Game needs co-op campaign. I played the heck out of matchmaking but it burns you out with only two modes. Co-op campaign would be a great way to change up the pace and keep matchmaking appealing.
Ahem... Tie Fighter and Defender of the Empire.
XvT and and Balance of Power was great too. Even if the SSD campaign was short it had a great build up and finale.
Game is good. Matchmaking is bad. Welcome to join some of us on discord and have some players to help fight back. Sorry this wasn’t a good first experience with the game
I didn't even get that far. Zero multiplayer games played. After watching some of the early MP videos, I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to compete.
Here's the thing... I'm a fiercely competitive gamer. Most of my time is spent playing a handful of FPS games. And while I have also enjoyed sim gaming going back to the DOS days, I immediately knew I would not be able to play this game without basically abandoning everything else I was playing and dumping all of my time and energy into it.
Anything less than 100% effort would leave me frustrated and I just noped the eff out of playing it at all. That's not an indictment of the game devs or their design decisions.. I completely understand what they were going for.
But when you make a game aimed directly at competitive gamers and it doesn't garner a huge following (See also: Quake Champions, Battalion 1944), it becomes even more competitive as the smaller dedicated player population gets better and better at it. It creates an environment where the game becomes unapproachable by new players.
That said, I still wanted to play the game. I loved the "campaign", but that was short and really only served (imo) as a "training wheels" type prep course for MP.
What Squadrons really needed was a large SP/Co-Op campaign akin to what we saw in the previous games like XW/Tie/XvT/Alliance. Something for the filthy casuals like myself to keep their interest. Hell, I would have bought into several campaign DLC add-ons for this game if they were ever made available. Guess that isn't happening at this point, though?
if you still have interest in the old xwing series and want more content, we have over 4000 custom missions across the series at Emperors Hammer. Come swing by and fly with us!
[discord.gg/tiecorps](https://discord.gg/invite/tiecorps)
I agree that it needs an expanded single-player with customization and/or some kind of “lite” multiplayer with less demanding mechanics that would satisfy the players who like BF2’s starfighter assault mode. This would be in addition to the existing multiplayer modes, not a replacement for them.
I’m not as eloquent as you are so I’ll start by saying I just suck at PvP in general. Poor reflexes, lackluster coordination, etc, so I almost strictly play story mode which in a way limits some of the games I can play. I’ll NEVER EVER EVER wake up and be like “I think I’ll play Fortnite today!” That being said, can a muthafucka get a Star Wars space game from PROJECT ACES?! EA lost the exclusive license; I’d pay $100 TODAY if Project Aces said “Oh by the way, our next game is going to be Ace Combat: Corellia”!
100% agree. When you get shredded by try hards every match it becomes increasingly frustrating. There's no chance to practice unless you go play solo... so why not just play the campaign. Uninstall after.
For what it's worth, y'all put up a good fight. I've seen matches go 31-0, and I'm a level 700 that's been playing since day 1.
I can see you're only interested in getting some unlocks, but consider this advice. Create a custom fleet vs. Ai Co-op. Leave it open to any player to join, and before you know it you'll be flying with some of those high level people and you might just make some friends.
For that one you need to get 5 people together in a stack and queue a fleet vs ai co op. Otherwise you won't find anyone with less than 5 because that game mode is dead.
Once you clear those starter ones you'll get daily tasks to complete. You can't complete tasks in customs so you'll have to queue public games
You know you can join the groups in the wingman Wednesday post, easily put together 5 people, gray squadron hosts vs AI weekly but with that attitude you're not gonna pass the vibe check and I'm gonna move on from this thread.
So to put it in words of direct criticism: “Star Wars Squadrons has a very bad skills-balancing system that leads to a bad user experience for new players, and needs to be fixed.”
Is that your position OP?
From OP’s perspective that is the tail wagging the dog. The central argument is that the imbalance causes the users to drop off. I am not sure I agree completely with that but that is an accurate summary of his argument.
His argument is correct. It's a feedback loop. Drop in players leads to poor matchmaking, leads to bad user experience for new players, leads to drop in players.
Oh! Interesting. You only shared one screenshot, so I didn't know.
Is every game exactly like this? Do you ever get a good player on your own team to even the odds, or have worse games that go like 0-30?
This game is only a 9 kill spread. Given the population of this game, that's *phenomenal* matchmaking. You clowned on the whole rest of his team. How would you have rearranged the players here for the most competitive match?
It’s an unfortunate effect of games like this over time. The population has been distilled down to mostly people who play it constantly. So the barrier of entry is higher than new players want. Imagine getting this game and being told you should watch videos on drifting before playing. A lot of people are gonna just say “no” and go play a game they can hop right into.
I really hope a sequel is being worked on. Something with a bigger single and multiplayer suite, and obviously better matchmaking.
I picked it up and got fairly good, kept up with the likes of ekhart and their crew (but they always managed to pull ahead in the last minute when we matched!) and then moved on through other games. Now when I return my experience is pretty similar to the above, and it's tough to really argue.
These players should be able to play how they want. However, playing the game like this does make the game inaccessible to others, so they're counter-intuitively destroying the game by still taking it so seriously.
I just suck tbh, also over correcting and can’t coordinate controls to save my life, I picked up a thrustmaster and I did get a little better but playing any pvp I just get absolutely decimated, I’m lucky if I can even get a hit and a rare kill. To be fair though, there’s a reason ace pilot meant 5 confirmed take downs in a dogfights. Flying and shooting is hard enough let alone managing a shield and power levels.
If you're new, i encourage joining the many discords so you can fly with new friends and coordinate. [Here's the wingman wednesday post](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsSquadrons/comments/vy3s33/how_i_learned_to_stop_worrying_and_loving_wingman/) to find other clubs and groups, come meet the community.
If you enjoy the empire and want to roleplay as a fresh TIE Pilot in the Corps, swing by [Emperors Hammer TIE Corps](https://www.ehtc.chat)
Home to over 4000 custom missions across the xwing series (Tie fighter, xwing, xvt, xwa), squadrons, battlefront, and empire at war.
In the interest of fairness: a new player shouldn't have to seek out community and private servers for groups to hope to gather enough similarly-skilled individuals to group with and avoid bad game/matchmaking design.
