Weapon Loadouts & Decision Making

Weapon Loadouts & Decision Making

One of the things I knew I wanted to address when brainstorming topics for Tribes Papers was the freedom of choice inherit in Tribes and Tribes 2, and how it played a big role in drawing people in and forming the tribal psyche. Specifically I want to talk about weapon choice, and how it affected the gameplay. I'm going to address what choice really means in the context of game design theory, and why it's definition should matter to the people who play Tribes. Finally, I will explain why I believe the system that the first two Tribes games uses works the best for an online shooter game, and I will offer comparisons to weapon systems that other games use.

Decisions, Problems, and Choices

Game design is about “designing decisions”. There is a lot of writing in the realm of game design dealing with decision making in roleplaying or otherwise story-driven games. But given how long online gaming has been around, it is a bit shocking how little work there is out there dealing with making decisions in online games. And decisions (according to James Portnow and Daniel Floyd of the Escapist) come in two forms- problems, and choices. And as Portnow explains, it is very important to make the distinction between the two. Most people use the terms interchangeably all the time. 
 

Problems

In real life, problems are the obstacles that lay between you and your goal. By the same token, in games, problems direct players towards their goal, whatever that may be. Choices let the player choose their goal. Every time a player is presented with a clearly defined goal, and the gameplay decisions are made in order to achieve that goal, those decisions are problems. On the other hand, choices are when a player has to choose between two things of equal or incomparable value. With problems, there is always a correct answer, and you must problem-solve to arrive at that answer. Choices do not have correct answers, and therefore are based on preference from the player.

 

Choices

Apple or Orange? Roses or Lilies? Chocolate or Vanilla? Does it even matter? These are examples of choices in a game. In traditional RPG games choices often present themselves as ethical choices, or as a choice between two weapons of separate but equal value (and this is the part I will get to later). Games generally have fewer choices than problems, but it's important to make the distinction. Often times people like to reduce choices to problems with a clear right-answer- and you can say this is an adaptive and common-sense approach to choices. We run into many choices without a clear answer every day in our real lives- what car to buy, what career path to take, where to live- things that you simply can't know a right answer to.

The problem that comes with building choices into games is that it normally takes a whole lot of effort to do so. No developer is going to spend hours creating the content for what happens if you say “No” if the game is based around you saying “Yes”. Also, often times rewards are built into a certain choice that make it far more favorable over another choice- and then the choice becomes a problem. Why not help this old man if he is going to give you a lot of money or items, and there is no gain for saying no? This happens in games all the time. 
 

Why the Distinction?

As I mentioned before, choices happen in real life all the time and we often have to live with the choices we make- this is a huge part of “the human experience” . Choices allow us to express ourselves to the outside world and are an example of free will. For games to appeal at an emotional level, they need to offer choice at least to some degree.

Another reason why choice is important to shooter games in particular is because of the motor skill involved in playing them over other games. Weapons in shooter games can only be as effective as the player using the weapon is at using them, and this is a fact a lot of people forget. These people often “prescribe” the best loadout or best way to do things as if it were a problem to be solved, when it is instead a choice based on preference. 
 

When Choices Became Problems

I've seen various things said by Tribes veterans, who have been here since the beginning, that I believe can be attributed to this common mistake people tend to make. Some veterans have said things along the lines of “I don't just want Tribes 1 to be brought back again, I want 1999 to be brought back again.” In other words, they want the feeling of experimentation they had at the dawn of internet gaming (when everything was new) to be brought back again. When skiing was just discovered, and people were learning different ways to play the game based on fast-paced movement. Back then, what to do wasn't so clear.

Vets have also said “All the strats in the game are war-proven now, there is nothing new to see.” As Tribes players began making names for themselves, different strategies and tactics became emphasized over others, changing decisions that were once choices into problems. There is now a “correct” or most efficient way to play. You didn't rely on mid-air discs to take someone out while dueling, you aimed for ground-shots and used the chaingun while in the air. You didn't rely on teamwork and flag passes to get the flag home, you relied on a fast capper who was clutch and could bring the flag home every time. You didn't use a bomber to take out enemy defense, you used spamming heavy offense. These are all examples of the mentality many vets harbor.

This is why any "fresh" game is initially appealing to a player- they offer various choices to experiment with. You could argue the reason why Tribes Ascend or Tribes Vengeance tried to break the mold so much was in order to get people out of the mindset of “This is the correct way to play.”

And personally, I feel as if this mentality becomes a weakness to some Tribes players to this day. Some people are so set in a way of doing things that they aren't willing to adjust to uncertain conditions, and try to change what isn't working. The best teams in the recent Tribes 2 Draft Tournaments have been the teams that have improvised more- not allowing cap routes to be camped, not allowing their team to be predictable to the enemy team.

The one popular remaining Tribes 2 server “Goon Haven” has many good examples of people making choices, and not relying on the “problem-solving” of other competitive players. Some use medium armors and det packs religiously. Some have become expert bomber pilots, arguably better than some HO playing competitively. I personally think at least once defensive player on a team should carry an ELF as it's more effective in taking out multiple enemies at once than using 3 mines on a heavy at one time, when you can only carry 5. One particularly vocal person in the Tribes community likes using mortar turrets and energy packs when he goes heavy.

