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A redesigned PW

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Planet Wars Prototype: Limited Force

I devise a Planet Wars implementation based on Points for various
ingame statistics(Ratio Based).

The goal being to keep players interested in playing games past the point where they are slowly losing, to the point where they can no longer really kill any enemies. Also at the same time creating a reason not just to "win" every battle, but to be the most effective player in the battle.
I don't like people resigning just because they are likely not to win. This really bugs me because I'm not JUST playing to win, I'm also playing to play, and ending the game before I'm done is just bullshit.

I want people to resign when they no longer have any means of further hurting the enemy, or are so overwhelming outclassed by enemy players that no one wants to continue. I want to see some scorched earth like play, where people are playing losing games just to bleed the enemy to death.

I understand how some people don't like this type of play, and you can just go suckit! Playing just to win is boring, mind as well go play something faster and simpler like call of duty. I want to enjoy the experience of playing the entire battle.

Account Influence
To increase the meaning of being an effective player, Have Influence
Ranks based on effective playing.
Such as someone who maintains top percentile of Damage Dealt / Metal Used. + 25
And a positive Damage Dealt/Damage Received + 25
And a Most avg Damage Dealt/Avg Game Times + 25
+2% influence for avg 14 games this week. with progressively less % gains for more avg games per week/time frame. Call it the Battle Experience Modifier
Have these statistics possibly fade over time, so the person needs to maintain these stats, not just gain them and keep them forever, so people with 1000 games cannot throw a single game and not care.

This means throwing games away, or playing badly will negatively effect
your influence for your faction(In every game you play). Give Highly influential players cool Titles/flashy or custom non game changing items like your colored laser beams. Something that distinguishes them in-game to other people. People like having flashy/cool meaningless crap that distinguishes them from the rest of the crowd.

So you see godde play a battle as an attacker, and the defenders do not gain as large a morale boost for inflicting damage on their enemy.

Godde is Rank Galactic Emperor 250 Influence : Laser Beam Color Black
-10% Morale Bleeding +10% Morale Damage
Klube is Rank District General 75 Influence : Laser Beam Color Blue
-2.5% Morale Bleeding +2.5% Morale Damage
Sakoth is Rank Boonies Commander 0 Influence : Laser Beam Color Pink


Give Planets Multiple Maps based on Defensive Hardpoints on the planet.
Give Factions a Select Number of "Fleets" or "Armies" each with certain
Metal Storage, Build Power, Morale. Games Played Will decrease Metal and
Build Power based on Ratio's of the teams such as some ratio of Metal
Used and Damage taken effects Metal and build Power loss. Whereas Damage
Dealt and taken effects Morale gains/losses.

Morale ratio effects the rate at which hardpoints are recaptured by the defenders(without winning games). All planets tend towards single ownership. This can be based on per turn, or by battle, each battle progressing the time before the point becomes recaptured by the enemy.

The US arguably lost the Vietnam War even though they inflicted horrendous casualties on the Vietnamese AND won pretty much every single battle.

Killing lots of attackers influences the residents of the planet to "rebel" and side with the defenders again. Losing Defenders may lessen the influence gain, but just the act of killing the enemy will always gain more influence to retake points.

I want to see people to continue playing games they may lose and turn their intention to killing as many enemy as possible/doing as much damage.

I've had resigns where I still had plenty of buildpower and like 30 unit army, AND they still had enough left to mount a sizable defense to kill units. I don't want to see this.

Also, highly influential players will have incentive to jump into games that may be lost just to apply their bonuses to bleeding enemies morale/metal/buildpoints. Or to try and bleed the enemy out before they can conquer a planet, since a fleet/army with no metal/BP/Morale cannot conquer anything.

I would also say, the more battles played per timeframe/the more income the following timeframe to allow more battles.

You could also have a Mercenary Fund where battles can be played past the fleet/army running out of resources, the fund being "owed" in the future and the effects for gaining/losing planet influence being lessened considerably.(Games have less meaning) This mercenary fund could also be applied to when players play on teams not their own, they gain their faction metal, and increase their own Influence. Also the more games they play, the more battle experience they gain to help their faction.

Also, the extra effects of each players influence could stop if there is no resources to fund the battles, or if factions don't want to pay mercenaries.

