I've been playing GSF for a few weeks now, long enough to identify certain things that make matches enjoyable - and not so enjoyable. My observations are probably similar to most pilots, both novice and expert alike.

I think most everyone would agree that the funnest and most memorable matches are the extremely close ones, in which leads are slim and often switch back and forth. And, at least to me, the most aggravating and boring matches occur when a seemingly pre-made team of expert pilots with maxed-out ships, coordinating via voice chat, goes against an opponent consisting primarily of novice pilots barely out of the flight tutorial. I've been on both sides of such slaughter-fests and they're nothing but /facepalms the whole time. They're certainly not fun for the losers, and I can't imagine how they'd be fun for the victors. I guess such pre-mades are made in the off-chance its members will go up against a similarly-constituted opponent.

There are many matches, however, in which one super-ace pilot completely dominates. To these guys I humbly ask, "dial it down" a bit. What's being gained by your 25-0 K/D? Certainly not anyone's fun. Certainly not your teammates' and opponents' skill levels. And certainly not the long-term health of GSF.

If it's clear your team is facing a bunch of noobs, perhaps hop in your bomber and play support? At the least, don't play your fully kitted scout, obliterating everyone within 2 seconds under a hail of rocket pods and quad lasers. In other words, strive for a proportionate response. Bring your A-game against A-teams, not scrubs. Everyone will thank you for it.

Flaming responses in 3.. 2.. 1...

(I don't disagree with you - a guild has actually killed GSF on evenings on my server)

Hello.

This thing has been going on quite long time. Since there isnt currently any way to do ace vs ace matches. My imperial pilot is often facing massivly outskilled rep teams.

Imperial side dont have so many players to form decend GSF guild. I started pooling those pilots that I found good

players and nice persons. Even without guild I can sometimes form premades that can put up a fight agaist the reps.

Personally I wanna play at my best as often possible. I do feel bad sometimes when my premade stomps rookie rep teams. Also when Im facing impossible odds I try to make most of it and improve my skills agaist the top players. Stick to your guns and dont lose heart!

I do play on the reps too my win % is pretty high there compared to imps

-Nemsis of the Red Eclipse

There are many matches, however, in which one super-ace pilot completely dominates. To these guys I humbly ask, "dial it down" a bit. What's being gained by your 25-0 K/D? Certainly not anyone's fun. Certainly not your teammates' and opponents' skill levels. And certainly not the long-term health of GSF.

 

If it's clear your team is facing a bunch of noobs, perhaps hop in your bomber and play support? At the least, don't play your fully kitted scout, obliterating everyone within 2 seconds under a hail of rocket pods and quad lasers. In other words, strive for a proportionate response. Bring your A-game against A-teams, not scrubs. Everyone will thank you for it.

I support the request, I really do. However, as with most things in life, it's not really black/white.

1) It can work in Domination, where the veteran parks their ship on one satellite and drinks a cup of coffee while letting the rest of pilots fight for the remaining two satellites, but it is more difficult in TDM, and not only because of the non-contributing debuff.

2) Veteran pilots usually go for the gameplay first and foremost. They may spend the ~10 minutes idling or flying in a way/ship which they don't enjoy, but no one can really call them out for not doing so; their enjoyment is as valuable as everyone else's enjoyment.

3) It would only work if - after "taking the veteran out of the equation" - the remaining teams would be roughly equal. It's not uncommon though that one side has decent "newbies", while the other has the veteran and the rest is conquest points farmers, AFKers who only want the daily rewards, and pilots who are hopeless but don't give a **** about that. In such case, the veteran has no other choice but to go for what looks like "ego boosting", but in fact is "alone against all" fight.

Well, going easy on the other side may work for merely competent pilots, but skill is so important in GSF that an all-noob team can be crushed by a skilled pilot flying an un-upgraded ship that they don't even like while goofing off and not seriously trying to win.

I've wound up doing that a few times, and I'm not a super-ace by any stretch of the imagination. Incidental kills as you try to grab every single powerup on the map for yourself can really add up over the course of a game.

I'll also point out that being a support bomber is only 'nice' in TDM matches, in domination games against newcomers it's a potential source of 1000-0 final scores.

The proper request is that the aces get on their T2 gunships in a double torpedo build. That's about as much handicap as you can get in GSF. Even then, while goofing off, there are pilots that are still going to be highly destructive. Just not nearly as destructive as they'd be playing seriously in a good ship.

