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Team: Bravery Against Death
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
Further to my first reply, I have been thinking about the possible parallels between classic MOBA's, LoL being the one I have the largest experience with, and the current systems in place for SS. It is a really good object of comparison, because it is/was the most popular game on the internet according to some articles.

My approach is to run as close to as possible parallels, so it will be easier to understand the possible design elements that could be migrated to work in SS. I will also offer a brief description of what LoL does with these and how I think SS could use their mechanic in a similar way.

Basics of leveling in LoL
There are two leveling phases for every character, in game, and universal. Every character can reach level 30 in game, as their character battles. In addition the universal character attempts to reach a different level 30 at a much slower level. (probably over 100 games to reach 30). Each level opens up additional rune and masteries slots. This is “you”. All your champions will be affected by these levels, and you can customize your ruin/masteries to the specific champions you play. These combine together to create a background flavor for the character. You can’t enter competitive/ranked play with a character that is below level 30. Selling ruins and extra configuration pages is one way LoL makes money.

Character skills (Speed Demon, Seer, etc) -> Ruins and masteries.
Given the description above, it’s pretty easy to see how character skills could be seen as a parallel to the above.

Ships -> Champions.
In SS, the ship options, resistances, pre-built in equipment, and limitations are the closest parallel to champions. In LoL the differences in kind between champions are far more severe than they are in SS, as each champion has several unique to that champion powers that they get, and get more powerful, as they level. The closest SS parallel to powers are the ships that have unique weapons of equipped gear, like the Reaver laser, or the Wing II Pro defensive shield bubble.

Tweaks -> Potions.
Anyone can use any power in SS, called tweaks. Shield soother, warmy warmth, etc. In Lol those are potions, mostly just health potions, but there are end game buff potions that add an extra 3 minute edge you can buy.

Given the above, and my previous comments, if I was designing a MOBA version of this game I would start by thinking about leveling during the game. If it was me I would have two categories, the basics league that would simply allow all players to reach 20 in the core skills, regardless of what they had in the universe. 1 level of all core skills per level of XP. The champion league would have an in game level cap of 30, where the first 20 levels would in addition to raising/revealing the core skills, also include the , sub skills (Seer, Speed Demon, etc), and then after 20 “reveal” up to 10 levels of Zen/Bar/Tweaking skills the player had in the main universe.

That’s enough for this post, more to follow.


Thu May 26, 2016 10:21 am
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Team: Bravery Against Death
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
…. Continued from previous post.

Equipment -> Items
In Lol you spend gold to purchase items. Most end game items are built from the components of lesser items. It is similar to BP’s for converting Ares into Ares+ augs for example, but BP’s are not necessary as it happens very quickly. The player agency choice revolves around what to build, what order to build in, and what to build to counter the other teams build, which everyone can see. Some of the bigger choices revolve around building a big item to completion, or working on two or three items at the same time.

Phases of the LoL MOBA.

Lane phase. During this phase of the game, all champions enter a lane and attempt to earn XP and gold off the minions that are walking down the lane and then fighting each other. The most important skill to learn for this phase is how to hit a minion last so that you get the gold, rather than one of your minions, in which case the gold is lost.

The fact that both teams need players in the same area to earn gold, forces the conflict and leads to champions exchanging damage in an effort to get a kill and bonus kill/gold.

The exception to this is the Jungler. This is a player on both teams that takes on the stronger jungle AI and roams on either side of the map. It is that persons job to farm the jungle AI effectively, and then jump into (gank) the lanes looking for a kill or assist.

It is also important to let your team mates know if your opponent is not in lane, as that means they could be moving to another lane to Gank, or just going back to base to get a gear upgrade.

After the lane phase comes the team fight phase. This is where both teams group up in an effort to push lanes and take down towers. Sometimes one of the team players will move out of the fight in an effort to push an untended lane while his other 4 team mates play defensive to simply hold the other team back, with the goal being to knock over towers to proceed towards the enemy base.

I think if the SS battle arena had a fairly well crafted galaxy layout, and replaced the LoL towers with drones parked directly next to the wormholes on the defensive side, that take a page from LoL and do not heal quickly at all, (think defunctstop), you could simulate the lane phase. I would lay out a “lane” like this, two on top, two on bottom.



