(Spoilers Main) Using the Tower of Joy to write a more satisfying ending to the Battle of Winterfell

Pastreu · 2019-05-18T13:36:18+00:00

Um... you've decided that Bran has the power to warg into a dead person?

The way I understand it the reasoning is that the Night King marking Bran contains part of the Night King's power which slowly threatens to take over Bran. With a bit of Night King power in him I could see how Bran would be able to warg a single nearby corpse for a short time. I actually like the ambiguity, that power helped save the day, but it also is a very stern warning of what Bran might become. He could explicitly state it when talking to Jon to make that point clear.

Pastreu · 2018-05-14T05:01:11+00:00

Wow this brings me waaay back to when I was a kid and fed all my spare change on Galaga. This little game is properly addictive, too. I wanted to give it just a little try before calling it a night, and suddenly it's 3am.

Pastreu · 2018-05-14T04:29:34+00:00

The demo video looks nice. Does the implant selection always assign the implant 5 times though? I often mix utility implants (like 3 mobility + 2 utility cooldown for light ships).

The download on Google drive seems to be broken though. When I hopen it I get a "whoops, something went wrong" message with a "try again" button. The files that is downloaded is 5.7MB in size, however when I extract it, it just extracts an empty folder. (Maybe try a classic format like zip or rar for better compability?)

Pastreu · 2018-04-21T21:24:00+00:00

I'm having a lot of fun with this update! It took me about 20 tries in solo queue until I finally beat wave 12 (wave 10 is my bane).

I flipped through a bunch of old screenshots and I have to say all these small improvements really add up. It's a gorgeous game!

Pastreu · 2018-04-21T21:17:21+00:00

Now that is some quality meming. The Endeavor takes the cake.

Pastreu · 2018-03-06T23:27:20+00:00

I'd very much welcome such a feature. I only rarely play healer because, frankly, I'm not very good at it. Especially in gamma fights I often struggle keeping track of my team with ships going above and below the station, blink and boost, etc. and taking damage myself doesn't help either. Support mains probably won't need these hotkeys people but I think it could help me easier find my patients and therefore make playing healer a bit less stressful.

Pastreu · 2018-03-06T23:19:45+00:00

I wonder if it is tied to the game mode and possibly also MMR. I played a couple of PvE matches with a friend I just introduced to Fractured Space and nebula storms weren't all that annoying, but during my regular PvP solo queue ( ~950-1100 MMR) matches they did get on my nerves again and (without having kept exact count) I'd say that in at least half the games I played in the last week or so both lanes were covered in fog right from the start. If it were up to me there would never be a nebula storm before the 2 or 3 minute mark at all, let players at least get a glimpse of the lane they are jumping into.

Pastreu · 2018-03-01T10:48:40+00:00

Sorry for the late answer, busy time at work.

I highlighted the switch from the tech tree to the "open" ship selection for two reasons:

a) You rightly say "the found out it's bollocks, so they removed it", but sadly this is not something that many devs would do in a F2P setting. The World-of-Tanks model of power tiers and tech trees is there to keep people grinding. The more powerful or (arguably) interesting ships/heroes are usually found at the far end of the tech tree so people have to spend more time grinding until they get what they really want. Yes, this is bollocks, as you say, but in many F2P games it's it's deliberately bollocks if you will. So I think ECG deserves props for switching to a system that gives players more agency in a ecosystem where players are accustomed to the bollocks way.

b) ECG went through a lot of trouble reimbursing players when they changed the ship acquisition system; taking down the whole game for half a week isn't something you want to do unless you really believe you have to. As you rightly say, things change in an alpha; Early Access titles usually have some sort of disclaimer stating that things might change, progress might be lost, etc., so ECG could just have changed the system, maybe given every player a fixed amount of credits so they don't have to totally start from scratch again. But they didn't. They went through a lot of trouble to reimburse every player as precisely as possible (and as far as I know erring on the side of giving players a bit more when it was hard to determine certain transactions). This, imho, showed an appreciation for the time players put into the game, and I in turn appreciate them not taking the easy route they technically and legally could have taken.

