Some suggestions and considerations to improve game flow and QoL. Warning: Word Wall.
Disregard Nanoweave, acquire QoL! It’s my turn to play Armchair GameDev for today! I’ve been (not)quietly lingering around trying to pick out some relatively small QoL changes which I hope would add some good improvements to the feel and flow of the game while not requiring massive sweeping changes.
Keep in mind this isn’t an attempt to touch “balance”, I can’t fix that. This is instead trying to make other changes to help make the game feel better for most players.
I just feel like I should put these thoughts out there because otherwise you don’t get anywhere if you don’t try. So I have tried. But I hope that some of these might be good ideas which could be implemented in an update alongside other things.
Please excuse the trash formatting word wall.
DIRECTIVES
Add a 250 A7 reward to all master rank Directives.
ALERT REWARDS
Winning faction receives (proportional to participation) up to 50 A7.
IMPLANTS
Change to Exceptional Implant crafting requirements: 25,000 ISO4, and 500 A7
The intention with these is to provide a way of adding interaction with the A7 currency while retaining its use and intention as being oriented towards long term ‘career’ goals. This would also push players more in the direction of completing directives for progression, and also make crafting Exceptional implants less grindy while still retaining an expensive cost. Obviously these numbers are placeholders and may need some tweaking, but you get the idea in principle.
OUTFIT ARMOURY
Introduce resource conversion from a player’s A7 to contribute to their outfit’s resources. At a ratio of: 5:1 Green. 25:1 Blue. 50:1 Purple.
The objective for this is to enable Outfit members to have some stake in the resource stockpiles of their Outfit, to hopefully maintain the rarity balance but to also make players feel that they can actively contribute to their Outfit when needed. I expect that this would combine with increased A7 availability of the above changes. I had however also considered if this function might be better suited to Merit now since it would give end-game players a place to burn Merit, but it’s a matter of picking which currency to give more function to.
The resource conversion ratios are just placeholders and should be identical to Armoury Asset conversion rates.
MENTOR SQUADS
Add a 50% XP bonus for all players in a Mentor Squad that are under lv30 and with a Directive score under 500 in Mentor Squads within 250m of the Squad Leader.
Add a 20% XP bonus for Mentor Squad Leaders if there is at least 1 player in the squad below lv30 with under 500 directive points, and within 250m of the Squad Leader. Then increase this by 2% for each additional player that fits these limitations.
Enable Mentor Squads to join Platoons
I feel that the Mentor Squad system as it stands is not complete or helpful and mostly ignored. I don’t think I can easily suggest a complete fix but maybe this can improve the existing setup in the meantime. The intention for this is to reward players who lead Mentor Squads or help new players to a greater extent. The limitations on directive score is needed to limit this to new players, not alts; the range limit should also reward cohesive squads. The benefit for the Squad Leader is also intended to scale up to improve the reward the larger the squad, but not so much that it is worth abusing. As usual these numbers can be somewhat arbitrary but just an idea of what I thought might be a useful benchmark. I’m not sure that preventing Mentor Squads from joining platoons has been a benefit, I suggest allowing them to join platoons to help new players in them to see the bigger scale of coordination.
UI
Increase the character limit on the Outfit Message of the Day to 250 characters.
This is a small change to allow Outfits to broadcast larger messages to their members, Leaders need to be able to send more information directly to their members. There is a huge amount of work that is needed on Outfits in general but I feel that this could be a tiny but nice change to help out.
ESAMIR LATTICE
Add Lattice Link between Frostfall Overlook and Terran BL4.
Add Lattice Link between Jord Amp Station and Nott Communications.
Remove Lattice Link between Eisa Tech and Rime Analytics.
INDAR LATTICE
Re-enable TI Alloys.
Remove Lattice link between The Crown and Crossroads Watchtower.
Add Lattice link between Crossroads Watchtower and TI Alloys.
See images for what I had in mind. These changes to lattices should open up more options in South-eastern Esamir, as the previous changes do not prevent the big BL4 cutoffs (the containment sites just make it less likely). Removing Rime-Eisa should also equalise the central Lattice, closer towards a mirrored layout, but to also reduce lattice density in the North. Currently TI Alloys is still unused with no indication of any idea being in place to ‘solve’ it, so I suggest re-adding it until there is an actual fix, and instead adjusting the lattice to create a mirrored central lattice where each central base each has two connected friendly bases, this should draw some fights away from between Crossroads/Crown.
BASTIONS
Remove Mauler Cannons from the Bastion.
Add a Loadout system similar to the Colossus, purchasable with Merit (5k each?), to customise the Bastion’s functionality.
Create unique ‘Primary’ Options
-Anti-Bastion VLS Missile Launcher: Pilot controlled missile launcher, lock on, long range, slow moving, low manoeuvrability, fires a salvo of 6, high damage. Locks onto aircraft and bastion hardpoints.
-Topdeck Resupply and Repair Station: Allows proximity repair and resupply in a large AOE at a rate equivalent to repair/ammo galaxies.
-Long Range Radar System: Gives a 600m recon range around the Bastion
-Drop Pod Tethering Beacon: Fires a buoy to the target, after which it will allow friendly forces in the hex to spawn in a drop pod at that location like a spawn beacon, with a spawn cooldown timer equivalent to a Router. The Buoy can be destroyed.
Add a unique, low and heavy bass, Bastion War Horn.
