Save GSF before it flops

[Zohkar]

Then again, Ebon Hawk is a different kind of server. Our vets treat our newbies, for the most part, with kid gloves and something vaguely approaching respect (but resembling pity). I don't know how it is on whatever server you're flying on, but on Ebon Hawk, I like to think we old hands are trying to get it right.

 

I want to call shannigans on that, because I've seen those matchs either from the start or coming into them because Imperials have decided enough was enough on being farmed and I backfill in. Matchmaking is going to kill GSF, when you have a team full of 5 ships on one side and only 1-2 people of 5 ships on the other. I know my republic character only has stock ships, but I am being thrown against Imperials with maxed ships and winning because we have more veterans on the Republic side with more skill and maxed out ships that group together vs. solo players.

[QuinMantha]

One, I says 'trying'. Two, normally it takes me glaring at people to make them try. Three, these statements aren't necessarily true when the Imperial aces come out. Four, it's 'shenanigans'...and five, all together now!

 

Assaulting a police officer!

 

EDIT: Sorry. My Pythonian instincts got the better of me there.

Edited March 8, 2014 by QuinMantha

[Ramalina]

So you agree with everything said, and even encourage BioWare to build a better training program, just like many of us have said. All but one thing, i highly suggest you jump on an alt and try the stock ships again. With understanding of how things work, they perform very well, I have formed a new respect for the rapid fire laser.

 

I did last night, mostly because flashpoint queues were being slow while I was leveling one of my tank alts.

 

It's not as bad as trying to dps in WZs or ops with a level one weapon, but there is a really big difference.

 

Had to fly much more conservatively, and spent half the match trailing smoke and fire because we had no bombers and I had forgotten that hydrospanner doesn't come with the stock copilot. Got lots of assists and zero deaths, but no kills. It helped that we had 4 people from the Aces thread on our team and that we were crushing the opposition (same faction match). I'll note that in order to survive that well I had to spend almost all my time with power management set to engine or shields. In my mastered Starguard that would have been blasters and engines respectively. I'd also guess that in my mastered ship my assist number would have been my kill number, and I'd have had as many assists as kills.

 

Basically I'd stick with my assessment, against a team of equal skill displaying equal team play, a team with stock ships is going to have a very steep uphill battle against a team with mastered ships. The best pilots in stock ships may perform decently against poorer pilots on the other side, but against similarly skilled pilots they will tend to loose consistently due to the gear difference.

 

The nice thing about the upgrade system, is that the survivability upgrades are low hanging fruit, and with something like 30-40k requisition you can have the same gear based survivability as a mastered ship. After that it's just flying skill.

 

It would probably help if there was in game info pointing this out for new GSF players.

 

Though, at this point it may all be a story of too little too late in terms of GSF recruitment.

[Costello]

My experience of late has been less and less games are popping.

 

Its a shame cause there isn't that much else to do at the moment. Sadly the tactical flashpoints haven't really been that great and been little other new content for a while.

 

The biggest issue has to be the PvP only aspect of GSF. The Aces who have every ship maxed out are destroying new players with ease. And this is obviously going to happen, better ships, more experience and just possible more skill with the systems.

 

If you don't get many kills or assists and die a lot you get a lot less points. And that means it takes a long time to get the ships, your experience is mostly flying to and from the cap ship to being burst fired, or blown up by a drone or gunship so you don't even get a chance to 'learn to play.' It doesn't then take a rocket scientist to work out this is not an enjoyable experience. And unless you are being forced to play GSF there are plenty of other ways to spend your time.

 

So unless the system can be incorporated to be used to offer game play with a wider appeal the aces will run off any casual or just poor pilots till only they are left playing and then find the level of work that goes into a game of bombers and gunships vs isn't worth the reward of fleet coms and some credits for ships they have already mastered. At which point long queue times and limited reward may make GSF even more unappealing.

[DanNV]

My experience of late has been less and less games are popping.

 

Its a shame cause there isn't that much else to do at the moment. Sadly the tactical flashpoints haven't really been that great and been little other new content for a while.

 

The biggest issue has to be the PvP only aspect of GSF. The Aces who have every ship maxed out are destroying new players with ease. And this is obviously going to happen, better ships, more experience and just possible more skill with the systems.

 

People who are trying to say mods don't matter are relatively clueless. I have characters with mostly modded ships and characters with almost stock ships (some are totally stock). Same pilot (me ) but the modded ships do well and the stock ones don't unless I'm up against other mostly stock ships. The mods in GSF make WAY too much of a difference. It's killing GSF slowly as new players try it and quit. Queue times are more than double what they were a month ago.

