But you can't judge balance on a single server's stats. If there is a skilled clan that goes in and plays ONLY Alien or ONLY Marine, then the stats will be contorted. You need to judge the balance issues off of multiple Public servers.
<!--QuoteBegin--Phant0m51+Feb 18 2003, 05:20 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Phant0m51 @ Feb 18 2003, 05:20 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> But you can't judge balance on a single server's stats. If there is a skilled clan that goes in and plays ONLY Alien or ONLY Marine, then the stats will be contorted. You need to judge the balance issues off of multiple Public servers. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Thats true. For any meaningful statsistics, you need a random sampling of data over a very large population.
Yes there is some data, but volunteered samples are useless. It it is definitely not a representation of all NS players.
Even though this data can only really represent thier respective servers, it might be fun to plot win percentages versus time. I know right after 1.04 was released, marines always won on my favorite server cause no one knew how to deal with a jp/hmg rush.
1) the data I put together I thought before I went through the logs myself that it would show marines winning ~50% of the time, given my own experiences on the server.
The one thing I can think of to fully evaluate this is to go through and find out who was on which team. Look at each individual person's stats. I know for a fact that people tend to hoard to one team or the other to go with mates, and I also know that when I'm on, I tend to attract some of the better players to my team, meaning whatever team I choose it is usually better than the other (note: not an ego trip, the other players are better than me for sure!)
With that in mind, I would then have to go through the individual games checking which team has the greater "skill factor" - again this is a nightmare, how do you define a skill factor (eg kills alone, or kills plus a factor I give based on how much of a teamplayer they are... then you have bias etc etc)
I'm talking myself into convincing myself to give it more time until skills are more even. in the back of my mind all I hear is "If you're new to NS you should try the Marine team first"
OK and 2)
Balance should be defined in the form a) 1 v 1 - who wins and what percentage (in terms of pure kills, not whole games) groups of 2 v 2, 3 v 3, all the way up to say 6 v 6 in one scrim. Maybe also factor in the percentage wins of scrims say 2 v 6 and 6 v 2 to see if there is any bias between having a large group of one and a small group of another always resulting in one side winning predominantly.
I'm not sure I'm making myself completely clear here, but the idea is simple: see what team wins when there are different numbers fighting each other (including the same number of players fighting each other)
This is of course not the whole deal, you would need to do this both early, mid and end game on 2 or 3 maps.
This clearly is one hell of an undertaking. I would also suggest doing such a study about 3 times in total with different players each time. It is a big, and frankly nigh on impossible task, but a fair scientific study of purely - does one team have a killing advantage over the other.
IMHO you can't judge such a thing as balance in any other way. You can't look purely at server stats as there are too many variables, at least in this method you would have enough data to draw some conclusions, though don't look at me to undertake this sort of study <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
So the moral of this completely confused and incomprehensible post is this: give it time, wait until 1.1, then let's see if there's a balance issue <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Personally I think that looking at win percentages is a fine way of judging balance. You say there are too many variables, but I think that if you look at win percentages over enough games, all the small factors get averaged out. That's what averaging is for.
Obviously, just looking at server stats won't tell you anything about how the balance is affected in smaller (4 vs 4 for example) games, but you can at least see the overall balance in a typical sized game, such as 8 vs 8, which is a typical server size.
Personally, I don't care if the game is balanced for small games, or even really large games. I'm interested in if it's balanced for the typical size game such as 8 vs 8. The stats we've seen so far show that it isn't.
(I'd like to reiterate that I don't think this imbalance is necessarily a problem ... people still choose marines when they want the challenge, I guess. It's not something that needs to be "fixed" at this point, I don't think. I'm sure some would disagree.)
After running and playing on my server since the week after NS was released, I've got to say that using these statistics to argue for greater "balance" is foolish.
