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Feedback and Suggestions / What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing
« on: July 11, 2013, 01:56:48 pm »
Now, I might get a lot of rage, hate, or whatever from posting this, but it's the truth.
GoIO's population has been decreasing, if it hasn't steadied-off yet from decreasing.
I am one of those players who has been a part of that decreasing population. In light of the new patch, I'd say the content is headed in the rightish direction. With a small development team and a lot of work involved, this is to be expected.
However, there are some very vital components missing from GoIO.
GoIO is a team-based game. This is undeniable. Team-based gameplay puts players in an environment where their success revolves around the cooperation and competence of fellow teammates. With that in mind, there is no function indicating a team leader, aside from the loose Captain position, and there is no function indicating a leader's control over a team. As well, without proper communication, a team is bound to fail. There is no encouragement of communication, and chat uses a system unfamiliar to most players. To top it off, most ships are grossly under-manned, with only 4 players per team, and 2 players being stuck on repair duty, while 1 is stuck piloting. This issue is especially prevalent with the larger ships that are built to sustain up to 4 people firing weapons at a time, yet, viably, only 1 or 2 can. This wouldn't be a problem if one weapon were capable of working sufficiently alone, but that's not the case. You need an armor ripper and a hull crusher to effectively compete. Faced with these situations, the random teams that assemble are very unlikely to succeed. This leaves a lot of players feeling angry and at a loss to succeed.
To summarize:
Issues
Incompetent teammates
Lack of communication
Trolls on the team
Lack of leadership
Undermanned large ships
Angry/hopeless new players
Possible solutions:
Add ability for Captains to kick under-performing or misbehaving team members
Add a level requirement for Captains (i.e. before captaining a team, one must be level 3 on any given class)
Add an option for Captains to set requirements for joining their team (i.e. only accepting level 3+ Engineers and level 5+ gunners, only accepting active mic users, etc.)
Prioritize mic volume to make other team members quieter when the Captain is talking
Promote communication with banners, messages, or some other form of promotion
Chance chat to conform to the usual T and Y system that most any gamer will be accustomed to
Make team size scale with ship size (i.e. a squid/pyramidion/gold fish would have 3 team members, a junker/spire would have 4, a mobula/galleon would have 5) OR make weapons more independent
Limit number of possible pilots on a team to 1
I want to stress how much a kick function is needed. The primary reason I don't play anymore is because Captains have almost no control over who gets on their team. With the dwindling population and less-than-sufficient socializing opportunities, the game quickly becomes aggravating and, I'd even say, unplayable. It's not efficient to have to report someone to a GM every time they get a complete troll on their team who just sits in a gun and puts "lol" in chat throughout the whole round. We NEED to be able to kick people, otherwise a single player game would be less stressful.
Another thing I've noticed is that, not only are players inexperienced, it's very hard for them to learn much. There's not much feedback as to exactly what someone is doing. A combat log or combat chat would be useful, or even just floating damage numbers. Without some substantial indication as to what's really going on in combat, the game feels extremely trivial and will lack serious legitimacy when any experienced gamer plays it. The damage bars in weapon descriptions are a start, but we still don't know what they mean. We need more numbers.
GoIO could be great, but without systems that keep players interested and leaders satisfied, it will die before it has the chance.
GoIO's population has been decreasing, if it hasn't steadied-off yet from decreasing.
I am one of those players who has been a part of that decreasing population. In light of the new patch, I'd say the content is headed in the rightish direction. With a small development team and a lot of work involved, this is to be expected.
However, there are some very vital components missing from GoIO.
GoIO is a team-based game. This is undeniable. Team-based gameplay puts players in an environment where their success revolves around the cooperation and competence of fellow teammates. With that in mind, there is no function indicating a team leader, aside from the loose Captain position, and there is no function indicating a leader's control over a team. As well, without proper communication, a team is bound to fail. There is no encouragement of communication, and chat uses a system unfamiliar to most players. To top it off, most ships are grossly under-manned, with only 4 players per team, and 2 players being stuck on repair duty, while 1 is stuck piloting. This issue is especially prevalent with the larger ships that are built to sustain up to 4 people firing weapons at a time, yet, viably, only 1 or 2 can. This wouldn't be a problem if one weapon were capable of working sufficiently alone, but that's not the case. You need an armor ripper and a hull crusher to effectively compete. Faced with these situations, the random teams that assemble are very unlikely to succeed. This leaves a lot of players feeling angry and at a loss to succeed.
To summarize:
Issues
Incompetent teammates
Lack of communication
Trolls on the team
Lack of leadership
Undermanned large ships
Angry/hopeless new players
Possible solutions:
Add ability for Captains to kick under-performing or misbehaving team members
Add a level requirement for Captains (i.e. before captaining a team, one must be level 3 on any given class)
Add an option for Captains to set requirements for joining their team (i.e. only accepting level 3+ Engineers and level 5+ gunners, only accepting active mic users, etc.)
Prioritize mic volume to make other team members quieter when the Captain is talking
Promote communication with banners, messages, or some other form of promotion
Chance chat to conform to the usual T and Y system that most any gamer will be accustomed to
Make team size scale with ship size (i.e. a squid/pyramidion/gold fish would have 3 team members, a junker/spire would have 4, a mobula/galleon would have 5) OR make weapons more independent
Limit number of possible pilots on a team to 1
I want to stress how much a kick function is needed. The primary reason I don't play anymore is because Captains have almost no control over who gets on their team. With the dwindling population and less-than-sufficient socializing opportunities, the game quickly becomes aggravating and, I'd even say, unplayable. It's not efficient to have to report someone to a GM every time they get a complete troll on their team who just sits in a gun and puts "lol" in chat throughout the whole round. We NEED to be able to kick people, otherwise a single player game would be less stressful.
Another thing I've noticed is that, not only are players inexperienced, it's very hard for them to learn much. There's not much feedback as to exactly what someone is doing. A combat log or combat chat would be useful, or even just floating damage numbers. Without some substantial indication as to what's really going on in combat, the game feels extremely trivial and will lack serious legitimacy when any experienced gamer plays it. The damage bars in weapon descriptions are a start, but we still don't know what they mean. We need more numbers.
GoIO could be great, but without systems that keep players interested and leaders satisfied, it will die before it has the chance.