109 replies to this topic

[hestoned]

Beemann, on November 27 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

@Hestoned
Since your non-existent team is so incredible that they can spawncamp a competitive team that has practiced together for hours in an area where they have a population and firepower advantage and keep them out of the match indefinitely, we might as well just drop siege and just hand you the medal every time

Please think before you say things

Oh and every death is -10 EU. 6 deaths is almost half of an A mech's carrying capacity
In addition, you lose everything by letting the other team shoot the ship down, and they lose nothing if you try to kill them on their side of the map
They don't need the AA because a couple of scouts can take down the battleship

My god your defensive. Where are you getting this idea that i have an air of superiority over you_ I'm simply saying that your strategy is not the end all be all of siege and giving clear reasoning to boot. If anything your assuming that your team has an impenetrable defense that 100% guarantees you survival. That is not the case. So what if i drop EU for you guys_ You made it pretty clear that you don't care if i hold AA so its a mute point. Again what am i risking by engaging you at your base_

[Nukerock]

Always thought siege mode was a bad mode for eSports, I thought they were coming up with a new mode for it, at least that's what I head people talking in this forum.
Siege mode lacks tension, it's not very exciting to see the ships getting closer to the bases and shooting them. Missile assault same reason, one team can get so ahead that it can just make the game boring.

The thing with CS is that it has these moments were it comes down to a 1v1 or a last second deffusal and people love to watch that.
Even tribes has these last moment shots at flag carriers and overtime standoffs where both teams are tied and one shot can change the game(tho these are also boring if teams are camping too hard, if map sucks).

[PlagueDoctor]

hestoned, on November 27 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

My god your defensive. Where are you getting this idea that i have an air of superiority over you_

Because you say you can beat literally everything we propose.

[Beemann]

You seem to be missing the part where you will literally never win the match, and unless you conform to the same strategy (IE putting all of your players on EU collection and destroying the battleship) you'll lose
So if you play up the AA or shoot the ships down, we get an infinite stalemate
If you attack the spawn, the team with the EU stockpile sends free ships at your base and wins
If you harass the EU gatherers, nobody cares because you're just wasting EU gathering and you're not going to win a shorthanded fight. At best you'll leave both teams on par with EU gathering

[Nukerock]

What do you guys think of a permanent death round style match, assuming you have some objective to get rid of camping and make sure teams engage.

I much rather prefer a game ending by 1 mech destroying another with some good shots, than a slow ass moving ship reaching its destination.

[z121231211]

Crazy idea suggestions ahead:
1) Make ship health increase exponentially, but have the AA always do 1/5 (or any other constant ratio) of the ship's max health.

2) Make dying cause you to drop 25 EU, have a limit of 900 EU on the map at a time (ie. EU is now a finite resource). So that when It's gone, people have to die or the ship has to explode. (So if a ship is in the air, that leaves 300 EU total that's on the ground, in mechs, loaded, in EU trees,etc. until the ship gets destroyed somehow) Though that means that if both teams have 450 EU loaded up it's essentially a TDM with some kill confirm added. Also means that 2 ships can't be in the air at once. Possibly have EU trees slowly suck up EU that was dropped onto the ground.

3) Possibly have 3 EU trees. 2 minor EU trees on either side and 1 major EU tree in the middle that regens twice as fast or something. (Balancing this with point 2 might be hard)

Those are at least basic, easy to change suggestions. But if Siege is flawed to such an extreme, I'd say the design team should just go back to the drawing board with "A. There needs to be a harvesting stage and B. There needs to be a defending stage" and go on from there using what they've learned so far.

Edited by z121231211, November 27 2012 - 11:52 PM.

[hestoned]

PlagueDoctor, on November 27 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

hestoned, on November 27 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

My god your defensive. Where are you getting this idea that i have an air of superiority over you_

Because you say you can beat literally everything we propose.

I never said i "can beat" every proposition you come up with. Just that there's a possibility for it to fail and i provided reasoning. I'm getting the feeling that there's a mob mentality forming against me. Are you saying that its literally 100% impossible to push you back into base, even after like 20 tries. C'mon dude everyone knows you cant win em all.

