Also some were saying you don't balance a game for newbs or pub servers...so you balance it only for pro com matches? You balance for 1% of the player base? That doesn't make any more sense then to balance for newbs. I would assume the goal is to have a fairly balanced game on all skill levels.
@DCMAKER Balance should be made at the highest level of play, as they are the people that are most consistent. If you balance based on lower skill players, then the higher skill players will have a field day. Eg. if you make something a rookie can use well (for example 50 bullets not enough to take down a skulk? lets put a 100 bullet mag in so rookies can take down skulks... Well, the pros can take down a skulk with 20 bullets (assuming a 50% accuracy), so that 100 bullet mag just made them twice as effective.
Also some were saying you don't balance a game for newbs or pub servers...so you balance it only for pro com matches? You balance for 1% of the player base? That doesn't make any more sense then to balance for newbs. I would assume the goal is to have a fairly balanced game on all skill levels.
@DCMAKER Balance should be made at the highest level of play, as they are the people that are most consistent. If you balance based on lower skill players, then the higher skill players will have a field day. Eg. if you make something a rookie can use well (for example 50 bullets not enough to take down a skulk? lets put a 100 bullet mag in so rookies can take down skulks... Well, the pros can take down a skulk with 20 bullets (assuming a 50% accuracy), so that 100 bullet mag just made them twice as effective.
It's not difficult to design a mechanic that helps rookies, but doesn't work in comp play. NS2 has them as well. They're called gorges and grenade launchers. Otherwise look at noobtubes or what not. Plenty of examples out there.
Onos is also a rookie friendly unit, although it's still useful in comp play.
I think that is bad, the lerk should be punished harder for these clear mistakes in decision making and intel gathering.
Why though?
Do you feel that NS2 is too easy for rookies to learn how to play?? 0.o
Or the Lerk for that matter??
If anything, (as the OP points out) it needs to be more forgiving in multiple areas imo, to improve player retention.
Changes like the recent price drop of higher lifeforms do just that, they allow more hands on time and are less penalizing / demoralizing.
Knowing when or where to cap a skill ceiling is a skill in itself, requiring you to intimately know your customer base's capabilities, and predict what the skill floor will be. (the average skilled player)
@IronHorse We touched on it briefly in the earlier comments. There are some weapons and lifeforms that are well designed for new players. Similarly there's wapons and lifeforms which requires a LOT of practise.
And that's OK.
The lerk doesn't really NEED to be effective for rookies. If you instruct rookies to wait for onos, they can get plenty of frags and hopefully enjoy the game, and even be remotely useful. So I don't see a problem in having difficult to master lifeforms/weapons, as long as we have these rookie friendly mechanics like the onos and grenade launcher.
Once rookies have become comfortable about the game, they can venture in to trying some of these more advanced and squishy lifeforms, but at their own pace.
I think the problem is found in how we educate the players about these rookie friendly weapons. I'm not trained in game design, but I'm guessing new people try the lerk because it's cheap - and because they generally get raped by them. At the same time, on the evolve tab you have what looks like a sort of progression, where the onos is the final form - so it seems intuitive to pick that last.
If you could somehow convince the rookies to save their res for the onos, or go gorge and support - I think that alone could help player retention, or at the very least help avoid the frustrating demoralizations you talk about, much more so than making the lerk/fade slightly easier to handle ever could.
Here's a related idea I'm gonna reap all the disagrees with this one, but here goes anyway!
Make the lerk and fade lifeforms 'unlockables'. So that a new player only can choose between gorge and onos. On top of that, when the players then do unlock the lerk or fade, they will be more invested in it and therefore train with it exclusively.
From the very few gathers/pugs I've played recently, I personally dislike the 2-3 lerk meta alot, but that is less the fault of how the lerk is played and more on how the alien commander/economy system was designed.
Also, the generic pack play of 4 skulk crush vs 2 marines where you literally don't even have to use any type of ambush tactic to take them down also turns me off. It's similar to the 3 lerk crush play you see where it is very hard for your team to track the same lerk and take it down before you all get wiped. If you aren't on at least w1/a1 at this point with sgs on the way, you might as well call gg. Makes for very linear gameplay.
