Messages

136

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 21, 2013, 08:33:09 am »

Institute a requirement-to-join function. A Captain would be able to set minimum level, required class, required mic usage, and required amount of thumbs-ups. Those things ought to be useful for something, anyway.


Problem solved. No kick function necessary.

That's a pretty good idea. The kick function should still be there for damage control(in case one of the players didn't take his medication).

137

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 20, 2013, 07:27:29 am »

Everyone is talking about an insta-kick feature and how it could be abused. why not have a VOTE-to-kick feature. everyone decides how the person is behaving and wether or not its worthy of a kick? almost all the players i've met are clever individuals with a sensible manner and do not seem like they would be prone to abusing such a power.

This is a bad idea for the reasons I stated above.  The vote to kick would only promote cliques and non-communication with outsiders.  I can't even say how many times last night a person was asked to move to make room for someone's friend or crew mate.  In every single case the person who was asked just moved.

It's not just a matter of efficiency.  Vote kicking, or just a kick button is certainly efficient, but it is contrary to the very nature and design of the game.  It would change the player base for the worse, imo. 

Besides, as others have stated, there are always Devs and CA's on to help with any problem.  For example, last night there was a bit of some spamming in regional chat.  Someone in our lobby mentioned  that it was getting a little annoying.  Keyvias just so happened to be in our lobby, so he asked for the spamming to stop.

How easy and beautiful is that.

Noone came to my rescue when I needed some troll removed from my team yesterday. CAs couldn't kick him and Muse wasn't even online.  Furthermore, people are not inclined to kick when the person they want moved or removed is friendly and communicative. Kicks are not your primary form of communication, they are there at the end of the line when all other manipulative tools have been exhausted. Then if kicking doesn't work, then a CA or Dev needs to step in.

138

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 18, 2013, 03:44:03 am »

Well, one of the problems with DoTa2 is Steam gives that game away quite often.

Seriously. I got 5 copies for no reason, and I'm sure many of you did too.

People aren't going to spend 15 bucks on the game thinking to themselves "I'm gonna go piss everyone off!" And even if they did, they would probably buy a more populated game.

Trolls in this game usually were interested at some point, but found the game too hard or had no proper teacher and decided that pissing everyone off was the only way they could get their money's worth.

9 times out of 10, I've found that simply tolerating a troll and politely asking them to do simple tasks will result in them doing that task. Praising them for doing that simple task often results in them doing more simple tasks.

As for that other time?
Report 'em, block 'em, and follow RomanKar's advice: Kick yourself.

That's what the HoN community also said. First it was "Matchmaking will fix this"; it didn't. Then it was "Retail will fix this" and again it just didn't. While anyone here knows that the high from winning a difficult game is much higher than just messing around (this kind of high: http://www.destructoid.com/two-hours-of-gaming-doing-a-line-of-coke-174520.phtml), there's a ton of younger players that just want to fuck around and you will suffer for it.

139

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 17, 2013, 06:05:12 pm »

Trolls aren't exactly known for their intelligence.

There once was a troll in my game speaking with an obviously fake Indian accent. He was picking the wrong classes and jumping around the lobby.

He ended up on my ship, much to my dismay.
Unable to kick him, I decided to deal with him.
I played along with his stupid joke ("So, what part of India are you from?"), and actually ended up having a good laugh or two.

He realized that he was also having a bit of fun, and returned the favor by being a good crewman.

We even ended up playing a few more games together.

TL;DR, kicking is the easy way out. Find a way to deal with trolls socially. That's what this game's all about.

That isn't proper trolling what he was doing. Kicking is an easy way out, certainly. But it's still civil. If you don't implement kicking, you WILL eventually end up with a community like DotA2s where flaming and verbal abuse is common. Simply because players will lack the means to rid themselves of unbeneficial teammates; and like I said, fighting the verbal abuse itself will only raise the frustration of the players.

What you had was just a minor incident. I've had tons of people on whom I've exhausted all my abilities to manipulate on without success.  This includes, but is not limited to, blackmail, request to uninstall the game, verbal violence, begging, rationalizing, threatening etc. And if the player just doesn't give two fucks, it just won't work. I'm talking worst of the worst here, there aren't a lot of those in this community right now. But that will change eventually; and if players cannot be arsed to respect their captain, that captain is going to take a lot of heat because he cannot control his crew.

