Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: Schwerbelastung on April 05, 2014, 03:16:34 pm
-
There's some people here saying more realism is more fun, some saying less realism is more fun, and people talking about how these things relate to player retention. I'll try to chip in. And yeah, I usually end up writing long-winded posts. For those with less time and/or interest, there's a tl;dr in the end. And no, you most definitely don't need to quote the whole post or reply to all points if you want to comment! :)
Also, if you wish to argue with the tl;dr instead of the actual post, please feel free to. However, it can be a good idea to read the whole post before doing so if you have time.
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ This is Alarma, the OWB - Official Warning Butterfly. She is here to warn you about an incoming wall of text! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
Foreword and why I am actually writing this much stuff
I believe one of the biggest questions Muse's staff has been trying to answer is exactly this one; why have there been problems with player retention, what steps and/or other incidents could have caused possible declines and/or increases, and what can we do to remedy the possible problems with player retention?
Now, bear with me here; I'm by no means a seasoned expert on this. However, I am currently majoring in relevant subject(s) (my major is possibly the least clearly defined at our university) - I've studied computer science, marketing, behavioral psychology, corporate and team level cooperation and business administration, for instance. I have also worked for 2 years at a gaming company, though my assignment was more with customer communication and team synergy (although claiming that the latter was an actual responsibility of mine may be stretching it) than product development. I've also played games since I was like 6, much like some others here. As such, I may be able to provide some more food for thought. I am not trying to derail the thread, although a lot of this post doesn't directly concern realism but player retention. People have been talking about both up to this point, though.
People gaining and losing interest in any game may have also something to do with other gaming titles that have popped up. Are there games similar enough to GoIO that might have an effect on GoIO? To give an example, has Dota 2 caused a change in LoL player retetion, and if so, has the change been brief or consistent? Has the opposite happened? Were there patches that caused a surge from one game to another? Possibly, but investigating questions like takes a lot of time. Personally I haven't seen many games like GoIO, so it might be fair to treat it as more or less a niche. Despite this, popular titles that pop up will have some gamers spending time on them instead of their old games, even if the games are very different. There have been some GoIO players i know playing a lot of Titanfall recently, for instance.
There are also obviously a lot of other things that can affect a game's "overall popularity", many of which have been discussed in this thread. Basically, even though suggesting possible causation between two different things can sometimes be reasonably accurate, one should be careful when making broad assumptions. And finally, I'm writing this post to give my thoughts on the issue, and in a best case scenario, talk through these posts to you, the others, and maybe even the devs about something that may not have been talked about too much as of late. No, not everyone will like reading a wall of text. That's why there's a tl;dr.
I know there's a lot of people on the internet nowadays that can't be bothered to read much more than a few sentences (and to be fair I have a feeling that there are even people who have skipped the post up to this point and will just scroll to the end after reading this), but I hope I can reach at least a few people regardless of that. I've done my best to keep the post coherent through formatting.
Some reasons why I think some people, especially new players, prefer other games to GoIO
Game features and the learning curve, new players vs vets. Has the lack of matchmaking been detrimental to the game in terms of player retention? In many other online games I've played, I've stood a bigger chance against experienced opponents. In games like Counter-Strike,I can pick up a weapon and one-shot an enemy regardless of his skill. I can get the money to buy a weapon like this in a few minutes, even if my team is losing. Counter-Strike only recently introduced matchmaking and in my eyes has done extremely well so far without it, mainly because of this. Also in DOTA 2, one well placed spell can be either practically or literally the end of an enemy hero, regardless of skill. Not so in Guns of Icarus. I started playing this game with a couple of friends, I'm the only one of the 5 who stayed as an active player. The others still like to play if we get the whole gang going, mainly because there is a very large gap between the expected or required and the actual amount of teamwork that takes place within "pick-up-crews", especially with low level players.
Basically, as a new player, I was essentially completely powerless against people who used teamwork, as I didn't know how the game mechanics worked yet, much less how to utilize our strengths together as a crew or even a team of ships. I could ask people how things work, but this would basically only work in game if there was a helpful player in my crew as I rarely had time to type in match chat, nor did I expect people to reply through it. Novice games balance things out as far as player experience goes, but as there are in my experience very, very rarely experienced people (CAs or teachers) in there, it's "the blind leading the blind" to quote NoWuffo, another forum user and a CA. People are sometimes eager to get into "real matches" partly because of this, partly because there are often very few novice matches around, partly because they want to play with "good people" for one reason or another, and partly because you cannot customize ship loadouts in novice matches. There may be other factors, but I consider these the most important ones.
Remember that a lot of low level players, especially from non-english-speaking countries, are not only inexperienced with the game but may also have some trouble being efficient teamplayers if they don't understand the communication that takes place in the lobby or in game, or if they cannot get a grasp of basic game mechanics in a relatively short amount of time. Also, getting a grasp of more advanced game mechanics is all but impossible if you can't communicate in or read English. That being said, most people playing this game do speak English, and there are no localization of descriptions, quick voice commands, or even tutorials unlike in most MOBAs, at least not at this time. I hear a Russian translation is on its way, though.
When talking about low level players vs. experienced players and the lack of matchmaking, Thomas actually went into a lot of detail and argued thoroughly on why he thinks his test results and arguments for implementing matchmaking are relevant here (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2682.0.html), more power to him. On a side note, I stole some of the formatting since I thought it was good. Anyone who is willing to do his best to prove he has an idea or an argument that is not too far-fetched can be a big help in my eyes. I read through the thread, and was not overly surprised at the results, having been on the journey from a newbie to a relatively experienced GoIO player within a few months.
What about the community? Would it have been possible to retain more players with a different kind of community in place? We have the CA system, developers who actively take part in community events and talk to the community, and a lot of friendly people in the community. Do we have our arguments and "bad apples"? Most definitely. Are they vocal enough and sufficiently great in numbers to stain the community? In my opinion, not really. Also, a lot of the issues that cause arguments can be dealt with in a civil manner on the forums. I believe we are in a very good place when it comes to the community on average.
In relation to this, the current lobby system divides people in two. Some people want the games to start quicker, some enjoy the socialization that takes place in lobbies. Muse have likely done everything in their power to both keep the game relatively social and introduce mechanics that keep the game from "dying out" (i.e. matchmaking). How will it turn out? Will we gain or lose more players with future changes? What about the general friendliness or Time will tell, but these are all issues that are thoroughly discussed not only by the devs but also by the community, also in this very thread.
Comparing teamwork, solo performance, and the learning curve of GoIO to MOBAs, a widely popular genre of games with matchmaking
To elaborate on the expected and actual teamwork, I will once again reference MOBAs, which is arguably one of the most wide-spread online gaming genres of our generation. For anyone who isn't familiar with these games or their history and wishes to read an article on it, try this (MOBA, DOTA, ARTS: A brief introduction to gaming's biggest, most impenetrable genre) (http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/2/4672920/moba-dota-arts-a-brief-introduction-to-gamings-biggest-most). Having played more MOBA matches than Guns of Icarus matches (some 2500-3000+ vs 1800), I'll try to compare them to a certain degree. Now, know that I've played 1500+ matches of both games/genres, and I know these games cannot be directly compared in many respects. However, as they both are games where you can either play individually or exercise teamwork, and one genre is wildly popular, it can be entertaining to think of the similarities vs. differences. So, as far as some general differences go;
- In a MOBA, a single player has a far bigger chance of making the game go one way or another, especially when talking about inexperienced players. Because of the so-called "snowballing" effect (getting a good start helps you do well later) new players can stumble across this and get a feeling of immense satisfaction as they see their team win more or less "thanks to him". Kills, deaths, and kill assists are all tracked and visible throughout the match.
- (Unlike the performance chart in GoIO which you can see for a few seconds if you play through the whole match. The performance charts are on top of that individual, so you have no idea how well you did overall, no good way to compare yourself to others. Not to mention you don't get gunner performance reviews as an engineer or vice versa.)
- There is matchmaking in most MOBAs, which makes games start relatively quickly and without much hassle, and which does its best to put experienced people against other experienced people and vice versa. It is possible for the match making system to relatively quickly calibrate your perceived skill, so "natural talents" or other games' veterans don't go through hundreds of "noob-stomps" as they progress through the system, unless they take certain steps to try to ensure that they do. Also, having thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of players doesn't exactly hurt the chances of there being more people with skill level equal to yours. The initial size of the playerbase has often been a concern when talking about matchmaking.
- While there are bots you can play with and against, the AI is activated in non-bot matches in only one instance I am aware of; a player leaving a novice (limited heroes) match in DOTA 2. In other cases, other steps are taken to try to balance the match if one team has a quitter/quitters. If the quitter(s) don't come back, players can even leave the game as they please without receiving a penalty, as the game may become a lot less interesting and fun at that point. Matchmaking stats will be recorded though, to prevent abuse.
- Due to the bigger playerbase, there are also more tournaments, more people streaming the game, more people talking about it, etc. You may think "So what? Yeah they're big." but a thing like this is like free marketing; you can reach millions of people with an expensive advertising campaign and have a lot of them buy the game, but you an also reach millions of people with active streamers and popular ESports events and tournaments, and that can have an effect not completely unlike having a constant, very expensive marketing campaign going on.
- In turn, in my experience bigger communities are on average less friendly. This has not prevented many games from being long-term hits, though. LoL, DOTA, Counter-strike, need I say more?
- Most MOBAs are free to play, which makes it relatively low-risk to try them out as a new player. However, they also usually have large enough player bases and development teams/companies to support the free-to-play model well, and the MOBA genre was already relatively popular and well-established before F2P became a widespread thing.
- While there are progression systems in both MOBAs (such as levels, masteries, runes, etc.) and in Guns of Icarus (class levels through achievements), the Guns of Icarus progression system could (and has) been improved a bit. A sense of progression is usually a pretty good incentive for players to keep on playing. A lot of new people still ask "how do I level up" in the game, too. Maybe you could have a small text "Number of achievements required to level up your class: x" in the performance sheet?
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ This is Alarma, the OWB - Official Warning Butterfly. She is here to tell you that the wall of text she warned you about will continue! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
-
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ This is Alarma, the OWB - Official Warning Butterfly. She is here to tell you that you are halfway through reading the wall of text! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
This is possibly the most important point I'm trying to make in this point when it comes to player retention in terms of MOBAs vs GoIO: despite single players being able to have a relatively large impact on a MOBA match, teamwork is also rewarded. While there are many, many more complicated tactics that can be employed in both games, simple tactics in both games are rather straightforward - attack the enemy together, ambush the enemy in the middle of them fighting your friend, hit an enemy with low health with a long range spell, etc. All these are arguably easier to carry out than their counterparts in GoIO, especially with people you don't/cant communicate with. Let's inspect the most simple tactic: how easy was it for me, as a new player, to coordinate an attack on an unsuspecting enemy with my crew and an allied ship?
