Well, I have a couple of them and I will list them here.
First thing first… I love the game the way it is right now. Is just perfect for what I want now, I don’t care about the BPs, an antagonist fucking my game, playing with noobs, etc. I play a one or two times per day and if I lose, I lose, if I win, I win, no big deal for me.
But I understand that not everyone plays the way that I play and I have some ideas that I think that can improve the game so more people can enjoy it and the player base can grow.
Game Modes.- First, the solo mode has to return. I understand that the game is multiplayer, has PVP and that, and I don’t have any problem with that. But the option was there before and some players like it and were a heavy blow when the game become full online. And think about this, some people like to play alone, for training, just because they want to play alone, or feel insecure about playing multiplayer, whatever. You have a great game, with a lot of interesting options and great characters and lore. The offline mode will give these players a chance to get into the game, and more important, will make bigger the pool of potentials customers that will spend money in the game. In another way, this offline players can, in a point, begin to play multiplayer, since they like the game and want to have a bite of the other options, and, who knows, they can begin to play multiplayer all the time. The only thing that you do taking out the solo mode, is pushing away a group of players that can buy stuff in the future, or migrate to the multiplayer options in that future too. And no, the current solo mode isn’t good at all. I have the first three campaigns and I can access to the training mode, but a guy that begin to play the game, well, they can’t do it easily.
- And since you can play solo the mission… give the chance to play them with one or two more teammates, don’t make it a four-player mandatory thing. Maybe a guy wants to play with one mate, give him the chance. Like the solo mode, you are giving more options so you can have more players playing the game and making it grow.
- Let the current team continue being a team. After the match let the players chose if they want to continue in that squad or want to quit, so you don’t have to go to queue again, searching a new team. Just keep playing with the same teammates that chose to keep in the squad.
- PVP festa. Take one mission, anyone, and give extra rewards in this mission in antagonists matches. Make it last one week, two, a month. The idea is that have a more competitive environment for those that want it. Give extra rewards for all the participants, more for the winners. Make a ranking of that particular mission during the time that this mission is the chosen one. At the end of this time give rewards to the bests players, riders, and antagonists. And with this will come all the meta that a good PVP game needs, who character is better as the antagonist in this mission? how to counter X antagonist? what is the best combination of characters for this mission? etc, etc, etc…
Antagonist- Make it optional. I don’t have any problem with antagonists invading my mission, or losing against them. But is clearly that exist players that don’t like it. They want to grind, they want to win the mission, and maybe they want to spend money in the game. So, give them the option, those players will leave the game soon or later and is better for all of those players to keep playing. And maybe, in the future those players want to take in the antagonist mode, is a win-win scenario. But the thing would be, how make the players play against the antagonist? Well, my next point, a leaderboard.
Rankings- For the players that love to compete. This is a very good option, something that will make them play, and play hard to get in the rankings. You can have a lot of rankings to let the players show who is the real spacelord. Who is the best playing certain character, who is the best playing in teams, who is the best playing against antagonists, who killed more antagonist in a single match, who have the best antagonist kill rate, who killed more elites in a single match, etc, etc, etc… And you can have these rankings for the antagonist too, who killed more raiders, who have the best kill ratio, the best timing for destroying a mission, etc, etc, etc. These rankings can be reseted every couple of months, like seasons. And more important, these rankings can be only for the players that play with the antagonist mode on, if you want to get in the rankings, you need to face with the chance that an antagonist can invade your mission.
- Titles. Players like to earn something for their performance in the game. A couple of titles can do the trick, titles for the rankings and titles for other stuff that you can do while playing solo or without an antagonist is obvious that the more important will be the ones of the rankings, but give to everyone the chance of a title
- Rewards per season. Throw rewards for the tops of the rankings, unique skins, unique BPs, mercury points, whatever.
Social features- Friend List and chat. I can have my friend-list of steam, but since the game is cross-platform, make a friend list inside the game, so you can add people from other platform and know if they are playing the game and make a squad more easily. And the chance to chat with this guys, so you can organize your team before going into the missions. A chat in the missions is a double edge weapon, since you can have a lot of toxicity very quick, and more in this kind of game, so keep the chat just for friends in your friend list.
- Let the players evaluate their own squad mates after the end of the match. Give the option to have different options, good player, helpful player, etc. (no negative options, this can be toxic), and a report button (with a text box to write why we report them, or options to chose), so we can report those players that are a pain in the ass (like the ones that jump to their deads killing our lives).
Craft systemThis suggestion is a major change, but here we go.
- Reduce the needed gold, and add materials, the materials can be found in missions depending on the enemies (some materials appears when the enemies are umbra wardogs, other when the enemies are from the hades division). So, to craft a weapon you need some materials and the gold.
- Only one BP needed. When you found a BP you can craft that weapon all the times that you want. But you always will need to grind gold and materials. But not the BP.
- Weapon customization. Add bonus to the weapons with special items that can be put in slots on the weapon. Each weapon has a number of available slots for this items. These items can be found as rewards in the missions.
