Topics

1

The Pit / Double it

« on: June 03, 2018, 12:03:28 pm »

Would you like to double the player count in Goio ?

Would you like to boost your income ?

if you answered yes to these questions you are in luck

we are currently experiencing the muslims holy month, the Ramadan.

A time where muslims purge themselves from evil and whatever good deeds they do, will count double in their afterlife

"Think Safety first" has released this video to help us all reach our individual goals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4_9TR7K4S8

I would like to thank "Think safety first" for this video and wish him and all other muslims a good Ramadan and Eid.

2

Feedback and Suggestions / Making new players stay

« on: May 12, 2018, 09:17:19 am »

First off, I would like to congratulate Muse Games on their release of Guns of Icarus Online, and Guns of Icarus Alliance (from here on just Guns of Icarus) on the Playstation 4 platform !

Good job, awesome to get people on console, into the player base.

The reason I write this post. Is that I have been in this game since 2014. I have seen many sales. I think I got a good idea of the problems that cause most of the new players to leave the game.

I would like to give you my input on how to make new players stay, and become a part of the community.

When I play with new people who just joined Guns of Icarus.Typically they tell me the game is awesome. They love it.And with good reason. It is indeed one of the best team based games out there. Ther is NOTHING wrong with the game itself

The problem come when they (novices) get matched against people who have 5000+ matches and they and their friends have 20. Imagine if you wanted to pick up cs:go, dota2, league of legends or team fortress with your friends. Imagine, you getting matched up against a team where 7 out of 10 players have 5000 matches played. It would not be fun for you and your friends. You would get owned and your opponents might realize how bad you are and start killing you with knifes. To "give you a chance"

In the same way, Guns of Icarus is not fun for the new players who run into stacks of high level players (and as we all know they will eventually do that). They get crushed and have a very bad gaming experience. So they exit and never come back

To combat this problem I suggest you put in place a new match making system. The one that is in place right now is not working in favor of new players. It is working in favor of veterans who are going to play the game anyway.

What would such a match making system look like ?

You select your desired class(es), you click a button and when the match is found there is no lobby. You go directly to the game. The person who is pilot, will select tools for the engineers and gunners. And while I know this takes away the "freedom" from the poor novice to pick parachute instead of a spyglass...so they at least have a chance of getting a soft landing if they fall off the ship. I think that it would help a lot in terms of getting better matches. Both for novices and experienced players

What about friends, who wants to play with their friends ?

Keep the match making lobby. Let people search as a party of friends. Let them go into the "custom game list" If they have a full team of people who are level 135; then it might take a while.And sure that sucks. But it's better than them creating a custom lobby and stomping all the novices that join.Like they do now. People who are already level 135 in any class already proved that they love this game and are probably going to stay regardless.

Typically when I bring the issue of the match making system up to other players. Their response is "the playerbase can't support this kind of system"
That might be true. The playerbase might not be able to support it. But if you keep the match making system that is in place now, you will never get the playerbase to support a superior match making. Like a snake biting it's own tail and saying "I gotta eat my tail cause otherwise ill starve to death"

finally I would like to address "smurf accounts"

Meaning accounts where a player, who is (typically) very skilled, make a new account in order pretend he or she is a novice and destroy novices who don't even see that level 135 coming at them. While i do understand that smurf account provides a little bit of cash flow. It is nothing compared to the potential value they kill with their smurf account. If they want a new nick name they can pay the 1$ fee. And while I don't know this for sure. I have a feeling that if some high level player wanted a stat reset and talked to an admin about it. They would get it .


Thank you for taking the time to read this post

3

General Discussion / About auto balance

« on: April 12, 2017, 05:54:31 am »

I watched the last dev fireside, and there were some talk about auto balance of factions.From what I understood : if one faction have a lot of active members other factions with less active members gain bonuses to keep things fair.

