View Full Version : improving op fights
we can agree that the op fight is *the* central element of NC, right?
so, whats your idea to improve this important event?
what do you enjoy most while fighting at an op (apart from winning)?
what do you enjoy the least (apart from losing)? do you think op fights are limited to capped chars, and do you think this is a problem?
do you want to change the need for 4 hacks? do you want longer cool-down times after conquering an op, so ninjaing would be less of a nuisance?
do you want to change the role of the underground door, the underground gr, non-player-defenses (like turrets whiche arent ingame atm)?
what other ideas do you have to make op fights more enjoyable?
Good thread. I'd also be interested in hearing what people would want from owning OPs. At the moment, other than GR control and occasionally the skill bonus, there doesn't feel like there's a huge reason to compete for these pieces of the gameworld. Should there be more stuff at OPs? Should they be bigger? Should more stuff occur naturally at them?
Cursed Shadow
04-09-13, 15:58
I certainly find them to be one of the most alluring parts of Neocron. I like the team fighting play style and fast paced nature of OP Fights.
I'll have a think about what aspects of OP fighting could be changed, and what I would recommend.
But from a "What we've already got" perspective:
- The current hack requirement for OP fights is too high, to the point where it can degrade character setups slightly.
- I think if you die in an OP sector, you should not have implants pop out, this only furthers the pain of OP fighting and makes bounce-back time more aggravating.
- I want to see vehicles used in OP fights more, and I think they should perhaps have different damage modifiers for PvP, than they do for PvE.
- Vehicles are made "indestructible", like the Quad/Reveler, or become indestructible (As in they blow up, but are not permanently destroyed) in Outpost Sectors specifically. *I'm sure this one will have some backlash from other people*
- This one is much trickier, and I don't even know if it can be fixed as it might be a Game Engine level problem. Clipping, let's be honest, it kills OP fights. A guy running around a building repeatedly because he's about to die and doesn't have a heal, it just drags out the fights and makes for a time consuming annoyance.
- Instead of the four hacks, I think the first of the layers should be about destroying a heavily armored entrance to the hack room. This would actually give Tanks something to do and make them part of the entry process.
- I think the UG misusage (for zone whoring) will hopefully be addressed by the Zone Whoring discussion.
I'll think of more, but I hope this provides some food for thought :)
Drachenpaladin
04-09-13, 19:43
Well, regarding PvP OP fights are definitely THE highlight.
Currently i do think it is indeed limited to capped chars.
Most notoric issue i think is the Underground Entrance, the zone whoring but also the AoE spamming for area denial.
The worst part of Op Fighting is the netcode. You can't show someone that doesn't play NC an opwar video and expect them to say 'that looked like fun.' What they are more likely to say is 'why are these people dancing erratically?' or 'is it over yet?'
The key to any game's growth is new blood. You can't even take the slice of NC that players readily identify as the /best/ part of the game and use it to excite potential players enough to join the game. That needs to be fixed.
Additionally, the process of overtaking an OP has become convoluted despite attempts to enrich the experience. Hacknet and hacking are great parts of this game but, with the state of the population, it is unlikely that it is anything more than another hurdle.
Last night I was logged on a poker, resser, and cster and was performing work for 3 different runners in Medi. I was 50% of the zone, doing 100% of the tradeskilling. The population today can not support its needs, and it's not the fault of the players. There needs to be some reprieve for the demands of tradeskillers (to include hackers) and reducing the requirements is probably the most logical way to do it.
The only suggestion I'll offer up right now would be to limit the amount of OPs any one clan can own at one time. Limit it to 4 or 5 this way more clans can actually be involved in OP fighting and it wont just be the two biggest clans fighting for a majority stake of the map. The more clans involved with the OP scene the better.
Doc Holliday
05-09-13, 06:48
Two clear goals should be set for any changes to be made to the op fighting.
Make the fights more accessible to people and make the rewards match the battle. If it was me this would be my core focus and any changes must satisfy one or both of these tenets.
eg. map control. loosen it up a bit. let the clan lock it to friendly or open to all rather than complete clan control for clan only.