Enemy Weak Drone ------ Weak drone -> Gate -> Weak Drone ----- Weak Drone ->Gate -> Stronger Drone ----- Stronger Drone -> Gate -> Stronger Drone ----- Weak Individual Player base -> Gate -> Team player base -> AI base.

Eventually AI lane spawn would get strong enough to knock over anything unprotected in the lane, except the AI spawn from the other side. An unbalanced lane would quickly push towards the other side and start knocking over drones.

I would give each player their own player base for building their gear. Bases would not upgrade, but they would have a selection of BP’s that allowed them to build the gear they wanted, with a team BP base for team gear. Losing your own base would be a large set back, just as losing an inhibitor in LoL is a very big deal. (AI spawn from the other side nearly doubles in strength.)

I would add in more specific shield types for players, that in addition to adding shield strength/recovery, also protected more/less against certain weapon types. That would give some of the choice/counter choice that LoL item selection has.

I would add in “Jungle” galaxies between the lanes that spawned increasingly difficult AI that were hostile to all. Put the DG’s in here, two layers deep, so if you manage to get a team wipe on the other side, or can see a good chance to leave lane, go to the DG and get an uber kill.


Thu May 26, 2016 11:48 am
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
Here's an idea to encourage conflict:

Periodicaly (every 10mins or so) a Comet (Think Halleys Comet with a nice tail) appears in the central galaxy that travels slowly from the top of the galaxy (5k due north of the center of the galaxy) toward the bottom (5k due south of the center of the galaxy), basically halfway between each teams bases. When you do damage to the Comet, it will move toward your side while traveling its route. The more ships and weapons firing on it will move it that much quicker toward your side. As the Comet reaches the end of its path, whichever side it is closer to will get some special item crates drop near their base. There could be a neutral zone (500 distance on either side of the center line) that the Comet must make it out of for the special items to drop.

The Comet should take approximately 3-5 minutes to complete its path. PvP of the enemy will reduce their ability to affect the Comet.

The Comet would have a high probability of low tier upgrades/items, mid probability of mid tier upgrades/items, low probability of high tier upgrades/items.

Let the enemy control the Comet while your team is mining asteroids and you could miss out on special upgrades, moosterium, etc.

If you only try and control the Comet as a strategy, then you could end up with the same mid tier upgrades and get way behind those who choose a mining strategy.


Thu May 26, 2016 12:53 pm
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
kwilson wrote:
Here's an idea to encourage conflict:

Periodicaly (every 10mins or so) a Comet (Think Halleys Comet with a nice tail) appears in the central galaxy that travels slowly from the top of the galaxy (5k due north of the center of the galaxy) toward the bottom (5k due south of the center of the galaxy), basically halfway between each teams bases. When you do damage to the Comet, it will move toward your side while traveling its route. The more ships and weapons firing on it will move it that much quicker toward your side. As the Comet reaches the end of its path, whichever side it is closer to will get some special item crates drop near their base. There could be a neutral zone (500 distance on either side of the center line) that the Comet must make it out of for the special items to drop.

The Comet should take approximately 3-5 minutes to complete its path. PvP of the enemy will reduce their ability to affect the Comet.

The Comet would have a high probability of low tier upgrades/items, mid probability of mid tier upgrades/items, low probability of high tier upgrades/items.

Let the enemy control the Comet while your team is mining asteroids and you could miss out on special upgrades, moosterium, etc.

If you only try and control the Comet as a strategy, then you could end up with the same mid tier upgrades and get way behind those who choose a mining strategy.



Sounds like a good parallel to the Dragon/Baron mechanic in LoL. Those are stationary monsters that are much harder to kill and usually require the team to participate, and leave or dominate lane, in order to be achieved.


Thu May 26, 2016 2:30 pm
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
PsyRamius wrote:
JeffL wrote:
Hey guys,



Teams

Players will be put into two different squads, regardless of team or any pre existing squads.  The battleground can hold an arbitrary number of players, but probably if it's over some threshold, then multiple battlegrounds could be spawned.  The teams will be split based on past performance in the battleground.  Players will be ranked by a heuristic such as wins - losses/2, sorted, and then split.  It will then look for swaps to make the teams more fair.