- I wasn’t aware of this because I didn’t get a single bp since the last update, but a friend got a rare weapon bp and he needs to spend 70k gold to make it, this is INSANE… reduce that, is impossible to make weapons, get characters, etc, with this numbers.
Rewards- Get rid of the timing for the rewards. Personally, I don’t really care, but I see the negativity in the fact that you don’t choose which bp will be, and you can even lose the match dropping the chances to get the bp very low. And then you have to wait a lot of hours, that pissed a lot of people here in the forum.
- Give some rewards for everyone, solo mode, without the antagonist, with the antagonist. If you play with the antagonist, the reward has to be bigger, going solo you can get materials and gold.
- At the end of the season give rewards for the tops in the rankings, like special BP, skins, or items with a bonus.
- Return to the specific bp dropping system in missions. Not knowing what we will get is a pain in the ass, so make a list of which bp drop in each mission, you can even change these lists every month or so.
- My idea for a loot system would be, in X mission you have 4 normal bp and 1 rare. When you end a match you have a chance to earn the bp or earn gold (give something even when you can’t get the bp). If you are lucky then you go to another random selection between the bp available in that mission (the rares will have less chance to come up). After the bp is decided, take down that bp for that player in the next random selection, so, keeping the same example, if I got a normal bp, next time will be 3 normal bp and 1 rare bp. With this, the players will have an idea of how much they need to grind and the safety that eventually they will have the bp, so they can be grinding that level until they get what they want.
- Let the player get bp for characters that they don’t have. Let me get a Doldren bp even if I don’t have Doldren. Maybe I never will use it, or maybe I will see the bp every day and one of those days I will say “fuck it, I will buy that character” or “I will grind for him”. Is a win-win scenario.
The missions and the factions.- Give special units for every faction. Right now the elite soldiers are quite the same, the one that became immune with aleph, the sniper that teleports and the commander that call the aerial strike. Examples about what I’m talking can be, a melee unit for the umbra wardogs, a big guy with a big hammer or something like that that will hit the pj and stun him for 1 or 2 seconds (the animation when the pj become injured), a flamethrower unit for the hades division, a shield unit, a guy that throws an item in the floor that renders an energy shield or metal shield, a stealth cyborg, that can walk like predator around the map, a unit that can throw a little turret in the field. The idea that the players have to adapt to every faction that they fight, and when there are two factions fighting, well, can be quite fun.
- New missions, but not the way that they are now. I love the idea of the campaign with a story, you have to keep that. But you can release some mission that isn’t related to any campaign and works for grind. Missions that can combine the aspect of the actual missions, even the same terrain. For example, you have to rescue an important person, like the mission of Shae, but without Kuzman, maybe fighting a generic boss or waves of soldiers until you break the lock where is detained this person (throwing aleph XD). Sabotage mission, like the first one of Hades Betrayal, overloading an item with aleph, then running away. Recovering an artifact, like the one of Schneider, but the idea is to recover the artifact before the enemies can download data from it. Rescuing prisoner, a combination of the one that you rescue the second protector and the one rescuing Lycus, you have to give the prisoner aleph, then they will go to a certain position where Cortez will get them, then you need to overload the engines of the ship and blow it. You can make a lot of random mission combining stuff that already exists. And to make them more varied, you can make the same mission, but with different factions as enemies, and then, with the special units, you can have a lot of replayability. And of course, you can earn material, gold and faction points from this missions too. To unlock this secondary missions you need to play the campaigns and finish their missions, so you can have access to this particular missions.
- Factions wars. I wrote about new secondary missions, well, you can attach this mission to factions, for example, a mission that you need to recover an artifact for the native faction, a mission to kill an agent for the umbra wardogs, a mission to sabotage for the hades division, so on. Then, if you succeed in this mission you will get extra points that will go to that particular faction, letting you earn titles for your development in that faction, and unlock special BPs of that faction that can be obtained through missions, simple rewards or gold.
Consumables- Make consumable items for the players to use. Like grenades, pulse grenades (to destroy the energy shields or stun enemies), energy shields (you drop the item and this render a shield), a lense to see the stealth units, a drug that makes you faster for a few seconds, and go on. Make the possibility to craft these items (you need the BPs).
- This all is to expand the experience and have opportunities to make money to maintain the game. You can sell the campaigns for the people that don’t want to grind levels, and wants the secondary missions that those campaigns offer. You can sell, I don’t know, materials, items with bonus, BP, multipliers of rewards (like the experience one, but applied to materials). The idea is that more people playing the game, more potential customers buying all the available stuff.
Characters- Character of the week. Put one character for free for a week, so you can play with it and see if you like it. I played a few games that did this and end buying or grinding for one particular character that I liked through this testings. You have more chances for a guy buying the characters if they taste it first.
- Remove the lvl requirement. You have very good characters, but hiding them behind a level requirement is not a good idea… What if I like Ginebra and want her right away? I don’t want to grind 36 levels, I just want to buy her right now, let me do it.
So there it is… is a lot, but is what I thought that could help to keep this game hot now and in the years to come.
And sorry for my english XD
