Home » FULL CONTROL GAMES » #JAFDEV » Community Wishlist for JA:F
| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322665]
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Sat, 13 July 2013 12:12  
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 Shanga |
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Messages:3479
Registered:January 2000
Location: Danubia |
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Point is - we can throw around ideas, but until actual development goes to nitty-gritty details, they might as well focus on SH. Because debating features that aren't even in the game for now its a waste of time (for them). Us, yea, it's our role to talk about stuff we want and stuff that should be in game, but we don't need JAFTeam to hold our hand while we do that.
If you guys follow BP Facebook page, they do publish regular newsletters. And I shared them. If you need to have them re-published here, just say so.
Apart from what JAFTeam said earlier, the good news is that SH got a very warm reception, game looks incredibly good and seems on its way to be a very good alternative to X-Com, albeit more difficult. I look into SH to see what FC can do. And to all those who said JAF will be a reskinned iphone game, I recommend a peek at SH. If they keep the same quality and I don't see why they shouldn't with Flashback, JA will look better than always.
Atm my feelings are SH will be a huge hit and by the time they get to make JAF, FC won't be starting as the "small danish indie dev" we knew them. They will be a strong name on the TBS market with a quality product under their belt. And for JAF that means huge exposure. New fans. Bigger budget.
You might say "oh well, but they're putting everything into SH, JAF will be made from leftovers". I'd say only this: a customer is never won or lost on his/her first purchase but on his/her second. If that one fails, you lost him. With games we can extend this rule to: a company will not make a name for itself until their second game it's a hit. So they can't afford anything but top quality for JAF. And that's a nice perspective for us.
[Updated on: Sat, 13 July 2013 19:40] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322804]
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Tue, 16 July 2013 10:19
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| Harper |
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Messages:149
Registered:June 2003
Location: Germany |
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My primary concern are the mercs. I always liked guys like Gumpy simply because of his lines, and I liked guys like Magic because of his capabilities, his voice, and his lines.
In JA and JA2, one couldn't start with a team of top-notch mercenaries. Rather, they had to be earned, either through reputation (JA) or money (JA2). What I hope is that the game leaves spaces for the Gumpys in this world. That means that there have to phases when the player can try out mercs and play around without feeling the pressure of time, and that AIM won't consists of "pros" only.
My second concern is the increase of stats and skills. In JA, stats could be improved. However, the difference between a "bad" merc and a "good" merc could not be dissolved. In JA2, things were different: in principle, every "bad" merc could be transformed into a top-notch merc. I don't know why the devs made it this way. In principle, the player had more discretion in order to decide what to do. But on the other hand, it made the top-notch mercenaries less, well, top-notch and less desirable. So what I hope is that a mean or a balance will be found between character development in JA and JA2.
My third concern is the setting. The original concept of JA was to create so to say "guys with guns". Although the setting was decidedly violent, it wasn't military: it was private actors against private actors. In JA2, this setting changed. With the emergence of the modder scene, what happened is that ingame warfare was professionalized and militarized. What I hope is that JA:F won't follow this trend and will be primarily about "weird guys with guns".
To me, these are the defining core elements of JA: mercenaries, relations (abilitiy-wise) and relationships between mercenaries, game progression, setting. They are core elements because, again, to me, they made the game distinct from other tactical games like "Terror from the deep", and gave JA its special personality.
[Updated on: Tue, 16 July 2013 10:21] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Sergeant
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322812]
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Tue, 16 July 2013 14:54
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| CrashGordon94 |
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Messages:61
Registered:May 2013
Location: England |
  
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Well, I don't have much for most of your post, I do have something about the way JA2 handled character advancement. Yes, in theory any merc could become top-notch, in practice it seems to be quite difficult. I've heard of people doing it but it always sounds like it takes quite a bit of time to do so, either by holing up and endlessly training (which could cause issues with game progress, and is time you could spend actually trying to advance, even slowly) or by actually having the characters fight (which I'll get to below).
Mainly it's not so much to make it so that people would go "I'm not bothering with this high-end merc, I'll just grab some random twit and train them until they're as good as the high-end merc.", it seems to be more so that a lower-end merc who you've been using throughout the game would slowly become better and better so they'd remain relevant through the course of the campaign and so they wouldn't necessarily be supplanted by similar mercs who just started out better.
The main thing with the high-end ones is they don't seem to be intended to be "totally better forever" so much as it's a choice between taking someone cheaper and more practical to hire but not as competent at first, and throwing out more money to get someone who's stronger in the short term.
