77 replies to this topic

[Frenotx]

Let me start off by saying that I really enjoy this game. Hawken has a wonderful style, and very satisfying game play. I really want to see this game succeed. I purchased the commander package in order to help that front, in fact.

That being said, I am extremely frustrated and disappointed with the direction that the game is moving. There are a lot of trends that I dislike (the decreasingly gritty / military-esque HUD and menus, countermeasures, etc.), but the biggest one by far is the direction that customization has been moving in. Essentially, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

I feel like as each stage of testing is run, the player's ability has been progressively has dumbed down / constricted. Just take a look at this pre-alpha video:
[media][media]

As you can see, that much earlier vision of the game gave the player A LOT of options. It is possible to tailor a mech to fit any play style pretty closely. It also allow for a ton of experimentation and variety.

I can't discuss what happened in alpha, so we'll skip that stage

In early CB, there were specific chassis, instead of just generic "A, B, and C". Each chassis had a different ability, a single secondary weapon, 2 default primary weapons, and 0 to 2 additional primaries available to unlock at max level. The first primary weapon was always available to you in battle, and you could pick one of your unlocked primaries to be your alternate, available to switch to when between lives in a match.

This is a HUGE reduction in the player's ability to customize, when compared to the pre-alpha video. There are tons of weapon combinations that are straight up impossible. If you are really partial to a particular weapon, it is quite likely that in order to use it, you'll be "forced" to either use a secondary that you don't like, or a chassis that doesn't suit you. I adore the EOC repeater. In CB, I had to either play a rocketeer (Not a fan of the hellfire, and prefer to more mobile), or level an infiltrator all the way to 20 (using primary weapons that I don't enjoy all that much). Requiring a player to play in a way that they don't like to, just so they can unlock the ability to play like they actually enjoy is not a fun system.

That said, a mech could be further specialized by distributing optimization points (earned as you level) among a tree of bonuses, and purchasing internal parts that gave specific bonuses. Both the optimizations and the internals had a significant, palpable effect on the feel / game play of a mech. A good bit of time could be spent distributing those optimization points, trying out the mech, the redistributing the points to try something new. Same can be said about the internals. These things weren't as fundamentally game-changing as choosing a different weapon, but they at least allowed some amount of tweaking, refinement, and experimentation.

Later in CB, the effect the optimizations was significantly reduced. The internals were given negative side effects to counter their benefits. The change to the internals didn't really affect customization that much- it really just made the player have to more closely consider their choice. The optimization "nerf" however, had a major impact. At this point, most of the bonuses were reduced to the point of being absolutely trivial. The few bonuses that actually had an effect on the mech were essentially made required- spending the points anywhere else was simply just throwing them away. So now all of the mechs have roughly the same optimization layout, and the difference between those who follow that pattern and those who don't is extremely small.

Next, we have OB. Optimizations and internals go untouched. Weapons are further restricted, though. The max level is raised from 20 to 25. A mech starts out with access to only one weapon. A second weapon is unlocked at level seven, and a third (for most chassis) is unlocked at 25. To make matters worse, you can only have one primary equipped to you mech at a time- no more swapping to your alternate primary whilst between lives in-game. This is just absurd. Now people are potentially forced to use weapons / play styles the dislike even longer.

For instance- the scout: This baby starts out with the mini-flak, and gets the flak at 7. These weapons are fairly different (one is more DPS-based, and the other one starts to get into peek-a-boo territory), but both revolve around the whole fast-moving-CQC play style. Let's say someone want to play a more long-range, explosives based, support-y mech. The scout with the HEAT and the TOW would be perfect for this. Unfortunately, the player has to grind through 25 levels of doing something completely different from what they'd like to, just so they can actually play the game as they'd like to.

