history and aces and the 95%

[arrefmak]

There has been lots of kudos to the aces of the various servers. Personally I admire them and am glad to fly with them. There is a 'foundation of confidence' when you head into contest with an ace or two on your side. I find I often do better and I think the reasons for that are complex.

 

And I have some games where I nail five enemy ships. Not often though. I'm a team pilot. I often spend all my time looking for pilots in trouble and immediately fly to engage the attackers on that pilot. I often see two or three enemy swinging in to line up on a single friendly who has strayed from the center of engagement.

 

It's a good thing to remember... lone pilots are soon dead pilots.

 

Here is a bit on aces, strategy, and survival. Aces are the 5% of flyers that account for most damage to the enemy. This approx figure (5%) has been tracked across wars large and small.

 

I'm having a blast with GSF and I thank everyone who joins us and makes the game pop, especially the 95%.

[SammyGStatus]

Mitt Romney is in the 1% of the 5% Glad to inspire Edited July 3, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[Verain]

Backing off of politics, I'll say that the top 5% players are pretty great in this game, and in MANY games, and that you can go further. Chess, Starcraft, whatever.

 

But we don't have that filtering system, which is fine: GSF can't rank the players. You sort of get the impression anyway when you play enough games, but it's just not the sort of thing that needs to be in each and every game.

[Nemarus]

GSF is one of the few PvP games I've played where an individual's skill can raise them to be "mythic" in terms of how their performance compares with the rest of the majority.

 

And by mythic, I mean similar to characters we find in myth and fantasy stories. Due to their extreme skill, they aren't usually threatened by enemies who aren't in their hero/villain tier. This generally isn't true in historical combat--or even in many video games--anyone can be slain by a lucky arrow or gunshot, or at the very least shut down through being outnumbered.

 

Examples of the "mythic heroes" I'm talking about:

In The Iliad, hundreds of thousands of troops are fighting, but fighters like Hector and Achilles are considered invincible against anyone but each other.

 

In Lord of the Rings, Aragorn and Legolas are not at all threatened by a random orc, despite the fact that neither of them has any particular superpowers.

 

In Game of Thrones, there is an elite tier of fighters whose skill is on such a higher level than others that they can "carve through [other warriors] like a cake". Barristan Selmy, Jamie Lannister, the Hound, the Mountain, etc. Not only do they casually mow down non-mythic characters, but in the fiction of the world (which is otherwise pretty realistic and brutal) they are recognized as having almost supernatural talent.

 

Star Wars is actually a bit different, in that most of the mythic heroes actually do have supernatural abilities, since most of them are Jedi and Sith. Bounty Hunters like Jango Fett, Boba Fett, and Cad Bane are the closest thing Star Wars has to skill-based heroes, but even they get a lot of their power from exotic equipment.

 

Sure, talented individuals can sway a Warzone or Arena, but I haven't ever seen someone carry a Ground PvP team like I've seen a talented pilot carry a GSF match--even when being focused by the opposition.

 

Personally, I enjoy that aspect of GSF. I like that a single name on a team can bolster hope and/or inspire dread. That being said, I certainly have a biased point of view on the issue

 

And if GSF were more accessible and had a little shallower learning curve, we'd probably see aces being a little less mythic. If it meant healthier GSF population and more active development, I'd gladly take that trade.

[Kuciwalker]

what.

[SammyGStatus]

Name recognition is pretty understandable since the population isn't exactly gigantic. There are a few individuals that will outshine the rest, either be from natural God given talent when it comes to click-click-pew or just hours upon hours upon hours of play.

 

When you and I are against each other in a match, I know my role. It's to take you down, plain and simple, because 99% of the general pugs (imo) can't. But when we are going after other players, the games feel... easy? There's only a handful of players who I am genuinely concerned about, but 4 of them play on different servers most of the time, and there are only a few players on TEH (mostly scouts which are the bane of GSs anyways) that worry me (JM is a cake walk, but playing with the best of the best doesn't really allow much competition when it didn't exist, and the only other server to offer competition is Harbinger but that's hit or miss). Probably should've taken advantage of making toons on newer servers during the GSF event, but there's always time to instill more fear

 

The pugs < the vets < the aces, and that's completely okay (given the way of the world). I hope our names inspire fear in our adversaries, or incite callouts in the pre-launch screen. We're not ficticious, but I'd prefer to have the uber talented players take on a mythic role

Edited July 3, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[Zoom_VI]

GSF is one of the few PvP games I've played where an individual's skill can raise them to be "mythic" in terms of how their performance compares with the rest of the majority.

 

And by mythic, I mean similar to characters we find in myth and fantasy stories. Due to their extreme skill, they aren't usually threatened by enemies who aren't in their hero/villain tier. This generally isn't true in historical combat--or even in many video games--anyone can be slain by a lucky arrow or gunshot, or at the very least shut down through being outnumbered.

This made sense.

 

 

 

Examples of the "mythic heroes" I'm talking about:

In The Iliad, hundreds of thousands of troops are fighting, but fighters like Hector and Achilles are considered invincible against anyone but each other.

 

In Lord of the Rings, Aragorn and Legolas are not at all threatened by a random orc, despite the fact that neither of them has any particular superpowers.

