Fun and Forced Team Play

#21 I could see certain classes as providing benefits to those around them on their team, or negative effects on their enemies - for example a paladin could add a "blessing" to those around him, or a bard could sing a courage song, or an orc could bellow for stat lowering to the enemies. But largely I don't think necessarily that every class should have automatic bonuses that apply to the players around them. If you're a solo player, and you run into a group of enemies, they'll be able to take you apart (unless you're a thief and you stay hidden), so travelling in a group will likely be necessary.

Also, setting up proximity radiuses might replace actual tactical planning with "let's all just jam into one space so we get mega +loc bonuses!" in a lot of cases.

Just a thought...

#22 Thats true...

However you could create classes that are designed to get around certain bonuses, creating a great segway for those solo players (like my sniper example in the first post). Also an assassian would be great for getting around those defensive bonuses by sneaking and criticle hitting (like the lance in Tribes 2).

You can also impose a Maximum limit on those bonuses. I think there for every + there should either be a - or a way to get around it with thought.

#23 Yeah. One of the GDC speakers mentioned balance through the rock, paper, scissors approach. Personally, I like that route the most since it adds to the strategic element. Like in TFC for Half-Life. The pyro is the bane of snipers, and the engineer is the bane of pyros, and the soldier is the bane of engineers...

This way teamplay isn't forced at all, but in order to overcome the enemy you must work together or else they can exploit one of your weaknesses.

One problem I see with the idea of auras that double stats is that a clump of 10 people would essentially be unstoppable. How do you limit this? Like how Mark said.

Don't make it automatic. Most real RPGs don't. Look at Everquest (ugh) or Anarchy Online or Bauldurs Gate. Team-based boosts cost a specific amount, and are limited in their use. I see the blue bar in the Realm War gui, and traditionally blue means "magic" when it's shown as a bar similar to health so I'm assuming this was the system GG is going to want to use.

I'd like it. It adds something that isn't directly combat related which would be fairly unique compared to other FPSes (it's all about killing, healing or waiting to kill) It would add a bit to micromanagement which always adds depth. "Hey! I'm going to swim across the moat and try to climb over the wall! Can someone please cast iron skin on me... oh and lesser invisibility as well so their archers won't be able to hit me as much!"

As long as the magic system is simple (which It'd be tough not to do :p) then the extra micromanagement would probably be welcome by most players. Only time the "details" annoy is when they either become too important or too time-consuming that they take away from the core goal of the game.

Of course... any of us who have played MMORPGs might remember that with this system you'll get a lot of annoying players who constantly beg for "buffs" yet never even try to offer any in return... punks.

#24 One of the interesting thoughts Tim came up with about some buffs is that they are continuous drain on the caster, not one-time hits... so if a mage casts stoneskin on 10 guys his mana will go away really fast... but if he focuses on just the point man he can keep it up for a long time... Also, many combat spells could be like that as well - the damage happens as long as the caster is concentrating on the spell, so you could really do the whole mage vs. mage spell / anti-spell thing. And if you did a Rock paper scissors thing with the spells, then you would need a balance of casters to really protect well from the other guys.

Also, distracting a caster with a big sword blow would be a way of knocking out a lot of defenses.

Another thing... maybe rate-of-damage from say, fire spells actually increases over time, giving your team a little time to counteract, but making that counteraction very necessary.

#25 Oh yes... gotta have a way to interrupt casting!

Everquest had it (I've never played the "game") but Anarchy Online (a game I played) didn't.

It was very annoying being a soldier with a big gun and having to run like hell whenever a spell was coming my way. I should be able to run up to the person and blast em so they at least mess up the spell. It never happened, and it was very annoying. Supposedly "brawl" occasionally interrupted casting, but I used ranged weapons so that melee attack wasn't quite viable for me.

This way you won't need melee users to do insane amounts of damage to make them win in close-range fights. Melee users should do more damage than ranged people per hit, but their real strength is that they have high chances to interrupt casting.

