Gapshots/Longshots don't work on Steel Peel?

While it's admirable that you want to setup a defense force for the devs you have to realize that they are all adults who are in a customer-oriented business. I'm sure they have enough sense and thick enough skin to shrug off the "You guys suck" rants and find the comments that have actual worth. Being that they setup these forums and are fairly active asking for feedback means they want to know what we all think but since this is the Internet there are always going to be asshats spouting unfounded hate. Besides I haven't seen anything in this thread that would amount to bashing on Scathis or the rest of the team.

Back on topic...here is my constructive criticism of the Steel Peel issue. Scathis stated earlier in the thread that the game was complex and the team didn't feel that they needed to teach every strategy to the players but rather let them learn for themselves through playing. While I agree with this idea and don't believe they even could teach everything I believe Steel Peel rubs against the grain of what you are being taught through playing. On the other three maps I'm taught that building Long Shot turrets can be very advantageous through kills and assists that I get. That is something that is taught well through gameplay. However, on Steel Peel there is nothing in the gameplay that teaches me I shouldn't be building Long Shots like on every other map.

In a game with as fast of a pace as MNC did the devs really expect players to build a Long Shot and then sit there and watch the projectiles fire into the air to see if they will hit the dome? I certainly don't think that is the case but how then are we supposed to learn that they are ineffective? Up until then we are taught through gameplay that Long Shots are effective when built on every other map. What is the gameplay convention that we are supposed to see that teaches us they don't work on Steel Peel?

This strikes me as bad design because the devs seemed to put their desire to make something different ahead of a core game mechanic that isn't effectively taught to the players. The facts:

1.) players have spend money on turrets
2.) can't remove/replace a turret once it is built
3.) Long Shots are available to be built on all nodes on all maps

These are core mechanics that the designers have to take into account when making levels. I'm not against having to learn new strategies or incorporate new play styles for a new map, but the designers don't get carte blanche when making levels. They have to work within the confines of the systems that they created. If they want to make a change to that system then they need to teach the player directly through a tutorial/text or through effective gameplay. Neither of these are done on Steel Peel and I fault the dev team for letting it through to the finished product.

After all that, let me conclude this post by saying that I play this game every night because it is a lot of fun (except for Steel Peel) and I think it was the best game in the Summer of Arcade. Uber has put out a great product that hopefully gets great support and lasts for a while. I'll also be keeping my eye on them for any future projects as they have earned my respect as well as my dollars with this title.

Which is too bad since it makes spawning the support's fodder more or less pointless.

The gapshots work, they just have to get out of your base.

who needs gap/long shots me and my team have become quite lethal on this map and the longer ppl sit and complain about the issue other teams are doing the same.

use your terrain and tools and think outside the box im for 1 am thankful there is a map where gapshots and long shots dont rule the ring but hey thats me...

i do however agree that a piece of glass in the lower middle region to help shield the front turrets a lil better is needed but for the most part its all gravy...

Here is the secret to success on steel peel:

1) choose assassin

2) stand in your base

3) blindly shoot shurikens towards the other side of the map (if you can get up to level 3 cloak for the free crits, more the better)

4) spam gremlins whenever you can for free kills and turret destructions

5) if and when the money ball goes down, use your juice to tear it up

Guaranteed most kills, most assists, least deaths, most money and no fun, every time.

So I was thinking of a way to keep Scathis' strategic value and still educate the masses and I think I came up with a pretty good solution...

Why not place a message that reads: '<!> Heads Up: Using a Long Shot on this node will be less effective than normal.' whenever you open the turret build menu on a node that has an overhead obstruction?

In this manner you actually educate the players instead of allowing them to ignorantly build turrets that are known to be less effective in certain locations.

That's an example of exactly what I was stating above. Since the designers are changing the systems for how the game works on this one level then they need to inform the player. I would like to see this.

However, I was thinking more about this too and there are times when you go to a nub to build a turret and if you don't have enough money to build a specific type that slot on the four-way menu is blank. Essentially if you don't have enough money you don't even get the option to build it. Why not just leave the LS space on the purchase menu always blank so players (especially newbies) can't waste their money?

According to Scathis it is "Because not allowing long shots would result in a host of other issues. We'd be sitting here talking about 'Why you can't build long shots on Steel Peel'." Personally I see it as a design flaw just as you do but I would like to see Uber take responsibility for their choice and at least inform the players of the drawbacks to building Long Shot turrets in certain locations. My solution allows this to happen while still allowing Scathis to stand by his decision.

EDIT: The flaw of Scathis' logic is that by answering the question as to why Long Shots turrets are not allowed you also inform the player at the same time. Something that has been neglected to this point. In the end the only viable solution is to inform the players and let them make their own decisions.

I agree that a pane of plexiglass to prevent sniping directly into the base from across the level would be good. It seems that if a player wants to harass people IN the opposing base, the should at least have to venture a small distance from the safetey of their own base.

