120 Hz Monitors, Alien Vision, And Scans
Robby
Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
Wall of text indeed. Some topics just aren't for the rushers. 
I want to talk about these three things kind of separately, and not in combination. It's not that i have issues with following motion with alien vision active while using a 120 Hz monitor or the like.
Let's get this out the way first; i'm an ex professional FPS gamer. My aim was once among the best in the Europe. That was almost ten years ago, so it's not something that i can use as an argument for having problems with aiming today. But in terms of potential, and huge past successes in the domain of aiming, i think it's fair to mention and keep in mind that this ain't no troll stomping about, writing all this. As i'm not nearly as good at gaming these days i think it's high time that i turn to the community to see what your views are.
The only time i evolve to anything as an alien is to help the commander as a gorge when nobody else is and to go onos just to help clean up the last base after a 45 minute game that won't end due to a marine team that refuse to use the concede function. I think it's so easy to skulk that i don't even see the point with doing something as overkill as go fade.
But you know what? Even an old ex champion like myself would be at the bottom of the scoreboard if it wasn't for alien vision. I wouldn't hit a damn thing in this game if the enemy wasn't an orange beacon of light in the middle of dark blue surroundings. Not because i can't aim, but because i can't see. (And no, i don't have any eye-sight problems.) Aiming is about eye-to-hand coordination. Thus, regardless of how good the hand-part is in this equation, you can't really aim for shiz if your eyes can't follow the enemy's movement-path, which i believe is more difficult in NS2 than in any other FPS game. I believe this mostly is due to the fact that NS2 is such a bland game when it comes to colors. This is of course the way it was meant to be. But that's why alien vision to me feels like a cheat. It gives you too much of an advantage. It makes too much of a difference. That one feature alone should not make players go from intermediate to skilled, which i believe is exactly what it has the potential of doing.
Both the marines and the aliens blend in too easily with the walls around them for my taste. I of course competed during a time when the ease of identifying enemy models was an actual part of the rules of the leagues.
But what do you guys think? Would NS2 be a more fun game if all enemies were easier to see, for all players, both sides? I think that's a good question that deserves some experimentation. I mean, if it would be easier for everyone to see each other, this would obviously mean that more bullets and bites/strikes would hit, thus killing players faster. However, it would then be more of an actual battle of aim (from my definition of that aim is eye-to-hand coordination) rather than a battle of who uses alien vision and whether or not the marine commander is generous with the scans.
When i command the marine team, i keep every major battle well scanned. I don't see the point with researching armor- and weapon-upgrades and advanced weapons if you're not also going to spend 3 res on the most crucial weapon of them all; distinct vision over enemy movement. It's also a huge morale-booster which i've noticed actually makes people more actively offensive, which is exactly what many marine teams lack.
As you may have figured out already, i as an old FPS gamer consider that clearly seeing the enemy is way more important than realism. How fun would a shooter be if a big part of the reason why you couldn't become very good at it was because the enemies simply were too difficult to see? I believe that NS2 is somewhere in-between in this aspect. It's not a disaster thanks to alien vision and scans, but it would definitely feel like more of a battle of aim (which typically is the practical and fun-to-learn skill that define the winners and loser in FPS games) if changes were made that took away the aliens' exaggerated enemy light-up during alien vision and that instead made both marines and aliens simply more visible.
Here's the thing though; it seems taboo to even mention how much easier it becomes to kill with alien vision. At least while in-game. Nobody wants to admit that they'd suck without it. And the marine stackers naturally despise it. I'm absolutely certain that there's plenty of NS2 players out there who are alien vision addicts too, yet who never would admit that it's the secret behind their successes. Whether or not you're ready to admit this, i still think that you could bring something to the table of whether of a debate; should marine players light up so clearly in alien vision? Flashlights don't make the aliens much easier to see. It's just a means of lighting up the environment so you can see where you're going in a room in which the power node was recently destroyed.
