As we all know, casuals make up a fourth faction loyal to the evil overlord Count Casula, and their morning routine involves finding ways to ruin games for everyone else while mustache-twhirling and practicing maniacal laughter. This makes perfect sense and is in no way an exaggeration. But but but but NUANCE? A middle ground between embracing redeployside and making a COD game, and having no spawns but the warpgate? A POSSIBILITY INBETWEEN? WHAT LIES! Building a financially viable model? WHAT HERESY! I know, I know... it has to be seen to be believed. Redeploy with me on a magical journey! For clarity, a field upgrade is something like Nanoweave rank 1 being rank 2 and incentive altercations are comparable to Half Life 2 and the developer-commentaries about manipulating a player down a path by setting items in locations meant to draw attention, etc.
3 drop pods out of three, very good and constructive. I want more! Some ideas about squad leading: Remove passive exp boost from joining a squad. Instead Squad and Platoon leaders should have access to exp boost fields to motivate their members (and randoms) to follow their command. Using those costs Command Points (CP). Ammount of CP earned per minute is determined by the combined average of exp/minute earned by the members of the platoon/squad (leading better = more exp/minute = more CP = more exp/minute = more certs = motivation). Squad Leaders should have a different set of boost fields than Platoon Leaders, example: Platoon Leader (works on all players but randoms get 33% penalty): - Support: +20% to all exp sources, high AoE, low cost, no cooldown - Assault: +30% to kill exp sources, medium AoE, high cost, no cooldown - Move : + 500 exp upon reaching destination, +33% transportation exp bonus, small AoE, medium cost, medium cooldown Squad Leader (Works only on squad members) - Destroy: +300% exp for killing the target, no AoE, medium cost, no cooldown - Attack: +50% kill exp, small AoE, high cost, no cooldown - Fortify: + 40% exp for mine/turret kills and + 10% exp to all other sources, small AoE - AV/AA nest: +25% to aircraft/vehicle kills exp and +50% resupply exp - Guard: +75 exp/minute, small AoE, low cost, long cooldown - Request MAX/Aircraft/Vehicle: +100% nanite cost as exp upon reaching destination, +30% exp using the requested force multiplier, small AoE, high cost, no cooldown All this is certable. Certain boosts may increase the CP income (SC sink).
Reply #1 - Business Model. I think you've got some good ideas there. I've seen the same reaction of "Where are the sales at?" when talking about the good points of PS2's monetization. Even the Steam packages aren't that well marketed. They seem to be OK value wise, but there isn't going to be a "Hey, listen!" notification from Steam to buy them. But then, I'm betting that what they really want isn't a lump sum SC purchase going towards a gun. They want the membership. UPGRADE NOW!, etc. It's consistent, predictable, trendable, immediately redeemable (as apparently the big SC sales went away in part due to weird accounting rules). Overall $10/month "forever" is going to beat gambling that the new model for the Mercy is going to push some units. Reply #2 - Redeployside Are casuals really what people are complaining about when they want Redeployside gone? I've seen two main culprits: Outfits bouncing between fights (which you call out in your video), and then the ... "enthusiasts" ... like itzMurda (of the L2PS2 Twitch stream) using it to keep their score/hour high. I don't think you can kill Redeployside without addressing those ideas. And it's why I personally go for the idea of just killing the Redeploy button. For the lone wolves looking for score, they're just using Redeploy because it's the best option. If you remove it they'll grumble and whine, but ultimately they'll just find the next best option. If you're a really great Dev, you'll find a way to make "Pull a Sundy and push the lane" the best score/hour option. Outfits on the other hand are harder. They specifically want to Redeploy; providing alternate options isn't going to change that (unless the other option is even better at allowing faster movement between fights). The quick and angry method would be to remove squad spawn entirely, but that also hurts the casuals which you rightly point out do need to be accommodated to some degree in order to keep the gears of the game turning. I'm not sure what the solution to it is though. There are people who love to complain that territory is useless, but watch the player base's behavior during an alert and you'll see that some people high in outfit command chains think the best way to play it is to see who can ghost cap the fastest. The real solution to Redeployside is going to be something to make it so that it's in the platoon lead's best interests to find an equally sized fight. Short of just disabling point capture if you have more than 60% pop, I'm not sure how you do this.
SPESS MEHREENS TODAY WE SHALL UPGRADE THE PROFIT, WE KNOW OUR DUTY AND WE WILL DO IT! WE FIGHT FOR OUR HONOR, AS BLUD RHAVENS, AS SPESS MEHREENS, AND WE FIGHT IN THE NAME OF UI UPDATES! IF WE LAG OUT THIS DAY WE LAG OUT IN GLORY, BUT WE SHALL NOT LAG OUT, NO, IT IS THE ENEMY WHO SHALL LAG OUT! MOST OF OUR BATTLE BRUTHAS ARE ON THE LOADING SCREEN, ALLOWING FOR MULTIPLE SIMUL-TANIOUS DEVESTATING AND DEFENSIVE REDEPLOYMENTS. WE ARE THE SPESS MEHREENS! WE ARE TEH EMPRAH'S FURY! (also I made a picture for this but I forgot how to attach one from the computer to the post and could only remember how to do the weblink.. sadfase)
Nice suggestions, but unfortunately they are too focused on competitive teamplay and non-profit solutions for the developers.
