I've been around gaming for a long time, some of my fondest memories stem back to the original Elite and X-Wing games, possibly my favourite space fighter game of all time is Star Wars: Tie Fighter.

I wasn't the best player ever, but I was competent enough and enjoyed the above games immensely and so I thought the GSF would be great fun. Unfortunately it seems to have inherited all of the downsides of an MMO environment.

 

1) Character specific hanger

For my playstyle SWTOR has evolved into a game about Alts. The original story lines remain the most compelling experience the game has to offer and the one I return to and so over the 5 years have accumulated 38 alts. And yet if I want to play GSF I have to develop each hanger individually!?

Not sure why this decision was taken. I'd be surprised to learn it was a tech limitation as the engine seemingly has no problem storing and sharing information from one character to another across legacy (family tree details, certain currencies) or account wide (collection unlocks).

 

2) Matchmaking

Lets be honest, matchmaking wouldn't be an issue if the population playing GSF was larger. As it stands though you can wait an age for a game to pop and then find out you're horrendously outgunned. Not a rewarding experience and not one that encourages repeat play.

 

3) Gearing

Why does gear grind still have a place in MMO design? Why make those new to a game (low in skill, low in gear) the cannon fodder of those that have been playing the game longer (better gear, better skill, not always but at least they'll be familiar with most of the maps and game styles).

 

4) Rewards

If you are on the loosing side frequently you find the payout for playing GSF is not worth the time investment. Why remain the cannon fodder of others when you could be using limited game time to reap better rewards. My own focus is on credits (although that is fading now the inflation is starting to push gold cartel market sets through the roof, but that's more the greed of other players) and I'll go where I can get better return on my time.

 

5) Game experience

As I started off with I played a lot of the old space sims, and it's been nice to see a return of interest in them with the release of Elite: Dangerous. I'm not a great pilot but I get by and yet I find GSF to be an extremely frustrating experience. That's why if I want to fly a space ship I go and play a different game rather than play GSF.

 

Seriously why couldn't we have had the intuitive and engaging experience of a space sim like Star Wars: Tie Fighter, a game that's nearly 25 years old.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Vhaegrant

Scratch GSF. It's horrible. Fly with mouse and keyboard? I'll pass.

Get over it, this isn't SWG. I get that you wanted a more sandbox type of game, but this isn't really that.

 

Also, seriously, with the HOTAS, you'd be in a position where players feel they need that to queue. Certainly, if done correctly, a joystick would totally dominate keyboard / mouse junk. They would have to add joystick support to the entire client, just for the GSF part.

 

The game you are describing sounds really cool man, and there's ways to still play it. But GSF is its own thing, and it is great. I'd love if the game was more like X-Wing, I'd love to use my HOTAS too. But man, it doesn't need to be less approachable, and does it really need to be super huge amounts of development? This just sounds like a QQ post instead of feedback the devs are asking for.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Verain

I used to play gsf for hours almost every day but stopped when 4.0 broke my crew that I paid to unlock. still waiting for it to be fixed

 

 

One of the few things Sony Online Entertainment did right was JUMP TO LIGHTSPEED. It was a totally separate game within the MMO. Here are some highlights:

2 new species, one of which is the Ithorian.

4 new professions - Shipwright, Pilot, Imperial Pilot and the Rebel Pilot.

Lots of space sectors to explore including the space around the current planets.

Fly X-Wings, Tie Fighters and even Correlian ships akin to the Millenium Falcon.

Real time space combat

More than 100 new missions

Decorate large ships that you and your friends could take into PvE and even PvP combat

 

Shipwright crafted ships and ship parts. RE loot and make yo4

Shield

Engine

Reactor

Weapon

Missile Launcher

 

We could really customize the fighters. Everything have a weight limit, energy consumption rate, Regen rate and energy use rate. Ships had different weight limit. 5 teirs of ships and parts. RE parts improved stats and lowered energy use, weight, Regen rates.4

 

Basically the ships were another character you could gear out for PvE missions and PvP content.

I had some great times with jtl. Load up the game, hit the starport and get on the Saitek X52 HOTAS and never touch the keyboard again. I'd fly for hours. Grind out a pilot in 8 hours and re the mission rewards for sale or build up a ship. Pilot was on farm if I wasn't out collecting player bounties.

 

SWTOR could do this if they would listen to the community let alone paid attention to what came before it. I'm not the first to mention jtl. Many to include me had hoped GSF was going to be similar. Starfox rail shooter let us down. GSF was the punchline no one asked for. It let every JTL fan know BW didn't care about the game And it's community.

4

So to logon the forums and see these threads feels like BW trolling. I can't take it seriously. Not after the multi-year-long NGE from patch 2.7 through 5.3. 2.7 was the patch that merged, removed and made abilities passive. The start of the dumbing down the game to a more simple minded casual playerbase. It's SWG CU/NGE wrapped up but spread out over years of time and chaptered expansions.

