8 replies to this topic

[Surn]

Increasing Tournament Joy

The last three tournaments have shown growth in player enjoyment, but there are still some issues that could be resolved. As many of you know, I used to run a Mechwarrior League, The Mechwarrior Registry (www.mechreg.org). During our decade of play in the league we had Microsoft and Mad Catz sponsored, streamed tournaments, and were featured on television shows like Ultimate Gamer. I personally coded and ran the league with the help of dedicated players.

Because we were players and the endeavor was just for fun, we tried everything to make the games as fun and challenging as possible. Which brings me to the tournaments and how to increase joy.

First, the problem

Many players are complaining about how the latest tournament format impacts the play and enjoyment of the game. I completed the tournament PRIMARILY due to the amazing understanding of my beautiful wife.

I tried every tactic that came across my mind to find an enjoyable way to earn points. Here are two problematic outcomes.

The meaningless point, 1 kill & 1 assist & win - but very little help to the team.




The fruitless endeavor, top dmg, 2nd highest overall match points 11 assists & win - no point.



The numbers (what gamers love to see)

Number of Drops: to score my 50 points it took me 177 attempts. While I was doing some experimenting that may have contributed 10-20 drops, it was a time consuming endeavor.

I did a total of 5 drops that were unrelated to the tourney. I had 2 CW counter attacks wins that did not count either due to crashes and reconnects or maybe it is just a bug. So considering all that, it took me about 160 drops.

The most effective mechs (biased by my skill and style of play), based on at least 4 drops played were:


*After getting a kill, I tried to assist others which may have skewed my k/d results later in the tournament.

The Solution

I have to admit that I do not know exactly the calculation for Match Score, but assists + match or damage would be a much better way to score the points.

I have 2 alternative proposals to encourage team play much more than killing or staying alive plus wins.

1) The next tournament use points based on Win + x damage or Win + x match score and an assist for good measure.

2) Do a tournament similar to the "Like a Champion II", but set the point threshold to 225. To offset this make each assist count as 1 point, each kill worth 2 points, each match score above 50 gets a bonus point, damage above 400 worth an additional point, and victory worth 3 points.

In my best mech, I would score about 12 points per match and could pretty much count on 5-6 points per match in any mech. Assuming other players are about my skill level it would take between 25-45 matches to achieve tournament success. I think the goal should be between 40-50 drops.

This system lets the players show significant progress every match, encourages better play and should increase player joy.

Let me know what you think, as I have a lot of ideas and experience that could help make this game more fun if you contribute feedback.

Surn

Edited by MechregSurn, 24 February 2015 - 06:02 PM.

[DrSlamastika]

Life is a b****, sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

I think this tournament was perfectly fine.
It was easy, you don't need stay alive to the end. . .
So there was no many pathetic "warriors" hiding and trying stay alive far away from battle.

It was challenge and when you finished, you got some cool stuff and one more important thing, that feeling of satisfaction.

The name of the event was "LIKE A CHAMPION", not " LIKE AN AVERAGE PLAYER"

Think about that . . .

Edited by DrSlamastika, 24 February 2015 - 02:23 PM.

[Surn]

I have one additional proposal.

The Mechreg was based on Player RPI, much like college basketball. It took into account the stats for you, your opponents and your opponents opponents. College basketball restricts this to just win percentage, but the mechreg RPI considered tonnage, win percentage, kills and player strength.

I did all the programming to calculate a player RPI via the database after each drop was reported to the server. MWO, couldn't easily duplicate that level of complexity, but they could use a simple RPI system like college basketball does.

So, my third suggestion would be a RPI based competition.

The top 10% of players get a grand prize.
The next 15% of players get second prize.
The next 25% of players get a small prize.

The tournament would cover the 30 games after the start date and only players with 30 matches by the end date would be considered eligible. The ranking would be based on the formula:
45% * victory percentage +
30% * opponents victory percentage +
25 % * opponents' opponent victory percentage.

This means that the CHAMPIONS will be the players who won the most games vs the best opponents.

