Spidernl's Brainstorming Thread

[spidernl]

Yeah. The title is weird, I know. I just thought of this after talking to Cool-Mint for a while, and the idea was also sparked by a 'newbie' coming into the zone and being scared off by the 'unfairness' (as usual).

 

Basically, I'd like to use this thread to get some direct but preferably 'targeted' feedback about a certain subject. The first will be getting newbies to stay and play. I need a system that has roughly the following characteristics:

1. It should be fun.
   
2. It has to be something that new players can instantly get into, in other words, no ?commands they have to look up, no tough ship required to have a chance, etc.
   
3. It has to "feel natural"/integrate well into normal gameplay, so: no (complex) ?commands, no 'experience loans', no 'good ship loans', etc.
   
4. It should (preferably) stimulate teamwork between new players and 'veteran' players. Both should have something to gain from teaming up. This could be money for the veterans, and a combination of money and experience(!) for the 'newbie(s)'.
   
5. It should (preferably, again) be possible at low population (3-4 players).
   

These are in order of importance.

 

Conclusion so far:

Yeah, I've pretty much got this idea fleshed out through input in this thread and ingame. For now, the idea is this:

 

Balling will be fleshed out. The reward for the entire team will partially depend on the player who scores. The lower the scorer's exp, the higher the total reward. This effect won't be drastic, but it'll be significant enough to stimulate 'vets adopting newbies'. It shouldn't be so big that people start aliases for it, however. Finding the balance here will be tough.

On top of this money reward the player who scores will also receive a decent amount of experience depending on their current experience. New players will probably receive something in the 20-40 experience range, whereas 2000+ experience players will likely not receive more than 1 or any experience at all.

Besides both of these reward changes, there'll be a "Periodic destruction" in minibase. Every "x" time, an effect will fill part of the minibase (Down from the goal, to be precise) and kill anything in its way. However, this 'time bomb' can be reset by scoring a goal. This should prevent campers holding minibase to prevent goaling without scoring goals themselves. Also, it'll be possible to take down campers by pinning them into minibase and then keeping the ball under control long enough.

 

 

Note that I'll be strictly moderating this topic. Any (off-topic) posts that deliberately start flame wars or steer the thread away from its purpose will be promptly deleted. I'd like this topic to remain useful.

 

Edit: Lol, I just read my post and it feels a little "Slaves, get to work on suggesting things I need! Now!". The idea was more like "This is your chance to influence how the zone will end up being". So yeah. The high jerk-factor in this post wasn't intended.

Edited October 23, 2011 by spidernl

[silverbullet]

Slaves, get to work on suggesting things I need! Now!

[baked cake]

heres a quick start. new players should own a jav and a warbird as soon as they enter for the first time.

 

 

i thought of some other ideas but i keep running into the problem where people will abuse any low xp ships with bonuses by aliasing.

Edited October 23, 2011 by baked cake

[CooL-Mint]

I was thinking, a separate zone. With auto bots, and a mixture of newbies. easy exp up to 1k exp or 2k exp which ever you perfer. they can just get started, kill bots and gain exp along with money. The bots on the other hand, may need to be nerfed a tad, for the newbies sake. You can alter it how ever you like. The other idea i had was some sort of mining. exp mining? maybe from asteroids. Other than these ideas, its all i have.

[WhiskeyTango]

As old as the concept is, I'm surprised it wasn't suggested from the jump.. We need a KOTH... One that moves around.. It gives everyone something to compete for.. I'd suggest thinking about either bringing back Priv's or maybe increasing the multifreq's to be able to have up to 5 members.. KOTH has and always will start good battles in center among any amount of people.. That or you MAY decide to have a set amount of freq's that could hold the hill, in which case it would have to be a set of freq's, like flag freqs, that had no limit as to the amount of ppl that could be on them.. Although, on this last thought, that would also allow people to jump to those freq's and wreak havoc in center as 2 freq's, or however many hill freq's, to wage war in center as large opposing freq's, which in itself could be fun as well...

 

Reward for the hill on the other hand is up for debate.. Seeing as this could be abused very simply to gain whatever reward may be up for grabs, I'd suggest also setting a minimum amount of players and/or amount of frequencies playing before it is activated..

 

I recommend a Hyperspace themed hill to maintain.. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.. I would just keep the radius of the hill to stay in center.. As fun as it would be to be able to try to hold a hill in the hypertunnels, I fear that it would also allow the hill into bases and sector 8 which could make the hill unholdable if it should appear in a base during a flaggame.. As remote as it may be that this would happen, I watched it happen many times when we had it active in Halo..

 

Just food for thought..

[spidernl]

Well, first of all about the "starting with ships", that's quite viable but not really the kind of thing I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that's more like a.. side game. A bit like balling, essentially. The job of balling however is primarily jackpot boosting. I'd rather not saddle that up with yet another role (balling doesn't really fit the "Don't need a tough ship to have a chance" condition either).

