Pilot Archive

The more and more I think about Deep Space the more it confuses and frustrates me. I started thinking, "what is really wrong with this zone and what needs to change to make it better?"

Anyway I came up with few things that I think would be easily changed in Deep Space that the devs could do right away to give us a more exciting experience in the zone, but at the same time offer exactly the same potential and advantages that we have now, without the disadvantages.

First of all, why do the spawns just ping pong around the zone? It's so arbitrary, they come close to their patrol point, switch directions and continue on. Why? Do the devs like to call attention to the zone walls? You would think an immersion breaker like a invisible zone wall would be something they'd want to try to have players avoid.

The idea behind the spawns in the zone is that they offer PVE incentive but you also have to make the spawns move around in such a way as to not encourage bottlenecks right? Well that's nice and all, but what you end up with is something that doesn't encourage PVP in a PVP zone. It encourages wandering off into a corner of the zone and not paying attention to the zone objective, which is to destroy the opposing faction base. It encourages being mr. sneakyman and cleaning off the spawns that come near the zone floor so you can avoid PVP.

It doesn't feel like a space battle. It doesn't really feel like much of anything except a jumbled disaster of vettes criss crossing around half the time.

Well why not change that? Those vettes are called blockade runners right? Why not have them run a blockade then?

I think the rebel base should be removed. I think that vettes and other spawns should hyperspace into the zone at different points along the far zone wall and simply fly across the zone attempting to get to the other side in a relatively straight line. When they do make it to the ISD side, they hyperspace out. Turn the Star Destroyer and have it face these oncoming Vettes, if nothing but for appearances.

1 this is going to reduce the lag in the zone. You don't need to have 20 vettes floating around half the time, you don't need to have these wierd spontaneous bottlenecks that pop up in Deep Space in various areas. It doesn't make the zone more fun, it doesn't offer any advantage to anyone really. Have a "squadron" or whatever of rebels race in a straight line and try to "run a blockade" is so much more interesting. Essentially the # of spawns in the zone would stay the same.

Furthermore, think about how much more exciting it'll be to load up in DS and run a blockade. Rebels now have two "missions" protect spawns as they travel to the jump point, and destroy the ISD. Imperials would lose the "destroy the base" "mission" but really who is going to complain about that? It was an absurd mission anyway. Why doesn't the ISD just fly over there and blow the thing to shreads? It's afraid of crossing the zone? Makes no sense.

And what other changes to the Imperial ships? I wouldn't change hardly anything, just make the spawns "Patrol" like they do now, onlyin certain areas. Concentrate the patrols near the ISD side of deep space. Make some of those areas overlap near the ISD so it's more protected and less apt to be succeptible to a corvette or other rebel spawn unwisely chosing to fly to close to it.

Since load points for rebel ships would be effectively randomized there'd be little incentive to "load camp" people on the other side of the zone. Similarly, increased NPC patrols around the ISD would discourage rebel "load camping" (although likely not eliminate it)

Lastly how hard could a change like this be to implement? It should just be a matter of adding load points and changing patrol points for spawns.

It's just a minor change like that though to NPCs that makes the game feel less like a setup for a grind and more as if it has actual content to it. Call it immersion, whatever.

-meeuki


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-meeuki


lumpini

-meeuki


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