Medal Types?

[Gorlom]

Beagle that's kinda funny since that one is one of the few I think is horrible. I mean I know I'm going to savescumm sending out only one soldier to a mission to get it. Isn't that the exact thing you said in your post you wanted to prevent?

[Zinn]

Chiming in for the "keep medals rare" team, I'd much rather have only three out of twenty of my troops have meaningful medals instead of having sixteen out of twenty being pinned full of freebies. Realistic or not doesn't enter into it for me, it's a design thing. If it's something where you go "I better do (x) to earn that medal", that would completely take me out of the game - the "Sole Survivor" one hits it on the head for medals done right in my opinion, a reminder of a dramatic experience. I haven't read all 10 pages but I could see a long-service campaign medal for attending many missions as well.

Actually, rare medals/achievements generally make people much more focused on obtaining them. After all, no one gets those medals and if you could get one for being sole survivor and you have two guys left vs one alien in the end, it would be odd if the least important guy (especially if a rookie) didn't bite the dust for an epic medal.

To compare, you can look at a game like BF3, where you get ribbons and medals for virtually anything: There's no incentive for chasing most of them as they occur naturally over time and with skill. If you know odds are your guy will get a "kill 5 aliens" medal over time, there's no reason to force him to kill 5 aliens on the very first mission. It's always the major achievements that people go all out to get, not the "common" ones.

[Gauddlike]

There is no way to stop someone hunting for the rare medals if they want to.

I am not sure it is even worth trying to if that is how they get enjoyment out of the game.

It is also not a valid reason to only add in easy to get and pointless ones for killing small numbers of enemies etc that everyone will get sooner or later anyway.

Some people will see them as a way of reminding them of when something great happened while others will just want to farm them for bragging rights or to round out the collection for the soldier they have named after themselves.

Remember we aren't talking about achievements here either.

These are not things that you will only ever get once and will be flashed out for all your steam friends to be jealous over.

These will possibly be awarded in each game to a limited number of your troops, either because they did something special (or something special happened to them) or because you went out to deliberately get them the award.

I would prefer them to be harder to obtain, not because it makes them harder to farm but simply because they will mean more to me when one of my troops manages to achieve one.

Kill 5 aliens, walk 100 AP worth of steps, carry a rifle, use up a full clip of ammo and random meaningless awards wouldn't give me any great feeling of attachment to the trooper who got it because they are just things that will happen in the game.

I want them to remind me of the time my rookie gunned down all five of the aliens that were trying to storm the ufo he was holding, or how it always seems to be Sergei who is left standing when things hit the fan etc.

If medals are hard to get they are memorable, if they are common they will just be more fluff text like where the rookie had their combat experience or their previous regiment.

[Beagle]

Gauddlike nails my point of view with his post perfectly. Most importantly is his point on achievements - these are not achievements! I see these as things your soldiers earn, not you - there's a subtle difference.

Beagle that's kinda funny since that one is one of the few I think is horrible. I mean I know I'm going to savescumm sending out only one soldier to a mission to get it. Isn't that the exact thing you said in your post you wanted to prevent?

If you're going to go that far with the intent of purposely hunting medals from the start, no amount of inspired design is going to stop you. If that's what you want to do, nothing's going to stop you from trying over and over to get that medal, and if you enjoy that, sweet! I'm talking about the more subtle design choices regarding your average player who is just going through the game normally.

Actually, rare medals/achievements generally make people much more focused on obtaining them. After all, no one gets those medals and if you could get one for being sole survivor and you have two guys left vs one alien in the end, it would be odd if the least important guy (especially if a rookie) didn't bite the dust for an epic medal.

To compare, you can look at a game like BF3, where you get ribbons and medals for virtually anything: There's no incentive for chasing most of them as they occur naturally over time and with skill. If you know odds are your guy will get a "kill 5 aliens" medal over time, there's no reason to force him to kill 5 aliens on the very first mission. It's always the major achievements that people go all out to get, not the "common" ones.

