Retaining experience upon death

[Zarel]

That is actually a thing in Final Fantasy style games that frustrates me (though maybe influenced by being able to save anytime thanks to emulators). Sure, you can go on, but when you can basically finish any normal battle by clicking "auto" (or hitting "attack" again and again) without having to do any thinking, battles become just useless intermissions that eat your time.

True, which is why Warzone isn't and shouldn't be a Final Fantasy style game in which you must keep every unit alive.

[JDW]

Oh, poor guy Zarel, I hope you aren't feeling too frustrated making your point repeatedly. Get some fresh air if you feel like you need it. Go on, all these guys can wait

[cybersphinx]

True, which is why Warzone isn't and shouldn't be a Final Fantasy style game in which you must keep every unit alive.

To make my point more explicit, if you make something too easy, people will stop caring about it, and pampering the players will make a game boring (but then, I started playing games when you had to read the manual to be able to do something useful, maybe people today are too dumbed down to deal with that...). I'm fully for losing experience when units die. Possibly with an optional way to save (a part of) the experience when a unit dies, maybe when it's assigned to a commander. But by default, yes, loose all experience, even if it took a week to get a unit that far. So what? As you said yourself in the fourth post of this thread, this is war, and stuff gets destroyed in wars. Even experienced stuff.

[Zarel]

To make my point more explicit, if you make something too easy, people will stop caring about it, and pampering the players will make a game boring (but then, I started playing games when you had to read the manual to be able to do something useful, maybe people today are too dumbed down to deal with that...). I'm fully for losing experience when units die. Possibly with an optional way to save (a part of) the experience when a unit dies, maybe when it's assigned to a commander. But by default, yes, lose all experience, even if it took a week to get a unit that far. So what? As you said yourself in the fourth post of this thread, this is war, and stuff gets destroyed in wars. Even experienced stuff.

Ah, finally, a good point in this thread. Saying "refer to the fourth post" was getting old.

Anyway, I've played easy games, and I've played difficult games. There's a difference, though, between difficulty and frustration.

Losing experienced units is frustration, not difficulty. You can replace 10 experienced units with 15 new units, and they'll work about as well; most of the experience lost is sentimental value.

In any case, when playing a difficult game, the object is often to retry until you succeed. Encouraging Warzone players to replay a level rather than accept that they have lost units is hardly desirable. Let the people who like achievements try for "no death" on the stats screen, but there's no reason to encourage it mechanically.

To be exact, Warzone is a war simulator, and to that end any part of a war that isn't fun can be removed. "Make it possible to lose units without losing days/weeks of effort" is one of those things that count as an acceptable break from reality.

[cybersphinx]

Hm, thinking about it a bit more, this could depend on the difficulty setting. So e.g. easy keeps 66% of the experience, normal keeps 33%, and hard loses all.

And I see experienced units more like the OCD mode in World of Goo, for example. Not necessary to win, but a nice extra to strive for.

[Tucalipe]

> So... To "enhance" the MP part of WZ, you'll just forget about the SP part?
> My last thought on this: Feel free to remove experience from human vs. human games, but on sp missions and campaigns, experience should be kept.

[Zarel]

Hm, thinking about it a bit more, this could depend on the difficulty setting. So e.g. easy keeps 66% of the experience, normal keeps 33%, and hard loses all.

And I see experienced units more like the OCD mode in World of Goo, for example. Not necessary to win, but a nice extra to strive for.

That's a pretty good idea, although I think Normal should keep at least 50%. I'd be fine with 75-50-0.

> So... To "enhance" the MP part of WZ, you'll just forget about the SP part?
> My last thought on this: Feel free to remove experience from human vs. human games, but on sp missions and campaigns, experience should be kept.

See, removing experience isn't what I'm proposing at all. Please read the title of this thread before replying.

[Tucalipe]

> By retaining experience upon death you ARE removing experience, as on everywhere else you lose experience when you die. Taking care of your units so that they don't die is one of the best strategic features of warzone. If you just remove that, then it becomes a do-or-die-only game... You could even remove that order from the orders menu...

> If you do that, put it on a mod or have it tweakable... Just changing the game's gameplay because it doesn't make sense on MP games isn't fair... For example, if you make it difficutly-dependant, you probably have a way to set the experience retained when units die based on a setting. If players want so, they could have all the dead units experience NOT be retained at all without having to play at a more difficult setting...

> And yes, by making units retain experience when they die you ARE removing the experience feature. Take any experience-based game/situation. You can't retain anything after you're dead...

> PS.: You're not rebalancing the game. You are altering its gameplay.
> PPS.: Don't bother replying. I'm not reading this anymore. I have stated I'm against this change and it'll be hard to make me think differently without good arguments on why should experience be retained.

[JDW]

Zarel, was your idea, to retain unit experience upon death, a way to reduce the frustration of players who hate losing their experienced units? Or did you feel like there was an imbalance in the game without it?

I'm guessing it was the former

EDIT: Why do I have a feeling that you are going to say it was both??

