Yup, that’s the problem. We could do some extra work to recognize if players try this and stop them with a “sorry, i know you logged out so you could switch from bob to bill, but we’re not going to let you do that. SUCK IT!”. that feels wrong to me too.
shiro had a good suggestion though which he direct messaged me (not sure why he didn’t post), which would tie switching characters to owning command posts on the battlefield, which i thought was a pretty cool idea…
Same thing can also happen for players switching sides trough relogging.
I still think the solution lies in rewarding people for not arbitrarily switching classes/body types/sides.
Is that a problem? You can always put a equally skilled bot in the place of the player who switched team, and maybe even open up a “vacancy” for another player who is equally skill matched and sitting in the games lobby to join up.
Yeahh, the people I do work for decided that the best time to get me involved on a project is THREE DAYS BEFORE DEADLINE, so my brain is failing and I failed to realise that that might actually make a better post than a postscript.
Anyway, the idea is that changing characters mid-game, joining a team, and disconnecting/reconnecting all become the same mechanic, controlled by resources that your team acquire by holding command posts throughout the map.
Your team holds only your initial command post. This slowly charges up a timer. When that timer is full, each player gains a credit that they can use to change character at a command post.
If a player doesn’t use that credit before the next one charges, the spare credit goes into a group pool.
These group credits can be used by anyone in the team to change characters, or anyone who’s joined the team to make their first spawn, or anyone who’s disconnected to make their first spawn with the new character.
Capturing additional command posts charges those credits up faster. What you end up with are essentially two timers. A respawn timer for characters already in the game, and a reinforcement timer that’s used to change characters.
So instead of a team rushing and liberating a forward spawn before pushing an objective like in ETQW, in Brink a team can rush the command posts, hold, suddenly switch team build, and then push the objective before the other team has the ability to react (because they’re waiting on their reinforcement credits). (If you’ve played Guild Wars, imagine Guild v Guild, except that Shrines give your team the periodic ability to change team-build, so you need to fight over those too with all the added extra layers of meta.)
Players won’t disconnect to change characters, because there’s no advantage or disadvantage to doing so (except perhaps losing your spot on the server).
The only issue I can see is that it adds time for that first spawn if you join a server part-way through a map. Credits need to charge slowly enough to make having them influential, but not so slow that a person spends ages waiting to get into the game.
I suppose the whole thing could be turned off for the super-casuals, but I can imagine the propub type players being quite willing to put up with the slightly longer wait in exchange for the secondary tactical layer.
So that means people can ONLY change their class if they control such a post right?
The only issue I can see is that it adds time for that first spawn if you join a server part-way through a map. Credits need to charge slowly enough to make having them influential, but not so slow that a person spends ages waiting to get into the game.
I’m starting to like this more and more.
Don’t worry about people having to wait before they can join. Many games (i grab my beloved Raven Shield again) do this and it’s no problem. The pro’s of preventing people from relogging to get their way around this outweight the cons of having to wait a bit by far. It gives new players the time to spectate a bit and make their mind up about what class they’re going to play and what set up they’re going to chose.
Yes. But teams have a command post in their home base (in case I wasn’t supposed to let that slip, sorry Richard), so it should never be the case that they’re getting no credits at all.
[QUOTE=tokamak;197274]I’m starting to like this more and more.
Don’t worry about people having to wait before they can join. Many games (i grab my beloved Raven Shield again) do this and it’s no problem. The pro’s of preventing people from relogging to get their way around this outweight the cons of having to wait a bit by far. It gives new players the time to spectate a bit and make their mind up about what class they’re going to play and what set up they’re going to chose.[/QUOTE]
I think that in a majority of cases it won’t be too annoying, and people will understand why it’s there given the extra importance placed on the ‘capture the forward spawn’ style objectives.
If the xp you earn during a map is “saved” at the end of the map, reconnecting with a different character would mean you lose any xp you have earned so far. Also perhaps handing out an xp bonus at the end of a map (if you have played the whole map with the same character). However this might not help stop those who dont really need/want the xp 
Yeah I think that xp should only be saved if you completed a map, so we don’t get people logging out right before they lose.
Also this could apply in singleplayer games, the end of a map could be considered a checkpoint so if you close the game before the end of a map any progress (and xp) is lost. :eek:
You end up alienating the people that have legitimate reasons for leaving mid-game. Just because someone’s at the door, or my child hurt themselves, i shouldn’t be penalized for that.
I think this may all be getting a little too far ahead of ourselves. You are outlining a lot of punishing measures for changing classes and not completing games that aren’t going to make anyone feel good the first them they find them.
Is changing classes or even characters such a dire crime that it requires half of the ideas outlined so far?
Changing characters I have more issue with than classes, because of the thoughts on the first page about inconstancy and it feeling odd switching between different characters, but I so no reason to punish freely changing classes as the player desires. My concern is that building game mechanics around controlling class and character change (mostly through exp) is only ever going to feel arbitrary, overly complex (some of these ideas require a wall of text just to explain :p) and downright stifling to a player that just wants to play a certain way in a certain game.
