GSF Discussion: Friction Points

[Verain]

Lagged ships would follow some imaginary trajectory not change it randomly while still being able to interact with objective/other players.

 

The trajectory can still appear "random" because the server is getting only intermittent updates from the player, which are incorrect. If you are facing due level north and boosting at time 0, you roll and pitch so you are now heading "down and east" and continue on that trajectory for several seconds until time 5, and all packets between 0 and 5 are lost, you might see a ship appear to boost north for 5 seconds then suddenly appear in a new direction, with the client drawing that as rapid movement. It looks exactly like what you are talking about, and it the natural result of player lag. Heck, I've even had nights where the whole server will be laggy for a few minutes and people will complain about it and then it will be normal again.

[Carnassis]

(1) In my opinion: Not really. Those who play the tutorial and read through the skill slots will have a pretty decent understanding of how to play. That being said, many players new to GSF may think so.. As the veterans are more than willing to off them right off the bat. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if there was a larger player base, so that these veterans are more spread out across the matches.

 

(2) Again: Not Really. Ships seem to be fairly balanced. With a little work, you can build any kind of ship to a point where they'll rip the enemies apart. The issue is more with player skill and willingness to cooperate.

 

(3) I've still been playing GSF... But I would appreciate having something new. We've been playing the same game types and maps for far too long. There needs to be some more variety... Something fresh to bring life back into GSF.

 

(4) There is a big problem with matchmaking. No one on BC wants to play GSF any more, even after the recent update. I can spend hours in a Queue waiting for just a single match. While I may love GSF, it's very clear that most players don't, right now. There needs to be something new to draw them in, or give them more incentive to play.

 

(5) Admittedly, the fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy based makes things pretty difficult. I often shy away from playing on new characters, simply because I dread having to work so hard, again, just to get my ships up to spec. A Legacy-wide system for this would be appreciated.

[Verain]

If speedhacking were a thing in GSF on a regular basis we'd see it in Domination matches where getting to the satellites first can outright win games.

 

Agreed, and if ANY hacking was a common, uncommon, or even rare thing in GSF, we'd at least see it sometimes. I mean, like, regular GSFers, many of whom cross servers, do not report an epidemic of hacking. It's either very rare or nonexistent. The fact that it is seen exclusively by new players who are listing stuff about a game (in every case, at least one of which is trivially wrong, and usually most of it) that they don't understand, is very telling. It's mostly some kind of imaginary creature, only in the minds of noobs.

[DanNV]

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

The learning curve is VERY steep. However, I don't know if a way to change that. Unfortunately, issues with matchmaking and equipment make the learning curve issue substantially worse.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

Type to type, no. Beginner ship to fully modded out, yes. Mods for the ships make WAY too much difference. Just like regular PVP, skill should be the issue, not gear, but you've done GSF to make gear even more of an issue than it is in regular PVP. You need to change all PVP to be skill based, not gear based. Gear progression shold not be a factor in PVP.

 

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

 

Not me, no.

 

Matchmaking issues?

 

The matchmaking algorithms are totalyl broken throughout the game. Making teams of similar skill and then trying to match them to other teams is the backwards way to do matchmaking and why you end up with teams steamrollering other teams.

 

Matchmaking should match opposing players of similar skill then create teams from those matched pairs. That way your teams have approximately equal skill levels.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

 

BW needs to go back and look at the legacy system. It has lots of potential but has been pretty much ignored since it was released (like many other things in the game - seeker droids, anyone?). There should be a lot more use of legacy in general and the perks should never have been moved to such a front loaded setup. So, GSF should be legacy. CXP should be legacy. Etc. Etc.

 

When I (rarely anymore) do GSF, I stop queuing when there are players who manage to skip around the map, sometimes to crazy distances, and you can't lock onto them or when people are moving just crazy fast. I know there are people who claim those issues don't exist or are just lag, but I don't buy it. People don't just happen to get lag as soon as someone starts shooting at them and they don't just magically go crazy fast because of lag.

Edited July 7, 2017 by DanNV

[Ramalina]

No, it really doesn't say everything about ship balance. It says that the players on your team do not know how to counter that tactic the enemy is using. Stacking any ship type (or even a mixed comp like you cite) requires an appropriate counter. This is a knowledge problem, not a game problem. Scouts, used properly, are extremely deadly against gunships. They can melt a gunship very quickly. With some team support, a few scouts and a mixed comp of other ships (a few gunships, a bomber or two for support) can be very reactive and proactive.

