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Darkspace: Suggestions |
Xanatos Omega 1st Lieutenant
Joined: January 19, 2010 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 18:17  
Greetings, everyone! I would just like to start out with saying that though I do not play darkspace much anymore, I have still been keeping a watchful eye on most things going on in game and out and am glad to see the devs are still hard at work making darkspace better. Recently, however, I have been thinking of a number of interesting additions and changes that may help this game out even further. I understand the devs are busy with what they have on their plate at the moment, so this is by no means to force them to implement these ideas now, just throw down some stuff on the table to think about. Feel free to post your own ideas if you wish. Input is much appreciated, but please, no flaming!
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Paying for your rank: Based on the principle of paying for enhacements. If he/she so chooses, a person(s) can pay a certain amount of money for a rank of their choosing or a rank bump. The higher the rank jump, the more amount he/she would have to pay. Ex: A person starting out at midshipman could pay to be chief marshal, but it would be quite expensive. A single-rank jump would be much less expensive (say, if you wanted to go from midshipman to ensign or 2nd lieutenant to 1st lieutenant). This would help DS to gain more income and help get more members.
Account Deletion Button: It has come to my attention that there are several (thousands) of profiles on darkspace that are not in use anymore because the player(s) have abandoned the game. Many of which have not seen activity since 2004. I understand the devs used to delete accounts but stopped mostly due to complaints of someone's account being wrongfully deleted. The solution: and optional account button with security measures. The idea goes something like this...
Click profile
Click edit profile
underneath Reset Rank is 'Delete Account'
Once clicked, the user with then be asked are they sure they wish to delete.
If 'yes' is hit, the user is then prompted to input username and pin number (and perhaps password)
The computer will then look for account data with the input username and pin number (so that it doesn't mistake the wrong account) and delete the data.
Accounts with financial data (such as payment for enhancements) I doubt anyone would want to delete, but in any case, it is the user who makes the decision to delete and the user deleting the account. In addition, perhaps the devs could delete accounts after, say, one year of inactivity during the ranking update time. If someone isn't getting on for an entire year, I sincerely doubt they're coming back on, but in any case, he/she could make another account. It is free after all. With this idea, it would free up and remove unnecessary game data.
Ships Damaged and Friendly Fire: Been looking at this and have been having mixed thoughts about it. The prestige it gives is nice, but personally, I miss how ships damaged and friendly fire was awarded by doing hull damage alone. It provided the game with more of a challenge, a reason for playing more (because I wanted to earn the prestige for the next ship by doing hull damage and get more skillful and punching into a ships hull) , and made is safer not to get friendly fire off yourself and others. In my opinion, shields/armor shouldn't count for ships damaged or friendly fire. Shields are simply a barrier that weapons impact on before they even reach the ship and armor is a protective coating over the ship.
I find damage should be awarded solely on if you (or the enemie's) ship is full of holes or leaking coolent, on fire, ect. ect. With the current state, you can even do friendly fire to yourself. The situation went like this..
Testing out the UGTO assault corvette in Rogen's Rift
Spot Pirate Destroyer
Opened up with partical cannons and torpedoes
Proton Torpedoes impact enemy ship and send shockwave
Enemy ship destroyed
Fly off with no hull damage, barely any damage to my armor, no coolent leaking, no holes in ship, ship not on fire...all in good shape.
Look at profile and it says friendly fire was increased, but there were no other friendly ships around, just me and the pirate destroyer
See where I'm going with this?
Firing core weapons such as the QST (which has highest splash damage) or any other core weapon would make in virtually impossible to avoid the shockwave caused and essentially, would be doing friendly fire to yourself and others simply by bumping your armor or shields. I suggest ships damaged and friendly fire be changed back to being awarded based on hull damage by reasons of the above information.
Medals awarded to unlock MI/Pirate class: Saw this in the development log, but then it dissapeared. Not sure what happened. Was the idea scrapped? If so, I suggest why not have people pay a simple fee to have the classed unlocked (not sure if this idea was already implemented, but what the heck..). Once more, DS can gain more income and players can get more play benefits.
