The current NS2 will never be a competitive FPSRTS
Stergeary
Join Date: 2010-07-05 Member: 72252Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2010-07-05 Member: 72252Members, Reinforced - Shadow
So, I say this while bearing in mind that the original design manifesto included a passage which I would paraphrase as, "The game is an FPS first and foremost, and if need be, elements of RTS will be sacrificed to to preserve FPS gameplay." So, don't get me wrong -- I am more than enjoying this game. However, NS2 with its current design can pass as perhaps a competitive FPS, but certainly cannot qualify as an RTS experience with any depth to be called competitive. It's actually due to a relatively straight-forward list of reasons, and I would preface the said list with the following: That I would urge you to disagree, preferably in an argumentative manner as to facilitate discussion, and also that I realize there are probably no easy fixes for any of these issues if having competitive RTS elements is in fact the desire of UWE, which it may very well not be. Nonetheless, I feel it is necessary to bring these issues to light since I feel the game is, as far as the decisions a Commander needs to make, relatively shallow. I will refer to Starcraft periodically throughout this writing, but note that it is not to say that NS2 should become SC in its RTS aspect, but simply as a comparison to SC as a tried-and-true example of a truly competitive RTS.
1.) <b>The irrelevance of positioning.</b>
Every strategy game that has ever existed, from Tic-Tac-Toe to Chess, positioning is always of paramount importance. Where you put a piece on your first turn is greatly influential to the state of the game on your last turn. A view at competitive games that can fulfill the genre of "strategic" will lend examples such as DotA, Starcraft, and so on, where positioning is a separate consideration in the the game itself, a discipline separate from resource management, APM, etc. But the fact is that in NS2, positioning is nearly irrelevant due to the existence of Sprint, Phase Gates, Distress Beacons, Jetpacks, Celerity, Leap, Blink, Lerk flight, Onos charge, and even Gorge sliding. In DotA, positioning abilities are handed out VERY sparingly to specific heroes and items, and often with a drawback (e.g. Kelen's Dagger of Escape). In Starcraft, the number of positioning abilities are even fewer, and are greatly restrictive (Nydus Canal, Arbiter Recall, Transports, and Stim Pack to a degree). But in NS2, there is a mechanic in the game for every class except Exosuits to simply get from anywhere to anywhere (granted, some faster than others). Certainly, one can argue that when a fight is happening, it is important to do so together with your team, but it's never relevant where your troops are with respect to the map as long as they are together shooting at the enemy somewhere. This, combined with the tunnel-room-tunnel layout of maps and the non-existence of a no-man's-land due to the zero-sum nature of resource-driven expansion (i.e. every inch of the map is always controlled by somebody) means there is no room to move freely on territory uncontrolled by either side. All of this combines to make the game a rush-fight-die-respawn-rush-fight-die-respawn game, with little to no emphasis on careful positioning. This makes it a consistently engaging FPS experience à la Modern Warfare at the expense of strategic depth.
How do you fix it? I don't know, but here are ideas. Increase map size, increase resource node count, decrease the damage that any lone soldier can deal to the enemy base, decrease the burst-damage the offense can incur, and/or increase the viability of defending. These are possible ideas, and I admit I don't know which are the most viable to implement. I would even argue that using Drifters/MACs to gather resources from resource towers might be a better mechanic than the current model of using highly vulnerable and remote resource towers that are unfeasible to defend. Drifters/MACs allow Aliens/Marines a way to dwindle the enemy team's resources without the current RT mechanic of ripping a hole through the enemy economy by taking out 2 far-off resource towers.