 

If you don't get many kills or assists and die a lot you get a lot less points. And that means it takes a long time to get the ships, your experience is mostly flying to and from the cap ship to being burst fired, or blown up by a drone or gunship so you don't even get a chance to 'learn to play.' It doesn't then take a rocket scientist to work out this is not an enjoyable experience. And unless you are being forced to play GSF there are plenty of other ways to spend your time.

 

So unless the system can be incorporated to be used to offer game play with a wider appeal the aces will run off any casual or just poor pilots till only they are left playing and then find the level of work that goes into a game of bombers and gunships vs isn't worth the reward of fleet coms and some credits for ships they have already mastered. At which point long queue times and limited reward may make GSF even more unappealing.

 

Yep, that sums it up pretty well.

Edited March 9, 2014 by DanNV

[Armonddd]

People who are trying to say mods don't matter are relatively clueless. I have characters with mostly modded ships and characters with almost stock ships (some are totally stock). Same pilot (me ) but the modded ships do well and the stock ones don't unless I'm up against other mostly stock ships. The mods in GSF make WAY too much of a difference. It's killing GSF slowly as new players try it and quit. Queue times are more than double what they were a month ago.

 

But I do very well in both my mastered ships and my stock ships. Sure, I do better in the mastered ships (which is to say, my flashfire, because I don't currently have any other mastered ships on TEH), but I don't do particularly badly in stock ships, either.

[Vildiil]

This answer belongs in one of the many tutorial / trainer / simulator threads, but anyways: I'm sure if someone would have explained the controls to you or the existing tutorial was at all good you would have ended up liking it. The real trick to GSF is slowing down your mouse movements, keeping them within the firing arc of each weapon. The missile lock on is also kinda wonky, once you get tone, you need to release the mouse button and quickly press it again to fire.

 

Once these two little but extremely important truths are learned anyone can fly GSF well. The game is horrible at explaining this. In the ground game you have the first 10 levels running around learning what your character can do before you're allowed into a pvp match for the first time. However that is all another thread entirely.

 

Basically once you get used to how horrible GSF is you'll like it.

[-Streven-]

My que times are pretty good, matches are often fun and not overly lopsided, and I'm seeing plenty of new pilots who are getting good. Don't know what all the doom and gloom is about.

 

What is this, like 80th thread dramatically predicting GSF's imminent demise? If you really cared about this game and it's community, and you understood what you're doing, you wouldn't post this drivel.

[-Streven-]

Dude, your 2 points have nothing to do with using voice chat in PVP. The DEV's have made it perfectly clear in several forums that the use of macro's is considered cheating. Just because I have a top grade system, with programmable key board and a naga mouse, doesn't mean that I can use the tech to gain an unfair advantage in PVP. Just after the release of Combat Logging, I ran several hours of test, on the training dummies, using finely tuned macro's and then following the same rotations, without macro's. There is a large difference in dps over a 10 min window. That testing allowed me to fully understand the macro ban.

Voice chat gives a similar advantage. Especially in GSF. One example.. if I'm chasseing you, and you have to stop flying and type 'help', you will probably be defeated. By using voice chat, not only are you able to call for help while still flying/fighting, but you are able to co-ordinate the rescue to maximum advantage. New pilots/subscribers/f2p, whatever don't have such advantage. Why do you feel that you need it in the PVP environment? Sure, it may be readily downloadable and free. But many simply will not download, try to set it up, or choose not to use it in PVP.

The fact that guilds do use such tactics as voice chat while fighting is simply another reason to separate the new from the not new.

 

People using voice chat coordinate a lot less than you think they do.

[-Streven-]

Make it cross sever, and turn on matchmaking. Almost all problems solved.

 

Yeah, as if latency wasn't bad enough. Cross server ques only sound good on paper.

 

It takes maybe a week of playing a handful of matches a day to get decent at this game. That's what people need NOT matchmaking.

[Applejacxs]

My que times are pretty good, matches are often fun and not overly lopsided, and I'm seeing plenty of new pilots who are getting good. Don't know what all the doom and gloom is about.

 

What is this, like 80th thread dramatically predicting GSF's imminent demise? If you really cared about this game and it's community, and you understood what you're doing, you wouldn't post this drivel.

 

On the main subject Of regional or cross server queing. Thats never going to happen. Cause if they haven't turned that on for the ground game at this point i don't see it happing. If it did get implamented it wouldnt come to gsf any time before the ground game or pve got it first.

 

its more like some where in the middle. Are there problem with GSF sure are. And your fooling your self to think there are none. Willl it go away or be removed i doubt i something like that will happen. Its just going to kinda end up like current space pve which is nice feature and i liked it enough to start a sub for it. But its really nothing more than something to do at this point in the game.

