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GSF Discussion: Friction Points


EricMusco

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Hey there folks! My name is Bret Hoffman and I am a Senior Designer on SWTOR and one of the devs who originally worked on GSF. I wanted to thank you all for your in-depth and well thought out responses. Keep it coming! We are definitely reading and collating all the feedback in this thread as well as the other two we created.

 

Keep that feedback coming in, and, once again, thanks for your thoughts!

 

Happy hunting pilots!

 

MAKE more COOL MAPS with more nodes! Thanks for popping into the Forums Bret! :)

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Addressing your points in reverse order... new players do have it rough, but there is plenty of hope available to them if they seek out the knowledge that will enable them to compete. This knowledge should be delivered in game, and in a properly developed game there would be some means to gradually allow people to build up their skills. Even without that, though, resources exist to help new players and on populous servers, those players are facing off against people roughly in their experience bracket. Check out my
for some more on this.

 

Most of us who are GSF veteran pilots were thrown into the fire just like you, and in a more lethal era of GSF where it was (believe it or not) even harsher on new pilots. If you can accept that it is possible to become skilled and competitive in GSF through patience and practice, then it should be no real problem to seek some outside instruction in the absence of in-game materials... and I very much hope the devs dramatically increase the quantity and quality of in-game tutorials for GSF pilots.

 

To your first friction point: bombers are a problem solved through knowledge and application of the techniques necessary to remove them. The problem comes in when the majority of a team doesn't have the necessary understanding of the situation to deal. This is, again, an issue with knowledge distribution and application.

 

If you were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, and you were never told there was Paper, so you figured you just had Rock and Scissors and that's it... it'd be a pretty frustrating game where you frequently lose once your opponents realize you don't know there's also Paper. Is the solution to remove Rock? Or to let the uninformed know that Paper is part of the game, and that it counters Rock?

 

Proper tutorial resources would solve many of the problems reported in this thread.

 

- Despon

I played GSF daily when it came out...I played it for months after Bombers were released...Bombers ruined the fun for me. Period. It's not a knowledge issue, it's not a lack of understanding how to counter them...it's that they COMPLETELY changed what I loved about GSF and made it suck for me. That's my bottom line. Bombers killed the fun I had in GSF...and I am not alone.

 

Also...what are you expecting a new player to do exactly? Shouldn't joining a match and slowly progressing be possible without seeking knowledge? I don't mean they should be blindingly ignorant, but how much do you really expect someone trying it out to invest? This is a game...it needs to be fun from day-1, not after investing weeks into reading and asking questions...GSF fails at that right now. Right now, it's FRUSTRATING and un-fun for a new player...something needs to change.

 

I appreciate all your replies and love the feedback you're giving, so please don't take any of my comments as attacks on you or your opinions, I'm simply trying to tell you where my own frustrations are at with GSF and where I see the issues with it right now.

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I played GSF daily when it came out...I played it for months after Bombers were released...Bombers ruined the fun for me. Period. It's not a knowledge issue, it's not a lack of understanding how to counter them...it's that they COMPLETELY changed what I loved about GSF and made it suck for me. That's my bottom line. Bombers killed the fun I had in GSF...and I am not alone.

 

There are plenty of players who feel the opposite of course, but considering this is your opinion (and others probably agree with you) that's that. However, I feel that stating it is akin to telling the devs that a certain role in the ground game (say tanks) is ruining it for you. Nice to know, but hard to act upon.

 

Also...what are you expecting a new player to do exactly? Shouldn't joining a match and slowly progressing be possible without seeking knowledge? I don't mean they should be blindingly ignorant, but how much do you really expect someone trying it out to invest? This is a game...it needs to be fun from day-1, not after investing weeks into reading and asking questions...GSF fails at that right now. Right now, it's FRUSTRATING and un-fun for a new player...something needs to change.

 

With this I agree. Tooltips could be clearer, the tutorial could explain game mechanics better (or at all), matchmaker could use a whole lot of improvement to not set up someone with 5 matches accountwide against someone with 4000. I dislike the concept of players having to search for info, at least for basic stuff. Once you understand the game I'd still expect there to be threads breaking the metagame down, and people will look for them to learn advanced play, but basic things such as evasion and damage reduction should be clear from the game.

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Couple of thoughts from someone who has always been a casual GSFer in re bombers, and, in a way, strike fighters

 

First, having seen and played bombers for a bit now, I like them; because of the RPS dynamic that appears to be the intended relationship: Scout>Gunship>Bomber>Scout. If anything, that cycle needs to be more emphasized mechanically and tutorially; with each class being optimized to its role, and each chip within the class being tuned towards a facet of that role. As it is today, the Scout and the Gunship feel tuned against each other as melee vs ranged classes, with the Bomber sitting out off to the side a bit with weaker inbound and outbound lines in the cycle.

 

Which brings me to the second thought I've been having: What's the role of the Strike? If you tighten the specialization to role of the Scout/Gunship/Bomber triad (Dogfighting, Wide Area Denial, Point Defense/Base Support), you open the field for a JOAT role - where a Strike isn't as good a dogfighter as the Scout, isn't as good at Wide Area Denial as the Gunship, and isn't as good at Support/Point Defense as the bomber, but it can do any of them at need, and rapidly switching, so it can switch between dogfighting the Gunship, sniping the Bomber, and bombing the Scout; but not as well as the hard counter to each; and if it's caught out in the wrong range, the Scout can beat it in a dogfight, the Gunship can snipe it from outside its range, and the Bomber can drone and mine it to death.

