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Games too easy?2 weeks to be in the best ships? |
PlasmaStorm
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: October 10, 2010
Posts: 16
From: South Carolina,USA
|  Posted: 2010-10-30 21:45
Oh yea.Compared to taking a year to hit Admiral,I guess it IS easy.But still think jacking up difficulty levels isnt the way to improve the game.I would think that would just deter new blood from coming in.
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Azreal
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
| Posted: 2010-10-30 21:55
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On 2010-10-30 21:21, SpaceAdmiral wrote:
also alot of old people never mention things like bombing in 1.483...
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Two true stories.
.482. The advanced transport, K'Luth. Bio bombs, 1200gu start, 15 gu speed. Cloud using a target point on side of planet. Bombs hit in mass cloud, wipe planet. Target planet as u pass, drop ten troops. Move to next planet. Most of my bombing points came in the offset bombing days. seldom bother with it now. too buggy.
.482. When you captured a ship, you recieved 2 points for every capture. One because you captured the enemy. Another because you got sent back to the ship yard to spawn again. Now you only get one. When the points changed, I was already in 3rd place with 90-something.
There have always been things that could be exploited.
Ai was removed at one time because people farmed them..
Imagine that....
Dont use all drones on a structure when building if u want more points. u get more points for building longer than faster. Points aren't based on structure, but time. So build two or three structures at once. This maximizes PPM.
Az
[ This Message was edited by: Azreal on 2010-10-30 21:57 ]
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Lrd_Hunter
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 16, 2006
Posts: 245
| Posted: 2010-10-30 21:56
why let look at it this way once you beat a game how often do you actually play it. in other words if let say i was a new player i come in and in about a mo i am grand with all badges then i think i know everything about the game and were there ya go.
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Subtilizer
Grand Admiral
Faster than Light
Joined: February 20, 2010
Posts: 122
| Posted: 2010-10-31 08:32
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On 2010-10-30 21:55, Azreal wrote:
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On 2010-10-30 21:21, SpaceAdmiral wrote:
also alot of old people never mention things like bombing in 1.483...
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Two true stories.
.482. The advanced transport, K'Luth. Bio bombs, 1200gu start, 15 gu speed. Cloud using a target point on side of planet. Bombs hit in mass cloud, wipe planet. Target planet as u pass, drop ten troops. Move to next planet. Most of my bombing points came in the offset bombing days. seldom bother with it now. too buggy.
.482. When you captured a ship, you recieved 2 points for every capture. One because you captured the enemy. Another because you got sent back to the ship yard to spawn again. Now you only get one. When the points changed, I was already in 3rd place with 90-something.
There have always been things that could be exploited.
Ai was removed at one time because people farmed them..
Imagine that....
Dont use all drones on a structure when building if u want more points. u get more points for building longer than faster. Points aren't based on structure, but time. So build two or three structures at once. This maximizes PPM.
Az
[ This Message was edited by: Azreal on 2010-10-30 21:57 ]
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*facepalm*
this furthers my belief that DS players can exploit anything even bread and butter.
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Xydes
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 07, 2009
Posts: 276
From: England
| Posted: 2010-10-31 17:32
I read the first few lines of this and I was like: You are one smart 2nd Rear.
You may not have been here long enough to comment on bugs, exploits etc etc.
But you got this down to a T.
-Skul
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MeguminLife[+R]
Admiral
Joined: December 13, 2008
Posts: 21
| Posted: 2010-11-03 23:28
I play this casually and I am a Vice Admiral half way to Admiral at 4 days. Try harder.
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Marius Falix
Grand Admiral
Joined: July 05, 2010
Posts: 268
From: Luyten
| Posted: 2010-11-04 06:55
with a dread avg is 1k pres per hour.
2k for a good fight.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2010-11-04 08:38
For the record, prestige gain is way too high, and we will be looking to lower it (I lowered it again last patch). We aimed to increase combat by adding prestige to armour/shield damage, however getting the percentage of prestige awarded correct is proving to be a difficult topic. However, I promise those who question the speed of which people are ranking that we are aware of the issue, and are continuing to work on the topic.
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2010-11-04 09:51
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On 2010-10-31 08:32, Chaoticstorm wrote:
*facepalm*
this furthers my belief that DS players can exploit anything even bread and butter.
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Which proves people have to be annoying as hell in order to get those things changed (note how they evetually were).
See the way I look at it is, for the game to be balanced, ranking has to be slow or, ships have to be equal, for these reasons.
If prestige gain is easy, and getting ships is easy (which it is), then rank is meaningless, and therefore, gaining new ships is meaningless. Why bother making big ships better and more powerful if.. they're easy to get? So make all ships good, just better in the hands of a skilled player. This is argued against because ranking up easy isn't easy for everyone (even if its a majority), there has to be some kind of incentive to keep playing (progression), and because people just think bigger ships should be better.
