Messages

1

The Lounge / Re: Prove you're oldfag

« on: January 13, 2017, 08:12:40 pm »

Metamidions, Lobbies of Icarus without Matchmaker (a.k.a. the Eternity Clock) even with hundreds of players online (back in the days when you would create a lobby with a map you actually wanted to play!), skill based leveling.  Competent, friendly crews, a feeling of actually being in command of a well tuned fighting machine.  Those oh so satisfying moonshine-driven Pyramidion ram kills with all guns blazing to soften up the target first.  Not having to soften up the target if it was a Spire.

I really miss the old game, and didn't really realize it until I read this thread.   The current version is really formula and quite boring, it wants to be a modern FPS game with a retro feel and fails everywhere

2

Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

« on: March 20, 2016, 10:44:48 pm »

One way to fix this would be to radically increase loch jitter.

Might work for the Gat, not for Mortar or Hades. Also affects l.carro very negatively with loch.

Fair enough.  Was just thinking out loud mainly regarding the way overpowered loch gatmortar.

First option makes a single loch gun of whatever gun choice that bit less frightening over the course of 1 clip.
Second option makes loch more in-line for Gatling and gives more time for the enemy for all other guns also. I like this option as the dmg/sec stays high (typically higher than greased) initially but after a few shots will drop. I really like loch as an 'ambushing' ammo type, make the first hits matter more.
Third option should balance between all guns better.

Of course an alternative is to just put loch back to what it used to be, but to be honest I like it being useful on other guns. Having an alternative to Greased is nice. As I said before, initial DPS being higher in a fight can make for some interesting engagements.
[/list]

I like the idea of an ambush ammo type.  My concern with option 2 is that I think the gunner class remains worse than worthless.  A good engineer with mallet can counter the DPS decrease from gun damage in the middle of a clip in well under a second.

Fundamentally, an ambush type with high DPS should come with a fairly hefty price.  If your ambush doesn't come off, you should end up with the light guns used for the ambush disabled until at least the enemy has a chance to bring his guns to bear.  If the loch gatling can continually strip armor at anywhere near the current rate then the game has devolved into lobby stacking.

I'd say one loch ammo clip should strip a buffed armor, if every shot hits, and only if the gun is broken afterward.  There are many methods to do this.

Oh, and Muse, I miss GoIO.  Can we get this fixed so I can actually play again?

3

Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

« on: March 20, 2016, 08:38:20 pm »

Another option would be to take the autofire after 1 click mechanic that was tried for the hwacha and apply it to loch along with maybe a 1 second repair cooldown. That way you have to chose between aiming and self repair.

One way to fix this would be to radically increase loch jitter.  Experimental ammo, right?  Not much time in the barrel to properly engage rifling, etc. therefore accuracy decreases.  The loch gat then only becomes insanely lethal at very close range, which minimises overall impact on the brawling meta.

Actually, the more I think about it the more I like the jitter increase combined with DPS increase per hit.  It always seemed odd to have an enemy ship 3 meters from you that you couldn't take out; this change would simply make it so that you don't ever let the enemy get that close.

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Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

« on: March 20, 2016, 08:35:33 pm »

any engineer can hop off the gun before it breaks and smack it quickly, then resume firing.

If shooting loch put the gun on mallet-length (or longer) repair cooldown, would it be decent?  TBH I'm a little surprised this problem wasn't forseen by our mighty Hand of Balance, but whatever.  Roll with the punches.

How exactly would this work?  Would this cooldown keep ticking (blocking any repair / rebuild) even if the gun is destroyed?  If not, gunner class will remain completely unneccessary on any ship -- the engineers will just fire loch ammo until the gun breaks, then rebuild with spanner / mallet.

Given that loch gat can destroy enemy armor in half a clip I'd say double the mallet repair cooldown, minimum.  Personally I'd rather see loch ammo completely deleted from the game at this point; Lobbies of Icarus and sniping matches aren't really my play style.

5

Gameplay / Re: New Lochnagar - Math and speculation

« on: March 20, 2016, 04:35:25 pm »

Don't know about you, but I'm seeing a lot of lochnagar abuse on gatts that shreds armour up like nobody's business, from max range with heavy ammo precision and a DPS that would make greased ammo green with envy.

Or how about loading it in a miniflak and you have enough firepower to destroy most ships with its 3 shots, save the Goldfish and Galleon. Highly accurate and a reduced arming time to make it practical for short range.

This is exactly why I stopped playing GoIO.  It's just not fun anymore; the emphasis has changed to the metagame "Lobbies of Icarus" which was never supposed to be the game's main feature.  With that kind of kill power you have to have very high level engineers, 3 of them.  No more gunners, ever, on any ship.  Just bring three engineers with a couple of ammo types between them.

No thanks.

6

Gameplay / Re: New Lochnagar - Math and speculation

« on: March 19, 2016, 10:53:18 pm »

The magic number is not changing loch, and making blenderfish useless.

I always did enjoy the blenderfish.  Hard to fly but provides some of the more interesting battles between highly skilled captains (helps to have a gun where a low level gunner can just click and pop ).  RIP my poor Koi.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Loch changes and effect on overall gameplay

« on: March 19, 2016, 10:49:22 pm »

I disagree on it putting an emphasis in sniping. It changes the brawl meta, but long range is relatively unchanged

Yeah, and I guess my point was mostly that if you don't like the new brawl meta (who really wants to spend half an hour hunting around for good players per match) your only other option is sniping.  Since sniping also requires good players, all the sudden it's very difficult to just hop on with a couple of friends and have something that isn't going to lead to an instant loss.  That's not even bringing up the fact that as a direct result of these changes no one can tolerate new players on their team unless the other team has basically the same number of new players per ship....