[PlagueDoctor]

Nukerock, on November 27 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

What do you guys think of a permanent death round style match, assuming you have some objective to get rid of camping and make sure teams engage.

I much rather prefer a game ending by 1 mech destroying another with some good shots, than a slow ass moving ship reaching its destination.

I dont know if there is any way to introduce objectives into a death round without just turning it into a team deathmatch (like in cs:s or cs:go) Perm death also leads to passivity, which isn't fun to spectate.

Also I don't like the AA housing, its too turtley and leads to hiding behind a wall  during firefights. Cover is good, having to fight a wall that shoots at you is not.

[NotKjell]

One other large issue with permadeath is the audience. The players watching hawken will largely be hawken players themselves, getting a kick out of seeing pros play what they play. Even if permadeath was balanced, even if permadeath was exciting to watch (which I don't think it would be), would the general populace really play that mode when they want to have fun_ I'd be worried the pro scene wouldn't be playing the same game as the community at large. I don't want to watch someone playing a mod of my game, I want to see the most awesome plays I try to do yet can never pull off.

[Beemann]

z121231211, on November 27 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

Crazy idea suggestions ahead:
1) Make ship health increase exponentially, but have the AA always do 1/5 (or any other constant ratio) of the ship's max health.

2) Make dying cause you to drop 25 EU, have a limit of 900 EU on the map at a time. So that when It's gone, people have to die or the ship has to explode. (So if a ship is in the air, that leaves 300 EU total that's on the ground, in mechs, loaded, in EU trees,etc. until the ship gets destroyed somehow) Though that means that if both teams have 450 EU loaded up it's essentially a TDM with some kill confirm added. Also means that 2 ships can't be in the air at once. Possibly have EU trees slowly suck up EU that was dropped onto the ground.

3) Possibly have 3 EU trees. 2 minor EU trees on either side and 1 major EU tree in the middle that regens twice as fast or something. (Balancing this with point 2 might be hard)

Those are at least basic, easy to change suggestions. But if Siege is flawed to such an extreme, I'd say the design team should just go back to the drawing board with "A. There needs to be a harvesting stage and B. There needs to be a defending stage" and go on from there using what they've learned so far.

1) actually strengthens this strat, as the whole point is to stockpile EU, crash the first enemy ship and spam ships towards their base while collecting as much EU as possible to keep the spam going. If they destroy your ship prematurely you have less EU to collect
The only alternative would be to basically set it up so that the first ship wins, which is just as bad

2) would just promote even less fighting. Why attack people when you can lose whatever EU you're carrying (while using the strat in the OP) PLUS cost your team 25 EU

3) only helps if the 3rd tree is necessary, and still focuses any action in the map too heavily on the center

Again, like NotKJell said, Siege is fine as a pub mode. There's nothing particularly wrong with it there
However it really can't be the comp gamemode. It's flawed on a fundamental level once you introduce srsbsns organized competitive teams

Edited by Beemann, November 27 2012 - 10:34 PM.

[hestoned]

Beemann, on November 27 2012 - 10:08 PM, said:

You seem to be missing the part where you will literally never win the match, and unless you conform to the same strategy (IE putting all of your players on EU collection and destroying the battleship) you'll lose
So if you play up the AA or shoot the ships down, we get an infinite stalemate
If you attack the spawn, the team with the EU stockpile sends free ships at your base and wins
If you harass the EU gatherers, nobody cares because you're just wasting EU gathering and you're not going to win a shorthanded fight. At best you'll leave both teams on par with EU gathering

Ok look. Since i'm engaging you at your base its safe to assume that i have ship on the way and i'm trying to prevent you from shooting it down right_ Now lets we fail and everyone dies. No big deal. Since you guys don't care about AA we'll just destroy any ship you launch from your stockpile in 10 sec's. So, AGAIN, i ask, what am i risking by engaging you_ What do i care if i die when you never contest AA_ I think the reason you see it as a stale mate is because your assuming that you will never ever get pushed back, not even after 3 hours of trying. That's inherently wrong cause we know no one is perfect. Eventually your gunna lose a fight.

