GSF needs love

[ALaggyGrunt]

It has just as much relevance as ground PvP, and if I may say so, it causes no conflict between PvP and PvE. The learning curve is hard, but less so than PvP (you need to learn 4 ship types, and not 8 ACs before counting all the subclasses).

 

"Throwing good money after bad"? Really? I get that some people don't like it (though I always find it funny that PvP'ers hate it, what with all the FoTM facerolling guilds), but it's pretty far-fetched to say that the game is plain bad. It's more balanced than PvP, F2P can play it as well, and it has a much less toxic community.

 

As a last question, why would it hurt you that we got attention? Do you feel it would detract from all the "attention" PvP is getting?

 

I have to disagree about the learning curve.

The typical MMO player knows how to move, run, jump, and deal with maze of skills and counters. They don't all know what to do when "climb", "dive", and "spiral" are perfectly acceptable paths of movement. This is made even more brutal by:

1: The tutorial. It doesn't explain or even mention many of the game's core mechanics. It's a nice place to fly around, but it doesn't suggest that the pilot practice flying and boosting and getting a feel for the ship.

2: The game's habit of throwing newbies against a wall of skilled players with mastered ships.

3: The lack of a PvE environment to learn to fly in against dumb and easier targets.

4: The default setups for the stock ships:

One is... a strike fighter which will never be able to seriously threaten any of the Most Effective Tactic Available ships one-on-one no matter how you build it. All they have to do is press '2' and either railgun it or move into close range, and they've got the advantage either through mines (bomber) or burst lasers (scout, gunship). A battlescout can get away with facetanking a mastered T1 strike with offensive wingman up. That should tell you how bad that ship is when things get serious.

The other is a scout which can be built a lot like the META scout (telemetry, crew cooldown of choice), (medium) laser cannon, rocket pods, distortion field, powerdive/barrel roll). Mastered, it can melt anything that gets complacent in the wrong half-second with offensive cooldowns up. Unfortunately, the default build is very squishy (quick-charge shields) and not very strong (rapid fire lasers, no telemetry), and most newbies don't know how to build it lethal. It's not hard to figure out, but most newbies don't know to figure it out.

If you're lucky enough to have been subbed about two years ago when the minigame launched, you have a third ship: the T1 gunship. It actually is a META ship, and capable of topping kill boards even stock if the other team won't bother to shut it down.

None of these can deal with 99% damage reduction charged plating unless the target is nice enough to stay in the open while the ability cools down until their systems are upgraded a bit.

Edited January 18, 2016 by ALaggyGrunt

[Greezt]

I have to disagree about the learning curve.

The typical MMO player knows how to move, run, jump, and deal with maze of skills and counters. They don't all know what to do when "climb", "dive", and "spiral" are perfectly acceptable paths of movement. This is made even more brutal by:

1: The tutorial. It doesn't explain or even mention many of the game's core mechanics. It's a nice place to fly around, but it doesn't suggest that the pilot practice flying and boosting and getting a feel for the ship.

2: The game's habit of throwing newbies against a wall of skilled players with mastered ships.

3: The lack of a PvE environment to learn to fly in against dumb and easier targets.

4: The default setups for the stock ships:

One is... a strike fighter which will never be able to seriously threaten any of the Most Effective Tactic Available ships one-on-one no matter how you build it. All they have to do is press '2' and either railgun it or move into close range, and they've got the advantage either through mines (bomber) or burst lasers (scout, gunship). A battlescout can get away with facetanking a mastered T1 strike with offensive wingman up. That should tell you how bad that ship is when things get serious.

The other is a scout which can be built a lot like the META scout (telemetry, crew cooldown of choice), (medium) laser cannon, rocket pods, distortion field, powerdive/barrel roll). Mastered, it can melt anything that gets complacent in the wrong half-second with offensive cooldowns up. Unfortunately, the default build is very squishy (quick-charge shields) and not very strong (rapid fire lasers, no telemetry), and most newbies don't know how to build it lethal. It's not hard to figure out, but most newbies don't know to figure it out.

If you're lucky enough to have been subbed about two years ago when the minigame launched, you have a third ship: the T1 gunship. It actually is a META ship, and capable of topping kill boards even stock if the other team won't bother to shut it down.

None of these can deal with 99% damage reduction charged plating unless the target is nice enough to stay in the open while the ability cools down until their systems are upgraded a bit.

 

All good points, but to actually be worth something in PvP you need to know much more than how to move and attack. It may SEEM like PvP is an easier learning curve (because you already know your class, hopefully), but until you know all the different classes, their offensive and defensive cooldowns, their attack types as well as your own, not to mention the different game modes and the tactics for each one... Well, you're no different than a new player flying a strike in GSF. You're basically veteran food, and will only score kills against other new players.

 

I totally agree that the beginner ships are traps.

 

On a sidenote, for an equally skilled strike and scout, the strike player will win head on. Not to say that the strike is better, just that a good scout won't try it, and if he does he'll die.

