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

(k1ruaa) #101

Well this is interesting, but in dota, if you loose 1 ally for example, you can try to play defensive until he respawn because you have towers to help defend. Not sure how it would work in this game. If you lost 1 mate you can’t just fall back to a tower and could really well get overwhelmed by a strong 5 man push. Sure if your mate die without doing any damage it’s that’s something went wrong but yea, as I said I don’t know how it would work.

(Glottis-3D) #102

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494811]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.
[/QUOTE]

You wanted to get rid of spawn waves, and introduce fixed seconds of spawn time for every kill?

that will lead to TDM.
Noone i predict will wait for 20 seconds every time he died. in a 10-minutes game with, lets say, 20 dying how much of a dead-time that is? 400 seconds that is 7 minutes.

so the spawn time will have to be reduced. leading to more often respawns,

and since you dont spawn with your team, spawn rape is mandatory. that will lead to widening and spreading spawn-places.

so.
less spawn times + wide spawn area - looks like TDM mode for me.

(k1ruaa) #103

[QUOTE=krokodealer;494832]You wanted to get rid of spawn waves, and introduce fixed seconds of spawn time for every kill?

that will lead to TDM.
Noone i predict will wait for 20 seconds every time he died. in a 10-minutes game with, lets say, 20 dying how much of a dead-time that is? 400 seconds that is 7 minutes.

so the spawn time will have to be reduced. leading to more often respawns,

and since you dont spawn with your team, spawn rape is mandatory. that will lead to widening and spreading spawn-places.

so.
less spawn times + wide spawn area - looks like TDM mode for me.[/QUOTE]

I agree once again. SW mode needs correct spawn waves to be interesting.

(BomBaKlaK) #104

And interesting maps with a significant travel time between objectives (not like trainyard …)

(INF3RN0) #105

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494804]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.
[/QUOTE]

A kill is by default most meaningful if you put someone out at the right time, however it still remains meaningful if the kill results in gaining ground. What people will complain about is when kills become static, ie simply holding position and not attempting to push forward; that’s where killing becomes null. Though the maps are much more intrusive on the original strategies, it is all about killing and moving forward. After all if you never take the risk to push to the objective with the team then your chances of completing the obj decrease, however your probability of survival increases. It’s most about what you said here “Did the kill help your team to capture/defend an objective?”. It’s much easier to play a static defense effectively than a static offense, however sometimes it becomes necessary to implore the same aggression on defense in order to delay obj completion. As long as the survivalist strategy is benefiting the obj control, then I see no issue with it.

(INF3RN0) #106

[QUOTE=BAMFana;494804]
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.[/QUOTE]

We originally had fixed spawn timers upon death, however it proved to belittle the game play immensely. It may have always been beneficial to kill someone, however the way games played out was more extremely chaotic than are now (if you can imagine). Spawn waves facilitate regrouping and encourages forward momentum. If people become too concerned with punishment for every death then things devolve into a highly defensive biased camp fest and focus on the obj is diminished. When people are more focused on taking decisive actions to get their team to the obj then it benefits the game. It’s not like you still can’t find reward from kills or make plays, but those involve either quickly executed team oriented pushes or fast individual multi-kill pushes. If an individual pick is made, then the team has to push forward to capitalize upon it before that player respawns, otherwise it becomes negligible. Making those pushes at the right times is just a sub-layer of the general strategy. In both scenarios a survivalist strategy never actually gave the required forward momentum, which you’d only really reap the benefits from in SnD or if spawns were up to 60s+ long.

(Humate) #107

Have gone 30-0 with the sniper, as was completely useless.

(Glottis-3D) #108

didnt know which of the 2 previous posts to plus. this was a tough one.

(light_sh4v0r) #109

Just a little sidenote:
Tribes Ascend has fixed spawntimes which are VERY short (which works for that particular game because of the movement system, I’m not claiming fixed spawntimes are a good idea in XT, nor are short spawntimes) which promotes selfkilling. In a competition match in Tribes you would hardly ever live longer than 1 minute, if the offense run fails everybody just respawns and starts over.
Just to say that there are modern games with /kill mechanics.

(trickykungfu) #110

This describes bamfanas current game style XD he has really good aim but everything else is just annoying and doesn’t fit to the game

(BAMFana) #111

I think I should clarify something before commenting further, to distinguish between two different opinions I hold:

  1. If the game is designed around it, with the kind of gameplay that today’s players want and enjoy, the most simplistic spawn system possible, where a player always spawns <x> seconds after dying, is preferable. (This means that I agree that if the game is designed more along the lines of W:ET, a rolling wave spawn system is preferable. However, I think that a game designed like this will be far less popular, and will mostly only appeal to W:ET and ET:QW veterans).

