Encouraging the newbies

[ThutmoseV]

I would like to encourage new GSF players to keep at it and take the time to be competitive.

 

GSF has a big learning curve. For PvE players leveling, it starts easy and gets harder, but the player can succeed as he gradually gets better as the content gets harder. For GSF it starts out hard. In your first match you could get pitted against guys like Xi'ao and Lormaru and get vaporized without doing much damage. I had the advantage of starting GSF at the very beginning, so it was a bit easier for me to get competitive since everyone else was learning along with me. It is hard, but you can improve if you keep at it.

 

When I started, I was afraid an old slow guy like me would get crushed by teenagers with quick twitch fingers. But I am able to hold my own, and if I can do it, you can too, if you make the effort.

 

The game could be improved by GSF group matching with more even ability levels, and I hope that happens sometime. That would probably require cross server matching to keep queue times down. But unfortunately that won't happen for a while, so we have to do the best we can.

 

There are a lot of articles about gearing, tactics, etc, that I won't try to go into here. But I will offer a few suggestions that might make it easier and more fun to learn GSF.

 

The first suggestion is obvious, use the many available resources about GSF. These forums are a good starting place. Don't be afraid to ask questions! If you ask them in this thread I'll try to answer them, and maybe guys who know more than I do will try to answer also.

 

Find the GSF chat channel on your server and join it. Ask questions, especially right after matches. Meet some of the other players. Ultimately you may get a chance to team up with other players in a group. If you are in a group with voice chat, you can be much more effective.

 

Try to find other ways to contribute beyond just kills and assists. Use a type 1 scout to make a fast run to a satellite at the start of the match. Use a strike fighter to escort a friendly gunship, attacking enemies that get close to it so he can concentrate on sniping. Get a ship type that has repair probes or hyperspace beacons to help the team. Use a gunship to pick off defense turrets or drones from long range

 

Get a bomber. If you have the Cartel Coins you can get one without having to build up a lot of fleet reqs. For domination matches, find a satellite that your side is going after or has captured and put out your mines and drones behind it (to make it harder for enemy gunships to pick them off). Guard a satellite so that other ships on your side can go after other objectives. I think it is easier for a new player to contribute to a domination match in a bomber than in other types.

 

Get a gunship. If you are a sub you already get one by default. I prefer the type 1 gunship (Quarrel, Mangler), one reason is it has the option of sensor dampening, which makes it harder for the enemy to see you coming until you are in range. Start with the slug railgun. Once you get the hang of aiming the rail gun you can do almost always do some damage and get a few kills, unless the teams are very badly unbalanced.

 

As you upgrade your ships, initially upgrade the offense before the defense, especially the main weapon. The reason for this is that I think it is more fun to get a few kills, even if you are dying a lot, then to die less but not do much damage. I would prefer 2 kills and 9 deaths, or 1 kill 5 assists and 9 deaths, over 0 kills and 7 deaths as a starting point.

 

Once you get to the point where you make a few kills, then concentrate on defense for a while. This does not mean just gearing, but learning how to make a quick getaway and use defensive cooldowns. The main thing is learning to run away fast. The barrel roll engine ability is very good for this and is available on many ship types. The advantage of barrel roll is can put some distance between yourself and the attacker. Just make sure you turn away from enemy ships before you hit barrel roll, or you can end up in the middle of a group of enemies, which is not fun. The other problem is it is easy to self destruct if you are not careful using an engine ability, you just have to learn to watch out for that. The main thing is to learn to react quickly. I don't know how many times I've tried to get in just one more shot before running away, only to be destroyed.

 

A ship is most vulnerable when it is shooting at something. So for an inexperienced player, I would suggest hanging back just a bit, until you see a dogfight developing. Then go after one of the enemy ships that is already fighting, and you might be able to get a clear shot for a bit. Also if the enemy ships are already dogfighting, they might not pay any attention to you for a little while. Of course, if an enemy is already damaged, you want to go after him first.

 

The last thing I want to mention is attitude. Go in with the determination to do your best, no matter what the situation. Think of a mismatch as a learning opportunity. Try to keep your focus up. Quitting in the middle of a match, or just sitting at the spawn point to finish the daily or to get conquest points is a waste of your time and the time of your teammates. If my side loses a TDM 25 to 50, but I get 8 kills and 5 deaths, I fell like I have performed as best I could and made a fight out of it. If my side loses a domination match, but my bomber has beaten off an enemy attack on a satellite, I feel like I did something. But even if it is 0 kills and 9 deaths, I always try. If you keep your attitude up, and get enough practice, eventually you might occasionally experience getting into a zone, where your reactions are a bit faster, your fingers move to the right place at the right time, and you see more than just a chaos of ships and blaster bolts. That is a very good feeling.

