19 replies to this topic

[Paul Inouye]

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to the MWO Community. I hope you and your families are having a good one!

-Paul


I may or may not be writing up proposals for Solaris.. no promises or info yet.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Merry Christmas Paul!

[AmbushKing]

Paul is winning if he can get a beta Solaris up by march..

It only needs 5 maps, but 1 to start beta is perfect, players join a lobby spectate the people fighting,place bets and collect winning bets Vegas style , while waiting/betting they can select if they want to be placed in the queue to fight next or just stay to spectate and gamble.

Then later they can implement house loyalty points for winning under your faction, and tournament style brackets/king of the hill type ladders.


Also merry Christmas man

[LordSkippy]

AmbushKing, on 25 December 2014 - 03:57 PM, said:

players join a lobby spectate the people fighting,place bets and collect winning bets Vegas style , while waiting/betting they can select if they want to be placed in the queue to fight next or just stay to spectate and gamble.

Or, watch and bet while queued for CW

[StillRadioactive]

These are my opinions, so take them with a grain of salt...

Maps shouldn't be much of a problem... we've already got plenty of small-ish maps that work for 1v1. This was proven with Hann_Solo's 1v1 ladder during its massively successful single season (more players than he anticipated = too much workload. He had to shut it down.)

IIRC, the maps available for Solaris mode were Frozen City, Frozen City Night (most common), Caustic Valley (a popular choice for "kite" build lights/meds), River City (popular for brawlers), River City Night, Forest Colony and Forest Colony Snow.

Those plus a handful of dedicated Solaris maps would provide ample variety for early beta.

That said, I think the most important thing is instant action for small units (1v1 for sure, possibly also 2v2 and 4v4).

After that is a persistent ladder viewable to the public... then spectator mode (ideally delayed by 30 seconds to prevent people from giving intel to their friends in teamspeak).

After all that is said and done... c-bill wagering.

Edited by StillRadioactive, 25 December 2014 - 04:10 PM.

[jaxjace]

Duncan Fisher and the coliseum

[dak irakoz]

Solaris! FFA matches would be nuts.

[TheSilken]

Already ahead of you on that Paul

[Son of the Flood]

Merry Christmas!!

[jay35]

There is soooo much potential with Solaris as a game mode. Literally five minutes of writing stream of conscious ideas around it:

Spectator mode

Initial state: Basic spectator mode with free-roam P/T/Z camera, option to lock it to each contestant’s view like current post-death spectator cam but team-agnostic; disabled Chat functions

Ideal state: Enhanced spectator mode, viewer toggle-able (visible/hidden a la RShift+F11 for those who want a completely clean screen for recording purposes) Solaris-relevant UI showing team/individual mech health & armament status to provide spectators with critical match status info; click contestant name in UI to have camera view brought to their mech’s location; enhanced streaming support functions, possible customizations by event host e.g., display unit decal/coat of arms in corner.

Queue

Initial state: Current private match lobby system with slight adjustments

Ideal state: Full tournament interface. Ability for those waiting in line to engage each other in quick warm-up duels (not counted toward tournament score). Ability to queue in multiple tournaments with different mechs.

Match configuration

Initial state: Current private match lobby system

Ideal state: Full tournament interface. Ability for contestants to select multiple mechs, a la dropship mode, for special multi-drop tournaments (i.e., “bring your best four” or “best 2 out of 3” contests). Ability for event host to configure tournament settings, between-round ladder/bracket tracking, remove/add contestants, etc

Tournament sizes

Initial design: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 tournaments

Ideal state: Any amount of players 1v1 through 12v12 with map size adjusting accordingly, and configuration allowing for imbalanced drops (i.e., 1v2, 3v5, etc.)

Maps

Coliseum (new map, based off the classic MW4 Solaris map)

Warehouse (new map, based off classic MW4 Solaris maps)

Terra Therma volcano (everything inside the entrances, including the platforms and the lower area)

Caustic Desert caldera (everything inside the caldera and enough space outside the rim to be able to break Line of Sight while navigating around the outside of the rim)

Tourmaline Desert dropship ring (the area around the huge “stargate” ring in the middle)

River City area around the citadel

Frozen City area around the dead dropship

Forest Colony area around the broken ship and islands

Betting

Initial state: Wager cbills on Team A or Team B as winner

Ideal state: Wager cbills on individual players on either team, ability to place multiple bets on the same match, factor in odds or adjusted payout based on player past performance in Solaris (e.g., upset/underdog win pays out more), research legalities around MC wagering (since it has a direct real-world monetary equivalent, it may not be viable without tax reporting of winnings, etc)

Other

Duncan Fisher announcer/commentator?

