It doesn't. Winning a single large engagement in a new techpoint is way more important than biting down a stupid RT.
It is?
Because biting down a stupid RT will cost the marines 10 TRes flat, plus 1 TRes per resource tick the RT stays down, plus 1 PRes per marine, per tick the RT stays down.
Say you have a team of eight, the RT stays down for 3 res ticks, that costs 13 TRes and 24 PRes. Assuming you used a skulk to bite the RT or you used something else and survived (and there is little reason why you wouldn't), it cost your team nothing, save a minute or two of one skulk's time.
Conversely, say you win a large fight at a tech node. That probably means you took some material losses in that fight so let's say it costs you oh, 25 PRes in gear, one shotgun and one welder, or just under one lerk, or a gorge or two and some spare hydras.
That gains you... well nothing really, you got a room, the room presumably didn't have much in it, and it cost you a full commitment of your team for the duration of the fight (during which time, skulks are probably eating your res nodes) and you have to expend more money to develop the tech point. Certainly you won the tech point but, there are lots of tech points. Wouldn't it be easier to find a less contested one? Or more profitable to wait for aliens/marines to drop some structures there and then destroy them, wasting their res?
Chomping/axing down an RT is one of the most efficient single uses of player time and resources that you are capable of making in a game of NS. It costs the enemy time and money, quite a lot of time and money in fact, as marines especially need to divert players to rebuilding their RTs, and aliens need to divert players to clearing out marines from destroyed RTs.
Unless the tech point has a lot of enemy materiel in it, fighting for it is kind of a waste of your time and money.
That one RT tied up a skulk for 30 seconds, it also still generated 5 pres and 5 tres while it was dying. Securing an important techpoint is often licence for 2-3 easily held RTs, my thinking and logic was long term.
It doesn't. Winning a single large engagement in a new techpoint is way more important than biting down a stupid RT.
It is?
Because biting down a stupid RT will cost the marines 10 TRes flat, plus 1 TRes per resource tick the RT stays down, plus 1 PRes per marine, per tick the RT stays down.
Say you have a team of eight, the RT stays down for 3 res ticks, that costs 13 TRes and 24 PRes. Assuming you used a skulk to bite the RT or you used something else and survived (and there is little reason why you wouldn't), it cost your team nothing, save a minute or two of one skulk's time.
Conversely, say you win a large fight at a tech node. That probably means you took some material losses in that fight so let's say it costs you oh, 25 PRes in gear, one shotgun and one welder, or just under one lerk, or a gorge or two and some spare hydras.
That gains you... well nothing really, you got a room, the room presumably didn't have much in it, and it cost you a full commitment of your team for the duration of the fight (during which time, skulks are probably eating your res nodes) and you have to expend more money to develop the tech point. Certainly you won the tech point but, there are lots of tech points. Wouldn't it be easier to find a less contested one? Or more profitable to wait for aliens/marines to drop some structures there and then destroy them, wasting their res?
Chomping/axing down an RT is one of the most efficient single uses of player time and resources that you are capable of making in a game of NS. It costs the enemy time and money, quite a lot of time and money in fact, as marines especially need to divert players to rebuilding their RTs, and aliens need to divert players to clearing out marines from destroyed RTs.
Unless the tech point has a lot of enemy materiel in it, fighting for it is kind of a waste of your time and money.
It's a pain to simply get another tech point, especially as marines. Without a second tech point, marines have no chance of winning at all. There are many situations where I will place the priority of a second tech point above a single RT that can be rebuilt later.
It doesn't. Winning a single large engagement in a new techpoint is way more important than biting down a stupid RT.
It is?
Because biting down a stupid RT will cost the marines 10 TRes flat, plus 1 TRes per resource tick the RT stays down, plus 1 PRes per marine, per tick the RT stays down.
Say you have a team of eight, the RT stays down for 3 res ticks, that costs 13 TRes and 24 PRes. Assuming you used a skulk to bite the RT or you used something else and survived (and there is little reason why you wouldn't), it cost your team nothing, save a minute or two of one skulk's time.
Conversely, say you win a large fight at a tech node. That probably means you took some material losses in that fight so let's say it costs you oh, 25 PRes in gear, one shotgun and one welder, or just under one lerk, or a gorge or two and some spare hydras.
