GSF Discussion: Friction Points

[HalfwayHorse]

Sometimes one side keeps stomping until they kill the queue. The matchmaker could mix Imps and Pubs into both groups randomly to prevent one side from being consistently overpowered. With the recent story expansions, it wouldn't even clash too badly with lore.

 

It would also enable matchmaking whenever there are enough people in the queue, no matter if the majority of them happen to be on one side.

 

Yes, I would love to have a legacy hangar.

 

I wish the new Introduction to Starfighter reward was retroactive, it is a bit frustrating to have to work on just getting ships unlocked on a number of alts while new characters can unlock all ships instantly and get the full benefit from ship requisition items.

Edited July 6, 2017 by HalfwayHorse

[josephxp]

Hey folks,

 

This week, we are creating three separate forum threads for GSF discussion. You can head to this thread to get links to each of them.

 

Galactic Starfighter, like all group content, is a system that we want to see being used by as many players as possible. This thread is to discuss the friction points that you see in GSF. Whether it stops you from playing frequently, or from playing at all, we want to understand that friction.

 

Here are some things to consider to get the conversation started:

• Is the learning curve too steep to get into?
  
• Is ship balance preventing you from playing?
  
• Are you not playing because you feel GSF needs something new to bring you back in?
  
• Matchmaking issues?
  
• The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?
  

 

Let us know your thoughts!

 

-eric

 

Lets start with the learning curve:

The GSF tutorial is trash, if you added a better tutorial and had it highlighted for first time players it will help greatly. For me it took me about a month to finally get a good grasp of how to fly and concepts, i felt that a better tutorial which is more in depth with controls would be better. Like saying you are under a missle lock use your engines ability to evade it, etc. fake NPC that fly's around to teach targeting. This would help many players new or returning.

 

Ship balance: No not really, with the recent reduction in costs of upgrades it helped SO much to level alts ships and beginning to master the ships i run on many characters. I would slighting increase the req gained from each game like a 10% increase and it will help newer players/alts upgrade ships quickly to get up to the same pace as others.

 

Still playing GSF when it pops giving the CXP and components from each match pretty much revived the pops and the community. Adding new maps/modes/(ships!?)/more fleet coms will definitely help bring people back to it who left because of lack of things.

 

Matchmaking isn't much of a problem, pops are coming up fast whether you solo or group que on prime time and GSF bonus days.

 

GSF not being legacy; this is a big one for me half the fun is upgrading ships and maxing them out. But it would be nice to have a semi-legacy hanger for each faction so you dont need re-upgrade all of your ships if you want to be more alt friendly.

 

Also another big thing id like to point out is after starting KotFE you no longer can use the companions as crew, fixing this will go along way so we dont have to repurchase companions to use for crew.

[ZambedosNB]

Making ship progress legacy-wide or Faction-wide is something I've wanted as long as I've been playing this game. I understand that it would kind of suck to have mastered ships on multiple characters and have that not matter, but if it increases interest in GSF that should be an acceptable trade off for diehard gsf fans (or not, you do you). Plus, Legacy ships for GSF is essentially equivalent to legacy gear in PVE/PVP.

 

I tried to get into it again the last couple weeks and although I had several fun matches in about two weeks I was sick of it and quit again. A major problem is also that there really is no learning arena. In PVE you can go from SM to VM to MM, in PVP you can go from Lowbies to regs to ranked, and before any of that happens you run around with your character practicing with random quests or smaller scale group content. But in GSF it's full throttle automatically and that makes it hard to get into. This is a tough nut to crack because GSF might not have the population to support different "difficulty" matches, but without these much of the population it could have has decided not to bother.

 

For my specific circumstance I just joined a new raid team and am trying to get my Command level up there to where it's useful, so I thought hey let's give GSF another try since they just revamped it. It's a lot to learn. I read a lot of guides and came to realize just how much I didn't know. About the time I started reading the descriptions of various components I asked is it worth learning? Having to compete against max ships at a steep learning curve is bad but what really mad me settle on a "No" was knowing that I'll have to start all over if I ever want to earn CXP this way on another toon. It makes a lot more sense to me to just do ground pvp instead. Plus bonus I'm getting better at playing my character in ground pvp, which isn't true of GSF, and I can at least attempt to hold my own. So the short of that paragraph is that yes, you added "ground rewards" to gsf but without a legacy system in gsf those rewards didn't feel worthwhile to me. Not sure walking you through my thought process counts as valuable insight, but there you have it.

