Guns Of Icarus Online

Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Richard LeMoon on November 13, 2016, 11:55:01 am

Title: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Richard LeMoon on November 13, 2016, 11:55:01 am
What are thoughts on the epidemic of Retrieve spamming for faction points? I stopped even looking at the map after I was that idiot spamming his grinding in global yesterday. He is likely top leader of his faction for what is a straight up exploit.

My thought is to first off, make diminishing returns on people that spam the same custom maps. -N% per instance during a set time. So someone that plays Oblivion 5 times in 30 minutes will get 25% points. This will prevent the meta-grind of any mode.

The second is to think of ways to make the modes (Retrieve) less grind-worthy.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Solidusbucket on November 13, 2016, 12:13:54 pm
I don't see the issue with it. It is fun for some (many?) people to do things like that in game modes that is the world section for alliance (individual contribution for the greater good of the team/world progression). Why take that away? A better solution is to make matches that naturally take longer to be worth more points. Point redistribution so that their 20 minutes spent grinding (about 12,000 points if done right) is equal to someone elses points when they play assault or whatever takes that long.

Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: GurasOguras on November 13, 2016, 01:06:13 pm
Retrieve is and will be the fastest to complete game mode. It's a design issue.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Lysanya on November 13, 2016, 01:16:11 pm
What are thoughts on the epidemic of Retrieve spamming for faction points? I stopped even looking at the map after I was that idiot spamming his grinding in global yesterday. He is likely top leader of his faction for what is a straight up exploit.

My thought is to first off, make diminishing returns on people that spam the same custom maps. -N% per instance during a set time. So someone that plays Oblivion 5 times in 30 minutes will get 25% points. This will prevent the meta-grind of any mode.

The second is to think of ways to make the modes (Retrieve) less grind-worthy.

Thoughts?

I sent Muse the math on this at the tail end of Alliance Open Alpha.  With the new method I saw yesterday, my old report to them is obsolete, though I did warn them that Oblivion was the most reliable farm.  It's literally zero risk.

I'll have to send in the new math to them and show them that no other mode or map matters in regards to flipping the map.

Retrieve is and will be the fastest to complete game mode. It's a design issue.

100% this.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Unarmed Civilian on November 13, 2016, 01:29:58 pm
I really hope the devs are more focused on making interesting and fun modes than on balancing the map interactions. I'm here to fly airships and have fun. If they're going to nerf rewards, they need to find ways to nerf the contribution to the map rather than slowing down the gameplay and making the game more of a grind.

I personally really miss the speedrun alpha. Right now Assault is like sieging 3 sentry nests in a row, especially since the refineries have so much health.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Lysanya on November 13, 2016, 02:21:06 pm
I really hope the devs are more focused on making interesting and fun modes than on balancing the map interactions. I'm here to fly airships and have fun. If they're going to nerf rewards, they need to find ways to nerf the contribution to the map rather than slowing down the gameplay and making the game more of a grind.

I personally really miss the speedrun alpha. Right now Assault is like sieging 3 sentry nests in a row, especially since the refineries have so much health.

It's not nerfing rewards for everyone.  It's only that one mode gives significantly more rewards over time (and it's not even close) than any other modes.  It just needs to be brought back in line with the other modes, that's all.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Richard LeMoon on November 13, 2016, 02:54:08 pm
When you have half of the running Retrieve matches locked, 1 ship, all AI on Oblivion, no one is having fun. It is pure grind.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Solidusbucket on November 13, 2016, 02:59:36 pm
When you have half of the running Retrieve matches locked, 1 ship, all AI on Oblivion, no one is having fun. It is pure grind.

the player doing it is having fun. . .


I'm biased as fuck btw. I was trying to figure out a way to do it on Hell consistently. I was having fun.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Unarmed Civilian on November 13, 2016, 05:13:56 pm
the player doing it is having fun. . .


I'm biased as fuck btw. I was trying to figure out a way to do it on Hell consistently. I was having fun.

It's the most fun solo mission in Alliance, in my opinion. Largely because it's the only one that is speed based. If it wasn't fun at all, people would not be grinding it over and over.

They should make a leaderboard for fastest solo runs of this.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Richard LeMoon on November 13, 2016, 06:12:50 pm
It's the most fun solo mission in Alliance, in my opinion. Largely because it's the only one that is speed based. If it wasn't fun at all, people would not be grinding it over and over.

