ADD HANDICAP XP and gold rewards for fighting in less powerful or popular ships and balance the game this way

[Destraex]

I wrote this in another thread where people wanted to nerf or buff ships. I hate nerf and buff because it means ships end up resembling nothing like their historical counterparts. They become skins on an empty shell of stats that mean nothing.

 

(vii) ADD HANDICAP XP and gold rewards for fighting in less powerful ships and balance the game this way (I am A BIG fan of this idea as it requires no stuffing around with history at all). This WILL get people playing every tiny and underpowered (by speed, armour or weight etc) ship under the sun. You can also keep adjusting this as newer ships come out to ensure people keep playing older ships.

 

For popularity the system could be dymanic. For instance one day nobody is playing renomees. The game gives renomees 2 X XP and gold modifiers which immediately people notice and start using them. Each ship type could have a ratio according to historical rareity that ensures they don't get a XP boost until they get below a certain level. For the trinco this would almost never happen because it should be rare and is popular anyways. But for the bell poule if it is making up less than say 10% of the used ships it would get an XP and gold X 2 modifier because it should be in greater numbers than the trinc because its type should be neither rare or in small numbers.

 

It could work both ways where if there is a glut of connies the XP and gold gets a negative multiplier which makes it unprofitable to sail and theirfor only people who don't care will sail them until they run out of money and have to go to other ships.

 

In this way we can encourage ships in this game to be like their historical counterparts and make battles interesting without having all this balance argument that usually ruins game immersion for me. When I see a trinc or a connie I want to fear, I want to know its rare and amazing. I don't want to think, that thing aint no trinc. It cannot even catch most things like it could in real life. It's just a poor facsimile of the real thing in for a bit of flavour and dressing.

 

Another way might be to hard limit each ship types numbers per faction. But that would annoy people I think.

[Stix]

+1 for multipliers. Give people incentive to sail smaller ships. Still need proper pvp rewards though

[Destraex]

The danger with PVP rewards is that clans will stream ahead of normal players by virtue of easy access to regular PVP.

[Legioneod]

Completely agree, ships need to be historical and not buff/nerfed. Your idea could be a good way to balance things.

[Capt. Rice]

couldnt this  be abused in a way?

[Stix]

It gets abused by friends sinking each other which is fixed by much more expensive ships.

[Destraex]

You know what it would not matter.

Because my suggestion measures the entire population for a faction. It also only measures open world ships that are in use and online at the time. Not ships that are sunk but ships that people online last selected in port.

couldnt this  be abused in a way?

Explain how?

[jodgi]

Something like this could be interesting. I've seen it at play in another game.

[Porpoise]

There should be some multiplier based on BR of your ship. 

[Destraex]

Something like this could be interesting. I've seen it at play in another game.

What other game does this?

[jodgi]

What other game does this?

Aces High has something like it. I'll explain later.

[Destraex]

I will look forward to it then

[Grim DeGrim]

Looks good.

[Puchu]

This suggestion will only matter till endgame. Once Endgame hits, all of this will be a non factor.

[Destraex]

Hi Puchu.. long time

I had no idea there was an end game? I could continue to enjoy sailing in all different ships even if I had the highest one.

The real value afterwards would be new theatres of operation like the med and english channel. 

[jodgi]

I will look forward to it then

Aces High is a large arena MMO where three factions are pitted against each other. You control ww2 warbirds, tanks or even ships (to an extent). Many players are out hunting but you can also capture fields by leveling the town and dropping paratroopers to get ten of them into a command building. So, some similarities with NA. Both games have top of class fighting mechanics.

But no grind and no economy.

Every vehicle is created to perform as close to historical performance charts as possible, no game balancing.

Balancing, or limiting, is done with “ENY” value attached to each vehicle and a cost of “points” to control certain (OP) vehicles. To fly the me262 you need to earn fighter points. If you kill a P51(eny15) in a spitV(eny30) you get a lot of fighter points. If you kill a Hurricane (eny40) in an la7(eny 12) you only get a little. You lose fighter points if you're killed while flying those OP fighters.

Players can do exactly what they want. This eny and points system has successfully limited the use of OP vehicles to a minimum over a period of many years. In fact, many good players take out “shitty” planes and try to hit above their weight class. I believe this is a side effect of the eny and point cost system. Anyone can win in good stuff, but are you good enough to beat a better equipped opponent?

The eny system is also used to balance out faction pop imbalances. If one faction has more numbers than another, the large faction is limited in vehicle choice, they can't take out the best stuff anymore. If you fight for the underdog you have access to all vehicles and point cost is reduced for the OP stuff.

The RvR guys tend to join the winning side. But, again, good players often choose to defend the losing side for sport and point farming. Even after we had more points than anyone would ever need, we did this.

This last effect would be so cool to have in NA but loss mechanic will never allow that to happen. All this explains my disenchantment with loss.

