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Was GOIO A Fluke?

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Shaytan:
My 2 cents on why I stopped playing.

Focused too much on changing game systems and less on game content.

Also I get matchmaking, you want to make it all nice and easy to use for console players. But it made enjoying the game a lot harder for me.

Also on stamina, I just don't get it. Sprinting as an engineer, why do I need to sprint on a teeny little ship, I'm not on a US Destroyer. Gunner kinda makes sense I suppose, reloading a gun way bigger than you faster. Pilot is the most absurd, it's like magic. Am I captain Harlock? And my ship is my dead friend's spirit and I can command it to just magically turn hard? (That would be cool.)

But yeah, that's my opinion. Game in it's self is still fun, the only aerial ship game out there.

Squidslinger Gilder:
I got it, the mode that would make Richard happy. Noobs would be empowered and vets would never play it ever.

Idea is as simple as hardcore mode in BF. So you have 5yr old soccer novice mode with self regenerating ships. Meaning no matter how bad the damage they take, the ships regenerate on their own. So noobs can do an absolute terrible job with everything but the game literally gives them free wins. This throws out teams, requirements of having a crew, and means that they can take horrid builds and sit there blasting away at each other for an hour before finally killing something. Then you'd have the normal mode where it is like the current game.

Sorry, just can never agree with coddling people. Games can be harder to learn but if you make them fun, people are willing to learn it.  Yes I'd like certain changes to be the standard instead of stamina, but this helps Muse see where the fun factor comes in better. At least for right now. If they want to change it in the future, great. I can already tell from the numbers on at the normal dead hours that the pop doubled. The Sun/Mon crunch is always the worst but before stamina I saw numbers getting down under 20 and it would stay consistently around that for hours. Last night during the normal crunch time we had 40 and the numbers increased as the time went. Granted this is early after a patch but it does show that people are taking to the new gameplay and enjoying it. If Stamina was purely hated and despised, wouldn't be seeing an increase.

nanoduckling:
Well that took a grumpy turn quickly. Let me echo the suggestion that folks calm down and maybe have some tea. My responses below.

Byron:
I value your opinion, I know it is shared by many vets. You and I have had a different experience, in part because I joined later. There are a few things we agree on though. First the heavy handed nerfs. I'd rather that changes to things like ships stats and ammo types be made slowly over many patches so we can get a feel for their impact. Maybe the pyra nerf or the heavy clip nerf or the flamer nerf are perfectly balanced as is and my perception is wrong, but I do know those changes have immediately produced qualitative changes in the feel of the game. Recent nerfs haven't slightly impacted meta strategies, they have crippled them to the extent that we have to completely relearn how to use them. Maybe after relearning them they are just as viable as other strategies, maybe they aren't, but we have to relearn them and it isn't subtle. This works great for folks like me because (outside of competitive where I've probably relied heavily on the blender) I'm pretty experimental, but I can see why it annoys people.

I'm not sure there is little testing, but I do think someone at Muse likes to be bold when it comes to changes. I'd like whoever that person is to be given a chill pill and reminded about the qualitative effects large changes have in non-linear systems. The dev app community seems pretty small to me so Muse seem to be doing what testing they can.

I'm not sure the design direction is random. It seems to me that the PvP game is being used as a testing ground for Adventure Mode. Muse have always been pretty open about the plan here from what I can tell. That means mechanics like stamina added to the PvP game. That said I agree that the style has been a bit inconsistent. The new UI is a prime example of that. My concerns are less with style there and more with seemingly foolhardy approach to established design principles like maximizing information density, correlating element size with importance, etc. I suspect someone with a background in design would take one look at the new UI and give their head a little shake.

As far as the quality of the game taking a nose dive, I don't believe in objective astetic values, so I don't think that statements about quality independent of values is especially meaningful. If I valued consistent art design I think I'd have a lower opinion of the game than I currently do. If I was a bit more selfish and wanted constant meta changes which benefit players like myself I'd probably be happier with the game. If I wanted a game where I could count on consistent game elements to explore in great depth I suspect I would have stopped playing the game a long time ago. It all comes down to what we want. Some of the recent changes I liked. Stamina added more depth to the game and gave me new things to play with. I can understand not everyone is going to like that though.

