I think the changes made to GSF with the last update have been simply wonderful. At least the 3.5 year silence from the devs was broken with well thought-out quality game balancing changes. Because the queue on Begeren is unfortunately so anemic I haven't had a chance to test fly the changes as much as I'd like, but I've been flying on Harbinger a fair bit this week while I decorate strongholds over there, and it's obvious these changes have really altered the face of the game.
Even the meta-thumping diehards of the most condescending stripe have not only embraced the changes but are actively rolling almost all of the previously disparaged ships into their gameplay. While I'm not terribly concerned with validating the choices of that particular crowd, it's undeniable that in a PVP environment much depends on what the dedicated play-to-win set is number-crunching, and nowadays they are number-crunching in a way that really broadens even their picky definitions of the meta.
What that means for the more laid back player is that you're not going to be ridiculed anymore for flying striker fighters (and if you've never been ridiculed for flying a strike fighter, my guess would be you've only ever played on Begeren Colony, because on any other server flying a strike fighter was guaranteed to earn you heaps for vile scorn and personal attacks). And overall it means that GSF, even at the highest levels of competitive play, is seeing a lot more dogfighting and a lot less bomber/gunship balls. Finally, the full nuanced potential of all those component choices is starting to be felt as things like EMP Field and EMP Missile and Plasma Railgun and Quick-Charge Shield get the boosts they always needed, and the range of viable tactics being fielded is broadening and becoming much more dynamic. It's awesome.
But! Now that my excited babble about GSF's recent changes is done, I'd like to speak to the future that lies ahead for BC pilots once we're merged into Harbinger.
I think everyone already has some idea of how much more toxic the Harbinger community can be, particularly in the PVP arena. That's just as true for GSF as for anything else. On Begeren I frequently try to lead off matches with a "Have fun, everyone!" message in chat channel, and I know I'm not the only one. Our server is, overall, a friendly one, and our GSF environment is the most welcoming and least toxic of any of the servers out there (I've flown on many). A friendly "we're all here to have fun" attitude is definitely not what you're going to find in GSF on Harbinger. But when it comes to attitude, that's of course a matter of choice; we can choose to maintain our friendly dispositions, or choose not engage in chat wars, and try to remember what it is we love about the game in the first place. They might get us down if we let them, but we can try not to let them!
There's another aspect I wanted to give people a heads up about, though, and that's the level of gameplay. Generally speaking, if you stuck through the GSF learning curve already then you're probably of the disposition who doesn't mind some level of challenge. That's a spirit we will all definitely need to hold onto after the merge. GSF gameplay on Harbinger is a very different league from gameplay on Begeren.
Two years ago, the coordinated GSF guilds were spread out across a few servers; Shadowlands and Ebon Hawk and Harbinger and Red Eclipse all had healthy populations. Even then, gameplay was more competitive on those servers than on Begeren, but there was still some overlap of galaxies. But in the last year in particular the migration to Harbinger and Red Eclipse as the two GSF hubs has been very pronounced. Even as a lot of people bemoaned the bomber-spam tactics being seen on Harbinger, the fact remained that if you wanted frequent queue pops that's where you needed to be, and as such the most competitive server-hopping GSFers made Harbinger a home for at least some of their characters.
I get a couple matches in on Begeren and I generally feel pretty unstoppable. I get a couple matches in on Harbinger, and I feel like someone has been slamming my head repeatedly into a wall. It's a serious jump up in challenge, difficulty, and ruthlessness. When I fly on Harbinger, I'm reminded that no matter how much I might love GSF I just haven't put in the same amount of hours some players (with the benefit of a healthier server queue) have done. Going from being top of the pack to middle of the pack, with some nuance and finesse still to learn, is humbling. On Begeren, if I realize I'm taking damage I've generally gotten into the habit of staying put to get my final shots off, knowing that most of the time I'll be able to take some hits and still recover. On Harbinger, if I linger for even a second after realizing I'm being targeted it is almost guaranteed death; there's a mastery of TTK (time-to-kill) in a lot of the player base over there that is really impressive.
All of this is just to say - Begeren pilots are likely to find themselves suddenly thrown into a much deeper and much more crowded pool, on Harbinger. And there isn't going to be a lot of mercy or friendliness in the air to help them acclimatize. My advice to Begeren's pilots would be to remember how you felt in the beginning of GSF, make peace with the idea that you are going to feel like that all over again to some degree, and try to embrace the new challenge.
That being said, I don't think rising to a new challenge should have to mean that we adopt the less civil attitudes of much of the Harbinger PVP player base. (The "elite" GSF community likes to think they are more welcoming than the ground PVP community, but too often what that translates to is just exchanging crudity for condescension.) I think it might be fun for our BC.org GSFers to put a monthly (or whatever) night on the calendar for us to team up and fly together. We might get our butts soundly kicked, but at least we'll know we're flying with friends who can take their punches with good humor!
