<!--quoteo(post=2036783:date=Nov 28 2012, 11:14 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Nov 28 2012, 11:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036783"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't anyone (let alone Charlie) only relies on the stats for balancing the game. However, stats are a very good way to confirm or refute your thoughts on game balance. If you thought that marines were op because of shotguns, but find that the win stats show an 60% alien rate and that more people get kills with rifles than shotguns, that's good evidence that should make you reconsider why you thought marines w/shotguns were op.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No that isn't. That isn't at all. I can think of at least six more stats you would need before you could possibly form a stat-based picture on whether or not shotguns are OP.
1) How many shotguns are bought per round, per marine. 2) How do shotgun sales factor in to other armory purchases. 3) How does the kill / death ratio of a marine with a shotgun compare to one with an AR. 4) How many shots, on average, does it take per-kill with the shotgun. 5) What is the kill / death ratio of every given lifeform vs. a shotgun. 6) How does the time / per res investment of a shotgun compare to the kills they get with it on a gestate / lifeform per res investment.
Something can be overpowered and *not* directly correlate to immediate victories overall. That kind of ignorance is exactly why the game is as broken as it is, because either people don't analyze the correct stats, or aren't smart enough to interpret them properly.
I'm telling you right now that shotguns *are* OP. I don't need a bunch of piecharts to tell me that. I don't even need to crunch numbers. All I need to do is ask the players "are you having fun as an alien when you have to fight shotguns?" The answer will overwhelmingly be no. Nobody likes their 50-res 30-second Fade being killed in two shots from a shotgun that some guy just grabbed off the ground for free. Nobody likes being instagibbed as a skulk or a lurk, because instant death is never fun. If something in the game is causing people to not have fun, it's broken and must be fixed, no matter *WHAT* your graphs and pie charts say.
ScardyBob, well, if shotguns dealt 1000 dam, rifles 5, all alien attacks 150, you might find a 60% alien win rate ... shotguns are still OP relative to rifles though.
I guess how we relate the stats is important, moreso because we have ZERO measure of errors, along with probably massive autocorrelation and heteroscedasricity.
<!--quoteo(post=2036783:date=Nov 28 2012, 07:14 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Nov 28 2012, 07:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036783"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't anyone (let alone Charlie) only relies on the stats for balancing the game. However, stats are a very good way to confirm or refute your thoughts on game balance. If you thought that marines were op because of shotguns, but find that the win stats show an 60% alien rate and that more people get kills with rifles than shotguns, that's good evidence that should make you reconsider why you thought marines w/shotguns were op.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Was responding to this line: 50/50 winrate is the only reasonable theoretical target for NS2
I know that Charlie does not rely on stats only to balance the game. Statistics can help but there are a lot of people who depend way to much on them(seen it happen to often). I think its better to rely more on knowledge though than numbers, statistics do help when used correctly.
<!--quoteo(post=2036821:date=Nov 28 2012, 06:54 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 06:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036821"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Nobody likes being instagibbed as a skulk or a lurk, because instant death is never fun. If something in the game is causing people to not have fun, it's broken and must be fixed, no matter *WHAT* your graphs and pie charts say.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Interesting how you know what everyone enjoys. I suppose head shots should be removed from counter-strike because they instant kill people and that isn't fun.
<!--quoteo(post=2036834:date=Nov 29 2012, 12:08 AM:name=Norton)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Norton @ Nov 29 2012, 12:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036834"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Interesting how you know what everyone enjoys. I suppose head shots should be removed from counter-strike because they instant kill people and that isn't fun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> We can revisit this argument when Focus returns. Wait, it won't, because marines dying just as fast wasn't "fun" for the marines. The difference being that in Counter-Strike, everyone can headshot; the difference being that gun accuracy precludes it from being a constant problem; the difference being that in Counter-Strike you're playing one-off rounds that are over extremely quickly; the difference being that in Counter-Strike, after you get headshot, you don't start the next round missing 95% of your cash and are punished by having to sit in a special penalty box for 30 seconds.
<!--quoteo(post=2036839:date=Nov 28 2012, 07:15 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 07:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036839"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->We can revisit this argument when Focus returns. Wait, it won't, because marines dying just as fast wasn't "fun" for the marines. The difference being that in Counter-Strike, everyone can headshot, the difference being that gun accuracy precludes it from being a constant problem, the difference being that in Counter-Strike you're playing one-off rounds that are over extremely quickly, the difference being that in Counter-Strike, after you get headshot, you don't start the next round missing 95% of your cash.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Counter-strike does not always offer both teams equal headshotting ability. Pistols vs rifles for example.
If you know how to burst fire, accuracy is never a problem. It's the same as in NS2, if you know how to aim and track movement you can land good hits, if you don't you will miss.
In NS2 when you die you just respawn, very similar to a round in CS.
If you buy armor and an AWP and get headshot you just lost all of your money.
What are you even talking about? It sounds like you would be a lot happier playing counter strike. :)
Also, I might be full of it, but I think I've heard that focus might come to a 4th chamber somewhere down the road. Don't quote me on that though, I might be wrong.
<!--quoteo(post=2036840:date=Nov 29 2012, 12:18 AM:name=Norton)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Norton @ Nov 29 2012, 12:18 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036840"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Counter-strike does not always offer both teams equal headshotting ability. Pistols vs rifles for example.
If you know how to burst fire, accuracy is never a problem. It's the same as in NS2, if you know how to aim and track movement you can land good hits, if you don't you will miss.
In NS2 when you die you just respawn, very similar to a round in CS.
If you buy armor and an AWP and get headshot you just lost all of your money.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Good one. You almost made me not notice that you skipped over the most important part of my post.
Also, you seemed to imply that the Desert Eagle is a poor weapon and not, in fact, an insta-gibbing headshot machine. I think I'll elect to continue this conversation with someone else.
PS: Another thing you failed to consider is that the whole *point* of CS is to get headshots and kill each other fairly rapidly. But you know, apples and oranges. You want to make stupid comparisons to ###### games that aren't anything even remotely like NS, go right ahead.
For me the most pressing issue by far is the performance, I have a terrible OLD PC and I can play on lowest settings with very bad FPS past 10 minutes into the game. I do want to be positive; NS2 is an awesome game!
<!--quoteo(post=2036657:date=Nov 28 2012, 02:28 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 02:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036657"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What I really meant by 2.5 is that people want things to play with. Yes, NS2 removed relocating the marine base into a vent. Yes, that never worked in NS1 and was really just a comedy option. Still, removing relocations took that little bit away from the game. Removing three alien evolutions took that little bit away from the game. Removing Gorge building took that little bit away from the game. It all adds up. People are simply going to remain entertained for longer in a game that offers them more. Seems obvious, but it's worth mentioning. The most balanced FPS game of all time would be two players in an empty fullbright box room, each armed with an instagib hitscan railgun. Doesn't mean it would be fun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The problem with this, is that the ideology is that it boils down to "if you just throw a lot of garbage content at something, you'll somehow get a better overall finished product". This is emphatically not the case.
ESPECIALLY with RTS game designs, it's not necessarily that minimalism is ideal, but to a certain degree you actually make the game quite a bit worse by extensively overlapping the roles such that you create obvious useless items and obvious ideal choices. NS1 was MUCH MUCH worse than NS2 is for this. If you choose to upgrade grenade launchers first, it implies you are going to have a different mid to late game transition than if you choose to upgrade flame throwers first. Flame throwers rely on getting deep into the map and harrassing alien cyst networks, they also imply that you're possibly having a lot of trouble with lerks that you need to deal with. Grenade launchers on the other hand must be supported much more heavily, it's a stronger slower push that will take place if there are more grenade launchers on your team.
