Gear/Gold related balance changes suggestions

[Raegenhere]

I very much like the idea of rewarding damage instead of kills. Not only for money, but also for the highscore.
The same mechanism could be used to punish hitting of a friendly, e.g. instead of getting 10 points for 10 damage you get -20 points.
Big questions is if that is realisable in the engine.

For things like "donating" money... i think there is too much coordination and micromanagement needed for stuff like that. At least for me i can say that, i often enough forget to buy stuff, especially if i manage to still live at the end of the round (which isn't too often  )
After all its about fighting, i would prefer that money stuff staying in the background, meaning it works automatically without anyone doing something expect spending that money.
I just don't want to see people asking for money on the chat all time.

 

[Æthelwulf]

That wouldn't work as well for archers though. They would do the 70% damage, earn 70 gold which they won't need and their kill would be finished off by an ally who would get the bonus and the kill. I would love an assist system because I like everyone I am guilty of finishing off a guy in a duel in the back. It's war. I will do what I can for my team to win but I don't feel good about it and likewise when I put 3 arrows in a chap at range only for a horse to bump into him and steal the kill I feel cheated that nobody is going to see in the scoreboard that I did most of the work on that chap. Damn, I both love and hate scoreboards.

Edit. The post I was replying to has been removed. I knew I should of quoted. Grrr.

 

[Raegenhere]

As long as the scoreboard only counts kills, we will always have that problem of 4 guys surrounding one enemy to get the kill, even if the would be needed elsewhere, taking the risk of wounding or killing a friendly.

So what i'd like to see is something like that:
- 10 damage inflicted to an enemy gives you 10 money and 10 points for the scoreboard
- 10 damage inflicted to an friendly gives you -30 money and -30 points for the scoreboard
- who did the actual kill should not matter anymore
I think that method would help towards more teamplay, we would  get rid of situations as described above.

Of course the amount of gold most likely has to be modified, maybe also the scorepoints to get nicer numbers.

(Maybe one could also think of different modifiers for different troop types... since on the start of a map its much easier to inflict damage for a hödving than for a hersir.
So while a hersir would get 10 gold/points for his 10 damage, the hödving could get only 8.)

Of course it can't ever be completely fair - a lucky hit onto an enemys back counts just as much as a much deserved hit that follows 1 minute of blocking and taunting.

 

[killer-blead]

A quick strike down should be just as much rewarded as a 2 minute long duel. You took your chance and killed your enemy in a mighty blow why should you get less reward for that?

 

[Davee]

Why not combine it?
Let's say that an enemy has 100 hp (they don't - I know). The new score system would give you 1 point per damage done, but a bonus of half (or something like that) the health of the enemy (50 in this case) if you kill them. This way, the killer would always get at least 50 points for finishing the enemy off, while people who helped out also get a fair share of the points. This would mean that you can gain 150 points for killing somebody.

Would it be a good idea to put a 100 points cap on score gained form killing an enemy? This would promote team-play for maximum rewards, but would also open up for abuse. Imagine one player hitting an enemy down to low health and then running off just so somebody else could get the bonus 50 points, which means that they generated 150 points collectively... Or maby it wouldn't be that much of a problem. It would actually also prevent exploitation in another way; you wouldn't get more than 100 points after attacking an enemy repeatedly after he has healed up using a banner.

A mod for the Source-engine (HL2, TF2 etc.) called "Hidden: Source" uses a similar score calculation formula and it works quite well! It was however just to determine who gets to be the "Hidden" next round (since it is a All vs one type game) and not score/money gain for everybody like it would be here.

Of course, I have yet to start scripting anything and some of this might not be actually do-able, with so much being hard-coded in the game. I'll have to check it up a bit, but from what I've seen so far, it shouldn't be a problem!

What do you think?


And yes, I was thinking of doing something like you mention in the first part of your last post, Angantyr

As for money donation - I think that's a great idea! Question is how the mechanics should work. Should it give it to the ones who need it the most (this could potentially target teamkillers), or equally across the whole team (even to the leader/top players)? Maby a player list from which you can choose who gets how much (this could be too much of a hassle for the player to do)? I kinda like the idea of having just one button that you press, type in how much you want to donate and then it proceeds to hand it out. A special formula to determine who gets how much of it might be the way to go.

As for stuff like tiered equipment levels; that sounds like it would unbalance things even more - with one team reaching the next tier before the other and then proceeding to dominate them... Besides, I kind of like the mix of gear we have now.

What do we do about the round gold* bonus by the way? Currently it can be exploited if you died one round without making it back up to the minimum gold* limit (as Haakon describes here)... We can't get rid of the fact that you lose your gear on death though.

* Why do I/we keep calling it gold? It's silver in Vikingr, damn it!

 

[STARik]

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.

