A (constructive) analysis of NS1
Detheron
Join Date: 2006-11-07 Member: 58469Members
Join Date: 2006-11-07 Member: 58469Members
<div class="IPBDescription">From an old school player</div>It's been 4 years... yet it seems like it was yesterday. I was a huge fan of Starcraft back in the late 90's, then I picked up Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I was about to get bored of FPS games, but then I saw the NS announcement on CAL website. That day was October 30th, 2002.
I DLed it on the first day. It was a brand new game with a very promising concept. I never liked TFC, but for some reason, I ended up loving NS.
4 years later, I still find time to play it now and then. After reading some posts at the old rr.org forums and checking a NS topic on the Nuclear Dawn boards (which Flayra replied to), I got inspired to make a post like this.
For the sake of simplicity, I will post my critique of the game first, then add another section later with ideas to improve NS2 and make it a better game.
<b>1) Race Vs. Race Balance:</b>
Since 1.0, a lot of tweaks have been made regarding game balance. Each team is as unique as you can get, and that is what I call a balance nightmare.
Why? Because you can't fully achieve balance between both teams when they have nothing in common, nothing to compare with each other. You can't balance HA vs Onos, or Jetpacks vs Lerks, for example. The end result is that one team always has an upper hand on the other, <b>making individual skill less meaningful than classes or weapon upgrades. </b>
<b>2) The resource distribution issue</b>
Resource management is the core of any RTS game, and here is no different. Nothing short of a sucessful early skulk rush will win this game without spending resources. While the unique resource distribution system for each class adds flavor and uniqueness to the game, I hope the current system gets discarded for NS2 and a new system, equal for both races, gets put in place.
The resource distribution system is the very foundation of balance in any RTS game, and in previous incarnations of NS, having 2 different systems brought a lot of headache for the developers. We all remember those 1.0x games with 12 players on each side, and how the aliens could never get enough res to build things as fast as marines. Things evolved since the implementation of "resource-per-kills" but it was a mere bandaid fix.
Both sides need to use the same RDS for the sake of balance. This doesn't mean that all turrets must cost the same, all resource nodes the same, etc, only that both teams need to get and spend the same amount of resources at the same pace, no matter how small or big the game is. You could, for example, make each resource node your team has give one resource point per player on your team every X seconds, and make marines pay for the weapons/HAs/JETs themselves instead of the commander, just like aliens pay for their forms, instead of implementing a resource-per-kills system.
<b>3) Upgrades should give you an edge, NOT be essential</b>
This is a very touchy subject, because it is very hard to not make an upgrade essential without making it useless. With the abundancy of bunny jumping macros, strafe walking and other speed-increasing scripts, movement chambers became almost essential as the first chamber for aliens because there are marines <b>nearly</b> outrunning vanilla skulks. Also, as marines get armor and weapon upgrades, the vanilla skulk gets more and more weak, whereas the 3/3 marine is actually quite deadly to skulks, gorges, lerks and not-so-skilled fades. If an upgrade gives substantial benefit over other upgrades of the same techtree, or is required (or commonly considered as a requirement) for a specific class to survive, something is wrong with the design.
<b>4) The commander</b>
At first I thought it was a great idea. The commander, a truly unique class (there can be only one at a time). No other class or player can have as much influence in the outcome of the game as him/her. This puts a really heavy weight on the shoulders of newcomers as they might be new to commanding and not so great at multi-tasking, which leads to servers having a select few "unnofficial" commanders while any beginner who gives a shot at the chair in peak hours is instantly ejected.
It was a fine idea that didn't work with the community, and I hope they won't be an unique class in NS2 anymore.
<b>5)The Motion Tracking/Scent of Fear issue</b>
It was posted in the Nuclear Dawn topic, but I found it a very valid point. Upgrades that pin point your enemies in your screen lower the skill factor present in the game. These upgrades in the current implementation are too powerful, but not something that should be discarded right away. A few tweaks, such as updating the screen every 6~8 seconds instead of every 2 seconds, or not capturing slow-moving targets (one could argue that sneaky marines don't sweat as much as running ones) would make them useful without making them "too good".
<b>6) The square problem (Map design)</b>
This is not a flaw of the game itself, but rather map design. Imagine a square. In one corner you have the Marine Start, in the other 3, hives. I'm not saying that all maps should or are designed that way, just keep that image in your head a little and you will see my point.
