I'm commander, BUT is it fun?
oldassgamers
Join Date: 2011-02-02 Member: 80033Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2011-02-02 Member: 80033Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
I've been thinking latetly while playing as marine commmander and alien commander about the experiance.
I think its quite fun being marine commander but what about the alien commander? They barely have anything to build, becides rts and their defence/offence structors. But shouldn't the gorge do that work? Or whats the purpose of being a gorge if there is an alien commander doing the same things?
I'm a little bit unsure if charles have really thought it through about the alien commander purpose and function. Even if charles has though through it, will it really be fun to be alien commander?
I really loved the way it worked out in ns1. BUT there is a small part of me that prefer having commander for both sides of course :)
I'm just hoping the balance between alien commander and gorge will workout very well at the final version of ns2.
What do you guys think?
I think its quite fun being marine commander but what about the alien commander? They barely have anything to build, becides rts and their defence/offence structors. But shouldn't the gorge do that work? Or whats the purpose of being a gorge if there is an alien commander doing the same things?
I'm a little bit unsure if charles have really thought it through about the alien commander purpose and function. Even if charles has though through it, will it really be fun to be alien commander?
I really loved the way it worked out in ns1. BUT there is a small part of me that prefer having commander for both sides of course :)
I'm just hoping the balance between alien commander and gorge will workout very well at the final version of ns2.
What do you guys think?
Comments
And the first person marine assisting commanders is one of my favorite aspects of the game.
That's generally how teamplay games work.
UWE tried having a more "complete" RTS experience for the marine com where the MACs would build all the buildings and marine grunts would do the shooting. This ended up with players feeling they were playing the commanders game, and not a teambased FPS/RTS. The MACs were nerfed and marines got their building rights back. Everyone was happier since now the grunts were actually playing together rather than jerking about doing their own thing while the commander did his thing with his macs.
UWE tried having a more "complete" RTS experience for the marine com where the MACs would build all the buildings and marine grunts would do the shooting. This ended up with players feeling they were playing the commanders game, and not a teambased FPS/RTS. The MACs were nerfed and marines got their building rights back. Everyone was happier since now the grunts were actually playing together rather than jerking about doing their own thing while the commander did his thing with his macs.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is 100% correct Odda2k. I totally agree with you there!
UWE tried having a more "complete" RTS experience for the marine com where the MACs would build all the buildings and marine grunts would do the shooting. This ended up with players feeling they were playing the commanders game, and not a teambased FPS/RTS. The MACs were nerfed and marines got their building rights back. Everyone was happier since now the grunts were actually playing together rather than jerking about doing their own thing while the commander did his thing with his macs.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not in my experience.
In good team games having other people is good because they make you better, not because you need them because otherwise you're terrible.
In a good team game you can perform well on your own, you have an approach to every situation and can accomplish any task, the difference is that if you have teammates you can do it more reliably, more quickly, and with reduced chance of being killed.
As it stands, the marine team cannot progress without babysitting the commander, and the commander cannot do anything without babysitting the marines, it turns the entire game into a giant escort mission, where marines are constantly making up for the commander's inability to defend bases properly or build anything himself, while the commander has to follow marines around and drop buildings on them and generally pick up afer them.
It isn't about working together in a positive way, because you see other players and think 'hey that guy can do everything I can and he's obviously doing well, we should team up and work together and that way we'll be awesome'. Instead you think 'urgh that idiot can't do any of this stuff which means I have to do it for him, I'd love to be doing something else right now other than running through the level to kill this skulk on the other side of it or building this base but I can't because nobody else on the team can do anything about it'.
If I'm playing, say, empires mod, if I play an engineer and get in a tank I can do more or less anything in the game, but I still want other people around because they give me more firepower and health by shooting stuff with me and getting shot instead of me, I value teammates in that game, in NS I would honestly prefer them to be replaced by robots as the commander and as a player, I would rather be playing combat than play marines.
