Inmate2993: It''s true that skilled players have the advantage of being skilled. And as far as I can see, no one in this thread suggested removing that advantage.

But many games turn into a positive feedback loop, where once a player is more skilled, or gets ahead of the others, he spirals out of control, becoming tougher and tougher, getting better and better weapons, while everyone else don''t get much chance to even improve on their current situation.

Examples include deathmatches in FPS games, where players, once they''re doing well, ends up with all the good weapons, while everyone else keeps respawning with a pistol.

Or strategy games, where the player who''s strongest *right now* gets more resources than the other players, can build more and better units, and is, in effect, practically unstoppable.

Or RPG''s where the stronger player is the only one to gain XP, because he''s stronger than the others, and so defeats them every time. This obviously enables him to become even stronger, while everyone else aren''t really moving at all.

A skilled player should obviously have an advantage through his skill, yes, but I think too many games hand out additional advantages to the player who''s in the lead, simply because they''re in the lead.

In effect, this often means that once you start losing, you might as well quit the game and start over. Not very clever gameplay design, is it?


---------
Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast

That''s a big problem in multiplayer game, especially when you start playing with some strangers over the Internet. Things like:

"How in the hell did he do that?"

"Look, I just saw him half a second ago over that hill before he killed me."

Newbies find it impossible to play like the experts. The worst thing that could happen is they (the newbies) could think that the experts are cheating. This is a major issue because it would make the newbies leave the game because he got killed so often and he didn''t see it as fair. If you play a game with some friend in the same room, like playing GameCube together, you know he''s not cheating, you will soon realize that he is better than you, and you can accept that fact.

Ladders are a good solution for this. You rank all players by kill/death ratio, or whatever. Then you are only matched with players within some distance from yourself.

Really good, or cheating, players float to the top and only play each other. Really poor players float to the bottom, and only play other really poor players.

A good ladder system goes a LONG way.

make the game strategic, then its based on how smart the person is

as playing to many games all the time makes you dumb...etc etc the tables will turn!

edit:
also i hate skilled players!, make the game so unfun!

playing with newbies is fun, get DOD and setup your machinegun, and your set for the game, like shootin fish in a barrel

[edited by - johnnyBravo on March 1, 2004 8:13:08 AM]

quote:

---

Original post by Spoonster
But many games turn into a positive feedback loop, where once a player is more skilled, or gets ahead of the others, he spirals out of control, becoming tougher and tougher, getting better and better weapons, while everyone else don''t get much chance to even improve on their current situation.

---

This is exactly what I meant. Games don''t necessarily need to give handicaps to skilled players, they just need to provide a way for someone who gets behind to be able to get back in the game.

When I was a child, we''d play Tag with a "No Tag Backs" rule, that being if I just tagged you, you couldn''t turn around and tag me back. Perhaps a "No Frag Backs" rule can be made up, I.E. players that were recently fragged are given a grace period of immortality to get them back on their feet.

As for Newbies Versus Oldbies. Ladder it.

In a MMORPG, pk''ing has never quite been figured out to begin with, but I''d say any zones that are pk enabled, set a maximum level on each zone, and if your level is too high, you aren''t allowed in. And maybe a minimum level too, so newbies can''t stumble into oldbie battles.

But you also need to be careful when introduing a "penalty" of any sort to advancing. It can lead to weird unintuitive and often un-fun behavior from the player. One example I can think of was one of the Final Fantasies... i think 8? The deal was that the higher level your characters were, the more powerful the monsters became. On the surface it seems ok, but the ratio was unbalanced so that fighting at high levels was much harder than at low levels, regardless of where you were in the game. As a result, many FAQs and players on their own figured out the strategy for doing well in the game was to try to level as little as possible, and not advance their characters much at all until the very end of the game when there weren''t any challenges left. This kind of thing really detracts from a game, when something that SHOULD be a reward (getting a new spell, gaining a new level), inwardly makes you cringe because you know the handicapping system is going to hurt you more than the new level helped you.
Similarly, I''ve seen multiplayer games that would handicap good players as they went along but reward poor players in an attempt to even things out. This would lead good players to act like "pool sharks"... basically, playing very badly and trying to get shot in the beginning so that the computer would think they were bad and the other player was good, thus giving him more power and weakening the other player. Then the player pretending to be bad would switch halfway into playing with his real skill and taking out the other player. Consider whether you want this to be how your game should be played. If people know your system works like this, then something that SHOULD be rewarding (shooting the other player), will also make you cringe because you know you actually just weakened yourself and made him stronger. If the levels aren''t balanced very well, no one will WANT to shoot the other player until the time is almost up because they will fear the other players are "sharking" them.

I personally advocate a computer assist system rather then a handicap system. How it works is that initally the computer helps the player by making things easier. As the player starts winning this assistance is lessened and eventually each computer assist is removed. So that the player is in complete control. Basiclly the better the player the more skill is required to perform at the same level.

So in a fps there might be auto-aiming, auto-dodging and increased armor to start. As the player kills opponents the auto-aim compensates less, the character stops dodging and they begin to take closer to normal damage.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

Here''s a link to a similar thread I started a while back.

I''m still working on that game (the engine mostly, but that is coming along nicely), so haven''t yet tried the suggestions there, but it might be a nice addition tot this thread.