Does auto balance mean, that being super active and doing a ton of runs will just cause the other factions to gain an even bigger bonus from the auto balance system ? I don't know if this is the case. But I kinda lost the motivation to do a lot of runs in Alliance because I got the feeling that all my effort will be translated into an "auto balance advantage" for the other factions.If I don't do any runs, my inactivity will translate into an advantage in the auto balance system for my faction ? If this is the case, I really don't see the point. I mean doing the runs are fun, but to keep on doing them it would be nice with some sort of progress that does not translate into an advantage for my opponents

4

General Discussion / Organized balanced games with rating

« on: June 29, 2016, 11:13:22 am »

I think most people will agree that finding good balanced matches is hard. I have been thinking about how this could be accomplished. How to make a system that would allow close to perfect balance.

My plan is to develop a website that organizes games.

below I will explain how I imagine this system will work :

First part is the captains, to play as a captain you need to be level 45. If you are below level 45, you can seek dispensation. This will allow you to play in a test match in order to prove that you are good enough, even if you are at lvl 14 pilot.

So first thing first, all captains who play in these games must have a certain level. I will explain later why I think this is necessary. There is no minimum requirement for the other classes, but I will explain how this can still be balanced :

The game starts with players signing up for the game. After the pool of players has reached  a certain size. The website will announce that the game is about to begin. The (4 or 6) captains are put on random teams, and a drafting phase of players begin. Red Captain starts out by picking one player for his crew out of the pool of players who have signed up.Blue Captain goes next, then second red captain. This cycle repeats until there are no more slots available. This might result in low level players being picked last, but they will enjoy the pleasure on flying with a high level captain who can help them improve

After the player draft, comes the ship picking phase, the ship picking phase is much like the player picking phase. Red Captain picks his ship,a load out and helm tools(engineering tools and gunner ammo is not considered by the draft) But once helm tool , ship and guns have been selected it is final. Blue captain follows, then red again until there are no more ships

Red captain now creates the password protected lobby and players join

After the match, a screenshoot of the score is taken by the winning team and uploaded. The result of the match is given in k/d - the more kills you have as a winning team, the more rating you will get. The more kills you have as the loosing team, the less rating you will lose

About the captain's being level 45, I think the best games is created when the pilots are high level and know what they are doing. They will also be able to help new players get better. Because the pilot has the overall responsibility for both player and ship selection. People below a certain level would probably not have a good time, and the same can be said for their teammates. However if 2 gunners sign up one is lvl 4 and the other is lvl 5 there is no problem, since the low level gunners wont decide what ship to fly and players to pick. It will be up to the captain abilities to instruct a low level gunner on how to gun



Now I have a couple of questions for you guys:
would you like to play this type of game ? (yes, no, maybe - please explain)
do you see any obvious flaws in the system ?

I look forward to hearing you guys feedback

5

The Pit / ai in pseudo code

« on: April 07, 2016, 10:12:18 am »

had a glass of wine trying to write an ai with pseudo code

Starting with a check on the hull since it is the most vital component

if (hull = down) then
    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    //////////////////////////////////////THIS IS WHEN NOT TO >>NOT TO<< REPAIR THE BROKEN HULL/////////////////////
   ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   //This case is when the AI would not run to try and save a broken hull:
   // If the AI can deal deadly damage with a gun, due to enemy armor down, gun type and distance to gun - go for the killing blow
         

if (can_ai_deal_deadly_damage_with_gun = true) and (is_enemy_armor_down = true ) and (is_ai_closest_engineer_to_gun = true)  then

// Tell the AI to shoot the gun until the target gets armor back up, dies or fly our of arc obviously using the fastest path avaliable to get to the gun
 -> AI.SHOOT.GUN until (TARGET.ARMOR = UP) or (TARGET.ARC <> ) or (TARGET = DEAD)
else
 -> AI.REPAIR.HULL until (HULL.BROKEN = FALSE)


are there any other times an engineer should not repair a broken hull ?



