Hello SWTOR dev(s)! I doubt any of you will actually read this but who knows... so here's a thought.

There are players who want more from GSF. Your corporate overlords like money. Players who want things sometimes have money. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or other platforms (I'm sure EA could whip one up for you) are great for parting people from their money when they want something. So here's what you do:

1. Pick a dollar amount that will satisfy the bean counters.

2. Establish some goals like ...

• $1million for three new maps
  
• $2million for a GUI and lobby to facilitate custom matches with variable parameters and invite-based pilot rosters
  
• $3million for Cross-server queuing
  

... or whatever works, money-wise. You can even be the first existing MMORPG to crowdfund new features for your players. It will be great publicity. If it works, you just made a boatload of money and made your players happier. If it fails, well, you probably only had an intern take a half hour to set up the Kickstarter pitch, so are you really worse off?

Seriously. We want things. Some of us probably have some money. We will pay you to give us a better game, because we like playing what's there in GSF now and want to see more.

So, try communicating with us!

Despon

+10^6

Great idea!!! At least within the 'home' region.

Hello SWTOR dev(s)! I doubt any of you will actually read this but who knows... so here's a thought.

 

There are players who want more from GSF. Your corporate overlords like money. Players who want things sometimes have money. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or other platforms (I'm sure EA could whip one up for you) are great for parting people from their money when they want something. So here's what you do:

 

1. Pick a dollar amount that will satisfy the bean counters.

2. Establish some goals like ...

• $1million for three new maps
  
• $2million for a GUI and lobby to facilitate custom matches with variable parameters and invite-based pilot rosters
  
• $3million for Cross-server queuing
  

... or whatever works, money-wise. You can even be the first existing MMORPG to crowdfund new features for your players. It will be great publicity. If it works, you just made a boatload of money and made your players happier. If it fails, well, you probably only had an intern take a half hour to set up the Kickstarter pitch, so are you really worse off?

 

Seriously. We want things. Some of us probably have some money. We will pay you to give us a better game, because we like playing what's there in GSF now and want to see more.

 

So, try communicating with us!

 

Despon

Companies providing specific content to players who want it...hmm, you're on to something Despon. Many of us have already backed various flight/space games on sites like Kickstarter and would undoubtedly spend quite a bit if they ever did anything like a GSF kickstarter--hell call it some Cartel Market thing, Hutts fund stuff right? Great idea, frustratingly out of our control.

Just to elaborate on this a bit more, let's look at what the following two things would accomplish:

Cross Server queuing would...

• allow for better matchmaking, giving players of all levels a more satisfying and fair play experience
  
• ensure pops were quicker, probably near instant at most times of day if everyone interested in playing was in the same pool of players.
  

Custom Match Lobby would...

• more easily facilitate tournaments and player-run events, which are great for the community and cost the devs nothing for a return of keeping players interested in the game.
  
• allow people who want to play with certain restrictions in gameplay [ex. Strikes only or scouts only] to post a custom match that others could join.
  
• allow teams of veterans to queue against teams of veterans, thereby giving new players a more forgiving and open playing field in which to learn the game and not be squashed immediately.
  

Either of these would be a massive improvement to the game. Together they would be a massive boost.

How much money would it take to get it done? Why not see if your players are willing to fund it? It will add value to your product at very little risk.

Come on devs, at least come talk to us and say why this isn't possible.

Despon

I appreciate the spirit, but lets look at numbers.

I think I am one of the most dedicated GSFers. I play every day if I can. I subscribe to SWTOR and yet mainly only GSF. I pay out of pocket for a GSF guild website. I've bought Cartel ships on multiple alts. I've gone to multiple cantina events up and down the west coast (even though I don't drink) just to ask about GSF.

How much do you think I would pledge? Given how much I love the game and how much joy it has given me, and given that I have good financial stability and significant disposable income, and given that my wife knows how important GSF is to me, I could probably pledge, at most, $1000.

How many of me do you think there are? If you want even $200,000, you would need 200 of me. I do not think there are 200 of me, nor even 100, nor even 10.

GSF does not have the fan base necessary to crowdfund through number of pledges -- it would need whales like me.

I think a GSF-focused Kickstarter would have a hard time getting even $10,000. Granted, that would cover 1 or 2 months of 1 dev's time, depending on how well the dev is paid. That might be enough to accomplish a balance update or new map.

