Community Question: Campaign Rewards and Unlocks

(badman) #1

Community, over the years our games have featured a variety of ways your character could level up and gain new abilities. For example, Enemy Territory featured temporary rewards that would reset at the end of the three-map campagn, while Brink allowed you to permanently unlock abilities as your character gained levels. With this week’s Community Question, we want to find out which of various progression systems tickles you the most:

Which unlocking mechanic for gameplay-affecting rewards do you prefer?

Please cast your vote in this week’s poll and do let us know in the comments why your chosen system works best for you. We look forward to your replies!

(DarkangelUK) #2

I prefer no gameplay affecting unlocks - RtCW did it best \o/

(light_sh4v0r) #3

Mmh, I don’t really like permanent unlocks, as they reward people for playing more instead of rewarding skill. Unfortunately many people need some sort of grind to keep their interest.

voted map-lasting rewards.

(Dthy) #4

Voted for campaign set awards. Personally, there’s no fun in permanently unlocking an award which can make game-play easier (such as reduced weapon spread in ET:QW). I find it more fun if i have to keep working at it.

(SockDog) #5

Console game expectation (read: how many units you’ll sell) aside. Campaign length rewards seemed a good compromise in ETQW but they’re not without issues. Specifically a rush to grind for upgrades faster and they can deter people joining mid campaign.

Personally, for pub games, I’d prefer an AI driven upgrade system which would balance out any skill differences and avoid the wanton grinding to upgrade faster. I’m sure there would be cries of “unfair” though, after all the strong should get stronger, this always makes for a fun pub experience. :rolleyes: Of course for the Comp mode (because there will be one out of the box this time <cough>) this should just be configurable in many ways.

Failing that, I’ll agree with DA. RTCW, Q3, CoD etc all worked fine without such upgrades. Again, if the game is there then it shouldn’t be necessary to add spice or strategy through upgrades.

And no, no permanent upgrades. Again, if you want a persistent kudos generator, link it to how people interact with their team then let the team be the judge. Give people the ability to vote for their man of the match, grant currency to each play to pay out to their team and the opposition and then award medals and graphical unlocks that way. I can’t see that being any worse than having people piss around in game rather than actually play the game.

(Breo) #6

Rewards are unlocked over the course of a campaign / several maps and reset afterwards

I think that this one unbalance the game itself.
Useally some players of the losing team leave during the campaign, which means new players without unlocks will fill up the empty slots.

When you join the last game of the campaign you need to fight against players who already unlocked the game affecting rewards e.g. reduced weapon spread, flak jacket, faster sprint, health regeneration etc.

(Humate) #7

ET / ETQW method for me - no permanent upgrades.

The thing I liked the way it worked in etqw was that it didnt matter that I joined a campaign on the third map.
The unlocks gave slight advantages, made the game interesting, but didnt overshadow skill.
The only real improvement I would make, and BF3 does a good job of this - is the delivery in notifying the player they unlocked something.

As for the ET/ETQW unlock mechanic itself; for the average player I think it keeps them playing on the server. And once they learn they lose those unlocks they come back to experience the grind again. Whereas these other games that have persistent unlocks, end up losing the player’s respect because they believe they “clocked” the game.

For competition obviously you want everything equal, so that aspect of the game always gets disabled.

(Ruben0s) #8

I voted no gameplay affecting rewards at all. I think everyone should have equal chances. If you play good you don’t need rewards, you will win the game and that is already rewarding enough.

With ET you have adrenaline, skilled players get them as first making them even better. I always disconnect when I see that a server has adrenaline enabled.

Brink has the cod method, which basically means the longer you play the bigger the advantage, although with brink you could unlock everything in a couple of hours.

I disagree with humate. I think that the average player wants persisting unlocks, most populated servers with et have xpsave( 17 from the top 20 servers in W:ET have xpsave, and with xpsave you have everything unlocked).

(Humate) #9

When I say “average player” - im talking about the typical pub player that only cares about grinding. Those players dont want to have everything, like XP save players do. They enjoy the process of climbing the mountain, but the problem is they think the game has ended once they are at the top of the mountain. Its why COD has a prestige system.

The XP save players, care about playing on an even level with everyone else, because they dont have the skill to beat players when they have no unlocks. When most players are roughly at their level, when someone has an unlock it has a greater effect over someone that doesnt. Where as when a top player joins a server, it doesnt matter what unlocks they have - it doesnt have an influence on the outcome; skill differential supersedes it.

(BioSnark) #10

No gameplay-affecting rewards at all. Gameplay-affecting rewards don’t necessarily have to compromise the integrity of skill-based shooter gameplay but I haven’t seen them hit that balance while remaining significant. If you want rewards, non-gameplay rewards can be effective without taking that risk.

In ET:QW, the upgrade system had a number of negative hits on gameplay. Because upgrade progression shadowed what the player was doing and reset at campaign conclusion, the system discouraged player adaptation and playstyle experimentation over the course of the campaign. For instance, if a player focused on the medic class, their healing abilities were improved for the duration of the campaign. That discourages the medic from switching to any other class, regardless of if the current objective and team loadout called for another class. The system also rewarded better players with better stats like reduced weapon spread. I’m no great font of aiming skills but I can see reduced weapon spread stacking my firefights by the second or third map. Finally, xp allocation was imperfect with fairly useless activities like deployable farming rewarding large amounts of points. That damages the goal of using the point system to encourage player cohesion.

Brink’s upgrade system takes a largely different form but fails to improve on the flaws of its predecessor. Again, we can sum up the goals of this system as character progression and individuality as well as encouraging team cohesion via experience point allocation. Same problem with point allocation. Player base (size and/or pc servers) didn’t go along with segmentation via player level which gives clear advantage to high level players (time>skill). When every player is high/max level, the goal of individuality is broken because there was so many upgrade points to allocate and such a clear distinction between average and great abilities that players have the same abilities. This system also shares the problem from ET:QW of sticking players to certain classes they’ve upgraded. If you want to use this sort of system, first balance them and then limit the number of active (activated or passive) abilities per class, dramatically, so that players who have played longer don’t have more abilities but more choices. Obviously, that is not balanced, just not as unbalanced and has more player differentiation.

Could you clarify what you mean here?

(Humate) #11

Another improvement that could be made to the unlock system, is visual confirmation of a particular unlock.
For example in SC2, if a Terran gets Combat Shields for his Marines, its clearly shown on the model.
The only way you can tell if someone has Level 3 Light Weapons in ETQW is if they pull out Akimbos or Charged Blaster which is Level 4. If there was a way to communicate this, then players that are “unlock conscious” due to not being that great of a shot, could avoid such players provided they have the awareness.

(Dormamu) #12

No gameplay-affecting rewards at all (PC)
A combination of permanent rewards and campaign-length rewards (PS3/xbox360 - i finished some games on the console only for the rewards and achievements)
The only good side of rewards i see it as a way to make the new players learn how to play a class, weapon, map ,obj, teamplay, etc.
As the others said, if your game will have a top of the class competition mode, i will not mind if your pub mode have all the cod+bf+ta rewards and grind all together.

(SockDog) #13

In essence remove the need to generate a score or play over time to get rewards. Instead adopt a system similar to L4D where you have a governing AI that can drop upgrades for either team based on how they are performing. It’s a total head flip concept which I’m sure many people would deem unfair as the lesser team would ultimately gain “better” upgrades (despite the better team ultimately being in a far greater position to win). Yet, I believe it would end up making each map more balanced rather than the current systems which just further the gap.

For me the goal of a good pub game is a close match which everyone can enjoy. I just don’t see the current systems helping with that or addressing the issue of skill differences in team composition. If your concern is for soundly beating whatever random team you’re up against then the simple option is to just switch off the upgrades altogether (ie a comp mode).

(_Megabyte) #14

I would say from ETQW pov, leave all unlocks for all 12 maps. I usually play 2-3 campaigns, but it’s interesting to have in Canyon icarus, husky drops. Ofcoz, maps may be will need some rebalance.

(tokamak) #15

You need three layers.

- Permanent layer: This allows you to put xp-multipliers and unlock skill-caps on certain skill trees you find important. Instead of improving the player from the get-go the permanent player only improves the way a player develops throughout the campaign. The permanent layer may have some growth (if that’s what the mainstream really wants) but it’s mainly about balancing weights. In other words, the points you gather can be spent on changing your character and if you want to put the emphasis on other ways of growing then you will spent more points to forfeit your current growth schedule and switch to something else.

- Campaign layer: This is where the actual rewards are collected. Think ETQW but now it can be more elaborate because of the under-current of the permanent layer. Class-specific rewards can only be obtained through playing a particular class.

The interaction between these two layers means that players can have a preferred class but when the situation forces them they’re free to develop another class albeit with a more stunted growth than how they set up their specialisation.

- Killstreaks. Yeah I love them. They reward players for staying alive as well as keeping their team-mates alive. It discourages lemminging. In COD they’re definitely too powerful and they can be made way more subtle (think TF2’s eyelander). Killstreaks can be amplified or more exotic ones can be unlocked through rewards in the campaign layer.

And as a general comment. Brink’s character development was terrible. There amount of options was way too close to the amount of rewards allowed to be active at one particular time and therefore there was no real distinction between players.

(SockDog) #16

Seems this is just accepting/ignoring the repercussions to yet again shoehorn in an RPG. Why can’t the game just be an FPS and stand on it’s own merits instead of hiding behind the appeal of not only unnecessary features but ones that damage the core FPS gameplay.

Criticise SD’s poor implementation if you want (I think it would be a lame excuse to do so though) but Brink is a striking example of a game strangled by features that just didn’t fit. SD needs to stop putting jam on their salmon and just trust they make a pretty wicked salmon or give up and make a frigging jam sandwich like the rest of the CoD wannabes

(light_sh4v0r) #17

Please no killstreak rewards etc. The accolades in Tribes are more than satisfying enough for me.

(Bullveyr) #18

this

RtCW ftw

(tokamak) #19

Any streaks not just killstreaks. A campaign reward could be the medic getting an accumulating health buff on every revive. So first revive is 100% health, second is 105%, third is 110%, etc up to some reasonable limit.

Seems this is just accepting/ignoring the repercussions to yet again shoehorn in an RPG. Why can’t the game just be an FPS and stand on it’s own merits instead of hiding behind the appeal of not only unnecessary features but ones that damage the core FPS gameplay.

Sometimes I wonder why you would even hang out in this place. If you want a classic shooter stripped to it’s bare essence then there’s already countless of them available. Nobody is depriving you of any access to any of such games and frankly I don’t see why we would need even more of them, there’s only so many variations on this ‘pure arcade’ theme.

SD doesn’t make these and strives to push on the genre with mechanics that create a playing field that can suck players in for years like they did with their ET’s.

(DarkangelUK) #20

So one game out of 3 sucked gamers in for years, that’s a 33.3% success rate (from a free game), suggestions geared towards long standing games aren’t welcomed here… what? Can you name a similar styled game that has a long standing fan base as much as ET that inherits the same unlock style and has held a substantial player base? Seems like you have the idea that he wants to ruin the company…