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- Jan 31, 2015
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Does anyone else feel like some of the things that contribute to a server being very fun for PvE actually directly reduce the fun of PvP on that server rather than complimenting it?
Full disclosure: I love to PvP. Competitively. I think AIs are retarded and the only way to make them "challenging" is to make them stronger pound for pound, make them greater in number, make them both stronger AND more numerous, or make them cheat.
In order for Starmade PvE to be fun, you need a range of pirates from rather weak, to very strong. So in order to "progress" in the PvE game you need an ever-larger ship because tougher pirate mobs are just hitting you with ever-larger alpha damage and soaking more damage than you currently deal out. So in Starmade PvE, ship size pretty much equals success (assuming a reasonably efficient ship design).
Of course all those giant ships cruising a server can get a little laggy, which is a real problem for people trying to PvP. Also who wants to go PvP and maybe risk losing all of their "progress" in the PvE game? So a lot of players aren't inclined to PvP at all since they need their giant ship intact to keep farming pirates and stay in the game at a level that's fun for them. Otherwise you're back in a fighter and even if you can survive in that just fine, it's a bummer to to have to fly past the strictly PvE guys (and buddies of the admins) lounging in their dreadnaughts - lagging you out as you pass - because they never deliberately risk a PvP encounter.
Starmade seems to be a great engine for PvE or for PvP, but I don't know if the two play styles are complimentary on a single server. PvE fun seems to call for very tough pirates that can hit you for 1-2M in a few seconds. But those kind of pirates inflate the minimum ship size on the server to something that can take that kind of hit and turn into it, which hurts PvP fun because that capability depends directly on size, and size=lag. Also because the smallest functional ship then takes so long to replace that it's usually not worth fighting in.
Does anyone else see this as a tension between PvE and PvP in Starmade?
Could delivering ship strength from dependence purely on size, through something like a research feature (is this planned?), help relieve this dynamic by allowing PvE progress through ship improvement that doesn't correlate directly to server load and GPU load simultaneously?
Could a way of improving a player's (or station's) ship-building capacity over time also relieve the difficulty of spawning good-sized ships for players who have worked hard to build up and progress in the game and thereby make PvP more inviting for players who have already invested a lot of time in succeeding at PvE?
Full disclosure: I love to PvP. Competitively. I think AIs are retarded and the only way to make them "challenging" is to make them stronger pound for pound, make them greater in number, make them both stronger AND more numerous, or make them cheat.
In order for Starmade PvE to be fun, you need a range of pirates from rather weak, to very strong. So in order to "progress" in the PvE game you need an ever-larger ship because tougher pirate mobs are just hitting you with ever-larger alpha damage and soaking more damage than you currently deal out. So in Starmade PvE, ship size pretty much equals success (assuming a reasonably efficient ship design).
Of course all those giant ships cruising a server can get a little laggy, which is a real problem for people trying to PvP. Also who wants to go PvP and maybe risk losing all of their "progress" in the PvE game? So a lot of players aren't inclined to PvP at all since they need their giant ship intact to keep farming pirates and stay in the game at a level that's fun for them. Otherwise you're back in a fighter and even if you can survive in that just fine, it's a bummer to to have to fly past the strictly PvE guys (and buddies of the admins) lounging in their dreadnaughts - lagging you out as you pass - because they never deliberately risk a PvP encounter.
Starmade seems to be a great engine for PvE or for PvP, but I don't know if the two play styles are complimentary on a single server. PvE fun seems to call for very tough pirates that can hit you for 1-2M in a few seconds. But those kind of pirates inflate the minimum ship size on the server to something that can take that kind of hit and turn into it, which hurts PvP fun because that capability depends directly on size, and size=lag. Also because the smallest functional ship then takes so long to replace that it's usually not worth fighting in.
Does anyone else see this as a tension between PvE and PvP in Starmade?
Could delivering ship strength from dependence purely on size, through something like a research feature (is this planned?), help relieve this dynamic by allowing PvE progress through ship improvement that doesn't correlate directly to server load and GPU load simultaneously?
Could a way of improving a player's (or station's) ship-building capacity over time also relieve the difficulty of spawning good-sized ships for players who have worked hard to build up and progress in the game and thereby make PvP more inviting for players who have already invested a lot of time in succeeding at PvE?
