Finding the Perfect Balance between Arcade & Tactical: Don't Try
Gorgeous Gorge
Join Date: 2009-08-26 Member: 68603Members
Join Date: 2009-08-26 Member: 68603Members
GAMEPLAY: ARCADE VS. TACTICAL
One of the biggest challenges for the NS team, I'm guessing, is deciding the balance between arcade style play (think Quake Deathmatch) and realism (think Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six). For example, Counter-Strike found a good balance between the two.
Things associated with "arcade" style play:
- take a lot of hits to kill something
- units move very quickly
- units can change direction quickly, bunnyhop around
- jumping doesn't slow units down, and aim does not suffer from jumping
- no recoil, and no advantage to standing still or crouching while you shoot
- less consequences from dying (faster respawn, respawn costs no res)
- grenades have a larger radius and are more scary.
- reloading with individual mags, rather than a supply of bullets.
Everyone has a preference. Vanilla NS1 tends to be in the middle, while CO and siege maps tend to be more like arcade.
A RADICAL SUGGESTION FOR FINDING THE PERFECT BALANCE: DON'T
My suggestion is different: don't try to find the perfect balance. Instead, allow the servers to set the balance differently. Allow the server admins to choose from a sliding “Tactical†scale where zero points is arcade style, 100 points is tactical, 50 is balanced (like NS1). 200 would be like playing Rainbow Six (very, very slow respawn means ambushing enemies and covering each other are a big deal) and -100 would be crazy arcade style (more like Quake Deathmatch).
Some variables would change smoothly (like unit movement speed, and the amount of recoil when firing a weapon).
Alien health would have to change differently for different units. For example, the skulk might lose 50% of its health if you increase the tactical slider a lot, but the onos would only lose 10% of its health, because onoses are always going to be lumbering meat-shield beasts, and you don't want them dying too easily.
Other variables would “snap†in when the slider got over a certain amount. For example, at tactical level 80, it would start to cost res to respawn dead marines/aliens. No res --> no respawn. For pub play, tactical levels over 70 might be a little too much (because having a noob on your team could really mess things up). But it would be more fun if each server got to set it's own amount, instead of a few guys in SF deciding for the rest of us how our games will play.
I have other suggestions at this thread: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=107309" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=107309</a>
It might make sense for some of those suggestions to only "snap" in when the tactical level is at a high enough amount. For example, HA who have less than 100 armor would be vulnerable to lerk gas only if the tactical level is at least 70.
Using a single variable to handle tactical vs. arcade, as one unified sliding scale, would be the best way IMO to implement this.
Does anyone know if this has ever been done before in a different video game (one sliding-scale variable drives multiple gameplay-related variables to change the gameplay experience)?
One of the biggest challenges for the NS team, I'm guessing, is deciding the balance between arcade style play (think Quake Deathmatch) and realism (think Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six). For example, Counter-Strike found a good balance between the two.
Things associated with "arcade" style play:
- take a lot of hits to kill something
- units move very quickly
- units can change direction quickly, bunnyhop around
- jumping doesn't slow units down, and aim does not suffer from jumping
- no recoil, and no advantage to standing still or crouching while you shoot
- less consequences from dying (faster respawn, respawn costs no res)
- grenades have a larger radius and are more scary.
- reloading with individual mags, rather than a supply of bullets.
Everyone has a preference. Vanilla NS1 tends to be in the middle, while CO and siege maps tend to be more like arcade.
A RADICAL SUGGESTION FOR FINDING THE PERFECT BALANCE: DON'T
My suggestion is different: don't try to find the perfect balance. Instead, allow the servers to set the balance differently. Allow the server admins to choose from a sliding “Tactical†scale where zero points is arcade style, 100 points is tactical, 50 is balanced (like NS1). 200 would be like playing Rainbow Six (very, very slow respawn means ambushing enemies and covering each other are a big deal) and -100 would be crazy arcade style (more like Quake Deathmatch).
Some variables would change smoothly (like unit movement speed, and the amount of recoil when firing a weapon).
Alien health would have to change differently for different units. For example, the skulk might lose 50% of its health if you increase the tactical slider a lot, but the onos would only lose 10% of its health, because onoses are always going to be lumbering meat-shield beasts, and you don't want them dying too easily.
Other variables would “snap†in when the slider got over a certain amount. For example, at tactical level 80, it would start to cost res to respawn dead marines/aliens. No res --> no respawn. For pub play, tactical levels over 70 might be a little too much (because having a noob on your team could really mess things up). But it would be more fun if each server got to set it's own amount, instead of a few guys in SF deciding for the rest of us how our games will play.
I have other suggestions at this thread: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=107309" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=107309</a>
It might make sense for some of those suggestions to only "snap" in when the tactical level is at a high enough amount. For example, HA who have less than 100 armor would be vulnerable to lerk gas only if the tactical level is at least 70.
Using a single variable to handle tactical vs. arcade, as one unified sliding scale, would be the best way IMO to implement this.
Does anyone know if this has ever been done before in a different video game (one sliding-scale variable drives multiple gameplay-related variables to change the gameplay experience)?
Comments
I for one will welcome the demise of classic ns as we know it today... waiting for just 1 NS1 server to be running a siege map (and not have a huge ping from russia with hate)... well it's like waiting for NS2 to come out lol.
@topic:
for me also this sounds like a lua mod idea. Actually I prefer to have one vanilla NS, which changes only because of patches / balance tweaks. But which is playable on every vanilla server in the same way.