Fixing the "Slippery slope"

Discussion in 'Game Play' started by Omneh, Aug 25, 2009.

  1. -=SIP=-

    -=SIP=- Member

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    I totally agree with FN198.
    The games where one team seems to be in front but the other team had a comeback because of teamwork are mostly the best games.
     
  2. Sheepe

    Sheepe Member

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    Which is why we should probably encourage that a bit more. I haven't played one of those in quite a while (Escort excluded)
     
  3. Empty

    Empty Member

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    We definitely need a way to continue research without a radar or cash, because nothing decides a match more than research.
    If you lose a radar and don't get a new one fast enough you will lose the game, any other setback can come back, but not research.
     
  4. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    while i see your point, this isnt fully true.

    upkeep would cripple you as long as you have much assets. lets assume a simplyfied radical version, each tank cost you 10% of your income to field them (for whatever reason, to run their engines, i actually dont care ...)
    anyway. a team that has a good portion of the map might be able to field more tanks, but they completely lose their income, which cripples their ability to reseach. while the other team, that only owns one ref but no tanks, still has income that they can spend.
    i think it still would mainly harm the early game.
    having no refinary should cost you the game. i have no doubts about this.

    but tbh, im not sure if the refinary system really needs a change at all. i think the main reason why its impossible to make a decent comeback is because tanks currently are too overpowered against their infantry counter.

    tanks might cost resources, but in the end they give you mega health, red armor, quad damage and haste. just to use a quake allegory ...
    dont you think that this is the real imbalanced by design?
     
  5. Beerdude26

    Beerdude26 OnThink(){ IsDownYet(); }

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    Tanks are indeed a very strong unit, but I don't feel the number of tanks on the battlefield should be limited by your upkeep possibilities. Instead, you should be able to gradually build up your tank count. I feel that the "refineries give less the more you have of them" concept works well to flatten out ridiculous resource bonuses, but still give an incentive to capture the remaining refineries.
     
  6. Empty

    Empty Member

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    I still say research is the biggest factor.

    Maybe STD needs to be buffed up to about 60% of upgraded gears power, up from like 20%, since it just gets rolled by everything else.
     
  7. Sheepe

    Sheepe Member

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    Maybe we should test out all of these ideas as they are so wide ranging it is extremely hard to theorize about their effects?
     
  8. Beerdude26

    Beerdude26 OnThink(){ IsDownYet(); }

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    I've programmed the recycling ability and should be in the current SVN. I may implement the other things later, but as this is just for testing and not final in any way, I'm first going to finish up other coding stuff.
     
  9. bokan

    bokan Member

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    Many of these ideas would only serve to prolong the defeat of the losing team, thus encouraging hour long turtles and revive-fests.

    In lieu of some of the economic limitations (I do agree with some amount of diminishing returns, however), I think that having cheaper and faster research for the losing team would make the games both more dynamic and less easily decided.


    also:

    might these be things that server operators can test out with the new scripting system?
     
  10. Beerdude26

    Beerdude26 OnThink(){ IsDownYet(); }

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    Actually, we're trying to prevent reaching that stage. True, games will probably be longer than before, forcing people to rely more on good use of strategy, research and teamwork than all-out firepower. However, when teams start researching superweapons such as nukes, rails, HE-arty etc, one team will gain the upper hand nonetheless.
    That seems a rather cheap way to 'balance' a losing team. The 'diminishing returns'-concept would be a much better approach to making the losing team not lose so much (relatively speaking).

    Me and Kylegar never discussed combining the two, but if I finish the other things before release, I guess you could :p
     
  11. -=SIP=-

    -=SIP=- Member

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    But don't forget that most teams fails because the other team is just better.
    And if you help the failing team they will not suddenly have better teamwork or be more skilled.
     
  12. Beerdude26

    Beerdude26 OnThink(){ IsDownYet(); }

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    Well I'm not trying to help shitty teams, I'm trying to fix the (lack of a) slippery slope :p
     
  13. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    my 10% per tank example was only simplified approch to make a point. 100% upkeep would be redicolous ... also i think every building, tank, whatsoever should add a bit too upkeep. but there is no need to reach 100%.
    have a look at WC3 most of the time you play on low upkeep, having a small strikeforce. and you only move into high upkeep for your final push.
    i think stealing ideas from blizzard isnt all that bad, they really know what theyre doing. here is a description in case you never player warcraft 3.

    also i really appreciat that you want to try it out :D
     
  14. Mr. Weedy

    Mr. Weedy I will report bugs on the bug tracker

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    Proper vehicle restricting would solve this.

    Have a list of all vehicles, unavailable ones are greyed out.

    Take "anyone can build" tick away from the heavy tank, and problem solved. Now the noobs can build only meds and lts. (If team had lts, meds and heavies.)

