"Pro" Mode

(Szakalot) #61

[QUOTE=adeto;525692]
Edit: Banning imo is useless. Same as above, takes away from a team’s strategic freedom and will likely just result in the same mercs being banned over and over and thus never being seen again. Which I doubt is what SD wants.[/QUOTE]

good points before this one, as it seems a little self-contradictory. If always the same mercs are being banned then what strategic freedom are we talking about? It would be a good sign to the devs if a particular merc would always get banned (as fragger would be the nr1 choice every single time at this stage of the game).

It also expands on the strategic freedom of the opposing team, as they can build a tactic around a specific weakness: ‘we will ban one of their engies, so their EV stage will be much harder; esp. against our skyhammer+arty+nader combo’.

(fubar) #62

[QUOTE=Szakalot;525703]good points before this one, as it seems a little self-contradictory. If always the same mercs are being banned then what strategic freedom are we talking about? It would be a good sign to the devs if a particular merc would always get banned (as fragger would be the nr1 choice every single time at this stage of the game).

It also expands on the strategic freedom of the opposing team, as they can build a tactic around a specific weakness: ‘we will ban one of their engies, so their EV stage will be much harder; esp. against our skyhammer+arty+nader combo’.[/QUOTE]

But… it wouldn’t work like that. He’d just take another one of those 4 different engi classes available to him. it’d merely remove mines or sentries or other abilities from the game that were otherwise “accessible”.
Same goes for banning Skyhammer or Arty, it’d merely be replaced by someone else that does the exact same job of killing the EV. You can’t ban an entire class or role, merely a merc… which there are/will be plenty of. Banning a fragger? Meh, I’ll just go Rhino or Nader instead. The only thing you achieve by banning a merc is removing an ability you’re not fond of from the game. Which is silly, really. Let’s go remove rocket launchers from quake, and awps from cs and rifles from ET simply because we don’t like or don’t know how to play against them.

(Rémy Cabresin) #63

[QUOTE=Szakalot;525703]good points before this one, as it seems a little self-contradictory. If always the same mercs are being banned then what strategic freedom are we talking about? It would be a good sign to the devs if a particular merc would always get banned (as fragger would be the nr1 choice every single time at this stage of the game).

It also expands on the strategic freedom of the opposing team, as they can build a tactic around a specific weakness: ‘we will ban one of their engies, so their EV stage will be much harder; esp. against our skyhammer+arty+nader combo’.[/QUOTE]

Highlighted is what I meant by specific mercs will get banned. Banning (especially with as few mercs as there currently are) in a class based game will result in crucial roles being banned. Example, taking current merc pool as an example, there are 2 medics. If there are 2 bans per team, imagine a team just banning all the medics out of the game, same applies to engineers. It would completely break the game. Wasn’t talking about banning the “OP” mercs. By strategic freedom I meant that if not everything is available to teams, imo, it takes away from the variety of tactics/strats a team can create. Personally feel that the more options teams have, the more interesting things become. If things get limited to where the options become few the strats also become more meta and thus more frequent(and eventually more boring) aswell.

Edit: plus as fubar said, strategy then turns into covering your weaknesses/disabling your opponents strengths. I can’t speak for everyone but this feels like making the skill cap lower to me, rather than improving your own play, just take away things you’re bad against or removing strengths of others to win.

(Zenity) #64

[QUOTE=adeto;525712]
Edit: plus as fubar said, strategy then turns into covering your weaknesses/disabling your opponents strengths. I can’t speak for everyone but this feels like making the skill cap lower to me, rather than improving your own play, just take away things you’re bad against or removing strengths of others to win.[/QUOTE]

I should properly answer some posts eventually (lots of good points all around, and thanks for clarifying your stance), just want to quickly throw something in here: What you are saying again isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because this would mean that you also have to spread out your skillsets a bit more.

I think that is generally a good thing and arguably increases the skill cap because it’s certainly harder to become proficient at more than one thing at a time.

One of the things that keeps MOBAs fresh and interesting is precisely this factor of not being able to specialise on just one set of abilities. That said, I think it’s way too early to even think about banning yet. The first big question would be whether to have a draft mode to begin with.

(Rémy Cabresin) #65

[QUOTE=Zenity;525714]I should properly answer some posts eventually (lots of good points all around, and thanks for clarifying your stance), just want to quickly throw something in here: What you are saying again isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because this would mean that you also have to spread out your skillsets a bit more.

I think that is generally a good thing and arguably increases the skill cap because it’s certainly harder to become proficient at more than one thing at a time.

