Isn't the need for concede and its supposed overuse more evidence of a problem with the game than a problem with the implementation?
I mean, it seems to me that the game is frequently reaching a state, within the first half or two thirds of the match time, where a significant portion of one team feels (often correctly) that 1. They probably cannot fight back to a win. And more importantly, 2. There is no point in trying...
So, effectively, this can be rephrased as 'often, the game reaches a point where trying to win is both futile, and playing the game further is not worth the effort...
What is going wrong here where your game is becoming so boring for the players that they stop wanting to play it?
Seems to me that if people are ending up feeling like that, it doesn't matter what you do with concede, remove it, rebalance it, replace it, you've got a pretty massive problem with the game when people are feeling that way about it.
Isn't the need for concede and its supposed overuse more evidence of a problem with the game than a problem with the implementation?
I mean, it seems to me that the game is frequently reaching a state, within the first half or two thirds of the match time, where a significant portion of one team feels (often correctly) that 1. They probably cannot fight back to a win. And more importantly, 2. There is no point in trying...
So, effectively, this can be rephrased as 'often, the game reaches a point where trying to win is both futile, and playing the game further is not worth the effort...
What is going wrong here where your game is becoming so boring for the players that they stop wanting to play it?
Seems to me that if people are ending up feeling like that, it doesn't matter what you do with concede, remove it, rebalance it, replace it, you've got a pretty massive problem with the game when people are feeling that way about it.
Its hard to change that without stripping out the RTS aspect of the game. If one team is rolling in resources and upgrades they're probably going to win. Might be possible to tweak the slippery slope a bit, but at the end of the day most games are going to end with one team massively ahead and they will be massively ahead before the final killing blow happens.
The problem is also that the concede option puts all the power of ending the gaming experience for others in the power of the non-players, people who come and go at their whim, where as the main players who play all aspects of the game have no power and are forced to have their experience often constantly abruptly cut short because of the partial-players.
It's conceders that are forcing others to play the game as they want, not the actual full game players forcing anyone to do anything.
If you are fequently conceding, and even worse, someone who tells your team to concede, you are the one who thinks everyone should play the game as you see fit, not the other way around.
The problem is also that the concede option puts all the power of ending the gaming experience for others in the power of the non-players, people who come and go at their whim, where as the main players who play all aspects of the game have no power and are forced to have their experience often constantly abruptly cut short because of the partial-players.
It's conceders that are forcing others to play the game as they want, not the actual full game players forcing anyone to do anything.
If you are fequently conceding, and even worse, someone who tells your team to concede, you are the one who thinks everyone should play the game as you see fit, not the other way around.
There is nothing wrong with vote concede.
Yeah, it's anti-climactic, but if the enemy team has two or more tech points and takes out your second tech point, there's a good chance the game is over.
Isn't the need for concede and its supposed overuse more evidence of a problem with the game than a problem with the implementation?
I mean, it seems to me that the game is frequently reaching a state, within the first half or two thirds of the match time, where a significant portion of one team feels (often correctly) that 1. They probably cannot fight back to a win. And more importantly, 2. There is no point in trying...
So, effectively, this can be rephrased as 'often, the game reaches a point where trying to win is both futile, and playing the game further is not worth the effort...
What is going wrong here where your game is becoming so boring for the players that they stop wanting to play it?
Seems to me that if people are ending up feeling like that, it doesn't matter what you do with concede, remove it, rebalance it, replace it, you've got a pretty massive problem with the game when people are feeling that way about it.
Its hard to change that without stripping out the RTS aspect of the game. If one team is rolling in resources and upgrades they're probably going to win. Might be possible to tweak the slippery slope a bit, but at the end of the day most games are going to end with one team massively ahead and they will be massively ahead before the final killing blow happens.
Well, yes it is certainly a common feature of RTS games that it is easy to develop an early lead and cripple the enemy from there on.
But, the problem is that that doesn't translate well to the FPS game of NS2. Yes it may make sense to a commander that they win or lose like that, but for players on the ground it mostly just means they often don't get to play with the fun toys, and the game becomes arbitrarily easier/harder for them, often unsatisfyingly so in both instances.
To make a good FPS/RTS I think there needs to be some way to address this problem. You cannot tie all FPS enjoyment and success to the RTS part of the game, when the RTS part of the game is very abstracted from the actual FPS combat going on.
You could probably go a long way to improving it by, say, balancing guns and lifeforms less around 'this one is very expensive so it is much much better' because that translates to 'this one is prohibitively expensive unless you're already winning'.
Even something as doable as reworking the overall game balance to allow for more lifeforms and guns more often would do a lot to make the game fun even if you're losing, and reduce the absolute dominance of the strategic game.
Basically, I think right now, you win based on how much money you have, not how skilled your players are. Of course player skill partially feeds into how much money you have, because if your players fight better they will capture more ground, but this rapidly turns into a steamroller.
After the first five or at the most ten minutes, you don't have lots of money because your players are skilled, you have lots of money because you had lots of money for the past five to ten minutes and can afford better stuff now, and that lets you get more money.
Yes the game does need an RTS element, but the RTS doesn't need to be the only way to win. If you cut back on the benefits to a strong RTS game, you would automatically make the FPS part more important, and give players on the ground more role in the game, and reduce the RTS-style problem of escalating leads.
