His implication was that the problem cannot be solved with things like force random scripts, the problem being that aliens is potentially not as fun as marines, and its manifestation being the stacking of the marine team.
The idea that players purposefully choosing to join one team over the other cannot be circumvented by disallowing players to choose which team they join is obviously absurd.
The problem is already solved for us in most cases. People are enjoying both teams by getting experience with both of them and voting for random nearly every round.
I'll simplify:
Players are stacking marines because they feel they're more fun
Players see players stacking marines and it has a strong feedback because they assume that marines will win and be more fun, so they try to do it as well
to start with the issue... then:
Voterandom happens and players get put on random teams
Vets that were trying to stack marines tend to stay on the team they're assigned, and if they leave the server adjusts the teams anyway
A game gets started and more often than not, it's a good one
Round ends, mapvotes/extensions end, and people end up voting random again rather than trying to stack a team because they had a fun game
In what way is this not at least a patch on the current state of stacking?
because your evidence is entirely circumstantial and doesn't reflect 99% of pub servers
literally none of your posts are worth addressing because you just said "well I saw x happen so you're wrong"
it's really amazing that you cannot grasp players needing to be forced into random teams as being an issue in the first place, and yet state that as a solution
His implication was that the problem cannot be solved with things like force random scripts, the problem being that aliens is potentially not as fun as marines, and its manifestation being the stacking of the marine team.
The idea that players purposefully choosing to join one team over the other cannot be circumvented by disallowing players to choose which team they join is obviously absurd.
In what way is this not at least a patch on the current state of stacking?
Force random obviously completely eliminates stacking.
However, if players are forced to play 50% of their games on a team they don't have fun with, they are liable to stop playing altogether.
because your evidence is entirely circumstantial and doesn't reflect 99% of pub servers
literally none of your posts are worth addressing because you just said "well I saw x happen so you're wrong"
It might not reflect those servers in part because many of those servers don't operate in the same way. This is extremely simple to understand and why I bothered mentioning our scenario in the first place - literally this is the first thing you should have gotten from the post.
I'm pulling the evidence from more than just what I saw, it's also in the server logs that I use to draw the conclusions and improve the experience. It's a work in progress and always has room for improvement.
It's a lot better than complaining that there is no reason to even try to fix the issue like you're doing.
EDIT to your edit: What are you even doing to try to help the situation? I'm not going to mod skulks to make them "more fun" as we're a vanilla server to begin with. Any attempt that has positive results is one that's worth it, and mine have been so far.
I completely understand your perspective that the problem stems from Aliens being less fun. But the truth of our experiences is that with randomized teams both sides have more chance of being fun and people ending rounds having enjoyed the experience. That's the bottom line - skulk issues included.
It's a lot better than complaining that there is no reason to even try to fix the issue like you're doing.
it's actually really not because if you don't understand the reasons behind the way certain things are the way they are, then the game doesn't ever end up getting changed because of small band-aid solutions that only scratch the surface of the issue
you're certainly free to random your server and in fact I encourage it since it sounds like a great place to play. if I were to pub I would probably play on that server, even if only to save myself from the same trap of stacking marines.
that doesn't solve the issue at hand at all, and that's what the thread in question is discussing.
EDIT to your edit: What are you even doing to try to help the situation?
it's actually really not because if you don't understand the reasons behind the way certain things are the way they are, then the game doesn't ever end up getting changed because of small band-aid solutions that only scratch the surface of the issue
you're certainly free to random your server and in fact I encourage it since it sounds like a great place to play. if I were to pub I would probably play on that server, even if only to save myself from the same trap of stacking marines.
that doesn't solve the issue at hand at all, and that's what the thread in question is discussing.
I completely understand the issue behind it. But why wouldn't I patch the hull of a sinking ship just because the hull was defective? You're acting like the ENTIRE basis for aliens being less fun revolves around the skulk issue. There is a large problem with skulks, but it's exacerbated by players seeing others stack. It's a feedback loop and a lot of the issue is addressed when you don't have that stacking in the first place.
