New Player Experience Challenge

[Paetheas]

Sorry, but no you're probably not skilled at the actual game mechanics.

 

Sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. It's likely that you know just how bad the gear gap is in GSF and you want that gap to remain so you have an easier time playing.

 

It's pretty funny that I have a 100% correct ratio of guessing who will win the match in the loading screens entirely based on which team has the most 2 fighter pilots(very nearly even matches with a 1 pilot differential is the exception).

 

It's also funny that I completely smash most other 2 fighter pilots but get crushed by all the 5 stable fighters with full upgrades. 95% of my kills were against other 2 fighter pilots 1v1 or in small skirmishes. So by your reasoning, I must magically get more skilled every time I fight another player with only the starter ships.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Paetheas

[Fractalsponge]

So by your reasoning, I must magically get more skilled every time I fight another player with only the starter ships.

 

Gear and skill are conflated in GSF. You gain skill by experience, and experience (matches played) automatically grants access to better gear. You (the hypothetical 2 shipper) may be an innately better pilot than many other 2-shippers, but not necessarily better than a veteran pilot in your ship layout.

 

Ace pilots HAVE taken purely stock ships out and topped scoreboards. That's not arguable. It's also not arguable that in a matchup of equally skilled pilots, gear will tip the balance. But just because you get flattened by a veteran that runs a mastered ship does NOT tell you that you would be able to be competitive when said veteran pilot has exactly the same gear as you. In all likelihood, they're just better because they're more experienced. In other words, the gear disparity is a symptom, not a cause of the veteran being more experienced, and thus a better pilot.

 

All the top pilots started with exactly the same crappy gear at launch. They got better as they played, and their ships got better as well. If you're not going to commit to playing to get more skill AND more gear, GSF isn't for you. Would you expect NiM ops groups to take seriously the complaints of a totally new player that an instance is too hard? That's pretty much what all "gear trumps all" threads sound like.

[Verain]

Lol. Spoken like a person that enjoys farming two ship players with a full stable of maxed out ships.

 

Two stables of maxed out ships, and that's on The Bastion- my alts also have some decent ships too.

 

But no, the 2100 games played is what I'm speaking like (again, not counting the other servers).

 

Because being able to get hit 10 times before your shields fall and being able to 1 or 2 hit new players from twice their effective range is pure skill, right?!

 

So, let me be blunt: everyone reading this knows that this claim is a lie. I'll do the math, so you can understand what everyone else is talking about.

 

Oh, and it takes around 150,000 to master a ship, so keep that in mind- that number is the exact same for each ship.

 

A stock battle scout will have 1026 hit points, 19% evasion, 1170 shields.

Lets buy the following upgrades on that stock ship:

Change crewman to Vector (1500 fleet req, you need this for all ships anyway)

Buy baseline large reactor (1000 ship req)

Buy baseline lightweight armor (1000 ship req)

 

Now, having spent not much req, you have:

950 hull, 27% evasion, 1274 shield. Effective health versus blasters (varies heavily, but constant for what we need to compare, which is upgrades): 3046.

 

With max upgrades (+10000 ship req for passives):

950 hull, 33% evasion, 1430 shield. By same metric, effective health is now 3500.

 

So you gained 15% more survivability.

 

Of course, there's other factors- the mastered ship will probably be able to boost more, turn more, etc. When you factor all that in, it's more than a 15% survival upgrade for getting mastered components- obviously, upgrades are meant to be meaningful, so that you strive for them when you lack them and so that you have choice once you have many upgrades to pick from.

 

What you claim- that a new ship will get killed in a couple hits- is definitely false, and shows you don't know what the veterans are even doing. No ship dies in two hits, and your lack of experience is obvious to everyone reading (which is why the entire thread is the whole forum telling you that you don't know what you are talking about- if everyone says you are wrong, and these people all have more than 1000 games, it is the height of arrogance to maintain otherwise).

 

More importantly, you speak of a 5x difference- that the new ship is 2 shot, and the veteran ship can tank 10 hits. Forgetting that these numbers are all delusional, we have the fact that there is no kind of 400% survival bonus due to gear- nowhere close. I'd be surprised if it even clocked in at much more than 100%, even factoring in everything.

 

And that is why everyone reading your posts is face palming, and why I am taking you to task. You don't even understand what your opponents are doing, and it says way more about you than anything about the game that you assume it must be the gear.

