How 2 Ambush
Radix
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
Players don't ambush by default because it's unintuitive. This thread is discussing ways to help newbies with this issue.
For example, you could make it so that as soon as a marine appears in an alien viewpoint, it should show a target ambush spot to take for the alien, like a waypoint nearby, so that we don't end up with a thousand galiens of the G4B2S empire straightlining into groups of shotguns.
For example, you could make it so that as soon as a marine appears in an alien viewpoint, it should show a target ambush spot to take for the alien, like a waypoint nearby, so that we don't end up with a thousand galiens of the G4B2S empire straightlining into groups of shotguns.
Comments
First, marines that have played as aliens before will remember the guides and be more apt to check these hiding spots, thus making them obsolete.
Second, even if marines did not do this, it can also be argued that marines should have some kind of indicator that warns them about dangerous areas from which they may easily be ambushed (some kind of GUI indicator gadget that can detect crevices, nooks, and crannies where skulks or other aliens may hide. While there surely are more bad aliens than marines, there are also many bad marines.
If anything, I think the best way to approach the problem of poor ambushing skills is through a tutorial video (or videos) and maybe by very good promotion of competitive games (i.e. youtube-like clips of 'good' skulking from competitive matches on prominent sites and maybe even on this main site). The fundamental tutorial videos should be brief and show the basic idea behind the concept of <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skulking" target="_blank">skulking</a> and leave the rest to intuition. Perhaps there could be direct links to these tutorial videos right from the main menu in-game, adjacent to choices for servers. Likewise, when new skulk players die repeatedly, perhaps a friendly suggestion from the hivemind could be made for the player to become more educated (and link to these tutorials).
If the player wanted to learn more beyond the fundamentals, there could be further links for more specific concepts about skulking. Eventually, a player could find a library of such tutorial videos and replays of competitive matches, critical analyses of skulk play taken from these competitive matches (if you've ever watched Minstrel's video match review, that is the style I am talking about and perhaps with a summary at the end of what went right and what went wrong).
Basically the information should be available from inside the game and players should be encouraged to view it and learn from it. A good competitive scene and an informal/semi-formal integration with the UWE site would greatly aid in this process.
First, marines that have played as aliens before will remember the guides and be more apt to check these hiding spots, thus making them obsolete.
Second, even if marines did not do this, it can also be argued that marines should have some kind of indicator that warns them about dangerous areas from which they may easily be ambushed (some kind of GUI indicator gadget that can detect crevices, nooks, and crannies where skulks or other aliens may hide. While there surely are more bad aliens than marines, there are also many bad marines.
If anything, I think the best way to approach the problem of poor ambushing skills is through a tutorial video (or videos) and maybe by very good promotion of competitive games (i.e. youtube-like clips of 'good' skulking from competitive matches on prominent sites and maybe even on this main site). The fundamental tutorial videos should be brief and show the basic idea behind the concept of <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skulking" target="_blank">skulking</a> and leave the rest to intuition. Perhaps there could be direct links to these tutorial videos right from the main menu in-game, adjacent to choices for servers. Likewise, when new skulk players die repeatedly, perhaps a friendly suggestion from the hivemind could be made for the player to become more educated (and link to these tutorials).
If the player wanted to learn more beyond the fundamentals, there could be further links for more specific concepts about skulking. Eventually, a player could find a library of such tutorial videos and replays of competitive matches, critical analyses of skulk play taken from these competitive matches (if you've ever watched Minstrel's video match review, that is the style I am talking about and perhaps with a summary at the end of what went right and what went wrong).
Basically the information should be available from inside the game and players should be encouraged to view it and learn from it. A good competitive scene and an informal/semi-formal integration with the UWE site would greatly aid in this process.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What you're saying is true, but it addresses the wrong fundamental problem. I'm speaking of intuition, you're speaking of skill itself.
