Observations Of Late...
Savant
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Yuno one thing that I keep thinking about when I read all the posts about NS is that most people keep confusing team strength with game balance. Right now the marines and aliens are pretty evenly matched in regard to strength. If anything marines have a tiny advantage since they can hold of massive alien attacks for a sustained period of time, and rarely are defeated in the early or mid-game. If aliens were as strong as some peple suggest, then marines should literally CRUMBLE far earlier in the game.
They don't.
Most games I play in 2.0 involve marines putting up a bigger fight than in any build I have ever seen before. Without resources and backed in a corner the marines hold off wave after wave of aliens, and the ALIENS are too strong?
Ummm, I don't think so. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Does this mean the game is balanced? Absolutley not. Stats from server ops I've talked with show marines only winning at most 33% of the time and often times less. So where does this inadaquacy come from? In watching and playing many games I tend to think much of this relates to the way in which aliens are allowed to build in the early game.
In other words, if we were to delay some of the alien expansion in the early game it could very well impact the game to the point where the marine team also gets an equal chance to expand and thus have an equal chance to win. To achieve this we really only need to make MINOR balance changes. Delay resource tower building in a simple but non-restrictive manner, and perhaps delay the second hive a bit. This alone could make the world of difference to balance.
Unfortunately all we're seeing are <b>massive</b> alien nerfs which target the symptoms and not the problem. It's only making matters worse and that can be seen in the bulk of the posts about 2.01c. If so many people think we are moving in the wrong direction, personally I'm inclined to believe them. Beta or not, the <i>current</i> changes being made in 2.01 WILL suck the fun out of playing aliens. One of the reasons Flayra posted that 2.0 isn't balanced was that some "last minute changes were implemented to make the game fun" and that sacrified balance.
Does it really make sense now to flip it around and sacrifice fun for the sake of making the game balanced? I thought that's what we were trying to avoid with 2.0 in the first place. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Flayra has made it clear in his posts that these changes are mainly being made to cater to the needs of 'competitive players' (IE clans) and this may likely mean public play will suffer as a result. However, like everyone else here, I'm just along for the ride. This is Flayra's bus, and he's free to make whatever lane changes he wants. <b>I completely respect his position and decisions</b>, even if I may not agree with them. I can only hope that Flayra listens to the public's cry and takes their feelings and concerns into consideration.
Regards,
Savant
They don't.
Most games I play in 2.0 involve marines putting up a bigger fight than in any build I have ever seen before. Without resources and backed in a corner the marines hold off wave after wave of aliens, and the ALIENS are too strong?
Ummm, I don't think so. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Does this mean the game is balanced? Absolutley not. Stats from server ops I've talked with show marines only winning at most 33% of the time and often times less. So where does this inadaquacy come from? In watching and playing many games I tend to think much of this relates to the way in which aliens are allowed to build in the early game.
In other words, if we were to delay some of the alien expansion in the early game it could very well impact the game to the point where the marine team also gets an equal chance to expand and thus have an equal chance to win. To achieve this we really only need to make MINOR balance changes. Delay resource tower building in a simple but non-restrictive manner, and perhaps delay the second hive a bit. This alone could make the world of difference to balance.
Unfortunately all we're seeing are <b>massive</b> alien nerfs which target the symptoms and not the problem. It's only making matters worse and that can be seen in the bulk of the posts about 2.01c. If so many people think we are moving in the wrong direction, personally I'm inclined to believe them. Beta or not, the <i>current</i> changes being made in 2.01 WILL suck the fun out of playing aliens. One of the reasons Flayra posted that 2.0 isn't balanced was that some "last minute changes were implemented to make the game fun" and that sacrified balance.
Does it really make sense now to flip it around and sacrifice fun for the sake of making the game balanced? I thought that's what we were trying to avoid with 2.0 in the first place. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Flayra has made it clear in his posts that these changes are mainly being made to cater to the needs of 'competitive players' (IE clans) and this may likely mean public play will suffer as a result. However, like everyone else here, I'm just along for the ride. This is Flayra's bus, and he's free to make whatever lane changes he wants. <b>I completely respect his position and decisions</b>, even if I may not agree with them. I can only hope that Flayra listens to the public's cry and takes their feelings and concerns into consideration.
