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Scenario Servers |
Sens [R33]
Admiral
Joined: September 27, 2008
Posts: 1020
From: Edge of th...
|  Posted: 2009-06-26 23:01
Well, they're back and running; what do yall think of them? Too long? Too little bonus prestige? Thoughts? Concerns? Post them here and discuss!
Common Issues:
-The "dread rush" phenomenon
-Players starting at different times
-One sided battles (frigates vs dreads)
-Sabotage (locking planets, scrapping, giving away intel, ect)
-SY doesn't drain resource when spawning ships
-Wrong planet names(what happened to smartinville?)
-Should faction assignment be randomised?
-Should it be continued?
-How can it be improved?
-Should we have AI?
-ect.
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Sardaukar
Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: October 08, 2002
Posts: 1656
| Posted: 2009-06-26 23:21
I will say that after replaying scens, after so long, I have to call into question the focus of DarkSpace.
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Leonide
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: October 01, 2005
Posts: 1553
From: Newport News, Virginia
| Posted: 2009-06-26 23:24
Quote:
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On 2009-06-26 23:21, Sardaukar wrote:
I will say that after replaying scens, after so long, I have to call into question the focus of DarkSpace.
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this. Darkspace was made for scenarios. plain and simple. MV doesn;t work with DS's setup.
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captain of the ICC Assault Cruiser C.S.S. Sledgehammer
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Veronw
Marshal
Joined: December 13, 2004
Posts: 554
| Posted: 2009-06-26 23:45
they are amazing fun, minus the dread rush, which sucks horribly if kluth get dreads first...
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Azreal
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
| Posted: 2009-06-26 23:49
Quote:
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On 2009-06-26 23:21, Sardaukar wrote:
I will say that after replaying scens, after so long, I have to call into question the focus of DarkSpace.
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heh heh. NOW you realize what we were on about lol.
Yeah, the scenarios are really better. But we need the Admiral or GA servers. Maybe even make the Sag server an admiral and up server, to promote the development of skills before getting in the MV. I still prefer a battle arena setup instead of the MV. Give each faction, ai as well, a few planets to spawn and mod with. Make them protected by jumpgates, and make it so PvP is the total focus.
But back to scenarios. I want new maps. And if the scenarios are back, can we get a new editor please? Have map contests for new server maps. The staff can always tweak what needs tweaking on the winner. Just a thought.
I would also like my mv enhancements to be in my garage. Would be a good use for lesser level enhancements that I would just eject anyways. I know that has never been the case, just sayin.
over all, i have to say ty for bring the scenario back. We (generally speaking we being the players, especially the "oldies") really do feel this is the way to go. I hope you are going to continue making changes and working on things. We, the same people, will repay you with loyalty and subs.
Thanks again, for bring back the scenario servers.
Az
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Sardaukar
Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: October 08, 2002
Posts: 1656
| Posted: 2009-06-26 23:52
Huh? I never opposed scenarios- I actually always cited their success when the big debate over keeping ship modding in the game. That they can work in this setup is what's surprising, though there is much room for improvement. Specifically, as previously mentioned, the shipyard rush itself- in one round K'luth got one up first, and I had a scale camping their soon-to-be SY world, destroying any engineers and frigates that got too close.
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2009-06-27 00:38
Idea: Scenario Server lasts 24 hours. No more "Flag planets"
Every day is a new Scenario. More maps with pre-built planets in interesting tactical positions.
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2009-06-27 00:50
I agree with the majority of Sens post so I'll just add potential fixes.
Quote:
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On 2009-06-26 23:01, Sensitivity wrote:
Well, they're back and running; what do yall think of them? Too long? Too little bonus prestige? Thoughts? Concerns? Post them here and discuss!
Common Issues:
-The "dread rush" phenomenon
-Bigger resource gaps, everything up to to destroyers being very small amounts, cruisers having a slight increase over that and then heug increase for Dreadnoughts, to the point that its generally much harder to bring one out.
Thus if a faction attempted to dread rush. it would be much more efficient to use smaller ships which could be gained much more quickly (minutes as opposed to a quarter of an hour or more).
-Players starting at different times
-If factions are balanced based on numbers rather than rank, then it pretty much guarantees that there aren't more people on one side long enough to get too far ahead without another faction getting a person.
-One sided battles (frigates vs dreads)
-If dreadnoughts take alot more resources to get, it becomes more efficient to use smaller ships, thus making battles more even.
-Sabotage (locking planets, scrapping, giving away intel, ect)
-Only more moderator enforcement fixes this.
-SY doesn't drain resource when spawning ships
-Needs to.
-Wrong planet names(what happened to smartinville?)
-Sort of personal opinion.
-Should faction assignment be randomised?
-No. Just balanced.
-Should it be continued?
