Genuine question about Balance and "Skill issue"

[mizolo]

OK, this is gonna get messy, because EVERYONE's gonna start posting crap in here, but here are the PRIMARY question(s) of this thread:

1: What does "skill issue" really mean?
Does it mean "Git Gud"?
Does it mean "You suck"
Does it mean "That caste / role sucks, GET OVER IT and STOP playing it"?
Does it mean "You're dumb, play smarter"?
"Any or all of the above, and i'm too lazy to point it out because you're a dumbass and I'm smarter than you"?

2: What audience is our game even targeting?
CLEARLY we want to have new players, hell we have a mentor WHITELISTED ROLE to HELP new players, we probably have new players every DAY, if not every other day at least.
Well we are CLEARLY not sending that message to new players with terms like
"Skill Issue"
"Git Gud"
"That's how it works"

Is it supposed to be like Escape From Tarkov & Darksouls where the gameplay is EXTREMELY un-forgiving and hard-assed realistic? Make one mistake, and you die PERMANENTLY for possibly HOURS? Not to mention followed by "Why is that a thing?" from the person, followed by "Skill Issue, lol" or "Salty, lol Git Gud".

Why should I have to worry about a new player getting his ASS kicked by a feature or shotgun juggler because he doesn't even know about it? MUCH FUCKING LESS how the feature / shotgun fire-delay circumvention even WORKS.

Why should new players have to worry about that shit? I've LITERALLY mentored a guy as a xeno who, after we found a lone target ... A LONE TARGET, proceeded to get his ass kicked by a shotgun juggler.
Nothing I can do about it, because once you get pounced by a lurker, you apparently get 30-60 seconds of pounce immunity from the same mob.
HOW IS THAT ANY FUN FOR A NEW GUY WHEN HE CAN'T EVEN HARDLY MOVE OR RETALIATE? MUCH LESS EVEN KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HIT HIM?

YEAH, I get it, It's a "skill issue, Git Gud scrub" but come ON man ...

This game shouldn't be Escape From Tarkov, or Dark Souls. So why are we treating it like it is one of those games, when we CLEARLY want NEW PLAYERS to be in the game?


I want CONSTRUCTIVE criticism in this thread.

Anyone being a meme lord with "Well, sucks to be them, they need to Git Gud" Comments I politely ask you to not post, or leave.

[sg2002]

Nice work on loading up your questions.

CM is and should realistically stay as hardcore and niche thing as it currently is. Lets say you don't want to sweat, lets say you want a nice and relaxing experience where you alone kill hundreds of xenos. Why play CM, when there are literally thousands of games like this? Games that superior on all technical aspects, like the new Aliens: Fireteam Elite.

The social aspect is important too. If the gameplay is hard enough that only few people can be really robust, then there's going a differentiation of sorts between those who are who aren't. But if the gameplay is simplified and everybody can be robust, then nobody is unique. Top players in any community are respected for being able to do something that the average player cannot. Elitism is part of the appeal here.

There's also not that much of a point in getting new players, since the dev team does not get anything for it and every new player is a strain on the admin team too. So as long as the server has good population numbers, there's little point in growth.

[Papa_Pollard]

OK, this is gonna get messy, because EVERYONE's gonna start posting crap in here, but here are the PRIMARY question(s) of this thread:

1: What does "skill issue" really mean?
Does it mean "Git Gud"?
Does it mean "You suck"
Does it mean "That caste / role sucks, GET OVER IT and STOP playing it"?
Does it mean "You're dumb, play smarter"?
"Any or all of the above, and i'm too lazy to point it out because you're a dumbass and I'm smarter than you"?

A: Its a catch all, nothing more than a joke in the same vain that "git gud" was for dark souls. It can refer to someone playing badly or it can be said in response to a broken or busted mechanic. Really it depends on the context case by case.

2: What audience is our game even targeting?
CLEARLY we want to have new players, hell we have a mentor WHITELISTED ROLE to HELP new players, we probably have new players every DAY, if not every other day at least.
Well we are CLEARLY not sending that message to new players with terms like
"Skill Issue"
"Git Gud"
"That's how it works"

A:There isn't really any specific target demographic, staff have made rule changes etc in an effort to dissuade certain types of players as well as encouraging other types of players to join, but on the other hand dev updates etc encourage a different form of play so really its just a wide net with no specific focus at all.

Is it supposed to be like Escape From Tarkov & Darksouls where the gameplay is EXTREMELY un-forgiving and hard-assed realistic? Make one mistake, and you die PERMANENTLY for possibly HOURS? Not to mention followed by "Why is that a thing?" from the person, followed by "Skill Issue, lol" or "Salty, lol Git Gud".