 

 

The problem is that I am stuck using the two starter ships with the starter weapons until I can save enough comm's to get new stuff. I am already skilled at the actual game mechanics.

 

If you haven't even earned the requisition to buy your other ships yet, you don't even know what this game's mechanics are, much less having any skill at them.

 

 

This is the core issue- players like you come in all ego, no skill, blaming gear. I think the quote was "It is frustrating that the people who complain about skill versus gear are the ones with so few games that they have neither."

 

 

So, how many mastered ships do you have? How many fresh servers have you rolled on? What you are doing- starting with new ships- is something that we have all done MANY times, with alts, on new servers, whatever. We've flown far more games in new ships than you have flown games total. You come from such scarcity that you think it's a big deal to get a full hangar of ships. You think a few weeks of game time is a long time when we've all been at this for months and months.

 

 

 

If you guys had any reading comprehension you will notice I said skill plays a very small factor when one player is brand new and the other has full ships.

 

First, that's not what you said. What you said was:

 

The real problem is that skill isn't much of a factor for a very long time until you can buy a top tier ship and fully outfit it. GSF is about the ships, not skill.

 

See how those are different? You said "skill isn't much of a factor for a very long time", and you were linked to a thread where a guy takes stock ships- absolutely bone stock ships- and does like 80k damage with them, carries the whole team, and crushes multiple five shippers, some of which have full upgrades. So that's wrong. And what you said the second time above- that skill plays a very small factor when one player is brand new- is also wrong. When one PLAYER is brand new, his lack of skill is what separates a player like you from, say, a veteran player on a brand new CHARACTER. Skill isn't a small factor- it's demonstrably massive.

 

 

I am very skilled

 

Go top the scores in the stock ship thread you were linked to then. Go on. You're "very skilled" after all.

 

This is the problem- you have so few games that you don't even understand what is going on in the game world, and your report on it is like a flying fish reporting back to his school on what the world above the ocean is.

 

"There's a gap" he says.

 

"There's more water way up there, you can see because it's also blue, but I'd have to jump as least twice as high to reach it".

 

 

but this game isn't like a first person shooter, fighting game, or rts where skill is basically all that matters. This is a game where the player with more time spent(and therefore better ships and gear) will almost always win unless they just go afk and let the 2 ship player turret them for a full minute.

 

 

And then you are back to it.

 

Get it through your head- you are losing because you are a new PLAYER, and have no experience or skill compared to veterans. Play more and you will have plenty of those things. You are not losing because you are a new CHARACTER. That you'll fix soon enough.

 

 

Again, I was merely trying to express my opinion that skill trumps the ship and components.

 

I think he was mostly offended at me, because I'm the one calling him out. I know it's not considered terribly polite to point this out, but it's not a controversial opinion. The very few things that DO involve gear- such as, for instance, the inability to hurt a charged plating SIM bomber on a node without an armor piercing upgrade- are not things that the poster you are talking to is even able to bring up. To him, he's shooting a bunch at enemies and assumes that all the missing is because he's outgeared, not understanding it's because he's not aiming right (it was a solid call to ask for his accuracy, or any screenshots of his "skilled" performance at all). I'm glad you don't want to insult him, but I just don't care. He can either handle the fact that he's bad because he's new and get better by playing, or he's no use to the community anyway.

 

 

Sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. It's likely that you know just how bad the gear gap is in GSF and you want that gap to remain so you have an easier time playing.

 

We have actually played fresh pilots, from scratch, multiple times. This is why you are so far removed from reality that you even lack the syntax to describe what's going on. Again- ships less upgrades than you, reliably doubling your damage and tripling to quintupling your hit percentage. Not that we know how well you do- you aren't posting your games, just making up things as you go, because this stopped being about a game you don't understand one page ago and became about winning a fight on the internet.

 

 

 

 

 

Bastion runs a stock night occasionally, watch the forums for that!

Edited September 1, 2014 by Verain

[Paetheas]

Lol vervain. Nice wall of text defending a gear based pvp system that so many people are aware of it has caused GSF to be a dead aspect of swtor despite the dev's best efforts to increase participation.

 

It's understandable that the few ppl left playing it will white knight the system at every opportunity.

[zaskar]

Seriously, GTF out of this thread if you want to argue about a dead horse do it elsewhere. This thread is has nothing to do with any of the last page and a half.

[DamascusAdontise]

Sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. It's likely that you know just how bad the gear gap is in GSF and you want that gap to remain so you have an easier time playing.

