Early Marine Play
grazr
Join Date: 2012-10-12 Member: 162195Members
Join Date: 2012-10-12 Member: 162195Members
<div class="IPBDescription">It sucks.</div>I'm wondering whether anything is going to be addressing the poor marine early gameplay balance.
Right now the stats sit at ~100% win rate for aliens in the first 5 minutes. with a slight advantage to marines afterwards (assuming failed skulk rushes) to a steady 60% win rate for aliens between 10 and 20 minutes.
As someone who plays both marine and marine com i've noted some real problems with marines in just the first minute of the game. Often players are stuck arguing over who com's for 10-30 seconds; enough time for the aliens to rush the marine extractor node positions and gain their first 2 harvesters. The game is already over despite the fact that marines can fight back, generally they get stuck in their base.
Another issue is that they all leave the base leaving no one to build an armoury or second IP. skulks rush the base and the game is lost in under a minute. A similar issue is that no one leaves the base and everyone stays behind to build the structures leading to a similar issue as the first. All of these issues are marine specific and do not plague alien teams; an alien team without com just leaves the game at equal footing for 5 or so minutes as generally the aliens will be preventing marine extractors going up keeping tres about the same early on.
I'd like to say there's a general balance to the game these days, more so than before even though marines rely more heavily on tres whilst aliens can casually talk over whether to drop a fade egg or some crags. But the reliance on marines to just not go "rambo FPS mode" cripples the team.
Part of the problem is the asymmetry in how each team gets it's resources. Marines rely on the players to build structures and maintain map control in each room whilst aliens can pretty much attack any location on the map with a marine presence to throw them off until phase gates are out. Marines went heavy on the extractors? Attack the undefended base. Marines are playing defencively? take out extractors. None of which risk the alien hive.
But besides that observation i would generally put it down to the IQ level of players who prefer to play marine.
There needs to be more of an emphasis to get a com in the chair ASAP. Maybe in noob freindly servers at the very least there could be a function to throw a player straight into the seat at the start just so that they can't avoid playing com.
Right now the stats sit at ~100% win rate for aliens in the first 5 minutes. with a slight advantage to marines afterwards (assuming failed skulk rushes) to a steady 60% win rate for aliens between 10 and 20 minutes.
As someone who plays both marine and marine com i've noted some real problems with marines in just the first minute of the game. Often players are stuck arguing over who com's for 10-30 seconds; enough time for the aliens to rush the marine extractor node positions and gain their first 2 harvesters. The game is already over despite the fact that marines can fight back, generally they get stuck in their base.
Another issue is that they all leave the base leaving no one to build an armoury or second IP. skulks rush the base and the game is lost in under a minute. A similar issue is that no one leaves the base and everyone stays behind to build the structures leading to a similar issue as the first. All of these issues are marine specific and do not plague alien teams; an alien team without com just leaves the game at equal footing for 5 or so minutes as generally the aliens will be preventing marine extractors going up keeping tres about the same early on.
I'd like to say there's a general balance to the game these days, more so than before even though marines rely more heavily on tres whilst aliens can casually talk over whether to drop a fade egg or some crags. But the reliance on marines to just not go "rambo FPS mode" cripples the team.
Part of the problem is the asymmetry in how each team gets it's resources. Marines rely on the players to build structures and maintain map control in each room whilst aliens can pretty much attack any location on the map with a marine presence to throw them off until phase gates are out. Marines went heavy on the extractors? Attack the undefended base. Marines are playing defencively? take out extractors. None of which risk the alien hive.
But besides that observation i would generally put it down to the IQ level of players who prefer to play marine.
There needs to be more of an emphasis to get a com in the chair ASAP. Maybe in noob freindly servers at the very least there could be a function to throw a player straight into the seat at the start just so that they can't avoid playing com.