Why are you all talking about clipping? I don't remember that being an issue when I was OP Fighting 2 weeks ago.
Cursed Shadow
05-09-13, 10:31
Why are you all talking about clipping? I don't remember that being an issue when I was OP Fighting 2 weeks ago.
It's been an issue in the past few OP Fights I've had. *This week*
RogerRamjet
05-09-13, 12:15
First issue will obviously be balance. I'd love to see the days back where runners who are just scraping epic weapons feel they can compete.
Remove hacknet from the OP experience, or somehow re-implement it. Make spies and PEs the hackers again.
Remove the UG GR.
The only suggestion I'll offer up right now would be to limit the amount of OPs any one clan can own at one time. Limit it to 4 or 5 this way more clans can actually be involved in OP fighting and it wont just be the two biggest clans fighting for a majority stake of the map. The more clans involved with the OP scene the better.
Would you go as far as limiting it to a number of OPs of the same type? Or just a hard limit on the total number?
Remove hacknet from the OP experience, or somehow re-implement it.
Any suggestions?
Remove the UG GR.
Why? Some elaboration on what you think this would bring to the experience would be great.
Cursed Shadow
05-09-13, 12:56
The idea of limiting the number of Max OPs controlled is silly, and can actually be exploited.
If I was your enemy clan, I could choose not to hack back any of your OPs completely preventing you from attacking any OPs, you'd only ever be on defender duty. Considering there are only ever 2 or 3 highly active OP fighting clans at any one time at the moment, once they've got their five... what do they do in the game?
That's what they play for, PvP in the form of OP Fights... I feel that this would hinder rather than help.
With regard to ninja hacking, it's always been part of the game, and if you don't have enough active players to defend OPs, tough luck.
RogerRamjet
05-09-13, 18:37
Any suggestions?
Why? Some elaboration on what you think this would bring to the experience would be great.
For hacknet, I was thinking with the eventual reintroduction of turrets, allow the OP security to be hacked and turrets brought under control of the attackers? Would add an element we've not yet seen into OP fighting.
AS for the UG GR, that last ditch push to the above ground GR when an OP was falling was usually pretty exciting. Now a clan can pop their heads up, get a whooping, zone down and GR out without having to put up a fight if they wish.
The idea of limiting the number of Max OPs controlled is silly, and can actually be exploited.
If I was your enemy clan, I could choose not to hack back any of your OPs completely preventing you from attacking any OPs, you'd only ever be on defender duty. Considering there are only ever 2 or 3 highly active OP fighting clans at any one time at the moment, once they've got their five... what do they do in the game?
That's what they play for, PvP in the form of OP Fights... I feel that this would hinder rather than help.
With regard to ninja hacking, it's always been part of the game, and if you don't have enough active players to defend OPs, tough luck.
I was thinking more along the lines of a 4-5 op hard limit where if you choose to attack another op when you already have 5 then one of your existing ops will go neutral, freeing up space on the map. This shouldn't hinder op fighting at all, it should promote it by freeing up space for other clans to control territory. If my clan has 6 people on and we want to fight but the only clan to fight (because they own 3/4 of the map) has 20 people on there's pretty much no reason to try, but if there's more clans who own ops there's more opportunity to find one with more equal numbers.
There's no real reason why a clan should own more than 4-5 ops other than they just want to have everything and crush any other smaller clan that might dare to get in on the scene. Too many times have we seen a newer smaller clan take an op only to be wiped out by the flavor of the week big clan for no other reason other than ego.
This should also cut down on ninjaing, as there wont be anything to gain from stealing more than 4-5 ops, all your other ops will go neutral. Although we will still have to contend with time zone differences.
Cursed Shadow
05-09-13, 23:09
I was thinking more along the lines of a 4-5 op hard limit where if you choose to attack another op when you already have 5 then one of your existing ops will go neutral, freeing up space on the map.
Now I completely back your suggestion.
As a former (and one of, if not, the first) mega clan leaders, I'm going to say something a little out there.
