34 replies to this topic

[Seabear]

I like the general ideas presented here. I would add one element to the list - that of selecting the border upon which the unit is deployed. For example, since I claim the Southwestern worlds as home, I would focus on the Lyran border battles. The idea of fighting one battle on the Lyran front and immediately jumping into the next battle on the Capellan front. No, wait! The Capellans are our trusted allies.... By focusing on one front rivlries will form as one faces many of the same units in combat multiple times - just as happened in the lore. As well, many units would begin to idenify with cetain planets and regions as they establish a sphere of influence - something many posterson the forums seem to want.

[Radick]

Seabear, on 26 June 2012 - 09:25 PM, said:

.... By focusing on one front rivlries will form as one faces many of the same units in combat multiple times - just as happened in the lore. As well, many units would begin to idenify with cetain planets and regions as they establish a sphere of influence - something many posterson the forums seem to want.

I personally like this idea, it will add to the community warfare. Say it takes a day to transfer to a different front. The Kuritans decide that they are going to attack against a Davion homeworld. The Davions expect some attack and have some people stationed. The Kuritans decide they want to powerhouse the invasion and organize a massive group of people for the assault. They go through with the plan and start hitting the Davions hard. I do not think it would be hard to have the devs set up a system where general battle value of the units is higher for Kurita, or they could even give them more units. This would give the Davion players a good reason to ask all their friends to help out so they are not put up against superior units/numbers. Then maybe a few days later, if Davion players are willing to risk not playing for a day, the numbers start to shift back to a "fair" amount on each side (War is never fair).

There could also be a different form of transfer for mercenary companies. They could pay a large sum of C-bills to move all of their equipment/battlemechs/pilots and other things. This would be instant but costly. It would make sense to have a difference between the transfer of a mercenary company and a House player. The House player for example might have to wait for the next dropship off (the next day), but he is employed by the military and all his expenses are payed for. Now, for the lone wolf mercenary, he may have to also pay as a company would but it would be a lot cheaper (yet still pricy enough not to constantly change at the players every whim) because he is only transporting himself and his battlemech.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Radick,
<S>

[WardenWolf]

I have heard a lot of folks on other parts of the forum complain about not wanting *any* time sinks outside of actual gameplay, so I suspect that requiring time to travel from one front to another or something would not fly with much of the game population. Also, it would limit the number of battles a give player could choose from at a time, which means longer queue times for each individual battle. Its a nice idea from a canon / lore perspective, but I don't think it is transferable to a MMO

[Radick]

WardenWolf, on 27 June 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

I have heard a lot of folks on other parts of the forum complain about not wanting *any* time sinks outside of actual gameplay, so I suspect that requiring time to travel from one front to another or something would not fly with much of the game population. Also, it would limit the number of battles a give player could choose from at a time, which means longer queue times for each individual battle. Its a nice idea from a canon / lore perspective, but I don't think it is transferable to a MMO

Okay I understand this point. Time sinks would suck. I do think that if they made it so there was some type of transfer time it would make choosing a front more important, just like choosing your battlemech would be important. I assume that you will not be able to just buy whatever battlemech with whatever weapons/equipment whenever you feel like it. I hope that you will have enough C-bills to buy a battlemech or two with the weapons/equipment you want and than work towards other designs and battlemechs you decide you want. This takes time too.

I guess that a player could make the argument that they will not get to play a lot because of real life and they want to be able to play when they can. This is simple to take care of. They either play where they are, which should have plenty of fun battles too, or, they decide to go to a different front the day before. It does not take long to log in, pick a front to travel to and log out. This should not really mess up their real life. There is of course the other type of player that has all the time in the world. My advice to them would be to pick there fronts carefully, and then spend a quality amount of time at them. This would help groups become known in certain areas as already said in an earlier reply.

I really do think it would be cool to have certain bands of warriors respected and/or feared in certain fronts. This would help people to get to know different groups by either repeatedly fight alongside or against them. What do you think?

