NS2 actually does way more than NS1 to lessen the snowballing effect of an RTS/FPS. Quite honestly, you really are now contemplating changes that would remove almost all of what I consider to be good about NS. Snowballing itself its not really a problem, its a mechanic and one that is present in a lot of games. I would say the attempts to always make sure a team has a chance to comeback have done more harm than good in NS2, as it has really impacted the pacing of games. In my eyes, there is nothing wrong with games that do snowball in the favor of one team or the other, as long as they give that team the ability to end the game once a significant advantage is obtained. NS2 can really drag games out, especially when one team really has already lost. I could see the appeal in a mode like siege from NS1, where both teams are fully teched and its a timer based thing until one wins. A straight fight would most likely yield insane alien win percentages, since they are heavily balanced on minimal res income early game. Baring some complicated system to scale their resources over the game, I fail to see how any system like this could be reasonable balanced without major lifeform changes, and without alienating much of the community.
@xDragon The benefit of this kind of change, is that when both teams have an equal number of RTs the game plays out absolutely identically to the way it currently does.
All this would do is reduce the significance of any one RT. By proxy this would also reduce the amount that a single player could dominate, since a single player could not dictate the entire outcome of the game from one location.
The game would still snowball, only it would take double the RT imbalance to snowball as much as it currently does.
Also you need to keep in mind that like any compounding system, after a certain duration the effects of prior compounding far outweigh the amount you are adding in with each iteration.
By this I mean that near the end of the game, the most significant thing is the extra upgrades and equipment the winning team already has. Rather than the amount of income currently coming in. Most pub games that drag out near the end are not that way because the winning team does not have enough of an income advantage to win, its mostly due to not being able to arrange a final push to finish it.
This change could lengthen the end game only in so much as the losing team wont become totally ineffective in the end, so much as the losing commander can't do anything at all. If that is currently the only way those games can be finished then that is a problem of not utilizing the many end game finishers.
Even with this system in place at end game a dominating team will still have 3 times the income of the losing side. It shouldn't ever take more than that to finish a game.
I think you greatly underestimate how little the aliens need to be successful in terms of resource income. Generally speaking if the aliens are on par with marines in terms of RTs, they are way ahead.
No one player can completely control this game, if that happens the other team is simply running to the same location over and over, or not doing anything else actively. You could argue that 2 players could accomplish this, but baring a huge skill indifference that no gameplay changes could make up for and a minimum of 8v8, I struggle to see 1 marine taking out 7 skulks that rush him, or vice versa. The main point being here that if the games are imbalanced by skill, handicapping the winning teams advantage merely draws out that game, and for what end? The skill imbalance will still lead to the same team winning.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Yes the skill imbalance will still allow the better team to win. There is nothing wrong with that, that is how it is supposed to be. The problem in NS2 is currently you are being beaten by skill, and all your tech is gone. A double punishment, so no chance of fighting back. No time to learn lifeforms to get better.
Giving access to the lifeforms and tech more often, means players encounter the lifeforms more often, and means they get used to them quicker.
As I keep saying though, it is fine theoretically, it needs to be tuned and tested in the real world though..
Quite honestly, you really are now contemplating changes that would remove almost all of what I consider to be good about NS. Snowballing itself its not really a problem, its a mechanic and one that is present in a lot of games.
Snowballing / slippery slope mechanics really ARE a problem, and are almost universally considered poor game design.
There really isn't an upside to slippery slope mechanics unless your game is stuck in a perpetual comeback state, in which case, you'd still want to address the problem instead of the symptom.
It's just a disappointing avoidable design that leads to matches where the real victor is decided long before the game actually ends, which results in either boring endgame play, or lots of anti climactic forfeits. There is nothing to like about this.. I don't see what positive could be gleaned from this design, even if it is less obnoxious in an organized competitive setting where forfeiting is without issue.
Some excerpts from a creditable game designer (Street fighter, Chess 2 etc) Sirlin:
"Slippery slope is usually a bad property in a game."
"I think slippery slope really is generally bad."
"It just shows that it is possible to remove slippery slope from an RTS if you try hard enough. "
I would say the attempts to always make sure a team has a chance to comeback have done more harm than good... NS2 can really drag games out, especially when one team really has already lost.
Don't you see though that the only reason it can drag out unnecessarily isn't because a comeback was possible, but because it was not!
A comeback, by its very definition means that it turned around the odds to at least provide the losing side with a fair or equal chance of winning.... dragging on in a game already lost does not match this definition and is a direct result of slippery slope mechanics.
NS2 is a niche game because of these mechanics (unforgiving, doubly penalizing, steep learning curve etc) and in no way benefits from them, even if that very small niche of a customer base enjoys it for whatever reason. (I suspect nostalgia and being unable to detach the notion of skill from unforgiving mechanics) I am not advocating making NS2 into COD or TF2 by any means, but I also feel like it has reached the polar opposite and that's not any good, either.
I cant disagree with that more.. by providing a team the ability to always have a comeback, you in effect make it massively more difficult for the 'winning' team to win. Its instantly visible when you look at how marines can turtle, or how aliens can turn games around with a single bile rush. Its not just having those used against you that makes them so powerful, its also the threat.
Quoting one article which agrees with your post is hardly indicative of good game design, especially from Fighting Games. I could go into how fighting games DO have a slippery slope, but I suspect that would be too much detail, and would take way too much time. Look at Dota2 or LoL - would you disagree that those games have slippery slopes? Or Starcraft 2, probably the biggest example OF it. The fact that the player winning has an ever increasing advantage does NOT make the game bad in any way - it simply makes every single decision that much more important. It is important to reduce the slope, make no mistake. But attempting to eliminate it, or constantly singling it out as the single worst flaw in NS2 is really naive, there are countless other problems which have had a much greater impact on the game.