They should make a leaderboard for fastest solo runs of this.

Sure, it is fun to do a few times. Then it becomes a Skinner Box being used to beat the other people also grinding it for points on the map. Remove all points given for 1v Oblivion and see how many people still do it. That is a great solution for now.

Anyways, I beat it in 2:23 seconds in a Galleon with a half nub crew. My crew were silent for a moment, then... "What? I mean what?? Was that it? What?" I agreed. It was lame and boring. Race to point A. Kill one ship. Grab cargo. Win game. It is sooooooooooooooo easy to do, and takes almost no skill. I could teach a 1 match pilot to do it.

My personal favorite thing to do solo is take a silly build like a Lumberfish, and beat Assault on hard or hell. Something that is actually a challenge to my piloting skills.

If you want to pretend this is not about the points, go ahead and feed the delusion. Fill up your points, and keep doing it without spending anything. Let those extra points get wasted. See how fun it stays.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: MightyKeb on November 13, 2016, 06:42:25 pm
It's the most fun solo mission in Alliance, in my opinion. Largely because it's the only one that is speed based. If it wasn't fun at all, people would not be grinding it over and over.

They should make a leaderboard for fastest solo runs of this.

Sure, it is fun to do a few times. Then it becomes a Skinner Box being used to beat the other people also grinding it for points on the map. Remove all points given for 1v Oblivion and see how many people still do it. That is a great solution for now.

Anyways, I beat it in 2:23 seconds in a Galleon with a half nub crew. My crew were silent for a moment, then... "What? I mean what?? Was that it? What?" I agreed. It was lame and boring. Race to point A. Kill one ship. Grab cargo. Win game. It is sooooooooooooooo easy to do, and takes almost no skill. I could teach a 1 match pilot to do it.

My personal favorite thing to do solo is take a silly build like a Lumberfish, and beat Assault on hard or hell. Something that is actually a challenge to my piloting skills.

If you want to pretend this is not about the points, go ahead and feed the delusion. Fill up your points, and keep doing it without spending anything. Let those extra points get wasted. See how fun it stays.

I think retrieve in general has one big flaw that needs to be talked about - the fact that the convoys go to the bases -which you are supposed to deliver their cargo to. That's like an opposing footballer running back to their own goal.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Unarmed Civilian on November 13, 2016, 07:13:39 pm
...

If you want to pretend this is not about the points, go ahead and feed the delusion. Fill up your points, and keep doing it without spending anything. Let those extra points get wasted. See how fun it stays.

okay.

By solo I literally mean just a pilot and 3 AI. Bring-your-own-buff edition.

I'm just saying it's a fast-paced mode, which I personally find fun, compared to how slow the others can be, and that if people are spamming it, lower the reward for it instead of trying to slow the mode down for the sake of slowing the mode down. Unless they think it is more fun if it is slowed down, or they want to overhaul it and it is consequently slowed down.

In other words, I want them to finish balancing out the gamemode for fun and only then worry about its contribution to the map that has literally no incentive to contribute towards other than having your name on a leaderboard that's wiped in about a week from now.

I wrote a big feedback thing and with a part about two mode ideas based on Retrieve that would both take longer to complete than the current Retrieve while making more sense story-wise. I brought up the story inconsistencies and suggested a change to it during the dev talks on Friday and got shot down. I'm one of the people who thinks it needs a total overhaul despite it being one of the more enjoyable modes for myself when things go as planned.


No need to be hostile.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Naoura on November 13, 2016, 08:52:50 pm
There isn't much you can do to change Retrieve mode, due to it's speed, aside from making less rewarding like Richard is asking.

I would, however, offer an alternative: give different missions different weight.

Retrieve is a FAST mission, and, lorewise, it shouldn't give you much, as you're only keeping what you already had. Give it a lower base value, and that will make spamming it less rewarding.

Assault is a slower mission, but it is, lorewise, much more effective against the enemy. They are losing major amounts of resources, and plenty of materiƩl. That is important for your war effort. Give it more weight.

