How long will GoI last? What happend to May players?

[roder]

Actually a lot of ships will run 3-Engi, while ships with heavy guns will want at least one Gunner on them so there's that. Variety in ships comes with experience, less experienced pilots will mostly try piloting ships that are pretty straight forward, the Pyramidion being a great example, just point and shoot at the enemy, so that might be one of the problems, if you play a lot of DM do not expect to see many Squids as they are not realy fit for DMing other ships and while possible, maily achievable if the captain has a lot of exprience and is playing against lesser opponents.

its more of a "don't tell me, show me" sort of thing. If I'm experiencing something different, who are you tell me that its not real haha you can tell me that this game has a lot of community features and variety all you want, but that is your own experience. the idea that you have to invest into the community to get into the game, well thats the case for every game. dont get me wrong, i dont hate this game, i just played it for a week and it didnt pull me in. and im sure there are people that it did stay interesting. and im sure there are games you've played that you didnt stay with after a week or a few days. thats just how the cookie crumbles. but i do think its interesting enough that i check in every once in awhile to see if they added new guns, new ships and that clan feature - because like i said, the lack of variety is what made me stop playing. i also think that small chatbox is way too small, at least to be able to instill any feeling of community. many conversations get scrolled up for ppl LFG. i dont think relying on the forums is a good way to build a community, that is an out-of-game experience. but this is all IMO

[Echoez]

Sure I agree, forums only aren't the best way to build up a community, sure the chat box isn't as large as I hoped it would be, but then again, improvements will be made, a clan feature is in order already and there's a lot of time ahead of us to updates. If the game only hooked you for a week and then you left, then you probably wouldn't have stayed anyway, cause yes, you are right, I have played games for a week as well and then left, when that happens it's usually you not actually liking the game that much, not the lack of community interaction. I didn't even interact with the community for my first 2 weeks.

Variety in guns will come with more updates as well, if you can't wait, well then, I can't help you with that.

[Plasmarobo]

its more of a "don't tell me, show me" sort of thing. If I'm experiencing something different, who are you tell me that its not real haha you can tell me that this game has a lot of community features and variety all you want, but that is your own experience.

Fair point. But really, we're trying to tell you what worked for us too.
It's like advice, take it or leave it, but it's how we see it and it might be helpful. We're suggesting workarounds, cause that's usually how things are fixed until official fixes come out. Those take time. For me, I've never had a problem creating my own variety inside games! I don't really expect other people to fix their behavior or product for me, I find ways to work within 'the box', but I'll occasionally push on the sides.

The promise of updates is kind of frustrating, but that's just modern indie games for you. The update cycle is continuous because it can be.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Sounds like hes given up. When it gets to that point, there is nothing you can say to convince someone to come back. Let him go, he'll forever miss out on what we are talking about and we won't have to waste anymore time on this. I have friends who quit this 15hrs in and then went back to playing CoD nonstop. I don't even bother with them. Not going to let their short attention spans keep me tied up instead of flying.

Forums are great ways to build communities. Just getting people to use them is the problem. Which is moronic when you think about it. People can log in and sit on Facebook all day but aren't capable of doing the same thing on a forum. Which is literally the SAME THING!!! Facebook is just a simplistic and prettied up forum tied together with other people. Boggles the mind how people can be so lazy online. Dealt with it a lot in guild management in TOR and WoW before that. Finally got to the point we would not accept new recruits unless they demonstrated the ability to fill out an application on a website. We'd ask them,"did you visit the site? All the info and strategies are posted there." They'd say "There's a site?" Then it would take them about a week to 2 weeks just to get into it. A site which had info posted in information sections of the guild for all to see...major /facepalm

[Redorio diVario]

But, as I said, most people don't know about the forum. The community is not being advertised. How else do you want people to join it? They are not aware of the forum's content, purpose, they don't even know that their account has been created here when they registered. In-game forum is mentioned only once as a place to provide feedback and submit bugs, so that's what most people think of it.

I will risk saying that also the dark layout of this forum is quite depressing and not attractive. Makes it feel like a boring place... ^^'

[HamsterIV]

Guns of Icarus is a game where knowledge is power. That much was apparent on my first game session. Any one seeking knowledge these days turns to Google, and Google sends them here. Alternately some people just don't want to learn. There are plenty of other games out there which don't require as much knowledge.

