Res for Kill discussion
Bacillus
Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58241Members
Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58241Members
<div class="IPBDescription">The good, the bad and the ugly stuff</div>As the title states, this thread is for Res for Kill (R4K, RFK). It seems that despite being a discussion more than a suggestion, it's still supposed to be on I&S section.
So, right now it's a controversial feature. A few critical things about it:
Good things:
+ Rewards players who try to improve their game.
+ Adds a teamwork element as a team can try to direct RFK to certain players. For example a fade can tank and let the skulks take the reward to improve the alien economy.
+ Creates variation as the res gain isn't identical in every game with the same amount of nodes. It adds a rather big variation to organised games where the node counts don't usually vary so much.
+ Adds some strategical value as a team can try to prevent the enemy from gaining RFK if they are low on nodes, increasing the res starvation.
Bad things:
- Frustrates newbies since they don't get to lifeform so much.
- Add quite a bit of unnecessary 'carry factor' where one player contributes massively to the outcome either by getting a very early lifeform or by feeding the marine res pool huge amounts of RFK.
- Doesn't reward assists or encourage teamwork on basic level.
- Makes newbies feed the enemy team.
- Adds a luck factor (1-3 res can mean a world of difference on low economy game. For example 6 res from 2 frags on 1 alien RT is a huge amount of res node time.)
Undecided:
+- Makes every marine and alien worth something, so there isn't any free unit.
+- Encourages people to frag and take active part in the game.
The division doesn't match completely and most of the points have positive effects and downsides on their own, but at least they serve some value for the discussion.
Now then, things to consider for NS2
- Should there be RFK at all?
If no:
-Good replacements? RFK had some merits after all, losing them would be a shame.
If yes:
- How should RFK be changed? It isn't perfect, that's for sure.
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I'd probably keep some form of RFK, but change it a bit:
- The randomness should be better controlled. In NS' case that would be something like 2-3 res for each kill. If NS2 creates enough of timing variation through other elements, the whole randomness should go and RFK should be locked to 2 for example.
- Give players some slight RFK for assists. For example 2 assists could equal one point of NS1 res. In general it's just a recognizition that the player does things right even though he didn't frag.
- Possibly drop RFK value to 1 if a skulk or marine dies too soon after the respawn.
- Possibly drop RFK to 1 if a player frags too much during one lifetime or in too short time interval.
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Discuss.
So, right now it's a controversial feature. A few critical things about it:
Good things:
+ Rewards players who try to improve their game.
+ Adds a teamwork element as a team can try to direct RFK to certain players. For example a fade can tank and let the skulks take the reward to improve the alien economy.
+ Creates variation as the res gain isn't identical in every game with the same amount of nodes. It adds a rather big variation to organised games where the node counts don't usually vary so much.
+ Adds some strategical value as a team can try to prevent the enemy from gaining RFK if they are low on nodes, increasing the res starvation.
Bad things:
- Frustrates newbies since they don't get to lifeform so much.
- Add quite a bit of unnecessary 'carry factor' where one player contributes massively to the outcome either by getting a very early lifeform or by feeding the marine res pool huge amounts of RFK.
- Doesn't reward assists or encourage teamwork on basic level.
- Makes newbies feed the enemy team.
- Adds a luck factor (1-3 res can mean a world of difference on low economy game. For example 6 res from 2 frags on 1 alien RT is a huge amount of res node time.)
Undecided:
+- Makes every marine and alien worth something, so there isn't any free unit.
+- Encourages people to frag and take active part in the game.
The division doesn't match completely and most of the points have positive effects and downsides on their own, but at least they serve some value for the discussion.
Now then, things to consider for NS2
- Should there be RFK at all?
If no:
-Good replacements? RFK had some merits after all, losing them would be a shame.
If yes:
- How should RFK be changed? It isn't perfect, that's for sure.
------------------
I'd probably keep some form of RFK, but change it a bit:
- The randomness should be better controlled. In NS' case that would be something like 2-3 res for each kill. If NS2 creates enough of timing variation through other elements, the whole randomness should go and RFK should be locked to 2 for example.
- Give players some slight RFK for assists. For example 2 assists could equal one point of NS1 res. In general it's just a recognizition that the player does things right even though he didn't frag.
- Possibly drop RFK value to 1 if a skulk or marine dies too soon after the respawn.
- Possibly drop RFK to 1 if a player frags too much during one lifetime or in too short time interval.
------------------
Discuss.
