Suggestions on How to Improve Starhawk, an Already Quite Good Game

‘Starhawk’ is an awesome sci-fi western third-person shooter that lets you transform a jet into a freaking robot, but its experience is dampened by certain aspects of its online multiplayer, which is also its main focus.

You see, ‘Starhawk’ has, well, a few issues with balance and frequent unfair play from its community. I think there’s a few ways the game could be improved overall.

Multiplayer:

• Improve the strength of the basic kinetic rifle. At the moment it’s pretty weak and can often take a full clip to take down another player.
• Limit the amount of vehicles that can be spawned by a team at once. The big problem with spawn camping is that the entire 16 players of the spawn camping team can spawn an 16 hawks or tanks at once. Limiting the spawn limit to between 2-4 would definitely help.
• One team shouldn’t be able to build structures in the other team’s base. Really, why would you even allow this in the first place? That’s just dumb.
• Make certain structures invincible, or take way more damage. The biggest problem facing a spawn camped team is that they simply can’t build hawks or tanks to counter it because the structures which build these vehicles are so fragile. I’m not saying every structure should be invincible, but maybe a couple should be a little tougher.
• Separate ranked servers. Make it so newbies can play in newbie servers with other newbies, so games don’t end up as all tryhard veterans versus newbies. Veterans can also, of course, play against other veterans and receive more of a challenge.
• Vehicles shouldn’t be able to just stay in an opposing team’s base for long – if a player remains in the other team’s base, in a tank or hawk, for too long, then they should just be ejected from the vehicle.
• Hey, maybe the fact that a tank can also mortar wasn’t the best idea, eh?
• Custom load-outs! Because every other game has them.
• More awesome customisable parts! There’s a Sweet Tooth skin for the Outcast, how about some Nathan Drake or Cole MacGrath clothes for the Rifters? As well as some more cool, lore-based stuff.
• Weapon customisation. Just like the paint jobs for vehicles, really. It’d be nice to make my boring old kinetic rifle look a bit different, at least.

Co-Op

• Make co-op games visible in the freaking server list! Is that too much to ask? Sometimes people just want a quick game with randos and can’t set up a game with friends.
• More XP earned from tasks and kills. This would encourage people to play co-op more, since right now you really earn very little XP from playing a full game.
• Multiplayer skills and buffs usable in co-op – going from a multiplayer game with the double clip-size buff to a co-op game without it is kind of lame. Not all skills would be relevant in co-op, but it’d be nice to be able to use them there, too.
• Friendly bots, just like how they work in the single player campaign. They wouldn’t be able to build structures, obviously, but maybe putting down an outpost could spawn in some friendly bots to even the odds? Especially when player co-op mode solo (obviously they wouldn’t be needed in a full four player game).
• More customisable settings for a co-op game. Game length, number of rounds or lives, and the ability to turn off hawks, if you want.
• Possibly a reverse co-op mode, where players play as Outcast fending off Rifters? I just want to use my wicked cool Sweet Tooth skin in co-op, is all.
• More maps! I assume this is already a given somewhere down the line with DLC, anyway, but more maps would really help.

To iterate, I think ‘Starhawk’ is completely awesome and offers something unique, with its sci-fi western aesthetics and ‘Build and Battle’ system, during a time when every shooter generally just looks the same. I just think there’s a some things that could make ‘Starhawk’ even more awesome. So, Light Box, help a brother out, huh?

• gaming
• ps3
• psn
• Starhawk
• video games