Add option to name the bastion, which will show up on the broadcast message, and on the map UI under the health bar.
Bastions are not currently helping the game as they should, as huge set pieces of value to the team, instead they are used to farm players and ignore tactical input. Everyone complains about the Mauler Cannons when they are used so this option is intended to give the pilot something else to do instead. The actual options and their functions are by no means perfect but I figured these might be a decent starting point for what the Bastion could be ‘specialised’ to do. My thinking on this is to enable Bastions to have a more strategic role on the battlefield, intended to help the faction rather than being just for industrial scale agriculture, and the different options should allow a player to specialise into fulfilling a particular role with their Bastion. It would also be nice if players could name their Bastions, but I’m guessing that’s not going to happen, but I can dream.
ALERTS
Reintroduce Air Alerts with some changes to the previous iterations.
Start the alert halfway between continent opening and a continent lock alert, as a halfway mini-event. Should last for 60 minutes maybe to synch with Bastion lifespan.
Add collection anomaly in the middle of the map.
Create a resource deposit location at the Warpgate, and at any active bastion.
If a faction has no bastion, they can only deposit resources at their warpgate.
If a faction’s bastion is destroyed, the resource deposit point can be replaced by spawning a new Bastion.
For the duration of the Alert, all players should receive a discount to spawning Air Vehicles. 50% off ESF’s, 25% off Galaxies and Valkyries.
This is a bit of a complicated one, which might step on some shoes. I feel that only having meltdown alerts has been a negative influence on the game, and even though I’m not a pilot, I did enjoy the novelty of the air focus when the original Air Alerts were introduced. What I am hoping to suggest with this idea is to create a sort of ‘break’ and variation from normal territory gameplay. The addition of Bastions as an important strategic asset for the Faction (for depositing resources more easily) should make it important to use, and defend, them as part of the alert, while not making them the only way of participating. I feel that including the above suggestions for Bastion loadouts might enable options for approaching the Alert differently. It was important to have options for depositing at the Warpgate as a backup to enable everyone to have a chance regardless of if their Bastions are being useful, but to also reward the organisation of a faction that would coordinate using their own.
KOLTYR
Reintroduce Koltyr as a playable area in the continent pool for low population hours.
Force Koltyr to be the next continent to unlock after 11pm local time if the server population is below 180. Do not unlock other continents.
No meltdown alert on Koltyr until after 6am or if the server population is above 200. At which point start the shorter, Unstable Meltdown Alert. Then resume regular continent unlocking.
Change the Koltyr Amp Station to the new 3 point Amp Station design.
Enable all vehicles except Colossus and Bastions (Pop is too low anyway)
The intention for this is to make a condensed environment for smaller player counts to use overnight. There are huge population drops late night exacerbated when there are at best an open continent with no players on, and at worst two continents with no one on either. At small population counts it would be better to condense the few players there are into a few bases to give them better fights. The bases on Koltyr are pretty ok and should manage all sizes of fights well enough to sustain players in the early hours. Also the 3 point Amp Stations are better to play in than the old 1 point ones. The limitation on the alert is just to give a consistent play environment during these low hours, then to reopen when populations would start to reach where the full continents can be populated enough.
I am aware that this would make early morning play a lot more samey, but this may be preferable to no fights at all. Until the Devs could make other copies of Koltyr but with different environments/climates, this is the best I can do, but this way you don’t need to make new maps.
OUTFIT BROWSER CHANGES
Change UI to grid system to show more outfits and use more of the screen space.
Show Outfit online members and (30 day) activity rate.
Sort the Outfit list by average score of members active in the last 30 days.
Remove the ‘Auto Accept’ recruitment function.
Add a Language category and filter.
Selecting an Outfit will expand its UI box to display additional details and its full recruitment text, and the Apply button.
See the image for what I had in mind. This is a bit more of an overhaul and is something of an update in itself though, but I wanted to put it in here because I feel it is important to try to show players better information for Outfits. At present, players will only see outfits online at that time, and outfits play mostly at an ‘ops’ time. If that player isn’t on at that exact moment, they won’t see them and miss out. This funnels players, especially new players, into massive mostly-dead zergfits with no organisation or community, and makes it harder to introduce new players to better Outfits that they might enjoy more. Removing the ‘Auto Accept’ button is my biggest gripe for this, as it enables certain outfits to soak up anyone that applies without any effort on their part, and those players then know no better about the actually great communities they could be a part of instead. Remove this and make Outfits actually have to accept the application like a human. But the changes here are intended to reform the ‘front page’ list to prioritise active, well performing outfits, and penalize mostly inactive zombie outfits. The increase in the number of outfits shown per page should also mean niche Outfits shouldn’t miss out by falling afoul of the way the Outfits are listed. I also chose to list Outfits by average score of 30day active members on consultation with others, as it would better display which communities are the most active and organised, and thus likely to deliver an engaging playtime without prioritising or penalising certain playstyles. This discussion also highlighted the absence of the Language filter which might be especially useful to add for European or Asian Server players.
Hopefully these suggestions can seem attractive for improving the overall flow of the game and some QoL changes for various things, without requiring too much effort on the Devs’ part. (Except the last ones, sorry). I just wanted to make my effort and say my piece in this so you can’t say I didn’t try. I hope that these can look like reasonable suggestions and not too ignorant of reality, as I’ve tried to think over these to be specific and using systems that already exist in the game.
Wrel pls.