As for the Long Shot turret related concerns:
1) I understand the urge to have some way to dismantle a poorly chosen or placed turret. However, the solution may be worse than the problem. I am guessing that a conscious design choice was made to NOT allow players on the same team to dismantle each other's turrets, as this would create a perverse incentive for some players to replace other people's turrets simply to gain (financial) credit for its kills.
As a team game, there will always be the risk of teammates making sub-optimal strategic choices. While this is annoying, its part of any team game/sport.
A feature which I don't think would cause much trouble, and may be useful to many players, would be the ability to break down one's OWN turrets. This would not impinge on others' playing (except arguably for the support who just hacked it for you), and would allow players to make the strategic choice of "wasting" the money they've sunk into a turret for the opportunity to change strategy.

2) It does not concern me greatly that long shot turrets are of reduced value on one of the four arenas (so far). Presumably the point of multiple arenas it provide different environmental challenges which call for players to employ different tactics (and for partied teams, different class makeup choices). Choices like this are fun and add to, rather than subtract from a game's depth.

Finally, as this is my first post on the boards, a big THANK YOU to the men and women at Uber for an excellent, highly entertaining, and very, very modestly priced game.

HeiroGlyph,

This is a strategic choice on the map because Long Shot can be useful on the map in certain situations, situations like players camping out on the left hand walkway.

So, how far would you go in teaching the player? Would you have built entire tutorials on how strategies on each map and each tactical situation? What would you give up to get these teaching moments in the game? Where does emergent game play fit into your design? How much do you want the players to discover their own strategies?

Lets go through this design exercise and see what you'd do. I'm interested. Who knows, I may need another designer down the road.

As a teacher you need to prepare a student as well as you are able. The correct path is always to allow them freedom in their choices but also to guide them and offer advice when needed. In the case of MNC there are certain node locations that hold strategic drawbacks and the only way to learn is by doing.

In my example the nodes would simply contain a message letting players know of the drawbacks to certain choices before they actually make them. Would it really be that hard to add an informative message just above/below the turret build menu when that location has an obstruction that will greatly impact the effeciveness of their choice? In this manner the player has the freedom to make their own decision but you have guided them as best you could as a teacher.

A full tutorial is not practical given the amount of information needed but you could always add text-based prompts that display helpful information whenever possible. Then you simply add a toggle to disable these 'tips' once the player is aware of their choices. In this manner you could remind a player to taunt after getting a kill, encourage them to spend money on other things besides skills (unlike Mickey Cantor always telling you to 'Upgrade those skills.'), or even explain what an ejector, annihilator and purchasing juice does when you stand over the prompts. Simple but effective.

Ok, so that's the theory, what about the practical execution of that theory?

What's the list of things you'd want to teach? How would the system of giving out these teaching theories work? There is no current system for giving tips on how to play each map, so I'll need a specification on how this new system is going to work. Given an amount of man-hours to get it done, what other system would you give up in place of it?

(For all you watching at home, if you interview with me, this is the type of questions you'd get)

A less gameplay intrusive alternative would be to create a set of basic strategy tips (the sort of things that are useful to know, but not immediately obvious) that are displayed in cycle during the matchmaking 45 second wait period. Since there is little else to do but wait during this time, it would be the ideal place to push information on players.

I would suggest 2 sets of tips, one general, one arena specific. The general tips would be about things like the fact that you can purchase juice at your base (something many new players are unaware of at first), or what the Ejector and Annihilator do. The other set, which could be mixed in with the general set, would give very broad level tips about the arena that was currently loading. E.g. "Long Shot Turrets have difficulty hitting certain areas in the Steel Peel Arena".

There are already some similar "tip" messages that appear during the Bacon/Shotgun Shell High-Five screen - but half of those are humorous (which is great, mind you), and there is only ever time for one per game.

To be clear - emergent strategy is a wonderful thing, and a healthy meta-game is the sign of a healthy game. I am not suggesting that the game point out perfect sniping locations, or clever tricks involving the jet pack that people figure out. But there is a class of not-super-secret knowledge that falls under "Gee, I wish someone had pointed that out when I first started playing" that could be made available non-intrusively in this manner.

I'm not HeiroGlyph but I'd like to take a crack at this...

First, let me say that I'm of the understanding that LS turrets do no good on Steel Peel. From your statement that "Long Shot can be useful on the map in certain situations, situations like players camping out on the left hand walkway" I must be incorrect. However that is another example where you haven't given me any education (through gameplay or exposition) on how to effectively use a LS on Steel Peel.

I agree with you that you don't want to bog down a game like this (primarily a MP action game) with a bunch of tutorials and text, but rather give the player the basics and let them learn and the mechanics and formulate strategies from there. The problem, as I see it, is that Steel Peel is an anomaly in regards to how the player is being taught (through exploratory gameplay). There are only four maps and on three of them LS turrets are effective in the same way. Then when you get to Steel Peel you change the rules and LS turrets are no longer effective. But as a player I have no way of knowing this other than if I build a LS turret, do nothing else, and wait to see if I get assists or kills from it. The three other turrets all have the same exact same behavior/effectiveness on all of the maps so why should I even assume that one of the turrets would become ineffective on a sigle map? Because you are letting the player learn through gameplay, as opposed to tutorials or exposition, when you change the rules of the game you have to let them know somehow. Now if there were eight maps and three of them had domes (or some other obstacle) that limited the LS turret effectiveness this would be more understandable as a player. I would say "Oh, this arena has a dome so I shouldn't make Long Shots". Since there are only four maps with only one changing the game mechanics of the LS this is very tough to see as a player.