To answer the title of your post, no I don't think it was a fluke, but a conscious design choice to go after a specific niche, a heavily co-op focused game with a steampunkish (I have a hard time placing the GoI aesthetic because it seems to borrow from steampunk, dieselpunk fantasy and the spaghetti western, that might contribute to the artistic cognitive dissonance) style. Going extreme in terms of target audience was always going to generate a somewhat fanatical fan-base. This probably explains some of the more extreme responses we see when things are changed. GoI is really the only place we can go to get a game focused on these themes and this level of co-operation, so when something changes which moves it between different sub-niches folks get upset. I say sub-niches because GoI has moved between niches. Anyone who has read Gilder's posts know that in 1.1 things were more dynamic and pilots were better able to dynamically control engagements. More recent patches made the positional game vital (especially the era of the gat/mortar metamidion). Of course this means that it is impossible to satisfy everyone at once, and it is sad for me to see so many folks not having a good time in the game at the moment, even if others are thrilled with the recent changes.

David:
David consider what you are doing here. You are actively burning bridges that will be difficult to rebuild, many of them with people who I would hope you value outside of being GoI players. As I explain above I can understand how people get angry over changes in things they care about and cant find elsewhere. It is okay to be upset the game is moving in a direction you don't like, but universalizing your experience (assuming your experience is the same as everyone else's) and assigning motive to others without basis will lead you to false conclusions, and in the latter case can hurt people. I don't believe you actually want to do that. Even if you never return to GoI I think you want to leave a positive impact on other people, and the way you are expressing yourself here is not doing that. I say that as someone who is like you disappointed at times with the design choices that Muse have made which created problems for veteran players.

I'd point out that I think you are wrong about stamina benefiting exclusively new players. If that is what it was intended to do then it has been doing a spectacularly poor job of it in the games I've played in. Richard has explained to you how adding new elements to a game typically benefit those already experienced with it due to combinatorial effects, and I will just echo that here. A novice might be able to use stamina to compensate for bad gun arcs but that counts for diddly squat when mine are using it to get rapid successive hull breaks with a gatling due to enhanced reload, or landing multiple mercury shots on a target with a loch flak pointed at the enemy.

I'm not going to guess at your motivations or intentions (and I'd suggest others not do so either as I've never seen such speculation ending productively) when you say you are leaving. If you say this patch has upset you enough that you don't want to play any more then I've no desire to question that. But even if you hate the game now that does not have to translate into opprobrium directed at other people or even at the folks who make up Muse. In life people will make decisions we don't like, but I have generally found I get more of what I want by directing my frustration at those decisions rather than at the people making them.

Grey:
The effort to reduce lobby times is something I'm happy with. I'm not sure it is why GoI has a retention problem, but faster match starts aren't necessarily a bad thing. I think I'm one of the few more experienced players who appreciates the lobby timer. I've expressed elsewhere serious concerns about the model matchmaker uses to predict matches, those concerns have deepened now that it basically tells me match predictions through the underdog system. Something is very badly broken with the model you folks are using when it comes to experienced players. If my count is right since the patch matchmaker is 0 for 3 with me rating teams as underdogs. If the system was working correctly and we generously assume matchmaker was making marginal calls (close to the boundary) I'm in the unlucky ~2.5% here. I've also expressed in other threads that the matchmaker is pairing those best placed to teach new players with those least interested in learning.

I agree the nerfs needed to happen, I'm fine with things getting nerfed. Has to be done if a mono-cultural meta-game emerges. I think most folks understand that. I don't understand why they need to be so heavy handed. Take the heavy clip nerf. This change has some hard boundaries so we have a sense of scale, you cant make the effect on spread greater than 100%, nor does it make sense to make it less than 0%. Typically when folk talk about small changes what they mean is an order of magnitude less than the characteristic scale of the system. In this case that would be a 1-10% change. Instead the change was 30%. Now I don't care because I change my build every game anyway, so having to experiment with new things is no imposition on me. For others this change throws big chunks of their past experience out the window. Would say a 15% change this patch and a 15% change next patch have been hard to do? I know there are a bunch of other changes that would have to be scaled with this one (like the carro nerf), but from what I can tell the calculations for those scale mostly linearly, and where they don't the impact would be to leave things similar to how they were before.

