iovandrake Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 I was going to suggest replacing time limits in favor of making tiberium a finite resource as it is for the RTS series, which would still add a "clock" to beat of sorts. I'm not sure how that would work out though ... Actually you could do it with the spawn system. If your entire team is without any credits then you automatically lose. Add a cost to formerly free units (maybe like 15 credits?). Have the limit of tiberium on the map be set to a certain amount and as that number of a field shrinks so does the field (toward the center of that field where harvesters actually harvest). If a field runs out before another then the harvester has an adjusted path to that field. This would make tiberium control an essential part of that mode's gameplay. Perhaps call the gameplay mode something like: Resource Control Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ARC_trooper Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 What if the buildings left standing add up to the points? Like the obelisk/agt only give 500 extra credits but keeping the refinery in one piece gives you like 2000 points? That way you stimulate the need to actually destroy the other teams buildings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iovandrake Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 What if the buildings left standing add up to the points? Like the obelisk/agt only give 500 extra credits but keeping the refinery in one piece gives you like 2000 points? That way you stimulate the need to actually destroy the other teams buildings. Maybe have it so that each building extra that a team has over you wish worth a certain number of points? That way it evens out if the buildings are even. I just want building loss to matter. It's stupid that a base that is mostly rubble won a fight. What did GDI or Nod just give up? It's just stupid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R315r4z0r Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Winning/losing should not be about the number of buildings you have remaining. That's totally unfair and unbalanced plus it completely guts a large portion of the game out. The points system is also a moral system. Just because you're losing your buildings, doesn't automatically mean you lose. If there was no points system, the match would just be thrown by the losing team once they lose 2 or 3 structures since there would be "no reason" in trying to fight back. People might even quit matches because they lose interest due to there being nothing that can be done. People would be like "Oh great, we lost 2 buildings... now we are going to get farmed for 15 minutes. No thanks, I'm out." then they'd leave. Points give incentive for people to keep playing even down the the last 5% HP of the last building remaining. Removing them destroys the integrity of the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iovandrake Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 By your logic the team who's down a lot of points with 10 minutes to go and no sign of a change should just give up since destroying enemy buildings isn't likely going to matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R315r4z0r Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 10 minutes is a long time. And there will never be a large enough point lead, at that point in a match, that would warrant that. It's just an impossibility. I mean unless the losing team is planting beacons and letting the winning team disarm them for the points, there would never be a lead like that. If someone is doing that... then you have other problems to worry about besides winning/losing the match. If a team was losing that badly it would because their own base is about to be physically destroyed so the remaining 10 minutes would be irrelevant. Game over by base destruction, not time limit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iovandrake Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 There would never be a large enough point lead? Say you're up 4-5k points. You're never going to completely stop earning points. It's conceivable that without abusing some cheap tactic (like whoring a building) you would never make up that deficit. Anyway the point originally was that a team deciding to quit can happen at any time. It doesn't have to be because you lost too many buildings it can happen just because the other team has too much of a lead too late in the game. In fact that's usually the only way timed servers end with base destruction. When one side quits. Most other times its a 30 minute grind fest all aimed at scoring points like you're playing Galaga. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrDanthrax99 Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Well, the points in the game are used to determine which team is, in theory doing more damage/repairing themselves. The fact that the team is able to keep the one building alive despite an onslaught of attackers is points worthy. I like the time limited games simply because, well, they END. In a Marathon server you better make sure you cath yourself and wheel up a buffet next to your computer, because you're gonna be there for a while. I've seen a game on Under go for 26 hours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OfficerMeatbeef Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Maybe have it so that each building extra that a team has over you wish worth a certain number of points? That way it evens out if the buildings are even. I just want building loss to matter. It's stupid that a base that is mostly rubble won a fight. Again, the enemy already gets substantial amounts of points for damaging a building to the point of destruction. The enemy gets a penalty of not being able to make a portion of those points back in repairs, on top of the substantial deficits that come with the loss of the building itself. Is it really necessary to FURTHER penalize them by losing even MORE points at the end of the round? Which is what this would functionally do, even if it is supposedly a "bonus for extra buildings left over"; obviously both teams start with the same number of buildings and thus will receive the same number of points at the end if they have the same number of buildings, they can only LOSE these points by losing a building. I'm not saying you can't argue that yes, they COULD be further penalized, but I personally don't see it as being wise. What did GDI or Nod just give up? It's just stupid. Well, no. The players kind of did. Again, the time limit is for the sake of playability, because it's still a game. But it you want, you can see it instead as an abstraction of what was mentioned before: the point of attrition at which one team no longer was willing to or capable of continuing the battle, and so it ended. Again, instead of a time limit and points, the game could start with a fixed number of reinforcements and resources for each team, and go from there. Higher tier units could cost more reinforcement points when lost, just like how they award the enemy more points in the current system. Or more intuitively, they could cost more reinforcement points when spawned, instead of losing points when lost. Damaging buildings could reduce reinforcements and resources, while repairing them could refund a portion of them (but NOT ever more than they started with) and destruction could immediately cut some percentage from your reinforcement/resource pool, but a smart team would then still be able to win by using their remaining resources and reinforcements than the enemy, even if they are down several buildings, just like in the current time/point system. After all, even if the enemy has left you hanging on to a single building and theirs are pristine, if you're the only ones left alive, surely