Verain

July 20, 2021

If you’re stopped on the street and asked to sign a petition, do you just write down all the reasons you disagree with it?

In those cases, I don't sign it. See, those petitions turn into votes, so I can vote for or against it. This isn't a democracy, this is the devs word is law.

And on the off chance that it was being evaluated *as a petition*, everyone would know what a lot of signers are. You got 25,000 people to sign your thing about minimum wage? Pathetic. You got a million people to sign it? Whoa, that's a lot!

But is 12 GSF players a lot? After all, not everyone is subscribed. So every voice probably stands for a lot more.

These are some of the tricks being used by this stuff.

Also in the real world a petition wouldn't just be Luc's pet issues plus some stuff that he hopes will get more signatures. Real world petitions are like "We should put this law on the ballot" or whatever.

If you don’t agree, don’t say anything.

How about Luc not say anything? How about YOU not say anything? Or should I start my own petition to NOT do what Luc says? Why should I be the one silenced?

The petition, if implemented, would make the game a whole lot worse.

So

DISAGREED.

UNSIGNED

STRONGLY DOWNVOTE

OR WHATEVER

There are far more important places to spend your energy.

You know, since you care so much about my time, let me offer you similar advice- there's muuuuch more important places to spend YOUR energy than disagreeing with me. So if you do, just stay silent, say nothing, go spend your energy somewhere else. Don't speak. That's my advice to you.

Does that help you? Is that helpful? Should I just tell everyone who disagrees with me that I'm doing them a favor by telling them to be silent, because I'm being RESPECTFUL OF THEIR TIME?

What a joke.

July 20, 2021

So to repeat the issue here, GSF has been largely neglected.

So? A "petition" isn't how you fix that. All of SWTOR has only a moderate amount of resources, and they help GSF when they can. Do you really feel that GSF is uniquely crapped on or something? I'd like them to pay more attention to it as well, but they don't owe us anything, we aren't some aggrieved party. At least you are being more honest now- initially you were hiding this confrontational take you had on the devs, and now it's in the open.

If it received regular updates and content like the ground game does, then there would be no need for a multi-point petition.

I feel you'd make one anyway. Your last petition went somewhere, so you think that's a skeleton key to get all your pet requests addressed.

The petition is essentially saying, "hey Devs, GSF kind of needs a little work please."

NO, that is NOT the "essence" of what it is saying. The essence of what it is saying is "here's stuff I want and I see other folks bring up some times so lets see if I can bully the devs into doing it". That's what it's essence is- making demands and trying to get everyone to line up and spam AGREED in your main thread.

You could easily make a thread saying "@devs GSF needs a little work please". And no, your petition isn't more likely. No, we haven't reached some fictional line in the sand where we need to take some stand. None of that. You could have made that thread, instead of these two.

People put individual posts up all the time asking for things, and what happens? Nothing.

Hey, remember the individual thread asking for mines to not respect LOS? Or more recently, the one about slicing, that you did? Slicing got nerfed because it needed a nerf and everyone knew it, not because your chosen format was a petition.

We tried that, it doesn't work. Time for a new approach. You'll thank me if this works. Regardless of whether you disagree with the approach.

I'm actually angry that I've never managed to sound this arrogant on the forum. I need to step up my game.

GSF is not balanced anyway,

Lol, GSF is extremely well balanced in comparison to everything else that gets discussed. It's vastly more balanced than Squadrons ever has been on any single day of its existence, and less buggy to boot.

So balance and mode would seem to be entirely unrelated.

So, I'm going to argue with everything you just said. First, you're incorrect that GSF is not balanced. By comparison to a lot of games, it is extremely well balanced, and keep in mind we are talking about the game modes and the ships here. The only standard by which SWS and GSF are both imbalanced is that neither will give you a perfectly balanced matchmaker thing, and that is by no means a relevant point here.

Second, you are assuming that because GSF is not perfectly balanced, suddenly, balance doesn't matter, and that every game mode will be equally imbalanced. This take is HOT GARBAGE. A MOBA is much harder to balance than a TDM. Balancing a TDM and a Dom with the same rules is a bit challenging- zone control is more relevant in domination, for instance, and healing, evasion, and player killing are more relevent in a TDM. But a MOBA thing? No, that's a whole other universe. There's a reason why League's myraid of creative modes are generally still in the framework of a MOBA instead of there being a capture the flag, or a democracy-tower type mode in there.

