33 replies to this topic

[AndY]

Sabre, on 24 February 2012 - 09:27 PM, said:

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about alt fire. I assumed that the role would changing a normal smg into smg with medic syringe or smg with force feild?

Something like that, yes.

Role-specific alt-fire might not work too well since players will be able to choose their own primary weapon from a wide variety (and I'm not sure how much sense it'd make to attach an alt-fire to a rocket launcher or sniper), so giving the player one additional role-specific weapon or tool might be what we go for instead.

[Sabre]

AndY, on 24 February 2012 - 09:47 PM, said:

Something like that, yes.

Role-specific alt-fire might not work too well since players will be able to choose their own primary weapon from a wide variety (and I'm not sure how much sense it'd make to attach an alt-fire to a rocket launcher or sniper), so giving the player one additional role-specific weapon or tool might be what we go for instead.

Then why does the function have to change each weapon? Can't a medic dart be on a shotgun and smg? From how it said in the post, I was picturing somekind of generic holder on the weapon you could slide anything in, like how a M16 have have a shotgun or grenade launcher in the same place. I assumed you meant that when you picked up a role, you'd slot the medic dart instead of the grenade launcher, and all guns had the same slot on them somewhere? Kind of like in Call of Duty you can put the red dot or acog on to any weapon. It just goes into the slot where the scopes go. I think I understood it wrong.

If primary is out of the question, what about sidearms? Let's say pistol in one hand, medic despencer in the other?

[AndY]

Sabre, on 24 February 2012 - 10:19 PM, said:

I assumed you meant that when you picked up a role, you'd slot the medic dart instead of the grenade launcher, and all guns had the same slot on them somewhere? Kind of like in Call of Duty you can put the red dot or acog on to any weapon.

Yes but like I mentioned, it might not work/make sense on some weapons (like a rocket launcher or sniper) or unconventional weapons like alien tech, etc.. It just needs more thought.

[A1win]

Sabre, on 24 February 2012 - 10:19 PM, said:

If primary is out of the question, what about sidearms? Let's say pistol in one hand, medic despencer in the other?

Having the role-specific feature as an alt-fire attachment to a weapon would be more elegant than having it in a separate weapon slot. Having it on the sidearm (or as a separate item in the other hand like you suggested) might work better than having it on the primary weapon, so we'll keep that in mind! But as Andy said, the primary weapons might vary so much that the attachments just wouldn't fit for all of them, and would limit weapon design by a lot.

My biggest concern of what should be avoided is to give the players an additional button (the weapon slot) that they must activate while they have a role, because it would be a lot easier to forget about it in that case than if it was tied to something you'd be using anyway.

There's also the option of replacing your usual sidearm with a role-specific sidearm. For example, instead of having a pistol, you'd get the syringe gun as the medic. This would make the roles a bit more of a choice than a strict improvement to having no role, while at the same time preserving your primary weapon. How does this sound?

[WAXT]

A1win, on 24 February 2012 - 11:49 PM, said:

There's also the option of replacing your usual sidearm with a role-specific sidearm. For example, instead of having a pistol, you'd get the syringe gun as the medic. This would make the roles a bit more of a choice than a strict improvement to having no role, while at the same time preserving your primary weapon. How does this sound?

So basically, the GP would be holstering the pistol in favor of the syringe gun (thus making the pistol "unusable")?

[AndY]

A1win, on 24 February 2012 - 11:49 PM, said:

My biggest concern of what should be avoided is to give the players an additional button (the weapon slot) that they must activate while they have a role, because it would be a lot easier to forget about it in that case than if it was tied to something you'd be using anyway.

This is the main reason we wanted it to be an alt-fire to the primary. We noticed in OW that players would easily forget that they had a shield/medpack, so having it as an alt-fire to your primary would make it more obvious. Players would likely also use it more if they didn't have to constantly switch weapons.

[A1win]

WAXT, on 25 February 2012 - 12:09 AM, said:

So basically, the GP would be holstering the pistol in favor of the syringe gun (thus making the pistol "unusable")?

That was the thought, except that I now realized it wouldn't be a good idea after all. Players would still be able to use their sidearm by dropping the role item, and having to do so would be just silly.

P.S. On the other hand, adding a short delay of 3-5 seconds before a role item becomes active after picking it up would make it not so desirable to drop the item anymore just to gain access to your sidearm for a short period of time. There could be a progress bar on the HUD indicating that the role item is being equipped to make the player aware of the delay. But this is getting rather complicated, and having the role item as a sidearm would be too easy to forget compared to having it as alt-fire for the primary weapon.

[leiftiger]

Sabre, on 24 February 2012 - 07:05 PM, said:

3- Could the OP player have some kind of special unit that but turns off certain powers for a while? Something like a tazer that breaks disguises or perhaps enemy technicains that can turn stuff back on again?