The best hive to spawn is usually the hive in the middle, because you can quickly connect to the other 2 hives from it. If you spawn in one of the other hives, you will be close to one hive and very far away from the other. Maps such as ns_caged comes to mind. It is a pretty big walk from Generator to Sewer, probably twice as much if Ventilation is locked down. If you spawn in the middle hive and a 'corner' hive gets locked down, you still have the other one pretty close to you, and very far away from marines. If you spawn in one of the other 2 hives, you only have one viable option to expand into. If the middle hive gets locked down, the game just became a lot harder than the former scenario.
I DLed it on the first day. It was a brand new game with a very promising concept. I never liked TFC, but for some reason, I ended up loving NS.
4 years later, I still find time to play it now and then. After reading some posts at the old rr.org forums and checking a NS topic on the Nuclear Dawn boards (which Flayra replied to), I got inspired to make a post like this.
For the sake of simplicity, I will post my critique of the game first, then add another section later with ideas to improve NS2 and make it a better game.
<b>1) Race Vs. Race Balance:</b>
Since 1.0, a lot of tweaks have been made regarding game balance. Each team is as unique as you can get, and that is what I call a balance nightmare.
Why? Because you can't fully achieve balance between both teams when they have nothing in common, nothing to compare with each other. You can't balance HA vs Onos, or Jetpacks vs Lerks, for example. The end result is that one team always has an upper hand on the other, <b>making individual skill less meaningful than classes or weapon upgrades. </b>
<b>2) The resource distribution issue</b>
Resource management is the core of any RTS game, and here is no different. Nothing short of a sucessful early skulk rush will win this game without spending resources. While the unique resource distribution system for each class adds flavor and uniqueness to the game, I hope the current system gets discarded for NS2 and a new system, equal for both races, gets put in place.
The resource distribution system is the very foundation of balance in any RTS game, and in previous incarnations of NS, having 2 different systems brought a lot of headache for the developers. We all remember those 1.0x games with 12 players on each side, and how the aliens could never get enough res to build things as fast as marines. Things evolved since the implementation of "resource-per-kills" but it was a mere bandaid fix.
Both sides need to use the same RDS for the sake of balance. This doesn't mean that all turrets must cost the same, all resource nodes the same, etc, only that both teams need to get and spend the same amount of resources at the same pace, no matter how small or big the game is. You could, for example, make each resource node your team has give one resource point per player on your team every X seconds, and make marines pay for the weapons/HAs/JETs themselves instead of the commander, just like aliens pay for their forms, instead of implementing a resource-per-kills system.
<b>3) Upgrades should give you an edge, NOT be essential</b>
This is a very touchy subject, because it is very hard to not make an upgrade essential without making it useless. With the abundancy of bunny jumping macros, strafe walking and other speed-increasing scripts, movement chambers became almost essential as the first chamber for aliens because there are marines <b>nearly</b> outrunning vanilla skulks. Also, as marines get armor and weapon upgrades, the vanilla skulk gets more and more weak, whereas the 3/3 marine is actually quite deadly to skulks, gorges, lerks and not-so-skilled fades. If an upgrade gives substantial benefit over other upgrades of the same techtree, or is required (or commonly considered as a requirement) for a specific class to survive, something is wrong with the design.
<b>4) The commander</b>
At first I thought it was a great idea. The commander, a truly unique class (there can be only one at a time). No other class or player can have as much influence in the outcome of the game as him/her. This puts a really heavy weight on the shoulders of newcomers as they might be new to commanding and not so great at multi-tasking, which leads to servers having a select few "unnofficial" commanders while any beginner who gives a shot at the chair in peak hours is instantly ejected.
It was a fine idea that didn't work with the community, and I hope they won't be an unique class in NS2 anymore.
<b>5)The Motion Tracking/Scent of Fear issue</b>
It was posted in the Nuclear Dawn topic, but I found it a very valid point. Upgrades that pin point your enemies in your screen lower the skill factor present in the game. These upgrades in the current implementation are too powerful, but not something that should be discarded right away. A few tweaks, such as updating the screen every 6~8 seconds instead of every 2 seconds, or not capturing slow-moving targets (one could argue that sneaky marines don't sweat as much as running ones) would make them useful without making them "too good".
<b>6) The square problem (Map design)</b>
This is not a flaw of the game itself, but rather map design. Imagine a square. In one corner you have the Marine Start, in the other 3, hives. I'm not saying that all maps should or are designed that way, just keep that image in your head a little and you will see my point.