Squadrons was designed to be a MOBA. It was the core element of the game, and they did an ok job, but by walking away from it so fast (the devs didn't even stick around six months after launch) they guaranteed that every imbalanced would stay forever. GSF was tweaked to its current point over the span of years, and then it became something only touched carefully. Even the sweeping changes a few years back weren't as disruptive as the ludicrous crap squadrons devs did, such as "now your ship takes double damage when you use this weapon" and "we took the ships that couldn't fly good and made them fly worse as a joke".

Adding a MOBA mode would be a huge deal.

If anyone wants to suggest pvp modes, the game to look at is Star Conflict. This is because GSF's domination and TDM were lifted out of there, back when that game was young and only had those two pvp modes. They've since added several other modes that work pretty good, and some of them are pvp modes. The two that would be of interest to GSF are:

Beacon Hunt - this is like domination, but with two core changes. First, only one satellite turns on at a time. Second, the team that has the active satellite can't respawn until the active satellite times out or until they lose control of it. This mode works way better than it sounds, though I don't think it's as good a mode as domination, it's very close. You can check it out in that game versus bots pretty easily if you like. This mode could be played with domination maps, making it the most likely thing that could be added.

Detonation - This is their take on capture the flag. This would require new maps. Each team has three points, so there are six points of interest on the map. A special bomb spawns, and your team wants to capture the bomb (so capture the flag), and the bomb guy has to get to any of the enemy points, at which point it explodes.

I don't think GSF would be perfectly balanced with this mode out of the box, and it would require new maps which is a huge ask.

They also have a variant where respawns are limited, but I don't think anyone would love that here.

I appreciate some players have tremendous amounts of fleet requisition stored up. But its still a pointless currency that becomes utterly useless beyond a certain stage. Would seem only logical to give it a purpose.

It's perfectly logical to leave it as it is. Perhaps the only change we should ask for is the ability to flex by linking our ship in a way that will show our ship and how much requisition it has available, so we can all measure our epeens in /gsf. Or perhaps we could ask for future cosmetic work to add some effect if you are willing to spend a million ship requisition.

But having it interact with the economy would be odd and strange. Whatever thing you end up being able to buy with it would have a tiny price compared to the effort put in, because everyone has all this braggable points that suddenly would be a currency.

Importantly, why would this obscure point be part of a petition?

This is why it needs to be a very high figure for the conversion.

See, that's not fair either. I have a zillion req, sure, but why should the time I spent be less valuable? And why should FUTURE conversions be penalized here too? The moment you let it become, I dunno, tech fragments, or some tradable item, you'll be here doing a petition (BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE WORKS GUYS) begging for a better conversion of time spent in GSF to earn ship and fleet req to (whatever), and you'll be busy showing how this DOESN'T RESPECT OUR TIME and how it's TERRIBLE FOR GSF PLAYERS and the devs HATES USS SO MUUUCH. Or maybe that won't be your thread, but the next you's thread.

Honestly the amount of fleet requisition stored up pales into comparison to the already existing ways to farm Fleet Comms.

This doesn't seem true to me.

But at least it would give a purpose to the currency.

I'd only be interested in a purpose that keeps the ship req tied to the player, and tied to GSF. So unlocking a sparkle trail or something for a huge amount seems ok to me, especially as the game needs a few more perks to stay on mains. But I wouldn't like, petition for it.

If the unlock price is "much higher" it defeats the purpose.

Your purpose is "free stuff for me", so yes, obviously a higher price defeats the purpose.

You're not at an advantage. Yes its player power in the sense that its a 2nd copy which can be useful,

It is useful. You know it's powerful as well, or you wouldn't be here asking for it. It is nice to be able to put two of these ships on your bar, especially if you tune one for TDM and the other for Dom.

As for the refund, yeah that's just not going to happen

Of course not. But nothing you want is going to happen either, and you're still asking for it. You're not asking for this because your goal is to screw over players who have bought the ships, like me, and to get free stuff for you, so you don't even bother asking or thinking about it or anything. It's not on your petition for this reason.

I remember seeing people moaning when Nico Okarr was given away free to subscribers a few years ago, and the founders were complaining that it was no longer an exclusive founder reward. Things change. You're either thinking about other people here or you're not.

First, "the devs screwed some people before, so they should screw everyone constantly" is a terrible argument. Second, unlocking these ships on multiple characters costs a lot more than Nico Okarr, and we've had the devs come in and say that they don't have the ability or the intention to do account wide unlocks on GSF, which is pretty much the go-ahead to buy stuff with the confidence that it won't be given away free later. So you're basically asking them to go back on past statements, specifically excluding anything that would serve as compensation to those that paid, all because you want free stuff and want to punish those who bought things already. Because "things change". And then have the balls to pretend this is about "thinking about other people". I'm the one "thinking about other people", because other players have done what I have. You want what you haven't paid for, and explicitly in a way that screws over people who played by the rules.

