Worst change to the game has been?
Which of these has been the worst change in your opinion
Grouchy
Worst change to the game has been? 95 votes
Hull Classes
18%
18 votes
Shipyard based Ship upgrades
28%
27 votes
Switch from percentaged based defenses to deflection/suvivability
9%
9 votes
2 month raid cycles
43%
41 votes
0
Very apt
Shipyard based ship upgrades have massively increased fleet build times as they are essential
It let them to force you to build a new fleet every cycle and PvP tier (which they control duration of)
Forbid strategy by restricting targets to only be fought by specific ships. You use what they tell you to use and where you can use it.
Ruined ship build creativity by restricting what weapons/specials go on each ship. Missile Seawolf? Nah, buddy. Missiles belong to assault and sometimes garrison ships. Be a good boy and put depth charges and rockets on that Seawolf instead.
- Also note: weight drastically increases between tiers so you're not allowed to use new stuff on old ships even if they're the same class. Check out the weight of current tier siege armor and check out the weight limit of an older siege ship like the Dragoon or Gladius.
Gave them an excuse to release constant powercreep and uninspired content. Please enjoy this new penetrative battery. It may look exactly the same as the last 3 we gave you, but this one has slightly higher numbers than the previous release. This new ship and special are allowed to have way bigger numbers and you can't question it because the new stuff has a bigger arbitrary number slapped on it.
Removed sideways expansion with the point above. New stuff is a rerelease of old stuff with bigger numbers instead of new functionality. When was the last time you really got to pick your engine type? (or choose between 1 of 2 for pvp) Research engine, Infernal core, speed system, resistors, scout engine, magnus drive and strike system were all engines but had their own standout features that made them compete for the choice of engine special. That's 7 unique choices for your major combat speed special.
Completely killed the REAL tier/progression system the game came with. When is the last time a special came out and it had a Level 1,2&3 variant like research tech does? The game state previously expected you to start out with weak ships with weaker weapons/specials and slowly work your way up to using strong ships using those Lv.3 versions of said specials. Now you ONLY get the strong ship and specials and you ONLY get to hit the hardest targets for those ships.
I can go on but this I covered most of the basic stuff there. I suppose I didn't address the upgrades with these points so allow me to speculate a little here:
I suspect the upgrade system would not have been implemented the way it currently is (if at all) if it weren't for the tier/class system.
There's no such thing as ship longevity anymore. They release a ship and that ship is only good for 2 months + some change for the 2 pillages it will get used in and its direct replacement gets brought in during the next tier. In the past with there being no classes/tiers there was a large variety of fleets engaging targets on the map, much unlike now. During the Frosty/Crusader era people were still using MCX/DNX to hit FM targets despite that fact that these ships were long outclassed by Kodiaks and Novastorms. Do you really think they would create tokens and upgrade kits for that many individual ships to crap up every prize list? No way. They'd likely only release X amount of individual ship kits/tokens in the store and some guy will have to repeatedly ask Kixeye several months in a row to include his desired kits/tokens in an event, because he is the only psycho in the game using Sawfish.
I would bet that instead, Kixeye would have made all upgrade kits and tokens completely generic and functional on every ship. I don't think upgrades would be even remotely as strong as they are now with that in mind. They'd likely be in line with something like the Eradicator's upgrades:
Which if you kind of look at it, are comparable or outright worse than typical retrofit levels on most ships. If you weren't forced to move away from your ships with tiers or move away from your fleet with class cycles, you could postpone taking upgrades or keep progressing upgrades on a specific fleet as a long term project in favor of building newer ships. I haven't also brought up the fact that upgrades might not have had immediate release with a ship. A ship might not get its first upgrade level for several months and then during an update might get access to only U1. Like what they were originally advertised to be, a system for older ships to get a bit more strength before you stop using them for good.
So with that being said, I think everything that sucks about this game just kind of ties back to tiers and classes.
Also just want to say that "well what about the build times if they got rid of/changed X?" is lame. The game DID have much longer build times prior to these systems and it was fine.
Yeah, all of us who played during the time definitely remembers Crusaders with a 30 day build time WITHOUT tokens existing.
Yes, I'd rather take 4-5 months to build a single fleet and make armor/special adjustments over the 2 years I'm going to get out of it before I finally retire it for good, rather than the current system.
No, I don't care that I can fully assemble a fleet right now in a little over a month (upgrades included) in the current game state when the fleet's clock is ticking down to its 2 month limit during that 'over a month' period.
Typed all this crap up while on a lack of sleep so if something is faulty, that's the excuse.
