45 replies to this topic

[SpiralFace]

While I have been on vacation the past few weeks, to keep my mind flowing (and prevent my family from driving me completely off the deep end,) I felt like solidifying some personal thoughts in regards to MWO in its current state, and how the already engaging game play can be improved on as we go into the new year. So with a few of these documents down, I felt like sharing.

Forgive me for the length, but I felt it was a good way to pitch changes and garner some discussions on topics that I would at least like to see looked into coming into the New Year.

To kick things off, I would like to propose a re-evaluation of the “Assault game mode.” And with it possibly use it as a test bed to not only make its own game mode better, but to additionally attempt to potentially diversify the game systems present in this game.

Current Issues With Assault Mode:

• Game mode has not scaled with the present game. (Was ok in 4v4, was “meah” in 8v8, but in 12v12 it is not viewed favorably.)
  
• Objective is currently a joke. No one likes going for it making assault essentially “Skirmish with Turrets.” And when they do, it’s to the ire and detriment of the players playing the game.
  
• Objective is simply not fun to go for. Nor are the rewards for taking the base (the primary objective in the game mode.)
  
• Nearly no incentive to act as the offensive party due to the turrets acting as a force multiplier.
  
• On smaller maps, engagements turn into dull stand offs with no one wanting to make advancements into the forces protected by turret cover.

Proposed High End Direction of The Assault Game Mode:

• A refocus on the primary objectives as the primary interest of the game type.
  
• Retool the base health bar to also account for the destruction of base structures.
  
• At time out, Victory goes to the side that has applied the most damage to the opposing base rather than the one with the higher kill count.
  
• Restructure the current bases to provide smaller “non-lethal” objectives to help damage the total base in addition to the lethal turrets.
  
• Allow for scaled base HP based on map size / base structures around the map.

Base HP.

At the core of this proposal is the idea that the base is no longer represented solely by a single cap objective that accounts for the entire bar. But instead is a “health” like HP bar that is affected both by traditionally capping of the main base objective, and the destruction of both lethal (turrets) and non-lethal objectives scattered around the battlefield.

Winner of the match would be the first to reduce their opponent’s base bar down to zero, or to the side that deals the most damage to their opponent’s base by the end of the match timer. Mech kills would only act as a secondary objective.

The base’s total health would be dependent on the total number of objectives scattered across the field. With a proposed breakdown that the total base health would consist of the following:

• Non-Lethal objectives: 30% of the base’s Health
  
• Lethal Objectives: 40% of the base’s Health
  
• Capturing the Base: Reduces the base health in the exact same way it does now. (But at a slower rate then it currently is to encourage going out and destroying objectives in addition to capping the base.)

The core idea around this is that suddenly, those turrets around the base are no longer simply structures that hamper progress, but part of the “main objective” itself. Taking both turrets and added “non-lethal” objects out of an enemy’s control zone will end up affecting the overall health of an opposing base. Suddenly putting a more “defensive” minded team on the back foot when the offensive team can at any point pull back to their base for support, and what before turned into a camp feast has an immediate incentive for the team that did not take initiative early in the game to “chip away” at base objectives to suddenly need to go on the offensive of their opposing base when the victory condition is triggered by the physical base health over how many mechs you killed. (Further re-enforcing the modes own niche rather than just being an alternative skirmish mode with an objective no one likes to go for.)

Layout of The Bases.

Rather than the bases being little forgettable outposts in the corner of the map easily ignored by the opposition, I would like to think of the bases in assault mode as being arranged in a “layered defensive” area of control along a tight “no man’s land” that leads to about 70 – 80% of the map being a rough zone in which some kind of objective is scattered in order to defend or destroy. Roughly laid out in a way that allows for multiple ways to approach the gameplay. To that end, dividing up each base into 4 major “zones.”
For this proposal, I will use the following rough breakdown of Tourmaline desert as my example:



Yellow star - The HQ: The base central HQ tucked away at the back of the map which must be secured through capping similar to how the game plays now. Still defended by a light amount of turrets.

Red Zone - The Defensive Zone: The area of the map that is re-enforced and protected by static defenses. Farther out then the current turrets go in this mode, these structures not only act as a much earlier warning system for mechs attempting a base rush on larger maps but provide a moderate amount of firepower to units attempting to defend the territory across a wider area.

