we hear complaints day in and day out about stacked lobbies … nine times out of ten they don't log back into guns. (something we can and do look at)
I've purchased GoIO for about 10-15 people. Real friends and old Cohort members. Good people, all. The VAST majority (honestly, every person, now that I think about it), joined up with us, played for an evening or two, then never logged back in. They simply didn't like the game. At all. Slow, boring, shallow. I don't agree, but I can see where they're coming from. This just isn't a game that everyone is going to love. It’s just the subset “Wow this game sucks it isnt fair its stacked and sucks im quitting forever and theres no boarding” is more vocal than the “eh, cool game, but not for me. Peace out.” set.
Correlation does not imply causation. Perhaps your game isn't the wide-spread attention grabber you seem to think it is. It's a niche game. Bringing friends, Cohort members, and people from other games into GoIO is damn near impossible for a reason. The overwhelming majority of people who try this game are not willing to stick with it under any circumstances. I've only had luck recruiting for GoIO from GoIO; new players who have already played and enjoy the game, and have already decided to stick with it for whatever reason before I came in contact with them. Everyone else quits. Stacked matches have nothing to do with it.
That's the reason we want to make this a high priority because keeping organized groups happy is a prime goal,
How? If you are actually trying, you’re failing with me, ~90% of my group, and some other groups I've talked to. I can think of nothing that was added with the primary effect of benefiting established teams.
The proposed clan system was something I was happy about. When it came out, it was simply 4 bracketed characters. I was not happy. The proposed 'competitive scene' was something I was happy about. But, seriously, it's just a non-integrated non-interactive webpage. Almost all competition is still restricted to weekends between 1-5PM. There is still NO competitive scene at 10:00PM weekdays. This is why I play pub games. You give me no option. Finding other clans to fly against is, quite honestly, a major pain. See above about useless clan 'system'.
If organized teams are a priority, the issue shouldn't be "What can we do to force organized teams to not be organized?" but "What can we do to make sure organized teams will be able to find a good opponent?" Finding an answer to either would solve your pub stomping problem, but only the second is going to make me happy. You've chosen to focus on the first. This makes me very, very unhappy.
I've been waiting with baited breath for months for something to help organized groups, and I've seen nothing usable.
making sure newbies have a chance to taste that victory or play with the great players is also important to us so they'll stick around, join and create clans, and allow more to happen.
I'm all for helping new players learn, get better, and win. But if the newbies get to 'taste victory' exclusively because you're gimping organization and competition, how does that victory taste? If this game isn’t supposed to be team-oriented and competitive,
I’ve made a huge mistake, and should probably just shut up now, and move on to something else.
You can post "But it is team oriented!" all day, but with each update I'm starting to think this is geared to be a casual pick-up game only. Recent ship and weapon balance, and now scramble, strongly support my hypothesis. I'm not interested in this being a casual noncompetitive game.
Let's test organized teams being scrambled over and tell us how it feels playing with a new ship on your side ... having the option turn into a requirement or vice versa will cause more issues and uproar in game than in the dev app.
This requirement/option mentality is the main problem I have with your method of "balancing". You always seem to lean towards required. Guns balance, for example. You decided one setup is being used too often or efficiently, so rather than tweak things so there are more viable
options, you gimp the setup into the ground so people are
required to use a new setup. As it’s suggested, rather than give
options to find suitable competition, you’re
requiring us to play non-organized teams. This sucks.
Why do you even bother posting on the forums if the stance is "I can see the majority want it to be an option, but still lets try it our way! I got a really good feeling about our way!" I see the same call-for-response then dismissal in the gun balance threads. "Just try it our way! We got a good feeling about this!" I'm all for you developing the game the way you see fit, but please don't ask for our opinions if you don't actually want them. It just makes people upset. Obviously, myself included.
In short... I am capable of putting together an awesome team. The mechanics of the game and makeup of the playerbase do not allow me to find suitable competition 99% of the time. Where does the problem lie; In the awesome team, or the incapable game? Why are you just trying to break up the team rather than do
anything to actually fix the game?
Supporting the idea that organized play is the same as poor sportsmanship and somehow ruining the game is a terrible idea in my opinion. I’m incredibly surprised that this is now MUSE’s official stance. It will most likely end up being the death of this game for me. Organization and tough competition absolutely must be the ultimate goal, not prevented at all costs through game mechanics.
Tl;dr Not happy.
What's in a name? ...changing the name might at least foster a more neutral debate.
I'm entirely done being neutral. Breaking up teams is breaking up teams. It goes against everything that I have ever defended about the 'true nature' of this game. How does the saying go? If it walks like a duck...