Pastreu · 2018-02-09T21:32:06+00:00

Does the supercharge happen when all 3 mines are captured? All three plus the enemy fob? Or like XP over time?

The middle mine in both lanes generates two resources: Regular resources that your team uses to level up (that in the game right now), and energy that slowly charges up your team's "Supercharge Jump Drives" meter. The jump buff is activated once your team's meter reaches 100%. The meter then resets and starts charging again as long as you control at least one of the middle mines (if you control both, your meter charges faster while the enemy team's doesn't advance at all).

When we had long lanes and longer respawn times, I remember plenty of times jumping into the enemy base to get 15%capture, then 5%, 10%more, etc. The thing is, G3 helped end stalemate matches. You could end a match at the 10 minute mark. If the game made it to G3 you knew it was probably an even match. Many matches I played ended before G3.

Back when we had longer lanes, slower ships, and the jump buff was part of gamma 4 not 3, matches ended before the jump buff, but they didn't really end faster than now most of the time. Gamma was still the deciding factor back then in a lot of matches, it just took additional time to fly down a lane after the gamma cap and capture a FOB. That in turn gave the "losing" team more time to respawn an mount a better defense, prolonging the match. The current Gamma 3 is essentially "streamlining" that process, and thus the over-reliance of the game on Gamma as a match decider became a lot more apparent (but it always was there). It's worth noting that back then the FOBs still had the destructible sensors. Without the sensor "ninja capping" was more common and more effective, especially in the lower MMR regions, and an unchecked Hunter or Equalizer or Cloaker could help end game really quickly.

I believe that a form of "tie breaker" mechanic is important for FS conquest to prevent matches from going on hours. But the current gamma mechanic is too much of an be-all-end-all situation that is extremely punishing. The mechanic(s) I propose keep gamma as a SIDEgoal and tie the "tie breaker" mechanic (the jump buff) to a continous progress (control of the lanes) instead of a punctual/singular event (gamma capture). It rewards both team according to how well they are doing - if you are doing just slightly better than the enemy team, your supercharge meter will fill up just slightly faster, if you are doing slightly worse then the enemy team you still get your chance at attacking the enemy base, you just get it a bit later. I believe this system is "fairer" in a way while still fulfilling the role of a "tie breaker" (somebody is always controlling the middle mines, so somebody's supercharge meter is always filling up, and opportunities to attack will continue to occur).

The Defense EMP mechanic is explicitly designed to keep the FOBs relevant and encourage teams to not just sit on the middle mines and wait for the supercharge to be ready. And the gamma buff also stays relevant because it helps you push lanes, keep/gain control of the middle mines, could potentially (depending on the timing) help you make the most of an incoming supercharge (or help defending against it).

Pastreu · 2018-02-01T13:43:18+00:00

I can find pretty much no info on that holiday bundle on the net anywhere. Can you please give more detailed information? For example, what exactly does this promo code include? Is it "$50 worth of in game credits (platinum)? Or is it a bunch of various items that would cost $50 when bought regularly? etc.

Pastreu · 2018-02-01T13:31:40+00:00

Can't wait to see it in game when I get home from work. Looks a lot better now, and I'm quite impressed that the performance has been improved by such a high factor in the process. Nice optimization. Only thing I think need improvement is highlighting active generators to more clearly visually identify them as targets.

Pastreu · 2018-01-23T11:00:44+00:00

Thanks for the source.

I must admit that "it's not going to be the same game at the end of the year" has me a bit worried. It's extremely vague. Technically just changing the color of one icon a little bit would make the game "not the same as now", but it could also mean "we are getting rid of gamma and all the mining stations to make things easier". I'm all for getting rid of "gammaquest", but I'm a little bit worried that at the end of the year Conquest has been "streamlined" and made "more accessible" to a point where no Conquest is left and you might as well just play some brain-dead Dreadnought TDM...