 

It's pretty funny that I have a 100% correct ratio of guessing who will win the match in the loading screens entirely based on which team has the most 2 fighter pilots(very nearly even matches with a 1 pilot differential is the exception).

 

It's also funny that I completely smash most other 2 fighter pilots but get crushed by all the 5 stable fighters with full upgrades. 95% of my kills were against other 2 fighter pilots 1v1 or in small skirmishes. So by your reasoning, I must magically get more skilled every time I fight another player with only the starter ships.

 

So first off this is a thread to help new players, and your only mucking it up and ruining the thread for anyone that might actually find it useful.

 

Secondly, skill trumps gear hands down. There is no way to rationalize your way out of this, there is ample evidence of both veterans in stock ships doing well against geared opponents as well as evidence of teams with less upgraded ships winning against more upgraded opponents.

 

Thirdly, gear DOES make a difference. Just not nearly what you think it does. I have seen plenty of games where I thought I knew the outcome only to find out that the 5 shippers on my team are either bads, too selfish to help the team, or being so lazy / stupid that they force a loss.

 

The biggest bars to new player success are as follows:

 

1.) Lack of flying skill (such as flying straight into gunships with no defensive maneuvers, or not responding when getting shot etc)

 

2.) Lack of situational awareness (flying too deep into enemy territory, not knowing where LOS objects are)

 

3.) Lack of knowledge about components and how to use them (half the new pilots I fly against don't even use missile breaks)

 

4.) Poor attitude / overly high expectations (somehow people in GSF forget all the other PvP games they have played where new players get rolled for a number of reasons including but not limited to: they don't know how to play the game yet.

 

You can delude yourself as to the nature of this game and continue to do poorly (with the off chance that someday you will get better) or you can realize your mistakes, stop blaming other people.... and start asking questions / grouping / getting better. Your choice honestly, its not the games fault that your having a bad experience. I cam promise you that.

Edited September 1, 2014 by DamascusAdontise

[Ryuku-sama]

Lol vervain. Nice wall of text defending a gear based pvp system that so many people are aware of it has caused GSF to be a dead aspect of swtor despite the dev's best efforts to increase participation.

 

It's understandable that the few ppl left playing it will white knight the system at every opportunity.

 

Well.. GSF isn't that dead... On the four servers I actively play(ed) on, only one has dead queues. The other three are quite alive. And what is drawing people away from GSF is the learning cliff. There is about no correct introduction to GSF. You are basicly thrown in the sea with the sharks, and told to learn to swim. We are experienced.... Just to give a little information about me... I never flew a mastered ship. Never ever. And I still can fight most people on this forum and have chance to come out alive in a 1vs1.

 

So link your accuracy. This stats shows much more than you can think.

Link your KDR and your WLR.

Then we may maybe take you seriously.

[jankiel]

GSF on the Progenitor is deffo not dead. In fact I've seen much more pops over the last weeks.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

The last few times I've played GSF on JC the ques popped decently, even late at night. Doesn't seem dead to me.

 

For my part as a veteran the biggest difference I've noticed between my ships with stock equipment and my mastered ones is I tend to make screw-ups where I forgot I hadn't bought that component or upgrade yet. But I'd say I've overall held my own even against vets.

 

Mostly why I think teams with more 5 ships win is because they have greater tactical flexibility. A team of two shippers is very limited in what tactics they can do compared to that team of vets (with skill not helping any). But if you gave complete newbies a full hanger of mastered ships they'd probably still lose to the vets due to only having a very basic understanding of how to fly (best case scenario) and how to properly deploy the ships they had access to.

[Altheran]

Secondly, skill trumps gear hands down. There is no way to rationalize your way out of this, there is ample evidence of both veterans in stock ships doing well against geared opponents as well as evidence of teams with less upgraded ships winning against more upgraded opponents.

 

Maybe the best way to picture how skill improves performance would be for one of us -day-one veterans- to show a screenshot of the early days performance, showing how bad our score were compared to what we can do now in a stock ship...

 

... but actually, it would be a bit embarassing.

[Asbetos]

I'm starting to think this guy is either a troll, or someone who, for some reason, hates BW and is trying to destroy their reputation. Judging by his argumentation and terminology, I highly doubt he played even a single GSF game, just heard some terms like "2shipper". Edited September 1, 2014 by Asbetos

[basicman]

I would say to any that think GSF is dying that Conquest is definitely revitalizing it. My guild ran GSF nearly nonstop all this last week in order to take Corellia on Jung Ma. This thread is highly valuable.

