| Author |
Switching from numeric to percentile prestige tracking. |
HellGremlin
Cadet
Joined: June 24, 2003
Posts: 91
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
|  Posted: 2003-07-05 16:18
Darkspace is suffering. New players that come in are immediately driven away by the saturation of the community by high ranking players. There are fleets made up of 90% Fleet Admirals, numbering dozens of members, making the Metaverse a thoroughly un-appealing prospect for players like myself - I will not set foot anywhere near the MV, as well as many others.
Those that stay, leave when they see the high level of bad sportsmanship in game - people self-destruct out of spite and malice, others commit acts of fratricide with little concern.
The problem with this?
Prestige gain and prestige loss are not correctly balanced.
The penalties for certain acts and mistakes are TOO SMALL. A person does not hesitate to self-destruct, ever... nor does he hesitate to attack a player on his team if he feels that he can get away with it. To some of these Fleet Admirals, crashing a Station into a planet or self-destructing it is something to laugh about, completely going out of the RPG vein Darkspace tries to fit itself into. In the real world, I don't know of any Admirals that get their jollies by condemning a crew of thousands to unnecessary death because 'huhuhu my dreadnought blowed up pretty'. The penalty for acts like these is meager, so much so that a FA could spend a whole day self-destructing and still be able to fly Dreadnoughts.
The penalties for certain acts should detract a percentile value from a player's prestige score, NOT a set numeric. So that no matter what rank you are at, self-destructing or FF-killing will cost you a sizeable chunk of prestige. Death should also be feared and avoided, after all losing a ship and crew isn't something that looks good on a captain's record. Here's some ideas:
- Self-Destructing your ship causes an automatic 10% deduction of your Prestige score. Your direct action, not that of your enemy, condemned your crew to death - as someone said in an earlier post, a Captain scuttling his ship without due reason (and no, "I'm about to get killed" is NOT A REASON) would meet with a court martial.
- Friendly Fire - in addition to the penalty incurred by FF points - causes an automatic 10% reduction in a player's prestige if the player kills a friendly vessel. Commencing fire doesn't incur the penalty, only destruction of a friendly vessel.
- Death. This should have penalties based on ship class, to make sure people are smarter about things like throwing Stations away for kicks. The graduated penalties look like this:
Dying in anything smaller than a Destroyer (includes light Engineers, light Supplies, Frigs, Scouts, etc) incurs a 1% Prestige loss.
Dying in anything Cruiser-weight (also includes advanced Engineers, advanced Supplies) incurs a 2% Prestige loss.
Dying in a Dreadnought incurs 3% Prestige loss.
Dying in a Station, 5% Prestige loss.
Why am I suggesting these things? Because these suggestions would balance the un-controlled gain in prestige Darkspace has suffered from since it's beginnings. A year ago when I played, I foresaw that in as much time, there would be too many Fleet Admirals to make the game playable for any potential newcomers - now, here we are.
Do something about it.
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'Good day, gentlemen. Time to die.' - Attributed to Warmaster
Harlan Stratholme of the UGTO Strategic Command at the Battle
of Procyon, 2267.
[ This Message was edited by: HellGremlin on 2003-07-05 16:23 ]
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'Good day, gentlemen. Time to die.' - Attributed to Warmaster
Harlan Stratholme of the UGTO Strategic Command at the Battle
of Procyon, 2267.
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Strategery
Grand Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: December 07, 2002
Posts: 522
From: Straight Outta Boston!
| Posted: 2003-07-05 16:38
Normally, I would delete this post. However, I'll use it as a warning instead:
Be nice - if you feel like being insulting, we will happily make it impossible for you to post for a day or so.
[ This Message was edited by: Shigernafy on 2003-07-05 16:58 ]
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Pope
Fleet Admiral
Joined: June 11, 2002
Posts: 2449
From: World of tomorrow
| Posted: 2003-07-05 16:47
Someone who has achieve the Rank of Fleet Admiral should be more competent then somone who is a 1RA.
If he is not, or acts stupidly out of other reasons, the game engine should penalize him.
now shoot that down.
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HellGremlin
Cadet
Joined: June 24, 2003
Posts: 91
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
| Posted: 2003-07-05 16:48
Good counter-argument.