Not Sure on specifics of everything, but I'm wondering if some system like this could lessen the effects of purposely lost games, people resigning early, people not playing due to clanstack, and clanstacking in general, and abusing alliances, or ungood/noobier players being excluded.
I kind of agree with some of the arguments I've seen on how current planetwars is and can be abused, and that it is likely an issue with how PW works fundamentally.
I want a system that provides incentive for playing more games, not a system that provides incentive to pick and choose if or when to play games. That type of system DOES NOT help a low population game like zero-k. Gotta get people playing more games not less. In current system there are times when you just don't play because you probably won't win. I want to see people playing to play, not just playing to win.

Winning is fun yes, and provides incentive enough to try and win if you can. But there needs to be incentive to keep playing even if you might lose, this is an RTS game, you can still have fun playing a losing war just by making it as difficult as possible for the enemy to win effectively, having high kill rates/efficiency. But people aren't going to do with without that extra reason PW could provide.

Maybe some type of system similar to this could work?
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Klube, are you a dev? I was thinking about a rework of PW for some time now we could cooperate on the topic. I have a wiki page set up for that over here
http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/wiki/PlanetWarsReloaded
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I'm trying to get into a Software Engineering position, and I've always been interested in Game Design(though unfortunately I have zero patience in 3d(or 2d) art).

I'd be interested in throwing ideas around.

I think that there is perhaps a fundamental issue being wrong with how the PW system is designed. RTS games are difficult to design with an MMO relationship.

RTS games are not just about win/lose, there is also the fun in everything leading up to absolute annihilation. I want a system designed to not only take that into account, but make that a focus in how wars are won.
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Just a heads up: We're not totally re-designing PlanetWars again. It has a few key issues that need to be addressed and we'll work on fixing them directly rather than overhauling all the superfluous extra stuff which won't change those problems.

Playing to gain these kinds of statistics will radically change how the game is played because they do not necessarily coincide with winning.

The things that make cost more than any other are actually static defense and AA (We have the statistics on this). If I want to keep my ratios high I will just spam defenses. Maybe sit behind defenses and use artillery, or large units I can repair. I will not use raider swarms to try and damage economy because while hitting economy often hurts the enemy way more than anything else you can do, they usually encounter defenses and do not technically make cost. On the flip side, at the end of the game it will be a race to see who can destroy the most structures to bring their ratio higher. I'll never make air because despite the fact that they can kill incredibly key and important targets like geos, fusions, comms and penetrators, they often do not make cost.

It also seriously ignores economic advantages, as I can afford to not make cost (IE spam raiders into defenses, or bomb AA) if I am making a lot more metal than the enemy. Right now, I do not care about cost if I know I can secure the reclaim from the battle (say comm vs comm, you might not make cost sniping his, but if your own comm can get the wreck it doesn't matter). With this system, I cannot do that.

There is also Lancasters Square Law. If the enemy has 2x as many units as I do and is pushing me, he will be making cost against almost anything I send. Should I try and delay him for my allies or just immediately resign so that my ratio doesn't drop any lower? Hell why don't I do nothing but initial flea raids, take out a few wind gens, then immediately resign so my ratio stays as high as possible? Does it take into account the cost of your own infrastructure when you resign? No problems, don't make infrastructure just rush units. Let your allies make infrastructure! They'll lose it to raiders and their ratio will lower. Why not rush a sumo every game and then repair it. Oh the enemy will secure all the territory before my sumo is even finished and it will leave a huge gaping hole in our line but that comm-supported Sumo will DEFINITELY make cost against the spam of units that the enemies superior economy sends against me!

We'll have players shouting 'My kill' and 'OMG KS!' when they stun a goliath with spies and then try and kill it with fleas.

I know there are systems you can put in place to counter-act a lot of these things, but those systems will be capable of being 'gamed' as well. The problem with PW is that it's objectives conflict with the objectives of winning Zero-K. Adding more conflicting objectives is not a solution.

We do already track these statistics and it would be interesting to show this data per player. We can even add them to awards or a more comprehensive ranking system. If you want to get into development that would be a great area to start. But this suggestions has NOTHING to do with planetwars. If you have a problem with resign votes, then the solution would be to up the amount of votes needed, or such. It's a simple elegant solution, rather than a complex convoluted system where you have NO IDEA what behaviour the incentives are actually going to drive.
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meh, I was just writing ideas. I'm still thinking occasionally on it.

