Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: N-Sunderland on November 15, 2013, 02:22:55 pm
-
http://gunsoficarus.com/community/blog/november-at-muse/
I've got to say, a lot of these sound really, really exciting (player slot swap? Yes please!).
Based on what the post says about the ship-scrambling situation... I don't think it'll solve stacking. Here's what I expect to happen:
-Stacked team gets on win streak
-Stacked team is one win away from scrambling
-Stacked team surrenders the next match
Or, if they're doing it for bounty points or trying to get a long streak going:
-Stacked team gets on win streak
-Stacked team is one win away from scrambling
-Stacked team goes and makes another lobby
-
I am actually quite happy for this feature. Now if I loose enough games against crazy good pilots I will have a chance to fly on the same team as those crazy good pilots after the scramble. Most of us say match stacking is not malicious. This will give us a chance to prove it. Players will have to go out of their way to abuse the system and if they do, we will know them for the jerks they are.
-
I'm actually more interested in the Database optimization. Since that means it's easier to get content out and it ends up better on the player side too.
-
I'm actually more interested in the Database optimization. Since that means it's easier to get content out and it ends up better on the player side too.
That is +1. Any optimization is nice.
As for Swap. Yes, that's great.
As for Scramble, no, it's not going to "solve" a thing. (And if it's due to the bounty system, get rid of it. It's apparently just brought the worst out of people for, what I feel no gain.)
Any team, stacked or not, that bumps that limit, will simply make a new lobby after a quick crew formation.
we will know them for the jerks they are.
And this notion that me wishing to play with people I like/know somehow makes me a jerk is why it's just going to sour the community vs do anything positive. I don't like stacked games. I get no joy in it, and being on the receiving end sucks. That said, i know that 95% of the time when that scramble moves me, ill want to just make a new lobby.
-
So if we can enable or disable it for private, why not just give the lobby creator the same option for public?
This is all well and good and will appease the short time player who comes in, gets his ass whooped and then QQs to Muse about stacking, never to play the game again. But why should friends and allies be forced to swap with players that likely don't listen, don't want to listen, and will likely rage quit the first chance they get? I get why your doing it but I'd rather leave and find a new lobby than be paired with a bunch of kids running a joke build just because they just want to screw around. I've tried to talk to kids doing that in the past, they just tell you to piss off then shout over voice chat till you block them.
I've had more captains appreciate fellow captains that communicate than those who don't. Some who when they hear you actually employing a sense of tactics, don't want to leave your side. Scrambling won't solve the problem, they'll just make a new lobby and reset.
I'm not saying not do it, but I'm saying just make it optional all around. Or set it so that it only counts 5-0 or 7-0 wins. Course there is another issue. Often times teams do not stick around after a 5-0. So this makes it pointless.
-
If my understanding of scrambling is correct, is it that an entire team of four players gets swapped over to the other side once one stacked side gets on a win streak. I don't really know if Scrambling will help, as great as that sounds. From my experience, players will actually scramble themselves if they feel like they're pub stomping to give other teams a fighting chance if they're cool with the team. The community is generally cool and chill enough to do that on their own. If you want to implement an option to do that within the system, that's fantastic (I'm already stoked on the idea of Slot Swapping with people). I'm not entirely sure on the automatic aspect of it.
In general, even if I'm losing, I don't mind it as much if I actually LIKE THE ENEMY TEAM. They earned their wins and they're typically cool with me as long as they know I'm trying my best to trump them at their own game. That's the power the cooperative play aspect has had on the game. Most of us have come to some fluid understanding of each other through our cooperation with and against people. Does scrambling help? Maybe. Maybe not. Will it change how the players feel about going against a stacked team? Not entirely sure. It's entirely subjective to every person.
-
I'm not a fan. Anything that forces players to possibly not play with friends seems like a bad way to go, and I'm talking about full teams, not just individual ships.
I'm pretty sure most of us don't really like pubstomping, but I also feel like lately there's been perhaps too much response from Muse folks to supposed problems that are brought up on the forums once or twice.
-
I've asked this so many times, and I'll ask it again, because I really think it would help lessen the disparity often seen in some matches much more than any kind of scrambling system.
Why are the tutorials not mandatory?
-
We'll have to see how it goes. I honestly think that just leaving it at Slot Swapping would be enough since players could easily just jump ships when they think the other team needs assistance. If you consult your original ship first then swap, typically they should be okay with it. But swapping out entire ships on an automatic basis seems like a huge game changer and would change the dynamic between the teams.
I honestly feel like some kind of Mentoring system would have been better to implement first. It would have the more experienced people help out these more inexperienced players actively. Then you could try out the Scrambling if the Scrambling solution is needed. But it's Muse's call.
-
Why are the tutorials not mandatory?
Even though I'll wholeheartedly agree with this, I feel even with it, it's still not enough for the average player to use in a combat situation, sure it gives you a good framework from which to build off of with experience, but will they actually stick around long enough to gain that experience? Again that's another subject entirely, but on the case of team stacking however, I know a decent amount of players will say to relatively low leveled players that they are looking for a challenge, not a pubstomp, should they stay, they are either looking for a challenge or aren't listening in the first place. While I feel that the new system is interesting I think like others have said they might just relocate the team/friends and continue on, it might discourage it to a degree but it'll still happen in any case.
-
we will know them for the jerks they are.
And this notion that me wishing to play with people I like/know somehow makes me a jerk is why it's just going to sour the community vs do anything positive. I don't like stacked games. I get no joy in it, and being on the receiving end sucks. That said, i know that 95% of the time when that scramble moves me, ill want to just make a new lobby.
Not sharing the joy of flying with a well coordinated team with new players makes you a jerk. People are buying this game and leaving it because they don't get the chance to experience what it has to offer. If The experienced players stick to their friend's list and clan rosters, the casual player will not going to see high level play from any angle but the victim's.
Unless you have been at the cutting edge of the meta since beta someone had to coach you on what to bring and what weapons work well together. Someone had to show you how to divide up tasks on a ship to keep it at optimal performance. Someone had to shoot that blender fish off your balloon when you flew into a trap. Flying with your friends is fine but be that "someone" to a new player as well.
A game community can't survive off the hard core. We need the people who fly for 2 hours on the weekend to pad our ranks. Those people aren't going to stick with this game if all they experience is a constant string of losses from vets. Lets throw them a bone every once in a while and let them what winning feels like.
-
If you truly believe that is all we do vs having randoms on our boats from time to time, then you are a bit short sighted. You are also naive to think that all of those players are willing to accept our advice when we provide it. Less then half of them in my most recent experiences have the want to learn more, let alone communicate in any fashion whatsoever.
A great game community needs people who want to play the game for what it is, not say "ready up" every 10 seconds, leave matches when they die once, and ignore the help we try to give.
Scrambling the boats by force isn't going to solve anything, unless the number of lobbies waiting to play was too low.
-
If you truly believe that is all we do vs having randoms on our boats from time to time, then you are a bit short sighted. You are also naive to think that all of those players are willing to accept our advice when we provide it. Less then half of them in my most recent experiences have the want to learn more, let alone communicate in any fashion whatsoever.
A great game community needs people who want to play the game for what it is, not say "ready up" every 10 seconds, leave matches when they die once, and ignore the help we try to give.
Scrambling the boats by force isn't going to solve anything, unless the number of lobbies waiting to play was too low.
As much as it pains me there is too much truth in this post, so few new players are willing to be taught the game. Most look at the loadout system as if it were some sort of personalization for them to pick and choose and not as a piece of the ship's loadout to be put together by the captain. More often than not when I get randoms either they are insistent on bringing what they want and argue when requests are made otherwise, or simply loadout the way they want and sit silently ignoring any advice given.
That being said I am also against this scrambling idea, it just seems like an attempt to try something different while avoiding the idea of including a higher level of game lobbies, IE Beginner<Casual<Competitive lobbies. It's a neat idea, that I haven't personally seen done before, and you can tell Muse's heart is in the right place. But I think it will just lead to the "stacked" teams leaving for new lobbies instead though.
-
I would argue some more but I just flew three games with a whiny 14 year old who knew everything. Screw them all.
-
And this notion that me wishing to play with people I like/know somehow makes me a jerk is why it's just going to sour the community vs do anything positive. I don't like stacked games. I get no joy in it, and being on the receiving end sucks. That said, i know that 95% of the time when that scramble moves me, ill want to just make a new lobby.
Yep.
All this will do is unnecessarily kill active game lobbies.
-
That's pretty much all there is to say about it. Lobbies will be constantly dying from entire teams leaving, and that'll just amplify the already long wait times between matches. There's just so much more harm than good that can come from this system.
-
Scrambling the boats by force isn't going to solve anything, unless the number of lobbies waiting to play was too low.
When I play in the evenings (my time) there is usually only 1 or 2 games going. These matches during the off peak times aren't the ones that are stacked imo, and we are also catering for the brand new players in these matches as there aren't any novice matches on at this time. I think scrambling will be chaos for captains though - do the captains get scrambled with the rest of the crew?
I don't think we can really test how a standard pub match will react to this in the dev app so we will just have to wait and see. It would be good if Muse were able to feature switch this off if it wasn't getting a good reaction, or make scrambling an option for players when creating a match.