Creatures: I've been thinking darkspace needs some more space creatures, or at the very least, some menacing looking ones. Of the three creatures that I have seen so far, the only one that looks potentially threatening looks to be the gaifen (which kinda looks like someone took some kind of animal an turned it inside-out). The energy and crystal entity basically look like a triangular lite-brite and an oversized quartz crystal. Don't mean to nag, but it just doesn't seem very threatening. I propose DS should look into creating a new creature, perhaps a space leviathan. Something massive in size that can devour ships which would have players needing to work together to take it down. The battle would be great and the prestige given from its defeat would be even greater.
More ideas to come...
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Lrd_Hunter Grand Admiral
Joined: August 16, 2006 Posts: 245
| Posted: 2010-07-03 18:48  
some of those ideas seem ok but the one about basically buying a rank bad idea the whole point on gaining rank is to learn about the game just wouldn't be right guys first day buy ga rank and able to jump into just about ever ship whithout having to work for them. Granted some wouldn't be useful cause of badges but if you buy the rank for grand admrinel you have any ship need to get those badges without having to do alot of work.
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Enterprise Chief Marshal Raven Warriors
Joined: May 19, 2002 Posts: 2576 From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2010-07-03 18:52  
I could never really abide by paying for your rank. That would seriously undermine everyone who invested a boatload of time, effort, skill, and energy to get where they are.
-Ent
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Xanatos Omega 1st Lieutenant
Joined: January 19, 2010 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 18:57  
Here's the thing, though. A new player could buy their rank, but with the new ships, they wouldn't know very much about how to fly them or the skills required to fly each one. Therefore, it would kind of be a fallback compared to those who are the veterans of those ranks. Say you have a person to payed for their rank and are flying a dreadnaught and then you have a regular player flying a dreadnaught. The regular person would likely do remarkably good while the person who paid would probably fair badly and die easier in battle for the reason of jumping rank without going through the experience. Basically, getting a good weapon with no idea how to use it.
[ This Message was edited by: Lord Xanatos on 2010-07-03 18:59 ]
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Talien Marshal Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010 Posts: 2044 From: Michigan
| Posted: 2010-07-03 19:00  
Buying rank=bad.
Buying MI ships=also bad. They're vastly overpowered compared to any ship of the same class available to players. Pirates, on the other hand.....yeah I'd like to get my hands on a Pirate Scout or Frigate.
FF, yeah, it's kinda silly if you get FF points from damaging yourself. If it was only for damaging allies that'd be one thing, but yourself?
_________________ Adapt or die.
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Xanatos Omega 1st Lieutenant
Joined: January 19, 2010 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 19:03  
Hmm..unless for the MI ships you would have to pay more compared to the pirates since they are so powerful. Basically, the idea for the pay to unlock the MI and pirates class is not all that different from any other online game where you can pay for additional features. In addition, those who pay money for those additional features generally get better weapons, armor, ships, ect. compared to those who play without paying.
But yes. As a result of placing the friendly fire to include shields/armor you can now do ff to yourself which is quite a shame especially if you are firing high-powered weapons. [ This Message was edited by: Lord Xanatos on 2010-07-03 19:12 ]
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darkcow300 Fleet Admiral
Joined: August 14, 2007 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 19:16  
most ideas seem quite interesting but the prestige only when hulled I don't like much. Point being that people usually jump when outgunned or outmatched giving no prestige at all to the lucky player that was there to shoot at him for a few moments. I personnaly like the current system.
and would lose a lot of interest in the game if it turned back to it's old system
Also account deletion is a good idea when the player is given this option but if devs do it well accidents might happen. for example I quit this game for a few months then came back for about a year then played a few months quit for a year... and now that I really got the feel for this game I would've regreted that my account was deleted twice if you get where i'm going with this.