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Also...what are you expecting a new player to do exactly? Shouldn't joining a match and slowly progressing be possible without seeking knowledge? I don't mean they should be blindingly ignorant, but how much do you really expect someone trying it out to invest? This is a game...it needs to be fun from day-1, not after investing weeks into reading and asking questions...GSF fails at that right now. Right now, it's FRUSTRATING and un-fun for a new player...something needs to change.

It is unquestionably part of the problem right now that people are blindingly ignorant of game mechanics when they enter GSF. I'd say that at least a quarter of matches I have played recently (and I play frequently, on numerous servers) wind up with three or more people shooting at under 5%. So, they don't know how to aim, what the range on their guns is, that their guns have a range, etc. the most basic of basics... let alone stuff like tracking penalty or that you're more likely to hit in the 'sweet spot' of a weapon's range than at the extremes. I've been in a few matches lately where eight out of sixteen people had a sub-10% shooting percentage.

 

Let that sink in for a moment - half of all the players in a match couldn't land even 10% of their shots.

 

You don't have to invest weeks into learning the basic operations of the game. Even the existing tutorial covers some issues people seem to frequently not understand, but it's presented in such an impenetrable and clunky way that people don't absorb it or skip it entirely.

 

Watching the three Beginners Start Here videos on my GSF School YouTube channel would take someone around 15 minutes, and they contain a wealth of instruction that is presented in (hopefully) a very accessible way. This sort of instruction should come from within the game, and I very much hope it will at some point, but in the interim, it exists and I think fifteen minutes is hardly a huge investment of time. I deliberately kept them short and condensed the information as much as possible because I know people won't spend a lot of time.

 

It is very unfortunate that on many low population servers, the matchmaking problems are magnified to a huge degree. A single veteran, even in stock ships with no upgrades, can wreck a whole team of new players because the veteran pilot knows what they are doing, and the new pilots are thrown into a relatively complex system without enough information (or low-stakes training time) to have a clue.

 

I don't mean they should be blindingly ignorant, but how much do you really expect someone trying it out to invest?

Just to reiterate, I hope that they will invest....

...12m 25s

 

GSF is a deep enough game that to succeed, you need to put in a little effort. If I was designing it from scratch, I'd have implemented a system where players start with a simpler, more restricted set of components playing against people who are also in those ships... I'd have made sure the beginner components aren't the worst possible ones to have in the game... and I'd have implemented a tutorial that doesn't make people want to skip or turn it off immediately. This all presupposes that there are enough players around to make matches possible in the 'new player, simple ship' bracket. Other games have pitted new pilots against bots for a period of time until they adjust to the controls.

 

SWTOR's engine and economic concerns may prohibit PvE style GSF, but even something as simple as allowing a group to queue into a practice arena similar to the tutorial map, where there is no timer and no effect on the pilot's record, would be massively helpful for those of us who try to teach people the game... or even for someone to solo queue into and just fly around... which, incidentally, is what I recommend people do with the tutorial map. Grit your teeth and run it through normally once, then run it again but ignore the instruction text and just practice flying around. Your ship is indestructible, you can maneuver without fear of anything except occasionally getting stuck inside an object's geometry if you bounce off it wrong.

 

- Despon

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Which brings me to the second thought I've been having: What's the role of the Strike? If you tighten the specialization to role of the Scout/Gunship/Bomber triad (Dogfighting, Wide Area Denial, Point Defense/Base Support), you open the field for a JOAT role - where a Strike isn't as good a dogfighter as the Scout, isn't as good at Wide Area Denial as the Gunship, and isn't as good at Support/Point Defense as the bomber, but it can do any of them at need, and rapidly switching, so it can switch between dogfighting the Gunship, sniping the Bomber, and bombing the Scout; but not as well as the hard counter to each; and if it's caught out in the wrong range, the Scout can beat it in a dogfight, the Gunship can snipe it from outside its range, and the Bomber can drone and mine it to death.

So, that is (presumably) what they envisioned for strikes, and that would be pretty cool.

 

The current problem with that is a great many of the components available to the strike fighter are in dire need of improvement. In fact it would probably be easier to list the components that -work- for strikes rather than the ones that don't.

  • Heavy Laser Cannon is well balanced and useful.
  • Quads kind of are, but less so on strikes than on scouts because strikes have no offensive system ability to really boost their deadliness (ie Targeting Telemetry, Blaster Overcharge)
  • Ion Cannon on the T1F is neat, though could use a range increase.
  • Cluster Missiles are great, really don't need any change.
  • Directional Shields are pretty solid. Hard to master, but useful once you do.
  • Repair Probes on the T3F are thumbs-up great.
  • The T3F also gets Power Dive, which is a little on the 'too good' side for scouts (and stupid on bombers) but on a strike at least provides some escape-certain-death ability.
  • Retro Thrusters on the T1F are good situationally.
  • That's pretty much it.

__

Note that several of these things are specific to only one strike at a time, and that the T2F gets nothing good at all to help it since non-cluster missiles range from 'meh' to 'useless.' If the remaining laundry list of choices for strike builds was up to par, they could jack all the trades they want and be part of any successful team. Anyway we had a 101 page thread two years ago discussing this so probably better to just refer back to that for more in-depth strike talk than anyone could possibly ever want to read.

 

- Despon

Edited by caederon
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In spite of its flaws, I *love* GSF. To the bullet points:

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

Yes. As with any PVP there will always be the initial "oh god what's going on" period of confusion. Even with guides, I expect that to continue. You h ave to pay attention to different things in PVP vs PVE. I don't have clear suggestions for a way to fix this, but I once made the observation that "GSF is a game that rewards patience but does not encourage patience". The new pilot experience can be very offputting.

 

Possible suggestion: Expand the tutorial mode to allow a player to just go in and fly around without the annoying popups and stoppages. Let me practice approaching a sat, shooting a drone.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

Not me, but it is a problem. I don't think strikes are as bad as "they" say, but I only fly one when I'm sure I won't influence the outcome of a match one way or another by doing so.

