However, things like watching a top team set up their hive getter skulk some frags for faster 2nd hive or a fade setting up skulks for efficient RFK usage are still some of the most awesome moments I've seen in any FPS.
This is one aspect that makes Dota so much fun: Good teams have one Carry who is supposed to get all the kills and get as much gold as fast as possible.
you can always RR. the whole point of RR was to show that you've given up and if half your team RRs then the rest of the team will lose on their own very quickly and the round will be over. It's like concede but with more of a "we've given up and you will too.."
you can always RR. the whole point of RR was to show that you've given up and if half your team RRs then the rest of the team will lose on their own very quickly and the round will be over. It's like concede but with more of a "we've given up and you will too.."
Ha you say you played DOTA. There you have the most unfun game while losing.
In NS2 its atleats 10 min, then the game is over and you can start a new one.
Indeed. I've been playing Dota2 alot lately. While many games are tight, usually I can tell if this game is lost or not within a few minutes.
But the game doesn't end for another 40 minutes, and leaving the game will impede your ability to get good games later, so you stay and die for the next 40 minutes to guys who have out-levelled you.
Aliens losing has always been an issue even in NS1 and you could always have a bit of fun even when losing as marines. The problem I have found is just that the Skulk doesn't get that much stronger relative to the marine as time goes on. Base Marines can also get stronger even if they are losing as 1 base is enough to get and keep everything for base marines, they don't even lose their weapons purchases as someone else can just pick them up. The Skulk actually gets weaker as you are losing because you lose leap if you drop to 1 hive and possibly some traits.
The same problem was recognised in NS1 and fixed to some extent by making it so life forms weren't tied to number of hives so you could get Onos at 1 hive which you can do now but this was with RFK so you could get the res even with little RTs. I don't think RFK should come back though at least not like the old form but Aliens get punished a lot more than marines do when they die, losing a lifeform is a big lose compared to losing a marine when weapons drop and can be picked up again and jetpacks are really cheap. Maybe if Aliens could get a sort of RFK spread to the team if a marine or advanced lifeform dies on infestation and/or a Gorge harvests the body. That would punish marine pushes that don't go well though and I think Marines not pushing enough is another problem on pub games, causing them to lose a lot.
If you lost as aliens, you deserve to lose. 60% win rates for aliens. Sure the process of losing is painful but it doesn't matter what side you are on. I quit this game because this game is imbalanced as fuck. I check back from time to time hoping for balance changes and there has been none ever since day 1.
I never understand how RFK detractors can play the snowball card. Have you never considered how infinitesimally small the snowball effect would be versus being able to purchase lifeforms or equipment in the first place?! It just seems ridiculous to me, in the context of NS (where snowball effects are found everywhere), that RFK would illicit such uproar. What amazes me more is the willful ignorance of the fact that RFD is doing the thing they fear already, albeit with with a negative emphasis.
We're talking about a ~0.5-1 rfk that;
1) Rewards good play
2) Creates collaborative teamplay (see Bacillus' posts)
3) Reduces the "tech explosion" effect
4) Varies timings in an interesting, but not broken, way
5) Provides a soft limit on game-ending (see elodea's posts)
6) Discourages passive play
7) Gives losing players something to work/hope for even in dire situations
8) Better reflects success (3-kills + death is still rewarded)
9) Is fun for min/max players
...
z) Doesn't break the game?
Even if it *was* a problem in NS1 - which I don't necessarily agree with - the fact that we are proposing rfk at a third of NS1 rates means it simply won't have nearly as much of an impact.
Losing as Aliens in this game is the single most painful game-experience out there.
+1. Being 0 upgrade skulks for the last 10 minutes while rines slowly push towards your last hive with W3 A3 jet packs and shotguns is a terrible experience. If I am on aliens and people don't vote concede immediately I leave the server.
(note this doesn't apply to 2 hives if you have leap. With that I feel I can still menace jet packers well enough)
The marine equivalent isn't painful, its just boring. Some seem to like the marine one tech point one res tower turtle mode though, even though it always ends the same way. I always vote concede, but will usually stick it out for a few minutes rather than find a new server.
I don't think either of these are the primary reason people who own it are not playing it.
I wonder out of all the people who bought it in the sale, how many never even installed it? I have a huge pile of shame from steam sales that have never even been installed. I'm sure NS2 is in a lot of people's shame piles.
Of those who did install it, I bet a lot more had trouble running it. The minimum and recommended specs are way off what is actually needed to get a smooth frame rate. This probably accounts for a lot not coming back.
Then of those who could run it, I'd wager that getting smashed by experienced players would have been the biggest reason they didn't continue.
Losing as Aliens in this game is the single most painful game-experience out there.
+1. Being 0 upgrade skulks for the last 10 minutes while rines slowly push towards your last hive with W3 A3 jet packs and shotguns is a terrible experience. If I am on aliens and people don't vote concede immediately I leave the server.
(note this doesn't apply to 2 hives if you have leap. With that I feel I can still menace jet packers well enough)
The marine equivalent isn't painful, its just boring. Some seem to like the marine one tech point one res tower turtle mode though, even though it always ends the same way. I always vote concede, but will usually stick it out for a few minutes rather than find a new server.
I don't think either of these are the primary reason people who own it are not playing it.
I wonder out of all the people who bought it in the sale, how many never even installed it? I have a huge pile of shame from steam sales that have never even been installed. I'm sure NS2 is in a lot of people's shame piles.
