Learning curve is terrible for most people, as difference between stock and upgraded ships multiply skill gap between players. U might watch all the tutorial, have the optimal crew, but a stock ship is simply outclasses by fully upgraded one. I dont mean some bs about veterans doing well in stock ships - yes youll do well against noobs, but your stock ship will be useless against a player of same skill in fully upped ship.

 

Biggest things for me are scouts bursting people in under a second and gunships 2 shotting, Bombers are fine, as gunships clear drones/mines with ease, theyre slow and cumbersome. Strikes are just mediocre. The only change I'd make for components is either lowering or removing armor penetration as a passive, there is no reason why entire components should be redundant just because of that. Its like giving carnage mara gore as a passive, its just dumb. make it a buff or crew skill, but dont make it a passive that works 100% of the time.

 

With lower TTK people will actually get a chance to try and escape, rather than being killed instantly with no chance to do anything. If any ship is too strong/weak, hulls/sheilds can be adjusted. But let us build DR, and not feel like *******es casue a scout can just ignore 100% of our defences.

I dont mean some bs about veterans doing well in stock ships - yes youll do well against noobs, but your stock ship will be useless against a player of same skill in fully upped ship.

 

First, not really. Second, the point isn't that upgrades mean nothing- they mean something- but that the skill gap is vastly (10x or more) greater than the gear gap. If you are a new player getting worked by a veteran pilot and your ship is unupgraded, you didn't lose because of the gear.

 

Anyway the devs pretty much made everything upgrade wildly fast anyway.

 

 

The only change I'd make for components is either lowering or removing armor penetration as a passive

 

You'd need to redo the entire meta because you wouldn't be able to leave charged plating as it is. That could happen, but it is a sweeping change.

 

With lower TTK people will actually get a chance to try and escape

 

I definitely notice that there's a gap where newer players will ask for higher TTK (you meant higher, not lower), and veterans generally don't want that. I think a big piece here is that an experienced pilot spends a lot less time, relative to a new pilot, tanking damage instead of flying evasively.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Verain

Id like to add in specific commentary regarding the tutorial

 

We need an active immersive tutorial in this game. I know it would be a lot of resources but it would be worth it. The tutorial should include the following.

 

A step by step guide to each ship Starting with each T1 version the tutorial guides players step by step through the ships components and functions and how tos on their weapons.

 

A sandbox area with both stationary and mobile targets, as well as obstacles and return fire.

 

A mini mission to take a sat and defend it, as well as a mini mission to get 5-10 kills in a TDM first before the enemy team does.

 

A version of the minio sandbox useful for 1v1 dueling where both pilots can communicate to each other in a short TDM freefor all area, or a brief king of the hill scenario.

 

the last one would be most useful for people who like to teach such as myself or Despon or Drakolich, and would provide the ability to give feedback in game.

 

its a difficult prospect right now for an experienced pilot to give in match feedback when were flying our respective rear ends off to achieve the match goals. we can only usually do it after the match is over.

 

Also I'm coming to the point that the GSF channel should be standard Op procedure and automatically on when the character is first created.

Also I'm coming to the point that the GSF channel should be standard Op procedure and automatically on when the character is first created.

 

This is a pretty brilliant obvious point.

 

The people who don't seriously needed the /GSF chat channel are already in it, and have largely migrated to the GSF Discord server.

 

The people who could seriously benefit from being in /GSF, mostly don't know it exists.

 

Making it one of the default in game channels would be good on the whole. You'd get more trolls, but the newbs would have a much more obvious place to fish for help from other players. I mean, there are pilots who spam a cjoin /GSF message at the start of matches pretty regularly as a public service, but it'd be nice if they didn't have to.

Server wide channels don't exist at character creation. If that's going to change, it shouldn't start with /gsf. Edited July 18, 2017 by Verain

Server wide channels don't exist at character creation. If that's going to change, it shouldn't start with /gsf.

 

I think they mean stuff like the trade and pvp channel, which definitely are there at start, just like general chat. If not, well, that seems like that would be the easiest and would make sense to do. *shrugs*

I think they mean stuff like the trade and pvp channel, which definitely are there at start, just like general chat. If not, well, that seems like that would be the easiest and would make sense to do. *shrugs*

 

Those are planet (or fleet) specific, not server-wide. Some servers have a /endgame channel set up for players looking to do operations or other endgame activities, and several guilds have set up channels for recruitment, like the Ootinicast-affiliiated guilds on the Harbinger and the Alea Iacta Est guilds on the JC server.

