Kincate
DUST University
Ivy League
58
   |
Posted - 2014.06.06 23:24:00 -
[1] - Quote
Currently, the leadership controls in Dust are frankly terrible. The only command that I see people use, is defend, which they stick on someone in hopes everyone will stick close to them. This is aggravated by the fact that placing any other commands is either far too time consuming (For a shooter), or just pointless as the command will disappear once no one GÇ£seesGÇ¥ that person anymore. With Legion we hope to see a set of tools that makes being a Leader not only more relevant, but also more gratifying in itself. My suggestion is to develop these leadership interfaces based off of a system which contains three distinct tiers. Now I am borrowing some terms from the military so this is not all original. My hope is CCP uses something like this as a guide to designing this portion of the UI. More than that I hope they look at it or something similar as a guiding principle when designing other portions of the game as well. These three levels as I call them are Tactical, Operational, and Strategic. Each level corresponds with a different aspect of the game.
Tactical, is your lowest level, this is your commands on the battlefield. This should by far be the simplest system. The orders you can currently give are more along the lines of what you want to be able to give, what needs to change is the way they are given. Part of these could just be attributed the limits of a consol controller. Hot buttons might ease this burden immensely; however you might look towards a system which is more assisted by automation. After all your squad leaders are on the ground and in a FPS combat environment it may be impractical to assume everyone is capable of the multi tasking ability which a few posses. This automation should take on the form of allowing for AI to auto issue orders when certain criteria are met. For instance as the squad leader I could set the UI up to issue an attack order on any target I engage. Or perhaps some form of auto target for these orders on enemies which are scanned. You might also consider options like this to be available with GÇ£CommandGÇ¥ Suits or through modules so you could develop a Commander Role. I do not believe you should eliminate the ability to place commands on the overview map, merely enhance the ability to issue orders without it.
Secondly you have the Operational level. This is the next step up more an RTS feel to it; this is where all of the information from all the squads should be visible. Your primary purpose should be issuing orders and coordinating squads. Also this is where supports should be called from, Orbital strike requests should be sent from here and other forms of support which might develop later on. It should also be where the (In my eyes it should be limited) resources are allocated, perhaps by assigning them to the squad leaders or dropping them yourself. Here is where orders like defend, capture, or move to can be issued to coordinate the actual fight. This is not something which should be available in normal matches. This has yet to be implemented in Dust and in truth there are only a few matches which should really have it; mostly PC matches. This is the level where Legion begins to separate itself from other games. Although unlike in Battlefield, this is never a position which should be randomly assigned. If you have not coordinated to build a team of x number of people you do not need to be in a top down mode, if you are taking a random contract with random people, you should not be issuing these orders. This is reserved for the next level of coordination. For the purposes of UI I keep the ability to view/run multiple battles on a planet in this level of Leadership, though the Argument can be made that this is in fact a strategic level.
Finally you have your strategic level, this is your star map, your inventory controls, you logistical nightmare of an invasion you have been planning. This is not a level involved in a particular session or battle. Strategic is all of the tools needed to plan, manage, execute, and review operations. For simplicities sake this is everything you need outside of the battle side UI. Your inventory management, your rosters, essentially part the part of your corp management UI dedicated to the initiating and reacting to conflicts. In the strategic UI you should be able to assign what corporate resources you want to commit to a given area. Maybe your Corporate warbarge can only hold x number of bombardments or maybe you do not want to pay the costs for them because youGÇÖre a new corp and poor. Perhaps you authorize certain Corporate approved fittings must be worn in company actions you now have to station those suits in whatever passes for a forward staging area, and of course clones the most precious resource of all.
This is just a brief suggestion on how to organize the design of your UI for the leadership. This is very important because as Dust is right now most of this is useless. However with Legion you are essentially getting the opportunity to correct the egregious mistakes made with Dust. Part of that is Dust is a Lobby shooter not an MMOFPS. MMOFPS requires a level of persistency which Dust does not have, but also because in an MMOFPS the key words are Massively Multiplayer. Lots of players require coordination. Without this coordination you do not get the large conflicts which tend to set the Eve universe apart.
1st Legionhaire
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Kincate
DUST University
Ivy League
58
|
Posted - 2014.06.06 23:24:00 -
[2] - Quote
TL;DR
When designing the UI establish three tiers of Leadership Tactical, Operational, and Strategic.
Tactical is the Squad level, use auto assist to allow orders to be used more effectively,
Operational, this is where orders like Defend, Capture etc should be used, limited resources (Orbitals, installations etc) should be allocated or even directly used from here. Also the level at which multiple battles which may constitute a larger battle may be managed.
Strategic is managing your logistical chain, allocating resources to operations etc. All of the Corp management tools which let you run a war.
1st Legionhaire
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