Losing to winning in 8 seconds.
briatx
Join Date: 2013-01-18 Member: 180352Members
Join Date: 2013-01-18 Member: 180352Members
So I ran across this today... I single it out because it's a prime example of what I consider to be one of the most broken aspects of the game.
There has been much whining and Aliens OP-ing and L2P-ing and L2aim-ing and L2scout-ing and L2-end-the-game-before-2nd-hive-ing and gnashing of teeth and Gorge hate. But just watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLAwy04eq2AQtn1Jsqfseg4b5u77oYwqaZ&v=xlzWy7rUZ5s&feature=player_detailpage#t=1077s
That looks to me like that's 1 Onos and 2 Gorges taking down power in ~8s, totally turning around a game in which the Aliens were about to lose.
Questions for today's studio audience:
1) What would the marines need in resources and players to achieve a shock effect similar to this, eg: game turnaround in 8 seconds? This was a 3 player attack at a cost of 95pres (and bile).
2) What would the marines need in resources and player count to defend against this.
3) In light of the above, do you think that this dynamic is balanced, or has a positive, negative or neutral affect on game balance.
While I'm whining, new free content is really awesome and appreciated, but I gotta laugh at a Gorge expansion patch right now. Priorities people.
There has been much whining and Aliens OP-ing and L2P-ing and L2aim-ing and L2scout-ing and L2-end-the-game-before-2nd-hive-ing and gnashing of teeth and Gorge hate. But just watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLAwy04eq2AQtn1Jsqfseg4b5u77oYwqaZ&v=xlzWy7rUZ5s&feature=player_detailpage#t=1077s
That looks to me like that's 1 Onos and 2 Gorges taking down power in ~8s, totally turning around a game in which the Aliens were about to lose.
Questions for today's studio audience:
1) What would the marines need in resources and players to achieve a shock effect similar to this, eg: game turnaround in 8 seconds? This was a 3 player attack at a cost of 95pres (and bile).
2) What would the marines need in resources and player count to defend against this.
3) In light of the above, do you think that this dynamic is balanced, or has a positive, negative or neutral affect on game balance.
While I'm whining, new free content is really awesome and appreciated, but I gotta laugh at a Gorge expansion patch right now. Priorities people.
Comments
It comes back to the same problem that can be found in other areas of the game: the marine comm is a tit, and the marines need to suckle on it constantly in order to survive; unlike the appropriately reptilian aliens who do their own thing, and don't need constant handling and routing. If the marine comm falters at all, the entire team sinks.
Something needs to be balanced, but things like this aren't the culprit.
IMHO, the inane power node mechanic is one of the biggest flaws in the game right now.
Yes but the Onos is needed for that bile rush to have any lasting effect. Two Gorges run into control and bile the power with no backup, meh. Tell the team to keep pushing, hop out chair, shotgun blast to Gorgies face, weld power node. Having the Onos stops this, no marine is going to 1v1 an Onos. In 90% of the time just a Fade would be enough, not many players can kill a Fade and 2 Gorges single handed.
Or you could PG, then beacon (15?) rush the hive, about 35 or so res on med,ammo,nano + whatever the rines had on them.
2)1 beacon would work (15), but risky
Spare arms lab would help (arms lab)
Com asked for help, if he had spare res dropping himself an exo to use (I have done that before)
Nano power while asking for retreat to Control might have worked
3) As always I think aliens have a slight advantage, but not really in this case, this was just bad luck on the rines side of being unable to kill Pipe fast
Also, I take it the Onos had cara, gorges had adren at some point?
And my major, final point: Risk vs. reward,
-Aliens might not have lost sub if 1 Onos and 2 Gorges hadn't been on the other side of the map, but they wanted to risk hitting the power at control, which paid off.
-Marines decided to keep hitting hives rather than beacon, risk that didn't pay off.
-Marines didn't try and recoup losses, kept pushing pipe/defending Cargo, not taking Sub or taking Control back with jetpacks. This risk (with the 1 Onos and 2 Gorges still around) did not pay off.
Of course, I'm not the best com for marines, so I usually end up doing the same, but after I can thing about what I did wrong, and what I could try for next time. That group of three did a perfectly executed tactical maneuverer and got the reward of victory from the jaws of defeat, nerfing the ability to pull this off seems cheap.
3)
Powernode design has inherent flaws which cannot be fixed without a more complicated ruleset (probably too unintuitive to be of benefit anyway).
