Curious about one aspect

(tokamak) #81

Players may also specialise in a required class and not have any abilities relevant to the objective.

(obliviondoll) #82

[QUOTE=BioSnark;281512]As I may have mentioned in a different thread with the same discussion, it’s possible that level 20 abilities require 19 points allocated in lower level abilities and similar applied to the lower tiers of abilities. The character’s abilities levels could also determine what level they are with respect to the match making system so a respec’d level 20 could play at level 1 with 1 point allocated.

just a thought.[/QUOTE]
Just quoting this because it’s a logical, well-worded suggestion, and would be awesome if the game does turn out this way.

(Bridger) #83

It still leads back to only having a single rank 5 ability, and that means only one class gets a rank 5 ability unless you choose a universal rank 5.

There’s too many unknowns to really know if this is going to be a problem. I’m going to reserve my judgement on this issue until I play it. As it stands, however, the best solution would be to have a sort of “ready room” or “ready mode” for the first 30-60 seconds of the map where you can select your character, which you are then locked into for the map. That would allow a team of pubs to quickly coordinate AND it would satisfy the people that want restricted character choices.

(SockDog) #84

Unsure whether you’re address that to me or an earlier post, if the former you might want to check your “being a dick” gauge, it’s in the red. Anyway…

To reiterate. I don’t care about the composite of abilities in players and classes (although the contradiction of there importance is strange for me). At a very simple level I’m concerned about the impact of building characters with class specific abilities as being a deterent for players to change classes in game. It’s that simple. If 8 or even 4 people on a team refuse to change to necessary classes to balance for objectives the team will suck.

(Weapuh) #85

[QUOTE=SockDog;281430]Have to agree with BMXer that this could lead to some very annoying behaviours.

Let me be clear here. I’m not saying the abilities make or break players but they’re clearly there for people to invest in and to augment their chosen character. The game then asks people to give that up willy nilly for the benefit of the team. I just find that very contradictory. I mean I hope as the more optimistic people here seem to think, that this is a non issue. Yet I also wonder if this is exactly the sort of thing having a closed beta test doesn’t pick up on due to the fact you haven’t got a high percentage of slavering character builders leveling up and playing just their chosen class.

Like the single player expectations I hope we don’t get the classic “you’re not playing right, it’s your fault” wheeled out if pub games are full of quitting or people refusing to change classes.[/QUOTE]

Exactly what I was curious about, thanks for seeing it. Kind of funny how crazy Darkangel and stats folks are taking it though. Some need to tone down the Rage-o-meters.

(Chili Squirts) #86

I remember back in stats class I always thought “When the hell am I EVER going to use this. I’m a film major for $%&@ sake!”. Thank you, Splash Damage Forum, you just taught me the meaning of college.

On a related note - These numbers are all skewed because for the first few days 50% of the player base are going to be light operatives to feed their ninja fantasies.

(Linsolv) #87

[QUOTE=SockDog;281625]Unsure whether you’re address that to me or an earlier post, if the former you might want to check your “being a dick” gauge, it’s in the red. Anyway…

To reiterate. I don’t care about the composite of abilities in players and classes (although the contradiction of there importance is strange for me). At a very simple level I’m concerned about the impact of building characters with class specific abilities as being a deterent for players to change classes in game. It’s that simple. If 8 or even 4 people on a team refuse to change to necessary classes to balance for objectives the team will suck.[/QUOTE]

You know what? I might have snapped at you unfairly.

I’m just so sick of people who are whining and crying about this, though.

Are you one of those people who sits there on their high horse and insists you’re going to drop from a server if you need a different character? Then that was aimed at you, and rude but I don’t care because I’ve tried to argue logically. Otherwise, I apologize, because your post made me assume you were one of those people and I made absolutely no effort to check. Which is rude and unfair.

I used to be really math oriented, but these days I try to keep it to myself unless all my “come on guys be reasonable” attempts have failed, and so a thread and a half later I made myself a little science project and I followed up on it until I was convinced I was right.

(SockDog) #88

Personally, I’ll change class, sides or whatever as I just want to have a fun and challenging game. I’ll be honest enough to admit that after many games like that really drains my enthusiasm though.

With regards to this thread I’m just throwing out a hypothetical or two based on past experience (ETQW) and posts on here. I’m happy to be wrong, I’m not on a crusade to hate a game I’m eager to play and I’m mature enough to know there are always going to be things I don’t like but have to live with.

I used to be really math oriented, but these days I try to keep it to myself unless all my “come on guys be reasonable” attempts have failed, and so a thread and a half later I made myself a little science project and I followed up on it until I was convinced I was right.