I do agree with Santa that even when marines set up a bait or catch a lerk out of position, it does seem a bit easy to escape as the lerk. That might be because I don't play against top competition. Too many times I see a lerk dive a marine baited in thinking there is only one marine (when instead there are three) and the lerk still gets away.
The lerk doesn't really NEED to be effective for rookies. If you instruct rookies to wait for onos, they can get plenty of frags and hopefully enjoy the game, and even be remotely useful. So I don't see a problem in having difficult to master lifeforms/weapons, as long as we have these rookie friendly mechanics like the onos and grenade launcher.
I guess that's just where we disagree, then *Shrug*
I feel like it should be a goal to have everything - as much as is possible - be easily accessible and still maintain a medium high skill ceiling.
Anything else is giving up on the design, in my mind.
It may be a stretch, but I keep referencing CS because it's such a good example of realizing that goal, so i'll use it again. Everything is in reach to an enjoyable level, even if you aren't good at it or familiar with it.
Compare the fun and ease in learning to fade for the first time versus using an AWP for the first time - you're more likely to enjoy and be successful in that sniping, yet there is still much room to grow skill wise, and losing your AWP to dying isn't remotely as much of a loss as losing your fade.
The slogan for the board game Othello comes to mind as the epitome of such a goal: "A minute to learn... A lifetime to master."
That's how you ensure player retention, imo.
I dont think that the lerk is too powerful overall, but I would say that's its skill:power curve is a little too strong. I also dont think the lerk is 'too easy', but once the player grasps the basics about lerk it becomes pretty easy to survive and still remain effective even when slightly outclassed. Unfortunately with the resource system and alien progression the lerk is really a necessary evil at this point, since the aliens so heavily depend on it for those 5 minutes to get to fades. I do think that the recent change in Competitive Mod to remove 5 base armor from the lerk, but give it 1 additional HP per biomass helps it match the pacing of the game better.
As for rookies starting off I can see attempting to steer them away from lerk or fade, but unfortunately I suspect they would do the same thing with their onos, yolo off into a crowd of marines. Its an unfortunate side effect of how most FPS games are played - really what needs reinforcing is that as anything other than a skulk, surviving is the most important thing you can do.
Unfortunately with the resource system and alien progression the lerk is really a necessary evil at this point, since the aliens so heavily depend on it for those 5 minutes to get to fades.
I agree with this, which is why I wouldn't recommend changing the lerk, without also changing the gorge in such a way that it can relieve some of the current lerks role (in that it can initiate group crushes, not bellyslide around fragging cappers lol )
The current lerk is not OP. It just has a high skill ceiling. You can quickly tell the difference between good lerks and meh lerks as a marine.
Just because something is hard to track doesnt mean we need to play the "realism" card. I heard the same story back when people didn't know how to deal with pogo-marines.
I know I'm quoting something from the beginning, but TBT @joshhh. Aiming at Lerks is very difficult for me because they don't follow any realism. The game also has very little telegraph when it comes to movement. Skulks/Lerks/Fades/Marines/ect. all have little to no telegraph when they decide to instantly move left, or right. This makes it so you have to moderately predict how an enemy will move, and makes the game very fast pace as poor reaction time won't let you change aim direction fast enough against that strafing Skulk.
However, Skulks, Fades, Marines, Onos, Gorge, all follow a sort of logic in their movement. If a skulk jumps, it will slowly descend at an arc (or straight down if they hold S) and a Fade that blinks has to follow the same logic unless they hold their blink down. Lerks can go up, down, left, right, they can stay afloat without ever needing to arc. Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, so aiming at them becomes a quick test of how quickly you can adapt to each of it's movement changes. Unlike the Fade/Skulk(that isn't strafing) which have logic in their movement. A person with a shitty mouse, monitor, or low FPS is going to have a very difficult time tracking that Lerk.
TL;DR Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, and aiming at them becomes a test of reactive timing. This is also limited by hardware, unlike the other (non-strafing skulks) lifeforms which you can use logic and create predictions for their movement.
