Ship Scrambling and Other Upcoming Features

[Cl ick to Ca p t ain]

If scramble makes it through it should be a "vote to scramble" option.

[Dev Bubbles]

Hi everyone, keep the thoughts coming! 
It's good to hear arguments on either side.  One thing that I'm also thinking about is that, if a match is scrambled based on the current ruleset that we're proposing, would the match become less fun? Or would the reorganization of team composition still be fun while giving teams the ability to meet and play with new people?  I guess it might be circumstance dependent, but interesting to me to think about.  But if you guys have more thoughts on why or why not, that would be great for me to know.  But the ideas and suggestions so far are great.  And I think it'll be interesting for us to see how this tests in Dev App, for better or worse.  We can see how people play with it, and if and what changes we need to make. 

@Dragonmere, no worries!  Let me try to touch on some of the points you made, and you can see what I say is reasonable or not.  About balance, while there isn't a state of perfection that we can ever get to, tinkering and refining balance in the game is something that we think we should continually look at, so that not only do we address obvious imbalances to the game, adjust for various things in the ripples of new items or mechanics being introduced, it's also a way to keep the gameplay fresher, so that people don't stay stagnant or entrenched with some way(s) of playing the game. 

With helping new players learn the game, and thereby reducing the barrier to entry and helping retention, this is something I think we should be continually examining and improving.  The idea is not to cater to those who don't want to learn, the idea is to cater to people who would want to learn, who otherwise would enjoy the game, but do not have the media or vehicle to do so.  I think the work we did with tutorial, manual, practice, and even novice matches speak to that.  Like you said, the game is different, and introducing tools for players to get acclimated to the game is really part of providing better service.  With these tools, we have been trying to be careful to design them to avoid major immersion breakage or too much hand-holding.  If we feel like we have room to improve, we'll try to improve. 

If I'm to guess at the reasoning behind your arguments, it may be that, with something like scramble, it is done at the expense of veteran/clan/"stacked" teams in favor of new players to the point of punishing the "stacked" teams.  This is just a guess on my part, so take it with a grain of salt.  With the spirit of something like scramble, it's more of trying to find a balance, and a way for people to mingle, and for people to hopefully have more fun and not less.  The idea is more about that people on either side of a match don't necessarily find it fun when it becomes too imbalanced or one-sided.  And that, with crew consistency, switching up sides by ships (which is a far less intrusive way than the type of crew scramble that a lot of other games implement) can offer something different and fresh in a match.

Overall, the idea for us is to examine how to make the game more fun in general, and to build upon an assumption that a drastically imbalanced match is not fun not just for the losing side, but for the winning side as well.  As we implement and test the feature, we will of course be studying how people use it, and it's effectiveness, and if there are adjustments we think needed to be made, we'll definitely not hesitate to make them. 

With better integration of competitive scene, events, and clans into the game, this is something that a lot of people have been requesting actually.  We started with the site, which is a pretty nice step up from zero.  But we're looking at how best to bring all that into the game as well.  It does take some time to design it though, so it won't happen right this minute. 

Hope this makes some sense, but regardless, keep the feedback coming! 

Thanks everyone!  Howard

[Dev Bubbles]

We actually thought through the logic and logistics of where best and how best to implement scramble, and ended up preferring scramble at match creation over voting for a few different reasons.  One, because of the good number of ways players can join the match, a voting system is more convoluted and logistically awkward.  Also, if any animosity exists in a heavily imbalance situation, voting could reinforce the tension and not diffuse it.  It's also harder to set the expectation clearly.  With scramble, we want to help players set that expectation that scramble would occur as early as possible.  Hope this makes sense! 
Thanks, Howard

[dragonmere]

You are introducing systems to deter organized teams, rather than to promote them. This is against what I believed was the nature of the game. Organized teams, not just individual ships, should be the goal. Rather, it appears to me that MUSE is treating it as a situation that needs to be resolved. I do not agree with this at all.

I want the challenge of this game to come from the enemy team's skill, not any imposed limitations. It seems like most of the changes I have witnessed are geared more towards making it difficult for higher level more organized players. A better response, in my opinion, would be to make it easier for new players to reach a higher organizational level. It seemed like you were working towards that with the clan system, crew formation, and party system. However, in their current state, most of those features are nearly useless or totally ignoreable. I wish those systems could be further developed and integrated, rather than this new trend of catering the game to less organized play.

