Still standing by my opinion that alien commanders ruined NS2.
PoNeH
Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58801Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58801Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Having to rely on teamwork in pub games is probably the most frustrating thing about this game. What made NS1 a success to me, was the simple fact that each side had a very distinct gameplay style. If I was playing in a server that was primarily comprised of inexperienced players (let's be honest, most of them are)... well... I went Alien. Having the ability to play more a individualistic game was key to keeping the game fresh (and keeping my stress level under control). As long as someone was saving for the hive, then you had a chance. NS2's replayability is pretty much non-existent in comparison to the prequel.
My $0.02...
My $0.02...
Comments
Regardless of that semantic though, i find "teamwork" not only existed in ns1 for aliens as well, but ns2's khamm mechanic doesn't really require team work.. In fact you can have an absolutely silent khamm..
Try that on marines without getting ejected.
So, i fail to see your point
Or someone else could just make a ns2 themed mod for half life 3 on source 2 and we can all move there.
I'm 100% for a massive fade buff and reimplemenetation of gorges building rts and hives, and people dropping rts then saving for lerk, and regen buff, and celerity buff, and adrenaline doubling replenishing rate, and the uselessness of hydras, and focus, and metabolize, and no babblers, and hives scaling armor
And INCREASED SHOTGUN ROF. Also shotguns that register, like the balance mod (what happened in 250 anyway)
So how hard is it to see out of one eye?
http://gifs.gifbin.com/032010/1269259657_omg_cat.gif
Stop embedding your images, this is not an image board. Funny as they may be. ;-)
If to remove alien comm (By Mr. Nihil):
-Upgrade system should be remade, so it would still go in desired direction and provide useful buffs, not be upgraded everywhere or not at all, or over-upgraded.
-Meddling with alien resource system could be mandatory in some way,
-It would be fun where gorge would be responsible for building healing stations, or offensive/defensive posts like camowhips, even if there would be a commander, I say gorges could do that micro better since concentrating on that particular front or area.
-It would be even more fun to make alien spawn system not be bound to control point, but they could hatch literary everywhere, where gorge would make nest, like a true infestation. Hives could be used as usual, but be stripped from egg duty.
I know, most tremolous-like ideas, but that game is very cool and I would deffinitely play a tremolous mod on NS2.
The source of lifeform explosion is from the original roles and designs which were based off of said tres model. These designs were dropped into a completely different economical model and expected to work the same. Sure they have been tweaked constantly and incessantly, but this was in lieu of actual redesigns that would better fit the newer model.
The only way to have a harmonic relationship between pres and tiered classes, is to ensure strict and proper roles - fleshing out RPS mechanics - which would make fade balls and any other explosion suicide. (a good example is exosuit design, a whole team of em = facepalm)
I agree.
THat is why marine PRES needs to be removed as well. It is retarded that at 4 minutes marines go from 6-8 LMG's to 6-8 Shotguns. Then 7 minutes (aliens holding 3 RT), aliens go from 4 skulks + 1 lerk to 4 fades + 1 lerk.
Removing marine PRES stops the entire team going from LMG -> SG
Removing Alien commander would force aliens to spend pres investing in RT's & Chambers, resulting in no life form explosion.
It worked in NS1 perfectly, however for NS2 we are forced to think of inventive ways to fix this problem.
oh, and it would also create a midgame rather then the early -> late game we currently have.
Aliens always had pres. What's new for them is tres. Gorge still feels shoehorned into the game, despite a menagerie of toys that just can't fill the void of no longer being the builder alien. Playing gorge was important, and tour team jelously protected you.
Kham still feels shoehorned into the game, with not as much to do and not as tight interaction with his team as the comm; despite various busywork and toys added to him.
A serious chunk of the charm about NS was that aliens were a decentralised hive mind and the marines centralised, and commanded top down.
I'm left wondering what is the baby in your analogy. I've yet to see any benefit of kham; not even easier to balance.
Getting rid of kham does not necessarily mean getting rid of tres. Just build from tres pool.
change the price dynamically or control the supply... both will work
Only good reason i see for removing alien commander is so it's much easier to make gorge interesting. Because spreading 1 function over two classes is never really that good an idea.
But honestly, tres/pres and alien commander are almost certainly not going to be removed for the rest of ns2's lifespan whether we like it or not. Weaknesses and strengths are well known by almost everyone. Better to spend energy discussing other things imo.
All good points, (except i feel the khamm finally feels like its demanding enough of my attention) and yea what elodea said what i meant to: its the separation of the systems combined with the same designs.
And pretty much everything else he said too.. lol
The benefits are primarily:
@male_fatalities for those reasons i just typed ^ it is actually worth a small bit of thought of how to make the circle fit into a square hole, imo.
Its really not hard - again i point to exos , or even gorge/onos and lerk /skulk relationships - all you need is complementary classes interacting with one another, each with a downside requiring said interaction to compensate.... or we could do simple like @biz said and price them dynamically.. at the cost of player aggression and frustration, "I saved up for this fade for almost 10 minutes now and someone just evolved and raised the price! ugh!" :shrug:
It really is easy, though, to design such things.. but i dont expect NS2 will be doing much redesigning after the hoopla that was 250 "A whole new world" patch.
Aliens always had PRES.
Removing alien commander does not imply removing TRES.
No, the reverse is true. The game is now more dependent on the actions of one alien commander, instead of the collective actions of a couple of gorges. You can overcome having one person dick around with OCs in a pub NS game. In NS2 if the kham rides the short bus you're all screwed.