And while Starfighter, Inc. was able to get over $200k, it was largely through deceptive use of nostalgia and exploiting people's desperation. They tried pitching a pure PvP game and immediately got backlash. Then they created a stretch goal to suddenly ads PvE, just to try and trick enough people to fund the PvP-only game. And in the end, they still failed, and they did not have the attachment to SWTOR or sentimental headwind that GSF does.

I appreciate the spirit, but lets look at numbers.

I think the main thing is that we just don't know what any of this would cost. In my initial post I threw out a completely ludicrous $1million figure, but that was based on nothing. If we could lure a dev in here (maybe we should set a plate of cookies by the chimney) we could find out what it might take.

I think a Custom Match Lobby would be the easiest thing of all to fund and produce. It would require only code assets, no new art aside from maybe a GUI panel and a button. It's not like it's high-tech stuff, games have managed to have matchmaking lobbies since the dawn of internet gaming. How much realistically could this take to accomplish? Could two programmers do it in a month? How much would they need to be paid?

Similarly, Nem, your request in another thread for a Cartel version of the new ship illustrates an area where it would take very little in the way of resources to produce quality content that could go on to earn them additional money. Any competent 3d artist could produce a GSF caliber model and textures in a day's work. These are not cinematic masterpieces. They're blocky little ships with no moving parts largely defined by their textures. It'd take a programmer a little time to set up the hardpoints where the weapon models attach and integrate it into the game menus. This is hardly an epic investment.

I'd love to hear from a dev what they consider the cost of producing a new map to be. The only way we can say if it would be possible to crowdfund something like this is to have a ballpark idea of what it would cost.

It seems ludicrous to think that there is no way for the development team to come up with enough funding to improve GSF.

Despon

 

It seems ludicrous to think that there is no way for the development team to come up with enough funding to improve GSF.

 

Despon

It's not a matter of how much time or resources GSF would cost. It's about the opportunity cost of taking someone off story, operation, or war zone content.

Let's say BioWare determines through its telemetry that a story-focused player generates 2x the revenue of a raider, 5x the revenue of a ground PvP fan, and 10x the revenue of a GSF fan. That means any work devoted to those types of content have an opportunity cost that makes them more epxensive to produce. Even if making a cartel ship only takes a 3D modeler one day, he could have been using that one day to make a room where a cinematic takes place, or a new set of cartel armor. Instead of doing something that had the potential to generate X revenue, he wasted his time doing something that will only generate X/10 revenue.

Eventually, this arithmatic leads to the conclusion that the best use of all resources is ALWAYS on your biggest moneymaker.

That is how we get an entire expansion focused on story.

Instead of doing something that had the potential to generate X revenue, he wasted his time doing something that will only generate X/10 revenue.

 

Eventually, this arithmatic leads to the conclusion that the best use of all resources is ALWAYS on your biggest moneymaker.

Imagine SWTOR as a garden. There are many things growing in that garden, all of which require varying amounts of water, sun, and attention to flourish. GSF is a cactus. It is a bit pointy, but really doesn't need much at all to stay alive. But even a cactus will die if it is unattended and starved for too long. Isn't it better to perform that minimal maintenance on what you've planted since you apparently saw value there in the first place?

Some seeds take longer to grow than others, but if properly tended to, can yield great amounts of fruit. I'm pretty sure that the guy who planted the GSF seeds has moved on to other pastures, but if you inherited a healthy garden wouldn't it make sense to keep it that way... or at the very least, plow it over and plant it anew rather than let what's in it wither away and rot?

Maybe you don't like that analogy. How about this one...

Imagine SWTOR as a living body, with many parts. When one of those parts suffers a little damage, isn't it best to treat it immediately rather than let it fester to the point where that part falls off? How does that opportunity cost analysis look if you lose an arm (or even a finger) when a band-aid and some cheap disinfectant would have solved the whole problem?

If there are low cost measures that could be taken to dramatically improve GSF, and people willing to fund those measures, what is the downside to doing that? The X/10 revenue rate is not fixed in stone, and if any degree of sensible planning was applied, GSF could earn them a lot more money than it likely does now.

All that said, it'd sure be nice to have a dev show up and give some insight. I suppose I'd have better luck waiting for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween.