[HeatRacer]

Suggestions:

1. 
   Reduce the range of gunships weapons from 15k to 10k...limit the number of gunships and bombers allowed in a match
   

 

As a primarily-gunship pilot, I would not be opposed to this. In the ground game, the "Sniper" class has a range only marginally farther than everyone else (35m vs 30m). Even at 10k, gunships would still have double the average range of other ships' 4k-6k range. Sure, other ships would then be able to get closer to gunships, but let's not forget gunships can equip the strongest close-in blasters too.

[Magira]

My main point why I play less GSF and turn me into more PVP friendly games is the matchmaking. It is simply boring and unfair.

 

I would certainly be a millionaire if there were bets on the matches. At most one out of twenty matches are balanced, all others are so unbalanced that I would bet every sum on the result.

 

The idea of Bioware Premades against PUGs "fight" is completely crazy, but a good matchmaking should be able to compensate. Same number of premades on both sides as an example.

 

The problem is that a matchmaking does not exist. If one exists, it probably works only with ten times the amount of players.

 

My suggestion: working on a matchmaking that minimizes the imbalance.

[Verain]

As a primarily-gunship pilot, I would not be opposed to this. In the ground game, the "Sniper" class has a range only marginally farther than everyone else (35m vs 30m). Even at 10k, gunships would still have double the average range of other ships' 4k-6k range. Sure, other ships would then be able to get closer to gunships, but let's not forget gunships can equip the strongest close-in blasters too.

 

I would. 10k is way too low. Snipers don't have a 5m advantage on everyone else: they have a 30m advantage on melee. They also have ways to participate in combat while enemies are close, and generate range.

 

What would be interesting would be if gunships had a bit more choice in railguns, and if range was worked into that. If your slug railgun had less range than ion or plasma, but continued to be the only railgun that ignored armor.

 

Anyway, at 10k an enemy ship is super mobile. That's way too big a nerf: that's a "delete gunships" nerf.

[josephxp]

Suggestions:

1. Learning Curve: We need some sort of area to go to with "friend" to test on ships and learn to fly similar to dueling could be limited to 4 flyers
   
2. Ship Imbalance: GSF should be about flying ie strikes and scouts as the main ships too many matches become a chess match with teams flying 5 gunships, and 1 or 2 bombers and a single strike or scout...Reduce the range of gunships weapons from 15k to 10k...limit the number of gunships and bombers allowed in a match

 

Learning curve piece, that would be nice for new players.

 

Ship Imbalance: limiting the range from 15k to 10k is fair for gunships that would pretty much balance them right there because, having played gunships alot (and every other ship to might i add), on a quarel/magnler if 3-4 ships are coming at you closing the distance fast its going to be hard where many pilots opt out of having no missle lock evasion with rotation thrusters (also for power regen) and being a stationary ship. This would solve the gunship issue many people have, but in all honesty fly at a gunship in an arcing manner its not that hard to do on a scout and can screw over a gunship pilot.

 

But you CAN'T limit how many people can play gunships and bombers. People are going to play what they feel comfortable with and what they know they can use. If you are forcing someone who plays only gunships into playing scout s/he is not going to play GSF anymore because they are being force to do something they do not want to do. Also you have players who are going for achievements where they need to play 250 matches with each ship, It would not be fair to force someone who need to finish their bomber gunship one to not be able to play as a ship to count towards this achievement. Putting a limitation would hurt the community not help it.

[Kurj]

I'm not sure this falls into the useful feedback category, but I refuse to play a space sim that has no joystick support. If there was a reason to dust off my CH Products setup, I would play in a heartbeat, because I miss the good old days of Wing Commander and X-Wing. But I have no desire to learn to play a space sim with a mouse and keyboard.

[JamaicanCastle]

Hey! Do you mind if I PM you? I can help with everything you've had trouble with, and I'd like to, if you're willing!

 

Don't feel too bad about dying a lot; everyone does at first. That's PVP for you.

 

I am not saying this as an attack, but yes, it is a problem in the way you're approaching things. That's not your fault; you don't have the experience necessary to know that yet, although it sounds like you already suspect that might be the case. In general, circle around outside of their line of sight and firing arc to pressure gunships from behind, but only do so in a ship with high evasion. Avoid being in the open for long and always have your escape route planned as you make your approach. Grab powerups if you can get them.

 

You can if you like, but don't feel like you need to. (The other reason I rarely GSF is that I'm on Shadowlands and it almost never pops, I just didn't bother mentioning that because "GSF participation is low because it's low" isn't a very helpful piece of feedback, you know?)

