In CoH, they at one point identified the problem that people were doing "Quickie Katie" TFs a lot because they represented, at that time, the best ration of rewards to work in the game. This caused a Merits system to be put in place, they data mined for how many Merits things should be worth, relative to each other, and that balanced the reward landscape out.
Here's my idea: instead of that, just give each TF or trial available to players a sort of "rewards clock" that causes the rewards for the TF to somehow increase gradually over time until someone successfully completes the TF. Then the team that successfully completes the TF get's the accumulated "jackpot" and the game resets the jackpot value to its baseline again. Basically it would work like Powerball.
This way, instead of people pounding one TF or trial over and over and over, we'd have an incentive to spread the love around and do all the TFs and Trials eventually, because of the rewards.
In CoX, you got the same reward for each TF all the time, unless it was the Weekly Strike Target. This way, you don;t need a weekly Strike Target to give some TFs more action, you just wait for that TF's jackpot to get to the point where it looks like the sweetest plum in the garden.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
At what level would this "rewards clock" or jackpot be at, personal or global, that is does it count for everyone individually or is it one large "shared" by everyone?
The way you phrase it right now sounds like it would be global and I'm no sure about such a system since I don't want to compete against every other group that could possibly be doing it once most feel that the jackpot is high enough, or getting screamed at for taking it "too early".
Add in that they will have one global sharded system and I don't think that jackpot would grow to very much, unless of course a high jackpot could be attained in a few hours.
If I understand correctly, and I may not, for every completed mission? (or TF) a credit would be awarded to every TF. On completion of a TF the number of credits attributed to a TF would add to or multiply the rewards for that TF. This would mean that difficult TFs and TFs that are unloved would get more action to have a chance at the higher rewards.
The upside is more content gets used. Content that is difficult gets challenged more.
The downside is that bad content keeps getting used, discouraging redesigns. People get upset if they put a lot of effort into a difficult TF but don't get the jack pot because someone beat them to it by 10 or 15 minutes. If you increase the rewards for a set time frame so no one gets snubbed by missing the jackpot then you could create a pendulum effect where the playerbase alternates between two pieces of "easy" content building one up while reaping the rewards of the other.
I think a better scenario is to use this credit token system to analyze player activity and manually adjust rewards for difficult content or prompt an investigation of why players aren't going after a particular piece of content.
On the surface this looks like a good idea, to dynamically encourage players to go after different content and avoid doing the same stuff over and over again. I think it needs some refinement and a bit more input. I also think it's a good idea to avoid giving the playerbase the information about which TF has the biggest "jackpot" because they are incredibly smart and incredibly lazy, they will find a way to abuse a jackpot system as initially defined.
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The way I was reading the notion was that each Task Force would have its own counter that slowly ratchets upwards by +1 (per hour?) and that when the Task Force is completed [i]by any team[/i] the counter resets to baseline and starts counting upwards again. It essentially means that the longer content remains "fallow" and unused by anyone, the higher the rewards for completing that specific content.
Think less "jackpot" where you have to play to RNGesus in order to "win" the reward and more in terms of Scavenger Hunt to find the TF that hasn't been run recently. It creates an incentive to "keep moving around" when it comes to doing TFs, rather than just chaining a single "best" one and keeping it on farm status.
All you'd have to do is have a UI element which shows what the current Reward Merits payout is for completion (and what the minimum payout is without the +1 ratchet) and you've got yourself a dynamic yet still somewhat predictable reward system that encourages a diversity of play, rather than a concentration of it.
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What mechanism would there be for players to flag content that really doesn't work? In my work and also in my gameplay, I sometimes run into things that just don't function the way the designer's notes say it should.
If you have a strong CS/GM team, finding holes in the world, reporting them, documenting them (despite falling for 10K damage and dying over and over), and figuring out how the problem happens, can be FUN! ...well, sorta fun.
I'm wondering if there will be a way to ask the Devs to take a second (or third) look at some aspect of the game and determine if it's working as intended. Something short of begging Arcana to analyze the thing!
Be Well!
Fireheart
Im hoping MWM add a TF of the Week sorta thing, but instead of just 1 TF, make it at least 3 TFs. And in each of them, have a foe Guest star from a different faction. Seen in a CutScene. Could be a messenger or Negotiator or sumtin'. Doesnt always have to be a person, just throw in a Device thats showcased with a Branding players can see and know which Enemy faction the Device belonged to.. so the 2nd or 3rd TF needs to be Run with them.
To be honest, this is a slight variation on an idea I posted in another thread about street sweeping. The idea with that was the every time a player defeats a mob in an outdoor spawn, the game randomly rolls to see if that player wins the "Street Sweepstakes" jackpot. If you win, you win a bunch of IGC or a kitty of prizes of some kind, if you do not, some small increment of IGC or prizes get's added to the kitty for the eventual future winner. Note that this does not take anything away from the player that they already had or would have received (your IGC drops and whatnot are unaffected). You just now have a SMALL chance at winning a jackpot until someone does, then it resets and starts to ratchet up again (again, like Powerball). It was the recent Powerball 1.5 billion jackpot in the recent news that gave me the idea.
