New Game mode suggestion: control points (the rich do not get richer)
Sling_Blade
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3412Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3412Members, Reinforced - Shadow
I was thinking about the way games have evolved over the years, and one thing that has changed a lot since the first multiplayer games are mechanics where "the rich get richer" have been discarded or greatly weakened. Quake, Counter-Strike, etc all had mechanics where players were rewarded for doing better by having more health, better weapons, etc. This is a lot of fun for players when they do well, because the mechanic helps them completely dominate their opponent. It greatly appeals to the "hardcore" gamers that frequently benefit from these mechanics. It sucks for newer/less than hardcore players though, because to them not only is their opponent better than them, they now have a huge artificial advantage over them which seems unfair. It also makes comebacks much harder, so most of the time the latter part of a game with this kind of mechanic is only fun for the person winning.
That's not to say there is anything inherently wrong with these kind of mechanics. It's preference. Some games like DOTA have done spectacularly well with those kinds of mechanics. But there's clearly a large portion of gamers that might find this kind of mode more fun. NS2 acknowledge this shift a little bit by getting rid of res for kills. The concede option also mitigates some of the downside to the "rich get richer" mechanics. But I think these are small steps that make hardcore gamers less happy and still don't really satisfy the more casual crowd.
I think it would be interesting to try to design a game mode that got rid of them as completely as possible, while still retaining the core NS2 mechanics. It seems the obvious choice would be, invulnerable main base, resources are not based on res nodes, and res towers are basically control points that give points to an overall score. Then just have a constant team res flow over time that the commander spends. By "control points" I don't mean changing the mechanics of res nodes at all, other than that they give points instead of resources. Players would still have to build/guard/destroy them. All tech progression should be tied to the commader's building. I think player's res flow rate should be tweaked, but not done away with altogether. Loss should be less painful but I think having a mix of tech is fun enough that keeping it around for when players can't afford the higher tech is more important. I'm not suggesting some version of "combat mode" that completely changes the core NS2 gameplay, only trying to weaken some of the "rich get richer" mechanics that turns off newer or casual gamers.
That's not to say there is anything inherently wrong with these kind of mechanics. It's preference. Some games like DOTA have done spectacularly well with those kinds of mechanics. But there's clearly a large portion of gamers that might find this kind of mode more fun. NS2 acknowledge this shift a little bit by getting rid of res for kills. The concede option also mitigates some of the downside to the "rich get richer" mechanics. But I think these are small steps that make hardcore gamers less happy and still don't really satisfy the more casual crowd.
I think it would be interesting to try to design a game mode that got rid of them as completely as possible, while still retaining the core NS2 mechanics. It seems the obvious choice would be, invulnerable main base, resources are not based on res nodes, and res towers are basically control points that give points to an overall score. Then just have a constant team res flow over time that the commander spends. By "control points" I don't mean changing the mechanics of res nodes at all, other than that they give points instead of resources. Players would still have to build/guard/destroy them. All tech progression should be tied to the commader's building. I think player's res flow rate should be tweaked, but not done away with altogether. Loss should be less painful but I think having a mix of tech is fun enough that keeping it around for when players can't afford the higher tech is more important. I'm not suggesting some version of "combat mode" that completely changes the core NS2 gameplay, only trying to weaken some of the "rich get richer" mechanics that turns off newer or casual gamers.
Comments
I was going to debate the fact that points are a less successful motivator for playing this game. I personally prefer more immersive gameplay mechanics, points seem very gamey, but to hell with that notion, let's discuss your idea further.
I don't like arbitrary game design decisions, so I'll start there. How would you determine a win if bases are invulnerable? Some simple solutions would be to give a finite amount of lives, or to have a "first player to 50 000 points wins". This is the first thing we should discuss (in my opinion which is always correct (/joke)).
Here's my idea, first team to TWICE the other team's score wins. A teams score is a total count of all score accumulated by any means: killing opponents, destroying structures, researching tech, destroying structures with that tech (arcs for example, not going into exacts yet, but somehow less points for using arcs than going in with axes).
The reasoning behind this, is no matter how far into the game the teams are, there will always be a chance to come back, with a constant flow of res, the team is free to try strategies that will help them get the upper hand.
One more thing, the twice other team's score, that may not work, 50% more than the other team's score might work better, that's something that will have to be tested and experimented with.
Having one team require x amount of more points than the other would seem to have the downside that games could take an indeterminate amount of time. With the above system it would be bounded.
The reason I suggested making main bases invulnerable is because that is classic mode's main objective, and part of the reason it requires "rich get richer" mechanics. One team has to become powerful enough to wipe the other out and destroy their base.
I'm sure you could think up some explanation for the "points" system, but I'm just talking game mechanics at the moment and trying to keep the idea compatible with current maps. You could have something like the res nodes are the base's power. The marines are trying to generate enough energy to deploy the system's biohazard detox system, and the aliens are trying to overload the nuclear reactor and blow the place up.