 

I feel like the core of my problem is that feedback from GSF is not very well implemented (or complete) and (as I mentioned) it's hard to even see what your teammates are doing, let alone process it. By that I mean - when I first started PvPing (for the DvL event, actually) I was pretty terrible. But I was able to see what other people were doing, especially in terms of positioning, strategy, using their cooldowns, etc., so I could progress bit by bit. In GSF I don't see anything like that level of feedback, so really the only way to progress is for someone to tell you directly - whether on the forums or a video or whatever - what you're doing wrong.

[XhrisShan]

One of the biggest complaints I heard both on BC (when I was on that server) and have heard on EH by new players is they cannot do anything before they get killed. A large part of this is they dont understand how their missile evade works,what each ship does and how to line up shots on a moving target. With ground PVP you have 10 levels of PVE before you can queue. This allows you to learn how your character works. It is in essence the introduction to how to play the game (that is what the four starter planets are there for). The tutorial does not give an equal compensation for that. To be brutally honest I dont think anything other than GSF PVE is going to. The rail-shooter space missions do not handle like GSF,they do not have the abilities of GSF and you cannot control where your ship goes like you can in GSF.

 

Yeah, the tutorial level's pretty mediocre. There should be several tutorials:

• Capturing objectives
  
• Defending objectives (against AI enemies, including having to deal with drones. e.g. "EMP Missiles and Ion Railguns are especially useful for clearing mines. Select the Quarrel or Pike to get rid of the mines that the enemy bomber keeps dropping")
  
• Movement (turning, strafing, stopping, boosting)
  
• Dogfighting (against AI enemies) (includes explainations of weapon range, firing arcs, and firing/evading lock-on weapons)
  
• Detailed explanation of how each ship works (descriptions in the Hangar are told from an in-universe perspective and thus aren't that useful). This might help people run Rampart or Spearpoint, since I've noticed pretty much noone runs those ships in Domination despite how absurdly important they are

 

Also, there should be medals for number of times an ally uses your Rampart's/Razorwire's beacon. Seriously, that is INVALUABLE in Domination matches

 

Ability to give out MVPs like in Warzones would also be much appreciated.

 

And PLEASE, give us the option to adjust mouse sensitivity. It is much too high for me and I don't understand how a flight sim lacks that control of all things.

Edited July 6, 2017 by XhrisShan

[Verain]

10k is vastly too low.

 

Here's the thing: right now, most maps have inbuilt features which punish a team that stacks a single ship type.

 

In all three domination 8 mans, this works great. If you stack gunships, the other team can play a balanced setup and smack you around. Three gunships working against a scout, a gunship, and a bomber aren't going to hold or take a node- they are going to get chased off the node by the bomber, harassed by the scout, and sniped by the gunship. While being forced to move. If damaged, the scout or gunship can retreat to the bomber mines. You need a balanced force, and it works really good.

 

In domination 12 mans, this is sketchier. It's a good plan to have more than a third of your team run bomber. The natural health of bombers, plus the layering of beacons, puts out a lot of health that enemy gunships can't easy push through fast enough, and while scouts can do the necessary dps, they are shoved around by the mines. These matches already favor bombers more than they should: any nerf to gunships would remove their only effective predator. That being said, it isn't like you can effectively run 9 bombers in a 12 man match: that can be beaten by an enemy composition that, while bomber heavy, still features gunships and scouts.

 

In Kuat TDM 8 man, there's usually a couple more gunships than would probably be normal in the rest of the game. Scouts can still get around the map effectively, and bombers have many solid nesting points.

In Kuat TDM 12 man, the extra spots are normally filled by gunships or scouts: no one benefits by stacking bombers excessively normally.

In Shipyards TDM 8 man, there's almost always more gunships than anywhere else. You can break these gunships with a combination of scouts and gunships (and usually one bomber nest), but it is not a composition that always happens. It's harder to make a nest because gunships can get a variety of angles in open spaces, and it is harder to move across the map in a scout because the obstacles are small and sparse compared to the tunnels on Kuat.

Shipyards TDM 12 man is usually too many gunships. A barrage of equally skilled scouts with some gunship backup can beat this too, but it is almost impossible to coordinate the countercomp. Even in this, the most gunship-friendly mode, there's still a need for other ship types.

 

Gutting railguns would effectively delete the ship. You may still have use for it on your bar if your team agrees to stack it on whatever maps it still works well for (Shipyards TDM probably), but how does that help?