Going back to the TFs now, if you prefer, you could have a random roll at the end of every specific TF and if someone on the team "wins", then they get the jackpot, if nobody does, then the jackpot grows until someone on a winning team randomly wins the jackpot. This would add an element of randomness to it that prevents the early birds from reliably always getting the worm, so to speak. To be clear, I mean that each TF would have its own separate jackpot. I think that the jackpot needs to increase over time even when the TF is not being run to actually be a force that tends to level out the popularity of the TFs to some extent. For example, the Dr. Q TF in CoX took so long that even if it had a jackpot system in place, it would never be the most efficient TF unless it's jackpot had grown very large, and that will only happen over a long time spent with nobody doing the TF, theoretically. So even with this system in place, long, arduous TFs that require a larger team would tend to run less often, I would expect. So you could modify it so that at the end of a successful TF, you get a CHANCE at the jackpot, but not the auto-win. That might work better. You could make the random "win or don't?" roll at the end a different odds chance for each TF, so that short ones have a small chance of winning and longer ones have a greater chance of winning. Wait, that could be bad. People might just go back to spamming Kattie Hannons to finally win one instead of the intended result. Hmmm....
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Hmm, a per TF jackpot with a random chance instead of guaranty would work better imo.
To lower the "grind" potential then perhaps have a diminishing returns of what is added to the jackpot pool for running it several times within short time frames, or perhaps have stacking personal markers for that that decays with time. Personal marker would probably work better since it gives You an incentive to spread out your runs over several TFs. Regardless, the min-maxers will always find an optimal route/way to do anything.
There probably needs to be guarantied payout if it's not been won for some time so that it doesn't grow too large. It should probably be set within a fairly large range and that it's reset if not claimed for a day or two so that one can't just leave it until it reaches guarantied payout (aiming for upper limit at range span) and then run it. By making it so that no one really knows when it reaches that point while only holding max bonus for a, relatively speaking, short time frame gives a big incentive to run it at least once every time of said time frame.
Though maybe a better way to spread people out would to give each TF some unique reward or perhaps some noticeable bias for certain drops.
To some extent, the specifics of this kind of thing can only be understood if you know roughly how many players you have and roughly how often, on average, each TF get's run WITHOUT a lotto type incentive already in place.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
True, but effectively all such details would, in this case, be the "final" numbers for the implementation, f.i not if they are implementing a cap on the bonus or not but rather what the cap would be. And of course, such details need continuous fine tuning.
I think this type of system hurts casual players. Sure they have the same odds as hitting the "jackpot" for each run but you have to "play to win" So a active or hard core player may have 5 or 10 chances per week while a casual player might have just one entry per week. Since most of the options to increase the jackpot are time driven at the end of the day you are more likely to reward heavy players.
In the past I may have thought that was fair, but more recently my very casual guild has suffered and struggled against such things. I don't know about adding a game play factor that would make a casual player feel as though they are not getting the most out of the game. Or feel like because they don't play as much they wont have a chance at getting such a reward.
Economically, such a lottery that favors those that play, further drives a wedge between hardcore and casual players by artificially increasing the existing earning potential between hardcore and casual players. This could have effects in the auction house making "elite" items even more so. Placing their cost far out of reach of casual players. Currently I have 300G in GW2. Which is enough to buy a lot of things, but some items, which I lack the time to acquire on my own, or due to the RNG have such a low drop rate so as to be unattainable by a casual player, are priced at 10 times what has taken me 3 years to earn. Extrapolating that out it could take me 10 years or more to earn that volume of currency to purchase such elite items. In the meantime hardcore players will continue to inflate the prices of these items.
I like the idea of a chance for a large windfall at the end of a TF, but the implementation is rife with potential pitfalls and negative outcomes. It's not impossible to make it work but the complications make it hard to work well.
I start to think that a curated TF of the week is not such a bad thing. Give the whole playerbase a chance to earn a modest reward for a short time for playing content that could be chosen at random. Furthermore, if the bonus reward is time locked, meaning it can only be earned once a week or once per change of featured event keeps a throttle on the rift between hardcore and casual.
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I have to respectfully disagree with the thought that this idea would help harcore players so much that it would end up hurting casual players ipso facto. Points in defense of my stance:
1. If rewards were strictly linear, that is, if your earning potential were a constant multiple of hours played, the casual players would be hurting there too. When you add in a random chance factor, this actually helps the casual player try to catch up by doing whatever is the most potentially lucrative TF and striking while the iron is hot. In other words, casual players might still win jackpots, occasionally, which I think is better than not having them
2. Casual players are, to some extent, defined as players who actually care less about such things as uber gear than other players do. As such the only thing they're theoretically losing out on is a part of the game they were less interested in in the first place.
3. Casual players inherently understand that if they play less, they'll get less rewards. I think everyone would concede that this will always be the case. I don't think random lottery-ization of rewards will make the problem worse to any great extent.