I think the best way to look at the main three classes (caster, ranged, melee) is that the caster is a support class. He can be a healing medic in a massive hand to hand battle, or raining down flame on the enemy from afar.

What ideas have GG discussed in terms of character development? Static classes? (healing caster, sword user, bow user) Open-ended classes? (stats would shape your class, not your choice when you start the game like most RPGs do) Equipment classes? (grab a bow, and you're a bow user... grab an axe and you're an axe user)

#26 Well, what we've talked about so far (this is not cast in stone) is basically 8 main character classes based on 4 primary races Orc-berzerker or shaman, Elf-sorceress or thief, Human-paladin or can't remember, Dwarf -cleric or warrior. Each class is then customizable with a limited number of skills or spells, depending on the class. But basically, you pick your class, pick your skills and jump in to the game... a simple procedure, but with enough variation that exploring all the roles would take some time.

There will be little to no character skill progression with experience - the skill progression is entirely in the use/learned tactics of the player. Characters will grow in other persistent ways with stats, rankings, honors, etc, as well as guild/clan wise.

#27 Thats cool. This sounds like a really cool game concept. I just hope I see groups a bit more than I did in Tribes 2. Whichever form that may take. :)

#28 I believe it was mentioned above, but you're going to have to accept that people might not want to be a team-player.

You won't see a disorganized "team" that just runs around playing Deathmatch beat a team that is working together. If you can't find good servers then it's your own fault, not the player's.

I know when I played TFC a lot I could go to a server and know what kind of game to expect. "pubs" were where newbies and snipers hung out. Was fun since I could break 100 points easily, but got old since it was basically deathmatch with minimal teamwork. I could go to some of the more "elite" servers and I'd be guaranteed a quality game. Everyone knew the maps and the defensive positions and did their "jobs".

So you're just going to have to accept that public games aren't going to press for good teamplay, and private ones will. Look at any game in existence and you'll see that's the case. Quake 3, Rainbow 6, Counter-Strike, TFC... Some people just want to goof around and get some kills for fun, and some people want to win. If you dont' cater to both you're going to alienate one of them.

#29 >>I believe it was mentioned above, but you're going to have to accept that people might not want to be a team-player.

Matt, I do accept it. And like I mentioned above, I have nothing against solo players. I just feel that when you buy a game that says "...the ultimate team-based action experience", you should expect to play a team based game. And if you purchase said game, you shouldn't be that ticked off if there are distinct advantages to grouping over soloing.

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>>You won't see a disorganized "team" that just runs around playing Deathmatch beat a team that is working together.

Your right, the teams would be incredibly imbalanced. So the disorganized team would lose. Which makes the game not fun do to a lack of challenge on the winning side, and not fun due to the lack of cooperation on the losing side.

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>>If you can't find good servers then it's your own fault, not the player's.

If you can't find a good server, I seriously doubt it's anyones fault, just bad luck.

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>>I know when I played TFC a lot I could go to a server and know what kind of game to expect. "pubs" were where newbies and snipers hung out. Was fun since I could break 100 points easily, but got old since it was basically deathmatch with minimal teamwork. I could go to some of the more "elite" servers and I'd be guaranteed a quality game. Everyone knew the maps and the defensive positions and did their "jobs".

You have to be invited to get into a non-public game, as they are passworded (being non-public and all). To be invited and have a full server, you pretty much need to be in a clan. Not very happening for a casual player who just wants to play a good team game.

-Jeff

#30 Team based play needn't be forced but you can design things so that it fully awards team play in whatever manner you decide. In this way clans etc can always play in the way they intended. People can then play in public servers but it simply won't do the game justice, though it could still be to the standard of Quake style melees.
Accommodate both.
If you want to play the game as its supposed to be played, take it a step further and join a clan. If not have fun in the deathmatches. To take the lowest common denominator and use that as your benchmark will leave you dissapointed...

#31 Thats it, if you want to make a team game (and whatever Matt insists, enough people want to play one) you should make one. If you worry that the average Deathmatcher won't want to play don't worry, you never intended them to anyway....

#32 Ok, let me throw this out there...

