"Guns of Icarus" fans, holding game back.

[Jazzza]

I'm the kind of player that changes to the losing team to balance the game. I do it in most games, but I tend not to do it in this one. If we're on a winning streak, I want to continue that streak with my crew because it's my crew - we've discovered how well we work together and our pros and cons. We are having fun playing together.

I know it's not fun to be on the losing team or to join a match that has one team full and the other empty, but it's a result of the promotion of the crew ideology and the game in general. Perhaps instead of complaining about it, you try and get some friends onboard and attempt to defeat your opponents using strategy or by adjusting your style.

[Morbie]

Hey Aythreuk, as a Moderator of the community, I can understand where your concerns are coming from and most players do strive to address your concerns and keep the game balanced as best as they can, but it will not be possible to adjust players decisions all of the time. Often players do enjoy staying with a crew and even team that they have found works well together. As this is the case, we will understand if you choose not to continue playing the game. We hope, however, that together we can push through this obstacle, and see you enjoying the game in the near future.
~Morbie

[Charon]

I remember coming in as a level one, doing fairly well in the majority of matches, bringing in a couple of friends and working my way up with those friends against "stacked" teams. If you keep playing, you'll find some lower level pilot that knows how to maneuver, when not to maneuver, and when to stabilize completely. You'll find a couple of engineers that listened to a veteran player or worked out the details themselves, and they'll keep you alive through some pretty interesting situations. You'll find at least one gunner that can hit well, sometimes even at a distance. Take those people and add them to your friends list.

Now, whenever they're online, you should hop into their matches. At least you know they're good at what they do. You might get one or two at a time, or even get the whole ship back together. That's when you'll really start defying those worthless little numbers next to those neat little icons that indicate your role.

I've been on ship with a level one pilot as he fought against a level nine. Over and over again, his abilities put us in a better position to lay fires. He communicated well, listened well, and even knew when to ignore my demands for better azimuth over better position. He did his time in the sandbox. I can't say the same for many of these newbies.

tl;dr

If the players that are leaving are doing so because they're fighting against veteran players, I'm not sure I care and I doubt many other people do, either.

[Pickle]

I played on a European server once. I was the captain and my crew all spoke some European language. Thanks but no thanks. You could say practically anything is "playable", it doesn't really say much.

English?

[HamsterIV]

I maintain that the low retention rates come from the fact this game is not for everyone. It sounds cool on the surface, steam punk airships, massive guns, and arena multiplayer. However when you drill down to it this game is about teamwork, following orders, personnel management, time management, and ballistic computation. For people who come from a world of FPS death match where winning comes down to putting a dot on another players head faster than he does it to you, this game is like a foreign language. I bought the 4 pack for myself and three friends. Only two of us still play.

The team stacking issue comes from how frustrating it is to fly with a team of all new players. When given the choice between being on a team with a competent captains and crew ,verses a crew of new players who will most likely make so many errors I will go blue in the face trying to correct them, I will take the vets any day. I play this game to have fun after all.

If an entire crew rage quits I sometimes switch teams with the rest of my crew to bring balance, but I am loathed to abandon a good crew. By good crew I mean people who follow orders and understand how I fly. They don't have to be high level or very experienced, we just have to work well together.

If muse wants to address this problem I suggest ship shuffling if one side gets too badly stomped. Keep the crew together but break up the team of vets. That way the members of the loosing team hopefully get paired with people who can teach them.

@ Charon
If new players follow your advice they will end up as high level vets in no time. That is how I went from not knowing the difference between the pipe wrench and spanner to what I am today, and I am sure most of the old hands have similar stories. Salute!
Well maybe not Spaceman, he probably knew how to fly an airship before he could walk.

[Pickle]

There's a lot of banter going on within these stacked crews.  Leave a team of players you know for an unknown crew and there's:
- 80% chance noone will communicate (by text or voice)
- 80% chance one crew member will not play the team game and will do their own thing
- 60% chance communication will be hampered by differences in language and culture (the Russian peoblem)
- 60% chance two crew members will not play the team game and will do their own thing
- 40% chance you'll end up with either a spare pilot or a spare gunner, and if you do there's a 90% chance they'll only gun
- 20% chance one player will do nothing at all (on the increase, two weeks ago I wasn't seeing it, it's not a spawn problem - they do move around they just don't play)

Against those odds, then unless I'm in a charitable mood and not just wanting to relax at the end of the day.. why would I not play on the same crew as the guys I already know, who know the routine and make everything just flow and know what to do?

