DescentBB

One last thing I'll add to the wishful thinging list...sound. A beam weapon should have some god-awful hissing, ripping sound of electron/photons being torn apart. A machine gun firing should sound like the gatling gun on an Warthog fighter; kinda like a explosive high speed whine of a chainsaw on steroids.
Missles/mortors should explode with a high energy bang that can be heard two corridors over. The sounds create a raucus atmosphere that seems to be lacking now (other than the taunts of course). Good sound please.

Sound is a big important part, some of the sounds in D3 are great, some need a little work. I always replace the sound that a concussion impact makes to a sound from freespace that just sounds better.

All of us here at HighOctane Software read this board and use the comments here as guidelines. This community has a great deal of knowledge about this type of game and we intend to embrace that knowledge and utilize it to shape the game. We do read this board however the fastest way to have a suggestion heard is to send it to suggestionbox@highoctanesoftware.com. This allows the team to study the suggestions and it's overall capacity.

We will be releasing screen shots very soon and we apologize for the website.

Sincerely,
Zachary Briggs, Executive Producer
HighOctane Software

woodchip wrote:One last thing I'll add to the wishful thinging list...sound. A beam weapon should have some god-awful hissing, ripping sound of electron/photons being torn apart.

One time, I played FreeSpace 2 with a good pair of expensive headphones. Wow. When the Shivan ships go flying by quickly, or when you fire your lasers at the giant, rumbling capital ship, the audio experience is epic. It would be great if the next "Descent" was comparable.

I was thinking of FS2 as well KY. I always liked the sound of a capital ship charging up a massive beam gun and then letting rip. Dang, now you made start thinking whether I want to play it a fourth time.

Screen shots are good!

woodchip wrote:I was thinking of FS2 as well KY. I always liked the sound of a capital ship charging up a massive beam gun and then letting rip. Dang, now you made start thinking whether I want to play it a fourth time.

Hehe. I'm also in that perennial state of wanting to play FreeSpace 2 again, but I never have the time.

Kyouryuu wrote:

woodchip wrote:One last thing I'll add to the wishful thinging list...sound. A beam weapon should have some god-awful hissing, ripping sound of electron/photons being torn apart.

One time, I played FreeSpace 2 with a good pair of expensive headphones. Wow. When the Shivan ships go flying by quickly, or when you fire your lasers at the giant, rumbling capital ship, the audio experience is epic. It would be great if the next "Descent" was comparable.

yea, and if they had a system where a command or something told you stuff that would be great!

I'm going to put a copy of this DBB post in an email and send it to them.

It's not a sim--and still a shooter--if you can fly strait without watching five different gauges to make constant, minute, adjustments. The inherent nature of 6DoF makes it almost impossible to be a sim. Most of the challanges in a sim is to keep your plane from falling, no? (While doing other things, like killing bad guys.) If you defy gravity, well.... There went the whole sim part. Anything else is detail, and balancing/stuff to whoop newbies with.

I like the idea of weapons you carry hurting manuverability a bit. Though, with only one ship by default in the game, if the effect is too strong, added in ships could end up being uncomparible? The difference shouldn't be more than a Pyro vs Phoenix or Pyro vs Magnum. (Remember, those ships are really rather close in their performance.)

I'd love to be able to customize a ship--perferably on the fly--for different tactics. (But only get one layout at a time.) (Twenty weapons in the game, and you can only carry five at a time!)

So many games concentrate entirly on graphics. Sound is oft ignored, and if you have any real headphones, or a sound card, wow....

I must hold against a complete mouselook. It puts you at a disadvantage if you _don't_ use a mouse. You simply can't turn as fast with other forms of control. They should be equal. I think D3's system of mouse control is rather nice--just add an auto-bank of some form and it should be quite managable to the newbie.

Has anyone considered accurate collisions? Maybe it's assumed, but I'd like to send a missile flying between my opponent's fins, or fly my paper-thin ship through a paper-thin hole... Only to find I don't have enough space to turn around. Or maybe fly up to my target, crack him with my wing, and watch as he spins in recoil from the impact. (Good way to keep that MD-like bouncing aspect in the game, eh?)

Perhaps this is being nitpicky, but in D3, you don't actually look from the cockpit on your ship. The view is always from the perfect center of the ship. The view should be coming from where the cockpit on the model is. We should be able to see our own ship from the cockpit as well. (Do you realize how much of a disadvantage that would put a Phoenix at? You couldn't see left or right with those huge wings.)
Boy, that would make a neat damage indicator. "Aww crap. There's a hole in my wing! Better get that fixed...."

