Alright so I've been back a week or so visiting and evaluating whether I wanted to resub. Being gone for a year or so does help provide perspective after being away from the daily grind.

 

I also started a fresh new character on The Red Eclipse. At first it was almost glorious, but that was probably because I caught a certain someone going through dailies. Regardless, matches tended to be extremely one-sided. However, the fresh competition and being relatively unknown on the server allowed me to get a better sense of the pain and frustration of a starting new player.

 

The new reward for the intro quest is really nice. You can essentially unlock every ship and use the daily and weeklies to help gather req or invest it all in one or a few ships.

 

The grind is still painfully slow. I was left to rely on the heavy hitters to get a win or generally eat a blowout loss for very little req.

 

I am level 22 I think at the time of writing this. My ships on the other hand are still far from competitive - primarily as I'm going up against skilled pilots who are nearly or fully upgraded vs my "baby ship". It really puts in perspective just how often I did this to level multiple characters before costs were reduced.

 

What I want to emphasize is that starting out, against skilled experience opponents, you lack the tools to truly be effective as an individual and are relying almost exclusively on your teammates. Sure I was able to net kills even at stock but it was like night and day compared to a fully equipped ship.

 

While it was kinda neat when people would start to recognize my experience, it was a bit of a double-edged sword. As a nameless unknown people tend to relax when they engage you or ignore you completely. As people start to notice, its a lot harder to sneak up when they're specifically keeping an eye out for you.

 

Now consider what that means for a brand new player who doesn't have the countless hours of experience and is simply trying to get a feel for everything.

 

I lost count of how many matches consisted of one-side getting completely decimated to the point of barely trying since trying was near instant death.

 

Now most pilots will acknowledge the impact of a skill gap but most won't own how dramatic of an impact a team of vets working together can have in a match. When you have to rely on capital ship fire for defense as they have more kills than your entire team combined....

 

Now you have no control over other players, and as such people chose not to queue and the wait grew longer. Thankfully a familiar name recognized this and came over. We still didn't win, but went from essentially hiding in spawn to providing minimal resistance, like going 25 vs their 50. A few more fights later and the scales tipped in our favor... heavily, like pilots recognizing most strength was on one side and those "in the know" swapped over.

 

Skill gap is a dominating factor. When the majority of pilots are new or inexperienced, all it takes is one good pilot to heavily dominate. Now when pilots of similar skill group together to take on those same inexperienced players, its just a bloodbath.

 

Now as an "MMO" you actually want to encourage grouping and socialization. However, when that grouping leads to overwhelming strength, you cannot rely on the community to self-regulate nor should they be forced to split. I personally always saw this as disrespectful towards their fellow pilots but the reality is with so few playing at any given time power swings are inevitable.

 

Now, if GSF was more popular and had a much wider player base to choose from there would be no reason not to group or to hold it against people who did.

 

But, as that's not the case, the only way I see of making things more competitive is to implement some sort of handicap/buff system or streamline and simplify the upgrading process. Right now, while it rewards people who invested into it, it also magnifies the skill gap.

 

Picture this: you've never flown before and you're up against people who's ships fly faster, turn quicker and deal more damage all while their pilots have in-depth knowledge and experience you lack. You load in, moments later you are blown up never seeing who shot you. The respawn timer completes, you load in and you're immediately shot with something, your shields are gone, and you can't use your boost. You explode.

 

Anyone who would claim that never happens to new players is lying to him/herself. When I was leveling on TRE, i largely got to avoid this experience as my teammates were doing that to the enemy instead. If I had been new, I would have had quite the positive experience on the winning side, but a horrible one on the losing.

 

In fact I inadvertently created this experience on harby. I was desperate for a q pop and queued with a group to try and catch one. The only notable opposition was Mendac, who was swarmed, effectively leaving me free to shoot at anyone without worry of retribution as the only person capable was preoccupied. There was a gunship or two around but because their team could offer such little resistance I was already waiting and shooting while they were evaluating targets after leaving spawn. When I shot at folks it was clear they lacked the tools to do anything about it other than desperately try to flee.

 

It wasn't a fun match for me, but I am fully aware it was worse for those I was against.

 

Now while things like a legacy hangar would help, if I spent an entire match leaving spawn only to die moments later repeatedly, I would not want to play again. Simply put, the mode isn't friendly to new people and is inclined to put people off just from their first flight. At least the regular pvp mode allows some interaction to take place and a chance to react even if one side is completely decimating.

 

Unless you can find a way to give temporary boosts or benefits or something to allow new players to be competitive, the number of pilots will continue to dwindle. In the current setup, even folks starting with a maxed out fighter like a rycer or strike would really help but still provide reason to upgrade other ship types.

