commander wouldn't be an issue if being a commander would feel awesome but this might be an issue with ns2's core design. The only role that has to be filled is a RTS role in a game that is for most part an fps game.
I only play pubs, comp might be completely differrent, but I do enjoy commanding. It's only a chore when your team is unresponsive... but when they do listen and work together, it's an awesome experience.
Sorry but no... Commander wouldn't be an issue if the community wasn't so mercilessly cruel to even decent commanders...
Well, there are multiple reasons for the low com supply. Toxicity may be one, but the shuffle system is clearly another. For instance, I would com a lot more if it wasn't essentially a guaranteed loss for my team. Also, for what it's worth, I see the community's treatment of low skill comms as a pretty natural response to core gameplay mechanics. It's not that we are all jerks, it's that ns2 gives this one player (the com) the unilateral ability to ruin the game for their team, and many inevitably do so. I don't know how you convince a bunch of random internet people to be nice to the person they (often justifiably) perceive as ruining their game.(matchmaking might help a bit)
The commander skill really isn't useful in any way beyond a competitive ranking. UWE has plans for a real competitive ranking rather than hive being shoehorned as one.
We can't shuffle it so that commanders are of equal skill. The current system is as such that people choose to be commanders. We can't force them to be commanders. It is possible that having equal skilled commanders would be a rare occurrence. What is needed is to shuffle after commanders are in the chair. This would still have the same problems that we have now such as leavers etc.
Most of the problems with implementation revolve around shuffle. Shuffle is a shine feature that is better than the UWE forced even teams. Shine is on github, and people can push code to it. We need a shine dev like @GhoulofGSG9 or @Person8880 or another modder to make a more advanced shuffle to make use of these features we have been discussing.
The question isn't "Can it be done?" but rather "How will it be done and who will do it?"
HandschuhJoin Date: 2005-03-08Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
edited November 2017
@Nordic I don't know If I understand you wrongly, but your statement that it's not useful in anyway feels like a hit to face for everyone who is trying to make UWE understand how many issues the non-commanderhiveskill has for public games, the fun, so in the end the holy grail of "player retention"
First noone ever said there have to be commanders of equal skill in the chair in the first place
The biggest issues were already adressed in this
Two things:
a) If I join a server right now at this time of day I'm probably on a server with hiveskill average 1,5k or lower.... it is no fun for them to get constantly reckt against good players, but could I go commander? No, because it's unfun for me to instantly loose because Hiveskill expects me to carry in a way I cannot perform as a commander.
So in the end, you're hurting the playerbase itself really bad. If I go comm with 2k Commskill, then all will be fair and square... but you can force ppl to smurf, so they have low hiveskill as comm but are insanely strong on the field (since noone guarantees that you'll be always comm... fun times, unbalanced games, playerretention dropping
b) Mostly on pubs you have issues that noone is commanding or wants to, because it's hard and there are high expectations for a commander. Good players won't go comm mostly for reasons stated above, bad players don't want to be shouted at. And what is really terrible, there are so few rolemodels
To show them how a good round is played - or a good techtree or buildorder so they don't do the same shit for hundreds of rounds and think how awesome it is to have no armorupgrade or medpacks are to expensive.
People learn commanding learning by doing... with no rolemodels or real good info they will have an even harder time to improve. So they'll learn "Turretfactory at start is good" - and Exos win the game ... yay - so fun
I might be wrong, but I think you were the one who told us that rookies don't want to be taught how the game works and find it out by themselves. That's fine but there is a difference between inventing a car or seeing how someone drives in one and you think "wtf, I want that too"
@Nordic I don't think anybody WANTS "equally skilled" commanders. I just want to be ABLE to command. Shuffling for equally skilled commanders is a poor idea, I'll happily grant that.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
@Handschuh I think what nordic is more concerned about is how do you put the commander skill to good use. If you shuffle with shine, how does shine know which skill value to use. Field play skill or comm skill? That is why he said the shuffle would need to happen after commanders have been selected. And then how does shuffle try to balance out the teams if one team has a rookie comm for example? (since shuffle is designed to force balanced teams)
So the real problem is not having a commander skill but trying to figure out how exactly to use it to improve the player experience on the pub servers.
Also for your first example it still feels like a more elegant solution is to reduce skill variety per server but we are still far away from that happening.
@Handschuh I may have communicated it poorly. Mephilles is right about what I said. You could achieve nearly the same result of having a commander skill by making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way. This would allow high skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss. The skill value for a commander is nowhere near as important as the implementation within shuffle. This is within the domain of the shine admin mod.
HandschuhJoin Date: 2005-03-08Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
edited November 2017
I think in prregame shuffle should work normally if noone is in the chaair shuffle like there is no comm, go in the chair->
show the number like in TTo that you see if it is inbalanced. If the difference is small do nothing!, if the hiveskill changes to much for one side give an info like a message so ppl can shuffle with commanders in place....
This could be resolved dynamically like it already is when players join or leave, so aanother shuffle won't hurt as much aas the constant shuffles like waiting for a comm.. i don't see issues there... all minor things which can be easily resolved.. you don't need to make a perfect system if you can fix that as a player
What happens during the round is another matter, just calculate with the guy as comm who is 70% in Hive mostly for example
Ofc that will likely proceed in 2 shuffles before start but wth, mostly we have 3-6'shuffles because noone goes comm
It can't just be about commanding not affecting your hive skill in any way; we also have to prevent a commander's hive skill value from influencing the shuffle results for the round in order to avoid @Handschuh's first point. As previous posts have mentioned, this opens up the possibility of exploiting the system, but I think that some clear rules can be established in order to handle edge cases where the commander is often fighting outside of the chair.
If we can't think of a way to incorporate commander skill values into shuffle (due to the mechanics of shuffle, the flow of the beginning of the game, etc.) then at least we can think of how to partition commanding from traditional hive skill values such that good field players are incentivized to command without worrying about how it's going to influence their marine and alien field skills.
@Nordic, you also mentioned that UWE intends to introduce "real competitive ranking", but I think that might be something of a misnomer. From the trello card: "People like having a number that they can track as it goes up and down. We should add a visible competitive ranking which you would be able to raise slowly. It would be able to be used as a status symbol rather than a balancing factor."
A status rank that only moves in a positive direction is the opposite of a "competitive ranking". I have nothing against the idea as a global vanity feature, but as applied to commanders, ranking symbols should ideally convey some information about the commander beyond recognizing that they've spent some minimum amount of time in the chair. What if we retooled the commander badge system as follows:
Starting Badge: Lieutenant -> same requirements as current comm badge
Bronze Badge: Commander -> 60%+ winrate
Silver Badge: Captain -> 70%+ winrate
Gold Badge: Admiral -> 80%+ winrate
In addition, we should be able to see how many hours the player has commanded, and perhaps there should be time-played prerequisites for the tiers. As should be obvious but probably isn't, these names/values are here for example only. I only intend to convey the concept.
In other words, commander "ranking" would just be a bracketed system with ranks that people could fall into or out of based off of their performance as commanders. This would casually incentivize winning and not fucking around with your team's enjoyment. And when you see someone who has played forever but still has a starting comm badge, you'll know (roughly) what to expect. These values would not be factored into shuffle. And a commander's alien/marine per team skills would not be impacted when commanding.
If people are super concerned about exploits, you could still use the same exponentially weighted time fraction to determine the % of time the commander has been in the field, and then modify the round's influence on their hive skill accordingly.
It can't just be about commanding not affecting your hive skill in any way; we also have to prevent a commander's hive skill value from influencing the shuffle results for the round in order to avoid @Handschuh's first point.
My point is that everything hinges on implementation within shine's shuffle. Moultano's per team skills as proposed would work without shine because it still gives shine one value. The aggressive shuffle you proposed would need someone to modify shine. Making a separate commander skill is nothing more than a vanity feature unless shine's shuffle does something with it. You might be thinking, "no duh", but many great ideas have been talked about on these forums and not been implemented before. I think I see getting something implemented into shine as a greater hurdle than others do.
I see a lot of people say UWE should make "X" better when "X" is actually a feature of shine. The line between mod and game is blurred. Many people don't know the difference. I am not saying those here do not know, but that most players do not.
If we can't think of a way to incorporate commander skill values into shuffle (due to the mechanics of shuffle, the flow of the beginning of the game, etc.) then at least we can think of how to partition commanding from traditional hive skill values such that good field players are incentivized to command without worrying about how it's going to influence their marine and alien field skills.
Now we are saying practically the same thing. It isn't just about "if" we can think of a way but also about who will implement it into shine. We can think we have solved the problem and world hunger while we are at it, but that doesn't mean we it will be included in shine.
Starting Badge: Lieutenant -> same requirements as current comm badge
Bronze Badge: Commander -> 60%+ winrate
Silver Badge: Captain -> 70%+ winrate
Gold Badge: Admiral -> 80%+ winrate
The current UWE badge system would not work well with that. They can grant badges but they can't take them away. Once you achieve a gold badge, you will always have a gold badge no matter how you perform. This is why everyone who has a skulk challenge badge has all the skulk challenge badges below the best they have achieved.
My point is that everything hinges on implementation within shine's shuffle. Moultano's per team skills as proposed would work without shine because it still gives shine one value. The aggressive shuffle you proposed would need someone to modify shine. Making a separate commander skill is nothing more than a vanity feature unless shine's shuffle does something with it. You might be thinking, "no duh", but many great ideas have been talked about on these forums and not been implemented before. I think I see getting something implemented into shine as a greater hurdle than others do.
Sure. You're describing implementation issues. I'm theorycrafting solutions. I'm not invested enough in the community to spend time organizing modifications, but I am invested enough in the community (and game) to brainstorm potential solutions.
You said that "You could achieve nearly the same result of having a commander skill by making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way. This would allow high skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss." That isn't true. Making commanding not affect your hive skill does not change anything if high hive skill players are still being shuffled based off of their current hive skill (using the existing shuffle mode, or any of the modes that have been proposed in other threads). In other words, what you described - "making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way" - is a necessary but not sufficient condition for allowing "high hive skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss".
I think it goes without saying that almost every change requires coding hours, whether they fall to the community or the devs. If you want me to grant that premise, by all means. I agree that we'd need someone to seriously rework shuffle for any of this to happen.
Now we are saying practically the same thing. It isn't just about "if" we can think of a way but also about who will implement it into shine. We can think we have solved the problem and world hunger while we are at it, but that doesn't mean we it will be included in shine.
Again, granted. Still not my point. In the opening of my post I was communicating that what you described in your clarifying post to @Handschuh was necessary but not sufficient to achieve the outcome you described.
This is a different topic that what is in this thread, and you can find my opinion on the matter here.
Well, it doesn't really matter if it's a different topic, since the conversation has segued to a more specific consideration of how to rework commanders vis-à-vis hive skill + shuffle.
The current UWE badge system would not work well with that. They can grant badges but they can't take them away. Once you achieve a gold badge, you will always have a gold badge no matter how you perform. This is why everyone who has a skulk challenge badge has all the skulk challenge badges below the best they have achieved.
My operating assumption is that "to do" cards on trello entail code requirements, and as such I'm less concerned about the way things currently work than I am about the way they'd work after being changed.
You said that "You could achieve nearly the same result of having a commander skill by making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way. This would allow high skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss." That isn't true. Making commanding not affect your hive skill does not change anything if high hive skill players are still being shuffled based off of their current hive skill (using the existing shuffle mode, or any of the modes that have been proposed in other threads). In other words, what you described - "making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way" - is a necessary but not sufficient condition for allowing "high hive skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss".
I see I wasn't clear enough on that point. I wasn't just thinking that a player's hive skill would not be affected by commanding, but that it would be ignored too. That would almost have the same result as a specific separate hive skill for commanders. It would allow high skill players to command without ruining the game.
I like this idea. There are plenty of players who rock on one side but not as good on the other team. It would make for fairer shuffles if implemented correctly.
https://trello.com/c/ICMe1KK0/132-hive-team-skill you can follow this card for future details. we are hoping to include it with our anniversary update, but it really depends on time from a couple people who are both very busy with other items at this moment. We do very much want to get this running though.
https://trello.com/c/ICMe1KK0/132-hive-team-skill you can follow this card for future details. we are hoping to include it with our anniversary update, but it really depends on time from a couple people who are both very busy with other items at this moment. We do very much want to get this running though.
https://trello.com/c/ICMe1KK0/132-hive-team-skill you can follow this card for future details. we are hoping to include it with our anniversary update, but it really depends on time from a couple people who are both very busy with other items at this moment. We do very much want to get this running though.
I am so happy to hear that. I have been wanting this feature for so long, and I didn't think it was possible. Don't forget to leave @moultano an awesome in the OP for finding a functionable solution if you haven't.
i have been waiting for this for many years. i mainly play aliens where i have a high hive skill. im sick and tired of being shuffled to marines and being expected to carry and then losing because im expected to carry. i suck at marines.
Comments
I only play pubs, comp might be completely differrent, but I do enjoy commanding. It's only a chore when your team is unresponsive... but when they do listen and work together, it's an awesome experience.
We can't shuffle it so that commanders are of equal skill. The current system is as such that people choose to be commanders. We can't force them to be commanders. It is possible that having equal skilled commanders would be a rare occurrence. What is needed is to shuffle after commanders are in the chair. This would still have the same problems that we have now such as leavers etc.
Most of the problems with implementation revolve around shuffle. Shuffle is a shine feature that is better than the UWE forced even teams. Shine is on github, and people can push code to it. We need a shine dev like @GhoulofGSG9 or @Person8880 or another modder to make a more advanced shuffle to make use of these features we have been discussing.
The question isn't "Can it be done?" but rather "How will it be done and who will do it?"
First noone ever said there have to be commanders of equal skill in the chair in the first place
The biggest issues were already adressed in this
Two things:
a) If I join a server right now at this time of day I'm probably on a server with hiveskill average 1,5k or lower.... it is no fun for them to get constantly reckt against good players, but could I go commander? No, because it's unfun for me to instantly loose because Hiveskill expects me to carry in a way I cannot perform as a commander.
So in the end, you're hurting the playerbase itself really bad. If I go comm with 2k Commskill, then all will be fair and square... but you can force ppl to smurf, so they have low hiveskill as comm but are insanely strong on the field (since noone guarantees that you'll be always comm... fun times, unbalanced games, playerretention dropping
b) Mostly on pubs you have issues that noone is commanding or wants to, because it's hard and there are high expectations for a commander. Good players won't go comm mostly for reasons stated above, bad players don't want to be shouted at. And what is really terrible, there are so few rolemodels
To show them how a good round is played - or a good techtree or buildorder so they don't do the same shit for hundreds of rounds and think how awesome it is to have no armorupgrade or medpacks are to expensive.
People learn commanding learning by doing... with no rolemodels or real good info they will have an even harder time to improve. So they'll learn "Turretfactory at start is good" - and Exos win the game ... yay - so fun
I might be wrong, but I think you were the one who told us that rookies don't want to be taught how the game works and find it out by themselves. That's fine but there is a difference between inventing a car or seeing how someone drives in one and you think "wtf, I want that too"
So the real problem is not having a commander skill but trying to figure out how exactly to use it to improve the player experience on the pub servers.
Also for your first example it still feels like a more elegant solution is to reduce skill variety per server but we are still far away from that happening.
show the number like in TTo that you see if it is inbalanced. If the difference is small do nothing!, if the hiveskill changes to much for one side give an info like a message so ppl can shuffle with commanders in place....
