Miscellaneous Suggestions

[Snowsickle]

Starting a new thread for this since the last one is pretty long/mostly outdated. Essentially the same as the Recommendations thread.

Tutorial Specific:

I feel like a lot of new players are struggling with actual gameplay after coming out of the tutorial. Some suggestions for more indepth training:

• Throttle is a huge aspect of dogfighting/navigating tight spaces; perhaps add a short ring course that forces players to dethrottle to make the tight turns... this would probably require a tutorial restricted to a certain plane.
  
• Comment that team games revolve around the control of the 'big bomb' item, and that planes are typically very inferior to it.
  
• Perhaps individual combat training with each plane, maybe make these selectable subtutorials. Basically an explanation of the use of a weapon, and a setup situation where it can be used to get a kill. Dunno, this might require more advanced bot AI or just creative map design.
  
• Emphasis on teamplay aspect of TBD, working with teammates to escort the bomb. Again might require some advanced AI, but a simple 'escort a bomb carrier' tutorial minigame would definitely be cool.
  
• Simple tutorial on customizing planes/how the plane menu works. It's not completely intuitive and could be stepped through pretty easily with text bubbles.
  
• Afterburner use: a course with a time limit that forces you to use afterburner, but stop towards the end and kill an enemy to complete the course.
  
• Another idea for tight turning, have some health packs/rings in narrow passages or extremely close to terrain and have people try to collect all of them without dying.
  

I realize it's probably a bad idea to have a tutorial that seems to run on forever, so it would probably be pretty beneficial to make sub-tutorials for more advanced tactics. Either way, having the information and some decent practice for new players seems like it would definitely help.

Other:

The silver --> gold icon thing is really neat. I realize thats how the actual air force insignias work, but if willing to deviate from that a bit, a bronze --> silver thing might be neat. Its definitely going to be the easiest way to eyeball a players level/skill range (new/casual/vet type thing) after a while.

Walls still feel a bit weak compared to other items. This has been discussed quite a bit but, bouncier walls, more damaging walls, less bouncy walls, walls with a short emp component, all pretty viable suggestions.

Repost from other thread, Lamsbros suggestion: As the timer in a FFA game approaches say, 10 seconds, there should possibly be a moderately quiet beeping sound as it counts down, and the timer should possibly enlarge or blink or something to draw attention to it.

Assist counter on the score screen might not be a bad idea if it can be fit.

Mostly an idea for the longterm here but: Account-tied stat pages with cumulative numbers - kills, deaths, damage dealt, damage taken, base damage dealt, successful bombs dropped, unsuccessful bombs dropped...

Have an indicator that you've successfully voted, now that the box remains open. A checkmark next to your vote would probably suffice.

Probably a good idea to avoid plane balance suggestions for the time being since perks will probably shuffle everything up quite a bit.

EDIT: Keep getting ideas.

Some kind of leaderboard (possibly for the top 3 players in a game or so) that displays at the top of FFA games, much like the base health bars in team games. Reduce the amount of tab-spamming necessary to keep up with whats going on. Might be tough to implement without being too cluttered, but since the interface isn't final it might be worth playing with a little bit.

[Karl]

pretty good ideas, thanks snow

[argonide]

For multiple people playing on the same client, perhaps a "select" input with the recently used accounts?

[Karl]

im not sure what you mean argonide. we have been playing with the idea of saving altitude options in your windows user folder... would that solve the problem you're having? we were also playing with the idea of saving options based on windows user and altitude user (windows_user_folder/argonide_options.xml) that way when you log into altitude it loads options.xml specifically for your account.

[argonide]

that would do it. The (minor) problem with it now is that it requires me to logout and then type my account info whenever kingsbro(get it?) plays altitude on our shared computer.

[Snowsickle]

I completely understand why it was done, but missiles have never really felt quite the same since the delay was added. I'm kind of in favor of going back to point blank missile days; if walls get buffed slightly, I feel like wall/shield will almost always be preferable to missiles. Pretty much any serious dogfight takes place in very close quarters, making missiles fairly pointless for anything that isn't a semi-random offscreen kill.

EDIT: Just thought of somewhat of a compromise on this. Perhaps if the missile tracked from the getgo, but didn't have the ability to detonate until the delay was up. This would help in certain frustrating situations where its not really point blank, but the fact that the missile doesn't track right away causes it to just sail harmlessly by the target.

Display player level UI when tab is pressed. At the moment the only way to check level progress is to die, which is kind of annoying sometimes.

Using the arrow keys on the plane select screen should default to the 'choose configuration' boxes, instead of selecting 'edit plane' on the way. Seems the most intuitive - especially since a single left/right press changes planes, but it takes two up/down presses. Just seems kind of unnatural. I've accidentally ended up on the edit plane screen quite a few times when trying to select my plane without using the mouse.