Forcing players to play in ways that they don't want to is just a bad idea. Such actions are not conducive towards attracting and retaining new players. In addition, stripping down customization to its bare bones is also bad. The ability to tweak, experiment, and re-tweak adds a lot of replayability, and helps people stick around. It's just fun to try and figure out the "best" way to set up a mech to suit you the closest.

The customization discussed / featured in videos such as the one above is one of the things that initially attracted me to this game. I LOVE games that allow for that sort of thing- it's one of the reasons I keep playing League of Legends (an outrageously successful F2P game). The game play never gets stale since there are so many fundamentally different champions, and so many ways to build / optimize / play said champions.

Having a lot of customizability is very beneficial to the F2P business. As previously stated, it keeps people interested for longer periods of time (obviously important). That's not all, though. The sheer number of options in LoL really allows you to feel like you own that champion- you've built them just the way you like them. That feeling of ownership and attachment increases the chances that people will want to pay for cosmetic stuff. At that point, they're treating / tricking out THEIR mech, instead of A mech.

Is Hawken doomed to bland, repetitive, cookie-cutter game play_ I hope not. It certainly doesn't have to be. So, how does one fix this travesty_ Here are my ideas:

1) Increase the effect of optimizations by a lot, preferably a good bit above where they were in CB1. But Frenotx! That will make high level mechs have too much of advantage over low level mechs! With the current system, yes it would. However, there's a way around it, which brings me to the next point.

2) Strong optimization bonuses give too much of an advantage to high level mechs, while weak bonuses are just... lame, and may as well not be there. If the bonuses don't give the owner an advantage over someone who doesn't have those bonuses, why have them at all_ How do you solve this catch 22_ Make the available number of optimization points tied to the pilot, not the mech. That is, introduce a "Pilot level", in addition to the mech levels.

Your pilot level would increase based on the experienced earned while driving any of your mechs. With the points tied to the pilot, the matchmaker can pit only pilots with similar amounts of optimization points against each other, thus giving everyone in the match a fairly equal footing. Customization AND fair play! Amazing! But wait! What about progression_! With the pilot level controlling the number of optimization points, and the pilot level being increased while driving any mech, wont pilots reach max level too quickly_ What then_ Point 3 has the answers.

3) First off, each mech should have one or two primaries unlocked / available to it off the bat, but ALL of the primaries immediately available for HC / MP purchase. This allows people to unlock the weapons they actually care about in a timelier manner, while minimizing the time "wasted" using weapons that you don't like. If the player chooses to, they can save up enough credits while playing another mech, and immediately unlock the weapon of choice upon purchasing the new mech.

So what about levels and mech experience_ This should unlock side grade options. These can include alternate versions of the primary weapons. Gain X experience using the slug rifle and you unlock the ability to increase its rate of fire at the cost of damage. Gain another X experience using the slug, and you unlock the high damage, high heat, low RoF version. You get the idea.

Internals can be treated in a similar fashion. At the start, internals have fairly low +'s and -'s. As you gain experience with the mech, you can unlock internals that have more significant bonuses, countered by more significant negatives. How specialized you want to be, and in what way you want to specialize is up to you.

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Tldr- Hawken has been moving in a direction of less and less customizability. I dislike this move, and feel that it is bad for both game play and monetary success. The game doesn't need to go down that path, and there are several ways to bring back customization without breaking balance (and possibly even improve it). If the game keeps moving in its current direction, my, and many others', interest in the game will likely fall off.

[BuDeKai]

totally agree. very well written. the only reduction i agree with is the move to only 2 items.

[Frenotx]

I kina preferred 3, but since they were made to be cooldown-based, I'm more ok with the change.

[Sinekrily]

Agree in every single line.
Adhesive what is you doing with the game!_

[Cyclonus]

Yes! I hope they update the depth on the customization in the future.

[Krellus]

I only started playing 12.12.12 and did feel like it would have been nice with more gun choices on a mech, and more effect from optimizations.

Having seen that alpha screen i am blown away! They did used to have more guns available!!! And from what folks say on the forums optimizations were more potent previously.

