Real-life races have aerodynamic drafting. Why don't competitive CGs?

[DemiserofD]

Competitive CGs are basically a race. Both sides are racing for the finish line.

The trouble is, in real life races, there's drafting. The person in the lead is always at a disadvantage, because they have to break through the air, while, those behind get to take some of their energy, making it much easier to keep up.

But in competitive CGs, that doesn't happen. Worse, because community goals rely on groups working together, when they even start to get behind, some players give up, which pushes them further behind, causing more players to give up, and in almost every competitive CG, the winner is decided in the first day. If that were a sport, who would bother watching it? If in NASCAR, whoever finished the first lap first would win the rest of the race 99% of the time, they would rapidly change the rules to make things more interesting.

And you can't always rely on bribing the viewers to participate. There's only so many engineered modules you can give.

There needs to be a balancing factor, something to still give the losing team a chance, so players still want to compete, even after the first day, even when they're behind. If anything, the losing team should have incentive to compete EVEN HARDER than the winning team!

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Just one option would be shared rewards. Right now, the Torval side is barely over tier one, and probably won't reach rank 2. The Caine Massey side is nearing rank 2 already, and may reach rank 3. This means that participating on the Caine Massey side is going to pay out 2-3x better than participating on the Torval side, for only slightly more effort.

Why not make both sides get the same reward? That way, participating on the Torval side will be easier, yet get the same rewards.

In other words, drafting behind the leader. It may not shift the balance completely, but at least it will give people a reason to compete on the losing side.

 

[Codger]

Wut?

 

[DemiserofD]

Wut?

Community Goals with two sides always snowball towards one side. The results are determined in the first 24 hours or less.

I would like them to be more competitive, and give a handicap towards the losing side.

 

[zimms]

Real-life races have aerodynamic drafting. Why don't competitive CGs?

Because it's a bad metaphor.

 

[Bottom Hat]

I don't understand the metaphor. Wouldn't "giving power up potions" to the second place one be better? Or give them a rebate on their income tax?

 

[Rubbernuke]

There are multiple ways to sort this out, none of which FD will do or really do again.

Examples: Lugh was an excellent example of making use of asymmetric approaches.

Stop writing directly 1 v 1 CGs. Denton v Marlinists escaping was a good example.

Up the difficulty and resistance at CGs. Have CG leaders establish pirate rules (so all bounties re theft / destruction) is nullified- so the outcome is not just straight hauling but instead has other constraints imposed. This could be in the form of heightened NPC pirates, or other players. CG rivals could put a bounty on stolen goods, allowing a wider range of responses at approaching the task.

The very last thing you want is more abstraction- what we need are more ways to approach the CG.

 

[DemiserofD]

This isn't a problem that should need to be individually fixed each time. It's a nearly universal problem, it needs a universal solution.

Making the rewards structure be shared would achieve that goal. I guess...why not? If you had a better universal solution, I'd be down with discussing it, but people complain every time but never have a better answer than 'give better rewards'.

 

[ethelred]

Some team elements, e.g. squadron leaderboards might help.

In a fever dream, even a "Open Only' leaderboard (as an option @Robert Maynard - all modes can contribute ofc) might go some way to provide meaningful PvP.

 

[Rubbernuke]

This isn't a problem that should need to be individually fixed each time. It's a nearly universal problem, it needs a universal solution.

Making the rewards structure be shared would achieve that goal. I guess...why not? If you had a better universal solution, I'd be down with discussing it, but people complain every time but never have a better answer than 'give better rewards'.

Rewards are not the answer, because they are either seen as unfair, not enough or too much.

The problem is not universal, because it only applies to diametrically opposed CGs.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The results are determined in the first 24 hours or less.

Though this time was an exception - the first 24 hours had the lead switch back and forth several times remaining within basically one cargo load, and Torval ahead for most of it. It was only after that - when the Feds had extra people show up and the Imps didn't - that it really started to separate. Why the Feds had significant extra presence after 24h but the Imps didn't? No idea.

That way, participating on the Torval side will be easier, yet get the same rewards.

That's not meaningfully the case this time either, looking at the Inara estimates for Tier boundaries.

