Hello Nick! Welcome!

 

We, the diehard Galactic Starfighter (GSF) community, are glad you stopped by. We know that the GSF population is smaller than BioWare hoped, but we remain passionate advocates and evangelists for the game, and we are hoping that you can give us some measure of communication with the development team.

 

Just like any forum, this one is filled with requests and suggestions, some grandiose and some modest. We hope that the more modest ones can be assessed against the game's overall backlog of work, and that you can provide us with a candid update on when we can expect GSF to get any attention.

 

In general, the GSF community wants three things:

1) Assistance in evangelizing/teaching the game--this is good for existing GSF fans, and it's good for BioWare to get more users engaged in a system that required significant development investment

2) Connect GSF to the rest of the game with more "ground game" rewards

3) Subtle and modest balance tweaks--GSF is in a decent place, but a few targeted numerical changes could make it more accessible and fun for everyone

 

Making GSF More Accessible

For #1, the biggest obstacle stopping more people from playing GSF is its learning curve. GSF is great fun, but first you have to learn what you're doing.

 

GSF has a tutorial, but it is very undiscoverable (it's the <?> icon in the upper right corner of the Hangar UI), and even if discovered, it does not adequately prepare new pilots for what they will face.

 

Accessibility Step 1 - Help players find the existing tutorial and introduction quest

The first step would be to simply make the existing tutorial more discoverable. Currently the PvP terminal has an "Introduction to Galactic Starfighter" quest, but this quest does not tell you about the tutorial, nor do many players even find it.

 

I'd propose that when players reach level 10, they are prompted with a simple feeder quest inviting them to complete the Galactic Starfighter tutorial (and telling them how to start it). That quest could give a starting batch of Fleet Requisition and then point them to the existing "Introduction to Galactic Starfighter" quest at the PvP terminal.

 

Accessibility Step 2 - Improve the existing tutorial

This would obviously require some additional development work, but Verain has made a set of suggestions that we believe will be simple to implement but extremely useful. And a lot of his suggestions would help us GSF veterans to take new pilots under our wing and actually teach them in a safe environment. We are eager to do this! It is the mission of my guild. But right now we don't have the tools to do so.

 

Please see Verain's suggestions for cheaply improving the tutorial experience here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=798967

 

Connecting GSF to the ground game

Right now there are few reasons, beyond a simple love of GSF, for anyone to play it. We would love to see more cosmetic rewards, such as outfits and decorations, that are exclusively available to those who play GSF. GSF daily and weekly quests now give Fleet Commendations--these should be used for more and more rewards. Right now the selection of Fleet Requisition rewards is very limited.

 

This will get more people playing GSF, which in turn has the potential to increase real money spend on Ship-to-Fleet Requisition and Cartel Ships (see note on Cartel Ships at the end of this post).

 

Tweaking GSF Balance (which also means making it more accessible)

Last year, BioWare indicated that development was pausing on GSF because it was "in a good state" or some such. On the whole, we do not disagree. GSF is a wonderfully deep and rewarding game for those who break past the learning curve. A lot of us would buy it standalone or subscribe for it by itself, if we could. We commend the developers involved on their clever and creative work.

 

That being said, after they said that, BioWare also said that there was a "balance pass" being worked on, that was part of their "multi-phase plan to revitalize GSF". I don't know about the multi-phase plan, but we would still like to get a modest balance pass, as GSF does have some balance issues that interfere especially with new players.

 

The simple fact is that certain ship variants and component combinations are a bit too powerful. In particular, these combinations are capable of delivering significant surprise burst damage. Veteran pilots can learn to adapt to these components, but they can be very hard for new pilots to avoid, especially in unupgraded starter ships.

 

As a consequence, new players feel like they got "one-shot" with no warning, and they leave GSF frustrated.

 

All this being said, we know that making any significant redesigns is both costly and risky. That's why we've prepared a set of modest and subtle balance suggestions that require no ship or component redesign. Instead, they only require numerical tweaks to data values--i.e. slight adjustments to damage of certain weapons. We predict that all of these changes would only require alterations in data files--no new text or UI work would be required.