The best hive to spawn is usually the hive in the middle, because you can quickly connect to the other 2 hives from it. If you spawn in one of the other hives, you will be close to one hive and very far away from the other. Maps such as ns_caged comes to mind. It is a pretty big walk from Generator to Sewer, probably twice as much if Ventilation is locked down. If you spawn in the middle hive and a 'corner' hive gets locked down, you still have the other one pretty close to you, and very far away from marines. If you spawn in one of the other 2 hives, you only have one viable option to expand into. If the middle hive gets locked down, the game just became a lot harder than the former scenario.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
The fact is that there is a large gap between good and average players. Good marines can aim super well and bust out pistol kills super fast. This in turn gives them scores such as 42-5. And yes, this is for pubs games, which is 99% of what NS is. And as for aliens, the learning curve goes to the fade. Depending how good the player is at fade, aliens will win or lose.
And these two roles, marine or fade have a large impact on RFK. RFK is easily abused by skilled players, while it leaves the average player in the dust. That's why one good player joining a game has such a profound impact on the outcome, rather than the team. Your a gorge? Well, then expect little to no res, even though YOU are the one who drops the RTs, chambers and hive. If you get nothing back from this role, is it a wonder why people don't gorge?
Then we have the upgrades. As of now, if we DON'T go movement chambers and DON'T get celerity, onos and fade classes are screwed. NS needs to again, not be balanced ON the upgrades, but rather on what the vanilla stats are. I'd go so far as removing the "essential" upgrades and replacing them with more specialized ones.
Overall, the problem is NS is listening to what clan players say, rather than listening to what the 99% of average players have to say. It's not a surprise that most of the vocal people are clanners. But I believe that if NS continues to listen to clan talk, it's just going to make the gap between average and clan players larger, therefore, you'll see more games where one clanner joins and changes the game - by himself.
I hope NS2 brings the pubber in mind. Keep the game about fighting your opponent, NOT worrying if you fade correctly or not. Make marines more than just how fast you aim. Look at the Nintendo Wii. Xbox and Sony are going down the hardcore path, while the Wii is trying a way that opens up to a larger number of people.
I remember in 1.04 those longer games that were epic. Nowadays, these games are rare. RFK has done it's toll: for every epic game where people struggle to win, we have dozens of craptastic 4-minute games where marines turret farm outside of the hive, lockdown hive 2 in a few minutes, etc. What used to be about strategy, as in what you did with your res, is now rewarding how skilled you are, something only a few clan players do exceedingly well.
Think of the pubbers. Once you lose them, you lose your foundation.
Resource distribution needs to be changed. The emphasis needs to be made not on the players that can point and shoot/bite well but on the overall team effort and strategy.
It was a fine idea that didn't work with the community, and I hope they won't be an unique class in NS2 anymore.
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Commander mode didn't work with the community? It seems to be a very successful element that many people enjoy, and one of the defining aspects of this game. The commander dropping weapons and buildings for the players to build is what set this game apart from all the other cs clones.
Not to mention, the fact that your fighting a completely asymmetrical adversary, adds many layers of depth to this game that even commercial games lack. I have also felt that the way the res system is set up is just fine. I really like the idea that the central focus of the marine teams resources go straight to the commander, as they should. As for aliens, its more communal and spread around to each individual alien.
As for the skill gaps in the game, that same argument could be applied to any FPS out there. I agree we should make the game as accessible to new players as possible, but still have the depth and strategy the more experienced players keep coming back for.
If you join a marine game with a newb commander, you'll die. And you pretty much know that. So you eject him or you lose quickly and he doesn't learn much at all. Eventually you get a few good commanders and some good games when they're around. Other times? Horrible games that don't exactly build the community.
And what happens when every marine wants to be out shooting and no one will be comm for the first 3 minutes?
Having a commander is a wonderful idea, but it really doesn't work too well in practice -- and that's a sad thing.
You can say how crappy CS is all you want (and I have my own gripes with it--haven't played much since version 1 came out) -- but I'm guessing Unknown Worlds would like to actually get a large enough fanbase to make some money. They won't do that by serving a small niche market.
The Kharaa, and their life forms, make up the bulk of the learning curve. Commanding is pie, once you know what each structure's value is, compared to fading.
Good comming comes down to knowing what to build, and more so having people who'll do it.
Overall, the problem is NS is listening to what clan players say, rather than listening to what the 99% of average players have to say. It's not a surprise that most of the vocal people are clanners. But I believe that if NS continues to listen to clan talk, it's just going to make the gap between average and clan players larger, therefore, you'll see more games where one clanner joins and changes the game - by himself.
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Once again the competitive community gets blamed. How can you say that the problem with NS is that the Devs listened to clanners. Are you even certain of this or are you just making up bullsh1t.
The only reason why the whole game gets changed by one clanner is because people like you create combat servers with 50 levels and make extra upgrades available to these "clanners" so they can upgrade faster than anyone else in the game and eventually get a 200-2 score because they are level 30 with 500hp and 500 armor fade with never ending adrenaline.