Comments
I'm not completely sure how RFK contributes to the long rounds. If anything, it favored the more fragging team and thus speeded up the finish.
With both teams having the same resource model in NS2 my hate for RFK may not be justified, but I always disliked it in NS1.
I personaly have enjoyed a failed full skulkrush where half of the dogs (6 players) gave 3 res which literaly spelled their doom.
If RFK is in NS2 it has to be toned down and deal boons based on the class the killed player was, i.e. a vanilla, skulk or gorge giving 1 res, jetpack, lerk and fade 2 and heavy / onos 3 res.
The point of rfk was in my opinion to speed up the games (4 hour matches didn't cut it i think), so instead of rewarding personal ganking the whole resource pump needs to adapt to the actual player amount.
It should be kept in NS2 ( if the gameplay is somewhat quite near to the one of NS1, ofc ).
Still, I am against all form of randomness. Therefore, 1 res for vanilla marines / skulks, 2 for some light stuff and 3 for the heavy stuff would be ok I guess ( once again, the res currency may be completely different etc ... but you see my point ).
It was a stupid, idiotic idea both on paper and in practice, so I have no idea what kind of massive brain damage must've occurred to make ANYONE think it was a good idea.
I would lower the amount of res provided for the baseline. Say 1 res total. We can adjust the point system to take into account assists and provide incentive there.
However, for Aliens, I personally feel they need the R4K to help get their higher lifeforms out in time. Also, it promotes killing. However, to help offset their non-battle capabilities, I liked the system where Gorges got an extra portion of the resnode res generation.
In short, we should cap it a bit so it doesn't promote ZOMG RAMBO! kekekekek carry. But it's not an inherently bad system.
With both teams having the same resource model in NS2 my hate for RFK may not be justified, but I always disliked it in NS1.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's more of a huge public server issue. The problem is that marines have no need to spend res as the free manpower is enough to hold the location. Surely RFK contributes to the behavior, but the issue could exist even with the res nozzle income, especially if the node income had to be risen to compensate the lack of RFK.
On smaller server the RFK isn't such a big deal, it's actually more about the marines struggling with rising fade counts as leapskulks start gaining RFK from cappers.
If there are still problems with turtling, there could be a change that either aliens killed within a marine area grant minimal RFK, or late game skulks grant minimal RFK. At that point marines are forced either to push aggressively or find more nodes to gain res at a decent rate.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=RobB)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RobB)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->RFK did throw the whole game off tracks.
I personaly have enjoyed a failed full skulkrush where half of the dogs (6 players) gave 3 res which literaly spelled their doom.
If RFK is in NS2 it has to be toned down and deal boons based on the class the killed player was, i.e. a vanilla, skulk or gorge giving 1 res, jetpack, lerk and fade 2 and heavy / onos 3 res.
The point of rfk was in my opinion to speed up the games (4 hour matches didn't cut it i think), so instead of rewarding personal ganking the whole resource pump needs to adapt to the actual player amount.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Based on NS1, the lifeform RFK is quite irrelevant. Killing a fade is already big enough reward, 2-3 extra res isn't going to do anything.
Whether the base RFK should be 1 is debatable, but I think even average of 2 isn't huge as it gives you just one free medpack to recover from the bite. It's not a dramatic difference and the significance of RFK can be scaled anyway. I'd say right now it's about getting the basic nature of RFK right, the number tweaking can deal with the balance later.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Temphage)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->RFK completely ruined NS1, utterly and completely. R4K made it viable to throw weapons to every marine and let them run off and do whatever. If you had a couple decent players, the early game rambo rush would usually put you ahead. At the very least, R4K made guns pay for themselves, thusly breaking the entire marine resource model.
It was a stupid, idiotic idea both on paper and in practice, so I have no idea what kind of massive brain damage must've occurred to make ANYONE think it was a good idea.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To this day I haven't seen the behavior you described. It takes average of 5 skulks to pay off the shotgun and the res invested on guns could often be invested into nodes or upgrades for better late game. In addition a K:D 5 practically means that you're overrunning the opposion already, so there's more issue in the alien inability to fight guns at that point. If the gun RFK still seems too effective, it's possible to reduce the bigger gun RFK to 0,5 - 1 or even 0, while the lighter guns still score more by average.
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A few additional thoughts:
- Gorges could possibly gain increased RFK to encourage battle and permgorging a bit more. Right now the big server res model relies heavily on RFK and the gorges aren't gaining it. Gorge scoring for example 1 RFK for every assist might allow some interesting economy related tricks.
