| Author |
Some Remarks |
globaliner
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: July 30, 2010
Posts: 3
|  Posted: 2010-08-03 03:30
I already talked to some people about it yesterday and although I am very new to this game, the things I noticed seem not to be all that wrong. This is why I post them here, because usually one should play a bit longer before commenting on the game.
Basically, what I noticed two things:
a) The scenarios are boring, because nobody is really trying to go for the win. For many players they are just good ways to gain pres.
b) The MV does not give you really epic battles between the factions. Players want to maximize their pres (which is ok) but I have not seen a single chat line in game that was about planning a nice attack on another faction.
Of course it is perfectly ok to leave the game like this and make this a pure pres-race. But I think the game has potential for more.
In chat yesterday, the following idea for a) came up, I therefore call it A):
A) Give small (very small) credit rewards for winning a scenario. This would increase the incentives to go for the win and make battles exciting.
Comment: First of all I doubt it is a good idea to draw further income potential from the development team. Probably, every credit that you give out for free will reduce the amount of credits bought by the players. Some players argued otherwise (such that once players know about the advantage of credits through getting some for free from the scenarios they would buy more), but I think that would require VERY precise balancing of how much credits one gains, etc.. There are also some distribution problems about who should get the credits. It may however be a way to solve a).
Now, I found a different way to solve both problems (as far as people regard these as problems) at once. I still separate them into two parts, though. Call A1) my proposed solution to a):
A1) For the duration of the scenario, divide pres into a personal prestige (PP) and faction prestige (FP). (Later, they will be converted into normal pres again). FP can only be gained by winning scenarios or holding flag planets for a long time. PP gain works the same way as normal pres gain. At the end of the game, each faction has therefore a score of FP, and each player has a score of PP. The conversion to normal prestige works like this: Take the total of all PP of a faction and call it TPP. Now each player gains exactly as much prestige, as his contribution to the win was:
pres = old pres + FP * (PP/TPP)
Lets clarify this with a simple example. Suppose ICC has managed to win and got 10k FP for that. ICC consisted of 6 players. One player was constantly afk, so he got 0 PP. One player made an enormous effort at building, attacking, whatever, so he got 1000 PP. Lastly, the other four players played quite alright, gaining 250 PP. Total PP is thus 2000. How much does each person gain?
Player 1: 10 000 * (0 / 2000) = 0
Player 2: 10 000 * (1000 / 2000) = 5000
Players 3-6: 10 000 * (250 / 2000) = 1250
This increases the incentive to go for the win, because if the team does not win (or hold flag planets for a while, this would need to be figured out still), there is no pres gain.
Now obviously, this is not well balanced out. For example, suppose the opposing faction was just a single player who got left by all his teammates in the first 5 mins. Then the FP should be much lower. There would need to be some way of making FP depend on how many players joined each faction for how long, how close the win was, how much pres the members on each side had, etc.. But I believe this can be figured out!
The result: We would finally have some intense battles on the scenario server. This makes it also more fun for beginners because stronger players have a big incentive to make them useful during the scenario by giving them orders. In return, the beginners notice that they can contribute something for the team victory.
Now stay tuned for the second part in which this system will be applied to the MV. Please discuss! (If these ideas are not all that new, please ignore them, don't hit me, I could not find them!)
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Sops
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 07, 2004
Posts: 490
| Posted: 2010-08-03 03:46
Big battles happen, they just do not happen as much as would be preferred.
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Shigernafy
Admiral
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 5726
From: The Land of Taxation without Representation
| Posted: 2010-08-03 05:15
I don't know that it would necessarily lead to more epic battles. More likely, it would result in more tranny rushes.
Also, with some ship types not having very rapid prestige gain (interdictors, scouts, etc), scaling your team pres based on your personal pres gain just further disadvantages those support roles.
Plus, that's a lot of calculations and complication..
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2010-08-03 05:25
Actually the small credit reward might be something. LOL.
Say... 100 credits for each scen win. 