  2. If Extraction does use a wave spawn system, it should have a minimum spawn time. Instant, or near-instant, spawns should never be possible. Implementing a minimum spawn time of for example 10 seconds would solve many of my issues with the current spawn system. (Same disclaimer as above, if the game is designed more along the lines of W:ET, it makes sense to have a wave spawn system with no minimum spawn time).

There are more than enough games, past and present, to prove that this isn’t the result if the game is designed correctly.

If the current gameplay is any indication, what rolling wave spawns really facilitates is spawn-run towards enemy-die-spawn-repeat meatgrind gameplay. When there is no real punishment for playing carelessly and dying, players don’t learn to play intelligently. I don’t disagree at all with what you say about the necessity of “quickly executed team oriented pushes” and the like, but that’s not what we’re seeing in-game, is it? In this regard I think it is important to distinguish between competitive play and public play. Organized teams have the required communication and team coherence necessary for utilizing these gameplay mechanics – even more so if the maps were significantly reworked and spawn timers adjusted. In public play, however, that simply isn’t feasible. Instead, public play in Extraction is mostly a competition of who can throw the most warm bodies into the pit, with the rolling wave spawns essentially giving a team an advantage or disadvantage at random. That isn’t fun, interesting, tactical, or desireable in any way, it’s just frustrating. I think the depressingly poor player retention in the beta is largely a result of this and other fundamental flaws in the current Extraction gameplay, but this is of course anecdotal.

My fundamental disagreement with you, is that you seem to be claiming that it is impossible to have non spawn-centric gameplay without the game losing the tactical qualities you are describing. I don’t think that’s true at all, and the most popular games in multiplayer history are proving every day that it isn’t.

Also, I think you’re misunderstanding what I say when I say that a player should never want to die. I’m not saying that a player shouldn’t take risks or that he should avoid dying at any cost. What I’m saying is that the game should never incentivize the player to self-kill. Instead, the player should have to make a decision of playing to do as much damage as possible before dying or playing to survive until reinforcements arrive. If the game is designed correctly, a player should often want to make the aggressive play because the potential benefits outweigh the risk, and should the player decide to play to survive instead, then the other team would be incentivized to hunt him down. That’s a lot more exciting for both the player, the opposing team and the spectators, rather than the player simply hitting a key to respawn – at least for non-ET players.

I don’t want to get into an argument about T:A and why it’s a failed game, but given how relatively unpopular it is, I think what you’re saying supports my argument rather than the opposite. T:A might be a game where short spawn times make sense though, simply because the maps are large and travel time after a spawn is significant. Even if your spawn time is short, the punishment for dying is still significant and comparable to a game with long spawn times and short travel times.

(INF3RN0) #112

The thing is that the map dynamics and layouts are the source of the issue on all fronts at this point. I am more for things continuing forward rather than backward. We did have 10s spawn timers in early alpha and it did not work, though the idea behind it was for the exact reasons you’re suggesting. I wouldn’t disagree that a lot of the experience is currently “run in and die” and self-killing is also highly negligible as well. Again this is due to the maps, where in the past SD titles even the pub had a much different dynamic to it. The spawn system has already been proven to compliment the game play of obj mode, however I would agree that the obj modes in this game simply do not play well. xT does play a lot better in TDM and Execution, however since all of these game modes will exist anyway I’m simply arguing for obj mode to function more complimentary to the goal. It may end up that Execution or TDM become the more popular game modes, but the point is to make obj mode as functional as possible.

Faster personal spawn times might seem good in theory, but having tested this already it proved to be much more problematic and frustrating. It made it much harder to complete maps as well as regrouping with teammates. That kind of spawn system is actually what is most commonly used in TDM, which is exactly what it played out as- much more of a meat grind than it is now.

In either scenario the map design really hurts the obj mode. In almost all cases defenders have undeniable access to the obj and offense can’t maintain forward momentum for very long. Maps tend to lack any real separation between areas as well as having identifiable and meaningful control zones. The best map experiences I had in past games was where maps intentionally created multiple control zones, which dictated momentum in either direction. The further your team’s control was extended, the greater your chances of securing the obj were or the more diverse opportunities became available (capping forwards, intercepting fresh spawns, etc). Additionally once the obj was secured the offense had the opportunity to extend further and delay the defense from regaining control. Another huge factor was dual forward spawns for both teams as well as selectable spawn points. This created much more dynamic strategy to the game play, where there was a lot more decisions that could be made that directly effected the game flow in either direction. All of these simply do not exist in xT to the same degree, which imo is making the game feel very much like a linear meat grind to complete an obj.

