A request to ace pilots

[AlrikFassbauer]

But playing the few thousand games is how the good pilots got that way.

 

Me, I'm reading a few thousand replies in these forums to get better at discussing.

Edited January 10, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

[SammyGStatus]

Me, I'm reading a few thousand replies in these forums to get better at discussing.

 

LMAO have +1 internetz.

 

Seriously though, I had a blast getting my first thousand games, but I made a hotshot post around my 100-200th game and Alex responded. I got wrecked thanks to the ion tap (at that time, I was running slug and ion but did not once use ion because I didn't know how it worked or what the optimal build was).

 

This is the point - even though I was one of the better flyers at 200 games, it took me another 400 to truly become comfortable in almost all GSF situations that dont involve a team focusin you with 8 ships on your 6.

 

I grind PVP for gear, up to my ~150 matches. I grind GSF for skill, and it takes a LONG time to reach the skill cap. I had fun learning despite sometimes having my heart race during battles where I was outmatched, or the asinine amount of hacking accusations received from both sides. My server's GSF interaction was extremely toxic, yet I still found it fun to get better and enjoy the game as it was designed.

 

The fault here is with Bioware - players can understandably feel frustrated by the results of these matches at times, but the game shouldn't have been designed in a way to allow that, and if it was designed in a bad way that allows for nothing but stomp-matches, it needs to be re-assessed. Asking players to make design choices like that isn't going to work.

 

If everyone had a bomber and a GS, it may also help

[Armonddd]

The fault here is with Bioware - players can understandably feel frustrated by the results of these matches at times, but the game shouldn't have been designed in a way to allow that, and if it was designed in a bad way that allows for nothing but stomp-matches, it needs to be re-assessed. Asking players to make design choices like that isn't going to work.

 

The bolded line is the only part of your post I disagree with. On TEH, as you know, we have a few people who swap characters and factions to handle balance match-to-match. I think it works fairly well.

[MaximilianPower]

You or rather your ship will literally get destroyed for this opinion.

You won't be liked at all. You are a heretic by now.

 

 

I've been lurking in this thread, but felt moved to respond to the above. just for the record - at least on JC - many of us do indeed switch out of our best ships if we smell a roflstomp match in the works. This isn't heresy. It's almost expected, and isn't much fun otherwise (speaking for myself there, of course). This past week has been a bit of an anomaly thanks to conquest (I think everyone's trying to pile up medals, for one thing), but by and large this is exactly the behavior I've witnessed. Not always, not by everyone, but I see it frequently and practice it myself.

 

Haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if this was already discussed - but conquest has also led to considerably less faction-swapping; if your guild is in the running, you aren't generally going to bother accumulating conquest points on the other side. So faction imbalance is probably at an all-time high, particularly during weeks when we have GSF objectives.

[MiaowZedong]

Please re-read what I wrote; you seem to have missed my point.

In case he's that to understand, what Armonddd is getting at is not how long it takes to become objectively good but how long it takes to become competitive and enjoy the game.

 

If you look at other game modes, you have some separation between skill levels. PvE progression naturally holds people to a level of content they're comfortable with. Ground PvP has low-level WZ brackets, regular max-level WZ and ranked WZ, and while there is a lot of QQ about people queuing for the wrong WZ you still have clear differences in the average skill level present in each environment. You can consistently be in the top quarter of the scoreboard in regs and still below average in ranked.

 

GSF is different in that newbies are thrown in at the deep end--there is definitely a huge population problem with splitting the GSF queue, but that's also a largely self-perpetuating problem because the newbie experience in GSF is just so very bad that it prevents the community from really growing.

 

And it's easy for established aces to say they put up with it, but they really didn't. Many were around when GSF launched and remember a legendary time when T1 strikes were thought to be good; most of the rest established themselves with help from the original crop of aces (personally, I cut my teeth queuing with Armonddd). I'm sure someone will pop up and say they learned it all on their own solo queuing a thousand matches against their server's big names, and frankly respect to them for sticking through with it—but players who did that are a tiny minority even within the tiny minority of good players.