Currently if you fly in to an uncleared, or partially cleared room as a lerk without scouting, or maybe you think your team mates have scouted it, I'd maintain, that any lerk with 50+ hours lerk practise can juke a div1 and probably some prem marines long enough to escape if it has full hp.
I've lerked against Premier level players in the past both in pubs and pugs. I learned very quickly that I couldn't close the gap in order to get a kill without some skulk help. I essentially became a spike slinger. Never went into open rooms and always stayed near a corner where I could survive when my HP dropped. If I hadn't, I would've lost my lerk early. Premier players WILL punish you for making a mistake.
Here's a related idea I'm gonna reap all the disagrees with this one, but here goes anyway!
Make the lerk and fade lifeforms 'unlockables'. So that a new player only can choose between gorge and onos. On top of that, when the players then do unlock the lerk or fade, they will be more invested in it and therefore train with it exclusively.
That s actually a good idea. I have seen way too many walking lerks/fades from green players.
Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, and aiming at them becomes a test of reactive timing. This is also limited by hardware, unlike the other (non-strafing skulks) lifeforms which you can use logic and create predictions for their movement.
Except that there's corners in this game.. so ANY lifeform (including skulks) can ambush you and test your "reactive timing" at any moment...
So yes.. hardware can affect your performance in an online competitive FPS - but this has been the case since Quake.
May I suggest: Adapt or die.
This is a long thread but has anyone also mentioned that lerks are explicitly designed in such a way that they have advantages early game vs marines? 1 lerk vs 1 marine at 3min = lerk wins usually. 1 lerk vs 1 marine at 20mins = lerk dies usually. A lerk that is tough to deal with early on becomes more of a nuisance in the late game.
Simply put, lerks NEED to be powerful early on and be able to deal with constant marine aggression because that allows the team to transition into fades without the game already being over. You can't rely on skulks and nerfed lerks to do this and marines would do too much economical damage, have too much map control and too much tech. The game would essentially boil down to "Can we make it to 10mins and get our fades...if not we lose".
Lerks are similar to how stalkers are in Starcraft 2. Easily the most powerful early game unit but once the opponents begin to tech up they become almost useless in a straight up fight and function more as support. Blink stalkers vs normal bio is brutally one sided in favor of the stalker but later on when bio gets stim, the bio player will absolutely crush a stalker heavy army. Stalkers contain the opponent and allow the protoss to expand and maintain a good economy. They are a transitional crux unit and lerks are very similar.
You get owned by the lerks early on but later, you repay them with a shotgun blast 1 hit KO to the face. I think its fine
The current lerk is not OP. It just has a high skill ceiling. You can quickly tell the difference between good lerks and meh lerks as a marine.
Just because something is hard to track doesnt mean we need to play the "realism" card. I heard the same story back when people didn't know how to deal with pogo-marines.
I know I'm quoting something from the beginning, but TBT @joshhh. Aiming at Lerks is very difficult for me because they don't follow any realism. The game also has very little telegraph when it comes to movement. Skulks/Lerks/Fades/Marines/ect. all have little to no telegraph when they decide to instantly move left, or right. This makes it so you have to moderately predict how an enemy will move, and makes the game very fast pace as poor reaction time won't let you change aim direction fast enough against that strafing Skulk.
However, Skulks, Fades, Marines, Onos, Gorge, all follow a sort of logic in their movement. If a skulk jumps, it will slowly descend at an arc (or straight down if they hold S) and a Fade that blinks has to follow the same logic unless they hold their blink down. Lerks can go up, down, left, right, they can stay afloat without ever needing to arc. Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, so aiming at them becomes a quick test of how quickly you can adapt to each of it's movement changes. Unlike the Fade/Skulk(that isn't strafing) which have logic in their movement. A person with a shitty mouse, monitor, or low FPS is going to have a very difficult time tracking that Lerk.
TL;DR Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, and aiming at them becomes a test of reactive timing. This is also limited by hardware, unlike the other (non-strafing skulks) lifeforms which you can use logic and create predictions for their movement.
