Guns Of Icarus Online
Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Kamoba on February 02, 2015, 07:33:13 am
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Hello ladies and gentlemen!
I'd like to address a small piece of feedback regarding the Experience gains of Guns of Icarus.
As wonderfully happy as I am that I now have my Elite pilot costume (Which is amazingly awesome!) I do feel that having only joined Guns of Icarus in October that the experience gain is a little bit too fast as I've near the pilot level cap with 660 matches.
The speed of which experience is gained makes being a "novice" almost pointless as you'll have hit level 7 within as many matches making the learning curve harder as the novice is so short lived (for the ones who stay in novice) that they're unaware they even finished Novice..
They then get pitted against vets, and start leaving after losses....
Increasing the level required to finish novice would not be a great help, but maybe scaling the experience rate would...
Just my two cents...
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I very much agree! I have seen so many level 20 something with less than 100 games played. This I feel somewhat makes the levels just an number as 40-45 will be gained very fast and as such won't carry much weight in showing who is good and not.
Simply put your level should be more representative of the time in game as that will translate somewhat to skill allowing people on a ship to get an approximate idea of what everyone will be able to do. Also I hate explaining how chemspray works to people between 20-30, they should have found it out long ago when they are on that level :(
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Becoming not-novice actually used to take level 3, if I remember correctly.
When was that? I believe that was back with lobbies of Icarus: The Classic edition *Free Broken Server list included*
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The old novice system had novice levels at 1-3, so 4 was when you were kicked out. However, the time it takes now to finish novice (I believe the achievement is actually rewarded at lvl4 instead of lvl8, hasn't been updated) is considerably less than it generally used to be. As a whole I've noticed level progression being a lot faster, around double that of what it was before for later levels, and even faster still for lower levels which is part of the issue occurring here.
I feel it may be more beneficial to set the novice system up not with levels but with match count. With that players with below, say, 100 (or certainly at least 50) matches could still play in novice games, regardless of level. This also helps players who choose to focus on one class instead of playing a mix of them. At the moment if I were to estimate it could take between 30 and 100 matches for a player to graduate novice (depending on the balance between classes played) with players focusing on one class at the lower end of that scale, rather an unfair way to do it.
An in-game tutorial for Chemspray could help a lot for some newer engineers too.
Levels have never been a good way to guess experience, I always find match count more useful but it's not something that it's easy to put a number on.
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Part of the problem may be the bonus experience from achievements - I have ~ 400 more games than Kamoba, for example, but he has higher rank than me in pilot. A lot of that may be due to the fact that I completed a lot of the easy achievements pre-MM without achieving level 15. Still, though, I'm not sure this is actually a problem. Constant leveling up is good for morale on the part of new players, so I don't see much of a problem with it.
Keep in mind that I've put close to 350 hours into GoIO, and 200+ hours into piloting alone, which is more than I've played Skyrim, GuildWars 2 and Borderlands 2 combined. Yet, I have multiple max level characters in GW2, have finished Skyrim's main quest a number of times, and so on. There are certainly those who have played more, but I'm not yet max level and I can't help but feel that asking players to devote entire weeks worth of time to reach max level is a bit elitist at best - ergo, I think the current leveling speed is probably fine.
And for those who say levels don't matter, they underestimate the influence large numbers have over player's egos. Certainly mine is affected the closer I see my rank creep to 45.
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The biggest problem with the fast level gain, is the novice players who have only experienced the game on one or two ships doing either only engineering or only gunning and finishing their "novice" status before they've even realised they were novice and the game play changes drastically from people mucking about on air ships to people blasting air ships out of the sky.
The jump between the novice and non-novice is huge, yet the level gap/time spent learning the game is near to nothing.
Level 12 gunners using only default ammo is a common thing.. Engineers with hydrogen extinguisher buff hammer and heavy at level 10 is also common...
People are not learning the game in the short time given to them before they wind up on the loosing end of a match and more often than any of us would like to see, rage quitting the game...
Remember novice matches mostly include two engineers running around like headless chickens trying to repair everything while a gunner shoots default ammo at any ship infront of him, the crew win and think they're doing well, so they stick together till they finish novice quickly, they end up one match against a random group of pub match players who know the basics and have one main engineer a gunner and gungineer... Suddenly the ship firing one gun is out gunned in a matter of seconds, that is no morale boost in the early game play...
