IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited June 2014
I am going to provide feedback here, because it's going to get more exposure and a larger sample size is always better.
For now i'll just provide feedback on the one mechanic that bugs me most : the skulk movement change
Here's the thing: While it may feel good, it comes with downsides that you may not realize at first.
Consider that if you increase the base speed of the skulk that this makes it *more* difficult for equally skilled marines to kill them.. at almost any skill level - and aliens do not need a general buff if you observe winrates.
Lesser skilled marines (rookies etc) already have a hard enough time tracking slow moving ground skulks and predictable walljumping trajectories.. increasing this difficulty worsens the overall winrate.
Higher tiered players will not jump around a marine that much since it creates a more predictable trajectory to track - the acceleration on the ground makes strafing much easier to "juke" a marine and get under their feet within melee range. What happens when this method is even *more* effective? It increases the impact these players have in lesser skilled environments. The opposite of a casual mod, no?
The secondary downside besides the unneeded buff, is that you are discouraging players from utilizing their environment beyond the flat ground beneath them.
It really isn't that difficult to express "Jump off of walls to gain a speed increase - chain your jumps from wall to wall to go even faster" .. in fact the video tips and written tips all say this - not to mention you can visibly watch skulks do it in every game. Teach the player, don't give up on them. Which brings me to my next point..
Proper game design should strive to teach the player, either through communication or through intuitive means (preferable) .. the skill curve implemented and the accompanying mechanics should provide this. To lower the skill ceiling (that's what this is) is to give up on proper game design.
I'd sooner support a change that gradually and intuitively brings a player to learn to walljump (a skillcurve!) - like increasing the momentum from any jump, and increasing the visual and audio feedback of connecting your first successful chaining of walljumps. (always wanted a very subtle 3 pixel instant flash around the border of the screen to denote speed increase)
Why the massive amount of hate? So someone is making a mod to try some changes they would like to make... so that's great, right? You don't like it, you don't have to play. Most likely your favourite server isn't going to be running this anyway.
I do agree though that the name feels inaccurate to me, I expected something very different when I opened the thread. Maybe that's where it's coming from.
You'd be amazed, having webs early game means you can make a more effective killbox or preplan your escape by webbing up a rear exit. Later in game it's definitely useless. Dropping the biomass level was really cheap to code, so this is an improvement over not having it used at all.
I'll admit I never saw web in play while I was a marine. I'm new to the game, so that doesn't mean a lot. So please forgive me if something like this is actually in place:
What about making the web more spider-web by making it invisible? The amount and scaling of invisibility needs to be discussed, but could look like this:
Basic web are the same, but once the commander places veils, webs become camouflaged like alien lifeforms who evolved phantom. This would boost both the usability of webs and shade hive, while leading to an ambush-focused playstyle with teamwork: Gorge places web, skulk waits camouflaged for the careless marine to ambush. Marines on the other hand are even more reliant on using the buddy-system. Maybe marines could also remove the web-effect from their buddy with axe/welder.
Oh and just another idea... making the web so that it places a warning (like the one made with middle mouse button) on the minimap, once a marine gets entangled/destroys it. Like the strings in a spider-web vibrate, once a fly gets caught. The spider (aliens) can then converge to the source of the vibration to eat the tasty marine.
This would make webs more versatile for aliens to protect against sneaky marines. Admittedly, this second idea is rather stupid. Looking carefully for hidden webs that even attract aliens in your direction might actually be more of an annoyance for the marines than anything else. But I just like the idea
Feedback post playing the mod I hope Ironhorse?!
But for me the movement/wall jumping mechanic just feels wrong, its as simple as that. skulk's most interesting feature is its ability to climb any surface so it can ambush or evade marines. The wall jumping mechanic reduces the value of using verticality to you advantage and it quite frankly is just a bit goofy. We have a vision for the mod that will hopefully come more into light as we refine and add further changes. Its not really about dumbing the game down but rather making it 'feel' less frustrating and more fun to play. For me that is a 100 times more important than balance.
