<!--quoteo(post=2029121:date=Nov 19 2012, 12:03 PM:name=Xarius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xarius @ Nov 19 2012, 12:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2029121"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Such nonsense. Do you actually watch competitive play, or ever played in a gather? If teams are more or less evenly skilled, marines have a definite edge early on. The onos comes at a vital time in the alien strategic gameplay, when they are at risk of desperately falling behind and losing the game, without it many more games would go the way of marines. (In both competitive as well as public games)
That's not to say there's some other things that need addressing, like how strong early shifts are, or the 229 regeneration, but none of these things are as big of a gamechanges as the early t.res onos egg drop.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the whole point of the post is that the "definite marine edge" which you see in high-skilled games doesn't exist at lower levels of play
in low-mid skill games, when aliens get significant early advantage (i.e. almost always if the teams are fair), a tres onos just accelerates their inevitable victory. most players blame the onos because that's what is kicking their ass the hardest, but in the vast majority of those games they were just getting outplayed by skulks
It's been discussed in other threads, but it seems like the Marines have a higher 'skill' requirement but the skill in question, I.E. aiming, is simply a superior mechanic over say wall jumping in the hands of an absurdly good player. This is because there is really no upper limit to how useful aiming can be until you simply never miss, ever, compared to a skulk who can't get much better than being able to consistently use the wall jumping mechanic while biting.
This is less true, perhaps, when considering Fades with Blink or a Lerk's absurd maneuverability in-flight, but when combined with things like shotgun aim can still be considered to be a more powerful skill. The abundance of things that result in a one-shot kill for the Marines when paired with absurd aim is the likely culprit. The aliens need a 50 P.res life form to survive three hits from a 20 P.Res gun. I'm not saying it's OP, I'm just saying that's the way it is. A Lerk goes down in two hits, and a skulk doesn't survive even one. This, of course, assumes every pellet hits on a random-spread weapon.
Not to say that Aliens don't need to aim, it's just that there's more to it than being able to aim as an Alien and the ability to aim effectively is at a lower threshold while ultimately being less effective. I'm not even sure there <i>is</i> a 'skill' that could bring the aliens to parity with a Marine that has absurd aim, outside of making aim a less effective skill for Marines by increasing the spread on LMG's or dumbing down shotgun damage.
I don't think those things <i>should</i> happen, as I don't like nerfs, but it's difficult to figure out a movement mechanic that could compare to being able to reliably hit aliens at any distance. I think that perhaps the recent buff's to camouflage might be the only <i>current</i> possibility, as it's probably the most reliable way to get one free 75 damage hit as a skulk when it isn't directly negated by an observatory or ping. It's just that after the early game, Camo and Silence become less useful and the buildable structure that comes with Shade isn't really spectacular when you consider healing crags and egg-spewing infinite energy shifts. Ink isn't a bad thing since it effectively blinds the Marines, but I would prefer ink to be a smaller AoE that isn't centered on the Shade but rather a deployable in a larger center somewhere around a mature Shade.
Celerity might be more effective versus Marines that aren't as great at tracking targets, but against players that hardly ever miss Camo might be a better early to mid-game option. It also forces the Marines commander to spend more T.Res on ping to locate targets for his forward troops, but if those troops have stupid good aim it's well worth the cost of a ping to kill the entire Aliens presence in a given area. The rings highlighting aliens players with a ping or observatory, in the hands of a player with wicked good aim, is frankly a little OP. I don't mind it on a ping, since that costs quite a bit, but I think it should require an upgraded Observatory to get the 'motion tracking' feature on a standard Observatory. It would make it less punishing to try and assault a Marines base with only a Shade hive. In a one on one comparison, the observatory wins every time against cloaking, and negates silence through the 'blue rings of doom'.
A scan costs 3 T.res, an Obs costs 15. If the aliens go Shade, there isn't much of a downside in building Observatories every time when you're assaulting a hive. It removes all the defenses and upgrades for the entire Alien team in a 15 T.Res structure. Sure, it must be powered, but with five Marines it's just a brief few seconds away. Then a phase gate. Then it's dead hive. Ultimately, building an observatory will pay for itself over using ping when assaulting shade aliens.
That may be so, but if the game is balanced on higher levels of play, it would be entirely wrong to nerf some aspects of it to make the lower levels of play more manageable, unless the changes only effect the skill floor and not the skill ceiling (like skulk glancing bite). The way I see it, more often than not marines just lack the proper coordination or experienced commander they truly need in order to stomp the aliens properly. And without the 6 min t.res onos egg drop at least, more games would be manageable for marines. (Since you often see marine teams holding on, even without proper coordination, a large amount of skilled players or a good commander, but they completely lose any grip on the game once that onos comes around)
I've already offered the solution in <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=124822&st=20&p=2028567&#entry2028567" target="_blank">my post here</a>. The only way you will balance pub play against competitive play is to not balance it at all. Each mode needs to have its OWN balance. You could throw in a full set of training missions (which this game sorely needs to educate new players) and even if you had that you would STILL not be able to raise pub play skill enough so that balance in pubs would be 'sufficient' for competitive play. It will never happen. Pubs will never get that good enough in a game this complex where the outcome of the game can be decided with a single action.
We've had this problem from the beginning, and it was one of the reasons public interest died off in NS1. The balance shifted too much to competitive play and people started leaving.
