Objective - Stopwatch - Branching modes

(RasteRayzeR) #1

Objective and stopwatch modes are well known as legacy game modes in SD games. But when I was talking with Ailmanki today I had another idea (he found the name when I explained it to him ^^) :

Branching : as we know each map has been split in smaller maps to accommodate 10 minutes games roughly. So there are 2 to 3 parts to play a full map. Let’s say a full map is a campaign (like in ET:QW), then we could have a few maps to fulfill a campaign.

Now in Branching mode, for the first map teams are randomly assigned to defense/offense in objective mode, and the winning team can choose the map for the next stage. For example, team A wins the first match in map 1, and for the middle stage they can choose out of 2 maps. They chose map 2.a rather than map 2.b. But if they they lose on the map they chose. then it’s over for them.If they win map 2.a, both teams go to map 3 which decides who will win in the end.

It gives randomness and player input in the story line, because right now whether you win or lose a map it changes nothing. Here you can have the true meaning of a campaign : win and you gain an advantage (you choose the middle stage map), but you have to keep wining the battles without failing to win the war (campaign).

(Finko) #2

Sounds interesting, at least we can try to test it :slight_smile:

(Mustang) #3

So it’s basically Campaign mode with a twist, at least it making Objective mode a little more interesting, I am not opposed.

The only downside is that some maps might never get played and if it’s always the minority that wants to play the less popular maps they would always lose out.

Any suggestions to solve that?

For example maps that appear as branch maps in one campaign could be start/finish maps in another campaign maybe, thus they’ll always get played at some point even if it’s less often, or is that too confusing and convoluted.

(RasteRayzeR) #4

[QUOTE=Mustang;483957]So it’s basically Campaign mode with a twist, at least it making Objective mode a little more interesting, I am not opposed.

The only downside is that some maps might never get played and if it’s always the minority that wants to play the less popular maps they would always lose out.[/QUOTE]

Yes, it’s a “campaign mode” but you don’t always get the same story. My main idea is that if you win or lose, the campaign gets affected and changes. This gives a tighter connection between the maps within a single campaign, and helps motivate the players to go through a whole campaign.

Of course it is just an idea. I really like when you actions influence the game itself and this could be one way to do it in XT. And also I’m not sure about SD being ok doing that, because it is possible that they didn’t planned such a feature and it would just get on top of a high pile of “TO DO” things.

(DB Genome editor) #5

While I really like the idea of a branching mini-campaign, what you describe would not be balanced if there is only one version of the 3rd map. Here’s why in my opinion:

[ul]
[li]There are 3 ways a team can win the campaign: lose - win, lose - lose - win or win - win - win. The important ones here are the last 2.[/li]

[li]This is true for both teams, so if the match goes to the 3rd map, it means that either the attackers or the defenders have won the first 2 maps. [/li]

[li]Since the 3rd map is decisive and can be reached through a winning streak by either side, it cannot favor either in its design (wouldn’t be fair to the attackers to win 2 in a row to have the match decided on a map that favors the defenders, and vice-versa).[/li]

[li]If the 3rd map favors both sides equally, then the first 2 maps have no impact on the overall results except that they provide the losers of the 1st map the chance to pull an upset victory by winning the 2nd map. [/li]

[li]Even if the 2 options for the 2nd map are very biased towards one side, the fact that the winner of the 1st map must win the 2nd is an advantage for the losers. They have a chance to win it all if they beat the odds on the 2nd map (no matter how slim they might be) and still have even odds on the 3rd and final map. [/li][/ul]

For this to work the 3rd map needs to be heavily biased towards the team that won the first 2 maps to get there, so there has to be a version that favors the attackers and one that favors the defenders (either different maps or the same one with different starting conditions and/or objectives). Or the narrative has to be such that who are the attackers and who are the defenders on the 3rd map is determined by the first 2 maps (so there could be a role reversal somewhere along the campaign and the map need only be biased in one direction).

Also, I’d rather have the 2nd map fixed depending on who won the 1st. I can only imagine the mess in pubs when half the winning team wants one and the other half the other, and the rage between the two sides whenever that second map would be lost (“We lost because of the map you picked”, “If you had picked the one we wanted we could have won”, etc…). It also simplifies the narrative by removing cases where the same result on one of the 2nd maps can be a decisive and final victory one day (lose - win sequence) or just a step along the way another time (win - win sequence leading to the 3rd map).

TL;DR: Love the idea of a branching campaign, but don’t think it can work if it merges back to a common point (3rd map being the same no matter what) and proposed sudden-death on 2nd map benefits the losers of the 1st one.

(RasteRayzeR) #6

[QUOTE=Djiesse;483962]
TL;DR: Love the idea of a branching campaign, but don’t think it can work if it merges back to a common point (3rd map being the same no matter what) and proposed sudden-death on 2nd map benefits the losers of the 1st one.[/QUOTE]

The details are hard to get right, you have perfectly understood it. I’m convinced there is a way to make the branching possible, because it brings a new element to the conventional SD games and this could be really exciting.

My initial proposal just came out of a flashing idea. It might not be good, but the ground concept it there. I like your idea of getting the roles switched depending on who wins the second map, could be worth exploring

(DB Genome editor) #7

Totally agree. SD already had this concept of the result of a mission determining the next one in Brink’s campaign mode (except that a loss brought you back to retry the same one again), they just need to take it to the next level and have a different follow-up mission depending on who won the first. Also, it doesn’t have to be a completely different map, could just be different starting conditions. For instance, if we take the current version of Whitechapel as a first map, the second could involve something inside the building we blow up at the end. If the attacker won the first map, they already have access to the inside of the building, but if the failed, they now have to blow up an entry point with C4 first.

