Worries about gameplay...

[Kouyioue]

It leads to far-reaching out of control botting and multiclienting in every case I've seen it in

If there's a leaderboard, some bored rich kid is going to bot it or buy their way through it. Even if it's something that requires in-game manual labor under intensive automation.

Hmmmmm.... maybe the competition can be "who's BASE can survive the longest once the entire map has been claimed, and the server-event-AI throws the difficulty killswitch for enemy spawns, starting the wipeout phase " ?

 

[Aphaz]

or use some form of pve competition...something similar to...

-Without End: this is a PvE instance match where the players need 2 rake up as many

kills/points as possible b4 beeing wiped out by the endless number of

monsters. the game awards points based on longest

surviving/most kills or healing done...but the point is 4 the players to get wiped sooner

or later

 

[Degiance]

It leads to far-reaching out of control botting and multiclienting in every case I've seen it in

So true.. You'd think people would get tired of doing that stuff but no. Some people just have to chase that false pride in form of leaderboard placement.

And what comes to

Hmmmmm.... maybe the competition can be "who's BASE can survive the longest once the entire map has been claimed, and the server-event-AI throws the difficulty killswitch for enemy spawns, starting the wipeout phase " ?

Yes! definetly.

 

[203]

What is your problem with such a high power gap?
Why should creating a good setup and playing well not result in a player being multiple times as effective as a person who put no thought what so ever in their setup and does not play well?

The problem is with people being good but not having the equipment. As you stated, there is a gap between lvl 1 and lvl 40, now take out the scrub from your equation and directly compare the snake eye with the mucho - it's like trying to scale a polished wall. You may be able to score a few a kills here and there by kill stealing or getting lucky and the big-o careless or swamped, but the result stays the same: negative fun for the lowbie.

 

[BunnyHunny]

The problem is with people being good but not having the equipment.

In firefall, the difference between lvl 40 average players and good lvl 40 players was high, even if both had the same resources.

The difference did not mainly come from the gear and perk options available, but from the options the players chose.
Of course, a fresh lvl 40 would not have all the gear and all the other options right away, but getting useful perks and decent gear was possible within a reasonable amount of time.

The difference did not vanish, just because people had access to the same resources.
The difference came from the ability to create a good setup.
A player with comparably easy to get perks and gear could be much more effective than a player who had all the resources, but didn't know what he was doing.

There MUST be a power difference between setups.
If there are no good and bad setups, this entire branch of the game (getting gear, creating setups) becomes pretty much irrelevant (aside from catering to special snowflakes, who MUST be unique).
Afaik, getting gear and creating setups is pretty much supposed to be all that the game is about.

How big the power difference turns out, is obviously a matter of choice of the devs, but imo, when running a good setup, it should definitely be possible to be at least twice as effective as a -gameplay wise- equally skilled player, who runs a bad setup.

And by that i do not mean that a player who played the game longer and farmed all day should be overpowered.
I mean that a player who chooses to research and craft a useful combination of items, spending his resources wisely, should easily overpower the guy who farms all day and just crafts random stuff without any thought.

As you stated, there is a gap between lvl 1 and lvl 40,

Since lvl are not supposed to be a thing in ember, there would only be a power difference between players who build a good vs. a bad setup.

now take out the scrub from your equation and directly compare the snake eye with the mucho - it's like trying to scale a polished wall. You may be able to score a few a kills here and there by kill stealing or getting lucky and the big-o careless or swamped, but the result stays the same: negative fun for the lowbie.

What?
I honestly do not really understand what you are trying to say here.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

About this thread in general... only 55 people casted a vote, but 25 of them are against any kind of competitive aspect?
Any game that rewards skill or high impact gameplay is somehow competitive.
How can half of you be against that?
Basically all multiplayer games have some kind of competitive aspect.

I DIDN'T VOTE. WANT IT TO KEEP IT OPEN FOR LATER.

THE MAIN PROBLEM ON THE WORD "COMPETITIVE", MANY THINK OR SEE THAT WORD AS "PvP".

 

[BunnyHunny]

THE MAIN PROBLEM ON THE WORD "COMPETITIVE", MANY THINK OR SEE THAT WORD AS "PvP".

