The weird thing is: Aliens are slightly op in my opinion. You gain res so dam fast with the 1.25 tick. So you can flash your lerk all day and get it up again after a few minutes. fades are comming around the 6.5 minute mark now.
But you are right, the pub play shows the opposite of the real situation.
player size is a thing i can agree. for example woozas: 23 rines should win all the time if they are playing this game correctly.
Hive balance? Would be more even when the smurfs would stop smurfing. Hive skill cannot shuffle fairly when people are cheating with their real hiveskill.
The most important aspect imo is game-experience.
Most of the people out there know how to play a fps-game. So as marine they are familiar with running around and shooting. that makes them better marines than aliens from the start.
Most of the alien games i see this stats in the scoreboard:
4 people are doin nothing except running alone against marines and dying over and over again. you are simply playing with 4 guys less in your team.
too many skulk are NOT res biting and allowing the marines to get their tech up very fast.
If all aliens would know what to do in every situation of the game, aliens would definitely win more games.
I think it's really important to understand what the goal is, and then using that for context, appropriate decisions can be made. In my opinion, right now the game needs revitalizing and not fine tuning balance. Of course never go full retard and discard balancing for the top completely or you'll end up in a similar situation where marines really struggle to win because aliens are so easy for high skilled players to abuse.
Maybe you didn't realize but vanilla balance at the Moment is so Bad, in a comp Match with almost even teams it is a guaranteed alien win.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited July 2016
There is so much more than telling people how important resbiting is.
We already have brainless skulks doing nothing except: Running to an restower, die there, repeat.
They are so focused on resbiting that they dont see the chance for an good engagement nearby with there tunnel views.
I saw this multiple times: I was distracting a rine, he was down to to one bite, another skulk behind just bypassed us to run to the next extrator and the rine from before was going there and killed him.
In an normal shooter you have to capture point a or hold point b.
So there are only a few objectives.
In NS2 there multiple sub objectives like:
Should i bite topo?
Should i help these 3 skulks to get nano back?
Is it better to run to base to force a beacon?
What structure should i attack 1st in what situation?
...
Then people have to learn simple basic rules like:
Dont attack alone
Use walljump to be faster
Press shift nearby rines for an better ambush
Dont run on the floor straight against rines
Use the map often
...
All this together and more is NS2.
It has only one mode, but this one mode includes so much more than simple DM, CTF, Capture and hold, Search and Destroy..
NS2 has parts from all the above gamemodes combined.
And thats why a simple "Bite more res" tutorial is not enough.
6v6 is a different kettle of fish to 9v9+ which is what I have been talking about, and are also unfortunately, what most servers are.
Also as @santaclaws has pointed out time and time again before, public games suffer most from the skill disparity inside teams. Hive shuffle might make avg skill equal, but the standard deviation inside the teams is so large that a 2-3 crucial engagements throughout the game set the snowball pace. The population of this game is now too small for "same skill" servers like HBZ used to be. This means you get individuals running around being able to kill vast proportions of the enemy team and dominating whole swathes of maps. Early game this is a marine, late game this is a fade (although often time the snowball is so large marines dominate)
Maps need to change to accommodate this phenomenon
Players need to be able to be distributed amongst community servers in their own skill levels
Balance changes need to be made to help the terrible players
I don't practically see no. 1 or 2 being feasible, and whilst I think no. 3 is a terrible makeshift solution, I'm not sure what else can be done because option no. 4 (unstated) is L2P and the majority of the community simply don't have the critical reflective skills to improve.
The 1st person camera looks quite different from the model animation especially for aliens, which can make things counter intuitive. A tutorial can't explain that very well, a killcam could better.
There is so much more than telling people how important resbiting is.
We already have brainless skulks doing nothing except: Running to an restower, die there, repeat.
They are so focused on resbiting that they dont see the chance for an good engagement nearby with there tunnel views.
I saw this multiple times: I was distracting a rine, he was down to to one bite, another skulk behind just bypassed us to run to the next extrator and the rine from before was going there and killed him.