Minimum for Tier	Torval	Caine-Massey
Top 75%	30	34
Top 50%	98	115
Top 25%	218	248
Top 10%	472	452
Top 10	951	1160

It's actually easier to get into the top 10% on the Caine-Massey side - and barely harder to hit any of the other thresholds. Most tonnages you could hand in would give you exactly the same tier whichever side you picked. (This is also the case in most other competitive CGs - you'd only get a significant separation if the winning side was also handing in much more per commander than the losing side)

Giving both sides the same tier payout at the end would remove a potential disincentive for late arrivals to pick Torval, but it wouldn't give any actual incentive to join her either, so it wouldn't counteract whatever other factors were already - before the lead was established - causing one side to be favoured. Also, even under the current situation, it's only going to be - T3 vs T2, say - a 12M credit difference in bonus payout for a top 25% commander. That difference is going to be utterly irrelevant to an established player anyway.



The other thing is ... based on the evidence of who's won previous competitive CGs, the "mercenary" aspect of how many credits they'll get isn't all that significant. The primary decisive factor appears to be story reasons. (90%+ of which comes down to "immediate aggressor loses"). Frontier are starting to adjust for that occasionally - Ackwada, Muhdrid (second time), Scriveners - all fairly close CGs which weren't really decided until after the weekend, because the effect of the story on participant levels had been accounted for.

(Something low stakes like this is better used for calibration of how popular each side is, rather than actually trying to make it a close race)

 

[Codger]

Ok, I guess I don't see this as a problem. Carry on!

 

[avow555]

Community Goals with two sides always snowball towards one side. The results are determined in the first 24 hours or less.

I would like them to be more competitive, and give a handicap towards the losing side.

Easiest way is if the current results aren't shown then everyone is in the dark until completion.

 

[Frankymole]

Easiest way is if the current results aren't shown then everyone is in the dark until completion.

That's how the Colonia Expansion Initiative was done. Arguably wasting everyone's time as the Privateer's Alliance shifted far and away many thousands more Travel Guides than the other player groups. They could've had a rest after the first 30,000 or so.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Easiest way is if the current results aren't shown then everyone is in the dark until completion.

It'd perhaps make it more suspenseful, but not in itself any closer - the initial split in participants happens for a reason (well, the combined effect of multiple reasons) so if no-one knows what's happening, the final split is still likely to match the early split in the end. And other proxy indicators would still be available - thread length on the forums is a pretty easy one if there's a runaway winner, Inara etc. would still be tracking people's personal progress and for something CG sized probably gets a representative enough sample to call 2:1 splits, etc. - that would still work most of the time.

It also takes away the ability for suspense (and therefore raised effort) from other sources - will the losing side at least get to Tier 2? Not that it was a competitive CG, but the recent Alcor CG would have been less exciting during the week - and perhaps felt more arbitrary - if no scores had been shown and then on Thursday morning it was announced that it had got to Tier 5 after all.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Easiest way is if the current results aren't shown then everyone is in the dark until completion.

Given the existence of third party tools, whether current results are shown, or not, there'd likely be sufficient data from those who choose to share their journal data with the aforementioned tools to give an idea of the relative performance of each CG.

 

[Nekozji]

Or just... Don't have winners vs losers. Just have contributors.

Maybe the winning side gets a new spaceport. No reason to stop if you're losing but the personal rewards are good.

 

[DemiserofD]

Or just... Don't have winners vs losers. Just have contributors.

Maybe the winning side gets a new spaceport. No reason to stop if you're losing but the personal rewards are good.

That's basically what I'm proposing. Right now, everyone gives up because there's no chance of reaching a higher tier, so further effort is pointless. If reward tiers are shared, then not only is it good for the losing side, it's even good for the winning side.

Though this time was an exception - the first 24 hours had the lead switch back and forth several times remaining within basically one cargo load, and Torval ahead for most of it. It was only after that - when the Feds had extra people show up and the Imps didn't - that it really started to separate. Why the Feds had significant extra presence after 24h but the Imps didn't? No idea.


That's not meaningfully the case this time either, looking at the Inara estimates for Tier boundaries.

