!! Reducing Sector Player Limits

im certainly not the most experienced player, but cutting it that much seems a little to much.

While i agree that the waiting times can be very long, i dont think thats the best way to go, atleast not by reducing the playernumbers that much.

 

Right now with the current speed of the game any map over 6vs6 (and even that) is almost unplayable. I have completely stopped playing in any fights with such big numbers.

If it is easy to just make this simple change in one day then do it.

This would be a great fast solution until you fix the speed problem (with 75% faster animations and under 60 sec time limits per round).

After the speed problem is solved just revert back the changes and let us have big epic battles like we do now but faster.


So i think this would be a great temporary solution.

 

reducing the timer would be a problem. With the lagginess of the combat UI, it is sometimes hard now to get a turn done in 60 sec. Perhaps if it were running more smoothly we could cut the timer.

It is not so bad in a real fight. Where it gets nearly unbearable is in a sector offense where your opposition is only AI. They trickle in one defender per turn. The lack of action plus the almost nonexistent xp in such situations makes it so that loss of capture points from attackers leaving nearly balances out the mere 2 you can gain from killing the one AI ship.

 

75% faster animations means 75% faster everything so no lag (or just way less lag remaining). That number is not random. Vesuvius said at ingame chat that thats the maximum they can get without desynchronizing sound effects.

If its fast enough to cut timers at half (so 30 seconds from 60) we can have 6vs6 games feel as fast as 3v3. Until then Reducing Sector Player Limits at half is a great temporary solution to fix the biggest issue the game currently has and attract more new players. Everyone should support it.

 

Afkers can be dealt with a similar solution to hearthstone. If they miss their first full turn without doing anything the next turn will only last 10 seconds and the third one zero (practically kicked).

Newbie zombies will improve in time and will be less in total population and if you manage to lower timers with faster animations their impact will be insignificant.

 

6 v 6 is ok for me, I have gotten used to most of the game mechanics. When I was going through my first few games .. it felt like there was no progression to grasp on... playing a few single player missions was the only incentive and it helped me with control fluency.

perhaps a couple of T1-T3 areas which can give bonuses to leadership points. %40 extra or something.. 3v3 or 4v4 ... such maps are too small to effectively house support ships and high tier ships. ~~~ Contrary to this, if you're a tier 3 attacking a tier 4 etc.. you'll get more points per hit and damage than a T3 Vs T3

60 Seconds max time.. but should there be an incentive for finishing your turn quicker? %10 extra LP if you average 30seconds or less etc..
the higher tier your ship.. this may become harder because generally the ships need to do a lot more..

Back to incentive. ~ the game has a seemingly steep gaming curve, and it feels really unrewarding to new players.
you dive into your first battle after tutorial.. may'be a mission,. which I recommend for getting used to what the tutorial teaches. you get 10-11 XP and LP .. but you need 800+ to progress to the next tier . and 1k EXP to even get your first captain level.
.. Sure in my OSLO I managed to get 400 XP/LP .. but in my T3 .. I was lucky to scrape 10-20 before my ship was blown up... ..
you could play .. 4-5 hours and feel like you haven't progressed at all... coupled with that 6v6.. 8v8.. Long time for your turn.. it's painful!
Finally, more incentive and quicker way to win the level... Capture points .. control areas where enemies can't spawn in .. but also gives you 1 capture point/defense point per turn ... sometimes if no player enemies spawn in .. you can spend the next 45minutes fighting 1-2 spawned npcs at a time.. .. alternatively,. if you manage to hold all 4 of the territories of a battle.. you win the map.. each quarter you gain control of you get so many EXP/LP ~

Despite all this.. this game has amazing potential... the bigger picture looks awesome,. .. just think.. how do I convince a player that this game is worth it after playing 3 PvP matches within 1 hour.