Honestly, i expected that to be one of the reasons, but...
Well, they are wrong.
There is no mentioning of PvP in title of the thread or in the question itself.

Since the question is
"Should there be some sort of competitive aspect to the game?"
it should be pretty obvious, that it is not about PvP.

"some" is a very general word and therefore basically the opposite of anything specific (as PvP would be).

Also, in the OP, non PvP competitive gameplay is a talking point.

One way you could do this and NOT be PVP is kinda like a arena: 2 teams of 5 (or more) players take on..let's say a cat. 3 Kaiju.

Same thing over and over again on these forums.
People do not know/understand, what it is about, but still want everyone to know their opinion...

I really hope the developers notice that and do not listen to the wrong people.

Nothing wrong with sharing and discussing opinions and ideas, but please guys.
Think for a second, before you post (or vote for, or against) something.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

The power gap (during 1.3) between lvl 1 and the average lvl 40 player was smaller, than the power gap between the average lvl 40 player and a good lvl 40 player.
The gap was purely caused by skill.

What is your problem with such a high power gap?
Why should creating a good setup and playing well not result in a player being multiple times as effective as a person who put no thought what so ever in their setup and does not play well?




About this thread in general... only 55 people casted a vote, but 25 of them are against any kind of competitive aspect?
Any game that rewards skill or high impact gameplay is somehow competitive.
How can half of you be against that?
Basically all multiplayer games have some kind of competitive aspect.

To your first point. I'm referring to the power gap between a frame with tier one items and tier four items in firefall. The leveling system used in firefall was an abomination and a disgrace to the game. The tier system is what I am basing my commentary on.

There should be nowhere NEAR the power gap between a level 1 and a level 40 frame. The power gap between a tier one and tier four frame is rational and I am fine with that.

Now, to spell it out:

What I am fine with: A large EFFECTIVE power gap and a small DIRECT power gap.

What I am not fine with: A large EFFECTIVE power gap AND a large DIRECT power gap.

Where:
An EFFECTIVE power gap is one created by skill, synergy of equipped items, and knowledge of the game.

A DIRECT power gap is one created by stats being gained as you increase in tier or level.

 

[Destination]

a small DIRECT power gap.

Didn't they already 'promise' that? Let's hope they don't forget.

large EFFECTIVE power gap

This will relate to how encounters and enemies, frame abilities and rewards are designed.

Encounters: already mentioned in some of my posts, IMO the most important things to consider are 'dividing players' and 'respawn mechanics'.

Enemies: from what I've read, I think they have the right ideas.

Abilities: an overused word here: balance. Personally, I dislike 'retarded' things left unchecked because devs don't care or devs don't want to confront certain mindsets which enjoy 'borderline exploitative' imbalances and naively take it as 'skill' (such as excessive AoE, excessive DR, excessive uptime for certain abilities, etc). For once, I'd like to see a design team not afraid of wearing the big boy pants and do what must be done but fewer are willing to do.

Rewards: there must be a tangible difference between the guy headshotting airborne targets on weapon rate of fire and the guy who still can't hit an elephant with a rocket launcher. There shouldn't be a single universal 'tier' reward just for completing the activity no matter how impactful your contribution was. This opens the possibilities for competitive play in a PvE OW setting.

 

[BunnyHunny]

Rewards: there must be a tangible difference between the guy headshotting airborne targets on weapon rate of fire and the guy who still can't hit an elephant with a rocket launcher. There shouldn't be a single universal 'tier' reward just for completing the activity no matter how impactful your contribution was. This opens the possibilities for competitive play in a PvE OW setting.

There should definitely be a difference between the rewards for somebody who deals damage and for somebody who does not.

It is not clear if you are suggesting this, but i am strongly against getting higher rewards, just for using a specific weapon.

Damage dealt should be what is measured by.
When fighting lots of enemies within a small area, a player who uses a sniper rifle should not get a better reward than a player who spams aoe, splashes the shit out of many enemies at a time and deals more damage than the guy with the rifle.