Hey, I argue with Tok. THAT. IS. TIRING. :slight_smile:

(Linsolv) #89

Then I apologize. I snapped at the ideas you were supporting more than I really meant to snap at you personally.

(Nail) #90

[QUOTE=Chili Squirts;281631]

On a related note - These numbers are all skewed because for the first few days 50% of the player base are going to be light operatives to feed their ninja fantasies.[/QUOTE]

nope, everyone starts as medium, you can use heavy after level 5 and no lights untill level 7, so it’ll be the second few days untill everyone will be a light operative and/or heavy medic

(SockDog) #91

No problem, I snapped back, we hugged, beat up an innocent passer-by to feel better… :slight_smile:

(CapnHowdy21) #92

This getting a little too touchy feel for a game about killing people… :-p

One thing everyone needs to remember is most of this is speculation. Speculation based on facts, but speculation.

We really don’t know what builds are going to look like yet. We don’t know how if tricking out one class is a good idea or optimal. We might find that if we take as many abilities make sense at first, levels you with a lot of undesirables. We might also find that diversifying isn’t a reward enough and that we need to specialize. We might also find that almost any group make up can work, and just your tactics need to adjust, therefore only requiring you to switch to complete an objective.

Theres a lot we don’t know. However since we are all here, and I’m guessing were all fans and excited, were going to have to trust that splash damage has thought this through. Whether or not their decisions creates a meta that suites our personal taste we can’t know till we play and the dust settles a bit.

(Linsolv) #93

… Says a guy with an avatar whose main facial feature is eye shadow. Sure. too touchy feely for you. :stuck_out_tongue:

(Seyu) #94

Ad hominem much, Linsolv?

(Shadowcat) #95

TL;DR - chance of a team of 8 people, each with a single class, having all 4 classes is = 62.29% (5103/8129)

My check is my earlier guess of 62.5%. When two entirely different methods converge, its a fairly good check.

(the term “sanity check” was somewhat abused in this thread though, since sanity checking is supposed to be a method for discounting results that CAN’T be true, not ones that seem unexpected.)

For those more curious about how i arrived here, based on the fact that some people didn’t seem to accept my guesstimates, I decided to make a “recursive” formula that fits the situation that could crunch it out long hand.To find it, i drew part of the probability tree, finding the %unique and %same for each fork, then found where it starts repeating itself, then turned a few branches into formulas, and found the pattern.

What I ended up with is this

.75^a * .5^b * .25^c = P(a,b,c)
a + b + c + 1 =< t
t=size of the team

Seems weird, but it works this way:
Start with P(1,1,1)
then increase “a” by one and run it again.
keep increasing by one in this way until a+b+c+1 = t
now rollover to P(1,2,1) and continue.
keep going in this way till you reach P(1,1,(t-3))
Now add up all values of P

I ran it for t=11 to attempt to approximate a couple dual class people. This is slightly wrong, since the second classes would have only 3 choice, not 4, but i don’t care to rework this formula to account for it.

anyway, for t=11, i ended up with 79.75%, this would be somewhere around the chance that an 8 man team with ~2 dual classes would have all 4 classes. So each dual classed person seems to lower the chance quite significantly.

(DarkangelUK) #96

I seriously think you have a reading disability. I don’t care either way about abilities, I’m on the ‘oh well, deal with it’ fence. I couldn’t care less what abilities I have or lose when switching class, i’ll play for the map and change when required… as i’ve said this ENTIRE time.

(Linsolv) #97

I just like doing math and telling people to shut the hell up.

(Seyu) #98

Shadowcat, shouldn’t it be a+b+c+1>=8 ?

(Weapuh) #99

And you seem to be schizophrenic because you keep imagining people raining hellfire when nobody is even close to heated about this subject as you would embellish. As helpful as you might thing the “oh well, deal with it” standpoint it’s completely useless regardless of what you think. So carry on being speaking of irrelevancies, whatever keeps you amused.

(DarkangelUK) #100

Speaking of irrelevancies eh? The game is at the DVD presses and nothing will/can be changed, and there’s still whine aplenty… the doomsayers like yourself are going way overboard with how ‘drastic’ an affect this will have on the game… when really it’s a complete non-issue and you’re just creating drama for the sake of it. Here’s an idea… deal with it.

EDIT: Just had a look at your original post, and it seems you weren’t privy to the older threads on this subject where people were claiming the stars were falling and the end of the world was nigh because you couldn’t change abilities to other classes… this is where my ‘drama’ came from. They more or less said no one would swap class, people would quit, stale mates everywhere and games would be boring with people stuck with their fave class. For some reason I automatically assumed the fear had spread here… guess not.