you're the victor? It would be more or less functionally the same though obviously a completely different design and experience for the player. Essentially, it would act as a middle ground between the existing gametypes, not providing the concise convenience of a timed game but not sharing the potential weakness of a marathon game dragging on indefinitely, since eventually resources have to run out. This would be a valid way to play if designed properly, just like marathon and timed games are both valid ways to play depending on your preference and simple realities of what you can budget for time-wise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iovandrake Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 How are they unwilling to continue the battle when they are winning? I mean winning in the aspect of pounding the enemy into oblivion. The only thing that stops this is the clock. So did GDI forces once 30 minutes are up go "Oh well, their 1 building vs our 4 is too much for us to ever overcome. Abandon the battlefield everyone!" Ridiculous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OfficerMeatbeef Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 (edited) How are they unwilling to continue the battle when they are winning? I mean winning in the aspect of pounding the enemy into oblivion. The only thing that stops this is the clock. So did GDI forces once 30 minutes are up go "Oh well, their 1 building vs our 4 is too much for us to ever overcome. Abandon the battlefield everyone!" Ridiculous. Of course they didn't, because they are not real entities and it is not a real war? We did, because we are players who have a limited time to commit to playing a game, so we have set an arbitrary time limit in which the results of the match will be determined. Yes, that is "ridiculous" in the context of what we're doing here, but it's a game and it's practical to do it so people with limited time can still enjoy it. And again, if they are truly "pounding the enemy into oblivion" as you say, they will win on points, so I don't understand what the problem is here. You're speaking like the enemy is literally getting points for losing. They're not, the system is designed so a more effective attacker still gets more points than an equally effective defender, so that even if they don't completely reach a decisive victory in the allotted time, they still win. If they don't, they lose. Defenders only have a chance to win against an effective attack by somehow managing to repel the enemy despite their substantial deficit in options. All other things being equal, a team primarily defending cannot get more points than a team attacking. As I alluded to, the points work as an abstraction to represent attrition. My fixed reinforcement example (and one I see you already thought through some) was primarily a way to illustrate that, by essentially making the limiting factor "points" instead of "time". This results in a situation where one team can run out of reinforcements/resources, instead of time, but otherwise it performs the exact same function: provides a fixed endpoint that will often occur long before a total victory is achieved, to make the game practical for people with lives to play. My hope was it would also be less abstract, so that one could understand "oh, right, this represents that the enemy may have destroyed a bunch of buildings, but they still ran out of people before they could destroy them all, so they did not complete the objective". Quite obviously, if they are out of people, as long as the enemy has even a single building left they still would win because there is nobody left to defend the other base. In the end, they were proven to be more effective. A time/point system is simply a different, more convenient way to represent that for many people. A competent, even superior team can still make a mistake that loses them a building. Maybe they believe they have the upper hand, weigh the risks and push their attack a bit harder, commit a few more defenders to the attack and a single SBH with a nuke beacon who was hiding in the base for the last 15 minutes makes his move, manages to find a key spot a defender didn't realize (or hadn't had a chance to get back to yet) was short a mine, defend the beacon before the team with the upper hand has a chance to pull back, and scores a building kill. Should that team really lose the match when time runs out because they are down a building, even if they were absolutely dominating the enemy beforehand, because a single member of the enemy team was able to capitalize on a good situation? If you answer to that is yes, I'm afraid we'll simply have to agree to disagree, because I don't see a way to reach a compromise that will satisfy us both. Well, except that the compromise is "play marathon". Again, if you enjoy marathon and it's how you think the game should be played, that's cool. But are you trying to argue that the game outright shouldn't be playable with a time limit? That's simply not practical or even desirable for many people. Edited March 12, 2014 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trev-MUN Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Actually you could do it with the spawn system. If your entire team is without any credits then you automatically lose. Add a cost to formerly free units (maybe like 15 credits?). Have the limit of tiberium on the map be set to a certain amount and as that number of a field shrinks so does the field (toward the center of that field where harvesters actually harvest). If a field runs out before another then the harvester has an adjusted path to that field. This would make tiberium control an essential part of that mode's gameplay.Perhaps call the gameplay mode something like: Resource Control I like this idea; you oughta suggest it over at the Game Design subforum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OfficerMeatbeef Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Actually you could do it with the spawn system. If your entire team is without any credits then you automatically lose. Add a cost to formerly free units (maybe like 15 credits?). Have the limit of tiberium on the map be set to a certain amount and as that number of a field shrinks so does the field (toward the center of that field where harvesters actually harvest). If a field runs out before another then the harvester has an adjusted path to that field. This would make tiberium control an essential part of that mode's gameplay. Perhaps call the gameplay mode something like: Resource Control Sorry, got into answering that last one and forgot about this. Yep, absolutely. Totally workable. Seems like a good idea! As I said though, if you do this, it's essentially substituting "time" for "points". It's a nice option, it'd make for a good compromise between the two modes, it's more intuitive, but it still has the potential to last longer than a regular timed game and, thus, a timed game remains a valid play option for people with rigidly defined recreational schedules. Options are always good, though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iovandrake Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Yes options are good and to each their own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 By your logic the team who's down a lot of points with 10 minutes to go and no sign of a change should just give up since destroying enemy buildings isn't likely going to matter. The logic is: If you lose buildinhgs you still can winn by pints If you far behind in points you cans till win with destroying the base Points and basedestruction is a balance ... jsut need a pedestal for an endgame beacon imho, then it is absolutely perfect! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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