Topics

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Class loadouts by ship

« on: July 04, 2013, 01:58:02 pm »

Simple suggestion:
 Save equipment loadouts by ship rather than a single tool setup saved and needing editing per ship.

First off, I know this wouldn't work amazingly well for gunners in pugs, but it has use for engineers and the lack of it is painful as a pilot. Changing from a galleon to a junker to a pyramidion requires going into my loadouts and swapping around at least 2 of my 3 tools.
As with any feature it would have to be toggleable.

Would also benefit more organised play, allowing teams to rapidly cycle through prebuilt layouts and equipment to throw off enemy setups trying to counter their specific ship. (In other news I'd also like to be able to "hide" my ship setup to prevent this more simply.)

2

Community Events / Proposal: Newcommers tournaments.

« on: June 27, 2013, 06:00:21 am »

I was thinking about this for a while but hit a few problems with it and was wondering what the interest would be like.

Essentially, whilst the Cogs and cEsports push at the high level play, getting on the ladder seems quite unapproachable (the cEsports document looks like a technical report not a guide to how to get involved/link in (also from what I understood is a bit long reaching)).
All current tournaments, even just competitive play beyond the one match, are liable to be quickly mobbed with far more experienced groups, forcing out those with interest but not the super high end playstyles and team. I was thinking of organising smaller scale "just for fun" tournaments for newer players as a stepping stone or "minor league".

Basic concepts:

• Cap on "skill" level:
   Awkward but I was considering something like no players above level 5. Needs work but something needs to be put in to prevent high end players and the same teams continually returning, winning and pushing newcommers away.
  
• Small teams:
   I'm hoping to devise a system to allow a single 4 man crew compete to keep the entry barrier as low as possible but the game simply isnt designed around 1v1. Currently considering Elo.
  
• Guildwars style "flux":
   Mix things up, again to prevent stagnation and promote the "just for fun", small rules changes for each tournament/match. Things such as: "sudden death" timers by referee (winner declared as highest score at X time regardless of final match score if it continues); gun/ship restrictions to mix up the meta; a temporarily lowered level cap to draw in newer players; Fixed loadouts (either secret pre-submission or select from pre-built layouts) etc.
  
• Short cycles:
   A major point here is getting the time from signing up to end of tournament as small as possible, 1 month is probably the limit on how long the tournement can go on for (sign up during previous one). The whole point I'm trying to get is the idea of rapid small scale competitions to help with player retention and give a greater sense of progress/meaningful battles rather than the detached battle and reset we currently have (with achievements and levels on the side). Adventure mode will definitely help with this but its a fair way off.
  

With some automation small tournaments could be automatically generated and played through in a single day (matter of a few hours for small 4 team setups) but in the mean time something to act as "an intoduction to competition" would fill the fairly wide gap we currently have between "non-begginers" matches and the E-sports level play.

Feedback/interest gauges appreciated.

3

General Discussion / Any chance of an extended donations with incentives (non-kickstarter)

« on: June 19, 2013, 07:40:28 pm »

A lot of kickstarter projects close well before the project is anywhere near completion, a fair few of these offer another system to donate with similar/identical rewards after the kickstarter closes.
Any chance GoIo will be offering something like this? I'd love to still be able to push for further stretch goals and get a pre-order in (a duster coat/other decent costume wouldn't go amiss either I must say) but didn't really get much of a chance to see the game before the donations closed.
I'm sure there are others in the same situation as me. Also means you get to keep the full donations, no kickstarter taking their cut

4

Feedback and Suggestions / Map & Scenario editor

« on: June 19, 2013, 06:45:19 pm »

Thinking about the list of ideas I keep spouting I think I can reduce the list of things I'd love to see massively by inclusion of a map + scenario editor. It would need at least:

• Terrain editor: A basic requirement. Hills, map size, limits etc.
• Scenery editor: Wrecks, buildings, clouds. Made separate as some of these may warrant special effects (eg. damaging areas) or be slightly dynamic (eg. moving Koth points, potentially collapsing areas).
• Team editor: I'd say allow up to 4 teams (classic RBGY) to maintain atleast 2-a-side while keeping to 8 ships max.
• Victory condition editor: Preset ones for DM and templates for a couple of other basic ones (Koth etc.) but should be able to script in custom ones.
• Spawn editor: Not just spawn locations but teams and conditions that allow/select locations.

(More than 2 teams may require the compass and "spot-boxes" to display in their team's colour, something I'd like to see anyway for the compass.)

I can see this would generate a lot of imballanced maps, but they could easily be an aside "custom map/match", a vote system for them could allow the best ones to be easily found and downloaded; Possibly even added into regular match cycles if deemed good enough by community and/or muse.

If implemented nice additional features to see would be:

• Maps only downloading and saving once, only using separate scripting for the alternate modes on the map.
• Donations to map makers, to draw in more skill and finesseful maps.
• "Trigger editor" a simplistic GUI for basic scripting, usable by newbies.
• Extension for adventure mode when it releases, allowing cutom mini-storylines (even if without rewards the stories can be fun)

Would also allow muse developers to focus a bit more on bug fixing and ballancing, offloading some content generation to the community. Almost always comes up with something new/amazing (just look at ARTS games and TD's, entire genres spawned from community map editing/modding).

5

Feedback and Suggestions / Quick join/Matches by game type

« on: May 22, 2013, 04:33:36 pm »

Having only had the chance to play CotH once and looking around I'm quite disappointed to see that I cant quick match into a specific game type, only into generic (unable to pre-pick captain or crew first is another minor gripe). This bothered me more when I can only filter by map to get a specific game type.

I'm proposing either:
 TF2 style quick match, allowing either specific map pick OR just game type; In this case captain/crew toggle would also be needed.
 WoW's Dungeon finder style menu to flick on/off specific maps with a "Must/Can/Can't captain" toggle. With this option being able to join as a group/ship(s) would also be appreciated to play with friends.
 
The match viewer also needs filter by type adding as while currently there are only a couple of non DM maps, some people want something other than a DM without caring what map.

6

Feedback and Suggestions / Improved matchmaking (ship based)

« on: May 22, 2013, 02:29:41 pm »

Just noticing many matches being slow to fill as they're competing heavily against other matches and often oversubscribed on either crew or pilots.
I'm suggesting matching up in a 4-man lobby for each ship, allowing ships to fill more quickly and be ready for a game. With this setup the ship would then be entered as a whole to matchmaking against other ships and go straight into the game. It should speed up getting games by cutting down on the number of full ships sitting in otherwise empty games.

This system would also have the side effect of removing what I see as a badly thought out meta of each captain trying to be the last person to swap their ship to counter their opponents. Moving the meta to being strategically countering popular builds rather than hectic menu navigating races, which really don't feel right in the game.