A critical Review
Cowcow
Join Date: 2013-09-01 Member: 187567Members
Join Date: 2013-09-01 Member: 187567Members
Hi all, this is my first post on these forums. Although I have not played this game over a long time period, i have put over 900+ hours in this game since the release of number 2 (though i still remain a bad shot).
And what a wonderful game! I feel like i am playing as a person inside age of empires; set in the future, With Aliens and In space.
So apart form AoE, i'm also a big total war series fan and i do enjoy first person shooters and have played games like battlefield since it's 1942 version - all which i love to play online, and the level of strategy involved in games like this is the thing that keeps drawing me back.
The first thing I've noticed, and i'm sure others have to, is there is a huge challenge to this game type (not really the game itself).
And this challenge springs from two very distinct but sometimes overlapping motives stemming from why players play the game.
1) To have fun
2) To win
Now sure, there are certainly a lot that crosses over. Obviously winning is fun. Heck, most people including me find the enjoyment from winning.
It's just like a sports team really. But not completely. Unlike a sports team, you don't really have a duty to work/win with your teammates. And that is actually really fair, it is a game after all. And other people might compare this with other games, like ones where you win by your team getting the most total kills or not getting killed the most total deaths. But this is not a fair analysis. In this game, you generally are always with a team around 10, you NEED to do things that can be boring (building) and there are crucial moments that can end/make your game (phase to x location to prevent gorge before x happens!, guard the arcs! wield! guard here! we need someone to spend there res gorging! And that is just the players.
For commanders, nearly everything they do is crucial, as they are spending the teams res. If they do something silly, their whole team goes down. furthermore someone has to do it, or someone will have to learn either way at the expense of their team ( or expecting everyone to sit their idle watching basic tutorial videos before they play the game i don't think is believable).
And obviously their is going to be tension between making it as simple as possible for people to learn/comprehend, giving it diversity for more experienced player matches and engagement while being fun - and that's just for both sides, what about with people with interests in only one? ah oh...
Seriously, really need to put emphasis on how all those things clash. Too much complexity means no one will want to learn/ hold responsibility for their team. Too much simplicity means no one will be interested enough to give it ago, and even when you have a balance between these two things sometimes it's not even fun, because you just sit there receiving demands or being anxious not to do a crucial mistake (example: forget power is being bile-bombed).
As a marine Comm on those public servers (95% of players play?) at the start you can't get those 8+ odd things all at once or it least all within the time everyone naturally wants at the start - shotguns, mines, 2nd ip, more res towers, phase gates, advanced armory, + med/ammo/scan requests, all the while having to explain at moments why you aren't doing something people mistake for neglect (not med spamming to save for that phase gate urgently needed.
There is also this awkward grey zone of who's job it is to co-ordinate things. There is nothing worse than an argument over teamspeak across the speakers of a dozen people.
But even saying all this, are they really 'problems?' Aren't they just a clash of perspective and interests? The game needs to sell and therefore make it appeal to new players but it needs to sustain it's player base by making it more in-depth. That is why it is so hard to be constructive in feedback.
But anyway, I will give it a shot.
Contents:
1) ideas to make people play together more smoothly
2) Ideas to add to the Alien comm
3) ideas to add to the Marine Comm
1) General radical Ideas:
i) Add some second type of resource you gain when building or for following orders, or reserve this more for the commander. Hell, maybe just new content in general, or make the assist Comms can give from a different res that both comm's have natural access to. This way a really skilled commander only has a small advantage rather than getting more advantageously tactical r as they get more res.
ii) Do something radical that means the marine comm doesn't require people to build, and just like the Ip auto-generates people as if it's printing them, this 3D print option starts building structures. Obviously would need power, or maybe a marine just to 'activate' it rather than stand there and build. Takes the boring out of doing building tasks.
