For me the only overly complicated systems is the alien tech tree and methods for acquiring upgrades. I also dislike the linear way upgrades can be accessed through biomass levels. I'd honestly like to see a RTS tech tree that's more conventional and have everything in one menu in one place, so you can clearly see what upgrades you can access and identify a clear path to getting them.
The linear nature of upgrade unlocks is the bigger issue, it feels like NS2 missing some tricks on giving commanders more interesting choices.
While working on the (poorly named) band aid mode I did have a brief stab at trying to design an alternative upgrade tree/wheel that would only be accessed by clicking on the hive. The main idea behind this was to re-balance the hive choice by directly linking upgrades to it, but looking back I think something like this may of gone some way to simplifying the whole process of understanding the best route to getting the upgrades you want.
Ultimately with a little rethinking the upgrade paths there is definitely better ways of simplifying the whole system and give more choice to the commander.
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Ultimately with a little rethinking the upgrade paths there is definitely better ways of simplifying the whole system and give more choice to the commander.
Yeah, I agree, the tech tree should be more accessible, easier to see, all in one place.
While working on the (poorly named) band aid mode I did have a brief stab at trying to design an alternative upgrade tree/wheel that would only be accessed by clicking on the hive.
I have 100 hours played and I still don't know what biomass is and how it works (and I was too lazy to google it). However, if the rings can demonstrate (and we make it obvious) the number of hives and their biomass, I think it nicely illustrates to players that certain upgrades can be unlocked only in certain conditions. If there are good description texts around or on mouse over, it would definitely help us to understand the underlying principles. At the moment, I just know that upgrades appear at some point of time, but I was never certain what exactly needs to happen.
Wow,that upgrade ring looks awesome! It looks like you'd actually see it in-game right now
Just a completely random thought,does anyone else think the Blink Icon is a little misleading and hard to see? When I was a rookie,it took me the forever to figure out what the heck the fade was doing in the icon. When I found out it was going from one place to another,I thought "Wait,I can TELEPORT?!" (this was around the time when I first got the game.) So I tried it,only to be confused by the fact that all I did was fly. I looked up if I was doing something wrong,and then I found out it used to teleport. So I was a little dissapointed. (Plus the current Blink is just really bland now :I)
So maybe it could be changed to a (friggin awesome) icon of the Fade moving forward with a big misty trail behind it? It would help rookies figure out what it does faster!
Plus maybe make all icons a bit easier to see? I have a hard time telling what Icon is what,plus the yellowish backround doesn't help
EDIT:come to think of it,why not make an Icon revamp thing? Alot of the alien icons are kinda undescriptive or just really "bleh." (I'm looking at you Umbra.)
As a newbie myself, I would like to see how I get killed so easily every time, it could be the best tutorial
which means, is it possible replay a few seconds - in my enemies' FOV ? just like they did in COD
I 100% agree that a replay system would be the best tutorial. See how you get wrecked by an experienced play is valuable as fuckkkk
Wasn't the whole point of the flamethrower to drain energy, to be a counter against energy-dependant life forms?
Sure, if you are able to consistently flame fade/lerk or live long enough to bake onos (and hope they don't have adrenalin). The sheer DPS of rifle or anything is better choice than trying that tactic and paying 15 pres for it.
^ Nah, I am pretty good at killing skulks with it. Against liveforms it is only useful at disorienting them while your comrades take care of them.
Is that on wooza's? If so that explains a lot.
Sure having more people around helps a flamer. Also JP helps ;p . But it is all in the technique. I have two favorite ones:
1) Flame everything around you
2) The skulk will get so sick because of the lag and epilepsy causing light and disengage
3) You will find it somwhere in corner in fetal position and flame it's face
or
1) Swich to pistol and be like: "look me noob running around with no rifle"
2) Skulks attack some priority target like exo or something
3) You switch back and do good ol' friendly fire on the attacked friend
I am not even kidding unfortunately . Sure skilled player will get me. But skilled player will get me no matter what weapon I have anyway.
I guess I fall in the category where I have a chance against a skilled player anyways with an LMG. I still think flamethrower needs a buff. It especially needs a change in how fast damage is applied.
Wasn't the whole point of the flamethrower to drain energy, to be a counter against energy-dependant life forms?
Sure, if you are able to consistently flame fade/lerk or live long enough to bake onos (and hope they don't have adrenalin). The sheer DPS of rifle or anything is better choice than trying that tactic and paying 15 pres for it.
So, what is the purpose of the flamethrower then? Actually, as I was typing this, I remembered that at one time, a alien whips and such would cease to function when being flamed... is that what the flamethrower counters? Alien structures on fire cease to function?
See, this is why we need better tutorials! After about 150 hours I should know this!
I guess I fall in the category where I have a chance against a skilled player anyways with an LMG. I still think flamethrower needs a buff. It especially needs a change in how fast damage is applied.
Flame thrower isn't a 1on1 weapon.
It's made to inhibit the alien structures to function. And catch a fade by removing the energy.
Imagine a squad with 1 FT and 3 SG in a hive. As soon as structures are ignited, the kammander can't activate the crag, or a shade and those structures cease to perform the automatic effect (especially crag) during the attack. The drifter is also useless in that case. It's far more effective than 4 ARCs.
Downside : you rely on your teammates for protection. But with a JP... just move.
It's just that FT should be used in a coordinated set of actions/tactics. Not for Rambos. Guess what a commander see in a public game every time ?...
Wasn't the whole point of the flamethrower to drain energy, to be a counter against energy-dependant life forms?
Sure, if you are able to consistently flame fade/lerk or live long enough to bake onos (and hope they don't have adrenalin). The sheer DPS of rifle or anything is better choice than trying that tactic and paying 15 pres for it.
So, what is the purpose of the flamethrower then? Actually, as I was typing this, I remembered that at one time, a alien whips and such would cease to function when being flamed... is that what the flamethrower counters? Alien structures on fire cease to function?
See, this is why we need better tutorials! After about 150 hours I should know this!
Besides direct damage the flamethrower has a few effects. I will explain how they are useful and the downsides of this.
It shuts down aliens structures effects.
A flamethrower can damage multiple enemies, or structures, at once.
It drains alien energy.
It does burn damage over time.
It does flame time damage.
It blocks bile bomb.
It burns away alien gas effects.
1. The strongest thing about a flamethrower is that it shuts down alien structure effects. The hive stops healing, crags stop healing, shades stop cloaking, whips stop whacking, and shifts stop giving energy. This makes killing a hive quite a lot easier. Aliens trying to defend the hive can't heal. A crag by the hive does not heal the hive making it take longer to kill. In a sense the flamethrower is a force multiplier.
The problem is that for you to perform this strong support role effectively, you need to be in a group of 5+ marines. Even then an LMG or shotgun would pretty much do just as well.
2. Another really strong aspect of the flamethrower is that you can damage multiple structures at once. Alien upgrades are often placed right next to each other. With a flamethrower you can kill all 3 really quick.
The problem is that it is really difficult to even reach those situations. Even if you were in that situation a grenade launcher would kill them faster.
3. A flamethrower can be a great support weapon because aliens are so reliant on energy. A fade pretty much can not move fast without energy. Aliens can not attack if they don't have energy.
The problem is that in a real game this really does not do much. I have twice in my 2000+ hours of gameplay caused a fade to die because I drained his energy with a flamethrower. Any moderately skilled marine would be better off with a lmg or a shotgun which is why the flamethrower is pretty much useless.
4. The flamethrower does burn damage over time. This is most obvious when a skulk dies as it runs away with low health, and then dies. What is not obvious at all is that you can set the ground on fire. A skulk will walk will take burn damage over time by walking on those flames. The less obvious aspect of this is you can do a lot extra damage to structures. If you try to kill and harvester with a flamethrower you an do additional burn damage to it by burning the ground. The harvester will both be taking damage from the flamethrower and the flames on the ground. I think it is about 30% more damage, but that is a guess at best.