[FBPL]

Encourage them?! Gads!

 

No. I say we form uber-sqns and hunt them remorselessly until they either: quit, accept they are only ever going to be laser fodder or become 'Aces'.

 

I've had just about as much of this care bear attitude as I can take on these forums.

[caederon]

I've had just about as much of this care bear attitude as I can take on these forums.

I hope you're kidding, but in case you're not, maybe you ought to think about it this way:

 

Bioware has already ceased development of additional content for GSF. This is because there is not broad enough interest from the player base to convince them it's worthwhile to spend their resources in that way.

 

If you ever want to see more GSF stuff, new maps, new ships, new game modes, something other than reheated table scraps like the T3 gunship and bomber... you should be recruiting new players by the dozen and convincing them it's worth their time to stick with the game. Otherwise, GSF will remain largely unchanged and only the hardest hardcore hardheads will stick around to repeat ad infinitum.

 

- Despon

[FBPL]

Dammit, did I forget to hit the satire button again?

[caederon]

Dammit, did I forget to hit the satire button again?

I'm glad that was the intent. The thing is, there are actually people who think like that. I was trying to talk sense to one just yesterday, who presented the argument almost precisely how you phrased it, and then went on to call me a 'bleeding heart liberal' for wanting to help people and have the audience of the game grow. But that guy and his pals were serious. Never underestimate people's capacity for shortsightedness.

[Vember]

Bioware has already ceased development of additional content for GSF. This is because there is not broad enough interest from the player base to convince them it's worthwhile to spend their resources in that way.

 

- Despon

 

How do you come to this conclusion? GSF pops are regular and frequent on Harbinger, i can do them back to back all day long if I want. I certainly hope they are still developing GSF, seems to be a healthy interest in it from what I can tell.

[caederon]

How do you come to this conclusion? GSF pops are regular and frequent on Harbinger, i can do them back to back all day long if I want. I certainly hope they are still developing GSF, seems to be a healthy interest in it from what I can tell.

They pretty clearly have prioritized everything over GSF. They scrapped (or 'indefinitely postponed' ) the Infiltrator ship class that had previously been announced. The new content that we most recently got, the T3 GS and bomber, are remixes of old content (and old art assets). They won't even address bugs that they have introduced into GSF in recent patches (see threads on here about sabotage probe, ion missile, EMP field). I hope that they do resume developing new content, but it certainly seems like their focus is elsewhere and they don't expect GSF to be a big moneymaker for them.

 

Conquest seems to have brought something of an influx of new players, but it certainly hasn't helped quality of play. While evidence is anecdotal, there have been plenty of anecdotes of players getting their conquest goals by sitting uselessly at the capship or doing just barely enough to keep from getting kicked for not contributing. There are certainly enough players on the scoreboard with a line that reads 0 0 6, 236 damage to suggest that these are not people who are serious about playing.

 

Harbinger, while I played there, did have plenty of matches running. Ebon Hawk does too, but other servers often have trouble getting a match started depending on time of day. Begeren Colony for example is usually dead in the mornings. We don't know what metric Bioware expected to meet, but if every server had the number of matches Harbinger does, I think they might re-evaluate their plans. Cross server queuing would of course solve all of this.

 

I'm not doomsaying to discourage people. On the contrary, I hope everyone follows the lead of the original post here and encourages new pilots. Offer up your time, try to be a force for bringing more interested, quality pilots into the game.

[Ramalina]

Well, in my guild we've gone from having just me doing GSF, to about 5 regular players. It may grow from there too, because now we can queue up a group of 3 vets and a new recruit, where we help the new person out, or at least commiserate with their being blown up.

 

We even created a squadron channel on our TS server.

 

Both the tutoring and the social aspect seem to really help encourage people to stick with it as they learn and gear up.

[SammyGStatus]

I'm going to blast every newbie I see the same way I blast literally anyone else. If BW wanted to make this game work properly, they would have. Since they don't and won't, I'm going to play the game that's available. If new players want to que, they should vocalize that it's their first game and get help from a vet. Otherwise, no sympathy. Growing the community isn't a high priority for me - there are multiple servers with multiple games on them regardless of how their new players perform.