And yes, I think positive measures should be available for the willing. I'm not a dick that just kicks people because they perform badly. I'm usually one of the guys that can make bad players perform well if they are prepared to listen. It's the players that refuse to listen or explicitly refuse to take orders from the captain that will do nothing but cause frustration and severely hurt the captain's patience. Again, those players aren't the problem now, but they will be in the future.

140

Gameplay / Re: Incentives to Move

« on: July 17, 2013, 11:29:32 am »

I'm not, ANY game maps to ANY game just like any N(on-Deterministic)P(olynomal) problem maps to any other NP problem. You have your area control, execution, forced choice situations, etc. This applies to fighting games where the elements refer to zoning, execution(comboing, moving around), setups and mixups, ...; also applies to FPSes where the elements refer to item/area control, aim+movement and angle of approach and even applies to RTSes where the elements refer to map control/resource control, valid apm+strategy and trading. It even applies to Chess. By that, this game is no exception and therefore my comparison is valid.

Now that you've stated that games last nowhere near that 2 hour limit, can we agree that 2 hours is just too long? We don't need to make it 15 minutes because that's the average game time; but having a time restriction of 45 minutes to 1 hour is much more reasonable.

Now your competitive scene, lets grab our fighting game comparison again because that is the best way to show the sillyness of your assumption: you're essentially saying that the round starts, one of the guys does an attack, hits it and proceeds to run away for the remaining 98 seconds and 47 frames of the game(60 frames per second). You understand that even the best players rarely manage this right? When there's 20 or 10 seconds on the clock, sure, but it's still really difficult because there's limits to the game field. And at that point I'd say that this behavior can be considered valid.

You are correct, there shouldn't be an incentive to move. I however clearly stated why this lack of incentive exists in the first place and that this is a normal part of game evolution. If people haven't already, they will find ways to work around the issue of being outranged(or zoned) by snipers and then snipers will start to have a go on how unfair and how easy it is to get rushed, then they develop and then rushers are moaning about it until it finally balances out and the choices are laid out. This behavior is completely normal.

141

Gameplay / Re: Incentives to Move

« on: July 17, 2013, 08:17:43 am »

Well, if you decide to be a brawler, then you have to understand that you will be manning attacks on snipers a LOT. That is part of being a close combat fighter. And quite frankly, you will get used to it after a while.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 17, 2013, 05:53:15 am »

You bring up a good point: How can kicking be abused if the whole group must vote on it first? If the pilot was the only one with the power, then it would surely be abused. If the whole team unanimously agrees that a certain player should go, then where is the harm?

If the captain is abusing his kicking abilities, he wouldn't have a crew. Being a captain means you need to have a crew's support and if you're a complete dick as a captain and kicking people randomly, you'd end up without a crew and thus unable to play effectively. Only dumb people would shoot themselves in the foot like that.

143

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 17, 2013, 05:36:30 am »

Hi Adino,
Great feedback and suggestions.  Firstly let me address a few things.  One is that, as a whole, the game's population has been growing over time.  Compared to the high of TGS videos spike days, yeah sure, there is a decline, but that sorta to be expected.  With more improvements that we do, we'll hopefully do better and better at keeping players and getting more and more people to enjoy the game.   

Secondly, a Kick feature we are deciding not to offer at the moment.  We are thinking about moderated and custom matches, but for now, we are not implementing a kick system after careful consideration.  We want to do more to encourage teamwork, and over the last 2-3 months, we have added commendations, party, crew formation, beginner matches, scripted tutorials, citizenship achievements, etc. to facilitate team play.  In the coming updates, we'll be working on different ways to facilitate team play and communications in matches.  Kick, in my humble opinion, does not facilitate team play, and can more likely lead to more trolling and encouragement of negative behavior in game.  As a creator of a moderated match though, I do think that Kick is what makes more sense there, and for that we are designing and spec'ing. 

Lastly, this is our 7th month of release, and so far we have been improving every step of the way.  And we haven't died yet.  Hopefully we can keep it going. 

And please don't take my reply the wrong way.  I absolutely appreciate your support Adino.  It's an honor to have everyone playing the game.  And while we have a different notion about Kick and about how to encourage team play (we opt for a more approach of encouragement rather than a a punitive one), I do fundamentally agree with you.  Improving team play and new player experience is the most important thing for us.  And we will do more. 

