Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: Bartle's Taxonomy Ignored?

« on: August 31, 2017, 04:11:42 am »

The peak game population is lately down to ~20 players. Its becomming unplayable.

This is simply untrue. The game regularly passes 20 players between afternoon to night EU Time. I think you're referring to the minimum population.

Make it ~36 player then: http://steamcharts.com/app/209080. Even MappleStory has more ingame players than this.

During my typical play time, I will see anything between 4 and 60+. I'd say ~30 is the average.
This is well inside "dead game" territory for anyone looking for the first time. New players that pipe up in chat typically express remorse for buying a game that they can't even reliably play.

Indeed. And the sad thing is that GOIO is awesome: it offers a completely new cooperative gamestyle incomparable to any other game. In any case, what can we do to resurrect it? THe only thing I could play for the past days was PVE, which is fun until you realize most matches against AI just feel the same. PVP is what makes the game really great: human behavior is unpredictable, which in long term translates into more fun. Still, PVE is great for new-commers to the game: its less competitive and the difficulty can be adjusted to "train" with your friends for the real thing (which for me remains PVP).

I want to reiterate that Narayans idea might not be bad, but requires the game to better retain players in the long term to be effective.

2

General Discussion / Re: The Official Unofficial Guns of Icarus Discord Server

« on: August 29, 2017, 03:26:21 am »

The link seems to be broken

3

General Discussion / Re: Bartle's Taxonomy Ignored?

« on: August 29, 2017, 03:24:40 am »

The peak game population is lately down to ~20 players. Its becomming unplayable.
Just a few months back I remember that there were 100 players minimum at all times, and that finding a lobby of friendly players whas relatively easy for either PVP or Coop.

I hope there is something that can be done to bring new players into the game, and most importantly, retain them.

4

General Discussion / Re: How to fix lobbies of Icarus and maybe the game

« on: August 29, 2017, 03:19:14 am »

I really like your suggestion. I don't know if GOIO will be able to capture new players, but if it does, the game needs something to get them to play in a confortable manner, making their experience as good as possible. In fact, the problem you address is the one that almost made me abandon GOIO when I started: I always tryied to find matches using the matchmaker, and it sometimes took ages (like 20 mins or so), or on the other hand put me always in the same lobby as some trolls from back then.

I don't know if any of the devs read this, but hey: the game is at a very deep low, and if you think about them, the community is giving many suggestions of how to refloat it
I have already bought some copies of GOIO + Alliance during the bring-a-friend 50% sales to some buddies. 

5

General Discussion / Re: My renewed argument for Free to play

« on: August 29, 2017, 03:13:16 am »

We know:

• Making the game F2P will cause a big inflow of new players for a while (new publicity and the like will get players to join)
• GOIO is unable to retain those new players, and the number of connected players will start to fall again once F2P-GOIO stops being a novelty

It seems quite clear to me where the problem is: what can be done to retain new players? .
Narayan is thinking hard about it. This post of him seem to address the problem I had when I started playing.

P.S.: The prediction of the OP has come true. Lately I only see ~20 players online. And those are divided between PVP and Coop, for which it is almost impossible to set up a decent lobby lately.

6

Gameplay / Re: New Player - need some help with understanding weapons.

« on: April 21, 2017, 06:27:50 am »

Hi Ghroznak the Orc,

The others already gave quite complete responses to your questions, I'll try to summarize it all down:

Things that have health:
The ship's armor. It's like an "energy" shield
The ship's hull. This is its health, but to damage it you must first destroy it's armor
Components: guns and engines have life too and can be damaged/destroyed
Balloon: these are air ships helt aloft by a balloon, pop it and the ship falls down.

How weapon damage:
All weapons have 2 types of damage.
- One is the direct hit damage, and applies right where your projectile hits.
- The other is burst damage, and applies as an AoE (area) damage around where your projectile hits.
That is, you shoot, and when the projectile hits it applies both damages. But one is concentrated at the impact point, the other spreads. These damagaes can be of various types: fire, explosive, etc...