There are fellow humans who believe that their favourite politician is telling the truth. There are also people who think the moon landing was faked. Aaaand the list goes on...
You can't police challenged individuals into playing the game properly... There are motivated rookies, who listen and want to learn, and there are the braindead whom you described, but no game can change that.
There is so much more than telling people how important resbiting is.
We already have brainless skulks doing nothing except: Running to an restower, die there, repeat.
They are so focused on resbiting that they dont see the chance for an good engagement nearby with there tunnel views.
I saw this multiple times: I was distracting a rine, he was down to to one bite, another skulk behind just bypassed us to run to the next extrator and the rine from before was going there and killed him.
There are fellow humans who believe that their favourite politician is telling the truth. There are also people who think the moon landing was faked. Aaaand the list goes on...
You can't police challenged individuals into playing the game properly... There are motivated rookies, who listen and want to learn, and there are the braindead whom you described, but no game can change that.
There comes a time where you can only blame NS2 so much and it's more likely to do with players getting dumber over the years, I swear to god the current trend for this generation is that every game must spoon feed you on how to play, if the last generation never had trouble adapting why is this generation struggling so much?
There are motivated rookies, who listen and want to learn.
Sure there are, but these players would ask stuff or would try to figure out things by themself.
So a better tutorial need players that are intersted in this.
How about a poll on rookie only servers.
Something like:
"Are you interested in more tutorials"?
or
"Would you play more tutorials if they are available"
The game could have the best tutorials in the world but they would be useless if noone is trying them.
Why do you think that better tutorials are needed without the knowledge that the new players want them?
Maybe they are thinking "Fuk of this noob tutorial bullshit, im a CS pro. I dont need this boring shit. its only waste of time."
We just got a better tutorial. By this I do not mean that we should not have another new tutorial, but we need to think how it should be done. I think we should not focus our efforts so much on what needs done, because better tutorials are fairly obvious.
Advanced tutorials were planned at one point. That plan seems to have dropped off. I would like to see it come back.
If this thread is to be productive, we should figure out what exactly we (veterans/community) want to see in advanced tutorials. Let the current, recently improved tutorial serve as the basics. Let it remain forced, and let players attempt advanced tutorials at their leisure. The most important thing is to make it abundantly clear that advanced tutorials exist, once they do exist.
So what should be included in advanced tutorials? I will start a list.
Aliens:
Advanced Skulk (Wall jumping, res biting)
Advanced Gorge (?)
Advanced Lerk (?)
Advanced Fade (?)
Advanced Onos (?)
Advanced Tactics (?)
Advanced Alien Commander (?)
Marines:
Advanced Aiming (?)
Advanced Tactics (?)
Advanced Marine Commanding. (?)
Marine Challenge. Similar to fade/lerk challenge, but as a marine for aim practice.
I ask you all, what else should be in this list? What should be taught in each of the supposed advanced tutorials?
Dont even necessarily need 'playable' tutorials, just an in-game 'Learning' menu with a couple of write-ups explaining a few basic concepts and up-to-date information regarding weapons etc.
As long as you aren't shoveling it in peoples faces most people really wont mind reading a couple of paragraphs explaining how to git gud. Its absolutely baffling that nothing of the sort has been implemented yet
We've got the hard part over with interactive walkthroughs of the basics. The remaining stuff does not need such a complicated implementation, just needs a knowledgeable person (someone from the comp community) to provide a couple of small writeups on 'advanced' concepts and slap them behind an option in the main menu.
1 bot skulk waiting behind a corner on a long hallway. One marine on the other end. The task is to attack simultanously. First let the player attack alone and let him die. Then new try as a team. The off-voice counts: ready.... 3...2...1... attack. Then the player has to attack the same time the bot does. Now he wins.
2.) Skulk: Wall Jump time-game:
Make a corridor or a level with a long hallway. Task: Get to the end in 30 seconds. You pass this tutorial when you reach the line under 30 seconds. So he is forced to use walljump.