Thanks a lot, Howard

Having experienced DotA2 and games where retardation is redefined on a daily basis, I'm telling you that kicking is aq MUST HAVE. Because without kicking, people, especially the captains, have no means of power over their team. And while admittedly, most crewmembers in GoIO have been great so far; there are also some kick or even ban-worthy occasions in my experience.

When the means of power are required, but not available, frustration kicks in. And it kicks in hard, it will not just be shouting and flaming, it will lead to some serious verbal violence that the DotA2 and HoN communities are well known for. And implementing a mute system will not only anger just about every player playing your game, it will not stop the frustration caused by dicks fucking the crew over.

Everyone knows that the flipside of kicking is that some will try to abuse it, but some games have already proven that this is a really minor issue. In Alliance of Variant Arms, people complained about being kicked almost every game they're in; their developers adjusted the kick system so people could call less kickvotes. Those same players still got kicked even though the callers were severely hampered in their abilities. Often there, kicking is a team effort where people will spend their calling abilities to help out those that don't. Not because the majority of AVA players are trolls, but because it's for the benefit of the team. The same applies to other FPSes like Call of Duty and Quake, it's the civilized and mature way of dealing with dicks.

144

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: What I Notice about GoIO and Why its Population has Been Decreasing

« on: July 17, 2013, 04:56:18 am »

The mobula would be much easier to maintain if the balloon and hull were connected more directly. You now need two engineers below deck and one above deck for the main engine to keep the ship in shape. When the mobula is taking a beating it's just dying a slow and painful death as it is right now.

145

Gameplay / Re: Incentives to Move

« on: July 17, 2013, 04:43:23 am »

The reason why I think the "time limit" set by the server itself is plenty is really one thing: tactics.

You start putting short time limits in there, and you get a bunch of "strategies" that revolve around it instead of, well what you saw Friday. You could have a team ahead in kills, and they simply avoid the other team till time runs out. You cut way into the chance for comebacks. And I can only imagine the rage of a tied game, and you both lose? Most of our games were close, and 2 of them were 7-6.

I can agree that I wished some CP maps were in the rotation. You don't have to separate them to have a good tournament either. Both can exist.

Having more time doesn't make a game more tactical. Quite frankly, strategies evolve from quick thinking and improve with experience. Fightinggames usually have a 99 second time limit on their rounds and that is a HUGE amount of time in those games as the game itself is designed to finish a round in under 40 seconds. The same way Virtua Fighter has a 45 second time limit while the game mechanics are build around finishing the round in 15 seconds. So for this game you have to consider what the game is designed for and how much time you intend to give it. From my small personal experience, rounds tend to take 15 minutes, so having a timelimit of 2 hours is just too long.

Secondly, the incentive to move comes from the playing style you wish to execute. Back to fightinggames because I got more experienced there, some characters have less incentive to move than others. Most notably characters that have longer range tools are less likely to try to rush at the opponent to fight him in close combat. With the airships it's the same deal. If your ship is loaded with 4 mercury field guns, you're not putting yourself in an advantage by charging at your enemy, instead, you prefer distance and you intend to stay at that distance. Once this game evolves, some players will develop more close combat oriented styles and have loadouts to accompany them; those players will have an incentive to move and will happily do so.

146

Gameplay / Re: Where is a "Ramming guide"?

« on: July 17, 2013, 04:03:55 am »

While it is a smart choice to use a balloon instead of the armor in order to ram, it is important to remember that this maneuver shouldn't be used like a Swiss Army knife- in all situations. Generally, I always expect my balloon to go down after a balloon ram. While the ram does do damage... because that balloon goes down, I will lose gun arcs on my ship, which would allow both ships to repair back to normal.

I keep impact damage in mind when I ram larger-armored ships, like the Galleon and the Junker. One huge ram will pop them and put us in a better tactical position.

The only ships I find ramming doesn't really work on are galleon and mobula. They got too many hitpoints to die from it and can usually even return fire. The rest are rammable provided they do not evade you. If done properly in my case, I take no hull damage during a ram. This is doubly important when running through spires and junkers. Oh, and I ram using the pyramidion, because I can use a front gatling gun to disable armor, do hull damage with the flak cannon and finish him off with the ram itself(again, galleons tend to survive this). I've experimented quite a bit about this and it is definitely a staple you can use when done correctly.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Clouds should cast shadows

« on: July 16, 2013, 04:33:15 am »

Because that's what clouds do