Of those who did install it, I bet a lot more had trouble running it. The minimum and recommended specs are way off what is actually needed to get a smooth frame rate. This probably accounts for a lot not coming back.
Then of those who could run it, I'd wager that getting smashed by experienced players would have been the biggest reason they didn't continue.
You pretty much hit all the levels of why some have stopped playing. The last one in particular. Having really good players/friends of the same tags stack the same team is really bad for new players or those learning to play. I've seen them hold up games as they wait in RR on several popular servers along with others who noticed who the good players are waiting for a slot to open up on the team with the good players.
Especially in rookie servers since there are no other full servers at the time. Sometimes I end up on the same team as them or opposite most of the time but I see many newer players leaving when they get stomped hard and servers emptying. Then the insults and accusations come out etc etc.
Not blaming them for playing together or saying something should be done because that is impossible. I just sort of wish the game had a larger player base like 10k+ so the skill level would be diluted a bit. Right now the 2k include a lot of dedicated experienced players scaring off the rookies. The other people who left was either because of performance problems or like you said buying games just for the sake of sales.
I never understand how RFK detractors can play the snowball card. ... We're talking about a ~0.5-1 rfk that;
1) Rewards good play
Kills ≠ good gameplay. That's why there is a point system.
Now if someone was to suggest res for points, maybe - just maybe - one could make a case for it. Res for kills does nothing to encourage good gameplay, and in fact detracts from it.
I disagree with most of the opinions here. The major thing that keeps me away from playing is Frames per Second. The performance i'm seeing would be acceptable in a single player game (thinking about metro 2033), but not in a multi-player game. And minor annoyances like lack of bunnyhopping and how aliens can phase through marines, and vice versa.
Simply put most of us play for fun but when some competitive players join they don’t care about winning or losing they just care about getting as many kills as they can. Gee that player is 30-0 in the first 5 mins, at that point its why bother playing the game.
There are still ONLY 5 playable maps, well actually 4 veil is a worthless sack of crap that goes slight changes whenever people who play marines complain enough. UWE only seems to care about balance changes, which they can only see since ns2stats don’t show the correct ratios.
Where is hypermutation?
Where is feign death?
Where are babblers?
Where is the rail gun?
I dont want this post to be taken as a flame or lambasting people. Laugh all you want but I posted this in the combat mod thread and was shot down. NS2 just like NS1 is a skill based game. If you are skillful then it doesnt really matter what class you play. A decent fade can OWN 3 or 4 marines and a jetpack shotgunner who can aim will eat all but onos solo for breakfast. The whole reason why combat took off in NS1 was it narrowed the skill gap. All of a sudden even noob players had access to tech on each respawn, this meant they could play and have fun. Even if you lost you still had tech and had fun so losing wasnt an issue.
Vanilla is not much fun if you are low skilled or new. Even if you tech up if you are a foot slogger then you are fade and onos food. Sat watching your hive get spammed from outside whilst you have no res is simply carp. Spawn die repeat. Ive had 3 close friends quit simply because they cannot get a foothold into playing the game - rookies need to find a server that is balanced and starting from the beginning - this isnt going to happen now adays.
What is the solution? Perhaps a partial refund of res depending on your score vs the score of the ENEMY team average. I dont know if the game tracks PRES weapons vs TRES weapons - perhaps TRES weapons stay and PRES weapons dissolve back to "partial refund"? That way even a rookie player can still play (and the system wont be abused in the beginning since there is an equal footing). If the teams are stacked then the weaker team will have better refund vs the stacked team having no refund for the top players and a bit for the rookies.
This should favour the aliens slightly so the tradeoff can be "something" done to the ARCs - speed them up? lower build time? Variable build time based on how many you have?
We're talking about a ~0.5-1 rfk that;
1) Rewards good play
2) Creates collaborative teamplay (see Bacillus' posts)
3) Reduces the "tech explosion" effect
4) Varies timings in an interesting, but not broken, way
5) Provides a soft limit on game-ending (see elodea's posts)
6) Discourages passive play
7) Gives losing players something to work/hope for even in dire situations
8) Better reflects success (3-kills + death is still rewarded)
9) Is fun for min/max player
I know, we have this dispute since beta and you probably won't change your mind about it ever. But I want to highlight the negative effects of RFK too. Because I think, that it would do more bad for the game than good. And also both sides of the medal should be named.
1) If you play good, you don't need an additional reward.
2) Has the possibility to change the community to its worse. "Damn Feeder! Stop dieing or GTFO!"
3) There are better tweaks with less negative impact to reduce the tech explosion problem. (For example: interesting p-res dumps for every life form or mandatory gorges to place cyst)
4) NS1 has shown, that this can backfire. Altering the timings of lifeform appearance can (if to strong) lead to situations you can't compete with. Enemies that have such high lifeforms, that you can't possible have the tech to compete with them.
5) If I understood elodea right, he thinks that RFK could end turtles faster and avoid stalemates, because the losing team can get res through kills while defending. I think the opposite would be the case. Not only does RFK favor the marines, who are much more competent in defending, (ranged advantage) while aliens need to get close and risk their lives on every attack, feeding the enemy. It also is very unlikely that a losing team can turn the tide with more p-res. A turtle happens, because the turtling team was outskilled and lost the game already. They won't comeback just because you feed them some p-res. They will just turtle harder with GL-spam and this is why RFK increases the amount of stalemates.
