10 replies to this topic

[The_User]

Alright, I've got two ideas (I didn't really want to make it into two threads).

 

Idea 1:

I think that Meteor Credits are okay to have, however I do have a few issues with it.

 

I think that they are a bit goofed, and may potentially lead to a pay-to-win nature. Now before you say, "They're mostly used for cosmetics," let it be noted that $5 doesn't even get you half of the repair drones. I think that MC should not be able to buy gameplay-related items (Mechs, weapons, internals, items, and most of all, early unlocks). Instead, just be focused on cosmetics as well as boosters.

 

Regarding Universal XP, you could just make all of it free but only have a quarter of the XP earned be converted into UXP. The amount of free UXP you get now is utter crap.

 

The idea I have related to it is have MC and HC be convertible into each other. An exchange rate could maybe be ~10000 HC for 500 MC. Since this chance would potentially discourage people from purchasing MC with real money, you could greatly raise the value of the purchases. Maybe increases them by 1.5x (or maybe even double them). This way, it likely won't affect your (the Devs) income, and allows much more customization among players.

 

EDIT: Many people disagree with Idea 1, so I'm throwing that idea away. I'll leave it up so that people can still see it, though.

 

 

Idea 2:

Matchmaking is a complete mess. Several times I have been places on matches where one team does horrendously (and unfortunately for me, I am put on the bad team most of the time). Just recently I played a match where the other team took no damage to their base in Siege. I may have read in the past that the game already has a matchmaking system, and in that case, it's not doing well.

 

A potential fix to this is to have a hidden ranking system (hidden because it may cause people to leave beforehand and disrupting the system).

 

Basically, winning a match grants you a MM (Matchmaking) point(s). Losing will remove the same amount.

 

Now arises the issue of people who leave late-game to trick the system. This is easily remedied by having the matchmaking remove the same amount of points as losing a match after a certain threshold (perhaps 2-5 minutes?).

 

Anyways, you might be asking how this fixes the bad team placement. Essentially the game reads the number of points each player has and tries to balance it between two teams.

 

Now arises another problem: parties. This can be fixed by having the system count the party's average score rounded up as one, or it can force them to be on the same team and the system can work around them.

 

This also fixes the issue of experienced players failing to find matches due to lack of people on their 'skill level.'

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this and potentially considering these ideas. I love Hawken, and I'd love to see it grow.

Edited by The_User, 07 April 2015 - 10:51 AM.

[Trigary]

I think that they are a bit overpowered, and can lead to a pay-to-win nature. Now before you say, "They're mostly used for cosmetics," let it be noted that $5 doesn't even get you half of the repair drones. I think that MC should not be able to buy gameplay-related items (Mechs, weapons, internals, items, and most of all, early unlocks). Instead, just be focused on cosmetics as well as boosters.

Hawken is not P2W at the moment. MC is not overpowered. Why shouldn't it able to buy gamepley-related items? You can get those for HC too, they aren't even very expensive, if you need an equipped mech, there's the assault. Boosters? That means you get more HC, which is like you get HC for MC (but it's not the same for noobs and pros, that's a downsight at purchasable content), so basically buying gameplay-related items.

 

UXP isn't a big thing in my opinion, it's not WoT, you won't really loose because you're mech has less XP.

 

Convert HC into MC? No, thanks. Just to be clear, I've never bought MC. There are people who have everything they can have for HC, they would never buy MC with this thing. It's a very bad idea I think.

 

 

A potential fix to this is to have a hidden ranking system (hidden because it may cause people to leave beforehand and disrupting the system).

There something like that, named MMR. The system how it calculates your MMR is like ?/Black magic, but yes, the MM is broken. Siege is the most unbalanced gamemode, people say, btw. I won't go into details about the broken MM system and my ideas for it, there are topics about it.

Edited by 00geri20, 05 April 2015 - 10:40 PM.

[CrimsonKaim]

let it be noted that $5 doesn't even get you half of the repair drones.

 

 

ha ha-ha ... hahaha-haaa hahahahaaaaa

 

[Flight1ess]

lol I wasted all my mc on day one XD

 

now im broke...

[Derpy Hooves]

Idea #1. No, convertable HC to MC would actually cause what little money is earned(this is a niche game after all) to vanish all together. I never bought any mechs/items/internals with MC since I saw no point in it. If anything I'd rather be able to gift my HC away to new players to give them a better experience.

 

Idea #2 TL:DR Things happen people leave matches, we've gone over and over before thats a near TL:DR topic on how broken matchmaking is.

[The_User]

Warning: Lost post ahead!

 

Should've known people wouldn't actually read the post.

 

 

 

Idea #1. No, convertable HC to MC would actually cause what little money is earned(this is a niche game after all) to vanish all together. I never bought any mechs/items/internals with MC since I saw no point in it. If anything I'd rather be able to gift my HC away to new players to give them a better experience.

 

Idea #2 TL:DR Things happen people leave matches, we've gone over and over before thats a near TL:DR topic on how broken matchmaking is.

 

Idea #1:

If you read the post, you'd see I address this issue. Allow me to quote myself:

"Since this *change would potentially discourage people from purchasing MC with real money, you could greatly raise the value of the packs. Maybe increase the value by 1.5x (or maybe even double them). This way, it likely won't affect your (the Devs) income, and allows much more customization among players."

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe it will increase profit. You don't really know until you try it. Perhaps a better conversion would be 10000 HC for 200 MC (as opposed to 500). I'm not really adamant about these ideas. They can change.

 

Idea #2:

If you read the post, you would see that it's not a TL;DR. I highly suggest actually looking back and reading the post before replying to this. I address a problem, and I provide a solution. I address another problem that could be caused by said solution, and provide another solution for it. I then go on to address another problem potentially caused by the first solution, and provide another solution for the new problem.

 

Allow me to once again provide ANOTHER solution to a problem that can arise from the first solution:

I now realize that simply winning and losing is not a good system as players can be put on bad teams and subsequently lose the match, and the autobalancer can act very odd with this system.

 

The point system could maybe score players using an equation similar to this:

(.4 + (playerKills + .5(playerAssists)/totalKills)) +-(.8))

The +-(.8) is the win/lose score.

Now, this equation means nothing to you, so let's plug numbers in.

Assume there was a total of  30 kills, and the player in question scored 7 kills and scored 8 assists. He also lost the game.

That's (.4 + (7 + 4)/30) - (.8)) which comes to a total of -0.02. A teeny tiny loss despite losing the game. Let's do another one.

43 kills total, Player scored 12 kills and 10 assists, and won the game.

(.4 + (12 + 5)/43) + (.8)) = 1.6. I rounded 17/43 up to 0.4. A large gain, and had he lost the game, he would've lost no points.

 

Now comes the problem of Technician. I propose a separate Technician variable:

(armorRepaired/20000) = techVar

You place it after the main equation. Now, let us test this.

I don't know how much health a Technician repairs throughout a game, so let's just go with an arbitrary number: 7528 armor repaired. The Technician also scored 2 kills and 6 assists. Total kills are 36. Game lost.

Equation would be (.4 + (2 + 3)/36) - (.8)) + techVar which would equal 0.12. Increase in score. If the game was won, it'd be 0.92, a good increase.

 

Free-For-All could ignore the gameOutcome variable (the +- .8). Co-op does not affect the matchmaking at all. These variables I mention are just names I came up with to describe parts of the equation. Chances are, they don't actually exist.

 

Leaving a game early runs the calculation the same and considers the match to be a loss.

 

Regarding the autobalancer, the game could sort players via a script we will call sortMethod. sortMethod calls the averagePlayerScore (via averaging) of the current lobby, and then calls the players with a score > averagePlayerScore, and randomly places those in the two teams. Then it calls those with a score < averagePlayerScore, and does the same. If two players are in a party, take the averagePartyScore, and count it three times.

 

If there is a party, call sortMethodParty before sortMethod and describe a function that tells the game to call the players with the score closest to the averagePartyScore, and place them on the opposite team. Then you call sortMethod and run the same. Since this would obviously lead to repetitive matches, after every match, have sortScoreParty take the 2-3 players who were placed against the party and make them immune to sortMethodParty. Then run the two scripts the same.

 

The great thing about this system is that improving your score doesn't really do much for you personally. It just changes the way the autobalance handles you.

 

This is just something I made up. It could obviously use some work and is bound to run into problems, however I did put a lot of thought into these equations and scripts.

 

Next time I highly suggest reading the entire post. Chances are you missed information.

Edited by The_User, 06 April 2015 - 08:53 AM.

[Derpy Hooves]

Warning: Lost post ahead!

 

Should've known people wouldn't actually read the post.

