GSF needs love

[ALaggyGrunt]

Two things before we can even talk about expensive modifications:

1: Make the terribad default ships and components actually useful, and put some newbie-friendly components on them.

For one, a gunship. When the other team is nothing but a ball of their own gunships and rail sentry drones, there's almost nothing the stock ships can do to deal with this.

For two, barrel roll everywhere. There may be better components, but barrel roll is a lot easier for a newbie to handle.

 

2: Better tutorial. It shows you how to shoot stationary targets and cap sats without explaining things like range, tracking penalty, accuracy/evasion, or power management mechanics-or how to use missiles. Or: the tutorial doesn't explain the game's core mechanics.

[Cedia]

I've never even tried GSF because it's WASD movement and I can't do that. Not to mention that the rest of the game is mouse movement.

 

It would be nice if they put in a way to plug in a different control scheme.

[Stradlin]

Two things before we can even talk about expensive modifications:

1: Make the terribad default ships and components actually useful, and put some newbie-friendly components on them.

For one, a gunship. When the other team is nothing but a ball of their own gunships and rail sentry drones, there's almost nothing the stock ships can do to deal with this.

 

Introduction to GSF - quest (pvp terminal) gives you insta 5000 Fleet Req. T1 GS and Beacon Bomber are 2.5k each. New player needs one game to have 4 ships. Flly agree on components; way too many stock builds have insane trap bits to them.

Edited January 16, 2016 by Stradlin

[ALaggyGrunt]

I know, I've played a few thousand games.

 

It's just that... you don't want to put a radically different minigame in an MMO with such a steep learning curve and not give the player a good idea of what's happening in it. For someone who's always run and jumped through things, flying through a crazy tight space at boost speed while trying to kill someone doing exactly the same thing requires a little different skill set than "know which button to push to counter X ability."

[Greezt]

At least everyone agrees that Gsf need some attention...

[Stradlin]

I very much like GSF, but after you master your ship, there is little motivation to keep playing the same maps over & over & over & over again. I would be happy with a reward system similar to the season rewards for ranked PvP. That would provide me with the motivation to at least completely my daily & weekly missions.

 

I kinda noticed you speak of mastering your SHIP, rather than mastering your SHIPS. Boy do I have news for you...;p

 

Basically, since we speak make believe life goals set in video game around an imaginary life, all of it is kinda silly and pointless. Having said that, I think GSF offers pretty vast amount of long term goals to pursue. Certainly more, and more varied than ground PvP it feels like.

 

1. Get a crew you are happy with.

2. Master a ship.

3. Master a ship from each of the four types.

4. Master all the ships you find fun or know are worth having.

5. Those ships you just unlocked need more crew! Buy em!

6. Master ALL the ships!!!

7. Buy ALL the crews!!!!

8. Every self respecting GSF pilot is present on both factions of his home server, of course. So you get to do steps 1-7 twice!

 

Above is like at least one year of your video game playing time, unless you are insane. Through it all, you can keep track of your personal stats and find grim satisfaction from watching them improve. GSF actually maintains a very extensive career file of everything you have ever done in space. From obvious things like win%, Kill/Death ratio and accuracy to some extremely obscure numbers; your GSF career is basically turned into few dozen different stats and numbers to track if you like.

 

Basically, 1-8+ Stats is pile of pretty nice and rewarding long term goals. Time required ofc varies from player to player but it is a safe bet we speak of 1-2 years here. Below is the insanity tier.

 

Insanity tier starts now!

9. GSF Achis! Obviously you need to ding 100% in GSF Achis. You prolly ended up somewhere around 60%-80% achis during your cosy, casual few year lasting stroll through 1-8.

10. You got plenty of alts. By now, you've realized all of the non- GSF related bits of TOR kinda suck. As result, none of your non GSF alts does anything meaningful in this game. Time to redeem this is now! Time to give those 100 alts of yours each a gift of GSF! Back to steps 1-8!

11. At some point between 4 and 8, you've realized all the cool kids do GSF on at least few different servers. You want to be a cool kid, don't you? So occasionally you do some GSF tourism too. Wellp, time to switch servers for reals! Return to step one. Cya again in five years!

 

From the above, I'd say 1-8+Stats can make a good bundle of sane, meaningful and extremely long-term goals to pursue.

Edited January 16, 2016 by Stradlin

[Sportiva]

I kinda noticed you speak of mastering your SHIP, rather than mastering your SHIPS. Boy do I have news for you...;p

 

Basically, since we speak make believe life goals set in video game around an imaginary life, all of it is kinda silly and pointless. Having said that, I think GSF offers pretty vast amount of long term goals to pursue. Certainly more, and more varied than ground PvP it feels like.