 

And the worst part of it is, even on servers where we do take it easy on the newbies, I'm not sure the worst matches are the curbstomps. The worst matches could well be the ones with a huge mix of skill levels on both teams and the aces competing with each other to see who can farm the newbies the hardest, because that is how you win games (especially TDM, but in Dom as well you want to hit the sat where the opposing aces aren't). Because those matches aren't over fast, and the food is even more helpless since the good players have to go all out to win—and there is nothing to be done to fix that without somehow getting more homogenous teams, because established pilots do need to be able to actually play the game.

Edited January 10, 2015 by MiaowZedong

[eedwana]

 

My core argument has nothing to do with the skill gulf. My core argument is that the game should be fun for the players. I'm pretty sure that even you will agree with that. 50-0 and 1000-0 matches aren't fun for either side, unless you happen to get a world record out of it. Even then, in my experience and the experience of others I've flown with, a close match is a lot more fun. It's really to my benefit to fly my crappy ships against new players as much as it is to theirs.[/Quote]

 

How do we make this a fun game without 50-0 and 1000-0 matches? Keep in mind that GSF is also linked to Conquest objectives and that can be pretty competitive for 1st rank.

Edited January 11, 2015 by eedwana
typo

[Verain]

Good job pretending you know what my core argument is. No, I'm not talking about how good new players should or should not be -- I'm talking about how fun the game should be for them.

 

You bring up the 50-0 and 1000-0 matches as a strawman, but that's not what this is about. If a player only has fun when he wins, well, this is pvp. He's going to have fun less than all the time, especially if he's a noob.

 

Remember the last wall of text I threw at you? The one where I called you an awful game designer because you have no concept of designing for a target audience/market?

 

If I remembered all the times college kids who know everything gave me a lecture about How Life Is, I'd have no neurons left for shoe-tying.

 

 

Of course I love that!

 

Maybe you don't enjoy trying different builds for the sake of it (when was the last time you tried out a Remote Slicing Clarion, for example?).

 

I've run a ton of games with that, and my last one was last week. I play suboptimal builds plenty.

 

Even if you do, it is ludicrous to expect people who are angry and frustrated by a poor play experience to play literally thousands of matches before they start enjoying themselves, as Sammy was suggesting.

 

Well, you've defeated that straw man, which no one was arguing for.

[Armonddd]

How do we make this a fun game without 50-0 and 1000-0 matches? Keep in mind that GSF is also linked to Conquest objectives and that can be pretty competitive for 1st rank.

 

Well, for starters, if your guild's goal is to conquer a planet, you're not flying GSF -- you're crafting (for millions of points per account) and playing warzones (which have better rewards nearly every week). But that's besides the point, because there's still a lot of competitiveness in ace vs ace matches, or grudge matches, or what have you.

 

I will also apologize in advance if you the reader have seen this before; it's essentially a compilation of requests from the forums as a whole since launch.

 

The best solution would be to implement a matchmaking system -- a proper matchmaking system, not this system that's thrown a double imp premade against random imp pugs more times than I care to remember. Obviously, such a system would require cross-server queues (which are, as I'm sure you're aware, the norm in most other games). But that's, unfortunately, not a very realistic solution.

 

It's also too late to remove the vertical progression system (the more you play, the more requisition you earn, the more effective your ship becomes) in favor of a horizontal progression system (spending requisition unlocks alternate components or upgrades that are balanced against the defaults). I would have preferred a system where, for example, slug railgun came mastered and you unlocked the ability to trade out the +10% damage for +16% crit, similar to Diablo 3's runes system, but again, it's a pipe dream at this point.

 

The next best solution would be a proper tutorial. The current tutorial hasn't been updated since beta, so it doesn't discuss TDM at all. Even in the Domination "tutorial", it provides you with no moving targets -- so you have no experience with a lead indicator before your first match. As I recall, it does tell you about power distribution, which is good, but it doesn't present you with much in the way of practical experience. Likewise, strafing and the various targeting keybinds are barely touched on. The devs could learn a lot from the Starfox 64 tutorial.