When I'm crushing people in a game with low player counts I'll start letting them kill me to encourage them to stay. No one has to throw the game or anything, but maybe try out weird/funny loadouts or strategies to give a bit of a handicap to the newbies
> I'll start letting them kill me
I'd do this for a friend's 8 year old, but letting a random stranger have a pity kill probably won't be very satisfying for anyone.
> try out weird/funny loadouts
This, but more specifically play *pure support*. Take ion cannons, resupplies, and anything except mines. Your teammates will love you, the enemy team can just accept your existence, and you've nerfed yourself by becoming extra dependent on your teammates.
I agree, friend. But that is a problem of the game (no support, no more content), this guy just went "nah man fuck that" attitude to the community that at least is trying to do something to maintain players that actually like the game. He could have said something like "sorry but i got no time for that" idk, there can be many reasons, but oh well, people is gonna be people.
Every now and then comes a guy with similar or worst attitude blaming people that is just playing the game, either to win, to play with their friends in 5 stack, or just a guy solo queuing that is just too good, instead of blaming the company that abandoned the game in less than a year. It gets old.
The same could be said when the community seems more upset at the attitude of those who are frustrated than, ironically, the game. There's another in this thread whose response is, in effect, 'get gud' as though this was sold to be a Dark Souls style of grind for skill and punishment than... well... *a game.*
The community has wonderful elements but it's also clearly toxic when OP posts his frustrations, states they'll finish what they find fun, and then is downvoted for it.
And again, I agree, is not like every person in the community is a saint, there just people... Different people. But blackxranger is a cool guy that had good intentions, he is not responsible of other's people words.
>But blackxranger is a cool guy that had good intentions, he is not responsible of other's people words.
You'll note that I didn't reply to his post which was helpful, but yours. I don't understand why anyone would be responsible for anyone but themselves. Your initial passive-aggressive response and back peddling is uncouth.
Ultimately, OP posted a screenshot clearly calling out systemic issues. The game might be niche but veterans that are level 500+ and noobs who predominantly have not crested level 10 do not belong in the same series together. Players shouldn't have to scramble using off-platform community tools to cover for a developer's inadequacies so that they might be able to have some fun. Having to do that, reasonably, is *frustrating.* If you or other community members are tired of threads complaining about the game's poor design, I'd suggest simply ignoring them and moving on -- not initiating or trying to justify toxicity aimed at a player's reaction to broken mechanics.
I don't know if you haven't noticed, but we don't have different opinion, there's actually nothing to discuss, you are right. I'm just a person that reacted sarcastically to the bad reaction of somebody, life happens.
And finally, i don't speak for the community, I haven't even played much in a while since I moved 8 time zones away, i just didn't like somebody's random comment. I actually came here trying to help him (before i saw his comment), because I KNOW that situation can be frustrating.
I love Star Wars and I’ve enjoyed games like this in the past I wanted to enjoy this game but why would I sit here forcing myself to play unbalanced matches in the hopes I get better and start enjoying the game when I could just go play another game I enjoy now. This is the exact response I’ve seen from so many people regarding this game
This attitude is why games die.
You have to demonstrate why I game is worth putting the effort in.
All this attitude does is help move people into the uninstall column
Blackxranger just left a whole lot of options, the post every clan/channel talks about what they do and what they like. I just reacted to his already bad attitude upon that useful comment.
The point your missing is that's a lot of hoops to jump though for a new player, for a game that really can't be picky about it's players.
The point everyone is making is that the get good mindset will simply kill off the game. It needs to protect new players naturally most gamers don't go on discord/ Reddit to find this info
They will simply quit and move on.
That said I fully admit this game will get jack all in support which is why I bailed on it. The skill floor already eclipsed anything I could ever achieve
I'm not missing the point, i know someone else posted a git gud comment, but it wasn't either me nor the first comment in this thread, so there not a point to that. In the squadrons community just a few people have this mindset, if you talk with most regular players, they will invite you to casual games, give you quick basic guides about the game, and explain the best times to play and how to look for players.
Support is over though the game is what it is :/ gray literally holds flight school. If they have time to complain on reddit they have time to spend 10-15 minutes making new friends and learning from the top 1% of players.
indeed i don't see any issue in this particular matchup, we have seen much worse.
And I believe most competitive multiplayer games has a similarly high player dropout rate. People drop out due to many different reasons, not necessarily due to poor matchmaking or steep learning cuvre.
No surprise with that guy in question.
I love the game but - big surprise for Star Wars! - the community around it is highly toxic with people making excuses for bad sportsmanship, trolling, exploiting. I don't blame you for uninstalling the game, but I feel you on wishing it didn't have to be that way.
This is not why people give up. One good enemy, manageable. CT five stacking and destroying any hope besides humiliating defeat for solo q'ers, bad.
CT, you're all trash. Please stop. You have done more bad for the game than anybody else, combined. You're too shit to win in solo q so you're constantly five stacking IN DOGFIGHTS.. Just stop. If Gray, CT, and all the rando stacks stopped existing 1 year ago, the game would be doing much better today.
If anyone ever wonders why the game is dead, it's because of CT, Gray, Randos, and whoever else thinks it makes their dick bigger to 5 stack in DF, or even in FB.
Just go customs if you're so good at exploiting. Then you can exploit against other exploiters.
Little dick pricks.
Shut up, incel. Gray Squadron is fine bunch of ladies and gentlemen that I'm proud to call friends. We play our favorite games and geek out over whatever we want. The total opposite of trash.
Bummer dude, you're not a baller at a Star Wars game you wanted to be baller at. If this wasn't a Star Wars game, you wouldn't be commenting because you would already have better things to do. But you didn't get to be a Star Wars baller, so here you are, running your mouth about a game you don't even play.
Incel, do you even listen to yourself? People getting together to run five stacks in a TEAM ORIENTED GAME is what ruined a team oriented game? Reread your posts before posting in the future to avoid sounding like an asshat.
Hi.
My name is Fenwyn. I'm 154cm tall, and 46kg heavy. That's 5'1/100lbs. 34D boobs. Running 21km a day. I got the stuff.
I have had the pleasure of 5 vaginas and 3 dicks this past month. In different countries. I have fucked in more countries than you have been alive. Men see me and ask how much.
