[2022] Followup: Walker Building System Rework

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Oh boy, looks like we hit a controversial vein with that last devblog - at the time of this post, it has:

• Comments: 263
  
• Up Votes: 226
  
• Down Votes: 243

That's certainly something. Feedback on discord and reddit paints a slightly more optimistic, but similar picture.

Transparency and Communication
We made a promise a few weeks ago that we'll do a better job with being more transparent, announcing changes early, and listening closer to feedback. We absolutely meant that.

I first want to go a bit more in detail about our intentions for this direction. In the end of this post, you'll find a poll where we ask you to give your opinion on which option you think is best moving forward - in case you wanna skip the wordy parts.

I already mentioned that I [chadz] - as a sandbox player - enjoy the ability to freely place structures wherever I want. It gives me the ability to outsmart other players and come up with solutions that maybe no one else thought of before.

Therefore, even internally in our team, the decision to introduce hardpoints was controversial. So why did we think this was a good way forward?

To answer this, I need to expand a bit on the vision for Season 5. S5 of Last Oasis is not S4 with changes sprinkled on top. It is practically an entirely new experience, guided by a new vision - because the old vision clearly didn't work. The most honest and direct proof of that is that player numbers dropped from originally 30k to below 1k. Big changes are needed.

Therefore, we tried to look at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is that each season of LO added bandaids on top of bandaids to fix game design flaws of the previous seasons, all the way back to the first public beta test. And we decided it's time to rip all of the bandaids off for S5.

One of our guiding ideas was "If we were to make LO from scratch, with the knowledge we have today, what would we do differently?". And this led us to a few principles we considered important.

For those of you that have already been reading between the lines of the recent devblogs, you've already realized that S5 is more or less entirely focused on PVE.

Pillar #1: PVE
One of the very basic principles for S5 is this: If I want to, I should be able to boot up LO alone (or with a few friends) on an empty private server, and have a great experience. That does not mean we're abandoning PVP, not at all, but it does mean that we're admitting that the initial premise of LO was wrong (we tried to focus on PVP, with only rudimentary PVE elements).

Instead, great PVP comes from great PVE. The PVE gives the reason for the PVP.

So what does that mean practically?

It means that everything about progression is about to change - drastically. It means that advancing through different types of Walkers and Rigs will be a major gameplay element. It means that equipping your walker with the right tools/weapons for the right job is a necessity, that finding and looting those tools is now part of that gameplay. And that hard decisions will have to be faced by players. Because with PVE comes, necessarily, environmental dangers and challenges that need to be overcome.

A story of S5
Let me walk you through a scenario in S5.

You've progressed to the stage where you have a basic Dinghy. It's a dedicated combat walker for you, equipped with two stingers for the pilot, a repeater and a ballista for your two friends.

There’s still one spot left to build a small weapon or additional storage, but the Dinghy reached its hardpoint limits. Your crew figures it’s time for an upgrade, and you know, through experience (or wikis) where you’re likely to find it.

You decided to go up against a group of Nurr Raiders (that's Rupu riding Nurr, equipped with ranged weapons), and by knowing the lay of the land you’re on, you found them rather soon:


It was a fierce battle, your crew prevailed, but your walker took some heavy damage. It will take considerable resources to repair. Furthermore, you lost the repeater on deck, which will be painful to replace.


However, on the upside: The raider loot was exceptionally good. Going through the spoils of combat, you've found the ability to construct either a Hammerhead Rig for the Dinghy, or a Stiletto.

You now have a tough decision to make. Stick with the Dinghy? Or go for the Stiletto?

The hammerhead Rig looks like a good upgrade - it has more medium spots, allowing you to equip an additional weapon and woodworking station so you can craft ammo on the go, making you more mobile.


Alternatively, you can consider the Dinghy a full loss with all the damage it has sustained. Spending all the resources to repair it is a big sunk cost.

Instead, you also consider going for a full upgrade, straight for the Stiletto. It costs considerably more resources, but even with the default Rig, it has many more spots available, making it possible for you to take on bigger mobs.

This is just one crude example of many, many more choices that you will face in S5. The difficulty in those choices is what we consider good gameplay.

This little story also shows another new major pillar of S5 that we haven't revealed too much yet, but will soon: Scarcity.

Pillar #2: Scarcity
I don't want to reveal too much about this part yet. In a nutshell: nearly all gameplay elements in S5 will be tied to the abstract concept of scarcity. Resources, Tech, Travel, Walkers, Weapons... and Hardpoints.

The idea is that players will be facing lots of choices about committing to decisions, investing resources, using what you have available right now, and striving for the things you want.

There's more pillars that guided our design throughout this LOverhaul which we'll reveal soon, but I hope this gives you a little bit of a better insight.

With this little exercise in storytelling and vision sharing done, let's get back to the topic at hand: Hardpoints vs Freebuilding.

Hardpoints vs Freebuilding
What we aim for in S5 is well balanced progression. What works against that is cramming your walker full of structures.

Look at these examples of previous seasons:


They are amazing feats of meticulous placement by players.

But they are also the very opposite of scarcity.

I understand that some of you think it's necessary to protect against zergs, but we have another major feature lined up that addresses that directly, rather than this bandaid.

The current system is awful for performance, it's horrible for movement on deck, and it completely evaporates our design decisions for S5. I think they are perfectly fine for private realms, I just see it going strongly against our vision for LOverhaul.

Feedback
However: We truly don't want to force anything on you that you don't want. Therefore, at the very least, the option for either freebuilding or rigs will be a setting players can decide on private realms.

But that's not a perfect solution, because most of you are probably excited to play on the main realm and want a default and vanilla version of S5 that's good and enjoyable.

This is where we get to the beta branch. Before we will launch S5, we will test all these options on the beta branch, open for everyone to join and to give feedback. There are many degrees of possibilities between full Freebuilding and strict Hardpoints:

• Hardpoint Locations and Rotations: Rigs define the exact location and rotation for exactly one structure. Some Rigs are better suited for broadsides, others are better for frontal attacks
  
• Hardpoint Locations: Rigs define the exact location for exactly one structure. Players are free to rotate as they see fit
  
• Free Placement on Walker, no structure amount cap: Maximum freedom, but Walkers have no specific role, their design matters very little, it's bad for performance, and the gameplay surrounding rigs is eliminated
  
• Free Placement on Walker, amount of structures capped by Walker: sacrificing some freedom, Walkers matter slightly more, it fixes some performance issues, rig gameplay is gone
  
• Free Placement on Walker, amount of structures capped by Rig: Rigs don't define the position of structures, but their amount. Similar as the option above, except the rig gameplay is back in a limited way
  
• Free Placement inside Hardpoints: Rigs define the allowed areas of structures, but players are free to place the structure anywhere within. Each Hardpoint can only contain one structure.

Those are the various degrees of options I see possible right now.

I have no doubt that there are many more, possibly better options than those listed above. If you have suggestions, let us know. Again - we do not want to act against you, our very playerbase. We’re on the same team.

We want you to give feedback, but for that feedback to be valid, it's important that you understand the full picture of LOverhaul, which we're trying to paint throughout these devblogs.

To help with the decision finding for a good building system, I've added a preliminary poll here so you can leave your opinion:

https://strawpoll.com/polls/DwyoqvopegA


Once the beta branch is available, we will test various options that sound promising, gather feedback, probably run another poll, and figure out a good solution that works for the majority.

I hope I managed to give some insight into out intentions and thoughts and am curious what you all think.

-c