Maybe more levels with different times.
3.) Skulk: Safe lifeforms.
Task is to defend an onos bot who is charged by marines. The onos is far away so the player has to use his learned wall jump from the second time-game tutorial to reach the onos in time and safe him.
4.) Skulk: Play sneaky.
The skulk has no upgrades and his task is to attack an extractor behind the enemys lines. Of course marines are guarding different routes and covering the lanes. The skulk has the task to sneak around them without beeing seen. If they attack him the player lost the tutorial. The task is to kill the extractor without getting seen by a marine.
5.) Skulk: It all adds up: (not sure if this can work or be programmed).
Make a little demo-game with bots where the player gets tasks from the off voice in every second. he starts as skulk and the off voice gives him the tasks he has to do:
for example: "round started. you see 3 teammates going cross, 1 going atrium, so your task: go sub now."
when he reaches sub: "there could be a marine building an extractor in ventilation. prepare an ambush when he is going to sub."
and so on. a scripted round from beginning to end.
Dont even necessarily need 'playable' tutorials, just an in-game 'Learning' menu with a couple of write-ups explaining a few basic concepts and up-to-date information regarding weapons etc.
As long as you aren't shoveling it in peoples faces most people really wont mind reading a couple of paragraphs explaining how to git gud. Its absolutely baffling that nothing of the sort has been implemented yet
We've got the hard part over with interactive walkthroughs of the basics. The remaining stuff does not need such a complicated implementation, just needs a knowledgeable person (someone from the comp community) to provide a couple of small writeups on 'advanced' concepts and slap them behind an option in the main menu.
Interactive would be great, but it is a lot more work. Some sort of in game concise write up similar to how depth did it might work. Would also be easier to update as the game evolves.
Still though, that list would be helpful.
I am also not sure how movement could be taught in a non interactive tutorial.
I think a meta game tutorial with the essence of blinds or tanes guide would be helpful. A tutorial on positioning and the like with a big focus on the (c)map.
In general challenges are less boring than tutorials.
like those in Quake Live that focus on different aspect of the game with growing difficulty (rocket jump challenge, bhop challenge)
ideas for ns:
-a fade race challenge
-a lerk race challenge
-a gorge/alien com "tower defense" challenge
-a marine commander "last stand" challenge
Is a lerk race challenge really necessary? It is not hard to go fast as lerk, but more about how you move. We already have a lerk challenge where you fight marine bots, but it gives no help on what to do.
Is a lerk race challenge really necessary? It is not hard to go fast as lerk, but more about how you move. We already have a lerk challenge where you fight marine bots, but it gives no help on what to do.
I'm sure these are just examples. We could adapt these as needed. For example, for the lerk: Instead of having a race, have the player fly through a gauntlet of enemies without being able to defend himself, that he can only survive if he moves erratically.
@Nordic Hive challenge are nice at testing a package of skills so more specific challenges would help develop more specific skills while being less boring than "do this now" type tutorials is what I meant.
Note these are just random ideas, I agree with your statement about lerks maybe instead a dodging challenge but it'd require bots with realistic aim.
In general challenges are less boring than tutorials.
like those in Quake Live that focus on different aspect of the game with growing difficulty (rocket jump challenge, bhop challenge)
ideas for ns:
-a fade race challenge
-a lerk race challenge
-a gorge/alien com "tower defense" challenge
-a marine commander "last stand" challenge
i like the idea of challenges. The hive challange was a good "tutorial" imo because challanges are more motivating then normal tutorials.
Races are a good way and i think last stand could also improve the motivation. A global scoreboard would also help to keep people motivated. So everyone wants to be number 1.
Setting the learning curve and tutorials aside, i feel most of it comes down to players not communicating. If you have a bad alien team, but they do communicate, rushes are still a possibility. For the marines it seems to me that there are not as many options, thus It probably would be interesting to see what happens if we adjust the cost for gates.
