Launcher Wishlist

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[TheVolskinator]

Note: This wishlist is absolutely WIP and will be updated over time.

Note: Please forgive my crappy photoshopping skills, and please ignore non-matching/poorly aligned characters.

Registration:
Inside Launcher rather than through forum

News tab:
 - Important: Easily-edited news column.
 - Nice to have: Links should function in the news column, allowing linkage to forum threads.

Intelligence tab:
 - No changes desired.
 - For some reason the graphs don't work or make much sense; it's up to you if you want to tinker with them or leave/remove them. I never found much use in the Intel tab other than kills/losses.

Profile tab:
 - No changes desired.

Company tab:
 - Essential: "Refill Company" button in the Company tab; refills company based off of last battlefile for that player. Desired location outlined in companyreference02.png.
   - Since neither of us are 100% sure now battlefiles are compiled, this might be a question for Che, Xeo, or someone else.
   - The refilled company should be filled with fresh, 0 XP units. Units with XP that die should remain dead, period; the Refill button should refill the company, NOT *revert* it to its last saved state (which would include unit XP).
 - Important: Pre-built Company templates.
   - Company templates with doctrine upgrades and doctrine units would add considerable complication to the launcher. This may be a consideration that we should live without.

 - Important: Modified Company tab text display (see companyreference01.png and companyreference02.png for before/after comparison).
 - Important: Database feature to limit the total amount of a given upgrade in a company. See referance photo. If set to 0, should be disabled (no limit other than resource cost).

 - Nice to have: Individual company win/loss games--is this possible? See companyreference01.png and companyreference02.png for before/after comparison.

 - Nice to have: Unit vet should be 5 individual, editable levels, not the current 3 (and I just add extra text to Vet3 to fake 4 and 5).
 - Nice to have: Hidden, activatable-in-SQL dropdown arrow on the tab itself that would allow us to swap between EiR and OMG units. See companyreference03.png.
      - To facilitate a possible mod merger, however unlikely.
      - If not activated, the arrow and menu won't appear.
 - Nice to have: Link to the leaderboards (your choice of placement).
 - Nice to have: Unlockable doctrine units appear greyed out on the company roster until an unlock is selected.
 - Nice to have: Unlockable doctrine units with 1 or more XP will be moved to holding zone if their unlock is de-selected.

Doctrine tab:
 - Essential: 9 unlock limit, shared between upper and lower unlocks. Both should draw from a common pool of limiting points (or other limiting system), allowing someone to theoretically unlock all lower unlocks and none of the uppers.
 - Essential: Should have no progession requirement (i.e., users may freely choose any combination of unlocks at random; no requirement to progress down any tree).
 - Essential: Doctrine tab UI changed (see doctrinereference01.png and doctrinereference02.png for before/after comparison).
 - Essential: PPs/DSPs should not increase or change in any way (I believe they're currently influenced by faction PP totals on the Warmap).
 - Important: PP renamed to DSP (Doctrine Selection Points).
 - Nice to have: Remove the arrows from the upper doctrine unlock tree if possiple. See doctrinereference01.png and doctrinereference02.png for before/after comparison.

Advantages tab:
 - Becomes a new entry in the database that can be edited at will. See attached photos for example.
 - Just for my sake, for recordkeeping:
   - MP Advantages
      - T1: +400 MP
      - T2: +800 MP
      - T3: +1200 MP
   - MU Advantages
      - T1: +100 MU
      - T2: +200 MU
      - T3: +300 MU
   - FU Advantages
      - T1: +60 FU
      - T2: +120 FU
      - T3: +180 FU

Warmap tab:
 - Essential: De-link resource advantages from the warmap; they will be re-distrubuted to companies' starting resources and/or advantages.
 - Essential: Delet this (tab) >:v

Battle tab:
 - Essential: Drop-down "Kick" function box. Would require all but one of the players' votes currently in the lobby. I.e.; 3v3 w. 5 people present would require 4 votes.
   - Would be disabled once a game was RTL.
 - Important: Some sort of audio cue when a game fills. There is already an audio ping that is used when one user PMs another in the launcher; perhaps we could use that audio cue.
 - Important: Remove XFire link.
 - Important: In-launcher matchmaker/display system.
      - Would display the proported level of game balance based on total player win/loss. See battlereference01.png and battlereference02.png for before/after comparison.
      - Would calculate the teams' combined winrate and simply display those rates relative to one-another. Would not force games, but would display clear deviations in team winrate.
      - Player winrates would be for that player's entire account, not just the company that's currently in that lobby.
 - Nice to have: Remove "Campaign Game" tickbox. See battlereference01.png and battlereference02.png for before/after comparison.
 - Nice to have: Expand the size of the Battle tab to take up the space left by the now-defunct Warmap tab. See battlereference01.png and battlereference02.png for before/after comparison.

