63 replies to this topic

[TheCaptainJZ]

Instead of Incursion, I'd be interested in a mode that has different quadrants or points of interest to control. Maybe one capture building is to control the radar field of either a portion of the map or the whole map. Another is a radar jammer. Another is a turret control. Another is dynamic gate control. I really enjoyed the MechCommander games and some elements from that could make matches more tactical and interesting.

There's been various little elements programmed for different modes. It might be possible to recombine them in new ways and not have to code it from complete scratch.

For Assault, I think it would be interesting to have it morphed into a mini-incursion where the base is an actual small base zone not just a square. Our maps are not designed for that however.

Edited by TheCaptainJZ, 26 August 2022 - 08:48 AM.

[LordNothing]

i think there should be two arenas. qp is skirmish only. then you have a second decked mode (not fp, that comes with baggage that is destructive to successful game development) where every map has a different complex mission baked into it. all the modes we have are contrived and poorly implemented. it feels like im on a reality show, not in a militarily oriented mech combat sim. thats the real immersion breaker.

also from a mapping stand point having to add several modes worth of props to a each and every map seems terrible for workflow. and with the investment put into the map being so high it seems like you spend a little bit more for custom game logic per map and have a game that is a lot more diverse. rather than the copy pasta that this game seems to be made out of.

finding a mission scenario that fits every map would really just involve taking a look at each map and figure out where to place appropriate props. knock out this generator, take out this sensor net, secure these firebases for ranged traders, secure an airstrip or artillery battery for support, take out the turret battery and proceed to the enemy base. the model you want to use for this is the assault mode from unreal tournament. you could do this one way or two way where each team has complementary objectives (if one team is ordered to defend something the other team's objective is to destroy it).

Edited by LordNothing, 26 August 2022 - 09:36 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 26 August 2022 - 09:33 AM, said:

i think there should be two arenas. qp is skirmish only. then you have a second decked mode (not fp, that comes with baggage that is destructive to successful game development) where every map has a different complex mission baked into it. all the modes we have are contrived and poorly implemented. it feels like im on a reality show, not in a militarily oriented mech combat sim. thats the real immersion breaker.

It sounds like what you really want is a single player game, not a multiplayer game

[LordNothing]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 August 2022 - 11:45 AM, said:

It sounds like what you really want is a single player game, not a multiplayer game

mission oriented gameplay can work in a multiplayer game. its been done, and well.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 26 August 2022 - 02:27 PM, said:

mission oriented gameplay can work in a multiplayer game. its been done, and well.

Out of curiosity what games have done it well?

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 26 August 2022 - 04:02 PM.

[Razgriz_]

LordNothing, on 25 August 2022 - 08:39 AM, said:

the bases are too small and isolated. they should expand out into the map with a few perimeters that you have to breech. there should be at most 2 grid squares of no mans land in between the bases. this seems like what they teased. spread out the objectives and add more walls and turrets to protect them. better turrets with more armor and better weapons, like ac10s or mrms and ams. add defensive/offensive structures that mechs can use as cover or climb for camping positions.

Incursion is a cool game mode concept but from what Ive seen in my short time playing no one every even enters a base until everyone on one side is dead. If they were on a smaller map or if the bases were closer that could encourage playing objective a lot more and could change the game mode for the better.

[Akamia Terizen]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 August 2022 - 04:02 PM, said:

Out of curiosity what games have done it well?

Literally any of them you can name besides MWO. Even MWO can make it work, with or without respawns, but they didn't.

Not everyone wants to play Team Deathmatch all day. Maybe you do, but you don't represent the entirety of the MWO playerbase, nor the players of other shooters. People like different things in multiplayer games.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Akamia Terizen, on 26 August 2022 - 11:06 PM, said:

Literally any of them you can name besides MWO. Even MWO can make it work, with or without respawns, but they didn't.

I ask for example, because most of the popular shooters out there, do not have complicated objectives and if they do, they typically serve a purpose (whether it is just to provide a meat grinder experience or to force engagements or discourage camping).

CS:GO, Valorant, R6: Siege, CoD Overwatch, TF2, any battle royale (Apex, Fortnite, PubG, Warzone, etc). None of those have complicated game modes.

