No on the super weapons for me. Not unless the poi's/opvs get their own super weapons as a counter...nice thumbnail btw
Stands to reason though, as it currently stands players already have the means to take out every single poi, why make it easier for the player without giving something for poi's in the process? Or do you simply want every single poi and opv in the game to be a 1 hit kill?
As I said, I meant it as an very end game thing, something very difficult to get and honestly if you use it, yes the POI is dead but then so is all the loot! Its more just a bit of fun.
The superweapon is a bit much without dramatic gating and progression changes. A complete no-go in MP.
very good points in the video, most of those would improve the game as you suggest and the warezone areas sound interesting esp if they are maked on the galaxy map. I no some of these have already been mentioned but; - I would like players to be able to capture and use opv's - faction territory should be fluid so players can actually take territory from npc factions and other factions for their own faction. - ship traders to buy and sell the prefab ships in game, makes another good reason to salvage wrecks, repair them etc. - ravien has a video showing drones attacking, if players had this it would actually make use of carrier class ships
Sorry for the TLDR post but you bring up lots of stuff. In (very) large part I agree with your assessment and order with a few exceptions and comments. I think your #10 (Long Standing Bugs & QofL Issues) is actually a #1 class problem; most of the things involved in this sort of pass on the code base are really jarring for new players and a constant irritant for the crusty ones. Improved base attacks (#1) is a huge driver (in a good way) in both Valheim and 7D2D and combining that with better tactics on the part of the AI would be a real game changer. As a turtle player (embed your factory build base in a vertical rockface to thumb your nose at the AI) I'd like to see ways a player could choose to avoid base attacks, especially early, because of the disruption they cause ... that could be as simple as requiring the enemy to find you with the recognition you've been found starting the clock on escalating (or all out depending on rep) attacks. Base Repair (#2) ... can I hear an "Amen!"? The "green field" method is just a timer to lock the player out of the entity for a period of time and when it expires the actual "repair" occurs. This might be a way of avoiding an exploit that occurred years ago when the system was introduced (i.e. "if you salvage blocks from a ship while it is in repair you get the resources at no cost" or similar) but the big thing is that it isn't a piecemeal approach to repair. Personally, I'd like to see the solution for all repairs changed as part of the "Better Drones" (#7) sort of features. Economy & Trading Overhaul (#3) / Perks & Skills (#5) / Techtree Overhaul (#6) ... 'nuff said. Huge empty white rooms right now. Guessing this is a "small teams with standalone problems" can-o-worms thing. Having these sorts of resource scarcity/plenty issues addressed by player and NPC trade would be a serious improvement and the point-based level system vs. tech tree & skills system was a battle fought in the 80's era RPGs and skills won hands down for all the reasons you mention. Picking flowers and collect rocks to hit level 10 is silly. Warzone & Faction Warfare (#4) & Superweapons (#9) ... not as critical for me but the lack of skirmishes between AI factions is jarring- Legacy, Zirax, and Kriel are clearly shoot first ask questions later sorts and they picnic together regularly. If we get superweapons I'm not sure why the baddies wouldn't have them too- I would not enjoy being nuked from space. The drone ... wow, this one has so much potential. The current drone already has a lot of OP flavor power. The hobby-horse size seems to be based on SV/HV block resolution and making a smaller drone move in a smooth fashion may be confronting that. I'd like to see the basic drone not be an infinite resource- by all means make crafting them in the survival constructor be a thing and keep their volume small so you can make a dozen of the basic ones, but they should be crafted with a finite count ... this would force a new player to choose to make one and be encouraged to figure out what they can do. Having bigger constructors make slot extensible ones would be great and using AI and feature boosters like the suit could be a neat way to address base & vehicle piecemeal repair. Having a drone with sentry duty warn you of predators and enemy approach or performing resource ferry duty would let you make some really great industrial bases in a consistent way that would animate in a way that nothing I'm aware of currently does; most all games that do anything like this take an assembly line / conveyor approach. In the good for goose and so for the gander, having pathable drones being something a POI developer could add would give the potential to set up sentries that the player needs to observe and outwit, etc. Great list and really appreciated the way you layout and address the problems.
I should have said at the start of the video, the 1 to 10 is not a priority order or anything, more just the order I wrote them down, sorry about that. Great points you make. I figure with superweapons the enemy would have them but not to use against the player, maybe in some story/pda mission where theres a battle going on or something you might see a Zirax Dreadnought use a doom laser on something but never the player. And to clarify further, I think these things should be gated behind some seriously difficult to acquire materials/resources and skill, to ensure the player only gets them once they have pretty much finished exploring the game and its missions etc. With nothing else left to do, lets go get the schematic for the alien Death laser and use it on the legacy! If you think about it too, using a superweapon to destroy a OPV or POI will demolish that object entirely, including any loot it had so it is just about fun and as I say, Righteous fury!!
Indeed. Perhaps the devices and steps involved be something that a scenario author gates would create the potential for multiple yet always costly sacrifices to enable. In one case it requires going full Gandalf on the problem; your jaded 25th level character has to take the hybrid AI core who has become his friend from a certain Polaris communications satellite deep into a facility to "paint" it and then stay there and protect them from an endless threat similar to one you once saw on a dead planet at the far edge of the galaxy. There's no coming back from that sort of thing, all the epic weapons and one-of-a-kind devices are lost, but you do get to watch the fireworks of a promethium fueled and flux coil channeled righteous fury with a front row seat. Having multiple but similarly difficult and scenario-based trigger sequences with real sacrifice would address the whole "and so the death star moved on to its next target" sorts of engagements.