Going a bit off-topic from the main discussion here, but thinking about what Sabre said. Will the OP(s) have any special role units? (Since I saw that A1win mentioned the health display of the units in another topic) It's rather pointless to know the units health unless you actually can do something to replenish their health. Having some kind of unit with an AoE style healing or perhaps going automatically to heal the units when close to them. Might also improve gameplay since you'd have to focus on taking out the healing unit primarily so you'd be able to kill the rest easily.

Edited by leiftiger, 25 February 2012 - 04:41 AM.

[AndY]

leiftiger, on 25 February 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

It's rather pointless to know the units health unless you actually can do something to replenish their health. Having some kind of unit with an AoE style healing or perhaps going automatically to heal the units when close to them. Might also improve gameplay since you'd have to focus on taking out the healing unit primarily so you'd be able to kill the rest easily.

As I mentioned before, I think it starts getting really complex for OPs when they have to worry about micromanaging. Deploying units and placing traps strategically should be their main concerns. We also have to keep in mind that while the game does combine elements from the RTS genre, it is primarily an FPS/TPS/Action/Co-op game (since players will be GPs 90% of the time).

However, your idea got me thinking. It's true that a unit's HP in OW didn't matter since they all pretty much died quickly anyway. But, we've been discussing introducing three types of units in IA!: light, medium, heavy (not counting mini-bosses), so HP will play a bigger role for medium/heavy units.

While roles and AoE abilities might be too much, how about an auto-recharge of HP for units that are low on health and moved away from the line of fire? So you could try attacking, get damaged, then fall back for a few minutes to recharge (a bit). This would allow you to use your units a bit more strategically and you could gain points at the end for not wasting too many resources.

It's 5am and I haven't slept yet so if I'm not making any sense, I'll try again after I've had some sleep.

[leiftiger]

AndY, on 25 February 2012 - 05:01 AM, said:

While roles and AoE abilities might be too much, how about an auto-recharge of HP for units that are low on health and moved away from the line of fire? So you could try attacking, get damaged, then fall back for a few minutes to recharge (a bit). This would allow you to use your units a bit more strategically and you could gain points at the end for not wasting too many resources.

It's 5am and I haven't slept yet so if I'm not making any sense, I'll try again after I've had some sleep.

That might work, or possibly having stationary health stations in the map that the OP could retreat against to heal units (maybe where they spawn, so they're not really reachable by GPs).

[AndY]

leiftiger, on 25 February 2012 - 07:56 AM, said:

That might work, or possibly having stationary health stations in the map that the OP could retreat against to heal units (maybe where they spawn, so they're not really reachable by GPs).

Unit spawning in IA! is going to be much, much more interesting than it was in OW (i.e. not in one place), but that's a discussion for another time.

[Ranma]

Quote

What would you guys think if role types were selected during warmup then randomly assigned to players when the round begins? You'd still have the option to drop the role item and give it to someone else if you don't want it.
Or, players could vote for a role during warmup and it would assign the roles based on who voted for them. For example, if players A, B and C voted for Medic and players D and E voted for Defender, then (at the start of the round) one randomly selected player from A-C would get the Medic role, and a randomly selected player from D-E would get the Defender role. Again, they'd still have the option to drop it.

With possibly every person fighting over a role I’m worried about at the possibility of ”that guy" who starts to hate the game because he feels that he never gets a role, even though he does. Maybe the game requires some sort of rule about that when it comes to voting for roles?

Edited by Ranma, 10 April 2012 - 09:22 AM.

[rickinator9]

The get the incompetent to stop using the role items, maybe RM could nerf the medic's and defenders guns. That way, they will shoot a lot less and actually spend time on their jobs.

I usually just pick those up accidentally or if nobody picks them up. I would like rather than walking over it, you need to press a button to get it. I also would like to have some sort of notifier as an indication that you have a role item.

And of course, a better way for the medic to see who's wounded.

Edited by rickinator9, 09 April 2012 - 06:21 AM.

[Ranma]

A suggestion for the alt-fire for the Medic? Talking about the medic role being like a totem, maybe that aura should be his only thing.


You said he'd shoot syringes that would boost speed and resistance? What if alt-fire switched the Medic's aura from slowly healing to boosting speed and resistance? That could be used tactically for specific situations, right?

AndY mentioned for the primary, an instant heal for all the units with a long cooldown? What if it was, say, a 10 second (depending on balance issues) upgrade to the Medic's aura to an instant full heal to anyone that walked inside, /as well as/ deliver a boost to speed and resistance?

Edited by Ranma, 10 April 2012 - 09:17 AM.