I already said it's a great idea and I'm sure it works fine for your servers. that was never the question. my post was simply stating the current terrible state of tier 1 alien vs. marine being so boring (especially as marine skill goes up), and why people stack and require being randomed in the first place. by all means people should force random if it helps out their server's game quality, but the point is it shouldn't be necessary in the first place because skulks should not have been in this awful state to begin with.
stacking does dictate the results of most pub games so it's probably a good idea regardless of what state the game is in anyway. most pub victories are dictated by 2-3 competent players (typically playing together) that play at a slight level ahead of the other clueless skulks walking in straight lines
His implication was that the problem cannot be solved with things like force random scripts, the problem being that aliens is potentially not as fun as marines, and its manifestation being the stacking of the marine team.
The idea that players purposefully choosing to join one team over the other cannot be circumvented by disallowing players to choose which team they join is obviously absurd.
In what way is this not at least a patch on the current state of stacking?
Force random obviously completely eliminates stacking.
However, if players are forced to play 50% of their games on a team they don't have fun with, they are liable to stop playing altogether.
It completely eliminates deliberate stacking. Believe it or not, there are people out there who are good enough to tip the balance of the game but prefer joining the weaker team or switching teams mid-game if things get too lopsided. This, too, would get eliminated.
I already said it's a great idea and I'm sure it works fine for your servers. that was never the question. my post was simply stating the current terrible state of tier 1 alien vs. marine being so boring (especially as marine skill goes up), and why people stack and require being randomed in the first place. by all means people should force random if it helps out their game quality, but the point is it shouldn't be necessary in the first place because skulks should not have been in this awful state to begin with.
I agree. I never had the illusion that you can fix the issue of stacking entirely by randomization and shuffling, but it's not a binary operation to begin with. It's about improving where you can. The devs surely are on this - Sewlek's Balance Mod does a great job with it in my opinion.
And even the skulk issue aside, there are always groups of friends/clans that want to come in and pubstomp, and team stacking bias based on the last round, or the particular map... this solution takes on more than just the problems that arise from the skulk's issues.
When the devs fix the issue, maybe it'll cut down on the stacking. I certainly hope it does. But our randomization is a vote to begin with, there when it's needed.
It completely eliminates deliberate stacking. Believe it or not, there are people out there who are good enough to tip the balance of the game but prefer joining the weaker team or switching teams mid-game if things get too lopsided. This, too, would get eliminated.
Actually, my enforced random (attempts) to take this into account (gonna need more testing to make sure it works of course), so theoretically this isn't a problem either. Switches midgame that appear to reduce lopsidedness are allowed.
Marines need to kill skulks much better than 1:1 K/D to even have a fair chance to win a game because of their slower movement, more expensive tech and time spent building. How do you change the game so that Skulks are more powerful without having them wipe out Marines at the first fight?
Marines need to kill skulks much better than 1:1 K/D to even have a fair chance to win a game because of their slower movement, more expensive tech and time spent building. How do you change the game so that Skulks are more powerful without having them wipe out Marines at the first fight?
By finally addressing the underlying problem, i.e the economic one. The problem with aliens before is not so much that skulks were too good, it was simply that they were too good FOR how fast aliens could tech and pressure map control compared to marines. UWE took the wrong approach by nerfing skulks, which makes them even more frustrating and unfun to play for a lot of players when they could have easily nerfed or reworked the T.res economy, which would not have had any impact on a player's enjoyment and gone just as far in balancing the game.
It doesn't take much RTS experience at all to see how Mobile, Aggressive and Fast Tech combined with low T.res cost economy is a ridiculous combination for any 'side' to have. You can't have your cake and eat it too, it makes no sense that aliens not only are able to pressure marines much harder, but also require less harvesters and tech up faster overall on top of that. Quite frankly it's downright mind-boggling and infuriating how this design anomaly has been left in the game for this long.
Good thing the balance mod makes an attempt then to have Leap available on 1 Hive already if the khammander is willing to invest a bit more time and res into it.
As for the pictures in the OP: veteran players usually don't run to the team assignments like that. They use keybinds to join the teams faster than any of those door-humpers could. These guys are probably just newbies who want to play on marines because they believe they will have an easier time on marine side.
