Pilot point ratings

[Northstar]

How are the point values of the pilots determined? Are they based on the accumulated experiance points, or on the purchased skills?

I suspect the former, based on observations, but shouldn't it be the latter?

On a related topic, is there any reference which shows the point values of the particular aircraft?

[bartbert]

It's been awhile since I looked at it, but as I recall the pilot value is based on his XP divided by 33.

I suppose that basing the point value on cumulative XP instead of purchased skills puts human pilots at something of a disadvantage relative to AI pilots because human pilots will tend to spend a lot more XP on non-permanent skills. But that is kind of intentional since it helps level the playing field (the AI does do some dumb things at times).

I'm not sure if the aircraft point values are published anywhere. Maybe Dan knows. If not, we could put that information out somewhere for those who are interested.

[Northstar]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Actually, I handn't even considered the AI issue. My thought had to do with the limitation on the point difference between pilots in a match.

For instance, (and the numbers that follow are for talking purposes only; I haven't done the math) I may have a pilot with 120 accumlated experiance, all of it spent on permanent skills. Another player may have a pilot with 200 accumulated experiance, but who has spent 80 points on various expendable skills during his carrier. Thus, we would actually have comprable pilots (both with 120 in permanent or unused expendable skills), based on the skills we have access to. However, the POINT VALUE of the pilots may be too far apart for them to actually play each other.

I don't know how big an effect this is going to be -- it all depends on what proportion of XPs are spend on expendable skills. If it is a large proportion (as you guys seem to expect) it could potentially have a huge impact. If only a small proportion of XPs is spent on expendable skills (which is what I have seen so far), than this will not have much of an impact at all.

I fear that in the long run we will end up with a severe stratification of pilots, as the hardcore players (or those with no life ) rapidly outpace the more occasional players. If significant XPs are divereted into expendable skills, this change will help maintain a more robust playing community.

I realize that to a certain point, that is the nature of the game, and we'll have to "like it or lump it", but this is just my $0.02.

[bartbert]

Those are good points, and it's something that we can certainly keep an eye on. If we start to see the stratification problem you mentioned, we can adjust the way match-ups are calculated. All those changes would be on the server, so with one update, we could get things back in line.

[Austin]

Greetings,

I know I am very new to this, in fact, I have never played the game yet. I am wondering if pilots can be killed and are out of the game permanently. That would certainly help keep the playing field leveled.

Note: I will be going home to try out the demo this evening. I have never heard of this game before and it has piqued my interest.

[Sixxkiller]

Austin,

Yes pilots die and that will be an equalizer.

In tournaments I suspect that they will have to take off the limitations so it really will end up being a best of the best situation. Just my opinion.

[Dan Verssen]

The flexibility of the system offers a lot of tournament variety. For example, we just a newbie pilot "Rising Eagles" tournament, and we are about to start a "Battle for Singapore" campaign team tournament.

In the future, we can have dogfight tournaments that in some way limit the pilots who can enter. For example, a tournament might be open to all pilots with up to 500xp.

We can also have historically based tournaments. For example, in early June we can have Midway tournaments. One would be a dogfight tournament where only F4F Wildcats and A6M2 Zeros can be used. Another would use the upcoming Midway campaign as the basis for a campaign tournament.

We could also have a "Lucky to be alive" tournament that is open to pilots with up to 200xp and 5 or more Purple Heart type medals.

We have a lot planned, and I'm sure even more cool new ideas will come up along the way.

As always, all player input is very welcome!

[Northstar]

Ok. I guess I feel the need to try to clarify my point one more time, since I don't think I made it clear the first time through. After this, I will shut up, since no one else seems to feel this is a problem.

To put it more bluntly this time, it seems to me that the play balancing mechanism is off kilter because it is based on the pilot's POTENTIAL (Accumulated XP) rather than his actual ability (XPs spent on currently available skills and abilites).

To use a ridiculously extreme example, if I have a pilot who has built up to 133 XPs, and has used every single point on redraws, draw extra cards, and cards, and has used them all up, he will go into his next fight as a 4 point pilot (not including aircraft). If his opponent has the same accumulated experiance, but has spent it all on say, Zoom Climb, Natural Pilot, Evasive, and say Stay with Him, he will have the same point value, but will be much more capable. Despite the fact that they are the same point value, the second pilot will have a significant advantage.

To be meaningful, I think the point rating needs to be based on what the pilot actually has available to use, not including expendable skills he has bought and used in the past(or for that matter, accumulated experiance he has yet to spend). To me, it seems like a waste to buy redraws and such, because you are essentially mortgaging your future: you may have a better chance in the current fight, but you are putting yourself in a hole relative to other pilots with the same accumlated XPs who have bought permanent skills.

Are ten "draw extra cards" (50 pts) over five missions really worth the same as "Aggressive" which gives you an extra card every time you are advantaged or tailing your opponent? Putting it that way, I guess it might be, if you add the consideration that a pilot might survive those five missions only because of the redraw. But, once a pilot does manage to survive, he has a definite advantage with the extra, permanent skill.

I guess my final tag line is that I think the pilots should be rated based on what he is capable of NOW, not what he has done in the past.

As promised, I will now shut up, unless others begin taking an interest in this issue.