[Ryuku-sama]

I would say to any that think GSF is dying that Conquest is definitely revitalizing it. My guild ran GSF nearly nonstop all this last week in order to take Corellia on Jung Ma. This thread is highly valuable.

 

This week is hrdly reliable.. How was last week?? Jung Ma.. I've left it cause the matches quality was lessening when Aimbot, Rumina and a bunch of other left for TEH.

[Ramalina]

It depends, many of the old time JM aces still do pop by from time to time, a lot of people still have characters and friends there, even if a lot of their flying is done on other servers now.

 

In addition, without them around to terrorize every new pilot there's a new crop of pilots that's actually coming along fairly well in terms of skill and gear.

 

Queue time varies with population, and JM generally isn't a super high population server, but there's usually one or two GSF games going even at off peak hours.

[Comradebot]

GSF? Dead?

 

On Shadowlands I've had easy pops all week, even at some odder hours, and have seen several new faces.

[Comradebot]

Oh, and Paetheas...

 

You're so wrong. Little while back I started up a brand new alt. Even with her stock ships, in her very first matches, I was competitive and racked up a solid number of kills and assists. Like, running enough games for the daily and weekly gave enough req to maybe switch a few components out to ones I prefer on those ships.

 

Her ships are still absolutely nowhere near fully upgraded (I made here about two weeks ago, and have only played enough games to just recently buy a Flashfire with my first 5k fleet req. So... however many games that is). But you know what? I never feel I'm "disadvantaged" by the general lack of upgrades her ships have.

 

 

Another personal anecdote: today I was running some games on my main (the one who does have a couple ships that are getting close to mastered, though not quite) and found myself with some fellow Pubs I knew to be solid pilots and against a bunch of Imps who, for the most part, I didn't recognize and had two ships. We literally agreed to "test the waters" to see if they were legitimately newbs and switched to some of our crappier ships in case they were. Turns out they were mostly good pilots and gave us a run for our money. Given how I didn't recognize the names for the most part and they were two-shippers, I'd wager they were probably mostly alts of folks with some experience.

 

 

But honestly, I don't know why I'm bothering typing this. You've clearly made up your mind and refuse, even when folks post facts on the subject, to consider the possibility that maybe the problem is simply you're more lacking in experience than you realize. And there should be no shame in that, all of us were newbies at one point. My first games were pretty abysmal: they were a lot of accidental self destructs, getting spanked by bombers/gunships with zero clue how to counter them, not realizing RFL were crap, maybe a kill or two a game, and enough deaths to make me wonder if I'm more of a hindrance to my team than anything else.

 

But that's the thing: when I did it a second time, it wasn't like that at all. I had zero problem, with the exact same ships as my first character had when he started, stepping in and at least feeling like I aided the team and held my own. And I'm not even super experienced, I've been at the GSF game for just a little over two months now. I'm positive other people could do the same and, with their stock ships, top the kill count against teams that had solid pilots on their side.

[Verain]

Lol vervain. Nice wall of text

 

You can't refute it, so you just try to insult me. Try being operative- "wall of text" just means "I don't know how to read well written things that are longer than a tweet". Well, go to twitter if you can't handle words bro. We're here to discuss GSF.

 

defending a gear based pvp system

 

You are in a thread with literally everyone disagreeing with you, and I guess this is all you got.

 

 

Why not check out the guides we all contribute to, instead of assuming that you are somehow Wedge Antilles made flesh? You do realize that many of the folks in this forum:

 

> Played X-Wing and TIE Fighter religiously, and some still do.

> Played other flight games, in some cases dating back to the 80s.

> Have extensive experience with flight sims.

> Have extensive experience with fps.

> Have extensive experience with SWTOR.

> Have extensive experience with MMOs.

> Have thousands of GSF games.

> Have mathed out every GSF component, and engaged in debates on their best uses.

> Have rerolled many times with fresh ships.

> Have trained fresh players.

 

So your claim that you are somehow just born amazing, unlike the rest of us that, you know, have the same interests and hobbies and experience but actually played this game enough to be good at it?

 

 

No one is buying it.

 

 

You have a whole thread of people not buying it. Are we all "defending gear based pvp"? Why not look at what we actually have written? Certainly, I've been in favor of shrinking the gear gap between new characters and veterans, and have argued for that at times. Since you just got here, you don't remember any of that. You just came in, said something that is demonstrably untrue, and that is against the lived experience of people who actually know what is going on in game, and then got crapped on.

