Combat philosophy of NS
monopolowa
Join Date: 2004-05-23 Member: 28839Members
Join Date: 2004-05-23 Member: 28839Members
<div class="IPBDescription">or, what UWE can learn from L4D</div>I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead lately, and got to wondering how the combat will play itself out in NS2 (ignoring the RTS side of the game for now). I see a lot of similarities in the play styles for the opposing sides in the 2 games (NS1 and L4D), and there are some things L4D does very well that could potentially be a good fit for NS2.
In NS1 we have the marines, who are
- ranged
- at their best when they can concentrate their firepower in one area
- achieve victory through superior firepower and armor/healing
and the Kharaa, who are
- melee
- excellent at picking off weak/isolated targets
- achieve victory through sneak attacks/traps (at least in the early game)
Likewise, in L4D you have survivors who are ranged, want to stay close together, and have superior health and firepower, and zombies who are melee types, excel at picking off isolated targets, and use constant guerrilla tactics rather than direct assaults.
Each of the L4D units is designed explicitly this strategy in mind, and has a very high probability to incapacitate lone survivors...The first NS game plays differently (aliens don't rely as much on disabling the enemy) for various reasons (it's an older game, and programming this into a polished form would require extra resources)
<b>What I would like to see added to NS2 is a bit of the 'Co-op' feel that L4D has captured so well, a greater incentive for marines to travel in groups.
In particular, I'd like to see skulk leap become a pounce (or at least gain knockback) rather than a big jump to use bite with - in other words, make it a proper attack to be used by itself
Other ideas could include a blinding effect for gorge-spit-headshots (similar to boomer vomit), and knockback from an Onos or xeno-skulk, going to a 3-D view to remove the marines' ability to react for a moment. </b>
Dead Space also does a good job with the occasional change in camera angle, whenever Isaac grapples with an undead space alien monster. It would look very polished if this sort of thing was implemented in NS2 - a marine trying to kick or shoot off a skulk gnawing on his arm.
Thoughts on this?
In NS1 we have the marines, who are
- ranged
- at their best when they can concentrate their firepower in one area
- achieve victory through superior firepower and armor/healing
and the Kharaa, who are
- melee
- excellent at picking off weak/isolated targets
- achieve victory through sneak attacks/traps (at least in the early game)
Likewise, in L4D you have survivors who are ranged, want to stay close together, and have superior health and firepower, and zombies who are melee types, excel at picking off isolated targets, and use constant guerrilla tactics rather than direct assaults.
Each of the L4D units is designed explicitly this strategy in mind, and has a very high probability to incapacitate lone survivors...The first NS game plays differently (aliens don't rely as much on disabling the enemy) for various reasons (it's an older game, and programming this into a polished form would require extra resources)
<b>What I would like to see added to NS2 is a bit of the 'Co-op' feel that L4D has captured so well, a greater incentive for marines to travel in groups.
In particular, I'd like to see skulk leap become a pounce (or at least gain knockback) rather than a big jump to use bite with - in other words, make it a proper attack to be used by itself
Other ideas could include a blinding effect for gorge-spit-headshots (similar to boomer vomit), and knockback from an Onos or xeno-skulk, going to a 3-D view to remove the marines' ability to react for a moment. </b>
Dead Space also does a good job with the occasional change in camera angle, whenever Isaac grapples with an undead space alien monster. It would look very polished if this sort of thing was implemented in NS2 - a marine trying to kick or shoot off a skulk gnawing on his arm.
Thoughts on this?
Comments
The idea of perhaps Skulks pouncing their targets are pretty awesome, knocking them down and slicing them up with their clawed feet, but it requires a cooldown on it which may ruin things too as it may impair movement or just be overpowered (as many player suggestions tend to be, this no exception). Also changing the views on certain actions such as this to bring you out to third-person when being pounced by a Hunter in L4D for example could really work well in NS I think.
So yes, I think impairing the Marine's view by stomping, pouncing, slicing and in general try to make the eye in the world less static should make things feel a bit more claustrophobic and scary. Same applies for the Kharaa of course, flashbangs being one example.
But I have to shoot down the idea of balancing the alien abilities to work as they do in L4D; it's not as easy to make the ambushes in NS than it is in L4D simply because L4D follows a linear path whereas NS doesn't, and quite frankly it would be boring if ambushes would overshadow the more in-your-face melee combat.
