1.1 In The Pub
rofish
Join Date: 2003-05-30 Member: 16872Members
Join Date: 2003-05-30 Member: 16872Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Clans are nice, but what about the rest?</div> I stopped playing NS for two reasons, one is that it's imbalanced and quite buggy. A lot of what I've seen in 1.1 is great, and should fix that. Another reason is the loss of 'good' pubs. I play in the pubs because I don't have the time to join a clan, and do all of that fun stuff. I wish I could, but I can't. I used to play a lot on Pancho's Tavern, and it suddenly disappeared one day. Up and gone, nowhere to be found. After that, I really couldn't find one 'good' pub. They had major team imbalances, especially with one good team overpowering one n00b team. My question is, what are you going to do for us pubbers in 1.1? It's nice that you guys clan match, but all that's allowed to play 1.1 is the top people in the top clans, so it's pretty much good vs. good. How are you going to make it fit that a n00b team, especially with a n00b gorge/comm, can still have a chance?
P.S. Giving the location for the comm in 1.1j is VERY nice. I hate it when people say gimme health and I have no clue where they are.
P.S. Giving the location for the comm in 1.1j is VERY nice. I hate it when people say gimme health and I have no clue where they are.
Comments
P.S. Giving the location for the comm in 1.1j is VERY nice. I hate it when people say gimme health and I have no clue where they are. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dude... if a game is balanced, n00b teams are going to loose. Thats HOW ITS SUPPOSED TO BE. Thats like asking the creaters of Starcraft:
"I just bought the game and I went online and played a game against an experienced opponent and got my **** kicked. WTH, you need to fix it so that I, as a new player, has a chance against more experienced players."
Umm.. no... Your reasoning is horrible dude.
For one, the commander gets lots of 'comfort' functionality to make his job easier, which should ease the load for newbies. Gorges aren't as important as they used to be, an alien team with a single bad lvl2 is thus not as doomed anymore.
Aside from that, there's still this group of medium sized screw-ups called 'Playtesters' who are, despite constant hammering from the vets (<!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->) trying to make the pubbers voice heard.
I guess you'll experience a more balanced pubgame, too.
That's why I said you just have to find a better pub <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
This is a difficult problem, not just for NS, but for game design in general. I'd rephrase the real problem as:
How are you going to make it so that n00b players can still have fun playing?
In card and board game design, the usual way you approach this problem is by varying the amount of luck in the game and making the learning curve shallower. In chess, I'm never going to beat a grandmaster, but a beginner doesn't have a prayer against me either. This is because chess has a very small amount of luck (it still has a little - you can make the right move for the wrong reasons). Note that chess has an easy learning curve - 5 year olds can easily learn how to play - but the amount of luck is too low to help new players out against experienced players. However, in a game like Sorry, children have at least some chance of beating me because luck will outweigh strategy for the most part. In NS, luck plays some part, but FPS skill along with some teamwork are currently the main determining factors of a team's chances. Increasing the amount of luck in the game doesn't look like a really viable strategy to me. One example of increasing luck in the game would be to make weapons less accurate, so a given bullet/acid bag/bite/whatever has less chance of hitting. I don't think this is necessarily the way the game should go. Some people would argue that taking out bunnyhopping is a move towards +luck, but I think that is primarily a flavour decision more than anything else.
When I've been playing in v1.04, I've found that new players do not contribute significantly to your chances of winning unless they have previous FPS multiplayer experience - in other words, if you were playing with a newbie on your team, your chances of winning are roughly the same with or without them. In 1.1j, I would guess that the team's chances may actually be <b>worse</b> with the newbie on your team for marines, since they will provide resources for the aliens.
So, making the learning curve shallower would probably be the best way of approaching the problem, so that newbies become intermediate players faster. Some ways of achieving this:
<ul>
<li> Improve in-game "tooltips" and help text. Never rely on a manual, because 95% of players will not read it. The text in 1.04 is not good (e.g. enouraging new alien players to evolve to gorge) but I understand from talking to Flayra at GDC that it was already improved.
<li> Keep game design simple and intuitive. For the most part, Flayra has done an amazing job of doing this already given the inherent complexity of a FPS/RTS hybrid game. About all you can do here is to make sure that any complexity (e.g. requirements on the tech tree) is easily understood by a new player.
<li> Watch new players playing and see what mistakes they make. For example, a lot of new players won't even know how to talk to people on their team when they start playing, and will wander off on their own.
<li> Make sure that players can contribute to their team's efforts without diverting team resources to them. This can be addressed (for example) by making sure that all-team upgrades, like the arms lab upgrades, remain solid strategies compared with spot upgrades like dropping a HMG. The changes in 1.1 for the alien team where res is not shared between the aliens should help a lot on this point.
</ul>
This is really just touching the surface of ways of helping new players out, but you get the idea. If Flayra reads this, I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
there are good servers with fun players, they just don't go out of their way advertising because they are too busy playing.
I think 1.1 will be much more newbie friendly than 1.04 is, because aliens will be much more well rounded than they are now. if the newbie wants to be a gorge he won't have the whole team screaming that he ruined their chances to win. and he won't have to know what the uber upgrades are, because they will all be decent. marines will be basically the same for a newbie, do what the commander tells you and you might get a cookie (hmg).
On the other hand, it might be that all the future versions will include a "glitch" (like the ones so far have): a super strategy that will dominate the game and will be noticed eventually. Then we're back to start when it comes to viable strategies. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
The only way to remove these super strategies is to create yet another patch. We'll see what happens with 1.1.
clamatius, one of the most interesting posts for a while, and I wholeheartedly agree. WP.
that debate is all in your head. i could convince you that i kno how to have fun staring at walls too, and i can. so screw you small minded.... omg im sorry, im rambling, nevermind.
How about having an inexperienced sniper or MGer in DoD, or having a new player in CS who's been given the bomb, or is playing the VIP? Both happen reasonably often in pubs, and they don't ruin things.
www.ponchostavern.com
Just because they can download a program doesn't mean they aren't lamer... and because they can download a program means they are not a fool? Personally I think hackers are fools, and they download the hack. You also say that because they download a program means they are decent players?
That is just a 1.04 example but what I'm asking is will 1.1 work as evenly if both teams aren't full of top-notch players?
BTW I'm not complaining about the 1.1 style of playtesting, just asking a question
hes got a point.
CD req servers are usually better than the average pub
Or instead of programming server variables he could just program content. Flayra has stated he doesn't like too many server variables because he wants the game to be as uniform as possible across the whole spectrum of servers. This is to make the game more newbie friendly.
If you want extras, thats where admin/meta mod comes in. Or you could just become good friends with voogru and maybe he'll program whatever you desire as a plugin.