@Grissi
You're assuming that rewarding player skill is a good thing.
it is, why do you think cod is so popular?
Call of Duty has plenty of mechanics in place that allow even the worst player to get a lucky kill against a pro player from time to time, due to the low TTK (even pros can't cover all corners in a battle against multiple enemies and will eventually die to one of them), gadgets that can give huge advantages and weapons that are easy to use for newbies but still very powerful (noob tube, martydom).
Even people who are rather bad at games and would fail at more complex game mechanics can get some good moments that way from time to time (see it regularly when my old man plays CoD4 vs playing any other action game I give him) - that is rather the opposite concept of rewarding only player skill. Plus CoD has an engaging singleplayer campaign to pull players in who will then end up in the MP after beating it, even if they didn't intend to when they originally bought the game.
RFK should go to tres, marine upgrades need to take longer to research, alien pres gain should ever so slightly get nudged down instead of the parity between the two teams, hives are now a pres drop and require a gorge to build.
I believe this would introduce the god hand aspect of NS1 back into NS2 from the commanders, marine comms in pub should have enough res that dropping a pack or two of mines or welders or a SG or 2 before 15 minutes isn't completely unheard of yet still juggle enough tres for engagements and upgrades. For aliens and specifically 6v6 pres hive drop eliminates one fade from the get go and to recompense him a tres drop or anyone with more tres drops ensures aliens can't just suicide themselves into marine bases 24/7. Alien pres gain is dragged out so fades go back to a 8-10 min drop on 3-4 RT, the current timings of lifeforms are ridiculous without the alien team winning all their engagements.
Marines upgrades are dragged out to ensure that if marines win all their early engagements then to stay on top they need to keep working as a team, it should be enough time to prevent marines from closing games out before fades just from 1-2 alien RT snipes, also dragged out to give commanders the option to drop weapons/support items for pushes, I'm not sure how to make that more attractive then dropping sentries every game with the spare tres but YOLO. I'd also increase PG research time by a lot or add to the cost, 2 min phase gates in pubs are getting boring knowing that a marine/marines just need 20 seconds to themselves in rooms before being able to reinforce the entire marine team into specific locations, specifically tech nodes, specifically the only 2 open tech nodes on veil/docking, specifically sorting/XR on mineshaft/summit, anytime. I'd probably just unfuck the passive scan on the obs and make it cost 20 tres and see if people use it more offensively or not outside of central in mineshaft or nano on veil.
I can't see any other way of breaking the fade ball without making hive a pres cost, I thought about pres RTs but that just means good alien starts snowball into great ones and probably accelerate the ball, at least in 6v6 or even higher pop games no less then 2 people are out of pocket for life forms due to hive drop duty, I think alien comm is in a good enough spot as semi perm gorge and he provides enough benefit to the team without enabling him to drop hives, he's easily able to wall off/hydra the main or natural expansion, he probably does tunnels to the 2nd hive and is easily able to assist or lead the counter engagement on the first 3 alien RTs. He's also in control of drifters and their active abilities as well as general map presence, he does shit.
Those changes alone should bring back the more skirmish feel that NS 1 had, where marines were constantly pressing out of base and sweeping aliens encroaching on their area of the map and pushing out to destroy the alien side, at the moment with cheap and fast PG, fast life forms and no penalty for death at all the game feels like a horrible arcade wash of combat and NS 1. And give onos at least 200 more armour back, what a moronic knee jerk decision that was.
The problem with using tres in ns2 is the scaling of numbers. It was a smaller issue in ns1 since you had to equip all your marines anyway but in ns2 the marine commander only has to spend res on basic structures and research. This means they would get a overflow of resource really quickly in games with high number of players. It would be even worse if the aliens would get that feature since they already have a overflow issue even without getting extra resources. Even though it would be nice to see RFK give tres I doubt the core resource mechanic allows for it.
GhoulofGSG9Join Date: 2013-03-31Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
edited August 2013
Imho if RFK would add tres we would create new balance problems. Aliens could expand even faster and get even faster their upgrades and abillities. Because marines have to build stuff in the first minutes of a round while aliens just could focus completly on farming tres for their team. And i hope we agree about that aliens don't need a buff atm.
Or you just get rid of the alien tres + khammander after all...