Logic and Ceres:
I promise this discussion comes full circle with a practical suggestion as to how Muse might want to view feedback from tests. Ah the philosophy of Psychology. I'm pretty sure Logic's hard drive is free from the risk of an uninstall. Ceres your understanding of this discipline seems pretty deficient here, I have no idea why you are talking about classical conditioning which is completely irrelevant. Logic asked you to defend your case, but I'm not even sure it can be made coherent. However I will try to work out what the intent is behind your words and translate that into a defensible thesis.

Quality in video games is an aesthetic judgement, and science is a descriptive epistemology. Hence, if the statement:

"weeks of testing and working hard at something makes you gain a  [sic]bias opinion of it."

is normative (that is to say the bias refers to inducing a difference from established objective norms in regard to quality in video games) then you have set yourself an epistemic burden you have no hope of reaching. If you simply mean that experience of a thing positively (suitably operationalized) disposes folks towards a thing, then since the statement is universally quantified a single counter-example is sufficient. I'm pretty sure PTSD demonstrates the weakness of your thesis. If, as I suspect, your statement is meant to imply that experience of a thing changes ones perspective of it, well you might want to take off the captain obvious suit ;). Seriously though if anyone is going to know what you are talking about you are going to need to be way more specific, and maybe learn a bit of the technical language of the discipline you are using. There might be a related point here though.

Cognitive biases exist. I can think of several possible biases that might afflict testers. Testers for a video game could end up experiencing attentional bias (I'll cite[1] as an example for this because it deals with chronic pain and I want to subtly hint that I don't like the new UI) because they are likely individuals who think a lot about the co-operative element of game play due to selection bias. They could also suffer from framing bias[2], (if the dev app is updated with a message to testers reading 'enjoy' vs. 'happy bug hunting' for example), although I've no idea how that could be avoided here. They could also suffer from the IKEA effect[3] (which is an awesome name), which I suspect is vaguely related to what Ceres was originally talking about (I say related because the example he gave was of parents and children, and no researcher worth a damn would consider that a good example of this effect because of the genetic relationship between subject and stimulus). In this investment by someone in making something (say by building a piece of furniture or providing feedback to a game designer) causes people to value the thing higher regardless of if the final thing is of higher quality.

On a side note I suspect avoiding bias is why Muse don't tell testers what has changed in the dev app right away.

What does any of that mean here? Diddly because inferring other people opinions are bias is a foolhardy thing to do in a discussion, especially one about subjective values where there is no objective standard anyway so any notion of bias is essentially meaningless. This way lies endless accusations of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I do think Muse should keep in mind testers opinions might be more positive than the wider communities because of the aforementioned effects. Of course my recommendation is based on a reasonable understanding of the state of the art in cognitive research and not a pop-psychology analysis of others faculties.

[1] Schoth, D.E., & Liossi, C. (2010). Attentional bias towards pictorial representations of pain in individuals with chronic headache. The Clinical Journal of Pain. 26 (3): 244–250.
[2] Clark, D (2009). Framing effects exposed. Pearson Education.
[3] Norton, Michael I.; Mochon, Daniel; Ariely, Dan. "The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love". Journal of Consumer Psychology 22 (3): 453–460.

MagKel and Richard:
Yup.

Keyvias:
An approach you might want to consider when responding to feedback is making it clear how varied it can be. If we knew your inbox was clogged with clear, thought out emails detailing why change X was needed I thinks folks would understand why decisions were made. Reading the forum and talking to testers within our community it occasionally seems like a consensus has been reached which runs directly counter to some of the implemented changes.

Richard LeMoon:
Gilder, I am going to have to assume that is sarcasm. That 'mode' sounds horrid, and I am much more clever than that.

I keep saying Guns is more like chess than an FPS.

When teaching chess, you show the novice each piece, and tell them what it can do. Then you go into the details of how to capture an enemy piece. Then into strategy via short, followed by long game.

If Guns were chess, the teaching method is this (by pure mechanics):  Set up all the pieces. Place the novice against a grandmaster. Allow the novice to make a move. Slap their hand if it is the wrong move. Continue doing so until they learn the game or quit.

People will NOT play a game if it is fun if that is the method used for teaching because they never learn it is fun. For every player that bumps into a good teacher or just takes to the game naturally, there are 100 others that get slapped.