If guns and alien classes were more of a side-grade than an upgrade, for example, and were unlocked easier and available cheaper, it would mean the game was less about who has more money to afford the good stuff, and more about who has more skill to win the fights and capture territory, and it'd be about that all the way through. You'd still have a strong RTS element with territory being the way to protect your bases and the key to getting some equipment, but you wouldn't have the very very money-driven strategy of the current game, which is not 'fight well to beat the enemy' but instead 'wait for the money to get fades/exos/jetpacks/weapons 3/whatever and then win because you have that and the enemy can't counter it'.
If players can participate and aren't locked out by strategic factors, I think you'll see less concession, in all forms.
@Chris0132 - I don't think the way to address the snowballing effect is to make the game more dependent on FPS skill. It already is very dependent on FPS skill. RPS elements only become a factor if the teams are reasonably close in aim (and movement and positioning and awareness etc).
I think your suggestions would simply draw out a lost game. The better-aiming team would still win, but the worse-aiming team would be able to hold out longer. I don't think that makes for more fun, just more activity.
The important thing is to make the game more forgiving of early mistakes, yet quickly end once a certain threshold advantage is reached by one team. Like a game of tug-of-war with a mud pit between the sides: they can go back and forth for a long time, but once a few people get their feet in the mud, they're going to lose, lose fast, and lose spectacularly. NS2 should be more like that.
@Chris0132 - I don't think the way to address the snowballing effect is to make the game more dependent on FPS skill. It already is very dependent on FPS skill. RPS elements only become a factor if the teams are reasonably close in aim (and movement and positioning and awareness etc).
I think your suggestions would simply draw out a lost game. The better-aiming team would still win, but the worse-aiming team would be able to hold out longer. I don't think that makes for more fun, just more activity.
The important thing is to make the game more forgiving of early mistakes, yet quickly end once a certain threshold advantage is reached by one team. Like a game of tug-of-war with a mud pit between the sides: they can go back and forth for a long time, but once a few people get their feet in the mud, they're going to lose, lose fast, and lose spectacularly. NS2 should be more like that.
But, that's my point, the game isn't dependent very much on FPS skill, it is arguably only dependent on that for a comparatively short time at the beginning of the match, and even then there is a massive element of chance determining how early expansion plays out. Depending on your choice of direction you can secure ground uncontested, blunt an enemy rush, leave your base wide open, discover the enemy hive, crush an early enemy extractor placement.
And the very nature of putting emphasis on things costing money as we do right now means that any financial lead is going to snowball very, very quickly. Every single unit of resources you acquire that the enemy does not, moves the game one step further out of the hands of the players, and one step further into the hands of simple statistics. Our guns do more DPS than your bites, our players have more HP than yours. Our team has access to siege weaponry and yours doesn't. We can buy rocks and you're still using scissor technology. A game based on statistical inevitability is not a fun game, it's arguably not even a game, it's a simulation. A game based on skilled combat has the potential to be fun. The game isn't very good at ending quickly even now, nor is it good at being fun while ending.
That's the problem, really, the team that's good at aiming won't necessarily win because of that, or won't be able to consistently make progress because of that. If they lose an extractor or the enemy researches a new tech, no reasonable amount of skill will even that gap. Similarly, a team that is bad at playing can hold out for quite a while, simply because they have money to spend. They can research upgrades and spend money on turtling structures and boost their spawn rate and cluster all their expensive stuff in one area, and even though they might have steadily lost ground due to not being as good, when they concentrate their money in one place, they become suddenly much better than the less-well-equipped people attacking them, because of course the attackers are spending money on expanding and securing their ground. But they have to wait ten or fifteen minutes to outstrip the turtlers in terms of their equipment. Because the turtlers are spending it all on defence all the time, the attackers have to spread out their spending. The game becomes stale because of the money mechanic, not in spite of it.
But, that's my point, the game isn't dependent very much on FPS skill, it is arguably only dependent on that for a comparatively short time at the beginning of the match, and even then there is a massive element of chance determining how early expansion plays out. Depending on your choice of direction you can secure ground uncontested, blunt an enemy rush, leave your base wide open, discover the enemy hive, crush an early enemy extractor placement.
I see your point, but I wouldn't put it that way. The game is VERY dependent on FPS skill. The better aiming team will win the game unless they make numerous strategic mistakes. A much better aiming team can win even if they make a few horrible blunders.
And wrt turtling:
I don't think turtling is a very big problem any more.
If enough people on the losing team don't want to turtle, they'll concede. If enough people on the winning team know how to break a turtle (it's not that hard: go for the I WIN button) then the game will be over quickly. You only get a turtle if - essentially - the majorities on both teams decide that that's what they want to do. So, hey, if that's what they want, well then, more power to them.
@Chris0132 The game is very dependent on individual skill already, attacking res nodes is one of the few things a new player can do in the game to be helpful to their team and you want to strip that away for some reason. NS2 is not a pure FPS game, if that is what you are looking for there are lots of them out there, this is a game for people interested in a FPS/RTS hybrid.
As a good example of what can happen when a team on the brink doesn't concede at the first sign of the other team showing that they too can play...
Today, I was playing in a smaller server, with only 7 or 8 players for most of the game. At one point he aliens went on the offensive, started taking things out, as they should for an interesting game as marines!
