Simplifying NS2 - Thoughts on Gameplay (feedback wanted!) - Natural Selection 2
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Simplifying NS2 - Thoughts on Gameplay (feedback wanted!) - Natural Selection 2
Heyo all. Since the renewal of NS2 development there’s been a lot of talk about systems, engine and tool changes, and a lot of “under the hood” things that, while...
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The Obvious: Babblers
Obviously, the great thing would be to make it such that the babbler eggs would be tied to the same weapon slot. Place an egg, then you get your N babblers to use. Perhaps on right-click. However, this opens up an accidental sink of res. By the time you've placed three eggs you might realize you've lost that res. It's a minor amount of setback, though.
Another thing on the topic of babbler bait is having some sort of actual feedback for players. One of the things I suggest was to have the bait ball do 1 damage. That's all. It'd be hilarious to kill a player with it (humiliating for sure), but it'd also show a new player that it doesn't do much in the way of real damage.
The Not-So Obvious and Much Hated Suggestion: Adding back-in skulk bunnyhopping
Wall jumping is unintuitive. It just is. There exists no other game where this ability is used in the same way as NS2, and can be awfully confusing for new players. While Titanfall and Call of Duty may have new forms of wall jumping, they are not used to gain speed for a melee character, which is the unfortunate position a skulk is in. New players often have a hard time playing skulk, and this is not the only reason why, but it definitely exacerbates most other new player problems: read "I can't get close to a marine," "why am I dying so quick," "this game sucks." Just attempting to show a new player how to use the ability from a seasoned player is incredibly difficult. Even watching some ENSL games, it's apparent that this ability is not grasped at even some advanced levels of play.
I also have a feeling that it's the reason why many players request the celerity upgrade first, because what they lack in ability, they make up for in.. well.. abilities.
I suggest adding back in a bunnyhop ability for skulk to gain speed and move in addition to the currently enabled walljumping. More players are likely to pick up on jumping to gain speed after watching a player perform this task, and it's been mimicked in games for the last two decades. So don't offer to me that no game has it, and that pressing jump repeatedly is unintuitive, because NS2 already has a queued jump system to make use of it. You just have to make sure it's actually easier to use.
The One I Want: Add in Lerk spores similar to compmod or NS1
Because why does the weakest lifeform have an attack that requires them to enter a late-game room and get next to marines to hurt them? While the execution is kind of neat, it's a terribly unintuitive design.
Also Rant. Totally agree with all the choices, save for the power-node, cyst one.
On one hand, it makes a lot of things a lot easier to do and mapping a lot more fun, but you're essentially wasting all those things. I guess you could retool those systems into something weird and new, but that's a lot more work. Such as if power nodes/Infestation did something else, like gave a harvester another layer of armor or gave aliens on it some bonus. You could apply the same logic to power nodes, giving RTs an on/off nanoshield or temporary electrify effect and or giving other bonuses to structures such as increased range for the observatory.
'Why not both?'
Personally I'd make the Lerk spike shooting ability Hive 3 instead and have the castable spores as the marine deterrent it is.
The hive hud was also a nice touch in ns1.
Take a new player evolving to an Onos for the first time. They are super stoked to play the giant rhino, have saved all round for this moment, being brutally murdered for 12 minutes. Right after evolving they feel invincible and walk into a room with 4 marines that melt them. That feeling of frustration and confusion and demoralization is hard to deny.
So something that might assist with this is increasing the chances to learn and fail.
Maybe a simple warm up or a simple game mode could do wonders for getting hands on time to practice separately from a robust tutorial.
I am thinking quick to engagements, fast to respawn, and containing an objective similar to one that may play out in a normal NS2 round. (never pass up an opportunity to teach the right thing!)
Maybe play that game mode for 5/10 min then the map changes to a classic round, rinse and repeat etc
My idea there was for the aesthetics only - You'd still want the lights on so you get better vision for marines. But you're right on the whole there, they really wouldn't have a true "point"... you could also remove them completely but it'd be a bit of a waste of the whole power system (which I was trying to avoid).
Power nodes can be justified by turning off the lights. When the node is dead the room is in permanent blackout mode, no red emergency lights. Adjust the health and repair speed to balance.
A gorge costs 8 pres. To a rookie it seems like the gorge is an upgrade. This lifeform cost money, therefor it must be an upgrade. It is not just pres, but the order of the menu. In the upgrade menu, the lifeforms are shown Skulk, Gorge, Lerk, Fade, Onos. This order shows progression in a sense. This again shows that the gorge > skulk. In reality the gorge is a support unit side grade of sorts. That is not communicated well though.