A:Sorta, kinda maybe no... The gameplay can certainly be quite punishing especially if you don't play to your strengths and make the correct decisions (basically if you play like a tard its gonna be hard). To say that current CM is "Extremely un-forgiving" is a bit misleading;

-Marines have unlimited revives and can heal themselves to a much greater extent without requiring to return to the Almayer.
-Xenos have a more streamlined combat system and receive 2 larva per cap making losses suffered by them much more forgiving.
-QoL all around from the mundane chat highlights to keybinds and other crap makes CM much less tedious and "difficult" such as actually knowing the direction of CAS/Mortar/OB

With all that being said, yes at first CM will be difficult for new players for the simple fact that they're in a PVP server against people who've played for years and know the systems, mechanics, code, optimal loadouts, map layouts and what they can handle.
The reason someone might respond to another persons complaints about X with "skill issue" is simple, because it is. That player likely doesn't have a good enough understanding of their own limitations and mechanics. Example: Being a first time T3 player and then getting krump'd within seconds after running into Cass and gang. Yes its lame how you a T3 xeno just got annihilated by a couple marines but its not imbalanced its just a case of being outplayed.
...or they could just be messing with the tilted player in dchat *shrug

Why should I have to worry about a new player getting his ASS kicked by a feature or shotgun juggler because he doesn't even know about it? MUCH FUCKING LESS how the feature / shotgun fire-delay circumvention even WORKS.

Why should new players have to worry about that shit? I've LITERALLY mentored a guy as a xeno who, after we found a lone target ... A LONE TARGET, proceeded to get his ass kicked by a shotgun juggler.

You shouldn't, keep in mind the new player experience has always been much different than that of a veterans. When you first start playing CM you know jackshit and that fear of the unkown and the dark and wanting to latch on to a large group all this adds up to make the new players experience a much more tense and "scary" type of gameplay and no amount of guides will properly prepare you for what you'll be encountering for roughly the first month.

Nothing I can do about it, because once you get pounced by a lurker, you apparently get 30-60 seconds of pounce immunity from the same mob.
HOW IS THAT ANY FUN FOR A NEW GUY WHEN HE CAN'T EVEN HARDLY MOVE OR RETALIATE? MUCH LESS EVEN KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HIT HIM?

YEAH, I get it, It's a "skill issue, Git Gud scrub" but come ON man ...

This game shouldn't be Escape From Tarkov, or Dark Souls. So why are we treating it like it is one of those games, when we CLEARLY want NEW PLAYERS to be in the game?

Yea you're right there is a fair amount of bullshit that is just outright punishing for both players new and old, but my god man...
If people are coming into CM expecting to be a top performing player with only a handful of rounds under their belt they need a reality check (its unhealthy), the gameplay makes it so old players who know what their doing can easily dispatch of new players regardless of what the new player is using and there is nothing wrong about that. There should be a noticeable skill disparity between these two types of players because if there wasn't then what is the point of sticking around to learn the systems of the game if no matter what a new player will be on equal footing in any encounter.

In other words you get what you give, if a new player is joining and expecting to be at the top with zero effort then they're in for a rude awakening and its not a failing on anyones part except the player themself. Yes it can be pretty daunting but to simply expect that by showing up you're to be rewarded with a learning curve thats just a flat line is downright idiotic. The beauty of CM is its what you make of it;

for some this means being numba #1 top fragga...

for others its a social game...

for nerds its an RTS with retarded mutinous AI...

for losers its a police larping fantasy...

...basically what i'm trying to say is git gud

p.s
reading some of the stuff you said makes me feel as though you'd prefer this be a hugbox where we constantly encourage players with *clap and "good job". sometimes being told git gud or skill issue etc is what motivates someone into bettering themselves. And if a new player can't handle the fact that they're not on-par with others and gets upset after being told they're simply not skilled enough to do what they where attempting to do then... thats on them and they need to grow up and accept that. As for saying "skill issue" and "git gud" as a means to tilt someone, sure its dickish but I'm just saying flat out people can fuck off if they feel as though that needs to be removed. Dchat is precious for those tilted copy pasta enraged moments removing it will just be destroying more of what the heart of cm is.

this is all coming from someone who cosplays as johnny bravo, doesn't wear any armor and only uses a stock M4A1.

[Nihad7]

1. IMO, "Skill issue" means "you failed at that, if it was someone else with more skill and experience, they'd not fail or at least do better than you" or just "you suck, gid gud" though, latter is more sarcastic and I don't like using it at all.

