Messages

31

The Signal Tower / Re: Occasionally Effective 2.0

« on: April 30, 2013, 12:25:17 am »

You're having trouble with that header because you're going at it thinking it has to be a font with special effects tacked on.  That's just not going to work.  That GoI waiting screen is done with so much more love, why not take a similar approach with the header?  Focus on making the header itself a logo rather than just text with a funny font you found on your harddrive.  Break it into two lines, make the first O into something like a crosshair or whatever, incorporate the OE symbol somewhere, anything to make it more like artwork itself.

Here's Newciv's Twitch header as an example, courtesy of our resident artist Beck:

32

The Signal Tower / Re: Streaming...

« on: April 30, 2013, 12:02:27 am »

Just as an example, anything you see in qwerty's GoI streams can be done easily in OBS and for free.  Most of XSplit's advanced functionality comes from its vastly superior plugin support.  If you plan on simply adding a static overlay (or the Twitch chat via an IRC client and OBS's handy window region tool) or need to include stuff other than game footage (XSplit notably has an SWF source plugin for flash games and neater animated overlays)  there's virtually no reason to buy into XSplit.  XSplit definitely WON'T improve your image quality, OBS is quite a bit more efficient as far as resource usage goes.  The real limiting factor is probably going to be your upload and your viewers' upload.

If you want to improve the quality a bit, you can increase the bitrate.  Just remember that the higher the bitrate the more likely that someone won't be able to download the video stream fast enough to keep up.  There's plenty of guides out there with their own arcane formulas for determining the perfect bitrates for different resolutions and framerates, trying to strike a balance between quality and bandwidth usage for both you and your viewers.

33

Community Events / Re: "The Cogs" Week 8 - Discussion

« on: April 29, 2013, 10:21:10 pm »

Yep.  The question is whether or not the shorter notice is easier to handle than the 'deathmarch' of time consumption.   We could just close the season without a tourney, then use a tournament to reestablish the COG structure.

I think that may be a better solution, if only because it gives us some breathing room for a back and forth with OE on scheduling the games.  Fight for the seeds over a couple weeks, Cogs as normal.  I don't think we should settle on that just yet, though, it sounds like it'd be a pain in the ass to organize when you know a lot of those early games are going to end up as no-shows.

I say these things knowing the effort that goes into putting on events, and knowing that there is a lot of work and thought put into cogs.

As do I.  I've organized stuff like this before, it does take a lot of effort.  Thing is, OE is getting stupid amounts of channel views in large part because of their efforts organizing this.  They're the official broadcasters of Guns of Icarus, backed by Muse.  It's not like they've been unrewarded or they're downtrodden, they can take criticism and they ask for criticism.  Just because they work hard doesn't mean it's not a bad idea to suddenly announce everyone involved is supposed to do something they weren't planning for for hours on end.  They've been kind of announcing how things are going to be without asking for input from the participants and that's just not going to work in the long run.

Again, the Cogs isn't entirely a gift from OE to the GoI players, the participants are very much responsible for a lot of OE's recent success and they very much deserve a say in how things are done.  No one wants to see the Cogs failing because everyone's switching to another tournament that's a bit more player-friendly.

There is no effort to dick with anyone.  CoGs is not and cannot be for everyone. It's for team players who have put in the effort or had someone else put in the effort for them to form a team, practice, and show up

Take my personal cogs story for example:

When Cogs started I saw that I was not going to be able to play, I didn't know anyone personally in the game and had not made any name for myself yet.  I started by trying to form my own clan, and started working on an everyone can join tournament called sky kinds.  Both failed. 
After crewing Smollets ship in normal games and having a great time he asked me if I wanted to be a duck.
Maybe a week and a half before the Raft played their first game I tried out for one of the 2 captain spots.  I lost to Ccrack and ended up as the gunner for Hizumi.  later because so many Ducks wanted to play in cogs I earned a captain spot on the 3rd ducks team, the Brood.

Even though the Brood has only played 2 matches, something like 17 different players have been on the Brood.
player sometimes can't make a game, some disappear, some stop playing GOI, some move on to captain their own teams, some come and fill in for one game.

You recruit when you sign up, and you recruit be for every single game. Thats just how it is.

