This is my idea for making life suck a little less for new pilots. Every component should have its cost removed. The only thing that should cost ship requisition is advancing the tiers of a component. Removing the component cost would allow new players to experiment with different setups to figure out what works best for them. The only reason the stock ships suck is because you have to spend a ton of ship requisition to unlock the right components for them. This means a whole lot of getting destroyed by veterans in mastered ships while not doing much damage in return. It's a very discouraging process for new pilots.

 

There was a similar problem in ground PvP until they introduced the Bolster system. A better geared, more skilled player will still beat a bolstered new player more often than not, but the Bolster gives the new player a fighting chance. You can't tell me that a stock ship with the setup Bioware sticks you with stands a fighting chance against a mastered ship with the right components. We all know that's not the case.

 

I don't know if Bioware intentionally stuck stock ships with the worst possible setups so you'd have to get farmed over and over until you could afford a better layout, or maybe they just have no idea what the GSF meta is. Either way, we should be able to pick our components for free like we can our utility points on the ground. The initial cost for components is unnecessary. It should only cost to improve them.

Your suggestion might help new players, however the core problem(s) would persist.

 

New players who don't read guides - and I have the feeling that's most of them - still don't know which components they should take.

 

Most ships work well when 30K-50K requisition was spent in the right components and their crucial upgrades. Without having to spend requisition on the components, new players still need to farm 20K-40K requistion to make their ship good.

 

Veterans will still easily beat new players - the skill gap is incredibly huge. A lot of new players have no idea that their weapons have a maximum range, and don't take any evasive action when being attacked. It wouldn't make any difference what components they used.

 

 

Bolster in ground PvP enables fresh level 65 characters to survive more than one attack and to deal damage at all. It just brings them close enough to fully geared players that they can't instagib a new player. Damage and Hitpoints between a new ship and a mastered ship in GSF don't vary as much as in ground PvP. In my opinion a stock ship in GSF is comparable to a bolstered new level 65 on the ground.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Danalon

I see it more of a problem that all 4 classes of the ships are not available from the start to take them for a run in a tutorial to test them out to at least know what they do and compare what you like and then pick one to throw all the comms against to build it up. The advice the guides give is to buy 3 ships to start with.That takes up the fist 10+ K fleet comms.

 

By comparison, in ground PvP, you can pick a character you feel the most comfortable with in levelling; you have a way to gear it before charging into battle before actually doing PvP; you have a choice to replicate that character and enter a bracket where there will be NO gear discrepancy at all (lowbies); and you can do it as many times as you wish by deleting & replicating a character for free as many times as you want at no penalty whatsoever.

 

GSF is by far more of a sink or swim than the ground PvP.

 

It's just a game, so it's not like the world is going to end because it's so unfair or something, but well, ground PvP is better for a new person who'd talk to more experienced folks& finds out the right things to do.

Edited January 23, 2016 by DomiSotto

Bolster in ground PvP enables fresh level 65 characters to survive more than one attack and to deal damage at all. It just brings them close enough to fully geared players that they can't instagib a new player. Damage and Hitpoints between a new ship and a mastered ship in GSF don't vary as much as in ground PvP. In my opinion a stock ship in GSF is comparable to a bolstered new level 65 on the ground.

 

This isn't entirely true. Some components, RFLC for example, are plain bad. The bolster you get means you have good gear, just unupgraded. Also, some upgrades make a world of difference. I'm pretty sure a new player won't understand why he's shooting at a CP bomber and doing nothing, or why he keeps missing that burst scout. Not to mention that strikes are not competitive... And one of your starter ships is a strike (and not even the best one at that).

 

A bolstered player is definitely better off than a new GSFer gear-wise.

This has been previously suggested and I totally agree that it would help immensely for new players to navigate through those crucial first few games to decide if they want to keep playing GSF or not. I remember my early games way back in my near stock rycer and I spent many of my early req just trying out each blaster at tier 1 to see which one was better. While I doubt it would get everyone, even something as simple as a ship req token rewarded through a in game e-mail with the body suggesting the purchase of each component would help more than what we've got going on right now.

A bolstered player is definitely better off than a new GSFer gear-wise.

 

I've seen enough roflstomps in ground PvP to feel certain that bolster doesn't help much against fully geared (augment slots for example make a bigger difference than I thought) opponents - skill difference plays a role here too. But there's no 8v8 deathmatch up to 50 kills, so it isn't as obvious that bolster doesn't really help. Bolster just prevents gear-related steamrolls of equally (low) skilled teams and maybe slows down the good teams a few seconds per kill.

