Messages

31

Gameplay / Re: 1.3.6 Harpoon Changes

« on: May 23, 2014, 09:21:45 pm »

Guys, let's try to reel it back a notch (see what I did there?).  I understand you are all very passionate.  However, let's not speculate.  If you'd like to test something in particular, please let me know.

From what I've read, it's clear that I should increase reload speed a tad after muzzle speed increase.

Any other requests for tests?

32

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.

« on: May 23, 2014, 09:19:30 pm »

quick thoughts...

1) Guns should always have more than 1 ammo choice.  Tell me of the guns that don't have more 1 and I will fix it.
2) Fix buff hammer, we have an idea already but may take some time to put in
3) Make engineers even better at maintenance?  We have a new engineer tool that is coming... something that helps mitigate damage.  Think of it as a more protective version of buff.

33

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.

« on: May 23, 2014, 06:58:18 pm »

I want to respect the choice to have all engineers.  That's fine.  But like how something becomes meta... I don't really want that because it means the decision space is collapsing.  On the other side, it's advisable not to run a boat with mostly gunners or at least I've never seen or heard of a ship run extremely successfully with this build (I'd love to hear from these people who think it's awesome).  To solve this, maybe there also needs to be really really really extreme repair tools lol.  Instant rebuild tool, instant repair tool.  Wonder what would happen ahahahhaah.

Oh gosh.  Can of worms.

34

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 23, 2014, 06:53:52 pm »

RE: Status effects

Adding an effect on a targeted component might be possible.  What it would, though, is that it won't be repairable.  I don't want to introduce another tool to negate the effect meaning it can't be TOO detrimental like fire stack.  Intermittently emitting a distracting spark might be okay, doesn't go away until the gun is destroyed.  It'll take a while for these kinds of ammo to make it in though since it'll involved both code and time, although probably less than new tools.  I like the idea.

RE: Homing/heat seeking

Our 'homing' is basically like heat seeking.  It'll look for engines more or less.  Haven't played with it in a long time but it's still in the code.  We may be able to pull it out and make it a skill modifier.

RE: Not being there last second

It was a risk/reward and information display decision.  If you're not there to reload the gun, and it's reloading on its own, how do I know what ammo the gun is being loaded with?  Now that we have additional UI and such, it might not be a big deal.  It's something to discuss but will undoubtedly be a huge change gameplay wise.  For better or worse, unsure.

35

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 23, 2014, 05:36:55 pm »

We had 'homing' in beta.....

Not sure about following cursor, though.  Might require a lot of work for that feature.

36

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.

« on: May 23, 2014, 03:01:51 pm »

It highly depends on exactly what you're trying to do and must be evaluated on a case by case basis for each tool.  Some will be easy.  Some will be hard.  But overall the ideas skew towards the hard.

The quote taken is an answer to a specific case.

Also we don't know if ammo will solve it.  We also don't know if "substantial" changes will solve it.  Each solution will bring ups and downs and they all need to be evaluated objectively.  We can't go in with any assumption regarding any solution, only a goal and timeline of when the tests can happen.

37

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.

« on: May 23, 2014, 11:54:47 am »

Well if it's completely unbalanced or ultimately prevents people from playing the game then we'll fix it.

In the case of the Engineer vs. Gunner, it's been around for a very long time.  Is it game breaking and prevents people from playing?  Not really.  It's one of the reasons it took this long to evaluate.  At this point it's closer to being polish than fix.  We don't mind boats with 4 engineers, we allow you to do it.  But the issue is that a lot of people don't see the point of bringing a gunner.  It's a finer issue than the server is broken or Field Gun is OP.  There are ships that do have gunners, though, and see the advantages of having one due to the ammo types on top of a well-timed buff.  I want to expand that decision space further.

Gunner vs. Engineer isn't broken, not by a long shot.  It can be improved, though.  There are other things that are actually broken and that's where the attention needs to be put.... e.g. servers exploding this week.

38

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.

« on: May 23, 2014, 11:12:35 am »

Some interesting ideas here.  I want to make everyone aware that these ideas are very difficult to implement without substantial changes to UI, database structures, and general code implementation.  We love making games and you know that we always want to make this one better (seriously, we've had so many patches) but we also run a business... we need to look at the path of least resistance and try to test there first.  We're a team of 13 people so we need to make sure that we don't waste any effort.

I encourage everyone to focus their energy to help us discuss New Ammo and tweaks to Old Ammo in the following thread:

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4079.90.html

Furthermore, if you have access to Dev App then there are 4 new ammo types to be tested.  They are quite unbalanced, some even a little broken, but they all give us an idea of what we can do to encourage users to take advantage of the 3 ammo slots that only Gunners have.  That's what we can take action on immediately without drastically changing any part of the game.  And if you want access to Dev App and to Dev App Forums, email keyvias@musegames.com

This is not saying 'no' to these ideas but rather that we can use your efforts right now somewhere else.  When we have tested all solutions that can be tested, in the order of their difficulty of implement, we will move on to the next idea and these are still on the list.  While you may not agree with our current tests, we'd love to see your feedback on them and feel like you can still make a big contribution to the game.

Again, thank you for everyone's suggestions.  I just want to make it clear what the pipeline looks like and how we approach problems like these.

