The balance debate revisited
Savant
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
<div class="IPBDescription">Why NS can't achieve balance in its present form</div>Before I start, when I say 'revisited' in the thread topic, I say so having posted on this issue before. In fact, as you can note by my info, I'm a 'old timer' who has been around since the 1.0x days. With the evolution of NS, there have always been issues with balance. In fact, I've brought the matter up at least once a year over the past years...
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=3410084223792199168&showtopic=41223&hl=" target="_blank">Can Real Balance Be Attained?</a> (2003)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=3410084223792199168&showtopic=66623&hl=" target="_blank">An Essay On Balance Issues</a> (2004)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=3410084223792199168&showtopic=89466&hl=" target="_blank">Balance Concepts... General musings about balance in NS</a> (2005)
With the board down in 2006, that leaves 2007 for my next instalment.
In playing the latest incarnation of NS, I'm sadly finding the same issues now that I found 4 years ago. The larger the server, the greater the imbalance. Some people defend this, and some people protest it, but the bottom line is that the game just isn't balanced for the majority of those who play it in the manner they play it.
Keeping the game balance for 6v6 and competitive play is all well and good, but if you have a huge chunk of people who don't play it competitively, and who play on larger servers, then you are essentially saying to a large portion of the player base that their style of gameplay doesn't matter.
Right now I think the biggest thing holding back NS is that no effort has/is being made to balance the game for play on large servers. Yet those larger servers are the bread and butter of the majority of people playing the game right now. Honestly, I really don't see the logic in ignoring their needs.
Does this mean I think that balance for competitive play should be thrown out the window? Absolutely not! I've played competitively on a number of HL mods, and it is an enjoyable experience. However, I do think that attempting to achieve any kind of balance that will work on both competitive and public servers isn't really possible. The variables involved are just too diverse, and you will never achieve a proper balance that suits the type of play in both forms.
In short, what NS really needs is a 'tournament mode' that is balanced explicitly for 6v6 competitive gameplay. This mode would allow competitive players the opportunity to play a game that is fine tuned for their kind of gameplay.
At the same time, 'public NS' should be rebalanced to appeal to the general public. Those casual players who play for fun, and enjoy the larger servers. I've had this debate with Charlie before, and I know he has expressed reservation with having 'two forms' of the same game. However, I really think this is an idea who's time has come. I have the greatest respect for Charlie, but I also feel that he is being unnecessarily inflexible with his ideals. The CO gameplay is a perfect example. He originally created this form of gameplay as a 'server filler' - a means for a half-dozen people to play while waiting for the server to fill up. When CO became wildly popular, he was extremely resistant to make balance changes that would take into account larger teams of players, since this was not how he intended the game to be played.
Larger games tend to be more fun, and that is something that cannot be ignored. Heck, a look at the stats for the various HL mods will find that TFC (which was released in April 1999) is still doing better than NS is in terms of active players. Even though the game hasn't seen any kind of update in years, it remains popular since it remains balanced.
Honestly, instead of discouraging larger games and larger servers I feel we should be embracing it. If this is how people want to play, "if you can't beat them, join them." If we want to build a base with which to carry forward towards the day when NS2 releases, then we need to stop shunning these larger servers and its respective player base, and start working to address their legitimate balance concerns. We can still maintain competitive play with a second balanced form of gameplay, and everyone would be happy. I honestly don't see any downside in this, other than it would take a bit of work to initially code the 2 sets of variables.
The balance complaints won't go away until/unless we acknowledge that there are two distinct sets of competing interests here. (Public play and competitive play.) It's not possible to balance one set of variables to ideally suit both forms of play because NS is too complex a game. Any overall balance will have to involve sacrifices to one form of gameplay or the other, and that just is not ideal when you are trying to appease two distinctly different player bases.
Let's give in to the reality that is NS, and give in to the fact that large servers are what's popular. We can balance NS for them, and adopt a 'tournament mode' to balance independently. Both player bases would be happy. I don't see how that would be a bad thing...
Regards,
Savant
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=3410084223792199168&showtopic=41223&hl=" target="_blank">Can Real Balance Be Attained?</a> (2003)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=3410084223792199168&showtopic=66623&hl=" target="_blank">An Essay On Balance Issues</a> (2004)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=3410084223792199168&showtopic=89466&hl=" target="_blank">Balance Concepts... General musings about balance in NS</a> (2005)
With the board down in 2006, that leaves 2007 for my next instalment.
In playing the latest incarnation of NS, I'm sadly finding the same issues now that I found 4 years ago. The larger the server, the greater the imbalance. Some people defend this, and some people protest it, but the bottom line is that the game just isn't balanced for the majority of those who play it in the manner they play it.
Keeping the game balance for 6v6 and competitive play is all well and good, but if you have a huge chunk of people who don't play it competitively, and who play on larger servers, then you are essentially saying to a large portion of the player base that their style of gameplay doesn't matter.