2.) <b>The zero-sum nature of resource acquisition and territory control.</b>
This is a big issue because you will rarely if ever let an RT sit idle except at the start of a game with close spawns, where the RT between your two bases is too risky. If there's an RT untaken and you have a couple of Marines there, you almost always drop the RT, your Marines build it, and they keep moving for the next RT. There is rarely more than 1 uncontrolled RT between your team's chain of RTs and the enemy's chain of RTs. This means there are fewer resource nodes on the map than there are means to acquire them, so it's a constant war to push this "resource frontier" for your team. This makes the game clearly cut-in-half. Compare this with Starcraft, where there are always more resources on the map than either you or your enemy can harvest until the late game when expansions are mined out. This allows a great deal of variety in positioning your bases and where you want to position your econ and your forces, and greatly increases the depth of any individual map. Aside from this, the existence of this no-man's-land where both sides can move their forces but cannot reasonably control means there's a great area over which combat can occur, and controlling where the combat occurs as well as making sure the terrain is favorable for your forces is highly important. This strategic depth is absent in NS2 because the combat always occurs at the same predictable places by the nature of this "resource frontier". This situation is also aggravated by the design of the current maps, which can always be expressed as a "bike wheel". There is a central hub with a resource node, and a great deal of paths (the wheel spokes) leading to the outside rooms, and each outside room makes a circumferential path around this central hub, each having their own node, and every other node has a tech point. This means the map is highly linear as to where pushes will go, since the paths are linear into each point-of-interest. In Starcraft, however, the map is continuous, and therefore there is a great deal of variety as to where fights will happen, regardless of where the two sides have chosen to saturate with their econ and military. NS2 lacks this continuous distribution of possible locations of conflict.
How do you fix it? Increase map size, allow the teams to decide where fights happen rather than being constrained by the map, increase variability in map design, increase resource node count, and/or increase importance of early tech while decreasing the viability of taking every RT possible as early as possible.
3.) <b>The non-existence of strategies with consequences and responses.</b>
I know the emphasis on the game is on the FPS, but it's so heavily on the FPS that a single good player on the other team can potentially make it irrelevant what the rest of your team does and what strategy you employ. Even in a competitive scene where the skill gap is far less, it is still clear that there are few unprecedented decisions a Commander can make to turn a game around, contrast this to Starcraft where a great deal of non-brute-force methods exist for executing a victory despite a deficit in military strength. In fact, a great mechanic in most strategy games from Chess and Go to Starcraft and DotA is "trading invisible blows". In board games, this translates into non-immediate consequences for the placement of a particular piece, forcing the enemy to read ahead of your moves to analyze the significance of your placement of pieces; for an RTS, this translates into the response to anticipated enemy movements through the fog of war by using your incomplete information, such as moving your forces to intercept an attack that may or may not occur, sending anti-air units to a dropship that may or may not be there, et cetera. For a game to have RTS elements means that well thought-out decisions and should be able to overcome brute force, at least to a degree. But the maps have so little breathing room that the only thing you are allowed to do is relentlessly engage the enemy, allowing for little to no creativity. The team should be able to make a decision that can make a game winnable even when the enemy can shoot slightly better. As the game currently stands, the ability to shoot/bite is the only thing that wins games. The game-changing events of the game is rarely "We chose Viable Strategy A instead of Viable Strategy B". It's far more often "This one Blinking Fade/Jetpacking Shotgunner is raping our/their team." And lets not forget, information is rarely important in this game. In most RTS games, information so often wins games in a way that allows weaker players to beat stronger players. In NS2, this depth is simply absent. At most, you can report Phase Gate placement, Command Station placement, Distress Beacon locations, and a march of Exosuits, whereas for Marines you can spend 3 res to see whatever you want. But none of these things give you a decidedly stronger position than the enemy because you now have this knowledge. Compare this with Starcraft, where if you know your enemy is going 4 pool beforehand, it means you've already beaten him, even if he's slightly better than you.
How do you fix it? Implement ways to influence the game via non-combat decisions, increase the variety of strategies, decrease the relentlessness of combat, increase the size of non-controlled areas of the map to allow for freedom of movement, increase starting resources, and/or increase building variability to allow enemies to determine your strategy based on visual feedback of specific structures.
Would appreciate constructive feedback or comments, and am open to the possibility that there are players here who understand the game deeper than myself, and themselves see depth in the commanding experience where I do not. And I understand that UWE probably has their own direction insofar as where this game will end up, but I thought this drop in the bucket might be worthwhile insight. Lastly, implementation of deeper RTS elements may decrease the intensity of the FPS experience (e.g. increasing map size means less-frequent combat), so keep that in mind, and thanks for reading.
