1. Intro
I’ve been playing the alpha for a few weeks now, trying to get a feel for what the game is like and where it is headed. My impressions so far are that it seems promising, but whether or not it will be a great game depends entirely on the direction Splash Damage takes during development towards beta. One of its most interesting aspects, in my opinion, is the combination of certain MOBA-like features with classic fps gunplay. If this concept was evolved further, I believe it could add enormously to the quality of the game. I’m currently working on a large document detailing my thoughts on this, and other gameplay topics, but as I don’t know how long it will take to finish, I’ve decided to post a concise version of my ideas concerning mercs and drafting.
2. Merc system
My first suggestion is simple: Discard the class based merc system. Design individual mercs instead. While class based games can be a lot of fun, they heavily restrict character design, and limit variety. If the surge in popularity of MOBAs, like Dota 2 and League of Legends, for the past few years has taught us anything, it should be that a large variety of unique mercs creates deep and engaging gameplay with near endless variety. While it is possible to design a pseudo class based system like Extraction currently uses, I believe this approach leads to “neither fish nor fowl” gameplay that fails to satisfy the advantages of either system.
Removing the classes gives you a lot more freedom to design interesting and unique mercs. No longer do you have to give every “medic” a revive ability, or some other arbitrary parameter imposed by what is essentially the first merc in that class. Instead, your only consideration is to create an interesting and unique new player character. With a thousand different games to take inspiration from, this should be pretty easy. For example, what about a merc that can throw stimpacks that temporarily boost weapon damage? A very fast acrobatic merc with a special melee weapon instead of guns? Or what about a merc with a teleport ability?
Doing this also more or less forces you to redesign certain class related mechanics and abilties that, in my opinion, are not working well. My primary example of this would be the ammo dispensing abilities of the fire support mercs, which seem more like a relic of bygone times than a gameplay improving feature. Not only are these boring to use for the fire support player, but it’s also frustrating for all the other players when nobody wants to do it. While not getting medpacks from a medic is acceptable because you can only blame yourself for taking damage anyway, running out of ammo often feels like the game is punishing the player for playing well. The players who run out of ammo are typically the players who get a lot of frags and stay alive for a long time. This has personally forced me to play almost exclusively as fire support in public games in this alpha, as I find myself constantly running out of ammo when I play any other class. This is not good gameplay design. There would obviously have to be some other mechanic in place to allow players to replenish ammo – for example either by buying ammo, returning to base, and/or picking up regularly respawning ammo packs from certain locations on the map.
I would also like to see certain other aspects from MOBA character design carried over, namely per-game stat and ability progression (by “per-game” I mean that they reset between each game). The classic Dota stats are Strength, Agility and Intelligence, and I think it might be feasible to simply use that trio, albeit perhaps with different names to fit better with Extraction’s theme. Strength could serve as a modifier for health, agility as a modifier for recoil and movement speed, and intelligence as a modifier for energy (energy explanation in the next paragraph). The basic idea is that players gain experience for completing certain goals ingame (fragging or assisting in fragging enemies, completing objectives, and possibly certain other narrowly designed goals) which can then add up to a level up, upon which the primary stats increase by a pre-set amount for that specific merc, as well as giving the player a skill point he can use to improve an ability. A per-game stat and ability system would naturally have to be designed in a certain way to prevent gunplay from degenerating, and what I’ve outlined here is just the basic concept, but I think something like this could add a lot more depth and variety to gameplay than the perk system I have seen alluded to in a few posts on here.
Furthermore, I would like to see a third resource added (in addition to ammo and health) called energy. This is simply mana with tech fluff instead of magic fluff. The combination of energy and cooldowns to regulate ability use gives you a lot more flexibility with designing abilities and mercs, as opposed to just using cooldowns like it currently is. For example, this would allow for a much wider range of mercs with support abilities such as medpacks and revive, as well as prevent the revive spam that is currently behind much of the problems with frustrating “meatgrind” gameplay. In combination with per-game stat and ability progression, this allows for interesting design. For example, the fire support air strike ability could drop three bombs at level 1 with a low energy cost and low damage on each bomb, whereas at level 3 it would drop five bombs with a significantly higher energy cost and damage on each bomb.