6) This can also backfire. You don't want to play to aggressive so you don't feed the enemy with p-res. Someone who isn't this skilled could even be yelled at, to stop attacking and dieing.
7) Naaah. The losing player lost in most cases, because he was outskilled. You aren't happy about the .5 p-res you get from that one lucky kill you could achieve. It even makes it worse for the losing player. This one skulk that dominated you and 2 of your marine fellas was annoying? I tell you what. Thanks of RFK he is now Fade after 4 minutes and dominates you even harder. And even if you manage to kill him in a lucky moment. At this time, he will have racked up enough p-res by RFK to go fade again.
8) This is essentially point 1) You don't need an additional reward when you just killed 3 skulks / marines. It is already awesome enough to achieve this. And on top of that, it sets the enemy team on a disadvantage. Where ever you killed those marines, they lost map control because of this. RFK would only make this loss worse.
9) Sorry, I don't understand that last point.
I want to conclude: Having an incentive to win in a game, is necessary. The best games are so much fun while winning, you don't even need an additional incentive. If you make the incentive / reward to big, you get the snowball problem. Early wins make a team so powerful, that the outcome of the game is already set in stone. At this point the game gets boring for viewers and frustrating for the losing team.
This means, the best you can do is to keep the reward as small as possible. The reward only needs to be big enough to create an incentive for the desired gameplay. In the best case, the desired gameplay is so much fun, the players will do it without any reward. RFK is a very good example for this: The player shoot at / bite each other, because it is already fun. You don't need an additional incentive for a player to use its weapon in a FPS.
If possible, a developer should even try to achieve the opposite. The more one team / player is winning, the smaller the reward should get. This is needed to keep the game interesting until the last minute. The border for this is only, that the reward must not get so small, that the incentive to win is lost after a specific point.
An example of some sort, is the upkeep cost in many RTS. Winning in some RTS-games can be equal to "having a big army". The increasing upkeep you need to pay for a big army is exactly a measure to lessen the snowball effect. It gives the losing team a chance of a comeback.
Translated to NS2 there are possible ways to introduce similar systems. But this post is already long enough.
5) If I understood elodea right, he thinks that RFK could end turtles faster and avoid stalemates, because the losing team can get res through kills while defending. I think the opposite would be the case. Not only does RFK favor the marines, who are much more competent in defending, (ranged advantage) while aliens need to get close and risk their lives on every attack, feeding the enemy. It also is very unlikely that a losing team can turn the tide with more p-res. A turtle happens, because the turtling team was outskilled and lost the game already. They won't comeback just because you feed them some p-res. They will just turtle harder with GL-spam and this is why RFK increases the amount of stalemates.
Yes, intuitively it may seem at first that adding rfk will prolong turtles. However, you need to think about it more deeply and understand the different circumstances in which the problem outlined by the OP arises.
Just to quickly re-summarise what i was saying. Hopefully this is somewhat clearer although i doubt it.
Situation 1)
Stale endgame due to behavioral issues stemming from broken risk to reward relationships and decision making. RFK goes towards solving this.
Situation 2)
We have an equally balanced struggle/stalemate despite best effort from both teams. Because we have a pre-existing state of perpetual 'turtle', RFK does not further prolong the turtle but actually tips the stalemate either way in order to get the ball rolling. RFK only provides a small impetus to the 'better team'.
If you were to add rfk to current ns2 and observe more prolonged turtles (I actually somewhat expect this), you need to understand that this is correlation and not cause. RFK in this case is only amplifying any current misalignment between offensive/defensive power etc. in a turtle situation (what is currently causing end game issues in the live build where there is no rfk). *edit* e.g. gl spam happens with or without rfk due to the ability to weapon pickup and armoury armour healing in part. Also note that we are talking very small ammounts of rfk of 0.5 or less - in order to buy a 25pres gl, you would need to kill at the very least 50 skulks (lol).
I have a bunch of RL buddies who I either used to play NS1 with or have introduced to NS2.
We have jobs, girlfriends, wives, etc. and do not have the time to organise any kind of matches with anyone, nor do we have a large enough group of players to play games together with.
We want to be able to play games together, on the same team. It's almost impossible to play marine together, as you can imagine.
I don't know how to solve this problem, but it probably involves making a matchmaker option the default for players rather than the server browser. Otherwise matchmaking lobbies would fill very slowly.
UWE, this is more important to me than new maps or even performance improvements. Although those are good too.
Situation 1)
I don't think that the knowledge of feeding the turtling team p-res would introduce any change to this behavioral issues. For aliens it could even more of an incentive to not attack the base and risk dieing before you got 3 or 4 onos ready. Some teams would just camp at the turtle entrance until they are sure that they can set the killing blow. While this last case could shorten the time to win, I think in most cases on pubs this would not happen and those would probably change nothing in the behavior.
Situation 2)
If I understand it right, we are talking about a game state in which both teams have equal strength and map control? Not a real turtle where one team is already pushed back to 1 base and has already lost the game minutes ago? In this case, I don't see the need to tip the battle in any direction, to allow one team to win faster. Because those equal matches are the most awesome and fun. In my opinion, a leveled battle field with equally skilled teams is the most fun and should be achieved, not ended quicker.