4. It seems counter-intuitive to me, to the point of unfairness even, to try to ensure that casual players get same quantity of rewards as people who play twice as much as they do. I would think that playing more often would lead to getting more rewards.
5. In a more overall sense, CoX was not so gear-centric as other games and I would hope CoT follows that in spirit. If that happens, no worries, I believe.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The one thing that I think we can all agree on is that the Play2Farm model embodied in the Quick Katie endless repeat is something to be avoided. Turning a single piece of content into something to be farmed is something that rewards what I think of as "static" gameplay, where you only face the same things and all you're doing is farming for the sake of farming. At that point, it almost starts turning into a "write a bot to do this for me" territory.
I vastly prefer an incentive structure that pushes Players (and Characters) to ... circulate ... around the game.
Simplest way I can think of encouraging that is the Daily Bonus, which gets refreshed after 20 hours, that grants extra bonus reward on top of the baseline for the FIRST completion of that content within the past 20 hours. It's not that you get locked out of the content, it's that the rewards for doing the content repeatedly in a short time are less ... thus providing an incentive to circulate through the variety of content that the game has to offer. That propensity for circulation on its own then provides its own incentives for Players to plan for and make use of builds for the Characters which are more broadly successful, rather than reaching for [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CripplingOverspecialization]Crippling Overspecialization[/url] to the point of being useless if they leave their "comfort zone" that they've planted themselves on for farming.
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As far as I know the more time you spend in-game the higher chance of payout you have per time-unit spent, especially when they are, relatively speaking, spending more time on the activities that can give you a payout in the first place.
Also consider that most casual usually play during "prime time" and thus there will most likely be lesser amounts in the jackpot due to more wins per time-unit.
I'll give you "uber gear" but most do want proper gear to be able to do experience the whole game.
Measured over what? Over RL time that is perfectly reasonable but not if looked over actually played time. I do not think any casual would accept a lower effort vs. reward payout.
Again, measured over what? As long as they keep effort vs. reward the same over all "player classes" then it won't be a problem.
The only ones I heard wanting to have extra rewards when not playing as much are the self-entitled bastards.
As far as I have seen here, they are going down the same path as CoH in this regard.
For this to be "fair" it should only count the time you spend in/on those activities that can generate a payout from this system.
I think we're trodding in the direction of "Is this a game we play for fun or a job we do for earned compensation?"
If you think of it as a job, then yes, all play that sees the player doing equal amounts of work ought to bring equal levels of rewards.
If you think of it as a game that is supposed to be fun, then I think adding in randomization adds to that fun because it gives people the "OMG! I WON THE JACKPOT!!!" moment once in a great while, and it adds the suspense and anticipation of such even when you don't win.
Hypothetically, one could propose a change to the CoX system of Very Rare Drops (purples) whereby instead of having one purple drop every so often at random, you instead took the average value of purples and divided it over all the times a player defeats a mob and then just give the players more IGC for defeating mobs and have no purple drops. You just defeat mobs, get IGC, then use it to buy rares and very rares once you've saved up enough to afford them. That model would be perfectly fair, and totally boring. I personally would prefer the random drops to that, because they spice up the game and make it more fun, to me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I've been following this thread and have a couple of thoughts. A timed jack pot that can be reset whenever the task force is run would be easy to manipulate negatively. That is since we're on a megaserver, with the possibility of many, many people all playing at once, the timers for task forces may never really achieve their jack pot state unless the timers are relatively fast, which defeats the purpose. Also, just because there is a jack pot with a reset timer or just a timed bonus reward system does not mean that it would be better to wait out for the timer instead of speed-running a task force over and again. The cumulative reward could end up being relatively equitable to the jackpot.
I do like the basic premise of incentive to seek out multiple task forces instead of repeating the same content over again. Though I think any concerns over speed runs in of itself could be misplaced. It is only the concern of repeated speed runs that could be problematic. All of our content and cumulative rewards will be part of our Challenges and Achievement system. A speed run through a task force could easily be part of such a system. However, should repeated speed-runs through the same content be problematic (even without earning new Achievements) the simplest solution would be to place a timer on each character to reduce the reward rate for that particular content. A dimishing returns if you will. But this would be something of a last resort, after adjusting base reward rates, and if possible any contextual portions of the content resulting in particular reward earnings.
By using our Achievements and Challenges system, we could include Achievements based on completing different task forces consecutively with a final reward for playing through each of them. And we could have this final reward be cumulative based on Achievements earned throughout each task force. That is, the more Challenges completed (thus earning an Achievement) in each task force (which would require more time to earn multiple Achievements, thus reducing speed runs, though going for a multiple speed run reward would be possible), the larger the final cumulative reward would be for completing all the task forces. Should a player repeat a task force prior to playing through all of them, their personal cumulative reward would be reset.
We may be able to take this a step further by making this a team based reward, in that completing each task force with the same player accounts (not necessarily characters), could result in a final reward bonus. We can have additional layers of completing with members of your super group, and completing with members of your super group's affiliated groups.
