Grimmiers
931
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Posted - 2016.06.16 01:22:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'd like to share some of my ideas of what I thought dust eventually get and what would work for project nova once vehicles and planetary combat are added.
Dust's Problems
Initial designs for how a battle would be played were very close to an rts/fps hybrid game and I could see why that would be problem with dust being on the ps3 and the challenge of making a long lasting strategic battle fun for everyone. So we had skirmish for dust which worked well and was simple, but still had complexities thrown in like vehicles, installations, mccs, orbitals, and all the dropsuits. The problem isn't that these things are complex, but that not everything was easy or useful, leaving new players confused and old players annoyed by clutter and silly mechanics.
What Nova should have
-Installations
Installations could be installed before and during a battle by a defending corp. All installations would be destroyable and expensive. Districts would have a limited bandwidth and distance for placement. Small installations would be deploy by infantry//vehicles. The construction would cost nanites and be built over time. Large installations would be dropped like we've seen in dust on clear terrain. Satellites would be launched while the district isn't under attack and could even play a part in eve since they wouldn't be used in live combat. Satellite could be things like containers, orbital cannons, stations, etc.
installations I'd Like to see:
- Null Cannons
- Small turrets (blasters, missiles, laser, rail)
- Large turrets (swarm, plasma mortar, forge/rail,)
- Supply depot ( resupply, swap)
- Spawn Unit (Should look like a bunker for safer spawning)
- Vehicle Bay(repairs, recalls, swap) would appear like a landing pad) *Rdv's themselves would be a limited resource
The purpose here is to have turrets not just be a daily mission or something that everyone knows the location of. Varied Null cannon placements would also make better use of larger maps and allow interesting meta shifts. The issue with turrets was that they were easily hackable, had strange ai, and left anyone using the turret exposed. The smaller turrets should have a front shield for protection and the large shields should be treated like a stationary vehicle. Only the large turrets would have ai that focused on vehicles and would fight back without being shot first. Hacking large turrets would use the virus upload mechanic null cannons use instead of instantly being flipped to your team.
A role for vehicles
Vehicles will already be much more important now that all installations including null cannons would be destroyable. They need to have a better relationship with infantry this time around. It sucked that repair tools weren't used much on vehicles and remote repair modules were scrapped leaving use with frustrating passive vehicle repairs. The only reason this was the case was because of every anti vehicle weapon/turret having absurdly high alpha damage. The only way to defend yourself against it was by stacking hardeners which combined with the high passive repair just wasn't fun imo. I'd like to see more dps style damage for vehicles and even allow small blasters and more infantry weapons as viable av.
As for vehicle designs, since nova mercs aren't one of the main races I think vehicles should have a modular look to them this time instead of making unique vehicles of all types. For instance, I have a generic LAV hull and will only look like a gallente style lav once I add gallente armor. Armor types should have different resistances built in making this visual change important. Hardeners would also have different resistance buffs.
Logistic vehicles will be better on pc if you can easily request a dropship by placing destination blips on the map. Dropships weren't really used in an elegant way because of drop uplink spam and crashing into other dropships being more effective than even av. As for repair modules, instead of awkwardly aiming your camera to repair a vehicle and crashing into it there should be a list of nearby repairables, or an auto repair mode for installations, turrents, or infantry. MAV's which never made it to dust would be ideal for mobile supplly units and as an APC.
Open ended win conditions
One thing I didn't like about dust was that every skirmish was about blowing up the other mcc or destroying clones. It worked, but didn't make good use of all the toys we had in dust. Instead we should have different game modes based around what a contractor might need mercs for. There could also be penalties and bonuses for how a job is done that doesn't just send you to a victory screen, but instead affects the payout.
Not every battle should be fought around a district in these cases which already seems the case with nova having ship interior battles. I'd also like to see completely open terrain or station maps for different contract styles like exploration and raiding. As for planetary conquest I would start around removing the timers. The timers were there so players didn't have to always be on guard for attacks, but it backfired when people just attacked and didn't show up. If a corp does no show the defending team should be able to steal their costly mcc. Pc should be more than just competitive dust, it should be a daunting long term fight and a way for players to create interesting stories like eve.
-Pc needs a surrender options
-a vote to kick option that sets that player as an enemy. Once that player dies a slot is opened for reinforcements
-Industry and market value for eve and dust players
-no victory screens, losses will be decided by your battle commander. who will crack first.
TL;DR Make dust fun for me
See ya in Project Nova |
Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
13548
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Posted - 2016.06.16 02:15:00 -
[2] - Quote
Those are very valid points.
One of the biggest issues that overshadowed any objective based mode was the lack of incentives to win the match and work as a team. When it comes to encouraging teamwork, Blizzard's Overwatch made that work very well by making every character and their role have strengths and weaknesses but are best utilized when paired up with another character that has a different role that suits it. For example: Mercy (support role) covering either Reinhardt (Tank role) or Soldier: 76 (Attack role) who have excellent tanking or offensive abilities but are lacking effective healing and go down quick if they don't have a support backing them up. Dust 514 had something similar as well with Sentinels being enhanced by Logistics players.
Unfortunately in Dust, most of the roles operated well on their own. Scouts, under the right conditions, were effective light assault suits while assaults almost never needed logistical support.
Going back to my point about incentives to win a match in Dust 514, that was the biggest problem that caused so many matches to end up being absolutely lopsided plus Scotty getting drunk with too much whisky as he handled matchmaking. This was especially true in public battles. This was not a problem with faction warfare as the rewards were plentiful for winning and the minuscule for losing.
If these two problems can be addressed in Project Nova, I can see the game going a long way.
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DUST Fiend
18378
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Posted - 2016.06.16 11:40:00 -
[4] - Quote
This would be the perfect opportunity to add AI units into the game. I've always thought a "tipping scale" style of AI reinforcements would work best in DUST, where the losing team is offered stronger / more reinforcements to constantly try to even out any given match.
For example with drones, you could have to hack an orbital cannon via 5 seperate terminals, and each time a terminal is hacked it spawns X amount of drones for the opposing team at a set interval.
Something to this effect would always ensure a frantic and chaotic fight while still allowing individuals to shine. It would make vehicle based combat signficantly easier to balance because no matter what there will always be AV pressence and AI soldiers could hop into your vehicles and be deployed etc etc. There really is a huge world of possibilities for this stuff but I generally avoid such musings because CCP decided to dial it down to 1 :/
Lord of all things salty, purveyor of gloomish doom and naysayer extraordinaire.
AV Incubus Specialist, Ex Prometheus
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