Make the game open, give people options and then let the player to decide how and when to invest different styles.
This always translates to ‘let me have whatever I want whenever it suits me’. It doesn’t create choice, it eliminates it. It means everyone is playing the same role. And I know, it’s nostalgic, it’s old skool to have a completely level playing field where none of the past decisions matter as you can always adapt on the fly. But it’s also a departure from the route towards deepening the shooter genre.
How many times have you found yourself playing ET, getting yourself into a situation and thinking “Man, it would be really cool if I was X class with X loadout right now”? Knowing when to apply what tool is a trivial exercise. Knowing how to apply your niche role to a complicated situation however, that is one of the most profound things you can do in a video game.
On buffs I think I prefer the idea of automatically applying them based on your proximity to other players. This is after all a game that is meant to promote playing as a team so why not encourage people to group together and coordinate in order to reap a benefit. Of course you can’t just grant someone +20 health if they’re within a certain distance of a medic because if you move out of range how do you take that +20 health away? How about instead you grant a +20 auto-regen of health if near a medic?
Of course some classes that are designed to be loners could benefit themselves if they are outside the range of the team, a covert ops could gain camouflage if away from their team or even see such a buff be deteriorated if enough enemies are close by.
Hmm part of Brinks problem was that there was no real risk management involved, and it lacked a genuine feeling of teamwork. To me that idea has the same sort of vibe to it.
A big part of that problem can be attributed towards all the buffs having a very similar overall result. In the end getting more hp, or more firepower or more ammo all lead to having more combat potency. It didn’t really matter when and how these buffs got applied, all that mattered was that they got applied. This means that the classes all started to have the same role. The only thing that mattered was having one of each so that the buffs could overlap.
And I get the idea. SD started with bringing down a team-based shooter to it’s core essence. IE, getting a team to work together on an objective and handling in such a way that they become bigger than the sum of it’s parts. They tried to lower the bar to the lowest amount possible and heavily facilitate this behaviour. It’s an extreme experiment and it shows that doing this trivialises the gameplay.
Most people here look at it and say ‘well, the problem is that it’s just all about pressing ‘F’ and be done with it’. But the ease at which you apply buffs is not the problem. In WoW it’s even easier to do such handlings, what was tricky in this game is knowing when was the right time to apply them. These things costed mana, had cooldowns or had a window of opportunity. That was the big problem and you found yourself as a player constantly weighing when the right time would be to use the wide scala yet limited sourced abilities at your comment. Actually applying them was just a matter of pressing a number. The game was even set up in such a way that a few seconds more or less usually didn’t matter.
So that’s not the problem. The problem in Brink is that the player could answer the question ‘when would be the right time to apply my abilities’ simply with ‘always’. Always is the best time to use whatever you have on your hands. Quickly, squirt out those buffs before you die or before it regens again. It’s that lack of scarcity that made all the tactics in the game feel frivolous. You were playing a teamwork simulator rather than actually teamworking.
And with ‘scarcity’ I don’t mean that players rarely get to do anything at all. It only means that there ought to be very limited windows of opportunity to do the right thing. Bell curves so to speak. Where the best time to do something rapidly increases, peaks and rapidly diminishes before it becomes useless again. Then the true skill of the players is to recognise these windows in a complex setting and work their ass off to do the right thing at the right time.
That’s my problem with classes that constantly have all the tools. When you have all the tools available to you then that means all the windows of opportunity overlap, this means that the choice you make starts to matter less. Again, that’s what happened in Brink, it didn’t matter what you did, as long as you kept doing something you were on the right track. That’s why I value very specialist niche roles.
You can’t change whenever it suits you. You need to die/respawn, you take a penalty on position and time to make a change. You also need to consider how that change is going to impact the team and not just one situation.
The playing field is graded by the player’s ability to utilise the tools available. If you limit the tools you are indeed making a deeper playing field but it’s one with peaks and troughs of randomness. That just sucks.