If anyone puts in attitude indicators, make it re-center-able. If you're in a highly vertical level, and have decided to just fly the whole thing like it was sideways (Your ships XZ axis's match the XY, or ZY of the level), do you really need that little guage tellin you, and spinning around like a mofo, that you're pointing up? To you, you're level. Let the guage match so. (Roll to whatever orient, push "reset level" button, that is now "right side up" for you.)

I don't know what kind of enemies they're planning to put in their SP, but can we do without the mindless flesh-eating zombies/alien-death-spores that seek to eat/kill everything? Give your villans some color maybe? (Although, I find the mechanical malice of the D1 mechs an odd exception. They had personality, despire doing nothing other than trying to kill you. I'm not quite sure why though.)

Energy/shield regeneration. Very very slow. Say, a point to each every ten seconds or something. ...and only if you stop moving. Say your ship can put out X power. Moving at full speed (Y) uses all of X power. Nothing left over (X - Y = 0). But when you stop and hover, or move slower, there's some left over. (X - Y = Z) Put that towards energy and shield regeneration (Z). You'll still need energy centers, because the regeneration is so low, but it gives you the option of hiding in a dark corner for a few minutes, or even for levels that don't have energy centers. Don't have to put those respawn-time-dependant energy stars in.

Armor plating. I find it odd that, once a Pyro's shields are down, a single shot of anything will blow it to pieces. Yet, these same weapons have to really pound a friggin' rock to get it to blow up--a rock that doesn' have shields. How can a pyro--it is made of metal, no?--break so easily? Armor plating please! Subsytem damage too. (Wow... Wouldn't it be neat to come out of a dogfight--so damaged--that you only have one gun barrel still working? He punched so many holes in your wings--thankfully he didn't hit any other critical systems--that you're almost disarmed!) (Knock out one of those big engines on the backside of a Phoenix and watch as it goes a lot slower!)
With the addition of armor to shields, it makes for a lot more weapon options. Weapons that damage shields more than armor, vic versa. Subsystem damage....

Enviromental/ship temperature. If you're in a lava-filled room, shouldn't napalm or microwave do more damage? Add to your high--but not yet dangerous--heat?

FLoating powerups. Why, exactly, do the powerups float in the air? And how is that a single barrel Fusion cannon can be picked up by a Magnum, and it suddenly has three barrels? Stick those powerups in boxes on the walls. Give them little jet packs or something. (Big label on side of box shows what it is?) Both problems go away then.

Less-than-instant salvage. You just blew a guy clean to pieces, and you can pick up a perfectly fine Plasma cannon from the wreckage? It didn't get damaged _at all_? Or is your ship really friggin' good at fixing weapons? If it was that good, why can't it fix itself when it's getting shot? And why didn't all those megas he's carrying blow up in the blast? Keep your distance for a well loaded guy blowing up!

Mmm... I think that's everything. For now, anyway.

I don't know about exploding secondaries. That kind of encourages missile-boating, a D3 phenomenon not everybody is thrilled about, becuase then if you collect maximum secondaries and somehow still manage to get killed, you're pretty much guaranteed to take out 2 or 3 other players in the process. Though, if regular weapons just floating in the air are destructible, that might even things out a bit. Someone going for the Mega Missile? Blast the missile with the Mass Driver and take out the player and any others that happen to be conveniently nearby.

Very nice, I like it.

How about a self destruct option with a moderate blast radius One last ditch effort to take out your attacker!

I see no problem with using the descent physics for this game. hell, look at quake , ut, and the dozens of it's clones. each game has weapons that are pretty much the same.

a new game like this has potential of being sucessful since descent is the only game that in the category and it's basically past it's prime.

so go for it.

It's not a frikken sim.

If you've got gauges, momentum, gravity, destroyable sub-systems, realistic non-floaty powerups, shootable powerups, and all this other la de da crap, the game is going to be tedious as hell. And quite frankly I don't think anyone's gonna play it.

Yeah, not to mention that having non-floating weapons slows down the gameplay.