I am in CoGs because of Squashes effort, Smollets effort, My effort, My various crew and teammate's effort, and all the people who put on the cog's effort.

IT TAKES A LOT OF EFFORT TO BE IN COGS.

Congratulations.  I don't see people lining up to watch players organize, they're there to watch the games themselves.  Demanding that everyone have your same dedication is absolutely ridiculous, that's not what the Cogs should be about.  This is not a professional league where people earn money, there shouldn't be an expectation that the participants go through undue stress just to compete.  The organizers taking a bit of time to consider the difficulty of scheduling for the teams is well worth whatever perceived drop in quality there is for the spectators, it's not that hard to just ask beforehand before declaring that this is what's going to happen and that's final.

Just about everyone here understands that just by the nature of having teams there's going to be unavoidable difficulties, it sucks but no one can really come up with a way to make team organization easy.  But that's completely different from romanticizing it as an ideal, like that's how it  should be.  It's fine to have a bit of pride about your own dedication but I'm going to be blunt, the less that kind of hard work is rewarded the better.  We should be making every effort to make participation as easy as possible, to take down as many boundaries to competing as is practical so that victories are less effected by anything other than skill.

It's just not fun watching a team like Corvus forfeiting a match because they got fucked by a surprise, people don't watch the Cogs to watch the participants stress out over scheduling.  That makes the game stop being fun, and when the Cogs stop being fun they're going to die.

If you don't like these facts about cogs make your own event.  Seriously I want more events!  I myself have spent over 30 hrs trying to get non cogs events going.

Teams are already feeling stressed out just by the current Cogs.  There's no way the Cogs could survive another similar league, a lot of people would be playing in one or the other.  It's really damn rare to have the time to participate in multiple simultaneous leagues, particularly if they're both as demanding as the Cogs.  Not to mention the nightmare of scheduling conflicts between the two, the Cogs have a pretty good time on Saturday and you bet any serious league is going to want those hours too.  A lot of people like myself want to compete in THE league, we want the spotlight on the bigass Twitch channel.  Picking up our toys and going elsewhere is more of a last ditch effort should all else fail, which it won't as I'm sure Qwerty and Swallow are going to take this thread seriously.

34

Community Events / Re: Cogs reflections...

« on: April 28, 2013, 05:43:57 pm »

High tensions matches are a great thing.  It's just that we may need a new cog down the line, which will be all sorts of fun to schedule.

35

Community Events / Re: Re: "The Cogs" Week 8 - Discussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 05:39:49 pm »

We all have time to find players available and form or reorganize our teams.

If you cant make it that is just bad luck.

If you want a tournament that you can control all the details of, make one.

please, I want a ton more events.

You are aware that boils down to "too bad, go away" right?  That's a completely unacceptable attitude for what's supposed to be a friendly community event.  Not everyone can easily form teams, not everyone is instantly recognizable in the community and can form their own cults if they so desire.  There shouldn't be this active effort to dick with people who are struggling to keep up as it is.  Believe it or not, those complaining aren't doing so just to ruin your fun, there's a serious downside to splitting the incredibly small competitive community into different tournaments, we WANT the Cogs to be the big event of GoI.  It truly is not terrible for the Cogs to be a bit more accommodating if that means it's not turning away people who want to participate.

I'm fairly confident Qwerty and Swallow aren't thinking this stuff up just to whittle down the participants to the true poopsockers, but there does need to be more thought put into big stuff like this and their impact on those participating.  These games should be for those playing first and foremost, the spectators and the channel views are a nice bonus but they should not come at the cost of pissing off the players.  Just ask for input on this stuff, it's so damn hard to get a small team together as it is without having to deal with big changes on short notice.

36

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Match replays

« on: April 28, 2013, 05:13:31 pm »

A replay option would be sublime, but I'd settle for a log of the top left windowpane, the 'damage report'. Maybe with time-stamps. That, theoretically, would require very little work for the coding team.

I don't know whether attack logs would prove all that useful to players, though, given how easy they are to misread.  Seriously, just try playing on any game that bans people for attacking others unprovoked or without certain conditions (like Space Station 13).  You will be banned within the week.  An admin will inevitably look at the attack logs, see that you attacked someone without getting hit back, and ban you without realizing the only reason you weren't hit was because the guy you killed was trying to force open an airlock separating you from deadly neurotoxins.

