Make Sure You Bring A Nova (Or, How Kill Assists Can Factor Into Reputation [Long Post]).

[8bit_Ghost]

So, after almost a week, I come back with the fourth part of my 5-topic megapost. Each post stands enough on their own but each is intertwined.

 

It started with this post: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/192499-if-youre-gonna-nerf-frost-might-as-well-nerf-rhino-or-an-epiphany-on-the-state-of-warframe/

Continued into this post: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/192696-there-shouldnt-be-an-i-in-team-and-heres-how-to-not-have-one-or-what-to-be-done-about-the-incompatibility-of-warframes/

And then it diverted into this post: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/192865-set-me-on-fire-ember-or-how-combination-powers-can-work-and-a-large-amount-of-proposed-combos/

 

This post is long, by the way. There is a TL;DR at the end but if you want an accurate understanding of my propositions then you're gonna have to read.

 

Why we need Kill Assists:

This post here is more of a continuation of the second post. I know that I proposed power combinations and it didn't really impress anyone (because of the powers combos I proposed, not the concept itself). I did write those pretty fast and they weren't all that good, I admit. But the general idea still stands: cooperative play in Warframe is lacking. For a game that sells itself as a PvE co-op game, there isn't much that rewards players for doing things cooperatively.

 

Now, as the title says, and the second post in this series said, I believe kill assists are what this game needs. I also believe that kill assists can fix almost anything in the game. It's a bold statement, but I'm prepared to back it up.

 

First off, I believe that kill assists already exist in the game. The way they seem to work is that if two players both deal damage to the same enemy and it dies, then an affinity multiplier is applied that may or may not be based off of how many players attacked said enemy. I don't have anything to back this up, though, so this is simply speculation.

 

Onto the main part of the topic, though. The reason why I believe that kill assists can fix almost everything is because of the purpose they can serve in-game. I believe that if applied correctly, then kill assists can be used to serve player reputation, enemy scaling, and fix RNG dilution. The stuff about enemy scaling and RNG is so big that it's gonna need to be put into the last topic, though. So first, onto kill assists and player reputation.

 

Right now, we have conclave. Conclave is a sum of the "power rating" of every mod, weapon, and warframe that a player has equipped. It is used to sort players into groups based off of an estimate of how skillful a player is with current equipment. It's smart in theory but it doesn't do much to sort players that are actually skillful and those that aren't. Some players may have a lot of strong equipment but not the full knowledge of the game (like me, that is a mid-range player that has equipment that reaches over 1000 conclave but isn't the best player, per say). But the system that at least gives players a fighting chance against players with similar equipment is what helps the most. Kill Assists and Repuation work hand in hand in a similar way, but in a sense that it can sort players based off of a point percentage which can factor into their rep score. This rep score would be used to put players into skill groups that are more likely going to work cooperatively together.

 

Warning: Math ahead.

 

Determining the Rank of the Assist:

So how would kill assists factor into reputation? Well, first let's decide what would actually factor into a kill assist. Simply having two players shoot at least one bullet at the same enemy isn't enough to decide a kill assist; a kill assist would need to be mathematically decided based off of the amount of shots and damage done per player. What is my proposition to a kill assist calculation? It would be based off of a bit of percentages and decimals. The idea is that when player A attacks an enemy and is hoping to do a kill assist, they want to do as close as 50% damage to an enemy in order to get the most reputation out of their shared kill. Player B that attacks will want to do similarly. So, if player A does 40% damage to the enemy and player B does 60% damage, then that would be a rank 3 kill assist for both players. What determines the rank of a kill assist? The closer your damage output is to 50% per enemy, the higher the score. If the damage percentages are 10%/90%, then that is a rank 0 kill assist. This counts into your kill assist amount but doesn't do much for your gamer rep. If damage percentages are 20%/80%, that's a rank 1 assist. 30%/70% is rank 2, 40%/60% is rank 3, and 50%/50% is rank 4. Doing less than/more than 10%/90% damage will net no kill assist at all. This encourages players not to attack each enemy only once, or to not aim for OHKOs. However, this might lead to players being frustrated at their teammates for killing enemies right as they were about to die, leading to a lot of rank 0 assists for both players. So to fix that, if player A was the player that started attacking an enemy and did 90% damage (aiming to kill the enemy completely on their own), and had the rest killed off by a different player, then player A doesnt get a rank 0 kill assist (which would have negatively affected their gamer rep). Player B in this case, though, will get the rank 0 assist, adding to their overall assist amount but not doing much for their gamer rep. This encourages players to not do "kill steals". This can also work if player A hasn't done more than 10% to the enemy and something like an Ultimate move comes and kills the rest of the enemy; player A wouldn't be negatively affected (although to make things better on players that use all-encompassing ults, they wouldn't be negatively affected either as it's hard to select which enemies are killed by things like Molecular Prime and Overload).