Building a good tutorial/learning curve is an art into itself. Some games are so masterful in doing so that you do not even realize it is teaching you the game. It is more like conditioning, and setting the tone of what to expect while introducing you to the tools or mechanics you need to overcome what comes next.


edit: @ nano - Just read through your entire text (even the psych bit) wondering what you would have to say about me. All I got is a 'Yup'. Not sure how that makes me feel.  :P

Hoja Lateralus:
Firstly, I want to thank all devs for posting here (since I know they don't really like/have time for it). That motivates us to do the ant-work in order to make the game better (by giving you the best feedback).

Now something completely different - wall of text!

Then... oh man, this thread has taken so many turns in so many directions that it's hard to even start. Maybe from the beginning - I joined around the end of 1.3.5 and for me GOIO is divided into pre-matchmaker era and matchmaker era. I remember that I started playing during summer holidays and fell in love in the game, I played for 6-10 hours daily. Then matchmaker came and ruined the game for me, to the point that I dropped the game for 2 months. When I came back I was no longer in love, more like friends with a lot of nostalgia of the past. The ones who read forum probably already know that I raised many complaints, but for me 1.4.1 was a huge step in good direction. I felt that the patch fixed/introduced features based on player feedback and it was actually first patch in a 'long' time that actually made my experience significantly better. I like this patch. And I choose to believe that we'll never take a step back.

I think one of the core problems of GOIO is two(and a half)-step problem:
1) One stupid player can easily ruin your experience
2) Vets can't play with vets, they have to play with medium or low skilled players*
2.5) There's no way of dealing with stupid players (once they're on your ship/team)
Giving you example, how things work in CS:GO
You suck -> You get better -> You play with people who are better -> Fun
In GOIO:
You suck -> You get better -> You play with randoms -> Sometimes really sucks
(well, being in a clan and having a lot of friends is crucial to having fun in goio and it can make those random encounters appear more rarely)
And it is partially because a large amount of people leave the game and I have an impression that GOIO population consists of 70% people below 500 matches and 30% people above 500 matches. It's worth taking a while to think why those people leave the game forever and in what circumstances. And I believe that although having many people bought the game is some kind of succes (because Muse can into moneys) 'but' having many people bought the game AND leave it shortly after (I think current playerbase is easily below 5% of all people who have ever bought the game) is something worth noticing and thinking through.

Again, CS:GO is an example that games CAN be harsh to new players and CAN be hard to learn and even harder to master, but when they offer something for your time. That's how games become popular, you go to your friend like "Listen, first 30-50 hours is going to suck, because you'll be learning shit, BUT THEN, OH BROTHER, YOU'RE GONNA HAVE FUN!". Perhaps GOIO's midgame and endgame aren't that rewarding. I am always repeating that good games defend themselves, and pre-matchmaker when I was in love with GOIO I bought game for my brother and actually brought him in and also encouraged one other guy to buy it, later he encouraged like 3-4 people to buy it, and so on....
(I just noticed that during writing this post Gilder wrote something similar, so I agree obviously)

*inb4 "But Dis, it's due to low population!" - devs have had 2 years to solve this problem

On the tutorial thing - Extra Credits recommended to make such an experiment: take a new player, sit him in front of computer and let him go through tutorial WITHOUT any advice from you. Then you can easily see where does he get lost and what mechanics need to be explained more thoroughly.

Personally on the feedback I have mixed feeling. Once on a Fireside I asked about new maps and was told that there won't be much more new stuff because devs are working on Co-Op. Then we got Minotaur and knew Stamina was in the DevApp...

@Jacob

--- Quote ---Some games are produced on massive budgets and are fated for success due to hype, marketing and a big brand-name; other games have to lead a harder life in order to gain notability.
--- End quote ---
I don't think that's always the case. I mean, I refuse to believe that consumers are stupid enough to buy the game just because it looks cool on commercials and everyone is talking about it. And even then - it will fail soon. Good example is waaaay overhyped Evolve
http://steamcharts.com/app/273350#All
In 3 months average population decreased by 7 times. Games have to be fun to be successful. And although it's surely easier to do with more budget and more marketing resources, that's not always the case, really. Also there is quite a lot of going on in indie scene also and good indie games gain recognition pretty quickly


Edit: About the variety of feedback - I think it's really helpful when devs put their reasons for particular change in patch notes (as they did now). It may lessen the outrage (at least the first wave) of the players.

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