Sorry, if I got you wrong. But the other case would be, that a turtle happened despite both teams were equally skilled. I don't encounter this often. You also need to keep in mind, that RFK favors marines. Camping in a hallway shooting down incoming skulks is an option for marines to accumulate kills. Aliens don't have this option. If they want kills, they need to make the first step, and risking their lives. (=risk to feed the enemy)
We're talking about a ~0.5-1 rfk that;
1) Rewards good play
2) Creates collaborative teamplay (see Bacillus' posts)
3) Reduces the "tech explosion" effect
4) Varies timings in an interesting, but not broken, way
5) Provides a soft limit on game-ending (see elodea's posts)
6) Discourages passive play
7) Gives losing players something to work/hope for even in dire situations
8) Better reflects success (3-kills + death is still rewarded)
9) Is fun for min/max player
2) Has the possibility to change the community to its worse. "Damn Feeder! Stop dieing or GTFO!"
I think this design of potential (RFK Good!) vs risk of backfire (RFK Bad!) is a pretty important factor in game design.
What I feel that many indie products (films, music and all that) need to have love-hate things in them. In some ways the quirkiness and mixed feelings make up for the lack of huge production values. Meanwhile the generally acceptable middle ground needs the huge production values to make up for the lack of lovable characteristics.
What this means for NS2 is that I feel it can use the more controversial stuff to get away from some of the less ideal production process (low performance, endgame turtles, missing features).
I don't think I necessarily even refer to RFK, but just a way of designing the game in general. Staying middle ground is something an indie company should avoid unless they feel like getting stomped by the giants.
I'd say performance is the biggest killer, you simply can not play this game on a stuck CPU with 60+ reliable FPS, it's not possible no matter what your GPU is, a 3.4k CPU will drop sometimes well below 60 fps and in todays day and age that's not acceptable. Games specifically streamline and low res heaps of shit and make maps as simple as possible to achieve this across multi platform releases, NS2 has this all encompassing object/cyst AI that swallows everything.
Echoing what OP said, aliens have 0 comeback potential outside of lucky base rushes on power nodes (I WIN buttons) which promotes turtling on marines. It's a problem that's part design and part culture, as some NA dudes have pointed out marines have 0 incentive to finish a game faster, it allows a lot greater risk of losing pres, tres and potential for 3-4 skulks to appear at a power node somewhere and take it down. The culture part is marine comms and marines develop that horrible RTS mentality of "max out unit limit (in NS2, pg/arm/sentries every room, 3/3 upgrades, duals, FT and GL JP) and send in one big last push" that stale mates games and surprisingly encourages turtling but for the winning team.
Off topic, every argument I've seen against RFK is flat out stupid, I can't even believe people are using NS 1 as an argument against it. I knew as soon as RFK was out of NS 2 and RFD as a mechanic was in its place that the consties had won, all the whinging whining "skill ceiling is too high, my feet hurt, I can't aim or be good at the game so I shouldn't be punished by the top 10% of players when I play against them, I want to go home" threads that dominated every constellation member's post history that they had won. Even tho NS 1 had gotten into the CAL/CPL, the very first instance of pro esports, shared by CS and DOD as the premier comp FPS (calm down rocket arena nerds), even with that accomplishment withstanding the consties had won.
Others have stated the arguments for RFK a lot better than I ever will and if you can't comprehend it you never will, you're holding back one of the few defining features NS 1 had that truly made it an RTS/FPS hybrid rewarding FPS skill with a RTS reward, now I just see people AFKing in big servers until they get onos/fade res and cringe every time I'm at the top of the ladder in score and KD ratio knowing that guy whose 2-0 and has sat on a wall for 10+ mins will see a fade minutes before my 22-10 arse ever will.
The largest irony I think of RFK being taken out is it harms new players the most, skilled players on losing teams have 0 incentive to hang around and leave, with RFK it could enable them to camp up kills over an RT area and get a higher life form out that could potentially turn a game around, knowing you have to wait 12-14 mins just to fade on one upgrade doesn't cut it, it's a catch 22, to potentially turn the game around you have put yourself at risk of death taking down RTs, killing as many marines as possible while doing as much damage as you can or block off marine advances, in doing so you delay yourself the chance to get a higher alien lifeform up by 10+ seconds per death thanks to RFD, if you don't go out and halt marines/distract them they dominate, if you do that you potentially buy more time for the teams mid/late game but you get punished mid/late game, no higher life form for you.
And you're the fucking guy the team needs on a fade/lerk to start making plays and whip the alien team together, plenty of NS 1 games were won knowing that 1-2 people even tho they were on the losing team RTS wise had a solid/great KD ratio and were definitely going to be threats sooner then later, this gave hope to the alien team to rush upgrades anyway, someone drop hive, you drop 3 DC right now, because THIS fucking guy here is nearly fade res and we just might make it through the night if we can enable him enough, you will never see that guy in NS2 keeping hope alive, you will never be in game and perform a huge comeback on the back of an exceptional player, you will never be this guy in NS2 no matter how great you are at a singular life form, you will never know this feeling in NS 2 without RFK and that alone to me is enough incentive to at least test it, every single person who played NS 1 got humbled at one point by someones ability to simply be a fucking dominator for 10-15 minutes and put the team on their back, it's simply mathematically impossible for player skill to turn around a stacked/horrible game with RFD.
Thanks consties.
tl;dr: Performance is bad because stock CPU does not play this game well enough, aliens have no comeback except for one luck/gimmick rush and marines have no incentive to finish the game fast, this is one part game design and one part game culture, RFK was a great system and it's a shame the casuals had it taken out of NS 2.
