Current time: 04-28-2024, 09:39 AM
ACV: Underground
A Plan...
#1
Posted on behalf of Grffon from ACG.

Quote:~it just boils down to having a thriving community that talks to each other and pays attention to the scene at large. FROM SOFTWARE already has a proven winner in that regard: Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. Both games have far bigger communities than AC, and both have etiquette and gentleman's bans that are universally abided by.
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I get where Griffon is coming from, because we (Cali players like he and I) had one of the biggest scenes in the country before online was available, especially during the hay day of AC games. Tons and tons of people to play all the time, and all of them were like-minded in the sense that they saw what AC could be and tried to play it with that idea in mind. To go from where it was, to what it is now, is pretty depressing.

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Before, with AC, the only way to prevent/stop that was either by convincing people they needed to play a certain way to get the most out of the game (i.e. tourney rules and the like) or show them there was another way to play that was nearly as effective. Both are much easier said than done, especially when you consider how personal communicating used to be within the scene. I mean you could talk to the best players in the state on a message board at length during the week, and then that same weekend head out to their place and put everything you guys talked about on full display. You just don't get that anymore. Not in the same way.

Quote:~it just boils down to having a thriving community that talks to each other and pays attention to the scene at large. FROM SOFTWARE already has a proven winner in that regard: Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. Both games have far bigger communities than AC, and both have etiquette and gentleman's bans that are universally abided by.
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I get where Griffon is coming from, because we (Cali players like he and I) had one of the biggest scenes in the country before online was available, especially during the hay day of AC games. Tons and tons of people to play all the time, and all of them were like-minded in the sense that they saw what AC could be and tried to play it with that idea in mind. To go from where it was, to what it is now, is pretty depressing.

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Before, with AC, the only way to prevent/stop that was either by convincing people they needed to play a certain way to get the most out of the game (i.e. tourney rules and the like) or show them there was another way to play that was nearly as effective. Both are much easier said than done, especially when you consider how personal communicating used to be within the scene. I mean you could talk to the best players in the state on a message board at length during the week, and then that same weekend head out to their place and put everything you guys talked about on full display. You just don't get that anymore. Not in the same way.

Ok, so my other topic and many of its replies have given me a lot more to think about. Armored Core has been my favorite game series for over a decade, and I'm not quite ready to let it go just yet. I've got one last idea to try and salvage what we can from AC. In the past, we took what FROM gave us and molded it into something great. We need to do it again.

My idea is an alternative tournament-based scene, ACV: Underground. Or if one is feeling a bit ostentatious perhaps Raven Underground, due to it being based on tournament rules from the old "Raven" AC games. The basic idea is to create our own forum-based scene away from the boosters and tryhards. Pretty much everything except the fights themselves will take place on the forums, hopefully various forums everywhere.
The idea I have is that various teams will formally challenge other teams from other forums or from the same forum. Set up a specific time to meet up, so that would hopefully eliminate ACVs whole "wait 20 minutes for no opponents" problem. We can set up some sort of leaderboard on the forums, I don't know if you'd want to have it descending with the top team(s) on top, or maybe simply in alphabetical order or something like that. We can even have the leaderboard record only wins, so nobody has to worry about a low win/loss record.

See this?
[Image: 33bb8e956cbb26381520b51130f92d3108008dcb...pscale.jpg]

FORGET THIS.

See this?
[Image: ScreenShot2012-07-29at110354AM.png]

FORGET THIS.

These no longer matter. Let the "Core of Duty" players have their online leaderboards where they can pretend everyone marvels at their skill. What really matters now will be kept track of on the forums.


I've got a few ideas.

ENFORCED BAN LIST/RATIO SYSTEM:
This is first and foremost needed to balance the game, as it has always been in the PS1-2 days. We've got a couple options. We can go for a simple ban list like old tournaments called for, or we can try out some kind of ratio system. The idea behind that being that each part is given a numerical value based on its performance, and the sum of a whole AC cannot go above a certain number, meaning the more powerful game breaking parts aren't off-limits, but one would have to equip some other low-tier parts to balance it all out. This could result in some more diversity and be more interesting, but admittedly it would be much harder to plan all that out.

