Poplo Furuya
Condotta Rouvenor
Gallente Federation
418
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Posted - 2013.07.20 17:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Honestly I think priority number one right new should be working on Skirmish 3.0, current Skirmish doesn't promote focused or defensive gameplay, neither does Ambush. The full extent of the tactical game in Dust is extremely rudimentary.
A knock on effect of this is that vehicles, be they HAVs or dropships, are not properly integrated into the game. No focused objective or frontline for dropships to make an aerial insertion on or behind. No focused objective for HAVs to be part of the defence or siege of, if there were their usefulness in a combined arms push or the holding of a position would give them new roles of critical importance on the field. A central point to design around allows you to more easily engineer your map design towards promoting these kinds of roles and strategies.
It's also really dull currently. In Skirmish slaying is still more or less the name of the game. The other problem is matches are in a vacuum and mean nothing, if FW gave faction rewards and proper feedback by letting the player see info on the conflict, the shifting balance of power on the planetary level, it might make a match feel like it's fighting for a place, for a goal. At the moment it's just rooty-tooty-point-'n'-shooty with no purpose but SPs.
Back to Skirmish, if I was given leeway to experiment with it I'd remove the ability to spawn on the silos but place more CRUs at certain areas within the map but not in too direct a proximity with silos... would also toy with the idea of either Scrambling facilities or equipment, interfering with Drop Uplinks within their range. Severely penalise spawn in timer by around 5x to 10x. What I'd hope to achieve there is making death less cheap and promoting the notion of having some people actively defend nodes and promoting the banding together of strike teams as a single element, placing more value on revival as well.
Since spawning in on a node getting hacked will no longer be possible hacking time could also be increased quite a bit. Perhaps the same time as resecuring currently takes. Area clearance and protection will be a greater necessity but then again hacking would now be purely to claim the silo, not to prevent people popping out of thin air right on top of you as they do currently. A silo currently undergoing transfer would also stop firing for the duration, currently it just keeps shooting.
The real important part is placement of CRUs and which silos to keep, making a judgement call on how you want to construct the basic low-level flow of battle based on the path of least resistance, how to go about enabling and encouraging defensive strategies around objectives, likewise giving alternate avenues of attack...
Would be far easier to do if it wasn't within the confines of the Skirmish 2.0 game mode. Multiple shared objectives, unfocused both in terrain and objectives in both sides. Split between areas, split between attack and defence, up to 5 objectives for each side, maximum of 16 players on each side.
Within those parametres it's a real ****** to pull off well. I'm not surprised CCP's failed. That's why the more focused Skirmish 3.0 might herald some salvation, it'll probably be -much- easier to forge into a solid game mode. |