How can Em8-er punish death and require skill?

[AdmiralStryker]

In another forum post, this issue has been brought up quite a bit. The game is supposed to be PVE and Open-world with minimal or no instancing, so let's see what we can do with that.

How can the game make player death matter and reward skill such that it matters?(ie, you have an influence whether you're playing with 100 players or 20)

What I see so far:
If you die:
-Your allies lose a gun.
-You can't get back to the fight quickly because you need to wait for your Omniframe to be repaired(or you're using a different Omniframe than previously)
-You're losing out on any rewards you'd get for participating during the time it takes you to respawn and get back.
-Any number of enemy Tsi-Hu are stronger, control more ground, and are able to attack your allies with more focus.
-Potential structures being destroyed, bases lost, anything invested in those structures/bases being lost.
-Potential THMPRs being destroyed.
-Potentially more players/structures being killed due to enemy Tsi-Hu being stronger.
-A Kaiju is going to take longer to bring down and deal more damage.


Feel free to add on and discuss!

 

[Degiance]

Im just gona throw few soft ideas that i haven't fully thought out yet..
Somebody suggested a Borderland 2/D.Va like mechanic where you could have a small/medium sidearm to speed up getting back to fight. (It can look cool but my mind just screams:"How does your tiny little pea shooter make you build an entirely new mech faster or better yet fix your beaten and bruised corpse?" I could understand it if it was like some type of critical systems repair kit moment) Fight for your life type of thing, but i'd prefer it relied more on your team.

There is always that one guy or gal who is damn near borderline guardian angel so why not encourage that. (I wouldn't mind a complete fifty/fifty deal where you either get thrown out of the fight entirely or get ejected out of the omniframe depending on what attacked you and how hard like overkill hard.)
Then while im out there exposed to the elements and completly vurnable to pretty much everything, you gotta have a team-mate who's giving you cover fire or better yet aggroing the crap out of anything trying to get to that delicious Kaiju happy meal. (I haven't thought it out completly yet but the thought plays out like a movie scene most of the time. I always liked the no man left behind mentality and that should be rewarded. Unlike in WoW where you can pretty much let everyone die but as long as the boss dies it's all good everybody gets loot. Then the guys who worked their ass off get a imaginery parrot badge and gold star >< )

Then in the visual book they mentioned how the omniframe start loosing critical systems more damaged they get and start limbing etc. So a mercy timer after a overkill hit by a Kaiju or Tsi-Shu wouldn't be completly crazy you have X amount of time to help your team-mate before their omniframe becomes a decorative lawn ornament and their either thrown to kingdom of heaven that is the nearest base/outpost or the wasteland nightmare as a fleshbag happy meal similiar way mentioned above. By help i mean giving them cover fire, pushing those swarmer off, perform some critical system repairs and if there isn't anybody who can repair they could help carry that immobilized omniframe somewhere near something that can give critical system repairs *shrug* ( Save Private Rabbit/Rook type of thing )

But all those are just soft suggestions with alot of wiggle room, i know people who don't like the idea of being punished for dying in a game. But dying all the time isn't really a skill and rewarding that feels ridiculous to me unless the game itself is completly ridiculous. ( My core suggestion is that give people the chance to save people, i personally love those "saved your ass from the fire" type of moments. Nothing builds team spirit like those moments. )

 

[zdoofop]

why would we punish people for dying? that's not fair to the people who just aren't as good.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

why would we punish people for dying? that's not fair to the people who just aren't as good.

Because it develops skillful play rather than "I'm going to just sit here and spew my ammo in this direction only because it doesn't matter if I aim or not."

 

[zdoofop]

Because it develops skillful play rather than "I'm going to just sit here and spew my ammo in this direction only because it doesn't matter if I aim or not."

what about people who are very squishy but vital to the effort?

 

[Torgue_Joey]

why would we punish people for dying? that's not fair to the people who just aren't as good.

THEN TEACH THEM HOW TO AIM.
TEACH THEM HOW TO TAKE COVER.
TEACH THEM WHAT "TACTICAL RETREAT" MEANS.
TEACH THEM HOW TO DODGE.
TEACH THEM THAT OMNIFRAME CAN JUMP/FLY AWAY FRON DANGER.
TEACH THEM THAT REPAIRS DOES NOT COME IN FREE FOR FRAMES.
TEACH THEM HOW TO ASK FOR HELP/PROTECTION.
TEACH THEM HOW TO SPELL M-E-D-I-C.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

what about people who are very squishy but vital to the effort?

GIVE THEM A SNIPER RIFLE. BEFORE THEY NAG ABOUT WASTING RESOURCES FOR FRAME REPAIR.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

what about people who are very squishy but vital to the effort?

Then they learn to get good.

I have played some time in the Mass Effect's Andromeda's Co-op arena battles.
In that game if you die during a round, you come back for the next round if your team wins the round. Which isn't new since this rule has been seen in many other FPS games with multiplayer in it.

