IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
If you keep the squad blob system. A great little benefit of the system would be to have the new squadmates pop into your hud. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/hcw97.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Inspiration off of the Star Wars: Republic Commando hud. One of the best squad based games.
Tool tips don't work, they provide no story or reason.
People think game design can be so basic, when in fact it is incredibly complicated.
There are times in the game when Marines/Aliens can be learning things, just think of all the opportunities.
Computer Screens Buildings Spectating When Dead Game Start Game End Etc
What players really need are stories.
There are dynamic ways to do things, and whilst tooltips can be handy at feeding information to the player before a game - they are useless during.
Think about it - does anyone here actually stop to read tooltips, or do they actually just get into the game by looking for something to shoot?
Look what most games do now - they feed tool tips to you on game load, or provide information on basic movement or control depending on what you are doing or have in your hand.
Dynamics such as resources, gameplay, etc.. will be lost on tooltips.
As for squads, they are fine. You just need to implement a cool off period for them.
So the longer you spend with a squad, the longer it takes to drop out of it when you are out of range/die/etc.
That way, if you start in a squad with player Y, but spend more time hanging around with your mate X... you eventually transfer over after a 30 second cool off period. The longer you stay with someone, the longer the cool off period becomes.
That way you preserve the idea of squads, whilst at the same time, allow players to make their own choices.
I like the lerk changes over all, though I wonder if the lerk gas could be more like a conical breath attack... Sort of forcing the gas out and away from the lerk. Like sprays a cone outward from the tubes rather then there being a rounded cloud left on/behind the lerk.
You could still do the fly in and "gas bomb" a long corridor or room but also, you could breath it out around corners without exposing yourself. It would only need to go about ten feet forward, and then spread out from there.
<!--quoteo(post=1872590:date=Sep 1 2011, 09:45 PM:name=Runteh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Runteh @ Sep 1 2011, 09:45 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1872590"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Tool tips don't work, they provide no story or reason.
People think game design can be so basic, when in fact it is incredibly complicated.
There are times in the game when Marines/Aliens can be learning things, just think of all the opportunities.
Computer Screens Buildings Spectating When Dead Game Start Game End Etc
What players really need are stories.
There are dynamic ways to do things, and whilst tooltips can be handy at feeding information to the player before a game - they are useless during.
Think about it - does anyone here actually stop to read tooltips, or do they actually just get into the game by looking for something to shoot?
Look what most games do now - they feed tool tips to you on game load, or provide information on basic movement or control depending on what you are doing or have in your hand.
Dynamics such as resources, gameplay, etc.. will be lost on tooltips.
As for squads, they are fine. You just need to implement a cool off period for them.
So the longer you spend with a squad, the longer it takes to drop out of it when you are out of range/die/etc.
That way, if you start in a squad with player Y, but spend more time hanging around with your mate X... you eventually transfer over after a 30 second cool off period. The longer you stay with someone, the longer the cool off period becomes.
That way you preserve the idea of squads, whilst at the same time, allow players to make their own choices.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I read tooltips, actually I usually try to trigger them. If I want to know what something is I look at it or mouse over it and wait for the game to tell me what I want to know with a tooltip, that's sort of the exact reason tooltips were invented.
I don't want to sift through a lot of useless fanfic to get to the useful information.
Also no, game design is incredibly easy in a lot of ways. You look at existing conventions and then put them in your game, tooltips are a convention, everyone knows how they work so you don't have to teach people how to use them, you mouse over something and the computer tells you what it is, you can put this in game for just about anything. There is no point teaching people things when you can just use something they already know.
It's like a tutorial only you can trigger it when you need it, for specific things, without leaving the game. Also you can make the game trigger it when you might not realise there's something you need to know.
Say you add some sort of buff to squads, you can add a subtle effect to tell players when the buff is active, but new players would also get a tooltip that tells them what the effect means, and what the buff does. So you get near other players, your screen gets a coloured vignette effect, and the game says 'you just joined a squad, the glowing effect means your health is now regenerating, stay with other players to keep this effect' and everyone's happy.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited September 2011
Quote from design log: <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Aliens have difficulty winning the late-game and marines have difficulty winning both the early and late game. I don’t have stats but my gut tells me this. Increasing frame-rate (or fixing the input/aiming issues which seem to exist) will help marines significantly but other steps can be taken while we work on that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think re-scaling Rifle's damage per bullet (higher damage, lower RoF) would shift the balance in Marine's favour. Since the first few bullets are quite accurately, this will allow Marines to do more damage with "twitch 'n burst" shooting style (like they do with Shotguns). The Rifle's sky-high RoF is probably putting extra load on the game any way.
I was under the impression that the rifle was always more or less pinpoint accurate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Imagine two hypothetical guns: one, which fires one bullet per second, but it deals 200 damage; the other gun spits 100 bullets per second, but each only deals 2 damage. With good aim, the first gun would easily deal more damage than the second gun, in a low FPS performance environment.
That is because the slow firing gun only require perfect aim for a fraction of a second to do full damage (eg Shotgun). Whereas the second gun requires perfect aim 100% of the time to deal the 100% of the damage.
<!--quoteo(post=1872679:date=Sep 2 2011, 09:32 AM:name=twiliteblue)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Sep 2 2011, 09:32 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1872679"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Imagine two hypothetical guns: one, which fires one bullet per second, but it deals 200 damage; the other gun spits 100 bullets per second, but each only deals 2 damage. With good aim, the first gun would easily deal more damage than the second gun, in a low FPS performance environment.
That is because the slow firing gun only require perfect aim for a fraction of a second to do full damage (eg Shotgun). Whereas the second gun requires perfect aim 100% of the time to deal the 100% of the damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But that doesn't apply if both guns are machine guns.
If the rifle fires one bullet per second it's not an automatic rifle any more, it's a bolt action.
If a gun fires three bullets per second as opposed to five, it won't make any difference, if you can hold your aim for half a second before needing to correct it, you'll get basically the same amount of damage with either gun.
The reason the shotgun is easier to aim is because you only need to aim it once, because it one shots most things you shoot with it, if you had to aim it three or four times it'd be no easier than the rifle.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Making game easier to learn Multi-pronged approach. A tutorial could be nice later but still feels like more work than it’s worth (esp. given that most people don’t play through tutorials). It still seems far better to have the game explain itself as you play (although harder).
- Add tooltips to commander HUD so you can hover to see “team resources†or quick descriptions of structures (like explaining how important an infantry portal is and what it does) - Explanation of resource model, SOMEWHERE (esp. when making kills, what’s happening?) - Unclear what scope of power-node is (need visual indicator for both comms and ground players)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You could try going with obligatory tutorials like Americas Army did. But with less suck and more awesome...
You could make it so that you'd have to go through some simple tutorials, and you get a score for each tutorial. Once you have accumulated enough points you can go online.
This could also be split into several sub sections, such as commanding, marine play and alien play. Practice scenarios with basic bots as your last "exam" before you're allowed online.
The most valuable point though; keep each section relevant to what you are trying to teach for that section. Don't start forcing commanding down someones throat if they are taking the basic marine movement tutorial. If a tutorial is too long or tedious, break it down into smaller chunks.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
edited September 2011
Near or after the release of the game, an opening cinematic like the one left 4 dead uses, is pretty useful at getting new players to understand the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1872717:date=Sep 2 2011, 11:16 AM:name=IeptBarakat)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (IeptBarakat @ Sep 2 2011, 11:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1872717"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Near or after the release of the game, an opening cinematic like the one left 4 dead uses, is pretty useful at getting new players to understand the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Kind of like the cinematic they released that said the game will be available in Fall of 2009? [lol]
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1872722:date=Sep 2 2011, 11:36 AM:name=vizionz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (vizionz @ Sep 2 2011, 11:36 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1872722"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Kind of like the cinematic they released that said the game will be available in Fall of 2009? [lol]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why can't Drifter flare blind all turrets to a certain distance? Say, for 10 seconds.
Or even a second drifter upgrade (expensive) that has a single universal cooldown (to prevent spam) that disables ALL powered devices within a certain radius for 10 seconds or so. Lights, too - that'd be scary and cool.
Drifters are easy to kill by decent defence (and the upgraded one with the EMP could be all glowy and move a little slower), but well supported / distracted (Lerk smog?) they could succeed in getting in, and you could pop one into Marine start or any turret-spammed area and give your guys a window to rip out the power. That'd also encourage the placement of a second IP area, to prevent all your spawning being knocked out in one hit.
If you don't want to put that on a Drifter, perhaps have a mutation (on Gorge?) which lets them do it, but die in the blast? Again, to prevent spam, make it a big deal, and encourage teamwork... And in either case encourage the Marines to have some forward skirmishers to try and knock that stuff out early, even when on defence.
Another thing you could do with Drifters is let them asplode into a several eggs, which decay if not on the creep. Solves some of the camping problems - but only if you've spirited a Drifter somewhere. That in turn encourages the Marines to go poking about in odd corners, which is always cool.
Finally, you could let Gorges lay "dormant" eggs, which can only be activated by the alien commander. That'd be their beacon, in a way: all the domant eggs activate and aliens insta-spawn until the egg supply runs out. Again, encourages the marines to go poking about looking for eggs. As long as they're careful the marines can still knock out a hive with egg denial, but the aliens aren't helpless against a lucky rush.
