The whole experience thing

[Garnier]

So the way it works now is, when you first join MP you have an experience average of about 2.5, which due to rounding really means an average of 2 on your units in game. When you go up against the 3s and 4s that everyone else has you're going to take a lot more casualties than anyone else, and have a terrible score making you think you did a lot worse than you really did. You still can win the battle because your teammates have good troops or because you have enough extra, but you won't feel like you contributed much, and the numbers on the battle records will make you look like a terrible commander when you aren't.

After playing 10-20 battles your troops will reach their upper limit of experience, which will be from maybe 3 to 4.5 average, depending on how careful you are or how much you avoid sacrificing your units (you all know what I mean here, when there's a line of troops from mixed divisions and the one stuck out front takes 80% of the casualties while the others rack up kills, who will be the one with that regiment out front? Someone has to).

Note that 10-20 battles, at an average length of probably 60 minutes at the least, that's 10-20 hours of playing with troops that are not as good as what all the veterans have.

To make this worse, most of us have been playing since the start and never went through this experience, because we were here when the campaign started and everyone had the same low quality troops and could build them up together in those first battles. Now it's only the new players who have to deal with it.

Looking through the players list, the only one who has played more than a few battles and is still here but wasn't here since the beginning is Shaka. This means that of the 20-25 regular MPers, only one has started playing in the last four months.



So the question is, is this a problem? And if so, do we want to do anything about it? We could say "I earned my good troops" and too bad for people who are trying to start playing now. It's a difficult problem to solve, the carry over is one of the fun things we have now, but perhaps it's not helping us grow.

Most war games aren't like this, usually you are equal to everyone else in everything but skill each time you start the game. Any thoughts?

[KG_Soldier]

There's no point in having carryover regiments if they all keep the same experience level. If we want balance, we can play the random division battle generator.

Winning and playing well should have benefits, and losing big should have consequences.

And really, compared to your first GCM, new players have it very easy.

For example, Shaka's Union division has been in about 12 battles and has an average infantry experience of 4.22, while Barlow's Union division (the most experienced Union division) has fought in 33 battles and has an average infantry experience of 4.4.

No one has ben able to maintian a regiment with an experience of 5 for more than a couple of battles.

That said, I have no problem with you raising the average starting experience to 3.0

[SouthernSteel]

If players were penlized for performing rather poorly and/or getting their troops slaughtered on a regular basis, Seal would have much worse stats :laugh:

I do have to agree that this go-round, it is easier for new players to get in and be competitive but I agree there has been a paucity of new players. It'd be difficult to say whether this is affecting their desire to hang around and play with us without hearing from them directly (something which doesn't seem terribly likely, unfortunately).

This falls under the same category as why MP overall is suffering for lack of players/new players. If we only knew what was turning them off, keeping them away, etc., we might be able to engineer a better fix.

But I agree with soldier, there's not much point to having any sort of carry-over between scenarios if we restrict experience any further. Honestly, for the number of battles I personally have played and those in which I have done exceedingly well (which, in the scheme of things, may not be that many), it's actually kind of annoying to not even be able to keep a 5. Still, I can understand that this is done with an eye to balance and fairness, and I can live with that. If only we had the new players to keep coming in...

[Garnier]

compared to your first GCM, new players have it very easy.

Yeah, it was ridiculous back then, lol.

Neither of you addressed the fact that we've never been in the new player's situation.

Along with the new player issue, I also don't like that you basically start out low, play 20 hours and then you're roughly on par with everyone else, and never have any variety after that.

Winning and playing well should have benefits, and losing big should have consequences.

It's nice, but when you give advantages to the better players it just exaggerates the difference, it doesn't help new players join the competition. If people actually think that new players don't care that they're totally at a disadvantage, I can't really argue it, all we can do is imagine.

What if regiments were "mustered out" after so long (randomly)? Then we could even increase the amount that experience can go up, so you could get regiments up to 5 and 6 occasionally, but you wouldn't reach a max limit and stay there, you'd have to fluctuate. New regiments that replace your old ones would not necessarily be green, but they could be. This would give more variety in each division, and mean that the consequences of winning and losing are still there but are for the short term, they don't last forever.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Although I don't play MP, I did do miniature gaming for many years. Miniature players were just randomly assigned a division or corps. We never got to pick. That way the same players could not always command the best troops in the army. That sort of arrangement would work in your group too. There is still an incentive not to destroy your unit since you might end up commanding it in the next battle and you will difinitely will be part of the army that has these depleted units.

In addition, the best generals would really be the best. They will be the ones that do well commanding all levels of troops.

[SouthernSteel]

Either one of those could work (mustering units out or having a set overall OOB and randomly assigning units out of it). MtG's idea kind of combines the two setups we have currently, where things are random but there are still consequences.