HP scaling
In regard to your specific issue of power sniping, this is sadly the result of effectively compressing your normal 10-15k+ of building hp into 4k hp. If we were to increase powernode hp to 10k or so to match, you'd be stuck with a bunch of irrelevant powernodes all over the map that no sane alien would want to touch. Powernodes find it very difficult to scale.
Redundancy
In order to maintain the integrity of some of the positive aesthetic effects listed below, powernodes cannot have redundancies. NS2 at one point had 15 tres powerpacks that provided redundant power to linked structures, but these were removed and turned into sentry batteries. To this end, they diverge from the design of protoss pylons, and arguably for the worse. See Artosis Pylon
What does this mean for powernodes?
It's just how it is, and unfortunately something we will have to put up with gameplay wise. Powernodes arn't going anywhere because of their positive effects
-the lights off experience
-the increased tension and immersion
-the intuitiveness of what to attack first as aliens
-the added 'volatility' and 'dynamic' gameplay
-more intuitive visual indication of territorial control
My opinion: it's fine.
These base attacks don't appear from nothing. I don't know what happened in this game, but when "Aliens were about to lose" a desperation counter attack is not exactly surprising. And everybody knows how a desperation counter attack looks like.
Marine Comm could just have built 3 Armories and probably shielded the power node completely, or delayed enough for a beacon.
To answer your questions:
1. Teams are asymmetrical. Marines have a ball of death consisting of Exos, MACs, Marines, ARCs that Aliens can't engage in direct fight. They simply can't, especially not in narrow hallways (this is what seems to have happened in the video, judging from the map - Marines overwhelmed Aliens on 2 fronts despite Aliens having an Onos).
Marines can sit in 2 bases (with some more additional RTs) and still come out with tons of Dual Exos and crush 3 Hive Aliens in direct fight.
Counter attacking somewhere, using superior Alien mobility, is what Aliens have instead.
2. Again: you should know how likely it is coming. Nobody seems to have looked out for it. Did nobody wonder where the Onos is and what that means? No blocked power node. Comm can scan possible access routes when Marines are attacking an Alien Hive and the base is empty and apparently open to an attack during the obvious Marine final attacks. He didn't even scan when 3 red circles appear in the empty base? Beacon etc.
3. I like power nodes and think this comeback ability for Aliens is necessary. See 1. I see it positive in that the game balance would be worse without it.
I can see that it's frustrating that a single slip by the Marine Comm can have such dire consequences. That's how it is. It's not too different from a surprise Phase Gate in a Hive room.
TLDR: in order for a game to not be boring, sometimes things will be frustrating
Similarly a two man JP rush on a rear hive with flamethrowers (or level 3 shotguns) can break an alien assault (although probably not result in a loss of said rear hive(maybe some upgrades though))
The key to the alien victory in the video above is not the main base rush, it is what is happening off-screen and the pressure being applied to warehouse. The Onos needs to be used to draw attention because they have to dealt with. The rush to the base only works if pressure is being maintained at the front. Those JPs in warehouse were almost dead and repairing the power when the Onos arrived that means that while control was going down they were also pushing warehouse heavily, possibly dropping the power and as we heard hammering the Comm Chair.
2) A marine on phase duty could have spotted the attack on the minimap before the first gorge fires, coordinated fallback team of two additional marines immediately phase back and (this is the key) focus fire the gorges. This turns your 8s loss into, hopefully, a close call.
If marines are not close enough to a phase the comm should beacon, immediately after beaconing most marines B-line to the phasegate and try to get back to support the exo's in the field. It is a risk to beacon but if you have two Exo's pushing they should be able to cover each other well enough for ~10s. If it is one Exo why are you pushing. Single Exos are better suited for guard duty, be it a base or an Arc Train. Something to divide the attention of the little skulks.
They also could have had an exo guarding their main base (admittedly a big resource sink) but as soon as the Onos and Gorges see it they turn right around.
Unlike the aliens this requires a lot more planning and role designation and it requires one person to have the mostly boring job of phase babysitter. Also it is high risk for the marines to beacon during an exo push and low risk for the aliens (relatively anyway, since gorges are so cheap) which is why it is such an effective tactic.
Admittedly they also had marines defending Warehouse so they were stretched pretty thin. But that is the risk of a heavy push into a hive. But the marines held warehouse so why did the aliens hold pipeline AND sub. That is a little weird and the Aliens were not in as dire straits as they may have seemed anyway.
3)I guess my point is a little over powered, but the asymmetry of the styles of play is what makes this game so fun. Have to counter the raw destructive power of the aliens with coordination and heavy effort is what makes this game fun. Not to mention the wielding the destructive power of the aliens.
The only weapon that does 'heavy' damage, is the minigun. If you want to point out in the LUA where it says otherwise, I'd be happy to see it.
Maybe nodes should serve as the power function to light up the part of the map it is in for the com + marines so they would be flying blind if it goes down. In addition to entering the unknown, taking down a power node should disable/weaken the base over a few seconds. So a beacon would bring half the amount of players in and phases would take longer to phase as well as ips spawning slower until the juice runs out and the base goes dark if there is no adequate response. During this time the aliens can obviously wreck the rest of the base to prevent those responses.
This way it does shut down the base eventually, but they face a bit of resistance before overtaking the base if the marines actually respond.
Power nodes have no benefit.
Lights off experience? Rooms turn red in like 30 seconds giving good light.
Increased tension? Increased annoyance is a better phrase.
Intuitive? really? Take them away and by your example, an infantry portal is intuitive.
Explain the dynamics involved in IF WE LOSE POWER WE'RE FUCKED LOL
Territory isn't indicated by power nodes. It's indicated by armories and marine presence.
These are questions you should be asking UWE, not me.
Without the power node, indefinite turtling by the marines is possible. It is doing it's job very well and was designed to make the game feel like 'you could lose at any time'.
The real imbalance is that Aliens can win a game by "everyone do one thing", but Marines will lose easy if they try the same tactic. I've played games where the aliens do a gorge rush on main base and invest almost nothing in res nodes. The Marines did the right thing and built a quick second base and captured at least 5 RTs and killed several nodes. Even with very late nodes, the aliens were still able to invest in Lerks rather quickly and keep marines pinned to one base. The aliens made several mistakes and still won, while the marines made one mistake somewhat early and could never recover.
I don't have the LUA code out in front of me, but I've always been under the assumption that the onos used a different "standard" attack when attacking structures... As seen from the attack animation. From looking at the NS2 Wiki page (http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/index.php/Onos), you can see that this attack is called "Smash" which does the damage type "door"... after looking up this damage type on the wiki it appears that this damage type is similar to heavy (in that it does 1:1 vs. armor) except that it also does damage to doors (maybe a future feature). As I said I'd need to check the LUA code to confirm this; however, this was my understanding. Please let me know if this is correct or just the wiki being the wiki
The Onos' structure attack is Smash, which does Door damage(equivalent to Heavy)...
What he and I said... :P
The marine strenghts of even faster firerates and respawnrates than in ns1 just dont apply here, they get outplayed easily by hit and run, gorilla warfare.
Note that the in game damage indicators show the onos smash as doing 200 damage per hit vs a structure, and 100 damage vs an exo. When used against an Exo it definitely does heavy 1:1 damage.
9 times out of 10 you're just going to die and lose your stuff, same for both sides. only difference is that marines have a solid weapon against it (beacon)
Nah, it's better to attack powernode most of the time because of the lack of notification when it is being attacked (or very small/little notification so that it is easily missed.). The comm will get a much more prevelant notification when the obs is attacked. Most comms won't see/notice the powernode is being attacked before it is too late and can't beacon as a result due to the notification system. Also, most pub comms aren't fast enough to realize what is being attacked and hit the beacon before the powernode is down in 8 seconds.
There is nothing for the marines that will allow them to pretty much turn a match completely around in 8 seconds.
I've seen so many games be turned around as a result of a ninja powernode take down.
What should happen (if you have 1 cc and it is in that room) if it is attacked is a big warning sign, with the option to hit the beacon button.
Before people start saying 'that is too easy', if you implement a warning system, there is no point hiding it away as just another alert. It just confuses players, especially new ones.
Really the skill is to make the appropriate decision to beacon or not.
1v1? What one? Onos should be able to fight a single marine by himself, no matter the weapon or upgrades...
Jetpacker against an onos should be fairer; the jetpacker can run is needed and would have far more of a chance.
Exo fighting onos is usually a win to the exosuit... But it's rare to find a situation like that.
As for the rest of your argument @bERt0r, I'm not sure, but it’s mostly balanced around endgame which I would have thought marines with exosuits out would have a slight advantage. Don't marines normally have a strong endgame (provided res levels)?
I will most certainly agree with aliens need less teamwork however, but how to fix that?
It wasn't that unexpected. This happens a lot... which is sort of why I'm bringing it up. I'm cool with parry-riposte, punch-counterpunch, as long as Marines have similar "shock" capabilities, which is the first thing I asked and you ignored. Three Exos can take a Hive down scary fast... once they get there, if they get there. But at a cost of 225pres.