_________________
'Good day, gentlemen. Time to die.' - Attributed to Warmaster
Harlan Stratholme of the UGTO Strategic Command at the Battle
of Procyon, 2267.
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Barthezzz
Fleet Admiral
Joined: May 31, 2001
Posts: 5630
From: The Netherlands
| Posted: 2003-07-05 17:18
Quote:
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On 2003-07-05 16:18, HellGremlin wrote:
The penalties for certain acts should detract a percentile value from a player's prestige score, NOT a set numeric. So that no matter what rank you are at, self-destructing or FF-killing will cost you a sizeable chunk of prestige. Death should also be feared and avoided, after all losing a ship and crew isn't something that looks good on a captain's record. Here's some ideas:
- Self-Destructing your ship causes an automatic 10% deduction of your Prestige score. Your direct action, not that of your enemy, condemned your crew to death - as someone said in an earlier post, a Captain scuttling his ship without due reason (and no, "I'm about to get killed" is NOT A REASON) would meet with a court martial.
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I agree with the suggestion BUT its much easier to just disable SDing if your ships central computer doesnt see a reason.
For example, enemy inf onboard stealing Tech would be a reason.
SDing to prevent getting a "Death stat" wouldnt be.
Quote:
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On 2003-07-05 16:18, HellGremlin wrote:
- Friendly Fire - in addition to the penalty incurred by FF points - causes an automatic 10% reduction in a player's prestige if the player kills a friendly vessel. Commencing fire doesn't incur the penalty, only destruction of a friendly vessel.
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Big no here. 99 out of 100 FF kills are by accident. The Admins can punnish this 1 guy when he gets reported. No need to punnish the 99 others for lag/Moving allies/etc
Quote:
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On 2003-07-05 16:18, HellGremlin wrote:
- Death. This should have penalties based on ship class, to make sure people are smarter about things like throwing Stations away for kicks. The graduated penalties look like this:
Dying in anything smaller than a Destroyer (includes light Engineers, light Supplies, Frigs, Scouts, etc) incurs a 1% Prestige loss. (1% is good.)
Dying in anything Cruiser-weight (also includes advanced Engineers, advanced Supplies) incurs a 2% Prestige loss. (Make it 1.5%)
Dying in a Dreadnought incurs 2% Prestige loss. (Make it 2%)
Dying in a Station, 5% Prestige loss. (Make it 2.5% - 1000 Press for an FA)
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Read the text thats written like this for my comment 
My 2 Cents.
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Firekka
Fleet Admiral
Joined: October 27, 2002
Posts: 285
| Posted: 2003-07-05 17:35
I kinda wonder how this links to the MV? FA doesn't have any FA's in it? People dont SD in FA? And how do you know MV is so bad if you dont set foot in it?
Personally i think you are a pres farming FA player that cannot accept other players have higher press then you, after all you are l33t 
Balancing pres loss is a good thing but if you would take a percentage i think it will scare both new and old players. At some point it would be too "expensive" for FA's to fly around
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HellGremlin
Cadet
Joined: June 24, 2003
Posts: 91
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
| Posted: 2003-07-05 18:00
I don't farm (or care for) pres. I play this game mostly for kills.
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'Good day, gentlemen. Time to die.' - Attributed to Warmaster
Harlan Stratholme of the UGTO Strategic Command at the Battle
of Procyon, 2267.
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warren
Grand Admiral
Joined: April 18, 2002
Posts: 312
From: piney point, md
| Posted: 2003-07-05 18:07
Quote:
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Dying in anything smaller than a Destroyer (includes light Engineers, light Supplies, Frigs, Scouts, etc) incurs a 1% Prestige loss.
Dying in anything Cruiser-weight (also includes advanced Engineers, advanced Supplies) incurs a 2% Prestige loss.
Dying in a Dreadnought incurs 3% Prestige loss.
Dying in a Station, 5% Prestige loss.
Why am I suggesting these things? Because these suggestions would balance the un-controlled gain in prestige Darkspace has suffered from since it's beginnings. A year ago when I played, I foresaw that in as much time, there would be too many Fleet Admirals to make the game playable for any potential newcomers - now, here we are.
Do something about it.
