86 replies to this topic

[franoi]

I am for a respawn system which would place people who die into some kind of supporting role.
Imagine if you die, you spawn in your base and you can choose to drive a vedette tank or a lrm carrier.
I haven't read anything in the Q&A about tanks so that would be awesome imho.

[L Y N X]

Support role ok, but per mission/map, once your mech is dead its dead... Otherwise this is not a serious effort at BT canon.

[Iron Horse]

cobrafive, on 27 November 2011 - 10:20 PM, said:

But there are many many very strategic games that have respawn...

I don't mean to pick on you cobrafive, but I noticed the terms "tactical" and "strategic" getting thrown around a lot and wanted to make a couple of distinctions:

1) Tactical vs. Strategic - While similar, I believe these terms are not interchangeable in this case. Since we are actually speaking about battlefields and not the broader overall concept of war or battlefields in general, I believe they have very specific uses in terms of this discussion.
Strategy, IMO, pertains to what you do BEFORE the match begins to give your side the edge (i.e. bringing a laser-heavy config for a hot map, which chassis should do what jobs, what type of armor to use, etc.), whereas Tactics (again, IMO) applies to type of movement and controls done DURING the match (flanking left/right, powering-down to hide from radars, advance "hey diddle-diddle" right-up-the-middle if you want, etc.).
"Tactical," as I've defined it, would be my preferred style of play, and I believe my definition is correct because games like Starcraft are typically termed "Real-Time STRATEGY" (essentially endless unit creation, similar to our "respawns"), whereas games like MechCommander are classified "Real-Time TACTICAL" (units deployed at the beginning of the match are essentially the only ones you get to use during the battle, similar to "no respawns").

2) Role Warfare - PGI has already stated that ROLE WARFARE is one of its core pillars of gameplay (http://mwomercs.com/game). I really just don't see a way to make a 35-ton Raven competetive with an 80-ton Awesome if they both get endless respawns. This is an over-simplification of the idea, but you can see my point: the biggest 'mech with the most guns will win nine times out of ten. Even if the Raven pilot does something very surprising to the Awesome and gets a kill, that Awesome pilot is going to be back and out for blood, so the Raven pilot either has to run and try to continue the now not-so-suprising tactic, or get killed over and over again until the now ******-off Awesome pilot wins the match. Now just multiply that by both sides 'mechs. Also, saying that both sides field similar sized 'mechs doesn't work either, because with respawns the battlefield either becomes a jumble of different 'mechs in different engagements, or a more or less constant skirmish line being constantly replenished by fresh 'mechs.
So the battle essentially ends during the STRATEGY phase, and despite the TACTICS employed by the pilots, the outcome is already more or less determined before the 'mechs even hit the field. So even just from a gameplay perspective this unbalances the fight, and arguably makes the overall match not fun for at least one team (using the one-on-one example, then extrapolating outwards again).

I personally believe the tactical aspects of the MechWarrior Universe are much more interesting and compelling than the strategic ones, and make for better gameplay as well. That said there's no reason we can't get both! *crosses fingers*

[Woodstock]

Oh no ... please no .... no respawns ... please.

Zerg tactics come from respawns.

They make mechs feel cheap and replaceable instead of rare and valuable.

And the idea that you could repair a mech in the time a battle will run for ...even repairing armour ... would destroy any immersion.

So please .... JUST SAY NO to this idea boys and girls

[VYCanis]

Sorry but I like, you know, want to actually be playing the game.

leave the no respawn for the tourney crowd who cares about that stuff, but i'd much rather spend most of my time playing rounds where I might fight the same couple people several times and the battle has the ability to evolve and flow. Not just some short brutal skirmishes where the first person to bite it has to sit around doing nothing for however long it takes to finally hunt down the last guy.

say all you want about making the mechs valuable, but all the feeling of value in the world doesn't amount to a wet **** if you are liable to spend most of your time not actually playing. And even if you get good, all you do is pass the problem onto someone else.

[Haeso]

You don't have to force players to stay once they've died, logical fallacy much?

[Odin]

Ladys and Gentlemen, lets face the facts.
PGI won't frustrate players about this.