 

Once again, Verain has done a wonderful job in collecting these modest tweaks all in one place: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7983062&postcount=1

 

Many of these changes are in line with comments made by devs last year, when they were still talking about the forthcoming GSF "balance pass". We are very curious to know if any such balance pass is still coming.

 

In Conclusion

Simple changes like these would serve as an olive branch to the GSF community, which has felt extremely slighted due to the recent spat of almost casual regressions introduced into GSF with 3.0+. I am happy these were fixed with relative haste, though it seemed like the issues were not even acknowledged until the GSF community pooled together to spam the general forums. Our own forum seems to be rarely visited.

 

I know we are a small community, and that our pet feature is not in line with SWTOR's renewed focus on story content. And I understand if that is why GSF was not mentioned in the producer's letter earlier this year. But it would really help us to know exactly what to expect this year, in terms of improved tutorial discoverability and quality, better connection between GSF and ground game rewards, and a balance pass to help level the playing field for new pilots.

 

This is our most desperate hour. Help us Nick--you're our only hope.

 

 

Some additional notes

 

Cartel Ships

The current set of 10 Cartel Ships is mostly unappealing, for veterans and new pilots alike. Six of them are plagued by these issues:

* Gladiator/Enforcer is a duplicate of a mid-tier starter ship that everyone has by default

* Mailoc/Redeemer is a duplicate of a top-tier ship that only costs 2500 Fleet Requisition, which anyone can get from the Introduction to Galactic Starfighter quest--plus they have a MAJOR bug: the ship uses the exact same icon for its railguns, meaning you can't tell them apart when switching. Just making them different color icons would solve this. A lot of us want to use this ship due to its neat appearance, but the bug is really crippling--please get this fixed ASAP!

* The Strongarm/Demolisher is a duplicate of what is widely regarded as the worst, most poorly conceived ship in the game.

 

The other two pairs (Skybolt/Ocula and Firehauler/Onslaught) do offer value to both veterans and new players.

 

We would happily buy more Cartel Ships if they were offered. In particular, we would like to see duplicates of the Clarion/Imperium, Sledgehammer/Decimus, and Condor/Jurgoran. Those would all sell very well, regardless of what cosmetic appearance they use. They could re-use the appearances they already have in game, or re-use the appearances of existing cartel ships, they could-reuse the appearance of class ships, or they could re-use the appearances of the cancelled GSF Infiltrator class. We aren't picky--they can look like whatever. Just give them a different name to set them apart and sell them--a lot of us would buy them.

 

Conquest and GSF

Right now we've got a little problem with how Conquest affects GSF. Some people farming Conquest points will just sit idle in a match, or if it's a Deathmatch, purposefully self-destruct into rocks (giving the enemy team points) to finish a match as quickly as possible. They do this because GSF largely rewards merely finishing the match the same as it rewards actually trying to win.

 

This thread has some simple and cheap suggestions on how to reuse some existing Conquest objectives to help motivate people to put more effort into GSF matches and not throw them on purpose. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7634988#post7634988

 

Reddit Thread

There was recently a lively and productive conversation about GSF in reddit. It has a variety of reasonable opinions. Please take a look!

 

 

---------

Edited March 25, 2015 by Nemarus

We, the diehard Galactic Starfighter (GSF) community, are glad you stopped by

How do you know that? You reported your own post to make them notice this subforum?

Edited March 25, 2015 by PavSalco

How do you know that? You reported your own post to make them notice this subforum?

 

I'm hoping we can get Nick's attention by sending him private messages.

 

But if we don't hear at least an acknowledgment from him in a few days, Reporting it is always an option

 

If that's what it takes...

I don't feel slighted if a new Community staff person doesn't drop by to give us a greeting in this forum.

 

On the other hand, if the Community team as a matter of policy and practice would at least send someone to check the front page thread topics a day or two after new patches come out, they'd be much less likely to completely miss things like the 3.0 GSF bugs and a year's worth of sticky requests for the Stasiepedia.

 

Stuff like that is pretty embarrassing from a Community relations team.