That said, you make some good points. NS2 will undoubtedly lower the skill ceiling to ease the learning curve and going in an L4D direction isn't the worst possible game to follow. Personally I don't like it- L4d is too <i>consoley</i>- you don't have to aim well as survivors (shotgun has wide angle of fire, quick reload, lots of shells in the chamber; smg has no recoil) and movement skills aren't too important for infected (you can try fancy walljumps to confuse a survivor but team-mates attacking together will always be superior); but it'd be the easiet pill for me to swallow.
I think the combat style will be influenced by the netcode. Source netcode is medicore and this shows in CS:S but is hidden well by TF2's combat. If NS2 can clone Q3's netcode (perfection!) they could do what they want with combat, but if it's spongey/laggy/poor prediction they might be forced down a Halo/TF2 route where the weapons are forgiving and enemies take a bajillion shots to die. I hope for the former, but w.r.t. Cory and co. I don't know what experience they have with this (how much of the netcode is available from the HL1 SDK? Did Titan Quest have solid MP? Can it translate to an FPS?) especially as so few developers get this right (Id software, and to a lesser extent Valve. Even Epic who made the dedicated online UT series fail horribly with no prediction code).
I do believe knockback for the Onos could be done well, but giving knockback to the base unit would not be good. The Skulk in NS is your basic Infected, it's not your Special Infected. It takes few shots, costs nothing and deals low damage, but it has high mobility - it's main advantage is its speed, not its damage or any special attack, and its secondary advantage would be inexpensive numbers. If you had a swarm of free units doing knockback it would be a mess.
You can compare NS to L4D by looking at Versus and using your respawn time and unit caps as your 'resources'. You can have up to 3 Hunters at a time and you can't just immediately build another one when it dies, you have to wait. Of the Special Infected, the Hunter is the least 'expensive', in terms of value he's on a par with the Lerk.
My point is you can't give the Skulk the abilities of a much higher-value unit based on the NS model. I think I remember them saying the Skulk will now be more of a 'soldier' unit, so perhaps it could be more of a 'Hunter-value' unit in NS2.
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Next, the Gorge example is fundamentally flawed. The Boomer is incredibly fragile, very slow, very loud, has a massive cooldown on his vomit and must get within very close proximity to initiate an attack. A Gorge isn't that slow, isn't that fragile, isn't that loud, has a spammable spit attack (and NS was built on the idea of 'no alternate fire') and has a ranged attack. You can't give a crippling attack to a ranged unit, it's just not balanced. There has to be some payoff for dealing a crippling blow; in L4D the Boomer is basically a kamikaze unit, which makes it a worthy tradeoff.
Good post.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Radix</b> had a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=105516&st=0&start=0" target="_blank">thread</a> about general skulk combat not too long ago. There was some talk of L4D there.
This is more or less what I was going for. Don't read too much into the examples I mentioned, because they're based on my experience with NS1 and I have no idea if they would be a fit in the combat system of NS2. I do think that adding a graphical element to at least some attacks would be a good way to add a level of polish to the game.
I read somewhere that marines will get a melee attack with the machine gun, so there's a possibility that UWE is already moving somewhat in this direction. I don't see much use for a melee attack in NS1, but it could be a good way to detach a pesky skulk gripping and tearing at your leg. And I don't think it would be too overpowered of an attack for an upgraded skulk (put it on leap at 2 hives), especially if a lone marine can disengage the skulk without help.
take tf2 for example (LOL I KNOW): there are knockbacks, stuns, invulnerabilites, random damage, etc.. and l4d with its constant camera changing..
all of this seems to slow down the pace of the game. locking the player out in the middle of combat isn't really that fun in the fps setting. if i wanted that i'd go play wow.
i have little issue with knockback, if its done well, because it doesn't lock the player out of shooting and retaliating. but a pounce like in l4d being put into ns doesnt work.. at least not with how ns1 worked.. a single hunter pouncing a single human is fatal but only if the human is by himself- which means he deserves to die. in ns a fight between a skulk and a marine is far quicker and locking the marine out of retaliating is a bit weird.
i dunno you all may hate me and my opinion but i personally think the fps genre is taking too much influenced from the rpg / rts genre. in my experience fps games are more about skill and reactions than strategy. it just so happens that ns1 was a perfect balance of both.
I don't think it removes skill from the game either. Marines still have the range advantage. They can still shoot skulks before they close the range to get a knockdown effect.
As an aside, I'm playing through Dead Space at the moment. I really hope the Devs have played through it as well because I think it does the sci-fi setting better than any other game I've played.