 

Here's the real thing: ask yourself why everyone doesn't stack (shiptype) on (map). You'll usually get similar answers. If you stack battlescouts on Denon, you will have a hard time seizing and holding a node. You'll face assaults from any bombers lucky enough to reach the node, and from gunships off the node, as well as the smaller number of scouts on the node. You will be left with no safe place, and all of you will have to do similar things to be effective. Basically, there's ships that you can handle 1-on-1 that you can't handle when part of a team, as long as your team is limited to your exact strengths and weaknesses. And that isn't really the case on the highly open, high player maps- basically shipyards TDM 8 or 12, and Kuat TDM 12. We're missing the ships or components that can cross that field when its ONLY defense is railguns, and there are enough railguns to make the immensely powerful distortion shield on the evasion scout not quite enough. Almost like... the game was meant to have stealth ships! Which, of course, it was. Smuggling a scout and a bomber towards an enemy nest undefended by a sensor drone would allow you to wreak havoc. If there isn't even a nest, walking that scout to two close gunships and opening with your plasma lance while he pops cooldowns would do a ton.

 

That's the part that is missing from these situations. Since we probably aren't getting our stealth ships any time soon, it is worth asking- should a ship offer a team shield? Simply making existing godly dogfighters immune to railguns (by reducing their range to a class-destroying 10km) is crap. A clarion putting up a giant visible shield that offers temporary but very significant protection to railguns as he rolls across the map with some battle scouts in tow would be a very different effect though, right? The answer to the few conditions that reward gunship stacking on live is an equally coordinated team with a better composition, but an alternate answer in a hypothetical mode could be a lesser-coordinated team that sees a sphere of protection go up, and takes the chance to dive across space. Basically, it should take LESS coordination to screw with a team that has set up a homogeneous setup, not equal or greater.

 

But it also shouldn't be "all scouts are immune to railguns" or "all railguns now suck forever because I get sniped a lot and don't understand why", or whatever other class-deleting ideas we're gonna get outta people.

[HeatRacer]

What would be interesting would be if gunships had a bit more choice in railguns, and if range was worked into that. If your slug railgun had less range than ion or plasma, but continued to be the only railgun that ignored armor.

 

Ok, I think that's a reasonable compromise then. Because ion is so disabling, I would argue that it should have the same reduced range as slug (with the precedent of ion cannon being a short range weapon too). So how about 12k or something? And then with plasma retaining full range, that would help make it a more enticing alternative to the others.

[AronisContar]

I play a ton of GSF, so none of these issues is preventing me from playing, but here it goes:

 

• Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

Yes. The tutorial is far too simple. I took me many, many matches, and lots of experimentation to really learn how to fly. A better tutorial would help a lot here.

• Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

I usually fall back to one of two ships - Flashfire or Quarrel. I don't fly bombers because I hate them, but that's just a personal thing. I rarely fly a Spearpoint. All other gunships, scouts, and all of the strikes are pretty much untouched. While this doesn't prevent me from playing, it does tell me that the balance is quite a bit off.

Some stats from my main char:

1272 total matches

853 Flashfire

492 Quarrel

282 Spearpoint

65 Star Guard

55 Novadive

26 Comet Breaker

18 Clarion

2 Warcarrier

All others at 0.

I would LOVE to fly my Star Guard more, but at the moment I'm a liability to my team in that thing.

• Are you not playing because you feel GSF needs something new to bring you back in?

Something new would be nice. Anything really. Just something.

• Matchmaking issues?

The games usually are pretty one-sided. I've flown lots of matches, and I'd estimate the number of times that I've seen e.g. a domination that ended 9xx-1000 is maybe in the low two digits. I however don't think you can do much about that since the player pool would need to be bigger - aside from maybe some strange handicap or buff system that tries to balance the sides out.

• The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

Irked me for a long time, but nowadays with the improved starting loadout and quicker requisition gain, I think it's less of a problem. I do think that legacy wide fleet, and maybe even ship requisition would be a neat addition.

 

I also have two additional suggestions, which don't really fit in any of the three threads, so here it goes:

• You used to be able to get a quick estimate of how strong the other players are by looking at the type and number of ships they have unlocked. Nowadays, it's pretty much 5 (identical) ships for everyone. Maybe add something that shows how 'good' a player is to the starting screen/map? A numeric rating, star system, or whatever.
  
• Something else I always wanted to have was a way to distinguish between shots that don't hit because I actually miss and fire past an enemy, and shots that don't hit because the hit/evasion system rolls a miss. It would be great if there was an option to show a little "Miss" floating damage number if the target's evasion makes a shot miss, instead of me actually firing into empty space. I also think a lot of new players would be less frustrated if they saw "Hey, I actually do know how to hit stuff, I just need to work on my cooldowns/components/timing".

 

Ciao, Aronis!

