Mixed Difficulties and racers on very easy

[Cisz]

Whenever I host a mixed diff game, I get at least one ve racer: A player that knows the map quite well, but picks ve anyway, because he want's a win, even if it's a cheap one. In 3.0 I could handle a ve racer on vh most of the time, because even on ve it takes some serious skill to do damage to a decent lfwd-n. With average racers I could even get away with random.

But in 4.0pb things changed greatly: vh got much harder, and ve much easier. So nowadays I don't even attempt a mixed game on vh, and even h rnd proves too difficult most of the times.

So far I know of two possible sollutions. Either we could forbid certain difficulties in a mixed game, like as in "normal or harder"-mode or maybe set a range of 3 consecutive diffs the players can choose from.

Or we could increase the waiting time before the next wave.

[pre:3qurtpmb]This is the list for 4.0pb:

vh 4s

h 8s

n 12s

e 16s

ve 20s[/pre:3qurtpmb]

Maybe we should also change the spawning rules for new elements, to protect vh rnd players from midwave lv.2 elements. How about: The element spawns for all players halfway through the waiting time of the releasing player, like at 10s for ve (the additional wait for ele spawing would come after that).

What do you think? There is probably more that can be done. Keep in mind that the result should still be very easy on ve, but not impossible for vh rnd on mixed diff.

[Karawasa]

Playing with the countdown timer is probably the easiest and least intrusive way of fixing this problem.

How about 5/10/15/20/25 VH-VE?

We also do not have to follow a static change per difficulty level. We could play around with something like:

4/9/15/22/30

[Twilice]

When everybody plays at very easy, 30 seconds is a LONG time.

But I know what you mean I want to play a public game but not enough players know very hard enough, and if I play a mixed game I get totally rushed.

If every players would have their individual levels, (some sort of a new mode) many important things will be lost.

The players who play slowly will get more interest then the other ones, so the competive is deleted.

Also ronalds will be though, what if a player finnished and the other ones are at level 40..'

If this would not have been problems it could have been a new mode,

[holepercent]

host pick: all players have a common 5sec timer

mixed difficulty: a variable timer depending on difficulties selected.. VE-VH, the next wave starts 30sec after the first player finishes, E-VH 22sec etc down to 5sec in all VH. then a relative timer for E-H and other in-betweens.

the elemental spawning. In mixed difficulty, set a timer for elemental summoning. in VE-VH, the elemental is summoned say 15sec after the ve player finishes. Thus the VH player has some extra time to clear the wave then all players get the elemental after that delay.

[Cisz]

host pick: all players have a common 5sec timer

mixed difficulty: a variable timer depending on difficulties selected.. VE-VH, the next wave starts 30sec after the first player finishes, E-VH 22sec etc down to 5sec in all VH. then a relative timer for E-H and other in-betweens.

With a 5sec delay on all ve games, that's really too fast.

And when a vh player manages to win a wave in a mixed diff game, most players should be nearly finished with theirs, so 30secs after a vh player finishes will totally nerf the vh players ability to race other players. We could ofc totally remove the aspect of racing from mixed diff games, but I'd rather force players than can and/or want to race to pick a higher difficulty.

So far Karawasas 5/10/15/20/25 looks the best to me, but we might end up with even higher number if we look at lategame. Afaik the kill time difference changes over the course of the game.

[jolin012]

How about an advanced mode for a constant timer? the "anti-ve-racer" mode. That means, nomatter if the ve player plays at area 7, a wave is released, say , 50 sec after the previous wave was released.

Another way would be to have it a command, like, -constantcountdown 50 or -timer 50.'

I think that would be the best solution, and the command would be known here on forums, in f9 and perhaps in a toolkit, which will hopefully inform all those vh players who need it and tend to play mixed games on Bnet. Command would probably be better.

[Cisz]

A constant wave time is ofc too slow early game and too fast lategame, and it would also remove the element of racing.

[jolin012]

um, removing the element of racing, isn't that what the entire problem was with mixed diff?. I can't see a way to have some sort of fair racing... perhaps we might need to change countdown numbers.

