Player based beacon

NovoRei · February 2016

The proposal is to add a game mechanic.

Allow marines on the field to press a key-button and active a beacon option. When a minimum percentage of marines have activated it, a beacon would be triggered. The percentage is defined by the comm at the observatory.

videoP · February 2016

I like this. I don't think beacon is good (pub server) game design in its current form. Beacon is so hugely important, yet is completely trivial in terms of executional skill, it really only serves to fuck over marine teams. Especially when marine teams have no way of knowing if their commander has the ability to quickly react until it is too late.

This is similar to an idea I had called personal beacons, where a player could choose to beacon themselves back to a base at the cost of their own personal res. I think that would be harder to balance though, given that it could be "abused" to avoid dying.

I also think, in 2016, its too late for the argument of "well the commander just needs to get better". That's not a solution for bad game design on pub servers, considering the entire teams success is directly tied to the action of the commander in this case.

That being said, this is sortof a bandaid fix on the underlying "problem" of pub server alien base rushes being so strong, due to the power node mechanic/low command chair HP/viability of baserush tunnels. I think the problem could be addressed at that level maybe...

Frozen · February 2016

This would make it so you can beacon without a comm in the chair. That's pretty strawng. I like it.

But I hate you, you're a boring cheater, stfu

Yojimbo · February 2016

SantaClaws · February 2016

videoP wrote: »

This is similar to an idea I had called personal beacons, where a player could choose to beacon themselves back to a base at the cost of their own personal res. I think that would be harder to balance though, given that it could be "abused" to avoid dying.

Allow me to nit this in the butt real quick before this gets out of hand. No, these two suggestions are not very similar at all. People "abusing" to beacon themselves to avoid dying, is the least of our concerns.

If you could beacon single players, there would no longer be any reason to hold back pressure on the aliens. In 6v6, you'd go 5 marine pressure always. Laneblocking would be a waste of good pressure as your base would always be indirectly defended. The whole trade-off of beacons, other than the tres cost, is that you lose all map presence. You'd not just undermine that, you'd remove all deterrence to the beacon mechanic.

It's a terrible idea, and I don't want to hear any more of it!

This, however, does not reflect on OP's suggestion. As I understand it, it doesn't change the mechanic of beacon at all, unlike videoP's suggestion, it would only change the conditions of activation.

And as @Frozen points out, that might lead to some more interesting decisions where a commander can afford the risk to leave the chair a little bit more. Which I find very positive.

Yojimbo · February 2016

SantaClaws wrote: »

videoP wrote: »

This is similar to an idea I had called personal beacons, where a player could choose to beacon themselves back to a base at the cost of their own personal res. I think that would be harder to balance though, given that it could be "abused" to avoid dying.

Allow me to nit this in the butt real quick before this gets out of hand. No, these two suggestions are not very similar at all. People "abusing" to beacon themselves to avoid dying, is the least of our concerns.

If you could beacon single players, there would no longer be any reason to hold back pressure on the aliens. In 6v6, you'd go 5 marine pressure always. Laneblocking would be a waste of good pressure as your base would always be indirectly defended. The whole trade-off of beacons, other than the tres cost, is that you lose all map presence. You'd not just undermine that, you'd remove all deterrence to the beacon mechanic.

It's a terrible idea, and I don't want to hear any more of it!

This, however, does not reflect on OP's suggestion. As I understand it, it doesn't change the mechanic of beacon at all, unlike videoP's suggestion, it would only change the conditions of activation.

And as @Frozen points out, that might lead to some more interesting decisions where a commander can afford the risk to leave the chair a little bit more. Which I find very positive.

I think you mean NIP THIS IN THE BUD, nit this in the butt, hahaha I love you dude.

SantaClaws · February 2016

dang. Was close tho.

When it comes to english proverbs I just hope for the best and prepare for the horse

Calego · February 2016

SantaClaws wrote: »

dang. Was close tho.

When it comes to english proverbs I just hope for the best and prepare for the horse

A horse in the mouth is better than two in the shrubbery...

As far as the OP's suggestion goes. I'm less in favor of decentralizing the commander's abilities, which is basically what this does. It doesn't take away the ability of the comm, but it provides a way for the team to bypass the commander, which I'm pretty iffy about.

It could work, it would probably be useful, but the commander side of me doesn't want it. Comming is just as much a skill based thing as fielding, and part of that is having the awareness of a commander. Knowing what's going on everywhere is your business, and if you provide an opening for the aliens to exploit, that's them capitalizing on your screw-up.

Yeah it does suck that the entire marine team can lose because one of their players didn't beacon at the right time, but IMO, tough cookies...

Ixian · February 2016

@Novorei

Why do you want to add this? Adding the reason and idea behind it could further its case.

_INTER_ · February 2016

Voting based game mechanic are kind of counterintuitive and breaking the immersion. Voting so far are more game management things not a mechanic to win a game (ejecting noob comms is for not loosing a game potentially). A vote is always a distraction. To prevent spam or making it unfair to the rest of the team, the threshold would have to be above 50%. The time needed to gather enough votes defeats the purpose of a beacon and opens door for more grieving and flaming against those that decide not to vote for something.

Also whats the goal of a vote based beacon?
Countering a bad comm? > Eject
Give commander more freedom to leave comm chair? > Well duh who's going to med etc. The commanders role would have to be completely remodeled for that to happen.

NovoRei · February 2016

_INTER_ wrote: »

Voting based game mechanic are kind of counterintuitive and breaking the immersion. Voting so far are more game management things not a mechanic to win a game (ejecting noob comms is for not loosing a game potentially). A vote is always a distraction. To prevent spam or making it unfair to the rest of the team, the threshold would have to be above 50%. The time needed to gather enough votes defeats the purpose of a beacon and opens door for more grieving and flaming against those that decide not to vote for something.

Also whats the goal of a vote based beacon?
Countering a bad comm? > Eject
Give commander more freedom to leave comm chair? > Well duh who's going to med etc. The commanders role would have to be completely remodeled for that to happen.

It's pressing "b" for beacon, not a vote. When the conditions are met, an automated beacon is initiated.

This has a double effect.
1. It's more forgiven to comms which have poor map awareness.
2. Promotes map awareness to field marines.

The "b" press could have a cool down of 10 seconds.

If the comm needs to be in the chair, you are not changing game mechanics. I would actually prefer the opposite to allow free use of the feature and promote exotic strategies.

Player based beacon

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