Mmm... one of the problems is that once you have the advantage, there is no real hurry - you might as well wait until you have 5 Onoses up, or 7 ARCs+Exos and then casually walk in and kill the enemy - which takes a while.
An interesting idea would be to try for a not-quite-loss; once one side realizes they can't win, they can call for a retreat which starts a timer; if they are still alive once the timer expires, its considered a not-quite-loss/draw. Marines can call for an evacuation ship, the aliens ... well, their last hive can mutate into an escape-pod or something.
Puts some pressures on the winning team to finish things off, and a reason for the defenders to keep up the fight.
That is a lot of fun. I've had a bunch of games where we pinned marines in and then told them "hold out 10 minutes and we'll concede." It's kinda interesting how much faster a turtle can go down when you give the aliens a deadline and how hard marines will fight back when they think they've still got a chance to win.
Had a guy play a dropship evac soundbite in the ready room after one of those and everyone loved it.
Thanks for so many answers, it seems I hit a nerve here...
Some remarks:
It's true that losing in dota might be equally painful as losing in NS2. I personally dont like dota at all(I think its fcking boring winning and unbearable loosing) so just ignore Dota.
I don't think RFK or not has anything to do with this. I also don't think this is the place to discuss this. I'm quite sure that the gameplay flaws that make losing in NS2 so painful and many games so bad are much more complicated than RFK yes or no.
I know that not being able to learn NS2 properly is a problem with new players. But I know NS2 quite well and still I have this problem with the game.
Performance definitely has it's part in low player numbers, I agree on that.
BUT what I wanted to express is this: Even with perfect performance, 30-50% of all NS2 games are not fun at all.
I myself have no performance issues and I LOVE this game(I mean I preordered it at a time when I was a fcking poor student who could spend 20$ max. per moth besides rent and food).
Despite that I'd say I enjoy less than 50% of all games. That's very bad for a game which by definition should be fun.
So even if we had perfect performance and perfect tutorials and perfect matchmaking, many many games would be bad because of this incredibly huge snowball effect, non-existant comeback ability and the overall very painful process of losing a already decided game for another 15 minutes.
And I don't say these thing to just rage a bit and blow off steam. I really hope the developers read this/similar topics and acknowledge that there is a problem with this game beyond Performance, Skilllevel and day-to-day balancing issues.
There are problems regarding the very fundamentals of the game design(the thread about the alien economy showed some of them) that should/have to be adressed in order of the game not to die of stale gameplay.
If I had to speculate I would suspect that making a custom made 3D-Engine really broke the neck of this game gameplaywise. It seems to me that far too much(but still not enough) of the very valuable development time went and is still going into technical aspects and especially optimizing performance.
This leads to far too little time to really think gameplay through which would have been crucial as major aspects of NS1 have changed on the way to NS2.
I think it is important to make adjustments before it is too late.
Mmm... one of the problems is that once you have the advantage, there is no real hurry - you might as well wait until you have 5 Onoses up, or 7 ARCs+Exos and then casually walk in and kill the enemy - which takes a while.
An interesting idea would be to try for a not-quite-loss; once one side realizes they can't win, they can call for a retreat which starts a timer; if they are still alive once the timer expires, its considered a not-quite-loss/draw. Marines can call for an evacuation ship, the aliens ... well, their last hive can mutate into an escape-pod or something.
Puts some pressures on the winning team to finish things off, and a reason for the defenders to keep up the fight.
Yeah, that honestly sounds like a damn good idea. Make it a 5 min timer (after a concede vote) , the loosing team has to fend off the attackers for that time or the game becomes a not quite loss. maybe if you guys are actually doing the gorge tunnel, a giant worm hole of a gorge tunnel opens up for the aliens to portal "out" - and the marines get a special color phase gate to "phase out" to.
It needs a special sound effect though, some type like the beacon sounds for the marines, and some all out hideous simultaneous screech from all remaining hives that echos throughout the map.
Cmon guys, enough with the RFK talk. RFK was tried years ago when there were almost no features in the game and unbelievably bad performance(moreso than now), and it clearly didn't work.
Comments
Heh, I hated this aspect.
Before auto balance, maybe.
Indeed. I've been playing Dota2 alot lately. While many games are tight, usually I can tell if this game is lost or not within a few minutes.
But the game doesn't end for another 40 minutes, and leaving the game will impede your ability to get good games later, so you stay and die for the next 40 minutes to guys who have out-levelled you.
The same problem was recognised in NS1 and fixed to some extent by making it so life forms weren't tied to number of hives so you could get Onos at 1 hive which you can do now but this was with RFK so you could get the res even with little RTs. I don't think RFK should come back though at least not like the old form but Aliens get punished a lot more than marines do when they die, losing a lifeform is a big lose compared to losing a marine when weapons drop and can be picked up again and jetpacks are really cheap. Maybe if Aliens could get a sort of RFK spread to the team if a marine or advanced lifeform dies on infestation and/or a Gorge harvests the body. That would punish marine pushes that don't go well though and I think Marines not pushing enough is another problem on pub games, causing them to lose a lot.
We're talking about a ~0.5-1 rfk that;
1) Rewards good play
2) Creates collaborative teamplay (see Bacillus' posts)
3) Reduces the "tech explosion" effect
4) Varies timings in an interesting, but not broken, way
5) Provides a soft limit on game-ending (see elodea's posts)
6) Discourages passive play
7) Gives losing players something to work/hope for even in dire situations
8) Better reflects success (3-kills + death is still rewarded)
9) Is fun for min/max players
...
z) Doesn't break the game?