Below are some things I might have wanted to take into account in GoIO. Some of them may be less relevant in some encounters. Some of them are also less obvious than others to new players. These will only cover deathmatch, as it would be even more complicated to talk about King of the Hill and Crazy King.
- What role am I playing? Am I the captain/pilot, and if I am, did I customize the ship myself, did I choose a pre-set or did I join mid match? If I'm an engineer or a gunner, do I know my place on the ship? Do the others?
- (In MOBA games, the roles and what people are supposed to do are often more or less straight forward in novice games. Usually two will go top, one mid, and two bottom. Sometimes there's a jungler, too. People can certainly choose less optimal heroes as newbies, but in League of Legends the majority of heroes can fill several roles, and also in DOTA 2 it's usually possible to "make do" even if your hero is less optimal. Also, if the "lanes" will not work as expected in the beginning, there's practically always someone who will point this out, in a more ..or less.. friendly manner. Finally, having say, 3-4 carries or 3-4 supports in a MOBA game is arguably less detrimental than having 2 pilots or 2 gunners on a ship in GoIO. It can even in some cases be advantageous to have that many supports of carries in DOTA.)
- What weapons am I using? Am I using a weapon combination such as gat + light flak, which is a fixed build in novice matches? Have I understood why I've been successful or unsuccessful in novice matches with my loadouts? If I am using for instance gat+flak, am I trying to get close and ram the enemy? Have I read the description of the light flak (or any of the guns), do I really know how it/they work? Am I aware of what an arming time is, and do I need to take it into account? How about gun projectile trajectories and how they are affected by ship movement? Does the gunner/engineer know of these things? If one of them knows, is he or she willing and able to communicate it to the other players? Do the engineers and gunners know which components to repair and rebuild, and when? Basically, do the 1-4 people on the ship know how the ship works? What about my allied ships and their crews?
- (In a MOBA, I need to know my hero's/champion's - usually 4 different - skills and how they work. It will help me to know others' skills, both enemies' and allies', but this is usually relatively straightforward since I can "inspect" an enemy's skills and see them in action, even when I'm dead and when I'm not in the combat situation myself.)
- Note that I will not always get immediate, clear feedback on whether something works or not, as I may not understand the difference between small and large hit markers (it took me hundreds of games to realize it wasn't random), yellow or red hit markers, primary and secondary damage, aoe, etc. I will also not be able to see how fast the enemy components' or hull health goes down, and tracking broken and rebuilt components as a new player can be challenging. The main feedback I will be getting is whether I or the enemy died, and especially in the case of other long range ships or lengthy encounters, I may not actually realize why the encounter turned out to go the way it did. I may also not be aware of the human player to experienced player to AI ratio on the ships.
- (In a MOBA, I will get instant feedback on how much damage is being dealt to me and the enemy. Keeping track of crowd control is less straightforward, but still relatively easy in most cases. If I want detailed information during or after the combat, I can browse the combat log. After I die, I can see a small screen saying what killed me and how much damage I took from all the spells and attacks that ultimately killed me together.)
- If I am the captain, how do I control my crew? Are my crew people who listen, people who don't listen, or AI? What classes are they? Do they have achievements that affect their gameplay choices? What equipment do they have? If they are AI, do I know how to control them?
- (In a MOBA, there generally is no captain. People work together as a team, with people having different roles. Sometimes it falls on one person to initiate the combat, but this is by no means necessary nor is it something that the other people need to control, only react to.)
- Even if I see a ship, I may be unsure of whether it's a friendly or an enemy due to the spotting system. Have I looked at the map and can I quickly use it to determine who is where, friend or foe? Who am I attacking with? Who am I attacking?
- (In a MOBA, there is a mini map system and a fog of war that makes identifying friend from foe relatively easy.)
- I likely cannot accurately estimate the chances of more enemies showing up. Have the other enemies been spotted? Have they been recently killed, and are they going to respawn? If so, where are the closest respawn points?
- (In MOBAs, you can see enemy respawn timers and the respawn place is always the same. They can employ methods such as town portal scrolls and such to get into combat quickly, but these are often things a player has time to react to, unlike an enemy spawning on top of you or behind you, especially in a 3d game with no birds eye view. (Yeah yeah, I know, we're flying, but you get the point)
- I have to communicate with the other ship on when to start the attack or estimate their movements myself since actually reaching the enemy takes time. How fast are the ships? Is one a long range ship, and the other a brawler ship? Can I trust my ally to provide cover fire from afar? Can I get my crew to spot the enemy for the ally? Can I keep track of what is happening to my ally, like if he gets ambushed when trying to provide cover fire? How will I react if that happens?
- (In a MOBA, I can often see my ally and my enemy on the screen at the same time. It helps to know what their capabilities are, but even if I don't know them, I have a pretty good overview of the combat situation, which helps me learn.)
- The steering mechanics of the airships. They take some time getting used to, so it's possible that the enemy will not only be able to see me coming from afar, but can also evade both of us in close combat and fly away or have his allies shoot me/us down.
- (In MOBAs, while there are a number of spells and items that affect a player's movement, getting to understand what they do takes a fairly short amount of time compared to GoIO in my opinion. You can't shoot the left leg of a hero to make him unable to turn right, for instance. You can't also shoot the enemy hero's weapon, making him unable to attack, although there are a few disarming spells and items with a low duration and usually a relatively long cooldown. Also, in a MOBA, I can usually see if I'm being crowd controlled as a new player. In GoIO, I was often wondering why my crew wasn't shooting at the enemy, and I couldn't keep track of the enemies destroying or disabling my weapons all the time. I'm pretty sure my low level friends had some trouble with this as well.)
- How skilled is my crew? Do the people know who will be shooting and who will be repairing? What if the enemy disables 70% of my components within seconds? Do I run away or keep fighting? What if someone disconnects in the middle?
- (In a MOBA, people disconnect more rarely than in GoIO in my experience, probably partly because there is a punishment system for leavers. I will often have more or less equally skilled people in my team, and as such, I can relatively safely assume that they will know how to react in different situations. The encounters also usually don't last as long on average than in GoIO, a certain fast-pacedness which helps me personally keep track of what has happened, what is happening and what I should do next.)
- How do I communicate my intent to my ally, and how extensively do I want to communicate?
- (In MOBAs, this is often done through "pinging" people on the map and using quick voice or chat commands. Some MOBAs also have voice communication. In Guns of Icarus, I can either use team text chat, or captain's chat. I find that low level people have some trouble responding and reacting to actual voice for some reason, which is why I would think it could be useful to have quick voice commands in captain's chat.)
- What is the skill level of the enemy I am facing? Is the enemy a low or a high level player across the board, or is he using a class that has a level that doesn't accurately reflect his actual experience or skill? If there is a high level opponent I am facing, is it the captain or a crew member? If there is a high level opponent/ship in the enemy team, is it the one I am attacking?
- (Reference to the spotting system. Also, in a MOBA, I can relatively easily see how well someone has done in a match by looking at the scoreboard - kills, deaths, and assists. It is, much like class level in GoIO, not a definite measurement of skill, but in my eyes a sufficiently good indication of the "danger level" the enemy presents to you. And yes, this could be turned into a discussion about initiator/carry/support k/d/a and junglers, but.. let's not.)
To be fair, I'll list some things a new player might want to take into account when coordinating a similar, relatively simple display of tactic and strategy in a MOBA. Some of these are also less relevant in some encounters, like in the list above. Most of them are fairly obvious though. I already compared GoIO situations to MOBAs, I won't be doing the same here as a lot of it has been covered already. I will instead provide some insight as to why I think these things are easier to understand than in GoIO.
- What skills do I have and how can I use them in a fight?
- (In most MOBAs, most heroes have four special skills and either a ranged or a melee attack. Most of the mechanics, while being diverse, are relatively easy to grasp. Like in GoIO there are easier and harder ships to handle, there are easier and harder heroes/champions to handle. I will also constantly be able to see the numbers; both my results when I'm damaging the enemy hero, when I'm being damaged, and my own cooldowns, to give me an indication of the pace at which I can deal damage and buff/debuff heroes/champions.)
- Does my ally's hero have crowd control skills, such as stuns or slows? Does he have buffs or heals that can help us? Will he/she use them?
- (In some MOBAs, if I choose to do so, I can see their allies' skills and read their descriptions when I click on the allied hero)
- Does the enemy hero have crowd control skills, such as stuns or slows, or does he have buffs or heals to counter our attack? Will he/she use them?
- (Again, in some games, I can check this by clicking on the enemy hero)
- Note that the answers to previous questions will likely be answered during the first encounter regardless of whether I checked the other heroes' skills before the combat or not, after which I theoretically will know to expect them in future encounters. In practice this naturally takes some time getting used to.
- Does the enemy have low health, giving me the upper hand?
- (Health bars are universally visible, and I can see exact values at least in some games by clicking on the enemy hero. Sometimes there are buffs that reduce the amount of damage taken, but this is basically always indicated, sometimes by a simple text such as "-80". There are more advanced damage mechanics, but a lot of the time I will only need to be aware of the magic and physical resistances of the heroes.)
- What are the chances of more enemies showing up?
- (In addition to there being a minimap where I can constantly see enemy heroes if any allied hero, unit, or building has them in their line of sight, at least DOTA 2 has quick voice commands for things such as "enemy missing", and in LoL people are supposed to call "MIA" when the enemy hero is missing, and as such can potentially be an as of yet invisible threat. There are also some heroes/champions with global spells so they can take part in the fight from afar, but these are more an exception than the rule.)
- How skilled is my team? Does it matter, or can we play this encounter more or less ignoring the rest of the team(s)?
- (When talking about new players, it can take a while for them to react to situations. Oftentimes a relatively successful "gank" (coordinated surprise attack) leaves little room for the target's teammates to react.)
- How do I communicate my intent to my ally?
- (In most MOBAs I have played, there are quick commands and so called "pings" that you can use to communicate your intent in a simple and efficient manner. Is a friend next to you in the forest, and do you want to kill an anemy? Click on your friend to ping him so he can see something is up, and write "go" or "come" in the chat if you want. Most people will pick up on this. There are also quick commands in DOTA for "fall back", and the majority of the community has also picked up on just writing "b" if they are falling back.
- What is the skill level of the enemy I am facing?
