Change medkits into a type of AoE cloud
Jow
Join Date: 2011-06-23 Member: 106032Members
Join Date: 2011-06-23 Member: 106032Members
Comments
The gorge is possibly getting a healing cloud.
The lerk has gas cloud.
The crag has an umbra cloud.
The fade has a darkness cloud and the shade is possibly getting the same.
Pheromones are planned to be like clouds.
There is a white fog throughout the map with the atmospheric lighting.
Besides, I like the medpacks. The marines have to grab them and gives a chance for the alien players to chomp him up before he heals.
An area effect, heal-over-time solution solves both problems.
An area effect, heal-over-time solution solves both problems.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Given the medpacks and ammo use p.res and the fact that marines generally die like pigs to the slaughter, I don't really think it's much of a problem. Besides, why remove some of the only micromanagement the game has.
If the game needs micro, add some decent micro, don't keep crappy micro in because it's always been in.
I'd like to see this for all marine comm droppables (medpacks, ammo packs, catpacks, etc). Point droppables always seemed like complexity without added value imo.
<!--quoteo(post=1896520:date=Jan 22 2012, 10:27 AM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jan 22 2012, 10:27 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896520"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Point droppables always seemed like complexity without added value imo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
Plus, the number of medpacks you can field doesn't scale with the number of players, so if the current system is kept in place, an AOE heal makes a lot more sense since its functionality is independent of the number of players.
Personal Res is too easily abusable. The commander role has an almost endless amount of PRes, since any Marine can become the commander. Med pack spam makes the outcome of a fight wildly unpredictable, making game balancing difficult.
UWE, we're a tough crowd.
<!--quoteo(post=1896585:date=Jan 22 2012, 03:52 AM:name=Krizzen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Krizzen @ Jan 22 2012, 03:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896585"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What? So, if the Kham is granted pheromones that buff, its OP, but its fine for the Comm? Furthermore, it would be better and more balanced if its AoE?
UWE, we're a tough crowd.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Apples and oranges. This is about commander abilities that cost resources to activate....and not the commander's orders (that cost nothing) which pheromones would the kham equivalent. Keep comm/kham abilities and orders separate.
Also, the heal thing in Alien Swarm comes to mind.
Heal over time is useless(2-3 hits from an alien and you are dead, hots are useless - you might as well remove medpacks and only let us use armorys) and aoe - come on guys you want to kill the only little thing that needs a little skill from marine commanders?
I personally never had an issue as alien with medpacks or nanoshield, if you play with the awareness that this exists. (sure sometimes it saves the ass of a marine, <u>so does frenzy gorges umbra crags ... for me as alien</u>)
=> the way how aliens move/dodge and attack filters out the good and the bad ones.
Medpacks and nanoshield might buy a marine a few seconds, but they never get "invincible"
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Personal Res is too easily abusable. The commander role has an almost endless amount of PRes, since any Marine can become the commander.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So all the marines are not spending their pres - because medpacks are so imba and make you invincible?
Did anyone ever do this? No. - Why? Because medpacks are not THAT crazy good. (and also because it takes a little to jump from fps mindset into commander micromanage/overview/tactic guy)
Sure if a commander is out of pres another player could jump into the CC and waste some of his pres - but this means now a player without pres is on the field and the player in the CC is spending his pres on stuff => so he wont be running around with weapon X or whatever either. (and might not have the pres after he gets out of it again)
... come on guys you want to kill the only little thing that needs a little skill from marine commanders?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
v
<!--quoteo(post=1896517:date=Jan 22 2012, 10:16 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jan 22 2012, 10:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896517"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Because it's the dumbest kind of micromanagement ever implemented in a videogame?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1896520:date=Jan 22 2012, 10:27 AM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jan 22 2012, 10:27 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896520"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Point droppables always seemed like complexity without added value imo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would rather that what separates good commanders from bad commanders is strategy and leadership, rather than aiming twitch-skill. If twitch-skill must be a factor, then it already is: what separates "good" 'units' from "bad" 'units' is their movement and aiming. So the commander dictates the strategy, and the 'units' decide and act on the ground-level tactics: that's how I thought people agreed it was supposed to work.
<!--quoteo(post=1896759:date=Jan 23 2012, 09:58 AM:name=Koruyo)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Koruyo @ Jan 23 2012, 09:58 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896759"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So all the marines are not spending their pres - because medpacks are so imba and make you invincible?
Did anyone ever do this? No. - Why? Because medpacks are not THAT crazy good. (and also because it takes a little to jump from fps mindset into commander micromanage/overview/tactic guy)
Sure if a commander is out of pres another player could jump into the CC and waste some of his pres - but this means now a player without pres is on the field and the player in the CC is spending his pres on stuff => so he wont be running around with weapon X or whatever either. (and might not have the pres after he gets out of it again)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, I think we should be operating under the assumption that there is a single commander for effectively the entire duration of the game (since this is almost always the case), but the current implementation actually isn't fine, because:
<!--QuoteBegin-Harimau+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Plus, <b>the number of medpacks you can field doesn't scale with the number of players</b>, so if the current system is kept in place, an AOE heal makes a lot more sense since its functionality is independent of the number of players.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So essentially with an AOE heal, your resources determine your "number of uses", not "number of marines healed", so you sidestep the issue of the scalability of medpack effectiveness with gamesize.
I agree, however, that Heal Over Time could make it all but useless in combat.
I've repeated this to death, but:
NS isn't in a good spot to develop huge strategical possibilities. It sacrifices a lot (NS2 in greatly increasing amount) to keep players happy on the ground level. At that point you need something else than just making a couple of easy and repetetive strategical decisions during the round.
By all means develop a smart strategical game if you can do it, but it's going to be ridiculously difficult on RTS/FPS game - especially with the modern standards of learning and requirements to provide easy and instant fun for each and every player all the time. Just whatever you do, don't build a shallow game that has nothing to do except repeating an easy grand strategy week after week and hoping the team listens and hits targets.
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I'm also kind of tired of arguing about med pack depth. They are not the most in depth or smartest commander element ever.
However, they do:
<ul>* Force plenty of quick decisions, which make a pretty big difference in commander skill
* Allow varied commanding styles
* Reward commanders able to read the game and be in right place at the right moment
* Allow commander to refine his game further than just executing a grand strategy
* Provide unique interaction between marines and commander</li></ul>
Some of the stuff mentioned can be achieved through AoE heals, but usually with far less precision and depth (depending on the AoE implementation of course).
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... And I'm by no means saying that the present NS2 implementation of medpacks is something that should stay. I'm mostly saying that I'd be happy to see single target instant heal medpacks as a part of the final design unless there's some brilliant plan how to otherwise create interesting challenges for the commander.
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Long story short: Give me challenges, simple strategical play probably isn't going to be enough unless there's some massive increase in strategical depth somehow.
It still doesn't address the (lack of) scalability of medpack effectiveness* with game size.
*simply defined as the number of medpacks you can field** divided by the number of marines you may need to heal
**the number of medpacks you can field is dependent on your resources; assuming a single commander for the duration of the game (a more than reasonable assumption), the only source of resources for medpacks is the player commander's Pres; the amount of Pres that a single player (the commander) gets is dependent wholly on the number of resource towers you hold and are independent of the number of players on your team
Let's not. That's not really a good start for discussion.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It still doesn't address the (lack of) scalability of medpack effectiveness* with game size.
*simply defined as the number of medpacks you can field** divided by the number of marines you may need to heal
**the number of medpacks you can field is dependent on your resources; assuming a single commander for the duration of the game (a more than reasonable assumption), the only source of resources for medpacks is the player commander's Pres; the amount of Pres that a single player (the commander) gets is dependent wholly on the number of resource towers you hold and are independent of the number of players on your team<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That seems like an awfully lot of complex words for a simple (and decent) point.
These are things that might have to be dealt with. To some extend you have to accept that things never scale perfectly though, you just can't have a similar game for 12 and 32 players without scaling everything from the map doorway sizes to ranged firepower and so on. I'm not even sure how well the AoE heals would scale after all, I guess it depends on the exact details of implementation.
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But as I already mentioned, there's no need to keep the medpack implementation as it is.
For example adding some RFK flow to comm's pres might work. I know it could be lightly abused by packing pres on some marine and then using that res for equipment, but if you really want to pick a single rich well equipped marine over a consistent commander with medpacking abilities, then so be it.
You can also have the AoE Heals as an alternative if implementing them both seems worthwile. No problem, in larger games you can still switch to AoE when necessary. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but as I mentioned a lot of things don't end up scaling perfectly anyway.
EDIT: And these are by no means meant to be compleetely functional, the best or the only solutions for scalability. It's more like I feel we've got pretty good tools to adjust and adapt if necessary.