Any way I like the fact that you keep new ideas at hand XD [ This Message was edited by: darkcow300 on 2010-07-03 19:18 ]
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Xanatos Omega 1st Lieutenant
Joined: January 19, 2010 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 19:27  
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On 2010-07-03 19:16, darkcow300 wrote:
most ideas seem quite interesting but the prestige only when hulled I don't like much. Point being that people usually jump when outgunned or outmatched giving no prestige at all to the lucky player that was there to shoot at him for a few moments. I personnaly like the current system.
and would lose a lot of interest in the game if it turned back to it's old system |
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The lucky player who was only there to shoot at the target a few moments shouldn't be considered to do much damage against the target unless they are a big ship and even if they did and the target jumps away, that's where hunting and tracking come into play. Follow the direction they jumped. Never has been a problem for me. However, many players will stay in battle for a while even when their hull starts taking damage. I find that with the ships damaged awarded from hull, it highly promoted the use of strategy and tactics to destroy the enemy before they jump in the first place and also promotes more use of aiming skills to continuously puncture only a certain area of the shields/armor to get to the hull.
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| Also account deletion is a good idea when the player is given this option but if devs do it well accidents might happen. for example I quit this game for a few months then came back for about a year then played a few months quit for a year... and now that I really got the feel for this game I would've regreted that my account was deleted twice if you get where i'm going with this. |
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I suppose the deletion idea can be left to the user to do alone, but seriously, you couldn't get back on for a whole year? You could have simply used a post-it or something as a reminder to get back on. A year is a remarkably long time. Or...another idea could be an automated e-mail could be sent out after a certain time reminding the person they haven't been on for quite a while and should at least visit the site to ensure their account still shows activity.
[ This Message was edited by: Lord Xanatos on 2010-07-03 19:35 ]
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BackSlash Marshal Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003 Posts: 11183 From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:02  
Buying rank = not going to happen.
Friendly fire = you hit yourself with splash damage.
We're not going to undo ships damaged given to armour/shield damage. As well as adding their damage to ship damage calculations we also added them to friendly fire, so overall they have the same ratio as hull damage, although at a lower percentage.
We added this due to no-one getting prestige in combat, and to promote it more - which was hugely successful.
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The_Enforcer (The Vindicator) Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 05, 2010 Posts: 163 From: another dimension
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:08  
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On 2010-07-03 18:17, Lord Xanatos wrote:
Creatures: I've been thinking darkspace needs some more space creatures, or at the very least, some menacing looking ones. Of the three creatures that I have seen so far, the only one that looks potentially threatening looks to be the gaifen (which kinda looks like someone took some kind of animal an turned it inside-out). The energy and crystal entity basically look like a triangular lite-brite and an oversized quartz crystal. Don't mean to nag, but it just doesn't seem very threatening. I propose DS should look into creating a new creature, perhaps a space leviathan. Something massive in size that can devour ships which would have players needing to work together to take it down. The battle would be great and the prestige given from its defeat would be even greater.
i kinda agree on adding a tougher space creature to the game, the leviatan sounds like a good idea
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_________________ Problem Darkspace?
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Xanatos Omega 1st Lieutenant
Joined: January 19, 2010 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:16  
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On 2010-07-03 20:02, BackSlash wrote:
Buying rank = not going to happen. |
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Hmm...go ahead, but frankly I think darkspace could use an additional method of income. I don't see why anyone would pay money to buy enhancements they could get from destroying ships.
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| Friendly fire = you hit yourself with splash damage. |
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Forgive me for saying but...lame. So we continue to get marked-up for firing our own weapons? Guess there's hardly any point firing torpedoes and core weapons...
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| We're not going to undo ships damaged given to armour/shield damage. As well as adding their damage to ship damage calculations we also added them to friendly fire, so overall they have the same ratio as hull damage, although at a lower percentage.
We added this due to no-one getting prestige in combat, and to promote it more - which was hugely successful.
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Perhaps prestige through damage armor/shields can be given when shields/armor reaches a certain damage threshold. Small damage = nothing. Halfway to all armor/shield gone = prestige gained at lower percent compared to hull.
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Talien Marshal Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010 Posts: 2044 From: Michigan
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:19  
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On 2010-07-03 20:16, Lord Xanatos wrote:
I don't see why anyone would pay money to buy enhancements they could get from destroying ships. |
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Because the droprate is low, and there's no guarantee you'd get the type of enhancement you want even when you do get a drop. Lots of people buy them because they get exactly what they want and the prices are reasonable.
_________________ Adapt or die.
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Xanatos Omega 1st Lieutenant
Joined: January 19, 2010 Posts: 10
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:25  
That is true. However you can work with what you do get until you get the one you want. Enhancements such as the limited weapon multiplexer and other such limited enhancements are quite common, especially in rogen's rift. One can simply stack them up to buff their ship a significant portion until the one they want pops up as a replacement.