Blue zone - The Recon Zone: This is the area of the map that is littered with non-lethal targets that do not attack back, but are still tied to the base’s overall hit points. And dependent on their nature, could provide secondary “sensory” information to the base defenders (physical seismic sensors, buildings that simply blind lock onto a single target, some that simply do nothing.) This zone covers the widest area of the map, which encourages scouts and recon mechs to scout out across the battlefield destroying non-lethal targets to chip away and damage the base without putting themselves at sever risk of the turrets pelting them to death.

No Mans Land: Hotly contested areas of the map that hold no base assets. Making them valuable territory to defend in a mech on mech engagements, but has no long term strategic value if a force is able to get around them.

Why?

Beyond simply providing something fresh, the main goals of these changes are to encourage the following:

• Make Assault its own unique and engaging game mode.
  
• Promote a tactical loop to deepen the amount of ways you play the game and engage on the map.
  
• Promote engagements to be spread out and not revolve around an “attack vs defense” of singular areas off the entire map.
  
• Promote the use of lower tonnage chassis and “role warfare” by giving lighter chassis that are lesser armed more options to approach contributing to a match that go beyond engaging the singular mech ball.
  
• Provide additional targets that can provide additional earnings to people that wish to go for objective wins over mech kills.

One of the greater balance concerns I have in this game as it currently is laid out is the over reliance on the “death ball” and singular mech ball groupings engaging with other larger groups. Its reduced the time to kill, it’s made even large maps like alpine and tourmaline revolve around the same singular patches of territory game after game, and probably most importantly, it’s made the overall meta of the game revolve solely around “ball vs ball” combat rather then reinforce the “role warfare” aspect of the production that drew many people to this games production at its on-set. Which has seen mechs that simply do not conform to that style of play left by the wayside and virtually useless in this game.

With that being said, I do not believe in completely trying to de-incentive its use, as it is currently the only effective way to play the game, but instead promote alternative methods of play by introducing elements within the game mode that encourages the use of smaller strike teams accomplishing objectives over a wider area of the map just as much as it promotes the Ball on ball play. And provide a bit more give and take that sees both of them as being valid options for use with in the game. I feel that a re-examination of assault mode like this has the potential of doing this by creating a tactical loop.

Death balls would be good at focusing down smaller strike teams, but smaller strike teams would be able to better focus on the objective win across a large battlefield over the death ball.

With a wide field with objectives scattered across the entire battlefield as opposed to a singular spot on the map, spreading out your forces to attempt an objective win, or to pull ahead by attacking multiple fronts in the “recon corridor” to do damage to the opposition will allow for a mode where more than just a singular tactic is considered “viable” all while attempting to bring the assault mode into a much better spot and make it a tense “give and take” mode that promotes more than just another flavor of skirmish mode.

This proposal is by no means an air tight design pitch, and is mostly presented as a “broad idea” to attempt to breathe a bit more life into the mode while promoting a bit more tactical depth to the game through game play objectives rather than just quirking everything to hell and back.

I’m interested in hearing what people think about a re-evaluation like this into the assault mode, and if there is anything you would like to add to it. And if it interests anyone else to see at the very least some of the broad ideas presented here looked into as we all look forward to the New Year with MWO.

Thanks for your time in reading through this admittedly long proposal.

Edited by SpiralFace, 05 January 2015 - 08:55 PM.

[Othello]

I have not finished reading this, but you deserve a like.

[Alexandus]

Bravo sir, this should be reviewed and looked into!

[BZArcher]

An excellent and interesting proposal! I'd love seeing this (or something similar) replace the existing Assault format.

[Kamikaze Viking]

This is brilliant.

And would also facilitate assault mode on normal maps being used in CW

[Night Fury76]

Love it.
The existing coding is already there, aka turrents without weapons become sensors as you describe.
Code this up and play it out on the test server, tweek each map as required.

Awesome mate, awesome

[StillRadioactive]

SpiralFace, on 05 January 2015 - 08:54 PM, said:

Spoiler

While I have been on vacation the past few weeks, to keep my mind flowing (and prevent my family from driving me completely off the deep end,) I felt like solidifying some personal thoughts in regards to MWO in its current state, and how the already engaging game play can be improved on as we go into the new year. So with a few of these documents down, I felt like sharing.