 

On a related note, some way to experiment with builds outside a match would be an excellent learning tool. It's totally understandable that a newbie might not realize that burst kills are better than any other kills, and that a gunship's range and a scout's speed are as big advantages as they are, but I think new players should be able to learn the basics from the tutorial and experiment with different loadouts in another practice space.

 

Perhaps the most realistic changes are the more "minor" balancing tweaks. One of the bigger concerns I have for a new player is the amount of time they'll spend not in the action. New players are going to die; that's both acceptable and, frankly, laudable. But this means that the new player is going to spend a lot of time waiting for respawn timers and flying back from the capital ship to the action. We play GSF to fly and fight, not to hold spacebar until we get somewhere interesting. I think a slight buff to engine efficiency (the activation cost and cost per second of boosting) on all non-scout ships would help both game balance and the new player experience. (Yes, buff gunships.)

 

Finally, as I've said multiple times in the past, burst damage is too high and time to kill is too low. Like engine efficiency, this is both a game balance problem and a new player experience problem. Burst laser cannons, slug railguns, rocket pods, and seismic mines are all extremely effective at blowing up a player before they realize they're a target. Targeting Telemetry and Blaster Overcharge are also culprits here.

 

(For reference, I think the double laser strike fighter, the Starguard/Rycer, boasts a nearly perfectly balanced build in the form of ion cannons, heavy laser cannons, and cluster missiles. Ions into clusters is strong but avoidable burst damage, switching to HLCs is a skill the player can improve at to maximize their burst capability, and the strike's inherent drawbacks in the turning and engine efficiency departments give the player plenty of opportunities to maximize their effectiveness. The range on HLCs provides a lot of utility to support the strike fighter's supposed multi-role superiority. Finally, the other components can be tailored to the pilot's preferences and goals; there aren't many "wrong" choices to be had.)

 

A few other weapons also cause issues on these fronts, but because of their utility instead of their damage. Interdiction effects, for example, make me want to stab myself in the eye. Ion railgun essentially bans you from the game when it drains enough of your power (it's considerably less fun to be a Magikarp using Splash than it is to be waiting to respawn). Railgun sentries are essentially guaranteed damage on new players that may or may not know that they can be shot, much less that they should be shot; feedback shields are another "why did I die" component. On the other hand, sabotage probes give plenty of warning before they land, giving players ample opportunity to do something about it -- or learn to do something.

 

Armor penetration and shield piercing are also too plentiful. New players don't realize that charged plating builds are, in the general case, more liability than asset due to their vulnerability to four of the most common weapons in the game (BLCs, pods, slugs, and HLCs). They also don't realize that full shields and red hull is about as bad as no shields and red hull due to, again, pods, slugs, and HLCs. Shield penetration isn't really explained anywhere, to my knowledge; at the very least, I've had a number of people ask me why they died with full shields because they just... don't know the mechanic exists. And, frankly, if I had been on the original design team, I would have suggested not implementing either mechanic; they're very dangerous and not at all related to the old space missions that new players inevitably compare GSF to.

 

Finally, the gap in effectiveness between stock components and good components, even comparing at tier 0 across the board, is just too large. Rapid-fire lasers have needed a buff for a long time, the Rycer has no business starting without ion cannons, rocket pods just have too high of a skill floor to be viable for new players, and impside pilots have no starting access to the all-important pinpointing passive (which honestly should just be rolled into weapons and replaced with something else). Sure, you can (and should) use your free 5k fleet requisition to buy another ship very quickly, but I think there should be other, more guaranteed ways to get a viable ship as a beginner.

 

I think these suggestions will both decrease the game's overall complexity and make it easier to learn what's going on in the match, other than "I have this weird UI that means things and there's a lot of enemies doing a lot of things". I think the current introduction to GSF is frustrating and not engaging; challenge is too high while skill is too low.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Armonddd

[Armonddd]

You bring up the 50-0 and 1000-0 matches as a strawman, but that's not what this is about.