 

HOTAS = Hands On Throttle And Stick

 

This too. You would basically have to do this in order for me to play GSF. But I know it will never happen, so......no GSF for me.

The only time I really play GSF is when I'm leveling because it has great XP. Tonight though, I ended up playing a bit of GSF with some friends because I thought it would be a good idea to refresh my memory before posting. In fact, I'm in a match right now but tabbed over writing this post because it can be so frustrating. That said, I do have a lot of hours logged in GSF and I have mastered both Imperial and Republic scouts. So here it is real time...

 

Reasons I Do Play GSF

- Great XP

- It's a change of pace.

- My scout looks awesome and I want to show it off.

 

Reasons I Don't Play GSF

- Defensive abilities suck and players die too fast.

- The rewards aren't worth the time it takes.

- Only two types of matches and the objective match is the same every time.

- I'm sick and tired of getting one-shotted by gunships.

- Matches are rarely head to head, you're either on a team that's good or not and "comebacks" are highly unlikely. I think that's another reason the matches feel soooo long. Be on a losing team and you know you're not going to make a comeback and have to sit there forever waiting for the match to just end. I'm not one to quit mind you, so I keep fighting, and I have seen some comebacks, but that's not to say these are my thoughts while waiting.

 

Observations

- Gunships are overpowered and in swarms it's hard to get close enough to kill them which is why 9/10 times the match will dissolve into gunship battles/nests on both sides.

 

- Why is blaster power even a thing? Not only are we dying so fast but now when we're alive we can't even shoot?!

 

- While I admire the skill of superior pilots the disparity between the average pilot in GSF and those that are "good" is too great. In PVP the difference can be the same but you don't die instantly and at least you feel like you have a fighting chance.

 

- The NPC/commander voice that says something along the lines of "you have to turn the tide of battle" when you're score is some super low number and the enemy is at 40/50 kills is really annoying. I hate it. Tell me when it's more like a difference of 5 between the teams and we have a chance to turn things around. But saying it when they're just about to win it's like a slap in the face and I'm thinking, "gee how am I supposed to turn the tide - whatever we're doing it hasn't worked thus far and it's highly unlikely we're coming back at this point."

 

- The only time I've ever seen hacking in this game has been in GSF matches. I PVP almost every day and I don't think I've ever seen anything there but I've seen ships use there evade ability twice back to back, missiles that fire instantly, and ships move in peculiar ways skipping around and preventing target locks.

 

- I don't really feel "connected" with my ship the way I do with my character. There is a wide range of abilities on my character and I get to choose which one would work best for a given situation. In GSF, death comes too quick and I only have four abilities to use. I know there is some strategy to playing but its just a bit too simple for my tastes. I would like to do more than turn in circles, try for target locks, get shot down by gunships in 1-2 shots, and occasionally use a special ability. I would like to feel more connected to the team too, as we do in operations with everyone having a role.

I got bored of GSF for various reasons, I'll leave balance ones for its respective thread. I'll start going with the suggested questions.

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

It is, considering you have to unlock all components on all ships per characters, I only played GSF on my main Rep/Imp character cuz its really boring to start from scratch everytime.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

Yeh in some way it is I'll get into details on the Ship Balance thread.

 

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

ABSOLUTELY! GSF has only 2 game modes which I got really bored of (Specially the dogfight mode, that one was always boring to my objective/strategy oriented playstyle) After years of waiting with no signs of new content for GSF I just threw the towel and forgot the feature existed till I accidentally type H trying to write on chat while not having it selected lol.

New game modes, ships, customizations, crew is needed on this game mode to be as enjoyable as it warzone partner.

The Star Wars universe is full of scenarios of intense space action. Be creative bring new modes we can take our ships to. A game mode about taking down the enemy team's Harrower/Valor class ships, some new maps on the new locations post KOTFE, Zakuul orbit with the eternal fleet on standby, Odessen atmosphere with a game mode that builds teams of mixed republic/empirecharacters.

Even a progressive PVE mode that works like a flashpoint but in space with our ships on a 4/8 team.

(I remember I designed this scenario back when GSF launched and you were asking for our suggestions about new maps: http://i.imgur.com/EBOB0xv.jpg)

Also make KOTFE crew useable on GSF, bring in those Zakuul ships:

https://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2017/13/1491126996-zf-m3d.jpg

http://pre11.deviantart.net/353f/th/pre/f/2015/356/6/3/zakuul_shuttle_ortho__new__by_unusualsuspex-d9ky79f.jpg

https://torcommunity.com/potato/4.0pts17/decoImages/Koth%20Shuttle.PNG

Keep the customizations comming, new colors, new patterns, also new weapons and upgrades to have more options to pick from on our arsenal.

