Things that hold the game back

For some, especially those that have been around a while, it's the lack of social features and team matches. For me, some days I think it's the crashes that doom this game to oblivion. But then I'm reminded that the crashes are (eventually) an easier fix. The worst, by far in my opinion, is the poor sportsmanship I see.

Completely TROUNCING new players. Celebrating lopsided victories. It's really sad, and is a great way to discourage new players from playing past the first day. I absolutely understand that a veteran will, on the whole, beat up on newbies regardless of the situation. What I don't understand is doing it in a top-tier ship. Does someone *really* need to grab that FH-250 to kill a team of six F3s and two B7s?

I've been in multiple matches lately where one team has A80s, V66s, X99s, and FH-250s...versus F3s. Having fun with adversity only goes so far. By all means, earn that win. But please, don't grind new players into dust with your heels, just because you can.

I wish WJ would get back, we really need him to balance all this stuff better, Premium ships are still ridiculous.

The new player issue is pretty tough; they're very vulnerable and some players just eat them up indiscriminately. I try to be more selective with my targets (or assist a teammate), but if there's 6 on me, they're all going down if I can manage it.

WJ has talked about separating rookies from vets until they reach level 10, but I don't know when that will be implemented.

I think many fly the ships they do because that's all they have besides a starter ship; they saw a spiffy ship, bought a couple boosts to get it, or bought one outright and that's all they have until they can grind enough creds for a new one. (I did this with the Cobra; it wasn't appropriate for many situations, but it seemed a better choice than the Mamba at the time)

Sometimes I think they jump in a powerful ship to counter an opposing ace, then use the ship against everyone who appears in their path.

Most often, though, I think that most players just use the strongest ship they have.

I won't say gg if I don't think it was. I've been spawn-camped before (once even by a teammate in a bomber before collisions were removed on launch) and it sucks.

Sometimes all it takes is that one Ace that has dedicated his time to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of his ship to unbalance a game. I've entered and played games where it was a one sided fight, only to have one new player completely reverse the game even without Lux or other high class ships.
I think one of the biggest complications most new players share is that most come from the world of modern FPS games. The third dimension is still quite new to them and it's hard for some to adapt to it. Also the lack of advertising is a major problem. I am not sure if I mentioned it in my intro in the boards, but, I only found this game on steam because I was bored and searched for Free-to-Play games. However, in the same breath, one can't advertise for something if it isn't making money so advertisements might force the game into a subscription fee.

I really like this game, and am willing to play even with the occasional crashes or rock field glitch-fests. I just really would like the Developers to come to a decision on the future of Moonbreakers. Either they can bring it up to speed or they can't, this "half and half" stuff is becoming difficult for the veterans sustain and the lack of new players is becoming a drain.

I was a newbie too. Those aces just gave me the boost to become better and better.

Ur right about them, but we don't have to treat them like little puppies. I was raped several times by the big ones at the beggining, now i can take them down if i'm lucky.

If someone likes the game, and wants to stay, he will stay no matter the failures imo. Hardly to say, but there are mindless players, lots of them, without the smallest effort to do something useful in the game. There comes the possibility of matchmaking, yes yes...

But i repeat. I enjoyed the game at the beggining too. Watching others rapeing the half map alone. XD I just wanted to become one of them. Thats what they gave me.

Sometimes i switch to mamba too, to give them chance, but it is so boring and dull to slow down even with mamba to give them that chance. It kills my game, and i play for fun. If he wants, he will catch up. As it happened several times before in 2-3 months. Tucasuk, Peelark, SirLevArris, and others, whose nick i can't tell now.

Only a little marketing and a good patch and a bit of developement needed. I hope we get it. I hope there will be progress with the game. I would risk it, that if needed, i would donate to help with marketing expenditures, or anything else. Maybe it would attract more players, more donators. And i say donating, not paying subscription... That is another story.

Ok well the Aces running around like alaskan seal clubber can be a bad thing, but as Adama said it can contribute to some motivation in some cases. not saying it's not a problem, just saying it's a tough issue.

