Invincible Power Nodes
Raneman
Join Date: 2010-01-07 Member: 69962Members
Join Date: 2010-01-07 Member: 69962Members
Comments
Then, light it up with alien structures and infestation emitting light...
If you made the hive emit a soft light over a long distance it'd do a lot to make the hive light up, same for the harvester, as both of those are limited structures so you can't spam lights everywhere.
Enable the new atmospherics and the hive would be brightened by the beam effects too.
I don't mind the new node system, but aliens should be able to make hives dark, possibly by infesting the power nodes, it's good that skulks don't need to chomp everywhere at the start, but bad that there is no replacement system for establishing alien power control.
In other words- remove it because it gives aliens a natural advantage. Are you saying aliens shouldn't have another advantage in their home territory?
Also, you have a flashlight.
Also, you have a flashlight.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not sure which lines you're reading between because that isn't what I said at all. I wasn't even thinking about the gameplay at a strategical level.
Since you mention it, I don't think aliens should have another advantage in their home territory but probably not for the reason you think. Either team having too much of an advantage in "home territory" inherently creates a game which lends itself to stalemates.
If you regard a desirable balance state as zero sum, then by increasing the capability of a team just from being in their own territory (as a buff to defender's advantage) you decrease their inherent capability to fight in a neutral area. In other words, neutering their offensive capability.
Soon you have two whole teams who are only willing to fight in their own territory, taking potshots at each other and turtling until they have end-game tech.
So by externalising the teams fighting capability into specific regions of a map you inadvertently nerf them anywhere outside of that zone.
Especially a blanket buff as binary as lighting state (its too dark to see the enemy -> I am dead / I can see the enemy -> they are dead), not even taking into account the huge variation in hardware between players.
Aliens do not want the power system in their territory, they want infestation.
Marines do not want infestation in their territory, they want the power system.
Right now we have the situation where aliens get a bonus for being on infestation and the marine team is uniform across all territories (so anywhere not alien zone is effectively neutral). Hypothetically, this can be seen as a proportion of the alien's power being derived from their surroundings (I'm going to say 20% to keep this simple). There are two ways this can go balance-wise depending on which area you see as the baseline for how powerful you want a team to be.
<b>Scenario 1:</b> Alien territory is baseline
<u>Alien Territory</u>
Aliens: 100%
Marines: 100%
-> Balanced fighting.
<u>Neutral Territory</u>
Aliens: 80%
Marines: 100%
-> Aliens can't push.
--
<b>Scenario 2:</b> Neutral territory is baseline
<u>Alien Territory</u>
Aliens: 120%
Marines: 100%
-> Marines can't push.
<u>Neutral Territory</u>
Aliens: 100%
Marines: 100%
-> Balanced fighting.
This would only get worse if marines were <i>also</i> incentivised to stay in their own territory, which would definitely lead to the stale-mate inducing double dip of ######ness I mentioned above.
There's also no easy get-out of this situation like you'd see in an RTS game employing rock-paper-scissors style balancing. RPS balance doesn't cut it when making a good FPS game, sadly, because it's generally frustrating as hell (this is probably why we hardly ever see asymmetrical teams in FPS games).
Emergency lighting is admittedly a really nice visual touch but surely there's a way of implementing it so you get a similar atmospheric feel without it impacting so much on core gameplay?
I totaly agree with you.
I like the darkness as an alien and i felt safer when the hive room was dark. also i tend to use alien sight most of the time anyway it makes things so simple to see, expecialy in battle.
Thanks...
If you made the hive emit a soft light over a long distance it'd do a lot to make the hive light up, same for the harvester, as both of those are limited structures so you can't spam lights everywhere.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I really like that idea. Particularly since hives and harvesters can only be in pre-defined spots, so there's no worrying about them not being hidden when they should be.
In asymmetrical games, you can actually get away with having quite severe territory advantages, if you design for it.
In NS2, you could have a marine tech tree that gives them territory independent advantages, while aliens could have territory dependent advantages. At the start of the game, all of the map is neutral, and both sides are balanced on it. As time goes on, marines gets more of an advantage off infestation, while the aliens gain power on infestation (it is necessary to introduce different levels of infestation too), and infestation also grows all the time.
Basically, you end up with a game where marines are trying to tech up quickly enough to be able to hold off the infestation and in the endgame, battle their way into the aliens hive and kill it, while the aliens are trying to protect and expand the infestation so it can reach the marine base before the marines have grown too powerful.
But that's not NS2.