Lets also not forget that the game is meant to be fun. I can take being beaten by a better player or better team but to lose because I or my team didn’t have an adequate preselected loadout, that sucks.
How many times have you found yourself playing ET, getting yourself into a situation and thinking “Man, it would be really cool if I was X class with X loadout right now”? Knowing when to apply what tool is a trivial exercise. Knowing how to apply your niche role to a complicated situation however, that is one of the most profound things you can do in a video game.
Again, you’re talking high strategy when there is none in a pub game. You have ZERO ability to predict the team and enemy composition (would you even know your own team’s special abilities?) or even the bloody map you’re playing on. And the time to assess and react to a complicated situation in an FPS game is tiny, the only decision that’s going to be made above those already considered is whether your dice roll beats the enemies.
Sorry to keep repeating it but I can see what you’re suggesting working in many scenarios but just not in a pub team based multiplayer FPS.
Actually. Before I click quick reply. I can see perhaps if on joining a pub game there was something like the Dota character and power selector thing (sorry, I’ve only watched one Dota vid). This way each team can select against the enemy and also their own team. Not sure FPS gamers would like that though, nor would it lend well to people dropping in and out of ongoing matches unless you forced them into an existing build. It’s an option though I suppose.
I still don’t get what is so appealing about forcing players into making permanent choices that prevents them from being useful at certain times during a match. What is so fundamentally wrong with being able to adapt to a situation?
If I’m playing as a medic and the engineers on my team are struggling to disarm a charge and the respawn counter is nearing 0 I may wish to /kill and respawn as engineer to have a bash, I may wish to push out and try prevent more enemies reaching the objective easing the pressure on the next wave of would be diffusers, I might want to fall back and prepare for the next stage, perhaps changing class at same time to improve the defence for the next stage, I might decide to hang around and place load of med packs at objective in preparation for the engineers, or whatever, lots of options and freedom but in tokaworld I would have to continue playing my specialised role till the map is over and no be able to help my team in any other capacity what so ever, where’s the fun in that?
Each of those options in that example have pros and cons, it’s not a given that each option will work or turn out to be the best option or the square peg in a square hole as you always say. I may miss-time my /kill or screw up my class selection wasting time, at best I’m playing as ‘wrong’ class for another 30s at worst I’m out of action for 30s, even if /kill and pick engi in time I may get spawned killed straight away or die on way to objective. Falling back may prove to be bad decision for the people who may need a revive attempting to still defuse the objective, even if the objective was blown a medic may be needed to revive players in that area so they can fall back without respawning thus saving time and communicating to the team how many enemies are approaching if any slip by at that point. Anything could happen still.
But the ease at which you apply buffs is not the problem.
Its precisely the problem… there’s no risk management involved.
Remember that list? Shoot first revive second, revive first shoot second etc?
All that stuff gets thrown out the window.
I’ve not really given it a great deal of thought so I’m open to the idea being flawed to buggery.
What I would be reaching for is a reward for players to group together (or stay away). Nothing more really. Being passive and working within a ranged area means that you need to be concious of working together but not having to do the Benny Hill stuff and then all going your separate ways. I think every successive SD game has tried to encourage players to group up but it’s yet to come across in a way that actually works naturally.
Of course, each class should still have active abilities for the team, medic with kits and revive etc. I guess I would say this is just a way to reinforce than a team that plays together is stronger and oh here some boosts to reinforce that message.
Okay too much to give a decent response towards. Though I like the DOTA reference, because that´s exactly what I´d like to see only more flexible due to the campaign nature. People making permanent choices in that game didn’t become obsolete or all-powerful, they only got more and less suitable for certain situations. The nature of that game was for them to find the situations in which they were suited the best and avoid the ones in which they were weak. Once such very important strengths and weaknesses are in place, you find that the decisions you make start to matter.
I’ve not really given it a great deal of thought so I’m open to the idea being flawed to buggery.
Ok cool.
The reward in using the proper formation happens on a team/tactical level instead of an individual one.
Each formation - all in / even split / uneven split has associated pros and cons attached to each already.
