Do they have to be alive when they start the boss fight, or when the boss dies? If it's the former, I'm sensing a new unintended mini-game coming... tee hee hee DBC
I'm suddenly finding myself again wishing that bosses would literally eat people who don't do enough damage to it. It'd make it almost impossible to carry new players through Siegfried and above, but that might actually be a mechanism we want, according to Sheinfell's argument about new players becoming jaded from getting too much too soon. If I saw the boss about to eat a player, I think I'd actually stop SHOOTING at the boss temporarily to ensure I don't make it flinch and give the freeloader a chance to run away.
I haven't actually tested that out yet. Might do so as soon as I get some sleep and wake up -- there's something seriously wrong with me when I'm awake between midnight and 7am >____>
I'm getting the notifications, but I usually don't respond with "nah, not for me today", because it seems bit mean to get the person's hopes up when they get a reply. I'm not gaming again until I sleep, I'm literally nocturnal right now >___>
If we've got a third, I could be talked into it... Embarrassing admission? I went into the thread awhile ago and couldn't figure out how to post or add anything to it... Edit: Oh, it's the "Add Comment" button. Got it. DBC
To go back a bit, I know undead's idea of basing mithril chances on ammo count is a rough draft, but keep in mind that people could undermine the system by standing around pumping a high E/S weapon into the ground for the whole boss fight. Even wearing a freedom backpack would increase the troll.
Clones v.s. Serpent Awesome. we all had the same weapons, armor, pack. M-27B1 ★★★★★★★★ Perseus armor STK-06-ZZ I know they're lv8 cause we killed the deranged alien in 7 minutes max. I enjoyed it
My argument there is that the only motivation to undermine the system IS to troll. The assumption is that the major motivation for most players to freeload at all is because it saves on ammo costs - to undermine the system by unloading ammo into the ground negates their original motivation for pulling out a Windblade, or not firing at all. That being said...Sheinfell's story lends some disturbing support to the reality of trolling, though we're now talking about players who play to actually tick us off rather than attempting to save gold in the most foolish of ways.
Nice, Arrow I am not giving up hope yet. To add to Arrow's experience, I just had two good matches. First one was the best, with 2 lowlevel guys in crappy armor and lowend assault rifles trying to protect *ME* . Definitely promising, these two. If whoever I just played Mantis with reads this: great game, thanks guys!
Arrow, I don't see you on the player's group on TA, did you want to join? Every so often, players from this thread try to play alongside each other, so if you're interested, the link is in Sheinfell's signature
Oh, so I'm not the only one wishing that would happen Plus, one time I did get really pissed and stopped shooting to allow the Mantis to rip the player to shreds. (He used a cutter.) There was also a sniper >.> sadly, he avoided the same fate as the sword moron.
Was the sniper doing any work? Because despite the stigma on railguns, they are actually quite strong when used to their fullest potential. When they're fully upgraded: The R100-Railgun (the one bought with gold) has a maximum damage output matching the Crab. The R700-AA (mithril sniper) has a maximum damage output equivalent to someone using nothing but the Laser Cannon (i.e. firing it until it overheats, and not switching to a secondary weapon while it cools down). The stigma is due to the fact that it's comparatively easy to miss a shot with the railguns, which will cause your average damage output to drop quite significantly because of its low firing rate. Additionally, you need to have a good sense of the railgun's reload time (which differs by a fraction of a second between the two snipers as well). In other words...in terms of damage output, the railguns can actually be quite decent - at the very least, they're much better than the swords. The problem is that they're generally not that practical for the whole boss fight because of the way they need to be utilised, and it's frowned upon if you're using it to save on ammo costs when automatic weapons are generally more damage-efficient. Personally, I'd say not to worry too much if they're using it on Wrath of Mantis, because the boss dies quite quickly there. If you meant in Double Rages though, then that's irritating, yeah - though still far better than sword-swinging morons. One last thing on Double Rages: not all players who pull out a sword are freeloading there. Specifically, you'll find quite a few players pull out Windblades when a Mantis puts its shield up - they're using the waves to check whether the shield is still active when they do that, and also to help with dodging attacks by increasing their mobility. While it's possible to damage either Mantis when they put their shields up, damage is massively dampened - if the boss isn't on its last sliver of health, I'd suggest you put away your M-27 and switch out a weapon without a speed penalty to evade attacks for about 30 seconds.
