Alright, here's a pretty big change to think about.

Psythe · December 11, 2011

Change (hell yeah, Obama [okay maybe not])

I've been brainstorming on things that could potentially be improved for the next reset in Hyperspace.

Now, I've been playing a lot of Call of Duty lately, and the game has inspired me to suggest changes to Hyperspace. Please, ignore the stigma of "he got that idea from somewhere else, it's no good!" and just hear me out, here.

First, personally, I believe that our current system of resetting the entire zone a couple of times a year is horribly unprofessional, unpredictable, and has a lot of potential to make people ragequit when they find out that all of their stuff is gone. What if we could find a way to promote players to reset their own accounts whenever they want to instead of resetting everyone on the owner's command? I'll elaborate later.
Second, it's kind of dull to gain XP on the zone. You either kill things or try to win a flag game. I hardly pay any attention to my XP gainage at all, personally. How would we promote players to keep track of their XP and, basically, be excited whenever they win a good chunk of XP? Again, elaborating on next section.
Third, well, I'm not going to lie, I haven't been actually playing Hyperspace much lately... but from my far-away perspective, it seems like the items are too balanced. I truly miss the days when you'd be like, "Damn, that guy always outruns me!" or "Ha! Bet you didn't expect my super stealth ship to sneak up on ya, did ya?" ... it just seems like ships just don't tend to have any strong suits aside from their general ship roles. Amendments are in the process of being thought out, so to the next section where I elaborate on these points.

Resets

Stop resetting the entire zone every so often. This is only done because everybody gets too powerful and newbies can't stand a chance against the other players. Instead, promote players to reset their own accounts. Yes, make them want to reset. How? Simple: Once they hit a certain amount of XP (let's just say by the time they hit 20,000 XP), they're allowed to reset. As a reward, a capacity slot, for what I'm just going to call a "relic" for now, is opened up. This allows the player to choose which relic they'd like to put on their ship/all their ships. These relics can't be sold for profit and boost certain stats for the player as a reward for having reset their account -- giving them an advantage depending on which relic they choose. There would be about nine relics to choose from, each having different effects ranging from larger map size to increased thrust. See the spoiler for a half-@&$ed brainstorm for such "relics."

red: All-around increase in ship stats. +Increased energy and map size.

orange: Increased rotation and thrust. +See Lv1 cloakers and faster transwarp/gates/etc.

yellow: Wider brick span. +Increased speed and thrust.

green: See Lv1 stealth/cloak. +Cheaper XRadar and longer lasting fields.

blue: See Lv1 cloakers. +Increased energy and rotation.

indigo: Respawn faster. +Increased thrust.

violet: Faster recharge of various items. +Faster AD respawn and cheaper XRadar.

white: Increased energy. +Decreased weapon cost and cheaper XRadar.

black: Increased map size. +Free XRadar and faster weapon delay.

... obviously needs some editing, but that's just lazy brainstorming for now.

And the +xxxx things are unlocked as part of the relic after completing challenges relevant to the relic's effects.

Experience Points / Challenges

In all honesty, getting XP in Hyperspace is dull and boring. You either get it from killing or from winning a flag game. It's a dreadful process to get enough XP to finally get a certain item. I'm not saying that we should go back to double-XP or anything; rather, I'm saying we should add challenges that players can complete for some extra XP. For example, let's say there's a challenge for the Mass Driver, like "Get 100 long-range kills for 100 XP", and maybe even after that, double the challenge's difficulty for even more XP so it can be repeatedly completed for XP. This way, the zone will be all like, "Good job, you completed that challenge! Here's your reward XP!" rather than, "You received X XP for killing X." Not that I'm trying to emphasize the slight dullness of gaining XP in the zone, but rather I'm trying to emphasize the fun factor of having challenges to complete to get XP faster to reset your account faster and get relics faster. Let's get those players even more addicted to the zone, eh?

Lastly, let's unbalance the itemset a bit.

Crazy idea, right? Like I mentioned earlier, it's kind of dull that everybody has pretty much the exact same ship with maybe a barely noticeable difference in speed. Honestly, all I ever notice is the weapons that the enemy happens to be using. I'm not saying that we should turn the zone into Super-Slow-Tank-Rape-Ships versus Super-Fast-Can't-Touch-This ships, but to some extent, it's just plain dull as it is, honestly.

I figure that with an addition of "relics," the signature items may or may not need to stay. I haven't thought about that much yet; I'm just throwing this idea out here and I'm curious about what the population thinks, and especially what the "higher-ups" think of this system.

Mainly, finding a way to promote self-resets in the zone rather than just resetting everybody no matter how far they've come along at a seemingly random time of the year is just plain annoying and unprofessional. This is all just my opinion, though. I'm open for some arguments.

