Victory conditions & changes for a better new player experience & higher engagement#1263
I feel that the current victory point system has several problems and I would like to suggest an alternative, that I think would improve the new player experience and create a more dynamic and engaging game.
Victory point is gained by holding control points, knocking out crew members/captain & completing optional/random objectives.
Victory points are never lost.
A game is played out over X amount of turns (can’t be ended early by any means)
Victory points is accumulated and counted at the end of the game
Crew can be deployed again one turn after being knocked out.
Captain will be deployed again one turn after being knocked out.
In ranked play you gain/lose additional ranked points based on the victory point difference between the winner/loser (forfeiting a game would give maximum penalty).
Wins and losses are sorted in three categories minor, normal, major. this would be another way to encourage players to stick around and do their best each game. (if you add player stats)
(optional) deployment phase at the start of each game where you can deploy crew worth X points.
maps could have additional or random ways to gain victory points, like an object each player needs to protect/destroy.
How much VP crew/captain/control points would reward would have to be decided by playtesting, and depending if you want to put the focus on point control or killing crew/captain.
A starting point could be that crew reward their deployment cost in VP and the captain gives about double of the most expensive units, so 15-20 VP, control points could give 1-3 vp per turn (you could also have bigger control points that give more VP per turn but requires more units to hold, or maybe that you have more units than the opponent).
Example - Victory Point Value
Captain 15VP
Charger Macoa 2 VP
Furia 4 VP
Dr. Feelbad 7VP
Control Point 1-3VP/Turn
Destructable objective 6VP (one time only)
I’d also like to give some additional feedback as to why I think this system would be an improvement.
I think the flaw of the current system is that it creates a feeling of “feast or famine” where one player finds himself in a position where losing a unit or controlpoint early feels like a “instant loss”. I do think players feel like there is very little room for comeback, and there are several reasons for this.
- Players have to make reckless plays because you win very fast from holding control points
- Early lost crewmembers escalate this further. Losing both a crewmember and a control point makes it pretty hard to get a comeback in time.
- You can’t use lost crewmembers again, reducing your tactical options as the game progesses, further reducing your posibility for a comeback.
- There’s a very limited time to reposition or retry because of all the above reasons.
I feel that this causes many players to give up early and forfeit the game, since they feel there’s little room for comeback.
I think the suggested changes would make for a more back & forths, with more opportunites for comebacks, where you also get a chance to regroup and try another approach and feel less like the game is hopeless and over if you do one mistake or have a bad dice roll.
I forgot to mention one more thing. Having crew be worth more than one victory point also opens up for additional design posibility, where you can have units that are somewhat overtuned for their deployment cost, but reward more VP, so you could for example have unit with a deployment cost of 4 but it’s worth 6VP because of it having somewhat higher stats or some ability that’s overtuned for it’s deployment cost. Obviously this could be reversed and be used for units that are summoned or where they die too easy and you feel that they should reward less VP.