One of the things that keeps MOBAs fresh and interesting is precisely this factor of not being able to specialise on just one set of abilities. That said, I think it’s way too early to even think about banning yet. The first big question would be whether to have a draft mode to begin with.[/QUOTE]

Spreading the skillset isn’t equal to increasing the skill cap. Infact it lowers the skillcap as people have to spread their attention rather than specializing. When you go to the doctor because you have cancer, do you want to go to a doctor specialized in cancer or to a doctor who didn’t specialize in cancer but knows it okayish among other things? That said, banning and draft both have NO place with the small merc pool we have now. Maybe if there are 40+ mercs, when it’s impossible to completely ban a certain class/role out of the game it might be something that’s discussable but until that point it’s a 100% gamebreaking mechanic.

edit: Also, mobas fresh and interesting is an opinion which makes it a bad example, I(and I know A LOT of shooter players) find MOBAs the most boring thing to play and watch. DB has a enough MOBA-elements already(I actually like the whole merc thing as it is atm), but if it becomes too much MOBA it’s very likely to lose a lot of it’s playerbase because people come here for a new objective based shooter(which has been dieing out lately) and not a MOBA with some shooter elements.

(Szakalot) #66

Good points on banning, but just to clarify; I’m speaking from the assumption of 15 mercs available. Not the present 8.

(Rémy Cabresin) #67

15 still very little mercs compared to MOBAs with 40+ champions/characters. There if ban 3 supporting characters there will still be 7/8 left. Here if you ban 3 medics your choices are down to 1/2 which I can’t call that a real strategic choice anymore. Making strategies with your team before a game won’t work anymore since that strategy might revolve around mercs that can be taken away from you. So strategies becomes simple and basic where mercs can be replaced, rather than creating interesting strategies that revolve around the use of specific abilities or a specific team composition. Which in some cases can be game breaking ofcourse, but thats why you need some form of regulation on f.e not being able to have 4 Fraggers/Skyhammers.

(Amerika) #68

[QUOTE=Szakalot;525689]Whats wrong with merc banning? I’m talking about 15 merc availble situation. Sounds like forcing opponent to play without one would mix it up considerably. Even though it would be fragger everytime :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m beginning to thing we misunderstand each other.

I’m talking exclusively about a setup wherein there can be only one merc type in each team. Each team picks as they like though. So one team could be: skyhammer, fragger, sawbonez, aura, proxy; another team could be skyhammer, fragger, aura, proxy, vassili. etc.

The way it forces diversity is by ensuring that each team of 5 players consists of 5 different mercs. Rather than 3 fraggers, one medic and one proxy. Or 3 fraggers, one skyhammer, one proxy. See what I mean?

Moreover: the merc special abilities scale very badly with multiples of the same merc. One proxy with her mines is easy to deal with. 3 proxy’s is constant mine spam at every corner. Same with auras, fraggers, skyhammers on EV, etc. etc. etc. Forcing people to have different mercs will flesh out the game more past the 3 fraggers vs 3 fraggers TDM with medic support.

when you talk class do you mean ‘heavy, engineer, medic’ class? That is another possibility (each player can choose to be one of 3 medics/slayers/engineers) etc. But personally I’d prefer to keep it simpler.

Rules such as ‘only one fragger’ but you can run 5 thunders seem very heavy handed to me. And if you are in favor of rules, than why not ‘each player is one merc’?[/QUOTE]

I think we understand each other but I don’t want what you want. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but you want people to pick and choose one merc and one merc only and play with them for the whole map. I still want everyone to be able to pick 3 mercs to use BUT have a limit on how many mercs of some types you can put into play at one time. For example, you can only have 1 Fragger on your team (or out in play) at any one time. And if another class gets to be too much (Nader) then limit them as well. That’s all I want to see. I want to allow everyone to still pick 3 mercs but limit certain ones that are a detriment to a competitive match due to their power when stacking. This type of rule has precedent in games like Wolf and ET as similar rules were used.

This keeps DB being DB, it doesn’t make a drastic shift from pub play to competitive play, isn’t a shock to the audience and gives strategists to figure out solutions to issues on maps while also allowing players to branch out. This is also why I don’t like bans in a game that doesn’t have 100 characters in it.

(Zenity) #69

Yes but the question isn’t who’s got more skill in X, but who’s got more skill overall. A more fitting analogy seems to be biathlon vs. cross country ski, iron man vs. cycling, or football vs. sprinting. Would you really say that the former always has a lower skill cap than the latter? I would still say it is the opposite, even though we often appreciate the specialised skills more (unless it’s football).

