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State of the Community
Lord Dick Tim:
(this post was originally made in the previous forums, with a few following posts by community members concering their thoughts on the presented issue.)
http://gunsoficarus.com/community/forumarchive/discussion/1213/state-of-the-community#Item_8
During the course of the previous day of testing and tinkering with the new game build a single thought, or phrase was brought up by a few players rather consistently. Generally there was a belief that GOI had developed a severe rift between "Awesome" players and well, everybody else.
Now, as is typical in any gaming community there is always the hardcore gamer and the casual, but rarely is it made so glaringly obvious which group a person belongs to in GOI, yet not in the typical way normally associated with many games.
Without perks, loot, extra bonuses or skills the elite players, which I really dislike using that word, are only distinguished by the crushing victories they have over other players.
Now this can't be attributed to only one person, as GOI takes a group of players on a ship, and a group of captains on a team working in concert with one another to be successful. Instead it's being attributed to a small upper class of players that regularly dominate casual or random crews without even being members of a clan or other social structure.
I'm talking mostly about us, the forum rats, the green names on friends lists that discuss strategies and dig through patch notes and debate tactics.
It's seems our debilitating advantage over most other players is communication. We talk, we are familiar with one another, we can adapt to each others tactics and strategies. We know who can shoot, who can fly, and who can keep a ship in the air with pixie dust and happy thoughts.
One instance during the day, a player was frustrated with repeated losses, crushing defeats and incapable crew mates and asked for some help from the lobby. I joined, a second later my ship is fully crewed with veteran players, all more then capable of outstanding performance. Instead of being happy for the help the player was further exasperated by what he saw as exactly why he had been loosing before, we had all automatically clumped together and true to form carried the match and slaughtered the opposition.
awkm:
You've brought up a good one. You've also presented the best solution:
Form teams with new players. Be accommodating and invite them to the forums.
It's only obvious in this game is because we have a very small community. The more players we have, the less common the upper tier players will be. You see the same kind of behavior in schools with the formation of social cliques. This is nothing new. It's just how hard you want to work at keeping those cliques closed from the outside. It's hard for us as developers to mix the player base up, we can't force you to play with people you don't want to. I mean, we're a team based game, you should be able to choose a very good team.
So really, what I'm saying is that the ball is in your court.
Perhaps you can split up your crew of 4 into 2 ships and take on new players in the open spots on your ships. This is something we want to promote as much as possible. The community is already pretty accommodating to people who come in.
And this isn't just to point fingers on you personally. Everyone can do their part to make this community as inclusive as possible. Hopefully this new forum format will help. Everyone's forum name is their in-game name. It provides a 3-tier communication platform (1st being in-game, 2nd being in Steam).
SeaMichelle:
I personally think that the biggest problem is the language barrier. Because most other games don't rely on communication very much, everybody has that chance to be successful. But with GoIO, having such a heavy emphasis on communication, it's difficult for the large chunk of the playerbase that speaks very little or no English. The reason so many of these newer players don't do as they're told isn't because they don't listen, it's because they don't understand what the heck they're being screamed at for. It's like traveling to a foreign country and being arrested, while not knowing what these angry-sounding cops are charging you with. And because GoIO is such a different game from most other games, what people should be doing isn't common knowledge for newer players because they're not used to the format. As a result, these foreign players are just trying to learn the ropes, while unknowingly lifting their crew off the ground with them.
(Sorry if off-topic, just trying to make a point..)
N-Sunderland:
--- Quote from: SeaWulfie on February 23, 2013, 10:59:23 am ---I personally think that the biggest problem is the language barrier.
--- End quote ---
I fully agree, especially with the recent mass of Russians arriving in the game. Hopefully the international boards on this forum will help these players get a better understanding of the game. At the very least we might be able to cut the yelling down a bit.
Pickle:
I'll copy across my replies from the original thread..
--
Good players tend to cluster around each other, and that's not just the technically good but the good to play with as well.
You play a game with X, you get on well, you look to join X when you see them playing, and you realise that X plays with Y and Z on a regular basis and they're pretty good too. So you add Y and Z to your friends list and you look to join them when you see them about. Soon there's an alphabet of players that get to know each other, and before you know it everyone else thinks it's a clique.
--
I think the twin topics of midgame joiners and quick match joiners have to be raised here. Established players cluster in part because they want to end the game with the same crew they started with - or if they lose a player they want a predictable AI replacament. Predictable in that they know the AI won't land them with a duplicate Pilot, or three Gunners, or three Buffing Engineers. They don't want to find themselves half way through the game and saddled with three crew members they didn't start with, they don't know, who refuse to communicate and only want to man a gun or run around polishing the brass.
Midgame joiners are a big problem at the moment, and I don't have a workable solution that doesn't introduce other problems by encouraging elitism.
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