Competitive CGs, and Their Issues

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

So I've noticed some slightly major flaws in the competitive CG design.

Choice. Lol

Firstly, you can choose both sides.
Which IMHO, is wrong. Easy solution, only allow the picking of one.

Secondly, judging by the evidence from the current CG, as soon as one takes the lead, every seems to dog pile on to that CG, leaving the other with little or no hope of success.
Solution? I have a few.

First one, is simple-ish.
Unique Rewards. The problem with competitive CGs, is the rewards are generally identical, because they're just credits. Only role play is the deciding factor, and if you don't care, you go where the most money is. If these types of CGs had unique rewards, such as materials, or permits, or something that the other one doesn't, it'll give you more incentive to pick a meaningful side, and fight for it. (Remember, you'd no longer be able to pick both!).

The second solution, is Pre-picking Your Side, before the CG even starts, and lock it in.
The application process could start a week early, and you get to sign up to either side (but not both!). Once the CG starts, no one else can join. No one but FD will know who's on who's side, so there's no in-game way to pick the automatic winner. (Forums and things could organise it though).
Then the CG would start, and you're pre-assigned your side to fight for.
That would only apply to competitive CGs though.
But it could also be used to help guage interest for the tiers.

Just a thought anyhow.

What would you think?

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[ForeverN00b]

I like the unique rewards idea, that may work. Right now FD doesn't display rewards until a given tier is reached, but that can be changed for rewards that are something other than credits. Maybe they could give out rare mats or data.

Pre-picking sides may not work, as one side will pull ahead and the other side may just give up (especially if there are no rewards at all for the losing side). We would still have the same problem.

One solution could be to not display the CG progress, although I'm generally against keeping information away from players.

My 2 cents.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

So I've noticed some slightly major flaws in the competitive CG design.

Choice. Lol

Firstly, you can choose both sides.
Which IMHO, is wrong. Easy solution, only allow the picking of one.

Secondly, judging by the evidence from the current CG, as soon as one takes the lead, every seems to dog pile on to that CG, leaving the other with little or no hope of success.
Solution? I have a few.

First one, is simple-ish.
Unique Rewards. The problem with competitive CGs, is the rewards are generally identical, because they're just credits. Only role play is the deciding factor, and if you don't care, you go where the most money is. If these types of CGs had unique rewards, such as materials, or permits, or something that the other one doesn't, it'll give you more incentive to pick a meaningful side, and fight for it. (Remember, you'd no longer be able to pick both!).

The second solution, is Pre-picking Your Side, before the CG even starts, and lock it in.
The application process could start a week early, and you get to sign up to either side (but not both!). Once the CG starts, no one else can join. No one but FD will know who's on who's side, so there's no in-game way to pick the automatic winner. (Forums and things could organise it though).
Then the CG would start, and you're pre-assigned your side to fight for.
That would only apply to competitive CGs though.
But it could also be used to help guage interest for the tiers.

Just a thought anyhow.

What would you think?

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

Is this for 2.2.03, or for 2.3? As of 2.2, CG's are never *truly* competitive, for the reasons you describe. However, in 2.3 beta they introduced us to truly Competitive CG's-namely those in which only one side can genuinely WIN. Now I never got a chance to try it out myself, however what I read about them was genuinely promising. They plan to expand this Competitive CG model beyond straight up combat (trade & piracy CG's were also mentioned).

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Is this for 2.2.03, or for 2.3? As of 2.2, CG's are never *truly* competitive, for the reasons you describe. However, in 2.3 beta they introduced us to truly Competitive CG's-namely those in which only one side can genuinely WIN. Now I never got a chance to try it out myself, however what I read about them was genuinely promising. They plan to expand this Competitive CG model beyond straight up combat (trade & piracy CG's were also mentioned).

It's for both really. Lol

Not that i know what the 2.3 CGs are like yet.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

It's for both really. Lol

Not that i know what the 2.3 CGs are like yet.

Neither do I, but one hopes that, if one side can only truly win, then there will be limits on how many sides you can take (i.e. just the one side ). Here is the link again, if its of use.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/335637-New-Combat-Community-Goal-Mechanics

 

[CMDR ANCALAGON]

As for the current CG's, I started last night and my observation for why everyone is focusing on one over the other is that one faction is issuing massacare missions agains the other like crazy, so there is an additional incentive to fight for that one.

At first I thought this was skewing the CG, but for all I know, this is intentional by FD and it is by design that the other faction loose this one.

I mean, I didn't even refresh the board or anything and that one guy was offering four differnet missions to massacare the Hand of whatever ships, even with no prior rep with either faction.

 

[Thetele]

Only way to solve the issues with competition CG is to lock the sides you can be. Lets say faction system in ed get a lot deeper and players could pledge to minor factions. If you pledge to minor faction being part to empire then you also are pledged to empire. And on CG that involve empire vs other factions only players pledged to empire factions could take part to that side and all pledged to federation faction would only be able to take part on their side. Neutral cmdrs wouldn't be able to take part at all. On CG run by independent faction all players could come to take part. This would make the game and decisions you make have more impact and define your character, now role play has no point as the game world doesn't reflect in anyway to which side you choose or if you remain independent. This is the only way to eliminate players choosing the cg that give them the bigger rewards. Changes in 2.3 won't solve this problem at all, it may even make it worse as the other cg chancels when one finish which mean there is no hope to get big rewards if your side lose, which mean everyone will just go with the cg that made more progress in first hours being up. It doesn't matter if CG run for the week, 2 weeks or month if the winner is decided after couple hours because players choose to support the side that is already doing better.