I'm just wondering what PW can do to provide incentive to play more games instead of everyone refusing to play most of the time because of clanstacks/etc.
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11 years ago
I think we have to remove all conflicting goals.
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11 years ago
Saktoth made a good argument. Making a more complex system does not always result in better model. In fact, a lucky average player pwning a newbie can make cost several times over, this does not make him "good". A newb porcing at back will make cost on defenses several times over as people will just swamp him to save time instead of making artillery. The only real way to quantify how good a player is is through opinions of other players. And those are not exactly easy to digitize.

However, the overall effectiveness of a player on the battlefield can still be asessed through metal spent/metal killed ratio. The metric should be counted per-factory and compared per-factory. That would solve the problem with air players, as in all of them would have poor kill/metal ratio there. However when you take all of those ratios, compare each one with the other players, you can figure out how good a player is overall.
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quote:
I think we have to remove all conflicting goals.

I second this motion.

Also, i've been thinking about the "designated players" vs "only prearranged battles" issue -- how about we add some initiation phase when joining a faction?

So that you have to be allowed to actually fight when your faction is on the line; making it a privilege like joining a clan is, like ability to command ships, etc. This would make intra-faction politics much more fun, too, and at least allow the noobs to be briefed.

Fighting as non-aligned (i.e, on defending side when a neutral planet is attacked) would still be free.
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11 years ago
headhunter that ratio thing dont work. as wolas wrote in another thread, its way more important what you kill than the actual numbers of kills/metal destroyed. if youre the guy that blows the enemy mohos/singus with your scythes and dont do much else you still have might actually won the game, while your teammate with the ca award might just fight a endless standoff battle. and if you destroy the enemy nuke/starlight by investing twice as much metal (ok this is theory now :>) you still might have won the game despite having a terrible ratio.
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11 years ago
To see someone true power, pw should get some dota 2/lol tournament picking phase. As they select heroes, in pw you select players. The ones first picked are the ones most valued in battle. And a banning phase would be nice too :D.
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11 years ago
True and true, yet for most games you do not want relative metrics. Relative metric is good for 1v1, but not for the team/ffa games. A single ffa win can give you a ton of ELO while your skill did not actually change.

To prove that ELO is unsuitable for team games, I suggest a research. I think it should not be so hard to store current ELO of each player in the battle archive, right? If that is done, I'd be able to construct the statistics of how representative ELO actually is depending on team composition (e.g. player skill deviation on each team). My gut feeling is that ELO is just plain asymmetric. As in +200 elo is not the same as -200.
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11 years ago
It is. having 2100 player and 1300 player is generally better than 1900 player and 1500 player. Maybe not 2v2 but in a bigger team it is.
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11 years ago
quote:
I think we have to remove all conflicting goals.

Absolute truth, for just about everything in zk.
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11 years ago
high elo players count for more in the early game and the late game, especially the late game.

in 2v2, a 2100 and 1300 is weak. in a 10v10, the 2100 will have the clout of half the enemy team put together in 20 mins
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The problem is there are always new players coming in whose elo does not reflect their skill, and big 10v10's are almost random, one single player does not have enough influence. The moment they drop below 1400 or so, they get balanced with the best players out there, and since they only play teams, their elo is kept artificially buoyant because it is so low. Often they never even play enough games to get their elo to really reflect how bad they are.

This has little to do with PlanetWars though. The issues with it are games not being able to start/clanstack imbalance and throwing or not wanting to win games.
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11 years ago
I think perhaps most people should be considered mercenaries. Allow factions to hire on players for their faction temporarily? that way more people would be amiable to playing with any side instead of there being so many conflicts of interest.

Faction commanders could be able to designate missions, maybe with player number/elo requirements and allow planetwars to automatically match up a game if there are mostly mercenaries in the lobby?

New players could all join a mercenary pool, I'm pretty sure it was once like this? People who are actually interested in joining a faction can, and others can play as mercenaries.

I vaguely recall something like that being considered long ago, But I no longer see anything related to that?

Perhaps let lower elo players who want to play PW provide some type of insurance if they lose? such as decrease influence gain for their enemies or something. So if they cause game loss it is less a problem? while all higher elo players in a game has more influence at stake in a battle for a planet?
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11 years ago
Insurance against losing sounds interesting.. However it would be vey hard to balance that ..
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11 years ago
And it will be exploited. As in smurfing.
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11 years ago
All these changes in PW are terrible. Not only terribly designed, but it would ruin PW entirely.
Like losing top faction influence by noobs who play first time. (as joining a faction do not require anything, just clicking)
So, no. You're wrong.
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