What is holding the game back IMO:

- No social features.
- No Private matches
- Matchmaking is.... lacking
- No new match types, Same games modes that were in when i started, and were there prior to the steam launch
- No new maps for the same period of time.
- As far as I can tell the balance on the ships is great right now but the promised XP progression scheme is badly needed.
- Lack of feedback from teh Developers who had been pretty good about communicating with us.
- Constant crashes
- Lag issues


Don't get me wrong i like the game alot I want to play it more, but the accumulated frustration over the above has me looking at MB and other available time sinks and the other has been winning out if only for novelty value.

To bring people back and grow this game these thigns at least some if not most NEED to be handled.

I think anyone that has stuck around, did so because they were trounced and wanted to get better. But as I said before, adversity only goes so far. Some ships are just plain better/faster for killing F3s, and it gets compounded when you have groups of those, flown by good pilots, against almost pure newbies.

I usually had great fun getting crushed. It forces you to get better, and prepares you for tough games. But sometimes there is no "opportunity to learn." Sometimes the other team is just being jerks and blowing all the (especially light) fighters away with almost no chance of retaliation. If you're up 80-15, do you seriously not consider maybe swapping ships?

I'm talking about things like...not swarming the front of the carrier and killing them one by one as they fly out. Things that, when you're way ahead, you can afford to step back and say "Okay, let them regroup, and then let's have a good fight." Things you, the obvious victor, can do. Not to coddle new pilots, but to show there's some honor in the fight, and give them a (still losing) chance to fight back, and improve their skills.

If you're coaching a middle school soccer/football team, you don't send out a starting lineup of professional players, with professional gear. You sure as hell don't keep them in after you're up 50 points and the clock is ticking down. If you're stuck using the same professional baseball players versus middle schoolers, you could at least use wooden bats instead of aluminum. You're still gonna win. That ability gap will still be there.

If my team is getting on fine without me, I'll attack the carrier and only take out those who insist; if you don't take the hint when I use turrets as cover to evade your gunfire, rockets and missiles, you get what you deserve...

re newb problems...
just last night i jumped on for a few hours (after weeks of mostly not playing) and for the most part it was a good time had by most. what seemed to really kill the buzz is carrier camping. before anyone starts up on that, let me be clear: i dont care whether to carrier camp or not, that isn't the problem. a few players felt it justified to use full force in already handicapped odds to push the other team into their carrier, then accuse the players of hiding in their carrier... really... people like that make me want to not play this game.

when i found myself in that situation, sure, i harassed the carrier for a little (often because i don't notice it straight away). but every time, i have and will continue to back off from the carrier to give the enemy team a chance to regroup and make things interesting again. the person of particular interest i have in mind eventually toned things down, and we had a round or 3 of mambas until the server picked up again.

when on the receiving end, yes, i will hug my carrier. the guns give me a much needed handicap when against the odds and being pushed back. one game notably was 4 vs me. 4. i didnt hide in the carrier, but i did go so far as to hide behind it until the enemy team was in turret range. all in all it wasnt too bad until they were carrier camping me, where my only choice was to kamikaze the ship that killed me the fastest until i could at least escape my carrier and make a stand outside it. (i think) many on here would consider me an ace, and in all fairness i have nothing to complain about (i won the game with a score of 30 vs 20 if memory serves). its irrelevant, sure, but most average players would have ragequit 5 minutes in and the remaining players would have run off (4 vs 0 for 10 mins? would you wait it out if you're new to the game?).

aside from giving the enemy carrier breathing room, why on earth would one use their ass kicking ship vs a team of mambas? some games i ended up in began with one newb on my team vs 5 decent players, 2 of which had A80's, another in a merlin... a challenge is a challenge, but where is the challenge if you instapop everything coming your way? i understand practicing your aim, it's why i fly a nighthawk knowingly in games where it is excessive to use it (ie, vs non-aces)... but seriously... no... if this game is so fun, use a ship that makes it fun. unless fun for you means 'to take victory in all games to whatever excess i can', which just makes you a jerk...