 

, , . . . .

 

GSF has never been a 'dogfighting' game. There is an element of that in GSF, but it isn't its focus, which is tactical space battles using a mix of ships and roles. The funny thing is, if most people had experienced a scouts-only TDM, they would know that it is one of the more frustrating experiences in the game because everything has a ton of Evasion and ample missile breaks. Shots rarely land. People just swirl in circles not hitting anything for large stretches of time.

 

Couldn't pass up the urge to have minor quibbles with these bits.

 

GSF was a pretty dogfighty game to start out with. Evasion and Barrel Roll mobility made gunships weaker against scouts than they currently are and there were no bomber minefields for gunships to retreat to. Gunships were fearsome, but charging in at a whole team of them in a scout was a lot more viable than it is today. The current meta is better I think, because Battlescout swarms are not as fun as one might initially hope, but GSF is not as dogfighty as it once was.

 

While stacking certainly doesn't say an awful lot about balance, it isn't free of effects on balance. The effects can be pretty powerful. Gunships and bombers stack well and stack easily, and once they are stacked the easiest way by far to counter that is by mirroring the stacking. Scouts don't really stack well (unless hunting strikes hidden in cover), and strikes have deadly allergies to stacking. On the whole it motivates a meta shift to teams that are mostly gunships with a few bombers for backup in TDMs and bombers with a few gunships and one tensor scout in Domination matches. Granted this is really strong only in certain brackets of skill, but those brackets happen to characterize the vast majority of GSF games played. Once players figure this out it also discourages them from spending enough time in scouts and strikes to gain the experience needed to deal with stacked bombers and gunships. It varies by server culture of course, but there is a real gameplay incentive that could be considered to favor a sort of "degenerate" balance.

 

The problem is that ranged fire support and area denial are critical to balance at moderate to high levels of skill, so you can't go crippling those roles.

 

Stealth ships were too hard to balance properly, but I think they were probably intended to have a "stack breaker" effect that would have likely been particularly effective against low to moderate skill players. Noobs in general find stealth killers hard to deal with in MMOs.

 

Batllescouts are semi-decent stack breakers but it requires pilots of a skill level that are in short supply.

 

Making it so that strikes aren't such easy food for stacks of other classes would help considerably. Bomber and gunship stacks aren't feeding on gunships and bombers as much as they are on scouts and strikes that don't have the skills to handle them.

 

I think there's also a certain amount of betrayal of expectations going on. In a Star Wars context you say, "starfighter battle," and the typical first reaction is X-wings and TIEs in a dogfight. GSF presents itself in a way that caters to that assumption. So when you get into GSF on a sever where there's a lot of stacking and discover a game that's basically "bombs and sniper rifles" there's a very good case to be made if a new player says in effect, "this is not what your ad was selling me and this is not what I signed up for, refund please."

 

 

I don't know that this is something that has to be addressed outside of hopefully making strikes strong enough to be viable in high skill brackets, but to the extent that this stacking incentive can be cured (probably not a great extent given the way gunship and bomber roles work mechanically) without breaking things in the moderate to high skill brackets it would be a very good thing to do.

 

Edit: even things like changing default ship loadouts would help. If you're not quite sure what you're doing there's a substantial difference between flying a T1 scout with Distortion Field past a cluster of gunships versus flying one with Quick Charge.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Ramalina

[Verain]

Yes, it is rather steep, especially for Strikes and Scouts. The Gunship curve is way easier.

 

Ah, I can see where this is going. This is a "nerf gunships" thread, with "nerf bombers" thrown in. Your "friction point" is that you don't like the game GSF is at all, and you want a game built around two classes instead of three. Instead of fixing strike fighters to have a job, you want them buffed in some way that makes them and scouts the only real choices.

