Exploding Penguin
Moderator
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IMO with the passive-to-active change and energy flow changes, pretty much every single class lost its specialty and just became...well...a "class" that's different from the others.
TLM used to be amazing at neutralizing opponents' offensive capabilities. Atom smash cost literally nothing, took a decent amount of energy, and had a short enough cooldown to spam to a point of being more annoying that static grenade before the nerfs. Now, it's just a class that doesn't really specialize in anything and just has different skills. Merc with static smash before the change used to be great because it was well-known for hybrid armor and bunker. Bunker hit ridiculously hard considering that you didn't have to invest too many skill points into it, but now Merc is also just a class with different skills. It really doesn't have anything unique compared to other classes in terms of engagements and metagame. BM used to be a great class that didn't need energy to do very well compared to other classes that demanded energy to function such as TM and BH, but now the class itself is just trash and it doesn't even function well at all like it used to.
Basically, classes used to be more individualized and unique. TLM was OP at one thing, but CH was OP at another type of thing. Now, it's just a class is OP or not OP and the metagame has pretty much just disintegrated. There's no fun switching to any particular class for a few reasons:
1) All the classes feel the same; they're just different skills. If you're gonna switch classes then you might as well just switch to the best ones at the time like TM and BH
2) Since no classes are individualized, the feel of " I can't wait to try this build out on *insert class name*" no longer exists. Before, people would be exited to try out a certain build type on a new class they switched to. But now, since there's no metagame and rarely any variety in encounters, there's no excitement. All people do is prepare their class and build for a single type of encounter which is the same every time. This is partially due to overused builds but I don't recall there ever being such a monotonous feel to PvP in ED.
To fix this monotonous feel, I'm thinking that ED should go back to its rock-paper-scissors balance system. Right now the balance system is literally just one person is better than the other through level or OP class/build. The previous rock-paper-scissors build at least had a metagame and variety of encounters to it. While it wasn't the best system it's definitely better than this binary "better or worse" system. Here's an example of the current system:
Build A is higher level. Build A wins.
or
Build A has an OP build/class Build A wins.
The rock-paper-scissors system is something along the lines of this:
Build A fights Build B. Build A beats Build B because Build A is meant to kill builds like Build B.
Build A fights Build C. Build A loses to Build C because of a flaw that Build A has that Build C is designed to take advantage of.
Build B Beats Build C. Build B wins because while it is weak to something that Build A has, it can exploit the weaknesses of Build C quite easily.
The thing about the rock-paper-scissors system is that the metagame exists in almost any encounter, and the types of encounters are many. Even if the rock build is 2 levels higher than the paper build, the paper build will still have a good chance of winning. Or, at least there will be a metagame and some skill fight to see who wins. The metagame thus exists in many more situations, and there are multiple different rock-paper-scissors engagements, not just one triangle. In the current system of balance, the metagame does somewhat exist, but only between 2 people of very similar build and level. The metagame is nonexistent in 90% of random PvPs, if not more.
If classes were to gain some features that they specialize in, then they would be more fun to switch to. After that, there would be different types of engagements because it would promote more class variety even if there was a single OP class/build, and the previous system of more randomized engagements and more metagame situations would be brought back up. This can be done by giving some classes back passives (not necessarily the same ones), because honestly the energy flow skills are literally passives and the original purpose of removing passives was never resolved since energy flow skills always have highest priority in investment.
I think the passive-to-active and energy flow changes made ED have the boring feel it has today. Does anyone else feel like this is the cause?
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