There are two ways I can think of that this can be made better.
#1 is easy. It is a simple GUI change. It would not change anything regarding balance.
#2 is a bit more challenging and maybe not even realistic. A free gorge could be OP with bile bomb nuking. To balance I would first make bile bomb more expensive to research and have a longer research time. I would make bile bomb fire slower. Bile bomb would just need nerfed. I would also make tunnels cost 10 pres each, or 20 pres total while buffing tunnel hp.
Ninja gates seem a bit worrisome, but not terrible. Seems like some good ideas on how to make powernodes work, but what about cysts. Why would you ever lay down cysts if it was just for immersion?
What about removing the powernodes that aren't at tech points? Setting up power for a base seems reasonable and cool. For an RT it seems boring. Just make it so that RT's don't require power, and don't automatically socket the node. *that* I like.
For cysts, use the current pathing to create "invisible" cysts that trace out from the nearest hive to each structure.
Edit: the more I think about this the more I like it. Just let rts be built without power. Such an easy and simple change! It would help with marine comebacks too since rebuilding the power at each node wouldn't take so long! This keeps all the benefits and mechanics but removes all the busywork!
Could keep the power system as an indicator of map control, heavily infested areas(lots of alien structures/grown hive) can muck up the power grid and kill the lights. With the glow of the transparency enabled alien structures lighting up the room.
Something mentioned in NSL Comp Balance discussions earlier in the season but never really fleshed out was an idea about having Marines spawn with Grenades once they're researched instead of having to buy them at an armory. The Marine commander would have to select which grenade they spawn with (which could be a little complicated), and of course Marines would all be spawning with the same grenades, but at least it's one less thing Marines need to do when they spawn.
Another small idea was to change it so Gorges only need to build one babbler egg to get the max amount.
Also, you mentioned sound cues for when upgrades/etc are available. How about audio AND visual cues for when you can evolve to different life forms? So when you hit 20 res, the Lerk taunt triggers, but also, whenever you press the button to evolve, instead of the lifeform being blacked-out there is a Res ticker that says "Gorge available/4.3 Res until Lerk available/19.3 Res until Fade/39.3 until Onos" or something like that. The cues should be disable-able in the options though.
Lastly, the main problem Rookies and sub-200 hour players have is that they don't have movement basics down. I think with the achievements concept, you could set up a tutorial where people can practice things like picking up max speed with wall jumping as a Skulk. Something like a "Speedy Gonzales" achievement where you circumnavigate Summit in X:XX time. Another achievement I'll call "Bull's Eye" where you parasite 5 Marines in one life. Your average new player doesn't know the importance of these concepts, but I think if they start aiming for them, they'll begin to learn the value of it.
*EDIT* - Also make Fade's walk speed a little bit faster. New players inevitably Walker Fade because they can't manage their energy properly. I'm not saying increase it much, but a small boost would improve their quality of life.
Per point 2: What would be the incentive to even build powernodes?
The lighting between unbuilt and built rooms would have to be adjusted (or some other benefit) for there to be any reason at all, otherwise you're just building a switch for the enemy team to turn off in their favor - essentially you'd be building a vulnerability for no reason.
Per Point 3: While I support making certain T3 alien tech more useful for breaking turtles, the issue isn't so much being under powered as it is going unused due to conceding before that point even comes.
This is because some of it is already powerful (biomass + compounding passive upgrades) and therefore the possibility of successfully fighting back (Increased PvE and higher lifeforms) and winning as marines is pretty bleak..
The issue of turtling - and why T3 Alien tech needs to be OP as a result - is from Marines having linear tech progression (gaining map control earns tech but losing map control does not diminish your tech) by having their upgrade structures in one fortified base and dependent on nothing outside of it. Compare that to hives, upgrade structures et al and it makes sense why Aliens rarely ever can turtle.
Therefore, I additionally recommend buffing late game marines to help making T3 alien tech more frequently seen because coming back is now a possibility instead of being futile, and then to prevent this from furthering the turtle issue, tie some of their later tech to another CC or equivalent.
You now can have more effective and fun late game tech on both sides that are actually experienced frequently, comebacks are more possible, and turtling is a thing of the past.
Not waypoint arrows, arrows on the floor. Learning new maps is the biggest struggle of them all. I'd call it a root cause of the learning curve (and why people don't appreciate new maps). And if newer players knew the maps, we'd probably see them improve more quickly, and understand the flow of the game better. Might even lead to less desire to seek higher player counts.
