Persistent online ranking in ET:QW

(drsquid) #1

I was reading the article on QW in the new Computer Gaming World and everything about the game has made me super excited. It sounds amazing, a true BF2 killer…

HOWEVER

I was saddened to read that there will be no persistent online ranking system, because Splash Damage feel that this has a negative impact on newbies, more experienced players having better weapons etc owning them as soon as they see them etc.

Well I do agree in BF2’s system this can be the case, especially for skill challenged newbs, but even without better weapons with ranks there will always be the skilled player on a server who kicks your ass…

I enjoy the feeling I get when I rank up in BF’2 and it gives me a sense of accomplishment, and even though I am sure there are many players who play just for personal points if you get on a good server good teamwork is there…

So I have a few ideas for QW that could be implemented that would allow persistent experience, ranks.

The simplest option to prevent newbs getting schooled by players with upgraded guns would be to have serves of different levels. When you go on the server browser you can filter serves that are ranked based on the percentage of players of different rank, so If you want to play on a server with mostly lower ranks players you can filter those ones in…and the default setting in the server browser would only show servers that have players of a similar rank to you. More advanced players could of course turn this feature off and play where-ever they want.

The other option is that if there are rewards for high ranked players, such as access to better guns or even a vehicle bonus or two there should be a penalty to offset the advantage the gun etc gives. I can see this working for the strogg quite easily…if you have a better gun it uses more of your energy, therefore you have less health (as mentioned in the article players are supposed to be able to change the energy levels of the strogg classes). A truly skilled player will see this as no obstacle, the player who just plays so much for xp points, but still has no skill is going to die a lot more as he ranks up 'coz he has less health. I don’t know how the penalties will work for the earth forces (they dont have an energy source like the strogg and limiting a higher players health seems artificial)…and as for vehicles…well there could be one or too higher rank specialty vehicles, like a stealth vehicle that is open to high ranks, but is extremely weak in armor or firepower…or bolt on upgrades that improve a vehicles performance in one area at the expense of another.

All these upgrade options that high ranked players could have would play a role in the teamwork element of the game and would play a role in tactical decisions made by teams in the game.

Anyway there are some ideas…hope someone a Splash Damage sees this

(Joe999) #2

balance is everything. persistent online ranking is quite the opposite of balance which results in no fun, which results in fewer players, which results in fewer game updates, which results in the death of the game, which results in no money.

what i wonder is: BF2 is brandnew, so why do people make suggestions which derive from features of BF2? why don’t they stick with BF2 if it’s that what they like to have? they better accept the fact that they aren’t satisfied with BF2 and are free to share my opinion: BF2 sucks!

the guys at SD have proven with ET that they know what they do. and i really do hope that with ET:QW a special edition will come out which contains ET so that i can finally pay something for the game and reward the years of fun and pleasure i had with the game, still have and will have until QW will be released.

(Ifurita) #3

I would also hope SD takes a pass on persistant XP and level bonuses. If I want persistancy, then I’ll play a MMORP. I want SD to deliver fast paced action, where everyone starts out on an even footing at the beginning of every game. I’m not even a huge fan of XP across campaigns - especially the 10-map campaigns that some server admins put together.

(drsquid) #4

BF 2 is a great game and is not that new now…try playing it some more…
I am not suggesting ET:QW take BF2 fetures, but since the 2 games are similar in many areas BF2 is a good example for SD to look at…and do better. I personal love the sci-fi/regular military mix we are going to see in QW and the huge maps, and the cool vehicles, and the objectives etc etc.
As for persisitent xp it doesn’t create imbalance if it is done properly and things are done to make it balanced, just like I suggested
in BF 2 I Love the fact I can go look at my stats and kill ratios, and most used kit, most used weapon, see how well I have done on a certain map and see how well I am doing to my next rank…and no this is not a MMO…just adds a little more to the great gameplay that BF 2 has already

(SCDS_reyalP) #5

IMO, the whole ranking/unlock system in bf2 is one of the worst aspects of the game (which is saying something, because it has some other major flaws.)

