Celus Ivara
DUST University
Ivy League
252
   |
Posted - 2014.12.29 18:17:00 -
[1] - Quote
If I may, one thing I'd like to throw into the conversation is the idea that these custom Warbarges should be viewed less as existing for a specific purpose, and instead as open-ended tools.
Right now, we are largely viewing Warbarges as serving a role in PC (and to a lesser degree FW and Pubs).
Now I do agree that Warbarges can help fix some massive problems in those areas.
But we are limiting ourselves here a bit.
We are succumbing to the fallacy of looking at Dust as it is now (the arena-FPS) and not what Dust could be (the Sandbox-MMORPG-FPS).
Yes, Warbarges can be used for combat.
In fact I'll agree that combat is what we should be balancing them against and making sure they are feature-complete for.
But Merc built/owned/upgradable ships can be so many other things, too!
I want to see Warbarges built as casinos, class-rooms, bars, personal yahts, third-party trade hubs, talk-show sets...
I want to see war orientated Corps using barges not just for direct attack, but also for resorce production, quarter-master barges built for storing and distributing weapons to the front line, area-denial and guerrilla-warfare orientated barges, Corp social areas, rifle ranges....
To a certain degree, this is just repeating the situation of what the "Corporations" feature is and how it's used.
Hypothetically, Corps exist to enable a group of players to grow in power, and eventually buy clone packs, take a district and then-on fight in the PC "end-game".
But in the New Eden sandbox people repurpose tools constantly to serve their goals.
People have utilized the Corporation feature to make banks, schools, escrow-services, and whatever-the-kitten Jadek Menaheim's been doing. ;)
But with Corps being purpose built for war, many features that would aid/enable these other uses are critically missing.
- There is no way to deploy to a district out side of direct PC warfare, this eliminates tons of other uses of Corps; no LAV races, no 1v1 gladiator tournaments, no schools giving hands-on lessons.
- Corp messaging ability (both internal and external) is terrible; try sending a 30 mail lesson pack to each new student under the current mail system, try advertising your Corps services to anyone not living on the forums, try giving a lecture in a hundred person chat with no ability to mute loud people or kick trolls, try organizing in-game events without an in-game calender.
At the heart of all this is a question of what we want Dust to be:
Do we want to focus on the arena-FPS we've had since launch?
Or do we want to build towards the Sandbox-MMORPG-FPS we fell in love with in the trailers? |
Celus Ivara
DUST University
Ivy League
258
|
Posted - 2014.12.30 13:37:00 -
[2] - Quote
Small post, but just want to say: A narrative excuse we can use for why Warbarges aren't visible/attackable in EVE is that they (usually) are located in very low orbit over planets. EVE ships (at least in gameplay) have never been able to get this close to planets; if we also add a line about their ships' sensors not being designed/optimized to scan in this area, we can handwave away a lot of the "invisible ships" issues people are bringing up.
I suppose that doesn't resolve the sub-question of "Where are the Warbarges when they're moving between systems/planets?", but it would resolve the rest.
And heck, maybe down the line we want 'barges visible and semi-vulnerable during transit.  |
Celus Ivara
DUST University
Ivy League
259
|
Posted - 2015.01.03 13:08:00 -
[3] - Quote
Avallo Kantor wrote:I'd like to chip in an idea I was thinking about as well on the availability of battles, and giving District owners a chance to become more active in their districts.
The basic idea is that when districts are able to make DUST Goo / Warbarge Fuel that it produces X / day.
However, this amount can be increased by having a district be set to "Active" (It would require certain privileges to do)
When a District is set to "Active" it will remain so for the next 1 hour. (Note this "active" period cannot overlap with that district's "vulnerable" period) During this time it will passively produce an additional sum of DUST Goo / Warbarge Fuel / Clones (Depending on the infrastructure type)
To balance this out though the District becomes attackable during this "active" period by anybody who wishes to assault the District, which would cause Planetary Raids to be had. A Planetary Raid would be slightly different from Planetary Conquest in a number of ways:
1) It would be fighting over the resources produce / stockpiled there. A decisive victory could see the entire gain of the "active" period taken
2) A District could not switch hands during an "Active" period, but losses in the District could still make impact in later battles.
3) Planetary Raids would use some format of the Ambush Game Mode.
Ideally this game mode would be set up to promote very swift conclusions to the battles, and for the Attacker to walk away with some portion of the product relative to their performance. (Ranging from 0 - 100% of gained product)
The overall idea here is to promote Districts as a fighting ground for corps in a way that allows them to fight when they are active and profit from it while also allowing other entities to come and disrupt those activities.
Though I'm not completely sold on the rest of the proposal, the core idea of defenders being able to make their district immediately vulnerable, with some encouragement to do so, is one of the best ideas I've ever heard for improving PC.
(Not a full fix of course, but a potentially very engaging new addition to PC.)
A caveat: We'd have to be careful about the execution on the mechanic, else it'll be vulnerable to the same district locking issues we had before. |