That gains you... well nothing really, you got a room, the room presumably didn't have much in it, and it cost you a full commitment of your team for the duration of the fight (during which time, skulks are probably eating your res nodes) and you have to expend more money to develop the tech point. Certainly you won the tech point but, there are lots of tech points. Wouldn't it be easier to find a less contested one? Or more profitable to wait for aliens/marines to drop some structures there and then destroy them, wasting their res?
Chomping/axing down an RT is one of the most efficient single uses of player time and resources that you are capable of making in a game of NS. It costs the enemy time and money, quite a lot of time and money in fact, as marines especially need to divert players to rebuilding their RTs, and aliens need to divert players to clearing out marines from destroyed RTs.
Unless the tech point has a lot of enemy materiel in it, fighting for it is kind of a waste of your time and money.
That one RT tied up a skulk for 30 seconds, it also still generated 5 pres and 5 tres while it was dying. Securing an important techpoint is often licence for 2-3 easily held RTs, my thinking and logic was long term.
30 seconds of skulk time is not an expensive price, and it would generate those resources anyway if you left it alone. The point is you are spending x amount of player time for x amount of enemy loss, 30 seconds of skulk time is worth the numbers I suggested. Destroying RTs is one of the most powerful material losses you can inflict with such a small investment of time and effort. Probably up there with killing an exo or onos if you manage to take out two RTs, Every one of these you destroy, and every resource tick you make them waste is taking money out of their account. It's holding them back while you advance, and it's a very safe strategy.
Yes you need your second tech point, but the more RTs you destroy, the more the other losses you inflict hurt the enemy, and the more time you buy to get that second tech point, and the better position you'll be in when you get it, and the more resources you can afford to spend on getting it.
It's a pain to simply get another tech point, especially as marines. Without a second tech point, marines have no chance of winning at all. There are many situations where I will place the priority of a second tech point above a single RT that can be rebuilt later.
I mean why go for the contested one in the first place. If you have to fight a war just to be able to place stuff in the room, you're probably going for the wrong point. Find one less contested and defend it, that way you can, if nothing else, earn its extractor income while fighting for it.
At the stage when you really need tech points, you shouldn't be fighting wars just to be able to place things in them.
Not SureJoin Date: 2013-01-06Member: 177758Members
I've played plenty of games where I died nonstop all game, getting scores like 17-20 and when I look at my res it's maybe 5-10 lower than everyone else. That's not exactly a huge difference when you're pubbing.
I don't think you lose enough res while you're dead to justify hiding in a corner all game until you have a fade, unless you're just a huge asshole who knows that you'll get about a minute and a half of marines with zero armor if you do that because it's a pub and people are generally bad.
I see it as fast practice for stuff that costs res so you know what to do when it counts in a real game. other than that it's (can be) just a bunch of team stacking.
Structure interaction has definitely gone overboard. Build armouries everywhere, build the power, kill the cyst, kill the cyst, kill the crag farm, kill the cyst. I don't find it particularly gratifying OR tactical. Most of those responsibilities could be removed entirely and there would still be a huge amount of depth in the game.
3) you could idle near hive/ip, drink a tea/read a book and begin to play when you have enough pres to go onos/exo/stuff like that.
This is a silly game decision.
For the life of me I can't understand why an afk kick was not forcefully implemented on all servers a long time ago.
It should be:
30 seconds of in game afk = no more res build up.
2 minutes of afk = ready room for you.
If server full, another 1 minute in ready room and you are kicked completely. (This gives 3 minutes to get up, take a slash with enough time to wash hands one would hope)
If server not full you remain in ready room until it is, then you are straight out.
KanehJoin Date: 2012-12-11Member: 174783Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
i was a little extreme with my statements, but that always helps to get discussion started =P
to clarify, you do have to fight eventually, but there are way too many mechanics in the game that encourage straight up passivity (camping), or avoid combat and doing something soul-draining (attacking/building structures is usually a better option). Many of these mechanics also really hurt new players and, in my opinion, their view of the game.
Things like the alien upgrades too are way more biased towards avoiding actual combat. celerity disables itself when you hit or get hit. cloak is horrendously frustrating as a marine and promotes camping as an alien. adrenaline being double energy reserves instead of regen promotes less constant harass and poking and instead promotes one big all-in (suicide gorges for example). Regen disabling itself for so long also promotes less harass and combat. All somewhat minor things, but added together the entire game seems to want you to just fight one battle every couple of minutes and then posture and do housekeeping for the majority of the time.
it's not completely game-breaking, but it does really hurt the level of action, and for me, the amount of fun i get. I really rather be going out there and testing my fps skills instead of "doing the right thing" and avoiding battles. I rather be shooting skulks instead of yet another cyst.
I've played plenty of games where I died nonstop all game, getting scores like 17-20 and when I look at my res it's maybe 5-10 lower than everyone else. That's not exactly a huge difference when you're pubbing.
I don't think you lose enough res while you're dead to justify hiding in a corner all game until you have a fade, unless you're just a huge asshole who knows that you'll get about a minute and a half of marines with zero armor if you do that because it's a pub and people are generally bad.
here's the thing. For every second dead, it delays that onos by a second. If you could get onos normally at around 15 mins into the game, but spent a good 3 minutes of it dead, then you onos becomes an 18 minute onos. What if marines get JPs at 16 or 17 minutes? suddenly you can't break that 2nd tech point and the game snowballs. It's a very plausible situation.
Its made even worse if you're trying to get a lerk out quickly. the difference between a 4 min and a 5 min lerk is huge. all it takes is 3-4 deaths to set yourself back by a minute.
That one RT tied up a skulk for 30 seconds, it also still generated 5 pres and 5 tres while it was dying. Securing an important techpoint is often licence for 2-3 easily held RTs, my thinking and logic was long term.
yeah, my point is that save the few important battles, a skulk going some important lifeform will do his best to avoid combat. which seems like the scale is tipped too far towards RTS elements when the majority of the players are playing a FPS.
seems like the scale is tipped too far towards RTS elements when the majority of the players are playing a FPS.
Actually, all the players are playing an RTS. The majority just happen to have an FPS-style user interface, so the confusion here is quite understandable.
I think people play passive as Marines because they can't hit skulks with the LMG so they decide to be a dedicated builder. After being downed by a team of skulks while running around lost and by themselves, I think a lot of players without microphones find themselves in this boat. Eventually they might learn to move as a team and follow directions, but they might just as easily quit because it's 'too hard'. Say what you will about that being bad or good, but I think it has a big part to play.
This is only one terrible side effect of hyper accurate fully automatic weapons. I'm not saying it's necessarily L2P either, FPS probably plays a pretty big role here too.
Basically NS2 says to the player "Buy a mic and a pro rig or GTFO". I expected that, personally, but there are plenty of people that don't have microphones and are trying to play with 15 FPS. They will never be anything except cannon fodder.
seems like the scale is tipped too far towards RTS elements when the majority of the players are playing a FPS.
Actually, all the players are playing an RTS. The majority just happen to have an FPS-style user interface, so the confusion here is quite understandable.
your semantics aren't particularly enlightening. point remains that people are doing boring things and fighting with silly mechanics that slow down the pace too much.
How much time do you really spend building, especially if you don't want to? Then again, games like SimCity and Starcraft exist for a reason.
However, most of the time when I'm doing "housekeeping" (your words), it's the most tense moments in the game. Building an armory in enemy territory or chomping on a RT while trying to time out the jump on the attacking marine, good times.
NS2 gameplay is not intended to (directly) reward FPS elements, because the game is at its heart about the RTS elements - territory control, resource management, and strategies/counter-strategies. Players shouldn't expect the game to encourage combat for the sake of combat, which seems to be the point of your complaint. Even as field players, they should be working towards strategic objectives, which may not necessarily involve as much combat as you'd find in a typical shooter.
My point is that you are expecting the game to be something it's not, is not intended to be, and does not need to be.
Structure interaction has definitely gone overboard. Build armouries everywhere, build the power, kill the cyst, kill the cyst, kill the crag farm, kill the cyst. I don't find it particularly gratifying OR tactical. Most of those responsibilities could be removed entirely and there would still be a huge amount of depth in the game.
What actions, besides shooting other player's, would there be?
@Kaneh You may actually enjoy the NS_Combat mod. Some servers run it, so give it a try! You might like it.
honestly, i do, which is what frustrates me the most. I would mostly rather play combat in NS2 because I find classic NS2 to be so drawn out and tedious. And i would've never touched combat in ns1.
NS2 gameplay is not intended to (directly) reward FPS elements, because the game is at its heart about the RTS elements - territory control, resource management, and strategies/counter-strategies. Players shouldn't expect the game to encourage combat for the sake of combat, which seems to be the point of your complaint. Even as field players, they should be working towards strategic objectives, which may not necessarily involve as much combat as you'd find in a typical shooter.
My point is that you are expecting the game to be something it's not, is not intended to be, and does not need to be.
however, most of the time, people are not "Working towards strategic objectives". Too much of the time is spent simply waiting for something to happen. Much of this downtime can be removed without hurting any of the depth, as tweadle said. Options are actually limited because of they way much of the game is structured.
For example, cysts. pre-nerf cyst spamming was actually a legitimate tactic to delay marines. In fact, marines spent so much time killing inanimate structures they had to nerf it. Even now it is still a relatively tedious process to clear cysts out of a room, and it isn't a particularly strategic action. Mostly what I'm advocating is the removal or reduction of more of these types of actions.
take that example of saving for onos. If dying didn't stop your res income, you could be much more active about denying res. Going and actively stop the marines capping nodes instead of just chewing the structure. or go and apply pressure to a base to force a marine response and stop capping that way. Not only does this open up more decisions, you can STILL just bite RTs if you so desire.
It's not combat that I'm specifically advocating an increase of, but an increase in time spent making meaningful choices and doing meaningful actions.
I tend to agree. As marine it seems like i'm the one running back and forth between skylights and overlook "defending" our nodes that take 27secs for a skulk to kill... Sure killing or dying is combat but its not at the frontlines.
Then i rebuild the power, and the res and rinse/repeat.
Last game, I'v seen a marine camping for the whole round in the vent between skylight and overlook. We didn't even hold overlook for most of the game (Subsector mainhive). All the marines kept running around the map, trying to secure rts that were chewed down as soon as they moved on to the next. Never managed any agression until we lost pipe and we made a last effort push on sub. Had a pg in overlook and we took out the all the higher lifeforms the aliens had by that time. Didnt matter though, as soon as we pushed into the hive, some alien killed our pg and we eventually got picked off - it is impossible to kill a defended hive with your pg down.
When I'm attacking a hive, I actually want to focus on killing the hive and not have to clean out the eggs first. A group of marines shooting a hive without aliens defending should result in a quick death. Sadly, this is only possible in poorly designed hive rooms where marines can shoot the hive from afar, without entering the room. If marines enter a room and shoot the hive, the first alien spawn wave always catches them with their pants down (since they emptied their mags into the hive).
however, most of the time, people are not "Working towards strategic objectives". Too much of the time is spent simply waiting for something to happen. [..] It's not combat that I'm specifically advocating an increase of, but an increase in time spent making meaningful choices and doing meaningful actions.
That's a fair point. A very good point, actually.
The lead designer of my favorite RTS says that too many games are about actions and activity rather than choices and decisions. He prefers games where a single decision is executed with a single action, and all the "busywork" involving routine actions with no non-trivial decisionmaking is automated for the player by the game.
In NS2, you could (in fact, you did) make a comparable point about decisions vs. downtime. Deciding to take down an RT or clear a room of cysts is an interesting decision, but then the execution of that decision is just sitting there doing nothing for a while. That doesn't sound like a great game mechanic, does it?
There's another factor to consider, though. In NS2 (as in any other RTS) time is a critical resource. The reason that taking down an RT is a strategic decision is that it takes time to do so. Deciding whether to spend man-seconds killing an RT vs moving forward vs moving to base is important, and if killing an RT didn't take any time then there wouldn't be any decision to make.
I think you got that wrong. The skulk chewing on the rt is not playing the RTS, he is the unit who has to do the work that is automated in a RTS. Therefore decision vs downtime does not apply for a skulk, he needs busywork.
'FPS First RTS Second'! Not when playing marines it ain't. Also, I think it's the result of poor design implementation that all new players actually assume marines have to play defensively, proceed cautiously, etc. I would much rather this was more the case to be honest, at least then the first 5 minutes of the game wouldn't be so absolutely crucial and marines wouldn't need to solely focus on killing or slowing down the alien economy.
Passive marine gameplay is incredibly boring for both teams and should never be encouraged. Whatever change is needed to get more marines playing aggressively should happen.
Structure interaction has definitely gone overboard. Build armouries everywhere, build the power, kill the cyst, kill the cyst, kill the crag farm, kill the cyst. I don't find it particularly gratifying OR tactical. Most of those responsibilities could be removed entirely and there would still be a huge amount of depth in the game.
What actions, besides shooting other player's, would there be?
Well firstly I think that should be the primary action obviously. Secondly, I'm not advocating the removal of structure interaction in its entirety. I absolutely love the bits of it that reflect and provoke genuinely thoughtful approaches - anything else, I deem to be repetitive clutter and fluff.
As examples: Take the 10 Tres armouries which make it incredibly hard to justify spending res on medpacks at lower levels (a far more engaging mechanic). In a similar vein, look at cysts and powernodes which are obligatory aspects of the game that never reflect choice in a meaningful way. Finally, observe the frequent abundance of res that Khammanders have in games where the question is never whether to build something, it's how many and where. Unfortunately, the answer to this is often "thousands" and "everywhere".
The current state of (public) NS2 is an armoury, phasegate, obs (and ultimately the CC) at most tech points. Throw in some turrets in the particularly bad games, advance armouries in most normal ones and hundreds of cysts in every one? That's why I think it's gone overboard. I don't believe these are the results of genuinely interesting decisions and I certainly don't think the consequences are fun to play with or against.
Structure interaction has definitely gone overboard. Build armouries everywhere, build the power, kill the cyst, kill the cyst, kill the crag farm, kill the cyst. I don't find it particularly gratifying OR tactical. Most of those responsibilities could be removed entirely and there would still be a huge amount of depth in the game.
What actions, besides shooting other player's, would there be?
Well firstly I think that should be the primary action obviously. Secondly, I'm not advocating the removal of structure interaction in its entirety. I absolutely love the bits of it that reflect and provoke genuinely thoughtful approaches - anything else, I deem to be repetitive clutter and fluff.
In NS1, I really liked that the gorge was a sort of dedicated "house keeper". I like some intense shooting as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just want a break from things, and to take it easy and spend your time contributing in other, less active ways. The NS2 gorge seems to have lost a lot of that since you can't really contribute much, other than to put your Hydras in the most obnoxious and active areas on the map and stand around and heal them.
Similarly, in NS1 due to the speed of marines and sizes of the map, there always seemed to be the spearhead group, who went in the most obvious direction, and then the one or two players who went the long way to cap those outlying resource nodes. It was always nice being one of those guys in the more secluded areas of the map every once in a while. With things as they are now though, every part of the map seems to be all action all the time.
Not saying its bad. Its just different. Not much time to take a breath. I definitely find myself burning out faster in NS2 than in NS1. I could play NS1 4, 5 6 hours straight. Switching between active and passive roles all the time. I can only really manage 1, max 2 hours of NS2 at a time though.
Structure interaction has definitely gone overboard. Build armouries everywhere, build the power, kill the cyst, kill the cyst, kill the crag farm, kill the cyst. I don't find it particularly gratifying OR tactical. Most of those responsibilities could be removed entirely and there would still be a huge amount of depth in the game.
What actions, besides shooting other player's, would there be?
Well firstly I think that should be the primary action obviously. Secondly, I'm not advocating the removal of structure interaction in its entirety. I absolutely love the bits of it that reflect and provoke genuinely thoughtful approaches - anything else, I deem to be repetitive clutter and fluff.
As examples: Take the 10 Tres armouries which make it incredibly hard to justify spending res on medpacks at lower levels (a far more engaging mechanic). In a similar vein, look at cysts and powernodes which are obligatory aspects of the game that never reflect choice in a meaningful way. Finally, observe the frequent abundance of res that Khammanders have in games where the question is never whether to build something, it's how many and where. Unfortunately, the answer to this is often "thousands" and "everywhere".
The current state of (public) NS2 is an armoury, phasegate, obs (and ultimately the CC) at most tech points. Throw in some turrets in the particularly bad games, advance armouries in most normal ones and hundreds of cysts in every one? That's why I think it's gone overboard. I don't believe these are the results of genuinely interesting decisions and I certainly don't think the consequences are fun to play with or against.
This is how it was in NS1, except that armories weren't nearly as powerful.
Yeah, go ahead, avoid combat. See how well that ends for your team.
Honestly, I win the majority of my games as rines commander by having my team just hold its 2 hive locations and nearby res. Not pushing any further until I at least have JPs done. Expansion in NS2 is tricky and as the OP stated, not really profitable in the long run.
NS1 had many more incentives for pushing forth such as kills giving extra res, unlimited turrets, etc.
The more I play NS2, the more I wish they would just give in and reinstate the exact gameplay as NS1.
In NS1, I really liked that the gorge was a sort of dedicated "house keeper". I like some intense shooting as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just want a break from things, and to take it easy and spend your time contributing in other, less active ways. The NS2 gorge seems to have lost a lot of that since you can't really contribute much, other than to put your Hydras in the most obnoxious and active areas on the map and stand around and heal them.
Similarly, in NS1 due to the speed of marines and sizes of the map, there always seemed to be the spearhead group, who went in the most obvious direction, and then the one or two players who went the long way to cap those outlying resource nodes. It was always nice being one of those guys in the more secluded areas of the map every once in a while. With things as they are now though, every part of the map seems to be all action all the time.
Not saying its bad. Its just different. Not much time to take a breath. I definitely find myself burning out faster in NS2 than in NS1. I could play NS1 4, 5 6 hours straight. Switching between active and passive roles all the time. I can only really manage 1, max 2 hours of NS2 at a time though.
Yup, I pretty much agree with this. You could definitely carve out a role that had more of an emphasis on building but it was optional beyond the basics. It never felt superfluous either, you always felt needed and/or desired.
@SixtyWattMan
You're saying that it's the same in NS1 and then, in the same sentence, pointing out the major difference as if it's nothing. Are you using the 10res similarity to disagree with the rest of my post?
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Also one big problem in NS2 is serversize.
I almost never see a 16- spot one. A lot are 18 spots, and the rest is around 24+.
Competition goes 6 vs 6, and I do see the benefit. Maps are getting more cramped the more players you shove into them.
Of course you keep running to your Rts if you have a surplus of skulks on the map.
(also a surplus of marines, but most tend to do rather bad)
I've played plenty of games where I died nonstop all game, getting scores like 17-20 and when I look at my res it's maybe 5-10 lower than everyone else. That's not exactly a huge difference when you're pubbing.
I don't think you lose enough res while you're dead to justify hiding in a corner all game until you have a fade, unless you're just a huge asshole who knows that you'll get about a minute and a half of marines with zero armor if you do that because it's a pub and people are generally bad.
here's the thing. For every second dead, it delays that onos by a second. If you could get onos normally at around 15 mins into the game, but spent a good 3 minutes of it dead, then you onos becomes an 18 minute onos. What if marines get JPs at 16 or 17 minutes? suddenly you can't break that 2nd tech point and the game snowballs. It's a very plausible situation.
Its made even worse if you're trying to get a lerk out quickly. the difference between a 4 min and a 5 min lerk is huge. all it takes is 3-4 deaths to set yourself back by a minute.
Right, but if I spend all my time playing conservatively it's much more likely that the marines will have jetpacks at 8 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
Comments
That one RT tied up a skulk for 30 seconds, it also still generated 5 pres and 5 tres while it was dying. Securing an important techpoint is often licence for 2-3 easily held RTs, my thinking and logic was long term.
It's a pain to simply get another tech point, especially as marines. Without a second tech point, marines have no chance of winning at all. There are many situations where I will place the priority of a second tech point above a single RT that can be rebuilt later.
30 seconds of skulk time is not an expensive price, and it would generate those resources anyway if you left it alone. The point is you are spending x amount of player time for x amount of enemy loss, 30 seconds of skulk time is worth the numbers I suggested. Destroying RTs is one of the most powerful material losses you can inflict with such a small investment of time and effort. Probably up there with killing an exo or onos if you manage to take out two RTs, Every one of these you destroy, and every resource tick you make them waste is taking money out of their account. It's holding them back while you advance, and it's a very safe strategy.
Yes you need your second tech point, but the more RTs you destroy, the more the other losses you inflict hurt the enemy, and the more time you buy to get that second tech point, and the better position you'll be in when you get it, and the more resources you can afford to spend on getting it.
I mean why go for the contested one in the first place. If you have to fight a war just to be able to place stuff in the room, you're probably going for the wrong point. Find one less contested and defend it, that way you can, if nothing else, earn its extractor income while fighting for it.
At the stage when you really need tech points, you shouldn't be fighting wars just to be able to place things in them.
I don't think you lose enough res while you're dead to justify hiding in a corner all game until you have a fade, unless you're just a huge asshole who knows that you'll get about a minute and a half of marines with zero armor if you do that because it's a pub and people are generally bad.
This is a silly game decision.
For the life of me I can't understand why an afk kick was not forcefully implemented on all servers a long time ago.
It should be:
30 seconds of in game afk = no more res build up.
2 minutes of afk = ready room for you.
If server full, another 1 minute in ready room and you are kicked completely. (This gives 3 minutes to get up, take a slash with enough time to wash hands one would hope)
If server not full you remain in ready room until it is, then you are straight out.
to clarify, you do have to fight eventually, but there are way too many mechanics in the game that encourage straight up passivity (camping), or avoid combat and doing something soul-draining (attacking/building structures is usually a better option). Many of these mechanics also really hurt new players and, in my opinion, their view of the game.
Things like the alien upgrades too are way more biased towards avoiding actual combat. celerity disables itself when you hit or get hit. cloak is horrendously frustrating as a marine and promotes camping as an alien. adrenaline being double energy reserves instead of regen promotes less constant harass and poking and instead promotes one big all-in (suicide gorges for example). Regen disabling itself for so long also promotes less harass and combat. All somewhat minor things, but added together the entire game seems to want you to just fight one battle every couple of minutes and then posture and do housekeeping for the majority of the time.
it's not completely game-breaking, but it does really hurt the level of action, and for me, the amount of fun i get. I really rather be going out there and testing my fps skills instead of "doing the right thing" and avoiding battles. I rather be shooting skulks instead of yet another cyst.
here's the thing. For every second dead, it delays that onos by a second. If you could get onos normally at around 15 mins into the game, but spent a good 3 minutes of it dead, then you onos becomes an 18 minute onos. What if marines get JPs at 16 or 17 minutes? suddenly you can't break that 2nd tech point and the game snowballs. It's a very plausible situation.
Its made even worse if you're trying to get a lerk out quickly. the difference between a 4 min and a 5 min lerk is huge. all it takes is 3-4 deaths to set yourself back by a minute.
yeah, my point is that save the few important battles, a skulk going some important lifeform will do his best to avoid combat. which seems like the scale is tipped too far towards RTS elements when the majority of the players are playing a FPS.
Actually, all the players are playing an RTS. The majority just happen to have an FPS-style user interface, so the confusion here is quite understandable.
This is only one terrible side effect of hyper accurate fully automatic weapons. I'm not saying it's necessarily L2P either, FPS probably plays a pretty big role here too.
Basically NS2 says to the player "Buy a mic and a pro rig or GTFO". I expected that, personally, but there are plenty of people that don't have microphones and are trying to play with 15 FPS. They will never be anything except cannon fodder.
your semantics aren't particularly enlightening. point remains that people are doing boring things and fighting with silly mechanics that slow down the pace too much.
However, most of the time when I'm doing "housekeeping" (your words), it's the most tense moments in the game. Building an armory in enemy territory or chomping on a RT while trying to time out the jump on the attacking marine, good times.
NS2 gameplay is not intended to (directly) reward FPS elements, because the game is at its heart about the RTS elements - territory control, resource management, and strategies/counter-strategies. Players shouldn't expect the game to encourage combat for the sake of combat, which seems to be the point of your complaint. Even as field players, they should be working towards strategic objectives, which may not necessarily involve as much combat as you'd find in a typical shooter.
My point is that you are expecting the game to be something it's not, is not intended to be, and does not need to be.
What actions, besides shooting other player's, would there be?
honestly, i do, which is what frustrates me the most. I would mostly rather play combat in NS2 because I find classic NS2 to be so drawn out and tedious. And i would've never touched combat in ns1.
however, most of the time, people are not "Working towards strategic objectives". Too much of the time is spent simply waiting for something to happen. Much of this downtime can be removed without hurting any of the depth, as tweadle said. Options are actually limited because of they way much of the game is structured.
For example, cysts. pre-nerf cyst spamming was actually a legitimate tactic to delay marines. In fact, marines spent so much time killing inanimate structures they had to nerf it. Even now it is still a relatively tedious process to clear cysts out of a room, and it isn't a particularly strategic action. Mostly what I'm advocating is the removal or reduction of more of these types of actions.
take that example of saving for onos. If dying didn't stop your res income, you could be much more active about denying res. Going and actively stop the marines capping nodes instead of just chewing the structure. or go and apply pressure to a base to force a marine response and stop capping that way. Not only does this open up more decisions, you can STILL just bite RTs if you so desire.
It's not combat that I'm specifically advocating an increase of, but an increase in time spent making meaningful choices and doing meaningful actions.
Then i rebuild the power, and the res and rinse/repeat.
Last game, I'v seen a marine camping for the whole round in the vent between skylight and overlook. We didn't even hold overlook for most of the game (Subsector mainhive). All the marines kept running around the map, trying to secure rts that were chewed down as soon as they moved on to the next. Never managed any agression until we lost pipe and we made a last effort push on sub. Had a pg in overlook and we took out the all the higher lifeforms the aliens had by that time. Didnt matter though, as soon as we pushed into the hive, some alien killed our pg and we eventually got picked off - it is impossible to kill a defended hive with your pg down.