HALF-HOUR CHALLENGE WINDOW:
When a team challenges another and sets up a meeting time, the teams should both arrive within half an hour of that time. If one team does not show, the match is forfeit and point to the other team, unless neither show of course.

BATTLES WOULD BE 2/3:
As with older tournaments the team battles would be decided by best two out of three. This would keep the action going on at least a bit longer than one quickly decided victory. The teams would be able to react and adjust to each others strategies.

BASES?
I'm not sure of this one, but maybe each main team could have one area that is "theirs". Whichever team is challenged, the match takes place in their area, like sports teams playing "home" and "away" games. I'm not sure if this could give certain teams too much of an advantage though, as I hear some maps, such as Mining Sector, are notoriously difficult to invade.


If this works out, we could have a new sub-section of the forum for it, with threads for challenges & results, leaderboard, a list of participating teams, general discussion, etc.
I'd love to see this happen, but it's going to require the help and participation of several members from several forums, assuming they haven't already sold their copy. This may be Armored Cores last chance. So, who's in?
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#2
hey this sounds interesting. i will be keeping tabs on this. any other stuff we need to know?
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#3
im probably will try out for this XD
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#4
(08-04-2012, 12:35 PM)Mjting Wrote: hey this sounds interesting. i will be keeping tabs on this. any other stuff we need to know?
Griffs trying to get all of the AC Forums to help out. So far, ACU has agreed, ACG (obviously), we at MV have as well, and interest has been shown on RP and RH.


If you want to see any new info on this, it's up in the ACG Clan/Teams subforum.

http://forum.acgarage.com/viewforum.php?f=29
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#5
I'm in, this is what I needed.
[Image: 213920.gif?v=1]
"It's snowing women." -Tsukika.
There are two things that I will always laugh at: "Yuno F***ing Gasai" and something else.
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#6
Thank you very much Farmboy, for posting this on my behalf. I wanted to post this here a while ago but was having some trouble registering, thanks goes to NiX for helping me out there.

But yeah, I'm hoping this can become a forum-spanning scene. What I'm planning won't be just an occasional tournament but a (hopefully) ongoing scene where clans battle each other without playing unfairly. We've still got to get some ground work laid out for it, but everyone's input is valued.
"Well you're obviously not a Poker player, Mr. West. Four-of-a-kind always beats a Pair."
Dr. Arliss Loveless, on leg types.
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#7
Have any of you tried just using 2 types of armor and damage types? It could simulate the old a shell-based vs energy-based types of setups AC had before. It's like having the invading team adjust to the defending team's rules.

As an example, Team A uses KE/TE armor and weapons only and any other team who wants to fight them must also use just KE/TE parts.
'Signatures are overrated.'
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#8
I'm not sure about that one. I see where you're going with it, but that would eliminate entire classes of AC as well, since the armor type is dictated by its weight class. If we do that all you'd have are LWs, HWs, and tanks. MW parts, RJs, and Quads would be cut.
"Well you're obviously not a Poker player, Mr. West. Four-of-a-kind always beats a Pair."
Dr. Arliss Loveless, on leg types.
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#9
Hey everyone. I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize to the AC community for disappearing and leaving this hanging. Unfortunately my job has gone into overtime, and while the extra pay is certainly nice, it doesn't really give me the free time needed to get something like this off the ground right now. I'm very sorry to everyone who was looking forward to it. Perhaps I could try again whenever my hours return to normal, but that's only if there's anyone even playing then. If not, maybe we could try again whenever ACV: Master Of Another Silent Answer comes out.

Also I wanted to clear up a common misconception that Underground was to be a big tournament or series of tournaments. That's due to my own poor wording. When I said I wanted ACV:U to be "tournament based", I simply meant an ongoing thing based on old tournament rules, even playing field, part bans, etc.
"Well you're obviously not a Poker player, Mr. West. Four-of-a-kind always beats a Pair."
Dr. Arliss Loveless, on leg types.
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