None of the lifeforms are easily tracked or predicted with the right person controlling them. Thats what makes it possible for a game to be balanced when a life form dies in less than half a second if tracked perfectly. Lerk is not the only class that can be extremely illogical. You must have never tried to shoot Golden's skulk. Tracking that spaztastic movement is almost all reaction and very little prediction. I swear he tapes the mouse to his hand and flops it around on the ground.
You've all said: Yes this game is broken and some people can abuse it, but we aren't going to change it because high skill is more fun for me.
Keep your dead game.
No. We said:
"Making a game more accessible is a good goal to have.
Designing the game to have a low skill ceiling is not.
It often just alienates the core population that can keep a game alive.
Now if you were to suggest improving the skill curve or lessening slippery slope mechanics.."
Then we went into a wild yet entertaining tangent that got me through math homework about lerks.
This is a long thread but has anyone also mentioned that lerks are explicitly designed in such a way that they have advantages early game vs marines? 1 lerk vs 1 marine at 3min = lerk wins usually. 1 lerk vs 1 marine at 20mins = lerk dies usually. A lerk that is tough to deal with early on becomes more of a nuisance in the late game.
A pack of 4 lerks with aura is awesome in in 6v6.. until the marines get shotguns..
None of the lifeforms are easily tracked or predicted with the right person controlling them. Thats what makes it possible for a game to be balanced when a life form dies in less than half a second if tracked perfectly. Lerk is not the only class that can be extremely illogical. You must have never tried to shoot Golden's skulk. Tracking that spaztastic movement is almost all reaction and very little prediction. I swear he tapes the mouse to his hand and flops it around on the ground.
@joshhh lol. that is the funniest thing I read for a while.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I would like to add one detail though...
Balancing on the highest skill is NOT the way to do it. You always balance around all skill levels. Here is why..
Alienating the largest player basis. How many highest skill level players does ns2 have? The whole prem div. Thats how much % of the entire competitive scene? Or how much % of the entire active ns2 player base? Its but a very small fraction of everyone playing ns2.
Players will not stick around if their balanced game will only be achieved when they finally hit prem div, as many will not ever reach that goal. (time, skill etc)
Highly skilled players will not stick around if their balance is gone above a certain skill level. (balancing for rookies)
Now balancing for all skill levels is a lot more challenging. Play which is common or doable for prem divs may be a hopeful glimmer in the eye of a pub or lower div player.
And from what ive seen so far many around the top fail to scale down their mindset when thinking how lower play is.
So rather then completely bitch about how the OP is wrong, lets keep in mind that for a rookie.. it may be accurate. Which begs the question.. what can we do about it?
If the 'fix' is to not be THAT green. Does that happen fast enough? Is their enough incentive for rookies to keep playing past that phase? And what about points raised by the 'middle skilled' players.. How to handle that?
The game needs a casual mod, a public mode, a whatever you want to call it mode- the name doesn't matter.
I don't think the ideas need a lot of work as a few balance changes would create a more even player field.
Many builds ago, everyone could be an overpowered onos.
At the moment, only a certain few can be an overpowered lerk/fade/shotgunner.
De-power the individual. The game has slowly been creeping towards a hero balance, where a single amazing player can control a whole game. I’m a fairly decent player but we can’t save the game from an invincible lerk or a med packed shot gunner.
Obviously everything would need testing.
Marine Change:
Med pack percentages. Every new life each sequential med pack deals 20% less health. It resets at an armoury (the numbers would need a bit of juggling).
Make Exos viable in public play (more health?).
Alien Change:
For lerk, Increase the hitbox and increase the health to compensate. Make them easier to hit so they can’t do the ridiculous flying twitch that only a small percentage have mastered.
Flame could slow the fade the down (or even stop blink completely). This would encourage teamwork and would make the flamethrower more useful. It would also give the fade a specific weakness. I have had lots of games recently where one player has 27:1. It’s doesn’t work and it’s not an enjoyable experience for the majority.
I'm not saying this should be the only way to play NS2, but the people who feel left behind would like a way to enjoy the game again.