Aliens do it much better, or did up until cysts, their commander can expand on his own, but benefits from player protection, players can run around killing stuff on their own, but benefit from capturing hive locations for the commander, they have a far more positive teamplay mechanic than the marines, which is based on mutual annoyance and generally makes me hate everyone else on the team. On aliens I can help out by just attacking valuable areas and keeping them clear, essentially giving a degree of strategy to an otherwise very team deathmatch sort of game, which is sort of the point of RTS/FPS. I attack hive locations until the commander captures them, a bit like battlefield with its flag system only more permanent, as you can generally only capture one at a time and they stay captured once you do, and the team generally tends to be a lot more organised. Ultimately it's a fun experience, moreso than simple deathmatch, it is enhanced by the RTS aspect.
As commander it is quite pleasant to play a simple but interesting RTS, where your players are attacking makes certain areas more valuable, as you can expand there more easily. Also players tend to react to certain things, if you push infestation a certain way they tend to follow it, if you put crag clusters in an area they tend to use it as a staging point, it becomes a quite interesting mix of conventional RTS and something like simcity, where you are trying to design the map to be desirable in important areas so that players will congregate there, on the other hand your players benefit immensely from your doing this, as they get healing areas and hive sight where the infestation is and so on. It is really quite brilliantly put together, far more so than the blunt force 'teamwork' the marine side is forced into.
A good analogy would be aliens are encouraged to work together in whatever way is most beneficial, while marines are all tied together at the ankle whether they like it or not and whether it's beneficial or not. One is enjoyable, the other is largely annoying.
-Removeeeeee the hive switching its annoying/boring
-get one energy pool where all hives have acess to or at least find a way that a commander can see (some kind of menu bar) what hives have what energy
More structures would be nice but I'm sure we will get them when they are done :)
-Removeeeeee the hive switching its annoying/boring<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Already done. Aliens can now use energy from other hives again, without having to physically log out and change hives.
--Cory
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Awesome! This was getting pretty tedious to do in B180.
In good team games having other people is good because they make you better, not because you need them because otherwise you're terrible.
In a good team game you can perform well on your own, you have an approach to every situation and can accomplish any task, the difference is that if you have teammates you can do it more reliably, more quickly, and with reduced chance of being killed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You must hate cooperative and team games that actually require working together.
More on topic, something that has always bugged me about commanding is how I have to still use the M key to view the larger version of the mini-map. That kind of information seems so important I don't understand why a commander needs to bring it up manually. Seems like the mini-map should be larger when commanding.
All team games require you to work together if the enemy does, as you will lose due to simple weight of numbers.
I hate games which try to force people to work together by crippling every player so that they cannot do anything alone and try to mash people into predefined roles which kill them if they stray from that role.
Teamwork in general is very fun, some of the most fun I've had in online FPS games has been working with a good team, but it is always in a game which doesn't try to force it, because forced teamplay is not fun, I don't need to be forced to do it, and I don't enjoy it when it is, because it's usually done at the expense of good mechanics in whatever the game is.
And thats a good thing! So everybody kann play his favorite position.
I, for instance, enjoy playing alien commander, doing my own stuff while "suggesting" the aliens to protect the new hive, or just let em freelance or tell 'em to attack extractors or so.
On the other hand I am a terrible marine commander. Don't get me wrong, this is a very interesting symbioses between marines and commander, but "commander babysitting marines/marines babysitting commander" as Chris pointed out, is just not the kind of gameplay I like.
I don't know if incomplete tech tree works as an excuse all the way. You could remove everything except barracks units, economy and bunkers from Starcraft and it would still make an intense game for some time. The basics need to be fun and interesting, only then the tech tree can then add variety and depth to the game.
Certainly the tech tree helps in many ways, but it's not a magical cure-all.
Where is the player list on the screen, so I can jump to different people or monitor their health?
Most of the satisfaction comes through being able to effectively get your team to trust you, do what you say, and care/look after them.
UI is still extremely basic for this, commander 'presence' is lacking for marines and HUD and AUDIO info is still very basic for letting them know of alerts of where to go.
Having circles appear on the floor where the commander makes an order (and idea I suggested way back) has been implemented, very weakly.
This sort of thing should be a move in a better direction, imo.
Remember, online games are all about the connection of people.
Also, can you please make buildings that are unbuilt be known to players. At the moment I still have to keep getting out the CC to build arms labs and what not because my team dont realise that it needs building.
