Messages

586

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: New Game Mode - 2v2v2/1v1v1

« on: October 29, 2013, 03:57:16 pm »

Part of me thinks it could be really interesting, while the other part of me thinks it could get pretty ugly in those types of matches. I don't think we'd be able to handle a 3v3v3 since 3v3 and 4v4 tend to get a little choppy as is.

But for a 2v2, do you still use the same scoring system for kills? This might restrict certain choices for ships, because you have to worry about your other enemy killing your current target. Which can lead to all sorts of rage and fighting between players (picture how mad people can get when even just allies steal their kills in other games). So disabling and balloon popping builds might not be as viable, forcing everyone to go the piercing/explosive route. (The time to kill for those builds is dramatically longer than for the piercing/explosive; allowing more time for someone to take your kill or just shoot you in the back).

What might work better in this situation is a score system change. Instead of getting points for killing, the team loses points for dying. This makes them care a lot less about kill steals, but more about staying alive. However, this can also influence ship builds, as teams may try taking out the 'softer' ships first, or encouraging everyone to bring the tougher to kill ships. (Something like 'stock matches' in fighting games; Super Smash Brothers anyone?) Whether is a 'team lives' or individual ship, although making it team could cause some in-team fighting when one ship dies over and over again, while the other stays alive longer.


And then you get the 4v2 scenarios, where 2 teams gang up on one of them. It might be two high level teams picking out the low level, or even two low level teams taking out the biggest threat (or maybe they just don't like pink). Overall I don't feel there's a bullet proof method of preventing this, and we'd just have to trust the players to be good sports.

587

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Randomness

« on: October 29, 2013, 03:36:36 pm »

When I first read the title, the thought that popped into my head was "There's no way we could get something like that." But after reading it, it seems pretty viable. A little complicated, but still something that could function well. There's always issues of course, but I feel something like this might help convince players to try out different things, and it sounds like fun.


Some other things I think might help the 'randomness' (not really random, more like the unknown) is hiding the ship and character loadouts of the enemy team, and perhaps also making the map completely random and not known until the match starts. This just makes players try to plan with their team mate more, instead of picking a ship specifically for a certain map, or to try and 'counter' the enemy ships.

When you play certain maps, you can generally expect certain kinds of ships to pop up. Like on dunes or fjords, you're more likely to get some long range builds because of the openness, while on paritan rumble, canyon, and duel at dawn, you're more likely to see some close range ships.

Players often pick the ships based on the map, and in some cases even pick ships that they believe will directly counter their enemy. Adding those unknown elements can make it a little more exciting. Who are you going to be facing? Where will it be? Are you going to have to change how you engage the enemy based on those things?

588

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 28, 2013, 05:18:23 pm »

We had a 'duel' map at one point (Duel at Dawn) (1v1), but it felt like it was drifting away from the core concepts of teamwork, so it was changed to a 2v2. I don't think they're likely to go that route again, but you never know.

As for the team stacking, we don't want to punish friends flying together, but we also want to protect random players from being stomped into pudding. Sure it can encourage some people to try harder, but others just get demoralized or upset. The new features should allow players to try and maintain fair matches if they so desire, without ruining the experience with their friends.

589

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Detonate Mines

« on: October 28, 2013, 12:27:50 pm »

It's not easy, but you can do it. I remember on one occasion we were having an all mine match and got a lot of practice at both avoiding mines and getting them to 'remote detonate' by placing an extra one. Getting them to blow up doesn't take much skill, but getting them to actually do some damage without someone running into them takes a lot of skill.

The 'remote detonation' is made difficult by the timing of the gun. You have to reload the next round, fire, and then wait for it to deploy. So if you try to fire that 6th mine as they pass by your first, chances are you won't actually do damage, as they'll be past it by the time it actually blows.


Currently it feels that mines aren't all that powerful. They're pretty easy to avoid, and only become a real nuisance when you're chasing a ship down (and even then, if you get close enough the mines lose a lot of their effect. You'll either pass by them or have the mine shots hit you before they deploy). They can get annoying when a ship has nothing but mine launchers on certain maps, but given the three dimensional nature of the game, you can still easily avoid them; and the ship full of mines is less able to actively seek out kills or even defend itself when engaged. It can just run and lay mines.


