So you're saying that shifting your essence into an energy/spirit form and leaving your physical body should be stress free? There are dozends of reasons why this ability should stress out his body and having it be an ability for a card is more for balance than anything else. Besides, this is a video game so the local rule only applies when he is in his physical body; when he is not in his body then different rules apply.

I do agree that Doldren benefits a ton from having optimal cards, so I would suggesting playing another local to grind faction points until you can roll some of them on Doldren, at least if you want to antag. Otherwise you can always play Doldren as a Raider and still be incredibly effective at taking down distant elites. Besides, no one wants to face a Doldren antag because of how cheap he feels to fight against, so of course they are going to prioritize shutting down an invisible grab from behind before it happens. Do you really think so little of Raiders that you think they would let you ambush them without trying to stop it?

Ran into a one punch doldren today what a great experience it was. Seriously how is this even possible I thought at least fifth council characters could survive but i guess not. Everyone in my team was lv 10-20 so i just gave up the moment i got punched from behind and died.

Yeah, I've run into a Doldren antag using Patient a few times now. At least in my case it was a one punch down, and if you are carrying something you don't have time to react in time. Overall I found it one if the more ufair antags simply because getting hit once is all it takes. And the sound that Doldren's orb makes is difficult to hear when other sounds are happening, and I was using surround sound headphones.

Agreed. It makes the entire mission feel like a waste of time when you get a duplicate and almost nothing else for your effort. RNG is bad enough, but to reward us nothing for rolling a duplicate is just bad design. At least other games let you trade, sell, or break down duplicates. I'm honestly not sure what they were thinking with this idea; it's like they don't play their own game because no one wants nothing as a reward.

Quote from: Hiero_Glyph on October 10, 2018, 04:05:55 AM

There are several ways to make optional PvP work but it takes effort from MSE. At this point I'm not sure they have the revenue stream to shift/add to their workload and make such changes. I definitely think the game would be more popular with optional PvP but I'm not sure it would be more profitable having to make the necessary changes for that to happen.

What would be all the work needed? 90% of all content is already attainable as either raider or antag, the only thing locked to either side is cards, on the contrary, there is very little work needed and considering the amount of ppl put off by pvp, it could actually be more profitable…

Because believe it or not the antag system is actually great and should be leveraged for end-game oriented content. So that means the playlists and reward system would need to be changed yet again. And since PvP would become optional then the faction card system would need to be changed, which hopefully means improved not just antag points being removed. Again, to overhaul an entire game takes a substantial amount of work, at least to do it well.

Quote from: Hiero_Glyph on October 10, 2018, 03:02:25 AM

The issue is duplicates. It would be tolerable if getting a card in a shuffle prevented you from getting a duplicate with a different experience modifier, but all too often you get 2-3 of the same card per shuffle. Also, you should be able to pay gold/faction to set a single card as preferred increasing the chance that it will appear in your hand. And lastly, there should be a way to pay to upgrade/reroll the experience modifier of a locked card.

These are all great ideas and i hope they get added but it would take a while to implement, so in the meantime they should increase the faction point rewards.

I'm not disagreeing, but it's good that you realize increasing faction gain is a like treating a cold with a cough drop, it may work but it won't get rid of the cold. Still, a cough drop is better than incessant coughing.

Acknowledged yes, but no official plans have been revealed to the community.

It's sad because all they need to do is make mentor matches never have an antag and they go from something players avoid to something players want. It's one of the easiest win-win scenarios ever.

Anyone that played ME3MP knows that one of the best parts of that game was the community events. Spacelords has a lot in common with ME3MP so it would make sense to have community events as well.

These could be as simple as a community challenge to kill Kuzman (In Shock & Upside Down) a specific number of times over a weekend, or themed events like #@€! You Schneider where we have to try and score as high as possible on In Media Res & Double Agent. There could even be special modifiers like vampire where you have to takedown an enemy every 30s or you health bleeds, or a slow but unkillable worm that follows players and OHKOs them if they remain stationary too long (these would be map specific of course). The goal is to make it fun but challenging so MSE could really mix things up. As for rewards, it really comes down to how well MSE can track in-game stats and reward the community for completing predetermined goals.

Another potential community event could be a weekly mission where MSE selects a specific mission and gives the community 4 raiders with preconfigured loadouts and lets them compete for the highest score. This would let players try out new characters and weapons and even some rare cards. This mission could also have a fixed MMR and no antag so MSE could control the difficulty as needed. This could also serve to collect data to better balance the game. Rewards would be given at the end of each week and would be based on your best score (although the mission would give high faction points and high gold like every other mission for each attempt).

Lastly, I'd like to propose monthly challenges for a special play list that guarantees an antag will be present. This play list would either be general (you only get to queue for it, no picking specific missions) or it could be split by campaign. You simply queue as an raider or antag and the game does the rest. The challenges track wins, player kills & assists, and anything else MSE can monitor. The rewards could be based on completing each challenge/milestone  (i.e. Kills I, II, III, IV, V) so the more you complete the more rewards you unlock. If you unlock all of them there could even be a special cosmetic or UI feature (name plate, rank icon, etc.) unlocked.

The goal is to get the community involved and grinding but to make it fun! Thoughts?

Quote from: Tekato on October 05, 2018, 08:42:31 AM

I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but you keep making up excuses to try to justify forced pvp.

If you call explaining that the current system is built around, balanced around and infused with PVP "excusing forced PVP" here's what I have to say to you:
The moment you downloaded and installed Spacelords you consented to PVP.
If you're a Vet you have no excuse, you didn't start playing the game and "suddenly the devs introduced forced PVP" no, you joined the game and kept playing despite the PVP or indeed because of it.

Meanwhile you address none of the antag side issues, because you dont care about the antag side, you dont care about the antag experience, you dont care about the already horrible antag queue times or the fact that what you're suggesting would benefit only YOU and would negatively impact anyone who enjoys playing an antag in multiple ways.

The difference is one party here is playing the game, as it is, as it was intended by the devs and how it is marketed.
And the other is a spoiled child who wants to change the game and anyone who's experience is negatively impacted by your desires be damned, because the most important person is you and no one else.

You are not listening if you think no one has suggested ways to make the antag experience better. We want better rewards, weekly challenges, faster queue times, exclusive cosmentics, leaderboards, etc. The issue remains that only the antagonist is 100% prepared for pvp while the raiders may be farming blueprints with a stock character.  Why waste their time and cheapen your win? Or is beating players that are not prepared part of the fun? No one wants the antag removed, we just want it to be a better experience for all 5 players.