[Unkn0wn]

Great. Please also get rid of things like PP and other old references to systems that we no longer use.

Aside from that and what i posted in the other thread:
- Add big discord button on main page
- Allow users to register inside launcher (delink registration entirely from website) but put in place some admin tools to track, launcher ban IPs, etc
- Fix news page, allow us to change links to tutorial pages
- Fix "post battle" pop up screen
- intel screen: be nice to integrate the leaderboard data from the website in here.
- intel screen: ability to download old battlefiles and launch eir.exe to watch replays would be cool
- "Matchmaking" I think you will have to come up with something more sophisticated for than just tracking wins and losses and giving players a ranking on the basis of that. At the very least you would also need to take into account kills/death on average per game mapped against players of a similar expected skill level and who people are playing with/against to weight the scoring of game outcomes. Dire or mysth can probably come up with something.
-

Unlockable doctrine units appear greyed out on the company roster until an unlock is selected.

I think this would probably needlessly clutter things up. People can look at the doctrine screen to know what units they dont have. There's very little reason that info would need to be on the company screen.

It's also worth thinking about what progression if any we still want there to be in the mod. It sounds like everything will be unlocked and available from the start (doctrine abilities, rbs at least) Are we confident that just veterancy and reward units will generate enough interest for players to come back. I'm not saying we should go back to the old grind but there might be some merit to keeping some forms of company progression.

[Unkn0wn]

Oh and one more, let users buy off-maps on the company screen. Delink from off-map radioman. Can use the empty space where pool info currently is.

[Tachibana]

If possible; An inverse of "doctrine units". Currently, selection of a doctrine can add units to a roster. It would be nice to have a function where selection of a doctrine could remove units as well (looking at you fatherland volks)

Unit Skins: A more streamlined integration of unit skins would be nice. Its possible right now, but it is a bit clunky.

Warmap: I would actually like the warmap to be functional. No longer tied to res bonuses and such, but it would still be nice to have around as a player retention tool. Maybe nothing more than gold rewards for participating.

Account integration: If at all possible, integrating launcher accounts to externals like steam, twitch, youtube and such.

[Unkn0wn]

On warmap, just a visual representation or some sort of return of the "momentum ticker" based on which faction is winning games would be nice yea. It could influence things like map choices or gamemode (though only by way of recommending something in return for a certain bonus like higher reward unit drop change or small xp boost or other bragging rights)

Either way, probably quite a bit lower in terms of priority compared to the other things

[Tachibana]

Generally speaking, is there a patreon or fund we could donate to to help out our launcher coders?

[tank130]

This is fantastic Volks!!!

Great to see a clear plan laid out and the ability for people to chime in and give thoughts.

Warmap thought ( Low Priority ) - What if reward units become available to companies in a sector when they win that sector? They still have to be purchased, but they are unlocked.

[Unkn0wn]

Generally speaking, is there a patreon or fund we could donate to to help out our launcher coders?

This - i know youve got some donation money still left in the bank but not a bad idea to already start building donation pool for months ahead. Also should then add that donation button to the launcher somwhere

[Mysthalin]

- "Matchmaking" I think you will have to come up with something more sophisticated for than just tracking wins and losses and giving players a ranking on the basis of that. At the very least you would also need to take into account kills/death on average per game mapped against players of a similar expected skill level and who people are playing with/against to weight the scoring of game outcomes. Dire or mysth can probably come up with something.

I think given the size of our community matchmaking should really be towards the bottom of the pole of features for the time being. There simply won't be enough games being played to get good sets of data to work with to develop a model - and you really need scale to even approach this. Especially true in team games - just think of DOTA2. People complain about being stuck "in the low ELO trench" due to being matched with Potatoes - and they've got thousands of games every day and a team working on the algorithm.

A simple, visible, W/L ratio should be more than sufficient for our needs for the time being - especially if we can get the launcher to show a blended team W/L when people join into the game at the bottom to get a gauge of "stackage". E.g.:

Player 1 - 10/5
Player 2 - 2/4
Player 3 - 3/8

Team W/L - 15/17

Player 4 - 11/12
Player 5 - 6/1
Player 6 - 4/3

Team W/L - 20/16

Would it be perfect? Nope, but a good enough prompt that maybe swapping player 2 for player 6 in the above scenario would balance out the teams a little.

