Topics

16

Community Events / Hephaestus Challenge Sign Ups

« on: May 10, 2014, 06:20:12 pm »

Hephaestus Challenge

Welcome to the Hephaestus Challenge, the next competitive league for Guns of Icarus Online

For information and rules click here

To sign up please provide the following

1. Team name
2. Team logo
3. 2 points of contact
4. 8 initial team members (subs can be used throughout with minimal restriction, check rules for more information)

Sign ups will close 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time Monday the 26th of May.
The first match will take place at 4PM Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday the 31st of May.

All sign ups must be done on the forums.

17

Community Events / Hephaestus Challenge Rules and Information

« on: May 10, 2014, 06:18:50 pm »

Hephaestus Challenge

Sign up thread is here (link)


All references to the Hephaestus Challenge within this will refer to the event as the League for simplicity.

The League is a competitive 2v2 deathmatch event focused around 3 core concepts:
1. Every team plays every week
2. Heavy structure and organization
3. Entertainment for both players and viewers

The League will be broken down into 4 phases:
1. Sign-ups
2. Regular Season
3. Silver Playoffs
4. Golden Playoffs

Sign-ups
Teams will submit their team name and a logo
Teams will submit 2 points of contact, including steam ID’s (ID’s may be messaged privately)
Teams will submit a list of 8 players to confirm that each team has 8 players to start the season

Regular Season
Teams will be randomly sorted into divisions of up to 8 teams each at the beginning of the season. Teams will primarily play other teams within their division.
The regular season will consist of 8 weeks of matches. Each team will play once a week on Saturday (with matches starting at 4pm EDT) with one scheduled bye week, allowing each team to play 7 games over the regular season.
Matches will be best of one, with a time limit of 30 minutes. Extra time will be given on a need basis (as ruled by a ref) in case of disconnects or server problems.
Matches will be scheduled to start at specific times. Teams are expected to be ready and in lobby before their specified start time or they will face an automatic forfeit.

Silver Playoffs
At the end of the regular season, within each division the bottom 66% of teams will be advanced to the Silver Playoffs, where they will be seeded according to how they did throughout the regular season.
Teams will play a best of one elimination bracket over the course of the weekend immediately following the end of the regular season (the 9th week).
The winning team(s) will be crowned champions of the Silver Playoffs and advanced into the Golden Playoffs.

Golden Playoffs
In the week immediately following the Silver Playoffs (weeks 10) the Golden Playoffs will run.
Within each division, the top 33% of teams will be advanced to the Golden Playoffs, along with the winner(s) of the Silver Playoffs, where they will be seeded according to how they did in the regular season.
Teams will play a best of three elimination bracket over the course of the week.
The winning team will be crowned champions of the League.


General rules
Players are allowed to play as substitutes for any team on any given week, but may only play for one team each week (and only one team through the duration of the Golden Playoffs).
Players and teams found to be breaking the rules or the spirit of the competition will be given a warning and, if they persist, will be punished.
If a team fails to show or cannot show for a match, they automatically forfeit.
If a team forfeits 2 matches, they are ejected from the League.
All matches and maps shall be random, and all refs shall be chosen to be impartial to the teams playing.
The winning team gets 8 elite prizes and 12 badges.

The expanded rule set may be found at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V9pISLUdi9OcChE2-OhSUPhyFXQggI41qpgT34SpcEc/edit?usp=sharing


If you have questions, thoughts, concerns and/or anything you wish to communicate to us send an email to HephaestusChallenge@gmail.com or send a message to one of the administrators: redria, Puppy Fur, Sammy B.T., Alistair MacBain or Grey T.

18

Gameplay / Guns of Icarus and the Law of Diminishing Returns

« on: May 08, 2014, 09:35:19 am »

The need for comboed weapons is one of the great things about this game because it holds great to the law of diminishing returns. To explain this, I will use the example my college professor gave me a few years ago. Imagine you're moving into your dorm alone. Now imagine you have one person helping you, that makes things a lot easier. Add a third, things are going great. Keep adding. At a certain point, there is only so much work that can be spread around and each additional person isn't helping as much as the initial people. The difference between 100 and 101 is negligible whereas the difference between 1 and 2 is the ability to move a couch.

