It just doesn't feel fun to play anymore.

[Swagile]

Player since 2015 here. Too many mechanics from base SS13 have been removed. We dropped a ton of depth from base SS13 (engineering, medical, research, etc.) in the name of balance and now everything marine side feels so bland because of fear of it becoming a meta. Engineer used to be my favourite job where you could have a massive effect on shaping the battlefield through a number of ways but now it just feels like you're bob the barricade builder with a few toys thrown in that get old after a couple of rounds. The biggest gripe I still have with the team is when they nerfed e-grills. Back in 2015-16 you used to have an incentive to keep power up because without it your whole base defense would fall apart. This resulted in engineering becoming a secondary objective to the marines that was as important as tcomms. Marines actually had to actively protect engineering which lead to harder tactical choices for command. Do you push caves with 3 squads and risk the LZ, engineering and tcomms being less defended? Do you use the harder to defend LZ 2 to consolidate your defenses because its closer to engineering? Do you leave 2 squads back and use LZ1, but risk a squad being cut off? Some of the most fun games I've ever had have consisted of being a bravo engineer cut off from lz1 and desperately trying to hold engineering to save the FOB. Balance shouldn't mean removing depth to the game because it makes everything feel bland.

i like you

this is exactly why i used to be a combat engineer main years ago

egrills, shield barriers, rapid table deployment, fake doors, windoors to block boiler gas, encased MG spots with glass on them, NORMAL WALL REMOVAL FOR OPENING FIRING LANES [the dev that made normal walls harder to deconstruct than r-walls, i still dislike you to this day], etc.

all kinds of tactics, all down the drain due to constant nerfs or outright removals

[Fewher]

i like you

this is exactly why i used to be a combat engineer main years ago

egrills, shield barriers, rapid table deployment, fake doors, windoors to block boiler gas, encased MG spots with glass on them, NORMAL WALL REMOVAL FOR OPENING FIRING LANES [the dev that made normal walls harder to deconstruct than r-walls, i still dislike you to this day], etc.

all kinds of tactics, all down the drain due to constant nerfs or outright removals

These tactics were cool, but were so unbalanced that a single engineer could win the round for marines if he was beyond competent.
I think a lot of these tactics and mechanics were awesome they also offered up a host of bugs and issues SS13 itself couldn't account for. For example, placing glass/egrills over things often bugged out intended mechanics like being unable to slash Sentries because someone built an e-grill ontop of it.

I think the freedom of CM is what attracted a lot of players early on, but a lot of the freedom was unintended and it was just a matter of time before it was patched.

[AlbertBlackwell]

Honestly, I wasn't around back then but that sounds brilliant. If I could code I'd like to have an "up to date" version of the electric grilles, and all the other stuff you mentioned. Command actually having objectives instead of "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hold filtration" would actually add some decent variety to rounds, variety CM doesnt have.

pretty goofy innit

[Swagile]

These tactics were cool, but were so unbalanced that a single engineer could win the round for marines if he was beyond competent.
I think a lot of these tactics and mechanics were awesome they also offered up a host of bugs and issues SS13 itself couldn't account for. For example, placing glass/egrills over things often bugged out intended mechanics like being unable to slash Sentries because someone built an e-grill ontop of it.

I think the freedom of CM is what attracted a lot of players early on, but a lot of the freedom was unintended and it was just a matter of time before it was patched.

oh it was hilariously broken when a competent engineer was playing, your not wrong.

but i miss it because being a GOOD combat engineer was REWARDING, just like being a GOOD combat medic back then made you a GOD; back when only medics could defib and had the space for meds, controls were clunky (this isn't good, but it showed who was a good medic or not), and most marines only had tricord injectors as their only meds (and people got killed faster with more permanent wounds back then), etc.

there was more to do than just slap down a cade; you felt like there was a progression system to being a good marine, and the longer your FOB survived, the most impenetrable it became.

now you just slap cades down and call it a day. no progression except making more cade lines (which don't matter because you can't shoot over too many cade lines or bullets start hitting cade lines, another nerf to good FOB's). its why i play a lot of TGMC nowadays, since engineers are rewarded for being creative and good at what they do whereas CM rewards you for being a cookie cutter NPC nowadays