[Nukerock]

NotKjell, on November 27 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

One other large issue with permadeath is the audience. The players watching hawken will largely be hawken players themselves, getting a kick out of seeing pros play what they play. Even if permadeath was balanced, even if permadeath was exciting to watch (which I don't think it would be), would the general populace really play that mode when they want to have fun_ I'd be worried the pro scene wouldn't be playing the same game as the community at large. I don't want to watch someone playing a mod of my game, I want to see the most awesome plays I try to do yet can never pull off.

That will be an issue with any mode they have, because of how many modes they have already, not everyone is gonna play the same.

But I prefer to watch those killing shots being the focus than just look at numbers increasing or decreasing the whole match, like assault or current tdm. There are ways to make sure the other team doesn't get an advantage by camping.

Or they could have a siege mode, more like the UT style or wolfenstein with one team on offensive and other team on defensive going through several objectives.

[AsianJoyKiller]

hestoned, on November 27 2012 - 10:18 PM, said:

I never said i "can beat" every proposition you come up with. Just that there's a possibility for it to fail and i provided reasoning. I'm getting the feeling that there's a mob mentality forming against me. Are you saying that its literally 100% impossible to push you back into base, even after like 20 tries. C'mon dude everyone knows you cant win em all.

If the teams are evenly skilled, then Team A (using NotKjell's tactic) will kill Team B (your tactic) members just as often as they kill theirs.
But Team B is at a major disadvantage, because every time they get killed, they have to respawn and cross the whole map while leaving their teammates at a numbers disadvantage. Team A respawns and doesn't have to consider a travel time, which means they have a numbers advantage, plus the have the terrain advantage.

So yes, you could theoretically push Team A back into their base, but it is significantly harder for Team B to keep them in there, and quite easy for Team A to push back out. And they can also have 1 or 2 mechs constantly shooting at your battleship, with teammates chipping in whenever they get a chance, to make the effort to take down Team B's battleship trivial. Also every time Team B dies, they drop free energy near Team A's base. As for energy hoarding, while battleships are out, nobody can collect energy, so Team B cannot have 1 mech hoarding, meaning they will not gain an EU advantage.

Once the battleship phase ends, with Team B's ship being destroyed over Team A's base, the game goes back to EU collection. But now Team A has the advantage of a large amount of EU right at their doorstep. Team B would have to commit their entire team to trying to deny Team A from collecting that energy, once again while Team A has a travel and terrain advantage. If Team B, doesn't commit their entire team, they will not be able to fully deny the dropped EU advantage.

If Team B somehow magically manages to completely nullify Team A's collection of dropped EU, then it's just back to the EU trees, leaving Team A no worse for the wear. But if they don't, Team A is now at a EU advantage, possibly ready to launch and will stockpile till all mechs are full and only then launch.

And please keep shooting down our ship as quickly as possible.
That is exactly what we want.

[z121231211]

Beemann, on November 27 2012 - 10:33 PM, said:

z121231211, on November 27 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

Crazy idea suggestions ahead:
1) Make ship health increase exponentially, but have the AA always do 1/5 (or any other constant ratio) of the ship's max health.

2) Make dying cause you to drop 25 EU, have a limit of 900 EU on the map at a time. So that when It's gone, people have to die or the ship has to explode. (So if a ship is in the air, that leaves 300 EU total that's on the ground, in mechs, loaded, in EU trees,etc. until the ship gets destroyed somehow) Though that means that if both teams have 450 EU loaded up it's essentially a TDM with some kill confirm added. Also means that 2 ships can't be in the air at once. Possibly have EU trees slowly suck up EU that was dropped onto the ground.

3) Possibly have 3 EU trees. 2 minor EU trees on either side and 1 major EU tree in the middle that regens twice as fast or something. (Balancing this with point 2 might be hard)

Those are at least basic, easy to change suggestions. But if Siege is flawed to such an extreme, I'd say the design team should just go back to the drawing board with "A. There needs to be a harvesting stage and B. There needs to be a defending stage" and go on from there using what they've learned so far.