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Shath Admiral Pitch Black
Joined: July 17, 2007 Posts: 219 From: Portland, OR
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:31  
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Paying for your rank: Based on the principle of paying for enhacements. If he/she so chooses, a person(s) can pay a certain amount of money for a rank of their choosing or a rank bump. The higher the rank jump, the more amount he/she would have to pay. Ex: A person starting out at midshipman could pay to be chief marshal, but it would be quite expensive. A single-rank jump would be much less expensive (say, if you wanted to go from midshipman to ensign or 2nd lieutenant to 1st lieutenant). This would help DS to gain more income and help get more members.
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horrible horrible horrible idea im afraid just because of the fact of lack of fair play so ppl that do buy their way to chief marshal will have stations within a week of playing while the rest of us hav spent months or years building up to that and i have always absolutly despised games that giv extra to ppl that pay (by extra i mean stuff that truly makes inpact ingame like without paying in sum random mmo u get a sword that does ummm 200 dps? and thats best sword in game after months or years of u working towards it...meanwhile a 10 year old who got a pay pal gift card for his birthday has a 450 dps sword in his first week of playing) also there will be an ENTIRE lack of respect for anyone that has marshal+ rank because ppl will assume they bought their way to it......altho 1 upside to this wud be popping a noobs station in a dessie cus he bought his way to marshal
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Accounts with financial data (such as payment for enhancements) I doubt anyone would want to delete, but in any case, it is the user who makes the decision to delete and the user deleting the account. In addition, perhaps the devs could delete accounts after, say, one year of inactivity during the ranking update time. If someone isn't getting on for an entire year, I sincerely doubt they're coming back on, but in any case, he/she could make another account. It is free after all. With this idea, it would free up and remove unnecessary game data.
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ummm bad bad bad idea im srry its just that a good number of DS players kind of quit the come back and i mean a very good number of them do in fact i do that with all my games when i get bored with them i quit for awhile then come back later so basicly by implementing this plan for a time period as small as a year wud kill the DS player population since ppl wud come back and see their accnts deleted and theyd just say screw it im not working my way to grand admiral agin *runs off and plays EVE or allegience*
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Medals awarded to unlock MI/Pirate class: Saw this in the development log, but then it dissapeared. Not sure what happened. Was the idea scrapped? If so, I suggest why not have people pay a simple fee to have the classed unlocked (not sure if this idea was already implemented, but what the heck..). Once more, DS can gain more income and players can get more play benefits.
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now this is a good idea for income....as long as the ships are balanced and not unbeatable this is an amazing idea
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Creatures: I've been thinking darkspace needs some more space creatures, or at the very least, some menacing looking ones. Of the three creatures that I have seen so far, the only one that looks potentially threatening looks to be the gaifen (which kinda looks like someone took some kind of animal an turned it inside-out). The energy and crystal entity basically look like a triangular lite-brite and an oversized quartz crystal. Don't mean to nag, but it just doesn't seem very threatening. I propose DS should look into creating a new creature, perhaps a space leviathan. Something massive in size that can devour ships which would have players needing to work together to take it down. The battle would be great and the prestige given from its defeat would be even greater.
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also a good idea i think a solution to this wud be to make MI and pirate stations tougher and give shinier rewards
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Shath Admiral Pitch Black
Joined: July 17, 2007 Posts: 219 From: Portland, OR
| Posted: 2010-07-03 20:33  
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On 2010-07-03 19:03, Lord Xanatos wrote:
Hmm..unless for the MI ships you would have to pay more compared to the pirates since they are so powerful. Basically, the idea for the pay to unlock the MI and pirates class is not all that different from any other online game where you can pay for additional features. In addition, those who pay money for those additional features generally get better weapons, armor, ships, ect. compared to those who play without paying.
But yes. As a result of placing the friendly fire to include shields/armor you can now do ff to yourself which is quite a shame especially if you are firing high-powered weapons.
[ This Message was edited by: Lord Xanatos on 2010-07-03 19:12 ]
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| no no no no the player bought MI ships should be balanced
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