At this point, another player on mic started pleading for us to concede, while he should have been aiming and shooting at damn dirty aliens!
They managed to take out the IP's at marine start, and everyone but me, Well, we had a comm chair up in locker room, where I happened to have run off to, they had taken out the power there, but we still had a chance! If the team would have conceded, I'd not have had the chance to jump in, build an IP, and weld up locker room. The game then turned into a hectic defense of locker room, while managing to go on the offensive.
We eventually lost... but before we did, we took out a couple of hives!
Had our team conceded, yea, it would have been a shorter game, but so much less epic.
There are game conceded that could have been won, and there are games that are not conceded and are lost.
So what ?
Like most people, I do vote concede when I'm bored beause nothing happen. Because our losing is unable to try anything and the winning side is too slow to finish.
Basically, two kinds of players, quitters, and fighters. If you accept that you loose before the game is over, then you loose, but when you force others to concede who would rather not quit because they enjoy the challenge, then you suck.
I believe the changes in the upcoming official balance mod will address these problems of games being hard to finish. A lot of it boils down to the respawnsystem which encourages turteling a lot. Concede is just a crutch and it is not implemented the best way. Remember how epic the "after game" in ns1 was, with people trying to hide around the map.
Basically, two kinds of players, quitters, and fighters. If you accept that you loose before the game is over, then you loose, but when you force others to concede who would rather not quit because they enjoy the challenge, then you suck.
You are forgetting the realists: the people who have played the game long enough to know when the game is lost with no hope of recovery. Believe it or not, not everyone likes getting kill-farmed for 10 minutes before the other team decides it's time to end it. This game does not play like a traditional FPS. You can't expect people to have fun when they are res-starved and extremely far behind in tech. Just like any RTS, there is a point where you just say GG and wipe.
@Chris0132 The game is very dependent on individual skill already, attacking res nodes is one of the few things a new player can do in the game to be helpful to their team and you want to strip that away for some reason. NS2 is not a pure FPS game, if that is what you are looking for there are lots of them out there, this is a game for people interested in a FPS/RTS hybrid.
Attacking res nodes is not FPS skill though, it's just about the only way players on the ground can personally decide to affect the RTS side of the game.
It requires no talent to chew on res nodes or repeatedly hurl marines at them, nor is it particularly fun to do so, it is however the best way to win the game, which is sort of a problem I think?
It isn't a measure of individual skill if people attack res nodes, it's a measure of individual ability to put up with tedious but necessary tasks.
All of the truly skilful parts of the game stop being very relevant quite quickly. Combat becomes more about who has the better gear, RTS becomes more about who already has the resource lead. The pure skill of combat which you see in the very early game, with balanced skulk vs marine combat, that goes out of the window quite fast, because marines start getting weapons and armor upgrades and buying shotguns, and skulks start getting carapace and celerity or evolving into fades. And then victory or defeat is determined far less by how people perform in combat, and more by which team can afford more fades or shotguns.
Basically, two kinds of players, quitters, and fighters. If you accept that you loose before the game is over, then you loose, but when you force others to concede who would rather not quit because they enjoy the challenge, then you suck.
You are forgetting the realists: the people who have played the game long enough to know when the game is lost with no hope of recovery. Believe it or not, not everyone likes getting kill-farmed for 10 minutes before the other team decides it's time to end it. This game does not play like a traditional FPS. You can't expect people to have fun when they are res-starved and extremely far behind in tech. Just like any RTS, there is a point where you just say GG and wipe.
Concede is good.
I've been here 10 years, you joined today and have 3 posts, and you have a my little pony avatar, so your opinion is moot. I've been playing since beta build 170 something. But then, I suspect you're just a double account set up to agree with yourself.
The pure skill of combat which you see in the very early game, with balanced skulk vs marine combat, that goes out of the window quite fast, because marines start getting weapons and armor upgrades and buying shotguns, and skulks start getting carapace and celerity or evolving into fades. And then victory or defeat is determined far less by how people perform in combat, and more by which team can afford more fades or shotguns.
Yes, exactly.
Some of us quite enjoy that. That's why we play NS2.
The pure skill of combat which you see in the very early game, with balanced skulk vs marine combat, that goes out of the window quite fast, because marines start getting weapons and armor upgrades and buying shotguns, and skulks start getting carapace and celerity or evolving into fades. And then victory or defeat is determined far less by how people perform in combat, and more by which team can afford more fades or shotguns.
Yes, exactly.
Some of us quite enjoy that. That's why we play NS2.
....Why?
I honestly don't get that, what is the fun in a game where your input is not important.
A strategic element in a game can add a lot of depth certainly, hell I like RPGs precisely because of the strategic choices in how you develop your character, but I don't see how turning the game every round into a mostly pay to win experience adds anything of value.
It's not the only way to put strategy in the game, you would have plenty of strategy just with buildings and bases, those give you a shifting front and meta-movement options, secured territory lets you get around the map and pick where you attack the enemy, and where yours and the enemy's forces deploy to will dictate where is easier and harder to attack, and that's all great, but I don't see why you need to remove player involvement in combat outcomes for that to be present in the game.
