Difference between revisions of "Developer Blog"

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= BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question =
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= BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You =
  
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So, in BTA's 13.2 patch, we made a change that I believe has been heavily misunderstood. We changed max salvage on missions to top out around 4/19 or so. The community has reacted with a fair bit of panic about this change and so I felt the need to explain a little further why we did it and why this isn't the end of the world so that folks can relax a little and perceive our reasoning.
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HBS BT has a fairly basic cover system, everyone knows this and intuitively understands it: stand in cover or brace, get damage reduction; have Bulwark and do those things, get more damage reduction; do all three, get the most damage reduction. Simple, easy to understand, functional, boring, not easy to modify. The HBS system works in grades of 20% and gives you a stack of Guarded. Guarded stacks with itself up to 3 times, for a total of 60% reduction. This is fine and basically works. However, we ran into issues with it when we started looking at implementing a new, better, system.
  
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To be clear out of the gate, this was not a nerf. Nerfs are actions taken to specifically punish a play style or stop something from happening and that's not why this action was taken. We had no direct issue with salvaging stuff, salvaging stuff is fine and good and fun and we like it. This was a gameplay focused decision, taken to encourage a certain gameplay loop. It is also part 1 of a multi-part effort and has multiple aspects to it. But I want to be extraordinarily clear: when we made this choice it was not to punish anyone or any play style, it was not done to hit the players with a stick and say "Bad Players! Bad Players!" Some folks have implied or believed as much and that view is just flat out wrong, this was not a punishment move.
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Recently, the question of artillery has come up a few times. Specifically, it was asked if we could make an artillery-specific Damage Reduction effect. The answer turned out to be that yes we could do so. In so doing though, the BTA Team ran into the larger question of where we put such an effect. Do we put it on a pilot skill? That might work, but what if you don't have that skill and you still need the DR? We realized that the most logical place to put it was on the Brace action. We then discovered that Brace is effectively hardwired and we needed to implement new code to make it modifiable. Once we did that, we realized that we had the ability to heavily diversify and deepen the DR system the game put into place. So, we did that.
  
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The "new" DR system works like so: certain skills give a base level of DR, amount and type are variable based on the skills. Further, alongside v13.3's weather system (EnvironmentalDesignMasks or EDM), we diversified the number of terrains that provide DR and how those work. Bracing also gives a certain amount of DR, both normal and AoE. Finally, we cleaned up some gear that provides DR (such as the Null Signature System). All DR sources in BTA now stack together perfectly. The intent of the new system is to make it such that more units have DR more regularly but that the DR numbers are lower in general. This has the effect of slightly increasing the durability of all units while making it harder to make an uber-tank.
  
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I can hear you asking now though, "Ok BD, then what the fuck did you do it for?" and the answer there is multi-stage. The first, basic, answer is to increase c-bill equity. The BTA Team identified that c-bills vs salvage is absurdly lopsided in terms of gameplay choices, to the point that the community wisdom is to never take c-bills. This is bad design. If a choice may as well not be there, then why is it there? Increasing c-bill equity is important and something we want to encourage. This is the weakest part of the reasoning behind changing the max salvage but is the easiest one to see immediately. There is a change coming in the next few days that will further act on this point, with an estimated 50% c-bill boost to all contract payments across the board, including special contracts such as flashpoints, with no drawbacks or tricks whatsoever. This should further help to equalize perceived c-bill vs salvage value and is one of those "multi-part efforts" I mentioned earlier.
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* The skills that provide DR are Bulwark (15% normal and 10% AoE), Sure Footing (5% AoE), Shielded Stance (50% normal), and Defensive Formation (20% normal to entire force).
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* Brace provides 20% normal and 20% AoE DR as well as 50% less stability damage taken.
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* Environmental sources include Forests, Whirlwinds, Destroyed Buildings, and Crystal Fields. Forests/Whirlwinds/Buildings provide 10% DR while occupied *and* for 1 turn after passing through them (to represent that combat is meant to be simultaneous and you were targeted while moving through the cover). Crystal Fields provide 5% DR while occupied and for 1 turn after passing through.
  
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'''IMPORTANT NOTE:''' All DR sources stack perfectly, but it is worth noting that they are multiplicative not additive, so you'll see things like 24% DR from a combo of Bulwark and Forests (1 * 0.85 * 0.9 = 0.765 which is displayed as 24% to the player).
  
