We talked about some gameplay ideas on IRC again today. I figured I'd post them here for feedback. This is from #unvanquished-dev.
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<Norfenstein> also thinking through a variation on free upgrades
<kharnov> oooh
<kharnov> people would definitely be interested in that
<Norfenstein> problem with free upgrades is that every upgrade has to be balanced assuming a constant stream of people rushing with it
<Norfenstein> so you can't have things like Gloom's kamikaze, which is only balanced because it costs 2 frags
<Norfenstein> I was just thinking maybe time-limiting upgrades would be enough, and that's basically equivalent to reducing the free fund time period (and not giving funds for anything else anymore)
<kharnov> what do you mean by time-limiting upgrades
<Norfenstein> if your tyrant dies in 5 seconds you can't go tyrant again for a little while
<kharnov> oh yeah
<Norfenstein> (or another high-value class)
<Norfenstein> haven't thought it all the way through yet
<kharnov> i'd like to see that
<Norfenstein> but it'd be an easy change if it ends up making sense
<`Ishq> I also had a different direciton wrt free upgrades.
<`Ishq> All the base classes are free
<`Ishq> But perks cost money
<`Ishq> And the perks will define how you use the classes
<`Ishq> For instance electricity is a perk
<`Ishq> Barbs can be a perk
<`Ishq> Pounce for lower classes can be a perk
<`Ishq> Kamikazi can be a perk too
<`Ishq> *kamikaze
<`Ishq> Might also need some of norf's suggestions wrt to time limiting though
<Norfenstein> structurally, that'd be equivalent to how unv/trem work
<`Ishq> With a little more flexibility
<Norfenstein> yea
<`Ishq> And the potential to have different adv classes
<`Ishq> "adv"
<`Ishq> And potentially classes with multiple perks
<kharnov> so get rid of advanced aliens and just have perks?
<`Ishq> Whether this added dimension is more fun is unknown though
<`Ishq> This is Viech's idea basically
<kharnov> how would perks work
<`Ishq> What I propsed above
<kharnov> how would they be represented
<kharnov> do humans get perks?
<`Ishq> Perks are addtional abilities that aliens get. I'm sure we'll have some way of identifiying them. Texture changes or something idk.
<`Ishq> Humans wouldn't get perks.
<kharnov> they should be shown similar to how the human inventory is shown, then
<kharnov> little icons
<`Ishq> Sure.
<`Ishq> That doesn't matter as much
<`Ishq> What the humans see is more important
<kharnov> perhaps you buy them from the same menu type as the armory
<Norfenstein> I'm more focused on finding the structural system that we like best, because we can't start designing classes/upgrades/perks/fun things until we know what the web of balance will look like
<`Ishq> True
<kharnov> okay, i can get behind that
<kharnov> you are the game designer here
<Norfenstein> regarding upgrades in general: gloom was basically just complicated team fortress; tremulous gated upgrades with stages; and unvanquished has a tug-of-war thing going on with momentum (which boils down to gating things with a lot of little stages)
<kharnov> that's a pretty concise way of putting it
<Norfenstein> I'm worried that more gates means more "match-ups" (to use a fighting game term), which can exponentially increase what you have to balance
<kharnov> what do you propose to resolve that
<Norfenstein> but it might be okay if stages just give you more options without making you stronger
<kharnov> oh
<kharnov> yes
<Norfenstein> hence you'd need something like funds or cooldowns so you could have strong things at all levels
<kharnov> so more momentum = more options, but to get stronger, you have to actually be good at the game and get perks or whatever by killing things?