Even if it *was* a problem in NS1 - which I don't necessarily agree with - the fact that we are proposing rfk at a third of NS1 rates means it simply won't have nearly as much of an impact.
+1. Being 0 upgrade skulks for the last 10 minutes while rines slowly push towards your last hive with W3 A3 jet packs and shotguns is a terrible experience. If I am on aliens and people don't vote concede immediately I leave the server.
(note this doesn't apply to 2 hives if you have leap. With that I feel I can still menace jet packers well enough)
The marine equivalent isn't painful, its just boring. Some seem to like the marine one tech point one res tower turtle mode though, even though it always ends the same way. I always vote concede, but will usually stick it out for a few minutes rather than find a new server.
I don't think either of these are the primary reason people who own it are not playing it.
I wonder out of all the people who bought it in the sale, how many never even installed it? I have a huge pile of shame from steam sales that have never even been installed. I'm sure NS2 is in a lot of people's shame piles.
Of those who did install it, I bet a lot more had trouble running it. The minimum and recommended specs are way off what is actually needed to get a smooth frame rate. This probably accounts for a lot not coming back.
Then of those who could run it, I'd wager that getting smashed by experienced players would have been the biggest reason they didn't continue.
You pretty much hit all the levels of why some have stopped playing. The last one in particular. Having really good players/friends of the same tags stack the same team is really bad for new players or those learning to play. I've seen them hold up games as they wait in RR on several popular servers along with others who noticed who the good players are waiting for a slot to open up on the team with the good players.
Especially in rookie servers since there are no other full servers at the time. Sometimes I end up on the same team as them or opposite most of the time but I see many newer players leaving when they get stomped hard and servers emptying. Then the insults and accusations come out etc etc.
Not blaming them for playing together or saying something should be done because that is impossible. I just sort of wish the game had a larger player base like 10k+ so the skill level would be diluted a bit. Right now the 2k include a lot of dedicated experienced players scaring off the rookies. The other people who left was either because of performance problems or like you said buying games just for the sake of sales.
Now if someone was to suggest res for points, maybe - just maybe - one could make a case for it. Res for kills does nothing to encourage good gameplay, and in fact detracts from it.
There are still ONLY 5 playable maps, well actually 4 veil is a worthless sack of crap that goes slight changes whenever people who play marines complain enough. UWE only seems to care about balance changes, which they can only see since ns2stats don’t show the correct ratios.
Where is hypermutation?
Where is feign death?
Where are babblers?
Where is the rail gun?
Vanilla is not much fun if you are low skilled or new. Even if you tech up if you are a foot slogger then you are fade and onos food. Sat watching your hive get spammed from outside whilst you have no res is simply carp. Spawn die repeat. Ive had 3 close friends quit simply because they cannot get a foothold into playing the game - rookies need to find a server that is balanced and starting from the beginning - this isnt going to happen now adays.
What is the solution? Perhaps a partial refund of res depending on your score vs the score of the ENEMY team average. I dont know if the game tracks PRES weapons vs TRES weapons - perhaps TRES weapons stay and PRES weapons dissolve back to "partial refund"? That way even a rookie player can still play (and the system wont be abused in the beginning since there is an equal footing). If the teams are stacked then the weaker team will have better refund vs the stacked team having no refund for the top players and a bit for the rookies.
This should favour the aliens slightly so the tradeoff can be "something" done to the ARCs - speed them up? lower build time? Variable build time based on how many you have?
1) If you play good, you don't need an additional reward.
2) Has the possibility to change the community to its worse. "Damn Feeder! Stop dieing or GTFO!"
3) There are better tweaks with less negative impact to reduce the tech explosion problem. (For example: interesting p-res dumps for every life form or mandatory gorges to place cyst)
4) NS1 has shown, that this can backfire. Altering the timings of lifeform appearance can (if to strong) lead to situations you can't compete with. Enemies that have such high lifeforms, that you can't possible have the tech to compete with them.
5) If I understood elodea right, he thinks that RFK could end turtles faster and avoid stalemates, because the losing team can get res through kills while defending. I think the opposite would be the case. Not only does RFK favor the marines, who are much more competent in defending, (ranged advantage) while aliens need to get close and risk their lives on every attack, feeding the enemy. It also is very unlikely that a losing team can turn the tide with more p-res. A turtle happens, because the turtling team was outskilled and lost the game already. They won't comeback just because you feed them some p-res. They will just turtle harder with GL-spam and this is why RFK increases the amount of stalemates.
6) This can also backfire. You don't want to play to aggressive so you don't feed the enemy with p-res. Someone who isn't this skilled could even be yelled at, to stop attacking and dieing.
7) Naaah. The losing player lost in most cases, because he was outskilled. You aren't happy about the .5 p-res you get from that one lucky kill you could achieve. It even makes it worse for the losing player. This one skulk that dominated you and 2 of your marine fellas was annoying? I tell you what. Thanks of RFK he is now Fade after 4 minutes and dominates you even harder. And even if you manage to kill him in a lucky moment. At this time, he will have racked up enough p-res by RFK to go fade again.
8) This is essentially point 1) You don't need an additional reward when you just killed 3 skulks / marines. It is already awesome enough to achieve this. And on top of that, it sets the enemy team on a disadvantage. Where ever you killed those marines, they lost map control because of this. RFK would only make this loss worse.
9) Sorry, I don't understand that last point.
