126

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

You can't please everyone; I really like this point, because now that the PVE players have left because they weren't listened to, the PVP players are now segmenting and leaving because aspects of the PVP are not what they want.

So, while you can't please everyone, you can however please no one.

127 (edited by Tiggus 2011-02-12 21:56:48)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Newsflash, the light bot roams we've done(speaking for GG) since the patch move around 75-80 because they actually have to to like..fit guns(and only 3 at that to get this speed).  Mechs can keep up just fine and fit more firepower, these arguments are based on unfounded theorycrafting and not field testing. 

The only reason you don't see more mechs in today's everyday roams(and we roam with mechs multiple times a week) are because they are more expensive and we are consistantly outnumbered in enemy territory so it doesn't make sense to risk it.  None of these suggestions(containers) would change that or make it more appealing to roam in a mech if you are not already doing so.

I'm not saying all bots are perfectly balanced and will not or should not be tweaked going forward.  For instance I do think mechs and above could do with some extra armor to make them tankier, just a bit.  When making balance changes to bots hopefully they will tweak just one variable at a time and gradually so they can judge the impact, not sweeping changes that ruin the fairly decent balance we have already.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Syndic seriously? Comon man you know better than anyone that if your fitted just right you could own a Mech 1v1 in your light EW bot. That should never be the case, nor should a light EW be able to keep you locked at long ranges and the mech cannot. You add light EW locking range + speed advantage = Dead mech. Seen it many times as Jsands states I agree, something is abit off when a mech gets beat by a Light EW. Basically if you agree with how Light EW's are designed currently, then mechs only purpose is defense of intrusions and PVE.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Serpens wrote:

Syndic seriously? Comon man you know better than anyone that if your fitted just right you could own a Mech 1v1 in your light EW bot. That should never be the case, nor should a light EW be able to keep you locked at long ranges and the mech cannot. You add light EW locking range + speed advantage = Dead mech. Seen it many times as Jsands states I agree, something is abit off when a mech gets beat by a Light EW. Basically if you agree with how Light EW's are designed currently, then mechs only purpose is defense of intrusions and PVE.

1v1 mech outreps 1 light EW DPS.

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Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Serpens wrote:

Syndic seriously? Comon man you know better than anyone that if your fitted just right you could own a Mech 1v1 in your light EW bot. That should never be the case, nor should a light EW be able to keep you locked at long ranges and the mech cannot. You add light EW locking range + speed advantage = Dead mech. Seen it many times as Jsands states I agree, something is abit off when a mech gets beat by a Light EW. Basically if you agree with how Light EW's are designed currently, then mechs only purpose is defense of intrusions and PVE.

Reread jsands post, it was a yagel not a EW bot.  I don't think it's possible for a ew to take on a mech solo unless the mech is terrible(to a degree I have not seen yet) and has no repper.  Light bots on the other hand pack a pretty nice punch if you let them sit within 100m of you.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

As small as the static speed advantage will be - it will be sucessfully and exclusively used - and will be able to pick fights at will and let the other bots feel obsolete.

So the only way is to temporarily change the speeds as in a speed module for light bots, tha enables them to fulfill their role, attack OR retreat - but not both. Anything else wont work.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Nothing is absolete atm. Every bot class is viable, tho last thing this game needs is more advantages for EA/release players. 6 of my guildies from other game started today, I'm already 100-150k EP ahead of them, what are new players to do if mechs are buffed to be "viable" for roams? Spend a month on Alpha getting EP to be able to pilot a Mech, so they might have chance to apply to a corp?

No sorry, a new player should be able to get involved in PVP inside a week without getting roflstomped so bad he ragequits because EA player X has 300k EP invested in Mech skills and outspeeds, outdps', and outranges him.

Player skill must always be important factor, not who can grind most NIC/Ore to produce ***.

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133 (edited by Container 2011-02-13 06:38:29)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Syndic wrote:

Your thinking is correct, carrot & reward system works. But balance is also to be taken into equation, because if mechs are any faster there wont be anything else piloted in-game besides Mechs and Ewar Mechs. Might as well scrap the whole Basic Robotic/Basic X skill tree, as well as all the low-tier bots.

