Retaining experience upon death

Ideas and suggestions for how to improve the Warzone 2100 base game only. Ideas for mods go in Mapping/Modding instead. Read sticky posts first!
Post Reply
User avatar
Zarel
Elite
Elite
Posts: 5770
Joined: 03 Jan 2008, 23:35
Location: Minnesota, USA
Contact:

Retaining experience upon death

Post by Zarel »

This off-topic conversation was split from Re: Confusion - Units are Manned or Unmanned?
Kamaze wrote:Well, if they would be fully remote controlled, then the cotrolling guys should gather and save experience even when the droids die ;)
This is one of the things I want to implement, mind you. Would make people less likely to scream in anguish whenever Nexus scourges take out one of their experienced units in one hit.

Sure, you can say "just throw inexperienced units at Nexus", but 1. that defeats the purpose of experience in the first place, and 2. it's too much micromanagement for my tastes.
User avatar
JDW
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1669
Joined: 18 May 2010, 20:44

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by JDW »

Zarel wrote:
Kamaze wrote:Well, if they would be fully remote controlled, then the cotrolling guys should gather and save experience even when the droids die ;)
This is one of the things I want to implement, mind you. Would make people less likely to scream in anguish whenever Nexus scourges take out one of their experienced units in one hit.
That would mean taking away a little sense of loss from the game. Then nobody would be careful when it comes to planning strategies with experienced units.. They would just relax and build another unit.. Maybe there's a better way to deal with the one-hit-instant-death for units.
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
-- Ambrose Bierce
User avatar
Corporal Punishment
Trained
Trained
Posts: 291
Joined: 28 Aug 2009, 12:29

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by Corporal Punishment »

Zarel: I second Josh. Auto-recycling the experience of a unit upon death encourages suicidal tactics. People would just throw wave after wave of flamer cyborgs at each other which get stronger every time. Really Zarel, this is pretty much the worst idea ever. Let people scream. Casualties are the nature of war and whoever plays a war game better gets used to it.
Qui desiderat pacem bellum praeparat
Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari
User avatar
Zarel
Elite
Elite
Posts: 5770
Joined: 03 Jan 2008, 23:35
Location: Minnesota, USA
Contact:

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by Zarel »

Corporal Punishment wrote:Zarel: I second Josh. Auto-recycling the experience of a unit upon death encourages suicidal tactics. People would just throw wave after wave of flamer cyborgs at each other which get stronger every time. Really Zarel, this is pretty much the worst idea ever. Let people scream. Casualties are the nature of war and whoever plays a war game better gets used to it.
I'm going to take your words "worst idea ever" as reason not to be polite in my response. That, and the fact that everything you've said is completely useless.

"At each other"? You do realize experience is meaningless in multiplayer, right? This idea is purely for balancing campaign. It's not like people are going to say "oh, no, in addition to all the money I spent, I'm going to lose ONE OR TWO EXPERIENCE POINTS if I sacrifice these cyborgs! I must keep them alive!" in multiplayer.

People don't throw wave after wave of flamer cyborgs since they can't afford to (I hope you realize that saved experience doesn't mean the next unit is free). Except on high oil maps, in which they spam units regardless of whether or not experience is retained. How stupid can your logic be?

And tactics involving sacrificing units are quite valid. All's fair in love and war, they say, and this is war, and surprise surprise, stuff gets destroyed in wars. Even your stuff. Ask a skilled MP player if he/she makes sure that none of his/her units die; I'm sure you'll find that the answer is "no". Heck, ask a skilled MP player if he/she even pays attention to experience, and expect the same answer.

And it's not like people will stop suicidal tactics in campaign just because they don't want to lose experienced units. They'll just micromanage so that it's the inexperienced units that die. Nothing but micro, and I wouldn't mind doing away with that kind of micro.

Though some kinds of micromanagement can be fun (hit-and-run lancers, for instance), others fall under the category of "pure frustration" (StarCraft I's selection limit, for instance), and we, as game designers, try to minimize those of the second category, which I argue is what keeping your inexperienced units as bait for enemy weapons is (not to mention that Warzone's pathing does not make individual-movement-based micro very fun at all).

And what if people just use fewer sacrifice tactics because the micro is so difficult with the pathing bugs and high APM required to make sure it's not an experienced unit that dies? Do you really want Warzone to be less strategic and more frustrating just because you don't want units to get killed in a war game?

