<!--quoteo(post=1714710:date=Jun 29 2009, 03:09 PM:name=Hawkeye)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hawkeye @ Jun 29 2009, 03:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1714710"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yes but making skulks 1:1 with marines is perhaps balanced in of itself but that throws out of wack the balance of everything else. It'd be easier trying to push water back into a leaky tank. I can see the advantage of symmetry, but the genius of natural selection is in its asymmetry and I'd hate to see that ruined. Certain things have to be symmetric for the purposes of having a gameplay which makes sense like resources. That doesn't mean that lifeforms from the Kharaa should be compared to human players with specific upgrades.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Ye, obiviously all the asymmetry they can get is good. I love how NS1 works on that. Still, I've got a lot of understanding for the devs even if they decide to remove some. I doubt they want to go through another 3 year balancing period before the gameplay reaches the 50-50 ratio on some specific amount of players.
The more I look at NS, the more amazed I get on how balanced it actually is. It means that the dev team has done an excellent job, but I don't know if they can repeat the process quick enough for a commercial product. For example the majority of the competetive scene had already gone inactive when the 3.2 brought a lot of great features to lower skill levels of its play.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Ultimately what is balance? If marines win just as many games as aliens win in a very general sense, it is balanced in my opinion. If skulks are truly inferior to vanilla marines, what's important is that this unbalance is made balanced by another aspect of gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'd say balance in general is the status where the game offers a reasonable amount of fun, challenging and viable strategies and all the factions have got a reasonable chance of winning the game. The balance between factions is probably the most important thing in that, but I wouldn't call a game balanced if a mirrored game ends up being totally predictable due to some choises being far above the others.
locallyunsceneFeeder of TrollsJoin Date: 2002-12-25Member: 11528Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1714456:date=Jun 28 2009, 02:40 AM:name=davidcavalcante)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (davidcavalcante @ Jun 28 2009, 02:40 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1714456"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The most ridiculous thing in NS1, in my opinion, <b>is the fact that ANY MARINE can build a structure, while aliens NEED TO SPEND 10 RES to evolve into a Gorge and then spend another damn 15 RES to build a Resource Tower</b>. I mean, 10 res is something that takes some time if the Aliens dont have most of Res Nodes of map. The worst part is when Marines destroy the Resource Tower that you built 2 minutes ago and then kill you (Gorge) while ur trying to flee. Then u notice that <b>you need another 25 res just to build 1 damn Resource Tower</b>.
My opinion? <b>THE GAME SHOULD REQUIRE 0 (ZERO) RES TO EVOLVE A SKULK INTO A GORGE, because it's just unfair that when 3 skulks destroy a Marine Resource Tower, 1 marine comes back and builds another one so quickly.</b>
I don't know if u guys have noticed that too, but 90% of games the Marines win, and 90% of games the map is <b>quickly filled with Marines Resource Towers</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The balance comes from the fact that skulks are much faster than marines.
asdh. I'm sorry but this is not the case. Aliens are actually overpowered in NS1. You just have to be smart as a skulk. Your not supposed to run into a marine while he sits there and waits for you. YOU HAVE AMMMMBUUUUSH. that's the point of the skulk. Your supposed to hide behind a wall, and when the marine gets close enough, you can pop out in front of him. And if your quick enough, it only takes a parasite and a bite or two, in the beginning at least. The skulk is fine. Plus, the skulk is weak because the marines are week also. If your a good skulk you know how to ambush, or strafe leap, which makes it harder for a marine to hit you.
They better implement bunny hopping and/or strafe leaping. Source doesn't allow you to strafe jump, meaning that anyone who created a jump video on CS Source is a ###### idiot. :D
Understandably you might find aliens less powerful in a server with more than 12 players untill around 18 players when the marines gain a distinct advantage, althought this is not mentioned you should generally take this into account when you referance ns1, as it was primarly designed around a 6 v 6 format as this would be an managble team size for clan play. Now clan play represents the extreme of one end, where games can be tipped by a single fight or action. Which would suggest the game is quite well balanced towards 6 v 6 play.
Now hives do increase the effectiveness of armour on all aliens, as well as granting new abilites and upgrades. This we all know, the idea behind this is to ensure that the alien team always looks towards securing the next hive to increase thier technological advantage over the marines.
Now what your suggestings is making the skulk unit which is typically an ambushing / scouting class should have more hp to survive the initial conflict. I can understand the reasoning behind this but you must take into consideration the ability of the players in question, all things being equal in skill and ability it will be 50 / 50 who wins in most situations. However if you find you are struggling as a skulk increasing the hp is not the answer as this would upset the balance based on equal or similar skill or ability level.
So for example, say a person can take down 2 marines most of the time, suddenly you give them more hp and they can then take down 3 marines. This does not solve the problem in question as you have not addressed the ability of the player in question, and have forgotten you are talking about people. Just because you find that the class is weak doesnt mean it is, especially when you observe and compare the class when used in clan play.
Ok now that has settled the matter of skulks in ns1.
Lets talk about ns2, now obviously the health of a skulk wont have the same value in comparision to 16 marines vs 16 aliens, so there is an arguement to increase it to help balance out the stacking effect of marine firepower (the more marines you have the more bullets get sprayed at you as you close on them), however the map layout will also have a lot to play in terms of the ability of a skulk, if you look at ns1 you can clearly see the maps are designed to give the aliens plently of places to hide and move around the map, if you are playing the skulk class right you should be taking advantage of these area's and using them to ambush your opponent.
This may continue into ns2 as well however due to the larger scale that is suggested, a small increase of say 10 health but also increase the armour by the same amount may be a good basis for testing on the difference of a skulks basic fighting ability on the larger scale of fighting that ns2 wants to achive, this will be changed depending on the feedback of the testing that will certainly be done. However there is an arguement against this as with the larger scale of fighting you would have larger maps, and therefore have the access to more rescources more quickly and less chance of the marines engaging the aliens as quickly, so you would have access to the higher lifeforms more quickly and thus negate the marines advantage with larger numbers of higher lifeforms.
However this is all just my speculation so take it with a pinch of salt.
And the clanners of ns1 will certainly suggest maps and an option to play the game closer to the ns1 that grew with us and are familiar with the 6 v 6 format that seems so easy to manage rather than the larger battlefield format closer to 16 v 16.
EDIT:
To the previous post, you can strafe jump in CSS its just limited due to the nature of the jumping speed, and how it decreases. You can also strafe jump in hl2 if you so wish. In the orgional HL it was a bug that was left in the game, it could have been removed. The opposite is true for source it can be added to the game if you want to as long as you program the engine to do so.
Also this is going to be an seperate engine they said they arent going to make it on source, so they can do what they like (I dont know if they will carry on with this or change it back to source).
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'd say balance in general is the status where the game offers a reasonable amount of fun, challenging and viable strategies and all the factions have got a reasonable chance of winning the game. The balance between factions is probably the most important thing in that, but I wouldn't call a game balanced if a mirrored game ends up being totally predictable due to some choises being far above the others.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> As much as I agree that ns2 should offer a reasonable amount of fun, be challenging, and allow viable strategies, though that says nothing about balance. And technically, if most games are totally predictable due to some choices being far above the others, so long as aliens win half the time and humans win half the time, that's balanced too. I never said that would be fun, but I don't even think 'fun' was the issue here. Seeing how it probably wouldn't be fun if one team one most games, balance should have highest priority.
rine help rine = bull###### alien help alien = BLOCK compare me speak to 12vs12 16vs16 6on6 pcw format are best is evident .., we need a game balanced in al, formats .<
<!--quoteo(post=1715850:date=Jul 5 2009, 09:19 PM:name=Hawkeye)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hawkeye @ Jul 5 2009, 09:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1715850"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As much as I agree that ns2 should offer a reasonable amount of fun, be challenging, and allow viable strategies, though that says nothing about balance. And technically, if most games are totally predictable due to some choices being far above the others, so long as aliens win half the time and humans win half the time, that's balanced too. I never said that would be fun, but I don't even think 'fun' was the issue here. Seeing how it probably wouldn't be fun if one team one most games, balance should have highest priority.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I intentionally picked a large group of requirements for balance. 50-50 can be reached by boosting two opposite units until they are the only options to use and then balancing them to the 50-50.
My idea of balance is that the game doesn't force the players to play in a repetetive or boring way as much as it ensures a good chance of winning for both players or teams. Of course the game needs to be built so that the repetetive and boring isn't the only option, but once the features are in the game it boils down to balance to make the game work around the designs.
I don't see how increasing the skulk's HP is even a relevant discussion right now since we have no clue how the skulk will be in NS 2, maybe he will have more HP or maybe he will have changed in some other way... who knows.
On the subject of the NS 1 skulk you just have to learn how to use him, and it's not something you will get the first time you play. Increasing the HP probably wouldn't fix anything and would probably just make the skulk to powerful for the marines to handle ( just like some others have explained pretty well in the above replies ). It's like... if you crash a plane and then stating that the only solution to that would be to make the plane uncrashable instead of just getting better at flying the damn thing...
<!--quoteo(post=1715871:date=Jul 5 2009, 06:19 PM:name=asdh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (asdh @ Jul 5 2009, 06:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1715871"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->rine help rine = bull###### alien help alien = BLOCK compare me speak to 12vs12 16vs16 6on6 pcw format are best is evident .., we need a game balanced in al, formats .<<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Get better helpers. Learn to coordinate. Every marine you attack should have been parasited long before, allowing you to kill them in two bites and letting you pick when you attack them without having to have LOS even. Meaning that you should be able to get in the first bite for free, so really it's only one bite you have to survive for. Aliens don't need more skill than marines, they need different skills. Marines need twitch skills. If you've been playing CS for as long as you say, you've probably got that in spades. Aliens need map awareness and tactical planning skills with their speed and intelligence assets making up for the lack of twitch required, and their low health balancing it out so that simply having high twitch isn't enough.
They're equal, but different. So it's not at all surprising you'd have a harder time with one than the other. Me, I get more kills as a vanilla skulk than I do as a vanilla marine. Does that mean skulks are overpowered? Not at all, just my own personal skills tend to work better with the skulk advantages than the marine advantages.
And even if one group of individuals is OP'd against another group, remember that NS is not individual vs individual, it's team vs team, and there's more than one alien race.
And the reason is reloading... No matter the size of a marine group, your clip will last 2 kills. Thing is, in a group, marines all shoot together... So, Open fire, one dead, two dead, RELOAD! At this point, all 3 marines are reloading, vulnerable, and generally already half dead. Skulk that keeps the preasure on gets 3 quick kills... MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH *chuckle*
This seems to happen a hell of a lot.. and you can tell it's happened recently when 3 dead players are saying "Build another IP!"
So I'd say... Symetrical? Definately not. Balanced? Yep! But I think the skulk could stand to be a little smaller
Comments
Ye, obiviously all the asymmetry they can get is good. I love how NS1 works on that. Still, I've got a lot of understanding for the devs even if they decide to remove some. I doubt they want to go through another 3 year balancing period before the gameplay reaches the 50-50 ratio on some specific amount of players.
The more I look at NS, the more amazed I get on how balanced it actually is. It means that the dev team has done an excellent job, but I don't know if they can repeat the process quick enough for a commercial product. For example the majority of the competetive scene had already gone inactive when the 3.2 brought a lot of great features to lower skill levels of its play.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Ultimately what is balance? If marines win just as many games as aliens win in a very general sense, it is balanced in my opinion. If skulks are truly inferior to vanilla marines, what's important is that this unbalance is made balanced by another aspect of gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd say balance in general is the status where the game offers a reasonable amount of fun, challenging and viable strategies and all the factions have got a reasonable chance of winning the game. The balance between factions is probably the most important thing in that, but I wouldn't call a game balanced if a mirrored game ends up being totally predictable due to some choises being far above the others.
My opinion? <b>THE GAME SHOULD REQUIRE 0 (ZERO) RES TO EVOLVE A SKULK INTO A GORGE, because it's just unfair that when 3 skulks destroy a Marine Resource Tower, 1 marine comes back and builds another one so quickly.</b>
I don't know if u guys have noticed that too, but 90% of games the Marines win, and 90% of games the map is <b>quickly filled with Marines Resource Towers</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The balance comes from the fact that skulks are much faster than marines.
They better implement bunny hopping and/or strafe leaping. Source doesn't allow you to strafe jump, meaning that anyone who created a jump video on CS Source is a ###### idiot. :D
Now hives do increase the effectiveness of armour on all aliens, as well as granting new abilites and upgrades. This we all know, the idea behind this is to ensure that the alien team always looks towards securing the next hive to increase thier technological advantage over the marines.
Now what your suggestings is making the skulk unit which is typically an ambushing / scouting class should have more hp to survive the initial conflict. I can understand the reasoning behind this but you must take into consideration the ability of the players in question, all things being equal in skill and ability it will be 50 / 50 who wins in most situations. However if you find you are struggling as a skulk increasing the hp is not the answer as this would upset the balance based on equal or similar skill or ability level.
So for example, say a person can take down 2 marines most of the time, suddenly you give them more hp and they can then take down 3 marines. This does not solve the problem in question as you have not addressed the ability of the player in question, and have forgotten you are talking about people. Just because you find that the class is weak doesnt mean it is, especially when you observe and compare the class when used in clan play.
Ok now that has settled the matter of skulks in ns1.
Lets talk about ns2, now obviously the health of a skulk wont have the same value in comparision to 16 marines vs 16 aliens, so there is an arguement to increase it to help balance out the stacking effect of marine firepower (the more marines you have the more bullets get sprayed at you as you close on them), however the map layout will also have a lot to play in terms of the ability of a skulk, if you look at ns1 you can clearly see the maps are designed to give the aliens plently of places to hide and move around the map, if you are playing the skulk class right you should be taking advantage of these area's and using them to ambush your opponent.
This may continue into ns2 as well however due to the larger scale that is suggested, a small increase of say 10 health but also increase the armour by the same amount may be a good basis for testing on the difference of a skulks basic fighting ability on the larger scale of fighting that ns2 wants to achive, this will be changed depending on the feedback of the testing that will certainly be done. However there is an arguement against this as with the larger scale of fighting you would have larger maps, and therefore have the access to more rescources more quickly and less chance of the marines engaging the aliens as quickly, so you would have access to the higher lifeforms more quickly and thus negate the marines advantage with larger numbers of higher lifeforms.
However this is all just my speculation so take it with a pinch of salt.
And the clanners of ns1 will certainly suggest maps and an option to play the game closer to the ns1 that grew with us and are familiar with the 6 v 6 format that seems so easy to manage rather than the larger battlefield format closer to 16 v 16.
EDIT:
To the previous post, you can strafe jump in CSS its just limited due to the nature of the jumping speed, and how it decreases. You can also strafe jump in hl2 if you so wish. In the orgional HL it was a bug that was left in the game, it could have been removed. The opposite is true for source it can be added to the game if you want to as long as you program the engine to do so.
Also this is going to be an seperate engine they said they arent going to make it on source, so they can do what they like (I dont know if they will carry on with this or change it back to source).
As much as I agree that ns2 should offer a reasonable amount of fun, be challenging, and allow viable strategies, though that says nothing about balance. And technically, if most games are totally predictable due to some choices being far above the others, so long as aliens win half the time and humans win half the time, that's balanced too. I never said that would be fun, but I don't even think 'fun' was the issue here. Seeing how it probably wouldn't be fun if one team one most games, balance should have highest priority.
alien help alien = BLOCK
compare
me speak to 12vs12 16vs16 6on6 pcw format are best is evident ..,
we need a game balanced in al, formats .<
I intentionally picked a large group of requirements for balance. 50-50 can be reached by boosting two opposite units until they are the only options to use and then balancing them to the 50-50.
My idea of balance is that the game doesn't force the players to play in a repetetive or boring way as much as it ensures a good chance of winning for both players or teams. Of course the game needs to be built so that the repetetive and boring isn't the only option, but once the features are in the game it boils down to balance to make the game work around the designs.
Don't change the skulk, he's awesome and people saying it sucks just don't know how to use him.
On the subject of the NS 1 skulk you just have to learn how to use him, and it's not something you will get the first time you play. Increasing the HP probably wouldn't fix anything and would probably just make the skulk to powerful for the marines to handle ( just like some others have explained pretty well in the above replies ). It's like... if you crash a plane and then stating that the only solution to that would be to make the plane uncrashable instead of just getting better at flying the damn thing...
alien help alien = BLOCK
compare
me speak to 12vs12 16vs16 6on6 pcw format are best is evident ..,
we need a game balanced in al, formats .<<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Get better helpers. Learn to coordinate. Every marine you attack should have been parasited long before, allowing you to kill them in two bites and letting you pick when you attack them without having to have LOS even. Meaning that you should be able to get in the first bite for free, so really it's only one bite you have to survive for. Aliens don't need more skill than marines, they need different skills. Marines need twitch skills. If you've been playing CS for as long as you say, you've probably got that in spades. Aliens need map awareness and tactical planning skills with their speed and intelligence assets making up for the lack of twitch required, and their low health balancing it out so that simply having high twitch isn't enough.
They're equal, but different. So it's not at all surprising you'd have a harder time with one than the other. Me, I get more kills as a vanilla skulk than I do as a vanilla marine. Does that mean skulks are overpowered? Not at all, just my own personal skills tend to work better with the skulk advantages than the marine advantages.
And even if one group of individuals is OP'd against another group, remember that NS is not individual vs individual, it's team vs team, and there's more than one alien race.
1v1 favors marine,
2v2 favors marine,
3v3 favors skulk...
And the reason is reloading... No matter the size of a marine group, your clip will last 2 kills. Thing is, in a group, marines all shoot together... So, Open fire, one dead, two dead, RELOAD! At this point, all 3 marines are reloading, vulnerable, and generally already half dead. Skulk that keeps the preasure on gets 3 quick kills... MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH *chuckle*
This seems to happen a hell of a lot.. and you can tell it's happened recently when 3 dead players are saying "Build another IP!"
So I'd say... Symetrical? Definately not. Balanced? Yep! But I think the skulk could stand to be a little smaller