 

 

that so many people are aware of it has caused GSF to be a dead aspect of swtor

 

"so many people"? Yea, right. As the rest of posts show, the game has participants, and those that don't play are likely not playing because the game is an actual 3-space flying game, which is vastly harder to learn than most games. I doubt the devs expected something that most SWTOR players have never seen before to sweep the nation. The game was coded reusing existing assets, and is an excellent form of design judo.

 

 

It's understandable that the few ppl left playing it will white knight the system at every opportunity.

 

 

Then why are you here? You walk in and spew a mix of lies, hatred, and untruths, and everyone calls you on it. Did you want to learn to play? There's plenty of people who will help you become good. If you just want to complain, just go away, because you aren't bringing us any value here.

[MDVZ]

My guild leader, a frickin' deadly pilot, helped/helps me

 

But, as I have been taught, so I shall teach. Such that I can (I'm lucky to dent the hulls of any aces, lots to learn myself yet). Lukeutus is my pilot toon, on TRE.

[MDVZ]

Oh, and if a comment from a new player to GSF is welcome on the 'gear vs skill' debate that seems to pervade this board -

 

I have about 17h on GSF. Most of it on a starguard (11h, I think), which is upgraded only to tier 3 on only the quads. Everything else is two or lower.

 

From day one I've not felt that the odds are stacked against me. In that time, my kill/death ratio is a little north of 1 on the whole, and my win lose is a bit better than 50%. My most newly ulocked ships show much better K/D and W/L ratios than this (my pike is about 2 k/d with a couple/few hours on it and ~70% w/l iirc, and flashfire is much better than that, but only off two or three really good matches).

 

Starting new ships, my ships were worse, but I was better. The stats I have reflect that.

 

In point of fact one of the things I like so much about it is how non-gear dependent it is.

[StealthNerf]

Yeah my experience as a new player was the same.

 

Think I've been flying my Clarion for 2 weeks now. This past weekend I got 12 kills 1 death in a TDM and got that 12 kill achievement for the first time.

 

And the match went 50-43, so it wasn't a complete spanking.

Edited September 2, 2014 by StealthNerf

[MDVZ]

I've got that achievement too . Had to go look and check, I don't really pay any attention to achievements. The only damage and deaths achievement I don't have is 15 kills. Don't know what my highest has been, but obviously between 12 and 15 XD.

 

So I can kill stuff and not be killed. For balance - my objectives acheivements are.....worse

[Paetheas]

•Whenever you see players with 5 ships in their hanger ADD THEM TO FRIENDS LIST (cant stress this enough, so important)

 

Apparently the ppl writing GSF guides disagree with you that gear and ships don't matter.

 

The only reason Q's aren't at 45-60 mins like they have been the past two months was because Bioware made it the most lucrative way of getting conquest points last week.

 

If you don't think a pvp game with Q's that last 45-60 mins is dead, then I don't know what to say.

[Ryuku-sama]

Apparently the ppl writing GSF guides disagree with you that gear and ships don't matter.

 

The only reason Q's aren't at 45-60 mins like they have been the past two months was because Bioware made it the most lucrative way of getting conquest points last week.

 

If you don't think a pvp game with Q's that last 45-60 mins is dead, then I don't know what to say.

 

Well the longer I've seen through the two servers I played lately, TEH and JC, during decent hours (not 6 AM sever time) is 15 min.

Second. Builds. For the NovaDive/S-12 Blackbolt. Stasie get one build out. I've seen three more builds. And I have let lose on the forum a whopping twelve builds. Learning to use your gear is the most important thing in GSF. Not the gear itself.. The skill with which you use it. Experience is also another way to describe it. Skill a third way. Not sucking balls a fourth way.

[MaximilianPower]

Apparently the ppl writing GSF guides disagree with you that gear and ships don't matter.

 

The only reason Q's aren't at 45-60 mins like they have been the past two months was because Bioware made it the most lucrative way of getting conquest points last week.

 

If you don't think a pvp game with Q's that last 45-60 mins is dead, then I don't know what to say.

 

I can't speak to other servers, but queues have been nowhere near 45-60 on Jedi Covenant at any point, ever, going back to GSF beta. I mean, maybe in the wee hours of the AM or something, but never during prime time, or even during the day.

[MDVZ]

TRE takes no more than 20min, usually more like 2, on any evening, and did before conquest started.