I've enjoyed Guns of Icarus off and on for a while now, and I'm sad to see the low number of players currently enjoying the game. More than that, I'm sad to see how little the game has changed over the last year. While I am looking forward to Alliance and what that expansion has to offer, I feel that the mainline game is in desperate need of some attention if the game is to survive for another year. While most of the handful of mechanical issues are easy to ignore (baring the difficulties of relying on AI in the game), the biggest sin of this game right now is that... it always ends up feeling like the same old thing match after match after match. And after recently reviewing some of the work that had been done to the upcoming Alliance DLC, I've organized a few thoughts on how the game could possibly fix a great deal of the stagnation it suffers from.
1-
The first and most simple of suggestions that I would offer, is that the pilot needs to have greater control of the AI crew members. The game already incorporates a simple "Balanced, Repair Focused, and Weapon Focused" setting for the AI, but this is rarely enough to compensate for a missing crew member or two. The game has an amazing means of allowing the pilot to bark out orders. "Man the fore guns" or "Repair the engines". But for the life of me, I cannot understand why these orders are not currently understood and enacted upon by the AI crew. Implementing a general upgrade to the AI's intelligence as well as enabling them to understand orders would go a great way towards helping maintain interest in the game by providing a little more leeway when players would rather abandon a match than work together, or when you simply cannot find enough players for a full crew.
2-
Introduce some new ships and weapons to the game. I know that Alliance will include a wide range of new ships and weapons, but I also know that those ships and weapons are not exactly... balanced for multiplayer matches. There seems to be mixed opinions on the ships appearing in the multiplayer matches or not, but people are fairly sure that the weapons will not be appearing in pvp games. The general balance between ships and weapons at the moment is fantastic. It really is. But if you want to keep people interested in the game, you need to give them a wider range of toys to play with.
3.0 and 3.5-
The third suggestion I have is two part. In order to help build interest in the game, you need to allow players a greater range of creativity when designing their personal ships. While simply including a wider range of ships and weapons would help in this regard, I feel that the factions mentioned in the story and introduced in Alliance should have an effect on the multiplayer environment. Even if only from a cosmetic point of view. I feel that each player should be able to choose a faction to be a member of. The player should either be able to choose a single faction for all of their characters (Pilot, Engineer, Gunner), or be able to choose a faction for each character individually. Each faction should provide access to a limited range of outfits for each character (thus improving the visual customization for each character) as well as at least one visual modification for each ship. For sake of argument, lets say that for each class of ship, there was also a unique skin for each faction. (this would be in addition to the "Industrial", "Pirate", "Royal", exc themes) These skins would offer a drastic visual change to the ship that exceeds the level of customization provided by the current "decorations" that you can adorn your ship with. However, in order to access a skin the pilot must be affiliated with the specific faction.
Even from purely a visual standpoint, allowing a pilot to pick one of the four or so factions and then pick to stick with the default skin or utilize his faction's skin will go a long way towards building interest and investment from players. "This is my ship. There are many like it, but this one is mine." If you wish to expand on this, then including a single Heavy and Light weapon for each faction (balanced for pvp) would also help add to the customization options, help make factions a bit more interesting, and help keep people interested in what is going on.
For the crew members, there needs to be a wider range of customization. Everyone has access to the same range of abilities and character skins. And, outside of that, there is no further customization for crew members. Nothing they do matters quite as much as what the pilot does (in terms of customizations). To help with this, it would add some interest for players if each faction also provided a unique Pilot, Engineer, and Gunner ability. This would allow crew a greater range of customization without going quite so far as to allowing Gunners the option of voting to switch out specific weapons with, say, the weapon provided by his faction.
4-
Let us customize the engines.
For each ship, there should be at four or more different options for engines. These options should effect the handling of the ship in question in obvious ways.
A- Default
B- Large primary engine, small turning engines (faster, but harder to turn)
C- Large turning engines, small primary engine (slower, but easier to turn)
D- Four small engines (each engine can be destroyed quicker, but has less effect on the speed/maneuverability of the ship when lost)
E- Two large engines (each engine providing one-half the forward power and all of the port/starboard turning power)
Additionally, it would help if there were, say, two "placement" options for each of the engine choices. Such as inverting the Primary and Secondary engine placements or moving them to entirely different positions. Lets say... what if you could get rid of the walkway on the back of the Goldfish and place the primary engine down where the secondary engines were and instead place the secondary engines on either side of a wider platform behind the baloon repair point? What if you could move the primary engine of the Galleon up to the top deck and move the aft gun down to the bottom deck?
5-
Let us customize the weapon placements.
