My 25 hour experience with the game

[Ironony]

I never played the original Guns of Icarus but when I saw around launch time that Guns of Icarus: Online was going to come up, I got three other friends and we bought the 4-pack pre-order. We were pretty hyped about the game after that: we would talk about how we would become the scrappy and rag-tag airship crew that would take on the whole world to ensure our safety and survival in this new, steampunk world.

I played around maybe 20 hours of the game with my friends during the weeks of the beta and then we kind of stopped playing the game. We recently picked it off the shelf just a few weeks ago and played another 5 hour or so.

We haven't really interacted with the community outside of the game and this was pretty my account of my 25 hrs of playing.

"EXPLORE strange lands! CAPTURE valuable resources! TRAVEL the world and DEFEAT pirate scum!"

I was really disappointed to learn that Adventure Mode could potentially turn into a paid DLC. My friends were disappointed too and we became maybe a little angry and felt cheated. That was probably the most nagging issue, but I'll set that aside for another time.

Before I go any further, I want to say I absolutely love this game and I hope it blooms and blossoms in the future. I've never played anything quite like Guns of Icarus: Online and I don't regret the purchase.

Having said that here are some thoughts I've had

1. Lack of voice commands
When I think team-based combat, I immediately think Team Fortress 2 and how communication is very important. A mic is nice, but some people do not have access to them. Voice commands can be short and simple and can just be little text macros that you can bind and send to your crew or team.

Pressing Z can open a crew menu with "Repair guns!", "Repair balloon!", "Repair engines!" etc. or X can open a team menu with "I'm going in!", "Back me up!" or whatever message deemed vital in a team environment.

2. The hats
Not really a suggestion. I just had a flashback to all the TF2 hat jokes my friends and I made. Sorry, but it had to be done.

"Oh god. Guys I think they have the hat advantage"
"It's okay guys, our Engineer has a hat"
"Their pilot has a hat: let's just give up"

3. Achievements for progress
I'm not sure if I'm a big fan of this. Although purely cosmetic, that number beside your name is pretty important on gauging how experienced the player is. I remember thinking "Oh great, we're up against a lvl 7 pilot". I feel that the current achievement system kind of forces a play-style on a player temporarily for the sake of progressing.

Players should just be rewarded for doing what their class is supposed to do.

4. Kicking people off guns
Captains can kick people off the helm. I just think the gunner should be able to kick other guys off guns. Which makes sense, right?

5. Damage indicators
They can be pretty vague at times and I'll sometimes have no idea how much damage I'm doing. I can assume I'm doing a lot of damage if I see really big hit indicators, but sometimes it feels as if my crew has been pummeling a ship for so long it's a wonder they're still flying.

On option to turn on damage numbers and numerical health indicators on subsystems somewhere would be nice.

6. Ship customization
I know you guys are working on this (or at least so I've heard). Different engine types, hull types, etc. Decals maybe? Team colored flags with little emblems on them perhaps. A stylized bow or steering wheel, things that can be unlocked as rewards and promote playing the pilot class. Stuff like that.

Sometimes it can take a long time for a game to start because people are scared to play as the captain.

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I don't really want to dip into the optimization and connection stability part because half of that is probably problems on my hardware and how old it is but it would be nice. I know you guys are working hard on that.

Also, if you guys ever do release paints, my friends and I will only start making jokes about lime green and pink hats. Sorry in advance!

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My friends and I agree, we love this game. We pretty much make all of our other friends sick of us from egging them to buy the game or supporting the game.

Work hard, play hard, and do good!

[Squidslinger Gilder]

1. Get a mic and use voice in game. It is much faster doing this than any sort of command system could ever be.
2. Ummmm...nani?
3. Ummmm...you can gain achievements just by doing that. Then there are others which requires you to do specific tasks. All of which do help you gain experience. So I don't get what your problem is.
4. Again, refer to #1. If they don't get off then captain can tar his own ship and destroy the gun. Or just fly away and wait. If they don't and are just trolling then block and report them for abuse.
5. Think armor penetration not big booms. You likely were using a loadout with no armor penetration. You need a mix of armor pen and big booms to bring down ships.
6. Yeah this agreed and is in the works. I think we'll see it as it gets closer to adventure mode.