Self-killing was really meant to be a means of regrouping for a push, though it was not as if survival was not important. Killing out would provide you more active map time and organized pushes, but in many cases it was more beneficial to stay alive in order to hold a position until reinforcements arrived, ninja the forward spawn, delay a wave, etc. The pros/cons were there and it wasn’t ever as if self-killing was a competitive meta that won games by itself. If it was desired to have a more intuitive system like adding an additional 5s to spawn if self-killing while taking damage, that would be better to me than condemning its uses. It’s just simply that all survival really ends up being is idling mid-map and farming kills without really gaining ground, which can sometimes be due to too much focus on numerical fragging or simply because there’s really no opportunity to do more in that kind of position.

(Humate) #113

You could create a mini-game around /kill, like buyback in dota2.

On a /kill, when that player comes back into the game they receive icon-timer on their hud (sim ilar to those ability cooldowns), which lets them know if they die again before that timer finishes it adds 10 seconds to the teams spawn wave. They would then obviously become priority targets, which would then prompt super aggressive combat from the opposing team, to ensure the rest of the team also has to deal with the 10 second penalty.

/cough

(attack) #114

[QUOTE=Humate;494890]You could create a mini-game around /kill, like buyback in dota2.

On a /kill, when that player comes back into the game they receive icon-timer on their hud (sim ilar to those ability cooldowns), which lets them know if they die again before that timer finishes it adds 10 seconds to the teams spawn wave. They would then obviously become priority targets, which would then prompt super aggressive combat from the opposing team, to ensure the rest of the team also has to deal with the 10 second penalty.

/cough[/QUOTE]
deleted…

(Humate) #115

refer to the /cough

(attack) #116

sry :smiley: . . ,

(Kendle) #117

Lots of text in this thread, not enough time to read it all, so here’s my thoughts on wave spawns, self-kill, and the basic mechanics of objective mode …

Wave spawns are not necessary for tactical game-play. I’ve played enough games that don’t have wave spawns to know that, in competition certainly, players organising themselves, pushing forward together, holding back to re-group etc. is perfectly possible without wave spawns. What’s more, wave spawns on public servers can’t and don’t force players to play as a team if they don’t want to.

However, wave spawns do give players the opportunity to play as a team more than staggered spawns do. I would suggest more players are likely to team up with a team-mate they spawn with via a wave spawn, than wait for a team-mate to team up with via a staggered spawn. The number might be low on public servers (as indeed it is) but at least wave spawns promote some degree of co-operation, where staggered spawns promote nothing at all.

So, wave spawns are not necessary, but I’d say they’re highly desirable.

Self-kill shouldn’t be an easy choice, and shouldn’t be a low cost choice, but I think it’s a misconception to believe it is in the first place. Self-kill as it functions now, and as it’s always functioned, always costs you, in that you surrender your place on the battlefield. It may be that the short spawn time negates some of that cost, but it’s not the self-kill itself that’s the problem.

And that’s the real issue here, spawn times are too short for the game-play. If it takes 40 seconds for a C4 charge to explode (for example) having defenders re-spawn every 15 seconds is not enough.

The game should go like this :-

  1. Attackers fight their way to the objective.
  2. Defence mount a counter-attack to stop the objective being completed.
  3. One or other succeeds and you either go back to step 1 or move on the the next objective.

What happens in XT is defence often get a 2nd chance to stop the objective being completed, and sometimes a 3rd, because re-spawn is too short in comparison to the length of time it takes to get the objective done. This leads to the feeling that you’re getting nowhere fast most of the time (the meat-grinder effect) and the lack of a sense of achievement when you do get the objective done, because it’s more likely you just “got lucky” rather than beat the other team fair and square.

Wave spawn + longer spawn times would fix many ills, as has been proven in previous games in this genre. As Inferno suggests, it may be in the long run that Execution / TDM become the more popular game modes, and Execution would work well as a comp mode IMO, but to fix objective mode (as opposed to the game as a whole) we need longer spawns IMHO.

(attack) #118

agree with kendle. i only think wavespawn is in this kind of game necessary.

(trickykungfu) #119

as self killing only is important for the competitive side i really don’t know why you are all talking that much about it…
Never saw a selfkiller (besides me) on public. Self regen takes care of those selfkillers…

Selfkilling for competition adds just more tactic into the game. Like Timing armor in quake… For me it just belongs to objective based gameplay. #1 Objectiv #2 Position #3 Death

But again Bamfana is the wrong person to talk about that. Just leave him alone…

(Glottis-3D) #120

…so…when the part 1 is over, and when is part2? :smiley: