10 replies to this topic

[M R T]

Would it be possible to have a win requirement for the event awards? Meaning when you need to get so and so matchscore, damage, uav detections and what not, it does not count unless you also get a win. Maybe this will stop people from just doing the bare minimum required to get the event reward, and rise the quality of matches during events?

[GottFaust]

Morte Nilsum, on 13 June 2019 - 11:18 AM, said:

Would it be possible to have a win requirement for the event awards? Meaning when you need to get so and so matchscore, damage, uav detections and what not, it does not count unless you also get a win. Maybe this will stop people from just doing the bare minimum required to get the event reward, and rise the quality of matches during events?

No, because wins can be easily torpedo'd by a single bad or trollish player. Why deny 11 others their event credit because a single guy decided to throw the match on purpose?

[thievingmagpi]

maybe if people focused on actually being effective, it wouldn't be an issue?

[Nightbird]

The quality of games in QP can go lower? laughs harder

[M R T]

GottFaust, on 13 June 2019 - 11:22 AM, said:

No, because wins can be easily torpedo'd by a single bad or trollish player.

First, that statement is false. Second, the object of a match is to win, not to leech on the other players in order to achieve the requirements of an event that just happens be running.

The reality is that people don't focus on being effective when they have no incentive to do so during events. There should always be an incentive to win, and events should give that incentive.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

We've had events with "win required" conditions in the past, and they were dreadful. They brought out the absolute worst in the community.

A significant percentage of players would simply give up the moment their team lost the kill advantage- you know, the point at which a team becomes more likely to lose than win? Flaking out on every likely loss lets you grind wins faster, even if some of those losses could have been wins if everyone had stuck it out. While PGI has since implemented a penalty for disconnecting early, it only applies if you disconnect while you're still alive- so, you'll get people YOLOing into the enemy to die early instead of just disconnecting wherever they sit. That's not really an improvement.

Before you suggest tacking a survival requirement on top of that... they tried that. It was worse. People figured out pretty quickly that they could maximize their win+survive chances by playing second-line exclusively, so you had teams of people constantly trying to retreat behind each other instead of advance. Also not an improvement, because you'd end up with two super passive teams timidly poking at each other sporadically in static games that lasted f o r e v e r.

But what if you add a kill requirement, you ask? Yeah, the MWO playerbase found a way to ruin that too. Turns out that the best way to game the kill+win+survive events for the highest event point grind rate was to be super aggressive early to snag a kill for yourself, then immediately run and shut down in a corner for the rest of the game. If you died in the attempt, you'd just disconnect and move on to the next game as fast as possible, which is what you'd do in any other event anyway. Those were the worst, most toxic events we ever had, and grinding them was absolute torture. Kill requirements in and of themselves never made people behave that badly, but throw it in on top of win or survive requirements and it's like swimming in hydrochloric acid.

Besides which... when a win is required to advance the event, people start acting as if they're entitled to the win, which makes it that much more miserable to be on the losing side than usual. Know how some folks will cast the blame every which way but on themselves, and get salty and caustic towards the rest of the team? Multiply that by twelve. We also didn't have built-in VoIP in MWO when win-required events were still a thing. So there's that too.

We do not need that kind of awfulness again, especially with a declining playerbase. The more toxic games get, the more people leave. We're at a point where a single hypertoxic event like that could literally kill the game.

Edited by WrathOfDeadguy, 13 June 2019 - 02:47 PM.

[thievingmagpi]

survive the first 2 minutes of a match- 10 million cbills

do more than 100 damage- 300 million cbills

[Kubernetes]

GottFaust, on 13 June 2019 - 11:22 AM, said:

No, because wins can be easily torpedo'd by a single bad or trollish player. Why deny 11 others their event credit because a single guy decided to throw the match on purpose?

Because currently people are torpedoing matches in pursuit of event rewards. It incentivizes people to run in with a weapons boat and suicide. If all that matters is doing x damage with y weapon, that's all they care about.

[M R T]

WrathOfDeadguy, on 13 June 2019 - 02:45 PM, said:

A significant percentage of players would simply give up the moment their team lost the kill advantage- you know, the point at which a team becomes more likely to lose than win? Flaking out on every likely loss lets you grind wins faster, even if some of those losses could have been wins if everyone had stuck it out. While PGI has since implemented a penalty for disconnecting early, it only applies if you disconnect while you're still alive- so, you'll get people YOLOing into the enemy to die early instead of just disconnecting wherever they sit. That's not really an improvement.

I did not even consider this as a possibility, but now that you mention it, it unfortunately makes sense. Guess my faith in humanity was too optimistic.

But how then can players be incentivized to not only do the bare minimum to reach the event goal but also to win the match? There has to be some way to do that without people exploiting it in the ways you mentioned.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Morte Nilsum, on 14 June 2019 - 04:24 AM, said:

But how then can players be incentivized to not only do the bare minimum to reach the event goal but also to win the match? There has to be some way to do that without people exploiting it in the ways you mentioned.

You can have "Win X number of matches" as separate. That way, people will play to win or at least try to not sabotage themselves. The problem however lies in the way the teams are matched. The game having a huge snowball effect built into it as a consequence makes unbalanced teams have almost no way to come back from a losing situation in most cases.

So, just have that extra challenge as well but not tied to any other requirements.

[GottFaust]

Kubernetes, on 13 June 2019 - 03:33 PM, said:

Because currently people are torpedoing matches in pursuit of event rewards. It incentivizes people to run in with a weapons boat and suicide. If all that matters is doing x damage with y weapon, that's all they care about.

I was more referring to trolls TKing people specifically to deny their entire team their event progress.
"Whoops I 'accidentally' just shot Bows3r in the back during that brawl and killed him. Oh well, there goes our carry, sorry for the loss!"
I guarantee that would happen, and more often than anyone here would like.