Bitfighter Forums

A survey to see what people think should come next

Weapon/module rebalancing

If this is a survey, then you should be able to select which one you like and which one you dont, but there is a 3 vote limit! There should be no limit at all!

I am gonna make bots

Bots are my #1 request right now. s_bot is fun but it gets old after a while. I'd love to see complex bots that utilize varying weapons and modules, even if just at random intervals.

I think the poll forcing you to choose "just" 3 is rather fitting, actually. You have to pick only the ones you are very passionate about ... Your top 3.

I only voted for more achievements. And even that is iffy until we get better database/player info integration.

Here are my thoughts on some of the available responses. I'm the lowest rung on the developer ladder, so my thoughts do not necessarily reflect those of the devteam as a whole:

More Weapons
We still haven't properly balanced the ones we have. We added Seeker for the last release (018 or 018a, I don't remember). It is decidedly useless in serious combat.

More Servers
This is probably the last thing we need. I'd rather see us have a handful of really good servers than a boggling selection of bad to mediocre ones (sorry guys, but if your server is on your home internet it's doing more harm than good).

More Achievements
I'd like to see more diverse achievements and a better in-game interface for them as well, but it's not a high priority (at the moment).

More Level capabilities(like moving walls)
We've added (i.e. fixed) some levelgen features for 019. "More" is not particularly helpful; much better would be specific feature ideas (including the cases in which they'd be useful).

New Bots
Bots are Lua scripts just like levelgens. Open up your text editor and get to work! We help people with Lua programming questions in the IRC Channel (aka chatroom).

Faster Servers
100 mbps should be fast enough for anyone.

More Controls
I'm not a big fan of making bitfighter more complicated. I assume you mean more combat/movement controls, but feel free to elaborate. Keep in mind we only have two dimensions to work with.

New Special Effects
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1823

Different Ships
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1721

Large Controllable Ships
Moar Cowbell(Missile Silos and huge weapons)
Campaign
I can't say anything nice, so I won't say anything at all

More Power modules (Equipment)
As with weapons, I'd like to make the modules we currently have more useful before we start adding more stuff (which will require even more balancing, and that's something we're not very good at yet).

That said, I'm glad to see some honest discussion about the future of bitfighter's development.

Side note: If anyone wants to make a case for weapon imbalance, see if you can get the footage from airlock in last night's BBB. The round started with everyone using mainly phaser, then by the end it was almost exclusively burst. I'd bet there are some interesting theories on why that happened and it's a great example of weapon choice in crowded environments.

I'm thinking the most urgent items on the list are more achievements. We have a long list of ideas to draw from http://bitfighter.org/wiki/index.php/Ideas_for_Achievements.

I have one idea for a new weapon (something fundamentally different than anything we've got), but I generally agree with Kaen that we can do much better with what we've got.

The most urgent items not on the list are an in-game help system (partially complete), and a bot manager to help new players try the game in a way that's not utterly, completely lame (as playing alone is).

I completely agree with these. We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make gameplay experience more convenient for the existing user, but seemingly not as much time thinking about the new user. I'd love to see features that welcome in new users and encourage them to stay and see the game for what it really is.

You will in 019!

So I've heard. I'm excited!

The Grand Bitfighter Burst Theory I guess. Probably because players realized that when there are lots-o-people in a small place, burst works well.