[Cisz]

If we are willing to remove racing, we might as well wait for the last player to finish. Racing is a way to reward skill, as it gives better players a reason to play fast. If it weren't for racing, I could just sit there and wait for interest.

[jolin012]

you are ofcourse right, hope we can find numbers that work, but what i don't like is that 30 sec or so for VE players will make 'em think the map is boring perhaps we should add a "Normal or higher"-mode that you've been talking about. or perhaps:

Dialog Box 1:

Very Easy

Easy

Normal

Hard

Very Hard

Refer

Limited Refer/Limit Choices

and Limited Refer would Give the Dialog box:

XXXX or Harder allowed

[Cisz]

Maybe a 30sec counter could also increase the motivation to play on a higher difficulty, dunno..

[jolin012]

VE Players are not aware that higher diff is faster, especially not if they play the map only once and then say "no more, was too slow"

[echinodermata]

To eliminate the needless 30 second wait for a game with only VE players, you could have a system that not only takes into account who finishes first, but also the highest difficulty played during that game.

For example, something like this:

[pre:3cor3qiv]vh: 20s

h: 15s

n: 10s

e: 5s

ve: 0s[/pre:3cor3qiv]

wait time = (highest wait time) - (first finisher's wait time) + 10s

When the first player finishes, the wait time for his difficulty is subtracted from the wait time of the highest difficulty currently present in that game. Then 10 seconds is added to that (so we don't have zero wait time).

[holepercent]

the problem with that system is .. if the VH player finishes the wave first (in which case most should be almost done with the wave as well), he is FORCED to wait for a long timer.. and becomes unable to race by rushing and flooding the other players..

The issue here is VE is much easier, VH much harder that it becomes too easy for VE players to race. The solution should be something that allows racing but yet the VH player is not too rushed, which i believe the changes to the countdown timer solves the problem better.

unless you are for the idea that racing be totally removed for mixed diff games. in which case as earlier mentioned, just wait for the last player to finish the wave before starting the timer for next wave.

[Guest d4vinci]

This might be a stupid idea, but what do you think about trying to balance it with the amount of gold received per kill?

On a game with mixed difficulties, take the median of the difficulty. Every player playing on this difficulty receives 100% gold for killing a creep. For every level below the median, the player gets the income reduced by (just an example) 25%, for every level above increased by 25%.

[Twilice]

But then it wouldn't be very easy and so on.

[electronX]

I agree with Cisz, racing is an essential part of the game.

Quick history:

- eletd3:

-- VE creeps were low hp, low count -> less gold, too

-- VE creeps with healing were absolutely imbalanced (felt like 5-6% healing ratio)

-- VE players could have trouble in the end with money management.

- eletd4 pb

-- VE creeps were low hp, equal count -> same gold -> so it is really easier

-- VE creeps with healing ...

- eletd4 current

-- VE creeps have capped hp, equal count -> same...

-- VE creeps with healing are balanced

So the diff is, that in v3 by spamming one could ruin VE's economy and confuse them at healing levels. In v4, in terms of efficiency, VE dominates VH as you have same gold but less towers and/or enemy hit points to fight.

I think it is still better than the v3 solution as it allows casual players to enjoy the game.

So I vote for any solution that prevents VE and VH playing the same game.

I think, normal and up is enough for online games. Hard is tough enough to be a good player's choice online when mixed.

[echinodermata]

I think a "Choose Your Difficulty (but only the difficulties I want you to choose)" mode is completely against the idea of being able to choose your own difficulty, and is also a compromise that satisfies no one. Changes to the countdown timer are sufficient in solving this problem.

Before we go about changing the countdown timer though, I think we ought to determine how fast each difficulty is expected to finish a level.

[Cisz]

Problem with this is that finishing times change during the game afaik. I never really took the times, but I would expect great ranges for varying stages of the game.

[Karawasa]

The changes in countdown timer (private beta) have yet to be fully tested. I think it will be enough to alleviate this problem.

[Cisz]

If that doesn't work, there are allways the severe options:

-In a mixed diff game, ve and e players never triggers the next wave, they allways have to wait for either all have finished, or a higher diff player triggering the next wave.

..or..

-In a mixed diff game, the wait between waves is scaled with the wave number if a player on ve or e finishes first.