Delaying a clear victory.

Discussion in 'General' started by VulcanStorm, Oct 12, 2016.

  1. VulcanStorm

    VulcanStorm Developer Staff Member Moderator

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    So there is this problem with all multiplayer games. And that is:

    "When one team has achieved a clear victory, but they choose to delay the end of the game."

    This plagues all games. Particularly empires. And it causes players on the losing side to leave and promotes "griefing" on the losing team. Either one of these results are bad for a server, as both result in a worse gameplay experience, thus players leave the game.

    Admit it; we've all been in situations where the enemy team has basically won, you are backed into the corner of the map. And the enemy chooses to play passively and kill you without actually winning.

    So what can we do to stop this, and end games faster with no delaying?

    I have a few ideas...

    1- INCENTIVISE WINNING.
    make the winning team "want" to end the game, this requires winning to have a larger reward than just scoring points.


    2- LOSERS RESIGNATION
    this is the losers accepting a loss, with the intention of playing another round. However no players get a reward from this. The idea being that the next game is more rewarding of an expeienxe for all parties involved.
    (Note: no-one won, one team quit)


    3- SUDDEN DEATH
    This is when the losers make a last ditch attempt to sieze victory, hoping the game will end swiftly. This is a desirable outcome as in either result, the game ends.
    result a - the losing team siezes victory. Game ends.
    result b - the losing team fail to sieze victory and in doing so, force the winning team to win a sudden death victory. Game ends.



    However... Many times option 3 is executed incorrectly and does not force a victory, as the losing team didn't go all out and so still provide a "challenge" for the winning team, this does however make it far easier for the winning team to end the game.

    Any more ideas??? (And how would they work)

    Disclaimer: in certain circumstances (training games), deliberate delaying is perfectly acceptable as it is beneficial to the overall health of the game (don't stomp new players).
     
  2. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Right after I made that post, well here it is again because it's more relevant here.

    I still think the reason we have so much that turtle business and last stands that last for ever is because we really only have 2 win conditions, kill all spawns and players(I've seen this happen like once legitimately) and kill the cv. Have a bunch of long posts over here https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/changing-the-win-condition.19224/

    To me giving a few other win conditions would seriously help things lasting forever because 80% of the time there's no comeback from certain things, the main one getting pushed back into your base. Sure it can feel all nice and stuff when you can break out of that, but most of the time that's solely cause random (good)vet joined team to turn things around or research(usually heavies) is finished and suddenly heavy push out of no wheres. People like that notion of never give up, but there will always be something off to me if you were losing the entire time and suddenly you come back from the dead, I mean retaking the map not ninjas.

    Quite honestly empires is at its peak when frontlines and battles shift rapidly, where base swaps are a common occurrence, like this one game of duststorm I had and changed sides with be 3 times, great stuff. Stalemates aren't so fun and that's what that last stand really is, one side can't make that final push and the other has no real good way of getting out of base(this is map dependent but usually true). So moving out of long ass last stands in to round where peak empires, the best empires, can be had should be done.
     
  3. ScardyBob

    ScardyBob Member

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    There was a server in NS2 that had something like this for their surrender plugin. It worked like this:
    • Team 1 votes to surrender
    • Team 2 has to kill the enemy hive/cc (i.e. CV) in 2min, but Team 1 can no longer do any damage to Team 2 players
    • If Team 2 doesn't win in 2min, Team 1 wins
    It was nice because it required the non-surrendering team (Team 2) to still have to achieve the primary win condition (i.e. kill the CV), but still gave Team 1 a chance at victory if Team 2 was wasting time and messing around. In Empires, I'd up the time limit to something like 5 or 10 min, but I think it would help in these situation.
     
  4. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    You know what would be nice, when you build 3-5 monument like in age of empires you win. If you can hold them another x minutes.
     
  5. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    We can always learn from other games.
    In League of Legends there are 2 ways implemented to "soft-force" the winning team to close the game ASAP, or they might end up losing the game.

    1: Much, much longer respawn time in late game. (~5 secs for the first 5 minutes, ~70 secs at 45+ minutes)
    This actually speeds up the game in general, the losing team would lose even faster.
    You can play around with the losing team for as long as you like, but if they manage to catch your mistakes in late-game(35+ mins), it can be instant-gg.
    Imagine in Empires your entire team is dead for 60 secs, enemy can just rush CV.

