The formula has already been written.

(BTMPL) #81

Blizzard did, for Diablo 3 and the game is meh. They had pro players guiding them from conception to the final stages.

See? It’s not always black and white :stuck_out_tongue:

(Anti) #82

It’s a good point, but they weren’t changing the entire business model of their game :slight_smile:

(montheponies) #83

The game needs to be attractive to a wide audience - for that to happen there should be as much flexibility as possible in the server settings.

Vanilla RTCW was hopeless for competition, which is where OSP came in (or ET Pro).
OSP wasnt favoured by most pub players - that’s where Shrub came in (or ET err Shrub iirc)

Point being that RTCW wasnt a single rigid game and it was stronger for that. Too many of us I think are getting hung up on trying to make this game into the image of the mod / server that we found most enjoyable…as alpha testers shouldnt we be considering it from a wholistic point of view not a narrow POV?

(BTMPL) #84

This. I’ve yet to see any post detailing the pov of a pub / cassual player, and I believe, no matter what we want, will be the majority of the players. At least at the start.

What I - and I guess most of us - would want to see is the ability to restrict or change certain game elements per server config. This way each of use can have a say in what league we want to play in, to shape it’s rule. Right now we’re here to test the game from all the points of view.

(Strifee) #85

[QUOTE=Anti;437487]This is the biggest design challenge we face on the game, trying to keep the ‘classic’ shooter feel we want with understandable simple gameplay whilst making it work as a F2P game that isn’t P2W. It’s incredibly tough, especially as we have lots of information telling us what types of transactions and systems will and will not have a good chance of making any money.

Suggestions from you folks on this front are always welcome as we need to be very inventive in how we try to deal with it :)[/QUOTE]

Anti,

I think you really said something here that sticks. Why is it a big design challenge to make a “classic” shooter? As Valdez stated, it is like basketball, the rules and everything are already established. Hell, I would still play Rogue Spear if it was up to date. Primary, secondary, and grenade. The most important thing I would try to keep in mind if I was making a game, if I have good players playing it and supporting it, that is all that matters.

(Anti) #86

[QUOTE=Strifee;439022]Anti,

I think you really said something here that sticks. Why is it a big design challenge to make a “classic” shooter? As Valdez stated, it is like basketball, the rules and everything are already established. Hell, I would still play Rogue Spear if it was up to date. Primary, secondary, and grenade. The most important thing I would try to keep in mind if I was making a game, if I have good players playing it and supporting it, that is all that matters.[/QUOTE]

I think you missed my point a little. Remaking a game is relatively easy if you change very little, but if we took one of our previous games and changed very little it would not be suitable for the F2P model, which is the business model we’re using. The big design challenge is making something that will work for F2P yet also works for that classic style of play and feel.

(INF3RN0) #87

SC2 is also very different from SC1, yet still is a great game. Pro players were just there to help make the new ideas work with the game. That’s what we should be doing here.

(Hundopercent) #88

[QUOTE=BTMPL;438995]Blizzard did, for Diablo 3 and the game is meh. They had pro players guiding them from conception to the final stages.

See? It’s not always black and white :P[/QUOTE]

Their are pro Diablo 3 players and tournaments?

If not, then that problem lies that they had pro players from a different genre trying to build a casual game. I thought Diablo 3 was a great game (I only paid 20$ for it) but I’m not a fan of Blizzard’s form of content they chose, which was to play the same game 5 times in a row. I played through it with 2 classes and was happy with it.

Understood, but does changing your business model mean you have to inflate OHK and cheese equipment? Make weapons inaccurate, make moving sluggish, intentionally imbalance classes along with the plethora of other concerns we’ve reported? I don’t think that’s necessary at all. Your predefined loadouts are a good approach but need to be more unique and not because they can lob sticky hotdogs on to walls that insta kill people.

But you are remaking your previous game. This has a majority of the core elements of ET with multiple classes, escorts, excessive objectives, with very long maps. You didn’t really change much other than some how managing to make it feel worse (sorry I don’t mean to dog you guys so hard but the game doesn’t feel right.)

What does classic play mean to you? I don’t believe we, as players, are on the same page as SD on what classic play is.

(Hundopercent) #89

So not only are you the spokesperson for SD but for Blizzard now as well?

