Feeding Frenzy

[Red-Xiii]

This is my last attempt to bring to light the main issue in the actual in-game community.  I personally called out two level 45 pilots, not trying to be rude but attempting to to let them know their continual harassment via text and voice was not helping their level 7 captains learn the game.  On SALE WEEKEND nonetheless.  No tutorials are going to make them understand exactly how the game works until they are throw into the fray and figure it out.  Anyone who says otherwise is just being simply wants to argue tutorials.  Not reality.  No tutorial ever allowed you to fully grasp all the concepts of every game youve played.

DO YOU REALLY expect new people flying as friends in a crew to understand gun arcs, ship mechanics?  DO YOU REALLY think you should be flying with them or STACKED AGAINST THEM?  Come on now.  All this bitching and moaning about novices shouldnt fly and high levels come out of the woodwork and wreck them.  Game after game.  EVERY  single lobby I went to.  This is why the player base diminishes so quickly.  NOT EVEN AN ATTEMPT to help them.  The absolute SECOND I said hey ya gotta turn your ship to the side so your gunner can shoot we became useful.  But no.  High level players find it beneath them to help and actually seem to enjoy beating them down both with them and against them.  Its not one or two lobbies.  Its every one of them thats not a novice match. 

Theres no excuse.  Theres no giving a book explanation as to why, or its muse fault for match making.  Or its a game let them burn.  It is a game.  Killem all.  But you will be back to playing by yourself because you continually killed the player base.  This the main problem in GOIO.  THE main.  Imo of course.  It is not a typical game.  Therefore its player base should act in a non-typical manner.  And be helpful.  Community has become to comfortable in their ways.  Clique.  You personally reading this may not be the problem specifically, but I guarantee everyone here has a huge part in the demise of new players. 

[Hoja Lateralus]

Short answer: Players don't care and it's not really their job to care. They want to compete in a serious manner and are annoyed when they are unable to, whether it's because of ally or because of enemy.

Long answer: I wonder what kind of harrasment was that, because "please, don't pilot as gunner" is not a harrassment for me But people are fine with people playing not so well if they are willing to learn and listen to advice and they are not complete morons. Becuase, yeah, sometimes just that lvl6 captain thinks he's so pr0 lgbt that he can take on 2-3 ships on his own.
OH LOOK IT DOESN'T WORK. I GOTTA DO THIS AGAIN!
People are stacked because playing together with noobs is a pain in the ass. Really, especially if they are on your ship. You know that, everyone knows that, and some people are just not willing to risk because 'vets do want to have fun too'. But most vets that I know try to bring non-serious loadouts for stacked matches, like all banshee mob or all flak spire. We are not willing to like fly into the wall to help them kill us, but we are willing to have some handicap for the sake of the game. Because most vets don't find crushing noobs that fun either.
Many times vets try to be helpful, I'm sure that when asked ALMOST ALL of them will give any noob the best advice they can, but when they try to delicately say i.e. "Pal, this loadout is not very good, because ... " they are responded with "F0ck off m9, I just play for fun, Imma not a tryhuurd like yeh". So yeah, we just stop caring, really.
Try to look up nanoduckling's posts, he actually made clan dedicated entirely for helping noobs and he did it for a while but his experiences turned him off very much, so don't put all of the blame on vets.

Edit: Also, sales weeks are unbearable for me. I always wait untill player population drops back to 400-500 and then play. At least since (apparently) I know my patience and I can't help - I won't make things worse.

[Red-Xiii]

Yes i wont beat a dead horse.  This is the only real issue I have in this game.  However saying that people want to compete in a serious manner in this game is true, but only when circumstances suit them.  Which makes them one dimensional.  And ornery at novices.  Instead of attempting to fly self sufficient and/or helping noobs.   I find that ALOT of high levels dont like flying against anyone but their friends or novices.  Only when people put their pride away do good games commence.  Im starting to think people have some serious performance anxiety.  Cant afford to lose and must find someone to blame.  Hence novice crushing.  Hoping this will change.  Im done with the subject. 

