Seeking ideas for team wide upgrades
Nordic
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
I have been toying with the idea of team wide upgrades for late game, rather than lifeform specific upgrades. So rather than say, stab, we get something that buffs the whole team. I am having trouble thinking of ideas. I asked this question in discord. I am making a thread to collect these ideas because things get lost in discord.
Comments
Babbler-Spoons: give all marine players a spoon. Eating a dead babbler with a spoon restores full health.
Maybe taking certain upgrades off of chambers and making them hive tech upgrades that everyone gets could be interesting though.
Well yes of course, but I am thinking of other upgrades that would be tied to biomass.
For example, at biomass 7 or something the commander could research that upgrade where aliens would leave a cloud that damages marines on death from combat.
You could even go the simplistic route and have something like a shift hive upgrade on bio8 called "enhanced celerity" where all aliens move 15% faster before celerity is applied. I think this sounds boring, but it is an example.
Just when you do it, it is important to 1) have it consistent 2) being an alternative to lifeform specific lifeform abilities and traits.
Idea 2: Infestation upgrades. Biomass 9 or 12 or w/e aliens can upgrade the infestation with a special attribute from one of the hives. Or possibly unlocking each of these attributes once biomass is maxed on an individual hive. Up for debate. For example: Shift hives would be a buff to your current upgrade ability like celerity, crag would maybe make natural regen quicker, or armor stripping for marines, shade would release a gas that distorts marine vision while walking on it or through it. Im thinking like a lighter version of inking but all the time in infested areas. Or possibly an aura deal that if a marine stands in infestation they would appear on the map. Lots of things you can do here.
idea 3: bringing down the energy on Adrenaline and giving it an increased attack speed for aliens. Possibly not a 100% uptime for this. Maybe it would work in short burts like a cat pack for marines. Once you start biting you get 3 seconds of increase attack speed with a 20 second cool down for example.
idea 4: Marines can buy upgrades for their weapons. Use pres to buy extended magazines, personal single use meds/cat packs.
Idea 5: Motion tracking upgrade after 2 chairs, proto, w3,a3. Upgrade from the OBS or ARMS lab. Would make sense on either as observatory gives sight while it could be considered an armor upgrade. Doesnt matter which to me.
Idea 6: Marine Commander AOE consumable upgrades. After w3.a3. 2 chairs and such the commander can unlock AOE droppables to help soldiers. Things like AOE meds that would function the same as a normal medpack but pop up as a small field they can stand in to slowly increase HP for meds, ammo field for Ammo, cat pack effects etc. Maybe give cat packs a larger aoe or not do this with cat packs bc limited area on Cat packs defeats the purpose except for reloading speed. These of course would have an increased cost and a substantial enough cooldown. AOE nano shield would be tight.
The commander would need to be capped at one such super arms lab so there can be no backups, in order to preserve its status as a singular high priority target. Either that, or make upgrading to it so expensive that the commander is hard pressed to choose between building a backup or getting another upgrade, on something like a 1.75/1 backup/additional upgrade res cost ratio.
I think this could work even though it is overpowered. And it is overpowered even if the advanced upgrades to weapons and armour don’t build at the same rate as the basic ones do and even if they are capped at only W/A 6. The reason it could work is because
1. It destabilizes the end game without affecting mid/early game, and this is something I think NS2 suffers from most, a sluggish endgame where while one team’s victory is almost assured, sealing it is painfully drawn out.
2. It is counterable and opens up strategic possibilities for both teams: It is a huge investment, so the commander needs to be mindful of where he places it to keep it safe, but he can also place it to draw aliens away from other structures. Sneaky bile rush? Place it at the far end of the room and gorges will be tempted to focus it instead of the mess of structures you heaped around the CC. Likewise, aliens are presented with an extremely high value target. Marines are jetpack rushing Cargo hive but only two skulls made it to control? Focus any structure or power and you either won’t be able to get it down in time or their com will laugh and rebuild once your hive is dead and the marines phase back. Focus the advanced arms lab though, and yeah, he’ll either panic beacon or die a little inside as he watches you irreparably devour over a hundred team res worth, possibly with a bottle of rich Chianti and while making deep sensual eye contact with your sexy undoubtedly-impressed-what-a-fancy-place-this-is skulk date. On top of that, when the alien team rushes a marine base, you are no longer limited to two priority targets. Now you can argue about prioritizing either power or the chair OR the advanced arms lab! If you don’t need this in your life now I don’t know what else to tell you.
Of course, in order for any of this to be balanced aliens would need an end game boost as well, preferably in asymmetrical tradition.
If you’re going to add mechanics, I personally only feel they are justified if they both enrich the gameplay and serve a purpose. I assume your purpose is to find ways to destabilize the end game, something I agree with. But even with this clear purpose in mind, if you decide to add another layer to alien tech you need to give the marines a way to respond to it. Following your first example, linking such tech to biomass equates it to just more lifeform upgrades, though they are really in an entirely different class altogether: game ender tech. I make this distinction on the grounds that it makes your team more effective without changing the way they play as active ability unlocks would do. In other words, it just makes them harder to play against. This does not enrich the gameplay and adds clutter to an already complex tech tree. It is a less obvious version of your second example, which really is just a bare naked game mechanic. Even if such additions to the end game are necessary, marines must be offered a way to counter them, other than just killing a hive, which they are trying to do anyway. Put another way, even if it is intended as a game ender mechanic, with teamwork and coordination, it must still be countereable, even if said team is on the back foot. Not allowing for this in a fun, organic way will net you the same community response we currently have towards contaminate, our current game ender tech.
