This is so simple it has to be easy for them to code and it’s forward compatible so complaints about Horde on Master being too easy won’t come later once individual players skills go up.
All you have to do is 2 things:
Have a leader board with horde @ master and give the same rewards for the top 5% every week that you do on escape.
Make horde @ master infinite waves with the difficulty increasing every boss wave like it already does; IE: 3x after 50 and before 60, 3.5 after 60 and before 70 etc.
Allow score cards
Now nobody will ever beat the computer again they will have to beat other players. The only way for it to be too easy will be for mass collusion.
Score cards will both help make the top 5% and they will also take up slots that would “make it easier”.
The better players get the harder it gets.
The more people play an over powered character the less it is available.
And most importantly people who are mostly happy with how things are right now don’t have to cringe when nerfers complain that they can beat the highest difficulty because somethings too good. The best things will be off the table after the first week of repetition and the 2nd best things will be off in the 3rd week etc.
Win - Win - Win - Win
PS: I am highly disinclined to believe any arguments against the time sink - because I am pretty sure that to beat Master currently after 3 hours you will occassionally wipe on 49 or 50 making the total time sunk closer to 6 hours.
Dunno about having an infinite Horde to be honest.
Definitely agree about using leaderboards for Horde though. Would be nice for there to be featured maps just like Escape.
Someone else had suggested that TC use their data to find say, the 3 least played maps, or the 3 least completed across the player base and use these. This way it encourages players to play these maps more, and as these stats change then the maps will also change. Maybe they can stay up and refresh every 4 week period. And give give out Gear Coins or other rewards based on the leader board.
With people able to beat master now they think that they’ve won. If you can’t delude yourself into thinking that you’ve won and it was too easy then you must instead strictly focus on being able to go farther than anyone else. That is a hard that TC will only have to code once. I’ll believe it’s too easy if somebody beats 500 consecutive waves in a day.
Yeah, but it takes around 2 and half to 3 hours (maybe more on some maps) to complete 1-50 on master as it is. Is it healthy to enable players to do anymore than that? i can imagine some lunatics putting in 10+ hour marathons just to do this! I think keeping it to 1-50 is fine if score-runs became more of a thing - especially if it had the same scoring system of Escape where headshots and executions scored more highly. It would encourage teams to limit the use of explosives and bleeding enemies to death which adds more challenge in itself.
EDIT:
Just to clarify, this is me coming from a social responsibility perspective more than anything. Spending so many consecutive hours at a screen isn’t healthy. I get that people make their own choices, but me - I’m not a libertarian type and I believe someone (in real life, the State) needs to put in boundaries to prevent or limit people from doing unwise things. Maybe I’m going a bit overboard here, but I don’t think TC or any game developer should set up a system like this which actively encourages such long stints on the game. I suspect there will be some ultra competitive types who will go out of their way to get 1# in the world and go a bit nutts doing so!
I myself have already wasted over 10 hours playing gears on various occasions. In fact as part of the process of passing the time while escape maps re-load I look to see who’s on and become aware of some others that are on about as much as I am.
I have to say that you are probably right.
It is irresponsible to spend too much time on an ephemeral game and to make it possible or desirable to waste even more life/time is probably irresponsible.
But the irresponsibility is going to happen whether TC codes to have 2 or 3 masters matches in a 10 hour waste of life OR whether they have 1 masters match in a 10 hour waste of life where maybe the sick individual loses credibility in their assertions that masters is too easy and that everyone should forfeit things that they enjoy to placate them.
I hope that’s not worded so strongly as to seem mad or self righteous - IDK if I can strike the right tone but your point is valid and accurate I’m just not certain that people playing too long can be helped effectively with just 1 thing.
I was happy when Frenzy came and even happy when it was available to custom lobbies but I still play way too much. I need therapy, and getting triggered by nerf mongers only makes it worse apparently.
Leaderboard-based rewards are stupid in Escape and they’d be stupid in Horde. They’re a form of FOMO.
Skins for completing Master on all of the maps? Sure. Leaderboard positions are fine, but the leaderboard position should be a reward unto itself. Featured maps are incredibly dumb.
For sure. I expect there are people who will willingly play multiple 1-50 master runs over a period of 10+ consecutive hours. It’s just the game isn’t set up with that in mind and the onus is on the player to actively choose to play multiple consecutive games. An infinite mode is a bit different especially with leaderboards in mind. There are some people who are very competitive and an infinite mode will tap into that competitiveness in them.
TC also said that they hope to include more variety in mutators for Horde, so I wonder how that will fit and whether that can increase scoring as well? It could be an alternative to score runs and leaderboards within the current 1-50 model.
To be honest I hate taking even 3 hours. I don’t want to commit to a guaranteed 3 hours for any reason.
That want gets betrayed when I just can’t let go.
Leaderboards still may have merit - anyone saying it’s too easy and is not in the top 5% isn’t finding it easy enough to be a top performer.
Getting to the top 5% in Horde is not all that difficult. I’ve done it on every map I’ve played (top 1% on all of them, IIRC), and all of them were done with complete randos.
Timed featured map rewards are cancer and need to be abolished, not expanded. The game needs to stop telling me when I should play.
Yes. That would be greatly preferable. It would also entice a lot more players to Master every map, since they have as long as they want to do it and the rewards aren’t going anywhere.
A permanent medal-based system like in Gears 3 with rewards attached to every tier would have been infinitely better than what we got. The Tour should just be for additional content on top.
Offering you a reward is different than telling you that you must do a thing.
If you are angry to not get a reward that you choose not to earn then that suggests a sense of entitlement that begs the question why do you deserve that thing for free?
They wouldn’t have to be though if they did them right. The current operation’s leaderboard rewards could just be put into the next operation’s store for coins/iron. That way, everyone is still able to get them (no FOMO), and those who did well enough to earn them don’t have to spend anything to have them.
How is doing a thing within a specified time-constraint any more impressive than just doing the thing? If you want some kind of beyond-Master completion goalpost to be the standard, then the skins could be tied to beating a “developer time” or “developer score” in the case of Horde.
Time restricted content is manipulative. That’s the entire point. If you’re pro FOMO, you’ve been duped. It is in nobody’s best interest other than the developer.
I’m talking coins. It’s all coins now. The escape leaderboards are coins.
No time restricted content.
The coins you’d win if you’re good enough to call it easy this week would be the same coins that you’d win if you’re good enough to call it easy the next week.
The scores would be strictly for Master too - NOT horde in general.
So you wouldn’t be getting top 5% because little kids are playing beginner - the difficulty would be based on how well you could do relative to how well others could do.
The problem that I’m attacking is the circumstance of people who say that master is too easy.
Hardness would come from needing to find ways to get a higher score than other players.
) are out in force…