A lot of players have had their game adversely effected by these
If Kixeye would simply make you choose your poison and limit things like they used to, this would actually create more balance and give both hitters and defenders more options. The decision to allow you to grab everything makes defense worthless 9 times out of 10, and it always favors the attacker no matter what except for a brief 30-40 days at most.
I recall getting the Crusader & Arbalest back in the day, using NHs for 4 out of 5 parts in Strike, & D-92S (IIRC) Maulers. I did get a little help from a couple of alli-mates as they saw that I was at least TRYING (the NHs didn't have the flag, & some serious skill was needed to do it damage free) one had a Frosty/V2H fleet, the other had a Kodiak flag with Reapers so was easy-peasy for them.
The 1st Crusader built went into my guard fleet. This was when Hellhounds were chewing up bases at the time. That Crusader chopped many fleets up if they were stacked (my guard was pretty trash at the time, Piranha II Arb, some other junk)
Ahhh, good times.! But as you say, classes killed that, limited this, that, everything else--like the armours, the engines, oh god.
Remember the Templar, the limited Crusader? How many built those, to find them seperceded by R5 Crusaders, when they hit the Retrofit Lab?
The R10 Goliath got a 3rd special slot, on top of all the other buffs. what did the current defender get? Some deflection values. Wow. It's still a dog.
I absolutely abhor the upgrade system, I abhor the lack of creativity we now have. Once made V2Hs designed for outright speed, Balze Throwers, D71Z torps, speed armour, Reaver Scout, with a bait hull, for slaughtering subs. I even managed to nail a zombie GC (I did run a Fearless Blitzer crew for that particualr job) sure, I lost 2 hulls, but he never came back to the sector again. Never seen a GC owner run from a fleet before lol (combat speed on that fleet with the crew was about 84 for 20 seconds)
Could we do that now? Unless you build Conqs for the task, there aren't even fleets to defend your sector with. You could put a fleet of Aboms on your base before the Skysabers came out, & you were essentially bullet-proof from a visit. Who even has fleets as external guards now?
The game isn't really fun, unless you like watching people die in your base. It's become, quite frankly, a chore. A hamster wheel that is liberally coated in WD40, with an auto-lubrication system on it, it'll never rust, but just get faster & faster & faster.
Upgrades are so essential to a ship now. They 'reduced' build times on hulls. Yeah, ok, but let's look at how long it takes to upgrade them, 1 by 1, & if you're short a kit? Hull upgrading stops until youve got them.
I could type more, but really, you covered a lot. I thank you for the time you took doing it, although you probably should've been in bed.
But hey, as I have always said when I talk way too much about BP: The passion is still there. I never left the game, the game left me.
Also unfortunate regarding purpose built/specialized ships like your high speed V2H. One of the examples that I think fits here better than any ship is the Battlecruiser. Everyone had a fleet of those regardless of what level you were because of their insane flexibility on a low repair time. They were used in so many strategies and longer term projects for low-mid level players. I recall a popular community strategy for those lacking thermal detection was to give them a certain amount of retrofit levels and build one with sonar pod (research tech was useful!?) just so it can spot for your ships during one (1) encounter on the Fractured Empires campaign. That specific encounter had 2 Destroyer ECM and about 20 Reapers and would open with you getting to watch a handful of Reaver ships get smoked by unseen enemies, another cool touch or experience that the game lacks these days. You just don't get to do projects like this anymore.
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Slightly off topic: I think even Kixeye acknowledged Battlecruisers for what they were. They were chosen to get the donator skin during the 2015 veteran donation drive (where the silver/gold '2015' badge is from) despite them not being a ship used in top fleets at the time. Even though it also had fantastic do-anything stats, Kixeye also never gave them a single dud retrofit level unlike most other ships having that stupid single retrofit level that is +4 turn speed. Either someone on the dev team loved that ship or they were very accepting of the community's love of that thing. Honestly that ship is one of the best designed pieces of content in this game, probably the best.
I do want to counter argue a bit on the Templar: Anybody who was closely looking at the state of the game when that campaign was released would know that the Crusader was on its way out. I remember discussing this with my alliance leader at the time (one of those players who had it all) and we came to the consensus that they were not worth building. Even as someone who didn't have them, I knew he was right. Their general performance over time was very subtly going down with the game shifting.