-
I think that players will just leave the match to make a new one. Good captains usually want to fly with other good captains.
-
Hi everyone, thanks for the feedback!
Ok, here are some questions for you guys:
1. If a well organized, or "stacked," team moves and create another lobby, would you consider that to be a form of match balance itself? Why or why not? And what do you guys think would be the result of a stacked team leaving a match to create or join another?
2. If we do create another type of match called "Competitive" in addition to Novice and regular, how should we definite the level criteria for entry or qualification into that match?
3. If we make Scramble an option for match creator, what type(s) of players do you think would create scrambled matches?
-
I'm going to answer the ones I have a decent grasp on.
3. In my opinion players who are running training sessions would find this a fairly nifty thing, for instance if one side of the training lobby is doing really well after x amount of matches things would be switched around and they might be able to lend some tips and tricks they've learned to others, of course they could just do so manually but that's not the point really.
2. I think players who have done 1 or more of the following:
- Played through all of the tutorials and gotten to at least 3 in at least 2 classes (there are only three after all)
- Have 100 (or something like that) matches under their belt.
- Gotten to 4 in at least 2 classes (Tutorial not required)
- Etc. Feel free to edit this list as necessary
-
It would be better to have more match types were players are segregated by skill level (matches played) but not restricted. That way new players could still learn a few things from the veterans but still have a place where they can play against people of the same skill level.
-
Hi everyone, thanks for the feedback!
Ok, here are some questions for you guys:
1. If a well organized, or "stacked," team moves and create another lobby, would you consider that to be a form of match balance itself? Why or why not? And what do you guys think would be the result of a stacked team leaving a match to create or join another?
2. If we do create another type of match called "Competitive" in addition to Novice and regular, how should we definite the level criteria for entry or qualification into that match?
3. If we make Scramble an option for match creator, what type(s) of players do you think would create scrambled matches?
2. If we do create another type of match called "Competitive" in addition to Novice and regular, how should we definite the level criteria for entry or qualification into that match?
I don't think it's really needed if you call it competitive, since some clans (AK for example) take in new blood and train them. So adding a level req for a competitive lobby would only be detrimental. A simple notifier that these lobbies are for organized teams, and that those coming in at random are likely to be rolled on repeatedly should suffice.
-
This idea is very cool and starts to address stacking issues, in my oppion there is a number of changes that can be made, a request balance option that unready all the teams and balances the lobby,
or how about making a lobby with a balanced option like stated so when you join you are locked into a ship on joining that is auto balanced,
Do not make it compulsive on every public game just a type of game or go one further and make a fully all random match,
just for fun mode, random ships and loadouts but with balanced teams ^^,
-
Hi everyone, thanks for the feedback!
Ok, here are some questions for you guys:
1. If a well organized, or "stacked," team moves and create another lobby, would you consider that to be a form of match balance itself? Why or why not? And what do you guys think would be the result of a stacked team leaving a match to create or join another?
2. If we do create another type of match called "Competitive" in addition to Novice and regular, how should we definite the level criteria for entry or qualification into that match?
3. If we make Scramble an option for match creator, what type(s) of players do you think would create scrambled matches?
1. I wouldn't, because in my last few sessions, the player count cant support that many lobbies. They will end up sitting in that lobby forever waiting (and possibly getting people who don't know better and then grind em), and either leave to play something else or join a lobby that can house them. The result will be lobby chains from win streak to another with a "stacked" team, and the lobby they leave will either fill up or die out and itll just be an ugly cycle.
2. I don't think the community needs a "competitive" match. Those are honestly in the form of private games already when we schedule scrims, or if we both have enough people, just make that lobby happen. The player base couldn't sustain the branches of lobbies in my opinion and you'd never see "competitive" matches outside tournaments.
3.Personally, it would depend on what I had at the moment. Let me explain. If I log in, and im alone or have a couple friends on, ill make a scramble lobby. Ill play, let the mechanics work themselves out, and maybe find a crew/team i like. I will then go make a non-scramble lobby to keep that team. People come and go a lot lately, so i might not ever make it to that non-scramble anyway.
Those with a team they like will make that non-scramble. "Stacked teams" will also do that. Perhaps color coding the different lobby's font (scramble/non-scramble) will let players see what they are entering.
Also, making it default to a scramble match (the options that is) will stop new players from just making a lobby and getting themselves killed. Then you force people to intentionally make that non-scramble.
Appreciate the questions Bubbles.
-
As a captain, if I end up being on a stacked team I suggest my crew and I switch over to keep the game entertaining, so naturally I welcome the swap feature with open arms.
With regards to the ship scrambling, and in addition to the above: I honestly don't care about playing with my buddies provided I have a reliable or receptive crew on my own ship (these can be randoms or friends/clanmates) and the game stays enjoyable for as many people as possible (by virtue that the winning teams are now scrambled to be with the losers). Stomping just leads to people getting angry and quitting and if there are fewer players there are fewer games. I personally think leaving a lobby and starting another just because you can't play with your friends on other ships, especially if you haven't got the numbers to make another full game, is damaging to the community as a whole because more people are left waiting around for longer to get into a match which in turn can lead to more people quitting. It's often painful enough waiting for lobbies full of experienced players to hit those Ready buttons, never mind waiting for a lobby to fill up in the first place.
Playing against friends (and taunting them in party chat) in a 'balanced' game is way more fun to me than absent-mindedly stomping the other team. Recently Valiant set up a lobby to play some practice pub games but the sheer number of clan tags in the lobby (around 12) put players off the moment they entered. We sat waiting for a fair while before I suggested we switch teams about to make the lobby more attractive and, sure enough, in no time we had a full lobby and a succession of fun games ensued. I think that's a much healthier way of doing things and the scramble feature looks set to try and promote that by doing it automatically after x amount of stomps. Anything but stomps can be great fun so trying to prevent them is a good step as far as I'm concerned.
Above all, players need to stick together and keep playing, and preferably in games rather than waiting in lobbies. I know it can be annoying playing with inexperienced or downright bad captains or crew but splicing them in with other better and more experienced crews is going to bring out the best in the more receptive players and cultivate growth rather than snuffing out any enthusiasm they had because the stompers wanted to stay together. Wanting to stay with the good teams all the time to the detriment of other players' experience just seems like terrible sportsmanship to me.
I don't see how the result of implementing this feature can be anything but a net gain though:
With ship scramble feature:
Ships get scrambled, winners are coupled with losers, nobody leaves to start another lobby = more balanced games ensue (technically)
Ships get scrambled, winners are coupled with losers, former winners get mardy and start another lobby = everyone waits longer to start a match
Before ships get scrambled, winners opt to swap with other ships voluntarily = more balanced games ensue (technically)
Without scramble feature:
Ships don't get scrambled, winners opt to swap with other players voluntarily = more balanced games ensue (technically)
Ships don't get scrambled, winners keep winning, losers get angry and quit or leave match to find a more balanced game = everyone waits longer to start a match
My only reservation would be the scumbags who'd surrender or intentionally lose to avoid the scramble, but who would do that? And would that behaviour be reportable? I rarely see trolls so this seems like a very remote possibility to me. The chance of former stompers leaving en masse seems more plausible but still undignified and every bit as damaging as the act of sustained stomping.
-
You misinterpret what we mean when we say we wish to stick with a good team. If I get into a lobby by myself, have a random crew and random ally captain who listens and is generally inviting, then that to me is a good team. Good team does not = Scrimmage team (aka all friends/clan buddies).
Then on the other side, you have one decent boat, but then one that has the unresponsive captain with two gunners, and even the captain would be a gunner. His boat is all harpoons. Normally those ships dissolve pretty fast because they cant figure out why they lose all the time, despite our advice to remedy it. Then the forced swap happens. The two decent guys team up, and im left with a mix bag. You aren't balancing anything. You just trade from a team that can potentially win to a team that is pretty much dead when the game starts. This is why people will leave 95% of the time to make a new lobby. We aren't actively giving the finger to the community we have for so long tried to foster since beta.
-
Hi everyone, thanks for the feedback!
Ok, here are some questions for you guys:
1. If a well organized, or "stacked," team moves and create another lobby, would you consider that to be a form of match balance itself? Why or why not? And what do you guys think would be the result of a stacked team leaving a match to create or join another?
2. If we do create another type of match called "Competitive" in addition to Novice and regular, how should we definite the level criteria for entry or qualification into that match?
3. If we make Scramble an option for match creator, what type(s) of players do you think would create scrambled matches?
1. If an actual team (read: organized) is forced to leave their lobby every 5 games due to a game 'mechanic' it's not balanced. Its punishing the team that wants to play together. I don't see how this could be beneficial at all. New lobby, same team. How is this better than when an unorganized team filters out of a 'stacked' lobby now? Just more waiting for the actual team.
2. No level restriction on "competitive" lobbies. "Competitive" lobbies should have Scramble disabled. And make it PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that it' a competitive game. And non-default. That's all. The 'stacking' teams will handle the rest.
3. Casual players who are still learning the game, or don't just give half a crap about teamwork or actually learning will create scrambled matches. Let them play together.
Now, I'm going break the usual brown-nosing streak that goes along with every time a dev posts. If you're easily flustered, I recommend you stop reading now.