Right now I think the biggest thing holding back NS is that no effort has/is being made to balance the game for play on large servers. Yet those larger servers are the bread and butter of the majority of people playing the game right now. Honestly, I really don't see the logic in ignoring their needs.
Does this mean I think that balance for competitive play should be thrown out the window? Absolutely not! I've played competitively on a number of HL mods, and it is an enjoyable experience. However, I do think that attempting to achieve any kind of balance that will work on both competitive and public servers isn't really possible. The variables involved are just too diverse, and you will never achieve a proper balance that suits the type of play in both forms.
In short, what NS really needs is a 'tournament mode' that is balanced explicitly for 6v6 competitive gameplay. This mode would allow competitive players the opportunity to play a game that is fine tuned for their kind of gameplay.
At the same time, 'public NS' should be rebalanced to appeal to the general public. Those casual players who play for fun, and enjoy the larger servers. I've had this debate with Charlie before, and I know he has expressed reservation with having 'two forms' of the same game. However, I really think this is an idea who's time has come. I have the greatest respect for Charlie, but I also feel that he is being unnecessarily inflexible with his ideals. The CO gameplay is a perfect example. He originally created this form of gameplay as a 'server filler' - a means for a half-dozen people to play while waiting for the server to fill up. When CO became wildly popular, he was extremely resistant to make balance changes that would take into account larger teams of players, since this was not how he intended the game to be played.
Larger games tend to be more fun, and that is something that cannot be ignored. Heck, a look at the stats for the various HL mods will find that TFC (which was released in April 1999) is still doing better than NS is in terms of active players. Even though the game hasn't seen any kind of update in years, it remains popular since it remains balanced.
Honestly, instead of discouraging larger games and larger servers I feel we should be embracing it. If this is how people want to play, "if you can't beat them, join them." If we want to build a base with which to carry forward towards the day when NS2 releases, then we need to stop shunning these larger servers and its respective player base, and start working to address their legitimate balance concerns. We can still maintain competitive play with a second balanced form of gameplay, and everyone would be happy. I honestly don't see any downside in this, other than it would take a bit of work to initially code the 2 sets of variables.
The balance complaints won't go away until/unless we acknowledge that there are two distinct sets of competing interests here. (Public play and competitive play.) It's not possible to balance one set of variables to ideally suit both forms of play because NS is too complex a game. Any overall balance will have to involve sacrifices to one form of gameplay or the other, and that just is not ideal when you are trying to appease two distinctly different player bases.
Let's give in to the reality that is NS, and give in to the fact that large servers are what's popular. We can balance NS for them, and adopt a 'tournament mode' to balance independently. Both player bases would be happy. I don't see how that would be a bad thing...
Regards,
Savant
Comments
As for two rulesets making the game 'too hard' for competitive players, I disagree. Let's be honest here, not everyone has what it takes to play competitively. Some people may not have the skill or communication skills necessary to succeed at competitive play. That's not a reflection on the game, that's a reflection on the player. (It's not a negative reflection either - not everyone is meant to play at the competitive level.)
Overall, in most competitive teams I've been on, the players are skilled enough that I would expect they would have no trouble adapting to this kind of subtle change. Competitive play was mever meant to be easy. However, the differences would likely be subtle, like the health/armor ratings of the various classes, the damage done from weapons, the cost of upgrades and the resource flow to name a few. We're not talking about adding 'scorpions that hover witout flapping' here. The changes would be subtle, but would allow each respective playstyle to be fun and intuitive. In public play it could mean more health/armor on skulks, while in competitive play it might be more hps on a res node. The details are unimportant since they can be independantly balanced to make sure that they work.
The concept is what is important here.
Regards,
Savant
1. just seems to crowded
2. marines have it easy because 10+ marines can cover 2/3 pgs 8- players allows aliens to attack the undefended positions
Constructive criticism is good. Doing nothing but badmouthing Developers and Playtesters, and making snide remarks causes nothing but a negative attitude to be formed about you.
For aliens, they have to charge down the same corridor, so a person aiming at one skulk might hit the one beside it and so forth.
Make friendly fire mandatory and you'll see marines instantly be more cautious about where they shoot.
I don't know if anyone has realized, but Half-Life 1 copies aren't exactly flying off the shelves nowadays, so the focus for this dev team really needs to be embracing the current (shrinking) player base, and balancing the game for the majority of players, which are clearly in the public server scene.
Look at any other game that actually succeeded in the competitive area, many of them use so-called "Pro mods" or "competitive mods" to focus the game mechanics (which were designed for their largest audience, the large public server) to work better with smaller, squad sized competitive games, allowing developers to continue to patch balance/other issues dealing with their public server community, without unbalancing play for smaller competitive games. PAM mod was a wildly successful competitive mod for CoD, and BF2 Pro is the current widely accepted BF2 competition mod, both of which enhance the competitive play aspect without having to worry about official changes made to the public server scene.
