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Kamamura
Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
This suggestion is motivated by a problem that occurs in public games. Inexperienced marine players often fail to organize coordinated attacks, they do not move in groups, but trickle one-by-one into enemy territory to be killed by ambushes, or just hang in base where it is intuitively "safe". Such behavior of course leads to poor map control and lost games, adding frustration to many commanders, whose verbal encouragements are often ignored.
To counter this, I propose a visual clue in the form of battle banner floating above a player selected by the commander, visible only to his fellow marines. Creation of the banner could be accompanied with a message "Player xxx has been promoted to sergeant", and verbal pre-recorded "Follow your sergeant to battle!" in the same voice as "build objective" and similar messages already in the game.
This "promotion" would have no effect on the game mechanics other than being a visual manifestation of the commander's wish that the players rally around the selected (probably more experienced/skilled) player. It would also be useful for rallying supporting welders for advancing exos.
Similar feature called "pack leader" or "alpha" could be considered for aliens, but the need is not as great as in case of marines who greatly depend on overlapping fields of fire and mutual support.
To counter this, I propose a visual clue in the form of battle banner floating above a player selected by the commander, visible only to his fellow marines. Creation of the banner could be accompanied with a message "Player xxx has been promoted to sergeant", and verbal pre-recorded "Follow your sergeant to battle!" in the same voice as "build objective" and similar messages already in the game.
This "promotion" would have no effect on the game mechanics other than being a visual manifestation of the commander's wish that the players rally around the selected (probably more experienced/skilled) player. It would also be useful for rallying supporting welders for advancing exos.
Similar feature called "pack leader" or "alpha" could be considered for aliens, but the need is not as great as in case of marines who greatly depend on overlapping fields of fire and mutual support.
Comments
These tools could improve marine team cohesion. Assigning players to squads with defined objectives is also better for newer players, who are often overwhelmed by the chaotic fray on pub servers. I believe that objective-based, organized gameplay provides better motivation, and in effect greater reward and enjoyment for the players themselves.
The main problem with a squad system in NS2 is that people die. Then they respawn somewhere far away. Say your IP's are in Terminal. Your "squad" is attacking maintenance from courtyard. You died in the fight and have just respawned. East wing is now under attack. Do you just go and rejoin your "squad" or go and get East Wing? (If you answered East Wing you're right).
NS2 relies on a flexible system, something like a squad system would end up being a supreme hassle for a comm to upkeep, or else it would just go unused. So yeah, squads would be awesome, but I can't see how they'd work.
That said. I'm all in favor of having the comm able to choose one person as a "field commander" of sorts. The only difference being that their chat and speak messages show up a different color. I suppose they could get some sort of visual appearance tweak if necessary, but nothing UI cluttering or too distracting.
So you run around in a group of three, skulks attack you and you gain a resource income bonus for fighting together (does not have to be for shooting the same target, just sticking together to cover each other). Same with building up, if one person builds up the buddys around them who guard the area gain a small resource bonus as well, even if no enemy appears (this might also help with the annoying 'five marines build the same structure and noone guards, all die by one skulk' issue <-- Yes this is exaggerated, but not much).
If players stray apart too far (lets say 15 meters, just as an example) the effect becomes weaker and/or dissappears. To show the player that he is currently part of a squad/pack an icon appears on their HUD. Boosted resource trickles are shown in yellow/green colours to indicate that you got boosted resources. There could be a timer so people running out of a room hunting a near-dead gorge don't get cut off immediately. Also the Commander should be able to select such packs easily (maybe they auto-form command groups) to order them around.
I still think the solution of all of these problems is simply communication. As long as you're communicating and people are slightly competant, they should work together (note that communicate is a two way exchange of information). So anything else on top of that will simply add to the confusion and complicatedness.
Yeah, if it was points it would be useless (I actually only use tab to see how many people on my team are dead or how many team-res my comm has while playing as alien).
I was thinking along the lines that a kill gives 0.1 pres per interval while with buddies, same for 500 HP built/repaired per interval. Of course, you could go RPG/RTS on this and give units a damage/speed/armor/insert stat here boost, but I think this might be more detoriating to gameplay than a little pocket money.