Why Pre-made raid groups and fully equip ships, actually harm GSF and PvP matches.

[Linuxizer]

Come back, Akabelleth, we still want to talk to you

 

Well, here's another anecdote. There is a legacy achievement called "Elite: Warmonger" for destroying 15 enemy ships in a single GSF match. On the Shadowlands, it took me more than 800 matches to get it! LOL! Since then I have started new legacies on other servers and got it in the first match on two legacies.

[Verain]

When I'm in your team - hypothetically - then I am NOT having "fun" when aces degrade me so much to an non-contributor that I just can't have the feeling of "fun" anymore.

 

If you queue up and the rest of your team carries you hard, that's not a design problem. Or any kind of problem. Your consistent evaluation that the mere existence of people more skilled than you is some kind of issue is really out there.

 

 

What I'm also noticing in this discussion is something that I know from the PvP forum : People make the devs responsible for something that was actually driven by the players themselves - like "the devs not giving new maps" being the cause of Newbies getting steamrolled by aces and therefore staying away from GSF, this dwindling GFS's population. Great logic.

 

It is great logic. Games with more content draw more people and maintain more players. The assertion that the issue is what YOU say it is, is YOUR assertion.

 

Over the field of competitive games, there's several things that improve or hurt play experience. Game balance of abilities is one thing, match making putting better players together in one game and worse players together in another (which must be accompanied by a rating system or rewards for the better players), but plenty of games do fine without those things. Content, mechanics, play diversity, pleasingness of play- these are much larger issues, and GSF does pretty great on some and drops the ball on others.

 

 

Yes, new maps would help a whole lot. But game balance won't fix you, man. You just run into every thread and say "I do not like losing, and this is a problem someone else should solve for me".

[ShallowHal]

We are not "sharing". We are "telling".

 

Your thread title is phrased like a fact. It is not a fact: it is incorrect.

 

Don't try to pretend that we are all trying to "change your opinion". You came here to debate by stating things as facts that are not facts. And definitely don't try to change frame on us with weasel words..

 

OK, having now (for the first time) been on both sides of this debate and having been a newbie at this game for over a year before I finally started reading some of the good posts on this forum and talking to some of the really good players today on the Imp side (one of the roses, Despon, and Cainin, I feel like I've lived in both worlds a little bit.

 

Today, I played as Joras on the Imp side on the Harbinger. Unlike most pilots, I don't have the same consistent name across toons and I haven't distinguished myself in any way (other than dying) to where anyone would have noticed me before today.

 

GSF, as it is designed, is a deeply flawed game that punishes new players too harshly for them to continue without help. The flaws though, are not with the mechanics of the game or that players can "hack" their ships (the best hack I've seen is trying to hit someone who is experiencing major lag and their ship jumps all around on the screen). It's not even that fully upgraded ships are matched against a team of people who are playing for the first time and have no chance to win, which was my original position.

 

The biggest problem is that in a faction vs. faction match (which happens more than half the time on Harbinger) four man groups are paired with other four man groups. If that gives a full 12 man team, the other team has no chance. It's like the Golden State Warriors playing against your local beer league players in basketball. It's no fun to play games like that where you just die the whole time, you don't know why, and you quit within 2-3 matches because it's too hard, the tutorial is inadequate, and the queueing system is awful (though the game is hurt most by the lack of players, though that is entirely the fault of the bad design and bad tutorial).

 

Is there a lot of information out there to help the beginner player improve quickly. There is. I know. I've painstakingly looked for it. And I'm only just now barely starting to reap the rewards. Stasie's New Player Guide to GSF is a thread I visit daily when plotting how to spend my comms. I have yet to watch Drakolich's videos, but he has so much of me in his stool, I already know half of it from getting killed repeatedly by his GS.

 

Here is (in my opinion only, NOT fact) the issues with GSF in order of importance.

 

1. The elitist attitude expressed by the poster above pervades GSF. How do I know this. Because I have participated in a lot of those skewed matches. The number of times I've seen one of the good pilots make an offer to a bad pilot to take them under the wing, invite them to a group, and give them a day's worth of tutorial?

 

ZERO

 

Now perhaps some of you have whispered to people after matches and I haven't been privvy to that. I can tell you I never got one. I even whispered to people I knew were good pilots and asked if they were currently good (and these are people who I discovered today are some of the nicest people I've encountered anywhere in this game, despite the number of times they've bludgeoned me over the past year. I forgive them for that now .

 

Now you may say "Why don't they just join the GSF channel and ask questions?" Well, they have no idea the GSF channel exists (I only just discovered today). I couldn't even figure out how to join until I asked in ops chat today. That one move probably improved me in one day 100% more than I'd improved on my own without direction for a year. Only stubbornness and the great XP from doing the dailies kept me stubbornly at it. But most people aren't as masochistic as me. 2-3 matches at most and you're going to lose that person forever because they don't understand why it's so hard and no one is helping them understand why.

