Let's Talk About Balance
Savant
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
<div class="IPBDescription">Not a suggestion, but more a discussion</div> OK, so NS has been out over a month and people are fast discovering aspects of the game they don't like. The problem seems to be that many of the complaints revolve around balance.
In examining this myself, I have seen a VAST variety of 'problems' that could be attributed to poor balance, but then I took a step back. The reason this is not posted in the suggestions forum is that I don’t want to cause a flame war over it.
Overall, what I seem to be finding is that the game isn't unbalanced in PRINCIPLE, but it is FAR too easy to throw a game out of balance early on, and when unbalanced it is extremely difficult to ‘rebalance’ it.
Let's drop a few examples before we move on.
Example 1: A 9v9 game on Eclipse. Aliens hive is CC. Marines spawn and set up shop with basic needs and then break into two groups heading for both unoccupied hives. After a couple runs they manage to hold them and then build (albeit slowly) defences to secure them. Total time to lockdown of both hives, about 10-15 minutes. At this point most aliens are in line waiting to spawn. (after dying from first rush and/or preventing marines from taking hives) In principle, the game is over, and the aliens are dealt a crippling defeat.
Example 2: Same map, a 9v9 on Eclipse. Aliens start in maint. and 8 rush in to Marine spawn. Four rush the Marines killing 6 and taking out the un-built armoury, TF and one of the two IPs (which was not fully built) before dying. The remaining 2 marines fight off the other 4 aliens who keep them from building another IP and also take chunks out of the resource tower. (which was killed on next rush) Marines never recover. Once Marines rebuild the aliens have a second hive and manage to get a third shortly afterwards. The resulting defeat sees aliens doing a gorge 'babbler rush' since they were rolling in dough and the Marines were boxed in.
Example 3: A 9v9 and 3 people (and at one point a 4th who went gorge to be able to go lerk faster) on the alien team decide they want to gorge from the beginning. Of course, the result is death for the aliens regardless of later changes by a couple people not to gorge.
Example 4: A 9v9 and when Marine spawn a noob takes the comm. No one knows the comm. Is a noob, and it isn’t until 5 minutes in that people realise that he can’t cut it. Comm. is ejected but damage from lack of a good comm. makes this game a cakewalk for the aliens.
Now please do NOT respond to these examples since they aren’t what this debate is about. Yes, there are many things that one can do to recover or avoid such problems. However, the problem is not that one could work around it, the problem is that these kinds of problems happen EASILY and can cripple the game very early on.
So what I’m trying to get to is that I believe that the game, as it is designed, is far too easy to imbalance. In addition, once fatally imbalanced, the game can normally NOT be corrected.
I was looking at ways to pinpoint a single problem and I couldn’t find one. Part of the problem is certain maps, so that could be adjusted, but the principle behind the game lends itself to this kind of issue excessively easily.
A possible solution to deal with this would be to make the game less resource dependant. As it stands, the longer a game goes on where one team is gaining an advantage, the other team is losing any ability to respond to that advantage.
Here’s a thought I had.
What if we scrap the current system of resources in principle… Make it so that BOTH teams get a steady flow of resources regardless of the number of resource nozzles they hold. (Stay with me, hold your objections until the end please.)
Now, with a steady flow of resources, you would be better able to balance the game since you could define the rate those resources flow, and as such could define how fast/slow the game progresses as well as giving either team more of a chance to come back from an initial setback. While the initial setback would delay a team, the steady resource flow would still give them the CHANCE to recover.
Now with that steady resource flow, how do we make control of the map a ‘challenge’? Well, we keep the resource nozzles as they are, and change their function. Now, instead of resource nozzles providing resources to the TEAM, they provide power to friendly structures. Therefore, if you want to build in a given area, you need to have a resource tower constructed first before you can build devices.
This could also help in some balance issues since a team (usually the marines) wouldn’t be able to rush in equipment unless they also held the resource nozzle for that area as well. If they don’t have a resource tower on it, then they cannot build anything. In addition, this would restrict certain building on maps, so some ‘siege around the corner’ stuff wouldn’t be allowed. Also prevented would be offence towers outside of the Marines spawn room.
If they lose the area’s resource nozzle, then all nearby buildings power down. (Marine or alien) As such, they may want to increase the armour level of the resource towers a bit should people find they are too easy to take out.
So that’s my thought. Any comments? (constructive criticism welcome!)
Regards,
Savant
In examining this myself, I have seen a VAST variety of 'problems' that could be attributed to poor balance, but then I took a step back. The reason this is not posted in the suggestions forum is that I don’t want to cause a flame war over it.