[Ramalina]

As you upgrade your ships, initially upgrade the offense before the defense, especially the main weapon. The reason for this is that I think it is more fun to get a few kills, even if you are dying a lot, then to die less but not do much damage. I would prefer 2 kills and 9 deaths, or 1 kill 5 assists and 9 deaths, over 0 kills and 7 deaths as a starting point.

 

I'd actually strongly recommend against this.

 

It takes quite a lot of requisition to make a significant improvement in offensive capability through gear.

 

Defensive upgrades on the other hand are very cheap, and provide quite a lot of effect for the requisition spent.

 

Also, from a learning perspective, getting a miniscule increase in your chance to kill a target is generally not as useful as going from not quite surviving to just barely surviving when you make a mistake. The extra time to figure out what is working and what is not working in terms of piloting is immensely useful if you're serious about rapidly improving your piloting skill.

[Paetheas]

The only reason GSF isn't completely dead is because of conquest points.

[BoushhDC]

How do you come to this conclusion? GSF pops are regular and frequent on Harbinger, i can do them back to back all day long if I want. I certainly hope they are still developing GSF, seems to be a healthy interest in it from what I can tell.

 

The reason the pops are high on Harbinger is that the devs seem to have removed matchmaking (with which it launched -- btw, when did its removal happen?) so now you get this, if today (A Saturday at Prime Time) is any indication:

 

START:

 

http://i.imgur.com/SpeBM47.jpg

 

and

 

FINISH:

 

http://i.imgur.com/vprPkgc.jpg

 

Aaaaand, that's why GSF is not going to attract and keep new players and therefore ultimately going to die.

Edited September 21, 2014 by BoushhDC

[MagikFingerz]

I'd actually strongly recommend against this.

 

It takes quite a lot of requisition to make a significant improvement in offensive capability through gear.

 

Defensive upgrades on the other hand are very cheap, and provide quite a lot of effect for the requisition spent.

 

Also, from a learning perspective, getting a miniscule increase in your chance to kill a target is generally not as useful as going from not quite surviving to just barely surviving when you make a mistake. The extra time to figure out what is working and what is not working in terms of piloting is immensely useful if you're serious about rapidly improving your piloting skill.

 

+1. Being killed a lot is discouraging even if you do get a few kills of your own. What's fun is when you have a good run and a decent kill streak WITHOUT dying, for which you need defensive capabilities.

[FBPL]

The reason the pops are high on Harbinger is that the devs seem to have removed matchmaking (with which it launched -- btw, when did its removal happen?) so now you get this, if today (A Saturday at Prime Time) is any indication:

 

START:

 

http://i.imgur.com/SpeBM47.jpg

 

and

 

FINISH:

 

http://i.imgur.com/vprPkgc.jpg

 

Aaaaand, that's why GSF is not going to attract and keep new players and therefore ultimately going to die.

 

 

...forgot to mention the fact that an obviously much more experienced side still took a horde of GS to face off against a bunch of relatively new players. It looks suspiciously like kill farming, which also helps drive away new players in droves.

[Daxer]

Subs get a gunship for free? Ive been a sub for several years, and didn't get one :/. Also I recently got into GSF however was quickly discouraged because (i played roughly 10 matches) each time I got into a game, my team was filled with beginners, we were all players who only had the 2 ships you start out with, while our enemy team all had 4 unlocked or more. Of course needless to say we were toast before we even started. im talking losing a deathmatch 50-2, not much fun, we all tried to coordinate and do our best, but we needed skilled players who had put more effort into starfighter on our team too, I feel like going up against a team that has powerful and upgraded ships, when you're just a beginner is not very fun, but I stuck with it, because I deemed that I was just unlucky with my teams and that I would eventually be placed with some powerful players so that they could balance it out.... Nope. So I came to the conclusion that the only way for beginners to get into galactic starfighter is to purchase a huge amount of CC and simply buy it. Because sadly as it is, if you are a newbie to starfighter, you can not gear up, because you will lose so hard, so fast, without any gain, that you won't get that much fleet req to get anything, unless you play it for a week straight. And that is also when you are a sub. I don't even want to think about what its like for F2P players...

[aazapagie]

Well for one if Biofail actually fixed the matchmaking then it might be fun to play but stacking 7 veterans against 8 freshhies really isnt fair and it's not jsut once but many many times.

 

It's not fun dying over and over again to fully upgraded ships you cannot damage.

 

You can encourage us as much as you want but until Biofail fixes the matchmaking then GSF will continue to suffer with new players not caring any longer and will just quit playing it.

[ThutmoseV]

Subs get a gunship for free? Ive been a sub for several years, and didn't get one :/.