It's all well and good for Charlie (bless his soul) to say that he doesn't want to 'go this way' in the game. (So he said in NS1 anyway) His game, his choice. Yeah I know it would mean keeping two sets of 'variables', but put the competitive players 'in charge' of making balance tweaks. Aside from general game changes, let them make their own changes - since they're the ones that know exactly what they need.
The problem is that I'm already hearing from people - that I convinced to buy the game - that they are getting really tired of getting rolled every time they play marine. (What also slays me is that despite the aliens winning more, the marine team almost always has the extra man.)
Could this current balance issue be fixed? Sure. But I guarantee the competitive players won't like the changes.
<b>Trying to keep everyone happy usually ends up with no one being happy.</b>
Why are players so obsessed with becoming gosu-godly at a game they barely play. Why is stacked teams even a factor in balance discussions? It shouldn't be. You know what the real problem is? This is heart of it:
Players are ###### lazy and want instant-gratification. Few gamers want to actually EARN the skills necessary to be good at a game. And that means continuously playing a game, putting yourself through that grind, and getting better.
The game has been out for less than a month. The newbies need to stop ###### about "such and such is OP" and worry more about how well they play, and where they can improve. Until the players take this responsibility upon themselves, casual gamers will continue to ruin games where devs cater to the loudest outcry.
IMO: Shut the f*&* up, and keep playing until you know for a god-given fact that is absolutely nothing you can do to improve. Then start worrying about what kind of balance changes you want to see.
<!--quoteo(post=2029453:date=Nov 20 2012, 12:09 PM:name=Afterhours)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Afterhours @ Nov 20 2012, 12:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2029453"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The game has been out for less than a month. The newbies need to stop ###### about "such and such is OP" and worry more about how well they play, and where they can improve. Until the players take this responsibility upon themselves, casual gamers will continue to ruin games where devs cater to the loudest outcry.
IMO: Shut the f*&* up, and keep playing until you know for a god-given fact that is absolutely nothing you can do to improve. Then start worrying about what kind of balance changes you want to see.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> How do we communicate that to new players without driving them away from the community? Continued growth is critical to the long term success of this game.
I've played with myself and a friend for like 2 or 3 nights in a row now. We love playing Marines and we lose every game as soon as the aliens get 2+ Onos.
We're doing fine things seem balanced and then ONOS *DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD*. Also it seems to be the same Onos to. They run away and somehow get healed up then come straight back. Even if we have XO's they get so close and they block you're view it's pretty impossible to focus fire the same one unless they come at you from really far away.
I'm not sure if it's because the Alien's have too many ways to regen health or what.
All I know is that in all the pub games I've played, even if I'm doing really well or fairly well. We lost games where my team ALL had ap positive K:D ratio and we did have decent map control.
In my experience as soon as the aliens team gets Onos it's over :(
<!--quoteo(post=2029461:date=Nov 20 2012, 12:20 PM:name=Darkhand)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Darkhand @ Nov 20 2012, 12:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2029461"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I've played with myself and a friend for like 2 or 3 nights in a row now. We love playing Marines and we lose every game as soon as the aliens get 2+ Onos.
We're doing fine things seem balanced and then ONOS *DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD*. Also it seems to be the same Onos to. They run away and somehow get healed up then come straight back. Even if we have XO's they get so close and they block you're view it's pretty impossible to focus fire the same one unless they come at you from really far away.
I'm not sure if it's because the Alien's have too many ways to regen health or what.
All I know is that in all the pub games I've played, even if I'm doing really well or fairly well. We lost games where my team ALL had ap positive K:D ratio and we did have decent map control.
In my experience as soon as the aliens team gets Onos it's over :(<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Try encouraging your commander to rush for Armor level 1 and Weapons level 2. Before robotics factories, before advanced armories, you absolutely need to have some upgrade levels under your belt before the first onos shows up.
I'm not sure my experience is representative, but it seems to me that by far the most important factor in who wins is which team has players better at Windows - who can click the best. The team with the best aim tends to dominate. Occasionally you end up with a team where the commander's on training wheels and that makes you lose, or you have five people standing in the base together looking scared instead of doing something, but much of the time it's apparent who's going to win right out of the gate just looking at the k/d ratios.
Personally, I think the difference in performance between a player with superb aim and one without is much too high, while the difference in many other things is too low. It feels like so much of the skill of the game is concentrated in how well you aim that it obscures everything else, to the detriment of the experience.
On a slightly different subject, trickle-down balance does not work. Strategies have different strengths depending on the skills of the players involved, and balancing the top level doesn't balance the rest by extension. That doesn't mean you have to pick one or the other (because, again, changes at one level don't necessarily affect the others the same way or the same amount) but it does make it more difficult, and it does mean the discussion can't be "the top matters, screw everyone else." I don't know about the other posters here, but I have no plans of ever playing at a competitive level but I'd like the experience to be enjoyable all the same.
So anyway. Windows skill is the elephant in the room for me. It seems relatively rare for games to be decided by weaker players not knowing to climb walls to win, though the counterintuitive nature of many of the mechanics (skulk wall jumping; the way to play the scary aliens is to be <i>ridiculously wimpy</i> rather than committing hard; etc) does hurt them and should be addressed. The bigger issue seems to be players with exceptionally good aim dominating the matchups. Aim should be helpful, but one exceptionally skilled marine or lurk or whatever shutting down the entire enemy team hurts the experience.