 

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

 

I play a lot on all my toons. If the queue's popping I'm usually in it. I'd like new maps but this isn't a big deal for me.

 

Matchmaking issues?

 

This is a problem. It's less of an issue now that more pilots are flying thanks to CXP, but sometimes it's clearly 8 randoms against 2 groups of four experts. I'm not sure how to resolve that, but I know it puts off many pilots. Me, if the match is that one sided, I just fly what I want for fun and try to get a few medals, but I prefer a match where there's a chance at a win.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

 

This is absolutely not a problem for me. I have a few "main" GSF toons where I've worked on mastering all ships for the achievements, but I'll fly on any toon. I actually enjoy leveling a new ship and trying out different builds.

 

My current pet peeve: CXP leechers and match throwing self destructors.

 

We see this way too often. I know some pilots view self destruct as a tactic in a domination match (die, take off from spawn to get get to current hot objective) but I don't like it and rarely do it myself. In a death match, we sometimes see pilots on teams with a lead self destruct to magically "heal" their ship or re-position on the map. That carries a clear penalty so I don't view it as a problem.

 

However, since some people abuse the self destruct to grief a team or hurry a match, something needs to be done to discourage the behavior. So far the best idea I've been able to come up with is adding a predictable delay to subsequent spawns after a self destruct. Say 5 seconds, then 10, then 15 ... or some other interval.

 

Just kicking non contributors isn't the answer in a death match. There's never a reason to be NC in a domination match, but in a death match it's quite possible that someone is trying to contribute but they just can't hit the maxed out evasion ships that are buzzing around them. It happens to me on newer ships sometimes, and I am far from not contributing.

 

Also please rethink the NC timer and conditions for bombers. I'll be close to the fray and taking damage in my legion or war carrier as I put out heals but if the opposition doesn't come in range of my drones, and they usually don't, I get flagged.

 

Gunship heavy matches:

 

This may belong under matchmaking, not sure. Giving everyone a gunship was some help but it isn't the real answer. I enjoy a good sniper fight myself, but I know many players do not. Perhaps a cap on ship mix for map/match type? But how to decide who gets to fly what?

 

Some specific suggestions

 

  1. Tutorial mode should have a "just let me fly around and experiment" mode.
  2. Vote kick option needs to be more obvious.
  3. Reporting a bad actor in a match needs to be easier. Just being able to click on a name or auto populating the match date/time/server/map would be a big help.

:

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Most of us who are GSF veteran pilots were thrown into the fire just like you, and in a more lethal era of GSF where it was (believe it or not) even harsher on new pilots.

 

What can be harsher for new pilots than flying against fully skilled veterans with *years* of practise ?

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Cap on particular ship types per side is not a good answer, incidentally, means someone is going to sit on the bench until there's space under the cap for the ship they want to fly. Or just not queue in the first place. Don't punish a player for a sin of game balance.
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Hey there folks! My name is Bret Hoffman and I am a Senior Designer on SWTOR and one of the devs who originally worked on GSF.

 

Thank you very much for this awesome game mode!

 

We're deep enough in the thread that I feel safe bringing up bugs. The bugs in the game right now aren't gamebreaking, and probably aren't discouraging new or old players from playing, but they are a moderate deal.

 

One of the final GSF patches (August 2014) made a bunch of confusing changes without dev statement or patch note. I believe the core intent of these changes was to separate snares into two categories. You can have a snare from category A and a snare from category B and both will stack, but if you have many snares from category A, only the strongest will take effect, and likewise for B.

 

I will refer to this as the Secret Snare Patch.

 

This change ended up with some seriously odd side effects. I'll list as many as I can think of:

 

 

1- Ion Railgun tier 5 talents.

There's been three generations:

In generation 1, the engine drain was a 100% lockout for 6 seconds, and the snare was a 40% snare for 6 seconds.

In generation 2, the engine drain was a 65% reduction for 6 seconds, and the snare was 55% snare for 12 seconds

The current generation, 3, post Secret Snare Patch, has the effects from generation 1 and the tooltips from generation 2. Either fix the tooltips, fix the components, or consider looking at choosing some middle values, as ion railgun is a well represented component in the metagame and nerfs or buffs will have an effect on play.

 

2- Ion Missile

Nothing is officially wrong with ion missile, but its snare was nerfed during the Secret Snare Patch, from 12 to 6 seconds. The tooltip at least went along with the change. This seems unlikely to have been intended, given that the missile is weak. Never did find out if this change was on purpose.

 

3- EMP field

EMP field has had three generations, just like ion railgun. First we had a small aoe (3000) and a matching tooltip, then we had a large aoe (4500) and a matching tooltip, and now we have the small aoe on the component with the large aoe values on the tooltip. This also seems like it was not a deliberate nerf, given that the component was buffed for a reason, but assuredly either the tooltip or the component is bugged on live.

 

4- Sabotage Probe

This is one of the most glaring yet least impactful GSF bugs. Basically, if you upgrade sab probe to have the "snare" talent, the sab probe effect is REPLACED by the snare. A sab probed ship is free to maneuver, which completely eliminates the entire point of the sab probe. This is almost assuredly due to the Secret Snare Patch logic, which groups snares into two groups and enforces exactly one from each group: presumably the "mild snare" is in the same "group" as the "cannot maneuver" debuff, and takes precedence over it. The workaround is to simply not take the snare talent, but it is still a really annoying bug that bothers a lot of players who will play several matches while screaming about hackers and cursing the Seven Names Of The Devs before being told to swap away from the snare.