 

A seperate zone isn't Hyperspace, it's a seperate zone. Go look at Everspace (it has forums somewhere around here too), it's in development and far from being done, but it has mining and all that cool jazz. A seperate arena isn't something I think would be a good move when population is just about enough to cover one public arena.

 

I'll let that slip, Silverbullet, because it's the first post

 

Edit:

Whiskey's getting closer to what I'm looking for, however KotH wouldn't really stimulate vets helping new players, it's more likely to stimulate vets teaming up and owning everyone else.

Edited October 23, 2011 by spidernl

[Alium]

I like the shark as well as anyone, face it its tiny fast with impulse and annoying as hell when used to leak properly. But what if the default ship was the shark instead?> Newbies could have a default ship that wont hurt the rest of the zone setup and that default ship could look cool and give them the overall taste of HS until they have the exp and skills to move onto better ships and gain access to sig items. The ship could even be setup as like a default ships with x items and equipment and what not so it would have a decent chance to stand up to vets but not want to be something you'd want to use once you got access to the other ships.

[Yin Yang]

Give them a good starting ship that's worth nothing, so they cant sell it for a profit. and after they get like 2000 exp it goes away. Edited October 23, 2011 by Yin Yang

[Alium]

If it's a side game the king of the hill idea presented by Whiskey seems to be the right idea. Its something that nobody could hold FOREVER and it revolves around center would ensure you don't get perma camping, even two lancs with interphase wont last forever in the open when all you have to do is spam prox to the ring.

[spidernl]

Well, I do agree that part of the problem is the fact that newbies start out with underpowered ships when they're not starting at the exact day of reset. Then again, the whole "climbing up the ladder" part where you grow increasingly powerful is part of Hyperspace's charm. Which is why I'm mainly looking for something that doesn't penalize a "worse ship" as much. In fact, it should somehow be pretty much only possible with an underpowered, underequipped ship. Which would be the new player's job.

 

Edit: Picture it in your head it like this: a new player would be like a mouse, protected by cats (vets) from other cats. This mouse can fit through a mousehole and complete an objective that helps both himself and the cats protecting him (vets on his freq). However, the cats COULD probably do it with some incredible agility, but they're at a distinct advantage due to their "size" (or exp, advanced items, etc.)

Edited October 23, 2011 by spidernl

[baked cake]

i have seen so many ppl come in and ask how to get in a ship and then leave. what about an area that is for 2k and under xp players only. could be set up for freq 0 and 1, and centering is every other freq. though it doesnt really integrate vets and newbs.

 

 

or maybe its possible to stagger koth rewards so lower xp players get more money. though that will probably serisouly segregate high xp players unless there is a way to prevent ppl from hopping.

 

 

what about a reward system that increases total rewards for eveyone when there are low xp players on the winning freq.

Edited October 23, 2011 by baked cake

[WhiskeyTango]

Just another idea, but is there a way to set the goal rewards by WHO makes the goal... Like say, a 500exp player makes the goal, and he makes more than a 1500 exp person... That would employ more of a teamwork effort... It would take the ships of the vets, to get passed the other ships, to get the newb closer to the goal... It gives the vets something to fight for to make the exp, and in turn, makes the newb feel useful, and also has a way of having team members help him stay alive..

 

More food for thought...

 

This would also discourage full Vet teams, knowing that having a newb on your team would score you more payout..

Edited October 23, 2011 by WhiskeyTango

[spidernl]

See my point about additional public arenas. We don't have the population to support it.

[baked cake]

no not an arena, closed area in pub, i dunno, i think wt has a better idea.

[baked cake]

actually i think me wt came on the winning idea there at the same time. If a low xp player gets better rewards for ball goals, ppl will be getting on freqs qith low xp players. same could possibly happen with leech money, and koth could give higher rewards when ther are lower xp players on winning freq.

 

(highest xp players xp - lowest xp players xp) * 0.5 + origonal reward = total reward

 

sadly there is still the problem of vets abusing aliases....i think there needs to be a long and lengthy newb initiation that can be fun and balanced for newbs but tiresome and boring for vets. thats why i sugested a separate area newbs have to run through untill 2k xp. well im still seeing problems to this idea but im sure there is some way to fix it.

 

what about only allowing one alias per IP adress, i dunno if thats even doable.

 

 

OK last idea: Give every player a GOOD starting ship with a sig and everything. BUT you gain no MONEY or XP. when you are ready you can crawl in the newb ship and slave your way to the top.

Edited October 23, 2011 by baked cake

[WhiskeyTango]

You do realize, that on freq's like KOTH freq's or whatever, could have a "decent" equalizer on it.. As much as I hate to suggest it, even tho I don't, having an equalizer like MG used to have, in use on KOTH freq's only, would prevent all "Vets" from joining on one KOTH freq because it would auto set them to another freq when using ?koth or whatever you'd use to activate it.. And if for some reason one team had people quit or go to flagging, or really, whatever reason, it would just move some of the players from the one, or two, or however many freqs, to balance it.. Was a really nice system all in all..