Despon

Imagine SWTOR as a garden. There are many things growing in that garden, all of which require varying amounts of water, sun, and attention to flourish. GSF is a cactus. It is a bit pointy, but really doesn't need much at all to stay alive. But even a cactus will die if it is unattended and starved for too long. Isn't it better to perform that minimal maintenance on what you've planted since you apparently saw value there in the first place?

 

Some seeds take longer to grow than others, but if properly tended to, can yield great amounts of fruit. I'm pretty sure that the guy who planted the GSF seeds has moved on to other pastures, but if you inherited a healthy garden wouldn't it make sense to keep it that way... or at the very least, plow it over and plant it anew rather than let what's in it wither away and rot?

 

Maybe you don't like that analogy. How about this one...

 

Imagine SWTOR as a living body, with many parts. When one of those parts suffers a little damage, isn't it best to treat it immediately rather than let it fester to the point where that part falls off? How does that opportunity cost analysis look if you lose an arm (or even a finger) when a band-aid and some cheap disinfectant would have solved the whole problem?

 

If there are low cost measures that could be taken to dramatically improve GSF, and people willing to fund those measures, what is the downside to doing that? The X/10 revenue rate is not fixed in stone, and if any degree of sensible planning was applied, GSF could earn them a lot more money than it likely does now.

 

All that said, it'd sure be nice to have a dev show up and give some insight. I suppose I'd have better luck waiting for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween.

 

Despon

Believe me, you're preaching to the choir. I like an MMO to have a variety of activities that support many different playstyles and types of players.

But I think KOTFE is probably a make-or-break moment for the game at large. They saw that 12x XP was very popular and brought in the subs, because people like to play through story content.

Warzones, operations, and GSF do not bring in subs like that.

Going to your garden analogy, I'm sure there are devs who love cacti. Jesse Sky told me that face to face. That being said, Jesse Sky needs to report his game's revenue and profits to BioWare, and BioWare has to roll that up to EA. And if EA tells BioWare to tell Jesse to focus on the cash crop (story), he's not going to spare a gardener--or potentially even a plot of land--for any cacti. He's going to use all of his capacity to grow the cash crop, which is story content.

And this pressure doesn't just come from high-up executives or corporate overlords. It comes from the players. Players assume that all developer capacity can be freely transferred and allocated to whatever suits their fancy. And any time GSF gets love, there will be an extreme blowback against BioWare, because the players will assume that a new cartel ship for GSF is the reason why they didn't get a new raid or warzone, or why KotFE only has 9 chapters at launch instead of 10 at launch.

Those same ignorant players who come in and say, "Gunships ruined my GSF experience". The ones who we all love to haughtily correct--guess what, they VASTLY OUTNUMBER US. We shouldn't be smacking them down--we should be embracing them, because at least they give GSF the time of day. At least they want to enjoy it. They are far closer to being our allies than the players who jumped onto Alex's Strike post and said "Why invest in this pile of crap? Let it die."

But this community continually and perpetually thrusts its head into the sand. It is so attached to what we have that it would rather see it wither and die than change to be more accessible.

It is so attached to winning forum debates that it never considers the view of a new player. It always considers the game in some objective, idealized fashion, instead of thinking about the impression it makes on someone who doesn't know any better.

When someone says, "Gunships/Bombers/BLC's ruin GSF for me," they aren't wrong. They are expressing a fact about how an element of the game makes them feel. And they are the master of that fact's accuracy, because it's all about the impression GSF makes on them. And they are representative of tens of thousands of players who tried GSF and then quit it.

Having some private lobby that lets us set up custom games would do nothing to save GSF. That's a niche feature for those few of us who want to set up private games.

On the other hand, having a larger matchmaking pool would help GSF. As would having a mandatory PvE tutorial. As would adding joystick support, even if it was utterly gimp compared to mouse. As would buffing Strikes to the extreme and deleting all trap components across all ships. As would nerfing tracking penalty and evasion, which both lead to player frustration and confusion.

But none of these would guarantee success. The earth the cactus is planted in may simply be too salted with the tears of everyone who decided to hate GSF in its first months.

Having some private lobby that lets us set up custom games would do nothing to save GSF. That's a niche feature for those few of us who want to set up private games.

I disagree with that entirely. If implemented properly it would allow several key things that are directly related to helping new players:

1. 'Teaching' matches that could be set up between someone who wants to show new players the ropes and let them fool around without the pressure of a real match, in a space that permits actual instruction. Let us be the tutorial since it doesn't do the job.