Crowd cheering?

Premium options?

You've probably already thought of most of these and many that aren't mentioned here, but maybe there's something here that will be of use.

Merry Christmas to you as well.

Edited by jay35, 25 December 2014 - 05:52 PM.

[Sparks Murphey]

Merry Christmas Paul, and the rest of the PGI team too.

[Threat Doc]

To Paul, Russ, Bryan, and the PGI crew... Merry Christmas from Kay Wolf and Skullguns, and all of Armageddon Unlimited. Here's to a New Year full of much 'Mech goodness, and to PGI earning enough money from the community to continue to build even more.

[Cerlin]

Marry Xmas and when solaris comes. Holy cow. Best excuse to add a real spectator mode ever. And Cbill bets.

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

If you haven't seen it, there is a Solaris Arena set of maps for the latest MW:LL version.

- Complete with new Duncan Fisher recordings that are cued to activities of the Pilots and Mech's.
- Multi levels of terrain, types of environments, and full era Mech chassis and weapons set by the Arena 'host'.
- Crowd cheering and fireworks are present when events happen during gameplay, spectating is free roam or 'follow mode', no in cockpit viewing. But spec's for the Mech's are displayed including weapon types and health states.

Match's are set by battle value of the Mech chassis or a c-bill limit to purchase for opposing Pilots, but PGI could make this nearly anything they want. There are no 'franken Mech's', mixing components that would normally never be allowed combined.
- This is for Pilot ranking and not a sport activity that can be wagered on, open to all. But could be matched selection if PGI builds this in.

(now yes, that 'other game' has 'repair stations' and 'ammo reload only' locations, but it still gives that Solaris event type of gameplay. From long range battles, jumpjet surprises, in your face point blank engagements to underwater tactics.)
- If you know your Lore, YEN-LO-WANG was made famous from these games.

Just some info,
Seasons greetings all, stay safe.
9erRed

Edited by 9erRed, 25 December 2014 - 10:27 PM.

[jay35]

Sounds okay except for these two items:

"There are no 'franken Mech's', mixing components that would normally never be allowed combined."
If you're implying stock builds only, then that sounds terrible and boring and very un-MWO (not to mention contrary to Solaris' history in MW games).

"- This is for Pilot ranking and not a sport activity that can be wagered on, open to all."

Then it's just another tournament that 99% of the playerbase won't care about or bother watching, just tell us who is supposedly "top pilot" or whatever and we'll get on with our day.

[MavRCK]

Here's my Solaris 7 proposal from over a year ago ....


http://mwomercs.com/...out-s7-for-pgi/


====================


Solaris 7 - MWO

Preface:

• A year-long season of dueling mechwarriors to determine who's the best mechwarrior in the universe.

Ranking:

• 
  
  
  
  There will individual rankings of mechwarriors in 5 categories: light, medium, heavy and assault and unlimited (choose any chassis).
  
• 
  
  
  
  Rankings will be based on a combination of wins, losses, damage done, components destroyed, etc minus damage taken, components destroyed, etc - this formula will help equalize mechwarriors who play often versus those who play less, but are of "better quality".

Earnings:

• Participants will earn a set amount of chills and experience upon winning and loosing. They will also earn a percentage of the amounts betted on the match - the match pot! In addition, bounties and their rewards can also be placed on and redeemed by participants.

Betting:

• 
  
  
  
  The ability for observers to place bets will help create interest in matches. Participants with an "interesting" personality will, of course, draw more bets and interests (and bounties!!).
  
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  Each match between two participants will have odds placed for and against them. The house will take bets from mechwarriors on these participants. A percentage of the total bets will be given to the winner (ie. 10%) and a percentage will be given to the looser (ie. 5%) - ie. boxing! See:http://en.wikipedia....s_of_bookmaking
  
• 
  
  
  
  In addition to betting on a match, each mechwarrior who bets can select their preferred choice of map for the participants to battle on. The participants can choose to follow the "fan favourite" map for extra bonus chills or select their own.