Working on community consensus about teamplay encouragement Alright ladies, let's get the train back on track. What do we have so far? We all agree that the biggest problem is the freeloading: That players can take advantage of the other players' effort, and get rewarded for doing nothing, which effectively amounts to sabotaging the fight for the others on the match. What do we have so far? 1) Ask Freyr about their vision for the game, if they think teamplay should be a big part of multiplayer PvE and encouraged, or if they see it more as a “every man for himself” thing. If they also want to see teamplay encouraged, ask them to listen to our concerns and have a look at your suggestions to resolve the problem. Overall, we believe that the game and the playerbase as a whole can only benefit from mechanisms that simultaneously encourage teamplay and discourage selfishness. 2) Problem Description: In multiplayer PvE, especially in the boss fights, it is possible to benefit from the effort other players on the match put in, without contributing anything yourself. The current game setup effectively rewards this uncooperative behaviour, as players do not need to spend any ammunition or put themselves at risk, and can still get substantial rewards - both in Gold and Mithril - simply for "being there". A secondary aspect is that the current setup allows more powerful players to "shepherd" less powerful ones through a bossfight, which provides the less powerful player with additional resources that are normally unattainable for him. Scope of the Problem: Unknown. As we do not have any numbers on SW's playerbase, or on the rate of cooperative vs. uncooperative players, we can only take guesses here. The scope for the TA community however is large, as we are all in favour of cooperative PvE teamplay, and actively try to promote it. For the total playerbase, we cannot make a meaningful statement. However, from our observations we can conclude that the problem might also be large in scope for the general playerbase. Compared to the total playerbase, we are a very small number of players. But, from the frequency we encounter both cooperative and uncooperative players, and from the fact that a significant number of cooperative players exist, we can extrapolate that a significant percentage of the total playerbase shares our views and concerns. 3) Possible solutions: The outlined solutions would achieve two things: 1) Encourage and reward cooperative PvE teamplay by the game mechanics 2) Reduce the possibility outlined above, to shepherd weaker players through fights above their ability for Gold and Mithril rewards that are out of their normal reach, and can potentially disrupt game balance. Solutions presented assume that reward amounts are at least modified by the outlined factors, or - on the far end - even completely determined by those factors. Solution 1: Make rewards based at least partly on ammunition (="energy") spent during a PvE match. At first glance, this is an obvious indicator of how much effort you put into the match. Looking closer, we can identify several problems: This does not cover swordusing players. They do not spend ammunition, but can still contribute to the match. It is still possible to not contribute to the match at all. For example by using a Freedom backpack and shooting at the ground. With the differences in power and energy use between the weapons, it is hard to determine the actual contribution to the match just by looking at energy spent. For example, a player with a level 1 starter assault rifle needs to spend substantially more ammunition than a player with a level 8 M27 chaingun to bring down e.g. the Mantis boss. Solution 2: 1) Substantially lower the base gold reward for "just being there" 2) No reward at all - both in Gold and Mithril - should be given to players who have either a) zero (or very small number of) kills during the alien wave phase or b) did no (or no significant) damage to the boss during that phase 3) Gold rewards should be increased based on a) percentage of kills (player's kills/total number of aliens) during the alien wave phase b) percentage of damage (player's damage/boss HP) during the boss fight phase c) number of players who survived 4) Mithril drop rate could also be increased by the outlined factors for gold rewards ADDITION: I forgot undead's suggestion that a boss tries to remove a player from the fight (aka eat him) if the player is not damaging it (enough). While removing a player seems rather drastic, it could be a very clear hint that contributing more might be a good idea. I personally would prefer that a boss focuses all his attacks on a player who does nothing. However, keep in mind that both these suggestions most likely require alot of effort from Freyer to implement them. Final thought: After some thinking, I do favor the mechanic that reward is influenced by number of surviving players, provided that the current reward mechanics do get changed to encourage teamplay more. I think this would encourage players to contribute to the fight, try to protect each other, and thus teamplay in general. So guys, what do you say? Can we reach some consensus here that we can present to Freyr and ask them for their opinion? Does anyone have more suggestions what could be done - and ideally easily implemented - to encourage and reward teamplay more? I want to get this to Freyr's attention as soon as possible, ideally before end of this week.
Great explanation about the railguns, undead, thanks alot! I added it to my resources for the playerguide. Hope I soon get to work on it more, to get at least some basic stuff up. Quite tied up with the balance / teamplay encouragement problem currently.
Sheinfell: For the most part, I agree with most of the points that you've put forward. To avoid making my post unnecessarily long, I might spend more time elaborating on where my stance might differ from what you proposed, or points I find particularly interesting, so please don't think that I'm trying to be uncooperative. ---------------- With regards to swordusers contributing damage, I'm giving it some thought, and I think that you're right in that their contributions need recognition. Assuming the Windblade waves do even half the damage of the melee damage, their damage output actually exceeds that of the FL334AR, which is a weapon a fair amount of developing players will go through. Their relatively lower contributions against tougher bosses would be captured by the damage percentage measure to begin with, so that mechanism should encourage the usage of stronger weapons against stronger bosses and their corresponding enemy rushes. I would similarly agree that scaling rewards according to the number of surviving players would work quite well if the mechanisms worked to completely discourage uncooperative behaviour (freeloading, or otherwise leaving before the boss fight after wiping out all the small aliens). There's still a potential issue to this system, however: certain players may have difficulty playing alongside each other, given the inherent difficulties with sustaining a network connection across dispersed geographical locations. Provided this is not a widespread problem, then I believe it's a negligible issue for the time being, but it's a potential hurdle that may warrant some consideration. One idea I think that may significantly boost cooperative teamwork would be the ability to use your pack items on other teammates. I would envision this being possible if it's possible to highlight one of your teammate's health bars by tapping on it, and then tapping on one of your own pack items to use it on them. People may not be so willing to spend a $40,000 health pack on someone else, but this could be quite ideal for loading a hyper clip onto a player with a fully-upgraded M-27 if yours is not at level 8 yet, or to boost a player's longevity by using a shield on them to halve damage. Team backpacks serve some of these purposes, but I think this might be a useful addition to the game. (I would also suggest introducing some consumable health packs which can heal the whole team instead of just one person, but I have a feeling that might take too much of the challenge away from the game). --------------- Anyway, those were the main responses that came to mind -- otherwise, I completely concur with what you've written up there Sheinfell. I like the way you've structured the whole essay, actually - IT customer service and problem solving techniques sure work wonders
No worries about that, undead. On the contrary, giving good input is extremely cooperative And yes, I tackled this thing the same way I go about a support case ;> Great feedback. Unless anyone objects, I will add it to the "laundry list" for Freyr. Especially the part about network issues and the suggestion for using items on other players are great.