You have this in guns. An example near and dear to my heart is the double carronade. I used to run double carro on the side of my Junker and thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I could quickly destroy balloon which in turn allowed my gat mortar ally to not worry about balloon blocking. I swore by this build for a long time.

However, later I realized how redundant it was. The job of the carronade was to pop the balloon. The thing is, you really only need one, especially if you played with a buff engineer on the gun. So while the double carronade is faster for destroying the balloon, the single does it well enough (one clip).

It was hard to realize that because I saw the side's job as being "kill the balloon" and it was doing just that, mission accomplished.I wasn't seeing the lost opportunities. I wasn't seeing that I was realistically shooting most of my carronade into the enemy hull due to how fast the balloon went down. I wasn't seeing that I could have more different types of damage.

Finally I was shown the light and began running carronade and carousel on my right side because it allowed me to set fires and lend some explosive damage once there was an armor break, and my game became substantially better.



This game has many examples of this. Every vet of this game has tireedly told someone that their build was bad because they doubled up on some form of damage. "No you don't want two h.f flaks on your Galleon" "Your gat, hades Junker is completly reliant on your ally for the kill," "Why on God's green earth do you have have five light flaks on a Mobula?" However I wanted to go into some not as obviously bad builds.



I already went into the double carro. I will mention though at in the team scenario, if both ships are blend focus, then its not as much a problem as your strategy is already so completely focused to put the enemy on the ground.

Double Lumberjack
Quite possibly one of the most annoying Galleons in the game, this ship is a powerhouse but ultimately a flawed one. One competent lumberjack can easily suppress a balloon, and a godly lumberjack can suppress two balloons. At the range at which you engage at with this long range of a galleon, you've got time. Throw an H flak or Hwacha and you still have the enemies bouncing on the floor but you gain the ability to kill them too.

Caveat an argument could be made for the galleon to be a support galleon. While this is an effective strategy, I feel like the loss of killing power is an issue with this. Regardless of efficacy, with the double lumberjack you are still sacrificing a lot of options.

Artemis spam

The infamous double triple artemis junker config

A screenplay by Sammy B. T.

Artemis number 1; This is great, I can easily suppress two thirds of a ship.
Artemis number 2; This also great, I can keep the rest of the ship disabled.
Artemis number 3; I guess I'll shoot at the next ship and get two thirds of it
Artemis number 4; Oh, well I thought i was going to be the inital two thirds but I can do the remaining third
Artemis number 5; Well I guess I will just do explosive and shatter damage to the hull, that helps right
Artemis number 6; Surely it must be doing something.

As a long time user of the artemis, nothing angers me more than excessive artemis. It is a great weapon and while effective in competent hands, it is godly in veteran hands. But if sacrifice piercing just so you can fit a bit more shatter in there then you are being quite foolish. It fails in the same way a quad hwacha Galleon fails, its not enough to take down components if you can't kill them.





Am I wrong or oversimplying things? Are there other examples i missed? Where do y'all see diminishing returns in GOIO?

19

Community Events / The Hephaestus Challenge Announcement

« on: May 04, 2014, 11:30:40 am »

The Hephaestus Challenge

Hey there GoIO. I wanted to get the ball rolling on the Hephaestus Challenge. What is the Hephaestus Challenge? Well let me tell you.

The Hephaestus Challenge is the new premiere league for Guns of Icarus Online. Combining community organization and in game support we will strive to deliver a competitive league for Guns of Icarus Online.
How will this league work?

• 2v2 deathmatch
• 8 weeks of Saturday matches with scheduled bye weeks
• 2 elimination tournaments at the end, a silver and gold
• A Silver Playoff with the opportunity to advance into the Golden Playoffs
• Golden Playoff to define the champion

We have a set of Condensed Rules for easy viewing and understanding of the structure.

Please make sure to review the Full Rule Set as well if you want to participate.
If you have questions, thoughts, concerns and/or anything you wish to communicate to us send an email to HephaestusChallenge@gmail.com or send a message to one of the administrators: redria, Puppy Fur, Sammy B.T., Alistair MacBain or Grey T.

This is currently the next-to-final draft of the rules. Over the next week, please give us feedback on our current set-up. If you wish to speak with us real-time, contact us and we will set up a time to discuss your concerns.

On May 10th, a final post will be released beginning sign-ups. Sign ups will end on May 19th at 11:59PM Eastern (Monday). We will release the schedule on May 21st at 1PM Eastern (Wednesday). The league itself will have its first matches played on May 24th (Saturday).

