Originally posted as a reply to newsfeed. Please SHARE ANY THOUGHT WORD INCOMPLETE PHRASE. To balence the equilibrium between The needs of Hardcore Players vs. Casual/Nonactive/Beginner players

The aim of this is to form a COLLECTIVELY ACCEPTABLE solution to a problem that persistsin all games, even your candy crush (well maybe not). This thread should be looked into by the developers assess of a giant idea that will soon sprout equality inParaversume. Here is what I posted in the newsfeed, and every opinion will be greatly appreciated in not just this idea, but many others to come that real are to this problem.

I still thinkit should be payable via large amounts of PB or instead buy para bucks with 3day vacation all catchup for that 14.99$ price. But all players should be welcomed.
Therefore I propose that when the game exits alpha, everyone's build will be reset and depending on the level of the upgrades, award special ranks for levels 10-20 20-30 30-40 etc available to alpha players only. Then they have additional fair amount of PB added to their account.

This with the reset, for the first few months leave the cap at 20. And every month raise the cap by 1or2.
however hardcore players PAST THAT POINT CAN:
Invest in weekly resetting point multiplier called Energy Manipulator that is super expensive 1k or so (yikes) that ascends at an exponential value and every 1 level adds to your Point/Energy multiplier for THAT WEEKS CAMPAIGN ONLY.
For example:
level 1 Energy Manipulator 1.1x points
Level 2 Energy Manipulator 1.2x points
Etc
For it to be available to upgrade, Max upgrades to your drone is required.

The presence of this idea Is to still promote HARDCORE gameplay and yet limit the growth of the top players so the Bottom beginners/slackers such as myself can catch up eventually to the top dawgs. It sounds fair enough and should be considered for implementation. I feel this will be successful, yet with the EM having an effect on the leaderboards that award PB, all y'all crazy players can still be overpowered.

Edited by moderator Tuesday, May 20, 2014 10:05:03 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I know this is a big idea, but how about different classes? Fighters: gain more experience through fighting
Mission-solvers: more through solving the missions
Supporters: Gains more when other people are around and fighting
Explorers: gains more through collecting

Each would have their own perks to:
Fighters: slightly atronger attack
Mission-solvers: slightly more speed and/or building rates
Supporters: can give other players health
Explorers: can move freely within a radius of a structure (there would have to be more added to this, I'm just not sure yet)

I'm not to sure about the uneven power levels yet (maybe a bracket system?)

--> Annoying Players

In any game, there are going to be jerks. That's the way of the world. But when the teams start to talk about each other in venomous ways, and behave badly because they think the other guys are all jerks, the game is starting to get ugly -- and thus not fun in the long run.

Let's face it: unless we were dumb, we knew from the start that the team choice was arbitrary. It doesn't matter what you actually care about, you just pick a color. Orange or blue.

Now when I played SC, everyone on my team talked about the other team as bad people, assholes, people who didn't want everyone to have fun and just liked picking on people. WE are nice people, and supportive, and great, but THEY are total dicks.

Guess what? I chose a team arbitrarily for Paraversume, and you know what? Everyone KNOWS that the blues are dicks. You have to be an asshole to stick with the blue team, obviously. Orange, oh, we're quite saintly.

I know that's not statistically significant or anything, but I'm betting that the Blues talk about the Oranges the same way. Sure, we have the odd dickhead, but we don't know about it or we laugh it off. Probably both. But their guy? Oh, he's an asshole.

This is NOT GOOD.

Suggestions:

1. Start a third team. Just think through what will happen, right? A PP goes up, and THREE teams show. Who shoots whom? If Blue really are dicks, Orange and Black (or whatever) will trash Blue, and Blue will always lose. Good: they learn something, maybe. But if in fact everyone is pretty much evenly balanced normal people, it gets complicated real fast. Blue-1 will talk or think, Blue-2 always shoots first, and so on. But since Blue-2's actions get Blue Team trashed, Blue Team will have to do something to rein in Blue-2's behavior. And the same goes for the other teams. I suggest that you accept volunteers up to X percentage from Blue and Orange to form the new team, so that everyone is equal very quickly.

