Switching to another team

Battlescape
41

That’s not my experience from the open beta of my most recent game. From what I can tell I got a good broad representation of the player base. The game was complete (as it should be for a beta test) and installation and updates were not a problem as they happened automatically through Google Play. The only difference was that players were warned that they were playing a pre-release version of the game and that there might be bugs.

It’s true that warning will exclude some players from the beta test sample, but I don’t think it would exclude those looking to exploit the game.

42

It is multiplayer?

43

What is your point?

44

Other:

  1. Switch once for no penalty.
  2. Switch again after ~20% of an average match length.
  3. No more switching.

Something like this.

1 Like
45

Team incentive suggestion:

Gain a small credit multiplier per credit earning contribution you make, up to a maximum (maybe 35%?). Resets if you switch teams.

examples:
Protect a transport: credit multiplier is now +0.01%
Kill an interceptor: +0.001%
Kill a carrier: +0.05%
Destroy a station: +1.0% (b/c it doesn’t respawn)
Capture a station: +0.1%

2 Likes
46

This whole concept is a huge mistake and will only lead to the toxicity and paranoia seen in Eve. It is one thing to run a stealthed scout, quiet another to lie and team kill. If that is “game play” you guys are aiming for I really don’t want to play. I think you need to re think this.

47

Keep it simple, allow switching with a 2min cool-off timer when teams are balanced.

48

What / who are you referring to ? I’m pretty confused by your reply.

49

Implying switching will cause toxicity and paranoia. ie you spy, switch teams and then kill your previous team.

I partly agree that too much switching will lead to a sense of frustration where the playing field changes too rapidly.

50

Sure, but what is this “if that’s the gameplay you guys are aiming for I don’t want to play” comment for ?

The whole point of this thread is to figure out solutions to avoid abusing team switching mechanics. The very OP is stating that it’s a problem. How do you jump to “devs want to let people cheat and grief like in Eve” from that ? That’s why I’m confused. At no point have we suggested that we wanted to let everybody switch teams freely with no consequence.

2 Likes
51

Well, maybe not most of them. cough

As for the question at hand, the easiest thing to me is to allow players to select their team at the start, and not allow switching at all, and build in win conditions around it. Then, if players push for team switching after launch, revisit the issue.

3 Likes
52

If I understand correctly you’re creating a mechanic that encourages players to stab each other in the back. I am really in to pvp, but not in to getting shot in the back or otherwise have to worry about betrayal from my team mates. That creates a toxic unfriendly environment/culture. It will certainly discourage new players as they will thought to be spys.

I have zero interest in that kind of game play, which is why I never picked up Eve.

53

I’m even more confused. Which mechanic are you talking about ? Team switching ? You can already freely switch to any other team. This topic is about adding restrictions to it. Isn’t that a good thing ?

If I understand you correctly you do not want team switching at all, period ? You could have simply stated that instead of implying it. In any case, I do not think forbidding team switching entirely is possible. People will want to play with their friends / clans and considering the duration of a match there’s no guarantee that the same group of friends will always be on the same team.

Consider this: a match starts, you play in red team for a while then disconnect. Meanwhile, your group of friends joins the green team. Later in the day, you connect back, see them online, but now you’re stuck on red team until the match ends ( which could take hours if not days ) and cannot play with your friends. Is that really what you want ?

Also, if you cannot play with your friends when you want to, wouldn’t that incentivize you on sabotaging the match so that it is as short as possible ? People are going to hang on discord, we have no way on controlling that, and they could easily exchange information about the match / objectives because they’re not allowed to play together… this would result in exactly what you wanted to avoid in the first place.

3 Likes
54

He just read the post title, triggered and replied. The only useful response is “Read the base post”.

For that, tell players which of their friends are in the match. They can then join the side of a given player, whatever side that turns out to be. They don’t need to know anything about the team.

I’m registered in the game. When my friends show up, they’ll say “Oh, JB is playing. Let’s join his team.”

People will spy through external means regardless of whether they’re in the game with friends.

4 Likes
55

In thinking more about this, I would like to take a step back and state the following.

Until we actually have a large player base that can give us adequate data on whether or not team-switching is an actual problem, I’d put out for your consideration simply waiting on implementing barriers to team switching. It may turn out that, in the course of time, team switching isn’t actually an issue, and players are more than happy being on whatever team they’re on, regardless of winning or losing (which should be ideal, anyways).

In regards to spying, I’d suggest that to counter this, it would be better to offer gameplay that caters to spying, I.E. cloaked interceptor. So while somebody could switch teams and report over Discord/TS, they’re not actually doing anything fun other than sitting in one spot, innocuously looking around at their ‘team-mates’.

The same philosophy could apply to any other form of exploit. Replace the exploit with gameplay that’s more fun and maybe just as effective than the exploit.

Until we have large player base, I’d almost say that thinking of having an elaborate, exploit-killing plan with extensive algorithms and/or timers is like counting the chickens before they’ve hatched.

I say let’s wait and see if it’s an actual problem. Then if it’s a problem, we can come up with a plan.

Now in PS2, where there was a huge population shift towards the end of an alert, this was indicative of the fact that there was a large reward for winning an alert vs losing, that affected the play-time afterwards, with the players having a big point influx to be able to upgrade stuff.

So those of us who played the game to have fun, even though we were losing, lost the ability to make a comeback in the last 10 minutes of the alert, being overwhelmed by the number of enemy troops.

So in regards to the future potential of having this scenario play on in IB, I’d recommend having a rewards based system that isn’t tied to winning or losing. You know you’ve done well if there isn’t a huge population shift to the ‘winning’ team.

5 Likes
56

I would even go so far as to add that the current gameplay doesn’t really make team switching helpful in any way. This is what we want.

Therefore, not a huge problem.

1 Like
57

I think that once a match starts the teams should be locked or rather I don’t think team switching should be allowed at all for the duration of a match. Obviously you can’t control what happens outside the game, but by formalizing the mechanic you are encouraging the behaviour. You are essentially saying underhanded meta play is “good”.

As devs you are setting the “culture” of your community by the mechanics and EULA.

“Shrug” I run a largish player organization/alliance in another gaming community and I really stomp hard on anything that could negatively impact the open friendly community we have developed. I see your team switching as a huge negative through that lens

It is your game and vision so you should do exactly what your vision tells you too. I am simply pointing out your decisions have impacts on more than just the game.

So the question to answer is what kind of community do you envision and do your in game mechanics support that or not?

I am not very active here so I probably should not have commented so I will let you have the last word sir

Cheers

1 Like
58

Dude. Your experience with an “open/friendly community” for a PVE org for a planned PVE event in an unreleased game where the only PVE is killing individual pirates that glitch out and freeze in place every few fights is not going to be relevant to a match based PVP game. Neither is your forum posting career for that matter.

59

Thanks for your reply. If you believe that team switching shouldn’t be a thing at all, then how do you propose to address the problem of people that want to group with their friends ? Again, it’s not a game where a match will last 10 mins, or even 60 mins for the matter. It’s going to be much, much longer, and people are going to be pretty pissed if they cannot join their friends in a timely manner.

4 Likes
60

Red team is best team.
You’ll never see me adorned in Green or Blue, they are swine!

Personally, I’ve only ever switched teams to improve my gameplay experience. Thinking of Planetside, or Battlefield games. I’ll switch to the losing side, it’s more of a challenge and can feel more rewarding to push back against a strong attacking force.

3 Likes