 

This problem could be so easily solved if EA cared about anything other than pushing cartel crap on us to milk money from losers with too much money and too much willingness to do random rolls for something with Revan's name on it. Auto-balance the four man groups in same faction matches so that a fully upgraded group is on each side of the match. If there are 3 groups, make the third group wait until a fourth group queues before splitting them apart. It would take probably 15 minutes for them to change that mechanic in the queue, but they won't because they are short-sighted about building a player base (the phrase pennywise and pound-foolish applies).

 

2. Your average noobie is not going to know how to add the GSF channel to their chat unless someone tells them. If you responded with 1 minute to go in a slaughter match that tying /cjoin gsf could make a huge difference in how well they do, you could easily double the player base on every server because they would see the good players as the nice people that they are instead of the pre-made slaughter factory that they appear to be.

 

3. The good players are not making enough of an effort to take newer players under their wing to teach them. And it's not for a lack of desire. Despon invited me to a group out of the blue just cause I was participating in GSF chat today and for that I am incredibly grateful. He didn't even offer nearly as much constructive criticism as I thought he might, even though my stats were pretty much of the 2 kills, 1 assist/0 kills 3 assist variety.

 

I cannot stress this enough.

 

IT IS IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF EVERY GOOD PILOT on this server to take new pilots under their wing and help them learn. Don't take the attitude of "I had to learn the hard way so they should too." The more good pilots there are, the more interesting matches there are, the fewer slaughters, and the more you can make this flawed game turn around and become a real selling point of the game. I think if every GSF ace took the 2 guys that he killed the most in a match and invited them into a group with another experienced pilot, you'd build a base that would grow and the matches would naturally become more even. There just aren't enough fully upgraded five ship hanger pilots out there right now.

 

I know that notion will meet a lot of resistance with a lot of you who quite frankly relish slaughtering teams in Deathmatch in a stacked game 50-3. But admit it, aren't the matches where it's 49-49 with 1 minute to go and each team is trying not to be the guy that is the 50th kill and be the guy that gets the 50th kill at the same time 10 times more fun? Most of you don't even need the comms anymore cause you have so many. So why not help new players grow, even if it's just 15 minutes out of your GSF day.

 

On my server, Harbinger, this problem is by far the most pervasive on the Imp side. I've seen some cross faction pilots who fight Pub side and maybe they're forming pub side powerhouses that I don't know about because I've never been invited. Tomorrow I'll go in on my best pilot's account and see who I can group up with on that side.

 

3. Guilds that cater to the new player need to be far more active recruiting in the last minute of matches in Ops Chat or pst.

 

Don't make them hunt you down like I did. Advertise to them where you know they're interested in the game cause....you see them playing. My pub guild (warzone emphasis) actively recruits both good players and new players and we've become very good very quickly (though I cannot say that has anything to do with me).

 

I know this post will fall largely on deaf ears, largely on the group of people that reaps the benefits of the stacked game right now and actually enjoys slaughtering new players and chasing them away. I won't name names, but we all know who they are. They're the guys who take the time to laugh at players during a match. I know what I say means zip to you. My post is more catering to the players who have invested a lot of time making videos, forum posts, and guides who obviously care about the game. Take newer players under your wing each day and just give them a couple of helpful hints like "Go guard your capped node all game and earn 3-4 easy comms" or "Fly close to the node when it's flashing and all of the drones are destroyed" or "Use your GS to kill drones all match" or the best advice I've read.

 

MOVE WHEN YOU GET HIT.

 

It'll make GSF a lot more friendly, a lot less intimidating, and welcoming to the newer pilot who is overwhelmed by the clunky interface and the imbalance of 90% of PuG matches.

 

My time is up. Thank you very much for your time.

Edited September 25, 2015 by ShallowHal

[Drakkolich]

Hi shallow that is one long post I didn't want to quote the whole thing and disect it so I'm just going to say a few things to answer you.

 

The interesting part is almost every single thing you mention for the top players to do, we have done many times already.

 

For example Vexxial once made a paragraph greeting for us to spam at the start/end of every game in which we saw a newer player. It told them about the guides on forums and the gsf chat channels. However after about 2 weeks of spamming that in every match we didn't get very much response out of it so it kinda faded away.

Here is a link to that thread if you're interested.

 

As far as matchmaking falling on its face when groups are involved we have been complaining about that since like a month after GSF launch. It's been a problem for a very long time.

 

 

You comment on how players never go talk to the guys we kill a billion times, there is actually a really good reason I stopped doing that. About 90% of the time I did it, the person would just curse at me and call me horrible names and tell basically tell me to go hell. So while I understand the idea of going over and helping players you just slauthered out most of my experience with it ended very poorly.

 

As far as taking pilots under their wings a lot of us have I've trained countless pilots during my GSF career. I myself have made tons of videos and guides to help others, as well as give other good pilots places to send new pilots they encounter. I think you would be surprised how many players that come visit me to ask questions on my stream or just send me privates messages on these forums were referenced by other good pilots I know to do so.

