[UI] Ideas for improving the game

Introduction:

Dark Orbit is a game many of us love, but the game in its current state is a sad husk of what was once a popular MMO. For the better part of a decade, the game has degenerated into a bot-infested grindfest with a playerbase a mere fraction of the size it once was. This document details how I, IhaveSonar, would redesign Dark Orbit to be a player-friendly, enjoyable game that focuses on exciting, company-oriented combat.

***Note that I acknowledge that the shipbuilding ideas are essentially impossible to implement without screwing over a ton of people, but I do think that the mission, clan, CBS, and event ideas could work will with how the game is today ***

Design Goals:

1. Heavily reduce the amount of time and money required to have a fully upgraded ship.
   1. Reasoning: Quite simply put, the reason there are so many bots is that it is prohibitively expensive in terms of time and money to fully build a ship manually. I applaud those of you who have done so, but if you want to have people actually play the game en masse, building a ship needs to not be such an extreme process. Many, many players are turned off by the prospect of having to pour thousands of dollars or hours into a game just to reach a bare minimum threshold of being able to compete with established players.

1. Re-design clans and events to focus the game much more heavily on inter-company combat.
   1. Reasoning: Companies being the focal point of the game’s factions as opposed to clans means that you truly gain a sense of “enemy” or “friendly” territory, which I always personally viewed as the coolest part of the game. Additionally, it’s really nice to be able to trust your company members to help you out in a skirmish. This is doubly important for new players, as they need fellow company ships to defend them so they can actually grow stronger.

1. Retain all elements of the current game that allow for engaging, skill-based gameplay.
   1. Reasoning: Over the years they have added legitimately cool features that add a lot of skill, strategy, and variety to PvP combat! These should be kept in the game.

1. Remove bots while allowing BigPoint to still make money.
   1. Reasoning: In the current state of the game, BigPoint cannot outright ban botters because botters account for the majority of their revenue. If we truly want a bot-free game, they need other sources of income from the game.

Shipbuilding Changes:

1. LF-4 and Prometheus lasers are REMOVED.
2. Pilot Bio is REMOVED. The base accuracy of all lasers is INCREASED to 100%.
3. Item upgrading is REMOVED.
4. Apis and Zeus Drones are REMOVED.
5. Cyborg, Mimesis, and Hammerclaw are REMOVED.
6. Spartan Drone Designs are REMOVED.
7. The Havoc Drone Design, when applied to all drones, gives you FAT LASERS.
8. The Hercules Drone Design, when applied to all drones, gives you BUBBLE SHIELD.
9. The Hermes Drone Design, when applied to all drones, gives you PURPLE-TRAIL ROCKETS.
10. All Drone Formations REMAIN.
11. All special rocket and laser ammunitions REMAIN.
12. All items primarily used in the creation of removed features, including but not limited to log-disks, green booty keys, green booty chests, gold booty chests, I-oil, and rinusk, are REMOVED.
13. All auctions refresh on an HOURLY basis.

Map Changes:

1. Blacklight Maps are REMOVED. (Random BlackLight aliens in the normal maps REMAIN).
2. Q-Zone is REMOVED.
3. Refraction Zone is REMOVED.
4. Ultimate Battle Arena is REMOVED.

Mission Changes:

1. Missions for higher-level players are ADDED in which they receive significant rewards for helping out lower-level players of their own company.
2. All former missions involving spending time in enemy/battle maps or traversing a certain distance in enemy/battle maps are RESTORED.

Clan Changes:

1. Multi-Company Clans are now REMOVED; you may only join clans that belong to your company.
2. By default, your clan is automatically and irrevocably at war with all clans in enemy companies.
3. By default, your clan is neutral with other clans in your company. You can form alliances or declare war with these clans as you see fit.

Clan Battle Station Changes:

1. Clan Battle Stations, on top of giving their normal bonuses to clan members, give XX% of those bonuses to all allied company members except those in a clan at war with the clan that owns the station.
2. Setting up a Clan Battle Station in an enemy company’s territory gives all online members of that clan X uridium/honor/EP.