Honestly, I wasn't around back then but that sounds brilliant. If I could code I'd like to have an "up to date" version of the electric grilles, and all the other stuff you mentioned. Command actually having objectives instead of "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hold filtration" would actually add some decent variety to rounds, variety CM doesnt have.

pretty goofy innit

objective based gameplay that rewards marines for doing anything but UNGA BUNGA charge would be kinda neat. DEFCON hoped to be that but its so boring to process pieces of paper that only people who really enjoy that (IO mains) ever really do it

[Rocco Ward]

I miss disposals and the SM. You used to be able to setup a last defense in engineering and any xeno that would attack and accidentally run into one of the pipes could be jettisoned into space. I remember doing this to a few queens and the laughter in dchat was comedy gold.

[LynuahSororitas]

The entireness of the game was butchered so a small yet vocal percentage of people that wanted nothing but mindless shooting could have a nicer experience which by default, jeopardised all the other people that enjoyed the game, and now you got: ''FOB/Engineering gameplay is trash, it should be removed— Nobody likes it'' - Of course, the role was destroyed and the people that loved doing it are long gone.

''Roleplaying doesn’t add up, it shouldn’t be a priority— Nobody likes it'' - Again, of course, if you outright destroy something and later complain about it because it doesn’t happen, and with that I say some of the developer team and some specific players.

As an analogy, if you have a meat steakhouse and suddenly rebrand it to a vegan restaurant without any apparent reason, and then complain all the old and classic customers are gone, the fault is entirely yours.

Even medics are being simplified as time goes, nowadays you can simply go out with a custom injector and click in everyone you see wounded and all the other things that I won’t lose my time listing.

It can be agreed it backfired by the amount of posts in this sole thread or the amount of leaving players. Killing an entire playerbase to welcome another isn’t a way to develop a game and that is what is happening.

The game won’t die, as said above, it isn’t as good as it was before but it surely is fun to the new ''customers'' that know nothing but what the new hollow CM currently is. And that is completely fine, for the new and upcoming players at least— But it is no surprise the old and majority of the base community has been currently slowly fading away.

And unless a drastic change is to happen, it will only get worse to everyone but the new players that enjoy the current state of the game. So, be happy if you lived through better times and keep up the memories you got, the new community surely has a reason to like how CM is going, be it just fragging or power gaming all the way, but that is CM for them, there is nothing that can be done. Using ours rose tinted glasses won’t change the reality.

[Stan_albatross]

The entireness of the game was butchered so a small yet vocal percentage of people that wanted nothing but mindless shooting

*mindless slashing

these people are xenomains

[Fewher]

The entireness of the game was butchered so a small yet vocal percentage of people that wanted nothing but mindless shooting could have a nicer experience which by default, jeopardised all the other people that enjoyed the game, and now you got: ''FOB/Engineering gameplay is trash, it should be removed— Nobody likes it'' - Of course, the role was destroyed and the people that loved doing it are long gone.

The core game was butchered due to years of poor leadership which caused poor game design and lack of direction.
Development suffered far more from this than the staffing side did, with many developers pouring out shitty mechanics that degraded the integrity of the game and no one in a leadership position with enough far-sight to correct it.

Now you have a game with little depth and a staff team so bankrupt from the original goal of CM.

However, I believe the playerbase has shifted so drastically that this is ideally what the majority wants now. The playerbase in-large doesn't want 2015-2016 Era, they enjoy the present game for what it's worth and the majority is simply no longer the majority.

[128th]

I been around here since 2015 and still remember old school cades that wouldn't allow you to shoot through them if you happened to be at opposite side of them. I agree that current engineering sucks ass. There is no fun in it, just a line of boring and non-rewarding choirs. Biggest downgrades from my experience over course of this years are:
- Locations where you can't place cades and generally can't build, like shuttles. There is no way to defend shuttle from xenos invasion if your PO is incompetent.
- Pathetic stats for manned weapons like M56 HMG that completely useless and acts like noobie trap.
- Lack of proper equipment for those regular marines that picks specific role kits.
- Consistent nerfing of all marine's weapons.

[kooarbiter]

god you peopler are getting this boomer nostalgic, I miss how awesome the sully's hangar was, how req could actually get things to the dropship in an appreciable amount of time, how clusterfuckywucky the layout upside was, and how fucking awesome marine prep could be on high pop rounds