Discussion

No portable repairs

I strongly disagree with any form of portable anything that repairs.

The more I think about this, the more completely unmanagable it becomes to have portable gantries, and the less desirable it becomes to have them. There is absolutely no benefit to them from a game balance standpoint, while there is a cubic buttload of drawbacks from a game balance standpoint.

In particular, at the end of a segment or episode, you need to be able to quit to your base of operations and resume from that point at a later time, potentially with different partners. The reason being, it's 10:30, its time for you to go home, do you want to lose all the progress, or have to wait for the same people you were doing the episode with to log on the next week?

We are not an offline game, we are not exclussively a solo game. Lets say you have limited supplies for portable repairs, then what happens when someone new joins the group? They could bring more supplies from town. The more I think about portable repairs, the more I don't see an effective way to implement them that would not be severely detrimental to game play.

Thats the same with a concept of a weapon or armor "wearing out" from use -- I have no problems with temporarily disabling an item until the player can get back to town and wrangle up some money to pay for a repair. That is frustrating to a player, but it only happens as a penalty if they screw up so it is OK for it to be frustrating. Its a penalty for failing.

But if the item wears out entirely, the most likely impact is that a player who has a rare item that wears out will complain about it, and annoy both other players and staff about it for an extended period of time. Thats not good for their renewal, and its not good for the other players' renewals, and so I believe we should (as much as it is possible for us to) avoid that scenario.

- dbacher

Ok..so the field repairs are out.... (though I wont rule out putting a gantry in a large dropship or a mobile base just yet.....then again, those ships by themselves would cost a ton in the first place.. or several guy's souls... j/k))

thing is, what about those who get their suits destroyed in the field? should we have some mechanism to deal with that eventuality? (such as the airlift method used in Auto Assault - they would get ported or something to the nearest friendly repair station....).

-Eiji

Basically, when you look at typical computer RPG's, there are three variables in a combat. Some games (EQ, for example) make these systems needlessly complicated, often so complicated that it isn't possible to tell what's going on. Other games (PSO/PSU for example) use very simple systems. The fact is, it doesn't matter how complicated you make things, a battle ends up with only three variables.

The first variable is "total effective hitpoints." For example, a "tank" class typically has a large hitpoint pool, say 10k hitpoints at maximum level (sometimes more). The Mobiles hit them, and as that happens, their HP is reduced. Certain other classes provide hitpoint regeneration, effectively increasing the tank's effective hitpoints.

The second variable is "damage per second dealt." For example, a "nuker" class typically deals large amounts of damage to the mobile, usually at the cost of some resource (mana). The goal is to make the monster run out of hitpoints before your tank's total effective hitpoints run out.

The third variable is "time spent." Usually, some resource (mana) is used to restrict how long you can reasonably continue to deal or take damage. Once that finite resource is exhausted, you typically would expect to lose the particular fight.

Now, my thought is it is a lot easier to balance "total effective hitpoints" when that is a more or less stable number. That is, if you have healing or repairing facilities in a Segment or Episode, it inherently becomes more difficult to manage that "total effective hitpoints" number, from a developer standpoint. It makes certain combinations of classes so much more effective, that those classes become a requirement. For example, an EQ party would never set off without a priest class, because they wouldn't live.

Meanwhile, you have to manage those other two features for healers, and so you end up with extremely specialized classes/character concepts, and the end result is that you have to have the "ideal" or "magic" group in order to do anything. This results in a large number of people LFG, and other people -- who happen not to be the correct classes -- never finding groups. It also results in five or six groups looking for the same character type, and being unable to play without it. I dislike that immensely.

Keeping with the Segment and Episode style of play, and traditional RPG's, healing and repair should be a rarity. In pen and paper D&D, you had to be careful with your healing spells. You could only cast so many a day -- I like this about D&D Online as well, the same pattern, you must manage your power until you get to a point where the DM allows you to camp overnight.

If you look at a Battletech or Mechwarrior campaign, the way it typically played, you started with supplies. You did a mission, took damage, and then you made a decision how to use those supplies to refit and refuel. Supplies were delivered to the campaign at intervals, not after every mission, and so you attempted to salvage as many supplies as possible. I think that design -- a segment of gameplay, followed by a segment of repair, drawing from limited supplies in the segment, episode and series is ideal. It means you have to manage things to keep a high rating.

From a design standpoint, I think that is where we should be focused.

-Dave