Forgive me for the length, but I felt it was a good way to pitch changes and garner some discussions on topics that I would at least like to see looked into coming into the New Year.

To kick things off, I would like to propose a re-evaluation of the “Assault game mode.” And with it possibly use it as a test bed to not only make its own game mode better, but to additionally attempt to potentially diversify the game systems present in this game.

Current Issues With Assault Mode:

• Game mode has not scaled with the present game. (Was ok in 4v4, was “meah” in 8v8, but in 12v12 it is not viewed favorably.)
  
• Objective is currently a joke. No one likes going for it making assault essentially “Skirmish with Turrets.” And when they do, it’s to the ire and detriment of the players playing the game.
  
• Objective is simply not fun to go for. Nor are the rewards for taking the base (the primary objective in the game mode.)
  
• Nearly no incentive to act as the offensive party due to the turrets acting as a force multiplier.
  
• On smaller maps, engagements turn into dull stand offs with no one wanting to make advancements into the forces protected by turret cover.

Proposed High End Direction of The Assault Game Mode:

• A refocus on the primary objectives as the primary interest of the game type.
  
• Retool the base health bar to also account for the destruction of base structures.
  
• At time out, Victory goes to the side that has applied the most damage to the opposing base rather than the one with the higher kill count.
  
• Restructure the current bases to provide smaller “non-lethal” objectives to help damage the total base in addition to the lethal turrets.
  
• Allow for scaled base HP based on map size / base structures around the map.

Base HP.





At the core of this proposal is the idea that the base is no longer represented solely by a single cap objective that accounts for the entire bar. But instead is a “health” like HP bar that is affected both by traditionally capping of the main base objective, and the destruction of both lethal (turrets) and non-lethal objectives scattered around the battlefield.

Winner of the match would be the first to reduce their opponent’s base bar down to zero, or to the side that deals the most damage to their opponent’s base by the end of the match timer. Mech kills would only act as a secondary objective.

The base’s total health would be dependent on the total number of objectives scattered across the field. With a proposed breakdown that the total base health would consist of the following:

• Non-Lethal objectives: 30% of the base’s Health
  
• Lethal Objectives: 40% of the base’s Health
  
• Capturing the Base: Reduces the base health in the exact same way it does now. (But at a slower rate then it currently is to encourage going out and destroying objectives in addition to capping the base.)

The core idea around this is that suddenly, those turrets around the base are no longer simply structures that hamper progress, but part of the “main objective” itself. Taking both turrets and added “non-lethal” objects out of an enemy’s control zone will end up affecting the overall health of an opposing base. Suddenly putting a more “defensive” minded team on the back foot when the offensive team can at any point pull back to their base for support, and what before turned into a camp feast has an immediate incentive for the team that did not take initiative early in the game to “chip away” at base objectives to suddenly need to go on the offensive of their opposing base when the victory condition is triggered by the physical base health over how many mechs you killed. (Further re-enforcing the modes own niche rather than just being an alternative skirmish mode with an objective no one likes to go for.)





Layout of The Bases.

Rather than the bases being little forgettable outposts in the corner of the map easily ignored by the opposition, I would like to think of the bases in assault mode as being arranged in a “layered defensive” area of control along a tight “no man’s land” that leads to about 70 – 80% of the map being a rough zone in which some kind of objective is scattered in order to defend or destroy. Roughly laid out in a way that allows for multiple ways to approach the gameplay. To that end, dividing up each base into 4 major “zones.”
For this proposal, I will use the following rough breakdown of Tourmaline desert as my example:



Yellow star - The HQ: The base central HQ tucked away at the back of the map which must be secured through capping similar to how the game plays now. Still defended by a light amount of turrets.

Red Zone - The Defensive Zone: The area of the map that is re-enforced and protected by static defenses. Farther out then the current turrets go in this mode, these structures not only act as a much earlier warning system for mechs attempting a base rush on larger maps but provide a moderate amount of firepower to units attempting to defend the territory across a wider area.

Blue zone - The Recon Zone: This is the area of the map that is littered with non-lethal targets that do not attack back, but are still tied to the base’s overall hit points. And dependent on their nature, could provide secondary “sensory” information to the base defenders (physical seismic sensors, buildings that simply blind lock onto a single target, some that simply do nothing.) This zone covers the widest area of the map, which encourages scouts and recon mechs to scout out across the battlefield destroying non-lethal targets to chip away and damage the base without putting themselves at sever risk of the turrets pelting them to death.

