Focus Testing Part 1: Stopwatch, Canary Wharf, Trainyard and Waterloo

(BAMFana) #81

[QUOTE=krokodealer;494767]because team-spawn is what helps players to play as a team. with more new-comers it becomes even more essential.
and this is a tool to delicately ballance the map.

and not to mention more active play as a whole. (resping to spawn wave instead of waiting fro 15+ seconds every time)

we did have this x-seconds for all system. and it was very boring thing to me =([/QUOTE]
And yet somehow, miraculously, Dota 2 and LoL manage to have not only individual spawns, but also up to 60 seconds or longer spawn times without teamwork or “boring” being a problem.

Being punished for dying is a good thing. When death doesn’t matter, neither does life. Wave spawns don’t actually improve “teamwork”. All it accomplishes is creating lemming trails of players who never learn to think for themselves. Combine that with fast spawns and you have a recipe for braindead meatgrind gaming

(k1ruaa) #82

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494769]And yet somehow, miraculously, Dota 2 and LoL manage to have not only individual spawns, but also up to 60 seconds or longer spawn times without teamwork or “boring” being a problem.

Being punished for dying is a good thing. When death doesn’t matter, neither does life. Wave spawns don’t actually improve “teamwork”. All it accomplishes is creating lemming trails of players who never learn to think for themselves. Combine that with fast spawns and you have a recipe for braindead meatgrind gaming[/QUOTE]

Really can’t agree with that. The comparison with dota is pointless imo, the gameplay is totally different and the way you play as a team also. Games of dota are 35 40min long average while a round in Xt is 10min average.

Think about what you say. Imagine for a sec that you kill the whole enemy team then 4 players wait at their spawn and instantly kill the players when they respawn one by one while 1 inge can do all the objectives. Ok, that’s a really specific situation but that would suck.

If you loose an obj, you must be able to fall back or selfkill to regroup with your teamates at the next wave. If people keep respawning every x second after they are dead, it would be total chaos and really hard to set up decent defenses positions or decent pushes. You could be overwhelmed by one full team rush if you can’t get your 5 players in position at the same time.

  • Knowing the enemy spawntime must be something you earn, which will allow you to time your pushes to give as much full spawns as you can. For defenders, it allow them to be really agressive when there is like 5sec before respawn and then /kill. That way they can respawn and retake their position.

  • It allow as I said in another post spectacular moves with air stikes, arty, nades, etc… when you time correctly their respwan.

It just make the gameplay and the teamplay deeper and even more important, it add a timing aspect which is really good. Without that you’ll just have 5 players all thinking for themselves : how can I be as efficient as I can. And really this is not teamplay. I don’t say that it doesn’t require brain or skill but it does not encourage teamplay. It encourage players to try to avoid dying as much as possible but that’s not the point. The point is to defend the objective or destroy it.

It’s kind of hard to explain how spawn waves affect the gameplay in a really really interesting way if you haven’t played a game like ET/RTCW though. I get what you say by thinking for yourself but you need to think for the objective before thinking for yourself. Dawn if you had seen “idle^night” playing ET you’ll understand what I am trying to explain.

(prophett) #83

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494769]
Being punished for dying is a good thing. When death doesn’t matter, neither does life. Wave spawns don’t actually improve “teamwork”. [/QUOTE]

From my past experience, I would argue that they do (or at least can improve it). It was a common strategy in competitive ET to have a few teammates push out with 5s or so left on your timer to do as much damage as possible to the attacking team and quickly respawn. Doing so would either delay their push while they healed/waited for their teammates to respawn, or they pushed with less than full health (while you respawned with replenished health and ammo).

Having to be constantly aware of your actions in relation to your clock (spawn waves) promotes a higher level of awareness/thinking than having a set time.

This is the problem here - fast spawns. The current system would work well with longer defensive spawn times. The current 18s D spawn time is nothing more than a braindead meatgrind with practically no consequence for dying. It needs to be 25-30s (obviously maps need to be improved in some areas to cater to this).