[Mkah Mvet]

1) voice commands - Personally, right now I'm on a really slow connection.  it's enough to play okay, but audio command shortcuts would also be appreciated here.  The less bandwidth used the better.

5) damage indicators - Not having numbers is a good thing.  It adds to the fog of war.  You can already tell damage to health and balloon by how crumpled they are.  And I think the guns/engines smoke pretty good when destroyed.  Some indicator for the armor would be nice (assuming there isn't one that I'm just not noticing), but I can't think of a way to do it that wouldn't just look weird considering how quickly armor can fluctuate.  Rust on the metal maybe?  (some advice to the OP, join some matches in spectator mode.  It's quite an education to see what's happening to each ship as it gets hit with different weapons, and theorycraft on what could have been done differently.)

6) customizations - not sure how I feel about that one...  I think goio already leans towards the complex side, and making it even more complex might be a turnoff for newer players.  Visual customizations, sure, that's a cool way to get some MT, especially if there is some player-made art assets involved.  (Along the lines of visuals, my own feedback, all the ships have too much red.  It can be hard to tell what team a ship is on, which did overly confuse me in some of my first battles.)

[Skrimskraw]

I agree on that the achievements shouldnt be the way to gain level.

however you can easily reach lvl 8 without hunting for achievements.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

That depends on the class. Up to level 6 it isn't terrible but beyond that you gotta work in a few that are very specific and past 8 you hit some real time consumers.

[Imagine]

I agree on that the achievements shouldnt be the way to gain level.

however you can easily reach lvl 8 without hunting for achievements.

I'd agree with that if levels actually meant something more than just getting more costumes.

[Skrimskraw]

I agree on that the achievements shouldnt be the way to gain level.

however you can easily reach lvl 8 without hunting for achievements.

I'd agree with that if levels actually meant something more than just getting more costumes.

I think achievements should unlock costumes and possibly titles.

level should be based on ingame experience, such as time played per class.

But a lot of other players disagree with this.

but tbh It doesnt matter in the end, usually everybody has a general Idea of who they think are good players. Its still small community.

[Charlemagne Montigue]

4. Kicking people off guns
Captains can kick people off the helm. I just think the gunner should be able to kick other guys off guns. Which makes sense, right?

I actually agree with this, I think this would help make the gunner class more desirable. Obviously the gunner would not be able to kick other gunners. Right now why not roll with 3 engineers they each get an ammo type, and they shoot just the same. Giving the gunner priority on the guns, not only makes sense, but will hopefully push people to be gunners if they want to gun rather than be engineers.

5. Damage indicators
They can be pretty vague at times and I'll sometimes have no idea how much damage I'm doing. I can assume I'm doing a lot of damage if I see really big hit indicators, but sometimes it feels as if my crew has been pummeling a ship for so long it's a wonder they're still flying.

On option to turn on damage numbers and numerical health indicators on subsystems somewhere would be nice.

As far as damage to a ship, when you start to really damage a ship, you can physically see the ship coming apart. Beams start to bend and buckle, the hull starts to look battered.  I think the damage indicators are fine as they are, they are just to help you know if you hit or not. Personally I would like the option to turn them off, I like to be able to see the components of the ship that I'm firing at.

[Hasu Kimchi]

1. Yeah pretty much true. Some voice commands would be pretty nice. After about 20 hours I can say I got a few games, where I couldnt use the ingame voice chat, because it was totaly broken ingame. So my teammates also could not use it, and then its like pretty bad.
Also a lot of people may not have a mic or headset or not using the ingame voice chat. If i play with friends we're using other voicechats like teamspeak or mumble and if we're only 3 it's confusing for the random, cuz he dont know what we are doing.

Well in real competitive play everyone will have a mic, but for random games voice commands could be pretty cool.

2. Well, there are hats.

3. I totally agree with this
Well I am not a big fan of achivements, but it's okay as far as you get only some cosmetic things. But IMO it shouldnt be mixed up with the "rank" and leveling stuff. Yeah sure, you can get a few achivements while playing like you always play. But levels and ranks, even if they are just numbers, have a huge impact on player behavior. And bound this on the achivements system isn't good in my mind.  Because the achivements are sometimes soooo accurate and so weired. For example repairing stuff as a pilot. So you end up with having a pilot in your team thats leaving his position to rebuild or repair some stuff to get the achivement and level up.

