Making public aliens more fun to play
Bacillus
Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58241Members
Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58241Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Learning from NS1</div>So, a lot of people enjoy marines a lot more than aliens in public NS. This thread is to discuss why the marines are more enjoyable and how this could be balanced out in NS2. I'll give a few starting points.
1. Aliens require bigger number of capable players.
The problem:
Aliens need way more capable players to play an optimized round of NS. First they need a few res cappers, a little later on someone to build the right chamber. A lerk is nearly a requisite to smoke out marines with decent aim once they get into good position. Later on you'll still need both fades and a hive. Even skulks are supposed to parasite and bite res effectively. If one role fails, the alien team ends up in more or less disadvantageous position. Meanwhile the marines need only a decent commander and enough of overall skill randomly spread out in the team, half of the team doesn't necessarily even have to know how to weld.
Possible solutions:
Alien commander. A decent commander helps a lot, although his actual role is still unclear. Nevertheless, any centered responsibility makes it less demanding for the rest of the team. Skulk as a basic aliens seems to lose both res biting and parasiting roles, so newbies sticking with it aren't loaded with a big role right from the start.
2. Res spread on big pubs isn't nice.
It takes forever to get to higher tech on the present 26+ player publics. Skulking simply isn't fun when marines get their goodies way before you get any meat shield lifeforms on the field.
The res model solves most of this.
3. 0 res marine > 0 res skulk
In public you're not going to get as much guns and lifeforms at your disposal as in organised play. Slow/scarse tech avaibility means that the starting classes are emphasized. Marines scale up nicely all the way with MT and upgrades, aliens are stuck forever with one chamber.
I don't know if there's an easy solution for this. Res models probably fix some of this, but the skulk's underdog role is more debatable. I wouldn't trade the nature of skulking to get the K:D 1:1 on starting roles, but someone else might do so.
---
Feel free to add more reasons and solutions. Discuss.
Edit: Hmm, moved to I&S. I didn't try to suggest any specific solution, but I guess the mods know better how the forums works the best.
1. Aliens require bigger number of capable players.
The problem:
Aliens need way more capable players to play an optimized round of NS. First they need a few res cappers, a little later on someone to build the right chamber. A lerk is nearly a requisite to smoke out marines with decent aim once they get into good position. Later on you'll still need both fades and a hive. Even skulks are supposed to parasite and bite res effectively. If one role fails, the alien team ends up in more or less disadvantageous position. Meanwhile the marines need only a decent commander and enough of overall skill randomly spread out in the team, half of the team doesn't necessarily even have to know how to weld.
Possible solutions:
Alien commander. A decent commander helps a lot, although his actual role is still unclear. Nevertheless, any centered responsibility makes it less demanding for the rest of the team. Skulk as a basic aliens seems to lose both res biting and parasiting roles, so newbies sticking with it aren't loaded with a big role right from the start.
2. Res spread on big pubs isn't nice.
It takes forever to get to higher tech on the present 26+ player publics. Skulking simply isn't fun when marines get their goodies way before you get any meat shield lifeforms on the field.
The res model solves most of this.
3. 0 res marine > 0 res skulk
In public you're not going to get as much guns and lifeforms at your disposal as in organised play. Slow/scarse tech avaibility means that the starting classes are emphasized. Marines scale up nicely all the way with MT and upgrades, aliens are stuck forever with one chamber.
I don't know if there's an easy solution for this. Res models probably fix some of this, but the skulk's underdog role is more debatable. I wouldn't trade the nature of skulking to get the K:D 1:1 on starting roles, but someone else might do so.
---
Feel free to add more reasons and solutions. Discuss.
Edit: Hmm, moved to I&S. I didn't try to suggest any specific solution, but I guess the mods know better how the forums works the best.
Comments
You basicly still have some toys left to play with, even locked down in your base, and an occasional lifeform kill makes it even more enjoyable.
Compare this to the alien endgame; you get spawncamped as skulk and have only a small chance to make damage, and the only fun is lifeforming last man standing like, which means even less fun for the skulks, because even less marines are actually shooting the hive and ending the game until all lifeforms are dead and in the spawnqueue.
I guess the glowie->egg respawn system is solving the spawncamping issue, but I think it might be hard to balance to maintain as much fun as possible for the last fight of the aliens and still allow the then superior marines to end the game rather fast.
im nos sure on that but im pritty sure that its not the same as it was in NS1
less than 10 minutes, 10-20 min, 20 to 30 and up
In the first 10 minutes of the game, sculks reigen supreme, with easly a 2:1 k/d.
ambushing is also easy because there are no boundrys or front lines.
The mid section of the game is where the aliens get lots of life forms and 2 hives.
by now, each team has territories and lockdown.
By the last segment, marines have full upgrades JP HA HMG motion. all this fancy stuff makes life hell for lower life forms.
This is why I hate long drawn out games.
Alien abilities come and go, but as long as marines have an armslab and CC, they keep all their upgrades. even taking down their proto, obs or AA only temporarily slows them.
In short, its those first 5 sweet minutes of a game that I play for. Every thing else is only okay.
In public you're not going to get as much guns and lifeforms at your disposal as in organised play. Slow/scarse tech avaibility means that the starting classes are emphasized. Marines scale up nicely all the way with MT and upgrades, aliens are stuck forever with one chamber.
I don't know if there's an easy solution for this. Res models probably fix some of this, but the skulk's underdog role is more debatable. I wouldn't trade the nature of skulking to get the K:D 1:1 on starting roles, but someone else might do so.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is the first reasonable argument for 1:1 I've heard. Maybe the solution isn't to make K:D 1:1 but play time 1:1. I'm not sure how to do this exactly, but I think this avenue will lead to better discussion with more options since I think the underdog role of the skulk is important.
The main problem is that few people in pubs are willing to sacrifice their personal resources to benefit the team. A shared alien resource pool will completely remove this problem. It is debatable if the loss of game dynamics will be worth it.