Or: Oh crap I'm finally making a thread about some sort of gaming-related topic.
TL;DR: How about we punish people for being too good at games?
So I was flicking through yet another thread about the Modern Warfare series, when one of the earlier comments made a fairly interesting point about their killstreak system. Those players who are good at the game and can score loads of kills are given the tools to do it more, whereas those who aren't find themselves on the receiving end of all these attacks, stopping them from scoring any kills themselves. This happens a lot; Unreal Tournament, for example, granting adrenaline for combos, and the Demoman's Eyelander in TF2. Not wanting to derail the thread, I decided to spew this one out myself about an idea that hit me after reading that.
What if, instead of rewarding players for scoring several kills, we punish them slightly? So, the first couple of kills are free of charge, but after scoring some arbitrary number, they start getting disadvantages; they slow down, they take more damage, they can be seen through walls, we start latching balls and chains onto their ankles and seeing if they can still fight just as well. Would this, then, make the game more fun?
The most skilled players are still likely to win, since they will have scored several kills before they start being hampered, they get a far more challenging game experience, and they also get bragging rights over their friends for scoring 5 more kills after having their blood drained out, their vision clouded, and a big red sign saying "kill me now" strapped to their back. The less skilled will find themselves fighting enemies they're more capable of beating, and a single noob in a deathmatch full of pros will find himself getting a few decent kills under his belt, still giving him some good solid field experience, and not allowing him to win easily.
The only game I've seen that does anything like this is Dystopia, where players spawn in with some armour which will never come back once broken, meaning that you can't just run away and heal back up to full strength. There's also no way to recover grenades once they're used, so once you've thrown 2 of them, they're gone. No more room cleaning for you. It works, pretty well, IMHO.
So, yeah, the discussion value here; do you think this would work in an online shooter? Would it patronise the newcomers, or would it actually give everyone a fighting chance?
TL;DR: How about we punish people for being too good at games?
So I was flicking through yet another thread about the Modern Warfare series, when one of the earlier comments made a fairly interesting point about their killstreak system. Those players who are good at the game and can score loads of kills are given the tools to do it more, whereas those who aren't find themselves on the receiving end of all these attacks, stopping them from scoring any kills themselves. This happens a lot; Unreal Tournament, for example, granting adrenaline for combos, and the Demoman's Eyelander in TF2. Not wanting to derail the thread, I decided to spew this one out myself about an idea that hit me after reading that.
What if, instead of rewarding players for scoring several kills, we punish them slightly? So, the first couple of kills are free of charge, but after scoring some arbitrary number, they start getting disadvantages; they slow down, they take more damage, they can be seen through walls, we start latching balls and chains onto their ankles and seeing if they can still fight just as well. Would this, then, make the game more fun?
The most skilled players are still likely to win, since they will have scored several kills before they start being hampered, they get a far more challenging game experience, and they also get bragging rights over their friends for scoring 5 more kills after having their blood drained out, their vision clouded, and a big red sign saying "kill me now" strapped to their back. The less skilled will find themselves fighting enemies they're more capable of beating, and a single noob in a deathmatch full of pros will find himself getting a few decent kills under his belt, still giving him some good solid field experience, and not allowing him to win easily.
The only game I've seen that does anything like this is Dystopia, where players spawn in with some armour which will never come back once broken, meaning that you can't just run away and heal back up to full strength. There's also no way to recover grenades once they're used, so once you've thrown 2 of them, they're gone. No more room cleaning for you. It works, pretty well, IMHO.
So, yeah, the discussion value here; do you think this would work in an online shooter? Would it patronise the newcomers, or would it actually give everyone a fighting chance?