Better re-think that one. For reference I used to play ranked League of Legends , paid probably 500$ for champs and skins, and only gave it up because of Sesame points and the companies total ownership by China. Look up sesame points, it's horrible.

Anyway, the whole team picking thing was one of the biggest issues with the game. Forcing friends to play against each other is a total non-starter.

So imagine if you the player were waiting 12 hours for a window so you and a bud could team up and fight it out in the arena, and then after that 12 hours you ended up on opposite teams. Rage quit the arena, or worse torpedo your team mates. Easy enough if one of you decides to do dick all. YouTube League of Children for examples of the total ass hattery that team mates can bring to the table.



Well, if they know ahead of time that the teams are random, then they wouldn't be expecting to necessarily be on the same team, so wouldn't be too shocked and upset to end up on different sides. When I go to pick up soccer with my friend, we sometimes end on the same team, and sometimes on opposite teams. I don't really care which, because it can be just as fun to beat a friend as it is to win with him.

I'm actually more concerned with people creating super squads of unbeatable sides that make matchmaking impossible, especially if there aren't that many people who show up.

I think at least to start with, we should go with totally random sides, and then possibly add squadding later if we think it would be an improvement. I want to try to make a really minimal version of this first for lots of testing and balancing, and then add features based on how it goes.

Quote:
You have to decide, how long do you want a game to be, and how chaotic/directly competitive do you want the fight.

Personally I like the way LoL did it. 20 Minutes minimum, 60 minutes was crazy long, and you would never see a "real" fight over 90 minutes long.


I agree, and we will be able to control the time based on how quickly the user bases move towards each other. I figure the game will end some amount of time after the bases get in range of each other, so that should be easy to tweak. I'm thinking along the lines of 20-30 minutes, but maybe longer would be more appropriate if the battle is only happening a few times per day. Shorter means that more people might log in specifically for it to get their tokens and have fun, but if it's too long, it might lose the more casual players, and I see it as being more fun with a lot of players in it flying around like crazy.

Quote:
I would also simply make the combat to hectic to be effective as a multi box. You don't see multi box in LoL, because trying to play as two different champs at the same time would be stupid in the extreme. Take away all the levels, all the power, and force the conflict to cross boarders, and multi boxing will be daft.


Yes, I don't think multi-clienting will be effective at fighting, but it could potentially be effective at spying or maybe even healing a little bit.

Quote:
Put in AI that is on side with the player teams, with given patterns, that if the players help along without resistance greatly increase the effectiveness of the players. (See lane phase in LoL)


I don't really think laning would work that well here. If we wanted, we could spawn drones that would move towards the enemy, that might be more realistic implementation-wise than special AI ships, but I feel like fighting over asteroid fields and NPC mobs would be a more "Star Sonata"-like way to farm your character than sitting in lanes. Maybe sending lane-like stuff at the enemy base would make the center gal feel more dynamic and call for the players to not ignore it until end game, though.

Quote:
Go watch some LoL vids, (I recommend Brofresco or AnkleSpanken they are pretty fun to watch) and see how the team AI (Minions), Hostile AI, (Jungle), and Uber AI (Dragon/Baron) are designed to work.

Don't think classic DG, think contested DG, where you get to open the gate for your team if you do X, make X a contest like killing and it can happen only every so often.

If your Making a MOBA version (GOD DAMB THAT SOUNDS FUN), then really you can learn a great deal by simply looking at the the things that the other MOBA games do.


I have played a little bit of LoL, but a lot of HoN and over a thousand hours of HotS. I view this proposal as sort of half way between MOBA like those and battleground like in WoW.

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For support, please create a support ticket here and I will get back to you as soon as possible. About Star Sonata.


Thu May 26, 2016 2:35 pm
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
kwilson wrote:
Periodicaly (every 10mins or so) a Comet (Think Halleys Comet with a nice tail) appears in the central galaxy that travels slowly from the top of the galaxy (5k due north of the center of the galaxy) toward the bottom (5k due south of the center of the galaxy), basically halfway between each teams bases.


I like the idea of a periodic comet.

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For support, please create a support ticket here and I will get back to you as soon as possible. About Star Sonata.


Thu May 26, 2016 2:36 pm
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
JeffL wrote:
PsyRamius wrote:

1.)