The marine commander must talk to his team or he gets kicked out of the chair. The kham often quite doesn't. You often have no idea where he is looking, what he's doing and newbies won't know or care. Gorges they interact with, on the ground.
That's not to say that the game can't work well with an alien comm -- of course it can, and even with the alien comm it is still a good game -- but it would need a complete redesign of all the alien lifeforms and the economy to do so. Even if that was done, however, I still don't think it would be a better game than one with a communal res pool and gorge builders. One of the beautiful things about ns1 was the vast asymmetry between alien and marine play; adding an alien commander has lessened that asymmetry, and making the changes needed to make the alien commander fit properly in the game would probably mean eliminating all the meaningful asymmetry, save for the melee vs. ranged aspect.
That said, the game is what it is. It's interesting to discuss these things, but let's not delude ourselves: The alien comm is here and it is here to stay.
Funniest joke I've heard all week.
its more complicated than you appear to think and not all about this or that feature of the game.
check out the mod classic NS.
I'd love to. But mods for NS2 don't work. They break as soon as someone at UWE sneezes. If by some miracle they happen to work at the moment, that doesn't mean anyone has started a server yet.
If by some miracles the mod has been updated and a server has been started, there are usually no players.
If by some miracle there are players, it's hosted out of New Zeeland or something.
It doesn't matter what you call it : when a resource system is split into two and both sides are given adequate Amounts to accommodate *all team related needs and all player desires*, individual financial decisions (lifeforms) impact the team FAR less... Giving leniency to player choices. You now spend your resources on what you WANT to play, and alternatively to help your team, not solely because your team needed X upgrade.
Its NS mixed with combat, a bit.
The impact is not removed, however, its just lessened.
The best example of this is how gorges are still very much needed.. But if one didn't save his resources, your team isn't screwed out of getting a hive - that was taken care of by the separated resource system.
No longer are the responsibilities of individuals as severe, allowing for more choices, experiencing more facets of the game, and more n00b friendly.
how would you preserve it, then?
I meant less dependent on individual players on the ground, by creating a dedicated commander.
Your "collection of gorges" sounds nice but it didn't work that way. The cost of a hive, or any large team expenditure *came out of one person's pocket.*
Now you spend a few res here and there on optional tunnels or hydras etc at most.
So saying "if the kham is inadequate, gg" is the same as saying "no one will spend their res, gg" both have happened, and still do, but at least you can eject your kham and anyone can rectify it despite the choices they made in the round up til that point.
Edit : i will agree that the team's responsibility for it's advancement has been diminished with the inclusion of the kham
If the kham rides the short-bus, you're all ****ed. The kham's decisions are far more important than any individual alien player in NS1.
The one way in which the dual res system does reduce the impact of individual financial decisions is entirely pathological. There is no trade-off between life forms and structures. This is not an inherent flaw of having TRES, but of having a fixed partioning between TRES and PRES per player.
What if I want to be gorge and drop important structures? What if nobody wants to be kham (very frequent on pubs where nobody wants to take responsibility for screwing over the entire team; a symptom of individual decisions of the kham being too important).
In my experience this was almost never a problem. A much more frequent problem was bad commanders, which was a server-emptying disaster, in NS1 as well as NS2. Now we have 2 comms; if either is terrible it's either a rush victory or 30 minutes of pointlessly getting reamed until you inevitably lose or leaving the server.
The commander is an individual player.
There's no distinction. Some gorges got an RT and went back to skulk. Some gorges got upgrade chambers. Some player saved for a hive.
In NS2 you'll see a significant number of players who just sit on res, or repeatedly go gorge and bile bomb. The odds of getting a whole team who all want to go fade and onos is statistically insignificant.
Doesn't work that way. People are quick to eject the commander if they suck, but no one wants to take over this mess; nor do people concede a game 5 minutes in. The usual outcome is a slow and painful 30 minute stompfest or an empty server, and it occurs very frequently.
I've played thousands of NS1 rounds; and I can only remember a few times when nobody saved for a hive and nobody could be arsed to drop RTs. A more frequent problem was someone unilaterlly going gorge and dropping unpopular upgrade chambers. Or in NS 1.0x, multiple gorges or sleaze-bags going gorge to mooch res faster.
What's the mystery? You just keep it and let gorges spend TRES on structures (excluding hydra/clog/babbler).
While we may be responding to multiple quotes with one another, we seem to be saying the same thing sometimes:
This is not an inherent flaw of having TRES, but of having a fixed partioning between TRES and PRES per player.
That's basically the same thing i was saying... all it was missing was your suggestion of:
You just keep it and let gorges spend TRES on structures (excluding hydra/clog/babbler).
But don't discount the fact that because there are two resource systems now, that there is *more* resources for your individual to spend - lending to said "combat mod" gameplay of more higher lifeforms /weapons as well as the other benefits i listed previously.
So yeah, doing so would diminish the occurrence of a poor khamm ruining games... and shift the responsibility onto a team of potential rookies who have zero clue the impact their decisions will have on their team .. which is basically the same outcome. (since you keep using the extreme - and in my experience rarely seen - "shortbus" example of a khamm)
You just feel like your team of rookies failed you instead of one player. One player who typically knows what they are doing, since like you said most who wouldn't, are scared away from attempting it.
I don't see it a huge problem if this change were to be made, other than it doesn't seem worth the effort.
You're just swapping one downside for another, as long as you keep separated resource systems.