Edited July 6, 2017 by AronisContar

[Brutonis]

It’s encouraging that GSF is getting enough attention to still draw an annual “what could we do for you guys” post but more than anything I think we would like to see something followed through on. Even a slight tweak to the meta (/cough strikes need a role) and a solid bug fix pass would be a good start. Though I suppose the adjustment to upgrade costs and making all cosmetic customization available with coins was a nice surprise and start.

 

There have been a lot of good things mentioned but one of the biggest for most vets is a better way to gauge misses/evades. Also, for me I’ve always found it annoying that the other team can see my health and shield numbers but I can’t. Would it be game breaking to put numbers on our health bars? Those are pet peeves more than anything so probably not something to bring people back.

 

As for retaining players in GSF, IMO more than anything there was never much of a hook to keep people flying beyond the competition itself. Maybe that was never intended. But because of this there was only one very short period where there was a deep pool of good veteran level players. The best vets and ace level players could entertain themselves well enough but the rest sort of lost interest after a few hundred matches if they made it that long. Unless you caught on with a good team or a guild that flies GSF you just never had much to do other than a bit of ship outfitting. Sure there are a few achievements and medals you can push for and some out of game stuff like the records threads but that doesn’t do it for everyone.

 

It would have been nice to have some in game reward tied to GSF. Maybe having gsf seasons like pvp is asking too much with such a small pool of pilots but it would have been nice to have had something to shoot for every so often. Maybe a quarterly ship reward of some kind or even an in game mount you can only get from those seasons. Just some in game “bling” to shoot for other than a title or three would have been nice.

 

If nothing else for the love of all that’s SW give us something meaningful for spending fleet comms other than a couple decorations and dated gear boxes. I have multiple toons sitting with max fleet comms and nothing worth doing with them worth the trouble of finding that vendor on fleet. If you have to do something to make the comm unique create a new starfighter comm.

 

New meaningful content might bring a few folks back. Like a Denon deathmatch with a smaller sphere of combat than the gargantuan domination field. Or given the new story areas offer up a new map that is purposely mixed pub/imperial cross faction in an Eternal Throne setting. I'm probably dreaming too much on that though . And even with a new map if there isn't a hook to keep folks around the game will be back to where it now resides within a month or so.

[caederon]

It's great to see some developer energy being turned towards GSF! I've been playing since the second beta wave and haven't quit since. I've seen a lot in the thousands of games that I have played, and have a few opinions on things...

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

The learning curve is not too steep. The methods by which players can learn, however, are deeply flawed.

 

I run a YouTube channel called GSF School that exists solely to train players how to play GSF. Your staff even linked to some of my videos in their recent Twitter post. This is an area I have dedicated considerable thought and resource to, because I love the game and want people to be well-informed about how to compete.

 

There are several large problems players face upon deciding to try GSF.

 

It is not obvious that there even -is- a tutorial, and when people get to it, the stop-and-read-then-fly nature of it is very offputting. It is a test of patience to push through it when what you are doing is interrupted every few seconds. It doesn't even offer a taste of the other non-scout ship classes, and the scout you are put in is not one players start with. It fails to cover many very important concepts and gives only the barest instruction on key game skills. In a word, it is a failure.

 

Even when players complete the tutorial, they are tossed into the fire pretty quickly... though how hot the fire is depends on where they are playing. On a high-population server like Harbinger, they stand a decent chance of being pitted against beginning-to-intermediate skill players. On less populous servers, they're tossed in against whoever's queuing, and that can turn out very poorly.

 

I actually ran an experiment: I made a new character on Harbinger named Stock Ship, and ran fifty matches with him in completely stock, unchanged-from-initial-loadout ships. At that time, what I found was that I actually was not pitted against server veterans aside from two of those matches. Nevertheless, to a new pilot, even minimally skilled enemies can look like aces. If one knows the game, they can

. Obtaining that knowledge is a barrier for many players. I've done my part to fill in the gaps, but better resources from your team would be exceptionally helpful.

 

A 'sandbox' map for people to fly around in and practice, either alone or with friends, would be astoundingly helpful and useful for teaching people the game in a non-threatening environment.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

Clearly, nothing (including common sense or the need to lead a productive life) has prevented me from playing but I still have some opinions here. They mirror a lot of what's been said by other veteran pilots, so I'll keep it concise:

 

Ship balance between scouts, gunships, and bombers is largely fine.

 

Strike fighters have no role and suffer quite a bit against anyone who knows what they're doing. You guys knew this two years ago when you made the last Dev Pilgrimage here, and nothing has changed since. I'm sure you can refer to that 90 page behemoth of a thread to get some ideas, but "make them hit harder," "make them take a hit better," and "give them options to escape danger" are good starting thoughts.