Now in NS games you can't say one clanner changes the whole game by himself. Its not like combat where the map is smaller and all he has to do is kill everyone. In NS fades don't have 50 upgrades. All it takes is what a little teamwork and you can certainly stop a "good" fade.
I agree with the points in the first post on how upgrades should not be essential to a win. But then again people like you create combat servers with 50 upgrades to just make this matter even worse.
Conclusion: 50 level combat servers killed NS. New players are playing on these servers and getting use to getting a million upgrades. Then when they play a round with NS and they see someone like Makaveli totally raping they think he is hacking.
I'm going off on a tangent here, I suspect. At anyrate, everyone hop aboard!
And as far as removing the commander mode goes, if anything, the aliens need a comm. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
In all seriousness, I suspect that including Whichbots out of the box (as it were) would be more effective for new players to learn about comming. Sure they wouldn't neccessarily know all the strats, but that chair would likely be a bit less scary. (Also, the commander section of the ns_training map made by meat_popsicle back in the day alone could help this.)
I mean, cripes, if I had to learn how to play starcraft by only playing those ub3r South Koreans, I sure as hell wouldn't have given it the hours that I gave it. (come to think of it, I still wouldn't want to play them, but I digress!) I didn't touch battle.net until I was well versed in playing against my friends. The idea behind combat, an experience where they can go comm free for a while to get the hang of the other parts of the game, may have backfired. (I still think the ns territories mod is what combat should have been, but I again, I digress!) Combat is so warm and fuzzy, nobody wants to leave it. There is so much instant gratification with combat, that they see no need to move to ns. As fun of a diversion as it is, it practically is a game (mod?) unto itself. Is it really that terrible though? Thinking of it that way, we're getting two games in one when we download ns. Is combat bringing people to classic? Or are we losing classic players to combat? I can't see us actually losing classic players to combat.
And look at the growth of this game. It's leveled off. Plateau'edided. New players are playing against experienced/jaded players. It's not like CS where a nubcaek like me can play his odds in finding a good nubcaek filled server. (So to say that NS was balanced for clanners, I think is wrong. It was balanced for all us 1.0x miserable old coots.)
I'm rambling now. Where was I going with this... oh I forget. At anyrate, get off my lawn!
I only play on (well, currently on a break until my new computer is finally built) hardcore playhouse NS servers nowadays since although it's a pub server it's got a lot of good regulars, and a lot of games there can go any way possible. I've seen pretty much any strategy there is to use from both teams, all which can work just fine.
On top of that it's pretty much teamwork that is the most important aspect. No matter what strategy you pick, it will be the teamwork that will decide which team will win. I've seen rookie teams kick vet team butt simply because although the vet team were much better gameplay wise they usually ended up underestimating the strength of coop and thus end up losing.
When it comes to top rambo marines that really know how to aim and shoot, and who set up sneak PG's outside hives, I've since long learned to try and get the khaara team to counteract this tactic by simply asking a few teammates to do patrolsweeps and try and keep a close watch on areas near hives that my team hasn't been active in for a while.
NS is so much more than just commanders, upgrades and whatnot else. Yeah, NS has a steep learning curve and does need a tutorial and good players who can shoot 10 skulks with one clip or bite 10 marines before being gunned down do make a certain difference, but no, I wouldn't say that it's so heavily reliant towards clans and elitism. All that rookies have to do is take a bit of time learning the game and simply take part of a team - even though they aren't ace NS players yet, if they have a good team contribution they will make just as much of a difference as any ace NS player. I've seen it happen many times already.
There is a distinct shortage of good comms because it requires somebody who not only knows all aspects of the game, but is able to combine it into a larger picture. Many people can't even recognize a good comm when they have one - I remember loling when people were voting to eject Routerbox or somebody else for not dropping turrets in a hive that aliens weren't going to drop 2nd anyways. Even a lot of clanners are mediocre comms because they can't keep track of the larger picture.
I would personally say that the high-end of the learning curve isn't learning how to blink and not run into walls, kill skulks in 15 bullets, etc, but rather the decision-making portion of the game. For example, obscure was composed of mostly not-too-impressive players (Sorry, but it's true <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />) but entered playoffs many times and even won a few championships because they had a good, experienced team.
As for listening to what the clanners say, why not? They are the people who are best at this game and have a deeper level of understanding than your average player.
The real problem is good players stacking teams (sometimes intentional).
