Current Notes (2/10/2024)

Having a wonderful time. Maxed out my skin things. I've already gotten $20 worth of game and I haven't even paid for it yet. What I jotted down today:

• I play medium offensive in the middle… like a swiss army knife. I run back to base and help pest control, but I also flag-chase (with a disc and grenade launcher… other people can use chain for clean-up duty) or torment enemy base when I can. Please don't make me choose offensive versus defense and don't lock me into specific loadouts… that's stifling emergent gameplay. Find another way to get people to understand roles or let them happen naturally.
• As I get excited I keep hitting middle mouse button. People must think I'm a maniac pointing at everything.
• Make the middle-mouse pointer point a hold-for-visible laser pointer and left-click to indicate a point of interest. Of course be context sensitive "attack enemy turret!" "converge here!" "someone kill this guy!" and announce it to the team and create a little task for it and reward players (by name) by announcing to the team when they accomplish said tasks.
• Someone in our arena game somehow camped inside the spawn gazebo and wouldn't get out. Ruined that game. Also sometimes the flag gets weird and jittery and just hangs in mid-air till you shoot it? One time it got stuck on a statue.
• New Grenade: a sticky-targeting-sensor that has to be snuck over and placed on enemy assets or on enemies or base locations. It puts mortar/grenade launcher targets on your teams HUDs providing that your sensors are on. Forced teamwork ftw!
• Make all disc launchers, grenade launchers, chainguns the same and just change the number of things you can carry per weight class, but have heavier items add to your mass and give someone the choice to not fill a slot in order to have less mass. (1,2,3 or 2,3,4). Make everything available. Have defaults but let us be able to modify them to our own delights. Keep performance consistent .
• Heat-seeking rocket launcher that only can go after someone who has jets on otherwise shoots straight. That's classic. Chaff could be a counter-perk so you could keep jetting and not have to stop to dodge. A quick left-click could just launch it straight… or hold for locking and then release if you get one. (But if they stop jetting don't punish them, have it go blind and only go straight afterward. If sensors are on warn them re: lock otherwise don't even tell them it's coming.)
• The quickchat wheel could be divided by left side representing your team's assets and right side indicating the enemy's. Two opposing base pics (generic icons) with icons under for sensor, gen, turret and flag and obviously if you're clicking yours it's "repair our generator/sensor/etc" and if the enemies then it's "destroy the enemy turret/generator/etc" or if the flag is missing then it would be "return our flag" if the flag is there then it's "defend our flag" ~ there's an enemy in our base pic/alarm… Generic chat stuff not side-specific "Sorry!" "Whoops" "When will you learn?" can be menu items at top or bottom (or center) of the wheel.
• Please don't change people's mass willy nilly via perks; you're trying to get them to understand all this physics stuff but you're playing with the values without letting them know it's really happening? If you want a game-based reason to do this then have anyone within the range of the generator/base get fed an extra green charge for jetpack use. When gens are off the green charge goes away and you're on your own. You could also have a faint geodesic green dome be visible as gens start, but then fade out or a circle on the radar to indicate to people, hey, you're within the bubble when this far away and that green circle is gone when gens are down. Or just indicate if someone is inside a bubble on the HUD.
• People should be notified when they are within enemy sensor range when enemy sensors/gens are on. If these kind of things were more visible in our HUDs it might make it more threatening. But then again, we should have more situational awareness when gens/sensors are on. I shouldn't be surprised by someone behind me. I shouldn't have to guess if someone is above or below me. If sensors are gens are on I should know things ~ and feel nakedly unaware when they aren't there to comfort me anymore. All the augmented reality kind of stuff could be part of the gen/sensor network and VERY evident when missing. (Is a more isometric height-indicated map hard to do? Like in elite dangerous with your altitude represented by a vertical line above or below horizon level.)
• Why are there flag-based perks when there are non-flag modes? You aren't really world-building when you break your own conceits. (Here's looking at you disc inheritance ~ I've gone Joker and decided I'm 100% inheritance all directions like god intended it and if you aren't then you're cheating physics.)
• The blue field should turn off when the gen goes off. Then you can duck down and repair them or get the jump on the guy who did it.
• Does the lil' start ski-boost not work after going up a blue field elevator? Feels off. Gets me killed too.
• I used to get frustrated about bullets because I was a purist, but I got 30 kills last match with disc and grenade launcher ~ it's so mean! Loving it actually. Now if someone catches me out with a low health bar and no phase and they want to use their little bullety clean-up tools I just doff my hat and die, I guess I deserved it.
• Repair gun should drain enemy energy at first (and if turret, gen, sensor ~ pause it's performance while being leeched) and transfer it to the engineer. Could make it also serve as a weapon that drains enemy/asset energy and then damages health when there's no more to extract. A close-up finisher or a sneak up on a fatty surprise. Keep him on the ground.
• Repair guns should be a (visible) area of effect around a player, not just a forward-facing thing. Might make it easier and less embarrassingly intimate to repair a fellow player too. Might have to limit that ability to a chooseable item/pack… if it made an area of effect green geodesic dome while someone was repairing an asset then other people could go over and top up their health bars if nearby.
• What if nuggets sucked into people that got close and you didn't have to be so precise?
• If you B-out you should not leave a nugget. Why give the enemy a bonus on your way out?
• Phased players should be able to see each other (not shoot) in phase-world. That would might make for some cool Lord of the Rings moments.
• I notice when I let go of spacebar (ski) I skid a bit before stopping… this should be how we carve harder turns at the sacrifice of some speed, but I've been trying it and can't get it to work as nice as I'd like. Could be another easy-to-learn hard-to-master feature if tweaked?
• As a dedicated medium I'm finding it very difficult to beat a light with super good skill… like they can just hang in the air and I fire off a disc and 4 launched grenados and he's just dancing around up there no cares in the world. A heavy that can midair can take me down pretty good too if there's no cover. I notice the good ones wait behind a hill till I'm close and then jet up and if I don't nail that MA then he's got me when I go to ground. Even if I do hit him he can still get me before I'm airborn again. Some folks seem to just be able to run rings around me, dancing around while I fire off a load of misses. I'm not complaining or saying anything needs to be changed either. I just need to git gud.
• I don't think newbies know to use jets to dodge in air when you feel a shot coming on or to try and be somewhat unpredictable where you land as ground-pounds are the easiest to predict. Not sure how to tell them.
• Is it my imagination or is going down a slope faster than free-falling? Physics says no. Is there a game-explanation for this? Are we deploying little 'please midair me I'm just hovering here' fins? Because of this I think hitting S to slow down in air to hit a slope is better than just falling and hitting the flat at the base of said hill, but I would need to test. It feels cooler to hit the slope.
• Team damage is off, okay good ~ I remember griefers, but can I boost my bros with a mid air? Was protecting a capper and wanted to give him a lil' push. Maybe that's OP? It would make flag clearing crazy-town because a mortar would clear baddies, but push your friends too. Never mind, I just realized griefers would still get off on this. Don't feed them.
• Remember the Halo 3: Believe ad with the models? When the match ends it should freeze the match as everything is and pan the camera around the tilt-shifted game checking out various scenes with discs and everything else frozen in air. That'd be sweet.