I gotta say I'm with the idea of Skill Floors and Skill Ceilings being the big blocker. Currently, it just seems like some aspects of the game are very difficult to accomplish, but still necessary, ie taking out a marine base filled with marines as an alien (Everywhere, I see posts about the number of combined lifeforms required to do this, ie a Gorge, a Lerk, a few Skulks attacking at the same time. Please be realistic. If a newbie alien team cannot EVER overpower a newbie marine team before they come and see your glorious tactical post on the forum, something is WRONG.)
The kind of thing I'd like to see the game going for is more abilities/upshots of various weapons/lifeforms that instantaneously seem like some absolutely enormous advantage UNLESS you're in competitive play. For instance, in TF2, the sentry is considered an overpowered piece of ###### by every newbie that plays, and all newbies love to make them because they rack up kills against other newbies. But against professionals that know to push their offensive, and know how to take down sentries, they are practically <b>useless</b>, meaning you never see them in 6v6 competitive play. The same type of thing applies for Heavies to some regard. I play as Heavy a lot, but I know as soon as the other team wises up on taking them down, I will have to change class to something with a wider skill floor/ceiling.
Similarly, I'd like to see ideas for this in NS2. Currently, the Fade is a 50-res unit that can go down pretty quickly. I would personally not like to change his HP. Can anyone here think up abilities that, when used by newbies against newbies, would be amazingly effective and keep Fades alive a long time; but would then gain you <b>nothing</b> when used in competitive play because all pros know how best to counter it?
I am trying to think up things that will make the game fun and appealing for new players; as is, most of the game's mechanics and abilities seem somewhat focused towards the "pro" end, especially on the alien team. ie, "If you know how to use it well, it's awesome." For lack of a better word, I would like a "noob tube" - something that grants newbies a bit of power, but at the expense of the flexibility needed to win games.
<!--quoteo(post=2028966:date=Nov 19 2012, 05:43 PM:name=Koruyo)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Koruyo @ Nov 19 2012, 05:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028966"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->* tho It seems like with tutorial videos alone we are not making any progress.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2028995:date=Nov 19 2012, 06:05 PM:name=sedek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sedek @ Nov 19 2012, 06:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028995"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Videos are inherently less effective as teaching tools, because even if a player is 100% invested in a video, they aren't practicing any skills on their own. Few players can get 100% invested in a video, so it all kind of goes downhill from there. An in game tutorial (preferably two maps, one for each side) with simple bots will go incredibly far as a teaching aid.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2029005:date=Nov 19 2012, 06:13 PM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 19 2012, 06:13 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2029005"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->well you can go buy call of duty etc if you want to learn how to play an FPS game, and you get starcraft if you want to learn an RTS. both of which will be better teaching tools than any tutorial mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
An interesting set of comments.
Koruyo, can you recommend some good tutorial videos? Or rather, have you recommended some good tutorial videos to the appropriate people? Increasing awareness might help. Anyone who watches the tournaments might actually watch training videos. The skulk wall jump video doesn't have many views, but you couldn't really say it was widely promoted either (and the presentation had difficulties too, but it's the thought that counts).
Sedek, tutorials cost time and money. Diverting development from fixes might not be worth it. In theory you could create a map with AI script, perhaps even use an existing NS2 map, but that still requires someone with both knowledge of AI scripting and competence in playing the game. Videos are cheaper, can be crowdsourced to negate time concerns, and show you the exact same information as "Here is the upgrade interface", "Here is how you place a structure", and so forth. Most importantly, it doesn't involve the development team at all. You just need competent community members, with good experience of playing the game, and who have enough credibility that people WANT to know what they know. In short, competitive players. I'm sure pubber old hands are equally competent, but they simply don't carry the same weight when it comes to engaging noob interest.
The other advantage to a video is that it's something you can easily circulate to media sites or even directly link to from the official Twitch feed.
Tarquinbb, I agree in theory with your statement, but the problem is that RTS games can be reduced to calculators with a fancy frontend. In NS2, your troops can disobey. Their hitrate is grossly variable. In FPS games, you don't answer to a higher authority for your upgrades. A person may come in from SC and think that he can turtle his way to victory. A person may come in from CoD and not understand why he isn't really being rewarded for killing everything he sees. At the end of the round, you have two very frustrated players.
We as a community need to support the people who want to learn, so that the information gets disseminated as widely as possible. Even if people never watch the videos, or never play a tutorial, they might still be able to at least learn from the experience and example of the others they play with.
IMHO bringing in new skill modes, or splitting the servers, is going to cause the same problems that plagued NS1. A group or clan server is perfectly entitled to put their own restrictions on players, but you can't expect that "solution" to work for the whole community. What happens when people want to move from casual to competitive? How do you raise skill across the board when anyone with any ability is playing on a closed server? How do you drive interest in the competitive mode if more people are playing "standard"?
In NS1 a similar experiment was attempted - Combat mode. YMMV on how successful that was, but looking at it strictly from it's relationship to core NS you can see that people may have been learning how to kill enemies but they were learning nothing about the Commander game or how upgrades actually work. A good tool for FPS skills but worse than useless for RTS. The end result was a ton of CO servers because the players couldn't reconcile their individual skill with their utter incompetence at teamworking and/or Commanding.
Again, YMMV but to me NS isn't NS when you remove commanding.
Combat was those intense moments of NS1 distilled into pure gaming crack. You lost the lulls, you lost the crecendos... All you got was constant a constant adrenaline rush. It didn't help us learn NS1, it just made NS1 look slow-paced and risky.
I agree with you Necrosis, adding additional game modes will indeed cause the same problems that plagued NS1, and I would very much like to stay away from solutions that involve splitting a growing player base.