1) actually strengthens this strat, as the whole point is to stockpile EU, crash the first enemy ship and spam ships towards their base while collecting as much EU as possible to keep the spam going. If they destroy your ship prematurely you have less EU to collect
The only alternative would be to basically set it up so that the first ship wins, which is just as bad

2) would just promote even less fighting. Why attack people when you can lose whatever EU you're carrying (while using the strat in the OP) PLUS cost your team 25 EU

3) only helps if the 3rd tree is necessary, and still focuses any action in the map too heavily on the center

Again, like NotKJell said, Siege is fine as a pub mode. There's nothing particularly wrong with it there
However it really can't be the comp gamemode. It's flawed on a fundamental level once you introduce srsbsns organized competitive teams

1) It makes the strat only viable for the first 10 minutes. With an exponential increase, by the 3rd or 4th ship it would be impossible to shoot the ship down with normal guns, but it will always be taken down by the AA.

2) Did you read past "Lose 25 EU"_ You have to attack people because unless your team took over both the points, you'd be forced to attack the other team to get EU else it'd be impossible to launch another ship. They could make it so that when a ship explodes all the EU gets distributed back to the trees (300 each side) instead of it all landing on the ground.

Edited by z121231211, November 27 2012 - 11:16 PM.

[hestoned]

AsianJoyKiller, on November 27 2012 - 10:47 PM, said:

hestoned, on November 27 2012 - 10:18 PM, said:

I never said i "can beat" every proposition you come up with. Just that there's a possibility for it to fail and i provided reasoning. I'm getting the feeling that there's a mob mentality forming against me. Are you saying that its literally 100% impossible to push you back into base, even after like 20 tries. C'mon dude everyone knows you cant win em all.

If the teams are evenly skilled, then Team A (using NotKjell's tactic) will kill Team B (your tactic) members just as often as they kill theirs.
But Team B is at a major disadvantage, because every time they get killed, they have to respawn and cross the whole map while leaving their teammates at a numbers disadvantage. Team A respawns and doesn't have to consider a travel time, which means they have a numbers advantage, plus the have the terrain advantage.

So yes, you could theoretically push Team A back into their base, but it is significantly harder for Team B to keep them in there, and quite easy for Team A to push back out. And they can also have 1 or 2 mechs constantly shooting at your battleship, with teammates chipping in whenever they get a chance, to make the effort to take down Team B's battleship trivial. Also every time Team B dies, they drop free energy near Team A's base. As for energy hoarding, while battleships are out, nobody can collect energy, so Team B cannot have 1 mech hoarding, meaning they will not gain an EU advantage.

Once the battleship phase ends, with Team B's ship being destroyed over Team A's base, the game goes back to EU collection. But now Team A has the advantage of a large amount of EU right at their doorstep. Team B would have to commit their entire team to trying to deny Team A from collecting that energy, once again while Team A has a travel and terrain advantage. If Team B, doesn't commit their entire team, they will not be able to fully deny the dropped EU advantage.

If Team B somehow magically manages to completely nullify Team A's collection of dropped EU, then it's just back to the EU trees, leaving Team A no worse for the wear. But if they don't, Team A is now at a EU advantage, possibly ready to launch and will stockpile till all mechs are full and only then launch.

And please keep shooting down our ship as quickly as possible.
That is exactly what we want.

You just pointed out the actual problem. Its not the strat itself. Its the fact that its so easy to destroy ships by just camping at your base. I think the devs are aware of this and are probably going to buff battle ships to the point where you need AA to take it down. At that point your gunna have to come out. Of course when that happens you'll have a hard time getting there since you awarded us so much map control.

[Beemann]

Except the passive team is the one spamming ships. You force the other team to leave the AA or give you all your EU back. With the addition to 2 (ships no longer act as giant EU reserves for the side they crash on) this can be somewhat prevented, but at that point you're just shifting the non-fighting from that to the inevitable rush-the-EU strat
And remember, you don't want to fight in a comp match unless you stand to gain more than you lose. Losing 25 from dying is just as much incentive to not fight as it is incentive to kill

Also it's worth noting that flat increases to the ship's health will fuzzy bunny over the AA beyond a certain point
It's ALSO worth noting that the optimal strat using team is the one sending ships over past the first one. The first ship is just for an EU boost. Ultimately the strategy is just about spamming ships and locking down sources of EU. It actually forces the other team to abandon the AA or fight for EU on the passive team's turf. If they can't do this, then the passive team sends bigger and bigger ships at them

Edited by Beemann, November 27 2012 - 11:23 PM.