 

 

As far as players that prefer the 50-1 matches over the close ones there actually aren't that many, at least not that I've met. When I'm playing with my team if we get too many matches like that in a row we swap factions to try to find premades to fight against, if we still can't find anyone we usually call it a night. (Sometimes were requing up ships for an event and we will keep playing on one faction however)

 

 

Anyways that's just a few of my thoughts on the matter.

[RatPoison]

I'll add...

 

More often than not, pride gets in the way and when a new player has been beat, and thus the reaction is not a positive one. For example, a match this weekend ended with mostly the slaughter of my team. A player asked how is it the other team is so much more powerful. I said, that they weren't (that much more powerful) and that individually each of the players on the opposition was actually rather pedestrian. Another on the team simply said, they're cheating or hacking.

 

Despite my protest against such a claim, that was ultimately what they verbalized agreement with. Not that half of our team had less than 10% accuracy, or that 3 of the team would fly alone against the other, etc. Hacking.

 

Following the matches conclusion, I attempted one more shot at righting the ship and was promptly called an ******.

 

I don't feel encouraged to volunteer because of encounters like this. Should a person decide to ask me questions following a match, I'll gladly answer. But 9 times out of 10 anymore, newer people who are flying don't care and don't want to read anything critical. Add in newer players who don't really have a clue giving advice and strategy to other new players over the protests of folks that may know something actually useful (yes, this happens)... well, it's an uphill battle that my lazy *** has already thrown the towel in on.

[Lavaar]

For example Vexxial once made a paragraph greeting for us to spam at the start/end of every game in which we saw a newer player. It told them about the guides on forums and the gsf chat channels. However after about 2 weeks of spamming that in every match we didn't get very much response out of it so it kinda faded away.

Here is a link to that thread if you're interested.

 

I've been getting a little lazy with this recently, and rarely do it, but to hear about ShallowHal's experience, I have decided I am going to start doing it again as much as possible. A server like harbinger, with many rookie pilots, could benefit from it, and if we get even one more gsf regular, or even a new "ace" from it, it will be worth it to me.

 

This is the text I currently use on the republic side:

 

" Welcome to GSF! New players, please grab the intro mission from the PvP terminal on the fleet after this game. You will earn the fleet req to buy both the Rampart bomber and the Quarrel gunship. Also type /cjoin GSF into your chat box to join the gsf chat channel. "

[Danalon]

I write a paragraph informing other players about the GSF channel and how to join at the beginning and end of every match (I may sometimes forget though) and there are very rarely people joining the channel afterwards.

 

Sometimes, when I had enough spare time after a match and I saw someone (on my team or in wargames) performing bad I asked them if they needed help. Most of them didn't answer.

Maybe one in twenty answered and most of those answeres were flaming/whining about unfairness in GSF (tried to convince them it becomes fun with more experience, didn't work) or, when I happened to whisper a bad performing pilot with a few hundred games experience they told me they just had bad luck (and continued performing bad in other games I saw them).

I gave up on whispering people because of those answeres. Whoever wants help needs to get to the GSF channel.

Edited September 14, 2015 by Danalon

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I guess the only real way that the whole premade problem might be solved with the lower queue pop would be to rework how match making prioritizes everyone in queue. Maybe not make it so everyone has equal priority but maybe readjust the equation so groups don't have as high a priority in the criteria match making considers when it's assembling a match.

 

That might mean it could prioritize more based on the skill of the pilots rather than the current system which seems to prioritize groups and then do it's best to make a balanced match with the leftovers. At least it's my impression that group priority would work when you have a high enough queue population but when you're dealing with a low population that priority skews things so it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to create a balanced match.

[caederon]

Despon invited me to a group out of the blue just cause I was participating in GSF chat today and for that I am incredibly grateful. He didn't even offer nearly as much constructive criticism as I thought he might, even though my stats were pretty much of the 2 kills, 1 assist/0 kills 3 assist variety.

Hey, good to see you here on the forum and participating in a thoughtful way as opposed to the sorts who dash off one-liner vitriolic complaints.

 

I had some irl concerns distracting me while I was flying yesterday, and really only started noticing your stats at the end of the last couple games. At least as far as I am concerned, it would have helped me to give you advice if I had a better idea of what you considered your trouble areas. (and I get that it can seem like 'everything' is a trouble area at first) Even if you just pick a subject as a starting point, I'm happy to talk at length on it and it can lead into further points that branch out from there. Basically, I didn't know where to start. Even saying something like "I was flying a sting and have a hard time hitting things" would be a good point to jump off on.

 

It's tough for me to be an observer of friendly teammates during a match that I'm focused on participating in. I'd actually have more ability to offer constructive criticism on that ground if I was flying against you. If I'm engaging you in combat and know to remember your name specifically (or have a reason to based on performance), that's when I'd see things like 'you're flying in a straight line while being blown up' and can offer specifics on how to alter those habits and improve.