 

Right now, mines go away in one hit, and have a very short cooldown, and drones take a player to actually swap to and expend some kind of resources on, and have 60 or 90 second cooldowns. Why should such a long cooldown have to bother enemy players effectively not at all? Calling railgun sentry drone a "mini gunship" is pretty silly. The railgun drone has a 10km range, a scout boosting at one in open space will trivially pop it without cooldowns. It has to charge, will have its shots cancelled by line of sight, and deals 715 damage if upgraded, with 20% shield piercing and full armor and evasion ignore (you can have less damage for a faster charge, or extra shield piercing for full armor ignore). It's main purpose is to deny effortless entry into a small section of space by a lone scout. It's main advantage versus scouts is that it ignores evasion. This all combines to form something that doesn't act like a gunship at all- it doesn't deal burst damage like a gunship, and evasion, a highly effective defense versus a gunship, is nothing at all versus a railgun drone.

 

Mostly, your post is "please nerf paper, paper wildly op. Signed, Rock"

Edited July 7, 2017 by Verain

[MakArdross]

Combine the requisitions, oh wait, you need two different types for people to spend cartel coins on the conversions. Money scams.

[Verain]

Also: A big "friction point" for me is, there are not enough maps and game modes. If you build a world of node defense maps and deathmatch maps, people will ask for nerfs and buffs within that world. We have entire ship builds that are only good at ONE of the play types: there's almost no need for a minelayer in TDM: their mines defend tight spaces which don't matter, and they don't offer meaningful defenses to their allies. There's little need for a dronecarrier in Domination: their mines aren't as devastating as those of a minelayer, and they can't talent charged plating and will usually lose a 1v1 versus a minelayer on a node. Meanwhile, gunships can choose to play a "fast game" or a "slow game", as a team, on TDM, but they have no such control over the pacing of the game in domination. Strike fighters are much stronger in Kuat TDM than Shipyards TDM, as a strike fighter in Kuat TDM is almost always near something that will provide it cover from the two ship classes that can farm it hard in open space, scouts and gunships. This doesn't make them good at that map, but it is still a shocking difference in total playability.

 

Finally, minelayers on Denon are vastly more powerful than on other maps. Playing one isn't more fun: you have to run across open space much more, all three nodes allow gunships to snipe you from pretty much any angle unlike the other two dominations. But the vast distances of the respawn mean that a hyperbeacon that lives for 30 seconds has made a massive difference.

 

In a universe with only five maps, even a small imbalance on one map will deeply flavor the team perception of it.

 

 

If we had different game modes, we wouldn't have this perception. Missing game modes proven in other broadly similar games include "capture the flag" and "search and destroy", with most of the fans of Star Wars suggesting more objective based play, such as teams attempting to escort a tanky-but-helpless convoy, a strike on a capital ship, or other modes tightly integrated into the lore and mechanics of Star Wars. The ONLY reason you don't see experienced pilots clamoring for this sort of stuff nonstop is that we figure it is broadly very expensive and would require development effort well outside of whatever budget our devs have. Most of the balance fixes recommended over a long term on this forum are built with the idea of making as many ships, and the neglected fourth class, viable in the current meta, which arises in huge part from the game modes and maps available.

[wvwraith]

Eric, I've been playing GSF since the beginning and I've been burnt out several times and come back. Here's some of my 2 cents.

 

 

 

1. Shields need to come back into play. There's too many overpowered weapons that cut through them like butter.

 

2, The following needs nerfed down. Rockets: no secondary weapon should be able to be spewed faster than putting quarters in an arcade. They're too cheap with targeting tt. Burst: The close range damage this has is close to ridiculous. Rockets/Burst can melt anything in a couple seconds. Shields are worthless against this combination. Railguns can be nerfed, but ion is a different case unless there's adjustment made to bombers as well. Railgun sentry on bomber: If gunship railguns can miss, so should the sentries.

 

3. Strikes are in desperate need of a buff. A scout should never be able to melt through a strike like nothing. They need to be top fighting ship hence the name "Strike."

 

4. More maps. I would love, love, love, to see a battle maybe over a city or even right over the Odessen base would be nice.

 

5. New objective maps. Take out the enemy's commandship would bring in a new element to gsf. I've seen a lot of people talking about how exciting this one would be.

 

 

7. New ship designs, color schemes, etc. I think Zakullian fighters should be in the mix now. Whether you have to unlock them, etc would be really nice.

 

 

8. More gsf themed armor, titles,

 

 

9 How about a combo pvp/gsf called the land and air war or something. Get a new companion, or something.

 

That's it for now...

[Rion_Starkiller]

The only reason I never got into GSF is because it is difficult to aim.