To summarize, speed-runs are only problematic if the reward rates over time are exceeding the intended design bounds.
Speed-runs could be a type of Challenge to each bonus rewards from an Achievement.
The more Challenges completed earns more Achievements (theorhetically reducing speed to complete as more is done).
Completing different task forces in succession can be a form of Challenge, with its own Achievement.
Completing different task forces in succession and earning similar Achievements in each task force would be a higher degree of Challenge, earning its own Achievement bonus.
The final 'big' reward would thus be earned by completing all the task forces in succession, with as many Challenges being completed as possible.
There is the possibility of additional bonuses for completing with the same player accounts, same super group, and sg affiliations.
No timer is necessarily required for this final large reward. Anyone could do it on their own time.
Completing all the task forces even once (in any order) would probably be a singular Achievement.
Going for the successive rewards would be repeatable. Playing a previous run task force resets the succession reward.
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- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
> Playing a previous run task force resets the succession reward.
Is that like the CoH Alignment system?
Will players opt Out of Teams to avoid being Punishment?
If so, try to avoid doing it. :P
No reset, just dont Count it towards the reward(s). ;)
I think you significantly underestimating the negative effects of hearing about everyone else winning while you don't. Also, if the minimum jackpot is too low it can give a "that's all!?" moment for some that may have waited for month for their first win.
I will readily admit that there is no way for them know the "effort" others have put in nor how long they have waited but it is a matter of perception.
I can only relate to my experience with lockboxes in Neverwinter (since they announce certain items from those). After having opened something like 75 and the best I have gotten is an off-hand for a class I won't play and cosmetic items (that I don't like the looks of) for weapons it builds a little bit of resentment seeing someone win a mount, companion or such. I'm fully aware that they could have opened thousand of boxes (they drop liberally) but I just can't help having that little "lucky bastard" moment. Sure, if I ever do get a really good one I'll most likely have a WOOOHOOO moment but until then it will be "what shit will I get this time".
The more randomization there is in rewards (both type and amount) the more you build the potential for such moments.
If this were to be used, the reset issue would only apply to running task force like content and then only apply toward the over-arching achievement. So you could run task forces 1,2,3. Do some regular mission content and / or ugc content, take a week off, come back and do the other remaining task forces.
The point here is to encourage players to seek out plYing different task forces by providing a larger reward. However the regular rewards would still be abailBle from task forces even if they are repeated. Caveat of course applying to the possible issue of speed runs with reward rates out of bounds.
To be clear here, it has been our stance that farming as a playstyle is not "abuse" of the game's reward systems, except if exploits are used. The only time there may be an issue is if (moee likely when) players end up figuring out the most efficient way of earning rewards over time and somehow exceed the upper bounds for what is deemed appropriate.
Keep in mind upper bounds will likely be pretty darn high that only a minority of the player base achieve it. We plan to leave plenty of room for such players down to the most casual while only looking for those who go out of the upper bounds as an issue of possible exploit.
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[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I'm assuming that it won't be possible for some trouble maker to prevent people from starting TFs at all. That is, by standing around near the NPC that gives the TF and preventing others from clicking on it, etc. Because that would be a problem.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Since people tend to dislike being punished for certain behaviors and prefer being rewarded for doing the desired thing, it might be better if we could couch the subject of TF variety in such a way as to make players feel as if they're being rewarded EXTRA for doing different content and not punished for doing the same content over and over.
I know that I myself am not personally a subscriber to the philosophy that farming the same mission over and over is a valid Preferred Play Style (TM), which some people espouse. That's fine, we can agree to disagree. If there is no hard gate preventing such repeat TF farming, then simply rewarding players a little more for varying their play behavior would probably be received better by those optimizers that would tend to do such repeat farming in the first place. After all, they're only after the most bang for their buck in terms of rewards for time spent playing the game. If the magic formula for that "Best Option" actually IS to do a series of different things instead of just spamming the same thing over and over, then that, I predict, will quickly become their New Preferred Play Style.
So I like the Achievements etc angle, but instead of presenting it as "diminishing returns on repeat TFs" I would present it as "ADDED rewards for doing chains of different stuff".
I would also point out that maybe developing TFs that don't take 12 hours to do and also TFs that only take 20 min to do would be good. Side by side, the comparison there is pretty stark. I'm okay with a variety of longer and shorter stuff. 45min to 2 hours is a good range to work in, I feel.
Edit: And now having typed all this, I am really jonesing to do a quick Lambda followed by a Keyes or Underground Trial. Who's in?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Isn't that what they actually are presenting those achievements as, a bonus that you explicitly choose to aim for?
The "diminishing returns" that was talked about are an extra step in trying to reign in farming and it's not related to said achievements.
Exactly. Also, the note that I said a diminishing returns would be a last resort. One of the indicators thst something is "not right" is if repeated runs over a particlar time frame results in a higher reward rate that is considered much greater than intended.
