41 replies to this topic

[Rebas Kradd]

Let me know what you think.

[sycocys]

Just looking through the text you had along with the video, not opposed to any of the ideas. At the same time I doubt we or anyone will be able to convince Russ to dump all those crappy CW maps they made and on top of that have to develop an interesting game mode for people that's more than just kill all the enemy mechs.

[Rebas Kradd]

sycocys, on 28 September 2015 - 09:46 AM, said:

Just looking through the text you had along with the video, not opposed to any of the ideas. At the same time I doubt we or anyone will be able to convince Russ to dump all those crappy CW maps they made and on top of that have to develop an interesting game mode for people that's more than just kill all the enemy mechs.

I don't think anything should be dumped, but it can be added onto.

I'd like to think that larger maps won't take longer than the current maps to create. More open space to test, but less terrain to get right and debug.

[sycocys]

The current set of maps are pretty, but the gameplay design of them is horrendous.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

I feel sad watching the video. Its a good idea, but i guess its too advanced for pgi. it cant be done with minimal viable effort.




So nice idea, but dont expect any attention or feedback from pgi at all.

Edited by ThisMachineKillsFascists, 28 September 2015 - 11:40 AM.

[nehebkau]

Some good ideas.

I would suggest that the spawn-points be able to be used by any team that captures them and that a person can choose which spawn-point they drop from. As for the sensor line? Don't really like the idea -- turrets alone do enough of a job stopping lights.

Edited by nehebkau, 28 September 2015 - 10:53 AM.

[SirNotlag]

Some good ideas here. I personally think that this would be good to be added as an additional game mode into CW, because sometimes I like simple kill all enemy mechs matches. The only issue I see is that bigger maps favour faster mechs and I don't think the sensor line would be enough to dissuade a light rush, in fact I think it would punish bigger mechs even more as the lights can still push threw and surprise based on speed but slower mechs would have their position given away. Also whats to stop the defenders from doing a light rush death ball down each lane to kill the attacking lances one by one.

Edited by SirNotlag, 28 September 2015 - 12:19 PM.

[Rebas Kradd]

nehebkau, on 28 September 2015 - 10:51 AM, said:

Some good ideas.

I would suggest that the spawn-points be able to be used by any team that captures them

I would worry that this would give far too much of an advantage to the defenders and ensure that most of the fighting takes place on one narrow strip of the map.

I also like the idea of only one side having dropships, while the other side is dug in and relies on the strength of their position. Seems much more realistic than what we have now, with both sides having dropships. Why not just have the dropships fight each other?

nehebkau, on 28 September 2015 - 10:51 AM, said:

and that a person can choose which spawn-point they drop from.

Maybe. I might like to hand that job to the commander, though, in order to give them a role, or at least let them divert mechs from a compromised corridor to one that's been opened.

nehebkau, on 28 September 2015 - 10:51 AM, said:

As for the sensor line? Don't really like the idea -- turrets alone do enough of a job stopping lights.

The sensor alerts would be an info warfare helper designed to turn defender guns on attacking light rushes sooner and increase the damage they can inflict. At least in my thinking.

Also, requiring lights to take out the generators would draw them to the generators, and thus to the turrets protecting them.

SirNotlag, on 28 September 2015 - 12:18 PM, said:

The only issue I see is that bigger maps favour faster mechs and I don't think the sensor line would be enough to dissuade a light rush, in fact I think it would punish bigger mechs even more as the lights can still push threw and surprise based on speed but slower mechs would have their position given away.

Well, that's exactly the point. If lights push through, they'll survive and inflict some damage, but the heavier mechs coming later will be compromised. The idea is to implicitly force the lights into a scouting and clearing role.

SirNotlag, on 28 September 2015 - 12:18 PM, said:

Also whats to stop the defenders from doing a light rush death ball down each lane to kill the attacking lances one by one.

If that happens, the gamemode has done its job. Defenders aren't camping, and we've split the 12-mans into groups for smaller engagements. Yeahoo!

[Bloody]

good ideas but beyond the capability and imagination of PGI imho. They dont even know how to run a PTS

[nehebkau]

OP,

Consider a battle mode like yours where the goal is to control ALL the spawn points -- that is the win condition. No traditional bases to assault.

Edited by nehebkau, 28 September 2015 - 03:22 PM.

[SirNotlag]

Rebas Kradd, on 28 September 2015 - 02:36 PM, said:

If that happens, the gamemode has done its job. Defenders aren't camping, and we've split the 12-mans into groups for smaller engagements. Yeahoo!

sure cause 12 on 4 is going to be fun...

[Rebas Kradd]

SirNotlag, on 28 September 2015 - 03:44 PM, said:

sure cause 12 on 4 is going to be fun...

Who is deathballing in your mind here, the attackers or defenders?

If it's the attackers deathballin, they're sacrificing the closer spawn points and forcing their later heavy mechs to walk just as far, as well as conceding the artillery/MFBs that can be picked up from activating those closer points.

