| Author |
Scenario Servers |
Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
|  Posted: 2009-07-06 12:38
Quote:
| Quakespace refers to an FPS, focusing mainly on combat |
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wait, so you're saying Darkspace shouldn't focus mainly on combat?
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|2eason
Grand Admiral
Agents
Joined: September 30, 2001
Posts: 1252
From: Wisconsin, US
| Posted: 2009-07-06 13:23
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On 2009-07-06 12:38, Fattierob wrote:
Quote:
| Quakespace refers to an FPS, focusing mainly on combat |
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wait, so you're saying Darkspace shouldn't focus mainly on combat?
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/facepalm
No, I was pointing out he contradicted himself.
- |2eason -
[ This Message was edited by: |2eason on 2009-07-06 13:24 ]
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2009-07-06 13:51
Thats not how I read it. But as long you agree that combat should be the main focus of Darkspace
Haha, here I was ready to tear you limb from limb.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-07-06 20:31
Quote:
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On 2009-07-06 10:35, |2eason wrote:
Where is the proof? Aside from that, you completely neglected my argument stating the aspects of the Scenario Server can be implemented into the MV.
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Unless the MV resets every few hours or every day, it can't be like scenarios. I like the constant restarting of scenarios. I don't like the persistence of the MV. I don't like how it's difficult to gain engineering badges. I don't like how transport ships have almost no use. I don't like how small ships really have no use.
I don't know how else to state this.
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Perhaps rather then tout, "MV BAD, Scenario Servers GOOD!!!" you should suggest improvements to the MV and continue to let the Devs know what you dont like about it.
- |2eason -
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What suggestions can I make? Turn the MV into one giant scenario server that resets all the time so we constantly have to recap and rebuild, which is the game style I prefer? Make it just 1 map so people aren't so spread out that you have to go looking for action?
No suggestion I can make would work for the MV.
I don't like the focus on large ships and combat in the MV. It's all about dreads. I don't like ship enhancements. I don't like elite AI.
I like how scenario servers feel like a galactic chess match, where everyone is focused on capturing and holding planets (vs in the MV when many times nobody cares one bit about capturing planets). Every ship has it's use from scouts to frigates and up to dreads. I like how you progress through the ships as the scenario goes on, and even if neither side gets dreads it's still fun. I like how scenarios have a defined beginning and a defined end, with defined goals, and you get to do it all over on a new map. And the best part is that everyone is in that one map, not spread out so that there's maybe 2 people here, 3 there, 4 farming AI on the other side of the MV...
Again, I don't know what kind of suggestions I can give for the MV other than that. I list what I like about scenarios and you read it and realize that it can't be done in the MV. I just don't like the MV. I've tried to like it, and 1.5 was fun for a while before it got all screwed up with patches. But my true DS love will be scenario servers.
BTW, I don't care about a progressing storyline or anything like that for scenarios. It's the resetting maps and everyone crammed into 1 map that's important. And, if 1.5 was left alone I would probably have stayed. But the nerfing of AI prestige chased a lot of players away, the changing of Rogen's Rift to a limited rank server screwed things up royally, and the station nerf is the nail in the coffin. Stations were the only thing keeping this game from being DREADspace, and of course that had to be nerfed.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-07-06 20:35
Plus, I don't want Darkspace to focus mainly on combat. Yes, I'm in the minority here. I want Darkspace to focus mainly on capturing, building and defending planets, with combat just being a means to that end. Currently it's the exact opposite. Capturing planets is just a way to encourage combat. It's like planets have no real importance.
The simplification of resources really hurt this (or if you like combat most, it helped). You don't have to worry about defending your urdanium and hypermatter planets anymore, because they don't exist.
Eh, I just don't like the direction this game is headed. So sue me.
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jedi42
Grand Admiral
Evil Empires Inc.
Joined: February 25, 2002
Posts: 478
From: jedi42
| Posted: 2009-07-06 21:16
I'm with MrSparkle on this stuff.
Some of the great stuff about the old scenario servers evolved through the match due to a set series of goals you had to accomplish to annihilate in the late-game.
