Messages

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General Discussion / Re: What do you name your ships and why?

« on: January 30, 2017, 09:48:54 am »

Pyramidion: The Mayfly -> Aside of being the name of one of the first airships it conjures astute precognitions of my piloting skills. Also mayflies are pretty amazing, being the only insects that have two imago stages. And they serve as an indicator species. If they can survive, everybody can.

Galleon: Volvox -> Painted green for extra volvoxness. Volvox are green algea, sphere shaped like the galleon balloons, and they are extremely awesome since they are on the verge of being multicellular organisms. They are right in between being a multicellular plant and being a colony of single cell algeas. Just like a good crew should be!

Mobula: Lysozym -> An enzyme that is part of the immune system and breaks down hostile bacteria cell walls. Like, ideally, my mobula breaks the enemy armor. Also, the mobula resembles in its shape lysozym crystals.

Junker: Leukocyte -> White blood cell. The Junker has a white, rather shapeless balloon. And what could be more fearsome than white blood cells?

Goldfish: Tardigrade -> Amazing tiny animal that can survive even in outer space due to anhydrobiosis (death-like, dehydrated state)! Extremely resilient, like the goldfish is. Boiling water? Liquid helium below -260°C? 6000 Bar pressure? Radioactivity? No problem! Also, again, shape similarities.

Squid: Wolfram von Eschenbach -> My favourit medieval author who subverted old literature standards and rules. Even the Middle High German original still reads extremely modern in some parts. I feel his writing style is as nimble and adventurous as the squid.

Spire: IOOth Red Balloon -> 99 of them go by, the 100th shoots back. Needless to say I painted it red.

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General Discussion / Re: My (Long)Open Letter to Muse

« on: January 29, 2017, 02:59:50 am »

@raging: I do not think I know you. But: It is possible to teach. But you indeed need to ask them first if they want to learn. Then all is easy.
You can of course also sneak in and give them unrequested advice, but you need to limit that to 1-2 things said or written in a non-patronizing, by-the-way style. That works most of the times. Sometimes they then want more. It also works fine to join Novice matches as a spectator and praise correct behavior of one ship. "Ship Xyz, good use of the gatling gun to break their armor!" The rest usually follows the example since they experience the effect of working gun combos. And they feel clever for "stealing" this piece of knowledge from their enemies. Writing "Ship Abc, use your gatling guns!" works only half as well. Like I wrote in my first post which seemed to go largely unnoticed, maybe due to being no community member, it is no easy task. But it gets much easier if the teaching is done in a certain way. And even more when done in a certain environment where they experience immediate positive reinforcement. Aka novice matches. I also learned key words like shooting, repairing, red hit markers in a few languages Helps a lot with helping e.g. russian players who react sometimes aggressively because they simply do not understand what you want. They know rude words from dota etc, so they often seem more competent in english than they actually are. At least as long as they are swearing.

My point is: More help in the novice matches would be more effective. Also non-misleading game advertisement. That would make people expect the steep learning curve instead of only big explosions.

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General Discussion / Re: My (Long)Open Letter to Muse

« on: January 27, 2017, 06:17:12 pm »

Talking about helping new people to fly:

Hi! I am inactive since about a year. I am a vet player and even played a bit competitive stuff, but I'm not involved in the community so much since I am a shoddy socializer, mostly quiet in voice chat unless I know the people really well and nobody can pronounce or remember my name 

Aaanyhow, I DID play some times during this year. If there was a sale I went active for a day or three to train novices and help them get into the game. I have trainer status , so I can join novice matches. Basically a bit like CA, but without fancy name color, title, special badges, regulative powers, dev contact or people noticing that you even exist  Which suits my needs, I am that worker bee type. Novices who have a great time and come back are all the reward I need.
Like many people here I think a larger player base is the only way to keep the game alive. Or revive it. I loved playing the game and I really want to see it flourish and hope that this also makes it interesting for me again.

I rarely saw CAs there in the novice matches, they were always more busy playing with their friends. In fact, I saw some of them AVOIDING flying with new players. One ex-CA even insulted them for being "worthless" and deserving to be stomped. They did nothing aside of being too slow learners for his taste.  I too have the impression some of them see CA as a club rather than something else. The only CA I encountered more than once in novice matches was Steffen. There was one other I saw once, but I don't remember the name. (Of course there are also other friendly CAs who actively support novices in regular lobbies, but I rarely saw that too.)

Novices quickly get frustrated after firing at each other for an hour without even so much as scratching each others perma health. Or after being stomped without even understanding why. The new tutorial is better, but still it is difficult to get into the game. That would be no problem if many people would be derping around too. But as it is, it is very difficult to join the active group of players, since it mainly consists of vets or experienced players on regular days, who are not very patient with new people.
The elitist attitude some people have does not help. Elitist behavior might be OK and even motivate people if a small group of pros does it. But if nearly everybody but you is a pro and looks down on you, it just sucks. Some of the novices ARE extremely terrible people, but not many. Mostly I enjoy novice matches immensely and it is the only thing that comes close to the "old feel".

Oh, and I have to say I am deeply unhappy with the new design and the Alliance stuff I have seen so far. It did not help to rekindle my interest in the game. I preordered it from humble bundle ages ago, full of hopes. The graphics I have seen so far are more anime than steampunk and seem lower quality at least to my untrained eye.


My take on what to do:

- I would like some new content, true. But that content should not be new ugly artwork or the de-steampunked new UI. (Sorry, to whoever made it. I am sure you worked hard on it. But it does not reach the quality of the old artwork. It looks blurry / confusing and the style is entirely different).

- I would want some active support of novice players. This is basically why I stepped forward after all the silent novice teaching. I think that is the only way to revive the game. And that mainly requires us veteran people (who else is left?) to be extremely patient, welcoming and proactively supportive towards new players. It is a group effort, folks. And maybe, if you see or know some people who think being salty is cool, do not reinforce their misconception  Balance matches! Always! Even if that means one ship of your friends has to play as your opponent.

- Reward community building work even more. Like I said, I am a worker bee, I do not need rewards, I have my own motivation. Non-weird people do need them, though. Once a friend pointed out my work to a dev and said I should get a fun title for all my work (some people afaik did get titles for joke reasons etc.). The reaction was... disinterested, to say the least. Like I said, I do not mind. But it might discourage others if they work more on the community growing front line than most CAs and their work would get dismissed like that. It is no easy work indeed.

- Delay the whole game of thrones "climb the social ladder in guns of icarus" stuff until there are enough people again to HAVE an actual ladder worth climbing. No elitism until there are enough peons again   

- Do not use popular hyperactive let's-play youtubers as advertisement again. They give people wrong impressions about the game and the wrong people bought it with the wrong expectations. Those people do not stay. That helps nobody in the long run.


That's all. I hope to see you all in the skies again one day!
Nyar