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Chiken experience

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DErankEntropy
8 years ago
It seems the experience gained from Chiken games is a bit silly. 25 xp for loss, and 50 xp for win. This means that if you win against a very easy chiken, you gain twice the experience then when playing against 2 suicidal chikens and survive 40 minutes. I've only done a single non-Chiken game (and that by mistake ;p), which gave me over 100 xp. And by looking at other players xp, I'm guessing you often get more than that. Is the low xp for chiken games by design? And even if so, can't it be made held into account the difficulty of the game? (Btw, if the later is a desired thing, and easy to implement, please point me to the code.)
+0 / -0

PLrankAdminSprung
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
It's by design. PvE gives low XP as a form of encouragement to try PvP.

The difficulty cannot be taken into account because there are external factors. For example Suicidal on Speedmetal is trivial but on Greenfields Normal might already be a challenge.

XP is mostly meaningless though, don't get too worried about it.
+3 / -0
DErankEntropy
8 years ago
You need XP for commander upgrades though right? And are you not at a disadvantage if you do not have well upgraded commanders?

quote:
The difficulty cannot be taken into account because there are external factors. For example Suicidal on Speedmetal is trivial but on Greenfields Normal might already be a challenge.


Adjusting to the just the chiken difficulty would certainly not be perfect (you have factors besides the map: people you play with, gameplay limitations you decide on, etc). Would it however not be less wrong, and thus an improvement over the current situation?
+0 / -0

PLrankAdminSprung
8 years ago
The disadvantage exists but is minimal. Commander modules are generally weak for their cost.

Whether an increased XP gain for difficulty is an improvement is not so clear:
  • improves the intuition? Sure. This is good.
  • improves the motivation we look for? Nope, we'd rather people participated in PvP (because then they interact with the community).

Then there's the question of whether increasing the overall XP gain rate is an improvement. The XP gain rate has two conflicting goals so any value is as good and changing it just shifts focus between them.

Overall I'm fairly certain nobody really cares about chickens though so if someone made a patch to have difficulty give extra XP it would most likely get accepted.
+0 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
What would be more interesting than random coop vs AI games giving experience are missions. Tutorials, campaigns and the CCR macro challenge especially have very consistent difficulties and training value for players. They could each probably give 100-500xp upon first completion, depending on difficulty. Perhaps even silly achievements or free unlock gifts (all the level 1-2 stuff) can be used to "reward" players for completing those.

That said, "unlock points" should probably just be removed and modules auto-unlocked on level ups, unless unlock points are some sort of incentive to get people to read and learn about the different modules. Even then, some players might be afraid of and delay spending their "valuable" unlock points, which imo would be very very bad, so that's another reason to get rid of them.
+0 / -0


AUrankAdminGoogleFrog
8 years ago
My solution is to remove the module unlocking process.
quote:
The disadvantage exists but is minimal. Commander modules are generally weak for their cost.
This may be true in some situations but is it true everywhere? We have one unlock system which is apparently supposed to have good balance and pacing everywhere.
  • In 1v1 Commander upgrades have mostly been made useless (with a few exceptions which still need to be dealt with).
  • In teamgames Commanders can be quite powerful or at least desirable. Do new players get annoyed at this? Do some leave because they feel a uselessness which stems from a lack of modules (even if it is unfounded).
  • in FFA Commanders are really powerful. For example the ability to morph a high BP, cloaked Commander can significantly improve your survivablity. Rezz improves this further (it needs removing).
  • In Chicken/CAI the imbalance between players does not matter so much. Commanders can be fun to use and upgrade here but the pacing for unlocks is probably too slow.

XP for singleplayer cannot be significantly increased because it is now linked to wiki editing ability and up/down voting. It would be a problem if someone could farm SP games quickly to get a new account with which to abuse these abilities. But it could probably be doubled.

Is unlocking Commander modules during Chickens a fun activity? Is it something to preserve? If it is fun perhaps we could replicate the experience with something similar to the Planetary Annihilation Galactic War. That is basically a branching story-free campaign in which you unlock things by picking a battle to play. We could design it better, remove some of the randomness, and make it coop. That could work quite well as a structured coop unlock mode, if unlocks are desired.
+1 / -0

USrankaeonios
8 years ago
Skasi I had the opposite problem. I looked into all the modules and ran up numbers only to find out after blowing all my points that what I ended up with sucked or was impractical for whatever reason. For example personal cloak with its 10e upkeep cost while moving (and commanders are SLOW so you pay pay pay), or disruptor bomb which only has 256aoe for its physical damage even though it's listed as having 512 aoe.
+0 / -0


USrank[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng
8 years ago
I really enjoyed the process of slowly unlocking everything when I picked up ZK (units, facs and com modules).

As it is now where only com modules are locked, its probably pointless.
+2 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
quote:
It would be a problem if someone could farm SP games quickly to get a new account with which to abuse these abilities.

Hence only the first such game would give XP. Besides, the level requirement for non-unlocks can be increased or changed completely.

quote:
story-free campaign

There could be a multiplayer campaign where coop-people who don't like PvP can complete various missions with ever-increasing difficulty and perhaps even some silly PW-like metagame.
+0 / -0