(k1ruaa) #84

ROFL that sentence sums up really well what I tried to exlpain with my block of text :XD

(BAMFana) #85

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for the skill element inherent in this system in SD’s previous titles. However;

[QUOTE=prophett;494772]
Having to be constantly aware of your actions in relation to your clock (spawn waves) promotes a higher level of awareness/thinking than having a set time.[/QUOTE]
This is the kind of gameplay that only W:ET and ET:QW veterans enjoy. I assume SD are trying to reach a larger demographic this time, rather than just making another mildly popular game. In which case, this isn’t what they should be aiming for.

“Tactical selfkilling” is a good example of why such a spawn system isn’t a good idea. It’s entirely counter-intuitive – a player should never want to die, the player should always want to do everything in his power to stay alive. Another thing is that it is pretty much impossible to create a meaningful in-session progression system without having progression gains for frags, in which case you have to remove the ability to suicide or penalize suiciding with xp loss.

The reason I mention Dota 2 and LoL, is that they have a lot more in common with Extraction than some players think, and they should have even more in common if SD wants this game to make an impact. SD have a golden opportunity to capitalize on the vacuum that currently exists in the multiplayer FPS market. The reason why Dota 2, LoL and other similar games are gobbling up such an enormous part of the competitive multiplayer market is because no other games offer a similar combination of cross-genre mechanics. The first developer that is able to combine rewarding FPS gameplay with the RTS/RPG mechanics of ARTS games is going to be laughing all the way to the bank, and the players will be laughing with them.

I’m sure certain diehards will pile on to disagree with me, but this is how it is.

(DarkangelUK) #86

Just to jump in and say that its something that RtCW, ET and ETQW veterans enjoy. If you take further games as examples, not many people are enjoying them anymore. Those games reached a VERY large number of people and were pretty popular in comp… and they were popular for a reason. Using another games demographic as a reason to not employ that system is just silly. There’s a reason that SD’s more current efforts haven’t worked so well and it’s because they’ve attempted to stray from the proven system each time… now they need to find their way back. Sorry BAMFana but no, it’s suicide going for the system you’re suggesting. I honestly and truly think that RtCW and ET are the few genres that just got it right, and any tweaking just damages it, they need to stick to what worked and stop kidding themselves that they can make it better. Hell ET was damaging enough as it was.

(prophett) #87

removed double post

(prophett) #88

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494777]
This is the kind of gameplay that only W:ET and ET:QW veterans enjoy. I assume SD are trying to reach a larger demographic this time, rather than just making another mildly popular game. In which case, this isn’t what they should be aiming for.

“Tactical selfkilling” is a good example of why such a spawn system isn’t a good idea. It’s entirely counter-intuitive – a player should never want to die[/QUOTE]

I view it as having to make decisions where there is a reward and consequence. If you play smart you are rewarded with little downtime, but if you play carelessly you sit in limbo waiting to respawn for 20s+

Obviously your proposed system’s reward would be to never die, because if you do you will always wait X number of seconds (but that is rarely possible).

Also, “tactical self-killing” is a tactic, is teamwork, and is the result of smart game play. I enjoy that system and think it suits this game. The system isn’t broken, it just needs to be improved a little (longer D respawn times).

(BAMFana) #89

Games don’t exist in a vacuum. Society changes, technology changes, people’s preferences and expectations change. You can’t make a successful game today using the exact same recipe that was used way back when. If W:ET was released today, would it have been successful? I highly doubt it. Some game features and mechanics that worked well then, will not work well now.

That’s not to say that a wave spawn system will inherently make the game unpopular, that would be silly. The point is that to make a game that taps into what the market wants today, gameplay has to be designed around certain mechanics that don’t work well with wave spawning and don’t work at all with spawn-timing-centric gameplay.

@prophett: It should be fairly clear from my posts that I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said about the merits of spawn-timing-centric gameplay. For that to work, however, gameplay has to be designed in a certain way. In my opinion, if Extraction is designed as such, the market will go “meh” and it will at best be another mildly popular SD title. That would be a shame, because it could be so much more.

(prophett) #90

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494781]You can’t make a successful game today using the exact same recipe that was used way back when. [/QUOTE] It’s a far cry from the same recipe, but it does (and should) retain some of the main ingredients that worked well in that game (and this one).