The problem is that a flamethrower marine can hardly use this to his advantage because even a skulk has a good chance of killing him. Unless that marine has a jetpack he is basically useless.
5. A flamethrower also does flame damage. Flame damage does 400% to flammable structures. There are not many flammable structures. They include cysts, hydras, and clogs. Welders also do flame damage. One of my favorite things to do is to have a jetpack and just just do a half second of flames on a cyst and run. I hit every other cyst. Doing this you can destroy almost the entire alien cyst chain before they can respond.
The problem is that this can only happen late game, and if there is at least one moderately skilled lerk or fade on the alien team you will not get very far.
6. Flamethrowers pop bile bomb. It stops it in mid air. Not only that, it will stop the damage over time that bilebomb does if a structure has already been hit. (Not true anymore). A single flamethower can shutdown a gorge rush entirely. Bilebomb becomes useless because the flamethrowers stops it. The effect is also complemented by the drain on energy making gorges even more useless.
The problem is that this is so situational.
7. Flamethrowers burn away lerk spores. They also burn away a lerks umbra. The alien commanders drifter abilities like enzyme and mucous membrane are also stopped by flamethrowers.
The problem is that you don't see any of those abilities used very often.
In fact, after writing this all out I realized how horribly confusing the flamethrower is. In the end all you have is a weapon that is extremely strong in certain situations that hardly ever happen.
A flamethrower can be fixed in 2 ways. Either give it enough damage to be able to defend itself without a jetpack, or change its role completely.
idk how viable this is, but a new player should just be able to sign up for free coaching and someone should spectate his play and explain the game and answer questions over voicecomm
idk how viable this is, but a new player should just be able to sign up for free coaching and someone should spectate his play and explain the game and answer questions over voicecomm
This has been done and tried before. Others who were more involved in those efforts could say more, but I don't remember them ever being that successful. Maybe those who tried did not advertise it well enough.
I know planetside 2 has this also, and it is not that popular either.
1) Improve ELO. Accuracy and K:D need to be alot more present in the current calculation. Green rookies need to be split up aswell. If the world would be ideal, we would of course just talk it out amongst ourselfs, make 2 captains and pick teams, but sadly this aint the case on most servers.
2) Do we have a thread for improving the UI? I think i might have some ideas.
3) After all this has been done: Tutorial videos on Youtube, which can be linked ingame or not.
Biggest thing to fix right now from my pov would be the formula for ELO. Accuracy and K:D need to be alot more present in the current calculation. Green rookies need to be split up aswell.
The reason Ns2 does not use K:D in its rating system is the same as Riot games with League of Legends. They explain their whole matchmaking process on this page.
If you won't click a link, here is a quote from them.
WHY DON'T YOU INCLUDE OTHER DETAILS, LIKE HOW MANY KILLS OR DEATHS I HAD, TO DETERMINE MY RATING?
If we did, it would encourage players to focus on killing other players instead of strategically winning the game. For instance, players who choose supporting champions would be adversely affected because they are not expected to earn kills. By putting as many measurements and incentives as possible on specifically winning a game, we avoid side behaviors that aren't as fun and confuse the rating process.
I still think we should try K:D. This is not LOL. It is NS2. ELO is there so we can have balanced games. Otherwise it does not really mean anything. It is not like we level up our characters or unlock new skins through it.
I still think we should try K:D. This is not LOL. It is NS2. ELO is there so we can have balanced games. Otherwise it does not really mean anything. It is not like we level up our characters or unlock new skins through it.
Ns2 is not LoL but the principles of the algorithm are the same and so is the logic. The following picture shows some graphs that depict the correlation of that to skill. You can see that Killrate or K:D correlates to skill with a value of 0.591 while W:L has a correlation value of 0.611.