<b>At the end of the day it's up to the skilled players whether to make the round a Good Game or not, and this is done by evening themselves up between teams. How about some incentive to do so?</b>
<b>I think that people who aren't regulars on the server should get some kind of warning or notice of which team is likely to win and which side they SHOULD choose to make a more fair game.</b>
Perhaps a plugin could be written to keep track of players' performance in a database and recommend a side for you to join that could even up gameplay. Imagine if there was a percentage or something in RR that said "Win chance based on players stats: Marines: 70% Aliens: 30%".
If the percentage says "Marines 95% Aliens: 5%" and you lose as aliens, there would be alot less rage quits. More likely they would say "well no crap we lost... - the thing said 5% chance". Next round they would try and convice the good players to balance themselves out, which is what needs to happen. It's got to be voluntary.
<b>This is exactly like most RTS games today</b>: In Starcraft you have a Win-Loss record, in Warcraft III each player has a level. The reason for this is if you lose to a "better" oppenent, you don't feel as worthless. Additionally If you win against a "better" opponent, you feel better.
I don't think you need to change the gameplay, you need to change, or at least influence the balance of skill on each side.
So.. we have: buyable weapons with equally devided "res" (cash? *cough*), teams that are effectively the same but only look different, no commander with the only teamwork being if people randomly want to work together. Its sounding an awful lot like a lot of other games I know..particularly a rather famous one for HL1 and 2. I dont mean to be offensive, but really it sounds like what NS is meant to be isn't what you want.
It's been 4 years... yet it seems like it was yesterday. I was a huge fan of Starcraft back in the late 90's, then I picked up Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I was about to get bored of FPS games, but then I saw the NS announcement on CAL website. That day was October 30th, 2002.
I DLed it on the first day. It was a brand new game with a very promising concept. I never liked TFC, but for some reason, I ended up loving NS.
4 years later, I still find time to play it now and then. After reading some posts at the old rr.org forums and checking a NS topic on the Nuclear Dawn boards (which Flayra replied to), I got inspired to make a post like this.
For the sake of simplicity, I will post my critique of the game first, then add another section later with ideas to improve NS2 and make it a better game.
<b>1) Race Vs. Race Balance:</b>
Since 1.0, a lot of tweaks have been made regarding game balance. Each team is as unique as you can get, and that is what I call a balance nightmare.
Why? Because you can't fully achieve balance between both teams when they have nothing in common, nothing to compare with each other. You can't balance HA vs Onos, or Jetpacks vs Lerks, for example. The end result is that one team always has an upper hand on the other, <b>making individual skill less meaningful than classes or weapon upgrades. </b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yea, you can't balance those things. Thats what makes the games fun, some things defeat other things (paper vs rock). Lots of games just boil down to Red vs Blue CS style gameplay and even if they do have a nice playerbase it's not a very good game.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>2) The resource distribution issue</b>
Resource management is the core of any RTS game, and here is no different. Nothing short of a sucessful early skulk rush will win this game without spending resources. While the unique resource distribution system for each class adds flavor and uniqueness to the game, I hope the current system gets discarded for NS2 and a new system, equal for both races, gets put in place.
The resource distribution system is the very foundation of balance in any RTS game, and in previous incarnations of NS, having 2 different systems brought a lot of headache for the developers. We all remember those 1.0x games with 12 players on each side, and how the aliens could never get enough res to build things as fast as marines. Things evolved since the implementation of "resource-per-kills" but it was a mere bandaid fix.
Both sides need to use the same RDS for the sake of balance. This doesn't mean that all turrets must cost the same, all resource nodes the same, etc, only that both teams need to get and spend the same amount of resources at the same pace, no matter how small or big the game is. You could, for example, make each resource node your team has give one resource point per player on your team every X seconds, and make marines pay for the weapons/HAs/JETs themselves instead of the commander, just like aliens pay for their forms, instead of implementing a resource-per-kills system.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Currently with the kill the other teams res and weapons/lifeforms it does work out some, I would like to see shared to team RFK and maybe even limited res feeding straight to gorges or one "captain" gorge. I do agree that the res system needs some tweaking, but it's very well done at the moment.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>3) Upgrades should give you an edge, NOT be essential</b>
This is a very touchy subject, because it is very hard to not make an upgrade essential without making it useless. With the abundancy of bunny jumping macros, strafe walking and other speed-increasing scripts, movement chambers became almost essential as the first chamber for aliens because there are marines <b>nearly</b> outrunning vanilla skulks. Also, as marines get armor and weapon upgrades, the vanilla skulk gets more and more weak, whereas the 3/3 marine is actually quite deadly to skulks, gorges, lerks and not-so-skilled fades. If an upgrade gives substantial benefit over other upgrades of the same techtree, or is required (or commonly considered as a requirement) for a specific class to survive, something is wrong with the design.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't have a problem with upgrades as the game goes on, thats part of the tactics. I would like to see some way to upgrade lower level lifeforms like the skulk so you can keep up some. Maybe you buy your own cara or focus or whatnot, hard to do that without turning it into co_ though.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>4) The commander</b>
At first I thought it was a great idea. The commander, a truly unique class (there can be only one at a time). No other class or player can have as much influence in the outcome of the game as him/her. This puts a really heavy weight on the shoulders of newcomers as they might be new to commanding and not so great at multi-tasking, which leads to servers having a select few "unnofficial" commanders while any beginner who gives a shot at the chair in peak hours is instantly ejected.