Haven't really touched the games that sell themselves as MilSims though like Arma III, Squad, etc so can't really speak to them.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 August 2022 - 05:26 AM.

[LordNothing]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 August 2022 - 04:02 PM, said:

Out of curiosity what games have done it well?

i already mentioned unreal tournament, its assault mode is kind of the prototype of what im proposing.

there was an old space sim called freespace, where you could have per mission logic (written in lisp of all things). it enabled complex mission oriented pvp and pve games. the only fundamental difference is terrain and gravity, but those are solved problems.

these are also very old games at this point. modern game development lost something somewhere back in the 00s.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 August 2022 - 08:02 AM.

[Akamia Terizen]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 27 August 2022 - 05:01 AM, said:

I ask for example, because most of the popular shooters out there, do not have complicated objectives and if they do, they typically serve a purpose (whether it is just to provide a meat grinder experience or to force engagements or discourage camping).

CS:GO, Valorant, R6: Siege, CoD Overwatch, TF2, any battle royale (Apex, Fortnite, PubG, Warzone, etc). None of those have complicated game modes.

Haven't really touched the games that sell themselves as MilSims though like Arma III, Squad, etc so can't really speak to them.

Gotta be frank with you, I don’t see how “destroy these buildings and protect your own” is significantly more complicated than “stand here for X seconds and keep bad guys out”. The power nodes and the special buildings they power I admit are not adequately explained – it took me a few games to figure out how they work – but I wouldn’t call them an objective per se.

[The Captain Dead]

Nobody plays cooperatively on this game, we should remove all modes and just leave skirmish

[ScrapIron Prime]

No, and unless you’ve got a top fuel locust, you won’t be grabbing any power cells as it takes too long.

yes, this mode is essentially assault, where you ignore the objective until the very end, but the mode is intrinsically cooler because it’s an objective rather than a laser box. It could be made much cooler with some good ideas and Developers, but as-is it’s niftier than Assault.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 27 August 2022 - 08:01 AM, said:

i already mentioned unreal tournament, its assault mode is kind of the prototype of what im proposing.

there was an old space sim called freespace, where you could have per mission logic (written in lisp of all things). it enabled complex mission oriented pvp and pve games. the only fundamental difference is terrain and gravity, but those are solved problems.

these are also very old games at this point. modern game development lost something somewhere back in the 00s.

Assault honestly sounds more like they games just decided to move this to a slower paced game like Among Us or games like Just Act Natural or West Hunt where it is more focused on deception rather than shooting. I'd argue that game developers shifted away from doing this in arena FPS for a reason. It was likely because there was too much defend at one time. Compare it to game modes like TF2 where there are stages but you are rarely fighting over multiple spots at once (and if you are they are within some distance of each other).

Akamia Terizen, on 27 August 2022 - 08:25 AM, said:

Gotta be frank with you, I don’t see how “destroy these buildings and protect your own” is significantly more complicated than “stand here for X seconds and keep bad guys out”. The power nodes and the special buildings they power I admit are not adequately explained – it took me a few games to figure out how they work – but I wouldn’t call them an objective per se.

Neither are good, the difference though for capturing "areas" is that you can generally prevent bad guys from getting in by using map control, not just standing on the point and I think this is one of the key points and why conquest is the game mode to beat at least for coordinated/competitive play is how these play out when optimized for.

Conquest is all about controlling the three cap. On good maps, the points are harder to control without moving and adapting to the enemy. That is what you want, you don't want there to be a really strong spot that a team can camp and maintain a three cap, there has to be give and take. Normally theta is that spot but not always.

CS:GO, Valorant, and CoD (search and destroy) all have a similar give and take behavior because once attackers plant a bomb, they switch from attacking to defending at that point changing the gameplay up a little bit, similar to how conquest can have sort of switch on who needs to be attacking vs defending. Games modes like incursion or modes where there is either too much to defend (so anything more than 3 spots is generally spreading you too thin depending on the team size) or too little to defend (two is the minimum to defend to actually require movement on the defenders side to react to enemy entry movements).