It could even be linked to the achievement system somehow.
Save 100 RTs that your nanite helmet directed you too --> Free Skin
I have seen rookies build 3 shifts or 3 crags for upgrades though... Maybe you should get rid of upgrade chambers and instead make them tied to crags shifts etc, you know like in NS1. It makes more sense and less crap in the commander menu. What you see often is marines will go rambo to the hive to kill upgrade chambers which is DEVASTATING in a close game. When marines lose the armslab they don't have to spend 60+ res to rebuild one.
Here's another one: remove the stupid 10 min limit to concede. When a team is losing really bad to a stacked team and has no res nodes do you really want them to stick around for another 5 minutes getting their asses handed to them? Of course people will leave/f4 cause its NOT FUN.
As for removing powernodes, do you think it will be easier to end a marine turtle when there aren't any? I don't think so. It will be MUCH harder.
I don't see how Exosuits need more firepower at this stage.
These are rough estimates but..
As it is they kill a fade in the same bullets @ w3 that it takes to kill a cara skulk @ w0. As a skulk it's like 3-5 bullets or something depending on upgrades. You get clicked on as a Fade and lose your armor. You get tracked for like 2 seconds and you're dead. Umbra maybe gives you 3 seconds or something, idk.
The exosuit already brings incredible firepower to the field. When used properly it's incredibly hard to take down. Stick a dual gun or even single gun in Y junction or the Dome hallways and let the aliens try to take that position from you. Extremely high burst damage at long range just doesn't really work well in NS2 in my opinion and I don't think making the Exosuit even more long range high burst damage will be good for gameplay.
I probably should never have included values in that suggestion.. everyone keeps focusing on those instead of the concept of those 3 main points, and those values are not concrete whatsoever, just examples. *shrug*
The one thing I am positive that Exosuits need though are increased mobility and possibly increased accessibility now that they can't be beaconed again. The cost vs reward just isn't adequate for Exos currently imo
I've thought about this alot and posted here about it alot. I always tried to think of how to change it without wasting the cysts or powernodes and I always say this:
Untie them from building structures as ou've said. Then keep them as a separate build path.
You can give certain buffa through infestation and power in rooms. Charge x res for a power node and you can give marines upgrades in that room like nanoshield and catalyst for a further cost.
And on infestation you can do similar but asymmetric things.
Marines can be all individual buffs and aliens are all terrain type buffs.
Possibilities are pretty endless.
New players loveeee cool map shit. So do old players.
However, I believe one major flaw within NS2 is the way games are decided and end game is ushed.
Quoting Ironhorse
Hive 3 upgrades could be "high risk, high reward" abilities that can quickly end a game (eg Stomp stunning a group of marines), or backfire if used poorly (eg Marines focus fire on Onos trying to Stomp and take it down, after it misses its Stomp and is unable to Bone Shield in time). They certainly should not be "one button and I win" abilities.
Most FPS games allow for progress (see TF2/Overwatch/CS/Quake/UT), but the power gap (ignoring the skill gap) between the teams is usually very small, with spikes in power (eg double damage power ups) that vanish over time. This is not true in NS2. The way upgrades are set up in NS2 aim to crush the losing team into submission by simply overpowering them, which results in irrecoverable situations that are not fun for the losing team. NS2 probably does not need more "comeback" mechanisms, as much as it actually needs "equalizers", that allow both teams to fight on equal footing.
How can we change this? By learning from successful examples from all genres of games. For example, in Counter Strike, powerful weapons can be looted from killing their owners, and turned against them; in League of Legends, killing players on the winning side give bigger gold bounties and experience, allowing one team to catch up. In LoL, even base structures can respawn over time, resetting the disadvantage, sometimes allowing the losing team a chance to wipe out the opposing team in a critical battle and come out victorious.
However, that does not mean NS2 should directly copy those mechanisms from CS or LoL. I am only using them as examples of how the power gap can be closed for more enjoyable gaming experiences.
In term of NS2, Resource incomes should be reworked so the winning team does not have four or five times the income of the losing team, from the second minute of the game.
Perhaps we should look at boosting temporary team-wide buffs as an alternative to "permanent" upgrades (eg Arms Lab upgrades, because they're virtually permanent, especially if power node requirement is removed). Using Alien commander abilities well (eg Mucous Membrane, Enzyme and Hallucinations) should be promoted as the primary methods of influencing battles, instead of Carapace and Celerity (why choose anything else?).
