In infinity battlescape it should have no battle resets from what I got from the intro it should have 3 outpost planets that are far orbit that factions can not attack and players can spawn at them for a continues battle with no resets.
Mostly they are super cold rocky planets where bases and cities are in domes or maybe they are on rogue planets that have wormhole access that only certain factions can go through the worm holes would be gigantic like moon sized and are around the outer regions of the solar system the rogue planets are fully claimed and fully colonized with stations and cities but are resource lacking so you have to go into the the solar system to get more resources.
So youâd like a planetside-esque type game?
It sounds nice but one of the things Iâve found with PS is that the neverending battleâs get boring. There really isnât anything to fight for except farming your stats.
The reason I wouldnât like to see that is so a match can have a victor. People can see which strategies for attack,defending, placing factories/mining facilities(if possible) worked. Itâs nice to have a definitive you win, otherwise what are you fighting for?
Thatâs a really long sentence.
Think of resets as punctuation in a sentence, they break up the gameplay and give everyone a chance to take a breath. Games arenât fun if theyâre like a job, people like satisfying conclusions.
Plus non-persistance makes game development easier if you donât have to worry about long-term effects of your changes you can experiment a lot more to see what works best.
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The way planetside 2 had to handle this problem was just ânothing ever really changesâ. Eternal boredom.
What i want to see out of the rounds in battlescape is progression, battles near the end should be very different from the start. Thats not possible to do in a permanently persistent world that isnt an MMO.
There needs to be a goal, not just destruction. On planetside, there are 3 worlds, when you win that world getâs locked to your faction and gives you a certain deduction in costs for certain items.
Yeah,but can you win planetside 2?
Beyond that, the progression should - ideally - be different each time. If the fight is always âsmall ships at the beginningâ and âlarge ships at the endâ (to use a simpleminded progression) then the start and end are different, but every match will be the same. The progression helps to keep things interesting for a while, but if all matches are essentially the same, the players will again find boredom.
Iâm not talking about changing the design of the game on the fly so much as allowing players to tackle things in a variety of ways. If people are expecting a certain progression, then teams should be able to change things up so as to ruin that expectation by coming at matches a different way. That should give them an edge.
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Yep. Think crazy RTS tactics. Where there are some ways to totally baffle an opponent by rushing certain units or using certain paths and combinations in very unusual ways and pull of a win in that way.
Or do you have even more in mind? How would you go above just that?
Hiding a fleet behind a moon and having a weak scout force lure the enemy in.
Well, it ultimately comes down to making the gameplay matter to people. Thatâs why a competitive game can do so well; people really get worked up about winning and losing. Iâve talked before about letting peopleâs personalities come through in the gameplay. A good game does that, and allows players to alter the way the game is played simply because of the people involved. Chess and Go are perfect examples of that. Aggressive moves, defensive strategies, sneak attacks and so forth.
One thing that would seem mandatory is some way for leaders to arise and direct troops - and for their directions to matter. If youâve got 500 players in one game and they have no coordination, youâre going to get a mob experience over and over again. If youâve got 500 players being directed by a few leaders but the leaders really canât do anything other than say âBlow up the bases in order 1, 2, 3â vs âBlow up the bases in order 3, 1, 2â then youâre again not really doing much good. The leaders need to have enough room to work so that their personalities - their preferences for interactions - can be expressed in the gameplay.
Think in terms of Patton vs Rommel vs Montgomery, etc. The personalities of the leaders determined how the battles went.
Beyond that, thereâs the changing environment, changing access to gear, personnel, etc. There are lots of ways to keep things fresh so long as the game itself doesnât place a straight jacket on the way the players experience the game. What difference does it make if thereâs a Patton or a Montgomery if the only thing players can do is a bayonet charge against machine guns?
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iirc a game called natural selection implemented something called âdynamic squadâ. People who were close together were deemed a squad and would be given squad orders by the leader.
