backseatdev

Recently, a friend and fellow blogger Going Rancid interviewed Nate from Bioware|Mythic and one of the questions asked was regarding tactics, the response was as follows:

“Our general goal for tactics is that we want players to agonize over their loadouts and have to make tough choices between several desirable options and end up with a loadout that they’re happy with once the choice has been made. Additionally, we want players to be using different loadouts for different situations, and tactics to be less “set and forget” – hence the multiple loadout sets built into the basic UI. It’s pretty common knowledge that there are some tactics which are viewed as “must-haves”, and we see from our metrics that players don’t frequently change tactics. Broadly speaking, our approach to improving tactics is to take one or two of the least-used and consider what improvements can be made to them; in most cases, we’d rather make bring up under-performing tactic options and make them as desirable as the most-used tactics.”

This got me thinking about tactics and how I think Nate is spot on in his thoughts on people picking a load out and just sticking with that.
On my Zealot I have the 4 I feel are the best and unless I go and do some PvE, those tactics do not change.
On my Choppa I actually have 3 tactic sets, each a varying degree on survivability from running solo to being in a solid group with guard. Really though, I would switch tactics maybe once per scenerio at most or just when I join a group.

The biggest thing preventing people from switching tactics based on the situation they are in is the restriction from switching while in combat. If this was lifted, you could further improve smooth transitions by allowing macros/hotkeys for tactic sets and linking tactics to stances/mechanics (eg. the new Zealot/RP mechanic for healing and damage modes). A cooldown may be required however.

This would add some interesting new group vs group dynamics as whole groups could have alternate strategies and flip to them on the fly.

It also just makes sense for ORVR as you often cannot get out of combat and you really do not know what you will encounter next. At the moment it creates an experience that promotes the most generic set it and forget it setup to ensure you will not be hand-cuffed with more specialized tactics.

What do you guys think? Aside from people that complain that there is mystery to their opponents, what other things could go horribly wrong?

Read the full interview by Going Rancid: http://goingrancid.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/war-qa-with-cc-developer-nate-levy/