Survival is it's own beast, and I personally think it's a horrific waste of the name. It's a modified Assault, and I dislike it. You should be surviving for a time limit, or at least a wave limit, with progressively harder and harder enemy wave. Lorewise, you would be intercepting an enemy invasion fleet, ahead of your faction's main fleet. Victory would cut one of their assaults down to nothing, and would be useful for your side. Not as useful, so I would give it a moderate weight for war-score, but it should offer a higher war-chest, for a bounty on enemy ships killed.

This brings us to Defense, which I think should have the highest War-score reward. It rightfully should be a little slower, and rightfully should be challenging, but not as uselessly difficult as it is. A major invasion is being sent at this Geothermal plant. You are the only one's stopping it. That is huge. It should be one of the more difficult modes, and it's war-score reward should have much higher weight.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Daft Loon on November 13, 2016, 09:12:07 pm
I like the idea of making the differing mode lengths an intentional thing and scaling the map points accordingly. It makes sense from another perspective too - wanting to pick a long or short match based on how much time you want to spend playing at that moment.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Solidusbucket on November 13, 2016, 09:57:38 pm
Yea, diminishing returns isnt the right answer. Scing the points is, though. I like the lore idea thing a couple posts up.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on November 16, 2016, 09:44:48 am
What really needs fixing (although I do like the idea of giving more effort for maps that just take longer by design) before you try messing with effort gains from these missions is the fact Chaladon has roughly half the membership of the other factions (even worse for Anglea) and the effort they require to do map objectives is just low. I only deliver the cheese (retrieve missions) because 1. They are honestly pretty fun and hectic and 2. It's really the only way we can not just lose territory all the time. The effort amounts should be based on active faction membership, not total. The map clearly reflects this with Chaladon having the lowest member base yet the world map is rather green. Poor Angela man....

Now if I'm mistaken on how effort is calculated (im sure other factors are at play that I just don't know yet) then by all means someone tell me in a pm.

TLDR: Fix the issues with effort calculations for defense/attack before even considering lowering effort numbers. I wouldn't mind the other missions getting effort buffs to compensate for the time they take in comparison to delivering cheese all day.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Richard LeMoon on November 16, 2016, 12:00:23 pm
My thought on the numbers problem is to remove new players from the faction pool. Remove the strong encouragement to join a faction, and create a new 'faction' called Wastelanders or something from outside of the empires.

It makes sense from a lore point of view as well. The (Skirmish) ships you fly are not like the AI ones. They seem older, and somewhat worse for the wear as if they are secondhand ships. You fly any ship from any faction, with the same being said for guns. You don't fly in major battles, and seem quite expendable. You are not in the in-crowd for any alliance. You can fight for other factions, and even against your own faction at times.

There is only one type of ship/crew that fits all of these. You are a foreign privateer trying to gain favor and maybe citizenship in one of the factions. You are a Wastelander.


Anyways, this would curtail some of the the number buff/debuffs, as people would have a bit more time to think about and choose a faction.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: GurasOguras on November 16, 2016, 03:55:21 pm
The effort amounts should be based on active faction membership, not total. The map clearly reflects this with Chaladon having the lowest member base yet the world map is rather green. Poor Angela man....
Finally, someone else also brought this up. As far as I know we've reported that at the dev fireside chat during the first alpha week. Muse didn't seem to fix that yet.

Now everyone, take a look at this:
(http://i.imgur.com/octl5v3m.jpg) (http://imgur.com/octl5v3)
(http://i.imgur.com/m1KCV16m.jpg) (http://imgur.com/m1KCV16)

I played 2 matches today. One Assault and one Retrieve. Both matches with 3 AI Squid on normal. I spent 20 minutes on the assault getting around 700 war effort and 2 minutes on retrieve getting little less than twice of that. The assault run was not perfect, but more resembling the regular match. I did prioritize the objectives, though. I think I could've done it in about 10 minutes with a little bit more strategy and luring the boss further away from the base. It is not as easy, however, to rush it as with retrieve.

Retrieve is 5 times faster than assault, and it is getting me almost twice the points. GJ Muse, there's definitely not a single design issue here. How to fix this? Remove the Retrieve. It might have been good on paper, but the idea just doesn't work. All Muse did try to fix that is increased the time required to rush from 30 seconds to 1 minute and 30 seconds. With Stormbreaker maybe even less. The introduction of class skills only makes it worse - the retrieve match was played as a gunner with kerosene and skill for doubling the damage of the guns.

