From my perspective, if one team can get a significant ressource advantage over the other, it should be able to overpower the other. In the same way, if one team manages to deny the other team the ressources (kill their lifeforms/weapons) they should also be able to overpower the other.
@dePARA
You first heard of the berlin wall falling in 1998?
As an alternative to my alternative above, instead of using gorge and lerk as support roles, make the 'force multiplier' a combination of different attacks that is more potent that the sum of its parts: eg: fade swipe and heal spray/spit each do more damage when used together (and less without). Any possible combination could be used to encourage a more diverse team make-up, and discourage the 5-fade ball: ie TTK is reduced when different classes are used by virtue of damage modifiers.
(to get around boring lerk/gorge play if they are relegated to purely support classes).
Not so enamoured with this idea, but I'm sure a good marketing guy could sell it
It strikes me that the main contributory factor to the fade ball being a major issue is this:
A group of 5 SG marines is incredibly difficult for an alien team to take out.
A group of 5 fades is incredibly difficult for a marine team to take out.
A group of 5 marines leaves the entire rest of the map undefended. If they move away from phase, the obs is the only thing that will save a base, and that destroys their offensive potential.
A group of 5 fades can move anywhere on the map in under 20 seconds.
Old Fades had the redeeming factor that they needed Blink to get that kind of mobility and that using Blink would constantly drain their energy.
Now we have the "skill" element of bunnyhopping around the map as Fade to reach maximum speeds without ever losing energy at all. Plus Adrenaline increasing the regeneration rate of energy. It's like buffing horizontal speed of Jetpacks while giving them unlimited fuel.
I think it is wrong to introduce specific abilities to buff fades for other lifeforms. The in a good teamfight, skulks should be distracting the marines while the fade blinks in for the kill. Sadly, fades work as an even better distraction (see my post above) due to the invisible blink.
In fact I would have no problems with fade balls being the gameender if they were not that easy to get. Here is where we are spinning in circles with the res model...
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited August 2013
Then you have to make those support abilities crucial enough that its worth sacrificing the extra fade(s) for that umbra, or extra babbler gorge.
Remember pre B250 when a lerk was nearly always required, and a solid marine team could often force a second. The marines just had the edge on early game skulks back then (glancing bites, slower movement, easier to hear). Fade balls were still a problem before 250, some people are forgetting that for some reason, it just showed up later.
Some really simple changes that I think would begin to help would be increased marine strafe accel to give marines some dodging potential against skilled skulks. Second would be making walljumping skulks consistently audible. I don't buy the situation being so hopeless that the alien commander and resource income system of the alien team needs to be completely reworked.
Marines should be forcing alien players to invest pres to stay in the game and be more likely to win. If you're going to 4 fade ball, marines should have a significant advantage up to this point. They should be able to keep the aggression up and delay the strat with harvester kills due to a poor alien team composition / support ability use. This is possible with Div1 aim and positioning.
In a sensible player count game this is already the case with exosuits, even though I do think exotrains on 18+ public servers is stupid. Aliens have an advantage due to the lack of shotguns and are able to keep eary-mid game harvesters up against LMGs.
If people have a bad time (losing the job, no money,..) and this situation didnt change for a long time they start to search the guilty ones.
Many people starting to think its the governments fault cause they didnt change the right things.
And in this time people start to think things like: "Hey, in the DDR everyone had work so it wasnt a bad thing after all"
---
If people have a bad time (losing the games, no balance,..) and this situation didnt change for a long time they start to search the guilty ones.
Many people starting to think its UWEs fault cause they didnt change the right things.
And in this time people start to think things like: "Hey, in NS1 everyone had a good time so it wasnt a bad thing after all"
Ok, seems like my ideas from a few pages ago are being ignored. So lets try again with the one I like the most and a little bit tweaked.
A building that stops fades in the vicinity to enter the blink-realm.
It needs to be researched first.
It's very costly, small and easy to destroy
It allows marines to make their bases "fade-free". At least no sane fade would try to fight in an area where blink is not available. With its low health it can easily be destroyed (even by a fade if there is no marine in that base that would stop em).
Downside: It can increase the appearance of turtles. But Exos on 1 CC and the very small range of BB contribute way more.
