Zero Notion
Wraith Company
367
   |
Posted - 2013.12.04 16:22:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm not sure if this has been suggested elsewhere but I think I've come up with a framework that can be utilized in Dust's context well.
Keep both the active and passive gains but separate the pools. Remove the caps from each.
Limit how much you can actively spend each week with active SP points.
Allow a queue system that utilizes the passive SP gain which goes directly into the queue.
This allows some diverse training capability and offers more of that 'progress' dopamine reward experience but on a more micro scale. This is important, as the passive SP queue allows for the experience of anticipation which is one of the most powerful reward triggers for humans.
Therefore:
Allows the players to continue playing as much as they like without having their SP gain restricted.
Spending is restricted with active SP but passive SP investment is only limited by the size of your queue (this is where new boosters could come in, allowing for a queue expansion or increasing the speed of the SP investment into the skill). This could be a potential AURUM item, enhancing the market place with diverse boosters to choose from in varying price ranges. Good for business.
With the removal of the cap from active gain, this could also allow players to plan for breaks and grind out matches in order to make up for potential lost time. Also, we've all been just a few hundred or thousand SP away from a new rank in a skill but find ourselves capped out. This is a bummer and causes the player to feel as if the game doesn't want them to continue playing. This is bad for business and bad for player experience.
Those are just my two cents. |
Zero Notion
Wraith Company
367
|
Posted - 2013.12.04 16:46:00 -
[3] - Quote
Spectral Clone wrote:Interesting.
Could you elaborate on how the spending cap would work?
I had a few thoughts in mind for this so I apologize in advance for the stream of consciousness;
One idea would to have a limited amount of SP spending available to each skill tree, encouraging you to diversify your points but giving you the option to save them for the following week. If this were the case, I would suggest the introduction of a skill in every tree with three levels of advancement that would decrease the amount of SP it costs to spend within that tree, allowing you to hyper focus a specialization of your choice. You would only be able to have three of these SP discount skills active at any time.
It would be a unique skill and similar to a 'skill tree module' in essence, as you would be able to turn it off completely - at the cost of losing one level of the skill. This would allow the player to shift his focus of specialization if he ever desired to do so. Clearly this is a rough idea.
The second and more 'easy' idea to implement would simply to have a weekly spending cap. Personally, I would try to have this cap equivalent to a variable of time. One SP value would be equal to X amount of time. In essence, this gives you something of a more 'instant' queue to supplement the passive over time queue. Personally, I'd like to see it placed at 32 hours worth of SP.
This way, while you might be restricted with the active SP and hit a cap, you can still have a passive queue going.
Another idea that I just had: At any time, you could transfer active SP points to the passive queue to help increase the speed in which it is investing points, up to 50% - the equivalent of a booster. This allows the player to invest their SP even further, which would be most useful after they've reached their weekly Active SP Spending Cap. However, investing from active to passive would be taxed: An active SP would have only 25% value of a Passive SP point. Having an alternative to AURUM that encourages playing the game is important. Hugely important.
I know, fairly convoluted to implement but this allows the players of multiple options and skill training planning while never losing a sense of total progress. |