 

1. Master a ship.

2. Master a ship from each of the four types.

3. Master all the ships you find fun or know are worth having.

4. Master ALL the ships!!!

5. Every self respecting GSF pilot is present on both factions of his home server. So you get to do steps 1-4 twice!

 

Above is like at least one year of your video game playing time, unless you are insane. Through it all, you can keep track of your personal stats and find grim satisfaction from watching them improve. GSF actually maintains a very extensive career file of everything you do from space. For individual ships and entire career both. From obvious things like win%, Kill/Death ratio and accuracy to some extremely obscure numbers; your GSF career is basically turned in few dozen different stats and numbers to track if you like.

 

Basically, 1-5+ Stats is pile of pretty nice and rewarding long term goals. Below is insanity tier.

 

Insanity tier starts now!

6. GSF Achis! Obviously you need to ding 100% in GSF Achis. You prolly ended up somewhere around 55%-75% achios during your cosy, one year lasting stroll through 1-5.

7. You got plenty of alts. None of them do anything meaningful, except your pilot chars. Time to give those 22 other chars the gift of GSF!

8. Time to reroll!! All the cool kids do GSF on at least few different servers. You want to be a cool kid, don't you? Return to step one. Cya again in few years!

 

From the above, I'd say 1-5+Stats can make a good bundle of sane, meaningful and extremely long-term goals to pursue.

 

I have mastered all non-CM ships on various characters ... but I have no interest nor do I see the reason to master all ships on a single character.

 

I actually think one of the bad design choices for GSF is that it doesn't support the legacy system. I would play much more GSF if I could queue while waiting for a Op or some other PvE event to start. But I only have mastered ships on about 5 or 6 of my characters.

[Homodmitrius]

Completely agree, at least fixing bugs with unselected component upgrades would be great.

And as i remember, in the end of 2014 there was s plan to "revitalize" GSF, started from doubling requisition gain. It is time to continue, sweet devs.

[branmakmuffin]

GSF ?

 

I don't care, it's merely aces farming Newbies.

Exactly so. Which is why it has been reduced to a failed mini-game. It's only value AFAIC is to fill in the last few Conquest points, and all I do is go in, fly around randomly, help vets get kill totals and then call it a day.

Edited January 16, 2016 by branmakmuffin

[Stradlin]

 

I actually think one of the bad design choices for GSF is that it doesn't support the legacy system. I would play much more GSF if I could queue while waiting for a Op or some other PvE event to start. But I only have mastered ships on about 5 or 6 of my characters.

 

Yeah this would be a huge boon. Many would suddenly find it bit less of a mountain to climb. You'd suddenly get so much more mastered or semi mastered ships in the sky. From purely personal&selfish POV, I'd find it a bummer cause I actually enjoy building insane pointless fleet of internet ships on my alts seperately. But It'd be great for GSF if they just turned it legacy based for sure. Failing that, giving people Legacy unlocks that boost Fleet Req would be a decent bone to throw too.

Edited January 16, 2016 by Stradlin

[Greezt]

Exactly so. Which is why it has been reduced to a failed mini-game. It's only value AFAIC is to fill in the last few Conquest points, and all I do is go in, fly around randomly, help vets get kill totals and then call it a day.

 

I'm sorry, I don't see why GSF is for "aces" only. In ground pvp, you get unbalance, and each class is better at something else. In GSF, you can have five ships on your bar... So what's the problem? The only unbalancing component is premades, but that's pvp.

 

Have you actually tried improving? Asking for help or tips?

[ekwalizer]

Hello devs, I hope you read this.

 

A while ago, you posted this thread on the Gsf forums. As I'm sure you know, it's gotten lots of responses.

 

Understandably, Gsf isn't your top priority at the moment. The new storyline, the game changes, everything that happened obviously takes priority. But yesterday in the stream, I was hoping you'd say something about Gsf. Not a strike rebalance (although that would be nice), but something. A new map, a bug fix... Anything.

 

The Gsf community has been growing ever since 4.0 launch, I'm sure people have felt it. With more players becoming active in the game, it would make more sense to give us some much missed attention.

 

I'd love to know what you have in store for Gsf. Please let us know, in forums or in the next dev stream.

 

Thanks

 

Needs flight stick control love. This is 2016. M/KB piloting is so 1992.

[FlavivsAetivs]

Should I mention the fact that the GSF community is really friendly, the exact opposite of the PvP community, and is helpful and wants to bring in new players and help them become vets/aces?

