Hey CIG, just wanted to drop some feedback on MM now that there's been time to play around with it with various ships and modes. I appreciate you setting up these look-ahead test modes for us to give you feedback on the model. I think there's been a lot of more granular/technical feedback on the egg thrust profile, the weapons, the pips, etc. which I'm not going to rehash. Rather, I'd like to give you feedback on the feel of the game and on the design motivations provided in various forums (isc, spec, etc.). First, at a top level, the current flight model certainly has flaws and despite those flaws, it has the following emotional characteristics for me: 1. I feel free to move around the universe I can move about, unrestricted with a somewhat reasonable top speed. Flight feels fluid, dynamic, responsive. I can get thrills threading the needle at stations, doing low flying, racing around obstacles. This model is just freaking fun. 2. Small scale fights have a deep learning curve Grinding out the nuances of the model to improve duels has proven to be both rewarding and challenging. It feels like I accomplished something, like I'm achieved a degree of competence that is recognized and rewarded. 3. Large scale group fights have an even deeper learning curve This is the real long tail of the competence curve. Refining the ability to be effective in a group fight, where speeds are high, merging and sticking is difficult, and at the top end of the skill levels here, getting kills is difficult, but immensely satisfying. I grew up playing wing commander. I want that ace fighter pilot experience in freaking space. Chris' vision about having ace fighter pilots in space, with carriers and other assorted vehicles with multiple players is deeply compelling to me. The competitive nature is ingrained in the concept, even in those early games where you were competing with other pilots on the killboard and their dialog would be affected by your performance. Improving and getting better along a deep skill curve is what makes games last for years and years. With MM now in the picture, it feels like lot of the spirit of what makes this project has been deadened. I think it starts with some of the developers talking about the motivations for MM being primarily to be able to better see ship models at low speeds, or to effectively lower the skill floor to make the game more accessible. I'm not going to talk about pretty ship models (they are though!), but I directly want to address the skill spectrum motivation. There's natural tension between the floor and the ceiling in a lot of games. Throughout the project to date though, it seemed like the project has largely been tuned such that the gap between those two is pretty large which I think is the right balance for a lot of reasons: 1. It makes people want to come back to the game to improve because there's always something more to learn, even at the top end 2. It fosters a community and culture of teaching, you see a lot of top end pvp orgs/people spending time extending a ladder to more junior players 3. It makes competent players feel good playing the game because they get rewarded for refining their skillset 4. It makes competitions interesting to observe and watch because you can always learn new styles, methods, and techniques by watching others, it's a very diverse ecosystem I'll also assert that if you look at games that have withstood the test of time and maintain a healthy player base, they share that larger skill spectrum. Look at the steamcharts numbers for things like counterstrike, siege, dota, rust, cod, apex, even team fortress 2, etc. They all share a very broad skill spectrum, relatively complex gameplay mechanics and they retain player's sustained interest with the depth of PVP focus, NOT a PVE sanitized experience. Having spent time flying around in ff and sqb with MM I have the following emotional reactions: A. I feel like I've had a straight jacket thrown on. My ship is broken somehow and needs to be repaired. It flies wooden, my freedom to express myself, do cool maneuvers is somehow artificially constrained. Maybe in time I will adjust to this experience but it definitely feels like a certain special sauce has been completely removed. It's been pasteurized and the flavor is gone. B. Getting shots on target is super easy now. It takes little skill, it's not rewarding. I don't get the same elation I do in the current model with getting my nose in the perfect position to land shots. Now it feels like more of a point and click adventure. Duels are just tedious aim races favoring keyboard and mouse players with instant corrections. It's much the same with group fights. C. Kitey behavior, extending/backstrafing/doesn't matter, feels magnified in this this model. It feels like the fights are longer distance now, I spend more time chasing, especially with people to pop into nav mode to disengage entirely. It feels like we went from a carefully choreographed ballet of intense concentration, coordination, and skill to a line dancing sequence at a dive bar. Combat at high levels now feels more like the eve online style of travelling with a group and just point and clicking on coordinated targets rather than a badass ace pilot simulation with 6DOF. I fully realize that this is a work in progress, however, with such a severe correction from simulation to arcade like gameplay I can't help but feel I went from a hardcore, complex space flight experience to something I can play on my phone with superficial gimmicks to make me feel like 'im in space', tons of auto-aim assist, hitscan-like weapons, and a wooden flight model. It feels closer to starfield or galaxy on fire's mechanics than a 'first person universe' with an emphasis on pilot talent. I urge the owners of the combat experience to reconsider dropping the skill ceiling such as it is largely because I think it's an unwise trade: short term bump making things accessible to new or low-competence players vs. longevity with competitive interest. Let us fly free! Let racers have an epic experience at the track, let low fliers get the thrill of 800m/s centimeters from the deck, let us fly unconstrained! Instead of crippling the flight experience in the interest of accessibility/skill-floor, consider some alternatives: - direct tradeoffs between weapons power and speed (single energy bank) - electronic warfare (lower power plant output/speed on targets) - combat tractoring/webbing (put beams instead of guns on larger ships like the anti-fighter corvettes that can attenuate speed the closer something is - might even make the HH actually useful for a change) - improving core hit registration mechanics in the game engine (incl. pip calculation) All of which increase the depth/complexity of coordination, systems, gameplay mechanics to make combat more interesting. I think this community has clearly demonstrated that you can generate interest and a sustainable revenue stream for your business based on gameplay models enabling a big skill differential. Please don't let accessibility focus groups kill what makes this project unique. Avoid a fundamental pivot for the project from appealing to people interested in deep skill based experiences to an arcade space romp. A consistent arcade-ification trend from MM to cheesy sniper optics glinting for the sake of accessibility makes me concerned about the future of my favorite gaming project. In short: - Keep flying in space freaking exciting! - Keep the community interested in helping each other learn! - Augment systems to better and directly address flaws in the mechanics rather than nerfing the very core mechanics that make the game unique </$0.02> Let the inevitable flaming begin.