Again, these aren't player achievement style things like BF3's ribbons/medals. This isn't "woah check me out I got a medal for winning with one guy better go brag to everyone", this is "woah my guy barely made it out of there and he got a medal for being a hard-ass brother". The former is part of player progression/social bragging and the latter is a form of character development/personalization for your troops, and if we confuse these two we will end up with a system that is focusing on the wrong type of result.

After all that, you can still say "well I'm going to treat them like achievements anyway and go farm them all". The reply to that is the same as the reply to Gorlom - if you're set on doing that, no amount of design is going to deter you anyway, so that's what you want to do and it's nonsensical to try to stop you. What we can design for is the average player so that these medals are part of the trooper development experience for him instead of him recognizing them as player achievements.

To add on a new idea at the end here on how we can help focus on the trooper-experience approach: I'd strongly suggest making sure we don't know how to "get" the medals or how many there are or anything about them until they're earned. This keeps them in the realm of earned-through-soldier-merit instead of the mindset of achievement farming that might pop up if a player is looking through the stats pages and sees "Medal Gallery" or whatever and a whole bunch of earnable silhouettes. Expanding on this, the tooltip/description for earned medals should be written more in-universe instead of a game description - what I mean by that is instead of writing "Medal of Gallantry, earned for being the last soldier alive in a mission", write something more like "Medal of Gallantry, awarded for heroism in the face of insurmountable odds". Instead of "Combat Ribbon, earned for killing a total of 20 Aliens", have "Combat Ribbon, awarded for continuous excellence on the field of battle". This gives the player a really good idea of why that award was given to that trooper, without laying things out like an achievement or giving concrete steps to tempt purposeful repeats of that award.

Ground Control did this well - it didn't even have tooltips for the medals your squads got, but it was pretty obvious why the tank squad which just took out 9 enemy tanks on that mission was awarded the Destroyer medal.

[TheTuninator]

Beagle that's kinda funny since that one is one of the few I think is horrible. I mean I know I'm going to savescumm sending out only one soldier to a mission to get it. Isn't that the exact thing you said in your post you wanted to prevent?

If you are savescumming with only one soldier for the sake of a cosmetic bonus with very limited gameplay application, that's your choice, but the game shouldn't be designed to reflect the incredibly small minority who are willing to abuse savegames to that degree.

I find myself more or less in complete agreement with Beagle's post; you've stated the points I previously tried to articulate masterfully well.

Edited January 23, 2012 by TheTuninator

[ooey]

I always wanted a system in the original whereby if a soldiers stats go above say 70% firing accuracy you get a bronze sniper icon, 80silver & 90 gold (perhaps a crosshair with a sniper rifle in the middle). This would at a glance say to me "keep this guy alive!".

I always thought it was silly in the original that your soldiers could become so good they would go beyond 90% accuracy.

Same for strength (a muscle icon perhaps) etc.

Throwing (grenade icon).

[anotherdevil]

If you are savescumming with only one soldier for the sake of a cosmetic bonus with very limited gameplay application, that's your choice, but the game shouldn't be designed to reflect the incredibly small minority who are willing to abuse savegames to that degree.

I find myself more or less in complete agreement with Beagle's post; you've stated the points I previously tried to articulate masterfully well.

Yeha but that's the problem with that medal in particular. I went through an alternate suggestion a few pages ago on this

[horrid]

I'd like to chime in for the medals being rare camp. If they get handed out like candy it diminishes their significance. Something like service medals by region would be acceptable in numbers though. If you use the territories the globe is already divided into and award a service medal based on 25 missions in a region that might be a good relatively common award. No need for a perk or benifit just an illustration of where the soldier has fought. With multiple bases and transfers of experienced hands it could make for some diversity and give each trooper a more complete combat record.

Final arguement against candy medals. Many recipients of prestigious service medals were awarded them posthumously.

