Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is actually one of the better arguments in this thread. Why?

The OP asserts that only the players skill should have any influence on an actions outcome, and that the ship always responds perfectly to your every command. As far as I see it, that kind of logic doesn't work when controlling a ship with thousands of crew on board. The game cannot simulate every action of the crew, so instead, it adds some random elements to the calculations. Or in other words, even if you, the capsuleer, takes direct control of a turret on the ship, you never know if the team responsible for doing maintenance on that gun this morning forgot something.

And as others have pointed out already; There needs to be something to account for the effects of hitting stronger and weaker spots on the ships, since the player can't directly control the aiming of each individual gun.

For the sake of realism yes, but Eve is looking realism in the rear view mirror anyway, and I would say competitive gameplay trumps the need for realism every time.

Using StarCraft as an example, there is no accounting for one of my marines hitting a zergling's fore limb or their skull . . . every shot just does 6+1 damage because, for the sake of competitiveness a commander needs to know that it is always going to do 6+1 damage; if the marine misses 5 times and the zergling eats him alive that is not the commander's fault

Its also part of why whatever part of the person you're aiming at in counterstrike always gets hit, when in real life wind and barometric pressure can vastly change where your bullet actually lands, but the game designers made the game so that if the player had an arm in his sites when the bullet fired that's what is hit . . . how would you like it if the wind just randomly threw off the headshot that you had lined up in TF2 or counterstrike?

This is because in a competitive game the person needs to have full control over the thing you have command of.

Lastly, you fail to understand that even from an RP perspective, variable damage against shields make no sense, shields are either on or off, they dont have weak points. In armor you have a point, but I firmly believe that in this aspect gameplay needs to trump realism.

that formula still boils down to [i]F[/f](x)=x.

1. because randomness dilutes some aspect of skill from the game (see above)
2. (one and two are really the same)
3. if x < z; d = d(max) else 0 (it eliminates the random factor and bases damage 100% on how well you manipulate tracking)



Clearly what I meant is that it scales linearly with hit chance, and damage currently scales exponentially with tracking in an idealized world where you're shooting hundreds of thousands of rounds into a station, but in a normal battle in eve with only a few hundred volleys; in a sample size that small the randomization variation gets too noisy and you cant make a definitive statement like that.

Please don't insult our or your own intelligence by accusing any of us of not reading, you're not going to help your argument in any way by this childish behavior.

As for the FPS comparison, your 'previous post' does indeed use the critical hits reference I myself used in my argument.

"Its also part of why whatever part of the person you're aiming at in counterstrike always gets hit" Which is exactly what I meant by 'critical hits'. What you're proposing would be as if every shot in counterstrike, whether you hit the heart, or a foot, did the exact same damage.



This right here is where your argument falls apart. Right now in Eve, it is not plausible to give the player full control over every aspect of your ship combat. Honestly, I don't think you've proven that Eve is even intended to be the same sort of competitive environment that we see in games like Counterstrike or Starcraft, and I see no reason it should be made more like them, since the way things are now seems to be working pretty well for Eve, and suits the game just fine.

I'd also say that continuously using starcraft or team fortress as examples is not really a convincing argument since neither of those are even close to the same genre as Eve, and thus the comparisons tend to fall a little flat.



This is not necessarily true either. Shields have power fluxuations, matrix inconsistencies, projector malfunctions, etc. In many ways they are more random than armor plating. With armor plating at least you know where the weakspots are, with shields, they fluxuate in patterns that would require insanely powerful sci-fi super AIs to accurately predict.

From an RP perspective, the Eve damage mechanics are already extremely streamlined and simplified.

Whether or not randomness exists in real life (most notably in quantum mechanics) is not solved.

Anyway.

I think the comparison of TF2 or SC2 is completely misplaced. Those are games designed for one thing only: competition.

Each round you start from the beginning, each side has the same advantages. The number of players does not change. Any "advantages" later in the game are the result of experience and knowledge.

In Eve when you engage somebody nothing is fair.
a) he may have more SP than you.
b) he may have more expensive modules than you.
c) he may have 300 players waiting behind the gate.

Competitive games aim at creating a controlled environment where everyone has exactly the same chances, it's all about skill - not time/money/numbers.

Eve is a different game entirely.

I cannot see your point here . . . clearly there are two aspects to the damage function:
one that determines whether or not a hit occurs or every shot would be a hit.
one that determines how much damage is done on each shot otherwise every hit would do the same damage.

Yes, they are relatedbecause they use the same random modifier but since one is binary (yes/no) and one scales (51% - 150%) then they are obviously different.


That argument would make sense if the shields in Eve were directional, but they arent, either you have shields or you dont, but this is a moot point, because gameplay mechanics should not be derived from RP arguments or else all ships should have unlimited speed et all

so you just went dyslexic at the part where I said

??