Overall, what I seem to be finding is that the game isn't unbalanced in PRINCIPLE, but it is FAR too easy to throw a game out of balance early on, and when unbalanced it is extremely difficult to ‘rebalance’ it.
Let's drop a few examples before we move on.
Example 1: A 9v9 game on Eclipse. Aliens hive is CC. Marines spawn and set up shop with basic needs and then break into two groups heading for both unoccupied hives. After a couple runs they manage to hold them and then build (albeit slowly) defences to secure them. Total time to lockdown of both hives, about 10-15 minutes. At this point most aliens are in line waiting to spawn. (after dying from first rush and/or preventing marines from taking hives) In principle, the game is over, and the aliens are dealt a crippling defeat.
Example 2: Same map, a 9v9 on Eclipse. Aliens start in maint. and 8 rush in to Marine spawn. Four rush the Marines killing 6 and taking out the un-built armoury, TF and one of the two IPs (which was not fully built) before dying. The remaining 2 marines fight off the other 4 aliens who keep them from building another IP and also take chunks out of the resource tower. (which was killed on next rush) Marines never recover. Once Marines rebuild the aliens have a second hive and manage to get a third shortly afterwards. The resulting defeat sees aliens doing a gorge 'babbler rush' since they were rolling in dough and the Marines were boxed in.
Example 3: A 9v9 and 3 people (and at one point a 4th who went gorge to be able to go lerk faster) on the alien team decide they want to gorge from the beginning. Of course, the result is death for the aliens regardless of later changes by a couple people not to gorge.
Example 4: A 9v9 and when Marine spawn a noob takes the comm. No one knows the comm. Is a noob, and it isn’t until 5 minutes in that people realise that he can’t cut it. Comm. is ejected but damage from lack of a good comm. makes this game a cakewalk for the aliens.
Now please do NOT respond to these examples since they aren’t what this debate is about. Yes, there are many things that one can do to recover or avoid such problems. However, the problem is not that one could work around it, the problem is that these kinds of problems happen EASILY and can cripple the game very early on.
So what I’m trying to get to is that I believe that the game, as it is designed, is far too easy to imbalance. In addition, once fatally imbalanced, the game can normally NOT be corrected.
I was looking at ways to pinpoint a single problem and I couldn’t find one. Part of the problem is certain maps, so that could be adjusted, but the principle behind the game lends itself to this kind of issue excessively easily.
A possible solution to deal with this would be to make the game less resource dependant. As it stands, the longer a game goes on where one team is gaining an advantage, the other team is losing any ability to respond to that advantage.
Here’s a thought I had.
What if we scrap the current system of resources in principle… Make it so that BOTH teams get a steady flow of resources regardless of the number of resource nozzles they hold. (Stay with me, hold your objections until the end please.)
Now, with a steady flow of resources, you would be better able to balance the game since you could define the rate those resources flow, and as such could define how fast/slow the game progresses as well as giving either team more of a chance to come back from an initial setback. While the initial setback would delay a team, the steady resource flow would still give them the CHANCE to recover.
Now with that steady resource flow, how do we make control of the map a ‘challenge’? Well, we keep the resource nozzles as they are, and change their function. Now, instead of resource nozzles providing resources to the TEAM, they provide power to friendly structures. Therefore, if you want to build in a given area, you need to have a resource tower constructed first before you can build devices.
This could also help in some balance issues since a team (usually the marines) wouldn’t be able to rush in equipment unless they also held the resource nozzle for that area as well. If they don’t have a resource tower on it, then they cannot build anything. In addition, this would restrict certain building on maps, so some ‘siege around the corner’ stuff wouldn’t be allowed. Also prevented would be offence towers outside of the Marines spawn room.
If they lose the area’s resource nozzle, then all nearby buildings power down. (Marine or alien) As such, they may want to increase the armour level of the resource towers a bit should people find they are too easy to take out.
So that’s my thought. Any comments? (constructive criticism welcome!)
Regards,
Savant
Comments
BTW, I play solely on public servers. Yes, there are times where I know I'm doomed based one the actions I see others commit. I try to be constructive about it though, and most times I get a positive response. It's very rewarding to be in a 4 vs. 4 matchup with 3 guys who are relatively new (including the comm) and be able to talk them through what it takes to win though. They learn a lot (thus increasing the clue level in the community), and in many cases you do as well.
First, if the game was simply about controlling the res points then you'd really only want to control the res points by hives. You might need to set up defenses at some res point, but for the most part--those would be part of some movement in game and not necessarily a part of overall strategy. This would mean that the humans always had an advantage in the game. Assuming they could secure 1 hive location, they would constantly get stronger (through upgrades) while the aliens always stayed the same. At least, with resource points the balance of power could shift by income levels. This takes out that possibility.