I'm actually more concerned with people creating super squads of unbeatable sides that make matchmaking impossible, especially if there aren't that many people who show up.

...

2.)
I agree, and we will be able to control the time based on how quickly the user bases move towards each other. I figure the game will end some amount of time after the bases get in range of each other, so that should be easy to tweak. I'm thinking along the lines of 20-30 minutes, but maybe longer would be more appropriate if the battle is only happening a few times per day. Shorter means that more people might log in specifically for it to get their tokens and have fun, but if it's too long, it might lose the more casual players, and I see it as being more fun with a lot of players in it flying around like crazy.

...

3.)

I don't really think laning would work that well here. If we wanted, we could spawn drones that would move towards the enemy, that might be more realistic implementation-wise than special AI ships, but I feel like fighting over asteroid fields and NPC mobs would be a more "Star Sonata"-like way to farm your character than sitting in lanes. Maybe sending lane-like stuff at the enemy base would make the center gal feel more dynamic and call for the players to not ignore it until end game, though.

...

4.)
I have played a little bit of LoL, but a lot of HoN and over a thousand hours of HotS. I view this proposal as sort of half way between MOBA like those and battleground like in WoW.


1.) Fair enough concern. I know how annoying it was every time I got smurfed by a Diamond. That said, I don't think your pick up soccer game example is in the same league as an SS MOBA would be. Might be fine to start given the population, but I would certainly push a few brain cells towards how to make a good match maker system that allowed friends to play together on the same team. The social aspect is crazy complex.

I'm not sure if you have experienced it, but I know from pick up hockey that every once in a while someone will "bring a friend" that turns out create such animosity between the teams that it impacts the post game relationship a bit. I know that toxic team mates are far far worse to play with than good opponents.


2.) If the game matches are targeted at 20-30 minutes, could you use the existing DG mechanics to create an in system match making model? Two DG gates open, you fly into the side you want to be on, 5 minutes later the second gate opens dropping you into the arena. After the match 20 minutes later the set up repeats? More use means more thorough testing.

3.) Just a thought, but you could switch it to Galaxy by Galaxy fighting. Each Galaxy in the arena has two bases, one from each team at wormholes located on opposite ends. These bases are weak but equipped with resource generation gear, like Hydroponics for example. You have to visit them to collect their resources, until the enemy destroys them.

I personally don't like the idea that the game rolls on until the bases start firing at each other. I would much rather see the bases seem incredibly strong to start, but get weaker in relation to the players the longer the game goes on. I think the core SS system already has a way for that to happen, it's just a matter of picking the starting base level/gear.

To make it more SS like, the AI bots could act like slaves locked to "Follow Me" and "Attack Enemies" instead of the lane minions. The AI/Player base has a re-spawn timer that can build up, so either they get replaced (and fly to support you) immediately on destruction, or you have to wait for a new one to be ready. The types of AI "slaves" spawned progresses as you level up.

4.) Good to know.Never played either of those, but I just watched some footage and they both seemed to have a "minion" class of some sort.

Some people/developers are so nose down into their own little world that they fail to see new games/ideas as options and opportunities. Glad to see that is not the case with you.


Thu May 26, 2016 3:23 pm
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
You might be right that it would be better just for the players to get strong enough to kill the other base on their own, though I like the bases moving toward each other as a way to keep an upper limit on the game length. If we make the power curve on the players such that they are strong enough to kill a base before the bases get in range of each other, that might be a good compromise.

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For support, please create a support ticket here and I will get back to you as soon as possible. About Star Sonata.


Thu May 26, 2016 4:31 pm
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Post Re: Designing a Star Sonata Battleground
JeffL wrote:
You might be right that it would be better just for the players to get strong enough to kill the other base on their own, though I like the bases moving toward each other as a way to keep an upper limit on the game length. If we make the power curve on the players such that they are strong enough to kill a base before the bases get in range of each other, that might be a good compromise.


In LoL they call them winions when they get big enough that simply pushing a single wave will push into and finish the game almost without help. Late enough in the game with inhibitors down, those things can be harder to kill than the players.

You actually have to work to keep them from finishing the game if your trying to do fun infinite stacking things without the game ending. There is no upper time limit, but then there are as many game instances as you like as well, and no locking up of players activities during that time.


Thu May 26, 2016 4:59 pm
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