 

For that matter, since the start of GSF, we may have had more communication from the Dev team than the Community team. That's sort of overtime bonus points for the devs, but the community team could maybe up their game a bit. For example by showing up at all.

 

The upside being that around here showing up at all is considered wonderful and amazing performance that should be heartily applauded. That's right, just show up, and we're willing to hand out Community team MVP nominations.

 

Acceptance speeches and dancing Ewoks are optional.

There's nothing wrong with soliciting your interests to another party. It's how lobbying works. Wether you like it or not, in life, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" so if Shayd takes it upon himself to try and garner attention toward GSF then perhaps it's in all our best interests as well. Personally, anyone that draws any attention to the GSF community in a healthy manner, wether it's through debate or knowledge sharing or even soliciting will have my support.

It's reasonable to assume he'll stop by at some point. Having a solid post for him is a great call.

 

Everything in Nem's post is solid, but I really want to point out that the section on cartel ships is absolutely super appropriate and hasn't been really grouped up before. Cartel ships have a lot of "face value", appearing to anyone who opens the shop GUI, and understanding what the heck you are looking at takes a lot of words, especially to a non-GSFer. It's not obvious if you "should" buy them, "need to" buy them, etc. The issues they do have are subtle, especially as regards the icon issue. I would only add that the "mastered" terminology is confusing.

There's nothing wrong with soliciting your interests to another party. It's how lobbying works. Wether you like it or not, in life, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" so if Shayd takes it upon himself to try and garner attention toward GSF then perhaps it's in all our best interests as well. Personally, anyone that draws any attention to the GSF community in a healthy manner, wether it's through debate or knowledge sharing or even soliciting will have my support.

Just a thought but maybe add in the CM ship section a note that having the GSF related options get added to collections would be good not just as quality of life but also in making newbies aware that the options are there. People check Dulfy and use the collections window for previews of up coming CM releases and the devs miss out on hyping GSF items by literally having no way for people to even know if new GSF items are coming out. It's kinda hard to get excited about collecting an item if you don't even know it exists.

 

EDIT: with connecting it more to the ground game I'd suggest tweaking the crafting mat loot boxes to drop only purple or better items. I bought a few of them when they first came out and it was a major let down to get the same types of unrare crafting mats I'd get by just sending crew on a mission. With the current crafting mat loot boxes you effectively blow your hard earned fleet comms for mats that you could've gotten cheaper by spending your GSF match credit reward on a crew skill mission. There's something wrong when fleet comms are harder to earn than credits but don't purchase loot boxes that only give prizes it would've otherwise taken 10s or 100s of thousands of credits to obtain from a lucky crew skill mission loot roll.

 

If fleet comms are supposed to help tie GSF to the ground game via loot boxes why should anyone play GSF to earn those comms if you're most likely going to get a green or blue item you would've been able to purchase by just spending the credits you already earn from playing the ground game?

Edited March 26, 2015 by Gavin_Kelvar

Who the hell made you our spokesperson?

 

We need two things:

 

1. All the bugs that where introduced in 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 need to be reverted. This is a simple source control function.

 

2. We need Lost Shipyards as a free-fly area that is accessible via the hanger screen button "train". Replace the powerups with random turrets and bomber spam. This has been my idea for a trainer since beta. Not verains.

 

After this is done, then we can talk wishlist stuff. Priorities man, priorities. Or are you asking for the sun, moon and stars and hoping for a wink?

Who the hell made you our spokesperson?

 

how on earth did you read his post and get upset

Edited March 28, 2015 by Verain

how on earth did you read his post and get upset

Some posters works just ooze certain aspects. In Nemarus case it is self-importance.

Some posters works just ooze certain aspects. In Nemarus case it is self-importance.

 

Then why don't you and Zaskar go and do something helpful for GSF, without a hint of self-importance of course, and post here and let us know how we can help?

Then why don't you and Zaskar go and do something helpful for GSF, without a hint of self-importance of course, and post here and let us know how we can help?

