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[L.C.]

An idea regarding gameplay occurred to me.

What if there were a zone, like an SVS zone, and a bunch of ship settings were changed every few seconds based on realtime/always-changing statistical information? Essentially, a dynamic form of gameplay that always changes based on player & population behavior.

Almost like how the stock market/economics works...

EDIT: And the same would happen with ?buy costs, how many points a player gets from a kill, flag win, powerball score, etc.

However, I have no idea as to what information may be used to determine how much to change each setting or to determine the dynamics of the settings.

EDIT2: This is an idea I would love to implement for Jackpot SVS as an experimental feature.

EDIT3: Left4Dead is a good example of this.

[JoWie]

We "sort of" do that at C&C.
You get credits, you spend it on buying upgrades, but the upgrades are for the entire team. When the game is over, everything resets.

The idea is that we would have a LOT of upgrades along with a tech tree. (investing more in the same "tree" is more beneficial then starting another one)

So if the enemy uses 1 particular tactic, you could defend against it using the proper upgrades. Hopefully, no 2 games would be the same.

Enemy invests in a superweapon, you can invest in counter measures, or you can invest in offensive capabilities to take out the superweapon

[Hakaku]

Well some zones already partly do that, for example, Powerball Zone makes the playing field larger when there's more players around, and Devastation's MegaJackpot event increases the jackpot factor as more players play. But most zones have per-player changeable factors, such as settings, costs, rewards, attach requirement, etc.

A lot of the realtime changes aren't actual changes at all though. Rather, they're specific formulas that actively check certain factors everytime a new request is made. For example, in a simple buy system, you check how many points a player has, and if they have enough, they're able to buy. In a similar respect, you can start adding new factors such as the price increases by so much as the player's points rises, or depending on the player's location on the map, how many kills and deaths they've achieved, etc.

All you have to do is have your bot configured to check certain factors and change certain aspects of the gameplay. What you decide to change is entirely up to you. It could be buyables, prices, ship speeds, arena size (using doors), or other.

What information and factors you need to take into consideration will vary depending on what you're trying to achieve. If it's a buy system, perhaps you want to take into consideration the number of points/credits/money they have, what ship they're using, the number of kills and deaths, whether they're on a spree or not, the number of players in the arena, how long ago this item was bought, limited availability of an item, where the player is on the map, etc. In the end, it all comes down to testing things out and seeing what works best.

[L.C.]

Very good information.

One of the things I was thinking about specifically was bomb and bullet damage, strength of rocket and repel, afterburners, and energy (this would only apply after death or changing ships).

Some factors could include the total number of players playing (in a ship), number of people on a non-empty frequencies, kill:death ratio, how frequently they get killed, lifetime (amount of time from new spawn to death), direction pattern (ie. if you mapped out a player's movements, from the moment they spawn to the moment they die -- did they turn left more than they did turn right, vice versa?), status (ie. they are detected as an individual who is after flags/powerballs more than they are just about killing people; someone who likes to be a attached to a teammate more than piloting their own ship; someone who tends to run more than confront enemies), amount of received bounty depends on number of players (more bounty if there are more players, but a player's bounty changes on-the-go/realtime as players leave and enter the arena), how often you attach to someone ...

Another thing is that this would probably be more appropriate as an ASSS thing than bot.



I am thinking more on a large scale level in the sense that it encompasses as many parts of the settings possible. Certain changes apply immediately while in combat, while other changes require you to get a new ship (whether you do a ship change or die).

It would work with any settings, and perhaps depending on what your default settings are -- that would act as a sort of "seed number" to assist in the dynamics of the gameplay. The idea is on-the-go, immediate changes in gameplay that players can feel and experience, but nothing so drastic as to change a players speed from one end of the spectrum to the other, but rather gradual real-time changes that go in a certain direction based on game data, statistics, behaviors, etc.

And yes, I imagine something like this would be quite complicated and difficult and would require lots of collaboration and brainstorming.




EDIT: Another idea.

If the economy of "bombs" were so bad (their damage level is what is being adjusted here), they would be weak enough that players would consider using bullets over bombs -- so in this element, players would have to alternate between bombs and bullets depending on some factor(s).

[Samapico]

How about damage that depends on the environment your ship is in? A base made of some elastic material where bombs and bullets can bounce, a base where the atmosphere is dense and bombs are less effective

Though it would make more sense for thrust / speed / rotation to be affected by environment
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(Insert a bunch of dead links here)

[D1st0rt]

Just keep in mind that your bandwidth usage is going to go through the roof if you do something like this.
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[Cheese]

just out of curiousity, why would you be concerned about bandwidth in a 15 year old game?

how much bandwidth does a zone like hs or tw use? :S
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SSC Distension Owner
SSCU Trench Wars Developer

[Dr Brain]

In HS it's not much, because we're conservative about how many settings packets we send. If you start sending them every few seconds (as proposed in this thread), then beware.
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Hyperspace Owner

Smong> so long as 99% deaths feel lame it will always be hyperspace to me

[sirkillsalot]

well i know it's old but does not have to be every few seconds of changing maybe every game or 5 to 10 mins to do this would require a automation system that every so often will change the settings around and maybe JUST MAYBE having a bot to change the settings every x min????? to something completely random

[Dr Brain]

Punctuation is not optional.

[sirkillsalot]

but is it possible

[Samapico]

We don't understand you if you don't use punctuation... Put some effort in your posts, and we'll put efforts in our replies.

[L.C.]