Well let me see. I own an automobile that I worked and earned the right to use, but it has an enormous number of restrictions and limitations on how and when I can use it. I really don't see those restrictions killing the veteran driver population. (If anything they are keeping them alive) But I'll ask the simple and obviously implied question, what would you be willing to do to make the game better ?

Wow it's like this comes from another planet. This is the Thrustmaster Warthog. http://simhq.com/_technology3/images/technology_174a_001.jpg They manufacture it under license from the U.S.A.F. it's a replica of the A-10 control system and no it doesn't have a version for PS-anything or XBox-whatever. Edit:And yes that will give you an advantage over a mouse. Also, in case you didn't realize it, it costs considerably more than the consoles.

Bomber + Fully turreted satellite shouldn't be a pushover for any one ship to take down. If they were it would mean bombers were horribly underpowered and couldn't do the one job they are meant to do (area control/denial) at all well.

Actually I am pretty certain it would make the game much more interesting or at the very least give it an extra dimension. People keep complaining X is overpowered well X is usually fine when you don't have entire setups built around abusing it. Nobody goes around saying nerf rooks or bishops in chess. If you gave one side the ability to have all their pieces be rooks and the other could only have pawns and knights then you would have balance issues. Honestly I don't know that having everyone have full access or even faster access to all the ships will improve the quality of the matches. I can easily see how it could be a very bad thing. It's not hard to see team death match being all scouts and gunships, domination being all bomber and scouts with the losing side switching to gunships. There are ship types everyone has access to and ships not everyone has access to. I can completely understand that people enjoy picking the ship they want to fly but if you want better matches something has to give somewhere. What would you be willing to give up to get more interesting balanced matches ? Or are you happy with with the situation we have now where blowouts are the rule and good hard fights are the exception ?

The xbox controller is really a piece of crap compared to a good set of flightsim controls. You are comparing something that looks like it came from fisher price to controls modeled on the actual systems used in life or death situations.

Interesting. Being able to make the choice is fun for you, how would you feel about extending that fun to the other side that can't make those choices ? So instead of say limiting your choice, if there was an imbalance in ship selections between the teams the team that was short ships would be temporarily be granted ships ?

Well I am pretty damn certain if the implementation were even close to being competently done it would be superior. My joystick has more buttons/controls that are far more optimal for flying a craft than any mouse/keyboard combo I have ever seen. Just off the the top of my head I can bind the power settings to the hat, the 1-4 to the buttons on top of the hat, the two fire buttons to the sticks fire buttons, throttle to the analog throttle and strafing etc to the spare buttons on the base by the throttle.

Interesting there seems to be lots of resistance to this even though it's a pretty common idea, what would y'all say to new additional modes of play ? Say an all scout game ? All Strike game ? Bombers and strikes for domination ? Scouts and gunships for death match ?

Sorry that's the wrong question to ask. The question is why would anyone want to go up against a team fielding 6 bombers or 5 gunships when their side can only field one or two ? Nobody ever wants to give up an advantage, you have to ask just how much advantage can be allowed before the game gets bad, and how to best limit it. I personally don't like seeing ships nerfed when they are only overpowered in stacks. As to the hard on people that want to level up their ships, I can see that and I certainly wouldn't appreciate it, but as things stand I don't like feeling forced to take ships now to carry the team, or to put it another, the opposing team can already dictate what needs to be taken against them, the motivation for this is to limit that a little.

Would always have to keep at least one scout or strike on your bar. If it's desirable (don't really see it as being so, the people with more advanced ships will also more than likely have better upgraded ships) you can allow a limited differential of 1 or 2 of a type.

Prevent sides from fielding more advanced ships than the minimum available to either. We keep seeing threads complaining about how bomber tactic X is OP or Gunship Y is unfair to noobs. Simple suggestion if team A has 2 bombers available and team B has 4 team B should not be able to take more than 2 bombers on to the field to counter. Same for gunships etc.

LOL yes because we need yet another way for a few people to have an advantage. Oh Before you go all joystick envy I have a logitech 3D pro myself.

It's amazing how many people argue that getting slaughtered should be fun for players.