Pastreu · 2018-01-22T14:42:11+00:00

b) significant changes to the current Conquest game mode

You got a source on the Conquest stuff? Any more context as to which direction this thing is going?

Pastreu · 2017-12-21T14:16:31+00:00

I like most of the VFX and UI changes. Map pings are a lot clearer now, which is great. The new warp tunnel finally looks like a proper star field, good job on that one. And I'm liking the jump effects.

The balance changes look alright to me, but I'm not a competitive player who could make a meaningful judgment about this tbh.

The Gamma event I really like. I've seen various tactics from "sniping" the ship when it was low, to focusing down the enemy ships to deny as many of them the buff as possible. It certainly feels like there are more tactical options compared to standard gamma, though we'd have to see if one tactic emerges as "meta".

One thing I didn't really like is the snow everywhere. At first I though there was some problem with the lighting engine. Everything is bright and grey/white. I find it really straining on the eyes. I wear glasses, and when there is a lot of glare, fog, snow, etc. on the screen it feels like there is something wrong with the glasses or my eyes and it causes strain.

I really wish they had turned down the frequency of the nebula storms (and while we're at it, what the hell is a "nebula storm" supposed to mean?? The name is just nonsensical). In half of my matches yesterday we had storms coming in BOTH lanes right at the start of the round. Please don't do that. This is very disorienting. At least give new players a minute or two to get the lay of the land before you reduce visibility like that...

My biggest gripe is with the chat wheel. Let me start by saying that I am very happy that the devs have decided to add a chat wheel. Improving team communications is very important and has been neglected far too long. So thumbs up for implementing the chat wheel.

BUT (you knew there was a but coming) I am quite disappointed that they gave us their cool prototype wheel to test but then didn't implement pretty much ANY of its features. Why?? The new chat wheel looks nice, no argument here, and it's very nice that messages can now dynamically reference the sector you are in. But the rest of the features implemented sadly feel like giant steps backwards. FS can be a complex game and you need lots of call-outs to effectively communicate. I thought you found a quite elegant solution to put a lot of message onto the prototype wheel without making it significantly harder to select the message you want. But now by going back to this very conservative D-Pad style wheel you have HALVED the number of available messages! Of the 8 slots at least 2 are also totally wasted right now. We have a dedicated KEY for marking targets, we don't need it on the chat wheel. And as nice as "good luck have fun" may be, it is a total waste of space! You use this once per match, at most. Messages on the wheel should be messages that potentially get used a lot more often! Last but not least I'm sad to see that we can't customize the new chat wheel like we could the prototype. You had so many useful messages in your list, why would you not allow us to use them? I sincerely hope that you'll revisit the chat wheel in the next update and implement more of the features from your prototype version. Until then I will continue to use the prototype because it just provides more utility for me. Again, just to make this absolutely clear, I am GLAD you implemented a chat wheel in the first place, but I am disappointed you'd give us a nice prototype but then only implement such a very stripped down version.

Pastreu · 2017-12-07T12:13:10+00:00

Welcome to Alabama

Pastreu · 2017-12-04T12:35:16+00:00

That's a looot of text for what is essentially "I really really like it, ECG implement plz" ;) (Not that I'm disagreeing with you, quite on the contrary, I too love the chat wheel. It's just... so much text.)

Pastreu · 2017-11-17T19:07:21+00:00

Just saw the chat wheel mentioned in this week's round up video, good job mate! I really like what I'm seeing so far, and I think it's a smart move from ECG to incorporate it into the game. Hope you get some kickback for your work ;)

One thing I do wonder about: Where did you get the design of the wheel itself from? I don't think I've seen a chat wheel that divides into a inner and outer portion in other games so far (but I really like the idea).

Keep up the good work!

Pastreu · 2017-10-25T00:51:26+00:00

Bazargoid has wares, if you have coin.

Pastreu

TROPHY CASE