Balance Concept: Redo Alien Res System for 3.2
GreyFlcn
Join Date: 2006-12-19 Member: 59134Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2006-12-19 Member: 59134Members, Constellation
If pug's are relatively balanced, and pubs are not.
Then one large factor is that aliens gets screwed on Res when it's being split 15 different ways.
<u>The Idea:</u>
<b>Give 1/6 the availible Res to each Alien,
Regardless of how many Aliens there are.</b>
That way, you achieve much of the same balance of a 6v6 PUG on a public server.
It also removes a lot of the sting of death when the Res doesn't recharge at a snail's pace.
Keep in mind:
The factor of the 100 Res cap limit for Aliens.
And how Marines don't need to spend extra res/time for upgrades every time they respawn.
_
Opinions? Comments? Flames?
Then one large factor is that aliens gets screwed on Res when it's being split 15 different ways.
<u>The Idea:</u>
<b>Give 1/6 the availible Res to each Alien,
Regardless of how many Aliens there are.</b>
That way, you achieve much of the same balance of a 6v6 PUG on a public server.
It also removes a lot of the sting of death when the Res doesn't recharge at a snail's pace.
Keep in mind:
The factor of the 100 Res cap limit for Aliens.
And how Marines don't need to spend extra res/time for upgrades every time they respawn.
_
Opinions? Comments? Flames?
Comments
A marine team will quickly get locked down by mass oc spam in the early game and after that by mass fade/onoses.
This is with 3 restowers and without rfk.
That way, you achieve much of the same balance of a 3v3 PUG on a public server.
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Erm, you do know that a 3vs3 PUG is horribly unbalanced?
To the system: (edited!)
Say you're playing a match 12vs12.
Your team has 3 rts.
Res come in every 4 seconds if I recall right.
This means every alien gets 7.5 res per minute.
So you can expect 2nd hive at 4 minute mark.
Thats were the 2nd hive usually comes in a 6vs6 game aswell.
But this would also mean that:
1 player drops hive
2 players can lerk (the rt builders)
1 player builds first chambers
8 players go fade!
The marines cant handle 8 fades at that time.
So now the marines have the disadvantage in larger games.
This system would only work if there were additional major changes.
Noone pugs ns maps 3vs3 he just misunderstood something or got info from a faulty source
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*doh* Then do it 6 ways ;D
Either way the point is that it shouldn't be split dynamically past a certain threshold :O
Aint saying make it as brute as 1.04 (if they really want fades on hive1 fine) but make it limited again.
Then we can ALSO limit the res again, making more res flow in the constant pool, ready for teamuse.
No matter how much res you throw whatever around, it's not going to stop that 2 or 3 marines from getting 56-2 scores.
Redesign the game to shorten performance between players and you'll see that the res system naturally will align itself to balance. But blood will be shed...
I've gone this route and the res system isn't the problem - it's the game design itself.
No matter how much res you throw whatever around, it's not going to stop that 2 or 3 marines from getting 56-2 scores.
Redesign the game to shorten performance between players and you'll see that the res system naturally will align itself to balance. But blood will be shed...
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Yeah, but the same could be said for the 2 to 3 Fades.
But anyways, I wasn't mentioning to alter RFK
I want to alter Alien RT res.
In that right now,
If there's 16 aliens on, then the pool of Alien Res gets split 16 different ways
Which causes it to recharge almost 3x slower than in an ideal 6v6 game.
All the while, Marines scale much better with larger numbers.
Since the investment for many of the marine abilities only has to be spent once.
On a small team, the price per teammate evens out to aliens.
On a large team, the price per teammate rapidly shrinks to become a bargain.
Then you factor in the time spent respawning, reupgrading, reevolving.
Marines get all their stuff instantly after the first time.
And hell, the super RFK alien guy, he's capped out at 100 Res anyways.
Hah, even one more thing to consider.
When a Marine dies, Res keeps flowing on into the pot.
If an alien dies, they don't get Res while dead.
I've gone this route and the res system isn't the problem - it's the game design itself.
No matter how much res you throw whatever around, it's not going to stop that 2 or 3 marines from getting 56-2 scores.