<Norfenstein> with funds you'd have to be good; with cooldowns you'd just have to wait if you die too soon
<kharnov> also, if all forms are available at the start, can we remove the whole concept of transitioning between forms and just lock you into whatever you spawned with? you would have a spawn delay based on the form you picked, with dretch being fastest and tyrant slowest
<Norfenstein> I don't want to make people sit in spectator while waiting forever to spawn, it should be you spawn as something weaker and try to stay alive a little longer for your next big upgrade
<kharnov> you could remove the general spawn delay entirely and have dretches spawn very quickly
<kharnov> 1-3s delay between dretches, 10-20s between tyrants or whatever
<Norfenstein> yea, though you might want to have the general spawn delay anyway so there'd be a reason to have more spawns
<Norfenstein> or maybe not, dunno
<kharnov> why not pick where you want to spawn
<kharnov> then you'd have a reason to put spawns in all sorts of places
<kharnov> and you could react to threats better
<Norfenstein> yea, location would be the difference
<kharnov> you could pick them off the minimap, or cycle between them while spectating
<kharnov> a resulting tactic of that would be aliens sneaking in a cluster of eggs in a hidden area near a human base, and then spawning their big aliens there
<kharnov> of course you'd have to get a granger there in the first place and go undetected while it's all building
<kharnov> which would severely punish dumb humans that don't go and scout around their base
<kharnov> would also help break ties
<kharnov> good luck turtling in your base all game when the aliens can send wave after wave of big shit at you
<Norfenstein> might be possible to make higher stages seem stronger by making the things in them especially good at countering the enemies things from one level lower
<Norfenstein> so stage 1 is rock, stage 2 is paper, stage 3 is scissors, or something
<kharnov> i like the sound of that
<kharnov> though
<kharnov> at this point i think "tier" would be a better term than "stage"
<kharnov> "stage" is too reminiscent of the hard stages of tremulous
<kharnov> plus it's one less letter in length
<Norfenstein> clearly superior
<kharnov> and it sounds appropriately MMO-y
<Norfenstein> if we do do rock-paper-scissors tiers, maybe the thing to start with is to NOT have any tiers and just balance everything together, and then later decide when things should be unlocked
<Norfenstein> might be a good idea anyway if there'd be a point in the game in which everything is unlocked
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<Norfenstein> you guys! what if tier = number of perks/upgrades/items you could equip?!
<`Ishq> Potentially
<Norfenstein> then we'd be free to have any unlock schedule we wanted (1: everything unlocked from the start, 2: a fixed unlock order we decide on, or 3: every game a few RANDOM perks unlock at every tier)
<M-TimePath> I like that idea
<M-TimePath> Unlock slots
<`Ishq> Tier 3 = exploding goons with barbs and electricity
<Norfenstein> YES
<`Ishq> Sounds fun
<Norfenstein> you'd still have to pay for perks (with either credits or a cooldown if you die too early)
<`Ishq> Yeah, somehow
<`Ishq> Let's get these ideas down and then priortize them
<`Ishq> #1 priority is to improve spiker
<`Ishq> And then we can let these other ideas trickle in
<`Ishq> This is definitely an idea to test out
<Norfenstein> and we'd be free to design some "perks" with flaws built-in (more health but bigger hitbox, or whatever) that would have lower costs
<`Ishq> Right
<`Ishq> And perks that help break the building advantages human maintain until aliens get adv goon
<`Ishq> But, I think build points already help reduce a lot of that turtle building
<Norfenstein> I have a list a short list of things to try in the short term
<Norfenstein> -a list
<`Ishq> Yep awesome
<Norfenstein> simplest: remove reactor -_-
<`Ishq> Buttt the beautiful model :(
<Norfenstein> no mercy when it comes to editing!
<`Ishq> haha
<`Ishq> But why bother removing the RC
<`Ishq> It already does nothing
<Norfenstein> people have already started using it as a free barricade :\
<`Ishq> LOL
<`Ishq> Yeah, that was funny
<`Ishq> Problem is, it will be built by default
<`Ishq> I guess we can have the RC/OM blow up on map start
<`Ishq> And then disable it
<Norfenstein> it's not too important, if there's not a simple way to get rid of it
<Norfenstein> I'd also like drills/leeches to not cost anything, since it sucks to have a complete base and want to expand but have to take something down just to get more BP
<Norfenstein> maybe just forbid building them where efficiency is less than some%
<`Ishq> Could be interesting
<Norfenstein> shouldn't be a major change, just removing an irritant
<`Ishq> Yeah probably
<Norfenstein> if I can figure out the best way to do sort-of-free upgrades, we should try that this Sunday too
<Norfenstein> I'd consider that the highest priority
<`Ishq> ok
<Norfenstein> or, I don't know, maybe not since the cooldown thing is mostly just another way to credits
<Norfenstein> but it should be an easy change
<`Ishq> Not really
<`Ishq> Cool down is not akin to credits since you can die and get kills really fast and maintain
<`Ishq> And maintain your evolution stuff
<`Ishq> But with a cool down
