Hi folks.
You've all been posting many idea threads lately. That's good! I'm very pleased to see the collective idea pool of the community. It's great to see everyone discussing what they'd like to see in Unvanquished. I figured that with the deluge of ideas lately, I'd set up a sticky to give you all an idea of what we're looking for in idea threads, from the development team's perspective. This way, we're all on the same page.
First, to quote myself from this thread,
kharnov wrote:There's a distinction between being bold and making extremely awkward gameplay changes just for the sake of change. A bold step might be to make a properly designed alien class or weapon and test it carefully. I don't think "vampire mode" or any other suggestion in this thread is a good idea. They come off as the sort of silly things you'd find on some sort of "fun" server like Unlimited BP or X. We have different standards.
I understand you might be frustrated that we turn down many suggestions, but that doesn't mean we ignore them. We do read and respond to things, unless someone replies to a thread with something we'd have said anyway. Personally, I think people need to stop recycling ideas from other games. We are not Call of Duty, Starcraft, Gears of War, Fallout, or whatever other popular series that people keep mentioning they want the game to be just like. At the moment, we are still in the phase where we're working out our own style and proceeding cautiously.
Surprisingly enough, game design looks much more different when you're involved with developing it. There are easy decisions, and then there are hard decisions. Blatantly borrowed and/or poorly thought out ideas can be easily discarded. Give us something that challenges us as game designers. Take the extra step and make a coherent idea that hasn't been implemented anywhere else. Show us an idea you put a lot of thought into, which addresses more than just "make this game more like that game", and then we'll see. We want hard decisions, ones that elicit debate between developers and the community. That's how we're going to move forward.
Many ideas, unfortunately, have been turned down. To minimize the chance of this happening to your idea, here are some general guidelines on what we don't want in Unvanquished:
Ideas taken directly from other games. These will be rejected on the spot. As mentioned above, Unvanquished is not Call of Duty, Starcraft, or any other FPS and/or RTS game. Please don't suggest weapons or alien forms that exist elsewhere, and do not lift mechanics from other games. However, it is acceptable to adapt ideas, provided that they aren't identical. For example, you can suggest the general theme of something, but it should not work or look exactly like it does in another game.
Blatantly unbalanced "fun" ideas. No. People are free to make mods on their own servers, but we will not include insta-kill death rays, things capable of gigantic explosions, flying grangers, unlimited build points, and similar ideas. Joke threads are tolerated but will likely be moved to the off-topic section.
Vehicles. These do not fit our game, and they make very little sense on maps with vent systems and tight corridors. They would also be overpowered, and would benefit the human team far too much. As for the alien team, they would make absolutely no sense.
A third team. This guideline is ironic, considering that the original Unvanquished project was a third team mod for Tremulous, but we do not want a third team at the moment. If we ever do include one, we would consider it during beta. For the meantime, please do not suggest one.
New weapons that fill an identical niche. We don't need more than one sniper rifle, we already have the mass driver. A rocket launcher is a bit pointless when you already have the lucifer cannon. Weapon suggestions are always welcome, but please make sure that it functions differently from weapons currently in-game.
New methods of movement for humans. The human team is meant to fight at medium to long range. Giving them different methods of movement would make them much stronger at close range, which would make it very painful for the alien team. In addition, movement gimmicks are what make the alien team unique. As always, remember that when you make a change to one team, it affects the other.
Game mechanics from vanilla 1.1 or GPP. We don't want Unvanquished to ultimately resemble either version of Tremulous. We are taking the gameplay in an entirely different direction. In addition, many of the gameplay mechanics of 1.1 were ultimately bugs that somehow became features.
Change for the sake of change. We want to alter the gameplay as much as everyone else, and perhaps even more so since many of us are long-time Tremulous veterans that have grown tired of playing the same game for so many years. However, we will not change things simply for the sake of saying we changed them. We want more substantial changes.
That should cover the majority of cases. For the occasional odd circumstance, I'll give an official response explaining why the idea doesn't work.
Now, here are some ideas that we have been planning for Unvanquished, likely to be worked on during beta:
A female model. This will happen one day. She would function identically to the male model, but would have sounds of her own. Since the addition would be mainly a cosmetic change, we've been putting it off until beta so that we can focus on higher priority tasks.
A flying alien. We have been discussing one. The exact implementation is still being decided, in addition to how the actual flight will work.
New names for things. This is a given. During beta we will be gradually renaming everything. A lot of community input will be required by then, but not at the moment. Names are a cosmetic difference and are thus low priority.
By this point, you might be wondering to yourself, well, what do you guys want? The truth is, good ideas are hard to come by, and they require either sudden flashes of inspiration, a good imagination, or significant mental effort. I obviously can't tell you what good ideas are, but I can give you some guidelines for making a proper idea thread. They are completely optional, but would significantly raise the chances of your idea being accepted, assuming it isn't fundamentally flawed. Here they are:
Detail. This is very important! Generally, the more thought you put into an idea, the more coherent it is. Think, how can this be implemented? You don't need to give a technical explanation, you can simply give a general idea of how you think it will work. Remember that this is your idea, and that you should give it the best possible chance by putting as much thought as possible into it. It's generally bad form to give a minor suggestion and suggest others should flesh it out for you.
Originality. Show us something we haven't seen before, something that, when we read through it, suddenly makes something click in our minds and makes us say, why didn't we think of that before?
Small is good. Less is more. Titanic gameplay shifts are generally not a good idea. It's better to move in smaller steps towards something new than changing everything overnight. That isn't to say that radical changes are a bad thing, it's just that you're more likely to make constructive progress by moving one step at a time.
Don't try to balance your idea. This might sound strange, but in many cases, you get ideas from people that are blatantly unbalanced, and they attempt to counter that imbalance with some caveat. Don't do this. Generally, you don't want to think about the balance of something until the idea is more fully formed.
Now that we have some guidelines set down, here are some frequently asked questions that I'll get out of the way regarding gameplay changes. Feel free to post in this thread if you have further questions. From time to time, it will be updated. With that being said,
FAQ
I'm not sure about my idea, where can I post it to get some official feedback before I go further?
[INDENT]Here, in this thread.[/INDENT]
Do the developers read through the feedback section?
[INDENT]Yes. Always. I can speak for myself in saying that it's the subforum I browse the most frequently. I try to give official responses whenever possible, but if someone else says something that I'd say anyway, I don't respond since I have a habit of trying not to duplicate other people's posts. Other members of the development team have posted in this forum and they read it too.[/INDENT]
Why wasn't my idea accepted?
[INDENT]You can generally refer to this thread most of the time. Otherwise, feel free to ask in the thread you made, or send me a private message on the forums.[/INDENT]
Do you plan on changing the gameplay?
[INDENT]Yes! I cannot stress this enough. As mentioned above, many of us are extremely bored of Tremulous, and we're very aware of some of the fundamental flaws in its gameplay, such as the frequency of camping and other undesirable gameplay elements.[/INDENT]
Do you test gameplay ideas?
[INDENT]Of course, if an idea seems interesting enough. We compile the changes and test them locally to see if they make much of a difference. If they move things in a direction that we want things to move in, then we include them in-game. Many of these changes have already been implemented. If they don't work, then we respond with that.[/INDENT]