And it could very well be discovered after reviewing the data that dev expextations of reward rate needs readjusting based on the behavior of a significant portion of the player base. But if there is specific scenarios where this upper bound is being exceeded, there should be multiple possible steps (singular or in combination) to be taken in order correct the issue. Of which placing diminishing returns would be the last resort.
The very nature of the Challenges and Achievements system in particular to the guidelines of playing through each different task force like content should encourage players to do so as the potential cumulative reward at the end (or final Achievement) would be worth it. Even in the case of repeated runs, I'm not certain it would be required to reset the Challenge for earning an Achievement. Repated runs though could result in a reset of a particular Challaenge was failed.
A quick example of this could be an Undefeated Challenge. Completing each task force while the individual player is undefeated, and gaining a bons if the team is undefeated. The reward fkr this Achievement could be tracked along each indivial task force.repeating a task force incurs the risk of failing this challenge, which results in the Challenge being reset.
Instead of a strict rule of repeat = auto-reset. Allowing repeats, but the player knowingly does so at the risk of resetting.
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- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Here's something that would be about as dirt simple as you can get for TF rewards.
Each TF records a time point corresponding to the last time you completed that particular TF in terms of Time Played (which only increments upwards). So if you've never played a particular TF before, the time since your character last played that TF is the entire lifetime Time Played on that specific character since they were created.
When you complete a TF, the Time Played timepoint gets recorded in the database for that specific character. If the TF has never been played before, the timepoint recorded in the database for that TF defaults to 0000 days, 00 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds.
Right, everybody with me so far?
Now, when you complete a TF, right before the timepoint recorded in the database for your character gets overwritten, it compares the current Time Played against the recorded timepoint ... and the differential then reports out [b]how long you've been playing the game since the last time you ran THAT specific TF[/b].
Okay, everybody clear on the concept I'm outlining here? Simple subtraction to find out the difference, right?
So ... you take that differential in how much time you've been playing the game since the [b]last time[/b] you ran that TF and ... you dump that value into either a formula or a table (Developers get their pick as to which is easier). That formula or table then "decides" what the bonus reward is for your character to have completed that specific TF.
So here's some examples to make the whole notion easier to understand.
A TF offers 20 Reward Merits for completion ... plus 1 Reward Merit for every hour you've been playing the game since the last time you completed that TF.
So if you run the TF twice in a row, and the second time you complete the TF is an hour of Playing Time after the first time, you'll get 20+1=21 Reward Merits the second time around.
If you then went off and played a lot of other stuff and then came back and finished the TF a third time after playing for another 20 hours of Play Time since the last run, you'd earn 20+20=40 Reward Merits the third time you complete the TF.
This means that letting content "lay fallow" will result in larger rewards when you actually come back to it for a repeat. If there are enough TFs to go around (such as, say ... 8) then it is entirely possible to set up a sort of "circulation pattern" in which it is more profitable (and therefore rewarded and incentivized) to "move around" between all of the TFs in sequence, rather than just picking a single one and running it repeatedly on Farm status. The motivation to switch content is thus a byproduct of the reward system (and thus, a "carrot") rather than being "all stick" due to some form of penalty system.
A side effect of such a system then becomes that the "base" rewards for TFs can be set relatively low, even to the point of being almost counterproductive to do, and then let the "reward bonus" system make up the rest such that everyone can pick for themselves how often they want to run a specific TF so as to make it "worth their while" (so to speak). Note that the system I'm outlining here could even go to the extreme (although I don't recommend it) of giving some TFs a baseline Reward of ZERO Merits(!) ... and then just use the Bonus Reward based on differential in Time Played determine the "payout" received for completion. Needless to say, such a system would be one that may require a certain level of "tuning" based on Player Behavior(s) and the Conventional Wisdom it spawns, but fortunately it should be a relatively simple matter to adjust either the baseline reward values for specific TFs (either individually or all in the same patch cycle) as well as the formula/table that computes the Bonus Rewards for allowing time to pass in actually playing the game before returning to a specific piece of content, such as a TF. That way, repeat "farming" of a TF in a short period of time isn't very efficient, but coming back to it over time can be quite rewarding.
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But, by that math, you'd get 20+1+20+1+20+1=63 for playing that same TF once an hour for 3 hours.
Be Well!
Firheart
If you can start doing TFs immediately upon making a character, and there's only one TF to do, then that's right. If there are three to do, it becomes 20+1+20+2+20+3=66, then when you continue rotating through the same three it's 20+3+20+3+20+3=69. More things to do between each run of Task Force Alpha increases the value of each run of Task Force Alpha.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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And if there's other repeatable material that averages 20 per hour, then those three TFs go up to 20+20+2+20+20+4+20+20+6=132 for six hours (same rate as the 66 over three hours while ramping up above), and then 20+20+6+20+20+6+20+20+6=138 over six hours sustained, (which is the same rate as the 69 over three hours sustained, above), for slightly less overall but, after ramping up, the same long-term reward rate...
