PR COOP - Improving teamwork and general gaming experience discussion thread

Thread: COOP servers getting boring

Taking that discussion to another level.

Everyone who plays on the PR servers is well aware of the situation on the PR COOP servers. Some find it boring, others don't see any challenge besides the mutated tanks.
And that's the first step, which leads to biased players not paying a whole lot of attention, or just plain rushing to get from one safe room to another and be done with the map.

Hence the lack of team spirit.

I mostly play on PR COOP, and I always see the same thing:
1. Structural rushing (by high players...)
2. Lack of motivation from players to help those in need (example: when the last person gets out late at the concert, he's swarmed by a horde and all the SI possible. Often dies.)
3. Extreme rushing (high levels... again, ever care to look back and tell yourself "wow, 80% of my team is far behind me, and the last people are getting their guts ripped out by hunters"?)
4. Bored high levels who only have one bloody thing in mind: gems

I understand that gems can motivate troops. It's like throwing a lamb in a den of lions.

The first issue was already discussed here which gave birth to the safe room door timer, which seemed to get quite a bit of attention. Hopefully this will be done

The way I see things is, once you get into PR, it's hard to go back to the "normal" mods like mixed mode, berserker or VI. And when people can't get into their PR VS server, they go onto COOP without much enthusiasm.

Personally, I love COOP, working as a team and helping the lower players, escorting them at the back or answering their questions. Like littlebrother said about me in one of his posts, I do think it's a nice place to get to know other players, and discuss things.

So the problem is, from my point of view, is that people don't go to COOP to have fun and work as a team, but mostly because they want to play something and didn't have the choice. A second PR Versus is being polled right now here, but that's a different problem.

The reason I made this thread is so we can discuss and share ideas on how to get people to be more interested in COOP, and not just make it a chilling lounge.
I get the feeling PR is blinding the regular players who get to a comfortable level, and forget about the newcomers who need help.

So there are two problems to solve:
1. Making PR COOP more challenging, so every level gets their share of fun
2. Improving teamwork

I'm fully aware that #2 will be hard, but I'm convinced there's always a way.

I've got some ideas for it:

End of round EXP proportional to the number of survivors in the safe room (we had this before, now it's only on finales). I believe I read there was a problem doing this at one point, because of people opening the door and closing it rapidly to keep earning exp. I'm sure there's another solution to that though.

Make teamwork based challenges more attractive. I mean, all people seem to want are gems. Why not put a gem as a reward for challenges like the day care one (what was the name again? you gotta revive 6 teammates to validate it).

Can we possibly get the exp ratios ? Like killing commons gives us 5 exp. I don't even know if helping teammates gives exp... but if it does, or doesn't, helping incapped teammates should give us more exp, and defibbing them even more. No healing because that's easily exploited.

Protecting teammates give bounty. Sometimes I see this work, most of the times I don't. I can only think that it's being added and removed all the time, since I noticed problems with the amount of bounty we got each time... protecting 1 guy from 1 zombie sometimes got us 5 bounty.

back to #1:
It's already been somewhat discussed in the first thread I linked to.

Personally I'd go for more zombies to block the rushers (reducing exp income per common zombie).
I'd also go for some expert system that calculates automatic events according to the average player level. Say for each level range of 10 levels, if the average level is 56, then a flock of 15 smokers could spawn every 2 minutes (outside of finales)


tl;dr : how can we improve PR COOP for all levels? more fun and more team spirit.

P.S. sorry for wall text. I'm tired and took forever to type this and can't think of anything else for the moment.

 

I'm relatively new to the PR coop servers but I have to agree with this. There are high level players who enjoy team work and will help the new players navigate (hard rain), but there are also high level players who care for nothing more than making it to the finale just to get gems.

Perhaps setting a spawn point by the ending saferoom for several SI (maybe a tank) to give a challenge to the players who reach there first. I believe it will encourage people to move as a group, making each round last a little longer than 3 minutes, and will discourage high levels rushing off on their own. Obviously a smoker or two won't be good enough for high level players with knife skill and the ability to self rez which is why a tank would be a good choice (maybe a semi mutated tank lol)

 

Hey, i have an idea!

what about applying deadspace concept to PR COOP.

like in deadspace, you have the normal necromorph and the dark necromorph.

they are of the same type except that the dark necromorph are harder to kill and they deal more damage than the normal necromorph. and yes, their color are dark black, very gruesome characters.

so i was thinking, since we have infecteds that incap or kill players in 1 hit or 5 secs, lets call them the Dark Ones, their damage is more and their health's longer. So if player kills one of them, surviving player gets the chance of either getting gems, thousands of points or thousands of experience or even the 50% lucky lottery minute.

to be fair and make an interesting chapters, the Dark Ones are only available in the first 4 chapters, they will not appear in finale, the finale is exclusively for mutated tank.

i know that players will say YEAHHHHHHHHHHH, KILL DARK ONES GET EXCLUSIVE REWARDS, but do remember that the Dark Ones are almost or equal to Mutated tank's damage and health. so players have to make a decision, players can avoid the Dark Ones and run for the saferoom or kill it to get THE REWARD. try as you may, but remember the DArk Ones are almost or equal to Mutated tanks.