The biggest pro for RFK is that it is just incredibly counterintuitive for a game centered around earning res, with a personal res counter on your hud all the time to not reward you for killing stuff. The main reason why counterstrike was so successful was because you earned money when you killed enemies, it was the first shooter that did that afaik. This is what games are all about, rewards for pulling off great plays.
Or you just get rid of the alien tres + khammander after all...
The biggest pro for RFK is that it is just incredibly counterintuitive for a game centered around earning res, with a personal res counter on your hud all the time to not reward you for killing stuff. The main reason why counterstrike was so successful was because you earned money when you killed enemies, it was the first shooter that did that afaik. This is what games are all about, rewards for pulling off great plays.
You could also use a RFP system to reward players without removing the khamm
I was not being serious there although I still fail to see the merits of the khamm + alien tres system has compared to ns1's ressource model and I understand that the khammander is going to stay. I just made that jest because your RFK to TRES idea was just what we had in NS1 on the marine side and that worked great imho. I loved not having to buy weapons myself and be a soldier focused on executing orders or having complete control over your team as commander. A good commander gave weapons to the better players on the team which made the game more forgiving for the bad/new players. There was also this social component involved: you perform good, your commander recognizes that and rewards you with a shotgun etc, that was so much better than call of duty kill streak rewards for example. Suddenly, you were the guy with the gun on whom your team and your commander was relying on. This was the marine teamplay experience i am just missing right now.
I thought especially with the PRES system that RFK is a must have since it synergizes so well...
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
RFK will only be a major step in solving the fade explosions IF the game is slowed down along with res flow. Slower res, less upgrades, RFK becomes significant. A fade getting another fade is not a problem to be considered here. What needs to be considered is the skulk that gets 15 kills pretty early. With this logic my point is that fade still won't come out that early. But he will certainly be alone for a long time
The biggest pro for RFK is that it is just incredibly counterintuitive for a game centered around earning res, with a personal res counter on your hud all the time to not reward you for killing stuff. The main reason why counterstrike was so successful was because you earned money when you killed enemies, it was the first shooter that did that afaik. This is what games are all about, rewards for pulling off great plays.
I think one of the reasons why I got to love RFK so much in NS1 is how it gives you a way to do things better.
Often in NS you find yourself with a plan that goes something like: "Hit a res peak, then push your advantage". RFK provided the way to do the "Hit a res peak" part better. Without the RFK you're kind of stuck at a certain level of execution as long as your remaining nodes stay up.
Anyone able to figure out some additional ways to execute a plan a bit better?
SInce the RFK debate probably flooded it, here is my utmost crazy idea about a possible fix for lifeform explosions.
*reposts*
Hmm.. im gona be cruel and suggest a massive thing here which will screw balance at the beginning.
How about a Biodiversity function?
Currently you have 5 lifeforms. Lets call that a diversity of 5 if you have atleast 1 of each in the team excluding the comm inside the hive.
If you have 3 fades, 1 lerk and a gorge then you have a diversity of 3 as you only have 3 different types of lifeforms.
Give a teamwide bonus for having better diversity, balance around & profit?
Now the hard part would be to deside which bonus(es) diversity would give. To good & the team suffers to much earlygame with just skulks. To bad, and they will all just fade explode.
Best would be to make it so that either going for a fade explosion OR a better bonus would both be considered a valid choice in both comp / pug.
SInce the RFK debate probably flooded it, here is my utmost crazy idea about a possible fix for lifeform explosions.
*reposts*
Hmm.. im gona be cruel and suggest a massive thing here which will screw balance at the beginning.
How about a Biodiversity function?
Currently you have 5 lifeforms. Lets call that a diversity of 5 if you have atleast 1 of each in the team excluding the comm inside the hive.
If you have 3 fades, 1 lerk and a gorge then you have a diversity of 3 as you only have 3 different types of lifeforms.
Give a teamwide bonus for having better diversity, balance around & profit?
Now the hard part would be to deside which bonus(es) diversity would give. To good & the team suffers to much earlygame with just skulks. To bad, and they will all just fade explode.
Best would be to make it so that either going for a fade explosion OR a better bonus would both be considered a valid choice in both comp / pug.
Discuss.
Good idea but would be kinda hard to balance, whats about marines (giving aliens more Buffs)? Also we can achieve more "Biodiversity" by RTP. All play the same class less chance to get point = less ress.
RFK will only be a major step in solving the fade explosions IF the game is slowed down along with res flow. Slower res, less upgrades, RFK becomes significant. A fade getting another fade is not a problem to be considered here. What needs to be considered is the skulk that gets 15 kills pretty early. With this logic my point is that fade still won't come out that early. But he will certainly be alone for a long time
This kind of system where pres income is toned down (say, halved) and RFK is added guarantees that anyone below some arbitrary kills-per-minute will get fades slower than before. Depending on how it is balanced to stop the 5 minute RFK fades, then people below this line could see their fade timings pushed back, even up to double as long. Imagine you're playing in a pub and you're an average or below average player. Now you can't go fade until 20 minutes into the game -- or onos until 30 minutes into the game. Simply because you don't get many kills.
That's one of the main problems with RFK. You have to balance pres around the guys going 15-0 in the first 5 minutes, but that can't be reconciled with the fact that many people will have just 2 or 3 kills after 5 minutes.
So what do you do? Have a limiting factor on your RFK where in players can only earn a maximum of 1 pres per minute, but this allowance stacks? IE if you have 0 kills, but are 3 minutes in the game, then you can earn up to 3 pres at any time... but won't be able to get your 4th pres until minute 4?
Or do you simply add diminishing returns where a player can only go 15-0, but kills 1 through 5 are worth 1 pres, kills 6-10 are worth 0.5 tres, kills 11-15 are worth 0.25 tres, etc?
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@GhoulofGSG9
Yes its a rough new idea and needs much balance. I more like supply the sketch idea and if folk like hope people with more sense of deep balance then me will take it from there.
If there's someone going 15-0 in the first 5 minutes, then you have a skill imbalance that you can't balance for. In order to balance RFK, you would take an 'average' kills that each player would have in the first 7-8 minutes, add that to the 'average' res they would have accrued through RTs and set the fade cost to that point.
I don't understand why people think that you need to balance for these games which are inherently imbalanced due to a skill difference. Its impossible to balance for these situations without dumbing the game completely down and removing every skill-based mechanic in the game - boring.
If someone goes 15-0 in the first 5 minutes, that game is all but over (assuming he is on aliens) with or without RFK. Unless your going to assume something happens and he suddenly cant kill anymore, theres no logical reason why he wouldnt be able to continue those kind of ratios as skulk for another 5 minutes.
Theres no point looking at extremes like that because in those cases, the game is already decided, RFK or not. All RFK is doing is helping end a game thats already over.
Saying that rfk should not be implemented because some players are better at getting kills is like saying a marathon runner should not get a trophy for winning a race. I mean he already got the best time right? Would be unfair if the other runners don't get a equal trophies.
You are hiding the truth from yourself with this. Your example, if chosen right, would give the marathon runner not only a trophy. It would give him actually a time bonus that is added to its real time before the match is over.
What you see as trophy for the runner. Is the "Marines / Aliens win" message at the end. Together with seeing yourself on top of the score board. What you want to do with RFK is to give the top runner half way through the marathon a time bonus, so it is even more difficult for the other runners to catch up to him.
You can't look at it black and white "Good players are rewarded anyway..." Sure they are! But we don't need to add another reward and maybe after that another reward. As you said yourself, they are already rewarded. Why should we add another reward like RFK for them?
You can say what you want. Even if the normal resource-system is tweaked to accommodate the implementation of RFK, it will give already better players an additional advantage over less skilled players. No matter how often you repeat that even bad players will get a resource point here and there when they manage to kill someone. In this timespan a good player will always have 10 times more res.
And the last thing this game needs, is to increase the difference between skilled and not so skilled players. Because it will lead to even more unbalanced matches.
On a side note: What makes me really sad about that (and I'm not even against trying RFK, to see what it does.) is that all the skilled / comp players are arguing for RFK because they would benefit directly from the system. It looks to me, that they don't care about the majority of not so skilled players and that those would get left behind. That they don't care about pub-play. That they are not interested in making the game better and more enjoyable for all players. It looks to me, that they only care to get that fade faster again after receiving an unlucky shotgun blast to the face. And I thought higher of those people regarding their interest of making this game better for all players.
Like mentioned before you can apply that to every single mechanic to the game, if we would not be allowed to have any reward with skill we could play pong where both players fill the screen so the ball never gets through.
Again an example that doesn't fit RFK. What RFK would do to Pong is to increase the size of the player that made a point, every time this player makes a point.
If someone goes 15-0 in the first 5 minutes, that game is all but over (assuming he is on aliens) with or without RFK. Unless your going to assume something happens and he suddenly cant kill anymore, theres no logical reason why he wouldnt be able to continue those kind of ratios as skulk for another 5 minutes.
Theres no point looking at extremes like that because in those cases, the game is already decided, RFK or not. All RFK is doing is helping end a game thats already over.
You are right. Those example describes a game that is already over. It describes one of those many boring games where the skill is heavily unbalanced. But if you think about less extreme examples, it only increases the reward of those good players. This way it increases an already slightly better team to an overpowered team. In a result we will have more boring early decided games.
Again: No matter if bad players will also get a few res from RFK, the good player will always profit more from it. And this gives an already more skilled player also more advanced weapons earlier. It increases the skill gap between bad and good players and therefore will also increase the skill gap between good and bad teams. I haven't seen a single valid argument regarding that problem with rfk.
Saying that rfk should not be implemented because some players are better at getting kills is like saying a marathon runner should not get a trophy for winning a race. I mean he already got the best time right? Would be unfair if the other runners don't get a equal trophies.
You are hiding the truth from yourself with this. Your example, if chosen right, would give the marathon runner not only a trophy. It would give him actually a time bonus that is added to its real time before the match is over.
What you see as trophy for the runner. Is the "Marines / Aliens win" message at the end. Together with seeing yourself on top of the score board. What you want to do with RFK is to give the top runner half way through the marathon a time bonus, so it is even more difficult for the other runners to catch up to him.
You can't look at it black and white "Good players are rewarded anyway..." Sure they are! But we don't need to add another reward and maybe after that another reward. As you said yourself, they are already rewarded. Why should we add another reward like RFK for them?
You can say what you want. Even if the normal resource-system is tweaked to accommodate the implementation of RFK, it will give already better players an additional advantage over less skilled players. No matter how often you repeat that even bad players will get a resource point here and there when they manage to kill someone. In this timespan a good player will always have 10 times more res.
And the last thing this game needs, is to increase the difference between skilled and not so skilled players. Because it will lead to even more unbalanced matches.
On a side note: What makes me really sad about that (and I'm not even against trying RFK, to see what it does.) is that all the skilled / comp players are arguing for RFK because they would benefit directly from the system. It looks to me, that they don't care about the majority of not so skilled players and that those would get left behind. That they don't care about pub-play. That they are not interested in making the game better and more enjoyable for all players. It looks to me, that they only care to get that fade faster again after receiving an unlucky shotgun blast to the face. And I thought higher of those people regarding their interest of making this game better for all players.
Who are you to say why anyone is doing anything, saying anything, or arguing anything?
Yes i am arguing for RFK to be added so that the 1 pub game I play per month I get my fade in 7 minutes instead of 8. The fact that you would try to villainize competitive players yet again is hardly surprising, and the true thing that's 'sad'.
As for making moderately imbalanced teams worse, that's hardly going to be a problem. In games like that individual players rarely have the ability to change the game, and they still require the commander for research and upgrades, which means holding res. RFK can help individual players get lifeforms and weapons quicker late game, but early game their power is still limited mainly by the strength of their team.
Also, making such stupid comparisons does little to help your point, especially because RFK accomplishes the same thing that holding RTs does, which is getting Pres. Trying to make it sound like something that solely exists to punish those who die by giving unbeatable rewards to their killer is not quite accurate.
A) Many pubs will disagree with your statement of : "In games like that individual players rarely have the ability to change the game" .. Again, just take note of the many threads regarding skill gaps that occur each month. A singular player going 15-0 is not only easy, but incredibly frequent and realistic - and yes - this player commonly ends up carrying one team, while demoralizing the other. That's definitely "changing the game".
Not sure why this is even a debate, but I agree with Dragon.
One player really cannot change the game without other competent players on their team. A good marine can't soloing a hive without commander support. Likewise, a good alien cannot carry if the rest of his/her team cannot protect rts. Skill gap is one thing but even so, a single player has their limits.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I disagree heavily @joshhh
Pubs contain one fade that can kill every single marine, and be sure to typically never die. Pushing back the team, and really there becomes zero reason to "protect rts" as the round just shifts to applying pressure because you have no reason to defend.
No a fade or a shotgun marine doesn't solo a base. But they don't have to, in order to a) carry the team b) completely demoralize the other c) largely impact the round, generally to the point of assured victory.
Again, the pub stomp threads of the previous months are the only indication you'd need, if you don't exclusively pub.
If the whole marine team can't keep one fade at bay then the game is already lost, with or without RFk. It doesn't really change anything for that scenario.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Here is my little idea to handle the "fadeplosion":
In ns1 players have to go gorge and build harvesters. That was very essential and ends up in an good mix of lifefeorms.
How about an new structure where alien players can spend an ammount of pres.
You need harvesters to increase the pres and tres income. Nothing new so far.
The idea is to decrease the tres income, but players can push the income with the pres spend.
The result:
Early weak fades without upgrades if no alienplayer spend some pres.
A few upgraded fades cause the player who spend pres cant go fade @ the same time like the others.
Here is my little idea to handle the "fadeplosion":
In ns1 players have to go gorge and build harvesters. That was very essential and ends up in an good mix of lifefeorms.
How about an new structure where alien players can spend an ammount of pres.
You need harvesters to increase the pres and tres income. Nothing new so far.
The idea is to decrease the tres income, but players can push the income with the pres spend.
The result:
Early weak fades without upgrades if no alienplayer spend some pres.
A few upgraded fades cause the player who spend pres cant go fade @ the same time like the others.
Removing the "build"-ability from drifters (make them scouts again) would do the same
Comments
Call of Duty has plenty of mechanics in place that allow even the worst player to get a lucky kill against a pro player from time to time, due to the low TTK (even pros can't cover all corners in a battle against multiple enemies and will eventually die to one of them), gadgets that can give huge advantages and weapons that are easy to use for newbies but still very powerful (noob tube, martydom).
Even people who are rather bad at games and would fail at more complex game mechanics can get some good moments that way from time to time (see it regularly when my old man plays CoD4 vs playing any other action game I give him) - that is rather the opposite concept of rewarding only player skill. Plus CoD has an engaging singleplayer campaign to pull players in who will then end up in the MP after beating it, even if they didn't intend to when they originally bought the game.
Im sure it slipped past with all the rfk talk.
I believe this would introduce the god hand aspect of NS1 back into NS2 from the commanders, marine comms in pub should have enough res that dropping a pack or two of mines or welders or a SG or 2 before 15 minutes isn't completely unheard of yet still juggle enough tres for engagements and upgrades. For aliens and specifically 6v6 pres hive drop eliminates one fade from the get go and to recompense him a tres drop or anyone with more tres drops ensures aliens can't just suicide themselves into marine bases 24/7. Alien pres gain is dragged out so fades go back to a 8-10 min drop on 3-4 RT, the current timings of lifeforms are ridiculous without the alien team winning all their engagements.
Marines upgrades are dragged out to ensure that if marines win all their early engagements then to stay on top they need to keep working as a team, it should be enough time to prevent marines from closing games out before fades just from 1-2 alien RT snipes, also dragged out to give commanders the option to drop weapons/support items for pushes, I'm not sure how to make that more attractive then dropping sentries every game with the spare tres but YOLO. I'd also increase PG research time by a lot or add to the cost, 2 min phase gates in pubs are getting boring knowing that a marine/marines just need 20 seconds to themselves in rooms before being able to reinforce the entire marine team into specific locations, specifically tech nodes, specifically the only 2 open tech nodes on veil/docking, specifically sorting/XR on mineshaft/summit, anytime. I'd probably just unfuck the passive scan on the obs and make it cost 20 tres and see if people use it more offensively or not outside of central in mineshaft or nano on veil.
I can't see any other way of breaking the fade ball without making hive a pres cost, I thought about pres RTs but that just means good alien starts snowball into great ones and probably accelerate the ball, at least in 6v6 or even higher pop games no less then 2 people are out of pocket for life forms due to hive drop duty, I think alien comm is in a good enough spot as semi perm gorge and he provides enough benefit to the team without enabling him to drop hives, he's easily able to wall off/hydra the main or natural expansion, he probably does tunnels to the 2nd hive and is easily able to assist or lead the counter engagement on the first 3 alien RTs. He's also in control of drifters and their active abilities as well as general map presence, he does shit.
Those changes alone should bring back the more skirmish feel that NS 1 had, where marines were constantly pressing out of base and sweeping aliens encroaching on their area of the map and pushing out to destroy the alien side, at the moment with cheap and fast PG, fast life forms and no penalty for death at all the game feels like a horrible arcade wash of combat and NS 1. And give onos at least 200 more armour back, what a moronic knee jerk decision that was.
The biggest pro for RFK is that it is just incredibly counterintuitive for a game centered around earning res, with a personal res counter on your hud all the time to not reward you for killing stuff. The main reason why counterstrike was so successful was because you earned money when you killed enemies, it was the first shooter that did that afaik. This is what games are all about, rewards for pulling off great plays.
I thought especially with the PRES system that RFK is a must have since it synergizes so well...
I think one of the reasons why I got to love RFK so much in NS1 is how it gives you a way to do things better.
Often in NS you find yourself with a plan that goes something like: "Hit a res peak, then push your advantage". RFK provided the way to do the "Hit a res peak" part better. Without the RFK you're kind of stuck at a certain level of execution as long as your remaining nodes stay up.
Anyone able to figure out some additional ways to execute a plan a bit better?
&
@MistenTH
SInce the RFK debate probably flooded it, here is my utmost crazy idea about a possible fix for lifeform explosions.
*reposts*
Hmm.. im gona be cruel and suggest a massive thing here which will screw balance at the beginning.
How about a Biodiversity function?
Currently you have 5 lifeforms. Lets call that a diversity of 5 if you have atleast 1 of each in the team excluding the comm inside the hive.
If you have 3 fades, 1 lerk and a gorge then you have a diversity of 3 as you only have 3 different types of lifeforms.
Give a teamwide bonus for having better diversity, balance around & profit?
Now the hard part would be to deside which bonus(es) diversity would give. To good & the team suffers to much earlygame with just skulks. To bad, and they will all just fade explode.
Best would be to make it so that either going for a fade explosion OR a better bonus would both be considered a valid choice in both comp / pug.
Discuss.
Good idea but would be kinda hard to balance, whats about marines (giving aliens more Buffs)? Also we can achieve more "Biodiversity" by RTP. All play the same class less chance to get point = less ress.
This kind of system where pres income is toned down (say, halved) and RFK is added guarantees that anyone below some arbitrary kills-per-minute will get fades slower than before. Depending on how it is balanced to stop the 5 minute RFK fades, then people below this line could see their fade timings pushed back, even up to double as long. Imagine you're playing in a pub and you're an average or below average player. Now you can't go fade until 20 minutes into the game -- or onos until 30 minutes into the game. Simply because you don't get many kills.
That's one of the main problems with RFK. You have to balance pres around the guys going 15-0 in the first 5 minutes, but that can't be reconciled with the fact that many people will have just 2 or 3 kills after 5 minutes.
So what do you do? Have a limiting factor on your RFK where in players can only earn a maximum of 1 pres per minute, but this allowance stacks? IE if you have 0 kills, but are 3 minutes in the game, then you can earn up to 3 pres at any time... but won't be able to get your 4th pres until minute 4?
Or do you simply add diminishing returns where a player can only go 15-0, but kills 1 through 5 are worth 1 pres, kills 6-10 are worth 0.5 tres, kills 11-15 are worth 0.25 tres, etc?
Yes its a rough new idea and needs much balance. I more like supply the sketch idea and if folk like hope people with more sense of deep balance then me will take it from there.
I don't understand why people think that you need to balance for these games which are inherently imbalanced due to a skill difference. Its impossible to balance for these situations without dumbing the game completely down and removing every skill-based mechanic in the game - boring.
Theres no point looking at extremes like that because in those cases, the game is already decided, RFK or not. All RFK is doing is helping end a game thats already over.
6v6 with fair teams is less than 1% of matches.