I think they mean stuff like the trade and pvp channel, which definitely are there at start, just like general chat. If not, well, that seems like that would be the easiest and would make sense to do. *shrugs*

 

The game doesn't have automatic server channels, and for GREAT reasons. If there is one automatic server channel, then it is the general chat for the server. If there are two, then the second one could be something else. So if you added a GSF chat, it would be all divided up into zones- ZONE channels, like General, PvP, Trade. All the pilots would have to make another server channel, and this one would be hard to get the word out for.

Color Blind / Color Support

 

I'm personally a big fan of UIs that distinguish purpose ONLY with color. On my home box, I redid the window decorations to only be different colors (same brightness), right next to each other, rainbow from red for close to violet for pin-to-workspace. A colorblind man would find my computer extremely unusable, and I don't give a crap, because I'm not colorblind. However, my custom scheme is neither a default inclusion in XFCE, nor does it ship with default-enabled window decorations that are unusable by the color blind- you have to dig around in settings to find any that are distinguished by color at all, and even then they are also distinguished by default position, etc.

 

SWTOR in general has global requests for a set of colorblind modes (to allow for recognizability for the more common types of colorblindness), and I won't touch on that. I will instead talk about small changes that would help accessibility for at least a decent number of users.

 

In GSF, the two big things that show up oddly are satellite colors in game, and the satellite and score colors in the UI. If a green satellite had some blue stripes on the wings, and was green and blue in the UI, that would probably make a big difference. If the team scores had a bit more distinction in how they were written- say, one was a larger font- that would also help. Secondarily, if some visual element existed for maps and targeting in addition to color, that would also help.

 

There's a bunch more that could be done if this was a design goal, and it is kind of a SWTOR problem, not a GSF problem. But I feel that 80% of the issues could be addressed with tweaks.

[*]Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

There's a case to be made that it is. I think it is mostly a player population issue though. Because there are fewer players, you more often get into unfair, discouraging matches in which you don't have an opportunity to learn.

 

[*]Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

To a degree, yes. Only one ship that I enjoy flying (Jurgoran) is viable. The other ships I like flying are not viable.

 

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

 

No, I don't think so. It would be fun to see though.

 

[*]Matchmaking issues?

 

Major. It is impossible for me to find a match without going across servers at my 'reasonable' playtimes (Oceanic). I would likely play SWTOR a lot more if finding a GSF match wasn't such a pain.

 

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

 

Very minor. This isn't something I have an issue with.

There are a number of problems with GSF:

• Lack of proper tutorials
  
  • There are lots of crybabies that can't be bothered to find tutorials online that explain the game. You need to explain more than just flight controls and shooting in the tutorial. You need to explain the abilities, targeting keys, energy management, leading shots, missile locks, evasion ability, domination rules, etc.

[*]Learning curve

• Can be alleviated with better tutorials and better matchmaking - people get frustrated and quit matches as soon as the going gets tough (this also happens in warzones) or they stop playing GSF completely. This leads them to believe loadouts trump skill, but even once you've upgraded your loadouts once, a capable pilot can start to make a difference. Whoever thought to add RPG elements to GSF is frankly, a moron. I came in expecting a slightly dumbed-down X-wing/TIE experience, and what I got was far different from that. Dumbed-down? More like lobotomized. It can be fun, but loadouts do play a factor. Anyone that has played those types of sims comes in with an advantage though.
  

[*]Matchmaking is horrendous - oftentimes, teams are stacked one way or another. This makes for boring matches. I've had a handful of nail-biters, and they are indeed the most enjoyable and memorable...even if we wind up losing, but they are few and far between. There needs to be some kind of system to track pilot skill, and not something just level-based. It needs to be stats based.

[*]More game modes are needed - such as capital ship/space station assault and escort missions

[*]More maps are needed

[*]Ships need to be better balanced

• Currently there is no Strike Fighter in the meta. Anything else is tactically superior. Gunships and bombers are king, and lots of people don't know how to properly counter each, even though there are counters to them.
  

[*]People need to be able to be kicked not just for being idle, but for being rude and immature.

• The unanimous vote system doesn't work. It should use a super majority system, and moving or interacting should not break the vote. This applies to warzones too.
  

