Number of Players for game to be balanced?

MagicElemental

About how many players does the dev team consider balanced. For instance TF2 has to be modified in order to detect over 24 player server, because the devs felt anything over that was unbalanced. In NS one the aliens typically do better when there are less people on the server. First the marines have one less player and secondly the resource model is made for a large group. However much of that will be changed, I was curious what would be considered a balanced amount of players for NS2 maps.

wankalot

In competitive play 6v6 is generally the accepted balance. Less than that aliens have an advantage, more marines begin to have an edge.

seraph787

heh so 6v6 is considered balanced? I can see that.

If this was to be true in NS2 also that would be unfiar to the more casual players who like playing in larger rooms. I feel like there needs to be some scaled modification so that its even no matter how many people there are.

CanadianWolverine

IIRC, the Devs have stated they want NS2 to scale much better, meaning that the game plays well regardless of the team sizes. Off the top of my head, I don't remember exactly which pod cast it was discussed in, but if I recall correctly, it was part of the intention in the Unified Resource Model, the other intention being having less of a restrictive balancing act with regards to asymmetrical opposing sides so they would be able to explore more avenues in the bio/tech trees and equipment/life forms roles within the game, allowing such concepts as the Hive Mind aka Kharaa Kommander to come to fruition.

Basicly, don't worry about it, the Devs already have considered balancing the game for any number of players <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />

Jane

The thing is the game can never be fully balanced despite how much work is put into it, and players need to realise that. Team 'balance' was always something that obviously players wanted, and imo something greatly strived for in playtests, but it's a never ending battle. You've got the alien vs marine balance, many vs. few players balance, and competitve vs. non competitve play balance and altering one pretty much guarantees the altering of another. One reason why they had a wide range of playtesters including both competive and non compettive players was to try to see how the game worked in a number of different situations but there are some factors that you really never see until the patch is released to the public. The thing is though that competitve vs. non competitve play is so different not only in the number of players playing but also how the team works together, it's makes it pretty much impossible to make the game fully balanced in both situations. Even playing with the "non competitve" pts (map makers, casual players.. etc.) you're working with a team that listens and respects each others view points vs. a total group of strangers on a server and the team work is different in those situations and effects all three major areas of balance. I look forward to seeing how they can impliment game mechanics to balance few vs. many players though, I think that is the one thing that with some crazy creative programming could really improve.

spellman23

@Jane, that was a little long, but a good read.

What I hope is that there isn't a huge disparity between competitive and pub. Hopefully it's a clean smooth transition on up the skill grade. If a chasm forms, it makes the jump to competitive all that more difficult, effectively choking the pro scene, which eventually makes it so the pubs aren't inspired to get to that level, which in turn can cause stagnation and the slow painful death of pub.

Kinda like what is going on now for NS1.

So yes, the better competitive cooperative players may have a different experience than the lowly pubbers, and yes it will be impossible to balance perfectly. DotA has several characters that can pwn at low level, but are a liability at pro level (Riki for example), but everyone plays it because we can always get better, it's still pretty well balanced, and it's just plain fun.