 

 

 

 

Idea #1:

If you read the post, you'd see I address this issue. Allow me to quote myself:

"Since this *change would potentially discourage people from purchasing MC with real money, you could greatly raise the value of the packs. Maybe increase the value by 1.5x (or maybe even double them). This way, it likely won't affect your (the Devs) income, and allows much more customization among players."

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe it will increase profit. You don't really know until you try it. Perhaps a better conversion would be 10000 HC for 200 MC (as opposed to 500). I'm not really adamant about these ideas. They can change.

 

Idea #2:

If you read the post, you would see that it's not a TL;DR. I highly suggest actually looking back and reading the post before replying to this. I address a problem, and I provide a solution. I address another problem that could be caused by said solution, and provide another solution for it. I then go on to address another problem potentially caused by the first solution, and provide another solution for the new problem.

 

Allow me to once again provide ANOTHER solution to a problem that can arise from the first solution:

I now realize that simply winning and losing is not a good system as players can be put on bad teams and subsequently lose the match, and the autobalancer can act very odd with this system.

 

The point system could maybe score players using an equation similar to this:

(.4 + (playerKills + .5(playerAssists)/totalKills)) +-(.8))

The +-(.8) is the win/lose score.

Now, this equation means nothing to you, so let's plug numbers in.

Assume there was a total of  30 kills, and the player in question scored 7 kills and scored 8 assists. He also lost the game.

That's (.4 + (7 + 4)/30) - (.8)) which comes to a total of -0.02. A teeny tiny loss despite losing the game. Let's do another one.

43 kills total, Player scored 12 kills and 10 assists, and won the game.

(.4 + (12 + 5)/43) + (.8)) = 1.6. I rounded 17/43 up to 0.4. A large gain, and had he lost the game, he would've lost no points.

 

Now comes the problem of Technician. I propose a separate Technician variable:

(armorRepaired/20000) = techVar

You place it after the main equation. Now, let us test this.

I don't know how much health a Technician repairs throughout a game, so let's just go with an arbitrary number: 7528 armor repaired. The Technician also scored 2 kills and 6 assists. Total kills are 36. Game lost.

Equation would be (.4 + (2 + 3)/36) - (.8)) + techVar which would equal 0.12. Increase in score. If the game was won, it'd be 0.92, a good increase.

 

Free-For-All could ignore the gameOutcome variable (the +- .8). Co-op does not affect the matchmaking at all. These variables I mention are just names I came up with to describe parts of the equation. Chances are, they don't actually exist.

 

Leaving a game early runs the calculation the same and considers the match to be a loss.

 

Regarding the autobalancer, the game could sort players via a script we will call sortMethod. sortMethod calls the averagePlayerScore (via averaging) of the current lobby, and then calls the players with a score > averagePlayerScore, and randomly places those in the two teams. Then it calls those with a score < averagePlayerScore, and does the same. If two players are in a party, take the averagePartyScore, and count it three times.

 

If there is a party, call sortMethodParty before sortMethod and describe a function that tells the game to call the players with the score closest to the averagePartyScore, and place them on the opposite team. Then you call sortMethod and run the same. Since this would obviously lead to repetitive matches, after every match, have sortScoreParty take the 2-3 players who were placed against the party and make them immune to sortMethodParty. Then run the two scripts the same.

 

The great thing about this system is that improving your score doesn't really do much for you personally. It just changes the way the autobalance handles you.

 

This is just something I made up. It could obviously use some work and is bound to run into problems, however I did put a lot of thought into these equations and scripts.

 

Next time I highly suggest reading the entire post. Chances are you missed information.

There's a point your missing here. It's been over an entire year since any dev has touched the game. People have accumulated a lot of HC. As an example, I myself have 1m HC just sitting around, meaning under your 10k for 200, I could trade in 100 times, that gives me 20k MC. I've already bought a great del of the cosmetics, and i own all the mechs, aside from individual mech components(body pieces/taunts), I only need 3 boosters, totaling 720 MC and 2 repair drones totalling 938 MC, plus the few remaining camos I don't have any desire for since I don't like them. That has me spending 1,658 of my 20,000 MC, that leaves me with 18,342 MC to spending on mechs I wish to customize the look of which there are only 3, and thats 3x 938, with a total spend if 2,814. Leaving me with a left over balance of 15,528MC so what exactly am I supposed to be doing with the rough estimate of $90 left over that should have gone to the devs?

