DTV reforms

[War_Ferret]

I will probably draw a lot of hate by questioning such an old tradition, but I think the wave system in DTV should be improved.

One of the biggest problems with DTV is that 80% of the team can't really do much to help, because bots need to get lured to some chokepoint/meatgrinder. There's only so much space in the meatgrinder/shieldwall and everyone else has to hide somewhere, so they don't get themselves killed for less xp or lure the bots away from the meatgrinder.

So why can't we fight bots head on with everyone invloved and have to resort to exploits? Because bots outnumber, swarm and face hug you from every angle until you can't move at all. This makes backwards the only direction to move in when aggroed by a train of bots. And bots tend to swarm a single target instead of spreading out.

I know you can't do much about the one-dimensional zerg AI, but you can do something about their spawning behavior. In order to avoid massive steam-rolling blobs that you can only fight with exploits, there's 2 things you should try in my opinion. It's very little effort and you can always revert back, if it doesn't work out.

1. Instead of one spawn point, use multiple ones spread over a small area or along a line, so you create multiple smaller blobs. This would also have the side-effect that bots (assuming they always go for the closest target when spawning) would be more likely to pick different targets and stay seperated instead of merging back into a single mega-blob. If you can actually tell bots via script what target to go for, make about half of them move towards random players.

2. Overhaul the wave-system: To keep blob-sizes fightable, don't spawn 100 bots at once. Just get rid of the waves alltogether and use a reinforcement system instead. For example, spawn 30 bots every 15 (or so) seconds and keep them coming, regardless of how many are still left on the field. This way you could fight them with the whole team in the open and you would have to be quick, because otherwise you would get swarmed after all. Adjust the difficulty by increasing the total number per round and/or giving them better stats. Health and ammo could be partially restored at the beginning of each interval (like 10%) or not be restored at all.

I bet this would give DTV a better pace and everyone could actually play instead of waiting in the back of a hut for the round to be over. At least try it.

The old meatgrinder playstyle would even still be working. Bots would just add up continuously, instead of 3 big waves. Fighting in the open would be an option for better (because faster) xp and gameplay.

[War_Ferret]

In short:

   ~15 waves with maybe 1/4th the number of bots instead of 3 blob waves.

   waves spawn every 10 (+/-) seconds, no matter if previous bots are still alive

   spawns get spread out a little, so bots don't spawn as one big blob

[Elio]

Totally agree

but just one thing that will make it hard to implement is to avoid players to stay a their base to respawn-killing the flow, they will have to make many random sections of respawn and with a number of at least 5 or 6 in the same time, with maybe a restricted zone? but what happens if bots get stuck?!, and it would surely require to modify the maps that would make it complicate and long to implement.

The concept is interesting but the implementation is complicate to imagine.

[War_Ferret]

Totally agree

but just one thing that will make it hard to implement is to avoid players to stay a their base to respawn-killing the flow, they will have to make many random sections of respawn and with a number of at least 5 or 6 in the same time, with maybe a restricted zone? but what happens if bots get stuck?!, and it would surely require to modify the maps that would make it complicate and long to implement.

The concept is interesting but the implementation is complicate to imagine.

Yes, the spawns would require some effort. The waves would be easy to change though - just a few lines of script to edit. About the spawn killing: one solution could be to increase the spawn frequency when bot count is low, so there are always around 1-2 waves worth of bots present, for instance. As soon as that number is reached, spawn intervals go back to normal. Or they could even slow down at some point (or gradually) to "auto-balance" the difficulty.

[War_Ferret]

Spawn killing could also be prevented by placing uni-directional invisible walls around the spawns. But then you'd have to edit all the maps again.

[Patoson]

I've thought about that as well. It's like how defend the village used to be. I would get rid of the virgin all along, since you don't lose when she dies anymore anyway, and have bots coming from multiple directions - less bots altogether - and without exploitable points where noobs can use a shielder to stop bots and just spam overhead, or use long weapons behind a fence, etc.

[_Tamra_]

You can edit maps and provide them to Prof/Dupre, then he can do all the coding, yet it's not clear how would that look a like and probably takes way too long.
Afterall I tend to just keep the status quo and enjoy that DTV is still alive. Better don't put too much effort into it these days.

[Jona]

Technically, I think the bots are spawning at multiple spawn points in a row as it is. The problem is just that they quickly converge on one point and therefore become one indistinguishable mass. It'd be fun if it was reverted to defend the village imo, but to make things harder you'd have no chokepoints with bots spawning on all sides of an open village. No sheds to shieldwall in, no rooftops to climb on, and no walls to hide behind. Your only option is to run out and meet the bot horde in a relatively-open field, or sit in the village pew pewing until they get too close. The only issue with this is I could see cav being OP, being nearly untouchable (if played well, of course) to certain waves that lack both ranged and cavalry of their own, i.e. the virgin defenders. If the waves were tweaked so that anti-cav is always present in some form, I think it could work.

Yes, the spawns would require some effort. The waves would be easy to change though - just a few lines of script to edit. About the spawn killing: one solution could be to increase the spawn frequency when bot count is low, so there are always around 1-2 waves worth of bots present, for instance. As soon as that number is reached, spawn intervals go back to normal. Or they could even slow down at some point (or gradually) to "auto-balance" the difficulty.

I'm relatively certain that changing the spawn positions of the AI merely requires some fairly simple map edits, you just have to move the location of the spawn, drag and drop. Changing the timing and number of spawns per wave, that would be a much larger change, and would likely require more than a couple lines of code.

[Elio]

Better don't put too much effort into it these days.

Yep, they should first try to fix other mods, like Battle, then players will probably come back again, let's hope.

[Jona]

Yep, they should first try to fix other mods, like Battle, then players will probably come back again, let's hope.

Yeah, if they make DTV too fun to play they'd really have population issues in other servers. Ideally we'd have a large enough playerbase to support both a more fun DTV and the regular battle/siege/strat servers. But that time has long since passed us by.

[Asheram]

Make it so you don't have to wait out 3 waves to respawn if you enter late or die in the first few waves.

[War_Ferret]

I understand editing every map individually for more dispersed spawn points and maybe even additional spawns from other directions requires some effort. But what about the smaller but continually timed waves to create a steady "influx" of bots instead of doom blobs? That may be enough to have "open battles" on all the maps we already have. I would even try to do that myself, if you upload or send me the uncompiled python file(s).

EU7 is already getting emptier compared to a few weeks ago btw, so I wouldn't worry about DTV becoming too popular ;)

[Patoson]

One thing that could be changed - and I don't think should be complicated - is turn on friendly horse bumping, making noobs learn how to use a horse, because right now they can get in your way without hitting you but still blocking you.

[Nightingale]

I am currently working on a single DTV village map with some of these ideas in mind. When I am finished we will likely do a playtest to see if I've addressed some of these issues in the single map im editing as a test. Thou I'm doing more than just moving spawns about and it will take -some- time