MP Imbalance Solutions: No Play Data. What's the point?

[RBL-4NiK8r]

Well most of my changes were what I thought of as common sense changes, and alot of it was on the VTOLS that I felt were useless in game. Take the Cluster Bombs in real life they have hundreds of bomblets that are released over a vast area, Pumpkin Dev had one bomb and really never learned what they could do by thinking outside the box. Just by taking that weapon that, say had a bomb doing 500 damage. You change that to 50 bombs doing 10 damage, here's the big key, I changed the accuracy to 10 or 20% so the target may not get hit much, but everything around it would, and here I added splash damage of 20 or so and 1 second burn time but no damage that was just for eye candy.

The other problem was by the time you get vtols the Twin MG, Minipods, Light Cannon are all but pointless to make for anything, because by then you are farther along in the tech tree to go back to what I call dead tech. Another thing that Pumpkin never thought of. Also RJ MP game was well ahead of the SP game at the time this went retail, the beta of this was a big hit on Mplayer you used to have hundreds if not over a thousand or so in the WZ Lobby 24/7 back at the time of beta and after retail.


The key problem you have in balance in this game that you don't in other games is that its all the same, you don't have any factions or other sides. Look at Earth 2150 or C&C, or Kohan 1 & 2 heck even Maelstrom had more balance in it and that game sucked balls, but it was fun beta testing none the less.



Kohan had General's with different skills or bonuses to the troops, something this game could never do, but that's why so many others lived longer then this game and worked, oh and I didn't even get into StarCraft because you can still find people playing that over in Korea and here why is that ?



Pumpkin never really thought out T3 and as it was they were not ready for the MP game crowd on Mplayer and it was a very big hit there, BUT it was also at the birth of the FPS and Everquest the summer of 99 changed the gaming world in so many way. Oh and I think we all know where the money went to.

The only way to balance this game would be to limit unit types to 10 and drop the unit numbers down to 5O and base defense to 20 of one type of weapon then you just might get the feel of balance, till then this game will always be about the masses and he who has the masses wins, and that goes for both Ripps or Tanks.

4nE

[aubergine]

The factions idea (and related unique bonuses) is interesting.

Player factions could be implemented via research branches - so very early in the game the player has to research a particular faction and that then limits what bits of the research tree they see (and most probably makes the other factions "obsolete" thus preventing player researching more than one faction).

Via rules.js script you could pre-define player factions, or hide certain factions, etc.

[Rman Virgil]

The factions idea (and related unique bonuses) is interesting.

Player factions could be implemented via research branches - so very early in the game the player has to research a particular faction and that then limits what bits of the research tree they see (and most probably makes the other factions "obsolete" thus preventing player researching more than one faction).

Via rules.js script you could pre-define player factions, or hide certain factions, etc.

Original, viable, generative, expansive and much fun, me thinks.

.

[aubergine]

I realised that due to techs being shared amongst allies, the factions thing would have much less impact because first person in an alliance to research a faction basically sets that faction for whole alliance. More info here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9493&start=150#p105970

[Rman Virgil]

I realised that due to techs being shared amongst allies, the factions thing would have much less impact because first person in an alliance to research a faction basically sets that faction for whole alliance. More info here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9493&start=150#p105970

True for team / clan.... as its played with the current mind set.

But not for FFA.

AND...off the top of my head... re-concieved Team / Clan play on 8 player maps, for example.

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[aubergine]

True, the factions thing could certainly be implemented and tire-kicked for FFA. But for team play I think we'd need some changes to the C++ code to allow certain techs (defined by stats data associated with the tech) not to be shared with allies.

[Rman Virgil]

True, the factions thing could certainly be implemented and tire-kicked for FFA. But for team play I think we'd need some changes to the C++ code to allow certain techs (defined by stats data associated with the tech) not to be shared with allies.

Yup.

BTW... I havn't looked at this source in a long time - WZ was created entirely in C.... what / how much has been migrated to C++..?

.

[zydonk]

The only way to balance this game would be to limit unit types to 10 and drop the unit numbers down to 5O and base defense to 20 of one type of weapon then you just might get the feel of balance, till then this game will always be about the masses and he who has the masses wins, and that goes for both Ripps or Tanks.

4nE

If I were to advise on something I know little or nothing about, I would make two interrelated suggestions re mp balancing.

One. Strip out the research tree. Do mp bouts ever get to T3, for instance? Make mp specific to one of the research stages, T1/T2/T3 and balance within that level.

Two. Make mods weapon specific, so that bouts can be cannon specific, or rocket etc. After all, mp is really arcade play and so gameplay should be reduced to a narrow range of weaponry and terrain.

Factioning changes nothing - a faction is in effect a single player. Different armies - as in Earth 2150 - would change nothing in essence, just different skins for the same basic unit.

You have to realise that WZ is great because of what it is, warts and all. Turning it into another game will only do just that - make it something other than WZ.

Most of all, mp is not sp over the net - it is a different beast altogether. And it should be remembered that WZ is essentially a sp game, that's where its greatness lies...

[aubergine]

BTW... I havn't looked at this source in a long time - WZ was created entirely in C.... what / how much has been migrated to C++..?

Source code stats (look at the Ohloh section towards bottom of page)

[aubergine]

Factioning changes nothing - a faction is in effect a single player. Different armies - as in Earth 2150 - would change nothing in essence, just different skins for the same basic unit.

While the majority of research tech would be available to all factions, each faction would have it's own unique bonus techs/weapons/etc unique to them. So it's not jsut different skins for units, it's completely unique techs/weapons/etc.

[Rman Virgil]

BTW... I havn't looked at this source in a long time - WZ was created entirely in C.... what / how much has been migrated to C++..?

Source code stats (look at the Ohloh section towards bottom of page)

Thanks. That was truely illuminating.

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[cybersphinx]

BTW... I havn't looked at this source in a long time - WZ was created entirely in C.... what / how much has been migrated to C++..?

Source code stats (look at the Ohloh section towards bottom of page)

The automatic statistics don't tell everything though. The complete game is compiled as C++ since some time, but most of the code is still the same C-style code it was before.

[Iluvalar]

If we could have data for lot of people during a decent time on how much frequently they researched each topic, it might be very helpful to tune the balance. indeed.

[Rman Virgil]

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BTW... I havn't looked at this source in a long time - WZ was created entirely in C.... what / how much has been migrated to C++..?

Source code stats (look at the Ohloh section towards bottom of page)

The automatic statistics don't tell everything though. The complete game is compiled as C++ since some time, but most of the code is still the same C-style code it was before.

When I saw those stats I was like - "WTF, where the hell have you been, Rman.... Oh well guess I missed a bundle."

Now it makes more sense to my remembered experience of this that and the other. Pheew.

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[aubergine]

If we could have data for lot of people during a decent time on how much frequently they researched each topic, it might be very helpful to tune the balance. indeed.

Totally agree with this! It would also make it much more obvious where time needs to be spent improving things, currently there is too much guess work when making any decision.

If anonymous stats could be gathered (and optional at player's choice of course) it would almost certainly show lots of surprising things that we all are currently unaware of.

For example - how many people are playing the game? What proportion are skirmish vs. campaign vs. multiplayer. What techs are never used, which are over-used, etc. I would assume (but without data no way to confirm) that many players are just playing the game in very basic way.