Larger servers stay full longer than smaller servers, for example the largest ns classic server guns is full at almost all times, dipping down to about 10-12 players from 4am-7am cst then picking back up again and back to 30 players by 7am, where as even a medium sized 18 slot server like tactical gamers doesn't fill up until mid-afternoon.
The latest patch especially seems like it's going to be hard for larger servers to deal with. One of the reasons the player base for ns has shrunk as much as it has is people who played the game for fun leaving after finding their game getting harder and harder to enjoy on the large servers they were accustomed to playing on as well as people who are completely new joining the largest populated servers they see and being put off.
A number of competitive players start off as that guy who downloads the mod his friend told him about, starts playing on the largest server he can find with open slots, and after awhile gets to the point where he is doing so well on the server people tell him he should sign up for competitive or he actively seeks it out looking for something more challenging from ns. With them getting a bad first impression you're losing potential talent and fresh blood for your league.
One of the main motto's I hear from people who call themselves competitive players is that they will adapt to each new update. If there were a tournament mode for ns I'm sure they would be able to rise to that challenge as well, it shouldn't be that much of a stretch for them though as 3.2 is fairly well balanced for competitive play and is currently being used by ansl and I believe ensl.
I would go on the flipside here and argue that to achieve some semblance of balance where both teams have good and real chances of winning to be quite an effort.
The major, major, major hoo-haw about balancing in larger games though, is the possibilities of high level tactics and strategy still exist, though are almost never practiced. As such not all balance can be truly considered for such a scenario because player skill is a huge factor.
With larger games there is invariably a much larger emphasis on map control, with many OCs/lerks/gorg trains/etc combos being NECESSARY to hold the required RTs (in a 24+ server I would imagine 5 RTs is a MINIMUM youd want) whilst still maintaining other essential dynamics to alien play (pressure, scouting, containment etc). These things are absolutely essential to the aliens winning, though I never see them, so its hard to comment on balance :/ A lot of people will absolutely refuse to play this game like anything other than a 6v6... and that would be disasterous <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Sorry but until people start pulling their fingers out of their ###### and playing smart I couldnt really comment on how balanced large games are. Cause they can shift rapidly and the result is devastating and demoralising.
Forget the rt res distribution. Take any remotely skill-balanced, large pub game and look at the amount of shotguns, pgs, turrets, jps and HA, versus the amount of ocs, upgrades, hives, lerks fades and oni.
Dont they seem to be almost... proportionate?
I just played the game where nobody knew how to make RTs on my team. However, since I went onos, I singlehandedly stopped the marine team.
It's ridiculous how effective one or two skilled players can be. RFK compounds this.
Like I said, RFK can be a solution, but only if player performances were similar. More often than not, they aren't. So what happens is the one or two pros on each team get all the res, while the other players remain starved (well not the marines). It's Res-For-Pros.
RFK can work, but that's if the skill levels of everyone were relatively the same.
I just played the game where nobody knew how to make RTs on my team. However, since I went onos, I singlehandedly stopped the marine team.
It's ridiculous how effective one or two skilled players can be. RFK compounds this.
Like I said, RFK can be a solution, but only if player performances were similar. More often than not, they aren't. So what happens is the one or two pros on each team get all the res, while the other players remain starved (well not the marines). It's Res-For-Pros.
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This is true. Many large, pub servers have an alien team that typically cannot compete well enough vs marines (who are usually stacked with a few superb marines). I've seen plenty of games where all but 3 or 4 aliens (on 12 player team) are skulks with little or no res. If you put inadequate skulks vs a marine team that is partially upgraded, who usually wins? The answer is usually the marines and they ended up getting their comm more res.
In essence, the balancing factor would be about +1 res for each player (except the person that got the +3 res for the kill). If you test how it plays out, then you could make the balancing factor to account for increasing server sizes by adjusting it to +(6n)^0.5/6, which would give 1 res per person at 6 players, about 1.4 res per person at 12 players, and adjust it as necessary.
This change would make strong alien teams stronger and will give the weaker alien teams a little bit more of a chance to do something. It definitely won't solve all the balance problems, but it might be enough to give pub play the little nudge it needs to get back to more tolerable days.
Quick Edit: The reason why tweaking res income can actually do something with balance is because on average aliens would be able to get higher lifeforms earlier and thus have a greater chance to capture and establish a second hive. Yes, when you go down to the core a pro marine team will still own any pub alien team. However, if you want to get quasibalance, then there are many ways to go about achieving it.
Is the game of football balanced? Is there any innate advantage to either side, aside from pure athletic skill? No. Absolutely not. But you dont hear people whining and complaining that Football is bullsh*t and needs to be 'balanced' because they're seeing the Colts demolish the local varsity high school team (which frankly i think would be hilarious to watch.. and people would do it. New reality series? 'Impossible Odds'? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />). Obviously football has symmetrical sides, but it shows the point.
As the devs have stated 3.2 was based around a small number of players per a server, 12-18 for this patch specifically. They could balance it for the larger servers while keeping a tournament mode for the small 6v6 crowd. I cant see turning away the more popular servers as a good move. You need to appeal to new players, if not you end up in the situation NS finds itself in now.
Anytime you're theorizing about a change and its effects, you <u>MUST ALWAYS KEEP ALL OTHER VARIABLES EQUAL</u>. If the skill is balanced on both sides and the game is fine, then the game is fine. If the skill is stacked on marines and marines win, thats not unbalanced. Thats expected.
Is the game of football balanced? ... Obviously football has symmetrical sides, but it shows the point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Actually, that's the problem, NS isn't symmetrical at all. Skulks aren't equal to marines, there is no alien commander, and the gameplay for each side is markedly different. That's one of the reasons the game is so hard to balance.
While skill can cause problems for balance, skill is not the problem here. Heck, one could argue that if you actually were able to balance the game to make it so that both sides had a perfectly equal chance to win regardless of skill, then the game would never end!
Yes skill is a variable, but in larger game it becomes less of a problem. While a single 'hot' player can easily influence a 6v6 pug game, that same 'hot' player won't have the same impact when teams are 16v16. There are just too many players involved. However, skill is not the problem here. People aren't complaining that they lose, or that some players are better than them. Losing is part of the game.
It's *how* people are losing that is the problem here. Balance is what controls the flow of the game, and right now the game is predominantly balanced for competitive play. That kind of balance sets the bar high for casual players, and it really sucks a lot of fun out of the game.
As I said, the point here is not to change the game to appeal to only one type of gamer, it's to adapt so that NS can appeal to an even bigger audience. I still remember the crowds on NS servers in the early days, where you could find hundreds of full servers out there with people playing. Nowadays the mod seems to be going the way of the Firearms mod, dying a slow death because of the developer's refusal to act on user concerns.
We all know that HL1 is primarily a dead platform, and it's now only really a springboard for HL2 development. The problem is that the people playing NS now are the same people who will likely spend money on NS2. However, that just isn't going to happen if you don't appeal to the kind of gameplay that they enjoy. In this day and age you're not going to sell a game that only works for 6v6. Investors aren't going to buy into that. Even CS had to build its popularity on larger servers.
When CS was released, it came in the same year as the Firearms mod. While many people haven't played Firearms, it was in fact the PC Gamer best new mod that year - beating out CS! In the end CS became more popular because it catered to what made it popular, while Firearms died a slow death shunning the user base and doing its own thing.
The question begs to be asked, "would adopting two levels of balance make the game more desirable to players?" If the answer is yes, then I really want to know why we are ignoring that potential. We have a captive audience who we can groom to buy 'NS2' when released if they have a good experience playing NS1. We should be looking to capitalize on that fact.
Why stifle the game unnecessarily?
Regards,
Savant
infact firearms community had a similar problem which i think exists in this community -scroll down to first sgossard post @ 6:25 pm and read on<a href="http://www.fasforums.com/archive/index.php/t-445.html" target="_blank">http://www.fasforums.com/archive/index.php/t-445.html</a>
also 'hot' players can influence 16v16 games. in this screenshot is a game where i didnt even try to kill###### - i had a shotgun for the last 5 minutes of the game and did as my commander told me to do. before goodknight (my clanmate) joined the server i also had a similar score and won the marine round. i also did the same on aliens as fade. when i decided to eat, i join spec and goodknight went 20-1 on marines.
<img src="http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4035/nstanith0000ux8.png" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
i have played many 3.2 games before and after the final version and the team that will displays the most teamwork and skill does win doesnt matter 32 or 16 man public games or a 6v6 clan match. ive won and lost just as many games as on previous patches as alien or marine and theres always a reason for it beyond ingame unbalances. its USER ERROR and i have fun on servers where you can point out mistakes after a round and people WILL ACTUALLY LISTEN AND ALTER THEIR IDEAS AND STRATEGIES TO WIN THE NEXT ROUND WITHOUT COMING TO A FORUM TO POST WHINES AND FLAMEBAIT. adapt already, you had two months.
Now, I'm currently not a developer (focusing on studies, not much time for games at the moment), so take what I say now with a pinch of salt as I haven't been in the loop for the last months:
There are/have been plans to deal with the resource distribution for larger (and smaller!) server games. The main obstacle has been time permitted along with some kind of sandbox to test it with. The more people that are required to test a feature, the harder it becomes testing it. It's not meant as an excuse, just as an explanation why we didn't do it while I was actively developing.
Now, you're talking about two different distinctions of the game type Savant; large vs. mid vs. small and competitive vs. pub. I do not believe distinguishing between competitive and pub play more than the current tournament mode is the way to go. I do, however, agree that there can be done some significant improvements based on the size of the teams, which seems (in my opinion) to capture most of the differences between the different server environments (local interesting personalities aside of course).
I don't claim to know the ideal size for servers, but I have seen this statement alot lately. Can anyone actually back this up, with real stats, that a majority of players prefer servers larger than, say, 20 players.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of servers split in groups of <=20 and >20 players and look at stats, without bots and accounted for time zone, detailing player numbers and perhaps tracking steam-id's to get a clear picture of player preference. We all know that postings on forums have little or no connection to reality.
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That seems reasonable to me. It's not a perfect statement, of course, but it adequately solves so many of the complaints that we're only now hearing about 3.2.
The build has its flaws, but it provides sundry remedies for dealing with most, if not all of them. The ###### is harnessing your team to consume those remedies effectively.
But then, actually pulling that off is 3.2's (arguably NS') most rewarding offering.
I don't claim to know the ideal size for servers, but I have seen this statement alot lately. Can anyone actually back this up, with real stats, that a majority of players prefer servers larger than, say, 20 players.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of servers split in groups of <=20 and >20 players and look at stats, without bots and accounted for time zone, detailing player numbers and perhaps tracking steam-id's to get a clear picture of player preference. We all know that postings on forums have little or no connection to reality.
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Well then, lets take a gander at the entire list of Non-Empty, Vac-Secured, Un-Passworded, worldwide Natural Selection 3.2 (ns_) servers. Mind you - this list was taken at about 1PM EST Thursday afternoon, probably not peak NS time.
<a href="http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nssteamsa6.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5267/nssteamsa6.th.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" /></a>
About Half of all 3.2 servers are configured for 20+ person play, with many more riding the 17-18 person line.
FF will make marines fire more cautiously, but it induces more trouble to the melee creatures more imho.
Being an admin one one of the (2?) FF servers out there, and having played thousands of rounds on it, I'd say that FF benefits aliens more than marines.
Aliens, like marines, have to be more careful in general. Obviously. But most of the TK kills come from players not used to FF who start attacking RTs with other skulks nearby. Since it only takes 4 bites or so to kill a skulk with FF, its easy to bite him down when you get into that mode of 'here comes 30 bites' when you start attacking an rt. Yes, in multi-alien combat, the FF damage is perhaps slightly worse for aliens, but nothing compared to the overall effects on marines.
Because, it really messed with marines. Early game, before armor 1, all it takes is three stray lmg bullets to send you from 3 bites to 2. And LOTS of lmg fire goes around. Anyone who's used to FF knows that whenever you see an alien, you still pretty much just shoot at it and hope your buddy doesnt take too much. Its better for you to hurt him than do nothing and have him die to the skulk.
Those few stray bullets, happening all the time, OFTEN mean the difference between a full bite.
Furthermore, GLs suddenly get a fairly substancial nerf. They're practically overpowered in FF-OFF anyways, but with it on, you have to be *very careful*.
And even furthermore, is mines. Sure, you can mine a PG... but make sure your marines dont toss any hand grenades nearby. Its very common for a skulk to start munching on a pg (between the mines, or where one already blew up), and then a rine hops through with gren primed, tosses straight down (a usually very effective tactic), but nukes all the mines. Comms have to be on the ball to scream out to NOT use HGs on certain PGs.
So in conclusion, imo, FF could balance out any perceives marine bias. But really, imo again, FF on is simply superior gameplay and fun <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
...and that's what this is all about. What people expect and how public players tend to play. Over the years, NS has defined itself, and even though balance has remained sketchy in larger games, the mod remained popular for a long period of time. However, The failure by developers to embrace the 'unintended' gameplay of larger servers and CO mode, the player base has dwindled, and the NS mod risks going the way of the Firearms mod. The Firearms mod, an award-winning add-on that beat out CS for the honour of 'Best new mod', now has one server that runs it, and the developers have all since moved on to other projects.
Let's take a look back at the stats over the last few years....
In Feb 2004, before HL2 and the resulting 'source' mods, Natural Selection was a solid 3rd in the ratings, behind CS and DoD. (stats <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040204025543/http://www.steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html" target="_blank">here</a>). Fast forward a year to March 2005, HL2 and related games are out, CS:Source is out, competition is fierce. Even through all this, Natural Selection was able to hold onto their player base, and there was no significant decline in either the number of players playing, or the number of servers available. (stats <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050307020746/http://www.steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html" target="_blank">here</a>). As the 2005 year drags on, DoD Source is released, and we can see that in the end of December 2005 that the number of players playing Natural Selection is now only half of what it was in the beginning of the year. (Stats <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20051227042508/http://steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html" target="_blank">here</a>). The demise of the NS forums, only compounded this decline, and we are left today with a veritable handful of players on a shrinking number of servers. What's more, Natural Selection has been surpassed in popularity by a number of mods, including Garry's Mod, TeamFortress Classic, Half-Life DeathMatch, Dystopia and Earth's Special Forces. (stats <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=stats" target="_blank">here</a>).
We can pretend that we aren't losing our player base, but the reality is that without some kind of action to embrace the concerns of the users, this mod will quickly become an 'also-ran' that wont provide any traction when NS2 is released. Why would someone shell out bucks for a game that they stopped playing?
Just because we're on the HL1 platform does NOT mean we should just assume that we can't keep people interested in the game. Just look at CS, you will see that over the years the number of people playing the original (non-Source) version has doubled, even after the Source version was released. Right now, there are 4 times as many people playing CS than CS:S, which speaks strongly to the efforts of developers to appeal to the desires of the greater player base.
NS2 is going to take time to develop, and in this time we should be looking to expand the player base with changes to NS that capitalize on what's popular. If you look at the server list, you may see 1 or 2 servers running 12 man servers. That's not what the public want to play. The larger servers are always the ones that are full. While it may not be ideal for NS to be played with larger teams, we have to stop being inflexible and embrace how people want to play. We can't dictate to people that they have to play 'small games' because that's how the mod is balanced - do that and people will leave. (As we've seen in the stats)
We have a lot of smart developers that work on this mod, and I know they could come up with ways in which we could have 'scaling variables' that are dependant on the number of players present. A server that runs 16v16 should be able to have just as much fun as one that runs 8v8. The larger server shouldn't have to suffer with poor balance simply because of some out-dated ideal that "NS isn't meant to be played with that many people." The stats speak for themselves, and people aren't playing.
Remaining inflexible to balance the game for larger servers only hurts the chance of NS2 to find a market when it is complete. There won't be anyone left at this rate, and so there will be no 'built-in' player base with which to convert to sales. Seeing as that is a key aspect that would be considered by prospective investors, this is something that could cripple the development of NS2.
However, in the end the question begs to be asked, what is the downside to balancing NS for larger servers? (While maintaining a independently balanced mode for competitive play.) Why the resistance? How does alienating a chunk of the player base serve any purpose?
NS as we know it is dying. It's not dead, but it's certainly in decline. Maintaining the status quo isn't going to help. It's up to the developers to decide if they want to let the game continue to decline, or if they want to take a stab as revitalizing it.
The choice is theirs.
Regards,
Savant
Savant, you're asking the questions on the premises that there is or has been a resistance balancing for large servers. In short; you're asking the wrong questions. There has never been a resistance to balancing for larger servers. Alienating players, regardless of playstyle, has never been a goal.
The ideal of 8v8 you refer to doesn't exist. True, our main bulk of balancing has been to the mid-range server sizes, but that has been more due to how much easier it is to get mid-sized servers running in a closed testing environment than anything else, and in such way has left us with less ongoing experience with larger server dynamics.
So please, you don't have to "fight" for this idea by speculating in how the playerbase will behave and how it relates to NS2. Just continue keeping it constructive instead, as there is no ideal or any other obstacle apart from actual development time and resources. (Which is something that can be severely lessened with a good and well thought out idea, of course.)
Savant, you're asking the questions on the premises that there is or has been a resistance balancing for large servers. In short; you're asking the wrong questions. There has never been a resistance to balancing for larger servers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I would tend to disagree with that remark, with a qualification. Have the developers ever <b>intentionally</b> set out to shun any form of balance for large servers? No. However, the developers have also not done anything to contribute to balance on large servers. While there has always been an undercurrent of "NS was never designed for large servers", it was certainly never malicious intent.
If we go back to the very beginning of NS, there was never any balance for large servers, not because they didn't feel NS should be played on large servers, but because the game was simply not optimized for it. If you had a game on a large server performance would go downhill fast. So I think the biggest servers we commonly had back then were 10v10, maybe 12v12 if a person had it on a really good machine. Above that would usually end badly as the games went on...
However, this is not to say that this debate hasn't been around. I can remember a post by an 'old timer' that some may remember. MMZ_Torak had a post in late 2002 that was titled "<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=17469&hl=" target="_blank">Balancing A Mod For Pubs Or Clan Matches, IMHO you can't have both.</a>" While server size is not explicitly mentioned, it certainly is implied since clan play normally happens in a 6v6 environment, while public play happens in a much larger environment.