 

Matchmaking issues?

Not really just the time it takes to find a match but as more people come back to GSF that wouldn't be an issue

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

Yeah this too, as I mentioned earlier GSF shouldn't be character based, its boring to start from scratch and unlock everything again for every alt u have. Specially since GSF customizations cannot be unlocked on collections. You don't know how dissapointing is to get your hands on those ships that came exclusively on the packs and to be unable to use them on all your characters.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Saito_Hiraga

- Defensive abilities suck and players die too fast.

- The rewards aren't worth the time it takes.

- Only two types of matches and the objective match is the same every time.

 

All legit and real concerns. I don't personally feel defensives are bad, but if you are a new player it could easily feel that way.

 

- I'm sick and tired of getting one-shotted by gunships.

 

Getting one shot by a gunship should be REALLY rare. If you play a distortion field type 2 scout, with large reactor and a crew member who has +shield, you have a total of 2250 (in F3 or F1: even more in F4 or F2) health in any direction if you aren't injured. A slug railgun at full charge will hit for 1760. If the slug has the crit talent, it can one shot you (16% of the time), and the other 84% of the time it will deal 1600 instead of 1760. Damage Overcharge (which is announced on the screen) also allows it. Are you really getting luckily crit, or getting nailed by DO, enough times to be sick of it? Or do you not actually mean you are being one-shot?

 

Other scout builds can have even more health than that, but I don't recommend them in general.

 

- Matches are rarely head to head, you're either on a team that's good or not and "comebacks" are highly unlikely.

 

A common complaint, and while it doesn't bother me as much (most pvp games are kinda like this), it is definitely echoed throughout the thread.

 

 

- Gunships are overpowered

That's a blanket statement.

Why is blaster power even a thing? Not only are we dying so fast but now when we're alive we can't even shoot?!

You have to manage all your power banks! If you're running out of blaster fire, take your shots a bit more carefully. There's plenty of juice in the tank as long as you aren't wasting it.

 

- While I admire the skill of superior pilots the disparity between the average pilot in GSF and those that are "good" is too great.

Agreed, but the big fixes for this include better tutorials, the ability to queue a practice level with a ship of your choice alone or with friends, etc. Trying to take the skill cap of the game down will definitely ruin it.

 

- The only time I've ever seen hacking in this game has been in GSF matches.

THIS is what made me push respond. I'm going to be direct: you seriously don't know what you are talking about here.

 

I PVP almost every day and I don't think I've ever seen anything there but I've seen ships use there evade ability twice back to back, missiles that fire instantly, and ships move in peculiar ways skipping around and preventing target locks.

 

The final one of those is caused by lag. It's not out of all possibilities that someone is lagging as a way to be harder to hit, but with practice you will find that lagging pilots have several weaknesses, including the fact that the server will sometimes "hold" them in a position that makes them quite vulnerable to weapon fire. I'm almost positive that deliberate uses of lag are very very rare.

 

The other things you describe I have literally never seen, and I feel confident saying you don't understand what is going on. I will also offer another explanation for your "instant missile". Seeker mines lock on (just like a missile) and fire (just like a missile) and can be cancelled (just like a missile). But the "lock on" is *instant*, and the mine launches. It is almost certain that you are seeing this. The double evasion thing is probably just a mistake on your part, but I will point out that one of the evasion cooldowns- running interference- applies to all allies near the caster. You could see it pop up repeatedly just for this reason. Note also that buffs can be odd, appearing to not be present and reappearing based on distance at times.

 

It's a long running joke that you aren't really doing great until someone logs over and calls you a hacker. Many pilots have had tickets opened on them- accusations of hacking are a very common refrain.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Verain

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 problem is that you guys have no idea what must be easy to understand and what is not. Remooving channeling abilities from meele classes and different stance buffs due to your incorrect opinion that these things made the bame difficult - WRONG because people liked it. Making gsf option window (when a player opens that strange window (which i dont even fully understand what it is, however showing ships, barrels etc) so difficult and scary-looking - WRONG. So many options in this window and things to think about in that spooky window before you join a fight, and you know players actually dont like to spend their time for long regulating/adjusting/reading etc since we do all of these at our works/studies. All players want is to join snd fight something that has easy mechanics but requires skills to fight other players. Thats why most of the players are not even thinking about playing it.

 

I don't think gsf has potential and that you can make it both have easy mechanic but good skill to play. Focus on other parts of the game pls.

 

P. S. We need cross-server queues or server merges fast!! French and german servers are dying, same with most USA servers

Queue as ops groups

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

 

Improved kick system

Please give us a better kick system. Currently there is nothing we can do about CXP farmers that join a match and then do nothing besides fly around the outside and occasionally get killed to avoid being auto-kicked for extended inactivity. The only kick option we have is when they are flagged as inactive and then as soon as we start the kick they move and it cancels.