It just seems to me like things like wrecking/disabling a base in 8s is pretty important to being able to win the game. Once you talk about ease of winning the game, asymmetry flies out the window because balance dictates that both sides have equal ability to win, ceteris paribus.
Ninja PGs require more than 8 seconds to build. They require power nodes that require time to build as well. 120pres is 26% more than 95pres. And as other people have noted, just the 2 gorges would have likely succeeded as well, with a lower chance of success if there were any Marine defenders. With the Onos on point the Marines almost have to beacon or park a dual exo at base and building block the entrances. And I'm still not sure that would stop it.
Re: bad luck of being unable to kill Pipe fast enough. I think this is the crux of the issue at hand. Aliens seem to take down Marine bases so much faster than Marines can kill hives. Why is that? Don't you think that's a particular important factor to balance?
Very insightful and informed post. I actually like the power node dynamic... (the first time the lights went out was pretty epic) except when suicidal gorges are taking power down in my main base in 8-10s when I'm pushing Exos. It's hugely broken. Get rid of it or give the marines C4 that take 8s to setup that will allow Marines to blow big chunks out of Alien hives. I would prefer fixing the power nodes somehow.
Some excellent points. I agree with a lot of it. I think the Marines could have lost Cargo and come back. But losing main, their adv armory, their proto... means no jetpacks or exos for several minutes at best.
If you are pushing Exos and beacon, you are probably going to lose those Exos. You can mitigate it to some degree with MACs. But If the marines in this video beacon, they lose Cargo.
Aliens will do this when Marines are attacking because they know the Commander is focused elsewhere. This is why most of you that blame Comm attention span are misguided. It basically means you are trying to assert that the Comm can't take eyes off of main for more than 5s so they can get the beacon in before power goes down. They might save the base but then lose the Exos and the Onos will probably still be able to run off.
I'm ok with asymmetry in styles of play. I am NOT ok with asymmetry in ease of winning the game. Which is the central issue here, IMO.
Yes, losing. If you listen to the alien team chatter, you hear things like: "We need to stall them" and "We're going to lose." Aliens had 2 of the 4 tech points before the raid (that's exactly half, by the way) and only 3RTs. I don't know how else to say it really, but you're wrong here. Marines had more of the map.
If you assert that Marines should feel like they can lose at any time, then I ask you if the Aliens have that same level of anxiety. I don't think they do. I think it's a major imbalance and a huge flaw. If we think that it's good, then you need to give Marines something (not the same thing) that will fulfill the same general capability. Or at least an affordable counter for it.
Ok, so to answer my own questions:
1) To achieve this level of shock effect, I think Marines pretty much need 3 Exos (3 players, 225pres), OR a serious ARC train (say 5... 75Tres ) plus escort (4 shotgun marines? 80pres), or maybe 5 marines with jetpacks and flamers (150-175pres).
The Exos and ARCs move so slow they will be seen coming a mile away. They are also ridiculously expensive compared to the Alien strike package. The marine strike is more expensive both in player count and pres.
The only conclusion I can make here is that the Marines have nothing that can damage the Aliens in that timespan for that cost. But I think we all knew that already.
2) I think a Dual Exo with armories blocking off the exits *might* have a chance at fending off the attack... or at least delaying it. But with bile, you really need to have a marine there with a welder to babysit. I think MACs would just blow up after bile. So min cost of static defense: 80pres + 20Tres for blocking armories. Boring job and a lot of pres wasted defending base. This gives Aliens a 2 player advantage everywhere else on the map. Can you even imagine an Onos tied up in base defense? I can't.
But it's doable I guess. I find it funny that so many people criticize marines for not being aggressive... and when they do they just get their power biled and lose. :P
A beacon is really out of the question if you are pushing Exos or ARCs. That's assuming you even notice in time and react.
3) Balance. It just seems obviously overpowered to me (which is why I brought it up). I just don't think that either side should have the ability to wreck a base so quickly, so cheaply, so effectively and so consistently. If one side has that capability, I think it will be forever hopelessly imbalanced if you don't give the other side a similar capability. Because it is so crucial to the outcome of the game.
Ok, think I said everything I wanted to. I'll get off the soapbox now.
I'm not sure taking out power nodes is the right thing to do anyway. But certainly you don't need an 8s takedown time so that pub games can end.
Pubs are overly quick to concede these days anyway, so your point is kinda moot.