 

Speaking of Molecular Prime, this specific power would be great in triggering kill assists, as would many different powers. If a different player kills the enemy that sets off a chain of molecular explosions, then both the player who is Nova and the player that set off the explosion would get perfect rank 4 assists for every enemy killed this way. It would also give players that were already dealing damage to an enemy the kill assist too if their enemy was killed by Molecular Prime. Other powers could work similarly, like players killing enemies in Vauban's Bastille, enemies frozen by Frost using Freeze or Snow Globe, killing enemies through Volt's Electric Shield, or players dealing heat damage to enemies affected by Accelerant. This was why I proposed combination powers, because this would lead to a lot of perfect rank 4 assists as well.

 

Multiple Players sharing an Assist:

Now, the amount of players that attack one enemy affects the percentages, of course. In the case of 3 players, the closer they are to dealing 33% each is what would give them the rank 4 kill. The way this would be split is as such: if players A and B deal an amount of damage to the enemy that is close to equal amounts each, then they would get rank 4 kills. Player C would get a varying assist mattering on how much damage they did. So if players A and B did 20% damage each but player C did 60%, then players A and B get rank 4 and player C gets rank 3. The full calctuation would be Player A's Damage + Player B's Damage = Set 1 Damage. Player A damage / set 1 damage = player A first set percentage. Player B damage / set 1 damage = player b first set percentage. What this would do is help decide what rank they get off of their kill, and their kill assist is determined first off of a normal 100% system. Then comes player C. Set 1 Damage + Player C damage = full enemy health. set 1 damage / full enemy health = set 1 full percentage. Player C damage / full enemy health = player C percentage. If set 1 percentage is 40% and Player C is 60%, then player C gets the rank 3 kill. If players A and B did 50% each of the damage they contributed, then they get the rank 4 kills.

 

When calculating the 4th player to attack an enemy that all other players have attacked, then it works as such: Set 1 damage + player C damage = set 2 damage. Then, the same calculation for player C in the previous paragraph is completed.

 

If all players that attack an enemy do an amount of damage equal to the preferred damage wanted, though, then they will all get a rank 4 assist. For 3 players, then each player should aim for 33% on every enemy that has 3 players attack it. For 4 players, each player should aim for 25%.

 

Reputation:

Now, that's how the kill assists are determined and ranked. But what about this whole reputation system? Well luckily this is a lot easier to determine, and is similar to basic star rating systems on many websites. Essentially, if a player makes 10 rank 0 assists, 30 rank 1 assists, 20 rank 2 assists, 35 rank 3 assists, and 40 rank 4 assists, their final gamer rep would be 2.481 repeading, or a 2.5 score. This is calculated by adding 0x10, 1x30, 2x20, 3x35, and 4x40 together, and then dividing it by the entire total of assists (regardless of assist rank). This averages it into a 2.5 score. Then, to fit reputation, players can be grouped together based off of the gamer rep they have. So, a player with 2.5 score would be grouped with 2 star and 2.5 star players when entering open groups.

 

TL;DR --- Kill assists can help the game by first: allowing players to get ranked assists determined by how much damage they deal to an enemy (if multiple players attack the same enemy). Players would have safeguards protecting them from eager killstealing players. Second: there would be an average of all the kill assists they made (determined by the rank of the assist) that will be used to make a 4 star total reputation score for them. Players would be sorted into open lobbies based off of their gamer rep so that certain cooperation levels of players will be sorted together. Low cooperative players get grouped with other players like them, and high cooperative players get grouped together.

 

So there you have it, kill assists and reputation. The next and final post will talk about how kill assists can be used to determine level and enemy drops, as well as how strong enemies are in a level. Thanks for reading!

Edited March 14, 2014 by 8bit_Ghost

[RoboDoge]

Much word.

 

Such lazy.

 

No read.

 

Very long.

 

Wow

[8bit_Ghost]

Much word.

 

Such lazy.

 

No read.

 

Very long.

 

Wow

I'll add a TL;DR that manages to say most of it for such lazies like you. :v

[RoboDoge]

I'll add a TL;DR that manages to say most of it for such lazies like you. :v

Much appreciated :)

[8bit_Ghost]

Much appreciated :)

and done. If you want the details, though, then read up. :P

[Speedwar88]

TL;DR Cant do it, enough of this during work hours, don't need more. :)

 

But in seriousness, interesting.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Speedwar88

[8bit_Ghost]

TL;DR Cant do it, enough of this during work hours, don't need more. :)

 

But in seriousness, interesting.