Faid touches on a key point that is so focal to these types of arguments (number of ops owned/being outnumbered) and so overwhelmingly ignored-
<TLDR>
Clan size is everything. The actual fix for this is limit the number of runners that can be in one clan (and hope the community buys in). Professional teams of any sport have a limited roster. Pro-gaming clans don't have 50 members. For all intents and purposes opwars are sport, which I hope anyone who has felt compelled to read this thread agrees.
</TLDR>
I started New Dawn on Saturn by merging 3 existing, successful, op-owning clans together. For those who can remember NC1 in those days, it was NAT (ala Rizzy, Ste-X), MiG (Crize, uhhh...), and Blood Brothers (Element, Gh0st, Rage-Mage) all merged into one big mostly happy family. Before we merged, every clan was just fine on their own, considered each other 'frenemies' and owned some portion of the map.
The day we formed, we seized the entirety of the wastes and held it, untouched, for several weeks. We had at least 15 players on at all times, peaking around 35 during prime time. There was some attrition due to personality conflicts, a few departures because players were bored of the game; but for a considerable amount of time, we held an extremely high player count and were able to defend everything we owned-- even when there were multiple different attacks.
We eventually decided (thanks to Ste-X) to allow a certain number of small clans to own ops, and not attack them, as a way to appease a number of detractors who said we were killing the server. Those ops changed hands frequently and the battles for them were typically on a very small scale (6v6 or below).
Meanwhile, we were defending our ops from Saturn's larger clans, united against us. We would fight 4 or more distinctly different clans/factions in the larger fights. Everyone wanted to own Soliko so badly. We probably fought there (2^32)-1 times for crying out loud. Those fights were huge-- probably the largest I have ever been lucky enough to be present for.
We held our grip on the wastes for quite some time. Sure some ops changed hands, but it was only when we started to splinter (Black Cartel formed, and was lead by runners from New Dawn) and saw more and more players go inactive or totally leave the game altogether that we lost control of what we took.
The Black Cartel went on to bolster their numbers and repeated exactly what we did.
Granted, I'll argue with anyone any day of the week that ND and BC had the best pvpers ever to grace this game.
However, I don't believe these clans were the power houses they were purely due to the raw skill. There were fights that should have been overwhelming that we had enough players online to handle. We were able to keep the entire server at bay because we were always ready to take whatever was thrown at us. We were able to do that because our clan's online count dwarfed any other clan's numbers.
<TLDR>
If there was a limit on the number of accounts (or less preferentially, runners) that could belong to a clan, it could do great things. Clans would become more privilege than commodity, more distinct, and more competitive. 20 total accounts (per say) can't hold the entire map.
</TLDR>
Doc Holliday
06-09-13, 09:22
nice ego post above. so how does it help todays game?
i'd rather say Divide has a valid opinion on the way, op fights should be: like a sports league. my opinion is different here, i believe we should tweak game mechanics so that a maximum number of players can take part. two different concepts.
nice ego post above. so how does it help todays game?
Anecdotal evidence of my point. Thanks for reading kekekekekeke^^
i'd rather say Divide has a valid opinion on the way, op fights should be: like a sports league. my opinion is different here, i believe we should tweak game mechanics so that a maximum number of players can take part. two different concepts.
That can keep individual opfights from being massively overstacked, but it wouldn't resolve (I don't imagine, anyway) the 'super-massive clan owns too much of the wastes' issue.
William Antrim
06-09-13, 18:37
Nc op fights have become like raids in wow. Too much organising and waiting for too little fun.
Ops need to be taken easier and quicker for more fights and more fun. Nc1 op fighting had that simplicity.
I hate to admit it, but I haven't been in once since I've been back. GMT-7 is a sad timezone to live in for this game from what I have observed. I've been silently concerned how the hacknet layer plays into the process.
Make the owning clan declare a window during which the OP is vulnerable. So the time of day with most members online can be chosen. Maybe even every clan should declare ONE window for ALL of it's OPs - this will make holding whole map more difficult, because it'd sync it's enemies and require fighting multiple battles at the same time.
Or maybe make the windows declared by GMs, so ppl from different timezones would fight for different OPs.
This aims to prevent ninjaing and increase participants count by synchronizing ppl.
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