As for the pictures in the OP: veteran players usually don't run to the team assignments like that. They use keybinds to join the teams faster than any of those door-humpers could. These guys are probably just newbies who want to play on marines because they believe they will have an easier time on marine side.
And they will, because as it stands skulking not only has a steep learning curve (which is problematic for a base lifeform), it currently also is perceived to be a frustrating experience by a lot of players. This is absolutely disastrous for the longevity of this game.
Whenever a server has forced random, I've noticed that players leave before the randomization occurs, then join back in once the teams have been randomized; just to join their team. This is terrible sportsmanship. Keep in mind that this isn't restricted to the rookies. No, most of the random-avoiding people are the hardcore 10-1 KDR sort of people. The ones who are always at the top of the scoreboard. Show some maturity.
But hey! Here's a screenie of the first server I joined this morning.
Ohh, I remember back in the beta where you could increase the aliens attack power so they did more damage.. Would be good if they revisited that and put it as a hive upgrade and tier it, 7% extra, 13% extra, 20% extra. That for me would make skulk a little more fun late game. When I played NS1 (yes i know its different) it was always 75dmg. now you get 25/50/75, so now I think its even more valuable to have a %dmg increase on lifeforms.
Focus was nice in NS1, because you always did max damage as a lifeform. In NS2, that is not the case, you get 25/50/75 as skulk. Imagine new players with focus, or even better players who are trying to leap at JP marines just to land a 25dmg bite with focus... not very effective or useful. (Though yes it would be pretty intense if a fade had it, as they can get in a lot closer and quicker, than other lifeforms)
What would be great (but probably hard to do right) is if the balance adjusted itself with the team's ratio and altered the way the game is played.
More Marines than Aliens would mean an increased res flow for Aliens and thus more/faster Hives/structures/tech/higher lifeforms and a kind of Predator style of gameplay; each individual Alien means a lot more and there will be very few Skulks (unless the Aliens are about to lose).
If there are fewer Marines, the Aliens res flow is decreased and you'll see a lot more Skulks on the field throughout the game. This could be combined with an accelerated spawn rate for the Aliens, because Aliens will die more often. This gives a Zerg-like gameplay.
Used to play 80% of the time as alien, then gorgeous came out and completely put me off alien with all the terrible changes. I can't stand playing skulk anymore, it's painful. They are so incredibly easy to kill, you can wall dance and do everything right and just get mowed down.
And I don't know if it's just me, but I used to be able to do the fade jump/double jump after shadowstepping while strafing, now I can ONLY do it if I'm going straight forward.
These 2 things made me pretty much stop playing aliens all together.
I love playing Skulk. Nothing is more satisfying than having ZERO AIR CONTROL. The movement mechanics in the gldsrc engine were so bad. Thank goodness UWE rectified the situation.
If people get stomped by some asshole veterans(who have magically never gotten tired of the SAME game over again in years) and not get frustrated by that, then I would be very surprised.
No really, if you have gotten killed 14 times in a row by someone, who you´ve clearly shot or bitten enough, then you deserve to get into a stacked team.
Force random obviously completely eliminates stacking.
However, if players are forced to play 50% of their games on a team they don't have fun with, they are liable to stop playing altogether.
It doesn't eliminate skill stacking, which is the biggest form of stacking in NS2. At best, forced random prevents the type of deliberate skill stacks, but it can and frequently does cause its own skill stacks.
What's really needed is a forced random that takes into account something like a player's ELO-rating.
While I appreciate some of the opinions here, it has little to do with aliens not being as fun. It's just a psychological thing. Marines == good guys. New players always flock to the "good guys". Look at early WoW population issues. Nobody went Horde because they were the "ugly bad guys". Same gameplay but the appearance and backstory turned people away. It's been the case in most games. Dark age of Camelot before that had huge Albion (good guy knights) overpopulation as well. At its lowest levels, the answer is nothing as complex as alien speed or economy. It's just the human element.