I am really starting to question the direction MUSE is taking the development of this game. Not content with constantly and drastically changing the weapons and tools in the name of 'balance', they have now decided to attempt 'balancing' the actual composure of teams. MUSE needs to decide what type of product they intend to produce, and then make THAT game.
Trying to please every single user who makes a post was probably awesome a year ago, when the community was only 100s of players, and all on the same basic level of experience. If this game is going to continue to grow, this practice will go from being exceedingly difficult to actually detrimental to the development of the game. Stop worrying about CONSTANT balance fixes. If their game is good, we'll play it. If it isn't, MUSE/GoIO doesn't deserve our time.
'Balancing' every single aspect the game for the sake of saying "Look its ALL balanced!" and catering to people who refuse to tolerate a learning curve makes no sense to me. If someone wants this game to absolutely hold their hand, and make every single match a 100% statistically 'balanced' and 'even', what is the point? Why are we playing? Why not create a virtual 16 player coin-flip simulator with steampunk hats?
Learning curves come with a benefit and pay off. This games learning curve isn't tough, but rather just unconventional. It requires you to form teams/clans. How many pub groups are there in tournament play? None. Hell, its usually directly stated in the rules. Establish a team, enter the team into the tournament. This is because in order to reach the potential of any ship, you NEED an organized team.
I am bewildered as to why consensus has seemingly been reached that organized teams need to be 'dealt with'. To me, this is saying 'Play this game, and get good - but not too good - or else!' or is evidence that the clan aspect of game play is being completely overlooked by MUSE as an actual asset of game play. It is an asset. It's the only reason I play this game anymore.
Don't get me wrong; Helping new players is wonderful! Give them tutorials, give them novice matches, give them CAs, mentors, training days, user-guides, youtube video tips, etc. Hell yes. Once an individual has utilized all these things, the only thing that stands between them and victory is their team mates and opponents.
But why don't we give them an easy and intuitive way to JOIN a group? Instead, it seems everyone (apparently MUSE very much included) are rallying against people who have taken the time and effort (and it takes LOTS) to form very effective groups in the absence of such a system. If EVERYONE had a group/team/clan, wouldn't the issue of 'stacked' go out the window? Wouldn't that make the people who are on these 'stacked' teams happy as well, as they get to face better competition? Why is this not an option? Help new players, help established teams, help the community, no one gets 'punished'. Well, except the people who flat refuse to play as a team rather than an individual, but I don't think we should encourage that mind-frame of play anyway.
If I'm completely in the wrong about balance-obsession and it truly is the only way for this game to progress, I've noticed something that should take 100% of our attention. Through extensive data analysis and spectating, I've found irrefutable empirical evidence that crew load outs aren't even remotely balanced. 99% of ships have at least one engineer with a Mallet/Spanner combo. It's clearly OP. A ship with a Mallet/Spanner engineer is able to repair their parts much too quickly. It's not fun for new players. This lack of balance is clearly breaking the game.
-
I hope you realize that ranting like that won't do much besides solidify their positions, and understandably ignore your post despite the feedback trickled in there that can help them figure out the best course of action.
For all intents and purposes, lets keep this thread civil please. That's directed at all posters.
-
Has censorship seriously reached the level where I can't say that I disagree with MUSE without getting a 'be civil' warning from a mod? There was no profanity, 'trolling' or harassment in my post. It was not ranting, out of line, or off topic. Nothing to warrant even a casual warning.
This "moderate/lock/delete if you disagree" mentality is very bad for the community in my opinion. :) Censorship is always bad.
-
Know that I am totally incapable of moderating this thread as I am an active poster in it with my own opinions. I'm posting my opinion, and not with mod mentality.
You can pm me if you have an issue with that. I'd rather not derail this thread as I'm sure you can agree it's rather important.
-
If scramble makes it through it should be a "vote to scramble" option.
-
Hi everyone, keep the thoughts coming!
It's good to hear arguments on either side. One thing that I'm also thinking about is that, if a match is scrambled based on the current ruleset that we're proposing, would the match become less fun? Or would the reorganization of team composition still be fun while giving teams the ability to meet and play with new people? I guess it might be circumstance dependent, but interesting to me to think about. But if you guys have more thoughts on why or why not, that would be great for me to know. But the ideas and suggestions so far are great. And I think it'll be interesting for us to see how this tests in Dev App, for better or worse. We can see how people play with it, and if and what changes we need to make.
@Dragonmere, no worries! Let me try to touch on some of the points you made, and you can see what I say is reasonable or not. About balance, while there isn't a state of perfection that we can ever get to, tinkering and refining balance in the game is something that we think we should continually look at, so that not only do we address obvious imbalances to the game, adjust for various things in the ripples of new items or mechanics being introduced, it's also a way to keep the gameplay fresher, so that people don't stay stagnant or entrenched with some way(s) of playing the game.
With helping new players learn the game, and thereby reducing the barrier to entry and helping retention, this is something I think we should be continually examining and improving. The idea is not to cater to those who don't want to learn, the idea is to cater to people who would want to learn, who otherwise would enjoy the game, but do not have the media or vehicle to do so. I think the work we did with tutorial, manual, practice, and even novice matches speak to that. Like you said, the game is different, and introducing tools for players to get acclimated to the game is really part of providing better service. With these tools, we have been trying to be careful to design them to avoid major immersion breakage or too much hand-holding. If we feel like we have room to improve, we'll try to improve.
If I'm to guess at the reasoning behind your arguments, it may be that, with something like scramble, it is done at the expense of veteran/clan/"stacked" teams in favor of new players to the point of punishing the "stacked" teams. This is just a guess on my part, so take it with a grain of salt. With the spirit of something like scramble, it's more of trying to find a balance, and a way for people to mingle, and for people to hopefully have more fun and not less. The idea is more about that people on either side of a match don't necessarily find it fun when it becomes too imbalanced or one-sided. And that, with crew consistency, switching up sides by ships (which is a far less intrusive way than the type of crew scramble that a lot of other games implement) can offer something different and fresh in a match.
Overall, the idea for us is to examine how to make the game more fun in general, and to build upon an assumption that a drastically imbalanced match is not fun not just for the losing side, but for the winning side as well. As we implement and test the feature, we will of course be studying how people use it, and it's effectiveness, and if there are adjustments we think needed to be made, we'll definitely not hesitate to make them.
With better integration of competitive scene, events, and clans into the game, this is something that a lot of people have been requesting actually. We started with the site, which is a pretty nice step up from zero. But we're looking at how best to bring all that into the game as well. It does take some time to design it though, so it won't happen right this minute.
Hope this makes some sense, but regardless, keep the feedback coming!
Thanks everyone! Howard
-
We actually thought through the logic and logistics of where best and how best to implement scramble, and ended up preferring scramble at match creation over voting for a few different reasons. One, because of the good number of ways players can join the match, a voting system is more convoluted and logistically awkward. Also, if any animosity exists in a heavily imbalance situation, voting could reinforce the tension and not diffuse it. It's also harder to set the expectation clearly. With scramble, we want to help players set that expectation that scramble would occur as early as possible. Hope this makes sense!
Thanks, Howard
-
You are introducing systems to deter organized teams, rather than to promote them. This is against what I believed was the nature of the game. Organized teams, not just individual ships, should be the goal. Rather, it appears to me that MUSE is treating it as a situation that needs to be resolved. I do not agree with this at all.
I want the challenge of this game to come from the enemy team's skill, not any imposed limitations. It seems like most of the changes I have witnessed are geared more towards making it difficult for higher level more organized players. A better response, in my opinion, would be to make it easier for new players to reach a higher organizational level. It seemed like you were working towards that with the clan system, crew formation, and party system. However, in their current state, most of those features are nearly useless or totally ignoreable. I wish those systems could be further developed and integrated, rather than this new trend of catering the game to less organized play.
-
I have to agree with a few of Dragonmeres points here.
Bubbles you ask if the system implemented as it is would make it less fun? Yes, pure and simple yes. IF I am playing with my team, I will make the choice to balance out the teams if I want another challenge. However if I am looking to practice with my co-captain (which you CAN NOT do in private lobbies without a LOT of players) I do not want to be creating a new lobby ever 5 games.
You say "and for people to hopefully have more fun, not less". You implement this system and I know a LOT of people that will be having less fun (myself included) due to the frustration of the scramble system.
As to Dragonmeres point about this game being about 2 ships instead of 1. I agree 100%, all Muse run tournament, and the vast majority of community run events are all 2 ship teams fighting each other. You do not play as 1 ship, and you CAN NOT play in those tournaments and expect to do well if you have no practice time your co-captain and their crew. While Dragonmere may have seemed at tad aggressive in his posts I believe he is correct when he says you are punishing organised play.
I further agree that you seem to have changed direction really. You were working on and discussing all these brilliant clan and party mechanics, most of which are fairly basic or not implemented yet despite a lot of requests and discussion. Instead you have now spent time on a mechanic that (IMO) is detrimental to the game and to organised play. From promoting to condemning it is a knee-jerk reaction based on the vocal majority of the forum user base, which is not necessarily indicative of the communities opinion as a whole.