My personal opinion is that the almost obsessive focus on comp balance (which frankly is impossible given how the game changes depending on skill levels) has actually been a negative factor on the games development. The design changes I push for consider fun and 'feeling' before balance. You can qualify and argue anything you like in the guise of achieving the holy grail of ns2 balance but if it leads to game that's less enjoyable then whats the point?
@meatmachie given the marine movement mechanics who doesn't miss bites?!.... I know i do and I would say i'm better than your average player.
The medpack 'adjustment' is also to discourage commanders raining them down every time a skirmish breaks out. It looks and feels odd. We've got a bigger changes planned, hopefully it'll put less pressure on commanders to micro manage the medpack rain.
Just a reminder all these changes are experimental, we're not attached to anything. Though trial and error we will find what works best for us and our server.
Thanks
@slizzered No idea is stupid. giving them as a sort of warning bell utility isn't all that bad. Maybe just attaching a recognizable noise when they break would suffice. I personally think the web implementation isn't all that bad.. and having them hidden and unavoidably large would be great for gorges but very annoying for marines. We're trying to reduce frustration for both sides. That would be my main concern anyway.
I think our next experiment with gorge abilities will be in making hydra's effectiveness and web count increase with biomass.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited June 2014
I get it howser, ;-) and I commend the attempt - I agree that changes are needed to make the game more fun for pub play (skill gaps and the increased impact slippery slope mechanics have on lesser skilled environments)
But you should not place fun over balance because if balance is horrible - then it will not be fun. They should have equal priority. Especially so for pubs, when the largest issue they face currently is poorly balanced matches.. Which are not fun.
I will try the mod tonight if it's available on an NA server
Here's the thing: While it may feel good, it comes with downsides that you may not realize at first.
Personally I feel having skulks handle like bricks to support perfect balance ties the cart in front of the horse. I see your point though, it would be ideal if we could unite fluid and pleasant movement with the need for close combat balance. I certainly agree that the feedback for walljumping can use some improvement.
We /do/ consider the big picture. Our level of insight is always going to differ from the resources and insight of a lead PT. The described issues are all so very hypothetical and quantified, and our time so limited, that we rather just tweak some dials and actually see what bears solidify on our path instead. Maybe some of these are less of an issue for us. It's simply too easy to get scared into passivity. Either way it'll surface and we'll tweak things as needed.
Don't be scared to let go and see what comes of this, and trust your players a bit more to stay away if our mod is shit. Right now the mod runs only on our server, and we clearly mark the mod, so the greenies are as safe from us as they are from Faded or Combat. If we fuck up the game people will simply not play our mod.
If the Dev team decides to make movement more pleasing and easy to use that would be great. I'll be the first one to rip this change out of our mod. Until then we work with the resources we have.
Sorry, if I wasn't clear enough about that: I didn't intend to change the actual shape of the web towards a spiderweb. Just about adding the invisibility, since it contributes to my personal idea of a "trap". The visibility thing is tough, yes. Therefore it would need some testing, maybe limit invisibility to be similar to "1 veil phantom".
Anyway, great to see that people are working on so many fresh ideas
We have a vision for the mod that will hopefully come more into light as we refine and add further changes. Its not really about dumbing the game down but rather making it 'feel' less frustrating and more fun to play. For me that is a 100 times more important than balance.
My personal opinion is that the almost obsessive focus on comp balance (which frankly is impossible given how the game changes depending on skill levels) has actually been a negative factor on the games development. The design changes I push for consider fun and 'feeling' before balance. You can qualify and argue anything you like in the guise of achieving the holy grail of ns2 balance but if it leads to game that's less enjoyable then whats the point?
Ok let's take a look back at NS2 during alpha/beta stages. Do you remember Feign Death? It was an ability attached to the shade hive. Basically if you died, you could magically come back to life 100 yards away from your corpse. It was a fun idea, not so fun for balance.
What about the grenade launcher attachment on to the rifle? Yea that was heaps of fun! I could attach a compact grenade launcher onto my rifle and spam away then shoot at skulks. Was fun, but not very balanced.
Lets look at another shall we. I hope you guys remember the 5 minute onos. Cause i do. It was fun while you were an alien right? Yea.......
Hey lets take a look at these other ones as well! Bile bombing lerks, 90% increase net health skulks from carapace, flamethrowers that could destroy an entire alien team and neutralize all the structures at the same time, leap on 1 hive, lerks without spike projectiles, the list goes on.
Some things that may be considered "fun" to you, may not be so fun in practice to many others. Most of the changes in NS2 now are from tried and failed experimentation. Balance changes are hard to just change on a whim. I understand i may came out pretty harsh here, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of the changes you want to implement for this balance mod for "average players" isn't exactly what i would do.
I see why you said wall jumping skulks look goofy, i understand that. If we had the opportunity to redesign a better movement mechanic for the skulk years ago I'd be all ears. But a flat base speed increase and lowering of hp of the skulk won't balance out. Hear me out here.
I see the reason why you increased their speed. I don't understand the reasoning of lowering of the health. If this is to help marines deal with the speed then i'm missing something here. If you take your average marine. If an average marine has trouble killing an average slow skulk now...why would lowering the health by 1 bullet make any difference? Now you have actually increased survivability for the skulks by increasing their speed.
If you want to help marines hit the skulks easier, why not increase the spread of the rifle? Or, increase the size of the bullets? Leave the hp of the skulks the same, have your speed increases, and just increase rifle cone of fire. That should help way more than 1 less bullet.
But this is all speculation. Try it out, experiment, then go with what works.
@schu ...just speculation here... but maybe you should try the mod out?
its not about making skulks easier to hit but rather tweaking the engagements to make it more about approach and ambushing for the skulk and not chaining up wall jumps.
We've been here from the start too and we draw on all the older builds.
I don't really see an issue with the skulks. They feel great. And jesus christ, if it doesn't work it can always be changed back!
What I'm more concerned about is the nerf to marine jumping. Frankly, I don't have any real memories about playing marine last sunday, but I think hitting a marine's combat potential three times (less medspam + faster skulks + removed jumping) may be a bit too much.
The problem about jumping is that a skilled marine can dance around an unskilled (or even a skilled) skulk outside range. I see why this can be frustrating as skulk. However, more often than not this is a perfectly legit maneuver and, in fact, the only way to stay alive.
The main problem is that the skulk couldn't catch up with the marine. You made the skulk faster already. I don't think slowing down marines any further is needed.
At the end of the day this is a talk about 'the skill ceiling'. We want more people playing this game, we all enjoy NS here - this is not a everything is wrong currently lets make it better! Their idea's we've had/would like to try and i feel like you should really give it a try before just blatantly saying this is bad.
I don't know how everyone else plays/feels but again this is all just mess about its not set in stone.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I will say that, since we talk pubs here, if changes ARE for the better it is actually quite well that folk like @Ironhorse are commenting on it. After all, if its for pub & good, it should be in vanilla ns2.
As for webs, I ment to say I know webs can be awesome. But in vanilla ns2 webs are useless due to loads of factors, like time when available.
@Howser I miss bites all the time, but if I see a marine is getting medspammed I focus, decide whether or not he is likely to have any armour left, and if not, make sure I land the next two bites in succession.
@Howser I miss bites all the time, but if I see a marine is getting medspammed I focus, decide whether or not he is likely to have any armour left, and if not, make sure I land the next two bites in succession.
From the perspective of an average skulk, the moment a marine consumes meds you are probably already damaged. Skulks typically commit to fight.
This specific change deals with the marine pickup cooldown of medpacks, not the commander drop cooldown. Originally it is around 0.53 seconds. Without checking wouldn't know the exact delay between bites, but i'm pretty sure landing two hits in 0.5 seconds is unlikely and depends a lot on having your bites offset correctly to the medpacks landing/
Now this isn't the majority of basic medpacking, generally the comm will take a second, or two seconds to get another pack on the marine, and that's fine. This change doesn't affect that at all. It's just the edge cases where medpacking does more than provide a handicap to the skulk and completely throws a fight.
It's all perceived annoyances though, if this change doesn't work out we'll throw it out in a week or two!
*Revised LMG shooting sounds and effects - Increased the amount of visual and audio contrast between weapons levels
Kinda cool.
*Marine bunny hopping reduces momentum
It's a l2p issue..... not gunna go farther than that.
*Reduced reliance on skulk wall jumping - Base speed increased, max speed remains the same
Gunna have to disagree with this one. I agree that skulk movement can be bland at times but it doesn't fall under the general annoyances category. Wall jumping is almost always just the mechanic to traverse the map and it's extremely easy to pick up on. I remember back when Swelek was on his balancemod craze... he implemented a b-hop mechanic that would have been much more difficult to learn.
Hauser mentioned "its not about making skulks easier to hit but rather tweaking the engagements to make it more about approach and ambushing for the skulk and not chaining up wall jumps" earlier. Skulk vs marine engagements are almost always based on positioning and movement. There's a trade off here. You can either bomb in with a high speed and predictable movement path or you can be unpredictable by ambushing, a-d strafing, or just being a spazz skulk but you lose that speed in the engagement. Decreasing walljump viability and increasing base speed blurs the lines here and that's just not good design.
*Skulk health reduced- takes one less bullet
See previous answer.
*Med-pack Heal time and amount increased, with cool down period- Reduces effectiveness of med pack spam
As long as you kept the possible health gained per second the same, this doesn't matter. Armor values were tweaked based on the current medpack system.
*Classic exo's restored (cannot be cat-packed)
I'm fine with that for pubs. Beacon-able exos were terrible.
*Web starting item for gorge- Cost no res but use a large amount of stamina and limited to three
Instant gorge tunnels are already a problem in pubs. Giving them webs on top of that is kinda ridiculous.
Has any of you guys actually played the new skulks? They feel amazing! It's like flying, really. But it didn't feel unfair on the marine side. And I'm willing to sacrifice 5% marine wins for more gameplay fun, really. In pubs, that is.
If it touches competitive balance... we already have a compmod anyway, haven't we?
Comments
For now i'll just provide feedback on the one mechanic that bugs me most : the skulk movement change
Here's the thing: While it may feel good, it comes with downsides that you may not realize at first.
Lesser skilled marines (rookies etc) already have a hard enough time tracking slow moving ground skulks and predictable walljumping trajectories.. increasing this difficulty worsens the overall winrate.
Higher tiered players will not jump around a marine that much since it creates a more predictable trajectory to track - the acceleration on the ground makes strafing much easier to "juke" a marine and get under their feet within melee range. What happens when this method is even *more* effective? It increases the impact these players have in lesser skilled environments. The opposite of a casual mod, no?
It really isn't that difficult to express "Jump off of walls to gain a speed increase - chain your jumps from wall to wall to go even faster" .. in fact the video tips and written tips all say this - not to mention you can visibly watch skulks do it in every game. Teach the player, don't give up on them. Which brings me to my next point..
Proper game design should strive to teach the player, either through communication or through intuitive means (preferable) .. the skill curve implemented and the accompanying mechanics should provide this.
To lower the skill ceiling (that's what this is) is to give up on proper game design.
I'd sooner support a change that gradually and intuitively brings a player to learn to walljump (a skillcurve!) - like increasing the momentum from any jump, and increasing the visual and audio feedback of connecting your first successful chaining of walljumps. (always wanted a very subtle 3 pixel instant flash around the border of the screen to denote speed increase)
I do agree though that the name feels inaccurate to me, I expected something very different when I opened the thread. Maybe that's where it's coming from.
I'll admit I never saw web in play while I was a marine. I'm new to the game, so that doesn't mean a lot. So please forgive me if something like this is actually in place:
What about making the web more spider-web by making it invisible? The amount and scaling of invisibility needs to be discussed, but could look like this:
Basic web are the same, but once the commander places veils, webs become camouflaged like alien lifeforms who evolved phantom. This would boost both the usability of webs and shade hive, while leading to an ambush-focused playstyle with teamwork: Gorge places web, skulk waits camouflaged for the careless marine to ambush. Marines on the other hand are even more reliant on using the buddy-system. Maybe marines could also remove the web-effect from their buddy with axe/welder.
Oh and just another idea... making the web so that it places a warning (like the one made with middle mouse button) on the minimap, once a marine gets entangled/destroys it. Like the strings in a spider-web vibrate, once a fly gets caught. The spider (aliens) can then converge to the source of the vibration to eat the tasty marine.
This would make webs more versatile for aliens to protect against sneaky marines. Admittedly, this second idea is rather stupid. Looking carefully for hidden webs that even attract aliens in your direction might actually be more of an annoyance for the marines than anything else. But I just like the idea
But for me the movement/wall jumping mechanic just feels wrong, its as simple as that. skulk's most interesting feature is its ability to climb any surface so it can ambush or evade marines. The wall jumping mechanic reduces the value of using verticality to you advantage and it quite frankly is just a bit goofy. We have a vision for the mod that will hopefully come more into light as we refine and add further changes. Its not really about dumbing the game down but rather making it 'feel' less frustrating and more fun to play. For me that is a 100 times more important than balance.
My personal opinion is that the almost obsessive focus on comp balance (which frankly is impossible given how the game changes depending on skill levels) has actually been a negative factor on the games development. The design changes I push for consider fun and 'feeling' before balance. You can qualify and argue anything you like in the guise of achieving the holy grail of ns2 balance but if it leads to game that's less enjoyable then whats the point?
@meatmachie given the marine movement mechanics who doesn't miss bites?!.... I know i do and I would say i'm better than your average player.
The medpack 'adjustment' is also to discourage commanders raining them down every time a skirmish breaks out. It looks and feels odd. We've got a bigger changes planned, hopefully it'll put less pressure on commanders to micro manage the medpack rain.
Just a reminder all these changes are experimental, we're not attached to anything. Though trial and error we will find what works best for us and our server.
Thanks
I think our next experiment with gorge abilities will be in making hydra's effectiveness and web count increase with biomass.
But you should not place fun over balance because if balance is horrible - then it will not be fun. They should have equal priority. Especially so for pubs, when the largest issue they face currently is poorly balanced matches.. Which are not fun.
I will try the mod tonight if it's available on an NA server
Personally I feel having skulks handle like bricks to support perfect balance ties the cart in front of the horse. I see your point though, it would be ideal if we could unite fluid and pleasant movement with the need for close combat balance. I certainly agree that the feedback for walljumping can use some improvement.
We /do/ consider the big picture. Our level of insight is always going to differ from the resources and insight of a lead PT. The described issues are all so very hypothetical and quantified, and our time so limited, that we rather just tweak some dials and actually see what bears solidify on our path instead. Maybe some of these are less of an issue for us. It's simply too easy to get scared into passivity. Either way it'll surface and we'll tweak things as needed.
Don't be scared to let go and see what comes of this, and trust your players a bit more to stay away if our mod is shit. Right now the mod runs only on our server, and we clearly mark the mod, so the greenies are as safe from us as they are from Faded or Combat.
If the Dev team decides to make movement more pleasing and easy to use that would be great. I'll be the first one to rip this change out of our mod. Until then we work with the resources we have.
Anyway, great to see that people are working on so many fresh ideas
Ok let's take a look back at NS2 during alpha/beta stages. Do you remember Feign Death? It was an ability attached to the shade hive. Basically if you died, you could magically come back to life 100 yards away from your corpse. It was a fun idea, not so fun for balance.
What about the grenade launcher attachment on to the rifle? Yea that was heaps of fun! I could attach a compact grenade launcher onto my rifle and spam away then shoot at skulks. Was fun, but not very balanced.
Lets look at another shall we. I hope you guys remember the 5 minute onos. Cause i do. It was fun while you were an alien right? Yea.......
Hey lets take a look at these other ones as well! Bile bombing lerks, 90% increase net health skulks from carapace, flamethrowers that could destroy an entire alien team and neutralize all the structures at the same time, leap on 1 hive, lerks without spike projectiles, the list goes on.
Some things that may be considered "fun" to you, may not be so fun in practice to many others. Most of the changes in NS2 now are from tried and failed experimentation. Balance changes are hard to just change on a whim. I understand i may came out pretty harsh here, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of the changes you want to implement for this balance mod for "average players" isn't exactly what i would do.
I see why you said wall jumping skulks look goofy, i understand that. If we had the opportunity to redesign a better movement mechanic for the skulk years ago I'd be all ears. But a flat base speed increase and lowering of hp of the skulk won't balance out. Hear me out here.
I see the reason why you increased their speed. I don't understand the reasoning of lowering of the health. If this is to help marines deal with the speed then i'm missing something here. If you take your average marine. If an average marine has trouble killing an average slow skulk now...why would lowering the health by 1 bullet make any difference? Now you have actually increased survivability for the skulks by increasing their speed.
If you want to help marines hit the skulks easier, why not increase the spread of the rifle? Or, increase the size of the bullets? Leave the hp of the skulks the same, have your speed increases, and just increase rifle cone of fire. That should help way more than 1 less bullet.
But this is all speculation. Try it out, experiment, then go with what works.
its not about making skulks easier to hit but rather tweaking the engagements to make it more about approach and ambushing for the skulk and not chaining up wall jumps.
We've been here from the start too and we draw on all the older builds.
What I'm more concerned about is the nerf to marine jumping. Frankly, I don't have any real memories about playing marine last sunday, but I think hitting a marine's combat potential three times (less medspam + faster skulks + removed jumping) may be a bit too much.
The problem about jumping is that a skilled marine can dance around an unskilled (or even a skilled) skulk outside range. I see why this can be frustrating as skulk. However, more often than not this is a perfectly legit maneuver and, in fact, the only way to stay alive.
The main problem is that the skulk couldn't catch up with the marine. You made the skulk faster already. I don't think slowing down marines any further is needed.
I'd have said the same if I invented the trifacegate :P
(jk^^)
I don't know how everyone else plays/feels but again this is all just mess about its not set in stone.
As for webs, I ment to say I know webs can be awesome. But in vanilla ns2 webs are useless due to loads of factors, like time when available.
Don't forget the like 4 other "balance mods" that exist...
I'm really impressed with the technical improvements in the recent patches. Hope to see that applied on gameplay side of things soon.
From the perspective of an average skulk, the moment a marine consumes meds you are probably already damaged. Skulks typically commit to fight.
This specific change deals with the marine pickup cooldown of medpacks, not the commander drop cooldown. Originally it is around 0.53 seconds. Without checking wouldn't know the exact delay between bites, but i'm pretty sure landing two hits in 0.5 seconds is unlikely and depends a lot on having your bites offset correctly to the medpacks landing/
Now this isn't the majority of basic medpacking, generally the comm will take a second, or two seconds to get another pack on the marine, and that's fine. This change doesn't affect that at all. It's just the edge cases where medpacking does more than provide a handicap to the skulk and completely throws a fight.
It's all perceived annoyances though, if this change doesn't work out we'll throw it out in a week or two!
No, there is NS2 and modded NS2
Hauser mentioned "its not about making skulks easier to hit but rather tweaking the engagements to make it more about approach and ambushing for the skulk and not chaining up wall jumps" earlier. Skulk vs marine engagements are almost always based on positioning and movement. There's a trade off here. You can either bomb in with a high speed and predictable movement path or you can be unpredictable by ambushing, a-d strafing, or just being a spazz skulk but you lose that speed in the engagement. Decreasing walljump viability and increasing base speed blurs the lines here and that's just not good design. See previous answer. As long as you kept the possible health gained per second the same, this doesn't matter. Armor values were tweaked based on the current medpack system. I'm fine with that for pubs. Beacon-able exos were terrible. Instant gorge tunnels are already a problem in pubs. Giving them webs on top of that is kinda ridiculous.
If it touches competitive balance... we already have a compmod anyway, haven't we?
Making things easier doesnt improve gameplay fun.
Game are fun because they challenge you in some ways, you die you retry, you improve (Dark souls style, castlevania, etc)
Frustration leads to having a blast latter on because you can feel the difference between what you were 1 month ago and what you are now.
Easy games are not fun, not having to improve is not fun.