Jeremy and all, Just been mulling over zombie slaughter in the bath, and 5 ideas struck that I think would help to increase both player interaction and overall productivity.
Productivity first: 1. Would it be possible for menus to be made navigable by letter, like how it is in menus elsewhere in Windows? For example, if I were in the safe zone menu, I could hit G for get equipment, then hit M E quickly to jump straight to medkit in the list of choices? My reason for asking will become apparent shortly. 2. The new system for tracking players is a very neat addition. Only trouble is, when there are a lot of people online, the interface isn't as productive as it could be. I'm imagining being able to hit a keystroke, perhaps P for players, that would pop up a menu containing a list of players who're currently online. Now, if that menu were navigable by letter as in the previous suggestion, you could almost always reach the player you're looking for in under 5 keys, instead of cycling through a list of lord knows how many choices on a busy day. Perhaps enter on a player's name would give you the ping once, shift-Enter would start the loop, similar to the setup in the menu for assigning points. My thinking is that if you're helping or being helped by another player and things are getting busy all around you, this method would be more productive to get a lock on than frantically scrolling with your P key, only to discover that 3 or 4 O's would've gotten you to the same place. 3. Building on that some more, the keystroke CTRL-/ is currently unassigned. Perhaps that could be used in future to build the same menu of players, and hitting enter on one would let you send a whisper? This isn't utterly down to laziness I promise, I got eaten alive once when I was switching away to check the chat log file for the proper spelling of a username. Might also help to quieten down the radio channels a touch when there are a lot of people online. Ok, now adding extra player interaction: 4. Is there any chance of being able to drop loot in future? My thinking here is that the first time I found fuel, I scurried back to the safe zone to lead a level 4 mission and was shown the ropes by a few kind higher level players. Since then, I try to help out the newer newbies than me in turn, and being able to drop and swap loot would be one more way of doing that. At the moment, there is a huge divide between the higher level players who could essentially die twice a day for a month and still afford to kit themselves out each time and even the most promising of newbies. Not complaining about that at all, those players have clearly put in the graft and deserve their status, I just think that a way of trading items mid mission or on the field would go a long way toward adding a real sense of "we're all in this together" to the game. It would be cool to be able to help your buddy who's just getting started along, or take a guy you don't know under your wing if he's showing signs of becoming a great player. To take the longer view, I'm kinda wondering what a level 2000 player would have left as a chalenge or a pull to return to the game daily, and I'm pretty sure helping out newbies would be a big pull for me should I reach an insanely high level like that. 5. Saving probably the most contencious for last, I'd really love to see the ability to hit other players added as an experiment, perhaps just to one map or mission. Again, I'm thinking along the lines of prolonging interest and giving higher level players another skill to develop, as well as aiming to bring us closer in line with mainstream practices. Before you shoot the idea down as a player or complain that it would totally unbalance the game, remember that the experiment I'm suggesting would only be on a set map or mission, you could choose whether to get involved or not. I think it'd be fascinating and would give even the most skilled players something new to chew on! Let the debate begin... Scott --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
