DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
It is true that many pubbers give up to early.
It is also true however that more matches should be given up more early.
You will only end a imbalanced match fast if its a insane heavily imbalanced match. Im talking 300-1800 here.
If a match is clearly imbalanced then the usual outcome is much less kind. The stronger winning team is taking their sweet time teching up. They do not want to risk anything, because why? The wins in the bag, why risk a loss. You will rarely see them ending it before w2 has done rolling.
All the while the losing team is well.. losing, clearly. With folk who dont know how to concede or do not want to, or the vote is still disabled.. It does not matter. They are just suffering in a dragged on match.
Making concede more fun will not fix this. Only better ways to balance teams will fix this. And that is hard. Very hard. Otherwise it would have been done by now.
I always hated minigames like 'your opponent conceded, you got x minutes to kill their hives or you lose.'
I mean really?
Not only does this skew the results and hive score even more if for whatever reason, the opponent is like 'naah' and dont kill the hive. It also makes it quite confusing for all who never saw said mod.
If you ever implement a minigame it can never ever let the conceding team 'win'. Lets not make bad results in hive worse. (or hive 2.0 or whatever we will use in the future)
Also you risk the chance that people like the minigame to much and just give in for the minigame.
Just as a note for the discussion, the "self-destruct" idea that I posted earlier was mainly just that, a self-destruct, not a mini-game.
As soon as the concede vote passed, the timer would start with the banner. The game is already over, theres just a "Big Finish" to it.
I agree that extending a lost game will get old, and as cool as minigames are, just making everyone on the losing team explode would be good enough imo.
The stronger winning team is taking their sweet time teching up. They do not want to risk anything, because why? The wins in the bag, why risk a loss. You will rarely see them ending it before w2 has done rolling.
You can blame gorge tunnel type mechanics for this.
Nonsense.. tunnels have nothing to do with it. Thats just bad laning by the marines and no marine comm paying attention. To name but a few reasons.
Besides its equally true for the other team. We blaming PGs for them?
The PGs that can become marine grinders wasting any weapons they brought to try to defend/attack through that gate? Meanwhile the gorge tunnel cannot be blocked in the same manner and can be cloaked?
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I understand the tunnel quite well. Thanks for assuming I know so little of this game.
You actually can easily block a tunnel, just stand in one. its a nice long straight corridor. :P
But more serious. A tunnel rush means the marine team is failing somewhere, hard. If you can crush your enemy that badly you shouldnt rush on a tunnel counter. You should even expect a rush tunnel if you are pushing aliens that bad.
It has nothing to do with dragging out a match or not.
I remember those times, that we as marines stormed into poorly placed tunnel and killed the hive. What happend to that strategy? Haven't seen that for ages. Before it happened like every third game, making tunnels double edged sword.
Let me explain that instead of giving a non the less deserved "disagree".
If a gorge needs minutes (say 2 minutes) it's :
A field unit that does nothing else for that time. 3... 4 minutes and we can agree the team is playing with one less player. Especially on 6vs6
He cannot heal his partners in case of sneaky tunnel. Otherwise the Marines will discover the spot sooner than later. It renders it completely useless, not only because of time lost but also because of strategic (not tactical) parameters.
If by any chance the gorge stays unnoticed for a while the Marines (med to high skill) will surely notice the one guy they don't intercept (kill). So they will search for the guys where they're not. Meaning not the front line. Especially on high skilled teams.
@Frozen yeah,I was a little sad when I found out you don't actually....well.....dig. It could be something simple like "Use your acidic spit to tunnel through the ground." Plus,it'd just be REALLY cool! One of the things this game needs (maybe not right away,there a much more important things than asthetics) is cooler....ness!
When I first saw the trailer for NS2,everything I saw was SO cool! I wanted to try it out! Then NS2 got super serious and unfun. Mistakes turned from "Oh,maybe next time!" into "Great,now all my teammates are yelling at me in the mic just because I couldn't here them before because THEY WERE ALL TALKING AT ONCE-*kicked*"
I miss the cool things like misty blue Fades and random gameplay where either team could win. Now it's just base-rushes instantly or people arguing and leaving because a rookie asked a question. (Or worse,stacked teams....)
The reason why conceding is so often necessary is because NS2 is a game about snowballing at the most fundamental level. You're fighting for an economic advantage that in turn enables you to get stronger tech and upgrades, over time creating an increasingly more overwhelming advantage that culminates in a win. This is common to all RTS games, and you can't eliminate the "hopeless game, let's concede" problem without revisiting that fundamental design. The hard part is in coming up with ways to do that without removing what makes NS unique. Basically you would have to completely rethink the role of res in the game and how it translates to player power.