I don't want to win because I bought an exosuit and the enemy can't afford onoses, and I don't want to lose because I'm trying to fight fades with the basic rifle. I want proper, engaging, balanced combat. Pay to win is bad in MMOs because it removes that sort of challenge, but NS2 becomes pay to win on a team level. Teams pay money and win because of it. That's just... dumb. And it's also I think why players concede at the drop of a hat, because they know full well that their personal skill is just not important, they can't win without the paid upgrades, so why bother?
Basically, two kinds of players, quitters, and fighters. If you accept that you loose before the game is over, then you loose, but when you force others to concede who would rather not quit because they enjoy the challenge, then you suck.
You are forgetting the realists: the people who have played the game long enough to know when the game is lost with no hope of recovery. Believe it or not, not everyone likes getting kill-farmed for 10 minutes before the other team decides it's time to end it. This game does not play like a traditional FPS. You can't expect people to have fun when they are res-starved and extremely far behind in tech. Just like any RTS, there is a point where you just say GG and wipe.
Concede is good.
I've been here 10 years, you joined today and have 3 posts, and you have a my little pony avatar, so your opinion is moot. I've been playing since beta build 170 something. But then, I suspect you're just a double account set up to agree with yourself.
My god, get off your pedestal. I've been playing since NS1 and I have every right to my opinion, but I guess since I don't frequent game forums I can't compete with your glorious thousand-post master race. Could you be any more pretentious?
Basically, two kinds of players, quitters, and fighters. If you accept that you loose before the game is over, then you loose, but when you force others to concede who would rather not quit because they enjoy the challenge, then you suck.
There's no extra "challenge" in most situations that people concede in. People concede games in positions where it is literally impossible to win the game without the other team suddenly playing 100x worse and/or going AFK. The idea of things being a challenge or not never comes in to the equation on any level. Fighting 6 Onos with 12 marines isn't a "challenge", it's a foregone conclusion unless the Onos are playing with their feet - no amount of marine skill wins that matchup.
I honestly don't get that, what is the fun in a game where your input is not important.
Well, I certainly don't think that "my input is not important" in NS2. My FPS skill is less important to the outcome if I and my team are succeeding at our strategic play than it would be otherwise, but that's hardly the same thing as my input not being important. My FPS skill is not the only input I have on the game.
It's also true that everyone's skill - FPS or strategic - becomes less and less important as the game goes on due to the snowball effect. That's a problem in pretty much any game that has an economy. Some games manage to avoid it better than others. NS2 needs a lot of work in this area, but I'm confident (hopeful?) that over the course of, say, the next year that it will get a lot better, between the devs giving it some attention and the players figuring out more of the metagame.
I don't want to win because I bought an exosuit and the enemy can't afford onoses, and I don't want to lose because I'm trying to fight fades with the basic rifle. I want proper, engaging, balanced combat. Pay to win is bad in MMOs because it removes that sort of challenge, but NS2 becomes pay to win on a team level. Teams pay money and win because of it. That's just... dumb. And it's also I think why players concede at the drop of a hat, because they know full well that their personal skill is just not important, they can't win without the paid upgrades, so why bother?
My take on that is: if you can afford an exosuit and the enemy can't afford onoses, then you have won. It's not that you're going to win with your exosuit... you have already won. The game is: secure sufficient resources to obtain a sufficient advantage to achieve a victory on the field. That's the game. I like that game. That game is fun. For me. Maybe not for everyone, but that's okay.
The drawback is that not everyone can tell when they've lost that game, and accordingly have to actually lose on the field to know that they've already lost.
Just like any RTS, there is a point where you just say GG and wipe.
Concede is good.
Just adding on to this point (and supporting the post I just made):
People GG and leave in RTS games once the game hits a stage in where it becomes impossible to win on your skill alone. If the game in SC2, and you just lost your entire army + a critical expansion base, you can no longer win the game unless your opponent severely messes up. Meaning, the capability to win the game is completely out of your hands, and winning would require your opponent to make a massive amount of serious mistakes to let you back in. There is no "challenge" involved in those situations, only waiting on the infinitesimal chance that your opponent would suddenly be unable to finish a completed game.
Simple analogy: It'd be like not conceding defeat in Chess once someone has checkmated your King, because you want to wait on the 0.0000000001% chance that they can't physically make the final chess move and knock your king over. You have zero control over whether or not he checkmates you at that point, and you're essentially hoping that he suffers a heart attack and/or stroke before he can make the final physical move.
The drawback is that not everyone can tell when they've lost that game, and accordingly have to actually lose on the field to know that they've already lost.
Seems like a lot of people are like this, especially in pubs. I'd like my games to be quick and to the point. I hate games that draw on forever, unless teams are an even match for each other. The turtling that can happen as a result is horrendous.
Delaying a loss by 20 minutes is not "challenging" or "hardcore", it's annoying.
Delaying a loss by 20 minutes is not "challenging" or "hardcore", it's annoying.
Some people do enjoy it, though. And it can be fun, the first few times, and maybe every now and then if the mood strikes you. But it gets old fast, and I suspect everyone will get over it soon.
Your FPS skill and your ability to decide where you personally go are about the only input you can really have in a game of NS2 if you aren't the commander.
Theoretically you can start ordering other players around but the commander will probably take issue with that, and it is contingent on other players being willing to cooperate with you, so it's a very unlikely or uncertain occurrence, not something you can base a game on.
So it follows that your FPS gunslinging ability/alien bitey prowess, and your ability to control your own personal strategic placement are the two ways in which your input is 'important'. In the sense that they are the two ways your input can have an effect on the game.