 

What is everyone's favorite ship? I dig T1 strike!

 

Same here In fact, I flew it for the longest time (it still has more games on it than any other ship) and thought it was the best ship available...

[MDVZ]

On learning curve, there is a fundamental difference.

 

Since bolster exists, anyone that knows their class can jump in a warzone (unranked obviously) and participate reasonably meaningfully. To play at a high level you need to have detailed knowledge of every class, and that's no small order, but you can be of help to a team if you just know your own well.

 

As grunt describes, you start GSF completely ignorant of major elements of the fundamental mechanics and with a pair of ships that you don't even know are built horribly. For what is a mini game, it's actually surprisingly deep and complex, with nothing in game to explain the complexities and no prior familiarity or ability at all.

[Lendul]

On learning curve, there is a fundamental difference.

 

Since bolster exists, anyone that knows their class can jump in a warzone (unranked obviously) and participate reasonably meaningfully. To play at a high level you need to have detailed knowledge of every class, and that's no small order, but you can be of help to a team if you just know your own well.

 

As grunt describes, you start GSF completely ignorant of major elements of the fundamental mechanics and with a pair of ships that you don't even know are built horribly. For what is a mini game, it's actually surprisingly deep and complex, with nothing in game to explain the complexities and no prior familiarity or ability at all.

I do not think people understand exactly how much steeper the learning curve is to the ground game. For ground PvP to be mechanically equivalent every ability would have to be a targeted skill shot and even then you still do not have to deal with a Z axis in the ground. They are similar, but still require different skill sets.

[Chiltonium]

just wish GSF got a PvE component. It's population is VERY small and not due to lack of interest. I know SO many people who really wanted to play it, but started to try it, got pooped on, and decided it wasn't for them. PvE aspect would get people used to the controls and fighting, not to mention actually be something else to do other than run around on the ground.

 

This game needs a Jump to Lightspeed expansion

[MaximilianPower]

If there is one part of the game I am against them putting anymore resources towards, it's GSF. It has no value added. Yes, a few people like it, but it is such a small minority that is pretty much insignificant, and it has near zero growth potential. It's a game within a game, that has insane amount of rules (like playing all 8 classes!) to be learned from ground up and it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the game. Why they sank all the resources to create it in the first place is mind-boggling. Swoop races would have had more relevance....

 

Doing anything for GSF is throwing good money after bad.

 

Sigh, this post makes me sad. Sad because there's truth in it, and because so many feel this way. Feels like tough love for a GSF die-hard like myself.

 

The flip side is what GSFers know to be true: it is absolutely a deep, engaging, and endlessly entertaining game-within-a-game. But that's a message which has always been nearly impossible to present to the average SWTOR player, because of the massive disconnect from the rest of the game, and the steep learning curve. Both of which are obstacles BW could address...but we know they won't. Not in a meaningful way. A few carrots in the form of rewards (decos, titles, more conquest points, more credits)...a few tweaks to starter ships and the req system...a much-improved tutorial - that's all it would take. It isn't rocket surgery. And while I wouldn't ever call such work "throwing good money after bad" - BW would see some return on that investment (especially if they leveraged the CM) - I just don't see it happening. Not anymore.

 

I don't personally know anyone who's forsaken GSF after having taken the time/made the effort to dive deep into it (I'm sure there are some such folks out there, but not many). It's easy to get hooked once you figure it out. There are just too many roadblocks to get to that point, as there always have been. And this seems unlikely to ever change.

Edited January 18, 2016 by MaximilianPower

[Greezt]

Since the forums are working perfectly, I can't quote.

 

MDVZ: see my reply to alaggygrunt. While the controls are indeed different for GSF and not for PvP, that only gives you a feeling of comfort, nothing more. You can go into a WZ and feel great, but walk into someone who knows what he's doing and your food, bolster or not. The initial GSF experience might be harder because you have to learn new controls, but in all honesty that's solved in two matches, max.

 

The real problem is the PvP aspect, by which I mean learning the mechanics, the strategies and the ship types. I still think that in GSF it's easier to learn these (3 maps, 2 game modes, 4 ship types and only 3 of you remove strikes) than in PvP (9 maps, 5 game modes, 8 classes before subclasses).

 

In GSF you can also "respec" to a more fitting class while in the WZ. In PvP, if you came as a sniper and found out you have no heals - well, you're gonna spend your time respawning...

[DomiSotto]

As a last question, why would it hurt you that we got attention? Do you feel it would detract from all the "attention" PvP is getting?

 

Precisely.

 

Had we had plenty coming for the character-based PvP and PvE, and resources still left over, go on, upgrade the GSF game module.

 

But since both PvP and PvE suffer the lack of developers’ attention, diverting anything to GSF is not just stealing from the poor, it is stealing it, and then throwing it into the trash.

