Res For Kills
Tiax
Join Date: 2003-05-28 Member: 16802Members
Join Date: 2003-05-28 Member: 16802Members
<div class="IPBDescription">my 2 cents</div> Im not a beta tester but my opinion on it doesn't require knowing exactly how it works. At least for the most part. Ether way, its some stuff for beta testers to think about if they read it <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
Personally I think res for kills, ether way, is a bad thing. Here are a couple of reasons:
1. It encourages people to kill as much as they can. While this sounds good for a commander it can be hell.
2. There will be common tactics such as spawn camping just to suck up all the res.
3. While the game should encourage a person to stay alive, it does this with the slow respawn. You should not be afraid to fight for fear of giving your enemy res.
4. It makes no sense logically. How would one get the nano sludge from a dead alien? Is the marine gonna drag its carcus back to some machine and toss it in to grind it into usable parts? (Lol, thats actually not a bad idea <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
5. Unbalance. Personally I think, and im making an assumption here, that a single noob on your team will have a much major impact against you if the enemy gets res for killing him then if he don't get res. In other words if you got a noob on your team and he dies...big deal. But if everytime he dies the marines get res then its gonna add up and seriously hurt your team.
6. As mentioned in other posts that wer epartially on this subject, its gonna cause a major witch burning type effect. "Get off my team you stupid noob, your giving them res! "admin_vote_kick NOOB".
I, personally, dont' think there needs to be any reward to encourage killing the enemy. You should do it to help the team win or because the commander tells you to, or in self defense. There needs not be a special money reward.
Personally I think res for kills, ether way, is a bad thing. Here are a couple of reasons:
1. It encourages people to kill as much as they can. While this sounds good for a commander it can be hell.
2. There will be common tactics such as spawn camping just to suck up all the res.
3. While the game should encourage a person to stay alive, it does this with the slow respawn. You should not be afraid to fight for fear of giving your enemy res.
4. It makes no sense logically. How would one get the nano sludge from a dead alien? Is the marine gonna drag its carcus back to some machine and toss it in to grind it into usable parts? (Lol, thats actually not a bad idea <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
5. Unbalance. Personally I think, and im making an assumption here, that a single noob on your team will have a much major impact against you if the enemy gets res for killing him then if he don't get res. In other words if you got a noob on your team and he dies...big deal. But if everytime he dies the marines get res then its gonna add up and seriously hurt your team.
6. As mentioned in other posts that wer epartially on this subject, its gonna cause a major witch burning type effect. "Get off my team you stupid noob, your giving them res! "admin_vote_kick NOOB".
I, personally, dont' think there needs to be any reward to encourage killing the enemy. You should do it to help the team win or because the commander tells you to, or in self defense. There needs not be a special money reward.
Comments
Maybe for tournament play it can work, but for pubs (which, if I'm not mistaken, is 90% of NS play), this will lead to lots of new players going back to playing TFC and Counter-Strike, ads on Nvidia notwithstanding.
Lies. You would have to see the alien res system and marine tech and res system to know how it affects marines or not.
at which point there is more chance for noobs on the marines for YOU to kill, than noobs on the aliens to get killed, because any one who reads the autohelp and the manual, will notice it recommends you play marines as a beginner...
but there is a 50% chance the noob is on your team or the other. deal with it.
Agke:
While im sure playing beta would enlighten me as to how the res situation balances out...thats not what im focusing on. If one side has more res then the other then find another way to balance it out. The idea as a whole sounds bad to me, im not claiming that it unbalances one team or another.
Ackward: I agree...most of the points are only regarding public play. But from my experience...as mentioned...thats 90% of gameplay. Clans who play other clans only won't be playing NS much. Not to mention if the public gameplay isnt' appealing...there won't be any clans.
1.1j, and 1.1p have been the most well balanced version to date, and both had marines getting res for kills.
Also, attempting following NS's original goals and backstory, the marines are meant to play as a <i>team</i>, while the aliens are meant to play as if it was a <i>deathmatch</i>. Anything that encourgases deathmatch play on the marine team is detracting from this goal. With aliens you have a lot more freedom to fiddle with them, since we already made the massive change of stopping the amount of gorges affecting your personal res intake, a big step towards deathmatch play...
Aliens do and should require a certain amount of teamplay, just as marines do and should require a certain amount of individualism... But rewarding the marines for their individual skill goes directly against everything the marines were ever meant to be as a team...
Ofcourse the vets all love the idea and the PTs all hate it... That makes perfect sense, because our vets consist of clanners. Highly skilled clanners at that too. Anything that rewards their great skill is ofcourse going to go down well with them. Our PTs on the other hand aren't all from clans, and they aren't all highly skilled. They represent the public aspect to NS in many respects.
While the vets play an extremely important role, in ensuring balance during tournament situations, don't forget that the original spirit of NS resides within the PTs, and when they unanimously oppose an idea, some serious weight needs to placed on their assertions.
The PTs were here, supporting and playing NS long before it was realised. Very few of us here remember what things were like pre-release... And while some may like to argue that we shouldn't waste time in the past... It will do more harm than good to lose sight of our roots and to lose what originally brought people to play NS...
There are other ways to balance marines receiving less res than aliens. Simply making everything the same is a lazy answer... Aliens have needed for a long time a kick in the rear end to encourage them into character... Skulks were <b>meant</b> to be suicidal units, sacrificing themselves for the greater good, and it sounds like that is happening now... It's not so bad for them to die anymore, and the benefit of making a kill far outweighs the penalties of dying for your average skulk now...
For marines, remember that their focus is not life or death. It is the team. You want to give them res bonus? Then find ways to reward them for teamwork. The marine defending the base, building structures, and following orders needs to be considered the 'good' marines... With the res for kills system... The marine who ignores his comm and kills the most aliens <b>will</b> become the comm's favourite marine... Because without them they'll have a far smaller res intake... Subconsciencely our comms will learn to favour the rambos due to their extra earning ability...
Is that what we really want? To reward our rambos? To leave our team players sitting in the gutter once again?
1.1j, and 1.1p have been the most well balanced version to date, and both had marines getting res for kills. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
They are balanced for tournament play. I believe they will be horrible for public play.
I'd say the original idea resides with Flayra, and he came up with the idea...took it out, saw how badly balanced the game became, put it back in and now its a lot more balanced again.
Its not really an opinion...its true.
IF there is to be a reward based res system for the marines, then it needs to reward teamplay, NOT individualism.
The kharaa are individualists linked via a hivesight designed to replace the need for complex co-ordination and intensive teamplay. The TSA Frontiersmen are team players, provided with a commander who focus 100% of his mind onto co-ordinating his team and turning possibly weak individuals into a strong <u>team</u>.
There has to be another way....
My line of thinking has to do with, as revenge said, marines having a DeathMatch focus. I.E. "go do whatever, just kill things so we win"
Not to mention the concept behind gaining res from killing an alien makes zero sense. While its nice to throw a feature in, I see no reason it shouldn't be done so that it makes sense.
1.1j, and 1.1p have been the most well balanced version to date, and both had marines getting res for kills.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But why is it more balanced? Because the marines needed more res in order to match the aliens? If that's the reason, there are other methods of giving marines a res boost.
I'm not a playtester so I'm not going to argue one way or the other, but it seems shortsighted to say "well it was unbalanced before, it was put in again and now it's balanced, so it has to stay". Just because something works doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best solution. We may find on pubs that marine res for kills encourages too much marine ramboing, or causes skulks to be overly cautious. Who knows. Just don't discard all ideas because something appears to be working in a controlled environment (I assume the vast majority of PTs and Vets are competent, mature, team-oriented players).
I think that is a good idea.
I really like that idea. I'm not sure how it would be implemented, maybe when there are 3 marines in a room, and one gets a kill, then res is awarded.
Like it was said before, it encourages spawncamping, ramboing, and the new players will be bashed even more than they already are.
I think instead of a bonus for killing players there should be a bonus if a player destroy key structures, like RTs, Turret Factories, Phasegates, Upgrade chambers, etc. or just no bonus at all.
A game shouldn't be just "balanced" for clans and veterans, but be also fun for new players.
Server admin can set it as he likes.
Why?
Well I like playing NS but its a pain in the butt to have to go down each list and look for the exact settings I want. Right now there is no need to do that. The best example for that wouldo f been action halflife.
When I wanted to play action I had to look for game type to make srue it was teamplay and not TDM, DM, LMS, etc. Then I had to look to make sure friendlyfire was on since teamplay without it was just spamming bullets all over. Then I had to look for a server that ran basic maps and didn't have alot of garbage. Then on top of all that I had to find servers without bots, with a good ping, and without abusive admins. By time your done there were about 2-3 servers out of 50 that were 'good'. Most action servers are empty and I think its the reason i just mentioned that causes that. Everyone has a different style they like and so everyones on a different server, no noe sees anyone else, and so no one plays.
Ether back, on topic, res for kills should ether be in or out, not an option. It would be insanly difficult to balance a game that had options you could turn on and off. And if turning it on or off threw the game out of balance....why play with that mode at all?
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Aw, come on. I think the most stupid way to back up a claim is to say its not "realistic" in a sci-fi mod. NS is full of unrealistic and physics denying things that have been rationalized with god knows what nanosludgerobots or weird airborne alien bacteria chewing dead marines in 2 seconds. I think the devs should never sacrifice game balance to realism.
Game balance >>>>> Realism.
Pege. I agree sort of. While claiming its unrealistic is one thing...even in sci-fi things should 'make sense'. The whole story behind this game COULD be true. In Star-Trek, things COULD be true. The captain doesn't suddenly destroy the Klingon ship and have his ship instantly repaired. Nor did Captain Kirk will himself to fly through the air.
Your point however, does make sense. Whose to say killing the alien wouldnt' give res? Whose to say that a dead alien can't be salvaged for the nanos. No one. But im still against the concept <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
For example:
2 guys kill 2 aliens each and get 2 res each. The res was 22 but they only see 20 and they won't see it go up till it reaches 30 or 25, whatever number you want to cap it at.
What do you think?
The idea should be scrapped. If marines need a res boost...give it to them some other way. For instance res towers could work quicker for marines since marines equipment is MADE to suck the sludge out where aliens have to adapt and make do.
I really like that idea. I'm not sure how it would be implemented, maybe when there are 3 marines in a room, and one gets a kill, then res is awarded.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Mebbe to get res, you gotta have a secondary weapon like a <b>nano-spade</b>. After laying the alien smack down, you then scoop/suck up the alien corpse with it. Of course, the bigger the alien, the more time it takes and the more res you get, but you are vulnerable. Given that the corpse doesn't last forever, you gotta be quick. So if you are ramboing, you may not get res cos you won't have the time to suck up the aliens before the corpse disappears or the dead skulkies' mates round the corner seeking kharaa revenge. Hence, if you got two marines together, one with a nano-spade, then you have more chance of scooping up the mess.
Long live nano-spades!
Creep.
"the aliens are meant to play as if it was a deathmatch."
"Aliens shouldn't fear dying"
"It's not what this game is about!"
You people are basing arguments on statements that you are taking as magical, undisputable truths. None of which have been justified or elaborated on at all.
We know res for kills for each team creates a penalty for the death of players on either team. We know this will reduce the 'kamikaze' aspect that comes with free offense. Simply stating these things is not an argument against res for kills. Infact these can be presumed to be the very reason for its implimentation in the first place.
What you are failing miserably to accomplish is explaining why additional penalties for death will have a negative impact on the game. Yes, skulks (and marines) will be more wary of diving into situations where they can't make at least a 1/1 kill ratio.... Why is this bad? The only answer that has been given is "It's not supposed to be like that!"
Say's who, the great gaming bible?
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You want to give them res bonus? Then find ways to reward them for teamwork.
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Res for kills is not a **** ranking system, the reward for teamwork is a significantly greater chance of winning the game. The reward for killing an alien or marine structure is the removal of that expensive structure from the game. The reward for killing a player that has an infinate number of lives and spawns for free is arguably less than it should be.
Res for kills removes a strange quirk of NS that is purposefully avoided in most RTS's - Free offense. In a RTS game, when you engage an opponent in a fight anywhere, wether over an important location or in a random mid-map confrontation, you risk your units. And your opponent risks his. If you come out ontop in the battle, you are "rewarded" by having cost your opponent more resources than he has cost you, thus putting you ahead. Even if the battle is not over an important location, and forcing your opponent to retreat does not give you a tactical advantage, winning the battle by killing more of your opponents units than he kills of yours is its own reward.