Thing is that it might make everyone go play Scen for the Cred prizes, possibly affecting the MV population.
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Vice Admiral Onassi
Vice Admiral
Joined: March 20, 2010
Posts: 44
From: Bridge of the Hot Needle of Inquiry
| Posted: 2010-08-03 06:39
You know, for a noob hes got some great ideas. +1
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Forger of Destiny
Chief Marshal
We Kick Arse
Joined: October 10, 2009
Posts: 826
| Posted: 2010-08-03 09:34
Why does everyone care for scenario sooo much more than MV...
As for the suggestion, it is self-sufficient in itself, in that it urges players to go fight. But the goal itself is flawed, with the easiest and superefficient method being transport rush. The suggested ideas work only if developers manage to include new scenario goals, in the patch coming Two Weeks™ from now...
As for the credit rewards and providing incentive to buy them:-
- The Beta Profile Transfer link now automatically sets your 'Credits' to 20,000 regardless of its true value. - Shigernafy, DevLog.
[ This Message was edited by: Dr. Michael Paradox on 2010-08-03 09:35 ]
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globaliner
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: July 30, 2010
Posts: 3
| Posted: 2010-08-03 17:54
ok, thank you for your first reactions. Here some further remarks.
Tranny Rushes
I was noob enough not to know about tranny rushing (good that I mentioned this early on in the last post, so I am excused). I checked it out and don't find it too overpowering in scenario unless one of the teams falls asleep.
1) A well cooperating team should first of all scout enough to know whether the enemy is going for something like this during midgame. If they don't, it is their own fault and they deserve the loss. Making prestige gain dependent on the win will force players to constantly stay engaged in battle. If you leave the enemy 5 minutes on his own, he might have exactly the tranny rush going that makes you loose. But this makes it rather more exciting!
2) Players may need to keep close to their main planets in the beginning of the game to fend off as many transports as possible when incoming and may need to start off with more troops placed on a planet, making economic development slower. They may need to keep transports ready to counterdrop. Again, if they are stupid enough not to, it is their own fault.
3) I also heard that the admins might make tranny rushing harder? Then the problem is solved by itself. Indeed, I think this is a balancing question that will need to be adressed separately.
I think even if a lot of strategies in scenario will be about how to get the transport to the enemy planet, the scenarios would still be more intense and more exciting. The main reason being that you constantly need to stay awake and ahead of the opponent to win any prestige. I totally agree with Michael Paradox, introducing different scenario goals would also solve this problem.
Slow Prestige Gain
The slow prestige gain of scouts and interdictors is a problem, although this problem is not intensified by paying the prestige only out if the team wins. Instead, the problem is less severe for the following reason: If currently nobody plays those roles it has hardly any effect on the prestige gain of the players. But under the new system suppose that one team takes turns in those roles while the other does not. It should then have a sufficient advantage to win the game. So players better learn quickly to take turns in these roles or they will not gain any prestige at all (Remember, PP and FP are not payed out, they are only used to calculate the new prestige).
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Antra
Admiral
Agents
Joined: February 16, 2002
Posts: 657
From: Grand Rapids, Michigan
| Posted: 2010-08-03 18:08
I don't mean to impinge upon your noobness, but you do have a couple of very well-reasoned posts under your belt. Since you have all of two posts, that's high praise. 
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Katejina
Grand Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: February 13, 2010
Posts: 73
From: katejina
| Posted: 2010-08-03 18:49
Quote:
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On 2010-08-03 09:34, Dr. Michael Paradox wrote:
Why does everyone care for scenario sooo much more than MV...
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MV is great and better than Scen in my opinion for battles and pres but I still want to play other factions every now and then and Scen is good for that.
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SpaceAdmiral
Grand Admiral
Joined: May 05, 2010
Posts: 1005
| Posted: 2010-08-04 12:26
credit rewards might hamper what little income ds has
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mandalore river
1st Rear Admiral
Joined: July 22, 2010
Posts: 95
From: port angeles, washington, earth, sol, milkyway
| Posted: 2010-08-04 14:29
Quote:
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On 2010-08-03 06:39, Captain Killstuff wrote:
You know, for a noob hes got some great ideas. +1
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i agree
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2010-08-04 16:15
Credits won't be awarded for anything. You purchase them, that's how it works.