Arguably the biggest way you can have an input on the game is with the strategic decisions, you can have a lot of effect on the game if you are willing to spend all your time pursuing harvesters/extractors, or at least you can have the most effect you can really expect to have in a current game of NS2.
But my objection here is that this is not a very engaging activity. The best way to kill harvesters is probably to throw yourself suicidally at them, guns blazing over and over again until the sheer weight of bullets outdoes the natural regeneration of the harvester, even if a skulk kills you they can't stop you damaging the harvester, and eventually it'll die, and you can prevent it being put back up by doing the same thing. If you want to you can choose to try fighting enemies first, but there's no reason to beyond boredom, because it isn't the optimum way to achieve the objective and the overall effect on the game.
For skulks it's a little different, they can use their mobility to harass undefended extractors and run when the marines show up, then go attack another one, but it's the same basic thing. Ignore enemies, chomp inanimate objects, because the enemies are not the goal, you achieve nothing by killing them.
There's also an issue where, as the game goes on, this becomes harder and harder to do, because both teams start fortifying their extractors with crags and whips and phase gates and turrets, so you eventually stop being able to get much return on your individual strategic forays. So not only are they not engaging activity wise, they are also generally unproductive. I should also point out that you are penalize for using this tactic because you don't get any personal res when dead, even though it is an effective one.
So your strategic input into the game is both dull and progressively marginalized as the game goes on. Your FPS input suffers the same way. Doesn't matter how good you are because your equipment is the main determining factor, as long as you're moderately competent you can win just by having better stuff than the enemy. FPS gameplay does however have the benefit of being engaging when it isn't being crushed by 'strategic depth'. Skulks vs marines are a very fun and very well designed piece of FPS gameplay, the only problem is that they only exist for a few minutes at the start of a game, and nothing else in the game even approaches that level of interest and asymmetrical balance. Everything else is just either better than what the enemy has, or worse than what the enemy has, not 'asymmetrical' just 'unbalanced'. Your FPS skill is simply not very important after a few minutes, both because killing enemies doesn't help the strategic side much, because it doesn't get you money, and because the very act of killing enemies is not determined by your skill at controlling your character as much as it is by how many stat buffs you've bought.
So, I say that your entire input is simply not important after a while, you are there to be an unskilled laborer, basically, you are not a player, you're a pair of legs to move your shotgun around and the shotgun's innate betterness than the enemy skulks will do most of the winning, or the fact that your fade can teleport and has a lot more hitpoints and can kill the unupgraded marines in two or three hits.
Your input is not important because a bot could do your job most of the time if you gave it the same equipment.
A well-written post; thanks for sharing your view. I'm afraid I'm late for bed, so I can't give it a suitable reply right now. Suffice it to say that a) I disagree with most of your points, and b) you and I have very different views of the game.
I will add this, briefly. As I was reading through your objections, the one thing that stuck in my mind as a response to many of them was "teamwork". For me, the fact that NS2 is a team game is absolutely central to the experience and its appeal. The game (for me) isn't about shooting down harvesters, it's about being part of a team who are using communication and coordination to effectively plan and execute a winning strategy. ... and if shooting down harvesters is part of that strategy, well, then I say "let's git-er-done!"
I think a lot of your other points could be better refuted by someone more experienced at the game than I, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
Certainly yes it is important to preserve teamwork, but I don't think you need to remove individual skill for that to be the case.
A team of individually skilled players will still beat a team of individually unskilled players if you remove the reliance on expensive equipment. If anything I find that the reliance on money removes most of the team dynamic, because your team doesn't need to work together very much or really interface with each other, they just need to cluster together so there is a big concentration of expensive things together in one place.
If you removed or at least severely lessened the idea of expensive = better, you would have far more room for creative teamwork, and good teamwork could help push back against a team that has a territory and resource advantage, it could turn the tide and consistently doing that would allow you to begin taking back ground, and eventually win.
I don't think it's a good thing that the game 'is already won' and especially not as quickly and easily as it is at the moment. If a team pulls out the stops and starts working well together and the players start getting kills and winning fights, that should turn it around for the team, at the moment it doesn't because resource leads (which are mostly borne of the snowball effect, you had an advantage five minutes ago so you have a bigger one now) are the main determining factor in victory.
Comments
I mean, it seems to me that the game is frequently reaching a state, within the first half or two thirds of the match time, where a significant portion of one team feels (often correctly) that 1. They probably cannot fight back to a win. And more importantly, 2. There is no point in trying...
So, effectively, this can be rephrased as 'often, the game reaches a point where trying to win is both futile, and playing the game further is not worth the effort...
What is going wrong here where your game is becoming so boring for the players that they stop wanting to play it?
Seems to me that if people are ending up feeling like that, it doesn't matter what you do with concede, remove it, rebalance it, replace it, you've got a pretty massive problem with the game when people are feeling that way about it.
Its hard to change that without stripping out the RTS aspect of the game. If one team is rolling in resources and upgrades they're probably going to win. Might be possible to tweak the slippery slope a bit, but at the end of the day most games are going to end with one team massively ahead and they will be massively ahead before the final killing blow happens.
It's conceders that are forcing others to play the game as they want, not the actual full game players forcing anyone to do anything.
If you are fequently conceding, and even worse, someone who tells your team to concede, you are the one who thinks everyone should play the game as you see fit, not the other way around.
There is nothing wrong with vote concede.
Yeah, it's anti-climactic, but if the enemy team has two or more tech points and takes out your second tech point, there's a good chance the game is over.
Well, yes it is certainly a common feature of RTS games that it is easy to develop an early lead and cripple the enemy from there on.
But, the problem is that that doesn't translate well to the FPS game of NS2. Yes it may make sense to a commander that they win or lose like that, but for players on the ground it mostly just means they often don't get to play with the fun toys, and the game becomes arbitrarily easier/harder for them, often unsatisfyingly so in both instances.
To make a good FPS/RTS I think there needs to be some way to address this problem. You cannot tie all FPS enjoyment and success to the RTS part of the game, when the RTS part of the game is very abstracted from the actual FPS combat going on.
You could probably go a long way to improving it by, say, balancing guns and lifeforms less around 'this one is very expensive so it is much much better' because that translates to 'this one is prohibitively expensive unless you're already winning'.
Even something as doable as reworking the overall game balance to allow for more lifeforms and guns more often would do a lot to make the game fun even if you're losing, and reduce the absolute dominance of the strategic game.
Basically, I think right now, you win based on how much money you have, not how skilled your players are. Of course player skill partially feeds into how much money you have, because if your players fight better they will capture more ground, but this rapidly turns into a steamroller.
After the first five or at the most ten minutes, you don't have lots of money because your players are skilled, you have lots of money because you had lots of money for the past five to ten minutes and can afford better stuff now, and that lets you get more money.
Yes the game does need an RTS element, but the RTS doesn't need to be the only way to win. If you cut back on the benefits to a strong RTS game, you would automatically make the FPS part more important, and give players on the ground more role in the game, and reduce the RTS-style problem of escalating leads.
If guns and alien classes were more of a side-grade than an upgrade, for example, and were unlocked easier and available cheaper, it would mean the game was less about who has more money to afford the good stuff, and more about who has more skill to win the fights and capture territory, and it'd be about that all the way through. You'd still have a strong RTS element with territory being the way to protect your bases and the key to getting some equipment, but you wouldn't have the very very money-driven strategy of the current game, which is not 'fight well to beat the enemy' but instead 'wait for the money to get fades/exos/jetpacks/weapons 3/whatever and then win because you have that and the enemy can't counter it'.
If players can participate and aren't locked out by strategic factors, I think you'll see less concession, in all forms.
Funnily enough, much hated mechanics like the power node are the ones that can save a game already lost.
I think your suggestions would simply draw out a lost game. The better-aiming team would still win, but the worse-aiming team would be able to hold out longer. I don't think that makes for more fun, just more activity.
The important thing is to make the game more forgiving of early mistakes, yet quickly end once a certain threshold advantage is reached by one team. Like a game of tug-of-war with a mud pit between the sides: they can go back and forth for a long time, but once a few people get their feet in the mud, they're going to lose, lose fast, and lose spectacularly. NS2 should be more like that.
But, that's my point, the game isn't dependent very much on FPS skill, it is arguably only dependent on that for a comparatively short time at the beginning of the match, and even then there is a massive element of chance determining how early expansion plays out. Depending on your choice of direction you can secure ground uncontested, blunt an enemy rush, leave your base wide open, discover the enemy hive, crush an early enemy extractor placement.
And the very nature of putting emphasis on things costing money as we do right now means that any financial lead is going to snowball very, very quickly. Every single unit of resources you acquire that the enemy does not, moves the game one step further out of the hands of the players, and one step further into the hands of simple statistics. Our guns do more DPS than your bites, our players have more HP than yours. Our team has access to siege weaponry and yours doesn't. We can buy rocks and you're still using scissor technology. A game based on statistical inevitability is not a fun game, it's arguably not even a game, it's a simulation. A game based on skilled combat has the potential to be fun. The game isn't very good at ending quickly even now, nor is it good at being fun while ending.
That's the problem, really, the team that's good at aiming won't necessarily win because of that, or won't be able to consistently make progress because of that. If they lose an extractor or the enemy researches a new tech, no reasonable amount of skill will even that gap. Similarly, a team that is bad at playing can hold out for quite a while, simply because they have money to spend. They can research upgrades and spend money on turtling structures and boost their spawn rate and cluster all their expensive stuff in one area, and even though they might have steadily lost ground due to not being as good, when they concentrate their money in one place, they become suddenly much better than the less-well-equipped people attacking them, because of course the attackers are spending money on expanding and securing their ground. But they have to wait ten or fifteen minutes to outstrip the turtlers in terms of their equipment. Because the turtlers are spending it all on defence all the time, the attackers have to spread out their spending. The game becomes stale because of the money mechanic, not in spite of it.
I see your point, but I wouldn't put it that way. The game is VERY dependent on FPS skill. The better aiming team will win the game unless they make numerous strategic mistakes. A much better aiming team can win even if they make a few horrible blunders.
And wrt turtling:
I don't think turtling is a very big problem any more.
If enough people on the losing team don't want to turtle, they'll concede. If enough people on the winning team know how to break a turtle (it's not that hard: go for the I WIN button) then the game will be over quickly. You only get a turtle if - essentially - the majorities on both teams decide that that's what they want to do. So, hey, if that's what they want, well then, more power to them.
