Author Topic: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest  (Read 17811 times)

Offline FlyingBoatPirate

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Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« on: March 15, 2016, 02:01:24 am »
The game only has three game types Death Match, KoTH, and Crazy King. Most players avoid KoTH and Crazy King because they are rather boring and Deathmatch gets old eventually. (The game also needs more maps, especially for 4vs4. Please make Canyons a 4vs4 map!) To help keep players, we need more game types!

Some new game types and improvements to KoTH games:

KoTH:
Allow KoTH games to be teams of 2. So, instead of a 4vs4 or 3vs3 KoTH, there would be four teams of 2 or three teams of 2. This would make the KoTH matches far more interesting. A free-for-all mode should be an option for 4 ship games.

Crazy King:
Allow the same change as above, however make 2 points active at a time. This means you must control both points to deny the other team/teams from scoring points. Would help to counter the run-away point effect that usually happens in Crazy King 4vs4.

Hunted:
One ship/team is the target and is always spotted for the rest of the ships. The hunted ship/team gains perma-buffed armor. Game has a set timer and team with the most points at the end is the winner. The Hunted ship starts with a pool of points, gains points as long as alive, and also gains points from kills. All other ships/teams start with zero points and can only "steal" points by killing the hunted ship/team or from other teams that have positive points.
  • Hunted Ships:
    Start with 100 points. Gain 1 point ever 2 seconds alive. Gains 10 points for every kill (but kill does not steal points from the hunters).
  • Other Ships:
    Start with 0 points. Steals 20 points for killing a Hunted Ship. Steals 10 points for killing other ships.

So, the idea is the only way for your team to gain points is to either kill the Hunted ships for large amounts of points or to steal points from the other teams. Killing other teams that have 0 points will get you no points. As the hunted ships continually gain points, there will be pressure to hunt them to keep them from automatically winning the round. Would make a fun match with 4 teams of 2, or 3 teams of 2. For 4 ship games, would need to be a free-for-all (And hunted ships would generate points slower/start with fewer points).

Crazy Hunted:
Same rules as above, but the hunted team/ship changes after a certain amount of time.

Flagship:
Each team has a flagship. Game is won by points, not by kills. The flagship of a fleet gains perma-buffed armor. Flagships are worth 50/40/30 points in 4/3/2vs matches. All other kills are worth 10 points, and are "stolen" from the opposing team's point pool. Both teams would start with zero points and gain points by killing the flagship, but would lose points if they lose any ships (points cannot go negative). First team to score a certain amount of points wins. This game type would encourage defending the flagship, but would require aggressive actions by both teams to be able to score the required points to win.

Turncoat:
For 3vs3 or 4vs4 matches. Each team has a captain that has the ability to betray their team. Only the captain knows they are the turncoat (before the game begins, will be randomly selected in final 30 second countdown). The turncoat ship has the ability to change sides at any point during the battle. Allied ships will be flashed a warning when the turncoat reveals themselves (but if the turncoat is a Pyra sitting right behind your Spire as you are sniping, you are as good as dead. Hahahaa!). Turncoats, once revealed, will gain the ability to spawn at either teams' spawn points.

Territories:
There are a number of control points placed around the map. The team that controls the most control points when time is up is the winner. Control points act as limited radar and will reveal nearby enemy ships on the map. Control points can be used as spawn points by the controlling team.

Flag Race:
Each team has a series of control points they must capture in order to win, so you capture Point A, then Point B, etc. A team can only capture their control points, but can block the other team from capturing. As long as an enemy ship is next to the other control point, your team cannot capture. The capture bar can only fill up, so if your half capture a point and are forced off/killed, you don't lose the progress you've made.

Buff Battle: Capture different points to gain buffs to different components for all ships in your fleet. For example, capture the Armor Point and all allies have buffed armor, etc. The down side is if you lose a point, the buffed components for that point take random damage from 20% to 50% on all ships in the fleet. There would be buff points for Armor, Balloon, Engines, and Guns. Buff bonuses would expire after a few minutes and require being recaptured. New buff points would be activated at random to prevent camping valuable points. (The buffs applied by the points would be lower than the buffs applied by the hammer. However, control point buffs and hammer buffs would stack.)

Goliath: One ship starts with full buff on all components. Buff is on a timer and will then jump to a random new ship. Buff bonus can be captured if you kill the buffed ship.

Cricket: Game is won by points, not by kills. For example: Kills are worth 20 points while each hull component destroyed is worth 5 points. Engineers who fix destroyed components gain 5 points and gain 1 point for fully fixing any component (Make those engineers feel better about having to fix everything!) Major components could be worth more points, like 10 points for hull/balloon. 8 points for main engine and large guns.

