Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: GeneralAmericanQuack on July 07, 2013, 07:20:14 pm
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I just finished showing my roommate a recording of a tournament stream (the 3v3 tournament on Friday). He's a fan of competitive gaming and has a good idea on what makes a game a contender to becoming an esport. He pointed out something which, in hindsight, is an obvious barrier to the esport status like myself and others hope for:
There is no strong incentive to move.
Matches on a competitive level develop a tendency to become long range sniping games with little maneuvering. Both sides sit back and wait for the other to stick its nose out of its hiding spot first. Even I had to admit it was an issue when the stream casters were getting bored and players, myself included, talked back and forth like we were in a chat room as we waited.
I'm not going to try to urge Muse to drop what they're doing on Adventure mode (something I eagerly look forward to) in order to make changes in PvP. What I'm looking to do is put up a thread where the community can brainstorm ideas that would put more emphasis on maneuvering and make the game more fun to watch.
Let's see what we can come up with, my fellow sailors of the skies!
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That's a problem with Deathmatch mainly cause where there is an objective, people are forced to move to it.
The time limit that there is, is just too much if you ask me (2 hours wat), there should be a less forgiving time limit to force moves in that game mode, if the time limit ends with no team reaching the goal, both lose, in order to avoid one team camping after they get one kill, you always need to force people to complete the objective if you want movement, currently there is no such thing hence every match with snipers in it ends up as a boring long range poking match that takes more than an hour each time.
People are lazy, what did you expect? x3
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Simply make King of the Hill and similar modes the one played competitively and avoid TDM. Problem solved, you have your incentive to move.
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Most esports are based on reflexes and speed. Which is why I say...they suck and will never been recognized by society as a whole. Guns can be about either but the emphasis is on teamwork and strategy. Tactics play a huge role vs mindless blasting in FPS games. In a way it is like golf. More fun to play than it is to watch, at times.
Thought it was funny on Saturday that casters were wishing there had been some sniping play before teams engaged. Course with 2 teams dropping out and only 2 matches to cast...kind of a question of what the point was. Over too fast.
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Most esports are based on reflexes and speed. Which is why I say...they suck and will never been recognized by society as a whole. Guns can be about either but the emphasis is on teamwork and strategy. Tactics play a huge role vs mindless blasting in FPS games. In a way it is like golf. More fun to play than it is to watch, at times.
Thought it was funny on Saturday that casters were wishing there had been some sniping play before teams engaged. Course with 2 teams dropping out and only 2 matches to cast...kind of a question of what the point was. Over too fast.
Whoah whoah whoah let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I had been settled in to have long sniping matches and was caught off guard with the sudden change in gameplay styles. I did wish the games had taken longer, certainly, but I also wasn't wishing for another couple of like two hour long sniping matches :D
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Well if Muse fixes a lot of things, sniping matches can start to thin out. The addition of mines coming does bring another factor. Mines can be both defensive and offensive. With the game in it's current state I say it'll only keep encouraging sniping. But some tweaks and adjustments to a few of the ships and cqc vs snipers is very viable again. Mines may play an important role in that if they aren't nerfed into oblivion. Heck I used to do it all the time months ago before Muse wreaked things. Had I had a mine launcher back then, the effectiveness of taking out snipers would have just increased.
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On some levels its amazingly easy to beat snipers such as paritian rumble, and using dust/clouds to hide yourself to catch them from the side or rear, of course on other levels its near impossible. if i find myself stuck with no option to do anything but run staight at them its a sticky situation but rull speed ahead and get everyone on repairs until we are close enough and it usually works out well :)
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The reason why I think the "time limit" set by the server itself is plenty is really one thing: tactics.
You start putting short time limits in there, and you get a bunch of "strategies" that revolve around it instead of, well what you saw Friday. You could have a team ahead in kills, and they simply avoid the other team till time runs out. You cut way into the chance for comebacks. And I can only imagine the rage of a tied game, and you both lose? Most of our games were close, and 2 of them were 7-6.