IMO we need respawns. Absolute no respawn games are not a guarantee for good behavior - players side or great gameplay - game side. I'd like to see a reward for staying alive. And some sort of limitations regarding respawns, depending on what kind of game mode your playing. Realistic respawns, pun intended, must be tied to the maps size, mission goals and sure some sort of carrot/stick mechanics. There's no excuse for being dumb - but we all have bad days and sometimes simply bad luck. FNG's gonna die a lot, keep this in mind. I'd rather see a positive reward/carrot system for staying alive, then a negative approach/stick for getting shot out of the map. Perhaps a mix of both with a heavier emphasis on the carrot part. IMO very likely we see some heavy use of the ingamecoin - C-Bills for this - repairs? And a clear encouragement for smart team play, which naturally, maturely includes the "Still alive, still alive" approach.

[irony1999]

If one of the goals is "kill everyone", then it would make sense not to have respawns.

Otherwise, I hope they use a dropship based respawn. Maybe dropships make new passes every x minutes.

[VYCanis]

Haeso, on 30 November 2011 - 07:37 AM, said:

You don't have to force players to stay once they've died, logical fallacy much?

no, not logical fallacy. remember the whole merc thing?
The whole point is that you group up with buddies and work together.

can't really do that when your group is liable to start dropping out of the game to find other servers to play on whenever they don't feel like sitting on the bench for 10 minutes.

[guardian wolf]

Which is true, but I like this Dropship idea, and wait, maybe a commander could call in reinforcements off map, like say a mercenary company, or a friendly unit just happens to "drop" and lend a hand to the side which they were called to help, that would be awesome for a campaign style map.

[Haeso]

VYCanis, on 30 November 2011 - 08:43 AM, said:

no, not logical fallacy. remember the whole merc thing?
The whole point is that you group up with buddies and work together.

can't really do that when your group is liable to start dropping out of the game to find other servers to play on whenever they don't feel like sitting on the bench for 10 minutes.

If you're playing with a 'Merc group, why are you worried about this, you should be playing as a team not a lone wolf, if you get killed outside of the main engagement and the mission drags on, you've messed up and death is your punishment.

I still support a reinforcements system using limited availability dropships if the mission permits and it's budgeted into the team's total BV rather than a gimmie, but respawn as a method of keeping people in play rather than a tactical decision doesn't belong in any serious gameplay. For instant action simulator play or something, sure if that's what people want, but not in the conquest portion of the game if it's separate.

[Ran Ito]

+1 no respawn.

[UncleKulikov]

cobrafive, on 27 November 2011 - 02:11 PM, said:

You should just respawn at a designated safe zone on the side of the map. Alternatively, capturable spawn points, battlefield style.

No reason to get fancy like this, people are willing to suspend their disbelief, respawns are something we understand as gamers.

I'd also like to see respawns depend on the game mode. Without respawns, every match is simply deathmatch, and I prefer objective-based gameplay. But I have fun in both types.

For sure.
Both types should be allowed for sure, in separate game modes so that players can choose how they want to play.

I like the idea of the respawn time taking longer the more damage you suffered, and combining that with a traditional spawn system would make it so that if one team has lots of casualties at once, it takes longer than if they were destroyed piecemeal.

Edited by UncleKulikov, 30 November 2011 - 02:47 PM.

[Damocles]

Personally against respawns. I want to play seriously with a team and if I die it was due to being outplayed.
I do not understand those who think dying and not respawning would kill teamplay.
You would drop from the game if you died and have no interest in seeing how your team fares in the match?
That doesn't sound like you want to play on a team at all. :|

If people want quakewarrior with rushrespawns and an endless K:D ratio then good for them.
Make it a mini-game.

[VYCanis]

Haeso, on 30 November 2011 - 02:26 PM, said:

If you're playing with a 'Merc group, why are you worried about this, you should be playing as a team not a lone wolf, if you get killed outside of the main engagement and the mission drags on, you've messed up and death is your punishment.

I still support a reinforcements system using limited availability dropships if the mission permits and it's budgeted into the team's total BV rather than a gimmie, but respawn as a method of keeping people in play rather than a tactical decision doesn't belong in any serious gameplay. For instant action simulator play or something, sure if that's what people want, but not in the conquest portion of the game if it's separate.

Because, if you want to encourage playing with friends and all that cool stuff, it goes counter to that if the best means of getting the most play time and actually playing with your merc group are mutually exclusive. I see no reason to punish deaths outside of hardcore style gamemodes to the extent that players are getting benched with evey death. It will happen to all of us. We will all get mechs shot out from underneath us, less skilled players moreso than others. Its bad enough getting blasted out of your mech by someone more skilled, repeatedly. Do we really need to compound that frustration by having less skilled players practically getting locked out of experiencing meaningful gameplay?