Why is it that when people try to come up with new ideas for a D4-like game, they always think of stuff that would be good in a sim? =P

I like the self-destruct thing. Maybe there could be a key combination to do it so it won't be pressed automatically, like a CTRL+ALT+DEL equivalent...like, slide up, slide down, and fire at the same time.

The only thing I don't like about accurate collisions is Pyros getting stuck on walls.

How about including a weapon that is similar to the rail gun that can shoot through walls and has an x-ray scope? That would stop base campers dead in their tracks. ^_~ How about an EMP Missile? Could you imagine? Fire an EMP missile while charging Fusion... then fire Fusion...opponent dead! ^_~

All these ideas are food for thought. It will be the developers job to incorporate what they like into the game. We here are just brain storming to help the creative process along.

Killanthype wrote:I like the idea of weapons you carry hurting manuverability a bit. Though, with only one ship by default in the game, if the effect is too strong, added in ships could end up being uncomparible? The difference shouldn't be more than a Pyro vs Phoenix or Pyro vs Magnum. (Remember, those ships are really rather close in their performance.)

If your ship moves at different speeds depending on your weapon, that throws off your enemy just as much as it throws you off. If I'm trying to hit a pyro and it moves at a different speed than the other pyro, I'm gonna be frustrated. Overall I think this just complicates the game and makes it less fun.

Killanthype wrote:]I'd love to be able to customize a ship--perferably on the fly--for different tactics. (But only get one layout at a time.) (Twenty weapons in the game, and you can only carry five at a time!)

Why?

Killanthype wrote:I must hold against a complete mouselook. It puts you at a disadvantage if you _don't_ use a mouse. You simply can't turn as fast with other forms of control. They should be equal.

I agree.

Killanthype wrote:I think D3's system of mouse control is rather nice--just add an auto-bank of some form and it should be quite managable to the newbie.

Auto-bank?

Killanthype wrote:Has anyone considered accurate collisions? Maybe it's assumed, but I'd like to send a missile flying between my opponent's fins, or fly my paper-thin ship through a paper-thin hole... Only to find I don't have enough space to turn around. Or maybe fly up to my target, crack him with my wing, and watch as he spins in recoil from the impact.

Again... why?

Killanthype wrote:Perhaps this is being nitpicky, but in D3, you don't actually look from the cockpit on your ship. The view is always from the perfect center of the ship. The view should be coming from where the cockpit on the model is. We should be able to see our own ship from the cockpit as well. (Do you realize how much of a disadvantage that would put a Phoenix at? You couldn't see left or right with those huge wings.)

How would putting blinders on a ship make the game more fun? How does making the view not come from the center of the ship make the game more fun? If I'm playing my game and it takes more space to dodge things below me than above me, I think I'm gonna be frustrated.

Killanthype wrote:Boy, that would make a neat damage indicator. "Aww crap. There's a hole in my wing! Better get that fixed...."

How does it make the game more fun?

Killanthype wrote:If anyone puts in attitude indicators, make it re-center-able. If you're in a highly vertical level, and have decided to just fly the whole thing like it was sideways (Your ships XZ axis's match the XY, or ZY of the level), do you really need that little guage tellin you, and spinning around like a mofo, that you're pointing up? To you, you're level. Let the guage match so. (Roll to whatever orient, push "reset level" button, that is now "right side up" for you.)

Why would they put an attitude indicator in?

Killanthype wrote:I don't know what kind of enemies they're planning to put in their SP, but can we do without the mindless flesh-eating zombies/alien-death-spores that seek to eat/kill everything? Give your villans some color maybe? (Although, I find the mechanical malice of the D1 mechs an odd exception. They had personality, despire doing nothing other than trying to kill you. I'm not quite sure why though.)

Because they looked cool and each had their own unique characteristics and sounds?

Killanthype wrote:Energy/shield regeneration. Very very slow. Say, a point to each every ten seconds or something. ...and only if you stop moving. Say your ship can put out X power. Moving at full speed (Y) uses all of X power. Nothing left over (X - Y = 0). But when you stop and hover, or move slower, there's some left over. (X - Y = Z) Put that towards energy and shield regeneration (Z). You'll still need energy centers, because the regeneration is so low, but it gives you the option of hiding in a dark corner for a few minutes, or even for levels that don't have energy centers. Don't have to put those respawn-time-dependant energy stars in.

Good idea on energy-regeneration. Does making it only work when you're stopped make it any more fun though?