P.S. I wouldn't recommend implementing KDR into the model regardless of datasets. Otherwise somebody like me that likes hobo companies (lufts, volks, etc.) would be able to happily underreport my actual skill level, while a well-meaning nubito that loses 2 tigers and 10 storms to kill 12 squads of rifles will look like a god.

[Unkn0wn]

Yea thats a fair point on player ranking. Sophistaced systems tend to require a large sample size and even then people will probably hate it. Problem with W/L display though and why we got rid of it in the past is because it is quite a misleading indication of how good someone is AND it makes it harder for poorer players to find games + gives an excuse for flaming.

Might still be ok to have the launcher look at W/L and give an indication of whether teams are fair in principal but I wouldn't make the actual wins and losses for each player public.

[Unkn0wn]

If possible; An inverse of "doctrine units". Currently, selection of a doctrine can add units to a roster. It would be nice to have a function where selection of a doctrine could remove units as well (looking at you fatherland volks)

There is a "unit swap" in the SQL which we used to use for the old locked & loaded and fatherland units. It would swap the 3 men supp weaps with the 4 men L&L crews. Someone would have to go in and see how that worked but it should be fairly easy to make it work again. I agree it would cut the clutter.

In principal we could also use that system to automatically apply some unlocks that require new units at neglible cost difference like the garrisonable shermans and "raid operations" cromwells and jeeps. No reason for users to need to retain a choice between the two if the upg is like 30 MP.

Warmap: I would actually like the warmap to be functional. No longer tied to res bonuses and such, but it would still be nice to have around as a player retention tool. Maybe nothing more than gold rewards for participating.

Thinking on this more, for new launcher, itd be a pity to just throw away the warmap entirely. Definitely need to delink it from resources, doctrines and game mode but if we could keep a simple version that allows players to deploy/attack/defend in exchange for some gold bonus or higher % reward cards that could be nice indeed. We'd probably do well to just get rid of all the warmap cards however as those overly complicate the 'warmap game', but then need another mechanism or something to water down the chances of players getting reward cards. (especially if we move to only having 10 reward units in total - they should all be fairly rare)

This would move the warmap back in the direction of just being a neat sort of visual display of which side is winning the war (maybe should just a map of Normandy/W Europe instead of Europe so as to cut down sectors and frontline areas), and potentially a no-frills minigame with players able to try and influence that by actively taking part. (every game should count against warmap but players actively taking part could make an additional contribution to factional wins in exchange for small rewards and there could also be a rotation of "recommended maps")

Which then also means we might need something in addition to vet and reward units to keep players interested. These could just be fluff things like extra skins or an in-launcher accessible leaderboard, more visible player launcher rank icons, etc

[Illegal_Carrot]

In principal we could also use that system to automatically apply some unlocks that require new units at neglible cost difference like the garrisonable shermans and "raid operations" cromwells and jeeps. No reason for users to need to retain a choice between the two if the upg is like 30 MP.

I have to disagree with you there. If the benefit of an upgrade is so negligible as to warrant a negligible cost, then perhaps that upgrade should be removed, improved made free, or at least left alone. Don't force people to buy upgrades that they don't want, especially if the actual benefit of that doctrine is negligible.

Hitler's Buzzsaw, for example. The Free RoF increase on LMGs is nice, but I'd be pissed if that meant the only HMGs I had access to were more expensive. That's MP I'd rather spend elsewhere in my company.

[Unkn0wn]

It is 25 MP though. Are you really going to opt to stinge on 25 MP when youve got buzzsaw unlocked?

[Illegal_Carrot]

It is 25 MP though. Are you really going to opt to stinge on 25 MP when youve got buzzsaw unlocked?

Yes. On that same HMG, I'd rather take Unbreakable for 20MP. Across 4 MGs, that's +100MP I'd rather spend elsewhere. I bought Hitler's Buzzsaw for the LMG buff, I don't want it to make my HMGs more expensive. In Armor, Rangefinding Experts might be worth buying on the Cali, but I'd be pissed if I had to buy it on every other tank in my company for no real reason. It would turn a lot of doctrines unlocks more into liabilities than benefits. You already have to choose if you want to buy upgrades (cost/reward analysis). Don't take that choice away from players, only to force them into a decision they weren't even allowed to choose.