Good points. 14 minutes of speech transcribed makes 10 - 14 pages of text, so I will obviously have forgotten many details only relying on my memory after 1 view. Base attacks : too weak or player too strong too fast ? If players are not supposed to establish themselves solidly on the starter world, then no point to scale the attacks if it's unrelated to player progression. Right now like you described, as soon as the player can unlock a few key devices then it's an auto-turrets game after that point. I see this as related to general balance and, mostly, starter playfields / setup design. Because Eleon also tries to incorporate some kind of general "tutorial" when players start from scratch, this induces rapid progression that may not be wanted at such an early stage. Many players long for a more basic survivalist experience, for longer than the time it takes to unlock big constructors/ armor etc. From there, enemies would have to be scaled down accordingly. Base attacks as such could be very limited but still annoying to keep the players on the edge, just not enough to prevent him from getting off the planet (and not with an endgame CV). -------------------------------------------- Base repairs : why it's not already a thing puzzles me. I like puzzles, but this one just evades me. ------------------------------------------ NPC economy : that may be feasible with a scenario or some mod, with a few more tools added to the box. But once again, this could be only accessible after significant progression, so players get to learn one bite at a time with traders, then service stations, etc. Could be tied with the next one of course : NPC battles : I see the fun in there, but I mostly see the game as an open world sandbox and this doesn't fit well with setting up random encounters that do not interfere with the player's agenda in untestable ways. We could have a short scenario to test this and see what needs to be done before attempting the galactic setup with another game running in parallel - the main events chain already suffers from small memory losses and hiccups, I wonder how an uncontrolled AI universe would behave unchecked... ------------------------------------------ Perks : sure. I'm sure we can already "simulate" this with scenarios/ dialogs, but there's a big chunk that requires changing the UI to support this. ----------------------------------------- Tech tree : related to perks/ skills ok, else it's like you described. Once again, if we don't want players to become warlords on the few starter worlds, this has to be closely linked to progression. ----------------------------------------- Drone : I guess its size may be related to the fact players want to be able to shoot it from afar in multiplayer... Other than that, good ideas. ----------------------------------------- Character models/ customization : why not. But that's far from a priority, I would prefer they include more moves/ animations (proper "sitting" transition, going to bed, opening a container, idle moves when talking in dialog, etc). As can be seen from the dancing people in the bar, animations can be easily remapped on many (humanoid) models, but making them correctly to fit a model is the first step. If models are made with significant differences before animations can be tested on them then weird things can happen. They can surely start adding a few more colors to already existing suits and helmets, that's just playing with textures and players can see "different factions" based on color schemes, while keeping the same models... ------------------------------------ Superweapon : definitely yes, and maybe a few different versions. Some of them could be tied to very specific scenarios (that old ancient ruin can be reactivated, and it's a giant gun/ activate a nuclear device and run away + cute explosion viewed from the window in a bunker, etc...) and used in only 1 long mission (relies on scenario builders). This can already done with the tools we have. For ships/ Bases, I think a whole balance needs to be included so these fit well with progression, scenario and enemy capacity. ------------------------------------- Logistics revamp : if you meant "UI" I agree, but the logistics I don't really care. It can easily be modded completely out of the game and lots of players wouldn't care. Again it all depends if players want to play "scavenge the galaxy" or if they prefer using blueprints and jumping in pre-made stuff just to get into the action. .
I can get on board with pretty much all of this. In particular, the faction warfare makes a lot of sense. Kind of ruins immersion when Polaris and Zirax units can be right next to each other, just hanging out and not doing anything. I do agree with the previous comment about enemies needing to find your base. It doesn't make sense to plop down a base and the enemy immediately knows where you are. Initially, I was skeptical of the superweapon idea; but to play devil's advocate, there is a way I think it could work. Maybe it could be like a single-use weapon. Some sort of super nuke that can only be mounted to a CV, you have to build a specialized launcher for it and you could only carry one at a time. Make up some lore friendly reason for the restrictions like the nuke requires a containment field of some sort; maybe generated by the warp drive or something. Maybe even add some negatives to carrying the nuke; like if it is destroyed by an enemy, it can detonate inside the launcher and damage your ship. If your warp drive is destroyed, you have 10 seconds or so to launch the nuke before containment is lost and it detonates.
I agree with most of the questions that are shown in the video. The community has a lot of ideas and we already see many of them embodied in the game =)). I understand that developers simply will not have enough strength or time to work out and implement all these ideas in the foreseeable future. But maybe one of the developers will look at this branch and share a secret: which of the voiced ideas are at least considered as promising for implementation?
Base Raids, they are slightly configurable, but so many things wrong there, not just the inability to change difficulty. Loot drops are not worth the defence of a base sometimes. Trader NPC and economy. Gets my vote. In 1984 Elite had a trading system, and that fitted on 2 diskettes. Character classes with exclusive skills per class - or having a tech tree that scales. So many tech tree items are in the wrong place in the tech tree or not even in the tree. The tech tree and unlocks is just broken. Can we PLEASE use the new exploration tokens, please publish the documentation and control of XP earning to let modders just do this for you. I. would pay for character customizations like simple helmets (the gam already has helmets but they are implemented in a way that does not scale) , cloaks, flags and maybe even a way of having a pet instead of a drone? Perplexed that not more folk are able to help here with some simpler ways to do this. Please publish a way to control XP and unlocks using something like tokens, and let players add the feature for you.