While moving the weapon hardpoints would likely be an absolute pain in the butt, allowing a bit more customization in the angling of each weapon would also help add to the interest and investment of each player. Large weapons could be angled for an additional 24.5-degrees include or decline while light weapons could possibly be angled up to 45-degrees in an incline or decline. Additionally, these weapons could possibly be angled left or right to a similar extent. Imagine angling the forward weapons on the galleon 24-degrees forward and the aft weapons 24-degrees to the rear. It wouldn't allow the weapons to fire exactly forward or backward, but it would greatly extend the engagement angle for the ship at the expense of having a harder time bringing a full broadside to bare on a target. Or imagine a Junker with the upper weapons angled 45-degrees to the rear and the lower weapons angled 45-degrees to the front. A Goldfish with the port and starboard weapons angled 45-degrees to the front or a Pyramidion with the port weapons angled to focus three weapons on the fore/port side of the ship.
Such a change would provide minimal graphical or physical adjustements to each ship, but would provide drastic gameplay changes for crew members and greatly alter the tactical options for the pilot. For example, a Pyramidion with the above changes would keep the secondary engineer on the upper-left weapon (next to the balloon) and would show the primary gunner switching between either of the port weapons to best engage a target (assuming the fourth weapon slot was not angled to the rear), or would encourage three engineers. One with the balloon and a light weapon, one with the armor and a light weapon, and one with three engines and a light weapon to maintain.
All in all, the game is fantastic. It is easy to learn and focuses on teamwork in a way that is unrivaled. Players can choose to perform non-combat roles and still be absolutely vital to the team (engineers) and communication between players (as a result of the gameplay style) extends beyond simple name calling and swearing. It's truely a fantastic game. It's simply... become stagnant.
While adjusting the engines may prove to be the most difficult to implement aspect of what I have proposed, please at least consider the extent to which such customization can extend the range of gameplay mechancis. As it is, when you are playing as a crew member, the game is very static. Each ship is typically played only one or two ways and each crew member is expected to perform the same routine and the same pattern over and over, match after match. With these fairly limited customizations, you can greatly expand the range of possibilities for each player.
Lets look at some examples here.
We'll start with the Galleon. Lets say that there is an option to switch around the engines so that there is a single small engine on the lowest deck, two large engines on the top-deck, and the rear gun can be switched to the middle deck (where there is no engine in this configuration). As far as handling, the ship gets its top speed reduced, but its turning speed is enhanced. For the crew, you would likely see the ship being split up so that there is one crew member on each deck. One crew managing the port/starboard engines and balloon on the top deck, another crew managing the port/aft light guns and the armor, and a third managing the lower decks. For the person on the lower deck, the single small engine is easier to repair and can be ignored if the captain is more worried about turning and keeping a broadside upon the enemy. Further enhancing the customization here, lets also say that all four large guns are angled down 24-degrees and the captain has chosen weapons best suited for popping balloons upon hostile ships.
This Galleon has now been set up stay as high as possible, turn quicker than normal, and rain fire down upon hostile balloons. The crew are doing different tasks than they would normally be doing, the tasks for each crew member are split up a bit better, and the entire ship is performing a drastically different role in a pvp match than people are accustomed to. Which adds a bit of excitement and interest from friendly and opposing players.
Or how about one of the other less used ships. Lets look at the Mobula. Lets say that the pilot chose to switch out the engines for two large engines (on the main deck). Lets say that the two lower weapons are angled downward 45-degrees and are set up to damage balloons, while the top three weapons are angled upward 45-degrees and set up so two of them do significant damage to armor while the third weapon does significant hull damage. The ship is now designed to engage targets from either a higher or lower altitude, the crew no longer needs to worry about the third engine at the top of the ship, and now each crew member can focus on armor and port weapons, balloon and starboard weapons, or engines and dorsal weapons. The ship becomes a tad bit easier to repair and by focusing on engaging targets above or below itself exclusively, the ship is able to excell at something other than sniping and becomes a more competative combat platform.
Even the Spire (a ship I actively avoid being crew upon) could become a bit more interesting with some of the customization options. Adjusting the weapon angles to better suit the crew and captain's playstyle... altering engines would allow a range of differences in regards to crew stations. For instance, lets say that the captain could alter the engines so that there were two large engines on next to the armor repair (or balloon repair). Which would make it easier for the crew to be split up into primary and secondary engineering positions. Or swapping out for four smaller engines (two next to balloon and two next to armor). With each engine being smaller and easier to repair, and with each engine only providing a portion of the forward/turning speed, the ship becomes more forgiving if one engineers simply cannot step away from the balloon or armor.
And then there is the squid. Imagine being able to pivot each of those three weapons so that a starboard broadside is possible? Or tweeking the ship so that it is either faster in a strait line but harder to turn, or the other way around...
Anyway. I've got a lot of ideas for how I would like to see the game grow and progress over the next few years, but I think that the above suggestions would be fairly low-complexity additions to the game that would add a great deal of life to the game itself. And if implemented could help gather enough interest and funding to push the game forward towards the next stage of development (which, if I am understanding correctly, could possibly be a free-roaming adventure game mode).
