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Shop/Customization Overhaul


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Poll: Customization Overhaul (20 member(s) have cast votes)

How would you change customization_

  1. Complete overhaul of shop to allow maximum customization (10 votes [50.00%])

    Percentage of vote: 50.00%

  2. Keep shop/class system, but add much more weapon options (10 votes [50.00%])

    Percentage of vote: 50.00%

  3. Change nothing (0 votes [0.00%])

    Percentage of vote: 0.00%

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#1 Immie

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Posted October 27 2012 - 10:37 PM

Check out this pre alpha footage of Hakwen's customization system. We had what looked like a much more customizable mech system, which seems to have been reduced and reduced, into what we have in beta, which is essentially a class system with almost nothing to customize but items/internals. Weapon changes are only unlocked at level 20, and are still extremely minimal, only allowing 1-2 options for the primary weapon... some classes (sharpshooter) don't get anything at all. My guess is that these changes have been to make it easier to turn a profit, but I'm sure you can imagine how a limited customization system would upset the fanbase of a mech shooter. So, in attempt to get the best of both worlds, I'm going to give a shot at a system which allows a large range of customization and is still feasible for monetization.


Split the mech shop into 2 sections:


Chassis Shop

Essentially the current mech shop, except you buy the mech at a reduced price, with no weapons
  • Chassis determines the weight class and special ability of the mech
  • Purchased chassis go into the "my mechs" section
  • Obviously, a chassis with no weapons won't appear to be selected after joining a server

Weapon Shop

Weapons purchased separately allow a greater range of customization, which equates to happier players... with the correct implementation, it shouldn't be abusable either
  • Primary/secondary weapons, items, and internal parts purchased here (give everything its own tab)
  • Puchased weapons go into a new section, "armory"
  • Viewing a mech in "my mechs" will display the mech and urge you to attach weapons from the armory where available
  • Installation cost: adding an item to a mech will cost a small fee (around 50 hawken points, to prevent players from only buying 1 chassis and swapping parts around constantly; reduce price of items so that a one-time purchase and install would cost the same as buying it normally
  • Items purchased with Meteor points come with a single-use free installation coupon
  • Maybe add a small fee for uninstallation too
All of the existing pre-built mechs should still be available at a slightly cheaper cost than buying the parts individually, and be included in the weekly free mech rotation




Problems/solutions

  • This means players can use any weapons with any special ability! That would be IMBA!
While I must admit there would be some problem causers here and there... for example, slug+sabot on infiltator, I feel like there would always be another viable combo in there, as long as the abilities were balanced thoughtfully. In the end, I think this would actually work in favor of the game, allowing a player to totally adapt their mech exactly to their play style. A sneaky sniper may like their cloak, but they won't be able to deal as much damage as one with cooling, or going up an armor level for a damage booster would allow them to trade more hits with other snipers.

  • Being able to take any combination of weapons would lead to everyone using a single, super-optimized build
I'm positive this wouldn't be as huge a deal as some would argue, due to the play styles thing I was just talking about, but I can definitely see certain combos seeing over-use and making gameplay stale. Vulcan + grenade launcher + coolant sounds like a nasty little combo... however, it should not reign supreme if it was correctly balanced. Say the cooling ability was limited to only A class mechs... a light with the vulcan, however strong when fired for a long period of time, would lose out in an HP-trading war, when facing a heavy, or medium+damage boost, if they also had a DPS based weapon. Similar precautions should be able to prevent any single, super-dominant loadout that took away from the variety of the game.





Agree_ Cool! Disagree_ Post why and I'll see if I can't rebuttal or change the system to make it work... I'm sure there's a loophole/flaw hiding in there somewhere...

Edited by Immie, November 02 2012 - 10:29 AM.

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#2 mechpilot9775

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Posted October 27 2012 - 11:20 PM

Everything you said is perfect.
100% agree.
I'm all for this.
:D  rock on
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#3 Juodvarnis

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Posted October 27 2012 - 11:27 PM

Is this a petition_ If yes, i'm signing it!
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*sigh*

#4 Th4nis

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Posted October 27 2012 - 11:51 PM

I've linked your post in mine about improvements. This is well said and something I'm looking forward to. Great job mate!

