Funds for player upgrades

[norfenstein]

I think we've gotten far enough in the Resources thread (which has mostly been centered on build points) that we can split off discussions of player and team upgrades. Team upgrades I think need to wait, and for player upgrades we'll start talking about what those upgrades might actually be shortly, but first let's make some decisions about the resource for player upgrades: funds. Like I did with build points, I'm going to make a list of assertions that cover everything I can think of for funds, including some remaining open questions. Most of them should be largely uncontroversial after what we've discussed so far, but some of them haven't been discussed at all. But if no one has anything to add or disagrees with any of these, then this will be close to enough to start with.

1. Funds are a resource for purchasing player upgrades

2. Each player has their own supply of funds to spend on upgrades for themselves only. Funds can not be shared, given away, or otherwise spent on another player.

3. Players start (regardless of when they join a match) with zero funds. If they get disconnected, the server may remember their funds and restore them upon rejoining.

4. Players may only hold a certain amount of funds at any one time.

   1. What should this limit be (will depend on what upgrades actually cost)?

   2. Should the maximum include the cost of a player's current upgrades?

5. No player upgrades are permanent; when you die you lose all upgrades (you don't lose any unspent funds).

   1. Should you lose funds (possibly even going negative) for killing yourself, and/or your teammates?

6. No upgrade is permanently lost when used (everything will be refillable, but refills may require waiting).

7. Funds are earned from killing enemy players.

   1. Are all enemies worth the same amount when killed, or should value depend on the target's upgrades? On the killer's upgrades too? In what algorithm?

   2. Should killing any enemy structures earn funds? Maybe just spawns and/or BPEs?

   3. Should building or any other activity (e.g. healing teammates) earn funds somehow?

8. Funds are not earned (from any fundraising activity) when near friendly structures.

   1. What should this distance be? Should it be a hard limit or simply reduce earned funds the closer you are?

   2. Should only BPEs count for this? Only spawns? Both?

9. Upgrades are purchased before spawning and cannot be changed while alive.

   • Or should upgrades instead be exchangeable/refundable somehow while alive? Should this be different between the two teams like it is in Tremulous?

[Theyain]

I would like to suggest a simple system.

Payment via ranks.

What I envision is a system where each player has their own rank, separate from what ever class they intend to use. The rank system would determine how much credits/evos each player would gain per x amount of time. Lower ranks mean small amounts while going up in rank increases that amount. In order for a player to increase their rank they would need to make a certain amount of kills per rank.

For example, a player joins and starts out at rank 0. They would earn a very small amount until they go up a rank, which increases their payment amount. This could be done with just a single kill (they're moving from no rank to the first rank, so the amount should be rather small). After a while of playing the game, the player would receive a payment. They could either spend it or save it, up to the player.

This method would still award players with skill without hampering players who are without skill or are just plain unlucky. It would also make feeding less devastating to the team that feeds. Finally, it would greatly encourage players to go out and fight because they are not as hampered starting off and feeding is not as powerful.

There is a problem; if no checks are in placed to see if the player is idle, then such a system could be abused. As stated, this chance of abuse could be negated if the server checks to see if the player is idle. This could be done via how long the player has not moved their mouse and a check to see If they're in the same area & if they have not been shooting people on the other team or building.
There is also the much smaller issue of the cost of class stages needing to cost more to off set the regular form of income. Right now such a system may make the evolution process to fast.

We could also make it so that building a player sets down can also add to a player's kill score, but at a fraction of the amount. This potential aspect could cause internal competition, with builders removing other peoples constructs to ensure that only their building make kills. This could be negated by having the game set up so that players can not remove other players constructions. Or needs their permission. I am not a fan of any of these systems and these are just (albeit bad) suggestions. I suggested the idea originally because I feel that it may make players less likely to build bases and will hurt builders as they will be much less likely to gain ranks.

Another thought I had is that we will need to determine if we should go with the ranks being separated from the teams or joint.

That's my idea. It took me a couple of hours to right this, so I'm not sure if this is easily understandable.

[norfenstein]

It would also make feeding less devastating to the team that feeds. Finally, it would greatly encourage players to go out and fight because they are not as hampered starting off and feeding is not as powerful.

I agree that feeding (or, more specifically, having that strong disincentive to attack) is something we need to be very careful about minimizing, but it sounds like the approach you describe only obscures the penalty for feeding instead of reducing it. The problem with is that you would earn funds based on your rank, but your rank would still be dependent on how much you've killed. So it seems like this would only make feeding more indirect, but not any less prevalent.

Maybe your intention (please clarify) is that the time-based payments would act as a limiter to how much a player could earn, even for highly ranked players. A rank-and-time-based reward structure isn't required for this -- the extreme end would simply be not having individual upgrades for kills (which is something we discussed), but you could go part way and just not have individual upgrades be very powerful.

However, I'm confident that we can work around feeding without removing player upgrades or making them largely unimportant, and I think we should, because (as I argued previously) this RPG element of player progression is a big part of what makes the game fun.

I can think of two things we can do to make feeding inconsequential (I don't think we can or need to eliminate it entirely):

• Don't reward funds for kills made near your base (point 8 in the list above). This removes the feeding disincentive for attacking the enemy base (and, bonus, disincentivizes camping in your base). So the primary location of "feeding" would be when the enemy is in your base and keeps killing you. In that scenario you really don't have much choice but continue (trying) to defend, so it's not a problem.

