DB Design Doc: In-Session Progression System

(Maca) #21

I don’t think any buyable things are needed, at least not for these types of things. In ETQW people might’ve felt the change be too drastic when the new campaign starts, and especially since it was many consecutive maps, so loosing it didn’t feel nice. But this is just one map with just three levels, so I doubt people have problems understanding the system.

But I’d like to flesh out the scoreboard idea more: I think there should be the level icon next to the player name or his score on the scoreboard. So people never have to guess. With the first two levels it should just be ambiguous “lvl 1” or “lvl 2” icon, but when the person gets to level 3, the icon on the scoreboard should also show which class level 3 item it is. So people know what to expect, and then that logo should also look different after that item has been used.

(INF3RN0) #22

I like the concept behind these tier unlocks. Based on the general notion of the tier3 items, I don’t see them as being more than an opportunity to be useful in the right situation. The fact that there’s a global notification and the items have limited use would definitely make for some interesting moments and add a lot of unique elements to the classes. How exactly is XP earned currently? I don’t want to end up seeing people exploiting means of attaining fast XP through unintended methods. Otherwise I think this could work very well if the rewards stay true to the mission statement.

  1. Are you making sure that the distribution and means of earning XP is even across offense, defense, and all classes? If there are any factors that might consistently allocate more XP to one side faster then it might end up always giving one side or class unlock bias.

  2. More details on passive abilities required to comment.

  3. Where can the supply station be deployed?

  4. Is UAV enough to make covert an attractive choice?

An important thing to note is that I can only see these rewards going over well in balanced games and environments where new players aren’t constantly joining in mid-match. I imagine that in any sub-par match up one side would consistently gain momentum. This can’t be helped most of the time, but I think the best solution is to ensure that these unlocks are attained properly and that they only offer a unique new tool that has the potential to be a game changer, but requires a lot of skill/timing/positioning to use it to such an extent. Perhaps something like making each consecutive tier 3 unlock require more than the previous would lessen the doubt that these will cause imbalance or too much advantage to the first side to get them, and make the timing of their use more important.

(rookie1) #23

Tier 3
Is an additional active ability/item for that class
Is unlocked around the 10-12 minute mark of a match (currently when the player earns 4000XP)
Is unlocked by pressing B (default)
Is equipped by pressing B once unlocked (default)
Has limited ammo/uses, is lost after this limit is reached
Can be re-earned by getting another 2000XP. This starts being earned the moment the player has bought the tier 3 item
The tier 3 unlock cannot be transferred to another class. Once it has been unlocked by pressing B switching class will cause it to be lost
Progress towards tier 3 can be transferred to another class. If an Engineer has 3800XP and switched to Medic then he’ll retain that progress towards tier 3 on the Medic

if the match in progress require an immediate x-class but the guy want to stay y-class to pass the 4000XP cap with it ,it Can lead to some hot dispute !!! Unless it can only be available only between 2 matchs …
Is these Unlocking Upgrades will change dramatically the superiority of the team that having it ??
what will be the % of chance that a team can have a unlock Tier 1-3 in a full game?

(Humate) #24

Would love to test this out.
Cant say too much about it till then.

(Bloodbite) #25

Rocket Launcher tiered unlock and one time use!?! This is a very nice solution to allow a moments noob tubing without it becoming a spammable grief tool.

But I would like to see 2 streams of XP tiers. To use W:ET as a reference point… combine what counted as XP gathering based on firearms and battlesense into one set of tiered unlocks (this basically leads to me wanting one thing specifically, an akimbo pistols unlock). And leave the second tier based on class specific interaction… which should be similar to W:ET and ETQW for the soldier… using heavy weapons and MG nests moves the class XP unlocks forward… It essentially splits FPS twitch/perception skill from the tactical and strategic

I think one single tiered structure, while it appears easy to understand, will get old relatively quick(er) for both casual and competitive players. And like we’re seeing with a few of the newer Alpha invites, they need to be spoon-fed constantly. Once they realise that’s all there is in their ration for today’s meal, they will whinge. A two stream structure makes it complex enough that those simpler minds will forever feel out of touch with completely understanding the mathematics behind how those two balance out, and thus will be too preoccupied with confusion to whine about how “this is old because its the exact same unlocks in the exact same order ALL the time… it’s not like W:ET… it’s not like ETQW… .even the perk system in CoD has more options and variety than this.”

When there are multiple combinations of how things unlock, successively, because of the flow of battle and not just because of a person’s skill, however insignificant for the firearms/battlesense stream (and they should be fairly insignificant compared to the class stream), it adds that extra sense of self-satisfaction. It also allows for a greater value and power placed on class stream unlocks in a way that is justifiable to even the dimmest of wits, therein encouraging greater reward for teamplay while giving the naturally inclined lone wolves a taste of what it feels like to unlock stuff.