 

In Game of Thrones, there is an elite tier of fighters whose skill is on such a higher level than others that they can "carve through [other warriors] like a cake". Barristan Selmy, Jamie Lannister, the Hound, the Mountain, etc. Not only do they casually mow down non-mythic characters, but in the fiction of the world (which is otherwise pretty realistic and brutal) they are recognized as having almost supernatural talent.

 

Star Wars is actually a bit different, in that most of the mythic heroes actually do have supernatural abilities, since most of them are Jedi and Sith. Bounty Hunters like Jango Fett, Boba Fett, and Cad Bane are the closest thing Star Wars has to skill-based heroes, but even they get a lot of their power from exotic equipment.

 

Sure, talented individuals can sway a Warzone or Arena, but I haven't ever seen someone carry a Ground PvP team like I've seen a talented pilot carry a GSF match--even when being focused by the opposition.

 

The rest I'm not so sure about

[QuinMantha]

what.

 

DO.

 

YOU MEEEEAN BY THAT?!

 

That...is not...an aaaaansweerrr!

[Verain]

I get Nem's "mythic heroes" and I agree with his claim about GSF having it.

 

 

So, many games have a pretty high skill floor. If you look at the ground game in this game- or WoW, or MANY other games- you have the ability for even a terrible new player to contribute. Their contribution won't be great, but in such a game:

 

1)- The hit points, armor, and easily accessed defensives often give even a naked player a moderate time to kill. If a veteran is killing ANYTHING in less than five seconds, that's normally perceived as a problem with gear or burst, because it is often trivial to apply at least some damage- face target, be in range, press an instant.

2)- Many of the things that happen represent a resource other than time. If you go into combat and crowd control someone, you likely burned a cooldown to make it happen. Even if the person you crowd controlled was terrible and weak, you still had the same opportunity cost.

3)- Left alone, a terrible or new player can still deal decent damage if they are on a dps spec. It may be very small compared to a geared and good player, but your hunter won't miss with his bow all the time or anything.

4)- Often a powerful cooldown, or more, is available to the player. This cooldown often offers a ranged stun, an aoe disorient, a powerful blast, or some other powerful and instant move t hat deals damage, healing, or CC, sometimes in an area. A bad player can contribute to the fight with this cooldown active- enemies may have to respond with crowd control or defensives (normally the cooldown is balanced around being used at just the right time, but these still offer power when used basically at random).

 

This means that a terrible player is still an effective sponge of damage and opportunity cost. A bad shadow priest can still fear several players, a bad maruader can still become very hard to kill and deal burst damage, etc.

 

In GSF, the skill floor is MUCH lower. A bad pilot can kill himself simply by moving. Since he moves by default, he can kill himself with his hands off the keyboard. A bad pilot can have no idea how to attack a target with variable range, and will often expend his entire gun battery uselessly into space until he is practiced. The time to kill can be much lower on a terrible pilot, because the game is balanced around evasive flying- your scoundrel can't step out of the way of a sniper's bullets, but you very much can dodge a terrible railgunner.

 

 

This creates a "mythic tier", much like the examples he brings- even though Game of Thrones is reasonably realistic, they very much highlight the "mythic tier" of fighters. This isn't actually even out of line historically- famous fighters were largely considered unbeatable by any single man, though it is difficult to figure which are tall tales and which are real.

 

 

Simply put, this game doesn't guarantee you some minimal level of effectiveness.

[CmorganBG]

what.

 

YOU'RE.

Deep.

In trou-ble, friend...

 

(Rhint's Old Skool, man. Hope the JCS you are rockin' is the first film version)

 

Speaking as a confirmed 95%'er, wingman/wingwoman, and cheerfully (and occasionally grumpily) oft-killed "veteran", I agree on the "epic" status that a very few folks reach. I will not make it there, and I'm ok with that. Everyone needs a wingman.

 

I disagree that GSF has a steep learning curve. It has NO learning curve. It has...

 

slam yourself into a sheer cliff until you

a. quit

b. ask for help

c. finally get enough req to begin to figure stuff out before you explode into a multi-colored pixel blossom of death

 

Folks who have a different experience already have some talents and a degree of situational awareness and 3d thinking that most of us just don't have.

 

Which is a long-winded way of saying "What Verain said".

Edited July 5, 2014 by CmorganBG

[Ryuku-sama]

I disagree that GSF has a steep learning curve. It has NO learning curve. It has...

 

slam yourself into a sheer cliff until you

a. quit

b. ask for help

c. finally get enough req to begin to figure stuff out before you explode into a multi-colored pixel blossom of death

 

I have to disagree with this. To me, from when new pilots I initiate say, they are placed in front of the Everest with nothing but their hands to climb it. They can

 

a) whine in game or on this forum.

b) buy the tools they need without knowing how to use them, on their way. They will have to learn how to use them effectively by themselves.

c) ask for some experienced pilots to help them in this trip. To share the knowledge on how to use said tools.

d) quit.

 

And it normally happens in this order.

 

If one ever happens to reach the peak, they can either stay and push others off will they are climbing or quit.

 

I have to say that I'm in the first category most of the time At least when I'm in face of some bad server lag/desync.