Re: Bloodbath, last minute suggestions
Alright, I really don't understand all this talk about aircraft being an invitation to cheat. If done right, they could be a novel adition we haven't seen before (redspots jets were never properly fleshed out and eventually retired). Any game system is only as foolproof as the dev patches it up to be. If you don't want aircraft to be used to get to a ridiculous height, make each craft have a ceiling they can't go past which is still in range of at least one lootable anti-aircraft gun or defense emplacement. Who says craft must have bombing abilities? Some could have them, but There might be different models and those which can bomb the ground are the hardest to get. A craft's primary purposs could be to quickly get from A to B (quick launch/land times and afterburners that give a short speed boost at the cost of fuel), to have dogfights (shorter range machineguns and avoidable missiles that don't go vertically), to recon an area (long range scanning ability that checks for items/structures/players on the ground and reports status +very quiet engines but low health), or to bomb structures (limited capacity to carry a supply of high-cost, high-damage ground bombs or missiles, slower than all other types of craft and slow fireing speeds that are raisable with passive skills to a cap). As others have suggested, have some anti-aircraft weapons added that do little damage to ground targets, but can shoot very high vertically and do good damage to a craft which can't take them out itself. Maybe even osme kind of EMP-device that would dissable craft nearby and cause them to crash (very limited availability, possibly a high-cost purchase from an in-game store). This would also encourage team play because players could work together in squadrons to neutralise ground defenses and destroy defensive fighters. Yes, I know, systems like these take a lot of coding. But do you know what is required to make your game stand out so no one can scream about clones? Yes, you guessed it, a lot of coding. If you want this to be successful in any way, at least for the comunity on ag.net which is tired of the same shit over and over, you're going to have to do a lot of work to get even those people to play who feel like audio games are up to their necks in fps games. Saying you don't want to code a system just because people might try to cheat it may suggest that you're not willing to think outside the box to imagine methods to counter this. If you had any other reasons for not doing this, then sure, as long as they're justified. Being afraid of cheating, however, is just another way to say "I'm too lazy to ballance those systems." This mentality won't get you anywhere. Not in life, but especially not when developing. I can't do much from here, I can certainly give you suggestions before release, and evne after release, and I want this game to be a success, so we finally have a new fps to play that gets updated (unlike rtr) and has a lot of staying power plus a dev that hopefully doesn't ragequit from all the drama (if it happens this time). Nevertheless, if this thing comes out and I feel like I'm playing just another tk with some different names but no true inovation from the standard formula, I won't be too nice to the game for too long. I might want this genre to make a comeback a lot, but I'm not that desperate, and most other players aren't either because there's a lot of cool stuff to play these days which has already proven itself. Be aware of all this before you release bloodbath. I get where most new devs are coming from when they rush a release. People want to be rewarded and receive recognition for any level of work they put into something, even if the work wasn't well-done. For games though, it would be better to wait, even if it feels like you're sitting on something great. Rushing a release does a lot more harm than good to the game's success and to your reputation as a developer and You'll get a greater reward in the end if you take the time to improve on what you have.
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