In my mind, there's one variable that outweighs all others by far in determining how the game will go - so much so that within 5 minutes of starting a round it's obvious who's going to win: <b>the skill of the Commander</b>
At least on my server, it's clear and obvious why the Marines lose so often. It's because of the following typical scenarios:
1. Crappy Commander - simply lacks the skill, leadership, multitasking, etc, to do the job. Has no plan of his own, but instead just responds to every request the players make, which tends to keep them happy (and in his chair) even though the game will be lost. While doling out guns, jetpacks, etc, this commander is not upgrading weapons, not strategically placing structures nor upgrading them, and is generally an idiot when it comes to placing turrets. He will cluster turrets so close together and with equipment that aliens easily get out of their line of fire, and will place turrets far away from equipment, next to doors, thinking it forms a wall when really the aliens just jump right over them and proceed to rip apart undefended structures. I could go on and on...
2. Commander-of-the-minute club - this is a game in which no one really wants to be the commander, or all potential commanders suck so badly (even more than #1, above) that they keep getting ejected. For whatever reason, the game progresses sometimes with no commander, sometimes wtih 3 in 5 minutes. It's a garranteed loss. Frankly, even a single switch of commander mid-play can easily spell disaster, because Commander #1 (if good) had been strategically placing structures, performing upgrades, etc, and basically laying out a plan for a win, that Commander #2 knows nothing about. So, when Commander #2 takes over, he has no idea where stuff is, what state it's in, nor (and most importantly) how the overall deployment of assets is designed to win. He fumbles around for a while locating stuff, but pretty quickly attempts to overlay his own ideas onto what he's left with, almost always resulting in a confused mess that's a quick ride to a loss.
From my experience, most commanders suck. Very badly suck. I hate commanding, because I find it unexciting (I never have liked RTS games at all), and, yes, I can't say I'm the best at it either. However, I did read up in these forums and on other sites related to strategy about how to command and be a good commander. This, combined with my own observations, make it pretty easy for me to tag a commander as either good or bad pretty quickly after they take over. And, 9 times out of 10, it's this difference that wins or loses the game for the marines. Sure, the marines have to be at least decent players themselves, but typically a great commander can lead even ho-hum marines to victory. The only time this fails is when the marines simply refuse to follow orders and go out on their own deathmatch-style hunts. Then they will lose.
So, here's why using win percentages for balance is not a good idea. Because if you adjust the power levels so that marines, even with crappy and missing commanders can still win 50% of the time, then you also have made it such that with a good commander the game becomes boring and ridiculous as the marines devastate the aliens time and time again. In a sense, you will be tweaking the game so that it *depends* on crappy commanders to actually have a fun, balanced play experience, which would be bizarre.
Ideally (though I don't know how you'd do this) you need to know what the win percentages are between aliens and marines <b>when the marines are under a competent commander</b>. Only then can you really know how the game fares when played as it should be.
Very nice thread this is, some good argueing going on, here's my 2 cents:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Balance should be defined in the form a) 1 v 1 - who wins and what percentage (in terms of pure kills, not whole games) groups of 2 v 2, 3 v 3, all the way up to say 6 v 6 in one scrim. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
KILLS ARE NOTHING!!!!! <-----
and to make my point clearer:
kills are absolutely, completely and utterly immaterial in an overall game.
The effect after the kill however IS important: can marines not leave the base, did the skulk get all but the one who is now forifying the outpost, did the marines camp in the base killing incoming skulks...<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
There's NO way to determine the effect of a kill, it could be a game-winner, it could be utterly pointless. Just forget about kills and plead for them to be removed from the alien stats.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> "Marines have a steeper learning curve." <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes and no, clanmatches do show that the marines have a "nuclear bomb" if the experience level is high enough and basically a "dud" with the infamous n00bs. Whereas aliens can get a "hand-grenade" with the same n00bs.