I'm not playing until Loch is fixed.

Yeah, that was my conclusion as well.  If Muse doesn't unwind this soon I guess I'd best start hunting for a new game to play; it's a shame because I always enjoyed the skill based aspect of this game from a pilot perspective.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Loch changes and effect on overall gameplay

« on: March 19, 2016, 10:37:09 pm »

So, I found out the loch ammo changes finally went live today.  They've had a relatively interesting and overall detrimental effect on the game.

For starters, if you aren't prepared to cycle through several lobbies waiting for experienced crew members and an experienced ally without running you will die.  Repeatedly, quickly, no two ways around it.  This is because the loch buff has left zero margin for error.  Prior to the buff when armor went down you could still generally recover, especially if you were a halfway decent pilot.  Now, If your engineer cannot keep your hull up at all times, you die.  If your gunner doesn't know how to deal maximum DPS with whatever arc you have, you die. This has immediately made the game very unfriendly to new players, and it's made it very unfun for vets as you can either spend 30 minutes lobby stacking (against any new players on your team) or have a 90% probability of a loss.

Secondly, it's placed a heavy emphasis on sniping matches.  I hate sniping matches, always have and always will.  Personal preference, yes, but I suspect locking the game into two basic strategies (snipe and pubstomp) is going to make other people unhappy as well.

Third, the changes seem to amplify any difference in crew member / ally skill level versus the other team into a match deciding factor.  Typically this has come down to pilot decisions such as ship loadout and overall strategy / ally coordination.  Now the matches are decided almost purely by crew member and ally skill level; to paraphrase "the only winning strategy is not to play".

Finally, it's really amplified the discrepency between the time spent playing "Lobbies of Icarus" and actually playing a match (tedious 50 minute sniping sessions where the environment decides the victor excluded).  Something needs to be done to lower the lobby times.  Perhaps a "AI crew" mode where all ships agree to give up two slots to AI in exchange for a balanced, faster start?

P.S.  I'm also seeing a sudden spike in captain and crew ragequits since this change.  Perhaps this indicates even more strongly that something is now way, way out of whack....

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Feedback and Suggestions / Broken gun reload animation

« on: March 19, 2016, 08:58:20 pm »

Something I've noticed, especially on heavy guns like the Hwacha, is that when the gun is destroyed in the middle of a reload cycle the reload animation and sounds effects continue, even thought the gun is not actually reloading.  This messes up a quick visual check of the gun cycle status by an engineer or pilot, as it looks like a gun is ready to fire but after fixing it and getting into it (or placing that gun in arc) the gun in fact is continuing its reload cycle.

I would imagine it would be trivial to stop the animation and sounds when the gun is broken.  Can this be implemented?  It's not something gameplay breaking, just a small annoyance / oddity.

Thanks! 

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Skirmish Content Kickstarter ?

« on: March 19, 2016, 04:36:48 pm »

I was interested in coop, until I played it for a bit. Now I want all that effort put into Skirmish instead. It is the real main game, and why people keep playing. PvE just does not suit how the game plays. It wears out fast. I dropped $10 on the coop expansion. I would pay at least double if Skirmish had an update as large as what is currently in Alliance.

This.  +100.  Just a single round of Alliance in Normal mode feels like running a marathon; it's sufficiently un-fun (especially with the constant and somewhat ridicuolous airplane attacks) that I've only completed a handful of matches (and actually won somehow, so it's not so much a question of ability as just it not being an enjoyable experience at all).  When you win a particularly difficult Skirmish 6 - 7 against captains your level, you feel somewhat drained but still energized from actually pulling that off at the last second against real players (or on the other side, for coming so close).  Alliance just leaves you feeling drained.

I don't think Alliance will live up to the grand vision Muse put forth in the Kickstarter, but it needs to exist because new players need some where they can play around before facing PvP games. We loose more players to noobs giving up before things get good than Vets giving up when they run out of content.

Heh.  Pushing new players into Alliance would be like airdropping a fresh recruit that hasn't even gone through boot camp behind enemy lines with no weapons.  Not exactly a good idea.

11

Feedback and Suggestions / Airplanes in Adventure Mode

« on: March 09, 2016, 02:59:51 am »

So, I recently  got a chance to play the Adventure Mode dev app and one thing really stood out....

What's with the airplanes?? 

I thought GoIO was a post-apocalyptic world with technology essentially capped in the (very) late 19th century, yet here we have fixed wing, heavier than air flight with four engines on a single wing none the less.  These planes are able to vastly outmaneuver the airships and have guns and bombs (!) on board.  Yes, I know the lightning gun will get rid of them but that particular weapon feels very much like an Deus ex Machina to avoid this:

Whoever owns aircraft and manufactuing facilities of that sophistication should be able to conquer the entire GoIO world.  It's like 1940s technology being used against 1900s level technology; that's a 30 - 40 year gap in weapons technology that would, in a real world scenario, all but guarantee victory for the nation using the planes.

Also, from a pure gameplay / fun perspective, I was getting much more of a WWII air raid feel from the game than a steampunk / post apocalyptic feel.  Keeping combat monoplanes in the air requires a technology level way above airships and it just feels very unnatural to mix the two.

Is there any way we can at least downgrade the planes to something more appropriate, like bi / triplanes carrying only one fixed weapon?  Something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#/media/File:Lanoe_Hawker%27s_No_1611_Bristol_Scout_C.jpg

Also they probably shouldn't respawn; in WWI aircraft were relatively unused compared to WWII and later engagements due to how difficult early aircraft were to use effectively, combined with the overall expense of production and training.