Just as a few examples, the targets started using less 'run-at-you' AI and started using the AI that makes them drive circles around you so arbalests were harder to hit. Pyroclastic turret (FM prize) was essentially forcing them to take absurd amounts of damage. They either had to sit under your Apocalypse mortars and take damage or they had to drive past and ignore the thrower turret and take a ton of damage from it. They also could not deal with the mines from an Artemis, so if they wanted to get to the back of your @ shaped base they would have to eat 2 mines in your channel that did massive concussive damage and left ice fields. All of this was just a few months before Punishers were released and we got our first Scourge targets... The faction that had ONLY submerged ships that dealt a damage type that no ship resisted. Yeah, you get it by now.
However, I will counter-counter argue in your favor here. Crusaders were still the big shot ship and any low-mid level guy who was chasing their white whale of power finally had an in with the release of the Templar. For them to not only build what they perceived to be not just a Crusader, but an IMPROVED Crusader just for Kixeye to release the Punisher, Scourge and the R5 Crusader very shortly after likely did not make them feel very good about making what should have been the obvious decision at the time.
As far as everything else goes I'd say you're right on with it. I believe this game truly peaked right before they added the Scourge faction and the initial set of ships that had built in deflection (Neptune/Punisher/Heavy cruiser/Drac carrier?) because that was the final push that sent the game down the ****. Limited weapons/specials, deflection as a mainstay stat, build times being adjusted for token existence, tiers and classes VERY shortly followed these things.
I want to bring up a random related memory for this: Special shoutout to CM Doomrooster during the release of Agility System IV. Instead of relaying our complaints or trying the pacify the outrage, he instead argued with the community and basically told us to suck it when we complained about the new concept of limited specials being damaging to the game experience.
It was 2PM when I typed that on Eastern US. I'm just a recovering vampire shift employee. I can cover much more and I wish to do so, but it's a thing of questionable value because I feel like it doesn't matter or do anything. The people that could fix the issue either won't read it or would think "wow, that sounds really cool. Will it make more money than now though?"
The people (our game buddies and us nobodies on the forum) that would read it are already like-minded, so all I am doing is feeding an echo chamber in a way.
The Armitis was one of those hard-to-get limited hulls, as I recall, or you could get it via R&D. Similar to the Monarch (& the path towards more limited stuff) Interestingly, only a few had the Wake ModuleIII (you know, those who had it all) the one piece of kit that made that hull shine, & Kix hardly ever offered it, although it was asked for. The Armitis was a very specialisd hull as I recall (like the Aegis) that was only decent as part of a base guard, with quite the build time, like the Aegis (I think the Aegis had potential, but its stats couldn't been better-the R5 Harlocks Triton was FAR better, albeit a fair bit slower-THAT hull was awesome as an anti fleet for doing co-op FM targets with lesser pirates.
Punishers saw a decent lifespan, the Neptune made an awesome FM tank (if followed by a Frosty to nulify the Cryos in the L85 hub) the Drac carrier didn't last long (but I bet lots coined it lol)
You're right about players can say this, that & the other, & all generally agree that the game kind of left us waiting at the alter. We try to woo it back, but they've got a new champion. One can see what's happened to the player base since, only have to see how many active players there are in raids.
Kix did initiate some good changes around the T7 mark, including the stopping of chore-fleet sniping & SY auto-repair after a hit. Add the MANY PvP T7 7D tokens for folks to fix their fleets based on that change: It was based on ho many hulls you had built, not equipped, so if you had a bunch of blanks, you could fit them out (as well as tweak the pre-built stuff) or that's how it worked out for me anyway.
Then they sold out to Stillfort, & that's where the monetisation has really picked up, new company had to get their investment back while **** Harbin went mega-yacht shopping. Given some images I've seen of him, I think he enjoyed his fun (dressed as an elf, for example) & I bet retirement from management suited him very much, no more irate players calling him all sorts of names here (& all the work the Mods had wiping out said nasty comments)
They need to be U2 at the very minimum for the (usually granted at that level) deflection bonuses.
Remember, you need those stupid kits to even upgrade the hulls.!
I'd rather have a fully built fleet ready for use on the 2nd raid than chase constantly for upgrade kits etc. A partial fleet can be used in the lower sets (albeit at less points than with the right fleet) or the previous targets can be cherry-picked for whichever is easiest to grind out 100k at a time.
Or if the haves kindly prep for the have-nots who own partial fleets only, if they're feeling generous (which usually happens towards the end of an event)
You might like current system, I ABHOR it. & no, even if I won that US powerball of 1.9 BILLION, I wouldn't upgrade instantly said fleets-I'd buy a REAL boat.!
https://www.youtube.com/c/DerpyTheCow47?sub_confirmation=1