Returning observation

Be like CNC Rivals?

I agree slowing games too much would be a step in the wrong direction. I do think mexes should cost 100 metal though instead of 75. That I think is justifiable. Armoring mexes to get 4x HP when under fire seems okay to me if the animation isn't instant so it requires player intervention to get the most out of it unless you widget it to auto armor when enemies are nearby

I don't mind mexes being harder to kill as long as the armor animation is slow. Lets say its 5 seconds. In this case unless the player does it manually very ahead of time that mex will die before it armors up

doesn't take 5 seconds usually to kill a mex, usually 1-4 seconds once u attack it

Here is something to test. I may not be around to test until Monday.

• Doubled health.
• Veh and Boat turnrate increased 60%.
• Veh and Boat acceleration increased 20%.
• Other turnrates increased 20%.
• Mex cost 75 -> 100.
• Mex health 800 (doubled) -> 900 to nerf Raven alongside other raiders.

Test the changes by hosting a passworded custom room and doing '!game zk:test'. You may remove the password after the game is set.

The aim is not to test balance, since these changes are obviously imbalanced. The aim is to compare the pace of the game, especially the early game. For the best test I would suggest players limit themselves to factories that don't depend so much on alpha, such as Rover and Cloaky, but you can try whatever you like. I expect alpha-raiders to be terrible.

Universal health changes could even be completely the wrong direction. I played an old C&C-type game recently and was impressed by how necessary and expendable it made its infantry. Losing units is less stressful when losing them is inevitable. Zero-K units are already quite retreatable, and more health just enhances their retreatability.

quote: I'm in favor of comp ladder seasons, but reading the posts here makes me feel like you don't understand what a comp season is all about. If you want to make it just another super balanced playground where everyone can be happy, I say don't even bother implementing it in the first place.

Would you elaborate? I feel like we have multiple people trying to explain the purpose of a seasonal ladder. Perhaps you could explain it more clearly.

quote: yes I'm only talking about MM. But I don't understand the seasons you're talking about here. I think 20 1v1 games is a minimum to get any kind of reasonable ladder. Obviously the numbers would be proportionally higher with higher player numbers. Is it a full ranking reset or does it "weigh off the old ratings"[Sparkles], so it doesn't really do much? Is the hidden rating used for actual Matchmaking and it is never reset? In that case the balance wouldn't break, but you also wouldn't get those easy matches after reset. The ladder would be out of sync with how you actually get matched. If there is a full reset, then my point of the smurfs still applies. The majority of players will not play enough games within 6 months to rise to their correct rank.

By "reasonable ladder" do you mean a ladder with a human-visible rating that accurately predicts game performance? That is not the purpose of a seasonal ladder. A seasonal ladder is meant to be climbed in response to a combination of work and skill.

I don't know whether ladder rating should be the only thing that impacts matching. If there is a hidden balance rating, then the hidden balance rating should not entirely dictate who you play. It should be possible to play against people at a similar point on the ladder to yourself. The effective-smurf concern can be ameliorated by using the previous season to transparently create next season's starting state. Perhaps ratings could be truncated or rescaled to fit in the range 1300 to 1700. Long calibration periods should not be required.

The ladder points must be simple. If you win games you should go up, if you lose them you should go down. If you are 'stuck' around a rating and randomly have a long winstreak, then the rating achieved in the season should reflect that peak.

quote: I find myself thinking that i would be much more interested in 4x hp for mexes (via armor, like solars; they have the animations to support it!) rather than 2x for everything. This also has the added bonus of being able to temporarily sabotage the enemy metal generation by forcing mexes to bunker, without destroying them.

I like the idea of incremental rewards for raiding but dislike armour. If mexes had Solar armour as it exists now, then the early game would become a lot more frantic as you micro your mexes. Closing before raiders hit is really powerful. Closing before burst damage (say from a Raven) is the difference between the attack being excellent or pointless. When you manually close a Solar you must come back and open it once the danger is over.

I am happy with manual Solar closing because they are already quite healthy relative to their spammability. There is room for players to optimise their play through Solar micro, but it won't have a large effect. I expect mex micro would have a sufficiently significant effect to be enforced.