#5 Mezion

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Posted October 28 2012 - 12:01 AM

What is suggested abouve seems to fit nicely.

Purchace parts and then installation fee: Having to buy the same parts for each mech seems stupid to me.

Upload camo with an install fee: it would be a nice feature, especially for clans.

Changing weapons to chassis/ability: Not sure if it will work well, unless as you said it was restricted to certain weapons for certain mechs, due to balancing.

Being able to sell items: assumedly at a reduced amount.

Reduce price on base mech: or at least allow swapping parts

I just wanted to chirp in with with my experiance.

I jumped in without reading anything to see how intuitive it would be to me, with few preconceptions. Understanding the mechanics came very quickly. I saw there was a free mech, which then seemed to charge me when I activated it(_). I found the upgrade area and worked out there was two currency systems, but you could choose what to pay with.  Decked out my mechs, and did a little better in deathmatch. I assumed (wrongly) the hawken points would be what we would gain with experiance.

To my dismay I saw it was not. A few games saw me only gain 64 meteor points. A mech costs near 10,000, and six slots add on 9,000 (6x1,500), total around 18,000.

I'm now stuck with what feels like the crappiest mechs. Then as I have gained experience, it feels like it has balanced out a bit more, however monetry gains are still terrible compared to price. I found the 2x xp gain, but then didn't have enough money for the 2x meteor point gain - which can't be bought with meteor points. I've played for maybe 6-8 hours, and i'm up to 1000 - still 500 to go to add another item to my brawler that only has three.

I'll fully admit I wasted half my "cash". I just wish to point thing that average joes would do.

Edited by Mezion, October 28 2012 - 12:10 AM.


#6 Immie

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Posted October 28 2012 - 09:27 AM

You've got it a bit confused there; Hawken points are earned, Meteor points are purchased/start with 4800 of them in closed beta 1. It's kind of hard to stop people from making the wrong choices when purchasing stuff, and blowing all your hard earned/paid for cash on something you don't like is a real deal breaker for most people. Some kind of system to sell parts before a certain time frame, or a free offline test mode would be a good start to helping get past that.

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#7 R3TRI8UTI0N

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Posted October 29 2012 - 02:30 PM

This.
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#8 Timber_Wolf

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Posted October 29 2012 - 02:46 PM

Since customization, to me and I think a lot of others, is one of our favorite, if not most favorite, parts about mech games I like, 95% agree with your post.

View PostImmie, on October 27 2012 - 10:37 PM, said:

  • Installation cost: adding an item to the mech will cost a small fee (around 50 hawken points, to prevent players from only buying 1 chassis and swapping parts around constantly; reduce price of items so that a one-time purchase and install would cost the same as buying it normally
Personally, I think I'd prefer to have the system be to associate items with mechs.  I think most people would prefer to own several mechs instead of one.  If I understand your post correctly, you'd pay to change whatever you have equipped on specific mechs, right_  So if I wanted to change from an HE charge to a turret I would pay for it.  While it makes less logical sense, I'd prefer it to be required to pay 50 HP (or a little more) to move that turret from one mech's garage to another mech's garage, and sort of paying to have the item reconfigured to work on a different chassis.
That way, when we buy an item we own one of that item, and can move it around between mechs but still only own one of the item.

In regards to having every weapon be available to every chassis:  I'm still a little torn on the issue and can see both sides of the argument.  I think a small pool of weapons any mechs can use that are sort of "all purpose," like the SMG, or assault rifle, or mini-flak cannon, should be available for all mechs while other more specialized weapons, like the vulcan or slug rifle, should be for specific mechs that correspond to that mech's default playstyle.  Of course, I'm not sayign the vulcan/slug rifle/flak cannon should be better than the general pool by any means, just much more specialized in what they do and match the "feel" of the mech.