If your team didn't work together, there were many consequences:
-can't secure and hold appropriate resource planets
-can't secure and hold primary goal-planets
-can't get up nearly-impenetrable defenses at key population centers
-inability to attack enemy transports or engineers
-inability to mount even mildly effective bombing runs (need escort + supply)
-friendly engineers constantly being pestered without fast-responding defensive players
-combat ships constantly orbiting at undeveloped planets due to no supply ship
-eventually being overrun by larger ships, struggling to maintain flag planets/resource planets
-eventual doom
If you did work together and had someone calling the shots (along with some feedback, and proper role-assignment), you could:
-rapidly secure high value targets
-defend building engineers and advancing combat/bomb forces
-setup supply "depots" with supply ships and escort as a fall-back point
-strategically capture planets as a mid-way point between front-line and rear-base
-death-star moons or adjacent planets to create defensible clusters
-position structures on non-orbiting planets sensibly to make defending planets a more strategic activity
-knowing the enemy has just said this in team chat: "Uh oh. They've got an EAD/Siphon/AD...". It was big deal.
-knowing the enemy has just said this in team chat: "THEY'VE GOT A STATION AT PLANET X!!!"
-knowing when you've made planets uncappable frustrating the enemy, seeing the results of your action force the enemy to change plans and countering swiftly, etc. etc.
The thing that forcing everyone into a single map does is give a built-in incentive to DO SOMETHING. The MV fosters an environment of "sit and wait". In a scenario server, if you bother to play, you are fair game, close by, detectable by scouts and other ships. You can be monitored and tracked easily. If you are doing something productive for your team, you should assume you will be targeted in some capacity soon... that means you have to be SMART, prepared, alert, ready.
In the MV, you could sit at a planet in orbit, go out to eat and a movie, come back, and no one has even noticed you.
In the scenario server, you'd be lucky to last 5 minutes at an undefended planet in orbit if you were AFK.
That made it fun, interesting, and dynamic.
The strategy element was really awesome... especially for players like me that would tend to gravitate towards a active-command role (regardless of ship). Capping strategic planets, spending lots of time in F2, redirecting priorities of other players...
...looking for aimless newbs and sending them to pester enemy engineers (a mission that WASN'T kamikaze in scenario, but IS in the MV), having someone lay mines in orbit of one of their flag planets, sending in dessies to assault guarding cruisers and other ships, building up particular planets in particular ways, carting resources (critical ones) as necessary to help out a competent engy....
....getting someone to supply competently at appropriate times, provoking the enemy by sitting a few thousand GU from the planet they are guarding with 2 or 3 guys, then when they attack have an extra 4 guys jump in and ambush them & sending your 2 newbs with troop trannies in as the battle starts winding down and the enemy is ejumping out, getting your engy in and covering him while the planet caps & advancing on the now wounded enemy....
...battling until the last second to inflict as much damage as possible, sometimes getting blown up by waiting a few seconds too long or getting surprised by a point-jumper, fighting to the death in a smaller ship (and not losing prestige) to defend a building engineer, scouting and beaconing small ships with no threat of reprisal early on, watching active players to determine if the enemy is cap and building, if they have an assault force, if they are going to bomb, and compensating...........
A portion of these things can be found in MV play... yes. But over the course of like 2 weeks at an average of at least 1 hour per night, and you won't find a lot of them due to the Dreadspace phenomena. I haven't played a whole lot in the 1.5+ version MV, but once I got back up to speed on how to play in the new version, I'd take low-rank/newbs with me... there wasn't a thing to do. "Come with me while I kill AI and you supply me for 2 hours," is not fun for either of us. Or "Let's hunt enemies down for an hour and then watch you get decimated and have to jump away within 1 minute..."
The difference is that the scenario jams all of that stuff (and more) into a couple of hours. The loss is that the environment is not persistent and the playing field is smaller. I would take a small playing field and non-persistent play if I could experience the totality of the Darkspace experience in 4 hours.
Plus, it is AWESOME to be able to switch factions and switch sides to play with different people. I like playing with all sorts of people. I'm K'luth at heart, but if the game was unbalanced it was only natural that a few high prestige players swap factions to balance things up. That was one of the great things about the Scenario servers... they were self-balancing because the players CRAVED a fair fight, so it was fun. Absolutely destroying the enemy and fighting scouts with Dreads was stupid and boring, and no one wanted that. Hell, sometimes you'd even let a weak team have a planet (like spotting someone a few strokes in a golf game) just so the mid-late game would be more fair and balanced. The players handled the balancing of the game more than anything else. But if the game isn't setup to allow that, it can't happen.