Well if you are willing to do that all you need is someone competent in a scout to follow you and unload on the bomber. If you are not in a premade though good luck on that. I can't count the times I have cleared the defenders on a satellite, cleared the turrets had it flipped or nearly flipped only to see the entire enemy team rushing at me to congratulate my efforts. All the while my team is unable to decipher the fact they need to either capitalize on the fact the enemy is weak everywhere else or should come help defend my position.

Don't be in a full pug group and don't kid yourself the 2.8 changes are going to help you one damn bit. The way the bombers can be countered if you can organize it is 2 gunships

One you are asking people to give up every other part of this game to play GSF that way. You need a group of people that will only be doing things in game that they can drop at a moments notice to make that work. Second you are seriously underestimating the value of voip and how it is used. Simply calling focus targets and having support ships call for assistance is enormous. I can't even begin to say how far off you are about when it is being used. Really at least 75% of the time I can see it used, it is being used to make certain a pug has no chance. It really isn't hard to see this either just look on your map for instances when the other team forms on one target or one map coordinate within a second or 2 of each other all breaking off whatever they were doing previously.

Interesting observations, my take on this will be from a bit of a different angle than what has come before. This is more a function of the matchmaking than anything else and map design as a much smaller second factor, and it can go either way but will always have a lean towards the pubs. The matchmaker loves creating matches which will be horribly unenjoyable for one side. It will regularly throw double , or triple groups of premades with mastered ships against groups consisting of all pugs and mostly noobs. The map bias is pretty obvious on two out of three of the domination maps, they outright favor the pub side. Lost shipyards the fortified objective is closer to the pub spawn point. Kuat Mesas the fortified objective is equidistant but the pubs get conveniently placed shortcuts through the obstacles. Let me ask the gunships you were trying to kill, would they have help magically pop up in your face when you tried to kill them ? Would they always be in the middle of a bomber field ? Have another gunship either covering their spot or right next to them ? It isn't the gunships that are OP, it's the team tactics being used against pugs that are OP

Both are correct and a really problematic situation. The problem is if it isn't pushed on everyone the people you would least want using it will be abusing it.

1. Tell them to schedule their GSF matches for times when their side does well on their server. This has two effects, first it lets them earn req faster giving them better ships which improves their performance. Second it means they likely won't have to fight 4 or 5, that are fighting to see how quickly they can kill the noob. 2. Tell them to get a voip premade. Because no matter how good they get they aren't going to be able to solo against a couple of gunships backed by a personal guard of a scouts and strikes. So unless they enjoy being pounded by people playing a fundamentally different game with different rules they need to do this.

Well, I can't see offering swag to show off without it being earned through ranked team matches. As things stand the matches are overwhelmingly bad jokes, and gsf only swag would just increase the incentive for making them worse. If you take a look ground pvp it's bad enough tossing solos together for ranked rewards It would be hard see the benefit of ratcheting that up in this game. Bringing the overall credit rewards in line with other activities would at least make the game more attractive to people that aren't playing just GSF.

I can get behind this. I have no knowledge of people being deliberately being annoying with it, but it's enough that it is.

Agreed. Improved directionals have been a long standing peeve of mine.

Yeah, there seems to be a leaning amongst MMOs to punish PvP rewards*. I suppose on the plus side, it makes it that much easier for people to leave matches they think will be unenjoyable. *It's really baffling to me as well seeing as lack of endgame content is always a problem. Well, I guess it's too many people saying this is the way WoW does it so it has to be right.

With the upcoming double credits for GSF event I got a little curious about just what effect that would have on my in game earnings. Currently I don't consider GSF a real income source it always struck me as falling far behind everything else I do in the game, but this event prompted me to check. So doing my regular pve activities in the game gave me the following hourly rate 90K credits 30 Basic comms 1 Exotic Element equalizer Misc Rep drops no easily assignable value + orange/blue gear Now putting in GSF into the equation Avg Match time 12 minutes avg award 6k credits: 30k Credits/hr assuming instant match pops. So even at double credit awards for GSF it is still far behind other game activities in terms of rewards/time. It would help GSF endlessly if people playing it, weren't effectively paying credits in terms of lost opportunities to play it.

I tried attack squadrons can see why it got shot down. While it definitely had potential and had many features GSF could use it had even more problems than GSF.