as far as piloting skills go, this game is NOT for hardcore fps gamers who play COD all day long. i have many unkind words for these 'gamers', words that do not have a place here even while ranting. but more to the point, 3d flight takes a certain nack - you need to abandon a preference for orientation as well as getting comfortable with the stomach-churning rolls and turns required to maneuver around tight obstacles. for most gamers this is disorienting - many times you will see only particular players in say battlefield excelling in flight combat, and i still cannot understand why some choose to fly in quote/unquote 3rd person mode (camera stays oriented to the ground and chases your vehicle, so pitching after a roll is as accurate as playing basket ball with your knees bending the wrong way and your head facing backwards). so... yes... 3d flight takes some getting used to, and especially for fast paced shootouts. the controls are not helpful with this in that there are certain preferred rotations (many counter-intuitive to real flight sims, even other space sims).

to top it off, more and more players each day cross the 'ace' threshold - roughly, i consider someone an ace once their gameplay exceeds the game itself and becomes a game of wit more so than a struggle with getting the ship to behave how you want. a player who is at that point or beyond will utterly thrash players below that point with almost no regard for what ship they use. these players have reason to behave, but it is their responsibility (while playing) to not abuse the newer players excessively. those new players may some day become aces, but they won't tough it out if they don't think there is any chance of doing so - learning is 2 way, you want to face those stronger than you to learn from, but at the same time, you don't want someone so ridiculously hard to kill that you can't even discern what you're doing wrong (or what they're doing that's giving them an edge)

/rant

this game otherwise desperately needs those social features, and until then, the better players ought to challenge themselves rather than going for overkill when their ego is butthurt. there are enough decent players in this game to kick it off into something larger (once bugs and balance problems are resolved). a lot of these decent players work well together by feel and reaction alone, but without any form of communication or hub for doing so, it is short lived and the motivation is there for only so long...

while being trounced may cause some newbies to focus more on winning, some people just leave. In a game with a bigger population, we can simply not care for those people. Not in this game. I think we need to make a conscious effort to make ever single precious beginner get hooked first before starting to show them what the game can be like.

I agree.

I'll do it, when i can.

So let's stop pushing them to the carrier and hitting them right after lift off. No problem. Sometimes i forget about the first thing, but i'll keep it in mind. I got used to the second one by myself. So it's no problem either.

I want to see more and more nicks familiar time to time. Agreed. Though i don't consider myself an ace, just a good one.

Same here. I played a bit, trying to encourage others not to fight with fully upgraded X99s against F3 mamba pilots, who doesn't even use rockets, but no success.

No offense, but it was Cedric. He didn't even react to chat, or anything else. At least he had fun a lot. I switched to Mamba, and it was fun too though. Trying to drift into the tunnel in the middle is impossible for me on BM, which means i'm always leaving a hole in the space. XD

Respect to Birillo, who uses Mamba almost every time and always finishing as top scorer. Of course after monseigneur Cedric.

I usually pick fights with enemy aces even if I can't kill them. (read: guys from the reaper clan)

Because at least I know that while they're busy killing me they won't be harming the newbies

Clan tags and big names are the first ones I go after; if you can take them down, you earn your teammates respawn + travel time to regroup.

I remember having one fight that got so lopsidedly out of hand that for part it everyone else on my team had quit; leaving me to deal with 8 aces alone.

That is the only time i have ever curled up in the carrier for pot shots. They proceeded to strip the turrets & abuse the crap out of the one mamba pilot that joined.

I dont understand why the free to fly rotation disappeared. Granted, making every single ship free to fly at once for a weekend was just silly, but taking it away altogether has seemed like a death knell for the game. If there had been no free to fly when I joined, I would not still be playing.

I frequently let the mamba pilots know this, & I have a lot of respect for those fledgling aces that haven't unlocked their first ship yet, but manage to make a mamba scary.