Also, I don't really like it because it removes (almost completely) the already small RTS part of the game.
From an implementation perspective I think the change is pretty minimal. No new assets, just some small changes to game logic. It's hard to estimate the exact time it would take since I don't know their code, but I think it likely a single developer could easily do it in a week. Probably the biggest time sink would be tweaking the team and player resource rates to be fun, which would require a fair amount of play testing.
I'm also not sure what you mean about it removing the RTS aspect of the game. The commander still has a limited amount of resources and has to choose how to spend them. He has to do everything he used to do. He doesn't have to defend main base, but he does have to defend control points. He's going to have to siege/attack control points/res nodes instead bases. Sure, it removes the classic RTS objective of destroying your opponent's base, but that kind of objective requires "the rich get richer" mechanics.
Thinking about it a bit more though... it might be better to use hives/command chairs as the nodes that give points. That would focus the fighting on fewer areas and have it seems less like a game of "musical chairs". You would need to make it easier to kill hives/command chairs though.
The slippery slope needs to be less steep than it is, but it should not be removed entirely, for reasons I discuss here.
That said, if someone made a mod like you're suggesting, I'm sure it would get played. But I don't think it would get played very much.
"By contrast, in the other extreme, where comebacks are always equally possible at any time (i.e. the "slippery slope" is perfectly flat) then the early decisions are unimportant because no matter how well or poorly you play early on your chance of winning later hasn't changed."
You're conflating two different mechanics, or at least, my suggestions are not "flat" in the way you've suggested. The chances of two teams winning any given fight are not necessarily tied to their chances of winning the overall game. That's the appeal of a control point system and removing "rich get richer" mechanics. It decouples the two outcomes. The fact that a team is up 499 to 1 means it's very unlikely that the other team will win. All the work that team has put in has pretty much assured them victory. But each individual fight isn't any less fun for the other team because they are not at a huge disadvantage. They aren't getting stomped into the ground because they still have armor 1/weapons 1 and the aliens have 50 onoses. A player isn't pissed because they died in a unlucky shotgun blast and now they're stuck as a skulk for the rest of the game. They didn't lose in the first 5 minutes because their base got sucker punched.
I don't think the thread you linked is really even trying to address that. It's a thread struggling to find the most tasteful balance of "rich get richer" mechanics, apparently to help make the game more fun competitively. That's fine, maybe a lot of complicated balance tweaks can make classic NS2 have your ideal "slippery slope". I don't think that's going to make the game any less frustrating for casual players though.
That's like the big publishers saying "I'm not going to fund your idea because it's not guaranteed to make money". You're blatantly squashing the creative process for no reason I can understand.
That certainly wasn't my intention. If anyone was considering working on such a mod and has been discouraged by my remarks, please accept both my apologies and my heartfelt encouragement to pursue your creative ambitions.
I stand by my assessment of the merits of such work. But my assessment isn't the one that counts. If you think it's worth doing, then do it.
Your basic deathmatch game is highly volatile, sure you can find the railgun and kick ass with it, but you have to be really damn good to do that forever, because everyone else can shoot at you and you have the railgun, so they are going to want to either get rid of you or steal the gun for themselves.
Further, everyone can run around the map and pick up guns and powerups, and maps are specifically designed to prevent camping the one good spot, you have to stay on the move to get ammo and powerups so you have to also, by extension, allow other players a shot at getting any given weapon, powerup, or other bonus.
With the advent of ranks and unlocks, you basically take the 'I played a few minutes and found the rocket launcher' idea and made it permanent. Now you have the rocket launcher in every game, and the rocket launcher isn't a random pickup, and players can't use it effectively even if they kill you, so you have the only rocket launcher and everyone else is fodder.
If anything, the trend is towards thinking that snowballing power is good rather than it being something to avoid.
NS2 has already made changes that addresses some of the mechanics that NS had like that. Bunny hopping being the biggest one. But it was never in the same league as quake in terms of how dominating a player could be. A good quake player in a pub would never die. A good player in NS2/NS might kill 3 skulks at most. And often he won't.
It also depends on who you're playing against, a good quake player could kill n+1 rookies, but in a comparable match he would have to contend against other people who would very likely kill him a lot too.
NS1 was really not very different in that respect, NS2 is moreso, though only very sporadically. It's still relatively easy to get a fade or especially an onos and kill as many marines as you like, dying only really as a result of over-commitment or carelessness. Assuming you're playing against not very good players at least.
What NS does do, I suppose, is remove the positive feedback loop from the player, and make it... well honestly pretty independent of your actions as an FPS player. Killing 10 skulks doesn't mean you get to pick up the railgun, it just means you killed 10 skulks. If you want the railgun you have to wait until the resources tick in and buy it, and everyone else can do it at the same time.
NS doesn't reward you for being good at FPS games, really. FPS games generally do.