Starfighter Feedback

[DarkAngelGuyver]

Honestly guys I was really stoked for this. Since the game launched and we had the on-rails ship stuff I was confident we'd see something to the tune of this. The videos had me hyped and I was ready to get my classic X-Wing on.

 

And then I actually strapped in and was immediately disappointed. Now to be fair: the basics of what's here IS good. The basic mechanic seems reasonably balanced, the game modes themselves are not hard to grasp. Where this falls utterly flat is on the control scheme. It is, frankly, a mess. I cannot fathom for the life of me why you've chosen this setup, but it's certainly not something that is impossible to be addressed:

 

-For anyone who's used to flight sims/space sims we generally prefer an inverted controls however the controls in this case cannot be inverted. Yes there is an option to invert them but that also inverts your targeting reticle. So you're trying to do to different things from the same control input. This is bad for those of you who aren't keeping track.

 

-Roll should not be prioritized on cardinal directions (A & D) as they don't have as much impact in a game like this where Yaw is far more important. WASD in nearly all other games maps to forward/backward and strafing left and right. It should be mirrored here too for the sake of again not flying in the face of every control scheme that just about every gamer has come to grow accustomed to as right now it just leads to confusing and conflicting inputs that while yes with practice can be overcome, they should not NEED to be overcome.

 

-The double-duty thing for the mouse makes it doubly aggrivating for those of us who have multi-monitor setups and until now have been running the game in full-screen windowed mode for easy alt-tabbing. By having to control both our aiming and our movement with the mouse it becomes far too easy to click off screen when making a sharp turn. This is unacceptable.

 

-Support for joysticks and gamepads. Really? We didn't put this in? One of the most important things for space and flight combat and it's not even an OPTION for us? It's not even hard to balance, simply lock the reticle nose on for those of us who like to actually fly our starfighters and let us map the controls. We'll handle the rest.

 

-Keep the mouse for aiming,, this is perfect for a mouse and keyboard setup, just don't have it pulling double duty as that gets horrendously sloppy.

 

-For the people who like what's here currently: cool! Leave it in, there's no reason that several basic control layouts cannot be fostered to suit different playstyles. It's just button and axis mapping and I'm confident that a professional dev team can add this in with little issue.

 

I really do want to play this, but until I catch wind that the controls are either revamped or simply more, and useful options are added I'm simply not going to bother.

[Blannis]

I have to agree and I think you laid out some very good points. I've ultimately cancelled my subscription, I'll check back if I hear anything worth while. But currently the GSF just isn't where it needs to be. Time to return to Hawken.

[Ren_simp]

Gsf is not a space sim and it was never advertised as one

Bioware Designed the game to be controlled by keyboard and mouse that's how they want you to play it

Its extremely easy to pick up the controls.

honestly people need to get over this Space sim garbage

I'm sure there are plenty of full fledged flight sims out there to cater for your burning need to use your joystick.

[DarkAngelGuyver]

Actually no it's not easy to pick up the controls. If the controls were easy to pick up then someone who's been gaming for a good 22 years wouldn't have difficulty with conflicting and overlapping inputs.

 

As I mentioned: There are options to continue to foster a mouse and keyboard setup that are neither difficult to implement, nor are they options that would take out the control scheme you've gotten accustomed to. Hell simply giving the players the option to map their own keybindings would fix all of this, so please take the attacks elsewhere and let the adults focus on trying to help improve the game so everyone can enjoy it.

[DarkAngelGuyver]

I have to agree and I think you laid out some very good points. I've ultimately cancelled my subscription, I'll check back if I hear anything worth while. But currently the GSF just isn't where it needs to be. Time to return to Hawken.

 

Eh I wouldn't go so far as to cancel my subscription. TOR is still a decent MMO and there's a lot of good in it otherwise. If it were simply GSF that I were weighing it against I'd agree and would ward people off of it, but that isn't the case, thankfully. None of this stuff is a hard fix, at least it shouldn't be, so I've faith that the Dev team can get it patched up and running nice for everyone, and if not? Eh, I'll just stick to the ground game and get my fix with Star Citizen.

[zechio]

...-Roll should not be prioritized on cardinal directions (A & D) as they don't have as much impact in a game like this where Yaw is far more important.

 

Actually, no. Roll and then Pitch lets you turn a good deal faster, making them far more important. Yaw is only for fine control when behind an oblivious person.

 

The controls are indeed very easy to understand. They're clearly based off of FPSes and arcade shooters ala Rogue Squadron.

