If people are saying 'this sucks, I want to die' often enough that you need to introduce artificial penalties on doing so, you're doing something incredibly wrong and need to look at your game again.
I mean my god, you've actually got people killing themselves because they don't want to play like that any more, when people don't want to play the game any more, your game is failing at being a game.
People don't kill themselves because the game is boring without armor. They kill themselves because it's a fast way to get the armor back and having armor gives you an advantage. With the added delay, it's not so fast anymore which means people are more likely to wait to be welded. Nice strawman though.
People don't kill themselves because the game is boring without armor. They kill themselves because it's a fast way to get the armor back and having armor gives you an advantage. With the added delay, it's not so fast anymore which means people are more likely to wait to be welded.
Nope. I don't care if it's 8 seconds or 14, I'll wait in the spawn queue since it's the sure thing. If they increase the time too much further then I'll just /retry. I'm almost always first to load a map with my machine and connection, so if it comes down to running out of base, spending 20 seconds running to an objective, only to die because I can be killed twice as easily, I'll take the 14 second wait before I leave base. Getting out of base faster means jack squat if you can get two shot. It just means I wasted all the time it spent going from base to the objective. No thanks.
Remember, the 8 second spawn queue applies no matter if you /kill or get two-shot since you have no armor. So the only variable is the 6 second penalty. Waiting an extra 6 seconds to spawn is nothing. If waiting an extra 6 seconds means I can secure an objective - instead of dying - then it's totally worth it. Hate me for it all you like, but you play your way and I'll play mine.
People need to understand you can't force people to play the way you want them to play. They'll either get around it or they'll quit. Pick one.
Nope. I don't care if it's 8 seconds or 14, I'll wait in the spawn queue since it's the sure thing. If they increase the time too much further then I'll just /retry.
Thank god there's no people like you on the servers I play on.
Perhaps you should wait for the change to go live before you jump to conclusions. Do you really think I am the only one who has ever or will ever use /kill in this game? Really?
Like I said, you can't force your playstyle on others. They'll get around it or they will quit. Then you won't have to worry about 'people like me' on servers you play on, since there will only be a handful of servers left populated. At least then you can sit proud knowing that it was all worth it.
Oh God here we go again with the doomsday predictions...
It's not doomsday, it's about how you treat the players. Were you not here during the free preview? People talking about how they didn't like all the rookies and one person had a server where they were autokicking all rookies. There is no respect or consideration for the 'average Joe' that plays NS2. My point is that the 'average Joe' becomes 'experienced Joe' if he isn't insulted and ridiculed.
You can't force people to play the game the way YOU want them to play. They will play their own way or not at all. I've been in this business long enough to know that if you try and force your will on gamers they just walk away. Whether or not NS2 survives will depend entirely on how they treat new players. Otherwise the game will die a slow death. Without new players NO game will survive.
This isn't doomsday, it's a reality check. Tread carefully where new players are concerned. That's all I'm saying.
(And it's time for me the check back out of this thread - I'm still answering PMs if anyone wants to discuss further.)
Oh yes I was very much here for the free weekend. I spent the vast majority of it helping out new players with my mates. We would split up over the teams and talk green comms through the game as field commanders, or comm ourselves with all green teams telling them what was going on and how the game works.
Good times, and some really fun games.
I don't always succeed, but I do always aim to be helpful and positive in game. That extends to welding my buddies so they are better equipped to shoot skulks off my feet.
You'd be amazed how positive the ns2 gaming experience can be with a bit of altruism!
Great, introduce an annoying mechanic, and then introduce an even more annoying thing to stop people getting around your annoying mechanic.
A kill command can't be implemented without a timer, it would be just stupid, with or without the armories.
If people are saying 'this sucks, I want to die' often enough that you need to introduce artificial penalties on doing so, you're doing something incredibly wrong and need to look at your game again.
I mean my god, you've actually got people killing themselves because they don't want to play like that any more, when people don't want to play the game any more, your game is failing at being a game.
So you are saying that the kill command should be removed?
Hum. No, sir.
...
No, I'm saying the kill command should be left in, and as a developer, the goal should be to arrange the game, such that killing yourself is not longer desirable.
It's like... if people were F4ing a lot, so the devs decided the best way to stop that is to remove F4.
Rather than, say, fixing the damn game so people no longer feel the need to F4.