 

[killer-blead]

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
• 50
• 10

The player sending the silver could get a confirmation message like:
Send x silver to player: <playername>

Then the other player could get a small message like this:
Recieved x silver from player: <playername>

 

[Davee]

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.

A bit complicated an approach to a small issue, but depending on how we end up modifying the earnings system, might be necessary. And if we do get around to doing it, I could throw in a "leader board" or something like that just for fun, so we can track how many heads you've sent flying, and total damage dealt, which could then get dynamically uploaded to our server's website

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
• 50
• 10

The player sending the silver could get a confirmation message like:
Send x silver to player: <playername>

Then the other player could get a small message like this:
Recieved x silver from player: <playername>

Yes, good layout. I think I might do it with a box where you type the amount of silver you want to donate however.

I could also always combine with with a "Donate all" button for quickly donating the set amount split to the whole team.

 

[Turanien]

I likey Davee.

/signed

 

[Halvar]

Let me speak for the beginners...I started last week and must say that it is really hard to fight against all those veterans and elite fighters...you need a very high frustration tolerance to try again and again and again...and again...and being killed right at the beginning...

...basically the money system is quite okay and should be kept easy and transparent...and I like the idea of counting damage instead of kills...but you should support rookies a bit more...if you die without a kill you should get a money boost...this would be a good team balancing factor that would also prevent beginners from giving up after a few matches...and I doubt players will commit suicide to get those 500 silver pieces or whatsoever...if you keep on dying, you will never win a battle...

 

[killer-blead]

It sounds good but what about teamkillers. They could think this is a excuse to teamkill because "Hey don't complain you still get your money!" or people going rambo because they will get money either way.

 

[Halvar]

It sounds good but what about teamkillers. They could think this is a excuse to teamkill because "Hey don't complain you still get your money!" or people going rambo because they will get money either way.

I don't think this game is about making money, but win the battle...
...people going rambo will die quickly regardless of the quality of their equipment...and players who keep on killing team fighters will be excommunicated anyway...
...although I see your point...but in the end I guess the "rookie-money-boost" will help to avoid results like 10:1, because one team had good start and could buy superior equipment right from the beginning of a battle...

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

To be frank I really liked Davee's latest input on this. Seems like a very solid method of combining most of the suggestions in this thread.

 

[Raegenhere]

Really looking forward to this!

Altough I don't think the actual "finishing off" shouldn't be rewarded more than a normal hit. Of course the final stroke should then count for the actual damage it did, not just for the hitpoints the enemy had left.

Also i have concerns regarding the donating system... i think well organised players get too much of an advantage there, with the result of all players of that team being on a similar tech levels.
I certainly have nothing against players being well organised, but this game is supposed to be about fighting, and thats where the efforts should go.
As I said, i very much dislike micromanagement and more importantly i really don't want to see people asking for or demanding the faction leaders and archers money all the time.

one other thing i'd like to put to discussion (i already did, but noone reponded ) :
Should the reward system treat all troop types the same, or should there be (minor) tweaks?
A Hödving starts with better equipment (better stats too?), so he has a slight advantage in comparison to a Hersir.

 

[BraveheartA7X]

I think a good way to do it would be remove gold loss upon death and keep it as a cumulitive total so at later rounds there is better armour

 

[Mammoet]

I think the gold earned can be a bit lower in general. When I do well, that is stay alive, I quickly have too much money to spend.

I really really really love the idea of giving points/money based on damage done. But should you get more points/money for slashing a peasant then a knight? Maybe it would be better if you get points on damage done before armor reduction, if possible??

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

I think the gold earned can be a bit lower in general. When I do well, that is stay alive, I quickly have too much money to spend.

I really really really love the idea of giving points/money based on damage done. But should you get more points/money for slashing a peasant then a knight? Maybe it would be better if you get points on damage done before armor reduction, if possible??

Well, the way I would make it, is to attribute points/score for simply contributing to a kill. A arrow in the back, 2 horse stumps to throw someone off balance, a few pokes with the spear to harass; all these attacks do different amounts of damage, but in the end, is one of them more useful, supportive and beneficial to achieve ultimate victory? I think not, it's relative.

By points I mean the actual score menu, you know. In some games, you don't have a kill criterion, you have score instead, which accumulates points according to number of kills, assists, contributions to map objective. It's a system that encourages teamplay more, I personally think a kill tab is a very primitive system and shows very little of one's skill/contribution to the team. Sometimes I have 10-2 scores as archer, other times I have 3-2, and my performance is exactly the same; I simply didn't get the killing blow.

To sum it up, score system : awards assists and concrete efforts, doesn't attribute points according to % of damage done. (That seems silly to me.)

 

[blitzking]

Alot of Steam games have a similar systen to Harkon is talking about. You may want to base yor system of one of those games.

 

[FrisianDude]

Link related to above post.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

Link related to above post.

Sorry, I didn't get it?