[kuroi neko]

Hehe I do take interest .

As I see it, this system gives an advantage to pilots with permanent skills. This in turn gives an advantage to frequent players, since it is psychologicaly easier to spare the XPs if you play 5 or 6 games in a row and get the "reward" in a single gaming session than waiting a whole week to see your pilot evolve if you play one game per day.

Another downside of the current system is the choice of bots, which is still based on the XP total earned in the demo. A 2000 XP pilot with a "post-demo" total experience of 500 XP or so will most of the time face monstruous bots (with about 6 or 7 permanent skills and tons of redraws), while a pilot created after the demo with the same "real" total will face "manageable" AI pilots. This is mainly annoying for 2v2 games with only 3 human players: the guest bot is often so horrible it destroys the whole game balance. But after all this is just a demo problem, it should disappear with time.

As for keeping the current system, I would say it rewards players who care about their pilots survival: buying cards does more for the offensive than the defensive, since the rarest and most expensive cards are basically attacks, and buying cards for defense is really a strange strategy, given the very limited defensive use of even an "ace pilot" or "vertical roll" over the devastating effect of an IMS2:D or OTS3:4 in one game.

[bartbert]

My mind is certainly open to different ways of making the match-ups work better.

However, I'm not sure I understand the point about the post-demo pilots causing bad match-ups. The demo pilots were limited to 100 XP. If that demo pilot were to continue as a "full version" pilot, he would start out at 100 XP and continue from there. Even if that pilot was showing a million XP on the web page Leader Board, he still would start out at 100 XP within the "Manage Pilots" screen in the game. When picking AI pilots, we look at the cumulative XP showing in the "Manage Pilots" screen, not what shows on the Leader Board.

With regard to basing match-ups on the value of skills actually possessed instead of on cumulative XP, I would just like to throw a couple of things out there for you guys to think about.

There are a lot of paths that a pilot can take from "newbie" to "uber" status. That is quite intentional. Some pilots will hoard their XP's until they can purchase that next great permanent skill. Others will spend the bulk of their XP on expendable skills that give them a quick return on their investment (particularly early in their careers). And of course there is a whole spectrum of choices in between these two extremes.

What we found during our testing is that the pilots who made it to "uber" status (say 1500+ cumulative XP), will typically end up with roughly the same capabilities regardless of which path they took to get there. That is, they will have roughly the same number of permanent skills, but the mix of skills will vary somewhat.

The reason they all end up with about the same number of permanent skills is because with each permanent skill that you purchase, the cost of the next permanent skill goes up exponentially. We did this because we didn't want to have a bunch of pilots who had every possible skill.

The pilot who saves his XP and only buys permanent skills may "max out" on permanent skills at 1500 or 2000 XP. The pilot who buys a lot of expendable skills and occasionally buys a permanent skill may not "max out" until 3000 or 3500 XP. But they both hit a plateau sooner or later.

I guess my point in all this is that whatever system we use to figure out match-ups, it should NOT be something that "forces" players down one path versus another. If a different system encourages players to try out different career strategies, that's a good thing.

[ October 07, 2005, 03:53 PM: Message edited by: bartbert ]

[kuroi neko]

Very well put, Brian

As for the actual XP used, I'm rather surprised because during the demo period it seemed to me the bots were a lot tougher for a 2000 XP element than for a "true" 100 XP element. After full release I only had quite experienced pilots (maybe 300-400 XP for the "weakest" pair) so I could not really test the difference. It may well be a subjective extrapolation of the impressions I had from the demo.

[Pawlock]

Bartbert:

While I agree with a lot of what your saying, its getting rather ridiculas to play the AI now. I though in demo it was bad, but what Im sseing now is WOW

I got mid 30ish pilot with 5 skills, havent spent huge amounts on extra cards and my latest mission having just scraped up enough to fly a mossy I was up against

Top Jap planes with typical leader 7-8 skills 7 card draws, target pilot plus 2 , Wingman 5 plus skills and 5 card draws, plus target pilot plus 2.

They tore through the heavy bombers more or less by end of first turn,ie both smoking both dead by turn 2.

I like playing the AI, yes I like a challenge, but this maybe over the top and starting to make it not so fun any more.

[Strider]

How about an option to choose your opponent type?

Create a 'list' of pilots that players can manually choose to fight against. There could be a 'summary' list showing pilot, plane type, and possible expirence points to be gained from fighting him. Then there could be a 'detailed' info box by clicking on the opponent to show all their 'possible' abilities. This list could be a single list and if a player chooses to fight a 'lesser' opponent, then he would receive none or next to no expirence points. The player would choose which of his wing(s) he wants to play and then choose his opponent(s) from the list. Also, leave in the default designer's assignment of opponent(s).

Just a general thought...

[kuroi neko]

Yes, that is a very good idea. Since the game is heavily based on client-server architecture, why not take advantage of this to design a kind of "oponent finder" web page? It should be possible to check which people are connected, and to display all comparable pilots for a given player. A simple click on the desired pilot could even trigger a game request directly on the opponent's client side (well of course this should include some sort of ignore/away system).

[Strider]

Clarification: I was talking about doing this vs the AI.

But kuroi neko's idea concerning human players would be nice also. Especially as the player base grows and a large number of different level pilots are developed.