Quality of Life Changes/Adjustments/Balance
Bike_Man
USA Join Date: 2016-03-12 Member: 214124Members
USA Join Date: 2016-03-12 Member: 214124Members
I've never posted on the forums before, but I've thought of a few ideas I think would help the quality of life for alien players. I'm sure there are other ideas I've forgotten, and I'll make sure to add some ideas for marines soon if I don't see them anywhere else. Please discuss each of the issues as numbered. I'd be giddy as a school girl if at least one of these made it into a patch.
The first one has already been mentioned here, as an improvement for aliens evolving. Currently, feedback for evolving in an invalid position occurs after one has selected their life form and upgrades. I would rather have the life form menu not appear until the player is in a valid position, or at least for there to be some clear indication of this in the evolve menu. As it has been mentioned, it's no fun to fail to evolve repeatedly. Eggs are vulnerable, so people naturally try to evolve out of sight, where it is more likely that there wont be enough room. I'm not sure if more room is needed for an onos to evolve versus a skulk, but the idea still applies. I don't foresee much opposition to the change, and development time shouldn't be too bad. Just like spawn orientation correction, fixing errors like failures to evolve should not be considered buffs, just good fixes.
Number two has to deal with gorge tunnels. I'm not going to talk about their pres cost, time of availability, HP/maturation, opening speed, infestation spread, etc. I'm talking about the interior of the tunnel itself. Currently, there are pieces of geometry that randomly spawn throughout the tunnel. For marines and most aliens, these little interruptions on the smooth floor of the tunnel are no problem. They are simply strafed through. But gorges, the ones who actually place the tunnels, are harmed by this. Gorges who attempt to slide through the length of the tunnel are nearly always stopped at one point or the other. At best, this just makes it slower for gorges to get through. At worst, the gorge dies because a marine jumped in and doesn't have the same mobility issue. I don't know what the code for a tunnel looks like, so it might be harder to remove these little bits, but I don't think it would be too much of a controversial change, either.
Three is a bit of a buff, and is definitely subject to debate. When drifters are damaged, they are only healed by a crag or a gorge. In the early game, there isn't likely to be a crag in the first hive, and if there is one on the field it probably is in an advance position. As a commander (or an observant player) I don't see many gorges naturally checking to see if a nearby drifter has full health, and I have never heard a commander say "Heal the drifter." I don't think that drifters need passive health regen like alien players have, but this could be a possibility. Rather, what I suggest is that drifters are healed by a hive, at a rate that the developers feel is balanced. I'd like to see where and how often drifters die on maps (a heat map of this would be awesome) in order to make a better decision, of course. In my experience, they die the most building RTs while the commander is occupied. I've heard that the code for drifters and MACs is a bit interesting, so I'm also not sure how hard this would be to change, regardless of the balance and gameplay effect.
Four is an alternative (or supplement) to number three. When drifters are damaged to a certain degree, they are forced to retreat to a hive. This is a pretty debatable change. It would decrease the mortality rate of drifters for busy (or out of hive) commanders, but could be frustrating for both teams. Marines might not like missing drifter kills, but marines might like forcing off drifters with a few stray bullets (or even indirect fire) instead of having to mow them down to disrupt their activity. Aliens might enjoy not having to spend so much Tres on new drifters, but might be annoyed at the forced retreat. After all, a damaged drifter can still cast abilities. The alien comm may also have to take a second to find the drifter that moved on its own, but then again, it's equally as disorienting to discover that your drifter has died and you didn't see it happen. Perhaps the forced retreat could be exclusive to when no alien commander is present. I would suspect that this change would be a bit tedious to implement, and definitely needs to be discussed to avoid the ire of the community elders.
Number five is probably the biggest change, affecting the game as a whole. I have seen several servers (Lerk Flyers in particular) running mods in order to literally change the game balance. I don't know if this is a good change or not, but I'm just throwing it out here: Let the vanilla game be more configurable balance-wise to server owners. This carries the risk of confusion - if too many servers modify the game balance, it can be hard for even veteran players to know how the game plays on each server. But if server owners were conservative with these changes, and made it very clear what has been changed (via motds and information plugins) the change could be a positive. People would still probably ask for more drastic mods, but tuning numerical values (res costs, damage, health, spawn times, etc) could benefit the wide variety of servers that exist. I'm assuming that this would require a huge overhaul of how both servers and clients run, however, so this change is more of a thought experiment than a request.
Oh, and we need more steam items. Gotta love my TSF pens and alien heads.
The first one has already been mentioned here, as an improvement for aliens evolving. Currently, feedback for evolving in an invalid position occurs after one has selected their life form and upgrades. I would rather have the life form menu not appear until the player is in a valid position, or at least for there to be some clear indication of this in the evolve menu. As it has been mentioned, it's no fun to fail to evolve repeatedly. Eggs are vulnerable, so people naturally try to evolve out of sight, where it is more likely that there wont be enough room. I'm not sure if more room is needed for an onos to evolve versus a skulk, but the idea still applies. I don't foresee much opposition to the change, and development time shouldn't be too bad. Just like spawn orientation correction, fixing errors like failures to evolve should not be considered buffs, just good fixes.