Other patterns could be used, and more task forces will only add to the variety of ways to get a slightly higher reward rate.
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Right, but, the Shortest TF with the largest reward, repeated infinitely, still gives the highest aggregate score. This is the problem we're trying to address, right? I'm not seeing how a +1 or +6, based on Time, is going to encourage moving around.
On the other hand, a small reward for a TF and larger reward for an Arc of TFs might do the job. There needs to be a reward for actually moving. Otherwise, someone's going to work out the math for Easy+Quick=Reward and we'll have 'Speed Katies' all over again.
Be Well!
Fireheart
In Dungeons and Dragons online Raids have a timer on them that starts when you complete them.
You can't repeat the Raid until the timer runs out.
Even regular missions give you an XP Bonus the first time you do it each day, so you have an incentive to wait 24 hours before repeating a mission: You can get a bonus on each mission if you keep doing different ones.
Personally I think that's better than anything else mentioned here.
Because I hate the idea of having my performance evaluated and compared to someone else's, especially in a game.
It's bad enough in school or at work, but at least there, there are good reasons for it.
In a game it's just a good reason not to bother.
Even people who like to team often hate it when they get stuck with a bunch of zergers.
Don't you hate being dragged around by people who are trying to finish as fast as possible to get a bigger reward.
You can't learn anything, and if there's something that's actually difficult to do and might take several tries then may God have mercy on your soul.
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+1
Hey! I take offense to that.. as a MinMaxEr. :P
You could have shortened up that sentence by using abbreviations. Whats taking you so long. Tick Tock!!
;D
I was using the simplest math possible to best illustrate the concept, not supply benchmarks that were already optimized for the purpose and had no room for improvement. That's why I pointed out it would even be possible to set the baseline/constant part of the reward formula to ZERO and just let the Bonus Reward based on Time Played since last run be all that matters.
It's definitely something you'd want to "tune" in order to encourage a particular set of behaviors in terms of "gaming the system" of how to secure the highest rewards in the least amount of time so as to promote "circulating through all the TFs rather than just picking ONE to run endlessly (ala Quick Katie).
Note that in contrast to the "cooldown timer" method that TMP references above, the system I'm proposing doesn't "lock you out" of repeating content "too soon" ... but rather simply incentivizes not repeating it "too often, too soon" due to diminished reward payouts, as opposed to restricting eligibility to play it.
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Question to Red, do you envision an upper limit cap on the amount of extra Merits one might get were they to, say, leave the game for like a year then come back and do TFs?
To Fireheart's point, let's say we have 3 TFs available:
Posi takes 30 min and gives 20 merits (base)
Manti takes 45 min and gives 30 merits (base)
Statesy takes 1 hour and gives 40 merits (base)
(Note that I think everyone will agree that the TFs base merits ought to scale to the average time it takes to do the TF, giving them an equal Merits per minute base to start with. Red might not have emphasized that point initially, but I think we'd all agree that it makes sense to do it that way).
If you sleep for 8 hours and log in the next day, and then do 5 Posi TFs in a row, by Red's math you'd get: 20+8+20+0+20+0+20+0+20+0 = 108 merits for 2.5 hours of TFing (since you're resetting the TF and doing it again before the first hour elapses, you get no added merits after the first one).
If you instead do a States, then a Manti, then a Posi you get 40+9+30+9+20+10 = 118 merits for 2.25 hours of TFing.
That's 10 more Merits for doing 15 minutes LESS TFing over three different TFs instead of spamming the same one over and over. If, in the second case, you wait 15 min before doing that last TF, perhaps because you're spending time in the auction house or costuming, you'd get one more merit at the end and end up with 119 merits for 2.5 hours (same time, more merits, and some added free time doing other stuff to boot).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Don't see that would be needed since it was based one PLAYED time, not on RL time. And I didn't get the impression that the timer would be "reset" after completing a TF, but rather it wold just add one to the bonus pool for each hour played.
So to redo your calculations (assuming they logged out bang on a /played hour previously with 0 bonus on each one).
Farm Posi: 20+0+20+1+20+0+20+1+20+0=102
3 different: 40+1+30+1+20+2=94
Not that big of a difference.
That's there the difference between a formula and a lookup table comes in handy. A formula can be either bounded or unbounded (meaning no theoretical max limit) and simply runs on variables and constants. A table, however, can have a discrete finite limit of possibilities programmed into it, such that there is an upper limit on the maximum payout possible.
Deciding which best serves the purposes of the game wouldn't be my decision, since there are programming constraints to consider as well, but those are the "shape" of the two most obvious and simple solutions to the problem.
And as already pointed out, you made a mistake. The reward counter goes up with Time Played ... not with real world time elapsed. So time spent not logged in on a specific character "freezes" and effectively "doesn't count" towards increasing the Bonus Rewards. That way, you don't encourage a "logged off farming" mentality.