 

GSF growth is not going to happen because it is unappealing to the overwhelming majority of the players. It is PvP, so it suffers from the hurt pride syndrome like all PvP. But there is more.

 

1. Most of us did not install this game to fly ships. We install this game to create a super awesome character with a tight butt and wave a lightsaber or a flamethrower.

 

2. GSF potential audience is limited to players with good hand-eye coordination. There is a wiggle room in ground PvP with roles and range to help with some of the common gaming handicaps. In GSF, if you can’t aim, you are out.

 

3. Nobody wants to be the insulted and humiliated, and GSF forces you to be a village idiot. Again. In GSF you will not carry over the proficiency you accumulated in the rest of the game and you re-start as a complete noob. Anyone with even a shred of savvy in PvP knows full well that s/he is going to be fast food because those who are still playing GSF are those who are good at it.

 

4. There is no gentle intro/easy mode for GSF like the lowbies are for regs in PvP, where the proportion of new players is high, the action is slow, and you see the character growth while doing the real thing, learn one thing after the next, nearly anyone can manage reasonably well after a few games and when you get a touch of proficiency, you can return there for a brief vacation if you had a bad day. In GSF, you are going to suck for a long time with no breaks.

 

5. Increased cadence of character development (new levels) and regearing leaves no time to start learning more new ‘characters’, aka ships that all need to be learned, keybound, muscle memory-trained, equipped etc. Unless you are one of the very few gamers who really wants to play vehicular combat or a gamer with many, many, many hours to play a day every day.

 

6. You are not even flying your in-game ship that you can bond to (particularly if you are a Smuggler). You are not getting to create your very own, very special Millennium Falcon or Ebon Hawk either. You get stock ships.

 

7. GSF does not have a carrot neither for the entry level nor for the high end. Ops are a social for the SM players, have cool stuff (or should) for the high-end players. PvP always holds the promise of becoming a ranked champion, having your name promptly displayed on the LB and getting that Cool Item of Season X.

 

To play GSF you need to be someone who can play FPS, give up your chars and start to incorporeally possess ships, become a complete newbie, get trashed to smithereens and start on a long and painful road to learning combat, equipping and maintaining ships without a guarantee that you will ever manage to be something other than a free kill. With the pops that are likely rare and are in competition with the other queues in the game.

 

I am someone who wandered into PvP by all the wrong reasons, fallen in love with it, and worked tirelessly since then on achieving mediocrity. Ground PvP opened the gates for me in SWTOR, allowing access to the rest of the content. I see GSF tutorial and give up. It's too much to even try.

Edited January 18, 2016 by DomiSotto

[DarkSaberMaster]

GSF is a failed mini-game, like PvE space is. No point in throwing good money after bad. STO is that way ---->

 

Why am I not surprised that would be your reply?

[MDVZ]

Precisely.

 

Had we had plenty coming for the character-based PvP and PvE, and resources still left over, go on, upgrade the GSF game module.

 

But since both PvP and PvE suffer the lack of developers’ attention, diverting anything to GSF is not just stealing from the poor, it is stealing it, and then throwing it into the trash.

 

GSF growth is not going to happen because it is unappealing to the overwhelming majority of the players. It is PvP, so it suffers from the hurt pride syndrome like all PvP. But there is more.

 

1. Most of us did not install this game to fly ships. We install this game to create a super awesome character with a tight butt and wave a lightsaber or a flamethrower.

 

2. GSF potential audience is limited to players with good hand-eye coordination. There is a wiggle room in ground PvP with roles and range to help with some of the common gaming handicaps. In GSF, if you can’t aim, you are out.

 

3. Nobody wants to be the insulted and humiliated, and GSF forces you to be a village idiot. Again. In GSF you will not carry over the proficiency you accumulated in the rest of the game and you re-start as a complete noob. Anyone with even a shred of savvy in PvP knows full well that s/he is going to be fast food because those who are still playing GSF are those who are good at it.

 

4. There is no gentle intro/easy mode for GSF like the lowbies are for regs in PvP, where the proportion of new players is high, the action is slow, and you see the character growth while doing the real thing, learn one thing after the next, nearly anyone can manage reasonably well after a few games and when you get a touch of proficiency, you can return there for a brief vacation if you had a bad day. In GSF, you are going to suck for a long time with no breaks.

 

5. Increased cadence of character development (new levels) and regearing leaves no time to start learning more new ‘characters’, aka ships that all need to be learned, keybound, muscle memory-trained, equipped etc. Unless you are one of the very few gamers who really wants to play vehicular combat or a gamer with many, many, many hours to play a day every day.

 

6. You are not even flying your in-game ship that you can bond to (particularly if you are a Smuggler). You are not getting to create your very own, very special Millennium Falcon or Ebon Hawk either. You get stock ships.

 

7. GSF does not have a carrot neither for the entry level nor for the high end. Ops are a social for the SM players, have cool stuff (or should) for the high-end players. PvP always holds the promise of becoming a ranked champion, having your name promptly displayed on the LB and getting that Cool Item of Season X.

