Skill trees

(Senethro) #101

[QUOTE=H0RSE;247177]It is indeed society that governs much of the violent crimes in the world. Look at the emphasis of money in world - people will lie, cheat, steal and even kill to get it. This is not some ingrained human trait, it is behavior shaped by the environment.
[/QUOTE]

This also sounds like a testable claim that someone will have investigated and analysed. Again I invite you to share the findings of those scientists who have informed you and the opportunity to do more than lecture from your internet expert armchair.

(tokamak) #102

This debate is for simpletons.

(Senethro) #103

[QUOTE=tokamak;247180]This debate is for simpletons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture[/QUOTE]

What do you think our positions are? I’m looking to find out if you’ve understood enough to know why your link is only partially relevent.

(tokamak) #104

I really don’t give a flying hoot about what your positions are on this matter.

(Senethro) #105

Obviously false as you’ve taken the time to post about it.

(Mad Hatter) #106

It is pretty off-topic though. I can’t even remember how it got started, nor do I particularly care, but please, let’s get back to blaming or defending consoles for doing whatever it is they’re doing…or not doing, or whatever. :tongue:

But in my professional opinion as a part-time unpaid game critic, 3 active skills seems like the perfect number, D pad or not. Giving players too many takes away from specialization and the uniqueness of your character, while having too few would drastically narrow down player’s combat roles, to the point where they’re only good at one thing and one thing only, like an Engineer that can lay down turrets but can’t buff guns or plant mines.

Just like 8v8 seems to be the magic number of players per map, 3 appears to be the magic number of active skills per player. It’s a good balance between being specialized and having plenty of options at all times. Just because you play on a PC doesn’t mean you need more of everything. More isn’t always better.

(BioSnark) #107

Okay, lets do this again. You are wrong on your first point. Leaderboards can measure win/loose, xp or objective completion. Those are positive player incentives for an objective game type. Stop it with that argument. You might say they are a net negative if you wish and I would agree. Second, stop saying that I’ve been making blanket statements. It isn’t “dreadful” and I never said “no-one will change class.” Stop.

I’m just going to restate this one last time and this time as a graphic…

y goes from no character selection at bottom to extreme, permanent character class specialization
x goes from players change class all the time at left to players never change class

. y
. |. . . . . /
. |. . . . /
. |. . . /
. |. . /
. |. /
_|/____x
. |
My preference is that Brink be somewhere in the middle on this scale so that players will change classes dynamically to meet mission requirements and expediencies. On the other hand, some degree of specialization and skill/weapon options gives the game’s skill system longevity and meaning.

(Nikto) #108

[QUOTE=BioSnark;247209]Okay, lets do this again. You are wrong on your first point. Leaderboards can measure win/loose, xp or objective completion. Those are positive player incentives for an objective game type. Stop it with that argument. You might say they are a net negative if you wish and I would agree. Second, stop saying that I’ve been making blanket statements. It isn’t “dreadful” and I never said “no-one will change class.” Stop.

I’m just going to restate this one last time and this time as a graphic…

y goes from no character selection at bottom to extreme, permanent character class specialization
x goes from players change class all the time at left to players never change class

. y
. |. . . . . /
. |. . . . /
. |. . . /
. |. . /
. |. /
_|/____x
. |
My preference is that Brink be somewhere in the middle on this scale so that players will change classes dynamically to meet mission requirements and expediencies. On the other hand, some degree of specialization and skill/weapon options gives the game’s skill system longevity and meaning.[/QUOTE]

the only leaderboard i have ever seen people interested in is the k/d-ratio one, though that may have been because the other ones aren’t common, ofcourse if your talking about one that doesn’t list k/d, or at least doesn’t put the emphasis on it, then it might have a good effect.

the amount of specialization in a certain class depends on what the player wants, certainly you don’t wish to limit the freedom of the player in a game like this?(this was meant halfjoking)
i agree that brink should be in the center of that graphic, and i was trying to figure out what you exactly meant, that’s a whole lot more difficult for the guy trying to figure it out through some small posts than it is for the guy who can read a post where it is carefully explained what is meant.

(Offensive Person) #109

I’m planning on making a soldier and a medic.

(Cankor) #110

i.e. you’re planning on making specialized characters who’s skill sets complement playing as a medic on the one hand and a soldier on the other, right? As opposed to a jack of all trades character who can jump from role to role.

