Wednesday, April 9 1997

"I don't think so," spake JeffP

Wednesday, April 9 1997
Every week, dozens of game suggestion are posted to the official message boards, the vast majority of which have been suggested at least a hundred times before. Some are good proposals which have either been overlooked by vie team or put somewhere on the to-do list. Others are bad ideas that have been shot down again and again by everybody's favorite balloon-bursters, Jeff and Rod. In an effort to increase the signal/noise ratio on the SuggBoard, I've decided to make a list of the five worst suggestions and tell you why they would hurt the game.

Customizable Ships: Maybe one day when we're all on fifty megabit fibrop lines, but not now. The ship.bmp file that holds the graphics of all the ships is about 300k, which would mean entering an arena with 90 people all with customize ships would require 300*90=27 megabytes of downloading.

Homing Missiles: Heaven forbid we should have to aim our bombs! Let's just fire randomly around the screen and let the computer do all the work of finding our opponents and hitting them. Anyone who's ever been on a Quake server where only one clan knows the secret impulse for guided rockets can sympathize.

Tractor Beams: This has been suggested as a solution to all the warpers, runners, and pussies one encounters in the game. However, there are more than enough legitimate reasons to run (but not to warp, which is why antiwarp exists), such as when one has twelve hard-earned flags and is being chased by everybody on the map. Now imagine each of those pursuers using his tractor beam on the poor flagger. Lame!

Wall Phasing: Everyone who has lost in the War Zone has at one time wished they had this particular powerup, which would allow someone to phase through a wall right into the middle of a hostile base. Don't wish too hard, however. Two negs on the same team with phasing could easily rid any base on the map of its flags; one phases in, the other attaches and phases out with the flags. Now imagine forty negs doing this over and over again.

Fill-In-The-Green: I actually used to think this was a good idea, until I thought about it some more. Basically, a fill-in-the-greener hates spending 5-15 minutes greening and wishes that every green would give him something he doesn't have. This would not only cut the time needed for greening by about 75% but would remove an exciting element to the game, that of downgrades. Without downgrades, it now becomes much harder to take that enemy base or hunt down that flagger, which is already hard enough against good players.

[4/9/97]