Weapon damage types:
Each damage (direct hit, and burst) can be of a damage type. This affects what elements on the ship suffer damage.
For example, piercing ammo does a lot of damage against ship armors, but not so much against hulls.
Fire damage on the other hand is great against balloons, and shatter damage can destroy engines and enemy guns.
What is the game mechanics behind how damage applies you ask? Check out this link:
http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_Types

Ammunition:
Now comes the fun part: loading different kind of ammunitions into your guns. The ammunitions do NOT change the damage type: the gatling will still do piercing (direct hit) and shatter (burst) damage. But it changes all other aspects... among them Damage Per Second.
Check out this link to get more info about how the DPS changes for each weapon and ammo:
https://yalneb.blogspot.com.es/2017/04/guns-of-icarus-online-weapons-chart.html

How to play "efficiently":
You will want a weapon to remove the enemy's armor as quickly as possible, and then a weapon to damage it's hull. Is there a weapon that does both?: no.
So, as the others stated, a good layouts (commonly found) are:
- For close range a gatling + mortar. You destroy the armor with the gatling, then kill the enemy with the mortar.
- For close to mid-range engagements I personally prefer a gatlink (lesmok rounds) + a flak or a banshee.
- For mid to long-range engagements, I like the Hades combined with a flak.
- And for long range, I love the Mercury and the Artemis.

GL&HF o7

7

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Painting Hulls

« on: April 18, 2017, 06:02:36 am »

Ive shot at alot of allied crusaders when fighting the baronies cause of the ship design and colours

+1

8

Guides / Re: Thal's weapons chart

« on: April 18, 2017, 06:01:31 am »

http://ducksoficarus.servegame.com

Wow! This is great!

9

General Discussion / Re: Yes, I would like to have names pls.

« on: April 17, 2017, 03:06:36 pm »

If you need Boss Ships, Check this link.

Thank you very much!

10

Guides / Re: Thal's weapons chart

« on: April 17, 2017, 07:59:11 am »

This will actually be very helpful for when I try and create another dumb weapon concept.

I'm glad you find it handy

11

Guides / Thal's weapons chart

« on: April 16, 2017, 02:19:41 pm »

Hey guys. I did some time ago a weapons chart for myself and some friends. I thought nobody would read it, but then came across Zanc's sheet and found out that people actually value them. DOn't hesitate to check out his sheet as well. it's very accurate.

Anyway, I started updating my chart just recently to the latest updates (many numbers might still be wrong) and haven't included Alliance weapons just yet. I also ported my chart to a google sheet, so everybody should be able to read it with a browser alone (the original file was libre office). I hope you find it useful, I posted it on my blog.

https://yalneb.blogspot.com.es/2017/04/guns-of-icarus-online-weapons-chart.html

12

Q&A / Re: Do tar-clouds (and incidentally, gas mortar rounds) stack?

« on: April 10, 2017, 11:37:45 am »

Wow! Thank you for testing!

13

Q&A / Re: Do tar-clouds (and incidentally, gas mortar rounds) stack?

« on: April 08, 2017, 03:30:01 pm »

I vaguely recall that gas mortar clouds were allowed to stack their damage during one of the betas/alphas but they don't seem to now.

Just did some testing and with how massively over nerfed the gas mortar is using lochnagar is kinda pointless, I shot 2 sequential Lochnagar-Cataclysm rounds at a target dummy and nothing broke, it took a third 'normal' lochnagar round to get parts to start breaking.

Did you stack your clouds, or re-apply the 3 clouds after the previous vanished?

14

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: New tools, guns and other ideas

« on: April 08, 2017, 03:28:32 pm »

Except the reload ammo type, I like all your ideas.

Regarding reloading... I always felt that it is weird that a buffed weapon does more damage. It makes no sense: the damage comes from the ammo, not the gun. Buffed weapons should have shorter reload times and maybe RoF, as by being buffed, their mechanism works better,

15

Q&A / Re: Do tar-clouds (and incidentally, gas mortar rounds) stack?

« on: April 07, 2017, 10:54:07 am »

[···] but it does 125% damage.

Actually 225%
(100% base damage + 125% lochnar. I know, its a bit confusing, but that's how it's implemented)

Hmm maybe you are right. Though I'd like to test whether the size of the cloud is affected (it should, I guess).