 

Your other idea, think about it for a minute here. Matchmaker is having a hard time making good balanced matches using a single numerical factor. A single numerical value is causing matchmaker to 98% of the time blow it's top and implode on itself. Now you want to add more numbers am I right? You want to add even more numbers to a system thats already having trouble with 1 number for each person. Doing that your gonna make matchmaker hate life and want to kill itself. Matchmaking as a whole needs redone other wise your just adding to a perpetually broken system no matter how many things you do to make it better, it'll just end up being worse.

[Hyginos]

The matchmaker works pretty well when people let it. It's important to remember that any time you join or leave a match in progress you have broken the balance that the MM has tried to accomplish. If you want balanced games, stay in the fuzzy bunny server.

[Miscellaneous]

The matchmaker works pretty well when people let it. It's important to remember that any time you join or leave a match in progress you have broken the balance that the MM has tried to accomplish. If you want balanced games, stay in the fuzzy bunny server.

^^ This. I have seen many a balanced match destroyed by a noob leaving and a pro taking his place.

[The_User]

There's a point your missing here. It's been over an entire year since any dev has touched the game. People have accumulated a lot of HC. As an example, I myself have 1m HC just sitting around, meaning under your 10k for 200, I could trade in 100 times, that gives me 20k MC. I've already bought a great del of the cosmetics, and i own all the mechs, aside from individual mech components(body pieces/taunts), I only need 3 boosters, totaling 720 MC and 2 repair drones totalling 938 MC, plus the few remaining camos I don't have any desire for since I don't like them. That has me spending 1,658 of my 20,000 MC, that leaves me with 18,342 MC to spending on mechs I wish to customize the look of which there are only 3, and thats 3x 938, with a total spend if 2,814. Leaving me with a left over balance of 15,528MC so what exactly am I supposed to be doing with the rough estimate of $90 left over that should have gone to the devs?

 

Your other idea, think about it for a minute here. Matchmaker is having a hard time making good balanced matches using a single numerical factor. A single numerical value is causing matchmaker to 98% of the time blow it's top and implode on itself. Now you want to add more numbers am I right? You want to add even more numbers to a system thats already having trouble with 1 number for each person. Doing that your gonna make matchmaker hate life and want to kill itself. Matchmaking as a whole needs redone other wise your just adding to a perpetually broken system no matter how many things you do to make it better, it'll just end up being worse.

 

 

You're right. I did miss that point. Now, I'm not gonna say "Well that's too bad," and I know that the chances of the HC<-->MC thing being added are next to none, but if that system were to be added, that stuff's gonna happen. I just kinda posted this to share ideas. Like I said, I'm not adamant about these ideas. They can change. However, since the Meteor Credit thing isn't going to change anytime soon, I'll edit the original post.

 

I never looked into the game's current matchmaking system, but I also didn't propose any additions at all. I proposed a complete redo. Changing something that big will have huge short-term side effects, but so will every change. Honestly, if you're going to shoot down every idea I have and resist change, you might as well stay off of this section of the forums. I hate to sound rude, but seriously, don't do that, man. It's just not cool. I do greatly appreciate the input you have given me so far, but don't just shoot down the ideas."

 

In regards to your statement of matchmaking have a hard time with one factor, then it's no wonder it's having a hard time. That's like trying to decide what business path will generate the most money, but doing it on your fingers. There are a lot more variables than just numbers. Plus, really there is only one factor in my proposed system: your MM score. All the other numbers are just calculations. Quote: "The point system could maybe score players using an equation similar to this:

(.4 + (playerKills + .5(playerAssists)/totalKills)) +-(.8))"

The equation is the calculations to obtain the number. It could be done client-side to prevent server overload, from which arises the problem of hackers. However, like I said before, this problem would have minimal effect. Quote: "The great thing about this system is that improving your score doesn't really do much for you personally. It just changes the way the autobalance handles you."

Hacking the game to give yourself a higher MM score will ONLY result in you being handled as a high-score player. There is no other effect this will have.

 

I seriously don't understand why you're so opposed to this.

[VYR3]

TBH I dont like the idea of not being able to buy MECHS with MC, internals/weapons/items however? all for it. I think it would be a good thing for the game that players cant buy internals and weapons for their mechs with MC.

 

HOWEVER, I think that the HC prices of internals/weapons/items would have to be reduced a little bit, or more HC would have to be added for missions.