lol@muse

[Narayan]

Well welcome to the game. While I'm sure it's not difficult to find a game finding a balanced one has become a challenge. How do you find matches? Do you use matchmaker or the march list? One of the more recent changes has been to place the match list more prominently, however this had had some side effects that haven't really made long term players super happy.

The major issue with the easy match list is that when I click ready and start a game I have a plan based on the crew I'm starting with. If I have 2 ai then my ship is planned around that, I'll probably take a Goldie or double gat pyra. The same goes if I have a full crew, if I look at my full crew before the match starts I'm going to take into account player level and experience when I make a decision about who will be gunner or who will be main engineer. I will assign a loadout including the appropriate ammo to each person make sure my ship is properly equippped and so is my crew then click ready and start the match.


In the good old days when I had 2 ai on my crew the only way I would get a mid match join is if someone on my friends lists wanted to join, or someone had a friend in the lobby and wanted to join. That meant I was usually going to get a mid to high level player, who at the very least would join as an engineer with standard kit, and probably look at my guns and bring the right ammo type. At best they will send me a pm saying something to the effect of I'm going to join standard kit would you rather I bring buff?

So this causes problems for 2 reasons, first I've been getting a lot of 2nd gunners mid match, or I'll get low level engies joining with chem extinguisher and mallet or something crazy. The 2nd is I might have accepted playing against an opponent who is high level with the expectation of having ai who's abilities in familiar with and then mid match I get one or two low level players that if they joined before the match had stated would have made me re evaluate the ship I was taking at the very least or abandon the match or ask for a ship swap at the most. This has been a quite frustrating experience as of late.

I'm glad to hear you have received good training, however the reason most people are surprised when you do turn out to be competent is because ca training has been so poor as of late and you are and exception and not the rule.

How many inactive CAs do you have muse?

[Keyvias]

We have a bunch of inactive CAs. Mostly because we have CAs and Mods from 4 years ago.
The biggest problem we've found with CA's isn't that they don't want to help or that they don't want to teach. It's that it's not obvious they're there and some hop on just to play (these guys are players.)

When asked our CAs have been amazing helping with events, teaching new players during sales, and being there every time we call. For different timezones and when we're not setting up something ourselves, I completely agree a lot of CAs go back to playing and enjoying the game while still trying to be nice.

This is something we talked about just this week in the office (moderation being a hot topic.) Of way to improve CAs being active in teaching. Our first idea is having it post an automated message in global when they sign on like "Hey everyone, [name] here and happy to teach you about the game just message me"
or something to that effect. That way CAs are constantly pushed and known for being helpful rather than people that are able to circumnavigate our clunky help menu.

[Solidusbucket]

Stuff about automated messages

That's a good idea. You could also add some flavor for each CA. Like Manns would say "Hello, friendly CA here to help. Send me a PM or click my name and join crew!"

While someone like Sundstroms could say "Hey, I'm stacking with SkBo! Join our crew and bring terror to the skies! Solidus is drunk again "

[Narayan]

Oh my gosh "hey everyone CA just joined a lobby as pilot join his ship now to learn the game". Than you get like 3 lvl 2s on the ship.  No one would want ca then.

To change the subject. You see what I'm talking about with the late joins tho right it totally ruins your plan.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Oh my gosh "hey everyone CA just joined a lobby as pilot join his ship now to learn the game". Than you get like 3 lvl 2s on the ship.  No one would want ca then.

To change the subject. You see what I'm talking about with the late joins tho right it totally ruins your plan.

Theres a lot of people, myself included, who were interested in CA work until they saw how CAs get treated. Heck I know some former CAs who absolutely hated it just because no matter how nice they'd be or how hard they'd try to help new players, the new players would treat them like trash. It was literally like the new player would shove dog poo in the CA's mouth and then force them to eat it with a smile on their faces. CAs could do nothing against this treatment.

It's not worth all the money in the world to be treated like that and unable to do anything about it. CAs don't even get paid!

CAs should have had the power to impose a kick or a ban for people who behave like that. Because think about it, if they treat a CA with such disrespect, they are treating other players with worse.

The trouble is, only CA Mods can do that and with good reason. Their requirements are steeper than CAs. So you have responsible people handling that stuff. However, if a kick vote system was in place, the work load could be taken off the CA system. Maybe some CAs would actually enjoy teaching again.

[Red-Xiii]

You introduce a vote kick option it will be overused and abused.  Plain and simple.  If anyone knows of games that use it in the past they are associated with toxic communities.  All ya gotta do is get one salty person to initiate the vote and most people will follow like sheep and just kick when they dont even know why.  (left 4 dead 2)

Doesnt matter if you leave it to a captain to initiate.  That says that all captains in this game have a high moral standard to only kick true offenders when everyones definition of a troll is different. 

You initiate vote kick, you lose more players.  Then you're talking about a skeleton crew remaining of players.

On the subject of CA's i see a consistency of long time players with the CA tag just playing with other high level players, as well as other CA's consistently going and helping novice crews.    I think it's time to re-evaluate who is a CA now and fire and hire all over again.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

You introduce a vote kick option it will be overused and abused.  Plain and simple.  If anyone knows of games that use it in the past they are associated with toxic communities.  All ya gotta do is get one salty person to initiate the vote and most people will follow like sheep and just kick when they dont even know why.  (left 4 dead 2)

Doesnt matter if you leave it to a captain to initiate.  That says that all captains in this game have a high moral standard to only kick true offenders when everyones definition of a troll is different. 

You initiate vote kick, you lose more players.  Then you're talking about a skeleton crew remaining of players.

On the subject of CA's i see a consistency of long time players with the CA tag just playing with other high level players, as well as other CA's consistently going and helping novice crews.    I think it's time to re-evaluate who is a CA now and fire and hire all over again.

Yes you will, but you aren't seeing the cost of what keeping trolls around is doing.

The cost of a few people getting ticked about being kicked, doesn't compare to the number of people who just stop playing due to trolls.

Case in point, ARK Survival Evolved. There was a time when servers were maxed out all the time. This went on for months. Then the trolls and the cheats had their toll. 70+ person servers that would be overloaded during most of the day, would struggle to get past 20 during prime times. This isn't an isolated case. I've seen time and time again over the years where a game without proper community police controls, would implode due to the inhuman behaviors of these animals.

Sure you'll be pissy if you get vote kicked the moment you join a match but, sometimes those people have had a friend that DC'd. You know how many times I've had that happen and someone jumps into the slot that refuses to leave? Holy crap, you come to really appreciate the nice ones who understand. There's just too many that sit there or get violent about giving up a spot. Then others who don't play with their sound on.

Establish a kick vote with a reason why ability, it's been done before. It works. It is much easier to track down and punish people abusing a group kick vote than it is to have to police an entire community in it's current form.

[Narayan]

if muse is interested in my suggestions you should go check out my letter keyvas