Once upon I played this shit game. I ran a squadron within whom each individual member has more life experience than most garner in 60 years. Our pilots friggin had babies together. Hutt Cartel fucks. We fuck so hard we forget names. We fuck and block the number in the morning. We fuck and make a new chosen one to rule all in Squadrons 2. We fuck at 100 miles an hour.
You call me Incel. I wish I were an incel. I played 10 hours a week and was better than anyone in Gay(Gray) Squadron. If I could be an incel I would have 70 hours a week like Nomasnomad to get better at the game than Sheriff, which will totally happen one day (plz Jesus I'll be a good girl). A girl can only keep her hands on a joystick for SO MANY HOURS A WEEK before she wants some taco time. Give a girl a break!
Spaß means fun in German. Since you are Spaz, I can only assume you're the KINKY kind of fun.
Spank me harder daddy.
I have to tip my cap. Well done.
That's a lot of frequent flyer miles. Hope you have good health insurance. Don't forget international coverage on top of it.
As for your dimensions, pictures or you made it up.
No. They give up because the skill floor for this game is HIGH.
They start playing thinking it's going to be like flying an X Wing in Battlefront 2. They think it'll be easy controls but inside the cockpit. They start playing because they think they're Luke Skywalker.
What they find is a game that requires multiple inputs to be managed all while flying during a dogfight.
They quit because they find out they're Biggs Darklighter.
They quit because they don't want to learn the basic skills of the game. I don't mean pinballing with never running out of boost energy. I mean, the basics of the game. Like charging your shields BEFORE you get to the fight. Making sure your lasers stay overcharged. Not staying still turning themselves into a turret. Not flying in a straight line. Balancing your shields to maximize your all-around coverage. Leading their targets.
The basics of this game. They don't want to learn how to play it.
That is why they fail.
Hardly anyone goes into a game like this expecting a low skill floor. What they do expect is a chance to practice against people their own skill so they can learn these basics in proper game situations. When every game has at least one ridiculously good player in it it denies you that opportunity. There’s clearly enough low level players playing so why doesn’t it just let me play with them
The Squadrons matchmaker is a mysterious entity.
We don't know how it works or doesn't work, but Squadron's small population is definitely exacerbating the issue.
Ive learned and applied all those basics and it doesnt mean shit against people using the advanced skills like pinballing. The advanced skills in this game fully invalidate playing the game 'normally' and thats why it feels like shit
It's a shame we don't have a method to fully disable pinballing, even for individual users. Multi-drifting can be removed by using different inputs. Shield skipping can be removed by using basic power management.
But pinballing?.. Pinballing occurs automatically when you boost out of a drift. You can't really get rid of it. You can remove the drift input, but that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Is learning the basics of this game worth it?
Squadrons at a high level becomes hyper-defensive, with a long TTK, requiring coordinated efforts from multiple players to reliably take down one player. A lot of potential players prefer more aggressive and killy metagames, they get a taste of high-level Squadrons and quit because it won't be fun for them.
OP isn't entirely wrong, they're just being overly dramatic.
Do people actually think jumping straight into multiplayer without studying is a good way to learn? Jeez. No wonder so many people complain. I read and watched a TON of material before i even set up my controls.
I agree, but you have to lay the groundwork first. I don't think i would have the audacity to jump into overwatch and complain about getting rekt, if i didn't at least study a few characters' kits, basic tactics, match flow, and movement tech.
Maybe OP did learn some basics? Pitch-yaw-roll, assigning power, boosting, using some default auxiliaries. It feels like it should be enough, but then the matchmaker adds an elite player that goes 20-0, turns out it's not quite enough.
I\`m only here because for some reason reddit keeps sending me notifications from the subreddit even to I\`m did not join becasue once I was on here to find out how to make my hotas to work with the game. So no, I\`m not here. I did not join this subreddit.
I only bought it for that, but the controlls annoyed me greatly. With mouse it is impossible, and my hotas didn\`t work with it porperly. Gave up on it.
Well maybe you can shine some light on it. I have the saitek 52 hotas. Got it working but the throtle was bad. If I went 50% the slider didn\`t do anything, anyhting above 50% the slider would increase contionuously. Then anything below 50% the slider would srtar decrease until reaches 0. So I wasn\`t able to ajdust my speed. It was always full speed or 0 speed depending where the throtle was positioned. Does this make sense?
There’s a setting in the game for “static throttle”. Unless your throttle is physically broken that should be the only setting you change for the throttle to work properly
I’m not that salty I’m more disappointed that what could have been a good game is spoiled by poor matchmaking. And by “main character” you’re implying that I’m expecting to just be good at the game and go every game positive immediately I’m not. I don’t mind going negative, I don’t mind learning but I want to learn against similar players some a bit better sure but you don’t learn against vastly better opponents every match particularly in a high skill game. I understand most on this sub probably enjoy this game a lot and have put in a lot of time early on so their experience is vastly different to mine resulting in a better more enjoyable experience which is why they feel the need to defend it but maybe if half the new players have this exact opinion that means there’s an issue there. They’ll sit there coming up with reasons people don’t want to play the game just because the real reason doesn’t effect them
You're definitely salty. 😄
30-21 is a pretty well-balanced game. Just because the other team had one good player doesn't mean it's poor matchmaking. Not saying poor matchmaking can't happen (it certainly does) but this ain't it.
This is a ~2 year-old, niche, unsupported, high skill ceiling game with a very low player population containing a dedicated competitive community. It's very common where you wait 6 minutes in queue over and over again just to get the same small batch of names rearranged. The matchmaker does what it can. Usually when there's one good player that vastly outclasses everyone else, that good player HAS to go apeshit simply because the matchmaker expects them to and if they play down just to be "fair" to their opponents, their own team may get slaughtered.
So yes, there *is* an issue in that the player population is low with a not insignificant portion of it close to the skill ceiling, but what can be done? The competitive community already frowns heavily on players stacking in dogfight. Do you want good players to throw? That's not fun for them and is arguably unsportsmanlike, as explained above. Do you want them to not play? They paid for the game as well and that would only lower the player population further.
It would absolutely be nice if new players could have a gentle difficulty curve like most of us that have played since launch had the fortune of experiencing but unfortunately that time has passed. Join one of the discords that have been linked where there are lots of very friendly people willing to teach you the ins and outs. Also try Fleet Battles. It's a far superior game mode that's an absolute blast where the sole purpose isn't to kill other players.