I can agree that I wished some CP maps were in the rotation. You don't have to separate them to have a good tournament either. Both can exist.
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Solution: have a tournament where more than one merc per ship is banned.
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Solution: have a tournament where more than one merc per ship is banned.
eh merc/arty..... might take even longer........
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Solution: have a tournament where more than one merc per ship is banned.
eh merc/arty..... might take even longer........
I honestly wouldn't be worried at all about charging a merc/artemis broadside. It's much easier to close distance against than a merc/merc side.
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Banning weapons isn't going to solve it really. That would still equate to 2-3 mercs. You of all people should know that popping some engines on incoming boats and then focusing them down would still work.
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That's true, but it would still reduce the effectiveness of sniping. Sniping would do considerably less DPS. Usually when rushing quad mercs the main problem is that they get the edge on armour/hull damage rather than component disables.
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mercs are amazing for sniping thats true, has anyone tried getting their engies AND gunners to focus on engine repairs while you close the distance and then focus on firing? you'll be surprised how easy it is since the merc turn is quite lumbersome
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Well yea, I'd of much rather faced 3 mercs in our final vs 5. Eric is still trying with his 2 shots on "heavy" components to disable rather than 1.
The biggest "problem" is good gunners, as funny as that sounds. With a combined gun-line of merc and flak, you're not charging that successfully. Really you shouldn't either, else sniping is pretty pointless. It takes time to get yourself in a position that you are comfortable to approach enemy teams, much like our final. It took forever to get them near cover we could use too.
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One thing that I think is really hurting a lot of brawling teams and helping snipers right now is the flare gun. On maps like Canyon, there's loads of cloud cover from which you could launch an ambush. However, a few well-placed flares guarantee that the snipers will see their enemies coming from a long way away. In our match on Friday against P&S, for example, we spent a long time trying to find a way to sneak past their gun line and rush in. But every time we passed through a cloud, we were flared, spotted, and sniped.
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Lol flare Op yo.
All seriousness though, that's not a bad point. Back in the day flares weren't popular at all, and now 8-10 boats carry one. You guys did real well with that final ambush to make it 6-5.
Misdirection is a lovely thing, though.
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I was really looking forward to the now reversed merc changes that reduced it's armor damage. That would have made sniping strategies much more difficult to pull off. If it only disabled you'd have to move in after a few shots to finish them off on ships like the pyra.
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Since it's still one of two guns that can strip armor well, I don't see it losing that role till something else wanders in.
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There are other guns that can strip armour well. The heavy carronade, the light carronade, the lumberjack, the mine launcher...
But that's not too relevant to this topic.
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Well yea flechette does it with average results (minus the LJ) but two of those are heavy guns, one is quite outdone in range, and mines can be avoided.
But yea, about that topic.
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I guess it all depends on how the new tweaks pan out. The mine launcher and Mobula are definitely going to change the scene as well. Still...
I've been toying with ideas of how a game mode featuring a timed match, with no kill cap would play out. The team with the most kills when time is up would be the winner. Something like that is something I think would encourage teams to search one another out. Especially as the time winds down.
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mercs are amazing for sniping thats true, has anyone tried getting their engies AND gunners to focus on engine repairs while you close the distance and then focus on firing? you'll be surprised how easy it is since the merc turn is quite lumbersome
I see a problem there. Either you are in brawling range if you can dissable, and you've allready dealt with the problem, or you are sniping yourself. The general Idea is to keep them busy with something that is not shooting at you while you approach, but accomplishing that on open maps is another story.
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Well when I think of an incentive to move I feel like a lot of older first person shooters had this down with power ups and weapon drops actively rewarding a player who knows how best to get around the map. For guns of Icarus I can't really imagine how best to do something like this. A straight forward way would to maybe have floating supply crates that insta buff certain or perhaps all the components of a ship temporarily. Thing is the buff would have to be good enough to incetivise moment but not so good that it'd diminish the use of the buff tool. Alternatively maybe instead of providing buffs maybe a small return on perma health.