 

To play GSF you need to be someone who can play FPS, give up your chars and start to incorporeally possess ships, become a complete newbie, get trashed to smithereens and start on a long and painful road to learning combat, equipping and maintaining ships without a guarantee that you will ever manage to be something other than a free kill. With the pops that are likely rare and are in competition with the other queues in the game.

 

I am someone who wandered into PvP by all the wrong reasons, fallen in love with it, and worked tirelessly since then on achieving mediocrity. Ground PvP opened the gates for me in SWTOR, allowing access to the rest of the content. I see GSF tutorial and give up. It's too much to even try.

 

Your post has irritated me a little, because I think GSF is great fun and yet you have some points, which are quite well stated. Allow me to retort.

 

1: I think it would be fairer to say that we didn't expect it. Presumably we all like star wars, and ships and space combat have been huge parts of the films. The film makers were wise to personalise the space combat and have the focus on WWII type fighters more than on big capital ships. Yes, we all wanted a lightsaber or blaster or whatever, but space ships in a star wars game is hardly unnatural, should come as no surprise, and evidently appeals to a lot of people.

 

2: Yes. Sure. It's a twitch shooter. There is more tactical depth to that when you get into it, but it's fair to say that if you can't twitch shoot, you're not going to do well in GSF. Fair enough. Given the popularity of FPSs, though, I don't think that rules out that many people.

 

3: New players get stomped by experienced players. Including in stock ships, because GSF is mainly a skill game. But, the GSF community is very supportive of people learning and it's extremely rare to see anyone actually insulted for poor performance. Good pilots often group with new or weaker pilots to let them have a better chance in tougher matches and show them the ropes, and the atmosphere of GSF is quite shockingly sporting and friendly for PVP. Not completely uniformly so, but in my experience far more than the ground game.

 

4: Very similar point to 3, but I guess it's rewarding for those that want the challenge and decide to keep at it. The brick wall on entry is an issue that most GSFers would agree with, though, and most of us want to see that alleviated, so that people are more likely to queue again.

 

5: I don't think it takes that much time to get to grips with the controls of any given ship or build. The tactical interplay between the ships in the context of what is heavily, but not obviously an RNG based mechanic is the hardest part. But overall, sure a reasonable point, but opinions evidently differ on this. What you say is clearly true for you, and not true for me, for a start

 

6: If I could replace my in game ships with my flashfire and sting, I would do it in an instant

 

7: Yes, this is true, and one of the issues GSF faces. It's not very well incentivised. People play it because they like it. They tag goals onto that, because, why not? Master all ships. Improve stats. Get all achievements. Place/do better on the GSF forum unofficial record boards. Whatever. There is indeed very little in the game to reward play (other than it being fun, which I why I do it; I don't care about any of the stuff I just mentioned). This is something I would like to see resolved, if it brings in new players.

 

Greetz: I see and understand your point, and you clearly do mine, but I still disagree. I suppose we'll just have to leave it at that

[Greezt]

Precisely.

 

Had we had plenty coming for the character-based PvP and PvE, and resources still left over, go on, upgrade the GSF game module.

 

But since both PvP and PvE suffer the lack of developers’ attention, diverting anything to GSF is not just stealing from the poor, it is stealing it, and then throwing it into the trash.

 

GSF growth is not going to happen because it is unappealing to the overwhelming majority of the players. It is PvP, so it suffers from the hurt pride syndrome like all PvP. But there is more.

 

1. Most of us did not install this game to fly ships. We install this game to create a super awesome character with a tight butt and wave a lightsaber or a flamethrower.

 

2. GSF potential audience is limited to players with good hand-eye coordination. There is a wiggle room in ground PvP with roles and range to help with some of the common gaming handicaps. In GSF, if you can’t aim, you are out.

 

3. Nobody wants to be the insulted and humiliated, and GSF forces you to be a village idiot. Again. In GSF you will not carry over the proficiency you accumulated in the rest of the game and you re-start as a complete noob. Anyone with even a shred of savvy in PvP knows full well that s/he is going to be fast food because those who are still playing GSF are those who are good at it.

 

4. There is no gentle intro/easy mode for GSF like the lowbies are for regs in PvP, where the proportion of new players is high, the action is slow, and you see the character growth while doing the real thing, learn one thing after the next, nearly anyone can manage reasonably well after a few games and when you get a touch of proficiency, you can return there for a brief vacation if you had a bad day. In GSF, you are going to suck for a long time with no breaks.

 

5. Increased cadence of character development (new levels) and regearing leaves no time to start learning more new ‘characters’, aka ships that all need to be learned, keybound, muscle memory-trained, equipped etc. Unless you are one of the very few gamers who really wants to play vehicular combat or a gamer with many, many, many hours to play a day every day.