However this doesn't mean that aliens will peak with dummies, no sir, in fact if the aliens are experienced too they can come up with much stronger techniques then currently used: -> get res -> get def -> be rambo -> get hive -> get fade -> get the win, BUT as clan-matches also show, they can only get a "c4-explosive" max, until they get a 2nd hive that is, at which point they basically get a nuke-chaingun with auto-aim and a snazzy <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> -logo, but I digress (1.1 will deal with that, hopefully).
So somewhere in between clan-matches and standard pub matches there's a match made in heaven <- <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> And in this match all shall be good and just and there shall be no pain for the win/lose ratios are 50% for both teams.
Oh, and on many pubs there IS pretty good teaming on the marine side. It's just that lower level experience (AND not knowing your teammate and which tricks he knows) is very win-chance annihilatingly <- just invented new grammar here
I play on a public server where the level of skill on both sides is exceptionally high...Whilst i dont have stats to back this up I estimate that the marines win 70% of the time.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->If the balance was adjusted so that a poorly-played marine team could still win, a well-played marine team will then dominate every game. [...] The NS player base is still in its infancy; give the players some more time to learn.
I´d like to add that I feel this great community has had an influx of new players these last couple of weeks, with more on the way...re-balancing in any way at this point will only force us to undo things further along the way. I´ve started to meet more obvious beginners lately, especially on the marine team and all with a very vague sense of teamwork...they might be coming from "some other mod"...<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I appreciate your statistics and I don´t dismiss them as rubbish, but as verbose said: Give people some time to learn. The server I play have a stable following, and as a consequence I´d estimate my personal stats there as being VERY close to 50/50. This since 1.04.
The problem people have understanding about marine's is that they grow exponentially good or bad depending on it's players and commander.
Unlike the aliens, where one good player for the aliens can be the saving grace of the team, marines have an effect of multiplying every action they do.
So, for instance, a bad placement of a turret factory results in it being destroyed in mid game; and these turrets defended the base, you subsequently have a prime example of how one bad action of a marine spells doom for the entire team.
Now, obviously the commander has the most effect when deciding games for the marines, but lets say a marine who is the last man alive after an attack was defending a phase gate waiting for reinforcements to warp in at any second, when he is rushed by a skulk and due to some **** shooting, he dies and the phase gate is killed?
Again, the simplest mistakes lead to the biggest downfalls.
By the same token, when in a clan match all marines play nearly perfectly, never missing, doing their orders, and pretty much kicking all ****(including fades, they don't mean **** to a good team of marines), then the marines flat out OWN the aliens.
Let's pretend we can represent the skill factor of marines and aliens in simple matimatical forumlas.
Let I = Impact on a team. Let p = number of players. Let s = skill of any one player.
For the marines, skill could be measured by I = p^s. (^ means <i>raised by</i>) For the aliens, skill could be measured by I = ps. (p multiplied by s)
Now, looking at the graph attached to my post, one can easily see how a team full of highy skilled players contribute FAR more to the team on the marines, whereas the best alien can only do so much.
This is why on clan matches, Aliens get slaughtered most of the time unless the marines screw up completely, due to near perfect marines.
And on pub servers, the marines are the ones who get slaughtered, due to sloppy(and often times even less than perfect) play.
This is the balence issue I believe Bytor and others were trying to address in their posts, yet they couldn't place their fingers on it.
If Flayra even happens to read this, then he should see the real problem of this game, and that is the skill factor of each team is far too unbalenced in representation.
As long as marines have exponential skill factors, then they will suck in pub play and dominate in clan play.
This is the biggest issue with NS and it's gameplay, and it's something that should be addressed by 1.1.
My suggestion to fix this would be to make it so aliens get more rewarded for playing in teams, just like the marines do.
This brings up another point, and that is: how are marines rewarded for team play vs. aliens who work in teams?
Look at starcraft, or at any RTS. What is true of almost any race is that ranged units, by themselves suck.
For example, a terran Marine will get anhilated by the eqivilant two zerglings.