//Sorry for length. I was a major advocate for leaving the scenario servers in when they were removed the first time, so I've thought about this a lot.
[ This Message was edited by: dj42 {C?} on 2009-07-06 21:47 ]
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|2eason
Grand Admiral
Agents
Joined: September 30, 2001
Posts: 1252
From: Wisconsin, US
| Posted: 2009-07-06 22:53
Mr Sparkle, I think you and I are going to just have to agree to disagree.
You continue to mention the same issues and I continue to point to the fact that it can be dealt with other then putting up a Scenario Server and calling it the Metaverse.
The simple fact people are crying for the Scenario Servers to be returned shows there hasn't been any successful progess made to make the Metaverse a viable, stable, enjoyable and dynamic gaming environment.
In my opinion, if Faustus and the Development Team want to continue to focus their attention on progressing the Metaverse they need to deal with a few things:
- Stop introducing new things, Figure out ALL of the balance issues at once, implement them and move forward. It's never going to be perfect, but if overall balance is accomplished you have something to work off of.
- Implement creative ways for new players to become involved in the Metaverse without being crushed by dreads. The Less crap flying around from each player, the less lag and the more people that can be around each other. Less projectiles, and make them more powerful.
- Create ways for you to gain in each area of the statistics within the Metaverse, such as Engineering, Transport, etc.
- Give the Metaverse a purpose, other then flying around planets that shoot at you that give you no rewards for capturing.
There are others, but they can start there and move forward.
Quote:
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On 2009-07-06 13:51, Fattierob (x2 Cybernetic Eye) wrote:
Thats not how I read it. But as long you agree that combat should be the main focus of Darkspace
Haha, here I was ready to tear you limb from limb.
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Combat should be the main focus, but other options need to continue to be viable and also focused on.
- |2eason -
[ This Message was edited by: |2eason on 2009-07-06 22:55 ]
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cctv dude99
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: February 20, 2009
Posts: 30
| Posted: 2009-07-07 10:25
Scenarios are pointless for non-subbed. Having subbed and non-subbed just means death. I've played on many games where no-subbed are killed by subbed, once I was subbed on a game, so I helped out the non-subbed. In nearly all MMOGs with subbed and non-subbed there is a barrier between the two groups of players. When I say having non-subbed and subbed means death, I'm not trying to be an ass. I'm just saying the truth.
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Huffywuffy, Mr. Builder
Fleet Admiral
Interstellar Cultural Confederation United
Joined: August 20, 2003
Posts: 76
| Posted: 2009-07-07 12:14
MV is pointless for unsubbed too. Every ships available at Cadet rank is utterly useless in Dreadspace. Transports and Bombers are unable to get through the planetary defenses, while Scouts and Frigates don't pack enough punch to seriously hurt Dreads on their own.
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Azreal
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
| Posted: 2009-07-07 12:24
1 thing missing from scenario servers that would make mv more irrelevant is the garage. once the scenario ends, bye bye ship. I'd love to see the mv garage system implemented in the scenarios, and the return of the admiral UNbalanced server.
just my opin.
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Jar Jar Binks
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 25, 2001
Posts: 556
| Posted: 2009-07-07 12:38
the absolute biggest problem i have with the scenario server is how its balanced. its balanced on rank, not on numbers. so if you have 2 FA or GA on one side you cant join that side untill theres xx ammount of captains on the other (extreme example) and that GA will always end up with a huge disadvantage, because no matter how good he is he's still only 2, while theres xx ammount on the other team(s) so getting enough planets up and running, and at the same time defending them gets boring really fast.
so i wouldn't mind testing how balance by numbers would work out.
[ This Message was edited by: Jar Jar Binks on 2009-07-07 12:43 ]
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-07-07 20:54
Quote:
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On 2009-07-06 22:53, |2eason wrote:
Mr Sparkle, I think you and I are going to just have to agree to disagree.