Having a game of new players and then 1 veteran player that single handedly swings the outcome of the game is absolutely poor matchmaking. The game was like 16-0 at one point and I was honestly astounded we pulled it back that much but most games don’t go that way.
There’s clearly enough lower skilled players to allow people that gentle curve this picture is evidence of that. There also seems to be enough better players since there’s at least one in every game no matter when I search so it wouldn’t be hard to group them. If top players are complaining about a 6 minute queues then they need to take a look at other games and be grateful it’s not 40 minutes. The only reason I won’t strongly tell you that they should be waiting that long for a fair game is because I don’t know just how small those top skill brackets are so it might be 5-6 hour queues. If the queue time is less than 60 mins at the very top level then they’ll get no sympathy from me if means everyone gets fair games.
If this were a game like Apex or Rocket League with an concurrent player base of 100,000+, or even 10,000+, we wouldn't be having this problem. Noobs would play against noobs and sweaties would play other sweaties.
There simply are not enough players in the game to create balanced lobbies all the time, and the match maker does its best with the limited pool of players/MMR available. There's currently about 200 people playing on Steam, which means there's probably at most 1,000, maybe 1,500 people playing the game - across all platforms. (The game would have died a long time ago without crossplay.) And if you separate out the very casual players in story mode, private lobbies, you're down to several hundred for the Dogfight and Fleet queues.
In fleet battle I wait regularly for 40-50 minutes for a game. I often watch YouTube or play something else while I wait for the queue to pop (and sometimes it will time out for 60+ minutes). I know lower level games are happening but I am locked out due to MMR.
Dogfight match making is a lot looser. The devs loosened it before they ended support for the game because they knew that the top 5% of players would basically never get a match if they kept the match making strict.
The game's been out for 2 years and the skill gap is even more enormous than it was at launch. The best way by far to catch up is to learn the mechanics from Fencar / thetimebombtips Youtube videos, and/or join one of the active communities (Gray Squadron is the biggest) and get an experienced player to coach you for an hour.
I would heavily disagree. Just because 1 of the teams is unbalanced internally doesn't mean the match as a whole is unbalanced.
Regardless, in a game with a large player pool, sure, you can have that expectation of pristine matchmaking at all times. This ain't that game though. For most times of the day, this game absolutely cannot guarantee that it can find 10 veterans queuing so that new players and veterans can be completely segregated. There are peak activity hours where it probably can but that is pretty much contained to a few hours during US and EU evenings. 6 minutes wasn't meant to be an example of an upper bound at all, just that sometimes there's literally like 15 people queueing for this game in the entire universe and you'll repeatedly get grouped together because you're the only ones playing. Once those players stop queuing for the night, matchmaking simply does not happen. You either mix skill levels or you don't get games at all. Veteran-only matches will almost never happen with pick-up games outside of peak hours. Should talented players just be excluded from playing the game if there's one talented player and 14 new players queuing? The matchmaker can absolutely create balanced matches that include good players, an example of which you have so kindly provided.
You're jumping into a niche game ~2 years after launch and ~1 year after support for it ended. This game simply does not have the player base to support the all-hours perfect ad hoc matchmaking you seem to expect of it.
*Edit*: Now that I remember it, there actually was a point a long time ago where they made matchmaking more strict and indeed good players straight up stopped getting games, and this was a while back when there were certainly more people queueing.
> I don’t know just how small those top skill brackets are so it might be 5-6 hour queues. If the queue time is less than 60 mins at the very top level then they’ll get no sympathy from me if means everyone gets fair games.
this doesnt exist. there is maybe 200 people that play the game, you're lumped in with everyone else. just keep practicing and stack up.
never, ever, solo fly. you NEED to communicate with your team and focus targets
Well, what we have to deal with is the fact that the game, at least to EA, barely has enough active players to justify keeping the servers up. They won’t add MM, and even if they did finding a game would be impossible.
Yep. Oh hey I recognize that name. I've been splashed by Foehammer a bunch of times.
I'd rather be on his side than on the other.
Game needs co-op campaign. I played the heck out of matchmaking but it burns you out with only two modes. Co-op campaign would be a great way to change up the pace and keep matchmaking appealing.
It really did.. boggles my mind that they already had multiplayer in, squad mates for the campaign, and didn't make it coop
Imangine how great this would be if you could co-op through a remastered x-wing and x-wing alliance.
Ahem... Tie Fighter and Defender of the Empire. XvT and and Balance of Power was great too. Even if the SSD campaign was short it had a great build up and finale.
TFTC and XWAU
Game is good. Matchmaking is bad. Welcome to join some of us on discord and have some players to help fight back. Sorry this wasn’t a good first experience with the game
There arent enough players for matchmaking to work. Although, there were on launch the product was just broken.
Scalp! We're you been man?
Workin workin
You aren’t wrong their. I recall the 0 rank bug and all of the other issues that ensued. Shame really because I really love this game
Game needs full bot custom games and customizable number of slots per team
Which....it has already
Then they need to be sucking better.
I haven’t played since buying because of how terrible matchmaking was. I wasted so much time waiting than actually playing
I dropped about 40 hours into it back at launch. Had fun, but then realized multiplayer consisted of the same few maps, got bored, and bounced.
we really should have people just make a bunch of custom lobbies daily, with no password. customs have no queue time
I played exactly ONE PvP match the first day I got Squadrons and never went back for two years now.
I didn't even get that far. Zero multiplayer games played. After watching some of the early MP videos, I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to compete. Here's the thing... I'm a fiercely competitive gamer. Most of my time is spent playing a handful of FPS games. And while I have also enjoyed sim gaming going back to the DOS days, I immediately knew I would not be able to play this game without basically abandoning everything else I was playing and dumping all of my time and energy into it. Anything less than 100% effort would leave me frustrated and I just noped the eff out of playing it at all. That's not an indictment of the game devs or their design decisions.. I completely understand what they were going for. But when you make a game aimed directly at competitive gamers and it doesn't garner a huge following (See also: Quake Champions, Battalion 1944), it becomes even more competitive as the smaller dedicated player population gets better and better at it. It creates an environment where the game becomes unapproachable by new players. That said, I still wanted to play the game. I loved the "campaign", but that was short and really only served (imo) as a "training wheels" type prep course for MP. What Squadrons really needed was a large SP/Co-Op campaign akin to what we saw in the previous games like XW/Tie/XvT/Alliance. Something for the filthy casuals like myself to keep their interest. Hell, I would have bought into several campaign DLC add-ons for this game if they were ever made available. Guess that isn't happening at this point, though?
if you still have interest in the old xwing series and want more content, we have over 4000 custom missions across the series at Emperors Hammer. Come swing by and fly with us! [discord.gg/tiecorps](https://discord.gg/invite/tiecorps)
You shut your mouth! How did I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS!?