 

People who complain about scouts, gunships, and/or bombers being overpowered (and I could cite threads on here where each idea is expressed) do so out of frustration and do not look at the big picture.

 

It's pretty obvious that the Infiltrator class would have addressed a lot of the issues that exist around weirdly useless components or abilities, but that's probably a windmill to tilt at some other time.

 

Are you not playing because you feel GSF needs something new to bring you back in?

New stuff would be great!

 

I think you could serve both your monetization needs and player desire by offering even more new cosmetic options and cartel ships that duplicate the remaining ship types with no doppleganger. You could even offer more that duplicate ones that already have cartel ships. I know plenty of people who would run three different builds of the Type 2 Scout or Type 1 Gunship.

 

I'd rather have you fix some of the existing useless/weak components (EMP missile, Ion Missile, Sensor Beacon, Interdiction Drive, etc etc) than add new ones.

 

A new map for TDM and Domination would be spectacular.

 

Matchmaking issues?

The matchmaker itself seems to work pretty well (if not perfectly) when there is a large enough pool of players to draw from. The size of the pool has everything to do with the type of opposition people get tossed in with.

 

You may note a bunch of threads in this forum complaining about premades. Without delving into the issue too far, let me say that teams of very skilled players would LOVE a way to queue up exclusively against each other that did not involve them getting mixed in with inexperienced players.

 

Get more players into the matchmaking pool, and enable them to learn the game, and this problem sorts itself out.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

I think cartel ship purchases and cosmetic unlocks should be Legacy-wide. A lot of the long-time veterans have several or even dozens of alts, all of which we fly on. It would be very welcome.

 

__

 

Let me just close by saying that it would be very welcome if you decided to talk a bit with the veteran GSF community directly as well. It is good to get a broad spectrum of viewpoints, but we've thought about all of this stuff, hashed it out, argued it, and otherwise beat these topics to death for a long time.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

- Despon

[phalczen]

Wow, this thread got a lot of names I've never seen before in the GSF forum, and perhaps that's a good thing. Since I play, I can only relate sentiments I've read from other players on the forums, which have largely been echoed above already, or comments from my guildies, who aren't forum warriors.

 

A new player to flashpoints or unranked ground warzones isn't nearly as ineffective as in GSF. Now, part of that is the nature of the beast: it's a completely different game mode as an arcade shooter and there is zero homology between ground ability based play and trinity roles, making it difficult to find where you "fit in." Part of it is design: poor ineffective starter components, strikes not really being effective out of the box, etc., but the feedback related to that is in your other threads. Part of it is the gear gap, an issue that is vastly improved even since a couple of months ago. Some people will undoubtedly complain its still too slow, but they either have not tried it since the 5.2.2 changes or it will never be fast enough for them unless you gave them completely geared ships from the get-go.

 

Part of it is matchmaking. It isn't any different than the complaints of ground pvp'ers about premades ruining warzones. I have often wondered or suggested that a group-only queue or solo-only queue might, in general, be better, but except on a server like Harby, the population probably isn't large enough to separate the queues and still have frequent pops. I don't have an easy solution for this, but I would suggest that as developers, you acknowledge that there is at least a perception that the matchmaking is a friction point because of premades and gear gaps, and that you will re-assess if any changes are needed once:

1) broken starter components/underpowered components/underpowered ships/underpowered crew members get addressed and improved

2) interesting ground related incentives and tie-ins emerge, independently creating interest in GSF just like CXP and UCs do.

3) tutorial gets improved or "GSF practice dummies" get implemented, or etc. Visual UI feedback on evaded shots, etc. gets implemented (great idea by Zyrieas and Verain from long ago and reiterated here again.)

4) population sizes change after changes/improvements based on feedback

 

That's my take. While some people undoubtedly feel like AFK'ing in a match is superior to suiciding, and that it is acceptable to use since the CXP and UC gain from GSF is great, I would encourage you developers not to remove these incentives simply because of bad behavior on the part of players. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, the "baby" in this case referring to wonderful CXP and UC yields. You should not penalize every GSF player simply because some recognize it is one of the best ways to earn CXP and UCs. Rather, use this as an opportunity to improve GSF for everyone.

[stu_ungar]

Love GSF.

 

My biggest issues:

- Ships should be legacy, I hate to have to grind on all my characters, and GSF grind is the most horrible one. Alternative to specialize just one char for flying sucks, I like to PVP on all my chars and would like to queue for GSF too.

- Beginning is steep, easy to make big mistakes by investing in wrong ships/skills the currency that is hard to grind. Reset and redistribution of points like in utility tree would be a great help.

- Horrible and too complicated UI for the hangar, this should be reworked first into something smaller and more readable.