Map Rotation Votes: I'm not sure if this is worth the time to code but it would be nice if you could do something like /vote mapCycle tbd or something, and the server would begin to cycle only tbd maps until a vote for "all" or "ffa" was called - also, a possibility to vote to have the map cycle a single map. Would add some more customizability for player based servers and eliminate some of the need to call a vote to change the map after every single game.

An additional argument for vote kick allowing a reason to be specified would be nice.

[Benjamin Spades]

so umm... can i have a cool gun? =)

[Snowsickle]

Resurrecting my thread to keep things organized.

Anyway, in another post on general (http://vapor.nimblygames.com/forums/...read.php?t=151) there's some talk of what to do with the drop on death feature if it's removed from TBD.

Just going to detail one version of CTF that I'd like to see here.

Basically, a neutral flag type powerup would reside in the center of the map, most likely with maps somewhat designed to have it in the middle of a few obstacles so it isn't easy to just fly through and keep going. Each team would control an invulnerable base on either side of the map, but would spawn on the OPPOSITE side of the map. To score, grab the neutral flag and land on your base. Essentially, you'd be spawning on one side, flying towards the flag, and continue flying onto your base. The opposite side spawning ensures that it isn't too easy to capture (defense will always be between you and your capture point) and that the flag will go back and forth fairly often.

Spawning may be kind of unintuitive, not sure. Seems like to make it a simple bomb map would be too similar to TBD, and landing with a powerup to score is kind of an interesting mechanic considering how vulnerable you are when you land.

[Blank]

post attempt #2... stupid IE

Anyway, your CTF suggestion touched on something I wanted to bring up. Landing: Does anyone do this anymore? It seems like repair drone has basically removed the necessity of it. It just seems like no one lands anymore unless they happen to get smacked up AND be like right near their base. I dunno, I always liked the mechanic behind it and it's so rarely used now....

I'm not sure where it rates as far as problems go (or if it's even considered a problem) but I thought I'd offer up a suggestion anyway: Bring back/make more powerups that require landing to take effect. Old school turret repair for starters. Could also make powerups for +team damage/HP/ammo, restore HP to base, 'upgrade' turrets, spawn an extra big bomb at base, etc.

If the powerups end up being considered too useful, you could either give them their own spawn point on a longish timer or require certain actions to spawn (IE, a triple multi, or 6x in a row, or spawn from a destroyed turret, or after hitting a big bomb).


Other random things I wanted to mention but always forget:

1- Make a "true" TBD mode. No bases (or at least, no big bombs), team with most kills win.

2- Bombers- I don't like that bomber weapons are now based on the way the ship is facing. It's already hard enough to hit with either bomb/nades. I dunno, maybe I need more time with it... it'd be nice to get some feedback from others who play the bomber more than I do. New directional based attacks: Good/Bad?

3- 2 flag CTF. Assuming you get the mechanics down, I think you could make Cave work with 2 flags just for testing purposes if nothing else. Have the flag under the base (where a powerup use to spawn in an older version of cave), lose the big bomb spawn, and lose the bottom middle turret... and go from there.

4- Afterburner perk kinda sucks :| Either needs more dramatic effect (does it even work with Miranda?) or some other bonus... maybe it doesn't fully drain energy? I dunno.

[PodBot]

as for the afterburner feature, putting it on a separate keybind and/or on its own power source, perhaps only a base landing in tbd games could recharge it. Right now its more anoying if anything, i always burn up 10-20% of my power bar accidently everytime i want to get to 100% fly speed, making a fire burst less powerfull, fair enough we are all at the same level. If it were on its own power source with more or less power, it would be fun to reserve it for when you really could show a great escape or something.

[Ferret]

Yea I rarely land, and it's usually because of a near miss from a nuke. Which, lately, has been really near because it's been blowing up next to me. After the current drop on death experiment is over and a decision is made on it, it might be time to think about expanding the radius on it. Just throwing this in here because when the base has only a sliver of health it shouldn't take too much to blow it up and it might encourage people to play more forward and not catch the bomb within an inch of the base if it'll still take some decent residual damage, like 5-10ish.

Anyway the repair drone feels too strong sometimes. At least it's kind of balanced in the way that's it's too strong, like a loopy will only get a small amount back but has time to run away forever and wait on that small amount, while an explodet gets more but couldn't evade the broadside of a barn, I guess? I still think that maybe it should take energy for it to heal you, maybe a button to toggle it? Perhaps you hit a key to trigger it, it gives you a short duration heal over time and you have to land to refill that ability? Or increasing the other green perks so that there's an equally attractive option. Maybe whatever you have in store for the two that aren't available yet will help, but it's kind of becoming the one perk to rule them all, one perk to find them, one perk to- what I'm saying here is that it's also evil.

Same thing happening with the blue perks, I never use the afterburner one compared to the energy.

A team kill count game could be fun, still agree on trying out a CTF mode and wherever it was that someone suggested the Halo "oddball" type with holding a power up.