• Make upgraded players earn less funds from kills. Getting an upgrade shouldn't make it easier to earn funds: in Tremulous, getting a tyrant generally meant you stayed tyrant for a long time; in Gloom, getting a stalker (the tyrant-equivalent) meant every 0-cost grunt charged you relentlessly and fearlessly because stalkers earned nothing for killing them. I think we can generalize this so that decked-out players would have less reason to farm naked enemies, and said-naked players would have less reason to not be aggressive.

Summary - I don't see the advantages a "salary" system has over directly rewarding players for kills as outlined at the top of this thread. I believe feeding can be satisfactorily mitigated in other ways.

[Anomalous]

Don't reward funds for kills made near your base (point 8 in the list above). This removes the feeding disincentive for attacking the enemy base (and, bonus, disincentivizes camping in your base). […]

Doable. We had a patch which provides extra funds for killing the enemy in their basecampers: that could be brought back and adapted.

Make upgraded players earn less funds from kills. Getting an upgrade shouldn't make it easier to earn funds: in Tremulous, getting a tyrant generally meant you stayed tyrant for a long time; in Gloom, getting a stalker (the tyrant-equivalent) meant every 0-cost grunt charged you relentlessly and fearlessly because stalkers earned nothing for killing them. […]

Something like… bsuit+luci+grenade gets 50% of what rifle gets? Linear scaling…? (Not sure that linear's right, given the power of shotguns and painsaws when used properly.)

[Dracone]

I'll keep my input on this a bit broad and just say that if anything, keep actual fund "bonuses" out; keep things base value or less under appropriate conditions (like the mismatch scenarios mentioned).

I think that Norfenstein's on the right track with "disincentivizing" camping. If you're going to drive the gameplay through influencing the advancement side of things (i.e. buying new things) you're going to be better off using negatives that encourage players NOT to do certain undesirable activities. Bonuses large enough to give enough incentive to not camp would likely need to be pretty high and would hold the potential of creating more of the same "situational bias" that we saw so much of in GPP, which also obligates me to add another general point about how this area of the game should be worked on under the ideology that doubling up on gameplay changes (like if you added the aforementioned penalties at the same time you added bonuses) can hold a high risk of polarizing the game's "power struggle."

[Ishq]

I believe any kill-class should give you the same reward no matter your class/upgrades. The issue in Tremulous is that the higher classes are excellent killers, but weak against base campers. The solution is not to discourage higher classes by making them easily counterable, but instead design them so that they are better basekillers. Killing bases needs to have a bigger incentive than killwhoring.

[norfenstein]

I believe any kill-class should give you the same reward no matter your class/upgrades.

So you don't mind that getting upgrades would make it easier to get more upgrades? Because just emphasizing base-killing power isn't enough: unless upgrades only improved base-killing ability and did nothing to make killing players easier then a higher class or better equipment would still make it easier to farm weaker enemies. I think we'll have a lot more flexibility in designing upgrades if we decide that getting an upgrade shouldn't make it easier to keep that upgrade, i.e. the most powerful upgrades would have to be a lot closer in power to having no upgrades at all if we have to balance for how much easier they would make earning funds. I think your capacity to generate funds should remain mostly constant (relative to your skill), with upgrades only improving your capacity to kill enemies and their bases.

[Ishq]

Oh no, I do agree that higher upgrades should make base killing easier and that the higher upgrades should have strengths and weaknesses. What I disagree with is designing an upgrade/class that doesn't get any reward for killing another upgrade/class. It would be far better if said upgrade/class had a lot of difficulty killing another class. For instance, if a certain classes's slow rate of attack made it difficult to keep up with and attack another class due to its speed.

[norfenstein]

It would be far better if said upgrade/class had a lot of difficulty killing another class. For instance, if a certain classes's slow rate of attack made it difficult to keep up with and attack another class due to its speed.

We certainly want that kind of rock-paper-scissors balance between specific classes, but unless "upgrades" won't make players stronger overall (just different), then the problem still exists. A battlesuit witih a lucifer cannon might have a hard time killing a dretch because its attacks are slow and the dretch is fast (as in your example), but the lucisuit is still inarguably the better class. An unarmored human with a lucifer cannon would have a much harder time, and it's an option for us to design Unvanquished like that: "upgrades" that wouldn't make you generally better, just change what you're good and bad at.

But I had been assuming we wanted upgrades to be a strong mix* of "vertical" (strictly better) and "horizontal" (situationally better and worse). And with any amount of "vertical" upgrades (even if just having so many "horizontal" upgrades ends up making you better overall) there exists the problem of funds being easier to get the more of them you've spent on upgrades, which I think is something we should avoid.

*As usual, I'm thinking of Gloom. To use just one example, the exterminator cost 4 frags and the stinger cost 3 frags. Over the lifetime of each, an exterminator would probably get more kills and destroy more of the enemy base than a stinger would, but in a fight between them an exterminator would never win because its only weapon does no damage to stingers.

[Ishq]

I suppose we agree on the essence of the topic. Maybe it is just your gloom examples I dislike. I dislike the notion that one class is by design completely ineffective to another. To go back to your example, an extremely skilled exterminator should be able to defeat a stinger. It is important to make classes fun to play, but we also have to make them fun to play against. Playing against a class you are useless against is no fun.