Edited July 25, 2017 by Tofu_Shark

Eric:

 

I will try to answer as thoroughly as possible and provide an insight into why I, personally, think GSF isn't fun. My own subjective "friction points."

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

Yes and no. And I know that sounds contradictory and evasive by nature.

 

Many advantages in GSF come from point advantages and build advantages. Even such things as turning rate can be increased with ship requisition in the component's "skill tree." As your point advantage increases, so does your progression on the "learning curve." There really is no need to participate in the steep learning curve when you have the components and build advantage over the enemy. This advantage goes as far as to offer direct shield penetration and other immensely powerful bonuses for veterans.

 

The learning curve isn't the issue, simply because the learning curve is never properly tested. It's the point curve that is causing tremendous issues.

 

Turn rates and shield penetration are way too powerful bonuses to have for simple progression. It makes what could be a game of skill and maneuverability into a point game. And this is where the secondary issue comes up: Matchmaking.

 

When you pitch veteran players with all these benefits into the same game as new players with close to none of the benefits, chaos is sure to follow. I went on my sage and did a quick round of GSF earlier. During the match, I used a new Strike Fighter to fight a gunship. I shot at th gunship for upwards of ten seconds and got multiple damage numbers popping up. It wasn't hard to hit because he was essentially motionless. I was not able to even drop his shield. Shooting at a built-up ship for over ten seconds and not even scratching the hull in any meaningful way is completely frustrating. Espescially when some other pilot flies around the corner and kills you in what seems to be three seconds.

 

In direct dogfights, fresh ships lose too. People seem to be done turning with their improved turning rates by the time you haven't even finished 2/3 of your own turn, and they already fire at you with vastly superior blasters.

 

This entire game of point improvements and serious advantages makes GSF completely unfun with such a small available playerbase. Veterans will stomp the new guys with nearly 1,000/200 point advantages. It completely kills every willingness to participate in the following learning curve.

 

And, yes, there is a curve. But that only comes into play after the point advantages even out over time: Aiming. Aiming feels completely off in GSF. You don't only have to maneuver your ship! You also have to constantly aim for a little, sometimes almost invisible circle in front of your enemy. That circle can move wildly from time to time, with little to no anticipation of where it will go on a fast, maneuverable ship. And even if you hit that circle, deflection/miss makes it feel completely unresponsive because there is no indication you actually missed.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

Other people have pointed this out in the past: Scouts can be somewhat useful. Strike Fighters are basically useless. Bombers and gunships have serious advantages. And if nobody on the team knows how to perfectly counter a bomber at a node, it is not unusual that a skilled bomber pilot will take out two or three average skilled enemy strike fighters.

 

Yes, ship balance is one of the reasons I rarely play. I am a strike fighter/scout type of person. I do not enjoy slow bombers or stationary combat. I enjoy the fast paces, dogfighting aspects of starfighter combat. Even back in SWG during JTL. If I can't play a strike fighter even slightly competitive, I won't really bother. I don't feel like picking a gunship/bomber and slowly fly around a single node for six minutes while deploying mines.

 

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

 

Not at all.

 

I don't feel like GSF needs something new. However, I am not a veteran. The current GSF content has barely lived past it's use for me because I rarely play GSF. What GSF could use, however, is an overhaul in how the game mode is integrated into the rest of the game.

 

Let's take one aspect that is very dear to me: Customization.

 

I have spent upwards of 30 million credits on my Republic characters alone in an attempt to make them look just the way I want. I spent CC on the CM to buy my sage the Sanctified Caretaker outfit and Blademaster's Lightsaber to make him look like a proper Jedi. That's properly something like 20€. I spent 10 million+ credits on my guardian for the Jedi Knight character creation armour. The point of this lenghty rant is to demonstrate that there are tons of people in this game who spent dozens of millions of credits to make their characters, strongholds and other things look just right to them.

 

This aspect is lost in GSF. Our characters vanish from screen. They seem to be replaced by a small, uncostumizable ship without any soul, and they mostly look the same to everyone.

 

And don't take this as a veiled request to introduce new "colours" to the CM. What is missing is real customization, and the ability to showcase that customization outside of matches. You'll barely notice a paint-job or a different engine colour during a match. What's missing is the ability to showcase our ships. One example of this would be to introduce new patterns, extras and cosmetic items for starfighters (paint jobs, pin-up logos, droids, battle-damage esque things), and then give us the ability to display these ships on centerpiece hooks/starship hooks in our SH. My biggest turnoff in terms of cosmetics is that GSF doesn't have all that much in this area.