I want to conclude: Having an incentive to win in a game, is necessary. The best games are so much fun while winning, you don't even need an additional incentive. If you make the incentive / reward to big, you get the snowball problem. Early wins make a team so powerful, that the outcome of the game is already set in stone. At this point the game gets boring for viewers and frustrating for the losing team.
This means, the best you can do is to keep the reward as small as possible. The reward only needs to be big enough to create an incentive for the desired gameplay. In the best case, the desired gameplay is so much fun, the players will do it without any reward. RFK is a very good example for this: The player shoot at / bite each other, because it is already fun. You don't need an additional incentive for a player to use its weapon in a FPS.
If possible, a developer should even try to achieve the opposite. The more one team / player is winning, the smaller the reward should get. This is needed to keep the game interesting until the last minute. The border for this is only, that the reward must not get so small, that the incentive to win is lost after a specific point.
An example of some sort, is the upkeep cost in many RTS. Winning in some RTS-games can be equal to "having a big army". The increasing upkeep you need to pay for a big army is exactly a measure to lessen the snowball effect. It gives the losing team a chance of a comeback.
Translated to NS2 there are possible ways to introduce similar systems. But this post is already long enough.
Just to quickly re-summarise what i was saying. Hopefully this is somewhat clearer although i doubt it.
Situation 1)
Stale endgame due to behavioral issues stemming from broken risk to reward relationships and decision making. RFK goes towards solving this.
Situation 2)
We have an equally balanced struggle/stalemate despite best effort from both teams. Because we have a pre-existing state of perpetual 'turtle', RFK does not further prolong the turtle but actually tips the stalemate either way in order to get the ball rolling. RFK only provides a small impetus to the 'better team'.
If you were to add rfk to current ns2 and observe more prolonged turtles (I actually somewhat expect this), you need to understand that this is correlation and not cause. RFK in this case is only amplifying any current misalignment between offensive/defensive power etc. in a turtle situation (what is currently causing end game issues in the live build where there is no rfk). *edit* e.g. gl spam happens with or without rfk due to the ability to weapon pickup and armoury armour healing in part. Also note that we are talking very small ammounts of rfk of 0.5 or less - in order to buy a 25pres gl, you would need to kill at the very least 50 skulks (lol).
+1
I have a bunch of RL buddies who I either used to play NS1 with or have introduced to NS2.
We have jobs, girlfriends, wives, etc. and do not have the time to organise any kind of matches with anyone, nor do we have a large enough group of players to play games together with.
We want to be able to play games together, on the same team. It's almost impossible to play marine together, as you can imagine.
I don't know how to solve this problem, but it probably involves making a matchmaker option the default for players rather than the server browser. Otherwise matchmaking lobbies would fill very slowly.
UWE, this is more important to me than new maps or even performance improvements. Although those are good too.
Situation 1)
I don't think that the knowledge of feeding the turtling team p-res would introduce any change to this behavioral issues. For aliens it could even more of an incentive to not attack the base and risk dieing before you got 3 or 4 onos ready. Some teams would just camp at the turtle entrance until they are sure that they can set the killing blow. While this last case could shorten the time to win, I think in most cases on pubs this would not happen and those would probably change nothing in the behavior.
Situation 2)
If I understand it right, we are talking about a game state in which both teams have equal strength and map control? Not a real turtle where one team is already pushed back to 1 base and has already lost the game minutes ago? In this case, I don't see the need to tip the battle in any direction, to allow one team to win faster. Because those equal matches are the most awesome and fun. In my opinion, a leveled battle field with equally skilled teams is the most fun and should be achieved, not ended quicker.
Sorry, if I got you wrong. But the other case would be, that a turtle happened despite both teams were equally skilled. I don't encounter this often. You also need to keep in mind, that RFK favors marines. Camping in a hallway shooting down incoming skulks is an option for marines to accumulate kills. Aliens don't have this option. If they want kills, they need to make the first step, and risking their lives. (=risk to feed the enemy)
What I feel that many indie products (films, music and all that) need to have love-hate things in them. In some ways the quirkiness and mixed feelings make up for the lack of huge production values. Meanwhile the generally acceptable middle ground needs the huge production values to make up for the lack of lovable characteristics.
What this means for NS2 is that I feel it can use the more controversial stuff to get away from some of the less ideal production process (low performance, endgame turtles, missing features).
I don't think I necessarily even refer to RFK, but just a way of designing the game in general. Staying middle ground is something an indie company should avoid unless they feel like getting stomped by the giants.
(I wanted to use some esoteric abbreviations too)
Echoing what OP said, aliens have 0 comeback potential outside of lucky base rushes on power nodes (I WIN buttons) which promotes turtling on marines. It's a problem that's part design and part culture, as some NA dudes have pointed out marines have 0 incentive to finish a game faster, it allows a lot greater risk of losing pres, tres and potential for 3-4 skulks to appear at a power node somewhere and take it down. The culture part is marine comms and marines develop that horrible RTS mentality of "max out unit limit (in NS2, pg/arm/sentries every room, 3/3 upgrades, duals, FT and GL JP) and send in one big last push" that stale mates games and surprisingly encourages turtling but for the winning team.