There are so many ways why a TF2 style doesnt work, and would never work for NS2 that I really cannot be bothered to type it up. As a quick example, look at how you 'win' in TF2, versus how you win in NS2. If you look at it in terms of kills, sure maybe they are not that different. But the day NS2 is solely about kills is the day that any magic which made NS enjoyable is gone.
I'm not saying a slippery slope is a desirable mechanic, but its mostly a side-effect that is more difficult to remove than most realize. I cant say I have ever seen an RTS game without it, or atleast one that worked well.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Slippery slope mechanics in RTS leads to gg calls rather than playing to the end of the game because no-one likes getting stomped. We like the challenge of coming back, I mean, many people's strongest memories are from epic comebacks, not from getting stomped or from stomping another team.
Making this change would mean commander tactics and co-ordinated teamwork becomes more important, because you aren't going to automatically roll the other team with superior tech.
I see it as a positive thing and a good way of increasing the playerbase for NS2. When I get back online properly, I will see if I can put a little time into making a mod, but it may not be for a couple of months.
I could go into how fighting games DO have a slippery slope, but I suspect that would be too much detail and would take way too much time.
...It's in the article I linked, and it's not that complicated
"Fighting games do have very localized, limited kind of slippery slope that’s actually a good quality. If a game truly has no slippery slope whatsoever at any point, then it can feel like a series of disconnected decisions."
Look at Dota2 or LoL - would you disagree that those games have slippery slopes? Or Starcraft 2, probably the biggest example OF it. The fact that the player winning has an ever increasing advantage does NOT make the game bad in any way
I don't think anyone here has said that this makes NS2 "bad", but rather that the degree of a specific implementation of a mechanic is - and it's not a detriment to remove it other than losing that extreme sense of impact. ("X unit is down, GG everyone")
Not to mention, this sense of power and being able to turn around the game exists even if you removed resource collection, your shotgun would still be able to clear a path through the next room of aliens. In CS when you win that 1st round, the enemy team isn't relegated to knives only the next round - they merely make less money, just enough to prevent the best weapons, but still enough to compete.. aka a very limited slippery slope.
Even Chess has a slippery slope and it's considered one of the most skilled games ever made... yet that doesn't mean it is perfect or without issues. Games can drag on forever in the end, anti climactic forfeits occur frequently (which is less of an issue with 1v1) and it can still be demoralizing, slow painful game with little hope for a comeback.
And there is a large difference between having a means for comebacks and being stuck in a state of perpetual comebacks.
"Successful" comebacks in NS2 are very rare in your average game past the ~6 minute mark.
For the record, we may be on the same page because I also don't think eliminating the slippery slope entirely is a good idea, nor do I think it's the single worst flaw in NS2... I don't know where you got either of those
I remember a thread from the idea forums that was essentially the nemo ironhorse compromise mentioned here. It was shot down really hard. I find it humorous to see it back here and reasonably supported.
I remember a thread from the idea forums that was essentially the nemo ironhorse compromise mentioned here. It was shot down really hard. I find it humorous to see it back here and reasonably supported.
I think the problem is you are confusing too many issues into one. I have seen many games change course after 6 minutes in, and some even way later. The trick is that you can really only look at games that had any reasonable chance of changing course, and even a hive 'skill' balanced game is still a massive wildcard, just like most competitive games. There are so many factors outside of just a 'skill' rating which determine how effective someone is in a particular round, and how effective their team is overall. If NS2 has any flaw in this area, I would guess that it would actually be just how sensitive the game is to player skill and performance... But I'm not sure that is a real 'flaw'. Generally I would point to the complexity of each class and how they are all so different from each other (aliens), but its more complicated than that I think. If you had two perfectly even teams play 5 or 10 games, you might be surprised how many times the pacing would shift. Shifts in power early game can be quite subtle, the loss or gain of a single RT often times determining it. Overall I think people miss the shifts in balance in this game, and really only see the large picture. If you are looking for those kinds of comebacks after aliens are down to 2 RTs and 1 hive while the marines have 3/3 tech and most of the map, I think you are always going to be disappointed generally, that is when the game is all but decided.
Also, there is more of a slope to fighting games then outlined in that article. They don't touch on positioning at all.. and there are more subtleties too, with relation to meter and such. Also, from back when I played CS losing pistol round was generally accepted to include losing the next 3 rounds on average. Chess is also really a terrible example for any of this due to how the game mechanics work, its not the slope causing stalemates or draws in that game.
The problem in NS2 is every loss punishes you too significantly. Both from a final victory perspective, and an emotional perspective. We want to keep it so that the better team still wins, but we want to reduce that emotional punishment along the way.
Players come across many frustrations.
1. Being cannon fodder.
2. Saving up for lifeforms/equipment only to lose them immediately and not afford another go for a long time.
3. Commanders who feel like they can do nothing at all because they are res starved.
4. Feeling like your team has lost but then having to wait until the enemy maxes their tech level before finishing you.
What I want to do is.
1. Make sure the game keeps moving forwards for both sides, until the end.
2. The commander should never become totally useless (res starved). It just isn't fun to sit there waiting 3 minutes to drop an RT. It should be harder when on few RTs, but not completely neutralise the commander meta game.
3. How good you are at attacking/defending RTs should matter, but it shouldn't be the entire game. You should never be so res starved that continuing to fight becomes pointless.