- (Matchmaking will do its best to minimize the skill difference, and while it is not foolproof, it is reasonable to expect that the enemy is more or less equally skilled. I can also take steps to see the enemies' experience - player matches or player level - in most cases. In addition, I can relatively quickly determine the abilities and the danger a certain hero/champion presents to me to a certain degree when I see them in a fight or two, and although this danger level will likely change throughout the game, it is not unreasonable for me to be able to keep track of how they are doing, even as a new player.)
Now, as you might notice from this, MOBAs have a lot of mechanics that help new players with the learning curve. I'm not going to talk about FPSs over here, since a lot of us are likely familiar with them and they are usually even easier to get into. Yes, there are hundreds of different skills in MOBAs, and more than a hundred champions/heroes in the two biggest MOBAs, and yes, this takes some time getting used to. It was one of the main reasons I stayed away from MOBAs for a long time. There are "novice matches" at least in DOTA 2 though, where all the players can choose from a pool of some 20 heroes that are relatively straight forward to play. In Guns of Icarus, we have the tutorials, and we have some players who are willing to help people out. However, seeing real, immediate results, reading descriptions, asking questions, and investigating the game mechanics when not in game all have different "thresholds". Some people can't be bothered to investigate game mechanics, or ask questions (especially since they are not guaranteed to get answers), or even read descriptions. Unfortunately, a lot of people nowadays are all about immediate, observable results. Most MOBA games are good at delivering this.
Read from here if you only want to read the realism argument
Coming back to the topic at hand, realism. I wasn't here before the big realism patch, so I can't comment on the actual changes. However, I personally feel that the current system is a relatively good balance between realism and fun. I generally need to be a decent pilot with a decent crew if I want to have a decent shot at success. If the enemy has an AI/very low level crew or a powder monkey captain, it's not unreasonable to expect less of a challenge than against a seasoned pilot+crew. However, I can also bring more experienced pilots/crew down if me and my crew coordinate well enough together, even though this may be very challenging. This is important in my eyes, especially now that we have no matchmaking in place. The game does not revolve, of course, around 1v1. However, talking about teamwork between ships would make this wall of post even longer.
To put it simply, I probably wouldn't like to see "dogfighting" in the game. The Squid could use a slight maneuverability buff to make it more widely used, but other than that I feel maneuvaribility is in a relatively good place. Also, it is something that new players could have better tutorials about, especially how engine(s')/balloon health, piloting tools and ship mass affect it.
Also, on the realism of weapons; I'm not sure if it is too realistic that you need dozens of high-powered field gun projectiles to completely puncture/destroy a balloon, if it only takes a few shots to penetrate hull armor and practically all other components can be one-shot with it (no, we don't know how the balloon's internal mechanics work "lore-wise", but I'm not sure that's relevant to the discussion at hand). Nor does it seem realistic that you can't kill or harm anyone, only destroy their ships. Gaming should in my opinion never be too much about realism; even games such as Sims, IL-2 Sturmovik and Operation Flashpoint, games that are supposed to "simulate" living and combat to a certain degree, sacrifice realism in favor of gameplay. I don't think this is a problem, and I think few people would argue with this. However, the discussion of realism vs gameplay can be a fruitful one regardless. Sometimes the scales are tipped too much for some players along with some changes/patches, which has likely been the case here. There's a very large grey area.
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ This is Alarma, the OWB - Official Warning Butterfly. She is here to tell you that the wall of text she warned you about is over! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
-
TL;DR;
I've tried to argue why I think GoIO has some issues with player retention compared to some successful games, including MOBA titles. Basically, getting to know and initially understand MOBA encounters can be rather simple when compared to getting to know and initially understand GoIO encounters. It can also be a lot easier to beat experienced players in many other successful games, which has in my opinion been especially important with for instance Counter-strike back when it had no matchmaking. I wasn't here to see the less realistic ship mechanics, but I think we're in a relatively good place now when it comes to balance between realism, fun, and the importance of the teamplay aspect. I also don't think realism is the biggest problem when thinking about how many people buy this game, and how many keep playing it. And no, that does not mean we should ignore it completely.
I also think this game and its community are awesome and this is a large reason why me and a lot of others do our best to contribute to them.
-
On a side note, I had a moderator split the realism thread and add these posts to a new thread, as the old one had lost a lot of its purpose. Hopefully we will get some discussion going on here! I think the topic of player retention is very important not only to the developers, but to the rest of us also, who would love to see the community live long and prosper.
-
I shouldnt have scrolled down.
I was like "Yeah, got my snack, screen, full and ready to read but then i scrolled down out of curiosity and im like "sun of a betch".
So, what i have to say is not from EVERYthing you have said.
Most of what you are talking about, or part of it is the feeling in reaction and player inputt.
There is not much that the game rewards the player with. There is, but it is never confirmed. You have to go to the progress, then rewards section and see what you have been rewarded for playing the game. Not only reward, there really isnt a grand confirmation about what you are doing ingame. For example, kills and destruction is mostly set on the top left corner. So if i stole a kill, yeah it feels good. Doesnt matter, but it feels good. And there is nothing to tell me that my ship got the kill, just the upper left corner.
Same goes for when you win or loose a match. The VICTORY or DEFEAT text isnt as celebrated as it should be for the viewpoint of a player. The music is understating the victory or the defeat. I mean ive learnt to identify which song is what but its not impactfull enough for a DEFEAT or VICTORY to notice it correctly.
In Titanfall, when you win, you get a Victory but on loss you get a muted Defeat
While here in Goio it is colorless and doesnt really make sure you know exactly what just happened.
Im not saying Goio should have this, it is just an example.
Another thing is Tool use, which they are actually trying to apply to the game. Tool use in the future will show some kind of sign of it being used (As seen once in the dev app). Because right now, the engineers on the ship dont exactly have any idea why the baloon or engines are getting damaged. Maybe it is best not to know and just repair, but it is just another example on how impactless the game feels for players.
I want to revert back to music as i feel like that is the best form of impact they can deliver to the game without making it too gamey.
A dynamic song on kill, or on death can make them dramatic enough for everyone to notice. Engaging players that something is wrong, or Success!
When the ship gets impact damage (Ship collision, terrain, mines), the music can start to haze itself in a way that it evokes the emotion of no control.
If the ship has ALOT of fire, an intense song starts to give the player an understanding that your in deep shit.
Or a harpoon latching onto your ship gives a warning soundclip of lets say a horror violin scare.
Explosive weapons from your ship hitting an enemy ship on their armor down can have small musical impact on each impactfull hit.
Or when your hull health is down and your screen is going red, a song may also signify the danger by slowly muting everything for a high pitched sound (Like Flash bang from counterstrike) the more damaged you are.
This is something you have alot of in Dota, or League of Legends with more gamey sound effects and voice overs.
Counter Strike Global offencive has music that indicates exactly what is going on.
Goio can rely on music which further makes the experience both cinematic, fun or engaging, gamey in some sense without touching the realism.
What GOIO is doing right in these terms is some bits of music with the drums. And how the guns shoot. So each ammo has different effects and sound. Along with when they hit, they show if it was a bad shot under arming time. You know, the hit markers getting red or not etc.
-
I shouldnt have scrolled down.
I was like "Yeah, got my snack, screen, full and ready to read but then i scrolled down out of curiosity and im like "sun of a betch".
So, what i have to say is not from EVERYthing you have said.
Most of what you are talking about, or part of it is the feeling in reaction and player inputt.
There is not much that the game rewards the player with. There is, but it is never confirmed. You have to go to the progress, then rewards section and see what you have been rewarded for playing the game. Not only reward, there really isnt a grand confirmation about what you are doing ingame. For example, kills and destruction is mostly set on the top left corner. So if i stole a kill, yeah it feels good. Doesnt matter, but it feels good. And there is nothing to tell me that my ship got the kill, just the upper left corner.
Same goes for when you win or loose a match. The VICTORY or DEFEAT text isnt as celebrated as it should be for the viewpoint of a player. The music is understating the victory or the defeat. I mean ive learnt to identify which song is what but its not impactfull enough for a DEFEAT or VICTORY to notice it correctly.
In Titanfall, when you win, you get a Victory but on loss you get a muted Defeat
While here in Goio it is colorless and doesnt really make sure you know exactly what just happened.
Im not saying Goio should have this, it is just an example.
Another thing is Tool use, which they are actually trying to apply to the game. Tool use in the future will show some kind of sign of it being used (As seen once in the dev app). Because right now, the engineers on the ship dont exactly have any idea why the baloon or engines are getting damaged. Maybe it is best not to know and just repair, but it is just another example on how impactless the game feels for players.
I want to revert back to music as i feel like that is the best form of impact they can deliver to the game without making it too gamey.
A dynamic song on kill, or on death can make them dramatic enough for everyone to notice. Engaging players that something is wrong, or Success!
When the ship gets impact damage (Ship collision, terrain, mines), the music can start to haze itself in a way that it evokes the emotion of no control.
If the ship has ALOT of fire, an intense song starts to give the player an understanding that your in deep shit.
Or a harpoon latching onto your ship gives a warning soundclip of lets say a horror violin scare.
Explosive weapons from your ship hitting an enemy ship on their armor down can have small musical impact on each impactfull hit.
Or when your hull health is down and your screen is going red, a song may also signify the danger by slowly muting everything for a high pitched sound (Like Flash bang from counterstrike) the more damaged you are.
This is something you have alot of in Dota, or League of Legends with more gamey sound effects and voice overs.
Counter Strike Global offencive has music that indicates exactly what is going on.
Goio can rely on music which further makes the experience both cinematic, fun or engaging, gamey in some sense without touching the realism.
What GOIO is doing right in these terms is some bits of music with the drums. And how the guns shoot. So each ammo has different effects and sound. Along with when they hit, they show if it was a bad shot under arming time. You know, the hit markers getting red or not etc.
That's a pretty good point, with the colour of the victory/defeat texts and the sound. This is actually as far as I know the very reason that slot machines function the way they do - a lot of people are drawn to the immediate audiovisual feedback they get when they win. The bigger the win, the more prominent the DINGDINGDINGs and the flashing lights.
If slot machines also needed you to check the "Games left/Wins" display (or whatever it's called in English) every time you won or lost, not nearly as much people would be playing them. :)
As you put it, it's the feeling in reaction and player input. Feelings are a very, very powerful thing, and people may not always even realize when their feelings are being manipulated - for the lack of a less sinister word - when it comes to media, games, or even slot machines.
