Hullukko
12-07-2011, 05:41 AM
I've seen a great number of suggestions (and counter arguments to some of them, too) and I think a lot of it boils down to a problem of the current approach being a "one room for them all" and it's having difficulties in being suitable for anything at all. I'm not going to dwell on class balance and game play issues here, that is really a separate discussion. My focus here is the match setup.
What's wrong:
can't chat before joining (!)
once joined, can't see the teams (!)
once joined, can't swap team (!)
can't spectate
3vs1 rushing, bad behaviour (!)
k/d ratio boosters (!)
miscommunication about 1vs1, 2vs2 and 3vs3 and impossibility to play such games easily
miscommunication about when to "go" or just rush
(If nothing else, please put some emphasis on the points marked with (!) because those are the features I think need to be addressed first and foremost)
What is needed:
In general:
Possibility to create games where stats (kills and deaths) are not counted (e.g. a check box during game creation)
Voting worked reasonably well in Quake in my opinion. Simple majority of yes/no replies was all it took and. In Quake there were many things that could be called for vote. (e.g. rebalance the teams based on class and last round success, map reset, boot for bad behaviour or reluctance/inability to participate to the game, etc)
Newcomer arenas. Yes, I think they need to be protected from the more experienced yet lacking in the morals. No one benefits if a player pops in the arena to try it out and an experienced k/d farmer crunches them so hard that they'll never try it again. I'm not sure how exactly this could this be accomplished, but I thought I'd make a mention of it. The PL arenas were ungodly repulsive for newbies in this manner, lets not screw up SL in the same way.
1 on 1 arena (think of quake rocket arena):
Wait queue to enter the ring (in quake we could spectate the fight from either pov or from above, if that's not feasible then let us stand about ringside or something, spectating (and chatting while at it) is a big part of that business)
Timed starts (quick enough, 5s countdown on something) This certainly doesn't slow things down, au contraire, it helps keep up the pace and most importantly it is fair virtually by definition.
Always back to full health for the next round
Winner stays in the arena, loser goes to back of the queue
No forfeits, no /ready, no /skip, you afk you die
TDM (Team deathmatch):
/ready is needed for tdm. Once everybody ready, countdown to start, full health and mana and match may begin (before match going on damage and killing can be allowed, but no death or kill counting)
No joining during game unless explicitly allowed by players already playing
Queue to enter 1vs1 and 2vs2 until two in queue
Unreadied again if a player leaves the match and no one in the queue
FFA:
No teams, no nothing
Fight always on
Prone to misbehaviour
This is not really necessary although as one without configuration and all this would be suitable for playground and externally organized stuff (e.g. tournament fights)
What would be nice:
Hosted games could be paused (and countdown back to action)
CTF was what I fancied the most in Quake, I never tried that in PL and haven't really paid much thought to what it could/should be like in SL.
One fun variant of TDM (and ffa, too) was "last man standing"
Tournament 1vs1/2vs2/3vs3 game modes, although I think the TDM is reasonably close to that or can be made with few checkboxes
Disclaimer:
I'm a seasoned Quake veteran (since 1997). I was never a professional, but we did play seriously in leagues and all that stuff. That doesn't make me an authority in this matter, there are people that have played way more and many that most certainly have a lot better insight when it comes to SL (and PL), but in online multiplayer pvp I have seen my share of action. As for PL and SL pvp I'm a newbie by any standard.
One thing to note is that those features in Quake online multiplayer modes back then were implemented by the community. We coded them ourselves for ourselves. The features that were there were meant to serve us players and nobody else. Sadly things are not like that with SL, but I'm hoping the devs might want to work on SL pvp to similar direction in the hopes of making it fun and welcoming instead of the abomination that it is now. I get it that it's beta, but frankly the user interface is substandard even for beta. Rome wasn't built in a day, but legends series has had pvp for over a year now, excuses outside of "the marketing execs won't let devs work on it" really don't cut it anymore. The thing that I find most odd is that this game has such superficial strictness (e.g. to foul language) and yet it employs a pvp setup that not only leaves room for unreasonably bad behaviour but I dare say rewards it in the form of kill/death stats and leaderboards. Nonetheless there's plenty that can be done for all this and time will tell if it works out or not.