Too many potentially fun, interactive commander abilities (eg Rupture, Catalyst packs) are currently trivialized (by being too weak) and underused, or locked up behind Tres "pay walls". Why not make them more accessible and balance around that?
Only allow meds, ammo, catpacks, and nanosheild in rooms with power. That would make power incredibly important, but not necessary. Power HP would need to be higher. Powernode build times would need to be very low. If power is out, it is just black with no emergency lights.
Cysting would give the alien khamm bonesheild, rupture, nutrient mist, enzyme, mucous membrane, and hallucinations. This would make cysting very strong if you could just lay down and enzyme cloud in any engagement on infestation. You could still use enzyme, mucous membrane, and hallucinations with drifters for off infestation support. Cysts would need a lot more health, and increased build time.
Map control would not just be how far you can build an rt. Controlling a room would be very important too because it makes you that much stronger. Powernodes and cysting would be a techpath that gives the commander more control of the situation. Cysting vs power would show map control very distinctly.
It would also be nice if rooms started out with lights off except for marine start in this hypothetical change. If you were going to have the lights start as off, and rooms would be dark aliens should have bioluminescence as shown in the following picture. This is code complete. Little or no additional work needed.
This 100%. Complexity of the game in terms of the RTS side I don't believe is what turns people away from the game (in fact i think it is intriguing if anything). But you do have to be able to access fun straight away, which is not possible for a new alien (its basically skulk for days). Why do you think so many new players are keen to try commander? Because they get destroyed on the field! I don't think there is any change we can make to Vanilla ( without dumbing it down completely and ruining it) that will ease this issue to the right degree. Without a bridging game mode that exposes the combat aspect of the game in quick low risk cycles, I think it will be really hard to make any significant change in the way of player retention.
Now that UWE is back involved, it all seems even less likely that any of this would possibly ever eventuate.
Basically this has all been said a million times at this point. Yes NS2 is overly complex, yes removing the gameplay implications of elements such as infestation, power nodes, blah blah blah would help. Everybody already knows and has talked about it to death over the years. Just going to get the same answers by reopening the discussion. Will anything actually change this time around?
Concerning that document, I kind of like the audio cues for hive existences. This teaches the importance of killing hives to rookies, especially the third hive, and it should facilitate their game sense a bit. The third hive audio cue should sound especially foreboding. The weapon/armor levels audio cue is a nice touch as well.
I agree with getting rid of cysts, although I guess it would make killing harvesters a bit harder. I like the idea of getting rid of power node functionality as well and I was worried about the repercussions for aliens since it means base rushes become much harder. Rushing power is pretty cheesy, though, and rushing the CC or other structures would still be viable.
Concerning hive 3 upgrades, perhaps xenocide could be used by all lifeforms. If it's gonna be the ultimate biomass 9 ability, might as well. Gorge xeno could produce a much larger, much more corrosive bile bomb, lerk xeno = longer lasting, much larger spore cloud that can't be cleared, fade xeno = huge vortex that disables structures and swallows bullets/projectiles, onos xeno = extremely powerful version of skulk xeno.
Thoughts on Decreasing the Learning Curve:
Wall Jumping: As Zavaro mentioned, wall jumping is such a crucial tool for succeeding at aliens, yet I often see regulars failing to achieve maximum wall jumping speed and blocking skilled wall jumpers who tailgate them, most notably during round start. Granted, pubs aren't as serious as competitive matches, but winning is still very much on everyone's minds, be it pub or pug or comp, since it's such a singular overarching objective of the game.
Wall jumping is not intuitive since it frankly makes little sense and most FPS games do not have a similar mechanic. It may be based on the basic principle of skulks sticking to walls, but the combination of jumping on a wall, jumping off of it, jumping off the ground, and repeating while holding forward + the strafe key toward the direction you're turning is needlessly complex. Dumb it down more for rookies. Bunny hopping is not much more intuitive than wall jumping and it only benefits the old school players coming from NS1, early CS, Quake, etc. I suppose bunny hopping would be easier for rookies to learn, however, if you made holding jump act like a continuous +jump -jump script. Make it so that this functionality only applies to ground jumps and keep the speed increase you get from wall jumping in order to keep running on walls relevant.
Blink Jumping: Another mechanic that players fail to learn early on usually due to failing to learn wall jumping. Blink jumping is tapping blink once, jumping off of the ground a few times, and tapping blink again in order to get back up to speed, all while making sure to hold the strafe key toward the direction that you're turning. Notice how similar this is to wall jumping due to having to hold a strafe key while turning. Get rid of having to hold strafe for turning somehow.