 

5- Misc text bugs- I'm actually not sure if these bugs are still on live, but plasma railgun and emp missile's texts had issues when talking about durations, and terminated the text after that point.

 

 

 

The big effect, presumably intended, of the Secret Snare Patch, was, of course, the effective nerf on snaring. Given that there were complaints of snare stacking at the time, this seems like it was probably dev intent. The other changes seem like they got brought along with an older version of the XML somehow. Note that there was no communication on the snare stacking, so I'm just guessing about that. Currently, as Drako found a long time ago, you have snares that only slow speed (Engine Targeting on Concussion Missile, Engine Ionization on Ion Missile, Engine Disruption on Ion Railgun, Seismic Wave on Seismic Mine), which do not stack with each other, but do stack with snares that slow both speed and turning (Interdiction Missile, Interdiction Sentry Drone, Interdiction Mine, Interdiction Drive). It would be helpful if this distinction was made in game or at least on tooltip, including things like sab probe, the copilot ability that snares turning only, etc.

 

 

 

There was also the infamous "Bug Patch" of 3.0, during which components became totally broken. We had DOZENS of bugged components, and the devs promptly addressed that in 3.0.1.

EDIT: Previously I claimed that the following effect was from the 3.0 patch. Apparently, the deselect bug started happening around 3.3.1.

 

Sometimes components will come "deselected". You can, for instance, end up with no tier 4 or tier 5 upgrade selected for one ore more components, on one or more ships. This bug seems to occur when you log in, but NO ONE can repro it. It just happens sometimes for no user-apparent reason. While pilots have worked around this by reminding each other to "check your components", I actually suspect strongly that there are other odd side effects of this internally. Please put this as some kind of priority, because it is wildly confusing and a huge hassle to have to check each component on every ship before queuing. Note that this bug can effect any component, though it has been awhile since people would spawn in without blasters or minor components.

Edited by Verain
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There are plenty of players who feel the opposite of course, but considering this is your opinion (and others probably agree with you) that's that. However, I feel that stating it is akin to telling the devs that a certain role in the ground game (say tanks) is ruining it for you. Nice to know, but hard to act upon.
I suggested a way to "act upon" it...restrict Bombers to only certain matches. That would please me and that would encourage me to try GSF again.
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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

 

Learning Curve: It's steep, but I think most of that is because of the lack of either a good tutorial or a PvE area. Add either of those, and the issues with the learning curve disappear. Ideally, a group PvE area would be perfect, as it would allow veteran players to train newbies who need training without having the pressure of a time crunch or opposing veterans vaping the newbies before they can get any instruction.

 

Ship Balance: I addressed this in the other thread, but I think the biggest issue with balance right now is that strikes are weak, mostly because missiles are weak. And gunship/bomber clusters are bad for the game in TDM (or even Domination, for that matter). They discourage players whose style is to dogfight while encouraging a sniping war. There needs to be a way for a certain ship type to be able to break up gunship clusters/walls without extreme coordination (which you really can't get in a PUG, particularly with newbies).

 

Something New: Always happy to have something new, but that's not keeping me from playing. I think if something new were to be added, I would like to see a few new maps for the current game modes as well as a few new game modes. The one I've seen suggested I like most is some form of capital ship attack. It would act like Domination in a way, but with clear attacker/defender delineation. The defenders would be escorting a capital ship, perhaps a crippled one, that has some anti-fighter turrets (like domination turrets). The attackers would have to destroy certain points on the ship in order to achieve victory. Then sides would swap. Or, alternatively, each side has a capital ship to escort, and they have to split their forces between attacking and defending. The first team to destroy the capital ship three times wins.

 

Matchmaking: The matchmaker is awful. Not sure how to fix it, but something needs to be done. I will let others address this, as they are more knowledgeable than me in that area.

 

Character v. Legacy: Before the changes to requisition, this was a problem. Now it doesn't bother me, though having some legacy requisition would be nice.

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What can be harsher for new pilots than flying against fully skilled veterans with *years* of practise ?

Magically transport yourself back in time to when Ion Railgun disabled your ship with even a quarter-charge shot, and scouts had so much Evasion they were literally unhittable for long stretches of time. It was harsher.

 

Also, what about the new players that are flying alongside fully skilled veterans with years of experience? They have space opened up for them and pressure taken off of them by virtue of the veterans essentially tanking for them or removing threats from the board. It's not all negative. Nothing is stopping new players from seeking out veterans to group with, either. And I don't know anyone I routinely fly with in GSF who would say 'no way kid, scram, you're not good enough to fly with me' (or some more colorful, less olde-timey variant of that). The players who have been around a long time are a resource for new players, too!

 

My current pet peeve: CXP leechers and match throwing self destructors.

...

  • Reporting a bad actor in a match needs to be easier. Just being able to click on a name or auto populating the match date/time/server/map would be a big help.

This is actually one of my only real Friction Points. People deliberately self-destructing to throw TDMs is an actual thing, and it is absolutely a serious negative force and form of griefing. There are well-known players who, as their whims dictate, will SD 15+ times in a match (I once saw someone manage 31) to prevent their side from winning. It's anti-social troll behavior and it would be nice to see the devs take some action against people who can be clearly verified as engaging in this.

 

- Despon

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Most things have been said already but I'll add my thoughts. I should say I fly everyday and level up my alts primarily through GSF along with getting all my conquest points that way too.

 

1) The learning curve was hard at first and it took a little while to get the hang of it.

 

Maybe creating a playground where people can fly and setting up dummy ships or targets to fire at. I've seen some say above the planets but even creating an instance outside of the Imperial and Republic fleet to fly in that playground until a match pops.

