64 replies to this topic

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Possible Solution

Contracts - VS games are started default with the Contracts option on. During these games 2 teams duke out with one another like normal however, lone wolfs/merc corps may take contracts while OUTSIDE the game. These contracts will be randomly available and place a lone wolf/merc corps in a game dependent upon the people in the game and the contract takers. EX. a lone wolf take a contract and is place in a 4v4-8v8 mission, a lance (4) take a contract and is sent into a 12v12+. Contracts will NOT say which game it is or who you'll be fighting, but may possibly display a threat indication (low, med, high, or something).

This system would allow the 'unaffiliated' into the match with specific objectives to complete in order to be paid/rewarded. Attacking players from the fighting teams does NOT give you bonuses to your mission or salvage (since the battle is still going on) however both sides see you as a hostile unit. This will prevent people from 'setting up' lone wolfs/merc lances that can purposely grief one side, it will also be more dangerous because the normal teams will be able to gain reward/salvage from killing the enemy mech (well, the winner of the battle may get salvage at least...if they implement this).

So yes, the lone wolf/lance COULD attack either side, but they would be randomly sent to a game, not get bonuses for it, and potentially be destroyed by EITHER side due to being seen as hostile and providing them with the normal bonus for killing you that they would from killing a regular enemy.

Just a rough idea, but I think that sounds like the best way (at least to me) to implement a merc-like contract system into the game that makes sense while at the same time reducing the ease of purposely setting it up to grief.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 09 February 2012 - 02:27 PM.

[Outlaw2]

Captain Hat, on 09 February 2012 - 02:07 PM, said:

Problem is, that isn't how it would go.

Let's say you got a big Steiner merc corp signing up for a game, they have seventeen players online and all looking to get into a game. Then you have nine Kuritans in another corp, a bunch of unafiliated players signing up for a Kuritan contract and three guys who want to do Lone Wolf missions. What are the Steiners gonna do? They're gonna form up their 12 "first line" players in a proper team and the other five are all gonna log on as Lone Wolves. Maybe they can't do it on their Steiner accounts, but it doesn't matter- in a F2P environment there's nothing to stop them having unafiliated alts specifically for this purpose.

So what happens? The nine Kuritans get their team filled out by unafiliated players who've signed on for Kuritan contracts, which they may have some discretion over based on listed contract completion statistics attached to the mercs' profiles or whatever, while the Steiners all arrive on the other team and there's a better-than-60% chance that the Lone Wolf slot will actually be a player on the Steiner team, regardless of what his ingame affiliations say.

The key problem is that the proposed mechanism specifically enables this sort of thing because it makes it a lot easier to get away with- it's going to be harder to remember the nick of a guy whose name wasn't on the OOB at the loading screen so that you can report him, and if he's a good scout you may well never see him at all during the game.

Plus, by implementing a "contract satisfaction" mechanic for players signing on for faction contracts (at the end of the game: These are this player's stats from this game: Do you feel he fulfilled his contract to fight for House Kurita? Click yes or no- and then all the statistics are collated and a "contract fulfilment" stat attached to the guy's profile) you can give faction-aligned people some degree of control over which mercs end up on their team (This is this player's "contract fulfilment" stat for your faction: Do you want him on your side? Click yes/no) whereas with the "Lone Wolf" scenario that kind of potential for risk minimisation is simply not there.

lol....are you serious? Have you never played a game with an automated match making service for public games before? LoL, Star Craft, Global Agenda? Pretty much any MMO with a warzone type instance? No? Well, what you described just doesn't happen. Players don't have that level of control on which pulbic game they play in and which exact players they play against (a lot of it to prevent the type of abuse you just described). Besides there are going to be thousands and thousands of players queing up for public game....not just a handful. Trying to fix the teams would be next to impossible.

Im sure you will be able to press TAB and see everyone name. I'm sure names will be listed on the battlegrid. Im more than certain names will be listed at the end of the match. Reporting people should be fairly easy regardless if they are house or lone wolf...otherwise MWO will be a big fail if they can't get that right.

I think I need to tell you that faction world battles are essentially public matches. Players might decide which faction world to fight over when they que up, but that single public match will NOT determine the outcome of the planet..... Because there will be multiple matches for that same planet throughout the day (and perhaps longer) and added up all together will determine which faction controls that planet. Each match won contributes "influence" points, and the faction with most influence at the end of the day controls that planet. These are the matches that "lone wolves" (aka neutral players) will participate in.

