Warning: this post is very long. It requires actual reading. Young children and the mentally challenged should not partake.
At the beginning of Ace of Spades' rise in popularity, the gameplay was unique in that, unlike most common FPS games, it required you to "build your battlefield" so to speak. Without cover or some sort of tunnel system, you would be lost and your team overrun. People had to stick together, make fortifications, and engineer a strategy in order to take the other team's intel. That was the goal.
But with the introduction of multiple mechanics that sped up gameplay and allowed people to "go it alone" more easily, this unique, fun type of gameplay began to fall apart.People stopped going for the intel and focused on kills. They built less complex things less often. They even began to create maps that eliminated the possibility of tunnels and trenches altogether, going so far as to force both sides to run around in a predefined linear area. Ace of Spades is quickly becoming faster-paced, far too easy, and more solo-oriented. If the game continues to travel at this trajectory, it will begin to fall into "run-and-gun" gameplay territory. In order to preserve and promote the greatness that is the special type of gameplay that only Ace of Spades can offer, I have a few suggestions.
1. Bring Back Teamwork
One major proponent of a fun game of classic AoS was working as a team. Speaking from experience, there's no better feeling than when your team can work together and overcome any obstacle in their path to win the game. That being said, there has lately been much less team-oriented gameplay in Ace of Spades. In order to bring back this fun experience and reinstate it as part of the core of AoS gameplay, here are a few suggestions:
- Slow down the individual by removing autoclimb. This will force people to be more cautious and will encourage people to avoid running off by themselves. I will elaborate on why else autoclimb needs to go later.
- Implement "spotting" and other team-oriented gameplay elements. Some players fly solo simply because they don't see a reason to have other people dragging them down. Add an incentive to working together by allowing members of the team to designate objectives, look out for one another, and effectively cooperate as a unit.
- Implement "squads", the right way. The subject of "squads" is a touchy subject, because implementing this feature could completely ruin gameplay if done the wrong way. Instead of allowing people to use this feature to spawn somewhere far away on the map, use it to bring people together. Rather than have a player spawn with his squad after he dies, make it so the squad spawns together at the end of the respawn wave. For example, let's say there are five men in a squad. They venture out to the other side of the map, but they're spotted by a guard patrol and three are killed. Men A-C will spawn together at the spawn point, but the last two will remain where they were. When they die, Men D and E will respawn together as well, but NOT with A-C unless time permits (window of 30 seconds). This prevents abuse of the system but allows it to bring people together to work as a team.
2. Make Forts Useful Again
The other day, I was playing CTF on a generated map when I realized something: back in the day, people would always be complaining about "griefers griefers! he broke the fort! he's blocking the tunnels!" etc. But now, all you hear is "hacker! aimbot! he's hackin kick him!". Besides the fact that aimbots need to be dealt with (!), this is because people don't care about fortifications anymore. With the introduction of the SMG, the rising popularity of small custom maps, and a faster, individual-oriented gameplay style, people don't see the need to build or simply cannot build something without it being torn to shreds or simply disregarded. The ability to "engineer your assault" is one of the key components of what makes AoS great, but if building things becomes too hard or even useless.. it's quite impossible. Here are some suggestions to remedy the situation:
- Make blocks more resistant to bullets and keep the spade the way it is. Plain and simple, make it so blocks are harder to break with guns. Make the shotgun take two shots(this will make more sense once I explain how the shotgun needs to be balanced), The rifle take three, and the SMG five. That way, people can build things without them being immediately obliterated but there's still the possibility that an organized team can break down a fortress with a machine gun assault. In addition, making the spades only take two hits to break a block only encourages griefing and makes blocks "weaker" and only works to sabotage building efforts on the whole. Keep the spade the way it is.
- Let us carry more blocks. When I'm trying to build a useful fort, I often find I'm out of blocks before I've finished my building. Seeing as anyone can break blocks and anyone can place them, I see no problem in letting us carry something like 80 or 100 blocks rather than 50. This would make building easier, especially far from the tent in CTF mode.
- Help us defend our forts by adding a balanced turret/mortar installation. The main purpose of building a fort is to defend a position. But with the gameplay we currently have, defending a position is very hard because it relies on people working together and being committed to the goal of defending. In tandem with the "teamwork" suggestions, the addition of some sort of defense turret or mortar would be very good. It would require three or four team members to be present in order to create it, and it would be manned by one person. A turret would be an infinite-ammo SMG that breaks blocks in three hits, not five. If it were a mortar, it would draw its ammo from the grenades of the people around it. When the rounds run out, it can no longer be fired until someone goes and gets more grenades and brings them to the mortar. If there are less than the requisite amount of people there (because they die, leave the game, etc.) the mortar/turret disappears. These additions would encourage building a fort and working as a team to defend it.