Today, I was playing in a smaller server, with only 7 or 8 players for most of the game. At one point he aliens went on the offensive, started taking things out, as they should for an interesting game as marines!
At this point, another player on mic started pleading for us to concede, while he should have been aiming and shooting at damn dirty aliens!
They managed to take out the IP's at marine start, and everyone but me, Well, we had a comm chair up in locker room, where I happened to have run off to, they had taken out the power there, but we still had a chance! If the team would have conceded, I'd not have had the chance to jump in, build an IP, and weld up locker room. The game then turned into a hectic defense of locker room, while managing to go on the offensive.
We eventually lost... but before we did, we took out a couple of hives!
Had our team conceded, yea, it would have been a shorter game, but so much less epic.
So what ?
Like most people, I do vote concede when I'm bored beause nothing happen. Because our losing is unable to try anything and the winning side is too slow to finish.
Stop seeing problems where there are none.
You are forgetting the realists: the people who have played the game long enough to know when the game is lost with no hope of recovery. Believe it or not, not everyone likes getting kill-farmed for 10 minutes before the other team decides it's time to end it. This game does not play like a traditional FPS. You can't expect people to have fun when they are res-starved and extremely far behind in tech. Just like any RTS, there is a point where you just say GG and wipe.
Concede is good.
Attacking res nodes is not FPS skill though, it's just about the only way players on the ground can personally decide to affect the RTS side of the game.
It requires no talent to chew on res nodes or repeatedly hurl marines at them, nor is it particularly fun to do so, it is however the best way to win the game, which is sort of a problem I think?
It isn't a measure of individual skill if people attack res nodes, it's a measure of individual ability to put up with tedious but necessary tasks.
All of the truly skilful parts of the game stop being very relevant quite quickly. Combat becomes more about who has the better gear, RTS becomes more about who already has the resource lead. The pure skill of combat which you see in the very early game, with balanced skulk vs marine combat, that goes out of the window quite fast, because marines start getting weapons and armor upgrades and buying shotguns, and skulks start getting carapace and celerity or evolving into fades. And then victory or defeat is determined far less by how people perform in combat, and more by which team can afford more fades or shotguns.
Yes, exactly.
Some of us quite enjoy that. That's why we play NS2.
....Why?
I honestly don't get that, what is the fun in a game where your input is not important.
A strategic element in a game can add a lot of depth certainly, hell I like RPGs precisely because of the strategic choices in how you develop your character, but I don't see how turning the game every round into a mostly pay to win experience adds anything of value.
It's not the only way to put strategy in the game, you would have plenty of strategy just with buildings and bases, those give you a shifting front and meta-movement options, secured territory lets you get around the map and pick where you attack the enemy, and where yours and the enemy's forces deploy to will dictate where is easier and harder to attack, and that's all great, but I don't see why you need to remove player involvement in combat outcomes for that to be present in the game.
I don't want to win because I bought an exosuit and the enemy can't afford onoses, and I don't want to lose because I'm trying to fight fades with the basic rifle. I want proper, engaging, balanced combat. Pay to win is bad in MMOs because it removes that sort of challenge, but NS2 becomes pay to win on a team level. Teams pay money and win because of it. That's just... dumb. And it's also I think why players concede at the drop of a hat, because they know full well that their personal skill is just not important, they can't win without the paid upgrades, so why bother?
My god, get off your pedestal. I've been playing since NS1 and I have every right to my opinion, but I guess since I don't frequent game forums I can't compete with your glorious thousand-post master race. Could you be any more pretentious?
There's no extra "challenge" in most situations that people concede in. People concede games in positions where it is literally impossible to win the game without the other team suddenly playing 100x worse and/or going AFK. The idea of things being a challenge or not never comes in to the equation on any level. Fighting 6 Onos with 12 marines isn't a "challenge", it's a foregone conclusion unless the Onos are playing with their feet - no amount of marine skill wins that matchup.
Well, I certainly don't think that "my input is not important" in NS2. My FPS skill is less important to the outcome if I and my team are succeeding at our strategic play than it would be otherwise, but that's hardly the same thing as my input not being important. My FPS skill is not the only input I have on the game.
It's also true that everyone's skill - FPS or strategic - becomes less and less important as the game goes on due to the snowball effect. That's a problem in pretty much any game that has an economy. Some games manage to avoid it better than others. NS2 needs a lot of work in this area, but I'm confident (hopeful?) that over the course of, say, the next year that it will get a lot better, between the devs giving it some attention and the players figuring out more of the metagame.
My take on that is: if you can afford an exosuit and the enemy can't afford onoses, then you have won. It's not that you're going to win with your exosuit... you have already won. The game is: secure sufficient resources to obtain a sufficient advantage to achieve a victory on the field. That's the game. I like that game. That game is fun. For me. Maybe not for everyone, but that's okay.
The drawback is that not everyone can tell when they've lost that game, and accordingly have to actually lose on the field to know that they've already lost.
Just adding on to this point (and supporting the post I just made):
People GG and leave in RTS games once the game hits a stage in where it becomes impossible to win on your skill alone. If the game in SC2, and you just lost your entire army + a critical expansion base, you can no longer win the game unless your opponent severely messes up. Meaning, the capability to win the game is completely out of your hands, and winning would require your opponent to make a massive amount of serious mistakes to let you back in. There is no "challenge" involved in those situations, only waiting on the infinitesimal chance that your opponent would suddenly be unable to finish a completed game.