Assertion: People don't play as teams because people don't _join_ as teams.

Imagine, if you will, a soccer match that was perpetually ongoing. Every twenty minutes the scores for each "team" are reset, but the players come and go as they please - I may walk on the field 5 minutes into the "map" run around for a little bit, go for the ball, whatever - but never take even 10 seconds before the game to talk to my supposed "team"-mates... you think these express anywhere near the optimal conditions for breeding successful teamwork? Because this is exactly how every single online team-based FPS works (afaik:).

What if we change it around a little bit? Let's say you never join a game solo - you join a squad (not necessarily even a persistent one - it can still be a "pub" squad), then the squad may join with other squads to form a team, and the team can challenge other teams. When a challenge happens, both full teams are dropped in to the map, and the battle takes place. At the end of each battle (20 minutes or so), everyone goes back to the lobby or whatever... players could then rate each other (everything from wow, great team player to real TK jerk), for future persistent reference when forming new squads/teams. The community could regulate itself - problem players would not be allowed to join squads, and people wouldn't join squads that problem players captain.

A little time before each battle would give people a chance to make sure all the roles they needed were covered, would give new users someone to pair up with and follow, etc.

Thoughts?

#33 That's a cool idea, but wouldn't it be incredibly difficult to keep latency low?

Servers that are hosted are hosted because the person who hosts it can control it. They can change map, rules, boot and ban players, or even cheat.

If you forced people to join in groups you'd have to have servers that have a significant amount of space on them (or have clients host the games like you'd see on MSN Zone with Quake 2) Either of the two situations would be tough to ensure they'd run smoothly.

Here's an idea I originally came up for my ex-project, Tactical Assault.

Tired of just running around as a faceless "red team" member who got 3 kills last game, but no one remembers? Choose an alliance to fight for! In order to play, you have to register an account. That account will track your stats across servers (kills/deaths/wins/losses)

After each game, the server sends the log of the game to the master server that then processes it. This main server tracks what alliances (not user-made clans... these are things YOU the developer set when the game comes out. Like sides in a war) are winning and what are losing. As you mentioned, a "global map" would be used to track the progress of each team. Why not have a truly global map? Depending on the progress of each alliance, the alliance can win or lose territories in the fictional world. Possibly being reflected via a "news site" for the game. "The Omega Alliance has conquered Northern Jagged Mountains!" would be seen by all. The Omega Alliance will increase in status, and others might want to fight for their alliance in order to reclaim the mountains for themselves!

It's something that hasn't ever been done in a game (a game for the Dreamcast was going to do it, but scrapped it shortly before release) and it would remedy the masses of folks who just play to screw around. The top people for each alliance would recieve some status symbol (maybe a uniquely colored name, or unique model) which would make people want to try to get a win for their alliance instead of a few wimpy kills.

This all is a very cool result, for a fairly minimal amount of effort. Just make the server relay logs (a few kilobytes) between rounds to the master server which parses the log into a database. It'd take some clever web-programming to make the map dynamically update based on the logs it recieves, but it would really make the player feel like he was playing in a war spread across a nation instead of just some guy playing on some server and not making any difference at all.

One of the reasons MMORPGs are so popular is because you can be the "best" and well-known. This would basically allieviate the problems with people not caring about their team, as well as integrating one of the more attractive features of MMORPGs.

#34 That's a good point Mark.

But I wonder if your proposed solution would help much during an ever-changing dynamic environment, which in turn changes the "game-plan". Of course unless you mean general tactics like "You guys guard the generator, you guys go for the flag, and we'll disrupt the enemy defenses. In which case that will help.

I *do* tend to lean toward the belief that something stronger (and fun) will be needed to give that incentive toward in-game group cohesion... (that will still allow soloers to have fun) unless I am off base with your suggestion?