The information is just too incomplete to make any real use of it.  So much of GoI is positioning and where two ships are relative to each other can make a "Random Asshole destroyed Hull Armor" either virtually meaningless or a real gamechanger.

37

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 02:57:13 pm »

I think chem spray is better vs. sustained fire damage, and the extinguisher for parts occasionally catching on fire.

Thing is, occasional damage is almost a nonissue in the current version.  I'd rather be prepared for serious fire damage than worry about level 6 fires (you gotta ignore a part for a while before it even gets that high) taking an extra hit of chemspray when you have to be on a part anyways because it's on repair cooldown, especially when you can outright ignore those fire stacks just by quickswitching to chemspray immediately following a mallet whack during your repair circuit.  Hell, even if you don't have the time to completely extinguish a fire, just chemspraying it once is often enough to make it manageable, to slow the damage down to something you can deal with later without it snowballing into a level 20 stack.  The only thing I've discovered that makes me not want to always go chemspray for all my firefighters is the flaregun's instant 15 stacks, shoot that into a balloon and they either have an extinguisher or they pop.

Well, we did get a bit sidetracked there.

I also think I've made my case pretty damn well, actually.

The efficacy of the flamethrower's incredibly relevant chemspray is one of the biggest reasons flamethrowers aren't stupidly OP.  It's so easy to chemspray while repairing at no loss of efficiency, so there's almost no excuse for being caught off guard and suddenly getting a level 20 fire on the hull.  Flamethrowers absolutely EAT crews that only bring extinguishers, it's so easy to stay in arc and force the engineers to make tough decisions.

38

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 02:33:43 pm »

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

If they brought chemspray, yes.

We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want

That's what we've been arguing.  I think I've made my case pretty damn well.

39

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 01:59:01 pm »

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

If they brought chemspray, yes.

40

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 01:48:00 pm »

But if the other ship has a dedicated gunner, there should be very little difference in the amount of shooting they do. They might have to jump off to whack the gun during reloads, but that's it. Gungineers don't have to worry too much either. On the Pyra they can quickly fix the balloon and be back on the gun quickly. The rest of the ship can be handled with little trouble by the main engineer. Same goes for other ships.

Again, this isn't any different for any other light weapon.  With a flamer, you can at least force them off the gun some of the time (possibly entirely if they have a dedicated gunner because they can't both extinguish and repair their own gun, they need someone else to stop what they're doing to keep them going) and hit the engines or balloon.  You only have to distract them for a bit so that your own engines can get back online so you can turn and get out of there, you need to DISABLE and the flamethrower is the perfect weapon for that situation so long your opponent didn't just chemspray everything.

41

Community Events / Re: change the play day

« on: April 28, 2013, 01:32:50 pm »

Obviously any time that is selected will have some problems with some people. A good organization will do the best that it can to minimize the scheduling conflicts. It's very likely that the COGs are doing that now.

However, if you've ever been out to eat, to a gas station, or to any store or business on any hour of the weekend -- I'm sure you'll understand that the middle working class doesn't get to sit home on Saturday/Sunday like we have a day off from school. Furthermore, a large percentage of 'gamers' do NOT have salaried Monday-Friday 9-5 jobs.

This is something that should be taken into consideration as the population of this game grows.

So very much the truth.  I get incredibly frustrated whenever I see someone being flippant about others' issues just because they personally aren't affected.  Cogs are at 3 in the morning for you and you get on just fine?  Good for you, not everyone has the luxury of staying up that late or getting up that early, not everyone has that day off.  If it can't be helped then it IS just a matter of dealing with it, but we should be making every effort to avoid that if at all possible.  It sucks being on the receiving end of those "deal with it" remarks, so don't fling them around just to brag about your own dedication.

That being said, 4-ish on a Saturday will likely be the one time that's convenient for the most people playing, I think it's a great "standard" time that should be adjusted as requested and complemented with rescheduled games if at all possible for those who cannot make the standard times.

42

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 01:29:40 pm »

The carronade and flamer combo is annoying, but it can't kill anywhere near as easily as other gun combos. If the other ship has drogue chute an good engineers, they'll be holding that ship together for a long, long time.

