The Reality of Leading an Empire Into War - Page 3

wraithverge · 2012-06-08, 07:58 PM

doo de doo, *logs in* The TR will TRIUMPH this day! *checks missions* hrmm, misson from higby, we need non anti air maxes all clustered around this area... highest priority... looks legit to me.

*higby in a lib "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"*

as long as missions say who posted them, I'm cool with it.

Xyntech · 2012-06-08, 11:20 PM

Originally Posted by The Kush

Good luck is all I can say. You don't even know what server you or anyone else will be on yet your trying to organize outfits?

Not a problem if players can freely move their characters around

I know I know, a lot of people hate that and think it will destroy community

Probably true, I wouldn't know.

Timey · 2012-06-08, 11:29 PM

I won't be there, but 10 heads with ambition AND skill to lead hitting their heads togehter on the same channel (kicking the idiots away with please not a democratic vote) and then "controlling" the zerg would be nice.

Virulence · 2012-06-08, 11:41 PM

From what they've said about it, the purpose of the mission system seems to be twofold.

1) Provide a way to automatically generate objectives and incentives to help distribute the population across a continent.

2) Provide a means for command-inclined players to generate their own missions in order to help guide their Empire to victory. This is probably going to be more effective (particularly if there are awards for completing missions) than having different people yelling on /contall or /global for the zerg to do twelve different things.

The ideas behind it seem sound, but it's impossible to say how it's going to actually work out until it's intensively played with on a pop-locked continent, and calling it pointless and stupid and ineffective at this point is dumb.

Xyntech · 2012-06-09, 12:00 AM

Originally Posted by Virulence

The ideas behind it seem sound, but it's impossible to say how it's going to actually work out until it's intensively played with on a pop-locked continent, and calling it pointless and stupid and ineffective at this point is dumb.

I agree. Certainly not the final word in leadership tools, but potentially a valuable tool none the less.

Even ignoring the other problems with CR5, I think that adding a mission would be a lot better than spamming CR5 global chat with "Get off Cyssor! Get off Cyssor! We need people on Amerish! Go to Amerish! Go, go, go!"

Red Beard · 2012-06-09, 12:10 AM

As I pointed out in another thread; I think a feedback system for rating legitimate leadership skills and reputation would be useful if it stayed out of the micromanaging of command relationships.

Leadership is inspiring others to follow you due to your ability to produce the desired results, and if good leadership in this case generates more experience gain than bad leadership, then even the zerg can be induced into giving accurate leadership feedback, as long as the experience reward system is structured properly.

Assuming that is the case, then I think these two things should be combined:

A leadership ratings system based on "underling feedback" that's compiled on a leader based on 'exit reviews' (something like genius on iTunes, or the consumer feedback on Ebay)...the incentive being experience generated for those under his (or her) command. It could be an automatic calculation based simply on experience generated for your followers, or peer review, or a combination of both.

Using that as a ratings system for reference as people shop for anything leadership related would be ideal in my opinion.

The key part of this design relies on the proper implementation of experience rewards both on the leader and follower side of the equation, and if that is set up properly, I think a command structure would form organicly and intuitively, without any micromanaging from the Devs.

Yea or Nay?

kaffis · 2012-06-09, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by p0intman

And no, your "mission system" is not adequate.

p0intman, nothing against you, but I do hope Higby takes this as a challenge and sets out to prove you wrong.

There's no reason a comprehensive, granular, heirarchical system that works cannot be developed with the right feedback and developer attention.

So instead of denouncing something that hasn't even been shown to us, why not go into beta with the approach that we can make the mission system awesome by partnering with the development team and making it a priority goal to MAKE it awesome?

Whenever I see threads like this, I can't help but wonder, even though I have never heard of the poster(s) railing so heavily against command structures or mission systems before, whether we're not just witnessing some guy with a Napoleon complex scared that if a game system to facilitate leadership works, somebody might come out of nowhere and prove to be a better leader than they, so they must instead devote all kinds of energy to ensuring that their big gang of buddies can out-shout or out-number any other budding tactical thinkers in the game and stay "in charge."

Xyntech · 2012-06-09, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by Red Beard

As I pointed out in another thread; I think a feedback system for rating legitimate leadership skills and reputation would be useful if it stayed out of the micromanaging of command relationships.

Leadership is inspiring others to follow you due to your ability to produce the desired results, and if good leadership in this case generates more experience gain than bad leadership, then even the zerg can be induced into giving accurate leadership feedback, as long as the experience reward system is structured properly.

Assuming that is the case, then I think these two things should be combined:

A leadership ratings system based on "underling feedback" that's compiled on a leader based on 'exit reviews' (something like genius on iTunes, or the consumer feedback on Ebay)...the incentive being experience generated for those under his (or her) command. It could be an automatic calculation based simply on experience generated for your followers, or peer review, or a combination of both.

Using that as a ratings system for reference as people shop for anything leadership related would be ideal in my opinion.

The key part of this design relies on the proper implementation of experience rewards both on the leader and follower side of the equation, and if that is set up properly, I think a command structure would form organicly and intuitively, without any micromanaging from the Devs.

Yea or Nay?

Yea, with a couple of notes.

The voting should do two things. If you vote that you like a commander, it raises their profile for all players (except for ones who have already voted that they don't like that commander), while also prioritizing their missions higher for you than other commanders who you haven't rated, or haven't rated as highly.