 

Don't match us with those we ignore

Please give us a "don't queue with those you ignore" option. This would help with people like the one I kept sending you videos and screenshots of who choose to use multiple bots inside matches or even just those that fly on their own but suicide through matches to get the achievements. My thinking here is that if we had that option during that whole bot saga then all of us regulars would of had them on ignore and whilst we could fly together the troublemakers would not get into matches with us.

 

YES! Please let there be SMW premades that faceroll the oposition! Will be so much fun and people will enjoy to que solo against a premade of TOP players who will farm them at spawn, match after match!

• 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?
  

1. Learning curve - it is. I have one character with three almost-maxed out ships and wanted to start from scratch on another one just to realize that for the next 10 hours of playtime I'll be simply flying around and dying just to get enough comms to get the thing started; the whole mode lacks directions, and if it wasn't for the fantastic community, 90% of the rules would be completely obstructed or would require an insane amount of time investments (e.g. to get every single available ship and component to understand the capabilities).

Also, after having played around 250 matches I still have a feeling I'm missing something, an element that drastically changes the experience but is known only to some.

 

2. Ship balance - sadly, it is. I came back after a year because I wanted to play GSF but had to quit after 2 weeks or so because I couldn't stand the constant meta of bomber & GS camping that turns the game from an awesome dogfighting experience into a tedious and frustrating lottery ("will I be facing THOSE guys again?"). I understand that all ship types have their place, role and playstyle, it's just that it's impossible for me to enjoy the game in its current state.

 

3. Definitely; right now, GSF it's pretty much a separate game with no connection to the regular one; apart from CXP, the rewards seem non-existent and don't provide enough incentive. New maps and gamemodes would also be welcome; the current ones are really, really good, but all in all the gamemode needs some additional variety.

 

4. Matchmaking issues - all over the place, but I understand it's impossible to have proper matchmaking if there isn't enough players

 

5. Legacy - I'm indifferent to the matter, I guess

 

Side note: thank you very much for looking into GSF, being as awesome as it is, it does need improvements.

Edited July 7, 2017 by tephlon

The final one of those is caused by lag. It's not out of all possibilities that someone is lagging as a way to be harder to hit, but with practice you will find that lagging pilots have several weaknesses, including the fact that the server will sometimes "hold" them in a position that makes them quite vulnerable to weapon fire. I'm almost positive that deliberate uses of lag are very very rare.

 

Ships skipping around IS NOT caused by lag, it is caused by speedhack tool. If you deny that, it is you who doesn't know what you're talking about.

 

Lagged ships would follow some imaginary trajectory not change it randomly while still being able to interact with objective/other players. Either you're lagging so you can't get your position to server and can't get other players position back either, or you're not lagging at all. You can't regularly benefit from lagging.

 

Speedhacking is finally being quenched down in PVP and hopefully it would be so with GSF too.

I still play a lot, here's my thoughts

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

It's hard without reading guides to understand many things.

The tutorial should be mandatory for players without experience AND improved a lot.

Many starters don't know they can choose spawn points or they have a booster and how to use it.

How many times did I saw starters wanting to go to a satellite but starting from the opposite spawn point and flying there without booster.

 

Starters got not idea which ship to use, which to buy, which to upgrade with what and for what purpose...

 

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

Not me, there's some balance issues with some ships being better/worse than others. My opinions about thoses are quite similar to what many already said.

 

The main problem with balance is role stacking. Stacking bombers under satellites or in protected area in TDM, stacking gunships in TDM...

 

 

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

I'm playing atm but I took breaks before for the lack of new mode/maps in GSF and ground PvP. Without something new, my next break is going to be sooner than later.

 

Matchmaking issues?

Imo, it's the #1 problem for players (new ones in particular). Not sure how you can solve it without huge increase in people playing GSF...

Between a newbie and an experienced player, the difference is huge, even more so jf the vet has a maxed ship or close to.

But it's not only a problem of maxed ship vs starter ship, it's also for a big part a problem of experience and of understanding of the mechanics of GSF gameplay.

I'm an altoholic and I play GSF on most of my characters. Even with non-upgraded starter ships, vets like me can do a lot more than complete newbies.

Again, as a reminder about the learning curve, many newbies don't know how to use their boosters, how to handle energy management, when they are in firing range, how to shoot missiles, what the starter ships can and can't do...which cause them a lot of problems even against vets in starter ships.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

I have no problem with that but many people probably do, they don't want to have to regrind requisition to get ships and upgrades.

Please don't force GSF to be Legacy wide, I can understand why some want it but please let it be a choice.

The same legacy wide armors/weapons let people skip the grind, it also lets people do the grind if they want to.

Let me choose for each of my characters if I want to use stuff I earned through Legacy characters or to start from scratch.

 

 

It needs a way to remove CXP farmers (like on ground PvP).