However, lets up that number, to say 24 marines and 48 zerglings. Do the zerglings stand a chance? Unless the zerglings completely surround the marines, which is extreamlly rare, in most cases a good 12 zerglins will be wiped out before the first row of marines can be attacked, and after many causulties on both sides, the zerglings will be annhilated. Of course, this doesn't make the zerg worse than the terrens, for every marine loss inflincted by the zerg, it can be gained many times as fast for the same cost.
The same scenerio applies to NS, however, instead of usuing numbers to win battles, imagine numbers in the form of skill points a player has; a good marine is far more effective than a good alien, and it stands when many good marines are with other good marines, the effect is compounded, resulting in super marines when they are used in a teamwork fashion.
When we go back to the starcraft principle, of marines owning zerglings in mass numbers, why were the zerglings owned?
It's simple, the marine could be constantly attacking while the zerglings are stuck behind each other.
Melee attackers in any RTS need to be alone, that is where they are most effective.
Looking back at starcraft, perhaps it's needed so that a lone marine can actually lose to a lone skulk. Don't say a skulk can just hide and jump the marine; that's pure garbage. Once a good clanners spots you, consider yourself dead. And claners know *ALL* of the good hiding spots, and are very good listeners for that *click**click* noise skulks make.
So my statement stands. Either make it so the skill system of the aliens is the same as the skill system of marines, by perhaps making karhaa tougher in groups by giving them more armor or something.
Or, make it so marines are really poopy by themselves, and so that they can't beat skulks 1v1, but when they are groups, they freaken own, but, the aliens have ways of forcing the marines to spilt up and make them vulerable, or make it so marines have a hard time enforcing their numbers(which they can do by phasegates now... Demonlaud if you read this then you know what I am talking about).
And, THAT ladies and gentlemen, is the issue with NS that plauges each and one of your servers.
I wuoldn't say that kills do not mean anything, though I admit entirely that teamwork is far far more important. Introduciton of a teamwork bonus (of some description) for the Kharaa would be a viable way to potentially rectify the problem - on a public server where the marines are generally beaten, the aliens could be weaker when alone, but stronger in groups, thus making any "ramboesque" alien team less likely to obliterate the poor ickle marines... In clan matches (or matches on my server where the vast majority of whatever team I am on know me and have played extensively alongside me, but I digress) the aliens (who already work together) would really benefit from this.
I agree with -v though, give it time.
As for kills, I argue they are quite important: eg marines have set up an outpost consisting of phase, TF and 4 turrets outside maintenance access hive. The aliens all group outside the outpost, waiting for all to get there (this is how it works on my *public* server), then they all attack at once. There are say 4 marines in the group. Most of the aliens get slaughtered as the marines have a pretty decent shooter in the furthest corner, so it takes 3 concerted, teamworked rushes just to take down the outpost. The problem? Not the turrets for sure, but the fact that 2 marines were able to survive each time and kill the last of the alien attackers.
This scenario may well be very different in different games, maps and servers, so it is futile using it as a general example of any potential balance problem (and I don't think it shows anything to do with this btw), but it backs up my point that kills ARE important. When this happened on my server last night, it was teamwork, sure, but also KILLS that enabled us to save the hive and soon after get fades and lerks taking the one remaining hive. Once the marines were dead, taking the phase down the rest of the way was no problem and we had all the time in the world to take the TF down.
In fact I have talked myself into the opinion that there is no balance problem at all.
At least not on MY server <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
that is good to hear <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> As for kills, I argue they are quite important: eg enz. enz..... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Read my post you again, I said kills are nothing and the effect after the kill is the only thing which matters, I also gave a few examples. Now YOUR example is a fine one demonstrating usefull kills for the marines, but what if the same marines just camped in the base and shot all the skulks as they rushed in keeping the marines locked tight inside the start until dc's come up at which point they get slaughtered.