Players naturally / intuitively bait each other because it's a fundamental human reaction to hide from danger - it's not intentional bad teamplay (most of the time) it's just a reaction.
However, it's equally natural for players to charge at marines as skulks. That's why you don't need guides for the marine side of the game.
Furthermore, you could implement this in truly dynamic ways (that didn't make mappers' lives hell) such as creating a 2 part process. At first it says "you can't kill the marine from here because he has a gun and you don't", second after the player moved back it would draw a point on the nearest brush that occluded the skulk's position (this can all be done on the client side) when he first saw the marine, it would then use that point and the occlusion test to create another completely dynamic hiding spot for the skulk.
For example, you're just past flight control on Metal and you round the corner and see a marine down the hall toward the end of the hall past flight. The skulk's position is marked, call it A. Tutorial then tells the player to move back, looking for points on brushes that would block line of sight to A as the skulk moves. Once one is found, it paints a decal or overlay on that point and instructs the skulk to walk up the wall. As soon as the skulk has a positive ratio this stops happening.
Videos are non-interactive so most will not be prepared to sit through a boring bit of exposition, even if it is gameplay-essential exposition.
Tutorials are interactive, but there is little incentive to do a tutorial when they could be playing with others, which is generally more fun. NS2 is primarily a multiplayer game, so a single-player tutorial is not an inviting introduction for most users.
But throw an achievement, and a relatively easy one at that, into a tutorial and suddenly the tutorial has an incentive. If they are an achievement ###### they will want to get all the achievements, so they will have to do this eventually. So suddenly it's a question of: <i>Why not play the tutorial now, get the achievements and get it over with?</i>
<u>It would go down like this:</u>
You are a Skulk in the Alien tutorial. You are told that the HMG/Shotgun will make very short work of you unless you use your surroundings and innate abilities to get within striking distance.
You are given a doorway (perhaps to a Hive room) and shown a parasited Marine coming your way, who you must not allow past.
The bot Marine has uber-twitch reflexes and will pistolwhip you from afar or Shotgun-to-the face if you don't ambush. The one restriction on this bot's AI is that, for the purposes of the tutorial, it cannot look up, it will not check the blinds on corners, and it does not autoaim for anything not already within its view until attacked (plus human-like reaction delay). Anything entering its field of view it will make very short work of, but anything attacking from outside of its view will have the advantage.
For the purposes of testing the Commander waypointing, unit selection and so on on their new engine, it's almost certain that UWE have some bot functionality already implemented. This shouldn't be too much of an extension to that. The main extras would be adapting NS for a single-player mode (the tutorial) and implementing a few scripted sequences.
The achievement for this is called something implying 'ambushing', so that when players look over the achievements they will see that they have to ambush a Marine in the Alien tutorial (e.g. "<b>Skulkbait</b> Ambush a Marine in the Alien tutorial").
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Hey presto, you have newbies who understand the benefit of ambushing through the tried-and-tested carrot and stick method. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
The idea to have simpler hud displays that pop up with Mr. T's head and say "set up an ambush FOOL!" is a reasonable idea. My concept really isn't that complicated. The only place it differs is in a little more hand holding and a few more hours of code.
In general, tutorials have been pushed aside, especially in impatient America. For example, Empires has a great quickstart manual, and yet you have every noob asking how to build a vehicle. Except me, because I read the manual.
Instead, devs are forced to implement in-game help. See L4D where they even explicitly tell you to pick up stuff like medkits and ammo for a while. Once the user shows competence (maybe after 5 or so helps) they go away.
My tuppence worth is to watch other players - see what they do - emulate - its called learning, and if u dont learn u r mincemeat.
Tag em all and let others sort them out!
Peristalsis (the original)
Though since that's probably never going to get made, I'd settle for the simple tutorial map method. No reason why this should be implemented in every map, but it would be nice for newbs to have a small map with a human and alien team with premade structures in which one could do various tutorials, your opponent being bots specifically programmed to have certain behaviors.