Radick,
<S>

[CCC Dober]

OP: Not too shabby for a first idea, nice =)

I'd ask you to add two things that could be considered necessary:
1. objectives (primary, seondary, tertiary, optional, special etc) and how they might not just affect the current, but nearby and following battles
2. suggest methods to avoid/suppress exploitation - think in worst case scenarios, i.e. organised group vs pubbies, faction overload tipping the global balance etc.

[WardenWolf]

CCC Dober, on 27 June 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

OP: Not too shabby for a first idea, nice =)

I'd ask you to add two things that could be considered necessary:
1. objectives (primary, seondary, tertiary, optional, special etc) and how they might not just affect the current, but nearby and following battles
2. suggest methods to avoid/suppress exploitation - think in worst case scenarios, i.e. organised group vs pubbies, faction overload tipping the global balance etc.

Thanks for the feedback!

1) At the moment it seems that the only game mode is going to be team wipe / base capture, but if alternate game modes were available then I could see that working into this. For example, when a planet from faction A is attacked by faction B, at first the battles might be focused on team B needing to capture A's base (an assault mode, so to speak). Once enough of those had been won it might progress to a more normal mode, and then eventually if B continues to win more than they lose maybe it would change to another game mode. Just ideas at this point, since it would involve altering another of the core pillars, but definitely neat to think about!

2) I would have balance in a couple of ways:

One, faction population balance could be aided by having mercenary players offered better pay for entering a battle on the side of a faction with less players. That way if there are 50 people from faction A trying to join a battle but only 20 people from faction B, mercs could fill in to increase the ranks of faction B's side and keep the queue from being too long for faction A players.

Also, as one faction starts to lose ground in the overall map the matchmaker might start to skew balance *slightly* in their favor. Giving then a 5% tonnage advantage, for example, or something like that; maybe even increasing the advantage as they lose more ground. This would make it harder to push a given faction too far back into their territory.

Because the more core worlds couldn't change hands anyway, I think that might be enough - but this sort of balance stuff would likely have to be tweaked by the devs as time goes on.

Keep the ideas and questions coming!

[CCC Dober]

As for your balance considerations, you might keep those canon units in mind that are considered 'untouchable'. Their political and military influence might have an impact on how fights are balanced. If you take Steiner's top notch Elite units, then you could assume to face much stiffer resistance the more you are closing in on core worlds or home planets/protectorates of said units. I wouldn't be surprised if reinfocements would suddenly show up in the middle of the fight or if the enemy unit suddenly lacks a Mech or two because their dropship got 'compromised'. Stuff like that always happened in the novels. In return, the influence of said 'untouchable' units rapidly diminishes with the distance of the fight from their 'turf'. Another thing to consider are roaming fleets or rapid response/strike forces that prowl the borders. I'm not too sure if something like this has been taken into account in BT. But I sure know that it's part of 40k (see Cadian Gate and Boros Gate as examples) and I think that makes for a welcome layer of forward defense. The main idea is to have a sizeable force of top notch units that can react to changing situations with overwhelming firepower in a very short time. It is technically possible in BT given the added flexibility of jumpdrives equipped with Lithium batteries, allowing 2 jumps in short order instead of just 1. The possible jump range allows to bypass forward defenses on border worlds.

But the main problem still remains and that is how the influence of organised teams can be compensated for when they are intent on pubstomping. Sure it's fun for them, but if they are distorting the balance of power and also at the expense of new/disorganised players, then you might be inclined to agree that this is something working against the spirit of the game. Lone Wolfs and small Merc units will not be able to enjoy the game if it comes to that. In essence it may just force people to stick to larger Clans in order to not get stomped and discarded like they don't matter.

If the game gives all players enough information, tools and individual objectives to organize themselves it might work out. But still, an organised group would have better communication and unit cohesion on their side. Some sort of ranking system could help to close the gap, but I'm not holding my breath that it can do the job all by itself. It's a team game after all and not really a one-man-army thing. The metrics to judge performance of individuals or random groups are very, very different. So the question remains: what can be done to further close the gap between an organised unit and a seemingly disorganised unit when they are matched?

[WardenWolf]

CCC Dober, on 28 June 2012 - 03:03 AM, said:

So the question remains: what can be done to further close the gap between an organised unit and a seemingly disorganised unit when they are matched?