No grind, no loss and no economy yet no one has ever complained about lack of reasons to fight.

[Destraex]

I am not a fan of hard limitations on vehicle choice. Just a penalty for choosing ships that everybody is using at the time you log in or even over the course of your game time as the population changes.

If their were say 1000 people online and a clan decided to take out 101 HMS Victories but the game rules said their should be less than 10% of those ships in game for a given faction at any one time. All victory players would then run negative XP and Coin. However they may want to do this for a short period for a battle and take the loss. But would shortly move to others ships. 

[Destraex]

Wow. Somebody just liked this after all this time.

[Carljcharles]

Make that 2 people!

...Apart from the 'bonus for using a reno today because there are not many of those in game right now'.

[Sir Robert Calder]

I understand OP's great desire to see boats in NA represented solely by their historical basis, but I am going to have to firmly disagree with adding handicap xp/gold benefits to avoid implementing balance changes.

 

Giving ships their unique role and the ability to fulfill roles that aren't blatantly designated by the game is the way to balance ships. Renommees tackle, Trincs chase, Surprises privateer, SoLs blow up ports in the large groups, Cutters harass, and Lynxes sail stupendously fast. When players start seeing this game less in the name of "progression" and more in the sense that maybe sailing around a Santisima at Rear Admiral isn't really a good idea alone, you will see a much wider variety of ships used. I am also willing to accept small changes against their historical basis in order to make those roles more well realized.

 

This may also come from a bit of bias as I understand GB on PvP1 is a highly populated faction, but in our port actions I consistently see a wide balance of ships from Cutters (out of necessity) to Frigates screening to SoLs. The variety in this game to me has been really good.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Sir Robert Calder

[Migui]

This is an artificial setup to force people to use certain ships instead of putting a bit of effort balancing each rate separately and giving each ship a meaningful role.

 

A good game design should favor people picking a particular one for a specific role, not making people use underpowered and suboptimal setups only for XP/gold.

[Destraex]

Migui the whole point is NOT to balance the ships but to let them remain in their historical and natural form. Do you think "balancing the ships" is any less artificial, in fact it is more so?

They all had roles in real life. We don't need to make stuff up! Your never going to get  perfect balance any ways and what is the point of playing if you do? This aint chess the game is too complex and the pieces will be too numerous to balance. I always found it boring when each side was perfectly mirrored of the enemy. As I said I am bored with this kind of setup. I would rather fight and win against the odds or salute somebody for running a sub optimal setup and still winning. It's never brave or cunning to win in a perfectly balanced environment or ship and it sure as hell aint the natural order of things. Next thing you know you will be asking that every battle is perfectly balanced in terms of numbers and ships. That would never do for the open world anyways right? People are outnumbered all the time. It's fun!

 

To me balancing the ships would be like speeding up a rabbit in a nature game to make it a competitive animal. It looks silly to anyone with a little knowledge and intelligence.

 

P.S. Like calder I am willing to accept small changes based on the fact that historical records are not always reflective or perfectly accurate in terms of speed etc anyways. I am not willing to accept constant balance changes purely for the sake of trying to make the ship fit like a square peg in a round hole. I don't want to see ships I know and love doing things they could never have been capable of in real life. This would make me stop playing. Because it would be like every other moba dota style game. 

[Sir Robert Calder]

To me balancing the ships would be like speeding up a rabbit in a nature game to make it a competitive animal. It looks silly to anyone with a little knowledge and intelligence.

 

I agree.

 

Also, when are we going to nerf Humans? I think they're a little broken.

[Migui]

Migui the whole point is NOT to balance the ships but to let them remain in their historical and natural form. Do you think "balancing the ships" is any less artificial?

They all had roles in real life. We don't need to make stuff up!

To me balancing the ships would be like speeding up a rabbit in a nature game to make it a competitive animal. It looks silly to anyone with a little knowledge and intelligence.

 

 

I am not sure that you get what balancing means. Balancing doesn't mean that suddenly a Cerberus is going to fight evenly with a Trinco just because they are on the same class.It means that every ship on its own is a good choice to fill a specific role, that it is going to be playable and fun to sail.

 

You said "For instance one day nobody is playing renomees. The game gives renomees 2 X XP and gold modifiers which immediately people notice and start using them."

 

If you have 10 frigates and people only uses 1 then there is an example of unbalanced and bad design that must be addressed instead of making people sail suboptimal and unfun ships only for XP.

 

Right now, with 350 of crew are you going to sail a Frigate or a belle poule over a trinco? You likely will want to bring a Reno to chase in world, thanks to the top speed.

 

You can work around without having to remove the historical purpose. But after all this is a game and many things aren't going to be like in the history, or they would be game breaking.

[Destraex]

I agree.

 

Also, when are we going to nerf Humans? I think they're a little broken.

Humans have always and forever will be broken Mr Calder. Nothing we can do about that except use our brains to mitigate things.