Making games more unpredictable

[badpazzword]

Can we stop discussing code changes?

inb4xeretov

[LANS]

Research times need to be rethought in SpedupCore. If the normal game length is 30 minutes, you nerf Bios. The above idea of increasing the differences between techlevels sounds good.

I'd suggest just making all tech cheaper across the board, or increasing miner speed and yield. Constant miner pressure becomes even more important. Default miner cost may need to be reduced to allow teams to come back from A 0-miner situation faster.

[SpaceJunk]

Put a bunch of newbies in a third team and give them seismics.

Edit: On a more serious note, why not just play with 5 max miners instead of 4?

[LANS]

QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Dec 21 2010, 11:42 AM) Put a bunch of newbies in a third team and give them seismics.

Edit: On a more serious note, why not just play with 5 max miners instead of 4?

This won't make much difference except pump up drone kills IMO, most not-uber-stacked teams have trouble keeping more than 2 (sometimes 3) miners alive for any extended period of time. That fifth miner might make a difference early-game against a weak starting faction if your team has concentrated miner defense, but its a matter of diluting your miner D against an offense that tends to concentrate on one miner at a time. That fifth miner also requires you to spread mining over 2 sectors rather than having the option of mining one sector at a time or multiple sectors at comm's choice. Two-sector miner D is harder to organize than one-sector by quite a bit.

How many even-ish (say, 12 players per team with maximum of +20 AS on one side) games do you see where one team keeps more than 2 miners alive once the enemy has mk-II tech up? That fifth miner may pay for itself in one load, but I don't see it making a big difference except in very small games where miners tend to live a bit longer, or in very stacked games where the extra miner doesn't make a difference as the enemy team is dead from the start.

[Makida]

Why is it a bad thing that you can predict games by seeing who's playing? I mean... isn't that a good thing, really, telling you that player skill is what determines the outcome of games of Allegiance? Why would you want to change this? I don't think it necessarily ever made the game less fun. Firstly, because not everyone obsessively tries to calculate the probability of their victory when the game starts, and secondly, because even if you know you're on the team with weaker players, you can still have fun trying to beat the odds and defeat the "better" team, making the game one of that unpredictable 15% -- and you can learn new tricks and improve your game even if you end up losing, of course.

I don't see why Allegiance needs to be made shorter, either. When I've played Allegiance I wasn't after some quick burst of action -- any brainless FPS can give me that. Allegiance is a strategy game, and strategy games should take a bit of time. The fact that the game's balance can shift, teams can stage a come-back, and there's enough time to really plan out what you're going to do in detail, are all good things, not bad things, and they are linked to the fact that games of Allegiance can take some time.

The best way to make Alleg less predictable in the long run is to find some way to get more people playing. Find some way to make the wait between games shorter, not the games themselves, and maybe more newbies will stick around.

[Spunkmeyer]

QUOTE (NightRychune @ Dec 21 2010, 03:04 AM) games are only unpredictable when you have teams of highly skilled pilots and commanders on both sides who are locked in an epic battle to outmaneuver one another in any conceivable way. unfortunately as these individuals are in the minority, these games are incredibly rare

This... or on a more upbeat note, don't start one-sided games.

Unfortunately, a lot of players either:

1) Do not realize the game will be one-sided (the "lacking a clue" syndrome)
2) Don't care (the "I just wanna $#@! around" syndrome)

Everyone who commands should understand the relative strengths of factions, the effects of money settings on factions and the balance of key players on each team, and make a strong effort to have these right for an even game. Everyone else should point out problems with these and not just hop on board for an hour of predictable futility.

[NightRychune]

i am mildly disturbed that spunky and i are in agreement so often these days

[vogue]

Lowering the amount of time that each game goes isn't really going to help unpredictability. More often than not, the more time a team has to recover from a loss like an opening miner or opening op the better.

[FIZ]

Probably a stupid idea, but what if every team started with a carrier?

Who would that [starting factions] help more, int factions or fig factions?

Pro: more forward teles, good scout for commander

Con: Well... int factions would much more far reaching, fig factions would be a much larger threat to opening drones. Giga would be in trouble IMO as well.


This would have to be a game controller setting IMO, but it would help with smaller games.

[Malicious Wraith]

Whats wrong with just building a carrier? They are cheap enough.