Lerk Juking: I'm not too experienced with lerking, but I assume that pancaking and spiraling becomes a bit predictable. Flying in a more-or-less straight line is a death sentence. Lerk juking seems to benefit from a sensitivity increase, although this can negatively impact aim if you're a low sensitivity user like I am. I find myself having to do awkward, sharp movements in order to be unpredictable, especially during retreats. Perhaps you could dumb this down for rookies and create an ability that does a barrel roll or something.
Onos: I see onii dying all the time. I assume they think they're invincible due to their HP and this backfires when marines rush them. Celerity is pretty much mandatory. It should be made more clear that they need to be on the lookout for groups of marines and that having a gorge buddy helps a lot. I don't like bone shield and it seems a bit useless, but then again, I hardly ever go onos. Perhaps this could be replaced with better directional movement changes with charge?
Removing Unneeded Complexity
The key here is in finding things that make the game more complicated but aren't making it more fun. "Arguably fun for some people" isn't a good enough reason to add complexity to an already complex game - complexity is like a currency that needs to be spent with care. Ideas:
- As mentioned in the doc, remove cysts and power nodes. Infestation can just spread from alien structures for aesthetics. The aesthetics of the room lighting can be tied to the presence of a marine RT.
- Remove alien upgrade chambers. Not sure why these were ever added to be honest. Just tie the upgrades to Crags/Shifts/Shades, like in NS1. This is simpler and more fun for the alien comm because he gets to spend his res on more functional structures on the map.
- Simplify marine med/ammo drops. This one is going to be controversial, but supporting marines properly is really difficult for the average player. First of all there should be auto-aim on the drops so you won't miss if your cursor is in the player's general vicinity. To balance this, medspam (which itself is frustrating for the alien team) would need to be nerfed, no way around it. So make a single medpack apply a non-stacking heal over time, balanced more as an out-of-combat recovery tool. This way the comm having lightning-fast reflexes isn't so critical to the outcome of an engagement.
Alleviating Common Pain Points
This is about identifying things that new players usually aren't very good at or find confusing, and trying to mitigate the impact it has on their experience. Ideas:
- Playing marine effectively requires a lot of game sense to intuit where aliens are likely to attack. This means it's really easy for marines to be backdoored and difficult to know where is the most impactful place to go. I think a good solution to this is to bring back motion tracking from NS1 - an observatory upgrade that renders all alien movement on the map. Yes this is a dramatic game balance change, but it would do wonders at giving new marines a better idea of what to do.
- Speaking of the map, new players should be taught how important the full-screen map is - so have an icon that appears on the screen after respawn telling the player which key opens the map. This should continue to appear for at least the first few hours of play.
- New comms also generally have trouble with map awareness and keeping remote res nodes alive. Inexperienced RTS players often rely on base defense as a crutch against this, but NS2 has very few effective options. Electrified res nodes in NS1 were a really newbie-friendly way to secure your territory; most vets would consider them not worth the money but for a new player who is frustrated by backdooring skulks they're quite helpful.
Finding this thread when I finally got to sit down tonight was so fun. I'm almost as bad at designing this game as I am at playing it, so I don't participate in these conversations too often. But I get so tired of the negative energy in these forums. I get so tired of articulate, intelligent people having nothing better to offer than derision and sarcastic dismissal, as it's all such a wasted opportunity. This brand-new thread has 20+ consecutive posts of people just constructively brainstorming off of each other -- like a creative leapfrog, and it's going to make me even sadder next time I see us at each other's throats, as these posts are an example of how we could be directing our energy all the time. I know we get tired of broken promises and pipe dreams that will never see the light of day, but reading this was just really refreshing, and I appreciate everyone lifting my spirits by participating the way you have. Well done!
( love the idea of trying marine res nodes without power node dependencies! )
- When do I use the welder and when the builder?
- How do I change my lifeform as an alien.
Fixes:
- Make the welder a builder replacement. Hold E to weld just like you would to build. Tweak values such that it is superior to the builder in all cases.
- Change the "Buy" key on armory and protolab to "B." This solves the conflict with buying from a damaged armory when you have a welder equipped, and teaches the player about the B key so that it isn't a surprise when they are on the alien team. They would trigger it accidentally by walking up to a structure and pressing B like they are used to on an armory.
https://feedback.userreport.com/19e981d4-394e-46de-997e-8913cc04aff2/#idea/75860