Really the effective thing to do is not to go easy on the other team. The effective thing to do is to log over to an alt on the other faction, get people to group que, and if at all possible use VIOP to mentor them a bit.

It works really well, except in those cases where as soon as you switch sides it's suddenly the faction you just left getting consistently crushed.

As part of the 'lower tier' of aces, I can only say YES!!! That Japanese kid and Scrables just destroy everybody and it's not fair to the rest of us who are trying to play. I repeatedly ask them to play GS but they can't hear me from the top of the charts.

In all seriousness, sometimes there us nothing that can be done. Solve the problem at the source - don't match aces with non aces. How to do this? We can't - BW needs to take that lead. Even a ranking system like chess with a global pool would improve experiences by allowing tiers to stay within defined constraints, provided the pool can sustain that much seperation.

This was a good post though, because it continues to shed light in the biggest issue - MATCHMAKING!!

No mercy.

The closest I come to going easy on someone is picking a ship without upgrades (which I have to switch to an alt to do), and this typically doesn't make much difference. It takes me a little longer to kill someone, and it makes matches against other good pilots who aren't flying non upgraded ships kind of stacked against me, but if you're very new or just not that great, you're simply not going to shoot me down until you've learned a thing or two. Even playing alts with no upgrades I can still completely dominate a pug vs pug match pretty handily.

You should know, though, that if I'm against a mix of good pilots and new pilots, I will typically go out of my way to fight good pilots and only pay much attention to bad ones if they chase/harass me or if they're guarding an objective. The only time I'll deliberately pick off easy targets is if I come into a Team Death Match in progress and my team is way behind. It's fun to pull a victory out of a huge kill deficit.

I know it's tough out there, but the very nature of GSF insists that it be. Those with perseverance will come to master GSF. Those who frustrate easily are going to have a rough time. If you see someone kicking people's asses left and right, feel free to message them for tips/advice/general information.

I will not give you mercy, but I will happily give advice ^_~.

No mercy.

 

The closest I come to going easy on someone is picking a ship without upgrades (which I have to switch to an alt to do), and this typically doesn't make much difference. It takes me a little longer to kill someone, and it makes matches against other good pilots who aren't flying non upgraded ships kind of stacked against me, but if you're very new or just not that great, you're simply not going to shoot me down until you've learned a thing or two. Even playing alts with no upgrades I can still completely dominate a pug vs pug match pretty handily.

 

You should know, though, that if I'm against a mix of good pilots and new pilots, I will typically go out of my way to fight good pilots and only pay much attention to bad ones if they chase/harass me or if they're guarding an objective. The only time I'll deliberately pick off easy targets is if I come into a Team Death Match in progress and my team is way behind. It's fun to pull a victory out of a huge kill deficit.

 

I know it's tough out there, but the very nature of GSF insists that it be. Those with perseverance will come to master GSF. Those who frustrate easily are going to have a rough time. If you see someone kicking people's asses left and right, feel free to message them for tips/advice/general information.

 

I will not give you mercy, but I will happily give advice ^_~.

How about swapping to a Mastered T1 or T2 strike .

I used to do this but it proved to be even less fun for more wasted time. Now I just work to end the match as quickly as possible, these matches going between 6-7 minutes for dom and a 4-6 minutes for TDM. It's the most painless method available right now.

What this really requires is a cross-server ace queue or just a congregation server we all go to after a certain skill level. People may disagree with me on what that level is.

Also Sam I played a gunship yesterday and Xiao was right, I did zoom in and out a lot trying to fire pods.

How about swapping to a Mastered T1 or T2 strike .

In farm matches my scores don't change if im in a strikefighter typically. In closer matches they don't change if I'm going after the right targets and not being focussed. Right targets being bombers and gunships primarily.

In farm matches my scores don't change if im in a strikefighter typically. In closer matches they don't change if I'm going after the right targets and not being focussed. Right targets being bombers and gunships primarily.

This. My scores are about the same as long as I don't have a railgun.. And go slightly higher when I have one. At least as long as I don,t have any serious opposition.

A Retro-Jouster with QCS is almost as mobile as a Flashfire and can destroy a lot of thing easily with Ion or HLC.

When I can land a protorp on a Flashfire, there is only one thing to say.. No matter what ship I would fly, said Flashfire is dead.