The weapon choice, supported by the reward system, should be an intelligent one.
Damage dealt should be the measurement, because that rewards players for playing as effective as possible, rather than simply picking the weapon that is the hardest to use (but only sometimes effective) and using it for all occasions.

i.e.
enemies which take high critical damage --> max effectiveness with sniper rifle
enemies have no (strong) crit zone --> automatic weapons
many enemies close together --> explosive weapons

A game called Defiance had a similar system.
The weapon itself was ignored by the participation-point-system.

What counted was damage and kills (also: healing, shield break, kill assists, etc.).
Damage generally was worth the same, independent of weapon choice.
Killing an enemy would reward a different amount of points, depending on how you killed it (normal kill, headshot kill, savior kill, ability kill, melee kill).
Dying would cost you a fixed amount of points, no matter if being revived afterwards, or not.

More participants made the enemies stronger, which increased the point-reward for damaging or killing a target.
More participants therefore allowed to get a higher personal score.
The higher the score, the better the reward and the higher the chance to get items of higher rarity.

Playing effective is what was rewarded.
(problem with this system was, that people would flock to one event and make the enemies so strong, that players simply got 1 shot killed)

 

[203]

I honestly do not really understand what you are trying to say here.

I don't care about lvl 40 vs lvl 40, i care about lvl 1 vs 40. ff had so few players in pvp you were thrown in one bucket and the big ones ate the weak ones and pissed them off the game.

 

[BunnyHunny]

I don't care about lvl 40 vs lvl 40, i care about lvl 1 vs 40. ff had so few players in pvp you were thrown in one bucket and the big ones ate the weak ones and pissed them off the game.

Well, that, nobody but you cares about, because ember has no levels.

 

[EvilKitten]

So this is my own opinion of course, but I think rewards should be based purely on an combination of raw HP damage, modified healing, and rezes. Those three items seem like they should be sufficient.

raw HP damage seems fairly straight forward. Critical hits already do more HP damage, so you will end up with more participation points. It also rewards you for being efficient.

healing I feel is also important but shouldn't be a linear reward. Rather you should get a bonus based on how close to death someone is. IE above 90% you get a 1x modifier, below 10% health healing gets a 10x point bonus. This rewards rescues, and doesn't reward heal spamming or overhealing. One thing I am not sure if it is possible is marking preventative damage. For example if someone places a shield that prevents damage to a player, can the game be designed to detect whether a bullet *would* have damaged someone and reward points to the shield placer.

I am not sure exactly how to weight resurrections, possibly based on the ratio of enemy strength (lots of minions vs a few powerful mobs) to friendlies within a certain range.

Additionally given the nature of Em-8er being a large scale planetary wargame, rewards should not be based on any sort of event but rather be a cumulative effect that should be entirely decoupled from other players. In other words as long as you are in combat the points will accrue, once you are sufficiently far away to be considered out of combat those points should be converted linearly into raw resources (or whatever other reward is given out for participation) and the counter reset. This allows for players to play for longer periods of time and get larger rewards, but it also allows players to come and go as they please without being penalized. It also doesn't give any bonus to player idling. The more you directly participate, the more you get out of it. The more efficiently you participate, the more you get out of it. This is where skill and having the right tools for the right job comes into play.

 

[Degiance]

...

If all that comes true i will not have any worries about gameplay. Your post was pretty much a homerun.

 

[BunnyHunny]

I think rewards should be based purely on an combination of raw HP damage, modified healing, and rezes. Those three items seem like they should be sufficient.

Reviving should not necessarily grant any reward. That would be profiting of other people's failure.

However, killing a target is important, since an enemy can still attack, even with 1% HP.
Nobody will stop shooting completely in order to steal a kill (because that is not how it works), but people might stop shooting a low hp target, because "the others will deal with it", in order to get more points from shooting something else.
Taking an enemy out of the fight is important and should be rewarded (at least a little bit).

healing [...] shouldn't be a linear reward. [...] you should get a bonus based on how close to death someone is.

The point of healing is not to have people almost die, but to keep them at full HP as good as possible, so that they can always engage in fights, without having to be scared to get sneezed on.

Your suggestion would promote risking the death of players, because healing low hp targets would grant a higher reward.
Not a good idea.

