I exchanged a word about this with a dev whilst playing but I thought I should also put this here.
Will there be an equivalent to the ‘objective wheel’ in Dirty Bomb? Personally that feature was THE reason I bought, then played Brink for months and months.
I loved that one could have ‘missions’ auto-selected for oneself if one chose(I always chose to). Felt like there was an AI commander guiding me along.
I really liked how switching classes was sometimes the mission assigned.
Personally the objective wheel(or the like) is THE feature I wish to see…
Not one of the features that really made me happy in brink. Used it for maybe the first 6 hours playing it but once you know the objective it seems pretty useless. Not trying to bash your idea down as it wouldn’t affect me if it was implemented.
The way DB is just now, there aren’t a lot of side objectives to be bothered about. The game is back to the ET days of old where you’ve got your main objectives and thats it. Given that the objective icons are visible anyway, I see no need for an objective wheel.
Ohh noes… :rolleyes: This feature was intended to support the console gamers with a gamepad. With DB we got a true PC game, so this idea would scare of many PC players.
One of the first things I did in Brink was to unbind this key.
I have no idea why it was needed, having said that if other people found it useful then great, just for me it would be wasted developer time better spent elsewhere.
Purely for the sake of accessibility, I feel that more guidance as to the task at hand (primary Obj vs secondary Obj), and what it entails (class requirement), is a must in order avoid confusion for first time players who may not give the game more than a round of two before quiting. A tutorial mission is probably the route to go with this, but some kind of in-game mission menu could work, especially if secondary objs are going to become prominent.
Alternatively we could have primary mission marks in red with a message saying “If you’re a newbie head for the red marker in your HUD”, and other/secondary markers in orange.
Which would be even clearer than, “Press Z for your objective wheel, then the one at the top is the primary objective and all the other are secondary onjectives”.
[QUOTE=Mustang;423328]Alternatively we could have primary mission marks in red with a message saying “If you’re a newbie head for the red marker in your HUD”, and other/secondary markers in orange.
Which would be even clearer than, “Press Z for your objective wheel, then the one at the top is the primary objective and all the other are secondary onjectives”.[/QUOTE]
Sure, clear and obvious visual differences should be in place regardless of how else one would decide to enhance any potential mission system. A menu based mission system could however remove clutter from the screen, allow for multiple secondary objs of greater depth, and would act as an ancillary USP for the game.
I don’t know how in-depth SD want to go with missions, so I can’t comment as to my preferred method of execution just yet, but the ideas of secondary objs and class requirements for obj completion are ones that many of those new to the game will not be familiar with. While not difficult to grasp, easing a new F2P player into those concepts is important so as to avoid the rage quitting out of frustration almost immediately.
The objective wheel had its uses with communication with the team. Specifically if you were on your way to revive somebody, or swapped to an engineer to construct something et al.
I can’t really see it having much room in DB (as it’s a bit faster and I think there’s less time to utilize the wheel (even if it was purposed for speed)).
VSays could probably re-take over the communication purpose, though. Like ‘I’m a medic!’ when I’m running at you means, I’m otw to revive so don’t tap out jackass.
I hate to repeat myself, but what secondary objectives? There’s the main objectives and that’s it, and they’re listed on the HUD as it is… I just see no need for a fancy system to tell you what you already know… that shiz needs did!
Yes secondary objectives should be implicit and not explicit. They’re part of the geometrical environment and players should figure it out and interact with it at their leisure. No more hand holding.
Perhaps we each have a different interpretations of secondary objs, I’m talking about things like gas terminals and side doors etc. These are what I class as secondary objs.
There simply aren’t enough of them to justify it. There’s the pumps on Waterloo, again, already highlighted on the HUD. Seems like a waste of resource catering to something that’s not exactly game defining or breaking.
I agree that as the game is now, such a system isn’t justified, which is why I said a simple tutorial would likely be sufficient for the state of the current game.
However, I also mentioned that I have no idea whether or not they want to implement a deeper mission system. It’s entirely possible that new maps or game modes could change things up and expand upon the multi-obj system that’s already in place. Hell, the system could be used to activate daily events, seasonal events, or any number F2P staples that are implemented in a much drearier manner in other titles.
Whether or not a wheel(or some other kind of menu system that allows you to highlight specific tasks) is implemented is not a major issue for me. Sure it would be a nice way to clear the screen of quite a bit of HUD clutter, but it’s not a necessity. I’m more concerned about everything being clear to players, including the newbs :P.
[QUOTE=Breo;423376]Not nessesary
[/QUOTE]
Heheh, yes, the mighty PC Uber race doesn’t need such pathetic crutches!
I felt both ETQW and Brink suffered through the mission selection. I get that it can facilitate communication to the rest of the team and in some part also train people what to do yet one thing I feel it does more than anything is stop you playing, require you to read through a list, select from that list and then play. In short it’s a distraction and one with little benefit to the actual game.
I’d much prefer an optional key press to toggle the display of additional objective icons on the screen. Enable this by default for a player’s first few games. At a push you could use the mouse over mechanic from ETQW to select a mission right from the HUD icons. Key however should be that you never need to read or stop moving to use any kind of system.
That all being said I think vsays (with perhaps some visual indicators), in game VoIP and a good automated team announcer should suffice.