Make points worth something different:
Add a permanent feature that records the level of your score, and is manifested in some symbolic but non-advantageous way.
iii) You can customize your look, maybe with just colors like a ribbon of some symbol you made around your arm represeting the flag of their 'colony,' or color in your name. So you go from green to lets say, white once your score reaches x, and white to orange once it hits higher than y, and then maybe...red once it gets over z? If this is too radical, maybe there is a default non-color everyone can choose.
This way, veterans don't have an advantage yet you can't discriminate against low lvl players (random ready room solve this anyway). Yet their is some idea that as you play the game you are building up a distinguishable identity, these tiny incentives can be a big driving force on people. Think of all those MMO's that are just about building up a distinguishable character, but obviously in these ways it would not be an advantage.
iv) Instead of in match changes, it's just ready room look changes, like... certain masks you wear in the ready room.
x) get rid of drifters, and use the infestation as sources of where enzime sprays can come from, and make it so marine commander can't drop meds/ammo on infestation. This acts as a counter to any losing side the enemy makes advances on and therefore makes games more fun and close.
Get rid of having to upgrade weapon choices all together, and have an armoury do 3 lvls.
There is less pressure of 'not doing upgrades right' and more on the comm engaging the game with assisting the players, which is a lot more fun and tactical, while also decreasing responsibility.
level one: default: wielders
level two: shotguns, grenades, mines
three: Flame and nader + exo unlocks?
2)Alien Comm:
i) Give rooms or certain areas a lighting failure, accompanied like with a scary alien noise of wires been broken making it extra dark. So cool and tactical. Would do this by having cysted to the power node of that room?
ii) Activate a gush of enzime poison that weakens enemy armour in a certain area.
iii)Give energy/life drops as mini cysts
iv) activate a type of...a wish this word did not have so much connotations...tentacle that brings a single marine in a group forward/back a certain distance.
?) not really an ability but make it so gorge tunnels look like they are ripping into the surface than a smiley flower on the ground.
x) if an alien team has pretty much won and is just facing a turtle, if the comm cysts through the whole map, once a certain map control has been obtained, a countdown of lets say 5 min begins where unless the marines push back alien map control all aliens receive a modest boost in every way of hp, energy ect. Or maybe the game ends and the cyst pollution just kills everyone.
3) Marine Comm:
i) shut a gate for x amount of time - Marines bone wall equiv
ii) Be able to point down your own gadget, like a metal marbel, that means you phase to that spot in that particular room (rather than the phase gate entrance ) or when you are beconed.
iii) assign duties to certain players, like keep this tech point/harvester secure. For example, electrician in x appears next to their name, so if the power goes out responsibility can be more easily shared, or you beacon a particular room, only the selected players you have previously chosen are beaconed (you have the option between beaconing all, and select group, with select group/player being less ress).
iv) Last-stand one time only options. This button puts the power in a certain room on overdrive, causing power to go out for 20 seconds + your command actions to not be active. Yet all marines who are dead spawn in that room instantly. and only can do like 3 marines per Ip (maximum ip limit?)
okay... i cannot remember my roman numbers..
x) Instead of adding just a sentry battery with turrets, you can choose a sentry battery that acts as a back-up power node (obviously without the turrets and little health).
ix) Instead of having just arcs, you have a missle launch thing. Costs 40 res. Within a certain cooldown, it fires a pulse anyywhere on the map, doing the equivalent of two arc pulses worth. Restrictions: Either can only build one, costs heaps or res for each click.
- Or maybe a barrage of pulse gun shots on a certain spot?
Add features where if marines enter a room with no power, or on certain infestation, signal communication is lost with them and they can no longer receive orders or be dropped med/ammo.
Alright, that's all the writing i'm willing to put you guys through for now!
And what a wonderful game! I feel like i am playing as a person inside age of empires; set in the future, With Aliens and In space.
So apart form AoE, i'm also a big total war series fan and i do enjoy first person shooters and have played games like battlefield since it's 1942 version - all which i love to play online, and the level of strategy involved in games like this is the thing that keeps drawing me back.
