2012-03-13, 19:49:23
The background:
yesterday I played some games of bt with a friend of mine who had not played it before at all. We first played vs AI, we + one AI vs 3 AI was easy. However, in another game we played 4vs4 filled with AI, and our allies had like 5-25 stats very early, I started with a troop command and wanted to change to a shredder, so I couldn't do much about it in the very beginning, and once I started into the game, the enemies already had way more gold. Still ended up with 20-10, but we lost that one.
Then, we tried to play online in a league qualify. My friend had about 0-15 stats, which he definitely didn't enjoy either. He was then kicked by his allies and I had to leave, because I didn't want to let him sit there waiting.
In the last days in general, I played some bt games again, and there was about a 40% chance, that there was a feeder in the game who decided the winner, 40% that it was an awesome game, and 20% that the teams just weren't fair from the beginning. Something like that.
So this brings me to the problem of players feeding. I thought about possibilities to solve this problems then, and came back to an idea I already had some time before, but which was never added to the game. If you don't like the idea, I would still encourage you do give any advice on how to fix that feeder problem in another way, or at least a statement why you think it cannot be fixed at all.
Feeders / bad players have to be distinguished from the the good players in the game to still let the better team win and encourage players to give their best. This is already given without any bounty because of the respawn time in which the killed player can't earn any money. We also can't punish the killed player even more, since this would make him feed even more. So feeding players need to give reduced bounty.
The solution:
My suggestion is to reset the bounty to zero, as soon as a player dies. Then the bounty grows to its original value over some given time, about 5 minutes I would say.
This means, a player dying exactly every 5 minutes won't give any more bounty in total than a player dying every 30 seconds. Stronger players who didn't die for 5 minutes will have a constant bounty from that time, so that they do not necessarily give the same amount of money to their enemies. Reaching that point may also encourage a player to be even more careful, since in the timer over 5 minutes he saves money for his team in every second. Besides that, the attackers may focus on stronger players to get more money from them, too, maybe even teaming up to prevent a player from reaching the 5 minute mark.
Also I suppose there are less deaths in games with good players, so the influence won't be too big for pro-games. In open games this could be the solution to feeding, as killing a player very frequently does not give any additional money at all. Of course, it would be easier for tinkers then and stuff, but otherwise they are hated for feeding, so this is the only possible way. As the total amount of gold gained by tank bounty will be reduced probably, increasing the base bounty could help keeping the old game length and balance. Maybe the bounty formula could be simplified then, too, since some feeder-related aspects are already taken into account, however, obviously not fixing the problem.
I know that this may change the game mechanics quite a bit and I actually doubt that this proposal gets through, but in my opinion there has to be done something about feeders. Or in general, it would be good to fix all reasons players are kicked for. And one additional note: I think it would be useless to add this as an option, since most players play on the qualify bot anyways and won't try that mode. Maybe it can be tried on the bot and removed again later, but it needs a wide start.
Thanks for reading, I hope I got some supporters by now.
yesterday I played some games of bt with a friend of mine who had not played it before at all. We first played vs AI, we + one AI vs 3 AI was easy. However, in another game we played 4vs4 filled with AI, and our allies had like 5-25 stats very early, I started with a troop command and wanted to change to a shredder, so I couldn't do much about it in the very beginning, and once I started into the game, the enemies already had way more gold. Still ended up with 20-10, but we lost that one.
Then, we tried to play online in a league qualify. My friend had about 0-15 stats, which he definitely didn't enjoy either. He was then kicked by his allies and I had to leave, because I didn't want to let him sit there waiting.
In the last days in general, I played some bt games again, and there was about a 40% chance, that there was a feeder in the game who decided the winner, 40% that it was an awesome game, and 20% that the teams just weren't fair from the beginning. Something like that.
So this brings me to the problem of players feeding. I thought about possibilities to solve this problems then, and came back to an idea I already had some time before, but which was never added to the game. If you don't like the idea, I would still encourage you do give any advice on how to fix that feeder problem in another way, or at least a statement why you think it cannot be fixed at all.
Feeders / bad players have to be distinguished from the the good players in the game to still let the better team win and encourage players to give their best. This is already given without any bounty because of the respawn time in which the killed player can't earn any money. We also can't punish the killed player even more, since this would make him feed even more. So feeding players need to give reduced bounty.
The solution:
My suggestion is to reset the bounty to zero, as soon as a player dies. Then the bounty grows to its original value over some given time, about 5 minutes I would say.
This means, a player dying exactly every 5 minutes won't give any more bounty in total than a player dying every 30 seconds. Stronger players who didn't die for 5 minutes will have a constant bounty from that time, so that they do not necessarily give the same amount of money to their enemies. Reaching that point may also encourage a player to be even more careful, since in the timer over 5 minutes he saves money for his team in every second. Besides that, the attackers may focus on stronger players to get more money from them, too, maybe even teaming up to prevent a player from reaching the 5 minute mark.
Also I suppose there are less deaths in games with good players, so the influence won't be too big for pro-games. In open games this could be the solution to feeding, as killing a player very frequently does not give any additional money at all. Of course, it would be easier for tinkers then and stuff, but otherwise they are hated for feeding, so this is the only possible way. As the total amount of gold gained by tank bounty will be reduced probably, increasing the base bounty could help keeping the old game length and balance. Maybe the bounty formula could be simplified then, too, since some feeder-related aspects are already taken into account, however, obviously not fixing the problem.
I know that this may change the game mechanics quite a bit and I actually doubt that this proposal gets through, but in my opinion there has to be done something about feeders. Or in general, it would be good to fix all reasons players are kicked for. And one additional note: I think it would be useless to add this as an option, since most players play on the qualify bot anyways and won't try that mode. Maybe it can be tried on the bot and removed again later, but it needs a wide start.
Thanks for reading, I hope I got some supporters by now.