You continue to mention the same issues and I continue to point to the fact that it can be dealt with other then putting up a Scenario Server and calling it the Metaverse.
The simple fact people are crying for the Scenario Servers to be returned shows there hasn't been any successful progess made to make the Metaverse a viable, stable, enjoyable and dynamic gaming environment.
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No no I don't disagree with any of those things you just mentioned. I just don't see them ever occuring in the MV, while they do occur in scenarios all the time. So why continue to support a game type that doesn't work? I seriously don't expect to ever see those things in the MV. I mean, it took how long to get 1.5? (nobody's fault, they're volunteers).
If they want new players to become involved in the MV, they need to get rid of the current ship balance plan that favors dreads over all else. We've been been told that they think dreads should be far superior to smaller ships, as incentive to gain ranks and to copy what most other MMOs do (I've heard an argument like "would you expect a level 50 in a MMORPG to die to a level 20 in pvp?). But what does that do for newer players? It forces them into supply ships until they can get dreads themselves. This game isn't like other MMOs and shouldn't try to be like them.
The game never used to have this kind of ship balance. Some people didn't like when cruisers and destroyers were the preferred ships, but I did (for the most part, at least compared to now). I can't count the number of cruisers I've encountered in the MV in 1.5 that I could pretty much ignore because they were no big threat unless a few of them ganged up. And destroyers and below? No threat at all. Not only do they have less weapons, each of those weapons does less damage per hit due to autoleveling (yeah yeah, more DPS but damage-over-time isn't very useful in this game vs big ships that can wipe you out with hard-hitting weapons). Destroyers and frigates can be fun and will eventually get the job done if the big ship ignores them long enough, but you're always better off using a bigger ship to do the job.
As for ways to gain points in engineering, transporting etc. I have no idea how to implement those ways in the MV. It goes against what the MV is, which is persistence. To gain engineering and transporting points you have to play on a server that isn't persistent, or is so damned active that you always find bombed planets that can be capped and rebuilt. But we all know the MV is mostly about logging on, choosing your dread, asking where the action is, and either heading there if there's action, logging off if there isn't, or going to farm AI. Not nearly enough incentive to cap planets which should be the lifeblood of the game.
(AI engineers and tranport ships do not help! Not only do AI engineers jump to any planet missing some buildings, but they also cap any planets cappable by newer players)
MV purpose? Supposedly the original purpose was to cap all of space and "win", right? But there never seemed to be much incentive to do so, unlike in scenarios where a win gives you a little bonus prestige, a brand new map to earn even more points in all the varied badges, and the chance to be a different faction. You wanted to cap those flag planets, except for a few maps that were just more fun to play through than win early.
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Shigernafy
Admiral
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 5726
From: The Land of Taxation without Representation
| Posted: 2009-07-07 21:29
You'd need 4 captains on a faction to balance against 2 GAs.
Basically, each rank in the list is given one point... GA, for example, is 13 points, whereas Captain is 7. And the code is such that you cannot join the team with the higher score, if they're not even.
The thing is... it sucks when there are no shipyards: if you have Nukey on ICC, you could conceivably have 15 midshipmen on UGTO before anyone could join ICC again, but meanwhile Nukey can only fly a frigate vs 15 assault corvettes. Or transports with 4 troops.
So ideally it'd be balanced by numbers until a shipyard is built. But then what do you do at that point? You can't just force some players onto another faction magically and immediately to "balance" it again.
All of which is to say: shipyards broke scenario.
nobody is surprised
this is what happens when you focus on a different style of gameplay for a few years
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cctv dude99
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: February 20, 2009
Posts: 30
| Posted: 2009-07-08 10:14
Another thing I noticed on nearly all other MMOGs forums, is that no one will listen to you if you're not subbed. I can't remember whos sig this is, but: 'I dont want any of that "ur cadet, your opion is invalid" crap' is what happens on most games. that person may have used it in a different way to how i've used it now, but i think it fits my point.
I also notice that the only usefull place for non-subbed is the beta, forcing non-subbed to quit or murder the beta server. at least there 'testing' it/not quitting, meaning they might sub l8r on.
[ This Message was edited by: cctv dude99 on 2009-07-08 12:16 ]
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