Adding an actual remote feature doesn't change too much, and really depends on how you do it. Does it just blow up one mine at a time? Or all of them? This can make it difficult to get a hit on the target you want or keep a good defensive field respectively. Should there be a range on the detonator? Does an active detonate cause a smaller aoe explosion? Does hitting the detonate happen automatically, or have a time delay?

There's a lot of ways to go about it to prevent it from becoming overpowering.



As for it not fitting the feel of the world, I can't imagine that they do not have electricity or radio. You can see all the lights on the different maps, and ships are able to communicate with each other. Not to mention the Tesla weapons in GoI and the old heat seeking missile launchers in earlier versions of GoIO.

590

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Detonate Mines

« on: October 28, 2013, 09:50:12 am »

As already pointed out, you can 'remote detonate' mines by firing 1 more mine that can be sustained. This will trigger the oldest mine, and may cause a chain reaction.

That being said, since you can already remote detonate them, I see no issue with making it easier to do so.

591

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Freezing damage

« on: October 28, 2013, 09:09:52 am »

Acting as a debuff? Now that sounds really neat. Possibly working by slowing down the ships systems (basically the exact opposite of a buff hammer on the parts it hits). Hull armor is decreased, engine output decreases, guns do less damage (or just fire/turn slower), the balloon rises and falls less effectively. It could affect only the parts it struck as well, possibly stacking the effect up to a certain limit. I like the idea of a different kind of weapon more so than just another damaging weapon.

592

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Captain Chat

« on: October 28, 2013, 09:04:38 am »

There is a team chat button, but that's for text, we're talking about voice chat (sorry I didn't clarify).


It's true that a lot of organized clans use a third party voice system, but that also shows the benefits of a full team chat. And this suggestion is mostly for the benefit of random players that decide to group up. Organized teams tend to use the party chat or a third party system just fine.


A volume priority is certainly handy, since it allows you to hear one person over the other, but at the same time you can't quite hear the other; and they have no idea you can't. Which is why it would be nice for them to hear, or be aware of the other chat taking place.

593

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Captain Chat

« on: October 28, 2013, 02:35:12 am »

Party chat does work great, but people only use it with their friends or pre-formed teams. Random assortments tend not to take the time to get that benefit. It's also in the random groupings that the other problems occur (captain leaving, captain not communicating, captain not being the pilot). So really the Team Chat is more for when the crew needs to talk with their ally ships.

The issue more commonly faced by everyone else, even in preformed teams, is players talking over one another, completely unaware that you're trying to pay attention to someone else. This actually happens to me more when the players have better teamwork. The crew and other ships try to communicate often to work together, and you get bombarded on both sides. Giving some kind of display in the UI (like a sound symbol showing up) to let players know that the captains are talking, or even letting them hear what's being said so they don't talk over each other would be really nice. Personally I want to believe that the player base is mature enough for a full on team chat (still being able to use their crew chat) in the cases where they need to tell the other ships something and the captain isn't there, or the captain can't (no mic/no sound/refuses).

594

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Clan tags free for all

« on: October 27, 2013, 09:50:03 pm »

That'd be a nice feature. I'm aware that it can happen, but I haven't seen too many cases of it; although I suppose that the clans themselves are far more sensitive to the issue.

595

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Captain Chat

« on: October 27, 2013, 03:29:32 pm »

I could see that being a problem on occasion. I'd at least like the crew to know when Captain chat is active (captain is talking or being talked to) so they don't start shouting "Turn Left! Turn Right! Argh, where are we going!? What's the other ship doing? Who are we aiming at? We need to go lower!" while the other captains are also shouting "Lets focus on the Pyra! I'm going to ram him! Hey, you're about to hit me! Get to point B, we'll head to point A, and that ship down there head to C. Let's all meet up on XXXXX. Where are you?"

And then one or the other getting upset when you don't respond to them fast enough.


With a good crew on each ship, they tend to know better than to shout over each other. It's like how the clans use skype/party/teamspeak/vent/etc to all talk to each other, even while being on different ships. In an ideal situation, they would know to use it only when they need to tell the other ship something, and not confuse it with the crew chat, in which they generally shout whatever occurs to them at that moment. Like "We need to go lower!" as your ship is already descending.