No Mans Land: Hotly contested areas of the map that hold no base assets. Making them valuable territory to defend in a mech on mech engagements, but has no long term strategic value if a force is able to get around them.

Why?

Beyond simply providing something fresh, the main goals of these changes are to encourage the following:

• Make Assault its own unique and engaging game mode.
  
• Promote a tactical loop to deepen the amount of ways you play the game and engage on the map.
  
• Promote engagements to be spread out and not revolve around an “attack vs defense” of singular areas off the entire map.
  
• Promote the use of lower tonnage chassis and “role warfare” by giving lighter chassis that are lesser armed more options to approach contributing to a match that go beyond engaging the singular mech ball.
  
• Provide additional targets that can provide additional earnings to people that wish to go for objective wins over mech kills.

One of the greater balance concerns I have in this game as it currently is laid out is the over reliance on the “death ball” and singular mech ball groupings engaging with other larger groups. Its reduced the time to kill, it’s made even large maps like alpine and tourmaline revolve around the same singular patches of territory game after game, and probably most importantly, it’s made the overall meta of the game revolve solely around “ball vs ball” combat rather then reinforce the “role warfare” aspect of the production that drew many people to this games production at its on-set. Which has seen mechs that simply do not conform to that style of play left by the wayside and virtually useless in this game.





With that being said, I do not believe in completely trying to de-incentive its use, as it is currently the only effective way to play the game, but instead promote alternative methods of play by introducing elements within the game mode that encourages the use of smaller strike teams accomplishing objectives over a wider area of the map just as much as it promotes the Ball on ball play. And provide a bit more give and take that sees both of them as being valid options for use with in the game. I feel that a re-examination of assault mode like this has the potential of doing this by creating a tactical loop.

Death balls would be good at focusing down smaller strike teams, but smaller strike teams would be able to better focus on the objective win across a large battlefield over the death ball.

With a wide field with objectives scattered across the entire battlefield as opposed to a singular spot on the map, spreading out your forces to attempt an objective win, or to pull ahead by attacking multiple fronts in the “recon corridor” to do damage to the opposition will allow for a mode where more than just a singular tactic is considered “viable” all while attempting to bring the assault mode into a much better spot and make it a tense “give and take” mode that promotes more than just another flavor of skirmish mode.

This proposal is by no means an air tight design pitch, and is mostly presented as a “broad idea” to attempt to breathe a bit more life into the mode while promoting a bit more tactical depth to the game through game play objectives rather than just quirking everything to hell and back.

I’m interested in hearing what people think about a re-evaluation like this into the assault mode, and if there is anything you would like to add to it. And if it interests anyone else to see at the very least some of the broad ideas presented here looked into as we all look forward to the New Year with MWO.

Thanks for your time in reading through this admittedly long proposal.

I'm not gonna lie, I saw this on Reddit and thought "I hope this is a dev post, not just some random self-promoting his terrible ideas."

Then I clicked it.

And it's some random self-promoting FUGGIN' AWESOME IDEAS!

This is just... I mean... I'd play the hell out of this. It sounds intense!

Edited by StillRadioactive, 06 January 2015 - 12:20 AM.

[SgtKinCaiD]

This is what the Assault Mode should have been right from the start !

If i can make a comment on this : just make sure that you gain a lot more CBills/XP by depleting the ennemy HP bar that killing all their Mechs.

[Night Fury76]

bump the hell out of this so the devs see it

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

I like it, but for it to actually work well. All the old smaller maps will need an expansion to tourmaline size or bigger. This would actually favor maps of Alpines size.

[p4g3m4s7r]

This made me shed a tear... it's just... AWESOME

Bartholomew bartholomew, on 06 January 2015 - 04:40 AM, said:

I like it, but for it to actually work well. All the old smaller maps will need an expansion to tourmaline size or bigger. This would actually favor maps of Alpines size.

I think his implementation would actually keep smaller maps (say river city) with turret layouts similar to what they already have, so that the different zones are just more compacted. If I had to guess, smaller maps would simply not benefit as much from the "de-balling" that this would encourage. They would, however, probably stop being instances of ring-around the rosy as one ball tries to get behind the other, and instead encourage one ball to start pushing into the base. In river city, this could result into the final fight normally being around whichever base the opposing team took more pot-shots at, or something like that (again, just guessing).