What would really help games stay interesting would be to allow for proper custom games. When hosting a custom game, the host should be able to control many of the variables of the game. Things that would be nice to control as host:
Ships
Load-outs (on ships and crew)
Crew Composition
Friendly Fire
Size of Different Teams (4vs4, 2vs2vs2, 3vs2vs1)
Force Team Changes/Move Players
Handicaps (Be able to give a team/ship a permabuff bonus on different components)
Length of Match (By timer/kills/score)

Like me, I would love to organize a Hunted Game (if the game mode ever existed) where the Hunted ships only have mines and the Hunters all have Harpoons. Then let the ramming games begin :D

Offline Omniraptor

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2016, 05:19:30 am »
I wholeheartedly agree with the ideas. Extra gamemodes using existing maps and design elements such as control points, match points, and respawns... as well as new ones- conditionally having a permanent buff or conditionally being always spotted.

Giving these tools either to human referees or player-written and workshop-submitted scripts would be fucking HUGE.

There are some big problems with the gamemodes you wrote up even from a purely theoretical/design perspective and more would surely come up in testing. However the idea itself is so amazing. I don't know how much engineering effort it would take to code in these handicaps. Probably a lot (that muse would rather spend on improving alliance). One can dream though..

Offline Hoja Lateralus

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2016, 05:51:30 am »
Doesn't matter, devs can't even provide new maps for existing modes or create ingame interface for a mode that is already existing and liked in community (VIP, also, remember squid racing?). For now, such ideas have no value at all, come back in 2020-ish.

Offline FlyingBoatPirate

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #3 on: March 15, 2016, 06:25:52 am »
Yeah, I figured with how long the game has been out and with the little added content, it seems like no new maps/modes will be implemented. Which is unfortunate. Even just giving some flags that could be set in custom games, players could organize the above game types without scripts.

The game is a lot of fun and has sold mechanics, but the variety is very limited. With the dedication level of the community, would love to see what could be done if the player base was given a few simple modding tools.

Offline Helios.

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2016, 08:29:18 pm »
i cant imagine why VIP (SAC ATTACK!) would be hard to code, but i'm not a coder, so there's that to consider as well.

Offline Hoja Lateralus

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2016, 02:08:00 am »
It's basically deathmatch with added some interface to choose which one of ships is a VIP and has a rule 'it this ship dies, other team wins'. I mean, can you go simplier than that?

Offline Jamini

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2016, 01:00:35 pm »
More ship variation would be nice as well. Once you learn the existing set, they can get boring quite fast.

Offline DJ Logicalia

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #7 on: March 16, 2016, 02:27:14 pm »
Despite how desperately we all want it, nothing major is coming until Alliance is finished

Offline Jamini

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #8 on: March 16, 2016, 02:39:30 pm »
Some things FROM alliance would be nice in skirmish.

Offline Hoja Lateralus

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #9 on: March 16, 2016, 03:05:26 pm »
'Some' of them will surely end up in Skirmish, like the new voicechat icons and new victory screen, which were in Alliance before they came to Skirmish

Offline Helios.

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #10 on: March 16, 2016, 03:16:27 pm »
i wonder if the heyoke or the charybdis would make the mobula nerf discussion somewhat different, so i think it will be important to know if those are imminent in skirmish or what, i HOPE they are! if they are then we have to have some idea how those ships work given the strange mechanics of these novel weapons.

Offline Omniraptor

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #11 on: March 16, 2016, 04:01:04 pm »
i wonder if the heyoke or the charybdis would make the mobula nerf discussion somewhat different, so i think it will be important to know if those are imminent in skirmish or what, i HOPE they are! if they are then we have to have some idea how those ships work given the strange mechanics of these novel weapons.

First rule of devapp is you don't talk about devapp.

and no they are not coming to skirmish.

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #12 on: March 16, 2016, 04:02:47 pm »
I still want a Brawl mode. No teams. No allies. Pick your own flag colors. 2 to 8 ships. Pure insanity.

Offline Kamoba

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #13 on: March 17, 2016, 03:23:43 am »
I still want a Brawl mode. No teams. No allies. Pick your own flag colors. 2 to 8 ships. Pure insanity.

I approve of this idea still.

Offline C r o w

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Re: Game Desperately Need new Game Variants to Maintain Interest
« Reply #14 on: March 17, 2016, 03:46:16 am »
Imagine if everybody in the Brawl takes a munker.
That's really nothing new since "mines don't take sides" anyway.