The 2 Engineer/1 Gunner Meta, and getting people to follow it

[Victor Conroy]

So I tend to wrack my brain daily over the question of whether this game is just hard to penetrate for some people, or if those people are infact just retards...

It's conceivable that newer people don't understand this is how the game has evolved...on the other hand, it's also entirely possible those people just don't care about the other crew and do whatever the hell they want...it's also arguable if this meta should be kept, but as things stand the reasonable for it is fairly sound.

Anyway, I just had an idea, a bit of social engineering that might steer people in the right direction.


In the lobby, where it says 'Click to Captain/Crew'...just put the Engineer Wrench symbol inside 2 of those boxes, somewhere along with the text, put a Gunner Bullet in the third crew slot, and put a Steering Wheel symbol in the Captain slot box.


Not much, but it might be something to engage peoples brains and get them thinking that maybe they should organize themselves like that. Mind you if it works better than expected I can see people getting bitched at for not going gunner in the gunner slot etc. It also doesn't account for the people who don't even understand what class they are, or how to switch, but maybe a greater emphasis on symbol association might work.

Addendum - Or, having double checked how the lobby looks, instead of just having the empty slot say "AI Crewman" have it say "AI Engineer/Gunner" instead, as an alternative to the symbols thing...of course then that would need to correlate to actually getting an AI crewman of that type once ingame, and if the code isn't already in place, well, extra work :s

[Redorio diVario]

It seems that Muse wasn't totally prepared for a big influx of new players. Unfortunately the game is not newbie-friendly and many of them just have problems to understand that this is a cooperative game with no place for individuals. I agree that GoI needs some simple instructions or subtle suggestions how the game is intended to be played.

I'm not sure if it was intended but currently the only sensible crews are 1 pilot + 2 engies, 1 gunner or 1 pilot + 3 engies. It's a problem described in this topic that gunner becomes just something optional. Maybe the game should be changed in a way that having 2 gunners on board would become sensible.

Addendum - Or, having double checked how the lobby looks, instead of just having the empty slot say "AI Crewman" have it say "AI Engineer/Gunner" instead,

It could help . The only problem is that we still lack an "AI pilot". This place should be replaced with "Capitan needed" or something.

[Victor Conroy]

It's not just about this weekend, it's always been a problem, it just becomes more egregious after a sale or other influx of players.

That thread is mainly arguing over if ships should bring a gunner at all, my concern, in this instance, is to try and prevent getting more than one gunner at any time.


And some of suggestions there would actually make meta an even bigger issue (Requiring even heavier enforcement), not less of a one.

Nerfing gunners ability to repair, or taking it away altogether, would just cripple a ship beyond reason if you suddenly found yourself with multiple gunners. You would have to start issuing service pistols to captains so they could shoot themselves.

And taking away ammo from engineers, then getting 3 engineers on your ship, could possibly lead to the same thing.

No ship can really sustain itself with more than one gunner, unless you're lucky, or have a specific plan.

It'd be good I suppose for either 2 engies or 2 gunners to be viable, but not with gunners as they are.

[HamsterIV]

I like the idea of having the lobby empty slots say "AI engineer, AI engineer, AI gunner" to nudge people in the right direction.

[JaegerDelta]

I have only ever run into this problem when people join mid-match.  if you are in a lobby captaining a ship, just ask people nicely and they will switch class. or if you see it on another ship you can just politely point out that someone should change their class to what ever, and give an explanation as to why they should do that. The thing this game really has going for it is the helpful nature of the community, it has been pointed out is multiple reviews of the game, and i think the community helping eachother is the best way to build a larger community.

yeah, the captain slot is best occupied by a pilot, but what if a group of friends are playing together and the only one with a mic isnt the one who likes flying? the 2 engie 1 gunner build may be the most efficient but just because its numerically superior doesn't mean everyone wants to play that way.
"
Basically, let people play how they want, if you dont like the way they play join a different match. an indication of the classes that "are supposed" to be on a ship in the lobby would be helpful...maybe. It only helps if people notice it and i think it would serve to make the community more silent or even indignant when people dont notice it.

a more elegant way to do it would be to make a note of it in the manual in some sort of lore-ish fashion (ex. saying "traditionally, the crew of an airship consists of blahblahblah" ) and then using that space that advertises the kickstarter currently, to advertise the manual. when the kickstarter is over obviously.

[Nadrynne]

Ahh, a "ur doin' it wrong" thread. I have noticed a bit more vitriol flying around in game lately about the "proper way to play" compared to the past. Well, I have noticed more vitriol in the lobby and in game generally. I don't know if this is because of the recent influx of players.

While I accept that the 2 engineer/1 gunner thing is an efficient set up, it's not the only way to play. I'd rather the general community not become some unfriendly super competitive environment like LoL or whatever, and if you step outside of the accepted crew set up, you get screamed at by everyone.

On the other hand it would be nice if the gunner class was altered a little to make it a more balanced choice in comparison to engineer. It seems odd that on an airship full of guns, the general view is you should take more engineers than gunners.

[Sasha H. Gorky]

I suggest to allow captains to restrict classes on their ships in Ship Customization, so that only specific ammount of crewmates with gunner/engineer/pilot role can join their ship. If someone enters your crew with other role it will automatically change their role to the needed one.
Captains are asking people to change their roles anyway but it will prevent joining more than one(/two) gunners(/engineers/pilots) during the match.