adding to ice's input, i recommend that 1 dark SI should be spawn for each chapter. and each chapter will have a rotation of different type of dark SI for example chapter 1 is dark boomer, chapter 2 dark jockey, chapter 3 dark hunter, chapter 4 dark spitter, no dark ones in chapter 5, its meant for mutated tank only. and why no charger or smoker, its because, smoker already has the infinite tongue and as for charger, there is the tendency that players might bait it to fall to the sea or off the building when its decide to charge.. lol

the only way to save your team mates is to shove the dark ones aside so that your team mates wont get hurt by them. The Dark ones won't get damage from shoving, but you will be able to save your teammate by doing it.

So how about it Guys, any input.

As for how much damage and health the Dark Ones should get, i leave it to Honorcode or any players with a sensible idea to give input on it. adding ice's input, maybe honor can give each Dark SI a special ability like the onc ice mention for boomer "zombie empire".

As for rewards, i leave it totally to Honorcode, on how many points, experiences, lucky lottery or gems the surviving player should get.

 

I LOVE littlebrother's idea.

On COOP, we're fighting to survive with 16 people. Adding these "Dark SI" is excellent, in my most honest opinion. We will have the normal SI, easy to kill, the usual annoying ones, and, we'll have the "Dark SI" that we'd want to run away from more than anything.

If they're on par with mutated tanks, there shouldn't be so many. Maybe one of each? They would do more damage (that 1 hit incap ride from jockeys).
However I'm afraid about the gem drop, that would lead to people wanting to farm them every single time, making the others wait (this is already an issue with the last tank on finales when everyone wants to leave but ONE idiot refuses and everyone dies = restart round...). Maybe just a 10pack toaster and pray for something good.

Adding effects to the "Dark SI" is a must though. I mean, look at the boomers. they should have a considerable amount of life, and their vomit should hurt us, and when they go boom, it should trigger a panic event every time, explode with one heck of a radius (maybe make everyone's screen shake?) and have a system message saying:
Darth Boomer is no more, behold the wrath of the zombie empire.

Heck they could even have names since they're unique and special. So people could make the remark and say "Spongebob is riding me! help!" instead of "DARK JOCKEY WTF OP HELP ME @!#@!"

​

Joining honor's and smoke's posts, hopefully the RDS (rushing detection system) could spawn enough SI to punish the rushers in the safe room.

Would like to hear more input though, and get more participation in this discussion

 

I like what you did in our game we were playing yesterday. If the server "detects" rushers, it makes them black and white. After that round, I sure never went in front of you again. I think it works very well, and would solve the rushing problem.

Also, I don't always think the COOP is easy. While, yes it is easy for those who play on a 16 person team, I play in the mornings when there is max 5 people on the server. With all these new zombies or SI, how the the small groups going to win. I think it is challenging to play COOP with a small amount of people, and notice we die more. Now with more of them, isnt that just going to get harder for the small groups? How could this possible be avoided.

I do like both the ideas here being proposed. Truthfully, I sometimes get a little bored of it myself. I am one of those "middle" people. Not in front to fight the SI or zombies, and not in back to get them at the end. So I can usually walk thorought the enitre map without killing a single zombie. And I think a main way to solve that problem is again, stop the rushers, make them wait. I really like that black and white idea honor (Or maybe just spawn 10 instacap jockeys on them).

I am glad that I could put fourth my opinion and I'm also glad someone finally made this topic. I hope it goes somewhere.

Chocobo.

 

also with regard to dark SI,

if players are against it, i would recommend an alternative.

using the current gamplay that honor has put up with the increase in SI and hordes and increase damage.
i recommend having a special zombie that players have to chase to get the reward, who this zombie is, im not sure about the name, hope u guys can help. you know there is this common infected that wears a hat and will run away when it sees you, they usually carry with them a med kit or molotiv with them and if u kill it, u get the med kit or molotiv. usually appear in the parish or the passing, hope this brings a clue, i totally dont know this zombie name.

i was thinking we could use this nameless zombie and increase its health tremendously, when this zombie appear, players can either chase it or just run to saferoom. if they choose to kill it, they get the special rewards as mention on my earlier post, but it won't be easy due to honor's update on the current coop. so this will really complement the current coop gameplay and make players decide to chase or not to chase. and it should appear only once throughout the whole campaign so that it will make players guess when that special zombie will come out and also to stop players from farming so that other players can move on with the next map.

also, how players will know of this special zombie, a ringing notification will appear stating that this zombie has appear, and if your lucky, you may see it glow for awhile, so that you can identify this zombie and chase after it, the glow only last like maybe 30 to 60 secs, the purpose is to make the gameplay difficult and not easy ok.

so thats my input.

 

This sounds scary LOL, hope it's completely ready when implemented, don't want everyone losing exp and all that stuff )':

Is it gonna be like, if you are away from the other people at a certain range, you are technically labeled as a rusher and will start to lose exp ectera.

