Balance And End-game Issues
BFishman
Join Date: 2002-05-04 Member: 579Members
Join Date: 2002-05-04 Member: 579Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Possible Solutions for Persistant Probs</div> I've been contemplating the player-balance issues, and problems associated with one final alien prolonging the end of a game to unnescesary lengths. The following propositions are merely suggestions to the dev team, who most likely have already addressed these issues in the latest beta patch (1.03). Try them out for size.
End game, all hives down, a few (or just one) aliens alive. Up pops a little timer, say, three to four minutes, counting down. Within this time period, if a gorge is able to begin the construction of a hive (yes, BEGIN, not finish) the timer is removed, and the game continues. If the remaining aliens are unable to begin construction of a hive by the end of this timer, and the marines still have not found the remaining aliens, then the round end (if the marines had found and killed the last aliens the the round would obviously end as well). This solves the issue of lamers extending the game just for the heck of it, but still allows for that rare comeback (besides, if a gorge has not secured a hive within 4 minutes of the last one's destruction, then any competent marine team would have by that point turreted all the hives anyway).
As far as pre-round balancing - simple - don't allow people to join a team if it has a player count advantage. Also, force players to join a team (through an auto-distributer) after 30 seconds of remaining in the ready-room (this prevents lamers from sitting around in the RR waiting for a team to clear up, which clogs free spots which would otherwise have players filling them)
And finally, for mid-round balancing: Once there is a discrepency in the team sizes by more than 1 (i.e 6 to 8, but not 7 to 8), a hidden timer begins. If this discrepency has not been fixed within, say, 30 seconds, the player on the larger team who has been on the server for the LEAST amount of time is given a warning message, saying that, after his death, he will be switched to the other team. At this point, a vote for the larger team could be presented asking for volunteers to switch to the other team -- this allows a player to switch to the other team if he wants to be nice and even it up. If a player were to volunteer to switch, the original switchee would remain on the team, and, after the volunteer's death, the volunteer would be switched. Simple.
As you can see, this presents the least amount of pain in being forced to abandon a team you've been working for hours on, and gives most of the control to the players themselves.
What do you guys think of this? Feel free to post criticisms, comments, or suggestions.
Thanks guys,
Later
-Fishman
End game, all hives down, a few (or just one) aliens alive. Up pops a little timer, say, three to four minutes, counting down. Within this time period, if a gorge is able to begin the construction of a hive (yes, BEGIN, not finish) the timer is removed, and the game continues. If the remaining aliens are unable to begin construction of a hive by the end of this timer, and the marines still have not found the remaining aliens, then the round end (if the marines had found and killed the last aliens the the round would obviously end as well). This solves the issue of lamers extending the game just for the heck of it, but still allows for that rare comeback (besides, if a gorge has not secured a hive within 4 minutes of the last one's destruction, then any competent marine team would have by that point turreted all the hives anyway).
As far as pre-round balancing - simple - don't allow people to join a team if it has a player count advantage. Also, force players to join a team (through an auto-distributer) after 30 seconds of remaining in the ready-room (this prevents lamers from sitting around in the RR waiting for a team to clear up, which clogs free spots which would otherwise have players filling them)
And finally, for mid-round balancing: Once there is a discrepency in the team sizes by more than 1 (i.e 6 to 8, but not 7 to 8), a hidden timer begins. If this discrepency has not been fixed within, say, 30 seconds, the player on the larger team who has been on the server for the LEAST amount of time is given a warning message, saying that, after his death, he will be switched to the other team. At this point, a vote for the larger team could be presented asking for volunteers to switch to the other team -- this allows a player to switch to the other team if he wants to be nice and even it up. If a player were to volunteer to switch, the original switchee would remain on the team, and, after the volunteer's death, the volunteer would be switched. Simple.
As you can see, this presents the least amount of pain in being forced to abandon a team you've been working for hours on, and gives most of the control to the players themselves.
What do you guys think of this? Feel free to post criticisms, comments, or suggestions.
Thanks guys,
Later
-Fishman
Comments
it sounds good. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Fishman
And finally, for mid-round balancing: Once there is a discrepency in the team sizes by more than 1 (i.e 6 to 8, but not 7 to 8), a hidden timer begins. If this discrepency has not been fixed within, say, 30 seconds, the player on the larger team who has been on the server for the LEAST amount of time is given a warning message, saying that, after his death, he will be switched to the other team. At this point, a vote for the larger team could be presented asking for volunteers to switch to the other team -- this allows a player to switch to the other team if he wants to be nice and even it up. If a player were to volunteer to switch, the original switchee would remain on the team, and, after the volunteer's death, the volunteer would be switched. Simple.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This would also give (the alien team in most cases) all the AFKers and RR llamas. I feel that having them on my team would be more of a hindrance than a blessing.
Mid-round balancing is problematic, I know I sure as hell don't want to play as an alien if I started as a marine most of the time. Many people feel the same way I think.