If we want to avoid power ups altogether punishing the player for not moving rather than rewarding them for moving would be an option. Maybe environmental hazards that hang around the edges of map like storms and dust clouds or maybe just a strong wind that's force more stationary ships toward the center.
Idk what do you think
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Well when I think of an incentive to move I feel like a lot of older first person shooters had this down with power ups and weapon drops actively rewarding a player who knows how best to get around the map.
I think it's obvious you're talking about Quake here (at least, that's what comes to mind for me), and I agree with you. Quake and similar games have so much strategy that go into them and require you to know maps inside and out, as well as know where your opponent is at all times. Inversely, games like Call of Duty have nowhere near that level of strategy, which is why you see a lot of spawn camping (not so far off from some Guns of Icarus matches). Not saying GoI has no strategy because it certainly has a lot, but we do see some level of spawn camping.
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What if there was a bomb on each ship that would blow up if the ship slowed down?
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I still haven't watched the last feed, but Im assuming it was at Fjords? Which is a beautiful but large map. And now that I think about it, most of our maps are larger maps (with exception to Duel at Dawn... maybe).
Smaller maps means that after a ship dies it will spawn closer to the fray, possible catching sniping ships with their pants down. If we make smaller maps (or at least cut up larger maps into smaller segments) we could see a whole new brand of brawling in competitive matches.
Only other thing i can think of is jacking up merc reload times...
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What if there was a bomb on each ship that would blow up if the ship slowed down?
Speed 12: Blimps now? Seriously?
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The reason why I think the "time limit" set by the server itself is plenty is really one thing: tactics.
You start putting short time limits in there, and you get a bunch of "strategies" that revolve around it instead of, well what you saw Friday. You could have a team ahead in kills, and they simply avoid the other team till time runs out. You cut way into the chance for comebacks. And I can only imagine the rage of a tied game, and you both lose? Most of our games were close, and 2 of them were 7-6.
I can agree that I wished some CP maps were in the rotation. You don't have to separate them to have a good tournament either. Both can exist.
Having more time doesn't make a game more tactical. Quite frankly, strategies evolve from quick thinking and improve with experience. Fightinggames usually have a 99 second time limit on their rounds and that is a HUGE amount of time in those games as the game itself is designed to finish a round in under 40 seconds. The same way Virtua Fighter has a 45 second time limit while the game mechanics are build around finishing the round in 15 seconds. So for this game you have to consider what the game is designed for and how much time you intend to give it. From my small personal experience, rounds tend to take 15 minutes, so having a timelimit of 2 hours is just too long.
Secondly, the incentive to move comes from the playing style you wish to execute. Back to fightinggames because I got more experienced there, some characters have less incentive to move than others. Most notably characters that have longer range tools are less likely to try to rush at the opponent to fight him in close combat. With the airships it's the same deal. If your ship is loaded with 4 mercury field guns, you're not putting yourself in an advantage by charging at your enemy, instead, you prefer distance and you intend to stay at that distance. Once this game evolves, some players will develop more close combat oriented styles and have loadouts to accompany them; those players will have an incentive to move and will happily do so.
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Brawlers already have an incecitive to move, they need to get in close range, I think the OP was mostly referring to snipers having to move instead of camping the same place while the enemy brawlers are forced to mane an engagement each time, sniping is effective right now because aside from the game boasting some of the scariest sniping weapons I have seen, you don't need to move your arse much.
In KotH where you need to get on the point, sniping is less effective due to forcing both teams to meet at a single point, Crazy king forces way too much movement for the sluggish Galleons to be effective as well so sniping loses effectiveness, you simply don't have the time to stand still and point broadsides at an enemy unless you are the current owner of the point and I promise, the brawlers will have the advantage of boasting faster ships than the snipers here.
So yeah, DM is pretty much the only mode plauged by snipers 24/7 and that's only in competative. It's not as bad as people think though :P
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Well, if you decide to be a brawler, then you have to understand that you will be manning attacks on snipers a LOT. That is part of being a close combat fighter. And quite frankly, you will get used to it after a while.
