Community Question: Campaign Rewards and Unlocks

(tokamak) #81

management’. Do you actually play the genre you preach to know a lot about? A progressional unlock game forces the player into a ‘path of least resistance’ mindset (there’s a new one for you). They’ll use the shortest route possible to get to where they want to be, if that means spamming the grenade launcher, switching to the next gun as soon as kill goal has been met, camping the spawn then they’ll do it. If the path of least resistance means they have to be an ass-hat to get there, then they will be.

Under the old xp distribution it might. But when you allow players to predesignate their own paths of least resistance (thanks for that, that’s less words than the whole ‘carving your own path’ stuff I’ve been talking about) . Then they’re already sacrificing a load of perks in favour of getting their favourites as fast as possible.

Under such a system it’s not a grind, it’s a big cost under the permanent management resulting in a small cost during the campaign.

I think ad hoc gameplay is very detrimental to a game. Any game. The ability to turn your strategy at any moment means is like playing rock paper scissors with the ability to change your hand whenever you want (try it, it makes for a pretty boring game). It doesn’t take any skill to figure out which action counters what other action, that’s supposed to be common knowledge within any game. The skill lies in anticipating how your opponent will think and do and respond to that. The skill lies in being unpredictable and surprising, giving you a window of enormous advantage until the opponent manages to adapt.

It doesn’t mean the entire mechanic has to be deterministic, far from it, but opportunity cost needs to be a big factor in the tactical shooter genre, otherwise you might as well stick to it being a shooter. Nothing wrong with that, arcade shooters are loads of fun, but if you want depth, you need that path dependency and opportunity cost. They’re not chores, they’re inherent to the genre.

(Humate) #82

Here is where the skill lies in counters:

Lets take etqw for example - i decide to play medic, theres a sniper on the hill who is preventing me from doing what I want to do.

I can run away like a bitch, or I can switch to sniper and smash him that way. If I opt to smash him via sniper, I also need to impact the game to the same degree that I was a medic. If I dont have the capacity to impact a game to the same degree that I do in a medic role, then the sniper successfully won the battle for his team - regardless of whether I can counter snipe him or not.

Therefore the cost for switching to a different role, is being taken away from a strength. The real skill in etqw is to be equally strong in all roles, so that it completely mitigates the cost.

(tokamak) #83

That’s indeed how it works in a game where everything was available from the get go. In the same scenario with character progression however, it would be likely that you’re not ideally suited to deal with the thread. It’s still possible but chances are there’s someone in your team that is better equipped for that role. In other words, either you’re the best suited in the team for this specific task, or you’re not. If you are, then the team relies on you to deal with this thread and if not, then you and your team rely on someone else to deal with it.

By not letting everyone have everything whenever they want, you create specialists. You create a diverse set of players that need to communicate and know the strengths and weaknesses in each other’s builds to come up with the most effective solutions. This mechanic is completely absent in a team of all-rounders. Sure you could argue that it would then come down to implicit strengths and weaknesses but these are far weaker (and far less pronounced and obvious) than the explicit strengths and weaknesses the game offers (at least, that’s what you all have been concerned about in the first place).

Not only does character progression offer the players who’re capable of anticipating the match in the long therm a way to utilise this capacity, it also compels players to see their actions within their team by making them more dependant on their team-mates.

(SockDog) #84

LOL what SD games are you playing? As I’ve said 100 times before what you’re asking for isn’t dumb in of itself, it’s just plain stupid in the context of a 20min 8v8 (soak up that 8 player diversity) FPS game. Jesus there are enough issues of communication as it is, you’re now proposing you add stuff that implies a necessary tea party every time there is a tactically challenging situation? Hahahahaa.

Players should know where they can effect most the impact within the team, this is a sign of a good player with team wide awareness. The improvement needs to be in allowing the team to communicate their needs more clearly. By limiting a team’s ability to effect change to some random configuration set before the game even begins is plain annoying, rips control out from under the players and also limits a maps ability to demand different compositions of skills throughout the objectives (again dumbing down the game to add “depth”!). Hell what you’d end up with is a specific configuration of player picking one or two maps that favours their build, or maps being designed so that even the most inappropriate build had something useful to do (read: limiting variety).

Brink took a step in your direction and it tasted bad. Lets just get back to playing a class based objective shoot and forget the need to play barbie or satisfy our WoW fantasies/braincrack.

(DarkangelUK) #85

Well you see that’s the thing, when the path of least resistance has been reached, then the exploratory path takes over. If you remove the chore of reaching your desired position in the 1st place, then exploring possibilities takes presidence. Creating a resistance path in effect locks a player into his desire, and when they reach that goal then they’re stuck stead fast because in their head that was their end point all along. Remove the end point and you open up a path of discovery that doesn’t have a plateau, that’s when you uncover a players abilities.

(tokamak) #86

That’s the field of tension between short therm gains and long therm gains. Very welcome in a tactical game.