[z121231211]

Beemann, on November 27 2012 - 11:20 PM, said:

And remember, you don't want to fight in a comp match unless you stand to gain more than you lose. Losing 25 from dying is just as much incentive to not fight as it is incentive to kill

Same as TDM where getting killed gives the other team another kill.

Beemann, on November 27 2012 - 11:20 PM, said:

Also it's worth noting that flat increases to the ship's health will fuzzy bunny over the AA beyond a certain point

Remember that "Ratio of ship's max health" part_ The AA will always take out 1/5 of the ships health every shot. So if the ship goes to 20 bars health, the AA will do 4 bars of damage per shot, if the ship's health then jumps up to 40 bars, the AA will do 8 bars of damage per shot.

[Beemann]

In TDM killing pushes you closer to the objective. You are forced to fight
There is no such incentive in Siege
Also I specified flat increases (because multiple people keep suggesting them). As far as your specific suggestion goes, it's still advantageous to use this strat to pad your ships health before fighting for the AA, to ensure victory if you get it past the point where the AA could feasibly kill it

Edited by Beemann, November 27 2012 - 11:35 PM.

[Conquistador]

I've been hovering along the sidelines for sometime now, reading this thread, and it concerns me a fair bit.

That being said, I see list after list of problems with siege, and no solutions. Do we just toss siege out into the garbage, or is there a way to salvage this game mode somehow_ Would better map design solve the problem, or are we at an evolutionary dead end_

While I feel extreme competitive strategies that exploit broken game mechanics are a first step to fixing the problem, I'm not seeing the key second step anywhere in this thread: Can we fix siege_ How can we do so_

1) Would making the battleships pass each other on parallel paths rather than travel on the same invisible rail mitigate some of the problem_ This would remove battleship collision and allow battleships to continue regardless if opposing battleships were airborne.

2) How about making battleship turrets invincible but only having siege battleships fire at players who fire at the battleships_ (Rather than at all targets on the ground indiscriminately, only fire back in self defence with overwhelming firepower to discourage people shooting down the battleship. When not firing at players, battleships would fire ranged weapons at the base that did no damage but provided graphical eye candy explaining their lack of air-to-ground fire. Players who did not fire at the battleship would be largely ignored. Players that did fire at the battleship would be targeted with impunity.)

3) What if we restored the base's hit points to three, like in CB2, but kept the cost of battleship launches the same_ This would still be faster than the previous beta build's games.

4) How about making the skill trees slow energy regeneration to a crawl when its reservoir is depleted, forcing players to harass opposing energy trees (rather than just camping at a single tree with all mechs with constant energy regeneration on the trees)_

5) Finally, how about reducing the amount of EU the exploding battleship drops to a quarter of its current state_

Edited by Conquistador, November 27 2012 - 11:39 PM.

[NotKjell]

hestoned, on November 27 2012 - 10:35 PM, said:

Beemann, on November 27 2012 - 10:08 PM, said:

You seem to be missing the part where you will literally never win the match, and unless you conform to the same strategy (IE putting all of your players on EU collection and destroying the battleship) you'll lose
So if you play up the AA or shoot the ships down, we get an infinite stalemate
If you attack the spawn, the team with the EU stockpile sends free ships at your base and wins
If you harass the EU gatherers, nobody cares because you're just wasting EU gathering and you're not going to win a shorthanded fight. At best you'll leave both teams on par with EU gathering

Ok look. Since i'm engaging you at your base its safe to assume that i have ship on the way and i'm trying to prevent you from shooting it down right_ Now lets we fail and everyone dies. No big deal. Since you guys don't care about AA we'll just destroy any ship you launch from your stockpile in 10 sec's. So, AGAIN, i ask, what am i risking by engaging you_ What do i care if i die when you never contest AA_ I think the reason you see it as a stale mate is because your assuming that you will never ever get pushed back, not even after 3 hours of trying. That's inherently wrong cause we know no one is perfect. Eventually your gunna lose a fight.

