6 replies to this topic

[Kobold]

So I was inspired by something posted in another thread, where someone stated that they believed all battles would be "faction battles" with terrain able to change hands. I don't know if this is true or not, but it inspired this thread.

Assume the following are true:

1) Every battle, including random public ones, have the chance to cause territory to change hands (or have an impact on territory changing hands, even if that means it requires 50 wins to take a planet)

2) Every battle will be some kind of faction v. faction, with lone wolves used to fill in on whichever team needs an extra player or three.

3) There will be SOME KIND of matchmaking balancing that may or may not take into account some combination of tonnage, BV, and player skill/experience.

4) There is nothing preventing players from joining whatever faction they want (clans excepted, of course).


So all that being assumed, what happens if one faction happens to be loaded up with a lot of good players, while another is full of bad players and is constantly getting hammered and losing planets? Should matchmaking take this into account and start "handicapping" games, giving a losing faction more weight on their side, or higher BV totals, to prevent a weak faction from getting mauled?

We see in many other games boom and bust cycles where one faction in PvP gets beaten down, then players flea that faction, making the problem even worse. Sometimes players looking for a challenge with switch into it, but that isn't always guaranteed.

Is the faction boom and bust cycle bad? Should it be avoided? Should there be systems in place to prevent it?

Speculation is welcome, but I am mainly curious about people's opinions just from an ideal game design standpoint.

[Redshift2k5]

Well, I think the merc corps will have a higher-than-average player skill, and I think they'll use the mercs to buffer weaker houses so all the great houses have more equalized standing.

If a House is weaker, then that's the house that will be sending contracts to the merc corps to fight for them.

[Carl Wrede]

Try this thread, its already discussed a lot: http://mwomercs.com/...quest-politics/

[Kobold]

Redshift2k5, on 06 June 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Well, I think the merc corps will have a higher-than-average player skill, and I think they'll use the mercs to buffer weaker houses so all the great houses have more equalized standing.

If a House is weaker, then that's the house that will be sending contracts to the merc corps to fight for them.

So rather than using matchmaking at the lower level, you would recommend trying to use the mercenary system at the higher level to functionally bolster the faction population's skill? Interesting way to handle it! That keeps the individual matches "fair".

Of course this also includes assumptions about how mercenaries work, but seeing as my entire OP is based on assumptions, I can't blame you.

Carl Wrede, on 06 June 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Try this thread, its already discussed a lot: http://mwomercs.com/...quest-politics/

A quick glance through that thread did not reveal anything about matchmaking or player skill, but I may have missed it.

Edit: I also love how the server software automatically combines multiple posts for me!

[Carl Wrede]

Its a general discussion of the planetary "metagame" where this topic belongs.

[Kobold]

I disagree. Lumping everything that is vaguely related into fewer threads is counterproductive, and makes it difficult to discuss any specific aspect of an issue in detail. If no one is interested in this topic, that's fine. It will just drift off the front page and be forgotten, just like my anthropomorphic Atlas/Battlemaster erotic fanfiction.

[Murphy7]

I kind of had the Starfleet Battles 3 hex-flipping mechanic in mind, and I can appreciate some of the issues.

Slow though it might be, could one player's focus on missions on a particular planet for a specific faction alone contribute significantly to the turnover in territory?

Could a well organized group of players "blitz" missions in a location and force turnover quickly? How quickly?

I want the dynamic universe, it is a significant selling point for me, but how it is attenuated to play does concern me.