The "new player" argument does not cut it for me

The argument that you're having no intention to adapt to the massive amount of negative feedback with the recent changes just because it's for the "new players" does not cut it.

• The mission system removes UI (base information) if you are not following the current mission. This is because the "new player" might get confused.

Aside from SOE acting like players are mentally challenged by the UI in this game, you are screwing the active experienced playerbase here. Players no longer have the freedom you so much promoted at launch, players are getting PUNISHED for choosing their fights and REWARDED for listening to AI. This takes away from the strategic element in this game that was already very shallow from the start.


You KNEW you'd get bad feedback because of this, you COULD have made a disable button (a large group of people even asked for it on the Roadmap). That is what a company that listens to its players does, this system is advertised as a tool for new players and is of no use for experienced players. The argument that it'll become useful for us in the future is ********, that means you've implemented an incomplete feature which is just as bad.

I guess SOE does what SOE wants?

I would see some use in this feature if you could mark some important target like a sunderer, so it shows as objective on other players screen, but that would need that the UI is capable of showing several objectives close to you at once and also displaying "relevant" information, if your interested or not. This could possibly accomplished if you can accept some objective (which will be your primary then)

A negative aspect of this idea would be the objective spam which could be done by players then ...

They already had a month of negative feedback:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/ready-for-testing-missions-phase-1.175384/

You can already sort of do this with offensive/defensive requests and smoke combined with /orders or /re. Not perfect, but it works pretty well.

Massive amount of negative feedback or forumside over reaction as usual?

Just want to point out Higby said newbies complain & quit the game because A. They get killed out of no where & B. They don't know wtf to do. So, would you rather have the game bleed dry of free players or just deal with some minor junk to have big battles like PS2 should have. And if you didn't know, the F2P model only works when you have a large player base.

Not really the same thats just a marker on the map which 99% of the players probably dont even see. It would be different if an objective pops up .. hey there is an enemy sunderer 200m beside of you in the mountains .. wouldnt you like to destroy it?

Even though i admit its a bit counterintuitive to the idea of spotting ..

You do know that creating a another account to circumvent a forum ban is against forum rules right?

It never surprises me when these threads pop up, but this time I'ma call you on it:

This is BS.

Seriously, read their post. This is a small part of a much larger objective. They're adding in player controlled objectives and mission systems, and will be adding all those toggles you want. This is simply the basic framework, and they want to ease us into it.

Your feedback is valuable, but only if you keep it constructive, that is, point out what you do and do not like about the current implementation after you've actually read through the patch notes... and keep it civil. These guys won't want to help you if you're constantly raging at them.

The problem is that this works using the instant action system, which is notorious for sending people into bad fights. It has tried to send me to many even fights as a squad lead (where we'd overpop the fight and ruin it), and it's also tried to send me as an individual to fights where we had 66% pop or where the enemy massively outpopped us (usually small fights). If it's sending newbies to ghostcaps or places they're getting farmed , that's bad. As a new player, I'd probably trust the AI.

I remember when I was new, I used the map to find even fights and went there, and had a decent amount of fun. But I didn't really start enjoying the game until I started joining squads (there were more public squads in those days because a) voice comms worked and b) people weren't burned out), and my fun increased leaps and bounds upon finding a good outfit. There needs to be more focus on providing an easier experience for platoons and squads to manage public groups instead of private ones if they really want to retain long-term players.

Well i guess that someone who already got a ban .. gives 2 ***** about that.

Like I said, it's not perfect. But it shows up on the minimap, and if you tell people "enemy sunderer on offensive request, go get it, " I have yet to see that sunderer last for another minute. There's always lots of C4 and tank mine fairies looking for a kill!

There are outfits who manage to keep sunderers alive for more extended amounts of time

Listen, I didn't say it doesn't have problems that should be tweaked. I'm saying, the number of posts about it just make it sound like SOE should ******* die in a hole and the game is a POS and **** everything it sucks, yatta yatta. It's just way over blown without understanding why their even putting it in place.

SOE does what SOE needs to do to make money off of this game. Simple as that. If they have determined that the amount of experienced players spending money isn't enough, and they need new players to make it viable, then that's what they'll do.

And there are lots of experienced players that aren't even spending money, or they've bought 1 $15 gift card since beta. I can't count how many times I've heard "veterans" of the game say that they haven't spend a dime on it. I even heard one guy say that spending money in a F2P game "just seems wrong". And I've been told numerous times that I should never spend SC on anything other than cosmetic items. Not saying that's how everyone is, but I hear it a lot and it's a terrible attitude to have, especially if those people want the game to stay alive.

Well lol, the Playerbase might just be mentally challenged. I mean, in World of Tanks the devs literally came out and straight up called the playerbase stupid, incompetent and incapable of teamwork. It was the funniest **** ever, its bad when a game company will call their paying playerbase dumb and stupid.....but really...that playerbase is...

