The Gorge as an instance of the Support role in gameplay
paella
Join Date: 2007-03-23 Member: 60463Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2007-03-23 Member: 60463Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Thinking about the Gorge and fun</div>I like to play supports in a lot of games. As examples, I have discipline/holy priest in WoW that I love PvE and PvP healing on; my favorite champions to play in LoL are supports such as Jana and Soraka (or Leona, the supporty-tank); I haven't played much TF2 but I've had a lot of fun with the medic when I do.
I'm not the only person that loves, and often prefers, playing support - but I don't really ever go gorge in NS. I didn't in NS1 and I don't it in NS2. <i>Part</i> of this is that I don't know the maps yet. A bigger part, though, is that the gorge doesn't really feel very fun to me.
I think it might be helpful to look at the way Supports are structure in LoL. If you're unfamiliar, LoL is a DOTA-clone made by Riot games. You play it from a top-down, RTS-style view, but you only control one unit (your champion) in your team. All champions have 4 abilities that do a whole variety of things.
Jana is one of my favorite champions to play, and she has a few different things:
1) an ability that slows one targeted enemy and does damage
2) an ability that summons a whirlwind that throws things briefly into the air in a straight line
3) a shield she can put on a teammate
4) an extremely powerful AoE ability that pushes all enemies away from her and heals all allies standing in it
A skillfully played Jana - shielding the right people at the right time, interrupting enemies with the knock-up from the whirlwind, and splitting the opposing team with her ultimate - can really wreck the other team's day.
This is true of the Gorge to an extent - an alien push backed by a couple gorges using healing spray and bile is far more danagerous than if those gorges were just Moar Fades or Moar Skulks or whatever. The problem is that there's honestly not a lot of skill to it. You don't aim healing spray. You don't have to husband your resources (you always have more energy). Bile isn't difficult to aim either. None of your abilities have a cooldown, so you don't have to choose <i>when</i> to use something. You can't affect the opposing team very much - you're basically just trying to keep your friends alive long enough to kill them all for you.
I really feel like gorges would benefit from more skill-dependent abilities. What if healing spray was instead a targeted ability with a longer range that ate your entire energy bar and did more significant healing? Then you'd have to be more skillful, not only in knowing how hurt a teammate was, but in choosing when to heal them, and having the possibility of missing with your heal.
What about an ability to "grab" a marine and yank them out of position, maybe using their tongue? The range on this couldn't be too long or it would be crazy-unbalancing, and targeting would have to be important, but it would be <i>super</i> fun.
Those are just random ideas though. My central thesis is that "standing still and spamming heal spray" is not fun. Adding skill and the risk of failure would help a lot.
I'm not the only person that loves, and often prefers, playing support - but I don't really ever go gorge in NS. I didn't in NS1 and I don't it in NS2. <i>Part</i> of this is that I don't know the maps yet. A bigger part, though, is that the gorge doesn't really feel very fun to me.
I think it might be helpful to look at the way Supports are structure in LoL. If you're unfamiliar, LoL is a DOTA-clone made by Riot games. You play it from a top-down, RTS-style view, but you only control one unit (your champion) in your team. All champions have 4 abilities that do a whole variety of things.
Jana is one of my favorite champions to play, and she has a few different things:
1) an ability that slows one targeted enemy and does damage
2) an ability that summons a whirlwind that throws things briefly into the air in a straight line
3) a shield she can put on a teammate
4) an extremely powerful AoE ability that pushes all enemies away from her and heals all allies standing in it
A skillfully played Jana - shielding the right people at the right time, interrupting enemies with the knock-up from the whirlwind, and splitting the opposing team with her ultimate - can really wreck the other team's day.
This is true of the Gorge to an extent - an alien push backed by a couple gorges using healing spray and bile is far more danagerous than if those gorges were just Moar Fades or Moar Skulks or whatever. The problem is that there's honestly not a lot of skill to it. You don't aim healing spray. You don't have to husband your resources (you always have more energy). Bile isn't difficult to aim either. None of your abilities have a cooldown, so you don't have to choose <i>when</i> to use something. You can't affect the opposing team very much - you're basically just trying to keep your friends alive long enough to kill them all for you.
I really feel like gorges would benefit from more skill-dependent abilities. What if healing spray was instead a targeted ability with a longer range that ate your entire energy bar and did more significant healing? Then you'd have to be more skillful, not only in knowing how hurt a teammate was, but in choosing when to heal them, and having the possibility of missing with your heal.
What about an ability to "grab" a marine and yank them out of position, maybe using their tongue? The range on this couldn't be too long or it would be crazy-unbalancing, and targeting would have to be important, but it would be <i>super</i> fun.