IMO team stacking occurs partly because for a variety of reasons (fun, ego, practice) comp players tend to play marine more often in pubs (some play it nearly 100%).
While I appreciate some of the opinions here, it has little to do with aliens not being as fun. It's just a psychological thing. Marines == good guys. New players always flock to the "good guys". Look at early WoW population issues. Nobody went Horde because they were the "ugly bad guys". Same gameplay but the appearance and backstory turned people away. It's been the case in most games. Dark age of Camelot before that had huge Albion (good guy knights) overpopulation as well. At its lowest levels, the answer is nothing as complex as alien speed or economy. It's just the human element.
lol. my bad, having zero air control and combat potential on your tier 1 lifeform is fine. you're right it's just psychological and has nothing to do with the severe imbalance between being a base skulk and a base marine
IMO team stacking occurs partly because for a variety of reasons (fun, ego, practice) comp players tend to play marine more often in pubs (some play it nearly 100%).
correct, because typically comp players are higher skilled than the average pub player, and enjoy dictating the flow of the game. a skilled comp skulk is not even remotely as close to being effective or useful to their team as a skilled comp marine
How about a server mod that sorts players based on their scores the previous round? i.e. the player with the highest score (either team) is sorted to the Marines, the second and third highest scores are sorted to the aliens, fourth and fifth Marines, etc etc. That way each team gets a balance of good/more experienced players and weaker/new players. If one team dominates, all of that team's members are pretty evenly distributed across the two teams in the next round.
Marines need to kill skulks much better than 1:1 K/D to even have a fair chance to win a game because of their slower movement, more expensive tech and time spent building. How do you change the game so that Skulks are more powerful without having them wipe out Marines at the first fight?
I've thought of this as a problem since pre B240 times. That is that marines need to stomp the skulks early game to get enough res. Only thing is in B240 on marines regularly do get k:d way over 1.
There is balance in terms of the raw win loss ratio of each race, then there is balance in terms of average k:d between races. I think more attention needs to be paid to the latter as it tends to be a deciding factor in whether people find a game fun or not.
It's just no fun getting repeatedly killed as a skulk which can often happen even in a game where aliens save up for an onos rapeathon and win.
The most appealing solution imo is to restore skulk movement and then to make minor adjustments to the aliens economy to achieve win loss balance and a fair and fun fight between each race's base class.
Marines need to kill skulks much better than 1:1 K/D to even have a fair chance to win a game because of their slower movement, more expensive tech and time spent building. How do you change the game so that Skulks are more powerful without having them wipe out Marines at the first fight?
I've thought of this as a problem since pre B240 times. That is that marines need to stomp the skulks early game to get enough res. Only thing is in B240 on marines regularly do get k:d way over 1.
There is balance in terms of the raw win loss ratio of each race, then there is balance in terms of average k:d between races. I think more attention needs to be paid to the latter as it tends to be a deciding factor in whether people find a game fun or not.
It's just no fun getting repeatedly killed as a skulk which can often happen even in a game where aliens save up for an onos rapeathon and win.
The most appealing solution imo is to restore skulk movement and then to make minor adjustments to the aliens economy to achieve win loss balance and a fair and fun fight between each race's base class.
Xarius has commented on this a couple of times, and he has a pretty good point about it. Essentially, the main problem with the balance of the game was (is) that aliens don't need to spend nearly as much to be a competitive late-game team than marines do.
In order to be competitive in the late game, marines absolutely need the following: second IP, armory, obs, phase tech, at least two phase gates (probably 3-4), welders, mines, shotguns, arms lab, weapons and armor 3, advanced armory, second CC, proto lab, jetpacks.
As compared to what the aliens absolutely need: second hive, crag and shift upgrades, celerity, carapace, leap, bile bomb, blink.
With just that, the aliens are capable of being competitive with the marines through the late game. Obviously, that's a whole lot less res to spend. They need cysts too, but not enough to close that enormous res gap.
The problem was that the aliens were also better at expanding quickly. Expanding quickly + needing less res = extreme advantage. Instead of balancing the game by forcing the aliens to spend more than marines to counter their ability to expand so quickly, they balanced the game by making skulks less effective against marines. The balance was achieved all the same, but at the expense of skulks becoming less fun to play.