1.) <b>The irrelevance of positioning.</b>
Every strategy game that has ever existed, from Tic-Tac-Toe to Chess, positioning is always of paramount importance. Where you put a piece on your first turn is greatly influential to the state of the game on your last turn. A view at competitive games that can fulfill the genre of "strategic" will lend examples such as DotA, Starcraft, and so on, where positioning is a separate consideration in the the game itself, a discipline separate from resource management, APM, etc. But the fact is that in NS2, positioning is nearly irrelevant due to the existence of Sprint, Phase Gates, Distress Beacons, Jetpacks, Celerity, Leap, Blink, Lerk flight, Onos charge, and even Gorge sliding. In DotA, positioning abilities are handed out VERY sparingly to specific heroes and items, and often with a drawback (e.g. Kelen's Dagger of Escape). In Starcraft, the number of positioning abilities are even fewer, and are greatly restrictive (Nydus Canal, Arbiter Recall, Transports, and Stim Pack to a degree). But in NS2, there is a mechanic in the game for every class except Exosuits to simply get from anywhere to anywhere (granted, some faster than others). Certainly, one can argue that when a fight is happening, it is important to do so together with your team, but it's never relevant where your troops are with respect to the map as long as they are together shooting at the enemy somewhere. This, combined with the tunnel-room-tunnel layout of maps and the non-existence of a no-man's-land due to the zero-sum nature of resource-driven expansion (i.e. every inch of the map is always controlled by somebody) means there is no room to move freely on territory uncontrolled by either side. All of this combines to make the game a rush-fight-die-respawn-rush-fight-die-respawn game, with little to no emphasis on careful positioning. This makes it a consistently engaging FPS experience à la Modern Warfare at the expense of strategic depth.
How do you fix it? I don't know, but here are ideas. Increase map size, increase resource node count, decrease the damage that any lone soldier can deal to the enemy base, decrease the burst-damage the offense can incur, and/or increase the viability of defending. These are possible ideas, and I admit I don't know which are the most viable to implement. I would even argue that using Drifters/MACs to gather resources from resource towers might be a better mechanic than the current model of using highly vulnerable and remote resource towers that are unfeasible to defend. Drifters/MACs allow Aliens/Marines a way to dwindle the enemy team's resources without the current RT mechanic of ripping a hole through the enemy economy by taking out 2 far-off resource towers.
2.) <b>The zero-sum nature of resource acquisition and territory control.</b>
This is a big issue because you will rarely if ever let an RT sit idle except at the start of a game with close spawns, where the RT between your two bases is too risky. If there's an RT untaken and you have a couple of Marines there, you almost always drop the RT, your Marines build it, and they keep moving for the next RT. There is rarely more than 1 uncontrolled RT between your team's chain of RTs and the enemy's chain of RTs. This means there are fewer resource nodes on the map than there are means to acquire them, so it's a constant war to push this "resource frontier" for your team. This makes the game clearly cut-in-half. Compare this with Starcraft, where there are always more resources on the map than either you or your enemy can harvest until the late game when expansions are mined out. This allows a great deal of variety in positioning your bases and where you want to position your econ and your forces, and greatly increases the depth of any individual map. Aside from this, the existence of this no-man's-land where both sides can move their forces but cannot reasonably control means there's a great area over which combat can occur, and controlling where the combat occurs as well as making sure the terrain is favorable for your forces is highly important. This strategic depth is absent in NS2 because the combat always occurs at the same predictable places by the nature of this "resource frontier". This situation is also aggravated by the design of the current maps, which can always be expressed as a "bike wheel". There is a central hub with a resource node, and a great deal of paths (the wheel spokes) leading to the outside rooms, and each outside room makes a circumferential path around this central hub, each having their own node, and every other node has a tech point. This means the map is highly linear as to where pushes will go, since the paths are linear into each point-of-interest. In Starcraft, however, the map is continuous, and therefore there is a great deal of variety as to where fights will happen, regardless of where the two sides have chosen to saturate with their econ and military. NS2 lacks this continuous distribution of possible locations of conflict.
How do you fix it? Increase map size, allow the teams to decide where fights happen rather than being constrained by the map, increase variability in map design, increase resource node count, and/or increase importance of early tech while decreasing the viability of taking every RT possible as early as possible.