Maybe the devs could just swing things back a little - an extra gun or two (maybe at level 13, and level 19), and buff optimizations (seriously no-one will complain that much re matchmaking - they will just play more and level up up up!) ... On the other hand I guess the increased restrictions make for easier balance.

Edited by Krellus, December 20 2012 - 01:53 PM.

[Gigatour]

YAY for f2p this is what happens when there is no subscription reality sets in and they realize noone will ever buy pieces at the same level if you give a large set to begin with. We wont get any of that back, we will get the basics on launch beta testers get a tiny bonus. Then they begin to sell premium maps, p2w armor and so on.

[draco7891]

While the level cap has increased, the total XP required to achieve max level has remained the same, so the practical effect is that the mech goes through the levels more quickly than before and achieves a better reward per unit time. This I don't necessarily disagree with.

One of the things that struck me as cool initially in the video was having mech abilities unlocked at the bottom of a tech tree, and therefore having multiple abilities available to a chassis. However, the issue comes in customizability: if the abilities are tied to such heavy investment in a tree like that, then it makes the mechs heavily focused (and not necessarily the way the pilot wishes to play). For example, if you want the damage ability, but also a highly mobile mech, there aren't enough points to do that. You've so heavily invested into the Offense tree to get the ability that you can't invest significantly into Movement anymore. Changing abilities to chassis-specific really tends to lend itself to developing specific "builds" like we see now, with more limited weapon choice.

Being able to pair any weapon combination with choice of chassis and/or ability is not only extraordinarily hard to balance, it's hard to develop proper rock/paper/scissors strategy, and what inevitably happens is FOTM. For example, if I could pair anything with anything, I'd take Rev-GL + Grenade on a 'Zerker with the damage ability (which is actually an ROF increase) and make it rain grenades left, right and center. This would be hilarious, but also very broken. The Rev-GL gets its balance by being tied to a big, fat mountain of a mech, so while it's powerful and does a lot of damage, it's hard to get into position/keep in position, keeping the risk/reward equation in balance. The only fix that comes out of said broken builds is homogeneity, that is the gradual slide of all weapons towards some cookie-cutter ideal so that no one pairing ends up being more effective overall.

I'm afraid I don't quite understand how you intend the Pilot level/optimization point system to work; is there some global pool for optimization points earned_ Do you continue earning optimization points indefinitely as you play a mech_ Does the pairing system work by points earned, or points spent (and if by spent, what prevents a high-skill veteran from removing points on his mech, getting paired into lower-skilled matches and cleaning house)_ How is earning optimization points proportionally by time/experience different than the current level-tied system_ How is matching by optimization points different than matching by Mech Mastery now (which seems to take into effect the amounts of XP earned across your Garage)_

Draco

[wintersborn]

I just started to play and I agree.
You need to give us some free options so we actualy like the game, if not we wont spend money.

You have to hook us and for many of us gameplay is not the hook, options are. I mean how many shooters (gameplay) are there already _ So focus on your building mech options as the hook.

[rdKNIGHTMAREZ]

i can see why they removed certain weapons from certain classes. But not being able to replace my secondary with my primary ...on lets say teh bezerker...is extremely frustrating.

Even if it was unlocked at lvl 25 or something...it would be something worth grinding up to.

Also...the techy hud GUI looks better in this video than the current one. More futuristic and interesting.

It's an amazing game that will sell well even now, but it does feel alot like TOW-Launcher online.

[draco7891]

I believe I have read that the ability to switch alt primaries in game was unintentionally lost (like the switch team button) in the design of the new UI and will be readded as soon as possible.

Draco

[Scourger]

Very well written and nice analysis + suggestions.
I agree with all, surprisingly enough.
I didn't even know all that customization was available! (I played only Open Beta)
Now I feel like I'm missing stuff.

[Aristes]

I support the original poster in his opinion.

