Balancing Skill-power Ratios
Kwil
Join Date: 2003-07-06 Member: 17963Members
Join Date: 2003-07-06 Member: 17963Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Taken from another topic</div> If you want the full context, I'm taking this from this topic here:
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=82459' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...showtopic=82459</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> (Gecko God Of DOOOM @ Oct 7 2004, 04:03 PM)
kwil. ill have to agree with most of what you saying. you bring up alot of valid points.
Now to figure out a way to fix it eh?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Aye! That's the tough bit.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
The only way I can think of fixing the lower rung part of play, with out decimating the higher rung. Would be to have a tutorial of some sort. or maybe a totorial map. that teaches all teh basic skills. From leap bite. blink swipe. (to help kill the jpers) to how to use the jp. etc.
...
Whats your opinion around a tutorial map that has voice instructions and maybe in map videos. (if possable)?
and other than this do you have any shuggestions?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well. That's one way, and a good step in the right direction. It's essentially acknowledging the problem and hoping to work around it by taking the players further up the skill slope until they get into that balanced territory.
An in game, scripted tutorial could do a lot. At least teaching the basic skills. The rub is in the practice. I mean, like the odd trick-shot example, if something just takes hours and hours of practice to do well, a tutorial won't be a lot of help.
The other way to approach it is to look at the imbalancing factors, and try to make them more user-friendly so as to lower the skill-power curve. Ideally when you do this, guys at the top end won't notice any difference, but those at the lower levels will find it works better.
Let's take the fade, for instance. Now this is really a difficult one, since a lot of the fades' power comes purely from experience and not any game based tricks. The player knows how to control his blink well, instinctively knows his range and how close he has to get to a marine before swiping, has a good feel for about how long he can stay in a fight before having to blink away, etc.
The difficulty with the fade is that this is all such a razors edge. Their range is extremely short, the blink extremely quick, the regular pace extremely slow. Combine all of these things and you have a situation where you have to be pretty danged good with blink to get into range (without going past it) to be able to do any damage.
To be honest, I think blink is the main difficulty as it takes a lot of skill to use well and very quickly loses it's effectiveness if a person can't use it that well -- but I don't know of any good ways to modify blink without ruining its effectiveness overall, so I don't wanna touch it.
Instead, and I'm not sure how well this would work, but one way to increase the user friendliness of the fade would be to extend the range or widen the cone of fire somewhat, so that if you don't land facing exactly right, you've still got a shot. Skilled players likely wouldn't notice this too much since they already land with it lined up very well. You might need a slight nerf to the swipe strength to compensate, since the game may well be balanced with the expectation of fades missing every other shot or something, but perhaps not. It'd have to be playtested out.
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=82459' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...showtopic=82459</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> (Gecko God Of DOOOM @ Oct 7 2004, 04:03 PM)
kwil. ill have to agree with most of what you saying. you bring up alot of valid points.
Now to figure out a way to fix it eh?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Aye! That's the tough bit.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
The only way I can think of fixing the lower rung part of play, with out decimating the higher rung. Would be to have a tutorial of some sort. or maybe a totorial map. that teaches all teh basic skills. From leap bite. blink swipe. (to help kill the jpers) to how to use the jp. etc.
...
Whats your opinion around a tutorial map that has voice instructions and maybe in map videos. (if possable)?
and other than this do you have any shuggestions?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well. That's one way, and a good step in the right direction. It's essentially acknowledging the problem and hoping to work around it by taking the players further up the skill slope until they get into that balanced territory.
An in game, scripted tutorial could do a lot. At least teaching the basic skills. The rub is in the practice. I mean, like the odd trick-shot example, if something just takes hours and hours of practice to do well, a tutorial won't be a lot of help.
The other way to approach it is to look at the imbalancing factors, and try to make them more user-friendly so as to lower the skill-power curve. Ideally when you do this, guys at the top end won't notice any difference, but those at the lower levels will find it works better.
Let's take the fade, for instance. Now this is really a difficult one, since a lot of the fades' power comes purely from experience and not any game based tricks. The player knows how to control his blink well, instinctively knows his range and how close he has to get to a marine before swiping, has a good feel for about how long he can stay in a fight before having to blink away, etc.
The difficulty with the fade is that this is all such a razors edge. Their range is extremely short, the blink extremely quick, the regular pace extremely slow. Combine all of these things and you have a situation where you have to be pretty danged good with blink to get into range (without going past it) to be able to do any damage.
To be honest, I think blink is the main difficulty as it takes a lot of skill to use well and very quickly loses it's effectiveness if a person can't use it that well -- but I don't know of any good ways to modify blink without ruining its effectiveness overall, so I don't wanna touch it.
Instead, and I'm not sure how well this would work, but one way to increase the user friendliness of the fade would be to extend the range or widen the cone of fire somewhat, so that if you don't land facing exactly right, you've still got a shot. Skilled players likely wouldn't notice this too much since they already land with it lined up very well. You might need a slight nerf to the swipe strength to compensate, since the game may well be balanced with the expectation of fades missing every other shot or something, but perhaps not. It'd have to be playtested out.
Comments
wee first reply, proud <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
NS should teach the rules of NS no?
[/laughingatyou]
[/laughingatyou] <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
The only way I could see any map being helpful in any way is putting a train func in a map that takes damage and putting hurt brushes over the whole floor and having a fade have to kill the thing. Maybe an obstacle course for lerks with the func_hurt walls. This will at least teach them to use blink for something other then running away, and actually get them moving around properly.