Fun and Forced Team Play

#1 Spheres of Influence ! Have you been reading my mind ...?

#2 heh, no. It's a common feature in the newer RPGs (diablow, anarchyonline) and stats are pretty much the next "big" thing for any genre.

I know my old project had an idea with it, and majority of turn-based games use it either in bolstering the mental stability of the players (xcom) or boosting stats (like in Incubation)

#3 Hmm, I have Diablo and Anarchy Online and I don't remember gaining speed/power/defense just by being near another team member. But I haven't played them in a while so patches my have been implemented.

In either case, whether thought of or not, I think it would work great for a team based 1st person shooter/slasher. Most "team-based" games result in everyone just bolting out on their own and "maybe" end up helping another person. This would make you want to help out each other and stay close(you will stay strong if you do, or go weak if you don't).

Also additional bonuses could be added to members of the the chain, like:

1) A radar to all those in a chain if there is a Ranger present

2) Regeneration for everyone if there is a Priest present.

or whatever...

#4 Heh, paladin auras Forgot they were self only.

Forgot that Blizzard isn't good at innovating, so I guess I assumed that a multiplayer game would have things useful to other players when fighting along side people. Nope!

Anyway, Anarchy Online has crats and engineers auras. The game itself is mind-numbingly horrible, but the auras are nice ways to entice groups to bring on less popular classes (engineers haven't really been unpopular, but crats have for a long time. now they do a bit more to help the team out)

Basically all you describe now has been done in Anarchy Online in real time, and most turn-based games do have "areas of influence" built into the location of other team members or team leaders.

The project I'm working on will take your allies and enemies into account. Bunch of allies nearby and you'll be kicking ass.... bunch of enemies nearby and you'll be panicking.

#5 Damnit, I had a nice reply but my posting ability messed up...here we go again.

Priests? Snipers? Rangers? Interesting mix :)

Jeff, it's a good idea, but the thing is, it's a really touchy subject when it comes to "forcing" players to do things. What you really have to do is reward those who teamplay without punishing those who don't. You can't really *force* players to do something...the majority of gamers seem to be teenagers, and well, you know what it's like trying to tell a teen what to do.

Teamplay is a big issue. It definitely makes the game a lot more fun, but right now a lot of gamers just don't seem to understand that. The systems in place for teamplay aren't very solid, and there's no clear advantage to playing as a team (other than winning, but what else?). Project: Warfare (plug plug, my game) is making a big effort to enhance and reward teamplay. There will be several optional systems in place for players to take advantage of at their own will. If they don't wanna play as a team, so be it...As long as they're not hurting the team, there's no realy problem.

#6 I fully understand where you are coming from. :)

I guess my logic stems from the fact that every "team based" game I have ever purchased has *always* let me down. Not because the game didn't posses a team based quality, but because 1st person shooters attract a high concentration of "death-matchers". It's not that there aren't others out there who enjoy "true" team play, it's just that there is an over-saturation of people who play the games in a manner that was seemingly not intended. This dilutes a pure team atmosphere.

Tribes 1 was a perfect example of this. The command view was a kin to an RTS game. I have always thought that it would just ROCK if there was actually an RTS fan commanding through that view and if the players would actually trust the commander and follow his orders. That game had so many tools it just screamed team play. I guess I just thrive on true team play and sportsmanship.

As a 1st person/strategy/war game enthusiast, this fact has always drove a stake into what I would call a grand ol' time. It really bites when you buy a game that states a style of play, and the majority of purchasers just don't "get it".

As far as the game style I brought up in the above post, I wouldn't really call it punishing those who don't play as a team (since they are playing a team based game, they *should* expect it to play it as one), but rather add a factor that is more cohesive *for* team play.

-Jeff

#7 I totally agree with you. And I thought I was the only one that knew about the command view :) There really are too many death matchers in team games. The problem I see is that there's a teamplayer in most of the gamers, but when you join a server, you have no idea who is teamplaying, do you know what I mean? For example, I jump in a game and want to play with some people who are playing as a team, but who the hell do I play with? There's no way to distinguish who's team playing and who's not. There needs to be a way to show that "Hey, Joe Blow is a teamplayer, and so is John Doe."