The awards are unbalancing, often discourage teamplay, and open up a whole range of stat padding abuses. Any stat system is going to encourage stat-whoring, but one that gives any kind of real gameplay advantage is going to be abused a whole lot more.

Tracking global stats also requires quite a bit of infrastructure and coding, which by definition means SD has to put less resources into some other aspect of the game.

The simplest option to prevent newbs getting schooled by players with upgraded guns would be to have serves of different levels. When you go on the server browser you can filter serves that are ranked based on the percentage of players of different rank, so If you want to play on a server with mostly lower ranks players you can filter those ones in…and the default setting in the server browser would only show servers that have players of a similar rank to you. More advanced players could of course turn this feature off and play where-ever they want.

This would only work at all if there is a reasonable number of populated servers with decent pings. Furthermore, it would still allow players with all the unlocked weapons to go beat up on newbs, and does nothing to discourage stat padding.

The other option is that if there are rewards for high ranked players, such as access to better guns or even a vehicle bonus or two there should be a penalty to offset the advantage the gun etc gives.

Regardless of what the reward is, people are going to go out of their way to get it, at the expense of other gameplay.

Joe999:
Comparing BF2 and ET:QW is reasonable. They are both squad / class based FPSes with vehicles and large open environments. From the available information, it seems the most logical current game to compare it to (although the tribes games, rtcw/et, and the *fortress games are also candidates)

(Dazzamac) #6

As I have said in many of these QW suggestion posts. If it resembles BF2 it’ll be ceck. If but on the note of battle improvments etc, allowing better players to have better weapons etc will only increase the deficit between good and not so good. On an ET 6 map rotation, by the 5th map, levelled up rambo’s and artillery spammers can become unbearable at times. We ran/are currently running a higher xp level up at the minute, this means people need more xp than usual to level up their skills and its running with glorious success.

(meisterbrau) #7

permanent raking kills teamplay. everybody is just looking for his stats in bf2 and gives a shit on his team. i really hope that all these bf2 players will stick to their game and do not start playing et:qw.

(Ragnar_40k) #8

Permanent ET ranking: http://et.splatterladder.com/?mod=ranking :drink:

(ParanoiD) #9

Maybe there will come a mod for it like in ET. I won’t see a problem with permanent XP as I know SD will do good things, but i wont be sad if they don’t add it (which they do). The XP system in ET is good. But still I hear noobs on ET say that the teams arent fair because the axis have about 2x zo much XP. It’s not true. A real skilled player can easily kill a guy with full battlesense, light weapons, medic etc. Just use the skills you have. Make sure ur HP is high, ur gun is fully reloaded etc. I once won a very nice pub match on supplydepot. My team was full of noobs (was allies) and the opposite team had like 1.5X our XP and 4 players I play with regular which were very good. But I commanded my team. We were working as a team, trying on our very best. And with the big difference in skill we still won the map which was really nice! Everybody has developped skills over the years. For exampke I am engineer and playing pub. I dont need full battlesense to avoid mines. By skill gained and experience you know where the opposite would lay down mines so you could easily use this information by trying to jump over these spots, using different routes, using places mines cant be plant, or little walls which are little from the ground preventing you not to hit mines. I will hit only 33% mines now then when I started.

(Sick Boy) #10

I hope three things:

  • no persistant xp
    -that ETQW steers away as far as possible from BF2 and sticks to it’s ET/RTCW roots
    -an easily accesible admin function to turn off the XP system, so we might actually see some use of it.
(amazinglarry) #11

Well first I’d like to say that I’m one of the ones who hope there won’t be any persistant online ranking where one’s rank unlocks new weapons etc.