MP - military police - can restrain enemy, tie em to an object, rubber bullets , ow that stings be tall fast…
SC - science office - more varied technical weaponry, more points new inventions, R&D, scientificy weapons…hologram tech etc
NC - ninja class - more melee than weaponry…
Digger - digs tunnels, hits you with a shovel…
Magician- came through portal into wrong game, spells more illusionary than harmful. j/k <------
BC - barbie class - sleep with enemy to gain info and std’s
[QUOTE=tokamak;408468]Okay too much to give a decent response towards. Though I like the DOTA reference, because that´s exactly what I´d like to see only more flexible due to the campaign nature. People making permanent choices in that game didn’t become obsolete or all-powerful, they only got more and less suitable for certain situations. The nature of that game was for them to find the situations in which they were suited the best and avoid the ones in which they were weak. Once such very important strengths and weaknesses are in place, you find that the decisions you make start to matter.
I promise I will get back on the other points.[/QUOTE]
The key points still remain.
You are removing a lot of choice in the hope that it provides tactical depth through the restrictions. I don’t believe this is the case with the pace of these types of games.
Unless a DOTA type system is employed you’re dice rolling. Even with a Dota type system a pub game would demand a huge level of coordination and you know what that means? Yup simplifying the gameplay so people know what they can do.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that you’re pushing a niche want onto a relatively niche sub-genre. I’m not for SD to make a CoD game just for massive sales number but likewise I don’t think they can afford to specialise to such an extent that they alienate their customer base. ETQW was too hard for people to pick up, granted some of that was design problems but much of it was people being unable to accept a game that worked on so many different levels.
What?.. Just you wait a minute!
The reward in using the proper formation happens on a team/tactical level instead of an individual one.
Each formation - all in / even split / uneven split has associated pros and cons attached to each already.
I agree but for a large number of players they don’t do this. Either through ignorance or arrogance. I saying this may be a way to passively reinforce that coordinating with other team mates produces better results by creating a situation where being together simply provides a tangible boost. Play long enough like that and then the thought of running off from the spawn on your own or lemming rushing an objective seems like less of a viable option.
That’s what I was trying to achieve, though specifically for the medic, with those suggestions I made, whether it would work or not I dunno, I think something should be attempted to somehow nudge players into sticking together more without simply telling them to or using mechanics like buffing and it should be done in such a way to not be too restrictive on what the individual can do, quite a task yeah?.
It should be preferable to work as a team in a team based game but as things stand there isn’t much incentive to do so, a single medic can dominate infantry combat, an engineer in a flier can be devastating, a field ops can bombard the hell out of a spawn exit. Whilst those don’t sound too bad at a glance there all for nothing if medics aren’t reviving fallen teams mates as they’re concentrating on fragging for all the match, if fliers aren’t taking down deployables and heavy vehicles near the objective as they would much rather play it safe else where in the map, perhaps spawn camping, same deal with the field ops.
[QUOTE=iwound;408479]MP - military police - can restrain enemy, tie em to an object, rubber bullets , ow that stings be tall fast…
SC - science office - more varied technical weaponry, more points new inventions, R&D, scientificy weapons…hologram tech etc
NC - ninja class - more melee than weaponry…
Digger - digs tunnels, hits you with a shovel…
Magician- came through portal into wrong game, spells more illusionary than harmful. j/k <------
BC - barbie class - sleep with enemy to gain info and std’s
There’s a wealth of abilities in WoW as well as in RTS games (often used by characters and the like) that would be heaps of fun in a first person shooter. Reality is also catching up rapidly with the video-game fiction and is evolving crowd-control weaponry at a much faster pace than game developers can seem to implement in an interesting way. Audio cannons, glue guns, tactical smoke. We don’t have that stuff. The last shooter that used tear gas in a satisfactory way is NINE years old right now.
Incapacitation is incredibly fun in video games. It makes everything dramatic. Rather than a team-mate dying next to you, him becoming incapacitated turns him from being a corpse into being a liability you need to protect until he’s in the clear again.