 

@infested I gave the hearthstone solution to Ves too.. haha

 

Hi Ves, this reduction solution to me is short term solution, because of your named disadvantages, and even if implemented, will still be unbearable to many. Since you're a programmer, I'll just say this is O(x) in nature. It's useful for multiplayer box games like homm, but it's bad for true MMOs which is supposed to be scalable upwards to technological/human mind/game design limits.

I suggest a O(1) solution, open to refinements. U turn the combat into a 2 player mode. Each player is a faction, and within each fraction need to move simultaneously with a increased timer, say 3 mins? In this implementation, u also need to enable max communication among a faction, integrating discord into the combat. Those who has no microphone, listen. There is no requirement to be coordinated, but it's welcomed of course.

U take away the initiative bar. Think of it this way.. homm has it because it has many units. Yet the players in homm won't feel the wait because they have control over half the units. How can u do that for a MMO game..

Now initiative can be totally removed for simplicity, or it can be a averaged stat. If averaged, then the side with higher init, can move, n wait to move finish later, just like a normal 1v1 game. Suggestion for such a major change is of course, remove first to avoid any bugs or unforeseen abuse. Be cool, the most popular homm version, 3, has no initiative bar either.

When number of faction is increased, wait time will increased again, but by then u may be more comfortable to reduce each faction time , from 3 mins downwards, since players are more experienced, n less players per faction. This is still O(1) solution because each battle can still progress at the same speed with increasing number of players.

Edit: Suggested refinement is when 2 Ally ships touch. Timer will automatically increase by 30 secs for the a ship to finish it's business n leave. Another touch on another spot of map will not increase the already increased timer. But a touch by a 3rd ship in the same hex area will further raise timer by 30 secs and so on. Support ships are excluded from this consideration.

 

Actually I like the feel of some big battles and the option to join one in a big operation.

My main problem as a beginner is that I simply cant easily see which systems are what kind of size. I would love to have the possiblity to make key shortcuts for certain action. Turn ship aroun 180° etc to make my move more smoothly. I need a better way to manipulate the map durning my move with the mouse. You (at least I cant drag and move) while its my turn. this is a problem if the area I want to move to is not clearly visible.
These kind of small annoyances make me move slowly adding to the turn and cycle time

 

I do love the large battles, but I can see the time commitment being an issue for some players. Right now I feel the biggest slow down is a simple learning curve for new players, who sit there for their whole turn when they are actually done. Some of the animations could be sped up like the marine pods which take forever (Not individually but it multiples fast the more that are used). Movement not slowing down at the end (Though I love the immersive feel it gives). SO at this time I can not support cutting the sectors in half. Maybe "maybe" lower them by 2, but even that I am not sure of.

Just suggestions...

1. Faster animations
2. More AI ships coming in based off an imbalance of players. 10 attackers against 2 defender equals maybe 5-7 AI warping in on the next turn.
3. If a player warps out, lock them out of the system for a good chunk of time, maybe 30 minutes?. Right now beating a hard opponent down just to have them warp out and coming back in the following turn because of turn time, with a fully healed ship is frustrating to say the least. If they blow up, fine, come right back, otherwise it just seems broken.
4. Maybe lowing the cap cost for faster play unless it is a key location, like around bases and a tile out from them.

Just my quick thoughts.

 

I really like the team turn idea (probably because it's similar to how Atlas Reactor works?) but I just don't see it really working in this setting. Eventually we're going to have more than just 2 teams in a game, that alone is going to make turns get wonky. You have to also consider that anyone in a T3 ship is going to get focused by an entire team each round so whichever team goes first will most likely win every engagement.

Speeding up animations will help a lot I'm sure but for other options maybe reduce how much a player can do in a single turn?

 

Too big a reduction. Maybe a drop of 2. Though for the big 26v26 planet battles something really needs to be done to keep those from being ridiculous.

 

Thank you Vesuvius! This is a great improvement!

 

Half +1 isn't that bad I suppose. What I am slightly concerned about is how silly does the increased animation speed look? I know immersion can take a back seat to speed up gameplay but does it look absolutely ridiculous having your ship move double or triple speed?