Additionally I can forsee a further issue from more a game code/server side. IF you force this system onto organised teams (and it will be forcing I'm sorry, textbook definition, I do not want to swap, you are making me) they will leave and form new lobbies. This will result in even more half filled, never starting, lobbies that spam all chat with 'Join this lobbie for cake'. This COULD (not 100% sure) create more pressure on the servers, cause lag etc etc to the detriment EVERYONES experience if it does.
As a quick sidetone making it a option for private lobbies does not fix this issue as "You can hand out your password" as you suggested on the Fireside. You allready have 20 other lobbies spamming to 'jon ths gme'.
What bothers me is that the solution to this is So Damn Simple. Just make it an option at lobby creation for all games. We don't need competitive lobbies any segregation of lobbies even if there are no restrictions on joining, will be detrimental. Just give the lobby creator the option. I know a lot of the experienced captains will do this from time to time and ALL the new players will. Hell, make it the default option and we have to swap to 'Stacked' mode or something, that way all the new blood will make the Scrambled lobbies by default.
Howard, as per our little skype convo a few minutes ago. I see 2 distinct mentalities when playing this game. Playing for fun and Playing to Practice. Now the two or not necessarily mutually exclusive HOWEVER if I am playing to practice it is with my co-captain by my side. Even when pub stomping I will get more out of flying with Sasqautch then I will with an all harpoon junker. You need to practice so much more than just shot timing and rebuild routes on ships. Co-ordination, communication, timing, approaches. If I want to train I do not want to be scrambled, If I DID (and I can see that happening to strengthen MY personal crew) I would start a scrambled lobby or join another.
Just my opinion on the matter. You want to test this? test it as near to every who has posted on this topic has suggested, as a lobby option.
cheers,
Qwerty
-
@dragonmere, actually, since you brought up better integration clan, party, and crew form, what do you have in mind? Any suggestions?
If the forum format is too scattered, you can email me as well if you want. Thanks!
-
@qwerty, our direction haven't changed actually. I have to look at the game holistically, while we implement features that improve team play, which we have been doing, we do also work on reducing learning curve and increasing retention, and this is something we've been working on since day one. Also, by the way, the server issue that you pointed out isn't really an issue. Thanks!
-
Long posts have been written on this so I will be brief.
This will just create more unfilled lobbies, it is hard enough to fill a lobby.
With the proposed voluntary swap mechanic being added, that may in of itself reduce "stacking"
Please don't do this and thank you for reading our posts.
-
I personally like the idea of scrambled matches but as a game type, like have lobbies called scambled lobbies so its clear that its a scrambled game and other people either looking for one or not can tell. As long as its not forced in every lobby I'd be ok with this and would even join a scrambled game once it a while.
With the whole issue of balancing which is going on I actually believe that its almost impossible to fully balance a game, regardless of whether or not you "nerf" this gun because people think its "OP" or "nerf" this ship because people think its overused players will just more onto something else. All these "balances", "fixes" or whatever you want to call it are doing is changing what people are using at the time and regardless of what's changed the more competitive teams are more than likely going to use the best ships with the best builds which other non-competitive players/"pug" players will see competitive players using/"stomping" with them and think "that looks good, I'll use that myself" which people will then start to complain about because everyone is doing it, things will get "nerfed" and the whole process will start all over again and again until the game has been "nerfed" so much that you don't even have a game anymore.
I'll end my voice opinion here before I go on for to long but this is what I think, feel free to either think about and/or comment on it. I'd love to hear whether people disagree or agree with me.
-
why are we not just creating aranking system that uses a number of different statistics (games played W/L KDR etc.) to help us creat "higher" ranked matches and "lower" ranked matches that help prevent imbalance in the first place? that way if you keep losing to someone of relative equal rank you know that you are doing something wrong not that they are "just better than me".
-
In all honesty, I don't think I'll mind the Scrambled Matches. I'm thinking that it won't be very helpful in 2v2 because in that scenario, you are guaranteed to swap ships regardless of which one gets moved to what side. There's no random aspect behind it. You know it will happen and everyone will become upset and unhappy about it if you know swapping will turn out badly for both sides. Part of the fun of scrambling the teams is not knowing who's getting shifted where and how you're going to shift your strategy to compensate. This aspect of scrambling is completely lost in 2v2 and it doesn't enhance or better the gameplay in that gamemode.
In a 3v3 match or a 4v4, swapping ONE ship from the opposing team becomes more meaningful but also doesn't become entirely detrimental. You will have two ships that will possibly cooperate and coordinate along with the chance to forge a new friendship with your "new" teammates. The teams though still have at least one ship they'll cooperate with if they like each other even when it's scrambled. The spontaneous and random aspect of scrambling is retained. You don't know what ship you're getting from the lot but you won't hate the situation automatically if you're being a good sport about it.
Though, this certainly is best case scenario, I'll admit. I actually think it's worth a shot in 3v3 and 4v4 to see how people deal with it but not so much in 2v2. Unlike in 3v3 or 4v4, 2v2 matches aren't as difficult to fill in and you can forego scrambling in them just to keep a room-type that won't scramble for the people who are on the side to not scramble the rooms.
I know this isn't exactly the best solution and it won't please everyone but at least it's some kind of compromise.
TL;DR: Don't scramble 2v2. Scramble 3v3 and 4v4 since it could actually work well in the larger rooms. You can then determine if you want to enable it in 2v2 after scrambling in the larger rooms for awhile.
-
Hello Everyone,
We're always taking ideas on how to do that better and please shoot them to feedback@musegames.com so I can record them in our project master to discuss with the entire team.
Differing opinions aside, we're not putting this into the game tomorrow. We brought it up to talk about because we hear complaints day in and day out about stacked lobbies and we want to do something to improve general quality of life.
The scariest part of those complaints? We hear them once per person and nine times out of ten they don't log back into guns. (something we can and do look at)
Even worse, most people don't send us a handy little email when they stop playing our game, it simply sits on their steam library collecting dust. We understand that gamers hop from game to game, it’s basic human nature, but we want to do our part to make sure people don’t leave simply because they’ve spend the last hour and a half being completely wrecked.
That's the reason we want to make this a high priority because keeping organized groups happy is a prime goal, but 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.
So let's have a serious discussion about making this place more newbie friendly. I'm not saying let's bubble wrap every door knob, but we might have to put some plastic covers on some outlets.
First things first, let's test the scramble. Not in production, Guns of Icarus Online will remain the same, but in Dev app. Let's test organized teams being scrambled over and tell us how it feels playing with a new ship on your side.
If it feels like we've broken the entire game, we can work with that information. At this point it is a lot of gut feelings. We have our gut feeling this will be positive and many of you have a gut feeling that this won’t be good. Let’s get some info and put it to the test.
We can set it to a swap after one win in the system and get a better feel for what it's like to be switched over.
That way we can look at this with data and not change any expectations in the game. But having the option turn into a requirement or vice versa will cause more issues and uproar in game than in the dev app.
-
You misinterpret what we mean when we say we wish to stick with a good team. If I get into a lobby by myself, have a random crew and random ally captain who listens and is generally inviting, then that to me is a good team. Good team does not = Scrimmage team (aka all friends/clan buddies).
Then on the other side, you have one decent boat, but then one that has the unresponsive captain with two gunners, and even the captain would be a gunner. His boat is all harpoons. Normally those ships dissolve pretty fast because they cant figure out why they lose all the time, despite our advice to remedy it. Then the forced swap happens. The two decent guys team up, and im left with a mix bag. You aren't balancing anything. You just trade from a team that can potentially win to a team that is pretty much dead when the game starts. This is why people will leave 95% of the time to make a new lobby. We aren't actively giving the finger to the community we have for so long tried to foster since beta.
Yeah, I understand by good team you don't mean scrim team.
You're not balancing anything in that particular scenario, no. You're never going to balance a 2v2 with three crews of similar experience/ability and one that is outright uncooperative. But a scenario where you've got an experienced team versus a team made up of a screwing around joke crew and a crew composed of newcomers that are wanting to have an honest to god match will be a different story. That's going to be stomp after stomp if teams remain the same and eventually people are going to drop out. If they're scrambled then the new crew that wants to play properly and learn (and, y'know, enjoy the game) gets a much better experience and sticks around. Yes, one of the winning crews will get lumped with the bad apple crew, but come on, which ever way you cut it, it's going to be a much more positive experience for new players who would otherwise have walked away never to come back. If there are two bad apple crews then at worst you get a supplemented 1v1 with your friends. I've rarely, if ever, encountered two bad apple crews on one team though and I'd still rather have them split up for more balanced games.
Surely the organised/experienced players who are wanting to stay with their friends no matter what will just organise friendly scrims independently seeing as they more likely have the connections, friends, clanmates -- as well as the time and inclination -- to do so? It seems ridiculous to me to punish the pub game crowd because they aren't organised enough. Pub games are wildly inconsistent by virtue that they're open to all. New players, dabblers, returners. They need everything they can get to get them into good games and playing well so they keep coming back. I played recently with a bunch of level ones who were bloody brilliant but it would have broken my heart to see them ground into a paste because the winning team wasn't prepared to sever their bonds in the name of good sportsmanship. Stomping and the prospect of allied crews abandoning a game just because they got scrambled is only going to leave a sour taste. And I really don't like the notion that the scramble feature will cause/force this kind of behaviour in allied crews. That's a choice, and a group one at that.
