2 réponses à ce sujet

[MyDamnAlterEgo]

I. Game modes and missions.

 

ME 3 MP – being pretty interesting – IMO somewhat lacks diversity in terms of the game modes: wave survival mode (aka horde mode, exterminatus mode etc.) as the only one available is not that much, is it? I have nothing against its co-operative PvE nature, though – exactly this aspect is a very good finding, PvP one – yet again IMO – would be way less popular. What all my suggestions are all about – is adding some more pure military logic without going beyond the current model.

As for current wave defense mode itself – the only question about it is: damn, what on Earth 10 waves?! IFRL it would be 2 waves at the very most: if first wave (let’s call it “chutzpa run” or “thunder run”, a rapid attack with relatively weak forces) is somehow repelled – any normal commander will send each and every soldier and vehicle available to the second attack.

Hence – there’s no way to repel such an attack completely with 4 (6, 8) men (even such super-duper ones, as they are depicted in ME 3 MP). In most cases there’s no need in such heroic deeds either: it’s enough to hold until either your reinforcements arrive or some kind of air or orbital strike can be performed. Id est – only for certain amount of time.

So my first suggested mission type is – “Defense” with 2 subtypes:

1. hold the line until your reinforcements arrive or
2. plant some homing beacon, defend it until the air or orbital strike is ready, and run like hell (or break through the enemy) to the nearest safe place to enjoy the fire show
3. in both cases – there can be a final stage – a mopping-up operation to finish the remainders of the enemy forces;

Next mission type is – “Spearhead”, also with 2 subtypes:

1. “Capture” - your group’s task is to establish a foothold on the enemy base and defend it until your main force arrives;
2. “Destroy” - break into the enemy base with brute force or infiltrate by stealth, plant the big bomb or above mentioned homing beacon and get to the designated evacuation point to enjoy the fire show being aboard something fast and preferably armored. Slightly more complicated kind of such a mission – after establishing a foothold your team defends it until that big nasty bomb or homing beacon is delivered and set up.

Third mission type is – “Assassinate”, the name speaks for itself: break or sneak into the enemy base, find the person of interest and eliminate one (pretty much like in the Syndicate game of the very same 2012, as ME3). You should expect this person to be heavily guarded, as well as possible enemy attempts to evacuate your target (meaning limited time to fulfill the mission).

Fourth mission type could be “Snatch”: get into the enemy base (pretty often in more than one stage – pretty much like in the Brink or Syndicate, again), and:

1. copy, move or delete some data (defending your position in process, pretty much like current “hack” special mission);
2. capture some person of interest and interrogate one (no roughstuff, only “serum of truth”), defending your position in process;
3. capture some material asset and deliver it to the designated zone where you (and your enemy, of course) meet either dropship covered by some gunships or, for instance, more serious landing party of yours with some mechs, Macos or Hammerheads (pretty similar to current delivery special missions, just with some more saucy ending);
4. capture some person of interest (by injecting some drugs to one) and deliver one to the designated location (if anyone here had played Brink, it’s something similar – pretty much like the current drone escort, just with a good chance to lose your object merely killed by a stray (or well-placed intended) bullet, fragment or explosion)

Any of above mentioned scenarios can have additional complications like: enemy attempts to make a backup copy and erase the data, while you get through to it, tries to evacuate your person of interest or valuable asset before you capture one (which all means limited time to get to it) and, naturally, attempts to take your prey back or destroy it on your way back to the rally point.

Also, there should be some more options for deployment to the mission - both one of your team and one of your enemies:

1. deployment out of the object's line of sight, probably with Mako or other transportation means to reach it;
2. assault deployment - in the line of sight of the object, using the assault dropship (or shuttle with some heavy armament on board) with some gunships covering your landing and performing the initial suppression of the enemy defenses;
3. stealth deployment - using stealth dropship with powerful electronic warfare equipment on it;
4. air drop using the (already shown in the trailer) jetpacks or some other anti-gravity systems;
5. orbital drop in drop pods - right upon the enemies' ears;

On the other hand - no random spawning should occur during the missions (as it currently is in the ME3 MP, where enemies can appear in any moment right behind your back): real-life military objects have limited options for getting in there. If, for instance, you defend some your base – you know its entry points. If you are about to attack the enemy one – all the more so, you should know where end how you can get in.

