Framework for design
Firewater
Balance Expert Join Date: 2002-12-12 Member: 10690Members, Constellation
Balance Expert Join Date: 2002-12-12 Member: 10690Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Originally posted in the ID forums, now modified</div>FireWater
The purpose of this post was to provide a framework for the mod intelligent design. But since the examples came specifically from NS, it can definately apply towards the sequel.
The fundamental premise of this game is ranged vs. melee. This concept has been tried before (Nautral Selection, aka NS) and it is very difficult to achieve balance within the mod. To understand this concept, one must define balance. I define balance as having an equal amount of viable features available to both teams so that it is the player that determines success or failure, not the game.
Ranged vs. Melee is very difficult to balance simply because the ranged team will almost always have initiative (aka first shot) against the melee team. Having this primary advantage allows for players to potentially kill an enemy before the enemy can strike them. This can cause a momentum shift in the game as early as the first minute or so in NS.
This momentum can allow for the ranged team to acquire resources faster, than the melee team, and allow them to protect them easier. Because of this resource gap, the ranged team would be able to tech faster as a team, as they can not only secure more resources for the team, but at the same time destroy enemy resources. So the ranged team speeds up and the melee team slows down.
Since the development team has it locked in stone that they want to do a quasi RTS/FPS with primarily ranged with primarily melee, I will not attempt to sway them away from that model, rather than attempt to provide a theoretical backbone for an attempt at balance for this model.
A potential solution to this problem is to give the melee team a chance to "close the gap" between it, and the ranged player, but at the same time, still give the ranged player some sort of advantage for having a ranged weapon. It would be wise at the beginning of the team that the melee team could have a way to reduce the effect of a ranged weapon, but not eliminate it.
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Class structure in NS, what can be learned from it?
Skill/Firepower/Time Theory.
In NS marines need 3 things to allow them to achieve a kill. They need enough skill, that is brains/dodging ability/aim to make a kill. One must be able to shoot at the target basically. One also needs enough firepower. Firepower is one of the larger variants as you can go from needing very little firepower (i.e. skulks) to needing very heavy fire (i.e. Onos). Firepower is defined as the amount of damage a player can deal to the enemy. The final aspect that a player needs is time. One must have enough time to fire enough bullets/shells to achieve a kill. I define time in this theory as the lowest amount of time possible to kill an alien.
As previously discussed, the skulk (1 hive), requires a decent amount of skill (which based entirely on the skulk) very low amount of firepower, and not very much time at all. The gorge on the other hand requires less skill than the skulk to kill, BUT requires more firepower and time to kill. The lerk is a difficult one to assess, because it doesn't require much time to kill, but one needs a good amount of skill, and decent amount of firepower.
Fades on the other hand, require the greatest amount of from all 3 aspects of achieving an alien kill. The fade requires the highest amount of skill, firepower and time to be killed.
The Onos on the otherhand, requires very little aim, but the highest amounts of firepower and time to kill. Since the onos requires such little skill to kill based on its size and speed, I determine it a skilless class.
The onos messes the balance up for both sides. It is the most expensive alien unit and can either be dominant or useless SOLELY BASED ON THE MARINE'S TECH.
When designing the game, please make sure that the most expensive melee unit is the game is skill based, and the most dominant melee unit. What the developers should avoid is having "powerless" situations (i.e. Vanilla marine vs an Onos, 1 hive skulk vs. Heavy with HMG) by making all the classes in the game skill based.
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Time/Resource/Location (TRL) theory.
Currently, marines need 2 aspects to aquire an advantage over the other team. They need time, and resources. Enough resources to purchase the upgrade, and enough time to obtain the resources and wait for the research time.
Aliens are restricted with 3 aspects to aquire an advantage over the other team. They are restricted with Time, Resources, and 1 of 2 specific locations in the map that they can expand to. It is very possible (and quite common in pub play) that the aliens can have both time and resources, but not the location because of the two hive lockdowns. Lockdowns takes away from the skill of the game because a player fighting the lockdown will usually fail because of game controlled entities (i.e. electricity and turrets) rather than actually players. All the marines need to do is contain them, tech dominating tech, and walk all over them.
The aliens will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage because they do not follow the same rules as the marines with regards to teching. In order to balance the game (ESPECIALLY RANGED VS MELEE) one needs to allow both teams upgrade under the same rules.