4. A team should never completely run out of options.
Teams should win and lose by how well they win and lose the battles they are currently fighting. Consider that you can win a game without having any tech advantage over your enemy by using team work and utilising player skill. So a tech advantage should give you an advantage not completely override everything else.
The current implementation pushes teams towards trying to build a small advantage, and then holding while their small advantage grows larger and larger over time until they tech out, and then finally strike. It is a game about bleeding your enemy out while you prosper and then finishing them when they pose no challenge.
By reducing the resources received from RTs and giving both sides a guaranteed income you stop most of that from happening. Everyone still has some fight left in them until the end. The better team still wins. Everyone has more fun. You can still out-tech your enemy if thats what you want. Map control still matters. Everyone still has a purpose.
Right now before a typical game ends the winning team will be making 9 times the amount of resources of the losing team! The winning team will have so much res that the commander meta game becomes silly, they just constantly drop weapons. The losing teams commander meta game becomes pointless, they can do nothing. In the revised system under the same circumstances the winning team will be making 2.3 times the income of the losing team. That is plenty considering they have most likely also been making more res for the majority of the game up to this point too.
Respectfully, I don't think you get what we are discussing here; We are not talking about modifying vanilla NS2 years after its release.
We are not talking about perpetual comebacks, or entirely eliminating a slippery slope, or even changing the skill ceiling.
We ARE talking about big picture design and issues that some of us have noticed in NS2, and toying with the idea of how to design a better game through a mod.
NS2 is ripe with design flaws that prevent it from being mainstream - if that statement were wrong, player counts would reflect so.
But that's not the only goal of discussing such mechanics, since it can apply to people who have thousands of hours into this game ... yet still don't enjoy all the aspects of it and see room for improvement.
I get this doesn't appease those competitive players who agreed with your prior post - but that's because its not really geared towards them, they already have NS2 and don't see a need for improvement in the same areas.
Some here, including myself, feel it's worth improving even if it means fundamental changes that betray what you'd consider to be a Natural Selection game.
So your time would be better spent (and it would be more appreciated) if instead of just defending the aspects of the current design that you enjoy, you gave suggestions and critiques on how specifically to implement new systems that would assist reaching these design goals we've shown an interest in.
Actually, I loved the punishing gameplay of NS2 when I first started playing, kind of like how I enjoy Dark Souls 2, but with less frustration and more fun in NS2's case.
I loved constantly being presented a challenge and always being able to improve. I loved learning the many new mechanics and observing others to learn how to do things right.
I understand part of what you are trying to say, but creating a mod or ideals to test is not hurt by simple discussion.
Part of my point is that a successive mainstream game is really the sum of many things, and unfortunately game mechanics are not usually the first on that list, often they are not even near the front. There are many things you could change gameplay wise to have the game see better support from the casual crowd, but I don't believe that effort would necessarily produce a more 'successful' game long term. Basically, while you say that there are people from within NS2 that want to see X changes to make the game more 'mainstream' as an alternate, they too have the same narrow pov that most any other player from within NS2 has. We cannot see the game from a completely neutral perspective anymore, simply because most of us have been around for too long. The TLDR of what I'm saying is that I believe NS will always be a niche game so long as one side is primarily melee, and the other is ranged. I suspect even if the game went fully class based TF2 style without any semblance of resources, that the game would still see limited mainstream success all other things equal.
Interestingly enough, I don't think you would even need to make a mod for this - Combat SA can and probably will provide a reasonable litmus test for all of this.
Also, I'll shutup now and leave you to your thread.
the difference between ns2 and other fps game is the depth of strategy. that strategy is born of the slippery slope mechanic. the reason that snowballing is such an issue in pub servers is because nobody on their is operating on any strategic level. so, i'll agree, that snowballing can suck in ns2 when it's impossible to put together any sort of strategy. there's just no way the game will be deeply rewarding in that scenario. it's not what the game is designed for! i also happen to think that that depth of strategy is the best thing about ns2. you can't just say "this lessens the value of any given rt." rts have totally different values for aliens vs marines. and just because you're behind economically doesn't mean you're gonna lose if you can correctly strategize your way out of that problem. it just changes the state of the game. you're never behind as long as strategy is on your side.
so really, i would say the central game design problem with ns2 is that it's designed to be a deeply strategic game (relative to modern fpss) but with no mechanic to corral players into thinking strategically, or to teach them the basic strategy of the game. could you lessen this problem by dumbing down public play? maybe. will it increase player retention? i doubt it.
I find it funny that people have these long write-ups that basically are the textbook description of how every RTS game works.
for those of you who don't actually play multiplayer Starcraft or Age of Empires or anything like that, just realize that all matches end in concedes. nobody fights to the end (unless it's a close game). 'snowballing' and 'inability to comeback' and 'running out of options' aren't design problems - they are win conditions.
the people who think they are design problems have a whole genre built just for them (it's called MOBA)
you shouldn't be shocked if that carries over to NS2, which is a RTS game between teams where some of the units (and the most important ones) are controlled by human teammates playing in first-person
I know they didn't put that sticker on the box because they thought an onos fighting a marine would look cooler than a harvester erecting itself or an arms lab researching a technology, but the marketing tricked you (it's their job...)
NS2 just needs 2 things to work as designed
1) fair teams
2) a way to end the game when teams are too fair
these are the same things that RTS games need
Blizzard invested millions into SC2 matchmaking so that #1 happens. Other RTS/strategy games use Elo-based matchmaking.
