Gear/Gold related balance changes suggestions

[Harkon Haakonson]

---- POST UPDATED ----

Basically I quoted several suggestions that would fit well within the mod and concern gold balancing issues and even new features involving gold, in some way. This is so that the devs have an easier and quicker time when brainstorming over changes to the mod. Quotes can be found further down in the post!

Alright, I've posted a reply in the "Keeping the Server Numbers up" thread as someone made a very good point of how this game rewards individual player skill too much and makes the experience frustrating at times for rookie players as well as the infamous snowball effect of the gold system, and I ended up describing some of my suggested changes in how to best improve the gold system in this mod, with the main purpose being not letting it be too much of a "snowballing" effect but more-so reward players for playing as a team, complete objectives, and don't feel so afraid of dying as to let others teammates die.
I'll copy paste it here so maybe people can give some input on this, as I feel they could be really positive changes regarding the whole combat balancing of this mod as well as how rounds progress! Here goes :

I never liked the gold system in this game, it's too much of a snowball effect. Gaining some gold per kill is encouraging, but the best way even to balance it, and how people teamplay, is to add some kind of "assist" system, so everyone that did damage to the opponent gets credited the kill or point in the score, as well as bonus gold. However, make the gold reward lower to all players envolved, the more people envolved in it (1 player killing another alone gives the most gold, if 2 players are somehow envolved in the kill it splits the gold reward in half the amount it is now for each).

---- Other users ideas :

You could make the silver donation towards another player like this in the menu:
After having pressed ESC for menu:
Donate > <player> > <set amount of silver>

You could set the amount of silver you get in a table like this:

• 
  1000
• 
  500
• 100

A suggestion given by some players was that gold should be possible to donate to your teammates. Some people prefer to keep their gear light/only carry a 2 handed weapon and a free shield to offer minimal protection against projectiles, and as such, they tend to accumulate a lot of money if their team is successful. I'm sure everybody has found himself with like 5000 gold saved up or something like that and hasn't really found the use for it, where some other guy might be struggling because he has been unlucky and died more than the others, thought still did well.

------------------------------------------------

About lost gear, and exploiting. Some mods like crpg keep user information, you could have a little log with player ID's and money they got, so it will prevent loosing all the money you put into gear when you die and will prevent player who quit and joined to have round bonus as their id's with silver quantity wont be deleted for some time just enough to prevent using that rejoin bug.

Pretty simple logic behind this one. Prevents you from doing the disconnect and reconnect thing after you die in 1 round, and successfully join a team before the round ends, so you get 1300'ish gold instead of the usual 860. Also, has Davee said, this sort of advanced data saving has other unrelated perks, such as keeping more detailed statistics about your performance in the server (number of decapitations pulled off, total kills, etc).

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:: Davee's post  : http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,158227.msg3829045.html#msg3829045

It has some good ideas about the subjects I posted above, including my originally suggested "kill assist gold", too long to quote for the purpose of this post, but might be worth checking it out.

---- In summary :

- Add "kill assist" gold reward for people involved, splitting the reward among players. So basically, each kill would credit more gold overall (I think that needs to happen regardless so it's a good thing) , and let's say it's 200 g per kill. If 2 players damaged/destroyed a shield of someone else, they both get 100 g. So, whoever got the killing blow should not get more gold at all in my opinion, but that's worth debating.
[ Typical scenario (written by Reignlief_M_OL in this thread) : ]

" Hmm reading through this thread I agree with the ideas on the dmg system, all the tiem as archer I rarely get more than 2 kills, most of the tiem i just throw my enemy of balance so an ally can get him.

And even when I play huscarl I still tend to play as support for others as Im not a particulaly good fighter if my shield goes down. SO i use a spear to keep the enemy distracted, but usualy don't get kills."


- Replace the "kills" tab in score with a "score" tab, crediting kills, assists, houses burned in Invasion for the sake of encouraging people to not just teamkill, but be helpful and be rewarded statistically for that.

- Add a "donation" feature, so you can distribute gold to any specific player you wish, from a fixed amount of gold like killerblead and others have suggested in this thread.

- Keep an advanced database of statistics in the server, in order to avoid the leave-reconnect gold exploit I described above, so the player's ID is saved on the server and if he joins again while in the middle of a round  he won't get considerably more gold when he respawns, as well as save fun statistical information! Decapitations, total kills, that kind of thing.