 

So as soon as I talk about what my argument is as opposed to what you've wrongly claimed it is, I'm bringing up strawmen. And when I relate it back to the exact words of the post I was arguing against, it's another strawman that no one was arguing for.

 

Edited January 11, 2015 by Armonddd

[aate]

Myself, I've been playing starfighter about a month now. If I come up on someone and kill them fast and easy, I don't go looking for them for easy kill and sometimes pass them by.

[Ryuku-sama]

Myself, I've been playing starfighter about a month now. If I come up on someone and kill them fast and easy, I don't go looking for them for easy kill and sometimes pass them by.

 

What would you do if the whole opposing team looks like that???

[Danalon]

[...]Finally, as I've said multiple times in the past, burst damage is too high and time to kill is too low. [...]

 

Actually, TTK is relatively long compared to other shooters I play(ed). It's short compared to ground PvP but ground PvP and GSF are completely different types of games. Also, considering the HUD indicators in GSF it's possible to (re)act even before something hits you. It's possible to see every player, mine, drone and turret in sensor range, even if behind a wall plus anything someone in your comm range sees. As soon as you learn how to read your HUD there are almost no surprises anymore. The only thing able to hit me unprepared are gunships shooting at me while I'm busy doing something else - but that's part of the game.

 

 

On another note. I doubt it would help to make a ranking system or something similar. Some of the most imbalanced games I've seen have been caused by mediocre pilots forming gunship walls or bomber clusters against other mediocre pilots that didn't happen to have something to counter it - those matches are won by the team that happens to have more of a specific ship type.

Gunship wall in TDM: Stay in rail-range of the other gunships but not too close. If someone attacks another gunship, rail the attacker. If someone attacks you, fly circles until another gunship rails the attacker. This works suprisingly well without much effort by the gunship pilots.

Bomber cluster in DOM: Select bomber, fly to a satellite, drop deployables and just watch the other team getting killed without you even moving. Protip: This works even better when there are at least 3 bombers per satellite.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Danalon

[SammyGStatus]

Actually, TTK is relatively long compared to other shooters I play(ed). It's short compared to ground PvP but ground PvP and GSF are completely different types of games. Also, considering the HUD indicators in GSF it's possible to (re)act even before something hits you.

 

Scouts TTK is subsecond. Quads n pods + BO or TT is able to destroy even bombers in under the time it takes me to charge a rail (Note - min fire time for GS to kill a scout is between 3 and 5 seconds, strikes <5, bombers <7). SCOUT TTK is low - everything else seems reasonable, but if you are focused on another target and a scout flies behind you running quads and pods, you'll drop before you know what's going on

[Danalon]

Scouts TTK is subsecond. Quads n pods + BO or TT is able to destroy even bombers in under the time it takes me to charge a rail (Note - min fire time for GS to kill a scout is between 3 and 5 seconds, strikes <5, bombers <7). SCOUT TTK is low - everything else seems reasonable, but if you are focused on another target and a scout flies behind you running quads and pods, you'll drop before you know what's going on

 

Your argument is that a scout can kill you before you can react because you are focussing on another target.

You can check your HUD for an indicator getting bigger or press TAB to check for the closest enemy.

Anyway. How is this different from being a scout in a dogfight and suddenly getting slugged?

 

Also, railguns needing to charge is to compensate for the range, the surprise attack capabilities and to keep their DPS low while they're hard hitting (if their DPS were higher but they weren't hard hitting they would be weird blasters with high range and annoying handling).

 

By the way in other shooters there are one-shot-kills, in GSF there are not (except slug railgun crit against certain builds and well, DO). Theoretical TTK shorter than 0.5 seconds aren't unusual.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Danalon

[MiaowZedong]

press TAB to check for the closest enemy.

El Oh El.