 

I think you may have seen this already but in case others haven't, I wrote a beginners' guide on here a while back, too, and it might address a lot of what you were hoping for in terms of general advice. Sriia also wrote one, there have been a bunch of other posts here in that ilk, it takes some work to dredge them all up but its worth it.

 

Finally, I usually fly Harbinger imp most days for one or two hours between 7PM EST - 11PM EST. If you see me online (and this goes for you specifically, and other new or inexperienced pilots, too) message me and come up with one or two topics that you feel are your biggest problem areas, so that we have someplace to start a discussion on how you can improve. You can even private message me here on this forum, and I'll do what I can to help.

 

Despon

Edited September 14, 2015 by caederon

[Linuxizer]

Here is (in my opinion only, NOT fact) the issues with GSF in order of importance.

 

1. The elitist attitude expressed by the poster above pervades GSF. How do I know this. Because I have participated in a lot of those skewed matches. The number of times I've seen one of the good pilots make an offer to a bad pilot to take them under the wing, invite them to a group, and give them a day's worth of tutorial?

 

I'm not sure if not being very chatty is a sign of elitism. Whispering to a rookie after I have a good match may look condescending. Whispering to a rookie after I have a mediocre match must look self-important.

 

I haven't got such harsh responses like others have, but more like, "this game is so bad, forget it, and good luck to you" which is still rather discouraging.

 

I sometimes try to inform new players about the GSF channel or the guides on this forum. There is rarely any response and then I give up.

 

I'm generally open to grouping with a rookie, but I never see any of them again anyway and I have given up on that too. Sometimes I don't want to group because there are real life distractions even though I'm queuing.

 

I prefer close matches to blow-outs.

 

I do remember seeing your name in a recent match or two

[Archonitek]

Joining a GSF guild is probably the best thing a rookie can do to improve their performance, even more than just having a veteran taking one guy under his wing. Back in late 2014 when I first started I wasn't making much progress at all even with the reading on the forums, but once I joined Eclipse Squadron and started flying matches with Gaara, Sriia and everyone else I got more feedback and advice from multiple sources which helped a lot.

[ShallowHal]

Hi shallow that is one long post I didn't want to quote the whole thing and disect it so I'm just going to say a few things to answer you.

 

The interesting part is almost every single thing you mention for the top players to do, we have done many times already.

 

For example Vexxial once made a paragraph greeting for us to spam at the start/end of every game in which we saw a newer player. It told them about the guides on forums and the gsf chat channels. However after about 2 weeks of spamming that in every match we didn't get very much response out of it so it kinda faded away.

Here is a link to that thread if you're interested.

 

As far as matchmaking falling on its face when groups are involved we have been complaining about that since like a month after GSF launch. It's been a problem for a very long time.

 

You comment on how players never go talk to the guys we kill a billion times, there is actually a really good reason I stopped doing that. About 90% of the time I did it, the person would just curse at me and call me horrible names and tell basically tell me to go hell. So while I understand the idea of going over and helping players you just slaugthered out most of my experience with it ended very poorly.

 

As far as taking pilots under their wings a lot of us have I've trained countless pilots during my GSF career. I myself have made tons of videos and guides to help others, as well as give other good pilots places to send new pilots they encounter. I think you would be surprised how many players that come visit me to ask questions on my stream or just send me privates messages on these forums were referenced by other good pilots I know to do so.

 

As far as players that prefer the 50-1 matches over the close ones there actually aren't that many, at least not that I've met. When I'm playing with my team if we get too many matches like that in a row we swap factions to try to find premades to fight against, if we still can't find anyone we usually call it a night. (Sometimes were requing up ships for an event and we will keep playing on one faction however)

 

Anyways that's just a few of my thoughts on the matter.

 

I appreciate your thoughts. As far as I know, you only fly under the Drakolich name on the Imp side and so aside from my awareness of your contributions on the forums and people telling me to check out your Youtube videos, my impression of you has largely been.

 

(shudder....it's Drakolich...I need to stay at least 20000M away from this guy at all costs...damn, why did I get suckered into flying into his area again.....augghh, I'm ion blasted and I can't move...boom, I'm one with the Force asking Anakin why he looks so different than he did in 1983 and why he was such a whiny brat in the 90's)

 

Obviously, you've been at this way longer than I have. When GSF came out, I tried it at first and almost immediately dismissed it for the simple reason that I had absolutely no clue what was going on. So I don't mean to sound like I suddenly split the atom with my thoughts. They're just my thoughts.

 

I actually flew quite a bit the another night with a woman from a Pub beginner oriented guild with one of the coolest names I've ever seen. At the end of every match, she put in her recruiting pitch. I don't know whether she got any response to it, but after a while I thought to myself "This probably isn't the best way to reach out to new players." For one thing, everybody has seen guild messages like that and they feel a bit spammy. I think probably what the players are more likely to respond to is a whisper, even though I know you've mostly had negative experiences doing that. I mean let's face it, anybody who has played this game long enough knows that there are a ton of very immature people who play this game. You only need spend 10 minutes in fleet chat or on Dromund Kaas to figure that out very quickly. So there is no perfect solution to the problem that will work for everybody. Some people will respond positively and maybe most people won't. But I think anything beats silent slaughter, which leads people to say "hacking/this is BS/etc" I've seen it a million times in chat on the losing end. You probably are on the losing end so rarely that you don't see that aspect of the game as much as I do and when you do, you're fighting against people that you probably fly with and against all the time and so you know you're losing to people of roughly similar skill so it's no big deal. It's different on the bottom end.