The first thing I've noticed, and i'm sure others have to, is there is a huge challenge to this game type (not really the game itself).
And this challenge springs from two very distinct but sometimes overlapping motives stemming from why players play the game.
1) To have fun
2) To win
Now sure, there are certainly a lot that crosses over. Obviously winning is fun. Heck, most people including me find the enjoyment from winning.
It's just like a sports team really. But not completely. Unlike a sports team, you don't really have a duty to work/win with your teammates. And that is actually really fair, it is a game after all. And other people might compare this with other games, like ones where you win by your team getting the most total kills or not getting killed the most total deaths. But this is not a fair analysis. In this game, you generally are always with a team around 10, you NEED to do things that can be boring (building) and there are crucial moments that can end/make your game (phase to x location to prevent gorge before x happens!, guard the arcs! wield! guard here! we need someone to spend there res gorging! And that is just the players.
For commanders, nearly everything they do is crucial, as they are spending the teams res. If they do something silly, their whole team goes down. furthermore someone has to do it, or someone will have to learn either way at the expense of their team ( or expecting everyone to sit their idle watching basic tutorial videos before they play the game i don't think is believable).
And obviously their is going to be tension between making it as simple as possible for people to learn/comprehend, giving it diversity for more experienced player matches and engagement while being fun - and that's just for both sides, what about with people with interests in only one? ah oh...
Seriously, really need to put emphasis on how all those things clash. Too much complexity means no one will want to learn/ hold responsibility for their team. Too much simplicity means no one will be interested enough to give it ago, and even when you have a balance between these two things sometimes it's not even fun, because you just sit there receiving demands or being anxious not to do a crucial mistake (example: forget power is being bile-bombed).
As a marine Comm on those public servers (95% of players play?) at the start you can't get those 8+ odd things all at once or it least all within the time everyone naturally wants at the start - shotguns, mines, 2nd ip, more res towers, phase gates, advanced armory, + med/ammo/scan requests, all the while having to explain at moments why you aren't doing something people mistake for neglect (not med spamming to save for that phase gate urgently needed.
There is also this awkward grey zone of who's job it is to co-ordinate things. There is nothing worse than an argument over teamspeak across the speakers of a dozen people.
But even saying all this, are they really 'problems?' Aren't they just a clash of perspective and interests? The game needs to sell and therefore make it appeal to new players but it needs to sustain it's player base by making it more in-depth. That is why it is so hard to be constructive in feedback.
But anyway, I will give it a shot.
Contents:
1) ideas to make people play together more smoothly
2) Ideas to add to the Alien comm
3) ideas to add to the Marine Comm
1) General radical Ideas:
i) Add some second type of resource you gain when building or for following orders, or reserve this more for the commander. Hell, maybe just new content in general, or make the assist Comms can give from a different res that both comm's have natural access to. This way a really skilled commander only has a small advantage rather than getting more advantageously tactical r as they get more res.
ii) Do something radical that means the marine comm doesn't require people to build, and just like the Ip auto-generates people as if it's printing them, this 3D print option starts building structures. Obviously would need power, or maybe a marine just to 'activate' it rather than stand there and build. Takes the boring out of doing building tasks.
Make points worth something different:
Add a permanent feature that records the level of your score, and is manifested in some symbolic but non-advantageous way.
iii) You can customize your look, maybe with just colors like a ribbon of some symbol you made around your arm represeting the flag of their 'colony,' or color in your name. So you go from green to lets say, white once your score reaches x, and white to orange once it hits higher than y, and then maybe...red once it gets over z? If this is too radical, maybe there is a default non-color everyone can choose.