Or they take a Galleon because "Big Guns!!!" Then the pilot fails to give any arcs... They get obliterated slowly...
The fast level increase is good for morale at higher levels yes (though still fast imo) at lower levels its for new players, who we want to learn and stay and make a legacy for themselves) something there needs to change.
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I mean, in that case the problem is the parameters of novice matchmaking, which could be tied to matches played rather than level. The actual speed of leveling would have no real negative impact in that scenario. Still, forcing new players to play novice matches is still something that I think is rather poor design with a small community like ours, however that ends up impacting pub lobby playing at higher levels.
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It took me several days, tens of matches, for me to graduate novice back when it was 1-3. I didn't know I had to hunt achieves to graduate.
It's taking many people 6 to 8 matches to graduate novice.
Just yesterday, I captain a crew of lvl 8s, who had one-digit matches.
I piloted a Galleon. They had never seen a Galleon before, didn't know how heavy rounds worked on Hwacha, and panicked at 1 stack flames.
We battled against two pyramidions, with a mid-range mobula on our side. It should have been a very easy match (Galleon-disable tank, Mobula-damage) because Hwacha is super-effective against pyras, but it ended up being one of the hardest matches I've won.
We need better tutorial. I want a Leaguish tutorial where the player is put into an easy, "scripted" bot match that teaches players as they play.
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I mean, in that case the problem is the parameters of novice matchmaking, which could be tied to matches played rather than level. The actual speed of leveling would have no real negative impact in that scenario. Still, forcing new players to play novice matches is still something that I think is rather poor design with a small community like ours, however that ends up impacting pub lobby playing at higher levels.
The novice match option can be turned off (which should probably be made more clear). If matchmaking can't put a player with novice matches enabled into a lobby then they get the option to join non-novice matches instead. There should definitely always be an option to not be in novice matches, but the option to be able to play in them should last for longer.
Without there simply being more players for the matchmaking system to work with there isn't much that could be done, except perhaps expand on the idea of novice games and split lobbies (optionally) further into different levels of play, but I can't see that working well due to similar issues and I don't think is a very good idea overall.
Slight correction to my earlier post, the "30-100" matches should be "10-40", or there about.
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Novices aren't forced into novice matches, Non novices are disallowed from joining them. It is supposed to create a safe space from the novices to experiment without getting killed 10 seconds into an encounter by a seasoned crew.
In spite of levels having no gameplay advantage they do effect how other people react to you. I will fly more conservatively if the highest level on my crew is less than 20, and I will micromanage anyone under level 10. If I am crewing I will not fly in a galleon or a squid with a pilot under 15.
The Match Making update that changed the levels forced me to reconfigure my expectations of players based on their level. If it were changed again I and I am guessing most players would change how they react to strangers based on their level.
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Novices aren't forced into novice matches, Non novices are disallowed from joining them. It is supposed to create a safe space from the novices to experiment without getting killed 10 seconds into an encounter by a seasoned crew.
That is the thing with novice players. In novice matches they are stuck with three ships (Pyramidion, Junker, Goldfish) with three predefinted and questionable loadouts while playing only one and the same gamemode (Deathmatch) on a maximum of two maps (Battle on the Dunes and Northern Fjords).
This doesn't allow for experimentation, exploration or any real excitement. I highly doubt that there is any excitement from people that just joined the game and play Battle on the Dunes, especially not when they can't do any of this "experimentation" during 10 games that doesn't allow any before not being able to join novice matches again.
So they join normal matches that have more game modes, more maps, allows for more ships and loadout variation and then they get "killed 10 seconds into an encounter by a seasoned crew".
Muse argued that novice matches have these restrictions to avoid silly builds like a four hwacha Galleon, which can be actually pretty deadly nowadays, but whatever, and to counter that novice players join normal matches to make these builds instead.
The problem isn't really how quickly they level up.
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I'm pretty sure new players love Battle on the Dunes, that's why it gets voted for so much.
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I wouldn't mind novice matches to be all they get until they have x number of achievements but that's just me, I acknowledge the player count is low so it might not work but I like the idea.
These achievements would cover the basics of the game and require things like; destroy 20 components with heavy clip, extinguish 5 components with chem spray, spend 30 seconds using moonshine, the idea being they'll get the achievements hopefully by using tools smart (probably not, its trial and error) the main idea being force them to get a few easy but fundamental achievements without any of the somewhat silly or difficult ones.
