Specialisation and character niches

(DarkangelUK) #61

How about a happy medium then, if you quit when your team is losing then no XP gain :smiley:

(tokamak) #62

A happy medium would be letting people keep any xp they earn and then have large rewards handed out after the match for ā€˜feats of strengthā€™, you know achievements that require some sort of skill and have no farming factor, lots of Valve games have them.

But I still think all progress should be registered after the game. Another good point for this is that it will make the game much more addictive, which is what the producers want.

(engiebenjy) #63

It encourages players to play till the end of a map even if their team is struggling, but I understand how it also acts like a punishment to those who leave for legit reasons. I think the ā€œtake a breakā€ feature of left 4 dead would fit in here. If the phone rings or your child hurts themselves then you become ā€œidleā€ and AI plays in your place till you return. Any XP that the AI player gets would not be added to your total (for obvious reasons) but the rest you would still be awarded at the end of the map.

Personally I think the ā€œtake a breakā€ feature is essential especially if SD are trying to get people used to singleplayers into multiplayer - the lack of a pause button is one of the more noticable things.

(DarkangelUK) #64

I think I have enough losses against my Quake Live account to prove I donā€™t just quit when the going gets tough. I like the idle idea actually engie, canā€™t believe that never came to mind!

(tokamak) #65

[QUOTE=engiebenjy;197331]It encourages players to play till the end of a map even if their team is struggling, but I understand how it also acts like a punishment to those who leave for legit reasons. I think the ā€œtake a breakā€ feature of left 4 dead would fit in here. If the phone rings or your child hurts themselves then you become ā€œidleā€ and AI plays in your place till you return. Any XP that the AI player gets would not be added to your total (for obvious reasons) but the rest you would still be awarded at the end of the map.

Personally I think the ā€œtake a breakā€ feature is essential especially if SD are trying to get people used to singleplayers into multiplayer - the lack of a pause button is one of the more noticable things.[/QUOTE]

Thatā€™s brilliant. Especially because Brink is already incoorperating bots in multiplayer.

(Rahdo) #66

Yup, bots filling in the ranks means people leaving matches for whatever reason is a smaller problem than it has been in the past, most definitely. I still think itā€™s worthwhile to encourage people to stay as much as possible, with ā€˜contributionā€™ bonuses payed out only at the end of the match as wellā€¦ (iā€™m a giving guy :slight_smile:

(Sssaap) #67

Iā€™d make it a multiplier, otherwise you will have people trying to join matches that are almost over and leave matches which just started.

So the time on the server influences by how much your xp will be multiplied (lets say adding .1 every two minutes. xp*1+(mins/2), actually looks kinda reasonable to me with that value)

(tokamak) #68

Thatā€™s an excellent idea! Even a flat multiplier that doesnā€™t accumulate during the match would help.

(organon) #69

[QUOTE=Sssaap;197476]Iā€™d make it a multiplier, otherwise you will have people trying to join matches that are almost over and leave matches which just started.

So the time on the server influences by how much your xp will be multiplied (lets say adding .1 every two minutes. xp*1+(mins/2), actually looks kinda reasonable to me with that value)[/QUOTE]

Read my earlier % bonus post. What if it all stayed the same, except that those bonuses get paid out on completion? Encourages people to stay in the game, to do their class jobs and not no wait but get busy.

(radiator) #70

iā€™m not saying those arenā€™t good ideas, but i think they are getting way too complicated.

i think simple rules are better, like only giving the end map bonus if you were X time active in the game.

(tokamak) #71

All these complex logarithms can be pushed to the background so the public isnā€™t bothered with it. All the regular gamer needs is a loading screen tip that says ā€˜you receive extra bonuses for sitting out a full matchā€™.

The way the respawn timers are handled in Quake Wars are also pretty complex, but nobody ever notices it.

(organon) #72

[QUOTE=tokamak;197523]All these complex logarithms can be pushed to the background so the public isnā€™t bothered with it. All the regular gamer needs is a loading screen tip that says ā€˜you receive extra bonuses for sitting out a full matchā€™.

