As one's arsenal grows, getting option for any situation, regearing into perfect combination every time becomes somewhat tedious: even with the help of loadout mechanic you will still have a lot of loadouts to scroll through, to the point when it's easier to equip whatever you want manually.
Additionally, I bet everyone knows the situation when you rush out of the spawn room/join a party only to realize you forgot to swap your gear. It can be intensely annoying in later levels, sometimes forcing you to speed-run the level.
I think there is a simple solution to both problems: a way to hint the game at what loadout you'd like to use.
Example: you've created a good loadout for Beasty Brawl: Venom Fang arena. You save it under a name that contains substring "[BBVF]" - what I call level hint. The rest of the name may be arbitrary. Then, when you next time get to that kind of arena, the game should automatically activate said loadout before entering the level.
A checkbox on options screen should be provided, in case the player wants to disable the system temporarily. I suggest keeping it off by default.
The algorithm for choosing loadout goes as following:
- Determine the level hint. I suggest using arcade level names as hints.
- Scan the player's loadout list for loadouts containing level hint in its name.
- If any found, select the topmost such loadout.
- If none found, leave the current loadout as is.
Loadout name could contain several hints in case you want to use the same loadout for several levels.
One thing I haven't figured out yet is what to do with mission levels. Should their hints be based on mission name + level name/number? Should the system even work for those? I hope for some feedback here.
Nice, idea, but I would change it into an add on for the loadout and not into an auto-epquipping (since you do not spawn on the arsenal station after all and thus can not change your set - to be honest).
Let us have something like this: If you enter a level that you created a certain set for, you will recive some kind of good visible information text (info text can be toogled off) that tells you that you saved loadouts for this level. When you enter the arsenal station, these very loadouts will be on a 'level-related' tab in front of other loadouts.
One loadout can be linked or unlinked with many levels, but it can get a new link only for levels you are actually inside (easier to code).
So your loadout tab will get fallowing order:
-Current level loadouts
-Level loadouts
-General Loadouts
e.g.:
-Current level loadouts
Beasty Brawl: Venom Fang arena
-Level loadouts
Volver Den: Thunderstorm (or whats-the-name)
-General Loadouts
Loadout set No 3476528
I see a problem in changing epquipment *after* you joined a level.