 

My only point to make is that while all of this stuff that people *are* doing is great, it requires effort on the newbie's part to find out that it's actually happening at all. If I can go a year without noticing any of it, I doubt I'm the only one.

 

Anyway, my personal commitment going forward is that when I'm fighting with someone who I can see is clearly not getting it, I'm going to reach out to that person and see if they'd like to group with me so I can give them some simple pointers that will at least give them some basic tenets of the game, why it's good to capture a node and stay near it, what earns you medals, why it's good to pay attention to ops chat, why the function keys are rather important, and most importantly, why you really really ought to at least add the GSF channel just to see what's going on. Because that's where I've been able to get all the response that I struggled to get via whispering people, watching Ops chat, and getting the kind of sarcastic feedback that people give a LOT in GSF which runs along the lines "You guys all suck", "You should uninstall now", "You should never queue again". That stuff never happens on teams you're on because your presence is alone to make any squad a lot more competitive. But when someone a tier down from you is flying with a bunch of two ship hangar types, it happens a lot in matches that I participate in on PuG's.

 

As far as joining a guild that is devoted to GSF, the only issue there is that I would never want to make GSF the only aspect of the game I play. I enjoy lots of group content. I particularly enjoy anything that pits humans vs other humans because that's the only part of the game that isn't static. The maps in GSF and warzones are static (almost painfully so, we're long overdue for some new maps). The class stories are so static that I space bar through all of it as fast as possible once I've been able to tweak my responses to positively influence whatever companion I have with me. The flashpoints, aside from the people you do them with (which are getting worse and worse because of 12XP), are static. Ops are just too much of a grind to be fun. But humans vs. humans will always be inherently more fun because it's never exactly the same thing twice.

 

Most of the guilds I've been in have been a waste of time or haven't really catered to my particular interests in playing the game. When my characters on the Bastion became more interested in world conquest than in anything PVP related, I pretty much lost interest in them. The rest of the guilds, there just wasn't a lot of actually guild activity.

 

I created two new characters specifcally just for GSF. One is in Raiders of Valhalla and the other is waiting to find out whether "her" application to that guild has been accepted (they seem pretty serious about wearing pilot gear to guild meetings, which might be a bit over the top for me. I haven't even done the first missions on the home planets yet or waited to start getting dailies. I just immediately starting playing GSF in the two stock ships and doing the best I could with the limited ability to contribute that you have with ships like that. So those will probably both be GSF guilded in some fashion or another. My imp alt that I've been doing most of my GSF'ing in got a random invite from a guild that seems pretty active so far, so I'm sorta waiting to see whether that lasts or not. My pub alts are mostly in the guild that I am co-guildmaster for (for no particular reason other than that I stuck around long enough to wait for the original guildmaster to abdicate his throne so that the guy who was doing all the real work could be guildmaster) and that is warzone focused and I like that guild for that purpose. But just as I would never want to devote myself to being *just* a GSF player, I would never want to devote myself to being *just* a warzone player and so those alts play GSF, just not in a GSF guild.

 

Anyway, I'm pleased that my post generated some discussion on the topic.

 

P.S. Why do GSF guilds put so much more thought into coming up with cool names for their guilds than other guilds? If I see one more guild with an attempting-to-clever use of Sith in their name, I might fly my worthless stock strike right into a rock.

Edited September 16, 2015 by ShallowHal

[Lavaar]

...Some people will respond positively and maybe most people won't. But I think anything beats silent slaughter, which leads people to say "hacking/this is BS/etc" I've seen it a million times in chat on the losing end. You probably are on the losing end so rarely that you don't see that aspect of the game as much as I do and when you do, you're fighting against people that you probably fly with and against all the time and so you know you're losing to people of roughly similar skill so it's no big deal. It's different on the bottom end.

 

This is true, it is very different to see these frustrations firsthand, frustrations born of repeatedly playing games with no chance of victory.