Maybe it would be a good idea to add some music, as Crafeksterty suggested, at least to victories and defeats, and maybe even some more subtle audio cues on kills and deaths or something similar? And although it could be hilarious to hear this (disclaimer: 4 sec screen capture of a screaming girl apparently from the movie Psycho, with the violin horror effect) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfthzU3V4zo) every time I get harpooned, I believe there are a lot of people here who wouldn't necessarily like too much change, so maybe start with baby steps. :)
-
We'll I for one don't think Muse should worry with player retention untill existing player retention makes servers too slow.
-
Regarding retention in Counter Strike, the only reason I play it now is because of matchmaking. I can guarantee getting in a decently good game fairly quickly with friends. I could never do that before unless I found a really good server and stuck with the community. Right now GoIO is like the dedicated server, but there is only so much you can do under that model. If the game wants to grow it needs something more flexible.
-
We'll I for one don't think Muse should worry with player retention untill existing player retention makes servers too slow.
I'm not really sure what to make of this. I'm curious as to why you think this way? I feel like player retention is a very important aspect to any game developer - and especially to an indie developer without a widely established playerbase - that wants to be successful.
-
Yes but high amount of players is making servers go slow or have large lag issues. Thus far the solution was to wait for the number of players to drop aftehr the sales - witch is counterintuiative if you actualy want to keep the players. I don't know is it server issue, or data center issue of the issue of the ISP providing internet to the data center, but it's a serious issue that detracts from the enjoyment of the game.
-
Yes but high amount of players is making servers go slow or have large lag issues. Thus far the solution was to wait for the number of players to drop aftehr the sales - witch is counterintuiative if you actualy want to keep the players. I don't know is it server issue, or data center issue of the issue of the ISP providing internet to the data center, but it's a serious issue that detracts from the enjoyment of the game.
I hear you, after being disconnected from the game and seeing multiple "Steam service unavailbale" messages multiple times in the past days, connection problems can be annoying.
However, it is not completely counterintuitive to wait for the number of players to drop down after the sales. We were given an example in junior high about economics, and especially small-scale service providers. It went a little bit like this;
Hundreds of years ago, a tailor was running a family shop. They had one machine to help them make clothes, and they were doing ok. They weren't generating huge amounts of profit, but they certainly weren't making a loss either. One day, they get an order from no other than the king of their country himself. He needs thousands of specifically tailored clothes for a royal party, and needs them within one month. He has contacted the tailor because he knows he has the skill and the technology to make such clothes.
The tailor now has a problem. He has two options. Either he spends a lot of money to purchase new machines and hire new staff, so that he can fulfill his king's order, or he has to decline the order, and would therefore not get the vast sum of gold the king would offer him for his services. He would also very likely get bad publicity if the story came out. If he chooses to purchase the new machines and hire the new staff, what will he do with them after the order has been delivered? These machines would likely cost as much or very likely even more gold than the king would reward him with, not to mention staff wages. He could certainly use the machines later, but would he actually need that many machines later - ever? Could he sell them? How much money would he get, and how time consuming would it be? Would the pros outweigh the cons?
I've thought of this scenario every time I see people complaining about game developers not buying a lot of servers to handle launch/patch/expansion days. For a (usually) limited amount of time, the servers are completely overloaded and the discussion boards are flooded with complaints, but it dies down as soon as the number of people trying to play the game simultaneously drops to the "normal" level.
As such, it's not always the smartest option to adjust to the largest order of royal clothes - or the highest possible number of simultaneous players.
Furthermore, games that have their playerbase multiplied during a sale are very often in my experience indie games. Large, successful games that get loads of new players during a sale usually have a lot of server capacity, and are trying to perhaps make up for the "unused machines" - make up for the players that have stopped playing the game. Also, these sales of successful games usually have the games still cost a lot more than indie games that are on sale; I've often seen sales of indie games for $1-$5, and also often seen sales of successful games for $15-$30. Sometimes this is not exactly true, as was with the case with The Secret World, a very well made online MMO with a (in my opinion) simply amazing storyline and dialogue in multiple languages.. but it ended up being a flop. The publishers were prepared for a flood of players.. but it never happened. First they had to get rid of the monthly subscription, then cut staff, decreasing the rate of content updates. There have also been many sales since, and the playerbase has been fluctuating, but it never really was what it should have been.
One thing I've been wondering about is why especially large developers / game companies don't at least rent extra server capacity so they wouldn't face the huge negative publicity that comes from server overload. Think Sim City, for instance. I'm not an expert on this, but I would really like to hear their point of view about this. Of course indie developers could also probably employ this strategy, but it would likely cause a bigger impact on their budget compared to a gaming company with an annual turnover of millions of billions of dollars.
-
I don't think the MOBA to GOIO comparison is that great. Individual stats in a MOBA are easier to track since all players succeed (kill an enemy hero) or fail (die) as individuals. In GOIO a crew succeeds or fails together. There is no algorithm to tell if an individual player's actions were responsible for the victory or defeat.
The MVP could have been the engineer who did nothing for most of the match but kept the ship alive during a critical moment, the captain who decided to regroup with his ally instead of meat grind, or the gunner whose knocked out the enemy ship's gun right as it was about to get a kill. The importance of these actions can't be recorded in the game log. It is up to the captain, crew, and sometimes the enemy to give recognition for exceptional behavior.
MOBA's are like baseball where an individual's performance directly effects the game's results in a traceable way. The number of home runs, strike outs, and catches can be tracked. Where as GOIO is more like football (American) and to a certain degree football (proper). The guy who runs into the end zone and the guy who throws the ball get most of the glory, but without the every single member of the team doing their job, nobody wins.
-
I don't think the MOBA to GOIO comparison is that great. Individual stats in a MOBA are easier to track since all players succeed (kill an enemy hero) or fail (die) as individuals. In GOIO a crew succeeds or fails together. There is no algorithm to tell if an individual player's actions were responsible for the victory or defeat.
The MVP could have been the engineer who did nothing for most of the match but kept the ship alive during a critical moment, the captain who decided to regroup with his ally instead of meat grind, or the gunner whose knocked out the enemy ship's gun right as it was about to get a kill. The importance of these actions can't be recorded in the game log. It is up to the captain, crew, and sometimes the enemy to give recognition for exceptional behavior.
MOBA's are like baseball where an individual's performance directly effects the game's results in a traceable way. The number of home runs, strike outs, and catches can be tracked. Where as GOIO is more like football (American) and to a certain degree football (proper). The guy who runs into the end zone and the guy who throws the ball get most of the glory, but without the every single member of the team doing their job, nobody wins.
That is both true and a little bit untrue. While in a MOBA, it is far easier to track individual performance (tracking kills, deaths and assists is enough), the problem I think GoIO has in comparison that it offers no way to track relative individual performance. When I'm thinking MOBAs k/d/a, I'm thinking kills/component destroys/accuracy for gunners, rebuilds/fire extinguishes/buffs for engineers, and possibly crew kills/ram kills/time survived in combat for pilots? Note that these are just things I can come up with off the top of my head, but examples of things that could be used to determine the relative efficiency of the different classes. And no, this does not account for the gunning engineers etc. It's just a short and simple example.
You give examples of MVPs in GoIO, but suggest that tracking actual game performance in a MOBA is relatively straightforward. What about the person who destroyed the barracks/inhibitors while the others were killing the enemy heroes/champions elsewhere? What about the support who healed his team and kept the carries from dying? Supports who disabled the enemy so that their team could escape in peace? People who TP'd to critical fights in order to have the enemy retreat? What about the support who placed the most wards, saving allies from ganks and prevented enemies from doing roshan/dragon/baron etc. in peace? People who did the most damage in a fight, yet lost the kill to a nuker support? People who jungled most of the game and didn't get many kills, deaths, or assists, but got all the crucial kills and did the most damage in late game, perhaps even almost single-handedly destroyed the enemy base, because they were so strong? Supports that actually sacrificed themselves and died in order to protect a carry?
Where as GOIO is more like football (American) and to a certain degree football (proper). The guy who runs into the end zone and the guy who throws the ball get most of the glory, but without the every single member of the team doing their job, nobody wins.
I could go on, but I think you've gotten the point. Nothing in a MOBA that I just mentioned can be defined from k/d/a accurately, and that is part of the reason why watching competitive games with experienced commentators is so much fun for a lot of new players. Not only is it definitely and absolutely certain that you don't win a high level competitive MOBA match without efficient teamwork, there is a level of depth in the game (as there is in GoIO) that goes way beyond the stats.
The stats are there so that people can get a leaderboard. Something they can be proud of, something that shows they need to step it up. Something to make their performance more visible, something to make the game more fun.
(Disclaimer: your personal mileage and opinion may vary when it comes to stats being fun in games)
-
The stats are there so that people can get a leaderboard. Something they can be proud of, something that shows they need to step it up. Something to make their performance more visible, something to make the game more fun.
Stats are fine. That strange number that judges how fine is a problem though. I've gotten a score of .8 for Piloting during a game where we got only one kill and died about 6 times...but it failed to account for the fact that each and every one of those deaths was a several-minutes long chase that kept the capture point in our hands and/or prevented an enemy capture, allowing my team a 650-0 victory. That's not bad piloting: that was a case of knowing that my ship alone couldn't defeat the enemy team, and thus deciding to focus on surviving and trick piloting to hold the point as long as humanly possible.
The thing that MOBAs do is display a stat screen that shows all the information about total contribution. To use League of Legends as an example, it shows the following:
Kills / Deaths / Assists
Total Creep Kills
Total Tower Kills
Total Damage
Total Damage to Champions
Total Damage Taken
Healing Done
Gold Earned
Longest Killing Spree
Inhibitors Destroyed
Monsters Killed
...
...and so on.
What it doesn't try to do is put a value on this. It doesn't say "Oh...you only got 1 kill and 8 deaths, so you get a 1.2 out of 10." That's because those deaths might have come as a result of single-handedly backdooring the enemy's base while the rest of your team distracted them, resulting in a net gain for your team even though you died every time.
GoI might want to take a leaf out of that book. Don't give use a score: let us figure out the value for ourselves. Instead, simply display numbers:
Engines/Balloons/Armor/Guns destroyed
Engines/Balloons/Armor/Guns rebuilt
Ships destroyed
Total deaths
Fires lit
Fires extinguished
Points contested
Points defended
Ram kills
Crew kills
...and so on.
Even if you merely display a few...say, a players most impressive three at the end of a game. Just don't attempt to make a system that judges the quality of their gameplay by the result.
-
Even if you merely display a few...say, a players most impressive three at the end of a game. Just don't attempt to make a system that judges the quality of their gameplay by the result.
Well said. The same things you described apply in DOTA. There are numerous different statistics spectators and casters can track in a match, many of which are similar or identical to the ones you listed. There are even graphs showing how the game has evolved, so you can see if someone goes from being the underdog to actually being on top.