And a lone flamer being formidable? Not even slightly. If the other team has any idea what they're doing, they'll keep the components in good shape while they shoot you with guns that actually do significant damage. You're not going to hurt a Pyra with a flamer if it's firing gatflak in your face.

If a Pyra is shooting gatflak in your blindspot then you're not going to hurt it without help period, no matter what light weapon you happen to be using.  The idea isn't to kill the enemy ship, it's to survive, and the flamethrower is one of the more effective weapons for the job as it at least gives the enemy engineers and gunners something to worry about that isn't shooting you.  They have to move.

As for the use of drogue chute, while that applies to any carronade build it doesn't apply nearly as much to a carronade/flamer combo.  The balloon is just the cherry on top, that continuous fire damage at nearly any angle will make any crew that didn't bring chemspray cry tears of blood.  It'll kill hulls, engines, weapons, everything WHILE forcing the other captain to bring drogue chute instead of any of the other great pilot tools.  Might take a bit longer to kill, but that's a ship that isn't going to do shit in the meantime.

43

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 01:09:08 pm »

But in what situations are flamers even used in conjunction with other guns?

...all the time.  They're absurdly effective trifecta guns: they don't require ammo switching so you can stick just about anyone on one, they have a wide turning arc, they can disable AND kill balloons with frightening efficiency, and they attack everything on a ship at once.  They don't need to be a primary gun to kick ass, I keep one of the front left of my Pyramidion for quick passes and to prevent enemy ships from fleeing when I catch them in a blind spot.  On my Squid it's a great complement to the front light carronade, able to help damage the balloon quickly while dealing damage to everything at once.  They're stupidly effective even against experienced crews, and Galleons make for easy targets should you keep your engines up after that inevitable Hwacha volley.  Flamethrowers can so very easily take out engines and balloons making them fairly helpless to avoid even MORE fire stacks.

Even if it's by itself, it's formidable.  While many other light guns will need another gun to be effective or have massive drawbacks like the Mercury's tiny rotation, the flamethrower deals respectable damage to all components and will force the enemy engineers to either allow the hull to take damage or sacrifice components.  It's the use you usually see out of it, a defensive weapon to push an enemy out of what would normally be a blind spot.  It's not hard to deal with for an experienced crew, but you have to actually deal with it unlike other light weapons which are simply a matter of repairing the hull or whatever gun got sniped out.

It's principal weakness is its range, but if you're not sniping it's not unusual at all for ships to rub shoulders.

I wasn't here to see flamethrower as instant killswitch for enemy guns, but I do know it's an awesome cross between a hwacha and a carronade.  Against people like me, you better fucking bring chemspray as that's the biggest thing keeping the flamethrower from being the OP terror it apparently once was.

44

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 11:48:11 am »

Except you're going to be taking continuous damage in that situation.  You use the chemspray BEFORE it reaches 20 stacks (if it already has reached 20 stacks then the entire ship has likely reached 20 stacks, you're fucked anyways), that hull is now immune to fire so it's not re-igniting giving you time to reach other components.  You can't do that effectively with an extinguisher, as soon as you leave that hull it's going to start building stacks again on top of whatever else the enemy is tossing at you.

45

Gameplay / Re: Engineer Strategy Dicussion

« on: April 28, 2013, 11:26:03 am »

I still chemspray incredibly useful as it stops those hugeass stacks in the first place.  You won't be able to chemspray everything, but you won't be able to extinguish everything either before they break.  With chemspray, you can protect more critical components without the need to babysit (chemspray the hull until it's put out, run to the engines to keep them online, keep moving back and forth while another engineer handles the balloon and guns).  With an extinguisher, at best you'll keep one thing in good condition or several in poor condition and you're much more likely to have a lot of dead components.

It's just such a huge advantage to be able to leave the hull without it reigniting and reaching level 15 while you run to keep your ship mobile, and it's so rare for a fire to reach a high level so quickly on a critical component without you noticing.  The flare gun is a notable exception that I'm now partial to, but my flamethrower isn't going to be so kind as to let you extinguish those fires one at a time.

But none of this matters if your opponent's fires are just accidents from other weapons.  Chemspray or extinguisher, that fire's going out in one click and it's not likely that the component is going to re-ignite anytime soon.