Domination/Dominion/Conquest/Whatever.

[»Ceiu]

So, I've been slowly planning this game type for a few months. I plan to fire this out over the next few weeks in an effort to replace the aging public arenas. It's similar to Domination from UT and Brain's Conquest idea (and apparently also Dominion from LoL), but with my own spin aimed at making pub more perpetual. My current rough draft of the game type is as follows:

 

 

Gameplay

The game will consist of players in a team free-for-all environment with a number of control points. The object is to own the control points and collect power. The first team to acquire a targeted amount of power will win.

 

 

Control Points

Control points are the backbone of this game type. The map will have a number of control points spread around the map. Teams will battle for control of these points, as each control point generates

power

-- a resource required for victory. Controlling more points earns the team more power.

 

Anatomy of a Control Point

Control points consist of an inner radius and an outer radius. They can be

contested

by entering the outer radius and

controlled

by entering the inner radius. Control points have an ownership level represented by a percentage from 0-100% and can have one of three states:

Unowned

,

Contested

and

Owned

.

 

Taking a Control Point

Control points begin the game

unowned

. To take control of a control point, a team must have at least one player within the inner radius while no opposing players reside within the outer radius. Control points will gain ownership at a rate of

n%/tick

,

where

n

is the number of allied players within the inner radius. When the control point reaches an ownership level of 100%, it becomes

owned

by the controlling team. If the team vacates the inner radius before fully controlling the point, its ownership level will decay to 0 at a rate of

6.5%/tick

.

 

When a player enters the inner radius of a control point owned by another team, it becomes

contested

.

A contested control point produces no power and does not contribute to the power capacity. A contested control point's ownership level decays at a rate of

(n+1.5)%/tick

,

where

n

is equal to the number of opposing players within the inner radius. A contested control point that reaches an ownership level of 0 will become

unowned

.

 

Power

 

Power is a team resource as well as a requirement for victory. Power can be used for special abilities to help defend or attack other control points and for crafting items (when the item set supports it). Teams earn power at a rate of

n power/tick

, up to a maximum of

c

, where

n

is the number of control points owned by the team and

c

is the sum of the capacity of all controlled points. A team with power that exceeds their capacity will lose power at a rate of

n power/tick

, down to their capacity of

c

, where

n

is equal to the difference in team-owned and opposing control points.

 

Examples:

• A team controlling three points will earn 3 power/tick, up to the capacity of 150.
  
• A team with 200 power and two control points will lose 4 power/tick, down to the capacity of 100.
  

 

Planned Public Settings

 

Teams

• Size of 5
  
• Private teams allowed
  
• Respawn at most recently controlled point (or center if team controls no points).
  

Control Points

• 6 Control points
  
• Power Capacity: 50/ea.
  

Rewards

• Every 300 seconds
  
• Upon controlling a new point
  
• Upon reaching 150 power
  
• Upon reaching 300 power
  

Victory Conditions

• Victory @ 300 Power
  

Misc

• Tick: 1 second
  

This is still a rough draft, so feel free to suggest improvements or changes. The full plan involves a new item system as well, but that will come later.

Edited December 18, 2011 by Ceiu

[Alium]

1: Can this new system be implemented in it's own Sub Arena as you continue to improve upon it and tweak it or will it be dumped onto us over night?

 

2: What time frame are you looking at to implement it? This year, next year? Febuary?

 

3: Is the current system so decayed and unsuccessful that it warrants such a drastic change in gameplay that may not even encourage zone growth or even maintain current population counts?

 

4: How many actual ways will this be distinctly different from Tri-Sector and can you list them?

 

5: The current game as it stands provides a large range of diverse roles and custom ship builds, which essentially allows every player to be the Sysop of their own 8 ships and provides quite a deal of freedom. What will current players expect to lose or gain in comparison to all the options they have now?

 

6: Should these types of discussions remain on the forums and not in public chat which may possibly discourage newcomers from sticking around since it has been made clear that the zone "Hyperspace" as they know it, is well on it's way to destruction? Illustrated here by the following.

