My Honest Thoughts.

Before I get into this, I want to make a few things clear.



At the time of writing this, I’ve put in 530 hours into Fractured Space. I don’t have the exact date, but my earliest date on store transactions was for 4,400 platinum on June 23rd, 2016. I’ve been in Bracket 4 since the day we capped MMR at 2,000. While my time played and experience is belittled by more than a few members of our community, I only state this to say that I have played my fair share of the game and seen what it has to offer. I love this game. I love playing it, I love getting into it, I love talking until I’m blue in the face about it.



I’ve tried very hard to be an active, lively and successful part of this game’s community. Some people like me, some people don’t; that’s normal. I’ve lurked in the steam forums, and argued for/against dozens of people here. I also do the same on Reddit. I have dozens of threads petitioning for change in favor of the community, along with dozens of suggestions (plenty of which were sourced from other community members) in the forums that I believed would make the game a better place for everyone on either side of the spectrum.

As we stand on the brink of Phase 3; an update that will hopefully bring a lot of desired changes and fixes, I want to offer my voice on the state of the game.



Edge Case Games has been focusing heavily on bringing in new changes and features that hopefully will “Plug up the holes in the bucket”, mainly trying to make this game appear more action-packed and faster paced. If anything should point that out, I would think the upcoming change where conquest sectors’ lengths are being drastically shortened speaks for that.

They’ve upped the maneuverability of the ships in the game, introduced a ship that turned every standing tactic in the game on its head for a good bit of time, and brought several organized tournaments to unite our player base as more than just a bunch of guys in the forums and discord.



They introduced an entire system to overhaul the way crew worked, further complicating (in a somewhat good way) stat distribution for players’ ships to fit a specific playstyle. Along the way we’ve had quite a few bumps (defense implants being god tier, Aegis being broken, etc), but I’d like to think on a whole we’re managing.



I’d like to once more say that I love this game. I loved it since day one, and I’ll still love it. I hope Phase 3 turns out great.



When I started this game, I got the basics down pretty easily. Sure, the tutorial was a little bit of a drag, but it wasn’t like the game turned me off with it. I am a pretty tolerant player, though, and my expectations aren’t tall. What got me really into the game was the iceberg-feeling I got from playing. While the basics are definitely basic, the complexity to which you could take it was overwhelming.



I thought the way cloak ships worked was awesome (energy management was vital for a cloak ship, while situational awareness was key for the target’s survival). Sniper ships presented a constant pressure on an enemy team as they tried to push down a lane. There were ships more suited for a direct slug-fest, and others designed for a more agile style of combat. It was a playground where the more you knew, the better you’d become.



Staying past 12km put you out of reach of most smartgun attacks but also made it easier for the rounds to adjust their course to hit your ship, if you’re not far enough. Cloaking would force small craft and missiles to lose their target. Void charges had an aoe at 12km that made them extremely effective for a pioneer maintaining a distance.



Your crew would let you know if an enemy ship uncloaked, even if you’re not paying attention. They’ll let you know if an enemy ship’s jump drive just went active. They would even tell you where to hit the enemy if armor is broken, or which armor facing to turn to reduce incoming damage.



I could go on.



But, to put it simply, the game held a sense of harsh punishment, but there was no greater feeling of reward for coming out the victor. You would fight an inevitable defeat in one sector so your allied fleet could dominate in another. An enemy ship turning their Point Defense on a second too late would give a feeling of gratification that you just got another hard hit into them, along with whatever your turrets are slugging them for. One man’s perilous jump is another man’s grand opportunity. Timing your team's pushes, and holding when necessary was deeply rewarding when done right.



That was the game that I fell in love with, and cost me a small chunk of my life. It was slow, but the way you had to think in every moment was fast. To become better, you had to learn how to anticipate your enemys’ plan of attack, and how to counter in turn. But it wasn’t just being smart that you needed to progress, nor was it skill/talent. There was the just right amount of luck in each moment that could either seal a victory, or cause an extraordinary comeback for either team.



Since that time back in June, we’ve seen a handful of changes to the game. We’ve seen a reworking in how Gamma works (removing Gamma IV), and a complete change of pace to the gameplay. Prior to the current system, there was a healthy amount of time where the matches played out before gamma got involved. That length of time was an opportunity for heavy ships to push down a lane, for a sector to go back and forth a few times in an intensive battle, and a chance for stealth ships to set up in wait to devastate a team right before they jumped to Gamma station.



That time has been replaced with barely enough for one or two back-and-forth moments, unless seal clubbing happens. Heavy ships barely have enough time to cross a sector before needing to leave for Gamma preparation.



If the intention there was to shorten games in favor of increasing the number of games, I must ask; was it worth it? To eschew quality for quantity? Instead of 30 minute battles between titans of steel in the cold, dark vacuum of space – Where every minute was a potential turning point for either team – we have 10-20 minute, awkward skirmishes with an occasional blaze of glory in Gamma before the team that was winning from the start finishes off the match, like mercy-killing some wounded animal on the side of the road.



For Phase 3, as an answer to the lumbering stretch heavy ships have to go to get across a sector, and to make the game more actionable from the start (see the prior comment about working on making the game appealing to new players), they’re shortening the conquest sector lengths. The large-scale combat and effort of ranging out your weapons – along with other standing elements in the current game – are about to either change or be removed outright.



Back to implants, they also killed one of the most appealing feelings to the game; free to play, but not pay to win. For a while, we played in a game where, yes, certain crew types were more beneficial to a playstyle on others, but they came with trade-offs that made the game still fun for newer players, since they didn’t feel like they were getting screwed over.



Implants didn’t have trade-offs. They are just outright upgrades. Of course when you’re at the top of the hill (by grinding a biblical amount of credits or by spending money), it’s likely to look different since you have them all. Or, you can make the argument that “skilled players can overcome the disadvantage of implants”. But from the perspective of new players, they’re going into the shark pool with empty implant slots; it takes no genius to figure they’re going to feel at an outright disadvantage. Thus Implants are pressing on – if they haven’t already broken it – the purity that the game had as a fair place of competition for any, and all. Where learning new tactics and improving existing ones was the way to victory.



As we come into Phase 3, I really, REALLY hope we can see a turn from Phase 2. While it brought in a few neat things, we saw a lot of the truly wonderful things in Fractured Space whither. I hope that when the game is appealing enough for new players, it’s still appealing for those of us who have stood by it for quite some time.



Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this, and please understand that this is just from my perspective. I know I do not represent the community in any manner. I just felt that I should speak up on my thoughts and concerns for the game.