 

2) I think the ship balance is fine. Each ship has their strength and weakness. No one ship can dominate the rest. It's the skill of the pilot, not the ships. That's a problem with the learning curve. Gunships have weaknesses, just like the Bombers. It's no different than a game of chess, people just have to be tactical instead of running in with guns blazing.

 

3) I still play daily.

 

I do feel as though it needs something to give it a little more purpose. I'm sitting on over a million ship requisition easy but won't waste CC on converting to Fleet Reqs which I can't use since all my ships are maxed. Maybe using it to buy decoration, ship customization, even with a high price tag, that would give some more motivation.

 

4) Matchmaking is bad

 

The problem I see on Shadowlands, especially Imp side is that there are farmers for conquest or CXP. If not farming then there are people throwing the match for the other team. Reporting them seems to take too long. For that reason I think Ops leaders should have the ability to kick since the vote kick is voided as soon as it's called out.

 

As for new players, maybe have a tier system based on over XP that separates them from the vets until they can get a feel for it. That may create a queue problem but knowing they won't get blasted out of the sky could entice some to try again. Maybe up the reward for beginner flyers until they hit a level/tier/XP level so we would know they are capable to go up against vets.

 

Even Imp and Pubs teaming up to go against a common enemy, similar to the other PVP match

 

Matchmaking needs reworked though, it either has cheaters or it's one sided.

 

5) I don't mind that it is character based. It gives me a goal to work toward I guess. There could be an unlock to max out all ships if you max them out on one character. That could be a win/win.

 

 

EDIT: Despite maxing out all my ships, I just found the GSF Tutorial Level. I thought the training was a read through pop up window that told the basics. I didn't realize there was a place to fly freely. Having an opponent that you can adjust the difficulty level on would be nice. Makes me wonder how many missed this section though. Maybe making it mandatory or have it flashing until it's completed.

Edited by Mystic_Chaos
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I suggested a way to "act upon" it...restrict Bombers to only certain matches. That would please me and that would encourage me to try GSF again.

 

Doing this is essentially flipping the bird to players that love flying bombers and/or only fly them. I personally prefer flying everything BUT bombers, but everyone has their cup of tea and I have flown with plenty on Shadowlands that only like to play bombers. While I can appreciate how bombers changed GSF, they've been around for years and they're not going to get rid of them or alienate people that do like them: that's just bad design.

 

A stronger way to approach it is to improve anti-bomber components and weapons. Currently, the best thing to deal with a bomber is a gunship with ion railgun. Scouts can do a good job one on one before it's set up, but the tools they're supposed to use against a bomber's stuff don't work well (EMP, etc.), and yeah... strikes are even worse off. I'd personally love to see satellites rotate to make lazy bomber pilots move (nothing worse than a "tick bomber," to my mind), but I think giving better tools so bomber pilots need to be proactive more is the way to go. Better components would also help against the lazies in shipyards and Kuat that find some trench to hide in and do nothing but fart mines, too.

 

Another thing about overall feedback, if they did make ship hangers legacy based, they really need to give better things we can spend our backlog of requisition on. I kind of wonder if that's what they're thinking since they've asked about vendors, too, but it really will help. Galactic command is nice and all, but it's subscription based, so if you take that and req away, you are drawing away potential pilots, too. Any vendors put in can have increased costs to encourage subs, too.

Edited by Pilgrim_Grey
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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

 

OK i've read 2 or 3 pages of replys and mostly from people who don't seem to give a crap about GSF. I've flown over 2000 missions since GSF launched. There are things you could do to make the GSF experience better.

1. There are several guides and youtube vids out there to help new pilots. however the best thing to help them is getting with a guild, or a veteran and grouping up with them. Give us a group tutorial or group PVE missions where new pilots can actually learn the roll of THEIR ship. this also lets them learn how to work in a group. make the PVE missions give req so they can upgrade their ship while learning to fly it as well.

2. The ships are fairly balanced although giving a small buff to strikes would be great or better yet better define their roll.

3. i've played for 5 1/2 years. I'm bored ******** so yes new GSF content would get me personally flying and playing more. I'm still around because I have a guild to look after. let us buy the cosmetics with our ship req or fleet req. give us something to spend it on once we have all the ships and have them mastered.

4. it's a population issue more than anything. but allowing guilds or Squads to group and queue up helps. I don't get why people want to complain about "premades" that's the point of joining a guild. having people you can group up with to do the things in game that you want to do.

5. I think fleet req could be legacy based since it's "Fleet" but I don't think ship req should be legacy wide.

 

Those things said as a vet and probably one of the top pilots on BC the amount of hate that vets get is a big reason many vets have pissed off. I don't know a single vet who won't help train new pilots. WE like a challenge and like helping new pilots because that gets US more matches doing the thing WE love. It flat out hurts being told that just because I logged in queue died. it's like "well **** i didn't want to fly anyway. except oh wait that's exactly what I wanted to do." I RP and fly GSF I don't do very much else. so yes I'm very passionate about GSF don't mess with the controls (i.e. adding joystick functionality) or dumb things down so that all the HARD work I and many other vets have put in are pointless. GSF is a skill based game. a skill that can be learned but it shouldn't be just handed to people. I'm good because I worked hard to be good. I've done my best to train pilots. but those guys have also gone on to other games. so really you need to worry about retaining players game wide not just in GSF. Give us a new map or game type and the vets will fly. encourage new pilots to listen to us instead of QQ'ing about how there's a skill gap. Give us a way to actually train new pilots, boom no more skill gap.

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Possible suggestion: Expand the tutorial mode to allow a player to just go in and fly around without the annoying popups and stoppages. Let me practice approaching a sat, shooting a drone.

 

ah if you boost straight at the sat right off the bat all three pop-ups will trigger, then you have 13 minutes to just fly around.