This could be resolved dynamically like it already is when players join or leave, so aanother shuffle won't hurt as much aas the constant shuffles like waiting for a comm.. i don't see issues there... all minor things which can be easily resolved.. you don't need to make a perfect system if you can fix that as a player
What happens during the round is another matter, just calculate with the guy as comm who is 70% in Hive mostly for example
Ofc that will likely proceed in 2 shuffles before start but wth, mostly we have 3-6'shuffles because noone goes comm
If we can't think of a way to incorporate commander skill values into shuffle (due to the mechanics of shuffle, the flow of the beginning of the game, etc.) then at least we can think of how to partition commanding from traditional hive skill values such that good field players are incentivized to command without worrying about how it's going to influence their marine and alien field skills.
@Nordic, you also mentioned that UWE intends to introduce "real competitive ranking", but I think that might be something of a misnomer. From the trello card: "People like having a number that they can track as it goes up and down. We should add a visible competitive ranking which you would be able to raise slowly. It would be able to be used as a status symbol rather than a balancing factor."
A status rank that only moves in a positive direction is the opposite of a "competitive ranking". I have nothing against the idea as a global vanity feature, but as applied to commanders, ranking symbols should ideally convey some information about the commander beyond recognizing that they've spent some minimum amount of time in the chair. What if we retooled the commander badge system as follows:
In addition, we should be able to see how many hours the player has commanded, and perhaps there should be time-played prerequisites for the tiers. As should be obvious but probably isn't, these names/values are here for example only. I only intend to convey the concept.
In other words, commander "ranking" would just be a bracketed system with ranks that people could fall into or out of based off of their performance as commanders. This would casually incentivize winning and not fucking around with your team's enjoyment. And when you see someone who has played forever but still has a starting comm badge, you'll know (roughly) what to expect. These values would not be factored into shuffle. And a commander's alien/marine per team skills would not be impacted when commanding.
If people are super concerned about exploits, you could still use the same exponentially weighted time fraction to determine the % of time the commander has been in the field, and then modify the round's influence on their hive skill accordingly.
I see a lot of people say UWE should make "X" better when "X" is actually a feature of shine. The line between mod and game is blurred. Many people don't know the difference. I am not saying those here do not know, but that most players do not.
Now we are saying practically the same thing. It isn't just about "if" we can think of a way but also about who will implement it into shine. We can think we have solved the problem and world hunger while we are at it, but that doesn't mean we it will be included in shine.
This is a different topic that what is in this thread, and you can find my opinion on the matter here.
The current UWE badge system would not work well with that. They can grant badges but they can't take them away. Once you achieve a gold badge, you will always have a gold badge no matter how you perform. This is why everyone who has a skulk challenge badge has all the skulk challenge badges below the best they have achieved.
You said that "You could achieve nearly the same result of having a commander skill by making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way. This would allow high skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss." That isn't true. Making commanding not affect your hive skill does not change anything if high hive skill players are still being shuffled based off of their current hive skill (using the existing shuffle mode, or any of the modes that have been proposed in other threads). In other words, what you described - "making commanding not affect your hive skill in any way" - is a necessary but not sufficient condition for allowing "high hive skill players to command without it being an almost guaranteed loss".
I think it goes without saying that almost every change requires coding hours, whether they fall to the community or the devs. If you want me to grant that premise, by all means. I agree that we'd need someone to seriously rework shuffle for any of this to happen.
Again, granted. Still not my point. In the opening of my post I was communicating that what you described in your clarifying post to @Handschuh was necessary but not sufficient to achieve the outcome you described.
Well, it doesn't really matter if it's a different topic, since the conversation has segued to a more specific consideration of how to rework commanders vis-à-vis hive skill + shuffle.
My operating assumption is that "to do" cards on trello entail code requirements, and as such I'm less concerned about the way things currently work than I am about the way they'd work after being changed.
In a harmless act of minor necromancy, I make this post to ask the following of you: what's the status on this, yo?
Whatever happened with this?
Could always get community members to help out.
I am so happy to hear that. I have been wanting this feature for so long, and I didn't think it was possible. Don't forget to leave @moultano an awesome in the OP for finding a functionable solution if you haven't.