On the other hand, if you vote that you don't like a commander, it shouldn't lower their profile for other players, it should merely remove their missions from your view. Commanders should be upvoted, never down voted. Obviously this system won't be perfect, but I think that zerg outfits will still have trouble ranking higher than commanders who are popular in general, across multiple outfits and the unorganized zerg. Especially if the zerg outfits don't have the option to downvote players.

To prevent spamming with multiple free accounts, voting could require recent active play time, or else your votes become void until you start playing on that character again. 4 hours per weak maybe? Still could be abused, but not worth the hassle for most players.

My idea of the vote system would be something like giving each player like 100 vote points. They could either give all 100 to a single commander, or split it between multiple commanders. 25 each to 4 you like, or 30 to one, 60 to another. However the player wants to divide it up.

kaffis · 2012-06-09, 01:02 AM

Cap the number of times you can upvote a given commander, too.

That way, if somebody gives you consistently awesome, fun, meaningful missions, you can max him out at 10 upvotes.

If somebody's more hit and miss, but still is clearly giving thought to stuff, you can give him 5 and then stop upvoting him (but not ignoring him, either).

And then, the zergfits can't just constantly vote for one guy on each account -- they eventually hit a cap.

p0intman · 2012-06-09, 02:42 AM

Originally Posted by kaffis

p0intman, nothing against you, but I do hope Higby takes this as a challenge and sets out to prove you wrong.

It would be great if he does.

Do it. Go and prove me wrong.

You know what I don't want this to turn into? A zergfit controlled system. That is possibly the single largest problem with it. That is why I propose a joint operations structure instead. Less dick wagging, more pew pew.

Edit: If you believe me to have a napolean complex - which I'd have to disagree with, im not even that good, just better than most of the cr5s these days - I invite you to do better than me. Surely, having someone who is greater than I do all of the leading would actually make things easier for me, because then the target would be on their heads, and not mine. Show me, o great one, how it is done.

As a sidenote, I am quite tired of people accusing me of having things like a napolean complex or trying to be a single voice for all outfits or whatever without actually stepping up and doing better.

Sabot · 2012-06-09, 03:18 AM

There's another problem with the misison system as far as I can see though... If a mission comes up, too many might be inclined to go take care of it, leaving the current battle with not enough troops.
I don't by any means think that the mission system is a bad idea, and we don't 100% know how it works yet, so beta might prove me wrong on this. But in the end I tihnk that people will have to be the ones that take care of the tactics of your faction. Easiest way of doing that, is having open communication with other "serious" outfits. If one or two or three players have proven to make sound tactical decisions, they can contact players of other faction that might be specilized in whatever the "commanders" wants to be done.

If we need a drop on a hex behind enemy lines to bind enemy troops at the position, I wouldn't want to wait for a mission to come up, nor would I want to put one up myself, because I'd want players I know can handle it to take care of it. So.. if there is a outfit specialized in this, I'd ask them to deal with ASAP. However, if I were the commander, I would never ask anyone to do something they didn't want to do either. At that point I might want to put up a mission and hope that some of the zerg goeas and takes care of it... or do it myself. It's a game after all and if people aren't having fun there's no point in it at all.

GuyFawkes · 2012-06-09, 04:23 AM

Originally Posted by Mastachief

You ... just .... don't.... follow the.... BAD ...... Commanders

Simples!

This^

Mike33 on werner in ps1 had one of the largest spam outfits on the server , but was still a spoon on almost every level.
Co-ordianting alliances or whatever to make a collective spoonful dosent change the fact that a spoon maybe controlling it. To their underlings they may be god, but to others they are simply a spoon.

Then you have the Gen-O-cide brigade from ps1 '' vaild tactic'' ''yeah but we staring at grey walls for 15 mins''

The game soon sorts the wheat from the chaff

p0intman · 2012-06-09, 04:25 AM

Originally Posted by GuyFawkes

Then you have the Gen-O-cide brigade from ps1 '' vaild tactic'' ''yeah but we staring at grey walls for 15 mins''

The game soon sorts the wheat from the chaff

It will likely not please you to know that I regularly kill gens with 70-80+ percent pop to make a point to the VS or TR.

GuyFawkes · 2012-06-09, 04:34 AM

Originally Posted by p0intman

It will likely not please you to know that I regularly kill gens with 70-80+ percent pop to make a point to the VS or TR.

Its not that killing a gen wasnt a valid tactic in certain situations, its just that to a degenrate few it was the only tactic they knew.
Things won't change .There plenty of wanabe generals that always tried using cr5 chat to spam ideas on the rest of us , but there was only 3 or 4 real leaders across all the servers on all the empires who really really knew what they were doing and gel everyone together into a super army for a few hours.

Mechzz · 2012-06-09, 04:56 AM

Originally Posted by Red Beard

....

A leadership ratings system based on "underling feedback" that's compiled on a leader based on 'exit reviews' (something like genius on iTunes, or the consumer feedback on Ebay)...the incentive being experience generated for those under his (or her) command. It could be an automatic calculation based simply on experience generated for your followers, or peer review, or a combination of both.

...

Hehe! This is a neat idea Red Beard, but it made me giggle when I read it. It made think of the new "questionnaire-filling" meta-game it would bring to planetside2.

So you're waiting to spawn after a mission is completed. Pop-up says "could you spare us 5 minutes of your time to give us your feedback on the mission you just completed".

Still, if they gave us dog-tags for completing the questionnaires, I would probably fill in a few!