In Planetside2, as a Medic, it is more effective (for gaining points) to revive dead guys, than to heal them and prevent them from dying in the first place, so that is what medics do. The best thing that can happen is when people keep dying instantly after you revive them.
Something similar would happen with your suggested system.
This is not the point of being a healer.
Healers are supposed to be reliable supporters, not to only heal you, when they gain the most from it.

This rewards rescues, and doesn't reward heal spamming or overhealing.

Rewarding rescues does not really seem necessary to me. The target has low HP, so there is much to heal, which means many points, anyway.
Overhealing would not be rewarded, because it does not restore any HP.
Heal spamming is exactly what a healer is supposed to do (good healers do it and try to keep everyone at full HP).

One thing I am not sure if it is possible is marking preventative damage.

Shield a player, all absorbed damage grants you points (low amount).
In case that is what you meant.

I am not sure exactly how to weight resurrections, possibly based on the ratio of enemy strength (lots of minions vs a few powerful mobs) to friendlies within a certain range.

As i already said: if reviving someone grants a reward, people are more likely to let them die.

[...] rewards should not be based on any sort of event but rather be a cumulative effect [...]

If the war is supposed to be happening in separate events, those events should definitely have their own participation counter that starts and ends with the duration of the specific event.
If that is not the case, there would not be a way to measure and reward skill with any kind of participation rewards.

With your system, every raging potato would be able to accumulate points and get good rewards by simply playing forever.

[...]as long as you are in combat the points will accrue [...]

This would take away any way of rewarding skill through the point system.

This allows for players to play for longer periods of time and get larger rewards

It allows every noob to get any kind of reward, if they just play long enough.
It also rewards you for risking your health.
That is bad.

but it also allows players to come and go as they please without being penalized.

No. It does the exact opposite.

People will try their hardest to find a way to accumulate as many points as possible, so they will NOT go as they please (or they will go, but stay logged in and run a bot) to keep the points.

If rewards accumulate, logging off or going afk can kill off huge amounts of progress (when returning, you have to get back to that high reward level).
Playing only for a short time would be guaranteed to grant a shit reward, because not many points could be accumulated.
Uninterrupted playtime would be the single most important thing when it comes to good rewards and lead to people playing for unhealthy long times.

BUT
If rewards are given out right after every event, you can leave any time and never lose more than a few minutes of progress.
You can log in, be top player in one event, get a good reward, log off.

It also doesn't give any bonus to player idling.

Indirectly, it can, because players will find a way to not lose their points while being afk.
If they don't find a way, they are punished for going afk.

With my suggested system, an idle player does not gain anything, but does not lose anything either.

The more you directly participate, the more you get out of it. The more efficiently you participate, the more you get out of it.

Same for my suggested system. Except mine would reward skilled play, yours would reward marathon gaming sessions.

This is where skill and having the right tools for the right job comes into play.

Skill would be close to irrelevant with your suggested reward system.
Playtime would beat everything.

 

[Destination]

Heal spamming is exactly what a healer is supposed to do (good healers do it and try to keep everyone at full HP)

There's a lot more than healing. There should be.
Games which have good healers always use this formula: healing + support = lots to keep you busy no matter if nobody is taking any dmg.
Healers have ACTIVE buffs for allies and debuffs for enemies. Those must be maintained and applied. Some have stacks, some have very short duration, some must be combo'ed into another class ability in one exact moment, some are key for a specific situation.

The good healer, in those kind of support roles, doesn't let a debuff expire on an enemy or a buff expire on an ally just to heal a guy who is above 75% HP. Decision making and situation awareness are required to excel at that role.
Some time ago I played a korean MMO by the name Tera (game is average but combat is excellent). That's a solid example of enjoyable support play, much more than heal spam (that's just what starters do). Healers had the task of healing (duh), best guys for revives, buffing (offense and defense), debuffing, cleansing status ailments, restoring mana and even crowd control and minion command. Mind you, that game has real targeting required and demands good positioning all the time (no tab target BS) on top of that.

'Score' for the support role has to weight-in buff and debuff/CC up-time. Since that is more important than topping HP on a barely scratched target, it must count and reward more. Exception is if a player stops a buff/debuff cycle to heal a guy who REALLY needs it, that's why I agree with EvilKitten regarding this: healing score doesn't need to be linear.