The reason why conceding is so often necessary is because NS2 is a game about snowballing at the most fundamental level. You're fighting for an economic advantage that in turn enables you to get stronger tech and upgrades, over time creating an increasingly more overwhelming advantage that culminates in a win. This is common to all RTS games, and you can't eliminate the "hopeless game, let's concede" problem without revisiting that fundamental design. The hard part is in coming up with ways to do that without removing what makes NS unique. Basically you would have to completely rethink the role of res in the game and how it translates to player power.
No, it's because the devs are afraid of giving teams the tools they need to execute an advantage. If an snowballed team could win then it would end quickly and be fine.
Instead in odd, desperate attempts to remove snowballing mechanics the effects of snowballing on player happiness are exacerbated.
Then tunnels are added and ruin games for the snowballed team. Don't forget them sometimes even teams can have a team snowball because nothing is static. Everyone forgets that snowballs can sometimes make it down a hill without picking up dog shit down the hill
You really don't get it do you?
Tunnel weren't added for the fun of it but simply because it was NEEDED.
At some skill level being locked in the hive or close to it; for the first half of the game is quite common. Tunnels are the way to remove the presure (as for Lerks ).
The more people play the more they will get better. So it is inevitable to see hive/egg lock at some point. This situation was the most boring moments in NS2. 2D thinking will never work with ns.
Easy solution to balance out concede: Increase respawn times based on what gear/lf u dropped when you died. I never played ns1 but I read on wiki that killing enemies gave team resources? why was this dropped? That obviously helps comebacks.
Shitload of work solution: allow marines and aliens to scavenge aliens and marines dead/destroyed bodies/structures respectively. Scavenging gives you a different resource which the commander uses to advance an alternative tech tree which should be focused on comeback potential.
How it usually work is something like plan A and plan B. When your strategy fails, you try to rely on players skill to win. Most videogames in which there is comeback, it comes through exceptional players skill, when your strategy crumbles, you try to keep the pieces together through your experience, your level of play, your commitment.
Currently ns2 has exceptional plan A, somewhat poor plan B because onos are onos fades are fades exos are exos and jetpacks are jetpacks.
It needs more ways to allow star players to shine in difficult conditions.
Shitload of work solution: allow marines and aliens to scavenge aliens and marines dead/destroyed bodies/structures respectively. Scavenging gives you a different resource which the commander uses to advance an alternative tech tree which should be focused on comeback potential.
I think it has been suggested and discussed already.
Do you think snowballing occurs because power/infestation makes it harder to retake res nodes? Aliens need to spread infestation, marines need to put power up and remove infestation.. if res structures could go up faster, it might make the game a bit more dynamic.
I think the biggest cause of snowballing is the loss of tech (alien lifeforms, marine weapons/equipment) upon death. When aliens are down on res and they lose a Fade/Onos in an engagement, odds are they'll never be able to replace it, meanwhile the marines are only getting better equipped. Same goes in the other direction when marines with little res lose their guns on the field. You could dramatically reduce snowballing by changing these to permanent upgrades and allowing aliens to respawn with their lifeforms and marines with their guns... However that completely turns the balance of the game on its head and everything would need to be reworked accordingly. Plus the ability to replace lost gear/lifeforms is the primary purpose of res in the late game, so if you remove that then the late game basically turns into Combat. Maybe that would make the game more fun, maybe not, but it's certainly not a choice to be made lightly.
btw as radical as that change would be I wouldn't be opposed to seeing something like that attempted. I really think NS2 needs something big to mix it up if the community is going to be re-engaged at this point. It certainly would make the game more accessible if new players were able to play with higher tech without losing it in minutes.
Comments
It is also true however that more matches should be given up more early.
You will only end a imbalanced match fast if its a insane heavily imbalanced match. Im talking 300-1800 here.
If a match is clearly imbalanced then the usual outcome is much less kind. The stronger winning team is taking their sweet time teching up. They do not want to risk anything, because why? The wins in the bag, why risk a loss. You will rarely see them ending it before w2 has done rolling.
All the while the losing team is well.. losing, clearly. With folk who dont know how to concede or do not want to, or the vote is still disabled.. It does not matter. They are just suffering in a dragged on match.