Number two has to deal with gorge tunnels. I'm not going to talk about their pres cost, time of availability, HP/maturation, opening speed, infestation spread, etc. I'm talking about the interior of the tunnel itself. Currently, there are pieces of geometry that randomly spawn throughout the tunnel. For marines and most aliens, these little interruptions on the smooth floor of the tunnel are no problem. They are simply strafed through. But gorges, the ones who actually place the tunnels, are harmed by this. Gorges who attempt to slide through the length of the tunnel are nearly always stopped at one point or the other. At best, this just makes it slower for gorges to get through. At worst, the gorge dies because a marine jumped in and doesn't have the same mobility issue. I don't know what the code for a tunnel looks like, so it might be harder to remove these little bits, but I don't think it would be too much of a controversial change, either.
Three is a bit of a buff, and is definitely subject to debate. When drifters are damaged, they are only healed by a crag or a gorge. In the early game, there isn't likely to be a crag in the first hive, and if there is one on the field it probably is in an advance position. As a commander (or an observant player) I don't see many gorges naturally checking to see if a nearby drifter has full health, and I have never heard a commander say "Heal the drifter." I don't think that drifters need passive health regen like alien players have, but this could be a possibility. Rather, what I suggest is that drifters are healed by a hive, at a rate that the developers feel is balanced. I'd like to see where and how often drifters die on maps (a heat map of this would be awesome) in order to make a better decision, of course. In my experience, they die the most building RTs while the commander is occupied. I've heard that the code for drifters and MACs is a bit interesting, so I'm also not sure how hard this would be to change, regardless of the balance and gameplay effect.
Four is an alternative (or supplement) to number three. When drifters are damaged to a certain degree, they are forced to retreat to a hive. This is a pretty debatable change. It would decrease the mortality rate of drifters for busy (or out of hive) commanders, but could be frustrating for both teams. Marines might not like missing drifter kills, but marines might like forcing off drifters with a few stray bullets (or even indirect fire) instead of having to mow them down to disrupt their activity. Aliens might enjoy not having to spend so much Tres on new drifters, but might be annoyed at the forced retreat. After all, a damaged drifter can still cast abilities. The alien comm may also have to take a second to find the drifter that moved on its own, but then again, it's equally as disorienting to discover that your drifter has died and you didn't see it happen. Perhaps the forced retreat could be exclusive to when no alien commander is present. I would suspect that this change would be a bit tedious to implement, and definitely needs to be discussed to avoid the ire of the community elders.
Number five is probably the biggest change, affecting the game as a whole. I have seen several servers (Lerk Flyers in particular) running mods in order to literally change the game balance. I don't know if this is a good change or not, but I'm just throwing it out here: Let the vanilla game be more configurable balance-wise to server owners. This carries the risk of confusion - if too many servers modify the game balance, it can be hard for even veteran players to know how the game plays on each server. But if server owners were conservative with these changes, and made it very clear what has been changed (via motds and information plugins) the change could be a positive. People would still probably ask for more drastic mods, but tuning numerical values (res costs, damage, health, spawn times, etc) could benefit the wide variety of servers that exist. I'm assuming that this would require a huge overhaul of how both servers and clients run, however, so this change is more of a thought experiment than a request.
Oh, and we need more steam items. Gotta love my TSF pens and alien heads.
Comments
2. Yes. I'm pretty sure it's not randomly generated and the three nubs on the floor are in the same place relative to the first and second entrances. I have figured out how to slide through and avoid them but it is really tricky and only works going from the first entrance to the second. Which is usually towards danger and not the direction you really need to be able to slide through quickly. I usually get stopped while charging through them as an Onos as well.
3/4. I like the idea of having the drifter retreat when it takes a lot of damage and the khamm is out of the hive. Maybe make the threshold low enough that two marines can kill it before it gets away, but a single marine would need to position themselves carefully to get it before it gets away? And it would make more sense if the hive healed the drifter. If this is implemented I feel there should be a message displayed to the khamm when they get back in telling them a drifter retreated, maybe even highlighting the retreated drifter.
5. Maybe. Not directly in the game, but perhaps another mod similar to the UWE Balance mod? I'm thinking it being a separate mod entirely would allow servers tweaking the balance to be put in the Arcade tab more easily. And by opening the Arcade tab players should realize there is something (maybe everything) different and would prevent the confusion you mentioned.
For all that is holy, please don't :] There are eons of devtime ahead of them, and achievements are more than enough atm.
I think that's actually a pretty good game mechanic, intended or not. As a gorge you have to be careful to enter early enough, and you can play with a single marine by entering and exiting repeatedly until backup arrives. More than one... well, a gorge would die on to field vs 1+ marines anyway.
Rest of your ideas and their drawbacks are pretty solid!