An idea for a comeback mechanic
ShamelessCookie
United States Join Date: 2014-06-11 Member: 196499Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, Pistachionauts, Retired Community Developer
United States Join Date: 2014-06-11 Member: 196499Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, Pistachionauts, Retired Community Developer
So I got to thinking about how to provide a comeback mechanic to make the game less steamrolly.
The idea would be to award TRes per kill, and the amount of TRes earned is = the number of resource nodes controlled by the enemy.
So, if Marines have 4 resource nodes, and Aliens have 1, every Marine kill earns 1 bonus TRes, and every Alien kill earns 4 bonus TRes.
This provides a mechanism for comebacks in the late game. If your team is on the ropes, and have lost a ton of map control, then every kill you earn is a small boost to try and help your team come back.
The idea would be to award TRes per kill, and the amount of TRes earned is = the number of resource nodes controlled by the enemy.
So, if Marines have 4 resource nodes, and Aliens have 1, every Marine kill earns 1 bonus TRes, and every Alien kill earns 4 bonus TRes.
This provides a mechanism for comebacks in the late game. If your team is on the ropes, and have lost a ton of map control, then every kill you earn is a small boost to try and help your team come back.
Comments
Release combat into ns2.
Watch the player numbers shoot up and charlie can get that nice little gold rolex he has had his eyes on.
Everyone will say "hey, remember when 'shameless cookie' saved ns2? What a guy"
The fact is this is a horrible, HORRIBLE idea in more ways than I can imagine. Even if it worked, and it won't, and even if it was balanced, which it is not, what @Aeglos mentioned about feeding is probably the worst thing you could do to this game. It turns rookies into enemies actively working against you at all times.
The more RTs your opponent has, the more important it becomes to win engagements. It would in a way make it feel less futile to take a room when your opponent has a lot of RTs, and also make it less binary -- even if you don't kill the gate, wiping their team is good for yours.
The number would obviously need to be balanced carefully, maybe not 1 tres per RT; but its definitely a cool idea, and exhibits some great out of the box thinking.
No? Maybe you were thinking of it backwards. The bonus would be based on enemy RT count, not friendly ones.
If you are losing and only have 1 RT, then the opposing team barely gets any TRes for each kill.
If you are losing and the enemy team has 4 RTs, then every kill your team gets is a 4 TRes boost to your team.
But for the naysayers who say "this is a horrible idea" or "it would never work"... it works perfectly fine in other team-based games.
Heroes of the Storm has MANY comebacks thanks to the fact that, if your team is losing, and you're down on XP, then every kill you get awards more XP than does a kill that the enemy team gets. It's a way to say "hey, you're losing, but you got a kill anyway. Good job, here's a bonus"
Maybe have it be something that only kicks in for the losing team, and only after a certain point (like having 4 rt's less than the enemy) That seems like it would be more of a comeback mechanic instead of just a way for both teams to get more Tres...
Good point, i shall move it. Overall Tres/Pres for kills/ score points has been tried in the past and turned out to cause a greater snowball effect.
But this is a great idea thinking about the resource system overall as there are certainly ways to improve it.
But it's far from the truth. Noobs keep feeding and frankly ruins the game for their team mates.
Yes. I understand that you want to base the res per kill on the opponents rt count. But the fact remains, that the team with most rt counts usually have more kills as well. Meaning, yes, they get less res per kill, but they also accumulate more kills..
This is also one of those things, that would impact different skill levels so drastically different, that it feels almost impossible to predict the repercussions. It might just work great on lower skilled servers, while working terribly with high skilled, or vice versa. But I find it very hard to believe, that it could work well across skill levels.
This also the issue with always knowing how many RT's the enemy has due to seeing the amount of res gained per kill.
Giving bonus res to the team who has the other team down to 1 RT shouldn't be a thing obviously.
How about varying res per kill based on the disparity between the team's RT counts as opposed to how many they have individually? So at the start or early parts of the game there wouldn't be res per kill, but as the snowball starts to take in effect the losing team will start to gain res per kill.
However, I've heard this suggestion multiple times before, and the issues with Resources being awarded for anything else is multiple :
Interestingly, when I tested some economical approaches to address the slippery slopes / comeback abilities.. I noticed that the changes had to be hugely impactful to do anything at all, and even then it was risky because they had to be purely situational so as not to affect unintended scenarios.
Ns2 is just so hard wired for slippery slope mechanics (mostly due to too much RTS) that you can't expect small changes to make a difference, unfortunately.
At this point, I firmly believe adjusting what we already have is a prerequisite to any other solution (weak aliens in early game, weak marines late game etc) - and that future anti-slippery slope solutions will have to come in the form of new features.