You can’t honestly think they were only their to help implement all of their ideas. They balanced the factions, isolated which units would and would not work etc. If they just embraced every change Blizzard made the game woulda tanked…

Just because their name is orange doesn’t mean you strap your knee pads on and unzip their pants for them. They need honest opinions and quality feedback so they know if they’re moving in the right direction or not. That’s what we’re trying to do. They get enough people on the forums already telling them every idea they have is ground shattering. -_-

(INF3RN0) #90

[QUOTE=strychzilla;439074]
Just because their name is orange doesn’t mean you strap your knee pads on and unzip their pants for them. They need honest opinions and quality feedback so they know if they’re moving in the right direction or not. That’s what we’re trying to do. They get enough people on the forums already telling them every idea they have is ground shattering. -_-[/QUOTE]

I’m just less tuned toward tunnel vision by my gaming elitism. Odd that you would say that considering I don’t agree with most of the design decisions. I do however see multiple games with complex content that play very differently as successors to a previous title, and that turn out great. That’s why I’d rather put in the extra work to help make new ideas work instead of just removing them and copying the old stuff. I don’t have to be a spokesman for anyone to see all the negative remarks from “pro players” during SC2 alpha/beta and then the same thing for HotS. Everyone just QQ’s at the beginning and has majorly negative responses to the new stuff without explaining how to improve/fix them non-destructively. SC2 just exemplifies how persistence pays off in the end and that people become more accepting of the new ideas once they adjust their play styles and focus their feedback constructively.

Also to add; it’s really easy to just call everything SD tries stupid ideas that won’t ever work and then to bunch up anyone who wants to contribute constructively a fan boy. Then to top it off just returning back to another game as the solution to every problem ends up preventing any progression. I just don’t see how that kind of feedback is helpful at all. I can’t speak for SD (even though it has come up already), but I think they would be more appreciative if people gave more open-minded feedback with clear detailed reasoning behind why anything unfavorable can’t ever be made to work. If anyone truly wants a near-identical sequel to RTCW with nothing new or different, maybe you should call up the devs that made it???

(Hundopercent) #91

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;439079]I’m just less tuned toward tunnel vision by my gaming elitism. Odd that you would say that considering I don’t agree with most of the design decisions. I do however see multiple games with complex content that play very differently as successors to a previous title, and that turn out great. That’s why I’d rather put in the extra work to help make new ideas work instead of just removing them and copying the old stuff. I don’t have to be a spokesman for anyone to see all the negative remarks from “pro players” during SC2 alpha/beta and then the same thing for HotS. Everyone just QQ’s at the beginning and has majorly negative responses to the new stuff without explaining how to improve/fix them non-destructively. SC2 just exemplifies how persistence pays off in the end and that people become more accepting of the new ideas once they adjust their play styles and focus their feedback constructively.

Also to add; it’s really easy to just call everything SD tries stupid ideas that won’t ever work and then to bunch up anyone who wants to contribute constructively a fan boy. Then to top it off just returning back to another game as the solution to every problem ends up preventing any progression. I just don’t see how that kind of feedback is helpful at all. I can’t speak for SD (even though it has come up already), but I think they would be more appreciative if people gave more open-minded feedback with clear detailed reasoning behind why anything unfavorable can’t ever be made to work. If anyone truly wants a near-identical sequel to RTCW with nothing new or different, maybe you should call up the devs that made it???[/QUOTE]

You obviously don’t read our posts and just scim through and retain only what you thought we were going to say. Come at me when you get your facts straight.

(INF3RN0) #92

What stuff that wasn’t in RTCW do you endorse? I don’t mean “fine for pub because balance doesn’t matter outside of comp”. Try to envision wanting to play the game if there wasn’t any competition mode or a scene at all. I read every word and I’d rather not quote all of the times I read “this will just have to be removed from comp, but fine for pub I guess (don’t care cause I don’t pub)” under the assumption that features are broken without suggesting a means of making it functional. I respect honest opinions and I complain plenty too if you haven’t noticed, but in the end everyone’s opinions are their own. I’ll take what I can get from voicing my wants, and then I’ll try to make constructive suggestions on the stuff that I’m not so keen on at first because in the end it’s the most I’ll probably be able to do.

(Hundopercent) #93

We can PM or talk on mumble but I’m not going to ruin a good thread because you can’t admit that you juggle the devs balls in a majority of yours posts.

(INF3RN0) #94

Just PM me those posts and I’ll go back and edit/delete them if they are straight up ball juggling. Ball handling is not my forte.