The issue I have with L2P style videos is my suspicion that they tend to hit a limited section of the playerbase. I honestly would not be surprised if less than 20% of the current player-base has seen a NS2HD video.
Sorry if some of these have been said already, but from page 1 I agree a big problem on marines for new players is we tend to rush to defend resource nodes completely dropping any sort of scouting or aggression, and then get stuck in a purely defensive mindset for the rest of the game (and consequently losing to Onos 8-12 minutes later).
I don’t think there needs to be a drastic change to balance or gameplay to fix the entry barrier, I feel the problem basically boils down to a lack of a few key RTS features in the game. This game is unique though so what works in Starcraft 2 won’t necessarily work in NS2 since your units are people, so really you have to make commander decisions easily visible to your marines, and vice versa. I’ve got a few suggestions on ways to improve this, and these suggestions are primarily directed at the marine commander interface and the map, but I think the alien side could benefit from a lot of these too.
1. Groups are a good place for improvement. I think commanders being able to assign groups 1-5 is good, but often times in a pub game your groups will have players leave and then your group isn’t as effective and you have to waste time hunting down other players to fill your group. Something to fix this could be an “idle player†notification (sort of like the idle SCV popup in starcraft 2). The comm could click on this icon and cycle through all players not currently in a group, and then easily assign them to whatever group he wants. The other option would be allow ungrouped players to pick what group they want to be on. You could even segregate groups into attack/ defend/ expand (see point 2)
2. Another problem with groups is a lot of commanders don’t assign groups, and/ or don’t tell you what group you are in so it’s hard to stick together (I’m sort of new to NS2, but if I’ve ever been in a group I’ve never really noticed). That’s kinda 2 different problems, the 1st problem of commanders not assigning groups might be fixed with tool tips suggesting the commander assign attack, defense, and expand squads? You could have the group keys coded as 1-2 = attack group, 3-4 = expand group, 5 = defense group (or something like that). Then a player knows what role the commander wants him to play. Next it would be nice to know what group you are in. A little icon in the same place as the suggested “idle player†icon could show up on your hud and tell you your group. Once assigned a group by the commander, you could even have a tool tip that tells the marine “you are in attack group 1/2, help your team scout and take out alien resource nodes and hives.†Or defend group “stay close to your commander’s waypoint and focus on defending your resource nodes and structures from alien attack.†Or expand group “focus on following your commander’s orders and establishing a forward base.†Those are just some suggestions for group segregation, and I dunno if they are great, but I think the idea is sound
3. Probably most importantly, and in line with segregating the groups, players and commanders need a way to know what group they are in and where their groups are. Let the players have an “A1†(for attack squad 1) on their map indicator to easily and quickly let everyone know where their group mates are and easily regroup, or at the very least allow the commander to yell at the lone wolf and tell him to stop defending that RT and help the rest of your group take out that hive!! You could even color code the groups if you wanted ;) And of course if you don’t segregate groups into attack/ defend/ etc, at least label the player icons of each group on the map as “1†– “5.â€
4. Similar to the rookie players being a selectable option in your game menu and them showing up in green, allow another option to select “pro player†and have them show up in a different color (red or blue or something). This could help a commander quickly break their force up and make sure each squad has a pro on it (or someone who considers themselves a pro anyway :P). You could have casual be default, or make that selectable too if you want.
5. This may be a bad idea, but if you go with the attack/ defend/ expand squads idea, you could possibly add the ability to make someone “squad leader,†who will stand out on the map with a special color. Assigning a player as squad leader could give him an aura that could apply a slight bonus to nearby players. For example, attack group leader gives all nearby units +5% to attack power; defense group leader gives all nearby units +5% defense (or slight regeneration ability); expand group leader gives all nearby units +5% movement speed. Leaders could be a research function or cost commander energy or something to balance it out a bit. I’m thinking this could play out like hero units in most modern RTS, where having the hero unit in a squad gives all the members a bonus.
TL:DR I don’t think the game requires a huge shift in balance or mechanics, but a little love on user interface (mainly the commander group system) could go a very long way to open the game up more to new players.
i think balance should be a good mix of pub/pro styles. the game shouldnt be so easy for new players to pick up. easy games dont have replay-ability imo
thats the appeal of MP gameplay over SP. the randomness and increased difficulty of a human player (most of the time anyway). SP you always know whats going to happen after the first playthrough. this is where the game is failing, making the game watered down to the point where every game plays exactly the same and there are no real choices just the same linear path to take to victory. the core of the game is broken as ive been saying for awhile, but again thats still just my own opinion. it would be nice if the devs admitted when something isnt working and just went back to the drawing board to at least find another way to implement something better. i mean look at the beta and all the "ideas" that had to be removed because upon implementation it just didnt work. and i mean core game mechanics that just were bad ideas or just didnt work. i just have no clue why things that still do not work and never have worked are stil stubbornly added patch after patch instead of fixing the real issue.
<!--quoteo(post=2029493:date=Nov 19 2012, 08:49 PM:name=Lofung)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Lofung @ Nov 19 2012, 08:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2029493"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i would say: PUB FUN MATTERS. and currently its not quite fun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2030135:date=Nov 20 2012, 03:48 PM:name=Chubby Chu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chubby Chu @ Nov 20 2012, 03:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2030135"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->WAAAAAAAAAAAAALLL - I did read most of it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Seems like most of your problems would be solved by a small period of time at the start of the game where a commander could be decided on and then an overall strategy could be explained to the team. Main reason I dislike pub play is the disorganized chaos that erupts from the word go. Sure you may get a general strat going by the first 1-2 mins but the first 30 seconds are completely decided by the whim of players/people shouting rush here/there.