Catch me in a charitable mood, and I'll take out a complete crew of new players and see how we get on.  Start out in a Goldfish, and if they're any good and they communicate try a Pyra or Junker build later.

One thing I won't do is crew for a Captain that's not a pilot.  This is very common with new players at the moment.  I've heard it described as "the Russian model" where a Gunner takes the pilot role to specify the ship and guns he wants, and hopes he'll get someone to steer for him.  As the Captain has control over the NOD keys, it's very awkward for the pilot on the crew.


If you really want to break-up the stacked teams, then Quick Match has to be disabled and there needs to be a balance switch so the Captain can specify 2x Engineer and 1x Gunner on the roster to prevent mid-game joiners wrecking the tactics.  Even then, that still allows a sufficient asshole factor for mid-game joining players to express their individuality by providing a Captain with two buffing engineers mid-game.

[Skrimskraw]

Hey Aythreuk
I can understand your concern about this,
But I have seen more games with only low level players in than I have ever seen before.
The high level players tend to play high level players for the benefit of getting good competition.
I have some members of SMAC, Ducks and gents on my friends list so I can quick join them instead of using every single minute of my game time teaching new players how to become better.

However I host a games daily called Crow Nest where everyone is welcome. And I dont mind getting level 1 players on my team, and I am quick to compliment them on their behavior and when they do things right.

But then there are players who just doesnt get the game, and no matter how hard and long you try to explain to them, you use more than 80% of your game time telling them how to fix  a hull, or how to aim than actually steering your vessel. - that is where my patience wears off, I just can't play with new players that doesn't respond.

Another problem is people being unable to take criticism, If i tell an engineer he needs to do a better job I expect him to step his game up and do his best. This isn't a game where you can slack off like an mmo, here the entire crew works as one unit, and if someone is doing a bad job I tell them to leave my ship or step it up, some people cant take that criticism and those are the people I actually don't want to play with.
also players insisting on piloting as level 1 is really annoying to be honest, no matter how many advice you give them, they wont learn because the best way to learn piloting is to first know your ships, health and limitations. - so starting as an engineer for some 30 games according to me should be mandatory.

My best suggestion is if you are going to play against high level /skilled players, don't whine about it, you can always join another game, but I learned a lot from being constantly defeated by players that were better than me at the time.
also ask the captains if you can be allowed to serve on their ships to learn the game, dont blame us for not doing anything, blame yourselves for not taking the initiative.

It's not that we like winning all the time, it's just that if we have to decrease our knowledge and  experience, the game just feels like its a boring job instead of us trying new tactics etc. etc.

[Skrimskraw]

after I made a post I realized that there were 3 pages :p
If a lot of what I said had been said before just disregard that.
I have a small sidenote too.

i add every low level who did an awesome job on my ship to my friendslist, and ask them to do the same. So as Charon says fill up your friendslist, thats what everyone else in this thread did.

[Charon]

Hey guys, I think I've figured out what to do about this. Once I say it, I'm sure you'll all agree.

WE ARE OP

NERF US

[Shukketsushi]

I would wager that more new players were lost to connection issue/game glitches than "stacked games." I endure them, and as do the rest of you here, because we love the game. We know that the developers are working hard to iron out the kinks that such a large volume of players presents, so, we are patient. New players who haven't really gotten into the game or over the learning curve are much less likely to be tolerant of those issues. I haven't been in a single game where people were vocal in which they weren't coaching new players. (Unless you count the games where my crew is all Russian; I couldn't tell you what in the hell they're saying).

I have about as much evidence to support my theory as you have to support yours. Next time that the game freezes or lags in a bizarre way I'll go ahead and screencap it for you so we're on even footing.