The HMG as an equippable is bad because it just outdates everything else in the tech tree. It either hard counters or soft counters everything in the alien tech tree. Put it in the hands of a jetpack and you completely negate the aliens mobility advantage, their HP advantage, their structure bases, their res node locations. Everything is heavily at risk to a JP HMG, he can harrass, he can slow push, he can blitzkreig, he has absolutely no weakness aside from lucky focus skulks and fades.
Taking the HMG out of the game, in terms of taking away the jetpackers ability to use it, was therefore very good for the game, because it created new tactical options and choices by eliminating a situation where you would be dumb to not do it that way. We currently have a much more interesting and dynamic tactical tech path for the marines, you feel like you have a LOT of choices, and a LOT of options. There are much fewer clear ideals.
You see this in all RTS games, the best ones make you choose "do I build more seige tanks, or do I build more marauders?", "Do i build more marines, or do I build more hellions?" At any given point in the game you have choices to how you adress the movements of your opponent, and choices into how you will put pressure on your opponent as well.
For an RTS game, thoughtless wealths of content being dumped into the game is VERY bad. You VERY quickly just discover the most broken uncounterable thing, and immediately EVERY game becomes "do I get a medium amount of broken unit x, or do I get a BIG amount of broken unit X"? You HEAVILY punish new players by having stuff in the game that's just useless, it traps them into building things they want because they're "cool" and getting crushed and laughed at because everyone knows you don't build Reapers, Hellions are just objectively better! Most games are FAR worse for this than SC2 however.
We're currently having this for Onos in NS2. Many games seem to be a long climb to near victory for marines, and then suddenly 4 onos come out and the aliens win. Aliens avoid fades, because they've just given up on winning the mid game, their only viable option is staying alive until the late game when the advantage swings in their favor again. There's no real tactical or stratigic choice to be made, and that's bad, but the worst fix possible is going back to the focus vs JP/HMG wars of NS1. That was INSANELY broken in it's own right! Lets fix the new mechanic rather than giving up and returning to an old one just because the old one was slightly less broken than the one we have now.
What you're forgetting is that this isn't counter strike, and to evolve carapace.
Thing with the shotgun is, it's a mid/short ranged weapon. If you miss your shot, or two if you're very lucky, you will die and lose 20 pres. If you attack a single marine with a shotgun properly with 2 skulks instead of ramboing in alone the marine is most likely going to die.
It takes skill to use it (no, not when you're facing skulks walking single file without using cover). And if 1 of the two skulks and the marine would die, that is a fair trade off in the bigger aspect of the game where your ultimate goal is to win the game, and not get frags.
Also, don't forget that this is a tried concept that has been working for 10 years allready.
<!--quoteo(post=2036842:date=Nov 28 2012, 07:23 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 07:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036842"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Good one. You almost made me not notice that you skipped over the most important part of my post.
Also, you seemed to imply that the Desert Eagle is a poor weapon and not, in fact, an insta-gibbing headshot machine. I think I'll elect to continue this conversation with someone else.
PS: Another thing you failed to consider is that the whole *point* of CS is to get headshots and kill each other fairly rapidly. But you know, apples and oranges. You want to make stupid comparisons to ###### games that aren't anything even remotely like NS, go right ahead.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Counter-strike is a game about map control and holding key positions so you can plant or defuse bombs. Head shots are just a means to an end. It is similar in many ways to NS2, but even if it wasn't I was just trying to point out that you cannot make a very broad and vague statement about what everyone enjoys. You said instant death is never fun. I am disagreeing.
But ok, let's assume I missed your point entirely to go off on a pointless derail. What exactly IS your point? From what I remember you posted that people are reading the stats wrong, and then you immediately said you don't need stats and that you personally are the one that knows what is OP and fun.
<!--quoteo(post=2036848:date=Nov 28 2012, 07:33 PM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 28 2012, 07:33 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036848"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...words about RTS games...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Very good post, I agree completely. I am not a fan of always picking onos because I know I will win if I do it, but I can't help myself.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=2036821:date=Nov 28 2012, 03:54 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 03:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036821"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm telling you right now that shotguns *are* OP. I don't need a bunch of piecharts to tell me that. I don't even need to crunch numbers. All I need to do is ask the players "are you having fun as an alien when you have to fight shotguns?" The answer will overwhelmingly be no. Nobody likes their 50-res 30-second Fade being killed in two shots from a shotgun that some guy just grabbed off the ground for free. Nobody likes being instagibbed as a skulk or a lurk, because instant death is never fun. If something in the game is causing people to not have fun, it's broken and must be fixed, no matter *WHAT* your graphs and pie charts say.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The example was merely illustrative and I'd agree I'd love to see all the stats you've listed (and more) before coming to conclusions on a particular game mechanic. However, since the ultimate goal in NS2 is to win, it makes the most sense to relate those game mechanics towards win percentage.
You might not like getting shotgunned to death, but that doesn't mean others don't find the challenge fun. I'm sure if you polled NS2 players, they'd say they found dying to not be fun, but that doesn't mean we should make skulks and marines invulnerable. <!--quoteo(post=2036822:date=Nov 28 2012, 03:54 PM:name=OnosFactory)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (OnosFactory @ Nov 28 2012, 03:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036822"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->ScardyBob, well, if shotguns dealt 1000 dam, rifles 5, all alien attacks 150, you might find a 60% alien win rate ... shotguns are still OP relative to rifles though.
I guess how we relate the stats is important, moreso because we have ZERO measure of errors, along with probably massive autocorrelation and heteroscedasricity.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> True, but they aren't op with regards to the most important factor in NS2, winning. In your hypothetical, the shotgun would be a noob trap, since its flashy damage stats would draw inexperienced players who didn't realize that it didn't actually help you win that much. It would make sense to rebalance the shotgun values to make it less a noob trap, but not because it was op.
Technically, UWE has stats on the whole population of NS2 games played rather than a sample, so many of the traditional sampling error estimates don't apply. Alternatives include just assuming a reasonable probability distribution (as I did with a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">binomial distribution for win stats</a>) or using some type of nonparametric bootstrapping method to randomly choose subsets of the stats data.
<!--quoteo(post=2036783:date=Nov 28 2012, 06:14 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Nov 28 2012, 06:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036783"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't anyone (let alone Charlie) only relies on the stats for balancing the game. However, stats are a very good way to confirm or refute your thoughts on game balance. If you thought that marines were op because of shotguns, but find that the win stats show an 60% alien rate and that more people get kills with rifles than shotguns, that's good evidence that should make you reconsider why you thought marines w/shotguns were op.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yes and no. It's not that simple. If your assumption was "marines are unbalanced because of shotguns" and you look at global stats and see more people getting killed with AR rather than shotguns... you could be letting the stats deceive you. The problem of shotgun unbalance may very well exist, however, it may be a subset problem rather than a global problem.
In this case, the majority of the complaints about the shotgun come from competitive players, so narrow your statistical analysis to only the top 3% ranked players in terms of average game score... then you'd have a clearer picture of how the shotgun is balanced in the high skill arena as opposed to the global arena.
I couldn't tell you what the results of that query will indicate, but to properly do statistical analysis, you need to look at the reasons why you're getting the stats you're getting, not just what the stats say in some big global scheme.
NS2 would be a terrible game if the whole game came down to the first 10 minutes. Imagine the aliens had some incredibly strong 5 minute push that was VERY hard for the marines to hold off... but if the push failed the aliens had nothing left to compete with in the late game. You might look at the stats and see 50/50 balance in games won vs games lost... but the game would still not be balanced. If 100% of the games won in before 10 minutes are won by aliens, and 100% of the games won after 10 minutes are won by marines, then there is something VERY VERY wrong with the balance of the game, regardless of weather, looking at all games, marines win 50% of them and aliens win the other 50%.