I don't even get why BileBomb was nerved so hard. If multiple gorges were OP, why not decrease the initial BB-damage to 0 and increase the damage over time effect but make it non-stackable? This way more than one bilebombing gorge will be ineffective. Allowing for easier balancing of bilebomb and dedicated heal-gorges in a siege.
- Change Tres model so that the Commander has Tres to drops lifeforms/weapons. (solution that doesn't remove the alien commander from the game but RIP Pres)
What this should do if done right and why:
Staggers fades and weapons making instant fade ball no longer exist and instant 5 shotgun spam no longer exist. Making the gameplay much better for both sides. No longer need umbra as a counter for early shotgun mass and it can be moved back to Hive 2.
Marines no longer have to deal with fade ball at 7-10m instantly against 4-5 fades.
Marines would still use the armory to get weapons but they would only be available by the number the commander purchases obviously.
Though for aliens this could be somewhat tough to make work as easily, either you make it so that aliens can only gestate in eggs in hives (no more dumb gorges in vents biling power nodes but limits flexibility of where you can gestate which kinda sucks).. or the Alien commander somehow grants the player a lifeform at Tres cost that they can gestate anywhere with.
You also might ask "but what stops the alien commander from instantly dumping/quickly getting enough res to drop a fade or lerk super early?"
Biomass. Require Biomass 2 for lerk egg, and Biomass 3 for fade eggs. Adjust costs appropriately so that the first Fade comes out about 6-7 minutes (estimate) in a normal game. And staggered fades from that point on.
Fun? Better than current Pres system and lifeform/tech explosions? I think so.
It also lets the alien commander stay in the game with this solution.. the only "removal" is Pres but it's really for the betterment of the game.
Also, change MACs to only affect structures and nanoshield as well.
Drifter "abilities" also need to be reworked if not removed entirely as the commander should have plenty of Tres sinks given the new system of buying everyones lifeforms and upgrades.
Even though this change would make players more reliant on their commanders for gear/lifeforms it would still be a great change for the game imo without removing "features" - just a change in the economy model/gear/lifeform mechanics for both sides.
DO IT SEWLEK. SOLVE PRES EXPLOSIONS, FADE BALL, AND SHOTGUN SPAM ALL IN ONE GO.
This solution could really work if the economy model, timings and costs were all adjusted to make the timings of lifeforms appropriate on the alien side.
SCALE THE COSTS/Tres INCOME MODEL ON PLAYER COUNTS from 6v6->8v8 (fuck 12v12 but if it has to be supported you could scale the costs/Tres model to work for that too).
If a change like this isn't made, the game is doomed to be the same pres/tech explosion from both sides in organized play - pub or competitive. And it just doesn't make for very good gameplay for either side.
The BT changes were a good step in the right direction but the game needs more.
That simply won't work outside of comp matches. It would tie the enjoyment and gameplay variety for the majority of the players in a team to the judgment of the commander.
What if a player is so bad that the commander won't drop him any weapons or eggs because he considered it a waste? Should that player never be allowed to go Lerk or whatever lifeform he likes, just because the commander doesn't want him to?
Scaling costs or res income mechanics based on the number of players on your team is massively flawed and unintuitive game design as well. You should never sacrifice consistency on such a large scale.
If a change like this is made, the game is doomed to alienate any casual player who would ever give it a try because he never gets to play with the cool stuff. And it is just about the biggest game design mistake one can make.
Besides that such fundamental changes to entire game mechanics are simply off the table nowadays. Build 250 was announced to be the last time that such massive changes would be made post-release. You simply can't change a sold product that significantly anymore and especially not remove existing features.
Taking away ALL control from field players on what they can buy is not a good model for pubbing. In comp, you know your commander is competent enough to listen and/or choose what each marine gets. That would work fine. In a pub, giving the commanders complete control over the individual strategy would be terrible. Aside from the whining and complaining, the comm would be constantly spammed for requests. If your commander does not have a great grasp on the game yet, marines will suffer a lot more than they would in current live build.
