Lets Talk Res For Kills
RyoOhki
Join Date: 2003-01-26 Member: 12789Members
Join Date: 2003-01-26 Member: 12789Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Effects on gameplay and balance</div> Everyone knows it's hard to win a 2.0 game as marines, and everyone has differant theories on the reasons why. Some say the aliens expand very quickly at the start of the game, which is true. Others say the 2nd hive goes up too fast: this is also true. Yet others say alien higher evolutions appear too early, again fairly true. More say the marines can't tech fast enough: valid as well, and tied to the 2nd hive as generally marines can't get to the tech level required to counter hive 2 abilities. Could it be that there is a simple underlying reason behind all these imbalances? I believe there is.
Alien 1 hive tech doesn't require huge counters on the part of the marines. Lvl 1 wpns will generally counter defense, mt counters silence (no real counter celerity except to be a good shot <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> ) and scans + forwards obs counter sensory. Marines can and do fight fairly well against 1 hive aliens, but once the 2nd hive goes up the marines are in trouble.
But not always. Recall those few games where the 2nd hive went up when the marines were fairly well teched: lvl 2 or 3 wpns, lvl 1 or 2 armour, 4 rts and some phases up with maybe MT thrown in. This is when the really big climactic battles occur that you remember forever: both teams, fairly evenly matched, throwing themselves against each other in a desperate struggle for ground and resources. But such games are rare, because that 2nd hive comes out very quick. The current record is 2:58 I believe, which is quite frankly ridiculous.
How is that hive going up so fast? One factor is a low hive cost, but that's not the real issue. Another is that the aliens take many res nodes early on, but the res gained from this isn't that great (although it is an issue that must be looked at). The true culprit is Res For Kills (RFK) because one good alien can simply temp after 5 or 6 kills and put a hive up. Marines simply have no chance, even with their own RFK, of getting the tech required to counter hive 2 abilities in that length of time.
Large numbers of alien res nodes aside, RFK is the driving force behind fast alien tech and expansion. After those intial nodes have been plonked down, good skulks with kills simply go back and fortify them. Or worse, come out with an early Fade or Onos.
Now there's a plethora of counters to a Fade or Onos, but most of them require some degree on tech on the marines' part (exception being shotguns, but most marine teams don't have the res a few minutes into the game to equip a team with enough shotties). 2 hive oni and Fades with lerk support rip through just about anything marines at this stage of the game can throw at them, and the marines' attempts to stop them simply fuel the res of these higher evolutions. 2 hive gorges pound any marine outpost to scrap metal, and from then on it's either a turretted spawn or the marine team just giving up.
If, as the 2.01 betas attempt to do, we are to achieve balance in 2.0, why are we working around the problems created by RFK instead of adressing the central issue itself. Deeper yet: why is RFK in the game anyway? The kind of gameplay it encourages on the alien side is one of individualism, not teamwork, ramboing as oppossed to working in groups. Many aliens won't drop RTs, instead they just keep running around killing until they can onos. These are poor aliens, granted, but that sort of gameplay would be much more lacking if RFK wasn't in the game, because those players would know that they'd have to drop RTs to keep going.
Natural Selection has always suppossed to have been about the stratigic control of resources in order to achieve victory. Why then do we have a feature in the game which not only detracts from gaining control of res points, but is causing deep imbalances as well? Bringing the game back to a state where resource towers are the only way to gain resources not only brings the focus back onto strategic control of the map, but also curbs the insanely fast alien teching. Even better, higher level lifeforms appear at times when the marines are at a level of tech to deal with them. Coupled with a small rise in hive cost, the game I believe can be balanced.
What are the thoughts of the community on RFK? Should it stay? Should it go? How do you think it is affecting gameplay and balance. And to the devs: why did RFK come into the game in the first place?
Alien 1 hive tech doesn't require huge counters on the part of the marines. Lvl 1 wpns will generally counter defense, mt counters silence (no real counter celerity except to be a good shot <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> ) and scans + forwards obs counter sensory. Marines can and do fight fairly well against 1 hive aliens, but once the 2nd hive goes up the marines are in trouble.
But not always. Recall those few games where the 2nd hive went up when the marines were fairly well teched: lvl 2 or 3 wpns, lvl 1 or 2 armour, 4 rts and some phases up with maybe MT thrown in. This is when the really big climactic battles occur that you remember forever: both teams, fairly evenly matched, throwing themselves against each other in a desperate struggle for ground and resources. But such games are rare, because that 2nd hive comes out very quick. The current record is 2:58 I believe, which is quite frankly ridiculous.
How is that hive going up so fast? One factor is a low hive cost, but that's not the real issue. Another is that the aliens take many res nodes early on, but the res gained from this isn't that great (although it is an issue that must be looked at). The true culprit is Res For Kills (RFK) because one good alien can simply temp after 5 or 6 kills and put a hive up. Marines simply have no chance, even with their own RFK, of getting the tech required to counter hive 2 abilities in that length of time.
Large numbers of alien res nodes aside, RFK is the driving force behind fast alien tech and expansion. After those intial nodes have been plonked down, good skulks with kills simply go back and fortify them. Or worse, come out with an early Fade or Onos.
Now there's a plethora of counters to a Fade or Onos, but most of them require some degree on tech on the marines' part (exception being shotguns, but most marine teams don't have the res a few minutes into the game to equip a team with enough shotties). 2 hive oni and Fades with lerk support rip through just about anything marines at this stage of the game can throw at them, and the marines' attempts to stop them simply fuel the res of these higher evolutions. 2 hive gorges pound any marine outpost to scrap metal, and from then on it's either a turretted spawn or the marine team just giving up.
If, as the 2.01 betas attempt to do, we are to achieve balance in 2.0, why are we working around the problems created by RFK instead of adressing the central issue itself. Deeper yet: why is RFK in the game anyway? The kind of gameplay it encourages on the alien side is one of individualism, not teamwork, ramboing as oppossed to working in groups. Many aliens won't drop RTs, instead they just keep running around killing until they can onos. These are poor aliens, granted, but that sort of gameplay would be much more lacking if RFK wasn't in the game, because those players would know that they'd have to drop RTs to keep going.
Natural Selection has always suppossed to have been about the stratigic control of resources in order to achieve victory. Why then do we have a feature in the game which not only detracts from gaining control of res points, but is causing deep imbalances as well? Bringing the game back to a state where resource towers are the only way to gain resources not only brings the focus back onto strategic control of the map, but also curbs the insanely fast alien teching. Even better, higher level lifeforms appear at times when the marines are at a level of tech to deal with them. Coupled with a small rise in hive cost, the game I believe can be balanced.
What are the thoughts of the community on RFK? Should it stay? Should it go? How do you think it is affecting gameplay and balance. And to the devs: why did RFK come into the game in the first place?
Comments
It's just like CS where once you win one round you win the next three, because you can simply outgun the other side (I no longer play CS partly for this reason). The fact that if you kill more oppostion you can control more of the map and hence more resource towers should be reason enough to kill things.
Comebacks are one of the greatest pleasures in NS, but RFK makes them virtually impossible. Once a marine side has turreted 2 hives and 5 RT's they can pretty much do nothing as they'll just get res from turret kills. Aliens are just as bad, usually once someone goes onos, thats it, they can onos indefinately as they get enough RFK that by the time they die they have 100 res again.
You can argue what you like, but I think RFK is fundamentally bad for NS. Of course that doesn't mean Flayra wont find someway to make it acceptable.
I feel like if we're going to have RFK at all, might as well make it strategy instead of just sheer slaughter number. If you waste a whole bunch of skulks rushing your base, you get more rez then you would if you took out an redeeming onos (which takes a ludicrous amount of luck, skill, patience, and luck). The current RFK system is no way to have a strategy game IMHO. If it was slightly adapted I'd be much more open to hit.
<i>**edit: Poorly worded.</i>
I'm not too sure how well it would play out but it's an idea.
It's no doubt that near the end one team is getting many more kill than the other, but these extra resources aren't needed if you're already dominating the whole map. It's much more worthwhile to get rid of the enemies res.
Of course this effects the early game so nozzles should give out more resources per tick to balance it.
<!--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-->A more conservative "fine tuning" tweak would be to add "point of diminishing returns" to RFK. In this system if you kill many enemies in a row, the probabilities are weighted so that you are more likely to get only 1 res for the last kills. This would subtly alleviate the "rich get richer" problem.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem is early game, where denying resources and outpacing the other team is key. Those few rambos provide the needed boost to the aliens to allow them to tech up and hive faster than the marines can tech up. Once one side starts winning the tech race, it becomes much harder for the other side to recover if the team is decent. Want marines to not get screwed by RFK? Stop the rambos. The same bodes true for aliens who spend their time throwing themselves against groups of turrets or marines and handing res to the commander. A few of those skulks can easily screw over an alien team by allowing the marines to tech up. It'll all even out once people learn what they're doing and learn to work for the team - oh and also once comms learn to start scouting for those lone alien res towers early. But don't tell any of them I told you that! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Speaking of S&I, why is this thread not over there? May it be because the developers and beta testers currently seem to refuse to read that forum?
Cripple the aliens? Hardly. Most games start with the aliens grabbing most of the res points on the map with their starting res, so they're fine for res then. If they don't defend those points, why should they be any less disadvantaged than a marine team which doesn't hold res points? Also you seem to be saying that a shotgun now means the marines have won the game. Well that explains those constant marine victories we see <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
10 res split up is not worthless: it's benefiting all the team members. The marines have a pool; the aliens share res, that's the way it is. As the resource system stands, the aliens would still be able to get a hive up very quickly: it's only 20 res more than what they start with, and a decent alien side usually has around 4 - 5 rts in the first minute or so. So in an 8v8 game some alien is going to have enough for a hive after a little over 3 minutes. A hive cost increase would still be nessessary in such a case as that's still too fast.
<!--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-->Speaking of S&I, why is this thread not over there? May it be because the developers and beta testers currently seem to refuse to read that forum? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I wanted this to be a discussion of RFK in the game, and looking into why it's there and if it is the fundamental reason for imbalance. I guess you could say I'm suggesting that it should go, but I want to know what the community as a whole thinks about RFK.
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The main flaw lies in that 1 alien res is worth much much much more than 1 marine res, and how easily the alien’s higher form of res can be aquired.
Lets say you have 5 aliens on a team. How long does it take to get 3 res at just one node?
Since you have 5 aliens and res goes to one alien every 5 seconds, or a tick, this means it takes 5 ticks to get just one res on a five alien team. This is actually 25 seconds. This means it takes 75 seconds to get 3 res as just one alien at one node.
How much does the marine team get in 75 seconds in on just one node? Remember, it's 1 res every 5 seconds... so that means 15 res for the marines. On a five alien team, 3 res = 15 res for the marines.
If an alien kills a marine and gets 3 res, he effectivly got 15 res on just a 5v5 game. :/ On larger games, this number grows: 3 alien res is worth 30 marine res on a 10v10, and so on. This inprotional value of the res is made balanced by the fact that there are more marines to kill on larger servers. So while the res nodes themselves will not rake in much res, killing will, by a large and far amount.
This means that if a skulk kills a marine and the marine's teammate kills the skulk, the skulk gets a much better deal in the long run. The marines are left with up to 3 res, which to be blunt, is jack crap. It is nowhere near equal to what the skulk got.
However, marine's have a shared pool; it makes sense for them to aquire res slower when killing aliens.
If 6 marines kill 6 skulks, one thing happens: They get up to 18 addition res.
If 6 skulks kill 6 marines, two things can happen, one being bad, the other being really damn good:
a.) All the skulks each get up to 3 res. (Bad, but balanced. It's obvious to see that res for kills on aliens was made intentionally so that aliens could still tech up with even a slow res model.)
b.) One skulk aquires up to 18 res. If this skulk has 25 res to start with, he could be at 43 res, a short hop, jump, and skip away from a fade or a hive. This is overkill. This is where the imbalance lies.
However, to be practical, we can't assume they each get 3 res per kill. The average is obvsiously 2 res per kill, so lets say the marine team gets 12 res, and the lone skulk gets 12 res.
The marine team could buy a shotgun. Woohoo!
That skulk could get a second hive. He has 37 res. Again, fairly short distance from a hive.
Since each game has more than one fight in it, this basically puts a limit to how many 'lives' a marine team can lose before the alien team pwns them with abilities their tech was nowhere near ready to deal with. A "Super Skulk" who nabs the majority of the res imbalances this so much it's not even funny.
On the other hand, games where there are no “Super Skulks” you don’t see this type of fast domination; it is indeed a very balanced game of what I expected NS to be. However, this is extremely unlikely; certain skulks are more skilled than others, and some skulks could just get plain old lucky. This upgrade time is far faster than whatever the marines can muster.
What needs to be done to fix this is a system where skulks cannot horde res. This is simply the only real fix to a major problem.
In small games(say 4v4 or less), skulk hording is the norm, generally in a small game the more skilled skulk will eat more marines easily, and on larger games(8v8 or more) good skulks have plenty to feed off of resulting in a quick alien dominance if the aliens are efficient biters.