Yeah, sounds good.
But, please, let them chuckle after the kill or they will give away their position.
There are even skulk players out there these days that chuckle while being cloaked just to die to a guessed sg blast the next second <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
EDIT: Maybe one placement per kill, or one placement per alien to avoid spam. <!--coloro:lime--><span style="color:lime"><!--/coloro-->Definitely let good players turn these visualizations off<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->.
the main problem is that when people die over and over again.. they leave. so we need to tell them how to play. if they want or not.
a pop up system like in L4d. whit mapper placed paths for the aliens. (climbing in l4d) (very good for NS2. or any game. )
a tutorial whit achiement (well. people will do it, but it isnt very realgame exierimence. )
videos, cool and action packed videos, showing how good aliens use good tactics. and showing the game itself. (for each alien one )
making things obious. comon, only a complete retard wouldnt understand that the "ambush" ability is for ambush.
Players naturally / intuitively bait each other because it's a fundamental human reaction to hide from danger - it's not intentional bad teamplay (most of the time) it's just a reaction.
However, it's equally natural for players to charge at marines as skulks. That's why you don't need guides for the marine side of the game.
Furthermore, you could implement this in truly dynamic ways (that didn't make mappers' lives hell) such as creating a 2 part process. At first it says "you can't kill the marine from here because he has a gun and you don't", second after the player moved back it would draw a point on the nearest brush that occluded the skulk's position (this can all be done on the client side) when he first saw the marine, it would then use that point and the occlusion test to create another completely dynamic hiding spot for the skulk.
For example, you're just past flight control on Metal and you round the corner and see a marine down the hall toward the end of the hall past flight. The skulk's position is marked, call it A. Tutorial then tells the player to move back, looking for points on brushes that would block line of sight to A as the skulk moves. Once one is found, it paints a decal or overlay on that point and instructs the skulk to walk up the wall. As soon as the skulk has a positive ratio this stops happening.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok, I see your point - baiting happens in competitive games as well along with charging, where there is low discipline. Having an in-game training system is actually a good idea if it does not point out specific places to hide and just uses line of sight (LOS) triggers. Having the hive mind advise the player to take cover in vents or retreat in the absence of other players against a large pack of marines would also be useful (especially if the marine has seen the player already). The hive mind could also advise the player to listen for footsteps to time attacks.
This reminds me of the LAN parties I hold. NS used to be the premiere game. Not sure how I kept being able to ceiling camp and wipe out 2 Marines per life. Kept telling them to check, but inevitably they'd forget and then the massacre would happen.
Maybe some gaming tips and hints can be displayed during the map change loading screen?
This made me think of Portal and GLADoS. The situation where GLADoS says if you fall in, you will die and the test will be terminated. Kind of a humorous way to inform people <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
I think it's a little more complex than that. People don't ambush because of a few things at least
1.) It takes time and thinking to learn to undestand where the marines are going at a certain moment in the game.
2.) It takes headphones and some focus on the game to spot the marines by sounds.
3.) Parasite does still seem to be too uninuitive for public server use.
4.) People don't often communicate about the marine progress on the map.
So basically we've got skulks that have no idea of the marine position/route before they run into it. They'll end up bumping into them instead of planning ahead for ambushes. No idea why some people keep on taking those long hallways while they've already found out about the marine though.
It's actually quite weird that you'll see newbies camping with marines more than ambushing with aliens. I guess that's somehow related to other FPSes.
Are people really giving up parasiting because it reveals them? Having either one guy parasiting and other ambushing isn't that difficult and parasiting on a long hallway and ambushing on some of the next corners is much easier for everyone. To be honest I'm shocked if that's the reason why people have stopped parasiting.
It isn't.
Dude just stop, if you don't understand what you're talking about - don't talk.
I think his point was that marines know they're going to get ambushed in cat, but the point is determining precisely where the aliens will come from, rather than knowing that they'll be somewhere in that area.