If players are taking a pretty crap option because it's preferable to their even crappier situation, your game is doing something wrong to put the players in that situation a lot, and the solution is not to make the crap option ever more crappy, so players are stuck in the crappy situation with no exit.
If a section of your game is bad, the solution is not to make the rest of it worse so that the bad bit seems better by comparison.
Great, introduce an annoying mechanic, and then introduce an even more annoying thing to stop people getting around your annoying mechanic.
A kill command can't be implemented without a timer, it would be just stupid, with or without the armories.
If people are saying 'this sucks, I want to die' often enough that you need to introduce artificial penalties on doing so, you're doing something incredibly wrong and need to look at your game again.
I mean my god, you've actually got people killing themselves because they don't want to play like that any more, when people don't want to play the game any more, your game is failing at being a game.
So you are saying that the kill command should be removed?
Hum. No, sir.
...
No, I'm saying the kill command should be left in, and as a developer, the goal should be to arrange the game, such that killing yourself is not longer desirable.
It's like... if people were F4ing a lot, so the devs decided the best way to stop that is to remove F4.
Rather than, say, fixing the damn game so people no longer feel the need to F4.
If players are taking a pretty crap option because it's preferable to their even crappier situation, your game is doing something wrong to put the players in that situation a lot, and the solution is not to make the crap option ever more crappy, so players are stuck in the crappy situation with no exit.
If a section of your game is bad, the solution is not to make the rest of it worse so that the bad bit seems better by comparison.
that's silly. the only time it's ever desirable to /kill is due to a bug (getting stuck) or if you are trying to beat an incoming rush. armory healing or not healing armor has 0 impact on the desirability of /kill.
it's telling that "oh no, people will kill themselves more" is the best argument that can be heard from those who oppose the change.
I'm not specifically using it as an argument against armory healing removal, I'm using it as a general argument.
It should not, in any circumstance, be necessary to put an artificial limit on ingame suicide. If you have to do that it's simply lazy design, rather than fixing the problem you make the aesthetically displeasing solution less effective.
Killing yourself is... not honestly a very useful thing to do, it is not really a very effective solution to any problem, but what it does serve as is sort of what I'd consider to be the baseline for player 'power'.
The ability to suicide is a power the player has, it's not a very good one, but it's one. Players should be... entitled I suppose, to at least that level of power in the game. If you give players less power than that, it's kinda getting a bit ridiculous how weak you're making the player.
So, when it comes to the idea of nerfing/removing suicide as an option ingame, there's something wrong with that, your game should not need to make the player so weak that they cannot even choose to give up any resources they may have spent, for the option to go back into the spawn queue, when players can't even do that without it breaking your game, your game needs work.
It's like... it's like if you decided that marines can attack alien bases too easily, so you made them unable to do anything other than walk on infestation. That's just... pathetic in how limited you have to make the player. Is the game really so artificially balanced that RUNNING is overpowered?
Well, that's how I feel about suicide, do you really want to play a game where DYING is considered overpowered? Because that's literally what the change says 'dying is OP, nerf plz'.
No, the suicide function was just missing something, it didn't need a "nerf" it needed all its functionality. A suicide command without a timer is just crazy and should never have been in the game in the first place.
i dont think /kill needs a timer (i mean, who really does it many times in a row just to troll?). i really don't think killing yourself serves as a baseline of power. you can still have full armor in the field, provided you have a willing teammate and a minor res investment. that doesn't seem too ludicrous to me. What is ludicrous to me is that for 10 res you can quickly establish a forward position that one person can hold indefinitely unless that person either a) sucks or b) is mobbed by a significant portion of the enemy team. i feel that the force multiplication effect of an armory is too big for the res investment, yet slowing down healing interferes with the 'fun' factor of it since you have to stare at it for longer. i would be even willing to try 'armory-only-heals-armor' and not health. it would kind of make sense, given that it's an armory. however, that may prove overpowered with medspam.
Can somebody tell me the actual design goals that this change should achieve? I am getting a lot of mixed ideas here conflicting with each other.
- Discourage pub marines from constantly running back for armor healing after taking a bit of damage and instead encourage synergy with the commander by requesting medpacks at the front.
- Encourage the purchase of welders and teamplay to stay in the fight, which also benefits keeping structures alive at the front.
- Increase significance of MACs in the early game.
- Prevent marines from easily establishing a strong foothold at the front by dropping a forward Armory.
- Aliens are designed around hit'n'run play and their actions thus had little effect if a marine was quickly back to full armor between fights. With this change aliens are able to easier wear marines down.