Oh, by the way, pounce must _not_ be a 'weapon' if it is included in the game, it must be intuitive and natural to use much like the Hunters.
What I'd like to see most of all however is a fancypance tongue pull that pulls marines into vents a la every other scifi movie involving monsters with tongues. It would be great, make it have a huge recovery time or knock the alien player out of the match for a bit (like the smoker is stuck), but you can pull one marine out of a group and up into the vent above you? Fantastic, and completely horrifying for the squad running around.
Work together, or die alone.
Pinning is out of the question, but I wouldn't completely be against the 'latching on' idea described earlier. If you could latch on as a Skulk, maybe reduce movement speed of the Marine, stop them from firing at all, but not deal significant damage, it could be an interesting mechanic. Very similar to how in Dawn of War II you can force ranged specialists into melee to nullify their effectiveness. But I'm not suggesting the Skulk should hold a Marine in melee until it dies, I like the idea of meleeing them off solo. You can improve the tradeoff by making it so the Skulk is left with no adrenaline for a quick escape or continued bites after being meleed off. So it's almost a kamikaze attack and definitely not overpowered in 1v1 situations.
The reason I think this mechanic could work is because it makes the lone Marine far more vulnerable to a pair of Skulks. One goes in to very temporarily nullify him giving the other a short window of opportunity to inflict damage, during which the Marine cannot fire back. It doesn't put a 1v1 any more in the Marine's or the Skulk's favour. If the Skulk jumps the Marine, the Marine will simply melee off and shoot the Skulk while it has no adrenaline to fight back. But if used in co-operation with other Alien allies, it becomes a far more powerful ability. On the other hand if the Marine has backup the 2 Skulks are unaware of, they are at the disadvantage if using this. This stops it from being a spammable ability, you have to think about whether you're going to be effective before using it.
Fleshing out the idea:
<b>Leap</b>
<b>Description:</b> When a Skulk connects a Leaps on a Marine, he will automatically bite down on until A) he is punched off or B) he is shot off by a 2nd Marine. This will be shown as the Skulk biting onto the Marine's arm (stopping him from firing), with also a low gnarl/growl effect for the duration (preceded by a blood/goo splatter sprite to cover up the transition between animations). The Leap deals a small amount of initial damage and perhaps slight knockback, but after that there is miniscule damage over time. The Marine has the option of meleeing the Skulk off (this does minor damage to the Skulk, and leaves the Skulk with an empty adrenaline bar). The Leap is announced via a clearly audible, high priority sound effect. Leap is unlocked at the second Hive Tech Tier.
<b>Effects:</b> Reduces target's movement speed. Disables target's ranged capabilities. Does small impact damage and very slowly drains the target's HP (1HP/s).
<b>Rate of Fire:</b> Low
<b>Range:</b> Medium-High
<b>Damage:</b> Low
<b>Speed:</b> High
It's also a possibility that leap and latch are separate skills. For example leap is used as +movement and latch is just slot3. At that point skulk stays highly mobile all around lifeform, but they've still got the ability to disable the lone marines.
1) make it so that a solo 1v1 will be resolved before extreme cases of help can make it (5-10 seconds to finish off a Armor3 Marine?)
2) perhaps the leap doesn't drain you unless you make contact, or there's some other thing you have to do, such as Secondary Attack when in melee range to activate the pounce. Otherwise it could act as a standard leap for mobility and hit-and-run purposes.
<b>Description:</b>
<b>Effects:</b> Reduces target's movement speed. Disables target's ranged capabilities. Does small impact damage and very slowly drains the target's HP (1HP/s).
<b>Rate of Fire:</b> Low
<b>Range:</b> Medium-High
<b>Damage:</b> Low
<b>Speed:</b> High<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
While I don't like effects that prevent marines from firing, I could see it as being pretty interesting(because the marine is not helpless) in this proposal and not unbalancing for the reasons mentioned. For example, the quick strike could have a .5 second wind up, but if a marine predicted the attack he could severely hinder the skulks adren.
Also <b>spellmen</b>, if I understand <b>crispy</b> correctly, the adrenaline isn't drained from the leap, but the application of a melee strike. I don't know if <i>all</i> of the adren needs to be drained in a single strike or just the equivalent of a bite + damage, but that is something to be worked out in testing.
This would require that the knockback move doesn't drain all your energy, but perhaps while leaping if you contact a bite it drains a bit extra energy than normal and provides the stun. You can then follow up with another bite.
