Adjusting Scenarios for Fun and Profit
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:26 pm
I think everyone except the people clamoring for 24/7 2x XP understand that Thunder Valley’s XP/time ratio is off and the scenario needs tweaking. However, overall there’s a much bigger problem with scenarios in the other direction: many of them last too long in every circumstance.
Most players would agree that Nordenwatch is the ideal baseline for a scenario. The three-point King of the Hill scenario is a classic, both in MMOs and elsewhere, and Nordenwatch has a solid design with interesting geometry and variety in play. If anything in WAR can be called iconic, it’s Nordenwatch. It’s also a rewarding scenario: points are scored continuously, so the longest a game will realistically take is when a healer and tank heavy fight on Fortress stalls the cap, but even assuming a full zero-kill stall where no one back caps the longest Nordenwatch will take is 12.5 minutes. On the flip side, consistent victory for one side will end in under five minutes, while complete dominance can be over in less than two.
Unfortunately, Nordenwatch is the exception, not the rule. Most scenarios stall easily or simply do not score points quickly enough to match Nordenwatch. For example, the tug-of-war maps: Battle for Praag and Gromril Crossing, require a 3-second action to capture the flag and take an additional minute to actually flip. Compounded by the fact that they’re 18 and 24 player scenarios makes it much more likely to stall in the center, and even if one team does manage to capture their payoff is fewer points than controlling two flags on Nordenwatch. Due to the map design and heavy player count it’s even harder to push deep -- I’ve only seen a 4-cap on Praag once, and that was a stomping -- so the win still takes forever, and the losing side is scoring zero points the whole time. A standard game of Praag will last 10-15 minutes.
The single point missions, like Doomfist Crater, have a similar issue with stalls scoring no points, but at least when one side captures they score as much or more than a two-cap on Nordenwatch. However, like the tug-of-war these have the issue of frequent 0-100 point losses that take much longer than a similar loss on Nordenwatch. Tor Arnoc and Mourkain’s Temple fall into this category as well, but made even worse by being able to carry the “point” out of the middle. The inevitable death of its carrier has little effect when they’re standing near their own respawn point, surrounded by allies. The losing team is left with the option of idling in their spawn and waiting out the very slow ticks, or feeding kills to end it as quickly as possible.
Lastly, the capture-the-flag/bombing run scenarios. Also prone to stalls where neither side can grab the objective, but these often lead to the dominant side spawn-camping the others while no one does the objective. From the dominant side’s perspective this is rational, because if they split off to take the flag they may lose their advantage and be pushed back, but as a consequence it takes far longer to reach 500 and both sides suffer. Blood of the Black Cairn also suffers from this: taking the side points requires splitting off and can result in the middle point being overrun, so the winning side just camps the spawn and wins very slowly.
Nearly all of these take longer in every case than Nordenwatch and reward the same or less. In some cases, the payoff for kills will be higher, but that’s not guaranteed at higher ranks where durability goes up and slogs become more common. Either way, kills don’t scale compared to the bonus. A game that takes 10 minutes where each side gets 50 kills will earn significantly less XP/time than a game that takes 5 minutes where each side gets 25 kills. So the non-Nordenwatch/Reikland Hills/Factory scenarios are just worse. Sometimes a little worse, sometimes a lot worse.
Now, I don’t think most of these designs need to change drastically. I’m happy to blacklist Mourkain’s Temple forever -- it’s broken in myriad ways -- but to encourage diversity, and reward diversity, I think most of the scenarios should have their scoring increased. Add passive scoring to locked tug-of-war points, increase the scoring for single-point king-of-the-hill, objectives, flag caps, and bombing runs, and increase scoring for kills for any scenario that doesn’t have a continuous push towards the game ending. There will still be plenty of scenarios that can be easily dominated by a premade or lucky well-formed PUG, but at least they’ll be dominated quicker and the loser can take their 1k XP and get on to the next round.
Most players would agree that Nordenwatch is the ideal baseline for a scenario. The three-point King of the Hill scenario is a classic, both in MMOs and elsewhere, and Nordenwatch has a solid design with interesting geometry and variety in play. If anything in WAR can be called iconic, it’s Nordenwatch. It’s also a rewarding scenario: points are scored continuously, so the longest a game will realistically take is when a healer and tank heavy fight on Fortress stalls the cap, but even assuming a full zero-kill stall where no one back caps the longest Nordenwatch will take is 12.5 minutes. On the flip side, consistent victory for one side will end in under five minutes, while complete dominance can be over in less than two.
Unfortunately, Nordenwatch is the exception, not the rule. Most scenarios stall easily or simply do not score points quickly enough to match Nordenwatch. For example, the tug-of-war maps: Battle for Praag and Gromril Crossing, require a 3-second action to capture the flag and take an additional minute to actually flip. Compounded by the fact that they’re 18 and 24 player scenarios makes it much more likely to stall in the center, and even if one team does manage to capture their payoff is fewer points than controlling two flags on Nordenwatch. Due to the map design and heavy player count it’s even harder to push deep -- I’ve only seen a 4-cap on Praag once, and that was a stomping -- so the win still takes forever, and the losing side is scoring zero points the whole time. A standard game of Praag will last 10-15 minutes.
The single point missions, like Doomfist Crater, have a similar issue with stalls scoring no points, but at least when one side captures they score as much or more than a two-cap on Nordenwatch. However, like the tug-of-war these have the issue of frequent 0-100 point losses that take much longer than a similar loss on Nordenwatch. Tor Arnoc and Mourkain’s Temple fall into this category as well, but made even worse by being able to carry the “point” out of the middle. The inevitable death of its carrier has little effect when they’re standing near their own respawn point, surrounded by allies. The losing team is left with the option of idling in their spawn and waiting out the very slow ticks, or feeding kills to end it as quickly as possible.
Lastly, the capture-the-flag/bombing run scenarios. Also prone to stalls where neither side can grab the objective, but these often lead to the dominant side spawn-camping the others while no one does the objective. From the dominant side’s perspective this is rational, because if they split off to take the flag they may lose their advantage and be pushed back, but as a consequence it takes far longer to reach 500 and both sides suffer. Blood of the Black Cairn also suffers from this: taking the side points requires splitting off and can result in the middle point being overrun, so the winning side just camps the spawn and wins very slowly.
Nearly all of these take longer in every case than Nordenwatch and reward the same or less. In some cases, the payoff for kills will be higher, but that’s not guaranteed at higher ranks where durability goes up and slogs become more common. Either way, kills don’t scale compared to the bonus. A game that takes 10 minutes where each side gets 50 kills will earn significantly less XP/time than a game that takes 5 minutes where each side gets 25 kills. So the non-Nordenwatch/Reikland Hills/Factory scenarios are just worse. Sometimes a little worse, sometimes a lot worse.
Now, I don’t think most of these designs need to change drastically. I’m happy to blacklist Mourkain’s Temple forever -- it’s broken in myriad ways -- but to encourage diversity, and reward diversity, I think most of the scenarios should have their scoring increased. Add passive scoring to locked tug-of-war points, increase the scoring for single-point king-of-the-hill, objectives, flag caps, and bombing runs, and increase scoring for kills for any scenario that doesn’t have a continuous push towards the game ending. There will still be plenty of scenarios that can be easily dominated by a premade or lucky well-formed PUG, but at least they’ll be dominated quicker and the loser can take their 1k XP and get on to the next round.