If xT/DB is not successful, I highly doubt this will be a main contributing factor.

(k1ruaa) #91

Well at first I agree that it could seem counter intuitive but really not that much. The fact that you revive when you die is also counter intuitive if you go that way. You can simply imagine the /kill as a soldier falling in battle, then another soldier come to combat with the next wave of assault.

If players have to focus on staying alive as much as they can, this game will be really boring:

  • People running around corners each time they get hurt to get a bit of regen
  • Camping, camping, camping because getting agressive in defense wouldn’t be worth it
  • Linear gameplay, no timing aspect, no exitement

And it would discourage players to think for the team, they would think about their survival and it would turn players into k/d ratio rambos.
The fact that people don’t really care about dying as long as they do the necessary damage/move is one of the things that makes a good teamplay game.

Well to sum up it just create a dynamic gameplay, where you always have to think and to be in coordination with your mates.

And yea, I may be an old douchebag ET veteran, but I agree with what DarkangelUK said. And after trying a ****load of team FPS, I never found the exitement that ET brought in its gameplay.

;(

(INF3RN0) #92

The spawn times are definitely not long enough to matter as much as they should nor do they feel important, but putting too much importance on “staying alive all the time” does not help promote the spawn wave/objective game play. It is more about timed damage output/aggression rather than overall kill to death ratio. Games are won purely on time and everything else contributes towards it as long as players are focused on the bigger picture. A player should be making their decisions around promoting forward momentum on offense and delaying it on defense, and not be nearly as concerned with self-preservation unless they see it as beneficial to their team. That is why we have medics that heal if found necessary to better ones chances of beating the clock.

For example a player might be getting a lot of kills and staying alive, but those kills don’t matter if they aren’t providing that needed forward momentum or delay. After all games are won through fast well coordinated team pushes or cross-fire defenses, and not individual players picking each other off throughout a match. The less intelligently you spend your life per spawn and at the wrong times, the more potential time you sacrifice- so really the reward is still there however your goal isn’t always to stay alive or try to get as many kills as you can to win a map. Even on defense aggressive forward mometum=less ground for the enemy and potentially stunting spawn waves. These games have always revolved around knowing when to be aggressive and defensive in the interests of running out or beating the spawn and overall game clock. In my opinion we achieve a greater responsibility for the objs and teamwork when a kill becomes insignificant if it doesn’t actually contribute anything meaningful.

(Bangtastic) #93

Self kill is only an option when you have several spawns to choose from, or you can manipulate the spawns. But if you have longer spawn times self kill to fastspawn for better defence before the enemy can reach it becomes rather a disadvantage? Cant tell for sure.

One thing I can tell for sure there must be a mechanism that dying again and again has negative consequences. Atm the game dont teach you a lesson, and you dont care since you are fast back in action, players dont learn anything. The fact that killing 3-4 ppl does not matter, it cant be that there is no impact. In. Sbf3 even if you managed to wipe the squad, it didnt mean anything. Its pretty much same here in xT, where is the peak of awesome actions which mean sth. the game is still a shooter where most elementary thing is shooting ppl, when this isnt rewarded, such a direct interaction with the game, where to put up the foundation of epic moments. The reason why LOL or cs is/was so popular because every kill a has a bigger meaning to the entire outcome of the match than in every other games. A kill and death should have bigger consequences for both parties. In Bf there is none, in CoD no meaning either an killseries are far away from being fair and have only a meaning to ebanana.

Im totally aware of the team aspect, but should it matter when you get 3-4 kills with your team or on your own, because its the same thing with the same advantage and penalty. Atm I dont feel there is sth here in xT, besides some chaotic massacre :wink:

(INF3RN0) #94

Map layouts and spawn timers are the main source of the problem in xT. Previous titles proved that “meaningful kills” mattered. Kills should matter, but padding your KDR should not. If you wipe a team at the objective or on their long spawn, it should greatly increase your chances of completing the objective or at least making significant headway in terms of map control. Where as picking off people one at a time and just having a good KDR should not grant you anything special. Meaningful kills always grant instant reward by default, but it’s just too bad that the maps don’t reward it like they should.