[TheTuninator]

Yeha but that's the problem with that medal in particular. I went through an alternate suggestion a few pages ago on this

What was it, exactly?

I honestly don't think it's a problem that needs to be adjusted for; if you want to spend five hours savescumming a single soldier through a mission and thus strip the medal you will receive of all value and meaning, more power to you.

[anotherdevil]

It was against the survivor medal (sole survivor of a squad at end of mission)

Might I suggest removing the above one Chris? I realise that it is hard to get (and nigh impossible to farm) but really this one is impossible. Even good players, I think would evac their surviving members rather than keep pushing in the hope that one of them might get this. And if you are that out numbered and your men are falling like flies, why would you think that your last man would make it? Not to mention the terrible bravery he's going to have after ALL his team mates have just died. So really the only way to get this is if you save scum like Gorlom suggested, and that's nothing that should be rewarded. IMO.

Might I suggest the one below instead?

Star of St. John/Star of Asclepius - Survived a fatal wound

You still get the 'survived a overwhelming situation' feel, there is no way to save scum it (because there is no indication during the battle if he will survive or not), it can't be farmed (because you may well kill your men), plus you're actually likely to get some of these through the normal course of the game (and feel happy about it if it's one of your best men!)

just my 2 cents =]

[Gorlom]

I'd prefere ADs version over the sole survivor one to be honest. I'm a completionist. I would have to savescumm the solesurvivor one, but the suviving a fatal would one I would be able to leave alone.

[TheTuninator]

Eh, no offense, but I don't feel the "survived a fatal wound" replaces the "sole survivor" medal very well; they're both there to recognize very different events. That's not to say "survived a fatal wound" is a bad medal; they're just very different.

Also, I don't think it's unrealistic that there actually could be a sole survivor; I've had this happen to me, and one of the most widely-circulated X-COM war stories, The Legend of Patrick Stewart, features a sole survivor moment.

Granted, it's very rare that you won't just reload or abandon the field, but that's what these medals are supposed to be; very rare.

I'd prefere ADs version over the sole survivor one to be honest. I'm a completionist. I would have to savescumm the solesurvivor one, but the suviving a fatal would one I would be able to leave alone.

You could easily savescum the "fatal wound" one too, just keep running one of your soldiers in front of the last alien over and over again and reloading until he finally gets it.

If you savescum with enough dedication, you can do literally anything; that's why the game shouldn't be balanced with savescumming in mind at all. It breaks the game by its very nature.

Edited January 24, 2012 by TheTuninator

[mike10019314]

there should be a few common ones , combat badge, wounded badge, one for being the first through the door on a ufo, one for capturing a ufo, then have the more rare medals getting a silver or bronze star for killing 4 or 5 in one mission, getting a medal of honor or eqiv for killing 10 or more or takeing 5 down with the stun stick or something

[mike10019314]

yeh common medals should not have much or any bonus.

woops thought one of the posts ahead of me was behind me

[iamkyon]

Call me silly, but due to the way I play class-based shooters, I would like to propose a medal for Outstanding Field Medical Service, which would be awarded for healing 1000 hit points worth of damage and/or saving fatally wounded squadmates' lives.

Edited to add: IceVamp beat me to it and brought forth a similar idea on the first page.

Edited January 24, 2012 by iamkyon

[anotherdevil]

You could easily savescum the "fatal wound" one too, just keep running one of your soldiers in front of the last alien over and over again and reloading until he finally gets it.

You could, but would it really be worth the effort? You'd need to get your man shot, then finish the mission. Only to realise they died. Reload, get your man killed, finish mission again, still dead... All those extra actions, all those extra loading screens, makes it a lot harder to save scum. you'd have to really really want someone with it...

Call me silly, but due to the way I play team-based shooters, I would like to propose a medal for Outstanding Field Medical Service, which would be awarded for healing 1000 hit points worth of damage and/or saving fatally wounded squadmates' lives.