 

Ceiu> The current system is broken, badly.

Ceiu> There are mindless flag games from time to time which consist largely of players spamming guns.

Ceiu> Ray.

Ceiu> FFS.

Ceiu> You are so confused it's confusing me.

Ceiu> I'm taking out the FLAG GAME.

Ceiu> Not the item system (yet). Though the item system I'm proposing is similar to diablo and WoW.

Ceiu> Regardless, things are changing, and this is the direction it's going.

Ceiu> Are you guys dense? This is still team based.

Ceiu> $!*@& read before you make retarded assumptions. Holy crap.

Ceiu> THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR SHIP.

Ceiu> The hell, man?

 

7: Was Brain right in leaving this for open discussion on the forum and not simply updating things by word of mouth in zone before he had a chance to see it made manifest?

 

8: To be honest there are some portions of this that do seem interesting to say the least, it's good to see that progress for the zone has not stagnated which more often than change, seems to be the real killer of many zones. This may simply be something that many people will simply have to wait and see before they will really and truely know. My hope is that by then it will be at least some sort of improvement over the old way of operation. I also hope that enough people will stick around to see this change and get to decide for themselves. Either way. Goodluck.

Edited December 17, 2011 by Alium

[Dr Brain]

Yes, it will be a subarena at first. The agreement I have with cerium is that if the players prefer it, then it will replace the main arena. If the players hate it, then it wont. Simple.

[»Ceiu]

1: Can this new system be implemented in it's own Sub Arena as you continue to improve upon it and tweak it or will it be dumped onto us over night?

 

That's exactly what I said would happen (and Brain reiterated in his post). :/

 

 

2: What time frame are you looking at to implement it? This year, next year? Febuary?

 

Around three weeks, maybe slightly longer. Preferably before the next semester starts.

 

 

3: Is the current system so decayed and unsuccessful that it warrants such a drastic change in gameplay that may not even encourage zone growth or even maintain current population counts?

 

Yes. Take a long hard look at what the current flag games actually entail. There is no squad activity, no true sense of teammates or even working together. Not to mention, it's several years old now. Time for something new.

 

 

 

4: How many actual ways will this be distinctly different from Tri-Sector and can you list them?

 

I've never even heard of Tri-Sector until now. Is that another zone?

 

 

5: The current game as it stands provides a large range of diverse roles and custom ship builds, which essentially allows every player to be the Sysop of their own 8 ships and provides quite a deal of freedom. What will current players expect to lose or gain in comparison to all the options they have now?

 

Again, I already stated that this is only a change to the gameplay for now, not the ships.

 

 

6: Should these types of discussions remain on the forums and not in public chat which may possibly discourage newcomers from sticking around since it has been made clear that the zone "Hyperspace" as they know it, is well on it's way to destruction? Illustrated here by the following.

 

Ceiu> The current system is broken, badly.

Ceiu> There are mindless flag games from time to time which consist largely of players spamming guns.

Ceiu> Ray.

Ceiu> FFS.

Ceiu> You are so confused it's confusing me.

Ceiu> I'm taking out the FLAG GAME.

Ceiu> Not the item system (yet). Though the item system I'm proposing is similar to diablo and WoW.

Ceiu> Regardless, things are changing, and this is the direction it's going.

Ceiu> Are you guys dense? This is still team based.

Ceiu> $!*@& read before you make retarded assumptions. Holy crap.

Ceiu> THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR SHIP.

Ceiu> The hell, man?

 

I find it quite insulting that you've spent the time to copy/paste only my lines, removing their context. Discussion in-game or this forum are fine so long as you guys actually read/listen to what other people are saying. The bit of the conversation you're leaving out is that Ray kept repeatedly asking about the ships, despite me telling him several times over that this is only in regards to the game play. Again: participating in a conversation rather than just repeating the same thing over and over is the key -- not the medium.