   



 

6

Feedback and Suggestions / WANTED minigame remake suggestion

« on: February 22, 2016, 09:17:39 am »

I don't understand how having a wanted mini game in it's current form can ever be a good idea. When you set up a minigame and declare winner. You have a competition. This will result in some of the people taking part in the competition wishing to win it .This can affect the way they play the game in a negative way

There are 3 ways to win the wanted minigame

the first an most effective way is to add everyone in sight to your friends list, that way you will be able to see mostly every on going game. Next all you have to do is join the lobby and based on the levels of players in the match determine the winning team. Then join it. This is bad for the balance in a game,where the balance was broken before the game even started. The winning team will now be reinforced by a players that knows his way around the game.And therefore make the already broken balance even worse. Should you come in doubt  what team is gonna win ? join spectator for a while and then join the winning team, when the match result have been determined. To me, joining a game in the last second only to claim bounty points and +1 win is cheating. What do you guys think ?

the second most effective way to win is to stomp novices as fast as you can. in order to gain as many wins as possible with the time you have available to you. While this is slightly more acceptable(everyone can pick their battles so to speak) I don't think novices have fun when they get stomped over and over, and so they turn away from the game. That's what I think, what do you think ?

the last way, and the way I guess the mini game should be played . You look for good balanced matches, a nicely balanced match is more enjoyable for everyone, but not effective for getting a lot of wins and that is the name of the game - thats how you win the WANTED mini game. I have only taken part it in one time, and I can honestly say, I dislike it and so here I am to suggest something I think would help new players become a part of the community instead of being scared away, because they get stomped all of the time. It would also reward the type of behavior I expect is desirable for the community

I think the idea with a mini game is great, but the objective in the current mini game is not good. Here is my suggestion :

remake the mini game so instead of encouraging stomping novices as fast as possible ftw. Make it so the only way to get points is by flying with novices

I imagen points could be something similar to this

WANTED player flying with a player with that has below 10 matches (and win) will grant the wanted player 5 points
WANTED player flying with a player with that has below 50 matches (and win) will grant the wanted player 2 points
WANTED player flying with a player with that has below 100 matches(and win) will grant the wanted player 1 points


in this way, people taking part in the wanted competition would have to make novice friends. Since the points are only granted if the ship wins, the vets and others taking part in the mini game will probably be really helpful. And if they are smart, they will make the novice feel welcome, hope he/she stays and wanna play on.Because in this setting the novices will be sought after, and I think more people would continue to play if they hit 100 games

there is however one problem with this system. Some players might make multiple accounts in order to make their buddies win, this would suck. I don't know if there currently are any rules about multiaccouting. A rule could be set that you cant take part in the mini game as a novice if you have played more than 100 games on any account

7

General Discussion / picking ship before match start

« on: February 14, 2016, 03:26:37 pm »

Last night I played a game. I picked ship pretty late, 10 seconds before the game started. When the game ended a moderator told me my behavior was "unsportsmanly". Since he/she is a moderator, I have to take him/her seriously. I tried to pm him/her to ask what would be an acceptable time frame to pick ship before matches. But the moderator had (to my surprise) blocked me    And so my question stand unanswered.

When I think about this "issue" if you can call it that. All captains have the ability to pick their ship late.If everybody pick late and nobody knows what the other team is gonna fly, there is no problem.But after being corrected by the moderator I now understand I need to change my behavior. The problem I have is I don't understand how to fix it and play in a sportsmanly manner.

i view it like this : in the game (against the mod) I changed ship late, i could have added time and alerted my opponents to the ship change. Then they could counter picked the ship I had picked and win. How fun is that ? sure then I could find a nice pick to match their pick, and then they could find a nice counter to my new pick. And so it could go on until match start or both teams could pick ships ships shortly before the match starts.

Can someone explain to me how to play in a sportsmanly manner with regards to ship picking ? I would greatly appreciate it

8

General Discussion / GOI usb custom controller

« on: April 27, 2015, 10:13:46 am »

I have been playing GOI for around a year now. I usually play as captains. There are some things that are hard when playing as a captain. You need to communicate with your team while flying the ship. This means that you have to hold down a lot of  buttons.  I tend to use the build in signals (repair the engines, man the fore guns) combined with my voice. So I figured, why not just build a custom controller for the purpose, and that's what I did

The  main features of the controller is it's ability to toggle things on and off. Instead of having to press down w for 20 seconds because you need to increase altitude you simply toggle the controller to increase altitude and toggle it off when you reached your desired hight.

Here is a video :

https://vid.me/dzxI