The problem with the k/d/a is exactly as you described; in a lot of public games, supports who performed near flawlessly may get a lot of flak since they actually want as few kills as possible - yet, the "crowd" usually just keeps track of kills and deaths. The supports certainly want to assist their team with kills, but as they are the player who needs the least gold, they want to let the carries get the killing blows (which earn them more gold).
Most of the time, people actually tend to more or less ignore the assists after the game and just go "omg noob support u got 0/4 u suck uninstall". The support might go "Well, I actually got 0/4/28..", and the first guy usually either goes silent, says that assists don't count, or simply insults the guy ignoring the argument.
If you had more sophisticated in game statistics or a playerbase that is universally able to read between the lines when it comes to simple statistics (let's be serious here; this might not happen), this would not be a problem. The problem, however, is that complexity breeds confusion; I believe there is a reason why the advanced statistics in DOTA for instance are only available to the spectators and casters.
-
Maybe I missed something when I (totally didn't) read the 3 OPs, but I didn't think stats were the main factor in player retention?
Either way, since the topic is up, I would love to see a variety of stats. It would tell so much more about how things went.
For instance...
Damage dealt to balloons
Damage dealt to armor
Damage dealt to hull
Damage dealt to components
Damage dealt by fires lit
Damage taken to *
etc.
This would be much more informative than "I destroyed some things". If you are shooting a gun the entire match, you quickly see where the major damage goes. New players would very quickly learn to shoot balloons with carronades, and armor with gatlings. Because after matches they would see that when they were just spraying, the dealt massive damage to armor. So next time aim at that.
Relating to the pop-up noises, it would be cool to see a point system put in place that does pretty much nothing, but lets you see what you can do.
Below or above your hotbar, have a line where notes pop up.
+10 destroyed enemy armor
+8 destroyed enemy gun
+2 repaired a component
+3 extinguished a fire
+15 destroyed an enemy
-20 destroyed allied (anything)
This would be similar to FPS style games where you get a score as the game progresses. What the score would mean is anybody's guess, but just the pop-ups would be gratifying.
Relating back to player retention though.
How often do people come back to the same game repeatedly for the same experience? Gaming is about experiencing something new. New content -> players come back for a taste. Most games don't hinge on getting you to buy and continue playing the game. Most games hinge on making other people like the game enough to convince you to buy it too. Companies get a good rep for offering new content that keeps players interested.
Indie games are sort of different. Most have bugs and continue to update as they progress. Still, we are in a unique situation where we are wanting to retain players and keep people around to play pvp simply because that is all we have. Most other games either have something else to fall back on, or have a hundred other games so similar that a player doesn't attach to a community, but the style of game. Players hop from game to game following whatever takes their interest at the time.
My grand point here is that as far as I know, the game is so unique and in such a strange place for player retention to even be an issue. I don't really have any solutions, but just consider how many games you played before you got to GoIO, and you never stuck to them like you do to this. Player retention feels like a problem, and may be a problem, but it is only natural, not an epidemic that lurks behind every update.
Just my 2 cents.
-
I know how economics work. You want to have enough capacities that they are enough 90% of the time. Problem is that after last sale it took a month to get to decent (but not quite normal yet). Means that if there is no more sales that the goal has allready failed. Issue if you want to increase the player base you need to increase you capacitiesr - especialy if you allready have your capaciaties 90% full.
-
I know how economics work. You want to have enough capacities that they are enough 90% of the time. Problem is that after last sale it took a month to get to decent (but not quite normal yet). Means that if there is no more sales that the goal has allready failed. Issue if you want to increase the player base you need to increase you capacitiesr - especialy if you allready have your capaciaties 90% full.
Do you actually have numbers to support this or just anecdotal lag evidence?
(No sarcasm here, actually curious)
-
I know how economics work. You want to have enough capacities that they are enough 90% of the time. Problem is that after last sale it took a month to get to decent (but not quite normal yet). Means that if there is no more sales that the goal has allready failed. Issue if you want to increase the player base you need to increase you capacitiesr - especialy if you allready have your capaciaties 90% full.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you didn't know how economics work. What I was commenting on was your claim that Muse as a company should not worry about player retention right now, as I myself do think it's an important issue for any game developer, especially indie developers.
A lot of the recent server problems have, from what I've understood, been Steam's problems. So Valve would be to blame here, not Muse. I'm not sure how the server mechanics work - if there are "low priority" servers that "go down more often" or something, but my point is that I'm not certain whether the servers are 90% full (or even mostly full, necessarily).
However, there may be some issues with the netcode of the game, which does present its own difficulties. Sometimes a poorly coded piece of software performs very poorly regardless of the hardware it's being run on (and no, I'm not implying you do not know this) and as such this might be something Muse could look into. However, code optimization is usually a low priority when there are larger issues at hand - one of which, I would believe, has recently been matchmaking.
-
I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.
Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!
-
I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.
Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!
What if we didn't need to implement complicated algorithms, but just tracked the stuff that is calculated in the game anyway? A little like the game calculates the seconds you use helm tools, it could calculate the amount of damage you do to balloons, for instance.
In an ideal world, the captain would be able to judge their crew and say "well done" or "please focus more on repairing next time", but not only does this have the potential of getting a little personal in case of critiquing, it is also something a lot of people don't bother to do. So if you were suggesting that game statistics can be replaced by peer evaluation, I'm not confident that is a viable option. However, if you meant something else, please feel free to correct me.
And as to your other point; I don't think the commendation system works "just fine". People give commendations left and right because of challenges that are unlocked through them, and you cannot give a "thumbs up" to a player if he performed well in your game, if you had ever, just once, in your lifetime, given a thumbs up to that player. Even if it was when you were level 1 and didn't have any idea how the system worked. So when you say it could be improved upon, I fully agree.
Finally, I'm sure you know that there are games that have both: a commendation system more sophisticated than the one in GoIO, and a means to track your performance relative to other players in the game. And while more features does equal more coding, I personally wouldn't like to shoot down either possibility in this thread since chances are the devs will read this and make notes, just in case they do end up having the time to implement new features in the future.
-
Do you actually have numbers to support this or just anecdotal lag evidence?
(No sarcasm here, actually curious)
No I do not have access to the appropriate metrics.
Most of the Aerodrome even was a joke becouse servers were crapping themselfs and were going eoither slomo or dropping people more than magnitude 12 earthquake (no insult meant against TO, it wasn't their fault servers were that bad).
I'm still getting regular rubber banding even as a hull engineer - witch is abnomral operation of this game. I know internet connection is fine, becouse I don't get dropped frames when streaming anything - (normaly 0 droped frames at about 10k sent frames). And a lot of other people that have fiber optics like me, and don't normaly have problems with this game, have been complaining - in fact there is a whole topic about it, even if it was started when things started to sort of nromalise).
-
Do you actually have numbers to support this or just anecdotal lag evidence?
(No sarcasm here, actually curious)
No I do not have access to the appropriate metrics.
Most of the Aerodrome even was a joke becouse servers were crapping themselfs and were going eoither slomo or dropping people more than magnitude 12 earthquake (no insult meant against TO, it wasn't their fault servers were that bad).
I'm still getting regular rubber banding even as a hull engineer - witch is abnomral operation of this game. I know internet connection is fine, becouse I don't get dropped frames when streaming anything - (normaly 0 droped frames at about 10k sent frames). And a lot of other people that have fiber optics like me, and don't normaly have problems with this game, have been complaining - in fact there is a whole topic about it, even if it was started when things started to sort of nromalise).
The point here being that amount of people on a server has no correlation with the lag effects. Yes, I'm pretty sure we all want the server to run smoothly, but you can't really say that the servers can't handle more people when the same issues are going on with less.
-
I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.
Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!
Didnt read much of the thread yet because of TLDR (im at work) but this stuck out. If we want to take something good from Moba's, why not just take there idea with the commendation system. Instead of giving a general thumbs for things varying from being a good team player, telling a good joke, or doing your job on ship, why dont we have commendations for "Fun to play with", "Helpful", "Good piolet/ gunner/ engie", etc.
-
I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.
Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!
Didnt read much of the thread yet because of TLDR (im at work) but this stuck out. If we want to take something good from Moba's, why not just take there idea with the commendation system. Instead of giving a general thumbs for things varying from being a good team player, telling a good joke, or doing your job on ship, why dont we have commendations for "Fun to play with", "Helpful", "Good piolet/ gunner/ engie", etc.
The commendation system has long been broken. When I first started playing, my impression was that if someone didn't quit early, and wasn't literally the worst person/player you had ever seen, they get a commendation. I still do that. I wasn't aware that there was anyone who actually thought about the commendations they give.
-
i think accurate match making is important for player retention in fact as wise man once said
I think what we need to do is overhaul the entire matchmaking process.
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 are based on things like, games played, kdr, points scored, damage dealt etc. A ranking system will help us make a match making system that would put players of 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 other nice thing about a ranking system other than allowing for accurate and useful match placement is that it gives players something to work toward. players who have goals are players retained.
-
also, i am all about a peer ranking system. e.g. a more comprehensive commendation system
-
I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.
Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!
Didnt read much of the thread yet because of TLDR (im at work) but this stuck out. If we want to take something good from Moba's, why not just take there idea with the commendation system. Instead of giving a general thumbs for things varying from being a good team player, telling a good joke, or doing your job on ship, why dont we have commendations for "Fun to play with", "Helpful", "Good piolet/ gunner/ engie", etc.
The commendation system has long been broken. When I first started playing, my impression was that if someone didn't quit early, and wasn't literally the worst person/player you had ever seen, they get a commendation. I still do that. I wasn't aware that there was anyone who actually thought about the commendations they give.
I feel the same way. I brought up the idea of an improved commendations system a few weeks back in a fireside chat, but it didn't get a very thorough answer since I asked it almost at the end. I think the answer was something along the lines of "that's interesting, we'll look into it".
I'm not sure how hard it would be to improve the commendations system a little. I can think of 4 changes:
- Have, say, three buttons for different kinds of commendations. "Fun to play with", "Helpful", and "Skillful", maybe. This gives people more reasons to commend players, and the players a better view on why they are getting commended.
- Let players track the amount of the different commendations they get, possibly both right after the game and in long term.
- Remove the challenges that are related to giving and getting commendations. In my opionion, players' only incentive for giving a commendation should be that they honestly feel he or she deserved it. Anything else removes from the main purpose of giving a commendation - a compliment, in a sense.