It was a fine idea that didn't work with the community, and I hope they won't be an unique class in NS2 anymore.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
While I understand frustration from bad comms, and yea there are tons of pubs. It really does add a lot to the gameplay, I'd look for ways to ease or streamline the commanding rather then removing it all together.
For all the games faults it is fun to play, You can turn it into a straight up counter strike clone but you still won't get the playerbase that mod draws.
The current gameplay is fine. Right when you start to win or lose... you know exactly why and it's because someone failed somewhere - not simply because the game failed you.
For example, if every alien abuses res and never drops the hive or if the comm never gets upgrades, or you lose an imporant part of the map, you know why you lost. You can imagine how the game might have gone differently if someone had spent their time/res differently. That means it's not the game's fault. It's skill on the part of the players.
Contrast that to 1.04 where no matter what the aliens did, early JPs would be flooding the hive.. or when siege hurt aliens and would kill them through walls while they tried to heal... that's imbalanced because there's no reasonable counter. There's a difference.
It´s an endless complain. I think would be better let servers admins balance things for them and leagues specify server default values for clan match. It would free developers to just fix bugs and improve their game content.
It´s a drastic solution. But i think it will offer for pubs and clans to play NS without complaing about the game balance so hard.
I think some of you missed my point in the critique. A critique is well written review of the game in your eyes. Which means all my points were just opinions.
I'm not trying to turn NS into a CS/DoD clone ZOMG! In respect to the resource distribution system, a lot of RTS games share the same RDS among different races. Take starcraft for example. They all use crystals, vespene gas, and build structures to increase the amount of units the player can control. In most games it is the same thing, you might have a race whose "lumber peons" cost twice as much the other peons from other races, but they gather twice as fast.
The RDS for each team already has a point in common, and it is the res-per-kills system. The developers realized then that two teams with entirely different RDS cannot be balanced against each other and tried to work in a fix for that. It is time for the community to accept that as well, so a new and more solid RDS can be put in game.
Additionaly, other changes could be done if the resource flow was static for both teams - such as keeping your alien form when you die, at the cost of a longer respawn time, or being able to change forms you have previously paid for free. I don't know about you, but I'd rather see a game where the top tier units fight each other until the last minute than games where the outcome is decided at middle game and you have a bunch of Fades stalking vanilla marines or an HA train vs skulks and gorges.
<!--quoteo(post=1574630:date=Nov 8 2006, 05:09 AM:name=Ahnteis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ahnteis @ Nov 8 2006, 05:09 AM) [snapback]1574630[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
He didn't say get rid of commander because it's too hard. He said that it doesn't work with the community. And the prevalence of CO servers is a testament to that fact.
If you join a marine game with a newb commander, you'll die. And you pretty much know that. So you eject him or you lose quickly and he doesn't learn much at all. Eventually you get a few good commanders and some good games when they're around. Other times? Horrible games that don't exactly build the community.
And what happens when every marine wants to be out shooting and no one will be comm for the first 3 minutes?
Having a commander is a wonderful idea, but it really doesn't work too well in practice -- and that's a sad thing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My point exactly, thank you.
The current incarnation of the commander class is not optimal. I'm not saying to scrap the idea altogether, but having more than one commander, or field commanders might be a good idea to consider. It obviously wouldn't work with the current way NS is implemented, but my points were made to be considered while developing NS2.
Overall, the problem is NS is listening to what clan players say, rather than listening to what the 99% of average players have to say. It's not a surprise that most of the vocal people are clanners. But I believe that if NS continues to listen to clan talk, it's just going to make the gap between average and clan players larger, therefore, you'll see more games where one clanner joins and changes the game - by himself.
I hope NS2 brings the pubber in mind. Keep the game about fighting your opponent, NOT worrying if you fade correctly or not. Make marines more than just how fast you aim. Look at the Nintendo Wii. Xbox and Sony are going down the hardcore path, while the Wii is trying a way that opens up to a larger number of people.
I remember in 1.04 those longer games that were epic. Nowadays, these games are rare. RFK has done it's toll: for every epic game where people struggle to win, we have dozens of craptastic 4-minute games where marines turret farm outside of the hive, lockdown hive 2 in a few minutes, etc. What used to be about strategy, as in what you did with your res, is now rewarding how skilled you are, something only a few clan players do exceedingly well.
Think of the pubbers. Once you lose them, you lose your foundation.
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Is this really how you feel? Bear this in mind :
NS has been for as long as I can remember, and will be for as far as I can foresee - be balanced for 6v6 play. This means two teams of equal skill - that is what the game is balanced on - not a public server.
You say NS needs to stop listening to clanners about balance? Tell me how many clanners can you name who know less about this game and its balance issues than you do? There's a reason that clanners make up most of the PT's vocal on game balance - it's because they play it day in day out, they know FIRST HAND what is wrong with the game and they usually have good ideas on how to fix them.
Free upgrades? How was that a bad decision? If you'd actually bothered to read the 3.2 changelog you would see that the vast majority of your points have been addressed in the test consti build.
<!--quoteo(post=1574604:date=Nov 7 2006, 10:36 PM:name=SmoodCroozn)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SmoodCroozn @ Nov 7 2006, 10:36 PM) [snapback]1574604[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I hope NS2 brings the pubber in mind. Keep the game about fighting your opponent, NOT worrying if you fade correctly or not. Make marines more than just how fast you aim.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you actually knew how to play the game you're arguing for, you'd know that there is no such thing as fading "correctly" - and there is MUCH more to playing marine than how fast you can aim. Just because you get owned by clanners regularly on publics doesn't give you the right to come in here and whine about the input of a bunch of players who collectively know the game better than the developers do.
I'm just not sure if it would be demoralizing to the team on the short end of the percent stack. Might simply make them decide to use unorthodox tactics such as a gorge rush,cloak rush, shotgun rush which admittedly the first time can have unexpectedly successful results.
Most of the time the people you're talking about who can swing a game will smurf though. Reason, they don't want to have all the other good players stacking their team as well. Would be an interesting idea to see implemented but I'm not convinced it would really help anything.
I have to say I agree to a lot of points that was made.
The fact is that there is a large gap between good and average players. Good marines can aim super well and bust out pistol kills super fast. This in turn gives them scores such as 42-5. And yes, this is for pubs games, which is 99% of what NS is. And as for aliens, the learning curve goes to the fade. Depending how good the player is at fade, aliens will win or lose.
And these two roles, marine or fade have a large impact on RFK. RFK is easily abused by skilled players, while it leaves the average player in the dust. That's why one good player joining a game has such a profound impact on the outcome, rather than the team. Your a gorge? Well, then expect little to no res, even though YOU are the one who drops the RTs, chambers and hive. If you get nothing back from this role, is it a wonder why people don't gorge?
Then we have the upgrades. As of now, if we DON'T go movement chambers and DON'T get celerity, onos and fade classes are screwed. NS needs to again, not be balanced ON the upgrades, but rather on what the vanilla stats are. I'd go so far as removing the "essential" upgrades and replacing them with more specialized ones.
Overall, the problem is NS is listening to what clan players say, rather than listening to what the 99% of average players have to say. It's not a surprise that most of the vocal people are clanners. But I believe that if NS continues to listen to clan talk, it's just going to make the gap between average and clan players larger, therefore, you'll see more games where one clanner joins and changes the game - by himself.
I hope NS2 brings the pubber in mind. Keep the game about fighting your opponent, NOT worrying if you fade correctly or not. Make marines more than just how fast you aim. Look at the Nintendo Wii. Xbox and Sony are going down the hardcore path, while the Wii is trying a way that opens up to a larger number of people.
I remember in 1.04 those longer games that were epic. Nowadays, these games are rare. RFK has done it's toll: for every epic game where people struggle to win, we have dozens of craptastic 4-minute games where marines turret farm outside of the hive, lockdown hive 2 in a few minutes, etc. What used to be about strategy, as in what you did with your res, is now rewarding how skilled you are, something only a few clan players do exceedingly well.
Think of the pubbers. Once you lose them, you lose your foundation.
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Sorry, but can anoyone tell me what RFK stands for?
Is this really how you feel? Bear this in mind :
NS has been for as long as I can remember, and will be for as far as I can foresee - be balanced for 6v6 play. This means two teams of equal skill - that is what the game is balanced on - not a public server. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why? It is clearly not working. Games are getting larger and larger, players actually enjoy playing in Many vs Many enviroments rather than a small 6v6 game, otherwise the servers with 20+ slots wouldn't be the ones which are usually full.