Comments
The problem is already solved for us in most cases. People are enjoying both teams by getting experience with both of them and voting for random nearly every round.
I'll simplify:
Players are stacking marines because they feel they're more fun
Players see players stacking marines and it has a strong feedback because they assume that marines will win and be more fun, so they try to do it as well
to start with the issue... then:
Voterandom happens and players get put on random teams
Vets that were trying to stack marines tend to stay on the team they're assigned, and if they leave the server adjusts the teams anyway
A game gets started and more often than not, it's a good one
Round ends, mapvotes/extensions end, and people end up voting random again rather than trying to stack a team because they had a fun game
In what way is this not at least a patch on the current state of stacking?
literally none of your posts are worth addressing because you just said "well I saw x happen so you're wrong"
it's really amazing that you cannot grasp players needing to be forced into random teams as being an issue in the first place, and yet state that as a solution
Force random obviously completely eliminates stacking.
However, if players are forced to play 50% of their games on a team they don't have fun with, they are liable to stop playing altogether.
It might not reflect those servers in part because many of those servers don't operate in the same way. This is extremely simple to understand and why I bothered mentioning our scenario in the first place - literally this is the first thing you should have gotten from the post.
I'm pulling the evidence from more than just what I saw, it's also in the server logs that I use to draw the conclusions and improve the experience. It's a work in progress and always has room for improvement.
It's a lot better than complaining that there is no reason to even try to fix the issue like you're doing.
EDIT to your edit: What are you even doing to try to help the situation? I'm not going to mod skulks to make them "more fun" as we're a vanilla server to begin with. Any attempt that has positive results is one that's worth it, and mine have been so far.
I completely understand your perspective that the problem stems from Aliens being less fun. But the truth of our experiences is that with randomized teams both sides have more chance of being fun and people ending rounds having enjoyed the experience. That's the bottom line - skulk issues included.
you're certainly free to random your server and in fact I encourage it since it sounds like a great place to play. if I were to pub I would probably play on that server, even if only to save myself from the same trap of stacking marines.
that doesn't solve the issue at hand at all, and that's what the thread in question is discussing.
giving feedback from a competent player
I completely understand the issue behind it. But why wouldn't I patch the hull of a sinking ship just because the hull was defective? You're acting like the ENTIRE basis for aliens being less fun revolves around the skulk issue. There is a large problem with skulks, but it's exacerbated by players seeing others stack. It's a feedback loop and a lot of the issue is addressed when you don't have that stacking in the first place.
Try it out sometime, you'll see what I mean.
stacking does dictate the results of most pub games so it's probably a good idea regardless of what state the game is in anyway. most pub victories are dictated by 2-3 competent players (typically playing together) that play at a slight level ahead of the other clueless skulks walking in straight lines
It completely eliminates deliberate stacking. Believe it or not, there are people out there who are good enough to tip the balance of the game but prefer joining the weaker team or switching teams mid-game if things get too lopsided. This, too, would get eliminated.
I agree. I never had the illusion that you can fix the issue of stacking entirely by randomization and shuffling, but it's not a binary operation to begin with. It's about improving where you can. The devs surely are on this - Sewlek's Balance Mod does a great job with it in my opinion.
And even the skulk issue aside, there are always groups of friends/clans that want to come in and pubstomp, and team stacking bias based on the last round, or the particular map... this solution takes on more than just the problems that arise from the skulk's issues.
When the devs fix the issue, maybe it'll cut down on the stacking. I certainly hope it does. But our randomization is a vote to begin with, there when it's needed.
Actually, my enforced random (attempts) to take this into account (gonna need more testing to make sure it works of course), so theoretically this isn't a problem either. Switches midgame that appear to reduce lopsidedness are allowed.
Sorry for the double post.
By finally addressing the underlying problem, i.e the economic one. The problem with aliens before is not so much that skulks were too good, it was simply that they were too good FOR how fast aliens could tech and pressure map control compared to marines. UWE took the wrong approach by nerfing skulks, which makes them even more frustrating and unfun to play for a lot of players when they could have easily nerfed or reworked the T.res economy, which would not have had any impact on a player's enjoyment and gone just as far in balancing the game.