The tricky part is timing the stun so that you can't be perma-stunned by the leap, but not so short that the Marine can shrug it off.
Before you get motion tracking, you've got to carefully move down halls and keep watching every corner for a possible attack. It just feels like a proper aliens-type theme. Once MT comes in, that's basically over since you practically see anything coming ahead of time. Not to mention it clutters up the screen with ugly abstract circles all over.
I don't know which would be better: no wall-sight for anyone, or wall sight but for the aliens instead. It could be something they always have or maybe an upgrade? Maybe the marines could still get MT but it would be more like the one from "Aliens" where it just bleeps faster and faster when aliens move around nearby. That would still add to the tension!
Overall I love L4D, and there are already some parallels with this game with or without pinning/MT. But I'm looking forward to the more competitive feel that NS2 should produce, as well as the more complex planning attacks that tend to happen in NS1.
Considering that L4D is a total failure as a competitive game, the question should be what NOT to do like L4D. What slows down the game and makes it relatively monotonous in multiplayer versus despite the advertised "dynamic" AI director, 5 types of cool zombies, good player characters, graphics effects, and music changes? What makes the skill ceiling rather low?
Bad zombie movement, no strategy, no aim, no choices, no-skill attacks, no depth.
As zombie you left click once to spawn, left click once to attack, then eat a sandwich or go take a piss while you wait to respawn. Sure hunter can jump off walls but the second you land that's it. Game over. Lame. There's no fluidity at all. Sure it takes a great deal of understanding and awareness to time your attack and maneuver your positioning correctly, but is that even an FPS? It's like a first person micro-heavy RTS or something. Except without the strategy. And the maps play the same way every single game.
Also, the way "teamwork" is set up in this game, with incapping and the fact that every single attack removes 2 players from action, the WORST player determines if you win or lose. Because (for example with survivors) invariably this player is going to have to do the saving at some point, and will fail. Or with infected, one person will screw up the ambush which messes it up for e v e r y o n e. That's just not fun. If you're that player, you get blamed. If you're someone else, you're helpless. This is the opposite of NS. Bad players can always contribute and good players can always make a difference. The only move in NS that removes a player from action is quite avoidable. In L4D you have no choice.
And shooting isn't fun in L4D. The guns feel awful, shoot awful, and are skill-less. Yeah here and there I was booted for haxing for shotgunning leaping hunters (thank you very much NS), but a nice shotgun doesn't make the game. AND if you miss and they get you, you can just "turn off", and take a sip of your beer, as you wait for teammates to save you. In NS if you miss you're frantically turning around to quickly shot skulk before you die. It's just more fun to play the game rather than watch. And remember, both the person removed from action AND the person doing the removing are now not playing the game. AWFUL. And it's binary... either they're leapt/smoked, or not. That's it. That's the full extent of the possibilities of the action.
IMO, it doesn't matter how short the stun, it's not fun.
On the marine side theres also some interesting aspects. BALANCE, a short term visual impairment that doesn't completely block the marines vision, only obscures is (blurry vision / green slime). A good marine will be able to keep his cool and continue fighting effectively through the inconvenience. COUNTERS, just like heavy armor nullifying Lerk spore, perhaps the HA could also nullify this gorge ability. Thus rendering it mostly an early game survival technique for those squishy Gorges <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
When you go third-person without control of the character you get frustrated... Really frustrated, especially if it happens more than once during a short timespan (which undoubtfully will be the case with skulks being the "basic" unit of the aliens even if it was a 3-hive skill).
I say, keep it like it was/is in NS1. There is already a "knockback" when bitten which kinda disrupts aim, that's enough. The gorge-spit is a cool idea though, as long as it doesn't last forever.
say theres one skulk, and hes ambushing a marine, the marine is new, on his own.
Skulk jumps down and latches onto marine(main skulk attack), the marine can hit buttons such as mouse click to attempt to punch/knife it away. If the skulk latches on for long enough and it can dodge incoming marine bites it will inevitably kill him. Possibly a commander upgrade can improve marine actions in this stance such as left click twice to preform a counter attack to the skulk bite. now the thing is heres where it promotes teamplay- an ally marine is able to pull it off or shoot it off. Likewise an ally skulk can help double gang the marine.
heck even have these 1 v 1 combat phases for alot of things- heavy vs fade in a punchout or a marine vs fade where the marine struggles to kick the fade away in an attempt to run away. It would be very awesome seeing off the distance as a marine say 50 metres away a skulk crawling around an ally marines back whilst 3 others bite him up, he drops then they run away. all your left with is his HMG and a ripped up body :P
If you want inspirtaion look up some of the dead space videos, you can sometimes see an alien latching onto isaacs back and hitting him, but not the press spacebar repeatedly as fast as you can but press mouse 1 as the marine punches to dodge its hit, likewise mouse 2 to attempt to hit back.
thoughts?