What I found is that you can have a really squishy character that is vital to the effort. But it requires skill to survive. The knowledge and willingness to understand that retreating, picking your targets and using weapons/powers is all viable options
Players either learn how to survive or they don't, swap characters so they don't die as much.

In the game Paladins, Overwatch or Titanfall they don't have that rule. Instead they let you respawn after a set period of time. Or instantly. The problems comes with instantly respawn doesn't motivate people to not die by getting better. No point in learning to aim and move properly if you are going to respawn instantly.

I forgot which game had it but I played one which would exponentially increase the respawn timer for every death. Players would quickly learn the mechanics which lead to better matches because no one wanted to wait forever in respawn.

 

[zdoofop]

-Any number of enemy Tsi-Hu are stronger, control more ground, and are able to attack your allies with more focus.
-Potential structures being destroyed, bases lost, anything invested in those structures/bases being lost.
-Potential THMPRs being destroyed.
-Potentially more players/structures being killed due to enemy Tsi-Hu being stronger.
-A Kaiju is going to take longer to bring down and deal more damage.

why are we punishing the skilled players for the actions of the trolls/leeches?

 

[ble003]

Green for ones i think might be a good idea, lighter for elaboration, purple is kinda off-topic ideas.

Enemies can puppeteer your omniframe
Enemies can steal weapons from your omniframe
Enemies can harvest tactical information from your electronics (or brain). They know what you knew when you died. So people being sneaky might need to disconnect from communication in case loud people get taken down? Limited information is an interesting gameplay-element, but since people can use third-party communication there's a limit to what can be done with it.
Enemies can power up using some resource from your omniframe. Eat explosives, become explosive.
Omniframe can explode, dealing damage in an AOE.

Bigger explosions from more explosives/heavier frames.

This damages frame more, which means more repairs are needed?​

Omniframe can need to be recovered. Captured Omniframe gets trapped in tentacles or something, can't be teleported back. Destroy tentacles to allow on-site repairs or teleportation away.
Redeployment takes time/happens at specific times, like between waves.

Allow people to swap omniframes at such times
Allow one person to have multiple omniframes present at the one time. More versatility, but takes time to swap and means more things to defend. Should omniframe availability be closer to D-va or somewhere between that and Battlefield-vehicles?

Allow deployed omniframes to be camouflaged.​

Death of pilot can stop you from playing/re-joining temporarily. I don't like long respawn timers for PVE, but there needs to be some reason you shouldn't want to just die when your frame is destroyed. Travel. Can you or can you not respawn from a besieged location? Planetside-style mobile spawners?

Questions, exempt from colours:
Is equipment that mostly functions after some irreversible loss has happened a good thing? Things you wish you had when you go down, but which take away resources that could be used to not do so.
Should suicide-mission omniframe-builds be encouraged with gear that specifically makes you die usefully? Things like Swansong in payday 2, the ability to remote-control your omniframe with limited range, or specifically increasing the power of your death-explosion.

 

[DefaltSimon]

-Your allies lose a gun.

I agree with zoodofop, we really shouldn't punish other players, but instead give them (other players) the initiative to help new players though some kind of coaching system.

About punishment, here's some ideas, sorry if there's a few similar ideas from above:

• After enough deaths (of all players combined), Tsi-Hu could salvage the destroyed Omniframes and deploy a mini-boss as a punishment to so many deaths. That would encourage not only self-preservation, but also some team help.
• There could be a random chance of a weapon/accessory the player used in the fight breaking (a weapon could have limited repairs or exponential costs).
• Your abilities could have cooldowns, that increase every time you die.

For example: the first time you die, you get a cooldown of a few minutes, but after multiple deaths, you get up to ... I dunno, 15 minutes or more.​

• There could be a wave system: players spawn in waves, every few minutes or so (i'm not talking waves like in common fps-es that are ~10sec. What I mean is arma-ish respawning with waves, when players spawn far from the point-of-interest and can use vehicles or other forms of transportation to get there as fast as they can, which would force cooperation). That would give players that died a few minutes to think about what they did wrong / could do differently.

 

[EvilKitten]

Why do we need to "punish" anything, I'd much rather prefer a bunch of carrots over a bunch of sticks personally. Reward good team play. Seems like that should be enough.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

I think "punishing" players may have been poor wording-how do we make death matter? You shouldn't be able to die, and get right up, back into the fight, and not care about it.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

why are we punishing the skilled players for the actions of the trolls/leeches?

As the enemies scale by killing us, not only does pushing them back become harder, but more important(and more rewarding, I imagine).

Weapons/gear is gonna have durability, I think that's been established. If you lose an Omniframe, I think it's established that it can't be deployed for a little while as it gets repaired. Puppeteering Omniframes is an interesting thought-maybe certain enemies can 'stea' and gain the use of one/a few of our abilities if/when they kill us?

Enemies getting location info of allies when they kill us is interesting, I'd like to see that tried. Our enemies will already become stronger by killing us.

 

[zdoofop]

• Your abilities could have cooldowns, that increase every time you die.