2. Set up the occasional BIG MONSTER BASH. Drop a 10k Igor and tell everyone where it is -- set up a non-aligned portal to go to. Now will people team up to trash the Igor, or will they shoot each other? If one Orange decides it'd be funny to shoot a Blue, won't Orange be just as pissed as Blue about the result? And so on.

3. Have the PPAs be aligned. You get full XP for blasting them no matter what alliance, but if the poo hits the fan and you're outgunned, your aligned PPAs will join in to take out the other team(s). Weakest team gets the most PPA allies, or PPA allies only support the weakest team, or whatever. So if you show up at a PP and the other team has zillions of heavy hitters, the longer you can hold out and do your best, the more bad-ass PPAs the other team has to fight off at the same time. Balances the equation a little.

Because in the end, it's all about balance. For the new or casual player, getting hosed by some big meanie from the other team is not fun. It's even less fun when you realize that there is nothing at all you can do about it. Sure, you can call for help, but by the time your team's big hitters show up the other guy is gone, or you call for a PP and everyone on both sides shows up -- at which point you are a trivial casualty in a big battle. Not fun.

4. Develop Team Leaders, people who play a lot, have powerful drones, and behave well. Have teams put names forward for leaders, and have the other team cast an important (if not necessarily deciding) vote. If Orange puts forward a big hitter who's a total jerk to the Blues in every venue, they should be able to vote her down. But if Orange puts forward someone that the Blues think plays fair and honest, that's a good leader. And then, when reining in your team's bad-behaving jerks becomes important, those leaders need to step forward and do something. When they do, by the way, you should have "thank you" tags on posts and names. Those who get the most such tags FROM THE OPPOSING TEAM get XP bonuses -- leaders only, of course; this should be subject to some comment or review or whatever by the originating team, just in case. But the idea is that you should be able to have team leaders who get XP bonuses (or whatever) for being enemies their enemies can respect. Among other things, this means that if one Blue player is being a total jerk to someone else, for example haunting a newbie's spawn in order to blow him up just because, the Blue leader who says "stop it or else" has an incentive -- and Orange has someone to turn to when their new player is having an awful time because of the Big Blue Meany.

Can't resist:
"Yes, your Blueness!"
"Whaaaaaat? Blue meanies only take no for an answer!"
"No, your Blueness!"
"That's better, Max."

Edited by user Thursday, June 19, 2014 8:08:58 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Had written "a last suggestion" and then wrote another post of suggestions, so I changed t

I think the big problem with the team leaders thing is that we already have moderators (though they have been busy/sick lately). The mods and Sym can ban/temp ban people. Also, in a fight situation, neither team is going to have the time to fire on his own team while being fired at from the opposite team. It puts you back at square one: team x leader trying to police his own team while getting upset with team y for attacking. Another problem with a leader role is "what happens when they aren't on?" There are no friend lists and so if you summon an e portal, your entire team sees it (depending on notification settings). So someone is bound to step up if something is amiss.

As for lower level players. Diamonds form under pressure. Harassing is one thing. But if player x finds player y's stuff, they are going to play in accordance with the base nature of this game and most likely destroy it.

Sym/mods is/are very responsive if there is an actual problem between players. I just don't believe we need powers granted to a team leader, a position that in reality is shared by dozens of people on both sides, and that changes depending on time of day.

Re. Power differences:


Window of immunity - a (open top-end) statistical relationship between an attacker vs defender to protect lowbies. The player with low shields is protected against a player with too high level weapons in a sliding window that center on a player's attribute level. (e.g: if window adjustment for immunity was -15 attribute levels, then a weapons 25 can attack shield values 11+ but shield values 0-10 are immune.)
Of course if a sliding scale window like this is too much code, a simple 'shields < 10 = immunity' would siffice but this could be exploited by already powerful players who purposely set shields at 10 to gain unfair advantage.