Premades should fight against premades or people willing to go against premades (default option off)

A PvE aspect would make more people into it and would help getting some experience.

Whatever changes you make, don't dumb what's existing. Instead makes it easier for players to understand what's going on, what's important.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Nyla

Thanks for this thread: GSF really needs some new stuffs.

It's a great part of the game and it's nice to see you pay attention to GSF (at least )

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

Learning curve is ok for me: I don't like easy way (= old school gamer).

Victory without risk means triumph without glory.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

As I said in the balance thread, I think bombers kill the fun in Satellite Maps (please decrease their durability or the damage of the mines).

 

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

I'm not playing to GSF cause I can't! There are not enough people in my server (Battle Meditation) => please merge the server with same language!

And I think GSF needs new stuff like:

- new maps!

- new goals like, for instance, protect a mothership or a military base while the other team has to destroy it

- pve content (with same goals as above)

I think if GSF was legacy-wide it would help, mostly because having to play that 1 character for GSF probably turns people off of it, I mainly play in 1 character only but a lot of my friends play in multiple alts and that would help a great deal to make GSF more alt-friendly.

Nice to see the threats

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

For most ones yes, because a sufficient training area is missing and a reason to do.

 

We need one area, where you can practice shooting on moving drones. The Drones should have different speed, amour, evasion and flying profiles (up to nightmare).

 

The second area is to practice controls. Maybe someone remind X-Wing Alliance. In that game (I loved it) you had several ring courses. By time you learned how to fly.

 

And a third area, where you can spend time as long as you want to adjust controls to your needs and test component combinations.

 

Adding these three areas will be not enough. I suggest an weekly training quest and new achievements.

 

In addition you can think of some kind of leader board, where the best times and scores are shown. And what about some ranked gsf while racing on ring courses with buffs and debuffs provided by Cerzka Corporation and sponsored by Giradda the Hutt.

 

Crazy Idea: What about Huttball in Space

- The only time I've ever seen hacking in this game has been in GSF matches. I PVP almost every day and I don't think I've ever seen anything there but I've seen ships use there evade ability twice back to back, missiles that fire instantly, and ships move in peculiar ways skipping around and preventing target locks.

 

If you think there is hacking you probably don't know what your talking about.

 

-If you didn't see who killed you they could have dampening sensors and you can even see them yet

-If you are being 1 shot chances are the gunship got a critical hit or has Blaster Overcharge mod in TDM

-Cluster missiles have very shot lock on time, rocket pods fire instantly

-Ship mobility can prevent target locks by running behind an astriod or straight up avoiding line of sight or taking a turn you cant keep up with because your arc of fire is small (eg. proton torpedoes have a small firing arc)

-Also ship engine moves that can make you go at a verticale or horizontal angle to evade, low cool down times like power dive which is a 90 degree vertical evade with 5 second cool down and low engine cost when maxed. retro thrusters etc. list goes on and on.

-Some scouts can have 2 evade abilities, distortion field when maxed one of the options is target lock break, as well as having an engine evade like barrel role or retro thrusters. Scouts also may have lightweight armor increasing evasion chances.

 

Literally there is a reason that i can explain to you what you think is hacking but really isn't at all and an even longer list of more details i can go into.

It's a long running joke that you aren't really doing great until someone logs over and calls you a hacker. Many pilots have had tickets opened on them- accusations of hacking are a very common refrain.

 

I know that all to well, especially getting 42 kills in a team death match on a gunship, 3 ships kept charging right at me the entire match head on, no arcing angle to avoid my railguns. People said i must have been cheating but in reality it was the sheer stupidity/insanity of charging at a gunship head on in a scout not using an evade boost or going at an arcing angle.

 

Then there are times when you push over 100k damage mark, or when your on a clarion/imperium going around healing people like crazy and power diving ever so often avoiding fire. getting criticals off a proton torpedo (crew abilites) and people saying thats OP, having my protons lock past 10,000m (because of tier 5 ability for 15% range increase), protons going to fast (missle speed increase 100% ability). the list of accusations go on and on.

 

Or simply getting lucky with evasion and crit chances because of your crew and abilities i mean using someone like pierce to boost crit chance even further with targeting telm. with burst lasers on a scout beautiful

The learning curve is not only steep, it is downright punishing.

 

The tutorial is useful in learning how to avoid objects. But stationary targets aren't at all the same as the moving ones in a match.

 

So, you go out there in a flimsy, underequipped ship to try to hit targets which are entirely different from the few you practiced on--and which strike back. You are fighting players who live and breathe GSF.

 

Not only will you lose (which is OK in my book), but you bring down your team (which is decidedly not OK). There is a lot to learn, and the entire experience is discouraging and bewildering.

 

I periodically try GSF for weeks at a time, then give up. I really hate damaging my own team and, until I get the knack of even the simplest maneuvers, my presence is a handicap, not a help.

