<!--quoteo(post=2027777:date=Nov 18 2012, 05:55 AM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Nov 18 2012, 05:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027777"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So everything boils down to: What is "fun"? And this is a very subjective thing. And as you see in the controversy in this thread. Many people think it IS fun. It is a surprising element that can end games in a way, that you doesn't expect at first. Best seen in the competitive matches where it was used. As I said and you ignored, even the moderators got all excited about it. It was (like in good story telling) an unexpected twist. And this is very fun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The 'unexpected twist' is only an available option for one of the two teams, making it fun for one and sincerely <i>unfun</i> for the Aliens. What 'unexpected twist' do the aliens have available to lock the Marines into a single strategy, or how can the Aliens make it so that the Marines are completely unable to build or buy upgraded weapons? Oh, right, they can't.
<!--quoteo(post=2027818:date=Nov 18 2012, 07:17 AM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 18 2012, 07:17 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027818"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i think the reason why it doesn't say 'MARINES WIN' after getting res locked is kind of obvious, it's because the game is not necessarily over - aliens could still all-in and maybe win. all you lose with res lock is your tech progression, therefore it's logical to go for an all-in. additionally, if the game instantaneously ended on res lock then it might not be apparent why you abruptly lost the game.
but there are plenty of situations like res lock from which you <i>should</i> not be able to recover. for example you kill the marine main command station and overrun their 2nd command station, preventing the 'commanderless' marines from retaking it. should the game instantly say "ALIENS WIN"? because the marines effectively have to all-in to stand a chance.
you guys are seriously thinking too much like an FPS game, so of course the RTS mechanics don't make sense. on the other hand, anyone who's played RTS like starcraft is very familiar with situations like this where for example you get rushed and lose all of your harvesters - you have no chance to recover because they'll storm miles ahead of you economically - you either GG right there or you try an all-in strategy... those are your only two options.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please stop repeating arguments that have already been addressed earlier in the thread. You either haven't read this topic, or haven't hit this issue before. Once again, <i>only one of the teams can be resource locked.</i> I don't <i>care</i> that resource lock is in the game, it's the fact that only one of the teams can be locked into a single boring strategy that requires you to either base rush <i>or else</i>. The or else is quite simply unfun for the Aliens. Again, <i>there is no mistake</i> the Marines can make that will result in anything close to the Aliens situation with a resource lock. It doesn't exist, they can always come back. So, who exactly is getting their hand held here with the status quo?
<!--quoteo(post=2027824:date=Nov 18 2012, 07:26 AM:name=SupaDupaNoodle)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SupaDupaNoodle @ Nov 18 2012, 07:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027824"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How is this bad gameplay? If you haven't managed your resources properly and you lose, that's just gg. The whole theory behind Kharaa is that their structures are grown, not built, so you can't ungrow something but you can recycle artificial structures. Even if there's res for killing, I don't see how that would help since its Team res that goes toward harvestors.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Obviously, you haven't actually read any of the posts in this thread either. So the Marines can manage their resources like a newborn elk and if they screw up so horribly that their team decides to eject them, they can still recycle the mistake or through better play mitigate their uneven research path. There is no comparable mistake the Marines commander <i>can</i> make that will result in a situation that they have no chance, mechanically speaking, to come back from. If the Aliens screw up, they are target practice without <i>any way whatsoever</i> to correct their mistake. There is a remaining strategy for them, but it's a piss poor one. (I.E. Base rush, base rush, base rush, or alt 4. That's it.)
<!--quoteo(post=2027874:date=Nov 18 2012, 08:41 AM:name=__Viking)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (__Viking @ Nov 18 2012, 08:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027874"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Furthermore, one could argue that without a command structure, you are on the same time limit as one is when res locked. So I say, there should be more in the game that favors RTS win conditions, and this means <b>more res locking</b>.
Now to achieve this there is a significant hurdle: recycling. Marines <i>can</i> be res locked, but recycling mitigates this. I do not dispute the marines ability to recycle, but it has side effects that are problematic.
That being said, my only intention was to make the case for alien recycling seem a plausible idea. <u><b>I do not think that it should be in the game.</b></u> The problem remains that recycling prevents marine res lock, and I don't have a solution for that. This is the line of thought that raises my earlier question: The possible implications of this are that the value of a harvester outweighs the value of an extractor. This is because killing a harvester has the potential to res lock the aliens whereas killing an extractor cannot do this to marines. This notion tends to fit early gameplay where a skulk's primary focus should be killing extractors and avoiding combat. This balance only holds however, if marines do not take up the same mentality. Interestingly enough, hyper aggressive marines are exactly what you see in high level play, and aliens are usually lucky if they have three or more harvesters up.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't care of if there is more resource locking, or less. It just needs to be a viable option for both teams if it's going to be in the game as a win condition. (Or, as some will argue, it's just a mechanic to give the Marines the chance at accidentally locking the Aliens into a lame strategy. I would like a similar mechanic to allow the Aliens to accidentally lock the Marines out of the resource game, locking <i>them</i> into a single strategy.
<!--quoteo(post=2027886:date=Nov 18 2012, 09:08 AM:name=Davil)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Davil @ Nov 18 2012, 09:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027886"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marines can be res locked... It's unlikely since you could recycle some things but if you have to recycle your armory, arms lab, ips, or obs then... Yea the game is over. Similarly if the alien comm is in the hive and letting the rt get killed... Well yea you deserve to lose, it's no different than a marine comm sitting in the chair while the power is getting killed or not beaconing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
hahaha, no. You're simply wrong here brosif, the Marines can not be resource locked until all they have is a Command Chair. If all they have is a command chair....well I guess you're right. A commander sitting inside a command chair by itself without power while the aliens don't do anything about killing the command chair could be considered resource lock. It locks the <i>one player remaining</i> into one strategy. Get out of the chair and end the match, or get out of the chair and end the match. The rest of the Marines team get to watch the Chair. Either way though, this example is a bit absurd and would require the aliens to purposely let the Marines CC live while killing every other player and structure on the map. This isn't an accident that results in trolling, this is just trolling. Hell, the Marine Commander can still end the game at the push of a button by getting out of the chair. He's lost because his team was outplayed, not because of any <i>accidental unfixable mistake</i> that happened in the mid-game. Also, the Marines can 'give up' at any time by recycling their IP's and refusing to build any more. If the team doesn't agree, they can eject him <i>and fix his mistake.</i> As Aliens I can't even give up without using F4. It's just lame for both teams to have it end that way unless you honestly like winning by accident. "Oh, we out<i>played</i> those wiley Aliens! Their noob com res locked them!" Do you not see the inherent fallacy in this statement? And the inability to fix it, as the Marines could easily fix it? It's just stupid, and worse it's stupid for no reason.