So you agree that carrot & reward system works.
But you don't see the only true carrot & reward that will keep most players in the game is bot progression.  PROVEN over and over and over again in MMO after MMO after MMO.
Vanity improvements and POS improvements will completely bypass the average players' interest.

Lose the bot progression of the game and the game has no hook to keep the average Joe
Schmo MMO player invested.  Joe Schmo wants bot progression, you don't give that he leaves.  As Joe Schmo leaves, light bot griefers have a great time for a while, until server becomes a ghost town and griefers will have no one to grief and leave too.

DEVs tend to listen to griefers because they are more vocal and seem more sophisticated.
But guess what?  It is the average MMO player that is the pillar of your company revenue and income and you ignore his/her mundane concerns at your own risk.  It is even in the griefers' long term interest that you listen to these players needs as no average player=no game=no one to grief.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Syndic wrote:

Player skill must always be important factor, not who can grind most NIC/Ore to produce ***.

Very noble sentiments.  FOR AN RTS.  FOR AN FPS.
Yes.  Player skills must be the most important factor in those types of games.

This is an MMO.
People do not grind NIC/Ore for its own sake.
They grind NIC/Ore for advantage.
They don't get enough advantage from it, they stop grinding NIC/Ore.
Gen chat falls, economy goes inert.
Game dies. It is that simple.

Wake up to what is happening.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Container wrote:
Syndic wrote:

Player skill must always be important factor, not who can grind most NIC/Ore to produce ***.

Very noble sentiments.  FOR AN RTS.  FOR AN FPS.
Yes.  Player skills must be the most important factor in those types of games.

This is an MMO.
People do not grind NIC/Ore for its own sake.
They grind NIC/Ore for advantage.
They don't get enough advantage from it, they stop grinding NIC/Ore.
Gen chat falls, economy goes inert.
Game dies. It is that simple.

Wake up to what is happening.

You sure it's just not Axe that is dieing?

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topi … host-town/

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Taking troll posts as fact?

lol, win.

138 (edited by Container 2011-02-13 07:39:58)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Regarding balance.

DEVs have done a good job balancing everything except in a very crucial area.
They have neglected to factor into performance that heavy bots require vastly more EP and cost much more NIC than light bots.
This has to be factored into relative performance of heavy vs light bots.

I understand the desire for skill to matter and newbies to have chances against older players.
However, it is not a binary choice that either you make the game all about skill OR you make the game all about EP/NIC.
It is more of a sliding scale of how much skill matters and how much EP/NIC matters.
Right now the balance is such that EP/NIC matters too little to drive people to subscribe for EP and grind for NIC.
The people who care about character progression (Translation: long term paying customers) are leaving or close to leaving.
Wake up to this fact and quickly remedy this with rewards for EP/NIC that matter or the game goes under.
This is a game survival issue.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Container wrote:

Regarding balance.

DEVs have done a good job balancing everything except in a very crucial area.
They have neglected to factor into performance that heavy bots require vastly more EP and cost much more NIC than light bots.
This has to be factored into relative performance of heavy vs light bots.

I understand the desire for skill to matter and newbies to have chances against older players.
However, it is not a binary choice that either you make the game all about skill OR you make the game all about EP/NIC.
It is more of a sliding scale of how much skill matters and how much EP/NIC matters.
Right now the balance is such that EP/NIC matters too little to drive people to subscribe for EP and grind for NIC.
The people who care about character progression (Translation: long term paying customers) are leaving or close to leaving.
Wake up to this fact and quickly remedy this with rewards for EP/NIC that matter or the game goes under.
This is a game survival issue.

Go ahead and quit. DEV's aren't going to make heavy mechs fast enough to be relevant in fast roams.