Firearms/Battlesense could include things like (and in no particular order):

[ul]
[li]Mine awareness within a specific, short range
[/li][li]Quicker weapon equip/swap
[/li][li]1x extra nade
[/li][li]1 or 2 second longer sprint, assuming sprint eventually has a stamina limitation
[/li][li]Akimbo pistol unlock as the final reward… for the rest of the session baby!!!
[/li][/ul]

I’m reluctant to suggest an extra ammo clip because it only worked for medics in the ET games, and doesn’t seem to suit the current direction of DB balancing that we’re feeling in the game.

This 2 stream approach also eliminates the inevitable presence of morons that are constantly kill-stealing and kill-streaking at the expense of the team objective (this will be a problem for both offensive and defensive teams) just so they can rack up their unlocks. It also lessens the chance of the other type of moron that suddenly sees a team of 7 with 6 engineers desperately trying to build an objective while the other team is moving the objective forward, or whatever that scenario may be just because engineer is the easiest to run out and earn safe XP on… remember the backstabs during barricade builds and demo plants in W:ET? Just because some greedy little prick wanted the XP despite you being faster and better in every way… it’ll just be worse this time around what with the extra trollish nature of today’s gamer culture.

(Anti) #26

The passive upgrades we’re talking about are actually very small, changes like affecting ability cool down time, amount of energy regained by picking up your turret etc. For example Airstrike cool down might go from 30 seconds to 26 seconds. The main impact we want from the system is with the tier three abilities, but we want some build up to getting them.

I think the best way to think about the tier three stuff is like CoD kill streaks, except they occur way less frequently and they actually require skill on your part to use, they’re not just free kills because you already got a bunch of kills. I think when you view them this way the fact you only have the progress towards them per match doesn’t seem too short at all.

(light_sh4v0r) #27

This sounds interesting. I’m a little undecided on the desireability of gamechanging unlocks, even if they’re hard to use.
In ETQW you rarely got tier 4 unlocks and when you did they made a difference, but not as substantial as a guaranteed kill on the EV (rocket launcher) for example.

(Humate) #28

Is UAV enough to make covert an attractive choice?

Maybe EMP would be more exciting

(rookie1) #29

There is few places in the game that you will potentionaly may lose players at first.
To complicate HuD is one of them (so far so good)

XPsystem is high in the danger zone
imo if you could display*graphicaly show what the XP system is and progression/goals/what it will unlock…will be the best.( *that can be understand with one look of it…not in the table style)
Keep hiding complicate stuff but let know its there from the beginning.
Comp mode could be where pro/hard core /comp will crack theirs fingers and say now they talking bizness and show all the tweaking stuff
like passing in an airplane from autopilot to manuel and having new flight controls :slight_smile:
Keep default DB simple ,you done a GJ so far with it

(acQu) #30

I’d say let’s try these out. My only concern is that the frequent repetition might get boring and might spoil the concept. Mainly there are 3 kind of systems of these sort, when you look at them from timing perspective: short-term, mid-term, and long-term. This system would be short-term. Mid-term is a system like this, but applied to campaigns, i.e. multiple maps per cycle and then you reset and gain abilities again. Long-term is the xpsave forever stuff. All surely have their favourites and have their pros and cons, but from my perspective i would say: pubs more or less want to achieve ‘something’ and then have it forever or at least over a considerable period (…nah forever xD). At least this is my assumption that it is what pubs want.

However the tier 3 stuff looks interesting, but there are issues with it ailmanki mentioned. A player who is better will become even more better. Wheras if you had the long-term model, one still has the option to compensate over time, so that if the better player reaches X, the worse player reaches X afterwards and then they are even again. With a short term model like this the differences between good and better placyers might be more noticable.

<little off> and i still think a pro-mod for serious balancing and a pub-mod for trying out OP stuff and have loads of OP variety would please them all. Ok, maybe not OP stuff, but variety and experimental stuff in somekind of a pub mod. This is basically how the W:ET community is splitted: there is the pro mod for all the comp players, and there are the pub mods (multiple of these) where the pubs play. I would say playerbase is even around 50/50, and this says alot. Most pubs would not like most of the stuff etpro has to offer, they would prefer more fun settings and abilities, which are only available on the pub servers. 2 things immediately coming to my mind when thinking about DB-pub mode: modifyable weapon system and loads of skin colors. For the pro mod only the standard weapons but balanced + standard skins. The concept of splitting DB into basically two game modes is almost painfully obvious to me, there are many more reasons to split. Basically look at W:ET and how the community is divided there (divided meaning in a positive way, so everyone gets his fair share).

(SockDog) #31

Maybe the upgrades can be map specific or user selectable to bring some variety and engagement from the players.

(Maca) #32

I personally don’t see a problem of the selection being too boring. It seems like the first two tiers and probably third tier will always be different from merc to merc, not to mention class to class. So if we look at the road-map thread, there will perhaps be at least 3 mercs for each class when we’re getting closer to beta, so that’s already 15 characters all with different tier upgrades. I think that’s quite nice selection to choose from.