Oh, and as for the 'lore' of Natural Selection 2? If the Kharaa kill all the Marines and still 'win' a given round where they're resource locked I guess they all just stay skulks forever. No expansion, no killing, no evolution, just an infinitely static infestation. Without a single resource node, I guess they just exist forever and don't, you know, <i>evolve</i>? Odd that Kharaa structures live at all <i>without any resources</i> when they clearly die when disconnected from the Cyst chain that provides those resources. Huh, it's almost as if <i>the hive produces resources that flow through a cyst chain.</i> Or at least if you go by the apparent way the aliens buildings function, it's a reasonable assumption for a person to make. Without a tutorial, a lot of new players are going to make this unrecoverable mistake. A lot of more expierenced commanders can still make this mistake as well, and it's a mistake you can't recover from through game mechanics. You can still win, but it will be because you and your team are badarses or because the Marines are terrible not because the game gave you any kind of method to mitigate a single mistake. The fact that we've seen what happens in a professional match, I.E. the Marines won in a resource lock, can give us a pretty big clue which team is probably going to win given equal or even close to equal skill levels. The fact that it can be a slow-burn win just makes it even more painful. You could be playing a skulk <i>forever</i> in a match like this. And you will <i>never</i> have the ability to upgrade or evolve.
Anywho, it's stupid to argue lore in a FPS/RTS hybrid. But the way the Aliens team appear to be designed would lead a reasonable person to think the hives produce resources themselves. Making Resource nodes capable of being the center of a resource chain would be an interesting change, but wouldn't fix the above issue at all.
<!--quoteo(post=2028082:date=Nov 18 2012, 09:50 PM:name=SpaceJew)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SpaceJew @ Nov 18 2012, 09:50 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028082"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The 'unexpected twist' is only an available option for one of the two teams, making it fun for one and sincerely <i>unfun</i> for the Aliens. What 'unexpected twist' do the aliens have available to lock the Marines into a single strategy, or how can the Aliens make it so that the Marines are completely unable to build or buy upgraded weapons? Oh, right, they can't.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is your problem. You try to force symmetry in an asymmetric game. There is no need for marines to have the same. And that losing isn't fun for either team is nothing new. But if I look as a spectator, it is fun to have a unexpected twist. No matter that the one team that loses because of it has not so much fun.
Stop forcing your symmetry. It doesn't belong into NS2. It is balanced by asymmetric counter parts. Like marines losing the game because of one little skulk, that gets the base power down while no marine notices it. And this happens way way WAY more often than res-locks. You see? No symmetry.
<!--quoteo(post=2028097:date=Nov 18 2012, 02:04 PM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Nov 18 2012, 02:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028097"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This is your problem. You try to force symmetry in an asymmetric game. There is no need for marines to have the same. And that losing isn't fun for either team is nothing new. But if I look as a spectator, it is fun to have a unexpected twist. No matter that the one team that loses because of it has not so much fun.
Stop forcing your symmetry. It doesn't belong into NS2. It is balanced by asymmetric counter parts. Like marines losing the game because of one little skulk, that gets the base power down while no marine notices it. And this happens way way WAY more often than res-locks. You see? No symmetry.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dude, you keep skipping vast swaths of this thread and returning to symmetry. We literally had like five posts yesterday that talked about this, did you read <i>none of them</i>? If you did, why don't you quote some of <i>those</i> posts and respond instead of returning to the very first point that's already been discussed? I can only assume you're trolling here with comments like that.
Have you had this happen when you were on the Aliens team? Was it fun? Those are direct questions. If it was fun, how was it fun? If it wasn't fun, why do you think so? There are some others. Talking about this issue in broad terms has obviously failed since so many people feel more comfortable talking around the issue than about it. I've said exactly why I don't think it's fun, and people reply with 'that's the way it is', or 'it add's more to the game', or 'Fun is subjective'. Those are certainly opinions, but no one has really supported why they think it's fun specifically in the circumstances where it happens.
Maybe fun is subjective, but I haven't heard anyone say how this is 'fun' for the Aliens team, rather I've heard a lot of reasons why people think it's 'fun' for the Marines. This is understandable, as it's a big bonus to the Marines team at the expensive of the Aliens. Again, I <i>do not have issue</i> with resource locking as a mechanic, or even necessarily the way it's implemented. It limits the Aliens strategy in a fundamental way when it happens, while there is no comparable way to do so to the Marines. In the asymmetry of the game, It would be like killing all the Marines Power Nodes on the entire map at once, but if there are surviving Marines they can <i>always</i> fix those. However, killing every Marine ends the match in this circumstance. (Which would be the fair thing to resource locked Aliens.) Maybe the three minute Onos is honestly included in the game to balance that downside, I can't say. I can say it isn't fun as-is unless you manage to kill the Marines base in that first rush. After that, it's over one way or the other. The <i>big</i> downside that ruins fun is the march of doom after the failed base rush, not in the resource lock mechanic itself.
<!--quoteo(post=2028120:date=Nov 18 2012, 10:44 PM:name=SpaceJew)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SpaceJew @ Nov 18 2012, 10:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028120"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Have you had this happen when you were on the Aliens team? Was it fun? Those are direct questions. If it was fun, how was it fun? [...] Those are certainly opinions, but no one has really supported why they think it's fun specifically in the circumstances where it happens.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And I answer: It happened only once to me as alien team in 399 hours of NS2. It was not more or less fun than the game in any other way. It was new, we tried to make a last push but I think we lost. The other occasion I have seen res-lock happen was in the competitive match live stream. And as I wrote already 2 times in this thread, it was horrendous fun. It was such a exciting "WTF"-moment to see a weaker team turn the tide and win in such a surprising way. (Do you keep ignoring this?) I like this mechanic because it brings variety in the game and leads to surprising moments. Accept that already.