To those (most likely VERY) few of you who've got PCs powerful enough to play NS2 with far above 60 FPS during combat and who thereby can enjoy (and are enjoying) the brilliance of a 120hz monitor, i have the question; How much would you honestly say that experiencing NS2 this way helps in terms of the aiming situation? Is it even more helpful than alien vision? Did you try using a 60hz screen before and thus clearly know the difference?
I don't at all intend to push my wishes onto neither the community nor the developers. I'm genuinely curious to how many that actually believe that the lack of clearly seeing the enemy's movement-paths is seriously affecting their performance. Whether you agree with me fully or can't relate to anything i'm writing, i'd still be interested to read what you've got to say. As an FPS veteran i believe that being really good at the game equals to having the most fun while playing it. And having such a tough time seeing the enemy, NS2 thus falls into a new category of FPS games that i really don't know whether it's on the good or bad side of the spectrum. In other words, i'm still confused over what should be done, if something should.
I want to end this post with reminding you all that i'm for nerfing the alien team because i myself find it much too easy to win while playing it, in a lot more ways than just the alien vision, by the way. I'm not a marine-only player who wants wall-hacks to improve my KD ratio. I'm a concerned veteran who is way more tired of winning as alien than i'm tired of losing as marine.
Sorry for the disorganized categorization of the paragraphs. I'm just writing it as i'm thinking it.
I want to talk about these three things kind of separately, and not in combination. It's not that i have issues with following motion with alien vision active while using a 120 Hz monitor or the like.
Let's get this out the way first; i'm an ex professional FPS gamer. My aim was once among the best in the Europe. That was almost ten years ago, so it's not something that i can use as an argument for having problems with aiming today. But in terms of potential, and huge past successes in the domain of aiming, i think it's fair to mention and keep in mind that this ain't no troll stomping about, writing all this. As i'm not nearly as good at gaming these days i think it's high time that i turn to the community to see what your views are.
The only time i evolve to anything as an alien is to help the commander as a gorge when nobody else is and to go onos just to help clean up the last base after a 45 minute game that won't end due to a marine team that refuse to use the concede function. I think it's so easy to skulk that i don't even see the point with doing something as overkill as go fade.
But you know what? Even an old ex champion like myself would be at the bottom of the scoreboard if it wasn't for alien vision. I wouldn't hit a damn thing in this game if the enemy wasn't an orange beacon of light in the middle of dark blue surroundings. Not because i can't aim, but because i can't see. (And no, i don't have any eye-sight problems.) Aiming is about eye-to-hand coordination. Thus, regardless of how good the hand-part is in this equation, you can't really aim for shiz if your eyes can't follow the enemy's movement-path, which i believe is more difficult in NS2 than in any other FPS game. I believe this mostly is due to the fact that NS2 is such a bland game when it comes to colors. This is of course the way it was meant to be. But that's why alien vision to me feels like a cheat. It gives you too much of an advantage. It makes too much of a difference. That one feature alone should not make players go from intermediate to skilled, which i believe is exactly what it has the potential of doing.
Both the marines and the aliens blend in too easily with the walls around them for my taste. I of course competed during a time when the ease of identifying enemy models was an actual part of the rules of the leagues.
But what do you guys think? Would NS2 be a more fun game if all enemies were easier to see, for all players, both sides? I think that's a good question that deserves some experimentation. I mean, if it would be easier for everyone to see each other, this would obviously mean that more bullets and bites/strikes would hit, thus killing players faster. However, it would then be more of an actual battle of aim (from my definition of that aim is eye-to-hand coordination) rather than a battle of who uses alien vision and whether or not the marine commander is generous with the scans.
When i command the marine team, i keep every major battle well scanned. I don't see the point with researching armor- and weapon-upgrades and advanced weapons if you're not also going to spend 3 res on the most crucial weapon of them all; distinct vision over enemy movement. It's also a huge morale-booster which i've noticed actually makes people more actively offensive, which is exactly what many marine teams lack.