[Qwerty Kun]

I have to agree with a few of Dragonmeres points here.

Bubbles you ask if the system implemented as it is would make it less fun? Yes, pure and simple yes. IF I am playing with my team, I will make the choice to balance out the teams if I want another challenge. However if I am looking to practice with my co-captain (which you CAN NOT do in private lobbies without a LOT of players) I do not want to be creating a new lobby ever 5 games.
You say "and for people to hopefully have more fun, not less". You implement this system and I know a LOT of people that will be having less fun (myself included) due to the frustration of the scramble system.

As to Dragonmeres point about this game being about 2 ships instead of 1. I agree 100%, all Muse run tournament, and the vast majority of community run events are all 2 ship teams fighting each other. You do not play as 1 ship, and you CAN NOT play in those tournaments and expect to do well if you have no practice time your co-captain and their crew. While Dragonmere may have seemed at tad aggressive in his posts  I believe he is correct when he says you are punishing organised play.

I further agree that you seem to have changed direction really. You were working on and discussing all these brilliant clan and party mechanics, most of which are fairly basic or not implemented yet despite a lot of requests and discussion. Instead you have now spent time on a mechanic that (IMO) is detrimental to the game and to organised play. From promoting to condemning it is a knee-jerk reaction based on the vocal majority of the forum user base, which is not necessarily indicative of the communities opinion as a whole.

Additionally I can forsee a further issue from more a game code/server side. IF you force this system onto organised teams (and it will be forcing I'm sorry, textbook definition, I do not want to swap, you are making me) they will leave and form new lobbies. This will result in even more half filled, never starting, lobbies that spam all chat with 'Join this lobbie for cake'. This COULD (not 100% sure) create more pressure on the servers, cause lag etc etc to the detriment EVERYONES experience if it does.

As a quick sidetone making it a option for private lobbies does not fix this issue as "You can hand out your password" as you suggested on the Fireside. You allready have 20 other lobbies spamming to 'jon ths gme'.

What bothers me is that the solution to this is So Damn Simple. Just make it an option at lobby creation for all games. We don't need competitive lobbies any segregation of lobbies even if there are no restrictions on joining, will be detrimental. Just give the lobby creator the option. I know a lot of the experienced captains will do this from time to time and ALL the new players will. Hell, make it the default option and we have to swap to 'Stacked' mode or something, that way all the new blood will make the Scrambled lobbies by default.

Howard, as per our little skype convo a few minutes ago. I see 2 distinct mentalities when playing this game. Playing for fun and Playing to Practice. Now the two or not necessarily mutually exclusive HOWEVER if I am playing to practice it is with my co-captain by my side. Even when pub stomping I will get more out of flying with Sasqautch then I will with an all harpoon junker. You need to practice so much more than just shot timing and rebuild routes on ships. Co-ordination, communication, timing, approaches. If I want to train I do not want to be scrambled, If I DID (and I can see that happening to strengthen MY personal crew) I would start a scrambled lobby or join another.

Just my opinion on the matter. You want to test this? test it as near to every who has posted on this topic has suggested, as a lobby option.

cheers,

Qwerty

[Dev Bubbles]

@dragonmere, actually, since you brought up better integration clan, party, and crew form, what do you have in mind?  Any suggestions? 
If the forum format is too scattered, you can email me as well if you want.  Thanks! 

[Dev Bubbles]

@qwerty, our direction haven't changed actually.  I have to look at the game holistically, while we implement features that improve team play, which we have been doing, we do also work on reducing learning curve and increasing retention, and this is something we've been working on since day one.  Also, by the way, the server issue that you pointed out isn't really an issue.  Thanks!

[Sammy B. T.]

Long posts have been written on this so I will be brief.

This will just create more unfilled lobbies, it is hard enough to fill a lobby.
With the proposed voluntary swap mechanic being added, that may in of itself reduce "stacking"
Please don't do this and thank you for reading our posts.

[Mr. Trickery]

I personally like the idea of scrambled matches but as a game type, like have lobbies called scambled lobbies so its clear that its a scrambled game and other people either looking for one or not can tell. As long as its not forced in every lobby I'd be ok with this and would even join a scrambled game once it a while.