<!--quoteo(post=2028082:date=Nov 18 2012, 07:50 PM:name=SpaceJew)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SpaceJew @ Nov 18 2012, 07:50 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028082"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Please stop repeating arguments that have already been addressed earlier in the thread. You either haven't read this topic, or haven't hit this issue before. Once again, <i>only one of the teams can be resource locked.</i> I don't <i>care</i> that resource lock is in the game, it's the fact that only one of the teams can be locked into a single boring strategy that requires you to either base rush <i>or else</i>. The or else is quite simply unfun for the Aliens. Again, <i>there is no mistake</i> the Marines can make that will result in anything close to the Aliens situation with a resource lock. It doesn't exist, they can always come back. So, who exactly is getting their hand held here with the status quo?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i'm repeating the argument in vain because evidently you're not able to comprehend.
resource lock is not a 'game ender', it simply forces the alien team to go all-in. else please explain why res lock stops you being able to rush the marine base and destroy the command station.
both alien and marines have several methods by which they can force the other team to go all-in... therefore the result of resource lock is not unique and thus cannot be a balance issue. even such situations like where the marines are forced back to a single base and lose all RT's - that is effectively a res lock because the aliens won't give the ground back without a fight and the aliens probably have infinite tres onos drops to prevent it. sure the marines can go around nuking all hives and win - but that is totally unrealistic and the outcome is identical to res lock.
claiming 'it shouldnt be there because only 1 team gets it' is totally noncontextual and irrelevant. also, how is it boring? it's only boring if your team are unable to organize an all-in counter attack, then too stubborn/stupid to GG or press F4.... perhaps they're actually having fun and that's why they continue playing.
in starcraft you often win a game with a similar 'rush' strategy to put opponent in an unwinnable position, so they go into troll mode and hide buildings/float buildings around the map so it takes you ages to win. this is accepted as part of the game, i don't see why this is so difficult to grasp.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
<!--quoteo(post=2027437:date=Nov 17 2012, 05:56 PM:name=__Viking)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (__Viking @ Nov 17 2012, 05:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027437"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Its efficacy hinges upon the marines only being on one base or only having IPs in their main. Furthermore it isn't exactly a discrete win condition as much as it is an avenue to achieve #1.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Obviously? My example of a powernode was for any base. But the same can be said about locking eggs in a hive room.. sure you stopped THOSE eggs from spawning. But what about their other hive? And just like powernodes eggs are not a win condition but it generally leads to it if done properly. (pick off marines who go to repair the powernode, and utilize the dark.)
It should still be counted as a win condition in that list if he was counting other things that dont equal am immediate win condition, like egg locking or res locked.
<!--quoteo(post=2028082:date=Nov 18 2012, 12:50 PM:name=SpaceJew)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SpaceJew @ Nov 18 2012, 12:50 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028082"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->hahaha, no. You're simply wrong here brosif, the Marines can not be resource locked until all they have is a Command Chair. If all they have is a command chair....well I guess you're right. A commander sitting inside a command chair by itself without power while the aliens don't do anything about killing the command chair could be considered resource lock. It locks the <i>one player remaining</i> into one strategy. Get out of the chair and end the match, or get out of the chair and end the match. The rest of the Marines team get to watch the Chair. Either way though, this example is a bit absurd and would require the aliens to purposely let the Marines CC live while killing every other player and structure on the map. This isn't an accident that results in trolling, this is just trolling. Hell, the Marine Commander can still end the game at the push of a button by getting out of the chair. He's lost because his team was outplayed, not because of any <i>accidental unfixable mistake</i> that happened in the mid-game. Also, the Marines can 'give up' at any time by recycling their IP's and refusing to build any more. If the team doesn't agree, they can eject him <i>and fix his mistake.</i> As Aliens I can't even give up without using F4. It's just lame for both teams to have it end that way unless you honestly like winning by accident. "Oh, we out<i>played</i> those wiley Aliens! Their noob com res locked them!" Do you not see the inherent fallacy in this statement? And the inability to fix it, as the Marines could easily fix it? It's just stupid, and worse it's stupid for no reason.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You say I'm wrong then you agree with me... Well played, wtf is wrong with you? I'm sorry but you need to understand the mechanics of the game before you start trying to correct people and act snide. I've commanded and won many game as alien and marine. I have a pretty firm grasp on how the game works, and I can tell you right now it's not any harder to res lock marines than aliens. The magic recycle solution some people keep saying really isn't that effective. Like we both already stated if you're down to recycling your armory or your ips you're already way behind if not completely screwed.
Here is a break down for marines, you start with 50 res. You need to build an armory, obs, and 2 res towers right from the start. That's 45 res in first few seconds. If the skulks are doing well they'll probably kill the marines after they started building the tower so it's a complete loss meaning they lose 10 res and get nothing back. Even if you recycle it, the amount you get back is based on how much health it has, and at max you get 75% back which for a harvester is 8. Chances are if you recycle it as soon as the guy building it dies, you're only get 3 back at most. So now you have an armory, an obs, and 1 tower. Well you can recycle your obs or armory and now you'll get back 8 or 11 res depending on which one you pick. And that will give you enough to put down 1 or 2 towers if you can actually get out of base, but there's a good chance you won't cause obviously the aliens are dominating you. If one skulk kills your rt in base, well now you have no res production and you're probably at about 20 res after recycling stuff and depending on whether or not you dropped medpacks and ammo. Basically if the other team can kill your rts that early in the game you're done.