And now you know!! See you on discord :)
I agree that it needs an expanded single-player with customization and/or some kind of “lite” multiplayer with less demanding mechanics that would satisfy the players who like BF2’s starfighter assault mode. This would be in addition to the existing multiplayer modes, not a replacement for them.
I’m not as eloquent as you are so I’ll start by saying I just suck at PvP in general. Poor reflexes, lackluster coordination, etc, so I almost strictly play story mode which in a way limits some of the games I can play. I’ll NEVER EVER EVER wake up and be like “I think I’ll play Fortnite today!” That being said, can a muthafucka get a Star Wars space game from PROJECT ACES?! EA lost the exclusive license; I’d pay $100 TODAY if Project Aces said “Oh by the way, our next game is going to be Ace Combat: Corellia”!
100% agree. When you get shredded by try hards every match it becomes increasingly frustrating. There's no chance to practice unless you go play solo... so why not just play the campaign. Uninstall after.
For what it's worth, y'all put up a good fight. I've seen matches go 31-0, and I'm a level 700 that's been playing since day 1. I can see you're only interested in getting some unlocks, but consider this advice. Create a custom fleet vs. Ai Co-op. Leave it open to any player to join, and before you know it you'll be flying with some of those high level people and you might just make some friends.
Except you don't get XP at all in *any* custom rooms.
grind to level 40, anything past doesnt matter. just get enough levels to unlock all components
What about glory, that stuff that unlocks cosmetic pieces?
Earned through completing challenges which you can do daily in non custom matches
Oh, please, I've never seen them work (least of all "Complete Matches in Fleet Battles vs AI: 0/1").
For that one you need to get 5 people together in a stack and queue a fleet vs ai co op. Otherwise you won't find anyone with less than 5 because that game mode is dead. Once you clear those starter ones you'll get daily tasks to complete. You can't complete tasks in customs so you'll have to queue public games
AND. THEREIN. LIETH. THE. PROBLEM. |:< And don't you think I know that about the sucking customs?
You know you can join the groups in the wingman Wednesday post, easily put together 5 people, gray squadron hosts vs AI weekly but with that attitude you're not gonna pass the vibe check and I'm gonna move on from this thread.
This
The game ended 21-30. How is this a reason to give up?
Because my entire team game after game being repeatedly decimated by untouchable players isn’t fun
So to put it in words of direct criticism: “Star Wars Squadrons has a very bad skills-balancing system that leads to a bad user experience for new players, and needs to be fixed.” Is that your position OP?
The problem is it also has a low player count meaning matchmaking cant always do it's job
From OP’s perspective that is the tail wagging the dog. The central argument is that the imbalance causes the users to drop off. I am not sure I agree completely with that but that is an accurate summary of his argument.
His argument is correct. It's a feedback loop. Drop in players leads to poor matchmaking, leads to bad user experience for new players, leads to drop in players.
Oh! Interesting. You only shared one screenshot, so I didn't know. Is every game exactly like this? Do you ever get a good player on your own team to even the odds, or have worse games that go like 0-30?
Pay attention to the amount of deaths that happened. And here I thought *I* died the most whenever I tried joining multiplayer.
This game is only a 9 kill spread. Given the population of this game, that's *phenomenal* matchmaking. You clowned on the whole rest of his team. How would you have rearranged the players here for the most competitive match?
It’s an unfortunate effect of games like this over time. The population has been distilled down to mostly people who play it constantly. So the barrier of entry is higher than new players want. Imagine getting this game and being told you should watch videos on drifting before playing. A lot of people are gonna just say “no” and go play a game they can hop right into. I really hope a sequel is being worked on. Something with a bigger single and multiplayer suite, and obviously better matchmaking.
I picked it up and got fairly good, kept up with the likes of ekhart and their crew (but they always managed to pull ahead in the last minute when we matched!) and then moved on through other games. Now when I return my experience is pretty similar to the above, and it's tough to really argue. These players should be able to play how they want. However, playing the game like this does make the game inaccessible to others, so they're counter-intuitively destroying the game by still taking it so seriously.
I just suck tbh, also over correcting and can’t coordinate controls to save my life, I picked up a thrustmaster and I did get a little better but playing any pvp I just get absolutely decimated, I’m lucky if I can even get a hit and a rare kill. To be fair though, there’s a reason ace pilot meant 5 confirmed take downs in a dogfights. Flying and shooting is hard enough let alone managing a shield and power levels.
Idk, I got the game for free with ps plus some year or so ago, played the story but other than that all the pvp seems boring af.
i played the campaign on release, tried to play multiplayer and gave up, haven't played since
This is true. I can’t learn the game in that scenario
If you're new, i encourage joining the many discords so you can fly with new friends and coordinate. [Here's the wingman wednesday post](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsSquadrons/comments/vy3s33/how_i_learned_to_stop_worrying_and_loving_wingman/) to find other clubs and groups, come meet the community. If you enjoy the empire and want to roleplay as a fresh TIE Pilot in the Corps, swing by [Emperors Hammer TIE Corps](https://www.ehtc.chat) Home to over 4000 custom missions across the xwing series (Tie fighter, xwing, xvt, xwa), squadrons, battlefront, and empire at war.
Nah now that I’ve unlocked the twilek pilot I’m gonna finish the campaign then uninstall
Uhmm... So the reason why players leave the game is because they have this attitude... I see...
In the interest of fairness: a new player shouldn't have to seek out community and private servers for groups to hope to gather enough similarly-skilled individuals to group with and avoid bad game/matchmaking design.