If it's the defenders deathballin, they're giving other attacker lances a straight shot at their base.

[Lykaon]

In the example given there are three lanes of approach.

Along those lanes are critical objectives (defended by NPC guns)

As the objectives in the lane are captured you effectivly push the lane back towards the enemy base.

So league of mechwarrior legends?

I jest...overall a decent proposal and one I would support.I have been in favor of larger maps with a play style angled towards objectives rather than smash em up robots deathballing.

[Paigan]

Rebas Kradd, on 28 September 2015 - 09:40 AM, said:

Let me know what you think.

Good idea and nice video!

Maybe it has potential side effects / problems etc. that aren't obviously visible at the moment (maybe too complicated for new players? games getting too long for casual players? lines depending too heavily on the skill of a few?), but apart from that, I like it .

Sadly, as mentioned, you'd have to convince russ first...

Edited by Paigan, 29 September 2015 - 03:33 AM.

[Squirg]

First you say that forcing players into narrow chokes creates stagnant gameplay, then you split up the teams into 3 narrow valleys. Much wow. Also, how will spawn points be chosen? Give it to the players, they'll deathball down the easiest lane; force it to be lance based, and a struggling lance will get pooped on for 30 minutes; give it a commander? Opens up endless possibilities for griefing and screws over pubs.

I like everything else in the video though. But really, imo the best way to discourage death balling and do away with boring choke points is to scatter objectives that need to be attacked / defended across the map, in which there is not enough time to deathball and sweep, and too many objectives to camp.

[Paigan]

Squirg, on 29 September 2015 - 03:33 AM, said:

First you say that forcing players into narrow chokes creates stagnant gameplay, then you split up the teams into 3 narrow valleys. Much wow. Also, how will spawn points be chosen? Give it to the players, they'll deathball down the easiest lane; force it to be lance based, and a struggling lance will get pooped on for 30 minutes; give it a commander? Opens up endless possibilities for griefing and screws over pubs.

I like everything else in the video though. But really, imo the best way to discourage death balling and do away with boring choke points is to scatter objectives that need to be attacked / defended across the map, in which there is not enough time to deathball and sweep, and too many objectives to camp.

Good points.
But I wonder:

If there are enough objectives with enough distance between them to prevent a deathball sweep, wouldn't that cause countless minutes of travel time between them?
Wouldn't matches deteriorate into hour-long strategic pokergames of "who sends how many heavies where first?" with hardly any fights?

Whenever I read complaints about deathballing, I can't help to think:
Maybe combining forces is simply a natural, efficient thing to do? (Similar to optimizing mech loadouts into many weapons of few different types).
Maybe all that complaining is actually a symptom of defying the reality of warfare optimization (or "process optimization" in general) ?

Edited by Paigan, 29 September 2015 - 03:47 AM.

[Khobai]

what prevents the defenders from deathballing and just killing the attacking lances while theyre seperated?

Quote

sure cause 12 on 4 is going to be fun...

exactly. theres nothing to prevent the defenders from deathballing. meanwhile the attackers are forced to split up due to their dropzones being seperated.


If you want to prevent deathballing you need infinite respawns and spread out objectives. deathballing will ALWAYS be a thing as long as killing enemy mechs is the easiest way to win a gamemode. infinite respawns removes killing enemy mechs as a potential win objective, which places less emphasis on the need to deathball, and much more emphasis on completing the objectives. And having spread out objectives would force teams to split up in order to capture enough of the objectives to win the gamemode.


What I suggest is a ticket system. Each team starts with something like 8000 tickets. And whenever a mech dies its team loses tickets equal to the mechs tonnage. Each player gets 4 choices of mechs and can respawn an infinite number of times in any of those 4 mechs. But each time they die their team loses tickets equal to the mech's tonnage.

Additionally there would be five capturable strategic objectives spread out across the map. Controlling a strategic objective would bleed the enemy team of tickets at a rate of 1 per second. Additionally each capture objective would provide a strategic bonus to the controlling team such as a mech repair bay, ammo cache, aerotech base, satillite uplink, etc...

Lastly there would be an enemy HQ for each team, which if it gets destroyed, that team immediately loses. That way the losing team always has a chance of winning the game by going for an HQ destruction. It allows for the possibility of an upset.

Edited by Khobai, 29 September 2015 - 05:04 AM.

[Arctourus]

congratulations OP, great idea. Would be nice to see modes like this and maybe some variations as well added into the mix. What's there now is too boring to wait a half hour to get into.

[Lyoto Machida]

Love the video and idea...I'd make a comment about PGI's ability to implement such a thing but it's already been addressed lol.

[Duke ramulots]

Rebas Kradd, on 28 September 2015 - 09:40 AM, said:

Let me know what you think.

Liked your ideas and proposed something similar a while ago.

The video was cool, did you make it yourself?

Edited by Duke ramulots, 29 September 2015 - 10:52 AM.