 

 

7: Was Brain right in leaving this for open discussion on the forum and not simply updating things by word of mouth in zone before he had a chance to see it made manifest?

 

What? I don't even understand the question fully. Are you suggesting that this be developed completely in secret and then suddenly swapped out?

 

 

8: To be honest there are some portions of this that do seem interesting to say the least, it's good to see that progress for the zone has not stagnated which more often than change, seems to be the real killer of many zones. This may simply be something that many people will simply have to wait and see before they will really and truely know. My hope is that by then it will be at least some sort of improvement over the old way of operation. I also hope that enough people will stick around to see this change and get to decide for themselves. Either way. Goodluck.

 

The point is to get input now before I get a week into the design/development and realize that something doesn't work or that something else works better. And, as I said, I'm not even entirely sure on the rules myself yet, so I want to discuss it with people to see if it can be fleshed out more.

[CommanderHB2]

A gamemode weekly/semi-weekly rotation would be really awesome; give people a taste of many different things.

 

Even with a new gamemode, it will get stale eventually; why not give people the old-fashioned flaggames AND the new Conquest?

 

 

------

 

Also; any implementation of lives would be a tactical twist. Once conquest begins, teams fight to control as many points as possible, earning as much 'power' as possible whilst trying to preserve themselves

 

Lives could be based on team size times 8.

 

Team sizes of 5 could effectively use up to 40 lives. MORE lives can be gained by controlling points for an extensive period of time (Say, 30 seconds funds your team with 1-2 lives, but you can only get x amount of lives before your team cap is reached). The goal is to make lives enhance the team's life slightly, but not be a sustainable source, so as to end the game as soon as possible.

 

Once all lives are gone, those remaining will be sent into spectator mode when they finally die for the rest of the game. By then, their points can still earn them lives (in which case, if there are too many players waiting to respawn, then random ones will be chosen to spawn first)

Edited December 17, 2011 by CommanderHB2

[Cheese]

if this replaces pub, move pub to a subarena to be hosted as an event

[Mistarbob]

I think this is a great idea, actually. You can flag in pretty much any other zone, and this seems like it should be less annoyingly binary than the current game mode, which has either "flagging" or "centering" and a lot of wasted map space as a result of the division between them. My only concern regarding this is that "staleness" will just replace "lack of direction" as an issue, but given the more dynamic nature of this game mode, it should be easier to smoothly integrate other activities if it becomes necessary.

 

I also like the implications the new item system has for an actual economy in the zone. The current buying system is little more than an enhanced version of the ?buy repel you see in other zones, and there's no real reason to allow players to trade items that they can always deliberately obtain anyway. If you manage to implement this well, it should be exactly what HS needs.

 

And really, if even I can't find a real problem with an idea, then it's probably worth running with. I'm looking forward to seeing what you make of it.

[»Ceiu]

A gamemode weekly/semi-weekly rotation would be really awesome; give people a taste of many different things.

 

I have no problem with doing such a thing. However, with the way some modules are designed, I see this being a fair amount of work in itself just to get the modules required for both gametypes to play nicely together.

 

 

 

Also; any implementation of lives would be a tactical twist. Once conquest begins, teams fight to control as many points as possible, earning as much 'power' as possible whilst trying to preserve themselves

 

...

 

Lives isn't a bad idea, but you need to remember that this is intended to replace pub. If it's setup in such a way that prevents players from playing for any length of time, they're more likely to leave than to hang around for the next game. This is even more likely when we take into account the item system and the fact newbies are outclassed by that alone. Additionally, we don't want to punish a team for having new people who may or may not realize that lives are important.

 

In short, for a league version of this, lives would be great to prevent teams from suiciding as a primary tactic. For pub, probs not.

[Alium]

As for Question 2: I look forward to it then, perhaps I'll get to enjoy it before my next semester begins. About to take off for winter break so might have to wait.