This issue has plagued NS since its inception, and it is still here today.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Alienating players, regardless of playstyle, has never been a goal.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Intentionally? Of course not. No developer goes at a game with the intent to alienate their player base. However, if the end result is as such, then one needs to ask if the direction that development is headed is the right one. If the player base was expanding, then you would be well within your right to suggest that my concerns aren't founded. However, that isn't the case. With a shrinking player base you need to start asking yourself the tough questions. Why are they leaving? What is it that is driving them away? if nothing is driving them away, then what is it that isn't being done to <b>keep them </b> interested? CS has remained popular through the years, as has DoD. We can't say that it's the 'old HL1 technology' that is to blame here.
While alienating players was certainly not a goal, it's happening. You can see it in the comments by players in game, you can see it in the comments by players in the forum and you can see it in the number of people playing.
Like I said, as a long time playtester I (and others) have brought this issue up before. Every time the issue of 'balance scaling' has been brought up, development shoots it down with responses like "we don't want to go in that direction" or that NS "wasn't intended to be balanced on larger servers."
In many ways one could suggest that NS is a victim of its own popularity. In the beginning people never expected that we would have so many servers trying to push the limits in order to meet the demand of players to play. That popularity was a driving force behind a push to optimize the code so that larger servers would actually be viable. However, once the game became playable on larger servers, people fast found out that balance just wasn't there. Since there was no real testing of it (again, because the game wasn't reliable on large servers) there was no way for the developers to know.
However, the problem has been that when any attempt at balancing for larger servers was considered, the adjustments proposed were deemed to be 'too disruptive' to play in smaller competitive games. The two competing objectives have left the developers with a game that isn't really ideally balanced for competitive OR public play, and people just aren't staying around.
I don't want to see NS go the way of the Firearms mod. I really loved that mod and was really saddened to see it decay the way it did. NS is going the same way, and yet here we are, having the same debates that we have had for the last 4 years. Honestly, I don't know what else to say that hasn't already been said.
Regards,
Savant
ATM its pretty much all "Fluff" ... They're putzin with new maps (new textures/wads etc too) player models, sounds, few other BASIC tweaks... adjustments mostly... anywhoooo back on topic *Sits attentively cross-legged nearby listening*
Keeping the game balance for 6v6 and competitive play is all well and good, but if you have a huge chunk of people who don't play it competitively, and who play on larger servers, then you are essentially saying to a large portion of the player base that their style of gameplay doesn't matter.
Right now I think the biggest thing holding back NS is that no effort has/is being made to balance the game for play on large servers. Yet those larger servers are the bread and butter of the majority of people playing the game right now. Honestly, I really don't see the logic in ignoring their needs.
[...]
At the same time, 'public NS' should be rebalanced to appeal to the general public. Those casual players who play for fun, and enjoy the larger servers. I've had this debate with Charlie before, and I know he has expressed reservation with having 'two forms' of the same game. However, I really think this is an idea who's time has come. I have the greatest respect for Charlie, but I also feel that he is being unnecessarily inflexible with his ideals. The CO gameplay is a perfect example. He originally created this form of gameplay as a 'server filler' - a means for a half-dozen people to play while waiting for the server to fill up. When CO became wildly popular, he was extremely resistant to make balance changes that would take into account larger teams of players, since this was not how he intended the game to be played.
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Thank you for saying this. I very stongly agree with you and I hope action will be taken. There is a major problem with the larger NS community being ignored. The vast majorty of he community is NOT playing competitive play most of the time. In fact, I would dare to say that 50% doesn't play competitive AT ALL.
Charlie is a great guy but his personality doesn't seem very open minded to be honest. It makes him a good game developer in the sense that it actually keeps his team on track to accomplish what they started but not as good with adapting to changes in how the game is played. This is just my opinion of the man from my knowing of him.
I feel it is time to let Natural-Selection evolve.
(PS: What ever happened to long lasting games and possibility of comebacks? Games today are just so one sided for the most part. Whomever grabs the most resources in the first 5 min wins regardless most of the time. It's all over too soon.)
<!--quoteo(post=1612331:date=Mar 7 2007, 06:42 PM:name=Thief)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Thief @ Mar 7 2007, 06:42 PM) [snapback]1612331[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Great post(s), lets only hope they are taken to heart. You really hit on the main problem we are facing today, the constant focus on attaining balance in smaller, competitive type games really does alienate the vast majority of current NS players.
I don't know if anyone has realized, but Half-Life 1 copies aren't exactly flying off the shelves nowadays, so the focus for this dev team really needs to be embracing the current (shrinking) player base, and balancing the game for the majority of players, which are clearly in the public server scene.
Look at any other game that actually succeeded in the competitive area, many of them use so-called "Pro mods" or "competitive mods" to focus the game mechanics (which were designed for their largest audience, the large public server) to work better with smaller, squad sized competitive games, allowing developers to continue to patch balance/other issues dealing with their public server community, without unbalancing play for smaller competitive games. PAM mod was a wildly successful competitive mod for CoD, and BF2 Pro is the current widely accepted BF2 competition mod, both of which enhance the competitive play aspect without having to worry about official changes made to the public server scene.
