Hey everybody, newer guy here though I've enjoyed the game since day 1. I'd like to extend my utmost admiration to the guys at Muse for all of their immensely hard work thus far. If I may share a personal view, my primary philosophy (to which a precious few exceptions are made) when buying a game of any price, is to ask NOT "Will this be some cheap thrills for the rest of the week?", as an unfortunate majority of gamers do, but rather "will this be a blast [assuming casual play] for the next 2, 3, 4 years, only to be reinstalled out of nostalgia after a brief hiatus?"
I can honestly say GoIO is pretty frakking close to such a status according to even the most critical of its playerbase.
That being said, we can all agree that there's definitely the potential for more craziness, more fun, and more of a game. There always is, and for that reason we have this board. So I present a brief thought on various suggestions, from mundane to ambitious.
One thing we've seen discussed here are smaller craft, particularly fixed wing fighters. I would consider this a staple element of the game given its roots, the original GoI,, and honestly wonder what has taken this long for them to show up excluding balancing agents and design. I wholeheartedly believe in their potential to coexist with the current game mechanics. Perhaps only airships could do things like capture points, allowing fighters to assume a supportive role, as they often do as much as they are pivotal elements in dogfights. Obviously a carrier class airship would sync with this well and could even debut their integration.
Another thing discussed albeit less so was, in a general sense, upping the scale of the battle, at least with a particular game mode. The plans for a playable dreadnought (currently the massive wreck on the "Battle on the Dunes" map) seem interesting too. I propose an alternative that could even be woven together:
We have heard this and that about some kind of metagame, or "adventure mode". What if that somehow contributed to a war against some rapidly expanding empire or pirate alliance trying to build a dreadnought and secure dominance of the skies? There could be a proper map (Global Agenda's Conquest mode comes to mind) with various regions and resources that could be controlled by player guilds, motivating conflict between said guilds but also having to constantly combat if not align with each other to keep that ever present, indiscriminate enemy at bay, a la EVE if NPC's were vaguely important.
Not terribly original, I know, but a fairly viable option imo, and would be a damn good motivation to continue playing. Most of all, I see no reason for it to break much of the current extremely solid core game we've seen thus far.
Lastly, will we ever see the return of maps where we can see next to none of the ground? I miss clinging to my gatling turret 8000 feet in the air amid the original game's beautiful cloud cluttered sunsets.
Thanks for the read, what do we think thus far comrade?