The Roadmap Watcher

[gingerbear]

I'm creating this thread with the hopes of being able to give constructive feedback on the roadmap plans, possibly nudging ideas there in a hopefully right direction before they get implemented.

I'm encouraging everyone to do the same in this thread, provided they are actively following the roadmap. Note that this is not an "official" thread, but a player-based one. If Rob and Tim decides to ignore / delete it, it's in their own right.

I'm asking the following:

• Do NOT comment on bug fixes (like "yeah this is much needed", or "I can't see Bug #2626254 on the roadmap please add it!")
• Do NOT post here new ideas that aren't on the roadmap already (make your own thread instead), but feel free to comment on the ideas you see there. (Notice the shiny new "Half-baked ideas" column!) Many of those ideas may seem familiar from previous discussions all around the forum, so you might want to dig around to see what other people have come up with.
• If you can, refer to the original card in some way ("I saw it in half-baked ideas", or "was under build ## on this day", etc.)

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My initial comments

Build #64 cards: (as of aug. 15.)

- I don't think that as of the moment [Zeta refactoring to be unaffected by buildings] is neccessary. Two reasons:
1) The removal of VP crippled the building system as much as it could, and since you wanted to kind of remove/rework the whole building system, why bother implementing something now that will be likely changed anyway?
2) If I understand the mechanics that lie in the building system now, the only buildings that are affecting the Zeta now are the ones that make their turrets turn slower. Given that the main source of damage are the mines that spawn periodically regardless of nerfs, I'd say from the zeta's POV the building system is quite irrelevant anyway.

- [ Class specific XP ] sounds indeed weird for tanks, the question is, whether we want to manifest the players in game?
a) If yes, then it could be something like "Tank driving expertise" or "Engineering knowledge".
b) If not, and we strict ourselves to the tanks as smallest units, then it could be "Rank" (the more enemies you kill, the higher your rank is, could be aligned to an existing military rank system. The tank specific extras could be the result of the higher rank: a commander is allowed to drive a better prepped tank than a shoddy private.), or maybe "[Grid] Influence" (meaning the more time you pass actively on the battlefield, the more "material" and thus influential you become. This increasing presence would mean that the tank learns more of the niches of the Grid, allowing it to get specific extras that "newcomers" do not.)

Build #65 cards: (as of aug. 15.)

- If you implement [floor tiles showing convoy paths], may I ask it to synchronize with the map lines, with the following way? Let the tiles (and lines) not only show the path, but somehow suggest the capacity of a convoy route? I mean, as the route dries up, the floor tiles (and the map lines) should fade out gradually, and then getting deleted in the end. Aside from this creating a nice visual effect, it would also incentivize people to search for new tracks if they see the current ones emptying. (Well, the exploration rewards are good incentives now anyway but I expect these to be cut back a bit.) It would also remove lines that are no longer used, resulting in a cleaner map.

[quicklite]

Aight, I might have more to say later, but for the moment, I'll just say comment on 3 things on the half-baked ideas section:

Ground patrols: Well, I like these, though that's probly because I suggested some form of this a while ago, and thus I'm heavily biased >_>. Though what would be nice is if these hugged convoy routes that they came into contact with for a little while before going back to their circling, just for added hilarity when they bump into convoys being chased by people, as well as giving them a reason to be targeted.

Air patrols: To anyone who played Half Life 2, I'd love to see these act a little bit like poisonous headcrabs. To anyone who never played this, poisonous headcrabs are creepy little spider-like fuckers that, when charged at, panic and run away to a place where you can't see them. After this, they will wait until you have turned away from them to attack something else, and then they will let out a loud battle-cry before flinging themselves at you, and if they hit, they'll bite (obviously) and deal a massive amount of damage through their poison. Now I'm not saying that air patrols should be poisonous, but I do like them as evil things that attack and kill players by catching them off-guard, before trying to make their escape. This is how I'd say that should work. First-off, they shouldn't be 'discovered' by enemy players. They should show up on the radar in cleared territory only. Meaning that they can escape and become completely undetectable in un-cleared territory. When in uncleared territory, these things should be very aggressive, and after circling the main cleared area once or twice (just cuz), they'll pick a person (or preferably a group of people), and basically charge them. They will attack their targetted until they have passed or killed them, before trying to get back to uncleared territory. These things should move as fast (or faster than convoys), and have some way of attacking behind them, but due to their limited turn speed (meaning that they can't immediately turn and flee back where they came from), they should be able to be tracked and killed relatively easily in heavily cleared territory. These patrols should be able to only regenerate health, and not numbers, meaning that you can gradually wear these downs as well as just flat-out killing them. These should not directly target people a certain distance away from cleared territory (to avoid scout rapeage >_>)


Hunter-Killer Drones: I'd like to see these only directly target players that have done the most damage to the grid. A good way to measure damage is like this: Each player has a certain number of 'points', counted invisibly (no HUD showing points here). Kiling small fortesses adds one point, medium adds 2, large fortresses or flankers (the small things protecting convoys) add 5, convoys add 10, any of the smaller fortresses surrounding a zeta adds 20, and zetas themselves add 50. The 3 people with the most points (however, they must have a minimum of 50 for this to occur) will have their names in red both in their labels and in the zoomed-out map (but not in the chat logs) to warn less experienced players that staying near them could be dangerous. Every so-often, these guys and anyone near them will be attacked by hunter-killers. If a hunter-killer lands a killing blow on you, you lose 15 points. You lose all your points when you quit for more than 2 minutes (so that lagging out doesn't matter). This will act as a sort of difficulty curve for more experienced players, while adding some lore to it (your enemies figure out the biggest threats and try to target them specifically).

[Ood]

Things that need to be 'sped up' in my opinion include:

From Not yet:
Giant Fortresses (additionally hopefully structures that influence other structures).
List of buy offers

Half baked:
Superconvoy
building redo (incentive is currently lost)
Triggers on cooldown after death.

Things I don't really think need to go in the game right now:
Convoy floor routes (the line is enough)
zeta unaffected by buildings
disarm/para immunity (just give us more dynamic enemies)