Incentives for sticking it out in a campaign

[slayernz]

I was pondering a bit. I am guessing some of you (myself included) have a tendency to do a bit of character buildup by doing the first level in a campaign, then aborting the campaign so you can do that same level again. It's a bit like Farming in Diablo, where you stop focusing on completing the campaign in order to build up cash (honor), or experience.

So I thought - wouldn't it be cool if there was a slight penalty for aborting a campaign (eg cost of between 100 and 200 honor every time you aborted a campaign. That would reduce the benefit of farming for honor by picking just one battle and repeating over and over.

SECOND, wouldn't it be cool if there was a special XP and honor bonus for completing a campaign (above and beyond the standard honor for kills and completing the battle). Maybe you get an additional 20% of all the honor you accrued during the campaign, AND you get 1x XP bonus for each battle that squadmember participated in during the campaign.

EG
If the campaign was 4 battles long, and your squad did the following:
Captain - 4 battles
Squad member A = 2 battles
Squad member B = 4 battles
Squad member C = 4 battles
Squad member D = 2 battles

Then bonus XP would be
Captain = 4XP
Squad member A = 2 XP
Squad member B = 4 XP
Squad member C = 4 XP
Squad member D = 2 XP

[xdesperado]

I like it.

One of the drawbacks for me with TA vs the other TB games is the ability to game the system.
I can farm for Honor and X.P. and I will never lose a squadie unless I choose to let him die instead of just aborting the battle and running it again.

[Lt. Hathaway]

Hilarious! "Reller's Relief" is my go to level for stress-testing ideas and new Templar types, because it's a beautiful fountain of Xenos. Mostly I just start a new squad at the top of the campaign list and work down, which has the squad just ready for Narvidian Dawn.

A bonus added to the final mission of each campaign would suit me just fine.

[slayernz]

For newbie squads, I do level 1 of the Moons of Nachot-uga campaign, because that was one of the first skirmish levels created, and there is enough room for squads not to get pinned down too easily.

When I've got their movement and offensive power up a little, I LOVE Siege of Roavin, first battle. It's my training ground for Neptune specialists. I have gone through the entire Siege campaign with the captain + 3 neptunes with devastating effect.

[Cory Trese]

We could just do that in the spreadsheet of levels by curving the rewards, right? like level 1 of a campaign gives you very little vs. level 5?

[xdesperado]

Jun 28, 2013 23:02:52 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

We could just do that in the spreadsheet of levels by curving the rewards, right? like level 1 of a campaign gives you very little vs. level 5?

Not really since you could still farm those 1st levels for XP and Honor then use a pumped up squad to blow through the campaign.

slayernz is suggesting giving an extra bonus for playing straight through a campaign.

[xdesperado]

Another suggestion is to add a penalty for repeating levels/campaigns with the same unit.

Maybe -2% Honor for every time you abort a level and -5% for every time you complete a level.

Gives a player more incentive to complete a campaign quickly and move on to new ones.

[Cory Trese]

I was saying I could use the level builder to say

level 1 | 0 xp | 10 honor
level 2 | 0 xp | 100 honor
level 3 | 1 xp | 100 honor
level 4 | 1 xp | 800 honor
level 5 | 5 xp | 900 honor

something like that?

[slayernz]

Jun 28, 2013 23:46:30 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

I was saying I could use the level builder to say

level 1 | 0 xp | 10 honor
level 2 | 0 xp | 100 honor
level 3 | 1 xp | 100 honor
level 4 | 1 xp | 800 honor
level 5 | 5 xp | 900 honor

something like that?

For completing a campaign, or per battle in a campaign assuming you run the campaign through from start to finish?

So for a level 1 campaign with 5 battle levels, you'd get a total of +0XP and +50 Honor for completion? +50 honor seems very little in the grand scheme of things. I'd probably want to go:
level 1 | 0 xp | 50 honor
level 2 | 0 xp | 100 honor
level 3 | 1 xp | 200 honor
level 4 | 1 xp | 300 honor
level 5 | 2 xp | 500 honor

Otherwise Level 5 campaigns would result in HUGE amounts of bonus.

The XP bonus must be for all of the squad and not just for the captain - that's one of the flaws in the bonus XP that you can find on some campaigns.

For penalty, maybe -50% honor for any battle in a campaign if you repeat the same campaign, and -25% honor for any battle in a campaign if you played it 2 campaigns ago.

This stops you from repeating the same campaign for farming purposes, as well as just alternating between two campaigns.

[ncaoa]

Jun 28, 2013 22:15:03 GMT -5 slayernz said:

For newbie squads, I do level 1 of the Moons of Nachot-uga campaign, because that was one of the first skirmish levels created, and there is enough room for squads not to get pinned down too easily.

When I've got their movement and offensive power up a little, I LOVE Siege of Roavin, first battle. It's my training ground for Neptune specialists. I have gone through the entire Siege campaign with the captain + 3 neptunes with devastating effect.

Lvl 1 Hydras murder in that level! Though at least one will probably get murdered also...


I like this idea. I also hate how easy it is to cheat the system.

[johndramey]

I think there should be some incentive in the system to not play the same level over and over again. As it is now people can (and do, as we see) play simple levels over and over again to get easy XP and honor to kit out there team.

My idea is this, how about allowing players to receive XP as they normally do now, but reward only a fraction of the honor per mission and reward the rest of the honor after completion of the campaign? Meaning, if you give 500 honor total for a 5 mission campaign, give 50 per mission for the first 4 (200 honor) and then the rest of the honor after completing the 5th and final mission (300). I always thought that would make sense, that way a player could feasibly make enough honor during the campaign to pay for ammo or other war gear they need, but would probably need to wait until after the campaign to buy any weapons/armor.

Just my idea, feel free to tear it apart now

[johndramey]

And! If we are talking about fun campaigns to do for XP and honor I love doing the Vestmarch campaigns over and over again. Each time is fun, they are relatively short, and they don't require too much from me aside from setting up a defensible location and blasting xenos.

[slayernz]

You should definitely get a little more from some of the really difficult campaigns (rather than the first couple of campaigns). You should also get diminishing returns for repeating campaigns straight away - you need to stay away from a campaign at least 3 or 4 times before you start getting original XP and honor levels.

[Cory Trese]

if this was the campaign:

level 1 | 0 xp | 10 honor
level 2 | 0 xp | 100 honor
level 3 | 1 xp | 100 honor
level 4 | 1 xp | 800 honor
level 5 | 5 xp | 900 honor

it would be the same as

level 1 | 1 xp | 300 honor
level 2 | 1 xp | 300 honor
level 3 | 1 xp | 400 honor
level 4 | 2 xp | 500 honor
level 5 | 2 xp | 400 honor

In the first one, there is an incentive to play to level 5. that is a proposed future.

the second one is roughly how it is today. no incentive to play to level 5 *in XP and $*

[slayernz]

Cory Trese, the only reason why I suggested that campaign bonuses be based on the number of levels is because some campaigns are waaaaaaaay longer than others, so should get more bonus just to encourage perseverance .