 

I know it is probably a L2P issue, but that's the reason. It's pvp - I want to pew pew at people and blow them up! Why so hard to aim?

 

Therefore, I don't play. I would be a burden to teammates. I occasionally play Space Missions though. One day the Hyperspace Legend legacy title will be mine.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Rion_Starkiller

[Verain]

2, The following needs nerfed down. Rockets: no secondary weapon should be able to be spewed faster than putting quarters in an arcade. They're too cheap with targeting tt. Burst: The close range damage this has is close to ridiculous. Rockets/Burst can melt anything in a couple seconds.

 

This is a nerf to time-to-kill, pretty much across the map though. It seems odd that burst/pods builds can go through bombers so easily, but it isn't even the top build for burst dps (that would be quads-and-pods in practice, and lights/pods in theory).

 

Increasing time-to-kill with this mechanism would be a buff to bombers and a buff to gunships. Do you *really* think time-to-kill is too low across the board? I feel that if gunships had more time to escape a scout in melee, they would be able to rain devastating damage across the map in the extra time they would get from a rocket pods nerf.

 

Remember that, at this point, the "good" weapons systems are almost exclusively selected. Both cluster missiles and rocket pods are capable of good damage, with different strengths. I get your complaint about how fast a scout can take apart a strike, but this really feels like it is something that should be fixed on the strike end. The ability to put pressure on gunships with scouts is very important, though, and we shouldn't lose that.

 

I wouldn't mind if the battle scout was less effective on bombers, however. That seems like an out-of-class strength. But you could do that without making them worse at dogfighting or gunship popping.

[ImmortalLowlife]

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.

 

I'm in THIS category. If I could use a controller or a joystick I'd play GSF. As it stands.....I find the "chase the crosshair with the mouse" control scheme absolutely unplayable. I tried several times in the tutorial mode just to see if I could acclimate myself to the controls and found I hated every minute of it. I remember seeing lots of players ask for this before and right after it launched. Maybe you'd see an increase in players if you gave us the option of control methods.

[Icykill_]

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

 

The short answers are -

the learning curve is too steep against current GSF players

GSF needs a lot to bring into it.

 

Long answer -

 

When GSF was announced I was excited. I envisaged a space flight combat simulator with story. Like the Xwing vs Tie Fighter of old.

I had friends I used to play the old Star Wars flight sim games with all lined up to join swtor. Some were still addicted to Warcraft and GSF was my chance to break them from it and come play swtor. Others weren't big MMO players, but would have jumped at a chance of another real SW space sim.

The fact that GSF wasn't even a shadow of those is why it failed in my belief. IMO GSF is nothing more than a generic console type space shooter (with a mouse control??), there is nothing SW about it. At least the space missions on rails felt like SW and even had the most minimal of story behind each mission. You would have been better off making those free flight and having us attacking those objectives with real players defending.

But to add insult to injury, there was no joystick support. I'd even dusted off my old Joystick so I could use it. How can you immerse yourself in a Star Wars space Fighter with a mouse and keyboard when we know they had joystick controls.

I tried GSF when it came and was so disappointed that I've only been back about 12 times just to make sure I really hated it or I was just so annoyed it wasn't like Xwing vs Tie fighter. (For the record it's terrible)

Those early Lucas Arts Star Wars sims that started with Xwing and went through to Xwing Alliance are still the benchmark for most space Fighter type sims, They are certainly the benchmark for any Star Wars space battles. All of those game are 20 years old and they are better than GSF. Seriously guys, you would have been better off getting permission from Disney/Lucas to adapt those Ship models, flight mechanics and reskinned the ships and upgrade the graphics.

Anyway, I can't think of any reason I would play GSF in its current form. The first step to temping me back would be with real joystick options

The second would be story or real goal other than guard some silly beacon.

The third would be to make it feel like SW.

[stu_ungar]

Ships skipping around is diagnostic of lag. .

 

No it isn't. You either don't know what are you talking about or you're using the cheater mod yourself and don't want to lose the investment. We had this EXACT same discussion for ground PVP where people would go "I play PVP all my life and I never seen it", "that is not cheating it's lag", "lol you don't understand utilities" for YEARS, until J***** started posting youtube videos where he uses mod to fly out of the arena to sit out the match. EVEN TODAY with all the videos there are people on PVP forum that claim there are no cheaters.