1) Alien comm isn't supposed to be as hyper-active as Marine. You don't NEED to play comm 100% of the time. Aliens are less centralized, so comms aren't needed all the time.
2) If you get bored, you may be doing it wrong. Most alien comms SUCK, they are way too passive. If you not doing these things, you are doing it wrong:
* burning every point of hive energy spamming cysts everywhere (and relocating to fresh hives as needed)
* burning every point of TRes until upgrades are complete and all hives are built
* constantly forward deploying crags
* deploying at least 2 crags to every hive, and at least 1 crag to every hydra cluster
* ANNOUNCING upgrade and progress. (I want to stab every comm that doesn't announce when Fades are available.)
* being the EYES of your team, scanning the map constantly, and calling out marine pushes (especially with Arcs)
* using umbra when possible
* advising Gorges where defenses are weak, or where a fade could use a hand
In my experience, when I comm as Alien I'm usually 100% busy until the endgame. (Unless the alien team is getting whipped and has only one hive, or the teams are very small.)
And it's going to get better. Aliens don't have Shift or Shade yet. Marines seem to pretty much have all their tier 1 and tier 2 stuff, aliens don't. At some point whips will be useful. Don't forget Whips are mobile, so the comm will need to micro them and use their Bombard ability. Alien comm will get Phermones. At some point, the drifter's flashbang will be reliable.
<ul><li>Inability to rebind keys</li><li>Similar structures/commands (e.g. hive and command station) being set to different areas of the grid for each team</li><li>Inability to assign things to 1-9</li><li>Inability to to multi-select by double-clicking (either select all structures, all structures of same type, all marines, or all marines in squad in view)</li><li>Structure placement bugs (i.e. structure that don't place when they should or where they should)</li><li>Inability to give any complex commands (mostly alien, but the marine commands are pretty poor)</li><li>Inability to see the commands you give</li><li>NPC pathing issues (much improved in B180, but MACs/ARCs/drifters still get stuck on things and fully stop, additionally I find many NPCs to take really poor routes, going through rooms when they should be going through vents)</li><li>Inability to zoom, rotate, or tilt the comm view</li><li>Extreme comm view rubberbanding when the server lags (<10 ticks/s)</li><li>Not being able to recycle things (as aliens)</li></ul>
The end result is that commanding is generally more painful than fun for most people.
Well, you can bind hives to the number keys, at least. But yeah, this feature needs to work for all things.
Must try harder.
My criticism is always harsh, but I love what you guys are doing. Keep it up.
If this is as UWE intends, then they should have never given an alien comm in the first place. There's essentially nothing an alien comm can do in this game (so far) that a gorge couldn't do in NS1, barring the attack/defense upgrades. Gorge 4 evar
Aliencommander has a battle overview a gorge never had and he can send his drifters anywhare and build opn two different places without getting chased by marines as well.
This is my opinion, and at a slight risk of going off-topic:
Most of that was not an issue as you could have several gorges right at the beginning, all capping res notes in the initial rush. This allows two places at once, and usually one gorge will be able to build fine as the marines chase the other players.
I would MUCH rather build by hand in first person than build by drifter. I found a kind of charm of having to get to where you want to build, wiggle your way up into odd places through creative means, and place your building juuuust right. It was fun in itself. (can you imagine TF2 where the engineer could drop his turret via overhead remote? Even ignoring the turret's power, it wouldn't be nearly as fun to play engineer) A human gorge also has common sense to hide or wait for marines to pass, while drifters will decide to take a shortcut through marine start.
As for overhead view in and of itself, I never once found myself wanting it. Until you brought it up just now, I have never even thought about having it as alien in NS1. There was just no need.
In all seriousness, he feels like a hackjob addon that's stealing some of the (NS1) gorge's role. I'm not denying that there might be some serious gameplay potential there... I just don't think that they've found it yet.
You may ask why.
The main reason is to balance the game.
The builder gorge and thus the alien team in NS1 was only balanced with the marine team on a 6v6 game. If there are less players alienteam has the advantage and if there are more players the marines have.
Just put the past behind you (or play NS1 of course) and accept the alien commander in NS2.
BTW. a gorge in the team is still essential for healing, bilebombing and building struktures faster.
It is not a needless role to be goirge, but a different one.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Can't wait for next patch!