Trafalgar Event Room Improvements

[Booyaah]

Apologies I wanted to originally keep this short as possible, but this will be a pretty long post, so grab some popcorn.  Anyways we've been talking about some of the shortcomings of the current large battle event setup in the other traf thread and the current setup has the following main two shortcomings:

 

1) Match maker dropping players to favor balance - For example with 10 Dutch in Frigates and 5 French in the same ships, the current setup would create a 5v5 and leave out five of the dutch.

2) Players do not want to be split up from their guild mates - The other option to allow everyone to play and keep teams balanced would be to split up the nations and have everyone potentially have to play with random players to balance the battle rating, which is not desirable for many people.

 

So think back to our past Trafalgar battles at Plymouth and how we balanced those matches.  We kept the players of the same nation together (since the game doesn't let us split nations in OW anyways) and we kept the BR between the teams balanced, regardless of if there was a discrepancy between the total number of players on each side.  The way we did this was by tallying up the # of each ships manually and the BR for each team and if one team had vastly higher numbers, we asked players from that side to step down into smaller ships to even things out, and that turned out for some very evenly matched fights.  That is the main problem with the current large event setup, we lack the abilities to retroactively go back and swap ships before being able to see the other team's ship lineup.  Allowing us to switch ships in a lobby system after the teams have been formed but before the start of the match would solve all these problems.

 

One thing I have come to realize though, is there are too many edge cases and potential for abuse if you let each nation decide the other nations on their team in a multi 4+ nation setup, it's just too complicated. When forming the teams, the game should internally keep the players from each nation together, but find the combination of nations that keeps the closest total number of players on each side (i.e. 14v16 not 10v20).

 

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So I have come up with a few new screens with all this in mind to take care of ship selection and also a way to prevent one coordinated guild from a single nation from dominating a team that is made up my a mixture of more random players from different nations.  I will start by going through each screen:

 

1) The wait screen - I didn't make a screen for this one but thought I'd mention it.  Currently it shows the number of players from each side.  It would be nice if it showed a listing of the actual player names and what nations would be paired up for each side.  Also the ability to temporarily leave the event screen while waiting so you can access all the other port screens if you wanted to do some crafting or inventory management while you wait.  Maybe a popup in global chat to remind 15 minutes before the event starts as well?

 

2) Lobby Screen - More reminiscent of the Sea Trials lobby.  I will explain the features below:

(I copy/pasted some data from the old traf sign-up sheet, so the data probably isn't accurate )

 

 

• You see the player and ship lineups for both teams at the top...pretty standard stuff
• Chat window brought back so both teams can communicate with each other on the final rules of engagement and inside their team to develop a strategy.
• Team Battle Ratings listed
• Several button options
• Match start status at the bottom middle

 

I'll go over each one of the buttons right now...

 

1) Select Ship - Clicking this button will bring up a new popup similar to the one we already have in port to switch ships and also let you configure your loadout.  I figured for convenience's sake, we should be allowed to pick any ship from any port and load it up with any modules or cannons we have in our current port.  Behind the scenes I think a temporary copy of the ship should be made just for the battle only then destroyed so players can't abuse it to teleport ships, modules, cannons, etc

 

How many times have you realized you forgot to switch off those medium cannons or carronades before a match or wanted to last minute switch out some modules?  You usually didn't have time with our Plymouth battles because you had to sail back into port against the wind a lot.  This would solve that problem.

 

 

 

2) Vote Admiral - The first minute the lobby opens would start a countdown to select an admiral by clicking on their name then this button.  The person with the most votes by their team mates would be promoted to admiral.  The fleet admiral would gain a few extra abilities, such as being able to use the fleet command functions if we ever get them in the future, vote kicking, and making handicap proposals.  

 

 

3) Vote Kick - The option to propose a vote kick on a player who is trolling or harassing the team would be only available to the admiral.  I imagined a vote kick by the admiral would give everyone a simple yes/no popup with the player's name and if 75% of the player's voted yes, the player would be kicked from the match.

 

 

4) Adjust BRH - Battle Rating Handicap.  Could maybe use a better term?  Imagine a scenario where you are up against a single opposing nation of players from a single guild who you know are all on Team Speak, but your team is filled with random players without voice comms.  In that case a 1:1 fight would probably not go very well for your team against the more coordinated and experienced team.  This option allows the admiral to propose a 'handicap' for the other team in order to balance for these intangibles.  The other team's fleet captain would have to agree to this, and the sides could negotiate what number they feel is fair in chat.

 

 

 

 

Here is an example: Let's say the red team say proposes a BR handicap of -20% for the blue team and the blue team accepts.  Once the red team finishes choosing their ships and everyone readies up, the red team's ships will become locked in.  Then the total BR limit for the blue team would get lowered to 80% of the red team's BR.  If the red team's BR is then over, they would then have to pick some lower ships to get their BR to fall at or below their new handicapped BR.  In the picture below, you can see the blue team's max BR has been lowered from 3600 to 2880.  Once all those conditions are satisfied and both teams ready up, then the match can start.

 

 

5) Exit Event - Self explanatory.  Once you leave you cannot rejoin

 

6) Ready Button - Self explanatory.  You should be able to hit the button again to 'unready' if you decide later on you want to change your ship.  Once everyone is ready a short 10 second cool down should suffice.

 

 

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Lastly I decided to throw a background, a few textures, and some drop shadows to make things look nice

 

 

 

 

(I wanted to use this picture but the camera angle of the image doesn't line up properly with this UI)

 

 

Thoughts?

 

[OlavDeng2]

This would be a wast improvement to what we currently have, i support this idea as we have had troubles a couple of times with the current system.

[Captiva]

Seems like a great idea for Trafalgar. I really appreciate the time you must have put into this presentation. Just to give you an added pat on the back, what I really like and what the game sorely needs are background screens - be it for Trafalgar, the Start screen, but especially when in port (something similar to your last example when in port).

[DazednConfused]

Very well thought out and reasoned suggestion!! You have outdone yourself here mate. If these changes are made ill start doing trafs again.

 

it would be awesome if we can get back to having spontaneous trafs like back in the day - and if this proposal is implemented it could happen. especially like the pop up reminders of upcoming battles.

 

PS. yaay i got voted admiral!!!

[Snoopy]

You demoted me in that screenshot!

j/k

I really like a system like that.

[Konali89]

Played some GENERIC events todya, i can only add that it needs to get fixed:)

The minimum requirment of 8 is fine and all, but as soon as that adds up, the guys that also wanted to join are having bad luck against groups.

If you join with more than 1 group, and it is decent and above the mininum you will see that players are being left out.

 

anyway, great post booyah. My english sucks haha and its really late here, but alot of guys got left out of the battle, and that is not nice. Whomever was there could perhaps rephrase my things and get the point across:)

[Jacques de Montagne]

I really do like the interface you are proposing Booyaah

 

In my opinion the two admirals/organisers should be allowed to trade players if both agree in order to be able to create custom battles or balance the match even further. Going forward should not require everyone to ready up - with 30+ captains around, chances are high that several people forget to check ready or go afk, ... It should be solely up to the admirals to lock their respective team after a grace period, so that the battle can start once they are both done.

 

The handicap feature is great but could be delayed if complicated to implement. Later on options to pick the type of map, time of day, weather and maybe even the wind gauge can be added. I could also envision admirals to pick a flag and a starting formation for their fleet, this would also save some of the set up time.