Author Topic: Underdog honor  (Read 6433 times)

Offline krait

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Underdog honor
« on: March 24, 2013, 05:10:14 pm »
Regularly I see fights where a group of 3 friends, often with crews in the 6-8 range, play against a team composed of level 1-3 members. Certainly experience levels don't confer additional abilities, but regardless of a general gamer's skill, I find experience levels are a reliable indicator of... experience.

I propose some metric or series of achievements that rewards players for fighting on the low-experience side of an greatly imbalanced fight (they'd have to be present both when the match starts and ends). If it were an achievement, it should involve enough matches (maybe 100+) to prolong the amount of time players would be willing to make the conscientious decision of turning a, usually guaranteed, win into a fighting chance.

I'd still favor an "honor" metric better, though -- experienced players who regularly choose the experienced side (with increased weight on captains) would have this slide towards zero (or into the negative, depending on implementation), while those who choose to even things out would rise in prestige. All of this would be relative to the amount of imbalance, with imbalance below a certain threshold having no effect (so a 8-8-6 vs an 8-8-8 match would not affect this metric for any of the captains).

To allow players to still play in clan or pre-determined team configurations without a large risk of penalty, when setting up a game, a minimum or maximum captain level could be specified to, for example, to enforce "noobs only" games or to prevent a trio of new captains from jumping into a game they couldn't reasonably win against a coordinated high level team.

Offline Pickle

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Re: Underdog honor
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2013, 05:32:40 pm »
Would an easier system be to award an "academy point" to the Captain every time a member of his crew levels up whilst flying with him? - that will be biased towards flying with lower level players and taking them through the basics.  Academy points could count towards either a unique ranking system, or unique costume awards, or just be a vanity badge visible against player profile.

Offline krait

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Re: Underdog honor
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2013, 05:38:33 pm »
It might be higher benefit to reward a high-averaged level player jumping on the ship of a low-level pilot. Really a great pilot with an inexperienced crew does a lot more for a team than a new pilot with a great crew. IMO, it's about the pilots, not so much about the crew.

Offline Pickle

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Re: Underdog honor
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2013, 06:45:04 pm »
Ok, to reverse it and still keep the algorithm as simple as possible.. 1 academy point to any crew member when a fellow crew member at least three ranks below them levels up.

But my view is that experienced pilots taking on inexperienced crew does more for the game a as whole.  I've had some great experiences with new players joining my crew, playing together for five or six matches and seeing them improve in their game awareness and knowledge, have them come back and join my crew when they see me online over the next few days, and then the following week be comfortable taking the other pilot slot on the team and we play a few games as co-Captains.  Perhaps this is because when I'm in a good mood I'm giving a running commentary to the crew on my intentions, a bit of banter, and a summary of the inter-Captain chat channel if I have a team mate that's communicating and cooperating.  Or if the other Captain isn't communicating but does seem to respond to tactical suggestions, I'll carry on talking to him and praising him to my crew when the team tactics are working.

Offline krait

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Re: Underdog honor
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2013, 08:01:12 pm »
Would an easier system be to award an "academy point" to the Captain every time a member of his crew levels up whilst flying with him? - that will be biased towards flying with lower level players and taking them through the basics.  Academy points could count towards either a unique ranking system, or unique costume awards, or just be a vanity badge visible against player profile.

The problem is that you see level ups so infrequently that people won't reliably be able to count on this, and thus will probably not care about it -- it'd be like one of those achievements you get without noticing, and don't really care about enough to actively work for. Making it based on achievements would help, but progress toward achievements may help even more.

Offline Helmic

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Re: Underdog honor
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2013, 09:15:28 pm »
These sorts of mechanical measurements are typically gamed anyways.  What we need is for the community itself to see team stacking as dishonorable and mock each other mercilessly for it.  Peer pressure is amazingly effective.

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Underdog honor
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2013, 02:12:33 pm »
I read in the pending features list that Muse is trying to add a salute mechanic in game. Maybe it will even be tied to our forum account salutes. I suspect this will accomplish the under dog honor and academy points system discussed earlier in the thread. It will encourage experienced players to seek out new people to help in exchange for salutes. Also since one sided stomps get boring quickly I would hope the stomping team would give salutes when an experienced captain/crew joins the other side and makes things interesting.