Besides, I don't see how stomping can be fun or practice, and leaving the lobby to start another isn't going to solve that either unless you've got a stable of friends to invite. But if you haven't, you're just making more people wait across more games, and there's nothing to say the new lobby won't fill up with more 'stompees' anyway. Then what are you going to do? Keep on stomping until you get scrambled again until you open another lobby? That just sounds like really bad form to me.
While I like the idea of making scramble optional at new game (options are good), giving that option may just keep the door open to stomping by the very people who are okay with stomping but not okay with scrambling. Pub players will go wherever there are games and if more non-scramble games are opened by more experienced players wanting to play together and 'practice', then we're back to stompsville again.
I think Asteria raised some great points on the implications of this feature on 2v2 versus 3v3 and 4v4.
-
What's in a name?
I think some aggrivation would have been avoided by naming the feature something other than "scramble", the term used in the context of a co-op game puts the reader immediately on the defensive regardless of what they might have otherwise thought of the idea. Something more neutral like ship swap balanceing feature would have probably avoided some headaches.
That being said I think the optional crew swapping and ship swapping should go in as soon as possible, since they're long awaited features, while everyone debates the merit of the balancing mechanic.
It's a hard sell telling players they're being forced to play nice on the playground, changing the name might at least foster a more neutral debate.
-
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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO_-esmcsv4), 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...
-
I'm going to try to stay as unbiased and level headed as possible, but keep in mind I too am outraged by this, and find myself yet again questioning the decisions being made. I didn't even believe when I was told about this system. I know it's been an idea tossed around in the past by some players who were tired of being on the losing side since they didn't take the time to organize a team or clan. But up until now, I thought the general consensus from anyone with any respectable amount of experience with this game was that it was way too difficult to implement, too unpopular to force on players, and potentially too caustic of an idea for the community as a whole. I figured the general outcry of "No, no, anything but that! (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTtvi0_BE7w")" would prevail. Now I hear that you're putting this exact thing in the game.
Muse, I'm speaking directly at you for this one. The past few patches have appeared to be following a trend that many of us have not been happy with. Hearing this news, it seems as if you're forsaking many of your players' opinions all together. I understand that this is your game and you have the right to try anything you want, but keep in mind any piece of art submitted to the world is no longer just the property of the artist, but it belongs to everyone who beholds it. I'm begging you to please listen to the community response to this one. I can promise you I'll be trying it out if it's implemented in the Dev App, but I know my opinions shall not change, and I will still be beating the war drums in terms of feedback. This is not simply because of a pre-determined bias, this is because I don't believe the game should be played like this. I don't agree with the direction things are headed, and as a captain I feel responsible to at least try to hop on the helm and turn the wheel.
-
I can't really say much in defense of "organized teamplay" because I don't fly on those ships. I am firmly in the boat of floating between groups and being in PUG matches because that's how I operate. I can work in an organized team but most of my enjoyment from the game doesn't come from flying with EVERYONE on my friends list. Flying against people I know is just as fun. I don't mind doing that which is why I said I didn't mind the scrambling feature for ships. In fact, all I have been doing lately is flying against people I know because their ships are always full of people we both know anyway! I don't have to fly WITH them to enjoy their company.
When people with established clans and teams want to fight with each other and are REALLY intent on it, they will go out of their way to make games where that is possible. You can make passworded rooms if you want. You can publicly release those passwords. Put those passwords in the room names even! There are ways around the scrambling system if you really want to avoid the system if it ever goes in.
The problem is when even the winning team doesn't find their victories rewarding because they know they'll win 100% of the time against people who have no clue how to deal with something that looks insurmountable. There's no way to change that easily without going through hoops and chutes to make it possible to change the field. That's a component that scrambling supposedly is trying to alleviate.
I get that you want to foster a competitive community, but the majority precisely is not that. If you look at any kind of competitive game, the majority of it's popularity comes from it's NON-COMPETITIVE community. Organized teams and clans are the minority. They are an important and integral part of the game and how it currently operates but without outsiders to see their accomplishments, the teams are meaningless. They're nothing more than just a conglomeration of people that wear a fancy nametag to look cool. That's not a competitive team.
So I applaud Muse for trying to make the game more meaningful to the people that will going around singing the praises of the people who will make it look awesome in competition. I already do that and I want more people like me who would appreciate what the teams REALLY represent to GoIO.
-
It's about time I put in my opinion.
I'm with the people who think that both the scramble and ship-swap system are good ideas.
A thing you need to think about is: who are the people who are objecting to this? Those who are part of high level competitive teams, those who are part of set teams. In other words, a rather small minority. What about the majority of the community? Those who don't (or very rarely) fly with a set group of friends or in a team. I count myself as part of this majority (it's very rarely I actually fly with Overwatch).
Bottom line: stacked teams are a serious problem. To that I think at least most if us can agree. And this system will go a good way to dealing with this problem.
Now people can say "it will only mean teams will leave and start new lobbies" and that it will only lead to an increase in unfilled lobbies. To that I say, you're right, it will... But who's fault will that be? It won't be Muse's fault, it'll be the fault of the organised team that decided to leave, the people who will throw a strop because they didn't get to play with their friends or teammates EVERY SINGLE game. I get it, it's fun and useful to play with people you know, but are you really saying you can't play with someone different for ONE game?
Again, this is of course just my opinion, and no disrespect to anyone who disagrees, but I'm glad Muse is putting something like this in place.
-
Now people can say "it will only mean teams will leave and start new lobbies" and that it will only lead to an increase in unfilled lobbies. To that I say, you're right, it will... But who's fault will that be? It won't be Muse's fault, it'll be the fault of the organised team that decided to leave, the people who will throw a strop because they didn't get to play with their friends or teammates EVERY SINGLE game.
Whose fault it is doesn't change whether it would be an issue or not. The problem is that the system would allow (and likely often result in) the teams to go and make another lobby, leaving us with a whole bunch of fractured matches.
-
If this is intended to be PUG/casual based, why can't MUSE just come out and say it? I'll back the hell off immediately. You won't have me 'chasing off' the new users. They'll just be not playing for more than a few hours for no particular reason. Perfect, right?
Instead, "keeping organized groups happy is a prime goal" with absolutely no substance to back that up. They really need to quit claiming they care about actual organization and competition while patching the game to the opposite effect. In private conversation, MUSE claims they want everyone to be in a group as organized and competitive as The Cohort, and then publicly come out against organized competitive teams. Please all, please none. They need to make up their mind so I can stop arguing my position.
Send me an engraved plaque or a piece of MUSE letter-head that says "You officially broke GoIO by being too organized." I'll hang it on my wall, and you won't have to worry about me anymore. Because, apparently, that's what's happening?
-
I think a point is being missed and that is that a few weeks ago when the game was on sale there was up-to a 1000 people waiting to get into a game, once the game went off sale the numbers plunged straight back down to the same 80-150 people waiting,
There was obviously money made from the influx of sales but very little of the users stuck around to actually play the game i think that the lobby system comes into it, if you join a lobby and the blue team is all clan lvl 7+ for example and you are new to the game you will leave 9/10 and try and find enough lobby if there is any running,
OR
You join a lobby and get beat become frustrated and there is no way to change the outcome you get disheartened, same as the achievements system and level up system not being fully explained so people don't really see a point to play,
Muse really has to do core changes to the game to help this situation obviously the feeling must be stacked lobby's is a massive Issue, we have all seen how some people react to a level 1 person join he's got a buff kit no mic and hes ready to help the ship out with good intentions 9/10 what happens he get's berated into changing everything why?? because you were told to..
If you don't comply then your a troll or you really want to buff you get asked to leave,
We are all guilty of this because when captain we know how we want our ship ran, in my opinion a vocal captain helps because even though you are telling them what to do they are learning the game allot quicker and explain why you don't need buff on your ship and some captains might on this ect ect,, than joining against a organised high level team who share the same lobbies fully kitted out mic'd up and you are on a galleon lvl 1 pilot who has already readied up to the new players how is this an encouraging environment to stick around and play, something needs to be done,
Yes the higher players and clans might be feeling hard done by, yes this is a niche title but the game needs to make money if you want updates adventure mode server quality bug fixes, This is someones job and they want to make the game more friendly to newer players so they become competitive and the scene grows when the game gets bigger they can even add intermediate lobbys maybe to go with novice or even advanced,
i think people should stop trying to blame muse for trying to kill the own competitive scene because it makes no sense why they would want to do that when numbers are so low clans make up majority of people, and instead use there clear knowledge and experience of the game to help come up with a solution, because just shouting down no change is going to get no were,
How can you expect to verse better people if no one wants to get better,
Ship scramble is a way to force interaction with different players, which is not favorable if your playing with friends but imagine the benefits it might have, the advice you can give knowledge because this game is not easy to pick up and play, when you get into the mechanics and different types of damage on guns, imagine when you started playing and this feature was in and the teams were even you didn't lose as much you learnt the game faster,
There is some tweaking needed such as with the scramble what is stopping the opposition just requesting a swap as mentioned in the updates, what locks them in place, lobbies might just go dead, so what can we come up with that is balanced fair and easy to implement,
-
Looking at things hollistically, the idea of creating a completely balanced, perfectly fair game utopia is about as realistic as building a functional pyramidion. There will always be winners, losers, lovers, and haters. We might as well just give up.