-Yes, with fixes.
-How can it be improved?
-Fixing above problems. Having actual progression between maps, and therefore able to tell a story based on which faction wins each map. It becomes like playing the MV, only one map at a time.
Making maps more balanced, and adding a timer in which the map only ends after one side holds all the flag planets for a specific amount of time, thus preventing rushes.
-Should we have AI?
-My personal opinion is no. They belong in the MV definitely.
-ect.
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Its my personal belief that scenarios allow for Darkspace to be played how I feel, is absolutely the most fun. Large, focused battles over real objectives in a story driven atmosphere.
It is in this way that scenarios help the most. Every map can have objectives, which can either be flag planets or whatever other multitude of mechanics we can think up. Thus it eliminates one of Darkspace's most irritating aspects, that is the lack of people.
If everyone is focused onto one map then there is no way you don't run into combat. With objectives, there is no more being lost without direction. It gets people to work together, because on such a small area, with even numbers being forced, then every fight is fun and fair.
Not only that, but it allows a dynamic story progression. A faction acheiving the most objectives would follow its story arc, and if they lose they go back a tier, and forward or to the side. All the way until a faction makes it to a homesystem, based on the story. You can then have your obligatory epic battle with elite AI fleets, thus giving everyone the incentive and the opportunity for whatever goodies they may get for success.
Thus is my dream. The MV never has worked very well. There are those who have claimed that the free driven, sandbox style is great, but its broad appeal hasn't really caught on. Thats because of that freedom, sides are unbalanced, people are hard to fight and organize of combat and perhaps worst of all, there is no overall goal, no overall objective, no direction. Just jump to a planet and hope someone comes to defend.
Its not enough, and Darkspace I'm sorry to say for everyone who likes that, has always been unique in its fact paced arcade style. and scenarios provided that. But we never expanded on that idea, despite that it has long been the people grabber, for that majority base of people who don't have 8 hours to devote every day to a persistent universe that I'm sorry to say, simply doesn't live up to its height.
Moving to expand and improve scenario servers is probably one the best, simplest, and time saving routes to improve the game overall, in my personal opinion. I honestly hope to see it done.
-Ent
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Alien Mastermind
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: January 20, 2003
Posts: 242
From: Toronto
| Posted: 2009-06-27 01:30
Would be helpful to see how many players are currently playing on the scenario server to have an idea if it is worth joining it.
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Darksworde
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: September 06, 2002
Posts: 806
From: The Zoo
| Posted: 2009-06-27 04:36
I miss Scenario, mainly as I dont get to play ICC or UGTO these days, just Kluth. It always made a nice break. MV is fun sometimes, by FA Scenario is what got me playing this game, and probably what would cause me to resub!!!!
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Mr.Grim[Loyalist]
Marshal
Joined: June 08, 2007
Posts: 301
From: Behind you
| Posted: 2009-06-27 06:53
Quote:
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On 2009-06-27 01:30, Alien~ wrote:
Would be helpful to see how many players are currently playing on the scenario server to have an idea if it is worth joining it.
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there was 15 of us in there earlier
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JBud
Marshal
Joined: February 26, 2008
Posts: 1900
From: Behind you.
| Posted: 2009-06-27 09:28
Quote:
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On 2009-06-27 00:38, Fattierob wrote:
Idea: Scenario Server lasts 24 hours. No more "Flag planets"
Every day is a new Scenario. More maps with pre-built planets in interesting tactical positions.
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Doran
Chief Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 29, 2003
Posts: 4032
From: The Gideon Unit
| Posted: 2009-06-27 09:43
Quote:
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On 2009-06-26 23:01, Sensitivity wrote:
Common Issues:
-The "dread rush" phenomenon
-Players starting at different times
-One sided battles (frigates vs dreads)
-Sabotage (locking planets, scrapping, giving away intel, ect)
those have always been a problem since at least as long as ive been playing. if a team is coordinated enough to zerg up a bunch of planets, grab miners and crank out enough resouces to spawn dreads while the other team is still tooling around in frigates and dessies, theres not a whole lot that can realistically be done about that.
heck, even before shipyards, people would camp in a homegate waiting for enough resources to be available to spawn a cruiser/dread/station, whoever was fastest on the spawn button got a big ship and everyone else had to wait longer.
scenarios have also long held an appeal for people that just have time for a quick hour or two of gameplay (its a common reason given when requesting scenario servers to be returned), but outside of a match start countdown timer and requiring everyone to "ready up", there's no way to make everyone start a particular round at the same time, as people are constantly comming and going.
and there will always be people that enjoy being assess and ruining the game for others, just have to deal with it as it comes in.