I completely understand lock's reasoning for suggesting such a drastic change. It would actually fix a lot of the current issues in the game. +1 lock. I am just considering the other side of the community and how this would affect them.
i think its retarded how the game keeps changing. people dont even have enough time to adjust their game play and then cry about the game cause there is no patience in adjust strategy.
What if a player is so bad that the commander won't drop him any weapons or eggs because he considered it a waste? Should that player never be allowed to go Lerk or whatever lifeform he likes, just because the commander doesn't want him to?
Think of the system like this: The commander purchases a Lerk, when you click B you see that 1 Lerk is available for evolution. Just like weapons for Marines at the armory, it would be up for grabs for any player that wants to go Lerk.
So the commander wouldn't directly control which player gets that - just like in NS1 with Tres weapon drops being the only way to get weapons. It might need some refinement in how it works on aliens but it definitely works for Marines.
Scaling costs or res income mechanics based on the number of players on your team is massively flawed and unintuitive game design as well. You should never sacrifice consistency on such a large scale.
It's that or you come up with some other way to support 12v12 with this change - should be fine for 6v6 -> 8v8. Or you just don't support 12v12 because it's fucking stupid for reasons I shouldn't have to explain: bad performance, bad balance, overall spammy gameplay.
If a change like this is made, the game is doomed to alienate any casual player who would ever give it a try because he never gets to play with the cool stuff. And it is just about the biggest game design mistake one can make.
Simply not true, in games where you are winning or evenly matched there should be ample weapons and lifeforms available for the players to use. Only when losing would you be low on resources to give players more weapons available/lifeforms. Which is the same with Pres system when you start losing gear.
Besides that such fundamental changes to entire game mechanics are simply off the table nowadays. Build 250 was announced to be the last time that such massive changes would be made post-release. You simply can't change a sold product that significantly anymore and especially not remove existing features.
Pres isn't a feature. It's part of the resource model.
You can change a product after it's sold. That's bullshit. StarCraft 2 and many other games do lots of patching over the game's lifetime.
As much I agree that having a single resource would be much simpler to work with I think its a waste of time to argue that point. A complete rework of the core resourcemodel will probably not happen, what we can however do is to figure out ways to work with it and try to make the best of it.
this guy who is advocating overhauling p res is in essence advocating changing the game into something different.
the current system is more fun because you can manifest your own destiny.
you can choose to buy a jetpack or a shotgun depending on how the game affects you.
it is a bad idea to make the commander determin who needs what units. because a) ppl on the field no more about what is pressuring them. and b) will cause ppl to scream at the comm for what they would of bought themselfs.
this guy who is advocating overhauling p res is in essence advocating changing the game into something different.
the current system is more fun because you can manifest your own destiny.
you can choose to buy a jetpack or a shotgun depending on how the game affects you.
it is a bad idea to make the commander determin who needs what units. because a) ppl on the field no more about what is pressuring them. and b) will cause ppl to scream at the comm for what they would of bought themselfs.
it creates a delay of game and fun.
No, it doesn't create a delay unless the players are not communicating with each other at all. In which case it might.
But that's the player's fault. You should know that you're purchasing a multiplayer game with tactics and strategy elements. Dig in and enjoy it, or go play CoD.
In NS1 a similar system worked fine because you had plenty of resources to give your players weapons and gear for which they asked specifically for if they wanted something.
Don't have to scream at the commander for gear, if he's anywhere near half decent.
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
So player X pressed the B key before me, and no now no more lerks allowed, eh?
I really don't see caps of any kind working in pubs.
@roobubba yeah that's what was suggesting for the past few pages. ;-)
Create complementary roles to have a varied team.
Another crazy idea :
lessen fade swipe Rof by half or more. Heal spray from a gorge now increases Rof back to typical rate (so enzyme still has it's place).. Feedback will be displayed by an obvious infected shader on the fade 's view model so they know the duration.
You can also make lerk spikes purely corrosive damage to armor and increase it's ROF, so a lerk can quickly disarm a room of armor to assist non heal sprayed fades. (i forget if puncture ignores armor already or not, whatever the case have armor be something the fade needs to wear through.)
Consequently this lowers lerk combat effectiveness slightly, more of a support role, allowing for higher HP values to create a less binary experience for newer players. i. E. 25 pres wasted in 2 seconds creating an aversion to spending that again.
Now there's two other classes that significantly increase a fade' s effectiveness, and to a point of almost requiring it. Less fades on the field and more teamwork required.
Just an idea though, I'm sure it has flaws.
Like not being intuitive that only a fade gets this rof increase from heal spray.
The notion is there however.
lock *snip * keep the name calling out of here - Ironhorse . and yes, in ns1 it was always Comm drop me a shotgun!!! then preferential treatment to all star player. so only top guy got jp or ha. then base camping waiting for load outs while second base wax attacked.
i think uwe learned from the mistakes of the past and applied them well in this new game.
my game play is not broken. i just find it frustrating when dual exos come out and aliens have 3 hives and start to get owned if they havent forced a turtle.
Which is another problem with Pres imo. If the team has lost all resources on the map and you can still purchase gear to turtle with, it's pretty silly.
E.g. Marines all buy exos after they lose the map and turtle. (boring in pubs)
While the resource system could be changed to work that way and it would fix massing, its also silly to assume it would instantly be balanced around ns1 equipment trends. It could easily be increased to offer lifeforms more frequently, but slightly less frequent than the pres based system. However as Grissi said, at this point such a change is realistically not going to happen, the amount of changes that it would require are not small, and its far easier to tweak the current system that we have now.
Yeah, I realize it's a long shot. And would require more time than UWE has. I just wanted to post my two cents on how it might work on a single resource model without removing "features".
Rather than suggest a complete removal of PRes, how about instead try a severe lowering of PRes income rates, to where a player can only hope to buy the lower tech/ lifeforms, but the commander would need to buy a majority of the higher tech/ lifeforms because it would take far too long for multiple players to save up enough money to buy a fade / onos / JP+SG?
That would probably also extend the early game, which is the most fun part for me, and the player would still feel slightly in control of his destiny.
It also occurs to me, you could introduce this same effect by instituting a much smaller Pres cap of, say, 30.
-edit-
And maybe if there is a cap, it could be raised via research from the commander, or tied to the amount of CCs or Res Towers you control.
I'm starting to wonder what people really think teamwork is. How I look at teamwork its a team doing their best towards a common goal. Even if fade ball is not balance right now it requires a lot of teamwork to pull of effectively against a good team.
People always talk about as marines in combat are not part of the team work but probably the most difficult teamplay required happens in combat in natural selection. How you cover your ally, how you zone the map and how you position yourself can be quite hard to do effectivly. A lot of that teamwork seems to be hidden to inexperienced players since it requires quite of bit of knowledge of the game. This is why visual teamwork looks more rewarding but often its actually not as useful. In the end if you want to be a team play, just do your best to reach the goal with your team, which is usually winning. Thats true teamplay.
Having 1 resource model can actually work fairly well for public it just depends on how its implemented. The fact remains it would be easier to work with than having 2 different resource models that are hard to connect together. I'm not going to dig deep into that discussions but you can't simply ignore the facts that Locklear put up there even though you don't agree with them. In the end though that discussion will lead no where since I'm pretty sure pres is here to stay.
Now about roles in a resources based game, that simply is not very good thinking. You don't need to give anything a role, its more about making sure that the pres you spent is true to its value. When you spend pres on something it should always be some kind of upgrade, otherwise you would never spend pres on it. The simplest solution to go for when talking about the fade ball is either adjusting the game to it or give marines more tools to pressure aliens to use more pres early game. Preferably with the use of gorge by fixing up the mechanics connected to it(like how hydras work). Creating gimmicky weaknesses are usually quickfixes that only complicate things on the long run. Its always best to stick to the core mechanics and make sure things feel fluid or fun. Creating gimmicky weakness just makes stuff frustrating to play with making the game less enjoyable. If UWE wanted more of a role based gameplay then having a game based of resources would have been a poor decision.
Comments
From my perspective, if one team can get a significant ressource advantage over the other, it should be able to overpower the other. In the same way, if one team manages to deny the other team the ressources (kill their lifeforms/weapons) they should also be able to overpower the other.
@dePARA
You first heard of the berlin wall falling in 1998?
(to get around boring lerk/gorge play if they are relegated to purely support classes).
Not so enamoured with this idea, but I'm sure a good marketing guy could sell it
I am from Germany and recently someone gave me a "too bad Hitler isn't around anymore" at the checkout counter.
I don't really see your example supporting your point, though.
Old Fades had the redeeming factor that they needed Blink to get that kind of mobility and that using Blink would constantly drain their energy.
Now we have the "skill" element of bunnyhopping around the map as Fade to reach maximum speeds without ever losing energy at all. Plus Adrenaline increasing the regeneration rate of energy. It's like buffing horizontal speed of Jetpacks while giving them unlimited fuel.
In fact I would have no problems with fade balls being the gameender if they were not that easy to get. Here is where we are spinning in circles with the res model...
Remember pre B250 when a lerk was nearly always required, and a solid marine team could often force a second. The marines just had the edge on early game skulks back then (glancing bites, slower movement, easier to hear). Fade balls were still a problem before 250, some people are forgetting that for some reason, it just showed up later.
Some really simple changes that I think would begin to help would be increased marine strafe accel to give marines some dodging potential against skilled skulks. Second would be making walljumping skulks consistently audible. I don't buy the situation being so hopeless that the alien commander and resource income system of the alien team needs to be completely reworked.
Marines should be forcing alien players to invest pres to stay in the game and be more likely to win. If you're going to 4 fade ball, marines should have a significant advantage up to this point. They should be able to keep the aggression up and delay the strat with harvester kills due to a poor alien team composition / support ability use. This is possible with Div1 aim and positioning.
In a sensible player count game this is already the case with exosuits, even though I do think exotrains on 18+ public servers is stupid. Aliens have an advantage due to the lack of shotguns and are able to keep eary-mid game harvesters up against LMGs.
If people have a bad time (losing the job, no money,..) and this situation didnt change for a long time they start to search the guilty ones.
Many people starting to think its the governments fault cause they didnt change the right things.
And in this time people start to think things like: "Hey, in the DDR everyone had work so it wasnt a bad thing after all"
---
If people have a bad time (losing the games, no balance,..) and this situation didnt change for a long time they start to search the guilty ones.
Many people starting to think its UWEs fault cause they didnt change the right things.
And in this time people start to think things like: "Hey, in NS1 everyone had a good time so it wasnt a bad thing after all"
A building that stops fades in the vicinity to enter the blink-realm.
It needs to be researched first.
It's very costly, small and easy to destroy
It allows marines to make their bases "fade-free". At least no sane fade would try to fight in an area where blink is not available. With its low health it can easily be destroyed (even by a fade if there is no marine in that base that would stop em).
Downside: It can increase the appearance of turtles. But Exos on 1 CC and the very small range of BB contribute way more.
I don't even get why BileBomb was nerved so hard. If multiple gorges were OP, why not decrease the initial BB-damage to 0 and increase the damage over time effect but make it non-stackable? This way more than one bilebombing gorge will be ineffective. Allowing for easier balancing of bilebomb and dedicated heal-gorges in a siege.
- Remove Pres from both Aliens and Marines.
- Change Tres model so that the Commander has Tres to drops lifeforms/weapons. (solution that doesn't remove the alien commander from the game but RIP Pres)
What this should do if done right and why:
Staggers fades and weapons making instant fade ball no longer exist and instant 5 shotgun spam no longer exist. Making the gameplay much better for both sides. No longer need umbra as a counter for early shotgun mass and it can be moved back to Hive 2.
Marines no longer have to deal with fade ball at 7-10m instantly against 4-5 fades.
Marines would still use the armory to get weapons but they would only be available by the number the commander purchases obviously.
Though for aliens this could be somewhat tough to make work as easily, either you make it so that aliens can only gestate in eggs in hives (no more dumb gorges in vents biling power nodes but limits flexibility of where you can gestate which kinda sucks).. or the Alien commander somehow grants the player a lifeform at Tres cost that they can gestate anywhere with.
You also might ask "but what stops the alien commander from instantly dumping/quickly getting enough res to drop a fade or lerk super early?"