NS2 players start blaming the design or the balance when the real problem is that the matches they cry about should never even have been played in the first place
would NS2 be more successful with a MOBA-like team vs team setup? probably
but then it would be League of Legends: Aliens vs Marines edition. it wouldn't be Natural Selection
I know the devs have done lots of improvements to various things, but until they make lobbies/gathers/matchmaking the de-facto way to play NS2 I don't see any of the tweaks achieving anything significant
even if they balance the game exactly how you personally want it to be balanced, what actually changes?
instead of conceding in 5 minutes you'll concede in 20? I think that makes the game worse because you waste 20 minutes in a round that never should be played instead of just wasting 5.
what's frustrating about this to me is that uwe has all the tools at its disposal to implement proper matchmaking. they're included in steamworks, which is already linked into ns2.
it has a full matchmaking api including stat tracking. this is what games like cs: go use. it would be pretty easy to implement. if they had done so when they first got steamworks in, the game would have been a lot more fun for everybody who played it.
As an avid fighting gamer. Street fighter (the most popular fighting game) has a very small slippery slope mechanic. They have mechanics in place just to prevent that.
There are ALWAYS options/ strategies(in street fighter) that if done correctly will allow you to win(comeback)
The biggest slope would be when a player is getting their ass beat in < 30 seconds, that people get flustered, lose concentration, and start playing poorly.
I don't want to derail but as a lover of fighting games, I felt the need to speak up.
If you're going to talk about slippery slope, you have to talk about the context. Fighting games have rounds of a minute or so. CS has rounds of 2-3 minutes and some stuff being carried over. Most RTS games and NS2 may have rounds of 15 minutes or more. A game of chess might be played 'a-move-whenever-you-like' way and last for a month. It's a very different experience to be 'slipping down' or pushing your opponent down the slope on different games.
It's not about whether some other game has the slope or not. It's about how a round of NS2 should look (someone really should have an idea at this point) and how slippery slope (or it's absence) serves the gameplay NS2 tries to provide. Slippery slope is a tool, use it in the right way at the right time and it'll serve you well.
@biz its funny you make that comparison because I've been likening NS2 to a MOBA for a long time now, and have pointed out on occasions that if we took a few twigs from the MOBA tree it could allow Ns2 to grow in wonderful new ways.
@biz its funny you make that comparison because I've been likening NS2 to a MOBA for a long time now, and have pointed out on occasions that if we took a few twigs from the MOBA tree it could allow Ns2 to grow in wonderful new ways.
pretty much anything to make the game more attractive to people who prefer moba/frag-oriented gameplay is going to make it less attractive to people who prefer RTS/match-based gameplay
there will always be irreconcilable contention between decisions being important and the game being forgiving.
that has nothing to do with the game's developer or its community - it's just a fact of game design
you can have your debates about which audience is more important, but I think it's pretty clear which path NS2 chose (lose harvesters = you die. keep harvesters alive = you win).
to me, it just seems silly turn the ship around 2 years after release because some people weren't expecting a RTS but got stuck with one
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
No one is turning the ship around.
But i think if a couple of modders could make something more appealing to the masses without sacrificing too much strategy or enjoyable gameplay, it could help with player retention.. and if nothing else, it would be a less frustrating game to the existing fans.
One quick note though: I think the downsides that come with the design where your actions are extremely impacting are just as bad as the hollow feeling you get when your actions have zero impact. (latest Battlefield games, PS2 etc) I believe there is a sweet spot that can be attained - defusing a bomb feels great to accomplish, while not being frustratingly unforgiving when it was your bomb that got defused.
An RTS works because all players start with balanced units. Imagine starcraft but the effectiveness of your units is randomly better or worse than your opponent at the start of each game.
In an FPS the players vary in skill, but the weapons are usually of the same power. Imagine an FPS were your opponents have better guns.
NS2 is a mix of the two. I think it works well when the impact of commander strategy on the game is similar to the impact of player skill, this way everyone feels like their efforts contribute. If you can have a single player YOLO off by themselves and decide a game it weakens the experience for everyone on the server.
What I propose is more of a "directed" game experience. The game is expected to play out a certain way which is fun for everyone. These kind of games have a couple of back and forths that feel like good equal fights, with one side securing a few good victories in a run giving them the upper hand. Finally when this happens and the situation is inevitable it should come to a close reasonably quickly. Therefore the stakes start low and get progressively higher and more intense.
1. Things you do right at the start should sway the game slightly either way.
2. As the game progresses the stakes get higher and victories and losses become more significant.
3. This progresses with the climax being a big significant victory (take out a CC/Hive)
Right now you can do something right at the start like take out an early RT. Which can give your team a 200% resource advantage, there is not much else later in the game that rivals that in terms of effectiveness! That is a very slippery slope, very quickly.
A small but reasonable constant resource income means that the commanders always have the ability to do something to move the game forward, even if they can't move the game forward for themselves as much as an enemy with more res towers can.
This solves the problems of..
1. One team being stuck with nothing for the entire round while the other team slowly techs up before finishing it. (long hopeless loss)
2. It reduces how devastatingly crippling one team having an amazing first start is in order to increase the chances of an interesting mid game. It also reduces the impact of having someone AFK for the first minute (which does happen). In addition it gives rookies a little extra breathing room right at the start.
3. If you do have an amazing start (taking out the enemy naturals) you still get a strong advantage but its not quite automatic GG. It might mean that you get lerks a couple of minutes before the enemy can afford shotguns, not that the game is decided. It gives you an edge, but its not so decisive.
4. Commanders are not stuck with absolutely no options, a bad game with the loss of a lot of RTs means you tech up a lot slower instead of not at all.
5. The winning team cannot just tech up and sit back, even when you are winning you will still fight some higher life forms, the enemy will still get upgrades.