Killanthype wrote:Armor plating. I find it odd that, once a Pyro's shields are down, a single shot of anything will blow it to pieces. Yet, these same weapons have to really pound a friggin' rock to get it to blow up--a rock that doesn' have shields. How can a pyro--it is made of metal, no?--break so easily? Armor plating please! Subsytem damage too.

Why?

Killanthype wrote: (Wow... Wouldn't it be neat to come out of a dogfight--so damaged--that you only have one gun barrel still working? He punched so many holes in your wings--thankfully he didn't hit any other critical systems--that you're almost disarmed!) (Knock out one of those big engines on the backside of a Phoenix and watch as it goes a lot slower!)

Nope. It wouldn't be neat. It would make me want to kill myself so I could play normally again. Oh, I have a solution! How about you automatically die as soon as you get hit with no shields! No longer will players have to worry about flying crippled and they can cut right to the fun! =D Oh wait... that's the way it is now.

Killanthype wrote:With the addition of armor to shields, it makes for a lot more weapon options. Weapons that damage shields more than armor, vic versa. Subsystem damage....

You're right. It does. But why is that a good thing?

Killanthype wrote:Enviromental/ship temperature. If you're in a lava-filled room, shouldn't napalm or microwave do more damage? Add to your high--but not yet dangerous--heat?

Dude...

Killanthype wrote:FLoating powerups. Why, exactly, do the powerups float in the air? And how is that a single barrel Fusion cannon can be picked up by a Magnum, and it suddenly has three barrels? Stick those powerups in boxes on the walls. Give them little jet packs or something. (Big label on side of box shows what it is?) Both problems go away then.

I'm sorry, what are the problems? I don't see any problems with the current way of doing things, but I see a couple with yours:

1. If all powerups are boxes, that means they're all plain and boring-looking. That's not very fun.
2. If powerups are stuck to the walls, this severely limits powerup placement by the level designers. It'll be harder to create a sense of flow in a level.

Killanthype wrote:Less-than-instant salvage. You just blew a guy clean to pieces, and you can pick up a perfectly fine Plasma cannon from the wreckage? It didn't get damaged _at all_? Or is your ship really friggin' good at fixing weapons? If it was that good, why can't it fix itself when it's getting shot? And why didn't all those megas he's carrying blow up in the blast? Keep your distance for a well loaded guy blowing up!

Why would a player want to pick up a damaged gun or a defective powerup? Why would a player want to take more damage from one ship blowing up than another ship blowing up when he can't see any difference between the two from the outside? He wouldn't.

I'd like to be able to tell how damaged an enemy is by looking at him. I'm a vulture @ heart

D3 doesn't do a good job of that. The sparks are difficult to see and not really indicitave.

I also think that slowing you down because of how many weps you have is a bad idea.

I do, however, think that it's a good idea to have DAMAGE slow you down once it's reached a critical threshold (say under 20% left and you slow down a bit). This was featured in a little known game called "Battlezone" by Atari, released 5 or 6 years ago for the PC and it added a bit of urgency to the whole "better get some repairs" thing. I thought it added to the fun and the skill factor. YMMV.

Aside from that, I want blindingly fast framerates, awesome graphics, gameplay as similar to descent as quake is to UT/Doom/Halflife/Etc, easy learning curve for D3 players, and I don't want it to be a hollow 'copy' like forsaken was of D3.

I'd like to see a new twist on the theme that adds to the fun and skill factor. An example of a skill enhancing twist: Double-jumping and dodging in UT2k4, which sets that game apart from the rest of the FPS 'groundpounders'.

The Shield/Armor plating combination would be nice. I always thought it odd that I could take out a fagmag with a flare...

A damaged ship that trails a little smoke (not too much to clog up the game) would be a good indicator of a weak ship. Say below 30 shields, make the smoke proportional to the remaining shields (no smoke after 30, and ramp up the percentage form there).
And/Or have ships trail smoke for a period of time after they get hit. If I drop a few vauss rounds on a ship, and then it banks out of the way, a smoke trail re-affirming the hit would be adrenaline-boosting. And if the smoke trail stays, then you know said ship is hurtin'.

