As posted on discord, for all you forum dwellers.
Hey all. I wrote a few paragraphs to express my personal view on our recent development progress, and felt it was appropriate to share with all of you. We have a lot of big changes on the horizon, and a lot of uncertainty on what specifically is going on. This will outline what and where I believe we should strive towards in terms of CM-2020. Some of you may love it or hate it, and you are very welcome to drop into my DMs and tell me why we should revert to CM-2017 (No really, feel free to give me your opinions on recent dev changes)
Objective Gameplay
Since this is our primary goal/focus right now, I want to share what I think is the correct way forwards for objective gameplay. Control points is our first step towards this issue, however I feel that to keep with some sense of roleplay as well as the mechanical aspects of the core SS13 culture we should have capture points be pseudo control areas. They should not have fake progress bars or something that doesn't actually have true player involvement. Capture points should be points of interest on the map that require both factions to build something, gather something, or destroy/defend something, and their locations should be laid out in a MOBA-esque style with LANES that both factions have to continue applying pressure to, with the amount of lanes based on player pop and map size.
Vehicles
Some people in public have expressed their opinion that the current power of the new vehicles testing is underwhelming. I personally don't want to see vehicles becoming the centre of attention again like the tank was, and they shouldn't be strong. I personally expect trucks and APCs to fall in line as logistical transport vehicles for FOB/frontline movement without getting hit by lurkers. Tanks would fill their current purpose at a weaker state with the change that restricts them from firing in a space around them (I really think this will impact their solo capabilities a lot in a good direction). If people are worried about how much of an impact they'll be, then worry no more.
Also I'd like to at some point introduce survivor vehicles that start destroyed around certain maps for people to repair. That's a stretch goal.
My Involvement in all this
Yes, I've been burnt out since Christmas. I haven't felt that well personally and it's mostly due to my real life situation. I love this project to no end and I want to continue working on it as much as I can, but I need to spend time working on my job prospects so that I can think about getting out of this shithole of a country. But until then I'm stuck here working for you lot.
Once I have the time and motivation here's what you can expect from myself and my fellow devs:
- Testing for Xeno Special Structures V2, FOB structures, Resource nodes and Objective gameplay testing to begin in about a week and a half's time. Once tweaked based on test results this will roll out into master. This will be our first step towards Objective based gameplay, which is our current primary dev team goal.
- Assist Atebite in rolling out vehicles. They'll hopefully refresh the current staleness that is tank gameplay.
After this I'll most likely be taking a more laid back position for a few months, but with all of what I said above I want to aid and implement the topics above if they are agreed upon.
As a footnote; I want to thank all of you that have spent the time bringing up issues with the newly implemented timelock system. I'm aware there are some reported issues with tracking and saving, and I'm doing what I can to try and put the pieces together for an eventual fix. I can only ask that you sit tight while I figure out what the issues are with the motivation I have right now.
Finally, SEA will be coming to moderators soon.
I'd genuinely like to see what people think of the direction forward, and will take on board what any of you have to say regardless of opinion.
Thanks for your attention.