In NS 1.04, you can concievably come out ontop in multiple battles and still have no edge at all over your opponent. Offensive units are free, and losing a battle costs you nothing provided you don't lose any ground in the process. Res for kills changes that, everytime one of your "free" units dies, the opponent gains resources. Effectively, there is no more free offense, despite the fact that spawning still costs nothing. Wether you think free offense is a good thing or not is another point to debate, but if you're aiming for a RTS style of game, free offense is a long way from starcraft.
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We may find on pubs that marine res for kills encourages too much marine ramboing, or causes skulks to be overly cautious.
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Listen to yourself... Res for kills is applied to both sides in exactly the same way. It has equal benefits and dangers for both teams. This is not just a marine bonus it's a feature applied to both sides. If you believe res for kills will make one side additionally cautious, then the same will apply to the other side. Marines not only benefit from the ability to gain resources from alien kills, they suffer from the risk of supplying the aliens with res when they die. Killing 50 skulks means nothing if you die 100 times, the situation this creates is as follows:
Both teams will ideally aim for the best kill/death ratios they can, whenever doing so hinders their ultimate goal less than the additional resources will benefit it.
That's it, and if you have any concept of logic you'll see that the above situation does not encourage "rambo" players in the slightest....
From a kills-economy point of view, the goal is not to gain as many resources as possible but to out-resource your opponent by as much as possible. This means if forfeiting some resources will cause your opponent to lose even more resources, it is in your benefit. To accomplish this, you fight only in situations where you can maximise your kills/deaths ratio. The player running off alone, to some random point on the map (I'm assuming this is your definition of a "rambo") Is in probably the worst situation you could be in for maximising your kills/deaths ratio.
By contrast, a marine in an entrentched position, with teammates covering his rear and other entrances into the room, possibly surrounded by mines, is in an extremely good position to exploit the kills for res system.
A marine running off alone towards a hive will probably kill more - he'll also die more. This system does not encourage rambos, infact it encourages more defensive play from both sides. The 1.04 "rambo" takes advantage of 1.04's free offense: when a rambo dies he costs his team nothing. Res for kills introduces the penalty for running off alone and dying.
Infact, the marine team is probably penalized even more by this system than the aliens are if they decide to go on the offensive. Deaths by marine turrets are unspecific, they are effectively counted a self-kill. While kills by alien offence chambers are attributed by the gorge. Gorges gain resources for marines dying to turrets, while skulks throwing themselves against a TF will most likely not be feeding the marines resources. *Informed Speculation*
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It is wrong on so many levels to reward marines on individual skill!
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By *reward* we are here referring to a benefit to your team. If you believe there should be no reward for individual skill, then we might as well just fit all marines with auto-aiming code that lands 1 out of every 3 bullets every time, you'd also need to remove all movement, as that can be constituted as an individual skill. You could have marines automatically walk to their waypoints while automatically firing... Oh yes and we forgot automatic weapon switching and target selecting. Then once you've dummbed the game down to the point where marines watch their player automatically carry out the comms orders and occasionally push the 1 button on their keyboard that does anything (+use) to build a structure (After all, building structures is teamwork!) you might finally have a game where individual skill isnt rewarded. Congratulations.
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Spawncamping
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Res for kills doesn't promote spawncamping - the entire sodding game design promotes spawncamping. If you get into a position to spawncamp the opposing team in NS you are 80% on your way to winning the game. There is no team serious about winning a game that will not take any opportunity to spawn camp the opposing team (Be it aliens or marines) whenever the chance arrises. A 1-3 res bonus is nothing compared to an extremely high chance of winning the game within 30 seconds. You cannot have any greater incentive to spawn camp the opposing team than you have already, and res for kills has zero impact on this. Getting into a position to spawncamp the opposing team is the battle, killing them all and stopping them respawning is the goal. Saying that res for kills will promote spawn camping is like saying a free cookie will encourage aliens to get 3 hives up and all go Onos - They were already going to do it anyway if you gave them half the opportunity.