10 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

The impossible task - how can we make capping relevant and rewarding without making it unfun. No one starts playing MW:O because standing in red squares sounds interesting to him, we're here for the battles. But still, capping exists and it can have a useful purpose, like giving incentives to both teams to split their force and protect or assault the capture point(s),so we don't just end up with 2 moving blobs.

So, here's my idea:
Instead of capping giving a fixed monetary reward, capping grants a percentage-based team reward bonus.
Everyone gets a bonus amount of money for capping equal to 25 % of the average cap reward of across team members.

That means:
If you cap rush, you get very little.
If you don't cap and duke it out you get more.
If you cap and duke it out, you get the most.


Example:
So, let's say a team finishes an Assault Mech with 6 destroyed enemy mechs by capping. On average, each team member might have earned 80,000 C-Bills. But due to win by capping, each team member gets 25 % bonus of this average value, so about 20,000 C-Bills. One player may have died early and would have only made 30,000 C-Bills, he now gets 50,000 C-Bills. Another player might have scored very well and sit at 150,000 C-Bills, he now gets 170,000 C-Bills.

Partial capping or partially gathering resources might also grant this bonus, but at a proportional lower rate. So if you won by killing the enemy team but also capped to 50 %, your team might get a 12.5 % bonus.

Now, this might still leave the poor people running around on Conquest to cap resources a bit low on cash, because they don't get kills and spot assists and thus still have a lower base reward. Maybe anyone that actively capped also gets a bonus based on how "much" he capped. So if one mech is responsible for 50 % of the capping result, he might get another 12.5 % bonus.

The result would hopefully still avoid people to just go for base rushing - because then, the average earning is just 25,000 and 6750 C-Bills more is nothing, but if the team actually fights the other team but also tried to cap, the would get a lot more...

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 21 May 2013 - 07:52 AM.

[Scromboid]

I'm not sure I get what you are saying exactly with the math, other than you want to reward me more for troll-capping.

I'm totally fine with that.

[Keifomofutu]

That's actually a very good compromise to the reward system to promote capping without promoting two minute cap trade matches. Well done. Because we've had equal rewards for two minute quick caps compared to killing all mechs and cap trades is the inevitable result.

[MustrumRidcully]

Scromboid, on 21 May 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

I'm not sure I get what you are saying exactly with the math, other than you want to reward me more for troll-capping.

I'm totally fine with that.

What do you mean with troll-capping? Getting the enemy to panic because you capped early and him rushing back his lance mates, so your team can pick them apart?

Yes, that's what I want to reward. But be careful, if everyone does it, it will get harder for you to panic the enemy, because they are used to it.

[Livewyr]

Ok, I was going to make a thread about this.. but I'll just hi-jack yours since it presents why my thread would exist in the first place.

Currently the two sides seem to be (including a straw man):

Fight to the Death, or you're a loser/troll vs. defend your base, moron, not my fault you don't want to defend.
Admittedly, I lean more towards the latter.

But at this time I'd like to pose a question:
What does assault mean? What is the spirit of an assault conflict?

Some would argue that it is to engage enemy forces to destroy them, but I'd say that is more of a Skirmish (which would be better represented by a TDM style of play)

When I think of Assault: I think of, "take the objective" and in the weird situation we're in now where both sides have an objective to take, I think "Take the objective, but protect your own at the same time."

What roles are there in this?
Attacking/Capturing and all the roles involved with that (scout, support, vanguard, flank guard etc..)
and Defending with it's roles (perimeter scout, defender)

On the mechanics side: make the base easier to defend in two ways:
Recoverable health: Make the base recover the portion of it's health decreased by an enemy mech, if one of these two things happen:
1: That mech leaves the square.
2: That mech takes an appreciable amount of damage. (we'll say cumulative 8, just to make sure some guy isn't defending a base by dragging a large laser across it.)
The base would cease losing health if a friendly mech steps on it. (Health would only be recovered by options 1 and 2)

Now since the game must reward players for appropriate play, I would propose some changes.

So what does this mean?
To promote attacking and capturing I would keep the same combat oriented rewards we have now, and add:
scouting rewards: XP/Creds for each enemy initially found (first on your team to find them) and XP/Creds for finding an enemy that hasn't been "found" or seen (by anyone on your team) in the last 40-45 seconds (that would be meaningful since a lot can happen in 45 seconds)
base capture rewards boost: XP/Creds for how much of the base capture (base health reduction) you contributed to in the end, IF the victory was by capture. (this means that if your contribution was recovered by the defenders, that XP/Creds value would go to them.)