[happyslappydingo]

At ShallowHal this is me Channelrose/Krispyrose I was the one who grouped up with you over the weekend just introducing myself here on the forums I sometimes read the forums and my mom said that you said something about me if you want to group up let me know and we can fly together I'm on every other week since my parents are divorced next week I'll be on I'm on this weekend as well. I'm either on Imp side Krispyrose, Channelrose, Blurose and Pub side Violentrose, Prim-röse. I'm in the GSF channel. Hope to see you soon

[ShallowHal]

At ShallowHal this is me Channelrose/Krispyrose I was the one who grouped up with you over the weekend just introducing myself here on the forums I sometimes read the forums and my mom said that you said something about me if you want to group up let me know and we can fly together I'm on every other week since my parents are divorced next week I'll be on I'm on this weekend as well. I'm either on Imp side Krispyrose, Channelrose, Blurose and Pub side Violentrose, Prim-röse. I'm in the GSF channel. Hope to see you soon

 

Hey Rose. I've flown with you under a few alt names, mostly Joras. I asked Sixofone if you ever all played the same and who likes killing the other the most if you're on opposite sides. I'll leave it to her to give you the answer. Us older folks keep each other's secrets.

 

Heh.

[AlrikFassbauer]

This is true, it is very different to see these frustrations firsthand, frustrations born of repeatedly playing games with no chance of victory.

 

This is not the slightest bit different in the "ground PvP" part of SWTOR.

 

But there, there are quite lots of vocal people coming into the forums and whining about "bads" - people who don't contribute to PvP in the same way they - the "aces" of ground PvP - are able to do.

 

In short : Both top players of GSF and of ground PvP do their very best to get any newbies out of the game through bullying, harassing, calling them "bads". They are even badmouthing any newbie aspects, like a hard learning curve.

 

Problem is, that trash talkers are the far loudest people. They are the so-called "vocal minority", and because they are SO LOUD, they are able to chase away any Newbies. Which, of course eliminates much of later-game competition for them : A scared-away Newbie who might become a top player one day is to eliminate as early as possioble so that he will not become any kind of threat to the "Elite" players - this is far more important in ground PvP where there is a Ranking which rewards players with in-game titles & items.

Edited September 20, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

[MaximilianPower]

In short : Both top players of GSF and of ground PvP do their very best to get any newbies out of the game through bullying, harassing, calling them "bads". They are even badmouthing any newbie aspects, like a hard learning curve.

 

Maybe I'm painting with a broad brush here, but I feel pretty strongly that the GSF crowd is much more helpful/understanding than the ground pvp crew.

 

I've done quite a bit of ground pvp, and I have definitely witnessed this kind of bullying behavior a lot. I see it every day just in fleet chat or in /pvp. On the other hand, I can count on one hand the number "ace" GSF pilots I've ever seen acting in this manner (going so far as to briefly switch factions solely to berate the opposition). And that's across thousands of games on several servers. Now and then we see a little elitism here on the forum, but not often.

 

Maybe we avoid this behavior out of necessity, i.e. with the small pilot population we just can't afford to turn off new folks. The game is already punishing enough to beginners.

Edited September 20, 2015 by MaximilianPower

[NeverEvar]

Actually GSF community is the most helpful one you can probably encounter in the game.

 

Those of us, that are dubbed "Aces" "Vets" "Pro`s" did countless things to help with the "not very good" first time experience.

 

As for "Mastered" ships...Well ok, There are some slight problems (mostly on T1 Strike) With breaking Charged plating...But T1 scout has 100% armor penetration as first upgrade on Rocket Pods. And full charged plating is not even that expensive.

 

As for groups...Well GSF tactical part comes mostly from groups and/or co-ordination , choosing the right ship for the job and working together is a crucial skill. Yesterday on Harbinger we had a pretty hairy game, with 3 experienced pilots on our side. and a very strong opposition on the other side(Like Mikaboshi and Buggsley, ) It was still a loss but it ended something like 850-1000 and was close to the very end. Without co-ordination considering the skill of the other team it would be a wipeout.

 

And yeah, most of us agreed that matchmaker needs some love(but most likely bigger player pool would solve the issue.

 

TL; DR

 

Groups do more good to GSF that any other thing...well maybe except the stunning tutorial)

Edited September 21, 2015 by NeverEvar

[ShallowHal]

Maybe I'm painting with a broad brush here, but I feel pretty strongly that the GSF crowd is much more helpful/understanding than the ground pvp crew..

 

I agree. Having done plenty of both, there is no question that the trash talk aspect of GSF is pretty darn low and that the top end pilots are far more helpful than the top end warzone people.

[ShallowHal]

As far as players that prefer the 50-1 matches over the close ones there actually aren't that many, at least not that I've met. When I'm playing with my team if we get too many matches like that in a row we swap factions to try to find premades to fight against, if we still can't find anyone we usually call it a night. (Sometimes were requing up ships for an event and we will keep playing on one faction however)

 

Speaking of your team...

 

I was flying Imp side last night when your team (I don't know who all the members are, but I know one of them is Mikaboshi) were in something like 4-5 games in a row where your entire squad, save 1-2 pilots had a full hanger and were good pilots. And you guys were rolling over every team, 3-capping in sat matches and winning domination matches by about 40 kills.

 

I know you and Mikaboshi like to fly together, but in 90% of matches, that's going to be vast overkill. And I didn't see anybody rushing to switch to the Imp side to try to even things up.

 

Now I certainly could have switched to one of my Pub characters and been a frontrunner with you guys (assuming that you didn't have 3 4 man groups that shut out the PuG guys, but I wanted to level my ships on that toon.