About revives: enemies should react to it, make it not always easy to pull off, risky to the reviver as to require cooperation/coverage/distraction by other players or good timing and opportunity if there's nobody to cover you. Again, I'll say working on the revive/respawn mechanics is one of the best ways to control the game difficulty.

This are some examples I'd love to see: enemy snipers aggro on players attempting revives in the open, enemy mortar/artillery attacks narrow the window of time to successfully pull off a revive by carpeting the area after some delay (if those types of enemy attacks are part of the encounter, I wouldn't like them everywhere I'm not a masochist), enemy melee units cloak (near invisibility) and go in for the kill (they decloak shortly before attacking to give a brief time to react), enemy support units place energy walls/turrets near a downed player to make it difficult to approach, enemy support units place some kind of area EMP to temporarily disable abilities/weaken shields near the downed guy.
Revives should be important and (some) encounters should put enough pressure on the participants as to make them relevant, the idea is to make them matter and make them desirable and influential to the encounter beyond some simple 'extra points' or 'redundant charity'. Healers and support should be important and not just 'optional' under this scheme because every 'class' can revive but healers/engineers do it better and succeed more often. There needs to be a balanced score in order to make 'planetside 2' not happen (you shouldn't wish your allies to die), and also balanced difficulty as to make 'every player count' (at least sometimes).

 

[EvilKitten]

Good lordy that was...um...I suppose there are a couple points I can respond to...

Reviving should not necessarily grant any reward. That would be profiting of other people's failure.

In Planetside2, as a Medic, it is more effective (for gaining points) to revive dead guys, than to heal them and prevent them from dying in the first place, so that is what medics do. The best thing that can happen is when people keep dying instantly after you revive them.
Something similar would happen with your suggested system.

Team oriented play, means you keep your friends in the fight. Giving someone a rez is a huge risk, you are forced to stand still for a period of time in the middle of a battlefield, without good support that can often mean the death of the rezer. A successful rez can be tricky, and keeping your squad at 100% effective is beneficial and should be rewarded.

The point of healing is not to have people almost die, but to keep them at full HP as good as possible, so that they can always engage in fights, without having to be scared to get sneezed on.

Your suggestion would promote risking the death of players...

because healing low hp targets would grant a higher reward.
Not a good idea.

...This is not the point of being a healer.
Healers are supposed to be reliable supporters, not to only heal you, when they gain the most from it.


Heal spamming is exactly what a healer is supposed to do (good healers do it and try to keep everyone at full HP).

Please don't play a healer. You appear to have no clue what a good shooter based healer is about. Overhealing makes you an utterly worthless squadmate. The point of healing is to keep people from dying, the rest of your time is DPS or crowd control.

If the war is supposed to be happening in separate events, those events should definitely have their own participation counter that starts and ends with the duration of the specific event.
If that is not the case, there would not be a way to measure and reward skill with any kind of participation rewards.

With your system, every raging potato would be able to accumulate points and get good rewards by simply playing forever.

"Participation" rewards don't reward skill...It is best to get rewarded for *what* you do, not for existing in the area of a fight. Keeping the rewards linear based purely on your gameplay is the best way to keep people in the fight while not penalizing anyone. And with a linear reward there is no point in hanging onto points longer or shorter than required. Moving out of combat is sufficient. Alternately you could simply have a timer that pings every 10 minutes with your rewards.

 

[Mahdi]

Seriously spot on you two. When I was PvP sorc healer in SwToR, I had pushes to use on their healers and other interrupts that I was constantly cycling through on top of heals and active h.o.t.s. for my squad members. Yes, mmo and PvP is far different than Em-8ER's design, but the concept of a healer doing many things at once is applicable.

 

[BunnyHunny]

I will not waste much more time on you, so i will keep it short.

You could try to actually reasonably argue some of the points i made.
You will not do that, because there is no way for you to come back at me in a reasonable way.

That might be the reason for you to make assumptions about me and make up things i did not say, so that you have something that you can actually attack.

Good lordy that was...um...I suppose there are a couple points I can respond to...

For a start, you could read what i wrote and then respond to points i actually made (which you don't), instead of making things up and attacking things for something they are not.