I will never become a high skill competitive player. That won't stop be from playing and enjoying the game. I will over time improve because of just playing and experimenting. I learned to play CS by playing against the bots. As I improved I was able to increase their skill level. Now I'm rarely at the bottom of the tote board online. In NS I rarely commanded. I improved my commanding skills by playing against bots to the point where I was a functional if not great commander and won most of the games I commanded with real players. You learn best by doing. Help from the community and good players is a big help. I'm not saying bots are the solution here, (the NS bots were pretty pathetic) but think about players who start with single player games that move to online playing. Half life deathmatch bootcamp map was my start.
I really think the game needs a better tutorial system. Yes, that takes time but it's worth it.
The biggest threat to NS2's continued life isn't perceived imbalance (though that's up there), but rather, a feeling of hopelessness, confusion, and frustration. These feelings can be combated by a nice community (unreliable) and education. Education = a better tutorial system.
It doesn't need to be a big scripted AI lead tutorial.
How about a word only tutorial that a player can 'activate' as a skulk? For example, something like 'bounce off the walls for a speed boost.' Once completed, it moves on -- 'now do boost off the walls and jump one more time to maintain your speed.' Then, when applicable, 'your commander has upgraded 'x', press 'y' on infestation to get this upgrade.'
I see these kind of tutorials all the time in lower budget games, and while not totally engaging or ideal, they get the job done.
<!--quoteo(post=2030732:date=Nov 21 2012, 01:15 AM:name=SentrySteve)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SentrySteve @ Nov 21 2012, 01:15 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2030732"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How about a word only tutorial that a player can 'activate' as a skulk?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Noble sentiments but unfortunately this costs the devs time and money. You also have to consider -
What triggers the tutorial message? In a situation where two triggers are valid, which has priority? How do you unambiguously but concisely explain the information? For example, what is a "bounce"? What does this information look like in other languages? How do you implement this for the Comm/Khamm interface?
Comm/Khamm is easily the biggest stumbling block to new players, seeing as you can't win without someone in that role. It's also not easy to learn "in the wild" because you have no guarantee that players will follow your orders. If you lose, you have no idea whether it was your strategy or your team. You need scripted events to teach Comm/Khamm, and this can be either ingame or more easily implemented out of game with an animation.
Comments
That's not to say there's some other things that need addressing, like how strong early shifts are, or the 229 regeneration, but none of these things are as big of a gamechanges as the early t.res onos egg drop.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the whole point of the post is that the "definite marine edge" which you see in high-skilled games doesn't exist at lower levels of play
in low-mid skill games, when aliens get significant early advantage (i.e. almost always if the teams are fair), a tres onos just accelerates their inevitable victory. most players blame the onos because that's what is kicking their ass the hardest, but in the vast majority of those games they were just getting outplayed by skulks
This is less true, perhaps, when considering Fades with Blink or a Lerk's absurd maneuverability in-flight, but when combined with things like shotgun aim can still be considered to be a more powerful skill. The abundance of things that result in a one-shot kill for the Marines when paired with absurd aim is the likely culprit. The aliens need a 50 P.res life form to survive three hits from a 20 P.Res gun. I'm not saying it's OP, I'm just saying that's the way it is. A Lerk goes down in two hits, and a skulk doesn't survive even one. This, of course, assumes every pellet hits on a random-spread weapon.
Not to say that Aliens don't need to aim, it's just that there's more to it than being able to aim as an Alien and the ability to aim effectively is at a lower threshold while ultimately being less effective. I'm not even sure there <i>is</i> a 'skill' that could bring the aliens to parity with a Marine that has absurd aim, outside of making aim a less effective skill for Marines by increasing the spread on LMG's or dumbing down shotgun damage.
I don't think those things <i>should</i> happen, as I don't like nerfs, but it's difficult to figure out a movement mechanic that could compare to being able to reliably hit aliens at any distance. I think that perhaps the recent buff's to camouflage might be the only <i>current</i> possibility, as it's probably the most reliable way to get one free 75 damage hit as a skulk when it isn't directly negated by an observatory or ping. It's just that after the early game, Camo and Silence become less useful and the buildable structure that comes with Shade isn't really spectacular when you consider healing crags and egg-spewing infinite energy shifts. Ink isn't a bad thing since it effectively blinds the Marines, but I would prefer ink to be a smaller AoE that isn't centered on the Shade but rather a deployable in a larger center somewhere around a mature Shade.
Celerity might be more effective versus Marines that aren't as great at tracking targets, but against players that hardly ever miss Camo might be a better early to mid-game option. It also forces the Marines commander to spend more T.Res on ping to locate targets for his forward troops, but if those troops have stupid good aim it's well worth the cost of a ping to kill the entire Aliens presence in a given area. The rings highlighting aliens players with a ping or observatory, in the hands of a player with wicked good aim, is frankly a little OP. I don't mind it on a ping, since that costs quite a bit, but I think it should require an upgraded Observatory to get the 'motion tracking' feature on a standard Observatory. It would make it less punishing to try and assault a Marines base with only a Shade hive. In a one on one comparison, the observatory wins every time against cloaking, and negates silence through the 'blue rings of doom'.