The point is: the kill SCORE means nothing, because its filled with useless and even couterproductive kills (NOT killing people so they dont respawn at the base can also be usefull), the only way to gauge anything in NS is by win/loss alone, simply because the game is WAY too complicated to look at anything else (correct me if im wrong), even res is useless if it gets misspent.
<!--QuoteBegin--Roobubba+Feb 21 2003, 10:34 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Roobubba @ Feb 21 2003, 10:34 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> In fact I have talked myself into the opinion that there is no balance problem at all.
At least not on MY server <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> How is there not a balence problem when the marines are overpowered when played perfectly, yet underpowered when played poorly? That is, vs. aliens who play perfectly and aliens who play poorly, respectivly.
Who cares if it's your server, the gameplay issues DO exist.
Comments
Thats true. For any meaningful statsistics, you need a random sampling of data over a very large population.
Everyone already concured that our stats look similar. Did you read the entire thread or just this last page?
Even though this data can only really represent thier respective servers, it might be fun to plot win percentages versus time. I know right after 1.04 was released, marines always won on my favorite server cause no one knew how to deal with a jp/hmg rush.
1) the data I put together I thought before I went through the logs myself that it would show marines winning ~50% of the time, given my own experiences on the server.
The one thing I can think of to fully evaluate this is to go through and find out who was on which team. Look at each individual person's stats. I know for a fact that people tend to hoard to one team or the other to go with mates, and I also know that when I'm on, I tend to attract some of the better players to my team, meaning whatever team I choose it is usually better than the other (note: not an ego trip, the other players are better than me for sure!)
With that in mind, I would then have to go through the individual games checking which team has the greater "skill factor" - again this is a nightmare, how do you define a skill factor (eg kills alone, or kills plus a factor I give based on how much of a teamplayer they are... then you have bias etc etc)
I'm talking myself into convincing myself to give it more time until skills are more even.
in the back of my mind all I hear is "If you're new to NS you should try the Marine team first"
OK and 2)
Balance should be defined in the form
a) 1 v 1 - who wins and what percentage (in terms of pure kills, not whole games)
groups of 2 v 2, 3 v 3, all the way up to say 6 v 6 in one scrim.
Maybe also factor in the percentage wins of scrims say 2 v 6 and 6 v 2 to see if there is any bias between having a large group of one and a small group of another always resulting in one side winning predominantly.
I'm not sure I'm making myself completely clear here, but the idea is simple: see what team wins when there are different numbers fighting each other (including the same number of players fighting each other)
This is of course not the whole deal, you would need to do this both early, mid and end game on 2 or 3 maps.
This clearly is one hell of an undertaking. I would also suggest doing such a study about 3 times in total with different players each time. It is a big, and frankly nigh on impossible task, but a fair scientific study of purely - does one team have a killing advantage over the other.
IMHO you can't judge such a thing as balance in any other way. You can't look purely at server stats as there are too many variables, at least in this method you would have enough data to draw some conclusions, though don't look at me to undertake this sort of study <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
So the moral of this completely confused and incomprehensible post is this: give it time, wait until 1.1, then let's see if there's a balance issue <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Roo
Obviously, just looking at server stats won't tell you anything about how the balance is affected in smaller (4 vs 4 for example) games, but you can at least see the overall balance in a typical sized game, such as 8 vs 8, which is a typical server size.
Personally, I don't care if the game is balanced for small games, or even really large games. I'm interested in if it's balanced for the typical size game such as 8 vs 8. The stats we've seen so far show that it isn't.
(I'd like to reiterate that I don't think this imbalance is necessarily a problem ... people still choose marines when they want the challenge, I guess. It's not something that needs to be "fixed" at this point, I don't think. I'm sure some would disagree.)