[spidernl]

Yeah, I've pretty much got this idea fleshed out through input in this thread and ingame. For now, the idea is this:

 

Balling will be fleshed out. The reward for the entire team will partially depend on the player who scores. The lower the scorer's exp, the higher the total reward. This effect won't be drastic, but it'll be significant enough to stimulate 'vets adopting newbies'. It shouldn't be so big that people start aliases for it, however. Finding the balance here will be tough.

On top of this money reward the player who scores will also receive a decent amount of experience depending on their current experience. New players will probably receive something in the 20-40 experience range, whereas 2000+ experience players will likely not receive more than 1 or any experience at all.

Besides both of these reward changes, there'll be a "Periodic destruction" in minibase. Every "x" time, an effect will fill part of the minibase (Down from the goal, to be precise) and kill anything in its way. However, this 'time bomb' can be reset by scoring a goal. This should prevent campers holding minibase to prevent goaling without scoring goals themselves. Also, it'll be possible to take down campers by pinning them into minibase and then keeping the ball under control long enough.

[WhiskeyTango]

Does this mean youre going to build some kind of "smart" goal.. So that say, the more exp between the "scorer" and the "team" determines how much/little the rest of the team gets?

 

eg. A 500 exp player scores, so those with 1500 exp get 3exp vs a 1500 exp player scoring gets the other 1500 exp players 1 exp?

[omnomnom]

How about a "Travel to the Area" thing. You have your whole team within a small area (say a circle in center) for a certain amount of time, then you get 1 point and it pops somewhere else. Get 10 points and you all get money and EXP. However turrets guard the circle. If you're a newb none will shoot at you, however each time you gain a certain amount of EXP one turret will decide to start shooting at you, until they eventually all do. D: So vets will have to dodge inside the circle while newbies can just run in. Also the amount of time you need to stay in the circle as a team increases with the amount of EXP you have. Say a team with 30000 EXP may need to stay in for 9 seconds while a 0 EXP team would only need to for 3 seconds. Basically its like autoturret dodge. Edited October 23, 2011 by omnomnom

[ColdfireX]

Ok, this isn't about the topic of getting newbies to stay, but I think this would be a huge leap forward in solving the rq/hopping issues in flag games, and would require minimal coding to implement..

 

Make the ?flag command accept an optional parameter of a frequency number, so either ?flag, ?flag 90, or ?flag 91 would be the proper use of the command. If you ?flag 90 or ?flag 91, either it tells you that would make teams too uneven, or you get on that freq. The common problem is that one player ?flag's, hoping to get on their desired team. Most likely, they will be put on the less powerful team which they did not want, and while they are about to spec, another hopper who has been patiently waiting, ?flag's immediately, knowing they'll get on the other team now. After the initial player ends up speccing for not hopping to the team he wanted, now the better team has +1 player, and the weaker team has -1 player, making the flag game even more stacked. This only encourages people to hop as they are handsomely rewarded when done successfully, to the dismay of a losing team that watches as the winning team grows in size, and theirs appears to rq.

 

Lastly, if you simply type ?flag, it works as normal, and will assign a team for you. But.. If you're trying to get on ONLY one specific team, then the ?flag command as it exists today is simply inadequate. It creates massive join/spec cycles that only adds to the initial problem.

 

It won't totally fix the problem, but its a start.

[spidernl]

Letting players hop to stop hopping seems like a roundabout way to fix a problem. What'd be better is to "lock" a player on their team. Basically, they wouldn't be completely locked on their team in the most literal sense, as in, no way to get on the other team even if it's 10v1 and you're on the 10-player team. It'd be more of a heavy bias of the evener, meaning that if you get on freq 90, and the teams are somewhat even, there's no way in hell you'll get on freq 91 until freq 91 is significantly disadvantaged.

 

To be fair, the balancer needs a pretty big overhaul for even the smallest improvement. Experience is a crude but remarkably effective balancing method considering the amount of time spent creating an experience-based balancer (not alot). But since I'm pretty much 'solo dev' (although Cerium's freq evening bot was very useful in some boosted jackpot flaggames, and is close to what I intend the balancer to do) I don't really have time to work on a more advanced system

[baked cake]

haha i just had a thought. but its about flagging. i like the mini sweeper idea thats great. after i was bitching about mini when it first came out, im already getting used to it. i just miss the part where all i had to do was concentrate and get really good at shooting the ball and not worrying about ppl shooting at me. the current idea is great for newbs to start balling but the goal doors may be a little tricky for new players, its tricky ofr me sometimes. :/ Edited October 23, 2011 by baked cake

[spidernl]

Yeah, fewer doors wouldn't hurt. Mainly the door at the "base" of the goal can be very annoying. Doors might not be necessary at all if the 'mini sweeper' (good name, good job ) gets implemented though.

[toxic_intruder]

The locking into a freq idea is great. Would it help to save your freq if you spike, so if you're on the winning trem and lag out you can get back on? I'm sure lots of people would love that to be implemented

[spidernl]

Yes, unless teams are really imbalanced, odds are you'd get placed on the same freq you were on prior to 'lagging out'. Edited October 24, 2011 by spidernl