Age of Camelot also had stuff like this. Good for min/maxers, but not much for anyone else. It simply accelerates the pace of the grind a touch.
[quote=“Tjafaas, post:38, topic:946”]
Therefore, long resets are IMO only good when there is some balance between team levels.[/quote]
Balance is an issue that they have to deal with regardless of the reset time. I won’t get into balance because that’s a rat’s nest all on its own.
It was never my intention to give all awards to a single team. There’s no reason that there cannot be 8 awards in a single system, with each team gaining four of them. That produces a tie, and each walks away with something to help them down the road.
I can easily see this happening as one team already has support A and the other team already has support B. So when they enter a system with A and B, the first team will push to get B and the second team will push to get A. If each team places greater importance on getting what they need more than denying the other team, both teams will get what they want.
Eliminating the ‘build’ mindset will probably help. That will happen when player skill is more important than the gear.
Lets make an anecdotal comparison with EVE. Imagine Nullsec being not just a place where people can hang out but very particular star systems being the exclusive manufacturers of specific equipment or ships in the whole game. Imagine a constelation that, when sufficiently developed, is able to manufacture a specific T2 Cruiser or Navy/Pirate variant that is not available anywhere in the game and whoever controls it has the monopoly on that specific ship hull manufacturing (they can still sell BPCs for $$$).
So there is one reason to own this system. Another example is cosmetics - having access to specific cosmetics that are “cool” and unique to whoever controls it.
No it wont, regardless of how important skill is, as long as there is a gear edge to be had, people will do their best to have it. It can be quake arena levels of skill but still people wont play with a worse build just because it’s comparatively less important, there is no tradeoff to doing it that way.
There are design techniques that can avoid the “best build” issue tha are sometimes missed out on. If you go straight adders and multis for gear there will be one best build, because if there is one stat that is worth having it is worth having at maximum. Instead you apply curves to everything and tune those and it makes things a lot more flexible. But im not sure how this would apply to battlescape, its kind of hard to discuss without knowing to what extend there will be different gear choices past the ship itself.
I’m not sure you’ve ever played a skill game because that’s gear-centric gaming, through and through. When your ability to accomplish a task is 90% your skill and 10% your gear, you really don’t care that much about the gear. It mostly exists to introduce variety, or to cater to your preferred playing style. Players pick up tools to perform their chosen task instead of becoming the pack mule for the gear that does the job for them.
Ask Chuck Yeager about aircraft types and their importance in combat. That’s skill-centric gaming.
Or to what extent player skill will be involved, apart from the need to maneuver in a newtonian environment.
You have been talking about this “skill” centered game design for years now, can you please elaborate a bit, maybe make you own thread and describe this golden bullet that you have invented?
Yeah, I thought about Dota 2 but I want to see what he considers to be a good “skill” game, @JB47394 has over the years been talking about everything taking skill and he has a solution to any gameplay mechanic that will take skill, from mining to reading your scanner to warping to shooting things…
It would be nice to have a topic on this made by him, as it always comes up.
I agree with you, @cybercritic .
If we take MOBAs as example of “skill games”, then build still matter.
Dota2: you won’t take the same items depending on what’s the composition of the ennemy team, nor will you take the same hero skill leveling. Same for LoL. For both of these games, items take a tremendous importance (less for hero skills as most of the time, it will depend of your role rather than any build order).
HotS: though the items have been removed, the build has been transferred to the hero skills. With a nice choice of 5 upgrades for your skills every 3 levels and 2 possible ultimates, there’s no denying build still exists.
Examples of game where “build” doesn’t exist would rather be FPS games: CoD, BF, … Usually, once the first grinding to unlock upgrades / weappons is done, there’s no real “build”. Only tactics.
Well, the most perfect skill based game I can think of is chess.
Eliminating the build mindset, the game of chess is perfect symmetrical balance. You have the same pieces and the same kind of pieces the other guy has. The only way to have a skill-only based game is to make the game symmetrical. The moment any sort of object that alters the game play in any way introduces builds. Specialization. In the end, I don’t think that a skill-only based game is the best choice, or even wise. Diversity encourages ingenuity.
I would only further note that employing the right tactic efficiently is a skill in and of itself. If you can’t use your specialized mobility thrusters to get close in order to use a close range plasma cannon by maneuvering around an asteroid, it doesn’t matter how much ‘skill’ you have or how good your ‘build’ is. You’re a sitting duck.
I would go and top your chess with a neat little game called Go (also perhaps known under the name weíqí or baduk). Easier to pick up than chess, thanks to it’s simple rule set, while at the same time offering an arguably higher skill ceiling (depending who you ask).
Gameplay suggestions. We got onto the idea of making long-lasting gameplay for Infinity:Battlescape. I said that eliminating the build mindset would help with that.
The build mindset.