[Audie Murphy]

Keep in mind that a big reason for the sudden influx of new players is videos from the TGS crew (TotalBiscuit, Criken, PressHeartToContinue, etc...)

All the people who watched those videos should understand how the game is meant to be played.

[RaptorSystems]

Personally, I think the gunner class should be something you have to unlock in order to use it, it is not a newbie friendly class. I couldn't tell you the number of times I have had to direct gunners to either repair their own gun or the balloon. Or better yet, jump on the wrong gun.

Sadly 2x gunners, 1 engineer and pilot is not too uncommon either.

[Redorio diVario]

While I accept that the 2 engineer/1 gunner thing is an efficient set up, it's not the only way to play. I'd rather the general community not become some unfriendly super competitive environment like LoL or whatever, and if you step outside of the accepted crew set up, you get screamed at by everyone.

Salute him.
We must decide what we want. We either want to accept only 2 engineers/1 gunner crews so that the game needs to be change in a way, that it doesn't allow any other selection of classes or we allow any variation of classes and change the game in a way that any (despite 1 pilot for granted) combination makes sense.
Just try to think how new players feel. It's like giving somebody a plate of cookies and then shouting at him for taking the chocolate one because some unwritten rules claim that he can take only take the one with pudding. You gave players the possibility to choose any class they want, so it looks like you accept this. If there is no strict rule about classes, if the game doesn't inform about the "stupid customizations" then don't expect new players not to take 3 gunners just because some players with high level say so. It will happen and it only shows that the game itself is not sure what it wants to be.

[LazerusKI]

2 engineers 1 gunner...pffff
you can win even if you have a completely weird team.
we won a game yesterday with 2 pilots and 2 gunners, and we got 4 of 5 kills, without loosing a component.

if you have a team that will play all the time together, you wont need a gunner or a pilot.
gunners abilitys are useless if you mount only one gun, and pilots abilitys will only destroy you.
our pilot brings us into position and then he runs around to repair small damages.
i like to play the gunner just because...guns. it can be usefull in random games, but not if you know your crew.
the engineer is just OP right now.

[Veyka]

2 engineers 1 gunner...pffff
you can win even if you have a completely weird team.
we won a game yesterday with 2 pilots and 2 gunners, and we got 4 of 5 kills, without loosing a component.

if you have a team that will play all the time together, you wont need a gunner or a pilot.
gunners abilitys are useless if you mount only one gun, and pilots abilitys will only destroy you.
our pilot brings us into position and then he runs around to repair small damages.
i like to play the gunner just because...guns. it can be usefull in random games, but not if you know your crew.
the engineer is just OP right now.

If you didnt need pilot tools, and your pilot could just get off the helm to do other stuff, then you are playing against inexperienced opponents, I can't count the number of times having 3 pilot tools to chose from has saved my ships life.

You cannot tank in this game, your ship will go down, or become useless unless your pilot engages in damage mitigation via positioning, tar, high adjustment, whatever.

Also there are times when you need a gunner, mostly when you are dealing with heavy guns.

Hwacha, you really want Heavy clip, burst and charged to be able to adapt, Lumberjack needs lesmock and incendiary to deal with distant aiming and arming time respectively.

There is a whole thread about gunner vs eng etc, so lets not rehash this, but it would be great to be able to hint to people what class they should bring, maybe give indicators in the lobby on matches that show engineers wanted, etc

Also, I doubt you could make 2 gunners 1 eng, 1 pilot viable without greatly reducing the ability to kill or disable to the point where one person could sort of keep up, and then matches would be almost never ending.

[Sasha H. Gorky]

If you didnt need pilot tools, and your pilot could just get off the helm to do other stuff, then you are playing against inexperienced opponents, I can't count the number of times having 3 pilot tools to chose from has saved my ships life.
(...)
Also there are times when you need a gunner, mostly when you are dealing with heavy guns.
(...)
Also, I doubt you could make 2 gunners 1 eng, 1 pilot viable without greatly reducing the ability to kill or disable to the point where one person could sort of keep up, and then matches would be almost never ending.

That's true, and every ship (except galleon) have only one heavy gun or even don't have any.
Nobody wants to make this game very unfriendly but new players are used to other games where they can do whatever they want. So they won't follow captain's orders.
I've played many many games where I even begged players to do what I want them to do (and what they should do because of their role).
I had situation once when I asked nicely lvl 1 engineer to get off the gun to start repairs, he said "F*ck you" and left the game.

This game is really team based nobody can disagree, but this is Captains' role to decide who they need on their ship. Allowing one (probably unexperienced) player to force captain into different gameplay isn't good idea. Because I believe that playing with two/three gunners is different than playing with two/three engineers. Of course you can say that experienced captain should adapt to every situation but there are plenty of unexperienced captains who can't or experienced captains who don't want.

This game really needs very big flashing signs everywhere: "There is no I in team" etc.


>>if you don't want to read my poorly written text, THIS is important part of the post<<

My second solution is to make "change role to engineer/gunner" button for captain, he should be able to use it on every crewmate only once (to avoid changing roles all the time). When he will click on it, crewmate will receive BIG popup window with information like "Your captain wants to change your role to Gunner/Engineer" and available options would be "Aye, Aye Captain" and "I'd rather be thrown out of the deck (abandon match)"