 

I got one, though I was a bit misleading because you had to be a sub on 11/1/13 to get a gunship unlock for early access. See http://www.swtor.com/galactic-starfighter .

 

As far as getting a better match, try running GSF at different times. On Shadowlands, it looks like the best Imp pilots like to run later in the evening. The Pubs tend to have the advantage in mid afternoon, though not as large. Of course, it might not be convenient to use different times. So your complaint is justified. Conquest helped some, not as much now as when it started.

Edited September 21, 2014 by ThutmoseV

[Verain]

The only reason GSF isn't completely dead is because of conquest points.

 

Lol, no.

 

The whole game got conquest added as a thing. Leaving out of an area- ie, if it had been left out of GSF, or Warzones- would have effectively gutted player participation in those areas, because the devs attached rewards that most players wanted to conquest. In other words: GSF wasn't dead before conquest, but if conquest had been added and specifically excluded GSF, it would have killed it, because the GSF players who also care about the main body of SWTOR would have been bribed to engage in "more profitable" actions.

 

 

So no, conquest doesn't prop up GSF.

 

 

Subs get a gunship for free? Ive been a sub for several years, and didn't get one :/.

 

All you had to be was subscribed on a certain time last year. If you don't have a type 1 gunship on each and every character, either you were not, or you should ticket it- but in fairness, I've NEVER heard of someone who was subbed then not having the gunship.

 

It's not fun dying over and over again to fully upgraded ships you cannot damage.

 

Upgrades are irrelevant if you can't damage a ship. Upgrades are a very minor portion of player power.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=755330

 

but until Biofail fixes the matchmaking

 

Matchmaking is not really a thing, and it's probably better that it isn't, versus seeing a thing where pop after pop of foodships happen whilst I wait in queue doing nothing. Simply put, if you have a veteran and a bunch of food and the game selects the food for the game over the veteran, it's a terrible system- and no server is rolling around with enough to get the "tiered" effect.

 

What matchmaking could and SHOULD do, is do better when it makes wargames. It should probably assign some power value to each player based on some metrics, and try to figure out what a balanced match is- I know it doesn't do this because I've solo queued and landed next to another great player (who was queued solo) plus four other full-mastered guys (queued as a four group), plus two moderate req guys... versus 8 two shippers. Again, this was a WARGAME, so there's no excuse for this if matchmaking were a thing, which it isn't. The fairest game possible would have been the four full mastered guys who were grouped, plus the weakest of the two-shippers, versus me, the other full mastered guy, the two partial dudes, and then the top four two-shippers. Not literally put the 8 worst on one side. You couldn't get that unless you just sorted arbitrarily: even a terrible matchmaker wouldn't assign the trivially WORST setup.

 

But when you want me sitting on the fleet while you get queue pops, sod off and get farmed. If Bioware takes GSF away from the players that actually play it, it really would die, especially if done in the name of newbs who fly at default speed firing rapid fire lasers at 11km.

[Paetheas]

You are delusional vervain. I spent a month trying to play my first GSF match well before conquest came out. I typically would get bored and leave Queue after 30-45 mins. My first ever Q pop was the time I forgot and stayed looking for a battle for over an hour. I still get 20-30 min waits at all times except prime time.

 

Conquest is entirely responsible for keeping GSF afloat.

[BoushhDC]

[...]Matchmaking is not really a thing[...]

 

I fully expect that matchmaking -- which WAS a thing -- which GSF launched with, was removed in order to keep the pops regular. No doubt. You acknowledge the situation but not that it's a problem and therefore offer no ideas for improvement or solutions.

 

For any game system to have longevity, there must be a steady influx of new players. The way the PvE side has traditionally dealt with it is by having level appropriate content, until the introduction of KDY. With that addition PvE'ers were, in a NON-COMPETITIVE** environment, introduced to a mechanic very familiar to SWTOR's ground-based PvP community. **(I say non-competitive to make the distinction indicating that no one is bothered since the objective is to finish the instance). That mechanic? BOLSTER. If they decline to have matchmaking, that will be the option. Personally, I hate and have always hated bolster in PvP at cap level, but have been forced to suck it up regardless, in all of BW's multitude of iterations.

 

However, the idea that you and your pack of "food eaters" will single-handedly sustain the game system, is short sighted and either BW will address it (with either matchmaking or bolster) or they, and you, will witness it's inevitable decline. Then, your fear of ever slower pops will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Personally, I don't think GSF is a priority for them, so unfortunately it will probably be the latter which I will truly mourn because having even *remotely* competitive GSF matches is a blast.