 

That being said, your main points are still sound. There is no reason that they shouldn't have full capability to rebind things, including to a joystick. Hopefully joystick people will recognize though that they'll still have to use the mouse to aim. If you try to do a normal flight sim setup with the joystick, you won't have anywhere near the fine aim required in this. A joystick would be nice for controlling the ship, though it would take me a lot of getting used to to be able to use the joystick with my left hand and mouse with the right.

[MajFauxPas]

Gsf is not a space sim and it was never advertised as one

Bioware Designed the game to be controlled by keyboard and mouse that's how they want you to play it

Its extremely easy to pick up the controls.

honestly people need to get over this Space sim garbage

I'm sure there are plenty of full fledged flight sims out there to cater for your burning need to use your joystick.

 

Your statement might hold water if the mouse/keyboard controls in SWTOR Starfighter were any good.

 

I was just in two 10 minute dogfights. Nobody killed me, I killed nobody. Because aiming is 99% impossible. I had 3 bogies on my 6, firing constantly, and I didn't die? LOL

Edited December 6, 2013 by MajFauxPas

[Marb]

• The biggest issue for me is how there is no visual feedback on where the cursor is when it leaves the aiming circle, which makes it really disorientating and hard to control the camera and stay on target.
   
   
  
• Another is loosing track of a target that leaves your screen due to all the red triangle clutter. I'm also not sure what the orange line is that appears, at first I though that was a coordinate indicator on where my off-screen target was, not sure what it is.
   
   
  
• Another minor issue is how quiet the missile lock on sound is, if firing blasters at the same time it is often hard to tell when you have locked on to your target.
   
   
  
• I don't think the ship stats should affect the responsiveness of the camera to mouse input, because at the moment ship stats are governing camera responsiveness as well, and aiming sensitivity can't be changed. The mouse needs to move the camera independently of the ship and use the user designated mouse sensitivity, so ship stats still affect ship turning speed, but not the sensitivity of the camera and aiming cursor.
  

Edited December 6, 2013 by Marb

[zechio]

Your statement might hold water if the mouse/keyboard controls in SWTOR Starfighter were any good.

 

I was just in two 10 minute dogfights. Nobody killed me, I killed nobody. Because aiming is 99% impossible. I had 3 bogies on my 6, firing constantly, and I didn't die? LOL

 

The controls work fine. There are other factors, and it could have just been some bad efforts.

 

For example, if you aim at the extreme of your reticle, you have a very low accuracy. Add this to enemies evasion, and you now will rarely hit. Range has a similar effect.

 

Get your enemy close, and in the center...and you can nail a string of shots extremely quickly, shredding even the heaviest armored opponents.

 

With the sensitivity so high, I do wonder if people with non-gaming mice might have trouble aiming. You're making very small movements, and lower quality mice might not register the smoothly.

[DarkAngelGuyver]

Actually, no. Roll and then Pitch lets you turn a good deal faster, making them far more important. Yaw is only for fine control when behind an oblivious person.

 

The controls are indeed very easy to understand. They're clearly based off of FPSes and arcade shooters ala Rogue Squadron.

 

That being said, your main points are still sound. There is no reason that they shouldn't have full capability to rebind things, including to a joystick. Hopefully joystick people will recognize though that they'll still have to use the mouse to aim. If you try to do a normal flight sim setup with the joystick, you won't have anywhere near the fine aim required in this. A joystick would be nice for controlling the ship, though it would take me a lot of getting used to to be able to use the joystick with my left hand and mouse with the right.

 

 

I dunno, I've never had issues with fine aiming using a joystick. And I here there's over a hundred thousand people out there who use a joystick on a daily basis to not only aim precisely but also do much more in depth control inputs than we ever would in GSF.

 

Really when it comes to joystick stuff, as I said: lock the aim reticle to the nose and let us do the rest. We're quite adept and likely it'd wind up the other way around when its all said and done with everyone wanting to nerf out joysticks (it's likely why they aren't implemented in the first place).

 

If I had my way for key bindings I'd map Q and E to roll, A and D to yaw, Shift and Ctrl to the throttle and then keep the mouse for reticle control.

 

This keeps your major movements to your left hand while the fine aim tasks are handled by the right. It's a better approximation of FPS controls. I'd have no complaints (or at least minimal) complaints with the mouse being used for pitch and yaw if it weren't for the fact that, as I mentioned, the devs have it pulling double duty with the reticle as well. This makes for a very messy setup.

 

Again though: simply letting us map our own keybindings for GSF fixes all of this. Like to the point that even having this discussion is silly

[DarkAngelGuyver]

• The biggest issue for me is how there is no visual feedback on where the cursor is when it leaves the aiming circle, which makes it really disorientating and hard to control the camera and stay on target.
   
   
  
• Another is loosing track of a target that leaves your screen due to all the red triangle clutter. I'm also not sure what the orange line is that appears, at first I though that was a coordinate indicator on where my off-screen target was, not sure what it is.
   