Exactly! And this skill only really pays off when the rest of your team isn’t able to change at will. Explicit strengths and weaknesses create a varied scape of asssets in which a player needs to orient themselves rather than fill in the obvious blanks the second they become available.

If the team needs a soldier to blow something up then the straight forward choice is to become the soldier, equip him with all the useful attributes and go straight at it. However, in a system where you can’t immediately obtain these perks you may have to weigh your options, perhaps it’s best to switch to soldier but it might be that there’s already a player present that already has a suitable soldier ‘grown’ through the campaign and then you can opt to take your own gathered inventory and see how you can compliment that. That’s a far deeper gameplay experience than getting to make these obvious, and therefore superficial choices all the time.

(SockDog) #87

But the stark difference is that for your system to work not only does a team of players need to be aware of a need, be in the right place for the need they also need to be fully aware of who is best suited to address that need and wait on them. It’s a situation that screams 9 out of 10 times being an absolute failure in pub games. Unless as I’ve said that the needs or abilities are so smoothed off that practically anyone can do them, which kind of defeats the point you’re trying to make about it adding something to the game.

Now, as a competitive mode, Team vs Team, I could see some potential for what you are saying. Each team would be aware of their composition and as such should have strategies to cope throughout maps. But in a pub game, and lets face it, it needs rampant pub support, the focus needs to be on creating an accessible and enjoyable experience. SD shouldn’t cram themselves further into a niche, as I keep saying, they should get a solid game out there that is fun to play, that limits frustration and obstacles, yet that is open enough to allow players to exploit the world in a good sense. Once they have that, then add these niche modes, or just include enough support in game for others to do it via a mod.

(tokamak) #88

Enter your magical AI wizard that magically indicates which guys would be best suited for the job. Solved.

Now, as a competitive mode, Team vs Team, I could see some potential for what you are saying. Each team would be aware of their composition and as such should have strategies to cope throughout maps.

Not only that, in a competitive mode you also know where your team-mates are heading. My above reply may be facetious but it’s not entirely impossible. What IS impossible is predict how the players will be equipped at the end of the campaign and that uncertainty is indeed an issue in pubs.

SD shouldn’t cram themselves further into a niche, as I keep saying, they should get a solid game out there that is fun to play, that limits frustration and obstacles

I just vehemently disagree with this attitude. For any other software, any user application or professional production software it would be essential to round off all the corners and smooth out any obstacles and chores, to make it as user friendly as possible. But you can’t apply this same idea to games. Blizzard did this with WoW. It started off as a robust and rough mmo where players had to put a lot of themselves into it to get things done. Granted it may have been too much work and it obscured a lot of gameplay from the more casual gamers, but Blizzard went so far into polishing their game that they cut away the very essence of a MMO. They went through such lengths to facilitate ease of use to the player by automatic groupings, lobbies, indicators and teleports that the entire game experience of a player was no more than hanging out in a capital city waiting in a queue for dungeons and battlegrounds, there was no need to traverse the world any more.

The WoW community deflated rapidly because of this and Blizzard has acknowledged it. They’re making amendments in their new expansion by taking out a lot of the shortcuts they once implemented. In other words, they’re putting some friction back into the game to make it more stimulating to play pardon the wording.

I know using other genres as examples isn’t popular here but these analogies are justified. You tie my ideas to Brink and how it ruined the game (and I still think they’re barely stick) but I could just as easily point to all the attempts to simplify the game and make things easier for the player and ruin important parts of what makes a tactical shooter.Everything was rendered semi-automatic. Running around randomly pressing ‘f’ and firing at everything that moved would get you very far even if you had no idea what exactly you were doing. Brink was a project about making a deep tactical shooter accessible to the casual player and it failed not only that but also because of that.

(Humate) #89

By not letting everyone have everything whenever they want, you create specialists.

Youre missing the point.
The specialist IS the player that can play all roles equally at a high level.

(SockDog) #90

Except my AI idea bases the performance of the teams and rewards/detriments them to give some weighting or handicapping. What you’d need is an AI mission selector, something which I think we’ve seen already in Brink and something which would still fail to address poor team composition and negate the need to strategise and work together which I think are your key wants out of the system.

I said smoothing in regards to making abilities/upgrades fit and to keep players relevant regardless of their chosen composition. To not do this would be less frictional and more sitting on a saw blade. It’s not something I’d want to see but would, IMO, be something I feel necessary to make your idea work. To be clear, limiting frustrations and obstacles is not the same as making the game bland and one button friendly. The point there is to address issues without needing to compromise the actual game. Like making a Mute button easily accessible and known rather than removing VOIP by default.

