66 replies to this topic

[Gagis]

pbiggz, on 13 September 2021 - 06:15 AM, said:

If you drop into assault, the win condition should be capturing the enemy base, right now if you do that its frowned upon, which means that entire game mode is a complete failure. If you drop conquest, terrain control should be your only priority.

Why on earth would anyone want these things?

This, like any other objective based shooter, is about the shooting. The objectives are there to break stalemates and force enemy to act, which is why competitive play is almost always Conquest. Better designed objectives might give you more interesting ways to force opponents' hands in, but they are still ultimately a tool towards the goal of players shooting players, not the goal itself.

[pbiggz]

Gagis, on 13 September 2021 - 06:37 AM, said:

Why on earth would anyone want these things?

This, like any other objective based shooter, is about the shooting. The objectives are there to break stalemates and force enemy to act, which is why competitive play is almost always Conquest. Better designed objectives might give you more interesting ways to force opponents' hands in, but they are still ultimately a tool towards the goal of players shooting players, not the goal itself.

Because 6 different flavours of skirmish with extra steps is ******* boring and every game plays out exactly the same way. I don't really care if you're having a negative reaction because we're so used to not having a nice thing, but thats not a good enough reason to not fix things.

[1453 R]

If what Biggz said was true, we'd still get plenty of shooting. "Capturing the enemy base" means you have to assault their base and defend yours. Plenty of shooting, it just happens in different spots and for different reasons. Similarly, Conquest would be about shooting people until they leave your point or die being stubborn. Rather than watching three lights dicker over everything but Theta while the icebergs grind on Theta, teams would disperse to take and hold multiple points. That stealth Flea will have a lot less luck swinging caps if it keeps finding two or three assault 'Mechs per cap point waiting for it.

Shooting is what you do to stop the enemy from doing the thing you want to be doing, instead. Shooting is the tool with which you achieve your goal of capturing a base or controlling territory. And frankly, if people don't shoot? if you see more Spider-5V's running around trying to be sneaky-breeki ninja britches and steal caps without fighting? Then perhaps you'll want to drop a little lighter and a little faster so you can chase them down and shoot them, hm?

[GoodTry]

pbiggz, on 13 September 2021 - 06:40 AM, said:

Because 6 different flavours of skirmish with extra steps is ******* boring and every game plays out exactly the same way. I don't really care if you're having a negative reaction because we're so used to not having a nice thing, but thats not a good enough reason to not fix things.

The problem is that there is no respawn. In other shooters with character classes and objectives, like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch, the players respawn until the objectives are achieved.

We can't add respawn at this point, and it's debatable whether it would be a positive change anyway.

In Team Fortress 2, there is a separate game mode (called Arena) where players don't respawn. But it's its own thing, with dramatically different game play. In MWO, every game mode is basically TF2 Arena with some other game mode tacked on, and it shows. But we can't really change that either at this stage.

The core problem is that match score is what people play for, and winning hurts match score. One possible fix would be to add +200 match score for all players if 6+ players are left on the opposing team at the time of an objective win; +100 if 3-5 players are left; or +30 if 1-2 players are left. These numbers could be tweaked, but the idea is to give out some match score to make winning by objective not feel like a loss, without giving out too much and inflating match score values if a team killed the whole other team anyway.

Edit: Thinking about this more, the bonus point formula could be along the lines of 280 * (players remaining / total players). That way each player gets a max 280 point score bonus if 0 players are dead when the cap happens, 140 if 6 are dead, 23 if 11 are dead, etc. That way a win gets players a solid match score of around 300-400 no matter when the win occurs, hopefully without too much artificial inflation.

Edited by GoodTry, 13 September 2021 - 07:27 AM.

[pbiggz]

GoodTry, on 13 September 2021 - 07:08 AM, said:

The problem is that there is no respawn. In other shooters with character classes and objectives, like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch, the players respawn until the objectives are achieved.

We can't add respawn at this point, and it's debatable whether it would be a positive change anyway.

In Team Fortress 2, there is a separate game mode (called Arena) where players don't respawn. But it's its own thing, with dramatically different game play. In MWO, every game mode is basically TF2 Arena with some other game mode tacked on, and it shows. But we can't really change that either at this stage.

The core problem is that match score is what people play for, and winning hurts match score. One possible fix would be +200 match score for all players if 6+ players left on opposing team; +100 if 3-6 players left; +50 otherwise. These numbers could be tweaked, but the idea is to give out some match score to make winning by objective not feel like a loss.

We could add respawn, we have the tech, but in the interests of not derailing this thread, i must insist we don't talk about it here. I'll do a giga-writeup on respawns another time.

It's a potential part of the equation, but without real game modes, all of these solutions are only partial solutions.

Edited by pbiggz, 13 September 2021 - 07:14 AM.

[Verilligo]

1453 R, on 13 September 2021 - 06:37 AM, said:

I actually kinda like the idea of flash objectives, things that pop up briefly and need to be taken advantage of quickly. God only knows what those may be, but literally anything that breaks up the stultifying monotony of watching twelve hundred tons of metal clump in the middle of the map and grind at each other.

Sticking with the (th/m)eme of "minimum possible PGI effort", perhaps the game periodically sprinkles consumables around the map. You get a Leopard swooping by and dropping supplies for the ground troops. Whoever gets to it gets it. Would serve to reward speedy folks who go out and find these freebies, as well as discouraging the ridiculous merderball humper-clumper gameplay everybody hates because there's so much more arty on the field.

Consumables would take too much effort to collect and would be unlikely to swing a fight. Better to have the Leopard swing by and simply shoot at the team that didn't call it in. Even better, but more complicated to achieve, would be dynamic level geometry that you can take a sub-objective to change. Enemy gathered at an advantageous point? Have a light circle around and make it a disadvantageous position. Yes, probably impossible as things presently stand, but changing objectives and game modes is impossible as things presently stand as well. Until we have engineer time for working on that, sorting out specifics is kind of pointless.

[Dogstar]

1453 R, on 13 September 2021 - 06:37 AM, said:

twelve hundred tons of metal clump in the middle of the map and grind at each other.

Yeah baby!

<insert Austin Powers image here>