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As a personal opinion after having played more, what we need is not an incecitive to move, but maps that have a lot of movement options.
Think of Paritan Rumble, Fjords, Canyons (aside from red spawn), Duel at Dawn and Labyrinth, these maps have both open areas but are littered with cover in many, many places giving a brawling team many more choices to approach the enemy snipers, the only map that puts brawlers at a severe disadvantage is Battle on the Dunes, which is probably the worst map in the game by far, absolutely open, clouds do not provide sufficient cover and you can't hide in then cause sandstorms and there is no hard cover other then 2 giant structures that have quite the space between them.
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Having more time doesn't make a game more tactical. Quite frankly, strategies evolve from quick thinking and improve with experience. Fightinggames usually have a 99 second time limit on their rounds and that is a HUGE amount of time in those games as the game itself is designed to finish a round in under 40 seconds. The same way Virtua Fighter has a 45 second time limit while the game mechanics are build around finishing the round in 15 seconds. So for this game you have to consider what the game is designed for and how much time you intend to give it. From my small personal experience, rounds tend to take 15 minutes, so having a timelimit of 2 hours is just too long.
Secondly, the incentive to move comes from the playing style you wish to execute. Back to fightinggames because I got more experienced there, some characters have less incentive to move than others. Most notably characters that have longer range tools are less likely to try to rush at the opponent to fight him in close combat. With the airships it's the same deal. If your ship is loaded with 4 mercury field guns, you're not putting yourself in an advantage by charging at your enemy, instead, you prefer distance and you intend to stay at that distance. Once this game evolves, some players will develop more close combat oriented styles and have loadouts to accompany them; those players will have an incentive to move and will happily do so.
You're comparing apples to oranges with fighting games to GOIO. A very small percentage of games last anywhere near that 2 hour limit. Most of these are casual games that have no real "must win" vibe about them.
Toss in the competitive scene though, and now you have that incentive to win. Teams stick closer, move slower, and make tactical decisions on the maps chosen. Toss some arbitrary time limit in there with some silly rule like "if you are tied then you all just lose," you take all of that out and replace it with people going for one kill, then running away till the limit is up.
My point is, in casual games, this isn't a problem. Snipe teams shouldn't have to move. There are incentives to do so as the battle evolves, but they can choose not to, and could pay the price for it if the location is compromised. This is coming from someone who would love to have more brawling fights. I'm not a big fan of sitting around and waiting. I never did like chess, lol. But in the matches where that is a thing, that brawly team does need the time to coordinate attacks, bluff, distract, ect. If not, you get charges into gun lines that never end well.
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I'm not, ANY game maps to ANY game just like any N(on-Deterministic)P(olynomal) problem maps to any other NP problem. You have your area control, execution, forced choice situations, etc. This applies to fighting games where the elements refer to zoning, execution(comboing, moving around), setups and mixups, ...; also applies to FPSes where the elements refer to item/area control, aim+movement and angle of approach and even applies to RTSes where the elements refer to map control/resource control, valid apm+strategy and trading. It even applies to Chess. By that, this game is no exception and therefore my comparison is valid.
Now that you've stated that games last nowhere near that 2 hour limit, can we agree that 2 hours is just too long? We don't need to make it 15 minutes because that's the average game time; but having a time restriction of 45 minutes to 1 hour is much more reasonable.
Now your competitive scene, lets grab our fighting game comparison again because that is the best way to show the sillyness of your assumption: you're essentially saying that the round starts, one of the guys does an attack, hits it and proceeds to run away for the remaining 98 seconds and 47 frames of the game(60 frames per second). You understand that even the best players rarely manage this right? When there's 20 or 10 seconds on the clock, sure, but it's still really difficult because there's limits to the game field. And at that point I'd say that this behavior can be considered valid.