 

I mean seriously... If you don't know what we're talking about ask for clarification or try to find sources yourself. Here's what typical speedhack looks in space:

http://imgur.com/a/V9h4z

So there is no ship, engine or utility that would make such lack of trajectory in specified time with or without lag. If enemy on the right was lagging for example it would be stuck in position 1 for 3 seconds, than jump to position 4 then 5. Maybe he would rubberband back to position 3. But it would never be out of possible trajectory that ship could have in those 5 seconds and it surely wouldn't be possible to interact with objectives in real time.

[Otaktey]

I love GSF. I'm an older gamer, I've player all the Lucas Arts games since 1995. GSF is disappointing to me in only one way, no Joystick support. This topic was all over the forums when GSF was released, and the Devs in that day did not give any feedback from their end. For your "Old School" gamers, joystick support would really make it fun, like all the old school flight combat games. I'm sure Keith can relate if he played those games back in the day.

 

Another thing I think will help is making the ship progression Legacy wide. I have a couple of toons with maxed out ships and I do very well with those ships. It is very frustrating for the Altoholic, like myself, to jump in on a GSF on the new Alt and have such a wimpy ship to play. It is hard to re-invest all that time to leveling up another ship on a game mode that really doesn't get a lot of queue pops anyhow.

[worexx]

Hi Eric

 

Great that BW starts to evaluate, whats went wrong with GSF. Here my suggestions....

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

[/color]

 

 

Flat? Are you kidding us? Eric, for beginners its a complete new PVP game: 4 new classes with sub classes, skill trees and 3D BG without bolstering. For beginners, it’s frustrating to die again and again. realize later that they have chosen/equipped the wrong ship. You spend hours the study guides, learn to fly, learn to fire and later learn to survive. In this time, you are the millstone around you teams neck. It’s like a 4vs4 arena at lvl 70 where you have lvl 20. No skills, no skill and small progress. In guides, often its mention you need 100 games to convert from noobs to an active team member. But SWTOR is casual gaming. Why should someone spend this frustrating time with GSF? For what? And on the other hand, why adv gamer must play with noobs? For the last question, the answer is simple. Because there are too few GSF player to implement the same system as for normal PVP. Any Idea why? ;-)

 

You add ships in the last patch to the start hangar. Really? Why? GSF for beginners is too complex and you increase this?You must realizie that GSF is a game within a game, with currently a short, really bad tutorial.

For most of the player, I assume, GSF is not fun, its only to equip PVE chars

 

[*]Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

no, in my experience, games are normally not balanced, because one side dominates from the beginning and win easily. Its often not a fight, its farming. Beginners in death matches are highly welcome! From the other team.

If ship would be the problem, all would play the same ship/class and games would be more balanced, or not?

 

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

Do you want to get more players or only keep the current players? If you need only the current player, design new maps. If you want new players, you need to reduce the complexity. Eg introduce a ship selector, where new player choose between rDD, mDD, tanks, healer or supporter or how you would call the different ships. And a tutorial where player learn to play basics of their class. Add a similar system like we have for normal pvp with low, mid and high and arena lvl.

 

[*]Matchmaking issues?

See above. I suggest that player with the same skill lvl, experience should play in their own league (eg. games, kill ratio, ship equipment… ). If the population is to low, connect servers.

 

 

[*]The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

Yes, I totally agree. It makes sense that a sniper character cannot heal in PVP but it doesn’t make sense that each character need their own hangar. If we would have a legacy hangar, not only legacy token, player would equip ships faster and would be more focused on game play. You could implement a legacy equipment like we have for PVE/PVP where part of the equipment is lagecy wide usable and part of it not.

 

cheers

[Verain]

No it isn't. You either don't know what are you talking about or you're using the cheater mod yourself and don't want to lose the investment.

 

In any reasonable forum, you would be banned immediately for accusing Ramalina of cheating, even by implication. That's simply disgusting, and a ludicrous assertion. The mods here are overly generous towards such things, so I'm sure your post will stay.

 

Client side hacks (teleport hacks specifically) are technically possible on GSF. But they are either nonexistent, or so rare as to basically be nonexistent. So much of GSF happens server side, and hacking would be VERY obvious to habitual players. MUCH more relevantly, the high speed relative to character size means that you will see lag look like someone zipping around the map.