Biomass. Require Biomass 2 for lerk egg, and Biomass 3 for fade eggs. Adjust costs appropriately so that the first Fade comes out about 6-7 minutes (estimate) in a normal game. And staggered fades from that point on.
Fun? Better than current Pres system and lifeform/tech explosions? I think so.
It also lets the alien commander stay in the game with this solution.. the only "removal" is Pres but it's really for the betterment of the game.
Also, change MACs to only affect structures and nanoshield as well.
Drifter "abilities" also need to be reworked if not removed entirely as the commander should have plenty of Tres sinks given the new system of buying everyones lifeforms and upgrades.
Even though this change would make players more reliant on their commanders for gear/lifeforms it would still be a great change for the game imo without removing "features" - just a change in the economy model/gear/lifeform mechanics for both sides.
DO IT SEWLEK. SOLVE PRES EXPLOSIONS, FADE BALL, AND SHOTGUN SPAM ALL IN ONE GO.
This solution could really work if the economy model, timings and costs were all adjusted to make the timings of lifeforms appropriate on the alien side.
SCALE THE COSTS/Tres INCOME MODEL ON PLAYER COUNTS from 6v6->8v8 (fuck 12v12 but if it has to be supported you could scale the costs/Tres model to work for that too).
If a change like this isn't made, the game is doomed to be the same pres/tech explosion from both sides in organized play - pub or competitive. And it just doesn't make for very good gameplay for either side.
The BT changes were a good step in the right direction but the game needs more.
What if a player is so bad that the commander won't drop him any weapons or eggs because he considered it a waste? Should that player never be allowed to go Lerk or whatever lifeform he likes, just because the commander doesn't want him to?
Scaling costs or res income mechanics based on the number of players on your team is massively flawed and unintuitive game design as well. You should never sacrifice consistency on such a large scale.
If a change like this is made, the game is doomed to alienate any casual player who would ever give it a try because he never gets to play with the cool stuff. And it is just about the biggest game design mistake one can make.
Besides that such fundamental changes to entire game mechanics are simply off the table nowadays. Build 250 was announced to be the last time that such massive changes would be made post-release. You simply can't change a sold product that significantly anymore and especially not remove existing features.
People get used to it or leave and people replace them. That's natural selection.
Taking away ALL control from field players on what they can buy is not a good model for pubbing. In comp, you know your commander is competent enough to listen and/or choose what each marine gets. That would work fine. In a pub, giving the commanders complete control over the individual strategy would be terrible. Aside from the whining and complaining, the comm would be constantly spammed for requests. If your commander does not have a great grasp on the game yet, marines will suffer a lot more than they would in current live build.
I completely understand lock's reasoning for suggesting such a drastic change. It would actually fix a lot of the current issues in the game. +1 lock. I am just considering the other side of the community and how this would affect them.
It can work if it was implemented correctly.
You fail to see what could be possible with this system. I'll break it down for you.
Think of the system like this: The commander purchases a Lerk, when you click B you see that 1 Lerk is available for evolution. Just like weapons for Marines at the armory, it would be up for grabs for any player that wants to go Lerk.
So the commander wouldn't directly control which player gets that - just like in NS1 with Tres weapon drops being the only way to get weapons. It might need some refinement in how it works on aliens but it definitely works for Marines.
It's that or you come up with some other way to support 12v12 with this change - should be fine for 6v6 -> 8v8. Or you just don't support 12v12 because it's fucking stupid for reasons I shouldn't have to explain: bad performance, bad balance, overall spammy gameplay.
Simply not true, in games where you are winning or evenly matched there should be ample weapons and lifeforms available for the players to use. Only when losing would you be low on resources to give players more weapons available/lifeforms. Which is the same with Pres system when you start losing gear.
Pres isn't a feature. It's part of the resource model.
You can change a product after it's sold. That's bullshit. StarCraft 2 and many other games do lots of patching over the game's lifetime.
doesn't mean the reasons were good
"balance test" was the biggest balance joke I've ever seen patched into a game
the current system is more fun because you can manifest your own destiny.
you can choose to buy a jetpack or a shotgun depending on how the game affects you.
it is a bad idea to make the commander determin who needs what units. because a) ppl on the field no more about what is pressuring them. and b) will cause ppl to scream at the comm for what they would of bought themselfs.
it creates a delay of game and fun.