Regards,
Savant
Comments
First, this is not so easy as you say. Yes, I can equip some shotty guys to smack aliens around, but they change tactics and react. Then we have a problem, because my teams are split up, and thus severely weakened (not that I advocate the one-mass tactic, I'm just saying that's what your examples of "holding off endless swarms" refer to). In this situation, one skilled skulk can rack up the few kills neccessary for an early fade and then, backed by gorgies, smack my marines around six ways from Sunday until I drop them shotties to kick his arse, only to have them all die to a lerk.
Then, I finally manage to react with some upgrades, whatever, and voila, second hive, and I'll be playing with umbra, meta, and the dreaded bile bomb.
This doesn't happen on pubs... I can win on pubs, and win the vast majority of my games. That doesn't make it balanced just because aliens are unable to react to decent play and strange tactics. The fact is, balancing for competitive play balances public play, since, over time, public play steadily approaches competitive play (and, in 3-4 years, the remaining NS pubs will be filled with clan-level players, who will consist entirely of die-hard uber players!)
And no, I don't believe Flayra believes these patches, at the moment, will actually balance anything. I think he's more concerned with how they fare, so he can decide what is needed to actually attempt a "fix". The fact is, a balanced game is a fun game, in the long run (as compared to a game in which, for example, aliens always win, or 'rines always win), the dev/test team just needs to find a balance that includes more fun than 90 second res activation time.
I also agree with what you said in principle, I think that all we really need to achieve a lot of balance is increasing hive cost to 45 and alien starting resources to 20. Aliens just expand too quickly.
However I noticed you said that "Beta or not, the changes being made WILL suck the fun out of playing aliens." This I disagree with, firstly its only a beta ALL changes are subject to modification or complete removal so its not going to do anything yet, wait until 2.01 comes out in the end, and secondly, I can't understand how it gets rid of the fun when theres just minor (yes they are minor) changes being made.
Well some are fairly big, like evolving near hives, but I doubt that'll stay.
Anyways, let's put it this way... If the only changes kept at the electrification changes, and the bug fixes, I'd be happier for it. I love the new electricity, I hate electricity in 2.0 especially with the exploiters. Would that ruin fun? Because you can't chew on electrified RTs anymore?
But rines just loose because of no teamwork, not because of movement chambers.
On publics you get flames noob for dropping movement first.
Actually I was talking about the major alien nerfs that we have seen in the first few beta patches. 2.01c especially seems to be a concern to many pepole. I think if we start over from 2.0 and make some small balance changes we'll be fine.
Regards,
Savant
Yeah I get that heaps, it's bizzare. Experianced clanners ask for mov first, and the rest of the team erupts with variations of "OMG WE NEED TEH SENSORY I NO KILL WITHOUT TEH CLOAK!!!!1111" <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> yet when you actually get 3 movements up, the kills just pile in, and once that second hive goes up any marine outpost is essentially doomed. Not to mention the boost Fades get from adren or even celerity. And lerks <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> Also interesting is that defense is being locked into a 2nd hive position, mainly because people refuse to go onos without redemption. I've gone onos without def upgrades and done fine, but maybe that's just me <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Savant, I just don't know. Expansion is one thing, the alien res flow is another. Expanding and grabbing lots of nodes actually doesn't net the aliens that much res: it's the res for kills that fuels the alien expansion. I'm convinced that there-in lies the unbalancing feature of the game, not that aliens can quickly expand but that RFK makes that second hive come up real fast, or allows access to higher lifeforms before the marines can deal with them. I've written a lengthy post on RFKs in another post and I'll throw it in here for discussion:
One alien resource is worth more than one marine resource. Not just because those RFK resources represent such a substantial boost in an individual's resources, but because those res can manifest themselves in far more powerful ways.
RFK does not just come from ramboing. THis is a really common misconception that I see heaps of people stateing every day in this forum. The fact is that groups of skulks working together can and DO ambush marine groups moving to locations on the map. Skulks also very often "suicide rush" a marine group, hoping to pick off just one person before dying. Not only does that one skulk get a rush of res, that marine group is weakened. So often I see marine groups making their way across the map and being picked off one by one. This is partizan warfare, exactly what the aliens are supposed to be doing, and there's nothing wrong with it. The thing is that even when marines move as groups, some if not all of them can and do die. and by dieing they fuel the individual alien resource flow.
Now looking at RFK on both sides, it becomes quickly apparent that good skulks can unbalance the game quite easily, whilst marines have a tough time combatting this. Skulk x is a pretty "elite" 5k|_|1k, he notches up 10 marine kills in the first couple of minutes. He's now sitting on around 50 res because he didn't temp at the start. How can he use that res?
- He can Fade. A good choice, because he can now take on groups of up to 4 LA marines with little difficulty. This fuels his res flow even faster. Better yet, any res nodes that the com has managed to electrify he can now take down with some gorge support.
- He can put a hive up. Another excellent choice. Soon afterwards the alien team will benefit as a whole from his actions. Gorges will soon be able to decimate marine defensive structures, skulks will become even more deadlier with leap, the lerks can now spam umbra helping negate many marine weapons, any Fades can now metabolise, allowing them to work free from hives, DCs, or gorges. Any early oni as well will have stomp, which increases the onos' power 5-fold. Better still, the team now has access to a new chamber.
- He can put up some chambers or OCs. Again, a good choice. This benefits the team overall, and can help seal off strataigic points. Creating forward healing bases or cloaking stations helps his team-mates out and fuels the res of his team's killing.
- He can keep saving for an onos. Whilst not the best choice maybe, if Skulk x continues his form he could be there quite quickly. The introduction of an early onos can be devestating to a marine team, as now virtually any marine outpost is vunerable.
Ok, now the flipside, the marines. Marine Squad 1 is a pretty fine squad, top of their class and able to choose which skulk eyeball to aim at from 300m. This group in the first couple of minutes applies excellent pressure on some alien res points and notches up 10 kills. The marine team has gained around 20 - 25 res. How can this be best used?
- Research. This is probably the best area to invest in. That res could be used to put an arms lab up, or if one is already up, it could buy a weapon upgrade. It could be used to contribute to a motion tracking investment also, or to upgrade the armoury.
- Construction. Another good area, the com could build a new res node or electrify a current one. He could build a forward observatory or a tf and one or two turrets. However, anything the com constructs is at risk from a gorge assult or a Fade attack, and unless the alien team has been very lax on kills, there's gonna be a second hive up very soon, which makes all outposts vunerable.
- Equipment. This CAN work, but it's probably a bad area. 2 shotguns can boost a marine team, but light armours are still very vunerable to ambush. This could net the com a good investment, but more likely the shotgunners will only be able to manage a few kills before being overwhelmed. Still, this can work, but it's not a concrete investment.
Now in a game where Skulk X and Marine Squad 1 are both playing, at the 5 minute mark of the game the marines are already in serious trouble. They've most likely managed to get lvl 1 weapons, but Skulk x is now a Fade and has been destroying group efforts to reach vital locations. OR A second hive is up, and gorges are bilebombing the com's 3 electrified RTs, and Squad 1 can't be everywhere at once. OR Squad 1 now has 2 shotgunners, and whilst these tough talking grunts have notched up some kills, they are quickly overwhelmed by an alien team that has constructed sensory stations across the map. The com has tried scanner sweeping, but his lone observatory quickly runs out of power, and Skulk x and his comrades rush in for the kill.
Bear in mind that the above scenarios happen all the time: everyone has met Skulk X or Marine Squad 1. The differance between what the 2 sides can do with that early res is striking, and the aliens defenitly have the advantage from it. Note however, that in a game where only Skulk x was playing, the alien team has virtually won already: the advantages gained from his kills are just too great. In a game where Marine Squad 1 is only playing, victory is by no means assured: partizan tactics and suicide attacks mean that no matter how good Marine Squad 1 is they will take casualties, not to mention the rest of the marine team. These casualties translate into a much more deadly alien side much faster than the marines can match.
In it's current form, the simple truth is that RFK is unbalancing the game, not to mention focusing both sides into a gameplay style that is hardly conductive to teamplay. Already the cries of "KILL-STEALER!" echo across alien teams, and RFK simply encourages the aliens to focus on a very individualistic style of play as opposed to working together. Changes that are coming into the game in the betas still try to work around RFK instead of changing RFK or better yet simply doing away with it all together. NS, which was always supposed to be about the stratagic control of resources, is instead turning into a CS-style grab for kills.
The simplest method to rebalance RFK would be to spread alien res for kills out across all the players, but this could still produce problems as those res will still be so much faster than standard alien res flow from RTs. In the end it may be that RFK is impossible to balance into the game, and whilst it remains gameplay will certainly be continuing to suffer.
That pretty much sums up my feelings on RFK. I think more than anything else that it is the fundamental reason for imbalance in the game as it stands.
Actually I was talking about the major alien nerfs that we have seen in the first few beta patches. 2.01c especially seems to be a concern to many pepole. I think if we start over from 2.0 and make some small balance changes we'll be fine.
Regards,
Savant <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think some of the patch changes were horrible, but I'm not very concerned about them. Flayra is trying some crazy stuff, but it remains confined to the beta tests for now. I don't expect many of those changes to survive. Many things from the beta period also didn't survive, the only reason why there appear to be so many problems now is that the beta is public. Pre-2.0 beta testing probably also generated a big mess occasionally, but we didn't get to experience it ourselves. The purpose of the beta is not to be balanced itself, but to gather data that can be used to make the official version more balanced.
One: Lowering alien starting res to say 20 or 22 or something
Two: Returning the Gorge res bonus where he gets 3 shares of the res. This would make it so half the team isnt always gorging making WOL EVERYWHERE, as is the case now in 2.0
I realize there must have been a reason flayra removed the gorging method of 1.04, however it has caused the res nodes to be like 6v2 3 minutes into the game.
Also most commanders dont realize that securing the 2nd and possibly 3rd res node with a squad of 4-5, and turreting it up, THEN TURRETING BASE will VASTLY increase your tech times.
I hate commanders who will drop 2 ip's armory, tf, and then 4 turrets, this takes like 3 minutes since the last few turrets you dont have the res for, THEN YOU MUST SAVE UP FOR A 2nd res, while now you have tons of turrets, AND all your marines at base.
To me it seems more efficient to establish an outpost whilst leaving many marines to defend your base, then with increased res flow, you are able to expand faster.
Gee, yeah... I thought 1.04 was perfectly balanced. From marine perspective, ROLF <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I don't really get this "alien nerf"-whining. As far as I know, in scrims aliens win like 9/10 times and that just about tells the balance is really outta whack (even devs acknowledged this). 1.04 was fine for like a month before people got into the game, learned the strategies and started owning as marine. If you don't balance 2.0 for clanners, you will just get the same effect: pubbers will get more experience and suddenly we will have like 8/10 alien victories which is just about as good as JP/HMG in 1.04... I'm sure "casual/5-minute" players or "I'm just checking the mod out" don't care if 2.0 goes straight to hell in a month, but the more interested people who really like the mod are going to suffer.
It boils down to this: do you want 2.0 to be a one month shiny star which will be balanced now (when everyone is a newbie and can't do anything right) or a mod some people will be playing for a year? Despite many forumites being one-sided alien-lobbying **** who don't care if the game is balanced or not as long as they can own marines 100-0 as a skulk, I fully understand and support what devs are doing and hope the "massive nerfs" will bring 50/50 (or at least close) win ratio for scrims.
OK, let's look back at WHY res for kills was implemented.
Back in the 2.0 beta, when the res economy was changed, aliens had it REALLY rough. The lack of the gorge extra share meant that res came in slow for gorges, and the slow resource income made it near impossible to save for Onos let alone other evolutions.
So we tried increasing the res flow at res node. (which impacted BOTH teams, as mentioned above) While it did give the aliens enough to be useful, it caused another problem.
When I was comm I could research EVERYTHING, electrify and turret farm all nodes, and at the end of the game have a couple thousand res left over. (yes a couple <b>THOUSAND</b> res) Res flow was later put back to previous levels.
At that point Flayra tried a new approach. Res for kills.
Originally it was to be for aliens ONLY, to make up their lack of the extra res to build stuff, and to compensate for the fact aliens get less res individually in larger games. This worked out well, but because of a bug, BOTH teams were getting res for kill income. However, what we found was that the outcome was pretty balanced. Marines didn't get too much income from res for kills, but aliens got enough to be competitive.
What is different from the way it is now? Activation time. During the beta, all nodes had activation time, and electrical nodes couldn't be exploited to kill them.
Fast forward to the end of the 2.0 when that 'last minute change' was made to remove activation. That, and that alone, was the only thing changed that impacted the <b>res economy</b>. However, that change was enough to impact the alien res flow. (yes res node income DOES make a difference, even if it doesn't seem that way)
With no activation alien res flow spikes in the early game, and marines have no chance to stop it. I'm not suggetsing that we bring it back, but I am saying that removal of it did greatly imbalance the game.
Removing res for kills will only change the imbalance from advantage aliens to advatage marines. It won't balance the game at all.
Think about it, if res for kills was SO imbalancing, then why were there no complaints from the veteran testers when it was implemented? Activation time negated much of the impact of early alien expansion, and that was the reason aliens became so strong when it was removed. (in my opinion)
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Expansion is one thing, the alien res flow is another. Expanding and grabbing lots of nodes actually doesn't net the aliens that much res<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Res for kills only becomes significant in the mid to late game when the higher level evolutions come into play. Most skulks would be lucky (or highly skilled) to get 10 kills before the second hive completes building. At an average of 2 res per kill, that's a measly 20 res.
Not significant in my book. How long does it take to make those kills, assuming 1 kill per life and one kill per minute (with some time spent getting back to the front line) I think 10 minutes to get 10 kills (if you are good) is reasonable. 10 minutes is a LONG time to wait for such a small amount of res.
On the other hand, lets look at resource flow:
First off all res nodes harvest 1 res every 5 seconds. That means a res node will harvest 12 res per minute. (which I will call RPM for sake of brevity)
1 nodes = 12RPM
2 nodes = 24RPM
3 nodes = 36RPM
4 nodes = 48RPM
5 nodes = 60RPM
Now let's take 5 res nodes (which you say doesn't provide 'lots of res') and see what we have.
On a 6 man alien team, 5 nodes will provide 60RPM to the team and that will provide EACH alien with 10RPM. So in two minutes, with 5 nodes, each alien on a 6v6 will get as much res as it would take them to get in 10 minutes with res for kills.
Let's look at a larger game, a 10v10. In this case each alien gets 6RPM, and basically has the same amount of res in just over 3 minutes. Even in a 15v15 with aliens only getting 4RPM, that's only 5 minutes to accumulate the same amount that takes 10 minutes to accumulate with res for kills.
Res for kills is not the real problem here. If it was, then there would have been an uproar when it was implemented.
There wasn't.
Instead all the balance complaints came about after activation time was removed. Coincidence?
I don't think so.
If anything, I'd love to see one of the 2.01 betas bring BACK activation using the 2.0 balance values, and then we can see how that impacts the game. If it DOES provide better balance, then we can look for ways to achieve the same level of balance without activation if people are so inclined.
Res for kills may be a great whipping boy, but unless we open our eyes to the real issue here, then we'll be continually spinning our wheels in attempts to achieve balance while massive nerfs are made to the aliens. In the meanwhile, aliens will end up toothless and weak, all for the sake of 'balance', but without consideration for fun.
I can't say I like that picture.
regards,
Savant
1: insurance, Com gets disconnected from server you dont lose the res. Ann Alein gets kicked you might lose 100 res. Yeah its not YOUR res but, its still important to your team. If he was a good player you just lost 6 res towers worth of res, 10 OTS, STs, DTs or MTs, A fade player who doesnt have to fear dieing, or an onos.
2: coordination of spending, Its damn hard to get 5 players to save res and all go onos at once to shread a team. Commander by defualt has this ability, All he has to do is bank it and when HE is ready he has 5 lev3 HA/HMGs,welders with a JP/GLer
3: res for marines builds to usable levels Much faster. It takes quite awhile for a gorge to get enough res for a modest WoL. With RFK a decent marines team can throw up a turret farm or even the begins of a fodder farm pretty quickly.
When I com I find that I have little problem with res flow or more importantly WINNING. I have found that aleins for the most part wer figured out pretty quickly, Mariens on the other hand seem to be lagging behind on the learning curve. I feel this isent a problem with the game as is a result of When some one coms his "secrets are his own" meaing that the rest of the team doesnt really see every thing that goes into a win and thus cant learn as much form there victory.