Furthermore NS's hive system gives TOO much of an advantage to the aliens when they get the second hive. (i.e. Faster spawn times, unlocked weapons, enhanced armor protection, greater map control, unlocked chamber upgrade). 1st hive is not enough, 2nd hive over compensates, 3rd hive is overkill.
This also leads to a lot of obselete weapons (i.e. primal scream, acid rocket, webs) because they are rarely, if at all, used in a close battle.
The alien expansion method hampers strategy because you will not see a viable situation where hive 3 weapons are used tactically. Commanders use a set of commonly used strategies to achieve victory. Aliens always try to get that second hive, because with out it their chances of winning are significantly hampered.
The solution to this is make both the melee team and ranged team be only restricted by TIme and resources. Have the dual restriction for both sides will unlock unlimited strategies with both teams, commanders will have to think on their toes and there will be more tactics involved as well. The strategies and tactics that can evolve, the more the community will converse either postively, or negatively, BOTH of which are better than not talking at all about the game at all. Having an active community can only sure success of the mod.
Take this as you will.
FireWater
The purpose of this post was to provide a framework for the mod intelligent design. But since the examples came specifically from NS, it can definately apply towards the sequel.
The fundamental premise of this game is ranged vs. melee. This concept has been tried before (Nautral Selection, aka NS) and it is very difficult to achieve balance within the mod. To understand this concept, one must define balance. I define balance as having an equal amount of viable features available to both teams so that it is the player that determines success or failure, not the game.
Ranged vs. Melee is very difficult to balance simply because the ranged team will almost always have initiative (aka first shot) against the melee team. Having this primary advantage allows for players to potentially kill an enemy before the enemy can strike them. This can cause a momentum shift in the game as early as the first minute or so in NS.
This momentum can allow for the ranged team to acquire resources faster, than the melee team, and allow them to protect them easier. Because of this resource gap, the ranged team would be able to tech faster as a team, as they can not only secure more resources for the team, but at the same time destroy enemy resources. So the ranged team speeds up and the melee team slows down.
Since the development team has it locked in stone that they want to do a quasi RTS/FPS with primarily ranged with primarily melee, I will not attempt to sway them away from that model, rather than attempt to provide a theoretical backbone for an attempt at balance for this model.
A potential solution to this problem is to give the melee team a chance to "close the gap" between it, and the ranged player, but at the same time, still give the ranged player some sort of advantage for having a ranged weapon. It would be wise at the beginning of the team that the melee team could have a way to reduce the effect of a ranged weapon, but not eliminate it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class structure in NS, what can be learned from it?
Skill/Firepower/Time Theory.
In NS marines need 3 things to allow them to achieve a kill. They need enough skill, that is brains/dodging ability/aim to make a kill. One must be able to shoot at the target basically. One also needs enough firepower. Firepower is one of the larger variants as you can go from needing very little firepower (i.e. skulks) to needing very heavy fire (i.e. Onos). Firepower is defined as the amount of damage a player can deal to the enemy. The final aspect that a player needs is time. One must have enough time to fire enough bullets/shells to achieve a kill. I define time in this theory as the lowest amount of time possible to kill an alien.
As previously discussed, the skulk (1 hive), requires a decent amount of skill (which based entirely on the skulk) very low amount of firepower, and not very much time at all. The gorge on the other hand requires less skill than the skulk to kill, BUT requires more firepower and time to kill. The lerk is a difficult one to assess, because it doesn't require much time to kill, but one needs a good amount of skill, and decent amount of firepower.
Fades on the other hand, require the greatest amount of from all 3 aspects of achieving an alien kill. The fade requires the highest amount of skill, firepower and time to be killed.
The Onos on the otherhand, requires very little aim, but the highest amounts of firepower and time to kill. Since the onos requires such little skill to kill based on its size and speed, I determine it a skilless class.
The onos messes the balance up for both sides. It is the most expensive alien unit and can either be dominant or useless SOLELY BASED ON THE MARINE'S TECH.
When designing the game, please make sure that the most expensive melee unit is the game is skill based, and the most dominant melee unit. What the developers should avoid is having "powerless" situations (i.e. Vanilla marine vs an Onos, 1 hive skulk vs. Heavy with HMG) by making all the classes in the game skill based.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time/Resource/Location (TRL) theory.
Currently, marines need 2 aspects to aquire an advantage over the other team. They need time, and resources. Enough resources to purchase the upgrade, and enough time to obtain the resources and wait for the research time.
Aliens are restricted with 3 aspects to aquire an advantage over the other team. They are restricted with Time, Resources, and 1 of 2 specific locations in the map that they can expand to. It is very possible (and quite common in pub play) that the aliens can have both time and resources, but not the location because of the two hive lockdowns. Lockdowns takes away from the skill of the game because a player fighting the lockdown will usually fail because of game controlled entities (i.e. electricity and turrets) rather than actually players. All the marines need to do is contain them, tech dominating tech, and walk all over them.
The aliens will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage because they do not follow the same rules as the marines with regards to teching. In order to balance the game (ESPECIALLY RANGED VS MELEE) one needs to allow both teams upgrade under the same rules.
Furthermore NS's hive system gives TOO much of an advantage to the aliens when they get the second hive. (i.e. Faster spawn times, unlocked weapons, enhanced armor protection, greater map control, unlocked chamber upgrade). 1st hive is not enough, 2nd hive over compensates, 3rd hive is overkill.
This also leads to a lot of obselete weapons (i.e. primal scream, acid rocket, webs) because they are rarely, if at all, used in a close battle.
The alien expansion method hampers strategy because you will not see a viable situation where hive 3 weapons are used tactically. Commanders use a set of commonly used strategies to achieve victory. Aliens always try to get that second hive, because with out it their chances of winning are significantly hampered.
The solution to this is make both the melee team and ranged team be only restricted by TIme and resources. Have the dual restriction for both sides will unlock unlimited strategies with both teams, commanders will have to think on their toes and there will be more tactics involved as well. The strategies and tactics that can evolve, the more the community will converse either postively, or negatively, BOTH of which are better than not talking at all about the game at all. Having an active community can only sure success of the mod.
Take this as you will.
FireWater
Comments
I know its old/long but I feel it has merit.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Furthermore NS's hive system gives TOO much of an advantage to the aliens when they get the second hive. (i.e. Faster spawn times, unlocked weapons, enhanced armor protection, greater map control, unlocked chamber upgrade). 1st hive is not enough, 2nd hive over compensates, 3rd hive is overkill.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
I should probably edit that post because of all the typos in and little errors in it.
The aliens will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage because they do not follow the same rules as the marines with regards to teching. In order to balance the game (ESPECIALLY RANGED VS MELEE) one needs to allow both teams upgrade under the same rules.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The entities inteself aren't that bad as long as they're used to spice up the fights (eg. mines at a PG as a simple example), but with the NS alien tech tree they indeed hurt the game. Still, they could be used to some extend to reward creative use of the surroundings and also to add up some strategy in building positioning and such. For example a field obs styled buildings add some interesting elements to the game.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The alien expansion method hampers strategy because you will not see a viable situation where hive 3 weapons are used tactically. Commanders use a set of commonly used strategies to achieve victory. Aliens always try to get that second hive, because with out it their chances of winning are significantly hampered.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The 2nd hive needs alternatives, agreed on that.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The solution to this is make both the melee team and ranged team be only restricted by TIme and resources. Have the dual restriction for both sides will unlock unlimited strategies with both teams, commanders will have to think on their toes and there will be more tactics involved as well. The strategies and tactics that can evolve, the more the community will converse either postively, or negatively, BOTH of which are better than not talking at all about the game at all. Having an active community can only sure success of the mod.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Having pure time and resoucres system is an option, but I'd still like to see some kind of 'location denial' in NS2. It allows NS to take a little different approach than the usual RTS games and makes good use of the mobility and 3D melee-ranged system when compared to the usual 2D RTS with static units.
That is a very interesting point. Static defenses can actually be quite fun when used strategically, as long as aliens have a dirt cheap and 100% effective hard counter to them. I'm talking about one hive gorges. Make sentries deal a lot of damage to low level life forms, but make them have about 100 health each. 5 gorge spits = -10 res. This will guarantee that sentries will only be used as a very temporary area denial system for skulks. One hive skulks can bring a gorge and defend him from marines as he spits down turrets. This is teamwork.
Sentries should be split into two categories, one which a marine buys and one a commander controls, the mobile turret. Both need to have very low health and be vulnerable to gorges.