No, it doesn't create a delay unless the players are not communicating with each other at all. In which case it might.
But that's the player's fault. You should know that you're purchasing a multiplayer game with tactics and strategy elements. Dig in and enjoy it, or go play CoD.
In NS1 a similar system worked fine because you had plenty of resources to give your players weapons and gear for which they asked specifically for if they wanted something.
Don't have to scream at the commander for gear, if he's anywhere near half decent.
I really don't see caps of any kind working in pubs.
@roobubba yeah that's what was suggesting for the past few pages. ;-)
Create complementary roles to have a varied team.
Another crazy idea :
lessen fade swipe Rof by half or more. Heal spray from a gorge now increases Rof back to typical rate (so enzyme still has it's place).. Feedback will be displayed by an obvious infected shader on the fade 's view model so they know the duration.
You can also make lerk spikes purely corrosive damage to armor and increase it's ROF, so a lerk can quickly disarm a room of armor to assist non heal sprayed fades. (i forget if puncture ignores armor already or not, whatever the case have armor be something the fade needs to wear through.)
Consequently this lowers lerk combat effectiveness slightly, more of a support role, allowing for higher HP values to create a less binary experience for newer players. i. E. 25 pres wasted in 2 seconds creating an aversion to spending that again.
Now there's two other classes that significantly increase a fade' s effectiveness, and to a point of almost requiring it. Less fades on the field and more teamwork required.
Just an idea though, I'm sure it has flaws.
Like not being intuitive that only a fade gets this rof increase from heal spray.
The notion is there however.
Not a cap, the commander could easily purchase another Lerk if he wanted to - or if you asked him to. Imagine that, communication :O
Take 2 RTs, research Biomass -> Buy a lerk ~2minutes in, another minute goes by, buy another lerk.
i think uwe learned from the mistakes of the past and applied them well in this new game.
If there's so little resources that only one player out of 7-8 people is getting the gear then something is wrong (no resources, you are losing)
I'm not being a jackass, I'm explaining how problems could be fixed for gameplay's sake both in organized play and in public play.
E.g. Marines all buy exos after they lose the map and turtle. (boring in pubs)
That would probably also extend the early game, which is the most fun part for me, and the player would still feel slightly in control of his destiny.
It also occurs to me, you could introduce this same effect by instituting a much smaller Pres cap of, say, 30.
-edit-
And maybe if there is a cap, it could be raised via research from the commander, or tied to the amount of CCs or Res Towers you control.
People always talk about as marines in combat are not part of the team work but probably the most difficult teamplay required happens in combat in natural selection. How you cover your ally, how you zone the map and how you position yourself can be quite hard to do effectivly. A lot of that teamwork seems to be hidden to inexperienced players since it requires quite of bit of knowledge of the game. This is why visual teamwork looks more rewarding but often its actually not as useful. In the end if you want to be a team play, just do your best to reach the goal with your team, which is usually winning. Thats true teamplay.
Having 1 resource model can actually work fairly well for public it just depends on how its implemented. The fact remains it would be easier to work with than having 2 different resource models that are hard to connect together. I'm not going to dig deep into that discussions but you can't simply ignore the facts that Locklear put up there even though you don't agree with them. In the end though that discussion will lead no where since I'm pretty sure pres is here to stay.
Now about roles in a resources based game, that simply is not very good thinking. You don't need to give anything a role, its more about making sure that the pres you spent is true to its value. When you spend pres on something it should always be some kind of upgrade, otherwise you would never spend pres on it. The simplest solution to go for when talking about the fade ball is either adjusting the game to it or give marines more tools to pressure aliens to use more pres early game. Preferably with the use of gorge by fixing up the mechanics connected to it(like how hydras work). Creating gimmicky weaknesses are usually quickfixes that only complicate things on the long run. Its always best to stick to the core mechanics and make sure things feel fluid or fun. Creating gimmicky weakness just makes stuff frustrating to play with making the game less enjoyable. If UWE wanted more of a role based gameplay then having a game based of resources would have been a poor decision.