- The first few frags within a life could be more valuable. For example the first three frags would grant 2 res, but from that point on only 0,5 or 1. That reduces some of the carry effect at least.
- On NS1's logic the marine res nodes should be worth RFK. Although taking them down is already good enough as it is, some 1-2 res award could encourage the right kind of action on public games.
The RFK might turn out to be more complex than it used to be, but I don't think it's that bad as long as it encourages the right kind of behavior and the knowledge of the exact mechanisms isn't required to enjoy the game.
The bolded portion makes no sense. In my scenario you quoted, which I commonly saw in game, the aliens have the map control and therefor should have the incredible income advantage. RFK nullified that advantage.
It was a stupid, idiotic idea both on paper and in practice, so I have no idea what kind of massive brain damage must've occurred to make ANYONE think it was a good idea.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
More troll ?
I think something is missing in this thread. I'm pretty sure Flayra said something about some global rt count in parallel as some personnal ressource count for marines or something, and in the way i understood it, that personal count would have something to do with the kills / the rfk. So after thinking about it, I am not sure there is a meaning to the question. A bit more information about the res system would help.
ps sorry for every one who has a K:D > 1:1 who I just insulted
pps R4K only hurts bad aliens (L337 Rines always spawncamp for $ & shotties)
Players are ordered by kill:death ratio. The top 25% receive 1, the next quarter get 2 res/kill, the next quarter get 3 res/kill, finally the bottom 25% get 4 res/kill.
It still keeps incentive to improve and kill, rewards newb's for doing the right thing, but as you get better the impact is reduced.
Except that the big game res model is absolutely ridiculous. Right now in 16 player team you need 8 nodes just to compensate the huge amount of players, the res flow isn't still any greater than the starting node setup in 6v6.
With 1 1/2 res flow on 8 nodes it would still take more than 4 minutes to accumulate 50 res. Meanwhile the marines are getting probably more than enough res for w3, a2 and a few turrets.
In addition at that point the 6v6 res balance would be totally messed up. At worst, the fades would be up at 2:20 or so. I think it's a safe assumption that we won't see similar res model scaling problems in NS2.
It's not so much that the games became longer. It's that they were decided in the first few minutes. If you were against an alien team with a good Fade player who got a couple of early kills, they'd proceed to go Fade early and completely destroy the Marine team before they had much in the way of upgrades to fight against them. Conversely, if you were facing a Marine team who managed to wipe out a pile of Skulks in the very early game, you'd get obliterated by upgraded well-equipped Marines.
Coming back from those kind of scenarios was, and still is, incredibly difficult, and usually doesn't work unless your opponents make some gigantic mistake. And there are few things worse in gaming than being forced to continue playing when you know it's a hopeless situation.
About the only games that were decided in the first few minutes in the pre-RFK days were when:
- Marines went for a failed relocate
- Someone went Gorge and dropped Sensory (actually I can't remember which patch buffed Sensory and whether that was pre or post RFK. Regardless, in the early days of NS, it was generally suicide to do it)
I miss those days. Heck if there are 1.04 servers out there, let me know.
An added disadvantage I've found is that for new players, RFK makes NS even more unforgiving.
There used to be one, a few years ago. Long story short, it was REALLY bad compared to post 2.0 gameplay. You shouldn't have such nostalgia. The changes of lerk and fade gameplay are themselves enough to NOT encourage you to play 1.04.
I am very surprised to see that you guys think RFK is that bad. Seriously, if a skulk is good enough to get 10 fades in order to go fade at 2:20, having him fade will just shorten a game that is already a marine lose.
Also, it is also in my point of view the basics of a timing mechanic for pcw. On some maps you can clearly do an early skulk rush on marines right to their first RT or to their base, because by the time the marines come to your RT all your skulks will already be in position even if they died, and the RFK skulk might get there will allow for earlier lerk and chambers. On the other hand the death of 4 skulks in MS early game may mean an additional shotgun or moar meds or earlier 2nd/3rd rt. This is good.
Also RFK allows >8v8 game to be playable. Imagine playing that horrible 13vs13 game without RFK ? First fades would pop soooo late... Horrible !
RFK-based FPS game with aliens, marines and base building: <a href="http://tremulous.net" target="_blank">http://tremulous.net</a>
Sorry, far off topic, but both Guns4Back2School and <BAD> clan servers (the 2 most popular NS servers in the US) have excellent admin support. Post demo/screenshots & logs on their web-site complaint forums to sort out these problems. Sometimes admin's are playing, so it pays to get to know who they are.