As for other things that probably could get a look: What about new players starting of with 1000 Skillpoints? Whoever thought of that should be (i cannot write this here). Haha. Really. Slash that value by half and let it be 500. Kinda lost count of how many bad games we had, simply because it made shuffle useless.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Look I am all for getting more players.
I am all for making changes to benefit or 'benefit' the game.
I am all for the easy to learn hard to master principle of gaming.
But you can not account and balance for everything. In every game there is a minimum set of effort and skill you need to insert to get anywhere. Good tutorials help you with those yes, but there is a minimum.
Lets take the current oceans of derpskulks. Just go play a few rounds, look at aliens and then come back here if you haven't played ns2 in a while.
Ok, so we got the derpskulk in mind? good. A quick recap just in case shall we.
The derpskulk always travels in straight lines to a target.
Goes in one, by one, by one, by one...
Makes a lot of sound without the actual added speed.
Stops making sound way to late, when its noticed by the enemy.
Does not listen to advice or reason while clearly speaking english.
Never flanks.
Stays skulk up to onos res (and then goes anything but onos.).
Does not react to any area under attack in any reasonable timeframe. (As in their movement speed timeframe, not vets)
So if we account for the low skilled player, and if we should balance the game for the oceans of these skulks.. How to do this?
Increasing speed? nonono, that will not do. They are not even using half of their current speed.
Increasing health? Without dodging or other mechanics this means the skulk will not reach the marine unless it survives the whole clip. Because... its going in one by one. So we want skulks surviving whole clips?
Sure you can say something like half the clip so the marines still needs to reload after 2 skulks. But derpskulks cant move. They dont know how. That marine can circle axing for the whole skulks healthbar and stand a good chance of living, let alone a simple reload or pistol cycle.
Point is, a derpskulk not following utter basics of skulk play shall not win a engagement, and buffer the crap out of aliens till it does is not helping.
And that is even ignoring the few vets still out there or the few rookie skulks who aren't derping around and actually improving. It would not make it easy to learn, hard to master.. it would be laughable easy to learn and easy to master.
So I would urge everyone once again on thinking how we can come up with methods to at least make these derp skulks into normal rookies.
Rookies who learn, listen, improve. Who can take the hint that going facefirst in a marine 20 times in a row and dying 20 times is probably not the way to do it.
I have to agree with others around here..
Im willing to accept many MANY changes in ns2 for the greater good. But oceans of derpskulks is not worth it.
In general challenges are less boring than tutorials.
like those in Quake Live that focus on different aspect of the game with growing difficulty (rocket jump challenge, bhop challenge)
ideas for ns:
-a fade race challenge
-a lerk race challenge
-a gorge/alien com "tower defense" challenge
-a marine commander "last stand" challenge
i like the idea of challenges. The hive challange was a good "tutorial" imo because challanges are more motivating then normal tutorials.
Races are a good way and i think last stand could also improve the motivation. A global scoreboard would also help to keep people motivated. So everyone wants to be number 1.
In my free time, I'm working on a skulk time-trial racing mode where you'll race to the end of very long track that's cobbled together from existing maps (tram to summit to mineshaft to refinery to docking). Took me about 70-80 seconds from start to finish. Then you'll be able to race against your "ghost" from the previous rounds (perhaps even save it/share it!). Good times will be given a bronze skulk medal, great times will be given a silver lerk medal, and ridiculously fast times a gold onos medal. Ever played the time attack mode from Donkey Kong Country: Returns/Tropic Freeze? Like that. Bronze is somewhat easy, silver is hard, and gold takes hours of keyboard soaking sweat and blood to shave the time down enough... if you're lucky.
Then hopefully I'll have time to revist the Hive Challenge, make it feel a bit less janky, more polished.
I'd still like to put together some kind of marine shooting-range challenge in a similar vein.
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
That was the initial idea behind the advanced tutorials.. different challenges that were short.
I still think an increasing amount of alien bots (starting with two skulks) pouring into locker rooms would be a decent challenge to train tracking skills and target priority.
Then for positioning you just require a Marine to reach waypoint X , where the road to get there is filled with bottle neck choke points that have ambushing skulks that give up on ambushing after a set amount of time. This teaches players to draw out aliens into a long line of sight instead of just chasing aliens through a door way.
The cool part about these is that it should require less work than the new tutorials.. there's little to no script (probably just a single instruction with advice) and you can utilize existing maps and bots similar to the fade challenge mode.
i agree with iron , perhaps have some txt explaining what is going on or a voice over , ie check corners when entering a room , look for small moments on the map for cloaked skulks . you could even get a good fade to do a run of the locker room ideas and have times to beat etc etc etc etc you get the idea ....but this still doesn't fix the population issue
Comments
The weird thing is: Aliens are slightly op in my opinion. You gain res so dam fast with the 1.25 tick. So you can flash your lerk all day and get it up again after a few minutes. fades are comming around the 6.5 minute mark now.
But you are right, the pub play shows the opposite of the real situation.
player size is a thing i can agree. for example woozas: 23 rines should win all the time if they are playing this game correctly.
Hive balance? Would be more even when the smurfs would stop smurfing. Hive skill cannot shuffle fairly when people are cheating with their real hiveskill.
The most important aspect imo is game-experience.
Most of the people out there know how to play a fps-game. So as marine they are familiar with running around and shooting. that makes them better marines than aliens from the start.
Most of the alien games i see this stats in the scoreboard:
4 people are doin nothing except running alone against marines and dying over and over again. you are simply playing with 4 guys less in your team.
too many skulk are NOT res biting and allowing the marines to get their tech up very fast.
If all aliens would know what to do in every situation of the game, aliens would definitely win more games.
Well at least no one complains about better tutorials. Except in that comic.
We already have brainless skulks doing nothing except: Running to an restower, die there, repeat.
They are so focused on resbiting that they dont see the chance for an good engagement nearby with there tunnel views.
I saw this multiple times: I was distracting a rine, he was down to to one bite, another skulk behind just bypassed us to run to the next extrator and the rine from before was going there and killed him.
In an normal shooter you have to capture point a or hold point b.
So there are only a few objectives.
In NS2 there multiple sub objectives like:
Should i bite topo?
Should i help these 3 skulks to get nano back?
Is it better to run to base to force a beacon?
What structure should i attack 1st in what situation?
...
Then people have to learn simple basic rules like:
Dont attack alone
Use walljump to be faster
Press shift nearby rines for an better ambush
Dont run on the floor straight against rines
Use the map often
...
All this together and more is NS2.
It has only one mode, but this one mode includes so much more than simple DM, CTF, Capture and hold, Search and Destroy..
NS2 has parts from all the above gamemodes combined.
And thats why a simple "Bite more res" tutorial is not enough.
Im still for an better video in the steam shop that shows and explains important stuff of the game.
We have one but im sure it can explain more:
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256661295/movie_max.webm?t=1456901779
6v6 is a different kettle of fish to 9v9+ which is what I have been talking about, and are also unfortunately, what most servers are.
Also as @santaclaws has pointed out time and time again before, public games suffer most from the skill disparity inside teams. Hive shuffle might make avg skill equal, but the standard deviation inside the teams is so large that a 2-3 crucial engagements throughout the game set the snowball pace. The population of this game is now too small for "same skill" servers like HBZ used to be. This means you get individuals running around being able to kill vast proportions of the enemy team and dominating whole swathes of maps. Early game this is a marine, late game this is a fade (although often time the snowball is so large marines dominate)
I don't practically see no. 1 or 2 being feasible, and whilst I think no. 3 is a terrible makeshift solution, I'm not sure what else can be done because option no. 4 (unstated) is L2P and the majority of the community simply don't have the critical reflective skills to improve.
There are fellow humans who believe that their favourite politician is telling the truth. There are also people who think the moon landing was faked. Aaaand the list goes on...
