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« on: January 26, 2017, 07:54:17 pm »
CA's and new player training
This is an area where i think muse has fallen really short, and if for no other reason than appearance. The CA corps when I found out about it appeared to me to be a social club, that was there for its own exclusivity. The methods of selection CA's in my mind, and I was rejected, seemed to hinge more on personality and connections, than actual knowledge of the game or willing to work with new players. Now a while later I see that all of these people who loved and were so important in the game dont even play anymore, and yet they are still retained for life, as if its some sort of court appointment.
The CA's like a good clan need to be pruned and recruited. Inactive CA's need to be pruned, and new CA's should be selected, and by that I mean actively recruited, instead of fill out an application and well call you. Mods and current CA's, you know who the people are that work well with new players and dont ask for a snapchat invite(jedi joke). Go out there, talk to these people get them interested, recruit them like you want them to join your clan, because that will make them excited to help out. The CA's and mods should be a living organization just like the game, they should be active players who are part of the community, and if they arent they should be removed, with the understanding they can always come back when they start playing again.
However as it stands we dont have enough active CA's in my mind and if the game population ever took off we couldn't get enough, and thats why we need to automate more parts of training. My first suggestion would be to change the way we unlock and design ships. Right now you have a novice lock on until you reach a certain level, and thats ok but other games have already established unlocks related to weapons like call of duty, and we could use a system like this to grant players ships and weapons based on level.
1 Ship:Pyramidion Weapons:Gatling, banshee
The logic here is that no player can screw this up, even double gat or double banshee would still kill someone.
4 Weapons: Mercury, Artemis
8 Ship:Junker Weapons: Mortar, light flak
10 Weapons:Flamer, Light Caro
12 Ship:Goldfish Weapons: Heavy Caro, Hwatcha
14 Ship:Galleon Weapons:Hades, Mine Launcher
16 Ship:Mobula Weapons:Flare
18 Ship:Spire Weapons:Harpoon, Lumberjack
20 Ship:Squid Weapons:All others
These ships would be unlocked by reaching the stated level number in any class, even if its gunner or engineer, with the understanding that having reached that level you have a basic grasp on the concepts needed to use them, ie when and what to use. Also we should create more of a wizard in the UI so that if someone selects a weapon, when they go to fill the next slot they get a recommended highlight on the weapons that go with it. IE gat slot 1 on a pyra is your choice, when you click on slot 2 it will say recommended next to mortar and banshee for instance. Implementing this system will hopefully allow us to not see some of the crazy loadouts we see when we have a noob ally.
The other great effect is it removes friction from vets an noobs. Noobs wont be able to fly merc squid their first match and annoying their co captian. Also the vet players wont be placed in the awkward position of having to ask a noob to change their ship. Which is something ive seen go both well and horrible. Some new players just dont like being told what to do regardless of what your level is, they just wanna have and ive heard this often "fun". Unfortunately they dont realize its not a fun things for us vets to have a worthless ally.
Without costume unlocks tied to level this will give new players a carrot to chase, and by the time someone reaches level 20 they wont need the carrot anymore they will stay for the game. They will have made friends probably joined a clan and have a lot of reasons to stick around.
Lobby balance
So this ones easy, you arent going to fix it and give up. I know it sounds horrible, but people will do anything to play with their friends, swap slot from spectate, join off friends you name it. So what you should do here is just remove all the restrictions you put in place cause people just getting around them, and it really only serves as an inconvenience, so actually youd make everyone's life nicer if you just took that out.
What you can do is make the underdog tag more prominent in the lobby again so people know what side the underdog team is, and keep the underdog achievements because people actually do like to grind those and thats the biggest motivator to be stacked against in my mind.
Disable mid match joins
The major issue with the easy match list is that when I click ready and start a game I have a plan based on the crew I'm starting with. If I have 2 ai then my ship is planned around that, I'll probably take a Goldie or double gat pyra. The same goes if I have a full crew, if I look at my full crew before the match starts I'm going to take into account player level and experience when I make a decision about who will be gunner or who will be main engineer. I will assign a loadout including the appropriate ammo to each person make sure my ship is properly equipped and so is my crew then click ready and start the match.
In the good old days when I had 2 ai on my crew the only way I would get a mid match join is if someone on my friends lists wanted to join, or someone had a friend in the lobby and wanted to join. That meant I was usually going to get a mid to high level player, who at the very least would join as an engineer with standard kit, and probably look at my guns and bring the right ammo type. At best they will send me a pm saying something to the effect of I'm going to join standard kit would you rather I bring buff?
So this causes problems for 2 reasons, first I've been getting a lot of 2nd gunners mid match, or I'll get low level engies joining with chem extinguisher and mallet or something crazy. The 2nd is I might have accepted playing against an opponent who is high level with the expectation of having ai who's abilities in familiar with and then mid match I get one or two low level players that if they joined before the match had stated would have made me re evaluate the ship I was taking at the very least or abandon the match or ask for a ship swap at the most. This has been a quite frustrating experience as of late.
I know this is a fairly long post, and if youve stuck it all the way thru bravo. Muse I hope you really consider these suggestions with an open mind as they are the only thing I can see that can fix a lot of the issues we are having. I challenge all of you at muse to come play some matches with me. See what its like to feel the stress of trying to teach a new player at the same time you are going against a vet stack, come play a 2 v 1 and see how it feels. Come on a smurf account so that you can get trolled. Try starting the match with open slots and see what randoms join your ship, and how that effects your game and the plan you hard going in. You can send me a PM with your steam details and I will add you, and we can set up some matches. I sincerely hope you guys can turn this around and remember the most important point ive made here which is we need more people, more than anything else thats the only thing that will fix this game.
Regards,
Narayan
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