Those are just random ideas though. My central thesis is that "standing still and spamming heal spray" is not fun. Adding skill and the risk of failure would help a lot.
Comments
The problem is that the gorge was originally designed as the alien builder, sort of a delegated commander, in the original game. Since it performed so many game critical tasks, it also had to be extremely fragile for balance purposes. In NS2 however, all of those functions have been moved to the alien commander instead, yet the gorge is mostly identical in terms of combat abilities (or should I say lack of) and fragility.
Put it simply: UWE needs to decide what they want the gorge to be. If they're going to keep the alien comm -- which I personally think is a mistake, but that's a different discussion -- they're going to have to redesign the gorge. Make it a proper combat medic/engineer class instead of the current "oh you're a newbie/bad player? go gorge" implementation.
Yeah I mean I came up with the suggestions as I was writing the post - they're mostly intended to be a sort of "here are different ways to think about the abilities" things.
Looking at the medic in TF2 is another example of how skill can be introduced. The uber-charge needs to be charged up and maintained, and then used at the correct time on the correct player.
Basically as you say, there's no challenge or skill to playing the gorge as-is, so I'm suggesting that the devs look at supports in other games and try to learn from what makes them fun.
Examples of important elements are:
1) Timing, either enforced by lack of a resource (such as mana) or by having to maintain or charge something up or the simple expedient of a cooldown
2) Ability to miss or mis-use. Jana's ultimate, if used poorly, can save an opposing team that over-extended by pushing them back to their lines. Used well, it can split the enemy team in two, almost certainly spelling their doom.
It's that second element I was trying to go for with the grab - an ability that messes with the opponent's position rather than directly damaging them.
The problem is that the gorge was originally designed as the alien builder, sort of a delegated commander, in the original game. Since it performed so many game critical tasks, it also had to be extremely fragile for balance purposes. In NS2 however, all of those functions have been moved to the alien commander instead, yet the gorge is mostly identical in terms of combat abilities (or should I say lack of) and fragility.
Put it simply: UWE needs to decide what they want the gorge to be. If they're going to keep the alien comm -- which I personally think is a mistake, but that's a different discussion -- they're going to have to redesign the gorge. Make it a proper combat medic/engineer class instead of the current "oh you're a newbie/bad player? go gorge" implementation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yup this pretty much hits it on the head...
Right now the whole metagame with the alien commander feels kinda "bleh..."
But tbh i believe there are good ways to keep the alien commander and give the gorge a delegated command role that plays somewhat "supportive".
Time and playtesting will tell, luckily UWE doesn't seem to be too scared to try out new stuff if something doesn't seem to work.
I just think the gorge ain't pretty high on their priority list right now when the metagame isn't really fleshed out yet.
That being said, it is an <b>awfully</b> tempting idea to ditch the alien comm. It would solve the make-gorge-interesting problems with one swing. I kinda miss building my very own litel' rez towah. :3 AND PROTECTING IT TO BITTER END!!! :E
Just random thoughts.
I believe Spit slows Marines and obscures their vision now. But the effect is too subtle to make enough impact.
As for Healing Spray being spammed too "spammy", I agree. Increasing its cost and heal amount would create free the Gorge from being a Right-Click slave.
I have yet to encounter Gorge spit so I don't know about the vision obscuring, perhaps Spit could be extra effective against armor, so Gorgies can help whittle down Marines.
I've played the game for many hours now and I still have no idea what skulk weapon 2 does. Me and a friend sat around and watched each other use it and still have no idea. All ranged weapons seem to be hitscan with virtually no visible feedback on whats happening.
I always had the problem that if you are gorge and there are marines you have exactly one option: Run in the opposite direction.
This completely limited this class in combat; add to that their weak health and armor -> in three out of five cases I died while running away. Being able to stagger an opponent would make it possible to flee much more successful in every direction while adding some depth to the combat scenario in which you now have to make a decision when encountering enemies:
a) Run away to where you came from
b) run towards the enemy, stagger, run where ever seems the best option
Think about how you see a gorge as a marine; for me gorges always represented easy bait. Nothing more, there was no danger to them at all, even if they were in a hive with lots of hydras – the gorge itself wasn't a threat of it's own.
From the alien perspective the gorge seems a bit monotonous right now as well:
a) While building a garden you would have no enemy contact or you would have to run away and abandon your garden or die as soon as an enemy appeared.
b) In battle you could only heal your team mates and when the battle was over either run away or bile bomb structures.
In both cases you are very passive, you never get out of that weaklings role.
The spit is literally worthless as it does not affect the combat ability of a Marine at all and the attack strength of your team is hardly increased by it (defending yourself with it doesn't work very well either, does it?).
Something is missing, something that would allow the gorge to add some tactical value in the heat of combat.
