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A cry for change

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Richard LeMoon:

--- Quote from: Shas'ui on January 16, 2017, 11:01:38 pm ---
Thus, when the proposed changes include altering the gun arcs, we can assume that not enough is known about the current function. As almost anyone who has flown on a spire knows, it's only attraction is the ability to have all three, or even four guns, one of them heavy, on target at once.

--- End quote ---

Well, sir, you are looking at the one that made all of the original stat change suggestions (not the botched ones that were put in), and I assure you that I am more than familiar with every build possible on the Spire, their uses, weaknesses, and even pioneered some of the current metas. I personally helped shape what the Spire is today through dedicated testing in devapp. You are welcome.

Now, you are under the impression that Tank Spire test was meant to adjust how it is currently used. That is wrong. It is meant to completely shatter the mold and remake it as originally intended and craft it into a heavy support ship WITHOUT all the forward facing firepower. The Spire as it is now, though fun, is a wrong turn that was taken the day it was released as a glass cannon with only two forward facing guns. Look at the description in the books. It is a heavy duty city defense platform, not a weak mobile artillery piece. Removing one gun and replacing it with an engine would have zero effect on that. The gun arcs should never have changed. The armor and hull should have been put where they belonged, making the Spire the heavyweight Queen of the skies it was meant to be.

I personally don't care what its current use is (which I know better than most players). This test was not about that. It was supposed to be a big "What if the Spire played to its actual original design instead of pretending to be made out of gray-painted balsa wood?" This is why people are upset. The stats that were put in kept it right square in the glass cannon class.

To go with your computer analogy, the change to the Spire is not to upgrade a PC. It is to tell your grandma to stop using it as a toaster.

Finally, I do think your understanding of ships may be skewed if you think the Galleon's speed is 'regrettable' on CK, since it is equal to a Pyramidian. Only Squid and Goldfish are faster. It is only regrettable if you don't have a good strategy. On CK, its balloon is much more of a weak point than its speed. I have seen all ships used very successfully by good pilots on CK, and have done so myself (with the exception of Squid).


--- Quote from: Solclaim on January 17, 2017, 12:04:06 am ---Do devs even look at these forums? You have not received a response. Sorry everyone but Games dead lol. Move on, go support devs that actually care about their game. Oh yeah games dead lol.

--- End quote ---

It is  US holiday right now. They are not in the offices.

Kestril:
Yeah. The frustration is we asked for tankspire and we got junkerspire (spunker). Just to be clear.  I don't think Shas'ui was arguing with you Richard, I just thing they wanted to point out that the arc changes reflected a misunderstanding about what makes the spire unique from other ships. I know you're looking to break the mold, but the way muse tiptoed into the changes does reflect some trepidation at best or some misunderstanding at worst.

But overlooking the arc changes, the changes made in the playtest pointed out that the devs had some misunderstandings about the spire's effectiveness at long range and about how engagements work in GOIO skirmish.  They increased armor and left the permahull still rather lacking. That, combined with the massive hitbox, made the spire still a glass cannon. In-game during the playtest they theorized that the armor would allow it to hold up better at long range, but they did not consider the easy-to-disable locations of the guns and the easy-to-hit vertical profile. These are deathknells to attacking at long range and such a change to armor would never be enough for the spire to participate in a long-range duel due to the emphasis on the disable weaponry at such range. Simply adding armor does not increase a ship's effectiveness at long range.

So Sash'ui has a point there, the devs misunderstood how the spire worked at long range. This is sort of the root of the frustration that I have (and maybe the community has). The lack of understanding between feedback and the devs. The devs can get really caught up in how ships *should* work, that it seems, to me at least, it's hard to demonstrate how they *actually* work with our feedback. (Until I picked metagally in the playtest and gave them an inspireing lesson:P)

Furthermore, it shows a misunderstanding about long-range engagements in GOIO. The long-range engagements are primarily disable-focused, to disable guns or balloon and allow an ally room to approach or to soften a ship up before moving in with the close-range killguns. The exception is the galleon, but even metagalleon doesn't give up disable capability as it sports a lumberjack.

Still, a heavy, forward-facing, quadfecta needs to stay on the (hopefully) incoming tankspire. Otherwise, as Shas'ui pointed out, it will not be a spire anymore, but a rather worse goldfish and it's niche will still be overlooked for the more manuverable counterpart. It's gotta keep the 2light+1heavy trifecta that no other ship offers at least. How it uses that trifecta will change drastically based on how tanky it becomes. Hopefully tanky enough to be a front-facing area denial ship or charger and not a glass cannon "ganker" that is, as you say Richard, contrary to its design.

Going something like ~950armor ~1400perma may seem powerful, but as shas'ui also pointed out, it's not all in the numbers. The spire is the easiest target ram and disable. The numbers may look high, sure, but it's profile and placement of easy-to-disable guns are it's most glaring weakness that cannot be represented on a spreadsheet. It's these weaknesses that make it resignated to a trolly ambush ship or a weak artillery platform since forever, really.

Still, all this feedback about "what a ship should be" and "what it's niche can be" is why we are here, and we wouldn't be going in circles as much if there was some clear direction and back-and-fourth between the devs and the community.

Admiral Obvious:
The devs have read and considered this thread, I messaged them myself. Due to the nature of the thread, they want to produce worthy response and to assess some inner workings

I for one do agree change needs to be made, and communication is very poor. However progress cannot possibly come as fast as we might like. MUSE is a small dev team and alliance has deadlines they need to meet to be able to produce the game. A lot of time, effort and money have gone into it and returns need to be made. While vets might like skirmish mode more, the general community and new players prefer the PVE mode over skirmish. It has already shown to be more popular as it is more fun and less competitive, and the devs obviously want to try to spread the game to more people. In addition development of the game takes time. Adding features, altering maps, implementing functions all take time to make and with a small dev team already tasked with making what is basically a brand new game, progress is slow.