Lastly, I think there was a big thread about something like this before, where people were choosing mechs not based on abilities, but because of their weapons that were available, and I think that that's still true.  If chassis abilities are supposed to differentiate the classes, there needs to be better, more desirable, and different effects that also have visual/audio clues.  Flat damage increase for a time, dumping the heat of your weapons, or flat damage reduction don't show the enemy that you've done it and the abilities themselves are kind of boring.  The infiltrator's and the heavy's abilities (while not exactly great, imho) give the enemy cues what you've done and make the mechs feel really different.  If the chassis abilities were better or more unique, then having all the weapons available to every mech makes tons tons tons more sense.

Also, I remember seeing some youtube videos where classes didn't even seem to exist, just different classes of mechs.  I really hoped it would stay like that, honestly.

tldr; I would like better abilities on mechs before anything else so that mechs feel more different than just what they can equip.

Edited by Timber_Wolf, October 29 2012 - 03:00 PM.

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#9 Immie

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Posted October 30 2012 - 03:15 PM

The way I'm thinking it, all of your weapons/items would go to the same spot (call it something like "Item Storage"), and you'd pay small fees to be able to attach/detach them to different chassis... so if you had several different mechs, and but had a certain item you wanted on more than one of them, it would be most effective to just have multiple copies of the item, one attached to each.

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#10 Mezion

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Posted November 01 2012 - 02:54 AM

Dang it, lost my window and I'm sure I wont get this right second time around.

It strikes me the same as working with a car:
certain parts are more expensive than others, but are usually better
cetain parts fit certain [car]s
if you have several [car]s, you can exchange parts, provided they work with that model of [car]
Some parts can swap on site, others require a mechanic
it costs to have people work on your [car]

It would be neat if you could manage arms/legs/etc. that visually had something to do with what level points you spend, and therefore relate to your speed/power/etc. Possibly different  parts could be bought as you level up_

Edited by Mezion, November 01 2012 - 02:56 AM.


#11 WALSRU

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Posted November 01 2012 - 12:46 PM

I was so excited when I saw the first peek at the garage, but what we have now is just TF2 hats. Please give us (back) full swappability!!

#12 Subdivision

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Posted November 02 2012 - 04:42 AM

View PostImmie, on October 30 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

The way I'm thinking it, all of your weapons/items would go to the same spot (call it something like "Item Storage"),

You mean an armoury_

I like the idea for more customisation. The suggested method would require plenty of testing to ensure it would maintain balance. The game should also feature lengthy descriptions of each chassis and weapon for people to see what they are buying beforehand so they only have themselves to blame if they waste their money. Obviously, we wont get a load of free Meteor points on release of the game and will have to start cashing in! I largely agree with the OP provided its balanced out.

Another way to add additional customisation I believe would appease people and wouldn't necessarily require the changing of the current mech shop system would be for the optimisations tree to add parts and components to the mechs visually. This way as players level up and gain tech tree points adding say better side boosters gives you extra jets on your sides and so on. This could be done in tandem with either system (the original or newly suggested one)

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#13 Lord_Trent_Kellan

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Posted November 02 2012 - 09:27 AM

You should have made this a poll.  I think 'yes' would be the overwhelming response.

Generally speaking, yes, I definitely agree with this suggestion and quite want it.  While I relatively like the different mechs right now, I find them almost... confining.  Most first person shooters I've played have a much wider degree of variety there, let alone a mech game.  Hints of the Alpha's garage sound much prefered, particularly with your suggested balances.

#14 Immie

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Posted November 02 2012 - 10:19 AM

View PostSubdivision, on November 02 2012 - 04:42 AM, said:

You mean an armoury_
Hmm, yes, that would be the word I was looking for. :P Edited it in to the original post.


View PostLord_Trent_Kellan, on November 02 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

You should have made this a poll.
Sure!

Edited by Immie, November 02 2012 - 10:24 AM.

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#15 Frenotx

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Posted November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM

First off, let me say that this is the single most important issue
at the moment, in my opinion. When I initially saw that footage, I
thought that was the direction the developers were moving TO, not
moving AWAY FROM. I was enormously disappointed to see how limited the
customization system was in CB1.