When I'm attacking a hive, I actually want to focus on killing the hive and not have to clean out the eggs first. A group of marines shooting a hive without aliens defending should result in a quick death. Sadly, this is only possible in poorly designed hive rooms where marines can shoot the hive from afar, without entering the room. If marines enter a room and shoot the hive, the first alien spawn wave always catches them with their pants down (since they emptied their mags into the hive).
That's a fair point. A very good point, actually.
The lead designer of my favorite RTS says that too many games are about actions and activity rather than choices and decisions. He prefers games where a single decision is executed with a single action, and all the "busywork" involving routine actions with no non-trivial decisionmaking is automated for the player by the game.
In NS2, you could (in fact, you did) make a comparable point about decisions vs. downtime. Deciding to take down an RT or clear a room of cysts is an interesting decision, but then the execution of that decision is just sitting there doing nothing for a while. That doesn't sound like a great game mechanic, does it?
There's another factor to consider, though. In NS2 (as in any other RTS) time is a critical resource. The reason that taking down an RT is a strategic decision is that it takes time to do so. Deciding whether to spend man-seconds killing an RT vs moving forward vs moving to base is important, and if killing an RT didn't take any time then there wouldn't be any decision to make.
Perhaps there's more to this topic than it seems.
Passive marine gameplay is incredibly boring for both teams and should never be encouraged. Whatever change is needed to get more marines playing aggressively should happen.
As examples: Take the 10 Tres armouries which make it incredibly hard to justify spending res on medpacks at lower levels (a far more engaging mechanic). In a similar vein, look at cysts and powernodes which are obligatory aspects of the game that never reflect choice in a meaningful way. Finally, observe the frequent abundance of res that Khammanders have in games where the question is never whether to build something, it's how many and where. Unfortunately, the answer to this is often "thousands" and "everywhere".
The current state of (public) NS2 is an armoury, phasegate, obs (and ultimately the CC) at most tech points. Throw in some turrets in the particularly bad games, advance armouries in most normal ones and hundreds of cysts in every one? That's why I think it's gone overboard. I don't believe these are the results of genuinely interesting decisions and I certainly don't think the consequences are fun to play with or against.
In NS1, I really liked that the gorge was a sort of dedicated "house keeper". I like some intense shooting as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just want a break from things, and to take it easy and spend your time contributing in other, less active ways. The NS2 gorge seems to have lost a lot of that since you can't really contribute much, other than to put your Hydras in the most obnoxious and active areas on the map and stand around and heal them.
Similarly, in NS1 due to the speed of marines and sizes of the map, there always seemed to be the spearhead group, who went in the most obvious direction, and then the one or two players who went the long way to cap those outlying resource nodes. It was always nice being one of those guys in the more secluded areas of the map every once in a while. With things as they are now though, every part of the map seems to be all action all the time.
Not saying its bad. Its just different. Not much time to take a breath. I definitely find myself burning out faster in NS2 than in NS1. I could play NS1 4, 5 6 hours straight. Switching between active and passive roles all the time. I can only really manage 1, max 2 hours of NS2 at a time though.
This is how it was in NS1, except that armories weren't nearly as powerful.
Honestly, I win the majority of my games as rines commander by having my team just hold its 2 hive locations and nearby res. Not pushing any further until I at least have JPs done. Expansion in NS2 is tricky and as the OP stated, not really profitable in the long run.
NS1 had many more incentives for pushing forth such as kills giving extra res, unlimited turrets, etc.
The more I play NS2, the more I wish they would just give in and reinstate the exact gameplay as NS1.
@SixtyWattMan
You're saying that it's the same in NS1 and then, in the same sentence, pointing out the major difference as if it's nothing. Are you using the 10res similarity to disagree with the rest of my post?
I almost never see a 16- spot one. A lot are 18 spots, and the rest is around 24+.
Competition goes 6 vs 6, and I do see the benefit. Maps are getting more cramped the more players you shove into them.
Of course you keep running to your Rts if you have a surplus of skulks on the map.
(also a surplus of marines, but most tend to do rather bad)
Right, but if I spend all my time playing conservatively it's much more likely that the marines will have jetpacks at 8 minutes instead of 15 minutes.