 

6. You are not even flying your in-game ship that you can bond to (particularly if you are a Smuggler). You are not getting to create your very own, very special Millennium Falcon or Ebon Hawk either. You get stock ships.

 

7. GSF does not have a carrot neither for the entry level nor for the high end. Ops are a social for the SM players, have cool stuff (or should) for the high-end players. PvP always holds the promise of becoming a ranked champion, having your name promptly displayed on the LB and getting that Cool Item of Season X.

 

To play GSF you need to be someone who can play FPS, give up your chars and start to incorporeally possess ships, become a complete newbie, get trashed to smithereens and start on a long and painful road to learning combat, equipping and maintaining ships without a guarantee that you will ever manage to be something other than a free kill. With the pops that are likely rare and are in competition with the other queues in the game.

 

I am someone who wandered into PvP by all the wrong reasons, fallen in love with it, and worked tirelessly since then on achieving mediocrity. Ground PvP opened the gates for me in SWTOR, allowing access to the rest of the content. I see GSF tutorial and give up. It's too much to even try.

 

I will respond to your points in order.

 

1) I didn't install this game to fly ships. None of the GSFers did. I took this game as an MMO, yet in fact I do ground PvP just as much as I do GSF. I tried it and found it fun, and that should be enough.

 

2) just like ground PvP and ops have different roles, so does GSF. Not all roles require the good hand to eye coordination and lightning reflexes. However, just like in ground PvP, in order to become good at ANY role, you will need them.

 

3) this one is a good point. Most people will give up in front of a good premade, and it can be hard to convince people to preservere when they get slaughtered and can't fight back. However, I truely think that giving GSF the attention it needs (a better tutorial, better starting ships etc.) will fix most of the problems. As for the rest... That comes with time, no way around it. Also, the small fixes can make more people stay, and that means you get to fight more people of your level.

 

4) this is entirely server and time dependant, just like in PvP. You can enter a match and end up against an 8-man premade on voice, or you can enter a match an see a whole bunch of newbies, just like in PvP. It's true that there are no lowbies, but how often do you run into vets and premades in lowbies? I know that I do all the time. The only thing lowbies do is gate your level, which is in many cases worse (as a level 40 fighting a level 64, for example).

 

5) it's different, but certainly not a lot. Muscle memory is much less of a problem (this is my opinion, others might disagree), because you have much less to memorize. You don't have 15+ abilities, DcDs etc., all you have is 6 abilities per ship, most of which are very similar. To be clear, I understand that this may be difficult. I just don't think this is a factor for most people.

 

6) This is an issue that can be fixed with "love". Ship customization is quite limited, and I understand that players have already asked for class ships to be allowed into GSF. This can't work for a number of reasons, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to customise your ships more.

 

7) true again. This isn't a problem with the game, though, only with the fact it's been abandoned by the developers for a while. Ranked queues, more rewards and such would be happily received by people who play the game. I see this as a reason GSF should get MORE attention, not less.

 

GSF growth is in fact happening, as it has ever since 4.0. I don't know what did it (maybe conquest changes, or lack of newer pve content) but on my server pops have been more and more frequent since launch. The pops compete only with pvp, and that's a shame in my opinion. They shouldn't have to be one over the other.

 

Other than that, I'm sorry that some people (you included) feel so strongly against this game. I don't see any reason for there to be conflict between GSF and any other part of the game. In fact, as I said before, they conflict much less than other parts of the game do.

[DomiSotto]

Yes. Sure. It's a twitch shooter. There is more tactical depth to that when you get into it, but it's fair to say that if you can't twitch shoot, you're not going to do well in GSF. Fair enough. Given the popularity of FPSs, though, I don't think that rules out that many people.

 

What percentage of SWTOR players do you think are actually any good at FPS? Is there a popular FPS there that publishes a curve to show the abilities of its population (in simpler words, what percentage sucks), and that's among the gaming population that specifically choses to play a shooter game. I would not mind seeing these numbers, because tbh, I think that hand-eye required to be good is fairly rare, and SWTOR is not a game that specifically draws the FPS-capable crowd.

[Greezt]

Greetz: I see and understand your point, and you clearly do mine, but I still disagree. I suppose we'll just have to leave it at that

 

Probably... Or maybe you could roll a new PvP toon, and I'll roll a new GSF one, and we'll see who has an easier time

[MDVZ]

What percentage of SWTOR players do you think are actually any good at FPS? Is there a popular FPS there that publishes a curve to show the abilities of its population (in simpler words, what percentage sucks), and that's among the gaming population that specifically choses to play a shooter game. I would not mind seeing these numbers, because tbh, I think that hand-eye required to be good is fairly rare, and SWTOR is not a game that specifically draws the FPS-capable crowd.

 

I don't know any stats, it's just extremely likely that two of the biggest gaming genres (FPS and MMO) don't have a strong degree of mutual exclusivity.

[Salakast]

2. GSF potential audience is limited to players with good hand-eye coordination. There is a wiggle room in ground PvP with roles and range to help with some of the common gaming handicaps. In GSF, if you can’t aim, you are out.