To fix skulk hording I propose a system where the skulk who made the kill gets the primary reward, but his teammates benefit also.
It goes like this:
When a skulk kills a marine, he randomly gets 1-3 res. However, only one of those res goes directly to him. The other res go to his teammates on a sequential order.
In these next examples, I made it so all skulks get 3 res per kill for demonstrations sake. Keep in mind that it would really be random in-game.
For example, say you have 5 skulks. Skulk5 gets a kill. The first res goes right to his own pool.
The next to res goes to skulk1, and skulk2.
Then, all of the sudden, skulk5 gets another kill. Skulk3 gets one res, and skulk4 does too.
Because skulk5 is owning, he gets yet another kill. This sequence restarts, skulk1 gets one res and skulk2 gets a res also.
Remember, in this sequence, the skulk who made the kill is never counted.
Keep in mind that it ended at skulk2. Now, because skulk3 was jealous of skulk5’s raw pwnage, he goes out and nabs a kill. Skulk4 then gets one res, and skulk 5 does also.
Not to be outdone, skulk2 gets two kills in a row. Skulk1 is next on the sequence, and he gets a res, and then skulk3 does also, followed by skulk4 and skulk5.
Is this system understood now? The skulk who makes the kill automatically gets 1 res for every kill, and all the res extra from the kill spills over to the other teammates in a sequential order, however, this order will always skip the skulk who made the kill if he’s next in line.
As for coding this in, it would take a good set of flags to make sure it worked properly, but I’m sure it’s nothing Flay can’t handle based off of what I’ve seen him do.
Anyhow, what my system will do is keep aliens from hording res and stopping an uneven tech progression on the alien team.
Currently, on the average game of NS, the res distrubition on a team is like this(for both pub and clan matches :/):
Every row is an alien resource pool. The longer their line is, the more res the alien has. (For better detail of this diagram, check my attachment.)
2.0 Games without my system:
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2.0 Games with my system:
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Notice how games in 2.0, you see the better skulks way ahead of the lesser ones, resulting in fragmented tech and generally unprepared marines, while in my system you see a pretty damn steady progression of alien resource pools, which means aliens would tech slower and more in pace with marines, yet they also would keep just as much res from the kills as in the old system.
Basically, with my system, one of the instinct reactions of marines should be when they see a fade:
“Okay, a fade, well, our lv. 2 weapons and lv. 1 armor should be enough to handle them, but be careful team, pretty soon their entire team will be able to go fade.”
As opposed to:
“****! A Fade already!?! Our two marines out on the field grabbing res can no way stand up to that force! We need to kill it or else it’s going to cost us!! Quick! Maybe we should rush some shotguns!”
In the old system, marines would generally be more unprepared. In the proposed system, marines would be right on par providing they had equal res nodes and weren’t getting totally owned in combat.
Still, even if my system was never used, one of the main problems of NS right now is alien res hoarding. It can really screw over a game. It absolutely needs to be addressed.
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And there we go.
-Now my suggestion, remove hive restrictions and make abilities unlock with time <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
1. Remove RFK for aliens, if not permanently, at least for a beta patch.
2. Tie onos and fade evolutions to hive 2 OR a two chamber requirement
Let me explain. Aliens can dominate easily, which has been illustrated. remove their rfk, and they take a big resource hit. Meaning, they all have to protect their investments. If they want to all gorge and drop RT's, the'yll have to protect them. If three drop chambers, they'll have to guard them. No more killing for personal gain, but having to protect the alien expansion to ensure future upgrades. Aliens are still VERY powerful, and rambo marines are toast, but this makes the marine expansion a little more possible, and when marines take out an rt, it makes it worth something (as it is know, Rt's to aliens are not very important). Then, make the two highest evolutions unlockable, giving the team a goal to reach. In 1.xx, the ability to go fade and onos was because the aliens pulled together to secure hives. Now that marines and alien teirs are more balanced, we can't afford to have three hives before onos, so it was unlocked, but we also lost something. By making onos or fade require two hives or 2 chamber types would force players to focus on a specific goal together.
now what's the difference between 2 hives and 2 chambers since you need a second hive to drop a chamber? Well, I like the two chamber idea because once you have had two hives and dropped chambers, if you lose a hive you still have the ability to evolve, leaving the mid/end game possibilities there. Flayra, I don't know if you read these, but I hope you consider this idea. It may work, it may not, but it sounds good to try, eh?
.tim.