Wow 5.5 .....

[caederon]

The significant gear grind might have served a purpose, though. It was drawn out for so long, that, as you played, you got a tangible improvement to your ship (upgrades) as you were getting tangible improvements to your player-skill level.

This growth period only matters when there is a large enough player pool to pit you consistently against people who have roughly the same level of gear. There isn't, now. While gear doesn't magically make someone competitive, it helps.

 

Raising up the floor has been the natural progression of PvP games for a very, very long time. If the floor is high enough to keep Drak's group from roflstomping every pug it comes across 50/5 or 1000/100, it's going to be much, much less inviting for anyone else new, because they'll have that much harder of a time getting That First Kill.

In a game where all players are in the same pool with no dividers to keep them apart, there is no other solution.

 

There is no barrier to meaningful participation that can't be vaulted by even the total novice.

 

New pilots need the following...

1. basic knowledge of where to be at a given time and how to use your controls to get there
   
2. basic knowledge of what weapons to use against which targets
   
3. the physical skills to lock a missile
   
4. knowledge of which ships or other targets they ought to lock that missile onto
   
5. a drive to improve and desire to play GSF that isn't based on CXP
   

_

That doesn't seem like too tall an order.

 

- Despon

Edited November 12, 2017 by caederon

[Ramalina]

If the matchmaker weren't so opposed to making balanced matches we could balance ourselves at this point. Between Discord for communication and only a few servers it wouldn't be that hard.

 

Fire the matchmaking algorithm and download a copy of Ianir's brain into the datacenters. We know Ianir's matchmaking works.

[ALaggyGrunt]

Come to think of it, "stop spawning" is an interesting tactic on its own.

 

Mechanically, it's "I don't want to deal with the match so I won't."

 

From a metagame standpoint, it's quite literally weaponized boredom (a concept I first saw utilized in probably 2005 in a small EVE-like game). The only thing more boring than farming a ship whose pilot has given up and stopped bothering to fly it is to not have anything to farm at all. It is a functional strategy, and much easier to coordinate than trying to actually hold a node against a much stronger team determined to hold all three or "finish the match" and play perfectly. Whatever hasn't spawned can't be shot down, and it's a tactic literally anyone can use once they know it's available.

 

It would make for an incredibly boring stream. The audience came to see things explode, and nothing exploded! Am disappoint! But, that's another problem that's shown up in a lot of games in recent times: they're more fun to watch than to play, and people have learned that let's-plays and Twitch streams are both cheaper and less frustrating than actually playing.

 

If we want to avoid that, maybe overextending the team is the best strategy for the best players: maybe nothing encourages a newbie like "This guy was totally wrecking our team and I got him!"

 

This growth period only matters when there is a large enough player pool to pit you consistently against people who have rouly the same level of gear. There isn't, now. While gear doesn't magically make someone competitive, it helps.

 

 

In a game where all players are in the same pool with no dividers to keep them apart, there is no other solution.

 

There is no barrier to meaningful participation that can't be vaulted by even the total novice.

 

New pilots need the following...

1. basic knowledge of where to be at a given time and how to use your controls to get there
   
2. basic knowledge of what weapons to use against which targets
   
3. the physical skills to lock a missile
   
4. knowledge of which ships or other targets they ought to lock that missile onto
   
5. a drive to improve and desire to play GSF that isn't based on CXP
   

_

That doesn't seem like too tall an order.

 

- Despon

 

"A drive to improve and desire to play" should be #1 on that list. It is the one and only reason any of us bothered to git gud. It comes before everything else. It's the only reason anyone is going to bother to get the other skills. And, for some reason, the learning curve is usually stronger.

 

Most of the newbies who stick their toes into any of the PvP in the game come to the conclusion: "The only winning move is not to play," or "I'm so bad there's no point in trying." We can say these players wrote a self-fulfilling prophecy all you want, and we can call these players entitled children if we want (that one is very much in vogue in any EA game forum and occasionally right), but that's part of the reality we might be dealing with.

[Alzim]

"This guy was totally wrecking our team and I got him!"

 

A powerful motivation - speaking from personal experience. (and one kill is enough to trigger that in this situation ...)

 

Oh, and if you're a beginner and some sort of premade or a single "ace" pilot is annoying you, because he's just too good and dominates/wins every match for the opposing faction: play a couple matches against him/them and try to improve/learn, but quit the queue for some time and come back later/another day if it gets too frustrating (instead of continuing and perhaps ragequitting GSF forever). At least that's the way how I handle it.

[RickDagles]

The problem with premades is that you don't need one 95% of the time, and therefore 95% of the games become stomps. But when the other side forms a decent team then you get premade vs premade battles which are by far the most fun and intense part of this game. In a perfect world we would just organize premade vs premade 8v8 battles or even premade 4v4 battles. I know it's frustrating to lose when you get unlucky with bad 'extra' teammates, but isn't it more frustrating wasting hours without any real competition? Edited November 13, 2017 by RickDagles

[Stellarcrusade]

If the matchmaker weren't so opposed to making balanced matches we could balance ourselves at this point. Between Discord for communication and only a few servers it wouldn't be that hard.

 

Fire the matchmaking algorithm and download a copy of Ianir's brain into the datacenters. We know Ianir's matchmaking works.

 

Unfortunately unless the "matchmakinger" would be able to split up teams of 4 super-veterans and make it cross-faction, there isn't much it can really do. Premades are not really a problem, premades made up of super-veterans pretty much destroys the chance of a real match. I do agree that 1 match a month when you get two equal premades against each other it is neat though.