In my mind, there's one variable that outweighs all others by far in determining how the game will go - so much so that within 5 minutes of starting a round it's obvious who's going to win: <b>the skill of the Commander</b>
At least on my server, it's clear and obvious why the Marines lose so often. It's because of the following typical scenarios:
1. Crappy Commander - simply lacks the skill, leadership, multitasking, etc, to do the job. Has no plan of his own, but instead just responds to every request the players make, which tends to keep them happy (and in his chair) even though the game will be lost. While doling out guns, jetpacks, etc, this commander is not upgrading weapons, not strategically placing structures nor upgrading them, and is generally an idiot when it comes to placing turrets. He will cluster turrets so close together and with equipment that aliens easily get out of their line of fire, and will place turrets far away from equipment, next to doors, thinking it forms a wall when really the aliens just jump right over them and proceed to rip apart undefended structures. I could go on and on...
2. Commander-of-the-minute club - this is a game in which no one really wants to be the commander, or all potential commanders suck so badly (even more than #1, above) that they keep getting ejected. For whatever reason, the game progresses sometimes with no commander, sometimes wtih 3 in 5 minutes. It's a garranteed loss. Frankly, even a single switch of commander mid-play can easily spell disaster, because Commander #1 (if good) had been strategically placing structures, performing upgrades, etc, and basically laying out a plan for a win, that Commander #2 knows nothing about. So, when Commander #2 takes over, he has no idea where stuff is, what state it's in, nor (and most importantly) how the overall deployment of assets is designed to win. He fumbles around for a while locating stuff, but pretty quickly attempts to overlay his own ideas onto what he's left with, almost always resulting in a confused mess that's a quick ride to a loss.
From my experience, most commanders suck. Very badly suck. I hate commanding, because I find it unexciting (I never have liked RTS games at all), and, yes, I can't say I'm the best at it either. However, I did read up in these forums and on other sites related to strategy about how to command and be a good commander. This, combined with my own observations, make it pretty easy for me to tag a commander as either good or bad pretty quickly after they take over. And, 9 times out of 10, it's this difference that wins or loses the game for the marines. Sure, the marines have to be at least decent players themselves, but typically a great commander can lead even ho-hum marines to victory. The only time this fails is when the marines simply refuse to follow orders and go out on their own deathmatch-style hunts. Then they will lose.
So, here's why using win percentages for balance is not a good idea. Because if you adjust the power levels so that marines, even with crappy and missing commanders can still win 50% of the time, then you also have made it such that with a good commander the game becomes boring and ridiculous as the marines devastate the aliens time and time again. In a sense, you will be tweaking the game so that it *depends* on crappy commanders to actually have a fun, balanced play experience, which would be bizarre.
Ideally (though I don't know how you'd do this) you need to know what the win percentages are between aliens and marines <b>when the marines are under a competent commander</b>. Only then can you really know how the game fares when played as it should be.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
Balance should be defined in the form
a) 1 v 1 - who wins and what percentage (in terms of pure kills, not whole games)
groups of 2 v 2, 3 v 3, all the way up to say 6 v 6 in one scrim.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
KILLS ARE NOTHING!!!!! <-----
and to make my point clearer:
kills are absolutely, completely and utterly immaterial in an overall game.
The effect after the kill however IS important: can marines not leave the base, did the skulk get all but the one who is now forifying the outpost, did the marines camp in the base killing incoming skulks...<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
There's NO way to determine the effect of a kill, it could be a game-winner, it could be utterly pointless.
Just forget about kills and plead for them to be removed from the alien stats.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
"Marines have a steeper learning curve."
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Yes and no, clanmatches do show that the marines have a "nuclear bomb" if the experience level is high enough and basically a "dud" with the infamous n00bs. Whereas aliens can get a "hand-grenade" with the same n00bs.
However this doesn't mean that aliens will peak with dummies, no sir, in fact if the aliens are experienced too they can come up with much stronger techniques then currently used: -> get res -> get def -> be rambo -> get hive -> get fade -> get the win, BUT as clan-matches also show, they can only get a "c4-explosive" max, until they get a 2nd hive that is, at which point they basically get a nuke-chaingun with auto-aim and a snazzy <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> -logo, but I digress (1.1 will deal with that, hopefully).
