Hello everyone,
Today an idea crossed my mind and I thought that sharing it with the GoIo community might help forging it something better and why not concrete?
Background
After playing for some time already to Guns of Icarus, I'm starting to loose grasp on the game.
A problem that a lot of us face I'm sure, playing for so long creates a kind of "already seen everything feeling".
Then I thought what games do I still enjoy playing after so many years, even for a bit from time to time.
Well there was MOBAs, L4D, FTL, The binding of isaac, a bit of minecraft maybe?.
I play also a lot of board games IRL, a bit of MTG and I mixed all that and tried to find a common element.
I also read a topic on this very forum about someone proposing to add the weekly mods L4D style to give some spic to the game.
And I came to this conclusion for now:
The key is randomness.
In L4D you never know what you will face and when (or what you will get and when as infected).
In FTL , Isaac, minecraft, the world are entirely random.
But what about MOBAs then?
Well like in magic and board games I play, I found out that what I really enjoy is actually the do the best you can do with what you get, aka drafts.
While it is quite unthinkable that GoIo makes totally random worlds, I've come out with 2 ideas that might give you some food for thoughts.
The Concept
To bring randomness in GoIo, we have to be really careful.
We can't just say, hey let's put everything random and see how it works.
My two ideas would come on top of the current system to build 3 different types of gameplay.
The 3 types would be: "free"(current), "ship draft", "limited supplies"
The ship draft
In this first gameplay type, the captain can't choose the ship they are going to fly while the players are joining the lobby.
THe choice would be made once the game is ready to start and each captain would have to choose out of 3 prebuilt ships loadouts selected out of a database of viable ships.
The idea would be to have a database of ships updated by the devs, consistent enough to provide variety without being gigantic.
This database could be built based of the successful builds encountered in the competitions for example.
It could also contain very specialised ships (ships dedicated to disabling for example), as well as all rounded builds.
For example choice between:
"The crazy pyromancer" : Pyra wth 2 flamethrowers on the front and 2 hades on the side (ok not very viable but you get the point)
OR "The Turtle" : Galleon Full Hwachas and mines
OR "The minced and roasted": Squid with carronade, flamer and mine launcher in the back
The algorithm for the ship choice could be totally random (with risks of having 3 specialised builds) or semi random ( 1 specialised, 1 close range, 1 long range for example).
The captains would have 2 mn to press ready before the game starts automatically. The crew (but the captain) could still change jobs at that point. Everyone can change tools.
The captains already have the captain chat enabled.
Limited supplies
Think of this gameplay type as if you had to go to war and you were too late to leave.
All the other took the supplies and you have what left.
How does it take form?
Simple, yet again the captain can't choose the ship, or well they might be able to choose the hull but remains to be decided.
Once everyone is ready, each team get a screen similar to this one:
Captain 1 (Junker)| | Captain 2 (Galleon)
Your turn | |
________________|_______________________|__________________
1x banshee |< 1x flare > | 1xHwacha
|< 2 x Hwacha > |
|< 1x Flamer > |
|< 2x Light Carronade > |
|< 1x light flak > |
|< 1x lumberjack > |
|< 2x heavy flak > |
|< 5x mine launcher > |
|< 0x banshee > |
And again, 3 mn in total to choose your equipment and prepare your ship (20s for captain to discuss+ 10s per turn to choose weapons max *12 max weapons (2 galleons) + 40s extra ust in case)
The captains would choose one after the other the items (to avoid someone taking his build and ignore the other captain).
Problems:
If the builds are totally unequal or if the weapons offered are not as strong as the other team:
It's random yes but you have control over this chaos. There might be a disadvantage but like in real life, you have to do with it and you try to make the best of what you have .
My captain is afk
Well, I was thinking of the crew highlighting their preferences to the captain, to help in the captain's choice. If the captain is afk we can take the gun/ship with the most preferences. If all are equal wellthe it's randomized choiced amongst the proposed.
If someone leaves the game
GOod question, well if someone leaves isn t it the same as with a normal lobby? If it's the captain leaving I don't have a solution yet.
What now?
Anyway, enough spoken, I would like the opinions and ideas of the players about that. Would you like to have a feature similar to this?
Would you have other ideas to bring some randomness into the game?
The chance is very slim that this will ever be implemented but who knows maybe the ideas will reach the devs and they will get some inspiration from it?