A scan costs 3 T.res, an Obs costs 15. If the aliens go Shade, there isn't much of a downside in building Observatories every time when you're assaulting a hive. It removes all the defenses and upgrades for the entire Alien team in a 15 T.Res structure. Sure, it must be powered, but with five Marines it's just a brief few seconds away. Then a phase gate. Then it's dead hive. Ultimately, building an observatory will pay for itself over using ping when assaulting shade aliens.
We've had this problem from the beginning, and it was one of the reasons public interest died off in NS1. The balance shifted too much to competitive play and people started leaving.
It's all well and good for Charlie (bless his soul) to say that he doesn't want to 'go this way' in the game. (So he said in NS1 anyway) His game, his choice. Yeah I know it would mean keeping two sets of 'variables', but put the competitive players 'in charge' of making balance tweaks. Aside from general game changes, let them make their own changes - since they're the ones that know exactly what they need.
The problem is that I'm already hearing from people - that I convinced to buy the game - that they are getting really tired of getting rolled every time they play marine. (What also slays me is that despite the aliens winning more, the marine team almost always has the extra man.)
Could this current balance issue be fixed? Sure. But I guarantee the competitive players won't like the changes.
<b>Trying to keep everyone happy usually ends up with no one being happy.</b>
Why are players so obsessed with becoming gosu-godly at a game they barely play. Why is stacked teams even a factor in balance discussions? It shouldn't be.
You know what the real problem is? This is heart of it:
Players are ###### lazy and want instant-gratification. Few gamers want to actually EARN the skills necessary to be good at a game. And that means continuously playing a game, putting yourself through that grind, and getting better.
The game has been out for less than a month. The newbies need to stop ###### about "such and such is OP" and worry more about how well they play, and where they can improve. Until the players take this responsibility upon themselves, casual gamers will continue to ruin games where devs cater to the loudest outcry.
IMO: Shut the f*&* up, and keep playing until you know for a god-given fact that is absolutely nothing you can do to improve. Then start worrying about what kind of balance changes you want to see.
IMO: Shut the f*&* up, and keep playing until you know for a god-given fact that is absolutely nothing you can do to improve. Then start worrying about what kind of balance changes you want to see.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How do we communicate that to new players without driving them away from the community? Continued growth is critical to the long term success of this game.
We're doing fine things seem balanced and then ONOS *DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD*. Also it seems to be the same Onos to. They run away and somehow get healed up then come straight back. Even if we have XO's they get so close and they block you're view it's pretty impossible to focus fire the same one unless they come at you from really far away.
I'm not sure if it's because the Alien's have too many ways to regen health or what.
All I know is that in all the pub games I've played, even if I'm doing really well or fairly well. We lost games where my team ALL had ap positive K:D ratio and we did have decent map control.
In my experience as soon as the aliens team gets Onos it's over :(
We're doing fine things seem balanced and then ONOS *DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD*. Also it seems to be the same Onos to. They run away and somehow get healed up then come straight back. Even if we have XO's they get so close and they block you're view it's pretty impossible to focus fire the same one unless they come at you from really far away.
I'm not sure if it's because the Alien's have too many ways to regen health or what.
All I know is that in all the pub games I've played, even if I'm doing really well or fairly well. We lost games where my team ALL had ap positive K:D ratio and we did have decent map control.
In my experience as soon as the aliens team gets Onos it's over :(<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Try encouraging your commander to rush for Armor level 1 and Weapons level 2. Before robotics factories, before advanced armories, you absolutely need to have some upgrade levels under your belt before the first onos shows up.
Personally, I think the difference in performance between a player with superb aim and one without is much too high, while the difference in many other things is too low. It feels like so much of the skill of the game is concentrated in how well you aim that it obscures everything else, to the detriment of the experience.
On a slightly different subject, trickle-down balance does not work. Strategies have different strengths depending on the skills of the players involved, and balancing the top level doesn't balance the rest by extension. That doesn't mean you have to pick one or the other (because, again, changes at one level don't necessarily affect the others the same way or the same amount) but it does make it more difficult, and it does mean the discussion can't be "the top matters, screw everyone else." I don't know about the other posters here, but I have no plans of ever playing at a competitive level but I'd like the experience to be enjoyable all the same.
So anyway. Windows skill is the elephant in the room for me. It seems relatively rare for games to be decided by weaker players not knowing to climb walls to win, though the counterintuitive nature of many of the mechanics (skulk wall jumping; the way to play the scary aliens is to be <i>ridiculously wimpy</i> rather than committing hard; etc) does hurt them and should be addressed. The bigger issue seems to be players with exceptionally good aim dominating the matchups. Aim should be helpful, but one exceptionally skilled marine or lurk or whatever shutting down the entire enemy team hurts the experience.
The kind of thing I'd like to see the game going for is more abilities/upshots of various weapons/lifeforms that instantaneously seem like some absolutely enormous advantage UNLESS you're in competitive play. For instance, in TF2, the sentry is considered an overpowered piece of ###### by every newbie that plays, and all newbies love to make them because they rack up kills against other newbies. But against professionals that know to push their offensive, and know how to take down sentries, they are practically <b>useless</b>, meaning you never see them in 6v6 competitive play. The same type of thing applies for Heavies to some regard. I play as Heavy a lot, but I know as soon as the other team wises up on taking them down, I will have to change class to something with a wider skill floor/ceiling.