Just having more armor, or more life regen is cool.. but its also boring after a while. Simple +5 to this, -10 to that, kinda stuff doesn't have much staying power.
I mean, even for the Marines, flamethrowers and grenade launchers are cool.. but it doesn't really change how you play, you know? That only really happens once you get your hands on a jet-pack or an exo. Now you can move through the map as a different entity and truly feel like you're doing something different, or at the very least, the same thing, with a pivotal twist. (weapons make you more useful versus certain enemies, it doesn't change how you fundamentally approach the Marine gameplay. A jept-pack lets you for all intents and purposes, be a skulk in vents. And an exo, for all intents and purposes, makes you a walking sentry gun rack) .
This game is giving me similar vibes to Nosgoth. The late, human vs vampire game by Square Enix, or published by them whatever the heck.
That game was pretty freaking awesome. But after a while the meta began to sink in. And maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing in a game, but because of the fact that the factions were so asymmetrically balanced, it pigeon held the players into playing the game in only a handful of ways. This became evident to casual players of the game, and more importantly, to the demise of the game, its Competitive scene as well, and all the people watching the tournaments..
It boiled down to two simple strategies all the time, every time, because humans used ranged weapons, and vampires used melee weapons to such specialized extents they couldn't do anything else once every fraction of a second mattered.
Humans find building, set up crossfire in overwatch stance, and kill vampires as they come in. If you wanted to use every advantage you had as a human, that's what you did, every time.
I see a similar thing happening here in Natural Selection 2. Really fast time-to-kill with classes that are more specialized than generalized. I honestly think NS2 could use more generalization. There are some Alien upgrades that are too simple I think, flat armor, flat health regen etc. And while many of the Marines upgrades are fun to use, they evidently only push the Marines natural play experience into the "ranged" box.
And I think Aliens and Marines should be able to play with eachs others toys more often. Or at least, have the option
How does this correlate at all with the thread
TL;DR - I think Aliens should be able to get a "Barbed Needle" upgrade that sacrifices (melee damage? attack speed? armor? health?) for a threatening Ranged Attack.
- Gorge bile projectile speed would decrease, and damage would increase (simple.. but the bloat already does so much already)
- Skulks Tracer Needle would have a reduced duration on target with slightly increased damage, and would do more impact damage, pushing targets around with each shot (increase its energy cost as well so its much less grief-able)
- Lurkers gas based abilities/projectiles would be able to travel farther before detonating
- Fade can shoot venom out of their mouths that can slow targets
- Onos would be able to take a Quill Burst ability, AOE DOT effect that is more lethal the closer the target is to the Onos's Head Plate, but doing less damage to targets with more armor (alternate upgrade to the smash ability?)
Initial Balance Edit * - Marines themselves would need their own "buff" or "addition" to help balance out this new Alien feature by giving the Marines a side-grade melee option. And to be perfectly honest with you guys, I think simply giving the Welder a deadly Alternate Attack that ran on a fuel gauge.
- Full flame damage (15 every 0.2 seconds) to health AND armor. Drains 1 fuel per 5 flames. I see it as draining 3x slower than a jet-packs fuel overall.
Aliens get a ranged option.
Marines get a melee option.
Idk.. its been stewing in my head for a few days now.
You mention Nosgoth, I did follow that game a little bit while it was at the top, but not so much near the end. But here's why Nosgoth is incomparable to NS2 in this way in my observation.
Nosgoth went stale because of the *gamemode*. Iirc it was initially a simple tdm, who gets most kills. Of course humans are gonna setup and optimize their positional advantage.
The way you solve that staleness, is by adding objectives. Force the humans to relocate. That's why they added Domination, or capture point or what ever it was called. But that's obviously not enough. Cus now humans simply camp the objective/point.
What NS2 has brilliantly done, in contrast to Nosgoth, is add *secondary* objectives around the map, in the form of resource towers.
Yes. You can sit on your ass as a marine and only take the long range fights and maximize your k/d, but if you don't keep the aliens RT's down, they're gonna out-tech you eventually. So in order to get to harvesters, marines HAVE to momentarily sacrifice their optimal positional advantage, in order to travel through hallways and rooms that are ambushable and favoring aliens.
That's why Nosgoth failed. It had no reason for humans to sacrifice position ever. In NS2, you can't just point-and-click farming kills, or you lose in the lategame - and that's the proper way to solve the assymetrical staleness thing imo.
That's one of the reasons why you want to get the shotgun. You want to be able to win those cqc fights, while you're traveling towards the enemy rt's/hives.
How about if you build regular turrets after 2 CC-locations they can be individually upgraded to flamer type if you select 1 then hit upggrade down in the hud for more substance.
To not let aliens feel left out make additional bile bomb upgrade on 3 hives with "glue" ability that slows down marines movement similar to web while bile-affected just more Mobile
if THAT is overpowered ...well set it to holding axe running speed is still normal & unaffected. This now is overkill but something you just randomly can buy at armory like a Scope at (replaces the slap with zoom-in) lol