[zaskar]

My que times are pretty good, matches are often fun and not overly lopsided, and I'm seeing plenty of new pilots who are getting good. Don't know what all the doom and gloom is about.

 

What is this, like 80th thread dramatically predicting GSF's imminent demise? If you really cared about this game and it's community, and you understood what you're doing, you wouldn't post this drivel.

 

First things first, yes, there has been some divergence from the core topic, but it's to be expected in a forum. You do know what the word means? That drivel, as you call it, is required within a quorum to gain consensus.

 

Your queue times are like an opinion, completely worthless without data. Did you spend three weeks playing hundreds of matches across the most populated servers on subscriber, preferred and free to play accounts to gather data? Do you have a background in this industry? None of the above.

 

By my estimation, again based on real collected usage data, there are around 7500 return users in North America. I'm not going teach user sampling math in this thread, look it up. You know, how Nelisen rates all media, same math. What I would not give to have access to the real numbers.

 

I do care about this part of the game and want to see it on par with ground pvp. To gain that kind of acceptance, it will need more development. For BioWare to spend money they need to make money, with GSF they make their bearshare from the transfer of ship requisition to fleet requisition. The micro transaction. The premium ships are only a small part of the revenue stream from GSF. To make those micro transactions, you need users en masse. Guess what 7500 return users are? Not profitable.

 

The most simple way to raise numbers in the return user numbers is to give them what they are looking for. Matches when they want them. The main difference between ground pvp and pve queues is BioWare already has players en masse with both of those parts of the game. The revenue from those game types is not tied directly to the amount of time players spend during the game type. Remember those micro transactions? GSF however is.

 

On the main subject Of regional or cross server queing. Thats never going to happen. Cause if they haven't turned that on for the ground game at this point i don't see it happing. If it did get implamented it wouldnt come to gsf any time before the ground game or pve got it first.

 

You're wrong for the business reasons I just said above. This is all about money and to make money they need people playing matches earning requisition. To (I'm gonna use the word) save, the game type they need users, it makes sense to use regional queues as a stopgap.

 

Regional queues are not hard with hero engine, hopefully with all of the customization they have not made it truly impossible to virtualize the pvp games or share data. Without any communication from the devs, it is just speculation, but it's technically possible speculation.

Edited March 9, 2014 by zaskar
Another quote .

[Buggleslor]

They need to fix the gear issues. As it stands, new players don't stand a chance. I have one character with pretty well modded ships and playing him is fun. Playing new ones is terrible. Against modded ships unmodded ones don't do well at all. I'v ebeen saying this would be and then is an issue since PTS testing and BW doesn't seem to get it. However, I expect that's a lot of the problem with queue times. People try it, get plastered a few times and quit like any sane person.

 

It's not gear. If I hop onto an alt with jack all for requisition and two ships, I'm still middle or near the top of the pack in every metric. It's straight up skill.

 

Sure, maybe I'm just preying on nooblets when I do that. I probably couldn't get away with it if I was playing against people as good as I am. That's the problem with GSF right now, though.

 

They took the population of a game where combat moves at a leisurely pace and you only have to click one button at a time and threw them into a fast-paced, 3 dimensional twitch shooter. Half the people in any given match (on both sides, though it always seems like there are more on yours) won't be able to figure out where the bad guys are, or have 3% hit ratings because they just sit stationary and find a red dot somewhere across the map and press buttons at it. If you gave these people 200,000 req for free, they would still feed 10 kills a game. Anyone who has played space simulations or fps (or both) in the past have a ludicrous advantage over anyone whose only game is swtor.

 

We need cross-server queues and some kind of elo or other ranking system to sort like with like. Either one without the other would be insufficient--without cross-server, the population would be too small to separate the aces from the nooblets and the queue times would skyrocket. Without some kind of ranking, you'll just have quick queues for the inevitable stomps. If you have trouble figuring out what direction you're going, you shouldn't be in the same game with someone who has been playing it since beta (and games like it since forever). Simply stratifying by ships owned won't fix that, need some kind of rating and sorting system. At the very, very, very least, cross-server would allow the system to match premades only against other premades. A team of 12 skilled players on voice chat with only basic scouts and strikes would wipe the floor with 12 strangers with fully upgraded ships, I guarantee it.

 

No matter what classes or upgrades they nerf, it won't change the fact that starting to play GSF cold is a horrifyingly miserable experience because you are immediately put in with the big boys. If every child's experience of baseball was being sent out against an MLB pitcher and being struck out every single time by pitches they couldn't even see, would anyone still play?

Edited March 10, 2014 by Buggleslor