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Recommended Sections and Sub-sections: 1a, 2, 3a, 5b, 6 and 9b


1) Campaigns and Map Design

• 1a) New Campaigns: One of the top things Spacelords needs right now is more campaigns: I feel that many players, including most of my online friends that played spacelords aren't playing it anymore, because it doesn't have enough mission variety. There have been 17 missions total for the past 2 years and if the spacelords developers want to maintain there playerbase and continue growing, I think they need to make more missions, especially ones suited for both unpopular and new characters and weapons. Perhaps these missions could include more interactive environmental mechanics e.g. the flowers in 'Double Agent,' and new enemy types, like fighting against local NPC's and bosses, maybe a melee martial arts local boss, or new elite types! Which reminds me, I have yet to see a fifth council officer elite
• 1b) Non-Linear Objectives: Players should be able to progress through mission objectives by more than one means e.g. in 'The Beast's Lair,' in the first stage against General Marmalade, raiders mainly damage him by using the pig to shoot at his primary weak spot, but he can also take damage by being shot at in certain eyes; in 'Mind Over Matter,' when the fifth council is invulnerable, raiders can deactivate it either by electrocuting the Fifth Council or by defeating a set type and number of enemies based on the stage of the game e.g. regular enemies, elites, miners and drones; in 'A Fistful of Sand,' Antagonists can win alternatively by killing the second protector, etc.

2) Well-Rounded Variety: When gameplay viability centers around a minority of characters and loadouts, then balancing and replayability issues develop more easily for varied styles of play, because when most characters and loadouts are sub-optimal for most missions or antagonist encounters, then choice becomes irrelevant for players that prioritize mission success over gameplay variety, which can be the case for players that don't want to risk lowering their MMR as it could mean entering ELO hell in solo-queue. This ties in to new campaigns and game modes: by creating new missions that subvert popular player choices and by altering antagonist encounters to be an optional game mode, players may be more inclined to try out new and different characters and loadouts. In addition to the idea of antagonist matches becoming an optional game mode, I think antagonists should have more time time to pick a character and raiders should have less

3) NPC Stats and Match Difficulty

• 3a) Artificial Traits: The growth rate of enemy NPC's DPS, health and other level scaling attributes increase too steeply with increased match difficulty: I think they should progress more slowly, but in exchange add procedurally generated artificial traits, like talents, new weapon variants and features, and augmented faction characteristics. An NPC's accessibility to an artificial trait can be determined by whether their naturally a combat based NPC or not like engineers or looters; their faction; and if their a grunt or an elite, what type they are; or if they can't interact with CQC moves, like miners, drones and the creatures on 'Enemy Within.' Some artificial traits may only be accessible to NPCs of a certain type e.g. only looters and engineers can gain access to a trait that gives them combat abilities and only sniper elites can gain access to traits that modify their teleportation ability. These restrictions are mainly so that traits can managed and factored in for gameplay strategies. Here are some examples of artificial traits: resistances to critical damage, toxin or push effects (That last one should only be granted to assault elites if they don't fire their weapon too often, otherwise they can be OP with their aleph ability); auto-reload or over-reload; giving additional properties to elite's aleph abilities, like using aleph overloads to supercharge their abilities; giving non-combat NPCs like looters and engineers weapons or the ability to strike; or giving miners and drones the ability to use CQC moves, etc. In conclusion, adding artificial traits to NPCs will keep them relatively dangerous, but also more varied and interesting with increased match difficulty
• 3b) Antagonist Match Balancing: An online friend named, Rican, along with his online friend, opinionated that ‘At least 15 NPCs should spawn at a time in antagonist matches,’ though whether this minimum value should be adjusted for map size and match difficulty is speculative. Players could be more incentivized to play as antagonists if they were offered increased rewards and or if match conditions were better for them, like more tactical spawn points or a new more useful interface for giving minions more specific commands
• 3c) Antagonist Match Mechanics: What if antagonists could not only send remote commands to NPCs, but also save and spend a special resource to summon regular, special or elite enemies, give enemies temporary buffs or create environmental effects. For reference, the "Veil Demon" in the videogame "Breach." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHAopdvbE0g (Sadly I think it might have been too ambitious). Whatever the solution, the average balance of raiders to antagonists should be 4 to 1