 

Matchmaking issues?

 

Tremendous matchmaking issues.

 

It is not fun to queue for the game as a new pilot and then get completely obliderated by veterans. It is not fun, it will never be fun. It's not a learning experience, and it certainly doesn't "harden the player for things to come." It's such a frustratingly bad experience that you want to smash your keyboard and do some PvE or ground PvP. The only person who considers this kind of matchmaking "fun" is the veteran on the winning end of the spectrum.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

 

Indeed.

 

I've said it since early access for GSF began: The hangar should be legacy wide. Everything else is somehow legacy wide. Strongholds wouldn't be nearly as popular if they weren't a legacy wide thing. The CM has legacy wide unlocks. GCXP unlocks legacy wide bonuses when one of your characters reaches 300. Gear can be traded through the legacy armour system. And warzone commendations were tradeable through your legacy up until 4.X.

 

The GSF hangar should have been legacy wide from the start.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Alssaran

People suiciding through matches is happening quite frequently at the moment and as we've seen in the past, even with videos, screenshots and tickets customer services are not willing to help.

 

My suggestion would be that the system auto-kicks people that suicide 5 times in a match if they have not killed at least 5 enemies.

 

Additionally, the system should auto-kick people that are inactive for 2 minutes and by that I mean not contributing at all. Some just sit at the base ship and when you initiate a vote kick against them they nudge their ship forwards which cancels the kick vote.

While I can currently comment in the forum....

 

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

 

Definitely. Even when grasping the basic concepts of a match type (Capture and hold or kill count) it's very difficult to be effective even after several matches. I would have never become a decent pilot if it wasn't my nostalgia for tie fighter. Even then I barely held on long enough to become proficient as tie fighter got right what gsf got wrong despite being a far older game.

 

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

 

Despite having extensively flown every ship type, I would say gunships and bombers ruined the mode. Most players want to duke it out in dogfights. Being blown up without ever seeing what shot you is more than enough to turn most people away, especially when it happens repeatedly. Clearing mines and turrets tends to require specific tools or a lot of coordination - something that cannot be expected of a new pilot.

 

Bomber spam and Gunship chess don't make a fun match for most (but it does for some).

 

 

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

 

 

I was gone nearly a year and stuff I had purchased in gsf were removed from my account. Doesn't make a lot of sense to spend more money on a product that can't maintain proper records of what you own. Contacting support for resolution is an irritating process that is ineffective anyway if the records are still being reset.

 

Bugs persisting for over 2 years also further discourage investing in said product, and having to check components every login is the equivalent of having to put on your gear... every time despite not having taken it off.

 

 

Matchmaking issues?

 

Yes. Blowouts should be the rare exception, not common place. Getting skipped after waiting 10-15mins doesn't help either. The community is small but it can't grow without other changes to improve the state of the game.

 

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

 

 

As someone who's mastered all ships available on at least 6 characters, I can attest to it being a painful process. It's essentially like leveling a character twice, first in game level, then gsf level. I will naturally avoid getting in q if on a character I haven't devoted to gsf - its not worth the hassle and I have over 20 max level chars (when max level was 65) I'm not always going to play a character that was devoted to gsf.

 

 

So to summarize, fix long-standing bugs, create a legacy wide hanger and provide in game bonuses if you want to entice more of the player base.

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

 

- Definitely for a new player. I started playing GSF on launch. My first deathmatch ended up 5:3 after time ran out and most of the points were self-destructs. It was way easier to learn basics back then. For a new player it must be rough right now, there are experienced pilots with upgraded ships and being blown down from sky over and over without actually knowing what has happened must be extremely frustrating.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

 

- No, although strikers should be look at (they are not viable at all). Also deathmatches with experienced pilots on both sides usually end up in a Gunship battles with 6 GS on each side, which can be quite boring. But hey, it is a MMORPG, some "classes" are always stronger than others.

 

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

 

- I am playing GSF and i enjoy it. But i agree it needs something new: Especially new maps and new game modes. Some PVE content would be interesting too. Probably a new ship. Concept of a stealth ship sounds great.

 

Matchmaking issues?