Most games take away the frustration of losing experienced units one of these ways:

1. Making it easy to get the experienced unit back (e.g. Pokemon; Warcraft III)
2. Making it easy to get to max level (e.g. Red Alert 3, Wesnoth)
3. Making it hard to die (e.g. Final Fantasy, nearly every RPG in existence)
4. Not having an experience system at all (e.g. StarCraft)

I challenge you to name a single game other than Warzone that doesn't fall into one of these four categories. You can't? So why should Warzone be more frustrating than any other game in this aspect?
j0shdrunk0nwar wrote:That would mean taking away a little sense of loss from the game. Then nobody would be careful when it comes to planning strategies with experienced units.. They would just relax and build another unit.. Maybe there's a better way to deal with the one-hit-instant-death for units.
That's a very good point - the sense of loss is important.

In multiplayer, the sense of loss is conveyed through the price of the unit. You lose the unit, you lose the money you spent to make it. You lose more units (and the money you spent on them) than your enemies, and your enemies will either have the money for way more units than you and overpower you, or maybe they spent that money on research and now each of their units are 3x as powerful as each of yours.

Experience doesn't really come in handy in multiplayer - you never get enough of it to make a difference.

In campaign, though, it's a whole different story. Unlike multiplayer, it's much rarer to run out of money in campaign, so experience becomes the main reason to keep units. If we retain experience, that causes problems.

Note, however, that campaign doesn't give you tons of power... It's enough to get by without too many worries, but if you actually try mass suicide cyborgs, you'll find yourself out of money real quick.

Anyway, one solution might be to retain only 3/4 the experience, or half, or experience - 10, or something like that. Enough so that if you mess up once, it isn't too bad, but if you repeatedly die, you'll lose pretty much all your experience.

What do you think?
User avatar
JDW
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1669
Joined: 18 May 2010, 20:44

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by JDW »

Zarel wrote:It's not like people are going to say "oh, no, in addition to all the money I spent, I'm going to lose ONE OR TWO EXPERIENCE POINTS if I sacrifice these cyborgs! I must keep them alive!" in multiplayer.
Very true.
Zarel wrote:... but if you actually try mass suicide cyborgs, you'll find yourself out of money real quick.
Tried that a couple of times. No happy endings there.
Zarel wrote:Anyway, one solution might be to retain only 3/4 the experience, or half, or experience - 10, or something like that.
I must say this is a better solution. The gamer who thinks that having a lot of units is a good strategy, will feel the loss when his unit (power) is destroyed. On the other hand, the gamer who thinks that attaining the highest possible experience is vital to winning, will feel the loss when his unit is destroyed and he gets back lesser experience than the one it originally had.

I think that just about resolves the issue.

Now, as to how much of that experience should be returned? I'm not going to suggest any numbers because I know that I'm not the right person for the job. Whatever I say would only be a shot in the dark. And I am sure you, Zarel, already have the numbers crunched up in your mind. After I skimmed through the Damage calculation page in the guide, I have realised that designing a game is much more complicated than I ever imagined, and it's easier to complain about a game than design one. :wink:

On a very separate note, I have a slight suspicion that you are sneakily trying to resolve the ambiguity about units being manned or unmanned. By allowing auto-recycling of experience when units are destroyed, you will be making them droids, that are maybe even remote-controlled from HQ, just they way you like to imagine it, right Zarel? :lol2:
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
-- Ambrose Bierce
User avatar
Zarel
Elite
Elite
Posts: 5770
Joined: 03 Jan 2008, 23:35
Location: Minnesota, USA
Contact:

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by Zarel »

j0shdrunk0nwar wrote:Now, as to how much of that experience should be returned? I'm not going to suggest any numbers because I know that I'm not the right person for the job. Whatever I say would only be a shot in the dark. And I am sure you, Zarel, already have the numbers crunched up in your mind. After I skimmed through the Damage calculation page in the guide, I have realised that designing a game is much more complicated than I ever imagined, and it's easier to complain about a game than design one. :wink:
I'd go with 75%.
j0shdrunk0nwar wrote:On a very separate note, I have a slight suspicion that you are sneakily trying to resolve the ambiguity about units being manned or unmanned. By allowing auto-recycling of experience when units are destroyed, you will be making them droids, that are maybe even remote-controlled from HQ, just they way you like to imagine it, right Zarel? :lol2:
:P My only goals here are to improve gameplay. Anything else is a coincidence.
EvilGuru
Regular
Regular
Posts: 615
Joined: 23 Jun 2007, 22:41

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by EvilGuru »

I do not think that all units should retain their experience after death -- that is what recycling is for.

However, I do think that commanders should retain their experience after death. This would make them significantly more useful (all units assigned to a commander with a lower experience than it take on the experience of the commander). Hence if you have 10 units assigned to a Hero commander all of those 10 units will behave as Hero's.

Commanders have always been 'special,' be it the command relay centre, their own entry on the hexagon, or their unique factory routing capabilities. It would be good to extend their special nature by keeping their experience after death.

It may even make them more useful in multi-player ;)

Polemically yours, Freddie.
KukY
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1859
Joined: 20 Mar 2009, 21:56

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by KukY »

EvilGuru wrote:I do not think that all units should retain their experience after death -- that is what recycling is for.