So, thoughts?

Edited December 11, 2011 by Psythe

Cheese · December 11, 2011

i would back this

noldec · December 11, 2011

I like

Psythe · December 11, 2011

Ceiu mentioned a good point involving leveling up in the zone. Whether or not "levels" will be a big thing or if we will just stick with good old XP is a different thing, but anyhow: If you were to reset at "level 20," and hit "level 20" again (total of level 40) after resetting and stayed at that level, you'd receive less XP for killing somebody who is a total of level 1 (newbie). This way, the "veterans" of the zone can't keep leveling up at lightspeed by beating up newbies; rather, they'd have to choose to beat higher level players or complete challenges.

and also, somebody think of a neat way to allow players to show off how big their e-penis is depending on how many times they reset their account. It's already been established that we can't do much involving having an icon follow a player, and all I could think of was to have different colored shields when hit depending on how many times you reset (then again not everybody uses shields). Somebody think of a way to viagra this idea!

Edited December 11, 2011 by Psythe

Dr Brain · December 12, 2011

So every time they reset, they get better? That solves the problem, how?

And resets aren't for newbies, they're for the vets. It keeps the game interesting. The item sets have been tending toward more balance and longer buildup times, so the resets haven't been as frequent. Personally, I think this has been fairly detrimental to the zone.

Psythe · December 12, 2011

So every time they reset, they get better? That solves the problem, how?

And resets aren't for newbies, they're for the vets. It keeps the game interesting. The item sets have been tending toward more balance and longer buildup times, so the resets haven't been as frequent. Personally, I think this has been fairly detrimental to the zone.

I completely agree that it takes too long to "max out" a ship nowadays. Addressing "how" promoting self-resets would solve the problem: Long buildup times. Players will be vulnerable as a newbie from the get-go -- they won't be super-powered just because they self-reset in order to get an item or some other kind of compensation for having done such a thing. Why don't we have a shorter buildup time for ships while we're at it? Those $5M items? Come on, now. I got tired of spending a week on Hyperspace and making about 10% progress on my ship builds, so I sold everything and handed the money out for simple trivia questions. I can't even fathom making it to a signature item within a month of playing, because some people do go out of the house sometimes.

My apologies for "dissing" the players who probably already have every ship maxed out, and dissing the current state of the zone, but it's so dull and frustrating at this point that I had to throw some ideas onto the board here.

Anyway, challenges are one solution to quicker buildup times.

Some challenges I thought of were simple things like

Grudge Holder: Kill the player who last killed you 20 times.
Spray and Pray: Get 100 long-range kills with the Mass Driver.
MVP: Be the MVP on your team for a flag game.
Wallbomber: Kill 20 enemies with bombs, not direct impact.
etc

The possibilities are endless (well, they end when we realize that there are a lot of things that simply cannot be measured by modules in this game) and having a list of challenges would certainly keep everyone entertained. I like this idea.

Edited December 12, 2011 by Psythe

Cheese · December 12, 2011

but you forget that those take work to implement, and spidernl is the only person actually doing anything that remotely even resembles work for the zone

therefore it will never happen

CommanderHB2 · December 12, 2011

That's a really good idea. I back that all the way.

Although Cheese put it rather harshly, that'd be a ton of work and I doubt anyone would even want to bother... >,>

Edited December 12, 2011 by CommanderHB2

noldec · December 12, 2011

and also, somebody think of a neat way to allow players to show off how big their e-penis is depending on how many times they reset their account.

?listprestige

Psythe · December 12, 2011

Yeah, unfortunately the rate of development in HS has gone down aside from work on items and maps. Regarding the "code work," well yeah, of course it takes work to code anything that resembles some kind of system. If anything, we can all just fantasize about the zone being perfect while it sits and rots as development declines... maybe I'm just not caught up with things in the zone as much as I used to be, but it seems like the "constantly developing" aspect of HS is dead. Depressing. I think both a matter of manpower and willpower for development. As stated earlier, we've only got a couple of people actually doing anything for the zone regarding code, and I doubt either of those really care enough about Hyperspace to work on it. Rather, instead of work, it has to become a duty -- one has to be inspired to create and to put forth the effort in order to reshape and improve the zone, which is hard to come by considering a lot of us have "real lives" and development on Hyperspace seems to be tentative unless it's simple stuff like base-making.

Hell, maybe we're all trying to improve the wrong game, here. I've been developing for other games lately. I haven't even considered contributing a base to the zone for quite some time now. I'm lazy, but at least ideas can be thrown out onto the board and we can romanticize about them until the idea is born or until it dies.

spidernl · December 12, 2011

You're wrong. I am actively developing. It's just that it takes time for anything somewhat big to be completed, and nothing changes until it's done.