Promoting defending should have XP/Credits bonus for:
Removing a mech's contribution (by damage, having most of the 8 damage if damaged by multiple sources)
Stopping the Base capture by standing on the base (the mech would get the XP/Cred reward that the opponents would get if he weren't there.) The more enemies on base, the more worth while putting yourself on it would be.. lets face, it can't be fun to be standing on the square taking abuse to defend the base.. get something out of it.

These things would also allow for categories for awards. (Yes, it does sound a lot like WoT.. because I really liked most of the WoT base capture mechanic)

---------------------------------

I'll save conquest for a different thread.

Edited by Livewyr, 21 May 2013 - 08:07 AM.

[Blue Footed Booby]

MustrumRidcully, on 21 May 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

What do you mean with troll-capping? Getting the enemy to panic because you capped early and him rushing back his lance mates, so your team can pick them apart?

Yes, that's what I want to reward. But be careful, if everyone does it, it will get harder for you to panic the enemy, because they are used to it.

They won't call your bluff if you aren't bluffing. Step on the cap and step off if and only if someone comes to fight you.

[MustrumRidcully]

Blue Footed Booby, on 21 May 2013 - 08:17 AM, said:

They won't call your bluff if you aren't bluffing. Step on the cap and step off if and only if someone comes to fight you.

The only unfortunate aspect is that if no noe calls the bluff, the game becomes less fun for everyone involved. It's certainly the enemies fault for not reacting, but still... It's unsatisfying. That's an issue in game design - if one valid winning strategy is less fun then then others, we need to consider how to improve the game so all valid winning strategies are equally fun.

Maybe the approach needs to be even more direct - all rewards inside the red square (and maybe a 500m radius around it) ar edoubled. Double the C-Bills and XP for kiling a capper, or killing someone while capping.

But of course, that might lead to people staying on the capture point and remove the scouting aspects. Which is another, underappreciated aspect of the game. Or maybe not "underappreciated" - because scouting is of little value on most maps, since you know wher ethe enemy is heading and what routes he can take anyway, and scouting amounts has little effect overall compared to that. The game modes and maps are not really designed to require much scouting.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 03 June 2013 - 02:27 AM.

[DeadlyNerd]

Doesn't doing damage and capping result in the most profitable win already?

The only way to fix ninja caps is to slow down cap time proportional to the number f alive enemy mechs. Done.

Thread redundant.

[HiplyRustic]

I can't see rewarding capping any more, for any reason. I see too much capsnatching© ("Capsnatch" and its derivatives are copyrighted by Rustic Rebellions Inc., all rights reserved) as it is to support rewarding the behaviour of the capsnatchers© any further. Quite frankly, if I could force my teams to do what I say I would just make a tight defensive perimeter and sit there to force the other guys to either come and fight or have a 0:0 match rather than turn around and see 4-8 people who raced the longest possible way around to get to a base without being seen to start capping.

I think it's cheap, people respond with "Tactics and strategy, Rustic!". Fine, I think the tactics and strategy are cheap. I'm here to blow up big stompy robots and get blown up in return. That's just me.

Edited by HiplyRustic, 03 June 2013 - 04:32 PM.

[Victor Morson]

I thought you were going to suggest faster caps. Glad to see that wasn't the case.

More rewards for capping is a good thing though. It's disappointing that Cap victories earn you by far the least profit and you get little incentive for doing it outside of caring for your team's victory.

[MustrumRidcully]

Victor Morson, on 03 June 2013 - 04:51 PM, said:

I thought you were going to suggest faster caps. Glad to see that wasn't the case.

More rewards for capping is a good thing though. It's disappointing that Cap victories earn you by far the least profit and you get little incentive for doing it outside of caring for your team's victory.

It is still definitely better to win by cap then not win at all - if you managed to kill just one enemy mech, that's salvage you can make. But you get of course even more salvage if you kill all mechs, and in the process of killing mechs, you'l lget a bunch of additional rewards. Cap-Rushing in and on itself is very unrewarding, but even strategic capping to split up the enemy team can be quite unrewarding, since you miss out on all the "process-of-killing-mechs"-rewards.