As you may have figured out already, i as an old FPS gamer consider that clearly seeing the enemy is way more important than realism. How fun would a shooter be if a big part of the reason why you couldn't become very good at it was because the enemies simply were too difficult to see? I believe that NS2 is somewhere in-between in this aspect. It's not a disaster thanks to alien vision and scans, but it would definitely feel like more of a battle of aim (which typically is the practical and fun-to-learn skill that define the winners and loser in FPS games) if changes were made that took away the aliens' exaggerated enemy light-up during alien vision and that instead made both marines and aliens simply more visible.
Here's the thing though; it seems taboo to even mention how much easier it becomes to kill with alien vision. At least while in-game. Nobody wants to admit that they'd suck without it. And the marine stackers naturally despise it. I'm absolutely certain that there's plenty of NS2 players out there who are alien vision addicts too, yet who never would admit that it's the secret behind their successes. Whether or not you're ready to admit this, i still think that you could bring something to the table of whether of a debate; should marine players light up so clearly in alien vision? Flashlights don't make the aliens much easier to see. It's just a means of lighting up the environment so you can see where you're going in a room in which the power node was recently destroyed.
To those (most likely VERY) few of you who've got PCs powerful enough to play NS2 with far above 60 FPS during combat and who thereby can enjoy (and are enjoying) the brilliance of a 120hz monitor, i have the question; How much would you honestly say that experiencing NS2 this way helps in terms of the aiming situation? Is it even more helpful than alien vision? Did you try using a 60hz screen before and thus clearly know the difference?
I don't at all intend to push my wishes onto neither the community nor the developers. I'm genuinely curious to how many that actually believe that the lack of clearly seeing the enemy's movement-paths is seriously affecting their performance. Whether you agree with me fully or can't relate to anything i'm writing, i'd still be interested to read what you've got to say. As an FPS veteran i believe that being really good at the game equals to having the most fun while playing it. And having such a tough time seeing the enemy, NS2 thus falls into a new category of FPS games that i really don't know whether it's on the good or bad side of the spectrum. In other words, i'm still confused over what should be done, if something should.
I want to end this post with reminding you all that i'm for nerfing the alien team because i myself find it much too easy to win while playing it, in a lot more ways than just the alien vision, by the way. I'm not a marine-only player who wants wall-hacks to improve my KD ratio. I'm a concerned veteran who is way more tired of winning as alien than i'm tired of losing as marine.
Sorry for the disorganized categorization of the paragraphs. I'm just writing it as i'm thinking it.
Comments
In pubs though it probably has a big impact for most alien players who use it so your point is valid enough.
It's called playing marines.
As for using alien vision and sight - NS2 is somewhat inherently dark, I would say its more the brightness than anything. As for needing scans I have pretty much no trouble seeing skulks as marine, but I do use a higher gamma setting.
This is where I have to depart from this train of thought. While I accept your perspective on the matter, and appreciate your skill and experience with regards to this topic, I personally do not like the overemphasis placed on aim in many of today's online shooters. When games were simpler, and hardware could only handle the most basic of functionality in a game, aim was all we had. There was simply you and a bunch of other dudes, and you all had guns and a crosshair, and the best aim won. That was fine for the time, but things have changed now.
Many people think that there are so called "skill equalisers" which ultimately detract from the paramount skill of aim, things like vision obscuration, massive health pools, asymmetric weapon match ups etc. In my opinion it is quite the reverse. Aim is the skill equaliser for intelligent and tactical play, and in my opinion, aim is featuring less and less in shooters every year.
The problem I have with aim is that its just so basic, so primitive. That isn't to say that its easy, or that I could simply have god like aiming if I wanted to. However, its akin to, for a rough example, someone who can lift a really heavy weight. Sure, the weight is damn heavy, and no way in hell I could ever lift it, and congratulations to them for being able to, but is it a skill? To me it isn't, because its entirely physical, and humans are intellectual beings. The true magic happens in our brain, the way we out think others, rather than simply move a mouse better than they can.
That, I suppose, is simply just another form of aiming though, the "predictive aimer", which is not your typical knee jerk reaction aimer. I, for example, have pretty bad aim, yet I still kill quite efficiently and on a large scale (pub hero inc) because I practice a lot of predictive aiming. Luckily enough, predictive aim has a very low reliance on being able to clearly see your enemy.
