Encouraging teamplay

(spookify) #41

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;512568]XP doesnt have anything to do with teamplay until the game itself starts to favour the teamplay. and that is what we need to fix in DB.

[ul]
[li]i have hp regen.[/li][li]i have ammo boxes around the map[/li][li]i can do all objects[/li][li]my abilities’ cooldowns do not depend on anything from my team[/li][li]no friendly fire, so i dont even have to care about avoiding shooting my teammates[/li][/ul]
this list literaly says: PLAY ON YOUR OWN.

there is no teammate interaction in the game.

no reparing teammate’s stuff.
no multidefuse.
no double-merc objects.[/QUOTE]

True Dhat!!!

(INF3RN0) #42

So before this whole thing turns into another one of those +1 threads with no real productive outcome. Maybe think about what defines ‘teamwork’ in a broad sense of the term, and then generate some ideas that could be incorporated into the current game’s structure. There’s a lot of ways to facilitate teamwork, the measure of which is attributed to winning the game; i.e. in an equal individually mechanically skilled match up would be determined by well timed cooperative strategy and intuition, more so in the meta than the micro. There’s plenty of team based obj games which function very differently and are still highly successful at facilitating teamwork and giving it measurable reward. There are indeed a very limited opportunities that identify as teamwork or motivate it, but the ways in which that can be achieved is not restricted to the way it was in a previous SD game.

(Glottis-3D) #43

some stuff that comes to mind.

  1. class-specific “secondary/thirdary objects” (sniper/artillery spots, constructable covers, ammo/health boxes that need hack/c4/repair action)
    class specific is a must. why whould any one need a teammate if he can do everything by himself?

why do we get ammoboxes for free (and why are they so useless? is another, but closely connected Q)
give the FOPS class ability to open, unfold them on specific places via codes, that are known only by artilery-classes
a soldier runs to a 'closed ammobox, uses context menu: clicks on a box and asks “Open this box plox” ’
and all fire-support mercs get an indication of this request.

Ammobox- firesupport
Healthmox - medics
MG nests - engies
Construcable covers - engies OR snipers (hack)

  1. team tricks.
    -team speed boost (teampush)
    -team jumps for slightly more height in a jump. not a quake-like. but more realistic kind of jump. so that lower person gets a kick.

  2. team abilities
    -spawning a fortress on specific place of a map to enforce this area, that any merc can contribute to.
    SOldier spawns it, Bushwaker adds a turret, Aura adds an HP-regen, proxy adds a mine-field, fire support adds Ammo-regen
    -ability combos like turret+3rd eye = more strong turret.
    -ability buffs by teammates. only other mercs can make your turret/mine/ammo station be more effective

  3. well, this is a no brainer.
    get primary objects class flavour again. “Cover your engie FFS!!!” = most effective teamplay encouraging tool =)))

deepen class objects with Double-class objects.
-a poisoned tunnel, that not only needs venting(engie), but an antidote sprayer (medic).
-large destructable objects - like bridge that require a real engeneer-mind to point a specific place where to plant a c4. i,e: engineer ‘hacks’ a object-panel, and only after that attackers get a specific place (a randomish place every time) on the object - what column to blow that is.

(Glottis-3D) #44

  1. giefback multi-defuse. (multihack etc) this also help for teamplay.

  2. lower HP regen, so that medics have more impact. and. DO NOT kill medpacks with damage-deny.
    when medpacks are denied by dmg, medpack are going more into spam-ability (drop them everywhere, coz they are anyway useless), than actual combat heal.
    if medpack are insta = they will be used in combats. isnt this called teamplay??

(Humate) #45

Team-work for me is any possible action within the game, with the intent on assisting the team win.
This includes things that seemingly on the surface look ego centric, or self serving.
So a good real world example would be Kevin Durant who shoots 50% from the field, 40% from 3, and 90% from the FT line.
With those percentages it hurts the team more if he doesnt shoot every time he gets the ball.
It would seem a bit silly to me to not run a Sniper simply because it doesnt fit someone’s perspective of what team-work is.
If they are team-wiping or they snipe over 60%, as an engineer that needs to complete the objective theres not a lot to complain about.

(Glottis-3D) #46

you say, that every team is better with Lionel Messi, than without him. and i agree.
but teamwork in football (soccer) comes from game elements like passes, false manoeuvres, combinations etc.

we need tyo brainstorm those elements into the DB.
so that every new team can go deeper and deeper in their interactions, that will give them advantage over less teamplay team (even if that other team has better individual players)

(Humate) #47

you say, that every team is better with Lionel Messi, than without him. and i agree.

Thats not what im saying. :slight_smile:
I’m saying that players play a certain way, based on their idea of what team-work is without considering what the moment really requires of them.

(Violator) #48

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;512568]XP doesnt have anything to do with teamplay until the game itself starts to favour the teamplay. and that is what we need to fix in DB.