 

Needs flight stick control love. This is 2016. M/KB piloting is so 1992.

 

Okay for those calling for this let me explain something: the game's engine cannot actually support controller/joystick at all. If you look at how it's coded, it's more or less not even possible.

 

~ Eudoxia

Edited January 17, 2016 by FlavivsAetivs

[JMCA]

I'd like some GSF love too, but the GSF community is about the same size as the operations community - way too small to justify focusing on.

 

They need to improve what matters most to the most players, and if they do that successfully, the budget will increase and hopefully they'll get around to us.

[ReverendAnderson]

Needs flight stick control love. This is 2016. M/KB piloting is so 1992.

 

People keep saying that, but I'm not sure they've really thought about what it'd be like going up against a mouse user, with the current Freelancer controls ... with a joystick. You'd get obliterated by all the players who could move their cross hairs waaay faster and more precisely.

 

Bioware would have to totally redesign the controls around a joystick for everyone. Which would kill GSF.

[ekwalizer]

Okay for those calling for this let me explain something: the game's engine cannot actually support controller/joystick at all. If you look at how it's coded, it's more or less not even possible.

~ Eudoxia

 

The Hero engine supports all manner of MMO Mice and gamepads. But it can't comprehend a joystick?

 

If that is the case, limited GSF participation shouldn't surprise anyone.

[ekwalizer]

Bioware would have to totally redesign the controls around a joystick for everyone. Which would kill GSF.

 

Which is how they should have designed it to begin with.

 

Post Script: Kill GSF? Really?!?

[Greezt]

Which is how they should have designed it to begin with.

 

Post Script: Kill GSF? Really?!?

 

It's actually not a design flaw per se. They explained in a stream that in order to make the game accessible to a larger audience, and since the ground game is played with a mouse and keyboard, they decided to make GSF a keyboard game too. I get why many players want a joystick, I'm just explaining why it's not there.

 

Also, GSF is very much alive. Try switching servers if the GSF on yours is dead.

[BrianDavion]

GSF ?

 

I don't care, it's merely aces farming Newbies.

 

welcome to any compeitive play enviroment ever "it's mostly people more skilled beating those less skilled"

[ekwalizer]

It's actually not a design flaw per se. They explained in a stream that in order to make the game accessible to a larger audience, and since the ground game is played with a mouse and keyboard, they decided to make GSF a keyboard game too. I get why many players want a joystick, I'm just explaining why it's not there.

 

Also, GSF is very much alive. Try switching servers if the GSF on yours is dead.

 

I refuse to fly M/KB. Plenty of games allow for both M/KB and flight stick, this should be no different.

 

Not allowing a flight stick simply because some players do not own one would be like not supporting Razer Nagas because not everyone owns one.

Edited January 17, 2016 by ekwalizer

[Bolo_Yeung]

Unfortunately, even the conquest rewards for 'doing the right thing' and GSF-themed conquest week were removed. No Total War, no Clash in Hyperspace... just stay in match, self destruct once in a while to avoid getting kicked and voila. Edited January 17, 2016 by Bolo_Yeung

[CrazyCT]

Meh, if I want a flight sim, I go play WarThunder or something.

[DarthSpuds]

My thoughts on GSF are here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=865774

 

Adding a PvE element to GSF would get more people involved, some of whom would stick around to bolster the PvP ranks.

 

And adding in GSF related Stronghold elements would enable to BW to monetise GSF via the cartel market.

 

All The Best

[Homodmitrius]

My thoughts on GSF are here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=865774

 

Adding a PvE element to GSF would get more people involved, some of whom would stick around to bolster the PvP ranks.

 

And adding in GSF related Stronghold elements would enable to BW to monetise GSF via the cartel market.

 

All The Best

 

Well, there is a space pve in this game - space missions i mean, but the crap thing is that rewards for space pve can be used only for itself. You buy ship upgrades and a couple of decos. That is definetly not enough to involve people.

Edited January 17, 2016 by Homodmitrius

[Greezt]

I refuse to fly M/KB. Plenty of games allow for both M/KB and flight stick, this should be no different.

 

Not allowing a flight stick simply because some players do not own one would be like not supporting Razer Nagas because not everyone owns one.

 

The games that allow for both generally favor the joystick over keyboards. That's because in order to be able to aim accurately with a stick, you'd need a system that help your aiming (a sort of "lock on"), like in Elite: Dangerous for example. You'd also need to bind the aiming and movement.

 

In other words, you'd have to make it compatible for the joystick users, and by doing so you'd kill the keyboard users. BW did some math, and figured that more people would play the game if it was optimized for the ground gamers...