Also, this makes siege towers worthless. Since you can't build siege towers anywhere but close to res points only a few of the res points would actually be close enough to something to actually siege it. Even building a siege gun in your base wouldn't be worth it because aliens could never build a structure outside your base for it to siege. Siege turrets would have to be changed.
Anyway, my thoughts...
--Frahg
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Nope. The first one is not - if the marines keep the pressure up on hive-1 aliens, they can force most of them to stay in the respawn queue, effectivly turning a 10v10 game into a 10v5 game.
After all, the marines can control their respawn rate by building more IP's, while the aliens have no way of increasing their spawn rate.
Phase gate + 4 IP's then just throw the marines into the meatgrinder. If you can maintain a 1-3 ratio (ie, three dead marines for every dead skulk) the aliens loose. All you need to do is to threaten to build a siege close enough to their hive, and you force all the skulks to run the gauntlets to take them out.
One of the bigger reasons why games larger than about 8v8 is decidedly in favor of marines. That and the increased marine resource flow.
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Once it becomes obvious that the marines are taking a hive, the aliens need to ALL go to ONE have and take it back. Anything less (N00b: I will keep attacking their main base so they are distracted!!!11) will not work. They only person that is distracted by one skulk attacking the marine Main base is that skulk.
my 0.02
GJ unbalancing the game unintentionally, all due to marine whining on these forums too.
the game must be about the moola. think Starcraft or AoE or what have you.
in ANY RTS the early game is SUPER important. Ling rush? Zealot rush? Reaver drop? All SC metaphors that are wholly dependent on moola.
imho.
interesting ideas though.
The only way that the idea might be able to work IMO is if you had to build something into the ground or something (without a nozzle), anywhere, and it would cost very little, but take a while to build. After this is built you could drop other stuff. Again, this puts marines at a huge disadvantage, half the game of getting their hive is making quick, agile attacks, dropping everything at the same time and seiging simultaniusly. Your idea would allow skulks the oppurtunity and time to spawn in and rush a developing base. This may be the aim of your thoughts but think of this; you have 2 hives, they dont, they are developing power thing outside your base, mass fades kill you. Rinse and repeat EVERY time they make an attack. Thus aliens would be invincible, and marines would whine.
edit: nothing, it is so messed up and fragmented you shouldnt read it, if you were going to respond, dont its poop.
However that being said, let's move on....
As stated in the other thread the fact that every game plays out differently is the strength of this game, not its weakness.
If one team imbalances the game by mistake, or a grief player, then yes perhaps this round is ruined and the griefer is removed. The mistake is learned by the novice player and the next round begins...
Why is that such a bad thing???
edit: removed quote which I didn't intend to leave in there.. OOPS!! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
on another note, I would like to see lerks given more armor and stronger needles attack
1) to make them worthwhile as an attacker and
2) to take care of jet packers.
actually I wouldn't mind a maintaince of armor, if their ground speed was increased. Flying is just too big a drain on the energy bar.
But yea 33 resources for something that doesn't stand a change against a standard marine half the time...
at least make them formidable away from vents and whatnot
back on topic:
I really do think the game is currently in the marines hands. As long as they have a non-n00b commander and at least 3 guys working together, they can stop an entire alien team.
Aliens can only hope that they dont charge the one hive they are trying to hold, and that they dont resource enough in the meantime to get hmgs etc before it goes up.
I think its sort of lame that at the moment marines can get hmgs and motion tracking before a 2nd hive is even close to going up.
some tips for lerks in the early stages:
-If you hold the jump button you glide, this takes no energy, while not as effective at dodging as constantly flapping is still very good for strafing marines in the early game and lets you use you spike attack
-Alternitively you could use the swooping chomp techique, this is very difficult to master and takes alot of practice (I still can rarely pull it off) however when I fail its ussualy due to my own error in the techique so i'm confident from the times its succeeded and from playtesting stories that once a lerk masters this techique it becomes VERY powerfull
Alternitively people really need to learn how to fight umbra, most servers once I get umbra i can keep my fades completely unscathed and we win quite quickly. This is not due to game unbalance but rather most marines don't know how to fight it. Two words will solve your umbra problem: Grenade Launcher. Every time I see marines start using it our umbra attacks start failing. Last game I played they defeated our umbra siege with a GL and could have started to push back into the map, however they decided to turtle in their base so we easily got up our third hive and they're heavy armor-less (my guess is we had killed all their res nodes) marines were no match for bile-bomb and stink cloud
YES, I acknowledge that a lack of teamwork is detrimental to the game and yes I acknowledge that there are differences with play on non-pub servers.