From the alien side, you start with 50, it takes a minimum of 6 on just about any map to get to cyst to the closest rt and 10 to drop it. So that's all of 16 for one rt and probably a total of around 35 for 2. To be completely honest, when I comm aliens I usually drop a 2nd hive, cyst to towards the closest rt to it, drop it and gorge. I get the second rt up and by the time i finish getting it up I can drop the next one heal that and finish the hive. It's usually about the 2 or 3 minute mark that the hive is up and I have 3 rt's up. Now how can I be res locked? Well if the marines run up to the rt I placed at the start and kill it, I still have at least 1 more with plenty of res to spare. So they'd have to kill the rt in the hive, and then kill the rt near the other hive. So basically they would need to completely dominate my team in order to do that. The only reason aliens get res locked, is cause the comm spends res on stupid crap they don't need, i.e. whips, early upgrades, tons of cysts. There are so many people that think you have to cyst to a hive in order to put it down, but you don't.
Basically the moral of the story is L2P, if you are getting res locked regardless of what team you are on, it's because you made bad decisions or your team is just flat out being destroyed at every turn. I res locked aliens by myself one game, but that was after killing 10+ res towers, and about 5 upgrade chambers. If it takes that much and you can't stop me, you deserve to lose.
The marine team can absolutely lose in a heartbeat to a single terrible mistake by the comm. Surprise rush on the base kills the obs before he can beacon and everybody is pushing a hive? Whoops, game's over. Lost a number of games that way in the past week.
<!--quoteo(post=2028176:date=Nov 18 2012, 03:57 PM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Nov 18 2012, 03:57 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028176"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It was such a exciting "WTF"-moment to see a weaker team turn the tide and win in such a surprising way. (Do you keep ignoring this?) I like this mechanic because it brings variety in the game and leads to surprising moments. Accept that already.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So you like it because it enables a worse team to beat a better one, and it's surprising to have it happen. What kind of play can the Aliens make that would be so surprising and unexpected <i>and</i> enable a worse team to persevere against a better one?
The ability to drop end-game units as a risky strategy is probably the reason it's in. Aliens are weighted to win early, Marines are weighted to win later. I get it, they're different. Marines are safe from unrecoverable mistakes like spending too many resources at one time. Maybe it's intended to balance the high cost of the Marines research, I don't know. As Ironhorse pointed out, it might be exactly because of the Power nodes being included in Natural Selection 2. I just think that a resource node, while it is high risk vs. high reward, it's a far higher reward for the Marines.After all, you can fix the power node and move on. It does force the Marines into a reaction strategy, but only for so long. The Resource lock is round-long.
<b><i>If you were locked out of spawning when in Resource Lock, and made it a winning condition for the Marines when all the Aliens are dead afterwards, I would have a lot less of a problem with it.</b></i>
<!--quoteo(post=2028365:date=Nov 18 2012, 08:46 PM:name=Zek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zek @ Nov 18 2012, 08:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028365"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The marine team can absolutely lose in a heartbeat to a single terrible mistake by the comm. Surprise rush on the base kills the obs before he can beacon and everybody is pushing a hive? Whoops, game's over. Lost a number of games that way in the past week.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm fine with that, one team definitely must lose. I just don't like the loss being stretched out. I like the fact that you need to figure out which buildings you want to hit. Resource towers are a big target for both teams, which is a good thing. I just think it's silly you can be backed into a corner with no chance of escape in the resource game as aliens but that Marines are insulated from such a situation. Especially when the other team didn't really even intend or count on a resource lock. It's just a side effect, really, of doing what you'd do anyway. No one kills the tower to try and get a resource lock, you kill them because you don't want the team to have resources. You might <i>hope</i> it resource locks them, but if that wasn't an option you'd still do it anyway with the exact same vigor.
Lone wolf resource sniping skulk Marines are an intended consequence then.
<!--quoteo(post=2028359:date=Nov 18 2012, 08:36 PM:name=Davil)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Davil @ Nov 18 2012, 08:36 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028359"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You say I'm wrong then you agree with me... Well played, wtf is wrong with you?
Basically the moral of the story is L2P, if you are getting res locked regardless of what team you are on, it's because you made bad decisions or your team is just flat out being destroyed at every turn.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I was trying to have a civil discourse on the subject. You were right, Marines can in one way be resource locked. It requires you to have exactly one building, and a team that's completely dead, with a stubborn commander inside the chair. The round ends when that chair is destroyed, or when the Commander gets out and is killed. The Marines can only be resource locked after they've already lost, and that state results in maybe at most a minute of resource lock. Aliens are always able to be locked, and it lasts forever (I.E. as long as it takes for the Marines to finally kill all the hives. Can be a second, can be an hour. That's the problem). So I was illustrating a point, namely that you're kind of right but mostly wrong.
I think you should save your vitriol for the pro's who have had it happen. I mean, they <i>obviously</i> haven't played very much huh? Some of them even commented in this thread, guess you missed that. Oh well.
Iron and Viking had some good points, but it seems like the community overwhelming loves the lucky win scenario. Especially the Marines.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I res locked aliens by myself one game, but that was after killing 10+ res towers, and about 5 upgrade chambers. If it takes that much and you can't stop me, you deserve to lose.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Maybe if you wouldn't have been by yourself, you could have killed the Hive and just ended it. Oh well, maybe you were just a lot better than everyone else or it's more fun to drag it out. More power to you.
Lets play a game. A Dice game. I'll call it Resource Dice. There is 2 teams, Marines and Aliens. Each team starts with 6 dice. You both roll your dice at the same time. If the Marine player rolls an odd number the Alien loses a dice. If the Alien player rolls a 2 or 4 the Marine loses a dice. If a player rolls a 6 he gains a dice. A player wins by reaching 100000000000 dice first.
<!--quoteo(post=2028497:date=Nov 18 2012, 10:54 PM:name=Vec)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Vec @ Nov 18 2012, 10:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028497"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lets play a game. A Dice game. I'll call it Resource Dice. There is 2 teams, Marines and Aliens. Each team starts with 6 dice. You both roll your dice at the same time. If the Marine player rolls an odd number the Alien loses a dice. If the Alien player rolls a 2 or 4 the Marine loses a dice. If a player rolls a 6 he gains a dice. A player wins by reaching 100000000000 dice first.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Irrelevant.