Off topic, every argument I've seen against RFK is flat out stupid, I can't even believe people are using NS 1 as an argument against it. I knew as soon as RFK was out of NS 2 and RFD as a mechanic was in its place that the consties had won, all the whinging whining "skill ceiling is too high, my feet hurt, I can't aim or be good at the game so I shouldn't be punished by the top 10% of players when I play against them, I want to go home" threads that dominated every constellation member's post history that they had won. Even tho NS 1 had gotten into the CAL/CPL, the very first instance of pro esports, shared by CS and DOD as the premier comp FPS (calm down rocket arena nerds), even with that accomplishment withstanding the consties had won.
Others have stated the arguments for RFK a lot better than I ever will and if you can't comprehend it you never will, you're holding back one of the few defining features NS 1 had that truly made it an RTS/FPS hybrid rewarding FPS skill with a RTS reward, now I just see people AFKing in big servers until they get onos/fade res and cringe every time I'm at the top of the ladder in score and KD ratio knowing that guy whose 2-0 and has sat on a wall for 10+ mins will see a fade minutes before my 22-10 arse ever will.
The largest irony I think of RFK being taken out is it harms new players the most, skilled players on losing teams have 0 incentive to hang around and leave, with RFK it could enable them to camp up kills over an RT area and get a higher life form out that could potentially turn a game around, knowing you have to wait 12-14 mins just to fade on one upgrade doesn't cut it, it's a catch 22, to potentially turn the game around you have put yourself at risk of death taking down RTs, killing as many marines as possible while doing as much damage as you can or block off marine advances, in doing so you delay yourself the chance to get a higher alien lifeform up by 10+ seconds per death thanks to RFD, if you don't go out and halt marines/distract them they dominate, if you do that you potentially buy more time for the teams mid/late game but you get punished mid/late game, no higher life form for you.
And you're the fucking guy the team needs on a fade/lerk to start making plays and whip the alien team together, plenty of NS 1 games were won knowing that 1-2 people even tho they were on the losing team RTS wise had a solid/great KD ratio and were definitely going to be threats sooner then later, this gave hope to the alien team to rush upgrades anyway, someone drop hive, you drop 3 DC right now, because THIS fucking guy here is nearly fade res and we just might make it through the night if we can enable him enough, you will never see that guy in NS2 keeping hope alive, you will never be in game and perform a huge comeback on the back of an exceptional player, you will never be this guy in NS2 no matter how great you are at a singular life form, you will never know this feeling in NS 2 without RFK and that alone to me is enough incentive to at least test it, every single person who played NS 1 got humbled at one point by someones ability to simply be a fucking dominator for 10-15 minutes and put the team on their back, it's simply mathematically impossible for player skill to turn around a stacked/horrible game with RFD.
Thanks consties.
tl;dr: Performance is bad because stock CPU does not play this game well enough, aliens have no comeback except for one luck/gimmick rush and marines have no incentive to finish the game fast, this is one part game design and one part game culture, RFK was a great system and it's a shame the casuals had it taken out of NS 2.
That is a lot of fun. I've had a bunch of games where we pinned marines in and then told them "hold out 10 minutes and we'll concede." It's kinda interesting how much faster a turtle can go down when you give the aliens a deadline and how hard marines will fight back when they think they've still got a chance to win.
Had a guy play a dropship evac soundbite in the ready room after one of those and everyone loved it.
Some remarks:
It's true that losing in dota might be equally painful as losing in NS2. I personally dont like dota at all(I think its fcking boring winning and unbearable loosing) so just ignore Dota.
I don't think RFK or not has anything to do with this. I also don't think this is the place to discuss this. I'm quite sure that the gameplay flaws that make losing in NS2 so painful and many games so bad are much more complicated than RFK yes or no.
I know that not being able to learn NS2 properly is a problem with new players. But I know NS2 quite well and still I have this problem with the game.
Performance definitely has it's part in low player numbers, I agree on that.
BUT what I wanted to express is this: Even with perfect performance, 30-50% of all NS2 games are not fun at all.
I myself have no performance issues and I LOVE this game(I mean I preordered it at a time when I was a fcking poor student who could spend 20$ max. per moth besides rent and food).
Despite that I'd say I enjoy less than 50% of all games. That's very bad for a game which by definition should be fun.
So even if we had perfect performance and perfect tutorials and perfect matchmaking, many many games would be bad because of this incredibly huge snowball effect, non-existant comeback ability and the overall very painful process of losing a already decided game for another 15 minutes.
And I don't say these thing to just rage a bit and blow off steam. I really hope the developers read this/similar topics and acknowledge that there is a problem with this game beyond Performance, Skilllevel and day-to-day balancing issues.
There are problems regarding the very fundamentals of the game design(the thread about the alien economy showed some of them) that should/have to be adressed in order of the game not to die of stale gameplay.
If I had to speculate I would suspect that making a custom made 3D-Engine really broke the neck of this game gameplaywise. It seems to me that far too much(but still not enough) of the very valuable development time went and is still going into technical aspects and especially optimizing performance.
This leads to far too little time to really think gameplay through which would have been crucial as major aspects of NS1 have changed on the way to NS2.
I think it is important to make adjustments before it is too late.
Yeah, that honestly sounds like a damn good idea. Make it a 5 min timer (after a concede vote) , the loosing team has to fend off the attackers for that time or the game becomes a not quite loss. maybe if you guys are actually doing the gorge tunnel, a giant worm hole of a gorge tunnel opens up for the aliens to portal "out" - and the marines get a special color phase gate to "phase out" to.
It needs a special sound effect though, some type like the beacon sounds for the marines, and some all out hideous simultaneous screech from all remaining hives that echos throughout the map.
I like it.