2. Honestly, I don't think CM-SS13 or SS13 in general aims for the casual players, it never did in the first place. This game is not even close to being made for casual players, I mean it runs on a engine that's made in 2003, controls are already hard to learn where you have to crave them at your brain and on top of that, its un-forgiving as hell when it boils down to gameplay which is mostly not fun and tedious and like you said, you can have your experience end permanently if you make a single mistake. Would your average casual player go through all this effort just to learn how to mix chems and make happy pills they want? At most, they'll stop playing SS13 and delete the BYOND when they see the amount of keybinds you need to keep in mind in order to play the game "normally". You can't expect a new player to join a server for the first time and learn everything perfectly in just one round and get to the top. They might learn some mechanics, controls and how the stuff works but that doesn't mean they'll master it. Like the saying goes, "Easy to learn, hard to master". I'm not even talking about the part that there're literal rules you have to follow to be able keep playing where casual players already have hardships about not getting banned from games with simple rules like Overwatch or TF2. SS13 is a game (actually, I view SS13 as a simulation rather than a game) where you only get to have fun only if you can either master the controls/mechanics or role-play nicely the others.

Actually, let's look at CM, the PVP based SS13 server where half of the playerbase is supposed to be dead over the first 40 minutes. And here's the catch, that 50% of playerbase who're going to get killed are either newbies or people that got quite unlucky (the one that got solo-screeched and dragged to Brazil/got off weeds as a xeno and overextended). Who's going to have more fun? A newbie xeno player who wanted to try the runner for the first time and died while trying to slash a marine 5 times after pouncing on them, not knowing marines get up after 2 seconds or the experienced marine main who has over +400 hours and 20 different macros set where PBing xenos with a shotty became a 6th sense for them? To put it simply, if you don't know how to play, then you won't have fun (unless you play SS13 to RP which still requires a bit of skill and experience)

Like you said, a new lurker player got killed by a shotgun-juggler and they didn't even know what hit'em. In this case, if that new player starts grumbling like "How the hell that dude kill me? I didn't even know that they can stun-lock me with 2 shotguns, isn't that un-fair? I couldn't even counter that. This game ain't balanced at all." then they're certainly doing it wrong. Sure, sometimes you can say stuff isn't balanced and I completely agree with you on there, this is a curse every online game has. But let's think about this the other way, where the lurker player thinks about where he did wrong and asks for some tips&tricks from a more experienced player or just observes one of them to see how they use tactics and strategies to mercilesly murder countless marines with no effort. You'll have to go through the "clueless and clumsy" phase like everyone else did in order to have fun playing SS13. Why do you think this game has such a small community? Its meant for hardcore players, the ones that accept to make effort and learn the game to its core. Hell, my first ever SS13 round ended in 10 minutes when a traitorous mime murdered me with a sleepy pen+C4 combo which was extremely un-balanced and un-fun at its time.

TL;DR git gud scrub, B)

Also, I'd even say that SS13's learning curve is far more harder than Dark Souls'.

[ObsidianCrow]

Is it supposed to be like Escape From Tarkov & Darksouls where the gameplay is EXTREMELY un-forgiving and hard-assed realistic? Make one mistake, and you die PERMANENTLY for possibly HOURS?

Yes. Good. Dont like it go play TG

[Stan_albatross]

Yes. Good. Dont like it go play TG

every single server is like that other than the erp hugbox ones tbh

[CABAL]

CM is quite frankly aimed at children/teenagers. If not, there would be a clear statement as a first thing you could find in rules and when entering the server (even before, in server description) that you should be an adult to play this game, otherwise suck shit up and don't cry, when someone makes a joke with innuendo. Because... OH GOD! THINK OF THE MINORS PLAYING THE GAME!

Here is the unofficial truth.

[Usnpeepoo]

Because people want to be coddled up to their asses on every little problem they encounter while playing CM. Nobody wants to be punished for anything they do in game and just want to have a safe, relaxing game ie they get to kill as much as they want and don't get stunned/killed themselves. A majority of the time "skill issue" is used sarcastically, and isn't always used seriously outside of obvious examples of new or experienced players making a stupid mistake and placing the blame on a mechanic that punished that mistake. Personally, I'd love to see a return of a more punishing system for both xenos and marines so people will actually be incentivized to work on being better than your opponent and not simply having it given to you in the form of balance or tweak/rework changes.

[Nunk]

1. "Skill issue" is a tongue in cheek phrase. Ditto for "git gud". Both are are used jokingly or seriously, depending on context.

2. My impression of the community is 16+ people who are fans of the original Aliens movie. Of course, SS13 being a free game that can run on a smartfridge, you're bound to have a trickle of actual children.



I don't understand your post.

Are you complaining about the skill disparities inherent in all PvP games, CM SS13 included? Or is this a thinly veiled complaint about double shotties?
If you're asking for a nerf to double shotties, maybe you should make that your main point instead of a bizarre rant about reducing the skill gap between new and experienced players (?).

[derpymcderpderp]

1. either a joke or an unironic comment by some retard who can't even bandage himself

2. everyone including (evidently) children