Being able to stagger and push an opponent would not change the gorge from a passive role to an active one as it wouldn't do much damage and alone it would not be enough to defeat an enemy, but it would be an "active ability" that would add some variety to healing and also change the gorge in the eyes of Marines as a more dangerous opponent.
Imagine running near an abyss and along comes a gorge with the ability to push you.
Or two marines with shot guns against a gorge and a skulk, the gorge can now actually affect the combat (healing isn't fast enough to protect from shotgun shells, staggering an opponent however would radically change the situation).
I've read many times about the win ratio between Marine and Skulk (1v1 = Marines win , 2v2 = draw, 3v3 = Skulks win). Wouldn't it perfectly fit the gorges role to change this critical situation to the favor of the Skulks by staggering Marines?
I also like the idea of a cool down for the heal spray, if you have to wait between two heal sprays you might just as well jump at an enemy to help your fellow Skulk (and yourself) to escape.
If there wasn't a thing called shotguns.
Sometimes one shot takes you down, often it's two.
I don't want to go anywhere near marines as a lerk.
It gets very frustrating for times where the vent is a meter off the ground; I'd either have to find other obvious routes or have to waste 3 PRes for a Mini-Cyst to hop up. Same thing applies to being in a vent and staring at a high exit.
Example vents being Summit Data Core to Ventilation, Ventilation to Sub-Access, Crevice to Atrium, etc.
Because right now i've got a pretty crazy idea in my head that would give building back to gorges and give the alien commander an unique and engaging role that plays very RTS'y but still different from the marine commander.
It would require alot of rethinking alien tech-tree's and shifting abilitys, but i like throwing ideas around so stick with me for a moment and keep all "balance thoughts" out of it for a moment:
- Make all alien structures movable like the whip.
- Seperate "chamber building duty" between alien comm and gorges, let gorges build the chambers with the active abilities like crags, sensory and move chambers (sorry using NS terms as i still get confused by NS2 upgrade buildings ;) )
- Alien comm still has to build the 3 chambers that give him upgrades to research
- This way gorges can spent their personal res to populate the map with usefull chambers. All the chambers need passive and triggered effects for the players on the ground. Every chamber also needs at least 1 triggered ability for the alien commander.
- If the alien commander doesn't like the placement of the gorges chamber he can unroot them and relocate them, this gives him the ability to passivley dictate in which way the "hive mind" is moving and thinking the team.
- Making the chambers movable also helps making their active abilities more usefull to the alien commander, this way the alien commander doesn't have to waste a ton of time to allways build new "outposts" instead he constantly relocates his buildings to where he needs them.
I really think this would lead to some very unique and entertaining gameplay for the alien commander and give some building power back to gorges which in turn imporves their gameplay. I haven't thought this out very far yet so i'm pretty sure there are like 2 dozen balance issues hidden in there.
But i think right now the alien commander and the gorge share the very same problem, a broken not really working alien metagame. This might be a working solution that's not too difficult to implement.
It's such a huge part of why I would want to play gorge in the first place (building that sort of stuff for support) rather than just making hydras. I can't even build DCs!
I don't think it's necessary to make ALL structures able to move, just Whips, Crags, Shades, and Shifts would work. The only static buildings are of great importance like the Cyst, Hive, Harvester and research structures, as Marines can always strike at those to weaken the Kharaa in general.
Regarding Gorge placing structures for the Khamm, PRes isn't that hard to come by, so there needs to be a higher cost compared to TRes. I do like the idea of the Khamm investing on well-positioned support structures by maturing them.
It would definitely be fun for me, to say the least.
And i disagree about personal res beeing easy to get, if you delegate so many important building duties back to the gorge he needs a way to tap into the team resources.
Like i said before: Currently the mid/late game alien comm suffers from an overflow of team resources he can't get rid off because of all the micro involved with buildings structures and keeping the infestation alive. I also feel like the alien commander should also get a use for his personal res, right now they are just wasting away.
I'd like something like the original gorge concept but controlled by the alien commander, alien commander can dynamicly set an maximum ammount of team resources and every team resources that goes above that goes straight to the gorges in the field. That way the alien commander could control resource flow for the alien team and depending on the needs redistribute them to his gorges or use them up himself.
It also would free the alien comm up from alot of micromanagement, if he is an hectic situation he can just set the "team resource limit" low so all the resources he can't spent right now go straight to gorges that are busy somewhere else.
But i strongly believe the current problems in alien balance directly result from poor alien commander and gorge gameplay and metagame.
Compared to NS1 the Marines have won SO much individual freedom:
Now a marine hasn't to depend on the comm dropping weapons, he just buys them.
Now the commander hasn't to depend on marines to build things, he has MAC's.