Redesign the game to shorten performance between players and you'll see that the res system naturally will align itself to balance. But blood will be shed...
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The first lerk can be active by the 1:30 mark. If he's good, and plays cautiously, he can shut down that pro marine's effectiveness, even if he never actually kills him.
The Fade shows up around 4-5 minutes. Now that pro marine is just fodder. No matter how good the marine is, if he doesn't have good backup from the team, he's going down.
I've seen marines get in the range of 30 or 40-2 on rare occasions, but thats almost always a game thats so badly skill stacked that his personal performance isn't really that important--its the entire team thats outplaying the entire opposing team. I've also seen marines that go 20-4 and still wind up losing, because the alien team showed better teamwork and was able to contain him once they got the res for lifeforms. One marine, no matter how good, cannot win the game on his own.
I've gone this route and the res system isn't the problem - it's the game design itself.
No matter how much res you throw whatever around, it's not going to stop that 2 or 3 marines from getting 56-2 scores.
Redesign the game to shorten performance between players and you'll see that the res system naturally will align itself to balance. But blood will be shed...
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Or maybe you should realize that there is nothing wrong with good players making more of an impact than bad players on the game. Everytime I see you post, it's the crying of a player who wants to make everything easier and increase the relative skill level of everybody by lowering the ceiling, instead of raising the floor.
If you don't like my posts, that's too bad. The world's full of opinions.
Most people can learn how to point their crosshair over a skulk, but never learn what decisions to make to keep that crosshair over their target without getting chewed to bits doing it. NS is most definately a game of choice and logic, if not to the extent that CS is. Now THAT is a thinking game.
Don't forget that every alien starts with 25 res no matter how many players are on the team. Thats a huge starting res advantage on larger servers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't forget that aliens get hives and lifeforms way later too and the marine tech tree is independant of player counts. Don't forget that aliens don't get any tech that allows them to cover 2 hive areas until the second hive goes live, so that initial 25 res for every doesn't matter so much. Aliens can't hold and defend enough territory to invest in nodes beyond the current hive and next hive without gorges and/or gorge forts. Gorge forts die without the gorge and die when the first GL hits the field anyways. Don't forget the more nodes you have as alien, more likely the a hive location will be ninja'd having the aliens scattered and diverted trying to procted them. Don't forget that beacons are static priced as well, pay for themselves on a rush, and aliens still can't change their spawnrate until the second hive goes up.
Most of all, don't forget that NS has <b>never</b> been balanced because it has never scaled. With a reasonable sample of 30 players - it's hard to ignore the stats.
This topic is somewhat related to the skulk discussion in addressing the problem of early-game alien effectiveness. There are two unreasonable expectations: 1. Pub players should be smart and play the skulk right. 2. Aliens should rely greatly on teamwork in larger games to effectively counter marines in the start of the game. You can't expect either from the average pub. It is hard to achieve it even in competitive play, let alone in a random server where people don't know each other/have communication problems/have different modes of thinking. If you keep these expectations, pub balance won't change.
There needs to be some kind of change that will allow aliens to fight back initially without relying on the above expectations. The skulk thread proposes buffs to skulks, this thread proposes a change to the resource system. Either approach may work. In changing the res system, you allow for the possibility to normalize the appearance of evolved life-forms so that the aliens can fight back before the entire map is marine-controlled.
I already suggested this for ns2, imagine a simple kind of upkeep system for marines by reintroducing spawncosts, but make the amount of res dependent on the armor level of the spawning marine (e.g. AU0 = 0res ..;..AU3 = 3res).
The costs for the armor upgrades have to be adjusted and the commander has a new option at the infantry portal which enables him to choose the armor level of the spawning marine and by that how much res he can or want to invest in the reinforcement.
One could even add this option to the arms lab, to reduce work for commanders considering multiple infantry portals.
This would scale to more marine players and encourages aliens to take out as much enemy rts as possible and disturb marines res flow to weak them which results in a changed rfk ratio of marines:aliens.
Moreover spawncosts would help to fight the marine mainbase turtle at the endgame when aliens have mapcontrol, but take too long to finish them off.