[Frenotx]

draco7891, on December 20 2012 - 02:01 PM, said:

While the level cap has increased, the total XP required to achieve max level has remained the same, so the practical effect is that the mech goes through the levels more quickly than before and achieves a better reward per unit time. This I don't necessarily disagree with.

I was unaware of this. They did still move your alternate primary to level 7, so an additional (albeit somewhat slight) restriction to freedom of play was added.

draco7891, on December 20 2012 - 02:01 PM, said:

One of the things that struck me as cool initially in the video was having mech abilities unlocked at the bottom of a tech tree, and therefore having multiple abilities available to a chassis. However, the issue comes in customizability: if the abilities are tied to such heavy investment in a tree like that, then it makes the mechs heavily focused (and not necessarily the way the pilot wishes to play). For example, if you want the damage ability, but also a highly mobile mech, there aren't enough points to do that. You've so heavily invested into the Offense tree to get the ability that you can't invest significantly into Movement anymore. Changing abilities to chassis-specific really tends to lend itself to developing specific "builds" like we see now, with more limited weapon choice.

First off, I'm not necessarily advocating that the game be made exactly as it was in that video. Secondly, unless I misunderstood the speaker, the whole idea of that system was that you would only have enough points to reach 1 of the abilities. With a limited number of points available, the player has to choose what they want to focus on. Want more damage_ That will either cost you speed or defense. That sort of resource management is what keeps such a system entertaining. You get to spend time figuring out just how much damage you want, and how much mobility / damage you're willing to give up for it.

draco7891, on December 20 2012 - 02:01 PM, said:

Being able to pair any weapon combination with choice of chassis and/or ability is not only extraordinarily hard to balance, it's hard to develop proper rock/paper/scissors strategy, and what inevitably happens is FOTM. For example, if I could pair anything with anything, I'd take Rev-GL + Grenade on a 'Zerker with the damage ability (which is actually an ROF increase) and make it rain grenades left, right and center. This would be hilarious, but also very broken. The Rev-GL gets its balance by being tied to a big, fat mountain of a mech, so while it's powerful and does a lot of damage, it's hard to get into position/keep in position, keeping the risk/reward equation in balance. The only fix that comes out of said broken builds is homogeneity, that is the gradual slide of all weapons towards some cookie-cutter ideal so that no one pairing ends up being more effective overall.

Again, I'm not advocating that things be made exactly like this video. There are plenty of ways of avoiding "broken" combos. You could make certain weapons incomparable with each other- claim that both need full access to the bullet trajectory calculator computer, or something. Alternatively, you could keep the system they've got now (defined chassis), but increase the number of weapons available to each chassis. I've got a hunch that this works fairly well.

As far at the FOTM thing_ I get so tired of people going on about that. There will always be a FOTM. It's unavoidable in a game that has ANY level of variation. People will always decide that setup X or play style Y is "the best" for some period of time. Before long, someone that actually has more than zero creative cells in their body comes up with something new that counters the current FOTM, then everyone flocks to that new thing. Even in OB, before long, you'll see people chattering about how amazing and OP some mech / weapon combo is. LOTS of people will start using that combo, because it's "the best". These things happen. If anything, trying to hamstring players' ability to customize their mech / fine-tune their playstyle actually exasperates the FOTM problem. What do you find easier to pick the best from- 3 objects, or 3000 objects_

draco7891, on December 20 2012 - 02:01 PM, said:

I'm afraid I don't quite understand how you intend the Pilot level/optimization point system to work; is there some global pool for optimization points earned_ Do you continue earning optimization points indefinitely as you play a mech_ Does the pairing system work by points earned, or points spent (and if by spent, what prevents a high-skill veteran from removing points on his mech, getting paired into lower-skilled matches and cleaning house)_ How is earning optimization points proportionally by time/experience different than the current level-tied system_ How is matching by optimization points different than matching by Mech Mastery now (which seems to take into effect the amounts of XP earned across your Garage)_

The idea is that the PILOT would gain experience, and the pilot's level determines how many optimization points available to each mech. Lemme break it down a bit.