This shows that even though K:D is not directly measured it still has a very high correlation so skill. K:D does have a large effect on your skill rating, in I can estimate it accounts for 96% of it.
If you are interested here are more stats about the hive skill system.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
Dude fuck k/d, use point/min then if you think you need something. People should be consistently putting up a good pdmg sdmg build time ratio. They shouldn't focus on pdmg
I still think we should try K:D. This is not LOL. It is NS2. ELO is there so we can have balanced games. Otherwise it does not really mean anything.
That would no longer be a an Elo rating system, but a glorified e-peen inflator that encourages farming arbitrary numbers. A rating based on victories and defeats already captures everything in your skillset that determines winning the game, and as can be seen from Nordic's post, correlates well with other more intuitive (yet judgmental) measures of ability.
Why not make the ingame scores actually meaningful, and base elo on points per minute, as well as game win/loss?
The ingame scores are meaningful, even if they are not factored in the skill rating. They act as indicators, to new players especially, that one action is more important than another.
Killing a cyst gives you +1. Killing a skulk gives you +5. Indicating that killing skulks is more important than cysts. And ressource Towers give you +10 or what ever it is?
Wrt the elo system, look at it this way. Regarding anything that you may perceive as a skillful action - if it does not affect your winrate, then clearly it is not a skill worth recording anyway, in a system that tries to predict the winning team.
Edit: It would be interesting to see a stat on how often Hive correctly predicts the winning team.
And in addition to that, a stat that shows how often the current Hive scores would predict past games that were predicted wrong at the time (To see the effects of the self-correcting process)
Of course, you wouldn't expect to see 100% succesrate in the later case even in the best case scenario, as it wouldn't account for players getting better with time as well as a dusin other factors. But I still would like to see it.
Personally, I don't want to see NS2 simplified. Tweaked and polished yes. Tutorials and training methods and meaningful, relevant practice to Polish up while not in multiplayer - hell yes. But simplify? That would break part of what makes NS2 special. Hearing that development was ramping back up, I have been playing again, and even though my performance is bad to mediocre against the dedicated players that haven't stopped, I'm reminded of why I always looked at this game in my library and thought "why is this game dead? I really wish it was HUGE".
Please don't dumb it down! Give players the tools to learn every aspect of the game and really practice in a non-competitive environment, but don't water down this amazing, one-of-a-kind experience!
I don't think they intend to simplify the game... the depth and skill ceiling will remain... they just want to take overly complex things and remove the complexity but maintain the gameplay... why do something in a complicated way that can be done with ease... if they system can be changed and made easier to understand while keeping its depth, I don't understand why anyone would ever be against it.
Comments
Wasn't the whole point of the flamethrower to drain energy, to be a counter against energy-dependant life forms?
The linear nature of upgrade unlocks is the bigger issue, it feels like NS2 missing some tricks on giving commanders more interesting choices.
While working on the (poorly named) band aid mode I did have a brief stab at trying to design an alternative upgrade tree/wheel that would only be accessed by clicking on the hive. The main idea behind this was to re-balance the hive choice by directly linking upgrades to it, but looking back I think something like this may of gone some way to simplifying the whole process of understanding the best route to getting the upgrades you want.
Ultimately with a little rethinking the upgrade paths there is definitely better ways of simplifying the whole system and give more choice to the commander.
I have 100 hours played and I still don't know what biomass is and how it works (and I was too lazy to google it). However, if the rings can demonstrate (and we make it obvious) the number of hives and their biomass, I think it nicely illustrates to players that certain upgrades can be unlocked only in certain conditions. If there are good description texts around or on mouse over, it would definitely help us to understand the underlying principles. At the moment, I just know that upgrades appear at some point of time, but I was never certain what exactly needs to happen.