   Now to the topic at hand: I agree with most of what you said, but
envision the ideal system to be slightly different. Here's what I have
in mind.

   Chassis shop: Chassis and abilities are tied together, not too
dissimilar from how things were in CB1. There is at least one chassis
available for each ability. For some abilities, like coolant, there
might be an "A" version, a "B" version, etc. For other abilities, like
stealth, there might only be an "A" version.

   Upon purchasing a chassis, you can then purchase weapons* for it.
Weapon availability will be decided by the weight class, not the
individual chassis. Some weapons may not be available to every class.
The Vulcan cannon for instance, might only be valid on B and C class
mechs. Maybe the hellfire missiles will only be valid on C class
mechs. The details on this are up for discussion, but the point is
that each CLASS will have a pool of valid weapons, some of which may
be shared with other classes, and some of which might be exclusive to
that class. This allows the developers to balance weapon strength
relative to mobility, and also further defines the differences between
the classes.

   One important detail: All valid weapons for the chassis in question
are available for purchase IMMEDIATELY, with absolutely not
correlation to levels. Tying weapon availability to levels is lame, as
it potentially forces people to grind with weapons they don't like,
just so they can get access to the weapons want to use / actually have
fun with.

   Once a weapon is purchased, it will be available for installation
on that mech. To install, just click on the slot that you want to put
the weapon in (bringing up a list of choices for that slot), then
click on the weapon you want to place there. Adding / changing weapons
costs some amount of Hawken points. For the sake of discussion, let's
say 300 per primary, and 600 per secondary. Switching weapons that are
already installed (swapping the primary / alt primary positions) is
free. Installing weapons into a blank slot (i.e. the first weapon to
ever be installed there) can be free, too. The exact values are not
terribly important. The point is to add a bit of a currency sink, and
encourage people to buy more chassis.

   On the topic of trial mechs: Trial mechs will be outfitted with a
secondary, two primaries, and a default item. They will grant
experience for their chassis, and award hawken points just as if you
were driving your own machine. In other words, trial mechs will
essentially be the same as they were in CB1.

   On the "people will all build whatever is decided to be the optimal
mech" subject- Given a lack of perfect balance / equality (which is
impossible to realistically achieve without sacrificing all variety),
there will exist an "optimal" configuration in any system. Even if you
remove all customization and only have pre-built mechs, people will
decide that mech X is "the best". Limiting customization freedom does
nothing to get rid of this "flavor of the month" problem. In fact,
giving people less choices only makes the effect more noticeable.
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#16 defekt

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Posted November 05 2012 - 08:20 AM

View PostImmie, on October 28 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

You've got it a bit confused there; Hawken points are earned, Meteor points are purchased/start with 4800 of them in closed beta 1. It's kind of hard to stop people from making the wrong choices when purchasing stuff, and blowing all your hard earned/paid for cash on something you don't like is a real deal breaker for most people. Some kind of system to sell parts before a certain time frame, or a free offline test mode would be a good start to helping get past that.
A cooldown period on any purchases, effectively.  Yes, that would be a neat function to have.  Wouldn't need to be long, say 24 hours for 100% of value buy-back if the item was never used.  Perhaps add in a 'used returns' clause whereby if a purchased item has been used the buy-back value falls away by 20 percentage points per game played.  For example...
- Buy a mech for 9000 today, never use it, sell it back for 100% of value tomorrow.
- Buy an Internals item, use it in three games, sell it back for 40% of value.
- Buy a new weapon, use it in five games, you're stuck with it.

#17 Timber_Wolf

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Posted November 07 2012 - 03:20 PM

View PostFrenotx, on November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:




   Chassis shop: Chassis and abilities are tied together, not too
dissimilar from how things were in CB1. There is at least one chassis
available for each ability. For some abilities, like coolant, there
might be an "A" version, a "B" version, etc. For other abilities, like
stealth, there might only be an "A" version.