(Protekt1) #8

hmm edit 1 sec

(INF3RN0) #9

It’s a nice idea. If anything allowing the winning team to pick the next map (where they would continue the story in an offensive or defensive continuation) would be fine too. That way you’d have a toss up between the same 2 maps in a campaign with reversed roles if either side won, so you wouldn’t need to produce a ton of maps for it to work. So that would be A -> B/C, B-> D/E, C->E/F. 1 intro map, with 6 in rotation for a 3 map campaign seems as low as you could go to get this to work.

(ailmanki) #10

I was quite sleepy when RasterRayzeR told me this idea :slight_smile:

The idea of letting a team choose is already happening in competition; usually you get a mappool, and both teams can choose 1-2 they want to play. I guess it depends on the rules of the competition, how that selection is done. This branching would simply connect those maps by a story. The idea is great, the execution of it is very difficult I think.

On the other hand, the choice is so little; it might not really be exciting after 100x times playing those maps. Most will have there preference by then; and in case of bad execution, there will always be the same choice made.

When you told me this idea RasterRayzerR, I imagined it differently, there is a low count on maps in ET which have a branching in them. Like a tank route, which can be blocked of by a barrier; and if not destroyed in time - the tank simply takes another route - irreversible. This has some randomness to it; only players who know the map and understand the mechanic - even grasp what is going on. For the rest, well the tank is just taking some way - does not even matter. It some kind of bad execution of this whole idea.

Camdem might be a good example of possible branching. As the map is now, you could in theory, blow the train up, or hack the controls. Actually one needs todo both of em in specific order. But that this is the basics of branching. In ET you had a few maps, where you could solve a map in different ways - once that was done, the map was finished. So its not the kind of branching we are talking about. But lets imagine, depending on which way you solve a stage of the map, the next stage develops differently.
As an example - probably a bad one - Waterloo its in early form. Get objective from church, bring it to EV. Bring EV to lift; now if the defenders had an option to destroy the lift, then attackers would need to carry the objectives a longer way.

Overall branching, choice is a wonderful thing, but its execution is terribly difficult. Already a linear story is very difficult; maybe I overestimate the problem since it would still be linear, just more like a tree, and not a single line.

(Protekt1) #11

This should just be the way tournaments are handled anyway. Having it built into online mode will be… okay… but not completely necessary or even really that fruitful unless there is really a benefit to having campaign mode in the game in the first place. Like ET had the leveling up for the campaign. But I think SD said they are thinking of moving away from that at this point.

I suspect the built in ladders will not be more than 1 match, but we’ll have to wait for details on that.

Perhaps there could be a bonus exp or whatever incentive for playing through an entire campaign. But that doesn’t seem to be providing a huge benefit.

(RasteRayzeR) #12

[QUOTE=ailmanki;483987]I was quite sleepy when RasterRayzeR told me this idea :slight_smile:

The idea of letting a team choose is already happening in competition; usually you get a mappool, and both teams can choose 1-2 they want to play. I guess it depends on the rules of the competition, how that selection is done. This branching would simply connect those maps by a story. The idea is great, the execution of it is very difficult I think.

On the other hand, the choice is so little; it might not really be exciting after 100x times playing those maps. Most will have there preference by then; and in case of bad execution, there will always be the same choice made.

When you told me this idea RasterRayzerR, I imagined it differently, there is a low count on maps in ET which have a branching in them. Like a tank route, which can be blocked of by a barrier; and if not destroyed in time - the tank simply takes another route - irreversible. This has some randomness to it; only players who know the map and understand the mechanic - even grasp what is going on. For the rest, well the tank is just taking some way - does not even matter. It some kind of bad execution of this whole idea.

Camdem might be a good example of possible branching. As the map is now, you could in theory, blow the train up, or hack the controls. Actually one needs todo both of em in specific order. But that this is the basics of branching. In ET you had a few maps, where you could solve a map in different ways - once that was done, the map was finished. So its not the kind of branching we are talking about. But lets imagine, depending on which way you solve a stage of the map, the next stage develops differently.
As an example - probably a bad one - Waterloo its in early form. Get objective from church, bring it to EV. Bring EV to lift; now if the defenders had an option to destroy the lift, then attackers would need to carry the objectives a longer way.

Overall branching, choice is a wonderful thing, but its execution is terribly difficult. Already a linear story is very difficult; maybe I overestimate the problem since it would still be linear, just more like a tree, and not a single line.[/QUOTE]

Agreed (+1), the ground idea of branching could lead to a great game mode. As this thread goes on, we can see that everyone has a different idea on how to implement it and it is great ! It definitely proves that we want to break this linear kind of gameplay,

SD still hasn’t announced the story of the game or how they intend to integrate each map into it. But from what I can see here, branching could be applied on a micro or macro level in XT :

  • micro : each team performances influences the way a single map runs (objectives that unlock different paths to reach an objective). This one we have been asking for for months when we complain about the maps linearity.
  • macro : winning a map within a campaign should have repercussions on the campaign, otherwise it’s just fighting battles without ever winning the war.

If branching is implemented on both micro and macro levels, I believe XT will become the new W:ET, with years and years of life ahead of it.

(Ashog) #13

[QUOTE=RasteRayzeR;483950]It gives randomness and player input in the story line, because right now whether you win or lose a map it changes nothing.

Here you can have the true meaning of a campaign : win and you gain an advantage (you choose the middle stage map)[/QUOTE]

Imho there is no advantage at all because the teams are random on pub, so why one chunk of random people would prefer/be better on one map, while the opposing chunk of random people prefer/be better on another map? In some rare cases it will be but normally it is also random, if you know what I mean.

I also think that this will lead to map genocides. Campaigns are great though, as well as the map voting, but the branching would make more sense if the loads of custom maps were permitted/available, which is not going to happen I suspect.