Great thread, everyone. I tried to run the "how long do you want NS games to last" poll awhile back but didn't get too much feedback. This kind of info is quite useful.
Great points, humbaba. I LOLed with the Pimpy reference too. I'm not sure where he went to but I miss his 2 page long posts on game design.
As far as late-joining, you can definitely do this. As an alien, you get birthed by a hive within 30 seconds. As a marine, you'll come in as a reinforcement. If it's near the end of the game and the marines are losing, they may not be able to purchase a reinforcement before the game ends. Generally though, you'll be in the game in less then a minute. If there are other people on your team that have been waiting longer then you to respawn, they'll come back first. In the meantime, you can spectate your team.
Also, if you join one team, you are not allowed to join the other team until the game ends. Currently, you can still quit the server, reconnect, then join the other team, but that will be fixed as well.
It would be quite a bit of work to have two different game modes, the long mode and the short mode. There is already the concept of "tournament mode", which handles things like friendly fire, respawning, and other more hard-core options designed for tourny play. Rebalancing the game to have a different pace while still remaining balanced seems like more work then it's worth to me.
I'd rather aim for the 20 minute average game time, designing it so not all the tech can be researched in that time. This is how fast RTS' work (Dark Reign, Starcraft). The game times are shorter then Age of Empires or Empire Earth, but you can still cram in a lot of strategy in that time. If the game continues on past this time, there will still be lots of higher tech to get to, stuff that you won't see in most games (motion-tracking, jetpacks, etc.). An hour long game will likely be the exception though, not the rule. Having games that CAN end in 5 minutes keeps both teams on their toes as well, and makes an interesting dynamic (ie, a good level 1 rush could do this).
The idea of a commander leaving in the middle of battle is definitely a good reason to try to keep the game times down a bit.
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Great points, humbaba. I LOLed with the Pimpy reference too. I'm not sure where he went to but I miss his 2 page long posts on game design.
As far as late-joining, you can definitely do this. As an alien, you get birthed by a hive within 30 seconds. As a marine, you'll come in as a reinforcement. If it's near the end of the game and the marines are losing, they may not be able to purchase a reinforcement before the game ends. Generally though, you'll be in the game in less then a minute. If there are other people on your team that have been waiting longer then you to respawn, they'll come back first. In the meantime, you can spectate your team.
Also, if you join one team, you are not allowed to join the other team until the game ends. Currently, you can still quit the server, reconnect, then join the other team, but that will be fixed as well.
It would be quite a bit of work to have two different game modes, the long mode and the short mode. There is already the concept of "tournament mode", which handles things like friendly fire, respawning, and other more hard-core options designed for tourny play. Rebalancing the game to have a different pace while still remaining balanced seems like more work then it's worth to me.
I'd rather aim for the 20 minute average game time, designing it so not all the tech can be researched in that time. This is how fast RTS' work (Dark Reign, Starcraft). The game times are shorter then Age of Empires or Empire Earth, but you can still cram in a lot of strategy in that time. If the game continues on past this time, there will still be lots of higher tech to get to, stuff that you won't see in most games (motion-tracking, jetpacks, etc.). An hour long game will likely be the exception though, not the rule. Having games that CAN end in 5 minutes keeps both teams on their toes as well, and makes an interesting dynamic (ie, a good level 1 rush could do this).
The idea of a commander leaving in the middle of battle is definitely a good reason to try to keep the game times down a bit.