I'm glad you find it interesting.

 

By the way, major edit: organized the post into easily read chunks. Post is now less intimidating to read.

[Dead_Rabbits]

kill stealing, in team based gameplay.

 

what?

[8bit_Ghost]

kill stealing, in team based gameplay.

 

what?

believe it or not but this is why players get mad about Nova.

Edited March 14, 2014 by 8bit_Ghost

[Phantasmo]

It's not laziness, it's simply valuing my time.

 

If you can't express your idea in two or three lines then go around, have a drink and try later.

[VegetableBasket]

People get mad about kills because the XP system punishes you for not killing things when levelling a specific item.

The upside of this is that it rewards you if you're levelling everything, which benefits probably 90% or more of the playerbase who aren't at the mastery ceiling.

The real solution to people whining about nova is to educate them on how XP is distributed and let them know that Nova is the reason their melee weapon levels up.

Edited March 14, 2014 by VegetableBasket

[Phantasmo]

People get mad about kills because the XP system punishes you for not killing things when levelling a specific item.

The upside of this is that it rewards you if you're levelling everything, which benefits probably 90% or more of the playerbase who aren't at the mastery ceiling.

The real solution to people whining about nova is to educate them on how XP is distributed and let them know that Nova is the reason their melee weapon levels up.

 

No, you are wrong because:

 

a) many people aren't mad at Nova because of the XP but because people like to shoot at the bad guys and kill them. Nova kills them all and makes the game boring. She kills bad guys you were shooting, and bad guys you were hitting with your melee weapon.  It feels like a kill steal.

b) "Nova gives you XP" What the F*** man, you mean that only Nova can do that? Enemies give xp no matter which warframe killed them. You get the same amount ot xp no matter if it was Nova or Macarius Prime  who killed the enemy. Nova just makes the process more boring.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Phantasmo

[SolidSp33d]

It's not laziness, it's simply valuing my time.

 

If you can't express your idea in two or three lines then go around, have a drink and try later.

 

No it's pretty much lazy. You don't need a TL;DR to read the first few sentences of the main post (or the first and last sentences of every paragraph. Scanning op) and get the main idea.

Edited March 14, 2014 by SolidSp33d

[ASH_PRIME]

Really easy to fix this issue, give the player that SHOOTS the M Primed mobs the kills...

It DOES suck to kick some major &#! and be the leader of the round only to see at the end that Nova has gotten 400 kills more than You cause of no 4 key



 

[Xebulin]

Really easy to fix this issue, give the player that SHOOTS the M Primed mobs the kills...

It DOES suck to kick some major &#! and be the leader of the round only to see at the end that Nova has gotten 400 kills more than You cause of no 4 key

 

Sure Novas M Prime should get fixed in some way, but only giving the player the kills who was lucky enough to shoot first, isn't the best idea. Nova herself would have never the chance to get any kills because of the animation and people will just be waiting for nova to press 4, i think that would be even worse.

 

Also does it really matter if you got less kills than another player, shouldn't this game be about cooperative playing for the completion of an objective?

 

Sure 'Nova is stealing all the kills' but thats public for you, if you want to have fun, you should probably play with some friends or friendly strangers, who don't use Nova. :D

Edited March 14, 2014 by Xebulin

[fatpig84]

Or we should stop caring.

Honestly even if gotten my Nova kills, i will be fine.

In fact I have stop play Nova cos I get too little exp with her.

So guys play moar Novas/Rhinos/Volt etc and press moar 4s !

[Lickity-Split]

Love it when there is a Nova in my group... Free Secondary and Melee weapon XP.

Dont care who gets the kills so long as we win in the end... 

If that summary at the end of the mission didnt appear we wouldnt be having this conversation... It only serves to make a co-op game competitive...

 

That said with Nova I can stand at the Defense objective and Mprime at exactly the right time and everything will die...

With my Rhino I can stand at the Defense objective and Stomp at exactly the right time then go around and kill everything before it hits the ground... Same thing just Nova is quicker.

 

Only reason I choose Nova over Rhino is its faster...

[(PSN)Fbeast2]

I also love it when there is a Nova in the squad. Especially on high level survival and defense missions. They can make the difference in completing or failing the mission.After all this is a co-op game. There is no such thing as kill stealing in Warframe. All enemies are to be killed as soon as possible by whoever can get the job done.

[Deidaku]

I like the lobby pairing aspect a lot OP. It's better than having a 4 player team with 3 highly cooperative players and that 1 guy that puts the mission in jeopardy every single time 

[Skarmax]

before TL;DR i was like

 

 

and now... your idea is okay imo