If you don't want to read all of that above - How would you feel about players starting out with a fully upgraded Starfighter (Rycer/Pike)? That way even newer players could be more competitive while leveling other ships without starting out "too strong".

If you don't want to read all of that above - How would you feel about players starting out with a fully upgraded Starfighter (Rycer/Pike)? That way even newer players could be more competitive while leveling other ships without starting out "too strong".

I actually did read the whole thing, so my thoughts are reflective of that post.

 

Starting people out with a fully upgraded Whatever would help only in a minimal sort of way. The reason for this is that a large number of new players these days do not care about learning or playing GSF. They care about gaining CXP. GSF is a means to an end, and they have no intention of competing meaningfully.

 

In an ideal world where everyone who queues into a GSF match intends to participate fully, I still think handing out mastered ships from the start is a bad idea. There are better ways to put new players into competitive situations that are in line with their skill level. You don't give a beginning carpenter a decked-out workshop full of power tools.

 

Novices need an environment where they can learn complex skills at a rate suitable to their experience level, without being bogged down by systems too complex for them to immediately grasp. Gradually introducing complexity and meaningful choice via specialization is a good way to bring novices along a learning curve.

 

I have now run two Stock Ship experiments, where I played 50 roughly consecutive games in nothing but stock ships. In my initial run, early this year (pre CXP) I actually found that 95% of the time I was sorted into matches with one veteran or less. Most of them were noobs v. noobs, or at the very least noobs v. novices. In other words, they were appropriate for beginning players. My second run, conducted about two weeks ago (in the CXP era) was worse, in that most teams had two or three veterans on them and a bunch of people who made no effort to participate in the match. I still ended up with around a 50% win rate, but the match results were more of a /\/\/\/\ shape than a ------- consistency.

 

The matchmaker works, when there is a sufficient player pool. The problem GSF faces is there are usually not enough veterans to sort them all against each other, and often not enough new people to get them all into matches against each other. The reasons for this condition are many, but can be boiled down to veterans bleeding away over the years of non-development and nobody rising up from the ranks of new players to replace them. The middle (full of competent if not great pilots) disappeared. A modest influx of new players came from the Conquest system, then a larger influx came from the CXP system integrating with GSF, but those players largely had no interest in GSF except as a vehicle to efficiently grind their non-GSF points.

 

Speaking of grind, I wholly disagree that it is difficult to build up a ship these days. The Req gains went up, the component costs went down, the Intro quest grants an enormous amount of Fleet Req. If you spend that 25k on one ship, it can be immediately competitive after just one game played. You can make meaningful purchases with the Req from the Daily and Weekly quests. This is a non-issue, if people put in a little effort to learn what is worth upgrading.

 

GSF needs players who want to play 'a tactically deep arcade space shooter' to show up, and definitely needs to help them to learn the game system better. A more balanced game environment would help but even as-is, the game can be learned and a player's performance can go from noob to consistent contributor and beyond without any herculean efforts. GSF needs more people filling queues that care about experiencing the game that exists.

 

- Despon

@Des

 

That's the thing - if there were enough people to sustain new people vs new people and vets vs vets simply having divisions would be fine.

 

It takes player sponsored events or at least some sort of special planning in advance to get teams full of vets. That's simply not practical for day to day gsf. We need to give something in order for a brand new player to pose at least some level of threat. Sure, a new player can kill me if i just sit there and not move and not try to kill them back. But given I'd probably have to sit there a while, especially against stock crapids..... let's just say I had quite a bit of time to compare my normal damage output with fully upgraded quad pods vs stock crapids with pods.

 

I mention max strike fighter because the majority of the GSF vets note them as being underpowered., and at one point the devs acknowledged this and even dedicated a thread to it that never became of anything.

 

The worst thing about starting in GSF is that it seems people do massive amounts to you, but you do so little to them.

 

I have a screenshot of one of these matches in a nearly stock gunship, coming out to a little over 41k in damage, second on the board, topped by neutrinos with a little over 95k. Where he went 23-7- 2, I was just at 8-6-3. Now I'm 99% sure he/she is maxed on everything short of looking at his screen. I would fully admit that neutrinos is a superior pilot to myself, and that the "upgrade gap" only increased the difficulty in trying to manage one of the best pilots of GSF.

 

That match ended 894-1000, and was the closest thing I had to a "close match". My team outperformed Neutrinos team almost entirely as a whole with effectively neutrinos and one other pilot carrying the rest of that team. At least, that's what the numbers would lead you to believe. The numbers wouldn't indicate how many people flew cover for neutrinos, and even the objectives score isn't a reliable indicator of who was running bomber support.