- Locked companions that one should unlock with fleet reqs (bug?)

- Premades. I don't mind them at this stage as they usually pop on both sides these days, but used to be wipefests. Should be solved like unranked premades whatever solution comes for that (I vote for team gsf and team unranked, and automatic split based on valor/whatever is gsf valor equivalent for solo)

- Cheaters? Not sure about this one, there might be some scouts that have ability fly a weird way but I think it's just speed hack in space as movement is non linear and can't imagine any engine working that way for that long. Like in PVP solve with more diligence.

[ThutmoseV]

Because the learning curve is inherently steep, I think the best thing you could do is a large upgrade to the tutorial. Here are some suggestions:

 

1. Be able to select the ship you use in the tutorial, just as you do in a match. This is especially useful for gunships that have a completely different system for firing their railguns, and for people using rocket pods, which are different from lock on missiles. Bombers could drop their mines and drones to destroy the targets. You can try the engine abilities such as barrel roll and powerdive so you won't self destruct as often in a match. I think this one is the most important and if you only do one thing, this should be it.

 

2. Have moving targets to practice shooting at, just moving in a big circle. Maybe even 3 targets with 3 different speeds: non-boost, bomber boost, and scout boost.

 

3. Have a corner of the map with something that shoots at you, to practice defense. Maybe a missile sentry drone, so you can practice missile break abilities or LoS to break missile lock. Maybe a railgun sentry drone.

[DarthNillard]

There are a few gangs of super dedicated GSF "gangs" that fly around and queue up in groups of 6-8 and just completely wipe out people who randomly queue. It's like Pre-mades in ground PVP, but 1000% times worse. First, because GSF is literally it's own game. Nothing you learned playing your characters has any impact on your ability in GSF, it's completely a different skill set. So at the very least if you are a solid PVE player and know your class, you can have some success in ground PVP while you learn. YOu are literally starting from scratch in GSF. Tack on having an empty ship and going up against 4+ skilled pilots with completely kitted out ships, and you will get massacred and never want to play again. Then if you somehow look past all of that, you also have to deal with the super long queue times because everyone else is tired of dealing with the pre-made pilot groups and stop queuing. So why sit around in a queue all night for a few pops when you can do a ton of more ground PVP or pretty much anything else instead without sitting around.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Queue as ops groups

Please let us queue as ops groups as the current 4 person group system makes team matches very difficult

 

You want more and larger premade groups going into group finder matches? That would literally make things worse for anyone not in a pre-made.

 

Pre-mades should only exist in PVP when there are 2 pre-made teams arranged to face off.

[Brutonis]

New “training” areas unique to each ship type

 

This one is tricky IMO because if you do it too well then you potentially pull folks out of matches and into single player.

 

As many have stated the tutorial was garbage for everyone from month 2 forward. In the earliest days of GSF it was sufficient because everyone was feeling their way through the flight style at the same time. At release the in match experience was in many ways its own tutorial. But once veterans and aces became a thing and a meta evolved then the tutorial became useless for truly new players. About like letting someone drive a scooter long enough to keep it upright and then sitting them on a geared out racing cycle and expecting them to not break something 10 seconds into the ride. Sink or swim doesn't work for GSF.

 

Something of a single player mode would help here if it’s done well. We’re likely well past doing it right but for the sake of dreaming…

 

Create a handful of single player matches based around each ship type or role. There wouldn’t even need to be a beefed up ai to give a good test of the basics. Maybe even create a score based on how you fly that mode and have a few levels of difficulty. Then keep a scoreboard of sorts without names so people can gauge where they fell relative to someone else.

 

Gunships maybe get a target fest. Bottom level mode wouldn’t be much more than stationary bullseye targets and a timer to complete shooting everything. Middle level could add mine clearing and closer objective play. Advanced could add the need to hide and strafe to shoot and hide again.

 

Scouts might have two modes to work. One being a basic flying map. Keep the map open so it doesn’t feel like it’s on rails but it should have a track of sorts. On a basic level it’s not much more than flying straight and passing through gates within a timer. Imagine Denon with a few dozen gates to pass through scattered throughout the debris and ships. A middle level might constrict the flight area so the pilot has to avoid obstacles. Then on higher levels you add in needing to manage power and being careful about being in the open too long.

 

Another scout mode could be the basic kill a lot of stuff fast. Not sure how best to do that without it being implausible and getting away from it being useful for teaching the game. And a higher level would be hard to do without some ai work.

 

Bombers I’m not sure what you do. I guess something that strongly discourages one from sitting still, or ticking, and stresses the importance of not hanging your backside out in the open. Maybe a really small area to require movement and cooldown usage.