They intend to turn NS2 into a business. That means they can't cater to a small, very specific playerbase, (such as clanners) but rather as many different players as possible. Which isn't hard to do, and the first step to achieve balance in larger games is developing a single Resource Distribution System for both teams. 2 RDS' can never be equal, and thus, never scale equally. This was the main problem in 1.0x.
<!--quoteo(post=1574749:date=Nov 8 2006, 04:04 PM:name=SpaceJesus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SpaceJesus @ Nov 8 2006, 04:04 PM) [snapback]1574749[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You say NS needs to stop listening to clanners about balance? Tell me how many clanners can you name who know less about this game and its balance issues than you do? There's a reason that clanners make up most of the PT's vocal on game balance - it's because they play it day in day out, they know FIRST HAND what is wrong with the game and they usually have good ideas on how to fix them. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. They shouldn't stop listening to clanners. In fact, they should listen to <b>everyone</b>. Segregating the community into small "factions" will serve no purpose other than worsen the game.
Most games these days have a "tournament mode" with specific rules for small clan play. The game rules are changed a bit, and the game plays slightly different, but for the better. This is something I look forward to see in NS 2, so everyone can have their cake and eat it too.
Balancing a FPS game for small teams only and ignoring the rest is a bad design decision and I'm sure Flayra knows it. I'd be surprised if this stance doesn't change in NS2.
You cannot balance NS for 6v6 aswell as 12v12 - the current game mechanics simply don't allow it - please look at the game as a whole. Publics are not the meaning of life, nor are they the most important part of the game.
edit: FYI it <b>IS </b>working - 3.1 was the most balanced version to date.
The only point in these posts I saw that seemed interesting was the one for a level on players with your chances of winning.
I'm just not sure if it would be demoralizing to the team on the short end of the percent stack. Might simply make them decide to use unorthodox tactics such as a gorge rush,cloak rush, shotgun rush which admittedly the first time can have unexpectedly successful results.
Most of the time the people you're talking about who can swing a game will smurf though. Reason, they don't want to have all the other good players stacking their team as well. Would be an interesting idea to see implemented but I'm not convinced it would really help anything.
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That's true it could be pretty demoralizing knowing beforehand that your team's at a disadvantage.
On the other hand, it's pretty demoralising to get owned HARD and get frustrated with your team when in reality you pretty much had no chance.
Anyway I'd be willing to try some sort of skill balance system as an experiment. I tend to feel like my time is better spent after having played a good, even game versus a crappy, one-sided, whack-a-mole game. The only thing that make the latter any fun is the music spam and just BSing over voice chat. The actual game is a waste of life.
Is this really how you feel? Bear this in mind :
NS has been for as long as I can remember, and will be for as far as I can foresee - be balanced for 6v6 play. This means two teams of equal skill - that is what the game is balanced on - not a public server.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yet 99% of all NS HAPPENS in pub servers. Show me some clan servers, because the ones that I see all the time (BAD, G4B2S) ARE pubs. What makes clan servers, which happen to boot everyone in scrims better than the rest?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You say NS needs to stop listening to clanners about balance? Tell me how many clanners can you name who know less about this game and its balance issues than you do? There's a reason that clanners make up most of the PT's vocal on game balance - it's because they play it day in day out, they know FIRST HAND what is wrong with the game and they usually have good ideas on how to fix them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, now I see you really don't know who plays NS. There's plenty of people here who HAVE played NS that has never been into a clan, such as myself. Just because I don't have a clan moniker means I have absolutely no knowledge? With that logic, you might as well say Flayra has no idea how NS works just because he's no mustang. Skill and game knowledge aren't bound together.
Again, what makes you think that only clanners know anything about NS? All they know is when they go into pub servers, they work it and throw off any balance there was in team games. THEY are the ones with the 53-4 scores, which gets the marine team upgrades fast or they solo fade to win the game. But they don't talk about this because like the monarchs in old France, once you're in power, you'll do anything to keep it.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Free upgrades? How was that a bad decision? If you'd actually bothered to read the 3.2 changelog you would see that the vast majority of your points have been addressed in the test consti build.
If you actually knew how to play the game you're arguing for, you'd know that there is no such thing as fading "correctly" - and there is MUCH more to playing marine than how fast you can aim. Just because you get owned by clanners regularly on publics doesn't give you the right to come in here and whine about the input of a bunch of players who collectively know the game better than the developers do.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->That is not what I meant. I meant that we depend on upgrades such as celerity so much, that going fade or onos without them against good marine aimers will result in death a lot of times. I'm saying that perhaps if the game is balanced on this upgrade, perhaps it should be given as a stat and celerity replaced with some other upgrade.