 

Given that the best pilot was able to hit 95k I would say the gap is too extreme if the weakest pilot only managed 1005 in comparison. Out of 18 total, 6 were under 10k damage - given that it was 8v8 that's practically an entire team. Sure bomber damage is highly dependent on mines, but that doesn't account for nearly a team's worth of people doing so little.

 

While I'd agree that you wouldn't necessarily start a young new carpenter with a band saw, you'd at least give them something to be able to fulfill their task. Upgrading a ship takes weeks, even with the current adjustments. I know that my ships were like paper without the extra shielding and evasion to the point where rail shots were one-shotting me without a red powerup.

 

The thought of giving a fully mastered strike isn't quite as extreme as a fully upgraded battle scout or gunship. But not only would it allow new players to pose some threat, but wouldn't require dramatic changes to code. It would allow new players to actually do some damage despite their inexperience and actively contribute. I myself learned mostly in a strike when I started because I had no idea they were under-powered until I started using the ship that neutrinos and people like him were shooting me with.

 

Sure, 25k fleet req is nice - but given that has to be devoted to ships and pilots it disappears quickly. Sure you can invest it all into one ship but what happens if that one ship isn't what you need given what your team and the enemy teammates are using? Calling it a non-issue means you truly forgot what its like to see things from a new player perspective. Most players don't immediately start looking things up before their first time attempting something - its part of learning through experience. The problem is that experience tends to be so negative they give up before enough interest sets in for them to start looking things up.

 

You claim that GSF "needs" people who want to play a "tatically deep arcade space shooter".

 

I show up, and I don't think of it as tactically deep, or arcade - the upgrade path is too complex to be arcade-like and I don't find it tactically deep when gunship chess or bomber swarm can summarize most of that combat.

 

If the new player experience isn't addressed more directly, GsF will bleed more than it gains, which has been the experience I've had coming back. I know the only reason I even bothered to try GSF was that intro mission on fleet and that I would only do the daily for weeks because I was having such a lousy time I didn't want to go again and only the daily reward was enough to satiate me long enough till I finally had enough upgrades to enjoy it enough to do it more than for a daily reward.

 

We aren't going to get people who appreciate this mode the way you do. We get whoever clicks on that intro mission and maybe people dragged in by their friends. I mean, GSF was one of the few things to tempt me back and its been clear that interest has waned even further across the community. I mean it took things like bbb having a conquest requirement to get some people to bother to fly, which is the main reason most of my impside characters even developed their gsf, and at least a few of the pilots I know imp side on harby did the same. The only real incentive now is the bonus day for command, and those people are generally too focused on a crazy grind to worry about Gsf outside of bonus.

 

Gradually introducing them to the complexity of the upgrade system would work if everyone was on the same page, but that's just not possible. If I'm fighting newbies in a stock ship, they have a reasonable chance against me, but if I'm in one of my maxed ships against a newbie in stock they're getting destroyed with little effort on my part. Why not meet them in the middle by giving them something strong enough to at least put up a fight? They'd still eventually have to learn the ins and outs of upgrading but wouldn't be so helpless during the learning process.

Also, while it would require modifying the current req system, having req gained all go to fleet req and getting away from converting ship req to fleet req nonsense since it clearly wasn't profitable and merely providing a disservice to the majority. I would think most people would rather spend those coins on aesthetics or unlocks, as mine personally only really get spent for account unlocks.

Given that the best pilot was able to hit 95k I would say the gap is too extreme if the weakest pilot only managed 1005 in comparison. Out of 18 total, 6 were under 10k damage - given that it was 8v8 that's practically an entire team. Sure bomber damage is highly dependent on mines, but that doesn't account for nearly a team's worth of people doing so little.

I don't disagree that there is a huge disparity in skill. I've participated in and perpetrated even worse gaps than that. What I disagree on is the means by which to address it, insomuch as it can be addressed.

 

If you want to look at the worst part of the disparity, start observing the Hit % of all pilots in matches. The vast majority of people playing now shoot under 20%, and a significant number don't even break out of the single digits. A small part of that is not having proper gear, but it is insignificant compared to a comprehension deficit of the mechanics by which the game is played. Evasion does not affect Hit % numbers, that stat records specifically the number of shots that were correctly aimed through manual precision.

 

An enormous number of people are not bothering to learn how or when to shoot.

 

The in-game tutorial is bad, but it does offer remedial instruction on how to fire your weapons, what 'range' is, how to lock a missile, etc. People are either unaware that there is a tutorial (which is common), are skipping the tutorial, or just don't care enough to learn to perform basic game tasks.

 

 

Upgrading a ship takes weeks, even with the current adjustments.