(LeeStyle) #95

Sounds like my Friday nights.

(attack) #96

a streamer sayd in one of his streams(zoidbergenstein played Et on Quakecon) .SD do amazing maps but every decission gameply whise say make fails. i often have the feeling that SD wants too much
i still remember the buff system it wasnt a bad idea to improve teamplay but after the 100 time it was like work, nobody want to buff every spawn.well they understand that movement is imporetant ,but movement in brink was too easyand not skillbased. still dont know why i have to lvl 5 chars to can play every class perfect ?bodytipe was useless because everybody played the fast oneand the bigger weapons wasnt even better. i think maybe they should simply think smaller.get the fanbase back and they would have a competitve game which can grow.

,He also said that it wasnt really possible in competitive to set a time ,or hard. he said the fun about sw is to set a time or beat the other.
maybe patches would have done it.

but let face it would have brink died if they would have rely on their strenghts and dont bring in too much new , we all would still play it,im a little depressed and its 5 o clock in the morning, so dont weight my words too high

(INF3RN0) #97

What I appreciate about SD the most is that they aren’t in it just for the money. They really do want to make everyone happy, but we sort of screw it up for ourselves in a lot of ways when we can’t make compromises on issues. Brink tried too hard to appease the non-vet ET players by completely changing the basic mechanics of the games. What would have been better was to make it more user friendly and informative to the public and spent more time on developing ideas like SMART movement and alot of the other innovative ideas. The solution to these games in my opinion is to find a way to bring all the communities together.

(tangoliber) #98

I’ve been supporting the “complete character/load-out” model from the beginning. I support it for gameplay reasons, and can only hope that it would be an effective business model…but my only knowledge in this area is that I myself would pay for those characters. My main problem with customizable loadouts has always been that it waters down abilities and weapons, since they all need to be balanced against every other ability or weapon. So, interesting abilities get nerfed to the point where they are no longer interesting…and satisfying weapons get nerfed to the point where they are no longer satisfying. The great thing about having non-customizable loadouts is the more flexible balancing options. You can balance a powerful weapon, not by nerfing it, but by pairing it with a weaker ability. Or vice-versa.

But, if F2P really needs microtransactions/customizable loadouts to be very profitable, then I understand…and by supporting that opinion, I hope I don’t help to lead SD down an unprofitable path.

(Kendle) #99

Strychzilla’s idea included assigning a points value to every item and only allowing players to load up to a maximum number of points, so if you could only load say 20 points, and there were 2 OP weapons available to a class that were 15 points each, you could only have 1 of them, plus some other weaker ability worth 5 points, for example. You could have a strong weapon + weak ability, or weak weapon + strong ability, but not strong weapon + strong ability if their total points exceeded the max. value you could hold.

(Protekt1) #100

This thread veered somehow into microtransactions and the f2p business model so I’ll toss in my 2 cents. I think SD should break away from old and frankly over-milked game mechanics like customized loadouts. I’d rather see more set classes than customized load-outs because at least set classes can be fine tuned and built to avoid really cheese set ups. Imagine for a moment that instead of merely the single default soldier class, you could also pick from 2 “specialized” soldier classes. They would be side grades and balanced to the extreme against their core/default class. You would earn these specializations or purchase early unlocks. There would be 2 for each class bringing the choices to 15. And each class/specialization would have skins and weapon camos to purchase.

As for the specializations themselves, I am not exactly sure how they’d be composed. But I assume SD has a plan on how to sell individual items so just stick those individual items in specialization in a manner that is balanced, fair, and unique. When it comes to competitive play, things are going to be different whether there are extra classes or customized loadouts so it probably will not affect them negatively. But at least in casual/pub play, the game will remain well balanced which I think is as important if not more important than balance in competitive play (comp communities/leagues can always use their own server rules and probably will regardless anyway).

I believe that many people aren’t into paying for unlockables even if those unlockables can be purchased through free in game currency. Over the last year, the only items I purchased in f2ps were skins/camos and perhaps a boost or two. I think people are more than willing to spend money supporting a game. But… many people are only willing to pay for cosmetics. So having purchaseable early unlocks for specialized classes will satisfy the group of people who are willing to buy items. And camos/skins will be satisfactory to people who are willing to buy cosmetics. Everyone is satisfied :slight_smile: