Is Tres needed?
Katana-
Join Date: 2008-11-25 Member: 65575Members
Join Date: 2008-11-25 Member: 65575Members
<div class="IPBDescription">what does the extra resource add to the game?</div>It seems like commanders have little need for pres, especially alien commanders, and what they do use pres for could just as easily come out of tres (logically speaking). The two res type system is a little strange in that the commander is really the only one who cares about tres, and in general any commander abilities that use pres are still really being spent to support the team rather than improve the commander's power or change his play style.
Wouldn't it make sense to just remove tres completely and make it so commanders spend their own res for upgrades and tech? Maybe it sounds crazy but it might stream line the game... and remove some of the pain points.
For example, marines could choose to sacrifice weapons on the ground for tech by hopping into a command chair and buying a few upgrades, maybe this is a bit counter intuitive. Having people going into and out of the command chair would be a little weird.
Alien commanders would also have something to spend res on.
In the end I don't think it would really change that much in terms of moment to moment game play, but it would remove the number of concepts that newer players have to keep track of.
Wouldn't it make sense to just remove tres completely and make it so commanders spend their own res for upgrades and tech? Maybe it sounds crazy but it might stream line the game... and remove some of the pain points.
For example, marines could choose to sacrifice weapons on the ground for tech by hopping into a command chair and buying a few upgrades, maybe this is a bit counter intuitive. Having people going into and out of the command chair would be a little weird.
Alien commanders would also have something to spend res on.
In the end I don't think it would really change that much in terms of moment to moment game play, but it would remove the number of concepts that newer players have to keep track of.
Comments
this would make it so large games would be completely differently balanced than small games.
This is why you have to have one resource that scales with team size(P-res) and buys equipment and one resource that does not scale with team size and buys structures and upgrades.
Unfortunately, the way it is done now there is a major problem; there is no longer any trade off between getting personal items and team items because you always collect both team resources and personal resources.
Getting rid of t-res can only be done if you get rid of the comm(i.e. something like NS1 aliens). For marines you would have to get rid of P-res, because otherwise it would be a REQUIREMENT to swap commenders very frequently(i.e. get rid of P-res and have something like NS1 marines). Now you get the scaling issues back.
That's not a problem, that's a feature. The problem is that marine equipment is a sidegrade, or maybe a slight improvement at best, while kharaa "equipment" vastly improves their capabilities. The other problem is that kharaa lifeforms basically all pop out at once, and there's essentially no reason not to switch over to fade or onos once you have res. There's no tradeoff for saving straight to those lifeforms and switching, whereas marines are really penalized if they don't continuously buy mines, shotguns and gls.
This is the big root problem with balance currently. It may or may not be fixed by the inclusion of the future planned features.
It should be pointed out that all of these problems can be fixed without touching the resource system at all. And ideally should.
Two types of resources allow you to balance tech/structure costs independently of weapon/class costs, such that, for example, you can make a balanced tech tree that works in both 6v6 and 12v12 matches. However, the current implementation has led to class/weapon spam (i.e. everyone going lerk or shotties). However, I think other mechanics (class/weapon limits, increased class/weapon cost with each extra class/weapon, class/weapon specialization) are a better method to reduce this problem then switching back to the one resource system.
dear god no. it would just be the same problem (only a few people with lifeforms and the rest stuck as skulks) under a different guise.
Exactly what NS2 needs if you ever want it to be somewhat balanced.
I totally agree with Scardybob.
No, it is a major problem. If there is no trade off made between getting equipment/units and getting buildings/upgrades you have removed a huge amount of depth from the RTS portion of the game.
With no other sink for P-res you also end up with very top-heavy teams, with most players being high-tier units most of the time. Destroying a hive does not mean that one of the players has to go gorge and drop a new one, preventing him from going fade, it simply means that he goes fade anyway and the comm drops a new hive when he gets the res.