1) You start your hawken account. You have 0 experience, and your C-RT has 0 experience
2) You play a game with Fred, and end the match with 2k experience. You have 2k pilot experience, and 2k experience on Fred.
3) You buy a scout, and play a game with it. You end the match with 1k experience. Moke has 1k experience, Fred has 2k experience, and your pilot has 3k.
4) Turns out that 3k experience get's you a pilot level. All of your mechs now have one optimization point available to it.

The pilot level would cap at 25, such that you can only have a max of 25 optimizations points available. If you've ever played League of Legends, you'll recognize this system.

[CrimsonDawn]

This is how it looked like before_!_ WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED WHEN THEY DECIDED TO LAUNCH IT D:<

[draco7891]

Frenotx, on December 20 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

Secondly, unless I misunderstood the speaker, the whole idea of that system was that you would only have enough points to reach 1 of the abilities. With a limited number of points available, the player has to choose what they want to focus on. Want more damage_ That will either cost you speed or defense. That sort of resource management is what keeps such a system entertaining. You get to spend time figuring out just how much damage you want, and how much mobility / damage you're willing to give up for it.

The problem there is if you don't want to invest in a single tree that heavily, you're left with a mech with no abilities (say a 0/12/13 split). If the abilities are powerful enough to be desirable, then that leaves a pilot with only 9 effective free optimization points to spread to another tree; you must spend at least 16 points to get an ability. If the abilities are not powerful enough, so that a mech without one is not at a significant disadvantage, then that also discourages deep investment in the skill tree, as it would be more effective to spread out. As the system is currently, we can have an ability and full investiture of points, opening up much larger possibilities to the pilot than the old system could. But with those singular, locked abilities also come the need to play a chassis in a specific role: Scout must now be played to his fuel reserve advantage, Bruiser must be played to take advantage of his limited but extra effective HP, etc. In turn, the weapons and weapon sets available must also reflect that playstyle, because certain weapons are impossible to use while in support of that ability.

Frenotx, on December 20 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

You could make certain weapons incomparable with each other- claim that both need full access to the bullet trajectory calculator computer, or something. Alternatively, you could keep the system they've got now (defined chassis), but increase the number of weapons available to each chassis. I've got a hunch that this works fairly well.

Well, what's not to say that this doesn't already occur internally at Adhesive anyway_ Moreover, while you could increase the number of weapons available, are you seriously suggesting, for example, that there is a large call for an SA Hawkins Scout_ Or an EOC Sharpshooter_ Seeker Bruiser_ I think given the current stable of weapons, the number of choices available are quite good, and doing something like that is variety for variety's sake. What in truth may be necessary is a larger selection of weapons period. More guns is never a bad thing.

Frenotx, on December 20 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

As far at the FOTM thing_ I get so tired of people going on about that. There will always be a FOTM. It's unavoidable in a game that has ANY level of variation. ... . If anything, trying to hamstring players' ability to customize their mech / fine-tune their playstyle actually exasperates the FOTM problem. What do you find easier to pick the best from- 3 objects, or 3000 objects_

While there has been some small FOTM issues in CB, we've always seen definite, succinct rebalancing take place, and that's significantly easier to do with a smaller grouping than balancing hundreds or thousands of choices against each other. If Sharpshooter is the FOTM because its accuracy and burst damage make it effective across all ranges, what's the best way to rebalance that_ Hope that among the thousands of choices available, there is one that is just as effective and therefore invalidates Sharpshooter_ Or is it easier to analyze why Sharpshooter is more effective (perfect accuracy + burst + good dodge) and shape those mechanics to push the chassis into the intended role (moving accuracy--, standing accuracy++, add dodge cooldown)_

Frenotx, on December 20 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

The idea is that the PILOT would gain experience, and the pilot's level determines how many optimization points available to each mech. Lemme break it down a bit.
...
The pilot level would cap at 25, such that you can only have a max of 25 optimizations points available. If you've ever played League of Legends, you'll recognize this system.

