Hey guys,
first of all I want to thank the devs for their great work. FW:ToW is like a dream come true for a Star Wars and space game fan like me. The game TIE-Fighter has always been one of my all time favourite computer games and along with the Thrawn Trilogy even inspired me to found a Star Wars-ish focused (vanilla) freelancer clan. I love the setting of the mod (timeline, available ships etc.) and the faction based game. I never thought anyone could ever improve Freelancer this much in regards of graphic and gameplay features like you guys did. It is a lot of fun to reach goals for your faction and play together with other dedicated players. And of course, as Sizer put it very well, the war we all are in against each other together. But this leads me to the point that actually made me post here.
Right now the most active faction by far is the GE, with all other factions being WAY less active. Of course there are several different factors leading to this, one being that the GE is pretty damn cool and fancy. But still the imbalance of activity between the factions and especially the general lack of active players can not only be explained by that. Logically I can only give input from my own experiences on the server and forum and from statements of some friends whom I showed FW:ToW but I am pretty sure other players have similar experiences:
It is extreme hard for the average new player to get into the game. The issues with the Game CP have already been stated in this thread. It is a very useful tool and I personally like it a lot but still not all new players know about it and the necessity of it to progress in the game (e.g. joining a faction, does this already connect the forums account to the faction user group? I think this would help a lot). As Loken already said, people feel pretty lost when they get online for the first time. But the reason for this is often not (only) the lack of knowledge about the Game CP or other FW:ToW features but the lack of possibilities to progress in the game right now. I often get asked where people can do missions for the GE to earn money by fighting. Well, the only answer I can give those guys is: "There used to be missions in the Dathomir system but by now there seem to be none, wheresoever. Set up a trading character to earn money urself or I can send you some to buy a different fighter." ... usually followed by the typical "read the beginners guide and join the forum user group" etc. This, of course, is very unsatisfying for many players who love their fighter chars and would like to earn money with them.
But the problems for beginners aren't tied to the GE offering no missions, starting off with other factions gives a hard time to new players too. Except for maybe the NR, neither me nor my friends really tried that yet. The only thing we know is that the Y-Wing as starter ship is more valuable than most (or all?) other starter ships, giving new NR players the possibility to upgrade their ship sooner. It seems that starting as a pirate is probably the toughest because their bases are very widespread, sometimes not even on the map (which for the other factions is okay I guess, but players starting as a pirate should have the advantage to have their bases being already on the map) so getting a new/better ship is even harder as well as finding a base that offers missions. (btw, why does the binayre pirates starting base sell the heavy lifter? and nothing else?) This is especially frustrating as the Game CP information on the ship selling location isn't always consistent with the actual game. This might have to do with a bug regarding the reputation requirements for ships though, as an imperial player recently wasn't able to buy imperial ships even though he connected the character to the GE with the Game CP.
So since this is becoming quite a long post already I will stop listing further observations and want to emphasise the need of an easier start for new players. They need to be informed of the basic functions of the Game CP (joining a faction, banking system and ship list) and that they shall take a look at the beginners guide if they are unfamiliar with the new features of FW:ToW compared to vanilla FL. Also the lack of missions is a problem for new players. It would be helpful if there would be more places that offer missions and these places should then be listed in the beginners guide. Of course it wouldn't make sense to have GE vs. Whom ever missions in Bastion, but in all border systems there should be some (this goes for all factions as well as pirates).
I feel like many players with a more casual attitude have been scared off already. Now I guess FW:ToW's focus isn't on these guys which I can understand but they still would have the possiblity to get more into the game and even if they don't, they will help with a bigger server population.
And last but not least, a little advertisment on websites such as reddit would help. I know that's the job of the community but not all of us have the hardware to get some HD footage with high FPS and even then the rather low population makes it hard to get some awesome battle footage. The latest bigger battle I participated in was ~7 GE vs. ~4 NR (props to the NR guys for showing up spontaneously
) and it was a lot of fun but sadly we didn't take many screenshots and nobody filmed it afaik. Maybe a server event openly planned would help to get more people online at the same time and provide us with what we need for a nice FW:ToW trailer.
Btw, whats up with the
Screenshot and Battle Footage Contest? Been some time since it ended, I guess not enough players contributed?
Don't get me wrong, I know that this is a beta and the focus isn't on making it easy for new players but on testing the gameplay features, making the game stable and getting rid of as many bugs as possible. But without a healthy player base I fear that not only the testing of as many aspects of the game as possible will suffer but FW:ToW itself will suffer in the long run, which would be pretty unfortunate because of its awesomeness.