- Award a bit extra gold to whoever pulls of a decapitation! \o/
Heh, totally unnecessary, but should be a nice touch. Suggested by Voldirs.



Hope this is helpful and sparks up a constructive debate!

Best regards,

Harkon

 

[Turanien]

In all honesty, I could not agree more. The gold system blows quite heavily, in Native and in Vikingr... This is especially important though in Vikingr given the prevalence of tunics and light garments against the supposedly high-end mail pieces.

I would happily see a dramatic revamp of the gold formulae. I'll post some more thoughts later this afternoon on the matter. 

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

In all honesty, I could not agree more. The gold system blows quite heavily, in Native and in Vikingr... This is especially important though in Vikingr given the prevalence of tunics and light garments against the supposedly high-end mail pieces.

I would happily see a dramatic revamp of the gold formulae. I'll post some more thoughts later this afternoon on the matter. 

A thousand times this, the bold particularly. Very glad to see a mod dev agrees!

 

[blitzking]

Also, you may want to include a small over-time bonus for banner-buffing, thatway people would be encouraged to buff more, and wouldn't lose money from doing it. Standards make a difference.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

Also, you may want to include a small over-time bonus for banner-buffing, thatway people would be encouraged to buff more, and wouldn't lose money from doing it. Standards make a difference.

You mean getting "assist points" from holding the banner long enough near big groups of people? Yeah that definitely should happen the way I see it, basically any obvious way of supporting the team should be rewarded with assist points, thanks for reminding me of standard holding. However it needs to be balanced so you don't get assist points easily for just buffing 1 guy, maybe a multiplier depending on how many people you're buffing, sort of like the gold ticks work for carrying banner near teammates.

 

[blitzking]

Even though the standard thing isn't exactly realistic, I like because if an assist point system is added it will allow new players to Warband MP (like me) to get good equipment and contribute to their teams without making many kills

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

Even though the standard thing isn't exactly realistic, I like because if an assist point system is added it will allow new players to Warband MP (like me) to get good equipment and contribute to their teams without making many kills

Realism is really relative in this context mate, heh. Standards didn't actually give soldiers extra powerful arrows or sword strikes!
In a gameplay design point of view it's a very good principle for the exact reasons you mentioned, encourages teamplay, lets less talented players who don't feel like fighting be helpful in some way and feel rewarded for their actions and lures casual players, which will be key for this mod's success.

 

[Davee]

We've been talking about this on and off for some time - and with some of the new operations that the 1.134 patch added, I think it could very much be possible to make the game count damage instead of kills. This was only intended to replace the "Kills" column on the scoreboard first, but after giving it some more thought I think I might be able to make it apply for combat earnings as well, in which case you would gain silver for damage, not kills.

(it could also be named "Score" or something similar if we make it count healing/boosting as well as house-burning)

As for the buff standards; I'm not quite sure what you're on about since it has had money rewards from the very first build!
From the FAQ:

Q. How does the standard work?
A. Buy one from the loadout screen. It can be found among the spears on most Infantry classes. To use it you simply wield it like a weapon. It will "tick" every 5 seconds, telling you how many teammates you are boosting. You gain 1 gold for boosting per teammate and tic And 3 gold for healing per teammate and tic. By boosting someone you give them a 10% damage increase and heal them for 3 hp/tic. The boosts will not stack with other standard carriers, one will override the other.
The carrier does not recieve the boosts from his own standard, but is free to gain bonuses from another.

(although I believe it heals for 5 hp and gets you 5 silver for a heal after the formula was changed in a recent patch)

As for losing money on death; I'm afraid you're somewhat wrong. You never lose earnings when you die, just your gear. You can never have less than the minimum money amount (which is 1000 default in Native, 860 on the Vikingr Einherjar server), so disconnecting/rejoining dosn't get you much - unless you manage to catch the round-end bonus. But of course, your overall point is still valid; many are afraid to die because they lose their gear.
It's kind of a fine balance though - do we want to have no punishment for dieing whatsoever? No fear of death? I concur in that it should be toned down to avoid snowballing, but still - we will have to consider any change very carefully and how it affects the flow and feel of the game.

 

[Moeckerkalfie]

After playing way too much over the last days I also noticed the shortcommings of the money-system...