[Shukketsushi]

But, as I said, most people don't know about the forum. The community is not being advertised. How else do you want people to join it? They are not aware of the forum's content, purpose, they don't even know that their account has been created here when they registered.

I always direct new players to the forum after I train them up a bit. I let them know that there are all kinds of wonderful things like informative guides, clan sign ups, and fan content.

[Charon]

New player has joined GoIO!
New player thinks Hwacha is AMAZING.
New player has had a bad match.
New player thinks Hwacha is OVERPOWERED.
New player quickjoins as anything but an engineer.
New player now thinks the community is bad =(.
New player has found the forums!
New player tells community what he thinks. =(.

New Player: YOU GUYS ARE SO MEAN AND THIS GAME IS GONNA FAIL W/O ME =(
The Community: Hey man! Don't worry, you haven't met all of us. We're pretty nice really =)
New Player: EVENT! CHOOSE YOUR PATH

EITHER

"Oh, awesome!" (Proceed to scream at your newbie crews from now on to go engineer because you don't need a damn gunner on a squid)

OR

"NO NOOOOO THE COMMUNITY IS BAD BECAUSE I SAID "

/Guns of Icarus Online natural progression of new players.

[Echoez]

Well, I feel lucky I joined the game with a full ship of friends despite them not realy playing anymore.

To humor myself according to the above post, I also thought the Hwacha was amazing at the start and well, it is an amazing weapon to shoot and it does some nasty things to enemy ships. Although we had a ship for ourselves, figured out that having at least 2 engineers is nessesary realy quickly and we just went with that from then on.

I'm still not sure why some of the newer players act like cavemen when told something, it's like the intelligence factor has dropped dramaticaly, I guess there are some realy stupid people out there, humanity never ceases to suprise me. Either that or people are realy bored to learn how to play a damn game.

[James T. Kirk]

Well, gamers today are used to either stupidly easy game mechanics (shoot that guy who isn't on your team. Sometimes there's a flag or bomb or something, but you can still win if you don't worry about it.) or a tutorial that holds your hand and tells you each and every thing about the game in 5 minutes or less.

GoI is neither of these, which is why I love it.
Having to ask others how to do pretty much everything strategy wise really adds to the social/teamwork part of the game.

[Serenum]

Is it just me or there has been an increase in active players lately?

[Andrej Peribosky]

I noticed an increase in players in the last two weeks, too

[N-Sunderland]

There have been sales and Steam Trading Cards, among other things.

[Calico Jack]

I started playing back in December '12, and around February one of the patches introduced a bug where the mouse input wasn't being read unless I played in windowed mode, so I waited for a bug fix and restarted playing once that came about. I'm also starting to run into players I saw around back at the start of the year coming back into the game again having taken a break from playing it.

As far as I'm concerned what I really like about this game, besides the gameplay itself, and what I think Muse has got 100% right, is the way the game encourages people to co-operate, rather than focusing on individual scores and beiing uber, even the most skillful players will lose unless they have both a working crew and a working team.

On top of that the long term player base is exceptional, I was in a match last night, tense, closely fought, despite vastly mixed player levels and length of in-game  time played. In the post-game lobby all the players remarked on how enjoyable the game had been, best summed up by one of the other captains when he said "That's Guns of Icarus".

Yes there are matches from hell too, but it is really something special when there is that spark and sixteen or twenty four individuals suddenly gel.

If I have a few have reservations, it's about clans, having been in a few clans in my time and also played games where it was impossible to play without being in a clan, where the in-game culture was run along the lines of prison gangs, join up or expect to be continually beaten up and/or have all your stuff taken, so I hope implementation will be handled as well as the individual experience side of the game. That said I'm not criticising people who wish to be in clans, nor the existence of clans themselves, but simply clans just aren't for me.

[roder]

Sounds like hes given up. When it gets to that point, there is nothing you can say to convince someone to come back. Let him go, he'll forever miss out on what we are talking about and we won't have to waste anymore time on this. I have friends who quit this 15hrs in and then went back to playing CoD nonstop. I don't even bother with them. Not going to let their short attention spans keep me tied up instead of flying

haha I specifically said in my quote I'm regularly checking back for updates. Why does everyone act butthurt when ppl don't like the game they're playing. They're always like "Ah, we didn't need them anyway", and they say that about every person leaving until you have like 20 ppl left saying that to each other. And they always try to discredit them by saying they play COD, like that is the universal go-to game to trash someone on web lol anyway it seems they came out with an update, so im here to try it out.