Regardless,
I point I would like to bring out however, is that it seems to me that the problem of "stacked teams" is to me not a problem of clans vs. pugs. While admittedly Friday Gents practice often ends up being a series of pub stomps, I find that the majority of lobbies where one team is clearly dominating another are actually cases of differences that in this discussion have been lumped together- often times it'll be level 4-5's vs. 1-3's or even a difference as small as a single captain on one team with a microphone. One team will dominate, hands down. Match, after match, after match. THESE are a majority of the "stacked" lobbies that I see, it's these lobbies that cause people to rage and complain, and for this case I'll say Yes! by all means scramble the ships- most of those players wouldn't mind, it would probably even achieve what it's supposed to achieve.
Before you carronade my beliefs into the dust below however- most of the friction with this idea comes from the fact that by scrambling ships Muse is rustling one of the key components and attractions of this game, which is the cooperation and communication required and gained from running a well co-ordinated team of ships. I totally agree. working as a well coordinated team with other captains that you know well and play with often is one of the most rewarding and fun things about GOI, and being stuck with an unresponsive tactless ally is not only enraging, but results in a match ultimately resigned to fail.
So why don't we satisfy everybody and MAKE SCRAMBLING A MATCH OPTION
(seriously, I'm like the hundredth person to suggest this.)
Now the new blood stops complaining about stacking, the mid-levels get fun games, and the veterans are free to fly teams to their hearts contents.
C'mon, there's even a convenient little blank area underneath the novice match slider.
-
Personally, I think most team stacks are not malicious. I suggest rolling out the "ship swap" feature first and seeing whether the issue resolves- ship and crew swap is perfectly voluntary and most people seem to have no problem with it, and it serves mostly the same purpose as mandatory ship scrambling, which is controversial and maybe not a good idea.
Since the community at large is pretty cooperative/nice and most stacked matches (in my experience) don't "unstack" because it's too difficult to get everyone to move while preserving crew composition. Once switching sides becomes a matter of two mouse clicks, I think people will be much more willing to move around.
Implement the switching mechanic first, wait on the more drastic scramble mechanic. However, if it's still a big problem after switching gets implemented, then maybe mandatory scrambling is in order.
-
This man speaks genius.
-
A huge problem that I have is with identifying legitimate problems within this community. Up until now, "Stacking is ruining this game!!!" has held about as much weight as "Boarding would be more FUN!!!" It's been rhetoric, and nothing more. There is NO reason to believe stacking has a negative impact on player retention. But now, apparently, we have MUSE saying "It's true!".
This is based on casual, non-scientific observation....
During the Steam Summer Sale surge, the ratio between normal and novice lobbies was probably about 1:4; at least. For every normal lobby, there was at least 4 or more Novice lobbies at the same moment. Mostly filled. Somewhere around 80% (fairly conservatively) of the NEW players played damn near exclusively in Novice matches. They did not come up against "STACKED" teams. They saw this game for what it is, and decided (of their own free will) that it was not worth their time. Why are we blaming this on organized teams? I do NOT understand. At all. Give me some proof. Please.
I have introduced this game to about 10-15 people in a "balanced team" atmosphere, and they still did NOT like it. Due to the nature and quality of the game. Not the composure of the teams. From my observations, player retention is more likely related to the quality and overall composure of the game - not the enemy team.
If this is for real 100% a legit problem - that experienced people are choosing to play with people they know on purpose - and it is making the game unplayable for new players, a scramble function isn't going to fix jack squat. We'll work around it. We're just going to make a new lobby, and MUSE will have fixed nothing. We're going to continue to learn to work together, get better, and continue 'ruining' this game.
The only way to fix this problem - IF IT'S REAL - is eliminating the people who like to play this game in a organized and competitive fashion.
I absolutely 100% for sure fall into this category. So I need to stop playing in the way I find enjoyable and rewarding, or just stop playing entirely, if I actually give half a damn about this 'community'.
I do give a damn. But I'm not going to stop being competitive. Team building and a competitive mind-frame are the only ways I have found to enjoy this game, despite short comings that may very well be causing many people to not play.
I hope you can see I'm up against a rock and a hard place. This is why I am so obviously frustrated.
-
Why are we blaming this on organized teams? I do NOT understand. At all. Give me some proof. Please.
I don't think Muse is blaming anything on organized teams. They're trying to ameliorate a known and well reported issue in the game community that is only is slightly related to clans. I've seen no less than 3 threads with long discussions about stacked teams so there must at least be some issue if it's getting that much discussion.
I think Muse's heart is in the right place with this in that they're trying to make the game fun for everyone. It really doesn't come off as a personal attack against clan/competitive players. I don't feel very strongly either way regarding the "scramble". I don't think it will solve the issue and it certainly doesn't stop teams from making new lobbies to stay together. For me the game really wouldn't be changed much by it either way, if the swap happens and it seems like the match will be fun cool, if I want to stay flying with my fellow captain or the swap doesn't seem fun I'll leave to a new match.
-
I didn't read the all the rants, but I have a new point:
When you get stuck on a team with a captain who doesn't know how to work a ship and refuses to learn/take advice the ship (lets call him Leroy) the scramble would be a blessing. It will spread the burden of having to put up with Leroy around to each ship on the server. It will give an exceptional captain a chance to show they can win regardless of how stupid their ally is. It will also give the last captain to fly with the Leroy some catharsis as he pummels Leroy into the ground.
When I am stuck flying under a bad captain I feel no sorrow for abandoning him. When I am flying with a good crew and a bad ally ship I feel bad leaving a crew that did nothing wrong.
-
Personally, I think most team stacks are not malicious. I suggest rolling out the "ship swap" feature first and seeing whether the issue resolves- ship and crew swap is perfectly voluntary and most people seem to have no problem with it, and it serves mostly the same purpose as mandatory ship scrambling, which is controversial and maybe not a good idea.
Since the community at large is pretty cooperative/nice and most stacked matches (in my experience) don't "unstack" because it's too difficult to get everyone to move while preserving crew composition. Once switching sides becomes a matter of two mouse clicks, I think people will be much more willing to move around.
Implement the switching mechanic first, wait on the more drastic scramble mechanic. However, if it's still a big problem after switching gets implemented, then maybe mandatory scrambling is in order.
Yup, player controlled ship and crew swap is on it's way first. Nothing to test there, it's something we've been missing and we're happy to put it in as soon as it's ready.
If I never see a stacked teams thread after this. I will personally lead the charge into getting rid of anything scramble related.
I'm really happy with everyone stepping back and talking about the issue, even if you don't agree with this plan.
We have a community meeting tomorrow and have no doubt this will be first on the agenda.
I know it doesn't look like you guys are making a lot of traction, but I'll let you see behind the curtain for a moment. I promise all your feedback is taken very seriously.
Since this thread I've had 4 impromptu meetings about better ways to solve this problem and as I said I've got another tomorrow.
I'll do my best to keep everyone up to date after we have our fifth (and I doubt final) meeting.
Keep up the ideas and the discussion though! I'm going to have this thread open tomorrow.
-
I agree with dragonmere in that Muse should look deeper into why players don't stay, that is if they haven't already. This is to say that I don't think these details need to be public knowledge, but I would consider investigating scenarios such as whether:
- players who hit rank 4 with ranks 4 3 3 (any class) are more likely to continue playing than players who hit rank 4 with ranks 4 1 1
- similarly players who hit rank 4 with greater than X matches are more likely to continue playing than players who hit rank 4 in less than X matches
- players who are using a clan tag with other similarly ranked players are more likely to continue playing than players who don't use a clan tag
- players who are using a known clan tag (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,295.0.html) are more likely to continue playing than players who don't use a clan tag of an existing clan
- players who obtained a copy of the game through a 4 pack are more likely to continue playing than players who bought a single copy (I have no idea if you can actually track this)
- players who use party chat regularly within X matches are more likely to continue playing than players who don't use party chat
- players who join non novice matches within X matches are more likely to continue playing than players who stay in novice matches
- players who take part in training matches (novice match with trainer/CA on ship) are more likely to continue playing than average player
- players who rarely experience 5 to 0 wins or losses in their first X matches are more likely to continue playing than players who only experience 5 to 0 matches
- players who typed 'gg' into chat after all of their first X matches are more likely to continue playing than players who type 'noob crew' into chat after their first X matches
(and some bonus ones)
- players who have a pyramidion with 'Ram' in the name (named after me of course) are more likely to continue playing than players who have never even met me D:
- players who have burned lots of ships with flamers and banshees are more likely to continue playing than players who use boring old gat/mortar
Discovering where (most importantly) the stayers are coming from should help plan tweaking the areas Muse should address. The items I list above are things I assume you have data on, but I do not know how much you do or do not keep a record of. Answers to the above questions could spur innovation in different directions such as tournaments for level locked clans, more recruitment drives from existing clans into novice matches, more support for players to keep in touch with each other in game (through a clan communication system), a greater drive for CA and trainer presence in novice matches, reevaluating the novice match lockout at level 4 or Pyramidions being named 'RamJamSlam Pyramidion' instead of 'Pyramidion Pyramidion' by default.