39

Gameplay / Re: 1.3.6 Harpoon Changes

« on: May 22, 2014, 10:51:18 am »

There's also a muzzle speed increase on dev app as well, which makes it much much easier to fire.

40

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 06:35:29 pm »

RE: Autoloader/Reload Crank

We had ammo and passives that modified reload speed.  The way we did it before was subject to a lot of abuse and we ended up ditching reloading speed related shenigans.  However, there's a chance faster reload may come back in some shape or form.

Having Autoloader/Reload Crank means that we would be officially making that last second ammo switch an important thing and not only a "nice to have."  That's kind of interesting.

41

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 06:01:33 pm »

Test for experimental ammo is now on Dev App for brave testers.

42

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 04:34:53 pm »

Again, we do not want to introduce any more exceptions than we have to.  This is not a 'no'.

No conclusions can be made without proper testing.  This means that these kinds of passives, tools, etc... could be the solution.  However, they're definitely not going to be tested first because of the time it would take to implement them.  The thing that can be easily implemented and tested is more ammo or tweaks to ammo.

Again, I'd like to hear ideas for new ammunition or changes to current ammunition... or even changes to Engineer tools (like buff) to increase the desire of Gunners on a ship.

If tests prove that ammo doesn't solve anything, I'll take suggestions on new mechanics.

43

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 04:24:52 pm »

Where do I equip this Gunner Chem Spray?  In a gunner slot?

That breaks paradigm and introduces behavior confusion.

You're right that it'll be little to be very little coding... but how do we display it to the user?  It's a running-around tool only available in the gunner slot?  That's weird, breaks paradigm. 

What if it's an Engineer tool?  But then why would a gunner bring it?  It's more useful to bring something to repair the gun if you need to.

Then the question is: why is the engineer more desirable?  Maybe the answer is Buff Hammer's effect on guns.  Maybe we'll look at dealing with that.

44

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 02:55:56 pm »

RE: Instant/Passive Effects

Yeah, it fits in the overall design paradigm of when what skills are used when.  However, the other thing to note is that while it is a Gunner item, it behaves differently from ammo.  Now, something that's in the same class of items (the Gunner slots) doesn't do the same thing as the others.  So far, the only exception are the two Spotting tools... they're Pilot tools but are used while running around.

In the case of an instant/passive gunner skill that is activated while on a gun, the item doesn't force a reload.  Having this item activated will also produce a strange interaction with reload.  Under the current reload mechanics, you will reload to whatever ammo you have selected.  However, I won't necessarily have an ammo selected now.  What do I reload?  It would make sense to reload whatever was previously in the gun if I have that ammo... but how do I know what was in the gun?  You can see where this goes.  Not that we can't solve the issue, it's already steepening the uphill battle that we're trying to fight in making choosing Gunners more desirable than Gungineers.

A lot of the difficult issues end up being clarity of behavior and how to tell players what is going on in a way that is clean (UI) and intuitive.  Intuitive and clean usually mean as simple as possible.




RE: Gunner focused repair tool

Such an item would be obviously great for a gunner who normally just needs a repair tool to fix their own gun (engineers already have a lot to worry about).  However, then this selection skews heavily towards collapsing the decision space of "What engineer tool do I pick as a gunner?"  The decision space is currently quite skewed where users will most likely take Pipe or Spanner.

However, there's always the Engineer and how this kind of tool will affect their loadout decision making.  For Engineers, it becomes a little more unclear... maybe that's a good thing.



Just to make it clear, I'm not shutting anything down outright.  I want to let everyone know all the considerations that need to be taken into account before things are set into motion, and then to steer the feedback into a direction that is more immediately actionable.  There are numerous good ideas so far that I'm working into this big change.

45

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 11:18:02 am »

Steering this back on track...

It is highly unlikely that we will implement tools, passives, or non-ammo related changes to the gunner in the near future.  None of those would be testable until several months out, and don't forget the several months of testing that comes with new things.  Furthermore, it breaks several design paradigms that are in place:

- Pilots tools can only be used on helm (aside from spotting, which are the only unique cases)
- Engineers tools can only be used while running around and on components
- Gunner ammo can only be used on a gun, while on a gun

There's a lot of inertia to stay that way because of how many of our systems are architected from UI, code, to design.  Introducing tools will also introduce confusing and unclear interactions.  Don't let this discourage you, though.  Remember that we can put many of the effects of the proposed tools into ammo types.

If it really seems like we need to move towards breaking our own rules, we will.  However, at this point there are other options (more diverse ammo) that are much faster to start testing on (next week even) and don't require us to strip out larges portions of the system.


RE: Unique behaviors per gun (linked/combo shot)

Interesting ideas sprinkled through those proposals.  However, we can't do unique behaviors for each gun with 1 ammo type.  Not only would it be unclear from a player to figure out what the ammo actually did (aside from testing each gun on their own or providing a wall of text to explain it), the code is not set up to handle those very specific cases, but the reasons not to do it have more to do with clarity and opacity of what the ammo is supposed to do rather than the actual implementation.

However, there may be something interesting about rewarding accuracy and consistency of shots.  How a piece of ammo knows that and explaining that is another story   Ah, game-isms.