"We" can do plenty to stop an individual. Half of the reason public players get slaughtered by amazing players is because they have 0 teamwork, no organization, and lack coordination. It's pretty easy for 1 marine to kill a group of skulks if they attack 1 by 1 through the same entrance. It's not hard to kill 3 marines as a skulk if they keep running out of each others' LOS. Flanking, moving in a group, and covering your teammates aren't competitive level skills, they are common sense strategies which work in practically every other team shooter/strategy game.
You always balance around all skill levels. Here is why..
How to buff lerk so you can get 20 kills without me getting 60 kills?
How to buff shotgun so you can kill a fade without me killing 5 fades?
You balance things at the top skill (reactions and aim) whilst leaving plenty of other options accessible to all skill levels (communication, decision making, map reading, positioning). This means that you don't create a shotgun that does 300dmg for a full shot because it might make it more balanced for everyone around 15% accuracy, but meet a marine with 25% accuracy and he will rip you a new pair of jeans.
Peripheral mechanics like removal of RFK and no-res-when-dead is certainly balancing for all skill levels, but what more can you do? It's virtually impossible to "balance for all skill levels" and it's a laughable idea to balance for anything but the top. How do you even know when something is balanced if you're not doing it for the top skill? Who is your calibration point, and what happens when a better player comes along and abuses beyond the point of calibration?
How to buff shotgun so you can kill a fade without me killing 5 fades?
You don't, you buff the grenade launcher. Because you're not going to use the grenade launcher anyway, the change won't affect you, only the rookie.
Basically, you make weapons/abillities that have a high Power/Skill relation for rookies. These weapons will not be anywhere nearly as efficient in competetive play compared to the shotgun, so they won't affect comp play much as they won't be used, even with buffs.
Similarly, the lerk shouldn't be used by the casual player at all - unless he plans to learn it. Now obviously I'm not saying we should take away peoples abillity to play lerk if they want to, but I do think encouraging new players to save for the easier to play onos or gorges is how you balance pubs.
Suggesting that you can't balance for low level play without affecting high level is nuts.
@SantaClaws
All well and good until you come across Herakles' now horrendously OP gorge...
That is because of how they chose to balance the gorge in compmod. Bunnyjump mechanics complement competetive play, not casual play. That change is going to have very little impact on low level play if any, which is the original intention I believe.
Comments
@DCMAKER Balance should be made at the highest level of play, as they are the people that are most consistent. If you balance based on lower skill players, then the higher skill players will have a field day. Eg. if you make something a rookie can use well (for example 50 bullets not enough to take down a skulk? lets put a 100 bullet mag in so rookies can take down skulks... Well, the pros can take down a skulk with 20 bullets (assuming a 50% accuracy), so that 100 bullet mag just made them twice as effective.
Onos is also a rookie friendly unit, although it's still useful in comp play.
waaaaa?
Do you feel that NS2 is too easy for rookies to learn how to play?? 0.o
Or the Lerk for that matter??
If anything, (as the OP points out) it needs to be more forgiving in multiple areas imo, to improve player retention.
Changes like the recent price drop of higher lifeforms do just that, they allow more hands on time and are less penalizing / demoralizing.
Knowing when or where to cap a skill ceiling is a skill in itself, requiring you to intimately know your customer base's capabilities, and predict what the skill floor will be. (the average skilled player)
And that's OK.
The lerk doesn't really NEED to be effective for rookies. If you instruct rookies to wait for onos, they can get plenty of frags and hopefully enjoy the game, and even be remotely useful. So I don't see a problem in having difficult to master lifeforms/weapons, as long as we have these rookie friendly mechanics like the onos and grenade launcher.
Once rookies have become comfortable about the game, they can venture in to trying some of these more advanced and squishy lifeforms, but at their own pace.
I think the problem is found in how we educate the players about these rookie friendly weapons. I'm not trained in game design, but I'm guessing new people try the lerk because it's cheap - and because they generally get raped by them. At the same time, on the evolve tab you have what looks like a sort of progression, where the onos is the final form - so it seems intuitive to pick that last.
If you could somehow convince the rookies to save their res for the onos, or go gorge and support - I think that alone could help player retention, or at the very least help avoid the frustrating demoralizations you talk about, much more so than making the lerk/fade slightly easier to handle ever could.
