Planned Development Games

[David]

We have devolved!
For humans, maybe "Reinforcements all died" or just the generic "You fail too hard"

[Amanieu]

"We have devolved" in a defeat tone, unlike the "We have evolved"
And for humans I like "Reinforcements all died"

[kevlarman]

Thanks for arranging these games. Was fun.

As for the experimental change, was that anything to do with 's4' decremnting the enemies stage by one? If so it seems like a nice idea but I'll have to play with it a few more times (with more teamwork than before) before I'll know how well it works.

As a minor note, it was a bit confusing when the "We have evolved" message came up when the humans reached s4. 

that's fixed now, i barely managed to get the code working in time for saturday's game, so it had 0 polish. i spent a decent chunk of my weekend cleaning it up and making it make sense.

[Norfenstein]

Game starting in 10 minutes on Euro MGDev:

/connect edev.mercenariesguild.net

[Syntac]

Maybe I'll spectate if my intarwebz hold out.

[Nux]

It turns out I was too busy yesterday to join.

Did I miss anything/anyone special?

[Syntac]

I spectated for a while... Not many people came.

[khalsa]

Actually after you left the server filled up completely and we had about an hour and halfs worth of really good games with >20 people.

Was a great 2 hours of gaming.

Nux: You missed the point where humans needed 33,000 credits for next stage :p

Khalsa

[Syntac]

You make it sound like they were waiting for me to leave...

Dammit.

[kevlarman]

It turns out I was too busy yesterday to join.

Did I miss anything/anyone special?

you missed stannum not sharing his 1st person weapon models

[Lakitu7]

It turns out I was too busy yesterday to join.

Did I miss anything/anyone special?

you missed stannum not sharing his 1st person weapon models

Which is a good thing being as they're not exactly balance-testing related and folks ought to have some part of 1.2 to actually look forward to in the future.

[KamikOzzy]

I don't like "Reinforcements all died" cause idk. How about:

• Our forces have weakened
• We are being overrun
• The threat has increased
• The enemy is advancing
• We're being overpowered
• Our chances are slimming
• We need to regroup
• We've been too careless

just some suggestions.

My opinion: the stage down feature puts power in the hands of killwhores, to me that's not good or bad, but it will make us that enjoy averaging 150 kills, instead of ending it in five minutes, more effective than we usually are.

[your face]

It turns out I was too busy yesterday to join.

Did I miss anything/anyone special?

lame >_>

[David]

• We are being overrun
• The enemy is advancing

* David likes.

[Nux]

Did I miss anything/anyone special?

lame >_>

Of course you are ALL special. I was just wondering if anyone MORE special showed up (Like a tremulous developer or David Hasselhoff)

[KamikOzzy]

Did I miss anything/anyone special?

lame >_>

Of course you are ALL special. I was just wondering if anyone MORE special showed up (Like a tremulous developer or David Hasselhoff)

David who? Not sure who that is...but wow imagine if Timbo were there! <3

[your face]

Well Timbo was there a few weeks ago, and apparently I didn't get to get his autograph.

[daenyth]

I very strongly dislike the new "stage-down" feature. Seems like a "solution" in search of a problem.

[benmachine]

I very strongly dislike the new "stage-down" feature. Seems like a "solution" in search of a problem.

That's not really what I'd call helpful criticism
The problem it solves is the difficulty of pushing a small but significant advantage sufficiently to end a game in your favour. Too many games quickly reach s3-s3 and then stay there for a long time. It's also fun because it keeps the later game dynamic, and gives goals to work towards at every stage.
Why don't you like it?

[KamikOzzy]

I for one don't take to the concept easily because killwhoring is now going to more heavily damage the opposing team, and s3 aliens can keep humans pinned at stage 1 indefinitely, which would just suck.

Edit: some alternate suggestions:
Aliens...
Getting to "stage 4" as an alien strikes every human building to half health.

Getting to stage 4 as an alien increases the cost of items at the armory by a certain factor.

Getting to stage 4 as an alien increases the hitpoints of alien structures

Humans...
Getting to stage 4 as a human shrinks the range of creep until the aliens stage up

Getting to stage 4 as a human destroys the alien trappers.

Getting to stage 4 as a human increases human maximum stamina

Both teams...

Getting to stage 4 fills (fully or partially) your entire team's credits/evos

Getting to stage 4 allows extra build points

Getting to stage 4 requires the other team to not only get the usual required kills, but also "two (or something more than one) kills in a row" to stage up.

[khalsa]

I think you will find that many of your concerns are unfounded, and that in practice things are quite different.

Please play several proper games with any changes before commenting on the concepts and ideas.


Khalsa

[KamikOzzy]

Some proper players will have to start playing there before I can judge how a proper game will unfold

In all seriousness, we're not going to know how a skilled game will play out until clans start using it, and I don't see that happening soon.

[David]

Why do you need clans for skilled players?
I've seen a lot of skilled players there, and quite frankly most clans are far from skilled.

[Nux]

How about you bring your clan along for a game! The more the merrier!!

[your face]

One pro on a server = stage 82

Rest of nubs = stage -82

[Lakitu7]

The idea isn't to add "stage 4" for its own sake. The idea is to replace sudden death by tipping the balance in the direction of the team who's dominating the other, making the game actually go toward a win for the better team instead of a 45 minute draw because the losing team camped their chainsuits/tyrants all game.

[Nux]

Yes, it generally seems to give the dominant team more of a advantage than they already had. I hope this doesn't make the games more deterministic. Would an early lead assure a win? Would the importance of not feeding encourage more camp?

[KamikOzzy]

Why do I mention clans...because when clans play eachother, they care (somewhat, at least) who wins. It's not that they are better, but they try harder and work as a team, and can keep from having one or two game-breaking feeders.

And I'd say Zubs is pretty darn skilled, for the record.

And yeah, it may help the dominant team, but one or two feeders could seriously harm your team, and I like games to be in the hands of the skilled players.

[Lakitu7]

We don't know, simply. It's a new idea being tried out. Come try it with us and we'll find out together.

[edit] Also remember that you get creds/evos from killing buildings now too, so feeding/not is not the only determiner. If rets/tubes are being killed, the enemy is advancing, regardless of who's camping or not.

[amz181]

has the actual alien/human player balancing changed from the last build? I missed the dev games so...

Because i got to say the last build was far too harsh to aliens. fair enough deducting the rants health, but the regen is just stupid, and gives the humans to far an edge. I'd prefer the medikit to the regen any day, seeing as its far to slow, and you cant expect your teamate to sneak around as a basi in S3...

but anyway im going to check it out now to see if i wasted my time posting this :p