 

- I think for proper matchmaking GSF needs a larger player base. I only queue solo, don't have any problems with matchmaking, sometimes i win, sometimes i lose. Server merging/cross-server queue would definitely helps too.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

 

- I like leveling new characters, leveling ships is part of that. Having access to my fully upgraded hangar on all my characters would probably spoil the fun for me. Some "hook" would be nice though, like having fleet requisition legacy - wide? But i can totally understand someone doesn't want to go through the whole upgrading process more than once.

 

 

Generally i think GSF is great. But it needs some adjustments that would attract more people to play it:

 

- PVE content (for people who enjoy PVE, also a place where you can learn how to play)

- New PVP maps

- New PVP game modes

Edited August 14, 2017 by Vichr

Let me start by saying thank you to the devs for opening up these avenues of discussion regarding GSF. That being said, I don't particularly like the way this thread was opened, I think it pigeon holed responses into a few narrow categories and didn't immediately elicit the information they were looking for. I interpreted this thread more as what outside of ship balance and itemization would make GSF better and more appealing. I have no doubt at least one of these ideas has been suggested already, if not all three, but thought it couldn't hurt to add my support to them. The first is a more comprehensive tutorial. Even allowing additional ship types to be accessed would go a long way in providing new players some experience before diving into the deep end. Secondly, resources not withstanding, and my favorite idea, a custom matchmaking lobby. Allow those who want hypercompetitive matches, stock matches, strike only matches, etc to set them up without having to try to queue sync with four separate groups and without interfering with the traditional matchmaker or interrupting the experience of the casual flyers learning the game. Most pilots I speak with really want competitive matches, win or lose and this would provide and avenue for that. Lastly some free flying open space. Anything that would allow vets to test builds/components or even spend some time teaching without the time or contribution restrictions placed by an actual match would go a long way in furthering the community that many have worked hard to build as well as the overall understanding of the game. As for friction itself, I am probably not the best to comment on that as I am a huge fan of the game mode and am generally queued if I am in game, and nothing has scared me off to this point.

It would help to stop the spawn point camping.

Opponents just waiting at the battleship or near by and you can't escape.

Your ship is respawning, bang dead.

 

It would really help if the battleships would be rearmed.

I played GSF for the first time ever yesterday.

 

I am between projects at work so I went home early instead of twiddling my thumbs. Being bored, I figured I'd look into GSF since there was a CXP bonus for it and it seems to be on CXP bonus more than anything else.

 

I did the tutorial which seemed simple enough but in my first 5-8 matches I had something like 200 damage and 10-15 deaths.

 

It wasn't until I watched the GSF videos on youtube, specifically the GSF School ones, that I actually figured out the basics of tracking my target, using the throttle, shields, and weapons, and figured out how to use the class skills.

 

By the end of the day, I was performing mid-tier (approximately 15-20k damage) with a somewhat decently geared strike fighter (blindly following the build guides online) and having fun with it.

 

To answer your questions:

 

Hey folks,

 

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

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

It is steep. People don't realize this is a game unto itself. I did not. This is MMO PVP meets FPS meets Flight Sim and you can't just hop into something like that and expect to perform well. The resources are there though if you want to get better.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

To be honest, I have no idea. I initially poked around at other ships but figured that if I were going to contribute to my team at all, then I'd have to focus on one specific ship (in this case the Rycer or whatever SF). As a brand new player I have no idea which ship is better and why, other than bombers are hard to bring down even if I get a jump on them and gunships are the FPS snipers and you cant approach them directly.

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?

It would be nice to have legacy based ships but I really don't mind either way. It took me one day of slow queues to get my first ship somewhat decent (I assume) so I think the gear up issue is where it should be.

 

As far as matchmaking, perhaps if you had a regs and ranked queues, you could allow the veterans better competition amongst each other and noobs time to learn without being one-shotted (population dependent of course (x-server?)). More often than not, I found myself getting annihilated by the same people over and over and over.

Edited August 30, 2017 by wbtusmc

... Additionally, the system should auto-kick people that are inactive for 2 minutes and by that I mean not contributing at all. Some just sit at the base ship and when you initiate a vote kick against them they nudge their ship forwards which cancels the kick vote.

 

Whilst I agree with this for the most part, it runs into one major problem with players like me who are quite happy to contribute deploying a hyperspace beacon and then fly about doing very little from a damage point of view (if any) purely to keep the usefulness of it there for my teammates. This frequently gives me the "you are not contributing ..." message, however I would argue I am in that it can make a major difference in a tight game if on re-spawn your teammates can spawn a lot closer to the target area(s) than the original spawn points, i.e. 4-5 seconds and back in fight rather than 10-15 ...

 

As soon as I die the beacon disappears so to me it makes sense to deploy it and stay out of trouble flying near it to protect it, but if enemy never find it or don't realize, then I get very little if any damage/kills but the team benefit greatly.

 

2 minutes of not contributing kills this play style which is valid from a team match perspective.

 

I guess there could be a check to see if ship/player had deployed a beacon before kicking though which would solve the problem.

I'm the PVP officer of a sizeable guild on EH, I've run 'star fighter nights' as part of my quarterly game plan for the past 2 quarters to help step players who avoid star fighter into a better understanding of it. As a guild we get 30-40 people a night online, I manage to convince 5 or 6 to group up for star fighter.

 

The learning curve being too high? Newer players have a lot to learn, it's one of the things I appreciate about star fighter, it's extremely team based and has layers of understanding to it. I've played for year now, and even now I take a second look at a ship and consider tweaking a build. When I manage to coach a newer player into landing their first kill shot, which can take a couple of matches depending on the competition, I can usually hook them into being interested by the next night. There really isn't instant gratification with this, I'm not sure there should be. Better tutorials or a hands-on simulator might help, you queue into a warzone by yourself chasing npc training dummy targets just so you can get hands on experience flying and targeting. New players trying to learn how to move their ship against highly skilled pilots that populate the queues? I end up sounding like Stuart Smalley over discord, because they feel completely helpless.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing? I appreciate the diversity of ships and the way they compliment each other.

 

Are you not playing because you feel GSF needs something new to bring you back in? Tactics. The problem with the matches never really changing is that the tactics become incredibly stale, making the matches frustratingly boring. The infrequency of the queue can also be problematic. In unranked PVP, you have arena matches to expedite pops when the population queuing is low. If there were new GSF match types that capitalized on smaller teams in more confined spaces, I could see it drastically increasing pops outside of peak server hours. If we added new content, more compact content might work better than larger scaled content.

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy? I have 8 characters. All 8 characters are completely bought out of every (non-cartel) ship with the same exact components with only a few variants in the name of experimentation. I struggle to see a downside to this, since your star fighter hanger is pretty much separated from the rest of your character.

Is the learning curve too steep to get into?

No - but its not really that relevant. New players can be amazing pilots and still get turned to paste by the 6 gunships waiting to eat them for lunch. It’s less of a learning curve and more of a “the only people left are the masochists that suffered through getting a ship geared to make it survivable and now want to make you suffer like they did.” After about 5 matches I got really good at evading, but I was never able to kill anything. After 15 or so matches I figured out that “flying” was not part of GSF. After 30 more I had a pretty well geared gunship and was actually killing things. After 30 more, the shame of snipe camping overcame me and I swapped to bombers (I even had a short stint in an anti GS scout… but no one can survive a pair of GS’s covering themselves. Add a 3rd and there is no way you will even get close.) So if your new, don't waste time with anything else, get a GS and learn to use it.

 

Is ship balance preventing you from playing?

Yes - completely this. You have 2 options for ships in this game. Bombers or Gunships. Even on a fantastic scout you still can’t out maneuver the fleet of gunships that everyone seems to swap to. Also - gunship deployment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You can have a whole team of GS's facing a whole team of GS's for some of the most boring “who will catch who at less than 15k 1st ‘dogfighting’" ever imagined. Gunships are too mobile, too well armored and need 0 support. If you get caught with your pants down in a GS, it should cost you. Right now, it doesn't. You just boost out, and pull your pursuer into the field of other GSs greedily waiting to pounce and watch them get vaporized while you find another spot to snipe from. In almost every match I have played recently, we start off with a mix of ships, each side figures out that the “fun” ship they were going to play isn’t going to work and they swap to a GS or a bomber.

 

Bombers are a lot more fun to play (IMO - ymmv), but they shouldn’t be your only viable choice to stave off GS Armageddon every match.

 

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

It would be great if there were fleet events, or invasion events where you were called to support.

