An interesting thread over at Reddit about GSF......

I'll quote something about your quote - with regards to the Mastered Cartel ships, I don't think that word means what you think it means. Those ships have NO upgrades, they are just identical copies of ordinary ships that happen to give you a 10% bonus on the rate you earn req from the moment you start. I'd guess it was a psychological advantage if you found you were getting more kills in your new Mastered ship.

I enjoy GSF, I play a lot, toons on both factions on Red Eclipse, although now my imp toon has reached 55, I'll probably just stick to one. To me, it's just a free bonus in a game I already enjoy playing as an MMO. It may not be what I hoped for, I wanted XWing vs Tie Fighter 2, the gear grind limits the toons I play on to just the pair and the matchmaking can be laughable when a war game puts 8 geared toons on one side and none on the other (when it's 4 vs none, I assume a premade).

I don't play ground pvp, I was never prepared to invest the time needed to learn and gear, but I love space sims and with nothing decent since Freelancer, and nothing great since Freespace 2, anything that lets me fly around shooting spaceships was always going to work for me. It could be better, but then that could be said about almost every game. This was a freebie, added in extra, and while it might have taken resources away from another op etc, it's a bit of variation. I'll keep playing for as long as the main game holds my attention.

Any new ship you buy from whatever source has ZERO upgrades, making it no better or worse than any other. CM ships only get the "mastered" buff you otherwise get by upgrading at least one item from all catergories to the max.

-- The tutorial is horrible. I have been playing MMO's for 20 years and I feel at a loss as to where to start with GSF.

-- I think it was a bad idea to try to implement a Progression based PVP system. Progression based PVP is extremely hard to implement well. Most of the time you scare newbs like me off. No one wants to constantly be beat to a pulp without any reasonable chance of winning just because you started late.

I have to say that it's 99% the horrid tutorial, not the gearing/progression that makes it so difficult. Any good pilot can go start a new toon on any server they like and end up in the top 5 with the default ship.

I have a friend who started a new toon this weekend on a new server - his 1st GSF match he finished #1 overall with kills and damage in his 100% stock default ship. That signifies to me that the secret to GSF is knowing how the hell things work, NOT gear/progression.

Thanks for the info, wasn't aware of that, didn't even look, thought it gave you the upgrades...

Perhaps it was indeed all in my head, or perhaps the playing I did before made me more skilled and the timing just worked out that way.

In that case, I'll take it off my P2W list.

Sorry, but that isn't something just anyone can do. Someone who is REALLY good, maybe. Everyone else, not so much. In general, the gear progression is weighted way to heavy in GSF. They made the exact same mistakes in GSF that they made in the ground game. It's gear oriented instead of skill oriented. Rewards should be new paint, different looking ships, ability to change weapons load outs, etc. None of the rewards should be gear progression. (Of course, the same should be for the ground game, but that's another story.)

Being an MMORPG at its core, the talent pool of ace pilots who knows how to dogfight in 3D space in this game is likely fairly limited. I'm guessing the number of pilots who cut their teeth flying the likes of CFS, IL-2, Elite or Wing Commander is few. Maybe some lack the spacial awareness, or haven't learned how to work with other (and often equally confused) solo pilots.

What I found is this ... the most fun one can have in GSF is to either get lucky and be teamed with a tight premade from whom you can emulate wingman combat, or be part of one yourself.

I worked a soloing GSF alt to tier 5 (components anyway) and lost interest because I got tired of drawing the ire of coordinated teams. So I transferred guildless toons from Jedi Covenant to a rocking guild on Pot5 that has a passion for running GSF premades. It's amazing how much fun GSF is when flying as a team with pilots who consistently practice together and can verbally communicate in real time.

Maybe if unranked GSF did away with premades entirely ... allowing only solo players from differing guilds to be grouped together? Might level the playing field enough to bring some players back.

I tried it.

Once.

They should have went with something more similar to either their space missions or the ground combat.
Instead they chose an entirely new system and gave us nowhere to practice other than as victims of those more experienced, which makes for a very poor practice field.

I couldn't even find directions for adjusting power levels until after I participated and got a codex entry.

I have an idea of how I would have approached it, but it doesn't really matter. They did what they did, and they aren't likely to change it.
The time and money involved in an overhaul is almost certainly not something that they are interested in investing.

Of course, for all I know GSF is a resounding success. I'm not going to be a click on someone's Reddit, but I woul dwager that they don't know what the numbers are. All they have is their opinion, just like others have theirs. GSF may be very popular.
All I know is that I didn't care for it when I tried it, to the point that I have never felt the need to go back and try it a second time.

I don't believe it is as popular as Bioware wanted it to be, but I do believe it is much more popular than the original PVE space combat feature, which I believe was an actual failure. I do not see GSF as a failure. It has too many merits and has obvious support in the community to judge it that harshly....

...but I do believe it is not as popular as it could have been, had it been designed properly. Whether it was a design decision, lack of time or funds or a combination of both, it just seems to me like it was an opportunity lost.

Or maybe, just maybe, the whole thing screams "GIMME MOAR CARTEL COINS OLOL" at everyone with half a brain? Without spending CC to exchange requisitions, you're going to be grinding that **** for months.