It doesn't take much RTS experience at all to see how Mobile, Aggressive and Fast Tech combined with low T.res cost economy is a ridiculous combination for any 'side' to have. You can't have your cake and eat it too, it makes no sense that aliens not only are able to pressure marines much harder, but also require less harvesters and tech up faster overall on top of that. Quite frankly it's downright mind-boggling and infuriating how this design anomaly has been left in the game for this long.
Good thing the balance mod makes an attempt then to have Leap available on 1 Hive already if the khammander is willing to invest a bit more time and res into it.
As for the pictures in the OP: veteran players usually don't run to the team assignments like that. They use keybinds to join the teams faster than any of those door-humpers could. These guys are probably just newbies who want to play on marines because they believe they will have an easier time on marine side.
And they will, because as it stands skulking not only has a steep learning curve (which is problematic for a base lifeform), it currently also is perceived to be a frustrating experience by a lot of players. This is absolutely disastrous for the longevity of this game.
But hey! Here's a screenie of the first server I joined this morning.
More Marines than Aliens would mean an increased res flow for Aliens and thus more/faster Hives/structures/tech/higher lifeforms and a kind of Predator style of gameplay; each individual Alien means a lot more and there will be very few Skulks (unless the Aliens are about to lose).
If there are fewer Marines, the Aliens res flow is decreased and you'll see a lot more Skulks on the field throughout the game. This could be combined with an accelerated spawn rate for the Aliens, because Aliens will die more often. This gives a Zerg-like gameplay.
And I don't know if it's just me, but I used to be able to do the fade jump/double jump after shadowstepping while strafing, now I can ONLY do it if I'm going straight forward.
These 2 things made me pretty much stop playing aliens all together.
No really, if you have gotten killed 14 times in a row by someone, who you´ve clearly shot or bitten enough, then you deserve to get into a stacked team.
What's really needed is a forced random that takes into account something like a player's ELO-rating.
Focus would make me feel like I'm still useful as a fade against JP/A3 marines that have an armory around the corner.
correct, because typically comp players are higher skilled than the average pub player, and enjoy dictating the flow of the game. a skilled comp skulk is not even remotely as close to being effective or useful to their team as a skilled comp marine
I've thought of this as a problem since pre B240 times. That is that marines need to stomp the skulks early game to get enough res. Only thing is in B240 on marines regularly do get k:d way over 1.
There is balance in terms of the raw win loss ratio of each race, then there is balance in terms of average k:d between races. I think more attention needs to be paid to the latter as it tends to be a deciding factor in whether people find a game fun or not.
It's just no fun getting repeatedly killed as a skulk which can often happen even in a game where aliens save up for an onos rapeathon and win.
The most appealing solution imo is to restore skulk movement and then to make minor adjustments to the aliens economy to achieve win loss balance and a fair and fun fight between each race's base class.
Xarius has commented on this a couple of times, and he has a pretty good point about it. Essentially, the main problem with the balance of the game was (is) that aliens don't need to spend nearly as much to be a competitive late-game team than marines do.
In order to be competitive in the late game, marines absolutely need the following: second IP, armory, obs, phase tech, at least two phase gates (probably 3-4), welders, mines, shotguns, arms lab, weapons and armor 3, advanced armory, second CC, proto lab, jetpacks.
As compared to what the aliens absolutely need: second hive, crag and shift upgrades, celerity, carapace, leap, bile bomb, blink.
With just that, the aliens are capable of being competitive with the marines through the late game. Obviously, that's a whole lot less res to spend. They need cysts too, but not enough to close that enormous res gap.
The problem was that the aliens were also better at expanding quickly. Expanding quickly + needing less res = extreme advantage. Instead of balancing the game by forcing the aliens to spend more than marines to counter their ability to expand so quickly, they balanced the game by making skulks less effective against marines. The balance was achieved all the same, but at the expense of skulks becoming less fun to play.