However I’ve always liked the stats that some mods keep, kills/deaths/shots fired etc. It would be cool if one’s profile displayed all that information, be it in the end of map game screen (maybe being able to click someone’s name and have it go to their profile view) or have a site that lists all players based on their GUID. I know that’s pretty unrealistic as it takes up a whole assload of bandwidth and stuff, but just some wishful thinking. It’s not something that would actually impact the game, gameplay wise… it’s would just be fun to see.

Now when it comes to XP I’m kind of on the fence. While it would be silly to say that XP doesn’t help you at all, it’s also silly to say that the only reason Player X is so good is because he’s been on this server all day (which doesn’t reset XP unless one disconnects for a map). I think the latter is untrue because to max out in any one ability (be it light weapons or medic) I think it’s a minimum of 240 xp?

So say Player X has 30203xp and has been playing all day but he’s been nothing but a medic, and player Y has 800xp and has also been just a medic. It’s reasonable to assume they’re both on the same playing field in regards to having level 4 light weapons, battle sense and medic. But player Y will cry and swear the only reason he can’t beat Player X or whatever is because of his XP count which is completely untrue.

Hmmm… so eating Candy Canes and typing this while ‘working’ I’ve sort of lost myself in a ramble… but I’m agreeing with the above posts that a BF2 system would be lame and QW should go the XP route again, although there should be a SCORE similiar to RtCW which would display the points received for taking an objective, building a bridge, reviving a teammate, kills etc. This would be relatively similiar to the way those already factor into the XP, but at the end of the maps where XP has been accumulated too much to know what teammate was actually doing his job, the score column would better represent it.

/incoherent reply

(Strid) #12
(kamikazee) #13

I triple that!
Let them compare ET:QW to BF2 when it’s done…

(drsquid) #14

it seems to me the continuous complaint about persistant xp is that it sucks in BF2

Well I still hold fast to the opinion that IT CAN be made to work if it is play tested properly. There should both advantages and disadvantages to having higher xp, better weapons etc that make things balanced, and this can be added into the game play. For example certain objectivs might need a specific weapon or skill that is gained from rank/xp to complete, but on the flip side the objective might be very tough, like almost a suicide mission…therefore players of different skill levels will be doing different things in the battle appropiate to their abilities…which will create teamwork.

Having a squad system in QW like BF2 does, but make it automatic that a higher ranked player becomes a squad leader or lower ranked players, and make it that his advancedment in xp is very very dependant on how he performs as a leader and how the squad performs as a whole

Stat whoring can be avoided if there are clear penalties, disadvantages from playing for ones self…

Hmmm I seem to remember a game that i played a while ago that when you were in a squd or group of players ( I dont think it was online) that you go a bonus when you stick together, work as a team…squads could have bonuses like better armour level when in a squad ,when you wokr together, an invisible boost, like setting it so when you are hit by enemy fire it does slightly less damage then when you are on your own…things like when you complete an objective as part of a team you get way more experience than solo and it is distributed over the whole sqad etc…hey now that I think about it thats what PLANETSIDE does

funnily enough QW:ET in some ways is more like PS than BF2…

now I have to go ponder this…coz I felt when I played PS (over a year ago last) that it was quite a balanced online FPS with persistant xp (but yeah its a MMO…)

(Etnies) #15

Ranked and non-ranked players/charecters i think would be the way out of this given both sides what they want, i also like the idea of keeping my xp etc… but wouldnt want to be pwnt by guys who r gonna play 24/7.

(kamikazee) #16

Yeah, or you’ll get MMORPG things like “Oh no, a lvl 60 tapir! Run!” :stuck_out_tongue:

(eq-Shrike) #17

Pffft levl 60 Tapir … My lvl 60 multi-coloured equine has ‘hooves of death’ special move that would pulp the Tapir …

(ParanoiD) #18

I even would be scared for a lvl 1 tapir. They have secret powers which can kill you at once, even on lvl 1! The guys at SD should watch out for the tapir over there!

(Joe999) #19

i always hear “tapir” … i wonder why … :smiley:

(fattakin) #20

hahaha classic Joe - KEEP IT REAL SD