Choosing Weapons After Map & Team Selected

Was asked (by a friend, not a dev) to put this in the main suggestions thread so people could comment on it... originally in Adjusting the Sails...

How about letting players choose their setup after seeing the map.

1. Select Ship
2. Queue for Battle
3. Map and Teams selected
4. Players get 30sec to load up their ships with weapons/gear and lock in
5. If a player doesn't load up and lock in, he's dropped (i.e. go back to step 3)

Pros:

• More meaningful and contextual choices for players - ships aren't just static with "mah best gear"
• Incentive to build and keep a larger variety of weapons since some work better for certain maps
• MOAR FUN!!!!

Cons:

• Brings in possibility of dodging matches, but this has it's own benefits and is easy to resolve:
  • If a dude is gonna dodge, he was probably going to be afk. Removing floaters pre-match is preferred to suffering a floater
  • The solution is to give dodgers an increasing soft ban, and to place repeat offenders in a "dodgers queue" they have to climb out of by not dodging or afk'ing (know this through player reporting)
  • Through this, over time, Rovio would also have another variable for the Matchmaker to use in creating good contests
• Players dodging will increase queue time, as the rest of the players wait for the matchmaker to do its thing
  • Still not a bad thing imo - I'd rather wait an extra minute to play a good match than get right in with a floater or someone who would dodge a match

Let's doooo eeeeet!!!!!!!

 

Noooooo!!!!
It will be soooooo boring!!!!
The current system is good mate.

 

Having people messing around in their inventory for 30 seconds, and getting booted, would be excruciating.

The only way I can see something like this working, is if we had alternative builds that could be saved and loaded quickly.

So you would have your main setup, and perhaps one alternative setup saved. Then you would basically get as long as the game takes to load in order to switch, else you join with your default.

I think that something like this might be nice for Fixers and Speeders, that have very limited weaponry, but Shooters should have enough slots for any eventuality. Letting them change is just going to encourage them to spam more.

That’s why I’m probably against having something like this implanted. Not knowing what map you’ll end up on, forces people to take balanced setups with a good variety of items. Allowing people to change builds on the fly, that’s just going to lead to shallower games with less item diversity (mine spamming on Wayward, Mortar spamming in Chill Zone, etc...).