An onos walks into the room and eats the players, and then the dice. Onos wins.
If you lose all your harvesters as alien and don't have enough res to get them back you lose.
Srs, don't do that. There is little to no benefit dropping 2 hives at once, a better decision would be a hive and a node or two with cysts. Comm makes wrong decision, loses games. THAT MUCH IS SYMMETRICAL.
I've just sat here and read this entire thread, I understand what you are all saying. The better team is the one that wins the game, like it or not. If you lose by one strat and feel butt-hurt then you should remember it next game, the word for this is 'learning'.
This game has not been at release for long enough for people to claim vast imbalances. I played 350 minutes as comm on both sides yesterday and another 460 minutes the day before. Never got res-locked.
tl;dr, res-locking is not a problem, playing poorly or making poor decisions is.
Get some wood, build a bridge and promptly get over it. </harsh-reply>
<!--quoteo(post=2028480:date=Nov 18 2012, 08:25 PM:name=SpaceJew)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SpaceJew @ Nov 18 2012, 08:25 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028480"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b><i>If you were locked out of spawning when in Resource Lock, and made it a winning condition for the Marines when all the Aliens are dead afterwards, I would have a lot less of a problem with it.</b></i><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2025877:date=Nov 16 2012, 05:18 PM:name=__Viking)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (__Viking @ Nov 16 2012, 05:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2025877"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm actually rather surprised that this hasn't been discussed in this thread, but these are the facts of the game that caused this thread:
1. Alien comm made a critical mistake and lost all harvesters without enough res to make another. 2. Alien team however outplayed the marine team completely, taking nearly the entirety of the map. 3. Due to #1, marines turtled their way to victory.
Now, I'm not debating anything regarding these facts I'd just like to add one of my own.
4. Had #1 happened to the marines instead of the aliens, they would have won, easily.
I think this is the issue that should be discussed here, not the fact that the alien commander made a serious error, but the fact that were it a marine mistake, all would have been fine. This may be an intended asymmetry of the game, but a mistake of this magnitude is much more forgiving to the marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well done. You win this thread. This is a clear balance issue indicating why aliens need RFK. Being able to recycle alien structures is also entirely sensible.
<!--quoteo(post=2028631:date=Nov 19 2012, 10:58 AM:name=Spetz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Spetz @ Nov 19 2012, 10:58 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028631"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Well done. You win this thread. This is a clear balance issue indicating why aliens need RFK. Being able to recycle alien structures is also entirely sensible.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
RfK wouldn't change a thing as the RfK would probably end up being p.res and you need t.res to build structures. Imho this is once again a side-effect of making the Gorge useless and removing all means for individual Kharaa players to inject their p.res into the t.res economy to hep the team out.
Easiest solution: Allow Gorges to drop RT's from p.res pool. Side-effect: That's gonna allow the Kharaa team to do all kinds of crazy stuff in terms of build order, thus making a few things quite imbalanced.
I still would love to see it happen as the Gorge needs some love anyway and the whole economy on the Kharaa side seems way gimped compared to NS1.
Comments
The 'unexpected twist' is only an available option for one of the two teams, making it fun for one and sincerely <i>unfun</i> for the Aliens. What 'unexpected twist' do the aliens have available to lock the Marines into a single strategy, or how can the Aliens make it so that the Marines are completely unable to build or buy upgraded weapons? Oh, right, they can't.
<!--quoteo(post=2027818:date=Nov 18 2012, 07:17 AM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 18 2012, 07:17 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027818"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i think the reason why it doesn't say 'MARINES WIN' after getting res locked is kind of obvious, it's because the game is not necessarily over - aliens could still all-in and maybe win. all you lose with res lock is your tech progression, therefore it's logical to go for an all-in. additionally, if the game instantaneously ended on res lock then it might not be apparent why you abruptly lost the game.
but there are plenty of situations like res lock from which you <i>should</i> not be able to recover. for example you kill the marine main command station and overrun their 2nd command station, preventing the 'commanderless' marines from retaking it. should the game instantly say "ALIENS WIN"? because the marines effectively have to all-in to stand a chance.
you guys are seriously thinking too much like an FPS game, so of course the RTS mechanics don't make sense. on the other hand, anyone who's played RTS like starcraft is very familiar with situations like this where for example you get rushed and lose all of your harvesters - you have no chance to recover because they'll storm miles ahead of you economically - you either GG right there or you try an all-in strategy... those are your only two options.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please stop repeating arguments that have already been addressed earlier in the thread. You either haven't read this topic, or haven't hit this issue before. Once again, <i>only one of the teams can be resource locked.</i> I don't <i>care</i> that resource lock is in the game, it's the fact that only one of the teams can be locked into a single boring strategy that requires you to either base rush <i>or else</i>. The or else is quite simply unfun for the Aliens. Again, <i>there is no mistake</i> the Marines can make that will result in anything close to the Aliens situation with a resource lock. It doesn't exist, they can always come back. So, who exactly is getting their hand held here with the status quo?
<!--quoteo(post=2027824:date=Nov 18 2012, 07:26 AM:name=SupaDupaNoodle)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SupaDupaNoodle @ Nov 18 2012, 07:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027824"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How is this bad gameplay? If you haven't managed your resources properly and you lose, that's just gg. The whole theory behind Kharaa is that their structures are grown, not built, so you can't ungrow something but you can recycle artificial structures. Even if there's res for killing, I don't see how that would help since its Team res that goes toward harvestors.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Obviously, you haven't actually read any of the posts in this thread either. So the Marines can manage their resources like a newborn elk and if they screw up so horribly that their team decides to eject them, they can still recycle the mistake or through better play mitigate their uneven research path. There is no comparable mistake the Marines commander <i>can</i> make that will result in a situation that they have no chance, mechanically speaking, to come back from. If the Aliens screw up, they are target practice without <i>any way whatsoever</i> to correct their mistake. There is a remaining strategy for them, but it's a piss poor one. (I.E. Base rush, base rush, base rush, or alt 4. That's it.)
<!--quoteo(post=2027874:date=Nov 18 2012, 08:41 AM:name=__Viking)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (__Viking @ Nov 18 2012, 08:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027874"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Furthermore, one could argue that without a command structure, you are on the same time limit as one is when res locked. So I say, there should be more in the game that favors RTS win conditions, and this means <b>more res locking</b>.
Now to achieve this there is a significant hurdle: recycling. Marines <i>can</i> be res locked, but recycling mitigates this. I do not dispute the marines ability to recycle, but it has side effects that are problematic.
That being said, my only intention was to make the case for alien recycling seem a plausible idea. <u><b>I do not think that it should be in the game.</b></u> The problem remains that recycling prevents marine res lock, and I don't have a solution for that. This is the line of thought that raises my earlier question:
The possible implications of this are that the value of a harvester outweighs the value of an extractor. This is because killing a harvester has the potential to res lock the aliens whereas killing an extractor cannot do this to marines. This notion tends to fit early gameplay where a skulk's primary focus should be killing extractors and avoiding combat. This balance only holds however, if marines do not take up the same mentality. Interestingly enough, hyper aggressive marines are exactly what you see in high level play, and aliens are usually lucky if they have three or more harvesters up.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't care of if there is more resource locking, or less. It just needs to be a viable option for both teams if it's going to be in the game as a win condition. (Or, as some will argue, it's just a mechanic to give the Marines the chance at accidentally locking the Aliens into a lame strategy. I would like a similar mechanic to allow the Aliens to accidentally lock the Marines out of the resource game, locking <i>them</i> into a single strategy.
<!--quoteo(post=2027886:date=Nov 18 2012, 09:08 AM:name=Davil)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Davil @ Nov 18 2012, 09:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2027886"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marines can be res locked... It's unlikely since you could recycle some things but if you have to recycle your armory, arms lab, ips, or obs then... Yea the game is over. Similarly if the alien comm is in the hive and letting the rt get killed... Well yea you deserve to lose, it's no different than a marine comm sitting in the chair while the power is getting killed or not beaconing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
hahaha, no. You're simply wrong here brosif, the Marines can not be resource locked until all they have is a Command Chair. If all they have is a command chair....well I guess you're right. A commander sitting inside a command chair by itself without power while the aliens don't do anything about killing the command chair could be considered resource lock. It locks the <i>one player remaining</i> into one strategy. Get out of the chair and end the match, or get out of the chair and end the match. The rest of the Marines team get to watch the Chair. Either way though, this example is a bit absurd and would require the aliens to purposely let the Marines CC live while killing every other player and structure on the map. This isn't an accident that results in trolling, this is just trolling. Hell, the Marine Commander can still end the game at the push of a button by getting out of the chair. He's lost because his team was outplayed, not because of any <i>accidental unfixable mistake</i> that happened in the mid-game. Also, the Marines can 'give up' at any time by recycling their IP's and refusing to build any more. If the team doesn't agree, they can eject him <i>and fix his mistake.</i> As Aliens I can't even give up without using F4. It's just lame for both teams to have it end that way unless you honestly like winning by accident. "Oh, we out<i>played</i> those wiley Aliens! Their noob com res locked them!" Do you not see the inherent fallacy in this statement? And the inability to fix it, as the Marines could easily fix it? It's just stupid, and worse it's stupid for no reason.
Oh, and as for the 'lore' of Natural Selection 2? If the Kharaa kill all the Marines and still 'win' a given round where they're resource locked I guess they all just stay skulks forever. No expansion, no killing, no evolution, just an infinitely static infestation. Without a single resource node, I guess they just exist forever and don't, you know, <i>evolve</i>? Odd that Kharaa structures live at all <i>without any resources</i> when they clearly die when disconnected from the Cyst chain that provides those resources. Huh, it's almost as if <i>the hive produces resources that flow through a cyst chain.</i> Or at least if you go by the apparent way the aliens buildings function, it's a reasonable assumption for a person to make. Without a tutorial, a lot of new players are going to make this unrecoverable mistake. A lot of more expierenced commanders can still make this mistake as well, and it's a mistake you can't recover from through game mechanics. You can still win, but it will be because you and your team are badarses or because the Marines are terrible not because the game gave you any kind of method to mitigate a single mistake. The fact that we've seen what happens in a professional match, I.E. the Marines won in a resource lock, can give us a pretty big clue which team is probably going to win given equal or even close to equal skill levels. The fact that it can be a slow-burn win just makes it even more painful. You could be playing a skulk <i>forever</i> in a match like this. And you will <i>never</i> have the ability to upgrade or evolve.
Anywho, it's stupid to argue lore in a FPS/RTS hybrid. But the way the Aliens team appear to be designed would lead a reasonable person to think the hives produce resources themselves. Making Resource nodes capable of being the center of a resource chain would be an interesting change, but wouldn't fix the above issue at all.
This is your problem. You try to force symmetry in an asymmetric game. There is no need for marines to have the same. And that losing isn't fun for either team is nothing new. But if I look as a spectator, it is fun to have a unexpected twist. No matter that the one team that loses because of it has not so much fun.
Stop forcing your symmetry. It doesn't belong into NS2. It is balanced by asymmetric counter parts. Like marines losing the game because of one little skulk, that gets the base power down while no marine notices it. And this happens way way WAY more often than res-locks. You see? No symmetry.
Stop forcing your symmetry. It doesn't belong into NS2. It is balanced by asymmetric counter parts. Like marines losing the game because of one little skulk, that gets the base power down while no marine notices it. And this happens way way WAY more often than res-locks. You see? No symmetry.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dude, you keep skipping vast swaths of this thread and returning to symmetry. We literally had like five posts yesterday that talked about this, did you read <i>none of them</i>? If you did, why don't you quote some of <i>those</i> posts and respond instead of returning to the very first point that's already been discussed? I can only assume you're trolling here with comments like that.
Have you had this happen when you were on the Aliens team? Was it fun? Those are direct questions. If it was fun, how was it fun? If it wasn't fun, why do you think so? There are some others. Talking about this issue in broad terms has obviously failed since so many people feel more comfortable talking around the issue than about it. I've said exactly why I don't think it's fun, and people reply with 'that's the way it is', or 'it add's more to the game', or 'Fun is subjective'. Those are certainly opinions, but no one has really supported why they think it's fun specifically in the circumstances where it happens.
Maybe fun is subjective, but I haven't heard anyone say how this is 'fun' for the Aliens team, rather I've heard a lot of reasons why people think it's 'fun' for the Marines. This is understandable, as it's a big bonus to the Marines team at the expensive of the Aliens. Again, I <i>do not have issue</i> with resource locking as a mechanic, or even necessarily the way it's implemented. It limits the Aliens strategy in a fundamental way when it happens, while there is no comparable way to do so to the Marines. In the asymmetry of the game, It would be like killing all the Marines Power Nodes on the entire map at once, but if there are surviving Marines they can <i>always</i> fix those. However, killing every Marine ends the match in this circumstance. (Which would be the fair thing to resource locked Aliens.) Maybe the three minute Onos is honestly included in the game to balance that downside, I can't say. I can say it isn't fun as-is unless you manage to kill the Marines base in that first rush. After that, it's over one way or the other. The <i>big</i> downside that ruins fun is the march of doom after the failed base rush, not in the resource lock mechanic itself.
And I answer: It happened only once to me as alien team in 399 hours of NS2. It was not more or less fun than the game in any other way. It was new, we tried to make a last push but I think we lost. The other occasion I have seen res-lock happen was in the competitive match live stream. And as I wrote already 2 times in this thread, it was horrendous fun. It was such a exciting "WTF"-moment to see a weaker team turn the tide and win in such a surprising way. (Do you keep ignoring this?) I like this mechanic because it brings variety in the game and leads to surprising moments. Accept that already.
i'm repeating the argument in vain because evidently you're not able to comprehend.
resource lock is not a 'game ender', it simply forces the alien team to go all-in. else please explain why res lock stops you being able to rush the marine base and destroy the command station.
both alien and marines have several methods by which they can force the other team to go all-in... therefore the result of resource lock is not unique and thus cannot be a balance issue. even such situations like where the marines are forced back to a single base and lose all RT's - that is effectively a res lock because the aliens won't give the ground back without a fight and the aliens probably have infinite tres onos drops to prevent it. sure the marines can go around nuking all hives and win - but that is totally unrealistic and the outcome is identical to res lock.
claiming 'it shouldnt be there because only 1 team gets it' is totally noncontextual and irrelevant. also, how is it boring? it's only boring if your team are unable to organize an all-in counter attack, then too stubborn/stupid to GG or press F4.... perhaps they're actually having fun and that's why they continue playing.
in starcraft you often win a game with a similar 'rush' strategy to put opponent in an unwinnable position, so they go into troll mode and hide buildings/float buildings around the map so it takes you ages to win. this is accepted as part of the game, i don't see why this is so difficult to grasp.
Obviously? My example of a powernode was for any base.
But the same can be said about locking eggs in a hive room.. sure you stopped THOSE eggs from spawning. But what about their other hive? And just like powernodes eggs are not a win condition but it generally leads to it if done properly. (pick off marines who go to repair the powernode, and utilize the dark.)
It should still be counted as a win condition in that list if he was counting other things that dont equal am immediate win condition, like egg locking or res locked.
You say I'm wrong then you agree with me... Well played, wtf is wrong with you? I'm sorry but you need to understand the mechanics of the game before you start trying to correct people and act snide. I've commanded and won many game as alien and marine. I have a pretty firm grasp on how the game works, and I can tell you right now it's not any harder to res lock marines than aliens. The magic recycle solution some people keep saying really isn't that effective. Like we both already stated if you're down to recycling your armory or your ips you're already way behind if not completely screwed.
Here is a break down for marines, you start with 50 res. You need to build an armory, obs, and 2 res towers right from the start. That's 45 res in first few seconds. If the skulks are doing well they'll probably kill the marines after they started building the tower so it's a complete loss meaning they lose 10 res and get nothing back. Even if you recycle it, the amount you get back is based on how much health it has, and at max you get 75% back which for a harvester is 8. Chances are if you recycle it as soon as the guy building it dies, you're only get 3 back at most. So now you have an armory, an obs, and 1 tower. Well you can recycle your obs or armory and now you'll get back 8 or 11 res depending on which one you pick. And that will give you enough to put down 1 or 2 towers if you can actually get out of base, but there's a good chance you won't cause obviously the aliens are dominating you. If one skulk kills your rt in base, well now you have no res production and you're probably at about 20 res after recycling stuff and depending on whether or not you dropped medpacks and ammo. Basically if the other team can kill your rts that early in the game you're done.
From the alien side, you start with 50, it takes a minimum of 6 on just about any map to get to cyst to the closest rt and 10 to drop it. So that's all of 16 for one rt and probably a total of around 35 for 2. To be completely honest, when I comm aliens I usually drop a 2nd hive, cyst to towards the closest rt to it, drop it and gorge. I get the second rt up and by the time i finish getting it up I can drop the next one heal that and finish the hive. It's usually about the 2 or 3 minute mark that the hive is up and I have 3 rt's up. Now how can I be res locked? Well if the marines run up to the rt I placed at the start and kill it, I still have at least 1 more with plenty of res to spare. So they'd have to kill the rt in the hive, and then kill the rt near the other hive. So basically they would need to completely dominate my team in order to do that. The only reason aliens get res locked, is cause the comm spends res on stupid crap they don't need, i.e. whips, early upgrades, tons of cysts. There are so many people that think you have to cyst to a hive in order to put it down, but you don't.
Basically the moral of the story is L2P, if you are getting res locked regardless of what team you are on, it's because you made bad decisions or your team is just flat out being destroyed at every turn. I res locked aliens by myself one game, but that was after killing 10+ res towers, and about 5 upgrade chambers. If it takes that much and you can't stop me, you deserve to lose.
So you like it because it enables a worse team to beat a better one, and it's surprising to have it happen. What kind of play can the Aliens make that would be so surprising and unexpected <i>and</i> enable a worse team to persevere against a better one?