Its what caused me to drop games like CS/neotokyo/and insurgency, once you get the vets in there, good luck ever actually learning how to play properly without having to waste ridiculous amounts of time running a gauntlet of frustration, where 5 minutes of gametime came at the cost of 45 minutes of waiting. that kills any sort of fun.

consequences i'm all for, believable respawns/reinforcements i'm all for, but for standard play, really the best bet is to have gameplay that actually keeps you playing, not waiting.

Edited by VYCanis, 30 November 2011 - 03:09 PM.

[Iron Horse]

VYCanis, on 30 November 2011 - 03:07 PM, said:

Because, if you want to encourage playing with friends and all that cool stuff, it goes counter to that if the best means of getting the most play time and actually playing with your merc group are mutually exclusive. I see no reason to punish deaths outside of hardcore style gamemodes to the extent that players are getting benched with evey death. It will happen to all of us. We will all get mechs shot out from underneath us, less skilled players moreso than others. Its bad enough getting blasted out of your mech by someone more skilled, repeatedly. Do we really need to compound that frustration by having less skilled players practically getting locked out of experiencing meaningful gameplay?

Its what caused me to drop games like CS/neotokyo/and insurgency, once you get the vets in there, good luck ever actually learning how to play properly without having to waste ridiculous amounts of time running a gauntlet of frustration, where 5 minutes of gametime came at the cost of 45 minutes of waiting. that kills any sort of fun.

consequences i'm all for, believable respawns/reinforcements i'm all for, but for standard play, really the best bet is to have gameplay that actually keeps you playing, not waiting.

I see your point, but an Optimatching system could reduce this. I also think there should (and will) be arena-style games and FFA outside of conquest mode.

[CobraFive]

Iron Horse, on 30 November 2011 - 03:21 AM, said:

I don't mean to pick on you cobrafive, but I noticed the terms "tactical" and "strategic" getting thrown around a lot and wanted to make a couple of distinctions:

1) Tactical vs. Strategic - While similar, I believe these terms are not interchangeable in this case. Since we are actually speaking about battlefields and not the broader overall concept of war or battlefields in general, I believe they have very specific uses in terms of this discussion.
Strategy, IMO, pertains to what you do BEFORE the match begins to give your side the edge (i.e. bringing a laser-heavy config for a hot map, which chassis should do what jobs, what type of armor to use, etc.), whereas Tactics (again, IMO) applies to type of movement and controls done DURING the match (flanking left/right, powering-down to hide from radars, advance "hey diddle-diddle" right-up-the-middle if you want, etc.).
"Tactical," as I've defined it, would be my preferred style of play, and I believe my definition is correct because games like Starcraft are typically termed "Real-Time STRATEGY" (essentially endless unit creation, similar to our "respawns"), whereas games like MechCommander are classified "Real-Time TACTICAL" (units deployed at the beginning of the match are essentially the only ones you get to use during the battle, similar to "no respawns").

I don't feel picked on, don't worry.

I do know the difference between Tactical/Strategic, but my point is that there are both strategic and tactical games with respawns. My particular mention of Battlefield was for that reason.

Although it is not present in the current generation of games, the older Battlefields had both strategy, and tactics. In example, tactics would be working together with your squad, while strategy would be the commander co-ordinating the squad and deploying off-map assistance. Did you see this much in Pub play? Maybe, maybe not. But the game was there.

It is why I also exampled Natural Selection, and game which had both tactical play (As there were many units and guns to take, which behaved very differently in very different situations) and a very deep strategic play which is far deeper then MWO will be (or should be), for example, collecting resources, building a certain number respawn pads, buying upgrades and doing research in the match... and the other team having a totally asymmetric strategic and tactical experience. But, this of course is my definition of strategy. To some this is still tactics.

I will not defend respawns to the death- I prefer them, when done well, but I like both systems, and they both have a great deal of merit. Both can be done well.

