Reinforcements suck

[DeadMG]

I'm sorry, they just suck terribly. In fact, I'm just going to go out and say this flat out.

Any meta-game mechanic which results in one player starting the game at an advantage defeats the entire purpose of playing the game, and therefore directly renders it unplayable.

Why would anyone invest their time in playing the game when they can lose because the other guy had more credits than them because they just joined GW?

The entire meta-mechanics need to be reworked. My suggestion would be that each planet gives a total amount of mass income. This mass goes to one single faction-wide bank in the ratio of the factions that control that planet. Each player has a defined location on the galactic map, and moving from planet to planet costs mass from the faction bank. You can see which players are on planets next to the ones your faction has a majority on. This would also help counter one faction simply having more players than others- if you can't afford to move a player from his current location to where he needs to be, he's useless. It also limits the effectiveness of the much better players in the game because they can't fight on every front at once; and introduces some elements of tactics which currently don't really exist and adds some better incentives for in-faction co-ordination or even cross-faction alliances.

Gains in the meta-game should ONLY translate into advantages in the meta-game. Never in-game.

[Ze_PilOt]

Both side can have reinforcements.

If one decide to go without, well, bad things may happen.

the other guy had more credits than them because they just joined GW?

Ask your faction to give you reinforcements.
GW is heavily co-op oriented. One can't work alone if he wants to succeed.

If you are looking at balanced games, it's probably not the thing game you are looking for. We have a working matchmaker for that.
A noob should be able to overcome a very good player with enough credits/help from his team to support him.


That being said, reinforcements time & cost are not balanced. At all. They are probably too cheap and come too soon. But that will be tweaked in beta, not before.

[pip]

It'll take a long time for people to realize that GW has nothing to do with a normal FA game, where the explosion of one of the ACU is the ultimate goal. The recall mechanic completely changes how things work. You don't win a GW game by necessarily killing an ACU but by forcing the opponent to recall. Killing an ACU is just cherry on the cake. Even recalling yourself (= losing) when you know your opponent used a lot of resources to have reinforcements when you deployed none can be a strategy (like in chess, it'll bring fruits later).

It's like in a real, long lasting war : it' not fair, it's not balanced, it's not symetrical. The system, when polished, is supposed to propose completely different gameplay than normal FA, where 2 players can join forces against a single opponent, but if this guy is good and has a lot more reinforcements than his opponents, he can still win (and hopefully be rewarded by more credits or advatnages for his "heroic victory", like in Total War).

The faction which will be best organized will have more chances to win compared to one in which everyone wants to play his 1v1 games like in ranked, even if they have more skilled players overall. I'm sure many competitive players won't like it, but some others will, precisely because it's different, and it's all about a metagame, and reaching the rank of supreme commander, etc.

[DeadMG]

If you are looking at balanced games, it's probably not the thing game you are looking for. We have a working matchmaker for that.

That's a completely different thing. If I join a random game 1v1, even without matchmaker, then the game's outcome is exclusively determined by one and only one factor- which of us is the better player. This cannot be said for GW games, which entirely defeats the point.

A noob should be able to overcome a very good player with enough credits/help from his team to support him.

That's not a good thing. That's a bad thing. A very bad thing. That ruins the entire purpose of playing the game.

They are probably too cheap and come too soon. But that will be tweaked in beta, not before.

Their time and cost is irrelevant. There is no solution to this problem that still maintains the mechanic of reinforcements. If they are useful, it defies the point of playing a strategy game since the game is not won by your strategy. If they are not useful, they're pointless. The best result here is that reinforcements are a dead mechanic nobody uses. The worst result that we have right now is that they dominate. But neither of these outcomes is a good thing.

It'll take a long time for people to realize that GW has nothing to do with a normal FA game

Really? Because if so, why would anybody play it? The mechanics of the meta-game are clearly a million miles from being a justifiable game in their own right- even in alpha. Galactic War is a metagame, but there's no core here that's worth playing.

The recall mechanic completely changes how things work. You don't win a GW game by necessarily killing an ACU but by forcing the opponent to recall.

Ultimately, this is irrelevant. The only change here is that I can win merely by threatening my opponent's ACU in some cases instead of having to actually follow through, and there may be some borderlines where it would not have been enough for a kill but my opponent recalls anyway. It changes nothing about the core gameplay. Every winning position in FA is a winning position here, and there are very few winning positions in GW which are not winning positions in FA.

It's like in a real, long lasting war : it' not fair, it's not balanced, it's not symetrical.

In case you hadn't noticed, real wars aren't fun. And neither is GW.

completely different gameplay than normal FA

That's bullshit. It's obvious that GW will always be based on FA's core gameplay; else it would be a game instead of a metagame. The core of the FA gameplay is that the better player wins.

The faction which will be best organized will have more chances to win compared to one in which everyone wants to play his 1v1 games like in ranked, even if they have more skilled players overall.

Really? So in the metagame the better players win. But in the actual game, the better player gets smashed because the other guy paid for a bunch of reinforcements. Notice any dissonance here?