No, it doesn't. If people get the Daily and Weekly quests, even assuming very low performance levels in matches, you can have important upgrades raised to a competitive state relatively quickly. This requires some small effort in determining which upgrades are best to get fast. While that information could be delivered more efficiently to players, and components could be rebalanced so as to remove 'useless' upgrades, it's not too much to ask.

 

The thought of giving a fully mastered strike isn't quite as extreme as a fully upgraded battle scout or gunship. But not only would it allow new players to pose some threat,

Lots of players in fully upgraded ships pose no threat. Gear will not solve a single-digit Hit % unless it includes a module that puts the reticle on target and pulls the trigger for people. Maybe an autopilot that also takes them to A B or C would help, too.

 

It would allow new players to actually do some damage despite their inexperience and actively contribute.

Again, I disagree. People aren't learning the fundamental basics of shooting, and will do no damage if they are blasting away with RFL the moment they spawn from the capship. People can contribute, earn medals, requisition, and CXP just by flying to a node in Domination matches and staying alive for a little while. I would hope for more from them, but a great many can't even accomplish that.

 

Sure, 25k fleet req is nice - but given that has to be devoted to ships and pilots it disappears quickly.

New players now start with Type 1 Strike, Type 1 Scout, Type 2 Gunship, and Type 3 Bomber. At most, they 'need' to buy a Type 2 Scout and Type 1 Gunship, or one of the bombers, depending on their playstyle. Crew may already be unlocked from questing, but they are not all that expensive. You can easily spend less than 5k Fleet Req on the few ships you need and the crew that matter. Of course, one needs to learn which those are to choose them, and that does require some small effort. 20k req goes a long way, these days, if properly spent on worthwhile ship upgrades. After one single game, you can have a competitive ship. After a couple Dailies and a Weekly, you're well on your way... if you learn a bit.

 

Calling it a non-issue means you truly forgot what its like to see things from a new player perspective. Most players don't immediately start looking things up before their first time attempting something - its part of learning through experience. The problem is that experience tends to be so negative they give up before enough interest sets in for them to start looking things up.

In addition to the recent 100+ games of pure stock play, I've built up probably a dozen or so alts through solo queue play over the last year. I can't un-learn the knowledge I've gained along the way, but I feel that from a gear perspective and a matchmaking perspective, I have a very good handle on what a new player faces.

 

When I first started playing, I was blown up plenty. I did not begin as an ace, and was routinely destroyed by the better players. This spurred me to decide "If they can do that, I can learn to do it, too" and so I set about gaining the knowledge and skills to compete. This was at a time when both Evasion and Ion Railgun were far more powerful than their post-nerf states, and thus extremely punishing on new players... and at that time I was flying Strikes and T2S exclusively. I didn't even touch gunships until about 1000+ games into my playing career.

 

If I join into a PvP game, my expectation is that I will probably get destroyed for a while... but if I spend some effort learning the game and practicing the skills associated with it, I can succeed. So far, that has been the case for me.

 

You claim that GSF "needs" people who want to play a "tatically deep arcade space shooter".

 

I show up, and I don't think of it as tactically deep, or arcade - the upgrade path is too complex to be arcade-like and I don't find it tactically deep when gunship chess or bomber swarm can summarize most of that combat.

I state that to differentiate from people who want GSF to be

• A space-flight simulator that is concerned with the detailed modeling of realistic systems and behavior.
  
• A 'dogfighting' game, which suggests play like Battlefront where it is zooming around in circles with little tactical depth.
  

_

I refer to it as 'arcade' in the sense that there is no modeling of real physics and the control schemes of the ships are abstracted to a degree that is not like a simulation. Its pace is fast, and action can be quite frantic, which is also more akin to an 'arcade' experience than a more pensive simulation would be.

 

The match-to-match vagaries of GSF are not what you should base your assessment of its tactical depth on. Too much of that is determined by the players you are sorted in with. If you play against people who know what they are doing, simple 'spam ___' tactics don't work, and ship compositions and choices must be made on the fly to counter what the enemy is presenting. Component/crew choices made pre-match add to the depth of in-match tactics and so does the group of ships you choose to slot on your bar. You can run five ships each of which excel in a unique situation or are necessary to deal with a particular threat. Compare that to Battlefront, where you have 'the fast ship,' the 'slower ship,' and 'the hero powerup.' In that game, the ordnance choices are nonexistent. There is no depth. Pretty graphics, though.

 

We aren't going to get people who appreciate this mode the way you do. We get whoever clicks on that intro mission and maybe people dragged in by their friends.

This is mostly a function of it being a PvP space combat game stuck in a corner of an MMORPG that has no commonality in play experience. People come to SWTOR to play an MMORPG. In a standalone game, you're buying into the experience it presents from the moment you plunk down your money.