(Glottis-3D) #95

and once again. we did have no spawnwaves on objective mode, and it was very bad. i didnt enjoy a second of those games.

(BAMFana) #96

I want to pick up on this, since it is something I commonly see certain players complain about in-game. What do you mean? If I’m holding a location and have a potential kill in my crosshairs, but the spawn timer is “bad”, should I choose to not shoot and run away until the spawn timer is “good”? To me this is completely ridiculous and I’m sure it is equally ridiculous to all other non-ET players. How meaningful a kill is should depend on what happens on the field (were you able to gib the incaps or kill the medic to prevent revives? Did the kill help your team to capture/defend an objective?) not some timer that’s ticking away at the top of the screen.

I will repeat, though, that I agree with everything you say about the importance of meaningful kills. As I’ve already said, I also agree that the rolling spawn wave system makes a lot of sense within the confines of spawn-centric gameplay. My disagreement is with the spawn-centric gameplay. I think it is a poor mechanic in a contemporary game, and it will not be well received by the market.

When was this? I’ve only seen two different spawn systems in this game; the current rolling timer wave spawn system and the previous non-rolling timer wave spawn system that was used in obj mode.

(trickykungfu) #97

It just doesn’t work they way it is now. It did not work for brink. The time to make a new game combining lol elements is over. Maybe bamfana is right… For now I think they should listen to use (like they did the last couple of months) and fix those map and spawntime problems

(Glottis-3D) #98

afair in OBJ mode, every player spawned after fixed seconds after he died (as a defendor at least.)

With all due respect, Fana. but what you suggest is to TDM the StopWatch mode. you need your frags to be important, no matter the circumstances. and stopwatch matches, that i loved to play were not about frags, and they were exciting exactly due to those things you describe as negative.

(BAMFana) #99

Previously the game would start a respawn timer when the first player on a team died (I don’t remember the exact time, but I think it was something like 20s). When that timer ran out, all dead players on that team respawned. After that, it would start over again with the first player to die starting a new timer. There were some more nuances to it, but that was basically how it worked.

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all and I don’t understand how it’s possible to interpret my posts in that way.

Yeah. Regardless of how I think the spawn system should work, those things need to be worked on.

(BAMFana) #100

I also want to pick up on something that was posted earlier, that I think is an incorrect understanding of how different gameplay mechanics incentivize player decisions in a game:

[QUOTE=k1ruaa;494783]If players have to focus on staying alive as much as they can, this game will be really boring:

  • People running around corners each time they get hurt to get a bit of regen
  • Camping, camping, camping because getting agressive in defense wouldn’t be worth it
  • Linear gameplay, no timing aspect, no exitement

And it would discourage players to think for the team, they would think about their survival and it would turn players into k/d ratio rambos.
The fact that people don’t really care about dying as long as they do the necessary damage/move is one of the things that makes a good teamplay game.

Well to sum up it just create a dynamic gameplay, where you always have to think and to be in coordination with your mates.[/QUOTE]
What you’re describing isn’t a game without spawn-centric gameplay, what you are describing is a poorly designed game.

Look at Dota 2, for example. In that game, you have enormous incentives to stay alive. When you die, the player who killed you gets a significant amount of gold and experience and your team has to play with one less player on the field for a long time. Dying in Dota 2 is extremely bad for you and for your team. And yet, with all that, people are still more than willing to throw their life away on aggressive plays. The reason is simple; while dying might be bad for you, it is equally bad for the opposing team if you kill them, and other gameplay elements are designed so that the rewards for accomplishing certain tasks are much greater than the penalty for dying.

The end result is that the basic gameplay is extremely satisfying. Whenever you enter a combat situation, you know that it is important. You know that your actions matter. You know that if you play correctly you will give your team a great advantage, and if you mess up the other team will gain an equally great advantage. The same implications are true for teamwork. You’ll commonly see support players on the winning team with stats like 0 kills 9 deaths 18 assists. That’s because the game is designed in such a way that the reward for supporting your team is greater than the penalty for dying, and thus the game motivates you play for the team rather than for stats.