Lastly, I would like to say that I understand that GoIO player data is confidential and I don't assume that you would share it with the community, just that you would take it into consideration when planning.
-
I think what we need to do is overhaul the entire matchmaking process. I mean let's be honest if the teams are "stacked" sooo badly that it causes someone to go and take the time out and make a forum post or message a dev about it they aren't going to stick around for five matches anyway.
every other game that is pvp and has a steep learning curve like HON or madden have a comprehensive ranking systems for each player. these rankings based on things like games played, kdr, etc. will help us make a pairing system that would put players if similar rank together(or as closely ranked as possible). without an accurate way of assessing skill levels we will always risk having players feeling in over their head.
the "quick join" option as it is at this very moment is completely unhelpful and often detrimental to someone's experience. for instance; I'm Johnny newbie and I was to gun and I have no other friends who play the game. I log in do the tutorial and feel ready to roll. I select my class and hit "quick join" only to join a match and have my crew mates asking me to "log out change my class to engi and log back in". what a bunch of jerks these guys are trying to get me to quit just because I'm new(because I don't understand that they are actually giving me helpful feedback) well I'm just going to mount this gun and fire away cuz screw these guys.
I hope you can visualize this very real scenario and begin to see that a scramble isn't even a bandaid to the actual problem. what we need is an ACTUAL matchmaking system.
-
If quick join cannot find an open match that has not started, it will create a new match for the player. This was changed a long time ago (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,368.msg5788.html#msg5788). any player who has joined mid-match, has done so on his own volition... There is a problem where someone will join the lobby right as the countdown is almost finished, leaving the captain with no time to organize his last team member, but I feel as though that might be a topic all in it's own, as it's not anything to do with ship scrambling.
-
If quick join cannot find an open match that has not started, it will create a new match for the player. This was changed a long time ago (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,368.msg5788.html#msg5788). any player who has joined mid-match, has done so on his own volition... There is a problem where someone will join the lobby right as the countdown is almost finished, leaving the captain with no time to organize his last team member, but I feel as though that might be a topic all in it's own, as it's not anything to do with ship scrambling.
o cool so it is both the quick join and the lobby menu that both need over hauling as I suspected... sounds like we need a matchmaking system
-
I didn't read the all the rants, but I have a new point:
When you get stuck on a team with a captain who doesn't know how to work a ship and refuses to learn/take advice the ship (lets call him Leroy) the scramble would be a blessing. It will spread the burden of having to put up with Leroy around to each ship on the server. It will give an exceptional captain a chance to show they can win regardless of how stupid their ally is. It will also give the last captain to fly with the Leroy some catharsis as he pummels Leroy into the ground.
When I am stuck flying under a bad captain I feel no sorrow for abandoning him. When I am flying with a good crew and a bad ally ship I feel bad leaving a crew that did nothing wrong.
There's a difference between how people would feel optimally and what they actually do feel. In reality there are very few captains who would view it as a blessing to end up with a bad teammate, and once again, that's when said captains start leaving the lobby.
-
You miss read Sunderland, it is a blessing to be shuffled away from the bad team mate. It is a bit of a curse to be stuck with a bad team mate. I am viewing this from the angle of being paired with the bad teammate before the scramble, and being free of him for a few rounds after the scramble.
Have you ever voluntarily swapped sides after one captain from the opposing team rage quits, only to discover the remaining captain is a complete retard? Some times you don't realize how bad the situation on the other team is while you are busy killing them.
-
So in that situation, you are just trading a loss. How does that do anything to better the game's enjoyment?
-
Scrambling spreads the dissatisfaction of having to put up with a bad team mate (Leroy) evenly around the server. The current system puts the burden of escorting a Leroy on the shoulders of one crew. Even if that crew leaves the server it will be replaced by another crew who will have and equally bad experience.
The worst case scenario in a 2v2 without shuffle over the course of 5 games is that eight people have a very good experience and 40 people have a very bad experience. Shuffling will make the experience of the winning eight less enjoyable, but will make the experience of at least some of the 40 more enjoyable.
Think of it as the video game communism.
-
Until that team leaves anyway and you net back to nothing. It's not a band aid for all cases, but for some it's not a bad way to go.
Option it. They will come.
-
I really like the idea of scramble lobbies, as long as it's not the only kind. It would make PUGs a lot more enjoyable. It's essentially just the auto-balancing mechanisms that you see in a lot of games.
Sometimes though, you just want to fly with your team. As long as I can create a public lobby with scramble disabled, I'll be happy. Ideally (to me, at least) Scramble and Scramble-disabled lobbies would both be shown by default on the match screen but would be differentiated by a label and maybe an icon or coloring or something. Add some hover text on the label so new players can see what it means easily and make an informed choice. I'd make Scramble the default type, since most games tend to be PUGs.
It's a similar idea as the Competitive lobbies Bubbles was seeking opinions on, but without the baggage of deciding how to limit them or how to define "Competitive".
-
I am hoping that coming in off a win streak will make the crew that got scrambled over to the bad team more tolerant. Especially since they know another scramble is coming to pull them out of this bad situation in the near future. Also the the crew coming off the win streak stands a better chance of evening up the game than a freshly joined crew. They had that win streak to sharpen their crew interactions.
-
Throwing my 0.02 in.
Assuming scrambling goes live and it's an optional part of lobby making and most people are happy, how do we want it to work?
One problem I see is this.
Scrambling is a counter to stacked and i agree with that. However if you're getting scrambled every match, you constantly have to form a new cohesiveness with your crew. There's no time to learn how to play together effectively in one match. One of the greatest joys of playing Guns is that feeling you get from great teamwork. Everyone knows exactly what they have to do because everyone is depending on each other to do what they can't. You can't get that from just one match.
Maybe have scrambling done every other match?
-
If you're crewing on a ship with a bad captain it doesn't really matter if your ally is good or bad, you won't have a good time.
Voluntary ship switching and perhaps mandatory tutorials would be a better solution than sharing the crap.
-
so no one else thinks and ACTUAL match making system would help?
-
I think the community is too small and the matches last for too long for an actual match making system to work. Also match making systems suffer greatly from mid game quitters since they do not allow for mid game joins.
-
I believe if we do a good job on match making on the front end we will have fewer mid game leavers on the back end.
also number of players matters little to a well set up matchmaking process. and I think it is very probable that the better we do on MM now the more players we will add moving forward.
-
I am hoping that coming in off a win streak will make the crew that got scrambled over to the bad team more tolerant. Especially since they know another scramble is coming to pull them out of this bad situation in the near future. Also the the crew coming off the win streak stands a better chance of evening up the game than a freshly joined crew. They had that win streak to sharpen their crew interactions.
That all depends on the x number they pick for scramble (remember, they haven't decided yet). Idk about pubbies, but it takes forever to get a game going these days, let alone waiting and praying for a scramble over just not bothering and making a new lobby to sit in.
It also messes with players leaving and joining. Nobody would want to be that captain that gets one good game before a scramble which tosses you over to Leroy for a serious of aweful.
I believe if we do a good job on match making on the front end we will have fewer mid game leavers on the back end.
also number of players matters little to a well set up matchmaking process. and I think it is very probable that the better we do on MM now the more players we will add moving forward.
Until I see ranks actually giving some indication of skill level, they need a way to figure that out first before even considering a matchmaking system.
-
Nobody wants to join a game and get paired up with Leroy indefinitely. I think this is one of the reasons games take so long to start. When I join a server and see a level 1 captain with no crew against a pair of Level 5+ captains with full crew I move on to the next server unless I am feeling masochistic or cocky that day.
-
I mean this with respectful disagreement but I think the community would have to be at least 4 times larger than it is now for matchmaking to really be feasible and worth the tremendous amount of labor it would take to implement (not to mention the fact that matchmaking would add no benefit to adventure mode).
-
Nobody wants to join a game and get paired up with Leroy indefinitely. I think this is one of the reasons games take so long to start. When I join a server and see a level 1 captain with no crew against a pair of Level 5+ captains with full crew I move on to the next server unless I am feeling masochistic or cocky that day.
But you would if you had to wait x games before knowing you'd even have a shot?
-
Even if the community were big enough I don't think GOI is the type of game that would really benefit from automated match making. Games with good match making like LoL are very dependent on individual player skill and less on group cohesion (I may be wrong since I only played LoL for a few weeks). So keeping a group of strangers together until they become an organized team is less important in LoL than it is in GoI.
@Zill
I do feel masochistic or cocky every once in a while (not enough to fly against you). The cockiness tends to wear off after a few games especially if the ally captain is really bad. Some times I do pull off improbable victories.
-
@Zill
I do feel masochistic or cocky every once in a while (not enough to fly against you). The cockiness tends to wear off after a few games especially if the ally captain is really bad. Some times I do pull off improbable victories.
Fair enough. I just turn my nose at the forced bit at this point. I would honestly make a scramble match in a lot of situations vs non-scramble if it were indeed an option to.