There have been times when I'm up against mainly mamba's that I launch my big mean A-80, but then spend most of my time typing, giving tips, or trying to teach the newer pilots how to dodge missiles or jam weapon locks. Hell there have even been a couple pilots that I would consider aces (just not quite at my level) who have benefited from this.

I spend most of any given match hunting and neutralizing one particular enemy ace, usually a heavy fighter, hopfully allowing the rest of my team to benefit from his absence. More and more I fly my G5... which I've begun to regard as an assasin's ship. Sure it wont rack up the kills the way the A-80 used to, but for finding and eliminating one heavy fighter at a time... i'm not sure even the merlin can compare.

Kackling Kobold wrote:
I dont understand why the free to fly rotation disappeared. Granted, making every single ship free to fly at once for a weekend was just silly, but taking it away altogether has seemed like a death knell for the game. If there had been no free to fly when I joined, I would not still be playing.

Determining Free-to-Fly ships is not an automated process; it requires manual input from the devs. As we haven't heard from WJ for a bit, I'm assuming that whatever is keeping him busy has prevented the ship rotation as well.

Kackling Kobold wrote:
i'm not sure even the merlin can compare.

The Merlin is not for assassination, but for brawling.

as snubby puts it, skill is the great equalizer - overall the ships are quite balanced imo. by that i mean that vs another ace, regardless of the ship the outcome is not always certain.

G5 vs X99 is no exception - they are about on par for dueling but each have their specialties and their own meaning of 'high ground'.

I'm also trying to encourage new pilots to use bumb rockets, but they don't listen. In S&D i got used to fly Mamba again, and if i see a player, who doesn't give up easily and keeps up constantly chasing me, i try to give them tips with rockets, turnig and firing machine guns. They haven't listened to me so far, i suppose, but i don't give up.

But... Tonight i had a match against HowitzerNAM with full of newbies. He joined the game for the last 2-3 minutes, and started to rape everybody on the field with good ships. The final moment was a clear shot in my mind, that made all very clear we are talking about here. We tried to get him with 2 mambas and an F3X piloted by alex663. 1 mamba me, one a newbie. We were seperated though, and he killed all of us with little damage dealt on him. He used an FH-250.

In the game lobby he started to pray himself, that he killed 3 of us, and he is still very good in his opinion. In the game,i asked him to switch to mamba, or something lighter. In the lobby the answer was an advice to us, to choose our ships WISELY!

I admit he is very good dogfighter, but no good man this night. At least he made everything clear. Respect to alex663. Good man.

I started to see the game in a different way...

where possible im now giving out tips to hunting me down... finding it more entertaining, as well as being the only way to improve anymore lol...

but yes. i too have tried asking people to switch to lighter ships, or at least ships that aren't impossible to kill you in by an average player.

one recent experience was rather funny in hindsight (especially to anyone who has played with/against me). i was forced to brush the dust off my 250 to even out the odds for a little, and asked some people to tone down the missile spam. the response i got was 'thats rich coming from you in your 250' and 'lets see you fly a krait or a nighthawk, then we'll talk'.

at the time it seemed to me that if i switched to a nighthawk and let loose, it would be more overkill than the missile spam i was seeing.

upon asking 'are you sure you want me those ships?' i was accused of being over-confident and full of myself... was i? i did end up switching to a nighthawk for a round (the guy left though) and i also wrote something in chat to the effect of 'was only asking to be polite about it'... not sure what to make of it all except laugh on the inside that no sooner than 1 minute of being in a 250 im accused of being over confident that i could fly a beam ship with any skill... funny...

when coming out of the hanger... i tend to look out for the bounties first, then the vets/aces. noobs i'll try and stay away from, unless the game is close, and then i just go for anybody in front of me.

if i'm in a game where it's a gong show for the other team.... i usuallly fly to the top of the map, look down and watch y'all fight it out.... it's interesting seeing different players fighting styles

F2P requires that the game be unbalanced. Players then seek balance by buying
advantages with real money. That's the profit model and that's why I don't normally
play F2P games and prior to this one, I've never put any money into them.