With the whole issue of balancing which is going on I actually believe that its almost impossible to fully balance a game, regardless of whether or not you "nerf" this gun because people think its "OP" or "nerf" this ship because people think its overused players will just more onto something else. All these "balances", "fixes" or whatever you want to call it are doing is changing what people are using at the time and regardless of what's changed the more competitive teams are more than likely going to use the best ships with the best builds which other non-competitive players/"pug" players will see competitive players using/"stomping" with them and think "that looks good, I'll use that myself" which people will then start to complain about because everyone is doing it, things will get "nerfed" and the whole process will start all over again and again until the game has been "nerfed" so much that you don't even have a game anymore.

I'll end my voice opinion here before I go on for to long but this is what I think, feel free to either think about and/or comment on it. I'd love to hear whether people disagree or agree with me.

[-Mad Maverick-]

why are we not just creating aranking system that uses a number of different statistics (games played W/L KDR etc.) to help us creat "higher" ranked matches and "lower" ranked matches that help prevent imbalance in the first place?  that way if you keep losing to someone of relative equal rank you know that you are doing something wrong not that they are "just better than me".

[Asteria Bisset]

In all honesty, I don't think I'll mind the Scrambled Matches. I'm thinking that it won't be very helpful in 2v2 because in that scenario, you are guaranteed to swap ships regardless of which one gets moved to what side. There's no random aspect behind it. You know it will happen and everyone will become upset and unhappy about it if you know swapping will turn out badly for both sides. Part of the fun of scrambling the teams is not knowing who's getting shifted where and how you're going to shift your strategy to compensate. This aspect of scrambling is completely lost in 2v2 and it doesn't enhance or better the gameplay in that gamemode.

In a 3v3 match or a 4v4, swapping ONE ship from the opposing team becomes more meaningful but also doesn't become entirely detrimental. You will have two ships that will possibly cooperate and coordinate along with the chance to forge a new friendship with your "new" teammates. The teams though still have at least one ship they'll cooperate with if they like each other even when it's scrambled. The spontaneous and random aspect of scrambling is retained. You don't know what ship you're getting from the lot but you won't hate the situation automatically if you're being a good sport about it.

Though, this certainly is best case scenario, I'll admit. I actually think it's worth a shot in 3v3 and 4v4 to see how people deal with it but not so much in 2v2. Unlike in 3v3 or 4v4, 2v2 matches aren't as difficult to fill in and you can forego scrambling in them just to keep a room-type that won't scramble for the people who are on the side to not scramble the rooms.

I know this isn't exactly the best solution and it won't please everyone but at least it's some kind of compromise.

TL;DR:  Don't scramble 2v2. Scramble 3v3 and 4v4 since it could actually work well in the larger rooms. You can then determine if you want to enable it in 2v2 after scrambling in the larger rooms for awhile.

[Keyvias]

Hello Everyone,

We're always taking ideas on how to do that better and please shoot them to feedback@musegames.com so I can record them in our project master to discuss with the entire team.

Differing opinions aside, we're not putting this into the game tomorrow.  We brought it up to talk about because we hear complaints day in and day out about stacked lobbies and we want to do something to improve general quality of life.
The scariest part of those complaints? We hear them once per person and nine times out of ten they don't log back into guns. (something we can and do look at)
Even worse, most people don't send us a handy little email when they stop playing our game, it simply sits on their steam library collecting dust. We understand that gamers hop from game to game, it’s basic human nature, but we want to do our part to make sure people don’t leave simply because they’ve spend the last hour and a half being completely wrecked.

That's the reason we want to make this a high priority because keeping organized groups happy is a prime goal, but making sure newbies have a chance to taste that victory or play with the great players is also important to us so they'll stick around, join and create clans, and allow more to happen.

So let's have a serious discussion about making this place more newbie friendly.  I'm not saying let's bubble wrap every door knob, but we might have to put some plastic covers on some outlets.
First things first, let's test the scramble.  Not in production, Guns of Icarus Online will remain the same, but in Dev app.  Let's test organized teams being scrambled over and tell us how it feels playing with a new ship on your side.
If it feels like we've broken the entire game, we can work with that information.  At this point it is a lot of gut feelings.  We have our gut feeling this will be positive and many of you have a gut feeling that this won’t be good.  Let’s get some info and put it to the test.
We can set it to a swap after one win in the system and get a better feel for what it's like to be switched over.

