DUST Search - Suggested Balancing for Diminishing Returns/Casual v Hardcore players.

Fivetimes Infinity wrote:

I'd be concerned that people might "play" Dust the way some people play EVE, where you log in now-and-then to check your skill queue and do some PI or whatever and then log off. For EVE, having it be mainly passive is a fine thing because it's a big, open world. In Dust, however, if people weren't really encouraged to play a fair bit, the matchmaking for games suffers.

But, it could be that much reduced SP gain and standard ISK gain would be enough of an incentive. It'd be something I hope CCP has or is intending to try out at some point, but I'd be a bit concerned that it'd take too much of the good feeling out of having a really solid game. If the game ever began to feel grindy, or people felt that not playing was good enough for progress, it'd be bad.

Oh, and I'd still say that diminishing returns should exist. Only, CCP needs to take it from Blizzard on how to market stuff like this. I remember WoW's beta, they had the "rested experience" bonus actually go from 200% experience, all the way down to... 50%, once you depleted all your bonus exp. People complained loudly about that. Next patch, Blizzard turns "50%" into "100%" without, as I recall, actually changing the exp you were gaining. Now people were happy.

So it's all about marketing. Having bonuses to SP gain every day for X games is a good thing. But people need to be aware it's a bonus on top of normal SP gains. So CCP needs to put on the end-game screen an indicator showing how much extra SP they're getting. People looking at it as diminishing returns, rather than extra SP above the baseline, is a problem in itself.

