Dear Muse: Please fix, or kill, skyball.

[Celine Dijon]

I'm not someone who is remotely familiar with forum etiquette, so I'm just going to come out and say it:
Skyball needs to either be entirely redone, or scrapped.

I jokingly compare it to any neglectful election, where a majority don't vote, and a minority who don't know better end up dramatically influencing the next 'era'. But in a nutshell... That's all I've seen from skyball. It culminated, tonight, in ending one of the most active lobbies I've seen in weeks... Due to disconnects. Only myself, the other captains, and maybe 3 crew across the entire match were not continuously forced into crashes.

We know you are busy with alliance and balancing skirmish, and that's why I simply ask to shelve skyball. At least for now, it doesn't work, isn't welcome, and is actually bad for the community.

-Celine Dijon

[Coldcurse]

To be honest I feel the same way. But I feel you're missing some information to give the devs some inspiration to look at this gamemode.

The gamemode is in my opinion the least liked. Although I cannot make that assumption and there should be a poll going around just to make sure.
But every time I have played this weird ass gamemode it feels really repetitive for me. You have your standard squid runner and then your disable ship to defend. If your team does not know what to do then this gamemode can end within 5 minutes.
I have no clue who actually vote for this gamemode in the first place.

The name itself does not fit in the world of guns of icarus in my opinion. Skyball sounds like a fun minigame played during peacetimes. But in fact your faction is always in war with other factions so why don't you call it "resource capture"? With this name you at least give a little description about the gamemode before you even look up the description and rules.

I think the biggest downside of this gamemode is that it feels misplaced in the game. Just to give you a example, read the following lines to see if you can asosiate with this statement:

• What are we fighting for?
• What am I supposed to do?
• Why can't I be awarded points by killing enemy too?
• What purpose does this have to the game?
• If I just pick squid it means that I can win faster. so other ships are irrelevant to this gamemode?

I rather see the purpose of skyball/"Resource Capture" be completely reïnvented and rebalanced because of the lore of Guns of Icarus Online and due to its awful repetitiveness or just completely removed.

[Solidusbucket]

I hate it as captain and as crew. I understand the tactics. I just think theyre lame. Im bringing this cargo balloon to your side of the map... the fuq?

Like you said. It doesnt fit. This is a game based on war damnit. Id probably like it more if it was "steal blue teams flag". It would still suck though.

No matter how you look at it: its a gamemode that promotes running away. Thats shit. Remember vip? It was shit when it first came out because it promoted running away.

Not sure why that lightbulb hasnt went off at Muse yet.

Works for alliance mode though.

[Ayetach]

Hi Celine,

Yeah the crashes are a problem, we recognise that. We've been working on fixes from the last few weeks to address it. Should be added with the release patch tomorrow.

As far as the game mode itself, hmmm. I'll bring this up in a meeting with the staff and discuss what we can examine to improve the game mode.

If you want to elaborate on any particular aspects of the gameplay you feel has potential for improvement let me know at feedback@musegames.com. I'll make sure to document every bit so we can cover those points, that goes for the rest of you too. Thanks folks!

[Psi Crow]

Richard LeMoon wrote in Discord

Image the harpoon if it never let go. That was the passing bug.
The fast ships did not get the ball. The ones that lived longer did. The pilot was removed from the equation.
If became all about the gunners and engineers
Current Skyball is: grab ball and run. Boo.
Bugged Skyball was tie your ships together and beat the shit out of each other until one team is left, then run the ball.
So, sort of like a mobile koth
It is something I would play

I wanna see that too, seems interesting.

[Solidusbucket]

It was very interesting. I also was part of that testing and Richard and I both voiced our opinions. I emailed them saying it should remain a feature. It was amazing.

It would fix skyball 100% if that feature was implemented. maybe.