Mechs/Heavies are already vastly superiour to every other mech with the exception of their speed. This will not change -- take your ball and go home... or adapt... but I get the feeling you're just looking for an excuse to give up. Losing isn't fun.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Geez ... 50 posts later saying the same thing again and again. It is not a game design issue if your alliance has rushed to mech/heavy-mech, and now finds itself outplayed by fast gangs with pilots who put skill points in small robots using game mechanics as designed.

Blackmailing that you are going to quit because poor leadership guidance to your pilots in terms of how to spend their extensions, so that devs should now change the game mechanics to make up for this inadequacy is not an appropriate answer, and you should realize this.

Whilst we can sympathize with your predicament - I'm sure frustration levels are rising for the pilots losing mechs and heavy mechs daily to our fast gangs - changing the game mechanics is not the answer.

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141 (edited by Lheomuh 2011-02-13 09:35:04)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

our 50 men corp is dead already..iam sure we are not the only corp from day 1...

142 (edited by Tiggus 2011-02-13 10:01:54)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

I'm still waiting to hear how making mechs go faster is going to make them better for roams, assuming the defenders also have mechs.  The reason people don't risk mechs often on roams is because they are more expensive to lose and can be pinned down by ewar tacklers so the larger defending group can slaughter them.  Explain how your solution addresses this.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Tiggus:

Its totally ok, that EWs provide a cheap way access to pvp on the one side for new players and be still viable in spider gangs later on for specialized players to a certain extend.

But they shouldnt be top notch, when they're easy and cheap to use. Theyre being used because only they can pick their fights, advance or retreat at will and are cheap.

This makes them superior to anything else in roamings allthough it isnt event the role they been built for since most builds go for speed and dps rather then tackling or EW.

Simply make their top speed be some sort of afterburner boost and decrease their base speed to the other speeds. They would still be the easy access pvp thing, could still have their role as supporting EWs and could still roam around...

..they would just need to pick their targets better and live with decisions they made if they used their boost for attacking or retreating, because they couldnt afterburn right again.

They couldnt kite defenders over the whole island if they dont use terrain and intel well and they couldnt just turn and run away after realizing whoops we didnt perceive the situation right.

I was talking with Siddy earlier about an appropriate way to implement an afterburner - the idea to make it accumulator based would favor greens immensly, so - what about making it interference dependant? Its a value that applies to all bots equal - though this afterburner wouldnt be made for anything bigger then lights.

Lets say the module would use inverse interference capacity as fuel - from a backstory point of view - interference would increase becasue of the engines powering at max.

Now youd have an ability that can be used on purpose for any speed relating matter in EWs to gain an advantage.

144 (edited by Container 2011-02-13 16:32:35)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Making top speed of light bots temporary via afterburner might work.

Making mechs and heavy mechs cheaper and less EP intensive might also work.
The issue is there is extreme imbalance in cost and EP effectiveness between light and heavy bots.

People train mechs because they expect this to be a mech game as it is in the mech genre.
Finding that mechs are useless in most cases, and that you have to train little spiders to be viable in PVP is an extreme let-down.

Let me illustrate this.
You buy a racing car game.  Cars better be the main thing you use.  Or you feel cheated by the developers.  Not motorbikes, not golf carts.  Cars, because the genre is cars.
You buy a tank game.  Tanks better be the main thing you use.  Not troops, not buggies.  Tanks.  Some people may use troops or buggies.  But you better not be forced to use them to play the game fully.  Because it is a tank game.
You buy an aeroplane game.  The game better be about aeroplanes.

Perpetuum is a mech game.
Look at the trailer, it shows mechs as the centerpiece.
Look at the website, it shows a Gropho as the centerpiece.
But when we started playing DEVs pull a bait-and-switch on us.
Hi, mechs are not used in 99% of situations!
Use this metal insect instead.  You fail by not training them!  Learn2play metal spiders!
But many find it hard to care about metal spiders, too un-Mechlike and looks like dirty household pests.
Any wonder if you are turning off people by advertising your game is one thing and then switching it to another thing completely different?

A car game without cars as the center, an aeroplane game without aeroplanes in the center, a tank game without tanks in the center is not going to last long.
Perpetuum better make mechs the center or it will not last long either.