   
  
• Another minor issue is how quiet the missile lock on sound is, if firing blasters at the same time it is often hard to tell when you have locked on to your target.
   
   
  
• I don't think the ship stats should affect the responsiveness of the camera to mouse input, because at the moment ship stats are governing camera responsiveness as well, and aiming sensitivity can't be changed. The mouse needs to move the camera independently of the ship and use the user designated mouse sensitivity, so ship stats still affect ship turning speed, but not the sensitivity of the camera and aiming cursor.
  

 

 

Can help you on some of this:

 

[*] When your reticle leaves the circle you'll see a line continue to draw outwards tracking where your mouse pointer is. It's very fine and difficult to notice, especially while in the thick of it

 

[*] Your selected target will be a light red diamond while all other enemies will be red triangles. The tutorial stuff will explain the targeting controls for you. They actually aren't too bad on that front and decently competent.

[Ren_simp]

Your statement might hold water if the mouse/keyboard controls in SWTOR Starfighter were any good.

 

I was just in two 10 minute dogfights. Nobody killed me, I killed nobody. Because aiming is 99% impossible. I had 3 bogies on my 6, firing constantly, and I didn't die? LOL

 

Are you even trying I see on average from most players 3-7 kills on

The low end of the score board your server must have really bad pilots

[zechio]

...If I had my way for key bindings I'd map Q and E to roll, A and D to yaw, Shift and Ctrl to the throttle and then keep the mouse for reticle control.

 

This keeps your major movements to your left hand while the fine aim tasks are handled by the right. It's a better approximation of FPS controls. I'd have no complaints (or at least minimal) complaints with the mouse being used for pitch and yaw if it weren't for the fact that, as I mentioned, the devs have it pulling double duty with the reticle as well. This makes for a very messy setup.

 

Again though: simply letting us map our own keybindings for GSF fixes all of this. Like to the point that even having this discussion is silly

 

I would probably do something pretty similar. It is indeed very tricky to get a good aim while turning sharp enough. Outside of circle fights though, it works fine.

 

I disagree though that a joystick could ever compete with the speed and precision of a mouse in aiming. A joystick is basically what console users have ( just a lot smaller ), and they lose out a ton compared to the instant precision of a mouse. That being said, a bad person with a mouse will get annihilated by a good person with a joystick:) If proper joystick support was implemented, I would probably use a hybrid though. Joystick for movement and mouse for the aiming.

 

I also think that your ideas should still be options. If someone wants a locked reticule and use just a joystick, why not? Some minor tweaking and options for key rebinding and this would be possible. Perhaps not the next minor patch, but surely the next decent patch could if they wanted to. I can't imagine more keybinding is not on the way.

 

I just want more options across the board really:) Checkboxes, color sliders, more key bindings, etc.

[Zohkar]

Me personally, I would prefer a joystick then using the keyboard, because honestly I have never used keybinds macros or the WASD to move. As a clicker, I use my mouse the best I can while in space combat and prefer to use the arrow keys like I do in pve and pvp content. Does this make me a bad player, yes in the eyes of some but with the joystick I would be alot more deadlier. My mouse cost me 10 and my keyboard 15 dollars so I use low end components as well which probally adds into my frustration.

 

Some matchs I can hit high into the accuracy (best 81%) but then thats usually when I play kill enemy turrents on the satellites which are stationary and in 1 pass I can usually get all 3. Most matchs I might get 0-3 kills and 3-8 assists and I am on the high end most people never getting any kills and a few assists. My best is 10 kills 12 assists because I eneded up fighting a republic team that almost everyone had starter ships. In a month when preferred get to play and another month later when free to play get in, I feel bad for them because they are going to be so out geared they will quit very fast.

[Marb]

Can help you on some of this:

 

[*] When your reticle leaves the circle you'll see a line continue to draw outwards tracking where your mouse pointer is. It's very fine and difficult to notice, especially while in the thick of it

 

[*] Your selected target will be a light red diamond while all other enemies will be red triangles. The tutorial stuff will explain the targeting controls for you. They actually aren't too bad on that front and decently competent.

 

Thanks. Yea that line showing where the cursor is needs to be a lot brighter, in a dogfight It's too hard to see.

[rbl_holmes]

Thanks. Yea that line showing where the cursor is needs to be a lot brighter, in a dogfight It's too hard to see.

 

I agree on this. I've never seen so many shades of blue until I started playing SWTOR, someone must really like blue lol. The targeting reticule that moves with the mouse and it's little line, need to contrast allot more, as in a different color than the rest of the hud would be nice, or the option to choose what color we want or something. It's very easy to lose sight of it in the heat of the moment.