 

Why not meet them in the middle by giving them something strong enough to at least put up a fight? They'd still eventually have to learn the ins and outs of upgrading but wouldn't be so helpless during the learning process.

I don't think it would have any significant effect. I'm not entirely against it, but it also isn't a solution. Veterans in stock ships still decimate non-veterans in geared ships if those people haven't learned the game.

 

- Despon

Sure, 25k fleet req is nice - but given that has to be devoted to ships and pilots it disappears quickly.

 

No, it doesn't. For that req you can have a perfectly serviceable ship. Additionally, you are on a bunch of alts I know and a bunch of alts I don't know, every day, doing dailies and such. A player who cared about actually getting a character into a good hangar, instead of a small army into top tier hangars, would not have anywhere near the experience you are talking about. Playing N characters is supposed to require N times the effort of playing 1 character, and you've chosen a very big N. It would be destructive to the game to make it about that playstyle- having a bunch of geared alts is a luxury bought with time (and sometimes money).

 

 

Your FIRST GAME gives you 25,000 fleet req, and usually at least 500 ship req. By three games in, you've earned around 25,500 fleet req and 2000-ish ship req, and up to thrice that really.

 

Mastering a ship has historically cost around 150,000 requisition. Currently it's around 75,000. The intro quest gets you one third of the way to mastered, roughly, if you are buying and playing that ship.

 

In the modern GSF experience, there's three general strategies to gear up. You do the one that is most common, as far as I can tell: you buy all the ships, and then you apply the ship req tokens from the daily and weekly to all of them, every day. This is a great long term strategy, costs no real world money, and takes a bit of time. If you play 2 games a day to complete your daily, then every 7 days you will complete 7 dailies and 1 weekly.

 

This is 12,400 ship requisition to your entire hangar each week. If this is all you do, then you will have your ships mastered- the ones you don't play- in a month and a half. This doesn't count your weekly fleet req bonus, all your earned ship req, and all your earned fleet req. It doesn't account for the fact that you have a bonus to each ship when you play it each time, or that you can engage in a req-farming playstyle without hurting your game play immensely.

 

There's another way to do this- dump all your reward req into one ship. Play that ship exclusively. If you play four games a day for a week, spend around 20,000 of your initial fleet req on that ship, and get around 1000 ship req each game, you'll have over 60,000 req on that ship- you'll be mastered in a little over a week. Of course, you can't probably do this on a whole bunch of alts, but that's not the normal play case.

 

There's a third way that is rare, and it's what I think you are complaining about- you can pay to convert ship to fleet, and then spend that fleet on that ship. This is similar to the second way, but it costs money.

 

In that case, after your first seven games, you'll have your weekly done, your daily done, your hangar unlocked (12 ships total), and then you'll pop your daily and your weekly. You'll now have 5200 req on each ship. Your main ship now has about 13,000 ship req. If you convert the 5200 * 11 ship req to fleet req, you'll have 62,400 ship req to work with- almost there- and assume you can get 8000 ship req over those seven games and you are within 5k, which is effectively done (especially because you may have some left over from the big and little fleet tokens). In this case, you have a mastered ship, and you have spent 2007 cartel coins to do it. A twenty dollar purchase is 2400 cartel coins: if you spend 100 bucks, you'll have spent less than 14 dollars.

 

That is the closest to monetization that GSF has- having a fully mastered ship, on day one, for 14 to 20 bucks. The real cost here is that your other ships are stripped bare of req, of course. Unlike the other games that do this, GSF ships don't come in "tiers"- you don't ignore the Mangler the moment the Dustmaker is available. While some ships are not useful, all offer novel play experiences, and none are intended to be bad, nor is their gating to unlock "the good ships" in any way.

 

If you are really bothered by playing more than seven games in anything less than a mastered ship- and remember, even a little req on a ship goes a long way, as regards armor piercing upgrades and the first few cheap tiers- then this 20 dollar purchase can let you skip even that. But most players won't feel the need to do this, and of those that do, most won't feel burdened by the twenty dollar cost, or will spend a tenth of that to get half the benefit.

 

 

The real fact is, the current state of req trades away almost all the GSF monetization that existed before, because it doesn't grief players into feeling that they should pay to upgrade. The initial version actually did, and some players actually just bought their ships after a few weeks of flying and wishing they had all the upgrades. This version will master your entire hangar in less than two months with two games a day. The lack of monetization probably hurts this game's appeal as a money source, but generally gets more players in than the previous model. I don't know what the "point" of GSF is financially, but generally in an MMO they hope to make enough playgrounds on their property that you don't get bored, and stick around with friends and spend your time on it. GSF is definitely doing that, even if it isn't getting people paying to get their ship upgraded a day or two faster.