And I don't like that this achivements have to be in a specific order. Well some of them. Like rebuild 20 hulls on a goldfish, after that you may get rebuild 20 hulls on a pyramidion. But the 250 hull rebuilds you did on a pyrimidion, while the goldfish achivement was active doesn't count.

And this forcing some people to do their achivements no matter what. "Oh I have to rebuild 20 engines with the spanner", better let the enemy destroy them completly so I can rebuild them"...

[Echoez]

3. I totally agree with this
Well I am not a big fan of achivements, but it's okay as far as you get only some cosmetic things. But IMO it shouldnt be mixed up with the "rank" and leveling stuff. Yeah sure, you can get a few achivements while playing like you always play. But levels and ranks, even if they are just numbers, have a huge impact on player behavior. And bound this on the achivements system isn't good in my mind.  Because the achivements are sometimes soooo accurate and so weired. For example repairing stuff as a pilot. So you end up with having a pilot in your team thats leaving his position to rebuild or repair some stuff to get the achivement and level up.

And I don't like that this achivements have to be in a specific order. Well some of them. Like rebuild 20 hulls on a goldfish, after that you may get rebuild 20 hulls on a pyramidion. But the 250 hull rebuilds you did on a pyrimidion, while the goldfish achivement was active doesn't count.

And this forcing some people to do their achivements no matter what. "Oh I have to rebuild 20 engines with the spanner", better let the enemy destroy them completly so I can rebuild them"...

Agreed, though I believe the achievements are a good way of leveling up. They just need to be changed in a way that allows people to level up the way they want, or even, provide some guiding lines, like the Ships achievement category, which gives you some ships to play in a specific order, thought the order is not the best... (Squid as the second ship you gotta learn, realy? That should be one of the last ones along with the Spire.)

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Yeah Squid is too advanced a ship for noobs and really it should forever stay that way. High speed, low armor ships should have the highest hurdles for mastering but pay off the most when investing time into mastering. The Galleon would be in a similar boat but it is low speed, high armor and can be flanked easily by faster ships. Plus you have to learn the firing angles which is a big part of it. It would probably be a mid level ship to learn.

Spire is...I dunno. I think either way you'll find noobs trying to do CQC with it and getting creamed. It doesn't have a lot of flexibility like the squid.

You all also have to remember that some achievements are insane because it gives the people hunting them incentive to keep playing. If all of them were easy, some folks would be done with the game in no time.

[Ofiach]

Ok I can't really read the rest of the post after your statement that making adventure mode cost money is a bad thing. UMMMM we all like free stuff I get that but these guys need and deserve money for the work they do. Saying it's a bad thing that they are charging for Adventure mode completely boggles my mind.

They make a product you pay for it to use it. That's how it works. This game (I truly hope anyway) isn't going to turn into a micro transaction P2W shitshow. I really do not understand how you can say that MUSE doesn't deserve money for the work they're putting into adventure mode.

If I'm misunderstand that somehow please clarify.

[Plasmarobo]

Spire is...I dunno. I think either way you'll find noobs trying to do CQC with it and getting creamed. It doesn't have a lot of flexibility like the squid.

 trying to do CQC with it

CQC

CQC

But yeah, spires always get way too close to me.

[Captain Smollett]

I used to have an incredibly powerful CQC Spire that relied heavily on the Medium Carronade.

Basically a balloon lock with a gat mortar combo, it was nasty.

Shame the Carronade was nerfed, it wasn't exactly a tournament build but it was damn fun and could dominate.
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Also please don't let gunners kick people off of guns.  I can hardly think of any time when a gunner kicking someone off a gun would do anything but cause harm to your own ship and boy would it make trolling with the gunner class even easier than it already is.

[Echoez]

Spire is...I dunno. I think either way you'll find noobs trying to do CQC with it and getting creamed. It doesn't have a lot of flexibility like the squid.

The urges to play Pyramidion with full ramming build when I see a Manticore Spires are realy up there, even if I hate the ship itself.