There a quite a few things that i think most games need to recognize and i believe they will be expressed in this game.
1. Ranks should not represent over powered gear instead ranks should be based on skill such as counter strike or league of legends
Just because we might have tiers, doesn't mean it reps skill. Being skill based, we also need a good representation of something, rank or otherwise, that reflects that. Good idea.
2. Most games now should stick to a cost of around 15-20 dollars as though those are the most successful and best for players and the developers
Games are too expensive. If we can keep our production costs down, and be more of sandbox/procedural type system, I can see a reasonable price for Ember. Dunno what that is is. Many $20 games are 2D and cheaper to make. Cities: Skylines is about $30 for example, and its production costs reflect that.
3. DLC content should add new and interesting things but they should not by any means be overpowering for instance in Tom Clancy The Division the game had perfect leveling and a decent fairness inside of each bracket but the guns were all generally balance depending on xp rank and my opinions on that have already been stated in topic #1. But within the ranks there were balanced fights with each gun having fair and equal opportunities. Once DLC hit this all changed however
Not selling guns, not doing F2P style design. Nope, nope nope.
4. Grinding and normal players - Now as though we all know that grinding is one of the things we can all say we have done it should not be essential to the games mechanics and it should be balanced somehow with the individual person.
All games have grinding. The trick is making it fun. In EQ you killed mobs over and over to level. In WoW we "hid" the grind by doing tons of quests that gave the majority of xp. Now players have figured that out and are bored with it. I agree that our "grinding" is going to be more like Minecraft grinding...resource mining and the fun encounters we can base around that.
5. PvP and PvE - This comes from the heart by saying these two need to be balanced and what i mean by this is my friend who loves PvE can not keep up with me (In some games) because of the overpowered drops and xp in PvP which is my favorite thing to do in a game and in contrast some games like defiance i cant keep up with him. These need to be balanced if i choose to stick to PvP and my friend chooses PvE and we have about the same hours we should both be in about the same rank and gear level
Right now, Ember is PvE only. I've never found a way to design for both at the same time. Later, if we do PvP, it will likely be "tournament standard frames" or something like that.
6. Coin systems and points - Some of my favorite games have used this method which id like to describe. Planetside 2 the free to play shooter struggled at first with making the points (Certs) available by the free 2 play players but still making money and have found a easy solution in which i commend them for Certs (Coins) are used for everything. To armor upgrades and even gun upgrades in perks there is nothing not available by these coins. Meaning i do not have to be rank 13 to use this gun i just need to save up a certain amount of points to own that gun.
Again, not sure we'll even have this. Trying to avoid any F2P style mechanics. But maybe. Too early to tell. I can see earning points for skill to acquire cosmetics we otherwise sell.
7. Following games past - With the following theme of hindsight 20/20 we should listen to what i believe some games did perfectly with free 2 play weekends and other different nice things for example Call of Duty one of my least favorite games really did some unique and interesting things that once again i have to give them credit for 1. Double xp weekends 2. Free 2 play weeks every so often as to inspire new players. 3. Just sometimes listening to outcry such as nerfs and buffs to certain or all guns =.
Yep, love them free weekends and other promotions.
So let me just thank mark for reading this and anyone else who may stumble upon this.
If you would like to hear any of my other opinions my Youtube link is
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQFYdS1YVpRjYDYjXOma13w
One last time thank you all for taking the time out of your day to read this