 

We had this EXACT same discussion for ground PVP where people would go "I play PVP all my life and I never seen it"

 

Ground pvp is a different beast. In ground pvp, cheaters have to work hard not to get caught, and the maps often give them a serious advantage for doing so, especially regarding things like "a debuff hits the arena that will kill everyone, but the cheating stealther can teleport out of its range, and the opposing team won't know it". Additionally a small teleport hack can give a big advantage and appear like lag, whereas in GSF, honestly, we'd know it unless the cheater was VERY subtle. Out of a field of cheaters, some are subtle, others are not smart, and we'd see the not smart ones and deduce the hack.

 

 

I've been the lagger, and I've been the laggee. I never see a fight where someone has magical lag that actually saves them, especially given how the server will often decide that your lagging has taken you through a mine or structure and explodes you. A teleport hack would not let you escape these risks.

 

Anyway, hacks in GSF are super rare to nonexistent. The mechanics of flight are simply not the same beast as the ground game.

 

I'll call them all cheaters, that's a good trick!

-you, probably

[Pilgrim_Grey]

Type to type, no. Beginner ship to fully modded out, yes. Mods for the ships make WAY too much difference. Just like regular PVP, skill should be the issue, not gear, but you've done GSF to make gear even more of an issue than it is in regular PVP. You need to change all PVP to be skill based, not gear based. Gear progression shold not be a factor in PVP.

 

The matchmaking algorithms are totalyl broken throughout the game. Making teams of similar skill and then trying to match them to other teams is the backwards way to do matchmaking and why you end up with teams steamrollering other teams.

 

Well, for one thing, if you're going to have mods, they should make some kind of difference, otherwise there's no point in having them. And the ones that make a real difference (that I miss when I'm on a young alt without much req) are disto field's missile break, the CD's on missile breaks (and reduced costs), Slug rail's armor ignore, and ion rail's aoe effect (which you really need to help with a bomber). Everything else is just gravy, and all those things I noted are not top tier and much, much cheaper to get than they used to be.

 

A possible change would be to have players choose from secondary effects (disto field missile break, ion's aoe) at base and just up different stats with the other tiers, but even that skirts close "we might as well just remove all upgrades," which isn't a good option either. It'd be much better to spend this time on making the different gear choices mean something.

 

Gear isn't the issue in GSF, skill level is, and they just don't have a meaningful way to separate us by skill: req levels are meaningless in that metric, it just means time invested. And unless they do cross-server queues, breaking up those queueing in anyway is detrimental, as then we'll never see pops (not like they happen very fast these days anyway). A more robust tutorial that grouped players could join would make a big difference there, but even then, there's nothing like a real match for you to realize how much skill you need.

 

Just like with any FPS, there are people uncanny good at sniping, people that are good, and people that really shouldn't that still keep doing it. You'll see it in Team Fortress or Battlefield, or any game. And GSF really is an FPS in many ways: you have to be able to move and shoot well, making use of your abilities.

[Otaktey]

The short answers are -

the learning curve is too steep against current GSF players

GSF needs a lot to bring into it.

 

Long answer -

 

When GSF was announced I was excited. I envisaged a space flight combat simulator with story. Like the Xwing vs Tie Fighter of old.

I had friends I used to play the old Star Wars flight sim games with all lined up to join swtor. Some were still addicted to Warcraft and GSF was my chance to break them from it and come play swtor. Others weren't big MMO players, but would have jumped at a chance of another real SW space sim.

The fact that GSF wasn't even a shadow of those is why it failed in my belief. IMO GSF is nothing more than a generic console type space shooter (with a mouse control??), there is nothing SW about it. At least the space missions on rails felt like SW and even had the most minimal of story behind each mission. You would have been better off making those free flight and having us attacking those objectives with real players defending.

But to add insult to injury, there was no joystick support. I'd even dusted off my old Joystick so I could use it. How can you immerse yourself in a Star Wars space Fighter with a mouse and keyboard when we know they had joystick controls.