 

 

That's not strictly true. You can contribute to a useful level as a bomber pilot without laser guided hand-eye co-ord. OK, good bomber pilots who can aim will be much better, but there is at least as much 'wiggle room' in GSF as there is in PvP, if you can have decent spatial awareness and think strategically about where to place mines/drones. And you get enough req to buy a bomber by completing the intro mission.

[DarkSaberMaster]

@Domi

 

I'm just going to reply to your first point, which I highly disagree with. Not sure if you were here when the game was in beta. Before the game even went live, there was a huge uproar about space being on rails. Many people who first started playing this game came from SWG, which had a twitch mini-game called Jump to Lightspeed. It was a very big point of contention that there wasn't going to be free form space flight, whether pvp or pve.

 

When the rumors came about the "Super Secret Space Project", people were ecstatic and was praying that they would finally get their JTL for SWTOR. Some were happy that they finally got free form space flight. Others weren't because it only catered to the pvpers. And some, like me, we're turned off because it didn't support joystick controls. But none the less, people did join this game to fly in space. Look back in past posts. You'll see I'm not making this up.

 

And to say that putting in resources for it is a waste of money? I call bs on that. PvP is just as much a niche game in SWTOR as GSF. Just like raiding/ops is as much as a niche in this game as role playing. So why should they throw resources into pvp, raidng/ops or role playing? Neither group is more important than the other. The tragedy here is that neither of these groups have been shown the love they deserve.

 

You may not have joined this game to fly ships,and that is fine. You play what you like. But there are many people, past and present, who would highly disagree with you.

Edited January 18, 2016 by DarkSaberMaster

[PorsaLindahl]

The negativity here. I'm not surprised.

 

GSF is failed mini game. Had to laugh at that one.

 

@ Domi...The response you got was pretty much what I might have responded, so I won't go into it.

 

GSF isn't what people expected from the SSSP (Super Secret Space Project) announced, and hushed, shortly after launch. What people expected was a Jump To Lightspeed like expansion, so it was met with tons of criticism off the bat.

 

I used to spend hours in GSF. Sometimes it would be the only thing I did in-game for days at a time. Sure it was rough at first, as a new pilot, but it smooths out and any half decent player can have fun with it, get lucky, and take out some of the "Aces" on occasion.

 

I've flown alongside, and against, many of those "Aces." I've had my *** handed to me and handed theirs to them (and 90% don't take it personal). I never considered myself an "Ace" even though I usually placed top 3 for medals earned (not to mention kills, assists, damage done) in a match - unless it was a total ROFL-stomp with unbalanced teams. Which is one of the issues that needs to be resolved with it.

 

I stopped GSF'ing, as mentioned previously, around 8 months ago. But if BW would fix even some of the issues with it, I'd be more than happy to jump back into the cockpit and hunt gunships, play turtle on a satellite..whatever.

[DomiSotto]

And to say that putting in resources for it is a waste of money? I call bs on that. PvP is just as much a niche game in SWTOR as GSF. Just like raiding/ops is as much as a niche in this game as role playing. So why should they throw resources into pvp, radong/ops or role playing? Neither group is more important than the other. The tragedy here is that neither of these groups have been shown the love they deserve.

 

Because when they do something for raiding or PvP or story-content or personal challenges, it all goes in the same bucket - playing the character you have created and learned to play. All these are easily to switch in-between modes that support one another. Those things come as an interrelated integrated approach to the game & improves you as a player on that AC.

 

GSF is completely separate. It requires to maintain a different skillset. It does not tie in or support the other aspects of the game. Playing it would likely dull your skill with your AC because you retrain muscle memory to a ship. GSF is a different game.

Edited January 18, 2016 by DomiSotto

[Stradlin]

 

 

GSF growth is not going to happen because it is unappealing to the overwhelming majority of the players.

 

 

 

Firstly, I'd say almost all successful, long lived MMOs have always been all about finding ways to turn several " overwhelming minorities" , that may or may not overlap, into a knot. This is about basic building blocks of a living artificial world, really. Virtually every MMO activity is always something that is " liked by minority." Once you get these minorities to interact and infect one another in few creative ways, you suddenly have a good, living breathing MMO on your hands.

 

My impression is that GSF growth has actually been happening for a long while. At least relatively speaking that is. Game may be bleeding players, (outside the occasional few week surges around story-drops) but out of those who actually play this game and stay, larger and larger % is doing GSF. I started GSF like 20 months back. From back then to now, only notable change in popularity I ever saw was one brought by the Conquest patch; it made things far busier than they were during my first three or so months with GSF. I have actual, hard good numbers about all this as much as you do, so tis just a subjective impression limited to Server I play. But really, I feel it very safe to say that more and more feel there just isn't much else besides GSF to do.

