Re-examining the Resouce Model and Alien Tech Tree
hf_
Join Date: 2011-06-10 Member: 103639Members
Join Date: 2011-06-10 Member: 103639Members
<div class="IPBDescription">An honest discussion</div>In this post, I'd like to discuss a game mechanism that seems overly complicated and offer a possible solution to streamline this mechanism to make gameplay simpler and more effective than the current build (208). Please post your thoughts on this below, should you have any.
<b>Resource Model</b>
<u>Summary</u>
With the new emphasis on "Energy", there are now three important resources: Energy (previously mentioned), Tech Res (TRes), Personal Res (PRes). TRes effects the ability of the team to advance into their tech tree to unlock more powerful abilities / evolutions. PRes allows players to directly influence their power in the game. Energy is tied to structures, constantly replenishes as long as those structures exist, and allows the commander to activate structure-specific abilities.
<u>Problem</u>
NS2 is a resource-driven game. You get more resources, you are rewarded, you spend them on stuff to give you an edge in defeating your opponent. UWE seems like they can't decide how the resource model should work specifically for the commander -- what resources should they spend to have an influence on the game. Currently Energy drives this, such as commanders dropping ammo/medpacks or placing cysts for infestation. The problem with Energy is that it constantly replenishes and works independently of the other resource model in the game (TRes & PRes). Non-commander players have no influence over it, so commanders can keep doing things even if there are no resource towers available for that team. Energy has no cost to the team or player, and only goes way if the structure is destroyed.
So, we need to take a step back and understand what is the purpose of Energy -- how does it function in the game. Essentially, it limits the amount of things the commander can do for a particular time. We don't want the Alien commander spamming cysts all over the map, so Energy creates a threshold (at least in the beginning of a new game) for the number of cysts, or how often you can use mist to mature structures. Likewise, we don't want the Marine commander constantly dropping ammo and medpacks to help out his team. In effect, Energy functions as a "cool down" mechanism. The commander performs an action, but must wait for more energy in order to do so subsequent times.
This begs the question, why not enact a "cool down" for commander-specific abilities?
<u>A Proposed Solution</u>
Get rid of Energy. It's an additional "resource" that is cumbersome and initially difficult to understand. If the purpose of Energy is to put a threshold on the limit of specific actions that are commander-specific, create a "cool down" for these actions. For instance, you must wait 1 second to place an additional cyst. You must wait 1 second to drops additional medpacks. Tie PRes back to these actions because the commander is technically a player in the game, even though their role is different. Their PRes should be spent to influence the game from their role as commander. Anything that a commander "creates" is a PRes expenditure -- ARCs, MACs, heath/ammo, Drifters, cysts. Structures that have activated abilities will also have a "cool down", such as Umbra for the Crag, Scanning or Beacon for the Observatory. These will cost the commander PRes to activate so the cost isn't free (like it is with Energy), and the commander's actions are directly affected by the current resource model in the game. You get more resource towers, you are able to do more as a commander. More strategy is involved as commanders must make sacrifices on influencing the team.
Also, this encourages the building of more structures, and actually gives benefit in the creation of additional structures. If there are more multiple armories, you can place more than one medpack or ammo pack at a time. If there are multiple command stations, you can drop nanoshield or nanoconstruct on multiple objects or people at the same time. In addition, the commander cannot spam actions, like scanning everywhere on the map, dropping 10+ medpacks at the same time, or constantly cysting a marine base. A final benefit would be that commanders do not have excessive PRes (since they are now spending it for actions). I believe most players are frustrated when they attack an alien hive after deposing of the alien team only to have a Onos commander come out of the hive to thwart the attack, or having a non-commander player die as a higher lifeform and switch roles with commander (who now evolves into a higher lifeform). The game should encourage only one player to be the commander for the entire round.
Cool downs are included in many games and should be relatively easy to understand, and we now have a simpler resource model that affects the commander as well as the team.
<b>Resource Model</b>
<u>Summary</u>
With the new emphasis on "Energy", there are now three important resources: Energy (previously mentioned), Tech Res (TRes), Personal Res (PRes). TRes effects the ability of the team to advance into their tech tree to unlock more powerful abilities / evolutions. PRes allows players to directly influence their power in the game. Energy is tied to structures, constantly replenishes as long as those structures exist, and allows the commander to activate structure-specific abilities.
<u>Problem</u>
NS2 is a resource-driven game. You get more resources, you are rewarded, you spend them on stuff to give you an edge in defeating your opponent. UWE seems like they can't decide how the resource model should work specifically for the commander -- what resources should they spend to have an influence on the game. Currently Energy drives this, such as commanders dropping ammo/medpacks or placing cysts for infestation. The problem with Energy is that it constantly replenishes and works independently of the other resource model in the game (TRes & PRes). Non-commander players have no influence over it, so commanders can keep doing things even if there are no resource towers available for that team. Energy has no cost to the team or player, and only goes way if the structure is destroyed.
So, we need to take a step back and understand what is the purpose of Energy -- how does it function in the game. Essentially, it limits the amount of things the commander can do for a particular time. We don't want the Alien commander spamming cysts all over the map, so Energy creates a threshold (at least in the beginning of a new game) for the number of cysts, or how often you can use mist to mature structures. Likewise, we don't want the Marine commander constantly dropping ammo and medpacks to help out his team. In effect, Energy functions as a "cool down" mechanism. The commander performs an action, but must wait for more energy in order to do so subsequent times.
This begs the question, why not enact a "cool down" for commander-specific abilities?
<u>A Proposed Solution</u>
Get rid of Energy. It's an additional "resource" that is cumbersome and initially difficult to understand. If the purpose of Energy is to put a threshold on the limit of specific actions that are commander-specific, create a "cool down" for these actions. For instance, you must wait 1 second to place an additional cyst. You must wait 1 second to drops additional medpacks. Tie PRes back to these actions because the commander is technically a player in the game, even though their role is different. Their PRes should be spent to influence the game from their role as commander. Anything that a commander "creates" is a PRes expenditure -- ARCs, MACs, heath/ammo, Drifters, cysts. Structures that have activated abilities will also have a "cool down", such as Umbra for the Crag, Scanning or Beacon for the Observatory. These will cost the commander PRes to activate so the cost isn't free (like it is with Energy), and the commander's actions are directly affected by the current resource model in the game. You get more resource towers, you are able to do more as a commander. More strategy is involved as commanders must make sacrifices on influencing the team.
Also, this encourages the building of more structures, and actually gives benefit in the creation of additional structures. If there are more multiple armories, you can place more than one medpack or ammo pack at a time. If there are multiple command stations, you can drop nanoshield or nanoconstruct on multiple objects or people at the same time. In addition, the commander cannot spam actions, like scanning everywhere on the map, dropping 10+ medpacks at the same time, or constantly cysting a marine base. A final benefit would be that commanders do not have excessive PRes (since they are now spending it for actions). I believe most players are frustrated when they attack an alien hive after deposing of the alien team only to have a Onos commander come out of the hive to thwart the attack, or having a non-commander player die as a higher lifeform and switch roles with commander (who now evolves into a higher lifeform). The game should encourage only one player to be the commander for the entire round.
Cool downs are included in many games and should be relatively easy to understand, and we now have a simpler resource model that affects the commander as well as the team.
Comments
As for energy as a resource, I certainly think it should be tied to holding tech points/power nodes/resource nodes in some manner. If energy is going to be a game resource, it needs to be related to territory control like the rest of the game. Building multiple structures to get more ability spam needs to be limited by map control.
Like you said NS2 is a resources based game, where you harvest resources on the map to buy army, tech or more economy. Having only one resource pool ensure you can't get these three things at the same time, forcing you to make choices, strategic choices.
Now if you start messing up with this simple rule, you go away from resource based strategy games.
It's not a bad thing in itself, but if it continues like that, remembering that the pres/tres system already hurts the RTS side, the game need to be renamed from FPS/RTS hybrid to something else (don't know what exactly).