 

As for Question 3: Has everything that can be done to improve the zone already been implemented or even tried? The whole point of getting in a group/squad is to extend and increase possible successes in game. Our current system makes it difficult to allow such tightly knit groups to be made and maintained (due in part to team sorting/flagging conventions) Whats the point of being in or forming a squad or making alliances when 10 seconds later you may have to kill the guy who just helped you win that last flag game? On the other side of things is whats to keep the more skilled players from simply "stacking up" against those who for whatever reason are simply at a disadvantage? We have stacking now, problem is, it hasn't been fully resolved because it isn't very simple or easy to do so. Sometimes it's simple like kicking obvious abusers when spotted on remote occasions and shaking a stick to keep them honest. Other times it's just easier to implement some automated system to attempt and fix things over the long term (like the team evener). Auto assigning people to teams isn't favored because of issues on both sides players and staff. You have those that feel that taking away the players choice would hurt things, while giving them too much freedom to do as they please ruins things for others with simpler intentions. Which way will your idea go on this?

 

As for Question 4: If Tri-Sector is not something familiar as of yet I believe it may be of interest if everyone took a look at that zone, a few of us could discuss this and arrange it at a time when at least a handful could get a chance to see first hand what something "similiar" may look like. Even though this should be considered gameplay that would touch upon your idea and not be an exact mirror image of what you are hoping to achieve. Sometimes it helps to have something more tangible to get a better idea and maybe even save some time implementing this.

 

As for Question 5: Bearing in mind changes in gameplay and not the ships at least in the start, will we continue to see additions and changes in current ship items/stats?

 

As for Question 6: If you find insult with your own words there isn't much I can do about it. My point was that perhaps that it may not be the best idea to discuss such things in public especially with people who maybe don't fully understand what you are trying to do. However, as is often the case it more than once tends to fall down to vulgar comments and insults many of them directed by you onto anyone who may not neccessarily hold your views. In cases like those it ends up with you looking like a bit of a "snob/jerk" and anyone else not neccessarily agreeing with you gets called "ignorant/stupid/moron/etc". It doesn't seem very productive to push this in pub if it's only going to degenerate into wasted effort and frustration. Also, it definitely doesn't seem right when those people being run out of the pub discussion happen to be viable newcoming players who wouldn't even be talking if they weren't interested in Hyperspace in the first place. (Talking about those like Ray) There is no need for such frustration and spite, if this is a good thing coming it will be done in due time take it easy some people may take a little more time to acclimate to new ideas and sudden intended changes. Given enough time anyone can adapt. You'll see.

 

As for Questions 1 and 7: These were more so about the sub arena concept. Brain has made it much clearer now, thank you for that.

Edited December 18, 2011 by Alium

[NuB KiNG]

im an hs player and i like this idea, i think the private freqs and the 5 player limit per teams is good, would promote maybe squads? squad activity on zones is always good.

the new item system sounds amazingly good, lets hope it happens

[»Ceiu]

As for Question 3: Has everything that can be done to improve the zone already been implemented or even tried? The whole point of getting in a group/squad is to extend and increase possible successes in game. Our current system makes it difficult to allow such tightly knit groups to be made and maintained (due in part to team sorting/flagging conventions) Whats the point of being in or forming a squad or making alliances when 10 seconds later you may have to kill the guy who just helped you win that last flag game? On the other side of things is whats to keep the more skilled players from simply "stacking up" against those who for whatever reason are simply at a disadvantage? We have stacking now, problem is, it hasn't been fully resolved because it isn't very simple or easy to do so. Sometimes it's simple like kicking obvious abusers when spotted on remote occasions and shaking a stick to keep them honest. Other times it's just easier to implement some automated system to attempt and fix things over the long term (like the team evener). Auto assigning people to teams isn't favored because of issues on both sides players and staff. You have those that feel that taking away the players choice would hurt things, while giving them too much freedom to do as they please ruins things for others with simpler intentions. Which way will your idea go on this?