 

I didn't see you guys being particularly concerned about balance last night. And in one of the games, you didn't even allow people to get the token cap of the node before you took it back. Later on, you did allow us to destroy some drones and temporarily cap nodes, but not initially.

 

So to some extent, even allowing for the fact that you have all the videos out there for people to learn from and have taken pilots under your wing to teach them how to fly better, you are also part of that problem when you see that the matches are that skewed and keep the team together anyway.

[Drakkolich]

Speaking of your team...

 

I was flying Imp side last night when your team (I don't know who all the members are, but I know one of them is Mikaboshi) were in something like 4-5 games in a row where your entire squad, save 1-2 pilots had a full hanger and were good pilots. And you guys were rolling over every team, 3-capping in sat matches and winning domination matches by about 40 kills.

 

I know you and Mikaboshi like to fly together, but in 90% of matches, that's going to be vast overkill. And I didn't see anybody rushing to switch to the Imp side to try to even things up.

 

Now I certainly could have switched to one of my Pub characters and been a frontrunner with you guys (assuming that you didn't have 3 4 man groups that shut out the PuG guys, but I wanted to level my ships on that toon.

 

I didn't see you guys being particularly concerned about balance last night. And in one of the games, you didn't even allow people to get the token cap of the node before you took it back. Later on, you did allow us to destroy some drones and temporarily cap nodes, but not initially.

 

So to some extent, even allowing for the fact that you have all the videos out there for people to learn from and have taken pilots under your wing to teach them how to fly better, you are also part of that problem when you see that the matches are that skewed and keep the team together anyway.

 

Lets talk a little about what happened last night then shall we.

 

For the last 2-3 weeks Siraka and Vexxial have been putting together full 8 man ops teams and syncying theirs queue's with my stream to make sure they fight us. This week most of my team has been either busy or out of town so it was just MIkaboshi and I duo queueing for this week. Spoilers here we've been getting slauthered this week.

 

They have still been queue ing 8 player premades vs just the 2 of us all week.

 

Last night Zyrieas had been watching the stream this week and decided to come help us so we would have atleast 3 vs 8. We fully expected them to be there again as I even checked Empire side before I started streaming and many of the players that we had been fighting all week were online.

 

We queue'd up and didn't hit them. We played EXACTLY 4 games on Republic side. They were so freaking one sided we immediately swapped factions. We played one Empire game which was pretty good, but since the Republic had been complaining that they had been getting slauthered all day by huge premades we didn't want to keep playing that faction and make their days even worse so we called it a night a whole 90 mins early.

 

 

Now your second point is that we were winning by huge margins, without pulling punches. Well I hate to break your bubble but if you watch the video of us playing we start almost every game by saying "I guess I play X ship because it still needs requisition" and Mikaboshi playing a freaking Starguard...

 

Here is the freaking video of lasts nights stream if you don't believe me.

 

As for not letting people turning satellites after doing a 2 week experiment of letting people take satellites and asking them what they thought of it. I have yet to encounter one positive response, it's been nothing but negative from the extra players on my side ************ that were being carebears to the enemies we do it too coming over and yelling at me for being condescending.

 

 

Mikaboshi and I are friends and we play together that should be enough.

Now I definitely don't have to give you a reason on who I play with, but hell I'm feeling generous today lets show you some screenshots of this weeks games.

 

Game 1

Score of Game 1

 

Game 2

Score of Game 2

 

Game 3

Score of Game 3

 

Game 4

Score of Game 4

 

Game 5

Score of Game 5

 

As you can see from those 5 games this week I have to play with good players to keep up with an army like that. In fact they have specifically challenged me to put together an 8 man team to fight them, which I plan to do.

 

Now we did fight games against them this week that were very good, but most of them involved them only getting half their premade in to even out the numbers. Or Mika and I going absolutely insane and trying to carry anyways. Thank god Draelik solo queue'd into that game or we probably would have been spawn camped.

 

Here is a great example of us trying to carry against ridiculous odds.

Game 6

Score of Game 6

 

 

 

Alright so that was a long winded explanation but please stop judging me when everything I do is so transparent. I freaking record all of my gameplay, you can go check out exactly what happened whenever you want on my twitch page.

 

Hell if you watch the video of the last Republic game we played last night, I see YOU specifically coming off the spawn and decide to turn away to let you come out of the spawn area.

 

 

Who knows man maybe if people keep posting stuff like you did today maybe I'll just stop caring about the community.

[DakhathKilrathi]

Speaking of your team...

 

I was flying Imp side last night when your team (I don't know who all the members are, but I know one of them is Mikaboshi) were in something like 4-5 games in a row where your entire squad, save 1-2 pilots had a full hanger and were good pilots. And you guys were rolling over every team, 3-capping in sat matches and winning domination matches by about 40 kills.

 

I know you and Mikaboshi like to fly together, but in 90% of matches, that's going to be vast overkill. And I didn't see anybody rushing to switch to the Imp side to try to even things up.