You can argue about the effectiveness of all of things I have just mentioned- but the fact of the matter is, they are all choices made by people based on their preference and skill. And choices are aplenty in Tribes, and that's what gives the game so much replayability. If vets think the game has gotten boring, it's because they aren't expanding their horizons, much to their dismay. Even people in Vengeance began to fall victim to this way of thinking. Don't believe me? Try asking a group of Tribes players if the rocketpod weapon from Vengeance was underpowered or overpowered. It all has to do with preference and what the player is good at.

Weapon Choices in Tribes

Tribes has often been said to have been one of the prototypes for what online shooter games are today- and many developers behind games such as Battlefield and Planetside had been quoted as saying that they drew inspiration from Tribes. One of the many things that has been taken from Tribes was a sort of rudimentary class system. But Tribes did not have what we consider today to be a traditional class system, wherein games will have many classes with only a handful of weapons to choose from. Tribes made use of 3 simple armor classes- light, medium, and heavy. The light armor could hold 3 weapons in any order. The medium armor could hold 4 weapons in any order. And the heavy could hold 5 weapons in any order. This was known as the 3-4-5 system.

There were only minimal weapon restrictions for each class, but it set them apart a great deal. The sniper rifle could only be used by the light armor. The missile launcher could only be used by the medium and heavy armors. And the mortar cannon could only be used by the heavy armor. Besides that, the rest of the weapons in the game could be used by any of those armors. And every weapon had a special use or niche it filled (well, almost every- the plasma gun is arguable here as being very similar to the disc launcher).

I've tried to determine why a system like this was chosen- why Dynamix decided on such an open style for their game, considering there were other games being developed around the same time that used a more traditional class system. I believe it has partly to do with the original Earthsiege and Starsiege games that Tribes was a spinoff of.

Earthsiege (1994) was a mech simulation games based in the Earthsiege universe. In Earthsiege, like many mech games at the time, there was a variety of mechs you could choose from, each having different 'mounting' points to mount guns onto- many mechs used the same guns. This was very similar in other simulation games as well (for example, in the X-Wing (1994) series of games all the starfighters had the same weapons, but various weapon arrangements and different secondary weapons to set them apart). 
 
In the Earthsiege singleplayer campaign, you had to arm your mech and all of your bot teammate mechs in the most efficient manner for your playstyle considering your limited resources. Each mech only had so many mounting points, and there was only so much of every particular weapon you could use. You could decide to give every mech the same loadout, or build up each mech to play a specialized role. But the choice was there to do what you wanted- and it wasn't always clear what the best loadout was for your mechs.

Starsiege:Tribes definitely took the gameplay mechanic from this game- originally in Tribes there was only so much of every armor and weapon you could buy from an inventory station based on how many credits your team had. And of course, just like in Earthsiege, most of the weapons could be used by all the player types. It got to a point while playing Tribes online that most servers had the credit system turned off, and you could buy whatever you wanted without thinking about resources- Tribes 2 eventually did away with credits altogether.

I personally find the most enjoyment the Tribes loadout system than any other system I've seen in other games. The game gave you free reign over any of the weapons at any time you wished (granted you could get to a powered inventory station)- but while you had this ability to use all the weapons, you were constrained by having only so many weapon slots to fill and weapon restrictions based on your armor type. This is the perfect balance of freedom and constraint in my mind, and other games that fall to either side of this balance tend to be not as enjoyable to me.

Comparing Other Weapon Systems

I've tried to figure out why the Tribes system draws on me and so many others so much, and after searching my thoughts a while I believe it really does come back to the feeling of significant choice as opposed to problem-solving. There are games that offer you classes to play as, where you are restricted on how many weapons you can use based on your class, and have far fewer weapons to use when compared to the Tribes 3-4-5 system. On the other hand, many arena games offer the player all the weapons at once (usually requiring the player to find them all, but sometimes they spawn with all the weapons). Both of these systems have their flaws when it comes to limiting significant choice. I'm going to provide an impromptu graph to help visualize how the freedom of choice affects the number of significant choices you make, and I will discuss the examples below it (please keep in mind I am not claiming this to be fact, merely my way of thinking).

Strict Class-based Games

With traditional class-based games, there simply aren't enough choices in weaponry, and players are pigeon-holed into a specific role. As well, the limitation on choice is magnified by the fact that often there is a selection of weapons that often serves the role best.

There is no better example to paint this picture than Tribes Ascend, since we are talking about Tribes. No longer do we have 3 weapon slots for the light, 4 for the medium, 5 for the heavy- every “class” now only has 2 weapon slots, with very limited options of what weapons we can use for each slot based on what the role of the class is. Choice does seem to exist in the game, but often times there are loadouts that are obviously more effective than others. For example, there are 4 different combinations you can make with the Soldier class based on its weapons:

• Assault Rifle\Thumper
  
• Assault Rifle\Pistol
  
• Spinfusor \Pistol
  
• Spinfusor \Thumper

If you are to analyze each possible loadout, Assault Rifle\Thumper takes the win as the most effective loadout. Assault Rifle\Pistol gives you two bullet-based leading weapons, with nothing to use to perform a disc jump. The Spinfusor\Pistol loadout is a faithful match to AR\Thumper, but the pistol is semi-automatic requiring you to click every time, while the AR you can just spray and pray with. And Spinfusor\Thumper gives you two explosive weapons best suited towards ground-shots, with no easy capability for air-shots. AR\Thumper wins out here.