However, I do think that commanders should retain their experience after death. This would make them significantly more useful (all units assigned to a commander with a lower experience than it take on the experience of the commander). Hence if you have 10 units assigned to a Hero commander all of those 10 units will behave as Hero's.

Commanders have always been 'special,' be it the command relay centre, their own entry on the hexagon, or their unique factory routing capabilities. It would be good to extend their special nature by keeping their experience after death.

It may even make them more useful in multi-player ;)

Polemically yours, Freddie.
Great idea!
User avatar
Boris
Trained
Trained
Posts: 283
Joined: 24 Apr 2010, 13:52
Location: About 10 years playing and creating warzone.
Contact:

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by Boris »

EvilGuru wrote:I do not think that all units should retain their experience after death -- that is what recycling is for.
I totally agree with you..
But commanders or units have same armor and body points.If hero is strong like new unit created from factory! What is a point?
User avatar
JDW
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1669
Joined: 18 May 2010, 20:44

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by JDW »

Boris wrote:Change campain,maps and more (see topic- time for new campain). Not only some stupid request from players. Ok?
I agree with you Boris, this game needs new material. Now, since contributions to this open source project are welcome, you can create a new campaign and submit it to the dev team for approval, if you got the skills and the time. Isn't that great? :)

:hmm: Uh-oh. I sense this discussion is going off-topic. I believe the topic in discussion is Retaining experience upon death
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
-- Ambrose Bierce
User avatar
Kih-ap-hiih
Trained
Trained
Posts: 45
Joined: 02 May 2010, 18:00

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by Kih-ap-hiih »

Boris wrote:
EvilGuru wrote:I do not think that all units should retain their experience after death -- that is what recycling is for.
I totally agree with you..
But commanders or units have same armor and body points.If hero is strong like new unit created from factory! What is a point?

Than you can try to develop heavy guns, that can hit you slowly! :lol2:
Research it, in your base! :ninja:

And to go back to topic, recycle or lose it! Its hard to explain but I say it all. :geek:
Last edited by Kih-ap-hiih on 14 Jun 2010, 19:19, edited 1 time in total.
guciomir
Trained
Trained
Posts: 133
Joined: 05 May 2009, 22:27

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by guciomir »

I do not like the idea for the following reasons:

- players will not care about their units. Right now we set them "retreat at medium/heavy" damage, after the idea is applied there would be no reason for this.
- this is a war and units die - this is normal and intuitive. Players will get confused why their units are always alive.
- i love the moments when of my veterans is damaged and the enemy is trying to destroy it. I see the rocket coming to finish the job, my heart stops for a moment. This is great and probably a lot of players love it.
- the idea will take a challenge out of the game (keeping a group of veterans is a challenge itself. Moreover the idea will make the game much easier and the campaing is already easy)
User avatar
JDW
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1669
Joined: 18 May 2010, 20:44

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by JDW »

guciomir wrote:- this is a war and units die - this is normal and intuitive. Players will get confused why their units are always alive.
Just to point out one misunderstanding that you may be having about Zarel's idea. The units will not be always alive. They will die. And you will still have build a new unit in your factory, which will again cost you money/power. The only thing that you will get back is some experience, from the old unit that was destroyed, for your brand new unit.
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
-- Ambrose Bierce
guciomir
Trained
Trained
Posts: 133
Joined: 05 May 2009, 22:27

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by guciomir »

Nope, I understood it correctly. Maybe my metaphore was a bit misleading, so I'll put it into other words. Players will get confused why their units are getting resurrected constantly.
User avatar
Zarel
Elite
Elite
Posts: 5770
Joined: 03 Jan 2008, 23:35
Location: Minnesota, USA
Contact:

Re: Retaining experience upon death

Post by Zarel »

guciomir wrote:- players will not care about their units. Right now we set them "retreat at medium/heavy" damage, after the idea is applied there would be no reason for this.
I have addressed this concern in the fourth post of this thread. Please read the thread before replying.
guciomir wrote:- this is a war and units die - this is normal and intuitive. Players will get confused why their units are always alive.
I have addressed this concern in the fourth post of this thread. Please read the thread before replying.
guciomir wrote:- i love the moments when of my veterans is damaged and the enemy is trying to destroy it. I see the rocket coming to finish the job, my heart stops for a moment. This is great and probably a lot of players love it.
I have addressed this concern in the fourth post of this thread. Please read the thread before replying.
guciomir wrote:- the idea will take a challenge out of the game (keeping a group of veterans is a challenge itself. Moreover the idea will make the game much easier and the campaing is already easy)
I have addressed this concern in the fourth post of this thread. Please read the thread before replying.
Post Reply