Just a completely random thought,does anyone else think the Blink Icon is a little misleading and hard to see? When I was a rookie,it took me the forever to figure out what the heck the fade was doing in the icon. When I found out it was going from one place to another,I thought "Wait,I can TELEPORT?!" (this was around the time when I first got the game.) So I tried it,only to be confused by the fact that all I did was fly. I looked up if I was doing something wrong,and then I found out it used to teleport. So I was a little dissapointed. (Plus the current Blink is just really bland now :I)
So maybe it could be changed to a (friggin awesome) icon of the Fade moving forward with a big misty trail behind it? It would help rookies figure out what it does faster!
Plus maybe make all icons a bit easier to see? I have a hard time telling what Icon is what,plus the yellowish backround doesn't help
EDIT:come to think of it,why not make an Icon revamp thing? Alot of the alien icons are kinda undescriptive or just really "bleh." (I'm looking at you Umbra.)
Is that on wooza's? If so that explains a lot.
I 100% agree that a replay system would be the best tutorial. See how you get wrecked by an experienced play is valuable as fuckkkk
Sure having more people around helps a flamer. Also JP helps ;p . But it is all in the technique. I have two favorite ones:
1) Flame everything around you
2) The skulk will get so sick because of the lag and epilepsy causing light and disengage
3) You will find it somwhere in corner in fetal position and flame it's face
or
1) Swich to pistol and be like: "look me noob running around with no rifle"
2) Skulks attack some priority target like exo or something
3) You switch back and do good ol' friendly fire on the attacked friend
I am not even kidding unfortunately
See, this is why we need better tutorials! After about 150 hours I should know this!
♪Hidden♩♩Game♪♪Mechanics♩♩♪
Flame thrower isn't a 1on1 weapon.
It's made to inhibit the alien structures to function. And catch a fade by removing the energy.
Imagine a squad with 1 FT and 3 SG in a hive. As soon as structures are ignited, the kammander can't activate the crag, or a shade and those structures cease to perform the automatic effect (especially crag) during the attack. The drifter is also useless in that case. It's far more effective than 4 ARCs.
Downside : you rely on your teammates for protection. But with a JP... just move.
It's just that FT should be used in a coordinated set of actions/tactics. Not for Rambos. Guess what a commander see in a public game every time ?...
Besides direct damage the flamethrower has a few effects. I will explain how they are useful and the downsides of this.
1. The strongest thing about a flamethrower is that it shuts down alien structure effects. The hive stops healing, crags stop healing, shades stop cloaking, whips stop whacking, and shifts stop giving energy. This makes killing a hive quite a lot easier. Aliens trying to defend the hive can't heal. A crag by the hive does not heal the hive making it take longer to kill. In a sense the flamethrower is a force multiplier.
The problem is that for you to perform this strong support role effectively, you need to be in a group of 5+ marines. Even then an LMG or shotgun would pretty much do just as well.
2. Another really strong aspect of the flamethrower is that you can damage multiple structures at once. Alien upgrades are often placed right next to each other. With a flamethrower you can kill all 3 really quick.
The problem is that it is really difficult to even reach those situations. Even if you were in that situation a grenade launcher would kill them faster.
3. A flamethrower can be a great support weapon because aliens are so reliant on energy. A fade pretty much can not move fast without energy. Aliens can not attack if they don't have energy.
The problem is that in a real game this really does not do much. I have twice in my 2000+ hours of gameplay caused a fade to die because I drained his energy with a flamethrower. Any moderately skilled marine would be better off with a lmg or a shotgun which is why the flamethrower is pretty much useless.
4. The flamethrower does burn damage over time. This is most obvious when a skulk dies as it runs away with low health, and then dies. What is not obvious at all is that you can set the ground on fire. A skulk will walk will take burn damage over time by walking on those flames. The less obvious aspect of this is you can do a lot extra damage to structures. If you try to kill and harvester with a flamethrower you an do additional burn damage to it by burning the ground. The harvester will both be taking damage from the flamethrower and the flames on the ground. I think it is about 30% more damage, but that is a guess at best.
The problem is that a flamethrower marine can hardly use this to his advantage because even a skulk has a good chance of killing him. Unless that marine has a jetpack he is basically useless.
