What Gaming Should Be

As an avid lifelong gamer, I try to describe what has worked well and poorly in games I've played, and in any given gaming scenario, to define how it could best be handled as a result.

Author: reillan

Relying too heavily on players giving ratings to other players could be a serious mistake.  You'll end up with a lot of cases of players playing the game with their friends, with the agreement that everyone always gives everyone else five stars.  If command of ships is given for high star ratings, this would end up being the only practical way to get it. 

First, I would never want to sit at my computer and listen to some other person tell me what to do in a game that I am playing.  I'd stop playing your game right there.  You have the right idea about filling our your crew but I think it should just be NPC driven instead of player roles on a ship.  There is too much of a disconnect from the player to the game to push an idea like that.  Now, if this was a VR game sure, I'd play an engineer or ensign.  Otherwise I have the feeling like I'd get to push a few buttons and then wait for someone else to do something.

I think I'd rather have an EVE type setup where there are logistic ships and I have my own ship doing the repairs then sitting on someone elses ship.  What I imagine happening is a game full of Mini games, people doing repairs, aiming weapons and whatnot with your idea. 

It does sound interesting, but you would have to make this game because otherwise, the current industry would definatly **** it up.

With both of your reference games, both had the problem that you were not part of the ship like you write.  Eve stinks in the fashion that your only clicking your ship around, PoTBS was nice because you used the keyboard to move around.  Now a system where you clicked for movment while going to another system and one where you took manual control for fighting would be super. 

You have some nice starts but you need to refine your ideas, like Quizzical said, players will take advantage of any system even if it destroys the gameplay just to be the best.

You might be able to do it more like how Puzzle Pirates does, with players able to pick their role on a ship from a few available.  The captain can order players to go do something, but can't force them to; his recourse is to kick them off his ship.

Puzzle Pirates does rate players on how they do, but the ratings are automatic, and not chosen by players.  Someone who gets an Incredible at a puzzle is doing a really excellent job, not just being on his friend's ship.  Someone who has gotten enough of them in the past to rate an Ultimate has to be genuinely good at the puzzle.

Sorry dude but there will be to much drama associated with many people running ships. IE gunners who hate the pilots and pilots who hate the gunners. This was available in Planetside btw. It worked because you had total freedom to go pilot your own ship or do whatever you liked.

The problem is limited views in space..and the fact that space is really big! A gunner in PS was going to see action eventually, and had landscapes to watch scroll by.

Who wants to make a 1 hour freighter run looking out the side of a ship and seeing nothing but utter blackness? What's you're engineer going to do when the engine isn't blown?

The idea for a "community" type of play is a great idea but I think it could be solved if you just mixxed EvE's great economy/PvE with JGE's flying ability. If you want unity give the captain the ability to call ships into a formation. The squad hits a button and their ship auto pilots into a position from which they can break at any time.

I have had similar ideas and think they are all fairly good, well not the rating system but the multi-player capitol ships are a great idea.

To the person that said they would never take orders from someone else, you have never raided before? How is raiding, where you take orders from the leader, any different then a captain on a ship giving you orders? Either way, it the option of being crew on a capitol ship or being the pilot of your own single seat fighter is there, I think it is a great idea.

I raided a few times.  I also stopped raiding too.  Listening to one person tell me how to swing my sword or where to stand grew old quick.  It's not my fault idiot programmers make raiding such of a borefest to allow this type of gameplay. 

The difference is when you have a game that you need  a leader to say, hey take out the drones a and b, and then come back and fight.  Not , take out a with this spell, this ability the go take out b with this spell and ability then come back and fight the boss in the way standing with 1 foot in the air too.

I can do without that and have done without that for a long time now. 

There are roles, and there are jobs.  I know which kind of games I play, do you?

It's an interesting start, but there are tons of problems to be ironed out.  First problem it's a group/raid heavy game, with little to no layed back solo time (like fishing in most MMOs).  Second, it's too reliant on RP.  Third what keeps space exciting?  Slow travel = more possibilties to be attacked, but makes it boring if nothing happens.  On that note what does a gunner do when nothing is attacking or anyone else for that matter?

Not to say it cannot work, but IMO people need solo-able tasks and a way to jump into the action quickly.  So how do we do that?  Every ship should be manned by droids (NPCs), they can do everything just not as quickly or well as a PC.  Here's the difference, PCs link up taking over for the AI.  A captain would set nav points, NPCs would follow it, then his task would be to line up PCs for when things go wrong.  This eliminates most of the sitting around doing nothing, as space stations would always have work or at least simulators to improve player skills on.

If ships are really expensive and hard to get, then what happens at launch when no one has a ship yet? 

Uh... You know this game already exists right?

Nice try advertising for it....

Uh...you know it doesn't, right?  EVE you just fly the ship around.  Yeah, they'll allow your avatar to walk around the space station soon, but it's still not the same thing.  PotBS is working on their avatars shoreside because of this disconnect.  What is this game that you speak of?

I could see a game like Firefly, where you are all part of a crew with different fields of expertise, having missions both in space and planetside.  You limit the size ship to, say, frigate or small merchant size, and are assigned a ship and crew for a certain mission, depending on what the ship needs.  It might not be a huge game, but I could see it being profitable.  If you wanted larger ships, you could form a guild, and, based on its size of ACTIVE players, the ship is upgraded/downgraded.

I outta know, I'm the Correspondent for it.

He had a almost exact description of StarQuest, even to the military faction.

Lol, sure does look like the same game and what he is writing.  I'd love to find a good review for that game.

Lol, ya, my review was kinda lame... SQO deserves better.  Expecially if people are blogging "Someday" and its already here, just goes to show my abilities to convey the game are lacking.

AlloughN - that's interesting, no I hadn't even heard of StarQuest.  Will have to check it out now.