A few ideas to improve gameplay

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A few ideas to improve gameplay

Postby mrnat444 » 24 March 2021, 01:11

One of the main issues in the game I feel currently is a lack of things to do. Once you get max upgrades, a command centre as respawn and a ton of matter containers (which might have already been placed by someone else), there's not really any incentive for anything. Aside from adding dungeons of the sort to explore/loot, I think expanding on and encouraging more PvP and competitive play could be just as interesting. Then again, it might simply be the low player count which makes the game functionally PvE, so idk. Listed below are a couple ideas I can think of to make the gameplay loop more engaging, and generally improve the game (hopefully).



*(this idea is an expansion on something Eric Gurt mentioned)
The ability to drop/store upgrades.
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While an upgrade is selected and has been upgraded at least once, pressing V could drop the specific upgrade as an item, storing the upgrade type and upgrade level in the item and removing said upgrade from the player. It can then be picked up or placed in storage like any weapon.

Ideally, this could not only allow respawned players to quickly equip upgrades from pre-filled storage (like "kits"), but could provide somewhat of an incentive to kill other players to acquire their upgrades.


More general cost/difficulty in getting upgrades, or less overall matter accessibility.
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Building on the last idea, this would be to increase the value of having upgrades and matter (and things in general), so that finding/looting upgrades (and weapons) is significant and you can't just rush all of them. Uncraftable, high matter cost, and additional resources/upgrades required are a few ideas which could accomplish this.


Bodies of players could function as storage.
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This would prevent a player's items from scattering on the ground unless/until their body is broken, preventing their items from despawning. Weapons, matter and upgrades could all be looted from a dead player.


Most weapons could not be immediately available to the player.
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Initially, the only placeable weapons might be the pistol, sword, build tool and perhaps defib. Unlocking the ability to craft other weapons could be done through placing/upgrading a command centre, finding weapons to unlock them (which would require near-all weapons to spawn in the world naturally), finding weapon blueprints, or simply through a high matter cost. There could also be a few more uncraftable guns that can be found in the environment.

This could further provide an incentive for PvP as there would be somewhat of a scarcity to most/some weapons.


*(I think Lazyrain or someone might have mentioned this idea earlier)
Placeable androids for base defense and exploration.
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There could be two versions/modes to these. First, they could function as characters and have AI like falkoks, patrolling an area (could have multiple AI modes) and attacking enemies and players not subscribed to the owner's node network. The second type/mode could be remotely controlled by the owner (sort of like casual mode in PB2) to explore areas without the player risking getting killed. Both of these androids/android modes could be equipped with weapons/upgrades like any player, allowing players to give custom weapon and upgrade loadouts to their androids as base defense or such.


More purpose to command centres.
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This could be something like using command centres to unlock upgrades/placeable items in all categories, so that items accessible in the build tool would not only be limited by matter cost, but also by whether or not players have unlocked them through a command centre (or perhaps also finding them?).


A couple ideas for why you might want to destroy other player's command centres

- players could acquire the unlocks other players have achieved by looting or destroying their command centre.

- command centres could hold research points required for unlocks, that players could acquire by looting or destroying other player's command centres.

- There could be a total world pool of unlock speed/capability that all command centres draw from (or something equivalent), meaning that destroying other players' command centres could allow your command centres to unlock more things or just research faster.

- Some rare items might be found only in dirt blocks or underground, requiring expanse of the map if all dirt has been destroyed.

- You gain something from building your base as large as possible, meaning that destroying other players' command centres allows your base to expand into theirs.


More improvements on communication nodes and node networks.
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When raiding a base or dealing with another player's turrets/structures, subscribing to their network in order to bypass everything should probably not be an option (unless maybe it is poorly set up by the other player). One way to solve this could be a subscribe request, so that only the earliest subscribed online player (aka the owner in most cases) or simply an already-subscribed player has to accept a subscribe request in order for a new player to join the network. Then the earliest subscribed online player would be only one allowed to kick players from the network (they could only kick players who subscribed after them).

Also, turrets could require matter which is supplied to them by communication nodes, which consume matter from matter sources (or other communication nodes) when their turrets are used. Turrets could also possibly have their own slow matter regeneration or the equivalent so they don't require a communication node/source of matter all the time.



Communication node expiration to create dungeons
Spoiler: Show More
Like command centres, a node network could expire if no one in the network joins the game for a period of time (which could take longer than command centres but it is assumed that both likely expire in such cases). When this happens, all players are kicked from the network, and the network instead becomes hostile to all players, and friendly to falkoks or some enemy type, with those enemies even spawning in the base.

The intent here is to dynamically transform abandoned player-made bases and areas into hostile dungeons for players to raid, saving some effort on dungeon generation since players would do it themselves if they become inactive. Command centres could possibly even be adapted to instead remove player control after 24 hours, but continue to prevent map expansion to further give player incentive for raiding (however without some countermeasure this could easily be exploited to make progression impossible, i.e. only command centres on the map).


Also an idea to counteract players enveloping the entire map and preventing new players from being able to progress, spawn areas could begin to expand into bases proportionally to how few dirt blocks and containers/crystals are accessible outside of base areas when their amount gets low. Also maybe some invulnerability for 30 seconds or something when you spawn.

I think it would be interesting if over time the gameplay loop transforms from mining for resources and building a base, to spawning into a base and fighting through enemies to find matter and items, and then back to mining as players naturally destoy things including command centres, all being player-driven. Also as mentioned earlier, encouraging players to build their bases as large as possible could support both this idea and the dungeon thing. In my opinion, the meta should be balanced around players who cause trouble, because gameplay stagnates without them.


give feedback ideas and stuff ok
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mrnat444
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Re: A few ideas to improve gameplay

Postby ZapruderFilm » 4 April 2021, 17:31

I like where you're thinking. Personally at the moment I am learning three.js, once I good understanding of how it all works, I'm going to move on and get a decent socket.io understanding. After that, I'm going to work on trying to make it so the game isn't only rendering a small part of the map for players to play on, and hopefully allow players to but distance between themselves and others.
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Left PB2 Staff to join Dark Clan.

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