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Hey there folks! My name is Bret Hoffman and I am a Senior Designer on SWTOR and one of the devs who originally worked on GSF. I wanted to thank you all for your in-depth and well thought out responses. Keep it coming! We are definitely reading and collating all the feedback in this thread as well as the other two we created.

 

Keep that feedback coming in, and, once again, thanks for your thoughts!

 

Happy hunting pilots!

 

Well. This looks like something we've seen before.

 

Morning Flyboys and Flygirls!

 

Thank you immensely for all the feedback and discussion last week and over the weekend. Keep on going but I just wanted to pop in to let you know that we are reading and looking at options. No timetable but just an acknowledgement that we are here and listening/reading along.

 

Cheers!

 

I want to believe you're going to do something, but we've been here done this before.

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Hi, few things about GSF from me:

1. Learning curve is too steep / takes too long. Before I can get to the point when I know what to do I will have to die so many times that I don't want to do it anymore.

2. It takes too long to get the ship upgrades to compete with other already geared players. Please don't count wins and say "oh you just have to win xxx times and you are fully geared". I will not win, which means it basically doubles the time to gear up, and its just per one ship. Thank you very much, If it was like completely new game with same amount of things like the "ground game" then I could accept this as normal. But it is not. its a side game, and spending so much time in it just to gear up is just something I won't do.

3. Ship balance is something I can't say much about as I can't get to the point where I have all the ships upgraded and played enough time to say what's balanced and what's not.

4. Matches take too long. It should be cut in half. That's why people don't want to be there anymore. Because if they can't contribute to the match and it takes ages to finish it, then what's the point?

5. For a person with a ship that is not upgraded (like me) the feeling of flying in GSF is like cycling through the knee deep water. It just feels sooooooo slooooow... omg it's like it's not a space ship but a cart with an invisible donkey puling it through the space...

6. Legacy. Yes, it is like a slap in the face. You were advertising legacy system as something of a big deal for the players and then you just "U" turned into character perks... single toon vs legacy... Please walk away from single toon perks and go back to Legacy focused perks. I'm not going to torment myself and other GSF players by trying to upgrade all of my toons, one by one, ship by ship... it would take a year to do it...or two...

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Hi, few things about GSF from me:

1. Learning curve is too steep / takes too long. Before I can get to the point when I know what to do I will have to die so many times that I don't want to do it anymore.

 

That's not the learning curve per se, it's having to deal with people who are already past that curve. You wouldn't die nearly as much were you faced with equal opposition.

 

2. It takes too long to get the ship upgrades to compete with other already geared players. Please don't count wins and say "oh you just have to win xxx times and you are fully geared". I will not win, which means it basically doubles the time to gear up, and its just per one ship. Thank you very much, If it was like completely new game with same amount of things like the "ground game" then I could accept this as normal. But it is not. its a side game, and spending so much time in it just to gear up is just something I won't do.

 

  1. you're wrong here. Objectively, empirically wrong. The only really necessary upgrades to compete are (in domination) armor ignore on weapons that can get it. Ion AoE is nice, but not generally necessary to be competitive. Apart for those two upgrades, everything will increase your DPS and survivability, but nothing is needed "to compete with other already geared players".
  2. if you get your new intro mission, you can after a single loss (no wins at all) get a single ship close enough to mastered that it will only matter against players of your skill level or better (including buying all relevant crewmembers). If you choose to get all the ships, you can do that instead.

 

If you don't want to play at all in order to master your ships, that's a different matter, but it sounds as if you haven't even tried to gear a ship up. Certainly not after the recent buff to requisition gain via tokens and the huge reduction in upgrade prices.

 

4. Matches take too long. It should be cut in half. That's why people don't want to be there anymore. Because if they can't contribute to the match and it takes ages to finish it, then what's the point?

 

This makes no sense whatsoever. If people are suffering in matches, your solution is to make them shorter so they can grit their teeth and wade through them? What?

 

If people are having a bad time, fix the matches so they have more fun. Examples: matching them against players of similar skill, creating environments where they can practice, better in-game explanations as to why they're non-contributing. Of all the solutions possible, yours does not even pretend to reduce the difficulties being a new player entails.

 

5. For a person with a ship that is not upgraded (like me) the feeling of flying in GSF is like cycling through the knee deep water. It just feels sooooooo slooooow... omg it's like it's not a space ship but a cart with an invisible donkey puling it through the space...

 

Heads up -- no ship will gain some secret speed boost from upgrades. The fastest a ship can get through passive upgrades is 20% more than it is stock (and even that assuming the ship has thrusters and that they don't come stock as speed thrusters). Perhaps you're flying bombers, which are slow? If you're flying scouts or even strikes, you're about as fast as you're going to get.

 

I assume you know how to boost and allocate power to engines (which also increases your speed by 20%).

 

6. Legacy. Yes, it is like a slap in the face. You were advertising legacy system as something of a big deal for the players and then you just "U" turned into character perks... single toon vs legacy... Please walk away from single toon perks and go back to Legacy focused perks. I'm not going to torment myself and other GSF players by trying to upgrade all of my toons, one by one, ship by ship... it would take a year to do it...or two...

 

You're not supposed to "torment" yourself. You're supposed to play because it's fun. If it's such a pain, try pinpointing what exactly the pain is.

