Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
1717
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Posted - 2014.03.04 19:20:00 -
[1] - Quote
Kain Spero wrote:Maken Tosch wrote:Kain Spero wrote:In regard to the OP getting rid of timers would be a very bad idea. You want to make PC into a job? Make sure you have to be on 24/7 to ensure a team doesn't try to stealth capture your district. I could see moving to a window system (district is vulnerable for 2 to 3 hours) where the district can be attacked at will, but even this has the potential to lead to empty fights.
The fact is that empty fights get boring very quickly, but players will generally gravitate towards gameplay that provides the most benefit for the least effort (see district locking). An FPS game where people don't actually fight isn't going to be something that is very compelling. Then what alternative do you have? Or do you think Mobius' alternative is a better idea? See link below for his alternative idea. https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1892076#post1892076 Again, I think a lot of the issues stem from passive ISK, which is compounded by the clone pack refund. Players will gravitate towards what is most profitable and no corp is going to want to spend hundreds of millions a day for long keeping their district locked up.
Good dustcussion, peeps.
This is one of several reasons i think a robust & flexible player/corp contract system is important to the evolution of the game. I put it above the player market and PVE in terms of what DUST needs to succeed.
District-holders could make auto-defense contracts for district defense when they could not be on to defend. These contracts could specify preferred corps, preferred mercs, pre-specify squad leader spots by corp membership and/or merc name.
The system should allow the use of an extensive list of variables(K/D, W/L, WP, ?, ?,...) with a robust set of logical tools, mathematical operators and conditions for both contract qualification and payout conditions. As an example of a robust system, consider Grismar's search tools. This is not a simple task for CCP but not a terribly tough one either, but the payouts from a contract tool like this will be tremendous in terms of immersive, social, player-driven, story-generating content.
And ofc the same tool would be used later to facilitate PVE drone-maintenance contracts - experienced district-holding PVP corps would issue contracts to younger PVE corps tyring to build a reputation and get their foot in the door for district ownership. Again, the social capital that comes out of this is significant.
Imo there is no other tool that CCP could add to the sandbox that would generate more story or more depth for New Eden.
P.S.: In thinking about this, we really need the game to maintain a permanent record of the end-of-match rankings(with additional pertinent stats) for every battle. This is also a feature that has tremendous positive social implications for the game.
I support SP rollover.
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Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
1719
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Posted - 2014.03.05 05:13:00 -
[2] - Quote
Soraya Xel wrote:Vrain, your system sounds unnecessarily complicated. It's likely to be excessive in terms of UI, and not particularly user friendly. A better mechanic is to do contracts the way EVE does them. They have a collateral. Anyone can accept the contract, but the contractor has set both a collateral and a reward. They pay the collateral when they accept the contract, if they succeed, they get both their collateral back, as well as the reward. If they fail, you get the collateral. So if the team you contracted loses the match, you get that collateral to soften the blow or use to acquire another district or whatever.
Setting a high collateral will ensure that only corps who are confident they can succeed will take your contract. However, if the reward is too low, they won't bother.
My system is only as complicated as you want/need it to be. If you want to issue contracts based on collateral then go ahead and do that. Or use collateral in conjunction with some other criteria.
A collateral-based contract like you describe excludes a lot of smaller corps, and that's exactly one of the things we need to avoid in DUST. Whatever system we come up with needs to keep elite corps in contact and communication with smaller/younger groups in DUST. Unless CCP institutes smaller match sizes, the flat collateral/reward model for contracts will exclude a majority of the playerbase. Looking at it from the contract issuer's side, allowing smaller groups or individuals to fill contract slots may very well be the difference between having defenders on the field or forfeiting due to no-show.
Avoiding that exclusion of smaller groups is the motivation and attraction of a highly configurable contract system.
I support SP rollover.
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