Also, why not have each gun tell you good ammos for them? if I remember correctly they each tell you about themselves already, is it too much to add in a blurb about greased rounds to the mortar?
Also, less creative solution but hear me out, increase the XP required to level at low levels? like, have each level require as much XP as getting to 8th itself does or something, if you get to 8th in 10 games now the number goes up to 80 which is much better I think
I would like to see the leveling at least for non-novices stay the same just because I level comparably slow (at 1100 matches) and I like the added pat on the back once in awhile, I wouldn't mind more goodies when I level though I mean you don't get anything at level 30? that was upsetting.. :P
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All those level 4's with 0 games played, xp from tutorial achievements is OP.
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All those level 4's with 0 games played, xp from tutorial achievements is OP.
Yes, that's a problem, half of novice is finished before even a single game is played ???
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Have shipped out with new crew in pubs only for them to deliberately destroy the Ship engines balloons you name it all in the Quest of achievement hunting. Which makes my loss count go up and not get the XP that should have been given. Why are there some players with only 600 matches + that can have a level 35 engineer a level 20 pilot + a 10 gunner.
1400 matches and have a lvl 45 engineer a 29 pilot and a sub 10 gunner. Rubs chin deep in thought
So Achievement hunting is still the way to level effectively? Humbug Had heard a rumour that a win = 1000xp and a loss = 100XP
This will explain that when shipping out with new crew who just break the ship and lose the match just for achievements is still biased.
It is beneath myself to bail on any match. Maybe that is something will look in to in the future. Just leave so don't A) Waste my time B) end up with more loses on my tally card. If myself loses with a crew who A) listen B) work hard at not losing, then am satisfied with that.
Just my thoughts and observation's.
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It is not just the pubs and new players who do it...
People who just buff and ignore repairs because of achievments happens often.
That's the most common reason people only fly with friends and clans..
Perhaps achievements should be less rewarding by themselves?
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It is not just the pubs and new players who do it...
People who just buff and ignore repairs because of achievments happens often.
That's the most common reason people only fly with friends and clans..
Perhaps achievements should be less rewarding by themselves?
Oh yes am all too fully aware of how selfish some players new, seasoned and achievement players are.
The hull buff being the worst. Hull break---->hull up-->> BangBangBangBangBangBang rest of the ship steadily breaks piece by piece :'(.
Hull re-buffed, saunter over to a ropey engine or gun then proceed to mallet it now the graft has been done.
Yes but am not against flying with new crew :) it's really good fun :). Have flown with quite literally hundreds 8) But those out only for themselves, well that kind of goes against what the game to me is meant to represent. Fine go achievement hunting in your clan and with friends but not in public lobbies at the cost of the other crew.
Again just merely an observation.
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It is not just the pubs and new players who do it...
People who just buff and ignore repairs because of achievments happens often.
That's the most common reason people only fly with friends and clans..
Perhaps achievements should be less rewarding by themselves?
Oh yes am all too fully aware of how selfish some players new, seasoned and achievement players are.
The hull buff being the worst. Hull break---->hull up-->> BangBangBangBangBangBang rest of the ship steadily breaks piece by piece :'(.
Hull re-buffed, saunter over to a ropey engine or gun then proceed to mallet it now the graft has been done.
Yes but am not against flying with new crew :) it's really good fun :). Have flown with quite literally hundreds 8) But those out only for themselves, well that kind of goes against what the game to me is meant to represent. Fine go achievement hunting in your clan and with friends but not in public lobbies at the cost of the other crew.
Again just merely an observation.
Very well made point, and I don't mind people hunting achievements on my ship as long as they do it at the right times. :)
Unfortunately there are selfish vets who claim they want to be the best at this game, forgetting the focus of this game is the team work and co-operation.
Achievements and levels do not make best players, working with the team, having fun and improving on mistakes made is the best way to play. :)
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I was a level 12 pilot before MM, it jumped me up to 45. But I've never tried to get an achievement. Except that jumping chiev.
I'd be in favor of doing away with achievements just so people focus more on the game. The best judge of skill is matches played. I see a lot of inflated levels.
I've never had a problem with people trying to get achievements at the cost of our success. I help them out, but not if it's something ridiculous like bringing a spanner as a gunner.