And by all means I don't want to step on the toes of any of those PL (and SL) pvpers that have way more experience, better ideas and insight. This was just my 2 cents. Feel free to comment and I can revise these suggestions based on them.
What's wrong:
can't chat before joining (!)
once joined, can't see the teams (!)
once joined, can't swap team (!)
can't spectate
3vs1 rushing, bad behaviour (!)
k/d ratio boosters (!)
miscommunication about 1vs1, 2vs2 and 3vs3 and impossibility to play such games easily
miscommunication about when to "go" or just rush
(If nothing else, please put some emphasis on the points marked with (!) because those are the features I think need to be addressed first and foremost)
What is needed:
In general:
Possibility to create games where stats (kills and deaths) are not counted (e.g. a check box during game creation)
Voting worked reasonably well in Quake in my opinion. Simple majority of yes/no replies was all it took and. In Quake there were many things that could be called for vote. (e.g. rebalance the teams based on class and last round success, map reset, boot for bad behaviour or reluctance/inability to participate to the game, etc)
Newcomer arenas. Yes, I think they need to be protected from the more experienced yet lacking in the morals. No one benefits if a player pops in the arena to try it out and an experienced k/d farmer crunches them so hard that they'll never try it again. I'm not sure how exactly this could this be accomplished, but I thought I'd make a mention of it. The PL arenas were ungodly repulsive for newbies in this manner, lets not screw up SL in the same way.
1 on 1 arena (think of quake rocket arena):
Wait queue to enter the ring (in quake we could spectate the fight from either pov or from above, if that's not feasible then let us stand about ringside or something, spectating (and chatting while at it) is a big part of that business)
Timed starts (quick enough, 5s countdown on something) This certainly doesn't slow things down, au contraire, it helps keep up the pace and most importantly it is fair virtually by definition.
Always back to full health for the next round
Winner stays in the arena, loser goes to back of the queue
No forfeits, no /ready, no /skip, you afk you die
TDM (Team deathmatch):
/ready is needed for tdm. Once everybody ready, countdown to start, full health and mana and match may begin (before match going on damage and killing can be allowed, but no death or kill counting)
No joining during game unless explicitly allowed by players already playing
Queue to enter 1vs1 and 2vs2 until two in queue
Unreadied again if a player leaves the match and no one in the queue
FFA:
No teams, no nothing
Fight always on
Prone to misbehaviour
This is not really necessary although as one without configuration and all this would be suitable for playground and externally organized stuff (e.g. tournament fights)
What would be nice:
Hosted games could be paused (and countdown back to action)
CTF was what I fancied the most in Quake, I never tried that in PL and haven't really paid much thought to what it could/should be like in SL.
One fun variant of TDM (and ffa, too) was "last man standing"
Tournament 1vs1/2vs2/3vs3 game modes, although I think the TDM is reasonably close to that or can be made with few checkboxes
Disclaimer:
I'm a seasoned Quake veteran (since 1997). I was never a professional, but we did play seriously in leagues and all that stuff. That doesn't make me an authority in this matter, there are people that have played way more and many that most certainly have a lot better insight when it comes to SL (and PL), but in online multiplayer pvp I have seen my share of action. As for PL and SL pvp I'm a newbie by any standard.
One thing to note is that those features in Quake online multiplayer modes back then were implemented by the community. We coded them ourselves for ourselves. The features that were there were meant to serve us players and nobody else. Sadly things are not like that with SL, but I'm hoping the devs might want to work on SL pvp to similar direction in the hopes of making it fun and welcoming instead of the abomination that it is now. I get it that it's beta, but frankly the user interface is substandard even for beta. Rome wasn't built in a day, but legends series has had pvp for over a year now, excuses outside of "the marketing execs won't let devs work on it" really don't cut it anymore. The thing that I find most odd is that this game has such superficial strictness (e.g. to foul language) and yet it employs a pvp setup that not only leaves room for unreasonably bad behaviour but I dare say rewards it in the form of kill/death stats and leaderboards. Nonetheless there's plenty that can be done for all this and time will tell if it works out or not.
And by all means I don't want to step on the toes of any of those PL (and SL) pvpers that have way more experience, better ideas and insight. This was just my 2 cents. Feel free to comment and I can revise these suggestions based on them.