In the case of one side of a battle being fully organized and the other not at all, I am not sure what can be done. Sometimes (rarely) a team with several stellar individual pilots may stand a good chance... and hopefully there will be a good implementation of orders and rewards to make the role warfare work out with a commander for the team as well as individual lances. Still, organization will often win out.

If this becomes a big enough issue that balance is required, then the matchmaker could potentially take into account players being grouped when they queue up. Perhaps have their tonnage or battle value artificially increased - 10% higher if a full lance enters together, 20% higher if the entire team is pre-made. That way the opposing team would have a boost in tonnage on their side to help compensate.

A lot of this is extreme theorycrafting, though, until we see what sort of matchmaking the devs actually implement. Once we know that, we can make more specific suggestions about how to balance and counteract one faction overwhelming another due to player organization.

[WardenWolf]

Radick, on 27 June 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

I guess that a player could make the argument that they will not get to play a lot because of real life and they want to be able to play when they can. This is simple to take care of. They either play where they are, which should have plenty of fun battles too, or, they decide to go to a different front the day before. It does not take long to log in, pick a front to travel to and log out. This should not really mess up their real life. There is of course the other type of player that has all the time in the world. My advice to them would be to pick there fronts carefully, and then spend a quality amount of time at them. This would help groups become known in certain areas as already said in an earlier reply.

Think about how much you want to be in the beta, playing MWO - assuming you are not - and then tell me if you think you'd be okay with having large blocks of time like that for as long as the game is out, where you couldn't play because your character was in transit between war fronts. It sounds nice on paper, adds a small amount of realism, etc... but in today's fast-paced world it wouldn't fly with 90%+ of the playerbase (myself included, I think).

In a single-player game, where time could be sped up, maybe... but here I think we will have to sacrifice a lot of realism in order to gain mass appeal and make the game fun. What the community warfare pillar should be about is drawing players together and giving a metagame, or overarching goals for players outside of individual battles, which will keep folks playing and give rewards for factions or merc companies working well together

[CCC Dober]

Yes, essentially it's theory and may not happen at all. Still, games like WoT or Space Marine showed me that team balance is a problem that has not been sufficiently solved in all these years, although you could rightfully assume that there would be enough skill and budget available in case of Space Marine. Also, LoLs system (ELO) can easily balance individual players, but it's not able to account for the synergies of good team play and inherent numerical advantages during confrontations. This is only negated if both sides display a similar level of skill.

So yeah, chances are that team balance will become a big topic sooner or later, unless the pillar can deal with it sufficiently.

[Radick]

WardenWolf, on 28 June 2012 - 09:07 AM, said:

Think about how much you want to be in the beta, playing MWO - assuming you are not - and then tell me if you think you'd be okay with having large blocks of time like that for as long as the game is out, where you couldn't play because your character was in transit between war fronts. It sounds nice on paper, adds a small amount of realism, etc... but in today's fast-paced world it wouldn't fly with 90%+ of the playerbase (myself included, I think).

In a single-player game, where time could be sped up, maybe... but here I think we will have to sacrifice a lot of realism in order to gain mass appeal and make the game fun. What the community warfare pillar should be about is drawing players together and giving a metagame, or overarching goals for players outside of individual battles, which will keep folks playing and give rewards for factions or merc companies working well together

I already said it would suck to have a time sink. I also said it would make it more important to pick were you wanted to fight. If you actually think about which front you want to fight on and then stay their for a few days or a week, then you are not losing a lot of time traveling between worlds. You could even live without time sinks at all buy planning your travel times to fit in with times in real life that you will be doing something other than gaming.

Before you bring up the point of people who pay for premium accounts I will explain that as well. It could be as simple as premium accounts have no downtime between fronts. This way those people who want to play more during their premium time can play all the time that they paid for without any hindrance.

Radick,
<S>

[Fire for Effect]

Nice idea sounds quite reasonable in the broad perspective. Maybe there needs to be some small things ironed out but in general sounds good

[WardenWolf]

Radick, on 28 June 2012 - 01:53 PM, said:

Before you bring up the point of people who pay for premium accounts I will explain that as well. It could be as simple as premium accounts have no downtime between fronts. This way those people who want to play more during their premium time can play all the time that they paid for without any hindrance.