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Its main features are a persistent, unsharded game world,
fully customizable mechs and robots with hundreds of equipment items, open-world PvP and missions, player-controlled economy, extensive crafting and industry, dynamically changing environment and much more.

thats the first sentence you read when get onto the perpetuum homepage.
right next to that is a cammy, the only bot ingame with 8 legs, left to it is the gropho, heavy mech, which is in scale with the cammy.

the game itself is not advertised as "mech" game, thats what other do. Actually the game tries to make the alien lifeform look the least as humanoids or any creature you see on earth on regular basis.

And the robot class ingame, named "mechs" is just the middleclass. the concept arts are showing even bigger robots that are also non-human shaped.

i would understand if you complained about the "dynamically changing environment", but not the mechs...

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

146 (edited by Container 2011-02-13 17:26:32)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Well, I am pretty sure the customer market for a game with manlike large robots as the top PVP class is far larger than for a game where small robotic spiders are the top PVP class.

Spiders and non humanoid creatures may excite the DEVs that they are being clever with the mech types.
But there is a strong reason why mechs in anime and movies are almost always humanoid.
Because that makes them relatable.
They look like people to some extent.
They feel they are like an armored suit or some kind of more powerful version of yourself.
Mechs that do not look like humanoids are hard to relate to or care about.

147 (edited by Annihilator 2011-02-13 17:32:31)

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

so in your words, someone who brings out a car- or spaceship mmo has to implement Avatars running around somewhere or the player can't identify themselfs with their combat machines?

btw, forgot in my previous post: the concept art even shows TANKS!

and take a look at "Robot-Wars" and how many of those robots are human-shaped.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Container wrote:

Making top speed of light bots temporary via afterburner might work.

Making mechs and heavy mechs cheaper and less EP intensive might also work.
The issue is there is extreme imbalance in cost and EP effectiveness between light and heavy bots.

People train mechs because they expect this to be a mech game as it is in the mech genre.
Finding that mechs are useless in most cases, and that you have to train little spiders to be viable in PVP is an extreme let-down.

Let me illustrate this.
You buy a racing car game.  Cars better be the main thing you use.  Or you feel cheated by the developers.  Not motorbikes, not golf carts.  Cars, because the genre is cars.
You buy a tank game.  Tanks better be the main thing you use.  Not troops, not buggies.  Tanks.  Some people may use troops or buggies.  But you better not be forced to use them to play the game fully.  Because it is a tank game.
You buy an aeroplane game.  The game better be about aeroplanes.

Perpetuum is a mech game.
Look at the trailer, it shows mechs as the centerpiece.
Look at the website, it shows a Gropho as the centerpiece.
But when we started playing DEVs pull a bait-and-switch on us.
Hi, mechs are not used in 99% of situations!
Use this metal insect instead.  You fail by not training them!  Learn2play metal spiders!
But many find it hard to care about metal spiders, too un-Mechlike and looks like dirty household pests.
Any wonder if you are turning off people by advertising your game is one thing and then switching it to another thing completely different?

A car game without cars as the center, an aeroplane game without aeroplanes in the center, a tank game without tanks in the center is not going to last long.
Perpetuum better make mechs the center or it will not last long either.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/trans … index.html

There you go, enjoy playing with 100% mechs in a mech game.

[18:20:30] <GLiMPSE> Chairman Of My Heart o/
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Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Behold, the new generation of mechs ingame (you can recognize it from the concept arts)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pd99 … ate-2_tech

Re: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT

Container wrote:

Well, I am pretty sure the customer market for a game with manlike large robots as the top PVP class is far larger than for a game where small robotic spiders are the top PVP class.

Spiders and non humanoid creatures may excite the DEVs that they are being clever with the mech types.
But there is a strong reason why mechs in anime and movies are almost always humanoid.
Because that makes them relatable.
They look like people to some extent.
They feel they are like an armored suit or some kind of more powerful version of yourself.
Mechs that do not look like humanoids are hard to relate to or care about.

Absolutely right Container. This is basic homework for any game out there.