Your game should always progress forwards even if you are losing. Losing a lot of the map should mean you tech up slower than the enemy, not grind to a halt with nothing for your commander to do.
In theory it will be more satisfying to lose, and also more satisfying to win. It is not fun to stomp or be stomped. I am not saying that wont happen any more, as it is still the exact same progression, only the curve is more forgiving.
I think a lot of pub games right now are won just on economy, with maybe a sneaky PG/Tunnel rush as a last resort by a losing side. There is a lot more possibility to NS2 than that. I think things like choosing to put down an RT or not should be a hard decision instead of an obvious one (are you willing to invest man power on keeping it alive for an entire 2-3 minutes to even pay for itself?) Perhaps a commander might forgo an RT to rush a particular upgrade sooner at the loss of long term income. Rapid expansion should have more of a downside (protecting more places leaving you open to attack, which is a natural anti slippery slope mechanic in a lot games). So choosing to rush economy instead of faster initial upgrades becomes a strategic choice not the automatic option.
Personally I find snowballing mechanics quite compelling from a hardcore perspective but I see why they can be bad from a casual PoV. It pushes you to learn and get better. Why did the game snowball out of control? What can I do to avoid this? Do I need to improve? I think its important to let people know why they screwed up and why the game snowballed out of control, only then snowballing and economy driven games can be rewarding and enjoyable if they are explicitly designed in a way that allows them to get quick feedback.
Even something as simple as CoDs killcam or SC2s game replays allows you to identify problems in your play and help avoid the stomp. Unfortunately, NS2 does little to help players improve on an individual and team level which leads to many people being frustrated at their first few hours of play. They have no idea what to do or how to play yet the game doesn't do much to provide feedback, you pretty much have to do it yourself such as recording or looking up for guides which lets face it, only a small minority would do so before calling it quits.
From an overall perspective and especially from a balance-design relationship perspective, economy-driven games absolutely must have some sort of snowballing design. "X unit is down, gg" is fine in an economy game. You don't lose an entire team fight in a MOBA or lose your army in SC2 and come back without doing some significant damage to the opponent in the process like trading a fade for a base and some shotguns. The one who plays better should be able to get ahead and stay ahead of their opponent but there shouldn't be a situation where you absolutely cannot make a comeback unless you are so far behind the opponent as in 1RT vs 8RTs without some sort of big committal like a gorge rush.
In SC2, you can comeback but its unlikely if you're drastically behind. A big doom drop into an opponents main, a baneling landmine on a huge group of bio, some clutch storm defense or a big transition into another unit comp like mutas can be a game changer. NS2 has elements of this like gorge rushes or beacon rushes or keeping lifeforms alive long enough.
What NS2 needs and I believe I've mentioned this before is not limiting a player or "de-powering" but to give people the opportunity to improve with later tech. Accelerate PRes, start the game out with a preset amount of structures, reduce cost of weapons and lifeforms, anything that gives people more time to learn the higher lifeforms like a rookie mode. The only way someone can play a fade or onos long enough to enjoy it is in combat mod which is a huge bug and balance ridden mess atm. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory had a mod called jaymod which was basically a funmod that changed a bunch of stuff but what it did do on most servers was vastly accelerate xp gain to unlock the most important perks.
I think a mode like this could be quite important for new players. Another alternative would be matchmaking but I doubt that will ever see the light of day.
Comments
All this would do is reduce the significance of any one RT. By proxy this would also reduce the amount that a single player could dominate, since a single player could not dictate the entire outcome of the game from one location.
The game would still snowball, only it would take double the RT imbalance to snowball as much as it currently does.
By this I mean that near the end of the game, the most significant thing is the extra upgrades and equipment the winning team already has. Rather than the amount of income currently coming in. Most pub games that drag out near the end are not that way because the winning team does not have enough of an income advantage to win, its mostly due to not being able to arrange a final push to finish it.
This change could lengthen the end game only in so much as the losing team wont become totally ineffective in the end, so much as the losing commander can't do anything at all. If that is currently the only way those games can be finished then that is a problem of not utilizing the many end game finishers.
Even with this system in place at end game a dominating team will still have 3 times the income of the losing side. It shouldn't ever take more than that to finish a game.
No one player can completely control this game, if that happens the other team is simply running to the same location over and over, or not doing anything else actively. You could argue that 2 players could accomplish this, but baring a huge skill indifference that no gameplay changes could make up for and a minimum of 8v8, I struggle to see 1 marine taking out 7 skulks that rush him, or vice versa. The main point being here that if the games are imbalanced by skill, handicapping the winning teams advantage merely draws out that game, and for what end? The skill imbalance will still lead to the same team winning.
Giving access to the lifeforms and tech more often, means players encounter the lifeforms more often, and means they get used to them quicker.
As I keep saying though, it is fine theoretically, it needs to be tuned and tested in the real world though..
There really isn't an upside to slippery slope mechanics unless your game is stuck in a perpetual comeback state, in which case, you'd still want to address the problem instead of the symptom.
It's just a disappointing avoidable design that leads to matches where the real victor is decided long before the game actually ends, which results in either boring endgame play, or lots of anti climactic forfeits. There is nothing to like about this.. I don't see what positive could be gleaned from this design, even if it is less obnoxious in an organized competitive setting where forfeiting is without issue.
Some excerpts from a creditable game designer (Street fighter, Chess 2 etc) Sirlin:
"Slippery slope is usually a bad property in a game."
"I think slippery slope really is generally bad."
"It just shows that it is possible to remove slippery slope from an RTS if you try hard enough. "
Don't you see though that the only reason it can drag out unnecessarily isn't because a comeback was possible, but because it was not!
A comeback, by its very definition means that it turned around the odds to at least provide the losing side with a fair or equal chance of winning.... dragging on in a game already lost does not match this definition and is a direct result of slippery slope mechanics.
NS2 is a niche game because of these mechanics (unforgiving, doubly penalizing, steep learning curve etc) and in no way benefits from them, even if that very small niche of a customer base enjoys it for whatever reason. (I suspect nostalgia and being unable to detach the notion of skill from unforgiving mechanics) I am not advocating making NS2 into COD or TF2 by any means, but I also feel like it has reached the polar opposite and that's not any good, either.
Quoting one article which agrees with your post is hardly indicative of good game design, especially from Fighting Games. I could go into how fighting games DO have a slippery slope, but I suspect that would be too much detail, and would take way too much time. Look at Dota2 or LoL - would you disagree that those games have slippery slopes? Or Starcraft 2, probably the biggest example OF it. The fact that the player winning has an ever increasing advantage does NOT make the game bad in any way - it simply makes every single decision that much more important. It is important to reduce the slope, make no mistake. But attempting to eliminate it, or constantly singling it out as the single worst flaw in NS2 is really naive, there are countless other problems which have had a much greater impact on the game.
There are so many ways why a TF2 style doesnt work, and would never work for NS2 that I really cannot be bothered to type it up. As a quick example, look at how you 'win' in TF2, versus how you win in NS2. If you look at it in terms of kills, sure maybe they are not that different. But the day NS2 is solely about kills is the day that any magic which made NS enjoyable is gone.
I'm not saying a slippery slope is a desirable mechanic, but its mostly a side-effect that is more difficult to remove than most realize. I cant say I have ever seen an RTS game without it, or atleast one that worked well.
Making this change would mean commander tactics and co-ordinated teamwork becomes more important, because you aren't going to automatically roll the other team with superior tech.
I see it as a positive thing and a good way of increasing the playerbase for NS2. When I get back online properly, I will see if I can put a little time into making a mod, but it may not be for a couple of months.
"Fighting games do have very localized, limited kind of slippery slope that’s actually a good quality. If a game truly has no slippery slope whatsoever at any point, then it can feel like a series of disconnected decisions."
I don't think anyone here has said that this makes NS2 "bad", but rather that the degree of a specific implementation of a mechanic is - and it's not a detriment to remove it other than losing that extreme sense of impact. ("X unit is down, GG everyone")
Not to mention, this sense of power and being able to turn around the game exists even if you removed resource collection, your shotgun would still be able to clear a path through the next room of aliens. In CS when you win that 1st round, the enemy team isn't relegated to knives only the next round - they merely make less money, just enough to prevent the best weapons, but still enough to compete.. aka a very limited slippery slope.
Even Chess has a slippery slope and it's considered one of the most skilled games ever made... yet that doesn't mean it is perfect or without issues. Games can drag on forever in the end, anti climactic forfeits occur frequently (which is less of an issue with 1v1) and it can still be demoralizing, slow painful game with little hope for a comeback.
And there is a large difference between having a means for comebacks and being stuck in a state of perpetual comebacks.
"Successful" comebacks in NS2 are very rare in your average game past the ~6 minute mark.
For the record, we may be on the same page because I also don't think eliminating the slippery slope entirely is a good idea, nor do I think it's the single worst flaw in NS2... I don't know where you got either of those
@james888 how times have changed...
Also, there is more of a slope to fighting games then outlined in that article. They don't touch on positioning at all.. and there are more subtleties too, with relation to meter and such. Also, from back when I played CS losing pistol round was generally accepted to include losing the next 3 rounds on average. Chess is also really a terrible example for any of this due to how the game mechanics work, its not the slope causing stalemates or draws in that game.
Players come across many frustrations.
1. Being cannon fodder.
2. Saving up for lifeforms/equipment only to lose them immediately and not afford another go for a long time.
3. Commanders who feel like they can do nothing at all because they are res starved.
4. Feeling like your team has lost but then having to wait until the enemy maxes their tech level before finishing you.
What I want to do is.
1. Make sure the game keeps moving forwards for both sides, until the end.
2. The commander should never become totally useless (res starved). It just isn't fun to sit there waiting 3 minutes to drop an RT. It should be harder when on few RTs, but not completely neutralise the commander meta game.
3. How good you are at attacking/defending RTs should matter, but it shouldn't be the entire game. You should never be so res starved that continuing to fight becomes pointless.
4. A team should never completely run out of options.
Teams should win and lose by how well they win and lose the battles they are currently fighting. Consider that you can win a game without having any tech advantage over your enemy by using team work and utilising player skill. So a tech advantage should give you an advantage not completely override everything else.
The current implementation pushes teams towards trying to build a small advantage, and then holding while their small advantage grows larger and larger over time until they tech out, and then finally strike. It is a game about bleeding your enemy out while you prosper and then finishing them when they pose no challenge.
By reducing the resources received from RTs and giving both sides a guaranteed income you stop most of that from happening. Everyone still has some fight left in them until the end. The better team still wins. Everyone has more fun. You can still out-tech your enemy if thats what you want. Map control still matters. Everyone still has a purpose.
Right now before a typical game ends the winning team will be making 9 times the amount of resources of the losing team! The winning team will have so much res that the commander meta game becomes silly, they just constantly drop weapons. The losing teams commander meta game becomes pointless, they can do nothing. In the revised system under the same circumstances the winning team will be making 2.3 times the income of the losing team. That is plenty considering they have most likely also been making more res for the majority of the game up to this point too.