Edited September 22, 2014 by BoushhDC

[LeglessChair]

I like to RP while I play GSF, if we are losing, at least we go down in style and have a laugh. I think it makes it more enjoyable for the newbies; it certainly made it more enjoyable for me during my first games.

[Verain]

I fully expect that matchmaking -- which WAS a thing -- which GSF launched with, was removed in order to keep the pops regular.

 

No, we haven't seen any changes to the behavior of matchmaking. We saw some really imbalanced stuff back then too, for instance- right near launch. The threads on this go back all the way- the only difference is, back then many of us believed that the matchmaker was functioning (because the devs said so), even when we saw really unbalanced wargames.

 

No doubt. You acknowledge the situation but not that it's a problem and therefore offer no ideas for improvement or solutions.

 

Because there isn't one. Or rather, there is only one. We must have cross server GSF- but they know that's the biggest issue staring them down in SWTOR pve, SWTOR pvp, and GSF. So no shock there.

 

I also propose a solution for wargames: it should have a matchmaker, as it currently does not. Wargames are solvable, because you have units ranging from 1 ship to 4 ship in size, and your goal is to get to one of the "sorta fair" solutions, when in practice, it doesn't do any of that.

 

But for factional combat? It has to pick who is available. It can't leave out the good players just to help the feelers of the foodships.

 

Until the number of players is so large.

 

 

 

On Bastion, at prime time, we consistently have two games going (and sometimes three). There's very little ability to go from queue cycle A to queue cycle B, and there COULD at least be that. But that only works when there's more than one wave queuing, and that's not all the time.

[BoushhDC]

No, we haven't seen any changes to the behavior of matchmaking. We saw some really imbalanced stuff back then too, for instance- right near launch. The threads on this go back all the way- the only difference is, back then many of us believed that the matchmaker was functioning (because the devs said so), even when we saw really unbalanced wargames.

 

Near launch... when everyone was starting off on the same foot? Or do you mean the difference between those that had early access vs. those that got regular access? I was there at the very beginning, and EVERYONE who hadn't gotten invited into GSF's closed beta was Koiogran Turning into asteroids or Barrel Rolling into superstructures multiple times each match. Even those that had been in closed beta didn't start off with any better equipment on their ships than anyone else. As things progressed, there was a mix on teams where there were more and less experienced pilots with more and less upgraded equipment. Later on, there were some unbalanced matches but they were not interminable. But the pics I linked... that went on all day. I only took screen shots after about a half dozen or so when I finally got to the point of "Oh, come onnnn!" lol. At no time in Pre-launch, official launch, or until I took a break from the game, was it so unrelentingly disparate all day, for several days. It is undeniable that the idea of matchmaking has been completely abandoned, and if you end up with *a couple* of experienced and geared people on your team, THAT is the fluke, not done by any in-game mechanic. It's simply, whoever's the first to que, goes.

 

 

Because there isn't one. Or rather, there is only one. We must have cross server GSF- but they know that's the biggest issue staring them down in SWTOR pve, SWTOR pvp, and GSF. So no shock there.

 

I disagree that there is NO solution, or that there is even only one. I do like the idea of cross-server queues but they have told us "no" since the very beginning. They've claimed technical reasons, but I'm going to have to call BS. Rift had cross-server PvP queues since it launched (well before SWTOR) and they combined pvp and non-pvp servers. Now we're in an age where games are either launching with mega-servers (ESO, which also uses the Hero Engine, incidentally) or converting to mega-servers (Wildstar). I don't buy that "can't" be done. They just need to put down the moneybags from CCs long enough to figure out how to make it happen. If they refuse and want the cheap way out, they can either do nothing, and let it die (the path they're on) or bolster. That's all that's left.

Edited September 23, 2014 by BoushhDC

[Kcin_Trebla]

The only reason GSF isn't completely dead is because of conquest points.

 

Sad but true (Metallica, Black Album )

Seriously, if conquest points would not call in GSF I guess I'd queue up for fights just a couple of times per month as I did before.

I have the feel that all recent new players queuing up are doing it for mainly this reason. I let you guess how they take that for at least other 20 matches they'll be vaporized without mercy and without any kind of hope to get any better any soon.

[zaskar]

I have a great solition for this and it's take it outside the game because BioWare has abandoned GSF.

 

I came up with a good way to do this.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=760146

 

Sorry about the person that crapped all over the thread. I don't know if it was that or genuine lack of interest but I did not get the 10 mentors I needed to sit down and code the thing. Maybe I need to revisit it.