By the way in other shooters there are one-shot-kills, in GSF there are not (except slug railgun crit against certain builds and well, DO). Theoretical TTK shorter than 0.5 seconds aren't unusual.

Actually, fighter sims don't usually feature one-shots, whether it's space ones like Freelancer or the X series, or plane ones like Cliffs of Dover.

 

If you're comparing this to Counter-Strike well yeah, but in chess you can't win with fewer than two moves (see what I did there?).

Edited January 11, 2015 by MiaowZedong

[caederon]

This really isn't such a complex issue, when you boil it down. Solve the problem by building up the skill level of new and inexperienced pilots.

 

GSF isn't going to change much unless there is some divine intervention that throws more dev time at it. So, we are left to deal with it as it is, a flawed game that can still be a lot of fun once you know what you're doing.

 

The 'once you know what you're doing' part is key. There are a lot of people who don't know what they're doing, from inexperience or from inability. The former can be cured, and even in the case of the latter, there are basic skills that anyone can learn even if they aren't the greatest shot. There are ample resources for them to learn from, in the form of great videos by many of the same aces who this post is asking to hold back. Drakolich's smorgasbord of videos, Tommmsunb's great accuracy tutorial, the guides and posts on the forum here, and even personal mentoring are all available to new pilots. Most of the aces that post here are available on multiple servers or by request (I have characters almost everywhere) and are very open about teaching tactics, builds, etc.

 

You have to put in the work to get good, and make some effort to learn the game systems so you can take advantage of them.

 

My time is precious to me, I have an hour here, an hour there where I get to play. I'm going to play matches to the best of my ability, because doing otherwise is wasting my time. Unless you're a server regular and know all the names, it is no longer reliable to judge team strength by the array of 2- 3- 4- 5-shippers. I've seen teams of 5-shippers play like they never flew a mission.

 

An ace in a stock ship can still wreck a bad team.

 

Encourage new players to get in the GSF channel, to ask questions, to seek out the resources that will help them develop the skills needed to compete. It's all out there, free of charge.

 

Despon

[Linuxizer]

You can only speak for yourself not your entire team. Holding back gives the opposition a chance to gain more req and feel like they did not just waste their time queuing.

 

Depends on how the aces holds back. If they all keep a Clarion or Spearpoint unupgraded and fly it against the newer players, great! But artificially prolonging a deathmatch with lots of ion railgun and interdiction drones and just waiting... no. End the match quickly and let everyone queue again.

[Armonddd]

Actually, TTK is relatively long compared to other shooters I play(ed). It's short compared to ground PvP but ground PvP and GSF are completely different types of games.

 

My scout -- with the same build that a lot of skilled players are running -- gets off a BLC blast every 0.65 seconds and a rocket pod every 0.62 seconds. At 500m (which is a very reasonable range if I'm trying to burst you), BLCs will do 865 damage to shields and 733 damage to hull. Pods at any range will do 437 damage with 28% shield piercing (meaning a minimum of 205 hull damage per hit). Both will ignore armor.

 

The stock blackbolt has 1040 shields and 950 hull; the first round will shred shields and knock out a significant chunk of hull. The target now has about 650 ms to react before the second round lands the kill. You can easily halve that accounting for latency (which comes into play twice) and the amount of time it takes for the human brain to process the information. Even aces get blown up in this case. Oh, and the awful QCS activated ability doesn't do a thing here; you'll regen up to about 430 shields and 720 hull, which is still less than the second wave will do. 0.65s TTK, no crits involved.

 

The stock strike fares a bit better, thanks to 1440 shields and 1450 hull. But it still dies to three rounds, for a 1.3s TTK. A clutch QCS will give you another 600ish shields, if you think to get it off and it's not on cooldown and etc, and will require a fourth round -- but again, we're talking about new pilots, and they're not necessarily going to think of that. Either way, TTK is very, very short.

