Phades
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Posted - 2005.06.02 23:30:00 -
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The problem lies within the travel system, not the instant bookmarks. Creating a system where time played is lost in transition, where the player has no control or interaction with his environment or other players is the problem. This problem lies within the system->system gate system and the point->point warp system and is emphasized with the bookmarks.
To be honest, designing a travel system revolving around the dead space complex idea would put far more player interaction in navigating and fighting. Allow for the complexes to have large entrance and exit areas, rather than points and all the real space within them to be play area to be explored and flown within. Then make the entrance into the complex areas the points of immunity as all players are forced into them at short ranges, opposed the distance traveled to be the point of immunity (or near immunity as you described it). Giving the players choice in how to fly, rather than forcing them what points to fly through, is a far better way to allow for the choice between speed or safety. It would also allow for more varied setups and balancing as the need for denial devices to work primarily at short range would be largely removed. Let your dev team actually use the huge game space available in the creation of these areas, in order to give every system a large feel to it, opposed to the 2.5-15km and sometimes 15-100km feel to it. Doing this would allow you to make the ships faster giving more distinction between the classes, before speed modules, but still fast enough to not make the travel time overly tedious. This could also lead to more specialized ships instead of all generalist ship bonuses and setups. A change like this is counter-intuitive towards the idea of the jump drive for XL ships, but it could be reworked into the current warp to gang member option style of module. This would make the jump drive useful on even large and medium ships to traverse the space in shorter time, if smaller ships are used. Everything from stations to asteroid belts could be inserted within these areas, allowing for normal function, or they can be merely exit destinations from the complex area. The complex areas could also exit into other systems, allowing for a more diverse play transitions, instead of warp->jump->warp while on autopilot or manually via instant bookmarks.
Forcing a system like this would cause the demise of autopilot most likely. It could also cause a misuse of alts at the transition points between complex areas, but could be remedied (to an extent) with a forced jump into the complex following a timeout. Of course alts and second accounts are able to do similar functions currently. It is ultimately a question of style, but the team can continue with the jump-> jump system implementing a growing number of band-aids to fix it, involving everything from the actual travel to the way players choose to fight with ship, weapon, and module combinations. The complex system would put more emphasis on the transversal system already in place and would put positioning higher in the strategy department than it currently is.
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