- This is a small but in my eyes an important detail: In DOTA, you actually have to click on a player's name and the type of commendation he deserves to give him a commendation. It's not something you can just "do when the game is over and you want to do something with your mouse", if you catch my drift. You need to take that small extra step, which reduces the overall amount of commendations but at the same gives them more value: if you were commended, the player really did want to commend you.
-
- Remove the challenges that are related to giving and getting commendations. In my opionion, players' only incentive for giving a commendation should be that they honestly feel he or she deserved it. Anything else removes from the main purpose of giving a commendation - a compliment, in a sense.
- This is a small but in my eyes an important detail: In DOTA, you actually have to click on a player's name and the type of commendation he deserves to give him a commendation. It's not something you can just "do when the game is over and you want to do something with your mouse", if you catch my drift. You need to take that small extra step, which reduces the overall amount of commendations but at the same gives them more value: if you were commended, the player really did want to commend you.
<3
Yes please, I feel like a scrouge when I dont give a commendation because its become that thing you do after each match.
-
I'm not sure how hard it would be to improve the commendations system a little. I can think of 4 changes:
Here's one:
You can only give 1 commendation each match, and you can give it to any player on any team, with no limits on commending a player more than once.
Notice you get mauled constantly from across the map by a lumberjack? Give that gunner a commendation.
Your engineer reads your mind and rebuilds exactly the right parts in the right order? Commendation.
Everyone in the match sucked and you had no fun? Commendation for the ground.
Er.... Don't give a commendation.
It would make you think a bit about who you are going to commend.
-
In my opinion, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the players to rate and manage everyone else's ratings. Players are inconsistent at best at accurately rating other players. If people don't participate, the system doesn't work. You can't realistically expect people to do work outside of playing the game.
-
Why do people (and muse) want player ratings anyway? Seems out of place in this game to me.
-
I like Redria's suggestion of one and only one commendation per match. If you are with a crew you really like, they will stick with you for more than 3 matches, and you can commend all of them. Otherwise give props to those who did well. If your team sucked give the commendation to some one on the other team, because they earned it more than the slackers on your side.
-
In my opinion, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the players to rate and manage everyone else's ratings. Players are inconsistent at best at accurately rating other players. If people don't participate, the system doesn't work. You can't realistically expect people to do work outside of playing the game.
Can you please clarify what you mean by having players rate and manage everyone else's ratings?
I believe what has so far been suggested here are mainly an improvement to the commendation system, and an automated (as in, not the responsibility of the other players) system that would calculate some key statistics (did you mean this by ratings?), which people could use to see their relative performance.
-
OP wrote about UI and general quality of life in mobas and compared them to GOI, concluding that mobas are more polished, documented and accessible to noobs (the game itself, not its community). The gist is that mobas spell out their mechanics a lot more explicitly via spell/item descriptions, whereas in GOI it's often hard to tell what's going on- is my gun doing damage? why can't I turn? why are the hit indicators suddenly red? Inexplicable hit indicators can be solved trivially with a tutorial, already being worked on.
We also discuss how to make the game more accessible/enjoyable by rewarding the player with visual or audio cues when they do especially well or poorly. When there isn't enough feedback it's commonly reffered to as http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWinnerIsYou
Existing examples of good feedback include the pretty explosion when you destroy hull armor, the pretty twirling bits when you get a kill, or the dramatic pose when you win. An example of abd feedback is the red haze over your vision when your have low armor and perma.
One thing that needs work is not enough visual feedback when destroying a gun or engine. It just starts idly smoking when it breaks, but to emphasize the moment there should a small explosion or a puff of smoke.
There are also meta-gamey rewards like achievement popups and increasing your class level. I don't like them because they promote grinding and sub-optimal play, but I understand, some people want an artificial carrot on a stick to stay involved because they don't find the core game enough fun in itself.
So, why do I dislike the reward of numbers at the end of a game? Because GOI is very social, more so than mobas- you're all literally in the same boat instead of scattered across the map. The numbers shed some light on how you did, and you get a warm fuzzy feeling if they're especially high, but imo you get a MUCH warmer fuzzier feeling when your teammates tell you 'good job!'. That's why I think a more sophisticated commendation system would be better than automated stat displays.
Also (this is more subjective) because precise stat displays kind of clash with the general steampunky cobbled-together aesthetic feel of GOI- the game feels more analog than digital. Notice how there aren't any numbers on the screen where you're playing? (recent addition of rangefinder excepted). It would be much easier code-wise just to provide your altitude as a number on a HUD, but for the sake of aesthetics muse implemented an analog altimeter on the helm. There are other examples like this.
So, I think it would also be aesthetically better if the post-game rewards were human/analog/commendation rather than computer/digital/stat display. If GOI were about spaceships I would probably be saying the opposite.
Of course implementing both systems would be best, but if I had to pick one it would definitely be human-given commendations.
Another idea- when giving a commendation, you should be able to type a note. Then those notes could be displayed on your profile page! and you would be able to sort/rearrange them so your favorite notes are on top! It would be so awesome :D
p.s. remember that both systems I talk about have NOTHING AT ALL to do with matchmaking. Matchmaking stats will be hidden https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3566.msg62798.html#msg62798
-
In my opinion, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the players to rate and manage everyone else's ratings. Players are inconsistent at best at accurately rating other players. If people don't participate, the system doesn't work. You can't realistically expect people to do work outside of playing the game.
Can you please clarify what you mean by having players rate and manage everyone else's ratings?
I believe what has so far been suggested here are mainly an improvement to the commendation system, and an automated (as in, not the responsibility of the other players) system that would calculate some key statistics (did you mean this by ratings?), which people could use to see their relative performance.
I was saying that relying on a rating system is bad way to determine how to match players of near equal skill. Far too many factors that are not skill related are in play when you give the job to other humans, rather than by a system looking at actual performance statistics. While it may be helpful for something like teamwork which a system would have difficulty measuring, it would be bad to use for most matchmaking parameters.
I'm not saying a better commend system wouldn't be nice for other reasons, but it should never player the main role in determining good matches.
-
Queso, please read the thread before replying. Matchmaking ratings are handled by muse, SECRETLY. The only thing you can do to influence your matchmaking rating is win games or lose games against players with compatible ratings. What happens in the actual game is irrelevant and SHOULD be, because it's impossible to quantify and rate someone's GOI performance algorithmically, while player feedback is unreliable.
The point is, we're not talking about possible mechanics to help people pair up into even games, muse has already (sort of) implemented those. We're talking about mechanics that make players feel more proud of their victories so they don't quit the game because it feels dull.
I feel player-contributed 'congrats' feel more rewarding than rows of numbers, and I explained why two posts earlier.
-
I'm actually proposing that a better commendation system could do both; act as a more accurate rating system for MM purposes AND make people feel more engaged
-
in addition to whatever automated stat tracking will be done (and should be on display)
-
I feel player-contributed 'congrats' feel more rewarding than rows of numbers, and I explained why two posts earlier.
No time for a longer post now, so I'll just comment on this shortly;
I feel the same way. Proper commendations, in DOTA and in other games as well, are more rewarding. The problem is that if the commendations are meaningful, people often don't take the time to commend others. This is exactly how it should be. If you are commended (complimented) all the time, the commendations can lose their meaningfulness. Especially many beautiful women I know (and to a lesser extent, handsome men) know what I'm talking about.
Statistics are neutral in the sense that they will always show your specific (not overall) performance accurately - how many kills, assists, deaths you have done in DOTA, for example. Statistics also never have a day off - they will be there regardless of whether your teammates feel like commending you or not.
Finally, they provide "negative" feedback as well - if you, as a gunner, kept shooting the gatling all over the place (including shooting when out of range) and didn't hit the enemy, your accuracy statistic would be bad. This is of course only true if the statistics would measure this.
In short, yes, getting commended in a proper way (in my opinion, not the current Guns of Icarus Online way) feels more rewarding than seeing stats. However, you can always fall back on statistics if you are given no commendations or if you have use for "negative" feedback (non-personal critique is often helpful when people want to improve).
-
Wait, how did we skip over the most relevant point made and jump straight into arguing about stats and ratings? The most important point made in the OP is that not only is there a learning curve to playing and using teamwork effectively, the game is significantly less friendly to players who have not yet begun ascending the learning curve.
In a first person shooter, even a fresh new player can headshot a veteran. Getting the jump on someone is good, but less important given the quick reaction rates possible. Both players can turn just as quickly (ignoring sensitivity).
In a MOBA, a more advanced player will naturally have the advantage, but can still be taken out by a poor move/stroke of luck.
In GoIO, the only time I expect to die against fresh players is if I take an exceptionally bad build, or I decide against better judgment that I can handle a 2 on 1. Alternatively, if my opponent is one good pilot and one fresh pilot, sometimes I underestimate how well the advanced pilot may use his ally. Keep in mind that I said die, not lose.
How frustrating is it to join a game super excited, get into a match, and get repeatedly shut out, to the point that you don't think you even did any permanent damage to your opponent?
Simply understanding how to maneuver a ship and deliver gun arcs to your crew gives an experienced player such an advantage over a newer player that pub matches are often decided before they even start, even if advanced players try to balance the teams. The other options a new player has are to not pilot until you have spent some time crewing and learning (which may not appeal to some people/doesn't allow 4-pack players to play together), or play in the novice matches (which would feel slightly embarrassing. Really? Let's challenge ourselves and try playing against people who know something.).
As much as the older part of the GoIO community is apprehensive about matchmaking, I think it will help a lot, even if it has only a rudimentary rating system. The goal isn't to deliver the best matches. It is to make the game easier to enter into, without ease being an active choice.
Get match-made into what amounts to a novice lobby? Eh, who cares? I get to play.
Get a choice of novice or non-novice? Eff that noise, I'm playing with the real players.
Naturally stats will drive the rating system, but I just want to make it clear that almost anything right now will work for matchmaking, and matchmaking will help solve one of the biggest problems with player retention.
TL;DR my stream of consciousness:
Due to the nature of the game, skill gaps are nearly insurmountable compared to other games. Matchmaking will help to prevent skill gaps within lobbies, which will in turn help keep players interested in the game, even if they learn slower than by playing in advanced lobbies.
-
Wait, how did we skip over the most relevant point made and jump straight into arguing about stats and ratings? The most important point made in the OP is that not only is there a learning curve to playing and using teamwork effectively, the game is significantly less friendly to players who have not yet begun ascending the learning curve.
In a first person shooter, even a fresh new player can headshot a veteran. Getting the jump on someone is good, but less important given the quick reaction rates possible. Both players can turn just as quickly (ignoring sensitivity).