This makes it look like nothing is happening, but that's not quite correct.

In fact, we might even have some competing development, which is not something I'm particularly happy about, but it's the result of Ceiu having a concept for the zone, wanting to develop it, and me wanting to improve on the current concept with a bit less of an overhaul-y nature to it.

I do think the concept of promoting self-reset over the "yearly" reset we have now is good. However, you're rewarding players with an improved ship for doing so. In other words, newbies will stand even less of a chance against the no-life players, considering those will basically have the equivalent of several extra items on their ship, making them more powerful whatever ship setup you use.

You'd have to find something that would make players reset, maybe to give them more choices, but not so much give them an absolute advantage over other players just because they play too much.

Oh, and about balance: I don't think that what you're talking about has anything to do with balance, really. In fact, reducing balance would cause far more homogenous builds than we have now, as it'd mean that a certain combination of items is far superior to other combinations of items. Obviously, everyone would use that combination, therefore making everyone's ship practically identical.

What you want is more impact of choices. You want items that drastically change your ship. That's all possible, and I agree it'd possibly be more fun, and it's something I'm already trying to work on.

Edited December 12, 2011 by spidernl

CommanderHB2 · December 13, 2011

Something to enhance a ship's adaptability would be really great and not too great to turn the tables of a battle.

Don't enhance a user's ability to do stuff; enhance the amount of things they can do. I can't quite put my hands on a good example.

Instead of being limited to having specialized items, perhaps have items that work for a wider VARIETY of uses- Your effectivity in a single battle will not be affected; it's not overkill on the person you're after. You aren't super-powered.

My idea, I guess, is allowing MORE ITEMS on the ship that can be reconfigured at the user's leisure, without having to Sell...Buy....Sell...Re-Buy...

Say, I want to use the Gamma Ray instead of my Sharppinger. I have A Prestige Level of 1; therefore I get 1 token- I apply it to 'Extra Gun'. I can configure what I want to use at any given time. To prevent from being spammed (Changing weapons/items constantly in an abusive manner), this could only be done in safe or once every X amount of seconds.

I'd definately like it. Switching between items...

Even cooler; a TOKEN SYSTEM could be created to give the user a reward of his choice (1 per Prestige)

2 Tokens: Extra Signature (Switch between signature Items, but must be the same type [E.G. Switch Mass Driver out for Phaser, or Quantum Torpedo for TacNuke. Must buy an Extra for another category before this can be usable)

1 Token: Extra Gun

1 Token Extra Bomb

1 Token: Extra Reactor (Switch between, say, Nadion Collector and Temporal Core, granted you have an extra signature and Alien Tech)

1 Token: Extra Sublight Drive (Switch between Ion Drive and Retro Rockets!)

1 Token: Extra Protection

1 Token: Extra Mount (Can switched when in a safe zone to prevent abusive behavior in base, such as buying endless amounts of Thor Mounts and spamming them)

1 Tokens: Extra ??? (Allow the switching of 'Shell' and 'Molecular Shield', or even the switching of Parasite and Nanomite Swarm!)

1 Token: Extra Alien Tech (Allow the switching of Antideath, perhaps, for Molecular Shield. ANTIDEATH'S RESET TIMER WILL NOT CONTINUE TO DECREASE WHILE IT IS NOT IN USE, making it so that the user can't just switch when the Antideath has been used until it's usable again.)

Basically, what this will do is allow people to make their ships able to do even MORE, but not actually change any core statistics about them- keeping them within balance with other ships.

To change what you have for a signature, for example, make a macro or something for;

?changesig

This will switch your signature weapon out immediately.

Say, you have a reactor as your signature weapon that is currently in use. You can either type;

?changereactor

OR

?changesig

Whatever item has 'Signature' in its item information will be switched when ?changesig is used. Nonsignature items use commands such as ?changegun, ?changebomb, ?changesub, etc.

Well, That's my take on it. Whudy'all think?

Edited December 13, 2011 by CommanderHB2

Psythe · December 14, 2011

You make a good point with the whole "allowing ship capability but not power/overkill" thing. Definitely something to consider.

I had thought about the whole "ship garage" thing that was supposedly going to be implemented in the future. I figured that a self-reset account would gain additional space in that garage, or something.

spidernl · December 14, 2011

Something like that is possible. However, the garage thing is something I'd love to implement, but it takes quite a bit of hscore-modifying.

Although it should be fairly simple to do with an extra table in the database (ship id, ) and some way to take items from that and put new ones in it, rather than ?buy/?sell.

The issue is pretty much that, as you can judge from the number of times I have to say "it's possible, but I don't have time", we lack developers (with time)

Edited December 14, 2011 by spidernl