MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unlocking

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

The metagame of Planetary Annihilation is the Galactic War, not some obscure set of artificial restrictions and unlocks. He is not against the Galactic War .

StarCraft I's multiplayer is still popular and was still insanely popular before II's release. And that game was released 14 years ago.

Also it is surprising that you bring up World of Tanks as a positive example of your "system". It's actually a pretty negative one, driving away new players because they have no chance, unless they throw a lot of money into the game.

And multiplayer should offer everything as well. A good matchmaking system is one answer to your concerns.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Dude, I'm not enemy of metagame. I play Eve Online - I love metagame.

I just think grinding is a horribly bad thing for an RTS.

I would absolutely explode my pants for a Galactic War metagame. So much so that if there's enough competent coders interested enough to help, I'll make it.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

You don't have to make it... Uber is .

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Anything that gives a long-term goal is fine. Both unit unlocking and an all-out epic, intergalactic Core vs Arm war ]:->

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Then everything is well . Galactic War is definitely something they want to make. Whether they'll have it available at release or later on at all still remains to be seen.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Good metagame: persistent campaigns [galactic war]

Bad metagame: locked items

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

I am so glad that I have made this thread. Now I know precisely what I want, and I think that you guys maybe want it as well.

p.s. I still think that the new players should unlock the units to learn the ropes, but let us put that aside. I am really happy that we all agree that there should be a long-term goal =)

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

I sincerely hope they do, but I haven't yet seen any mention from them about it.

That said, I'd like GW to be more single-shard 24/7 uptime than what Boneyards had. None of the "everyone arrives at the same time, and the survivors leave automagically after the villains are vanquished" business.

I'd make players jump from system to system to get to the fight they wanted (preferably battling the entire time). How they'd jump from system to system is something I haven't worked out yet. On a technical level, this would mean joining and leaving servers that are already going. And since you're doing that; you're literally always playing (so are your opponents so be careful).

But for anything good and fun to happen like this, you'd certainly need a system of saying "we own this star, its planets, and their moons, and you'll have to fight us off them if you want them."

I'm fairly biased towards Eve's sovereignty mechanics. So it'd be "find the enemy's big-expensive-something, blow it up, and build your team's own one on top of the smouldering ashes."

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Because there's no other purpose to playing the game. I mean, if I was steamrolling everyone with Build X, then it's vital that everyone can use Build X. Because that's how they compete with me. That's how you ensure that when the game loads, they have a chance to win which is directly proportional to their skill at the game. Else, it just becomes pre-determined. I win because I have Build X and you don't. GG. Game over. Where's the strategy in that? None.

You can switch races after any game. Using your opponents to find a counter is an excellent idea. If you play Terran and your Zerg opponents keep Roach Rushing you, then pick Zerg, do a Roach Rush, and learn from the Terrans you encounter who keep building one marauder in a bunker and repairing it. Oh hey, *that's* how you counter Roach Rush.

Their "success" is "Pay to win". Not something I wish for PA to emulate.

I have to agree. If this "feature" is introduced, I'd have to get out of the game immediately. This is directly counter to the most fundamental concepts of a strategy game.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

I think that manual travelling may cause the game to stall in the end phase, as the already build base and resources might be transported among the bases. This is a risk that has to be considered.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

I just assumed that old bases would be left behind (and probably self destruct) when the respective commander left.

Now that you mention it; I should put more thought into that part of it, and what happens when fifty players all pile into one solar system (yes, that fight would be epic, but it might overload things).

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Well sir... have a look at that!

Green=confirmed ^ ^

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Also, there'd be no end-phase. It'd be forever an ebb and flow of people arriving, building, and dying. Defenders have a rather sizable advantage though.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Then I'll gladly point you to this summary: viewtopic.php?p=509657#p509657 (last part of that post). Also shame on you for not reading at least the whole interview and preview from PC Gamer! :Þ (Which were both linked in the GPG thread as well.)

The 'confirmed status' has to be taken with a grain of salt. In many cases these are things the devs have been stated they want to do, but there is no guarantee that this will definitely be possible in the end. Technically that may be the case for all the confirmed things, since it's a very early stage of the game

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

I'm only defending unlocks in the context of Zero-K and saying that it works there. I just want to say it possible that unlocks could work in PA aswell.

There are several other reasons to play the game. Maybe not for you.

Then you could deploy a counter to Build X or if there aren't any good counters against Build X maybe it needs to nerfed because it makes the metagame shallow.

It's like saying that you are is predestined to lose just because you don't have a stealthfield or a Galactic Colussus unlocked. Both units could be great in SupCom but they are not used every game and trying to deploy a strategy that includes them might just fail because the game never progress to the point that they are useful.