 

Once you spend one weekend watching cutscenes and listening heads talk their way out of a linear story, you are actually done with the meaty bits of the new expansion. Time to look for something else to do. If I wanted good instanced ground pvp, hard core PvP, casual raiding, hard core raiding, overall PvE adventure or a good narrative for that matter, I'd find all these done better in some other MMO. Some of these other games are even backed with MMO dev teams that don't appear so utterly estranged from developing an MMO.

 

Meanwhile, overall experience of seeing GSF as the game you play and SW:TOR as a waiting lobby is one you won't really find anywhere else. I feel jury absolutely is out there on how good or functional a game TOR is.. but I can tell you, it makes one glorious waiting lobby. You don't get it anywhere else, not really. Not yet anyway! Like, imagine World of Tanks where your lobby isn't a chat box but rather, an average MMO set in Second World War. This game doesn't exsist, but is closest thing to experience SWTOR is for GSF Pilot I can think of. ; p

 

3. Nobody wants to be the insulted and humiliated, and GSF forces you to be a village idiot. Again. In GSF you will not carry over the proficiency you accumulated in the rest of the game and you re-start as a complete noob. Anyone with even a shred of savvy in PvP knows full well that s/he is going to be fast food because those who are still playing GSF are those who are good at it.

People are different. What you claim is some malicious " insulting and humiliating" experience makes an interesting and fun learning-to- play- a- game - experience for many others. Really, in game where entire story content is busy playing itself on your behalf and gives you almost no freedom or opportunity for mistakes of any kind, it is very welcome to have even couple of places besides end game raids, where you can actually have opportunity and freedom to fail, win or learn something. Many people consider these essential, meaningful parts of playing a video game.

 

5. Increased cadence of character development (new levels) and regearing leaves no time to start learning more new ‘characters’, aka ships that all need to be learned, keybound, muscle memory-trained, equipped etc. Unless you are one of the very few gamers who really wants to play vehicular combat or a gamer with many, many, many hours to play a day every day.

I thought Kotfe further streamlined and simplified either rotations or abilities of the the two max lvl characters I've played since KOTFE. For average player doing typical playthrough, at no point is there a situation where he would have to learn anything or do something right. Action bars, abilities, rotations..why bother? Sure, if one is perfectionist or harcore enough or enjoys min maxing, then nothing stops you from figuring out optimal builds, optimal rotations, etc. Just as easily you can skip all of that. It doesn't matter or make your virtual life much harder or slower. Both options result in meat of typical gameplay of typical player picking the typical route from 1-65 being either driving from one place to another and watching talking heads(vanilla) or watching curscenes and watching talking heads (KOTFE) Actual time you get to spend killing 3-4 token mobs while using, or learning, or ignoring those hard learned rotations is much shorter than time it takes to drive to story instances.

 

Meanwhile In GSF, you want to pick a ship and a build that works for you and learn to play it pretty well. If you refuse to do these things, then things in GSF go badly for you. In a game where story content is almost entirely just mobs that can't kill you and talking heads vomiting dialogue where you really can't make bad decisions or mistakes, then something like freedom to perform badly, and make mistakes from which to learn from should actually appear pretty rich and welcome thing to have.

 

7. GSF does not have a carrot neither for the entry level nor for the high end. Ops are a social for the SM players, have cool stuff (or should) for the high-end players. PvP always holds the promise of becoming a ranked champion, having your name promptly displayed on the LB and getting that Cool Item of Season X.

Depends what motivates you. Why is mastering ships, buying new ones and learning how to fly them not a carrot? Or why is your career file, which tracks like few dozen different stats combining every match you ever played not a carrot? Or why is GSF Achi hunting not a carrot? Coolest legacy titles of this damn game come from GSF. Not a carrot either? If this stuff can be dismissed, then what on earth does make a big enough carrot for you? Does Emma Watson pay one a visit IRL if you actually have the stamina to finish Trooper or Jedi Knight class story or something?;o

All in all, GSF carrots absolutely blow casual PvP equivalents out of the water. More things to track, more stuff to earn and build. Casual WZ grinder can't even see how many matches an individual character has played, heh.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Stradlin

[DarkSaberMaster]

Because when they do something for raiding or PvP or story-content or personal challenges, it all goes in the same bucket - playing the character you have created and learned to play. All these are easily to switch in-between modes that support one another. Those things come as an interrelated integrated approach to the game & improves you as a player on that AC.

 

GSF is completely separate. It requires to maintain a different skillset. It does not tie in or support the other aspects of the game. Playing it would likely dull your skill with your AC because you retrain muscle memory to a ship. GSF is a different game.

 

Hmmmm. I guess the guys in my guild who still do progression ops, pvp, and still kick *** in GSF must have some secret super power that enables them to do all three with no issues then.

[DomiSotto]

Hmmmm. I guess the guys in my guild who still do progression ops, pvp, and still kick *** in GSF must have some secret super power that enables them to do all three with no issues then.