Agreed, but I still say abilities should be diversified and made more interesting first

View PostFrenotx, on November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

   Upon purchasing a chassis, you can then purchase weapons* for it.
Weapon availability will be decided by the weight class, not the
individual chassis. Some weapons may not be available to every class.
The Vulcan cannon for instance, might only be valid on B and C class
mechs. Maybe the hellfire missiles will only be valid on C class
mechs. The details on this are up for discussion, but the point is
that each CLASS will have a pool of valid weapons, some of which may
be shared with other classes, and some of which might be exclusive to
that class. This allows the developers to balance weapon strength
relative to mobility, and also further defines the differences between
the classes.
I'm okay with this and it does prevent most game breaking combinations, probably.  I think most of us would agree that certain combinations on an infiltrator would be kind of ridiculous, yes_

View PostFrenotx, on November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

   One important detail: All valid weapons for the chassis in question
are available for purchase IMMEDIATELY, with absolutely not
correlation to levels. Tying weapon availability to levels is lame, as
it potentially forces people to grind with weapons they don't like,
just so they can get access to the weapons want to use / actually have
fun with.

1000% agree.

View PostFrenotx, on November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

   Once a weapon is purchased, it will be available for installation
on that mech. To install, just click on the slot that you want to put
the weapon in (bringing up a list of choices for that slot), then
click on the weapon you want to place there. Adding / changing weapons
costs some amount of Hawken points. For the sake of discussion, let's
say 300 per primary, and 600 per secondary. Switching weapons that are
already installed (swapping the primary / alt primary positions) is
free. Installing weapons into a blank slot (i.e. the first weapon to
ever be installed there) can be free, too. The exact values are not
terribly important. The point is to add a bit of a currency sink, and
encourage people to buy more chassis.

I still don't really like the idea of currency sinks in most games.  Especially with the rate we earn currency right now (subject to change), that seems a tad bit high.  And, if I own one chassis I really don't want to buy that chassis again if I want a slightly different loadout depending on the game mode/map.  I understand a cost for trading items between mechs, but I don't really see the point of having to pay for swapping weapons on the same one.

View PostFrenotx, on November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:


   On the topic of trial mechs: Trial mechs will be outfitted with a
secondary, two primaries, and a default item. They will grant
experience for their chassis, and award hawken points just as if you
were driving your own machine. In other words, trial mechs will
essentially be the same as they were in CB1.
sounds good

View PostFrenotx, on November 05 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:


   On the "people will all build whatever is decided to be the optimal
mech" subject- Given a lack of perfect balance / equality (which is
impossible to realistically achieve without sacrificing all variety),
there will exist an "optimal" configuration in any system. Even if you
remove all customization and only have pre-built mechs, people will
decide that mech X is "the best". Limiting customization freedom does
nothing to get rid of this "flavor of the month" problem. In fact,
giving people less choices only makes the effect more noticeable.
If mech weights determine what we can equip, that should help immensely.  With enough weapons, chassis, and options available it should be much less noticeable.  I know I mention BL:R a lot on here, but I think it does a really good job with its system in this regard.  The sheer availability of options makes finding optimal builds kind of hard.  They exist for certain weapons, especially the sniper rifles, but it's pretty hard to detect otherwise.
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#18 Frenotx

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Posted November 07 2012 - 06:04 PM

View PostTimber_Wolf, on November 07 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

Agreed, but I still say abilities should be diversified and made more interesting first

I agree that the abilities could use a good bit of work. I just mentioned the current abilities for the sake of an easy example.

View PostTimber_Wolf, on November 07 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

I'm okay with this and it does prevent most game breaking combinations, probably.  I think most of us would agree that certain combinations on an infiltrator would be kind of ridiculous, yes_

That's the idea. :)

View PostTimber_Wolf, on November 07 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

1000% agree.

The fact that they didn't already have things set up this way was very disconcerting, to me.