 

Let's suppose the newbie saved up their req tokens and has now picked up a gunship. Maybe they've been flying a fair bit, but they've left their gunship mostly alone until now. (Also, this lets me address some other specific balance concerns.) A fully upgraded meta gunship like you'd find in the Staciepedia has 1870 shields and 1250 hull. After round one, it has 773 shields and 1045 hull. The next pod knocks it down to 541 shields and 840 hull. The BLCs then take out the shields using 62.5% of their available damage; the remaining damage is dealt to hull, reducing it to 565. From here on out the gunship will die to almost any stray hit. A BLC crit or two pod crits will result in a round 2 kill.

 

Also, considering the HUD indicators in GSF it's possible to (re)act even before something hits you. It's possible to see every player, mine, drone and turret in sensor range, even if behind a wall plus anything someone in your comm range sees. As soon as you learn how to read your HUD there are almost no surprises anymore.

 

You can do this and I can do this. We can do this because we're experienced. New players don't understand what the HUD means, because it's a whole lot of junk they've never seen before. A lot of people don't understand how communications work or even why they're important ("if I can't see it it's not there" isn't as uncommon as you might think). They don't understand that a larger red arrow means a closer enemy. They don't know why there's a second name showing up in the target detail window, or why it changes sometimes. They don't even know what a firing arc is or why those circles change on their Rycer/Starguard. And these are the players that are being told "just stick with the game for a few hundred or thousand matches and it'll get fun".

 

On another note. I doubt it would help to make a ranking system or something similar. Some of the most imbalanced games I've seen have been caused by mediocre pilots forming gunship walls or bomber clusters against other mediocre pilots that didn't happen to have something to counter it - those matches are won by the team that happens to have more of a specific ship type.

 

Frankly, a matchmaking system should account for that. But even beyond that, I've seen too many matches where one side just dominates completely because of their aces. The OP is asking that the aces hold back in completely mismatched games, so things like 50-4 TDMs and 1000-14 domination matches are less common. It gets worse than that, of course, but generally only when premades are involved.

[Ryuku-sama]

Armondd... If one lets the enemy fires more than one volley, they deserve to die.

[Armonddd]

Armondd... If one lets the enemy fires more than one volley, they deserve to die.

 

The target now has about 650 ms to react before the second round lands the kill. You can easily halve that accounting for latency (which comes into play twice) and the amount of time it takes for the human brain to process the information. Even aces get blown up in this case.

 

Thank you for properly reading my post and considering it in the light of the new player experience being discussed in this thread.

[Ryuku-sama]

Thank you for properly reading my post and considering it in the light of the new player experience being discussed in this thread.

 

They still deserve to die. After the first surprise death, one should have understood how dangeroud BLC are... And they have their own sound for a reason.

Whenever you hear BLC... If you don't know where the scout is, you're in danger... Move. Lesson I learned on me second game, when BLC + BO was still used.

If you don't move, it is your own damn fault if you die.

Add a few dozens deaths to figures out how to effectively escape a BLC scout and then one shouldn't die ever to the first pass considering they aren't already half dead. TTK isn't low. 0.65s is way higher than any FPS TTK.. And you have many way to fins the scout before he opens on your six.

 

There is nothing broken. New pilots just need to learn to use the tools they have effectively.

[DamascusAdontise]

First off, I think asking people as a blanket statement to do "anything other than their best" is wrong. Everyone has an equal right to play this game the way they want to. Additionally some of us don't have un-upgraded ships and don't want to fly builds that we hate and / or sub-optimal just to play "hard mode" or WE you wanna call it.

 

With all that said, I choose to fly a Bloodmark or an Imperium (typically) when I am in a match with mostly new players. I even do things like break off before the kill to give them the chance to run, or my teammates the chance to get the kill. I sometimes will actively avoid people who I consider friends / or fl with frequently. Most of the time I will let the enemy have a node (IE leave 3 alone when we have 2) etc. All these things I do by choice.....and more often than not to keep the queue from disintegrating . Expecting this type of behavior from everyone though is wrong (we can play any way we want to)

 

What I will not do however is lose a game that I could have otherwise won. I will also not allow people to focus me into oblivion (if I can) when things start to pickup or I start to get the shaft I quickly drop pretense and commit to the attack.