So somewhere in between clan-matches and standard pub matches there's a match made in heaven <- <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
And in this match all shall be good and just and there shall be no pain for the win/lose ratios are 50% for both teams.
Oh, and on many pubs there IS pretty good teaming on the marine side. It's just that lower level experience (AND not knowing your teammate and which tricks he knows) is very win-chance annihilatingly <- just invented new grammar here
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->If the balance was adjusted so that a poorly-played marine team could still win, a well-played marine team will then dominate every game. [...] The NS player base is still in its infancy; give the players some more time to learn.
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Very well put.
I´d like to add that I feel this great community has had an influx of new players these last couple of weeks, with more on the way...re-balancing in any way at this point will only force us to undo things further along the way. I´ve started to meet more obvious beginners lately, especially on the marine team and all with a very vague sense of teamwork...they might be coming from "some other mod"...<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I appreciate your statistics and I don´t dismiss them as rubbish, but as verbose said: Give people some time to learn. The server I play have a stable following, and as a consequence I´d estimate my personal stats there as being VERY close to 50/50. This since 1.04.
Also, eaglec said some wise stuff. Kudos.
Unlike the aliens, where one good player for the aliens can be the saving grace of the team, marines have an effect of multiplying every action they do.
So, for instance, a bad placement of a turret factory results in it being destroyed in mid game; and these turrets defended the base, you subsequently have a prime example of how one bad action of a marine spells doom for the entire team.
Now, obviously the commander has the most effect when deciding games for the marines, but lets say a marine who is the last man alive after an attack was defending a phase gate waiting for reinforcements to warp in at any second, when he is rushed by a skulk and due to some **** shooting, he dies and the phase gate is killed?
Again, the simplest mistakes lead to the biggest downfalls.
By the same token, when in a clan match all marines play nearly perfectly, never missing, doing their orders, and pretty much kicking all ****(including fades, they don't mean **** to a good team of marines), then the marines flat out OWN the aliens.
Let's pretend we can represent the skill factor of marines and aliens in simple matimatical forumlas.
Let I = Impact on a team.
Let p = number of players.
Let s = skill of any one player.
For the marines, skill could be measured by I = p^s. (^ means <i>raised by</i>)
For the aliens, skill could be measured by I = ps. (p multiplied by s)
Now, looking at the graph attached to my post, one can easily see how a team full of highy skilled players contribute FAR more to the team on the marines, whereas the best alien can only do so much.
This is why on clan matches, Aliens get slaughtered most of the time unless the marines screw up completely, due to near perfect marines.
And on pub servers, the marines are the ones who get slaughtered, due to sloppy(and often times even less than perfect) play.
This is the balence issue I believe Bytor and others were trying to address in their posts, yet they couldn't place their fingers on it.
If Flayra even happens to read this, then he should see the real problem of this game, and that is the skill factor of each team is far too unbalenced in representation.
As long as marines have exponential skill factors, then they will suck in pub play and dominate in clan play.
This is the biggest issue with NS and it's gameplay, and it's something that should be addressed by 1.1.
My suggestion to fix this would be to make it so aliens get more rewarded for playing in teams, just like the marines do.
This brings up another point, and that is: how are marines rewarded for team play vs. aliens who work in teams?
Look at starcraft, or at any RTS. What is true of almost any race is that ranged units, by themselves suck.
For example, a terran Marine will get anhilated by the eqivilant two zerglings.
However, lets up that number, to say 24 marines and 48 zerglings. Do the zerglings stand a chance? Unless the zerglings completely surround the marines, which is extreamlly rare, in most cases a good 12 zerglins will be wiped out before the first row of marines can be attacked, and after many causulties on both sides, the zerglings will be annhilated. Of course, this doesn't make the zerg worse than the terrens, for every marine loss inflincted by the zerg, it can be gained many times as fast for the same cost.