 

Points you've made:

  • impossible to play without upgrades -- factually not true, has been falsified many times over. Also, considering that you've never actually mastered a ship, you do not know how much upgrades would or would not affect your effectiveness.
  • learning curve is too steep -- it seems to me as if your problem is actually your competition and not the learning curve. Ways to differentiate between them: tough competition entails dying before being able to contribute, knowing what to do yet being outplayed. Learning curve entails floating around wide-eyed, not understanding why you're not hitting things with your lasers, not knowing how to boost, getting lost in 3-D space, not understanding why you're missing a lot even when on target, etc.
  • upgrades take too long -- if you want no upgrades at all, that's one matter (and I personally have no problem with that). If you think that it really takes long to upgrade now, you're wrong again. This also ties into the fact that you think upgrades really matter, while in fact most of them do not and it's easy enough to get the ones who do.

 

Points you could have made:

  • I feel helpless in matches. I'm constantly destroyed by other players, and don't get a chance to compete with them. It could be because of upgrades, skill level or both, but in either case I'd like to have better chances on more even footing.
  • I feel like I'm thrown into the deep end in GSF. Is there a tutorial? I've never seen it, which speaks volumes about its effectiveness. Where am I supposed to learn how to fly and shoot?
  • all the components and upgrades are overwhelming. I understand that people like customizing their builds, but as a new player I can't make heads or tails of it. A simple explanation of how stats work would go a long way to helping me, similar to the way you can scroll over stats in your character sheet and get a basic understanding of what they do.

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Maybe there is a way to mitigate match-making issues without actually changing the match-making. This is because there are downsides to making better matchmaking.

 

First though, if we were to change matchmaking, maybe the best (least downsides) would simply be to split up the veterans and remove faction vs faction. Yes I know, hard to determine the algorithm of weighing skill levels on each side, but it's doable.

 

That being said, how can we mitigate instead? It is very common to have matches where one side is WAY more powerful than the other. Its not so much because people like to play in teams as that is natural to GSF. Although when those teams are teams of uber-skilled-veterans that pretty much removes any chance of a fair match. (Not quite sure why these uber veterans do not split up for the matches to even it out). The result of a terrible matchup one side has no chance and people end up just going through the motions, quitting the match, or something not useful. How about we give the facerolled team a chance to get back into it. Ideas?

1.) Sat battles: one side is significantly ahead (how much?), the weaker side's hyperspace beacon becomes un-killable. It becomes a SUPER BEACON. This would allow the weaker team to at least have a chance to get back into battle faster, because they are probably dying very fast and the other team probably dying very little and have no need for a hyperspace beacon. Whenever one team is very over powered, they are ALWAYS right on top of the weak teams beacon, killing it very fast. It's overkill really. The suggestion here is that the hyperspace beacon STAYS un-killable til the end of the match. It doesn't do any good giving the team a temporary catch-up boost only to take it away if they actually get close.

2.) Deathmatch: When one team is way over powered they usually enter a "feeding frenzy". Where they start flying loose in order to hurry up and get the juicy easy kills to pad their stats before their teammates can. This sometimes results in a spawn camp situation, and yes I know spawn camp prevention ideas are typically pretty dry but how about if you are down by 10+ (or how much?) kills and you are anywhere near your spawn point you gain something like an automatic shield and damage powerup (wears off over time if you move away from spawn). This gives us a couple of things. 1.) The wimps that are spawn camping now have to fight on a more level playing field (something wimps hate). 2.) The losing team has something to do other than die. It would be fun to push back a massively superior team a little. Like cornering a bear in a cave, you get some ferocity in the last-stand. If the spawn campers are gunships at a range, you can boost to them with your powerups still on and back them off. It may just be enough to help the weak team regroup and make a push.

 

If #2 isn't enough to fully get them back into the game, at this point the enemy team is probably a huge GS wall just waiting for anyone to approach. Maybe instead a shield buff for teams down by over 10, until they are under that number again? Here is where peoples ideas to improve these thoughts are welcome.

 

Too often in bad matchups one team has no chance and really has no purpose remaining in the match. Their job is to be a balloon in a pin factory.

 

The goal here is to give face-rolled teams a chance to win or at least have some participation in the remainder of the match. These are not for teams that are just a little behind, but behind far enough that the OP team starts to feel comfortable that a win is inevitable. Replies to my post should be suggestions that accomplish that.

Edited by Stellarcrusade
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Maybe there is a way to mitigate match-making issues without actually changing the match-making. This is because there are downsides to making better matchmaking.

 

The matchmaking algo right now is pretty good, but not exactly great. It will match you based on upgrades, but it really prioritizing making *A* match versus making *THE* match. I sometimes want to queue the ground pvp just to see these super balanced matches that are supposedly taking place. To listen to people critique GSF, this is the only game mode ever in any game ever that makes lopsided matches some of the time. In my experience across a bunch of games, matches that snowball are the rule, not the exception, and GSF is pretty good by any comparison I've ever made. I've queued into Arathi Basins that are five cap or four cap, most Warsongs I saw would go 3-0, been effectively spawn camped in Halo, been totally crushed and have totally crushed in Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Starcraft II, finish in arbitrary places in online Mario Kart, etc. When I did play this game's ground pvp, it felt very much like WoW: many matches were totally decided before the game started. My experience in Battlefront at launch, which had a zillion people online and playing, was also reasonably lopsided many times.

 

A game with fewer sides is less likely to be arbitrary.

A game with more players is USUALLY less likely to be arbitrary, assuming that there are roles.

A game that is more skill based and less random is less likely to be arbitrary.

 

GSF has many players on only two sides and outside of Damage Overcharge and occasional wild crit or accuracy streaks, is reasonably predictable. You would expect it to make uneven matches a decent amount of the time, just like every other game like this.

 

 

I feel matchmaking could be improved, but it isn't broken, and it isn't even mediocre in a novel way. The real fix for matchmaker would be cross server. Everyone knows that, and it is apparently totally impossible in this game (and ONLY this game, somehow). Without that, you could still improve it by being willing to make cross faction groups (which would somewhat hurt the game's fantasy), or by being a bit less willing to pull the trigger on making a game. Beyond that I have no idea.