It's a very tricky issue, and I sincerely hope that players will be taking advantage of the teamplay systems we will have in place. I suppose we'll find out once we start beta testing in a long time from now in a galaxy far, far away.

#8 I'm still not clear how its going to incorporate the different elements of hand to hand, missile and magic based wars. Its almost impossible to hand to hand someone with a ranged weapon unless your stupidly attack proof. (Look at how powerful british archers were).

Will need some attention in design to balance some of these issues.

from what i can tell, Jeff intends there to be a lot of team interaction, so things like magicians are used to cast flying spells on other classes etc.

Phil.

#9 Yeah Phil, actually that was the exact same question I wondered when I found out about this project.

Very cool idea with melee weaponry, but balancing it is going to be hard especially with persistant stats (Which I assume means: "Die, and you lose your stats") Heh, melee guys are going ot have to have some really big perk to be able to be viable against a couple of archers and spellcasters sitting atop some guard tower!

Forcing gameplay doesn't work because it will alienate the deathmatchers.

Sure, you might not like them, but their money is just as good as Joe Teamplay. I know, because I play TFC on many servers and many people are just plain ol' DMers. They play as sniper to just get easy kills, or pyro just to piss snipers off (no wait, that's me :P)

If you want to make a game based around teamplay successful you must accomidate many types of player. Accodimate the camper (to an extent), the newbie, the veteran, the spammer, the sniper, the DMer, the team player, the scout...

If you can effectively allow these people to play the game their way, they can have fun. I know that after a few tough matches as a medic in TFC I enjoy taking a break and grabbing a sniper or heavy weapons guy and just slamming it to the enemy without really working my "mad skillz".

Sure, some people want to play on teams... but majority of games are played on public servers. Public servers mean you're playing with strangers. If you're playing with strangers you'll always run into punks. Punks not only will ignore the teamplay aspect of the game, but they'll try to turn it against their own team. Need to take an item to capture point 3? This punk will pick it up and hide so your team can't win. He'll constantly grenade the spawn point so even your own team can't run in.... he's a punk.

If you don't allow people multiple ways to play the game (and still have a good time and a chance to make a difference in who wins if they do a decent job at it) then the griefers will basicaally shut down the game. Casual games will be rare, and it can be tiring making sure your team is organized.

#10 That's pretty much it. I mean, it doesn't matter about money, but you still want people to play your game. I guess the point is to make it obvious that it is a team game and there are clear advantages and reasons to play as a team. Some games make it more demanding to play as a team; games where there are multiple objectives to complete in order to win, such as DoD, RTCW, and even Tribes sometimes. TFC is less "high maintenance" when it comes to teamwork; you pretty much just have to capture the enemy flag and defend your flag (except for the missions where you cap multiple points...that calls for teamwork).

I'm hoping the systems we have will make it so that non-teamplayers are actually helping the team in whole. I mean, deathmatching does help if the player is good, because they do a lot of the killing. This leaves room for the teamplayers to complete missions, which is pretty much the essence of the game. And as far as the "punks" go, giving the ability to boot them is pretty much all the game needs.

#11 From one of the designers of Dark Vengeance, I can tell you that you definitely can find a balance between close range (HTH) and long range weaponry. Speed of movement, rate of reload/fire, what else you can carry/use (powerups). Temporary invis/invul starts to balance stuff. Speed helps too.

HTH guys would need to be able to close to HTH range, but their weapons could be very effective once there (assassins).

I've got YEARS of thinking about this stuff in my head... I'll try to start retrieving some from long-term storage in the weeks ahead. ;)

d

#12 Still not seeing it David. How can you close to HTH range when your being blasted by ranged stuff?

I can see some kind of shields.. but that doesnt help against magic.

The thing is, eventually, you want HTH to be against other HTH and such.

Personally, I just cant see how it'd be useful to be anything other than a magic caster. Sure, you might be able to tank a lot of hits. But casting is useful for so much else.

One thing I'm looking forward to, is to see if there's any plans for a magic class that can create forts. Or battlements or similar.