I can see alot of WoT in PS2 though. I mean, who goes into a place 10v3 and loses? oh wait, Mattherson NC!

Hate to say this but if you have trouble figuring out how to get to the action in this game an extra indicator that often screws up the information you need does not help.

As a experienced player the new mission system screws with so many things that I am doing. I like to play in platoons. In fact I like to lead squads and platoons when I can. The mission system has a negative impact on me both as a squad member and a leader. How? The auto mission objective updates based on the platoon/squad leads location.

How is this a problem? Say my squad is capturing the crown. I decide as the squad lead to get us ready for the next target. I redeploy to the warp gate to grab a galaxy and take off. I instruct my squad to squad deploy into my galaxy once the crown is capped. the issue is now my entire squad cannot see the CURRENT counter. All they can see is my objective. Now they cannot report to me the time left which throws our coordination off.

Now if it is that confusing for us as veteran players imagine how much more difficult it is for a new player who had trouble getting into the action before now? It makes it worse. Not better.

Dude, you just don't get it. You didn't spend a couple million making & investing in this game. Let's be conservation and say they only have 20 employees total working or connected to PS2 & they make $40,000 a year. That means you have to earn $800,000 a year just to pay them! If you're trying to not only make up the money you spent on development but also pay employees AND make a profit, you're going to do WHAT EVER THE **** is needed to keep newbies flowing into the game. A large population is NECESSARY to keep a F2P model afloat. Not every implementation to keep them is going to work or be perfect, it's constantly a Work-in-Progress, just like how much has changed since Launch. You're looking out for your handful of squadmates and yourself. They're looking out for potentially thousands of players & employees. Be more understanding.


Not like I'm a saint anyway. There's still a bunch of stuff that hasn't been added or fixed since launch that bugs me.

Not against our outfit
I think our best so far was something like twenty sunderers killed with our one squad in about five minutes in a Vanu archives defense ^^

We generally avoid using sunderers if we can, but are pretty good at keeping ours up, too. In many cases, people aren't watching them very well, though. Generally sunderers are used by bigger groups, so they tend to be less organized, while smaller groups (well, even up to platoon level) rely on beacon swaps, medics, and the occasional galaxy instead for offensives, and use sunderers for defense

.

On the one hand, yeah, the forum blowback is pretty bug. On the other hand, it's the same stuff people said in the PTS discussion--eg, what's the point, especially since it interferes with normal play? And I have yet to see a single positive comment in-game about it either, even though ingame people are generally more positive about stuff. It just feels more like it's in the way than anything, and the real question is...how long until phase 2? Phase 1 was on test for almost a month--and if it takes another month for the cool stuff, that's not good, since April is when we're starting to see other games come out that will be competing for this playerbase. The next few weeks are going to be critical for this game, so things need to start looking a bit better.

And I know I sound a bit cranky, but I know my outfit and other big outfits are very concerned with patch trends of the last few weeks. We like this game, and have put a lot of time and effort (and money) into it, even through pretty rough times. Incomplete, rushed features and buggy updates shouldn't be the norm, and they cannot be if this game is going to last. I've heard as a running joke from a lot of different people that "maybe SOE is purposely trying to destroy the game." While that is complete nonsense, it's the kind of complete nonsense that will drive off newer players.

The mission system is just the latest in a series of rushed things that seems to have been released primarily to put content into the game. I don't mind having a missions system, I do mind that they're releasing it in such an unfinished state. We waited months with a development freeze, I don't think people would mind waiting a month longer for a complete system, especially with all this other new stuff being released.

I just think it's one of those things where there really aren't enough people on PTS to see how it would really function in the daily scale on Live. Phase 1 is probably one part theoretical and one part feedback but they needed to put it on Live to really get a sense of how it changes the flow, etc. Know what I mean? They've got some crazy detailed data on everything in game, even "heatmaps" on where everyone walks, etc. I'm sure they're getting some better insight on it now and will tweak it accordingly plus forum feedback. I'm just sick of the "sky is falling" folks.


This probably sounds stupid but the one thing that bugs me about it is the sound effect. Makes me think I'm getting a "Tell" message. Derp.

Actually, your the one who is not getting it. This new mission system in no way makes it easier for newbies to get into the action. Nor does it prevent confusion. It increases the confusion. Had you bothered to read my post you would realize that this will not increase new player retention but further confuse them thus causing them to LEAVE sooner.

The last thing you want to do to an already confused newbie is overload them with more information that means nothing to them. That is exactly what this does. It overloads them with conflicting information.

Since its implementation the ability to organize new players in our squads has gone down due to the mission notification telling them one thing and squad leads telling them another. Simple huds = less confusion and higher player retention.