You can't police challenged individuals into playing the game properly... There are motivated rookies, who listen and want to learn, and there are the braindead whom you described, but no game can change that.
There comes a time where you can only blame NS2 so much and it's more likely to do with players getting dumber over the years, I swear to god the current trend for this generation is that every game must spoon feed you on how to play, if the last generation never had trouble adapting why is this generation struggling so much?
Sure there are, but these players would ask stuff or would try to figure out things by themself.
So a better tutorial need players that are intersted in this.
How about a poll on rookie only servers.
Something like:
"Are you interested in more tutorials"?
or
"Would you play more tutorials if they are available"
The game could have the best tutorials in the world but they would be useless if noone is trying them.
Why do you think that better tutorials are needed without the knowledge that the new players want them?
Maybe they are thinking "Fuk of this noob tutorial bullshit, im a CS pro. I dont need this boring shit. its only waste of time."
Advanced tutorials were planned at one point. That plan seems to have dropped off. I would like to see it come back.
If this thread is to be productive, we should figure out what exactly we (veterans/community) want to see in advanced tutorials. Let the current, recently improved tutorial serve as the basics. Let it remain forced, and let players attempt advanced tutorials at their leisure. The most important thing is to make it abundantly clear that advanced tutorials exist, once they do exist.
So what should be included in advanced tutorials? I will start a list.
Aliens:
Marines:
I ask you all, what else should be in this list? What should be taught in each of the supposed advanced tutorials?
Remember, keep it simple, and keep it short.
As long as you aren't shoveling it in peoples faces most people really wont mind reading a couple of paragraphs explaining how to git gud.
Its absolutely baffling that nothing of the sort has been implemented yet
We've got the hard part over with interactive walkthroughs of the basics. The remaining stuff does not need such a complicated implementation, just needs a knowledgeable person (someone from the comp community) to provide a couple of small writeups on 'advanced' concepts and slap them behind an option in the main menu.
1.) Skulk: Pack Play:
1 bot skulk waiting behind a corner on a long hallway. One marine on the other end. The task is to attack simultanously. First let the player attack alone and let him die. Then new try as a team. The off-voice counts: ready.... 3...2...1... attack. Then the player has to attack the same time the bot does. Now he wins.
2.) Skulk: Wall Jump time-game:
Make a corridor or a level with a long hallway. Task: Get to the end in 30 seconds. You pass this tutorial when you reach the line under 30 seconds. So he is forced to use walljump.
Maybe more levels with different times.
3.) Skulk: Safe lifeforms.
Task is to defend an onos bot who is charged by marines. The onos is far away so the player has to use his learned wall jump from the second time-game tutorial to reach the onos in time and safe him.
4.) Skulk: Play sneaky.
The skulk has no upgrades and his task is to attack an extractor behind the enemys lines. Of course marines are guarding different routes and covering the lanes. The skulk has the task to sneak around them without beeing seen. If they attack him the player lost the tutorial. The task is to kill the extractor without getting seen by a marine.
5.) Skulk: It all adds up: (not sure if this can work or be programmed).
Make a little demo-game with bots where the player gets tasks from the off voice in every second. he starts as skulk and the off voice gives him the tasks he has to do:
for example: "round started. you see 3 teammates going cross, 1 going atrium, so your task: go sub now."
when he reaches sub: "there could be a marine building an extractor in ventilation. prepare an ambush when he is going to sub."
and so on. a scripted round from beginning to end.
Interactive would be great, but it is a lot more work. Some sort of in game concise write up similar to how depth did it might work. Would also be easier to update as the game evolves.
Still though, that list would be helpful.
I am also not sure how movement could be taught in a non interactive tutorial.
like those in Quake Live that focus on different aspect of the game with growing difficulty (rocket jump challenge, bhop challenge)
ideas for ns:
-a fade race challenge
-a lerk race challenge
-a gorge/alien com "tower defense" challenge
-a marine commander "last stand" challenge
I'm sure these are just examples. We could adapt these as needed. For example, for the lerk: Instead of having a race, have the player fly through a gauntlet of enemies without being able to defend himself, that he can only survive if he moves erratically.
