Question Base capture

[Raap]

I'd honestly love to see more objective based maps like Seamist. Maybe even with side objectives to allow the attackers to buy more time, at the risk of wasting too much time if they fail to complete them quickly enough.

 

Honestly, something based on the RA underground facility missions would be p.awesome.

 

Hostile Waters does use scripted gameplay as well, but unlike Seamist it does so with balanced teams and more traditional base layouts.

 

The reason you don't see too many of these maps is because it takes a while to set up (Hostile Waters using about 40 or so scripts for the end game logic, not counting the bonus objective scripting).

 

Back between Beta and Gamma, the APB dev team was tossing around the idea of making most maps have some objective of sorts, or at least a more clear plot. This never became reality due to various reasons.

 

I personally still think that each map should have something more unique to it, to help make gameplay more varied. This way Zama and Bonsai don't end up playing more or less exactly the same like they currently do, and it allows maps to play differently not exclusively by their layout alone. The problem is you can't just add objectoves or bonus objectives to every map and have it make sense... The maps need to be designed with it in mind, or greatly modified.

 

In truth, possibilities would greatly improve if we had an additional in-game resource besides credits, with different uses, and possibly map-specific. Right now everything is tied to one resource, or existing building functionality.

 

Edit: Expanding on that idea, if we had a new resource pool (let's just call it "Resources" so it becomes more general-purpose), and have this resource be team-shared and not unique per player like credits, then you could have teams work towards building up a pool of "Resources" from map-specific objectives (securing and holding a lumber yard on The Woods Today, holding a warehouse on Metro, etc.), and then a team member could spend these resources on a special terminal to activate a team buff, purchase a special unit, upgrade buildings (gain interior defenses), or build additional structures... You name it. By not tying this or map objectives to the regular credit-based economy, you don't mess up regular gameplay balance, but still achieve interesting results that can spice up map gameplay variation. If enough upgrade options exist, then a sub-game of technology racing is added to the game, to make sure your team has more things unlocked.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Raap

[Einstein]

Nice, thats a very interesting thought.

[Raap]

I'm not saying "APB GOT TO DO THIS NAOW!", it's just a thought I put together in 5 minutes. It's pretty much what I do, come up with concepts which need some more time to iron out potential problems. Interior defenses as an upgrade for example could end up being a big departure from regular gameplay, and turn into a gimmick that just ends up reducing gameplay fun factors.

 

But at least having a second pool of resources besides credits, does allow for quite a few new options to be developed upon it... And that's something to keep in mind; None of this exists within the current functionality of W3D gameplay, to my knowledge, and would require substantial work. Enough work to make you wonder if development time isn't better spent elsewhere... Especially considering the limited time W3D staff programmers have.

 

With that said, a generic resource pool logic has a very wide range of usable applications, for a number of W3D projects besides APB. So it'd make a strong case for being "worth the time", providing there is enough interest.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Raap

[Isaac The Madd]

Reminds me of a variant of the donating plugin for brenbot which instead of the team donate command splinting the credits between each player on that team, it would dump them in a pool which anyone on the team could draw from.

If ABP had this spies would steal team credits all the time.

[Raap]

I'm curious how an APB match would play with shared team credits... It would probably involve a lot of team chat rage about wasting credits... Yeah, never mind, it'd be pretty terrible to share credits if you don't want people to rage quit every match.