Thank you to everyone who has posted and discussed ideas, there's some really great conversation going on in here! We aim to avoid drastic changes, ideally this would be simple, small things that help newbies with their first experiences with the game.
Admittedly the powernode/cyst removal ideas do not strictly fall under this category, but I've been a huge advocate for these changes since I can remember- that's why I put them in the document. I was really interested to see what people thought about it.
And again I do want to emphasize that these ideas are purely speculative at this point- there's no wrong answers. Discussion is good and thank you all for keeping it friendly! I'm slowly compiling feedback into the document but please do keep posting
If you are really that bothered by the 'possibility' of audio cue's, they could be disabled in tournament mode. Or, they could be enabled in a 'rookie' mode/server. There are quite a few small changes that could help newer players learn the game which are automatically disabled in tournament mode. If you want to grow the game, you need people to stick around and see that the gameplay IS worth their time.
I've always wanted to see what NS2 would look like without cysts. I understand why they are in the game, but I'm not sure they make the game-play better. I do think power nodes serve a great and important function. The major differences from playing NS1 and NS2 when you first start it up: is power nodes/cysts and not being able to build a command center anywhere on the map. I think the power nodes/command station changes in NS2 was a benefit. I like the fact that you can't get a ninja phase gate up anywhere on the map without building the power first. Aliens once they kill the power outside their base know that marines can't get a gate up quickly which is a good thing in my opinion.
I would like to see how the game would work without cysts though. Infestation from structures or gorges I think could make the game more fun to play. I don't think aliens should be limited to having to protect little things on the ground, and it's very hard to stop marines from killing your cysts. Can we go into more detail on how infestation can work from alien structures or gorges? One idea is to have gorge healing alien structures that grow infestation would make the infestation grow faster around them. Would give a benefit to a gorge in a room with structures.
Or you can remove power nodes also, but perhaps require a long building time when away from a command station. So let's say a phase gate in your base (next to your command station) took a normal amount of time to build, but a phase gate away from a tech point took 2 times as long. Then you don't need power nodes, you can serve the same function by having marine structures take longer to build. If you have a command station in the room, then you can build structures 2 times as fast for example. Command stations would then serve as a main building time saver in a sense.
this is my first time posting on this forums, but i am watching from the second row since a while.
Short introduction of myself (please feel free to skip ahead for the actual suggestions )
I am VERTiGO from Germany, started playing early 2013 and have 1960 hours logged as of now ... though my aim still sucks, guess i'm too old to keep up . I bought badges, dlcs and other stuff to support the game and also cause i thought it to cheap for the many hours of fun it gave me. I love this game and loved the time when it was constantly updated, even if i didn't like every single detail.
I am not at all against changes as long as NS2 is still making fun. To me the fun part comes from the mostly very nice community, the teamwork, greater strategic aspect and meta game and also the skill progression. Thanks to that even after so many hours the game isn't the least bit boring (maybe aside the pls-get-a-com-part). There is no other game (and i played a lot) that i can compare it to in terms of replay value.
Before i list my ideas i have to say that the game makes a lot of fun as of right now and the balancing feels right as well ... but if you absolutely have to change something so rookies have an easier time i propose the following:
tl;dr on to the suggestions (i got inspired by a lot of your ideas):
if you remove the need for power on buildings as you planned link the light situation directly to the RT/harvester (room has RT: brightly lit / room has harvester: complete darkness and bioluminescence (as others have already suggested) / room has none: red light) (maybe powernode gets automatically build depending on rt/harvester hp if you want to keep it)
rt/harvester should then have a slightly longer build time but also more hp
to balance out but still enable ninja gates you could prolong the build time of phase gates (as there would be no need for power anymore)
the arms lab could be removed, you could link the armor of marines to the amount of CC's they have (or armories if you like that better) ... marines and aliens should have to compete for tech points not only deny the alien progression
the weapon upgrades could be linked to actual weapons: e. g. LMG = LMG + W1 / shotgun = shotgun + W2 / HMG = LMG + W3 + bigger clip size
alien upgrades could be linked to the biomass of a hive (e. g. shift hive with biomass 2 equals 2 spurs / shade hive with biomass 1 equals 1 veil ...)
i also support moultano's idea to replace the building tool with a welder
Of cause all of this had to be balanced out in terms of tres/pres, time to build, hp of lifeforms/structures, reload time for weapons etc.
I think this would be a little bit more intuitive for rookies:
marines: bright light good!/darkness eew!, new weapon = more damage, more cc's = more armor/better survivability
aliens: the opposite in terms of light, more biomass = faster/tougher/sneakier, more hives/biomass = more hp/better survivability
Maybe its all a terrible idea but i have a feeling this could work, to still have a complex but not complicated NS2.
One last thought: Maybe reduce the gap between a1, a3, w1, w3 and of cause also the impact of biomass for aliens to make comebacks a little bit easier and not such a snowball from just a bad first or second encounter.
This was longer than expected. Thanks for reading cya
Edit: As others have already said: Please don't make this game simple (dumb it down in the language of our time) it just wouldn't work. E. g. I bought NSCombat a year a go and played for about 6 hours. Without the complexity, the meta game and the high skill ceiling this game would become boring after a very short while.
Also any balance changes should be tested thoroughly (maybe in form of a mod): if it works fine, if not let the game stay as it is and focus on the polishing of tutorials, ingame hints, hud ...
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited December 2015
Everyone know the typical mistakes rookies doin and the "dumb down" should adress these.
And ONLY these.
I cant count the "Please, press shift to be silent" or "Leave the base" or "dont run around in lemming packs", or "Check the map" or "The Phase gate is under attack, use the phase gate"
Examples for possible solutions:
Rookie skulks running on the floor into marine direction and trying to "hide" after they make lots of noise.
- Solution: If the skulk is running and there marines near by a cool alien hive mind sound says "Pssst, press shift to be silent". Or a "I think this was to loud, maybe the marine heard you" after he reached his "hide" spot.
Rookie fades running into maaines, swiping like idiots and died cause no energy.
- Solution: If the energy reached a critical level a alien voice is saying "Watch out, you dont have enough energy to escape"
With these kind of hints the players have direct input why they die so often as skulk if they ignoring the hint.
At round start all marines standing in base and waiting for stuff. The classical "Jesus, leave the base"
- Solution: 2 can be the basebuilders. So before roundstart they can klick on "yes, im the early basebuilder"
After roundstart a commander voice is saying "we have our basebuilders, the rest MOVE out!!!"
I think there more of these typical rookie situations everyone knows.
The current video implementation isnt very helpfull in needed situations. They are only explaining buildings but not important situations.
So the basic change should be:
The game checks critical situations and give the rookie an non distracting hint via sound/voice.
But please, do not try to dumb down the game to attract it for the masses.
This would kill the heart of the game
This plus a hive 3 finishing ability compared to arcs to help the aliens to break the stalement.
Like arcs on contermination cant shoot, so the teleported whips can kill them.
Last Stand is probably the most reminiscent of that instant fun gratification mode, without dire concequences
Exactly. That's why I played marines for 6 months. It was a somewhat normal FPS (minus targets moving on walls and ceilings of course) and I could jump right in, go rogue, and just shoot stuff. That was the lure for me. I didn't want to command, didn't care about strategy so much...(maybe a little strategy), and just had fun. Now, at a more advanced stage, I get super annoyed when people don't play like me, don't do what you say, don't listen to the comm, or can't even do a little chip damage on a fade (I do 200dmg and there's 5 other marines in the room - He lives, Really?). BUT!!! For those "noobs" I'm talking about, they sure do have a good time getting a few alien kills. The better they get at it, the more rewarding it could be and they may be apt to stick with it. Many, I venture to say, will give up on the game.
I suppose that's why I enjoyed the combat mod initially...jump in and have fun...no responsibility/no consequence. However I now enjoy the strategy and tactics in vanilla NS2 even more.
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Ugh this thread makes me sad.
How do we know the game would be worse without them though? We haven't seen NS2 without them. NS1 worked fine without them. I think you could accomplish the same game-play functions they do now without having to worry about a cyst on the ground or building a power node as I discussed above 5 posts back.
Imo first thing to do is making 2 different game types. like the old "tournament mode" in ns1, but with much wider differences.
TF2 for examples has many game types, and the rookies are ok with them, as long as they know there are differences in the gameplay. You should create 2 (and then maybe even more)different games. the competitive one, which is the actual ns2 (so we are free to changes without whines) and the 'casual' one with all the big changes.
with that in mind I see the changes in the .doc as too little. you can't hope to change a game with just little things like powernodes and cysts rules.
with that in mind I think you should change BIG things before
now i didn't ever think at what, and don't even have the time now, but just brainstorming:
- Complete revision of 'movements & life & death' parameters. which could be for example :
1. alien speeds, or better, change directions speed (for lerk/fade) is too high. good lerks need to be hitted more easily. players don't need to be sharp shooters to kill an alien. CONS: rebalance, more health ?
2. avoid unexplained death (alien side) with shots you don't even heard if not when you die. (netcode problems too? ). more base health in general?
2a. which takes me to marine rate of fire: 50 bullets in ~ 4 seconds is too much (For example an ak47 in cs:go needs around the same time to fire 30 bullets). Lot of bullets lost in the walls. it's not difficult to see 1 mag\1 skulk situations and it's simply bad considering you should only need a hand of bullets to kill a skulk. CONS: overall rebalance of aliens attack side
3. remove all extra unknown movement trick (walljump, etc.. )? or maybe ok if explained, but with much less maximum speed. easier for everyone to achieve and keep it. cons: rebalance..
- Give more time/fun using non standard equipment/lifeforms. it's bad when you wait all game to buy something and then die and have to wait again. ex: give 3 weapons ticket in the armory when you buy one, so even after a death(2) you can retake it from armory without spending res. or, alien side, from the first time you have 5 minuts to evolve in that lifeforms again..
- longer games! we all (well a lot of us ) started with ns1. with that good old 1 hour long games we had. they were amazing, but not only, we had the time to test e try things.. I can understand that a long game is hard and that one may not always have all that time, but i think they could be much easier to get in the game mechanics. not like nowadays where 3 minutes after the start it's all already decided. and maybe you always play the first 10 minutes till endgame and don't even see later tech.
1. need to avoid quick endgames, something to comeback in the first minutes if there was a bad start. slower tres?..
after that you can start to change other basic gameplay parameters to try simplifying the game mechanics a little.
the arms lab could be removed, you could link the armor of marines to the amount of CC's they have (or armories if you like that better) ...
That's an interesting concept using Armories or something else that would be on the frontlines, but they are a bit weak and go down far too often due to where they need to be positioned.
They also don't outright block a hive from being dropped.
I've been wondering : what if you made a base/platform for the Prototype lab that fit onto a tech point? This would keep A3 and W3 at one base still, however (unless you tied them to that prototype lab)
This guy gets it.
Homogeneous winning conditions but with asymmetric gameplay prevents a world of issues (like turtling or predictable round)
Wouldn't that make the snowballing issue even worse though? It also would make both sides suffer the 3rd hive ability issue of the game conceding before you get the endgame tech. Plus that only really works in 5 techpoint maps since each team would naturally expand to a second base and the last available techpoint would be the deciding factor for the game. Veil, Eclipse, Kodiak, Caged and others would be incompatible for this king of the hill equivalent gamemode.
Marine upgrades should stay independant from techpoints for map and gameplay variety sake.
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Ugh this thread makes me sad.
How do we know the game would be worse without them though? We haven't seen NS2 without them. NS1 worked fine without them. I think you could accomplish the same game-play functions they do now without having to worry about a cyst on the ground or building a power node as I discussed above 5 posts back.
How do we know the game would be better without them? Why split an already tiny community with drastic changes? How about instead of making this game more casual, we make it more competitively viable? Or, even better idea, leave this dead game alone so the 500 people who enjoy it can continue enjoying it.
*if this has already been suggested in this im sorry, im at work and cant read the whole thread atm and i want to get thoughts out
I personally and i know zavaro holds the same opinion as me here, and that is skulk wall jump is the DUMBEST mechanic ever.... i for one dont believe it needs to be removed. But there NEEDS to be another implementation for skulks to gain speed. Wall jumping is single most difficult mechanic to understand in this game.
There needs to be implementation where u can just mash spacebar as skulk to get full speed. The game already queues your jumps so it would just be a simplified version of bunny hopping. I think if this mechanic was added to the already exisiting wall jumping it would make for beginners to understand skulk play much easier. Because the exisiting mechanic of ONLY wall jumping to get max speed as skulk way too damn complicated for new people. It should NOT take a new player 200 hours to learn something as important as getting max speed as a skulk. Thats just silly, even some competitve players have issues grasping this concept....
I dont believe wall jump should be removed but there NEEDS to be something else.
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Ugh this thread makes me sad.
How do we know the game would be worse without them though? We haven't seen NS2 without them. NS1 worked fine without them. I think you could accomplish the same game-play functions they do now without having to worry about a cyst on the ground or building a power node as I discussed above 5 posts back.
How do we know the game would be better without them? Why split an already tiny community with drastic changes? How about instead of making this game more casual, we make it more competitively viable? Or, even better idea, leave this dead game alone so the 500 people who enjoy it can continue enjoying it.
That old thing about knocking something before you try it. I already tried it, on NS1. I'm not saying you go immediately to the NS1 model. I'm saying you take the NS1 starting point of less restrictions, but add new ones that make the game-play very similar to what we have now without the annoyances.
In addition to what I said above, perhaps gorge tunnels would provide a certain spread of infestation. And alien extractors would provide a larger level of infestation. So let's say the alien extractor outside base infestation would reach halfway to the alien tech point, and the tech point res infestation would reach halfway to the first alien extractor. So you could essentially cover the whole area with infestation if you hold both extractors. This way, you aren't changing the fact that bone walls would still be effective, you just wouldn't have to worry about those little cysts. I think this could work. Map developers or game-play developers would have to review each map and see how far the alien infestation should reach from an extractor to essential cover the whole map in infestation if you hold all the extractors. This makes more sense to me, and still keeps the game very similar to now. I think it also looks better if infestation is coming from structures and not little things on the ground.
Observation: New players place mines to close together, until someone tells them it's a bad idea. Solution: Visual indicators. Blueprint is green -> fine, orange -> will cause chain reaction, red -> forbidden location. Possibly also show the explosion radius.
Observation: New players don't check their map as often as they should, have no idea what's going on. Solution: Show a big map while waiting for respawn. Prominently show the respawn location so they can map out a route (maybe something spinning? movement attracts attention).
Observation: New alien players forget to evolve their upgrades everytime they respawn. Solution: Not sure. Probably allow skulks to spawn with their last upgrades, which leaves the problem how to direct attention to the upgrade menu in the first place. Maybe you could choose upgrades while waiting for respawn?
Observation: Rookie lerks are sitting ducks, crawling on the ground, not realizing how fragile they are. Solution: Not easy. Proper way probably would be a kill cam that shows them the last 3 seconds from their killers perspective. Alternative: Tutorial.
Observation: Rookie onos overextending, dieing in an instant.
Solution: Red glowing screen when at 40% health?
Observation: Rookie gorge mis-judges the situation, attacks marine(s) when he should be fleeing. Solution: Don't know. Tutorial?
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
i like cysts and power, i dont think they restrict the game at all. They do make rushes harder to pull off which imo is a good thing.
True, but you can have very similar game-play functions and remove them entirely. Which makes it easier for newcomers and does anyone else find cysts an annoying part of this game?
This guy gets it.
Homogeneous winning conditions but with asymmetric gameplay prevents a world of issues (like turtling or predictable round)
Wouldn't that make the snowballing issue even worse though? It also would make both sides suffer the 3rd hive ability issue of the game conceding before you get the endgame tech. Plus that only really works in 5 techpoint maps since each team would naturally expand to a second base and the last available techpoint would be the deciding factor for the game. Veil, Eclipse, Kodiak, Caged and others would be incompatible for this king of the hill equivalent gamemode.
Marine upgrades should stay independant from techpoints for map and gameplay variety sake.
If both teams have a fighting chance of winning due to the viability of their late game tech why would the team concede?
When we've tested tied tech in the past we saw exactly this; in fact the one complaint about it was that games lasted too long. What a difference compared to today's average round.
I do agree that a 5 TP map is ideal for that change, although we've seen this setup before on a map like veil and what happens is that 4th TP becomes a major source of contention between the teams, with ownership going back and forth - so it's not the end of the world. (there's a tournament match that demonstrates this perfectly, i'll see if i can find it)
Marine upgrades being a linear progression creates a slew of issues that we are still dealing with today.
There's zero reason to keep it this way other than a very shallow arbitrary notion of asymmetry that is already present in every other facet of the game.
Make doing the right thing cooler wherever possible.
E.g. the welder. It looks wimpy and unfun to a new player. I don't know if you can make the welder itself look more badass; but maybe you can make a really nice particle effect and sound when you're welding the right things and keep it as is when you're not hitting anything. Maybe you can make welding away cysts more satisfying.
NS1 had weldable vents and similar; this was a way to make the welder feel like a hero in a tiny way. Eventually you discover that the welder is cool. This was a kind of gateway application for the welder. In early NS1 the welder also used to do stupid amounts of damage to structures; this certainly did make it cooler, but it made it unbalanced and annoying.
Standing still and just welding a structure with a high health is very boring. You're not supposed to ever do that, but new players don't know that. How do you make it attractive and intuitive for them to keep track of their surroundings, understand how your team mates are positioning themselves, watch the minimap, listen for sounds, listen to your commander etc? Maybe you can make the welder model larger and with a flat top and show a zoomed in, room scale minimap right on the back of it with little damage circles for the things you can repair including player armour?
New players often think the bait ball is useful when you don't have any babblers out. How can you make the bait ball look unattractive and look like it doesn't do damage by itself? Babblers are very poor at attacking enemies and new players are lured to do this because that's the coolest use for them. Perhaps they can be changed to meet players expectations without being imbalanced if they apply a small slow down or something instead of doing more damage. Most new players don't seem to know babblers can be stuck to players and themselves, and it doesn't look cool. How do you make this cool?
Some other problem areas are:
Higher lifeforms need to go away and heal frequently. New players think the big stonking onos looks like it should just run right in and wreck shit. New players don't necessarily think of the fade as hit and run.
The AoE heal of crags and hives isn't intuitively obvious and visible.
It's apparently not obvious that the skulk can sneak and that marines can hear a skulk that's running from far away.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited December 2015
You need a way to tell people why they are losing engagements and help new players here instead of introducing new winning conditions or removing arms labs.
Like my sound idea from above.
The whole discussion is about rebalancing the game and you forgot the real issues new players have.
Find a way to teach players important game/class specific elements instead of removing things and replace them with other stuff.
New game conditions didnt help a skulk running straight into 5 marines, it wont help marines running around in lemming packs or commanders didnt know how important medpacks are.
Veteran players didnt have any problems to play the new meta.
But the overall experience for new players wont change, cause they still geeting slaughtered by the vets and the new players didnt know what they doing wrong..
And i thought this is what this discussion is about.
To help new players to understand the game.
i like cysts and power, i dont think they restrict the game at all. They do make rushes harder to pull off which imo is a good thing.
True, but you can have very similar game-play functions and remove them entirely. Which makes it easier for newcomers and does anyone else find cysts an annoying part of this game?
i like the asthetic they bring to the game, the powering down of rooms and the spread of alien infestation
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Ugh this thread makes me sad.
How do we know the game would be worse without them though? We haven't seen NS2 without them. NS1 worked fine without them. I think you could accomplish the same game-play functions they do now without having to worry about a cyst on the ground or building a power node as I discussed above 5 posts back.
Here's what I envision. Please bare with spelling and grammar as posting on my phone is tedious.
Imo, it's the little gameplay elements that will suffer. I imagine longer stalemates (turtles) with power removed. Picture three to four ips constantly regurgitating marines during a turtle. In this situation, as it is, what's the solution? Kill the power, stop the respawns, end the turtle.
Now imagine a harvester... you pop the cysts to start the bleeding, encourage alien comm to redrop cysts, keep popping em, further draining res and luring skulks in. I just feel you would take away power away from proactive players.
Aliens allowed to build wherever they want? Imo this also takes away from immersion, the sense of territories.
And tech points tied to upgrades? No! This would only enhance the snowball effect.
Why not just suggest you remove everything all together and make ns2 another mindless deathmatch. Or make it a capture and hold kind of game? While we're at it, make the maps smaller, remove techpoints all together. See where I'm going with this?
Do we want combat or do we want ns2?
I just feel like giving in to this is an oversimplification of the game, and stupidity wins. let me clarify that I'm not suggesting anybody here is stupid, I just feel like watering down the gameplay is not the right answer to this "conundrum."
Tutorial, though.... training matches...
I wish to elaborate more but trying to post on this phone at work is driving me crazy.
I am not a new player. I'm not a rookie or a newb (or a noob), but I'm by no means a veteran. I only just hit Hive level 3.
Reading this thread convinced me to sign up because I can't just read without responding to a couple random ideas. Keep in mind three quarters of my gameplay experience is as aliens, but I've been trying to get my sea-legs as marines (hee) of late. I have no commanding experience (I suck at RTS) but I think I'm probably qualified to try commanding aliens, with a lot of handholding from veterans.
Various medpack ideas: Yes, mostly. Medpacks seem OP to the average skulk, but they suffer from accuracy problems. Various people have mentioned making them easier to target (which I don't know anything about but it sounds like a good idea) and making them have a slightly larger pickup radius. Perhaps with a slightly increased cooldown? Again, I'm unfamiliar with how Marine commander works.
Power nodes: I like them, I think they should stay. Personally I think they should be a tiny bit easier to take down as an alien, but not by much. They're extremely hardy targets right now and mostly not worth destroying because any fool with a welder can fix them up fast. In all 72 games I've played (as of this writing) I can count the number of times taking out power was more than just insult to injury during a base attack on one hand. Hmm. Maybe correlate the armor and health of a power node to the number of structures in the room? Just an idle thought. Also, I like the suggestions about powering down the lights in rooms without built/destroyed power nodes, or at least dimming them a bit. Perhaps even switching rooms with hives built in them to blackout or emergency lighting immediately (which marines can override by building a power node)? Combine that with the suggestions about making alien buildings glow for room lighting... hmm. Food for thought.
Cysts: Seem fine as is right now. Cyst chains are important for expanding, but they're also vulnerable enough right now to encourage consolidation in equal measure. Stick your tentacles out too far as alien and get them cut off. We've got gorge tunnels for sneaky RT outposts already, and anything to make playing Gorge more interesting is a good thing.
Babblers: Take more time to use than they seem to be worth. "Building" the eggs doesn't take long, but directing them in combat is extremely clunky. To the point that I rarely do it (even though I often have plenty of pres to spare). No idea how to fix that really.
Map: A third of the time I open my map it takes me five seconds to find myself. The shrinking arrow is not obvious enough.
Walljumping: The mechanic is fine, but it needs to be explicitly explained by an explicit tip that pops up in the HUD for new players who have freshly hatched as Skulk. "As Skulk, press the Jump key repeatedly as you run along next to walls to leap off of it and give yourself a speed boost" is all I frigging would have needed, but I have 17.75 hours of Alien gameplay and I only just figured that out. And I was told about walljumping literally in the first game I played.
Spore Cloud Cropdusting: It's fun! But it's usually suicidal, especially because it's such a late game ability that even the most agile of Lerks are likely to encounter a fatal cloud of buckshot if they try to use it where it would be best used, e.g. inside marine bases on clusters of marines. Making it behave more like Umbra would help a lot, but it should still be relatively easy to spread everywhere, so don't kick up the energy cost too much please.
Hive-Dependent Upgrades vs. Permanent Upgrades: The asymmetry is cool, but mostly it just seems to force aliens to collect tech points if they want to have enough traits to win the game. I also think that the Shade Hive should be a more viable second (or even first!) Hive than the current Shift>Crag>Shade progression, but I don't have any real suggestions about resolving that.
It seems a lot of the problems new players have understanding NS2 could be helped with concise lifeform specific or equipped weapon specific HUD tips, similar to the ones on the loading screens in TF2. I don't really buy the "NS2 is complicated and people don't want to learn" argument. MOBA games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends are both far more complex in terms of simple rote memorization, item combinations, hero powers, etc. and those games have massive playerbases.
Hate the idea of power/cyst changes. I really don't think anything needs to be simplified that drastically. Game shouldn't be made easier, its hard line is what defines the game.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Ugh this thread makes me sad.
How do we know the game would be worse without them though? We haven't seen NS2 without them. NS1 worked fine without them. I think you could accomplish the same game-play functions they do now without having to worry about a cyst on the ground or building a power node as I discussed above 5 posts back.
Imo, it's the little gameplay elements that will suffer. I imagine longer stalemates (turtles) with power removed. Picture three to four ips constantly regurgitating marines during a turtle. In this situation, as it is, what's the solution? Kill the power, stop the respawns, end the turtle.
Now imagine a harvester... you pop the cysts to start the bleeding, encourage alien comm to redrop cysts, keep popping em, further draining res and luring skulks in. I just feel you would take away power away from proactive players.
Aliens allowed to build wherever they want? Imo this also takes away from immersion, the sense of territories.
And tech points tied to upgrades? No! This would only enhance the snowball effect.
Why not just suggest you remove everything all together and make ns2 another mindless deathmatch. Or make it a capture and hold kind of game? While we're at it, make the maps smaller, remove techpoints all together. See where I'm going with this?
1) first point about longer stalemates with power removed - you can still destroy the command station. - command station can act like a power node in base with ips. Ip's won't work without a command station, and if theres 1 command station left - it would already be game over.
2) regarding harvester and cysts - so you want marines to be sitting there popping little cysts on the ground? What about shooting the rt? That drains alien res too and is more interesting than shooting a little cyst.
3) Aliens allowed to build wherever they want? I didn't say that - you still have rt spots on the map that work for larger infestation. You can already build a gorge tunnel for limited infestation, as I would keep in the game.
4) Tech points tied to upgrades - I only mentioned build time would be less next to a command station and take a lot longer away from a command station. That stops a marine team from being able to build a ninja phase gate quickly as it would take longer to build structures away from your bases.
5) then you go into an all deathmatch end of the world scenario where you just throw everything out. I'm trying to keep the game very similar and make it more fun to play. Power nodes I think could go either way, but I think cysts should be taken out of the game. They aren't fun and more annoying than anything.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@IeptBarakat please do not forget that something like bunnyhop actuall is harder for folk with (slight) motor issues. Or said otherwise.. not everyone has the same personal skill in moving parts of their body in continues and fine movement. I myself would be hard pressed to do bunnyhop and I had years to practise. (and I did)
@deck_ to be clear, wasn't only referring to your post. The thing with tying power to the cc is that the cc is defended by respawning rines as well as other rine structures. Power nodes are the weak spots in the armor in my view.
@mattji104 *gulp* against my better judgement, can you please elaborate?
Again, I have more points I'd like to make but phone is a bitch to get detailed on. Main point is that I think you'd sacrifice subtle nuances on the gameplay that I for one enjoy.
@deck_ to be clear, wasn't only referring to your post. The thing with tying power to the cc is that the cc is defended by respawning rines as well as other rine structures. Power nodes are the weak spots in the armor in my view.
@mattji104 *gulp* against my better judgement, can you please elaborate?
Again, I have more points I'd like to make but phone is a bitch to get detailed on. Main point is that I think you'd sacrifice subtle nuances on the gameplay that I for one enjoy.
well the cc being tied to ips only matters if you have another command station in the game. If there is 1 command station left, you kill it - game over as it is now. So who cares what else is working in the room. You seem to think it's easier for 2 gorges or something to sneak in your base and kill the power - yeah it is, but the power node is still in the marine base. Sometimes it's actually easier to hit the command station with a large alien team because you have more surface area to hit it. Those big onos can get in the way. Yes, it's easier to hit a power node on side of a wall than get all the way in the room and hit the command station. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Regarding attacking a 2nd marine base, I'm not sure what should be tied to the command station. Maybe ip's wouldn't work in that room but phase gates would still work...not sure.
Power nodes are just 1 thing to hit in a room now. In NS1 - you had the command station (command chair as I still call it). There are still many ways to win on a base rush: rushing obs, phase gate, arms lab, ips, and command station can all be effective depending on the moment. You don't need to have a power function. Again, I'm more against cysts than removing power. I'm just trying to say removing power can also work.
I do agree that a 5 TP map is ideal for that change, although we've seen this setup before on a map like veil and what happens is that 4th TP becomes a major source of contention between the teams, with ownership going back and forth - so it's not the end of the world. (there's a tournament match that demonstrates this perfectly, i'll see if i can find it)
The game in it's current system is dependent on if the aliens can get the 3rd hive before being locked in by a marine 3/3, having a 2/2 vs hive 2 game will just be a deadlock, and then a landslide when one base finally breaks. Or in a 5techpoint map the marines would quickly lose any chance of a comeback because they'd be locked to 2/2 against a 3rd hive alien team. Since the 3rd hive in it's current form is supposed to be a game ender even a marine 3/3 can't hold up against it(hence siege mode). That's why people would concede, because tying marine upgrades to techpoints kills marine survivability and prevents any reasonable chance of comebacks.
The format should stay and Hive 3 just should have better game ending opportunities, and make the arms lab more punishable by having it's research tied to the structure itself rather than just being unlocked for the rest of the round since aliens already have the equivalent with the upgrade chambers, armslab rushes were a real threat in ns1.
Comments
Admittedly the powernode/cyst removal ideas do not strictly fall under this category, but I've been a huge advocate for these changes since I can remember- that's why I put them in the document. I was really interested to see what people thought about it.
And again I do want to emphasize that these ideas are purely speculative at this point- there's no wrong answers. Discussion is good and thank you all for keeping it friendly! I'm slowly compiling feedback into the document but please do keep posting
I would like to see how the game would work without cysts though. Infestation from structures or gorges I think could make the game more fun to play. I don't think aliens should be limited to having to protect little things on the ground, and it's very hard to stop marines from killing your cysts. Can we go into more detail on how infestation can work from alien structures or gorges? One idea is to have gorge healing alien structures that grow infestation would make the infestation grow faster around them. Would give a benefit to a gorge in a room with structures.
Or you can remove power nodes also, but perhaps require a long building time when away from a command station. So let's say a phase gate in your base (next to your command station) took a normal amount of time to build, but a phase gate away from a tech point took 2 times as long. Then you don't need power nodes, you can serve the same function by having marine structures take longer to build. If you have a command station in the room, then you can build structures 2 times as fast for example. Command stations would then serve as a main building time saver in a sense.
this is my first time posting on this forums, but i am watching from the second row since a while.
Short introduction of myself (please feel free to skip ahead for the actual suggestions
I am VERTiGO from Germany, started playing early 2013 and have 1960 hours logged as of now ... though my aim still sucks, guess i'm too old to keep up
I am not at all against changes as long as NS2 is still making fun. To me the fun part comes from the mostly very nice community, the teamwork, greater strategic aspect and meta game and also the skill progression. Thanks to that even after so many hours the game isn't the least bit boring (maybe aside the pls-get-a-com-part). There is no other game (and i played a lot) that i can compare it to in terms of replay value.
Before i list my ideas i have to say that the game makes a lot of fun as of right now and the balancing feels right as well ... but if you absolutely have to change something so rookies have an easier time i propose the following:
tl;dr on to the suggestions (i got inspired by a lot of your ideas):
- if you remove the need for power on buildings as you planned link the light situation directly to the RT/harvester (room has RT: brightly lit / room has harvester: complete darkness and bioluminescence (as others have already suggested) / room has none: red light) (maybe powernode gets automatically build depending on rt/harvester hp if you want to keep it)
- rt/harvester should then have a slightly longer build time but also more hp
- to balance out but still enable ninja gates you could prolong the build time of phase gates (as there would be no need for power anymore)
- the arms lab could be removed, you could link the armor of marines to the amount of CC's they have (or armories if you like that better) ... marines and aliens should have to compete for tech points not only deny the alien progression
- the weapon upgrades could be linked to actual weapons: e. g. LMG = LMG + W1 / shotgun = shotgun + W2 / HMG = LMG + W3 + bigger clip size
- alien upgrades could be linked to the biomass of a hive (e. g. shift hive with biomass 2 equals 2 spurs / shade hive with biomass 1 equals 1 veil ...)