596

Feedback and Suggestions / Captain Chat

« on: October 27, 2013, 03:09:08 pm »

I think it would help if captain chat became more of a 'team chat', instead of just the captains. There's a few reasons for this:

• Captains may not have a mic or be listening, while their crew does
• The Captain might not always be the pilot
• Captains can leave the match and force another crew member to take the helm
• Captains that don't communicate well, but have a crew that's willing to do so

There's also my own desire as a pilot/captain to not have my crew and fellow captains talking at the same time without realizing they're doing so. With a crew chat and a team chat (instead of captain chat) players can hear when someone is talking in either chat. So there's less of a chance of them talking over each other.


Failing that, I'd at least like some kind of symbol to display when captain chat is active. Letting your crew know that someone else is already talking to the captain, and shouting into their mic isn't idea at that point.

597

General Discussion / Re: Some of ye olde concept arts

« on: October 27, 2013, 01:54:05 pm »

The howitzer would be hilarious to have on a ship. Pretending it would fit and such. I imagine that firing it would propel your ship backwards pretty violently.


I know that the original Guns of Icarus had Tesla weapons, but I'm fairly certain they decided to go a different route in GoIO and not put Tesla weapons in. It used to be a damage type, but was replaced at some point (with shatter I believe). The harpoon was an electric harpoon at some point, but has been changed; so it's pretty safe to say that they probably won't make an appearance in Skirmish. Adventure mode may be an entirely different story though.


I love that image of the GodLamp, and think it would make an epic heavy weapon. I could see it firing off a beam of light that does massive fire damage. The ammo might have to be the gun 'overheating' though or something like that. It might have to work through some kind of powered device. I don't think reflecting sunlight would work very well, what with all the foggy/dark maps and the balloon from the ship getting in the way.

As for beams of light themselves, they don't operate like lasers (unless you want to make it a laser cannon?). One example is the magnifying glass and the ants. Any sadistic child who's done this (all of you, don't lie) knows you need to hold it a certain distance from the ant, at the right angle. This is to get the ant at the focal point, where the area of the beam is the smallest, maximizing the energy/area. Then you get a cooked ant. Too far away and the light scatters about, too close and the focal plane is too large. You'll warm the ant up a bit, but you're not going to cook him.

Which would make this weapon very interesting. We already have weapons whose damage is based on relative distance. This one could be an extreme example of that. At the furthest point of it's effective range they could be taking max fire damage, while moving closer reduces it up until the point there is none. The gun could use some kind of light or power source as ammo instead of the sun.

598

Community Events / Re: Guns of Icarus Online - The Board Game!

« on: October 27, 2013, 12:41:00 am »

I give you...... Version 2!




This was a blank map blatantly stolen borrowed from:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/regional-world-mapping/21103-thaldar-first-map.html

Using that as a base, I derived the map above, creating the nodes and connections between them. You'll noticed that most nodes are not long cities, but 'Resource' points. There's about 56 nodes on this map, making it significantly smaller than the original. This includes 6 capitals and 10 major cities.

Using IvKir's suggestions, the rules will be changes so that owning a capital or major city is required for 'respawning' once destroyed in combat. Failing to hold those will result in your team's removal and any remaining territories belonging to your team going neutral upon your defeat.



At this point I think we can go ahead and start the Mock Sign Ups, essentially looking for interested teams. I'd like to have 4 at the very least, upon which we'll have a 'captains' meeting to discuss the rules of the game; allowing teams to suggest and vote upon changes they deem desirable or necessary. At this time we would also set a start date.

So any interested teams please using the following format and reply to this thread (colors are first come, first serve and will be used to display territories on the map. Try to keep it simple.):

-----------------------------------
Team Name:
Team Color:
Team Logo (optional):


Team Captain:
Team Sub Captain (optional):
Team Members:
-----------------------------------

Remember that you need a minimum of 6 people to form a team (subject to change if necessary).

599

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please Make Gunners Useful

« on: October 26, 2013, 07:41:31 pm »

Good call! Seems they're listed as S2W2. Not entirely sure where that three came from. I blame faeries.

600

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please Make Gunners Useful

« on: October 26, 2013, 06:55:05 pm »

I think that was Cogs season 3? I was looking for videos of GoIO tournaments and I can't seem to find anything particularly fresh. It could just be that I don't know who's been streaming them recently. I believe those particular shots are from Qwerty's twitch.