Somethign that D3 almost did right, was kill physics. Outdoors, if you smack a ship with the last needed MD shot, the ship could cartwheel across the level in flames before exploding. Very sweet. Except that it wasn't implimented indoors as well. Sort-of, but not really. I'd like to see a ship lose control and start dropping, and bounce off the ground or wall 1,2,random times before exploding. Depending on how low the shields were, and how much damage the weapong that made the kill was (trifusion on a GL with 0 shields would be mid-air, instant kaboom (Very far into the negative shield value, like minus 80 to 100)). Micro on a ship with no shields would be a loss-of-control spin, bounce, kaboom. Micro only taks 9, so at -9 the ship would be intact enough to fall from the sky instead of being vaporized.

i like the idea of a dynamic cockpit-view, shaking on hard moves and weapons-impact. this could be a serveroption, enabled and disabled by servers.

d3 had the dynamic lighning already, so a ship can hide into the dark if the server wasnt on fullbright ships. a nighview switch would be fine, where the pilot gets dissorted view from bright lightsources, but can spot ships in dark areas.

another cool feature would be a simplyfied quickmap zooming in, d3 had a automap but switching to map and back takes to long so its almost useless in d3-mp. such a map could zoom in on tab-press and zoom out on tab-release, and could show special targets like flagrunners, virus-carriers etc. (well depending on the gamemodes you plan to have in this game)

XeonJr wrote:How about a self destruct option with a moderate blast radius One last ditch effort to take out your attacker!

id voutch for that

In that case, maybe something like Mechwarrior 4 where you can attach High Explosives to faster ships as a last-ditch attack, but it counts as a weapon hardpoint or something.

we want fun, not realism.

XeonJr wrote:How about a self destruct option with a moderate blast radius One last ditch effort to take out your attacker!

Lame and stupid.

I forsee a newb flying into a fight and hitting the self-destruct button all the time every time.

voice communication (ala ut2k4 for instance) would be terrific!
Audio taunts (as per D3) are a must have!

Audio taunts (as per D3) are a must have!

Also a must have: the option to turn them off.

The only realistic aspect I expect from this game is that everything is properly to scale.

D3 has a form of collision destruction. If your ship is afire from napalm and you collide with another ship, I've noticed that some of the napalm is transfered to the other ship and sets it on fire. If the other ship is low on shields it explodes.

Suncho wrote:How would putting blinders on a ship make the game more fun? How does making the view not come from the center of the ship make the game more fun? If I'm playing my game and it takes more space to dodge things below me than above me, I think I'm gonna be frustrated.

Uhm... no offense intended man, but when you're playing an FPS and you can't leap over 30-storey buildings, does that make you frustrated? No, you'd just work within the limitations.

This is the same story. You'd get used to it, and the game would look more believable for it too.

If your ship moves at different speeds depending on your weapon, that throws off your enemy just as much as it throws you off. If I'm trying to hit a pyro and it moves at a different speed than the other pyro, I'm gonna be frustrated. Overall I think this just complicates the game and makes it less fun.

A similar story - what if you're talking Pyro-GLs and Phoenixes? They move at different speeds.

And if you think it would complicate the game, imagine what FPS players think about the whole Descent series!

Killanthype wrote:I think D3's system of mouse control is rather nice--just add an auto-bank of some form and it should be quite managable to the newbie.

Auto-bank?

Killanthype wrote:If anyone puts in attitude indicators, make it re-center-able. If you're in a highly vertical level, and have decided to just fly the whole thing like it was sideways (Your ships XZ axis's match the XY, or ZY of the level), do you really need that little guage tellin you, and spinning around like a mofo, that you're pointing up? To you, you're level. Let the guage match so. (Roll to whatever orient, push "reset level" button, that is now "right side up" for you.)

Why would they put an attitude indicator in?

Read my post further up for information on that... basically a ploy to make the game more playable for those that get disoriented by 6DOF shooters (e.g. mainstream FPS players).

It is, though, just a suggestion for a possible implementation - not the only way to achieve that effect, if that effect is necessary anyway.

I'm sorry, what are the problems? I don't see any problems with the current way of doing things,

Mainly because it looks pretty dumb.

but I see a couple with yours:

1. If all powerups are boxes, that means they're all plain and boring-looking. That's not very fun.
2. If powerups are stuck to the walls, this severely limits powerup placement by the level designers. It'll be harder to create a sense of flow in a level.

And agreed. In an FPS it's not such a big issue to stick stuff on the floor, but in a 6DOF shooter problems could arise. It'd be best just to figure out whether it's better to screw up the level flow or stay with rather unbelievable visuals.