I tried GSF when it came and was so disappointed that I've only been back about 12 times just to make sure I really hated it or I was just so annoyed it wasn't like Xwing vs Tie fighter. (For the record it's terrible)

Those early Lucas Arts Star Wars sims that started with Xwing and went through to Xwing Alliance are still the benchmark for most space Fighter type sims, They are certainly the benchmark for any Star Wars space battles. All of those game are 20 years old and they are better than GSF. Seriously guys, you would have been better off getting permission from Disney/Lucas to adapt those Ship models, flight mechanics and reskinned the ships and upgrade the graphics.

Anyway, I can't think of any reason I would play GSF in its current form. The first step to temping me back would be with real joystick options

The second would be story or real goal other than guard some silly beacon.

The third would be to make it feel like SW.

 

100% agree with you ICY! What were they thinking to even consider a Space Combat game mode without a Joystick? The Devs of that day were very far removed from the gaming community when GSF was released. I had already made my post for this thread from the Dev Tracker page. I didn't read any posts here first. I propose that we put it on the test server and give it a go.

To Devs: please don't try to say that it is not possible to give joystick support. The joystick is just another mouse on the programming end. It was easy to give mouse and joystick support for windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP, and so on. Also, you've already separated the Key bindings for GSF from other game modes, so the game engine already recognizes the GSF controls as a separate entity.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

I'm in THIS category. If I could use a controller or a joystick I'd play GSF. As it stands.....I find the "chase the crosshair with the mouse" control scheme absolutely unplayable. I tried several times in the tutorial mode just to see if I could acclimate myself to the controls and found I hated every minute of it. I remember seeing lots of players ask for this before and right after it launched. Maybe you'd see an increase in players if you gave us the option of control methods.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing joysticks enabled. I'm really not sure why they aren't, as it's basically the equivalent of how Battlefield works when you hop in a plane or helicopter. GSF really is basically an FPS, but with that vehicle element added to it.

 

But just realize if they did add it, you'd still be playing a "chase the crosshair" game, as everything in GSF is structured around that crosshair: the whole thing is structured around it, and they're not going to rework for something that foundational. It's an arcadey space combat game, not a flight sim. Not sure if that's what you're longing for, but some of the "needs joystick support" crowd still seem to long for a flight sim or something like the old TIE Fighter game, which is not what GSF is at all.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Pilgrim_Grey

[ImmortalLowlife]

I wouldn't mind seeing joysticks enabled. I'm really not sure why they aren't, as it's basically the equivalent of how Battlefield works when you hop in a plane or helicopter. GSF really is basically an FPS, but with that vehicle element added to it.

 

But just realize if they did add it, you'd still be playing a "chase the crosshair" game, as everything in GSF is structured around that crosshair: the whole thing is structured around it, and they're not going to rework for something that foundational. It's an arcadey space combat game, not a flight sim. Not sure if that's what you're longing for, but some of the "needs joystick support" crowd still seem to long for a flight sim or something like the old TIE Fighter game, which is not what GSF is at all.

 

Actually....I'm more of the old "Jedi starfighter, pilot wings, wing commander, or my favorite....Rogue Squadron" type player. I'm primarily a console gamer and I'm better with a controller.

[Stncold]

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...

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

I don't really have much to add except for quoting this so it gets the attention it needs.

 

The only thing I'd really add is to either remove TDM or at give an option to not get queued into it. I'd gladly wait an extra 10-20 minutes for pops if it means not having to do TDM Shipyards like ever. Almost everyone I talk to hates it with a passion because it turns into a gunship fest and understandably so.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Stncold

[naganje]

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

It would be great if the tutorial included some form of moving target practice. A lot of my guildies couldn't really get into GSF because they couldn't wrap their heads around aiming even after reading or hearing what to do. Would be nice if they and other people like them could practice without being shot at.

 

Matchmaking issues?

I love domination, but if I've been in way too many Gunships vs Gunships TDM matches on the Red Eclipse, maybe with the odd 1-2 scout(s) and a bomber to drop repair drones. If you get two evenly matched teams it usually ends with neither one of them getting 50 kills before the timer runs out. I've even been in matches where the winning team didn't even hit 30 kills. TDM should force people to move around. One way to do it is to follow the example of competitive mods in FPS games which restrict the number of players per class in a team.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

I wouldn't make it legacy, but Imp/Pub based. It kinda makes sense for all your characters to share a hangar. However, now that the upgrade costs have been significantly lowered I don't think GSF being character based is a major issue.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

Actually....I'm more of the old "Jedi starfighter, pilot wings, wing commander, or my favorite....Rogue Squadron" type player. I'm primarily a console gamer and I'm better with a controller.