 

In Guild chat, the inability to master the elementary fly-and-shoot aspects of GSF are always cited as the reason for not participating. A serious effort to make a truly effective tutorial would do much to turn participation around. People want to be able to enjoy it, but they can't if they can't manage the essentials.

 

Perhaps a series of tutorials could double as space-mission quests? I know that this sort of solo content isn't what you've been concentrating on building up, but my guess would be that mastering these mini-practice-quests would lure a good few players into the GSF arena.

 

I know that the Zakuul Eternal Championship did much to encourage me to try my hand at ops and more advanced FPs. Something similar would be very useful to GSF.

 

I do want to compliment those GSF enthusiasts who have taken my ineptitude with grace or, at the very least, silence.

I read through the entire thread. Most of the feedback is naturally from GSF players and I'm sure will be of great value in improving the experience. Since it looks like you are trying to expand the GSF playerbase, I will give you my two cents as a non GSF player. But I can only respond to the first question: Is the learning curve too steep? Yes. So yes.

 

When it first came out, I was looking forward to trying GSF based on the hype pre-release. I didn't get past the tutorial. I tried the tutorial again a few times but never felt comfortable trying a match. Last summer I was determined to finish DvL so I played GSF. I did the tutorial again but still had no clue. I did the matches I needed and my experience has been described in this thread many times. I didn't mind dying over and over again because I fully expected it and I just needed the DvL achievements. And yes, even though I was only doing it for DvL I did try to actually play the matches, but to no avail. I was even more confused at the end of them than before I started. I don't PVP either, but at least in the few matches I've done (mainly for DvL) I actually understood (at least some of) what was going on around me. Not so in GSF. It's not so much that there is a learning curve of being new and needing to practice to figure it out, it's the feeling that there is no hope of ever figuring it out. There's no chance to do anything in a match and the tutorial is completely incomprehensible.

 

It's not fun.

 

If changes are made I will definitely try it again.

Please make Ships legacy bound. I only do GSF on 1 toon out of the 12 level 70s I rotate through. I do not want to grind up a new squadron of ships on each toon as this takes too long and GSF does not pop enough to facilitate this. Also I have over 5000 fleet comms and literally already own everything that is worth owning that can be purchased with fleet comms. There is honestly not enough incentive to que GSF as you'll be in que longer. If you que For both GSF and Warzones you'll majority of the time get a ground Warzone pop first Andy of the GSF does pop your probably already on a ground Warzone

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?

Yes, it is rather steep, especially for Strikes and Scouts. The Gunship curve is way easier. Same goes for the upgrade viability curve.

The tutorial could be fleshed out a bit more and show new players that it isn't the best course of action to just sit in a gunship and snipe away, but that roles of other fighters are often even more important.

It also doesn't help that people get into their first match(es) and get completely destroyed by veteran players that build their gunship/bomber walls and such.

 

• Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

It definitely ruins the fun when you go up against a group of 6 gunships and 2 drone layer bombers (or playing with them stealing your kills after you slowly chew down an enemy in a dogfight). This says alot about how broken the balance is. Strike fighters are too weak, scouts are okay in the hands of good players (but the learning curve/upgrade curve may be too steep). Gunships are easy to get in and rather easy even without upgrades to get a bunch of kills with. Drone layers can just lay their way too powerful drones and hide somewhere protected AFK while their drones rack up kills.

The problem with the "Little Death Stars" aka Gunships (and Bomber Railgun Sentry Drones!) and drone layer/mine layer bombers is that they totally ruin the Galactic STARFIGHTER aspect. They ruin Dogfighting, the Star Wars-like Dogfighting feel (play the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games to see what I mean!). Groups of little Death Stars that cover each other and (often one-shot) kill everything that gets close enough to even do damage to them and are tough enough to not get killed quickly isn't fun.

 

Balance suggestions:

In general, Strike fighters need to be boosted, scouts remaining mostly the same (perhaps some minor decreases for some builds), Gunships and offensive drone laying bombers need to be brought down quite a bit.

 

Strike fighters need to be boosted and made more attractive across the board. Increase their speed/boosting power a bit, decrease lockon and reload times of their long-range warheads like Proton Torpedoes, Thermite Torpedoes, Concussion missiles, etc. and perhaps increase their range a little bit.

Also, the missile lock breaker ability cooldowns need to be normalized at 15-20 seconds. Right now it gimps you severly if you take barrel roll with it's 30 second cooldown compared to other abilitites like Power dive with 15, Retro thrusters/Koiogan turn with 20, etc..

Also, abilities like Interdiction Drive, Shield Power Converter, etc. need to have a missile break included, too (although it should perhaps be on a separate missile break cooldown timer with abilities that have lower cooldowns than others) so people won't gimp themselves when taking them.