20

Gameplay / Missed among all the flamer being op, Chem Spray is 5 seconds again

« on: April 30, 2014, 08:47:14 pm »

When did this happen? There is no patch note putting it back to five that I can find. You give flamers the most ridiculous buff "fix" for its ability to put ion fire stacks and then nerf the only weapon that can stand against it?

Playing this game with these uber flamers is getting ridiculous. The gun was balanced before. Whether or not it was consistent wasn't an issue because it had good aoe and and a big clip.

21

World / The image on the Rocks of the Red Sepulcher

« on: March 31, 2014, 12:04:16 am »

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=244221898

What do these engravings mean?

I see airships, some 4 legged creatures, a dinosaur, some guys fighting on the ground and a few jellyfish.

22

The Pit / What Shows Are You Watching?

« on: February 26, 2014, 09:13:14 pm »

I've recently been getting into Teen Wolf, its mixture of dubstep fights scenes and lacrosse rightfulyl earns it a google review rating higher than Game of Thrones! Its a great show and I would love to find more people with who I could talk about it.

23

Gameplay / Tab lock down (Patch 3.5)

« on: February 04, 2014, 04:16:59 pm »

While I do like the fact that I can now mute people in match using the tab screen, now it locks down all action such as moving or clicking. Is this intended as it basically stops any engineer from being able to casually check who is in the lobby. Pressing tab is almost habitual for me while applying a buff or running across the ship and I hope this is not intended or necessary.

24

Feedback and Suggestions / Sorting of matches

« on: January 03, 2014, 12:40:44 am »

Instead of having it listed

Scramble Lobby
Scramble In Game
Normal Lobby
Normal in Game

make it listed

Lobby
Lobby
In Game
In Game

Whether the scramble or the normal is on the top doesnt matter as much as does keeping both of the waiting sides at the top. It makes it hard to fill up lobbies below the mess of 3 person scramble lobbies.

25

Feedback and Suggestions / Ability to turn private lobbies public.

« on: December 05, 2013, 10:25:43 am »

I'm sure everyone has had this scenario happen to them.

6 of your clanmates are on and 7 from another clan are on. Y'all want to have a pickup game so you tell them you are making a lobby and ask them to join quickly. You jump over but before all can load in, that level one gunner takes the captain spot and gets mighty offended when you ask him to switch.

Well here is a solution. Have an option so that the host of a private lobby can switch the game to public. That way you can make sure you get your teams right before letting in anyone. Its basically a form of crew formation but it would allow for setting up to play against other teams.

26

Community Events / December Drill; A Duck Divvying of Dclans (the D is silent)

« on: December 02, 2013, 07:09:07 pm »

December Drill; A Duck Divvying of Dclans (the D is silent)

Link to google doc
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10WKkoeHZOcCc_1FIjIPfkijSHLu2e67n3n9uvOfZpJo/edit?usp=sharing

I wish to do a simple event as we head into the holiday season of December. My goals are simplicity, flexibility, and conciseness. While I love grand tournaments, as we move into December I know that many people will have restrictive schedules on the weekends. This obviously makes competitions difficult as teams will be unable to bring their 100% to the weekends. So here is what I would like to put forward.

Saturday at 4pm EST, 9PM UTC (Cogs time)
8 teams (6 or 10 also workable, as long as we’re even)
4 best of three matches
No time limit for matches
Random maps released prior to event
Live Stream each match for 45 minutes before moving onto the next with the main stream. If stream team is large enough, we may have people take over stream. Regardless the next pairing will begin 50 minutes (5 minutes to switch things) after the start of the one before it
No ladder, no champion, no reward outside of enjoying your matches.

This isn’t a tournament but instead just an attempt to bring together teams of players in Guns of Icarus for some streamed competitive matches. I think this would be fun and easy to put on some great matches. Also unlike other tournaments where you have to clear a whole afternoon as you might have to continue on in the tourney, you basically only need to clear perhaps an hour and a half around your match. While this loses the fun of a tournament, being free from that pressure could help for around the holidays.

Method of pairing will be first come first serve of teams signing up for a time. Privately contact me through the forums requesting a time and I will update this doc accordingly. Steam and Skype are also fine. Who chose what will be revealed once a time slot is completely filled.