One special problem is, that if you won mutliple times in a row but use only light gear (because of movement speed),
you tend to have a few thousand denars as surplus, which you don't use.
Couldn't you maybe create a system which enables sharing of your wealth, so the banner carrier who bravely stood at
your side when you faced the enemy assault gets his reward too, as well as the unfortunate less experienced companion
who tries his best to help you.
In its easiest form this method could just split up your money on all the players of your team evenly, leaving you only
with the start money of 860 denars.

I would actually prefer giving the money to the opposing team, since they need it more, but I guess this lack of
balance has to be sorted out in an other way than by the generosity of the victors.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

After playing way too much over the last days I also noticed the shortcommings of the money-system...

One special problem is, that if you won mutliple times in a row but use only light gear (because of movement speed),
you tend to have a few thousand denars as surplus, which you don't use.
Couldn't you maybe create a system which enables sharing of your wealth, so the banner carrier who bravely stood at
your side when you faced the enemy assault gets his reward too, as well as the unfortunate less experienced companion
who tries his best to help you.
In its easiest form this method could just split up your money on all the players of your team evenly, leaving you only
with the start money of 860 denars.

I would actually prefer giving the money to the opposing team, since they need it more, but I guess this lack of
balance has to be sorted out in an other way than by the generosity of the victors.

I get where you're coming from, and in the end it seems like a noble method, sharing with your companions. Hell, the more gold you share, the higher your "score" or "assist points" should also raise! A great idea! In the end, it all comes down to the snowballing effect of gold accumulation and excessive gold deficit, yeah.

 

[Shoep]

As a archer, you dont really need more then 1500+ silver to get the best gear you want ( Bow, arrow, armor + melee weapon of choice ). It'd be nice if i could share that silver with others of my team who could actually use it, yes

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

As a archer, you dont really need more then 1500+ silver to get the best gear you want ( Bow, arrow, armor + melee weapon of choice ). It'd be nice if i could share that silver with others of my team who could actually use it, yes

Also a very good point, I started playing archer a LOT in 0.71 (I don't really anymore, I liked it because I could be pro and snipe away at people with very good accuracy, especially when I rolled with Smiley, I don't play this to be a real support-based player) and I did it not only because it was great fun, but because at the first round I had a large majority of my optimal gear already, and in the second round I was set for the whole match. You don't have access to heavy armor, and none of your weapons are that expensive, so having more than 1500 gold precisely was sort of redundant, unless you planned on accumulating gold to play a melee powerhouse in later rounds.

So giving archers more things to spend gold on (which seems like the right move, I think pricing should scale equally with all classes so as not to create an imbalance or sloppy gameplay progression) is probably the best development decision, as well as allowing the sharing of funds, of course.

 

[Chel]

one thing you could do is have the gold for kills split, for example 1/3rd goes to the player who got the kill and 2/3rd is distributed between the rest of the team equally (or depending on how much gold they already have).

I agree that the gold lost on death is too high, it should be a fraction of the gold you have (1/3rd for example), not a set value.

 

[Shoep]

The problem i see is when you remove the penalty for losing gold when you die, is that our 'berserk' players will go even more crazy as dieing matters even less to them now.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

The problem i see is when you remove the penalty for losing gold when you die, is that our 'berserk' players will go even more crazy as dieing matters even less to them now.

I thought about this, but then again, if you look at the people playing, many are afraid of stepping it up in-game, I've seen many times people cowering to be the among the first to charge in. Sure there should be penalty for dying, and rewards for tactical plays and efforts, but this is a game that progresses throughout rounds and eventually restarts, people shouldn't always be afraid of dying in public play because that way they'll never get to enjoy the game completely!

I confess I'm not too sure if people act that way because of the gold loss though, just seems like a logic thought because I too sort of think that way sometimes, I try to be more sneaky in order to not die as much and collect gold, but hey this is Viking land, leave the girly stuff for Norman cavalry.

 

[Fenix_120]

I am torn between one argument and the other.


On the one hand, the elites of the era did get the best equipment so yes if your a better fighter you should get better equipment.


On the other hand the number of kills on your score should not be what regulates your fighting ability, I remember one time I was playing as a Norman Miles and I was fighting a Viking Hersir, we were both fairly good players so we both were well armed and armored with mail, helmets and swords and good shields.