 

Scouts are mostly fine, but one could adjust the Burst Laser Cannon which just isn't too strong a bit so it's on par with Quad Laser cannons and others. Evasion may also be decreased slightly (but not too much), but maybe become more effective against Railguns. Perhaps tweak Rocket pods a little as they are perhaps deadly in the hands of skilled pilots (although the learning curve to use them well is steep). Maybe boost the Tier 1 scouts slightly as well.

 

If Gunships are to keep their offensive one-shot power, they need to be made true sitting-duck glass cannons and die quickly. Right now, Gunships are able to one or two shot kill strikes, scouts and sometimes even bombers before they can get in range to fire their weapons and if they do, they are able to withstand alot of punishement and even able to outrun even some scouts (and strikes as well, of course), which shouldn't be the case.

My suggestion is to greatly decrease the hitpoints and defenses as well as engine power of gunships and mostly keep the offensive output the same, except reduce the range of their railguns and other weapons so they are at least on par with Strike fighter's Proton torpedos.

Or greatly decrease their offensive capability.

The problem is also that a big perimeter net of coordinated gunships (especially when hiding in a drone/mine field of a bomber or more) can easily dominate everything since nobody can get close enough.

 

The automatic kill capabilities of Bombers need to be greatly decreased.

First, make all (offensive) drones and mines killable with one shot.

Second, Railgun Sentry Drones need to be removed completely. They are basically auto-aiming gunships which is just too overpowered.

Drones that heal and provide buffs to teammates are good, perhaps there could be extended a bit.

Bombers should transition more from offensive mine/drone layers into the traditional Star Wars Bomber role with hard-hitting warheads that are mostly meant to take out capital ships, space stations, ground targets and other objectives (in conjunction with new game modes that introduce such!).

 

Perhaps it might be wise to limit the maximum amount of Gunships and bombers active at a time in a match per side as well.

 

In Team Domination, Ships should be unable to fire from within the perimeter of their Spawnpoint's capital ship's turrets. It's incredibly annoying when Gunships (but also others with long range weapons, gunships are most prominent since they have the longest range) just sit in the safety of their capital ship turrets while killing people without repercussions.

 

On a side note, perhaps EMP Missiles/Pulses should destroy all mines/drones in the vicinity to be really desirable to be used instead of just disabling them for a few seconds.

 

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

1. Server merges into one megaserver per region and/or at least cross-server GSF queues to get more pops at all times of the day. Waiting hours and hours for a pop is ridiculous.

2. More modes. Perhaps a proper battle with captial ships where Bombers (repurposed as Bombers as we know them from the Star Wars Universe instead of mine/drone layers!) need to be protected and take out hard points like shield generators, turrets, hangar, bridge, etc.. of the capital ships and Strike fighters and scouts cover them.

Also co-operative PVE GSF missions when.

Maybe have capital ships with mannable stations, as we have seen in Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed.

3. Co-operative (also flyable solo) PVE GSF missions (at least missions with bots) when there aren't enough people to pop queues.

4. Private, invite/challenge based GSF PVP matches where you can make an ops group and challenge another ops group (of any faction) to a match (or allow randoms to join), select the map, objectives (how many kills/captures are needed, etc.), which fighter types are allowed (for example strikes and scouts only, no gunships/bombers, only limited number of a certain ship active per side at a time, etc.).

5. Possibly some combination of GSF and ground missions in stages, similar to Star Wars Battlefront (2015)'s Death Star Assault mission series, where you disable a capital ship in GSF and escort a shuttle first, then do ground combat to rescue someone, bring them to the shuttle and then fight it out in space again. This could be done for both PVE and PVP.

6. Add open space, with one open space sector/system around every planet where you can freely fly around in your GSF starfighter, meet NPC craft, players, do quests, etc., like the excellent Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Expansion, which is still one of the best MMORPG expansions of all time and would be a no-brainer to re-create in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

7. There should be Astromech companions with all passives and active abilities or you should add a crew slot for "Audio/Voice" only so we can put any crew member we prefer the banter (or chirping!) of into. It's stupid that one has to sacrifice immersion (having a astromech chirping as your "copilot" as you fly) for effectiveness.

 

Also, Weeklies/Dailies need to advance the same for winning and loosing. As it is now, the winners just win more due to being better equipped due to double the speed in gaining rewards/advancement and the loosers just being kept worse and thus keep loosing more (this is a general problem with PVP in this game, it needs to be changed for both GSF and Warzones!). Also, once the winners finish their dailies, they often log off and it often leaves the loosers with half their daily completed and take another day to finish their "daily", especially in conjunction with almost no pops. So they sometimes can only advance a fourth the speed of the winners, which is frustrating.