Also if you gave noobs a mastered strike fighter, they would just complain that strike fighters are terrible and demand a mastered battlescout and railsniper and a mated pair of bombers. This version of req is about fivefold more generous compared to the original.

Also if you gave noobs a mastered strike fighter, they would just complain that strike fighters are terrible and demand a mastered battlescout and railsniper and a mated pair of bombers. This version of req is about fivefold more generous compared to the original.

 

They are, but still have enough power to be a threat without coming close to being an I win button. It would be more of a bandaid than a resolution - but even in the short while I've been back it seems like things are a bit desperate.

 

Like I said, while possible to devote that new intro quest bonus to one ship, it's not necessarily ideal. I know that when I started my very basic knowledge led me to believe that strikes were the natural fighters to use for combat and devoted my time to them until seeing enough stings and flashfires to recognize why they served that role instead. Essentially you could say with that starting req I would have dumped it all into a fighter and regretted it later. When one is learning, its natural to make mistakes - especially with learning the upgrade system.

 

The main thing I noticed on this new grind on Red Eclipse is that even with my experience advantage, it only accounted for so much. I was clearly outclassing the lesser experienced pilots even if they had more upgrades. Sure there were those that would shoot at targets well beyond range and would do little damage no matter what ship they were in - but I also ended up seeing that more pilots were more competent than I used to give them credit for - essentially held back by a lack of upgrades.

 

While I agree that its definitely easier to level ships now - gains weren't all that great even under sub status. I would maybe net around 1500 at most but the majority were less than 500 for entire matches. By the time I hit level 22 I didn't have armor piercing, max distortion, or max anything for that matter. And I was reminded why I only flew dailies for the longest time - I just didn't feel rewarded enough per match without the daily bonus reward.

 

When I ended up being on the wrong side of one-sided matches my req per match was horrible. Not exactly an incentive given the lack of competitiveness. If I wasn't already an experienced pilot in need of a GSF fix I would have left queue. Not a lot of reason to log into a nearly guaranteed loss to see almost no progress made.

 

It also proved to be the conclusion most people made as the queue wait times reflected.

I lost count of how many matches consisted of one-side getting completely decimated to the point of barely trying since trying was near instant death.

 

Someone wrote here - at least that was how I understood him or her, that taking out weaker players in an domination (?) map is an essetial thing, because weaker players would be a threat, too.

 

Keeping this kind of logic in mind (/supposed I understood it correctly), I understand now why one side continues to perform this "complete decimation" without helping newer players.

 

It's like throwing somneone who hasn't learned swimming yet into a strong, big river and then saying : "It's like sink or swim".

Someone wrote here - at least that was how I understood him or her, that taking out weaker players in an domination (?) map is an essetial thing, because weaker players would be a threat, too.

That is probably because they are. Even the weakest player who never pulls the trigger on their weapons can contribute significantly in a Domniation match just by getting to A B or C and staying alive in the vicinity of the node. When those weaker players do happen to pull the trigger and shoot, they are adding firepower into a zone of attrition around a satellite that can overcome your team. If those weaker players are in bombers, they can (and often do) find a crack to wedge themselves in and sit there in a hard-to-hit position.

 

Keeping this kind of logic in mind (/supposed I understood it correctly), I understand now why one side continues to perform this "complete decimation" without helping newer players.

Help new players outside the confines of a match. I do. Frequently. That is the appropriate venue for reaching out to people and/or providing them the resources to learn.

 

If people hate losing, they can react to that by either quitting or by using it to fuel their motivation to improve. If the path to improvement is too long or involved for some, that is a decision they can make based on their personal tolerance.

 

If a game system provides everyone accessibility to the same tools, it is reasonable to say that it is a fair system. People are not blocked from achieving their personal best by anything other than lack of motivation, dedication, and physical skills. Anyone can contribute competently in GSF.

 

- Despon

I would agree with Des's last response - in a dom matches the dynamics are different, altho you do evaluate threat levels unless every name is a big hitter. It really would make no sense to let random newbie pilots take a sat unopposed unless you were intentionally giving it to them in a game you already know was won.

 

Every now and then I will intentionally allow a newer pilot to blow me up as I remember how I would try so damn hard and usually never get credit for a single kill. That's not to say people don't earn their kills on me as plenty do - but there is a difference between someone who can kill you and someone might just tickle. That's in matches already won so as to not disrespect my fellow teammates and cause a loss. Typically, if I'm in a match I know is won I'm far more lax and easy to kill than one that's neck and neck.

