No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

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whitelion1284
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No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by whitelion1284 »

I just wanted to pitch in and offer my thoughts on the solution to reinforcement farming coming in 1.5.

I agree that overwatch camping an endless series of reinforcements is cheesy and exploitative and it should be discouraged by taking away the reward for doing so. The absolute elimination of experience from reinforcements seems a little punitive, however, and takes away experience from what can be argued to be legitimate kills. So I was thinking about a compromise, although I freely admit that I have no idea how complicated this would be from a coding perspective.

The compromise: leave the experience for reinforcements in place up to the moment the objective is completed. Those are all valid kills. Your squad is fighting to achieve the objective within a time frame and the reinforcements are legitimately increasing the difficulty. That should carry a reward. Once the objective is completed, however, the reinforcements should offer little to no reward, thus encouraging the player to GTFO as quickly as possible.

Anyhoo, that's my two cents worth.
Cheers.
nmkaplan
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by nmkaplan »

That doesn't fix the problem at all. If a player is willing to hang around fighting waves of enemies for a few XP, why wouldn't they be willing to run a crappy mission (say, a get advent attention, or a simple POI), forgo the objective and stick around fighting waves of enemies?
Exquisitor
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Exquisitor »

I've tried farming reinforcements. It's really not that fun and rather boring. It doesn't really add that much xp in the scheme of things either. I think capping the xp and intel from kills is a reasonable solution. These could be capped at 2-3 times the number of Advent on the board at start for GoPs, not sure that a cap would be needed for endless waves in haven rescues or shoot the alien data tap missions.
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WanWhiteWolf
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

Exquisitor wrote:I've tried farming reinforcements. It's really not that fun and rather boring. It doesn't really add that much xp in the scheme of things either. I think capping the xp and intel from kills is a reasonable solution. These could be capped at 2-3 times the number of Advent on the board at start for GoPs, not sure that a cap would be needed for endless waves in haven rescues or shoot the alien data tap missions.
I am not sure Heaven defense will give any XP with this change. They are RNF after all.

I played this campaign with 0 RNF farm. And I can tell you , that in October, I was still without a MSGT. I think the current XP is based around the fact that you DO kill some RNF.

I think it's fair that the XP is capped; but the soldier XP should be adjusted as such.
fowlJ
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by fowlJ »

RNF only missions will give XP according to their own rules - in fact, I'm pretty sure they already do.
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whitelion1284
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by whitelion1284 »

I guess the question that interests me is: What's more important? Creating a balanced game for the majority of players who play the game for enjoyment's sake or making it absolutely impossible for the die-hard power gamer to cheese and farm his/her way to victory? Is preventing them from doing what they want to do really all that important?

Anyway, I'm not attached to the idea and I suspect I'll be categorically ignored by the devs anyway. I just don't understand the compulsion to take away legitimate (albeit small) amounts of experience from the average player in order to discourage the cheaters.
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WanWhiteWolf
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

fowlJ wrote:RNF only missions will give XP according to their own rules - in fact, I'm pretty sure they already do.
Heaven Defense is rated as Very Light. Pretty sure you are going to kill more than 12 enemies before the minimum 5 turn evac timer runs out.

And you can still farm XP in different ways - like doing low % missions and kill as many as you can before evac. It's just free XP and potential loot. Failing a mission doesn't raise vigilance.

If they are going to reduce even more the amount of XP you get, you will be going - at least on lower dfficulties - into final mission without a single soldier MSGT. I am pretty sure you can finish Veteran October / November and you are not going to have many / if any MSGT by then.
Antifringe
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Antifringe »

whitelion1284 wrote:I guess the question that interests me is: What's more important? Creating a balanced game for the majority of players who play the game for enjoyment's sake or making it absolutely impossible for the die-hard power gamer to cheese and farm his/her way to victory? Is preventing them from doing what they want to do really all that important?

Anyway, I'm not attached to the idea and I suspect I'll be categorically ignored by the devs anyway. I just don't understand the compulsion to take away legitimate (albeit small) amounts of experience from the average player in order to discourage the cheaters.
That's not what's going on here. Certainly no one is "cheating" by farming RNFs. That's just playing the game by the rules presented.

The problem is that the optimal play involves uninteresting grinding. If you are trying to play your very best, you should always, always, always stop at the evac and farm RNFs for a while. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it's not challenging, but it gives you an advantage that you don't get if you skip it. That's bad design. Or rather, a bad circumstance that arose spontaneously, unintended by design.

Good play and fun play should be the same thing. This isn't supposed to be one of those MMOs that reward you for grinding the same task for hours on end. I think the intent is to reach players through engagement rather than through addiction.
Steve-O
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Steve-O »

WanWhiteWolf wrote: Heaven Defense is rated as Very Light. Pretty sure you are going to kill more than 12 enemies before the minimum 5 turn evac timer runs out.
HAVEN. Haven, haven, haven.

HAVEN.
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whitelion1284
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by whitelion1284 »

LOL

Steve-O, pet peeve?
mudhut79
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by mudhut79 »

The thing for me is that, on those missions where everything goes downhill and you do have to 'legitimately' fight off waves of reinforcements to get back to the evac zone, you really should be rewarded for the extra kills. These are the sort of missions where you're taking wounds/deaths and the extra XP helps to offset that soldier loss (including via recovery time). Xcom is already prone to downhill slopes (things start going bad, game mechanics make it so that things get worse....) and restricting XP from reinforcements just moves it more that way.

My proposed solution is this: reinforcements only provide extra XP if they get to take an action (or perhaps, more technically, if they are still alive at the beginning of the alien turn after their drop). I say extra XP because I would keep the mechanic where you get XP for reinforcement kills up to the starting map enemy count regardless - this is just whether you can get extra XP over that limit. So if you kill all map enemies, then camp the evac zone to kill reinforcements the turn they drop, via overwatch and the Xcom turn -> you get no XP.

This proposed solution would still give you zero extra XP for reinforcements in quite a few 'legitimate' cases - after all, even if you're staging a fighting retreat from a mission gone bad, alpha striking those reinforcements between you and the evac zone is still best practice. But it's better than zero in all cases. And I figure it would be able to be coded (flag on units as to availability for extra XP, set to false when dropped, flips to true at their first active alien turn), happy to hear any other suggestions though.
ereinion
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by ereinion »

Dear Pavonis,

I have this problem too, I had "reinforcement warning" on the my screen top left each mission and each turn, but the dropship never showed up..how can I fix it?

I just used weapon and enemy's mods ( compa to LW2 ).

Thanks
Zork
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Zork »

To come back to OP topic I understand the point of view that XP should be mission based and not kills based. But the reality is XP kills based is already an important mechanism of the gameplay.

I also understand that no way the basic grinding should be advantaged, it's a sort of players schism, some will find it fun and some not and expect not be disadvantaged to not do it.

There's already a farming by killing all pods on map or not, eventually reinforcement should be managed in the same way, not infinite reinforcements but a defined number of reinforcement. Extra reinforcement past the limit would be named extra reinforcement or something and would bring no XP, base reinforcement of the mission would be XP managed as enemies on map, full XP if killed, half(?) XP if not killed even if not spawned so make a mission very fast wouldn't be more penalized than doing a mission without killing all pods.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
NephilimNexus
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by NephilimNexus »

My solution:

1) Advent reinforcements are worth zero xp until the next turn begins.

2) Once the next turn begins they are now worth normal xp.


Examples:

A farmer leaves ten guys on overwatch. A dropship flies by and three Advent troopers jump out. They immediately try to scamper, but all three are cut down in hurricane of gunfire before the turn ends. No experience is awarded.

A player leaves three guys on overwatch. A pod teleports in and three Advent appear. They immediately try to scamper, and two are killed before the turn ends. They give no experience. The third one makes it to cover, however, and is now flagged at normal xp value.

A player is rushing for an evac point when Advent drops four more troops directly behind them. Since no one was on overwatch except for one Ranger who got it for free, all four troops scamper for cover. They are all now worth full xp.
Psieye
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Psieye »

All these arguments stem from "the hypothetical hyper-optimal player can't possibly exist - or would be exceedingly few in number. Stop inconveniencing me to answer that player."

From a philosophical standpoint, I disagree with that view. Game design is about making sure the hyper-optimal player is having fun. Sure you can make sub-optimal playstyles be fun too and that's healthy for the game. But if the hyper-optimal player is not having fun, you have a failed game.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
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MacroNova
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by MacroNova »

NephilimNexus, that will just incentivize people to stand in the evac and not overwatch, and then kill all the enemies on their own turn, until it gets too difficult to do so.

I hate farming reinforcements, but I do it because I feel like I have to. Mission XP should be buffed and reinforcement XP dropped to zero.
LordYanaek
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by LordYanaek »

Psieye wrote: From a philosophical standpoint, I disagree with that view. Game design is about making sure the hyper-optimal player is having fun.
<Philosophical garbage>
"Shlipoophically" i would ask why?
The point of a game is to have fun, not to play optimally. Should developers really try to make a game enjoyable for people who don't try to enjoy their game? I think it's doomed to failure anyway and it's worse if it makes the game less enjoyable for all the players who simply want to enjoy it (which wouldn't apply to this particular case).
MacroNova wrote: I hate farming reinforcements, but I do it because I feel like I have to. Mission XP should be buffed and reinforcement XP dropped to zero.
Please don't feel insulted by this comment, it was a general answer to a general statement. I think RNF grinding is a special case because many of us are conditioned to grind XP whenever we can by all those MMOs (which i will never call RPG). That being said you should really try not doing it, i only ever "farmed" 2-3 waves in some Smash and Grab missions (they are the easiest to farm) and only when the timer was close to 0 when i reached evac and didn't feel like my guys were progressing too slowly (playing on Commander).

Some people prefer playing math and will have fun making sure they always gain the maximum (xp in this case) up to the 10th digit. Good for them if it's their way of having fun. I wouldn't really call this optimal because it might be optimal from a number of mission to xp ratio but it's far from optimal from an hours spent to xp ratio. Those players generally find grinding (rnf farming is nothing but grinding) to be fun and grinding is part (sometimes the central part) of some games so i wouldn't really worry for them.
</Philosophical garbage>


Back on topic. I think the developers have to go one extreme or the other. Either they allow RNF farming or they totally remove any gain from RNF. Trying to find a "middle ground" won't work because grinders will always find a way to grind something. Examples :
  • Leave the experience for reinforcements in place up to the moment the objective is completed. This might sound like a nice compromise but grinders will just camp the VIP on the evac zone along with the squad and farm the RNFs since the objective is not yet completed.
  • Advent reinforcements are worth zero xp until the next turn begins. Already answered by MacroNova, just wait for your turn and kill them during your turn. It will be longer and more tedious but grinders will still grind.
  • Don't give XP to soldiers who score a kill while standing on the evac zone. I didn't see this one proposed but it would also look like a good idea, however grinders will just camp 1 tile away from evac for the OW farming (1 tile will allow them to ignore enemy OW when they finally decide to GTFO)
  • XP awarded for enemies who are still alive at the beginning of the alien turn after their drop. Best one i've seen so far but i can see grinders stunning them and waiting one turn to kill them. Much more involved, complicated and ultimately tedious grinding but still possible.
I think the developers decision was the correct one not because of some philosophical nonsense but because it will reduce the disparity in XP gains between players and allow easier balancing of soldier progression. Hopefully this will prevent some players from finishing the game without any MSgts because the progression was balanced around results from (at least partially) players who grind RNFs.
mudhut79 wrote:The thing for me is that, on those missions where everything goes downhill and you do have to 'legitimately' fight off waves of reinforcements to get back to the evac zone, you really should be rewarded for the extra kills. These are the sort of missions where you're taking wounds/deaths and the extra XP helps to offset that soldier loss (including via recovery time). Xcom is already prone to downhill slopes (things start going bad, game mechanics make it so that things get worse....) and restricting XP from reinforcements just moves it more that way.
Concerns like this one and concerns about loosing "legitimate" XP are understandable but given the relative importance of Mission XP vs Kill XP, loosing the XP of 1-2 waves won't really make a difference. What you really need is some sort of rubber band mechanic which could be implemented totally independent from RNFs. What if the loss of a soldier increased the XP gain of surviving squad members by some percentage or flat amount? Of course to avoid exploiting this would be restricted to soldiers with a rank that's lower (maybe lower or equal) to the lost soldier so you can't just take a suicide rookie to boost the XP gain of "real" soldiers. There might also be a minimum rank before this ability triggers to avoid further abuses and it might be tied to the "Vengeance" GTS improvement that i think people rarely bother researching.
Psieye
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Psieye »

LordYanaek wrote:i would ask why?
The point of a game is to have fun, not to play optimally. Should developers really try to make a game enjoyable for people who don't try to enjoy their game?
Market share. Granted, you have a point that LW2 is a mod and not a commercial investment: player numbers mean nothing to Pavonis for this game. But in conventional game making situations with a large investment, abandoning customers just because you're uncomfortable with philosophy should be a conscious decision that all stakeholders (i.e. employees and investors) will have to get onboard with and communicate. Observe:
LordYanaek wrote: Some people
Those players
You disagree with 'that demographic' and you'd prefer to not associate with them. Nothing wrong with that on a personal level. It's a bad attitude for a business as it's money you could target. It's excused in this context because LW2 is not a business venture. But in general, if a developer is paid, they should make their game enjoyable for people who "don't try to enjoy their game". Because those people are following an instinct that WANTS to find fun at the end of it. If you don't want to cater to those people, the game design needs to make it clear it's not trying to please them. Otherwise you're duping them into thinking they'll find fun but they won't.


Now, putting the philosophy aside, you give a more relevant reason why all this matters:

There is a perception (which may be accurate) that there's not enough XP in a campaign. Vanilla's rubber band for dealing with high rank soldier loss was black market soldiers keeping up in rank with where you should be. That may not be enough for LongWar's demand for a large roster. If people are trying to farm RNF because they feel it's necessary to keep up with enemies (and not because of general min/maxing desire) then there's a bigger problem elsewhere than this debate on "should RNF farming give rewards?" If the argument stems from "but it's not realistic" then this is one occasion where gameplay is more important than flavour.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Jacke
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Jacke »

I tend to align more with LordYanaek's views than Psieye's, but I sympathise with both.

I agree with LordYanaek that in the case of experience from RNF's, it's just better to be simple here and remove it, primarily to make it easier to further balance experience over a campaign without the complexity of it varying due to how many RNF's are killed.

Games and a game modded need to be both fun and challenging. Gamers are willing to extend effort in overcoming challenges they view as somewhat tedious when the payoff is good enough, but that's skirting a tight line. Trying to cater to all possible players and their market share is IMHO going down the path to overly min/max designing a game. Much as overly min/max playing a game, that can waste a lot of effort and resources for trivial benefit. We can all think of AAA games that went too far down the Big Data rabbit hole when enough of the data and the analysis was just wrong.

Balancing is necessary and balancing everything in a mod is tough for all 4 difficulties. LW2 is definitely tight with resources to provide challenge, harder at the higher difficulties to get all the features of the game unlocked in a campaign. Soldier experience is one of those resources that needs to be balanced and right now it seems to be a bit too tight. The best way to get it right is not to make things murkier with RNF experience.
MacroNova
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by MacroNova »

LordYanek, I'm definitely not insulted by your argument. As I see it, there are a lot of players who will exploit any advantage available to them to win. Even if said exploit is unfun and grindy. You make the tradeoff argument that the time spent isn't worth it. My counterpoint: the time spent playing a campaign only to lose because your soldiers were underleveled isn't worth it either.
Psieye
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Psieye »

I thought this thread had reached its conclusion and wanted to retire. The philosophical tangent served its purpose. Despite disagreements on the philosophy layer, the last few posts have all converged on one conclusion in the pragmatism layer: shut down RNF farming. If lack of EXP is a concern, then it should be addressed in bigger ways than keeping a post-mission grind in any form. Simplicity to balance and gameplay experience over realism.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Zork
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Zork »

It's a no end debate because it's divergent opinions. As I already wrote if you don't like grinding you definitely don't want grinding is encouraged in any way. If you like grinding you don't like a tool is removed.

Now argue that grinding is optimal play doesn't make any sense, there's rules and adapt to them that's it, if you can't you don't play optimal.

Now if it's a no end debate it's also a sensible topic, I don't want any game evolves to be the grinding feast that is Final Fantasy Tactics. FFT is an amazing game but the extreme grinding is a boredom for me.

Not get XP for late reinforcements is fine, you failed do the mission fast enough you don't worth any reward, it's a simple easy to understand rule.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
Exquisitor
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by Exquisitor »

I thought about this issue some more as I was farming reinforcements this morning. Why not just give bonus XP scaled for finishing an objective early (by number of turns before reinf arrive or number of turns before mandatory exit)? There could also be extra incentive by reducing XP from kills after the first 2-4 waves of reinf arrive.
lumber-chick
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Re: No Reinforcement Farming vs No Experience

Post by lumber-chick »

I think the only thing that is broken now is that those post-objective RNF are risk free.

They are in the same location, always close to your squad, close to evac point, and have no actions upon arrival.

We are not afraid to camp and kill them. But we dread the mid-mission RNF because they delay objective, add to active pods, pose risk to squads.

So I would simply make the RNF more and more risky to handle. Examples:

- Give them guaranteed yellow alert action at some point. They are warned, it would actually make sense. Will I risk OW on 3-unit drop if they can all flank shot me if one of my OW misses?

- Make them drop in RANDOM locations further away so you cannot camp them. I will not risk fighting a pod I cannot even see, no thank you.

- Add OW-immune units to every RNF at some point.

- Add Shieldbearer shield active on drop at some point.

Etc. Etc.

Makes RNF actually scary + better risk reward system, like infilteation and other mechanics with tradeofs.

With tradeoffs it'll solve itself.

Capping XP etc. Is just a workaround I feel. But it might suffice :)
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