With the recent "Map Spotlight"s in the mapping forum I thought it would be nice to do this for the scout in the suggestion forums. The basic idea was to take some part of the scout (A skill, A weapon or anything that could be changed) and try to have a serious discussion about it. Later, after the thread has gone on for some time (1-4 weeks) or the thread dies off, a new spotlight would come up. However there are somethings that would need to be a addressed before I decide to make this. 1: Is this needed? Would it be worth it? The most important. If I did something like this, a serious discussion occured and several Ideas came out of it, would the devs seriously consider them?(Not that any would have to be implemented. Official response appreciated) (again to the devs) Is there any already existing plans or restrictions that we should know to accommodate or avoid? Would people actually take part? Would they be civil and not just end up flaming each other? Should we start off with the small things or start with the HUGE ones (i.e. concussion grenades vs what should the role of the scout be?)? What should be the rules? I was thinking along the lines of: Please keep vulgarities and arguments to a minimum. Post only if you have something constructive to say. Only discuss the topic of this highlight, its relation to other parts of the game/class and specific ideas brought in by other community members. Please clearly state who or what idea your post is intended to address. Please clearly distinguish any intended pros/cons/alts and full suggestions from the rest of your post so that they may be added to the front. Is anything else needed? 7:What should be the format? I was thinking along the lines of: [Rules] [Topic] {General ideas that have come up already} {Things that could be changed} {History if applicable} Second post:[Reserved for full ideas] {Name of Poster} {List of specific changes} {Intended/likely impact on gameplay} {Pros/Cons/alts}. All edited at posters request and when new pros/cons/alts come up from other people. Third post: [reserved just in case] Any fixes or possible adjustments? Is there anything missing or which could be improved?
I really don't think it's a good idea. Design by comittee is a silly idea, especially when the comittee isn't a group of intelligent game designers, but rather any idiot who can join the forum.
rule 11: do not talk about fightcl-.. scout scout = flamewars, let the devs figure out what to do with it everything else yea, go ahead
It wouldn't be "Oh this is now in the game" it would be "we, as a community have now discussed some ideas and think that you, the devs should consider them". It's basically making a place to consolidate ideas and brainstorm as a community as to what we should do with the scout, one piece at a time. All legitimate cons that come from anyone would be noted next to each suggestion. If you can raise legitimate cons to every suggestion, then you're helping. The whole idea is to try and remove the flame from the scout discussions. To try and make them useful and maybe come up with some thought out and discussed ideas.
It's still going to be a very scattered discussion. In order come up with a solid idea you need to be talking face to face, you need something to aim at like a concept or something, and you need to have people who know about design. Otherwise you end up with a crap idea. The other option is you let one person do the design himself, that will give you good cohesive ideas which complment each other but you run the risk of losing objecitvity. The only possible use for this that I can think of is that if there is a particularly common theme, either an opposition or suggestion, which could be used as a goal or something to avoid for someone else to do the actual design, but I very much doubt there will be such a theme.
Well the main idea is to get several separate people to design something themselves, then to put these peoples complete and cohesive suggestions up for scrutiny by the whole community. Because if a suggestion is just an offhand remark it won't be put near the start with the cohesive ideas for scrutiny to try and increase the initial quality of the posts. The discussion would be limited to 1 thing at a time (a skill, a weapon) and there are the rules which are supposed to try and stop the scattered discussion. As for a theme... I may be misinterpreting this, but this is sort of what I asked for from the devs isn't it? Some guidelines of what the devs are going to, or refuse to, do. This would limit the suggestions to within possible contributions instead of having random ideas all over the place. Or did you mean just the entire discussion should be about these possibilitys and total rejections to help sculpt other ideas that come forth later? If that's what you meant, I think the devs should decide that(and probably should tell us so that our suggestions are possible to be introduced). If neither of these are what you mean, please elaborate so I can improve the idea of this discussion thread(s)
Ya... that was one of the main concerns I had. I even mentioned it Just from the point of a discussion, the smaller the topic, the better the discussion will go. If we start off with something BIG like this, the discussion may go off on far too many tangents and just end up collapsing, but if we do things too small we may end up just reinforcing an idea that was corrupted from the start. Larger ideas don't have to be as detailed so they can be broad roles to fill out large amounts of design space, but in lacking details could be as vague as the role of the scout is now. The smaller ones would allow for more detail and make suggestions more likely to be implemented just because they don't impact the game as much. I sort of want to start with something small just to see how this discussion would go, then move on to larger stuff. Start with something small like concs, stuns or vehicle speed then move onto bigger things like Hide, sabotage and the role of 4ths class. Also, if we end up doing one skill at a time, the discussions won't last for a great deal of time. Also, I think that the names of, and general function of most scout skills could be tweaked in order to make many different roles, and could lead to the progression to some form of role on its own, but should not be considered the best way to get a role.
I wouldn't mind. Best would be if you start with small topics, like additional skills for the Rifleman, so you can get a feel on how to discuss things. I'll probably moderate these threads if I have time to prevent petty personal arguments from derailing the thread.
If everyone who took part was mature, informed, intelligent and literate it would work great. A noble Socratic debate. This is the internet, mate. No chance.
It is entirely possible to be mature, intelligent, and literate while still being incredibly annoying. It would work better with small topics I concur.
Don't talk about the scout and it will be fine. The scout has already had enough discussion that pretty much every good idea has been mentioned.
I don't think this would be a very good idea, for all the reasons mentioned above. The devs will sort out the scout and the community will invariably respond. Maybe this format would work for something else, but a scout spotlight would go nowhere.
Cause you said rifleman, it would be better imo to make a thread for every class to flesh out a proper role for it. So its easier to find a gap for the scout and adjust/balance each class versus each other. No limitations suggestion wise, like if you think the rifleman should get a grenadelauncher and it should work like the current mortar say so for example. But i think its impossible to make the scout usefull without touching the other classes and if you want to do it you have to redefine them all.
great idea. start with the massive problems: what IS the scout. or should I say, "fourth class", because we have yet to decide on a definitive role and position within the team for him.
to find a niche for the scout we should first start to find the niches that the other classes dont fill in yet
another approach would be to merge the scout with the rifleman on BE aka super soldiers and give NF a sabotaging guerilla warfare class and the standart rifleman.
interesting to continue on your idea, Be riflemen gets buffed and the scout removed, NF scout is turned into a guerrilla fighter, and they still have the rifleman as it is now q1: how is be rifleman buffed q2: what will make the nf scout "guerrilla" q3: how will the nf rifleman fit into the picture?
The main idea was to discuss existing things so that the discussion doesn't end up going all over the place. ("I wan't the rifleman to have a sniper rifle>grenade launcher>minigun>laser rifle>jetpack>goo grenade...etc). Also I mainly wanted to stick to the scout because its (arguably) one of the largest Issues right now. Having 1 of the classes be shunned or be a gimmick is annoying. They've been mentioned as off hand remarks in dozens of different threads. This may just be a rehashing of all those ideas and getting more critique on it, but i think its needed. This is meant to help give options and ideas to the devs before they decide on anything. Probably, but making something good for scouts and then going around to the other classes would probably be easier in the scope of these dicussions. I think that I may start with a test one. Probably on jeeps, vehicle damage or healing upgrade, just to see how this would work. If it works fine, then probably move onto that (although remember what happened here) Thanks for the feedback everyone, please keep it coming.