The combination of the concepts outlined above synergizes quite well, and it should be able to make it work within the fps framework without degenerating the gunplay we fps enthusiasts crave. It also opens up further avenues for adding depth to the game. For example, using per-game stat and ability progression, and the third energy resource, it is possible to design mercs that have peak power during different stages of the game. Some mercs could be designed to be very powerful early in the game, but have slower stat progression or weaker ability improvements, making them weaker later compared to mercs that start out weak but have more powerful progression.
Opposite to this, I don’t think adding “utimate” abilities is a good idea. These are abilities that by their nature have to be enormously powerful, which I believe will adversely affect gunplay too much to be acceptable. Ultimates have a place in MOBAs, but not in fps games. Firefall is perhaps the best example of an fps game that has been ruined by ultimate abilities.
3. Drafting
Accepting and adopting the previous recommendation of removing classes and designing unique mercs also opens up for the addition of one of the most amazing features of Dota 2: Drafting.
The idea is as simple as it is amazing in practice: Each game is played 5v5 – using lobby based matchmaking – with only one player allowed to play as each merc (often referred to as “highlander” in class based games). In order to decide which players get to play as which mercs, however, there is merc draft before each game starts. In Dota 2 Captain’s Mode you have a captain that selects (and bans) mercs for the entire team, but there are other ways of doing this to facilitate non-competitive play – Dota 2’s Allpick mode is one, but I don’t think that is the best solution.
For a short explanation of how drafting works and why it is good, read this: http://www.team-dignitas.net/articles/blogs/DotA/756/Dota-2-A-Beginners-Guide-to-Drafting
Drafting is a huge boon to any game that has the design required to facilitate it – namely a large enough collection of unique player characters that is available to all players. 20 different mercs is my best guess at a minimum number of mercs, but at least 30 would be preferable. Drafting adds, amongst other things, an element of self-balancing gameplay (since overpowered mercs will be the first to be banned), more strategic and tactical interaction between teams, and forces players to be more versatile (rather than simply play the same class/merc every time).
For an exciting example of how it works in practice, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8HBr1EGX1I – the draft takes place during the first five minutes of the video. This is the final game of the grand final of “The International 3”, the third iteration of the yearly Dota 2 tournament hosted by Valve, this time with a total prize pool of ~$2.9 million (yes, you read that correctly). I don’t even play the game – I try to stick to only fps games, but it’s difficult these days with the lack of good alternatives – but I still sat up all night watching it live, because the tournament was amazing and pro Dota 2 is a lot of fun to watch.
4. Do not rush the beta/release
This is unrelated to the rest of my post, but I’d also like to warn Splash Damage of the dangers of releasing the game before it is ready, both the beta and final release. In 2011/2012 I participated in a similar pre-buy alpha/beta test system for a game called Natural Selection 2, which had its player base decimated by poor first impressions due to rushed beta and final releases. The game has sold around 600k copies in total over the past four years (it was released 31 Oct 2012), yet its daily peak of concurrent players is only around 1000. Having had first-hand experience with it, I’m convinced that one of the most important reasons for its horrible player retention rate is the infamously poor quality of its beta stage and first six months of its post-release, which made a lot of players lose interest in the game permanently.
With pre-paid beta test access, players expect a near-finished game with minor bugs and only a few missing features. If you instead serve them an unfinished game in the hopes that they will test it, then you will get a lot of disgruntled players who will quit the game permanently after a short period; and what’s worse is that they will tell all their friends how bad the game is. This is to be avoided at all costs! For a free to play game, word of mouth and player retention are alpha and omega. These days, “beta access” should be treated as a synonym of “early release access”.
5. Final remarks
Hopefully this thread will serve as a catalyst for moving Extraction towards an interesting design direction ripe with potential for turning this into a fantastic game. I’m sure some of the ET enthusiasts in here will disagree with much of this post, but I urge you to keep an open mind. Making Extraction as just another iteration of the ET formula is not likely to end well for anyone.
if you add all these features and I have to be constantly number juggling to figure out if I have enough DPS etc… KISS