 

On the other hand, I do think expressing some restraint is warranted when your team completely outclasses the other side. I remember when I started I would respawn and moments later die from something I never saw. It was almost enough to get me to quit as what's the point of just clicking respawn repeatedly for several minutes.

 

Last night I had a match where we completely outclassed the opposing team. I ended up mostly going after someone with a racist name repeatedly to not feel so bad as the two fellow aces on the other side had more than their fair share to deal with.

 

Of course today on TRE I was not afforded any such mercy in the same circumstance but when they're mean over there it's not with attitude or anything.

 

Mid match the pace is generally moving too quick to really provide in-depth assistance - I don't think anyone aside from Stasie has gone as far as Despon has in trying to help new people. While me disagree on certain perspectives, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody more patient and willing to help with GSF as Des.

Every now and then I will intentionally allow a newer pilot to blow me up as I remember how I would try so damn hard and usually never get credit for a single kill. That's not to say people don't earn their kills on me as plenty do - but there is a difference between someone who can kill you and someone might just tickle. That's in matches already won so as to not disrespect my fellow teammates and cause a loss. Typically, if I'm in a match I know is won I'm far more lax and easy to kill than one that's neck and neck.

Sometimes I hear Rapid Fire Laser Cannon coming at me, and I look towards the stock ship thinking: Oh, there's on again. Then I simply activate Distortion Field and continue my strafing battle with another Gunship. Why does he not kill me? Not because of his non-mastered Rapid Fire Laser Cannons. Not because the game is limiting him in his ability to kill me. No, he's actually firing in empty space.

 

I'm not sure whether you were around two years ago when <Unrelenting> was still ruling the skies most of the time, but a lot like Despon a group of pilots (including myself) decided to create a guild (]<Thranta Squadron>) in order to change a few things: (1) to learn how we could at least put up a decent fight against them, (2) to help others learn how to do the same and (3) to last but not least soften the experience for other pilots.

 

By now, other guilds, groups and pilots have come into play and it appears we failed at the third and last thing we wanted to do. However, doing the first thing was completed with only a minimum amount of effort, really. It was easy to find information on Galactic StarFighter even then (when there was no such thing as Despon's GSF School on YouTube and the only thing we used to find information was a good set of Google search terms). These days it is even easier, partially, I hope, because of how we also attempted to achieve the second goal.

 

There are more guides now, the one even better than the other, though all with their strong points. There's Despon's YouTube channel, which he already linked above, which provides fun and informational content that is even enjoyable for the most experienced pilots. Only last week there was SRTR II, during which a group of Veterans (myself included) helped twelve Rookies over the span of six hours to get into GSF. Indeed, it requires even less effort to learn GSF than it did back when I first started.

 

This is the biggest sign to me that most people who are now playing GSF, like Despon says, don't want to put in even the tiny bit of effort of watching a YouTube video. For most, that's a pretty normal way to spend at least an hour of their day!

 

Now of course, one might promote that restrain should be applied when facing newer pilots. I, for one, have done that for about a year. I admire your effort. But this is a PvP game. While with real-world problems small changes to your own behaviour may impact others, here, everyone is (semi-)anonymous. And when people are anonymous, they act differently. They say different things. Sometimes for the good, usually for the worse. And in my experience, those worse reactions are toxic. Not only for you as the receiving party, but the person who gives it is also only more set to do what he or she wants.

 

Thus, my advice would be to change the things you can change. Focus on your own actions. Help others if they ask you. But don't try to change people's behaviour: you'll end up disappointed, and that's not worth it.

The new reward for the intro quest is really nice. You can essentially unlock every ship and use the daily and weeklies to help gather req or invest it all in one or a few ships.

 

The grind is still painfully slow. I was left to rely on the heavy hitters to get a win or generally eat a blowout loss for very little req.

 

I am level 22 I think at the time of writing this. My ships on the other hand are still far from competitive - primarily as I'm going up against skilled pilots who are nearly or fully upgraded vs my "baby ship". It really puts in perspective just how often I did this to level multiple characters before costs were reduced.

 

It is a bit less grindy if you start playing GSF at 50 or higher. Then you can pick up intro to conquest, use the fleet reqs to get a sting/flashfire for your first game (which at least is somewhat useful in stock config), and then after you've bought every ship in the game plus companions (from the 25k gsf intro quest) you can use the ship reqs from the conquest quest to do initial setup on all your ships. It doesn't make them competitive, but you can at least get the most important components for your ships before you bring them to battle.

 

One thing I would like them to change related to requisitions is the participation rules. If you're fleeing for your life through a flurry of bolts and missiles, you're soon counted as not participating, when clearly you are. In addition to doing damage and interacting with objectives, being hit or being the target of missile locks should count as participation.

