This mode has a lot of potential. If I could advise a few ways I think would greatly improve the pactsworn gameplay in the long term:
Players should be assigned a special at random. Being able to pick means that players will make a tier list in their head and choose to ignore certain specials if they have the option. It also means that Ubersreik players will likely be bombarded with the same special over and over if and when some meta is decided. Being given a special at random makes you work with what you have and improvise and coordinate with team mates. Of course it shouldn’t be true random, or else a team can get RNG screwed over.
No duplicate specials. There’s 4 players and 5 pactsworn specials to choose. There should never be allowed more than 1 of each type of special on the field at a time. If a player doesn’t want to play as a certain special, well that’s tough. You gotta learn to work with all of them
Right now I think being able to pick your pactsworn might be one of the most dangerous mechanics to the success of this feature. Movement speed and damage numbers and stuff like that can be tweaked, but this is a feature players will quickly get used to, and I think it is a very bad idea design wise to go forward
Being able to pick between two options is a great idea and it’s on the balance team and the situation to make me want to pick one over the other.
The only thing I’d like to see: make me chose either a damage focused rat or a disabler. It feels bad / weird to have to pick a disabler when you want / need a damage rat and vice versa.
I don’t think this will be the case.
Effectiveness of certain specials are heavily dependent on the map segment heroes are.
For instance:
Assassin and rattling are more efficient in open areas, while gas rat and warpfire thrower is thriving in thight spaces.
That’s just one thing among other factors.
Player should be able to pick appropriate rat for certain situations.
I believe that being given a rat at random promotes team play, it requires you to communicate more, it would force teams to work together and improvise with the tools they’re dealt and would disincentivize lone-wolf play, and it makes the game more suspenseful for the Ubersreik team.
It’s how Left4Dead 2 worked. I can tell you from great experience that if players had the option to choose their special in L4D2, under the majority of circumstances they would choose to pick a pin special other than the Jockey. As useful as the Jockey can be, there is inherent jankiness to how that special works and he’s slower and you have to get closer to attack. Smoker, hunter and charger are naturally more reliable at getting pins under more circumstances because they have faster or safer attacks. In a cliff scenario where a jockey can ledge a survivor, the charger can straight up charge them off the side completely. If you had the option, you’d pick charger every time.
If Infected could have picked their special in Left4Dead, when you get to scary locations on a map where there are instant-dead spots that Special Infected can drag you into, it would remove all elements of suspense for the survivor team. When you take the elevator up to the roof in the map No Mercy, the entire area you enter is a death trap where you can fall off the side of the building. It’s always very suspenseful because you don’t know what specials are going to be dealt and at what time. Will they get a charger that can screw us over big time? Will they get a smoker or a jockey for this part up ahead where those two specials are especially effective?
Throw in the option to choose and that suspense is completely gone. There’s always going to be a charger because he’s the best in that spot. In the actual game, you might not roll a charger so you had to work with what you were dealt and coordinate with the team.
Player should be able to pick appropriate rat for certain situations.
I posit that it is much better for specials to have to work together to make their inappropriate rat for the certain situation work.
I don’t like either of these suggestions.
I understand not liking a random rat given to you, you have less control and you have to think more and lots of people would be against that. But it’s hard for me to understand how one wouldn’t see how duplicate specials are a very poor idea. Duplicate specials are already a dubious idea in Adventure mode and they always have been, but it’s manageable because they’re bots.
Randomness in Gaming is extremely overused. It seldomly really is the best solution. It just so happens to be a pretty easy insertion to get game mechanics started, but in almost all cases RNG is little more than a silly placeholder that never gets exchanged.
For what you suggest for instance, a more elegant solution would be possibility of picking all rats freely by the team from one pool, but that one character pool has limits.
Example: Say, you can only have 2 gasrats, 2 gunners, 1, assassin, 1 packmaster, flamer unlimited.
And then every player picks from the pool, first come first served.
Way more strategic, still puts constrains, easily a better solution than RNG.
That said, I really don’t want either. I think what we got this time is good. It’s just an example how RNG usually really doesn’t do much that a thoughtful system can’t do better.
Being able to compliment teammates by choosing rats that work well with their picks can also promote team play, so? That’s even less of a stretch than what you came up with.
You can’t be lone wolf as a rat. literally anything you do will give opportunities to your teammates, even dying is drawing attention from others.
You might be more or less effective as a team, but that’s require communication, which is almost non existent in pugs, even in adventure mode.
You better try and figure how to promote that. Than create another inconvenience,
which will probably only make people leave matches more.
Team play incentive is here. we don’t need to turn it into artificial requirement.
Skill of enemy team is already doing that and much better than needless restrictions.
It’s suppose to be casual and fun experience after all.
Translation: You are stupid for not agreeing with me.
I don’t think you’re wrong, I just have no way to know if you or anybody reading this feedback topic or Fatshark themselves understands how important L4D2’s “AI director” was to the feel of that game and ultimately its continued success and replayability. I’m not a game developer but I love L4D2 and developer commentaries what I watched of them were really insightful. The AI Director is no secret mechanic, Valve gushed over it forever, at the end of the day it’s how the game decides to strive for fairness.
This mode has been compared to L4D2 versus a lot, even by Fatshark themselves, but this versus mode has gone for a more Back4Blood style of being able to choose from 2 choices of special which I think is worrying decision, because it changes the dynamic in the ways I mentioned before, loss of suspense for the protagonist team, metagaming causing certain specials to be chosen over others, and as my friend put it earlier, the randomness (controlled by the “AI Director”) absolutely helps to keep L4D2 from becoming stale or “solvable” a decade later.
“AI Director” as I understand it is what valve called their system of setting up dramatic spawning of hordes, and maintaining a fair number of specials by putting the spawns on a rotation of sorts and doling them out appropriately.