[StalaggtIKE]

@Russ: Please?

[SpiralFace]

Bartholomew bartholomew, on 06 January 2015 - 04:40 AM, said:

I like it, but for it to actually work well. All the old smaller maps will need an expansion to tourmaline size or bigger. This would actually favor maps of Alpines size.

Well I'm hoping that what the dev's said about the size of most maps needing a re-visit this year to account for 12 v 12 ends up being true. As they said that, I curved this proposal on the assumption that that might be ture well before something like this would ever be able to legitimatly see the light of day.

But this is why I also say the map health should be scaled based on the amount of content that is lying around them. So typically the amount of health on a map like river city would be much less then on a map like tourmaline dessert. Making every structure count for a higher percentile of the bar to keep things tense.

Even if you kept river city exactly how it is now and have the turrets that are there account for the health of the base, The "river stand off" can end up tipping into one side needing to take the initiative if one side is able to take down 2-3 turrets, forcing the other group to potentially go on the offense rather then simply camping it out in a perpetual stalemate that is fun for no one.

[Thanix]

This is great stuff. Hope the new and improved PGA see it and act on it!

[Dutch Bear]

Love this idea. Give us game play that is tactical and watch out! PGI what are the chances of looking into this idea?

[Ozric]

Great post. Lots of good but often overlooked ideas drawn together into a coherent and viable proposal, that would work nicely for CW to boot. Thanks for sharing.

[ScorpionNinja]

The OP said:
" Death balls would be good at focusing down smaller strike teams, but smaller strike teams would be able to better focus on the objective win across a large battlefield over the death ball.

With a wide field with objectives scattered across the entire battlefield as opposed to a singular spot on the map, spreading out your forces to attempt an objective win, or to pull ahead by attacking multiple fronts in the “recon corridor” to do damage to the opposition will allow for a mode where more than just a singular tactic is considered “viable” all while attempting to bring the assault mode into a much better spot and make it a tense “give and take” mode that promotes more than just another flavor of skirmish mode.

This proposal is by no means an air tight design pitch, and is mostly presented as a “broad idea” to attempt to breathe a bit more life into the mode while promoting a bit more tactical depth to the game through game play objectives rather than just quirking everything to hell and back. "

Well said and pointed out!!!

I get so ******* bored of the deathball vs deathball "gamemode" that is the ONLY gamemode within all 3 of these so called: gamemodes!

Right now if PGI came out with a 1v1, 2v2 SOLARIS VII style "gamemode" that would be the ONLY gamemode I would play. Until they change **** into something like what the OP* mentions, deathball vs deathball is boring and MWO even the current CW matches, will just drive away players. Its only a matter of time, before you get sick of the same thing, match after match, etc. If you keep watering down your customers Drinks at the Bar, you wont have customers sticking around in the long run!

[Rebas Kradd]

ScorpionNinja, on 06 January 2015 - 07:19 AM, said:

Until they change **** into something like what the OP* mentions, deathball vs deathball is boring and MWO even the current CW matches, will just drive away players. Its only a matter of time, before you get sick of the same thing, match after match, etc. If you keep watering down your customers Drinks at the Bar, you wont have customers sticking around in the long run!

Statements like this are exactly the sort of thing that devs tend to ignore.

When you pitch an idea and stick to its positives and tangible benefits, people listen.

When you treat your idea like the only thing that will "save the game", you come off as vaguely trying to blackmail PGI into doing what you want. Needless to say, that's not something that wins you any respect from the right people.

[DEMAX51]

Nice proposal, dude! Here's hoping a higher-up at PGI takes notice

[Nik Reaper]

Indeed , It's a good idea and one that could fallow as soon as destructable terrain is in ( even if it is prerendered where it breaks and not ragdoll, at least not server side ).

Though one would still wounder if simply killing the enemy team would be simpler as there is no respown and the other team is incentivised to come out and fight instead of covering and risking the destruction of the there base.

Would love to see a dropship varient of it though , and if at some point we have mobile AI defenders as tanks and LRM carriers that are part of the base "health" pool we have a winner here!

Edited by Nik Reaper, 06 January 2015 - 07:51 AM.