I think you might be over reacting just a tad. It's not like I accused Nem of being the evil overlord of our undoing. In fact I didn't even question nor criticize what he was doing. The only thing I could be accused of is questioning how. It's like the proverb says "Iron sharpens iron". However iron can not sharpen a marshmallow. Edited March 29, 2015 by Lendul

Thinking you can make a difference and being willing to write up suggestions isn't the same thing as self importance.

I think Nemarus is mostly spot on here. Honestly the only nitpick I have is with part of Verain's balance thread. While the thread as a whole is good, the scout debuffs are certainly too hard. I feel like Scouts are already becoming a bit overwhelmed by GS/bomber wall in Deathmatch and Rampart/Razorwire spam in Domination. Taking away anything from the scout is going to kill it except in the hands of only the most elite pilots.

 

 

Also I think the Razorwire/Rampart cartel equivalent should be on the top of the list. Most players would love to hold an anti-scout build on their bar with overcharged shield, engine2shield converter, and conc mines. The 'typical' charged plating/hyperspace beacon/interdiction mine build is much better against bombers, but it would be nice to have something to use against a team of battlescouts.

 

It would be really cool to run one Condor/Jugoran with powerdive/DF and one with directional shield/retro but I don't think I'd ever keep both on my bar at the same time.

Edited March 29, 2015 by RickDagles

Who the hell is Nick? Some kind of Bioware forum representative? Well then, I have a question, Nick. If that is your real name...

 

Nick? What do you guys intend to do about servers like Jung Ma whose GSF queues are practically dead? I want a free character transfer!!

Who the hell is Nick? Some kind of Bioware forum representative? Well then, I have a question, Nick. If that is your real name...

 

Nick? What do you guys intend to do about servers like Jung Ma whose GSF queues are practically dead? I want a free character transfer!!

 

Well obviously we should hold a server GSF event.

 

Stock night would probably be well suited as I don't think a lot of off server people have well geared GSF alts on JM.

Well obviously we should hold a server GSF event.

 

Stock night would probably be well suited as I don't think a lot of off server people have well geared GSF alts on JM.

 

That's a good idea. You're right, most of the server people just do the weekly and daily and done. Those with fully upgraded hangars are a little rarer now. But... yes!

 

I still want a free transfer though

 

Reported the thread, Shayd.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Ymris

I am actually a little disheartened there hasn't been any response to this post. I'm not asking for him to solve all of the GSF ills in game, but a little acknowledgement would be nice. It is just common courteously.

You're right, most of the server people just do the weekly and daily and done.

 

If GSF was fun for them, they'd stay.

If GSF was fun for them, they'd stay.

 

GSF is fun for me, but other parts of the game are too, and once the daily is done, there aren't really any rewards to keep you playing like ground PvP's extra daily, ranked daily, valor to grind, more robust non-gear rewards for coms to work toward, or a single PvE daily zone like Yavin that gives you rewards for 8 quests instead of ...1, or an Ops that has a chance to give you gear upgrades every time through -plus a bunch of coms.

 

I can go elsewhere and have fun, and also win a reward for the time. I know some people like to play just to play and don't care about any reward or advancement other than the thrill of the game, but that's not my bartle score type, and I think it is not a common one overall since the game in all other aspects is geared to reward extra play. Granted BW may not care, one way or another I am in game playing and possibly buying CC (which I do).

 

But there are times I log out or don't log in, when I could be in game but there's nothing catching my interest worth working towards, and that could be GSF if they made it worth while. The only time I ever play enough GSF to get tired of it is when I sit down for a few hours of conquest point grind during the rare times we invade somewhere with an extra bonus (an example of how a even a small reward boost can keep players playing more). I want a reason to play GSF more, I like the game, BW could keep me playing longer, and sell me more ships and cosmetic components (should they add more on the CC market to buy) if they added reasons to queue more.

I am actually a little disheartened there hasn't been any response to this post. I'm not asking for him to solve all of the GSF ills in game, but a little acknowledgement would be nice. It is just common courteously.

 

I wouldn't get your hopes up.

 

There's every likelihood that GSF has been deposited in the 'too hard' basket, along with Ilum.