-
It is probably a matter play style, ship scrambling would benefit my way of playing while probably being a burden to other people's way of playing. I tend to join random games with complete strangers even if I have people on my friend's list online. I assume clan loyalties trump any personal loyalty a player feels to me. So I don't expect a clan member to join my ship if he is already flying with his clan. This style of play leads to very long win streaks or very long loosing streaks. I feel a scramble would help even out the experience.
-
I feel like this discussion isn't going anywhere. We already know muse's opinion (they will roll out position swap and wait for results). Their immediate course of action is already determined, and nobody seems to have anything against it. The scramble thing is a hazy possibility at best, so can we stop talking about it and focus on the other stuff? Maybe start a new, appropriately named thread? I know this one is named scrambling "and other stuff", but I'd rather have a thread dedicated to each individual change than one big one with conflicting conversations.
-
I feel like this discussion isn't going anywhere. We already know muse's opinion (they will roll out position swap and wait for results). Their immediate course of action is already determined, and nobody seems to have anything against it. The scramble thing is a hazy possibility at best, so can we stop talking about it and focus on the other stuff? Maybe start a new, appropriately named thread? I know this one is named scrambling "and other stuff", but I'd rather have a thread dedicated to each individual change than one big one with conflicting conversations.
oh yea, whats all this other stuff? Well from here I am interested to see the regular (with scrambling) and competitive game choices in real live games. That is the only way we will find how well it fits.
-
It's the deciding factor, for at the moment it's just all speculation and discussion (some rant but that's not the point). I want to see where this goes, it may work, it may not, it could have disasterous consequences but it could also be fairly nifty, time will tell.
Games with good match making like LoL are very dependent on individual player skill and less on group cohesion (I may be wrong since I only played LoL for a few weeks). So keeping a group of strangers together until they become an organized team is less important in LoL than it is in GoI.
LoL is in fact solo and team based at the same time, for instance all players have to work together to win, however you really don't need much communication, if all team members know their role they can do pretty well versus a team that doesn't know what their doing, this however is another thing entirely.
-
LoL is in fact solo and team based at the same time, for instance all players have to work together to win, however you really don't need much communication, if all team members know their role they can do pretty well versus a team that doesn't know what their doing, this however is another thing entirely.
This is pretty correct. League of Legends is designed around minimal communication and roles that don't vary much from game to game. There are lots of tools that allow for League to implement systems so players don't have to ever talk to each other (which is evident in the pinging system and how it's designed).
-
Well I arrived at the discussion late. I think the ship scramble and crew/ship swap would be nice features to have. I think a lot of the issues raised come from a misunderstanding of how it's intended to work.
http://gunsoficarus.com/community/blog/november-at-muse/
From what I've read, I can't tell if it's planned to be an option at match creation, or mandatory
We actually thought through the logic and logistics of where best and how best to implement scramble, and ended up preferring scramble at match creation over voting for a few different reasons.
This post makes me think it's an option at match creation, although the initial blog reads that it would be mandatory in public matches. Personally I feel an option at match creation would be best.
But how it would work is a whole ship swap, taking 1 ship (maybe?) from each blue and red team and having them change places. So instead of team A and B vs C and D, it could end up being team A and C vs B and D.
This means the crew composition on the ship is still the same (so you're still playing with your friends if you're an organized team), and you just have to worry about coordinating with your ally captain(s).
The scramble would take effect after X amount of consecutive wins based on the team (red or blue). In their example, this number is set at 5.
------------
Regardless of how it works, I don't think it would do much against "stacked" teams. Teams that are stacked and wish to remain so have pretty easy workarounds, such as forfeiting/losing on purpose right before the win streak reaches the threshold. Thus the count is reset and they can keep it up longer. They might not want to lose and just choose to leave the match and create a new lobby. This isn't too bad, as the thought that this will create piles of half filled matches doesn't take into account a player's desire to actually play a match. If the lobby doesn't fill up, they tend to leave it and search for a different lobby. It's an issue that tends to resolve itself.
Then of course the ship/crew swap just might be 'abused', with the previously stacked team ships refusing to start the match until the other captain lets them swap back. In the same manner that players will refuse to start a match until their crew members bring exactly what the captain wants them to bring, and on occasion refusing to start a match until that crew member changes places with one of their friends who they want on their ship.
Then there's the negative side of the scramble. What if teams aren't stacked, but one team still ends up winning 5 times in a row? Maybe it's two pub teams or even two organized teams going head to head. Each deathmatch ending 5-4 or 5-3, one team just barely coming out ahead each time. The scramble would still go into effect. Of course they'd still have the option of crew/ship swapping, but it's just something consider.
Overall it's a nice option allowing for variety and better competition at the unorganized team level, but has a difficult time reducing 'stacked' team situations (in the events where they wish to remain stacked). For organized team matches, it should be difficult for them to reach the win streak necessary for the scramble, and even if they do it's more likely they'd just swap places back; making it not affect them at all.
-
LoL is in fact solo and team based at the same time, for instance all players have to work together to win, however you really don't need much communication, if all team members know their role they can do pretty well versus a team that doesn't know what their doing, this however is another thing entirely.
This is pretty correct. League of Legends is designed around minimal communication and roles that don't vary much from game to game. There are lots of tools that allow for League to implement systems so players don't have to ever talk to each other (which is evident in the pinging system and how it's designed).
Don't we have a ping system too?
By 'other stuff' I meant the new spawn system, which will affect how games are played pretty drastically. It was mentioned in the blog post, so I thought we might want to talk about it. However, the topic is big enough that it'll probably need its own thread.
-
LoL is in fact solo and team based at the same time, for instance all players have to work together to win, however you really don't need much communication, if all team members know their role they can do pretty well versus a team that doesn't know what their doing, this however is another thing entirely.
This is pretty correct. League of Legends is designed around minimal communication and roles that don't vary much from game to game. There are lots of tools that allow for League to implement systems so players don't have to ever talk to each other (which is evident in the pinging system and how it's designed).
Don't we have a ping system too?
By 'other stuff' I meant the new spawn system, which will affect how games are played pretty drastically. It's up for testing in dev app right now,and it was mentioned in the blog post, so I thought we might want to talk about it. However, the topic is big enough that it'll probably need its own thread.
We don't have a ping system, unless you count the spy glass. Most experimental features/changes do get their own threads.
-
LoL is in fact solo and team based at the same time, for instance all players have to work together to win, however you really don't need much communication, if all team members know their role they can do pretty well versus a team that doesn't know what their doing, this however is another thing entirely.
This is pretty correct. League of Legends is designed around minimal communication and roles that don't vary much from game to game. There are lots of tools that allow for League to implement systems so players don't have to ever talk to each other (which is evident in the pinging system and how it's designed).
Don't we have a ping system too?
By 'other stuff' I meant the new spawn system, which will affect how games are played pretty drastically. It's up for testing in dev app right now,and it was mentioned in the blog post, so I thought we might want to talk about it. However, the topic is big enough that it'll probably need its own thread.
We don't have a ping system, unless you count the spy glass. Most experimental features/changes do get their own threads.
ENEMY SHIP AT STARBOARD BOW!
REPAIR THE ENGINES!
I'M GETTING THE FRONT GUNS (or something)
Pretty close to pings, if you ask me! ^^
-
Don't we have a ping system too?
By 'other stuff' I meant the new spawn system, which will affect how games are played pretty drastically. It's up for testing in dev app right now,and it was mentioned in the blog post, so I thought we might want to talk about it. However, the topic is big enough that it'll probably need its own thread.
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2081.0.html
Please refrain from talking about dev app mechanics. They are not finalized.
-
I'm still going to fly in close formation with my randomized teammate to stack, whoever he/she may be. Their experience doesn't matter as long as I fly close to him/her and I fire upon whoever he/she fires upon.
This will not fix stacking, It will just make the new guys less prepared for it. It will also break good friends/clans apart, and a lot of us do play for our friends/clans.
-
If we really wanted to fix stacking, we would tie each ship to a single side or corner of the map to prevent one from flying with the other. We could use chains, rope, strings - hell, even dental floss. Then it could be just like 1v1, the way Muse always wanted Team Deathmatch to be.
-
If it's optional, then business as usual. If it's forced, I would be as bold to say Muse will put the nail in the coffin of competitive and clans. To quote dragonmere "But the setup of the lobby system and the balance of the game mechanics tends to heavily favor pick-up games, rather than organized play, and that seems to increase every patch. You're left with people competitively playing a casual game, rather than people casually playing a competitive game - like DOTA".
I hope Muse has the foresight to see it's the clans and competitive community keeping their game alive. Sure sales help bring in new players, but without friends made through your clan, player retention would be low. Player retention means we spread the word, we get more, keep players, they spread the word; Butterfly effect. If they make this game too frustrating to play as a group or clan, retention dies, game dies.
"Once a match is created, the blue and red sides will now have their win totals tracked." Based off of this, instead create a ranking system that is displayed in the lobby selection. A player can make an educated decision as to the difficulty of the lobby choices.
If this happens "Once a side attains a consecutive winning streak of 5, ship crews will swap places across blue and red team." We'll just all leave and create a new lobby. Sorry but, screw that system, I'm going to play with my friends.