What I couldn't put in a KOTET Survey...

[Tash_Verano]

"Above all tighten the Galactic Starfighter Control scheme so as to allow for not only joystick support, but tighter controls to allow for the player to out fly better equipped ships. Make Galactic Starfighter feel more like a fast paced flight sim and people will play it. the joystick doesn't allow that much of an advantage anyway. especially with gamepad support being popular now. the rest of Galactic Starfighter is fine as is. The last thing a player in a PvP flight experience should be worrying about is trying to just fly straight. with it as is, that's all I ever worry about and makes it frustrating. You're missing an opportunity to let people who remember the X-Wing Series or SW: Galaxies - Jump to Lightspeed feel that white knuckle thrill of out flying a heavier armed opponent by sheer skill. Again, vehicles are a HUGE part of Star Wars. No current MMORPG experience would be better to suited to handle it right now than SWTOR. Give the fighter jocks a place to shine please!

 

Also could be interesting to have Vehicle based free flight "Uprisings-esc" PVE Space Combat... an additional plus would be Speeder/Swoop/Pod Racing. It would be a truly Star Wars experience to have vehicles be a larger part of the multiplayer experiences down the road."

 

I offer this up to the forums, because the character limit for the Survey couldn't handle it. I know I'm not alone feeling frustrated by not only the slow queues, but once you're in there hardly being any use except for target practice since the veteran GSF players simply do better due to the stat differences. You can't skim surfaces, you can't feel competitive while flying "inferior" ships, & if you are new to GSF & flight sims... May the force have mercy on your soul.

 

GSF is a well thought out and designed system... except for the flight controls. there are those who use a gamepad for SWTOR, so why not let us use Joysticks too? Flying ships in GSF feels too sloppy even with the keyboard and mouse.

 

Am I wrong? or am I just Loony?

[caederon]

GSF is a well thought out and designed system... except for the flight controls. there are those who use a gamepad for SWTOR, so why not let us use Joysticks too?

I can understand the desire to use a joystick in a space combat game. My old, worn out Sidewinder would attest to that if it weren't in a scrap heap somewhere. It is not going to happen in GSF for the following reasons:

_

1. MMORPG players are not a group likely to own joysticks. Joysticks are a very niche input device. SWTOR is an MMORPG. GSF is a space combat game stuck inside an MMORPG.
   
2. There are no active developers working on GSF, and haven't been for two years. They are not going to cater to a niche within a niche with something that would be relatively expensive in terms of development time.
   
3. The flight model in GSF is well suited to the control scheme, and it is not particularly imprecise once you get used to its response. Most of the imprecision comes from misjudging the size of the hit box around ship models, or from client-server lag misreporting the positioning of objects.
   

 

If you want a PvE experience that prepares you for GSF combat, go get the old game Freelancer... or try out Star Conflict (which is a bit more physics-based and slide-y than GSF but pretty similar otherwise). Yes, it would be great to have PvE GSF missions for lots of reasons, but #2 above kind of precludes that.

 

but once you're in there hardly being any use except for target practice since the veteran GSF players simply do better due to the stat differences. You can't skim surfaces, you can't feel competitive while flying "inferior" ships,

You may not believe this, but the stat differences are not the main reason people do better. Experience and knowing the game are hugely important. I have an upcoming video series dealing with exactly this issue coming out soon. You can absolutely compete in "inferior" ships and help your team, you just have to know what you're doing. It doesn't take that long to get a ship's most important components upgraded, you just have to know what to upgrade and what to get. Knowledge is the best weapon you have in GSF. That's why I made a YouTube channel for GSF School, to distribute that knowledge.

 

I know GSF is tough, especially for beginners. Look for solutions you can take through your own action to improve and compete better.

 

- Despon

Edited December 16, 2016 by caederon

[Ramalina]

GSF has a profoundly different control scheme than a flight sim. It's not a matter of tightness or looseness.

 

In an aircraft/spacecraft physics based scheme ( ie a sim.), you input controls to point the nose of the craft, and target by flying the pipper/reticle over the target (with appropriate lead angle).

 

In GSF it's a modified First Person Shooter system, that mirrors older FPS type controls. You input controls to move your targeting reticle, and the ship turns toward the reticle at a rate inversely proportional to the reticle's displacement from the center of the screen.

 

In a sim based model the return-to-center nature of a stick is a huge advantage, and a mouse and keyboard person is at a huge disadvantage.

 

In GSF's weird modified FPS scheme, a return to center function isn't particularly advantageous for maneuvers, and the rapid fine motor control for targeting over the target's lead indicator gives a mouse a huge advantage over a stick with regards to gunnery.

 

Bottom line is that the engine doesn't support stick input, so they're not going to bother rebuilding the engine for the sake of adding it. There are 3rd party software options that can take stick input and get your computer to treat it as mouse and keyboard.

 

Ultimately thpugh, using a stick for input gains you nothing in maneuver, and looses quite a bit in gunnery. It's an inferior hardware interface for GSF's design.

 

As a sim fan, I definitely get where you're coming from in terms of not liking the control setup. It took me a month or a month and a half of play to get used to the system enough so I didn't hate it anymore. Maybe 20 or so hours of play.

If a normal sim is a placental mammal, then GSF may be a platypus. It's never going to be normal by the standards of flight/space combat sims, you just have to learn to appreciate aspects of its weirdness.

 

 

 

Some people find that it helps a great deal to turn down their mouse sensitivity quite a bit, and report that it feels less twitchy and more controllable after doing so.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Ramalina

[phalczen]

Those of us who tested this in closed beta fought that fight. Now, because of the way the steering and targeting are linked, joystick users would be at a significant disadvantage relative to mouse and keyboard users, like Ramilina and Despon have said. These days, joysticks are hardly part of the typical PC gamer's default setup. But even if they were, a control scheme that was more difficult than M&K would actually detract from the new player experience. As I made the case in the "2-3 weeks till announcement" thread I believe it's the experience of new players and the lack of a design meant to retain those players that hurts GSF, and joystick controls would do nothing to improve that.

 

Regarding your PVE suggestion, it's a fair one, one that I think everyone here would appreciate. Although the standards for mission quality and AI may be high (compared to other classic games), I don't think it's insurmountable. I just think we're all too jaded to believe that there would be enough dev time to do such content. Either way, I believe that an improved tutorial would give the devs tools they need to accomplish such a task.... just like developing the HK-55 chapter gave them the tools to do cool things in KOTET like the walker driving and another spoilery thing I won't go into.

[ALaggyGrunt]

If they designed it to work better with a joystick, the guy with the $400 Warthog stick-and-throttle would have a significant advantage over, say, the guy with the Xbox gamepad or a cheaper joystick which may or may not have deadzone or precision issues. It's the difference between being able to to solidly hit a target with high angular velocity (they move across your screen fast), and having to wait until you can drop in on its tail.

 

If they designed it so some of the ships and weapons worked better with a joystick, it would be less broken, but that would mean hardware-locking players out of being able to fly a scout effectively.