Just my (perhaps ignorant) 2 cents on a topic which I also think quite a lot about.
Artificially introduced handicaps or crutches in a game, simply detract from those pure gameplay elements...
I don't think a lot of the people posting here have ever played Q3A or watched top level players play Q3A or HLDM.
Well yes. You can never entirely remove those aspects from a game which is set in a 3D environment. Some advantage will always be gained from the way in which you traverse the environment, and good players will identify that advantage and allot a certain amount of time and effort into taking full advantage of it... but how much of a roll did it really play?
I mean, if you had to divvy up the overall "percentage" of focus given to three gameplay elements, namely aim, movement, and tactics, how would you do it for these three games?
Quake 3
Counter-Strike
Natural-Selection 1/2
To put my opinion in perspective, I see it like this.
Quake 3
Aim: 50
Movement: 40
Tactics: 10
Counter-Strike
Aim: 70
Movement: 5
Tactics: 25
Natural-Selection 1 / 2
Aim: 20 / 35
Movement: 30 / 30
Tactics: 50 / 35
*These values aren't comprable between games. Aim of 70 in CS doesn't mean you needed more aim than Quake 3
s 50. It just meant more overall focus in that game environment went to aim.
It is the core of those three games you listed along with some others (Unreal, HLDM and so on). NS1/2 has a nice addition to this called reload and energy management. Which could translate into Quake or Unreal as knowing where and when your pickups respawn.
The thing is, NS2 has way too many "immersion" or visual obscuring going on for its own good. I've said this many times already. But the only things I personally find acceptable in terms of balancing the combat are the bite cams, the spores/umbra and the muzzle flash.
More personal opinion ranting from me now:
It annoys me when people mention things like respawns in support of tactics in those kind of games. Knowing respawn routes, and timing, is not tactics, simple because there is an answer. If you plug the initial conditions into a computer, a split second later it will give you the optimal answer. If a player can definitively know the answer then it isn't tactics.
Tactical decisions have no answer. You're in a room and someone is coming in from another entrance, where should you stand? Well, does he know you are there? How fast is he moving? Does he have full health? Are there more than one? Where will he be looking? Are you going to try and kill him? How long until backup arrives for him? All these questions essentially don't have answers. The information you have at your disposal is too limited, and any answers you come up with are guesses. Nothing to do with tactics can be known, only assumed. Real tacticians simply assume correctly more often than average ones. They just guess better.
For me, DayZ, and to a greater extent, games like Arma 2, perfectly illustrate this. The game is so true to life that, in combat, hell, everything seems completely random. It is so difficult to know what to do, because there is just so much information, and you just don't know what to do with it. Aim plays basically no role. If I was to give aim a rating as I did previously in DayZ or Arma 2, it would be less than 5. All that matters is tactics. And in fact the tactics are so mind blowingly complex, than in 90% of cases outcomes are essentially random because nobody has enough information to make the right decision. But those who do know the tactics, and how to make the right decisions, well when they play average players it just becomes a joke. Aim lets you take on 10 other players? Tactics will let you take on 100s.
Aiming your weapons still had a VERY big part in that game, simply because of the fact that if you do not hit your target they have time to retaliate. I used to play a lot on the Allied team, because the Germans had much better weaponry and tanks. So making a mistake would be much more likely to end up in disaster.
Not knowing information about a certain situation is your own lack of situation awareness, something that comes from movement, observing, sounds and game knowledge. On high level play those things become more and more automated. After a while you can anticipate if you can or cannot win an engagement based on your aiming skills, positioning skills, movement skills, knowing where to and when to retreat if things go sour and listening for potential reinforcement form your or the enemy team. Also in some cases it is perfectly acceptable to do a suicide rush as well in NS(2), to absorb bullets that defends other (at that time) more important/expensive units.