As far as incentive to do anything, at some point we're changing how the planetary system works within DS. It will be rolled out over a period of time, but with it should come some interesting and welcome benefits to a stale system.
Scenario support on the dev team is mostly dropped, and past writing some flavour text and trying to make it not crash once a day, we're not working on making the game more scenario-based. Instead, we're trying to bring elements of scenario into the MV that players seem to like (fast paced action, etc); the planetary changes are just part of this. This should result in us making the majority of players happy (although as you understand, you cannot make everyone happy all the time).
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globaliner
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: July 30, 2010
Posts: 3
| Posted: 2010-08-05 06:02
Thanks for all the posts! I am very excited about this, because in many games it is quite rare that developers answer posts of people with only two posts (Update: It is no. 3 now).
Thanks also to those that have cheered for these two posts, haha. I have to admit though, that I deal with incentive systems quite a lot on my job.
Quote:
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On 2010-08-04 16:15, BackSlash wrote:
Credits won't be awarded for anything. You purchase them, that's how it works.
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Yes, as I expressed, I think it would only draw funds away to finance the game.
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As far as incentive to do anything, at some point we're changing how the planetary system works within DS. It will be rolled out over a period of time, but with it should come some interesting and welcome benefits to a stale system....
...Instead, we're trying to bring elements of scenario into the MV that players seem to like (fast paced action, etc); the planetary changes are just part of this.
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Sounds great! Is all this basically fully designed such that it will only need to be implemented? Or are you guys still taking suggestions? If the latter is the case, could you give some hints where suggestions/discussion should take off? For example, what the goal of these changes should be and what are no-no's that would never be changed?
The reason why I ask is that it might not be very helpful if I developed some incentive ideas like the one above for MV and then the following week there is a new update... To solve the problem in MV is way harder than in scenario, so it would take quite some time to think that through.
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Azreal
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
| Posted: 2010-08-05 06:23
Im not sure what you are looking for, tbh. Epic battles? Almost every K'Luth on at any given time is engaged in the battlezone(s) when I play.
Plan attacks? You are new. We do that all the time. Maybe it's just a K'Luth thing, but to say that is to further the so-called myth that K'Luth uses tactics and the other factions do not.
Im also against ANYTHING that gives out free credits. It is the base for income now, and that must be limited.
As far as scenario and winning....I admit it. It is horrible in there. Players develop these stupid truces and side rules (example: dont attack engies.)
Personally I ignore truces and any rules that are not in the RoC. Especially in scenario. It developes bad habits in players, leads to more QQ down the road when they hit the MV and cant fight their way out of a paper bag, and it is basically really poor gamesmanship.
Yes, thats right POOR gamesmanship.
Go play tic-tac-toe or paper-rock-scissors if you want that kind of an experience. But dont walk into a "mmo" and tell people they cant attack an enemy. That's just plain immature.
Personally, I think it should be against the RoC and violators modsmacked, but that's just my opinion.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2010-08-05 08:59
The only kind of truces that aren't allowed are mutual prestige gain truces.
What's nice is if you want to attack engineers in scenario, you can. It happens all the time in fact. With AI orders it's not nearly as annoying as it used to be to be attacked in an engineer. People will probably yell at you, but there's no rule against it.
(remember when engineers could effectively defend themselves vs frigates?)
I always felt scenario embodied the core of DS more than MV. You have to do everything in scenario, from capping planets to building them from scratch to defending them. That's the heart of DS.
MV on the other hand is mostly about ship combat. There's not much planet capping going on and building is almost always fixing planets. It's really missing a few key game play elements. I dare any new player to earn his transport and engineering badges in MV. That doesn't mean scenario is for new players to earn badges, it means MV is missing key game play elements. It's too focused on ship combat without any need to go capping or building.
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