The problem is it is FAR too easy to unbalance the game...
-EARLY (first 5 minutes)
-by ONE single teammate
-by people who don't play as a 'team'
-by choosing a specific rush tactic
-by getting 'lucky'
-by a newbie comm
-by a newbie gorge
-etc.
Yes these things can involve player skill which is a variable, but there will ALWAYS be people playing who don't know how to play. I play TFC and I STILL see people join who have no clue to play and that mod has been out for years.
There also is little or no chance for a team to make a comeback at all. You may say that is how the game is 'supposed' to work but I disagree. I think that every game should be a challenge, and if it is predecided because a lack of resources make any kind of response impossible, then you will never have many satisifying games for both teams.
Some values would need to be adjusted and the resource system tweaked, but the end result could end up with evenly matched teams having a nice good game without one or two people screweing them over.
As for resource nozzles and sieging hives, yes I know that wouldn't be possible in some places, but that would be up to the map maker to decide if they wanted the hive siegeable. If they want you to take it "The old fashioned way, to earn it" then you need to get some heavies and go in there with guns blazing. Also keep in mind the active zone for coverage is a variable. it doesn't need to be as small as a TF.
The problem is that with the MASSIVE variance in gameplay causing games to be viturally ended early on, it rips the fun right out of the game for EVERYONE on that team. Who wants to play when you know you are screwed? All it encourages is the "let's hit F4 and start a new game." If you remove that then people will just leave and find a new server.
I don't know of any other mod where a game could be dramatically affected by ONE person like NS can. The other mods allow a team to integrate new players and not allow mistakes to screw the team over.
Since this is just a discussion, please don't dismiss my idea out of hand. THINK beyond your like of the current system and see if you feel the game could be made BETTER this way. It's not that big a change if you think about it and it really wouldn't affect the gameplay as much as you think.
Regards,
Savant
Balance tweaking: adding a weapon or class, removing something small. That's feasible.
The game will probably fall into place with some more clarity once the community starts to understand it more...granted teamwork is central, but it takes some time for CS, DOD, and some other MOD cross over players to grasp how important temawork and listening to the commander is and working under the collective progression of the aliens is....disucssing this topic is a good idea, it at least shows that there are intelligent players out there who are considering how to balance the game and improve upon an already solid framework...
ps,
skulkswerenerfed or whatever the hell is name is, should prob be vanquished from the forums, the community and the game
Status of game: They had relocated their base to a hivepoint, and held the other free hive with more turrets than we could hope to kill, I got up some offence and defence towers a fair way away from their base-hive, we still had movment from a previous hive we'd got then lost.
Then this guy who's name I've forgotten goes lurk and I persuade him that their not defending their base enough and we should attack it (acctually I'm trying to persuade everyone)
I switch from my outpost building gorge to lurk and start hitting their base then flying down the corridor to regen, I'm shooting the TF and killing any marines that poke around after me (spines do quite enough damage thanks).
This other lurk is flying AROUND THEIR BASE while loads of marines shoot at him, he flys off a ledge flys about shooting them from long long range then pirches somewhere.
He swoops in bites a marine to death and then flys back down my corridor to regen. His ability at controlling his flying was absolutly F*** fantastic.
Lurks are also highly powerfull in the medium/end game a single lurk with 2 hives can umbra next to the turret factory thus letting himself and his skulk buddies take it down.
As to all the problems with balance.
Blame the newbie com, and the newbie skulks any change to the game that makes it easier to recover will make games last for ever, it wouldn't be too hard just boost both the starting classes and nothing else, problem is it would just strech out games for AAAAages.
As for getting rid of the res system you've gotta be kidding! If anything I'd like them to cut down the number of res you get per tower to make games more about holding res points. Of course I'd also like to see marines capable of holding bottlenecks, don't see this happening though :\.
BlueGhost
Now off to my sig:
It also encourage turtling for both sides especially marines. Just hide in the base with moutains of turrects and then slowly siege your way out. Boring way of playing.
Take away the siege cannon? Then the marines get nailed by offensive towering from the aliens because they build by themselves and multiple gorges can build simutaneously.
Take away the offensive towers? Then the aliens get owened by turrects.
Take away the turrects? Then the marines get owned by rushing skulks.
Take away the skulks? Wow, I think we struck gold. Take away the skulks and then the game will be completely balanced.