July 19, 2021

There is nothing wrong with trying to make a collective voice heard.

This is YOUR voice. You've collected a bunch of things that other people have discussed a bit, and then added some of your own. For instance, there's plenty of people who want free cartel stuff, but very few people asking for removal of copilots. Yet here they are in the same "petition". Organized by you, and no one else.

Safe to say you are in the minority on this one.

Of course I am. You're voting on free stuff, and I'm one of the few players who bought enough here that I'd be punked by them doing this, because I paid to have cartel ships on multiple characters, and you did not. Obviously if they go and give you and everyone else free cartel ships everywhere, I'm the butt of the joke. Being in the minority doesn't make me wrong. I bet if we took a vote to divide your bank account evenly between the forum members, it would be "safe to say you are in the minority on this one" too.

A work around for a bug that has been rather ignored? No thanks.

You should say "thanks" because I just told you how to solve it if you really care. But yes, obviously they should fix it. This is the only actual defect in all of this, you know- this stupid deselect thing that I don't really think the devs understand exactly how frustrating it is to have to check everything every time you log in or just be missing a pile of upgrades. You can bet if talent trees had this issue in ground game it would be a tier 1 emergency.

We agree on plenty of these. I don't think petitions are how to get stuff done. If we have to, I think they should be reserved for cases where it has become disruptive, and where basically everyone agrees. Multipoint wishlists strikes me as extremely disrespectful and inappropriate. None of these are prenerf slicing, and the only defect in the list is the component deselect bug. How many people signing "agree" don't actually care about 2-6 of your points but really just would like, for instance, a new map and the bug fix? But by setting it up to avoid this nuance, you create the illusion of mass support.

July 19, 2021

Copypasting my dissent from the main thread into this distraction thread:

---

First off, please not do discuss this petition here.

No thanks, I'll disagree here and there if I have to as well. It's extremely important to disagree with a petition on the petition itself, to make it clear that a united front is not in any way being presented. By shoving dissent into another thread, it makes it appear as if the petition has unanimous support.

Second. If you agree with the petition, please just type "Agreed", and then rate the thread five stars. Do nothing else. Do not make comments or give feedback in this thread. We know from previous experience that a clear petition with lots of "yes" votes that is also rated 5 stars, will get the attention of the devs.

Good grief, no, this is the worst possible lesson. "Here's how to bully devs, from the time the devs listened to us last time".

How come you don't even say how to disagree with your "petition"? Hrm....

Here's your idea:

1- New map. This is a good idea. We don't need a petition for it. The devs know that new maps are great. Iokath in particular was really great. Do you think they need a petition for it? Nobody petitioned for Iokath. GSF shares resources with the ground game, especially with something like level design man.

2- New mode. I'd like several modes to be added- they could look around at other, similar games for inspiration, many of which started with domination and TDM and then added other objective type maps- but I don't expect it and I don't feel we should demand it. A new game mode is a huge deal, please remember.

3- More GSF decorations- Hey this would be neat, but why does anyone need a petition for this?

4- More stuff to spend currency on- there's technical difficulties with spending fleet or ship requisition for anything else. This would be nice for them to fix at some point, but at this point it's pretty absurd how much ship and fleet req is stored up, waiting to absolutely hammer whatever aspect of the economy they tie it to, were they to do this.

5- Legacy unlock for cartel ships - I don't want them to do this. I have bought cartel ships on many characters, and this is one way I can distinguish myself from someone who is unwilling or unable to do this. I won't be sad if they did this (though I would be grumpy as they would inevitably not throw any CCs my way). Anyway, I bought into it this way, and I hope they keep it this way.

6- Completely destroy links between a character's appearance and that character's abilities - Naw , screw this. It's great that if you like a character, you get to put up with their unique ups and downs, and can't just build everything perfectly without any actual tie to the characters being represented. It's really good the way it is now, if anything I'd like more things tied to characters and factions than now. We already lost almost everything that made these characters unique in the ground game, we have absolutely no compelling reason to lose that link here (at least the ground game people had points about access to healers and tanks back then).

7- Component deselect bug can be worked around by transferring a character. This should definitely be fixed or worked around (the workaround would be to let the game transfer you to another real or fake server and then immediately back, for no cost). But again, a petition? Screw that.

8- Matchmaker Improvements- Yes, this would be a nice thing for them to work on at some point. Matchmaker does pretty good right now though, with so many people playing. It seems to bump around in the dark when there aren't enough players for three games though.

July 19, 2021