Challenging:

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  Players can pay a chill fee and challenge one another. The fee will go into the match pot.
  
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  These participants can choose between playing immediately and between playing within a set period of time, i.e. 7 days. Matches that are not played within the set period time result in a disqualification and a loss of points. Greater than a set number of disqualifications in a season will result in the player being banned from Solaris 7 for the remainder of the season.

Matches:

• 
  
  
  
  Matches can be a winner takes all or a best of 3, etc. In general, most matches will be single elimination and more important matches will be a best of 3.
  
• 
  
  
  
  Matches will take place on a predetermined map. An RNG coin toss will choose which mechwarrior gets to the select the map. The other mechwarrior will get to select which of 2 starting locations to begin at.
  
• 
  
  
  
  As mentioned, the mechwarrior may choose the fan favourite map for bonus chills and fan "appreciation".

Maps:

• To start, a select of 3 to 4 maps should be available for Solaris 7 participants to choose from. Each map should have a variety of terrain, heat, cover, etc… Special attention should be placed to the starting locations such that the advantage to choose the map is countered by getting to choose the starting location.

Solaris 7 Champion:

• To determine the champions, each season there should be a round robin event of the top 8 players in each category (best of 3), with double elimination for the final match (best of 5).

Observing matches:

• 
  
  
  
  Let's hope there will be streaming from both participants and possibly built-in twitch.tv streaming so that the mechwarrior community can select from the UI2.0 menu the option to watch the game!!!
  
• 
  
  
  
  Hopefully, we can also observe and cast the games! Go go observation mode!

=======================

• 
  
  
  
  Ideas? Thoughts?
  
• 
  
  
  
  I think this could be one of the most interesting and fun parts of MWO in addition to Community Warfare. (Heck, Solaris 7 could be the real community warfare so to speak!)

<3 Mav

[MadLibrarian]

Well if you're writing up proposals, I suppose I will write a bit too.

I see Solaris as having a lot of potential to add immense replay value to solo players and competitive units alike. The approach I'm suggesting is aiming to direct resources toward the database rather than art creation. Simply put, utilize design time to get a working league/tourney and rating system, with new maps being secondary. I realize that data management in cryengine is a bit of a rough task, but you can probably avoid a lot of that by exporting the data and using the web for most of the feature crafting like the statistics and tourney rankings. I think statistics tracking is an important aspect and multiple time periods should be included or separated into special tourney qualifying rounds. Mech and weight based tournaments could especially utilized functionality like this.

The game mode design can be simple, so long as you can get the IFF working properly with stat recording, the general new game mode settings should be pretty easy. (I.e. UI buttons, Rewards, and spawn integration with existing maps.) We don't need to render thousands of fans or have a bunch of new maps (yet). If the functionality exists to drop solo into a 15 man deathmatch, in a weight class based league/tournament that generates a pilot rating/ranking, it will be worthy of the name Solaris VII.


After you're sure the game mode can exist, I think it would be great to add in a broadcasting aspect on top. Little bits of fluff for immersion can make matches seem worthy of recording, thus posted to youtube and promoting the game. These bits are superfluous but could be cool as hell. Betting would also be great, but introductions with a map flyby with Duncan Fisher describing the map would be particularly interesting. He could probably announce weight class winners, and even host the grand championship in a live broadcast if paid well.

In the meantime, let's get George LeDoux in studio recording some Community Warfare news regularly! He is instant immersion, and needs to be utilized as often as possible.

You could even generate some cash to pay him by auctioning personalized recordings and content bits written by the community in advance of Solaris. E.g. BT parts adverts, unit ads, custom descriptions and intros for players/mechs/units.

[rotocheese]

Thank you, you too. I really appreciate all the work you guys have been putting in. Happy holidays.

[BitGlitch]

Paul, if you do Solaris FFA, please make sure to make the crowd cheer and have the announcer just like MW:LL. Please! THAT (with the crowd cheering just that way) was what fired me up when fighting.

[Kalimaster]

Thank you for the Christmas Wish. Hope you had one as well.