That and there are high-end ones that have fairly unique things that won't just be completely copied by trained-up units. I'm mostly thinking of Shadow and his Camoflauge skill with this one, admittedly.
I'm sorry if I've got this wrong or I'm not getting my points across well, just felt like this was worth saying.
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Corporal
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322817]
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Tue, 16 July 2013 16:49
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| Harper |
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Messages:149
Registered:June 2003
Location: Germany |
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Thanks for your reply.
In JA, there were only six slots for mercenaries, so the problem didn't exist: since "bad" mercs didn't make progress fast, sooner or later, they had to be replaced by better mercenaries.
In JA2, the number of slots was increased up to 18. The consequence was that the player, unlike in JA, was no longer forced to make decisions. He could simply keep "bad" mercs, especially specialists for repairing items. There simply was no need to get rid of them; they were cheap, and there were plenty of slots. So in JA, you had to start with "bad" mercs, you had to generate more income in order to get better mercs, and you had to get better mercs in order to combat successfully enemies at the later stages of the game (I have never tried to use "bad" mercs). That was an element of game progression.
In JA2, this element no longer existed. In practice, one could use "free" mercs, or cheap mercs, or expensive mercs, or any mix of them right from the start. The player had a higher degree of discretion, and, in turn, a lower need to make "good" decisions. The function of "bad" mercs was not so to say hierarchically fixed with regards to game progression; rather, their function was defined by the player within his game plan or strategy. Their relative progression with regards to top-notch mercs, however, wasn't reflected by their increase in price, which only reflected level progression. So when you say that they weren't intended to be "totally better forever", this fact may serve to raise an objection.
My main point, however, is, that there should be reasonable limits to character progression: guys like Biff or Gumpy never should be able to master combat skills to the same degree as e.g. Magic or Gus. My second point is that character progression should be slow. In JA2, Ice or Blood quite often had achieved already level 6 before I was able to hire Magic, and I don't find that appropriate.
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Sergeant
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322845]
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Wed, 17 July 2013 09:21
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| Harper |
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Messages:149
Registered:June 2003
Location: Germany |
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I agree in part with Shanga. I do not know how often I played the game. Probably not 1,000 times, but, well, quite often. In the beginning, I spent a lot of time with maxing skills and attributes, simply because I could, because it was a new feature (compared to JA), and because I found it exciting.
I replayed JA2 pretty often since I liked to test a different IMP, or other mercs, or other merc constellations, or a different order of objectives. The longer I played JA2, the less interested and engaged I became in maxing. (As CrashGordon94 points out in his reply to an earlier post of mine, he never engaged in maxing because of the effort it takes.)
So I simply do not share this experience; it was rather the opposite.
But even if I would agree with Shanga, he doesn't tackle a different aspect related to the issue: as I said, character progression in JA2 was relatively fast compared to JA. As a consequence, IMP or "bad" mercs had already achieved a comparatively high experience-level when top-notch mercs (e.g. Magic, and yes, maybe I'm a bit obsessed about him) were available, making these mercs less desireable, less special, and less top-notch. I always found that this aspect took away a little of the fun of the game.
(A sidenote: I replayed the game pretty often, but I rarely finished it. Quite often I stopped after I conquered the fourth city or so. At this time, I already had the best equipment, and I simply didn't feel the need or desire to go on and finish the game.)
(A second sidenote: I think the "hierarchical" element of the availability of mercs outlined in a previous post could be found in the availability of weapons as well, at least in JA. In JA2, comparatively decent weapons were available relatively early, e.g. a Colt Commando or AK-74 could be found from the elites that were trying to recapture Drassen oder the SAM-site. I always wondered if the early availability of such weapons contributes to the game or takes a little as well.)
[Updated on: Wed, 17 July 2013 09:25] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Sergeant
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322853]
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Wed, 17 July 2013 11:59
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| Shanga |
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Messages:3479
Registered:January 2000
Location: Danubia |
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My point was that JA2 character progression was setup that you could either recruit scrubs and train them up and go full squad mode or recruit 1 good merc, plus your IMP and some rebels and go superman. It was never "this half of AIM is retarded and will stay so, the other half is ubercool". Due to the roaming nature of the game, yes, you could've taken the time and made warrior gods out of everyone, but if you do a fast campaign in vanilla JA2, no, you won't have Ira at level 6.