That said, banning and draft both have NO place with the small merc pool we have now. Maybe if there are 40+ mercs, when it’s impossible to completely ban a certain class/role out of the game it might be something that’s discussable but until that point it’s a 100% gamebreaking mechanic.

I think Draft could be interesting as an option much earlier. I have mixed feelings about it, but it sounds pretty wild and that alone makes me want to try it. :slight_smile: It could be a complete mess, or it could be the best thing since sliced br… I mean Action Quake 2.

edit: Also, mobas fresh and interesting is an opinion which makes it a bad example, I(and I know A LOT of shooter players) find MOBAs the most boring thing to play and watch. DB has a enough MOBA-elements already(I actually like the whole merc thing as it is atm), but if it becomes too much MOBA it’s very likely to lose a lot of it’s playerbase because people come here for a new objective based shooter(which has been dieing out lately) and not a MOBA with some shooter elements.

I don’t personally play MOBAs either and find the gameplay pretty boring, but we can still acknowledge that they are doing a lot with very little. You don’t have to like the genre to recognize that drafting is an important factor in keeping those games interesting to their (massive) fan base.

(tangoliber) #70

I don’t think banning is necessary, actually. It would probably be detrimental.

My main hope is to see a large variety of mercs being used. I don’t want to see a set group of common mercs in every match. (Even if the mercs are perfectly balanced (impossible), I think players will gravitate towards the same ones.)
I don’t want to see too many mirror matches (same mercs fighting each other). So, this is why I like the idea of a draft mode that doesn’t let one merc being used on both teams.
This is purely for the purpose of being an entertaining game to spectate.

I’d like for us to have at least 30 mercs to choose from, eventually.

Of course, I support tournaments using a variety of rulesets. Draft mode is just one fun possibility. The default mode should be decided upon by the people who actually participate in these matches.

The PS3 community of Brink used to arrange matches with weird restrictions, and it was much more fun than the typical matches where everyone was a light-body type with Carbs. One such restriction in a 4v4 tourney was that every team had to have a heavy soldier with chain gun and grenade launcher, a medium engineer with shotgun, a light sniper operative, and one medium body medic with burst-fire rifle. Had a much more interesting dynamic than usual.

(Rémy Cabresin) #71

[QUOTE=Zenity;525812]Yes but the question isn’t who’s got more skill in X, but who’s got more skill overall. A more fitting analogy seems to be biathlon vs. cross country ski, iron man vs. cycling, or football vs. sprinting. Would you really say that the former always has a lower skill cap than the latter? I would still say it is the opposite, even though we often appreciate the specialised skills more (unless it’s football).

I think Draft could be interesting as an option much earlier. I have mixed feelings about it, but it sounds pretty wild and that alone makes me want to try it. :slight_smile: It could be a complete mess, or it could be the best thing since sliced br… I mean Action Quake 2.

I don’t personally play MOBAs either and find the gameplay pretty boring, but we can still acknowledge that they are doing a lot with very little. You don’t have to like the genre to recognize that drafting is an important factor in keeping those games interesting to their (massive) fan base.[/QUOTE]

The main reason for the success MOBAs is the amount of money pumped into marketing and tournaments, not the tournament system itself. MOBAs focus on younger audiences and keep them in with a chance at big money. If Riot today announced that there will be no more banning and drafting but the prizepool doubles, people will keep playing and people will keep watching to see who wins that insane prizepot. Tournament system means very little when it comes to why a game is being played when there is a crowd as big as f.e LoL. But for a small game like DB is atm, a tournament system can make or break in the early stages. ET and RtCW have shown that for SW gamemode(which mobas are not) there is a system that works, it’s a safe choice and with the decision making SD has had so far, safe choices would be nice for a change.

(tangoliber) #72

Those games are fun to play, but personally, I don’t find it that interesting to watch, aside from the dramatic moments that Stopwatch creates. There are very few FPS games that I think are fun to spectate. (Titanfall was somewhat watch-able because the movement and cat-and-mouse gameplay works very well on a visual level.)

I think that Dirty Bomb could be fun to watch, in a way that no other FPS has achieved yet…, provided it has a large variety of mercs and you see different game-changing abilities coming into play in each match you watch.)

(BAMFana) #73

The facts don’t support that argument, Dota was huge long before big payouts became a thing.

As for drafting, it’s pointless without bans. You’re just playing ARAM then, the typical ARTS pub mode. What makes drafting exciting, what gives it depth, is the interplay between bans and picks – attempting to force the other team into a particular archetype (or preventing them from getting one), while trying to move into a specific archetype yourself. This only works if it’s possible to ban out mercs. This enforces more variety in gameplay, since one-trick pony players who only practice one merc will simply get banned out every time (I say this as a player who solely plays fragger, since there’s no point in me practicing anything else because that’s the only merc I’ll ever play in 5v5s under the current system). It also prevents the current 2 fragger, 2 medic, one utility (proxy/sniper/sky) meta from turning the game into a exercise in pure repetition, since that particular archetype will be the first thing teams look to ban out.