 

You know what would be awesome? The ability to call in support bots or drones from your flagships – Like calling in scout support to swarm GS nests. Or giving strike fighters HARM missiles that can fire and forget on ships that are actively tracking them (like say… a gunship painting them -or anyone else- for a free-kill snipe. Force the GS driver (yes, driver… tanks don’t have pilots, sorry) to think before they sit back with their gun charged up ready to pounce on whoever comes into range). It seems I have an issue with gunships…

 

Microrant incoming – My biggest problem with the GS isn’t even that its ridiculously configured, it’s that I HATE driving one. I just can’t stand it. But for a long time, it’s all I would play because it was the fastest way to collect medals. So, I hate driving them and hate flying anything else when there is a fleet of them in the air. So yeah, just delete the gunship altogether and I’ll be happy =)

 

Companions - It would also be cool to be able to take your GS crew members as companions. I'd love the chance to get companions you can only earn by GSF achievement.

 

Matchmaking issues?

Considering it seems like only the same 20 or so people ever play, it seems like when they want a match, they get one. And if you are one of those guys, you already know who is new and who isn’t, so you know who to focus on from the word go – further punishing the new players. It would be fantastic if you didn’t see who you were fighting (how does it make sense to know the loadout and name of your enemy pre-match??)

 

The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy?

A legacy hanger would be fantastic. I’ve kind of created this for myself already – setting up individual alts with their “favorite” ships. Sadly, most of them are now favoring bombers… or I don’t play them at all if I loaded out a scout or (le gasp) a strike fighter. It would be very cool to have a GSF stronghold where you can actually interface with and show off your “fleet”

So if your new, don't waste time with anything else, get a GS and learn to use it.

 

I'll just leave this here. Read it, learn it, love it.

 

I won't argue that a lot of matches devolve into GS chess, and I certainly understand finding this playstyle tiresome. You are certainly not alone in that. But the fact is, there are indeed effective counters to gunships - even multiple gunships. 1v1, good battlescouts will eat even the best GS pilots for lunch. That said, pulling off a win versus a GS wall requires at least some level of coordination. And that's where the average pug team falls flat. At a high level of play, 8 gunships aren't going to win a TDM versus a well-coordinated team.

 

tl;dr - read that guide, fly smart, make some friends, get a group. Profit.

I'll just leave this here. Read it, learn it, love it.

 

I won't argue that a lot of matches devolve into GS chess, and I certainly understand finding this playstyle tiresome. You are certainly not alone in that. But the fact is, there are indeed effective counters to gunships - even multiple gunships. 1v1, good battlescouts will eat even the best GS pilots for lunch. That said, pulling off a win versus a GS wall requires at least some level of coordination. And that's where the average pug team falls flat. At a high level of play, 8 gunships aren't going to win a TDM versus a well-coordinated team.

 

tl;dr - read that guide, fly smart, make some friends, get a group. Profit.

 

You illustrate my point completely. To beat the pug GS wall (I like your description there ), you need a well coordinated assault group. There is something wrong when that is the case.

You illustrate my point completely. To beat the pug GS wall (I like your description there ), you need a well coordinated assault group. There is something wrong when that is the case.

 

I agree, to an extent. GS walls are a problem on specific maps, notably Lost Shipyards TDM. Gunships stack a little too well there because they have terrific line of sight. In my experience, these are the matches that most typically devolve into gunship chess. I do think gunships could use some sort of nerf so they don't stack so well.

 

But anywhere else, you have options. On Kuat Mesas TDM, smart flying can get you up a gunship's tailpipe without being exposed to railguns. On domination maps, teams largely comprised of gunships shouldn't be an issue. They can't hold nodes effectively, and certainly can't cap them sitting 15km away.

 

I took issue with this:

If you get caught with your pants down in a GS, it should cost you. Right now, it doesn't. You just boost out, and pull your pursuer into the field of other GSs greedily waiting to pounce and watch them get vaporized while you find another spot to snipe from.

 

You can absolutely wreck a single GS with a scout (ideally, a Flashfire or Sting). With practice, you can win that matchup nearly every time. All you really have to do is get them to move; an unharassed GS is dangerous, but as soon as he's forced to deal with a scout, he's no longer a threat. The link I posted should help.

I wonder if the 300-th post after the initial question triggers something..... like a response.... or even just a post mortem nerve impulse.

 

I would think 250+ posts of open, honest, sensible opinions should get something..... or is it business as usual at Bioware?

-i.e. Ask a question, ignore the answers for over 2 years.. then ask another?

 

Just wondering .... HELLO? ANYONE AT HOME IN THERE? ANYONE? HELLO?

Edited September 21, 2017 by Storm-Cutter