 

Now I certainly could have switched to one of my Pub characters and been a frontrunner with you guys (assuming that you didn't have 3 4 man groups that shut out the PuG guys, but I wanted to level my ships on that toon.

 

I didn't see you guys being particularly concerned about balance last night. And in one of the games, you didn't even allow people to get the token cap of the node before you took it back. Later on, you did allow us to destroy some drones and temporarily cap nodes, but not initially.

 

So to some extent, even allowing for the fact that you have all the videos out there for people to learn from and have taken pilots under your wing to teach them how to fly better, you are also part of that problem when you see that the matches are that skewed and keep the team together anyway.

 

 

Hey there! I was actually with those two last night (I play as Zyrieas on Harbinger).

 

Drakolich streams almost every night, and you can watch last night's stream here. You should probably check it out. It was just the two of them for one game, and then just the three of us for the next three games.

 

I know we played some of the ships in our hangars that are less lethal or that we're still leveling, in most matches. We stayed Pub side for a while because we were hoping to run into the team that was winning Imp side; there were a lot of complaints in the Pub side GSF channel about how rough games were.

 

The first game I played with them was Lost Shipyards Domination. We did three cap there, but it wasn't as though we spawn camped. I played a Warcarrier that isn't mastered, because I would like to level my ships too. The next game was Denon, and we actually did let people a node at least once in that game, not that we were under any obligation to do so. I did play a gunship for that one, but you guys kept up the pressure so I felt it was the right call against your bombers. The third and final game I played was a Mesas TDM where I played the Warcarrier again.

 

At one point in that last match I made a comment as I was killing someone about how I really wasn't enjoying killing RFL scouts who wouldn't get out of the way of my HLC. Believe it or not, I think that's pretty boring.

 

I dropped out after that game, and Drakolich and Mikaboshi went Imp side right after I dropped. They played Pub side for right at an hour, with just four games (they played one before I got there). Their Imp game at the end of the stream wasn't all that close either.

 

What do you think we should have done differently, short of just not playing the game? Bear in mind that we'd heard there was at least one good Imp team out there from the Pub side GSF channel (you can hear this mentioned at around 48:10, when Drak says he'll switch sides if it stays lopsided).

 

Edit: Also, see Drakolich's post above. I logged in specifically to run into the team he's been dealing with this week.

Edited September 25, 2015 by DakhathKilrathi

[NeverEvar]

Welll there were dozens of arguments if "Allowing a cap" is a good strategy vs newer pilots. You can search for them easily. But personally i would have been pissed if Drak took it easy on me, or my team

[Ardaneb]

I was flying Imp side last night when your team (I don't know who all the members are, but I know one of them is Mikaboshi) were in something like 4-5 games in a row where your entire squad, save 1-2 pilots had a full hanger and were good pilots. And you guys were rolling over every team, 3-capping in sat matches and winning domination matches by about 40 kills.

 

I was on impside last night. In Drakolich's defense:

1. There were 3 top pilots. Mikaboshi was barely even in meta ships except for the Denon match where we actually threatened them by holding two nodes several times. Drakolich was playing a scout build that is not his best build much of the time.

2. They were clearly trying to counter my scout shenanigans as opposed to killing all the new players to run up their stats (especially in the shipyards 3 cap that you referenced).

3. The impside had an advantage a little earlier in the night.

4. There were two matches going on concurrently so it was hard for them to judge who the imps were in the other match.

5. Drakolich and his various premades do switch sides.

 

I have spent much of my GSF time in solo queue switching factions and picking up 20% vs 50% vs mastered ships to balance the queue on Begeren. There are a lot of changing variables and it is very hard to do. I used to think it would be easy and straight forward, but it is not. It is much harder on Harbinger where the population is bigger and many more pilots are just there for the daily. So, even if a balanced match was Drakolich's main goal it would be difficult.

 

It is fun to play with your friends and I can't fault them for wanting to win. There were a lot of 5-shippers on that faction in the intermediate to good category who were not in the premade. This made a huge difference in how the game felt to the new players on our side and was completely out of Drakolich's control. If Drakolich switches factions, many of those players will drop or switch too.

 

Edit: I wrote this before I saw what Drakolich and Sriia put up there.

[Lavaar]

ShallowHal in this instance is only talking from his PERSONAL experience and how HE felt during the matches last night. He doesn't care about any of the justifications for why you played how you did, and he certainly doesn't need to click through your stream to try to understand that you guys "didn't really mean to" and thus make everything dandy for him. His sentiments are no doubt echoed across the servers whenever a powerful premade comes to play. Some people realize this is the nature of the game, and others don't, and I think that this competitive pvp minigame of ours being situated within a community of mostly KOTOR fans who expect to be the hero, I can understand why many do not last very long in this environment, and why the sentiment towards GSF can be so hateful.

 

By coming here to say this he has decided not to suffer in silence the way a lot of GSF players do.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Lavaar