Still, though, we have to strike a balance between welcoming new players and not breaking out the yardstick to rap the knuckles of old players. While I like MtG's idea to a point, I also have reservations about being assigned a unit that someone carelessly thrashed previously. And, assuming we would still be mixing sides and all that, it would be a bit annoying to be assigned a unit one game, absolutely decimate your opponent, then be assigned the unit you massacred the next game :pinch:

The fact of the matter is that it is difficult to have the carry-over of a "campaign" without the various other aspects of said campaign. The idea behind all of this that you have done Garnier (as far as I understand) was mainly to make creating games quick and easy. As such, some elements of historical realism must inevitably fall by the wayside (ie mustering units out at random). For me, at least, a number of those elements are what makes the game enjoyable. However, I still want, as much as anyone else, to bring in new players and not scare them off. We have other people for that

[Garnier]

to make creating games quick and easy.

That's right, I mean you can make games quick and easy with sandbox or scenarios, just they're not balanced and troops are hard to distribute etc. Perhaps playing more random games with new players is the way to go. I've played wargames for years that didn't have any long term consequences, but they were just fun to play. Having short events with some sort of consequences is fun, it just takes work to run that kind of thing.

As such, some elements of historical realism must inevitably fall by the wayside (ie mustering units out at random)

I don't follow the logic there.

What MTG mentioned is different, where you have a pool of troops on each side for a temporary campaign that are randomly assigned each battle. That's like what the Missouri campaign was going to be, but it required human effort, not a good thing.

[RDBoles]

If I may explain a little idea I have to help with the newbee's entering the games. I don't think, at least from my perspective that there is anything wrong with the Multiplayer gaming at all. I think time is the big factor here. Newbees come and go all the time in and out of the lobby, home page, and forum. If you could put a flashing signal that could be activated every time a game is about to commence, in the forum ,home page and mp lobby it would give the new and old people an idea of when a game is about to start. It could be just a mouse click by the host when he has , let us say 15 minutes before start time, or even longer if you want a larger game. I have seen little flashing icons on web sites to draw peoples attention to other things. Why not an up coming battle? Just a thought.

[KG_Soldier]

The reason we have carryover regiments is to give players a reason not to make foolish charges and such every battle. When we played "stock" battles, almost every game had players' regiments almost totally wiped out. Having the results of the battle have some effect on the next battle gives players incentive to play more conservative, which is a good thing.

Just look at the battle results from our random battles compared to the campaign battles.

Honestly, good players have no problem competing even with newly formed divisions, and in no time, their divisions are as experienced as anyones: such as Little and Shaka and Cleburne. These guys may have taken a beating their first few battles, but after that, they're scoring well and competing every battle.

And we've had a few players who left after a while because they were taking beatings every battle, whether they had an experienced division or not (I won't name names).

I think the GCM is pretty friendly for new players, and yet still has incentives for all players to do well and gain their divisions experience.

And really, I can't think of anyone who quit playing after a few battles because their division was too inexperienced.

In the last week, GryWolf and Jackson90 played their first battles. Jackson90 did very well his first couple of battles:

http://www.sow.philipmcg.com/c/platte/p ... attle=1706

He took 877 casualties and dished out 513 -- very good considering his regiments were all 2s and considering he was fighting against Barlow most of that battle. I'm sure he'll be back and in no time will be on the positive side of the casualty totals. And GryWolf played his first game the other day and took a pretty good beating:

http://www.sow.philipmcg.com/c/platte/p ... attle=1707

But he admitted he's not very experienced and really had trouble with the 200 yard vision restriction, but he got into the fight, exposed himself a bit, and paid the price. But he was back last night but couldn't play because of family obligations, and I promise you he will do better and better the more games he plays.

There's nothing wrong with having to fight your division from inexperienced to experienced, and fortunately, in the GCM, taking a lot of casualties early doesn't hurt you near as much as an experienced division taking a bad beating.

And as far as those of us who've been around from the start not having to experience playing with a fresh division against experienced divisions, how about giving players a fresh division after 40 games with a division. That would give me two fresh divisions, and I would welcome the challenge.

[Garnier]

Having the results of the battle have some effect on the next battle gives players incentive to play more conservative, which is a good thing.

Yeah, that was the whole point originally.

And as far as those of us who've been around from the start not having to experience playing with a fresh division against experienced divisions, how about giving players a fresh division after 40 games with a division. That would give me two fresh divisions, and I would welcome the challenge.

That's sort of what the "mustering out" idea was for. 40 Battles would be too simplistic, because you might avoid 1v1 or short battles or whatever to keep your limit down. I could use a combination of casualties taken and the time the regiment has been in existence, to determine the chance it was mustered out each turn. We could also have new regiments come in with more experience than they do now, occasionally. Then if you wanted to just use experienced troops you could, but if you want lots of troops, you'd have to bring your 1s and 2s.

Alternately, your divisions could expire after so many days automatically, but then we'd be in a cycle where most of us reset at the same time, and others are off sync. So probably cycling by individual regiments (or perhaps brigades?) is better.

@RBDoles

That's a good idea, but I don't have any control over the MP lobby or this website. If they're on my site, they can already see when there are lots of people in teamspeak, and whether they're already in game or not. But people have to get there first and the only way to find it is to read the forum here.