Besides, I don't think we lack incremental raiding rewards. How many mexes are killed is one such reward. The value of killing a mex depends on the proximity of enemy constructors, and killing those constructors increases the value. Lastly, if you have more time around a mex you can kill supporting Solars and turrets.

quote: Would you elaborate? I feel like we have multiple people trying to explain the purpose of a seasonal ladder. Perhaps you could explain it more clearly.

In its core, a competitive ladder is a rat race to the top. Those who deserve to be destroyed will get destroyed and those who deserve to be at the top will be at the top. The environment should be fair, without anyone being babysat or having an unfair advantage. I'll try to extrapolate this as I go down a list of points.

First off, DF's comment about ladder being 6-12 months long. This is a huuuge nope. Once the ladder ranks get stabilized, the interest wanes and participation will drop since the effort required to rise in ranks is too much. Only the most contested positions between people who care will see action. The length of a single season should be one and a half months, two months at most. You can go lower but not any higher; point is to keep the rankings fresh and moving, and to prevent the eventual staleness.

Any head start based on previous rankings or skill or anything else is straight out the window. There are legitimate reasons to have such benefits in games with large enough player base, but for smaller games this will only fasten the stagnation and ruin the 'fairness' associated with a competitive scene. No freebies to anyone, everyone has to put in the same amount of work to rise up the ranks.

Automatic matchmaking should be more mixed rather than locked to "similarly skilled" players. There should also be an option to be able to pick who you want to play against rather than it all being automated. I guess I should address one of your previous comments in this topic, as this and the next point kind of relate to it...

quote: Briefly, hoping that people change is completely backwards game design. Sure, you can design a game that is "not for" the majority of people, but then you'd better be happy with doing that. The premise of this thread is what might be done if we're not happy with that.

Who's the majority though? The current and the old, burnt out players or the RTS crowd? Most RTS games tend to have two scenes; the low tier mishmash (think pots) and the high tier 1v1 scene. And there are always incentives to play those 1v1 games; the incentives are often MacGuffins, but the important point is that they exist. They don't exist in ZK. I've never cared about 1v1, but the few times I've played ladders/seasons elsewhere, the thought of standing at the apex, in that glorious #1 place when the ladder/season ends, has roused my competitive spirit. On the other hand, even if ZK had a 2v2 or 3v3 ranking, I wouldn't care about climbing the ranks. There's no MacGuffin to gain from being at the top of an eternal snorefest ranking.

This is something a ladder could make up for. Something to attract the 1v1-loving RTS players.

Work and effort should be a factor in ladder rankings. Those who put in the time to play games SHOULD be ranked higher than those who are more skilled but aren't putting in similar amount of effort (this is extremely simplified, but going into details would take too long due to the amount of conditionals involved. I hope the general idea gets properly conveyed).

A competitive ladder should be the single place in an RTS (with a small community) where new players aren't being pampered. They should be allowed to be destroyed by higher skilled players rather than be locked into their own skill group. Casuals who can't handle the losses will switch to the more lax teams or current MM, and the new players who can handle it actually benefit from playing and losing to people above their skill level. "Balance" should make up only a small part of the matching system.

Rankings shouldn't be hidden. This goes against the whole "stress reduction" this topic is about, but my post is solely about competitive season/ladder.


That should cover most of my thoughts without going too deep into details. The reason I have the word competitive in italics is because this is an important distinction; if the ladder you're looking to make is more along the lines of "current MM but with a twist", then my post can be largely ignored.

Its pretty common practice for people to start at a higher rank/division based on their previous season performance. It's not only fair but also a more accurate representation of their skill. They still will need to grind/win many matches to compete in ladder consistently

Let's make a separate thread for testing that starting with GoogleFrog 's post, shall we?

Those can be fun, but every economic building you have to build, is also something to protect/raid. So an economy does add an extra dimension to the tactical side of the game.

I guess if we wanted to Zero-K's current econ could be adapted to produce a "victory point resource", crystals or whatever, and everyone could have a slowly escalating basic income of actual metal.

But I gotta say I rather like the exponential economic growth and scrabbling over wreckage of Zero-K and other similar games.