So as you can see, all of it is part of the bigger picture as I've said before. Where aim is the main tool for your survival, the rest is situation awareness
I could however further explain why i believe this by replying to your other post:
For starters; the game modes i competed in in UT are called Instagib DM and Instagib CTF. Instagib is a mode in which there are no powerups whatsoever and all players only carry a single weapon that is direct-hit from any distance, has unlimited ammo and that can fire only once a second. This essentially makes iDM a sniper-fest minus the scopes and the camping. Twitchy hand-movements, a mouse-sensitivity setting individually perfected down to the third decimal (no joke), and the highest demands for quick reflexes in the e-sports world. iDM = 100% aim. If you miss a single shot, you're dead. Movement was no obstacle whatsoever to the really good aimers back then.
As i see it, this is where the true champions of FPS gaming came from and will remain. There's nothing but you, an enemy, two identical weapons on a symmetrical map. No advantages whatsoever. Anyone can learn tactics and plan this and that. But the greatest aimers are (or at least were) less than 20 the world over.
iCTF has the same weapons-system though with teams of four or five that involves capturing the other team's flag. This of course requires movement, though more in terms of communication and co-ordination with the team of which path to chose depending on where the enemy is. My role in the teams i played with was usually the mid-fielder, who's task it is to cover our flag-carrier and shoot down the enemy flag-carrier, thus in large only requiring aim. I played this part not because i lack the ability to plan tactics, but because i had the fastest and most accurate hands in Europe. Putting the right man in the right spot is obviously an important part of any battle.
Could i had done this if i didn't clearly see the enemy the split-second he came around a corner? Of course not. My skills would never had been discovered if it wasn't for games such as UT. NS2 for one certainly isn't about head-shots or one-shot shock rifles, so i do realize that i'm not exactly "at home" in this game. That doesn't necessarily mean that i don't have a voice concerning the unfair advantage of orange pillars representing the enemies during alien vision.
The only two elements in CS that needs to be taken into consideration of the aim vs movement vs tactics debate is the sound of footsteps and well-placed campers. The camping-spots are known by all who compete, so it's more of a game of faking-out the enemy team than it is to shoot the enemy while you're partly invisible. The best aimers easily head-shot campers and strafers alike, one-on-one. However, with team-work you can of course ensure that you and a team-mate get LOS over an enemy at the same time, thus doubling your chances of surviving. But still, once you and the enemy see each other in a competitive match, that battle's over in 0.5 seconds. So movement isn't really applicable here. Though tactics is.
Just thought i could help giving some input on these matters.
For the record, i've seen quite a few competitive matches in modern FPS games since i quit. And your theory of modern games being a lot less about aiming is at least practically easy to confirm, because today's FPS champions would have been absolutely battered if they stepped into a time-machine and faced someone like me back then. The people who win today's e-sports championships make me drop my jaw in how little practical aiming-skill it requires to get a big ol' trophy from a couple of skirts. That's neither insult nor boast. Ask any old UT or CS champion what they think of today's FPS tournaments and you'll receive a similar reply even from the most neutral person.
You may think that tactics and planning are more important, and in todays games they certainly may be, but nothing takes more work and time to perfect than aim. Nothing. That's why i consider it the most honorable and respectable talents of gaming. If you don't consider this a skill, i don't even know what the heck has happened to the FPS genre since i quit. FPS was that one genre that always was about practical skill. Not about planning or taking your time. That's what RTS was for.
For those frequent situations where alien vision isn't available?
Enemy recognition is another of those; in 'competitive' play, a majority of 'top tier' players seem to tend toward a flat-textured arena set with fullbright models and solid-color enemies to allow for near-instant IFF recognition at any range.
There's a reason these solid-color reskins are considered 'cheats' in most common (non-Q3A) competitive play. It grants a significant advantage both in reaction time, and reduces the chance that a player will commit an error by not visually recognizing that an enemy is present/is an enemy.
It removes a skill from the palette, catering the game toward those who have ONLY developed their twitch-aiming. In the case of instagib, this is only exacerbated as there is no need to anticipate and follow a target (removing THAT skill); you only need to fire once.