2. Enabling those who want to run an 'all scouts' or 'all strikes' match to do just that. Hate a certain class? Then put up a match that excludes it and enjoy the company of like-minded players.

3. Enabling teams of veterans to successfully queue against each other instead of the futility raindance that goes on when attempting to get premades fighting against each other instead of against teams of hapless 2-shippers who will get completely destroyed.

On the other hand, having a larger matchmaking pool would help GSF. As would having a mandatory PvE tutorial. As would adding joystick support, even if it was utterly gimp compared to mouse. As would buffing Strikes to the extreme and deleting all trap components across all ships. As would nerfing tracking penalty and evasion, which both lead to player frustration and confusion.

I'd rather see trap components buffed to make them useful. More viable options is better than fewer viable options. It's mostly a matter of adjusting some numbers, which seems pretty low on the 'resource cost' scale of dev investment.

Obviously cross-server queues would be the biggest boon to GSF but I assume that there is some technological ogre that would have to be slain for them to accomplish that, or you'd think they would have done it by now. If I could select one miracle fix for GSF that would be it. I'm just assuming it would be more costly to do that than other options, but without any kind of dev input on the subject it's pretty much just speculation either way.

Despon

When someone says, "Gunships/Bombers/BLC's ruin GSF for me," they aren't wrong. They are expressing a fact about how an element of the game makes them feel.

They aren't saying that, though, they are saying 'Gunships are OP / should be removed / etc'. Their frustration is valid, their feelings are not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether they have the perspective to identify what the root cause of the problem is. If all the gunships vanished, people in battlescouts would ream new pilots into oblivion with just as much frustrating uncounterability. The new player experience would be no better, they would just be eating a different flavor of defeat. It would not taste any better.

New players need to play against people of similar ability level in order to have the time and space to develop their skills. Ship classes have nothing to do with it. There are a lot of ways that you could approach the problem of how to get new players into evenly matched scenarios, but wantonly removing ship classes because the lowest common denominator doesn't know what to do to deal with them isn't it.

Better tools to teach the game, safer places to learn the game, less chances to be slotted into uneven teams. That is what will improve the new pilot's experience and let them develop their skills.

Don't turn 'Rock Paper Scissors' into 'Rock'

Despon

Devs are not going to do anything about gsf. Its pretty much in the same shape with pvp and pve op content now.

I think its a shame. New storyline is great and all, but honestly how long will it take people to burn through the new storyline? Maybe a week or two at the most? I think bioware is making a big mistake alienating the other branches of the game. The fact that Nemarus has reached out several times to the devs and basically they blew off everything he suggested to them speaks volumes about how much they really care about gsf. Hate to be the negative nancy here, but I think what we have in gsf is all we're going to get except for maybe a new cartel ship or something for them to milk a few more dollars from the player base. There's really nothing we can do, can't talk to devs because they're not even listening to us and you can say hit them in the pockets, but all they'll do is move on to the next game so that's pretty much it.

Heh, I mostly fly. I haven't even set foot on Rishi as an imp, never mind Yavin or Ziost.

Despon hit the nail on the head about the New Player Experience. When I'm flying with friends, good matches are rare. When we do get a good match, it's a wargame because the other faction (pub or imp, depending on the day) got sick of us farming them and came over to our side of the server-to still be fodder because most of us could just blow them away with rapids because they don't know to hit spacebar and break when there's something intent on their destruction, or if they see a red plasma ball to put a rock between their ships and the ball, because it might just be a gunship pointed at them. Or that Koiogran turn is usually terrible for getting out of a gunship's line of fire.

I would add to that post: This is how PvP games kill themselves. A bad or nonexistent matchmaking system will throw a bunch of newbies in their first ten matches against premades full of thousand-game veterans-over and over and over, with exactly the same result every time. Yes, strikes could use a buff. They could do it several different ways and any one of them could be a correct one-but at the end of the day, very few people will care if something isn't done about the abundance of there-are-no-words-for-this-much-fail matches.

But this community continually and perpetually thrusts its head into the sand. It is so attached to what we have that it would rather see it wither and die than change to be more accessible.

 

It is so attached to winning forum debates that it never considers the view of a new player. It always considers the game in some objective, idealized fashion, instead of thinking about the impression it makes on someone who doesn't know any better.