 

 

First though, if we were to change matchmaking, maybe the best (least downsides) would simply be to split up the veterans and remove faction vs faction.

 

Unsure if by "split up the veterans" you mean "try to matchmake good players against each other" or "remove group queue". If the first, it could prioritize that more. If the second, removing the ability to run as a team is a totally different, and much worse, game.

 

 

That being said, how can we mitigate instead?

 

Yea, definitely. The idea where there would be a shout-out in TDM if one team was behind by more than 10 points, resulting in that team's capship turrets coming back online, would be a reasonably minor mitigation. The devs put in the ability to take multiple spawns in TDM: only a terrible player can actually be spawn camped today. Unfortunately, many players don't know this (aka, are terrible). The reason the cap ship turrets were turned off was because of a degenerate strategy: everyone boost out with scouts and gunships, play VERY defensively and run back to cap ship if threatened, and once ahead by 2 points, run back to cap ship and camp until game win. Any solution that prevents this nonsense would work. You might also want the middle cap ship to be able to move forward during this (not that I've seen ANY sign that moving an object is even POSSIBLE in GSF), to guard a bit more area and have the losing team have a way into the part of the map that provides cover without being sniped. I don't know what would be ideal, but the static nature of the map hurts this a bit.

 

In Domination, I don't feel that losses are as brutal in a lopsided map. You literally can't be spawn camped, and the enemy team three capping you makes the game go faster without turning off your ability to play, or even dash at nodes.

 

You wouldn't want a mitigation that actually lets a dominated team WIN. You'd want one that makes losing not feel ludicrous, and lets you practice some. I feel anything that promised a node, or made an offensive spawn point unkillable, could actually result in a game being swung sometimes. Matches like Denon revolve so harshly about holding nodes, and have such a long response time if you sweep or are swept. You also can't really put too much emphasis on player deployed beacons, as they are very vulnerable to griefing and noobplay (oops its in a rock somehow, lel).

 

The goal here is to give face-rolled teams a chance to win or at least have some participation in the remainder of the match.

 

A team being rolled should have no chance of victory, barring a change in players or a dramatic change in strategies. It should never be in the best interest of the winning team to avoid winning too hard for fear of some carebear mechanic.

 

But that's very different than giving them a game to play. They should meaningfully be able to lose LESS under these situations, meaningfully be able to play the game in some way that is enjoyable and able to be learned from.

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Something that I would recommend is two-fold: adjusting the tutorial and adding some sort of shooting/driving range.

 

Right now, the issue is that the concept of the tutorial is a good start, focusing on the basic commands and the "how-to" for flying. However, that is the extent that I recall. I think something that would help increase the skill/knowledge base is to expand the tutorial, to include utilizing the different weapon systems, ie, lasers and missiles, setting mines, and advanced combat flying. I think this will allow people to get a better basic understanding on both flying offensively and defensively, along with working the weapon systems.

 

I think adding in a shooting/driving range would help build the confidence of players, such as having an offensive course at different levels (such as target acquisition with target either flying defensively, non-defensively, and counter-attacking) and a defensive course (ie, try not to die for various periods). I think a good incentive for this would be either unlock ALL level 1 upgrades based on the type of ship (weapons, movement, defense based on the range utilized and difficulty), unlock ALL level 1 upgrades for that specific ship (thus, requiring the players to utilize the range more for more ships and thus, more training/practice). Utilizing this system and some variation of the recommended incentives would encourage players to use the assets available, increase skill/knowledge base of the ship and its capabilities, increase confidence in said assets, increase competitiveness in the matches, and allow players to not be forced to go face-first against veteran players with no upgrades or hope for survival.

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I think a good way to help with the learning curve would be to add a free fly mode, basically an instanced area where players can fly around and kill bots (target practice) it's basically something you could do to pass the time or queuing for a gsf match like the Fleet. Every planet could have its own "hub". As a bonus you could give players daily or weekly objectives to do for the hubs which can give rewards in return such as smaller amounts of ship and fleet requisition . Players could also flag themselves for pvp as well inside the hubs which would good for dvl events. Guild ships parked on planets could actually appear in "hubs" as targets to be hit (not destroyed). Edited by phill-fry
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Learning curve: There are definitely too many instances of the game not giving you enough opportunity to get used to how things work, but it also just makes it hard to understand what's going on. I think I went through several hundred matches before I realised what evasion was... after reading about it on the forums. It's not like the game shows me a difference between a ship evading and me missing by a fraction. I just thought that I was the lousiest shot ever.

 

Ship balance: I think "general chance to compete" is more of an issue than balance between ships due to the extremely low time to kill that can be achieved by good players. Being blown out of the sky in what feels like one or two hits without having any idea of what just happened is frustrating and makes it hard to figure out how to do better. You could argue that this is just how shooters are, but I'm guessing that most SWTOR (and probably MMO) players prefer a more stately pace to their gameplay.

 

New things: I'm not going to say that stagnation is the only reason I'm not playing more often, but it certainly doesn't help. Above anything else I would like to see some more game modes (not just maps). I wouldn't do as much ground PvP as I do either if every pop was simply a 50/50 chance of either arena or Alderaan Civil War.

 

Matchmaking: Hard to judge when there simply aren't enough people queuing to get more than 1 or 2 matches going at a time.

 

Character vs. legacy based: Even though I don't do a lot of GSF, I have to disagree with many here and say that I like "levelling up" a new character's ships and would miss that if it was made legacy-wide. Once you've bought all the upgrades, the incentive of further character progression is lost. Maybe there could be some legacy perks to make gearing up alts easier without completely taking away the option to start over from scratch if you want to.

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