 

Thing is, there's not much reason to keep the current system around. Many players (myself included) are bored with it, as much of the gameplay boils down to spamming guns, repels and suiciding to push the opposing teams around. Additionally, the fact private teams were removed in favor of the only-two-public-teams system makes it virtually impossible to play with people of your choosing. So, there's really no point in starting a squad, since whether or not you get to play with them is a crapshoot anyway. Additionally, the existing major problems require exceedingly complex systems to fix (hopping, balance) and, to date, no one has even come up with a plan to solve either that doesn't itself introduce a number of other, equally large, problems.

 

That said, I ask you this: What is the advantage in spending time repeatedly patching up the current system (which is quite dated in itself), when a new system could potentially fix the problems while providing something new in the process?

 

As far as stacking goes: a given team will be able to be "stacked" and hold a single point no problem, but that still leaves five control points uncontested. If a team is proving to be too difficult, your team could opt to simple hold another point (or two) elsewhere and build up resources to take them out later.

 

 

As for Question 4: If Tri-Sector is not something familiar as of yet I believe it may be of interest if everyone took a look at that zone, a few of us could discuss this and arrange it at a time when at least a handful could get a chance to see first hand what something "similiar" may look like. Even though this should be considered gameplay that would touch upon your idea and not be an exact mirror image of what you are hoping to achieve. Sometimes it helps to have something more tangible to get a better idea and maybe even save some time implementing this.

 

I want to start designing this next week, so unless you think I'll be making a major system overhaul by seeing this zone, I'm not terribly concerned with seeing what other zones have done (nor am I interested in dealing with the almost-definite politics/drama that would come along with that).

 

 

As for Question 5: Bearing in mind changes in gameplay and not the ships at least in the start, will we continue to see additions and changes in current ship items/stats?

 

If this picks up, I will work on the new item system to go with it. Though, if this doesn't take off, there's no item set.

 

 

As for Question 6: If you find insult with your own words there isn't much I can do about it. My point was that perhaps that it may not be the best idea to discuss such things in public especially with people who maybe don't fully understand what you are trying to do. However, as is often the case it more than once tends to fall down to vulgar comments and insults many of them directed by you onto anyone who may not neccessarily hold your views. In cases like those it ends up with you looking like a bit of a "snob/jerk" and anyone else not neccessarily agreeing with you gets called "ignorant/stupid/moron/etc". It doesn't seem very productive to push this in pub if it's only going to degenerate into wasted effort and frustration. Also, it definitely doesn't seem right when those people being run out of the pub discussion happen to be viable newcoming players who wouldn't even be talking if they weren't interested in Hyperspace in the first place. (Talking about those like Ray) There is no need for such frustration and spite, if this is a good thing coming it will be done in due time take it easy some people may take a little more time to acclimate to new ideas and sudden intended changes. Given enough time anyone can adapt. You'll see.

 

You're doing exactly what annoyed me in game: not reading. I don't care that you copy/pasted my text, I care that you're hand picking lines and taking them out of context. It's a silly manipulation tactic used to make your point stronger while omitting any point my statements -- not matter how vulgar/snobby -- would have made. To reiterate, again, a conversation requires you to both listen as well as talk. My frustration comes from repeatedly expecting you guys to have an adult conversation despite perpetual degeneration into childish whining about problems that don't even exist.

 

Also: In my experience, people that blindly attack ideas for changing what they like about the zone are going to be impossible to please anyway -- and that's exactly what Ray was doing.

Edited December 18, 2011 by Ceiu

[Mistarbob]

To clear up the Tri-Sector issue: I went to the zone, tried it out, and talked a bit with the owner. The similarities end at "multiple points to control," which is no different than the case with any other turf arena. Tri-Sector and what Ceiu has in mind are radically different, so that issue is hardly even worthy of consideration.

[CDB-Man]

This sounds like an interesting idea. Perpetually active gamemodes with low pop requirements will allow more frequent activity.

 

This idea also allows people to "continue to center" which is good.

 

 

Also, for once, I definitely agree with cheese:

 

if this replaces pub, move pub to a subarena to be hosted as an event

 

I like this idea.