One could even argue that loosing should give you more experience, since you learn from falling on the face. But we all know this isn't possible with people that will start loosing on purpose otherwise, so rewards/advancements should just be even and the same, no matter whether you win or lose a match. Effort should be rewarded, not whether you are with the better equipped side or not.

 

• Matchmaking issues?

Queues don't pop for hours at times, even at high times and when there is GSF bonus. As mentioned earlier, either servers need to be merged or cross-server queues implemented.

Also cool would be (in general) if you could queue to any content with any character and when you get a popup, you can choose which of your characters to take to it. That way you could do something with one character that doesn't fly and when a GSF match pops, you could select your pilot character instead.

Also, it would be nice if the popup shows which Instance and match type it is so you can decide to accept or decline instead of people joining and leaving the match when they see what it is.

It would also be a good idea to be able to switch the loadout during matches (before each spawn) so you could select the components most suitable for the group and match setup.

 

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

It would certainly be good if all GSF unlocks as well as Ship and Fleet Requisition would be legacy-wide. Grinding them up for every character is just tedious and not fun most of the time.

 

 

Let us know your thoughts!

 

-eric

On a side note, that you increased the reward for the "Introduction to Starfighter" mission to 25k Fleet Requisition is good as it allows one to buy all the fighters and also crew that they want. However, it isn't fair that players that completed it before didn't get that benefit. I suggest re-granting that mission to all characters that had completed it before the last patch or just add the 25k Fleet Requisition to them.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Glzmo

It definitely ruins the fun when you go up against a group of 6 gunships and 2 drone layer bombers. This says everything about how broken the balance is.

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.

 

I agree wholly that strike fighters need improvement, and given that flying a strike is one of the initial experiences a pilot has, this is an important source of friction. So many of these other complaints stem from people not having the knowledge that would enable them to react to a situation properly, or the mechanical skills to enact the counter (like hitting their targets). When half of your team has a shooting % under 10%, you're not going to counter a whole lot.

 

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.

 

Better in-game tutorial resources are imperative to upgrade GSF and decrease discontent. In the meantime, I have produced a wide variety of videos teaching beginner-level skills to analyzing more complex situations with advanced tactics. Head over to GSF School if you want to check that out.

 

- Despon

Ships skipping around IS NOT caused by lag, it is caused by speedhack tool. If you deny that, it is you who doesn't know what you're talking about.

 

Lagged ships would follow some imaginary trajectory not change it randomly while still being able to interact with objective/other players. Either you're lagging so you can't get your position to server and can't get other players position back either, or you're not lagging at all. You can't regularly benefit from lagging.

 

Speedhacking is finally being quenched down in PVP and hopefully it would be so with GSF too.

 

Ships skipping around is diagnostic of lag. The server will keep waiting for the client to update for at least 15 seconds in cases of slow or missing data transfer, any update that makes it through will be updated on the server. For the lagging person it's fairly seamless, you can shoot, turn, but things like missile locks and on cooldown abilities won't actually register with the server unless the relevant packets get through.

 

Jumpy movement and impossibly fast and sudden direction changes are exactly what you'd expect from that sort of server-client relation where the server just uses the most recent data it has from the client and extrapolates during gaps in data transmission.

 

I've seen it playing on Wi-Fi with weak signal, I've seen it when auto-updaters hijack most of a computers network bandwidth.

 

It's possible to lag with deliberate interference with wireless (partially block the signal with metal or something) or by having a really bandwidth greedy download or peer to peer application running that you can start or stop with a hotkey.

 

It does work fairly well at avoiding blaster fire, but it severely degrades your ability to do everything else in GSF that matters in combat.

 

If you understand how the server deals with severe lag, it's quite possible for a skilled pilot to do things like guarantee missile hits or mine hits on the lagging player. That's why you typically only see it from fairly desperate new players, if you know what you're doing the cost of what you lose to lag is far greater than the modest protection it provides.

 

Bioware certainly knows all this, and there's not any indication that they've ever considered doing anything about it. After all, why fix an "exploit" that makes the exploiter more likely to lose? At any rate the physical realities of networking mean that there's not much you can do about it from a software engineering perspective.

 

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. You'd also see it in all the strikes spamming proton torpedoes as fast as cluster missiles. Speed hacks do very specific things, and we just don't see the symptoms of those things in GSF. Lag we see plenty of, especially from those poor APAC players.

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

 

Cos it is a mini-game with no ties to your character. Make it a free system such as EVE or the previous MMO SWG. Huge space systems filled with npcs occasionally meet an enemy player. Make space mining and with resources gathered you could craft stuff that is useful for your character, consumables cosmetic gear decorations whatever. Escort missions where you can earn some credits. Seek and destroy missions so on. Just seriously u guys esentially work on a Lucasart game just look at what Sony did with SWG space and make it like that.

 

Currently GSF's only purpose is that you can AFK level your command rank, and never get kicked or punished for it.

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.

 

Well said.