By all means give exp rewards for changing class to the objective class when its needed, but it doesn’t need a massive and overly rigorous system (degraded exp per person changing class for example) to be built around it in my opinion.
I’d like to address the issue of character changing and class changing more thoroughly in a perfect world, but character changing especially is such a nebulous worry at this point that its quite hard to consider a realistic fix or even whether there is a problem that needs fixing.
But only letting people change their class/equipment/body type/etc. at one spot would also draw more than only a bit attention to this and therefor quite much encourage public camping to this spot.
I mean - you have people standing around to change the class at that spot, why not just shoot in or deploy a turret at that spot. Before you come up with the idea of a save spot: DON’T, otherwise you’ll have people driven crazy by expiriencing others running their just to heal up (or the exits get camped what so ever). If you now think of a certain amount of time after being shot that needs to be passed before you can enter this zone(it’s all already have been there somewhere) don’t aswell, because you will have even more people camping others coming either out of that zone or trying to get into it being shot once or twice or a turret infront of it shooting everyone. I can promise you - they won’t like that.
I actually find nothing ‘imbalanced’ in being able to change the class or bodytype for just what you want to have to help your team or suit yourself.(Same goes for body type)
I’d allow a change just always after you’ve died - AND at a certain spot, maybe once a minute - so the command post wouldn’t draw that much attention to opponents.
(Anyway are we talking about FFA or team deathmatch? - like a save zone would make sense in FFA what so ever -.-)
I’d even go that far to speed things up a little to allow people outside the game (just like in Guild wars, now that everyone is using it:P) to create templates they want to save as classes, so you’d be able to select via the ‘limbomenu’(no clue how you are going to call it) one out of…5 templates you created up front and out of the three body sizes,(=15 templates).
First selecting the body type->‘template’(different equipment would then make sense aswell)
And if it isn’t the first time selecting something it would just assume you would want to have the same body type so you only choose out of 5 templates.(Just as in RtCW where you only select another weapon but stick to the same class if you open the menu - not to talk about class scripts:P)
Why not just take a more than once prooven system out of RtCW/ET?
Just xp for doing objectives. What ever you do gives you xp, but those objectives give you major xp bonuses (just coming to my mind if I’d actually see “objective whores” ever again, would thrill me seeing someone writing that :D)
Why would you log out JUST BEFORE the game ends anyway? Did I miss something, that people get negative xp for losing?! Or are you maybe talking about STATS?(ohhh very important:P)
And if the match is about to be over i find it kinda irrelevant if someone leaves or not.
Do you really care about getting penalized because your child hurt itself?
No the point still stands, the xp should be awarded after completing a match.There loads of these games who work with these set-ups, look at all those football games out there.
Changing class I dont think is being questioned, but changing your character and thus getting all the abilities that come with this character is. The reason for limiting the abilities which can be applied to a character is to prevent them becoming unbalanced - if you can swap between characters mid-game it somewhat invalidates limiting abilities. Everyone is a super-medic, everyone is a super-engineer, etc.
Or at least that is the impression I have gotten so far…
Yeah, you might as well allow changing the body type of your character that way. What is the point of selecting it at the start?
[QUOTE=engiebenjy;197297]The reason for limiting the abilities which can be applied to a character is to prevent them becoming unbalanced - if you can swap between characters mid-game it somewhat invalidates limiting abilities. Everyone is a super-medic, everyone is a super-engineer, etc.
Or at least that is the impression I have gotten so far…[/QUOTE]
Not talking of removing the ability restriction - but the builds sure have to have some weak spots, so the other team is still able to react on what the opposing team has changed.
If they all are heavy engineers (given that there is a set amount of max. turrets) let them be, just shoot run away for health and go again, they won’t magically heal up I assume.
(In best case shoot in a rocket/grenade and they won’t be able to revive each other)
[QUOTE=tokamak;197295]Do you really care about getting penalized because your child hurt itself?
No the point still stands, the xp should be awarded after completing a match.There loads of these games who work with these set-ups, look at all those football games out there.[/QUOTE]
Why are you answering the question for me? Regardless of the reason, yes i care that i’ve played say 19mins of a 20min match and lost everything i worked for for one reason or another. I want to be able to choose when i can quit, and not be held to gaming ransom because all my hard work will be lost cos i simply have something else that needs my attention more at that point in time.
Right so you’re one of those types that suddenly ‘needs’ to leave 1 minute before the end. I’ve seen lots of those in Quake Wars and that’s exactly why I think they don’t deserve any points at all.
Are you being purposely awkward now? It was an example, regardless of when i leave, i still want reward for the work i did in the time i was there. Grow up m8, really.
atleast try and pretend you see my point instead of being a douche
Yeah I see your point and I think that people more often rage-quit than become of some sort of emergency so the pro’s of people not leaving over trivial reasons outweigh the cons of people being penalized for leaving for important reasons. If you’re willing to forfeit your “hard work” then the reason is important enough to leave.