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Great idea. Yes if games are balanced for the larger server then a nice competitive server can simply add some AMXX plugins to tweak as needed.
Balancing large pubs should not be done at the expense of non-large pubs, as large pubs do not constitute a vast majority of pubs.
NS's balance currently does not scale either up or down.
(just as a note, and this is more subjective than the rest of what I'm saying: playing with too few players rather sucks, which is one of the few times combat is nice, and is also why large servers stay more populated than non-large servers. If you have a server size of 16, and 4 people leave after a round, then you're down to 12, and more people start leaving because they don't want to play such a small game; as anyone who plays on non-large servers knows, this happens with some frequency)
There has been no way suggested to make NS's balance scale that will obviously work.
There have been plenty of solutions suggested, but they all (at least, the ones I've seen) have had pretty glaring flaws. Many smart people have put a lot of thought into this, and yet there's no golden solution being touted here.
Savant, you ended your most recent post with <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Honestly, I don't know what else to say that hasn't already been said. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->. If you'll read Tanke's post, you might get the impression that he's quite open to addressing balance on large servers. In fact, he almost even solicits solutions to making NS's balance scale.
On the other hand, if your goal is not to be involved in solving the scalability issue yourself, but merely to suggest a direction for NS to take to ensure its survival, have you considered, rather than persuading the devs to spend more time trying to solve a problem they have been unable to solve in the last five years, attempting to persuade the operators of large servers to lower the numbers of players?
If not, is this because you find large games are inherently more fun?
How do you reconcile this with the fact that this whole post is about how balance (and, presumably, hence gameplay) in large games in NS has never been good?
If the argument that the devs should devote more time to large NS servers is based purely on the number of people playing on large servers, why not make a similar argument for the devs to spend time balancing 50-level combatt?
I'm not trying to be antagonistic here; these are just questions that have sprung to mind while reading the large-server posts.
It is not easy to "tune it right". But it'll be easier for devs to change this or that and make it tested. The HL platform doesn't matter. You can do it on any platform. It's just a way of working. At the end dev just enter parameter and the game "behave".
<b>The most common parameters that can be dynamic are:</b>
All games : Life points, Armor, Bullet / weapon damage, unit speed (walk / run ), jump amplitude.
NS specific : Hive life points, RT life point, strutures life point.
Touchy one:
Lag parameter: Due to lag; players will be able to fullfill goals... or not. For example reduce bullet damage when lag exeed +80ms.
Static but important Environment and map:
-Maps could be reshaped a little. Hive that are clean and full of light like a supermarket is not really helping aliens.
-Big empty rooms at MS and close to MS.
-Tiny, dark, full of obsticles in hive and close.
-If marins can shoot anything like in 3.2.0 more efficiently (lag problems solved???) include more vents...
<b>All these are managable parameters.</b>
In fact dev changed a lot of them. Remember the life reducing of skulks on 2.0. But all was done statically.
The standart calculus would be something like :
Considering skulk life = 1000 and we only display this number divided by 10.
bulet damage = (bullet damage * some-value-to-have-big-numbers ) / players
bulet damage = 100 * 5 / 6 = 83 damage per bullet
bulet damage = 100 * 5 / 15 = 33 damage per bullet
So skulk-life / actual-bullet-damage gives
1000 / 83 => 12.04 bullets to kill a skulk
1000 / 33 => 30.30 bullets to kill a skulk
Little explanation: More players means more "damage power". Reducing the effectiveness of damage power enforce the need of teamplay for example. IT IS JUST AN EXAMPLE TO SHOW THE DIFFERENCE. And i made the difference 'huge' on that purpose. You can easely reduce amplitude / or what you want to see concerning the player behavior.
For example you can put this to reduce amplitude:
bulet damage = (bullet damage * some-value-to-have-big-numbers ) / <b>(</b>players <b>/1.2)</b>
We would have 100 and 40 as bullet damage for 6 and 15 players.
Every 5~10 sec the set of parameters is re-calculated. And there you have it. Of course the little calculus are not fiting what NS needs. And of course you can have a much more complicated system. The trick is to have and include what suits the need for balance.
Beside: Make sure everybody has the same interface and settings. Meaning do we play with blockscript=1 etc... It's dev who should officially set this once and for all. Not server admins. You can't deny using scripts change thing a little.
-FFA is usually the first step to "enter NS" and it opens the door to competitive play.
-FFA can be played like 'tournament mode'. It's just a matter of taking time to adapt a little. I left CS a long time ago. Before a left; the compet/FFA settings were the same exept for the number of players.
-Playing FFA like competition (tournament mode; exept for the say 'ready') is the key to recruit competitive player faster. I mean do you play soccer / football / basket ball differently ? i mean different rules ? No, you play the game like it was meant to be played. Why NS should be an exeption ?