- i also support moultano's idea to replace the building tool with a welder
Of cause all of this had to be balanced out in terms of tres/pres, time to build, hp of lifeforms/structures, reload time for weapons etc.I think this would be a little bit more intuitive for rookies:
- marines: bright light good!/darkness eew!, new weapon = more damage, more cc's = more armor/better survivability
- aliens: the opposite in terms of light, more biomass = faster/tougher/sneakier, more hives/biomass = more hp/better survivability
Maybe its all a terrible idea but i have a feeling this could work, to still have a complex but not complicated NS2.One last thought: Maybe reduce the gap between a1, a3, w1, w3 and of cause also the impact of biomass for aliens to make comebacks a little bit easier and not such a snowball from just a bad first or second encounter.
This was longer than expected. Thanks for reading
Edit: As others have already said: Please don't make this game simple (dumb it down in the language of our time) it just wouldn't work. E. g. I bought NSCombat a year a go and played for about 6 hours. Without the complexity, the meta game and the high skill ceiling this game would become boring after a very short while.
Also any balance changes should be tested thoroughly (maybe in form of a mod): if it works fine, if not let the game stay as it is and focus on the polishing of tutorials, ingame hints, hud ...
And ONLY these.
I cant count the "Please, press shift to be silent" or "Leave the base" or "dont run around in lemming packs", or "Check the map" or "The Phase gate is under attack, use the phase gate"
Examples for possible solutions:
Rookie skulks running on the floor into marine direction and trying to "hide" after they make lots of noise.
- Solution: If the skulk is running and there marines near by a cool alien hive mind sound says "Pssst, press shift to be silent". Or a "I think this was to loud, maybe the marine heard you" after he reached his "hide" spot.
Rookie fades running into maaines, swiping like idiots and died cause no energy.
- Solution: If the energy reached a critical level a alien voice is saying "Watch out, you dont have enough energy to escape"
With these kind of hints the players have direct input why they die so often as skulk if they ignoring the hint.
At round start all marines standing in base and waiting for stuff. The classical "Jesus, leave the base"
- Solution: 2 can be the basebuilders. So before roundstart they can klick on "yes, im the early basebuilder"
After roundstart a commander voice is saying "we have our basebuilders, the rest MOVE out!!!"
I think there more of these typical rookie situations everyone knows.
The current video implementation isnt very helpfull in needed situations. They are only explaining buildings but not important situations.
So the basic change should be:
The game checks critical situations and give the rookie an non distracting hint via sound/voice.
But please, do not try to dumb down the game to attract it for the masses.
This would kill the heart of the game
This plus a hive 3 finishing ability compared to arcs to help the aliens to break the stalement.
Like arcs on contermination cant shoot, so the teleported whips can kill them.
Tutorial, tutorial, tutorial is all that is needed imo. And actual training matches that cover everything one would encounter in a live game.
Ugh this thread makes me sad.
How do we know the game would be worse without them though? We haven't seen NS2 without them. NS1 worked fine without them. I think you could accomplish the same game-play functions they do now without having to worry about a cyst on the ground or building a power node as I discussed above 5 posts back.
TF2 for examples has many game types, and the rookies are ok with them, as long as they know there are differences in the gameplay. You should create 2 (and then maybe even more)different games. the competitive one, which is the actual ns2 (so we are free to changes without whines) and the 'casual' one with all the big changes.
with that in mind I see the changes in the .doc as too little. you can't hope to change a game with just little things like powernodes and cysts rules.
with that in mind I think you should change BIG things before
now i didn't ever think at what, and don't even have the time now, but just brainstorming:
- Complete revision of 'movements & life & death' parameters. which could be for example :
1. alien speeds, or better, change directions speed (for lerk/fade) is too high. good lerks need to be hitted more easily. players don't need to be sharp shooters to kill an alien. CONS: rebalance, more health ?
2. avoid unexplained death (alien side) with shots you don't even heard if not when you die. (netcode problems too? ). more base health in general?
2a. which takes me to marine rate of fire: 50 bullets in ~ 4 seconds is too much (For example an ak47 in cs:go needs around the same time to fire 30 bullets). Lot of bullets lost in the walls. it's not difficult to see 1 mag\1 skulk situations and it's simply bad considering you should only need a hand of bullets to kill a skulk. CONS: overall rebalance of aliens attack side
3. remove all extra unknown movement trick (walljump, etc.. )? or maybe ok if explained, but with much less maximum speed. easier for everyone to achieve and keep it. cons: rebalance..
- Give more time/fun using non standard equipment/lifeforms. it's bad when you wait all game to buy something and then die and have to wait again. ex: give 3 weapons ticket in the armory when you buy one, so even after a death(2) you can retake it from armory without spending res. or, alien side, from the first time you have 5 minuts to evolve in that lifeforms again..
- longer games! we all (well a lot of us
1. need to avoid quick endgames, something to comeback in the first minutes if there was a bad start. slower tres?..
after that you can start to change other basic gameplay parameters to try simplifying the game mechanics a little.
Homogeneous winning conditions but with asymmetric gameplay prevents a world of issues (like turtling or predictable round)
That's an interesting concept using Armories or something else that would be on the frontlines, but they are a bit weak and go down far too often due to where they need to be positioned.
They also don't outright block a hive from being dropped.
I've been wondering : what if you made a base/platform for the Prototype lab that fit onto a tech point? This would keep A3 and W3 at one base still, however (unless you tied them to that prototype lab)
Marine upgrades should stay independant from techpoints for map and gameplay variety sake.
How do we know the game would be better without them? Why split an already tiny community with drastic changes? How about instead of making this game more casual, we make it more competitively viable? Or, even better idea, leave this dead game alone so the 500 people who enjoy it can continue enjoying it.
I personally and i know zavaro holds the same opinion as me here, and that is skulk wall jump is the DUMBEST mechanic ever.... i for one dont believe it needs to be removed. But there NEEDS to be another implementation for skulks to gain speed. Wall jumping is single most difficult mechanic to understand in this game.
There needs to be implementation where u can just mash spacebar as skulk to get full speed. The game already queues your jumps so it would just be a simplified version of bunny hopping. I think if this mechanic was added to the already exisiting wall jumping it would make for beginners to understand skulk play much easier. Because the exisiting mechanic of ONLY wall jumping to get max speed as skulk way too damn complicated for new people. It should NOT take a new player 200 hours to learn something as important as getting max speed as a skulk. Thats just silly, even some competitve players have issues grasping this concept....
I dont believe wall jump should be removed but there NEEDS to be something else.
That old thing about knocking something before you try it. I already tried it, on NS1. I'm not saying you go immediately to the NS1 model. I'm saying you take the NS1 starting point of less restrictions, but add new ones that make the game-play very similar to what we have now without the annoyances.
In addition to what I said above, perhaps gorge tunnels would provide a certain spread of infestation. And alien extractors would provide a larger level of infestation. So let's say the alien extractor outside base infestation would reach halfway to the alien tech point, and the tech point res infestation would reach halfway to the first alien extractor. So you could essentially cover the whole area with infestation if you hold both extractors. This way, you aren't changing the fact that bone walls would still be effective, you just wouldn't have to worry about those little cysts. I think this could work. Map developers or game-play developers would have to review each map and see how far the alien infestation should reach from an extractor to essential cover the whole map in infestation if you hold all the extractors. This makes more sense to me, and still keeps the game very similar to now. I think it also looks better if infestation is coming from structures and not little things on the ground.
Observation: New players place mines to close together, until someone tells them it's a bad idea.
Solution: Visual indicators. Blueprint is green -> fine, orange -> will cause chain reaction, red -> forbidden location. Possibly also show the explosion radius.
Observation: New players don't check their map as often as they should, have no idea what's going on.
Solution: Show a big map while waiting for respawn. Prominently show the respawn location so they can map out a route (maybe something spinning? movement attracts attention).
Observation: New alien players forget to evolve their upgrades everytime they respawn.
Solution: Not sure. Probably allow skulks to spawn with their last upgrades, which leaves the problem how to direct attention to the upgrade menu in the first place. Maybe you could choose upgrades while waiting for respawn?
Observation: Rookie lerks are sitting ducks, crawling on the ground, not realizing how fragile they are.
Solution: Not easy. Proper way probably would be a kill cam that shows them the last 3 seconds from their killers perspective. Alternative: Tutorial.
Observation: Rookie onos overextending, dieing in an instant.
Solution: Red glowing screen when at 40% health?
Observation: Rookie gorge mis-judges the situation, attacks marine(s) when he should be fleeing.
Solution: Don't know. Tutorial?
LOL @2cough
Restrictions to building by cysts and power RESTRICT the game. Not the other way around
True, but you can have very similar game-play functions and remove them entirely. Which makes it easier for newcomers and does anyone else find cysts an annoying part of this game?
@IeptBarakat Nope, it does the opposite.
If both teams have a fighting chance of winning due to the viability of their late game tech why would the team concede?
When we've tested tied tech in the past we saw exactly this; in fact the one complaint about it was that games lasted too long. What a difference compared to today's average round.
I do agree that a 5 TP map is ideal for that change, although we've seen this setup before on a map like veil and what happens is that 4th TP becomes a major source of contention between the teams, with ownership going back and forth - so it's not the end of the world. (there's a tournament match that demonstrates this perfectly, i'll see if i can find it)
Marine upgrades being a linear progression creates a slew of issues that we are still dealing with today.
There's zero reason to keep it this way other than a very shallow arbitrary notion of asymmetry that is already present in every other facet of the game.
E.g. the welder. It looks wimpy and unfun to a new player. I don't know if you can make the welder itself look more badass; but maybe you can make a really nice particle effect and sound when you're welding the right things and keep it as is when you're not hitting anything. Maybe you can make welding away cysts more satisfying.
NS1 had weldable vents and similar; this was a way to make the welder feel like a hero in a tiny way. Eventually you discover that the welder is cool. This was a kind of gateway application for the welder. In early NS1 the welder also used to do stupid amounts of damage to structures; this certainly did make it cooler, but it made it unbalanced and annoying.
Standing still and just welding a structure with a high health is very boring. You're not supposed to ever do that, but new players don't know that. How do you make it attractive and intuitive for them to keep track of their surroundings, understand how your team mates are positioning themselves, watch the minimap, listen for sounds, listen to your commander etc? Maybe you can make the welder model larger and with a flat top and show a zoomed in, room scale minimap right on the back of it with little damage circles for the things you can repair including player armour?
New players often think the bait ball is useful when you don't have any babblers out. How can you make the bait ball look unattractive and look like it doesn't do damage by itself? Babblers are very poor at attacking enemies and new players are lured to do this because that's the coolest use for them. Perhaps they can be changed to meet players expectations without being imbalanced if they apply a small slow down or something instead of doing more damage. Most new players don't seem to know babblers can be stuck to players and themselves, and it doesn't look cool. How do you make this cool?
Some other problem areas are:
Higher lifeforms need to go away and heal frequently. New players think the big stonking onos looks like it should just run right in and wreck shit. New players don't necessarily think of the fade as hit and run.
The AoE heal of crags and hives isn't intuitively obvious and visible.
It's apparently not obvious that the skulk can sneak and that marines can hear a skulk that's running from far away.
Like my sound idea from above.
The whole discussion is about rebalancing the game and you forgot the real issues new players have.
Find a way to teach players important game/class specific elements instead of removing things and replace them with other stuff.
New game conditions didnt help a skulk running straight into 5 marines, it wont help marines running around in lemming packs or commanders didnt know how important medpacks are.
Veteran players didnt have any problems to play the new meta.
But the overall experience for new players wont change, cause they still geeting slaughtered by the vets and the new players didnt know what they doing wrong..
And i thought this is what this discussion is about.
To help new players to understand the game.
i like the asthetic they bring to the game, the powering down of rooms and the spread of alien infestation
Here's what I envision. Please bare with spelling and grammar as posting on my phone is tedious.
Imo, it's the little gameplay elements that will suffer. I imagine longer stalemates (turtles) with power removed. Picture three to four ips constantly regurgitating marines during a turtle. In this situation, as it is, what's the solution? Kill the power, stop the respawns, end the turtle.
Now imagine a harvester... you pop the cysts to start the bleeding, encourage alien comm to redrop cysts, keep popping em, further draining res and luring skulks in. I just feel you would take away power away from proactive players.
Aliens allowed to build wherever they want? Imo this also takes away from immersion, the sense of territories.