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ship would have to be balanced frist for somthing like this to work.
why would some one get a nice big dread with some little noob in a dessy could kill it.
why would any one get something bigger the a cruiser any more when they can lose so much pres
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NightDragon
Cadet
Joined: May 26, 2002
Posts: 893
| Posted: 2003-07-05 18:08
i dont think SDing is a problem, so what if they lose 5 more prestieg, and a change to do damage, to you.
As it is, ships are too easy to kill, as i keep saying, i dont care if tehre is - inf on my ship, being at 40% hull and all my systems at 0% im going to SD i dont care about YOUR stat, or if you say you deserve your kill, im not going to wait for some idiot to kill me, ill SD get a new ship with 100%hull and 100% systems, so i can fire once agein, by the time i repair just one system its 1 either already dead agein or it will take me at least 10 mins to be able to jump
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HMCS-Ottawa
Cadet
Joined: July 14, 2002
Posts: 56
| Posted: 2003-07-05 18:17
I say just let everyone have whatever ship they want and allow us to battle to the death. Alot of people don't play because they don't want a crappy ship and die battling a modded out dread. I takes to long to gain pres unless you sit as a supply or tranny doing missions 24/7
Pres = Bad get rid of it, allow us to use any ship we want. It would be a wicked battle then.
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Intrepid
Cadet
Joined: July 16, 2002
Posts: 87
From: Colorado
| Posted: 2003-07-05 18:43
Just because you're FA doesn't mean you're any less vulnerable to dieing, or FFing. While we try to keep these thingst to a minimum, they happen. It's a part of the game. We get new ships and then move on with our lives. The point of the game is to kill or be killed.
You also make it sound like FA's only fly stations, which is so far from the truth it's not even funny. Look at ICC, most players fly Assault Cruisers, a ship that most new playera can get. Most K'luth fly Destroyers, which even more new players can get when compared to cruisers. If new new players (those that don’t have any pres) are the players you are speaking of, they can go into the Newbie Server to build up pres until they can get these other ships.
You also say that you won't go near the MV, which makes me wonder why you play this game at all. While I realize you played this game in the earlier days, and do not know how much things have changed since then, I will say this: most every FA I've seen will at the very least help new players in the MV when they ask questions, some will even go out of their way to help them.
If any new players feel discouraged because they run into better players and quit, then I guess that's their personal choice. The others will just do what myself and hundreds others have done: work to get better.
Punishing higher-ranking players for doing things like attempting to defend against large numbers of enemies (like the situation with the K'luth, or the ICC right now), and dieing would not only be ludicrous but just plain stupid.
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[ This Message was edited by: Trep on 2003-07-05 18:44 ]
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Aspro
Cadet
Joined: April 09, 2002
Posts: 75
From: Belgium
| Posted: 2003-07-05 18:46
I play for the kills thats a nice one i play this to be killed
I
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Novacat
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 30, 2001
Posts: 2337
From: Starleague Cache
| Posted: 2003-07-05 19:01
I do notice theres an ungodly amount of fleet admirals in existance, and the rank itself isnt extremely hard to get.
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Lark of Serenity
Grand Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: June 02, 2002
Posts: 2516
| Posted: 2003-07-05 21:00
anyways, i think FA should be much harder to obtain, but have more stuff along the way to keep it interesting. people are getting FA far too fast, and end up being total n00bs flying stations around trying to justify taking over command of a fleet op.
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[ This Message was edited by: Shigernafy on 2003-07-06 05:44 ]
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JackSwift
Cadet
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: October 30, 2002
Posts: 1806
From: Where the Sun dont Shine (Seattle-ish)
| Posted: 2003-07-05 21:48
What would happen if death did incur a major penalty? People would fly ships that are hard to kill while at the same time deal tons of damage (ring any bells...? ). All I would see is a bunch of Kluth flying around everywhere. Wait a minute! That's no different than right now! *Scratches head*
Besides, this game isn't about kills. If it was, then kills would mean something other than a number on your rep. Prestige is easy to farm in this game, however. I look at some profiles and see over 70,000 prestige gained in less than 5 months. These kind of profiles usually have huge amounts of pres in two areas: Ships Damaged and Repair. Something should be done about the rate in which people can farm those areas of prestige.
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