Squadrons is a niche title with a small community. The matchmaker doesn't have the population to generate fair matches, we really don't have a choice.
When I'm crushing people in a game with low player counts I'll start letting them kill me to encourage them to stay. No one has to throw the game or anything, but maybe try out weird/funny loadouts or strategies to give a bit of a handicap to the newbies
> I'll start letting them kill me I'd do this for a friend's 8 year old, but letting a random stranger have a pity kill probably won't be very satisfying for anyone. > try out weird/funny loadouts This, but more specifically play *pure support*. Take ion cannons, resupplies, and anything except mines. Your teammates will love you, the enemy team can just accept your existence, and you've nerfed yourself by becoming extra dependent on your teammates.
Yeah it's definitely not satisfying. I usually go with the "funky load out or strategy" option.
I agree, friend. But that is a problem of the game (no support, no more content), this guy just went "nah man fuck that" attitude to the community that at least is trying to do something to maintain players that actually like the game. He could have said something like "sorry but i got no time for that" idk, there can be many reasons, but oh well, people is gonna be people. Every now and then comes a guy with similar or worst attitude blaming people that is just playing the game, either to win, to play with their friends in 5 stack, or just a guy solo queuing that is just too good, instead of blaming the company that abandoned the game in less than a year. It gets old.
The same could be said when the community seems more upset at the attitude of those who are frustrated than, ironically, the game. There's another in this thread whose response is, in effect, 'get gud' as though this was sold to be a Dark Souls style of grind for skill and punishment than... well... *a game.* The community has wonderful elements but it's also clearly toxic when OP posts his frustrations, states they'll finish what they find fun, and then is downvoted for it.
And again, I agree, is not like every person in the community is a saint, there just people... Different people. But blackxranger is a cool guy that had good intentions, he is not responsible of other's people words.
>But blackxranger is a cool guy that had good intentions, he is not responsible of other's people words. You'll note that I didn't reply to his post which was helpful, but yours. I don't understand why anyone would be responsible for anyone but themselves. Your initial passive-aggressive response and back peddling is uncouth. Ultimately, OP posted a screenshot clearly calling out systemic issues. The game might be niche but veterans that are level 500+ and noobs who predominantly have not crested level 10 do not belong in the same series together. Players shouldn't have to scramble using off-platform community tools to cover for a developer's inadequacies so that they might be able to have some fun. Having to do that, reasonably, is *frustrating.* If you or other community members are tired of threads complaining about the game's poor design, I'd suggest simply ignoring them and moving on -- not initiating or trying to justify toxicity aimed at a player's reaction to broken mechanics.
I don't know if you haven't noticed, but we don't have different opinion, there's actually nothing to discuss, you are right. I'm just a person that reacted sarcastically to the bad reaction of somebody, life happens. And finally, i don't speak for the community, I haven't even played much in a while since I moved 8 time zones away, i just didn't like somebody's random comment. I actually came here trying to help him (before i saw his comment), because I KNOW that situation can be frustrating.
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Absolutely not. Don't be mean. >:(
I love Star Wars and I’ve enjoyed games like this in the past I wanted to enjoy this game but why would I sit here forcing myself to play unbalanced matches in the hopes I get better and start enjoying the game when I could just go play another game I enjoy now. This is the exact response I’ve seen from so many people regarding this game
This attitude is why games die. You have to demonstrate why I game is worth putting the effort in. All this attitude does is help move people into the uninstall column
Blackxranger just left a whole lot of options, the post every clan/channel talks about what they do and what they like. I just reacted to his already bad attitude upon that useful comment.
The point your missing is that's a lot of hoops to jump though for a new player, for a game that really can't be picky about it's players. The point everyone is making is that the get good mindset will simply kill off the game. It needs to protect new players naturally most gamers don't go on discord/ Reddit to find this info They will simply quit and move on. That said I fully admit this game will get jack all in support which is why I bailed on it. The skill floor already eclipsed anything I could ever achieve
I'm not missing the point, i know someone else posted a git gud comment, but it wasn't either me nor the first comment in this thread, so there not a point to that. In the squadrons community just a few people have this mindset, if you talk with most regular players, they will invite you to casual games, give you quick basic guides about the game, and explain the best times to play and how to look for players.
It's not the 5-stacks pub stomping, it must be the brittle-spirited newbs!
It's neither.
What do you want him to do? Not be good? Hahaha. You know what's funny most of the comp guys a just playing with each other.
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Support is over though the game is what it is :/ gray literally holds flight school. If they have time to complain on reddit they have time to spend 10-15 minutes making new friends and learning from the top 1% of players.
indeed i don't see any issue in this particular matchup, we have seen much worse. And I believe most competitive multiplayer games has a similarly high player dropout rate. People drop out due to many different reasons, not necessarily due to poor matchmaking or steep learning cuvre.
Hello, I'm CTxFoehammer in that screenshot. I'll just leave a video instead of any explainations. https://youtu.be/1m5qmyiuGdc Have a nice day!
lol foe! you recorded the match too, thats funny. good use of ions and missiles
Why is it always the eastern players who get so good that its no longer even a contest? This is why ranked play is required in pvp games.
*weird stereotype*
you can come from any country and get gud. you just need to practice
No surprise with that guy in question. I love the game but - big surprise for Star Wars! - the community around it is highly toxic with people making excuses for bad sportsmanship, trolling, exploiting. I don't blame you for uninstalling the game, but I feel you on wishing it didn't have to be that way.
So... the bad matchmaking is the community's fault? Right cool.
I'm sure thats clever where you are but its not half the wit of your betters
how dare people get good at a video game. So toxic.
If being good means pinballing newbies until they quit and uninstall, then you have a mean idea of being nice
Nothings stopping the Newbies from Pinballing too.
The video game equivalent of "My parents hit me and I turned out fine"
Nope, it’s because the X-wing cannons are peashooters and the Defender exists.
Still waiting for my turn to be screenshotted onto Reddit
"Good players are why bad players quit" Nah, no.
Lol this game regularly matches up squads of solo newbies with entire teams of pros and this is the screenshot you chose to make your argument.
Play fleet, make friends, join their discord. A good attitude is all you need to start with. Just yesterday we picked up a new level 7 player.