Making concede more fun will not fix this. Only better ways to balance teams will fix this. And that is hard. Very hard. Otherwise it would have been done by now.
I always hated minigames like 'your opponent conceded, you got x minutes to kill their hives or you lose.'
I mean really?
Not only does this skew the results and hive score even more if for whatever reason, the opponent is like 'naah' and dont kill the hive. It also makes it quite confusing for all who never saw said mod.
If you ever implement a minigame it can never ever let the conceding team 'win'. Lets not make bad results in hive worse. (or hive 2.0 or whatever we will use in the future)
Also you risk the chance that people like the minigame to much and just give in for the minigame.
As soon as the concede vote passed, the timer would start with the banner. The game is already over, theres just a "Big Finish" to it.
I agree that extending a lost game will get old, and as cool as minigames are, just making everyone on the losing team explode would be good enough imo.
You can blame gorge tunnel type mechanics for this.
Besides its equally true for the other team. We blaming PGs for them?
The PGs that can become marine grinders wasting any weapons they brought to try to defend/attack through that gate? Meanwhile the gorge tunnel cannot be blocked in the same manner and can be cloaked?
You actually can easily block a tunnel, just stand in one. its a nice long straight corridor. :P
But more serious. A tunnel rush means the marine team is failing somewhere, hard. If you can crush your enemy that badly you shouldnt rush on a tunnel counter. You should even expect a rush tunnel if you are pushing aliens that bad.
It has nothing to do with dragging out a match or not.
Yes. All my Yes.
It doesn't matter in the end. A gorge which is "unnoticed" has plenty of time to do the stuff he needs.
Then no tunnel would be ever placed because it would be boring as hell.
If a gorge needs minutes (say 2 minutes) it's :
- A field unit that does nothing else for that time. 3... 4 minutes and we can agree the team is playing with one less player. Especially on 6vs6
- He cannot heal his partners in case of sneaky tunnel. Otherwise the Marines will discover the spot sooner than later. It renders it completely useless, not only because of time lost but also because of strategic (not tactical) parameters.
- If by any chance the gorge stays unnoticed for a while the Marines (med to high skill) will surely notice the one guy they don't intercept (kill). So they will search for the guys where they're not. Meaning not the front line. Especially on high skilled teams.
-> uselessImagine that for Phase gates...
Ho boy...
What's boring is that gorges make tunnels without any tunneling.
And why the fuck would you imagine it for phase gates. Both teams don't need identical abilities
When I first saw the trailer for NS2,everything I saw was SO cool! I wanted to try it out! Then NS2 got super serious and unfun. Mistakes turned from "Oh,maybe next time!" into "Great,now all my teammates are yelling at me in the mic just because I couldn't here them before because THEY WERE ALL TALKING AT ONCE-*kicked*"
I miss the cool things like misty blue Fades and random gameplay where either team could win. Now it's just base-rushes instantly or people arguing and leaving because a rookie asked a question. (Or worse,stacked teams....)
We need more cool things! DIGGING GORGES FTW!!!
No, it's because the devs are afraid of giving teams the tools they need to execute an advantage. If an snowballed team could win then it would end quickly and be fine.
Instead in odd, desperate attempts to remove snowballing mechanics the effects of snowballing on player happiness are exacerbated.
Then tunnels are added and ruin games for the snowballed team. Don't forget them sometimes even teams can have a team snowball because nothing is static. Everyone forgets that snowballs can sometimes make it down a hill without picking up dog shit down the hill
Tunnel weren't added for the fun of it but simply because it was NEEDED.
At some skill level being locked in the hive or close to it; for the first half of the game is quite common. Tunnels are the way to remove the presure (as for Lerks ).
The more people play the more they will get better. So it is inevitable to see hive/egg lock at some point. This situation was the most boring moments in NS2. 2D thinking will never work with ns.
Shitload of work solution: allow marines and aliens to scavenge aliens and marines dead/destroyed bodies/structures respectively. Scavenging gives you a different resource which the commander uses to advance an alternative tech tree which should be focused on comeback potential.
How it usually work is something like plan A and plan B. When your strategy fails, you try to rely on players skill to win. Most videogames in which there is comeback, it comes through exceptional players skill, when your strategy crumbles, you try to keep the pieces together through your experience, your level of play, your commitment.
Currently ns2 has exceptional plan A, somewhat poor plan B because onos are onos fades are fades exos are exos and jetpacks are jetpacks.
It needs more ways to allow star players to shine in difficult conditions.