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I'd like the extra information. What I suggested once was to have a new windows with comms' order.

like: The comm wants miner D, he open the order windows and create an order labeled "defend the miners". Then, people on the team could sign-up for miner D and anyone looking at this windows could see there's 2 person on miner D.


But I voted for something else and I'll post it here:
Could you fix The He3 dropping from F3 view and rocks disappearing without eyes? I heard rumor it would be fixed in R5 but see nothing about it. All the other suggestions are interesting, but this one would have the most impact in actual games(For the best).

I'll just throw out a plea for a general direction. I would love to see features that are geared towards player attraction & retention. I know you said that some of these features are boring to implement... but I think they are the most important. Removing firewall problems & various connection issues is a big one. A 5 min sweep of the helpline shows all kinds of connection related issues... something that most modern games don't have to deal with. The only reason I even bother mentioning it is because you are looking for a big project. This qualifies

As Orion said, the scalable UI would be amazing. Very few people voluntarily keep their games at 800x600, we only do it in Allegiance because other resolutions look so freakin terrible. I don't want to know how many new players we lose because of this... people are picky about stuff like this.

The next one isn't a biiiig project, but its effects will surely be welcomed. Server stability. I mean all of the servers we run. Lobby, game, whatever. Having a server crash is pretty frustrating... especially if it happens several times in a day/week.

We have an amazing game on our hands. However, it won't be awesome if we ever run out of players. Any method of keeping players around should take priority above the rest. While very neat, game replays won't keep people around. This is somewhat related to expectations. We should always make the effort to meet expectations before trying to beat them. All players expect server stability & a UI that works. If we continue failing to meet these expectations, nothing good will come from it

TB

Le Frog, nice to see you still kicking around Just a few thoughts:

You are spot-on, one BIG change like that will do a lot more to help the game than a multitude of minor stuff.

As for your options: Datamining and SA UI are better than Recording because the latter will really only help squad games - although it'd make them awesome, probably priority should be given to something that'd improve pickup games as well.

The remaining two both need very careful design. You know I'd been talking a lot about a "command & mission interface" back in the day but one needs to come up with a system that's simple, yet comprehensive enough to improve the game. Your goal, to help everyone know wtf everyone else is doing is great, but it'll be very difficult to accomplish.

Datamining for balancing purposes seems to me to be the best option with most effective chance of success (if you actually pull this off, I'll get back into core design ) , but again it's not immediately clear to me what kind of statistics you have in mind. Balancing is such an horrendously difficult act to get right (I know how many sleepless nights I went through to satisfy pretty much nobody) that a more formal method to it than:

*Observe issues
*Come up with an idea and feed it to the masses
*Listen to bitching and one million variations
*Pick one, implement, test briefly
*Throw it out there and see if it passes muster without much more bitching

...would obviously make Alleg a better game.

But what kind of stats do you think you can gather? Are you thinking "this missile has been fired X times, hit Y times, destroyed Z1 HP of type a hull, Z2 HP of type B hull...", "this ship has been deployed X times, has a win ratio of Y1 against ship Z1, Y2 against ship Z2" etc?

I think before you embark on this route, you may want to invite analysis of how it would be used. This may take a long time to go through, you may run out of patience by the time it's done.

(One idea that's even tougher to implement but maybe a lot easier to make use of is continuous runs of AI on AI games to arrive at a good balance. The downside is it'd need continuous tweaking as AI behavior diverges from human behavior with every new capability introduced to the game so it'd never be done.)

How about a Kage Autowhine™ feature. When Kage is off doing other things you activate this feature and a facsimile of kage whines on all chat the whole game long!

voted "I don't care"

I would like to see the features that have already been implemented go live...

Also as long as it is something another dev or myself are currently not working on (I'm not working on anything now, so you're safe there and I don't think any other devs are active either...)

Maybe go help with the new security client first (if you're not already)?

I dunno if this has been talked about, since I am about 2 months old in playing this game but how about points for nanning. Can't tell you how many times I will nan almost an entire game and have 50 points in a 1 hour game. 1\20th of a point for every point of damage repaired or something. Unsung hero or whatever, I don't like it when it looks like I did hardly anything.

Different countermeasures would be interesting. I wouldn't mind launching a smoke screen to hide prox or after going into an aleph just to dissorient. I wouldn't mind having a different one instead of just COUNTER1 or COUNTER2.

fuzzylunkin1 wrote:QUOTE (fuzzylunkin1 @ Sep 2 2009, 10:51 AM) Maybe go help with the new security client first (if you're not already)?

I'm mostly afk until 5/2010, sorry

Talonwisp wrote:QUOTE (Talonwisp @ Sep 2 2009, 12:45 PM) I dunno if this has been talked about, since I am about 2 months old in playing this game but how about points for nanning. Can't tell you how many times I will nan almost an entire game and have 50 points in a 1 hour game. 1\20th of a point for every point of damage repaired or something. Unsung hero or whatever, I don't like it when it looks like I did hardly anything.

Most people can point out who the nanners/scouts in a game are. I used to feel the same way as you, but people do notice.

Game Recording and Playback will also be really useful in teaching newer players how to play, it definately won't be just for the squads but on the other hand makes it so people can watch squad matches so people can actually spectate, can teach newbies what to do, I would gather this would be incredibly useful for Cadets, and also very useful for ACS and just the general community.

I don't know how powerful you can make it Kage (if you choose it that is), would a viewer be able to view from a flying camera and warp to different sectors in an instant? pause rewind? Slow-motion? I suppose all the details can be worked out and suggested once you actually choose a project.