[ul]
[li]i have hp regen.[/li][li]i have ammo boxes around the map[/li][li]i can do all objects[/li][li]my abilities’ cooldowns do not depend on anything from my team[/li][li]no friendly fire, so i dont even have to care about avoiding shooting my teammates[/li][/ul]
this list literaly says: PLAY ON YOUR OWN.

there is no teammate interaction in the game.

no reparing teammate’s stuff.
no multidefuse.
no double-merc objects.[/QUOTE]

Need to spread more reps :slight_smile:

When playing with a few exceptions I find -

  1. To heal I have to rely on regen because my team usually has no medics or its not worth them reviving me / they are ramboing.

  2. For ammo I have to /kill or use ammo boxes because the team has no fieldops or they are using AOE / ramboing. Was playing with some new players last night and they didn’t even realise they could dish out ammo.

  3. The difference in movement speeds between mercs makes it harder to stick together. Can’t catch up with Proxy to heal her, don’t want to wait around for the fatman. If we are going to have this then how about having support mercs of similar speeds to the mercs they are meant to be supporting? No-one is going to want to play ‘Rhino-med’ though :).

  4. Lack of spawn waves in objective mode. 90% of the time I’m respawning back alone or maybe with one other player = lemming rush.

So generally I find I am forced to go solo a lot of the time or at most one other player (the only time we ever get more than that is the last objective on Whitechapel due to the required spawncamping) due to the above points as are most of the other regular players. 1) and 2) are also slow but better than nothing but its annoying to have to rely on them. I think the diversity of the mercs is actually making them too individual to the extent that its harming teamplay. ET worked because everyone had the same movement speed and HP (medics boosted the whole team, another type of perk missing from DB), and you had to support the single class which could do the objective.

The only thing which slightly makes a difference is defusing - the engy does do it a fair bit quicker, but again their role is diminished due to the fact that anyone can do it. It seems like a sticking plaster to cover up the ‘3 mercs rule’ for players who don’t choose an engineer (another rule which is not exactly popular).

(Szakalot) #49

I find that the ability to plant by any merc is more detrimental to the teamplay, then defuse. 5 sec vs 2-3sec isn’t a big deal, but 5sec vs 10sec is.

(warbie) #50

It’s worth noting that early in the beta there were clear classes - medic, engie, field ops, soldier etc - with the class specific skills we’re used to from RTCW and ET. There were no ammo stations and people didn’t drop ammo on death either. However, there was still next to no teamplay due to the spawn times and map layouts. I agree with everything you’re saying, Glottis-3D. Much of it others have touched on over the last year or so in other threads. The underlying issue, though, is that teams are not together. I remember playing as a medic back then and it was a game of searching for people who needed help - rather than what I was used to in ET, which was seeing people needing revives and health all around. Of course everyone quickly worked out it was easier and faster to just respawn with full hp and ammo, which is what happened. I’m convinced this is the reason these things were dropped. So rather than look into massively changing the maps and experimenting with spawn times, reliance on other classes was taken away and what we have now was born.

(Szakalot) #51

@Warbie,
totally agree:

the most common issue with spawntimes mentioned here, is that teams don’t move together as one attack wave, cause spawntimes are too short, so everyone just lemmings the frontline alone. I agree that this is partially the issue.

However, a much bigger problem is little punishment from death. If you want people to work together, you need to make them think that they cannot go in alone. Risk of waiting 20-30 seconds in limbo will encourage many players to flock to their teammates, stick with their medics, and be more careful when pushing.

Tickets could also be brought back, like in RTCW.

At the moment its just too easy to lemming objectives. I find that many objectives can be conquered by simply throwing yourself at the enemy, killing and gibbing whoever you can. Eventually, defense will be pushed out of position.

Naturally, longer spawntimes can be frustrating, some measures to allievate this frustration could include:

  • expansion of the kill cam, allow the player to look more freely around their corpse and admire their demise; let them see the last couple seconds before death,etc.
  • limbo menu where you can examine the map from top-down
  • being able to switch to other players faster. For some reason, you have to wait a good few seconds sometimes; before you can watch other players from your team.
(warbie) #52

Agreed. They’re so many knock on effects and that’s a good example of one. Another is what asynchronous spawn times give. Traditionally defending teams spawned slower than attacking, which allowed for very defensively biased choke points. At first the attackers stood little chance at all, but as they start chipping away at the other team and start making them spawn things begin to slowly seesaw in their favour. It’s empoweing - feels like you’re achieving something. And the defenders go from kings of the castle to backs to the wall desperation! With equal spawn times we’ll never have that as attackers simply would have no chance - so we have to have more open, random, free for all objectives.

(tokamak) #53

Tweaking spawn times quickly changes a lot of dynamics, like the value of gibbing or mass-killing mercs (like artiller/minigun) over targeted killing mercs (snipers).

All gameplay rules are interconnected and can’t easily be changed independently without ruining something else.

(Szakalot) #54

[QUOTE=tokamak;512636]Tweaking spawn times quickly changes a lot of dynamics, like the value of gibbing or mass-killing mercs (like artiller/minigun) over targeted killing mercs (snipers).
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure what you are getting at. Sure, gibbing will be more important; but I found players to be gibbing very consistently already. I’m not sure how the values of mass-killing mercs vs targeted killing mercs, will shift in such a profound manner: people will kill and die dozens of times in one game.