Uh oh, don't give the Devs any crazy ideas!

[Radick]

WardenWolf, on 28 June 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

Uh oh, don't give the Devs any crazy ideas!

What is wrong with allowing premium players to move more freely? It has nothing to do with balance in the combat and allows them to play all of their premium time. It would be bad business practice to limit their playing time since they actually paid for it. It could also encourage people to pay without giving them an advantage during fights. I see nothing wrong with this, do you?

Radick,
<S>

[IceSerpent]

Just a few comments...

WardenWolf, on 25 June 2012 - 08:28 PM, said:

On each border between major powers, one to three planets would be 'contested' at any given time. The number would depend on the size of the border involved.

It's better to base it on the number of players currently online, who associate with a given faction. This way a more heavily populated faction can fight more battles and you don't run in a problem with 12 players trying to defend 3 planets at once.

Quote

As battles are fought, a slider would move back and forth between the two factions involved. Once it got to a 'tipping point' of a certain number of battles won or a certain percentage of victories for a given side, then control would change hands and a different planet would be contested instead.

This is essentially how it was done in ISW (Inner Sphere Wars) and it caused an issue with neither side being able to progress, especially when "core" teams are in different timezones. I.e. one side wins a few fights, players go to bed, the other side gets their A-team online and pushes the slider back.

I think a better way of doing it is to have different planets having different number of "mechs in the garrison", which would determine how many mechs can be killed on each side. Let's say a planet has a garrison of 3 companies (36 mechs). Regardless of how many players are on each team, the planet changes hands if attackers get 36 kills and remains under the same flag (just stops being contested) if defenders get 36 kills. This works the same way whether it's lance vs. lance or company vs. company battles, just the number of matches changes.

Edit: Just thought of something - to prevent losing team from playing hide-and seek until the end of the match, the victory conditions should be to either get required number of kills (i.e. "wipe the opposing foce") or achieve the required number of objectives. Something like a planet with 3 companies in garrison also has 3 bases to capture, which work like you originally suggested (slider). The team that gets all 3 objectives in a row (pushes slider all the way) wins regardless of casualties, provided that they don't run out of mechs in the process.

Quote

- Joining a House faction would also have perks, like discounts on certain weapons or mechs perhaps. This, along with a ranking system, would be there to offset the more limited selection of battles.

The amount (and possibly type) of planets your House currently owns should also affect those perks, i.e. the more industrial words - the cheaper repairs or something like that.

Quote

- Lone wolf players would gain reputation with a faction as they fight for it, and lose reputation when they fight against it. This could have some small impact on the pay rate (houses might pay more for mercs they like).

Same should go for merc companies - even though they fight on a different set of worlds, I think those border worlds are still part of a House, so loyalty points should affect mercs' benefits.

Edited by IceSerpent, 28 June 2012 - 04:49 PM.

[WardenWolf]

Radick, on 28 June 2012 - 03:57 PM, said:

What is wrong with allowing premium players to move more freely? It has nothing to do with balance in the combat and allows them to play all of their premium time. It would be bad business practice to limit their playing time since they actually paid for it. It could also encourage people to pay without giving them an advantage during fights. I see nothing wrong with this, do you?

What I said was mostly intended as a jest - but the worry would be that the devs would see a way to make anyone who wanted to be able to play easily have to pay for an account and without making the game technically pay-2-win (which they are very much against).

Personally I don't think the devs would 'punish' non-premium players like that anyway, so I was just joking - hence the at the end.

[Orkdung]

Quote

As battles are fought, a slider would move back and forth between the two factions involved. Once it got to a 'tipping point' of a certain number of battles won or a certain percentage of victories for a given side, then control would change hands and a different planet would be contested instead.

What if more than one faction is vying for the planet (I'd certainly like to see this).