The classic 5 that Quake Wars has could use evolution but every so-called “team-based” game has used it since.
Battlefield, Call of Duty, and such have the same principle “starter” classes unlike since pretty much Cod4 where you could use the in-game create-a-class to create your own. Though a system like that would pretty much by a mix of the Quake Wars pre-defined classes and the more powerful customization engine Brink has.
Even though I enjoyed Brink besides the “Unbalanced Choke Points” I think asking for a remake of Quake Wars would be more ridiculous than just continuing the ET franchise. Seeing how RAGE is a freshly-new IP and Doom 4 is in the works; it would be nice if any reconsidered Class-based systems were enveloped in a ET:Doom or ET:Rage seeing how even Brink is just running on a heavily modified id tech 4…While id has been churning out Rage and id tech 5 since it’s 6 or so year old public demonstration at QuakeCon.
But getting back on topic; unless Splash Damage is looking to break the mold of class-based gameplay, a more “modern” or “evolved” state of the classic classes (pun not intended) would suffice most gamers, IMO.
What?.. Just you wait a minute!
I agree but for a large number of players they don’t do this. Either through ignorance or arrogance. I saying this may be a way to passively reinforce that coordinating with other team mates produces better results by creating a situation where being together simply provides a tangible boost. Play long enough like that and then the thought of running off from the spawn on your own or lemming rushing an objective seems like less of a viable option.[/QUOTE]
While the intention to gain tactical advantages, from the various formations is generally not there in pub play… the result or the reward still exists. Being together already creates a boost, it just doesnt create that boost all the time. Sometimes playing in groups, actually causes your team to lose.
If your team goes all in against a split defence, you not only have superior fire-power but you have access to all your resources. And until the defenders guarding that entrance respawn, you have ensured a number advantage going into the objective.
Thats if all goes well. If it doesnt, and somehow theres a nicely timed nade or theres a prone hyper waiting there, thats when your team-work is tested. It now becomes a race b/w how quickly you can recover vs the speed in which the split defense collapses.
You can also do cool stuff like feign all in attacks, only to sandwhich them once they collapse with a split attack (rambo medic). Yes I know, not really something done in pub.
I personally dislike buffs. They make estimation of a potential 1on1 fight almost impossible. It is rather a random thing whether that guy you wanna kill is buffed to ears or normal. And knowing that and his skill would sometimes change my decision to pursue him or which tactics of killing to choose (brute force heads on, evasive, trickery or careful). Now, the potential skill of an enemy is either known before a match or often gets clear during the first minutes of a match. With buffs you just never know. What I mean is it takes a lot from skill fights and redefines the whole combat, relying often rather on buff luck than on personal skill.
What I can accept is a kind of permanent buffs (campaign-wise) based on stars like inETQW or W:ET, for example reload speed, ammo amount, medkit size, etc., as soon as you reach 2 or 3 stars in that particular class. I also can accept a team-dependent buff, like in W:ET, where if a team had more than 2 medics, the health of each player in that team would be higher progressively according to number of medics. Another permanent buff is class-defined, e.g. soldiers having higher health, or engies having better armor, or scouts having faster speed (in TF).
But temporary buffing without any way to see who is buffed with what is making the fights too unpredictable (and not due to skill equality but artificially) and often frustrating. Also I agree with tokamak about silly after-spawn rituals. They need to go. What you get with them is wasting time and concentration on stupid juggling with syringes/ammopacks and trying to reach several players running away to buff them (and you seldom get anything in return), instead of concentrating on getting to objective or killing. In Brink, often people were buffing back only if you start buffing them first, and this is the thing that will never change whatever you design there. Keep it simple as it was in ETQW, spend this time on designing smth more important, such as better tunable and clearer hud or demomanagement.
[QUOTE=.Chris.;408491]That’s what I was trying to achieve, though specifically for the medic, with those suggestions I made, whether it would work or not I dunno, I think something should be attempted to somehow nudge players into sticking together more without simply telling them to or using mechanics like buffing and it should be done in such a way to not be too restrictive on what the individual can do, quite a task yeah?.