Alien sight does grant an advantage. This is mostly-intentional, and is one of the things that helps to counter the Marines' range advantage; Marines have to be able to visually distinguish between what's an alien, and what is just part of the level. Additionally, alien vision was originally intended more to grant a Kharaa advantage in dark rooms... with the full-dark removed (aside from the brief power-loss effect), it is less necessary. I think I would prefer to see Alien Vision become closer to monochromatia; in dark rooms (and red-lit), maintain it as-is now. But in fully powered rooms, fade the bright orange toward the background color. Maybe just slightly off from the background.
This would also place even more importance on killing power nodes; with no power, Marines are easier for the Hivesight to identify.
If you would like a game totally reliant on aim though, I would strongly recommend giving Shootmania a look. It takes those old instagib and 'top level' standards to their logical extremes. Really a game where nothing matters aside from the mechanical ability to twitch-shoot mindlessly, as the title would suggest.
I also think it's ridiculous that I have to use alien vision to play properly, especially when that vision nullifies all the work mappers/artists do in the first place. I find it doubly ridiculous that alien vision has awkward drawbacks like not being able to see certain projectiles as it feels really tacked on or as if it's actually just an oversight.
What compounds my irritation further is that most people don't play with the same disadvantages anyway (myself included - I ramp gamma up as high as I can). Nobody actually makes genuine use of darkness to ambush because you're never sure if your opponent is playing by the same rules and I've yet to see a single instance of a from-the-dark-ambush in a competitive game.
Basically, I don't think we can approach darkness as if it is adding to the game tactically or skillfully because it's always a byproduct of far more important factors.
Yikes. That's a scary read for an FPS vet!
However, you and i actually want the same thing when you think about it! The potential changes to the game that i've mentioned above would make it easier for everyone to see the enemy and his movement, thus making it easier to deal with the FPS part of the game, without pushing out any of the RTS-skills that you're talking about. I want to make it easier to shoot, so that even RTS players like you can handle that better.
Case and point: I never use alien vision; the only exception being when the room goes dark because the power's down. It doesn't handicap me in the slightest, even though I play for and against the best teams in the world.
Those are considered cheats in NS2 as well. Fullbright models/maps will never be acceptable in NS2, but it might be beneficial, particularly for new players, to have players stand out from their surroundings a bit more.
I do like that marines see 'less'. Yes, I try to play both marines and kharaa.
having alien vision show more textures for pretty is what im after, but I am for letting them have there benefit of vision. NS1 also gave them a vision which was superior to marines.
Not to detract from the rest of your well-stated points, but alien vision isn't an unfair advantage. It's just an advantage. NS2 is asymmetrical, so each side has many different advantages over the other; AV is one for the aliens.
It might be an unbalanced advantage, though. Not in the sense of balancing aliens vs. marines, but in balancing AV vs. normal sight for the aliens. If AV provides such a huge advantage with no meaningful tradeoff, then having normal sight is pointless because nobody will use it. And that in fact seems to be happening, as I've seen countless recommendations to always play with AV and never turn it off.
As for your other points:
I'm an utter FPS newbie. Well, technically, I played a lot of Doom when it first came out, but not much since then, so perhaps that makes me a born-again newbie. I started again recently for exactly two reasons: Natural Selection 2 and Planetside 2. They both looked so different from the typical shooter, each with their own compelling gameplay, that I decided to make the investment in equipment and playtime that I knew they would require. So here's my perspective on your questions, speaking as someone whose experience is the complete opposite of yours, but perhaps speaking on behalf of a large potential market for this game.
In PS2, for a good long time I couldn't hit anything because I literally could not see what I was supposed to shoot at. Nobody else seemed to have any problem seeing me, mind you. I picked up a night vision scope and suddenly started getting kills, simply because I could finally ID my targets before they filled me full of lead. With practice I've gotten much better at target acquisition, and now the NV scope is a situational accessory rather than a necessity. By contrast, in NS2 I've never felt like I had any problem spotting my enemies. I have trouble hitting them, but that's due to my horrible aiming, tracking, and twitching skills; I can see them just fine.
