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« on: November 14, 2016, 07:48:12 am »
Well music is just... off. It's not bad per se but it's a complete misfit. GOIO is not an action-packed game, especially in the lobby, but music seems to try to sell us some big hollywood action scene. Turned it off at the beginning and never going back. Also, is it just me or Alliance has no drums at the end of lobby timer?
Also that's very telling of Muse that they are adding a new mode instead of balancing the existing ones, it's not like they see them for the first time. The things about points-to-time ratio should've been noticed and done already. I know we're beta, but come on, at least try.
On the topic of ships, from engineers perspective Magnate and Corsair are fine, Shrike is a bit weird maybe but managable, but Crusader is a ship that I will never be engineering on when presented with a choice. Hull placement makes no sense, stupid beams that you run into and narrow corridors make me despise every second I spend on this ship. At least remove the beams and put a fucking ladder there...
Boss ship battles show interesting flaw in GOIO in general. Let's imagine a boss in game like Dark Souls. It is way stronger than you. What do you do? Try and die. And again. Finally, you learn its' (sometimes slow, and definately predictable) moves, you can avoid the attacks, outsmart it, and through your skill, knowledge and patience defeat it. How does it look in GOIO? Also I'm supposing the most radical way of playing - with one ship - since Devs allow this as a default and try to refute my arguments that it shouldn't be a thing really.
Boss ship is obviously stronger than your ship on every way. More guns, better arcs (I think there some 360 arc gun?), faster movement and stronger hull. What do you do, how can you use your assets to defeat it? Unlike Dark Souls game - dodging attack is not really an option. Can you outmanoeuvre the ship and hit its weak points? Not really, since it has many guns and it's extremely quick for its size. Okay, so what are your options? Well, you can sink in the damage and hope that your engineers will manage. But this, again, doesn't work, firstly because of bosses firepower and secondly because of a low skill ceiling in engineering that cannot be dealt with in any way. So... what's left? Shooting from outside the bosses range which is firstly not always easy to do and secondly boring. Do not forget that usually there are also other ships around and you have something to do outside of the boss. This is just a nuisance. Even with more ships it comes down to "okay, I'm red, now you take the damage and I'll be shooting from afar".
I think when designing Metroid there was a rule that while presenting a boss to a game, the designer must have defeated it without losing one health point. I know this is far from perfect example, but I would like to see Devs try defeat a boss with one ship without losing permahull. And if they did, what were their impressions from the gameplay.
I think Muse sees at least part of the problem and they try to minimize it through buffing player in general. Way in the back there was stamina, then tool upgrades and now abilities. Because you can't jump over the skill ceiling, especially cooldowns and engineer repairing capability.
With boss this could've been managable in a comprehensive way. Let's say that boss ships shoot more rarely, with slower bullets with more "high risk- high reward" kind of way. Put hwachas on boss ships so players have opportunity to avoid damage. Make a gun that takes a while to shoot but has to "charge" making a sound. You see boss pointing the gun, you see the sound, you try to run the fuck away (I imagined a heavy flamer and a loud noise of some gas pumping or whatever). Heck, make boss ships shoot mines with lesmok. This would make engagements more depending on skill and knowledge and therefore very probably more fun.
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