Yes but that is exactly my point. Brink’s maps were by necessity designed to cope with three body types and balanced so it favoured none. Why? Well because instead of making movement a learned skill it was based on a body type. As each body was largely available at the same time it became necessary to ensure one didn’t over power the other. Multiply this by the many other abilities and you’ll see how they require the game to be designed and balanced into this melange of compromises. Now, if we ignore just basing it on skill and gave instead people access to each body type on the fly then the maps and objectives could at least allow some freedom there for people to make the right decision at that time.

As I said way back, the concept is limiting, you gain a meta game at the cost of the core game accomodating it. Better IMO to promote more open play, give people tools to distinguish themselves through learned skills and knowledge rather than a faux system based on time played or some other metric.

(tokamak) #91

Except my AI idea bases the performance of the teams and rewards/detriments them to give some weighting or handicapping. What you’d need is an AI mission selector, something which I think we’ve seen already in Brink and something which would still fail to address poor team composition and negate the need to strategise and work together which I think are your key wants out of the system.

What I’d need for the indicators to be clear is a scoring system that quickly shows how competent the build of specific players are towards a job. Could be as simple as a colour chart. Red: unsuitable (player clearly focuses somewhere else), Yellow: Mediocre (player has a balanced build) Green: The expert (player has sunk his resources in the relevant spec)

And of course it’s limiting. Limits create variation. Limits allow players to distinguish themselves. Like you said, they can already do that through personal training, but a meta game on top of that changes nothing about that. There’s still personal expertise to be honed whether you ‘grow’ your inventory or have it available from the get go.

Just read what you’re saying and let it sink in for a moment.

(SockDog) #92

Limits create invisible walls, demand compromises in gameplay and design to exist. Any personal expertise is ground down under this, instead of being a master of 15 weapons you’re now a master of one. Instead of learning deft timing to perform a tricky jump or move you’re now a selection box away from exploiting such things in specific places.

What you keep describing just strikes me as a single player game. Something where you’re in control. Problem is this is a multiplayer game, it doesn’t pause for reflection and study, it doesn’t have the opportunity draw consensus from all players. You’re creating an environment of chaos built on the assumption that your desires represent everyone elses and they’ll play along. It’s like asking for an objective to involve solving an astrophysics equation or playing a game of chess. They’d add a massive amount to the game but honestly, they don’t really fit with what the game is trying to achieve, that, IMO, is to be a more varied in pace and tactics team based shooter, something achieved quite well with RTCW - ETQW.

(tokamak) #93

You’ve got a very valid point that limits are detrimental if players can’t see -and therefore account for- them. That’s why I definitely welcome the idea of making that more intuitive, I didn’t consider that myself.

Problem is this is a multiplayer game, it doesn’t pause for reflection and study, it doesn’t have the opportunity draw consensus from all players.

Hey I never said people can consider their choices indefinitely. The fact that it’s a multiplayer means split second decisions. That you’re then need to make decisions within these (soft) constraints only adds to the challenge and only increases the skill ceiling.

(Humate) #94

[QUOTE=tokamak;396864]

Just read what you’re saying and let it sink in for a moment.[/QUOTE]

Actually read the sentence.
hint: one class wonder

(tokamak) #95

generalist
a person who has knowledge, aptitude, or skill in a variety of areas, as contrasted with a specialist.

(SockDog) #96

Multiple times I’ve stated the necessary limits go beyond those of communication between players although that is a large one. Those limits are ones that reinvent the wheel where players use skill and experience and instead give you a square wheel and then demand everyone rides down a rutted road.

Hey I never said people can consider their choices indefinitely. The fact that it’s a multiplayer means split second decisions. That you’re then need to make decisions within these (soft) constraints only adds to the challenge and only increases the skill ceiling.

I never meant to imply you did, it was my observation that the process you are promoting seems a lot more fitting for such a situation (single player, tactical builds and choices). Now if SD created a proper single player campaign, allowed you to build a squad (or Co-Op team) which then worked through challenges I’d think that was an awesome idea. I just don’t buy this as adding anything to what is ultimately a fast paced turducken FPS experience.

(Humate) #97

[QUOTE=tokamak;396873]generalist
a person who has knowledge, aptitude, or skill in a variety of areas, as contrasted with a specialist.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/generalism[/QUOTE]

hint - master of all trades, not jack of all trades.

specialist:
a person highly skilled in a specific and restricted field.

When a player in etqw, is master of all trades they are the specialist. The ability to play everything at the highest level is the asset here, because it means teams that value ‘one class wonders’ can be exploited by forcing undesirable class compositions.

(tokamak) #98

If a player gets to be master of everything then that’s a clear sign the skill-ceiling is too low.

(Apples) #99

I dont find etqw’s skill ceiling too low…

The thing is, you guys wont ever agree because toka wants more mmo into FPS and Humate wants more solid oldschool FPS into FPS… I would tend with the second option too, and then add mod or stuffs once the game is a big hit

(tokamak) #100

“Mod or stuffs” you’re the third or fourth person who proposes this as a viable solution. “Mod or stuffs” seriously.