Hmm. I think what the misunderstanding is on how easy it is to down a battleship, especially low level ones from full health. They're simply not threatening, a team doesn't need much time or effort to stall them out. 1 scout has the potential to deal 20,000 damage on it's own, yet a level 1 battleship has only 8,000 hp. In one game, 2 vs 3, me on the side with two I managed to solo shoot down 3 ships in a row, my teammate never shot up. While getting spawncamped on sahara/bazaar. AJK, a very solid player, was one of the ones spawncamping too.

The strategy isn't "turtle turtle turtle", it's get the EU in out corner and level up our ship as much as possible before attacking. Assuming one team (team A) focuses on launching the ship asap, harrassing and not focusing on gathering as much energy as possible. The other team (team B ) is focusing on sucking the map dry of EU and making sure everyone's tanks are full. Team A's battleship is launched, at which point team B finishes sucking the map dry and returns to base. Team B knocks down Team A's battleship to <100 HP in little time. Team B then launches their battleship in the last moments, stalling both ships at their base. Skipping over the stalemate this creates, assume Team A actually shoots down Team B's ship. Team B now fires one shot, knocks Team A's ship out of the air and their base is now littered with EU.

Now here's where Team B's tactic pays off over Team A's.

Team B has been stockpiling energy and fighting from the safety of their spawn, Team A hasn't. As soon as the first ship of each team is gone, Team B instantly re-launches. The EU points will not be active long enough for Team A to collect energy to launch a battleship. Without the EU to launch a battleship to counter Team B's battleship, Team A is forced to shoot down this battleship. Worst case scenario, Team A shoots it down extremely fast and let the EU fall all over the Team B's base. Best case, they wait until the battleship is over their own base and shoot it down (notice - wait 2:30 with no action. boring and a bad mode). But let's ignore the EU the second battleship drops and where. Depending on how much EU was stockpiled by Team B during the beginning (remember they had their full team stockpiling, this is reasonable), with the EU dropped from the Team A's and Team B's ship they instant re-launch...AGAIN. Now Team B has emptied their stockpiles, EU points are still empty/off and Team A didn't focus on EU so they can't counter the battleship with another battleship. Team B has NOTHING to lose now AND a level 3 battleship, it's their turn to push. Only with a much scarier push, with minimal risk beforehand and a LOT of turtling.

This is what this tactic is designed to do. Say you do shoot down this 3rd ship as it's not hard to do, the game is back to square one. EXCEPT, Team B's next ship will be level 4, and thus harder to stop than Team A's level 2. Advantage - B team. Or maybe this is done another round in a row. Team B would then have a level 6-7 battleship to push out with, even harder to stop and a larger advantage.

Team B is gaining the advantage here at minimal risk. Team A is fighting at a constant combat disadvantage, slowly falling farther and farther behind in battleship level to do...what_ Even if Team A is fighting with their whole team, it's not like they're accomplishing anything. Team A can't hope to land the first battleship. It's not realistic to assume they can go in Team B's base, kill them so they drop their stockpiled EU, stand on and pick up that EU and make it out alive. Because anything less and that player has stuck they're neck out for nothing, the dead person can just respawn and re-pickup their EU. Then when ships are dead, Team B relaunches the next ship on schedule and Team A is forced to respond.



Now, the issue I skipped over earlier. Team A launches their battleship first, Team B whittles it down to <100 HP rather easily. Team B then spends their energy at the last moment (easy and safe), and blocks Team A's ship outside their base.

Well now what. Team A has no incentive to shoot down Team B's ship. All that means is that Team B will then knock down Team A's ship and fill up on 2 ships worth of energy. Their ship is one shot away from death anyways, it's not like shooting down Team B's battleship gives them a chance to do damage. Team B has no incentive to shoot Team A's ship. They want their own ship shot down first, they want all that EU. Killing Team A's ship means that their own ship which has about 0% chance to actually damage the other teams base will leave their base, fly across the map and potentially get stuck there and give Team A easy energy.

But...the game literally won't continue on until one ship is dead. The power to kill one particular ship resides in the team with incentives to NOT kill that ship first. It's a stalemate.

Again, I like siege. It's fun to play. But there are core issues with the mode, let alone a stalemate built into the game.