Ideas on what to do with the collectables (Project Sticky Shoe)

Nordic · May 2016

Project sticky shoe was put in. Right now these items don't do anything. According to the development trello the idea, the only thing left to do is to add a "sink." The idea behind these collectables is to add some form of progression mechanic into the game.

remi wrote:

Q: Can I do anything with these items?
A: No not yet, besides collect them all. There are 15 to find.
Q: Why can't I do anything else with them?
A: Because we haven't had time to implement it yet, and other items have higher priority... but we do have more ideas and want to expand this feature.
Q: Why did you release it without all the rest of that?
A: Because it takes time, and we weren't sure if anyone would be interested in items at all. We also wanted to "seed" the economy so when more is released, we get more immediate feedback.

The devs have said "we do have more ideas and want to expand this feature." What if we gather some ideas and help them out before they get there. The purpose of this thread is to gather ideas on what exactly should be done with these collectables.
How should these collectables be obtained? Should they be random?
The devs still needs a "sink" to use these collectables for. What should that sink be?

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Here are my ideas:

Right now the collectables are given out randomly based as you play. What if it was not so random? What if they were tied to in game events.

Like if you were given a skulk head, gorge head, lerk head, fade head, or onos head when you got a kill one of those lifeforms. It wouldn't happen everytime you kill that lifeform.
Every skulk kill would have a 1% chance of getting a mounted skulk head. About every 100 skulk kills would give a player a skulk head.
Every gorge kill would have a 5% chance of getting a mounted gorge head. About every 20 gorge kills would give a player a gorge head.
Every lerk kill would have a 20% chance of getting a mounted lerk head. About every 5 lerk kills would give a player a lerk head.
Every fade kill would have a 50% chance of getting a mounted fade head. About every 2 fade kills would give a player a fade head.
Every onos kill would have a 75% chance of getting a mounted onos head. About every 1.5 onos kills would give a player an onos head. That way you are likely to get an onos head if you manage to get a kill on an onos, but it is not guaranteed.

Getting a lifeform kill is already satisfying. This would make it even more satisfying by affirming the success. It would give a sense of achievement. Getting all five of those collectables would be difficult but satisfying. This would be a progression mechanic.

Maybe the Aurora ticket could have a 10% chance of dropping if you win a game as a marine commander, because you would obviously need a vacation.

I am not sure how well this could be applied to all of the collectables. I think some of them should be random drops as freebies just for playing. Any collectable that is not given randomly, must have be given as a reward for something tied to something you should already be trying to do. If anything, the rewards should encourage you to try all aspects of the game.

I don't have any unique ideas for what the "sink" should be. Having the collectables be used to create cosmetics is a natural idea. For example, if you combine all the lifeform heads you are given a golden LMG. What I think might be interesting is if these cosmetics are not permanent. You would get a golden LMG but it only lasts 7 days. That way you need to get more lifeform heads to get another golden LMG.

I don't have really any good ideas for cool cosmetics. A golden LMG is kind of silly but cool. If cosmetics are done, they have to be interesting. They have to be really cool cosmetics. The collectables would gain most of their intrinsic value from the cosmetics you could get from them. Because of this, the cosmetics have to be something people would want.

If the collectables are given as rewards for certain actions, like killing a fade, or commanding then the cosmetics should reflect that. Are you good at getting kills? Then the cosmetic for that should be a weapon. Do you command a lot? The cosmetic should be tied to the hive/command chair.

In discord this morning, @wooza and @Keats were having a bit of a discussion. Wooza proposed an interesting idea. Reward playing mods like last stand, faded, etc with a higher drop rate. Maybe even have mod specific drops. Wooza also suggested seasonal drops.

The_Welsh_Wizard · May 2016

All I can say is: Please do not make cosmetics as terrible as it is common in other games. There are already skins in NS2 that do not fit into the games art style, don't make it look silly. A golden rifle makes zero sense.