3.) <b>The non-existence of strategies with consequences and responses.</b>
I know the emphasis on the game is on the FPS, but it's so heavily on the FPS that a single good player on the other team can potentially make it irrelevant what the rest of your team does and what strategy you employ. Even in a competitive scene where the skill gap is far less, it is still clear that there are few unprecedented decisions a Commander can make to turn a game around, contrast this to Starcraft where a great deal of non-brute-force methods exist for executing a victory despite a deficit in military strength. In fact, a great mechanic in most strategy games from Chess and Go to Starcraft and DotA is "trading invisible blows". In board games, this translates into non-immediate consequences for the placement of a particular piece, forcing the enemy to read ahead of your moves to analyze the significance of your placement of pieces; for an RTS, this translates into the response to anticipated enemy movements through the fog of war by using your incomplete information, such as moving your forces to intercept an attack that may or may not occur, sending anti-air units to a dropship that may or may not be there, et cetera. For a game to have RTS elements means that well thought-out decisions and should be able to overcome brute force, at least to a degree. But the maps have so little breathing room that the only thing you are allowed to do is relentlessly engage the enemy, allowing for little to no creativity. The team should be able to make a decision that can make a game winnable even when the enemy can shoot slightly better. As the game currently stands, the ability to shoot/bite is the only thing that wins games. The game-changing events of the game is rarely "We chose Viable Strategy A instead of Viable Strategy B". It's far more often "This one Blinking Fade/Jetpacking Shotgunner is raping our/their team." And lets not forget, information is rarely important in this game. In most RTS games, information so often wins games in a way that allows weaker players to beat stronger players. In NS2, this depth is simply absent. At most, you can report Phase Gate placement, Command Station placement, Distress Beacon locations, and a march of Exosuits, whereas for Marines you can spend 3 res to see whatever you want. But none of these things give you a decidedly stronger position than the enemy because you now have this knowledge. Compare this with Starcraft, where if you know your enemy is going 4 pool beforehand, it means you've already beaten him, even if he's slightly better than you.
How do you fix it? Implement ways to influence the game via non-combat decisions, increase the variety of strategies, decrease the relentlessness of combat, increase the size of non-controlled areas of the map to allow for freedom of movement, increase starting resources, and/or increase building variability to allow enemies to determine your strategy based on visual feedback of specific structures.
Would appreciate constructive feedback or comments, and am open to the possibility that there are players here who understand the game deeper than myself, and themselves see depth in the commanding experience where I do not. And I understand that UWE probably has their own direction insofar as where this game will end up, but I thought this drop in the bucket might be worthwhile insight. Lastly, implementation of deeper RTS elements may decrease the intensity of the FPS experience (e.g. increasing map size means less-frequent combat), so keep that in mind, and thanks for reading.
Comments
I think the title of this thread should have been named 'I want bigger maps' though. That's more or less what you've asked for with all three points and it's less confrontational to boot.
Since that is the case, I would strongly recommend you look in the modding section and check out the map <i>Goliath</i>.
At the moment, it's just Aliens running and jumping around Marines with insane speed and spamming bite - not to forget the Fade with their teleport.
Pure chaos, no brains - I dont see any joy in that.
@Landiron: Yes, another huge part of the lack of depth is that losing a Marine in SC incurs a 50 mineral cost and training time for the unit, losing a Marine in NS2 has no cost except for the respawn time.
1. Positioning is a big deal in NS, both for the ground units and the commanders. It works a little different then an RTS though. Because the number of units (players) on each team is fixed, it is more about the 'time density' of players in a given area, then them merely being there, ie the percentage of time each player is spending in a given room. Basically, if you are committing a lot of your players time to a given area of the map, you are naturally weaker in other areas of the map. Even if you can use abilities to move around the map, the amount of time you spend in an area is more important then just being able to get there. For example, if marines drop a phase gate in a particular place, suddenly the frequency of a marines being in, and around that room increases so their influence there increases.
In Go, you can place a stone almost any where on the board, at any time, does that mean Go doesn't have positioning? No because you have to spend several turns to build up a good presence, or be moving into an area where you opponent has very little influence.
The classic example of this is marines exerting good pressure on alien nodes early game, which allows them to cap nodes on the opposite side of the map. This is positioning most of your power in one place to try and force the other team into defending rather then attacking.
Like wise some areas on the map have value only in their position. A good example is system way pointing on veil, which allows a team to exert pressure on 2 hives, and double all from the same room, but doesn't have a tech point or resource node.
2. In higher level play, your statement about most nodes being capped isn't true. Generally the aliens will be running on 2-3 nodes and the marines will be running on 3-4. Most maps have more then 8 nodes, so 1-2 are not capped. The only time one team gets more nodes then the values above, is when they are exerting crazy pressure through good positioning, tech advantage, or player skill, because it prevents the opposing team from spending time destroying res nodes.