-Jeff

#35 That's an interesting concept. About a year or two ago, I was in an online Tribe (Sons of Thunder) while T2 was in development. The leader of SoT and myself were tossing around ideas for future mods, one that I had brought up was actual "campaign maps" (kind of similar to the global maps mentioned). Essentially you would enter into battle at the apex of the map campaign, the warring tribes would then 'tug-o-war' through the maps until victory was claimed on the last hold map for either side. Essentially it worked like this:

[map3 team1]
[map2 team1]
[map1 team1]
[map0 'center'] < battle start
[map1 team2]
[map2 team2]
[map3 team2]

It would help simulate the feel of gaining ground and retreating to the last outpost or holdfast, until the losing team's last stronghold fell and they're ousted from the domain being fought over. One challenge would be trying to make the maps 'flow' together from outpost to outpost. Just thought it would be a fun way to 'saga' tribal wars.

I like the squad insertion idea. Maybe up the infrastructure for battlefield commanders? Add levels such as squad, platoon, company, battalion, etc. on the grand scale. I think they could be kept fairly dynamic and fun without it getting too technical. Just a thought. :)

#36 Tyler, your campaign idea is exactly what I had in mind :) I've heard there is a WW2 half life mod out there that uses a similar system. Haven't played it though so I can't rate it....

#37 We actually considered that style of campaign during T2... the problem I came up with was - if you had two reasonably well matched teams, the battle would just ping-pong back and forth between 2 or 3 maps - instead of going through the rotation.

The problem I was trying to solve with the squad formation pre-battle is the one of the solo players and problem players in a team game (mostly problem players) - if you have a central mechanism for choosing and rating your teammates, you simply won't pick problem players to be on your team... without this ability you will always be at the mercy of jerks - or the server will have to have special rules for handling those players... ie. 2 tks and you get booted, etc.

How can server operators be incentivized to allow their servers to run automatic matches? For a lot of games there are a TON of empty or mostly empty servers. Maybe the server op could put a server up on "pub" rotation during certain hours or take it off the rotation at certain times (with enough advance warning so the current battle can finish). Maybe server ops with good volunteer servers get special priviliges in the community?

#38 >>The problem I was trying to solve with the squad formation pre-battle is the one of the solo players and problem players in a team game (mostly problem players) - if you have a central mechanism for choosing and rating your teammates, you simply won't pick problem players to be on your team... without this ability you will always be at the mercy of jerks - or the server will have to have special rules for handling those players... ie. 2 tks and you get booted, etc.


This is a bit OT, but...
I wonder how feasible it would be to institute a player rating system, which contained stats like "# of times kicked", "TK's", etc... on a master server. Then allow server admins to read that information so they can apply a filter to prevent those baddies from joining.

-Jeff

#39 I'm sure there's ways to get around the stalemates on a campaigning scenario like I'd mentioned. Things like limited reinforcements or resources, team casualty tally, regional control within the map itself, etc. A setback in limiting reinforcements might soften the battles with 'sure-footing' tactics, no beserker rush battles. The maps I'd listed were the extreme scenario, a total of 3 seemed more reasonable. But it was primarily for those wanting a bit more out of team oriented competition, not so much for pubbing.

A rating system would definitely be nice. I think actions speak louder than words and viewing your potential teammate's record would help in assembling troops significantly. But I've always viewed TK's (deliberate ones atleast) like 'gnats of war', annoying as hell but easily squashed. Makes for hairier battles. :-) 'Sometimes it's entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge hammer.' - Major Holdridge

#40 I was thinking a bit about this and thought it would be Interesting to join an "INN" server for your selected race/town/whateverfits There you could meet up with people and form partys of adventurers to play with. Then when your party is ready to go maybe the INN server would select a server for your party to join based on any number of options you have set. You would need some sort of match making logic for the seperate INN servers to drop two pretty even teams into a match that meets what you want to play. This could probably take care of some of the many empty servers that have the resources to play decent games but get ignored because other servers are more popular. Probably would need a way to rate the good servers to get chosen first.

I don't know just some random thoughts, I always thought it would be kinda cool to join into a game this way instead of chatroom/list ways we are used to seeing. Perhaps the INN servers would have things to do while you wait.. like breifing/planning what you are trying to accomplish this game in an environment like sitting around a table in an inn.

just some thoughts.