Hi everyone,
I realise that I am uploading this post quite late, so you will get more or less of a double-post with tomorrow’s update again.
While the majority of our players have been interested exclusively in single-player and co-op play, there is a small minority of players who are still very excited (and insistent to tell me) about the possibility of competitive gameplay for PtP. Even though this is a minority, I still think that there are ways of making some competitive gameplay work, and my holiday has given me some time to think about how this could be realised in the (far) future.
One of the main issues I’ve had in adjusting from our initial competitive gameplay to the coop modes have been balancing and timing. In general, competitive gameplay lends itself more easily to quick matches (or at least somewhat contained timeframes), with fast, predictable, and balanced progression. For 0.9, I am intending to move away from this even further by embracing random resources and adapting to what you find even more - which makes competitive play yet more difficult.
However, I think that there is a possibility for a sort of player vs player vs environment gameplay. Rather than simply pitting the players against each other with randomness potentially allowing one to beat the other early on, pitting two players against each other in getting the artefact from a well established pirate fortress may be a better bet. In this situation, players will both be slowed down by having to overcome the AI, and both players will have enough time to adapt to what they find and make the most of it.
This could lead to rather interesting gameplay, where a dominant player needs to consider not only how to advance against the AI, but also how to protect themselves against their human opponent. Likewise, the player who is lagging behind may get opportunities to disrupt the dominant player, or to simply steal the artefact away from them as they are weakened by the AI.
Of course all of this will be far in the future, after creating a fun and balanced gameplay loop for singleplayer and coop - but I think the possibilities for competitive play are still there in the long run!
Until tomorrow!