All joking aside, I truthfully only have two gripes: but let me summarize what I've written below first:
1) make the useless guns useful again
2)stop making the game harder for new players
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(read on if you dare)
1)perhaps it's time to stop thinking in terms of weakening weapons, and start thinking about raising the other weapons to meet that competitive level.
Banshee is a good example...at some point in our distant past it was buffed to a "useful" status, which earned it a nurf shortly thereafter to where it's at currently in the "useless" category...in stead of nurfing it there should have been a counter created (chem spray at the time wasn't working) to help combat it's usefulness
example if a sniper gun exists, there should be a tactical tool to counter said sniping
like forward shooting smoke screen, that doesn't damage your own ship
or when the Artemis was "op" something like chaff that would cause the missile to miss the target
(when I say useless, a quick look at a competitive match would easily indicate what I mean by "useless" guns...as they are never used)
at one point there was a time when you would really have to ask yourself should I take gun a, or gun b, as they could be match specific, or target specific...now all you have is choice a
there are tons of other options if you don't want to raise the bar:
you could add new guns to the game to add challenge, I'm still a huge fan of a muck gun that prevents an airship temporarily from rising
or return fire to being a real threat...maybe there should be a captains tool that would make a ship temporarily immune to fire (at some fun expense, like all guns shoot slower)
2) I have yet to see one change that improves the feel or learning curve for new players
example, does shaking the Lumberjack serve any purpose other than increasing the challenge for experienced players? does making any gun harder to shoot improve the game play at all?
(sorry that is a rhetorical question, please withhold your rounds of Duck No)
My point being is that making the game harder does not make it better...
(are we trying to turn GOIO into a Korean professional competitive game? I hope not!)
our efforts should be in making the teamwork portion of this game even more involved, more exciting, keeping new players hooked into our community in preparation for the upcoming release of adventure mode....
one game, played against one team of new players, who finds every other gun besides the Mercury in this game too difficult to learn in less than 500 matches Should not mean please nurf the Merc...it should draw to our attention how we are failing our community
why not give new players a moving target reticle...fire bullet with gun in this box to hit target (like in Tribes 2)
or add something to the game to bolster teamwork
I would love to see a truly heavy cannon that requires a gunner to fire it and an engineer to load the ammo (min of two people to fire the single gun)
or a ship that needs a crew for more than just repair and shoot
for example...the map could be a tool to bring instead of the spyglass...so you need to act as the navigator and tell the captain where to fly
add challenge that ADDs to the gameplay, not to the learning curve
This is all
-Mr Arrow
indeed a Capital Fellow