I am against any major changes to the existing system. I admit that there are some balancing issues to be addressed, but scrapping the resource node system is not the solution and never will be. It is just like trying to balance a RTS game by taking away its economy system.
Regards,
Savant
Regards,
Savant
oops forgot to advertise the server:
MMZ Darwin NS 1.03 207.168.116.87:27015
1.) Early Marine rush. If the marines stick together at the beginning of the game they can rush the enemy hive in the first 3 minutes(right after the 3 turrets are up in the base). On large servers a group of 5-6 marines and a commander that spends all his resources for health and ammo are nearly impossible to stop even if the aliens attack in one group because of the ranged attack of the machinegun. Then after some skulks are down and waiting to respawn the marines clean up the hive. So an increase of the marine spawn time or a reduction of the alien respawn time is certainly needed.
2.) Midgame. As soon as Aliens get 2 hives its over for the marines. Thats because of acid rocket. That weapon is too powerfull. It should do much less damage and no splash damage(40 on direct hit maybee).I think its intended as a sidearm like the pistol but adrenaline makes it the weapon of choice of the aliens. The fade needs to be nerfed so that he gets used for what he was made for : CLOSE COMBAT. That would add a lot of balance since then he needs to get close to the enemy and the stupid rit and run and heal attacks wouldnt work anymore. People say that you can kill fades by rushing them but the problem is the umbraing lerk and the other 2 fades around the corner making every effort other than a grenade launcher useless. And a grenade launcher costs a hell of a lot of resources and they can evade it easily because of the long time the grenades need to detonate.
In my opinion these are the 2 points that make the game a short experience since most of the time the outcome is decided after the first 10 minutes. Its possible to come back as the loosing team but 98 of 100 games are decided as soon as the marines or the aliens have 2 hives. And then begins the F4 endgame annoyance :-(
I disagree. Most games are not over when the aliens get two hives. Normally, the marines either have to screw up or the aliens to get lucky for that base to die. All the marines have to do is not hide in corners hoping the acid blasts wont hot them and to keep piling through the phase gate without going for full ammo every time ( you only need 125-150 rounds ffs not 250! )
With regards to nerfing the fade's acid blasts, you'd make it ridicously hard for mid-game aliens to actually take a marine base. The only way to get in is to destroy the turrets on the side on the turret factory that you plan to hide and then storm in. If they had to charge in and slash each time, they wouldn't have a chance if the marines put up more than 4 turrets. Why give the marines a long range weapon and then remove any chance of the aliens of countering it? When aliens only have skulks versus HA + HMG, they can't compete as they get killed long before they reach the enemy. So why shouldn't the aliens have their version of that?
On the map with feedwater ( ns_bast? ), with the aliens at feedwater I've managed to kill off their gorge at the refinery and then got to the tram tunnel. With no enemies behind me, I was able to prevent the aliens from getting out of feedwater via the tram tunnel as I was able to shoot any whilst they had to approach along the long corridor. If my commander had actually listened and supported me with buildings/people, we'd have cooped them in feedwater and won shortly afterwards. Sadly despite requests, I ran out of ammo and got rushed by 3 skulks. They then got refinery and went on to bet us.
Simply, the marines have a massive advantage in the early game with their ranged weapons when they don't allow themselves to be jumped - motion tracking being so important. In the middle game, aliens have the advantages with their fades. In the end-game marines have the advantage once again with their HMGs ( as long as the aliens dont have 3 hives natch ). So overall the marines have the advantages, yet you want to nerf the poor fade?
So if the marines sn<b>a</b>tch defeat from the jaws of victory, you want to nerf the aliens until even a terrible team of marines win?
[edit]i know why s<b>n</b>atch can be considered an obscenity but in the context, it's amusing to see it done so.[/edit]
I disagree. Its easy to take out a turret farm without acid rockets. I do it all the time. Unless most of the players i go for carpace+celerity run up to the tf crouch and slash away(slashing does lots of damage to buildings). By crouching only a small part of the turrets hit me, the others cant shoot me because im covered by the tf. And the fades can take alot of punishment so usually the tf is down before i die. If then there is a smart lerk that follows me and casts some umbra i take out as many turrets as you want. And try the slash on the marines once in a while. You will see how powerful it is. And if it should get ugly just run away and search a def chamber. With celerity a fade is nearly as fast as a skulk. The difference to using acid rocket is that i must get to the enemy giving him the chance to kill me if he plays smart(3 marines can kill a fade). But against acid rocket hit and run attacks the marines are screwed. So weakening acid rockets would not make it impossible to win for the aliens just forcing them to play a little bit smarter. And it would give the marines a chance to kill the fades.