- The requirement to use Welders to heal armor of team mates means that marines have to switch away from their weapons, which gives aliens another window of opportunity that they can use to attack.
The change in sewleks balance mod works pretty well, i think. You see a lot more marines running around with welders and supporting each other and less armory huddling/less marines running back to the armory.
So, you want to hold noobs hands more. Strange way to do it.
You want to encourage hit and run attacks by Aliens at the same time as getting marines to weld each other. This is contradictory. The window of welding is too low to create a significant advantage to attack during.
MACs used more. This is contradictory to the hit and run attacks also. An armory and mac does the same thing as the original design, just it costs significantly more.
It comes down to being a nerf to marines as it now costs additional res to heal properly. This was not listed in your design goals but is the most obvious effect. Is this the intended effect?
So, you want to hold noobs hands more. Strange way to do it.
no, we want noobs to learn how to play as a team instead of raging at the comm if he doesn't drop a forward armory. on the flip side, we don't want a one-man wrecking crew dominating map control in the pro scene with the drop of an armory and some medspam.
You want to encourage hit and run attacks by Aliens at the same time as getting marines to weld each other. This is contradictory. The window of welding is too low to create a significant advantage to attack during.
No, see, the hit-and-run is when marines are out of position (aka too far from support). This change means that you can pick off marines. Very seldom as aliens do you want to engage a full marine team, because you will usually lose without higher life forms. On the flip side, if you see 2 marines and one is welding, that is 1 less person shooting at you for the 1-2s it takes for him to see you and swap back to his weapon. This is often a big enough window for you to close the distance, land 1-2 bites and either kill the marine or escape.
MACs used more. This is contradictory to the hit and run attacks also. An armory and mac does the same thing as the original design, just it costs significantly more.
That's right. This is to make robo-first a more viable and valid tactic. Right now there is absolutely 0 choice between an armory and a robo bay unless you're rushing arcs. This means that going robo-first is always an all-in tactic, which severely limits the usefulness of early robo.
It comes down to being a nerf to marines as it now costs additional res to heal properly. This was not listed in your design goals but is the most obvious effect. Is this the intended effect?
There's a counter-nerf in that more people will learn how to play as a team.
[dont like quote walls. person said stuff here, just look at their post instead]
Yes. That is what I said with holding noobs hands. You are forcing them to do the right thing instead of showing why it is better. I did not say this was bad, just that it was strange approach. The end result is definitely welcome. The second part with one man wrecking crew is a new intent that was not in the original list. A marine by himself, building power by himself and then an armory by himself gets an advantage at holding a position. Not sure how that is a problem, but lets say it it: A MAC F&W will replace that armory it is more effective than the armory as it will heal during combat and is mobile. That lone wolf can focus all his attention attack. I am not sure why you find encouraging that tactic beneficial.
Welding comes after combat, not before. The alien would attack and have to disengage, then the marines weld each other. Marines don't just break out into welding while running to an objective. This might be an advantage to the fade who has the movement to actually disengage and reengage at will, but will not help the skulks or even lerks as their speed is too low to get away with enough health for a second pass. Is this assessment not correct?
Robo first was also not listed as an intended effect in his list. Right now its armory first because phase, armor 1 and shotguns, not because armor healing. I know it has already been decoupled with those important upgrades. The armory in base will always be first because it is free health and ammo the comm doesn't have to drop. Armor repair never even factored into armory first. Early robo needs a buff to make it viable, not nerfing the alternatives.
That is not a counter nerf; that is wishful thinking.
1) No one is forcing anyone to do anything. You can run around without a welder. You can refuse to weld. However, the consequences of not doing so are more apparent, and more severe. It's not handholding, it's making an underlying theme clear: you are much better off in groups than alone (a mechanic that is not found in many other modern FPS).
2) The one-man-wrecking crew has been mentioned a few times in the thread. It's not as big an issue to most people since most people aren't pro gamers, but it is still problematic in that while marines are underpowered in pubs, they win the majority of games in top-level competitive games. Sure, you can have a mac near the armory, but a mac is very vulnerable, and comes with significant investment and takes up the commander's time to manage. Also, in comp play where this is most often the case, marines mostly do not move alone to set up a forward base, they move in 2-3 splits or sometimes 2-2-1 with the 1 meeting up with one of the other groups at an objective. A common outcome of an engagement is that 1 marine is left alive to defend an area.
2b) Is this even an argument? What happens if a skulk attacks and withdraws, and the other skulk that he is partnering with waits for the marines to pull out the welders before dropping in from the ceiling? Why must it always be 1 skulk vs marines? This is what I'm driving at...there is too much solo mentality.
3) Armory only comes first because that is what people are accustomed to. There are plenty of viable strats in which you drop an arms lab first. The point is not to pigeonhole the game into always armory first, because then the game should spawn the marine team with an armory.
That is forcing. You have taken functionality away to force them to towards welding. You are not making welding better, you are not demonstrating its effectiveness, you took away the alternative.
So there is no longer a one man wrecking crew, it was a team that captured an area and the victor is now securing it till survivors come. They no longer deserve to secure that area after their team work earned it and the comm is investing resources to aid him as he has to build up both power and the armory by himself in hostile territory?
This one I don't understand. There was never a 1 on 1 situation. Wouldn't make sense if you have two marines to weld to have only one skulk. How would that even make sense? Three marines vs three skulks is a much better, even fight. In this situation, you would like to split their force against the marines, have them go in two to soften them then one while they are welding?
It was forced, because that was the key to all necessary tech. There were zero viable strats for arms lab first; arms lab had armory as a prerequisite. Removing armor healing from the Armory does not affect the tech strategy though. So that is not pertinent to this conversation.
I would like to discuss the intent of the change. Everything should have a plan and I wanted to know the plan behind this intended improvement. I am not knocking you for not including a complete list of intent, you are not the mod creator. We are all piecing it together as a collective, not alone. The OP was not complete either, and the discussion in the thread started arguing contradictory points, so I wanted to try to get a cleaned up plan.
OPs post is not the end of the discussion as there are 24 pages of additional opinions and discussion on this topic. He also had contradictory ideas of marines going back to base to heal being a problem, and aliens not making any progress because they are going back to heal. Retreat is the same as death in terms of time; forcing a retreat is a victory, just like forcing a beacon.
I do not understand his intent of making fade balls more powerful.
I suppose you could see the removal of a mechanic as forcing; I see it as creating a vacuum within which welding and/or macs naturally fill. These 2 mechanics are already quite powerful, however you do not see them very often because armory healing armor is free for the player and does not require any effort from the comm. Therein lies the issue for me: armories cannot cost more than 10 res without breaking the marine economy, yet they provide an in-the-field advantage far too great to be commensurate with their cost.
As for a team securing a forward position: that very much is still possible and armories are still part of the "secure a position" equation. Mines and sentries can help secure a forward position. However, a result in which a solo marine who can often kill 3 skulks- even 4 at times- can be restored to full combat power when the marine team is overextended is undesirable. Also, once that forward base is established, how are aliens able to oppose a marine team that can both be at full armor and full firepower constantly? The only good solution IMO is to make it so that the marines have to either sacrifice firepower for armor, or armor for firepower.
If a single marine can take on three or four skulks by himself and survive, he has earned that armor, he deserves that armor. The problem wouldn't be with the armory at that point, its skulks being too weak.
Comments
People don't kill themselves because the game is boring without armor. They kill themselves because it's a fast way to get the armor back and having armor gives you an advantage. With the added delay, it's not so fast anymore which means people are more likely to wait to be welded. Nice strawman though.
Remember, the 8 second spawn queue applies no matter if you /kill or get two-shot since you have no armor. So the only variable is the 6 second penalty. Waiting an extra 6 seconds to spawn is nothing. If waiting an extra 6 seconds means I can secure an objective - instead of dying - then it's totally worth it. Hate me for it all you like, but you play your way and I'll play mine.
People need to understand you can't force people to play the way you want them to play. They'll either get around it or they'll quit. Pick one.
Like I said, you can't force your playstyle on others. They'll get around it or they will quit. Then you won't have to worry about 'people like me' on servers you play on, since there will only be a handful of servers left populated. At least then you can sit proud knowing that it was all worth it.
You can't force people to play the game the way YOU want them to play. They will play their own way or not at all. I've been in this business long enough to know that if you try and force your will on gamers they just walk away. Whether or not NS2 survives will depend entirely on how they treat new players. Otherwise the game will die a slow death. Without new players NO game will survive.
This isn't doomsday, it's a reality check. Tread carefully where new players are concerned. That's all I'm saying.