"How many marines am I up against? Two? Ok, I can handle that. Oh wait, a third spawned in while I was attacking and he killed me."
Making the spawning dependent on a combat timer isn't going to help either. That would create awkward game tactics.
"Don't shoot that alien or else our friend won't be able to respawn!"
Sounds like just another "experimental" change. The gameplay <!--coloro:#FFA500--><span style="color:#FFA500"><!--/coloro-->basics<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> (movement, pathing, commander interface responsiveness, RoF bugs, etc) need to stay on the front burner.
Since they've never done it before I suppose it is an experimental change, but that's kind of a given. They also work on more than one thing at a time you know.
My personal impression, though: A bit overkill perhaps, and probably unnecessary. Some number adjustments might make it work, but I feel this easily making balance that much harder to achieve, if it's not carefully dealt with.
Just skimming the Design Log for today, I don't really understand how squad-based spawning works. It seems rather unintuitive since you just get thrown into a random squad by the game, and commanders have no control over it.
For squad-based spawning (researched at Obs), this means that if an entire squad is dead, they will all spawn together at the infantry portal? What happens if only one or two members of the squad are dead? Do they spawn separately or still together? Does this increase the spawn wait time of other squads? Very confusing.
I think that commanders should be able to group squads together like in other RTS games -- take the Total War series for instance. You select however many units you'd like, and then assign them to a hotkey, which groups them and automatically assigns them a number/color/whatever. The commander can then use the hotkey to select them as a group to issue commands.
I see the commander as the overseer of the game -- he/she should have complete control over his team. Forcing squads doesn't give the commander the option, which takes the game out of his/her hands. I'm also really confused to what logic will be used to determine the size of the squads. For example, in a team of 8 (sans commander), will there be two groups of four or four groups of two or some other weird combination?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Players will be assigned a squad automatically by the game. Red squad, Blue squad, etc. Squads will be a minimum of 2 players, up to 4-5 players. Commanders don’t choose what players go in what squad (which will allow us to balance the squad spawning rate somewhat).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I ABSOLUTELY, VEHEMENTLY disagree. In all-caps, even. Simply unacceptable for anything other than basic pub play. Composing squads based on skillset is a key part of how my clan plays the game. Team organization is a comm responsibility, which in turn means the comm needs that authority.
If you want to auto-assign squads to start, for use on pubs, I'm OK with that. But there needs to be some ability to dynamically adjust squads during a match. ESPECIALLY if game mechanics, like spawning, are going to use it.
I'd be totally OK with squad assignment occurring when the comm uses the CTRL+# keys to make groups. Simple, fast, intuitive.
As a new player, the only thing I found difficult to understand was what my weapons did, especially as the aliens.
Some explanation in the mutate menu and armoury?
The commander functions are also difficult, obviously, but I think if you let the commander functions work in an otherwise empty server (to let people muck about) and add some more decriptive tooltips, I think that'll all work really well. Maybe even a lil' pop up [?] icon that'll give a brief overview of how it works (eg that aliens can only build on the infestation).
<!--quoteo(post=1873528:date=Sep 7 2011, 02:52 PM:name=Squidget)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Squidget @ Sep 7 2011, 02:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873528"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I ABSOLUTELY, VEHEMENTLY disagree. In all-caps, even. Simply unacceptable for anything other than basic pub play. Composing squads based on skillset is a key part of how my clan plays the game. Team organization is a comm responsibility, which in turn means the comm needs that authority.
If you want to auto-assign squads to start, for use on pubs, I'm OK with that. But there needs to be some ability to dynamically adjust squads during a match. ESPECIALLY if game mechanics, like spawning, are going to use it.
I'd be totally OK with squad assignment occurring when the comm uses the CTRL+# keys to make groups. Simple, fast, intuitive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So I think we talked about this but I think we may have something that allows you to turn off the auto-squad on clan matches because we agree its very unlikely you will want that feature in clan matches. The issue with giving the command this control is having to add new UI for it thats informative and does not drag away from what the commanders role is. I do not think you want something where you are playing sim city with your squads.
<!--quoteo(post=1873519:date=Sep 7 2011, 01:44 PM:name=hf_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (hf_ @ Sep 7 2011, 01:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873519"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Just skimming the Design Log for today, I don't really understand how squad-based spawning works. It seems rather unintuitive since you just get thrown into a random squad by the game, and commanders have no control over it.
For squad-based spawning (researched at Obs), this means that if an entire squad is dead, they will all spawn together at the infantry portal? What happens if only one or two members of the squad are dead? Do they spawn separately or still together? Does this increase the spawn wait time of other squads? Very confusing.
I think that commanders should be able to group squads together like in other RTS games -- take the Total War series for instance. You select however many units you'd like, and then assign them to a hotkey, which groups them and automatically assigns them a number/color/whatever. The commander can then use the hotkey to select them as a group to issue commands.
I see the commander as the overseer of the game -- he/she should have complete control over his team. Forcing squads doesn't give the commander the option, which takes the game out of his/her hands. I'm also really confused to what logic will be used to determine the size of the squads. For example, in a team of 8 (sans commander), will there be two groups of four or four groups of two or some other weird combination?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here again to expand on why we don't make the command the controller of squads has to do more with the nature of FPS games and RTS games. In the examples you mentioned you as a controller of large groups of units would want to have that control. As a commander in NS2 you do not really control the marines you are just directing them and managing resources so it does not seem as relavant for you to have this control.
The other issue is the inherent nature of FPS games especially in non-clan play, pub games you have people coming and going a lot which means the commander would have to be dealing with this sqauds and such all the time and we don't want that. We try to group you with your friends and if we can't do that we put you in a group with random other players. I don't think thats horrible for the more common case of pub play.
<!--quoteo(post=1873581:date=Sep 7 2011, 07:45 PM:name=wacko)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (wacko @ Sep 7 2011, 07:45 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873581"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Here again to expand on why we don't make the command the controller of squads has to do more with the nature of FPS games and RTS games. In the examples you mentioned you as a controller of large groups of units would want to have that control. As a commander in NS2 you do not really control the marines you are just directing them and managing resources so it does not seem as relavant for you to have this control.
The other issue is the inherent nature of FPS games especially in non-clan play, pub games you have people coming and going a lot which means the commander would have to be dealing with this sqauds and such all the time and we don't want that. We try to group you with your friends and if we can't do that we put you in a group with random other players. I don't think thats horrible for the more common case of pub play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I get what you're saying, but I think limiting the commander's role in the manner inherently dilutes your strategic options. It makes more sense to have the game auto-assign players to squads by default, but then have a button controlled by the commander which turns off auto-assignment and allows them to manually control it. If the comm turns it back on, the squads would stay in their current configuration unless people joined or dropped from the game and were auto-assigned again.
It will take more time to implement but it will be much more fun and provide and additional layer of much needed complexity for the RTS role.
In Red Orchestra 2, the commander can do "Forced Respawn" if the team needs more reinforcements and doesn't have time to wait for the timer to end. It could work in NS2 squads, instead of instant access to frontlines with squad respawns and the commander has more control over squad play. Or maybe we could do squad spawns only in areas without DI? Just my thoughts.
<!--quoteo(post=1873580:date=Sep 7 2011, 07:40 PM:name=wacko)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (wacko @ Sep 7 2011, 07:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873580"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So I think we talked about this but I think we may have something that allows you to turn off the auto-squad on clan matches because we agree its very unlikely you will want that feature in clan matches.<b> The issue with giving the command this control is having to add new UI for it</b> thats informative and does not drag away from what the commanders role is. I do not think you want something where you are playing sim city with your squads.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sorry that you have to put work into your game, here I found you a simple idea for squads thats tried and true
How about adding a colored square to every player on the scorebord(4 colored squares to be exact = 4squads max.) The game automaticly puts players in squads like you planned it (so the border of the squad colored square will be highlighted on the scorebord)- but if some adjustments are needed... the commander can switch a player into another squad with a single click on a square next to the players name...
I dont really like the squad system, because i dont think its really needed - at least only needed if you really really want this spawn with squad feature in the game...
+ from the other thread
<!--quoteo(post=1873557:date=Sep 7 2011, 11:42 PM:name=ASnogarD)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ASnogarD @ Sep 7 2011, 11:42 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873557"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Squad Spawing is fine in a big open game , like Battlefield , as it takes a lot of time to travel and squads will be dispersed all too easily. Its no fun waiting for a team mate to spawn , grab a ride and join up with you again ... in a big map. NS 2 maps are pretty small, it wont take you 5 mins to hike to the action again and quiet frankly spawing in on squad members would simply make the PG nearly redundant... as well as the IP. It also heavily effects the gameplay negitively, it will make for squads that move forward as a unit but camp if a squad mate dies until he spawns back on them , then march on... been fed ammo and health via the com. Kharaa would struggle to utilise hit and run tactics as a kill would simply cause the marine squad to turtle up till the spawn timer is up.
<!--quoteo(post=1873598:date=Sep 7 2011, 08:43 PM:name=RichardRahl)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (RichardRahl @ Sep 7 2011, 08:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873598"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Sorry that you have to put work into your game, here I found you a simple idea for squads thats tried and true
make your job any easiyer? let people join their own squads with their friends it will work better than shoving 4 random people down someones throat.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That squad UI is horrible HAHA its not a matter of putting/doing the UI its a matter of making a meaningful UI that does not confuse the player. The UI you linked is crappy and to be honest a lot of people do not use it... it targets a very small group of folks who would actually care to customize the Squads. Which is another reason why we did not want to add a new UI.
Here again people can join a squad with their friends the game will put you in squads with your friends... so I am not worried about that. I mean all these arguments about squad control and being able to customize your squad and such seem wasteful to me because so many other games have that feature and a very a small percent of people actually use it. We feel like we are bringing in a feature and putting at the front and making it a part of the game instead of what a lot of other games do which is hack in it there and hope that people will use and most don't.
I am also sure things will change once the system is in and people use it as I am sure you guys opinions will so I would wait to case judgement on it until its in the game and usable because I don't think the design doc really makes it clear to the players how and what it will be like... it makes it clear to me as to how I need to write the feature.
<!--quoteo(post=1873621:date=Sep 8 2011, 12:48 AM:name=wacko)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (wacko @ Sep 8 2011, 12:48 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873621"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That squad UI is horrible HAHA its not a matter of putting/doing the UI its a matter of making a meaningful UI that does not confuse the player. The UI you linked is crappy and to be honest a lot of people do not use it... it targets a very small group of folks who would actually care to customize the Squads. Which is another reason why we did not want to add a new UI.
Here again people can join a squad with their friends the game will put you in squads with your friends... so I am not worried about that. I mean all these arguments about squad control and being able to customize your squad and such seem wasteful to me because so many other games have that feature and a very a small percent of people actually use it. We feel like we are bringing in a feature and putting at the front and making it a part of the game instead of what a lot of other games do which is hack in it there and hope that people will use and most don't.
I am also sure things will change once the system is in and people use it as I am sure you guys opinions will so I would wait to case judgement on it until its in the game and usable because I don't think the design doc really makes it clear to the players how and what it will be like... it makes it clear to me as to how I need to write the feature.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
first of all it's not a crappy UI, it's a pretty decent minimalist squad UI which has been used in the new Battlefield games for years and it works, secondly as far as your post saying "Here again people can join a squad with their friends the game will put you in squads with your friends" not if you joined and your friends squad was already full you would get sent to an entirely different squad.
Comments
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/hcw97.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Inspiration off of the Star Wars: Republic Commando hud. One of the best squad based games.
People think game design can be so basic, when in fact it is incredibly complicated.
There are times in the game when Marines/Aliens can be learning things, just think of all the opportunities.
Computer Screens
Buildings
Spectating When Dead
Game Start
Game End
Etc
What players really need are stories.
There are dynamic ways to do things, and whilst tooltips can be handy at feeding information to the player before a game - they are useless during.
Think about it - does anyone here actually stop to read tooltips, or do they actually just get into the game by looking for something to shoot?
Look what most games do now - they feed tool tips to you on game load, or provide information on basic movement or control depending on what you are doing or have in your hand.
Dynamics such as resources, gameplay, etc.. will be lost on tooltips.
As for squads, they are fine. You just need to implement a cool off period for them.
So the longer you spend with a squad, the longer it takes to drop out of it when you are out of range/die/etc.
That way, if you start in a squad with player Y, but spend more time hanging around with your mate X... you eventually transfer over after a 30 second cool off period. The longer you stay with someone, the longer the cool off period becomes.
That way you preserve the idea of squads, whilst at the same time, allow players to make their own choices.
For example you buy a shotgun and the voice says "this is the shotgun, blablabla...". As you just need to listen you can continue to play.
You could still do the fly in and "gas bomb" a long corridor or room but also, you could breath it out around corners without exposing yourself. It would only need to go about ten feet forward, and then spread out from there.
People think game design can be so basic, when in fact it is incredibly complicated.
There are times in the game when Marines/Aliens can be learning things, just think of all the opportunities.
Computer Screens
Buildings
Spectating When Dead
Game Start
Game End
Etc
What players really need are stories.
There are dynamic ways to do things, and whilst tooltips can be handy at feeding information to the player before a game - they are useless during.
Think about it - does anyone here actually stop to read tooltips, or do they actually just get into the game by looking for something to shoot?
Look what most games do now - they feed tool tips to you on game load, or provide information on basic movement or control depending on what you are doing or have in your hand.
Dynamics such as resources, gameplay, etc.. will be lost on tooltips.
As for squads, they are fine. You just need to implement a cool off period for them.
So the longer you spend with a squad, the longer it takes to drop out of it when you are out of range/die/etc.
That way, if you start in a squad with player Y, but spend more time hanging around with your mate X... you eventually transfer over after a 30 second cool off period. The longer you stay with someone, the longer the cool off period becomes.
That way you preserve the idea of squads, whilst at the same time, allow players to make their own choices.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I read tooltips, actually I usually try to trigger them. If I want to know what something is I look at it or mouse over it and wait for the game to tell me what I want to know with a tooltip, that's sort of the exact reason tooltips were invented.
I don't want to sift through a lot of useless fanfic to get to the useful information.
Also no, game design is incredibly easy in a lot of ways. You look at existing conventions and then put them in your game, tooltips are a convention, everyone knows how they work so you don't have to teach people how to use them, you mouse over something and the computer tells you what it is, you can put this in game for just about anything. There is no point teaching people things when you can just use something they already know.
It's like a tutorial only you can trigger it when you need it, for specific things, without leaving the game. Also you can make the game trigger it when you might not realise there's something you need to know.
Say you add some sort of buff to squads, you can add a subtle effect to tell players when the buff is active, but new players would also get a tooltip that tells them what the effect means, and what the buff does. So you get near other players, your screen gets a coloured vignette effect, and the game says 'you just joined a squad, the glowing effect means your health is now regenerating, stay with other players to keep this effect' and everyone's happy.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Aliens have difficulty winning the late-game and marines have difficulty winning both the early and late game. I don’t have stats but my gut tells me this. Increasing frame-rate (or fixing the input/aiming issues which seem to exist) will help marines significantly but other steps can be taken while we work on that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think re-scaling Rifle's damage per bullet (higher damage, lower RoF) would shift the balance in Marine's favour. Since the first few bullets are quite accurately, this will allow Marines to do more damage with "twitch 'n burst" shooting style (like they do with Shotguns). The Rifle's sky-high RoF is probably putting extra load on the game any way.
I was under the impression that the rifle was always more or less pinpoint accurate.
I was under the impression that the rifle was always more or less pinpoint accurate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Imagine two hypothetical guns: one, which fires one bullet per second, but it deals 200 damage; the other gun spits 100 bullets per second, but each only deals 2 damage. With good aim, the first gun would easily deal more damage than the second gun, in a low FPS performance environment.
That is because the slow firing gun only require perfect aim for a fraction of a second to do full damage (eg Shotgun). Whereas the second gun requires perfect aim 100% of the time to deal the 100% of the damage.
That is because the slow firing gun only require perfect aim for a fraction of a second to do full damage (eg Shotgun). Whereas the second gun requires perfect aim 100% of the time to deal the 100% of the damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But that doesn't apply if both guns are machine guns.
If the rifle fires one bullet per second it's not an automatic rifle any more, it's a bolt action.
If a gun fires three bullets per second as opposed to five, it won't make any difference, if you can hold your aim for half a second before needing to correct it, you'll get basically the same amount of damage with either gun.
The reason the shotgun is easier to aim is because you only need to aim it once, because it one shots most things you shoot with it, if you had to aim it three or four times it'd be no easier than the rifle.
Multi-pronged approach. A tutorial could be nice later but still feels like more work than it’s worth (esp. given that most people don’t play through tutorials). It still seems far better to have the game explain itself as you play (although harder).
- Add tooltips to commander HUD so you can hover to see “team resources†or quick descriptions of structures (like explaining how important an infantry portal is and what it does)
- Explanation of resource model, SOMEWHERE (esp. when making kills, what’s happening?)
- Unclear what scope of power-node is (need visual indicator for both comms and ground players)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You could try going with obligatory tutorials like Americas Army did.
But with less suck and more awesome...
You could make it so that you'd have to go through some simple tutorials, and you get a score for each tutorial.
Once you have accumulated enough points you can go online.
This could also be split into several sub sections, such as commanding, marine play and alien play.
Practice scenarios with basic bots as your last "exam" before you're allowed online.
The most valuable point though; keep each section relevant to what you are trying to teach for that section. Don't start forcing commanding down someones throat if they are taking the basic marine movement tutorial.
If a tutorial is too long or tedious, break it down into smaller chunks.
Kind of like the cinematic they released that said the game will be available in Fall of 2009? [lol]
Obvious jab at developers is obvious.
Besides, that was a teaser.
Or even a second drifter upgrade (expensive) that has a single universal cooldown (to prevent spam) that disables ALL powered devices within a certain radius for 10 seconds or so. Lights, too - that'd be scary and cool.
Drifters are easy to kill by decent defence (and the upgraded one with the EMP could be all glowy and move a little slower), but well supported / distracted (Lerk smog?) they could succeed in getting in, and you could pop one into Marine start or any turret-spammed area and give your guys a window to rip out the power. That'd also encourage the placement of a second IP area, to prevent all your spawning being knocked out in one hit.
If you don't want to put that on a Drifter, perhaps have a mutation (on Gorge?) which lets them do it, but die in the blast? Again, to prevent spam, make it a big deal, and encourage teamwork... And in either case encourage the Marines to have some forward skirmishers to try and knock that stuff out early, even when on defence.