That's obviously not true because it doesn't happen to marine teams.
The choice doesn't need to be between "equipment" ie p.res stuff or "buildings" ie t.res stuff. For marines the choice is buy it now or buy it later. There are constantly reasons to prioritize your p.res based on your team's strategy at the moment. For aliens there is no choice: there's nothing to buy now because the upper tier units are more expensive, and there's no reason to avoid buying it later, because you get fade and onos at approximately the same time as you unlock all of the abilities that come with them.
Most of the players in NS2 aren't playing a RTS, they're playing a team shooter.
With no other sink for P-res you also end up with very top-heavy teams, with most players being high-tier units most of the time. Destroying a hive does not mean that one of the players has to go gorge and drop a new one, preventing him from going fade, it simply means that he goes fade anyway and the comm drops a new hive when he gets the res.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A thousand times this.
Wouldn't it make sense to just remove tres completely and make it so commanders spend their own res for upgrades and tech? Maybe it sounds crazy but it might stream line the game... and remove some of the pain points.
For example, marines could choose to sacrifice weapons on the ground for tech by hopping into a command chair and buying a few upgrades, maybe this is a bit counter intuitive. Having people going into and out of the command chair would be a little weird.
Alien commanders would also have something to spend res on.
In the end I don't think it would really change that much in terms of moment to moment game play, but it would remove the number of concepts that newer players have to keep track of.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just posted an idea on exactly this...!
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=118315" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=118315</a>
It does what you suggest Katana-, and solves the com switching problem people bring up here :)
With no other sink for P-res you also end up with very top-heavy teams, with most players being high-tier units most of the time. Destroying a hive does not mean that one of the players has to go gorge and drop a new one, preventing him from going fade, it simply means that he goes fade anyway and the comm drops a new hive when he gets the res.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Unfortunately, I think this is a situation where the RTS portion (tradeoff between units and tech) conflicts with the FPS part of the game (balance over different playercounts). However, there are other ways to fix the underlying issue (i.e. mass fading/onosing/shotgunning/nading/etc) without reverting to a single resource system.
If the comm class is going to use PR and TR and energy stored in different structures, there need to be clear and distinct classes for these different currency types.
TR = structures and upgrades and AI units (what else?)
PR = only what a FPS player can buy (comm should be handing these out or letting PR overflow to other players)
Energy = structure abilities/spells (should ARCs, turrets, hydras and whips also have energy?)
So the gorge certainly muddies up this system somewhat. The move to free gorge building goes some way to correct that in a sense.
The separate issue of grouped lifeforms/weapons purchases can be solved pretty easily by having more PR options.
One thought is to allow FPS players to spend PR to buy energy for a structure. This gives structures the possibility to scale energy with player count without always having multiple structures. It is a fun mechanic. Your PR is converted to energy for the structure. Now the structure is able to function again. It gives FPS players the ability to make an RTS-like decision with their PR.
I can see a comm asking for Obs energy when a team is attacking a Shade Hive, Gorges spending PR to provide more energy for Crag Umbras, a marine recharging the armory before joining an assault.
If this was the case, marine team would have the same problem. It doesn't. Hence the problem doesn't lie in the resource system (which is identical for both teams), but in the tech paths (which are different).
The major difference is that marines have to use Pres for welders and mines while aliens do not. On top of that buying a gun as a marine does not increase your survivability as drasticly as evolving into a higher lifeform does for the aliens which means that marines are potentially expending Pres at a higher rate than the aliens.
At the moment an alien player hatches from their egg, a meter increases (P-RES based on res/sec. from RTs), which gradually moves to light up each lifeform in order, gorge, lerk, fade and onos.
To purchase an evolution the player must wait for the lifeform to be lit by the meter. After they evolve and hatch from their new egg, the meter resets, meaning they cannot immediately evolve into, for example, an onos after a fade(wasting res in the process).
Meaning 'personal res' is not carried over between lives.