In a MOBA, a more advanced player will naturally have the advantage, but can still be taken out by a poor move/stroke of luck.
In GoIO, the only time I expect to die against fresh players is if I take an exceptionally bad build, or I decide against better judgment that I can handle a 2 on 1. Alternatively, if my opponent is one good pilot and one fresh pilot, sometimes I underestimate how well the advanced pilot may use his ally. Keep in mind that I said die, not lose.
A very good point. The reason I didn't try to "steer" the discussion to one way or another is that I feel it's better to talk about what people want to talk about. There may possibly have been a slight (over)abundance of words in the OP, but it's for two reasons; it gives people more things/opinions to comment on, and it lets me be more thorough. Thanks for reminding us (me, too!) of the learning curve point.
But yeah. Back to the point at hand. I also feel (who wudda thunk? :))) that the learning curve in GoIO can be ruthless, and 4 of my own real life friends didn't play past the novice levels just because of that. Now that I've played some matches and gained some levels, I have the upper hand over novices. I often try to avoid flying "extremely powerful" builds, especially when facing low level players. Every 5-0 or 600-0 match I play where there are a lot of low level players on the losing team, I die a little inside. Ok, that may be an overstatement, but I don't feel like saying "gg" in those cases.
I hope matchmaking will fix some of this, as changing the learning curve drastically is not going to be a viable option in a game like GoIO where the development phase has already progressed very far. However, smaller steps can and should be taken. I have recently started a suggestions thread about improving in-game tutorials (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3823.0.html), where a developer has already graced us with his presence, telling us that the tutorials are being improved and that new suggestions are valuable.
If you have any ideas, feel free to pop by!
-
Queso, please read the thread before replying. Matchmaking ratings are handled by muse, SECRETLY. The only thing you can do to influence your matchmaking rating is win games or lose games against players with compatible ratings. What happens in the actual game is irrelevant and SHOULD be, because it's impossible to quantify and rate someone's GOI performance algorithmically, while player feedback is unreliable.
The point is, we're not talking about possible mechanics to help people pair up into even games, muse has already (sort of) implemented those. We're talking about mechanics that make players feel more proud of their victories so they don't quit the game because it feels dull.
I feel player-contributed 'congrats' feel more rewarding than rows of numbers, and I explained why two posts earlier.
I must have misread something earlier then. My bad.
-
do we still having training days/ nights? or a group of people who devote time to that?
(p.s. I wouldnt mind)
-
do we still having training days/ nights? or a group of people who devote time to that?
(p.s. I wouldnt mind)
I'm not sure about that - and even if we did, the problem is how are we going to get that message across to enough people? It is a nice idea, but possibly better put in action by having CAs / teachers regularly enter novice lobbies.
-
In a first person shooter, even a fresh new player can headshot a veteran. Getting the jump on someone is good, but less important given the quick reaction rates possible. Both players can turn just as quickly (ignoring sensitivity).
In a MOBA, a more advanced player will naturally have the advantage, but can still be taken out by a poor move/stroke of luck.
This is where the theory is wrong. The correct analogy in MOBAs would be a noob tream gatting a teamkill/ace on veteran team - and it's not going to happen.
-
In a first person shooter, even a fresh new player can headshot a veteran. Getting the jump on someone is good, but less important given the quick reaction rates possible. Both players can turn just as quickly (ignoring sensitivity).
In a MOBA, a more advanced player will naturally have the advantage, but can still be taken out by a poor move/stroke of luck.
This is where the theory is wrong. The correct analogy in MOBAs would be a noob tream gatting a teamkill/ace on veteran team - and it's not going to happen.
I'm not quite convinced that the analogy has major flaws. In a FPS, say, Counter-Strike, you have 2 teams (for the sake of the argument, 5v5) trying to kill each other. Same for MOBAs.
In Counter-Strike, you can kill one experienced member of the enemy team with a well-placed shot or a stroke of luck.
In a MOBA, you can kill one experienced member of the enemy team with a well-placed spell or a stroke of luck.
In both games, killing an experienced member of the enemy team alone is not only possible, but also very satisfying. And as described before, this is not the same as winning or losing the whole match.
In GoIO, you have 2 teams trying to kill each other. One inexperienced member (captain), or ship, has a very low possibility (as described by redria above) of killing an experienced member (a ship) of the enemy team.
-
But that's also kind of where the differences show between GOIO and games like a MOBA or CS. While MOBAS and CS are both semi team based games, an individual can in fact carry the entire team, and while there are certainly elements of teamwork in both, a team on GOIO is 2-4 ships depending on map and game mode, each ship is a team in of itself. If just one person on a ship is not doing their job properly it affects not only their ship, but also their ally ship. A 1v1 in GOIO is described as 1 ship against the other, however it isn't just one person flying those ships, but rather crew versus crew in which they must decided what they should repair or what guns to focus on or fire with.
What am I trying to say here exactly? Essentially, in games like CS or a MOBA type game a player can go and lonewolf it and come out victorious, sure in both you're placed in a team however you can effectively do your own thing as long as you're doing it correctly. GOIO is certainly more team focused then the previous two, of course you can hop into a lobby alone and play a few rounds like that, however EVERYTHING you do affects the flotilla as a whole, you can royally mess up in CS or a MOBA and your team can still win, while a mistimed repair can spell defeat or using the wrong ammo can extend combat and put you in a bad place.
-
The flip side of this 'problem' is that a coordinated team who are individually unskilled will beat a team that's good but can't work together, which is as it should be. I don't think GOI's greater emphasis on teamwork is really a big problem, it's the core of the game and what sets it apart.
-
I have to agree with Omniraptor, further building on this the essence of this community is in fact built upon the precedent that the game has provided, and that is you must work together in order to achieve victory. While sure we've had our fair share of arguments and the like, but the GOIO community is on average much more friendly than other games. In a podcast I was watching they were discussing Dark Souls II, using the covenant system as an example, the game calls the blue covenant the Covenant of the Meek, basically insulting anyone who joins it due to the fact that they don't want to PvP.
-
The flip side of this 'problem' is that a coordinated team who are individually unskilled will beat a team that's good but can't work together, which is as it should be. I don't think GOI's greater emphasis on teamwork is really a big problem, it's the core of the game and what sets it apart.
I agree. Having greater emphasis on teamwork sets GoIO apart from the other games, and in a good way. The same thing applies in many other team oriented games - flawless team coordination can and should beat individual experienced players. Because of this, individual performance - except maybe in the case of being a pilot/captain - has less of an impact in GoIO (as I've written several times in this thread), but this could be "balanced" through other means, some which I will point out later in this post.
I would still like to make a point that team coordination may not matter if one of the teams does not understand game mechanics well enough. This is especially true in the case of captains. A skilled captain with low level / AI crew with virtually no communication can relatively easily beat a well coordinated low level ship in 1v1 if the skilled captain knows how to use certain game mechanics to his or her advantage.
Note that I'm not saying the problem is in experienced people beating low levels, I'm saying this could be made less of a problem if low level players were more aware of game mechanics on average. In my OP I detailed some of the things I should have taken into account as a low level player, most of which I had more or less no idea of back when I was a low level. I believe during my 20'ish years of gaming, this is one of the few games where this is especially true.
Some of the main things I've personally argued in this thread are as follows;
- New players have a clear disadvantage against experienced players, and this is made worse because getting to understand the important game mechanics takes a relatively long time, especially compared to a lot of other games. This could be improved (and is being improved according to a dev) for example by improving the tutorials.
- While there is a lot of depth in this game, one of the problems concerning player retention might be that the game is not very good at giving immediate, obvious feedback. (Actually, possibly the only indication of this is the difference in hit markers - big/small, yellow/red. And even understanding this difference takes a lot of time for a new player who just hopped in a game.)
- Statistics and similar mechanics could allow for more interesting* gameplay, where you as an individual have a better chance of having fun and measuring your relative performance even if the rest of your crew/team is not communicating or doing very well.
*subjective
-
One thing we as players could do RIGHT NOW to make the game more accessible is make youtube guides detailing piloting basics like "don't meatgrind", "stay together", "focus on one target", "take cover to avoid getting sniped", "don't try to run if you're in a junker", "do your best to flank galleons" and lots of others.
Also general captaining basics, like "everyone should have a specific station", "everyone should be using proper tools", "EVERY ship needs a buff hammer", "call out important events such as enemy sightings or component breaks", "captain's job is not only to fly but also to manage their own ship".
Or we could make youtube videos detailing how/when to use specific weapons, and maybe similar guides for ships. Basically turn existing guides into videos with voiceover and pretty gameplay footage so they're more engaging (to certain players) than reading a wall of text. That way the info could reach players who would never bother reading anything on the forums, and if they had any questions there would be a link to the forum thread in the description.
-
"EVERY ship needs a buff hammer"
Hades-artemis pyramidion I actually prefer no buff hammer. I like my balloon to be maintained for emergencies, and I don't think a buff hammer engineer can maintain my balloon well enough. Also, it needs a gunner for the hades.
Buff hammers extend into the realm of advanced gameplay. Focus on getting engineers to manage their areas properly before you start making them also handle something like buffing.
But that's besides the point.
I agree that our discussion should try to revolve around what we can/should do as players and a community. We can't control Muse, and they have their own ideas. We are best off trying to grow the game through community efforts.
That said, personally when I play a game, I like to learn it and find my place before I look at things online. Any sort of guide, be it video, text, hologram, whatever, is something I avoid in any game until I have my feet under me. Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like I would rather base my skill in experience and grow my abilities by learning tricks from others, than to learn through guides and gain experience only as someone who already knows the community tricks.
I don't think any guide outside of the game will help keep new players. I think that in order to keep a new player, you have to get their interest through the game itself. Then their interest might grow as the connect to the community.
So while video tutorials would be beneficial for mid skill players looking to improve, I think that we first have to keep them around long enough to care.
To get a new player's attention, we must assume several things
Assumptions
- They are not yet interested in actively training/learning - only in playing the game
- They will not look at the tutorials since tutorials are not required - better to learn through experience
- They will not be prepared for the coordination needed to maintain a ship and a team
Working around this set of assumptions, what can we, as a small group of players active in the forums, do to make players more interested in sticking around and improving?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In a completely different direction, I had an idea that would require Muse support, but would be interesting.
Coded Retention Idea
Brand all players into one of the factions immediately. Your faction is displayed.
Factions may have allied factions. These are shown publicly in game.
Muse controls the alliances, shifting them about to keep things varied.
You may only play on ships with people of your faction/allied factions.
You may change factions on a limited basis. Start with 2 free changes. Max of 2 changes storage. Every week you are given a free faction change.
