Disruption mechanics/dialogue dissonance

[SilentMobius]

Firstly I'd like to say I actually, really like the mechanics of the disruption game mode. It does a good job of scaling such that a team can gain a notable time advantage without explicit multipliers (Like fissures). There is plenty to do and when all the pathing bugs get sorted it'll be pretty much frustration-free fun for me.

But...

Let's talk about what the mechanics actually are:

• Each round you get a reward from a drop table that changes according to the wave number and the amount of conduits sucessfully defended
• You get one reward per wave as long as at least one conduit is defended (Not one per conduit)
• The reward tables are different and not a strict improvement over each other so it is distinctly possible that a team will want rewards from a limited set of drop tables, not just the highest

So let's look at what players told (I'm using little duck as reference because she is supposed to be on our side):

Quote

"Somthin' happens to the conduit before you can pull the goods, you don't get the goods, Ever."

So this is just false, each conduit does not get you a reward, you do not lose a reward if a conduit blows. You lose a reward if four conduits in a round blow. Think about this from the perspective of a newbie (E.G.) farming the new dethcube blueprints with their clan. The leader is telling them to let all but one conduit blow (To stay on table A) and the in-game dialogue is contradicting that.

So let's look at the "a conduit has blow" dialogue:

Quote

"Conduit destroyed, you won't be seeing those goods again"

Again this is just plain false, a single conduit blowing does not lose the player anything! Please do not give the player false advice that may even be in conflict with what the team leader is telling them to do, it just causes friction and confuses new players.

Quote

• "Conduit Down. Look, Mumsie may have raised you belivin' winnin' aint the most important thing, but piece of advice... it is"
• "Conduit blown, mate this is not how bills get paid"

Each of these it telling the player "You did something wrong" that the game mechanics are requiring you to do, in order to get your desired reward.  As a vet it's just irritating but as a new player you are teaching them to ignore the instruction dialogue.

So to be constructive I'm going to suggest alternate dialogue, I'm no writer but hopefully it's enough to get the idea:

Intro:

• "The Conduits standin' at the end of the cycle determine what stuff we get. Let em all blow and we get nuffin'!"

The UI calls it a "round" not a "cycle" but "round" sounds 4th wall breaking and "cycle" sounds more diegetic IMHO

For the dialogue when a conduit blows:

• "Conduit down, I hope you meant to do that mate, we need some of them standin'"
• "Conduit Blown. We're not going to get the top tier stuff if you keep that up"

And save the outright negative lines for a total conduit wipe. Alternately just strip the offending lines until you get the VA for Little Duck back in (who is fantastic BTW) and then redo these few lines

Edited October 5, 2019 by SilentMobius