Feedback Friday 20th June 2008

Hello everyone! Welcome to my second Feedback Friday, which fortunately is not quite as long as my first! As you may know, we recently had a group of players visit Destination Games in Austin to show them what we’re working on and get their feedback. We got to spend the day with them showing them the studio, eating delicious Texas BBQ, posing for pictures, demo’ing upcoming content in D10, explaining our development pipeline, and discussing the game in general. 

Everyone had very insightful feedback to give about TR and what we should be working on. I was impressed by their knowledge of the game and their absolute passion for game systems. During dinner, Richard (General British) hung up two large sheets of paper on the wall, one labelled “What would you add?” and the other “What would you change?” At the end of the night we were left with:

What would you change?

• Aggro System
• Crafting does not compete for skill points
• Crafting things other than consumables + mods
• More level appropriate ammo schematic drops, weapons, armour, etc, less paint
• Donald Rumsfeld CP Commander (AFS) <- Explained later
• TSR Base Damage +25 - 40% in PVE so 1 shot kills on trash happen
• Restore reflections to linker bosses
• Hack Skill - increase base Range (maybe adjust hack time to distance)
• Look at allowing abilities to use different logos at different pumps (e.g. Lighting 1 = power, lightning 3 = power and something else, etc)
• Logos users are underpowered and not compelling to play
• CPs should influence the region around them, beyond the occasional patrol
• Swap Launchers with propellant guns
• Lava hurts (runaway cascade damage)
• Engineer Turrets, rifle-like Rate of Fire, not chaingun-like
• Fire support 1/3: 50% phys, 50% sonic; 2/4: 50% elec., 50% EMP
• Tactical evasion 5: Toggle

• Sidekick/Exemplar (ref: another NCsoft MMO “City of Heroes")
• Link loot in chat
• Team leader can select team mission objective
• Map thumbtack
• Report spammer -> auto ban account with enough hits
• Ability to get coordinates of a target
• Logos user items/class/armour
• Repeatable endgame
• Making a noticeable difference in the war
• Red circle on minimap indicating aggro range (gets smaller with stealth armour)
• Walking or standing still should reduce aggro range for all classes
• Demo charges destroy turrets and force fields

  These sheets of paper were conveniently located right next to my table (Thanks Richard! ) so each person had a chance to chat about these items at length. So I thought this would be a good chance to close the feedback loop and specifically address some of these issues. I’d love to do all of them but that would be the most epic Feedback Friday of all time. So I’ll just talk about a few of them.

The new aggro system was put into place to get rid of non-responsive creatures.  There is something strange about shooting a Thrax right in the face but his buddy next to him just stands there as if nothing is happening. There is also something strange about that Thrax running at you, through a group of his friends, screaming that he’s being shot in the face, and not one of his friends joins to help. Our changes to fix both these cases had unintended consequences in some areas such as Control Points, i.e. it spawned a giant spike in difficulty.  We also know that the changes affected some classes more than others and may have caused some to change their play style. With the bring-a-friend code and more responsive creatures we were forced to do a balance check with the game, and many abilities had to be altered.  This caused some growing pains for both the players and us. We’ve reduced the initial hit drastically and are constantly tweaking these systems further based on your feedback.

2- Crafting does not compete for skill points, Crafting things other than consumables + mods

We’re currently prototyping a new crafting system, one that matches the play style of TR more closely.  It needs to be complex enough to provide the level of player customization that I’ve been advocating, but not so complex that it scares players away from the system entirely. Part of this prototype is the idea of removing the crafting skills altogether so you don’t have to make a crafting alt. We have toyed around with the idea of crafting logos abilities, or using logos abilities in the crafting process.  Now for the disclaimers - this is all just in the prototype phase and is bound to change through testing and iteration, so don’t hold these words as definite plans. But I thought it was important to mention that we have been actively exploring crafting.

3- Logos users are underpowered and not compelling to play.

Our goal was always to make the combination of logos abilities and weapons the strongest.  Solely using one or the other would not be wise.  However, we’ve recently made changes to improve upon Logos users by adding the functionality to cast while running, and removing timers from several abilities, and increasing duration.  We will continue to make more changes in this direction based on your feedback as well. There may also be things that further augment logos powers like specific armour sets, but I don’t see making logos-only characters viable in the near future.

4- Donald Rumsfeld CP Commander

Just an explanation of what this is since I imagine many people are like “???”. Essentially, our plan is to swap out all NPCs meshes with new meshes of the likeness of Donald Rumsfeld *JK* Basically the AFS are never equipped for success at things like control points. The NPCs that are there are ill-equipped and are basically standing around as the Bane send wave after wave of assaulting squads. The NPCs should be more responsive and take appropriate action. That’s definitely true in some cases and just means that more players have to step up and defend those weakling NPCs!

5- Link Loot in Chat

This is actually a current story in our backlog (which is a large repository of all the work we are planning to do on the project). It is lower priority than a number of other tasks, but it has been discussed by the team. I think it would be great to be able to easily show off your epic loot. And honestly we need more epic loot to show off - and we’re working on that as well. You’ll see some cool new high level shotguns in D10, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

6- Repeatable endgame

As I mentioned in my last FF, endgame can take lots of forms. Whether it’s searching for ultra-rare loot, engaging in PvP battles, or playing brand new Operations, endgame can really be anything that keeps you in the game after you’ve reached the cap or are close to it. It also gives you a stronger reason for reaching the end. Recently we’ve been prototyping different forms of this endgame. Some things like cool loot will take the form of item sets and epic equipment that are being released to players on a continuous basis starting in D10. You’ve also likely seen the PvP Wargame map on PTS. This is really the start of a larger effort. It’s still in the prototype phase but we’re exploring different map styles and objectives to see what is the most fun. I see that style of map having the most mileage for endgame and we’ll continue to explore all similar possibilities. It really gives additional meaning to how you build your character and importance to the equipment you wear.

So hopefully that gives some insight into how we’re addressing some of the concerns brought up during the War College. As I always mention, player feedback factors heavily into our development plans, so if you have suggestions and comments, please share! We’re listening!

Tom Potter
Lead Designer