They are much easier to kill in large player games; I thought that much was obvious<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was just saying (following ironhorse idea that ns1:spark would be only for 6v6 because of the lack of resources scaling) that although ns1 was balanced around 6v6 and didn't had resources scaling, it wasn't a problem at all for the average public player (me) to play 14v14 games.
Even if the NS1 model has issues, the Lua probably allows servers to find their own ways for dealing with any imbalance they come across. For example I could see numeric tweaking or onos modification to adress some of the scaling issues.
Also, now that the maps get rebuild and the files are readily available for modification, it's not awfully difficult to create maps better suited for big games. Widening the worst chokepoints and slapping a few extra nodes near alien hives should be a good start already.
... And as already mentioned, it's not anything unplayable even as it is right now with all the notable flaws in it.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited May 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1935911:date=May 13 2012, 09:08 AM:name=Yuuki)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Yuuki @ May 13 2012, 09:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1935911"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I was just saying (following ironhorse idea that ns1:spark would be only for 6v6 because of the lack of resources scaling) that although ns1 was balanced around 6v6 and didn't had resources scaling, it wasn't a problem at all for the average public player (me) to play 14v14 games.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Really? Because i had noticed, as unknown_soldier stated, that marines had the upper hand with higher than 6v6, and with less than 6v6 aliens had the advantage.
<i>Also, hasn't charlie himself and other devs stated this fact before?? </i> It might not be as noticeably unbalanced as a game that is a work in progress, changing from week to week, but i do remember a clear imbalance playing as aliens in large pub games. Oh and i did not play competitively for NS1, just pubbed constantly.
If all those 28 players would be good players, then marines would have little upper hand in 14v14 public, but in reality there is a perfect balance. It may seem that marines win more rounds because better players like to play more as marine, but more skilled team wins 9/10 times even in 14vs14 publafest. I really wish that game developers would play their own games.
<!--quoteo(post=1935964:date=May 13 2012, 10:20 PM:name=ironhorse)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ironhorse @ May 13 2012, 10:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1935964"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Really? Because i had noticed, as unknown_soldier stated, that marines had the upper hand with higher than 6v6, and with less than 6v6 aliens had the advantage.
<i>Also, hasn't charlie himself and other devs stated this fact before?? </i> It might not be as noticeably unbalanced as a game that is a work in progress, changing from week to week, but i do remember a clear imbalance playing as aliens in large pub games. Oh and i did not play competitively for NS1, just pubbed constantly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> There's a world of difference between some imbalance and being unplayable. As you said yourself, you played pub games despite the imbalance. It's annoying, but it's not the end of the world as long as the game is awesome in other aspects.
... And it's not like NS2 isn't potentially going to have big balance issues with quite a few things once the performance, playercounts and level of play go up.
IMHO the issue is the life form itself and not the strawman of the player count or some other garbage like scaling. It's something that can be done at any time without any tech requirements (though you don't see any until post 6 minutes cause augment). It has a huge AoE disabling stomp that is extremely buggy and generally unavoidable (without JPs which the game rarely gets to that stage for marines). The AoE disables buildings, players, everything short of the power node. It destroys structures extremely quickly, and has a strong attack versus players. It has a huge amount of HP and armor. It's disabilities are that it costs a fair amount.
That's the life form itself.
Sometimes marines are able to stop the Onos, maybe one or two, but eventually they're overwhelmed. It takes an entire team, or at least the greater majority of it, to take down one Onos. Furthermore, unless the marines have weapons 3 (90 tres for a w3 rush), the Onos will take an extensive amount of time to go down, and will likely escape.
The Onos is a problem because it gives 1 player the ability to fight an entire team without any invested skill. It is purely a tactical life form that has no room for any mechanical skill and very easy to gain tactical skill. Overall it gives too much to one player just because they have a lot of Pres.
Scaling is an issue that had been blown way out of proportion. I understand why Flayra sees the NS1 model as flawed but the fact is... NS2 still uses it. It's hard to see how keeping the T.res system of NS1 but adding a secondary resource based of the SAME STRUCTURE is going to magically fix scaling; it can only moderate it. I still stand by RFK or some kind of reward4action method being the best way of addressing this issue because it directly scales with player-counts. It also fixes the 'tech explosion' problem that we see currently in every game.