For example: the first time you die, you get a cooldown of a few minutes, but after multiple deaths, you get up to ... I dunno, 15 minutes or more.

now that is an idea I can live with. Well, not exactly, but it does make sense to...inconvenience players the more they die. Perhaps something like each frame you break increases the calldown timer of the next one. Abilities, however, shouldn't necessarily suffer because they affect rotation.

There could be a wave system: players spawn in waves, every few minutes or so (i'm not talking waves like in common fps-es that are ~10sec. What I mean is arma-ish respawning with waves, when players spawn far from the point-of-interest and can use vehicles or other forms of transportation to get there as fast as they can, which would force cooperation). That would give players that died a few minutes to think about what they did wrong / could do differently.

problem with waves is that if too many die, the tsihu have the time to reset everything and you have to start from scratch. However, I do very much like players spawning from, say, the closest human controlled base, which could be kilometers away, unless a squad leader puts down a spawn point. This would give people incentive to group up for invasions, instead of hundreds of players going in solo and tripping over each other.

 

[zdoofop]

As the enemies scale by killing us, not only does pushing them back become harder, but more important(and more rewarding, I imagine).

then are we trying to discourage laziness, or encourage it?

To put it another way, if we are trying to discourage it, why are we "rewarding" (in your eyes) skilled players for the actions of others? then wouldn't you want to bring as many incompetent/lazy people with you as possible? to be challenged?

I get it, you want a challenge you believe worthy of you, but there are other players here too.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

then are we trying to discourage laziness, or encourage it?

To put it another way, if we are trying to discourage it, why are we "rewarding" (in your eyes) skilled players for the actions of others? then wouldn't you want to bring as many incompetent/lazy people with you as possible? to be challenged?

I get it, you want a challenge you believe worthy of you, but there are other players here too.

I had doubts about scaling rewards as the encounter got harder due to screw-ups. Probably shouldn't have wrote that.

Encounters are still going to matter more as people die, though-if you have 20 people die to one Tsi-Hu, you now have to(at some point) go and kill that fed enemy.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

I agree with zoodofop, we really shouldn't punish other players, but instead give them (other players) the initiative to help new players though some kind of coaching system.

About punishment, here's some ideas, sorry if there's a few similar ideas from above:

• After enough deaths (of all players combined), Tsi-Hu could salvage the destroyed Omniframes and deploy a mini-boss as a punishment to so many deaths. That would encourage not only self-preservation, but also some team help.
• There could be a random chance of a weapon/accessory the player used in the fight breaking (a weapon could have limited repairs or exponential costs).
• Your abilities could have cooldowns, that increase every time you die.

For example: the first time you die, you get a cooldown of a few minutes, but after multiple deaths, you get up to ... I dunno, 15 minutes or more.​

• There could be a wave system: players spawn in waves, every few minutes or so (i'm not talking waves like in common fps-es that are ~10sec. What I mean is arma-ish respawning with waves, when players spawn far from the point-of-interest and can use vehicles or other forms of transportation to get there as fast as they can, which would force cooperation). That would give players that died a few minutes to think about what they did wrong / could do differently.

This should be done as well. I'd like the game(through achievements, whatever) to incentivize ducking into a hail of bullets for a friend as a heavy, or running into the fire to pick up someone on the ground.

To your ideas, respectively:
-Yes. Please. Maybe each Tsi-Hu, as they kill players, can gain the ability to use their own calldowns(theirs being kaiju)?
-Durability is going to be a thing.
-While I don't like abilities having increasing-on-death cooldowns, I think Omniframes are going to go on cooldown when you die, and have to be repaired for a duration before you can use them again. I'd like to see this duration get longer if you die multiple times in the same frame, but I also don't want it to be a complete lock out for new players who are dying often.
-Respawning from a different base would be good. I also like the Planetside 2 version-if you die, respawn far away unless someone has a respawn beacon of MAX-esque vehicle up.

 

[Duke]

i have been thinking a bit on this..
Maybe a GW2 like death where if your health hit 0 your omniframe takes a knee or falls and you enter a "maintenance / survival mode" you could have 4 skills, 1 L.Range attack, 1 S.Range attack, Recovery skill and a give up mode, an "eject" You kill a monster and you could use its "essence" to re power your frame and continue fighting. The repair mode could be a small node that comes from the omniframe and circles repairing you. Just a thought..

 

[AdmiralStryker]

i have been thinking a bit on this..
Maybe a GW2 like death where if your health hit 0 your omniframe takes a knee or falls and you enter a "maintenance / survival mode" you could have 4 skills, 1 L.Range attack, 1 S.Range attack, Recovery skill and a give up mode, an "eject" You kill a monster and you could use its "essence" to re power your frame and continue fighting. The repair mode could be a small node that comes from the omniframe and circles repairing you. Just a thought..

All decent ideas. Another thing I like the thought of is how Warframe does it-you die, you fall down and can only use your secondary weapon. You get a limited amount of time before someone has to revive you, or you die.