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The next part of the answer is the much more important but much more obscure answer and, simply put, is that this salvage change was done to extend a specific period of BTA gameplay. BTA careers can be broken into about three parts: the scrappy early-game when you've got nothing to work with and your pilots are bad and you're struggling to survive, the rich and interesting middle-game when you've stabilized and are starting to define the career's trajectory, and the snowballed late-game when you're an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction with maxed out everything. It's the BTA Team's general belief that BTA is at its very best in the first two phases, with a lot of the best gameplay coming in the middle-game where you have some power (unlike early-game when you're just flailing for any lifeline) but still have some restrictions due to lacking perfect builds like in late-game snowball. The salvage change was made to extend the middle-game, the phase we believe is the best phase of BTA.
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The design goal is to encourage mobile play and risk taking (more doable thanks to the more constant DR from things like Bulwark and cover sources) while not making everything a defensive tank (because the numbers are lower across the board). At the same time, if you want to play extremely defensively and form cover-based gunlines (I'm a big fan of this style of gameplay), you still can because Bulwark and cover and Brace still stack well and even can help cover you while you reposition from cover to cover thanks to the sticky effect of the cover sources. There are now also AoE DR sources such as Bulwark and Sure Footing and Brace to help you out if the enemy brought artillery and to give you some level of protection, though not enough to trivialize the artillery.
  
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This change may sound scary or unusual, but I've been playing with it extensively as has the team and we're convinced it's a good gameplay change that mixes things up in a positive and enjoyable way. Your gameplay style hasn't been nerfed or removed and you may find that this helps you generate new strategies that you might not have considered before now. Give it a try and let us know what you think. I've opened #dev-blog-discussion again for conversation about it, please be respectful with your commentary or criticism.
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We had this discussion a while ago about where the best time in BTA was had and how we could extend that period so that players could experience more of it. The core problem is that BTA, like many games of this type, is by definition a snowball game and that can't really be stopped. Success means that you acquire more parts and mechs and tools which means that you inevitably snowball really really hard and become the unstoppable juggernaut of death I mentioned earlier. The key metric to how you do the snowball is salvage, which is the objectively best source of material to encourage the snowball. Further, salvage shares go up as missions become harder. On the face of it, that's logical: harder missions bring bigger rewards. But it also accelerates the snowball meaning you skip through the middle-game faster to get to the broken as hell end-game.
 
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In order to extend the middle-game, we looked at two options: shorten the early-game or slow down the end-game. The early-game is dangerous but also deeply deeply rewarding as you survive and gain that stability that leads into the middle-game. We didn't want to shorten that experience because it too was identified as being really enjoyable and rewarding to push through. On the flip side, since we can't stop the end-game snowball, slowing it down doesn't actually change anything beyond making you get there slower. You'll still always get there if you succeed, it's the nature of the design, that cannot be stopped, only delayed. The choice seemed clear: make a change to slow down the end-game and thereby extend the middle-game some. The choice we landed on is, I hope, obvious now: reduce salvage numbers.
 
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By reducing salvage numbers we can keep players in that enjoyable "choices still matter" period of the middle-game. Less access to everything a player wants when they want it is intentional. I've seen people saying "oh, you need to super upgrade the shops" and, uh, no, I don't. That defeats the point. The point is to extend the period where you don't have all your tools because the very act of having all the tools defeats the entire point of having a middle-game because that's the definition of the end-game snowball period. Think about it critically: you've lost literally no access to anything. At the absolute worst case scenario, a mission that offered you 7 picks offers you 4 now. That's three less items. That's it. It's not that the items became rarer, it's not that the items aren't there, it's that you now need to make choices about what you value more often. That extends the middle-game where choices are important without removing the end-game because you'll get there anyway, just 1-3 less picks at a time. Nothing changed, it just ratcheted down the acceleration a little.
 
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I know there are going to be voices that say "but BD, I like the snowball". You know what? I do too. It's fun to be super powerful. And guess what? I didn't take that away from you, I just made it come a little later. It means you get to enjoy your career longer, it means your success will feel more earned because it took a little longer and little more tactical choices on your part to get there. Each piece of that snowball feels better because you chose it over something else. This choice wasn't made for no reason, it was made to encourage a longer, more contemplative, more "choices matter" style of gameplay. It wasn't a punishment of the snowball, it was a mild delay to encourage another period of a BTA career.
 
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At the end of the day, BTA is a modpack with a vision and a clear design goal. Total "do it your way" freedom leads to uniform blandness (see: Ubisoft sandboxes). I as a designer believe firmly in a focused experience with intentional goals and that's the spirit this change was made in. I talked with the team, we decided that this was the period of BTA's gameplay we want to encourage most, and that's what we did. We didn't take away the early-game struggle for those players who love it and we didn't take away the late-game snowball for those players that love it, that's all still here. When you comment, and I expect there will be comments, keep in mind that we did this to encourage something, not punish something else.
 