We had both flanked to the left of the main battle of the Stamford bridge map so we were both alone and started fighting each other.

I was half expecting the fight to last for maybe a good ten seconds but it turned out I was fighting this one guy for nearly two whole minutes, I blocked or dodged every-time he struck at me and he blocked or dodged every attack I made at him, we both had good shields so they did not break the whole time though if mine did I would expect I would have lost due to my lag.

Anyway he feints and finally scores a good two consecutive hits on me and knocks me to about 1/3 my health and I guess because he got careless and tried for three hits I managed a good hit to his head that very nearly kills him but thanks to his good helm he was still alive.

Then this dude on a horse charges up behind him and stabs him in the back, taking the kill I had fought HARD for.


So actually I'm going to agree with you, I think a system based on damage dealt would work well, a Viking Hersir with 100% health gets hit by a Norman Miles and a Norman Knight, the Miles takes away 80% of said Hersir's health and the knight finishes him off, so the Miles should get 80% of the gold and the Knight 20%.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

Your example proves my point just great, it's one of the most frustrating situations where one just feels that something is wrong about the system.

Note though, I have no problem with the best players having the best of gear, they still will with my proposed system, more-so even.
That way a good player that is getting his kills stolen but manages to damage the enemy and do most of the job gets credit in both score and gold, allowing him to scale with equipment tiers properly. This would help and encourage archer players a lot, especially now that it is more unnacurate and less of a stomp class in the right hands. I remember many times getting good solid shots on someone from a good angle to throw them off guard for a second so that my ally fighting him could swing his sword for the kill safely. It feels good to help your team, but it feels even better if you get due credit for your support.

 

[Shoep]

Oh man, you wouldn't believe the number of times i shoot a enemy right before they're about to stab a teammate in the back, just delaying that attack for long enough for the teammate to notice them. Or that i only kill like 25% of the people i shoot at, the other 75% survives, or i manage to hit them once and someone else finishes them off.

I still dont think archers were ment to kill, but more to support a group of fighters, pick off the 2-handers, shoot into melee's and help your allies that are having trouble in their fights. Its what i try to do mostly. I only directly shoot for a target when they're either chasing me down with their shields or throwing stuff at me

Oh, and archers dont need the gold! give me a option to 'donate' it to other players, or give us swords for 2,000 each so we have something to waste our money on

 

[Alec{zacool}]

Something that would be cool would be having a tech system. But probably extremely hard to implement.

Tech 1: Basic swords and shields and armor.

Tech 2: More specialized weapons and upgraded stuff.

Tech 3: Elite stuff!

To unlock techs, your team has to "donate" gold to the "team bank", which when a certain amount of gold is reached, the next tech is unlocked.

Either that or have several things to unlock, and your team captain, (Earl, Count, etc) gets to research stuff for your team.

That would mean that a team has to work together to save up cash to get advantages on the enemy, instead of blindly charging in just to get killed and waste your money.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

Oh man, you wouldn't believe the number of times i shoot a enemy right before they're about to stab a teammate in the back, just delaying that attack for long enough for the teammate to notice them. Or that i only kill like 25% of the people i shoot at, the other 75% survives, or i manage to hit them once and someone else finishes them off.

I still dont think archers were ment to kill, but more to support a group of fighters, pick off the 2-handers, shoot into melee's and help your allies that are having trouble in their fights. Its what i try to do mostly. I only directly shoot for a target when they're either chasing me down with their shields or throwing stuff at me

Oh, and archers dont need the gold! give me a option to 'donate' it to other players, or give us swords for 2,000 each so we have something to waste our money on

Hahaha, spot on my friend, spot on.

@Aleczacool

That actually sounds like a really interesting idea man. It makes sense too in my opinion, it'd make battles seem more realistic and the gear scaling transition seem way smoother. As it stands it's weird to watch someone in your shield wall of equal rank with heavy mail armor while you're wearing a linen tunic and no protective helm.
Evolution of technology would probably be very exciting. No more naked people fighting alonside heavy mail warriors. Especially so for the normans since they were sort of the most uniform faction. I also like how you related the tech system to the coop gold system revamp.

Really good ideas coming to light in this thread guys! I'm sure the devs can lay a lot of brainstorming over some of this stuff, I sure as hell am looking forward for some of these suggestions.