Event Changes:

1. All goals scored in events such as Spaceball and Capture the Flag give all online members of that company X uridium/honor/EP.
2. Each wave finished in Invasion gives all online members X uridium/honor/EP.
3. On the FIRST DAY and ONLY the FIRST DAY of each month, GALACTIC STRIFE is activated, featuring massive rewards for the highest-scoring players at the end of the 24-hour period.

Dealing with Bots:

1. Bots are AGGRESSIVELY dealt with from day one. On top of running bot-detecting scripts and issuing bans of increasing length, BigPoint hires a player or multiple players to actively fly around in-game and issue bans of increasing length to botters.

Revenue Changes:

1. BigPoint no longer offers pre-made ships for sale.
2. BigPoint now starts selling most cosmetic designs for ships, drones, and PETs in the shop for purchase with real money.

Conclusion:

While several of these proposed changes are admittedly pipe dreams, I do believe BigPoint could implement some of them into the game as we know it today! Most notably, I believe BigPoint could phase out MCCs and rework events and Clan Battle Stations to allow more company-centric gameplay.

Alternatively, it is possible that BigPoint could release a Dark Orbit Classic that is essentially a simplified version of the game featuring all of these changes. Both World of Warcraft and Runescape have had success releasing classic versions of those games, so it is possible that Dark Orbit could benefit from the same process.

 

I'm not letting you take my hard earned UFE equipment away.

How about you quit DO and go make your own "perfect" game if you're going to even entertain such a thought of doing this.

 

LMAO There's no way any of that will ever happen. I worked hard to get my gear, and folks who paid for a lot of their stuff would be three times as angry. DO has a habit of making changes, not always liked, but not taking things away that we earned(or some bought). Sorry, nothing personal, just going to have to thumbs down most all of your ideas laid out above.

I agree that the game could use some changes, just not these.

 

What are you going to do when they shut down the game, ask them for a jpeg of your "hard earned UFE equipment" ? Or perhaps the flash code piece where it is programmed?
Also your second comment is really an example of why this game has gone down the drain since p2w content usually attracts toxicity.

Anyway, we can have a separate server with this characteristics while keeping the normal ones for those who " I worked hard to get my gear, and folks who paid for a lot of their stuff would be three times as angry".

I just would like to add that I think the advanced jump cpu should be limited to same company and pvp maps. In my opinion being able to bypass the so called "portal guards" from back in the days and freely farm new players was one of the worst updates in this game, maybe even worst than the UFE gear.

 

If you want people to even consider your ideas, appeal to reason. Your proposals come across as nothing short of a joke

 

There is a notable difference between developers advertising an item and then backtracking by removing that item, versus shutting down an entire game where everyone's items disappear where everyone is affected equally. So, I won't answer that question, its beyond the scope of OP's main point.

Not an argument.

 

It's really the missions newer players have issues with, they are assigned way too early for such hard missions that cant be completed alone or take forever.

I agree with the company point. Game is too one sided and isn't even about companies currently.
There's no skill anymore because damage variety is so high. Anyone can use Cyborg and win most fights with two speed configurations if they play correctly.

I agree with some removals but this is a bit exessive since people have paid actual money for these items.

Yeah you just wanna remove a lot of things that will just make the game worse, I agree jackpot arena is useless now but refraction and some others I feel are quite useful.

Map changes aren't needed, mission changes aren't needed and clan changes are a bit exessive. Just making no negative honour for destroying your own company regardless of kill or not is enough to put an end to MCC.

Event changes will fix naturally with the fix of MCC. Bots cannot be fixed, it's not something that has an easy solution on browser games, Bigpoint are doing okay with it though with the last anti-bot measurement they took.

Don't try to support cosmetics, they're useless. Add some actual content to the game instead of masking updates with useless cosmetics that don't actually do anything for the game.

That's my personal view on most points. Like I said, I like some ideas but some I don't.

 

That would not happen. you cannot dictate the bigpoint how to run the game,and besides that stupid IDEA of yours millions of players like us will be wasted or affected of what they/we earned..

 

I'm sorry but removing stuff is NOT something I am a huge fan of (even though I agree things have gotten out of hand) I would rather balance them like for example reducing prometheus laser range by 10%, this would make prometheus a little more like side grades rather than direct upgrades.