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Gameplay / Re: PvP 2v2 with Special Abilities
« on: July 07, 2018, 01:02:13 am »
The balance of this game is already tenuous. Full ship disables and low time-to-kill setups are common. Any ability which increases damage output beyond what it currently is will lead to a degenerate game state where either:
A) Offensive abilities are the strongest. Ships run multiple gunners and pop all their damage abilities in the first volley to get the fastest possible kill.
B) Defensive abilities are better than offensive abilities (either because of numbers or duration). Ships utilize engineer abilities to make themselves unable to be killed, creating a boring period at the start of every fight where nobody can do real damage.
Powerful, single-use (or long cooldown) abilities create perverse gameplay incentives in an environment designed to be slow and tactical. Every single fight will revolve around ships poking at each other to try and bait out the opposing "ultimates", only for them to immediately disengage, hiding, as the ability timer fades away.
Bringing Alliance abilities to PvP is not a new or original suggestion (I would go as far as call it "lazy"), but with even a basic understanding of the balance and tempo of a Guns of Icarus match you would realize it's a bad idea.
(Not that I'm opposed to testing bad ideas if it requires minimal development work.)
A) Offensive abilities are the strongest. Ships run multiple gunners and pop all their damage abilities in the first volley to get the fastest possible kill.
B) Defensive abilities are better than offensive abilities (either because of numbers or duration). Ships utilize engineer abilities to make themselves unable to be killed, creating a boring period at the start of every fight where nobody can do real damage.
Powerful, single-use (or long cooldown) abilities create perverse gameplay incentives in an environment designed to be slow and tactical. Every single fight will revolve around ships poking at each other to try and bait out the opposing "ultimates", only for them to immediately disengage, hiding, as the ability timer fades away.
Bringing Alliance abilities to PvP is not a new or original suggestion (I would go as far as call it "lazy"), but with even a basic understanding of the balance and tempo of a Guns of Icarus match you would realize it's a bad idea.
(Not that I'm opposed to testing bad ideas if it requires minimal development work.)