-SY doesn't drain resource when spawning ships
see, thats a proper bug and should be reported as such (support@palestar.com)
-Wrong planet names(what happened to smartinville?)
not wrong. default. scenarios are running off the orginal maps that have been in the game for a very, very long time, any changes made later were done though the map editor which is now dead. no names have been changed to protect the innocent (or guilty), and arenty likely to be without heavy bribery.
-Should faction assignment be randomised?
the effectivness of darkspace's team balance mechanism has always been debatable. teams will be stacked, no getting around that, people like to play with their friends. we dont have anyway of forcibly changing a person's team mid-game or otherwise shuffling/randomizing teams, implementing that, like a match start/ready feature would take exactly 2 Weeks? and faustus has historically placed more emphasis on furthering the metaverse than scenarios |
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[ This Message was edited by: Doran on 2009-06-27 09:46 ]
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YIIMM
Grand Admiral
Joined: June 16, 2005
Posts: 851
From: Barcino, Hispania Tarraconensis
| Posted: 2009-06-27 10:08
Quote:
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On 2009-06-27 01:30, Alien~ wrote:
Would be helpful to see how many players are currently playing on the scenario server to have an idea if it is worth joining it.
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This is one of the more recent changes that I honestly don't see the benefit of.
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Purpura
Cadet
Joined: March 16, 2003
Posts: 27
From: Living on top of a tiki hut bar enjoying the sun and the ocean
| Posted: 2009-07-03 01:08
back when i first started in 03, back when each planet would spawn 1 tranny when a spaceport was built, you could move resourses between planets(i think). Ships were based off credits which were generated by the planets pop, and planets off metals, urainium and something else i cant remember. (personally I liked that system alot more then the current one) it was the FA server that everybody flocked too, we loved it, its what made me sub. Things were indeed quite abit simpler back then and it was even abit unbalenced but nobody i knew really noticed, they were to caught up in the game.
My fondest memories are of Ugto vs Kluth at sol, with kluth owning earth and Ugto owning venus and the great battles that would rage over the expance in between and one side would outmanuver the other and cap the planet they were after. and at the end of every match everybody would say GG
I seriously loved that old verson of the game, it really broke my heart when the new system came in, it doesnt give the same feeling to me, everyones mad or bored all the time and the game has really lost the steam I remember
back then I remember that kluth's cloak was alot more simple too, instead of this nearly invincble cloak that can only be revieled for a second by eccm the sig would rise enough that you could actually target them lol, but the kluth could also jump while cloaked, and fire outta it without haveing to wait lol
Personally i liked that better, more straightforward, easy to understand how to counter and be prepared for kluth and kluth was easy to get how to play them, butt now days not even a beacon will keep them visible and Im told eccm "pings" them for a second but it seem random to me and unreliable
buttt im realllyyy getting sidetracked srry ^^
The point Im trying to make is that I and a great many other people Played and paid for this game specificly to play mainly in the FA Server, as the mv felt like nothing was being accomplished capping the same planets over and over, only to do the same thing the very next day cuz some1 capped all the ones you capped while you were sleeping lol gave it a stale feeling
In FA there was a deffinate goal and accomplishment, it was like "We Won this match, and this match will never be replayed, this match was the only one of its kind and we won" as even if the map was the same next time, the players and the movements never were, each game was unique and special in its own way, each new game fresh. Kinda like how you can play Chess or poker 10 times ina row and still wanna play that next game lol
Although everybody can see the vision of the Metaversa, I dont think the dev team has the resourses atm to make it work. We realize that you want to make a constant world thats evolveing and flowing all the time, it is an abitious goal, one certainly worth working towards. The concept is simular to alot of my own ideas and I see the beauty it could be. However in the 5 years or so Ive been here, Ive seen very little progress in it. Maybe you could consider shelveing the idea for a time, and work on a part of the game that worked well and the Players loved? Honestly, I think if the team focused on FA for 6months or a year there would be so many more players/subs that you could expand the operation. I for one would deffinatly be glad pay to play the old way. Then after that, have a small team focused on working with FA, and have the rest re-focus on developing the meta-verse and I bet the whole community would support you in it.
Hmmm have you ever seen Shattered Galaxy? It is alot like a Combo of the MV and Senario servers, the makers of the game have Ingored the game for yearssss, and people still pay to play, even tho its free lol. Why? because they found something that thousands of Players liked, You know what they did instead of working on that game? They started makeing whole new ones off the profits loll and no one complained, the players were satisfied and thats all they cared about. thoo i havent played SG ina while I imagine its still going even tho its so outdated lol
Well anyways the message is why not focus on something for everyone for abit, before going and createing this grand thing... cuz right now everything seems so rushed, thrown together and panicked, trying to make it work and make people happy with the mv... the devs shouldnt have to Convince people to like the MV, they should just like it because its fun to play. and right now its not fun to play....