I've seen plenty of Marines who would disagree with you about Stomp being hard to dodge. Hell, the other night I was duo'd by a pair of Marines (with weap 3) because they dodged 4 stomps in a row.
Which is another thing to bring up. You may complain about Stomp but it's the Onos' only method of escape (active charge is lol-worthy), especially when Marines have weapons 3 and are shredding through an Onos like a hot knife through butter.
<!--quoteo(post=1936088:date=May 13 2012, 11:06 PM:name=Champlo0)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Champlo0 @ May 13 2012, 11:06 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1936088"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It has a huge AoE disabling stomp that is extremely buggy and generally unavoidable (without JPs which the game rarely gets to that stage for marines).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pre-207 you could jump the stomp and if i remember correctly cory said that it was NOT intended to remove that. So i hope coming 208 we will be able to evade that knockdown with timed jumps again and to be honest, jumping above the stomp was pretty easy maybe even TOO easy.
edit: Found it:
"<i>If this was changed it wasn't intentional. Initially the stomp was effecting jetpacking marines as well, which we certainly didn't want, and we lowered the height of the stomp effect area.
We want marine players to be able to dodge the stomp if they can time their jumps right, so we will look into this to see why it is no longer working this way.
Comments
Onos do scale. . .
They are much easier to kill in large player games; I thought that much was obvious<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was just saying (following ironhorse idea that ns1:spark would be only for 6v6 because of the lack of resources scaling) that although ns1 was balanced around 6v6 and didn't had resources scaling, it wasn't a problem at all for the average public player (me) to play 14v14 games.
Also, now that the maps get rebuild and the files are readily available for modification, it's not awfully difficult to create maps better suited for big games. Widening the worst chokepoints and slapping a few extra nodes near alien hives should be a good start already.
... And as already mentioned, it's not anything unplayable even as it is right now with all the notable flaws in it.
Really? Because i had noticed, as unknown_soldier stated, that marines had the upper hand with higher than 6v6, and with less than 6v6 aliens had the advantage.
<i>Also, hasn't charlie himself and other devs stated this fact before?? </i>
It might not be as noticeably unbalanced as a game that is a work in progress, changing from week to week, but i do remember a clear imbalance playing as aliens in large pub games. Oh and i did not play competitively for NS1, just pubbed constantly.
<i>Also, hasn't charlie himself and other devs stated this fact before?? </i>
It might not be as noticeably unbalanced as a game that is a work in progress, changing from week to week, but i do remember a clear imbalance playing as aliens in large pub games. Oh and i did not play competitively for NS1, just pubbed constantly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There's a world of difference between some imbalance and being unplayable. As you said yourself, you played pub games despite the imbalance. It's annoying, but it's not the end of the world as long as the game is awesome in other aspects.
... And it's not like NS2 isn't potentially going to have big balance issues with quite a few things once the performance, playercounts and level of play go up.
That's the life form itself.
Sometimes marines are able to stop the Onos, maybe one or two, but eventually they're overwhelmed. It takes an entire team, or at least the greater majority of it, to take down one Onos. Furthermore, unless the marines have weapons 3 (90 tres for a w3 rush), the Onos will take an extensive amount of time to go down, and will likely escape.
The Onos is a problem because it gives 1 player the ability to fight an entire team without any invested skill. It is purely a tactical life form that has no room for any mechanical skill and very easy to gain tactical skill. Overall it gives too much to one player just because they have a lot of Pres.
more hardcounters, necessary tech and dominant strategy please!
Which is another thing to bring up. You may complain about Stomp but it's the Onos' only method of escape (active charge is lol-worthy), especially when Marines have weapons 3 and are shredding through an Onos like a hot knife through butter.
Pre-207 you could jump the stomp and if i remember correctly cory said that it was NOT intended to remove that. So i hope coming 208 we will be able to evade that knockdown with timed jumps again and to be honest, jumping above the stomp was pretty easy maybe even TOO easy.
edit: Found it:
"<i>If this was changed it wasn't intentional. Initially the stomp was effecting jetpacking marines as well, which we certainly didn't want, and we lowered the height of the stomp effect area.
We want marine players to be able to dodge the stomp if they can time their jumps right, so we will look into this to see why it is no longer working this way.
--Cory</i>"