Joseph Ridgeson
WarRavens
League of Infamy
695
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Posted - 2014.03.10 21:27:00 -
[1] - Quote
190,400 SP is a number that every DUST player is familiar with. It is the Active SP you can obtain every week. Currently, the only way to get this SP is by spending time in a match (5 SP per 1 second) and getting War Points (1 SP per 1 WP). I have been playing a bit of GW2 recently, I noticed the daily achievements and thought that it would be interesting if DUST were to incorporate them. Not as additional SP necessarily but as a way to cap out. Imagine it like this:
I log in and see my weekly achievements:
Kill 20 Scouts (5,000)
Kill 20 Assaults (5,000)
Kill 20 Logistics (5,000)
Kill 20 Heavies (5,000)
Obtain 30 Triage (5,000)
Run 30 kilometers (5,000)
Destroy 5 vehicles (5,000)
Hack an enemy vehicle (3,000)
The SP amounts or what you have to do could easily change but the basic gist of it is there. This has multiple positive results.
The first is it gives players a different opportunity to cap out every week. Rather than just having to play matches and waiting for them to end, it provides the players way to actively make that go faster (IE, "Obtain 20 Guardian Assists"). For the casual player that just likes to play the game, nothing much changes. They may complete an achievement here or there but not really altering their style of play. For the hardcore "cap out ASAP" people, it gives them a way to cap out faster while still having to play the game and providing everyone else something to shoot at and be shot by.
Another thing is it pushes people into more roles and out of their comfort zone. Like the Heavy and Scout event, it can teach people to do new roles they haven't done before. So many players just run an Assault suit with a Rifle and never experience the depth of the game. Look at all the threads that were posted around the Mauler event. There were a multitude about how much fun they were having as a Heavy and that they had never done it before. Imagine if that type of thing happened every week. It would naturally show players that this FPS has more depth than what is immediately obvious.
After capping out, the achievements could just give a small amount of SP or ISK. If it was going to give 5,000 for 20 Scouts killed, make it give 500 SP. This gives the hardcore person something additional as well. They would cap out and then have a reason to continue playing because they have their checklist to complete.
The Achievement System would also help provide data to CCP. "This achievement is the one that is most often completed despite having a worse Difficulty to Reward ratio than these achievements. Is there a possible balance problem that we are not aware of?" IE, if killing 5 Clones with Melee Attacks is done more often than killing 10 Clones with an Ion Pistol, it could be evidence of a balance concern. The players would be gathering data in a completely non-obtrusive manner, all the while playing the game and not doing anything they didn't want to do. This applies both to the Casual Player and the Achievement Hunter.
This would even work if/when (please, please be WHEN and not IF...) the SP Rollover system is released. Those that are up to date on their capping would still have something to do within the game itself. Those that took a month off of playing wouldn't feel overwhelmed by seeing half a million SP because they would know they could also do achievements to speed that up. A grind that is accepted completely by the player without feeling like it has to be done is actual game play.
Achievements simply allow for more ways that the player can play the game. Someone that has never flown a dropship before might call a couple in if they have an achievement like "fly 3 kilometers" or "deliver 10 allies to the battleground." With that, they might really like the dropship and become the next Judge Rhadamanthus. Jeez, if I never would have killed someone calling in their tank and hacked it back in beta, I might never have found the aspect of the game I am most fond of. Achievements could create an invisible hand that would guide people to something that they are quite fond of.
I would appreciate comments, concerns, and basic feedback on this idea. |