Statistics are AWESOME and necessary and super cool, and if you know what you're doing with them you can retrieve some EXTREMELY provocative information, but it's VERY VERY easy to use them wrong.
<!--quoteo(post=2036859:date=Nov 29 2012, 01:47 AM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 29 2012, 01:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036859"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In this case, the majority of the complaints about the shotgun come from competitive players<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Although I guess technically you could be right, but there's barely any complaining. The only thing I could complain about if I tried is that it would be nice with one spread instead of having the spread random. Either way, stuff dies.
<!--quoteo(post=2036848:date=Nov 29 2012, 12:33 AM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 29 2012, 12:33 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036848"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Stuff about RTS games<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Please name which RTS games you're talking about, because realistically the RTS field is as varied, if not more so than the FPS genre. Starcraft? We're not talking about Starcraft. Starcraft is not your typical RTS game and is thus irrelevant. Supreme Commander, Dawn of War, Homeworld, Wargame, Company of Heroes, these are all RTS games that are fairly successful, are extremely dissimilar (well, I guess DoW and CoH have some similarities since one was an evolution of the other).
Not to mention, Starcraft-style RTS games are more or less dead. Starcraft did its particular flavor of RTS so well that nobody even really tries to compete.
I love Relic's RTS games because they <u>don't</u> get bogged down by obsessing over 'is this going to be good for competition'. They make FUN RTS games first. Trying to make your RTS game some sort of ultra-refined competition crack is like making an MMORPG and trying to outdo World of Warcraft. It won't happen. Relic also does exactly what I described: they ensure that their games have lots of meat and things to play with. Dawn of War 2 was only vaguely like Dawn of War 1. Every time they make a new game, they make a new game.
On the contrary to what you said - Supreme Commander: FA was jam-packed with all kinds of things. However, most of the units and buildings are never used in competition. Does that mean the game is hurt by it? Did it somehow stop people from enjoying the game?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Stuff about HMG / Jetpack<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can't really say anything here, because most of your issues here are with specifically how UWE did things. The whole point of this thread is that UWE is not very good at doing things. For example, the jetpack. Yes, HMG + Jetpack was idiotic. But, I'm not the moron who decided the jetpack would have near-limitless amounts of thrust and fuel, and that somehow flying around in full body armor with a giant machinegun would have no serious ramifications on your ability to fly around.
You say that the HMG made LMGs obsolete. Sure it did, but again, I'm not the one who gave it weapon stats more or less directly in line with being a 'super HMG'. Would you argue that the LMGs in Battlefield make assault rifles obsolete? That the LMGs in Counter-Strike are better than the assault rifles? The weapon was better than the LMG because it was better than the LMG, that doesn't mean that the only possible solution was to strip it from the game entirely. All it did was remove an option. Removing it because of the balance issue with jetpacks is a crappy, lazy way of doing things.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Stuff about Onos<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Onos phenomenon is a direct consequence of not enough content. When Marines get Exos, they don't immediately all suit up in 4 dual-minigun exos. Because the marine team has constant viable microtransactions that eat their pres over the course of the round. The aliens do not. Your options are a fairly situational 30-res Lerk, a fairly inefficient 50-res Fade, or an extremely cost-effective 75-res Onos. The aliens have nothing to eat into their pres otherwise. The aliens are designed around fear of death, so a Lerk will always be a Lerk - his res will never go anywhere until he finally actually does die, which doesn't happen nearly as often as it could to a Marine. For the most part, this means that aliens are always constantly pooling up their pres - most of them probably aren't even paying attention to it, they're focusing on making sure their Fade isn't instagibbed by a 20-res shotgun. Then, before you know it, oh look there's an Onos. That reminds me, I have 77 res, I guess I'll go Onos too.
Why do you think I made a thread asking for a 6th lifeform?
<!--quoteo(post=2036855:date=Nov 28 2012, 07:42 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Nov 28 2012, 07:42 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036855"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The example was merely illustrative and I'd agree I'd love to see all the stats you've listed (and more) before coming to conclusions on a particular game mechanic. However, since the ultimate goal in NS2 is to win, it makes the most sense to relate those game mechanics towards win percentage.
You might not like getting shotgunned to death, but that doesn't mean others don't find the challenge fun. I'm sure if you polled NS2 players, they'd say they found dying to not be fun, but that doesn't mean we should make skulks and marines invulnerable.
True, but they aren't op with regards to the most important factor in NS2, winning. In your hypothetical, the shotgun would be a noob trap, since its flashy damage stats would draw inexperienced players who didn't realize that it didn't actually help you win that much. It would make sense to rebalance the shotgun values to make it less a noob trap, but not because it was op.
Technically, UWE has stats on the whole population of NS2 games played rather than a sample, so many of the traditional sampling error estimates don't apply. Alternatives include just assuming a reasonable probability distribution (as I did with a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">binomial distribution for win stats</a>) or using some type of nonparametric bootstrapping method to randomly choose subsets of the stats data.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I feel like it's a bit problematic trying to use statistics to identify fundamental imbalances. My preference heavily leans to intuitively guessing at an imbalance, observing whether the statistics support the assumption, and then narrowing down to more specific queries. "Are marines losing 60% of the time?", "Are the marines losing 60% of the time in the late game?", "are onos a factor?", "is onos performance generally cost effective?". If you can answer all those questions you can confirm a theory about the total balance of the game, and you can begin to produce solid evidence for a theory as to why that imbalance exists.
If you don't really have as much of a solid idea of why you are having a problem with balance, you can also look at statistics for evidence of the location of the bottleneck issue. If you see that aliens win 70% of games, but balance is generally 50/50 as soon as the game gets out of the 5 minute mark (where as it's 80/20 before then), then you can start to look for the source of the problem. Obviously, in that case, the problem would not be onos, it MUST be something early game.
With the right statistics being gathered, all these questions are statistically answerable. I feel like that's the best utilization of statistical analysis for game development. Look for micro trends, don't try to ham fistedly force macro trends.
Also, some imbalanced things are fun, and should be worked around rather than "fixed". It's a complex problem.
This game made a mill on release? Which is more than ANYONE on these forums ever personally made with a product release, even if your a company marketing drone.
Yeah, the amount of money uwe made with the release of the game when compared to someones earning was obviously the point of this thread. I thought it might have been about someone worrying that something in the game is turning players away, but i was wrong.
<!--quoteo(post=2036876:date=Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036876"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->HMG stuff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It was bad, it wasn't just "better than the LMG" it obsoleted completely every other weapon, aside from maybe one grenade launcher to spam at your siege turrets, you might drop some shotguns if you were tight on res, and there was a player who was good at ninjaing down nodes, but otherwise you would never get a composition with just a few HMGs if you could afford to just have more HMGs.
I'll give you that it could have been balanced differently, it didn't HAVE to obsolete everything, but it was such a ridiculous stupid skilless weapon, it was extremely unfun to play against, because an HMG could kill a whole team faster than any other weapon in the game and still have ammo left over. I really don't miss it at all. Removal of the HMG was one of the nicest things for NS2.
<!--quoteo(post=2036876:date=Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036876"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->RTS stuff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Oh, which RTS is popular and regularly being played today?
<!--quoteo(post=2036876:date=Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036876"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Onos stuff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You claim it's about not enough content and then argue it's about asymmety... Adding a new lifeform doesn't necessarily change any of the points your making. It's just immensely bad and irresponsible game design to put things in a game for no apparent reason to just have more stuff. I can't think of a single game I think was legitimately made better by wasting artist and developer time like that. Procedural content is one thing and there are many great games made with it, but it's absolutely incompatible with a competitive shooter, let alone trying to jerry rig it into something as delicate as NS2. Games that do that just feel slapdash and careless. They're not good. NS would not be made better by that ideology in the slightest.