What I think might help is this: an open to the public, and regularly updated list of "things to do" made by Muse that contains deadlines and regular progress updates. A simple trello page containing ideas they want to implement, or some calendar showing what they want to do in the future would be a big help to the community so we know what is going on and what to expect. It might help us feel like our feedback is being noticed and that we can expect change in the future. Change is needed, communication needs to be clearer, and players need to feel like their input is being heard.

Kestril:

--- Quote from: Admiral Obvious on January 17, 2017, 01:01:26 am ---
I for one do agree change needs to be made, and communication is very poor. However progress cannot possibly come as fast as we might like. MUSE is a small dev team and alliance has deadlines they need to meet to be able to produce the game. A lot of time, effort and money have gone into it and returns need to be made. While vets might like skirmish mode more, the general community and new players prefer the PVE mode over skirmish. It has already shown to be more popular as it is more fun and less competitive, and the devs obviously want to try to spread the game to more people. In addition development of the game takes time. Adding features, altering maps, implementing functions all take time to make and with a small dev team already tasked with making what is basically a brand new game, progress is slow.

--- End quote ---
I applaud their vision for alliance. It does have some genuinely fun moments, expecially against the boss ships and the defensive encounters. It is shaping up to be a good PvE experience that I think will differentiate it substantially from the competition and offer a nice game for players that love teamwork but are offput by PvP. It's a good idea and I want to see it implemented well. But making a good on Alliance isn't mutually exclusive with engaging and listening to feedback from the community. That's all.

I just want to reiterate that the I, at least, am not looking so much for Progress with a capital "P" (although that may help)  as much as a better back-and-fourth communication with the community. I feel like my feedback was ignored on the fireside chats when it came to feedback for retrive mode, and, I may as well be perfectly honest here as this thread seems to be the time and place for it: on a few occasions I felt like I was talked down to when offering feedback on retrieve mode. Upon offering up the feedback that retrieve seems to not be as clear and not as straightforward as other modes. I offered that the many moving parts in this mode could lead to decision paralysis and overwhelm players when played the first five-or-so times. I elaborated further when asked to clarify and then, puzzlingly, they replied in the stream and It felt like I was talked-down to when one of the devs talked about the optimal strategy for the mode and how to play it. Yeah, I got that, I speed-broke it with lysanya on the stormbreaker a while back. So, consequently, I sort of felt ignored, like they really didn't get the message, and it made me feel reluctant to give feedback in the future.   

That's just one example but I think it illustrates a part of the disconnect between the devs and the community. Another hash-tag for jedi: #ConnectTheCommunity.



--- Quote ---What I think might help is this: an open to the public, and regularly updated list of "things to do" made by Muse that contains deadlines and regular progress updates. A simple trello page containing ideas they want to implement, or some calendar showing what they want to do in the future would be a big help to the community so we know what is going on and what to expect. It might help us feel like our feedback is being noticed and that we can expect change in the future. Change is needed, communication needs to be clearer, and players need to feel like their input is being heard.

--- End quote ---

Yeah. You said it.

Anyways, apologies if my replies seem spammy. I'm trying to add to the conversation and provide some greater context so I hope muse can act on it. It is also not my intention to be mean or malicious or spiteful with this post.  I just want to see Guns of Icarus Online and its community stick around more, for a little while longer at least, and this feedback is the best way I can do it.  Anyways, I've said my peace and am going to retract periscopes and lurk around this thread for a bit.

o7

Shas'ui:
Richard Lemoon:

I would like to apologize for the overly harsh undertone of my earlier post; when written, I did not have the ability to fully investigate all aspects of the event in question, nor the ability to easily review as I was writing; most of my points could have been better phrased. (on phone at work).

My experience with the stat changes, proposed and in game were that of the botched, and they were, as has been noted elsewhere, "less then perfect", and I did not come across the context of attempting to match the lore. Given that, as well as a certain softness for the ship itself, and an amount of frustration at the similar changes to the mobula, I assumed, incorrectly, that the intent was to change the ship "because it's not being used enough in competitive". This assumption yields much smaller adjustments then those needed to match the spire's lore.

I attempted to address the idea of a large change, but instead became entangled in my explanation/analogy. Again, this was due to incorrect assumptions as to the reason behind the change.

Thank you for clarifying the situation in which these changes were proposed: in the case of trying to match the lore, you are correct in that significant changes are needed.

As for the galleon example, it is a case of perception rather then reality: while the galleon is indeed capable of keeping up, in the crazy king matches I have played, when a galleon appears, it is usually piloted by someone who brought rangefinder, spyglass, tar who sets off, alone, towards the enemy team, ignoring the capture points and any attempts at communication. Properly equipped and communicative galleon pilots would indeed be useful allies in crazy king, but the number I have flown with is quite low, and the victories with them are less memorable then the spectacular failures.

I would maintain that my point of the spire becoming a different ship remains, but given that the objective was to create a new ship via "completely shatter[ing] the mold and remaking it", it is not relevant to the current efforts. However, if you are successful in remaking the spire, I would be interested to see what, if anything, would fill the mold. So many loadouts, some of which I am told you pioneered (good for you!), rely on the current setup, and it would be a shame to see those go, as we saw with the mobula adjustment. On the other hand, we would have a new ship to work with, to experiment with, and that could easly offset the loss in terms of enjoyment.


To conclude, I am sorry that my post was so harsh; it was written under assumptions that you have proven false. I look forwards to what you come up with, and hope that you are not inconvenienced by botched/incorrect changes in future.

Wishing you clear skies and smooth sailing,
Shas'ui

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