(And it's time for me the check back out of this thread - I'm still answering PMs if anyone wants to discuss further.)
Good times, and some really fun games.
I don't always succeed, but I do always aim to be helpful and positive in game. That extends to welding my buddies so they are better equipped to shoot skulks off my feet.
You'd be amazed how positive the ns2 gaming experience can be with a bit of altruism!
No need to engage a user 1 on 1 publically. If you have a problem, take it up through PM. - Angelusz
No need to engage a user 1 on 1 publically. If you have a problem, take it up through PM. - Angelusz
...
No, I'm saying the kill command should be left in, and as a developer, the goal should be to arrange the game, such that killing yourself is not longer desirable.
It's like... if people were F4ing a lot, so the devs decided the best way to stop that is to remove F4.
Rather than, say, fixing the damn game so people no longer feel the need to F4.
If players are taking a pretty crap option because it's preferable to their even crappier situation, your game is doing something wrong to put the players in that situation a lot, and the solution is not to make the crap option ever more crappy, so players are stuck in the crappy situation with no exit.
If a section of your game is bad, the solution is not to make the rest of it worse so that the bad bit seems better by comparison.
that's silly. the only time it's ever desirable to /kill is due to a bug (getting stuck) or if you are trying to beat an incoming rush. armory healing or not healing armor has 0 impact on the desirability of /kill.
it's telling that "oh no, people will kill themselves more" is the best argument that can be heard from those who oppose the change.
It should not, in any circumstance, be necessary to put an artificial limit on ingame suicide. If you have to do that it's simply lazy design, rather than fixing the problem you make the aesthetically displeasing solution less effective.
Killing yourself is... not honestly a very useful thing to do, it is not really a very effective solution to any problem, but what it does serve as is sort of what I'd consider to be the baseline for player 'power'.
The ability to suicide is a power the player has, it's not a very good one, but it's one. Players should be... entitled I suppose, to at least that level of power in the game. If you give players less power than that, it's kinda getting a bit ridiculous how weak you're making the player.
So, when it comes to the idea of nerfing/removing suicide as an option ingame, there's something wrong with that, your game should not need to make the player so weak that they cannot even choose to give up any resources they may have spent, for the option to go back into the spawn queue, when players can't even do that without it breaking your game, your game needs work.
It's like... it's like if you decided that marines can attack alien bases too easily, so you made them unable to do anything other than walk on infestation. That's just... pathetic in how limited you have to make the player. Is the game really so artificially balanced that RUNNING is overpowered?
Well, that's how I feel about suicide, do you really want to play a game where DYING is considered overpowered? Because that's literally what the change says 'dying is OP, nerf plz'.
- Discourage pub marines from constantly running back for armor healing after taking a bit of damage and instead encourage synergy with the commander by requesting medpacks at the front.
- Encourage the purchase of welders and teamplay to stay in the fight, which also benefits keeping structures alive at the front.
- Increase significance of MACs in the early game.
- Prevent marines from easily establishing a strong foothold at the front by dropping a forward Armory.
- Aliens are designed around hit'n'run play and their actions thus had little effect if a marine was quickly back to full armor between fights. With this change aliens are able to easier wear marines down.
- The requirement to use Welders to heal armor of team mates means that marines have to switch away from their weapons, which gives aliens another window of opportunity that they can use to attack.
You want to encourage hit and run attacks by Aliens at the same time as getting marines to weld each other. This is contradictory. The window of welding is too low to create a significant advantage to attack during.
MACs used more. This is contradictory to the hit and run attacks also. An armory and mac does the same thing as the original design, just it costs significantly more.
It comes down to being a nerf to marines as it now costs additional res to heal properly. This was not listed in your design goals but is the most obvious effect. Is this the intended effect?
No, see, the hit-and-run is when marines are out of position (aka too far from support). This change means that you can pick off marines. Very seldom as aliens do you want to engage a full marine team, because you will usually lose without higher life forms. On the flip side, if you see 2 marines and one is welding, that is 1 less person shooting at you for the 1-2s it takes for him to see you and swap back to his weapon. This is often a big enough window for you to close the distance, land 1-2 bites and either kill the marine or escape.
That's right. This is to make robo-first a more viable and valid tactic. Right now there is absolutely 0 choice between an armory and a robo bay unless you're rushing arcs. This means that going robo-first is always an all-in tactic, which severely limits the usefulness of early robo.
There's a counter-nerf in that more people will learn how to play as a team.