Please don't play a healer. You appear to have no clue what a good shooter based healer is about.

Well, again, you are wrong.

While you made a baseless assumption about me, i have good reasons to think that you probably are not the best healer in any kind of game.
I know that healing is not about letting team mates drop as low as they possibly can (in any kind of game), which is what you want to see rewarded.

Overhealing makes you an utterly worthless squadmate.

I never said that overhealing is useful.
In fact, i said that it is useless, which is why i thought that there was no reason for anyone to even think that it would be rewarded.

The point of healing is to keep people from dying,

Great. Thats what i said.

You suggesting to let implement a system that makes you wait for people to drop to low HP, in order to get extra points for healing them, does not make it seem like you had grasped this concept before.

the rest of your time is DPS or crowd control.

I never said that a healer should be doing nothing, when nobody needs healing.

"Participation" rewards don't reward skill...

Wrong.
I will not further talk about this topic. I would have to repeat myself. Again.

Do not comment about something that you have not even read.
How about that?

It is best to get rewarded for *what* you do, not for existing in the area of a fight.

Great. I said so myself.

Keeping the rewards linear based purely on your gameplay is the best way to keep people in the fight while not penalizing anyone. And with a linear reward there is no point in hanging onto points longer or shorter than required. Moving out of combat is sufficient. Alternately you could simply have a timer that pings every 10 minutes with your rewards.

Wrong.


Your entire post is lies and deception.
I would say that i trust in people noticing it, but... well i don't.

But who cares if they notice.
That is what people slap their likes on.

This is what i meant when i said that these forums are just as stupid as the firefall forums.

I would really like everybody to get their IQ checked and displayed next to their name tag.
Maybe that would explain some posts.

 

[EvilKitten]

I will not waste much more time on you, so i will keep it short.

Well, again, you are wrong.

Wrong.
I will not further talk about this topic. I would have to repeat myself. Again.

Do not comment about something that you have not even read.
How about that?

Wrong.

Your entire post is lies and deception.

I attempted to distill your last comment down to its key arguments. The hypocrisy is cringe worthy.

I would really like everybody to get their IQ checked and displayed next to their name tag.
Maybe that would explain some posts.

I have an IQ over 140 and tested in the top 98% for the entire US. That I chose not to respond to each and every one of your sentences because there is simply nothing substantive to respond to.

On to more important matters...

Now that I have taken some time to digest the original topic I feel ready to add a bit to it. The issue here isn't whether there will be any competition (I assume there will be some sort of leaderboards) but rather how it could be implemented. You can't keep a raw running point total because the sad reality is that time tends to trump skill in the long run, a nooblette with 8 hours a day to play are going to outperform a highly skilled player who only has 30 minutes or an hour to play a day. Also given the fact that Grummz stated that there will be no quests means that dividing gameplay up into discrete chunks might be difficult.

My idea stems from my earlier ruminations, what if the leaderboard point values are a function of my above scoring concept as modified by time spent in combat (thus allowing players to mingle back at HQ without worrying about their scores dropping). The same design could also be used for any special events. Where any player that participated for at least 50% of an event would have their average score tallied and the top contributors posted. That particular leaderboard can reset every event (or if they happen very often perhaps the last few events)

This design would cater much more towards highly skilled players who can pack in the most DPS/Heals into their playtime.

One element that also might require a modification to my original concept would be dying, while death outside of events shouldn't be a huge deal, dying while an event is running could tick a second modifier to the time divisor, which would effectively decrease the resulting score.

The final equations would look like:

Game Score = ([Monthly_Damage]+[Monthly_Modded_Healing]+[Monthly_Resurrections])/[Monthly_Combat_Time]
Event Score = ([Event_Damage]+[Event_Moded_Healing]+[Event_Resurrections])/([Event_Combat_Time]*(1+[Deaths]/10))

You will notice I listed the data points for the game score as Monthly. Since rewards for a single combat session are given out immediately there is actually no requirement to keep a full lifetime point tally, instead the game could reset once a month, allowing everyone to start with a fresh score. This would allow both old and new players to stay on an equal footing while showing who the highly skilled players are. Like Event scores, the last few months of a players Game Score can be kept so that players can track their overall progression.