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Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.21 01:56:00 - [1] - Quote I've been thinking a lot recently about the diminishing returns issues, the complaints on the forums and also the issue of casual v hardcore players and i think i have a solution. The main issues raised with the casual v hardcore players have always been the same, can casual players compete with the hardcore players due to the difference in SP, parallel to that discussion there has always been a group of players present asking for the diminishing returns mechanic to be removed from the game. Many people have argued about removing SP rewards from matches and only having passive SP gain like in EVE and many have said they don't agree with that due to the nature of the game and that it is used as an incentive for people to play and log in, to progress the skills of their character, which i can see and understand and actually agree with, even as an EVE player and even though i feel that the SP rewards don't totally fit with New Eden, but i concede that it fits with the FPS type game and as such it makes sense to keep it here. I do think that the diminishing returns mechanic should be dropped, now before you all jump on me and scream that people who play all day will have a huge advantage or that people who don't play every day will be at a disadvantage hear me out and read the whole post before making a decision. If diminishing returns in implemented it will mean that people will get the same SP reward per warpoint they gain regardless of how many games they have played for a day. That means in theory that people who play more, will gain more SP due to the fact they have more warpoints gained, there is a way of countering that though i believe and it would best be combated with several minor changes. The first change i would suggest is changing the amount of SP gained per warpoint the player gets in a match, lower it considerably. So where people are currently getting 30k SP per match now, lower it to 10k match, reduces the distance between players who play on a regular basis and those who are more casual by limiting how far people can progress if they play more than others and it helps to take away the advantage of people who have no other commitments and can play as much as they like, let them focus on something else like ISK gaining and becoming a billionaire. Secondly, to counter the lack of progress that people would get from matches in comparison to what they gain now, raise the passive SP gain, double or even triple it so that people can gain, 50k or 100k passive SP per day. It allows a good level of progression in the game but keeps the incentive there for people to play and continue to gain SP. Thirdly, and by far the biggest change that would counter the loss of diminishing returns and keep the more casual gamer in "The SP Race" is allow a type of "Rested EXP" similar to other MMO's. Maybe give people a 100k SP per day Rested EXP, this covers about 10 games under the mechanic outlined above, so the hardcore would still have a small advantage but allow casual players to gain SP faster and keep their interest held too. Give that 100k SP out at a rate of maybe 2.5x EXP per match so they still have to play a couple of games to gain a days worth of SP back and allow the Rested EXP to be accumulated so that if someone does not play a game for 30 days, they log back into 30 days Rested EXP, they have to play 60 games before they get back up to speed, allowing them to get hooked on the game again after their break or for whatever reason they left the game. Those 60 games will equal about 15 hours of game play time so they still have to put the work in. I'm an EVE player and i know people are going to jump on the "THIS IS NOT WOW" Bandwaggon but again, hear me out first... If we allowed a level of Rested EXP to casual players they would still be useful to us in our corps and fighting by our side as they can catch up faster, In addition to this they won't have much ISK in comparison to their SP so they won't be able to use all the best gear, still giving the hardcore a slight advantage and allowing CCP to generate extra income a percentage of people will buy AUR to use the new toys they unlock rather than grinding ISK. IF CCP decides to impliment character trading like they do in EVE this will also mean that the very oldest characters will always have an advantage in SP like in EVE and will allow character trading as an extra income source for CCP and will also mean that those extra slots in your character list will actually have a good use too. Thoughts, comments, suggestions?
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.21 03:15:00 - [2] - Quote Bumping this the whole 6 threads that are above it to stop people starting a new thread again.
Avenger 245 Crux Special Tasks Group Gallente Federation 477	Posted - 2012.09.21 03:58:00 - [3] - Quote Almost tl;dr just to give this thread a bit of a point I have a question. How would this reward people who put the time and effort into the game? where shpuld the line be drawn for people who put effort in, people who cant put the effort in and people who dont care to put the effort in? How would this benefit the loyal long term hard core players? It seams your heavly rewarding people for not doing anything, and favoring a very passive sp gain which by alot of accounts isnt good for the casual vs hardcore argument?
STB Vermaak Doe 558	Posted - 2012.09.21 04:02:00 - [4] - Quote This is definitely a case of an overly explanatory post. As for the sp, i find it fine cause whenever i have a down day, I'll rake in tons more sp and isk compared to me being afk for a week or so.
Azmode Deamus Amarr Templars Amarr Empire 28	Posted - 2012.09.21 09:10:00 - [5] - Quote I liked EVE when I played it. It was a few years old. However I could never get into it because by the time I did start playing - my. Character was obsolete in skills compared to others. I had NO way of catching up. No matter how many hours I put into the game. No matter what I did my character would have forever been a gimp to me. I met a guy who played once every few days since launch and his character was way more powerfull by ten fold because he logged in every few days to change skills. Although within a month I surpassed him in play hours. That was EVEs biggest failing. So many players like me. If there is no carrot dangling to make me feel more powerfull there is no incentive to play them I quit. Anyways. I think the rested. P bonus soul be a good idea but keep everyhing else the same. Casuals will never be as powerfull as hardcore gamers and that's alrigt. As long as there are ways to compete
EO v Prime United Pwnage Service RISE of LEGION 7	Posted - 2012.09.21 11:00:00 - [6] - Quote Azmode Deamus wrote: That was EVEs biggest failing. So many players like me. If there is no carrot dangling to make me feel more powerfull there is no incentive to play them I quit. So you haven't understood EvE. I think the balacing ideas from Sin3 DeusNomine are MUCH better then the op's ones. https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=37370&find=unread Its ok to have diminishing returns but i dont want to feel like I HAVE to log in at least once a day to play 1-3 Games to get the most out of it, i want to sit down maybe 1-3 Days a week for longer then 2 hours of fun. Not everyday a little bit, the system as it is now favors hardcoreplayers who play every day...
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.21 13:06:00 - [7] - Quote Avenger 245 wrote: Almost tl;dr just to give this thread a bit of a point I have a question. How would this reward people who put the time and effort into the game? where shpuld the line be drawn for people who put effort in, people who cant put the effort in and people who dont care to put the effort in? How would this benefit the loyal long term hard core players? It seams your heavly rewarding people for not doing anything, and favoring a very passive sp gain which by alot of accounts isnt good for the casual vs hardcore argument? People who put the effort into the game would have a lot more ISK for their gear, the more casual player would have the skills but not the funds to use that gear, you'd also gain a small SP advantage based on the number of games you'd played. I don't think there should be a line drawn, everyone should be on reasonablly equal footing, if anything the line should be drawn based on the age of the account, not number of hours played. It would benefit the long term players by having an SP advantage over newer players, in addition to a lot more ISK the same as it is now, but it would also allow them to gain rested EXP on their alts so they have a use for them and can specialise each of their accounts easily for specific roles without having to put several hundred hours into each one.
Sees-Too-Much 332	Posted - 2012.09.21 13:25:00 - [8] - Quote I'm actually a little iffy on the whole idea of SP payouts. I'm a dropship pilot who doesn't play very often, so for several reasons I probably have one of the lowest SP characters in the beta right now. I have six million SP. That's in a month. It took my EVE character two years to mass up to 60 million SP. So basically one of the slowest rates of SP gain one can have has netted me over twice the rate of SP gain of a capsuleer. What will it look like next patch when I can get transport assist points? They say it'd take 18 years to train every skill in EVE. At the rate at which hardcore DUST players (the guys with over 20m SP right now) gain, they could train them all in three. And DUST currently has a lot fewer skills than EVE.
Fivetimes Infinity Immobile Infantry 1086	Posted - 2012.09.21 13:30:00 - [9] - Quote I'd be concerned that people might "play" Dust the way some people play EVE, where you log in now-and-then to check your skill queue and do some PI or whatever and then log off. For EVE, having it be mainly passive is a fine thing because it's a big, open world. In Dust, however, if people weren't really encouraged to play a fair bit, the matchmaking for games suffers. But, it could be that much reduced SP gain and standard ISK gain would be enough of an incentive. It'd be something I hope CCP has or is intending to try out at some point, but I'd be a bit concerned that it'd take too much of the good feeling out of having a really solid game. If the game ever began to feel grindy, or people felt that not playing was good enough for progress, it'd be bad. Oh, and I'd still say that diminishing returns should exist. Only, CCP needs to take it from Blizzard on how to market stuff like this. I remember WoW's beta, they had the "rested experience" bonus actually go from 200% experience, all the way down to... 50%, once you depleted all your bonus exp. People complained loudly about that. Next patch, Blizzard turns "50%" into "100%" without, as I recall, actually changing the exp you were gaining. Now people were happy. So it's all about marketing. Having bonuses to SP gain every day for X games is a good thing. But people need to be aware it's a bonus on top of normal SP gains. So CCP needs to put on the end-game screen an indicator showing how much extra SP they're getting. People looking at it as diminishing returns, rather than extra SP above the baseline, is a problem in itself.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.21 14:26:00 - [10] - Quote Fivetimes Infinity wrote: I'd be concerned that people might "play" Dust the way some people play EVE, where you log in now-and-then to check your skill queue and do some PI or whatever and then log off. For EVE, having it be mainly passive is a fine thing because it's a big, open world. In Dust, however, if people weren't really encouraged to play a fair bit, the matchmaking for games suffers. But, it could be that much reduced SP gain and standard ISK gain would be enough of an incentive. It'd be something I hope CCP has or is intending to try out at some point, but I'd be a bit concerned that it'd take too much of the good feeling out of having a really solid game. If the game ever began to feel grindy, or people felt that not playing was good enough for progress, it'd be bad. Oh, and I'd still say that diminishing returns should exist. Only, CCP needs to take it from Blizzard on how to market stuff like this. I remember WoW's beta, they had the "rested experience" bonus actually go from 200% experience, all the way down to... 50%, once you depleted all your bonus exp. People complained loudly about that. Next patch, Blizzard turns "50%" into "100%" without, as I recall, actually changing the exp you were gaining. Now people were happy. So it's all about marketing. Having bonuses to SP gain every day for X games is a good thing. But people need to be aware it's a bonus on top of normal SP gains. So CCP needs to put on the end-game screen an indicator showing how much extra SP they're getting. People looking at it as diminishing returns, rather than extra SP above the baseline, is a problem in itself. I'd agree with a lot of that personally, i know CCP had a meeting recently to talk about the issues people have said with Casual V Hardcore SP differences and it's being addressed but im not sure how, maybe we'll find out next build?