4:00 a
4:00 b
4:50 a
4:50 b
5:40 a
5:40 b
6:30 a
6:30 b

This can be expanded if there is enough interest. Sign ups will open December 3 at 4PM EST or 9 PM UTC

Now this is all in a google doc as well as this forum post. Once the forum post goes live, this will continue to be updated as the official rules. Rules will be set in stone once sign ups open. Feel free to comment and critique as well as point out anything I have missed.

27

Community Events / New Rule Idea, Cutsies

« on: August 07, 2013, 02:49:55 am »

So as many have realized, losing the 3a vs 2c match is in many ways a death sentence as it puts you in the long rotation where you miss out on functionally a month of competition. Furthermore, this season added the "Newcomers' Proving Ground," an excellent addition that has sadly not always filled up. Perhaps a solution to this is possible if we allow a cutting rule.

What if we allowed positions 3b-3d to basically try and claim a newcomers spot IF there are insufficient newcomers.

For example, this week only the Falconeers (4a) have signed up. PaFa (3d), Polaris Company (3c), and Aurora Squadron (3b)
are currently sitting in rotation. We could let one of these teams to call dibs on cutsies. I would suggest priority is given to the lowest rank as they have been rotating the longest. PaFa for all practical purposes would be treated as 4b. This would give them the chance to to jump up to 3a if they win both the 4a vs 4b and the 4w vs 3e match. If they lose, they will be ejected and can just sign up next week.

What this accomplishes is it helps make sure there are 4 matches every week and it gives some advantage to being in the upcomer's cog as right now it would be better to simply exit and reenter the cogs.

Thoughts?

28

The Pit / The end times are coming to Guns of Icarus. Here are the omens.

« on: July 02, 2013, 11:00:59 am »

Yesterday I was given the gift of prophecy, the ability to see into he future of GoI. I saw many great fabled things like the Manta Ray/Mobula, and the Rankinguld Shooter. However, many terrible thing were revealed to me. Here they are.

Harpoon guns have a two round clip, one for reeling the other for looping. Plan accordingly!
Greased components now set fire more easily. Plan accordingly!
Balloons now deflate correctly upwards as opposed to downwards. Plan accordingly!
More strength is needed to carry around heavy rounds.  Plan accordingly!
The in game game manual has been updated. Plan accordingly!
The components connecting the balloon and the ship can now be destroyed. Plan accordingly!
An achievement system that makes every player happy the moment they begin the game has been implemented. Plan accordingly!

29

Community Events / Cog Chronicles II

« on: June 24, 2013, 12:39:38 pm »

Hey there, Sammy B. T. here. I wanted to show y'all something I have been putting a minimal amount of effort into. I call it the Cog Chronicles (Or the Chrogicles, if you will). My goal as one might guess from my title is to basically chronicle the cogs and provide information that is both useful, comprehensive, and accessible. In the last season of cogs, finding out information was scattered across bracket, preview, and tipping threads. To fix this I made a prezi. For those not knowing what a prezi is, imagine a power point presentation where all the slides are laid out on a table and you can go back and forth between the slides. At the moment it is only five frames including a boring title frame. This is something I will be updating constantly and so if you see a mistake, can think of something to add, or just have anything you want me to know, simply tell me and I shall do my best to strive for the right.

If you click any of the words in this line, you will be transported via the internet to my prezi!

I am slightly worried that that link might not update past what is currently saved. If that is the case, I am sure I can talk to a CA to get this fixed.

Right now I plan on having at minimum the weekly initial rosters in both "line view" and "cog view." Currently I am thinking of adding things such as, but not limited to;
Tipping information frames
Results frames
Short Summary of matches frames
Accounts of the romantic/sensual escapades of qwerty and swallow...frames

This should be fun. Please though, comment on, criticize, tear asunder my work. Can't wait to hear from you. I would like to know what each teams abbreviated name should be. 4 letters or less.

A quick note. This is not official, if something I say here contradicts anything that Swallow says, defer to Swallow.

30

Feedback and Suggestions / Lightning clouds

« on: May 20, 2013, 01:47:57 pm »

Would these be a good idea on new maps? We have the much loved sandstorms at the Dunes. Perhaps another kind of painful cloud could be fun. Imagine with me for a moment but perhaps while passing through it, have random strikes on components that deal fire damage.



Myah?