It's a choice: either risk attacking Meduna early with lowbie mercs or spend time and train up. Plus it was all related to Wisdom trait. Basically the game was designed so in a rather quick play you'd have 1-2 good mercs maximum acting as specialists, not a full squad of Magic clones.
It's hard to judge how fast each merc progresses for different players, because the game is very dependant on your play style. If you use Ira as mule, she won't gain marksmanship very fast. If you really want to make a sniper out of her, you can give her good weapons and she'll get better.
If you want to talk fast progression - look at the new X-com. I was playing it for a few hours and everyone was a Colonel, fully geared in best armor and preparing for last mission. And I was "wtf, is it over already?". It lasts as much as it would take you to take over Alma in JA2. That's fast and I don't mean it in a good way.
[Updated on: Wed, 17 July 2013 12:06] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322872]
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Wed, 17 July 2013 20:10
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| CrashGordon94 |
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Messages:61
Registered:May 2013
Location: England |
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Also another thing is that technically these high-end units are "available" the whole game, as long as they're not on assignment.
Now, I don't want this to sound like a nitpick since I know what you mean by this: They aren't really feasible to hire and keep hired until later when you can secure a better income. BUT this is an important distinction to make because you actually can hire someone Magic quite early on if you wanted. I mean, I heard of some guy on GameFAQs who hired Scope for a week at the start of the game IN ADDITION to the IMP, Steroid and someone else I can't remember. Of course he questioned his decision with Scope and this sort of thing isn't terribly feasible or necessarily a good strategy, but that's actually part of the choice! You CAN hire these top-end mercs quite early but there are downsides to it, you'll have stronger units but you'll need to work harder to cover their salaries and you'll have a smaller team too.
Also, if these top-enders still require a little more incentive to at least consider them as an option later on after lower mercs have become stronger (which is't necessarily wrong, I could see such a point) my suggestion would be to have a few more like Shadow, who have something that can't be perfectly replicated by lesser units (for him, his always perfect Camoflauge) even if they could be trained into the same general role (in this case, stealth).
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Corporal
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #322902]
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Thu, 18 July 2013 09:57
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| Akodo Deathseeker |
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Messages:104
Registered:March 2001
Location: St Paul, MN |
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I can think of one game that I've spent many hours playing again and again even though I have technically 'won' it. Medieval II Total War. And really, it's for similar reasons. It's fun to carve out a world empire using the finest German knights backed by solid infantry...and then do it again with massed english longbowmen...and the do it again with a muslim faction using cavalry archers and light horsemen...and then do it again using a viking horde.
Similarly, it's fun to try JA2 with highly skilled mercs, with low quality but decent mercs and watch them grow, with an all woman team, with the 'freebees only', with the 'crazy squad', with the 'night ops specialist'and with various combinations of who gets along with who.
in Medieval War II factions have a lot of similar units plus a few unique units, but they also often take away one key unit type from each faction (maybe no access to decent archers, or no access to good spearmen, or no access to quality heavy cavalry) learning to do battles in spite of that gap is part of the fun.
In JA2 you can, with enough training, crow shooting, and cow punching, turn any merc into a top tier warrior on par with Lynx, Gus, and Scope. I've never done it. I've always been much more interested in playing with the mercs and letting them progress more naturally (I'd train, but really only when otherwise the merc would be doing nothing as others were healing or whatever)
I am not sure you need to force anyone's hand on this however. I don't see a need for selecting a game option that denies me the ability to recruit the top tier mecs...I just choose to NOT RECRUIT THEM. I never needed an official ironman mode, I just let combat play out fully OR if it went absolutely terrible, reload from a save that was before that combat even started.
And I also think to show the real variability and capability of this system you'd need a couple dozen different 'modes' which makes me in favor of having NO modes, but simply SUGGESTIONS. Heck, maybe even something that analyzes the game and at the end states
"Congratulations! You've Won! However we see you fought most of your battles at night using night-ops specialists...maybe you should try playing again fighting in the daylight hours! or 'You've won using the best personnel AIM had to offer, do you think you could do it with just the people you meet locally?'
Or maybe just find different places during the game to suggest variants. I think of all the games that give tactical suggestions or quotes from famous generals while loading or between cutscenes, etc. There may be JA:F points where this could be implemented. Maybe sometimes while booting up the game you'll see the message "Ira and Conrad are both skilled teachers" and sometimes you'll see "Ever thought of playing using just the M.E.R.C.s?" or similar game variant suggestions.
