Hey. So myself, Zeeno, Agentevil, meharrp and a few others came up with an idea on Discord.
Essentially, encouraging players who stick to one gamemode to spread out their playtime on others through an individual bonus each day.
An example:
Kevin loves playing Golf, but doesn’t play much Virus.
Every 24 hours, a random payout bonus (Around 25% additional) would be assigned to him for a certain gamemode, heavily favoring the game(s) he plays least. So he’s most likely to get Virus as his bonus for the day, but it’s random so he COULD get Golf, but it’s not likely. His friend, Steve, gets something different however. He plays Virus most but doesn’t play much Planet Panic. Yet again, every 24 hours he would be assigned a random unit bonus that heavily favors the game he least plays.
What this does in essence is pushes players who are focusing on one gamemode, perhaps because it has the highest payout or maybe because it’s their favorite and encourages them to play other games; verity will slow down the burnout you feel after playing the same game over and over again, which will keep the players feeling like they’re always experiencing new things and not just spamming the same game, over and over.
This is a really good idea, but I feel like it shouldn’t favor the gamemode the person plays the least. It should just be randomly chosen every 24 hours and be the same for everybody so everybody can all be playing one gamemode together and earning bonus units. Just my take on it.
That’s difficult though, because for those 24 hours everyone will be playing a single gamemode. Having your playerbase spread out is far better than pigeonholing the entire game into playing a single gamemode… So let’s say one person loves Virus, only plays Virus but the bonus game of the day is Golf, but he has no interest and doesn’t care about credits… He’s going to be playing by himself for that day. When it’s random for each person, it’s less likely to alienate players who don’t care about payouts and just like a single gamemode.
Just gonna point out now that Nintendo Land did this, and it worked just fine for me and encouraged me to play the ones I didn’t like and still have fun
While I don’t totally agree with this idea, I don’t disagree with it either. It feels like something that would either be a big hit or miss. I’ve played a few games that used the same logic but the only people it ever really attracted were money/credit hungry folks and not the ones who just want to kick back and have fun.
Though it might be a neat option for server hosts to turn on and off.
Yeah, the ludicrouslt high payouts for Minigolf in GMT basically meant that almost everyone played that game and the others were nowhere near as popular. My favourite gamemode is Virus, but the payouts were never as good as Minigolf, so when I needed money I always chose golf over Virus. I would like to see the games be more equal in payout (through bringing UP the low payouts, not lowering the high payouts) so that the emphasis is on fun, not profit.
I agree with this idea. As someone who doesn’t play much mini-golf, it’s a pain to get cash. I don’t think players should be funneled into one game if they are want to make money.
On the other hand I do feel you should be payed more for longer games (though they’re all about the same time with no lost rounds.) Example is if snl is on average a 30 minute game, and virus were a 10 minute game, snl should make more. If they had the same payouts, everyone would choose the faster virus, because you could play 3 times in the time of one snl match and make 3 times the cash. No these aren’t accurate numbers, I made them up for an example.
I’m personally in favor of this. Although it may seem like it encourages farming, I actually think it does quite the opposite. Think about it, if you don’t play a specific game mode there’s probably two reasons why:
You don’t like the Game World or don’t know how it’s supposed to play out.
You want to farm a specific Game World (which was the case with Paradise in the Alpha).
This system actually helps break both of these problems.
The way it helps it breaks the first one is exactly because of the point the OP has pointed out. It encourages players to play more varied game worlds than just the ones the player is used to.
Based on the example given, Kevin might dislike Virus, but the bonus payout gives him another reason why he should give that Game World a chance again. In this case, he might end up becoming good at Virus and start enjoying it as a Game World or it might leave the situation like it is - If someone really doesn’t like a Game World, he’s most likely bad at it, and it won’t be a bonus payout that’s going to convince him to stay.
What about the farmers? Let’s stick to the Paradise example. People in the last alphas were pretty much playing Paradise only for farming, and let’s assume that type of farming returned again. Would a bonus payout in a Game World that they don’t play as much really encourage more farming?
I doubt so, in fact, it’s highly probable that the bonus payout wouldn’t go over how much that farmer can get in whatever they farm. However, it encourages it to stop it’s farming routine and go play something different - The bonus payout would never hit the Game World his farming because it’s based on the Game World he plays the less, which means he wouldn’t be able to use it in favor of farming.
Hope this make sense and helps shine more light in why this design decision wouldn’t be that bad.
To be honest, I don’t think a lot of people would care about the bonus.
for example, Zombie Massacre was the gamemode that not a lot of people played,(which is weird cause ZM is amazing) but you made SOOOOO much money from that shit. People really didn’t care. Another gamemode that people didnt like was Source Karts, but I don’t know about the payout since I played it once and it pissed me off real bad and I never played it again.
Point is, I feel like people always are gonna do what’s fun, unless they wanna grind units. (Which isn’t fun.)