 

When someone says, "Gunships/Bombers/BLC's ruin GSF for me," they aren't wrong. They are expressing a fact about how an element of the game makes them feel. And they are the master of that fact's accuracy, because it's all about the impression GSF makes on them. And they are representative of tens of thousands of players who tried GSF and then quit it.

This may be down to some form of attrition bias rather than something caused by the community itself. That is, the smaller GSF gets, the more homogeneous the views of the remaining pilots tend to become, as players with unaddressed concerns eventually stop playing and so you hear from them less.

players with unaddressed concerns eventually stop playing and so you hear from them less.

That is indisputable. The way Bioware has handled GSF players' concerns (total indifference for a year followed by a strange, brief dev appearance with the strike thread) shows precisely how much they care about those players.

The way to improve new players' experience is to get them playing against other new players, and away from playing against veterans. Gutting the game of various ship classes will not accomplish that. What will accomplish that is centralizing the player base so everyone is in the same pool, and/or giving people access to a matchmaking lobby that provides tools enabling them to fly against opponents of an ability level they're comfortable with. If said lobby also allows people to post matches restricting the available ship classes, all the better. I'd be happy to occasionally fly 'all strikes' (just like the Strike Nights of yore).

That's the whole reason I made this thread. If there's a 1% chance that someone on the dev team reads this and thinks 'Hey, maybe we COULD make enough money to fund a custom lobby' then it's worth it to keep up this discussion. GSF is not some irreparable train wreck bereft of earning potential.

Despon

I think that in a lot of ways GSF is a labor of love by devs that are into Star Wars, and like many of us loved games like the X-wing series and Wing Commander. SWTOR was missing decent space combat, and they made decent space combat happen.

If we're using farming analogies and metaphors, then we GSF players are the trained pack llamas on a dairy farm because the farmer passionately believes that long backpacking trips in the Sierras just aren't right without some pack llamas to carry the gear. Mountain transport is what they're for after all. So the llamas are great, fairly low maintenance, and the packs finally are to where they don't cause terrible chafing on the llamas or unexpectedly fall off. The llama guide school and expedition center are still kind of outside of budget though. Kind of a lot out of budget. Passion is a fairly strong driver, and barring disasters llama related happenings will occur when there's a chance. I know a thing or to about cool things that are slated for, "when we have a chance," and it's not at all uncommon for chances to take a year or two, or five, to arrive. In the meantime we get to stand around chewing the cud and spitting at passing llama haters.

Throw a PvE campaign in the list for that kickstarter. Epic story is what Bioware is good at, and epic story-driven free-flight Star Wars space combat? Probably two guys on this forum who wouldn't instabuy. The bonus of doing it with this game engine is you don't throw a joystick into the system requirements, which expands the market even more.

Advertise that in enough places, and a few million would probably be easy. Or, if enough of us got in the mood to make that happen and produce a working demo, well... it's a nice thought, but we couldn't call it Star Wars anything.

Add first-persion viewpoints to that list, too: I'd like to fly my ship from a cockpit instead of third person, because I like the illusion I'm actually sitting in a ship. As a bonus, make the cockpit a full 360-degree model for anyone with shiny expensive surround vision-type things.

Everspace kickstarter trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN7MugzDLrQ

I don't see any stationary sniper ships but the developers may actually be trying to keep customers instead of run them off.

Everspace kickstarter trailer:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN7MugzDLrQ

 

I don't see any stationary sniper ships but the developers may actually be trying to keep customers instead of run them off.

The controls and flight physics seem close to those of GSF. That's where the similarity ends in my eyes. I don't hear anything about PvP. I even searched the kickstarter site for the term "PvP" and found nothing. I see someone mining a rock. I see cloaked ships. Looks like pure PvE to me. I'll keep an eye on it because it really looks interesting and I hope it gets a PvP feature that's playable with keyboard and mouse.

However, there is a sentence I find worth mentioning: "... you only get better at this by gradually developing a greater understanding of the game world and the mechanics behind it."

That's also applicable to GSF. In fact, to become a good GSF pilot it is vital to gather experience in games and learn the underlying mechanics. Most complaints about GSF balance are issued by players who didn't play enough games or didn't make enough experiences to fully (or almost fully) understand GSF mechanics.