Now compare that with the current alien implementation:
Gorges do not dictate the gameplay anymore, they feel like they are useless on the ground if the commander doesn't help them.
Alien commander on it's own also feels useless without the gorges helping him out.
Right now the whole NS dynamic is switched up the wrong way, Marines got easier to "not teamplay" while aliens have to hope for a perfect tandem of gorges coorperating with the alien commander to get anywhere.
Delegating some building duties back to the gorge and changing a few other things (most importantly: Small cysts shouldn't cost res at all) would help make the alien gameplay more dynamic again, so that every player can add something usefull to the RTS aspect of the game by simply going gorge. After all we are playing Natural Selection 2 and not Team Selection Natural Fortress 1, so the gorge should probably end up with a somewhat more unique role then "TF2 engi".
If you want to raise the skill ceiling for the gorge for tactical placement then <b>give them many options to place with very narrowly defined and specific roles.</b> This will then require the gorge to think carefully about what to use, how best to combine them, and how to maximize their effect. Even if they don't place base structures, they could still place certain support structures that function in a narrowly defined and important manner to front line defense, offense, or backline defense.
This does not mean you need to get rid of the alien commander, who does his own "large" structures, it means the gorge places his own types of structures to benefit the team.
That's basically how RTS work outside of SC's obsessive deal with APM. It's about developing a plan, modifying it as needed, and countering the enemy as best you can. Narrow definition of roles prevents "uber structures" that you spam and means everything has a hard counter, as well as probably soft counters.
That's how you raise the gorge skill ceiling, not by combat ability. Though I think being able to slide off infestation and bounce off things would be great fun... IE you slide, then space bar to gain acceleration just at the points of impact like a big orange bowling ball. Very silly though.
It's a fun game with a terrible community. Not everyone that plays it is an awful human. Many of us are polite, encouraging, helpful, etc.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Their skill ceiling was never going to be high on the combat front because they don't do that. They aren't a twitch class and not every class needs to be a twitch class, they are a tactical class that should be about thinking about the environment and determining where to place things for maximal effect to make things easier for your team. That's a skill all in its own right and it doesn't have to be based on button pushing. The skill ceiling for chess has nothing to do with how well you can physically move the pieces about.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
NS2 is not chess, though?
I mean, the gorge is both important and boring, which means many pug alien teams have a hard time finding someone willing to play it. At least in NS1, you could skulk and save up 50 res and drop a hive, then re-skulk - now if you gorge you expend pres to sacrifice your own fun in hopes of helping to secure a win.
Have you ever played a medic in TF2?
I have to disagree with that!
NS2 is just like NS1 an RTS-FPS hybrid and a big part of RTS game is the "chess gameplay" of allways thinking and planning 2 steps ahead of your enemy.
There is a huge metagame hidden in NS1 that plays just like chess on a very basic level, personaly i want a similiar complex if not even more complex metagame for NS2.
That's what makes the RTS portion of the game fun and unique compared to everything else out there...
What if we dropped the alien-commander, but instead gave gorges the ability to 'connect' to the hivemind at certain points in the infestation (maybe just at the pustules). The gorge would then be in the commander-view, to do some commander-work and after that he just disconnects and goes on with his gorge-stuff.
The two sides would be different again, the gorge would be the builder-class and fun again and commanding as kharaa wouldnt be that boring anymore.
1. His split slows marines down, blurr theyr view and does DMG
2. Heal heal and does also DMG, 1vs1 = 50%/50%
3. Siege attack that may DMG armor
4. Strategic out of range cysts placement and upkeep of the forwardbase (crag, shade,hydras,whips)
5. Marines always focus on the gorge -> ambush support
6. No one lets a gorge die! -> cutness bonus!
I think it was to make it easier to play.
A new player going gorge in NS1 was surprised to find out he/she was "the one in charge" or "the person supposed to build everything"
By placing the commander in an RTS view in NS2 this fact is far more obvious.
As far as what kind of love the gorge needs...
I think it is simply allowing the gorge to build anything out of pres.
A gorge can do the favor of building up the infestation and capping the resource node.
The khamm can drop the hive.
I think allowing the gorge to build anything (or close to anything) will create a more work-together bond between the gorge and the kham.
It would become more of a do you have the cash discussion.
Khamm: I have cash for a hive and <area> is clear.
Gorge: I can extend the infestation and maybe build some hydras.
Khamm: drop the extractor instead if you can ...that will allow me to build some whips.
Wouldn't be too sure about that...
If that would really be the ultimate goal then the current implementation has failed all over the place, because currently an alien commander needs more APM to be of any use to his team then a marine commander needs. So the khamm leaving the hive currently is allways an disadvantage...