Thanks for the discussion though Shame
Here's the first few rounds of results:
#1: 21 minute game. Marines lost gradually. Marines earned 45 bonus res. Aliens earned 38
#2: 23 minute game. Aliens cameback to win. M:40 A:89
#3: 14 minute game. Aliens dominated. M:50 A:58
#4: 24 minute game. Marines lost gradually. M:78 A:78
#5: 38 minute game. Very back and forth, but Marines eventually lost. M:175 A:108
#6: 7 minute game. Marines dominated. M:21 A:12 (for reference, kills were M:37 A:9)
I wouldn't be suprised if mechanics like these can have unfortunate effects of changing the way teams play with the lead or when they are down because res is a concern. However, I think it's the best idea I've heard so far for a comeback mechanic. Res towers are still important, but gives another avenue for a comeback and you have to do something positive to get it. It doesn't mean you automatically get jps, it just makes it easier to get some tech. You still have to win fights later on, but at least you have a chance. This game is always going to have a lot of snowball games as IronHorse was kinda getting at, but if this makes the 60/40 games more 50/50 - Shameless could be onto something.
If it makes pubs more fun to play and balances out games more, it could be a positive idea. Even if it was only implemented in non competitive servers or something.
- Noobs keep feeding...you may have been talking about combat, but this might be a valid concern people have about this mechanic. That could happen, but even if it did, they haven't necessarily cost their team the game. It still has to play out. The other team has to do something positive with the tres gained and so on. This mechanic isn't giving the other team an automatic win, it just makes it easier to do things when you're down.
- Your point about the team with the most rt counts usually has the most kills - yes, that is why the mechanic rewards the team that is down in res towers more. You could also change this mechanic to not reward a team at all if they have a certain amount of res towers. So the team winning by a lot isn't getting any added benefit.
- Your point about impacting different skill levels differently is a good point. Not sure if this would work in a competitive scene, but might work great in pubs. And if it doesn't work in all pubs, then it might work in the pubs that don't want to be competitive.
Shameless - I like that you're testing out your idea, what do you think about the idea of not allowing any additional tres per kill for a team that already has 4 or 5 rts? That way the mechanic is only really kicking in for a team that is down big. If an alien team has a 5 rt to 3 rt lead, not sure the mechanic should be kicking in for the aliens. It could end up creating a larger snowball game. So perhaps try: in addition to making the values dependent on the other teams res, also have the mechanic only kick in when you're below a certain amount of res towers. You could also have it only kick in 5 minutes into the game or something if it hurts the early game. Or just read Iept's idea above which seems to say it well.
Generally at the first minute of a game each team could have 3 RTs each if they secure their naturals, so giving TRes per kill in this manner would just open up the gates to feeding right away.
If for example you were to make it so res per kill kicks in on increments of 2 of each additional RT the enemy has compared to you, the early/midgame would go relatively untouched res timing wise and make it work purely as a comeback mechanic without creating a snowball effect from feeding early on.
If the enemy has 2 more RTs than you: 1 TRes per kill
If the enemy has 4 more RTs than you: 2 TRes per kill
If the enemy has 6 more RTs than you: 3 TRes per kill
If the enemy has 8 more RTs than you: 4 TRes per kill (Maybe a bit much)
If it's too good and causes indefinite games, I'd recommend putting it to increments of 3.
Subject to different values effected by team size, ect.
You could work on that, but this is one idea to help snowball games. Why not try it? Also it's more of a way for the losing team to have something to do or another avenue to go. It doesn't for example make your life forms terrible all of a sudden.
I agree, and that's why if the losing team fails to get kills, then they will not earn any bonus res. The entire basis of the comeback mechanic is, if you are losing on map control, but winning team fights, then you get a small reward.
The first thing I notice is that only one round allowed for a comeback. (#5 would have happened anyways, arguably)
This speaks to either the impact of Tres vs Pres differences between the teams, or that the change isn't impactful enough.
The second thing I notice is that there appears to be no controlled distribution of which team gets rewarded the bonus resources.
4 out of the 6 rounds the losing team has equal or LESS bonus resources than the winning team!
This implies that the winning team is potentially benefiting from this change more than the team that needed the help.
Which further hints at the impact of KDR over RT count in NS2.
That game is a joke.
It may hint at the impact of KDR count, but it could just mean for this scenario that the mechanic has to be tweaked. As was said before, perhaps a team that has a certain amount of res towers should not be getting any additional res from kills AND/OR perhaps the mechanic should not go into effect early game. The mid game is where it's possible to have better lead changes so to speak and to make games more even.
You can't expect a loosing team to gain more kills just by loosing (quite the contrary in fact). So a system like this can only be regarded as a bonus for bad play. Also why should winning a teamfight be rewarded one time and not another time. That makes it "arbitrary".
That kind of solution avoids the counterintuitive and questionable idea of 'punishing' marines for capping nodes. Meanwhile it still allows aliens to have some kind of method for creating extra income while the RT economy isn't in their favour.
If you want to prevent heavy snowballing with such tech, you can also give diminishing returns for too frequent kills, although that kind of hinders the comeback mechanic too at that point.