I think you may be reaching a bit for a MP arena shooter. The DotA-esque elements of your game definitely add a level of complexity to the genre but 'emergent game play' is such a red herring in design. If your game is good and allows players to explore the systems you are going to have moments of 'emergent game play' but there still have to be defined rules in which all of the systems must operate. It's those rules that I think get broken on Steel Peel.

Again, let me say that I'm trying to be constructive with this criticism. I think you made a brilliant game that I'm glad I purchased and have fun playing. The fact that you are on here talking to us about why you made your decisions is great to see and I want to thank you for engaging the community in effective debate.

Typing up my last post took to freaking long...

I think a tip system would be a good idea but being that you don't have one I understand your questions here, all of which are valid. But again it comes back to the system that your design decision went against that caused this issue. As a player you taught me on Ammo Mule, Grenade III, and LazerRazor that LS turrets can be used like 'X' and are effective. They hold that same system on every map except for Steel Peel, but you never told me that or led me to find out for myself during gameplay.

I'm not saying you need to implement a new tip system to rectify the issue, but rather that you shouldn't have designed a level which changed the system you already taught me of how a LS turret works.

Well, all of this would have been completed while I was playtesting the game. The concept would be that you already have a GUI in place that can support a text overlay at the bottom of the screen, similar to how a health bar displays when a Gunner's mortar hits a distant target. Sadly, I have no idea how long it would take to adopt the GUI to handle the text overlay but that would be discussed prior to starting this entire process. This text prompt would need to display for ~5 seconds (would need to test to determine optimal awareness) and would be small enough to not interfere with the action in front of the player. The message could include map specific information, general tips or even class related information, possibly with an icon to relate what each tip is explaining.

A text file is then created when each specific condition is met and a conditional is included to allow it to be disabled in the options. For the sake of simplicity you could always make a prompt display every 30 seconds and include information from the genreal, map and class specific qualifications. Depending on how much time was invested this system could be incredibly detailed or just be a 'quick tip' format. Both methods have their pros and cons but the text prompts would likely only take 2-3 hours per week for 8 weeks total to complete. The reason for the length is due to features being changed on a regular basis but my guess would be 20 hours of adding and editing data. Once the data is logged, if a feature is ever changed you would only need to edit the data related to that specific change.

In an ideal world the text files would be uploaded to the Title Managed Storage so that they could be adjusted on the fly.

Another non-intrusive suggestion that might help players learn what strategies are effective (such as the Long Shots in Steel Peel being discussed here):

More detailed post game and in game stats. Especially with regards to turrets. For example, it would be useful to know where my assist or kill is coming from when the game tells me during the game. I'm 80% certain I just see a message that says "assist" and some $. If instead it said "Long Shot: Assist +$15" or "Rock-it Kill: +$25" I would get in game feedback on whether (and how often) my turrets were making kills and assists. Not only would this give me long term strategic learning about general strategy and placement, it would give me in-game tactical knowledge about what was effective during a given game.

In addition, having a page or two of post-game stats that showed some of the following would be a great way for players to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of their strategy (and with respect to the current debate - such data would reveal to anyone looking that long shots weren't doing much good on Steel Peel):
- which turrets you built and how far they were upgraded
- how often they were destroyed
- how many kills/assists each type of turret made
- how much money each type of turret earned you over the course of the match
- how much money you spent on each type of turret

I assume these stats are all in the server and just need to be formatted for user perusal. From a style point of view, more stats fits well with the Sports theme of the game. You KNOW the Sniper drafted himself in all three of the Fantasy Combat leagues he plays

This thread is ridiculous. Build some longshots, notice that they fire at the wall, and LEARN that it's probably not a good idea to use them on the map.

I agree that the bigger issue is the ease in which turrets can be taken out by snipers but I think turrets are too easy to take out in nearly every situation, barring turrets guarded by both a support and firebase.

I believe Uber has 16 employees. Given that fact, this game is amazing, and with the short list of existing issues, a gap shot tutorial on steel peel is the last thing I want the guys working on.

Well, the simplest answer is that you already have a system in place to "teach" players (if they're paying attention.) The "protips" already tell us things such as "you can't overheal a jackbot xl" and "never pet burning dogs." Why not co-opt that system to teach things like "longshots may be drastically less effective on steel peel, think before placing them."

Another "teaching tool" that's already in place is pitgirl. When you shoot the money ball, she tells you not to shoot the money ball. How about when you place a longshot on steel peel, she chides the player for their dumb move?

The funny thing is that you can actually overheal a Jackbot XL. Anyway, the only problem with this idea is that it requires sound files instead of text files so the application would be much more intensive overall. Also, you want to allow players to learn on their own so you wouldn't say that something is bad or chastise them, instead you want to explain why doing something may not be as beneficial as another action and let them learn from making choices.