Make the lerk and fade lifeforms 'unlockables'. So that a new player only can choose between gorge and onos. On top of that, when the players then do unlock the lerk or fade, they will be more invested in it and therefore train with it exclusively.
Also, the generic pack play of 4 skulk crush vs 2 marines where you literally don't even have to use any type of ambush tactic to take them down also turns me off. It's similar to the 3 lerk crush play you see where it is very hard for your team to track the same lerk and take it down before you all get wiped. If you aren't on at least w1/a1 at this point with sgs on the way, you might as well call gg. Makes for very linear gameplay.
I do agree with Santa that even when marines set up a bait or catch a lerk out of position, it does seem a bit easy to escape as the lerk. That might be because I don't play against top competition. Too many times I see a lerk dive a marine baited in thinking there is only one marine (when instead there are three) and the lerk still gets away.
I feel like it should be a goal to have everything - as much as is possible - be easily accessible and still maintain a medium high skill ceiling.
Anything else is giving up on the design, in my mind.
It may be a stretch, but I keep referencing CS because it's such a good example of realizing that goal, so i'll use it again. Everything is in reach to an enjoyable level, even if you aren't good at it or familiar with it.
Compare the fun and ease in learning to fade for the first time versus using an AWP for the first time - you're more likely to enjoy and be successful in that sniping, yet there is still much room to grow skill wise, and losing your AWP to dying isn't remotely as much of a loss as losing your fade.
The slogan for the board game Othello comes to mind as the epitome of such a goal: "A minute to learn... A lifetime to master."
That's how you ensure player retention, imo.
As for rookies starting off I can see attempting to steer them away from lerk or fade, but unfortunately I suspect they would do the same thing with their onos, yolo off into a crowd of marines. Its an unfortunate side effect of how most FPS games are played - really what needs reinforcing is that as anything other than a skulk, surviving is the most important thing you can do.
However, Skulks, Fades, Marines, Onos, Gorge, all follow a sort of logic in their movement. If a skulk jumps, it will slowly descend at an arc (or straight down if they hold S) and a Fade that blinks has to follow the same logic unless they hold their blink down. Lerks can go up, down, left, right, they can stay afloat without ever needing to arc. Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, so aiming at them becomes a quick test of how quickly you can adapt to each of it's movement changes. Unlike the Fade/Skulk(that isn't strafing) which have logic in their movement. A person with a shitty mouse, monitor, or low FPS is going to have a very difficult time tracking that Lerk.
TL;DR Good Lerks have no logic in their movement, and aiming at them becomes a test of reactive timing. This is also limited by hardware, unlike the other (non-strafing skulks) lifeforms which you can use logic and create predictions for their movement.
That s actually a good idea. I have seen way too many walking lerks/fades from green players.
So yes.. hardware can affect your performance in an online competitive FPS - but this has been the case since Quake.
May I suggest: Adapt or die.
Simply put, lerks NEED to be powerful early on and be able to deal with constant marine aggression because that allows the team to transition into fades without the game already being over. You can't rely on skulks and nerfed lerks to do this and marines would do too much economical damage, have too much map control and too much tech. The game would essentially boil down to "Can we make it to 10mins and get our fades...if not we lose".
Lerks are similar to how stalkers are in Starcraft 2. Easily the most powerful early game unit but once the opponents begin to tech up they become almost useless in a straight up fight and function more as support. Blink stalkers vs normal bio is brutally one sided in favor of the stalker but later on when bio gets stim, the bio player will absolutely crush a stalker heavy army. Stalkers contain the opponent and allow the protoss to expand and maintain a good economy. They are a transitional crux unit and lerks are very similar.
You get owned by the lerks early on but later, you repay them with a shotgun blast 1 hit KO to the face. I think its fine
None of the lifeforms are easily tracked or predicted with the right person controlling them. Thats what makes it possible for a game to be balanced when a life form dies in less than half a second if tracked perfectly. Lerk is not the only class that can be extremely illogical. You must have never tried to shoot Golden's skulk. Tracking that spaztastic movement is almost all reaction and very little prediction. I swear he tapes the mouse to his hand and flops it around on the ground.