I get your point, but not having both sides tech similarly REALLY puts a damper on any kind of strategy. I mean if you want location denial it should be maybe where there are key resource nodes, or perhaps a node that generates 2 or 3 resources per tick instead of 1.
I see your point, but I think the addition of the "second" resource alleviates this expands upon location control rather than nerfing it, assuming marines are more concerned with "metal" than Kharaa.
<!--quoteo(post=1696715:date=Dec 24 2008, 10:05 PM:name=aNytiMe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(aNytiMe @ Dec 24 2008, 10:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1696715"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That is a very interesting point. Static defenses can actually be quite fun when used strategically, as long as aliens have a dirt cheap and 100% effective hard counter to them. I'm talking about one hive gorges. Make sentries deal a lot of damage to low level life forms, but make them have about 100 health each. 5 gorge spits = -10 res. This will guarantee that sentries will only be used as a very temporary area denial system for skulks. One hive skulks can bring a gorge and defend him from marines as he spits down turrets. This is teamwork.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I like this idea a lot.
Sentries should be split into two categories, one which a marine buys and one a commander controls, the mobile turret. Both need to have very low health and be vulnerable to gorges.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Static defenses can play a pivotal role in the game, however as of right now I feel that they are too dominate.
I remember the 1.04 days where turrets were dumb as door nails and a skulk could circle strafe them to break them down. There was something that I read in a basics of game play of NS that stated "The more turrets that in an area, the more they interfere with each other and become less accurate". I think this would be an AWESOME idea to go back to. The problem with turrets and static defenses is that there is no logistical hive 1 counter to them. Several ways to address this would be make the turrets less accurate (basically only useful when players are around, like in earlier versions), or also to make the commander have to "maintain" the turrets (i.e. pay for ammo) or make turrets not be repairable.
Something along those lines would force more offense for both teams (OC's would function similar as the new turret design).
It could probably work. With some means scouting and variation in res-tech-army balance in tactics we could have at least some prediction when the oppositing team is going to take over a location. The spread of DI will also most likely reward fighting over a location before the aliens take over it rather than attacking it later on.
1) First, i will cite several factors in balancing. SFT and TRL theories are a good start, but they're missing several components.
a) SFT, which as i understand refers to marine control, is missing the situational factors as well as grouping of players.
By <b>situational factors </b>i refer to map design in particular. Open areas would obviously benefit ranged players. Thus, map design could be an important balancing factor. The choice of creature in aliens' case and weapons/tech in marine's case would depend on the map/room design.
By <b>grouping of players </b>i refer to teamwork and positioning of players in a single fight. Sure, one onos will over power a lvl1 marine with LMG, but would likely die to 10. Generally, marines benefit from bunching up while aliens benefit from attacking from different fronts (because if they attack from one side, they're easier to kill). Fire power and time will depend on the number of players present in a group. Another important thing here is that a 6v6 game will have a different balance compared to 12v12 (or 2v2) game.
b) TRL seems to refer to commanding aspect of the game. One big missing factor here is player skill. The tactics should (and do) vary depending on the skill of the players. You may have noticed that commanders in pubs tend to rely on stationary defenses while in pro games, they hand out weapons and never build turrets. This makes sense. It would be impossible (and foolish) to design abilities that would be equally effective for all levels of play. Having said that, I agree that NS1 can improve in many ways especially in allowing aliens to make more use of their high level abilities.
Still, that doesn't mean making the sides similar is the only solution. I completely disagree with this statement: "The aliens will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage because they do not follow the same rules as the marines with regards to teching. In order to balance the game (ESPECIALLY RANGED VS MELEE) one needs to allow both teams upgrade under the same rules." Obviously, mirrored sides would be perfectly balanced, but there would be no fun in that. Having similar tech rules would be easier to implement and balance, but it is by no means absolutely necessary (though in NS2 case it may be a sensible solution simply due to time/money constraints)
2) My second point is that, theorizing is good, but the actual play will differ from the theories. Best balancing occurs when actually play-testing the game. When NS2 comes out, even after some extensive testing, it will still be unbalanced (just like NS1 and Starcraft). As players get better and find new tactics/strategies/exploits the game will need to be rebalanced. Having some basic frameworks is crucial though, so this discussion does have a lot of merit.
Hopefully some of this was useful.