 

Strikes, well, they need a role first. But I guess you toss them into the scout modes with a tweak or two.

 

 

TL/DR

 

A bottom line here being to make a fun little challenge mode that vets could revisit to see how they score and new folks could push to get better at putting the circle in the circle and blasting without spray and pray. Make the areas relatively open and keep them active after completion so one could float around and play with the ship they are in. Beyond that, implement it how you please but focus on making folks use basic skills they need to use to live in actual matches.

 

One idea I liked that someone mentioned in GSF chat one night was after a match is complete allow people click off the scoreboard and actually fly around a bit. Maybe even allow combat to continue for those willing to be target dummies. It would be a way for at least screwing around in each map and trying stuff you couldn't during a match without hurting your team.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Brutonis

[HeatRacer]

Strike fighters have no role and suffer quite a bit against anyone who knows what they're doing. You guys knew this two years ago when you made the last Dev Pilgrimage here, and nothing has changed since. I'm sure you can refer to that 90 page behemoth of a thread to get some ideas, but "make them hit harder," "make them take a hit better," and "give them options to escape danger" are good starting thoughts.

 

If:

Scouts = highest burst and highest speed and maneuverability

Gunships = highest range

Bombers = highest armor and hull points

 

So expanding on a suggestion in one of the other threads, maybe Strikes could be highest "endurance", as in larger engine and blaster pools. They'd still be slower than the scouts, but would have the engine capacity to go farther, and to shoot more often, as befits a heavy fighter. This might be a nice boon to the class without having to redo components (which are often shared with other ships) or break the game.

[ThutmoseV]

On the issue of pre-mades, I think that it would be nice if 2 teams could prearrange a match and go against each other without using the regular queue. I think this would help the more casual player since the large teams would not be in their matches quite as much. I had the opportunity to participate in attempts at such matches, but we messed up the regular queue and we also often had trouble getting the 2 teams matched up against each other.

[Verain]

If:

Scouts = highest burst and highest speed and maneuverability

Gunships = highest range

Bombers = highest armor and hull points

 

These aren't roles, they are just observations.

 

The roles thus far are: defending an area, attacking from range, and dogfighting. Scouts and strikes are in the final bucket, along with the type 3 bomber. The "dogfighting" job is kinda divided into ships that offer buffs and debuffs, ships that deal wild damage, and ships that offer high maneuverability. The final two parts of that are both the battlescout though.

 

So expanding on a suggestion in one of the other threads, maybe Strikes could be highest "endurance", as in larger engine and blaster pools. They'd still be slower than the scouts, but would have the engine capacity to go farther, and to shoot more often, as befits a heavy fighter. This might be a nice boon to the class without having to redo components (which are often shared with other ships) or break the game.

 

How does this help strikes though? So a strike can shoot forever. Basically that is already true. Unlike scouts, they already have a magazine component which gives them extra regeneration or total power, or extra missiles. Does that matter if they can't get an enemy to stay inside their cone of effect?

 

Just yesterday I was missing three scouts at 13k. I was desperately trying to peel any of them before they ended my teammate, who was down below. Zero of my shots connected. Pretend any ONE of those stings had been replaced with a strike fighter. That would have helped me out a lot more- the strike would have had less engine once chasing my ally down there, he would have dealt less burst damage, he would have had a worse secondary weapon, he would have been much easier to outmaneuver, and I would have absolutely destroyed him because he would lack their evasion. Basically, their scoutball would have been a lot worse if a strike had replaced one of them.

Now replace one of them with the strike you just proposed. That would STILL have been against their own interests: the fact that a strike could be down there with a lot of blaster power wouldn't have helped him do that job. If he had changed his strategy and chased me, it would also have been better if he was yet another sting.

 

So how does that change help strikes? In the situation I described, there were THREE stings. Surely any buff to the strikes that gives them a job would at LEAST make a compelling reason for ONE of the stings to be a Rycer or a Quell.

 

Make buff proposals that actually help the class and increase ship diversity!

[MeNaCe-NZ]

On the issue of pre-mades, I think that it would be nice if 2 teams could prearrange a match and go against each other without using the regular queue. I think this would help the more casual player since the large teams would not be in their matches quite as much. I had the opportunity to participate in attempts at such matches, but we messed up the regular queue and we also often had trouble getting the 2 teams matched up against each other.

 

Yeah I can't believe functionality like this doesn't exist in the game for both PVP types.

 

Be it a pre-made only queue or a pre-arranged match as you have outlined, preferably both, it's crazy that all there is is just random matches for the most part.