 

I thought so, from how you posted. I mostly added that in there as some posting in thread and in the past are like "I wanted a SIM" or something hardcore along those lines, which is clearly what GSF is not intended to be, and frankly would not be a very big draw. Games like Battlefield, Rogue Squadron, etc., show that a lot more people like a more arcadey approach. And yeah, I don't see why joysticks or controllers can't work with GSF. I personally prefer mouse since I played a lot of FPS on the PC, not consoles (I don't know why people prefer controllers, they're so imprecise for aiming). But I get that people want it.

 

Oh, and that's not to say people shouldn't like flight sims or something like TIE fighter, just realize that they're not a big draw for a lot of people.

[BenKatarn]

To give some background about myself, I was initially pretty hyped for GSF (I have a background with X-Wing Alliance and the Rogue Squadron series, so I can switch between "realistic" and "arcade" space shooters pretty well) and played it a lot initially during the early access period. I did kind of lose interest afterwards when it became available to all players and bombers were introduced to the mix. I later returned to it during early 4.0 when it was actually somewhat viable for credits and experience, as well as conquest points, and it was great when I had some guildies play it with me (that generally increases the PVP enjoyment severalfold for me, specifically with voice chat).

 

Nowadays I play GSF very infrequentl. There have been months where I didn't play it at all, and there have been months where I completed the Weekly several times. I believe this to be because of the meta state of the game and the fact that fewer people want to play it (which may in turn also be related to the meta.

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

As a lot of people already pointed out, the tutorial for GSF is abysmal because you have no enemies. If it's good for anything, it's for learning general flight controls, but most certainly not for learning how to play or how to fight. It also doesn't help that you have no choice in what ship you want to do the tutorial, which means you have to test new ships during a live match.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

Gunships and bombers reign supreme in GSF, they really need to be brought more in line with the other ship classes (or in the case of Strike Fighters, buffed significantly).

 

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

 

GSF needs a massive overhaul. We only have two gameplay modes (Domination and TDM) and three maps, one of which doesn't even support TDM (Denon Exosphere). There needs to be more variety, and more content in general. As people have mentioned, something like a capital ship battle with an attack / defend mechanic like Voidstar would be cool. In general, a problem I have with GSF is that it's so dominated by gunships at the moment that actual dogfighting rarely happens.

 

 

Matchmaking issues?

 

Related to the learning curve, it's not very fun at all when you have a match of new players against a squadron of veterans with upgraded/mastered ships. That in turn can frustrate new players pretty easily, because playing for the first time (or on a new character) usually results in having to "die through matches" in order to get requisition to upgrade your ship.

 

There is also the issue of group constallations. Depending on the gameplay type, you will fight against a squadron that consists mostly of the same ship. This is especially true during TDM on Lost Shipyards, where I have regularly run into an enemy squadron consisting of 5 to 6 gunships sniping other players, a bomber or two to help entrench and heal the gunships and the occasional oddball scout or strike fighter running interference to get people hiding behind astroids or structures out of cover so the gunships can farm them.

 

I feel that there should be some sort of enforced squadron balance, so that an entire squad isn't composed of gunships, but on the other hand there are certain ship types I don't want to play either (I mainly play scouts, because of versatility and the fact that they are the best looking ships in my opinion). But having a more versatile squad should have some benefits. While Overwatch (to my knowledge) doesn't force a team to have a balanced setup, it is most definately encouraged, though Overwatch's objective-based multiplayer can hardly be compared to GSF.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

 

GSF should never have been a character-based activity. As others have pointed out, having another grind on a character besides the "ground game" equipment really isn't helpful. It is pretty obvious that GSF was initially designed to fully support the use of Cartel Coins, with it even having its own subsection in the Cartel Market, but that ship obviously has sailed by now. Fleet Requisition should be a legacy currency by now to assist people with alts to try out GSF on other characters. For instance, I have several fully upgraded ships on my Imperial main, whereas by Republic main barely has anything. I must have something in the vicinity of 100.000 points of Fleet Requisition on my Imperial main that I have no use for because have nothing to spend it on.

Edited July 7, 2017 by BenKatarn