You can bank it unlike cooldown abilities, but only to a point unlike t/pres, so you can't invest & completely forget only to much later get full use of it. Plus, if the ability is considered valuable for an enemy they have a way of attacking it directly in the form of destroying the "bank" (like how cooldown would work).
And, it's used for instant effect "spells" unlike t/pres, but never in the form of direct attacks or heals, currently the only things in the game with cooldowns.
in starcraft it's used to cast spells, not to create basic infrastructure
there is a tradeoff we can make here to force these abilities to scale relative to playercount in a way. that is to say, we can make all energy-costing abilities an AoE effect, so that the more players there are, the more these abilities can affect. This is already mostly the case on the alien side. Unfortunately this also has the effect of lowering the skill cap of the comm, and introduces other balance problems (how would you balance an aoe nanoshield?).
there is a tradeoff we can make here to force these abilities to scale relative to playercount in a way. that is to say, we can make all energy-costing abilities an AoE effect, so that the more players there are, the more these abilities can affect. This is already mostly the case on the alien side. Unfortunately this also has the effect of lowering the skill cap of the comm, and introduces other balance problems (how would you balance an aoe nanoshield?).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Changing the current support abilities back to pres/tres would not address player count scaling at all. And you're right with how messy things like Nano Shield would get if they were AOE.
The game is never going be balanced for all player counts no matter how hard UWE tries to make it so, sorry UWE and I get why you're trying, but it's not going to work and has the potential to hurt the fine-tuning of balance that a set ideal player count would bring. Things down to the size of hallways effect balance when dealing with larger player counts, and as the numbers go up so will the advantage to the marines against skulks and the other melee alien classes. But this is off topic...
Take the new Medpack/Ammo system.. Armories are very cheap and very effective even not taking into the account that they provide energy for meds/ammo. You can build several armories and literally never run out of med/ammo spamming capability. It's just silly. Even if they increase the energy cost for them to something ludicrous, it would serve to do nothing more than make them too costly early game and fail to stop them from being spammable late game. It's the same with cysts, they are free, spammable and a giant waste of time to kill as a marine.
Stuff like cysts/meds/ammo are simply not balanced on the energy currency. I understand that they were put there due to "comm swapping" but it fails to solve that "problem" in any way. TBH I don't see why comm swapping was an issue... if you need more meds/ammo for a big push and want to swap comms for it, why shouldn't you be able to? That takes coordination and teamwork, and you are paying for it with resources (I've maybe seen that happen once or twice in a pub game, it's very uncommon). That's going to be 1 or 2 less shotty/GL/flamer for your team.
There are not enough p-res sinks( and t-res sinks for aliens) in the game to begin with, I cannot fathom why forcing these into the energy currency was considered viable to begin with.
No, they use CC energy. There's a mixup in the changelog, this appears twice one stating that it's CC energy and another one saying it's Armory, but it's actually CC energy.
Ah, thank you for the correction.. My argument still remains the same though.
I don't see how though, multiple command stations are very difficult to build and hold(and you should be rewarded for doing so) as opposed to your suggestion that it was broken with spammable armouries.
Cysts are not balanced at the moment as they cost too little energy.
About the second paragraph: I don't think it should be desired to have multiple structures of the same type. The cool-downs of active abilities should just scale with the number of marine energy nodes/ alien rts build. Medpacks/Ammopacks are limited on res, so spamming them will hurt the comm aswell.
Not p-res, t-res. P-res are for personal equipment that scales with player count. Cysts specially should cost t-res.
Yea, you're correct. Haven't thought about it the right way. The comm should expand in the same speed regardless on the number of players in game.