In the past you found/made something that people liked, why get rid of it and try replaceing it?
-The "dread rush" phenomenon
This is pretty easy i think, put timers on ships, either on when you can get them, or a timer that resets everytime a certain shiptype spawns, think this would solve the problem
orrr even returning to the old credit system modifyed for the new Shipyards... dont remember any complaints like this back then, it was more about who got to use the available credits, but that certainly wasnt a huge deal as limited credits is how problems like this were avoided lol and it made people think about things more then just going with the biggest thing they could get, cuz sometimes they couldnt get the biggest thing, and ppl had to adapt to the situation, which is how it should be anyhow lol
-Players starting at different times
Dont think thatsa issue...
-One sided battles (frigates vs dreads)
Think the timer could help with this, orrrr idk give a production bonus to the sides that cant make em yet er something, in the end tho its the players faults that its happened right? lol
orr maybe a blueprint system? that could really change things
orrr again to the old credit system
-Sabotage (locking planets, scrapping, giving away intel, ect)
Maybe some player mods would help this
-SY doesn't drain resource when spawning ships
mmmm idk if thats good or bad.. rescourses should probably be faster to get if you wanna drain em for every spawn... or lower ship costs
-Wrong planet names(what happened to smartinville?)
who cares...
-Should faction assignment be randomised?
Maybe till like an hour into the game or something
-Should it be continued?
YES, infact Fautus should take as much pride in FA as he does the MV, and Glorified as much aswell, FA and the MV could be amazing side by side
-How can it be improved?
Dev focus on this part of the game
Serious attention to the fun factor
Random events
Control Points/ Territory system of some kind, not just planets, maybe immobile stations that start as their own faction with own Ai fleet would be the control points of course theyd be armed and have supply deopts, then the ships that are tied to each station are added to the Conquering Factions Ai fleet... Maybe thered be differant sizes of station and the territory they control... like from "light stations" on the fringes of the system all the way to "Super murderous Boss Station" lol Think a "Home Turf" bonus of some kind could be interesting too
Think that idea would have to be debated as theres alot of things that could be done with it that im not thinking of atm lol
Missions To name a few ideas
Make a seperate mission screen, like the map, maybe even make it part of the map screen
/spawn a patrol/scout to pick off
/ Scout a # of Enemy ships
/ Mine a special rock
/ Bring ceratin # of rescourses to planet
/ Spawns a attack fleet that trys to take a planet of yours (Maybe a certain % of ppl in the faction would have to accept or something)
/ Vise-Versa
/ Save a Ship under attack
/ Repair some random damaged ship
/ Pick up survivors
/ Trade between planets (shipping/mail service kinda thing maybe)
/ Assasinate a Certain Ship
/ Bomb a certain Building
/ Bomb a certain # of inf
/ Evade a ceratin # of missles
/ Kill a Ceratin # of ships
/ Escort a ship visting multiple places (maybe a science expedition or a world leader.
/Steal a 1 time use "Upgraded" Ship/Weapon blueprint
/ take certain Station
Im sure theres tons more that could be thought up
naturally put a limit on missions, maybe 1 every 30mins, or 2-3 per game or something like that
-Should we have AI?
I think AI could deffinately be a good thing for Senarios, would really liven it up if done properly lol. maybe theyre released on a timer or planets owned/ or a combo of SY planet + Timer, but spawning some basic stuff from gates... think they should probably not respond to any orders from players tho as they could probably be exploited that way orrr maybe they can only be ordered around by 1 person from each team, a "Commander of the faction" type thing could bring something pretty interesting to the game. ooooo maybe the command Ships would actually be Command ships! loll orrr maybe they could fallow a some scripts on how they cordinate together and what they do
AI would really help new people grind too i think, when working with older players of course lol, as the Ai needs to be able to hold its own and even suceed sometimes against players
maybe Ai should be off doing its own thing appart from players, only acting as part of the backdrop, to give it an atmosphere, just part of the scenery... idk personally I think a mix of AI involvement along with the opposite could be best, as it could be annoying with them always around.... buttt maybe if someone put alot of work into ai fleets they could be looked at more loveingly lol
mmmm if fautus is really so obcessed with the MV maybe thered be a way to tie them together somehow? maybe make it so that winning in FA turns into an Advantage of some kind in the MV.... idk.... could be an idea tho... and an incentive to improve FA for the sake of the MV :P loll
anyhow, if fautus seriously put some time into engeneering FA type servers I think the return on how many ppl sub, stay, use the mv, and truely enjoy the game would be well worth the time
THink i could be forgetting things... buttt ill add more if i remember lol srry for the length
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 01:21 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 01:23 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 01:44 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 01:46 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 01:49 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 02:21 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 02:47 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 02:51 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Purpura on 2009-07-03 02:52 ]
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