If you're having problems with crew chievment whoring run a tight ship. Make sure they bring your loadouts and that they aren't doing something silly.
If ya wanna be a chiev whore get on a different ship.
If they refuse to bring a loadout report them and leave.
Hull buff is always last priority after balloon, engine, and gun buffs...
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Achievment hunting is best done when the lobby is stacked. That way one team can deliberately Nerf themselves and still get something out of the match. When joining a ship it is courteous to try and win the first few matches before dicking about and trying stupid stuff for achievements and the Lulz.
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All those level 4's with 0 games played, xp from tutorial achievements is OP.
Yes, that's a problem, half of novice is finished before even a single game is played ???
Lvl 4 though quantified in the old level system would be equivilent to 1.33 so really its how they should be starting out if we were making a debate of this.
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All those level 4's with 0 games played, xp from tutorial achievements is OP.
Yes, that's a problem, half of novice is finished before even a single game is played ???
Lvl 4 though quantified in the old level system would be equivilent to 1.33 so really its how they should be starting out if we were making a debate of this.
The problem then is not the EXP from the tutorials then but instead a problem with the duration of novice period, which to be fully honest is only as long as it takes players to learn how to turn it off...
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Novice can last between ~10 and ~60 matches. 60 for people who don't specialise in a class and play all three about equally (while also probably not getting tutorial achievements), 10 (or even less) from people who do the tutorial achievements and then get a few achievements during their first few matches.
It's definitely possible to get engineer to lvl5 without playing a single match, may be possible to get it even higher.
I personally think that novice should be tied to match count rather than level since, especially at lower levels, it can be very different for how quickly different people level up. Having it tied to matches (50-100 at least in my opinion) would solve that, as well as not be as hard on those who specialise in a single class.
Comparing the levels in the new system to the old ones doesn't work too well either, it's so much faster even when taking into account the tripled level max.
The XP gains from levels 1 to 7 (gap between each level) are
2000, 3000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000
Won matches give a base of ~1000 XP with perhaps up to 500 extra for really doing your job 'well' (rebuild all the things for engineers etc). Take into account that the achievements at that level also give a lot of XP (around 2000-4000 I believe) and are fairly easy to get then you can start to see how quickly players can be kicked out of novice.
On the other hand this would make more of a difference if novice matches were actually formed by Matchmaking instead of mixing the lobbies, but that's a discussion that has been held many times elsewhere.
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As a recent graduated novice, I can share some thoughts about that.
It was definitively nice to have some time on a limited selection of ships/guns/build. It felt very overwhelming to have to figure everything out. So I disagree with the idea of experimenting. It would be fun though to have a "field trial" where you could face AI crew with a new build.
Leveling up is nice, and is definitively something that makes me happy because of the dyes and badges.
As I was approaching the levels 6 or 7 in novice mode, I started getting annoyed by total beginners that wouldn't even try and was hitching to play with more experienced players, so I feel like the timing was about right.
The most I learned was from playing with more experienced players, so while it's great to have some time to get the basic mechanics, learning really happens when you get micromanaged or explained what the ship build is about.
Maybe there should be an advanced novice section where experienced players can join to do some teaching (like one per crew?)
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Since I started this thread the values of experience and early levels have changed and new players spend more time in novice now. So it's less a problem of people leveling out of Novice in four matches. :)
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It is not just the pubs and new players who do it...
People who just buff and ignore repairs because of achievments happens often.
That's the most common reason people only fly with friends and clans..
Perhaps achievements should be less rewarding by themselves?
achieves since 360 has always been its own reward.
Underdog goes the correct direction though by having cosmetics as the rewards for milestones on achievements. replace that with the exp bonus and voila.
lvls give new cosmetics. OF COURSE PEOPLE WILL BREAK THE GAME TO GET FREE CRAP.
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I wonder if there's a way to get across to players that getting better at the game is its own reward? (beyond just waiting for them to work it out eventually, which is obviously a very unreliable process)
Dota has succeeded at this pretty damn well, and before that the previous generation of FPS managed the same.
Maybe something as simple as letting players view their own matchmaking rating would put the focus more onto "skill progression". Of course that assumes that Muse ever made the matchmaking formula more sophisticated than just win/loss.
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I'd be careful about showing off too much about skills and match making ranks because some people then don't want to play with beginners.