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My mistake. Going by blacke4dawn's revised version of my scenarios however, the spammer still wins, which is a problem. Maybe a better system would be to have the counter count real time and then max out at, say, 20 hours. That way every day you log in you could theoretically do one of each TF and get the full maximum bonus merits, whatever it is, for each of them. Maybe 1 bonus merit for every 2 hours of real time since your last successful completion of that TF up to a maximum of 10 bonus merits for 20 hours or more spent this way. Depending on how valuable the merits actually are this could be a more easy to remember "hour per merit" rate if you prefer. The trick is setting the base merits for the TFs as a function of expected time spent to completion and then set prices of things you can buy for merits appropriately.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This turns out not to be the case, if you remember that you need to divide your rewards by the time it took to earn them.
The Farm Posi Scenario, which BTW looks more efficient if you cut it off at the same point in the cycle you started at, gets 82/120 min=.683333 merits per minute.
The 3 Different Scenario gets 94/135 min= 0.69629629 mpm, and that's just to start. The next 135 minutes, each TF finishes 2.25 hours after the last time it started, so they all get 2 extra, for 96/135=0.7111111111 mpm.
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This ignores Travel Time between TFs. You lose 'mpm' in the breaks.
Be Well!
Fireheart
If travel time between TF-giver contacts becomes the break point, then I would just give everyone a cell phone or something that lets you set up a TF from wherever you are by talking to the contact remotely. That or if you want to make people cross-cross the landscape, give every TF a 5 minute cool-down timer so that you can't start a new one until 5 min after you ended the last one.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I quite like this idea. It's something I've seen in Swtor and works quite well. Not to mention you need to do them to get decent equipment for the Hard TFs (or Flashpoints as they are called) and the Ops which are so difficult they require 8 players instead of the normal 4. So of course you could do the same over and over again, however it'll get VERY boring and this isn't an issue because there are SOOOO many flashpoints so you aren't likely to get bored.
Plus on top of that the new 4.0 stuff they've added they have done it where the re-doable heroic missions (which are once a week) now give rewards specific to the new story mission stuff they're doing now, so they are on a timer because it'd be so easy to exploit.
Just my opinion on the situation.
The aspect I like most about the Powerball style jackpot system, if it could ever actually work right, is that it gives the entire community at large a prompt to do a specific TF together, not unlike the Weekly Strike Target system in CoX did. This way people get that little push they need for the game to help them decide WHICH specific piece of cooperative content to do tonight, instead of everybody trying to start a different TF and taking forever to form a team.
Using another Magic the Gathering analogy, if you walk into a group of magic players and ask "anyone wanna play Magic?" the immediate response is then "What format?" because there are like 7 different rules sets you can use. Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Standard, Pauper, Commander, and Tiny Leaders. This is why it helps, if you want to get people actually doing stuff, to set up ahead of time what the event is and what format we're all expecting to play that night.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The thing that I don't care for about the Jackpot system is ... praying to RNGesus.
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Now see, the problem I had with the Strike Targets was that after I'd done the weekly, I couldn't find anyone willing to do anything ELSE for the rest of the week. This seems at odds with the idea of encouraging people to cycle around the content.
I'd rather see some combination of the 'repeat timer' and 'diminishing returns' mechanic. The idea being, that there is always *some* segment of players looking to do the same content you do.
I think the problem with the WST was the time scale. It's good that people want to strike while the iron is hot, but I think they needed something more like a Daily Strike Target or something so that you could blow through more different TFs faster and still get the bonuses. I agree that, for the guy who really wanted to do the first Respec TF, the WST was terrible at getting a team together for him on any week that wasn't the week for that TF, which was like EVERY week that year except maybe 2.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
If I may pose some thoughts on the topics discussed so far.
I have a concern with any mechanic that places a timer on an action, in particular a lockout timer. The point of this game, or any for that matter, is to play it. There are people who find satisfaction in repeating things, and who are we to say "you can't play that way" by putting timers on things, thus forcing them to not play the thing that brings them satisfaction. Anything that limits a play style should be looked at very closely, with a very Big microscope.
Now onto Lotto types of rewards. The definition of reward (a thing given in recognition of one's service, effort, or achievement) is counter to the Lotto premise. In playing the game we provide effort and achieve our goals (whatever they may be) and provide service to the needs of the game (missions, TF's etc.); hopefully getting a reward for doing so. In so doing we, also hopefully, become better players and possible even better people. Does winning the Lotto make us better players or people. I have to say it doesn't. Does the game improve with that mechanic, does randomly assigning a gift increase the quality of the game for everyone, again I have to say it doesn't.
Sorry if I am sounding negative, it's in my nature to take the "Devil's Advocate" side of discussions. Thanks for listening!
They also serve, who only stand and wait.
Actually I don't think you sounded negative at all, and what you've said is in keeping with what the devs have said about not putting limits on farming.
The very idea occurred to me (after my previous comment). What difference does it make to us which missions someone is playing as long as they're playing?
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Do you think that doing the same 30-min Quickie Katie Hannon TF 8 times a day for a month makes the min-maxer doing it a better person or even just a more highly skilled player of CoX than people who chose to other content over that same time period? Because I don't. Any idiot can have someone tell them that the Katie is the best bang for the buck and then just rinse repeat that sh!t until they pass out.