You've all said: Yes this game is broken and some people can abuse it, but we aren't going to change it because high skill is more fun for me.
Keep your dead game.
Any money says this guy clicked 'post' and then Start > Natural Selection 2
No. We said:
"Making a game more accessible is a good goal to have.
Designing the game to have a low skill ceiling is not.
It often just alienates the core population that can keep a game alive.
Now if you were to suggest improving the skill curve or lessening slippery slope mechanics.."
Then we went into a wild yet entertaining tangent that got me through math homework about lerks.
A pack of 4 lerks with aura is awesome in in 6v6.. until the marines get shotguns..
@joshhh lol. that is the funniest thing I read for a while.
Keep your CoD mindset and be gone.
Balancing on the highest skill is NOT the way to do it. You always balance around all skill levels. Here is why..
Alienating the largest player basis. How many highest skill level players does ns2 have? The whole prem div. Thats how much % of the entire competitive scene? Or how much % of the entire active ns2 player base? Its but a very small fraction of everyone playing ns2.
Players will not stick around if their balanced game will only be achieved when they finally hit prem div, as many will not ever reach that goal. (time, skill etc)
Highly skilled players will not stick around if their balance is gone above a certain skill level. (balancing for rookies)
Now balancing for all skill levels is a lot more challenging. Play which is common or doable for prem divs may be a hopeful glimmer in the eye of a pub or lower div player.
And from what ive seen so far many around the top fail to scale down their mindset when thinking how lower play is.
So rather then completely bitch about how the OP is wrong, lets keep in mind that for a rookie.. it may be accurate. Which begs the question.. what can we do about it?
If the 'fix' is to not be THAT green. Does that happen fast enough? Is their enough incentive for rookies to keep playing past that phase? And what about points raised by the 'middle skilled' players.. How to handle that?
"We" can do plenty to stop an individual. Half of the reason public players get slaughtered by amazing players is because they have 0 teamwork, no organization, and lack coordination. It's pretty easy for 1 marine to kill a group of skulks if they attack 1 by 1 through the same entrance. It's not hard to kill 3 marines as a skulk if they keep running out of each others' LOS. Flanking, moving in a group, and covering your teammates aren't competitive level skills, they are common sense strategies which work in practically every other team shooter/strategy game.
How to buff lerk so you can get 20 kills without me getting 60 kills?
How to buff shotgun so you can kill a fade without me killing 5 fades?
You balance things at the top skill (reactions and aim) whilst leaving plenty of other options accessible to all skill levels (communication, decision making, map reading, positioning). This means that you don't create a shotgun that does 300dmg for a full shot because it might make it more balanced for everyone around 15% accuracy, but meet a marine with 25% accuracy and he will rip you a new pair of jeans.
Peripheral mechanics like removal of RFK and no-res-when-dead is certainly balancing for all skill levels, but what more can you do? It's virtually impossible to "balance for all skill levels" and it's a laughable idea to balance for anything but the top. How do you even know when something is balanced if you're not doing it for the top skill? Who is your calibration point, and what happens when a better player comes along and abuses beyond the point of calibration?
You don't, you buff the gorge. Because you're not going to use the gorge anyway, the change won't affect you, only the rookie.
You don't, you buff the grenade launcher. Because you're not going to use the grenade launcher anyway, the change won't affect you, only the rookie.
Basically, you make weapons/abillities that have a high Power/Skill relation for rookies. These weapons will not be anywhere nearly as efficient in competetive play compared to the shotgun, so they won't affect comp play much as they won't be used, even with buffs.
Similarly, the lerk shouldn't be used by the casual player at all - unless he plans to learn it. Now obviously I'm not saying we should take away peoples abillity to play lerk if they want to, but I do think encouraging new players to save for the easier to play onos or gorges is how you balance pubs.
Suggesting that you can't balance for low level play without affecting high level is nuts.
All well and good until you come across Herakles' now horrendously OP gorge...
And the very last thing the GL needs is a boost, at least to player damage, and not for any reason relating to balancing for skill.