You're silly! I like it =]

[TheTuninator]

You could, but would it really be worth the effort? You'd need to get your man shot, then finish the mission. Only to realise they died. Reload, get your man killed, finish mission again, still dead... All those extra actions, all those extra loading screens, makes it a lot harder to save scum. you'd have to really really want someone with it...

Right, and save-scumming one guy through an entire mission to kill like 8-20 aliens would also be a highly intensive process in terms of having to repeat turns over and over again. You'd have to really want someone with the sole survivor medal to do that.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that save-scumming breaks the game, period; that's why I'd really prefer that it not be taken into account whatsoever in game design.

[Gorlom]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that save-scumming breaks the game, period; that's why I'd really prefer that it not be taken into account whatsoever in game design.

Then don't introduce a medal that encourages completionists to savescumm and we wont ahve this discussion.

[xracer]

Eh, no offense, but I don't feel the "survived a fatal wound" replaces the "sole survivor" medal very well; they're both there to recognize very different events. That's not to say "survived a fatal wound" is a bad medal; they're just very different.

Also, I don't think it's unrealistic that there actually could be a sole survivor; I've had this happen to me, and one of the most widely-circulated X-COM war stories, The Legend of Patrick Stewart, features a sole survivor moment.

Granted, it's very rare that you won't just reload or abandon the field, but that's what these medals are supposed to be; very rare.

You could easily savescum the "fatal wound" one too, just keep running one of your soldiers in front of the last alien over and over again and reloading until he finally gets it.

If you savescum with enough dedication, you can do literally anything; that's why the game shouldn't be balanced with savescumming in mind at all. It breaks the game by its very nature.

love that comment, and could not say it better myself.

Just for arguments sake lets say they implement 30 medal they are all very hard to achieve if someone wants to get all of them, first they will find out what is it that you need to get it and then they will try over and over and over.

So the arguments should be based more towards what merit a bonus and what not, I still believe there should be fairly "common" medals and then the distinguished medals.

[anotherdevil]

Right, and save-scumming one guy through an entire mission to kill like 8-20 aliens would also be a highly intensive process in terms of having to repeat turns over and over again. You'd have to really want someone with the sole survivor medal to do that.

Agreed it breaks the game.

However, if I was going to do the sole survivor medal, I'd only do it on a small scout, and hell yeah I'd save scum it to death. It'd be way easy, as soon as you start doing bad, load game. At least I wouldn't have to wait through any loading screens

[Gauddlike]

It doesn't matter how hard you make the medal to get, someone somewhere will always save scum or even use a cheat to get it.

It is not possible to make a medal or achievement that can be gotten through playing but not farmed in some way.

It shouldn't even be attempted as that would likely just penalise the people who are playing the game for the sake of the game itself.

Some reasonably easy medals for number of missions completed and that sort of thing are definitely not out of place.

They are a reward for playing the game well and keeping your troops alive.

The basic ones should have no or minimal bonuses though.

I would definitely avoid steam style achievements as medals though, you can always add actual achievements if steam is used for distribution.

[TheTuninator]

Agreed it breaks the game.

However, if I was going to do the sole survivor medal, I'd only do it on a small scout, and hell yeah I'd save scum it to death. It'd be way easy, as soon as you start doing bad, load game. At least I wouldn't have to wait through any loading screens

Well, I'd assume that there would be a baseline of at least a medium or larger UFO, or the medal would be rather devalued; one guy killing a single alien who popped out of a Very Small UFO is hardly a feat for the ages.

Also, Xenonaut loading screens are/will be about as long as a "Hidden Movement" alien turn, so waiting through loadscreens is not really more difficult.

Then don't introduce a medal that encourages completionists to savescumm and we wont ahve this discussion.

I'm sorry, but I really don't think medals which the majority of non-savescumming players find valuable and hard to achieve should be limited for the sake of the small minority of save-scumming completionists.