View PostTimber_Wolf, on November 07 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

I still don't really like the idea of currency sinks in most games.  Especially with the rate we earn currency right now (subject to change), that seems a tad bit high.  And, if I own one chassis I really don't want to buy that chassis again if I want a slightly different loadout depending on the game mode/map.  I understand a cost for trading items between mechs, but I don't really see the point of having to pay for swapping weapons on the same one.

The specific numbers I gave were just for the sake of discussion. I wouldn't expect those numbers to get used specifically, nor do I expect the current Hawken point gain rate to stay the same. As for currency sinks, while they are annoying, they're also essential to keeping people engaged in the long term. If you don't have stuff for people to continue buying, then everyone will just end up with giant reserves of currency, and at that point, there's no purpose in making stuff cost anything.

View PostTimber_Wolf, on November 07 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

If mech weights determine what we can equip, that should help immensely.  With enough weapons, chassis, and options available it should be much less noticeable.  I know I mention BL:R a lot on here, but I think it does a really good job with its system in this regard.  The sheer availability of options makes finding optimal builds kind of hard.  They exist for certain weapons, especially the sniper rifles, but it's pretty hard to detect otherwise.

Having things split into different weight classes also allows you to set up rock-paper-scissor scenarios, as needed. Perhaps the [MECH X] is really strong, and is easily the best A-class mech. Well then perhaps this C-class, which isn't necessarily the "best" C-class, has a really easy time taking out [MECH X]. I don't want things to become that simple, but you get the idea.
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#19 SEEKER1019

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Posted November 07 2012 - 11:33 PM

I was thinking that one way to implement the weapon and item restrictions on the different weight classes would be to base it off an equipment slot system, much like with the optional parts in the Armored Core 3 games or the computer chips in Chromehounds. Each of the different weight classes could have a specific number of equipment slots, the amount of which would determine what parts and how many could be equipped to the mech at one time (for instance a small amount for a lightweight, a large amount for a heavy, and somewhere in between for a middleweight).

Each part would require a certain amount of free slots (depending on traits like size or effectiveness) in order to be equipped, so more powerful weapons like hellfire missiles would occupy a greater number of spaces than a weaker weapon like a submachine gun. Same for items: a rocket turret would need more space than the HE grenade. This would allow players to equip whatever parts they choose so long as the total required equip space for the parts does not exceed the limit for that weight class.

I completely agree that there are certain weapon/item/chassis combinations that should not be allowed, but I don't think that the best solution would be to make certain parts completely unavailable to a specific weight class, as that seems to me like another example of not giving the player enough freedom when it comes to construction. Rather, I think the player should be given the option to equip whatever parts they want to whatever weight class they want, but if they choose to equip that one very powerful weapon to a mech from a weight class it wasn't designed for, it would require them to make cutbacks to their effectiveness in other areas.

Let's say that someone wants that infiltrator equipped with the sabot rifle. Fine, but if they choose to outfit their mech in such a way, they would need to make a decision on which of the mech's capabilities need to be lowered in order to accommodate the unusual weapon, For instance, do they downgrade their primary weapon to fit the sniper, or do they keep the more effective primary and instead remove an item or two_ Is it worth it to give the mech that long-range capability if it means leaving it so vulnerable during close-range engagements_ As long as the requirements for each weapon are balanced properly, this system of give and take would help prevent the creation of any one loadout that is superior in every way.

I think this would be a good way of allowing the player more freedom of customization while still keeping the overall gameplay balanced. Also I believe that this slot-based system would support the development team's goal of keeping the game accessible to newcomers, as it wouldn't be difficult to understand as long as the garage screen features adequate visualization of how much space each part requires and the total space occupied/remaining for each mech.

#20 Frenotx

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Posted November 08 2012 - 04:48 AM

I've always been a fan of resource-management-based customization. The weight system was something I really enjoyed about the mech warrior games. As stated, it allows for some really interesting balancing choices. Unfortunately, I have my doubts about the devs having enough time to actually implement a change this drastic.
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To pronounce my name correctly, just pretend the 't' isn't there. You can also think of it as "Freno - [sodacan opening sound]"




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