[CommanderHB2]

I was thinking in conjunction with lives we could implement a time limit for the game. Instead of having a set goal to win, how about one side merely tries to get more 'power' than all the others?

 

Have control points give back lives every x seconds/minutes and have 'checkpoints' every minute or so that replenish a team's lives by about 5-10, or make lives purchasable. Making these games last about 5-10 minutes at most would make for quick, tactical gameplay and a ton of fun. If the enemy is being too aggressive, they'll most likely run out of lives temporarily and allow the other teams to make up for lost ground. It's logical to allow this, but no more than about 30 seconds to a minute- hence the idea of 'Checkpoints'.

Edited December 18, 2011 by CommanderHB2

[kevinz000]

lives=a bit limiting

items/item crafting=MINECRAFT..I LOVE IT

[spidernl]

Yay for new game types. This looks interesting.

 

As far as item systems go, I'm personally not often a fan of MMORPG's item systems.

Whatever you do, you'll end up with items that are distinctly better than other items, and you'll get less variety than with a fine-tuned, 'hand-crafted' item set (generally, anyways).

 

Also, grinding to get items is not something I enjoy doing.

 

What I think would be interesting instead is to use the map to spread some 'resources' as well. Then, you could have items require a certain combination of resources and/or money. Some items might require very rare resources, giving players a reason to trade. Basically, this would be more EvE-like.

 

I've been personally developing a new item set for quite a while now, and I'm considering using a resource & trading system for it.

[Cheese]

with a node control system in place, there is no reason to limit pub to 2 teams, and each freq/team could have a predetermined node color

this will lead to a purpose for squads in hs

[CommanderHB2]

Each control point could give 1 of a certain resource during its collection time.

 

Then you can combine the resources you get from those points to make more valuable resources/ores.

 

Then you can combine THOSE ores.... and so on.

 

The possibilities could be limitless.

[Cheese]

suggestion: node groups

you could have specific sets of nodes that are geographically similar, and award a certain % or amount of points/power/whatever to the team that controls that set

 

like the board game RISK

[Cheese]

additionally, you could have specific persistent LVZ activate when players enter the area for each flag occupation state change (owned/unowned/decaying), and turn off when the state change becomes complete

and talk to dr brain to ask how he made the stuff with particleillusion

 

.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Cheese

[spidernl]

additionally, you could have specific persistent LVZ activate when players enter the area for each flag occupation state change (owned/unowned/decaying), and turn off when the state change becomes complete

and talk to dr brain to ask how he made the stuff with particleillusion

 

I've made stuff like the blink/shield animation(s) with particleillusion, we'll be fine.

 

But I do see potential for combining this node system with a "crafting"-based item set. You'd have a large number of "basic resource" (call it ore or something, I don't care) nodes, and say one of the "ultimate resource" nodes. Maybe leave the best/rarest resource "locked away" until population hits at least 10 (playing) to ensure the stuff really is rare.

[Unix]

Ignots

[Cheese]

well

i could do a preliminary open source alpha release of my fake player platform, because it has an upgraded version of smong/jowies damage module, for the purposes of tracking tile damage, and there could be tile or fake player based objects taking damage that could be destroyed, and then rebuilt/bought using resources gained from node control

 

or there could be team purchases, where players are awarded a certain amount of resources per ding, and one player can spend their money on a team upgrade which affects every player, like -1 firedelay or something

[»Ceiu]

You guys are getting ahead of yourselves. I'm not even going to think about planning/designing the item system until the game type is done. Let's try to focus on that first.

[spidernl]

In this case, the game type would influence large portions of the item set by indicating item costs and whatnot

Even before it's done, you'd have to plan for it at least.

 

Also, Cheese, I think it's kind of silly to use the weapons tracking module for this. Why work with tile damage when you can just work with proximity and one or two LVZs for capturing points? Or even them good ol' flags.

I also have JoWie's "version" of the damage module, which would probably do the trick for most things.

 

Not a fan of team purchases.