I really like the community is super welcoming and teaching! I've been with so many very experienced players who took the time to walk me through a lot and taught me so much. I'd hate to see that go because they might loose rank by loosing games with a young crew!
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I'd be careful about showing off too much about skills and match making ranks because some people then don't want to play with beginners.
I really like the community is super welcoming and teaching! I've been with so many very experienced players who took the time to walk me through a lot and taught me so much. I'd hate to see that go because they might loose rank by loosing games with a young crew!
Already able to see someone's match count in game, so that "risk" is already there...
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An an engineer.
I only reached level 45 a week ago after nearly 700 matches as engineer.
I literally leveled up about 5 times in the space of two days.
Max level required 45 000 exp.
Since last week. I have amassed about 100 000 exp...
Should I be level 100?
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Since last week. I have amassed about 100 000 exp...
Should I be level 100?
No, you'd be level 47 with ~7,000XP left over.
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As much as I would like to see levels go up, it would be unfair on newer players.
There is a high concentration of people with at least 1 max level class these days.
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I say make it harder to level up at the highest levels. 45 should really be the max like 1,000,000 XP, 44 could be 500,000 and 43 at 200,000.
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I say make it harder to level up at the highest levels. 45 should really be the max like 1,000,000 XP, 44 could be 500,000 and 43 at 200,000.
I might be inclined to agree with you. I think maybe 1,000,000 is a bit much, but it's too low. I've seen people with less than 300 matches with level 45. It's absurd
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Linear scale is very un-life'y, meaning that it rarely occurs in real life, therefore applying it to games is not always a good idea.
Logarythmic scale much better because it shows that on the high levels you have to put much effort for little reward, but on that level that reward is worth it. A proffesional athlete has to put a lot of effort (practice, diet, perhaps equipment) to get their time by few miliseconds faster. Also at the beginning you learn/progress very fast with very little effort. It may give so nice numbers as now 1k, 2k, 3k, etc. but if we discuss this, I'd recommend some formula based on logarythm.
For example purpose, imagine
x = effort put into the game (measured in hours of gameplay, I guess)
y = progress (here measured in lvl/skill gained)
(http://www.mathipedia.com/FunctionTransformations-Exponentialandlogarithimicequations_files/image017.jpg)
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x = effort put into the game (measured in hours of gameplay, I guess)
y = progress (here measured in lvl/skill gained)
(http://www.mathipedia.com/FunctionTransformations-Exponentialandlogarithimicequations_files/image017.jpg)
*Drools*
I like graphs, This is a very interesting proposition. How could you make this work in game? What number of hours or amount of games would you suggest to play in order to reach such high levels?
Most high level players I have seen have an average of about 1000 - 1500 games with about 500 hours or more.
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I like graphs, This is a very interesting proposition. How could you make this work in game? What number of hours or amount of games would you suggest to play in order to reach such high levels?
Most high level players I have seen have an average of about 1000 - 1500 games with about 500 hours or more.
I would imagine it would be somewhere around 1200-1300 games to lvl 45 would be sufficient, taking that it's about the same as before matchmaking without ach farming. Scaling the graph based on that would be great. I would also love if the leveling before lvl 8 were slower.
But to be fair, I find it a bit dull that you can't customize your loadout at all in Novice matches, and in my opinion it would be great for new players if they even had more preset loadouts to play with, I mean Muse has a way to save loadouts so why not? If we give novice players more (preset) stuff to play with and raise the novice cap, it's naturally better for learning. Not to mention that the most common reason novices leave novice matches is that they can only play with 3 preset ships and want to test out new things. More preset builds helps relieve the issue.
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It took much longer than 1200 matches to get to lvl 15 pre MM without farming. I had over 2000 as pilot and was lvl 12 before MM booted me to 45.
The novice loadouts should atleast be better, some of them like flak merc or lumberjack blatantly don't work. There have been many suggestions on varied loadouts that Muse should consider. I think novice loadouts should be locked to effective and varied loadouts that work, but some of the current loadouts don't.
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To be fair, pilot was the hardest I think. I clocked about 1k games on engi which is the easiest class to do it on.
I think 1200 games woule be just fine, at least compared to 600 it takes nowadays. I have about 700 games on pilot which in this patch would easily be enough to get 45, but I'm not since I was 12 before the MM update, so it almost looks like I don't compare to the neo-45 pilots even if I would (speaking solely by levels, which we all know doesn't equal skill)