Disclaimer: if I end up repeating some things pointed out before, blame
those filthy ninjas my esteemed compatriots.
That isn't quite what I said.. I said dead bodies means it's challenging. It could be spread out to mean other kinds of failure as well. It could be from any cause, bad orders, underpowered players, etcetra, and it could be in other forms, such as actual mission failure or permadead players or such.
Well, as said, I don't think you can really use dead peeps as a good metric of gm-induced mission difficulty, cause there is too much confounding with player stupidity or char being underpowered. And kinda the same can be said about mission failures. It's just very hard, if not impossible, to find any decent metric without establishing some sort of baseline, which would need eg. multiple teams running the same mission without extra info and seeing how they do, to balance out difficulty from player and char stuff and let the actual mission difficulty come through (if the same mission gives about the same difficulty level/outcome for the 5 man newb squad vs the 5 man ultravets team,
then you can say the mission is too easy).
I mentioned dead bodies because that's the only kind of real failure that exists. A failed mission hardly matters, it's just a missing superartifact or two that you never knew existed in the first place, or a theoretically uncomfortable situation for Steve which he would then solve with no player effort at all.
This, I can almost see where you're coming from. I proposed to pw, long ago, we invent some sort of points system where the missions we do and decisions we make influence some sort of (maybe hidden) 'war effort' value. And then, we can get an actual effect from failed missions that ensures things have consequences (eg fail this mission, lose 100 points, and if you are below threshold x by time y, things get harder, or you loose out on something). If pw says 'if you get above 200 points by next mission batch, there's a special mission where you raid a UWM weapons lab and get to steal EVERYTHING' then I can assure you people will feel the loss if they don't get that. Or maybe 'below a certain amount, that mission will have more defences, represented by more enemies and heavier AA on drop'. He doesn't even need to show us this number or the thresholds triggered, but knowing it's there means there is a sort of assurance that bad shit has consequences, and might even help him be tough on us and actually make things harder. It also gives him a handy excuse: 'sorry guys, but you didn't meet the points needed, and now I can't help but send you on a penal mission batch with lots of danger and low payouts'.
Because, as I am hearing it, what you want most here is for things to have consequences, mostly
hard consequences of screwups. This part:
A screwup on the Q'baja diplo mission, for instance, and I think Steve would have murdered the guy and took over the planet anyway. Only loss would have been a couple tokens. Temp dead, which used to make you sit out a mission, doesn't matter, you get patched up and sent out again immediately, no loss.
I can agree with partially: if Steve says a failed mission just means he solves things in the background, things do loose their meaning a bit. And when is the last time a brain went stale and died due to being dead too long? If we invent a system where every 10 (random example) turns after a temp dead you get a -1 on your end roll that determines bad stuff, then it would have a much more meaningful impact.
A significant majority of player casulties were caused by other players, but these days we have plenty of people ready to jump on any inappropriate orders in the OOC thread, 'don't do that' and any players seen to be dangerous have been marginalized, such as Xantalos or U_P.
I do agree we really need to cut down on OOC at certain times. I don't really agree with saying the players have been very marginalised though, both of them still play and not outright ignored. Hell, Xantalos took the loss of Xan's powers like a champ and kept it almost fully IC! Sure, he is probably plotting to exact horrible revenge, but as long as that's IC? I'm ok with that.
In the end though, we need to remember something: as long as people are having fun, and the gm is as well, that's what matters. So, even if we are all but destined to win the game in the end, as long as people have fun with it, that's not a problem. Sure,
you might only find true bliss if you first have to bash your head against a wall for a million times or when every mistake is brutally punished (you play roguelikes, for example), but I wouldn't say that that idea of fun is an any way superior! So, be careful not to force this view of how 'a good game' should be.
ER is a game about nutso convicts with weapons of outrageously high caliber on deadly and genuinely zany/surprising/spooky missions at the whim of an omnipresent green AI, at heart, and the whole "Do exactly and only as I say or I will have the GM assassinate you" just doesn't seem to like, fit.
I do agree what happened not a long time ago was very unfortunate, in multiple ways, but we shouldn't dwell on it forever. Gotta learn what went wrong, and try to do better in the future. Not like we've suddenly gone full HARD ASS MILITARY SON! Cause if we were, Miya'd be putting peeps through brutal (and very mandatory) VR training on their downtime.
The current round is definately more significant, but we're moved from the point of 'don't blow yourselves up' to win, to 'do things that could be done with five 0 mission newbies'. There's a long way to go from there.
Heh, lolnope. Without cameyes and a very good amper, that organic missile strike would
slaughter quite a few newbs that don't have robotic jock straps.
Even if correlation isn't 100%, it's nice to have something that can be pointed at.
Have you had statistics? If there's a lot of confounding parameters and you aren't sure if relationships are only correlated instead of causal, you might as well not bother.
I'm also very reluctant to imply that newbies are also useless players. You're not useless simply because you joined later than other players. You're useless because you're on missions that can be, and are, soloed by your robot overlords. And because new players tend to disappear more.
This touches on a sensitive area. How to rhyme a situation where one character so vastly outclasses another, said newb might as well not be there for all the effect it has on a mission? However, should said overlords hold back (and suffer more casualties) because of that, and then be rightfully blamed for it? It's one reason why I'm trying to go on a bit less missions (I can always yell at Hep for fun times), or maybe try to command more from ship, cause nobody wants to see the 'Miyamoto solo show (also others)'. It's almost a vicious cycle: peeps disappear cause they can't do things, and vets do things themselves cause noobs tend to disappear.
Topic reminder: price of AoW - price should or should not be raised from 30 to 50 tokens
argument: current price of 30 tokens is reasonable, 50 is too many, because 50 would mandate 5 missions minimum, 10 maximum, of saving every single token in order to buy it, and saving every single token for that long is an unreasonable expectation in of itself. leading to it becoming unpurchasable
If we take the maximum of 10 missions of decent (not extraordinary, but decent) pay, isn't that an ok number to get an avatar? The single most powerful piece of equipment? Cause right now, if a person earns 7 tokens per mission, he can get there with 4 missions a lil' bit of loaning. suppose 5+14 tokens go into gear, and then 14 tokens from next missions. Selling gear gets you 9 tokens back, that's now 23 tokens. 7 tokens are very easy to loan from people, and unlike with the battlesuit, you don't need to save some tokens for equipment, you get a whole lot of stuff for free! And then you are so powerful/nearly unkillable, paying back those people should be hella easy. You know that I get around 35 tokens worth of equipment for free on top of the avatar, right? 20token manip + (ballparking, would probably be more) 15 token superlaser (with own generator).
The jeep thing is a good, if peculiar, example: If all you needed was a single robot overlord, the jeeps wouldn't be necessary in the first place.
That's kinda the ugly question though: if the teams had only been robot overlords and a couple normal peeps who could ride on top of them, would the mission have gone that much differently till now for (or, at least, for gyromitra)? Hell, one reason I created that perimeter and told them to 'hold the line' while I dig is because it's a perfect opportunity for pw to send some actual enemies at them and give them something to shoot at and be helpful. Cause for now, the most work by newbie chards has been done by drivers (ferrying newbs around) and medics (healing people, mostly newbs).