[Kih-ap-hiih]

To make my point more explicit, if you make something too easy, people will stop caring about it, and pampering the players will make a game boring (but then, I started playing games when you had to read the manual to be able to do something useful, maybe people today are too dumbed down to deal with that...). I'm fully for losing experience when units die. Possibly with an optional way to save (a part of) the experience when a unit dies, maybe when it's assigned to a commander. But by default, yes, lose all experience, even if it took a week to get a unit that far. So what? As you said yourself in the fourth post of this thread, this is war, and stuff gets destroyed in wars. Even experienced stuff.

Ah, finally, a good point in this thread. Saying "refer to the fourth post" was getting old.

Anyway, I've played easy games, and I've played difficult games. There's a difference, though, between difficulty and frustration.

Losing experienced units is frustration, not difficulty. You can replace 10 experienced units with 15 new units, and they'll work about as well; most of the experience lost is sentimental value.

In any case, when playing a difficult game, the object is often to retry until you succeed. Encouraging Warzone players to replay a level rather than accept that they have lost units is hardly desirable. Let the people who like achievements try for "no death" on the stats screen, but there's no reason to encourage it mechanically.

To be exact, Warzone is a war simulator, and to that end any part of a war that isn't fun can be removed. "Make it possible to lose units without losing days/weeks of effort" is one of those things that count as an acceptable break from reality.

Oh that is beautiful!
Now I will love to stay(play) with you, if you ever play the game as it is, and not complain what is happening, to what they are up to do with this game, blaming some people,that not love it as it`s is.
Not finished post! (Taking some rest.).
What ever you have played so far did not make me so excited.

[Zarel]

> By retaining experience upon death you ARE removing experience, as on everywhere else you lose experience when you die. Taking care of your units so that they don't die is one of the best strategic features of warzone. If you just remove that, then it becomes a do-or-die-only game... You could even remove that order from the orders menu...

I address this concern in the fourth post of this thread. Please read the thread before replying. Here, I'll rephrase it for you:

Actually, most other games retain experience upon death. RTSes are an exception, and RTSes deal with the problem by having a low experience cap - usually around 30 kills. If you could only lose a maximum of 30 experience in Warzone, retaining experience wouldn't be as big of a deal.

The reason most RTSes have such a low experience cap is also because you don't retain units and structures when you go from one scenario to the next. Warzone's innovation is that it's continuous - you keep the same army as you go through scenarios, which is actually one of Warzone's best features, and the reason why the RPG model of "retain experience" works better than the RTS model of "extremely low experience cap".

"Retain experience, but deduct some of it as an experience penalty" is a tried and true method. D&D, for instance, penalizes one level for each resurrection. It works better because the experience penalty makes experienced units more valuable, but losing them doesn't mean losing weeks of work, either - hence "the best of both worlds."

> If you do that, put it on a mod or have it tweakable... Just changing the game's gameplay because it doesn't make sense on MP games isn't fair... For example, if you make it difficutly-dependant, you probably have a way to set the experience retained when units die based on a setting. If players want so, they could have all the dead units experience NOT be retained at all without having to play at a more difficult setting...

Config file setting, sure. Interface option, no; it's not worth coding interface for (not to mention we don't really have anywhere for setting it). Anyway, in that case, we'd be discussing the default settings anyway.

> And yes, by making units retain experience when they die you ARE removing the experience feature. Take any experience-based game/situation. You can't retain anything after you're dead...

I address this concern in the fourth post of this thread. Please read the thread before replying. Here, I'll rephrase it for you:

Go ahead and tell Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons, and practically every other game in existence that they don't have an experience feature.

> PS.: You're not rebalancing the game. You are altering its gameplay.

I never claimed otherwise.

> PPS.: Don't bother replying. I'm not reading this anymore. I have stated I'm against this change and it'll be hard to make me think differently without good arguments on why should experience be retained.

You haven't stated a single reason that I haven't addressed before you even brought it up, besides the suggestion to make it optional, which I'm fine with on some level.

Zarel, was your idea, to retain unit experience upon death, a way to reduce the frustration of players who hate losing their experienced units? Or did you feel like there was an imbalance in the game without it?

Well, I mean, "balance" is mostly a multiplayer concept. The analogous singleplayer concept is "difficulty", which is orthogonal to the purpose of my proposal, which is to reduce frustration, not difficulty. So yes, it's purely a frustration change, not a "balance" change.

Oh that is beautiful!
Now I will love to stay(play) with you, if you ever play the game as it is, and not complain what is happening, to what they are up to do with this game, blaming some people,that not love it as it`s is.
Not finished post! (Taking some rest.).
What ever you have played so far did not make me so excited.

Please speak English.

[TVR]

... "Retain experience, but deduct some of it as an experience penalty" is a tried and true method. D&D, for instance, penalizes one level for each resurrection. It works better because the experience penalty makes experienced units more valuable, but losing them doesn't mean losing weeks of work, either - hence "the best of both worlds." ...

It could be full experience recovery, as long as the method required is skill-based.