(Anti) #33

Per Merc is something we’d love to do, but that’s a hell of a lot of work, we’ll have to see if we have time. Right now it’s just planned as per class.

(Maca) #34

I see, I misunderstood some previous post then, sry

(Scrupus) #35

[QUOTE=Anti;433388]The passive upgrades we’re talking about are actually very small, changes like affecting ability cool down time, amount of energy regained by picking up your turret etc. For example Airstrike cool down might go from 30 seconds to 26 seconds. The main impact we want from the system is with the tier three abilities, but we want some build up to getting them.
[/QUOTE]

I understand the idea better now, after reading it a few more times and also your extra comments :slight_smile:

And if they’re minor and easy to handle for the player, it might work well. But wouldn’t it also affect map design a bit, as most of the 3rd tier stuff will mostly be available in the end?

But what about more mid-term progression, like the old campaign mode - do you have any thoughts on that? As others said the campaign system itself had flaws, like players joining in the middle of a camp. But I was wondering if it could work if it was more based on game sessions, so each player starts building up when he joins, and ends it when he leaves - unrelated to the other players. With more stuff to temporary unlock, over 3-6 maps or so. Not sure, just a thought.

Would maybe complicate it even more, but I must confess that one thing that really drove me into ET, was the rather advanced xp and class system (for it’s time). I read that little manual that followed the game, over and over in the beginning - it was excellent :slight_smile:

And yeah, I know a lot of players don’t care about xp progress system, but for some, I think it is a good motivator to make them more objective and focused on their class tasks. And it also add an extra dimension to the learning curve. Which others can ignore, if they don’t care about it anyway.

Or something like Bloodbite suggested, kind of like that double stream idea, to make some more variation.

(Breo) #36

I would give the soldier an AVT instead of the rocketlauncher :frowning:

(INF3RN0) #37

Tier3 abilities; think LoL ultimate. They can offer some exciting game changers, especially for spectators. I still think that each class needs an ability unlock closer to the panzer type of choice. Maybe offer two choices per class depending on what the player feels more comfortable with, one being supportive and the other destructive. Soldier has the chance of putting out an extra spawn wave if he does it right (not like he can’t already do that, but this is much more epic). All of the other abilities won’t really have nearly as much impact potential.

Here’s some ideas off the top of my head for an alt tier 3 pick;

Supportive;
Soldier- (Give me an idea!)

Destructive;
FOPS; Mortar barrage- equivalent of ET airstrike (fast hitting, high damage- timing requirement)
Engineer; (Give me an idea!)
Medic; (Give me an idea!)
Covert; (Give me an idea!)

(Bangtastic) #38

First of all a radioactive super weapon can be considered for each class.

Supportive:
Soldier:
Idea1 - Soldier can throw a kit/armor to pickup, which provides more armor, stamina, let people endure more damage (against radioactiveness?), or he can provide others with nades?
Idea2 - Soldier is able to use a big shield which can take a big amount of damage or is time limited and has a long refresh rate.
Idea3 - Soldier is able to drag the MG-Nest of the engineer in a limited area but reallly slowly?

Destructive:
Fops, you already mentioned
Engineer:
Idea1: Kind of C4-Uranium with a remote control, to time its explosion
Idea2: A customized and upgraded double welder - used as a short range flamethrower; OR she is able to throw this customized welder at enemies, they take damage in a radius couple of meters.

Medic:
Idea1: A certain weapon that can be used either to poison enemies or to heal your allies (remember the link gun?)

Covert:
Idea1: Instagib weapon, limited rounds -> people cant be revived, large bullets?

(Ruben0s) #39

It sounds cool to me, but I think that this will be incredibly difficult to balance, good luck with that.

So far the tier 3 ability of the recon class looks on paper kinda useless, as most of the important objectives happen inside buildings (waterloo, london bridge, white chappel).

The engineer tier 3 ability looks extremely powerfull. What if 3 players on a team use the ability at the same time, as defence inside the london bridge building?

Some other things that concern me, is that the good players get stronger and that this will increase the gab between newbs/pro’s.
And what about joining mid game? To me it looks like joining mid game is a punishment, for yourself and the team.

Anyway I would love to test it out, I wonder how it works when 16 players get all their abilities at 12/13 min ingame. That will be an epic spam fest.

(iwound) #40

Idea1: Kind of C4-Uranium with a remote control, to time its explosion

I think a large bomb would make a nice 3rd tier weapon.
A freely plantable bomb with a much higher power than a c4.
At first i thought car bomb. but an extra car somewhere might just arouse suspicion.
Could be wirelessly activated. Think satchel on crack. and when it goes off, shop and car alarms ring for a few seconds on top of the destruction.
Something as big as the container blasts on waterloo. Maybe bigger.