The game is never going be balanced for all player counts no matter how hard UWE tries to make it so, sorry UWE and I get why you're trying, but it's not going to work and has the potential to hurt the fine-tuning of balance that a set ideal player count would bring. Things down to the size of hallways effect balance when dealing with larger player counts, and as the numbers go up so will the advantage to the marines against skulks and the other melee alien classes. But this is off topic...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Its true you can't perfectly balance the game for all player counts. This is true for ANY game. I think UWE should focus on a specific player count, however they should always keep a close eye on how things affect other player counts. The competitive scene is going to be 6v6. They will be the most picky. Everything else will be for casual, pubs, and things can be more loose...to an extent. Its not that great if the 6v6 competitive scene is perfectly balanced, but open pubs are rampant with cheese that drive away players. Especially for a COMMERCIAL game (not a mod).
I think UWE shouldn't sabotage themselves by adding features that don't scale with player count ... but can easily can be modified to scale. Tres and Energy don't scale. Com pres doesn't either, not unless there is commander switching... kinda....its not something that should be promoted regardless imo. Commander abilities themselves need to scale. The biggest offenders are medpack, ammopacks, nanoshield and nanaconstruct. Make them scale without removing the skill required to use them. I think adding an AoE element won't dull the commander skill required. Effectively right now, a commander needs better APM skills in larger games, than in a small 6v6 match. AoE effects could be normalized around what is expected (roughly) from 6v6 match commander.
For instance, a commander clicks a player to give nano-shield. All other marines within a radius of the clicked marine also receive a shield. In a 6v6, players are more thinned out, and in this scenario only clicked player receives it. In 12v12 its probably gets 2 players in the same scenario. As a side benefit, it promotes marines sticking together. Not perfectly balanced for scale, but better.
For nano-construct, instead of clicking on players, commander clicks the structure and it gets built faster. For med and ammo packs, allow multiple players to walk over and benefit from a single pack, but a player can only use a pack once. Its essentially the same supporting one player in one room as it is 3 players in one room (the difference between a 6v6 and a 18v18 match...if it gets that high).
It could be argued to use TRes for everything, but cysts costing TRes caused a lot of reslock problems last build.
Btw, I'm not sure if the energy detractors realize it, but NS1 had energy as well, on the Observatory (for scan).
Cooldown is a special case of energy, with the energy cap being equal to the ability cost. I agree it's not a very interesting case, because you can't plane anything and save energy, build things earlier like you said.
It's fine to have some abilities costing energy (like umbra) but important things (tech, economy, army, map control) should be mutually exclusive and thus on the same res pool. For example having cysts on tres instead of hive energy.
Another thing hf_ pointed out is that important things being costing hive energy can be problematic because the enemy team can't do anything about it (except killing the hive but then it's gg so it doesn't really count).
To summarize :
Things are need to be mutually exclusive -> same res pool
Things that the enemy should be able to affect -> not on hive energy
I haven't been following the discussion, but I don't think removing energy completely is a good way to go about it. Using structure energy for certain abilities -- such as scan and hallucinate -- makes a lot of sense. Using it for all abilities -- including cysts, medpacks and beacon -- makes very little sense, however.
From a theoretical point of view, it might seem elegant to organize player actions in groups a, b and c, depending on what fits the "theme" of the action, and then saying that group a uses tres, group b uses energy and group c uses pres. Doing it like that has a lot of unfortunate side effects, however, and doesn't account for how the actions are used in practice.
One example; cysts use energy: Results in lots and lots of cyst spam. Trying to kill them is basically pointless as a marine, because the alien comm will just drop two more a few seconds later. An unfortunate side effect of this is that servers get bogged down by the amount of cysts after fifteen or more minutes into the game, leading to poor server performance during the late game.
Instead, necessity should decide what type of resource a certain player action uses. By default, all actions should cost tres. Player actions should only use energy or pres if there is a particular reason for them doing so -- for example players buying their own equipment/lifeforms and promoting the use of an ability (scan for example) without the comm having to worry about his immediate resource situation.
As a digression, I personally think that separating pres harvesting from tres harvesting (sort of like minerals and gas in Starcraft), would improve the RTS side of the game immensely.
I feel like every other solution just makes it more complicated for new players and also balancing.
what were you thinking? pres from techpoints only?
If you have the first node in the base be a Tres extractor you'd also give the players a real big incentive to secure the 2nd node.