Note these are just random ideas, I agree with your statement about lerks maybe instead a dodging challenge but it'd require bots with realistic aim.
i like the idea of challenges. The hive challange was a good "tutorial" imo because challanges are more motivating then normal tutorials.
Races are a good way and i think last stand could also improve the motivation. A global scoreboard would also help to keep people motivated. So everyone wants to be number 1.
As for other things that probably could get a look: What about new players starting of with 1000 Skillpoints? Whoever thought of that should be (i cannot write this here). Haha. Really. Slash that value by half and let it be 500. Kinda lost count of how many bad games we had, simply because it made shuffle useless.
I am all for making changes to benefit or 'benefit' the game.
I am all for the easy to learn hard to master principle of gaming.
But you can not account and balance for everything. In every game there is a minimum set of effort and skill you need to insert to get anywhere. Good tutorials help you with those yes, but there is a minimum.
Lets take the current oceans of derpskulks. Just go play a few rounds, look at aliens and then come back here if you haven't played ns2 in a while.
Ok, so we got the derpskulk in mind? good. A quick recap just in case shall we.
So if we account for the low skilled player, and if we should balance the game for the oceans of these skulks.. How to do this?
Increasing speed? nonono, that will not do. They are not even using half of their current speed.
Increasing health? Without dodging or other mechanics this means the skulk will not reach the marine unless it survives the whole clip. Because... its going in one by one. So we want skulks surviving whole clips?
Sure you can say something like half the clip so the marines still needs to reload after 2 skulks. But derpskulks cant move. They dont know how. That marine can circle axing for the whole skulks healthbar and stand a good chance of living, let alone a simple reload or pistol cycle.
Point is, a derpskulk not following utter basics of skulk play shall not win a engagement, and buffer the crap out of aliens till it does is not helping.
And that is even ignoring the few vets still out there or the few rookie skulks who aren't derping around and actually improving. It would not make it easy to learn, hard to master.. it would be laughable easy to learn and easy to master.
So I would urge everyone once again on thinking how we can come up with methods to at least make these derp skulks into normal rookies.
Rookies who learn, listen, improve. Who can take the hint that going facefirst in a marine 20 times in a row and dying 20 times is probably not the way to do it.
I have to agree with others around here..
Im willing to accept many MANY changes in ns2 for the greater good. But oceans of derpskulks is not worth it.
In my free time, I'm working on a skulk time-trial racing mode where you'll race to the end of very long track that's cobbled together from existing maps (tram to summit to mineshaft to refinery to docking). Took me about 70-80 seconds from start to finish. Then you'll be able to race against your "ghost" from the previous rounds (perhaps even save it/share it!). Good times will be given a bronze skulk medal, great times will be given a silver lerk medal, and ridiculously fast times a gold onos medal. Ever played the time attack mode from Donkey Kong Country: Returns/Tropic Freeze? Like that. Bronze is somewhat easy, silver is hard, and gold takes hours of keyboard soaking sweat and blood to shave the time down enough... if you're lucky.
Then hopefully I'll have time to revist the Hive Challenge, make it feel a bit less janky, more polished.
I'd still like to put together some kind of marine shooting-range challenge in a similar vein.
I still think an increasing amount of alien bots (starting with two skulks) pouring into locker rooms would be a decent challenge to train tracking skills and target priority.
Then for positioning you just require a Marine to reach waypoint X , where the road to get there is filled with bottle neck choke points that have ambushing skulks that give up on ambushing after a set amount of time. This teaches players to draw out aliens into a long line of sight instead of just chasing aliens through a door way.
The cool part about these is that it should require less work than the new tutorials.. there's little to no script (probably just a single instruction with advice) and you can utilize existing maps and bots similar to the fade challenge mode.