[DrTentacles]

I don't have nostalgia goggles when I say the game's community has gone downhill. Novice-hating was a thing when I entered, but it was just mostly just Ceresbane. Now he's got a little cult of personality. CAs don't come down on this shit nearly hard enough. Some of them even endorse it.

[Daft Loon]

As far as stacking goes there's some changes that could help push things in the right direction:

-Returning to showing levels in lobby. Considering how trivial the workaround is hiding levels only keeps the newest of players from knowing (until the end of match screen), if it means the other side of a stacked lobby never fills faster than it empties people will have to change.

-Explain the swap ship feature of lobbies somewhere obvious (as a menu tip or a mouseover of the underdog indicator) and suggest its use for balancing lobbies. It would be nice not having to explain what it does as often when trying to at least roughly even out numbers/experience in a lobby.

-Bias the after match ship shuffle. Far too often there is a perfectly fun lobby going only for it to die when the shuffle creates the least even combination of ships. If there is a significant difference it should avoid the worst option based on underdog/mmr system.

-Encourage people to compete against their friends with achievements etc. Its often more fun to split up a bit than have a boring one sided stack anyway.



Marginally related pet hate -
High level players I don't know or barely know turning my team from me + 1 or 2 friends + misc into a stack of me + friends + 3 or so other vets + misc rather than joining a ship on the other side that might have a novice on it. Could people try not doing that.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Marginally related pet hate -
High level players I don't know or barely know turning my team from me + 1 or 2 friends + misc into a stack of me + friends + 3 or so other vets + misc rather than joining a ship on the other side that might have a novice on it. Could people try not doing that.

Explained above. Boo hoo, vets want to have fun too, what a terrible people they are.

Although this one time I've had this situtation that I was in the lobby and I've seen that match is stacked against me, with members of certain-big-but-not-so-liked-clan playing main roles. So yeah I've figured "Fine, I'll get this over with and then lobby will shuffle and I'll have some actually good match perhaps". But after the match ended they actually swapped back. Well that's uncool, man.

[Arturo Sanchez]

No responders, decliners and shit talkers and sure majority of vets will actively play with noobs.

Not going away? then we'll do what any reasonable person does. Kill them all with extreme prejudice by staying with people we TRUST.

[Keyvias]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to hop in and say a couple things.

1) It is not your job to teach and improve the novices (Though we truly appreciate those that do!) Your job is definitely to have fun and that can and should be your first priority
2) When someone says "Novice Hating" happens, they don't mean you are doing it or everyone is doing it, simply that people are doing it and it is frustrating them because they want people to stick around, we all do.
3) Youtube events bring out the worst in novice games and in vets (cause vets have to deal with players who honestly don't know the game at all.) It sucks, but it's true. It is important to remember though, that many current vets found out about the game from previous events we did and I know plenty of vets who didn't know about Guns of Icarus before Grumps, TB, or Cox. So for the bad apples that hang out for a week, we do get some truly awesome players out of these events.
4) I think Disaster has the right idea. If you hate the novices (or how the game gets during a youtube event) a break can be the best bet. Play the game when it's fun for you and reap the rewards of still having a population without having to deal with the week of training and headaches.
5) Events like this are why we still have a population, without a influx of players every so often the player base would be much smaller (See most other multiplayer only indie games)


So in summation, I know its frustrating to deal with novices, it's frustrating to deal with vet hate, it's frustrating that this is the best way to pop the population up. I wish we could get a couple million views and sales putting up in-depth tutorials that made people as awesome as most of our vets and only have the people that Guns is a match for buy it.
We are improving the tutorials and making them mandatory so hopefully that will help a bit, but at the end of the day there's no way to instill the hundreds to thousands of hours that vets have into novices that quickly.

It definitely doesn't hurt to talk about this topic though and at the end of the day we all want the same thing (a bunch of vets and great players to keep playing Guns of Icarus.) So as long as we keep everything civil I'd love to look at unique solutions to something that has been an issue for almost every online game for as long as the first "LFG" was met by "Fk U"