Stefan Stahl
Seituoda Taskforce Command
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Posted - 2015.05.27 17:42:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hi,
here's an issue that has irked me a lot ever since I started playing Dust:
You're playing a pub match solo like apparently most people in this game (not necessarily the forums) do. As it happens you find yourself stacked against a superior enemy team. You now face a simple decision between these two options:
A) Keep pushing with your best gear.
B) Use cheap suits and act defensively.
After the match the EOM screen shows a very humorless balance depending on your decision:
A) You managed to inflict some damage, but completely lost on ISK. You should not keep doing this.
B) You didn't rack up many kills, but you came out with a profit. At least you made something out of it.
The net result is that players are rewarded for not trying hard at playing the game. The "reward" here is not in the gross ISK payout, but in the net ISK profit (as in reward minus expenses). The problem here is that the ISK reward doesn't scale well with trying hard to turn a game around. Even if you end up contributing 30% of the WP on your losing team you'll barely be able to cover the bill for 6 advanced suits.
Let's change this.
There are many ways to it, but I'm going to suggest the following:
Whenever a player damages or heals something the game keeps track of the ISK value of the affected hitpoints. If you throw a grenade to deplete 50% of a 200k ISK pro suit your personal tally is increased by 100k ISK. If you use a 50% needle to pick up a 250k ISK logibro your personal balance is increased by 125k ISK.
Once the battle is over the ISK payout is determined by multiplying this personal balance by a payout factor - e.g. 50% (assumption: on average a suit sponges up twice it's ehp before being killed, ingame statistics could help figuring out this factor). Damage to vehicles, infantry or healing may require different ratios. Different ratios for shields and armor may also be an interesting tuning factor.
I expect the following results from this:
- No matter how difficult the battle is, if you inflict damage or support your team you can run a profit, if you play well.
- Not playing the game doesn't give you any reward.
- Using expensive gear to stomp people in inexpensive gear bleeds ISK. The vet earns few, the new player earns a lot.
- People may become adept at exploiting this system. Some exception-handling should be introduced to stop people from turning insane profits (e.g. any suit or vehicle can never exceed a return-on-invest of 5, capped using an inverse exponential function).
Thoughts? Improvements? |