Radical different perspective of a possible solution to rage quitting

AnnihilatorX

Join Date 03/2004

Radical different perspective of a possible solution to rage quitting

Approaching from another angle, I am going to suggest a radical change towards game flow and balancing which will solve or at least some of the rage quit problems:

Scale down the amount of gold and exp awarded for killing DGs when every level the agressor is greater than the defender
Scale up the amount of gold and exp awarded for killing DGs when every level the agressor is less than the defende

What does this do? This allow the losing team a chance to comeback through proper readjustment of strategies, giving some of them hope rather than despair and not to make coming back seems impossibility. If the team made a mistake earlier, they can try to make up for it by playing better and hopefully score a few kills to get back to enemy levels. Currently without a dynamic balance act such as this, coming back is a uphill battle with exponentially increasing slope. This merely make the slope straight and easy, but your team still have to climb it to catch up. In addition, the enemy is harder to exploit their power because of the scale down.

In addition, the following is possible:

Scale down the amount of gold and exp awarded for killing creeps for the winning team for every level higher of difference between mean levels of two teams

Because this tend to make the game lasts longer, this will require balancing such as the gold flow may be increased for both team.

EDIT:

Borrowing from InfiniteVengeance's idea, which I think may be superior, is to penalise death rather than reward the agressors, by taking away gold (which I think should be able to go negative even, to prevent cheap item bail) on the defeated. Refer to the first reply

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You guys are suggesting a handicap mechanic. I'm all for that as an option, perhaps even one that's enabled automatically based on relative ladder rank or something (if ranking is affected accordingly). But the whole point of the snowball effect is to avoid drawing out the game, and that's a very good thing.

And the "it's a game, not a sport" thing is silly. Demigod is very obviously intended to be both. That a some of you (and I) suck too much to play it as a sport doesn't mean others shouldn't.

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At first glance I like Annihilator's idea better, and I do think it's a good one. though vengance's idea has some merit as well.

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And the "it's a game, not a sport" thing is silly. Demigod is very obviously intended to be both. That a some of you (and I) suck too much to play it as a sport doesn't mean others shouldn't.

You're putting the cart before the horse. The game needs a bigger playerbase and more balance tweaks to be a sport. We're all talking about a balance tweak here. Also the mechanics of most games make comebacks way more feasible than they are in this one at the moment.

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I'm strictly against any form of punishment upon death

Two reasons:

1) It's bad game design. If you punish upon a mistake, it kills the fun. Keep in mind that in most games the mistake itself already leads to severe punishment, concretely for this game you can neither get XP nor gold while dead. Punishment never goes well with fun, conversly rewarding good play helps the fun.

2) It introduces a spiral of doom. Read the OP's post, it's already explained there.

I'm in favor of the "scaling" approach. Why should I get the same amount of gold for killing a enemy that's a lot weaker than me as for killing some who's on my level? It makes no sense in the first place.

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Quoting Obscenitor,

reply 3

Seems to me the game is about as balanced as can be already, save perhaps 1v1 matches. Regardless, I don't see how forcing on-the-fly handicaps on players will improve balance or attract more players.

I think we fundamentally disagree on the spiral of doom thing. If anything, I would like it to be more severe than it is now. I don't want to drag out a game that's obviously decided already, and I don't ever want to feel like I just won a match because my opponents were good, but I was 'precious'. Levelling the playing field & being nice is just as much fail in competitive games, as the opposite is in society.

An alternative to your on-the-fly handicap might be to do the exact opposite of what's being suggested in this thread: nerf the rewards for killing DGs of your level, and increase rewards greatly for kills with level difference. That encourages both comebacks and more decisive victories.

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There needs to be punishment upon death in some form or another, you can award your opponent kills, not give them xp or gold while dead...whatever, but there has to be some punishment upon death and it is certainly not bad game design.

If there was no punishment for death, I would respawn instantly, losing nothing after dying and you gaining nothing and the game would be terribly contrived. It would consist of me running into battle spamming attack and all my skills and then respawning and doing it all over again.

The current punishment system causes you to sit out for a period, denies you some xp and gold for that period, and gives your opponent some gold. Take out the gold reward and it's still worth me trying to kill you, take out the punishment for death altogether and the game will be broken.

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There's already punishment on death. More/different punishment on death isn't going to change the "fun" by appreciable amounts (you can measure this?)

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Yes, I already said that there is already a punishment for dying. And it's not "different" punishment when additionally substracting a load of gold from the players purse but clearly "more".

With that out of the way I say yes, it is going to change the "fun" by appreciable amounts, because the additional punishment is just overkill. It's like falling on the head by your own fault and then getting laughed at. And I'm not being demigod specific here.

And yes, I can measure it, allthough it's not linear.

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Yes, I already said that there is already a punishment for dying. And it's not "different" punishment when additionally substracting a load of gold from the players purse but clearly "more".

Changing it from "your death gives enemies lots of gold" to "your death gives enemies little gold and you lose gold" IS different. You only think the punishment is greater because you're ignoring the longer term effects of granting the enemies lots of gold. They then become more powerful and more able to kill not just you but others on your team. Killing others on your team makes them even stronger against you.

You losing gold only really makes them stronger against you. Thinking the punishment is "more" ignores the team aspect of the game as so many do when talking about balance. It's no harsher at all.

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