Sorry for busting out in Maths... if you are curious what this looked like in the old league click here

Edited by MechregSurn, 24 February 2015 - 06:26 PM.

[Phobic Wraith]

I like this. I can't really say that I have any suggestions. This would be far preferable to how the "like a champion" events are working, but my thinking is that PGI doesn't want everything to work easily. They want people to work hard and increase the threshold for success. That means they give away less free stuff, but still get people to play. I hope I'm wrong.

[MadLibrarian]

I couldn't agree more. They need to stick with generic scoring that won't break the game play. Your suggestions all seem like valid solutions.

In general, I'd like it if they kept it simple by just using match score. They can easily boost it up to whatever they like to increase the difficulty if they are really worried about giving away too much stuff.

[AC]

I kinda agree with this. I had a match were I had the highest kills and the most damage, but never managed to wipe my lasers across a mech for the assist. I know they are trying to mix it up, but I think they could create a few scenarios where you score a point.

Maybe 10 assists and a win.
Maybe 4 kill no assists and a win.
Maybe highest score, 1 kill and 1 assist and a loss.

[YUyahoo]

I know people will never be happy no matter what scoring system PGI uses but the ones they keep using over and over I have two big issues with. The first is where there is an imbalance in the value of assists or kills in the "score X points to get a qualifying game" style events because when kills are worth more than assists it inspires incredibly bad behaviors and when assists are worth more than kills we are "punished" for working toward the primary/secondary objective of the game. The other I have issues with are the events where you need to win to qualify. Now I know most of you will disagree with me that you should have to win (specially during a tournament) to have a qualifying match but with the way MWO works currently getting a win depends more on the MatchMaker and the 23 other players you are randomly assigned to every match (whether they are groups or solos) than our own individual skills/effort/performance. So, how to resolve this? Quite simple...when you need to score "x" points to have a qualifying game change the scoring formula to have kills and assists worth the same (instead of 10pts for a kill and 20pts for an assist have kills and assists worth 15 pts each) and when the scoring system involves getting a kill and an assist in the same game to earn a point remove the "and win" condition (and better still reward people for multiple kills and assists in the same round and/or offer a bonus point for a win...get 3kills and 3 assists earn 3 points, if you win the round get a 4th point). Is this less challenging? Perhaps for some but for many others it makes the impossible at least attainable and for many more (those who work weekends or have family commitments and can't spend 10+ hours grinding every event) it would shorten the time needed to complete the event to more reasonable levels. Before all of you start blasting me for suggesting that events be easier/shorter these events are supposed to be fun and enjoyable but also consider this...I also play poker online and participate in on-line tournaments, those tournaments can have millions of participants but they are generally over in 2-3 hours...most people I have seen post results for all the MWO events I have participated in took about 5 or more hours just to get to the half way mark. Also think about the most recent event we just had, like a champion II, would it really have been a significantly less challenging event if it took the average player less than 5 hours to get to 50 points instead of 10+ hours (and for some just to get to 25 because of the teams MM assigns them to)? These kill/assist/win to get a point style tournaments really are more of challenge of the Match Maker (for the win component) than they are of our own skill.

Edited by YUyahoo, 24 February 2015 - 11:55 PM.

[Wildstreak]

Match score should be considered more than damage, there are Mechs out there that can score well but do not get high damage.

There should have been a second team tournament like last summer, time for PGI to see what is going on and that produced actual results from them in changes.

I do agree people whould work for what is offered, the main issue is of the various formats for tournaments done, more of them promote individual play that messes up team play and even winning by mode. This tournament was one of them.

Here's a tournament idea. Remember the Faction type ones where your actions contribute to your Faction winning? If your Factions wins the goal set, one existing Mech not having it gets Faction camo unlocked. That would be the lowest level prize. Then you could set higher level goals that win Faction content.

[Scout Derek]

I'm going to be short with this.

Keep the same rules, but instead add one additional alternative to it:

At least 6 assists or more and 400 damage or more.

That'd make it flexible for players to go for a kill and a assist or play just the way you want to.