Info > Feedback and Suggestions
What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing
Adino:
Now, I might get a lot of rage, hate, or whatever from posting this, but it's the truth.
GoIO's population has been decreasing, if it hasn't steadied-off yet from decreasing.
I am one of those players who has been a part of that decreasing population. In light of the new patch, I'd say the content is headed in the rightish direction. With a small development team and a lot of work involved, this is to be expected.
However, there are some very vital components missing from GoIO.
GoIO is a team-based game. This is undeniable. Team-based gameplay puts players in an environment where their success revolves around the cooperation and competence of fellow teammates. With that in mind, there is no function indicating a team leader, aside from the loose Captain position, and there is no function indicating a leader's control over a team. As well, without proper communication, a team is bound to fail. There is no encouragement of communication, and chat uses a system unfamiliar to most players. To top it off, most ships are grossly under-manned, with only 4 players per team, and 2 players being stuck on repair duty, while 1 is stuck piloting. This issue is especially prevalent with the larger ships that are built to sustain up to 4 people firing weapons at a time, yet, viably, only 1 or 2 can. This wouldn't be a problem if one weapon were capable of working sufficiently alone, but that's not the case. You need an armor ripper and a hull crusher to effectively compete. Faced with these situations, the random teams that assemble are very unlikely to succeed. This leaves a lot of players feeling angry and at a loss to succeed.
To summarize:
Issues
Incompetent teammates
Lack of communication
Trolls on the team
Lack of leadership
Undermanned large ships
Angry/hopeless new players
Possible solutions:
Add ability for Captains to kick under-performing or misbehaving team members
Add a level requirement for Captains (i.e. before captaining a team, one must be level 3 on any given class)
Add an option for Captains to set requirements for joining their team (i.e. only accepting level 3+ Engineers and level 5+ gunners, only accepting active mic users, etc.)
Prioritize mic volume to make other team members quieter when the Captain is talking
Promote communication with banners, messages, or some other form of promotion
Chance chat to conform to the usual T and Y system that most any gamer will be accustomed to
Make team size scale with ship size (i.e. a squid/pyramidion/gold fish would have 3 team members, a junker/spire would have 4, a mobula/galleon would have 5) OR make weapons more independent
Limit number of possible pilots on a team to 1
I want to stress how much a kick function is needed. The primary reason I don't play anymore is because Captains have almost no control over who gets on their team. With the dwindling population and less-than-sufficient socializing opportunities, the game quickly becomes aggravating and, I'd even say, unplayable. It's not efficient to have to report someone to a GM every time they get a complete troll on their team who just sits in a gun and puts "lol" in chat throughout the whole round. We NEED to be able to kick people, otherwise a single player game would be less stressful.
Another thing I've noticed is that, not only are players inexperienced, it's very hard for them to learn much. There's not much feedback as to exactly what someone is doing. A combat log or combat chat would be useful, or even just floating damage numbers. Without some substantial indication as to what's really going on in combat, the game feels extremely trivial and will lack serious legitimacy when any experienced gamer plays it. The damage bars in weapon descriptions are a start, but we still don't know what they mean. We need more numbers.
GoIO could be great, but without systems that keep players interested and leaders satisfied, it will die before it has the chance.
Dev Bubbles:
Hi Adino,
Great feedback and suggestions. Firstly let me address a few things. One is that, as a whole, the game's population has been growing over time. Compared to the high of TGS videos spike days, yeah sure, there is a decline, but that sorta to be expected. With more improvements that we do, we'll hopefully do better and better at keeping players and getting more and more people to enjoy the game.
Secondly, a Kick feature we are deciding not to offer at the moment. We are thinking about moderated and custom matches, but for now, we are not implementing a kick system after careful consideration. We want to do more to encourage teamwork, and over the last 2-3 months, we have added commendations, party, crew formation, beginner matches, scripted tutorials, citizenship achievements, etc. to facilitate team play. In the coming updates, we'll be working on different ways to facilitate team play and communications in matches. Kick, in my humble opinion, does not facilitate team play, and can more likely lead to more trolling and encouragement of negative behavior in game. As a creator of a moderated match though, I do think that Kick is what makes more sense there, and for that we are designing and spec'ing.
Lastly, this is our 7th month of release, and so far we have been improving every step of the way. And we haven't died yet. Hopefully we can keep it going.
And please don't take my reply the wrong way. I absolutely appreciate your support Adino. It's an honor to have everyone playing the game. And while we have a different notion about Kick and about how to encourage team play (we opt for a more approach of encouragement rather than a a punitive one), I do fundamentally agree with you. Improving team play and new player experience is the most important thing for us. And we will do more.
Thanks a lot, Howard
Pickle:
--- Quote from: Adino on July 11, 2013, 01:56:48 pm ---I want to stress how much a kick function is needed. The primary reason I don't play anymore is because Captains have almost no control over who gets on their team.
--- End quote ---
I find swearing profusely usually gets the desired result. I start with polite requests to leave, and scale up until the air is blue.
The new Party system will help deal with trolls. It should now be easier to play out to the end of the game and then move the entire Lobby (minus troll/s) to a new game.