The solution that many people suggest simply does not work. On a 30 player server, marines might have the advantage, but with scalable res, once you get 10 players with 50 res, you get 10 fades and the opposite problem occurs.
Having said that, we are going to look at this problem. It has always been on the agenda for 3.2, but we're not going to touch it until post 3.2 final. The current set of changes are enough variables to balance for now, and once we are satisfied and do a final release, we'll investigate solutions and consider implementing changes to large game res flow for one of the 3.2.x balance patches.
BTW, the empirical evidence suggests that there is a 50/50 win/lose ration on large game servers. Wozer at NSA wrote a utility to generate win/lose ratios and on their 28 player server over a couple of thousand games they see the win/lose ratio converge to about 0.5.
Whats the point in waiting for a good fade who does not die to hit 100 res, if he aint gona use it. Thats atleast 50 res the team can need and the fade can stay fade.
>to think of it, if you don't wanna make it hive dependant like 1.04 do it like this:
skulk = 100 res limit
gorge = 90 res limit
lerk = 70 res limit
fade = 50 res limit
onos = 25 res limit.
Any lower lifeform can acumilate res to do something. Higher lifeforms usually stay alive and allow res to flow in the pool. Upon death, the become skulk with the 100 limit, and grab all res from the pool untill the pool is dry or they got 100 res.
This way the pool can buildup alot faster. Gorges can build more, and if any player dies they can gestate faster.
Sure this way, a good player is saving the res for a bad player to gestate, but whats the point if a bad player ######s 100 res and does nothing anywayz? better have a chance of using it.
2nd edit for typos
Most of the "skill" you're talking about in NS is logical skill though.
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make that "Most...Skilll...in NS...logical skill" magik <3
A long time ago, CheesyPeteza wrote a plugin that implemented scalable alien res. It divided the alien resources up such that each alien got the resources they would have got on a 6 player team.
The solution that many people suggest simply does not work. On a 30 player server, marines might have the advantage, but with scalable res, once you get 10 players with 50 res, you get 10 fades and the opposite problem occurs.
Having said that, we are going to look at this problem. It has always been on the agenda for 3.2, but we're not going to touch it until post 3.2 final. The current set of changes are enough variables to balance for now, and once we are satisfied and do a final release, we'll investigate solutions and consider implementing changes to large game res flow for one of the 3.2.x balance patches.
BTW, the empirical evidence suggests that there is a 50/50 win/lose ration on large game servers. Wozer at NSA wrote a utility to generate win/lose ratios and on their 28 player server over a couple of thousand games they see the win/lose ratio converge to about 0.5.
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Keep in mind that those statistics do not tell you what is going on in every game. They do not tell you whether the games were one-sided or balanced, what the maximum/median/minimum K:D ratios were on each team. Those statistics also do not take into account stacking, which often occurs when the good players flock to one team or another. Therefore, although they may spend an equal amount of time playing one or the other side, thus giving a 0.5 statistic for wins of each side, the game may still be unbalanced.
I'm not saying its balanced, just saying that the OP's idea is not warranted. Its not like the aliens have never beaten a good marine team in a large game. I still say the problem is more of a lack of teamwork and the approach a lot of the people take to playing aliens on large servers than the resource system.
Keep in mind that those statistics do not tell you what is going on in every game. They do not tell you whether the games were one-sided or balanced, what the maximum/median/minimum K:D ratios were on each team. Those statistics also do not take into account stacking, which often occurs when the good players flock to one team or another. Therefore, although they may spend an equal amount of time playing one or the other side, thus giving a 0.5 statistic for wins of each side, the game may still be unbalanced.
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We're very much aware that the statistics give no real insights into game quality. We don't ever act on statistical evidence unless there is strong correlation with perceived problems.
Any changes to res flow will not be radical. We need to ensure that large alien teams are not so starved of res that they can't keep up with marine tech progression, but not so resource rich that the marines face an army of fades after 4 minutes.
Sure.. if we switch the 90/100 limit between gorge and skulk it still works. The general idea is to take res from the big aliens.
Sure, who says it must be 100, 90, 70, 50 and 25. Its just a idea, and balance isues are for the devteam to figure out. (if it gets in)
But it would be so cool. having limits again.