Welding comes after combat, not before. The alien would attack and have to disengage, then the marines weld each other. Marines don't just break out into welding while running to an objective. This might be an advantage to the fade who has the movement to actually disengage and reengage at will, but will not help the skulks or even lerks as their speed is too low to get away with enough health for a second pass. Is this assessment not correct?
Robo first was also not listed as an intended effect in his list. Right now its armory first because phase, armor 1 and shotguns, not because armor healing. I know it has already been decoupled with those important upgrades. The armory in base will always be first because it is free health and ammo the comm doesn't have to drop. Armor repair never even factored into armory first. Early robo needs a buff to make it viable, not nerfing the alternatives.
That is not a counter nerf; that is wishful thinking.
1) No one is forcing anyone to do anything. You can run around without a welder. You can refuse to weld. However, the consequences of not doing so are more apparent, and more severe. It's not handholding, it's making an underlying theme clear: you are much better off in groups than alone (a mechanic that is not found in many other modern FPS).
2) The one-man-wrecking crew has been mentioned a few times in the thread. It's not as big an issue to most people since most people aren't pro gamers, but it is still problematic in that while marines are underpowered in pubs, they win the majority of games in top-level competitive games. Sure, you can have a mac near the armory, but a mac is very vulnerable, and comes with significant investment and takes up the commander's time to manage. Also, in comp play where this is most often the case, marines mostly do not move alone to set up a forward base, they move in 2-3 splits or sometimes 2-2-1 with the 1 meeting up with one of the other groups at an objective. A common outcome of an engagement is that 1 marine is left alive to defend an area.
2b) Is this even an argument? What happens if a skulk attacks and withdraws, and the other skulk that he is partnering with waits for the marines to pull out the welders before dropping in from the ceiling? Why must it always be 1 skulk vs marines? This is what I'm driving at...there is too much solo mentality.
3) Armory only comes first because that is what people are accustomed to. There are plenty of viable strats in which you drop an arms lab first. The point is not to pigeonhole the game into always armory first, because then the game should spawn the marine team with an armory.
Why are you so obsessed with my listing? I was just enumerating some examples that you could have found as well just by reading the OP.
I mentioned early game MAC importance, which implies that a Robo Factory has to come pretty early at some point.
That is forcing. You have taken functionality away to force them to towards welding. You are not making welding better, you are not demonstrating its effectiveness, you took away the alternative.
So there is no longer a one man wrecking crew, it was a team that captured an area and the victor is now securing it till survivors come. They no longer deserve to secure that area after their team work earned it and the comm is investing resources to aid him as he has to build up both power and the armory by himself in hostile territory?
This one I don't understand. There was never a 1 on 1 situation. Wouldn't make sense if you have two marines to weld to have only one skulk. How would that even make sense? Three marines vs three skulks is a much better, even fight. In this situation, you would like to split their force against the marines, have them go in two to soften them then one while they are welding?
It was forced, because that was the key to all necessary tech. There were zero viable strats for arms lab first; arms lab had armory as a prerequisite. Removing armor healing from the Armory does not affect the tech strategy though. So that is not pertinent to this conversation.
I would like to discuss the intent of the change. Everything should have a plan and I wanted to know the plan behind this intended improvement. I am not knocking you for not including a complete list of intent, you are not the mod creator. We are all piecing it together as a collective, not alone. The OP was not complete either, and the discussion in the thread started arguing contradictory points, so I wanted to try to get a cleaned up plan.
OPs post is not the end of the discussion as there are 24 pages of additional opinions and discussion on this topic. He also had contradictory ideas of marines going back to base to heal being a problem, and aliens not making any progress because they are going back to heal. Retreat is the same as death in terms of time; forcing a retreat is a victory, just like forcing a beacon.
I do not understand his intent of making fade balls more powerful.
As for a team securing a forward position: that very much is still possible and armories are still part of the "secure a position" equation. Mines and sentries can help secure a forward position. However, a result in which a solo marine who can often kill 3 skulks- even 4 at times- can be restored to full combat power when the marine team is overextended is undesirable. Also, once that forward base is established, how are aliens able to oppose a marine team that can both be at full armor and full firepower constantly? The only good solution IMO is to make it so that the marines have to either sacrifice firepower for armor, or armor for firepower.
Incidentally I suggested a similar thing and was yelled at by Hugh because we weren't using his tutorial vids/hints.