Respectfully, I don't think you get what we are discussing here; We are not talking about modifying vanilla NS2 years after its release.
We are not talking about perpetual comebacks, or entirely eliminating a slippery slope, or even changing the skill ceiling.
We ARE talking about big picture design and issues that some of us have noticed in NS2, and toying with the idea of how to design a better game through a mod.
NS2 is ripe with design flaws that prevent it from being mainstream - if that statement were wrong, player counts would reflect so.
But that's not the only goal of discussing such mechanics, since it can apply to people who have thousands of hours into this game ... yet still don't enjoy all the aspects of it and see room for improvement.
I get this doesn't appease those competitive players who agreed with your prior post - but that's because its not really geared towards them, they already have NS2 and don't see a need for improvement in the same areas.
Some here, including myself, feel it's worth improving even if it means fundamental changes that betray what you'd consider to be a Natural Selection game.
So your time would be better spent (and it would be more appreciated) if instead of just defending the aspects of the current design that you enjoy, you gave suggestions and critiques on how specifically to implement new systems that would assist reaching these design goals we've shown an interest in.
I loved constantly being presented a challenge and always being able to improve. I loved learning the many new mechanics and observing others to learn how to do things right.
Part of my point is that a successive mainstream game is really the sum of many things, and unfortunately game mechanics are not usually the first on that list, often they are not even near the front. There are many things you could change gameplay wise to have the game see better support from the casual crowd, but I don't believe that effort would necessarily produce a more 'successful' game long term. Basically, while you say that there are people from within NS2 that want to see X changes to make the game more 'mainstream' as an alternate, they too have the same narrow pov that most any other player from within NS2 has. We cannot see the game from a completely neutral perspective anymore, simply because most of us have been around for too long. The TLDR of what I'm saying is that I believe NS will always be a niche game so long as one side is primarily melee, and the other is ranged. I suspect even if the game went fully class based TF2 style without any semblance of resources, that the game would still see limited mainstream success all other things equal.
Interestingly enough, I don't think you would even need to make a mod for this - Combat SA can and probably will provide a reasonable litmus test for all of this.
Also, I'll shutup now and leave you to your thread.
so really, i would say the central game design problem with ns2 is that it's designed to be a deeply strategic game (relative to modern fpss) but with no mechanic to corral players into thinking strategically, or to teach them the basic strategy of the game. could you lessen this problem by dumbing down public play? maybe. will it increase player retention? i doubt it.
for those of you who don't actually play multiplayer Starcraft or Age of Empires or anything like that, just realize that all matches end in concedes. nobody fights to the end (unless it's a close game). 'snowballing' and 'inability to comeback' and 'running out of options' aren't design problems - they are win conditions.
the people who think they are design problems have a whole genre built just for them (it's called MOBA)
you shouldn't be shocked if that carries over to NS2, which is a RTS game between teams where some of the units (and the most important ones) are controlled by human teammates playing in first-person
I know they didn't put that sticker on the box because they thought an onos fighting a marine would look cooler than a harvester erecting itself or an arms lab researching a technology, but the marketing tricked you (it's their job...)
NS2 just needs 2 things to work as designed
1) fair teams
2) a way to end the game when teams are too fair
these are the same things that RTS games need
Blizzard invested millions into SC2 matchmaking so that #1 happens. Other RTS/strategy games use Elo-based matchmaking.
NS2 players start blaming the design or the balance when the real problem is that the matches they cry about should never even have been played in the first place
would NS2 be more successful with a MOBA-like team vs team setup? probably
but then it would be League of Legends: Aliens vs Marines edition. it wouldn't be Natural Selection
I know the devs have done lots of improvements to various things, but until they make lobbies/gathers/matchmaking the de-facto way to play NS2 I don't see any of the tweaks achieving anything significant
even if they balance the game exactly how you personally want it to be balanced, what actually changes?
instead of conceding in 5 minutes you'll concede in 20? I think that makes the game worse because you waste 20 minutes in a round that never should be played instead of just wasting 5.
what's frustrating about this to me is that uwe has all the tools at its disposal to implement proper matchmaking. they're included in steamworks, which is already linked into ns2.
https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/api
it has a full matchmaking api including stat tracking. this is what games like cs: go use. it would be pretty easy to implement. if they had done so when they first got steamworks in, the game would have been a lot more fun for everybody who played it.
There are ALWAYS options/ strategies(in street fighter) that if done correctly will allow you to win(comeback)
The biggest slope would be when a player is getting their ass beat in < 30 seconds, that people get flustered, lose concentration, and start playing poorly.
I don't want to derail but as a lover of fighting games, I felt the need to speak up.
Yes definitely, but there are mechanics in place that help you break streaks for sure. Look at the CZ-75 and the round loss bonus.
It's not about whether some other game has the slope or not. It's about how a round of NS2 should look (someone really should have an idea at this point) and how slippery slope (or it's absence) serves the gameplay NS2 tries to provide. Slippery slope is a tool, use it in the right way at the right time and it'll serve you well.
pretty much anything to make the game more attractive to people who prefer moba/frag-oriented gameplay is going to make it less attractive to people who prefer RTS/match-based gameplay
there will always be irreconcilable contention between decisions being important and the game being forgiving.
that has nothing to do with the game's developer or its community - it's just a fact of game design
you can have your debates about which audience is more important, but I think it's pretty clear which path NS2 chose (lose harvesters = you die. keep harvesters alive = you win).
to me, it just seems silly turn the ship around 2 years after release because some people weren't expecting a RTS but got stuck with one
But i think if a couple of modders could make something more appealing to the masses without sacrificing too much strategy or enjoyable gameplay, it could help with player retention.. and if nothing else, it would be a less frustrating game to the existing fans.