And I'd also like to add, in city scapes and factory fought maps I'd like to see little faction men running around in the controlled factions colored jump suit.
You always see birds(butterflies in World of Tanks) flying around in first person shooters, why not little humans looking out a window pointing, or on a crane or what have you.. "Look!! House Kurita attacks"
Sort of Gozilla-ish.
Im not insisting on 100 little humans running around frantically, but 2-3??
In the novels and in imagery this seems to always be the case. It would certainly add to the atmosphere.

.

Edited by Orkdung, 24 July 2012 - 04:44 PM.

[Deadmeat313]

There have been some good imaginative ideas posted on here so far. I think many plans underestimate the sheer number of battles that could be fought by the playerbase in a single hour.

Those who have played World of Tanks will be familiar with the screen margin listing that there are normally upwards of 300 battles running simultaneously at any time. They are max 15 minutes duration. And when killed a pilot will most likely punch out back to the hangar screen - pick another machine - and hit NEXT BATTLE!

If all of these battles are being used to determine control of contested worlds then they could conceivably change hands very quickly. For the strategic map to be meaningful, I reckon that it should take several hundred battles total to secure a world. Each victory by your faction edging the capture counter closer, and every defeat sliding it back a notch.

Also, importantly, the pilot should not have total control over which planet he fights each battle. I think you should be able to select a theatre of war - but then the game will generate a number of battles for all the participants of that theatre, allocating some as offensive and some as defensive troops on each world.

You might find yourself (if fighting in the Sarna March Theatre, Liao vs Davion) being part of an attack on Sakhalin in one battle, followed immediately by a defensive battle on Ares. Just go with the flow! Travel times need to be so arbitary as to not be there. When Sakhalin falls later that day you can still feel happy that you did your part.

Transfer to a different front could be instant - but with a 24hr cooldown to prevent you hopping again. That way you are never forced to Not Play, but are somewhat limited as to your battlefields.

These are my thoughts anyway. Feel free to disagree!

[Rhyshaelkan]

Wonder how that might work out for merc contracts too. A merc company of 12 would want to stick together. After falling in battle it would behoove them to stick around till successfully completed or all in the merc company falls. Then as a unit could move on to the next mission. However if the merc belongs to a larger unit he might plug himself into any mission by his corp waiting to roll. Lots of possibilities.

[WardenWolf]

Deadmeat313, on 25 July 2012 - 04:03 AM, said:

If all of these battles are being used to determine control of contested worlds then they could conceivably change hands very quickly. For the strategic map to be meaningful, I reckon that it should take several hundred battles total to secure a world. Each victory by your faction edging the capture counter closer, and every defeat sliding it back a notch.

I agree - and I think if multiple game modes are added over time things could get even more interesting: the first X number of battles portray the initial landing, recon, and some early base caps. Then it transitions to deathmatch, fighting over resource points, and taking out specific targets. Toward the end it begins to be attack/defend and taking out political leaders on the planet (escort missions). Those are just rough ideas, but having a 'plot' to the capture of each planet would be cool

Deadmeat313, on 25 July 2012 - 04:03 AM, said:

Also, importantly, the pilot should not have total control over which planet he fights each battle. I think you should be able to select a theatre of war - but then the game will generate a number of battles for all the participants of that theatre, allocating some as offensive and some as defensive troops on each world.

Now here I have to disagree: I think you should be able to pick a specific planet where a battle is going on if you want, but I think there should also be options to just jump into any battle your side / merc company is involved in. This would allow those who want to be a part of a specific campaign do so, but those who care less would also have an easier and faster option to just join a battle.

Orkdung, on 24 July 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

What if more than one faction is vying for the planet (I'd certainly like to see this).

That could be interesting, but I'd like to see them get 1v1 faction combat down first. There aren't as many planets that are bordered by three factions like that... but it could be cool to add later on.

Orkdung, on 24 July 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

And I'd also like to add, in city scapes and factory fought maps I'd like to see little faction men running around in the controlled factions colored jump suit.
You always see birds(butterflies in World of Tanks) flying around in first person shooters, why not little humans looking out a window pointing, or on a crane or what have you.. "Look!! House Kurita attacks"
Sort of Gozilla-ish.

I have heard that the devs are avoiding actual, visible humans in the game (other than your own pilot). If humans are visibly pictured as being killed, it would up the games rating.