The very same situation - with evacuation: there should be different types of it:

1. currently present uncovered evacuation with landing shuttle, just made a little bit more realistically - current 2 minutes to arrive are good, but "no need to get into shuttle, it's enough to be in some circle" is no good at all: there should be some limited time (I assume 30 s) to get into the shuttle under enemy fire with shuttle firing back (i.e. from the reverse side of the shuttle to avoid blocking its fire arc - pretty much like in some ME 3 SP mission with shooting the geth rocket troopers );
2. covered evacuation - shuttle or dropship is covered by, say, 2 gunships. All the rest is about the same;
3. stealth evacuation - by a kind of a stealth shuttle with powerful electronic warfare equipment. No need to load under enemy fire, but - way longer ETA and necessity to go beyond the enemy base;
4. land evacuation - in the rally point you (and your enemy) meet some Mako or Hammerhead with pretty serious rearguard party;
5. mid-air snatch - shuttle or dropship do not land, only hover for limited amount of time, and players must get aboard with their vertical mobility systems (aka jetpacks) or drawn aboard one by one with some kind of rope with homing grapple. Also can be covered or uncovered

Just like with dropping -  no randomly generated evac zones, only ones with clear military logic in selection.

In the nutshell – there should be in various (in many ways) shorter missions with ONE main objective (as it mostly is IFRL).

To be continued ....

[MyDamnAlterEgo]

 II. Enemies

The element I’m a tad concerned here is a general “quantity over quality” approach: hordes of enemies which you destroy and scores like 75 kills per single mission surely feed the players’ ego (and through this - publishers' and, to some extent, developers' bank accounts), but – are fairly insane from the military point of view.

Thus – I for one would like to see on the enemy side pretty similar classes with the very same abilities as we have: normal vanguards with Biotic Charge, snipers, which can sync-kill the player (especially ones with heavy sniper rifles like Widow or Javelin, not even having to score a headshot to kill a player), engineers with Incinerate, Cryo Blast or Shield Drain, infiltrators with Tactical Cloak plus Overload or Snap Freeze et cetera. Must accent – not hordes of such enemies, there should be way less of them, but – they should be ones of higher quality: the score of 10 - 12 kills per mission should be obtainable only for fairly good players.

For instance (in ME3 terms): the Cerberus Assault Troopers should be armed with Mattocks instead of Hornets (as it is shown in the most of cut scenes), and – damn, they look pretty well-armored (not having any armor in the game), so at least some light armor would be logical on them. Practically – they should be like Dragoons with Mattocks and grenades, but without that melee jump. Respectively Centurions – as higher rank – should use the Harriers already and have both shields and armor. And so damn on

Also - they should have some kind of military organization: for instance – 1 Centurion and 9 – 10 Assault Troopers should form a squad. Special troops like Combat Engineers, Adepts, Vanguards, Sentinels or Infiltrators – should be attached to the squads. 2 – 3 such reinforced squads plus Atlas or Ymir mech (from ME2) could form a kind of strike or guard force (as it is pretty well shown in the cut scene where Shepard meets the Jacob in ME3). Or - special and support classes could form smaller (4-5 men) task groups with their own kind of sergeant each. Just imagine fighting 5 normal Vanguards with Charge and, for instance, Lash or Nova. Or 5 Black Widow - armed Infiltrators with Tactical Cloak and, say, Snap Freeze or / and some kind of grenades. I'd say, it would be pretty thrilling. For mere justice sake - there were nice attempts to add some more prominent enemies to the game - for instance, Rampant mechs, "CAT 6" mercenaries and mirror matches on the Armax Arena, but - it all took place in SP.