This sounds very ideal and through a series of tweaks to the game after it's content complete this could be achieved.
I think my view on this stems from an intense dislike of some (artificial and automatic) factor other than my or my team-mates personal ability determining the outcome of an engagement. In a game like NS where you are forced to swap between attack and defense at a moment's notice things like this just don't sit very well.
I think my view on this stems from an intense dislike of some (artificial and automatic) factor other than my or my team-mates personal ability determining the outcome of an engagement. In a game like NS where you are forced to swap between attack and defense at a moment's notice things like this just don't sit very well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can't avoid having strategy influence the outcome of an engagement. Your tech level vs the aliens tech level matters - 3 vanilla marines vs 3 fades is pretty much a foregone conclusion from the start. Vice versa, a couple of marines supported by sentry guns that only needs to guard a couple of ARCs from skulks while the last hive is being bombarded is also a very loopsided battle.
The difficulty in making a game with strong strategic elements like NS2 and FPS is to make the game fun to play even if the strategic game puts you into a tactically bad situation.
I do think that designing a game where infestation has a strong tactical influence could be fun to play - but it would have to be a pretty radical redesign.
I personally thing there should be a neutral atmospheric 'lights on' position, with only temporary darkness when a power node goes down or the alien commander orders it (assuming permanent dark hives are off the menu).
marine - broken - alien.
Marine or "human" is default mode, normal whitish blue lighting
If aliens break a room's power, theyre in congestion and lighting is moody and shady.
If aliens claimed the room and infestation is spreading, the muccus starts to glow yellowish-orange to brownish.
The difficulty in making a game with strong strategic elements like NS2 and FPS is to make the game fun to play even if the strategic game puts you into a tactically bad situation.
I do think that designing a game where infestation has a strong tactical influence could be fun to play - but it would have to be a pretty radical redesign.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes I think you're right. The annoying thing about this sort of thing is that it's a hard to define threshold of "too much strategy influence" but you know it when you see it and it's probably different for everyone.
It's to do with not wanting to feel useless, within reasonable constraints. I don't mind fighting close to the enemy spawn, even though they have quicker reinforcements, for example.
In NS1 if you're alone and only have an LMG but, say, w2/a2 upgrades and you fight a lone hive 2 fade you have a good chance of forcing him to flea. Without the upgrades and the odd medpack you'd be mincemeat. That feels fair to me because of being at reasonably the same tech stage with passive upgrades so even the base unit isn't rendered useless.
A prime example of what isn't OK is SC first aliens. It's frustrating to push into as a marine because you don't have a chance with equal upgrades, but similarly frustrating as an alien because you're so weak when not within the cloaking field of the SC.
Perhaps, then, it comes down to the difference in "effort" put in by both sides. I'll stick with the NS1 example for now because I believe it fits well as an analogy. For the alien team who drop SCs first, it's actually much easier to fight defensively with than any other chamber. The marines, however, must instantly split their tech and go into a long defensive macro game and the individual marines must rely on the commander to actively scan areas, which they may or may not have the energy to do. Which side has had to work harder just to stay in the game? (I won't get sidetracked by how frustrating it is as aliens who've picked SC to try and fight offensively, even though it's extremely pertinent to the darkness on infestation discussion.)
At a strategic level, it's technically balanced because by opting for SC first the aliens have a significantly weaker mid-game but for the individual marines there's an overwhelming feeling that there was nothing you could have done to avoid dying unless you play far far far better than the other player.
StarCraft players complain about this all the time - ghost emp is far too easy to use, marine/marauder/medivac stim is a-move, 1base all-ins vs zerg and so on. One player only has to put in x effort while to counter that the opponent must be capable of 2x effort just to hold it off. Of course in pure RTS it doesn't matter as much if you lose a bunch of high templars in one particular skirmish if by getting ghosts the opponent has given up his ability to defend against something else but when 5/6ths of your playerbase <i>are those high templars</i> it makes for an un-enjoyable experience.
Also, right now DI kind of bluntly adds overall bonuses and penalties for respective sides. There's hardly any way to really adapt to it. I think I'd be more comfortable if the DI area limited some approaches, maybe required more attention to some other details, but still have you full possibilities to fight back as long as you're willing to accept the disadvantages.
For example don't let MACs drive into infestation still gives you full potential to operate with GLs and such, keeping open interesting options. Meanwhile a 10% movement speed penalty just leaves you weakened without any possibility to adapt and ends up being frustrating and in some sense just makes aggressive gameplay more difficult in all cases.