There is no reason for anyone to defend a planet when they cannot win. No "I must buy time for my faction mates to do XYZ". Nothing. Even owning individual additional planets is largely irrelevant- the progress of a faction depends on the number and activity of it's players and when they are active rather than any desperate fight you might wage for one planet. There is no reason to even launch the game if you will not be competitive with your opponent- not even a metagame reason. The only winning move here is to not launch the game.

Much like there is no reason NOT to recall if you're in trouble. The mass system I suggested in the opening post would at least give people an incentive to stay in the game and delay attackers even if they could not hold the planet.

[ZLO_RD]

I am, as good player, LIKE that i have more resistance from less skilled players, and even more like to overwhelm this resistance and enjoy how bad enemy used his reinforcements, and look at waste of enemy credits.
No matter how hard they try, at then end i can just recall.

But from other side i do not need reinforcements almost at all, if i play normal, enemy can start recalling after 5 minutes of game, espesially if i had reinforcements that game.
you need to "scout" enemy skill and ajust your strategy or you can even die because you did not used good BO and enemy rank 0 guy is suddenly a good player, or opposite, hide reinforcements, hide how much advatange you have.
but instead of playing safe i can start invest significantly more in eco and even start loosing on all fronts and make it look like i am loosing while preparing a snipe force of 4 t3 bombers from 4 t2 power economy.
Thouse mindgames are really interesting to play, even decent player can see that he is loosing and instead of recall he may try to avoid snipe and force recall

not sure if i said everything correctly, but almost all the time i send reinforcements to noobs in my faction instead of reinforce to myself ~4 t3 units every game

[Ze_PilOt]

That's a completely different thing. If I join a random game 1v1, even without matchmaker, then the game's outcome is exclusively determined by one and only one factor- which of us is the better player. This cannot be said for GW games, which entirely defeats the point.

On the contrary, that's actually the whole point of GW. Team work and a good chain of command (as a faction) is more important than individual strength.
I'm actually quite happy that a noob can compete with a good player if he planned it well.

ZLO get it right : Good players are supposed to help less skilled players, as these are the backbone of your faction.

Most probably reinforcements are too powerful. But again, balance will come later. But they will stay, it's a core element of gameplay, and that's actually what will make it fun for less skilled players.

Without them, I can tell you what will happens, because it happened when they were not there yet : Top players ruling everything, everyone quitting the game because they have no fun being beaten every time.

That's not a good thing. That's a bad thing. A very bad thing. That ruins the entire purpose of playing the game.

Again, if you want to play a fair FA, you have the matchmaker and the find game options. GW is a different beast.

If the matches were vanilla FA games, GW would just be a new fancy way to launch games, that's a lot of effort for a lobby skin.

Much like there is no reason NOT to recall if you're in trouble.

That's the whole point of it. Self-evaluation. You should never die normally. So yes, there is really no reason not to recall, that's the point

You have to remember it's an alpha.
The core element of gameplay are not there yet, because the core features are not all there yet.

Balancing will be done in beta, when all the elements are in place.

For example, you are saying there is no meta game. It's true, because there is actually any.
That doesn't mean there will not be, and it's designed from a long time.

I'm currently working on having game launching and reporting correctly, as well as teamgame working.

[Ze_PilOt]

By the way you seem to think that GW should be separated of FA. It's not how I see thing.

GW is an big alteration to FA gameplay. It's not a fancy computer board game where you play FA instead of throwing dices.

It's not really a metagame, it's a whole new game.

That's not seem to be what you are looking for, but you don't need me to play a board game

And for your mass idea, that's how credits will be generated at some point.
But no move on the map is planned : it would be really frustrating (ie for team game, you have to move together but a friend has no credit left, strategically it's better to be in an area to defend, but you prefer the maps on another side of the map,..), and quite frankly, too much for me to do. (graphic-wise, that would mean a total rework of the whole openGL display, and it's done, I won't go back on it).

But your idea is not good, sorry. What would it mean is that the faction with most players, or with most BETTER player wins, no matter what.
What would be the point? What strategy would it bring? I could tell you the winner of the war before it really start just by looking on who is in each faction.
That also reduce the faction choice for the player : Either he wants to win and choose the faction with the best players, or he want to play and choose another one, but will be bashed.

Wait for all the features to be in place, I think you will be surprised. It's far more strategic than what you are describing.

But it emphasis greatly on team work and communication inside a faction, that's for sure.

[Ze_PilOt]

And by the way, you under-estimate strategy & team work even at this early development point.

ie this morning :

Capture.JPG (48.85 KiB) Viewed 1378 times

The aeon side is very organized since saturday (you can see how much map was taken back).
In this exemple, we capture adjacency planets (over 51%) so the middle UEF one is basically a free win. (I know it should be possible for UEF to defend, but right now, it's a very effective strategy).

We did that for 2 days : cutting planets out, with good players giving units to less skilled players, while the better players defend only (so they can earn some credits back).