The nubs get raped and the vets are gifted a hollow and ultimately pyrrhic victory.
After all, no one with any self respect enjoys beating disadvantaged opponents.

Ordinarily it's the responsibility of the developers to create a balanced game, one bounded by
legal restrictions, but since they are required to do otherwise it's left to the players,
many of whom instinctively look to restore the value of their victories by implementing
balance via moral obligations. Moral obligations are voluntary though and people disagree
about their shape and form, legitimately so, tbh. It's a recipe for discontent.

Personally, I get bent out of shape by vets flying killbine harvesters and speed running
objectives, but I can't deny that they are perfectly within their rights to do so.
This friction within the community wouldn't exist if the game was properly balanced in the
first place, but that leaves no room for the F2P model.

So why do I still play? Well, I'm with Samuel T Anders on this one:

"It's about those moments when... you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty of
physics, the wonder of mathematics. And all the relation of action and reaction. And that
is the kind of perfection I want to be connected to"

...I love to fly, and that, at least, is something that mb does get right.
It's probably the only reason most of us are still here, wading through the bullshit,
snatching at those moments of sheer joy.

(sorry for the necro. there aren't any trolls here though so I guess it's not important)

You are correct; this is proudly a troll-free zone. *raises ban-hammer to ward off troll responses*

You are also correct on another point; there's usually more fun than not when flying in Moonbreakers
I've been flying my Mamba a lot (when I've been able to play at all) to keep things "fair" for the rookies and as an "in yo face!" for the vets. "Fair" in this case is my kill count hits mid-twenties instead of thirties or forties some extra armour/speed/weapons would afford. Against the vets, it's nice to keep up or surpass them in their death machine using the starter ship

science wrote:F2P requires that the game be unbalanced. Players then seek balance by buying
advantages with real money. That's the profit model and that's why I don't normally
play F2P games and prior to this one, I've never put any money into them.

The nubs get raped and the vets are gifted a hollow and ultimately pyrrhic victory.
After all, no one with any self respect enjoys beating disadvantaged opponents.

Ordinarily it's the responsibility of the developers to create a balanced game, one bounded by
legal restrictions, but since they are required to do otherwise it's left to the players,
many of whom instinctively look to restore the value of their victories by implementing
balance via moral obligations. Moral obligations are voluntary though and people disagree
about their shape and form, legitimately so, tbh. It's a recipe for discontent.

Personally, I get bent out of shape by vets flying killbine harvesters and speed running
objectives, but I can't deny that they are perfectly within their rights to do so.
This friction within the community wouldn't exist if the game was properly balanced in the
first place, but that leaves no room for the F2P model.

So why do I still play? Well, I'm with Samuel T Anders on this one:

"It's about those moments when... you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty of
physics, the wonder of mathematics. And all the relation of action and reaction. And that
is the kind of perfection I want to be connected to"

...I love to fly, and that, at least, is something that mb does get right.
It's probably the only reason most of us are still here, wading through the bullshit,
snatching at those moments of sheer joy.

(sorry for the necro. there aren't any trolls here though so I guess it's not important)

i beg to differ, there ins't balance in any games at all not even in the paid ones, you can buy battlefield 3 and no matter how much you paid for it that doesn't going to stop the kids who have more time,practice and reflexes than you or me to keep owning us in different ways and don't forget the HUGE difference between some dude flying with the mouse and another using a joystick not to mention the advantage of having a superior computer, more FPS better line of sight.
anyway back to the F2P i dont know what games you played but all the ones i played the only advantage those who pay have is getting things faster and some customization items that makes your character look cooler but sadly they aren't bulletproof, i have never put a cent on a F2P game yet i enjoyed them all, maybe i can't have the best gear in a matter of days but i can farm for it months and that makes it more worthy and enjoyable