Border planets are played by merc units exclusively. Its pre-made versus pre-made team composed of members of each respective unit. These are NOT public matches, and the units involved DO have control on which planet and which opponent they fight in the match. These matches resemble the more organized and higher level matches found in leagues. Random players will not be participating in these matches. The outcome of the those matches (or group of matches) will determine the outcome of who owns the planet. Since teams will compose of members of the merc unit, fears of team fixing, sand bagging or tanking is almost non-existent.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 09 February 2012 - 03:00 PM.

[Captain Hat]

What I posted above is in fact a very common tactic for getting organised groups into random PuGs in WoT. If everyone in a group hits "battle" with tanks in the same tier range within a couple of seconds of each other, the odds are good that most of them will end up in the same game. It gets worse in a game with faction alignment (like this one) because the teams don't then randomise. You can do the same thing with company battles, essentially choose to fight the other tank company your clan has set up by putting in a company in the same range and hitting "go" at the same time.

Random it may be, but if a whole group of players all appropriate (in terms of level, alignment and so on) for the same game all ready up at the same time, the odds are always going to be good that they will end up in the same game.

This is actually a thing that already happens in similar games to the one that is being proposed here. This tactic is not conjecture, and it very specifically does happen all the freaking time in the one game that is most directly comparable (like it or not) to the model which MW:O is likely to follow.

Also, whether doing this will win you a planet or not is irrelevant: Most of an organised clan's time in a game like this will likely be spent grinding to advance their characters, and anything that helps the clan's players level will, in the long run, give it a competitive edge int he games which do matter. As a result, it will happen.

EDIT- Also, Mautty- you're not paying attention. All of what you have posted has already been addressed. People grief all the time, even when it is directly detrimental to their own progress in whatever game is in question. Putting penalties in, not rewarding them for doing it etc is of little to no utility in the prevention of it (except for the obvious point that if your rules rewarded griefing in the first place you were obviously doing something drastically wrong). I have seen large chunks of an entire forum population decide that a particular online game/ instance of such needs trolling, log into it en masse and, in what was essentially a very well coordinated attack, systematically make an arse of themselves to everybody within reach. Why? Because they thought it would be funny.

You can reduce the instances of griefing by players accepting combat contracts for games by offering the aligned players refusal of non-aligned mercs based on their record for essentially not griefing (and for completing missions, or at least trying to) in the past, and you can limit the griefing by faction-aligned players by making the penalties for trolling their own faction extremely harsh (though if the system is automated there will be people who deliberately skirt the limits of what is acceptable so this will need some human oversight as well at the end of the day) but for lone wolf stuff where the contract is essentially automated and completing the mission and griefing one side or the other are not necessarily mutually exclusive anyway this is much more difficult.

Edited by Captain Hat, 09 February 2012 - 05:46 PM.

[MaddMaxx]

A possible power event? missed it...

[Outlaw2]

Captain Hat, on 09 February 2012 - 05:23 PM, said:

What I posted above is in fact a very common tactic for getting organised groups into random PuGs in WoT. If everyone in a group hits "battle" with tanks in the same tier range within a couple of seconds of each other, the odds are good that most of them will end up in the same game. It gets worse in a game with faction alignment (like this one) because the teams don't then randomise. You can do the same thing with company battles, essentially choose to fight the other tank company your clan has set up by putting in a company in the same range and hitting "go" at the same time.

Random it may be, but if a whole group of players all appropriate (in terms of level, alignment and so on) for the same game all ready up at the same time, the odds are always going to be good that they will end up in the same game.

This is actually a thing that already happens in similar games to the one that is being proposed here. This tactic is not conjecture, and it very specifically does happen all the freaking time in the one game that is most directly comparable (like it or not) to the model which MW:O is likely to follow.

Also, whether doing this will win you a planet or not is irrelevant: Most of an organised clan's time in a game like this will likely be spent grinding to advance their characters, and anything that helps the clan's players level will, in the long run, give it a competitive edge int he games which do matter. As a result, it will happen.

Yeah "counting in" in WoT. It CAN happen, but again players don't exactly have full control over it. However, I doubt there is a long list of players that are willing to waste their time queueing on their lone wolf alt account simply so they can sand-bag a match just in case by chance they are placed in the same match as their teammates AND on the opposite side. Of course this could be a problem with bots, but almost any feature becomes a problem when bots are thrown in the equation. But since it looks like we are both arguing agianst the OPs idea in the end, I feel we are splitting hairs if we continue this and kinda getting off topic, so I'll leave it at that.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 09 February 2012 - 07:10 PM.