A lot of matches that are close are typically me vs the world and they happen pretty frequently. I just had one match where I came in when it was 20-5 and within 2 and a half minutes we were 22-25 in our favor. Next match ended 50-33 and I was 29-8-0 then this happens next match http://i.imgur.com/Wwf4G3o.jpg.

The matches where we just destroy the game are pretty few and far between but when Sam and I group up they kinda just happen.

I wholly disagree with OP. I play to win and I train to win. This is a competitive game and as so you cannot ask people to 'dial it down'. What we can do and will do is point out how, what and why you need to change or do something different. I fly with anyone and everyone on the Bastion. Experience is everything in this mini game. Why water that down?

That being said the onus lies with the fledgling pilot to bring themselves up and thats not going to happen if you pull your punches so to speak. Fierce pilots make for great training. I went through the trial by fire that this mini game is and I took my beatings knowing that great pilots as enemies will make me a great pilot one day. I will concur with another on this thread, a lot can be done to avoid rofl-stomps if we had a larger matchmaking pool.

The only thing that a new or newer pilot can do is what I did way back when while I was learning.

Once you find out who the good pilots are you have to just talk to them! Everything I have learned about ship builds, tactics, and etc. came from befriending those Ace pilots to learn from them. Just because we can dominate a match does not make us a-holes. I have never met an unfriendly pilot ever!

So long story short just talk to those Ace pilots! They will help you!

The only way to do what the OP is saying is to play when there's one of those Super Serious nights happening, on the server where the event is not happening. Otherwise the aces will just farm. Some aces (Sriia's bunch on TEH) will be less evil about it and try to stay out of the spawn, but most of them will just kill everything as soon as they see it (see also: it just spawned).

Newbies are not going to learn how not to fly into stuff if they've only got a minute to fly before the spawns get swarmed.

Sometimes the better pilots do go easy. It looks like this.

Eh?? I see no 'better pilots' here. Sorry to tell you but even while dialing down, a good pilot cannot shoot innacurate.

ANd nothing here even breaks the 40% which is RFL + Pods accuracy target...

Eh?? I see no 'better pilots' here. Sorry to tell you but even while dialing down, a good pilot cannot shoot innacurate.

 

ANd nothing here even breaks the 40% which is RFL + Pods accuracy target...

Dragon, you're by no means bad but there are a couple pilots there who outflew you last time you swung by our server. You shouldn't try to judge people by a single stat, in a game where you weren't present

Dragon, you're by no means bad but there are a couple pilots there who outflew you last time you swung by our server. You shouldn't try to judge people by a single stat, in a game where you weren't present

I go by this name on two servers.. But I guess you're from TEH (Sriia gave it away)???? And I never said I wasn't outflown by some people.

I said one simple thing many times before. Accuracy is the best stat visible on the scoreboard as far as judging one's level goes.

And beside, how should I judge the scoreboard?? Damage?? Not good if you didn't fly seriously. Kills?? Worst than damage. Deaths?? Not dying isn't an achievement in an easy match.. Especially when you aren't going in 1vs4-5 fights. Objectives?? There is a serious lack of detail on the scoreboard.. 13 can be very good or very bad depending on the amount of offensive points.

Having 37% accuracy isn't holding back much.. It's wasting your shots. It's wasting your energy.

Flying support for newbies is one thing, shooting completely beside the target is another. Considering I feel I'm not shooting straight the moment I go 5-7% under my averages, I can only imagine what it feels to shoot that innaccurately willingly. Are you trying to only shoot at very high deflection?? Or just not shooting on the target hoping they will learn how to go evasive??

And beside, how should I judge the scoreboard?? Damage?? Not good if you didn't fly seriously. Kills?? Worst than damage. Deaths?? Not dying isn't an achievement in an easy match.. Especially when you aren't going in 1vs4-5 fights. Objectives?? There is a serious lack of detail on the scoreboard.. 13 can be very good or very bad depending on the amount of offensive points.

You shouldn't judge the scoreboard. You're completely missing the point. That scoreboard wouldn't show a difference between somebody who was barely decent and one of the legendary aces of the game. The point is, the game went to time because for most of the game, the better pilots did everything besides play. The point, other than amusement, of posting the screenshot is that it shows some newbies to GSF are so lacking in experience and skill, they would have barely won a Dom before time when their only opposition was four players who themselves were also terribly new (and so bad, they were ignoring Ops chat). We're talking about newbies who had trouble capping sats against only the turrets. That is the point.