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Sergeant
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #323865]
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Sun, 11 August 2013 06:41
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| Akodo Deathseeker |
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Messages:104
Registered:March 2001
Location: St Paul, MN |
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GASK3Texcited for JA:F
my suggestions as someone that has played JA2/JABIA religiously...
- Make SMG's/Pistols worth our while. Possibly able to walk/run and shoot at the same time? Make it a benefit to use SMGs in buildings and urban enviornments over rifles
I disagree. Now, part of JA fun is it can be 'movie and TV' style action. Yet also part of JA fun is using tactics and cool guns. Part of JA fun is being realistic with these guns.
Compared to assault rifles, pistols and SMGs just suck.
Pistols have one real purpose...they are small making them easy to carry. I think the best implementation of them then would be for the merc inventory screen to have a specific holster for pistol, and cheap AP to switch to it if your main gun is empty, or jammed.
But for a situation where you say 'I should put my other gun away and use a pistol' no, should not exist.
Same with SMG. Contrary to what TVs and Movies show, SMG is outdated tech, like driving a Model-T rather than driving a modern car. Yes, the Model-T did a lot of things better than horses (bolt action WW1 and WW2 rifles) but not everything. Still, we have gone beyond the Model-T with modern cars. Same thing, the invention of the assault rifle made the SMG obsolite...especially now with short barreled assault rifles.
Quote:
- Make a ton of fun and random skills to choose from. I love building up a character/IMP to the way i want them.
- lots of uniforms/outfits. I actually thought JA BIA did a decent job of options to choose.
- stealth and stealth takedowns would be a fun plus
I agree with these.
I'd especially like to see a variety of hats.
Red Bandana on head - small morale boost.
camo bandana - camo boost
baseball hat - increased perception
baseball hat of significant team - increased perception, small morale boost
various hats like boonie hat, cowboy hat, australian bush hat, etc would aos give increase to perception (at least during daylight)
but there could be a lot of other fun hats, just to have a laugh, but also so mercs look different from one-another.
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Sergeant
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #323911]
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Mon, 12 August 2013 00:46
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| Akodo Deathseeker |
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Messages:104
Registered:March 2001
Location: St Paul, MN |
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DepressivesBrotI find it curious how he first writes elaborate rants about ony pistol calibers being viable for serious suppressing and then declares all weapons using them to be useless ... pick a line and stick to it man.
Only subsonic rounds are viable for TOTAL sound suppression.
Subsonic rifle rounds like the 300 blackout subsonic are significantly less potent than regular intermediate cartridges, they end up with power similar to a pistol round.
Hence, the one roll the SMG had remaining was TOTAL extreme sound suppression. (because you still have the clack clack clack of the action). So a shorty AR chambered in 300 blackout is just as compact, just as handy in close quarters, just as quiet, slightly better range, similar lethality, AND...if you switch to standard rounds, you get a very large jump in power and range for the cost of a fairly slight increase in noise.
tl;dr
SMG gives A
SBAR gives A + B
SBAR > SMG
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Sergeant
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| Re: Community Wishlist for JA:F[message #323912]
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Mon, 12 August 2013 00:56
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| Akodo Deathseeker |
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Messages:104
Registered:March 2001
Location: St Paul, MN |
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Sam_HotteAkodo DeathseekerSame with SMG. Contrary to what TVs and Movies show, SMG is outdated tech, like driving a Model-T rather than driving a modern car. Yes, the Model-T did a lot of things better than horses (bolt action WW1 and WW2 rifles) but not everything. Still, we have gone beyond the Model-T with modern cars. Same thing, the invention of the assault rifle made the SMG obsolite...especially now with short barreled assault rifles.
By this definition you count modern PDWs like MP7 or P90 rather as ARs than SMGs?
IMHO Pistols, SMGs (PDWs) and shotguns should have their legitimate place in the game for CQC (and covert ops), even towards end game.
No. I am fine with PDW having their own category, but if push comes to shove, I'd group them with SMGs.
What I see when I look at these cartridges is pistol cartridge enhanced for armor penetration that just happened to be stuck in something other than a handgun first.
PDWs generally deliver a very small increase in terminal performance as SMGs, have a very small increase in range, are better at punching through light body armor.
In all categories they fall well behind an assault rifle.
They have two factors in their favor. #1 The PDW is generally slightly lighter than a short barreled assault rifle #2 Less recoil which equates to a bit less effort to train.
Remember, PDWs were NOT designed to be top notch CQB weapons, they were designed to be guns carried by people who were unlikely to fight...truck drivers, artillerymen, etc.
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Sergeant
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