3. This is also not true, though more limit then a 'real' RTS. Choosing your initial upgrade as aliens, going early hive... they have fixed consequences that can be exploited by marines. Likewise, if you go armor/weapons/phase tech/ Advanced Armory first with marines, you will have inherent exploitable weaknesses as a team. Even committing lots of res to building resource towers is going to slow down your tech in the short term, which can have a really big impact, especially on the early game.
wat
have you ever been in so much as a scrim
alternatively, which would you prefer as a marine:
a) getting attacked by two skulks coming down the same long corridor
b) getting attacked by two skulks coming from different directions at a chokepoint
should marines play bunched up or spread out?
should skulks rush or parasite and ambush?
etc
edit: I mean maybe it will maybe it won't, who knows, but your, uh, <i>analysis</i> here is clearly ignorant of the realities of what goes on even in the nascent competitive scene in the beta
I don't think larger maps will solve the problem. I know we all want more of an RTS feel to the game, but that feel is only felt if you play as commander. Right now, its more of a tug of war rather than an RTS where you have to control more areas on the map than your opponent. Think domination from COD or conquest from BF with a guy in the sky giving you toys.
Pub games just give you the FPS feel and very little rts. Competitive games only slightly make the game more rts like. Perhaps a more dynamic tech tree and a more diverse early game.
But then the game would have to be completely redesigned.
Honestly, there's so much change going on, I'm more concerned about performance/FPS than balance/strategy.
1) This reads like pure nonsense to me. If you play with competitive teams, you'll come to realize that positioning is the most important task in this game as well as in its predecessor NS1. Yes, there are abilities like Sprint, Leap, Blink, Phase gates etc etc but that doesn't mean that you can be everywhere at every time. To go to a phase gate takes time, to leap/blink/run to the other side of the map takes time, everything takes time. You talk about relevance of strategic factors and also use Chess as an example, so let me put it this way: <b>Time is one of the utmost important resources in every strategical oriented scenario.</b> (yes, even in chess)
Bad positioning equals a high loss of time which gives your opponent an upper hand. If you have 3 marines run back to save 1 RT against 1 skulk, you screwed something up big time. In NS1 there is also lots of guides written about gameplay, positioning and controlling enemy movements etc. You might want to try out <a href="http://www.ensl.org/articles/598" target="_blank">Tane's advanced marine guide</a>. NS2 inherits the same mechanics.
I also don't see any benefit in bigger maps with clear no-man's land (like resource isles on some SC2 maps). In given scenarios you already have kinda no-man's land for both marines and aliens. Take veil as an example: if marines try to hold 3 points (MS, double, pipe for example) and are under heavy pressure by aliens (meaning lots of fades), they cannot afford to go cap or defend west sky/topo rts. I have seen countless games on NS1 marines lose just because 1-2 marines think they need to go cap those rts with a 3 point hold-down. Some areas can easily become no man's land. Aliens can neither cap them too hastily, since a single pressure ninja can take them out way too fast.
2) Funny enough, I think SC2 has more of a "natural frontier" than NS (1&2). Yes, you will see the map often capped in half when observing the minimap and determine from the blue and orange structures. Still, there are lots of meaningful fights behind those frontiers. A competitive alien team which doesn't send out skulks biting RTs in the back will lose 9/10 games. So you have alot of regards to defending, attacking and recapping RTs behind that "frontier". Aliens are more apt to do so since they are more agile by definition.
SC2 is a rather poor counter example because all competitive maps I know have natural expansion lines. You are rarely free in choosing them because the map design forces you in a specific expansion order, at least for the first 2-3 bases (relevant for >90% of the games played). The main fighting occurs mostly on predictable places while you have some minor fights (e.g. dropship harassment) at different locations. The no-man's land (expansions far away) are usually not takeable, and if so, you could consider it cheesy or, at least, as super risky or desperate move. I can say that at least for the competitive scene, random ladder games with lesser skill level not included.
3) True, NS 1 and 2 are FPS foremost and not pure strategy games, but do not underestimate the impact of decisions taken. You can force your enemy to react (attack nodes, hives, CCs) and you can take advantage of enemy positions when known (3 marines in crossroads, rush DC phasegate!). The only lack I admit is that the "build order" for upgrades do have a lesser impact than say, in SC2. But again, this is mostly a FPS and you can't translate the variety of that many structures and units as well as upgrades available from a pure RTS game to a FPS hybrid without overcomplicating the game by large amount. Still, it is highly important to note that the Khamm goes for a fast hive, where he drops his upgrade chambers, if marines start with an obs, if a 2nd CC is on the way, where PGs go up, etc etc.