5. A flamethrower also does flame damage. Flame damage does 400% to flammable structures. There are not many flammable structures. They include cysts, hydras, and clogs. Welders also do flame damage. One of my favorite things to do is to have a jetpack and just just do a half second of flames on a cyst and run. I hit every other cyst. Doing this you can destroy almost the entire alien cyst chain before they can respond.
The problem is that this can only happen late game, and if there is at least one moderately skilled lerk or fade on the alien team you will not get very far.
6. Flamethrowers pop bile bomb. It stops it in mid air. Not only that, it will stop the damage over time that bilebomb does if a structure has already been hit. (Not true anymore). A single flamethower can shutdown a gorge rush entirely. Bilebomb becomes useless because the flamethrowers stops it. The effect is also complemented by the drain on energy making gorges even more useless.
The problem is that this is so situational.
7. Flamethrowers burn away lerk spores. They also burn away a lerks umbra. The alien commanders drifter abilities like enzyme and mucous membrane are also stopped by flamethrowers.
The problem is that you don't see any of those abilities used very often.
In fact, after writing this all out I realized how horribly confusing the flamethrower is. In the end all you have is a weapon that is extremely strong in certain situations that hardly ever happen.
A flamethrower can be fixed in 2 ways. Either give it enough damage to be able to defend itself without a jetpack, or change its role completely.
This is false. Bile will continue to tick on structures and marine armor.
This has been done and tried before. Others who were more involved in those efforts could say more, but I don't remember them ever being that successful. Maybe those who tried did not advertise it well enough.
I know planetside 2 has this also, and it is not that popular either.
Thiiiis is the soooong of HIDDEN GAME MECHANIIIIIIIIICS!-Yeah i'm not a good singer
But when I do play marine next time,i'll probably be using the thrower of flames next time
That was ironhorse whom I got that same information from.
2) Do we have a thread for improving the UI? I think i might have some ideas.
3) After all this has been done: Tutorial videos on Youtube, which can be linked ingame or not.
The reason Ns2 does not use K:D in its rating system is the same as Riot games with League of Legends. They explain their whole matchmaking process on this page.
If you won't click a link, here is a quote from them.
Ns2 is not LoL but the principles of the algorithm are the same and so is the logic. The following picture shows some graphs that depict the correlation of that to skill. You can see that Killrate or K:D correlates to skill with a value of 0.591 while W:L has a correlation value of 0.611.
This shows that even though K:D is not directly measured it still has a very high correlation so skill. K:D does have a large effect on your skill rating, in I can estimate it accounts for 96% of it.
If you are interested here are more stats about the hive skill system.
That would no longer be a an Elo rating system, but a glorified e-peen inflator that encourages farming arbitrary numbers. A rating based on victories and defeats already captures everything in your skillset that determines winning the game, and as can be seen from Nordic's post, correlates well with other more intuitive (yet judgmental) measures of ability.
Killing a cyst gives you +1. Killing a skulk gives you +5. Indicating that killing skulks is more important than cysts. And ressource Towers give you +10 or what ever it is?
Wrt the elo system, look at it this way. Regarding anything that you may perceive as a skillful action - if it does not affect your winrate, then clearly it is not a skill worth recording anyway, in a system that tries to predict the winning team.
Edit: It would be interesting to see a stat on how often Hive correctly predicts the winning team.
And in addition to that, a stat that shows how often the current Hive scores would predict past games that were predicted wrong at the time (To see the effects of the self-correcting process)
Of course, you wouldn't expect to see 100% succesrate in the later case even in the best case scenario, as it wouldn't account for players getting better with time as well as a dusin other factors. But I still would like to see it.
I don't think they intend to simplify the game... the depth and skill ceiling will remain... they just want to take overly complex things and remove the complexity but maintain the gameplay... why do something in a complicated way that can be done with ease... if they system can be changed and made easier to understand while keeping its depth, I don't understand why anyone would ever be against it.