Let's get to the point, after playing this game for a short while, I've found that a) I have no intention to stop any time soon and 2) there are a few things that annoy me/would be nice to have.
1) Learning curve
It's rather steep beast at this point. I'm the kind of person who reads a lot of guides before he even starts playing, but for someone who doesn't? Not that fun. There are a few points here, so I'll just go through them in order.
1.1) Tutorials
They... aren't great. One outright mistake is messages that disappear when you just move around - I've found at least one of these. It'd be better if you had to actually do something before they change - dedicated button would be best, but anything other than moving and looking at the pretty airship would work.
Now, engineer and gunner ones are reasonably OK, though I'd like more emphasis on leading your target and projectile drop in gunner - most mainstream games don't have those, so someone who didn't play ARMA or Sniper Elite may have a bit of a problem there. Engineer could introduce the repair circuit, lot of engineers fresh out of novice games just stand near one piece of equipment.
1.2) Piloting and advanced tutorials
Pilot tutorial fails to mention/emphasize/test some pretty important concepts. They aren't exactly basic flight, but still. Maybe implementing advanced tutorials wouldn't be a bad idea - even, say, gunner could benefit from more long-ranged practice, or engineers from using chem spray.
What the piloting one needs is introduction to ship inertia, including things like lag and behavior of motors - no brakes and reverse having a lag isn't something immediately intuitive.
Another important thing is tighter turning curves when going slower. Many beginning pilots don't figure this one out, and I can't really blame them.
Flying through some literal hoops that are impossible to navigate through without using these techniques seems like a good idea to me.
1.3) Social interactions
I admit it, this comes from recent Extra Credits episodes, but still. GoI demand quite a lot of interaction, and easing people into it might not be a bad idea. It can be as simple as disabling voice chat (maybe even text chat?) for players below level X in novice games - as an added bonus, this will force them into using in-game commands, which comes in handy if your voice chat is on the fritz. Maybe even making novice novice games? Honestly, I could just chuckle at someone in novice games calling me a noob, but...
1.4) Social kosherness
At least some guidelines to what is and isn't considered okay could maybe help. Stuff like how captain is in charge, quitting is for losers and so on. Most importantly perhaps, mention that standard crew loadout is gunner/engi/engi. Some new players figure it out on their own, some don't, and I've seen some captains quit at the last seconds before match because they had two gunners. For shame.
2) Practice mode
This one could use some love.
First thing first - add a button to spawn practice targets at long range. If I want to practice, say, hades cannon, I have to jump through some (this time metaphorical) hoops to be able to do it.
Next one - make practice targets actual airships. This way, you have to get people to go with you if you want to, say, train yourself to gauge distance to ships by eye, or to be able to hit the hull of the bloody junker.
3) AI crew
Making an AI capable of piloting ship is not really viable, but at least make the crew listen to in-game commands, specifically to pilot V-button voice messages.
4) Leaving crew formation
There is no way to do it for a while after the match has ended, at least not without quitting the game - you have to wait until you're in the lobby. When you've found a good crew, it's fine. When you're in a toxic one and want to go find a new one, not so much.
5) Brighter colors?
Not much brighter, it'd kinda not fit with steampunk thing, but a little bit? It's rather hard to tell blue and red teams apart from each other.
6) Captain spot
It doesn't work. I don't know if it gets stuck on ship's hitboxes, or has bad range, or needs to be aimed precisely, but it doesn't work properly. Making it a cone that passes through solid things would be best - especially if it only works on spotted ships.
Again, this is not the issue if your voice chat is okay, but mine has a few second lag, and sometimes crashes the game. I'm pretty sure it's a steam issue at this point, but still.
Well, I suppose that's all, then. Fly safe, shoot decidedly not so.