 

I agree that there's a lot of room for improvement for the new player experience. Maybe all starter ships - including T1 Bomber and Gunship which should be awarded for the intro instead of just 5K fleet requisition - should have the "best in slot" components, so beginners don't get confused. But without reading guides and a will to learn things it wouldn't help.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Danalon

Letting new players pick their components for free is a step in the right direction. At least they'll keep queuing up to try new builds. You can't expect them to want to get farmed over and over to build up enough ship req to pick out the components some unofficial guide on the internet tells them to pick. GSF doesn't get any developer support anymore because it never got popular. It never got popular because it is too inaccessible. GSF has been the Nightmare Mode of Space and it's doing more harm than good. Developers can't justify spending resources on new ships, maps, and game modes, etc because GSF is simply too hardcore.

 

The few hundred of us still flying regularly is not a success story; it's a failure on Bioware's part. I remember when tons of people were super-hyped GSF was coming. Dozens of guilds were being formed around its premise. And then it launches and the majority of people hated it within the first week and never queued again. GSF needs to be revamped from the bottom up and it starts with letting players pick their components for free. It's a small change that doesn't hurt anybody and would take two seconds for Bioware to do.

I see dozens of new pilots with only starter ships everytime I play. People still want to try it, but they don't stick to it. The reason for this is simple. People like having success and a lot of people want to be successful right from the start, which isn't possible in PvP. Getting good in PvP needs practice.

 

Entering GSF is a guarantee for having a hard time but most of the time it's not the difference in components/upgrades that makes it so hard. It's the experince of thousands of games some pilots have. I've seen a lot of people thinking they could kill me in my T2 Scout if they just used a T2 Scout with the right components and upgrades, only few succeded. Of course, aces from other servers would easily beat me, but most players I encounter can't.

 

I think a proper tutorial which is required to play before entering GSF would help new players. A rated GSF parallel to the normal GSF might pull away the veterans from the normal games, but currently most servers wouldn't have the veteran population to make that possible. I'm still hoping for that "better than cross server" thing someone mentioned once, to make the matchmaking system work like it's supposed to.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Danalon

Well, the only thing that bugs me is that I have to pay to even try out a class of a ship. It's like if when I started the game they's only let me try a BH and a Knight, but playing Chapter 1 would unlock a Consular and an IA and so on. I understand the logic behind investing comms in upgrading your ships, don't understand a logic of ships being locked out and tutorial not being accessible on those ships.

 

Eh, well, it is what it is.

Edited January 23, 2016 by DomiSotto

Well, the only thing that bugs me is that I have to pay to even try out a class of a ship. It's like if when I started the game they's only let me try a BH and a Knight, but playing Chapter 1 would unlock a Consular and an IA and so on. I understand the logic behind investing comms in upgrading your ships, don't understand a logic of ships being locked out and tutorial not being accessible on those ships.

 

Eh, well, it is what it is.

I think the logic was rooted in the initial design of GSF and never changed to reflect the progress (or lack thereof) of the game.

 

Subscribers have their faction's main gunship unlocked by default along with the strike fighter and scout, so they were trying to incentivize people to subscribe.

 

Unless my memory fails me, bombers weren't added in until GSF was already up and running for a while, so of course the initial design didn't give players that choice right from the start.

 

The intro mission gives you enough fleet req for a 2-shipper to get their faction's Type 1 gunship and Type 1 bomber, but it doesn't really point people towards the knowledge that it would be a good idea for them to do so. It's not a huge barrier to overcome, but it's also not adequately explained to people.

 

The initial game design was never significantly updated* to reflect the changing nature of the needs of the player base. SWTOR was more grind-y back when they made GSF and reflects that mindset. They have stripped a lot of those elements from the main game, and if they allocated any dev resources to GSF they would probably do the same to it.

 

I'd have no problem with them offering new players one of each of the 4 ship classes to start. It would be fantastic if they made Rapid-Fire Lasers much better so new people didn't have a useless pea-shooter. I'd wholly support them unlocking all components by default. Even if it's not a really onerous grind to get that stuff, there is no good reason to dis-incentivize people from experimenting especially when certain components are measurably superior to others.

 

*they did boost the amount of requisition gained by daily and weekly missions, which helped, but it would not hurt to do more.

 

Despon

Edited January 23, 2016 by caederon

Or you could have a tier system that lets new pilots fly against new pilots? Have "levels" based on how much ship req you have earned and/or ships you have purchased?

 

The absolute worst part of GSF is coming in new and getting one shot by fully upgraded ships. You know as soon as you load in and see a fleet of gunships coming at you that all you are going to be doing all match is counting your deaths.