If you could mouseover or look at performance tab, you'd see some really weird stuff (among other things, we were strafing into mesa tops so I could farm repairs) for some of the pilots there, but it's totally besides the point.

And for what it's worth, I believe that when Sriia correctly estimated to within five seconds how long it would take for us to three-cap, it did show a great understanding of the game. We probably did make the greatest statements of skill that would have been possible in that match, and it's still not all that impressive. If you would have made the challenge "win the game with 100% accuracy" instead, I'm sure we could have, but again, not even that impressive and probably a lot more boring. What we did was cut the game as close as we could, and that did salvage fun from what would have been an extremely dull match had we played normally.

And yes, I agree that accuracy is probably the best of the scoreboard stats if you're going to judge people by the scoreboard, but the only real thing that decides if somebody is good or not is how they can affect a game's final score. That said, wasting energy tends to carry a low penalty in GSF (depending on the weapon you're using of course) so taking speculative, low hit probability shots is a valid strategy with most weapons. The most obvious exception is rockets, you don't want to waste rockets with low hit chance shots.

You shouldn't judge the scoreboard. You're completely missing the point. That scoreboard wouldn't show a difference between somebody who was barely decent and one of the legendary aces of the game. The point is, the game went to time because for most of the game, the better pilots did everything besides play. The point, other than amusement, of posting the screenshot is that it shows some newbies to GSF are so lacking in experience and skill, they would have barely won a Dom before time when their only opposition was four players who themselves were also terribly new (and so bad, they were ignoring Ops chat). We're talking about newbies who had trouble capping sats against only the turrets. That is the point.

 

If you could mouseover or look at performance tab, you'd see some really weird stuff (among other things, we were strafing into mesa tops so I could farm repairs) for some of the pilots there, but it's totally besides the point.

 

And for what it's worth, I believe that when Sriia correctly estimated to within five seconds how long it would take for us to three-cap, it did show a great understanding of the game. We probably did make the greatest statements of skill that would have been possible in that match, and it's still not all that impressive. If you would have made the challenge "win the game with 100% accuracy" instead, I'm sure we could have, but again, not even that impressive and probably a lot more boring. What we did was cut the game as close as we could, and that did salvage fun from what would have been an extremely dull match had we played normally.

I see. Even in farm matches.. I don't fly to lose, I just switch to a stock ship, a ship with a troll build.. Or even just restrain me from using a component of my ship.. Yesterday for example, I did a match without using Wingman or Directionnal active on my Quell (which was mostly stock beyond some minor components, Directionnal and BR).

I never go out of the match and let the other team free reign. I will put limits on what I can and can't do, but I won't let them have it easy.

And yes, I agree that accuracy is probably the best of the scoreboard stats if you're going to judge people by the scoreboard, but the only real thing that decides if somebody is good or not is how they can affect a game's final score. That said, wasting energy tends to carry a low penalty in GSF (depending on the weapon you're using of course) so taking speculative, low hit probability shots is a valid strategy with most weapons. The most obvious exception is rockets, you don't want to waste rockets with low hit chance shots.

Not really. With anything but BLC, you need to keep a constant stream to do damage.. So firing at high deflection keeps you from turning fast enough to center your target. It may not be a very high penality against bads.. But against good opponents with maxed ships it can make or break a fight. Sure on the other hand, high deflection shot may also be your only chance to damage the opponent... In the end all of this is mostly situationnal. Then you have Quads and their heavy cost if they miss. And finally railguns and rockets.

I sympathize with the OP, it must be hard to be in matches up against our premade group but what can we do about it - we don't choose the matches.

On my main I have one unmastered ship left and my hatred of bombers is well known so I rarely fly them. My alts are running out of stock ships as well.

When i fly my unmastered ship it doesn't always make that much of a difference. Some matches I'll fly around and only target people that actively shoot me or I'll only use Ion cannons on my strike just to see what happens.

However, I dont want to loose matches and neither do the other people on my team (guildes or not). I'm not going to deliberately throw a match to keep other people happy and if that means going GS or Scout to win then that's what I'll do.

On the flip side of it I'd still encourage players to come ask for help, or advice. I'm more than happy to talk about GSF and give pointers on tactics or ship builds. We all started the same way the only difference between me and other players is the time I've put into GSF - I'm happy to share that experience but you gotta ask.