I can also imagine a type of job board that the leader of a round can edit. It shows what needs to be done and then people can sign up for it as a group or single person. Completing a task would give you a reward (only if you signed up for it) based on a factions bank account (which is fed with 10% of the produced credits). Raising / lowering the rewards would allow the leader to guide the troops.
However this would, at best, be a separate mode, as it works completely against the nature of battlescape, which is âdrop in, have fun, drop outâ.
I dont know about the first natural selection, but in NS2 a single teamâs commander built structures, bought into certain tech or upgrade paths, and vocally coordinated with the team. Something like that would be fantastic but we have to be conservative with such suggestions at the minimum funding tier.
If battlescapeâs games last days then they will surely need to use something more dynamic though. Either voting for team-wide technology or upgrades or voting for a single/multiple commanders. Im still not convinced that having games last more than a few hours will be a great move as it forces these kind of sacrifices, but weâll see in the playtesting certainly!
Structuring the game to have voting for a single commander with specific tasks is the sort of thing that Iâd suggest a game avoid. It has the upside of ensuring that there is a single commander who has access to a specific set of toys, but it has the downside of a single command structure in every game session. In the long term, it serves as a gameplay straight jacket.
Note that I donât have a problem with a single commander - if thatâs the way the players want to operate in that session on that server. If players want to organize another way, with multiple commanders responsible for different aspects of a session, then I want them to have the tools to be effective that way as well.
This means that if a clan of 50 wants to operate as a separate entity, thatâs their business. They arenât obliged to vote for someone else, and they neednât dominate voting so that they always lead everyone. Theyâll have access to whatever toys are practical for a group of 50 players.
Flavian and Keith have both already said they donât want to add in a âcommanderâ role that everyone either ignores outright or follow into deathtraps.
More organic, player-driven methods of organisation is the way they want to push things.
In the end, itâs going to be your choice who you want to fly with and where you want to go and fight in each battle. Supporting groups that form up around people who know what theyâre doing, independently of any âleadership mechanicâ the game ends up with, seems like a good way to go.
But there will be things like ground-to-orbit defence installations. Directing those might be something you need a commander or commander-like person to do, if you donât go for something like ânearby players vote for a targetâ or âthe AI decides the best targetâ.
Yup, orbital cannons will need gunners. They should also need a logistics team to keep them operating, a defensive squadron to keep them from being destroyed, perhaps targeting ships to designate things to hit and so forth. The more powerful an object is, the more players that should be involved in its creation and operation. The less support such an object gets, the less powerful it becomes.
Once you get to that point, people vote with their skills, their time and their resources. If you believe that itâs time to get an orbital cannon in place, then you devote your attention to it. Either start up an effort or join someone elseâs.
Edit: Oops. My bad. You were talking about ground-to-orbit and I took it as orbit-to-groundâŚ
Wow⌠Thatâs a big chunk of wild speculation mixed in with stuff thatâs outside the scope of anything under the $1.5million stretchgoal.
I think orbital bombardment will be performed by Cruisers, not dedicated orbital cannon.
Heâs talking about ground-to-space cannons, not orbit-to-ground cannons.
Communication tools within game will really help things if it is done right without the need for official commander-only toys.
My suggestion: (based on dekakus description of a âjob boardâ), is that players should have a simple way of indicating their intentions to the rest of the team e.g. âDefending Skybase Alphaâ (like selecting a job on a board, but it will be a static set of jobs) then they will be grouped with others doing the same job. People could also vote on what jobs they think people should be doing.
You could incentivise using this system with small bonuses for completing actions related to the job you have selected, but that could be up to players if they want to put credits into a âbonus potâ.
Notice how with this system anyone could take command and everyone has access to all the tools, but itâs up to players to figure out how they want to use it.
With the ability to freely transfer credits to other players, a leader could be any player who decides to use credits to incentivise actions.
The system can be added to or simplified based on playtesting/dev resources.
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