 

Also just to drop in on a point that I always shake my head at: player ranking system. First off we all already know that there are not enough players for matchmaking to work properly (thats a given) and we cannot dis-allow people to play (high or low skill)

 

I have seen true ranking systems (in a game called MWO) this in a game with thousands of players queuing at any given time. Even with all that the biggest complaint in that game is one sided matches. It STILL happens even with a strict matchmaking system;. The takeaway from this is that PvP is difficult if not impossible to make "balanced". In fact PvP at its very core is about imbalance (the stronger side winning) Our BEST BET is to try to get a proper tutorial / pray for super server or cross server / and help to train our new players.

 

Trying to rely on any system to make things match perfect every time.... is just never going to happen. I havent seen any system anywhere that can actually pit people of like minded skill against one another in even 50% of the matches. Skill is VERY VERY hard to quantify.

[Armonddd]

TTK isn't low. 0.65s is way higher than any FPS TTK.. And you have many way to fins the scout before he opens on your six.

 

There is nothing broken. New pilots just need to learn to use the tools they have effectively.

 

This isn't a terrible FPS game. This is a space combat game. The difference is that GSF is fun but the learning curve is enormous, and thus only a limited number of skills carry over between the two.

 

FPSes also have significantly less wait time between death and return to action, from what I've seen -- also something I addressed. This kind of almost justifies awful TTK standards.

 

TEH had a Strike Night for a long time until conquest was introduced and everything got thrown out of whack. That was the server's GSF community as a whole saying "the game is more fun when everyone's in a strike fighter, largely because TTK is too low".

 

You're also looking at the problem from your own viewpoint instead of the developers'. Sure, you learned how to react to BLCs that quickly, because you learn quickly and are a good pilot (from what I've heard, anyway -- I've never had the pleasure of flying with you). If you're a relatively new player, you probably even skipped the period where most people were flying their t1 ships and t2 scouts were relatively rare, much less t2 scouts with mastered BLCs. But you are not the target audience of GSF. If you were, GSF wouldn't be an unranked minigame created within a cloodgy engine and forced to tie into a completely different game.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Armonddd

[caederon]

Educating new players and giving them the tools to learn and thereby improve is the one solution that we can consistently enact. Some people don't listen (or think they know it all) but the majority of inexperienced players I have talked to and given advice to want to learn.

 

Try this during the next wargame you're in: If it looks like you're on the side that is going to roll over the other team, hang back and use the /1 general channel to talk to the 'enemy' side and offer strategic advice during the match. Give them some pointers on how to better coordinate their attacks, what targets they should be looking for, general ideas on how they can improve their performance. Occasionally people will think you're a crazy know-it-all, but I've had some success in delivering useful instruction to people in lopsided wargames.

 

I'm trying to avoid any 'wishful thinking' solutions, but it sure would be nice if there was a way to let new players practice shooting at moving targets. Getting them above single-digit accuracy counts would improve both their performance and the fun they have. Maybe wargames could offer a chance for that sort of instruction, too, if people could organize it and get others to go along.

 

Despon

[AlrikFassbauer]

Try this during the next wargame you're in: If it looks like you're on the side that is going to roll over the other team, hang back and use the /1 general channel to talk to the 'enemy' side and offer strategic advice during the match. Give them some pointers on how to better coordinate their attacks, what targets they should be looking for, general ideas on how they can improve their performance. Occasionally people will think you're a crazy know-it-all, but I've had some success in delivering useful instruction to people in lopsided wargames.

 

Very nice idea !

 

I'm trying to avoid any 'wishful thinking' solutions, but it sure would be nice if there was a way to let new players practice shooting at moving targets.

 

The original X-Wing game had that.

Especially notorious were the cannons that shot at you after you had passed them !

Edited January 13, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer