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So here's a random thing I've been musing recently - with the way HMW is currently set up, the aim is to get all 10s in every stat to be able to reach L10 (or, yes, L11 for dual tactics, but that's more by oversight than by plan!).

But to me, "all 10s" is pretty boring because every bot ends up with the same stats. Really the only variability is which tactics to use (for alts/flavour; we understand that they're not equal), and a little bit by weapons.

If you look at actual TF Tech Specs, back when they were a thing, you'd hardly ever see a bot with all 10s outside of faction leaders (even G1 Optimus had 76 of 80 points, G1 Megs had 71 of 80). This obviously goes for nearly any game too - you don't max out every stat on one character, you specialise in a couple of key areas.

So here's my (open-ended) question - assuming the stats all actually did something useful and you could still get to max level, what do you think be a good balance might be? 60 points + tactics at max? 70? How much would make different builds feel distinct?

Ooh, that's some interesting stuff there Bun-Bun! *saves for perusal*
Size classes is something I thought about a few times, would be good to let players e.g. advance through Scout, Warrior, Voyager, Leader, Commander, with each bringing some bonuses. Always good to have more reasons to level up rather than hoarding XP to stay at the top of the bracket (obviously this isn't a thing at L10/11 in the same way as the early game).

But yeah, this is all assuming that different builds actually had meaningfully different strengths, of course. That the game becomes incredibly grindy and repetitive once you hit L2-3, especially if you don't play at (relatively) busy times, is its own separate problem that I think turns off a lot of potential new players, but not really what I meant here. I guess I was mostly seeing where people fell on the "I want to max everything!" versus "I want lots of different build types!" axis.

Bun-Bun wrote:I don't suppose you could be convinced to make a whole new game Glyph? I think I might be able to get the old RDD crew back together for that

Ha, I'd sooner try to get something to happen with the game that already exists!

Would have loved to, was sorta banned at the time (thanks OS). Apparently the ban stopped working for a bit, but then came back. Had to ask Ryan to lift it in the end.

There was an implicit "if possible" on that last comment. I appreciate the vote of confidence, mind.

Always interested to look at people's notes & ideas

-Soundwave- wrote:My question then is, if you wanted a Soundwave persay Using something in his stats, but of course that isn't really going to level you up. In my case, I'm going to be accused, (if anyone is left to) of playing a level too low for my character. What do you do?

Not sure if I'm completely understanding your question, but I figure anything that costs XP should be included in your level. In (current) HMW's case that would mean making anything in your stats that you buy, that you don't just automatically get, cost XP and count as an upgrade that then counts towards your level.

HMW's an odd bird. Most games have you either level up whenever you hit a predetermined XP total and get all your upgrades at once or keep buying skills/upgrades as you go and not really bother with broad levels. The second one works great for single-player games, but not well for matched multiplayer as you need some kind of level brackets to match players together. HMW tries to have it both ways, and makes it really hard to match character levels as there can be so, so much difference between two bots 8 upgrades apart but technically the same level - both in terms of performance and how much XP they had to spend to get there.

My initial question was less to do with levels than build options, though - mostly looking for more interesting things we could do than just "get all your stats to 10", and having progression cap out at some point before that. That said, I've long thought that level-by-XP would work better overall and make it easier to get some level of balance and extensibility; even if you keep level-by-upgrades, I'd like to see some things (bonuses, tactic/gear availability and so on) work off level requirements rather than minimum stats in order to give players an incentive to level up rather than hoard XP. But that also said, there's a lot of things I'd do differently if I was making a game from scratch, but (a) it's not my design, it's Ryan and Vir's, and (b) HMW's been around for over 20 years now and trying to suddenly turn it into a completely different game probably wouldn't go down that well!

Another idea to throw around and bounce off the forum...

What if your bots could retire and be replaced with new ones? As an alternative to invoking the dreaded R-word, maybe a "start a new run" option could be available on a per-character-slot basis.

The top 20 bots on the high score table all have over a billion XP each - they're all maxed out, they're never going to need to try new stuff, nobody's realistically going to catch up to them as long as they're played, and if the game did switch to level-by-XP they'd jump straight up to the cap so would never even see any new content that got added mid-tier. A retirement option wouldn't force players to start over, but would give them the option to play through again with a new character if they wanted to. (As distinct from resetting an existing character to a lower level and getting complaints about their millions of spare XP...)

Personally I'd want the retired bots to still be viewable in some kind of Hall Of Fame, not just disappear; they've worked for that XP total after all, and represent the game's most ancient addicted dedicated players. Heck, maybe there could even be an option to bring the character back to your team (at a cost) if you have a free slot, for an exhibition match or mission event or something.

Thoughts?

Ah, I see. Yeah, I'm kinda spitballing on what could be rather than where things are. There'd need to be viable alternative builds and preferably other things to spend XP on for it to work, of course. I think I said somewhere else that some fundamental flaws in the design weren't really apparent when most people were sort of 5-9 with lots of different builds, but only really came out when the few remaining players ground their way up to L10/11 and oops, suddenly every bot is basically the same.

The under-levelled thing was always an overblown complaint IMO, since that extra XP wasn't doing anything. Sure, I get the annoyance with someone keeping themselves at the top of the level bracket and hoarding XP until they can jump to the top of the next one, but since the game allowed it that was good (if cheesy) play on a meta level; I think infamous cases like Stanformers and his permanently top-of-L1/2/3 strafers contributed a lot to the general frustration, but as (I think it was) Burn said, that just made him an obstacle to overcome like an end-of-level boss.

It is an issue that level-by-XP immediately gets rid of - you can simply flip the current setup around and say that you go up a level at <whatever> XP and get 9 upgrade points to spend. Then everyone's at the same place until they get enough XP for the next level and 9 more points (which is ironically the same as if everyone was saving up 9 upgrades' worth of unspent XP!). If that's too wide of a bracket, you can cut the levels in half and have a 20-level system with 4/5 upgrades per level. (And no, before anyone suggests it, that doesn't mean you should get a million XP per % of damage )

Uh, I got sidetracked. Responding more directly, I don't mean you should necessarily copy a canon character's statline or that people should just stop upgrading at some number of points even if they have XP to spend - rather that progression would cap out earlier so that all-10s just can't be a thing. In conjunction with the retirement suggestion, it'd also encourage multiple shorter runs (but still long enough to be an achievement!) and maybe New Game+ options rather than having to grind out hundreds of millions of XP over years and years to achieve that top level.

Hey Psychout, good to hear from ya

Keeping the 11+ missions as pure number-goes-up clicker missions is an interesting idea. When proposing the retirement plus hall of fame thing, I did imagine that - even if they wanted to free a slot - some would want to just keep playing until they beat whoever was at the top of the HOF before retiring!

I hear you on the legacy alts, too. Never liked being at the mercy of the (obviously now broken anyway) alt rotation as to whether I could keep my bot's chosen look. If I ever got the opportunity, I'd definitely want to add options to restat without losing the alt mode!

Hey Burn

Huh, you know, I remember hearing about that game but don't think I ever actually checked it out.
The main other one I remember from back in the early days was B.O.T.S.][ !

which... appears to kind of still be going, as a redeveloped clone by one of the players after the original had a database intrusion?

Yeah, from what I remember the battle part was a very simple I-go-you-go sequence, but the upgrades were kind of unclear and the couple of times I interacted with other players it was like an early version of FPS chat.