Comments
This isn't a real issue. It simply comes down to the fact that aliens can move faster than marines, and thus have a brief period where they can be at the marines base and the marines cannot be at their base yet. It's compounded by the fact that marine bases all have an off button (powernode). It's simply the design of the game, and marines simply have to be reserved to preventing this rush from killing them. It's like arguing that because zerg can 6 pool that every other race in starcraft must have a 6pool style rush that's equally effective as well. That's just not reality.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As someone who plays both marine and marine com i've noted some real problems with marines in just the first minute of the game. Often players are stuck arguing over who com's for 10-30 seconds; enough time for the aliens to rush the marine extractor node positions and gain their first 2 harvesters. The game is already over despite the fact that marines can fight back, generally they get stuck in their base.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->What? Cysts can't be across the map that quickly. If you mean "be at the marine node positions", once again, this is not an issue. Marines can generally kill skulks.
I'll be the first to complain that somehow every game I jump in the command chair 4 marines run off in one direction, and no one at all goes the other direction. You need both nodes in the early game. It should be common sense that in the opening seconds of the game marines need to branch into two teams and go to the two opposite directions. Yet, the fact that marine players seem generally too dumb to handle this doesn't mean the game in imbalanced.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Another issue is that they all leave the base leaving no one to build an armoury or second IP. skulks rush the base and the game is lost in under a minute. A similar issue is that no one leaves the base and everyone stays behind to build the structures leading to a similar issue as the first. All of these issues are marine specific and do not plague alien teams; an alien team without com just leaves the game at equal footing for 5 or so minutes as generally the aliens will be preventing marine extractors going up keeping tres about the same early on.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Once again, that's just the way the game works. Marines just need to be slightly less than 100% aggressive in the early game. It's not a problem that marines have to counter an easy to stop early game rush, it's just part of the game. Aliens can't JP flamethrower down the marines cyst network in the late game. Marines can't onos rush the alien power node. The game is asymmetrical. Some times one team has a viable strategy at a certain time that the other team just doesn't have an equal response to.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'd like to say there's a general balance to the game these days, more so than before even though marines rely more heavily on tres whilst aliens can casually talk over whether to drop a fade egg or some crags. But the reliance on marines to just not go "rambo FPS mode" cripples the team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->It does, but that's ok. That's just the way NS2 has to be played. It doesn't help however that aliens are just doing much better in the win loss column in general, so there's even less room for marine teams to make "mistakes" then there would be if things were just generally a little bit easier for marines.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Part of the problem is the asymmetry in how each team gets it's resources. Marines rely on the players to build structures and maintain map control in each room whilst aliens can pretty much attack any location on the map with a marine presence to throw them off until phase gates are out. Marines went heavy on the extractors? Attack the undefended base. Marines are playing defensively? take out extractors. None of which risk the alien hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I count this as a good thing, not a problem. The asymmetry of NS2 is what makes it so much more fun than every other FPS out there today!
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->But besides that observation i would generally put it down to the IQ level of players who prefer to play marine.
There needs to be more of an emphasis to get a com in the chair ASAP. Maybe in noob freindly servers at the very least there could be a function to throw a player straight into the seat at the start just so that they can't avoid playing com.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The last thing you could possibly want to do to make this better for marines is to make a player who doesn't want to comm do it anyways. There are a LOT of potential mistakes to make commanding marines. Every marine win can generally be considered as due in large part to a good commander who played his/her best. Sure, you COULD make the whole thing a lot dumber, but honestly, the game would just be worse. Competitive RTS games are supposed to be hard, they're not really fun when they're too easy.
Look, I'll say it outright. I really don't like the power node mechanic in NS2. I have the sense that adds a dozen new problems to the game in order to "fix" one problem, that honestly, it doesn't do a very good job of fixing (late game turtles). I find it zaney and often skilless how often a game can suddenly be lost for marines in which they had done everything right because 3 skulks show up in your base at just the right time to take out the powernode before the comm can fully respond. The warning the automated voice gives you that you're losing the one thing that will result in you instantly losing the game is WAY too minor and ignoreable. The powernodes also frustrate the freedom of base layout designs in many locations, because you just sort of HAVE to protect the power node whether you like it or not. And finally, it's frustrating how much extra time marines now have to spend "building" nodes in the beginning of the game. It's very nearly doubled from what it was in NS1. A lot of your "problems" stem from weird mechanics the powernodes have introduced. Many of them aren't really even real problems, some of them are more frustrations that arise from the interactions of other things that legitimately are problematic design. In other cases, the fact is just always going to be that asymmetry is asymmetrical, and that's very normal and acceptable, and in fact it often makes things more fun. Sometimes there are things that come out of asymmetrical designs though that do need to be addressed because they are not fun.
The teams don't both need to have 50% win ratio at any given time during the game. It's normal that in some phases marines are a bit stronger, and in other phases aliens are a bit stronger. Even when you have symmetrical teams, this STILL happens because there are certain timings any given design lends itself to being strong. If Zerg skips it's third hive in ZvZ in starcraft, they have a very strong 10ish minute push that will just kill you if you were greedy and you didn't counter it properly. Sometimes one team is just going to be able to be aggressive and the other is just going to have to be defensive if the team chooses to exploit their temporary aggressive advantage, and that's fine. In fact, I'd say it's nice if the game forces you to both skillfully play defense and skillfully play offense. It's not fun if you never have to be defensive if you simply choose to play hyper aggressively or vice versa. Sometimes your opponent should be able to FORCE you to be defensive, whether you like it or not.
It's not that every design we have is fine, just because it's part of the asymmetry of the game... but whenever we look for "problems" in the game, we really have to consider weather this "problem" is just a normal effect of an asymmetrical design, or weather it's something that legitimately is ruining the fun for some reason or another. We can't just say "5% of games are won by aliens in the first 5 minutes, where marines don't win any games in the first 5 minutes, and therefore the game is imbalanced". Sometimes mechanics like that are exactly what we would expect, and it's fine to just expect the marines to be a little more effective in properly defending the 5 minute push. Now, if aliens could somehow perform that rush, and it was IMPOSSIBLE for marines to defend it... or likewise, if performing the rush ALWAYS cost the marines some res, where as it NEVER cost the aliens anything, then that would be something we'd have to look at, because why would the aliens ever not do a rush that always payed off? However, that's currently not the case. Aliens have to give up a fair bit of map control if their early push fails without killing anything, and it's not terribly difficult to defend as marines, it really just takes a little bit of whittling down skulks as they get close to the base, and killing the last of them when they actually get there.
Plus i suggested putting a player in the chair on noob servers for a reason, because in non-noob servers this is less of an issue. The important thing to do is give everyone some commander experience because having commander experience is good for marines who don't command as they understand the cost of buildings, timing of upgrades, what each building does and anticipate the needs of the commander adn what to ask for in order to get a certain thing on the field (like an observatory to get phase gates).
Having marines running around without com experience is just hurting the game and making marines more selfish.
A lot of the complaints i made weren't "QQ this is OP" but for listing cause and affects. IE either a bunch of small issues leading to a big one. which could be reduced with more hints for marines so they understand there's more to the game than shooting aliens.
One of the biggest problems in the games is marines thinking "someone else can and will build that, i'll run off and shoot stuff". Players need to be shown that that's not the case and a 30-40 minute drawn out game that is lost wont necessrily teach a bad marine player that him failing to build a phase gate in nano lost the game 20 minutes later. Not every player is that smart.
A lot happens in the first 5 minutes for the marines that dictate how the next 20 minutes will play, this is why you'll see after 20 minutes is when the marines start winning more than 50% of the time, because the early game advantage starts to stack up over time.
I'd really encourage all players to try to learn to command... I just don't know if on a live server where screwing up will hurt everyone is the best place to take your first baby steps. Especially if you don't want to, and there's no one to walk you through the basics. Explore mode and youtube tutorials exist for a reason.
Eventually you have to play a live game. There's a reason we have noob friendly servers, but they don't seem to be doing much for marine players. Alien commander has been made more fluid with hints that show properly in recent patches. But marine players don't seem to get the bigger picture; they just seem to think killing aliens until you get to the hive is how the game is played and then start whining about the lack of upgrades when they've been on 2 extractors for 15 minutes. They throw a lot of responsibility off onto each other or their com for their own mistakes and thus never learn.
Which says a lot about why people prefer playing aliens and their win ratio sitting at 60%. Aliens can rambo and require almost no com communication unless they want a specific upgrade that might have been lost. So don't necasserily dumb it down, but provide room for marines to learn. If that fails; provide reward incentives. If a particular structure is more crucial, provide a higher points value for completing it (this only seems to be done with kills).
-Game starts while 90% of the players are in the ready room.
-A team has no commander for upwards of a few minutes.
It baffles me that UWE has not fixed these. There are a variety of solutions that should be easy to integrate.
A) After X time force random teams.
B) Don't start the game until X% of players have picked a side.
C) Make the warm-up last longer.
D) Allow players to choose the commander role BEFORE the start of the match (during warm-up).
E) Assign a random commander if no one chose the commander seat after X second (they can always leave the chair*)
F) Anything else!
These could be server side. You could implement multiple, but have none activated by default and an admin could select the one(s) they want on their server.
TLDR
<b>It is simply too frequent that a team has no commander for crucial seconds and minutes of the start of matches.
It is simply too frequent for matches to start with a fraction of the players in the ready room.
This is easy, please fix it. Even if it's not a final solution. This affects nearly 50% of my matches.</b>
*Many new players who get in the commander chair do not know how to exit it. Please make it more obvious.
Often I see myself with stats like 10:2 in the early game, killed 2 harvesters and than look at the map just to see that we are losing because my team lost on all the other positions.
and I struggle against camo without comm support.
<!--quoteo(post=2039752:date=Dec 4 2012, 07:15 PM:name=mushookees)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mushookees @ Dec 4 2012, 07:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2039752"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->its also due to games starting too soon. Games starting with 2 marines and 3 aliens with 15 players in ready room for example<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This really needs to be fixed. It usually causes problems for the marine team more, but I have seen it stuff up alien teams too.
I hope at bare minimum the time to round start is increased next patch. Though I'd prefer if in the ready room was given a make over so every one can just join what ever team they like, then after that a random numbers balance occurs, then some extra warm up time is given, then the game starts. <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=124806" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....howtopic=124806</a>
Actually marines are the strong race in the earlygame, mostly because of the size and speed of skulks.
The reason you see win/loss being in favor of aliens in earlygame, is because aliens knows this fact.
So aliens bypass the marines and take their base down early on, because they can't compete very well in combat.
And also, winning or losing isn't always dependent on the Comm/Khamm. You could have the best Comm ever to live, but if you're given a bunch of derps who just want to be in an Exo all game and gather 100 resources, then that's hardly the commander's fault. I'd consider myself a pretty good PUB commander, and I've lost my fair share of games just because some people cannot shoot or open a map. But of course, as is the nature of entitled people "It's never my fault."
Marines can shotgun rush and win very easily
Sentries in Hive is still has the highest chance of success for marine wins in the first 5 min
You can also do 3 Infantry Portal > Phase Gate Rush but it requires more res/time to setup so not as favorable
If you play on a larger server skulk rush is pretty well a guaranteed failure strat because you go into egg lock so fast
Also, early game runs at a neat 100+ fps for me and is the complete opposite to the low fps nightmare of late game. Full with skulks with cele, cara and leap that, in an environment that runs at around 20 fps or so, almost looks like animated creatures from some sort of adventure film from the 60s, but sped up by 100% or more.
tldr: early game marine fun. early game fun period.
You know, I see these stats quoted all the time but I have a sincere doubt in their validity. Do these stats account for...
<ul><li>Repeat teams? New players often stack the same team over and over again. You can spend 3 hours in a single server with the same new players and the teams barely change between rounds. I doubt that the repeated teams are taken into account.</li><li>Map time against players active in server? Rounds are constantly being started 30 seconds before 3/4 of the server actually loads in and that first minute or so is pretty vital to shaping how the game will go. I doubt it's being taken into consideration.</li><li>The players' scores/kills/deaths/map times? Again, new players often stack Marines and more often than not, while I'm on, say, ns2_Docking, and holding Departures by myself against repeated attacks, the other 5 Marines on my team fail to hold Cafeteria against 2 Skulks. Of course this isn't being tracked at all.</li><li>Marine equipment logistics? I've seen many games otherwise in favor of a Marine victory go horrifically bad for said Marines when 4/6 Marines decide they all need to buy Grenade Launchers and Flamethrowers. Or you have 4/6 Marines with 100 PRes and no equipment for the entire game. The statistics accounting for this would probably be impossible to collect, as it is another "Are they new players?" stat.</li><li>Server stats? A laggy, low performance server is going to be hideously in favor of Aliens. How about those servers that have a 24 player cap? Are they included?</li></ul>
I mean, those are just the basic complaints I raise about the ns2stats crap constantly being used as an argument for balance claims. ######, I don't even know what servers this website is actually taking stats from, other than that list under the servers page with what, 60 entries? I mean, you don't use Little League Baseball stats to predict MLB games.
a) Repeatedly zerging nano/lava early game, hoping on the 26th attempt they make some ground.
b) Repeatedly pushing the side of the map that has the most red dots on it, instead of taking new territory.
c) Killing every cyst sequentially in a 100 long cyst train
d) Ensuring that any sneaky push is vanished by shooting at as many alien structures as possible
Hopefully these things all fade over time as marine comm is an incredible exercise in intensive babysitting for most pub matches. Whereas alien comm practically drives itself.
And also, winning or losing isn't always dependent on the Comm/Khamm. You could have the best Comm ever to live, but if you're given a bunch of derps who just want to be in an Exo all game and gather 100 resources, then that's hardly the commander's fault. I'd consider myself a pretty good PUB commander, and I've lost my fair share of games just because some people cannot shoot or open a map. But of course, as is the nature of entitled people "It's never my fault."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The commander can make mistakes that will lose you the game, but the commander can NEVER win you the game. Winning is contingent on marines. If you're in a hive rush that drags on for 5 minutes and never actually kills the hive, there was almost always nothing the commander could have done to make that too much easier on you. At a certain point your team just has to be able to do damage to important targets. I'd argue it's actually harder for marines to play "right" the commander's goal is pretty simple, more extractors, more tech points, and use the previous 2 to get upgrades as fast as possible. If either one of those 2 basics isn't happening, there's not a lot he can do about it.
<ul><li>Repeat teams? New players often stack the same team over and over again. You can spend 3 hours in a single server with the same new players and the teams barely change between rounds. I doubt that the repeated teams are taken into account.</li><li>Map time against players active in server? Rounds are constantly being started 30 seconds before 3/4 of the server actually loads in and that first minute or so is pretty vital to shaping how the game will go. I doubt it's being taken into consideration.</li><li>The players' scores/kills/deaths/map times? Again, new players often stack Marines and more often than not, while I'm on, say, ns2_Docking, and holding Departures by myself against repeated attacks, the other 5 Marines on my team fail to hold Cafeteria against 2 Skulks. Of course this isn't being tracked at all.</li><li>Marine equipment logistics? I've seen many games otherwise in favor of a Marine victory go horrifically bad for said Marines when 4/6 Marines decide they all need to buy Grenade Launchers and Flamethrowers. Or you have 4/6 Marines with 100 PRes and no equipment for the entire game. The statistics accounting for this would probably be impossible to collect, as it is another "Are they new players?" stat.</li><li>Server stats? A laggy, low performance server is going to be hideously in favor of Aliens. How about those servers that have a 24 player cap? Are they included?</li></ul>
I mean, those are just the basic complaints I raise about the ns2stats crap constantly being used as an argument for balance claims. ######, I don't even know what servers this website is actually taking stats from, other than that list under the servers page with what, 60 entries? I mean, you don't use Little League Baseball stats to predict MLB games.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes man factoring in flamethrower to grenade launcher ratio is basically the first lesson in virtually every statistics 101 course, closely followed by individual player skill because it is just so easy to quantify. What planet are you from?
I'm not sure what a possible fix could be here.
I've found there's a very good chance that a public player (in any video game) will flat out ignore all forms of player to player communication. I
I want to say that if the game had better commander features this might help. Perhaps some kind of 'standing order' that is constantly displayed on a marine players UI? For example, a commander could type "Attack Lava" which would be displayed constantly and assign a waypoint that never goes away. That's a simple suggestion, and in a perfect world it would help new players understand what their commander is asking of them even without and text/voice communication. Even still, I doubt it would yield any significant improvement in teamwork. In the end, it's a breakdown within teamwork that leads to these problems and other perceived balance issues.
Teamwork in pubs isn't common. It's not rare, but it's not common. Since NS2 is a game based entirely on teamwork, you get these kinds of problems that don't really have good solutions. I become easily frustrated when marines are so oblivious and don't make any effort to assist or try to learn. My short term solution: mute mics and pretend I'm playing a deathmatch game. My long term solution: wait for NS2:Combat to become more popular.
Right now the stats sit at ~100% win rate for aliens in the first 5 minutes. with a slight advantage to marines afterwards (assuming failed skulk rushes) to a steady 60% win rate for aliens between 10 and 20 minutes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm looking at the NS2STATS.org site. The graph you're referring to is bugged, I think. If you look at the "Wins By Round Length" then the far left corner says "-5 - 0 minutes" which is obviously a mistake. The second bar says "0-5 minutes." I'm assuming the left bar is an aggregate of games where it bugged out the round length for some reason. I don't think aliens truly win 100% of games that end in <5 minutes.
In the column labeled "0-5 minute games" you see marines with a winrate of 61%.
<ul><li>Repeat teams? New players often stack the same team over and over again. You can spend 3 hours in a single server with the same new players and the teams barely change between rounds. I doubt that the repeated teams are taken into account.</li><li>Map time against players active in server? Rounds are constantly being started 30 seconds before 3/4 of the server actually loads in and that first minute or so is pretty vital to shaping how the game will go. I doubt it's being taken into consideration.</li><li>The players' scores/kills/deaths/map times? Again, new players often stack Marines and more often than not, while I'm on, say, ns2_Docking, and holding Departures by myself against repeated attacks, the other 5 Marines on my team fail to hold Cafeteria against 2 Skulks. Of course this isn't being tracked at all.</li><li>Marine equipment logistics? I've seen many games otherwise in favor of a Marine victory go horrifically bad for said Marines when 4/6 Marines decide they all need to buy Grenade Launchers and Flamethrowers. Or you have 4/6 Marines with 100 PRes and no equipment for the entire game. The statistics accounting for this would probably be impossible to collect, as it is another "Are they new players?" stat.</li><li>Server stats? A laggy, low performance server is going to be hideously in favor of Aliens. How about those servers that have a 24 player cap? Are they included?</li></ul>
I mean, those are just the basic complaints I raise about the ns2stats crap constantly being used as an argument for balance claims. ######, I don't even know what servers this website is actually taking stats from, other than that list under the servers page with what, 60 entries? I mean, you don't use Little League Baseball stats to predict MLB games.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We're not talking about "predicting" MLB games. We're talking about changing game rules. I agree with you, the stats we have are not comprehensive or all we need. But they're a starting point.
The very best solution is a fleshed out, single player mode with bots where you comm, but that's a smidge more work.
The longer this game is out the harder it is for anyone to jump in and start learning as peoples expectations get higher over time.