If players are focused on constantly getting new gear and optimizing it and not on using their gear, then the game retains a build mindset. The fact that players use the term ‘build’ is an indication of that. I assert that gear-centric gaming is a barrier to gameplay longevity because players want to get to the end. That’s where the best gear is kept. Once the players have that gear, the designers either have to add new gear or let players leave. Blizzard is the poster child of adding more gear and more accomplishments to keep players going with games like World of Warcraft and Diablo 3.
The idea behind skill-based gaming is that players play for the experience of using their skills. A good match of Go is played for the joy of the game. Each game is a unique experience, with surprises and challenges. There is no simpleminded grinding possible. Players must think and apply themselves to achieving whatever goal they’re after. When players think, they branch out and push into new approaches to problem-solving. It is a way of crowdsourcing content. Minecraft demonstrates this in a highly entertaining way. So does Kerbal Space Program.
So Infinity:Battlescape would be well-advised to steer clear of a gear-centric game. A gear-centric game gives essentially one experience - the grind. Small game shops have been exploring other recipes with success by focusing on the experience of gameplay instead of the progression through the gameplay. Any game company wants its players to savor being in the game, not finishing it.
You know that I meant the “what’s this thread about” as a joke because I didn’t contribute anything to the topic, right?
Anyway about your build mentality. There’s another game universe that takes a quite interesting approach to it: Eve Online on PC and Dust514 on PS3.
For those who are unaware of: Whatever you build in either of those games isn’t permanent. You die = you lose everything that you had equipped at the time of death. In Dust 514 (which is a first person shooter btw), people are encouraged to not use their strongest gear most of the time, as it is quite costly to restock on those. There are instances where they do use their strongest gear, which is during territorial battles, and usually millions upon millions of credits are lost in a single match. I think this would be a good way to geep the gear upgrading in the game while at the same time keeping them from leaving once they reach the final tier.
Just so we’re all on the same page, how would you call a game like Counter-Strike?
There is gear progression from one round to the other, but it is limited to the match. Each match start from scratch.
I would argue that it is actually a skill-based game, according to the way we are defining it. You are trying to acquire better (and more specialized) gear, but doing so is a skill to try and do it the best way during the match. There is no real grind, because the goal is to have the right gear at the right time (e.g. before the opposite team got theirs), not simply inexorably advancing toward a new piece of gear like a glacier.
The difference being, that is a match-centred skill in a mostly round-centred skill game.
The Battlescape equivalent is having the varied battles around the star system giving advantages to one of the other team, but once one side win the entire system (or a draw condition is met), the match is over and a new one starts from zero again. (For this model in action in a space shooter, I recommend - again - to look at Allegiance).
At least, that is the case for a few hours long match. What about a few weeks long match?
Yep, I think most everyone here is quite familiar with the game.
I would consider repeating a past achievement to be a horrible reason to keep playing a game.
Don’t know. Don’t care. It’s like debating whether or not Pluto is a planet. There are elements of skill and gear in most every game. The game of Go. Perfect skill game, right? Well, one of the two basic rules of the game is that black moves first. That’s a gear advantage. The essential point here is to understand where player skill is involved, where gear is involved, and to pick between them at appropriate points in the design process to produce the gameplay that you’re after. My assertion is that gameplay acquires longevity when player skills are involved.
Skills more advanced than optimizing a gear build. Optimization is a skill, but it’s not a particularly creative one.
Statistics would seem to disagree. EVE online and World of Warcraft continue to bring in sales and monthly subscriptions. Enough of them to even pay for continuing content development. I can’t think of any skill based games over a decade old that can say the same.
Except poker. But then, gear is kind of important in that. You need at least a chip and a chair.
Gameplay longevity, not game longevity nor even commercial success. Gameplay longevity is the number of hours of gameplay that an average player will get out of an implementation. I assert that involving player skill into the mix is more effective at increasing that number than adding more gear or other straight progression content.
Note that there are plenty of elements of player skill to EVE Online’s gameplay. Aiming weapons and flying just don’t happen to be two of them.
As a self proclaimed somewhat-good pilot in eve, flying is absolutely a skill to have. I don’t know if it’s changed at all with the new manual controls, but choosing where and how your flying in tandem with what kind of fit you have was the best way to “use” what skill you have. The rest of the game is all strategy and forward thinking. I can think of many kills that I’ve had because I knew how to fly and slingshot and/or fly into orbits of enemy ships to tackle them in whatever way. Simply hitting “approach” or “orbit” would have accomplished nothing in those circumstances. It really determines whether you get the kill or lose it with you dying, or living to fight another day.
You’re not just repeating a past achievement (imho). You are taking more factors into consideration than just: “Oh this one is better gear I’ll use it from now on”, as this gear can go as fast as you got it. You need to balance your income and your spending in an environment, where every encounter might end in your ships destruction. You’re not playing to get the gear, but the gear is something you get along the ride.