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If you think about successful games now, while raw gameplay is obviously important, it's not the single most important thing like it was in the past. The post release love a title receives to keep things fresh is equally as important. By this I don't mean expansion packs, free tracks, extra teams, and all the stuff that requires a lot of work, i mean very, very small things that make a massive difference, like -
- Weekly Community Challenges - Rainbow Six Siege, for example, has things like "Kill 1000 enemies in the next week with nothing but a spoon". A pretty monumental task, and if you do it, you win nothing but a keychain. But people will put the time in to do these challenges because they'll have the little key chain to hang off the front of their ship that thousands of others wont. Things like "Do a Speed Lap under 20 seconds on xxx track on xxx speed to win a new ship skin" would be HUGELY popular. The key part is though is they are all cosmetic rewards. None of them change them gameplay whatsoever.
- Community Events - These can be even easier to implement. A little message saying "Show your colours; Qirex or Piranha?" and in a weeks time publishing which team won the most amount of multiplayer matches adds nothing more than a little bit of spice and competition.
- "Clip of the month" - couldn't think of another way to word this, and to be honest this one's a little more difficult to do. But I guess it could be a "screenshot of the week" maybe? Just something to encourage saving clips, saving screenshots, and sharing them in game.
- Current live Twitch streams - Pretty self explanatory :D Advertise current popular live streams.
- Hearing from the developers - Right, this is a massive one for me. All it is, is some kind of article from the developers. and it could be almost anything to do with the game (or even not to do with it!). One of my favourite games at the moment is on Steam called Factorio. Only 2 guys made it, it's sold over a million copies, has the highest average rating on Steam with a frankly unbeatable 99.9% positive, and every single Friday without fail they release something called "Friday Facts". Just a little piece from the developers about whatever subject the want, be it changes to the game, an insight to how it was made, whatever they feel like. It makes a massive difference and they haven't missed a single one for 5 years.
I guess my view on the series is if you want to make a new WO, and want it to be massively successful, I believe it just needs a few features to tie the community together.
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Well all of the above are designed to keep current players involved with the game and playing it, but even these can get repetitive after a while, and eventually player levels are going to drift down.
So you also need something to bring new players into a game to replace the ones you are losing, and at the same time re-attract those who have drifted away.
With a game like Wipeout you can't really do much in the way of new craft, as there is basically only 4 specs to play with.
Adding new weapons is a double edged sword because you could easily get it wrong and upset the balance of the game, which would alienate more than bring together, besides, both of the options above mean player options, and the more player options you have can make it slower to load if playing online, you could end up waiting half as long for a track to load as the actual race took , and nobody would put up with that.
The only real thing that would keep people happy would be new tracks.
Now I don't mean a whole add on pack like Fury was to HD, more like one new track added say once every 4 to 6 months would suffice, it would give everybody enough time to play it to death and try to be the fastest on it before the next one came out.
This would also keep the studio building the game active in keeping the old one working properly, while designing anything new, plus one track every 5 months wouldn't need a whole team to do it, they could have the basic framework done, and have new designers and Artist that are coming through have a go at it, this would also keep both the game and the people building it fresh, everybody's happy.....well in theory:)
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And if we follow the trend on PC, collectibles like skins (CS:GO) or... hats (TF2), hahaha.
But this is a racing game, and the sad truth is futuristic ships don’t attract players as much as real cars, so we’re limited by the small player base anyway.
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Completely agree.
Still believe though that small things make a big difference. People love seeing that the developers haven't just abandoned the title once its been released.
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I agree totally.
The unfortunate reality is that Sony own the Wipeout brand, and no disrespect intended to the Clever Beans guys, if Sony Legal had their way they would have them tied up in a Dark room so they couldn't post anything
Sony legal would have to be more hated than ISIS, as they are more destructive to ideas.
Besides, anything ported to the PS4 would have to go through a publisher, and when that happens, they usually want to do the port themselves, so the game is separated from it's makers somewhat by going through that process, which lessens the chance of the game makers being able to do it.
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Ok so here is what I don't get. Why do so many gamers like these indie titles that supposedly mimic a return to classical styled games, yet turn around and demand all this new stuff?
I think the general sentiment among most of us here is that we like the current gameplay experience and we just want that with better graphics and new tracks.
I've suggested many features that might make the game more new pilot friendly, but truth be told, I like the game just the way it is.
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You are not totally wrong...
Truth is, I even would like some things to go back as they were...
No more barrel rolls and no more side shift. I actually enjoy them, but at the same time I don't. It's strange. Don't Know how to explain it.
And I think it does make the game even harder for new ones. Before all we had to do was to learn the tracks and master the ships.
There were actually nothing else to do (and it was already hard !)
Now there is the side shift to master and the barrel rolls. I am a veteran player in wipeout, I'm far from being the best but I have some pretty good skills.
So I learn a track and when I'm good enough on it I go online... God when I see players with godlike skills like Feisar_2097, roll barreling everywhere, on parts of the tracks I did not even know it was possible, and, thanks to the boost if offers, then skipping entire part of the track it is just... Not fun, but it is also non fun to watch. There is a track, I think we should stay on it and not being able to take short cuts.
About shortcuts, there have always been different routes in Wipeout, but in 2048 it is just too much I think.
So yes, I think for some things Wipeout should go backwards but for other things it should brings some new stuff, as I said I'm a previous post.
And btw, an arena for eliminator mode would be awesome.
I even thought it could become a new sport in the wipeout lore.
And in game we could have 2 careers:
A career for a racing pilot, and another for a combat pilot.
And it could be a team sport like rugby or football: 2 teams of 10 ships each fighting in a huge arena. And season would work like the football world cup with semi finals, final etc.
And the last thing I imagined: Why not in a zero gravity environment? We would pilot our ships more like planes than cars. And we could have some epic dogfights ahah.
But well this is just an idea ^^
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Hey, I agree with you on a lot of your observations about how people feel about the game, and possibly which way it might head.
Any chance of getting Wipeoutarena happening again?....seems sad.
I just visited sites in Normandy, and it just irritates me that the ARENA crowd are not involved.
What Happened?
I see Leougnbok is racing on the Omega pack as his old BADTEST name [ How many people would known that?]
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I'm glad we agree on what the game should become :)
Well to be honest, I've always been on wipeoutzone (I did not registered until 2011, but was lurking long time before^^) and when I heard about wipeout arena I gave a look at it but it was already relatively quiet. So even if I registered on the site, I didn't stay long there and went back to wipeoutzone...
I don't know anyone there, so I can't tell you what happened or what they are doing now. However, most French wipeout fans I know are often visiting wipeoutzone... So, we, the French, are still here ahah
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I've actually beat 2097 in a few races, and ironically they were on the slower speeds doing Pure Race sessions. I need to reach out to him and see if he wants to be my new nemesis. That role used to be scarfroggers, but I haven't seen him in ages. I personally like having someone I'm on par with, but only if I land every single roll and don't make mistakes. It makes the win worth something. I haven't seen much of MurcielagoMLRZ either now that I think about it, but then again I seldom race on Phantom. And that kind of points out why some of us like the barrel roll mechanic.
My reflexes are not as good as they use to be and I need glasses. I also usually race with a few beers which also hinders performance. But there is just as much skill in learning all the barrel rolls on slower tracks as there is in mastering lines in Phantom speeds. I personally race on the slower speeds because it can turn non-technical tracks into highly competitive super technical tracks where not exiting a turn at just the right angle means you miss out on a barrel roll chain. Example: Vineta K. This is an easy track. But when two masters of roll compete, the track changes, and in my opinion becomes one of the harder tracks.
A typical optimal lap on venom includes landing the following rolls:
• First, barrel roll in the tunnel. However you can hit the semi-hidden weapon and speed pad without sideshifting which is about 0.15 seconds faster. Also, you get the weapon pad to absorb the energy lost in the roll.
• Then if you were lucky enough to get a turbo, you can boost roll over the following straight. But then the question is do I save it for the big turbo roll at the end of the next tunnel before the straight on the entrance or burn it on the straight?
• If you wait, you can get the barrel roll on the gap leading to the final tunnel...
• ...and if you hit the hidden boost pad, you can sideshift over and barrel roll again,
• ...and if you land that, you can go for a third barrel roll on the final part of the track by using the momentum from the previous barrel roll to SS+roll over the speed pad on the right.
• The last roll if you save your turbo instead of burning it, can be used to go for a double by nosing up on the first speed pad of the race (so this is actually the second lap, but for sake of making my point, I count this as part of the first).
If you do all this in a single lap, you'll be far enough ahead that you'll likely be out of quake range by the end of the first lap. But if you are racing with someone else that know all these tricks, it comes down to making all of these each lap, and managing energy by knowing when to leave a bomb, or when to eat it instead. You make split decisions like if I have a turbo but have 1% energy left, do I absorb, or boost into a weapon pad taking a risk?
Without any turbos, there are 4-5 (that last one on near the starting point is stupid hard to do) rolls you can do. Missing just one means you lose unless you turbo lucky (which I never seem to do).
I can't even begin to understand the complexity of the lines in Phantom (though I'm not terrible at it, just not nearly as good as Flash/Venom). So barrel rolls provide a way to be an elite pilot on even the slowest speed classes. I find those races more exhilarating than a close Phantom race, because the attention to detail and micromanaging energy is just so much fun to do! I also like the fact that you seldom have to use airbrakes on Venom and Flash because a sideshift will normally suffice. I can probably (and plan to) eventually get that competitive in Phantom. Rapier is always kind of meh. It is fast enough to cause you to make some errors you can't recover from, but not so fast that you need to worry about breaking into each turn with perfect lines. Essentially, Rapier is fast enough to satisfy but is much harder to run technical races. I'd rather either go slower and focus on flying technical, or fly faster where airbrakes are a must.
Traditionally, venom and flash are for beginners. But those speeds also offer a highly competitive challenge. I think I only beat Cypher one time legitimately on a Phantom race (and by that I mean neither one of us missed a shortcut and were neck and neck the whole race). I consider Cypher to be an elite pilot for sure. But I always had the advantage at slower speed because I knew what was possible at slower speeds and I was more accustomed to relying on tricks to win. I know I will never have the reflexes to be amazing at Phantom, so having the barrel roll mechanic greatly increases my enjoyment and keeps me coming back for more.
So for the TLDR, the point is simple: keep things competitive at multiple levels and I think there has been a lot of attention to detail to do just that.
PS, after reading this I will likely spend 99 laps on each Phantom course, because that is where all the elite action seems to be going on these days!