Work together, get advantages

Raneman

We need advantages given for teamwork to encourage it. It's been experimented in some game to keep the players in small squads or groups, and has worked well.

One word though: be creative. Health boosts are boring.

Voyager I

Support roles with semi-specialist equipment seems like the obvious choice.

Bacillus

I don't particularly like any automatical boost for sticking together. The melee vs ranged nature makes it already extremely difficult to break decent teamwork, especially marine squads are tough to fight off.

The problem is getting the decent teamwork going. Purposeful specialist items sound good, good squad communication is awesome and encouraging boosting by map and skill design and animations doesn't seem like a bad idea at all.

Brute

Some visual path which tells the player where to go to group up with his squad together with some auto-grouping would probably fix the problem. the teleport-to-squad-function is also a good approach

Bacillus

Some kind of laser sights might be nice as long as they are only visible to fellow marines. At that point you can point out locations easily and the squad roughly knows which directions are covered.

Voyager I

<!--quoteo(post=1758676:date=Mar 10 2010, 11:19 PM:name=Bacillus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bacillus @ Mar 10 2010, 11:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1758676"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Some kind of laser sights might be nice as long as they are only visible to fellow marines. At that point you can point out locations easily and the squad roughly knows which directions are covered.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I actually really like this idea.

Blue21

I always figured that running around by yourself and getting owned by a fade was good enough reason to stick together.

spellman23

See Empires.

See fail of the "stick together, get squad bonuses"


It won't work. Instead, support class/loadouts/items are the way to go.

brownymaster

Two ways to go about it is to either make soloing extremely detrimental (ie aliens rape you if you're alone, marines in squads rape aliens) or reward cooperative actions (welding each other to repair armor, cover firing, etc). I don't know if their should be honestly, sticking together is a reward in and of itself, and if someone can do well solo they won't care about any incentives of the working in a squad unless the game is going to be totally squad power based. For aliens, they're ambush/roaming duty most of the time and they already have a huge incentive to work together because aliens going in one by one get destroyed.

The main issue about not soloing is going to depend on how dependent we're going to make marines and aliens on each other. In the first NS, the commander dropped you weapons if he trusted you (usually), could deny you medpack/ammo drops, and you needed teammates to weld each other for survivability. Aliens didn't have someone that can force anybody to get RTs and chambers (or the right chamber even) but so heavily relied on getting those upgrades it was usually work sacrificing your starting res to get the stuff and help everyone including yourself. I don't know the perfect solution for NS2, but I'd have to agree with making the items on marine side extremely useful to teammates/supporting in some way. I don't have any good idea for aliens beyond the fact that they already get ripped apart going in alone without a mass of skulks or a lerk gasing marines to help. Just want people to take this into consideration, just a rabble pretty much.

Pipi

A bit off the topic but I think what would also help in teamwork (including the commander) would be some context sensitive key like in bad company 2, where you just hit a key to call for something, example, calling an RT to be dropped for the commander, instead of a vague "where's the order?".

Could also serve to ask for weld, or make it apparent that a structure needs welding. I'm sure it could serve in many many ways.

juice

If NS2 needs artificial buffs to force teamwork, then it's already a failure. Teamwork is compelling only when it emerges naturally from the action elements.

Zek

I don't like arbitrary teamwork buffs, teamwork should be required to survive just because of the mechanics of the game. If you're concerned about reaching out to newbies then yell at them in the tooltips if they're alone for too long or something.

Tha

whilst ns1 massively encouraged teamwork, and it paved way for teamwork such as welding eachother, guns dropping and being pickable onos stomp stunning to give time for enemies to be killed, still people went off on thier own, its just a fact most games even massively team based games have people running on thier own(ON PUBS MAINLY!).. people like doing thier own thing sometimes.

Basic teamwork is 2 guns = kill enemies twice as fast, however some games get in the way of this adding things in such as friendly fire, i know in a mod, its melee based medieval and when friendly fire is on its actually extremly bad to be in a group as most of the time when you swing you will kill a teammate rather then an enemy.

its kind of hard to find the balance, do you want a game where its just group vs group 24/7 ? that means we wont get those classical crap ya pants moments such as when im off rebuilding an rt that a skulk has chomped on then i just hear a footstep and i shake.

Voyager I

Actually, yeah, Fades are basically all the incentive I need to <i>never</i> want to be alone as a Marine.

RobB

<!--quoteo(post=1758650:date=Mar 10 2010, 11:40 PM:name=Raneman)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Raneman @ Mar 10 2010, 11:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1758650"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->We need advantages given for teamwork to encourage it. It's been experimented in some game to keep the players in small squads or groups, and has worked well.

One word though: be creative. Health boosts are boring.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Enemy warning if they are on your bud's screen but not yours (if youre not looking in that direction).

whoppaXXL

<!--quoteo(post=1758676:date=Mar 10 2010, 10:19 PM:name=Bacillus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bacillus @ Mar 10 2010, 10:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1758676"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Some kind of laser sights might be nice as long as they are only visible to fellow marines. At that point you can point out locations easily and the squad roughly knows which directions are covered.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Good base.

A good effect would be surely the "Cover the marine with heavy weapons, cause he is slow and easy to circle."
A Squad with good shared roles will do all the job in the game.

Everyone will run after a Exoskeleton just like marines stay near to vehicles in reality.
When you know exactly what the other guys are doing you can better fit your own role in the game (e.g. the lasersights)

So there should be some way to give combat roles. Not only about Equipment but how would it be if a commander gives squads combat roles like:
- Scout Squad (RT and expandment)
- Support Squad (Defend and Cover other Squads, Buildings)
- Attack Squad (Just rush the damn thing)

So you as player can easily see and decide which role is just needed, with or without any bonus.
But the com is needed to share those roles right, or we're doomed.

When you're the only medic in tf2 you can change the outcome of the game easily, what makes YOU proud, but don't itches anyone else.
So you don't often take this class all alone because killing is just more funny at this moment.

So... everyone should ###### see how IMPORTANT iam for the team and i should be rewarded (it's the internet i know, you're forgotten in 10 seconds).
That makes you want to do the good stuff.
Though it's surely hard to do it the right way.

Jiriki

No. Not really.

NS is imo. too complex to have automated teamplay gains, although I'm open for clever suggestions. An example of marine teamplay would be a fade hitting base, running out with little health and other marines waiting for it some corridors away. Or as aliens, lerk can draw fire when a skulk comes from a direction marine wasn't looking. Now how do you automate that without huge amount of false positives. Besides, how would the game now whether it was wise to do that at that point? I agree with whoever posted, game mechanics should provide incencitives for teamplay not some achievement gimmicks.

Teleport-to-squad -- now that reminds me of Subspace. Epic game.