Actually it was the perfect start for discussion. I was acknowledging that what you said had some validity, even if I didn't wholly agree with it (I think it's a case of YMMV) - going from that point, however, I needed to point out an important (the most important) aspect that you had overlooked.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That seems like an awfully lot of complex words for a simple (and decent) point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It was actually just one sentence, which I further elaborated on:
"It still doesn't address the (lack of) scalability of medpack effectiveness with game size."
Nothing complex at all.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->To some extend you have to accept that things never scale perfectly though<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is not one of those things.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not even sure how well the AoE heals would scale after all, I guess it depends on the exact details of implementation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As I've mentioned before, AoE heals sidestep the issue of scalability - each AoE heal is an instant one time use, but every marine within the AoE is healed for a certain amount. With larger player counts, you would most often have larger squads, and an AoE heal could possibly heal all members in the squad. With a team of 6 or a team of 16, the <i>maximum</i> number of marines you can heal at once is 5 or 15 respectively - that is, the <i>maximum</i> number you can heal at once, in both cases, is <b>all</b> of the team - that's how it scales. It's certainly not perfect, and may most likely require an increased cost, but it's definitely an improvement.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->For example adding some RFK flow to comm's pres might work. I know it could be lightly abused by packing pres on some marine and then using that res for equipment, but if you really want to pick a single rich well equipped marine over a consistent commander with medpacking abilities, then so be it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is frankly just silly. I mean, we have another resource that is used for the team and cannot be (ab)used for individuals, called team resources, so why wouldn't we use that instead? Why must we be limited by this idea that medpacks (and ammopacks) must be bought with personal res?
I have tried to push this idea of adding TRFK (perhaps even removing PRFK) for natural scaling (more players = more targets (sources of res) = more hunters (collectors of res)) multiple times in the past, but the reception has been mild at best.
Commander personal res would better suit global or large-scale support that is independent of the size of the team (so that the "effectiveness" of any support scales), and for which the benefits are not cumulative (so teams can't cycle commanders for cumulative benefit from Pres spending). A good example would be consumables (one-time use items) like AoE heals. A bad example would be structures and researches, since it would mean that the pacing of the game (the timings of the technology) could possibly speed up with cycled commanders (more players). Another bad example, and one which was present in the earlier builds of NS2, is the sentry gun: teams with players with excess personal res could cycle commanders to drop sentries, leading to spam.
The current resource system (and the way that other elements interact with it) is essentially a half-measure. It was changed from the NS system to address game size scalability and balance issues, but it's an incomplete implementation full of issues. Unfortunately it's very low priority for UWE, and hell, I'm not sure they've even been exposed to the idea.
So those are the two suggestions I have thought of to address scalability:
1) TRFK and TR costs for discrete heals/ammo.
and/or
2) PR cost for instant AoE heals/ammo.
Apples and oranges. This is about commander abilities that cost resources to activate....and not the commander's orders (that cost nothing) which pheromones would the kham equivalent. Keep comm/kham abilities and orders separate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hmmm, I wasn't referencing the resource-free commands that Charlie was talking about for communication, but rather the buff concept being thrown around that thread. A buff pheromone cloud would clearly be the EXACT same as an AoE heal, albeit with different visuals. The point being, the concepts on that thread concerning pheromone buffs apply to this 'medpack AoE cloud'.
Not sure why this misunderstanding would lead to anger...
Anywa, back on topic:
I totally agree with what you said, and was thinking the same thing when I saw medkits, AoE.
I think an large destructible medpack/station/something that heals AoE would be interesting. That way, the aliens can counter it, the commander has less to micro, and the soldiers don't have to rely so heavily on a commander predicting their generally unpredictable movements.
Yeah, put it beside the armoury. :x j/k but seriously I don't mind medding the way it is..
edit: because armories welding is dumb
Really now lets not blow this out of proportion, it isnt very much micromanagement and added complexity at all. The ammount of medpacks that drop per click is tied to how many marines you have selected at the time which you have the option to use if you are a lazy commander. I have to say i like the drop mechanic and when we see a better and improved res model, good commanders will be rewarded for smart and concise use of medpacks whereas bad spam commanders will not. Again, i dont see it as alot of micromanagement. All you need to do is drop medpacks in the vicinity of the marine in question and they will pick it up by themselves without further action from yourself. If you can drop them accurately, even better.
+1 to no more clouds. I'm already a bit apprehensive about gorge heal cloud but we shall see how it works.
edit - also im curious to know what the definition of 'dumb' micromanagement is.. Because map awareness is certainly required for point dropping.