That way we can look at this with data and not change any expectations in the game. But having the option turn into a requirement or vice versa will cause more issues and uproar in game than in the dev app.

[geggis]

You misinterpret what we mean when we say we wish to stick with a good team. If I get into a lobby by myself, have a random crew and random ally captain who listens and is generally inviting, then that to me is a good team. Good team does not = Scrimmage team (aka all friends/clan buddies).

Then on the other side, you have one decent boat, but then one that has the unresponsive captain with two gunners, and even the captain would be a gunner. His boat is all harpoons. Normally those ships dissolve pretty fast because they cant figure out why they lose all the time, despite our advice to remedy it. Then the forced swap happens. The two decent guys team up, and im left with a mix bag. You aren't balancing anything. You just trade from a team that can potentially win to a team that is pretty much dead when the game starts. This is why people will leave 95% of the time to make a new lobby. We aren't actively giving the finger to the community we have for so long tried to foster since beta.

Yeah, I understand by good team you don't mean scrim team.

You're not balancing anything in that particular scenario, no. You're never going to balance a 2v2 with three crews of similar experience/ability and one that is outright uncooperative. But a scenario where you've got an experienced team versus a team made up of a screwing around joke crew and a crew composed of newcomers that are wanting to have an honest to god match will be a different story. That's going to be stomp after stomp if teams remain the same and eventually people are going to drop out. If they're scrambled then the new crew that wants to play properly and learn (and, y'know, enjoy the game) gets a much better experience and sticks around. Yes, one of the winning crews will get lumped with the bad apple crew, but come on, which ever way you cut it, it's going to be a much more positive experience for new players who would otherwise have walked away never to come back. If there are two bad apple crews then at worst you get a supplemented 1v1 with your friends. I've rarely, if ever, encountered two bad apple crews on one team though and I'd still rather have them split up for more balanced games.

Surely the organised/experienced players who are wanting to stay with their friends no matter what will just organise friendly scrims independently seeing as they more likely have the connections, friends, clanmates -- as well as the time and inclination -- to do so? It seems ridiculous to me to punish the pub game crowd because they aren't organised enough. Pub games are wildly inconsistent by virtue that they're open to all. New players, dabblers, returners. They need everything they can get to get them into good games and playing well so they keep coming back. I played recently with a bunch of level ones who were bloody brilliant but it would have broken my heart to see them ground into a paste because the winning team wasn't prepared to sever their bonds in the name of good sportsmanship. Stomping and the prospect of allied crews abandoning a game just because they got scrambled is only going to leave a sour taste. And I really don't like the notion that the scramble feature will cause/force this kind of behaviour in allied crews. That's a choice, and a group one at that.

Besides, I don't see how stomping can be fun or practice, and leaving the lobby to start another isn't going to solve that either unless you've got a stable of friends to invite. But if you haven't, you're just making more people wait across more games, and there's nothing to say the new lobby won't fill up with more 'stompees' anyway. Then what are you going to do? Keep on stomping until you get scrambled again until you open another lobby? That just sounds like really bad form to me.

While I like the idea of making scramble optional at new game (options are good), giving that option may just keep the door open to stomping by the very people who are okay with stomping but not okay with scrambling. Pub players will go wherever there are games and if more non-scramble games are opened by more experienced players wanting to play together and 'practice', then we're back to stompsville again.

I think Asteria raised some great points on the implications of this feature on 2v2 versus 3v3 and 4v4.

[Captain Smollett]

What's in a name?

I think some aggrivation would have been avoided by naming the feature something other than "scramble", the term used in the  context of a co-op game puts the reader immediately on the defensive regardless of what they might have otherwise thought of the idea. Something more neutral like ship swap balanceing feature would have probably avoided some headaches.

That being said I think the optional crew swapping and ship swapping should go in as soon as possible, since they're long awaited features, while everyone debates the merit of the balancing mechanic.

 It's a hard sell telling players they're being forced to play nice on the playground, changing the name might at least foster a more neutral debate.