You can argue that this is a choice and not a problem, and I might give you that. It all comes down to preference, and what you are best with. But even then, with 2 weapons to pick in only 2 weapon slots, that's 4 separate weapon loadouts to choose from. For a medium in Tribes 2 that has access to 8 weapons to fill 4 weapon slots with, there are 24 different weapon loadouts to choose from- and that's if you neglect the order in which the weapons are chosen. And to most people the order they put their weapons in is sacred- that's one reason concussion grenades are feared in Tribes 2. When you factor in order, you are given 70 different weapon loadouts for the medium armor.

Even if you added up all the weapon loadout choices for the soldier, raider, and technician, this only barely scratches the surface of the number of choices offered to the medium armor in Tribes 2. When you consider the variety of grenades and packs you can use in your loadouts in Tribes 2, the differences in “choice” between Tribes 2 and Tribes Ascends becomes even greater.

While some loadouts for classes can come down to preference, some classes simply don't offer you what your preference is at all. What if you find yourself having a certain finesse and likingness towards arc weapons, but only so many classes have arc weapons? You are confined to using whatever else that class uses in order to be effective, or consider picking up new skills. And true, Tribes Ascend could eventually be built up to a point where every class has one of each 'type' of weapon, but is that really a good idea? There are already so many spinfusors in the game, so many “chainguns”, so many arc weapons- and at the end of the day, it would become a nightmare to balance if every class had everything- you would be better off getting rid of class restrictions altogether.


I'm just using Ascend as an example here, most class-based games have a similar problem when it comes to the limitation of choice.

Not Strictly Class-Based, but Still Limiting Choice

There are games that (while not catering to choice as much as Tribes did) do offer more selections than a class-based game. These are games that offer you fewer weapon slots than in Tribes, but give you more flexibility to choose what weapons you are going to use. Gears of War, Halo, Planetside, and Timesplitters are a few examples of this caliber of choice. In Gears of War and Planetside, you are limited to what weapons can fill certain slots (and in Planetside, each class only has a specific number of slots to use, while in Gears of War you can always carry one sidearm, 2 rifles, and an explosives). In Halo and Timesplitters you can only carry 2 guns, but the fact that you can carry any 2 guns leaves the loadout completely in the player's hands to decide. Halo 2 even gets bonus points for allowing akimbo, thus increasing the number of possibilities a great deal.

Tribes Vengeance falls just short of Tribes 1 and Tribes 2, based purely on its 3-3-3 loadout system. It's similar to that of its two predecessors, only with less slots for the medium and heavy classes. There is certainly more choice in T2 than in Tribes Vengeance, but this difference is much less noticeable than when comparing T2 to Tribes Ascend.

Arena-Based Shooters

On the complete other end of the spectrum, we have games that provide the player with every weapon at the same time (granted the player finds them all, or joins one of those special servers). Examples of this type of game include Half Life, Quake, Doom, and Unreal Tournament, among many many others. In most of these games each weapon has widely different purposes. You might be thinking to yourself, how is this a bad thing? You have all the weapons at one time- that is a huge amount of choices for the player! 

Right- but how is this helping the player feel like the choices they are making are significant? Choices feel like an after-thought when they feel insignificant- and there is nothing as significant as being limited to what weapons you can carry on your belt. There is a feeling of permanence to having only so many weapons that you choose on your body- it expresses how exactly you want to play. 

In a single player campaign in a traditional shooter game, often the weapon selection you have at your disposal is only an expression of how far you are into the game. Online, it may only be an expression to what weapons you ran into. If you have a certain weapon you favor over others, you might decide to camp a certain area of the map to achieve that weapon, or you may have memorized the spawn rate of the weapon- but only still, that is just one weapon, and when you are in a server packed with players, there is an increased risk you might not ever get that weapon. Players who play competitively in an arena-game do not find a level of meaningful choice found in Tribes- they pick the tool best for the job when they have it, and don't think twice about it. 
 

In Conclusion

The number of options available to you in Tribes was a big factor in why the game was appealing to me and so many others- and this fact was left by the wayside in recent years with T:V and T:A. You could literally “build your own class” and play how you wanted. This offered a freedom of choice not present in class-based shooters. And not just a freedom of choice- a freedom of meaningful choice. A meaningful choice that allowed you to express exactly how you wanted to play and what skills you were good at, and this allowed you to become the best fighter you could be out in the field. Not only this, but the choices you made (in light of arguments over how effective they were) helped shape your experience into something that was a human experience- possibly a bit rough around the edges, but an experience of “creative” decision making. Not an experience of “creativity through constraint”.