Ah, guess we need to wait for the man.

Phil.

#13 HTH could be made much more effective by using wide arcing motion damage. While ranged weapons use the targeting crosshair, a HTH attack could be made to decapitate anyone within the arc of the blade for example. Explosives are also not much use at very close range unless you want to kill yourself as well :)

Regardless, weapon balance is always a trial and error process.

#14 We do not envision rules that explicitly enforce team play. Our vision is that team play is a result of needs. Look at Tribes and you will know what we are talking about. Remember that we have always been supporters of player skills as opposed to character based skills.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#15 It's too bad people don't play Tribes as a team game.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great game... But for the average quake mentality, games like Tribes will never be anything more than a glorified death match. There just isn't reason enough for the teams to stick together.

Case in point, how many games of Tribes have you played where there were a bunch of Heavies all screaming for an APC pickup all the while pilots are just pumping out one man speeders? Almost always... How often have you seen a squad of people hiking out on a mission? Almost never...

Sure you get into a good team game now and then, but consider yourself lucky if you run into a full game where all 60 players are covering zones, defending generators or running in strike teams. Normally when I go running into a generator room, its vacant.

Imagine how often people would stay together if there were a distinct advantage to grouping?

Again, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the loner. But team based games should necessitate cooperation.

-Jeff

#16 Although you are right in alot of aspects, If you were to look at some of the team matches in the original Tribes.. You would not see anything but teamplay. One of the main reasons people did not play as a whole team on "pubs" (Public Servers), was due to the fact that they didn't have to. When players are constantly practicing with their team, they like to be able to get away and play deathmatch-style for a bit (to hone their skills, or just have fun). It's probably better this way, so as to appeal to the largest audience possible (nobody is forced to do anything they don't want to, but if they choose to play as a team with the rest of their team - they will reap the benefits).

I agree with Jeff Tunnell in that an individual's skills should be more important than the skills of the character they are playing as.

#17 Yeah, i agree completely. Class based skills are generally unbalancing. Someone should be judged on their skill as a player, rather than some other quality.

However, there is a scissors/paper/stone of class selection which might add to gameplay. Or even random class choice.

I'm a big big fan of iterative development for gameplay issues. Thats a BIG advantage of development like gg.com in that we can tweak and tweak and tweak almost forever to get the sweet spot of gameplay.

Phil.

#18 I guess I was a bit misunderstood. I *Do* believe that player skill should be a factor. My idea is to add a *bonus* to speed/defense/offense. This system no more relies on stats over Player skill than Tribes does with being able to move faster/hit harder/take more damage depending on what armor you are wearing. It just adds a bonus to these factors when people are in close proximity.

Tribes 2 *does* give bonuses for grouping in *one* circumstance. Everyone on a ship gets a bonus to defense (the force field). If that bonus extended to ground troops as well, I think it would have been even better.

I don't mean to sound like I am defending my idea to the death (*I know* it's a good one), I just didn't want the idea to be shot down due to a misunderstanding.

I think the main misinterpretation was caused by the *forced* word in the title. Should have picked a euphemism.

#19 Team proximity bonus sounds like a better term. And actually doesn't sound like a bad idea. It does seem to encourage team play without forcing people to do so. People seem to use Tribes and Tribes 2 as examples, so I'll follow suit. Imagine the repair guy in Tribes 2 that goes around repairing people as a healer in RW. Suppose that players naturally, but slowly, regenerate health in RW. Now, if players were in close proximity of this healer, they would regenerate a little bit faster. It still wouldn't beat being healed straight out, but still would be a bonus if you are in close proximity of team mates.

#20 Exactly!

As mentioned above, each class could posess a group giving enhancement, like Scouts giving a radar (which could be role-played in as an Awareness sphere for RW), Warriors who could benefit the group with extra offense or defense in the form of "Courage".

This would really add a lot of depth, strategy and fun.

It would also encourage (not force) people to play as a classes to balance the group. You really wouldn't want to be a scout in a group with another scout because you can only have one radar (though it wouldn't hurt), so you may want to be a healer or Warrior.

Etc...