When I jumped into v2 the first thing I did is goto the GI forum and khara stat page and read all the ALiens gripes, warnings, **** and such and then catered my comming style to them. v.1.4 went out the window as soon as v2 was installed. Coms have to adjust to a new game style, period, end of disscussion. Marines CAN AND DO win the majority of there games when played propeerly. As of now I have some thing like a 22/2 win ratio on a PUB with little stacking.
Every one is whinning for these nerfs and I hope that flarya doesnt bow to there wishes becuase mark my words, Eventauly v2 comming strats are going to become common knowledge and once they do marines will basicly be unbeatable....
On Pub play at least marine RT's often go down before they make a 'profit' and adding a 90 sec activation time will make it even worse. Alien RT's however are often 'safe' for a long time as the RT's are often near a hive protected by roaming skulks.
If alien expansion happens too quickly then we can do many small things to counter it.
-Implement a reverse activation time on res nodes. This would mean that once a team built on a res node, they would have to wait 90 seconds (or whatever time is deemed suitable) until they could build on another node. This would really only impact aliens since marines don't own the map and rarely go around capping nodes consecuitively in such a short period of time. Not to mention marines don't need as many nodes to survive. As such aliens would be forced to wait before going gorge or they might end up being stuck unable to drop a node temporarily.
-Change the system so that to build a res node you need to have built one upgrade chamber for each resource chamber you want to build, BEFORE you can build the resource chamber. Since you start with one resource chamber, that means you need to build 1 upgrade chamber before you can build your second resource chamber. Want to build a third resource chamber, you'll need 2 upgrade chambers built. A forth you'll need 3 etc. So one gorge would have to drop upgrade chambers in order for the other gorge to drop a resrouce chamber, instead of both gorges being able to drop resource chambers.
-Change the hives so that aliens need to have FOUR resource nodes capped in order to build the second hive and SEVEN nodes capped in order to build hive 3. The backstory would be that the first resource chamber supports the first hive, but you need 3 more resource chambers to support each new hive built. This would reinforce the concept that to build hives you need to dominate a good portion of the map to support those hives and win the game. It would also shift many of the battles to resource nodes, which would enhance gameplay and variety.
-Change the system so that all three upgrade chambers for hive one must be built BEFORE you can drop hive #2. Once hive two is up you need to build 3 NEW type upgrade chambers before starting to build hive 3. (not just more hive one upgrade chambers) This would prevent people from dropping hives without building the upgrade chambers.
All of these changes are minor and would only slightly impact alien GAMEPLAY. They would, however, have a marked impact on game BALANCE and I think would go a long way to bringing the two teams together.
We don't need to swing the nerf bat to achieve balance. All it takes is a few minor changes to impact the desired change, and as a bonus you can keep the game FUN to play. (which it is quickly losing in 2.01)
Regards,
Savant
On Pub play at least marine RT's often go down before they make a 'profit' and adding a 90 sec activation time will make it even worse. Alien RT's however are often 'safe' for a long time as the RT's are often near a hive protected by roaming skulks. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why does the activation time have to be that 90 seconds? There is a variable that could be playtested enough to find the good number for it. It seems to me that people usually think about these balancing ideas with an on/off type on thinking, so there either is a 90 sec activation time or there isn't any. You ever heard of fuzzy logic? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Then a skulk needs to earn 10 res before he can go gorge. In a 6v6 game, that will take five minutes unless he manages to kill a marine. In a 12v12, it will take 10(!) minutes....
The obvious marine tactic is to sit in base and tech up until the aliens can start building RT's.
Talk about a BOORING game.
Ten minutes? With RfK, it doesn't take ten minutes to gather that much. It's still important to go out and deny marines territory, just that if marines fail, they don't suffer a major setback.
1. Share RFK equally among the team
2. Make RT's build themselves without the gorges having the option of speeding up the process. The build time acts as an intuitive activation time and slows down early game.
Shared RFK is to even out the individual res progress and also to help out the gorges who miss out on the RFK almost completely during early game.
RT "activation" is simply to make reckless expansion more risky and push back the 2nd hive for several minutes.
Regards,
Savant