  
 
= Previous Developer Blogs =
 
= Previous Developer Blogs =
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[[BTA Developer Blog 6: The Salvage Question|BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13]]
 
[[BTA Developer Blog 6: The Salvage Question|BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13]]
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[[BTA Developer Blog 7: Damage Reduction And You|BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You - 2022/4/14]]
  
 
[[Category:Dev Blogs]]
 
[[Category:Dev Blogs]]

Revision as of 17:29, 14 April 2022

BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You

HBS BT has a fairly basic cover system, everyone knows this and intuitively understands it: stand in cover or brace, get damage reduction; have Bulwark and do those things, get more damage reduction; do all three, get the most damage reduction. Simple, easy to understand, functional, boring, not easy to modify. The HBS system works in grades of 20% and gives you a stack of Guarded. Guarded stacks with itself up to 3 times, for a total of 60% reduction. This is fine and basically works. However, we ran into issues with it when we started looking at implementing a new, better, system.

Recently, the question of artillery has come up a few times. Specifically, it was asked if we could make an artillery-specific Damage Reduction effect. The answer turned out to be that yes we could do so. In so doing though, the BTA Team ran into the larger question of where we put such an effect. Do we put it on a pilot skill? That might work, but what if you don't have that skill and you still need the DR? We realized that the most logical place to put it was on the Brace action. We then discovered that Brace is effectively hardwired and we needed to implement new code to make it modifiable. Once we did that, we realized that we had the ability to heavily diversify and deepen the DR system the game put into place. So, we did that.

The "new" DR system works like so: certain skills give a base level of DR, amount and type are variable based on the skills. Further, alongside v13.3's weather system (EnvironmentalDesignMasks or EDM), we diversified the number of terrains that provide DR and how those work. Bracing also gives a certain amount of DR, both normal and AoE. Finally, we cleaned up some gear that provides DR (such as the Null Signature System). All DR sources in BTA now stack together perfectly. The intent of the new system is to make it such that more units have DR more regularly but that the DR numbers are lower in general. This has the effect of slightly increasing the durability of all units while making it harder to make an uber-tank.

  • The skills that provide DR are Bulwark (15% normal and 10% AoE), Sure Footing (5% AoE), Shielded Stance (50% normal), and Defensive Formation (20% normal to entire force).
  • Brace provides 20% normal and 20% AoE DR as well as 50% less stability damage taken.
  • Environmental sources include Forests, Whirlwinds, Destroyed Buildings, and Crystal Fields. Forests/Whirlwinds/Buildings provide 10% DR while occupied *and* for 1 turn after passing through them (to represent that combat is meant to be simultaneous and you were targeted while moving through the cover). Crystal Fields provide 5% DR while occupied and for 1 turn after passing through.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All DR sources stack perfectly, but it is worth noting that they are multiplicative not additive, so you'll see things like 24% DR from a combo of Bulwark and Forests (1 * 0.85 * 0.9 = 0.765 which is displayed as 24% to the player).

The design goal is to encourage mobile play and risk taking (more doable thanks to the more constant DR from things like Bulwark and cover sources) while not making everything a defensive tank (because the numbers are lower across the board). At the same time, if you want to play extremely defensively and form cover-based gunlines (I'm a big fan of this style of gameplay), you still can because Bulwark and cover and Brace still stack well and even can help cover you while you reposition from cover to cover thanks to the sticky effect of the cover sources. There are now also AoE DR sources such as Bulwark and Sure Footing and Brace to help you out if the enemy brought artillery and to give you some level of protection, though not enough to trivialize the artillery.

This change may sound scary or unusual, but I've been playing with it extensively as has the team and we're convinced it's a good gameplay change that mixes things up in a positive and enjoyable way. Your gameplay style hasn't been nerfed or removed and you may find that this helps you generate new strategies that you might not have considered before now. Give it a try and let us know what you think. I've opened #dev-blog-discussion again for conversation about it, please be respectful with your commentary or criticism.

Previous Developer Blogs

BTA Developer Blog #1: BTA's Core Philosophy - 2021/5/18

BTA Developer Blog #2: BTA and the Clans - 2021/5/24

BTA Developer Blog #3: Tanks For All The Fish - 2021/5/31

BTA Developer Blog #4: Abiding Quirkiness - 2021/6/11

BTA Developer Blog #5: Artillery and You, A Primer - 2021/10/8

BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13

BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You - 2022/4/14

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