The ability to drop end-game units as a risky strategy is probably the reason it's in. Aliens are weighted to win early, Marines are weighted to win later. I get it, they're different. Marines are safe from unrecoverable mistakes like spending too many resources at one time. Maybe it's intended to balance the high cost of the Marines research, I don't know. As Ironhorse pointed out, it might be exactly because of the Power nodes being included in Natural Selection 2. I just think that a resource node, while it is high risk vs. high reward, it's a far higher reward for the Marines.After all, you can fix the power node and move on. It does force the Marines into a reaction strategy, but only for so long. The Resource lock is round-long.
<b><i>If you were locked out of spawning when in Resource Lock, and made it a winning condition for the Marines when all the Aliens are dead afterwards, I would have a lot less of a problem with it.</b></i>
<!--quoteo(post=2028365:date=Nov 18 2012, 08:46 PM:name=Zek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zek @ Nov 18 2012, 08:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028365"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The marine team can absolutely lose in a heartbeat to a single terrible mistake by the comm. Surprise rush on the base kills the obs before he can beacon and everybody is pushing a hive? Whoops, game's over. Lost a number of games that way in the past week.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm fine with that, one team definitely must lose. I just don't like the loss being stretched out. I like the fact that you need to figure out which buildings you want to hit. Resource towers are a big target for both teams, which is a good thing. I just think it's silly you can be backed into a corner with no chance of escape in the resource game as aliens but that Marines are insulated from such a situation. Especially when the other team didn't really even intend or count on a resource lock. It's just a side effect, really, of doing what you'd do anyway. No one kills the tower to try and get a resource lock, you kill them because you don't want the team to have resources. You might <i>hope</i> it resource locks them, but if that wasn't an option you'd still do it anyway with the exact same vigor.
Lone wolf resource sniping skulk Marines are an intended consequence then.
Basically the moral of the story is L2P, if you are getting res locked regardless of what team you are on, it's because you made bad decisions or your team is just flat out being destroyed at every turn.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I was trying to have a civil discourse on the subject. You were right, Marines can in one way be resource locked. It requires you to have exactly one building, and a team that's completely dead, with a stubborn commander inside the chair. The round ends when that chair is destroyed, or when the Commander gets out and is killed. The Marines can only be resource locked after they've already lost, and that state results in maybe at most a minute of resource lock. Aliens are always able to be locked, and it lasts forever (I.E. as long as it takes for the Marines to finally kill all the hives. Can be a second, can be an hour. That's the problem). So I was illustrating a point, namely that you're kind of right but mostly wrong.
I think you should save your vitriol for the pro's who have had it happen. I mean, they <i>obviously</i> haven't played very much huh? Some of them even commented in this thread, guess you missed that. Oh well.
Iron and Viking had some good points, but it seems like the community overwhelming loves the lucky win scenario. Especially the Marines.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I res locked aliens by myself one game, but that was after killing 10+ res towers, and about 5 upgrade chambers. If it takes that much and you can't stop me, you deserve to lose.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Maybe if you wouldn't have been by yourself, you could have killed the Hive and just ended it. Oh well, maybe you were just a lot better than everyone else or it's more fun to drag it out. More power to you.
I'll call it Resource Dice. There is 2 teams, Marines and Aliens.
Each team starts with 6 dice. You both roll your dice at the same time.
If the Marine player rolls an odd number the Alien loses a dice.
If the Alien player rolls a 2 or 4 the Marine loses a dice.
If a player rolls a 6 he gains a dice.
A player wins by reaching 100000000000 dice first.
I'll call it Resource Dice. There is 2 teams, Marines and Aliens.
Each team starts with 6 dice. You both roll your dice at the same time.
If the Marine player rolls an odd number the Alien loses a dice.
If the Alien player rolls a 2 or 4 the Marine loses a dice.
If a player rolls a 6 he gains a dice.
A player wins by reaching 100000000000 dice first.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Irrelevant.
An onos walks into the room and eats the players, and then the dice. Onos wins.
Srs, don't do that. There is little to no benefit dropping 2 hives at once, a better decision would be a hive and a node or two with cysts. Comm makes wrong decision, loses games. THAT MUCH IS SYMMETRICAL.
I've just sat here and read this entire thread, I understand what you are all saying. The better team is the one that wins the game, like it or not. If you lose by one strat and feel butt-hurt then you should remember it next game, the word for this is 'learning'.
This game has not been at release for long enough for people to claim vast imbalances. I played 350 minutes as comm on both sides yesterday and another 460 minutes the day before. Never got res-locked.
tl;dr, res-locking is not a problem, playing poorly or making poor decisions is.
Get some wood, build a bridge and promptly get over it. </harsh-reply>
<img src="http://www.reactionface.info/sites/default/files/images/1257003814239.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
1. Alien comm made a critical mistake and lost all harvesters without enough res to make another.
2. Alien team however outplayed the marine team completely, taking nearly the entirety of the map.
3. Due to #1, marines turtled their way to victory.
Now, I'm not debating anything regarding these facts I'd just like to add one of my own.
4. Had #1 happened to the marines instead of the aliens, they would have won, easily.
I think this is the issue that should be discussed here, not the fact that the alien commander made a serious error, but the fact that were it a marine mistake, all would have been fine. This may be an intended asymmetry of the game, but a mistake of this magnitude is much more forgiving to the marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well done. You win this thread. This is a clear balance issue indicating why aliens need RFK. Being able to recycle alien structures is also entirely sensible.
<a href="http://www.callofduty.com/blackops2" target="_blank">NS2 - Balanced Edition</a>
RfK wouldn't change a thing as the RfK would probably end up being p.res and you need t.res to build structures.
Imho this is once again a side-effect of making the Gorge useless and removing all means for individual Kharaa players to inject their p.res into the t.res economy to hep the team out.
Easiest solution: Allow Gorges to drop RT's from p.res pool.
Side-effect: That's gonna allow the Kharaa team to do all kinds of crazy stuff in terms of build order, thus making a few things quite imbalanced.
I still would love to see it happen as the Gorge needs some love anyway and the whole economy on the Kharaa side seems way gimped compared to NS1.