Alternatively, if we were getting really desperate we could follow the examples of the Freespace and Mechwarrior series and have ship loadouts. While more realistic (you're supposed to install new weapons in 2 seconds, eh?) it would likely be unpopular.

This is why public input should be restricted...

Fine sugestions, but when can we get it? even if it is a D3 up graded. Kind like stoping some hacked ship from getting into the game.

I like the self-destruct thing. Maybe there could be a key combination to do it so it won't be pressed automatically, like a CTRL+ALT+DEL equivalent...like, slide up, slide down, and fire at the same time.

the fact that i think you were serious makes this damned funny. lets explode when we trichord!

I forsee a newb flying into a fight and hitting the self-destruct button all the time every time.

{ROX}Hostile?

BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHA @ kurupt

kurupt wrote:

I like the self-destruct thing. Maybe there could be a key combination to do it so it won't be pressed automatically, like a CTRL+ALT+DEL equivalent...like, slide up, slide down, and fire at the same time.

the fact that i think you were serious makes this damned funny. lets explode when we trichord!

Sounds fun. ^_~ =P

You trichord by sliding up and down at the same time?

That button combination was just an example, which is why I wrote the word 'like' next to it.

Testiculese wrote:The Shield/Armor plating combination would be nice. I always thought it odd that I could take out a fagmag with a flare...

Quiet, TesTANKulese!
[/troll]

Sirius wrote:Uhm... no offense intended man, but when you're playing an FPS and you can't leap over 30-storey buildings, does that make you frustrated? No, you'd just work within the limitations.

No I wouldn't. I'd go play D3. If this game sucks too, I'll go back to playing D3. =)

Sirius wrote:A similar story - what if you're talking Pyro-GLs and Phoenixes? They move at different speeds.

They also look different.

Sirius wrote:And if you think it would complicate the game, imagine what FPS players think about the whole Descent series!

And imagine what FPS players would think about a game that's not only harder, more complicated, but less fun, than Descent!

Sirus wrote: Read my post further up for information on that... basically a ploy to make the game more playable for those that get disoriented by 6DOF shooters (e.g. mainstream FPS players).

But how would it help if there is no up or down?

Sirius wrote:Mainly because it looks pretty dumb.

How does floating powerups look dumb?

Sirius wrote:

Suncho wrote:but I see a couple with yours:

1. If all powerups are boxes, that means they're all plain and boring-looking. That's not very fun.
2. If powerups are stuck to the walls, this severely limits powerup placement by the level designers. It'll be harder to create a sense of flow in a level.

And agreed. In an FPS it's not such a big issue to stick stuff on the floor, but in a 6DOF shooter problems could arise. It'd be best just to figure out whether it's better to screw up the level flow or stay with rather unbelievable visuals.

Isn't it obvious which is better?

Sirius wrote:Alternatively, if we were getting really desperate we could follow the examples of the Freespace and Mechwarrior series and have ship loadouts. While more realistic (you're supposed to install new weapons in 2 seconds, eh?) it would likely be unpopular.

I agree. Very likely.

Soooo....... About that website being done 14 days ago....

Evil Bob wrote:Soooo....... About that website being done 14 days ago....

I concur.

Top Wop wrote:

Evil Bob wrote:Soooo....... About that website being done 14 days ago....

I concur.

x2 concur

Food for thought. What do you think about dynamic key locations? I can't decide if that would be good or bad. On one hand the robots are placed in the level to make it challenging to reach the keys (oh no, I have to go in there to get it ) but on the other I think it would be fun to be in random locations. Maybe have a key directional indicator on the HUD?

I read some posts where people think the same find keys, destroy reactor goal kind of boring. Not me. I look at it like baseball. Yes, you only have to score runs but how you score them makes it interesting.

Colored keycards..... that's so 1993.

It's also good. Colored key cards are what made the Descent 1 singleplayer good and lack of them are a big part of what made the Descent 3 singleplayer suck.

Descent is a game, and in most games the object is always the same. If you know how to play Descent, you know you need to find the Blue, Yellow, and Red keys then destroy the reactor and find the exit. That's the game! Creating different levels with these objectives in different places are what keeps it interesting.

On the other hand, having all kinds of crazy objectives that have nothing to do with each other just seems boring. It's difficult to measure your progress when you don't know what the game is.

At least in Descent 1, you could tell how close you were to beating the level by how many keys you had.