3. Balance the Guns.
Some people might say one gun is too powerful, or another is underpowered, or maybe they're all equal and you just don't have the "skill" to operate them, you noob. Well to most of us, it's been obvious since the day of each of their respective introduction that not all the guns of Ace of Spades have been created equal, and this needs to be fixed in order to achieve a better game. On a case-by-case basis, here's my take on how to balance the guns:
- Rifle: Mid-to-long range all-purpose weapon. The rifle is the golden original of AoS and has been in the game since day one. But over time, it has been nerfed and with good reason: quite simply, the Rifle was ridiculously powerful and accurate for a long time. But this never mattered because it was the only gun. So when the SMG and Shotgun come into play, we need to make it so the rifle has a weakness. If you've tried using the rifle at close range, you'll know it's a shot in the dark. It's nearly impossible to kill someone at point-blank range with a rifle faster than an SMG or Shotgun. So in short, the rifle is pretty good as it is, we just make sure that it is bad at close range and gets better the farther out you're shooting. This prevents it form being too good but cements its purpose as a psudo-sniper semi-automatic counterpart to the SMG.
- SMG: Mid-to-Close Range "Double-Edged Sword". The SMG is often used incorrectly by newbies who think it's a "spray-and-pray" kind of gun. It's not. The SMG can only kill at mid range if fired in short bursts. This is good because it prevents it from taking the place of the Rifle. However, it could still do to be a bit more accurate at mid (not long) range. This mid-range burst fire is the first edge of what I call the "double-edged sword" of the SMG. The second edge is the close-range side. At close-to mid-close range, the SMG can be a powerful bullet-spray based weapon used for mowing down targets and taking out small block cover. And with the change from 3 shots to breaking a block to 5 for the SMG, it can now be used for that purpose without totally destroying the players' ability to build. In addition, the change from 3 to 5 also warrants the SMG getting more bullets. It runs out way too fast if you're adopting the bullet-spray style of assault, so it needs one more clip of bullets in order to be at its full potential. Its reload time could be a bit longer to offset this fact.
- Shotgun: Close-Range Self-defense or Rush weapon. The shotgun is vastly underpowered. There, I said it. Its reload time is way too long, it gets too few bullets, and is not accurate enough for it to serve its purpose well. Its purpose should be too aid in close-range combat and "rushing" enemy fortifications, and to serve as a self-defense weapon for people in forts who deal with close-range assaults from people rushing. In this way, the Shotgun balances itself. So make the reload time a bit shorter, give it more bullets, and make it dead accurate at close-very close range and you've got a serious contender against the powerful SMG and Rifle.
4. Miscellaneous Fixes and Improvements.
Listed in order of importance.
- Make it so getting the intel shows enemy positions. This would make people work together to get the intel rather than running off on their own and going for kills.
- GUI Votekicking/Select language at first Startup. The votekick system on vanilla is useless because it doesn't last long enough and never works. In addition, many people don't speak English, so they don't understand the message. Remedy this by making votekick messages and game text configurable on startup by language or a GUI.
- Prevent aimbotting and other hacks from working. This ruins the game and NEEDS to be dealt with.
- Make map sizes adjustable to be larger or even smaller. This would add a whole new level to the gameplay, with the possibility for large-scale territory wars or intense firefights in small areas.
- When you press T or Y for chat, a log appears that you can scroll through with the arrow keys. Chat disappears too fast, we need to be able to see earlier messages.
- Add server-side toggles for Cap Limit, respawn wave time, spectating, and nearly anything else that can be modified. Customization is good!
- Add the ability to reconfigure all of the keys. This is a fundamental feature that is missing, and left-handed people sure wish they had it.
- Fix the glitch that occurs when your head is stuck in a block.
- Allow more than 32 players per server. If the server can handle it, why not?
- Show the mapname for a server in the server list. This would help when picking a server to play on.
- Give admins more powers, like flight, godmode, and infinite ammo. Because being an admin right now is kind of lame in vanilla.
With all these additions in the game, Ace of Spades will grow to be the best game it can possibly be. Please leave comments and criticism below, but when criticizing please give reasons and support for your argument. Be civil in discussion please. Thanks for reading all the way through, it was a long one.