I'm wondering what's the philosophy that NS2 has for weapon usage, because to be honest, in NS1 all you had to do was pretty much aim and shoot (i don't recall the weapons having recoil or alt fire). On the alien side however, it was fine since you had at least a couple of abilities to use and you can change the way they work with the upgrades you get and stuff.
Also i'm wondering if the hitbox system will change. Will we do the same amount of damage no matter where we aim? are there head shots (not necessarily one shot kill)? Consequences for hitting a certain area (marine gets bitten in leg starts limping) things like that?
The Skulk should always be easy for a marine to kill 1vs1 or even 1vs2. Keep in mind that NS is not a (L4D) Hansel and Grendel game (you don't follow the breadcrumbs from point A to B). So while teamwork is important, a decent marine should be able to run off by himself/herself and stand a chance at survival.
That said, you make some good points. NS2 will undoubtedly lower the skill ceiling to ease the learning curve and going in an L4D direction isn't the worst possible game to follow. Personally I don't like it- L4d is too <i>consoley</i>- you don't have to aim well as survivors (shotgun has wide angle of fire, quick reload, lots of shells in the chamber; smg has no recoil) and movement skills aren't too important for infected (you can try fancy walljumps to confuse a survivor but team-mates attacking together will always be superior); but it'd be the easiet pill for me to swallow.
I think the combat style will be influenced by the netcode. Source netcode is medicore and this shows in CS:S but is hidden well by TF2's combat. If NS2 can clone Q3's netcode (perfection!) they could do what they want with combat, but if it's spongey/laggy/poor prediction they might be forced down a Halo/TF2 route where the weapons are forgiving and enemies take a bajillion shots to die. I hope for the former, but w.r.t. Cory and co. I don't know what experience they have with this (how much of the netcode is available from the HL1 SDK? Did Titan Quest have solid MP? Can it translate to an FPS?) especially as so few developers get this right (Id software, and to a lesser extent Valve. Even Epic who made the dedicated online UT series fail horribly with no prediction code).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i agree <3
duh this aint ensl!
say theres one skulk, and hes ambushing a marine, the marine is new, on his own.
Skulk jumps down and latches onto marine(main skulk attack), the marine can hit buttons such as mouse click to attempt to punch/knife it away. If the skulk latches on for long enough and it can dodge incoming marine bites it will inevitably kill him. Possibly a commander upgrade can improve marine actions in this stance such as left click twice to preform a counter attack to the skulk bite. now the thing is heres where it promotes teamplay- an ally marine is able to pull it off or shoot it off. Likewise an ally skulk can help double gang the marine.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
LOL.. skulk hugz! In fairness though, if any creature is going to get a "hug" attack, it oughta be the gorge.. cause they're just so huggable. That it pukes on your face afterward is an unfortunate side effect.
To be serious, you do *not* want skulks with any kind of attack that incapacitates a marine or blocks said marine from attacking. Crispy explained the basic reasoning for this (cloaked skulks + incapacitating attack = gg) and to expand on it, remember that the marines are generally a man down (cause they need a commander). That's a skill for a higher life-form (like Onos) giving the marines a chance to arm up and reducing the chances that you end up with evenly matched numbers of incapacitators and victims.
That said, you could possibly have a leap do a "knock around" effect like Doom3 (and to a lesser extend L4D) does. Disorienting as hell, but if you're well skilled you can recover almost instantly.
I agree with the general idea that the combat philosophy of NS should promote marines sticking together, but L4D is, in many ways, a lousy model to do this from, because it controls how many of the special infected you can have on the survivors at any one time. That makes all the difference. Fr'instance, picture trying to play L4D against 4 simultaneous hunters or smokers.
No, the way to do it is simply to make marines (or aliens) less powerful if they're separated from the group. With the background of nanites vs. bacterium we can even see the way to do this. Things like cloaking working better (or worse) depending on how infected the area is and how many aliens vs marines are present. For instance, 1 marine in an infected area attacked by two aliens might mean that they can even attack completely cloaked. Whereas an even number of marines to aliens means cloak functions as normal, etc.