Now that’s the basic idea, but there are many different drafting systems that can be utilized to accomplish this goal. There obviously aren’t enough mercs to use the same system as Dota 2 and LoL uses, but it’s possible to achieve a similar effect by drafting loadout cards rather than mercs. There are many different ways of implementing loadout card drafting, one being a system where there are three available loadout cards for each merc, one for each gun. Another system entirely would be to do something similar to drafting in card games like Hearthstone and MTG, where for example 40 loadout cards are randomly created for each match and the teams have to pick/ban from those to create their roster.

I disagree with the claim that being locked to one merc for the entirety of a match is inherently bad for the game or would create less interesting matches. Instead I think what we’re really talking about here is two different kinds of depth. Being locked to one merc has more strategic depth, while being able to swap out mercs during the match has more tactical depth. I think the former is preferable, and proven to be effective in a drafting system by Dota 2 and LoL, but there are obviously good arguments in favor of the latter as well.

(tangoliber) #74

True. I’d like to point out that spectators are more likely to understand the strategic depth than the tactical depth. (The tactical depth is also hard to see from the POV of the streamcast.)

Take American football… spectators can watch the game for 50 years and most still not understand tactical things like pattern match coverage, inside zone blocking, banjo switches, receiver option routes, pulling guards, and why the formations are the way they are. They don’t really know all the details of what is happening at the line of scrimmage. Plus, the camera angles and instant replays don’t really give you a good view of the blocking schemes on the line. (Similarily, in an FPS stream, you can’t really see all the angles of a coordinated attack. Hard to get a good sense of what is really going on.)

But they understand the strategic stuff like, “We switched to a 3-4 formation to try and get better pressure on the QB”, “Our QB has running ability which gives us a numbers advantage”, “We put a bunch of fast receivers on the field”, “We are trying to spread the defense horizontally”, “We are running the ball to try and get the safeties to creep up”, “A bubble screen is a safe, effective playcall on 3rd and 15.”, etc…and that’s what gets them spectating in an active way (agreeing or disagreeing with the coach’s strategy.)

(tokamak) #75

That’s a concern for mobas as well. But in the end it means a higher experience ceiling.

(Szakalot) #76

its a yes and no question.

There is skill in being able to adjust your merc composition and strategy on the fly to what the opponent is doing.

But there is also skil in trying to combine 5 unique mercs to their highest advantage.

I would also be fine with a mode where people draft unique mercs for each stage. So you can swap around after each obj is finished; but always with 5 different mercs.

(tokamak) #77

Yeah and that’s why that execution mode may turn out to become way more popular than this one. In there it makes sense to have only one unique merc.

And in truth, there really isn’t such a game like that right now. The closest would be Counterstrike or TF2 Arena but TF2 doesn’t have the objectives and CS doesn’t have the classes.

The draft mechanic would be the same though. You’d start the game in the same way only objective goes with 5-choice respawns and execution is without any respawn.

(LCTR) #78

Interesting ideas in this thread :slight_smile:

[ul]
[li]1 Merc rule seems to put some people off - but what if you had 3 loadout cards for that Merc? Is that still a problem? You can have variation in the role but you’re still tied to the core (health, abilities) of that selection.
[/li][/ul]

  • [li]iirc the SD folks said they wanted 5 more Mercs out before release? (4 now that Nader is out). I’m thinking that the pick and ban draft would allow for some great play. People may get known for their Rhino or Skyhammer play and enemy teams might want to mitigate that.
    [/li]Seems like a nice layer of meta to me…
(matsy) #79

I will add one thing. When ever a cup game went to a draw and a decider was needed. I did enjoy the draft of elimination of deciding the next map…

I just really don’t like the idea of being stuck with one merc for a map in SW. It may work in Elimination but I could imagine this will be a slow process each round unless first come first serve which I can see a lot of drop outs…

I think I could live with two mercs, and then limit the number of the classed OP mercs per team. Which would mean less reacting but more planning.

At this stage I don’t think vitoing a teams merc is fair if you have only specialised in that one merc, as it could make you useless and that isn’t fun!

(Glottis-3D) #80

StopWatch should be 3 mercs per map.
and Execution should be… whatever, aint gonna play this mode =)

-update-

got some neg rep for this comment! <333

or is it bad??