As *OFFICIAL* is written in caps, this thread must maintain a high standard of serious face-ness and general good suggestions. Here is a serious face for those of you who don't know what one looks like >:|. Please bear in mind I use the title "OFFICIAL" very loosely, as there still isn't a dedicated suggestions sub-forum.
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Now due to the lack of catergorised sub-forums, I've taken it upon my boring self to (hopefully) create a thread where we can post our suggestions and have them read by others. As the thread will, in theory be more condensed down into purely suggestions and not rage-fests and people crying, there is a greater chance they will get looked at by the powers that be.
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As we all know Ace of Spades is a fairly new game to hit our screens, and like many other new games, requires alot of support, especially for AOS
(due to I presume its small budget). So please feel free to post any suggestions you may have concerning AoS but there are several rules which I would appreciate you to follow;
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+ Keep all suggestions relevant and important.
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+ If somebody has already come up with your idea, think harder. Can it be improved?
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+ If you see a bad idea, please say why and offer alternatives but do not provoke a rage-fest, you can never tell how many testosterone fueled 13 year olds are hiding behind the keyboard waiting to button bash until their mother calls them for dinner.
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+ Use common sense. Don't post suggestions for "planez wif laz0r gunz lol0o0ol0l" as this is probably outwith what the developers probably see as essential/beneficial at such an early stage in the game.
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Here are a few improvements I came up with before and/or during writing this thread;
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#1 Balance Out the Bias. When a team begins to fail it's not uncommon for people to switch to the winning side at the touch of a button. This should be limited to a switch say every 5 minutes UNLESS greater influence is put on the teams to win, such as a time-limit, after which the game will RESTART and everything will return to a blank battlefield. This will in general, reduce rage so people will be less enticed to cure their boredom of loosing by grieving.
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#2 Fix the way the game is displayed.There have been a countless number of times where I will be listening to a song on Youtube or have an overwhelming urge to go on Wikipedia and read a random article, when suddenly all attempts at this are thwarted by the fact that as soon as you press esc, it's gone. Forever. Until you start up another connection to a server. I am aware that you can alt-tab out of the game, but for some users this may be inconvenient so the game IMO should be displayed in a client window.
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#3 Settle the Scores. So there I am in the middle of the battlefield trapped behind a shoddily built wall of bright pink blocks for comical effect and I decide to check my score, well according to my score I usually have in the region of 15 deaths and around 100-200 kills, despite only being on the server for a few minutes. Lolwut.jpg
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#4 HammerHead Accuracy. In all fairness, the game is way too accurate, I miss very few shots, regardless of the distance which I pick off my unsuspecting pray. IMO the accuracy should be worsened slightly, to allow for more marginal errors within the game to make it more enjoyable when in combat with the enemy. This will make players ask themselves "What if I miss?" and not "How easy is this?".
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#5 The Fish. A Fish is the name I give to a player whom spends the majority of their time, camping far out at sea picking off players and usually spawn killing. To combat this, when in the water there should be a 'bobbing' effect implicated, this will ensure that if you would like to be a fish, you will have to shoot like a fish too... presumably quite shit. This will stop people detracting from the games wonderful fort-building nature and get them more involved.
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#6 Leaderboards. Ah yes we all love a bit of stiff competition don't we? Well at the end of each round (assuming a time-limit / map restart has been implicated) scoreboards should be displayed. The leaderboards should show the usual kills/deaths and K/D Ratio, along with maybe some interesting facts such as "amount of enemy blocks destroyed" and "amount of blocks placed" and maybe a line of scrolling text along the bottom of a random fact such as "Player X threw the most grenades" etc etc. This could be implicated to a global level, to generate a more team-driven environment towards every round, this may influence more clans to be formed which would further expand the fanbase. There should also be a Win/Loss ratio, (disconnection counts as a Loss). This will enable players to show off their stats on their profile, and to be able to establish who is a genuine player, and who is just plain bad.
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#7 F*ck Da Police!. No don't, infact don't bother messing with authority, as generally they are good. This suggestion has probably been made more times than the word "noob" has been displayed on any of the servers. Permissions. I understand that many of the people hosting the server will probably have an extremely basic understanding of the language used to write the game so that is probably the reason why there is a lack of authority. Ace of Spades needs a dedicated server unit to run several servers on different maps 24/7. With this players will know these servers will be faster, secure, and presumably griever free as admins/moderators may be assigned...*cough* me *cough*. These servers could possibly require a premium account? *hint* $$$ *hint*.
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#8 Grenade Limit. You know that little green tent? Yeah the one with that one guy in it who sits there throwing grenades about? Well that can be stopped. Limit grenades to 2 per player. Now before you say "I hardly ever use more than 2 nades a round" please read the above suggestions. With the introduction of a time limit/more pressure on teams to get the intel, this will seem more intelligent.
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#9 Donate! As irrelevant as this is to your "epic game time" many of us probably forget that the developers are using their own time, and probably their own money to allow us to blast people in the face. Just a few donations here and there of say $10/£5 each will help indefinitely no matter how small.
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I hope you all enjoyed reading my 9 suggestions, I was going to put 10 but that would be way too mainstream.
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Please feel free to post your suggestions and generally adopt a respectful manner towards all those involved with the game, whether you're developing/designing or playing, we all deserve to be listened to. Unless you're a fish.
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Thanks all!
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Alex, AKA Cubed.
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PS If you're wondering why I'm using full stops to add spaces between each line, it's because BBPress is awful and doesn't understand consecutive enter key presses. IMO, they should at least use SMF.

I'll confess to downloading the leaked copy of 0.53... hopefully this doesn't involve any banhammers.

So, a quick review of the new features. I'll ignore the fact that only five people can play at a time without the server lagging uncontrollably, since Ben's planning to fix that for the final version.

The two most notable new features are the SMG and the new block graphics. First, the block graphics: They're awesome. There's a hint of the old "radar rings" whenever you move your cursor towards the ground quickly, but it resolves itself very quickly (Those who are prone to motion sickness should avoid doing this). Overall the blocks look very crisp. One other player commented that the rendering was better than Minecraft (although to be fair, MC has to deal with textures).

Now, the SMG: I actually kind of like it. First off, it's actually pretty rotten for close-in engagements, where its inablity to one-hit kill puts it at a disadvantage against a rifle. I found that it actually worked fairly well at middling ranges (around 50% of render distance). It also has nice fortification destruction capabilities all the way to fog distance. A rifleman and a gunner working against the same target proved to be a practically unstoppable combination.

So overall, 0.53 is a fresh, new, and improved. The SMG encourages teamwork and use of cover, and the new block graphics make the game look amazing compared to 0.52 and earlier.

I'm beginning to wonder why Ben hasn't called it 0.60.