PS
Something Howard has been too polite to say. To save rehashing arguments, if you read back the forum a bit you'll find discussions about pretty much every point you raise. The observations regarding crew size and kick options are very old arguments, almost as old as the game. And most opinions are deeply entrenched.
Adino:
--- Quote from: Dev Bubbles on July 11, 2013, 02:26:51 pm ---Hi Adino,
Great feedback and suggestions. Firstly let me address a few things. One is that, as a whole, the game's population has been growing over time. Compared to the high of TGS videos spike days, yeah sure, there is a decline, but that sorta to be expected. With more improvements that we do, we'll hopefully do better and better at keeping players and getting more and more people to enjoy the game.
Secondly, a Kick feature we are deciding not to offer at the moment. We are thinking about moderated and custom matches, but for now, we are not implementing a kick system after careful consideration. We want to do more to encourage teamwork, and over the last 2-3 months, we have added commendations, party, crew formation, beginner matches, scripted tutorials, citizenship achievements, etc. to facilitate team play. In the coming updates, we'll be working on different ways to facilitate team play and communications in matches. Kick, in my humble opinion, does not facilitate team play, and can more likely lead to more trolling and encouragement of negative behavior in game. As a creator of a moderated match though, I do think that Kick is what makes more sense there, and for that we are designing and spec'ing.
Lastly, this is our 7th month of release, and so far we have been improving every step of the way. And we haven't died yet. Hopefully we can keep it going.
And please don't take my reply the wrong way. I absolutely appreciate your support Adino. It's an honor to have everyone playing the game. And while we have a different notion about Kick and about how to encourage team play (we opt for a more approach of encouragement rather than a a punitive one), I do fundamentally agree with you. Improving team play and new player experience is the most important thing for us. And we will do more.
Thanks a lot, Howard
--- End quote ---
That's an all-fine-and-good approach to take, given that everyone wants to work together or be constructive somehow. That's a severe generalization in the online world. The added features are nice, but when I read the words "party" and "crew", I synonymise those with "team" in my mind, and I have a hard time believing I'm the only one. There isn't really a clear explanation of these new systems given, and I, for one, am very uncertain as to their purpose. I have a hard time believing I'm the only one, again.
I've played a lot of games in my time, and one thing I notice is that fair and forgiving games seem to have a lower general satisfaction among the playerbase compared to games with harsh, unforgiving environments. For example, STO vs EVE. Aside from the players themselves being in an unwanted situation, I'd sure feel sorry for the developers that have put themselves in the position to be blamed for it. In games were players are free to kick, free to troll, free to _____ and face the consequences from other players, the players can only blame other players. In games where players are free to troll and the developers have said "we're not going to do anything about this because we want to encourage people to stop rather than punish them", the developers are in a very blamable position.
I don't want to sound threatening, I'm just pointing out what a bad picture it is altogether. By allowing these things to happen, you're actually encouraging their continuation and growth, rather than letting other players deal with these upstarts. Ordinarily, someone unfavorable would eventually be so unwanted that he'd never find a team to annoy anymore. That's not possible in GoIO because he can stay wherever he goes without any ramifications.
That being said, I probably won't be playing GoIO, aside from checking out new updates, until a kick function is implemented. I'm genuinely annoyed out of any and all motivation to continue playing, and I really can't blame the other players.
Captain Smollett:
Trolls are a problem in every game and when someone is dedicated to ruining everyone else's experience more than likely they will find a way to succeed whether there is a kick option or not.
But I honestly have seen very little trolling in this game and with over 800 hours of time into it I feel like I can speak from a vantage point of experience.
It seems that your greatest frustration derives not from trolls but from the need to rely on teammates and those teammates sometimes being "incompetent". And therefore you'd like to kick said teammates so you can supplement them with ones that help you win.
This is the main reason we don't have a kick system
Because you can't get rid of bad players you're left with two options. Lose.... or teach. The current mechanics actually encourage players to teach and help each other and encourage players to get better. This fosters a fantastic community and enhances the team play element.
In regards to some of the other points you made I disagree that there isn't incentive to communication. The overarching goal of every match is to win and 9 out of 10 times the winning team had the best communication. This in and of itself encourages communication. I like many new players also thought that large ships were undermanned but more experience will show you that 4 people is more than enough for all the ships in the game and is essential for the game balance.
I do actually like the idea of having to reach level 3 before you can pilot in non beginners match though and prioritizing the volume of the captains mic also seems very sound and reasonable.
As for damage log, there is a constant damage feed on the top left of the screen as well as tons of visible indicators of ship damage. Furthermore lots of valuable weapon and ship data can be taken directly from the website http://gunsoficarus.com/gameplay/weapons/ http://gunsoficarus.com/gameplay/ships-3/ though admittedly it's a bit difficult to access.
You are like everyone entitled to your opinion and seeing as the CEO of Muse read this even before I did, it's great that you've shared it as it will only help make this game even better than it is.
If you do give GOI another chance, I'd recommend you join one of the existing clans. Having a reliable group of people to play with will likely get rid of a lot of your main complaints with the game and give you a fresh perspective on the game in general.
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