I forsee issues.

If Pilot XP is sum(Mech XP), then we can be in one of four places.

If Pilot Levels come as fast as Mech Levels, (max level ~190,000XP), then one needs only play one mech to level 25, and then every subsequent mech they purchase has 25 free optimization points to spend, even at zero playtime. That makes veteran players more effective (although admittedly the entrance to "veteran status" is low in this example). While this results in most pilots always having full points (and therefore the full plethora of tree options), it punishes new potential players who have not invested the approximately ~20 hours of game time required to make that barrier. While with everyone running a full set of optimizations could conceptually result in playstyle-shaping and sidegrades, there will still be a definite vertical upgrade barrier to very new pilots.

If Pilot Levels are as slow as the sum total of all potential mechs (of which there are currently 9, and more coming in future), then total XP required is (9 * ~190,000 ) 1,710,000XP. At an earn rate of ~2,500XP per match and ~15min per match, that represents an investment of approximately 171 hours in order to have a full optimization tree, making the tree almost worthless as only the very most dedicated players have the time invested to make significant tree investments. This turns the tree into a significant vertical progression.

If Pilot Levels come as some proportion of mech XP (say 2x, or 4x as much), then we have some middle ground between the first two, trading time and verticality.

If Pilot Levels come as a proportion of the number of mechs currently owned (ie, if a pilot owns one mech, ~190,000XP is required for max Pilot; 5 mechs would require (5 * ~190,000) 950,000XP), then we encounter the issue of redistribution of points. That is, a pilot plays a single mech to 25 and has a full tree. Buying another mech now doubles his required XP, halves his current level, and therefore reduces the number of points he has available. This is perhaps the most equitable of the scenarios in that new pilots still have a smaller barrier to entry while old pilots have a large stable and something to work towards, but how does the game handle removing points from mechs_ Would it force the pilot to recall and redistribute all remaining points on every mech they owned_ Would it have some priority in removal_ Or, perhaps, could pilots continue to use their old mechs/points, so long as they remained unmodified (which may lead to a situation like a combination of the first and second scenario, where a player simply circumvents the system by leveling only one mech at a time)_

Moar details!

Draco

Edited by draco7891, December 20 2012 - 08:29 PM.

[LunaticCalm]

Man, this thread depresses me. Seeing all the cool stuff that once was.

I can only assume they couldn't figure out how to sensibly monetize that sort of system and so totally reworked it. Unfortunately I don't see any way for them to make such a dramatic change to bring this back now that the game is released and people have paid real money for things.

[Juodvarnis]

Wow...

Totally agree with you, mate!

I even had to "unlike" some other guy's post so i could "like" yours, because i had reached my "quota of positive votes for the day"

Edited by Juodvarnis, December 20 2012 - 10:04 PM.

[Greenvalv]

This is a major problem Tribes Ascend is dealing with... too many classes with either pigeon-holed roles or confused ones.  In Hawken, we have too many duplicate mechs where the only difference between the 2 is the mech ability (e.g. the scout and the berserker).  Several mechs need to be combined for customization reasons.

And with that said, this is pretty much the only problem I have with the game.  *goes back to playing Hawken*

Edited by Greenvalv, December 20 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[Grokitach]

They choose the actual system to avoid to Hawken to be P2W game. For exemple, Exteel made the choice of pay-to-get-powerfull-mech by selling overpowered pieces in the Cash Shop... And the Alpha system tends to be that way.

I think that the new system is maybe more restrictive, but you must make choices with it. Also, it's easier for people that don't want to bother with tons of optimizations, playing hours and hours only in their garage. I would like it too, but I played too much Mech games like that.