4) Reward and Construction Mechanics

• 4a) Level-Up Rewards: Level-ups are generally boring, 2K gold and occasionally some prestige points are very under-stimulating regular level-up rewards; I'm not saying all level-ups should be complete game changers, like the forge skill level-ups, but they should definitely be more influential and interesting. They shouldn't be something that can be rewarded to you by playing matches or purchasable with mercury points, because then they would have no uniqueness and it would cheapen the time players invest in the game; they should have a gradual, long-lasting effect on players and their in-game choices, impacting their perspective on both the gameplay and meta-mechanics of the game
• 4b) Match Rewards: I think the daily rewards system should be scrapped, except for the accumulation pot, because it both ignores key factors of match success, like match difficulty, dictating what fixed set of rewards you can earn beforehand; and doesn’t reward us based on those key factors. The daily rewards system doesn’t contrast with what players should be rewarded, which is important, because this in turn makes the game better reflect the effort players put into matches. Furthermore, I think this system should be replaced with a daily system that multiplies rewards by what you earn after matches, with each succeeding match multiplying rewards a little less until the multiplier reaches "1." In conclusion, the base match rewards should be scalar and relative to their difficulty and a match rewards multiplier should be added and replace the daily rewards system
• 4c) Blueprints: Considering how more characters and weapons get added to the game; forge skill level-ups make constructing weapons more expensive and take longer to build; and blueprint rewards are random and only construct a specific weapon: I believe weapon blueprints can become a more viable regular reward for missions in the near future, if players have both a chance to earn blueprints in abundance from any match and if the rewards system can be properly balanced for frequent blueprint rewards
• 4d) Currency Utility & Enhanceable Match Rewards: Currency could be spent to improve match rewards before matches start as a way to raise excitement and the stakes so players can have an alternative motivation to winning matches. These reward modifications could include things like increasing the chances of getting: blueprints or multiple blueprints, the chance of blueprints being rare; multiplied rewards, the chance to get blueprints for a certain character, etc.
• 4f) Talent Construction: The 'cheap' weapon construction option discourages consistent play, because each construction occupies a construction slot, and can take days to finish. 'Shortcuts' aren't really necessary, skipping one talent tier doesn't matter if fast constructions can reach the same tier at a much faster rate. I think you only really need fast construction and cheap construction, or better yet, replace the options with a more dynamic choice system: all constructions start out with sorta long construction time (not as long as cheap construction though), but you can spend a limited set amount to accelerate the rate of construction time, further time acceleration costs premium currency
• 4g) Weapon construction: This is way too expensive at max forge skill and the MOD system only adds more pressure when you invest kill points into MODs, MODs into weapon constructions and weapon constructions into construction slots. Weapon parts don't seem to be a necessary crafting element for weapon construction: they don't do anything unique and their rewarded from missions just like gold and talent points are, and in the current meta. If weapon parts were to still be in the construction system they should be rewarded more sparingly or be usable in more ways than one, like being tradable for gold, talent points, kill points, prestige points or something that can only be exchanged with weapon parts. In the end, unless weapon parts can serve as an engaging component to weapon construction, then they shouldn't exist
• 4h) Summary: The amount of time and resources invested in some single constructions, with the minute incentive of fixed daily rewards, makes it repelling to construct most things as the commitment can be too great: currently rare weapons cost 45K Gold and take 1 day and 16 hours to build with certain rare MODs, and top tier Talents cost 36K Talent Points, taking 1.5 days to build using the fast option or 6 days to build using the cheap option. I think the solution would be to reduce construction costs and wait time for all constructions (including all talent construction options) and to reduce the cost and wait time increases of each forge skill level. Also I think the reward system should give progressively better rewards based on match difficulty

5) Talents and Talent Panels:

• 5a) The Problems with Talents: most talents' functionalities are either unviable or situational, and some talents have two versions of themselves, where one has better stats than the other: a common version and a rare version. The labeling of talent rarity is unnecessary, because their is nothing rare about them if any player can obtain them at any time with enough talent points and gold. Also I think talent rarity was a design that was meant for the previous talent system, because it gave players random talents, so I don't think this design element applies effectively to the current talent system
• 5b) Reworking Talents: Pre-existing talents should be altered and new talents should be added to compliment different or similar playstyles from current ones so that talent selections are better balanced, unpopular talents are more viable and choosing talents feels more tactical and impactful. Furthermore, there should be more character talents linked to their ability, they seem infrequent; maybe add some talents for grappling or something that can be associated with grappling e.g. Loaht's 'heavyweight'

6) MOD System: The mod system is too random, like the old talent system where you had to spend talent points and hope to get the talents you wanted, it feels like a repeat of that mistake, plus you have to keep track of another currency. The only thing I like about is how it's currency is earned (from kills), besides that I think it should be either seriously reworked or scrapped for a new modification system: maybe basic weapon features, like affiliation, treasure hunter and bounty hunter should also multiply kill points; maybe how many kill points players are rewarded should take into account more factors to kills: the difficulty rating of the enemy NPCs or players, instakill or gradual death, shot difficulty, range, CQC finisher or thrown off the ledge, etc.. In conclusion, the design of the MOD system goes against simplicity and it would be more enjoyable if the costs to using it were significantly reduced (the cost for extractions) or if mods could be installed and uninstalled from already constructed weapons and be stored in a mod bank, where you could re-install mods into any weapon you like, be they pre-construction or post-construction, but add a kill point cost to installing, reinstalling and removing mods from weapons

• Side note: there is currently no page in the quick guide about damage types

7) In-Game Currency: There are too many in-game currencies. Besides premium currency, I think other currencies should be removed and have their uses (whatever they could be bought on) absorbed by better currencies, unless both how a currency is earned and spent has distinguishability and necessity. E.g. what makes Kill points, Premium Currency and Status Points distinguishable from each other is how their currency is earned and how they can be spent, meanwhile gold and affiliation are earned the same way (by playing matches), just spendable on different things

Match Scores and Standard Grouping: I think match difficulty should play a larger part in our scores, maybe how we are scored for match difficulty should either be by the average players win rate or the match score for the corresponding match difficulty. Furthermore, I think we should also be scored by our win rate and highest score for a mission relative to our highest scores in other missions. Also think kill assists, teammate saves and objective accomplishments should also be factors accounted for in our scores

9) Playable Characters and Weapons

• 9a) New Characters: The next playable character for Spacelords should  either be a local or a fifth council member, because their is a disproportion between the number of characters in each faction. Furthermore, whoever they may be, should supplement character balances in the current roster and if possible, be a direct counter to the most popular character and the adverse to the least popular in the current meta
• 9b) Weapon Dynamic Abilities: An interesting character element I really like that both Aneksa and Valeria share is that their character abilities are altered by what weapon they equip. I think all characters would be a lot more interesting if each of their weapons had a different effect on their ability
• 9c) Character and Weapon Demos: Weapon descriptions don't explain how weapons work very well, some like a few of Ayana Kwena's weapons have identical descriptions. And considering how weapon constructions become more expensive and take longer to build with each forge skill increase, I think players should be able to access a quick-loading test chamber where players can test out a character from their character page and try out demos of their weapons

10) Main Menu Group Settings:

• 10a) Raider-Antagonist Grouping: There have been a few times where my online friends wished they could form groups with an antagonist. An idea, from a disclosed online friend, suggested that 'players should be able to form 5 player groups and rotate between the roles of raider and antagonist, match to match.' Their should probably be settings for this system, so that players that don't want to change their position in the group (antagonist/raider) can lock them in place. This idea would be useful as these groups wouldn't have to wait for matchmaking to start a match
• 10b) The Issues with Raider-Antagonist Main Menu Grouping: If players manage to form 5 player groups, I think it is likely that some players will scheme and plan missions where the antagonist of the group remains docile for the duration of the match or give enemy NPCs inefficient commands; so that the raiders can artificially bump-up their scores and vice versa. So while in this 5 player grouping, there should be countermeasures that prevent farming for highscores or other mission rewards: random team formation at the main menu, like in matchmaking; deactivate the players ability to raise their highscore in missions or access their accumulation pot and major daily rewards; 5 player groups could be scored in matches with an alternate system that scores players based on the activity and competitiveness of all players, so as to not cheat the system
• 10c) Main Menu Leadership Issues: There are some issues with how leadership works in the main menu: their is no button that allows the leader to hand over their leadership to a selected teammate; teammates can't request to invite players, kick teammates off the team or vote on which mission to play next, or at the very least vote from a set of missions the leader has selected. Maybe leadership should be a setting that can be turned on or off, and when all teammates at the main menu have it turned off, they have access to the typical controls of the leadership role

11) Mission Character Selection Menu: When at the character selection menu at the start of missions, their should be a option that randomly selects a character for you. This feature should include a setting that can add or remove characters from the random selection process; the default for this feature should pick characters that fit the mission, and exclude characters of the same faction (like a role lock system)[/list][/list]

I don't like it when players build a weapon and they have to choose between investing in basic weapon features that enhance their gameplay and basic weapon features that enhance their rewards (Affiliation and Treasure Hunter). I think these two types of basic weapon features, gameplay and reward based, should have their own independent point systems.

I think some of the respawn points should have their locations adjusted: On some missions where there are evacuation points, like the fatty aleph convoy, when the evacuation timer activates, raiders respawn at the evacuation zone, but for other missions like the sargon mines, the mission for rescuing Lycus and the mission for rescuing the first protector, raiders don't respawn at the evacuation zones; and on the general Marmalade mission, raiders respawn to the evacuation point if their in the right location

This issue was mildly annoying, because when the evacutation timer had only a few seconds left on the clock and I just respawned, I died for no reason.

Furthermore, dying meant that my team would have to go on without me, which can create more issues:

1) If I played a fifth council character that wasn't Ginebra and the rest of the team was already far ahead, it would take a while to catch up, which could leave me open for attack and perpetuate the cycle of dying and respawning again and again
2) If my absence meant my fellow raiders couldn't effectively progress through the mission, then they could also die, I would have to wait for them to respawn and I could left me open for attacks, perpetuating the cycle of dying and respawning again and again.

In conclusion, I think raiders should respawn at evacuation zones so a perpetual cycle of unfair, unnecessary team deaths does not occur.

I think there are two issues with character viability right now

1) Most characters aren't viable throughout the whole of the missions
2) Some mission objectives follow themes that only a few characters are viable at. And when that happens, it makes character variety feel less impactful.


Explanation for problem #1: When I'm on a mission objective where the goal or part of the goal is to attack a giant bullet sponge in an open spaced area, like fighting Dr. Kuzman in the desert, General Marmalade, Aneska in her mech or Schneider in his mech, I always choose a high DPS character like Schneider and Constantine; When I'm on the mission where the spacelords have to save Loaht, I choose Rak Mayura, because his ability to increase the movement speed of teammates is useful when their holding the canister; when I need effective AOE damage I pick Dr. Kuzman.

The reason why I choose theses characters, is because their effective at those objectives. But when it comes to other types of objectives, they are less viable which makes their viability throughout the whole of the mission inconsistent. And the only character I can think of with consistent viability throughout a certain mission is Ginebra on the hades aleph mining mission. In this whole mission, mobility and flanking is quite crucial and Ginebra fits this mission well.

In conclusion, I think the solution for character viability is a mix of more characters that can be effective at specific objective types, so theirs more variety, more missions that can compliment the abilities, weapons and talents of the least played characters to make them more viable and more mission pattern variety so that some characters have general viability on certain mission (Which brings us back to character variety).

I think a spider chart should be displayed in the character profile screens to summarize loadout attributes, like how much crit damage they can deal, crit chance, average DPS, healing output, mobility etc. Maybe an expandable spider chart.

I think MMR should be relative to match difficulty ratings and that MMR should only increase if players can consistently win a certain amount of matches relative to what their MMR is on average.