Squads
RisingSun
RisingCalifornia Join Date: 2004-04-19 Member: 28015Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
RisingCalifornia Join Date: 2004-04-19 Member: 28015Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The goal of the squad system is to help groups play together.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I dont think there is any need for this feature. Survival should be enough of an incentive. The more i hear about squads the more i personally dislike it. This will turn into a deal breaker and the only reason i wont cancel my 8 preorders is because "NS1 remade" / to honor the team who put NS1 together. Sad to see game play being dumbed down to squad play.
*edit - Knee jerk reaction here as i am terribly disappointed after waiting years for this game. Ill get my constructive hat on in a sec.
I dont think there is any need for this feature. Survival should be enough of an incentive. The more i hear about squads the more i personally dislike it. This will turn into a deal breaker and the only reason i wont cancel my 8 preorders is because "NS1 remade" / to honor the team who put NS1 together. Sad to see game play being dumbed down to squad play.
*edit - Knee jerk reaction here as i am terribly disappointed after waiting years for this game. Ill get my constructive hat on in a sec.
Comments
I still think the commander should be able to create his own squads. Because otherwise the commander will never know where which squad is and who is in it, because its all dynamic.
But well, its really not something i see as critical, so i will see how it turns out
Could you imagine that lone marine running out near a hive undetected, having people switch their squad to his, and killing themselves to gain his position.
Or imagine as aliens focusing on the Phase Gate near the hive to push those marines back, but what would it matter? Marines spawning on each other makes it near impossible now to push any forward marine base back. Not only would you have to destroy the PG but hunt down every single marine near the location only to have one marine run back to start the whole spawning cycle again.
There is little risk and a lot more reward with this silly new ADDHD style to game play. Death doesnt matter as long as one of your squad hangs back (the GLer or Flamer). Why even have PGs? There is just so much i dislike about the squad system right off the back i fail to get it all down. There will be restrictions and such but it wont change the fact that this make death near meaningless to marines. Especially when you drop your now self purchased weapon on the ground to be picked up soon after you respawn right next to your squad mate.
Really saddened this is even being considered when there is no need for it.
For example, having players near each other automatically be assigned into "blobs" with 1 being red, 2 as blue, 3 as green, etc. Have a small window at the top with the blob color, hotkey, and the amount of players in the blob. Maybe have a lock button that will automatically keep the players currently in the blob together even if they split?
Spawniing with the squad should be restricted to a very lategame upgrade. This isn't battlefield, we aren't going to be playing 32v32 player matches. Phasegates are sufficient.
been saying this for so many months now, and every serious vet out there views generally ns2 this way.
I'm not sure why games must be reduced to such things where everything given to them, more easier tasks, less attention required and overall just not as challenging. Is it just these 21th-century games or what. I just want my ns1 gameplay back.
I'm not sure why games must be reduced to such things where everything given to them, more easier tasks, less attention required and overall just not as challenging. Is it just these 21th-century games or what. <b>I just want my ns1 gameplay back.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Amen
*edit- Quick thought. What happens when Jet Packs are introduced. 4 people spawning with a jet packer seems ridiculous.
But I'm all for the ability to choose your spawn location. And I'm glad the friends will be placed in the same squad.
Hopefully the hud will display squad info.
But I'm all for the ability to choose your spawn location. And I'm glad the friends will be placed in the same squad.
Hopefully the hud will display squad info.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But it doesnt make sense to choose which IP you spawn at. Who cares? They probably wont let you spawn at a random place around the IP or within a radius because that would be unfair to the aliens who spawn from stupid vulnerable eggs.
Dynamic squads would be cool as long as it doesn't give bonuses or a spawn advantage. It should solely be used to give orders and organize your teams. I would also love the idea of on the fly squad grouping when in close proximity to a group in a forward location.
I totally agree with your first statement =)
Squad spawning seems lame.
TrueVeritas has a decent idea going! I like.
As for the dumbing down of Natural Selection..
People seem to forget that NS1 had it's problems too, it wasn't a perfect game yet ppl talk about it as if it were Game equivalent to Jesus.
"I'm not sure why games must be reduced to such things where everything given to them, more easier tasks, less attention required and overall just not as challenging. Is it just these 21th-century games or what. I just want my ns1 gameplay back."
Things like crop dusting lerk gas or dynamic infestation, cysts, flamethrowers, etc. add to the depth of Natural Selection imo.
I'm not a fan of every UWE has changed but its impossible to please everyone.
"Quick thought. What happens when Jet Packs are introduced. 4 people spawning with a jet packer seems ridiculous."
That already happens in NS1. But I do agree that Jetpacks will need balancing. Seems like Fades were the counter to Jetpacks in NS1 since Fades jumped, not teleported. (Because teleport was too buggy in NS1) Blink essentially made Fades FLY forward. (Onos used to the counter to Jetpackers when they had paralysis, a projectile that stunned marines, even jetpackers. Was too overpowered and removed)
But great ideas guys!
As for marine and commander play, what do you guys think about commanders being able to drop medpacks and ammunition packs like mini refill stations that run out?
To eliminate med and ammo spamming for commanders, this would also be a soft incentive for marines to stick near the ammo or medpack packages, giving a sense of squad or group play.
The only issue for me, is the ability to change squads. This should occur when you spend more time running around with a different squad/person - that the game automatically recognises your preferential players.
The steam friends bit is a nice little touch as well.
Great stuff UWE, looking forward to seeing this!
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I dont think there is any need for this feature. Survival should be enough of an incentive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The matter of the fact is players don't on publics. This is not 'dumbing down' the game, these sort of measures will actually allow for a more intelligent game.
Think about it, do you want to spend more time faffing around trying to get people to do things?
Or do you want to spend time easily communicating your intentions and actually play an intelligent game?
I really think spawn on squad could be a good change and give the marines a nice offensive boost. It will reduce the reliance on sentry guns and locking down areas.
It could be a problem if 1 marines hides near the hive and then all of them spawn in though - perhaps having a loud distinctive noise and visual effect for when a marine spawns would be a good way to alert the aliens.
Good players know this, new players learn this.
Squad Spawning: No.
Squads, IMO, should be assigned and primarily used by the commander. It should be obvious to a player what squad they're in, where their squadmates are, and what their squads orders are. But I think squad spawning opens up too many problems to be worthwhile.
Being able to select your IP while you wait in the respawn queue would be great, though.
Where are you 'spawning' from? Thin air? Why do we have IPs and phase tech then? Nanites aren't really a good explanation for the creation of lifeforms, only machinery really.
Ok, so say I spawn with my squad up front. I've appeared as backup on the front lines, but now I'm not near an armory and only have the basic weapons I would normally spawn with. It would be very frustrating to those spawned like this.
So tbh I feel squad spawning is better suited for team deathmatch, and clashes heavily with the RTS aspects of this game. It also detracts from the immersion of spawning from an IP or egg. Also since we now have phase gates and can access them rather early in the game (iirc squad spawning was the mechanic to replace phase gates before they were re-added), it just isn't necessary.
I'll wait till the CoD fever Flayra is suffering from disapaites and he realises what he has done.
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.
Squad-spawning: no, I mean it is already achieved with the Phase Gate and it isn't necessary in a semi-small crammed sci-fi environment. Not sure it's worth development time, honestly.
In my dream world I would rather see ways of communicating with my friend of choice better. The <i>Portal 2 screen-in-screen</i> and the <i>marker </i>is such a wonderful idea. In NS2 the screen-in-screencould be used to see what my friend is doing and where he/she is, and the marker could work great on a per-squad basis to position and organize your squadmates.
- Add squad to scoreboard for friendly players (group players by squad, or draw squad colored icon next to name).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A few points i have that keep me apprehensive about this
1) I feel marine play should be a whole team effort and reinforcing compartmentalized play with squads of 4-5 <b>might</b> actually create barriers to team play of some sort.
2) Im weird like this but i enjoy pub games simply because its nice to play with new and random people. I dont want to have to defriend people.. :( Also im curious how squads are sorted if say 7/10 marines have each other on their friends list but 3/10 dont. Or say you get a group of clanners in one squad and a group of random newbie pubbers in another.
3) It seems like a semi beacon of sorts, concerned that ninja obs/pg play which i really enjoy will start becoming obsolete.
4) What if 2 squad members are currently on different sides of the map, where does squad spawning send me?
5) Will there be much point to squad spawning mid/late game anyway since you can't buy a weapon while your dead?
Respawn times will definately need to be dynamic as a result (something you guys have already recognized) and i wish you luck trying in balancing!
*edit* If you really do want to go down the squad spawning path, one way to tie it into the RTS aspect would be to make squad spawning an on/off comm toggle that costs obs energy or such. I really dont see squad spawning as promoting team play more than i see it as simply buffing marine pressure.
design log!! :p
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/139ySUrBsO0m0Z4ilq0YsDEHJLQhBa6RrIjJIsckL2kE/edit?hl=en&authkey=CLCo8Z0J" target="_blank">https://docs.google.com/document/d/139ySUrB...uthkey=CLCo8Z0J</a>
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/139ySUrBsO0m0Z4ilq0YsDEHJLQhBa6RrIjJIsckL2kE/edit?hl=en&authkey=CLCo8Z0J" target="_blank">https://docs.google.com/document/d/139ySUrB...uthkey=CLCo8Z0J</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What is your point? I already read it, that's exactly what my post is talking about...
eh then i must have misunderstood you my bad.
Number One: Allows the commander to better command marines to do things, we feel that in most cases the game ends up fractioning into small strike teams or groups of players to go off and do something and we feel by giving you a friendly group to be apart of that will help make the overall experience better. The experience here is that you as a player feel involved in the game with your fellow players. A lot of other FPS games do similar things where they encourage you to play with your fellow comrades and so this is our implementation of that.
Number Two: We want you to play with your friends... we feel like the more, “Hey friend that was just ###### amazing, we totally owned that hive†moments happen as a group the happier you will be and so thats why we are adding the squad spawn we don’t want you ever feeling like you are missing out on the action with your friends. Modern games do something similar example the latest Medal of Honor spawns you next to other players regardless of where they are on the map because the feeling is you want to play with other people.
As for how confusing it sounds; I think that is just the nature of the design doc its more of a guideline to the implementer as to how the feature will work. Live in action its actually pretty simple and very clear. You will know what squad you are in and the commander will know what squads are out there and furthermore you will know when you are playing with your friends. I think the only odd part is the IP spawning but I think that will be smoothed over with testing and feeback but the overall feature of squads is pretty solid and common on games.
What incentive is there to stick with my squad?
And by that I specifically mean MY squad, not just 'with players' because at the moment it kinda seems like the game is arbitrarily assigning players to groups, but not giving them any reason to stick with the group.
Unless you're going to die an awful lot and squad spawning is going to be a really important part of the game, I don't see why you'd stick together with your squad rather than just following whichever other players happen to be closer to you.
Having played empires, which has quite a lot of cohesion in games and players often pick specific squads and organise using them, and players get bonuses for being near their squad leader, they still tend to drift off and do things on the other side of the map. Also BFBC2 most certainly doesn't do squads well, most people don't seem to use them and the squad spawning is a significant step down from the 2142 beacon system, as it usually spawns you somewhere stupid and you get blown up.
The groups just seem like they'd be extremely arbitrary, and if that's the case why is it any better than picking a squad from a list?
Basically squads are in a lot of games, but they're usually pretty useless, I don't see anything that would change that in the design log. The friends feature is actually a good one and would be the exception to the rule, but how many people are really going to have friends who play NS2? I have quite a few who play empires, so they're interested in FPS/RTS games, and even I have maybe one person I can think of who owns NS2/plays it with any frequency. Not to mention I can easily play with them in any game just by clicking the 'join server' button on their drop down menu.
Oh yeah also squad spawning is really really annoying to have to deal with as an opponent. Again going back to battlefield, the 2142 systam of dropping the beacon was much better, because first off, it actually showed you spawning in by dropping a great big thing out of the sky, so you know if the enemy is getting reinforced, and secondly, you know where they're spawning from, it's essentially just like a more mobile infantry portal.
If you replaced squad spawning with some sort of placeable phase gate which was much weaker and maybe had a limited rate of spawning, that'd be much better. You could do some fancy programming to tell spawning players which beacons are available and ready to spawn and such, and you could make one player in the squad the designated leader and they get the beacon to drop where they like, that would work much better I think, and be more fun. You could also perhaps make it so players can switch squads by selecting a different beacon, if a squad is at say 3 players, any other players could select to spawn at their beacon, and they'd join the squad when doing so, so any understrength squad in an important location would quickly fill up to full strength, however you could only have a max of about five people in a squad and therefore only five using the same beacon, which would be another reason to have phase gates.
As for squads themselves, I could care less. If it makes it easier for the commander in some way or gives people a warm fuzzy feeling to be in a squad with friends then great, keep it in.
Squad spawning is a very bad idea for NS2 in my opinion, for all the reasons people have already mentioned earlier in the thread. NS2 does not need to strive to include every feature of other FPS games on the market right now. I think ASnogarD brought up a really good point about why squad spawning works well in BF, but would not be appropriate for NS.
In Savage 2, the commander chooses squad leaders at the beginning of the game, other players are then free to join the squads (until a squad is full).
Squad leaders can create spawn portals for the squad respawn from, as well as provide passive bonuses to nearby squad members.
However, in NS2, the Phase Gates already facilitate rapid travel for Marines.
Instead of re-spawn in squad ... give marines in squad shared rewards instead (similar as in NS1 co_)!
The maps in NS 2 are not so large that it takes forever to join up with your squad, I dont think you are ever more than 60 - 80 secs sprint away from any point in a NS 2 map.
Its not needed, it breaks gameplay in a number of ways for the Kharaa.... take ambushing re-inforcing units for example, err no the unit will teleport to thier squads. Hit and run tactics to whittle down a attacking squad, pointless as they will magically reinforce.
Using MoH as a example isnt a good idea, first up the teams in MoH are symmetrical so both teams get players spawning on top of each other... secondly MoH wasnt considered a huge success, a rather forgettable experience.
How will Kharaa friends get together at the CC ? Will they materialise out the surrounding bacteria in the air ?
Oh, and what about weapons ? How will the player spawning in on thier mates buy a weapon or will the armory become a research only tool and weapons will materilise in thin air after the Marine has put in the courier order ?
Marines have Phasegate technology, this already gives them a good amount of mobility so they can cut travel time to reinforce ...or join thier friends at the Hive easy enough.
This is in the same class of bad idea as the slow on hit was, and look what happened when you went ahead with that idea despite negitive feedback... I dont think taking fans feedback is always a good idea, but this is one of the rare times you should listen.
Spawning on squadmates in NS 2 is a bad idea.
Please for the love of god don't introduce it.