You are correct, there shouldn't be an incentive to move. I however clearly stated why this lack of incentive exists in the first place and that this is a normal part of game evolution. If people haven't already, they will find ways to work around the issue of being outranged(or zoned) by snipers and then snipers will start to have a go on how unfair and how easy it is to get rushed, then they develop and then rushers are moaning about it until it finally balances out and the choices are laid out. This behavior is completely normal.
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Let me ask this again...
Why don't you play another game mode? Like Crazy King, where moving is the whole point?
Why is TDM, arguably the least interesting kind of game mode to spectate, the one played competitively?
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Because it's the most fun to compete in.
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Let me ask this again...
Why don't you play another game mode? Like Crazy King, where moving is the whole point?
Why is TDM, arguably the least interesting kind of game mode to spectate, the one played competitively?
Most KotH maps only support 3v3+, the only 2v2 KotH map is Labyrinth so far.. and since most competative play is 2v2.. you get the point.
Because it's the most fun to compete in.
Opinions Smollett, opinions :P
I think KotH is a very interesting game mode to watch and compete in when competent people are playing and I wish to see many more 2v2 KotH maps that will eventually be added in the competative map rotation. If dunes is in there, which is virtually the worst map in the game, why not something more interesting Labyrinth or newer 2v2 KotH maps?
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Now that you've stated that games last nowhere near that 2 hour limit, can we agree that 2 hours is just too long? We don't need to make it 15 minutes because that's the average game time; but having a time restriction of 45 minutes to 1 hour is much more reasonable.
Now your competitive scene, lets grab our fighting game comparison again because that is the best way to show the sillyness of your assumption: you're essentially saying that the round starts, one of the guys does an attack, hits it and proceeds to run away for the remaining 98 seconds and 47 frames of the game(60 frames per second). You understand that even the best players rarely manage this right? When there's 20 or 10 seconds on the clock, sure, but it's still really difficult because there's limits to the game field. And at that point I'd say that this behavior can be considered valid.
No I see no reason to change it because the only games that do last that long seem to naturally resolve themselves before that time as opposed to hanging that hour limit over their heads. My concern is purely that the time limit begins effecting the outcome of a match, with which it shouldn't be a factor in GOIO.
Now, call me thick, but I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'll just give my perspective through example. Time limit is 45 minutes. You have a 2v2 dm on canyons. Through regular gameplay, the score is now 4-3 in favor of blue. Say we get to the 35 minute mark at that point, and a decision is made by blue to simply sit on their lead and avoid contact with the other team. Yes, it's not overly easy to simply avoid the other team, and it may backfire, but its not something that should be a part of the equation to begin with. Now if a game cant sort itself in 2 hours, then im sorry but those teams are way too careful and deserve to get frantic at that point. I'm just seeking the most natural gameplay without artificial barriers.
I'm not against other incentives to move like game modes and the like (I even wish there was more options for the 2v2 map set), but time limits other than the game's natural one never sat well with me. All opinion of course.
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Seems to me that the problem isn't necessarily the weapons or the time limit, it's the maps.
It's too easy on many maps to find a nice open area near the edges to camp with limited angles of approach. This heavily favor snipers. If open areas were more in the center of some maps, and the narrower paths that encourage brawling were surrounding it, it might be more interesting. Sniping would still be potent, but it would give brawlers more of a chance to catch the enemy on their weak side. Situational awareness and tactics would be extremely important on a map like that.
Additional ways to make a map more interesting would be to have a high, open area with limited cover and a low, crowded area with lots of cover (Paritan Rumble sort of has this, but it has lots of high cover as well). A sniper will be able to punish anyone who pokes their head above the cover, but the cover will allow ships to approach from unexpected angles, or even below if the snipers aren't careful.
I'm fine with certain maps favoring particular strategies, but right now the majority of maps heavily favor sniping. That leads to a lot of same-y builds and drawn out sniper duels. Some changes to the maps, like additional cover to allow more angles of approach, would help a lot.
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Ive just posted a suggestion https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1770.0.html for it