A big draw to NS2 and PS2 for me, though, is the notion that maybe, just maybe, it's not quite so critical to see, aim, track, and twitch. I like that awareness is important, that tactics are important, that teamwork and communication is important, and most especially that strategy is important. The hand-eye coordination tasks engage me physically, but the rest engage me mentally. I like the combination. Very much. If the other parts weren't there, it wouldn't be the same game, and I wouldn't want to play.
I just feel there are certain areas in maps where the colors blend too closely to a marine or skulk color, especially on infestation. It can be annoying to momentarily lose track of someone for a split second because my eyes cant track them over a background that is the exact same color as a skulk or marine. Maybe i need to crank up gamma so there arent as many dark places left, though i still wish the models used slightly different colors from the map colors, if they is even possible.
I tend to agree with you overall. I'm the same way in terms of playing aliens, it's too easy. So I usually go marine since more people stack aliens of late, and it's more of a challenge.
When I turned on alien vision for the first time (in the pre-release beta) I honestly thought it was a graphic bug. It just seemed too good.
Do I play with it on? Of course. I'm not going to intentionally put myself at a disadvantage. The real problem is that alien vision is so good there is really no reason not to have it on. What's the point of all these finely crafted maps and environments when the alien team doesn't even see them? I can appreciate why they did it. There was something similar in NS1 to limited extent, but it wasn't something the aliens got by default. I kinda miss NS1 where you could parasite a marine and it meant something. Although the flipside to that is that many people suicided when parasited.
I don't think they can remove it at this stage of the game, even if they wanted to. There would be an uproar for sure.
However, what I considered (when I pondered this issue) was to tie alien vision to power nodes. When the power node is in the socket - and the lights are on - the alien vision is disabled. (by virtue of the lights disrupting it) When the power node is destroyed and the lights are off, alien vision is back on. This would accomplish a few things. First it would make power nodes important for BOTH sides, since having power in a room would give marines an advantage over aliens and vice versa. (to make this work, rooms without a power node would start with lights off, since aliens can't kill a power node that isn't socketed yet.) Second, it would make territorial control that much more important for both teams.
Furthermore, alien vision actually breaks TWO of Chalie's high-level design rules.
#1: Tradeoffs There is no downside to alien vision.
#2: Purity of purpose/Non-obsolescence Alien vision makes normal vision obsolete.
I'd love it if a group of people (perhaps a couple comp teams) experimented by having a game where the alien side agreed not to use alien vision. I wonder how that would impact the balance of their game?
Also I want to ask you Robby, what are your reaction times (or if you know, what were they)? Unless you know where a target will be you can't even begin to aim before you have time to react, and even if you do you need that reaction window before you can shoot. Reaction speed is about as much of a skill as height is a skill for a basketball player, so in other words not at all and almost entirely out of the control of the player. Personally my reactions run between .2 and .3 seconds and all the practice in the world won't push me over .2
There is a trade off to alien vision. If you are fighting in the marine base for example, than between the marines, aliens, and marine buildings it can actually be harder to see the marines with alien vision off than on because ALL of those things are the same color. In addition, alien vision struggles with transparency, so gorge shots (both spit and bile) and glass and whether or not a phasegate is active are nearly impossible to see.
In terms of purity of purpose, alien vision is for target acquisition (spotting a marine) and normal vision is for target differentiation (telling the difference between a marine, a fade, and an observatory). Both work for the other purpose to an extent of course, just like a shotgun can still attack at long range, just less effectively.
Just like an LMG is clearly superior to a pistol MOST of the time, alien vision is clearly superior to normal vision MOST of the time. That doesn't make the pistol or normal vision totally obsolete though.
I did a bit of stuff in Q3A, but that was mostly "For fun", I never got into the competitive side of things.
Aim is easily the most important skill in any FPS game, NS2 included.
To say that it isn't, just isn't true.
Sure you can out think people, but even if you get the drop on them, if your aim isn't up to snuff, you're gonna die.
Yup, doesn't matter how good your plan is if you can't execute it.
Again, aim is a factor.