Similarly, I'd like to see ideas for this in NS2. Currently, the Fade is a 50-res unit that can go down pretty quickly. I would personally not like to change his HP. Can anyone here think up abilities that, when used by newbies against newbies, would be amazingly effective and keep Fades alive a long time; but would then gain you <b>nothing</b> when used in competitive play because all pros know how best to counter it?
I am trying to think up things that will make the game fun and appealing for new players; as is, most of the game's mechanics and abilities seem somewhat focused towards the "pro" end, especially on the alien team. ie, "If you know how to use it well, it's awesome." For lack of a better word, I would like a "noob tube" - something that grants newbies a bit of power, but at the expense of the flexibility needed to win games.
<!--quoteo(post=2028995:date=Nov 19 2012, 06:05 PM:name=sedek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sedek @ Nov 19 2012, 06:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2028995"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Videos are inherently less effective as teaching tools, because even if a player is 100% invested in a video, they aren't practicing any skills on their own. Few players can get 100% invested in a video, so it all kind of goes downhill from there. An in game tutorial (preferably two maps, one for each side) with simple bots will go incredibly far as a teaching aid.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2029005:date=Nov 19 2012, 06:13 PM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 19 2012, 06:13 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2029005"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->well you can go buy call of duty etc if you want to learn how to play an FPS game, and you get starcraft if you want to learn an RTS. both of which will be better teaching tools than any tutorial mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
An interesting set of comments.
Koruyo, can you recommend some good tutorial videos? Or rather, have you recommended some good tutorial videos to the appropriate people? Increasing awareness might help. Anyone who watches the tournaments might actually watch training videos. The skulk wall jump video doesn't have many views, but you couldn't really say it was widely promoted either (and the presentation had difficulties too, but it's the thought that counts).
Sedek, tutorials cost time and money. Diverting development from fixes might not be worth it. In theory you could create a map with AI script, perhaps even use an existing NS2 map, but that still requires someone with both knowledge of AI scripting and competence in playing the game. Videos are cheaper, can be crowdsourced to negate time concerns, and show you the exact same information as "Here is the upgrade interface", "Here is how you place a structure", and so forth. Most importantly, it doesn't involve the development team at all. You just need competent community members, with good experience of playing the game, and who have enough credibility that people WANT to know what they know. In short, competitive players. I'm sure pubber old hands are equally competent, but they simply don't carry the same weight when it comes to engaging noob interest.
The other advantage to a video is that it's something you can easily circulate to media sites or even directly link to from the official Twitch feed.
Tarquinbb, I agree in theory with your statement, but the problem is that RTS games can be reduced to calculators with a fancy frontend. In NS2, your troops can disobey. Their hitrate is grossly variable. In FPS games, you don't answer to a higher authority for your upgrades. A person may come in from SC and think that he can turtle his way to victory. A person may come in from CoD and not understand why he isn't really being rewarded for killing everything he sees. At the end of the round, you have two very frustrated players.
We as a community need to support the people who want to learn, so that the information gets disseminated as widely as possible. Even if people never watch the videos, or never play a tutorial, they might still be able to at least learn from the experience and example of the others they play with.
IMHO bringing in new skill modes, or splitting the servers, is going to cause the same problems that plagued NS1. A group or clan server is perfectly entitled to put their own restrictions on players, but you can't expect that "solution" to work for the whole community. What happens when people want to move from casual to competitive? How do you raise skill across the board when anyone with any ability is playing on a closed server? How do you drive interest in the competitive mode if more people are playing "standard"?
In NS1 a similar experiment was attempted - Combat mode. YMMV on how successful that was, but looking at it strictly from it's relationship to core NS you can see that people may have been learning how to kill enemies but they were learning nothing about the Commander game or how upgrades actually work. A good tool for FPS skills but worse than useless for RTS. The end result was a ton of CO servers because the players couldn't reconcile their individual skill with their utter incompetence at teamworking and/or Commanding.
Again, YMMV but to me NS isn't NS when you remove commanding.
I agree with you Necrosis, adding additional game modes will indeed cause the same problems that plagued NS1, and I would very much like to stay away from solutions that involve splitting a growing player base.
The issue I have with L2P style videos is my suspicion that they tend to hit a limited section of the playerbase. I honestly would not be surprised if less than 20% of the current player-base has seen a NS2HD video.
I don’t think there needs to be a drastic change to balance or gameplay to fix the entry barrier, I feel the problem basically boils down to a lack of a few key RTS features in the game. This game is unique though so what works in Starcraft 2 won’t necessarily work in NS2 since your units are people, so really you have to make commander decisions easily visible to your marines, and vice versa. I’ve got a few suggestions on ways to improve this, and these suggestions are primarily directed at the marine commander interface and the map, but I think the alien side could benefit from a lot of these too.
