First off, I love that so much of the development and changes lately have been about refining existing elements to the game: Engineering was made a lot less grindy and random in 3.0, Crime & Punishment (while still far from perfect and needing some further refinement) has helped change the user experience, and the proposed PowerPlay changes indicate that every part of the game is still being looked at.
My next hope? CQC.
I'd love to see CQC get some game design attention and development time. Here are my proposed changes, many of which are echoing what others have called for:
1) Allow in-game queueing. Add this to the contacts screen, so you could set yourself as "available" for a period of time - perhaps 20 minutes? - where, if a match opened up, you'd be invited in. You could decline, and the game would have at least a 20 second countdown timer before starting, which would allow you time to get out of a dangerous situation. That is, you can't jump into CQC if the game wouldn't let you log out normally. Also, allow what mode they want to queue for, with multiple selections allowed. That is, I want to queue for deathmatch and capture the flag, but not team deathmatch. If I'm offered a game but decline it, that queuing is turned off until I turn it back on.
2) Add bots to fill out games.
3) This is a big one: add at least two "loadouts" for people to play with their own ships. I propose the following: in one of the stations where a CQC arena exists (such as Chomsky Terminal in San Tu), have the option for a player to enter their ship into a CQC loadout. This would cost a percentage of the ship's value (perhaps 1%) and would have to be re-paid any time you wanted your re-entered your ship into CQC (but not if it was already there). If you always always want to have it available in CQC, leave it parked there. The cost only has to be paid once, and, per suggestion #1, you could queue into it from anywhere. Also, have a small selection of reasonably engineered ships available to choose from as well (perhaps unlocking them through some mission) such as a Viper Mk III,
Secondly, assign point values to ships. A hauler would be one point, a Federal Corvette would be 100, with multipurpose ships ended up lower on the scale due to lack of combat focus. Then, add points for the class and rating of the modules. e.g. a stock E-rated Vulture would have no points added on, while a fully A-rated Vulture would have the maximum points (which would still be fewer points than, for instance, the A-rated modules on an FdL). The same goes for optional and utility modules. Finally, points are added for engineering. Every grade level of engineering on any module is a point. e.g. grade 5 dirty drives is 5 points, grade 5 overcharged power plant is another 5 points, etc. These point totals are then used for balancing the scoring and rewards at the end of the match. For instance, if a fully engineered FdL defeats a stock Hauler, then the FdL pilot gets very, very few points. However, if that Hauler pilot defeats the FdL, they can considerably more points given the difficulty.
I understand that this would involve changing all the ships in CQC as their mechanics don't work the same in CQC as they do in the live game. I'm okay with this.
My next hope? CQC.
I'd love to see CQC get some game design attention and development time. Here are my proposed changes, many of which are echoing what others have called for:
1) Allow in-game queueing. Add this to the contacts screen, so you could set yourself as "available" for a period of time - perhaps 20 minutes? - where, if a match opened up, you'd be invited in. You could decline, and the game would have at least a 20 second countdown timer before starting, which would allow you time to get out of a dangerous situation. That is, you can't jump into CQC if the game wouldn't let you log out normally. Also, allow what mode they want to queue for, with multiple selections allowed. That is, I want to queue for deathmatch and capture the flag, but not team deathmatch. If I'm offered a game but decline it, that queuing is turned off until I turn it back on.
2) Add bots to fill out games.
3) This is a big one: add at least two "loadouts" for people to play with their own ships. I propose the following: in one of the stations where a CQC arena exists (such as Chomsky Terminal in San Tu), have the option for a player to enter their ship into a CQC loadout. This would cost a percentage of the ship's value (perhaps 1%) and would have to be re-paid any time you wanted your re-entered your ship into CQC (but not if it was already there). If you always always want to have it available in CQC, leave it parked there. The cost only has to be paid once, and, per suggestion #1, you could queue into it from anywhere. Also, have a small selection of reasonably engineered ships available to choose from as well (perhaps unlocking them through some mission) such as a Viper Mk III,
Secondly, assign point values to ships. A hauler would be one point, a Federal Corvette would be 100, with multipurpose ships ended up lower on the scale due to lack of combat focus. Then, add points for the class and rating of the modules. e.g. a stock E-rated Vulture would have no points added on, while a fully A-rated Vulture would have the maximum points (which would still be fewer points than, for instance, the A-rated modules on an FdL). The same goes for optional and utility modules. Finally, points are added for engineering. Every grade level of engineering on any module is a point. e.g. grade 5 dirty drives is 5 points, grade 5 overcharged power plant is another 5 points, etc. These point totals are then used for balancing the scoring and rewards at the end of the match. For instance, if a fully engineered FdL defeats a stock Hauler, then the FdL pilot gets very, very few points. However, if that Hauler pilot defeats the FdL, they can considerably more points given the difficulty.
I understand that this would involve changing all the ships in CQC as their mechanics don't work the same in CQC as they do in the live game. I'm okay with this.
