Make Galactic Starfighter what IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN FROM THE START!

[Belthorian]

#1 Enable Joystick/HOTAS/Rudder Peddle/Track IR support. As is the control scheme for galactic Starfighter is probably the worst decision in gaming history. Seriously whomever came up with that idea should be fired immediately because he or she has no clue as to what gamers want. People play games like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, DCS series, Falcon BMS, Flight Simulator, ETC because people want FLIGHT SIMULATORS. I already know what your argument is going to be.......but Belthorian not everyone owns a joystick! My answer is simple THIS IS THE PC GAMING COMMUNITY, anyone who plays a flight simulator has MULTIPLE joysticks, By not having joystick/HOTAS/Rudder Peddle/Track IR support you automatically alienated 90% of your target market.

 

#2 Enable cockpit view. Playing a game where your flying aircraft from a third person point of view does the exact same thing as no joystick support. It removes the immersion factor. Look at any great flight sim in the history of gaming and your not going to find any timeless classic that are third person.

 

#3 Offer varying levels of difficulty including a hard core sim mode. Look at the greatest combat flight sim game ever made Microproses Falcon 5. Originally released in 1998 Falcon 5 has survived the demise of it's company and has been kept alive by an enthusiastic community for 17 YEARS. The community has continuously updated the game to take advantage of new hardware and technology. It is still the most realistic flight simulator ever made. Flight simmers are the most fanatically loyal gamers if they find a great product they will play that product for YEARS. That should be your target market, not the casual player who goes after whatever new shiny object is dangled in front of their face. If Galactic Starfighter was a high fidelity space combat sim you would attract a large core of flight combat sim players who would play it for years.

 

#4 Offer PVP AND PVE events in Galactic Starfighter. While PVP is fun things like lag and the general repetitive nature get old quickly. A PVE Galactic Starfighter campaign would be awesome. A storyline from a pilots perspective, involving capital ships, escort, strike missions, fighter sweeps, recon. Just having PVP eliminated a huge percentage of the potential player base. While the concept of PVP is great the reality is often something different. Nobody likes the in game harassment and trash talking they are often subjected to. Even when you do well you are often targeted for harassment. People get mad that they got killed and send all sorts of nasty comments to the person who killed them.

 

In closing the decision to roll out Galactic Starfighters as it currently is was possibly the worst decision in gaming history. Fix it by making it a space combat sim with joystick/HOTAS/rudder peddle/Track IR support, there is already an excellent model to base it off of, the GREATEST space combat sim ever made X-wing VS Tie Fighter. If someone is crying because they don't have a joystick.....GOOD those are not the people you want to cater to. Flight/Combat sim players are your target market. It will provide you with a whole new player base, many of which will subscribe just to play Galactic Starfighter. Even the free to play flight sim crowd will still buy stuff from the cash shop in the form of micro transactions.

[Majdloch]

Waves hand, 'GSF is not the game for you'.

 

Bioware made a fun mini game. Enjoy it for what it is.

[Lendul]

But Belthoran, GSF is not a flight sim, it's a flight shooter. Are you having difficulty keeping up with us simple KB&M folk?

[Lavaar]

I hear where you are coming from, and with huge resources and time investement GSF could have been much more in-depth than it currently is. However, part of the appeal to a lot of us folks is the relative simplicity in the interface choices, yet great depth in the playstyle and tactics that can be utilized.

 

With regards to the HOTAS support, I have managed to program a saitek X52 HOTAS setup to work in GSF using a program called joy2key. At this point I am far too accustomed to the k+m to use it fully, but sometimes I utilize the throttle or toggles for certain in-game actions. It may or may not be practical once someone gets used to it, but I have also never used a joystick before, so I would love to hear if anyone would be able to use one successfully. The means to accomplish this exist, although they require a little bit of tinkering.

[Verain]

It's funny that he uses "enable", as if adding support for a whole new control scheme is just a switch.

 

GSF coded to support HOTAS would give a huge advantage to anyone using that. We already have people coming in and crying about the skill difference, add a control difference and... well...

 

But I say that every time.

[NeverEvar]

Actually....i almost agree with you... All the things you mentioned would be fun...

 

BUT

 

You are talking about making a new game(which i would play) But GSF is a GSF. Fast paced shooter closer to Descent 2 then to any of Star Wars games.

[Verain]

With regards to the HOTAS support, I have managed to program a saitek X52 HOTAS setup to work in GSF using a program called joy2key. At this point I am far too accustomed to the k+m to use it fully, but sometimes I utilize the throttle or toggles for certain in-game actions. It may or may not be practical once someone gets used to it, but I have also never used a joystick before, so I would love to hear if anyone would be able to use one successfully. The means to accomplish this exist, although they require a little bit of tinkering.

 

The issue with using a translator is that you don't get anything you actually should by using the HOTAS.

 

First, you can't directly control pitch and yaw. GSF uses a "fly into this reticule" design, and it dual purposes that for the purpose of aiming. This means if you are pitching down, you are also aiming down. If your HOTAS could control the pitch, yaw, and roll directly, then you would gimbal the guns with a different mechanism (such as a hat), and without any of that you'd be firing directly forward. Further, roll is a toggle (you are rolling left, rolling right, or not rolling), versus the analog you would expect. Basically, all the functions a HOTAS gives are not supported by GSF.