In the NS2 artbook TSF marines are described as "nimble, unconvetional and somewhat underfunded group of soldiers, which their simple, relatively low tech appearence is meant to convey. Their technology is centered around modularity, reuse, and centralized commmand/intelligence."

For getting the alien heads for example you could get a battered armor that partly got replaced with alien armor parts.

SantaClaws · May 2016

NS2 isn't exactly known for its rich lore. It's a multiplayer game. While I don't disagree with you entirely @The_Welsh_Wizard, I'd take it with a grain of salt. I know very few that actually care about the lore to begin with, but either way, rewriting the lore, to fit some new cosmetics, wouldn't be the worst thing in the world would it?

Dilligaf · May 2016

Almost everything i say has been said before but might aswell leave it here.

Make items craftable for skins/shoulder pad/weapon skins/helmets.
Bound some items to the amount of Skulks, Lerks, Fades, Onos, Structures you kill defend or destroy.

100 kills of certain lifeform gives you " ...... " item.
Destroying or defending 100 structures gives you "...." item.

That way you can have skins that show how much you been killing, assisting or destroying structures.

The_Welsh_Wizard · May 2016

SantaClaws wrote: »

NS2 isn't exactly known for its rich lore. It's a multiplayer game. While I don't disagree with you entirely @The_Welsh_Wizard, I'd take it with a grain of salt. I know very few that actually care about the lore to begin with, but either way, rewriting the lore, to fit some new cosmetics, wouldn't be the worst thing in the world would it?

It is not about sticking strictly to the lore, it is about keeping an authentic and unified look and feel to the art style. Also it should make sense imo, everytime.

NS2 is already based on a certain style and if you make new things and use a different style for it, you would have to restyle big parts of the game that were made with the old one.

So why would you rewrite the lore to fit the new cosmetics in the first place if you can just create new cosmetics the way they fit to the already existing one?

Tundra pack for example makes the game less authentic. The color of the TSF marines is somewhat between green and grey. Exception is the pure black Spec-Ops armor. But it is an unique model and it is "spec ops", so it makes sense that it is very dark.

Tundra is only a skin, white with blue splashes (for what reason?) on it, it fits 0% into the game and the metalish grey of NS2 and it stands out on the battleground. By the time before Tundra was released there have been other skin concepts too. All of them have been very colorful with some kind of sticker on it. Imagine playing a game of NS2 and seeing a rainbow marine ball. It looks silly.

Keats · May 2016

I agree with most things here. I only have a few new things to say (all of these have been said better before by better people than me):

Perhaps get rid of the intermediate consumables. Have cosmetics be the only things that drop, and make them craftable à la CSGO. Let crafting respect item pools as Nordic said, so that e.g. commanding well gives you a new decal for your CC, and crafting five decals will give you a complete building model replacement.
Example commander cosmetics: Decals (partial model replacements) that are overlaid on the CC or hive, to let the team really know it's you in there. A smiley face, the TSF winged knifegun, a monster truck running over a skulk. Put hearts on your crags or armories. Complete model replacements, that turn your buildings a different color, or make them shiny. Some textures have balance implications but if the colors are muted enough I think it's alright. And the CC/hive are so obvious already that I don't think they'd suffer from being garish.
Example field cosmetics: the obvious weapon and worldmodel replacements. I think there are a lot of options here: take for example the Faded Zebra from CSGO. A lot can be done even with without bright colors and distracting shading. That's not to completely rule out bright colors though; client viewmodels aren't necessarily displayed to the world.

I agree with The_Welsh_Wizard that a cohesive artstyle is important to how the game looks. But perhaps I think it is less important than he does. I would rather have new items that don't exactly fit with the established direction than no new items at all. Far more important in my opinion are the balance concerns from too bright or too dark skins. But as I say above I think these can be handled.

CRaZyCAT_Rus · May 2016

Get full set and receive coupon for the purchase ns2 game (40% maybe) which can be transmitted to another man. Or maybe for a random product (skin, game, deluxe edition upgrade).

Ideas on what to do with the collectables (Project Sticky Shoe)

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