You are hiding the truth from yourself with this. Your example, if chosen right, would give the marathon runner not only a trophy. It would give him actually a time bonus that is added to its real time before the match is over.
What you see as trophy for the runner. Is the "Marines / Aliens win" message at the end. Together with seeing yourself on top of the score board. What you want to do with RFK is to give the top runner half way through the marathon a time bonus, so it is even more difficult for the other runners to catch up to him.
You can't look at it black and white "Good players are rewarded anyway..." Sure they are! But we don't need to add another reward and maybe after that another reward. As you said yourself, they are already rewarded. Why should we add another reward like RFK for them?
You can say what you want. Even if the normal resource-system is tweaked to accommodate the implementation of RFK, it will give already better players an additional advantage over less skilled players. No matter how often you repeat that even bad players will get a resource point here and there when they manage to kill someone. In this timespan a good player will always have 10 times more res.
And the last thing this game needs, is to increase the difference between skilled and not so skilled players. Because it will lead to even more unbalanced matches.
On a side note: What makes me really sad about that (and I'm not even against trying RFK, to see what it does.) is that all the skilled / comp players are arguing for RFK because they would benefit directly from the system. It looks to me, that they don't care about the majority of not so skilled players and that those would get left behind. That they don't care about pub-play. That they are not interested in making the game better and more enjoyable for all players. It looks to me, that they only care to get that fade faster again after receiving an unlucky shotgun blast to the face. And I thought higher of those people regarding their interest of making this game better for all players.
Again an example that doesn't fit RFK. What RFK would do to Pong is to increase the size of the player that made a point, every time this player makes a point.
You are right. Those example describes a game that is already over. It describes one of those many boring games where the skill is heavily unbalanced. But if you think about less extreme examples, it only increases the reward of those good players. This way it increases an already slightly better team to an overpowered team. In a result we will have more boring early decided games.
Again: No matter if bad players will also get a few res from RFK, the good player will always profit more from it. And this gives an already more skilled player also more advanced weapons earlier. It increases the skill gap between bad and good players and therefore will also increase the skill gap between good and bad teams. I haven't seen a single valid argument regarding that problem with rfk.
Who are you to say why anyone is doing anything, saying anything, or arguing anything?
As for making moderately imbalanced teams worse, that's hardly going to be a problem. In games like that individual players rarely have the ability to change the game, and they still require the commander for research and upgrades, which means holding res. RFK can help individual players get lifeforms and weapons quicker late game, but early game their power is still limited mainly by the strength of their team.
Also, making such stupid comparisons does little to help your point, especially because RFK accomplishes the same thing that holding RTs does, which is getting Pres. Trying to make it sound like something that solely exists to punish those who die by giving unbeatable rewards to their killer is not quite accurate.
A) Many pubs will disagree with your statement of : "In games like that individual players rarely have the ability to change the game" .. Again, just take note of the many threads regarding skill gaps that occur each month. A singular player going 15-0 is not only easy, but incredibly frequent and realistic - and yes - this player commonly ends up carrying one team, while demoralizing the other. That's definitely "changing the game".
One player really cannot change the game without other competent players on their team. A good marine can't soloing a hive without commander support. Likewise, a good alien cannot carry if the rest of his/her team cannot protect rts. Skill gap is one thing but even so, a single player has their limits.
Just an observation.
Pubs contain one fade that can kill every single marine, and be sure to typically never die. Pushing back the team, and really there becomes zero reason to "protect rts" as the round just shifts to applying pressure because you have no reason to defend.
No a fade or a shotgun marine doesn't solo a base. But they don't have to, in order to a) carry the team b) completely demoralize the other c) largely impact the round, generally to the point of assured victory.
Again, the pub stomp threads of the previous months are the only indication you'd need, if you don't exclusively pub.
In ns1 players have to go gorge and build harvesters. That was very essential and ends up in an good mix of lifefeorms.
How about an new structure where alien players can spend an ammount of pres.
You need harvesters to increase the pres and tres income. Nothing new so far.
The idea is to decrease the tres income, but players can push the income with the pres spend.
The result:
Early weak fades without upgrades if no alienplayer spend some pres.
A few upgraded fades cause the player who spend pres cant go fade @ the same time like the others.
Removing the "build"-ability from drifters (make them scouts again) would do the same