:: The FCT Shopping - Insight & Infos ! ::

2013-06-06 • Oxyde • (Blogs - Oxyde)

Salut à tous! :D Before starting with what I want to talk about today, I want to thank you all for the warm welcome the FCT receives each week. The FCT was originally started to gather many French players all in one place, and not the players you're familiar with! We don't always succeed on gathering them baguette-eating specimens, yet we gather many of you, Doom players. Hardcore or casual players, a lot of you change their personnal schedule to come play weekly events here on ZDaemon! So, to you, the players who make this wonderful port active: Thank you! ( Click to enlarge ) Now, let's proceed with a more detailed post about the FCt and it's blockbuster event: The Shopping Center! The first Shop system we created was implemented for the 9th FCT. The server stayed active for the entire week, sometimes stealing the #1 place to the weekly events (WNF comes to mind). While I am impressed of the success this mod has met, I'm also deeply sorry for the other weekly events, as their events are much more fun than ours! After 2 sessions on the shop, we have nailed down what are the biggest problems of this mode. Allow me to list a few of these: Exchange system - Usage Exchange system - Availability Restarting & Joining Exiting the shop map Money scavenge Prices & Balance These are the main issues we knew we had to fix for a new version. We have worked hard on this second version, and some of the fixes we made might not be everyone's taste. Here are the main changes, and what was done to prevent them. ------------ Exchange system - Usage & Availability The mysterious "Exchange" TV screen texture in front of the exit! Originally, we planned the thing to be used reasonnably, in a "civil" manner. We also had plained to explain players who joined recently, how the trading tool works. As things turned out, most players were camping the dropping spot, scamming out new comers before we could even press "T". Both of our concepts were ruined within 15 minutes of gameplay. In the second version -> I designed the second shop with much more epic proportions. It is much larger than the first one, it has two floors, each with a distinct purpose. The 1st floor is the mall itself, where you buy inventory items, weapons, ammo, armors and everything you need to fight your way through the levels. The 2nd floor is about business! Up there, you can sell weapons and use the trading system. The later changed it's name, the monitor now displays "Drop Money". In addition to this small yet significant change, I added 4 more dropping spots. In short, this resolves both the availablity of the tool, and the ease of use of the system. I also reworked the way it is so only one player can stand on the drop spot at once. ------------ Restarting & Joining This one is certainly the most annoying issue with the gameplay we provide. When all players die, or a new players arrives during the middle of an epic battle, the problem is the following: All you have to fight is a Berserk and a Shotgun. We had no specific idea on how to fight this problem at first. The only thing we coudl do was changing the map via rcon, but that couldn't work without an admin around. We also thought about the voting possibility, where the shop could be the only votable map. Again, it didn't work quite well because players didn't know the shop is on Map00. In the second version -> We partially solved the situation. The first we did was to implement weapon pick-ups again. We did not add all of them, because that would kill the concept, but we added sufficient weaponry for the players to survive difficult maps if they are careful enough. Another solution that will be added when ZDaemon will reach 1.10, which is to exit the map back to the shop using sv_acs_world_exit. You don't have to be a master mapper to understand what this one does! ;) We also will add a special note on the F1 "HELP" screen to tell players to vote back to Map00 for the shop. ------------ Exiting the shop map By that, I mean "Exiting the shop"! The problem is quite simple to understand, and even easier to fix! When players are done with their shopping, they like to hang around in the place, and they especially like to not walk on the exit teleporter. It is also common that 10/12 players are ready, but are stuck here forever because the two remaining ones are english ignorants. JCD came up with a solution to this problem even before I could think about it. He added a script that simply ends the map via a simple "rcon puke" command. In the second version -> We simply change the way it is done. Instead of having all players ready, when 66% percent of them are, the shop is exited with a small timer to make the players hurry up. ------------ Money Scavenge Dark title for a dark problem! Creepy stuff! Within the first episode of a game, the maps usually do not hold many monsters. The maps tend to be easy, not very rewarding, and unbalanced when it comes to check the wallet! We also noticed some problems with players being vampires, constantly waiting in the shadows to pick up the loot of their fallen victims. It's unfair to the brave players, and it doesn't make much sense that a total coward is given more weapons. In the second version -> The shop itself now holds more Santa Claus-based scripts. Of different levels and use, they offer interesting mini-games to entertain people between two slaughterfests. We also changed the loot itself. Players can now get either coins, or coin-filled bags. Both of them offer more variety in the quantity, the rarity, and the risk/reward ratio. Dead players also drop a bag, a Borderlands-like idea that JCD implemented. Unfortunately, our last problem couldn't be fixed, and so far, we had no idea on what could be done about it. If you think of anything, tell us! ------------ Prices & Balance During the first event, we noticed that most of the time, players could only buy one item, no matter the category of this item, it could be a weapon, a sphere, an armor... They always ended up spending their money with a single switch being pressed. The only benefit this system has is that the players have an entire level to think about which weapons they will buy. In the second version -> This has led us to rethink the approach of the shopping system. A lot of newly arrived variables also would make this system obsolete, take, for example, the possibility to sell weapons. The overall idea behind the changes is "Think twice before you buy". To do this, we have added many valuable items, and changed the price of all the existing ones. This gives us the opportunity to see what the players are the most interested in (survivability vs. weaponry) and how badly do they want these specific items. It's a somewhat limited trading system allows for even more "team play", which is an interesting side effect. ------------ Some issues still however can't be fixed, take the following: Maxed money amount Flying money Jackpot Pain Elementals (which is not a meant bug!) As for the maxed money, we are looking into more exotic ways to keep track of it. You can find below a bunch of screenies with some of the new stuff!