TBH, I think those that want complicated missions need to ask themselves what are they trying to achieve? What behavior are you trying to encourage. Is it trying to incentivize mechs that aren't focused on damage? If that is it, destroying buildings requires doing damage so that seems counter-productive, but why are you trying to shift the focus around from damage? Is it under some guise that this will create a use for lights magically? What is the goal here.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 August 2022 - 02:27 PM.

[LordNothing]

the goal is nothing more than to add some depth to the game. so many matches are just people mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again.

controlling or destroying an objective should have some immediate in game consequences that either aid you in winning or hurt the enemy team in some way. the ones we have are either direct game enders or completely irrelevant due to skirmish. they do not directly affect how the match is played.

conquest might be the exception as it enforces some degree of map control and breaks up the larger battle into some smaller skirmishes. giving players some tactical advantage to breaking up the murder ball could be advantageous to making the game play out in more diverse ways. imagine if taking a cap did a sensor sweep or reloaded everyone's consumables. or imagine if every time you took out a generator in fp your drop zone would move up and you would open up new avenues of attack. or if blowing up a generator in domination unlocked a strong trading position or a secondary bubble you could use to block cap.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 August 2022 - 03:52 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 27 August 2022 - 03:49 PM, said:

the goal is nothing more than to add some depth to the game. so many matches are just people mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again.

I think there is misunderstandings here:

• Complexity =/= Depth, these are two separate concepts, do not conflate the two
  
• Generally depth comes down to game mechanics and map design more than objectives and game modes (though game modes can have an impact, there is a reason skirmish or just regular TDM is actually a bad game mode).

CS:GO has a lot of depth despite having a pretty straight forward game mode, there is more to that game than just flicks and reaction time. A lot of it is just knowledge of how maps play out, getting good at reads/predictions, how to play the eco, and just knowing how to react. MWO is somewhat similar, the problem is that you are using PUG matches to determine depth. This is a team game, you aren't going to get crazy matches if people aren't actively trying to learn the game (in fact there is a distinct "anti-meta" crowd in this game that actively refuses to learn).

LordNothing, on 27 August 2022 - 03:49 PM, said:

controlling or destroying an objective should have some immediate in game consequences that either aid you in winning or hurt the enemy team in some way.

Why? What purpose does that serve the game? All this really does is add another resource teams have to juggle and idk that it is really necessary.

LordNothing, on 27 August 2022 - 03:49 PM, said:

giving players some tactical advantage to breaking up the murder ball

Murder balls aren't really that effective by themselves, you have to have aggression with that murder ball to work. You know what I see more often tha murder balls? Teams hiding behind rocks and slowly getting pushed back into a ball in some piece of low ground giving up all map control, lacking any sort of aggression to make something happen and dying to concave firing lines that slowly tighten the noose which is how coordinated play works. Murder balls are more a danger in PUG queue than they are competitive play because it is just easier to push against uncoordinated teams and gobble up a spread out team that isn't reacting appropriately to a push like that.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 28 August 2022 - 06:37 AM.

[LordNothing]

i know the difference between complexity and depth, this game has neither.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 28 August 2022 - 07:24 AM, said:

i know the difference between complexity and depth, this game has neither.

Well adding complex game modes won't solve that, it will just give the illusion of depth. If you are looking for depth in PUG queue in any game, you will not find it because of the nature of PUGs, such a thing is a futile pursuit. You want depth then you have to play in more coordinated matches.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 28 August 2022 - 07:43 AM.

[LordNothing]

i find when you cater to the lowest common denominator, that's what you get. just another excuse for inaction.

Edited by LordNothing, 28 August 2022 - 12:00 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 28 August 2022 - 11:59 AM, said:

i find when you cater to the lowest common denominator

If that were true for this game then we would already have more complex game modes, we would have the energy system, etc because people who don't bother learning the game constantly want stuff like this.

Even if PGI had the capacity to do new game modes, they would be better off trying to fix the myriad of other issues surrounding this game before that to make it more interesting.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 28 August 2022 - 04:15 PM.

[Urbie Connoisseur]

MechB Kotare, on 25 August 2022 - 02:52 AM, said:

99% matches were played like a regular skirmish/domination.

Like literally every game mode but conquest, which is actually why I feel skirmish should be removed IMHO.

Edited by Marida Connoisseur, 28 August 2022 - 08:15 PM.