Unvanquished Forum

2.1.1 Abrupt stage changes wrote:

One problem of the current stage system lies in the abruptness of stage traversions. For a number of items, we found that they are too powerful for one stage but should be available sooner than the next higher stage. This is especially problematic for items that are necessary to continue the team progress that would ultimately lead to reaching the next stage. As an example, the helmet is an item that should not be given to a human in the first minute of a match but as soon as the alien team has a number of dragoons they are able to lock the humans into their base, effectively preventing them from making the progress that would lead to the helmet being unlocked. While this specific problem certainly requires additional treatment that is outside the scope of the core gameplay, it illustrates the fact that having a low number of stages will lead to suboptimal decisions regarding the availability of an item.

Ishq wrote:

I think that the issue with abrupt stage changes can be attributed to the naïve method of rewarding confidence. Mainly, this abrupt change occurs when a team destroys some forward, or some undefended group of buildables. Confidence earned should be directly proportional to the risk of inducing that event, and generally, I don't think that's the case in the current system. For instance, destroying an undefended base (ie, remnants of a base move) gives a ton of confidence, and there really isn't a good way to removing that base without a significant confidence drop. (Yes, I realize that Viech talks about something completely different in this section, but I feel this is important, and also relevant to the title, so I'll leave it here).

Instead of abruptly dropping your stage, perhaps allow for 30-60 seconds with a visible warning that your team is about to drop? It would give you some added time to get things back together, or at least make you aware that you're about to stage down. Currently, there isn't a very good visible indicator of that. A lot of times, I've just found myself staged down out of nowhere and completely screwed.

On the other hand, wouldn't we get a lot of mileage out of removing the stage system altogether and adding in something along the lines of personal upgrade paths?

kharnov wrote:

On the other hand, wouldn't we get a lot of mileage out of removing the stage system altogether and adding in something along the lines of personal upgrade paths?

My proposed solution 2.1.1.1 goes in that direction – I'd like to dissipate stages for a start. This will allow us to test new approaches such as personal or team-wide flexible upgrade pathes more easily.