<!--quoteo(post=2037010:date=Nov 29 2012, 05:31 AM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 29 2012, 05:31 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2037010"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Oh, which RTS is popular and regularly being played today?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't know what you want. Comparing anything to Starcraft is like comparing anything to Nazis. If you think every RTS can and should be paralleled to Starcraft, then does that mean every FPS game must be paralleled to Counter-Strike, and that every MMO should be compared to WoW?
Dawn of War 2 is still played. Supreme Commander 2 is still played. Relic is one of the few studios for THQ that brings in a constant stream of cash. I'm willing to bet people are still playing Zero Hour too. Uber Entertainment just raised about $5mil <b>from over 50,000 people</b> to develop an RTS spiritual successor to Supreme Commander / Total Annihilation, and it's not going to be Starcraft, or Starcraft-like, and it'll be multiplayer only. By my count, that means that a game that hasn't even come out yet is 10x more popular than NS2.
Are you saying that your only measure of a game's worth is how long people keep playing its multiplayer at high levels? Because that's crap and you know it. I guess we can call NS1 a crappy game because it was only the <b>third</b> most popular HL1 mod. <u>That means second worst</u>. What was more popular? The FPS game with a big pile of guns you could buy and use, and the FPS game with a bunch of WW2 stuff you could use. I wouldn't call either of them minimalist.
Nobody plays Tribes 2 anymore, so I guess under your ridiculous standards, that means that game was a total failure. Maybe they shouldn't have ruined the game by putting in features like tanks and bombers. Isn't that what the fusion mortar was for?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You claim it's about not enough content and then argue it's about asymmety<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Woah, where did you get an asymmetry argument out of that? Because I think the asymmetry argument is the most trite bull###### that currently exists on this forum. People are using it as some sort of catch-all excuse for anything bad about the mod. As far as I'm concerned, worries about asymmetry went out the window the second UWE removed the single biggest asymmetric aspect of the game, and implemented a Kharaa commander.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Adding a new lifeform doesn't necessarily change any of the points your making. It's just immensely bad and irresponsible game design to put things in a game for no apparent reason to just have more stuff.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Except for, you know, the impeccable arguments that have been made to support a 6th lifeform that not a single person who's pooh-poohed the idea has dared to actually address, instead just going for the "NO WE DON'T NEED IT BECAUSE I SAY SO" response.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I can't think of a single game I think was legitimately made better by wasting artist and developer time like that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Name some that did, then. And not just 'I think this has too much stuff!' but you know, where complaints about too much stuff was actually voiced by more people than just you. I'll wait.
Alternatively, how about you start naming games that had features that were redundant, where you could *cut* content and still more or less have the game intact. This might be harder, because you'll start with a list that includes every game ever made, and end with a list that includes every game ever made. Now ask yourself if more or fewer people would've played your cut-down minimalist tightwad version over the original.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->NS would not be made better by that ideology in the slightest.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"Ideology"? Are you literally only capable of thinking in extremes?
Pray tell, what do you think is meant by 'more content'? If any other competent developer had a whack at NS2, it would have more content. No, not over-the-top TF2 hats, 89 guns ala BF3, unlockable pay-2-win exclusive guns, but a new lifeform, several new options for alien upgrades, some alien abilities improved and given more depth or replaced with something better, a couple of new marine toys.
How about a ****ing hand grenade, you know, the thing from NS1? Go ahead, tell me that that would just ruin the game completely because it's similar to the concept of a grenade launcher, and anything that co-opts another role means it's useless clutter and garbage. See, I can think in extremes too.
There's a big difference between "minimalist design" and "12-year-old's first attempt at modding design doc".
Seriously, Swiftspear, you're smarter than this. Quit with the ###### strawmen and the hyperbole or leave.
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<!--quoteo(post=2037010:date=Nov 29 2012, 06:31 AM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 29 2012, 06:31 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2037010"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It was bad, it wasn't just "better than the LMG" it obsoleted completely every other weapon, aside from maybe one grenade launcher to spam at your siege turrets, you might drop some shotguns if you were tight on res, and there was a player who was good at ninjaing down nodes, but otherwise you would never get a composition with just a few HMGs if you could afford to just have more HMGs.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> This isn't true, not even remotely. The shotgun was vastly more powerful against structures than HMGs (from 2.0 and onwards), and good shotgun aimers were often more dangerous to fades and lerks than HMGs because of the burst damage (the only exception being the combination of JP+HMG+200fps). Good comms would drop shotguns far more frequently than HMGs, even after AA was upgraded.
I haven't played NS2 yet but from what I've gathered the skill ceiling has been lowered. Making a high skill ceiling game is paramount to the success over a long period of time. When I first started playing NS1 and Counter-strike, I used to get completely owned. This didn't discourage me though, because I knew that I was the reason for dying, and not the game. There were so many high skilled mechanics which made the game extremely fun, that when you actually got good, it was very rewarding being in control of the game, and when you play other good players, you don't think "oh, I just got randomed, you think, this player played better than me".
Part of what makes a high skill ceiling game fun is that you're always improving in all aspects of your game, which makes it worth playing.
High skill ceiling games are only fun provided the skill floor isn't too high as well. Dota is a good example of this, it's a very complex game, but there's a number of heroes which are very accessible for new player. Ideally you have a high skill ceiling and a low skill floor, really. Glancing bites are a good mechanic at lowering the skulk skill floor. Onos and Exos need a higher skill ceiling, lerks and fade could arguably use a lower skill floor.
Mind you lowering the skill floor does not affect competitive play, so there's really little reason to oppose it.
About the fade, I was playing some public the other day and the players were not very good, so I was feeling a bit bad to kill them too many times. Then comes a newbie fade, I shotgun it once or twice, thinking he would notice he's got low health and go away, but he kept trying to swipe me, so in the end I had to kill it, which was quite sad.
So what I'm trying to say is the the skill floor for the fade is "retreat when you have low health". And frankly I don't really see how you could get lower than that. Surely the health feedback could be a bit better, and providing a good tutorial would help a lot. But I don't really see how you could tweak the mechanics to have a lower skill floor.
I think it is common sense that sitting on the buissness end of a shotgun for any length of time is not a healthy lifestyle especially for a fade. That's why he has his evasion abilities, after all. The fade is probably the only difficult lifeform to play properly but it doesn't take much effort to get decent at shadowstep and blink as long as you know how to use them.
<!--quoteo(post=2037051:date=Nov 29 2012, 01:32 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 29 2012, 01:32 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2037051"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Stuff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Sorry, you frustrate me, because you make thoughtless arguments for things and then haphazardly defend them at all costs.
There are legitimate arguments for a 6th lifeform, but you didn't make them in your thread. You referenced a mid game gap that is very arguable whether it even exists, you failed to suggest the basics of what a 6th lifeform would even look like. It's akin to identifying a problem and saying you can fix it by implementing magic to the game. There are many ways to do a 6th lifeform that are an utter waste of time and effort, and would basically just be the false trap I pointed out before from bad RTS games, or alternatively just invalidate everything on the alien side already, there are few ways to do it so it is not. You can't just take a scorpian that hovars without flapping, jam it into the game, and not have any problems. Adding a 6th lifeform entails a bunch of new problems that have to be solved, and it's unacceptable to just pretend they don't exist. That's why the suggestion, they way you made it, is almost impossible to respect.
Yes, you need to seriously consider Star Craft in relation to NS2. Star Craft, as an RTS makes sense in the FPS universe. It Gels well with the things we know make a solid deep FPS game from observing examples like Tribes, TF2, DoD, Even Battle Field (which is generally a hilariously bad FPS on a pure design level, and something no indie team could effectively equal because it's such a content garbage dump, it's redeeming quality is purely fun). Games like Sup Com are too much about the overarching strategy of the game to accommodate an underlying FPS game. The flow of action in sup comm games is basically "Build up giant army, smash into opponent" That would be very very boring to play as an FPS player. The WarHammer series is interesting, but it's far closer to Star Craft than Sup Comm is. Games like CoH and WarHammer HAVE been trying to compete with the Star Craft model, and they've been HEAVILY influenced by the success of Star Craft. They're eliminating or minimizing resource play of any type and focusing on tactics based gameplay. They primarily work by simplifying. They are weaker than Star Craft because although they are more simplified they still fail to be as polished. They're not all bad games per say, but they aren't the one you aspire to when you are trying to imitate a great RTS game.
The types of games indie teams can make are more limited than what can be done by big AAA developers. It's more difficult to put something into a game just because it's cool. It's dangerous to pay someone to make something for you and not use it, or worse, put something into your game haphazardly and all of a sudden the majority of your other content isn't played with at all any more. These games, almost by nature, have to be more thought out and deliberate. Indie games all protect an ideology of simplicity to design or die on the review floor. It's one of the things NS2 does well, everything has a place, everything fits, it's a very good thing in this case, your criticism of it isn't constructive, and it boggles my mind that you don't understand that.
There are thousands more ways to break NS2 than there are to make it better. You yourself identify things you don't like about the game... but you seem to assume they're an anomaly and the solution is as simple as reacting to the "problem" and throwing almost anything else in instead. It doesn't work that way. Game development, game design, it a minefield of bad and wrong ways to handle any given situation, with very few clean passages. If you can't suggest an actual place a new piece of content fits into the game, in the same way a puzzle piece would fit into it's puzzle, it DOESN'T BELONG IN THE GAME!
There are many games that are bad because the content within them doesn't fit together, and very few that are an exception to that. On the other hand the majority of the games that are simple but polished have a level of brilliance to them.
<!--quoteo(post=2037220:date=Nov 29 2012, 02:35 PM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 29 2012, 02:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2037220"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There are many games that are bad because the content within them doesn't fit together, and very few that are an exception to that. On the other hand the majority of the games that are simple but polished have a level of brilliance to them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> And how does this all work in practice?
NS2 is an extremely linear-feeling game, void of real options. Look at how rigid the alien team lifeforms are. They all are shaped pegs fitting into their specially shaped holes. Let's take Dawn of War, which I think is way closer an analogy to NS than Starcraft will ever be. You want something armored to absorb the damage and push into the enemy base. What do you do? You can build a Predator Tank, a Dreadnought, or a Hellfire Dreadnought.
The Hellfire Dreadnought is great at range, but lacks DPS and durability. It's designed as a long-range fire support unit.
The Furiso Dreadnought has extremely high DPS in melee range and will tear through infantry without a problem and decimate vehicles that it can get close to, but is, of course, range-impaired.
The Predator is more resource-intensive, and will absolutely shred infantry, but has weak anti-vehicle properties. It can, however, be upgraded with LasCannons which make it into a superior anti-vehicle platform, but it loses almost all effectiveness against infantry as a result.
You have three heavy Space Marine vehicles that are similar, but work differently and are better at some things than others.
In NS, if you want to absorb damage, you have to be an Onos, because **** you, that's why. NS's over-specialized lifeforms and terrible evolution system are the exact opposite of gameplay variety and flavor. They're the equivilent of making an RTS game with just three units - the swordsman who counters pikemen, the cavalry that counters swordsmen, and the pikemen that counter the cavalry. It might be balanced and minimalist, but it's not "brilliant", it's not exciting, and it will not sustain interest for long. Even Age of Empires, the closest analogy to this, was developed with a gimmick, the whole complex research trees, race-specific bonuses and units, and the advancement of epochs, on top of advanced resource modeling. The combat may have been more or less about pikes vs. swords vs. horses, but there was a lot more to the game than just that.
Comments
No that isn't. That isn't at all. I can think of at least six more stats you would need before you could possibly form a stat-based picture on whether or not shotguns are OP.
1) How many shotguns are bought per round, per marine.
2) How do shotgun sales factor in to other armory purchases.
3) How does the kill / death ratio of a marine with a shotgun compare to one with an AR.
4) How many shots, on average, does it take per-kill with the shotgun.
5) What is the kill / death ratio of every given lifeform vs. a shotgun.
6) How does the time / per res investment of a shotgun compare to the kills they get with it on a gestate / lifeform per res investment.
Something can be overpowered and *not* directly correlate to immediate victories overall. That kind of ignorance is exactly why the game is as broken as it is, because either people don't analyze the correct stats, or aren't smart enough to interpret them properly.
I'm telling you right now that shotguns *are* OP. I don't need a bunch of piecharts to tell me that. I don't even need to crunch numbers. All I need to do is ask the players "are you having fun as an alien when you have to fight shotguns?" The answer will overwhelmingly be no. Nobody likes their 50-res 30-second Fade being killed in two shots from a shotgun that some guy just grabbed off the ground for free. Nobody likes being instagibbed as a skulk or a lurk, because instant death is never fun. If something in the game is causing people to not have fun, it's broken and must be fixed, no matter *WHAT* your graphs and pie charts say.
I guess how we relate the stats is important, moreso because we have ZERO measure of errors, along with probably massive autocorrelation and heteroscedasricity.
Was responding to this line: 50/50 winrate is the only reasonable theoretical target for NS2
I know that Charlie does not rely on stats only to balance the game. Statistics can help but there are a lot of people who depend way to much on them(seen it happen to often). I think its better to rely more on knowledge though than numbers, statistics do help when used correctly.
Interesting how you know what everyone enjoys. I suppose head shots should be removed from counter-strike because they instant kill people and that isn't fun.
We can revisit this argument when Focus returns. Wait, it won't, because marines dying just as fast wasn't "fun" for the marines. The difference being that in Counter-Strike, everyone can headshot; the difference being that gun accuracy precludes it from being a constant problem; the difference being that in Counter-Strike you're playing one-off rounds that are over extremely quickly; the difference being that in Counter-Strike, after you get headshot, you don't start the next round missing 95% of your cash and are punished by having to sit in a special penalty box for 30 seconds.
Counter-strike does not always offer both teams equal headshotting ability. Pistols vs rifles for example.
If you know how to burst fire, accuracy is never a problem. It's the same as in NS2, if you know how to aim and track movement you can land good hits, if you don't you will miss.
In NS2 when you die you just respawn, very similar to a round in CS.
If you buy armor and an AWP and get headshot you just lost all of your money.
Also, I might be full of it, but I think I've heard that focus might come to a 4th chamber somewhere down the road. Don't quote me on that though, I might be wrong.
If you know how to burst fire, accuracy is never a problem. It's the same as in NS2, if you know how to aim and track movement you can land good hits, if you don't you will miss.
In NS2 when you die you just respawn, very similar to a round in CS.
If you buy armor and an AWP and get headshot you just lost all of your money.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Good one. You almost made me not notice that you skipped over the most important part of my post.
Also, you seemed to imply that the Desert Eagle is a poor weapon and not, in fact, an insta-gibbing headshot machine. I think I'll elect to continue this conversation with someone else.
PS: Another thing you failed to consider is that the whole *point* of CS is to get headshots and kill each other fairly rapidly. But you know, apples and oranges. You want to make stupid comparisons to ###### games that aren't anything even remotely like NS, go right ahead.
The problem with this, is that the ideology is that it boils down to "if you just throw a lot of garbage content at something, you'll somehow get a better overall finished product". This is emphatically not the case.
ESPECIALLY with RTS game designs, it's not necessarily that minimalism is ideal, but to a certain degree you actually make the game quite a bit worse by extensively overlapping the roles such that you create obvious useless items and obvious ideal choices. NS1 was MUCH MUCH worse than NS2 is for this. If you choose to upgrade grenade launchers first, it implies you are going to have a different mid to late game transition than if you choose to upgrade flame throwers first. Flame throwers rely on getting deep into the map and harrassing alien cyst networks, they also imply that you're possibly having a lot of trouble with lerks that you need to deal with. Grenade launchers on the other hand must be supported much more heavily, it's a stronger slower push that will take place if there are more grenade launchers on your team.
The HMG as an equippable is bad because it just outdates everything else in the tech tree. It either hard counters or soft counters everything in the alien tech tree. Put it in the hands of a jetpack and you completely negate the aliens mobility advantage, their HP advantage, their structure bases, their res node locations. Everything is heavily at risk to a JP HMG, he can harrass, he can slow push, he can blitzkreig, he has absolutely no weakness aside from lucky focus skulks and fades.
Taking the HMG out of the game, in terms of taking away the jetpackers ability to use it, was therefore very good for the game, because it created new tactical options and choices by eliminating a situation where you would be dumb to not do it that way. We currently have a much more interesting and dynamic tactical tech path for the marines, you feel like you have a LOT of choices, and a LOT of options. There are much fewer clear ideals.
You see this in all RTS games, the best ones make you choose "do I build more seige tanks, or do I build more marauders?", "Do i build more marines, or do I build more hellions?" At any given point in the game you have choices to how you adress the movements of your opponent, and choices into how you will put pressure on your opponent as well.
For an RTS game, thoughtless wealths of content being dumped into the game is VERY bad. You VERY quickly just discover the most broken uncounterable thing, and immediately EVERY game becomes "do I get a medium amount of broken unit x, or do I get a BIG amount of broken unit X"? You HEAVILY punish new players by having stuff in the game that's just useless, it traps them into building things they want because they're "cool" and getting crushed and laughed at because everyone knows you don't build Reapers, Hellions are just objectively better! Most games are FAR worse for this than SC2 however.
We're currently having this for Onos in NS2. Many games seem to be a long climb to near victory for marines, and then suddenly 4 onos come out and the aliens win. Aliens avoid fades, because they've just given up on winning the mid game, their only viable option is staying alive until the late game when the advantage swings in their favor again. There's no real tactical or stratigic choice to be made, and that's bad, but the worst fix possible is going back to the focus vs JP/HMG wars of NS1. That was INSANELY broken in it's own right! Lets fix the new mechanic rather than giving up and returning to an old one just because the old one was slightly less broken than the one we have now.
Thing with the shotgun is, it's a mid/short ranged weapon. If you miss your shot, or two if you're very lucky, you will die and lose 20 pres. If you attack a single marine with a shotgun properly with 2 skulks instead of ramboing in alone the marine is most likely going to die.
It takes skill to use it (no, not when you're facing skulks walking single file without using cover). And if 1 of the two skulks and the marine would die, that is a fair trade off in the bigger aspect of the game where your ultimate goal is to win the game, and not get frags.
Also, don't forget that this is a tried concept that has been working for 10 years allready.
Also, you seemed to imply that the Desert Eagle is a poor weapon and not, in fact, an insta-gibbing headshot machine. I think I'll elect to continue this conversation with someone else.
PS: Another thing you failed to consider is that the whole *point* of CS is to get headshots and kill each other fairly rapidly. But you know, apples and oranges. You want to make stupid comparisons to ###### games that aren't anything even remotely like NS, go right ahead.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Counter-strike is a game about map control and holding key positions so you can plant or defuse bombs. Head shots are just a means to an end. It is similar in many ways to NS2, but even if it wasn't I was just trying to point out that you cannot make a very broad and vague statement about what everyone enjoys. You said instant death is never fun. I am disagreeing.
But ok, let's assume I missed your point entirely to go off on a pointless derail. What exactly IS your point? From what I remember you posted that people are reading the stats wrong, and then you immediately said you don't need stats and that you personally are the one that knows what is OP and fun.
<!--quoteo(post=2036848:date=Nov 28 2012, 07:33 PM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 28 2012, 07:33 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036848"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...words about RTS games...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Very good post, I agree completely. I am not a fan of always picking onos because I know I will win if I do it, but I can't help myself.
The example was merely illustrative and I'd agree I'd love to see all the stats you've listed (and more) before coming to conclusions on a particular game mechanic. However, since the ultimate goal in NS2 is to win, it makes the most sense to relate those game mechanics towards win percentage.
You might not like getting shotgunned to death, but that doesn't mean others don't find the challenge fun. I'm sure if you polled NS2 players, they'd say they found dying to not be fun, but that doesn't mean we should make skulks and marines invulnerable.
<!--quoteo(post=2036822:date=Nov 28 2012, 03:54 PM:name=OnosFactory)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (OnosFactory @ Nov 28 2012, 03:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036822"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->ScardyBob, well, if shotguns dealt 1000 dam, rifles 5, all alien attacks 150, you might find a 60% alien win rate ... shotguns are still OP relative to rifles though.
I guess how we relate the stats is important, moreso because we have ZERO measure of errors, along with probably massive autocorrelation and heteroscedasricity.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
True, but they aren't op with regards to the most important factor in NS2, winning. In your hypothetical, the shotgun would be a noob trap, since its flashy damage stats would draw inexperienced players who didn't realize that it didn't actually help you win that much. It would make sense to rebalance the shotgun values to make it less a noob trap, but not because it was op.
Technically, UWE has stats on the whole population of NS2 games played rather than a sample, so many of the traditional sampling error estimates don't apply. Alternatives include just assuming a reasonable probability distribution (as I did with a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">binomial distribution for win stats</a>) or using some type of nonparametric bootstrapping method to randomly choose subsets of the stats data.
Yes and no. It's not that simple. If your assumption was "marines are unbalanced because of shotguns" and you look at global stats and see more people getting killed with AR rather than shotguns... you could be letting the stats deceive you. The problem of shotgun unbalance may very well exist, however, it may be a subset problem rather than a global problem.
In this case, the majority of the complaints about the shotgun come from competitive players, so narrow your statistical analysis to only the top 3% ranked players in terms of average game score... then you'd have a clearer picture of how the shotgun is balanced in the high skill arena as opposed to the global arena.
I couldn't tell you what the results of that query will indicate, but to properly do statistical analysis, you need to look at the reasons why you're getting the stats you're getting, not just what the stats say in some big global scheme.
NS2 would be a terrible game if the whole game came down to the first 10 minutes. Imagine the aliens had some incredibly strong 5 minute push that was VERY hard for the marines to hold off... but if the push failed the aliens had nothing left to compete with in the late game. You might look at the stats and see 50/50 balance in games won vs games lost... but the game would still not be balanced. If 100% of the games won in before 10 minutes are won by aliens, and 100% of the games won after 10 minutes are won by marines, then there is something VERY VERY wrong with the balance of the game, regardless of weather, looking at all games, marines win 50% of them and aliens win the other 50%.
Statistics are AWESOME and necessary and super cool, and if you know what you're doing with them you can retrieve some EXTREMELY provocative information, but it's VERY VERY easy to use them wrong.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY</a>
Although I guess technically you could be right, but there's barely any complaining. The only thing I could complain about if I tried is that it would be nice with one spread instead of having the spread random. Either way, stuff dies.
Please name which RTS games you're talking about, because realistically the RTS field is as varied, if not more so than the FPS genre. Starcraft? We're not talking about Starcraft. Starcraft is not your typical RTS game and is thus irrelevant. Supreme Commander, Dawn of War, Homeworld, Wargame, Company of Heroes, these are all RTS games that are fairly successful, are extremely dissimilar (well, I guess DoW and CoH have some similarities since one was an evolution of the other).
Not to mention, Starcraft-style RTS games are more or less dead. Starcraft did its particular flavor of RTS so well that nobody even really tries to compete.
I love Relic's RTS games because they <u>don't</u> get bogged down by obsessing over 'is this going to be good for competition'. They make FUN RTS games first. Trying to make your RTS game some sort of ultra-refined competition crack is like making an MMORPG and trying to outdo World of Warcraft. It won't happen. Relic also does exactly what I described: they ensure that their games have lots of meat and things to play with. Dawn of War 2 was only vaguely like Dawn of War 1. Every time they make a new game, they make a new game.
On the contrary to what you said - Supreme Commander: FA was jam-packed with all kinds of things. However, most of the units and buildings are never used in competition. Does that mean the game is hurt by it? Did it somehow stop people from enjoying the game?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Stuff about HMG / Jetpack<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can't really say anything here, because most of your issues here are with specifically how UWE did things. The whole point of this thread is that UWE is not very good at doing things. For example, the jetpack. Yes, HMG + Jetpack was idiotic. But, I'm not the moron who decided the jetpack would have near-limitless amounts of thrust and fuel, and that somehow flying around in full body armor with a giant machinegun would have no serious ramifications on your ability to fly around.
You say that the HMG made LMGs obsolete. Sure it did, but again, I'm not the one who gave it weapon stats more or less directly in line with being a 'super HMG'. Would you argue that the LMGs in Battlefield make assault rifles obsolete? That the LMGs in Counter-Strike are better than the assault rifles? The weapon was better than the LMG because it was better than the LMG, that doesn't mean that the only possible solution was to strip it from the game entirely. All it did was remove an option. Removing it because of the balance issue with jetpacks is a crappy, lazy way of doing things.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Stuff about Onos<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Onos phenomenon is a direct consequence of not enough content. When Marines get Exos, they don't immediately all suit up in 4 dual-minigun exos. Because the marine team has constant viable microtransactions that eat their pres over the course of the round. The aliens do not. Your options are a fairly situational 30-res Lerk, a fairly inefficient 50-res Fade, or an extremely cost-effective 75-res Onos. The aliens have nothing to eat into their pres otherwise. The aliens are designed around fear of death, so a Lerk will always be a Lerk - his res will never go anywhere until he finally actually does die, which doesn't happen nearly as often as it could to a Marine. For the most part, this means that aliens are always constantly pooling up their pres - most of them probably aren't even paying attention to it, they're focusing on making sure their Fade isn't instagibbed by a 20-res shotgun. Then, before you know it, oh look there's an Onos. That reminds me, I have 77 res, I guess I'll go Onos too.
Why do you think I made a thread asking for a 6th lifeform?
You might not like getting shotgunned to death, but that doesn't mean others don't find the challenge fun. I'm sure if you polled NS2 players, they'd say they found dying to not be fun, but that doesn't mean we should make skulks and marines invulnerable.
True, but they aren't op with regards to the most important factor in NS2, winning. In your hypothetical, the shotgun would be a noob trap, since its flashy damage stats would draw inexperienced players who didn't realize that it didn't actually help you win that much. It would make sense to rebalance the shotgun values to make it less a noob trap, but not because it was op.
Technically, UWE has stats on the whole population of NS2 games played rather than a sample, so many of the traditional sampling error estimates don't apply. Alternatives include just assuming a reasonable probability distribution (as I did with a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">binomial distribution for win stats</a>) or using some type of nonparametric bootstrapping method to randomly choose subsets of the stats data.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I feel like it's a bit problematic trying to use statistics to identify fundamental imbalances. My preference heavily leans to intuitively guessing at an imbalance, observing whether the statistics support the assumption, and then narrowing down to more specific queries. "Are marines losing 60% of the time?", "Are the marines losing 60% of the time in the late game?", "are onos a factor?", "is onos performance generally cost effective?". If you can answer all those questions you can confirm a theory about the total balance of the game, and you can begin to produce solid evidence for a theory as to why that imbalance exists.
If you don't really have as much of a solid idea of why you are having a problem with balance, you can also look at statistics for evidence of the location of the bottleneck issue. If you see that aliens win 70% of games, but balance is generally 50/50 as soon as the game gets out of the 5 minute mark (where as it's 80/20 before then), then you can start to look for the source of the problem. Obviously, in that case, the problem would not be onos, it MUST be something early game.
With the right statistics being gathered, all these questions are statistically answerable. I feel like that's the best utilization of statistical analysis for game development. Look for micro trends, don't try to ham fistedly force macro trends.
Also, some imbalanced things are fun, and should be worked around rather than "fixed". It's a complex problem.
So.
Haha.
So.
Thank you for clearing it up.
It was bad, it wasn't just "better than the LMG" it obsoleted completely every other weapon, aside from maybe one grenade launcher to spam at your siege turrets, you might drop some shotguns if you were tight on res, and there was a player who was good at ninjaing down nodes, but otherwise you would never get a composition with just a few HMGs if you could afford to just have more HMGs.
I'll give you that it could have been balanced differently, it didn't HAVE to obsolete everything, but it was such a ridiculous stupid skilless weapon, it was extremely unfun to play against, because an HMG could kill a whole team faster than any other weapon in the game and still have ammo left over. I really don't miss it at all. Removal of the HMG was one of the nicest things for NS2.
<!--quoteo(post=2036876:date=Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036876"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->RTS stuff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oh, which RTS is popular and regularly being played today?
<!--quoteo(post=2036876:date=Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 28 2012, 08:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2036876"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Onos stuff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You claim it's about not enough content and then argue it's about asymmety... Adding a new lifeform doesn't necessarily change any of the points your making. It's just immensely bad and irresponsible game design to put things in a game for no apparent reason to just have more stuff. I can't think of a single game I think was legitimately made better by wasting artist and developer time like that. Procedural content is one thing and there are many great games made with it, but it's absolutely incompatible with a competitive shooter, let alone trying to jerry rig it into something as delicate as NS2. Games that do that just feel slapdash and careless. They're not good. NS would not be made better by that ideology in the slightest.
I don't know what you want. Comparing anything to Starcraft is like comparing anything to Nazis. If you think every RTS can and should be paralleled to Starcraft, then does that mean every FPS game must be paralleled to Counter-Strike, and that every MMO should be compared to WoW?
Dawn of War 2 is still played. Supreme Commander 2 is still played. Relic is one of the few studios for THQ that brings in a constant stream of cash. I'm willing to bet people are still playing Zero Hour too. Uber Entertainment just raised about $5mil <b>from over 50,000 people</b> to develop an RTS spiritual successor to Supreme Commander / Total Annihilation, and it's not going to be Starcraft, or Starcraft-like, and it'll be multiplayer only. By my count, that means that a game that hasn't even come out yet is 10x more popular than NS2.
Are you saying that your only measure of a game's worth is how long people keep playing its multiplayer at high levels? Because that's crap and you know it. I guess we can call NS1 a crappy game because it was only the <b>third</b> most popular HL1 mod. <u>That means second worst</u>. What was more popular? The FPS game with a big pile of guns you could buy and use, and the FPS game with a bunch of WW2 stuff you could use. I wouldn't call either of them minimalist.
Nobody plays Tribes 2 anymore, so I guess under your ridiculous standards, that means that game was a total failure. Maybe they shouldn't have ruined the game by putting in features like tanks and bombers. Isn't that what the fusion mortar was for?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You claim it's about not enough content and then argue it's about asymmety<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Woah, where did you get an asymmetry argument out of that? Because I think the asymmetry argument is the most trite bull###### that currently exists on this forum. People are using it as some sort of catch-all excuse for anything bad about the mod. As far as I'm concerned, worries about asymmetry went out the window the second UWE removed the single biggest asymmetric aspect of the game, and implemented a Kharaa commander.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Adding a new lifeform doesn't necessarily change any of the points your making. It's just immensely bad and irresponsible game design to put things in a game for no apparent reason to just have more stuff.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Except for, you know, the impeccable arguments that have been made to support a 6th lifeform that not a single person who's pooh-poohed the idea has dared to actually address, instead just going for the "NO WE DON'T NEED IT BECAUSE I SAY SO" response.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I can't think of a single game I think was legitimately made better by wasting artist and developer time like that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Name some that did, then. And not just 'I think this has too much stuff!' but you know, where complaints about too much stuff was actually voiced by more people than just you. I'll wait.
Alternatively, how about you start naming games that had features that were redundant, where you could *cut* content and still more or less have the game intact. This might be harder, because you'll start with a list that includes every game ever made, and end with a list that includes every game ever made. Now ask yourself if more or fewer people would've played your cut-down minimalist tightwad version over the original.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->NS would not be made better by that ideology in the slightest.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"Ideology"? Are you literally only capable of thinking in extremes?
Pray tell, what do you think is meant by 'more content'? If any other competent developer had a whack at NS2, it would have more content. No, not over-the-top TF2 hats, 89 guns ala BF3, unlockable pay-2-win exclusive guns, but a new lifeform, several new options for alien upgrades, some alien abilities improved and given more depth or replaced with something better, a couple of new marine toys.
How about a ****ing hand grenade, you know, the thing from NS1? Go ahead, tell me that that would just ruin the game completely because it's similar to the concept of a grenade launcher, and anything that co-opts another role means it's useless clutter and garbage. See, I can think in extremes too.
There's a big difference between "minimalist design" and "12-year-old's first attempt at modding design doc".
Seriously, Swiftspear, you're smarter than this. Quit with the ###### strawmen and the hyperbole or leave.
This isn't true, not even remotely. The shotgun was vastly more powerful against structures than HMGs (from 2.0 and onwards), and good shotgun aimers were often more dangerous to fades and lerks than HMGs because of the burst damage (the only exception being the combination of JP+HMG+200fps). Good comms would drop shotguns far more frequently than HMGs, even after AA was upgraded.
Part of what makes a high skill ceiling game fun is that you're always improving in all aspects of your game, which makes it worth playing.
Mind you lowering the skill floor does not affect competitive play, so there's really little reason to oppose it.
Then comes a newbie fade, I shotgun it once or twice, thinking he would notice he's got low health and go away, but he kept trying to swipe me, so in the end I had to kill it, which was quite sad.
So what I'm trying to say is the the skill floor for the fade is "retreat when you have low health". And frankly I don't really see how you could get lower than that.
Surely the health feedback could be a bit better, and providing a good tutorial would help a lot. But I don't really see how you could tweak the mechanics to have a lower skill floor.
Sorry, you frustrate me, because you make thoughtless arguments for things and then haphazardly defend them at all costs.
There are legitimate arguments for a 6th lifeform, but you didn't make them in your thread. You referenced a mid game gap that is very arguable whether it even exists, you failed to suggest the basics of what a 6th lifeform would even look like. It's akin to identifying a problem and saying you can fix it by implementing magic to the game. There are many ways to do a 6th lifeform that are an utter waste of time and effort, and would basically just be the false trap I pointed out before from bad RTS games, or alternatively just invalidate everything on the alien side already, there are few ways to do it so it is not. You can't just take a scorpian that hovars without flapping, jam it into the game, and not have any problems. Adding a 6th lifeform entails a bunch of new problems that have to be solved, and it's unacceptable to just pretend they don't exist. That's why the suggestion, they way you made it, is almost impossible to respect.
Yes, you need to seriously consider Star Craft in relation to NS2. Star Craft, as an RTS makes sense in the FPS universe. It Gels well with the things we know make a solid deep FPS game from observing examples like Tribes, TF2, DoD, Even Battle Field (which is generally a hilariously bad FPS on a pure design level, and something no indie team could effectively equal because it's such a content garbage dump, it's redeeming quality is purely fun). Games like Sup Com are too much about the overarching strategy of the game to accommodate an underlying FPS game. The flow of action in sup comm games is basically "Build up giant army, smash into opponent" That would be very very boring to play as an FPS player. The WarHammer series is interesting, but it's far closer to Star Craft than Sup Comm is. Games like CoH and WarHammer HAVE been trying to compete with the Star Craft model, and they've been HEAVILY influenced by the success of Star Craft. They're eliminating or minimizing resource play of any type and focusing on tactics based gameplay. They primarily work by simplifying. They are weaker than Star Craft because although they are more simplified they still fail to be as polished. They're not all bad games per say, but they aren't the one you aspire to when you are trying to imitate a great RTS game.
The types of games indie teams can make are more limited than what can be done by big AAA developers. It's more difficult to put something into a game just because it's cool. It's dangerous to pay someone to make something for you and not use it, or worse, put something into your game haphazardly and all of a sudden the majority of your other content isn't played with at all any more. These games, almost by nature, have to be more thought out and deliberate. Indie games all protect an ideology of simplicity to design or die on the review floor. It's one of the things NS2 does well, everything has a place, everything fits, it's a very good thing in this case, your criticism of it isn't constructive, and it boggles my mind that you don't understand that.
There are thousands more ways to break NS2 than there are to make it better. You yourself identify things you don't like about the game... but you seem to assume they're an anomaly and the solution is as simple as reacting to the "problem" and throwing almost anything else in instead. It doesn't work that way. Game development, game design, it a minefield of bad and wrong ways to handle any given situation, with very few clean passages. If you can't suggest an actual place a new piece of content fits into the game, in the same way a puzzle piece would fit into it's puzzle, it DOESN'T BELONG IN THE GAME!
There are many games that are bad because the content within them doesn't fit together, and very few that are an exception to that. On the other hand the majority of the games that are simple but polished have a level of brilliance to them.
And how does this all work in practice?
NS2 is an extremely linear-feeling game, void of real options. Look at how rigid the alien team lifeforms are. They all are shaped pegs fitting into their specially shaped holes. Let's take Dawn of War, which I think is way closer an analogy to NS than Starcraft will ever be. You want something armored to absorb the damage and push into the enemy base. What do you do? You can build a Predator Tank, a Dreadnought, or a Hellfire Dreadnought.
The Hellfire Dreadnought is great at range, but lacks DPS and durability. It's designed as a long-range fire support unit.
The Furiso Dreadnought has extremely high DPS in melee range and will tear through infantry without a problem and decimate vehicles that it can get close to, but is, of course, range-impaired.
The Predator is more resource-intensive, and will absolutely shred infantry, but has weak anti-vehicle properties. It can, however, be upgraded with LasCannons which make it into a superior anti-vehicle platform, but it loses almost all effectiveness against infantry as a result.
You have three heavy Space Marine vehicles that are similar, but work differently and are better at some things than others.
In NS, if you want to absorb damage, you have to be an Onos, because **** you, that's why. NS's over-specialized lifeforms and terrible evolution system are the exact opposite of gameplay variety and flavor. They're the equivilent of making an RTS game with just three units - the swordsman who counters pikemen, the cavalry that counters swordsmen, and the pikemen that counter the cavalry. It might be balanced and minimalist, but it's not "brilliant", it's not exciting, and it will not sustain interest for long. Even Age of Empires, the closest analogy to this, was developed with a gimmick, the whole complex research trees, race-specific bonuses and units, and the advancement of epochs, on top of advanced resource modeling. The combat may have been more or less about pikes vs. swords vs. horses, but there was a lot more to the game than just that.