Coming back from those kind of scenarios was, and still is, incredibly difficult, and usually doesn't work unless your opponents make some gigantic mistake. And there are few things worse in gaming than being forced to continue playing when you know it's a hopeless situation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Most of the time the lost map control is far bigger deal than the RFK: It's next to impossible to win with 1 alien node and 5 skulks not biting the enemy nodes is going to give him far more than the average of 10 res from 5 kills. Killing those 5 skulks is just one shotgun in RFK, minus the meds, it's nothing you couldn't reverse as long as you manage to break the marine push before it takes over the whole map.
The bad team is punished twice, as they are already in an inferior position, and the other team is even rewarded for that.
Furthermore a single player can have a negative effect on your team, and he may not even notice what he is doing wrong. I remember lots of public games where skulks kept rushing into the marine base and dieing withing seconds, as they had nothing else to do and got bored.
To counter the second concern, a player who dies to often in a given time should get a huge warning message. Something he absolutely will notice like big letters on the screen the next time he is dead, reading something like "You died 4 times now in the past 2 minutes while being on enemy territory rewarding the enemy team with 12 valuable res points. As a skulk you should try <enter tutorial text about ambushing here>". The idea is, that people will adjust their way of playing, when you explicitly tell them their mistakes instead of relying on their own ability to analyze.
Possible other solutions could be that non-upgraded standard units give no res at all, (which would of course even encourage stupid rushing). The amount of res gained could be determined by the worth of the killed unit, as I don't see why units which are intended to die easier should give the same amount as units which are heavily armoured, armed or not supposed to die anyway.
Another solution I can think of is rewarding only double and mulitkills (10 sec kill counter reset), so you are rewarded for stopping a group of enemies, but not for killing this lone marine who couldn't wait to walk into your hive.
However, regarding the first concern, from a game-mechanics viewpoint I would even suggest that the player who does something wrong should be punished, to give him a better feedback loop of what he is doing (i guess it's hard for some people to see a connection between them dieing way to often and their team loosing the game some minutes later). As a kind of negative feedback he could wait longer till respawn. Of course this means you have to find a solid algorithm to determine whether someone is really doing something stupid, which I imagine to be kind of impossible as there are always some very clever tactics which would fire a false positive. A positive feedback would work too (i guess), like gaining 10 additional hp for staying alive for 3 minutes. But then you might again run into the double punishment problem.
Also RFK allows >8v8 game to be playable. Imagine playing that horrible 13vs13 game without RFK ? First fades would pop soooo late... Horrible !<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
RFK made large games even worse, as marines shot up the tech ladder. Marine res goes to a pool, alien res does not. If 8 marines kill 8 skulks, they now have around 16 res. If 8 skulks kill 8 aliens, they all have 2 res. Broken res node mechanic aside, even if it were 24 vs. 24 you only have to assume it's a 1:1 kill scenario, which benefits the aliens hardly at all.
I really hope the res model for NS2 does not include RFK in any form
Any inconsistencies in resource accumulation most probably stems from the already known issues with the resource accumilation system and not rfk. On both large and small servers rfk will be unproportionally important to either team - because of how the game works, not because of rfk itself. And in NS2 both teams will collect resources the same way.
Thats why I like skulk so much.
The time it takes for a squad to move into a position and the time it takes for gorges to fortify that place, whoever needs less wins.
That's where suicidal tendencies come into play. Even if you get killed you can accomplish reducing their force.
If their armor is damaged, they either die faster or require more time to arrive for welding up (more time to mobilize the hard defense).
If they are hurt or need restocking, the mCom has to spend res which in turn hurts the whole team.
long rambling short: RFK negates this kind of strategy, worst case everey dead skulk trying to derail this squad is a free health- or ammopack.
The time it takes for a squad to move into a position and <b>the time it takes for gorges to fortify that place</b>, whoever needs less wins.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Err, what?
That only works when you're swimming in res and then you've already won the game.
Anyway...
I like how RFK forces you to plan attacks, but the additional bonus for the winner of a fight can be a bit too much seeing how gaining territory control is a pretty nice bonus all by itself.
I agree pretty much. I don't care if RFK's significance goes down quite a bit (RFK dropped to 1 for example). Still, I'd like to have it in the game as it adds some extra bits of thinking to the game.