 

That's not to say no one should do this- it seems like it would be fun- but it also is using the wrong control scheme. If you control your pitch, yaw, and roll with a stick, that's great. If you control a mouse cursor with a stick, that's not so great.

 

 

I guess what has always puzzled me about these posters is that they seem to assume that the reason GSF doesn't have even more people playing is because they didn't gate the game behind a "buy the proper input device that you use nowhere else in SWTOR" gate, in addition to the serious skill gate and the minor gear gate.

 

And it always ignores how very much testing would have to be done, on every release, to support a control scheme JUST used in GSF. They'd need to buy a bunch of joysticks and test every time.

[Verain]

Oh, I also had missed the part about "add pve", as if that was a trivial task. The game engine doesn't have the AI needed to fly enemy ships. It's an MMO engine, so the enemies behave in extremely simplistic manners- there's no skill at all to figuring out which player a boss will attack (it's the tank!), and the MMO portion of the game gets its difficulties from stacking mechanics that must be scripted and wouldn't work in the general case. That's not to say it couldn't be done, but it would really be a huge and massive undertaking.

 

 

OP's claim that it was "the biggest mistake" is also just a joke. Plenty of GSF players. Pretty good ship balance, especially for something that gets almost no budget for development. Fun, fast paced, and pretty compelling.

 

The posters of this forum have made several suggestions that are pretty low cost and high impact. A rant about how the game needs to be some other game entirely, at massive cost, isn't useful.

[AgentRobP]

I guess what has always puzzled me about these posters is that they seem to assume that the reason GSF doesn't have even more people playing is because they didn't gate the game behind a "buy the proper input device that you use nowhere else in SWTOR" gate, in addition to the serious skill gate and the minor gear gate.

 

The "download a massive ground-based RPG's PvE content to play a starfighter PvP game" gate is, I would guess, the single biggest limiting factor. Anyone not interested in the ground game is much less likely to play GSF, which is unfortunate.

 

And it always ignores how very much testing would have to be done, on every release, to support a control scheme JUST used in GSF. They'd need to buy a bunch of joysticks and test every time.

 

Don't be ridiculous; they barely (if at all) test GSF for each release as it stands now.

[Vasflam]

It's funny that he uses "enable", as if adding support for a whole new control scheme is just a switch.

 

GSF coded to support HOTAS would give a huge advantage to anyone using that. We already have people coming in and crying about the skill difference, add a control difference and... well...

 

But I say that every time.

 

 

Pretty sure it wouldn't be this simple. GSF is perfect fit for it's mouse controls. "Enable" full support for every single Joystick and HOTAs solution under the sun and I bet mouse+keyboard would still offer the best overall experience. Just so much more accuracy this way. t'd be different if GSF came with real need for few dozen different keys or whatnot.

 

Last I checked, Star Citizen has it's flock of compulsory consumers highly upset about something similar. Game promises and delivers support for mouse, gamepads, Joysticks, HOTAS. As it stands, people using mouse+keyboard are ones piling the kills over there, while those 2000 bux custom design Hotas sets are gathering dust in corner. I

 

I always wonder if people asking for this remember what it is like trying to use a joystick in fast phased arcade game.

 

I can't imagine joystick or Hotas support even giving that much of a boost in..atmosphere; at least I'd need first person cocpit view for this particular flavor of immersion to kick in. By the time your list of demands includes complete overhaul to camera and controls both, you are pretty much speaking of some different game pretty much.

 

Personally, I'd understand repeated requests for gamepad support much better. But even there, we speak of a different game pretty much.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Vasflam

[Archonitek]

Shouldn't the title of this topic be 'Make Galactic Starfighter what PERSONALLY SUITS MY PLAYSTYLE BECAUSE I DESERVE IT...ALSO I WILL NOW TALK ABOUT TURNING IT INTO A COMPLETE STAND ALONE GAME RATHER THAN AN ADD-ON TO AN MMO ENGINE'

 

In closing the decision to roll out Galactic Starfighters as it currently is was possibly the worst decision in gaming history. Fix it by making it a space combat sim with joystick/HOTAS/rudder peddle/Track IR support, there is already an excellent model to base it off of, the GREATEST space combat sim ever made X-wing VS Tie Fighter. If someone is crying because they don't have a joystick.....GOOD those are not the people you want to cater to. Flight/Combat sim players are your target market. It will provide you with a whole new player base, many of which will subscribe just to play Galactic Starfighter. Even the free to play flight sim crowd will still buy stuff from the cash shop in the form of micro transactions.

 

The hyperbole is strong in this one.

[ALaggyGrunt]

Making the game actually work well with a joystick would mean all the keyboard+mouse users (or: most of the game's population) would be seriously handicapped. Seriously, go to GOG, grab Xwing or TIE Fighter, and try to play it with a mouse-and then a joystick. Then think of what we'd get if we put a mouse user against a joystick user.

 

Making the game work with a joystick with the current design would mean joysticks would be pointless.

 

The only way to make it work well with a controller people actually have is if we designed it to go with everyone's favorite console controllers, because a lot of us already have these for consoles and/or other games.

Edited September 28, 2015 by ALaggyGrunt