It is kind of an interesting topic, how to build your character, and the tendency to build them towards roles you like to play, and the impacts specializing in a single character type could have on game play (including switching or not switching).

As far as not switching, I don’t really see it as too big of a problem given how much XP it looks like they will be dumping on the objective class guys. Seems to me there will always be guys willing to do the objectives, even if not for the XP just for the glory (although this would be slowed if they publish players K/D’s cause those guys tend to die more). I also doubt there will be a shortage of medics, seems like they dump lots of XP on that class as well. I’d go so far as to say the XP syetm will probably help quite a bit with incentivizing players to switch classes: if theres an empty role (say soldier) it seems someone would be bound to switch. If you’re the only guy tossing out ammo you should be getting tons of XP for it as you’re not sharing that role with someone else. Or maybe you’re one of 4 soldiers, you’re not getting much XP becasue you have to share it with 3 other guys, so this pushes you into changing class as well.

Not too worried about guys not switching because their character isn’t flexible enough.

(LyndonL) #111

Meh K/D is a bigger incentive to not die if the record is permanent. If it’s K/D per match, meh who cares… But if it is with your account forever you are less willing to tarnish it.

(tokamak) #112

Xp per minute should be the true value of skill.

(LyndonL) #113

Maybe, maybe not. People who take the low XP missions like support (medic) can be highly skilled and still not have a massive XP per minute if they’re not doing the main objectives.

(tokamak) #114

The xp reward of a mission or any action really should be reflected in it’s importance. If this isn’t the case then the xp distribution is flawed, not the xp/hour as skill measurement.

(Senethro) #115

Your reasoning is flawed. What you actually want to use to measure skill is whatever that information is that would cause you to change XP distribution.

XP is only an approximate measure of skill at best. Its like measuring the fitness of an organism by how many legs it has instead of how many fertile offspring it produces.

(tokamak) #116

True but I can’t quantify what I what I want to use to change xp distribution in any other way, therefore the xp deserved per time is the closes thing we will ever get.

(brbrbr) #117

skill of xpwhoring ?
victories/per minutes[not victories/per matches. ie another xpwhoring statswhore] matter.
or in short: “victory - MATTER !! rest - NOT!”

(tokamak) #118

Victories only say something about the team effort though, not the skill of the player itself.

(Senethro) #119

As long as players mixed sufficiently you could use statistics to discern the effect of an individual player on the team but as soon as theres a bunch of servers filled with regulars who stack one team and never play anywhere else this would fall apart. Or at least be less accurate.

(Cankor) #120

And penalize players who switch when the teams are unbalanced as well as reward players who stack. But generally you will find all the great players have really good win/loss ratios, so it’s still relevant.

Excluding issues with exploitation, XP/Hr would work better if the XP awards are balanced across the classes (i.e. a Soldier doing a great job earns equal XP as a medic also doing a great job). But it’s also more complicated than that because when XP is used as a pure incentive it displaces some of the skill based aspects. Examples: Giving XP to switch to the objective class, giving XP to change sides when teams are unbalanced, giving one class more XP because in general that class plays a more important role (medics?), etc.

That said it’s pretty much the best option and of course (unless I am mistaken) this is what SD plans on using for the leaderboards, so hopefully there’s some attention paid to balancing it from class to class.

A long time ago I was trying to set up a web site to track XP on ETQW by class, so I could run my own experiment and see if one particular class tended to garner more XP than others. I found though in ETQW it was impossible because the XP wasn’t tracked by class (except for class specific actions). In other words, if you killed some guy with an AR, you had no idea by looking at the stats if you did it as a medic or an engy or some other class.

Hopefully SD sets up their leaderboards segregated by class so it’s possible to compare from class to class and balance the XP awards over time. So you would have, Best Soldier, Best Medic, Best Engineer and Best Operative. Going further, to be best over-all you could say you had to excel in more than one class, so some guy who just plays a single class all the time (maybe it’s the one which tends to generate more XP/hr than the others) doesn’t dominate the leaderboards. Oh wait, they said no global leaderboards right (except I guess for the special missions or whatever they are called)?

Doing it this way would let you do things like give more XP to the soldier for killing (because that’s his primary job) to offset the lack of XP he might get compared to say a medic who is getting tons for rezzing guys.