And tech points tied to upgrades? No! This would only enhance the snowball effect.
Why not just suggest you remove everything all together and make ns2 another mindless deathmatch. Or make it a capture and hold kind of game? While we're at it, make the maps smaller, remove techpoints all together. See where I'm going with this?
Do we want combat or do we want ns2?
I just feel like giving in to this is an oversimplification of the game, and stupidity wins. let me clarify that I'm not suggesting anybody here is stupid, I just feel like watering down the gameplay is not the right answer to this "conundrum."
Tutorial, though.... training matches...
I wish to elaborate more but trying to post on this phone at work is driving me crazy.
Reading this thread convinced me to sign up because I can't just read without responding to a couple random ideas. Keep in mind three quarters of my gameplay experience is as aliens, but I've been trying to get my sea-legs as marines (hee) of late. I have no commanding experience (I suck at RTS) but I think I'm probably qualified to try commanding aliens, with a lot of handholding from veterans.
Various medpack ideas: Yes, mostly. Medpacks seem OP to the average skulk, but they suffer from accuracy problems. Various people have mentioned making them easier to target (which I don't know anything about but it sounds like a good idea) and making them have a slightly larger pickup radius. Perhaps with a slightly increased cooldown? Again, I'm unfamiliar with how Marine commander works.
Power nodes: I like them, I think they should stay. Personally I think they should be a tiny bit easier to take down as an alien, but not by much. They're extremely hardy targets right now and mostly not worth destroying because any fool with a welder can fix them up fast. In all 72 games I've played (as of this writing) I can count the number of times taking out power was more than just insult to injury during a base attack on one hand. Hmm. Maybe correlate the armor and health of a power node to the number of structures in the room? Just an idle thought. Also, I like the suggestions about powering down the lights in rooms without built/destroyed power nodes, or at least dimming them a bit. Perhaps even switching rooms with hives built in them to blackout or emergency lighting immediately (which marines can override by building a power node)? Combine that with the suggestions about making alien buildings glow for room lighting... hmm. Food for thought.
Cysts: Seem fine as is right now. Cyst chains are important for expanding, but they're also vulnerable enough right now to encourage consolidation in equal measure. Stick your tentacles out too far as alien and get them cut off. We've got gorge tunnels for sneaky RT outposts already, and anything to make playing Gorge more interesting is a good thing.
Babblers: Take more time to use than they seem to be worth. "Building" the eggs doesn't take long, but directing them in combat is extremely clunky. To the point that I rarely do it (even though I often have plenty of pres to spare). No idea how to fix that really.
Map: A third of the time I open my map it takes me five seconds to find myself. The shrinking arrow is not obvious enough.
Walljumping: The mechanic is fine, but it needs to be explicitly explained by an explicit tip that pops up in the HUD for new players who have freshly hatched as Skulk. "As Skulk, press the Jump key repeatedly as you run along next to walls to leap off of it and give yourself a speed boost" is all I frigging would have needed, but I have 17.75 hours of Alien gameplay and I only just figured that out. And I was told about walljumping literally in the first game I played.
Spore Cloud Cropdusting: It's fun! But it's usually suicidal, especially because it's such a late game ability that even the most agile of Lerks are likely to encounter a fatal cloud of buckshot if they try to use it where it would be best used, e.g. inside marine bases on clusters of marines. Making it behave more like Umbra would help a lot, but it should still be relatively easy to spread everywhere, so don't kick up the energy cost too much please.
Hive-Dependent Upgrades vs. Permanent Upgrades: The asymmetry is cool, but mostly it just seems to force aliens to collect tech points if they want to have enough traits to win the game. I also think that the Shade Hive should be a more viable second (or even first!) Hive than the current Shift>Crag>Shade progression, but I don't have any real suggestions about resolving that.
It seems a lot of the problems new players have understanding NS2 could be helped with concise lifeform specific or equipped weapon specific HUD tips, similar to the ones on the loading screens in TF2. I don't really buy the "NS2 is complicated and people don't want to learn" argument. MOBA games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends are both far more complex in terms of simple rote memorization, item combinations, hero powers, etc. and those games have massive playerbases.
1) first point about longer stalemates with power removed - you can still destroy the command station. - command station can act like a power node in base with ips. Ip's won't work without a command station, and if theres 1 command station left - it would already be game over.
2) regarding harvester and cysts - so you want marines to be sitting there popping little cysts on the ground? What about shooting the rt? That drains alien res too and is more interesting than shooting a little cyst.
3) Aliens allowed to build wherever they want? I didn't say that - you still have rt spots on the map that work for larger infestation. You can already build a gorge tunnel for limited infestation, as I would keep in the game.
4) Tech points tied to upgrades - I only mentioned build time would be less next to a command station and take a lot longer away from a command station. That stops a marine team from being able to build a ninja phase gate quickly as it would take longer to build structures away from your bases.
5) then you go into an all deathmatch end of the world scenario where you just throw everything out. I'm trying to keep the game very similar and make it more fun to play. Power nodes I think could go either way, but I think cysts should be taken out of the game. They aren't fun and more annoying than anything.
@mattji104 *gulp* against my better judgement, can you please elaborate?
Again, I have more points I'd like to make but phone is a bitch to get detailed on. Main point is that I think you'd sacrifice subtle nuances on the gameplay that I for one enjoy.
well the cc being tied to ips only matters if you have another command station in the game. If there is 1 command station left, you kill it - game over as it is now. So who cares what else is working in the room. You seem to think it's easier for 2 gorges or something to sneak in your base and kill the power - yeah it is, but the power node is still in the marine base. Sometimes it's actually easier to hit the command station with a large alien team because you have more surface area to hit it. Those big onos can get in the way. Yes, it's easier to hit a power node on side of a wall than get all the way in the room and hit the command station. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Regarding attacking a 2nd marine base, I'm not sure what should be tied to the command station. Maybe ip's wouldn't work in that room but phase gates would still work...not sure.
Power nodes are just 1 thing to hit in a room now. In NS1 - you had the command station (command chair as I still call it). There are still many ways to win on a base rush: rushing obs, phase gate, arms lab, ips, and command station can all be effective depending on the moment. You don't need to have a power function. Again, I'm more against cysts than removing power. I'm just trying to say removing power can also work.
The format should stay and Hive 3 just should have better game ending opportunities, and make the arms lab more punishable by having it's research tied to the structure itself rather than just being unlocked for the rest of the round since aliens already have the equivalent with the upgrade chambers, armslab rushes were a real threat in ns1.