    Now, I don't think we need 5~70 secs respawn time, maybe 7~15 secs would do.
    Yes, I think early game respawn time should be faster, 10 secs is a little too long.

    2: Both teams would eventually reach a point where they all have "full items" and that means they are all equal, this usually happens at 50~60 minutes.
    Imagine in Empires the losing team can pump out as much heavy tank as the winning team at 60 minutes.
    I am not sure how this should be implemented in Empires, though.
     
  6. Donald Trump

    Donald Trump Member

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    *cough cough* Counterable research ended games quick.
     
  7. Señor_Awesome

    Señor_Awesome Member

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    I think this problem stems from our combination of RTS/FPS. True FPS games have an easy time with game endings, having a much better idea of how long a round 'should' take. Some balancing of ticket counts and done, whammo, ~15 minute rounds. Extra bonus add some capture points with ticket bleed to make a winning team win faster to further reduce time for a round to take when the victor is obvious.

    But in Empires the RTS factor and varying map sizes means a game can last 10 minutes... or 3 hours - and all of that gameplay may be meaningful. So in an RTS when one side is clearly losing they more often than not give up, gg no problem. But uh oh, we have 15 infantrymen and 9 of them think they're doing quite well, killing dudes and building things and they don't feel like they should surrender.

    So how do you reconcile these two things? You need a way for games to end that don't
    1. Dissatisfy commander since game was still going strong but tickets ran out
    2. Dissatisfy players who thought they were doing fine

    I... don't have an answer. I think the answer may come from more closely analyzing the situation when we feel like a surrender is necessary or that a game has started to drag past the point of necessity.

    I wonder how often a significant resource/total team net worth advantage correlates to these situations. If it does, maybe a ticket drain based on this factor could help. The annoyance there is, the ticket counts per map are not standardized in any way.
     
  8. Donald Trump

    Donald Trump Member

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    Make Surrender IN THE GAME ITSELF rather than a plugin.

    Have the commander initiate it. Have a popup show up that is in the way so new people are FORCED to acknowledge it.
     
  9. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    It was clearly this and not the 100 other things at the time that helped fights end. Totally just counterable research, nothing else contributed to it.
     
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  10. Donald Trump

    Donald Trump Member

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    It sure as hell helped. Com armor was weak to something and enemy tanks were weak so they didnt survive as long meaning end games went fairly quick.
     
  11. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    Heres an idea on how to make people seal the deal... make it more possible to have a comeback, reduce slippery slope early game but make it big late game.
     
  12. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    AGE OF EMPIRES MONUMENTS!
     
  13. Neoony

    Neoony Member

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    Damn, thats better than aircrafts.
    Why did noone ever suggested monuments? xD (wonders)
     
  14. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    Wouldnt that add another layer to the game? having to defend your base when you get your monument up or 2 or 3 of em. Super low hp, but takes atleast 3000 engi no rep calculator points to build.
     
  15. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Comm armors weren't weak to a specfic thing, they were just weak. So counter research means nothing here.

    Tanks could die pretty fast from 2.4-2.5 barring compo which was intended to be awesome, again it wasn't really counter heavy. This is to say there's nothing stopping someone from changing tanks to be weaker right now without going into counters.
     
  16. Neoony

    Neoony Member

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    I wonder how limiting the vehicle numbers and/or reducing res would affect this issue. (which was being quite demanded recently)

    I think I would actually prefer people camping vf than this...long stale games (if that would help)

    :grinimp:
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2016
  17. Neoony

    Neoony Member

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    Oh, I just realized that we already had a "monument" in empires and it was called Hobbes.
    It had one difference though, it kept running away from your base straight onto enemy turrets :grinimp::grinnf:
     
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  18. VulcanStorm

    VulcanStorm Developer Staff Member Moderator

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    There are some worthwhile suggestions here... Keep them coming.

    The intention was to ensure games end promptly, so that the final win is not delayed due to selfish behaviour.

    But also the idea is to keep the game fun for both teams...
     
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  19. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    If u upgrade your radar to a lighthouse you get super extended radar tech and if enemh doesnt destroy it in next 5-10 minutes they lose
     
  20. LordDz_2

    LordDz_2 Strange things happens here

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    How to win pub games:
    Make wonder building.
    Wait 10 minutes.
    Win.

    Team is surprised and asks if their team or the enemy team won.
     
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