Another thing you could do with Drifters is let them asplode into a several eggs, which decay if not on the creep. Solves some of the camping problems - but only if you've spirited a Drifter somewhere. That in turn encourages the Marines to go poking about in odd corners, which is always cool.
Finally, you could let Gorges lay "dormant" eggs, which can only be activated by the alien commander. That'd be their beacon, in a way: all the domant eggs activate and aliens insta-spawn until the egg supply runs out. Again, encourages the marines to go poking about looking for eggs. As long as they're careful the marines can still knock out a hive with egg denial, but the aliens aren't helpless against a lucky rush.
"How many marines am I up against? Two? Ok, I can handle that.
Oh wait, a third spawned in while I was attacking and he killed me."
Making the spawning dependent on a combat timer isn't going to help either. That would create awkward game tactics.
"Don't shoot that alien or else our friend won't be able to respawn!"
Sounds like just another "experimental" change. The gameplay <!--coloro:#FFA500--><span style="color:#FFA500"><!--/coloro-->basics<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> (movement, pathing, commander interface responsiveness, RoF bugs, etc) need to stay on the front burner.
My personal impression, though:
A bit overkill perhaps, and probably unnecessary.
Some number adjustments might make it work, but I feel this easily making balance that much harder to achieve, if it's not carefully dealt with.
For squad-based spawning (researched at Obs), this means that if an entire squad is dead, they will all spawn together at the infantry portal? What happens if only one or two members of the squad are dead? Do they spawn separately or still together? Does this increase the spawn wait time of other squads? Very confusing.
I think that commanders should be able to group squads together like in other RTS games -- take the Total War series for instance. You select however many units you'd like, and then assign them to a hotkey, which groups them and automatically assigns them a number/color/whatever. The commander can then use the hotkey to select them as a group to issue commands.
I see the commander as the overseer of the game -- he/she should have complete control over his team. Forcing squads doesn't give the commander the option, which takes the game out of his/her hands. I'm also really confused to what logic will be used to determine the size of the squads. For example, in a team of 8 (sans commander), will there be two groups of four or four groups of two or some other weird combination?
I ABSOLUTELY, VEHEMENTLY disagree. In all-caps, even. Simply unacceptable for anything other than basic pub play. Composing squads based on skillset is a key part of how my clan plays the game. Team organization is a comm responsibility, which in turn means the comm needs that authority.
If you want to auto-assign squads to start, for use on pubs, I'm OK with that. But there needs to be some ability to dynamically adjust squads during a match. ESPECIALLY if game mechanics, like spawning, are going to use it.
I'd be totally OK with squad assignment occurring when the comm uses the CTRL+# keys to make groups. Simple, fast, intuitive.
Some explanation in the mutate menu and armoury?
The commander functions are also difficult, obviously, but I think if you let the commander functions work in an otherwise empty server (to let people muck about) and add some more decriptive tooltips, I think that'll all work really well. Maybe even a lil' pop up [?] icon that'll give a brief overview of how it works (eg that aliens can only build on the infestation).
"This is the Infantry Portal. This is where you will respawn when you're out of action." In that throat-cancer sounding (yet smooth) voice.
If you want to auto-assign squads to start, for use on pubs, I'm OK with that. But there needs to be some ability to dynamically adjust squads during a match. ESPECIALLY if game mechanics, like spawning, are going to use it.
I'd be totally OK with squad assignment occurring when the comm uses the CTRL+# keys to make groups. Simple, fast, intuitive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So I think we talked about this but I think we may have something that allows you to turn off the auto-squad on clan matches because we agree its very unlikely you will want that feature in clan matches. The issue with giving the command this control is having to add new UI for it thats informative and does not drag away from what the commanders role is. I do not think you want something where you are playing sim city with your squads.
For squad-based spawning (researched at Obs), this means that if an entire squad is dead, they will all spawn together at the infantry portal? What happens if only one or two members of the squad are dead? Do they spawn separately or still together? Does this increase the spawn wait time of other squads? Very confusing.
I think that commanders should be able to group squads together like in other RTS games -- take the Total War series for instance. You select however many units you'd like, and then assign them to a hotkey, which groups them and automatically assigns them a number/color/whatever. The commander can then use the hotkey to select them as a group to issue commands.
I see the commander as the overseer of the game -- he/she should have complete control over his team. Forcing squads doesn't give the commander the option, which takes the game out of his/her hands. I'm also really confused to what logic will be used to determine the size of the squads. For example, in a team of 8 (sans commander), will there be two groups of four or four groups of two or some other weird combination?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here again to expand on why we don't make the command the controller of squads has to do more with the nature of FPS games and RTS games. In the examples you mentioned you as a controller of large groups of units would want to have that control. As a commander in NS2 you do not really control the marines you are just directing them and managing resources so it does not seem as relavant for you to have this control.
The other issue is the inherent nature of FPS games especially in non-clan play, pub games you have people coming and going a lot which means the commander would have to be dealing with this sqauds and such all the time and we don't want that. We try to group you with your friends and if we can't do that we put you in a group with random other players. I don't think thats horrible for the more common case of pub play.
The other issue is the inherent nature of FPS games especially in non-clan play, pub games you have people coming and going a lot which means the commander would have to be dealing with this sqauds and such all the time and we don't want that. We try to group you with your friends and if we can't do that we put you in a group with random other players. I don't think thats horrible for the more common case of pub play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I get what you're saying, but I think limiting the commander's role in the manner inherently dilutes your strategic options. It makes more sense to have the game auto-assign players to squads by default, but then have a button controlled by the commander which turns off auto-assignment and allows them to manually control it. If the comm turns it back on, the squads would stay in their current configuration unless people joined or dropped from the game and were auto-assigned again.
It will take more time to implement but it will be much more fun and provide and additional layer of much needed complexity for the RTS role.
Sorry that you have to put work into your game, here I found you a simple idea for squads thats tried and true
<a href="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/491/bfbc2game20101210224736.jpg" target="_blank">http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/491/bfb...01210224736.jpg</a>
make your job any easiyer? let people join their own squads with their friends it will work better than shoving 4 random people down someones throat.
The game automaticly puts players in squads like you planned it (so the border of the squad colored square will be highlighted on the scorebord)- but if some adjustments are needed... the commander can switch a player into another squad with a single click on a square next to the players name...
I dont really like the squad system, because i dont think its really needed - at least only needed if you really really want this spawn with squad feature in the game...
+ from the other thread
<!--quoteo(post=1873557:date=Sep 7 2011, 11:42 PM:name=ASnogarD)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ASnogarD @ Sep 7 2011, 11:42 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873557"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Squad Spawing is fine in a big open game , like Battlefield , as it takes a lot of time to travel and squads will be dispersed all too easily. Its no fun waiting for a team mate to spawn , grab a ride and join up with you again ... in a big map.
NS 2 maps are pretty small, it wont take you 5 mins to hike to the action again and quiet frankly spawing in on squad members would simply make the PG nearly redundant... as well as the IP.
It also heavily effects the gameplay negitively, it will make for squads that move forward as a unit but camp if a squad mate dies until he spawns back on them , then march on... been fed ammo and health via the com. Kharaa would struggle to utilise hit and run tactics as a kill would simply cause the marine squad to turtle up till the spawn timer is up.
DO NOT LIKE.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/491/bfbc2game20101210224736.jpg" target="_blank">http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/491/bfb...01210224736.jpg</a>
make your job any easiyer? let people join their own squads with their friends it will work better than shoving 4 random people down someones throat.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That squad UI is horrible HAHA its not a matter of putting/doing the UI its a matter of making a meaningful UI that does not confuse the player. The UI you linked is crappy and to be honest a lot of people do not use it... it targets a very small group of folks who would actually care to customize the Squads. Which is another reason why we did not want to add a new UI.
Here again people can join a squad with their friends the game will put you in squads with your friends... so I am not worried about that. I mean all these arguments about squad control and being able to customize your squad and such seem wasteful to me because so many other games have that feature and a very a small percent of people actually use it. We feel like we are bringing in a feature and putting at the front and making it a part of the game instead of what a lot of other games do which is hack in it there and hope that people will use and most don't.
I am also sure things will change once the system is in and people use it as I am sure you guys opinions will so I would wait to case judgement on it until its in the game and usable because I don't think the design doc really makes it clear to the players how and what it will be like... it makes it clear to me as to how I need to write the feature.
Here again people can join a squad with their friends the game will put you in squads with your friends... so I am not worried about that. I mean all these arguments about squad control and being able to customize your squad and such seem wasteful to me because so many other games have that feature and a very a small percent of people actually use it. We feel like we are bringing in a feature and putting at the front and making it a part of the game instead of what a lot of other games do which is hack in it there and hope that people will use and most don't.
I am also sure things will change once the system is in and people use it as I am sure you guys opinions will so I would wait to case judgement on it until its in the game and usable because I don't think the design doc really makes it clear to the players how and what it will be like... it makes it clear to me as to how I need to write the feature.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
first of all it's not a crappy UI, it's a pretty decent minimalist squad UI which has been used in the new Battlefield games for years and it works, secondly as far as your post saying "Here again people can join a squad with their friends the game will put you in squads with your friends" not if you joined and your friends squad was already full you would get sent to an entirely different squad.