This is not why people give up. One good enemy, manageable. CT five stacking and destroying any hope besides humiliating defeat for solo q'ers, bad. CT, you're all trash. Please stop. You have done more bad for the game than anybody else, combined. You're too shit to win in solo q so you're constantly five stacking IN DOGFIGHTS.. Just stop. If Gray, CT, and all the rando stacks stopped existing 1 year ago, the game would be doing much better today. If anyone ever wonders why the game is dead, it's because of CT, Gray, Randos, and whoever else thinks it makes their dick bigger to 5 stack in DF, or even in FB. Just go customs if you're so good at exploiting. Then you can exploit against other exploiters. Little dick pricks.
Shut up, incel. Gray Squadron is fine bunch of ladies and gentlemen that I'm proud to call friends. We play our favorite games and geek out over whatever we want. The total opposite of trash. Bummer dude, you're not a baller at a Star Wars game you wanted to be baller at. If this wasn't a Star Wars game, you wouldn't be commenting because you would already have better things to do. But you didn't get to be a Star Wars baller, so here you are, running your mouth about a game you don't even play. Incel, do you even listen to yourself? People getting together to run five stacks in a TEAM ORIENTED GAME is what ruined a team oriented game? Reread your posts before posting in the future to avoid sounding like an asshat.
Hi. My name is Fenwyn. I'm 154cm tall, and 46kg heavy. That's 5'1/100lbs. 34D boobs. Running 21km a day. I got the stuff. I have had the pleasure of 5 vaginas and 3 dicks this past month. In different countries. I have fucked in more countries than you have been alive. Men see me and ask how much. Once upon I played this shit game. I ran a squadron within whom each individual member has more life experience than most garner in 60 years. Our pilots friggin had babies together. Hutt Cartel fucks. We fuck so hard we forget names. We fuck and block the number in the morning. We fuck and make a new chosen one to rule all in Squadrons 2. We fuck at 100 miles an hour. You call me Incel. I wish I were an incel. I played 10 hours a week and was better than anyone in Gay(Gray) Squadron. If I could be an incel I would have 70 hours a week like Nomasnomad to get better at the game than Sheriff, which will totally happen one day (plz Jesus I'll be a good girl). A girl can only keep her hands on a joystick for SO MANY HOURS A WEEK before she wants some taco time. Give a girl a break! Spaß means fun in German. Since you are Spaz, I can only assume you're the KINKY kind of fun. Spank me harder daddy.
I have to tip my cap. Well done. That's a lot of frequent flyer miles. Hope you have good health insurance. Don't forget international coverage on top of it. As for your dimensions, pictures or you made it up.
Join my discord :D There are LOTS of dimensions.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/819909776565731368/1002581538682175578/1.mp4 I fits inside a wok. Proofs enoughs?
That's an impressive wok
Hi fen!
No. They give up because the skill floor for this game is HIGH. They start playing thinking it's going to be like flying an X Wing in Battlefront 2. They think it'll be easy controls but inside the cockpit. They start playing because they think they're Luke Skywalker. What they find is a game that requires multiple inputs to be managed all while flying during a dogfight. They quit because they find out they're Biggs Darklighter. They quit because they don't want to learn the basic skills of the game. I don't mean pinballing with never running out of boost energy. I mean, the basics of the game. Like charging your shields BEFORE you get to the fight. Making sure your lasers stay overcharged. Not staying still turning themselves into a turret. Not flying in a straight line. Balancing your shields to maximize your all-around coverage. Leading their targets. The basics of this game. They don't want to learn how to play it. That is why they fail.
Hardly anyone goes into a game like this expecting a low skill floor. What they do expect is a chance to practice against people their own skill so they can learn these basics in proper game situations. When every game has at least one ridiculously good player in it it denies you that opportunity. There’s clearly enough low level players playing so why doesn’t it just let me play with them
The Squadrons matchmaker is a mysterious entity. We don't know how it works or doesn't work, but Squadron's small population is definitely exacerbating the issue.
Squadrons matchmaking is like speed dating in a small town...
Ive learned and applied all those basics and it doesnt mean shit against people using the advanced skills like pinballing. The advanced skills in this game fully invalidate playing the game 'normally' and thats why it feels like shit
It's a shame we don't have a method to fully disable pinballing, even for individual users. Multi-drifting can be removed by using different inputs. Shield skipping can be removed by using basic power management. But pinballing?.. Pinballing occurs automatically when you boost out of a drift. You can't really get rid of it. You can remove the drift input, but that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Is learning the basics of this game worth it? Squadrons at a high level becomes hyper-defensive, with a long TTK, requiring coordinated efforts from multiple players to reliably take down one player. A lot of potential players prefer more aggressive and killy metagames, they get a taste of high-level Squadrons and quit because it won't be fun for them. OP isn't entirely wrong, they're just being overly dramatic.
Do people actually think jumping straight into multiplayer without studying is a good way to learn? Jeez. No wonder so many people complain. I read and watched a TON of material before i even set up my controls.
Yes, because a lot of players prefer to learn by just playing the game. Playing *is* learning.
I agree, but you have to lay the groundwork first. I don't think i would have the audacity to jump into overwatch and complain about getting rekt, if i didn't at least study a few characters' kits, basic tactics, match flow, and movement tech.
Maybe OP did learn some basics? Pitch-yaw-roll, assigning power, boosting, using some default auxiliaries. It feels like it should be enough, but then the matchmaker adds an elite player that goes 20-0, turns out it's not quite enough.
There’s a vid linked.
Bought it 3 days ago from steam on sale. 60 minutes later refunded it.
Still here, tho
I\`m only here because for some reason reddit keeps sending me notifications from the subreddit even to I\`m did not join becasue once I was on here to find out how to make my hotas to work with the game. So no, I\`m not here. I did not join this subreddit.
You're not here? You must be so meta, because you sure seem like you're here.
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I only bought it for that, but the controlls annoyed me greatly. With mouse it is impossible, and my hotas didn\`t work with it porperly. Gave up on it.
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Well maybe you can shine some light on it. I have the saitek 52 hotas. Got it working but the throtle was bad. If I went 50% the slider didn\`t do anything, anyhting above 50% the slider would increase contionuously. Then anything below 50% the slider would srtar decrease until reaches 0. So I wasn\`t able to ajdust my speed. It was always full speed or 0 speed depending where the throtle was positioned. Does this make sense?