I agree that individual skill and teamplay abilities have a higher impact than the strategy your commander chooses, but that's the nature of FPS. I want that. I am not a stupid zergling who goes forward, bites and dies (remember the onos role in NS1 combat? get 4 levels, go onos and press W+mouse1 ftw, no skill involved, most frustrating experience ever), I want my abilities of positioning, dodging, gamesense, movement, aiming and teamwork give me an edge over the enemy. The marine commander's skill evolves from fast reaction time by sensing enemy movements and medding skills. Of course he also has to lead your team and decide which nodes he wants to kill (can my team kill that without high losses?), to cap (is this RT good to defend in my marine's positioning plan?), when to push a hive, where to put pressure, when to fall back and tech up, whether to continue an attack after defeat of the first squad, whether to....I'll stop. The alien commander has less skill and time involved, which is unfortunate for pub games, but in competitive it opened up an assymetry again where the commander is often in the field as gorge or skulk and for upgrades having teammates jumping in a hive.
@Landiron
Sorry man, but more slowed down gameplay I couldn't bear. NS2 movements are already way slower than NS1 (god I miss those fade hunts with jets so bad). It's just a personal opinion though, but I prefer slower environments only on pure strategy games, let's say Hearts Of Iron 2 where I need my time (=pause key) to think about my next step. But yeah, just my thoughts.
I for one wouldn't mind if the game fractured into pub and competitive modes. Whats annoying in pub play may be appreciated in competitive play
Again thank you for you post and I hope you tune in this weekend.
At the moment, it's just Aliens running and jumping around Marines with insane speed and spamming bite - not to forget the Fade with their teleport.
Pure chaos, no brains - I dont see any joy in that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is one of my pet peeves. Speed and strategy have absolutely no correlation.
Strategy has to do with the number of viable choices you have vs the number your opponents can react too. It is about making decisions. Just because the game rewards you for making decisions faster, doesn't mean there are fewer decisions to make.
Making the game slower reduces the dexterity required to play, it does not increase the strategy requirement. Slowing down the game makes the strategic part of the game more accessible to low dexterity players.
Just because you can't keep up with the split second judgement calls competitive players are making, doesn't mean they aren't making them constantly.
Last night, I lost games as both comm, Khamm, marine and alien alike ( amongst several wins ;) ) yet I *didn't know why* ...
We were winning, but we lost.
Now thats a good game.
It certainly could be more of an RTS, and that would be fine, but if you push it too far, nobody will want to play and it will not be interesting for spectators.
In fact, I would argue that the necessity of having a skilled team makes it even <i>more</i> competitive. Sure, if one team is vastly superior than the other it might not matter what tech choices they make, but if you have two evenly matched teams, as should be the case in organized/competitive/pro play, then all of a sudden the strategic choices are relevant again.
The main problem is the difference between competitive and pub play, but that is exactly the same in any other game. While there is definitely still work to be done to perfect the RTS hook, it is no different than Starcraft. Will I watch a game of bronze leaguers? Not unless I need a laugh. But is that the game's fault or just the people playing?
1.) <b>The irrelevance of positioning.</b>
While I can see your point, you forgot, that it is very boring for a soldier to stand somewhere on the map and wait that enemies appear. That is also one of the main-causes why you don't see well thought positioning in the game. If the players would do it, you had instantly countered your "RTs go down to fast"-argument.
Also there is already some aspects of this. Skulks are most effective when ambushing. Therefor you need a good position for your ambush. Also marines are more effective in long hallways etc. (But this is all mostly FPS-positioning.)
But all in all you can't forget, that there are players on the battlefield that want fun. Units standing in nomans-land for minutes isn't fun. Therefor as you said in your introduction, the game is foremost a FPS and than a RTS.
2.) <b>The zero-sum nature of resource acquisition and territory control.</b>
RTs are a sign of territorial control in NS2. You can't really compare it to SC here, because in SC you need to pay for your troops. The whole concept of resources is another in NS2. No matter what you change (longer building times for RTs, higher cost of RTs) there is always the incentive to build them and hope the enemy will not bother to destroy them or sell them if the enemy is attacking them. They are more comparable with Capture-Points in Company of Heroes. And I think this concept does fit NS2 much better than an SC resource concept that is build around complete different game behaviors.
To your other point: Summit and Tram are this kind of "bike wheel"-maps, yes. Even Docking to some extend. Veil has another (refreshing) layout. I'm all with you in making the maps more complex. More paths from room to room. More vents. Less linear hallways that have only one entrance and one exit. I think this could be enough to create more interesting and varying battle locations. Increasing Resource Nodes has been seen in some maps to destroy the balance of the game. The timings of some tech is balanced through the game by cost. Having to many res nodes leads to matches with nearly no early- and mid-game and create an overall boring experience.
Also having bigger maps only increases boring walk-times AND creates even more incentive to build lonely RTs, because the enemy doesn't bother to walk all the way only to get down one RT.
3.) <b>The non-existence of strategies with consequences and responses.</b>
Ouuu... nonono. I know you see this from the RTS-view. But you can't complain that a single player with FPS-skill can turn a game around but on the other hand demand that a single player with more RTS-skill can turn the game around.
If you increase the weight of the decisions of the commander, you let every other player suffer from bad decisions of one player. If you say, the com should be able to win the game, you also they, that the com should be able to lose the game by bad decisions. While this is already true to some extend, it is in no way fun for all the other players in the team, when the com screws the match by a false decision. You simply can't ruin the fun of many players only to give one player more power of decisions. This is the literally best example of why the devs say "The game is an FPS first and foremost, and if need be, elements of RTS will be sacrificed to to preserve FPS gameplay." Simply because the fun of many players is more important than the fun of one player.
As I said, that doesn't mean that the com has no importance of decision. If you are a good com, you can coordinate your troops to very effective and focused pushes. This (while one of a few) is a very powerful tactic, that only good coms with some social skills can pull out. Also when to research what is important and can win / lose games. The only problem right now, is that there is very little variance in strategy, because they are not really balanced. Shift first and PhaseTech first seems to grant the highest winning chances so this is chosen mostly. But this is another topic.
Something could be said for bigger maps, and I'm sure anyone that played NS1 feels the current NS2 maps are fairly cramped, but I'm sure those things will all come in time. NS2 is still practically in its infancy and should be allowed some growing room.
And as far as it never being a competitive game goes, I think the success of NS1 in that aspect speaks volumes for the potential that NS2 has.
One doesn't have to play to see the differences. Watching a stream is enough atleast for me.
While it sure is another category it isn't solely "better" in comp games.
The difference is, that you need real social commanding skills to command a pub-game. While in comp-games the players know who to listen to.
See the challenge in commanding real humans instead of clicking to send some pixels over the map like in SC. NS is the first <u>real</u> FPS/RTS-Hybrid you have to play this game very different than a pure FPS or RTS game. And suddenly there is a complete new kind of strategy and tactic in it you just have to discover by using your social skills while commanding.
Aliens = Skulk/Gorge/Fade + Cara/Blink/Leap/Adren/Regen
Marines = Mines/Shotgun/GL + Armour/Weaps + PG + JP
That is off the top of my head, but that is all we see in competitive games. If we think that competitive games are the most efficient way to play this game then you have to realise that it means a lot is being excluded because it does not work. Not to say it couldn't, but they need to be balanced so that they can work their way into the competitive scene.
What happens in competitive games often works its way into public servers.
But I totally disagree with the OP, as some of the recent twitch streams have been awesome to watch.
1) The game is unbalanced (upgrades, lifeforms, maps, ...) so there is often only one obvious choice.
2) Alien tech <strike>tree</strike> bush, abilities being linked to second hive, researchable abilities/upgrades for differentially abundant/important lifeforms.
3) Pres on marine side removing trade-off between army and economy/tech.
4) Lots of in-game walhack minimizing the need of proper scouting.
5) Very little cheesy strategies.
6) Generally not very deep tech trees.
Aliens running and blinking around you, spamming their melee and hoping to hit something really doesnt need much judgement calls - there is just no option left.
Imho, it's just bad gameplay in a game with potential.
2. I could not agree more with this. I HATE that the entire map is always under someones control. Gone are the days of NS1 where a good 20-30% of all res nodes would be uncapped, simply because they were too risky to take. Now the only objective is to take as much of the map as possible and continue to take it again and again whenever it is lost. This reduces commanding in NS2 to more of a point and click adventure game.
3. Also goes back to the dumbing down of commanding. Tech is no longer in a tree shape. where choices must be made at branches. Instead it is a totem pole with both teams racing to the top.