fenrir storm Tronhadar Free Guard Minmatar Republic 314	Posted - 2012.09.21 14:30:00 - [11] - Quote Not got a lot of game time pay for your clone to go in a training room to get sp , then you could keep up to a certain extent with those who have time to play more. Obviously it couldn't be a rediculous amount of sp and your passive would be lowered whilst training. Just an idea
Jin Robot Tronhadar Free Guard Minmatar Republic 330	Posted - 2012.09.21 14:53:00 - [12] - Quote fenrir storm wrote: Not got a lot of game time pay for your clone to go in a training room to get sp , then you could keep up to a certain extent with those who have time to play more. Obviously it couldn't be a rediculous amount of sp and your passive would be lowered whilst training. Just an idea Yeah, you could make it AUR only and throw in some free thukker nades.... You would have to include something to keep people from playing all the time and using pay for sp.
fenrir storm Tronhadar Free Guard Minmatar Republic 314	Posted - 2012.09.21 15:25:00 - [13] - Quote Jin Robot wrote: fenrir storm wrote: Not got a lot of game time pay for your clone to go in a training room to get sp , then you could keep up to a certain extent with those who have time to play more. Obviously it couldn't be a rediculous amount of sp and your passive would be lowered whilst training. Just an idea Yeah, you could make it AUR only and throw in some free thukker nades.... You would have to include something to keep people from playing all the time and using pay for sp. Dunno if your being sarcastic or not but if you put your clone in for 2 days and you go on before that you get only the sp for the time your in, and if you want to train again you have to start new and no make it use isk quite alot. Was just a quick idea to keep those who have limited time in the game with out falling to far behind and as I said it should not be a stupid amount of sp gain just more than the passive


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