[MyDamnAlterEgo]

III. Some concerns about the combat mechanic.

 

Shields, barriers and armor.

 

Should NOT be the “absolute protection until worn out” thing. Their level of protection must be limited – pretty much like the one of the armor is. For convenience sake I’d propose to express it like thickness of the armor plate which it matches in its protective properties: for instance, “the shield resistance is 12.7 mm (or 0.5 inch) ”

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Respectively, all weapons should, besides damage, have 2 stats for penetration - "armor penetration" and "shield penetration". Weapons with penetration higher, than shield resistance – pierce it and transfer their damage (though not entirely) to the further layers of protection (armor) or directly damage the health/system integrity. Weapons with penetration lower, than shield resistance - merely wear them out, as it is now. Situation with armor is a tad different - weapon with low penetration merely do not pierce it and don't do any damage

 

 

Some weapons – like energy (laser, plasma, particle beam) ones, melee weapons, technical and biotic abilities (except for respective explosions) – should bypass the kinetic shields: laser and particle beam weaponry merely do not have the projectiles, while plasma weapon “projectiles”, melee and technical / biotic abilities have way too low speed to trigger them.

 

All above mentioned things bypassing the kinetic shields (save the melee) could (I’d rather say – should) be caught by another type of shields – the energy ones. Naturally, these energy shields do not protect from any kind of mechanical damage. Thus – the only protections from melee are – yep, good old armor and body implants like "heavy bone weave".

 

Armor - in term– is no way the absolute protection either: kinetic weapons with good penetration, as well as laser and plasma ones pierce it and deal damage directly to the wearer’s health. Certain biotic and cryogenic abilities can significantly weaken it (as it currently is in ME3). On the other hand fire-based abilities should not be the "armor killers" - they should bypass the protection granted by armor to certain extent (as well as cryogenic weapons).

 

There could be 3 levels of armor used in the hardsuits – light, medium and heavy one (marked respectively by light-yellow (lemon), dark yellow (sienna) and orange).

 

Biotic barriers - could be universal, i.e. protecting from both kinetic and energy weapons, but - granting weaker protection, than kinetic and energy shilds.

 

Shields restore, armor repair, healing and revival

 

Shields and barriers are pretty rapidly worn out and the very same way rapidly and automatically restored (as it is now).

 

Armor, on the other hand, is way harder and slower to destroy – and, respectively, way slower to restore. It does not restore by itself – there could (and should) be some kind of manually triggered “Nano – repair kit” or “Omni-repair kit” for it. Another option – there could be some omni-gel storage (of limited capacity) and dispensing system for it in the hardsuit. The dispensing of the omni-gel (and, respectively, armor repair) should be turned on and off manually.

 

Pretty much the same way (storage of limited capacity and manually triggered dispensing system) should work the healing and (if present) battlefield revival. They both should work pretty much like the current Bloodlust, just without buffs – restore health over time with certain speed. Healing is started by the hardsuit wearer, while revival – only by teammates ("once someone is incapacitated – no actions can be taken by oneself" is a pretty fair approach, isn't it?). Both processes spend the medi-gel. If someone is out of medi-gel on the mission (has taken too much damage) – it’s up to one’s teammates if to heal (revive) or not to heal (revive) him/her, spending their own medi-gel (healing / reviving the squadmate should not be free, as it is now).

 

Sync-kills must be permanent – no “rising in the end of the wave”. Currently sync-kills are mostly melee ones. I for one would like to see more of them of distant kind – like headshot from enemy sniper (especially heavy one) or direct hit from a vehicle cannon (in ME2/3 terms – Geth Armature’s one, as well as Atlas’s one must be instantly lethal). Sync-killed teammates could be replaced in-between the mission stages (and only then, no deployment into the thick of battle and death during the loading screen should take place).