I still recommend for units to drop their experience in the form of an artifact when they are destroyed, but one that is only recoverable by your team.

[JDW]

Zarel, was your idea, to retain unit experience upon death, a way to reduce the frustration of players who hate losing their experienced units? Or did you feel like there was an imbalance in the game without it?

Well, I mean, "balance" is mostly a multiplayer concept. The analogous singleplayer concept is "difficulty", which is orthogonal to the purpose of my proposal, which is to reduce frustration, not difficulty. So yes, it's purely a frustration change, not a "balance" change.

Ok, I think I get it now. So what you are trying to do is to increase the fun factor of the game by removing an undesirable feeling of frustration, while still maintaining the same level of difficulty.

Well, if you feel that this step will help improve the fun factor even more, then I will support it.

[JFM]

Frankly I see no reason to change anything.

First: If your hero dies just reload the mission that is why saved games are made for.

Second: No scourge is ever going to destroy a fully tracked Tiger in a single hit. Now if you put your Hero eggs in a Tan killer, Hover, bug chassis and run past a scourge tower you deserve to lose it.

Third: In missions where losses can't be avoided send some inexperienced but tough units (that means tanks!) preferrently commanded by a leader ito attracting fire. Behind them have experienced units from killer types (bunker busters, artillery, anti-tank missiles). If you do it correctly you will lose none of your experienced units in fact they will not even be fired upon. If you do it really well you won't lose any of the units in your tank shield because your hhammer will blow the enemey away before it cabn do much harm. So if you lose an experienced unit it is because you played badly and you _deserve to lose it_

Fourth: If any the game is too easy. Of course first time I played it was a blood bath but, at the risk of seeming arrogant, I ended being able to carry the same thirty nine units (of course recycled several times) from Alpha 1 to the final battle with Nexus without losing any of them. Furthermore in only two or three missions (eg the one where you have bombards and the Collective ripple rockets and howitzers) did I need to build additional units acting as sacrificial lambs. Now there were mssions I had to play sevaerl tilmes befire getting it right but I reiterate my assertion: it is easy to preserve your experienced units and if you lose one it is your fault not the game's so this is a thing wh doesn't need tio be changed in WZ2100.

[Zarel]

Frankly I see no reason to change anything.

First: If your hero dies just reload the mission that is why saved games are made for.

It means that if you want to use hero units, only strategies in which not a single unit dies will succeed. Those aren't the only strategies I want to succeed, the game should encourage that even if you lose a few units, you should still go on - a sort of "accept your losses" type thing.

Second: No scourge is ever going to destroy a fully tracked Tiger in a single hit. Now if you put your Hero eggs in a Tan killer, Hover, bug chassis and run past a scourge tower you deserve to lose it.

At Normal, a Scourge doublehit does 1424 - 2*armor to Tracks. Tiger Tracks have 2520 HP and 61 armor by G1, so two Scourge towers is enough to kill a Tiger Tracks. And Tiger Tracks are not very manueverable; it's easy to get hit by the second while you're trying to retreat.

Third: In missions where losses can't be avoided send some inexperienced but tough units (that means tanks!) preferrently commanded by a leader ito attracting fire. Behind them have experienced units from killer types (bunker busters, artillery, anti-tank missiles). If you do it correctly you will lose none of your experienced units in fact they will not even be fired upon. If you do it really well you won't lose any of the units in your tank shield because your hhammer will blow the enemey away before it cabn do much harm. So if you lose an experienced unit it is because you played badly and you _deserve to lose it_

See, that's the problem. Why is any strategy in which you lose units "playing badly"? That precludes so many strategies that are perfectly valid in multiplayer.

For instance, using a bunch of very long range weapons (say, Mortar) is a strategy with low losses. Using a bunch of tanks with high HP (say, Heavy Cannon) is a strategy with medium losses. Use a bunch of high damage low survivability weapons (say, Flamer) is a strategy with high losses. They can all be good strategies, though.

Why should flamers be discouraged in campaign? It seems ridiculous to give players a bunch of weapons, and tell them never to use them. There shouldn't be one "best weapon" - Warzone should be a strategy game.

I have a feeling you were playing on Easy. On something like Hard, on harder scenarios, you usually have to use pure artillery push to win with no losses. Should we really be encouraging that?

Fourth: If any the game is too easy. Of course first time I played it was a blood bath but, at the risk of seeming arrogant, I ended being able to carry the same thirty nine units (of course recycled several times) from Alpha 1 to the final battle with Nexus without losing any of them. Furthermore in only two or three missions (eg the one where you have bombards and the Collective ripple rockets and howitzers) did I need to build additional units acting as sacrificial lambs. Now there were mssions I had to play sevaerl tilmes befire getting it right but I reiterate my assertion: it is easy to preserve your experienced units and if you lose one it is your fault not the game's so this is a thing wh doesn't need tio be changed in WZ2100.

Are you sure you're not playing on Easy? It's been a long time since I've balance-tested campaign, but my impression from the forums is that it's not that easy to steamroll with no losses.