It should be preferable to work as a team in a team based game but as things stand there isn’t much incentive to do so, a single medic can dominate infantry combat, an engineer in a flier can be devastating, a field ops can bombard the hell out of a spawn exit. Whilst those don’t sound too bad at a glance there all for nothing if medics aren’t reviving fallen teams mates as they’re concentrating on fragging for all the match, if fliers aren’t taking down deployables and heavy vehicles near the objective as they would much rather play it safe else where in the map, perhaps spawn camping, same deal with the field ops.[/QUOTE]
Yup. Just aiming for a mechanic that makes a reward obvious enough to encourage the right behaviour rather than what exists now which is either a form of total silence or screaming at players to do something. Both of which, thus far, over many games, has failed to grab the masses.
Earlier in this thread I very nearly suggested that the medic not have the capability to kill the enemy. Instead they’d have equipment to distract or disable enemies allowing them to revive and then get the hell out of dodge. I wasn’t too sure how such a thing would be received though, end of the day this is a shooter and playing someone that can’t shoot, ever, might not being any fun. So any new weapons need to be weighed up on their uniqueness versus what they actually bring to the game.
As for bringing ideas from totally different genres… You’re the same guy who claims you can’t employ elements of what make emergent games like Minecraft and DayZ into an SD game and yet you can pilfer from RPGs and RTS games without issue just being they’re cool. Mmmm
[QUOTE=Humate;408529]While the intention to gain tactical advantages, from the various formations is generally not there in pub play… the result or the reward still exists. Being together already creates a boost, it just doesnt create that boost all the time.
If your team goes all in against a split defence, you not only have superior fire-power but you have access to all your resources. And until the defenders guarding that entrance respawn, you have ensured a number advantage going into the objective.
Thats if all goes well. If it doesnt, and somehow theres a nicely timed nade or theres a prone hyper waiting there, thats when your team-work is tested. It now becomes a race b/w how quickly you can recover vs the speed in which the split defense collapses.
You can also do cool stuff like feign all in attacks, only to sandwhich them once they collapse with a split attack (rambo medic). Yes I know, not really something done in pub.[/QUOTE]
I totally agree with you that this is what people should be aiming for I’m just saying that it’s clearly not obvious enough the the general masses. We need to give them a doggy biscuit when they’re teaming up so they do it often and enjoy it. Then as a consequence they’ll pick up on the more subtle advantages and finally learn to coordinate to the level you’re saying. It’s clear that after how many years of MP gaming that grouping up has not become a given trait of the online gamer.
I get you. But I think the doggy biscuit is built in.
If tokamak [sorry just using you as an example] has trouble beating players on his own, the doggy biscuit is to team up with other players, so that -
a) hes not waiting in the spawn queue all the time, hes has access to medics that revive him
b) he’s ensuring he has more gun power on his side when there’s a fight which increases his chances of survivability.
The only thing he has to give up, is ability to control detection.
Most player’s in toks position will gladly give that up though…
Now lets say they are given another doggy biscuit like a healing aura (:() that heals players within a certain radius of a medic.
Dont you think that would cheapen the team-work required when things dont go smooth sailing?
They already have the resource advantage, they already have the weapon advantage.
Wouldnt it be better to give that healing aura to a medcrate and allow the players to decide whether they want to fight near it?
I like the idea of tweaking/enhancing the current classes (Medic, Engy, FO, CO, Soldier) and also perhaps, adding specializations to each class. Perhaps add 2 choices of specialization to each class, to add more customization for playstyles, so, for example, a Medic player could choose to specialize in boosting his healing abilities, or go more of a support route, and specialize in buffs. An Engineer choose to boost the proficiencies of his teammates weapons, or choose to specialize in deployables, etc.
I don’t really see a need to come up with an entirely new class, since all the bases are covered already. Just improve/expand upon what is already there.
Sounds more like WoW the fps game.