[dragonmere]

we hear complaints day in and day out about stacked lobbies … nine times out of ten they don't log back into guns. (something we can and do look at)

I've purchased GoIO for about 10-15 people. Real friends and old Cohort members. Good people, all. The VAST majority (honestly, every person, now that I think about it),  joined up with us, played for an evening or two, then never logged back in. They simply didn't like the game. At all. Slow, boring, shallow. I don't agree, but I can see where they're coming from. This just isn't a game that everyone is going to love.  It’s just the subset “Wow this game sucks it isnt fair its stacked and sucks im quitting forever and theres no boarding” is more vocal than the “eh, cool game, but not for me. Peace out.”  set. Correlation does not imply causation.

Perhaps your game isn't the wide-spread attention grabber you seem to think it is. It's a niche game. Bringing  friends, Cohort members, and people from other games into GoIO is damn near impossible for a reason. The overwhelming majority of people who try this game are not willing to stick with it under any circumstances. I've only had luck recruiting for GoIO from GoIO; new players who have already played and enjoy the game, and have already decided to stick with it for whatever reason before I came in contact with them. Everyone else quits. Stacked matches have nothing to do with it.

That's the reason we want to make this a high priority because keeping organized groups happy is a prime goal,

How? If you are actually trying, you’re failing with me, ~90% of my group, and some other groups I've talked to. I can think of nothing that was added with the primary effect of benefiting established teams.
The proposed clan system was something I was happy about. When it came out, it was simply 4 bracketed characters. I was not happy. The proposed 'competitive scene' was something I was happy about. But, seriously, it's just a non-integrated non-interactive webpage. Almost all competition is still restricted to weekends between 1-5PM. There is still NO competitive scene at 10:00PM weekdays. This is why I play pub games. You give me no option. Finding other clans to fly against is, quite honestly, a major pain. See above about useless clan 'system'.
If organized teams are a priority, the issue shouldn't be "What can we do to force organized teams to not be organized?" but "What can we do to make sure organized teams will be able to find a good opponent?" Finding an answer to either would solve your pub stomping problem, but only the second is going to make me happy. You've chosen to focus on the first. This makes me very, very unhappy.

I've been waiting with baited breath for months for something to help organized groups, and I've seen nothing usable.

making sure newbies have a chance to taste that victory or play with the great players is also important to us so they'll stick around, join and create clans, and allow more to happen.

I'm all for helping new players learn, get better, and win. But if the newbies get to 'taste victory' exclusively because you're gimping organization and competition, how does that victory taste? If this game isn’t supposed to be team-oriented and competitive, I’ve made a huge mistake, and should probably just shut up now, and move on to something else.

You can post "But it is team oriented!" all day, but with each update I'm starting to think this is geared to be a casual pick-up game only. Recent ship and weapon balance, and now scramble, strongly support my hypothesis. I'm not interested in this being a casual noncompetitive game.

Let's test organized teams being scrambled over and tell us how it feels playing with a new ship on your side ... having the option turn into a requirement or vice versa will cause more issues and uproar in game than in the dev app.

This requirement/option mentality is the main problem I have with your method of "balancing". You always seem to lean towards required. Guns balance, for example. You decided one setup is being used too often or efficiently, so rather than tweak things so there are more viable options, you gimp the setup into the ground so people are required to use a new setup. As it’s suggested, rather than give options to find suitable competition, you’re requiring us to play non-organized teams. This sucks.

Why do you even bother posting on the forums if the stance is "I can see the majority want it to be an option, but still lets try it our way! I got a really good feeling about our way!" I see the same call-for-response then dismissal in the gun balance threads. "Just try it our way! We got a good feeling about this!" I'm all for you developing the game the way you see fit, but please don't ask for our opinions if you don't actually want them. It just makes people upset. Obviously, myself included.


In short... I am capable of putting together an awesome team. The mechanics of the game and makeup of the playerbase do not allow me to find suitable competition 99% of the time. Where does the problem lie; In the awesome team, or the incapable game? Why are you just trying to break up the team rather than do anything to actually fix the game?
Supporting the idea that organized play is the same as poor sportsmanship and somehow ruining the game is a terrible idea in my opinion. I’m incredibly surprised that this is now MUSE’s official stance. It will most likely end up being the death of this game for me. Organization and tough competition absolutely must be the ultimate goal, not prevented at all costs through game mechanics.

Tl;dr Not happy.

What's in a name? ...changing the name might at least foster a more neutral debate.

I'm entirely done being neutral. Breaking up teams is breaking up teams. It goes against everything that I have ever defended about the 'true nature' of this game. How does the saying go? If it walks like a duck...