In any case, I think we can all agree that players valuing their present life more, will encourage teamplay. Similarly, valuing the lives of your teammates (‘protect the engineer!’), will do the same. Incidentally, valuing your life will make you value your teammates’ as well, since the crossfire they provide is huge.

(tokamak) #55

I’m not disagreeing but we have to put more thought into what we’re saying.

The trade off for gibbing becomes higher which means that we have to reconsider the ease at which it happens and not having a medic in the team feel like a lottery.

But that’s just a small change compared to the way Mercs function overall. Longer spawnwaves means less players on the battlefield which disfavours the mercs that rely on ‘wide’ damage (ineffectively dishing out damage but at larger groups) and it favours mercs that rely on ‘tall’ damage (effectively dishing out damage but only at selected targets).

It’s just like how each merc changes in value depending on the team sizes being used. In W:ET for example, a mortar is fairly uses in small teams but on 32 player servers it suddenly becomes an incredibly powerful weapon.

The point is, throwing suggested tweaks left and right is easy if you don’t have to consider all the consequences that flow from it.

(Glottis-3D) #56

we’re still in the closed beta. right? =)

(warbie) #57

Exactly. I think considering the consequences is exactly what we’re doing btw. There are plenty of very specific, considered suggestions in this and other threads for improving the current state of teamplay in DB. Of course there’ll be unforeseen knock-on effects if any get implemented, but at the moment teamplay is simply not working. At least in any comparable way to ET. The frustrating thing is DB could take the good bits from ET (which is essentially the tight teamplay) ,add all the mercs and abilities it wants and end up being the much better game for it.

(Szakalot) #58

[QUOTE=tokamak;512641]
The trade off for gibbing becomes higher which means that we have to reconsider the ease at which it happens and not having a medic in the team feel like a lottery. [/quote]

What do you mean by ‘lottery’?
In W:ET, and even in QW (at least on GDF), having no medics in the team usually means that team is screwed. Which is what we want to encourage (right?). Never even mind RTCW, where you have 30 bullets, and no lvl1 light weapons to get an extra clip. Similarly, not having an engineer on goldrush; won’t get you very far with repairing that tank.

I think gibbing is in a really good spot at the moment, the trade-off is clearly there, just like in the previous games (except RTCW; where you never had the bullets to gib)

But that’s just a small change compared to the way Mercs function overall. Longer spawnwaves means less players on the battlefield which disfavours the mercs that rely on ‘wide’ damage (ineffectively dishing out damage but at larger groups) and it favours mercs that rely on ‘tall’ damage (effectively dishing out damage but only at selected targets).

There is less players on the battlefield, but each player is also more valuable. So, while scoring multiple kills with one blasty weapon is less likely, it becomes much more useful, when trying to punch a whole in defense.
I get what you are saying with the mortar example, but I would argue that no merc/weapon in DB comes even close to such specialized weapons in W:ET (flamethrower, pf, mortar), or QW (vehicles, rocket launcher). Overall, mercs are pretty well balanced, and each has potential to score multiple kills.

The point is, throwing suggested tweaks left and right is easy if you don’t have to consider all the consequences that flow from it.

Sure, we can discuss it to our hearts content, but things really have to be actually tested before anyone can say what will work. Ideas are cheap, and I totally agree; but Its also true that the game as is, doesn’t require teamwork much. It encourages it, but since individual skill level is so much more relevant to the team’s success, it really doesn’t feel like a big impact in the game.

(tokamak) #59

I get what you are saying with the mortar example, but I would argue that no merc/weapon in DB comes even close to such specialized weapons in W:ET

…yet

And that’s what brings us to the essence of my point. The spawn times deeply influence the extend to which mercs can specialise. I’m not saying it’s good or bad but it needs to be considered with great care.

The results you bring as a medic become more erratic. Constantly reviving players that nobody cares for gibbing because they’ll be respawning any second is a stable but low value you bring to a team. Once the spawn time increases the value of each kill becomes higher, the value of denying that kill through a revive also becomes higher as does the value of denying the revive through a gib.

If players easily get gibbed because there’s little cost to it, then finding players to revive becomes a rarity. Lower probability, higher pay off = lottery.

What this means that the difficulty of gibbing a player should be considered. Whether to expend ammo/time/effort on that needs to be a tough choice rather than a frivolous chore. Especially now the value of the act has increased by a tweaked spawn time.

(Szakalot) #60

I think it is a tough choice already… Just like in previous SD games, trying to gib a player when someone else is shooting at you is very risky indeed. You need to easily spend another ~10 bullets on the body, probably emptying your gun. Running in to knife someone is still viable, but you will most likely die shortly afterwards; just like in previous SD titles.

Additionally, if player’s life increases in value, its more likely the player will try avoiding situations where they can be gibbed easily (read: stick with the team).

You keep saying that things have to be considered. I don’t think anyone here disagrees, stuff has to be figured out. Which is why we are figuring it out : )

Many emergent player behaviors can pop up from seemingly small changes. Isn’t it what the beta is for? As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather see SD go wild with tweaks, with a new build each week, changing spawn times/maps/weapon balance, whatever, than go stale, too afraid to change one mechanic in fear of consequences.