This way, veterans don't have an advantage yet you can't discriminate against low lvl players (random ready room solve this anyway). Yet their is some idea that as you play the game you are building up a distinguishable identity, these tiny incentives can be a big driving force on people. Think of all those MMO's that are just about building up a distinguishable character, but obviously in these ways it would not be an advantage.
iv) Instead of in match changes, it's just ready room look changes, like... certain masks you wear in the ready room.
x) get rid of drifters, and use the infestation as sources of where enzime sprays can come from, and make it so marine commander can't drop meds/ammo on infestation. This acts as a counter to any losing side the enemy makes advances on and therefore makes games more fun and close.
Get rid of having to upgrade weapon choices all together, and have an armoury do 3 lvls.
There is less pressure of 'not doing upgrades right' and more on the comm engaging the game with assisting the players, which is a lot more fun and tactical, while also decreasing responsibility.
level one: default: wielders
level two: shotguns, grenades, mines
three: Flame and nader + exo unlocks?
2)Alien Comm:
i) Give rooms or certain areas a lighting failure, accompanied like with a scary alien noise of wires been broken making it extra dark. So cool and tactical. Would do this by having cysted to the power node of that room?
ii) Activate a gush of enzime poison that weakens enemy armour in a certain area.
iii)Give energy/life drops as mini cysts
iv) activate a type of...a wish this word did not have so much connotations...tentacle that brings a single marine in a group forward/back a certain distance.
?) not really an ability but make it so gorge tunnels look like they are ripping into the surface than a smiley flower on the ground.
x) if an alien team has pretty much won and is just facing a turtle, if the comm cysts through the whole map, once a certain map control has been obtained, a countdown of lets say 5 min begins where unless the marines push back alien map control all aliens receive a modest boost in every way of hp, energy ect. Or maybe the game ends and the cyst pollution just kills everyone.
3) Marine Comm:
i) shut a gate for x amount of time - Marines bone wall equiv
ii) Be able to point down your own gadget, like a metal marbel, that means you phase to that spot in that particular room (rather than the phase gate entrance ) or when you are beconed.
iii) assign duties to certain players, like keep this tech point/harvester secure. For example, electrician in x appears next to their name, so if the power goes out responsibility can be more easily shared, or you beacon a particular room, only the selected players you have previously chosen are beaconed (you have the option between beaconing all, and select group, with select group/player being less ress).
iv) Last-stand one time only options. This button puts the power in a certain room on overdrive, causing power to go out for 20 seconds + your command actions to not be active. Yet all marines who are dead spawn in that room instantly. and only can do like 3 marines per Ip (maximum ip limit?)
okay... i cannot remember my roman numbers..
x) Instead of adding just a sentry battery with turrets, you can choose a sentry battery that acts as a back-up power node (obviously without the turrets and little health).
ix) Instead of having just arcs, you have a missle launch thing. Costs 40 res. Within a certain cooldown, it fires a pulse anyywhere on the map, doing the equivalent of two arc pulses worth. Restrictions: Either can only build one, costs heaps or res for each click.
- Or maybe a barrage of pulse gun shots on a certain spot?
Add features where if marines enter a room with no power, or on certain infestation, signal communication is lost with them and they can no longer receive orders or be dropped med/ammo.
Alright, that's all the writing i'm willing to put you guys through for now!
Comments
Unfortunately, the game has already gone through many radical overhauls and the tolerance of the player base is slowly (or not so slowly) decreasing.
I suggest that you play the game some more in its current form, and come back to your suggestion list after a month or two, see if you still view things the same way.
I will address only one topic you proposed - auto building for marines. That IMO would mean removing one of the best and unique aspects of this game - the fact that similar to real military operation, you are not just randomly killing enemies, but you are fulfilling some objective (securing an oil rig, transporting supplies, holding a border) in a hostile environment, and that makes you face tough decisions. Those who build and repair cannot fight, and vice versa. If you are to perform a non-combat duty, you must have a buddy that will watch your back while you do it.
Building is one of the most exciting elements of the game, it's not boring at all.
The more you will play, the more you will realize there has been a lot of thought put in the game design.
Of course, some elements are infuriating to some people - up to this day, I can't understand why babblers made it to the actual game. Obviously, someone in UWE has a big creative ego that sometimes redesigns with a hammer - but that's just how things are.
While I don't have much to bring to the table for counter suggestions atm, I definitely think many of the points you covered in the start of your post are things people should consider more actively when suggesting changes to the game. While the game is difficult to get in to, and in many cases some heavy responsibilities need to fall to somebody, I personally feel that defines the game to a certain extent and is a big part of what makes it so good.
I certainty wouldn't expect a collection of ideas such as i have suggested to be taken and applied all at once!
Of course the best ideas are ones reflected on.
So as i understand it, everyone wants the game to be attractive and grow, but there is serious concern about the fine line between trying to reform it and make it a better version of it's original self, and trying to revolutionize it by making it popular by being something different.
The reason the changes recently i think have been seen in such a negative way, is because they are trying to make it better by adding more 'stuff,' than adding more of what it is. Adding grenades are just another extra type of weapons, why not just add bazookas ect - and so it just becomes a flood of 'cool stuff' that does not really represent why the player came into the game in the first place. There are other games like Cod and BF for those.
But then there is the awkward question of what 'is' it that makes this game awesome. I think it's the combination of being challenged tactically through engagement with a 'commander' that gives everything a sense of unity - this type of double-dimension playing style. So would it be then fair to say the best ideas are to enhance these features?
That's why most of my ideas are to do with increasing the tools the commander can use to interact with the people than just increasing the gadgets.
While building does do all of these things, that's not why I dislike it - I think it just could be prioritized with more engaging comm/marine activity. Now, there are certainly tactics involved in building, especially close to enemies, but building itself is just the action of holding down E. And then going to other places and holding down E. Maybe a reverse idea is to make the building process more fascinating? What would that look like?
So the way I see it would be to make the activity of building more fascinating, or replace it with something with the same nature but more fascinating.
Could an example be having to gain certain resources to keep the phase gate running for example?
Much thanks.
With regards to grenades one big advantage they give which may seem like a relatively minor thing is the ability to clear out a vent without a jetpack. I cant tell you how many times I've been infuriated by a gorge hiding the in the vent in hydro on descent bile bombing, and until jetpacks are out, unless he pokes out a bit too long there is nothing I can do about it. Now, cluster in the vent and the gorge is gone! Aliens have also received some buffs as well so the other two grenades can play a big role in getting crucial lifeform kills. The other big change to marine is the exo changes but to be honest they are just clearing up the poor structure of the previous system, i.e after dropping 40res on a single exo you then cut out any real chance of you going dual, and then after making this change a dual railgun was a natural consequence.
A lot of the new alien abilities mostly affect late game and are there to combat the marine turtling issue that has been around for a while. Some of the earlier abilities (such as the Onos bone wall) I think are there also to try and take the focus off of the fade lifeform late game for aliens. New Onos is so much more fun and more useful.
When it comes to your building suggestion, I personally would be happy with a more complex system I think it would be really engaging and great fun. But I think it would be far too complicated. One thing this game already struggles with is people coming in to it and not understanding the RTS aspects of the game such as resource and map control. Getting new players to actually build RTs and phase gates in important rooms is really difficult when most of them are more focused on death-matching in empty unimportant rooms. I understand your idea trying to make building more engaging to motivate players to do it, but I think all it would do is make an already relatively complex system even more difficult for new players to grasp. For example if you had to gather materials to build an RT for example. Comm says okay go to A to build the RT, player arrives, now gather X from B and Y from C so you can build it. Suddenly this seemingly quick building job has turned into a 2-3 minute gathering exercise and all this player wants to do is start shooting aliens.
I personally think the problem is that the game is a really unique blend of FPS and RTS, and you have to learn to play it as if its an entirely new genre, many people struggle with this, get frustrated and move to something else, before they hit that brilliant point when you see the beauty of the game.