I don't agree with this definition of rewards, at least not rewards in the videogame sense, and I'm not against the idea of putting repeat timers on individual content pieces in order to encourage or outright force players not to repeat them over and over to the exclusion of everything else.
In my personal opinion, the vast majority of people who did repeat Katie Hannon TFs in CoX did them not because it was their favorite activity in and of itself, and not because they LOVED Katie Hannon so much that they wanted to save Amy Johnsonover and over just because it was a cool story or whatever. They repeated it because it was a means to an end. It was the most "pay" for the least amount of "work" in terms of time spent and items gained.
The people who did farm Katie Hannons back in the day would tell you openly and honestly that they did that because they wanted to rack up rare drops as fast as they could with the least amount of thinking or work involved on their part to get them.
Whatever the rules of the game end up being, minmaxers will try to find the most "bang for the buck" way to progress through the game, and that will ultimately be their Preferred Play Style, regardless of what it specifically ends up being.
So my argument is, it isn't the mission repeating PER SE that is the Preferred Play Style in the first place, it's the min-maxing. ALL systems can be min-maxxed, it's just a matter of how. Thus, if you allow people to do the same TF over and over and over again, BUT make there be some kind of diminishing return on the items dropped at the end and/or the IGC that one can accumulate, then you're not taking away the pure joy of repeating the same TF for hours and hours from those people that love that specific TF, but you are forcing the min-maxers to rethink the formula and find a different path to maximum wealth for minimum effort.
I would argue that the real min-maxers WANT devs to do that. Finding ways to get the most out of the system via it's own rules and regulations is what they love to do. Once that right answer is found, they can stop thinking and the rest is just following the rote grindy formula for success.
If the "right answer" ends up being that you want to keep switching gears and doing different content (either in a specific order or no particular order) instead of the same exact TF (or worse, the same one mission) over and over, the good news is, there's still a "best option, most bang for the buck" way to progress (spoiler, there always will be) but this way at least you don't have to bore yourself to death doing the same bloody TF all day long every day. I like maximum rewards for minimum work as much as the next player and even I can see the advantages in encouraging variety. I'd much rather do Task Forces A, then B, then C then D, then maybe back to A again, then E, etc... and have it be some kind of more detailed puzzle than just "Everybody knows Katie Hannon is the quickest, so just do umpteen of them over and over like everyone else and you get paid."
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Radiac, the Chalaenges and Achievements system exactly aims to provide what you've just stated; a means of providing a greater possibility of reward for going through multiple task forces (when we have multiple in the game). It does so on the individual character level instead of placing everyone in the same rail road. It also doesn't exclude the possibility of someone repeating the same activity over and again. This is only an issue of the reward rate exceeds the upper bounds of intended design.
Boredom if this activity is subjective to the player, just as is having fun engaging in this activity. The development team's responsibility is to do their best in making each portion of the game engaging, and hopefully qualitively rewarding according to the challenges presented. Would it be nice if people always went on to different content and engaged in the full experience of the game? Certainly. Are players required to do so? Absolutely not.
The important part is the fact that peop,e are playing. The good part is of each experience is rewarding without causing any detriment to the larger player base. Speed runs, farming, and the like aren't necessarily detrimental. It is only when either exploits are used or reward rates result in a higher return than intended is when there a cause for concern.
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Sounds good to me, Tannim. The lottery thing was, afterall, just an idea. I'm not married to it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is why I prefer the Star Trek Online system of offering a Daily Bonus Reward the first time you do something after "a day" has elapsed. It means that the most efficient way to accumulate resources is to "circulate" among the various content options, rather than to just simply repeat farm the same thing over and over endlessly. So you get a one time double payout once per day for each sort of reward, and there are multiple reward currencies (in STO).
In a City of Heroes context, it would work a lot like earning double Marks when doing a TF and then putting the doubler bonus onto a 20 hour cooldown (so come back tomorrow to get it again). That then lets you dial down the rewards for doing the TFs to something that is harder to exploit because the baseline assumption is that you'd only be "wanting" to do each TF once per day at most for maximum payout. Net result? Encouraged (but not enforced!) circulation through the content provided.
You'd still be able to repeat farm a particular TF, but the efficiency of rewards for doing so would drop ... meaning the min-max crowd has an incentive to adopt a different conventional wisdom than just farming a single TF for maximum payout with the minimum amount of effort.
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Please please please don't use cooldowns for such things, use a daily reset instead.
Yes I know I'm probably nitpicking here but I've never liked CD's for things that are supposed to only be done once a day/week/whatever in games since it's fairly easy that it gets "out of sync" with RL (for a lack of a better term) and you suddenly end up a day or so "behind". Making it reset at a fixed time each day has the big advantage enabling someone to do gain these bonuses in the evening one day and then do it again in the morning the next day, and still only get the bonus once per day in total.