One quick note though: I think the downsides that come with the design where your actions are extremely impacting are just as bad as the hollow feeling you get when your actions have zero impact. (latest Battlefield games, PS2 etc) I believe there is a sweet spot that can be attained - defusing a bomb feels great to accomplish, while not being frustratingly unforgiving when it was your bomb that got defused.
In an FPS the players vary in skill, but the weapons are usually of the same power. Imagine an FPS were your opponents have better guns.
NS2 is a mix of the two. I think it works well when the impact of commander strategy on the game is similar to the impact of player skill, this way everyone feels like their efforts contribute. If you can have a single player YOLO off by themselves and decide a game it weakens the experience for everyone on the server.
What I propose is more of a "directed" game experience. The game is expected to play out a certain way which is fun for everyone. These kind of games have a couple of back and forths that feel like good equal fights, with one side securing a few good victories in a run giving them the upper hand. Finally when this happens and the situation is inevitable it should come to a close reasonably quickly. Therefore the stakes start low and get progressively higher and more intense.
1. Things you do right at the start should sway the game slightly either way.
2. As the game progresses the stakes get higher and victories and losses become more significant.
3. This progresses with the climax being a big significant victory (take out a CC/Hive)
Right now you can do something right at the start like take out an early RT. Which can give your team a 200% resource advantage, there is not much else later in the game that rivals that in terms of effectiveness! That is a very slippery slope, very quickly.
A small but reasonable constant resource income means that the commanders always have the ability to do something to move the game forward, even if they can't move the game forward for themselves as much as an enemy with more res towers can.
This solves the problems of..
1. One team being stuck with nothing for the entire round while the other team slowly techs up before finishing it. (long hopeless loss)
2. It reduces how devastatingly crippling one team having an amazing first start is in order to increase the chances of an interesting mid game. It also reduces the impact of having someone AFK for the first minute (which does happen). In addition it gives rookies a little extra breathing room right at the start.
3. If you do have an amazing start (taking out the enemy naturals) you still get a strong advantage but its not quite automatic GG. It might mean that you get lerks a couple of minutes before the enemy can afford shotguns, not that the game is decided. It gives you an edge, but its not so decisive.
4. Commanders are not stuck with absolutely no options, a bad game with the loss of a lot of RTs means you tech up a lot slower instead of not at all.
5. The winning team cannot just tech up and sit back, even when you are winning you will still fight some higher life forms, the enemy will still get upgrades.
Your game should always progress forwards even if you are losing. Losing a lot of the map should mean you tech up slower than the enemy, not grind to a halt with nothing for your commander to do.
In theory it will be more satisfying to lose, and also more satisfying to win. It is not fun to stomp or be stomped. I am not saying that wont happen any more, as it is still the exact same progression, only the curve is more forgiving.
I think a lot of pub games right now are won just on economy, with maybe a sneaky PG/Tunnel rush as a last resort by a losing side. There is a lot more possibility to NS2 than that. I think things like choosing to put down an RT or not should be a hard decision instead of an obvious one (are you willing to invest man power on keeping it alive for an entire 2-3 minutes to even pay for itself?) Perhaps a commander might forgo an RT to rush a particular upgrade sooner at the loss of long term income. Rapid expansion should have more of a downside (protecting more places leaving you open to attack, which is a natural anti slippery slope mechanic in a lot games). So choosing to rush economy instead of faster initial upgrades becomes a strategic choice not the automatic option.
Even something as simple as CoDs killcam or SC2s game replays allows you to identify problems in your play and help avoid the stomp. Unfortunately, NS2 does little to help players improve on an individual and team level which leads to many people being frustrated at their first few hours of play. They have no idea what to do or how to play yet the game doesn't do much to provide feedback, you pretty much have to do it yourself such as recording or looking up for guides which lets face it, only a small minority would do so before calling it quits.
From an overall perspective and especially from a balance-design relationship perspective, economy-driven games absolutely must have some sort of snowballing design. "X unit is down, gg" is fine in an economy game. You don't lose an entire team fight in a MOBA or lose your army in SC2 and come back without doing some significant damage to the opponent in the process like trading a fade for a base and some shotguns. The one who plays better should be able to get ahead and stay ahead of their opponent but there shouldn't be a situation where you absolutely cannot make a comeback unless you are so far behind the opponent as in 1RT vs 8RTs without some sort of big committal like a gorge rush.
In SC2, you can comeback but its unlikely if you're drastically behind. A big doom drop into an opponents main, a baneling landmine on a huge group of bio, some clutch storm defense or a big transition into another unit comp like mutas can be a game changer. NS2 has elements of this like gorge rushes or beacon rushes or keeping lifeforms alive long enough.
What NS2 needs and I believe I've mentioned this before is not limiting a player or "de-powering" but to give people the opportunity to improve with later tech. Accelerate PRes, start the game out with a preset amount of structures, reduce cost of weapons and lifeforms, anything that gives people more time to learn the higher lifeforms like a rookie mode. The only way someone can play a fade or onos long enough to enjoy it is in combat mod which is a huge bug and balance ridden mess atm. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory had a mod called jaymod which was basically a funmod that changed a bunch of stuff but what it did do on most servers was vastly accelerate xp gain to unlock the most important perks.
I think a mode like this could be quite important for new players. Another alternative would be matchmaking but I doubt that will ever see the light of day.