    This way comm doesn't need to all the time restrict unrestrict the VF so certain persons could build their tank.

    You call getting paper heavies with standard engine doing better than the enemy which has reactive armor, 3 phase and meds?
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2009
  15. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    You know damn well what I was discussing so don't prick about.
     
  16. spellman23

    spellman23 Member

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    Here's the thing. We can theorize and hash out basic ideas much easier than coding and trying them out.

    Granted, going so far as to theorycraft (i.e. postulating the random edge cases that no one cares about without any solid evidence) is poor and should be avoided. However, basic balance theory can be applied and help hash out the rough ideas and then we can take the best ones, run some basic tests, and see how it goes to get the details worked out.


    However, going "let's implement them ALL" is a poor choice. Waste of time and play testing.
     
  17. bokan

    bokan Member

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    Right, so what needs to happen is for us to develop two or three well-thought out and detailed models, implement them each in a test build, and see what does the most to improve the gameplay.

    I'd like to help with this but I don't have any idea how to get to the code; can anybody point me in the right direction?
     
  18. spellman23

    spellman23 Member

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    Talk to the devs. MOOTant, Kane (not to be confused with KaneTW), and Brutos are some of them.


    Probably the best choice is for the devs to pick one, maybe two, and stick with it until all the bugs are out. This kind of core element has to be intrinsic to the game. Granted, some of the ideas are predicated on certain features that can be re-used in other ideas, so may be good to implement along the way anyways.

    Worst case, next release takes much longer and we have vestigial code. It's the vestigial code I'm more worried about.
     
  19. RoboTek

    RoboTek Member

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    I am going to explain the problem, bare with me here this is going into technical details a little bit.

    So, we have empires gameplay. It looks a little something like follows.

    [​IMG]

    Territory Advantage
    Now then, when you capture more territory, this means that the enemy has less an area that they need to cover, so they have less of an area that the same number of people need to defend. This means it is harder to take territory and while games don't really end immediately when one side gets an advantage. It changes quickly, and while gaining or losing territory takes time, it effectively takes no time to cut your losses and dig in. If you were doing things right, it probably took no effort at all.

    Tanks
    You can field tanks. They cost money. They let you take more territory. Like digging in, this is also a transitory advantage and can be lost as soon as you screw something up.

    Research
    You research things and improve your tanks, and effectively your overall ability to fight. This is NOT transitory and investments stay with you the entire game. This means this is a delay strong effect, and it can only go up. It is limited by time, but not tremendously by money. If you have the money to fight you have the money to research.

    Income
    Income comes with territory. It is transitory, though most of its effects (research) are not. Likewise you can save money for future investment.


    As with the model above, there is a slippery-slope in gameplay, where the positive feedback loops from winning kick in, and unless the enemy team takes them out, one side will generally quickly grow strong enough to win.

    Now, this is mitigated by a few things, because that team is more effective (they are defending a smaller area), they need a little less money to get by. The problem is that this just drags out already long games with a single clear victor. There is no good way to go outside the conquest-cycle to achieve victory.

    Compare this to UT conquest.

    [​IMG]

    In UT, there is less of an advantage from winning, and that advantage is entirely transitory. Likewise the defensive benefits are often less significant. This leads to potentially quick wins and turnarounds. There is nothing like research that enables a team to be certain of victory after the tipping point. In a normal FPS it is even more extreme.

    [​IMG]

    The scores are completely independent. One team simply wins or loses on its own, it just because less likely as their enemies are ahead in points.


    The point of this

    There needs to be one of the following things to make empires gameplay have comebacks that are realistically possible.

    1: A more aggressive advantage for defenders fighting tanks without tanks. Combined with a cheaper, faster, alternate research path or a more significant limit on the advantages of research.

    2: A realistic way to heavily threaten or kill the enemy command vehicle, behinds enemy lines, while at a technological disadvantage. This used to be the case with 9-mines, but has decreased dramatically. This could even be true if they had to abandon defense to pull it off, but it would need a real chance of success.

    3: An upkeep cost on all vehicles, limiting the ability for a team to dominate with them. Realistically, this is a poor solution but I am pretty sure it does the job.

    4: Having total research be limited by time, rather than taking time. This would mean that not researching would not be as huge a disadvantage. Instead, players could research the technology "instantly" later if they ever made even a small comeback. i.e. biotech takes 4 RP, and you receive an RP every 30 seconds regardless of the status of your radar or funding.

    5: Anything else that you guys can think of that provides negative feedback (goal-seeking feedback). That is to say, anything that brings players closer to 'the middle' whether it is a tax on those doing well or an automatic salary paid evenly to all players.
     
  20. RoboTek

    RoboTek Member

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    On a side-note, photobucket ate the + and - signs for the positive and negative feedback loops when it made it a jpg, but you should be able to figure out what's what.
     

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