 

There are a lot of ways to make GSF fun to play, but until you address the huge learning curve and allow new pilots time to mature, you will be stuck with the same long queues, blowout v. nil turkey shoots, GS standoffs that put you to sleep and/or afk conquest farmers that don't care about the outcomes anyway.

There is a matchmaking system that tries to find pilots of equal equipment. It checks how close to mastered the best ship on the bar is and how many games a character has played. However, the system doesn't wait forever until enough players with roughly equal equipment are listed and just starts a game. The system seems to work, as sometimes players with a lot of games played are skipped multiple times while others get a pop. Those pilots counter this effect by listing with a group, because the system prioritises premades.

 

There are simply not enough pilots to make the matchmaking system work as it should.

 

New players can only hope for mercy of the better players in unbalanced games. It's not possible to tell others how to play the game, so it's the decision of the better players if they want to play serious against beginners or not.

Edited January 24, 2016 by Danalon

There is a matchmaking system that tries to find pilots of equal equipment. It checks how close to mastered the best ship on the bar is and how many games a character has played. However, the system doesn't wait forever until enough players with roughly equal equipment are listed and just starts a game. The system seems to work, as sometimes players with a lot of games played are skipped multiple times while others get a pop. Those pilots counter this effect by listing with a group, because the system prioritises premades.

 

There are simply not enough pilots to make the matchmaking system work as it should.

 

New players can only hope for mercy of the better players in unbalanced games. It's not possible to tell others how to play the game, so it's the decision of the better players if they want to play serious against beginners or not.

 

 

I think you made my point.

Or you could have a tier system that lets new pilots fly against new pilots? Have "levels" based on how much ship req you have earned and/or ships you have purchased?

 

The absolute worst part of GSF is coming in new and getting one shot by fully upgraded ships. You know as soon as you load in and see a fleet of gunships coming at you that all you are going to be doing all match is counting your deaths.

 

There are a lot of ways to make GSF fun to play, but until you address the huge learning curve and allow new pilots time to mature, you will be stuck with the same long queues, blowout v. nil turkey shoots, GS standoffs that put you to sleep and/or afk conquest farmers that don't care about the outcomes anyway.

 

As danalon said there is already a system in place that tries to do that, but it prioritizes getting a game going as soon as possible. Maybe if the system kept players with under 30 games from being thrown against mastered ships or something similar? If the matchmaker didn't put mastered ships against newbies ever, you'd run the risk of regular players quitting due to long ques. I believe mechwarrior online tried a matchmaking system which stopped vets from playing against newbies and it just ended up with a player base loss as the vets just left and the newer players still didn't stick around.

The GSF population is too small to divide up now. Yes, the learning curve is steep and it's not going anywhere, but there's things Bioware needs to do to make GSF more accessible and get more people doing it regularly. All four ship types need to be available from the start. You shouldn't have to buy a bomber just to test out flying the damn thing to see if you like it. You shouldn't have to pay for new components because the ones Bioware stuck you with are garbage. And there should be a tutorial that is effective.

 

It also shouldn't cost tens of thousands of ship req to max out a ship. Maxing out a ship should take about as much time as getting a full set of ground PvP gear. Skill will always trump gear so why not make it take less time to max out a ship? The motivation to do GSF should come from a desire to get better at it instead of getting farmed enough so one day you can master a ship and farm the new players just like you were farmed. GSF in its current state is too grindy, too inaccessible, and too unforgiving to new players. And before we get anymore content for GSF, Bioware needs to correct these glaring issues.

Subscribers have their faction's main gunship unlocked by default along with the strike fighter and scout, so they were trying to incentivize people to subscribe.

 

I am a subscriber and I did not have the gunship unlocked on either Pub or Imp. I just got a scout and a strike. Also, no matter which ship I select before entering the tutorial, I still end up on the tutorial ship. Which is a bit silly. Learn by doing is all great, but just having a tiny-tiny chance to do dummy practice would have been nice.

Edited January 24, 2016 by DomiSotto

I am a subscriber and I did not have the gunship unlocked on either Pub or Imp. I just got a scout and a strike. Also, no matter which ship I select before entering the tutorial, I still end up on the tutorial ship. Which is a bit silly. Learn by doing is all great, but just having a tiny-tiny chance to do dummy practice would have been nice.

 

Subscribers back when the game launched get a Mangler/Quarrel. The rest of us have to buy them. It's not too bad, but it would be much better to get a ship of each type, agreed.

 

The tutorial is dumb, but if you can get used to flying that ship (a flashfire, I think) it'll help you get a feel for the general game, and especially scouts.

The T1 Gunship given to people who had an active subscription on 01 NOV 2013, a month before launch. Edited January 24, 2016 by Danalon