Reiyn,

 

As a first timer who you (and several others on Republic side, Harbinger) annihilated time and time again yesterday, I whole heartedly agree that it was not fun and had I something better to do, I may not have stuck around as long as I did.

 

See this post: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=926658&page=30

 

(Flying under 'Loose Sausagewallet')

Reiyn,

 

As a first timer who you (and several others on Republic side, Harbinger) annihilated time and time again yesterday, I whole heartedly agree that it was not fun and had I something better to do, I may not have stuck around as long as I did.

 

See this post: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=926658&page=30

 

(Flying under 'Loose Sausagewallet')

 

Hey Loose, I saw you in a match today just an hour or so ago. You were flying a type 2 scout in a Kuat mesas domination match that the pubs won pretty easily. I just wanted to tell you to keep trying, weekday afternoons are often dominated by one side or the other so don't give up and keep plugging away. You've made a good choice to unlock that scout because it's definitely considered one of the meta ships. I'll try to reach out to you next time I'm flying on impside.

Reiyn,

 

As a first timer who you (and several others on Republic side, Harbinger) annihilated time and time again yesterday, I whole heartedly agree that it was not fun and had I something better to do, I may not have stuck around as long as I did.

 

See this post: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=926658&page=30

 

(Flying under 'Loose Sausagewallet')

 

Normally you won't see my main for more than a few random matches on any given day. If you're referring to the most recent Galactic Command bonus day for GSF - I flew her longer than I have the entire time I've had her, and she's almost 3 years old now.

 

The week long command bonus event managed to get me to sub, and even with the bonus its still very grindy.

 

I won more than I lost, but not by a huge margin - and don't think I even grouped for q priority that day despite focusing on GSF specifically for command xp (along with heroics and such).

 

And yes, there were definitely a lot of inexperienced pilots to go around, but I did end up having a solid amount of quality games despite the influx.

 

Just last night I got in on imp q for daily knowing full well that there wasn't enough strength on that side to succeed against the team of 4 pubside. So, accepting that loss is almost inevitable - sometimes I play differently for the sake of amusement. Instead of actively trying to win in a hopeless situation - I would try and focus my efforts on someone and make sure that even with the huge advantage they would still have to blow up a few times. It's essentially a kamikaze stye one way trip.

 

Sometimes, you have to find a different way to enjoy the mode other than winning. A lot of what got me to ace level was simply finding the strongest pilots and trying desperately to kill them. Most of the time I didn't have to find them, they found me, over and over again. I died excessively in the beginning but each attempt was its own little learning experience.

 

I had more fun in those two losing matches than I did in the one prior where I was pub winning with a blowout.

One thing I would like them to change related to requisitions is the participation rules. If you're fleeing for your life through a flurry of bolts and missiles, you're soon counted as not participating, when clearly you are. In addition to doing damage and interacting with objectives, being hit or being the target of missile locks should count as participation.

 

Add those who drop a hyperspace beacon somewhere useful (i.e. not miles below/above sats A & C but midway between A&B or B&C so respawning teammates get you to the one most in need of help asap ...), and then stays back out of trouble to keep it active as long as possible ... every game I do this I get tagged as not participating but clearly am in that I have a non-violent beacon assisting my teammates ... what's the point in dropping a hyperspace beacon if I then go into combat and die 10 seconds later ? and have to wait a minute before I can drop another ?

Add those who drop a hyperspace beacon somewhere useful

...

and then stays back out of trouble to keep it active as long as possible ... every game I do this I get tagged as not participating but clearly am in that I have a non-violent beacon assisting my teammates ... what's the point in dropping a hyperspace beacon if I then go into combat and die 10 seconds later ?

I can understand your concern, but consider the following:

_

• It is likely that only one of the two nodes you have put your Beacon between is under heavy attack (or any attack). Going to the off-node, usually the 'side' one, will not only ensure you are contributing by being on an objective, but will also help your team defend that node if the attack shifts there.
  
• Taking yourself out of the action puts your team at a significant disadvantage regardless of your Beacon placement. Guaranteeing the other side numerical superiority is not helpful to your team.
  
• Bombers can survive quite well by keeping Line of Sight (LoS) broken between themselves and attackers by using the satellites' many protrusions as shelter. Combining this with your mines makes it difficult for enemies to attack you.
  
• Your Beacon helps your teammates after they've died. Help them even more by contributing towards keeping them alive by using your mines to deny the enemy easy access to the node, which also creates an area of strength for your teammates to fall back to if necessary.
  

_

Once you learn how to use your Bomber's components and crew to good effect, and when you master the art of being hard to hit in close spaces, you'll be a valuable contributor to your team.

 

- Despon