Quote

2) Role Warfare - PGI has already stated that ROLE WARFARE is one of its core pillars of gameplay (http://mwomercs.com/game). I really just don't see a way to make a 35-ton Raven competetive with an 80-ton Awesome if they both get endless respawns. This is an over-simplification of the idea, but you can see my point: the biggest 'mech with the most guns will win nine times out of ten. Even if the Raven pilot does something very surprising to the Awesome and gets a kill, that Awesome pilot is going to be back and out for blood, so the Raven pilot either has to run and try to continue the now not-so-suprising tactic, or get killed over and over again until the now ******-off Awesome pilot wins the match. Now just multiply that by both sides 'mechs. Also, saying that both sides field similar sized 'mechs doesn't work either, because with respawns the battlefield either becomes a jumble of different 'mechs in different engagements, or a more or less constant skirmish line being constantly replenished by fresh 'mechs.
So the battle essentially ends during the STRATEGY phase, and despite the TACTICS employed by the pilots, the outcome is already more or less determined before the 'mechs even hit the field. So even just from a gameplay perspective this unbalances the fight, and arguably makes the overall match not fun for at least one team (using the one-on-one example, then extrapolating outwards again).

I personally believe the tactical aspects of the MechWarrior Universe are much more interesting and compelling than the strategic ones, and make for better gameplay as well. That said there's no reason we can't get both! *crosses fingers*

This example is true but you are looking at it from only a combat perspective (as you say, its a simplified example). I am speaking of an objective-based game. In a straight death-match type, I think, it would be difficult to balance this game as it is, as scout mechs would be undervalued if everyone could respawn. But on an objective based match, the role of the raven wouldn't be to charge in and get killed by the awesome.

It means to me that say that awesome (and his buddies) defeat the raven (and his buddies) and take the objective, the raven can come back and try to fight the awesome for it again after the respawn: but in that meantime, the awesome and his friends have locked that point down and have been ticking down the victory timer/collecting resource points/manufacturing turrets/whatever purpose the objectives serve in this game. The awesome and his buddies are rewarded for their victory but the raven doesn't lose the match after a single encounter. They can try again against that point, or maybe they fight for another point that doesn't have as many guards- that was the strategic play I would imply (as opposed to tactics, which would be co-operation in the battle itself). Because they want commanding and communication to be part of the game, I assume they will want to include a strategic element of that sort.

I also mention there are other ways to balance, even for a deathmatch-style game: for example a "team health" or ticket system, where an awesome dying hurts your team more then a raven dying. I played a fun little gundam game with this system, where for example, You can play as any mobile suit you want without restriction... but if you play as the Gundam, when you die it takes away 45% of your team's health, whereas if you play a Zaku 2 and die, it takes only about 10% of your team's health, and there were many options- like a customized Zaku 2 being faster and hurting more, but bumping up his death penalty and reducing his armor... only a skilled player should pick that mobile suit... this would be an interesting system to represent a mech's BV in-game and would also really give incentive to stay alive.

Now, like I said, its only a way, I don't think a no-respawn match would not work. I think it would be fun too, and I could write as much about why that would be fun over a respawn match. Plus it depends heavily on, objectives, combat, mechs available, the matchmaker...

[Dayuhan]

I actually answered this in another topic so rather than repeat myself I will just post a link to that article here.

[Breeze]

I would like to see some type of "limited respawn" system, akin to some of the earlier suggestions in this thread (eg Dropship reinforcements; MFB on-field repairs).

A respawn system does not necessarily mean something like COD, where there are infinite respawns and little penalties to dying. I think that such a system would not be best applied in MWO. Combat between mechs would be far more protracted, giving players the space to play tactically. So death in this game should be meaningful, and unlimited respawns take away from that.

But a limited respawn system can add a new gameplay element which can be applied believably to the game. Resource management feels quite in-line within the BT universe, which a limited respawn system would introduce.

Imagine deploying a lance into battle, but each team has a couple of reserve mechs (eg total 6 mechs = 4 in lance, 2 as reserve) as backup. This will force teams to decide which mechs to bring into the fight first, and which to use as backup. Some teams might choose to go scouting first, then bring in the heavies. Other teams might decide to overwhlem in the first instance. There could also be penalties for bringing in those reserves (eg deployment times), which means the weakened team could still be defeated by a tactically superior team, yet still have a sliver of a chance to come back from the brink.

This could be an interesting way to add more dynamism to the overall gameplay experience, without diluting the impact of a single mech's demise.

[Karyudo ds]

I would much prefer no respawn. Though I do think reinforcements via dropships would actually make sense if done right. Depends on how the maps come out but I could see make sense.