<Norfenstein> they serve the same purpose
<Norfenstein> is what I mean
<`Ishq> I suppose, though a cooldown is more harsh
<Norfenstein> eh, not how I'm envisioning it
<`Ishq> Maybe
<`Ishq> Just my first thought when I thought of a cooldown
<Norfenstein> I'm thinking your "cooldown" would coincide with you being alive, so you'd only notice it if you died quickly (obviously, "quickly" would be a longer time for more valuable loadouts)
<Norfenstein> basically: turn buying-with-funds back on, disable getting funds from anything but the free fund timer thing, and greatly reduce the free fund interval time
<Norfenstein> a hacky way to do "cooldown"
<`Ishq> Perhaps. Just consider the case where you spawn, get 5 kills, and then die really fast
<`Ishq> You can respawn as rant
<`Ishq> However with an X sec cooldown, that is no longer the case, depending on X
<Norfenstein> oh yes, it'd be worse in that case
<`Ishq> brb getting water
<Norfenstein> the reason I came up with it was just so that you couldn't have a steady stream of high-value loadouts
<Norfenstein> so you can't just rush mara after mara into a turret grinder
<Norfenstein> (but you COULD do that with dretches, more or less)
<Norfenstein> but anyway, the point was, we could move forward with testing using either this or funds-as-usual, I think
<`Ishq> Oh norf
<`Ishq> Something interesting that we found out during one of our dev tests:
<`Ishq> We had toyed with the idea of a "minimum wage" proportional to your momentum
<`Ishq> And you basically got a fixed amount of evos on spawn based on team mometnum
<`Ishq> And that ran into the problem we saw with free upgrades
<`Ishq> Immediate rushing as mara or whatever else people could affort
<`Ishq> afford
<`Ishq> Perhaps we could combine that with what we have
<`Ishq> A cooldown for the mininmum wage
<`Ishq> *minimum
<`Ishq> but evolution with evos
<Norfenstein> to be clear, I think free upgrades, or that CAN be balanced, it's just that you'd be restricted in what you could add to the game if you wanted it to be fair
<`Ishq> I agree
<`Ishq> I think there are multiple ways we can attack this
<`Ishq> But, out of curiosity, what do you think we accomplish with free upgrades?
<Norfenstein> I was trying to think of an answer to that actually; I think people liked it just because it was fun/novel
<`Ishq> So for me:
<`Ishq> Free upgrades is a way to promote teamwork and aggressive play. People are afraid of dying so they play conservatively to preserve their credits/evos.
<`Ishq> If that is not a factor, they play much more aggressively.
<Norfenstein> yea, that was the best reason I could come up with too
<`Ishq> A metric that use for "fun" is the number of skirmishes outside both teams' bases
<Norfenstein> I like that upgrades are a team-wide goal, but I'm not sure why I like that
<`Ishq> And aggressive play helps that
<Norfenstein> honestly I'm not sure if I like it all just because it's a different system than what I've played with for... uh, like 17 years
<`Ishq> I can say that I enjoyed it on aliens. It was a lot of fun for me to be able to rush continuously.
<`Ishq> I can also say that because of that, there was less strategy and team communication. Each person could be their own one man army
<`Ishq> On humans, i was really frustrated
<`Ishq> I couldn't leave my base effectively
<`Ishq> If I met a dretch, I was basially dead
<`Ishq> dretch with poison*
<`Ishq> or any alien with poison for that matter
<`Ishq> So me not being able to leave my base coupled with aliens continuously rushing my base
<`Ishq> Made it feel overwhelming and doomed
<Norfenstein> which is kind of weird, being afraid of dretches with free upgrades on but not with it off, but I kind of felt the same way (and didn't last Sunday with free upgrades off)
<Norfenstein> I'm hoping the cooldown idea I'm going to try to find time on Saturday to implement will be the best of both systems
<Norfenstein> are you still thinking about Urban Terror's stamina system and sliding and ledge-climbing?
<Norfenstein> I don't remember what was different about it, but I didn't mind UrT's stamina while not liking Trem's
<`Ishq> I don't know so much aobut stamina
<`Ishq> Definitely exotic movement
<`Ishq> Ledge climbing is less useful to me tbh, but sliding, wall jumping, and other fancy movement types are definitely planned.
<`Ishq> Any thing to break the monotonous backtracking dodge humans are forced to use.
<Norfenstein> I think ledge-climbing is neat
<`Ishq> Also, the fear of dretch is less for dying, but more of "losing time"
<`Ishq> Like, you'r ehalf way to their base, and by the time you get anywhere close, you have 10hp
<`Ishq> It would best if you could get close with full health and medkit
<`Ishq> So you can actually inflict damage
<`Ishq> ledge climbing can be neat, I suppose. Especially when coupled with walljumping
<`Ishq> UrT jump maps were insane
<Norfenstein> might break our maps, but THAT'S OKAY
<`Ishq> nah, would just allow future mappers to be more creative
<`Ishq> Also, with jetpack, ledge jumping's advantage to reach places is kinda negated
<`Ishq> I can't imagine how exotic movement can break any maps
<`Ishq> Since everything is accessible to anyone with wall climb, pounce, and jetpack
<Norfenstein> I guess that's true, would just be rare places where humans could access a little earlier, or have better routes through a map
<`Ishq> Yep