If prestige gain is hard, and getting ships is hard (which it is not currently), then rank means something, and ships are worth their rank. So it makes sense they are more powerful. However, because rank is hard to get, this makes powerful ships rarer because fewer are willing to invest the time to get there. I personally favor this approach. However, there remains the problem of people who already ranked up easy and are flying powerful ships and newer players get screwed because there are alot of big ships flyig around and not enough smaller ships.
So the solution to that, is to take away big ships from the players who haven't 'earned" them, so to speak. The definiton of such being, that the system wasn't intended to let you fly a the best ships in the game without some serious time investment (not weeks but months for the casual player). There are a variety of options for that, all of them unpopular because every person at Admiral or higher thinks they deserve what they earned because of the system that was in place at the time, no matter how imbalanced it was.
So were faced back at the first option, making every ship equal, except in case of skill, which is also good, but hard to accomplish. Also unpopular with the Dev team which would mean undoing years of past and future possible work, and unpopular with certain players who think the best ships in the game should remain just that - best, not equal.
So in the end, we get stuck with the same imbalanced system, same playerbase of high ranked players but few lower ranked players. And then we wonder why after a few years we get fewer and fewer new players that stick around. Maybe because the game gets boring for a majority of people when they have all the badges at 1RA, or because they can fly the best ship in the game in two weeks. Progression are balance are things that keep MMO's ticking, and if both of those things don't exist after the first month, then why do you keep sticking around?
For the same combat? Yeah maybe. The game has enough variety (but few "end game" goals) to keep you around a few more months, which is alot more than other MMOs can say, but really, the jump from scout to frigate and so on is so quick and immediate that that variety is rendered meaningless, and the combat stale. All you get left with is a die hard core of players that absolutely love the game with the fanboyish passion of an Xbox 360 player (thats me, Mr. Going on 9 Years). It took me two years to hit Fleet Admiral playing casually (then the highest rank in the game, only one station) and those were some of the most fun memories of the game.
You might ask why - maybe because the game was fun enough to keep me hooked even though the progresssion is slow. The game kept me hooked because the small ships didn't suck and neither did the big ones. All it took was skill, and alot of luck, and your friends. Battles changed systems often (there was no quick shipyarding to and from places), and dieing mattered because you had a long way to go to get back to the action. So even if you died (and lost lower prestige than you did now), you hated it because that meant your fleet was down one more person who was integral to the fight five systems away. At the time, scouting if you can believe it or not, was the exploit then (or playing Kluth, which were incredibly overpowered - we didn't have a Dev team at the time who released quick enough updates to fix problems like this).
Getting FA mattered because most people worked for it, and you could tell who didn't. And why do these things matter? Because im MMOs, there is always status, and status matters to people who have played a long time and earned it. People play MMOs to have fun and also earn recognition. So prestige gain rate matters. Ship balance matters. And why new people are just as important as the old ones - the old ones matter because it gives something for new people to work towards, and it gives the old people fresh people to test their skills against. And what gives MMOs their life - replayability. You want people to keep coming back. DS always gets close to the Golden WoW Recipie but never quite does it because of an increasingly senile and stubborn playerbase.
You might ask then, what killed the playerbase then? Stagnation. Despite gross imbalance and exploits, the game still kept a constant 80 player ingame presence (spread across MV, scenario, newbie, etc.) ingame despite there still requiring a subscription. For over two years. With little or no updates. Crazy. Thats how interesting the game was. So yeah, thats why I always yell for it back.
I love rambling about nostalgia.
-Ent
[ This Message was edited by: Mersenne Twister on 2010-11-08 08:38 ]
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2010-11-04 16:26
We'll most likely be reviewing the ranks and prestige system after the planetary and fighter changes get released, since these are the things (as Ent pointed out) that are throwing the balance of the ships out of wack.
The first few ranks should be attainable within an evening of playing, once you get into the mid bracket however, ranks should start advancing in difficulty/time to obtain steeply, as the usefulness of ships in this bracket starts to evolve, edventually progressing onto the gaps we have between GA, M and CM. These ranks should take very long to attain. The main reason they do not, is the prestige gain on shield/armour damage, which is being rectified.
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Knightfall
Grand Admiral
Joined: September 26, 2009
Posts: 14
| Posted: 2010-11-04 17:33
When I first started playing, it took me over a month (about 3-4 hours a day) to get to 2nd rear admiral, and when I came back to the game it only took me about a week to get from 1st rear admiral to Fleet Admiral. Since then I have slowed down my playing alot and am only halfway to Grand Admiral. I think that that is way, way too fast. Too many times I have seen someone flying a dread that shouldn't be. He either got to it by doing nothing but combat and cant do support roles, or he grinded did the opposite and has no idea how to even use it.
Just my two cents
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2010-11-05 07:53
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On 2010-11-04 17:33, JediMaster wrote:
When I first started playing, it took me over a month (about 3-4 hours a day) to get to 2nd rear admiral, and when I came back to the game it only took me about a week to get from 1st rear admiral to Fleet Admiral. Since then I have slowed down my playing alot and am only halfway to Grand Admiral. I think that that is way, way too fast. Too many times I have seen someone flying a dread that shouldn't be. He either got to it by doing nothing but combat and cant do support roles, or he grinded did the opposite and has no idea how to even use it.
