A better implementation of Feign Death.
_Necro_
Join Date: 2011-02-15 Member: 81895Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2011-02-15 Member: 81895Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Lets try sidegrades not upgrades.</div>A short note, where I'm coming from: I like the concept of Feign Death, because it can add variety of gameplay. I don't really like the actual implementation of Feign Death, because it is more of a life-saver than a tactical tool. Why would this be better? Because upgrades in good multiplayer-game-design should not only make you stronger. They should basically be sidegrades. Sidegrades allow you to play the same class / lifeform in different ways. They give you an advantage in a specific situation. You need to adapt your play-style for this class to get the advantage of the upgrade. A simple +HP is boring and adds nothing to the gameplay. In fact upgrades like cara damages game-play, because you only get a plain advantage over your enemy. That means the balance shifts and skill is less deciding. Sidegrades on the other hand are only useful if you adapt your play-style. They grant an advantage only in specific situations. And you and your skill are responsible to get yourself and your enemy in this situation.
Examples:<ul><li>If you choose Silence you can play the skulk faster, but you have to consider, that you should not be seen. Also you rely more on ambushes.</li><li>If you choose camo, your playstyle gets much slower, but also rely on ambushes.</li><li>If you get a jetpack as marine you need open rooms with high ceilings to get a real advantage in combat.</li><li>In TF2 the Huntsman (=Bow) changes the whole playstyle of the Sniper because this weapon is not really good at longrange like the rifle.</li></ul>
So I hope we can agree, that upgrades that are essentially sidegrades are good for the game and add variety and playability in the long-term.
So how could Feign Death be changed to make it a sidegrade rather than an upgrade that saves your ass?
<b>New design of Feign Death:</b><ul><li>The main-change should be the possibility to decide when you want to come back to life. This way you extend the "Khara should be ambushers"-gameplay. In order to make this not OP, the marines have to be able to kill the feigning alien (by shooting at the corpse).</li><li>Because of lag and reaction time we need one or two seconds of invulnerability, so the alien doesn't die because the marine unintentionally shoots longer than the alien lives. One or two seconds also doesn't make it to unintuitive for the marine. The exact value has to be found by testing. Short as possible but long enough to not make it useless or frustrating for the alien.</li><li>It's important, that this upgrade is counterable: The marines can counter this upgrade by shooting at the corpse in exchange of wasting bullets.</li><li>The alien should not be able to move while it is feigning. Logically it is feigning its death. So it IS the corpse. It does not create a corpse and gets invisible, like it is now.</li><li>The alien can now wait for the marines to pass by. If it is lucky, no marine shoots at the corpse and it can come back to ambush the marines from behind or flee to heal (=makes it useful for gorges too).</li></ul>
<b>Additional changes that may be necessary:</b><ul><li>If it occurs to be a problem (only IF!), that the alien can instantly wake up and attack a near marine or if it is to easy to flee, you could simply add a 1 second long animation of the ragdolled corpse becoming an living alien again. In this 1 second the alien can not attack or move, giving marines time to react. The alien can avoid this disadvantage by choosing the right time to wake up (=when nobody is looking).</li><li>It may be to easy for the alien to die while feigning. For example a skulk with 10% HP left would die by a single bullet. If this gets a problem, there needs to be a fixed (or slightly random) amount of bullets to the corpse to kill the alien. Something between 5 to 10 bullets. Do not use a damage-modification like "takes only 5% of the damage" because this imbalances onos or skulk. Instead use a countable number of bullets needed no matter what lifeform is feigning.</li><li>The time the corpses remain in the world should be longer to make it not that obvious. This is a decision of how much the amount of corpses impact on the performance.</li></ul>
The main point of this change is to make it a tactical sidegrade and counterable for marines. (If you die as marine, you should always be able to say: "If I had done this instead of that, I would not have died." You should never get the feeling of inevitable death.)
<b>TL;DR:</b><ul><li>Let the alien decide when to come back to life.</li><li>No invulnerability while feigning (beside the first one or two seconds, because of network delay)</li><li>counterable by the marines when shooting the corpse</li></ul>
Examples:<ul><li>If you choose Silence you can play the skulk faster, but you have to consider, that you should not be seen. Also you rely more on ambushes.</li><li>If you choose camo, your playstyle gets much slower, but also rely on ambushes.</li><li>If you get a jetpack as marine you need open rooms with high ceilings to get a real advantage in combat.</li><li>In TF2 the Huntsman (=Bow) changes the whole playstyle of the Sniper because this weapon is not really good at longrange like the rifle.</li></ul>
So I hope we can agree, that upgrades that are essentially sidegrades are good for the game and add variety and playability in the long-term.
So how could Feign Death be changed to make it a sidegrade rather than an upgrade that saves your ass?
<b>New design of Feign Death:</b><ul><li>The main-change should be the possibility to decide when you want to come back to life. This way you extend the "Khara should be ambushers"-gameplay. In order to make this not OP, the marines have to be able to kill the feigning alien (by shooting at the corpse).</li><li>Because of lag and reaction time we need one or two seconds of invulnerability, so the alien doesn't die because the marine unintentionally shoots longer than the alien lives. One or two seconds also doesn't make it to unintuitive for the marine. The exact value has to be found by testing. Short as possible but long enough to not make it useless or frustrating for the alien.</li><li>It's important, that this upgrade is counterable: The marines can counter this upgrade by shooting at the corpse in exchange of wasting bullets.</li><li>The alien should not be able to move while it is feigning. Logically it is feigning its death. So it IS the corpse. It does not create a corpse and gets invisible, like it is now.</li><li>The alien can now wait for the marines to pass by. If it is lucky, no marine shoots at the corpse and it can come back to ambush the marines from behind or flee to heal (=makes it useful for gorges too).</li></ul>
<b>Additional changes that may be necessary:</b><ul><li>If it occurs to be a problem (only IF!), that the alien can instantly wake up and attack a near marine or if it is to easy to flee, you could simply add a 1 second long animation of the ragdolled corpse becoming an living alien again. In this 1 second the alien can not attack or move, giving marines time to react. The alien can avoid this disadvantage by choosing the right time to wake up (=when nobody is looking).</li><li>It may be to easy for the alien to die while feigning. For example a skulk with 10% HP left would die by a single bullet. If this gets a problem, there needs to be a fixed (or slightly random) amount of bullets to the corpse to kill the alien. Something between 5 to 10 bullets. Do not use a damage-modification like "takes only 5% of the damage" because this imbalances onos or skulk. Instead use a countable number of bullets needed no matter what lifeform is feigning.</li><li>The time the corpses remain in the world should be longer to make it not that obvious. This is a decision of how much the amount of corpses impact on the performance.</li></ul>
The main point of this change is to make it a tactical sidegrade and counterable for marines. (If you die as marine, you should always be able to say: "If I had done this instead of that, I would not have died." You should never get the feeling of inevitable death.)
<b>TL;DR:</b><ul><li>Let the alien decide when to come back to life.</li><li>No invulnerability while feigning (beside the first one or two seconds, because of network delay)</li><li>counterable by the marines when shooting the corpse</li></ul>
Comments
You could be right but TF2 has a different class system. In NS2 the aliens pay for their classes. Sure you probably won't take feign death with a skulk so the marines wouldn't be likely to shoot the skulk after he died. But if you did spend a lot of resources into your lifeform you want to make sure you stay as long as possible in this form, so feign death would most likely be a very good choice. The marines know that you spend a lot of resources and would come to the same conclusion and shoot your corpse. That's at least what i would do as a marine and also the reason why i most likely wouldn't chose feign death as a sidegrade since carapace, regeneration and adrenaline are far more useful.
What about the kill messages? Fake message and fake score for killing aliens with feign death? Remove kill messages completely? How long would have corpses to stay before they despawn (when a alien without feign death dies)?
Yes you are right. This upgrade would not be very useful for higher lifeforms. But this is also the whole point of the change. The critics say, that the higher lifeforms don't need a cheap mechanic to escape. This is simply frustrating for marines. (Also it is very difficult to NOT hit an onos-corpse.) So the main use of the upgrade shifts to the skulk. Because the upgrade does not cost you anything. And you get out the most use if you take it for ambushes. On the other hand, because nobody with any sense would take this upgrade with a higher lifeform, no marine would shoot the corpse of the higher lifeform. So it might be occasionally useful.
<!--quoteo(post=1952479:date=Jul 19 2012, 11:04 AM:name=Nakorson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Nakorson @ Jul 19 2012, 11:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1952479"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What about the kill messages? Fake message and fake score for killing aliens with feign death? Remove kill messages completely? How long would have corpses to stay before they despawn (when a alien without feign death dies)?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fake score (but not visible while hitting tab) and kill messages (like in TF2) are a must. Also I think a good amount of time for corpses remaining in the world could be 20 or 30 seconds. But this is performance-dependent. If it leads to performance problems, maybe 10 seconds are enough.
Your starting premise is wrong though. Not all good games are built around the concept of sidegrades, nor is that a requirement.
RTS games are built around the concept of gaining advantages over time that you can leverage against your enemy. Which is why you've got to strategize and not just outclick or outshoot your opponent to win.
The aliens are suppose to get outright more powerful, just like the marines do.
RTS games are built around the concept of gaining advantages over time that you can leverage against your enemy. Which is why you've got to strategize and not just outclick or outshoot your opponent to win.
The aliens are suppose to get outright more powerful, just like the marines do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Seconded.
The chamber upgrades are supposed to be just that: upgrades, just like gaining new abilities, and the upgrades on the marine side. Carapace was an outlier because it was so thoroughly overpowered combined with early-game leap that they had to add a downside to it, making it a sidegrade instead of upgrade. But now that leap is tier 2 carapace should lose the movement speed penalty.
Games like TF2 have to use sidegrades because there is no in-game progression, only out of game progression (acquiring new items). Since not all players in a given game are on even footing in terms of out of game progression, all out of game progression needs to be sidegrades rather than upgrades.
RTS games are built around the concept of gaining advantages over time that you can leverage against your enemy. Which is why you've got to strategize and not just outclick or outshoot your opponent to win.
The aliens are suppose to get outright more powerful, just like the marines do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This. No one wants upgrades to be a wash, they want to get stronger, and for gameplay balance it's critical that they do. The variety of gameplay comes from the fact that you can choose from among all the different upgrades(and lifeforms). Upgrades with drawbacks are fine but only if the advantage of that upgrade is even better than normal - see Carapace.
RTS games are built around the concept of gaining advantages over time that you can leverage against your enemy. Which is why you've got to strategize and not just outclick or outshoot your opponent to win.
The aliens are suppose to get outright more powerful, just like the marines do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
By acquiring upgrades (or more upgrades) but compared to each other each upgrade should offer a different playstyle rather than some being plainly better than others. Unless of course they vary in cost.