Hope to see this,

 

I was thinking of this too, but waited for someone to ask it..lol

im wondering if its a range or distance detection?
because what if theres a late bloomer who just join the coop like in no mercy rooftop finale, theres usually a late bloomer there. so will this affect the majority of players that are already on the radio or will it affects the late bloomer whos way at the back?

also, are the mains the center of detection?
what if the mains are spreadout, some new players dont even know what main is when they join. some main are way infront and some are way at the back.

i recommend that this be trial on coop and not on versus yet, because in versus one of the strategies is to tell main to rush while the non main take care of business.

actually it would be better if any system that is on trial be tested on coop first. this will help to prevent players from ranting on system issues if the system does not work in versus, i know of someone who likes to rant about things and then got himself ban.. lol

i also would like to add that in versus, mid way in game, the mains tend to change to another player. so will this also be affected. not sure if main changes midway in coop

 

I love this idea but what about when theres maybe 3 - 4 people left on the verge of dieing and you know they will so you have to rush (or stay behind and die with em ofcourse) or when theres a small group of rushers at the front while the rest are at the back....would it effect them in the same way? or would this only effect solo rushers?

 

the main man just replied,

looks like i have to suit up and go GYFA mode.

whats GYFA u say, it stands for "GUARD YOUR FREAKING ASS"

 

Those zombies are classed as Uncommon Infected and are called the Fallen Survivor.

I think this idea would be absolutely hillarious! Those dudes can be tough to catch normally - add higher HP and some other buffs and it would turn a game into a Benny Hill routine in no time.

OMG, is there some way to play Yakety Sax when the (as yet unnamed) special zombie spawns?

I can just see all the gem-crazy players chasing this guy all over the map now ....

 

MGFTW clip with Benny Hill music over the top

http://bennyhillifier.com/?id=iTVoCN_TKVM

 

WOW, your song is so perfect for it EVILPAUL. i can vision your imagination. but its still an idea, hopefully honor would consider it.

He just have to programme the nameless zombie, add hp, add sprint, add temprary glow, add short distance teleportation and add ringing notification of his appearance. this zombie is set and ready to go.

but need sometime to programme the chances for rewards, but honor is known for his quick witted skills, so i see no problem with him programming the reward chances.
and again the reward chances will be gems, points, experiences or lucky lottery minute..

this would be so fun if this idea was to materialise. lol. it would really complement the current update that honor has done for coop.. lol.. Evilpaul' song was still playing when i made this statement.

 

Will your RDS be bulletproof?
I mean if it's based on distances, how do you know that the guy in the back is the guy in the back and not the rusher, and the rusher is not the last man behind. Based on some kind of map progress system? (like in Versus mode).

Would be awkward to have the guy all the way in the back, getting raped, lose exp too since he'd be marked as a rusher, lol.

Another idea is to make the surviving team lose exp per death.
Say 16 are connected and playing.
5 died on the way to the safe room.
so 11 made it or are incapped.
death penalty would be something like -100 exp per dead teammate.
so all 11 survivors lose 5*100 exp, because they left their mates for dead.

Obviously, there would need to be some way to detect those who join in the middle of the game. So basically keeping track of all the players at the start, and at the end... This is just an idea though, I can see more flaws.

 

This one is on behalf of the new players. This is what I see (and I'm a fairly high level player):

High levels have faster everything and they quickly outpace new players (NP). NPs are quickly left in the dust. The majority of high levels (99% of them) race to the saferoom, leaving NPs to fend for themselves. Occasionally, one or two high levels will stay back and help them, and while they're fighting for their lives, they hear the rushers chatting about gems or bouncy garbage cans or, and this is what irks the hell out of me, "Hurry up, guys in back!"

Not only do those who stay and help the new players get significantly more points than the self-absorbed rushers, but since everyone has to wait for the last person anyway I don't see why everyone isn't staying to help fight zombies, since this is a game where...wait for it...one fights zombies.

The High Levels have forgotten they were nubs once, too. They wouldn't have made it to their level if people had not helped them. Many NPs get frustrated at the lack of cooperation on what is ostensibly a CO-OP server, so they rage quit and do not come back.

This behaviour hurts everyone. Not only do we not get fresh blood, but MG loses out on potential customers.

Why would someone stay and play when current members act like douches?

 

IO have not read all the posts to see if it has been said or not but anyways; I would like to see the auto balance option wait for CP to load up to add levels. This would allow it to balance based on levels and players. A level 100 player is for sure worth 2 low level players. I understand Skill > levels and XP spent but the extra tricks you get makes a huge difference in the difficulty of a low level to get you down and keep you down.
my 2 cents.

 

Is there a way to reduce rewards for players who do damage to other players (up to a certain point). Such as molotov or grenade damage (after 450 dmg to players you lose your points) or something. There are several higher level players with resists/immunity that fire up gas cans, throw mollies, and explode cars without any concern for their teammates. This could also be a good teaching tool for newer players as they would aim a little more carefully as well.

 

Sure, then someone throw a molotov to kill an horde of zombies, a noob walk into the flames and the other guy is punished.

Nah... I dont think it gonna work.