And in before someone will hate on me: I have to say that retrieve is my favorite game mode and it's giving me the most fun out of this overall pretty repetitive and boring PvE. I like it, but for the greater good it has to be gone.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Naoura on November 16, 2016, 04:04:55 pm
Rather than remove Retrieve mode, why not just change it? I've sent in my theory on changing the weights of the different modes, but I don't think Retrieve mode is what it should be. You're not really retrieving anything. It's modified, speed based defense.

I would say they need to modify Retrieve period. Make it similar to Infiltration, but a little more advanced. Instead of catching the enemy and killing them for cargo... why not have cargo spawn in from a position at the end of the map? Sneak through the enemy lines, or else brute-force your way through, in order to get to that cargo, then drag it back out before the time limit. It'd still be a fast-paced game, and probably even more so, but I think it would fit the idea of a retrieval better, as well as making the mode more difficult.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: GurasOguras on November 16, 2016, 04:48:41 pm
How do you change retrieve? Move the refinery further from the starting point? As for now, that didn't fix anything. The proposed ideas won't change the major design issue - take the cargo from point A to point B and  congrats you won. Muse has a weird habit of introducing game modes heavily oriented around Squids.

Deathmatch or KoTH: "They are beginning on the south. We'll take the High Passage and fight from within The Pocket. We have to play it smart. I will engage first and disable their galleon. Then you attack it while we'll switch fire to the other one and keep it pinned."

Skyball & Retrieve: "LOL more speed LOL must go fast LOL"

That's how I see it.
Title: Re: Diminishing returns on custom Alliance maps
Post by: Unarmed Civilian on November 16, 2016, 05:10:19 pm
How do you change retrieve? Move the refinery further from the starting point? As for now, that didn't fix anything. The proposed ideas won't change the major design issue - take the cargo from point A to point B and  congrats you won. Muse has a weird habit of introducing game modes heavily oriented around Squids.

...

From a big feedback post I made not very long ago...

Here's a collection of my current thoughts on Alliance. No pictures, no TL;DRs, just a lot of text. You have been warned.

...

Ideas for modes:

Interception:
Reversal of assault, a defensive mission, a variant of retrieve. Here, there is a troop of attacking ships that are out to destroy friendly refineries. Their commanding ships are leading the charge, and need to be stopped. You start behind them, and they already have a head start.

After destroying the commanding ships, a set number of their remaining ships needs to be destroyed. After that set number, the capital ship that the devs love throwing into every mode spawns and tries to finish the job themselves. The mission ends in victory if the capital ship is destroyed, and defeat if all bases are lost. Rewards are based mostly on number of surviving bases.

Tug of War:
Retrieve with more focus on retrieval of cargo. Kind of like Skyball with AI Pyramidions. The AI has just finished a successful raid on a friendly base, and are running off with their spoils. Your job is to get those spoils back before the enemy gets away.

The enemies have a head start. You need to retrieve the cargo before the enemy gets away. You start out at the friendly base, and your goal is to return that cargo to the friendly base. The first convoy carriers must be destroyed for them to release the cargo. After that, ANYONE who is rammed is forced to drop the cargo. This turns it into a game of tug of war, where outmaneuvering the enemy ships becomes more important than getting kills, and where you aren't forced to wait around and kill to reobtain the cargo if it was stolen. There should be no boss, as why on earth would they risk losing a capital ship on something so trivial? Especially since speed and maneuverability is far more important than applying pressure.

If needed, you could make a wall at the end that only ships with the cargo will damage, and have the lose condition be the destruction of that wall.


The keen may have noticed that these two are heavily based on Retrieve. This is because I believe that while Retrieve can be fun, it is messy and doesn't really make sense story-wise. I believe that PvE content is about making a story and having the players experience that story.

...

[votekick pls]


Retrieve needs an overhaul. And Defense. Assault maybe. Mostly Retrieve. These were two ideas for overhauls that could recycle the same maps (the most compelling reason to keep a mode like it, as they are not free to make).

Both of my suggested variants would take longer (admittedly the second one only about twice as long if done optimally), while keeping the theme of speed.

As a side note: I personally think Assault takes too long for how monotonous it can be. It needs more variety than it currently has. Infiltration is a far more interesting take on that mode.