The way the respawn timers are handled in Quake Wars are also pretty complex, but nobody ever notices it.[/QUOTE]

Well, somewhere in the overview/stat screen when tabbing there should be a little place where it says: you currently receive 5% bonus xp and if you finish the map you will receive 250XP.

(Sssaap) #73

So you want to have that bonus being triggered after some time has passed?

Either the bonus will not be worth it or people will only try to join at the minimum to get this bonus in my opinion.
(still I donā€™t get it why everyone cares about people leaving just before the map endsā€¦so be it,itā€™s not like it takes the fun from you (since the map is about to be over anyway) neither it ruins YOUR stats or anything else (if there are stats about: ā€œyou won <> matches and lost <>ā€ and just have k/d stats updated when people disconnect/are being disconnected).

But still IF you want to make people stay untill the end you really have to make it worth their while to join as soon as possible and to leave as late as possible but still donā€™t punish them too hard for leaving but neither boost them too much for staying, keep the balance, and not having a proportional bonus curve just isnā€™t supporting this imo.

(organon) #74

Yes, I like the proportional increase of XP over the course of a map better, and that was what I initially thought of.

But I have seen it far too often, that people rather leave than try harder/smarter, if they are at a disadvantage. So having a payout at the end is something to discourage going AWOL or flatout changing sides. It is almost always the worse team that ends up being the smaller team, so if you discourage going AWOL or changing sides, you wonā€™t even be punishing those that change to the weaker team to help them, because that is not necessary.

Maybe just losing that bonus % is enough to discourage the winning team joiners.

Maybe having both bonuses is best, just needs to be balanced against each other.

But:

  • the payout at the end must be the same for winning and losing (the winner gets more XP in the course of the match anyway)
  • and if teams are very inbalanced and one team gets steamrolled, the AI will be able to detect that, and maybe then offer to the top 3 of the better team for one of them to change sides with the bottom 3 of the other team without penalty
(Sssaap) #75

Well, people also tend to join opponents side in the middle of a game, not just at the end and defining which team is the much stronger one will be (apart from taking frags and sayā€¦frags are 3 times higher at one side, they must be stronger) quite hard, since there isnā€™t really a way to measure which team is better, is it? at least defending teams more often get more kills than attacking teams - as long as attackers manage to chance roles by spawnkilling.

But yes, the xp gain for each action(and bonuses) has to be equal on winningteam aswell as on losingteam.

Itā€™s indeed a nice idea to make sure the ā€˜weakerā€™ team gets supported somehow by AI detecting which team is the one that needs nerving and the one getting rolled but imo not practicle.(would be too hard to write a reasoning AI to do such)

(tokamak) #76

Changing sides wonā€™t be an option. Remember that you pick your character, resistance or security before you start playing.

(organon) #77

No changing sides in game would be great. Donā€™t think that you chose your character beforehand is a really show stopper to changing sides mid game though if that was wanted. Would just be one more click.

(Zhou Yu) #78

Its been said in interviews (iirc) that characters can be played in both factions and have to different wardrobes in order to swap for each.

I would assume that tattoos/bodytype/scarification/facial models stay the same but the costume changes.

In terms of teamswapping, just have a server option to limit it, people canā€™t swap when teams are even and no player can join the larger team if numbers are uneven.

This has to be worked through with the bots ofc because of the coop stuff in there, but I imagine there will be a server option to turn bots off in any case (canā€™t imagine the idea of playing with bots on both sides particularly thrills comp players ^^).

(Nail) #79

ā€œI would assume that tattoos/bodytype/scarification/facial models stay the same but the costume changesā€

this is true

I assume changing sides will be a easy as W:ET or ET:QW

(tokamak) #80

You can make the same dude for both factions, but that doesnā€™t mean that one dude can be playing both factions here.

Besides, swapping teams would result in all kinds of problems considering the mingleplayer nature of the game, weā€™ve already been trough this on another thread.

I guess it would be possible, but say youā€™re playing with a friend on the same team, and one of you goes to the other team, then both of you wonā€™t see each other in the next match any more.