That's not a knock on your playstyle preferences, everyone plays a game differently, but asking game options to be tailored to your deliberately game-breaking style of play strikes me as rather inconsiderate. You have adopted a style of play which by its very nature breaks the foundation of the game (and, again, that's totally fine); if you're going to embrace its game-breaking nature, than you need to embrace the fact that this is not reflective of the way the game is meant to be played.

As Gauddlike has pointed out, it's more or less impossible to create a medal that can't be save-scummed, because save-scumming breaks the game. I don't think I've seen a single medal design in this entire thread that couldn't be save-scummed if you put in enough time.

Edited January 24, 2012 by TheTuninator

[anotherdevil]

Well, I'd assume that there would be a baseline of at least a medium or larger UFO, or the medal would be rather devalued; one guy killing a single alien who popped out of a Very Small UFO is hardly a feat for the ages.

Also, Xenonaut loading screens are/will be about as long as a "Hidden Movement" alien turn, so waiting through loadscreens is not really more difficult.

Well we'll see what we'll see about those two points. I'm hoping for short load times, but we'll see =] Certainly are not short at the moment...

[Beagle]

Gorlom, AD, you guys are basically arguing for the sake of it at this point. Like I and several others have said, these aren't achievements that are in the game to be farmed or aimed for, and if you are set on treating them like achievements and aiming for them and farming them anyway, then there's no point trying to design a way to stop you from doing that - you're going to do it no matter what.

Might I suggest removing the above one Chris? I realise that it is hard to get (and nigh impossible to farm) but really this one is impossible. Even good players, I think would evac their surviving members rather than keep pushing in the hope that one of them might get this. And if you are that out numbered and your men are falling like flies, why would you think that your last man would make it? Not to mention the terrible bravery he's going to have after ALL his team mates have just died. So really the only way to get this is if you save scum like Gorlom suggested, and that's nothing that should be rewarded. IMO.

I bolded the important parts of your suggestion here just to get this point dealt with as quickly as possible. Your suggestion centers around it being an achievement-style thing that players are aiming to get on purpose so they can show off. If you are treating these medals like that, no amount of design will dissuade you from seeing them as farmable achievements - you've already made that up in your mind, you're the 1 or 2 percent of the playerbase who are set on getting them for whatever reason, there's no point wasting effort trying to dissuade that.

If you think of these not as player achievements, but trooper personality, you will understand the point I've been trying to make a lot better. Going back to your quoted suggestion - it's not supposed to be looked at as hard to get, you're not supposed to look at it and go "oh this is impossible to farm", you're not meant to keep pushing with your last man "to get the medal". It's supposed to be hey, your team goes out on a mission, mass casualties, you've got a few guys left and they're trying to breach the UFO, you lose all but one in the breach, the mission doesn't end and you hold the UFO/hunt down the last alien with your last man and he clutches the mission. Or you take mass casualties, your guy gets cut off, is running back to the Chinook to extract and bags the last alien on the way home, happening across him by chance. It's a very tangible way of reminding you of those "X-Com Moments" where your trooper had something crazy happen. It's not a way of saying "I farmed all the medals, I'm the best".

If you're going out with the intention of getting medals - you're going to do that anyway. There's no point hamstringing the medal design by designing it around that kind of player, because it's not designed for that kind of experience - it'd be like setting out to create a high performance race car, getting complaints from a few suburban families that it doesn't fit all their kids, then redesigning it to be slower and roomier.

[anotherdevil]

Ok well we were talking about farming because Chris brought it up in the OP, but still my point stands that that medal is very hard to get. I would be more likely to quite and try again after half an hour or so than have my entire dream team of alien fighters lost. Maybe that's just me.

Also if you left in the rest of my quote, you'd see that I wrote the other one could be gained "through normal play" as in, you could quite happily get some of those medals without trying, as in, without the achievement style of gameplay.

Basically what I am saying is make sure you read the whole post next time =p