[Kyren]

I'm also one of those cool guys who tend to switch teams if it's unbalanced. Was on a 3v3 yesterday, first on blue, and we were winning against other at least somewhat experienced crews (level 3 and upwards, at least the captains), until most of them left and the other side got filled with level 1 players. I switched teams with their remaining level 3 Captain and found myself paired with 2 level 1 Captains, one of them an Engineer. We got one kill troughout the match, and were constantly battling their level 7 pyramidion Captain. That was funny though, and I guess that's what kept the game going for a while. Anyhow, about my team:

I called targets troughout the game, and no one responded, and when we nearly had the Pyramidion down for the first time one of our allies respawned behind them - I asked for help with them, and they flew straight away, totally oblivious to us struggling with another ship just in front of them. It was a little frustrating, and I'm seriously happy that my crew stayed aboard the ship troughout the game. Still, I felt a little unnerved at the end of it.

It's a quite tedious business at times, teaching and playing with new players. Especially if you've got to give up on the lads you usually play with. I usually avoid matches with guild tags in them, because I've only got one fixed crewmember who plays regularly, and the rest will be quickly filled up with whoever comes along or has me on his friends list, and whoever comes along sometimes puts me at a disadvantage. You could say I'm used to having a second captain fire my gatling.

Still, I'd call it best judgement to switch teams if things get unbalanced, because there's no fun to be had if you're just wrecking a totally clueless opposing team. In that I like the guild-tagged matches very much, because they usually only attract players who are up to the challenge, and the rest will go for Randomname's Game. In my opinion, having a high level of experience should morally oblige one to share it with newcomers.

We could maybe force players to get at least some captaining experience by making them go trough a tutorial before they're able to take the Captain Role, or Commander position in a game? Could work much the same way with Engineers and Gunners. I've started another indie game recently, and before you even get to have a look at the main menu of it, you're forced into a tutorial. For instance.. Captaining: Use Hydrogen to reach a ascending speed of X. Ram target X at the other side of the map with Impact Bumpers.

[Jazzza]

Hey guys, I think I've figured out what to do about this. Once I say it, I'm sure you'll all agree.

WE ARE OP

NERF US

Yep I'm out. It was nice playing with everyone!

*deletes account*

[HamsterIV]

Whether or not Aythreuk is still paying attention, three pages of discussion proves he/she has struck a nerve. I think we all feel a little guilty for some of the harsh newb stompings we hand out, especially when more than half of the names on your team are in green. At least I do.

I don't really know how we can make the situation better without changing what we love about Guns of Icarus. A crew of coordinated experienced players should do significantly better than a crew who doesn't know what their are doing. Otherwise what is the point in coordinating and learning the game?

[TheMick]

Im guessing I'm one of the newest here, im one of the indie bundle purchasers.

Things really haven't been that bad in terms of finding games so far. I managed to convince four other friends to pick up the game up because we all have a blast playing team based games together. There's really been only one night that we had trouble finding a game andthat was because we were dead set on crewing together; if we split up it would have been far easier.

I will admit it is intimidating seeing opposing ships manned by a bunch of vets but many people are fairly sporting. even our kamikaze Russian opponents were diligent enough to drop a GG afterward. I guess the lesson from my point of view is to just take the games as they happen; if I can fly with friends great. if not I'll gladly hop on (as an engineer WITH a mic, don't worry) and cruise with someone else.

[Macheath]

Part of the problem is that, when many new and inexperienced players lose to a well-organized team, they simply leave the match in silence. They don't learn from the defeat, nor make any attempt to improve. Instead, they try to find a game with other players closer to their own experience level, in order to find a "fair" fight. Many players who play online games don't actually want to play with other players. What they really want is to play against really smart AI. They have no interest in communicating with their fellow players, and when the challenge is too great, they prefer to turn down the difficulty instead of raising themselves to that level. This is not exclusive to GOIO, but rather is a shift seen in the culture of online gaming in general over the past decade or so.

Now, I'm not trying to place blame on the new players, nor am I lumping every single online gamer into this category. I'm simply pointing out a trend of modern online gamer behaviour. 10-15 years ago, when online gaming was really starting to take off, player community was a much higher priority than it is now. In today's online community, players want to be able to log in solo and have fun, even in games based entirely around an online experience with/against other players. Even MMOs feel they need to cater to "solo" players in order to have success. It used to be understood that, in order to get the full potential out of such a game, you needed to find yourself a solid core group of friends to play with. The expectation today is that the solo gamer should be able to "pop in" to an online game and have a blast. Any obstacle which gets in the way of this casual fun (like, say, running into a good team of players) is immediately met with frustration and hostility, where it potentially could have been a more profound learning experience.

-Macheath.