And you can unlock the units that the enemy used and try his tactic in the next game. Is that so much different than changing race?

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

What kind of unlocks does Zero-K use?

You can't just unlock it, that's 0ritfx point. Units will be unlocked for you gradually as you play the game more often, by some measurement in which you may also be able invest real money. As long as the unit is locked for you, you are stuck with not being able to use that tactic.

What's additionally silly: 0ritfx wants this to gradually introduce a player to the game, in order to remove certain traps and pitfalls. This makes no sense, because if other players are able to use a certain unit against you, this all gets moot. You are then forced to learn how to counter it with what is at your disposal, which also means that you need to know what said unit actually is capable off. Which in turn cancels the whole "being slowly introduced" mechanic.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

There are like 10 factories with different unit lineups. Some factories like the "Heavy tank"-factory are harder to play and is therefore locked. In Zero-K there isn't any techtree and no unit is supposed to simply be a better version of another. Many expensive units are also locked as to prevent newbies from making a Goliath or Detriment/Krogoth right of the bat without enough resources. Special units like Capture car(fragile and expensive), storage(players should spend their metal rather than saving it) and Scythe(cloaked melee raider which requires alot of micro to use effectively) are also locked.
Most superweapons are locked as newbies usually tend to make them prematurely when conventional units would do much better.

Then you have the commander upgrades which cost alot of ingame metal and energy to obtain. It lets you gradually upgrade your commander and create a unique unit that can be useful but there are anti-heavy units which can counter an unsupported commander pretty easily.

I think that unlocks should be cheap and fast to obtain by playing the game. In Zero-K it is best to unlock most units first, maybe a superweapon for FFA and then you can customize your commander if you wish. After you have played 5 games or so all factories can be unlocked. 20 games all units in the factories can be unlocked. 40 games and propably all superweapons can be unlocked. 80 games and you should be able to make all combinations of commanders. After that there isn't anymore to unlock. I guess you could add in visual stuff...

I think short tutorials in combination with unlocking stuff would be best rather than just grinding for Exp. Say that you play a mission on 5-15 minutes and have to use the stealthfield for example to win the mission. After the game you get exerience points and that unit.
That could be a good way to introduce people and soften the learning curve if PA gets alot of different units and mechanics.
Or if you could unlock units by earning achivements in sandbox by dealing damage with said units or scouting out a large area of the enemy base with a special spy satellite.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

i said "commander upgrades" but i mean SupCom1 style upgrades, in a single game i should be able to upgrade my commander to become more powerfull/more resilliant/faster builder, but in a metagame type? NOOOOO NO NO NONO NOOOOOOOO

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

It is the basis for all competitive play- at any level.

That's not accurate. For example, how could you possibly devise a counter to Build X? You can't try it against your friends. You can't have your friends try it against you. You can't play it against people online and learn from their counters. Not being able to play Build X yourself automatically pre-determines that you will basically never be able to counter it. And there is no way in hell that the devs could possibly manage every single Build X that ever comes up in the lifetime of the game. The way that games like Starcraft 2 remain balanced is that the players come up with the counter-strategies. You can't just nerf every build that happens to be the best this month. But you've turned any build that happens to be the best this month into the build that happens to be the best this decade, because no player can create a build that can counter it.

Not to mention the idea that perhaps Build X is simply one variant on a whole class of builds. For example, in Starcraft 2 on most maps and matchups, people fast expand. If you banned fast expanding for one player, they'd be crippled- but there's no way you could better the game by nerfing fast expanding, and if you fast expand, you can then go into virtually any build you want and there's no reason to nerf fast expand.

Actually, in SupCom, I rose very high on the initial ladder beating players who were much better than me by whoring stealth TML. And in FA, a GC is a pretty critical unit for Aeon. And, well, let's just say that you can't arbitrarily decide at development time which units would turn out to be the most critical ones when the players get their hands on them. There's no way Uber could possibly predict this accurately enough to not end up making Zerglings or Marines an unlock. Also, if they're rarely used, why justify the development cost?

Yes. Because you're not talking about playing several games- you're talking about guaranteed, always being able to change race, and two, the opponent does not play two races at once. He only ever plays one race. You can find the Koreans who play your race and copy their strategies. But in this system, you can't, because that Korean used a unit you haven't unlocked- oh ****! Now you're screwed.

It's perfectly viable to only ever learn to play one race, because you simply trade disadvantages and advantages. You're not talking about just unlocking additional advantages, which are nothing but advantageous.

Re: MMO Aspects such as levelling commander skills and unloc

Maybe the entire topic is a bit flawed as there are at least 2 ways to look at this.

For me, MMO aspects are fine, AS LONG as they stay within one play session, in other words you have to level up again the next time you play.

If they carry over between games I will add myself to the big NO team.