1. Groups are a good place for improvement. I think commanders being able to assign groups 1-5 is good, but often times in a pub game your groups will have players leave and then your group isn’t as effective and you have to waste time hunting down other players to fill your group. Something to fix this could be an “idle player†notification (sort of like the idle SCV popup in starcraft 2). The comm could click on this icon and cycle through all players not currently in a group, and then easily assign them to whatever group he wants. The other option would be allow ungrouped players to pick what group they want to be on. You could even segregate groups into attack/ defend/ expand (see point 2)
2. Another problem with groups is a lot of commanders don’t assign groups, and/ or don’t tell you what group you are in so it’s hard to stick together (I’m sort of new to NS2, but if I’ve ever been in a group I’ve never really noticed). That’s kinda 2 different problems, the 1st problem of commanders not assigning groups might be fixed with tool tips suggesting the commander assign attack, defense, and expand squads? You could have the group keys coded as 1-2 = attack group, 3-4 = expand group, 5 = defense group (or something like that). Then a player knows what role the commander wants him to play. Next it would be nice to know what group you are in. A little icon in the same place as the suggested “idle player†icon could show up on your hud and tell you your group. Once assigned a group by the commander, you could even have a tool tip that tells the marine “you are in attack group 1/2, help your team scout and take out alien resource nodes and hives.†Or defend group “stay close to your commander’s waypoint and focus on defending your resource nodes and structures from alien attack.†Or expand group “focus on following your commander’s orders and establishing a forward base.†Those are just some suggestions for group segregation, and I dunno if they are great, but I think the idea is sound
3. Probably most importantly, and in line with segregating the groups, players and commanders need a way to know what group they are in and where their groups are. Let the players have an “A1†(for attack squad 1) on their map indicator to easily and quickly let everyone know where their group mates are and easily regroup, or at the very least allow the commander to yell at the lone wolf and tell him to stop defending that RT and help the rest of your group take out that hive!! You could even color code the groups if you wanted ;) And of course if you don’t segregate groups into attack/ defend/ etc, at least label the player icons of each group on the map as “1†– “5.â€
4. Similar to the rookie players being a selectable option in your game menu and them showing up in green, allow another option to select “pro player†and have them show up in a different color (red or blue or something). This could help a commander quickly break their force up and make sure each squad has a pro on it (or someone who considers themselves a pro anyway :P). You could have casual be default, or make that selectable too if you want.
5. This may be a bad idea, but if you go with the attack/ defend/ expand squads idea, you could possibly add the ability to make someone “squad leader,†who will stand out on the map with a special color. Assigning a player as squad leader could give him an aura that could apply a slight bonus to nearby players. For example, attack group leader gives all nearby units +5% to attack power; defense group leader gives all nearby units +5% defense (or slight regeneration ability); expand group leader gives all nearby units +5% movement speed. Leaders could be a research function or cost commander energy or something to balance it out a bit. I’m thinking this could play out like hero units in most modern RTS, where having the hero unit in a squad gives all the members a bonus.
TL:DR I don’t think the game requires a huge shift in balance or mechanics, but a little love on user interface (mainly the commander group system) could go a very long way to open the game up more to new players.
thats the appeal of MP gameplay over SP. the randomness and increased difficulty of a human player (most of the time anyway). SP you always know whats going to happen after the first playthrough. this is where the game is failing, making the game watered down to the point where every game plays exactly the same and there are no real choices just the same linear path to take to victory. the core of the game is broken as ive been saying for awhile, but again thats still just my own opinion. it would be nice if the devs admitted when something isnt working and just went back to the drawing board to at least find another way to implement something better. i mean look at the beta and all the "ideas" that had to be removed because upon implementation it just didnt work. and i mean core game mechanics that just were bad ideas or just didnt work. i just have no clue why things that still do not work and never have worked are stil stubbornly added patch after patch instead of fixing the real issue.
This.
Design the game to be FUN.
Then balance it around competitive play.
You will win both sides.
Seems like most of your problems would be solved by a small period of time at the start of the game where a commander could be decided on and then an overall strategy could be explained to the team.
Main reason I dislike pub play is the disorganized chaos that erupts from the word go.
Sure you may get a general strat going by the first 1-2 mins but the first 30 seconds are completely decided by the whim of players/people shouting rush here/there.
<!--quoteo(post=2030232:date=Nov 20 2012, 05:57 PM:name=TimMc)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TimMc @ Nov 20 2012, 05:57 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2030232"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This.
Design the game to be FUN.
Then balance it around competitive play.
You will win both sides.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Quoted For Truth! :)
In NS I rarely commanded. I improved my commanding skills by playing against bots to the point where I was a functional if not great commander and won most of the games I commanded with real players.
You learn best by doing. Help from the community and good players is a big help. I'm not saying bots are the solution here, (the NS bots were pretty pathetic) but think about players who start with single player games that move to online playing. Half life deathmatch bootcamp map was my start.
The biggest threat to NS2's continued life isn't perceived imbalance (though that's up there), but rather, a feeling of hopelessness, confusion, and frustration. These feelings can be combated by a nice community (unreliable) and education. Education = a better tutorial system.
It doesn't need to be a big scripted AI lead tutorial.
How about a word only tutorial that a player can 'activate' as a skulk? For example, something like 'bounce off the walls for a speed boost.' Once completed, it moves on -- 'now do boost off the walls and jump one more time to maintain your speed.' Then, when applicable, 'your commander has upgraded 'x', press 'y' on infestation to get this upgrade.'
I see these kind of tutorials all the time in lower budget games, and while not totally engaging or ideal, they get the job done.
Noble sentiments but unfortunately this costs the devs time and money. You also have to consider -
What triggers the tutorial message?
In a situation where two triggers are valid, which has priority?
How do you unambiguously but concisely explain the information? For example, what is a "bounce"?
What does this information look like in other languages?
How do you implement this for the Comm/Khamm interface?
Comm/Khamm is easily the biggest stumbling block to new players, seeing as you can't win without someone in that role. It's also not easy to learn "in the wild" because you have no guarantee that players will follow your orders. If you lose, you have no idea whether it was your strategy or your team. You need scripted events to teach Comm/Khamm, and this can be either ingame or more easily implemented out of game with an animation.