The same scenerio applies to NS, however, instead of usuing numbers to win battles, imagine numbers in the form of skill points a player has; a good marine is far more effective than a good alien, and it stands when many good marines are with other good marines, the effect is compounded, resulting in super marines when they are used in a teamwork fashion.
When we go back to the starcraft principle, of marines owning zerglings in mass numbers, why were the zerglings owned?
It's simple, the marine could be constantly attacking while the zerglings are stuck behind each other.
Melee attackers in any RTS need to be alone, that is where they are most effective.
Looking back at starcraft, perhaps it's needed so that a lone marine can actually lose to a lone skulk. Don't say a skulk can just hide and jump the marine; that's pure garbage. Once a good clanners spots you, consider yourself dead. And claners know *ALL* of the good hiding spots, and are very good listeners for that *click**click* noise skulks make.
So my statement stands. Either make it so the skill system of the aliens is the same as the skill system of marines, by perhaps making karhaa tougher in groups by giving them more armor or something.
Or, make it so marines are really poopy by themselves, and so that they can't beat skulks 1v1, but when they are groups, they freaken own, but, the aliens have ways of forcing the marines to spilt up and make them vulerable, or make it so marines have a hard time enforcing their numbers(which they can do by phasegates now... Demonlaud if you read this then you know what I am talking about).
And, THAT ladies and gentlemen, is the issue with NS that plauges each and one of your servers.
Introduciton of a teamwork bonus (of some description) for the Kharaa would be a viable way to potentially rectify the problem - on a public server where the marines are generally beaten, the aliens could be weaker when alone, but stronger in groups, thus making any "ramboesque" alien team less likely to obliterate the poor ickle marines...
In clan matches (or matches on my server where the vast majority of whatever team I am on know me and have played extensively alongside me, but I digress) the aliens (who already work together) would really benefit from this.
I agree with -v though, give it time.
As for kills, I argue they are quite important: eg marines have set up an outpost consisting of phase, TF and 4 turrets outside maintenance access hive. The aliens all group outside the outpost, waiting for all to get there (this is how it works on my *public* server), then they all attack at once. There are say 4 marines in the group. Most of the aliens get slaughtered as the marines have a pretty decent shooter in the furthest corner, so it takes 3 concerted, teamworked rushes just to take down the outpost. The problem? Not the turrets for sure, but the fact that 2 marines were able to survive each time and kill the last of the alien attackers.
This scenario may well be very different in different games, maps and servers, so it is futile using it as a general example of any potential balance problem (and I don't think it shows anything to do with this btw), but it backs up my point that kills ARE important. When this happened on my server last night, it was teamwork, sure, but also KILLS that enabled us to save the hive and soon after get fades and lerks taking the one remaining hive. Once the marines were dead, taking the phase down the rest of the way was no problem and we had all the time in the world to take the TF down.
In fact I have talked myself into the opinion that there is no balance problem at all.
At least not on MY server <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for kills, I argue they are quite important: eg enz. enz.....
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Read my post you again, I said kills are nothing and the effect after the kill is the only thing which matters, I also gave a few examples. Now YOUR example is a fine one demonstrating usefull kills for the marines, but what if the same marines just camped in the base and shot all the skulks as they rushed in keeping the marines locked tight inside the start until dc's come up at which point they get slaughtered.
The point is: the kill SCORE means nothing, because its filled with useless and even couterproductive kills (NOT killing people so they dont respawn at the base can also be usefull), the only way to gauge anything in NS is by win/loss alone, simply because the game is WAY too complicated to look at anything else (correct me if im wrong), even res is useless if it gets misspent.
At least not on MY server <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
How is there not a balence problem when the marines are overpowered when played perfectly, yet underpowered when played poorly? That is, vs. aliens who play perfectly and aliens who play poorly, respectivly.
Who cares if it's your server, the gameplay issues DO exist.
I wrote a good essay a page ago, hate to see it go to waste.