Minimum for Tier	Torval	Caine-Massey
Top 75%	30	34
Top 50%	98	115
Top 25%	218	248
Top 10%	472	452
Top 10	951	1160

It's actually easier to get into the top 10% on the Caine-Massey side - and barely harder to hit any of the other thresholds. Most tonnages you could hand in would give you exactly the same tier whichever side you picked. (This is also the case in most other competitive CGs - you'd only get a significant separation if the winning side was also handing in much more per commander than the losing side)

Giving both sides the same tier payout at the end would remove a potential disincentive for late arrivals to pick Torval, but it wouldn't give any actual incentive to join her either, so it wouldn't counteract whatever other factors were already - before the lead was established - causing one side to be favoured. Also, even under the current situation, it's only going to be - T3 vs T2, say - a 12M credit difference in bonus payout for a top 25% commander. That difference is going to be utterly irrelevant to an established player anyway.



The other thing is ... based on the evidence of who's won previous competitive CGs, the "mercenary" aspect of how many credits they'll get isn't all that significant. The primary decisive factor appears to be story reasons. (90%+ of which comes down to "immediate aggressor loses"). Frontier are starting to adjust for that occasionally - Ackwada, Muhdrid (second time), Scriveners - all fairly close CGs which weren't really decided until after the weekend, because the effect of the story on participant levels had been accounted for.

(Something low stakes like this is better used for calibration of how popular each side is, rather than actually trying to make it a close race)

The objective isn't to make the losing side win, it's just to keep losing from stifling competition. You want players to keep on trying right until the end, even on the losing side. At the moment, people instead swap to the winning side, because there's zero reason not to do so.

Imagine if, rather than each side having their own tiers, both sides work towards the same set of tiers. They're competing, but also helping each other individually profit, so everyone's encouraged to keep going, even if their side is losing.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The objective isn't to make the losing side win, it's just to keep losing from stifling competition. You want players to keep on trying right until the end, even on the losing side. At the moment, people instead swap to the winning side, because there's zero reason not to do so.

I'm sure some people do, but not to an extent which makes much difference. This current CG certainly doesn't demonstrate it strongly - since midnight Jan 15 when the lead was reasonably clear, Caine-Massey have increased their score by 4x and participants by 2.5x, and Torval Mining have increased their score by 3.3x and their participants by 2.1x

But actually, there's also two good reasons to stick with the side you started with, for most people, so long as the CG is reasonably close.
1) They're still the side you support in the plot. Don't underestimate that one.
2) Even viewed purely from a mercenary perspective, it's not that significant and the incentive works both ways - if you switch sides, you potentially give up some rank. One tier less but one rank higher generally balances out, and you can potentially optimise further.

Say someone can mine 1000t. Let's assume a T3 finish for CM and a T2 finish for TM. Under the current rules...
If they put it all on Caine-Massey they get top 10% and 60M credits
If they put it all on Torval they get top 10% and 40M credits
If they split it 50-50 they get top 25% in both and also get 60M credits
If they split it 66-33 towards CM they still just keep top 10% in CM and top 25% in TM, for 84M credits
If they split it 66-33 towards TM they still just keep top 10% in TM and top 25% in CM, for 76M credits

Sure, Torval players have some incentive to defect to Caine-Massey. But Caine-Massey players also have an incentive, if they're only in it for the money and really fussed about 10-20M extra credits a week, to defect to Torval.
(That would stay true under your proposal; Torval players would get more money than currently, but "optimal defectors" would get even more, so it still doesn't encourage loyalty to the losing side)

 

[DemiserofD]

But actually, there's also two good reasons to stick with the side you started with, for most people, so long as the CG is reasonably close.

That's the biggest issue. It's not presented itself on this one(yet), but in others, there have been cases where you end up with a 3-4 tier difference, or ones where one side doesn't reach tier 1 at all.

I think most players don't defect because they see the next tier approaching. If you look at the Torval side, you see it probably wont reach the next tier, so while you could put effort towards it and get a small bonus, you are likely better off putting effort towards the Caine Massey side, maintaining your place, and then getting the next tier and increasing your payout.