 

No secret super-power, just high gaming IQ. There are absolutely the gamers that can jump from NiM raiding on any class and in any role to gold tier in PvP to GSF if desired. I do not dispute that such players exist. What I dispute is that a lot of people are capable of maintaining the GSF vs AC duality. I am also fairly certain, that given the choice between playing GSF and playing your character, most folks will pick playing their character.

 

I have once belonged to Conquest guild that had people playing everything that gave points. I don't know how they did in GSF, but in PvP they acted as bossy know-it-alls and were not really good at that. Belonging to that guild made me abhor Conquest, which is truly unfair.

Edited January 18, 2016 by DomiSotto

[Greezt]

No secret super-power, just high gaming IQ. There are absolutely the gamers that can jump from NiM raiding on any class and in any role to gold tier in PvP to GSF if desired. I do not dispute that such players exist. What I dispute is that a lot of people are capable of maintaining the GSF vs AC duality. I am also fairly certain, that given the choice between playing GSF and playing your character, most folks will pick playing their character.

 

I have once belonged to Conquest guild that had people playing everything that gave points. I don't know how they did in GSF, but in PvP they acted as bossy know-it-alls and were not really good at that. Belonging to that guild made me abhor Conquest, which is truly unfair.

 

You seem like an educated person, so let me ask you this: did you ever feel that studying one subject dulled the other in your mind?

 

I see no reason that is should be any different for GSF. Just like people can be good at basketball and tennis, they can be good at GSF and PvP.

[PorsaLindahl]

in PvP they acted as bossy know-it-alls and were not really good at that.

 

In many other games that I've PvP'd in, this was generally the way things were. That and the "gg noob" comments. The losers always smack talking the winners. The general attitude in PvP was like 3 year olds arguing over which color crayon to use. And it wasn't isolated incidents. There were people like that in every match. And it wasn't friendly banter.

 

One of the things I liked about GSF is that you don't (or at least I didn't) see this very often. There would be an occasional smart mouth out there, but it wasn't all the time. Maybe GSF has a "higher class" of PvPer.

 

There is another thing: You don't GSF, you said you were turned off in the tutorial. By that statement, you never truly tried it. How can you criticize something so vehemently if you haven't even attempted to be a part of it?

Edited January 18, 2016 by PorsaLindahl

[DomiSotto]

You seem like an educated person, so let me ask you this: did you ever feel that studying one subject dulled the other in your mind?

.

 

Absolutely. Starting French hosed my Spanish, my teacher told me to pick one. When I lifted heavy, I could not run, or the lifts went down. I almost took a nose-dive when I put the roller-blades on for the first time, because I ice-skate on figure skates, and used to pushing off my toe. While doing my degrees I've learned to forget as much as I've learned to retain to be successful. When I talk to a colleague we switch to English to talk shop because native tongue terminology messes us up.

 

But why go that far? Two days of not playing a character in this game, and I fumble. Switching ACs, let alone roles leads to a drop in performance.

 

There is another thing: You don't GSF, you said you were turned off in the tutorial. By that statement, you never truly tried it. How can you criticize something so vehemently if you haven't even attempted to be a part of it?

 

I am against diverting the resources towards GSF, because in my view creating that module really negatively impacted the rest of the game, as it caused the rest of the game lose momentum and stagnate for a long time. That infusion in GSF three years ago imo cost the rest of the game dearly. I believe that GSF was a costly mistake, and BioWARE over-reached trying to do it all.

 

One of the things I liked about GSF is that you don't (or at least I didn't) see this very often. There would be an occasional smart mouth out there, but it wasn't all the time. Maybe GSF has a "higher class" of PvPer.

 

Those were the only players I knew who did GSF, those Conquest guild point-hunters that were among the most unpleasant bunch I have met. That includes the atrocious social norms of the ranked PvP.

Edited January 18, 2016 by DomiSotto

[DarkSaberMaster]

So you're issue is that you can't multitask? As far as the tanking French because you started taking Spanish, I call bs on that. Growing up in Italy, just about everyone I knew who spoke Spanish, picked up French and Italian easily. They said it is because they are similar in language because of their roots. So like I said, that is a problem that is associated with yourself.

 

As far as the rest of your comment. Now we are at the root of why you don't want GSF improved. You feel it should never have been added in the first place. Well. A lot of people who hate pvp feel the same about pvp. That it takes away valuable resources that could be used for pve i.e raids/ops. And there are people who believe that raids/ops should be axed in favor of stories because it is taking away valuable resources for that. My point is, I'm glad EAware, with as much as they bungle things, don't listen to either of those groups because nobody would get anything.

 

But then again, when has pvp, ops, and role play been shown any love? I really am surprised that you take this opinion Domi, considering how you came into pvp. Now that you are a pvper, you of all people should know how it's like to have your preferred playstyle ignored and constantly told that it should be axed from the game because only a small minority play it.

Edited January 19, 2016 by DarkSaberMaster