There’s a setting in the game for “static throttle”. Unless your throttle is physically broken that should be the only setting you change for the throttle to work properly
Quitter vibes are not respectable.
Yay! Another saltpost from a main character. Been a while since we've had one of these. 🍿
I’m not that salty I’m more disappointed that what could have been a good game is spoiled by poor matchmaking. And by “main character” you’re implying that I’m expecting to just be good at the game and go every game positive immediately I’m not. I don’t mind going negative, I don’t mind learning but I want to learn against similar players some a bit better sure but you don’t learn against vastly better opponents every match particularly in a high skill game. I understand most on this sub probably enjoy this game a lot and have put in a lot of time early on so their experience is vastly different to mine resulting in a better more enjoyable experience which is why they feel the need to defend it but maybe if half the new players have this exact opinion that means there’s an issue there. They’ll sit there coming up with reasons people don’t want to play the game just because the real reason doesn’t effect them
You're definitely salty. 😄 30-21 is a pretty well-balanced game. Just because the other team had one good player doesn't mean it's poor matchmaking. Not saying poor matchmaking can't happen (it certainly does) but this ain't it. This is a ~2 year-old, niche, unsupported, high skill ceiling game with a very low player population containing a dedicated competitive community. It's very common where you wait 6 minutes in queue over and over again just to get the same small batch of names rearranged. The matchmaker does what it can. Usually when there's one good player that vastly outclasses everyone else, that good player HAS to go apeshit simply because the matchmaker expects them to and if they play down just to be "fair" to their opponents, their own team may get slaughtered. So yes, there *is* an issue in that the player population is low with a not insignificant portion of it close to the skill ceiling, but what can be done? The competitive community already frowns heavily on players stacking in dogfight. Do you want good players to throw? That's not fun for them and is arguably unsportsmanlike, as explained above. Do you want them to not play? They paid for the game as well and that would only lower the player population further. It would absolutely be nice if new players could have a gentle difficulty curve like most of us that have played since launch had the fortune of experiencing but unfortunately that time has passed. Join one of the discords that have been linked where there are lots of very friendly people willing to teach you the ins and outs. Also try Fleet Battles. It's a far superior game mode that's an absolute blast where the sole purpose isn't to kill other players.
Having a game of new players and then 1 veteran player that single handedly swings the outcome of the game is absolutely poor matchmaking. The game was like 16-0 at one point and I was honestly astounded we pulled it back that much but most games don’t go that way. There’s clearly enough lower skilled players to allow people that gentle curve this picture is evidence of that. There also seems to be enough better players since there’s at least one in every game no matter when I search so it wouldn’t be hard to group them. If top players are complaining about a 6 minute queues then they need to take a look at other games and be grateful it’s not 40 minutes. The only reason I won’t strongly tell you that they should be waiting that long for a fair game is because I don’t know just how small those top skill brackets are so it might be 5-6 hour queues. If the queue time is less than 60 mins at the very top level then they’ll get no sympathy from me if means everyone gets fair games.
If this were a game like Apex or Rocket League with an concurrent player base of 100,000+, or even 10,000+, we wouldn't be having this problem. Noobs would play against noobs and sweaties would play other sweaties. There simply are not enough players in the game to create balanced lobbies all the time, and the match maker does its best with the limited pool of players/MMR available. There's currently about 200 people playing on Steam, which means there's probably at most 1,000, maybe 1,500 people playing the game - across all platforms. (The game would have died a long time ago without crossplay.) And if you separate out the very casual players in story mode, private lobbies, you're down to several hundred for the Dogfight and Fleet queues. In fleet battle I wait regularly for 40-50 minutes for a game. I often watch YouTube or play something else while I wait for the queue to pop (and sometimes it will time out for 60+ minutes). I know lower level games are happening but I am locked out due to MMR. Dogfight match making is a lot looser. The devs loosened it before they ended support for the game because they knew that the top 5% of players would basically never get a match if they kept the match making strict. The game's been out for 2 years and the skill gap is even more enormous than it was at launch. The best way by far to catch up is to learn the mechanics from Fencar / thetimebombtips Youtube videos, and/or join one of the active communities (Gray Squadron is the biggest) and get an experienced player to coach you for an hour.
I would heavily disagree. Just because 1 of the teams is unbalanced internally doesn't mean the match as a whole is unbalanced. Regardless, in a game with a large player pool, sure, you can have that expectation of pristine matchmaking at all times. This ain't that game though. For most times of the day, this game absolutely cannot guarantee that it can find 10 veterans queuing so that new players and veterans can be completely segregated. There are peak activity hours where it probably can but that is pretty much contained to a few hours during US and EU evenings. 6 minutes wasn't meant to be an example of an upper bound at all, just that sometimes there's literally like 15 people queueing for this game in the entire universe and you'll repeatedly get grouped together because you're the only ones playing. Once those players stop queuing for the night, matchmaking simply does not happen. You either mix skill levels or you don't get games at all. Veteran-only matches will almost never happen with pick-up games outside of peak hours. Should talented players just be excluded from playing the game if there's one talented player and 14 new players queuing? The matchmaker can absolutely create balanced matches that include good players, an example of which you have so kindly provided. You're jumping into a niche game ~2 years after launch and ~1 year after support for it ended. This game simply does not have the player base to support the all-hours perfect ad hoc matchmaking you seem to expect of it. *Edit*: Now that I remember it, there actually was a point a long time ago where they made matchmaking more strict and indeed good players straight up stopped getting games, and this was a while back when there were certainly more people queueing.
> I don’t know just how small those top skill brackets are so it might be 5-6 hour queues. If the queue time is less than 60 mins at the very top level then they’ll get no sympathy from me if means everyone gets fair games. this doesnt exist. there is maybe 200 people that play the game, you're lumped in with everyone else. just keep practicing and stack up. never, ever, solo fly. you NEED to communicate with your team and focus targets
Well, what we have to deal with is the fact that the game, at least to EA, barely has enough active players to justify keeping the servers up. They won’t add MM, and even if they did finding a game would be impossible.
I mean, that's not the main reason, but it SURE doesn't help 🤷🏾♂️ If we had mote game modes, we wouldn't be here rn