[Hitomo_x]

this is ment to be a casual game

 

get used to it wich does not take Long

 

you can really have some doubtless fun with that, only the upgrade costs for components are to high

[sentawan]

Gsf is not a space sim and it was never advertised as one

Bioware Designed the game to be controlled by keyboard and mouse that's how they want you to play it

Its extremely easy to pick up the controls.

honestly people need to get over this Space sim garbage

I'm sure there are plenty of full fledged flight sims out there to cater for your burning need to use your joystick.

 

I agree!

[bastiondh]

Gsf is not a space sim and it was never advertised as one

Bioware Designed the game to be controlled by keyboard and mouse that's how they want you to play it

Its extremely easy to pick up the controls.

honestly people need to get over this Space sim garbage

I'm sure there are plenty of full fledged flight sims out there to cater for your burning need to use your joystick.

 

And again ^^^ especially the part about the joystick Made me laugh.

[Kombatikon]

Gsf is not a space sim and it was never advertised as one

Bioware Designed the game to be controlled by keyboard and mouse that's how they want you to play it

Its extremely easy to pick up the controls.

honestly people need to get over this Space sim garbage

I'm sure there are plenty of full fledged flight sims out there to cater for your burning need to use your joystick.

 

Hey man toatally agree with this *** are yas comparing this to real space sims geezes get over yourselves they have done well and I am sure there is going to be alot more going on than just how it is at the moment its only been 3 frakn days

[AlrikFassbauer]

I guess that you are against joystick control and pro towards mouse / keyboard control,

because in your whole life you would never ever even toufch a flight sim even if 10 horses were dragging you towards it !

Edited December 6, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

[The_Natoorat]

I see this thread focused on Sticks-Of-Joy as primary means of control. Personally, it doesn't bother me much, but I'm a silly person (and I don'thave a joystick, as my previous one got broken in 'Dive, Dive, Dive' mission in FreeSpace 2 ;/ ). On the other hand, if you don't mind, I would like to paste here a post from my other thread in 'Suggestion Box' which everyone ignored. Oh well.

It's just a collection of more general ideas concerning GSF.

 

 

So, Galactic StarFigher is out. Has been for last couple of days, and people had a chance to try it out and see what's what. I think now is the time to start talking about what we want to change/add to GSF. So without further delay, here are my ideas:

 

1) Gaining XP.

I've been playing GSF solely as my Imp Agent. My level is 25... and I haven't started Balmorra yet. I don't know what lvl requirement is to join GSF but lvling with it is so fast it breaks the 'main' game without adding anything to GSF itself.

I would recommend lowering XP gain at least by 75%, or better still, get rid of it completely and give only legacy XP.

 

2) Ship customisation.

At the moment it's very limited, just paintjob, weapon's and thruster's colour.

We need more options: different wings, thrusters moved to different locations, more paint options, decals (symbols?), engine sounds etc.

More ships are welcome but they should be very different from the ones already available. Just give more customisation options, being added regularly to keep us 'in the game' with the ship we have invested our time in.

 

3) Crew XP and level.

Here is an idea! After each battle we get some 'crew xp' that we can allocate to any of our crew members. After getting enough XP, crew member rises its level getting small bonus to its skill/abilities. It would be a very small bonus, eg 1% reduction is skill cooldown on lvl 1, 1% increase is ability magnitude (eg secondary wpn ammo) with lvl 2 etc.

 

4) GSF Headquarters

Right now GSF feels disconnected from the game, you just press 'h' and there you go. How about optional physical place that we go to, to launch GSF battles? Let's say we go to our faction's fleet, than to a new capital ship (through inter-fleet transport) and there in a hangar are terminals that open usual GSF window. That is only an option, everyone can still just press 'h' when- and wherever they want, but using HQ would give extra 5% requisition points (or whatever they are called).

 

5) Co-pilot comm chatter.

I find it very annoying, mostly because co-pilot attempts to be funny. It isn't. Now I'm using an astromech droid, its squeeks are less annoying than other crew members. Please do something about that. The easy thing would be an option to disable comm chatter altogether, the more difficult thing would be making co-pilot's comments more professional (that is shorter and more to the point).

 

6) More maps and match types.

I'm certain that it's just a matter of time before more maps/gamemodes will be added, just wanted to bring that point up.

New modes such as 'Team Death Match' or 'Free For All' could be an interesting addition. Maybe turn-based Assault/Defence?

Also new maps that have obsticles are welcome. Some people are complaining that they are crushing into the astroids, but that's the point! Dogfights (especially between scouts) in asteroid field produce so much more adrenaline.

 

That's all for now, if you have anything to say/add do not hesitate show no mercy.