Simple analogy: It'd be like not conceding defeat in Chess once someone has checkmated your King, because you want to wait on the 0.0000000001% chance that they can't physically make the final chess move and knock your king over. You have zero control over whether or not he checkmates you at that point, and you're essentially hoping that he suffers a heart attack and/or stroke before he can make the final physical move.
Seems like a lot of people are like this, especially in pubs. I'd like my games to be quick and to the point. I hate games that draw on forever, unless teams are an even match for each other. The turtling that can happen as a result is horrendous.
Delaying a loss by 20 minutes is not "challenging" or "hardcore", it's annoying.
Some people do enjoy it, though. And it can be fun, the first few times, and maybe every now and then if the mood strikes you. But it gets old fast, and I suspect everyone will get over it soon.
Theoretically you can start ordering other players around but the commander will probably take issue with that, and it is contingent on other players being willing to cooperate with you, so it's a very unlikely or uncertain occurrence, not something you can base a game on.
So it follows that your FPS gunslinging ability/alien bitey prowess, and your ability to control your own personal strategic placement are the two ways in which your input is 'important'. In the sense that they are the two ways your input can have an effect on the game.
Arguably the biggest way you can have an input on the game is with the strategic decisions, you can have a lot of effect on the game if you are willing to spend all your time pursuing harvesters/extractors, or at least you can have the most effect you can really expect to have in a current game of NS2.
But my objection here is that this is not a very engaging activity. The best way to kill harvesters is probably to throw yourself suicidally at them, guns blazing over and over again until the sheer weight of bullets outdoes the natural regeneration of the harvester, even if a skulk kills you they can't stop you damaging the harvester, and eventually it'll die, and you can prevent it being put back up by doing the same thing. If you want to you can choose to try fighting enemies first, but there's no reason to beyond boredom, because it isn't the optimum way to achieve the objective and the overall effect on the game.
For skulks it's a little different, they can use their mobility to harass undefended extractors and run when the marines show up, then go attack another one, but it's the same basic thing. Ignore enemies, chomp inanimate objects, because the enemies are not the goal, you achieve nothing by killing them.
There's also an issue where, as the game goes on, this becomes harder and harder to do, because both teams start fortifying their extractors with crags and whips and phase gates and turrets, so you eventually stop being able to get much return on your individual strategic forays. So not only are they not engaging activity wise, they are also generally unproductive. I should also point out that you are penalize for using this tactic because you don't get any personal res when dead, even though it is an effective one.
So your strategic input into the game is both dull and progressively marginalized as the game goes on. Your FPS input suffers the same way. Doesn't matter how good you are because your equipment is the main determining factor, as long as you're moderately competent you can win just by having better stuff than the enemy. FPS gameplay does however have the benefit of being engaging when it isn't being crushed by 'strategic depth'. Skulks vs marines are a very fun and very well designed piece of FPS gameplay, the only problem is that they only exist for a few minutes at the start of a game, and nothing else in the game even approaches that level of interest and asymmetrical balance. Everything else is just either better than what the enemy has, or worse than what the enemy has, not 'asymmetrical' just 'unbalanced'. Your FPS skill is simply not very important after a few minutes, both because killing enemies doesn't help the strategic side much, because it doesn't get you money, and because the very act of killing enemies is not determined by your skill at controlling your character as much as it is by how many stat buffs you've bought.
So, I say that your entire input is simply not important after a while, you are there to be an unskilled laborer, basically, you are not a player, you're a pair of legs to move your shotgun around and the shotgun's innate betterness than the enemy skulks will do most of the winning, or the fact that your fade can teleport and has a lot more hitpoints and can kill the unupgraded marines in two or three hits.
Your input is not important because a bot could do your job most of the time if you gave it the same equipment.
I will add this, briefly. As I was reading through your objections, the one thing that stuck in my mind as a response to many of them was "teamwork". For me, the fact that NS2 is a team game is absolutely central to the experience and its appeal. The game (for me) isn't about shooting down harvesters, it's about being part of a team who are using communication and coordination to effectively plan and execute a winning strategy. ... and if shooting down harvesters is part of that strategy, well, then I say "let's git-er-done!"
I think a lot of your other points could be better refuted by someone more experienced at the game than I, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
A team of individually skilled players will still beat a team of individually unskilled players if you remove the reliance on expensive equipment. If anything I find that the reliance on money removes most of the team dynamic, because your team doesn't need to work together very much or really interface with each other, they just need to cluster together so there is a big concentration of expensive things together in one place.
If you removed or at least severely lessened the idea of expensive = better, you would have far more room for creative teamwork, and good teamwork could help push back against a team that has a territory and resource advantage, it could turn the tide and consistently doing that would allow you to begin taking back ground, and eventually win.
I don't think it's a good thing that the game 'is already won' and especially not as quickly and easily as it is at the moment. If a team pulls out the stops and starts working well together and the players start getting kills and winning fights, that should turn it around for the team, at the moment it doesn't because resource leads (which are mostly borne of the snowball effect, you had an advantage five minutes ago so you have a bigger one now) are the main determining factor in victory.