Just my two cents
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I can attest to this. Getting CM is far too easy. I've played very rarely for the past three or four months and managed to gain over 150k prestige just from smashing spacebar and dieing [and sometimes even when dieing often.. Its too out of whack. It should be the other way around. A fast climb to cruisers and then a much slower climb to dreads and an even slower climb to stations and beyond.
-Ent
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Azreal
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
| Posted: 2010-11-05 07:57
In .482, I made GA in about 9 - 10 months. That was with all the old system, with all the old pain of dying, with all the slow gains in pres.
Of course, I played about 40 hours a week then, but nevertheless, it was certainly doable. I was just one of the very few that did do it.
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DarkCloudd
Grand Admiral
Joined: June 20, 2005
Posts: 85
From: Iowa
| Posted: 2010-11-05 09:09
The problem is finding that sweet spot that makes it a challenge and still provides some replay value to it. Too short to hit max rank? Then there isnt as much replay value to it. Too long? Then you have to deal with player burnout and leaving for good or for extended periods of time.
I guess what we should be asking ourselves is this, What is the point of Darkspace? Is it a leveling game where the most enjoyment is from ranking up and then platueing at the high levels? Or is it getting to the highest levels quickly to enjoy a "Raid" style enviroment.
The way I look at it, the scenario server is more like a leveling up zone, quicker combat, quicker maps and a set goal of each map. The MV on the other hand if like the raid enviroment. Large map with the constant struggle over turf.
In my honest opinion to make it more balanced, the prestige gain from combat should be lower but the prestige gain from all other activities should be dramatically increased to make it more worth while for the people who actually want to gain ranks to do something besides combat. Unfortunately that is a find line to walk. Lower prestige gain too much and you drive the new players away because they dont level up very fast. Thus limiting their access to new ships.
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2010-11-05 09:52
These are very valid criticisms to address...
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On 2010-11-05 09:09, Fatal DarkCloudd *COM* wrote:
The problem is finding that sweet spot that makes it a challenge and still provides some replay value to it. Too short to hit max rank? Then there isnt as much replay value to it. Too long? Then you have to deal with player burnout and leaving for good or for extended periods of time.
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This is very true in way too many MMOs. But DS has something more unique than most MMOs doesn't it?
See most other MMOs rely on some vague level system where you gain generic prestige just killing things. Of course there's very little replay value there when you're grinding off of AI endlesesly. That gets tiresome fast except for the most hardcore players.
DS shines and is very different in the respect that there are many ways to gain our version of experience points, and all of them are important to gameplay, all of them have complex interacitons, and all of them require personal experience and knowledge to get the most out of it. Not to mention the huge variety of ships that exist. There is already now a massive replay value just from this fact alone because there are many Marshals and Chief Marshals who play on a daily basis.
Yes - even the people at the very top play the game constantly on a daily basis to gain absolutely nothing. NOTHING. Except to climb higher on the rankings list. Thats it. By god. Would WoW still have the same replayability if once they hit max level, they had nothing to do but fight in PvP matches? The game would be dead in a week. Replayability is very dependent on what makes the game interesting enonugh to give it variety on a daily basis. Replayability will be there if we do the following:
Cadet -> Captain = very fast progression. Get to good ships quickly and get lightly involved in every aspect of the Darkspace system.
Captain -> 1RA = medium progression. Get to even better ships should take a good week of casual play. Get more involved with finer parts of combat tactics and so forth. Probably be a experienced builder at this point.
After that, its slows down even more, and then it should contiue to drastically take much much longer to get all the way up to CM.
The player gets consistently new ships to play with if they play often and well enough, and the combat is constantly ever evolving because you're playing against actual people.
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I guess what we should be asking ourselves is this, What is the point of Darkspace? Is it a leveling game where the most enjoyment is from ranking up and then platueing at the high levels? Or is it getting to the highest levels quickly to enjoy a "Raid" style enviroment.
The way I look at it, the scenario server is more like a leveling up zone, quicker combat, quicker maps and a set goal of each map. The MV on the other hand if like the raid enviroment. Large map with the constant struggle over turf.
In my honest opinion to make it more balanced, the prestige gain from combat should be lower but the prestige gain from all other activities should be dramatically increased to make it more worth while for the people who actually want to gain ranks to do something besides combat. Unfortunately that is a find line to walk. Lower prestige gain too much and you drive the new players away because they dont level up very fast. Thus limiting their access to new ships.
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I think a good solution would be lower combat prestige gain and increase the others, but add in badge requirements to have before you can increase in rank. Such as, 1RA requiring at least Silver Star. So even if you exceed the prestige for it, you haven't diversified your skills enough to earn the rank. And then just increase the caps for Gold and Platinum Stars.
-Ent
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