DUST Search - New Active SP reward system

KalOfTheRathi wrote:

Just a little reply with my usual side of snark. No personal affronts intended although I would not complain if it happens.

Why do others worry about AFK so much?

I don't do it unless DUST itself forces me into it, like spawning me into a wall on the MCC although the last one kicked me from battle and I received zip for that.

CCP beget EVE and later DUST. Ganking, AFK, passive SP (only in EVE I believe) and many behaviors that are considered pathological or at least sociopathic in nature are endemic to New Eden. One might wonder how promotion is handled within the corporation; I, however, do not.

Gamers Game Everything.

They play the game. They game the game. They game the rewards, the kills, the health, the deaths, the vehicles and anything they can get near. It is the nature of the beasts that are gamers. Regardless of the game itself.

Recall that DUST is a grinder. A heavy grinder with many significant rewards blocked behind massive SP walls. The only currency in DUST that counts is SP. Some have lives such that playing long hours fits with them. Others don't want to lose the SP but don't want to play the game as heavily. In EVE the solution is built into the game and paid for with subscriptions.

In DUST ... AFK is their solution. Okay, they can in DUST with Passive SP, just not very quickly. If there are too many AFK just switch to long distance play. Snipe, test fly your drop ship or rail tank. DUST Devs say they are considering solutions. Which is fine but considering they built the game that enabled this from the beginning I am not holding my breath.

Personally the system doesn't bother me that much (a little, true enough) as the real alternative is a monthly fee.


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Vrain Matari ZionTCD 726	Posted - 2013.08.23 00:14:00 - [1] - Quote Great work, OP. Imo passive sp gain in matches is one of the primary drivers of bad player experiences in DUST for both new players and vets. I like your proposed modifications. I voted for your option C, but would be just as happy with D. But there's a dynamic built into ZDub's proposal(and Killar-12's mod) that i really like: for very good players, it makes WP farming unattractive beyond a certain point. Taking a graduated proportional self-referencing system like ZDub's to its natural conclusion leads us to a logarithmic reward system. I'd like to see if that makes any sense. So if sp = log(WP), 10 WP gets you 1 sp, 100 WP gets you 2 sp, 1000 WP gets you 3 sp and 5000 WP gets you 3.7 sp. Calibrating this to match what we're used to, let's multiply by 2000(just a rough guess): sp = 2000 x log(WP), and so 10 WP gives 2000 sp, 100 WP gives 4000 sp, 1000 WP gives 6000 sp and 5000 WP gives 7400 sp. This system is very generous to low WP earners, and we can see how it still allows WP farming but the farmers really have to work for their sp. I don't mind the generosity at the bottom end, anybody who's earning 10 WP per match needs a hand up. I think with a system this generous we could drop the 1sp/second passive bonus and go pure active sp. Add to this the flat 1000 sp bonus for each player and 1350 WP earns a player on the losing team 6260 sp and 7260 for being on the winning team. Exploitable? Absolutely! Player just hops from battle to battle, optimizing their time-in-match + queue time to maximize sp, quitting before the end of a battle. Or a player just puts out a set of hives and uplinks and AFKs for the rest of the match. The logarithmic reward system is a limiting case and a good example for all graduated reward systems like ZDub's and Killar-12's. Peeps will look for an optimal point to bail on the match where they can maximize SP(the good players) or go the other way and minimize their risk for a still-ok sp reward. Is there a way to make this work? It would be nice to know what CCP's anti-farming tactics will be. We'll know soon enough i guess.
Vrain Matari ZionTCD 728	Posted - 2013.08.23 02:39:00 - [2] - Quote KalOfTheRathi wrote: Just a little reply with my usual side of snark. No personal affronts intended although I would not complain if it happens. Why do others worry about AFK so much? I don't do it unless DUST itself forces me into it, like spawning me into a wall on the MCC although the last one kicked me from battle and I received zip for that. CCP beget EVE and later DUST. Ganking, AFK, passive SP (only in EVE I believe) and many behaviors that are considered pathological or at least sociopathic in nature are endemic to New Eden. One might wonder how promotion is handled within the corporation; I, however, do not. Gamers Game Everything. They play the game. They game the game. They game the rewards, the kills, the health, the deaths, the vehicles and anything they can get near. It is the nature of the beasts that are gamers. Regardless of the game itself. Recall that DUST is a grinder. A heavy grinder with many significant rewards blocked behind massive SP walls. The only currency in DUST that counts is SP. Some have lives such that playing long hours fits with them. Others don't want to lose the SP but don't want to play the game as heavily. In EVE the solution is built into the game and paid for with subscriptions. In DUST ... AFK is their solution. Okay, they can in DUST with Passive SP, just not very quickly. If there are too many AFK just switch to long distance play. Snipe, test fly your drop ship or rail tank. DUST Devs say they are considering solutions. Which is fine but considering they built the game that enabled this from the beginning I am not holding my breath. Personally the system doesn't bother me that much (a little, true enough) as the real alternative is a monthly fee. Because it's a match-based shooter and the passive-sp driven AFK mechanic destroys matchplay. Especially for new players. And they didn't build this game this way from the beginning. They arbitrarily added the passive in-match sp charity without consulting players after we had a massive debate and vote on the beta forums. All the vets here have been over this topic until we were sick of it, I kid you not. And this current sp reward system was supposed to be temporary. That was six month ago or something like that. And CCP recently announced that they would not be implementing the system the players voted on anytime soon. But until this passive in-match sp reward is dealt with, new players will continues to be puzzled and let down by DUST's sp mechanics. I'm sure that once new peeps figure out what's going on the reaction is 'that's just lame'. DUST is a grinder, but it's first and foremost a shooter. Players deserve to be rewarded for activity, not for passivity.
Vrain Matari ZionTCD 739	Posted - 2013.08.24 02:51:00 - [3] - Quote Zeylon Rho presents solid points, and he has helped me clarify my thinking on this. A skillpoint reward system has only one job, and that is to reward player behavior on the battlefield ideally this reward would be for how much a player contributed to winning a match. That's a hard thing to determine, isn't it? I can imagine a panel of impartial match judges sitting around and trying to quantify different players contributions to winning a match - the discussion could go on for hours. It's a big ask for any system to get right. But here's the important part: a skillpoint reward system should never be modified to stop AFKing. When we start trying to do that we deform it away from it's real purpose, which is a hard enough thing all on its own. In light of that I'm looking at CCP's anti-AFK mechanic as a positive thing. And i'm still thinking a graduated or log system could be a good thing. The real question would then be how do we design a WP reward system that promotes dynamic, creative, impassioned teamplay? Or is this also the wrong thing to ask of a WP system?