If your faction wins a game, any game, your faction gets one point towards a public leader board. Games with players from allied factions gives a point to both factions.
Clans are part of a faction.
The idea here is that instead of throwing new players into a bunch of random lobbies and hoping they figure out community themselves, we push them to get to know their faction. If one of the strongest parts of the game is the community, and the only way to discover that is by playing long enough to wander into one of the fun lobbies, then we are missing an opportunity. Give players an incentive to bond. Give them common enemies.
My basis for this is the factions in WoW. I know nothing about them, and have never played the game, but I know players get spirited about the distinction. Maybe that isn't the direction we want to go, but it would add an interesting facet to the game.
Clans each being part of an individual faction, with factions shown on the leader board, would give clans an incentive to more actively educate new players instead of just "go play the tutorial please", since the clans would want their faction to do well. See a player in your faction that is terrible? Get them on your ship and make them not terrible so your faction does better.
-
I agree that our discussion should try to revolve around what we can/should do as players and a community. We can't control Muse, and they have their own ideas. We are best off trying to grow the game through community efforts.
I disagree. While we can't control Muse, they have repeatedly shown that they do appreciate our input, and as such I would personally refrain from recommending that people only concentrate around community efforts. I believe this thread could be a healthy place for both dev suggestions and community effort talk, as sometimes the two can be intertwined (i.e. the tutorials issue). You have also posted a dev suggestion in this very post, as I'm sure you're aware. :)
I don't think any guide outside of the game will help keep new players. I think that in order to keep a new player, you have to get their interest through the game itself. Then their interest might grow as the connect to the community.
I agree. I've been thinking of doing these so-called video tutorials, but I feel a lot of the effort would be wasted if people were expected to find the videos from some thread on the game forums. Even if there will be a direct link on the new UI to the forums. It needs to be more obvious to new players in order for most of them to be able to see it before either getting bored of the game or figuring it out for themselves.
In a completely different direction, I had an idea that would require Muse support, but would be interesting.
Coded Retention Idea
While it is an interesting idea, I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. One of the main reasons people get "attached" to their faction in WoW is that both of them have very unique storylines and areas that the players actually play through during the game. Maps/areas, npcs, quests, even instances/dungeons and bosses. Not only that, the faction system is very easy to understand. There are only two main factions as far as the average player is concerned. Each one consisting of an alliance of subfactions, which basically never change.
You can change your faction (though this was only introduced years after the launch) but you will usually not need to do this, and if you do, you need to do it on the website of the game (and pay actual money for it, since it's a really big deal). The factions cannot communicate with each other either, as they do not speak a common tongue. This is in my opinion key in the "us vs them" thing. People found ways to circumvent the "communication block" during the initial launch by using ASCII characters, but this was very quickly fixed. The factions can basically only communicate with each other through emotes and very basic words (I believe the word "lol" has a fixed translation, so someone who learns it from context or from others will recognize it, for example).
Also, in WoW, if you see an enemy, he will still be your enemy 2 weeks from now. There are several, and I mean several nuances, and a huge amount of lore behind the factions, but the key thing is, you don't need to know anything else than "we're us, they're them, red is dead on PvP servers" to do well.
Simplicity is key here. Your suggestion sounds quite interesting, but I'm afraid a lot of the people would just get more or less confused by it. Heck, we even have players confused about the wanted/bounty hunter system, and that's pretty simplistic.
-
While I certainly agree that we need a more simplistic faction system, I do note that it should be complex enough to make it interesting, how we go about and do that is unknown to me at this moment.
-
Coded Retention Idea
I think it's a horrible idea. I want to be free to pilot any ship, and same goes for our clan. We regularly rotate thru difirent ships and difirent tactics, and geting locked to random selectgion of 2 ships would probably make us all quit Goio.
Also killing a ship is NOT like killing a player in a moba. it's like killing entire team of players in moba. A ship is not a player it's a small team of 4 players. Team size in MOBA's is either 3,4 or 5 players (Twisted Treeline in LoL, Bloodline champions, Defense of the Ancients map in any DotA style MOBA, respectively). Killing 1 ship means a team of 4 or 8 players beating entire team of 4 enemy players. That means all 4 experienced players making more errors at the same time as 4 inexperienced players do correctly. Assuming you could get a pro team to play against teams of noobs in LoL (lol is so far the only MOBA with serious pro circut), how often do you thin you'd get a team of newbies score an Ace against the pro team? Never. That is exact same as expecting a team od newbies take on a competitive team in Goio and kill a ship. Pro LoL players know when to engage, have insane skills and insane map awareness. Newbies might get some kills, but that is almost like loosing a baloon or an engine or a gun in Goio - it's something you can recover from even in competitive matches.
-
not to mention with only 50 players on at any given time getting a lobby going is already hard enough without worrying about if there are enough of a given faction online to even field a full boat (e.g. 40 of on faction and only 10 of another)
-
Also killing a ship is NOT like killing a player in a moba. it's like killing entire team of players in moba. A ship is not a player it's a small team of 4 players. Team size in MOBA's is either 3,4 or 5 players (Twisted Treeline in LoL, Bloodline champions, Defense of the Ancients map in any DotA style MOBA, respectively). Killing 1 ship means a team of 4 or 8 players beating entire team of 4 enemy players. That means all 4 experienced players making more errors at the same time as 4 inexperienced players do correctly. Assuming you could get a pro team to play against teams of noobs in LoL (lol is so far the only MOBA with serious pro circut), how often do you thin you'd get a team of newbies score an Ace against the pro team? Never. That is exact same as expecting a team od newbies take on a competitive team in Goio and kill a ship. Pro LoL players know when to engage, have insane skills and insane map awareness. Newbies might get some kills, but that is almost like loosing a baloon or an engine or a gun in Goio - it's something you can recover from even in competitive matches.
I feel I may not have explained myself correctly when I was making these analogies.
First of all, I detailed in my very first post that the two games (or actually, a game and two gaming genres) can not be compared directly in many respects. An analogy is flawed by definition; if it wasn't, it would no longer be an analogy, but the very thing it was being used to describe. I could have chosen a game that more accurately depicts teamwork between two units within a same team, such as Artemis space ship simulator, but that game is unknown to a lot of people so I had to choose the lesser of two evils and make my analogy based on a game/genre that was more widely known, yet didn't perfectly capture the teamplay aspect of GoIO.
My reasoning for choosing the two gaming genres was threefold;
- The genres were widely enough known so people could get an idea what I was talking about.
- There are enough similarities in the games to compare some things. For instance, if my friend says he would like a multiplayer team game where he can either play together with his friends or alone, I could ask him to try out all the three games/genres; DoTA/LoL/MOBAs, CS/team FPS games, and GoIO. In all 3 games, he would be a newbie. However, the experience he would get in these games as a newbie would be very different depending on which game he would like to try out. Apparently the two games/genres have succeeded in having players keep playing them after starting, whereas there are statistics to show that GoIO might have some problems in this regard. I'm trying to find out peoples' opinions on why they seem to be better at this than GoIO and am trying to present some arguments of my own.
- Both/all games are bought and played mainly by individuals, and it would be unrealistic to expect the majority of the newcomers to work well within a team, especially if they join games where the player experience levels vary wildly and they are not aware of core game mechanics.
Basically, the key similarities as far as this thread's intent (in regards to my OP) is concerned are as follows;
- Both/all games still attract new players today
- Both/all games are more or less team oriented
- Both/all games are played with the intention of having fun
The key differences, respectively;
- Both/all games have different levels of player retention, for various reasons
- Both/all games have different ways in which a new player can realistically expect to experience satisfaction/get a feeling of success
- Both/all games have new players experience different amounts of fun, for various reasons
Remember that I have been both a newbie and an experienced player in all these games/genres, like many others of us. As a newbie, I had a significantly harder time of getting into GoIO and the 4 real life friends of mine have all but given up on the game for reasons I've described in this thread - and yet, they all have tested out and kept playing MOBAs and team oriented FPS games. I'm not a statistician by profession but I understand 5 people is not enough to make a reliable statistic. However, it is an anecdote that seems to somewhat support some other peoples' comments and research about player retention in GoIO.
I believe we can all agree that GoIO as a game will live longer if Muse succeeds in increasing its player retention. This thread is partially intended to potentially help them out with this, possibly giving them some ideas and opinions to work with.
-
Forcing people to become part of a group sounds like a very bad idea to me as, this decreases the number of people you can pair up with for matches and the community is so small it can't afford that.
The best idea I can think of to increase player retention is actually the clans. This is a team based game so becoming part of a group is vital. Clans can teach new players all the tricks of the trade, and give them a group of players they can play with regularly.
GOI's current clan system is, for lack of a better term, pathetic! All it is, is a tag there are no systems to back it up in the game. Now I am no programmer or have any idea what Muses capabilities are so I have no idea how hard it is for them to upgrade and actually implement something, but from here I am just going to describe the clan system for a 3rd person shooter I used to play which was slightly different from the norm and something similar would go a long way in help GOI.
Firstly the clans had their own pages you could browse in the game, there was a huge list of all the registered clans. The page had their name, and a brief line of description, list of all members, number of games played won/lost, and score and rank if they participated in the ranked matches.
Anyone could make a Clan too... well sort of it required at least 5 founding members I assume simply to stop everyone and their mothers from making a clan and overloading the database. But it was super simple click "create clan" fill out the info and name then select 4 people from your friends list not currently in Clans and bam! there you go new clan.
The MOST unique thing about this clan system was probably the "request to join" I myself have never seen that in any other game. Anyway it worked just like a friend request send it to the clan and it would go to the clan leader and he could accept or deny. He clicks accept you're in, he clicks deny you'd get a message saying you got rejected. I never was a clan leader so I have no idea if these requests could become nonstop bombardment and be annoying as hell but systems could be put in place to limit that like making it so you can only request to join a specific clan once a week and only allowing one request pending so a person cant spam all clans in one sitting.
TOO LONG DID NOT READ!
Make an actual clan system! Important components being a clan list to browse and the ability to send requests to join a clan.
I think this would help player retention specifically because clans teach those who join them and add a sense of belonging. This is a team based game so you need people to work with but from what I have seen a lot of people jump into this game alone with no friends and get frustrated then leave :-[. The ability to allow them to request to join clans would allow them to work towards becoming part of a group quickly rather than the invitation only system which makes them feel excluded.
-
Sidenote:
Muse once said they are working on a clan feature. Will take a while till its finished due to coop and adventure but its being worked on.
-
Sidenote:
Muse once said they are working on a clan feature. Will take a while till its finished due to coop and adventure but its being worked on.
it's in the dev app already.