4Game

As a game developer myself and avid Among Us player there's something bothering me about this game, and I'd like to share with you my thoughts on this subject. Lobby settings are becoming a problem. Not that I oppose customization but custom lobbies shouldn't be the only way to play; games need to have at last a few game modes with standardized gameplay, otherwise it's chaos. There's just too many possibilities, many settings that completely alter the way you play the game, unbalanced combinations that may favor crewmates or impostors, everyone is developing different preferences and it's honestly a pain to find a lobby with the settings you want. None of that would be a problem if we could have a few pre-defined settings to choose from when searching for a game.

So I came up with a simple solution: game modes. Whenever you're creating a lobby or searching for one, on top of selecting the map and number of impostors you would choose a game mode in order to facilitate finding matches that suit your tastes. Something like this (game modes in green are the ones you're searching for and the grey ones are out). Each mode would have fixed settings, except for Confirm Ejects, Anonymous Votes, Task Bar Updates and Visual Tasks which are still customizable. I wrote some examples below but those are merely suggestions to illustrate my idea.

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• Casual:

Emergency Meetings: 2

Emergency Cooldown: 10

Discussion Time: 15s

Voting Time: 60s

Player Speed: 1.5x

Crewmate Vision: 1x

Impostor Vision: 1.5x

Kill Cooldown: 20s

Kill Distance: Medium

#Common Tasks: 3

#Long Tasks: 2

#Short Tasks: 3

Confirm Ejects / Anonymous Votes / Task Bar Updates / Visual Tasks: Host's choice.

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• Medium:

Emergency Meetings: 1

Emergency Cooldown: 15

Discussion Time: 30s

Voting Time: 60s

Player Speed: 1.25x

Crewmate Vision: 1x

Impostor Vision: 1.5x

Kill Cooldown: 25s

Kill Distance: Short

#Common Tasks: 2

#Long Tasks: 2

#Short Tasks: 2

Confirm Ejects / Anonymous Votes / Task Bar Updates / Visual Tasks: Host's choice.

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• Hardcore:

Emergency Meetings: 1

Emergency Cooldown: 15

Discussion Time: 45s

Voting Time: 60s

Player Speed: 1x

Crewmate Vision: 0.75x

Impostor Vision: 1.5x

Kill Cooldown: 30s

Kill Distance: Short

#Common Tasks: 2

#Long Tasks: 1

#Short Tasks: 2

Confirm Ejects / Anonymous Votes / Task Bar Updates / Visual Tasks: Host's choice.

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• Custom:

All settings chosen by the host.

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Also drew up an improved lobby room to emphasize this new information. The main settings (Game Mode, Map and Number of Impostors) are highlighted on the top of the screen. Then come the settings that are still customizable (should be different color than the rest but I'm lazy) so the player can find that information quickly, followed by the rest of the settings that are now pre-defined and can no longer be changed. I believe it would also be a good idea to be able to check some of the settings after the game already started (illustrated here as a tab below the Tasks one) so people don't have to ask if Visuals are on etc. Clicking that tab would display the game mode and the 4 customizable settings (or all settings if on Custom lobby).

I'd really like to see something like this added to the game, because when I think of wasting 5 minutes to find a lobby that meets my preferences I honestly give up playing. Let me know what you think 🙂