Pub balance matters.
Rokiyo
A.K.A. .::FeX::. Revenge Join Date: 2002-10-10 Member: 1471Members, Constellation
A.K.A. .::FeX::. Revenge Join Date: 2002-10-10 Member: 1471Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">But tweaking numbers isn't going to fix anything</div>Alright guys, here's the deal: This game needs continued sales, and it needs lots of them. Unknown Worlds benefits from the direct cash injection, and the competitive community benefits from the influx of new talent.
Maintaining the perception of balance on the public servers is not easy, but it is the lifeblood of the company and the competitive community, so we can't just forget it entirely.
That being said, I agree with the main criticism of pub-balance levied by many experienced players: Attempting to balance against inexperience or idiocy is just going to throw out competitive balance, and has the potential to ruin competitive play.
This leaves us in a difficult situation: If we focus on balancing competitive games, we cut off our supply of new-bloods. If we focus on balancing public games, we forfeit what could become a lucrative and entertaining e-sports industry for developers and players alike.
I believe the topics discussed when looking at public balance need to be completely different from the topics discussed when looking at competitive balance. At high levels of play, an extra 10 points of armor, or an extra point of damage on an attack can make all the difference in the world, but these distinctions relatively meaningless on a public server.
On public servers, I believe the most important "balance" factors are skill-floors and skill-ceilings. So many public games are won or lost by the existence or absence of extremely skilled players on a team, and I suspect the random spread of skill levels on a given team account for a large portion of what many public players believe to be balance issues. A skilled marine commander can still win more games than he loses in 229. A skilled fade can still decimate entire squads of marines. A skilled lerk is outright brutal right now, even without upgrades.
I believe the accessibility of this game, and the growth of this community, would be greatly benefited by more debate on why a given class or lifeform is hard to pick up, and what could be done to help new players avoid many of the silly mistakes that a competitive player would never make. From displaying giant red up arrows on the walls for a skulk who is under fire, to changing the sentry gun tooltips to say "build these if you want to lose", I want to see widespread community debate on how to make the game more intuitive <b>without</b> reducing the skill ceiling for any of the existing classes or roles.
Maintaining the perception of balance on the public servers is not easy, but it is the lifeblood of the company and the competitive community, so we can't just forget it entirely.
That being said, I agree with the main criticism of pub-balance levied by many experienced players: Attempting to balance against inexperience or idiocy is just going to throw out competitive balance, and has the potential to ruin competitive play.
This leaves us in a difficult situation: If we focus on balancing competitive games, we cut off our supply of new-bloods. If we focus on balancing public games, we forfeit what could become a lucrative and entertaining e-sports industry for developers and players alike.
I believe the topics discussed when looking at public balance need to be completely different from the topics discussed when looking at competitive balance. At high levels of play, an extra 10 points of armor, or an extra point of damage on an attack can make all the difference in the world, but these distinctions relatively meaningless on a public server.
On public servers, I believe the most important "balance" factors are skill-floors and skill-ceilings. So many public games are won or lost by the existence or absence of extremely skilled players on a team, and I suspect the random spread of skill levels on a given team account for a large portion of what many public players believe to be balance issues. A skilled marine commander can still win more games than he loses in 229. A skilled fade can still decimate entire squads of marines. A skilled lerk is outright brutal right now, even without upgrades.
I believe the accessibility of this game, and the growth of this community, would be greatly benefited by more debate on why a given class or lifeform is hard to pick up, and what could be done to help new players avoid many of the silly mistakes that a competitive player would never make. From displaying giant red up arrows on the walls for a skulk who is under fire, to changing the sentry gun tooltips to say "build these if you want to lose", I want to see widespread community debate on how to make the game more intuitive <b>without</b> reducing the skill ceiling for any of the existing classes or roles.
Comments
imo it comes down to tres onos for the simple fact that both teams can be 'average pub players', but the marine team could have 2 way above average pub players and still not be able to win because it takes more than 2 players to deal with an onos. therefore why would above average pub players choose to play as marine knowing they have a very slim chance of winning?
tres onos = giant snowball.
i think the effect of 229 is totally exaggerated and the recent alien swing is almost entirely because people have started using the tres onos strategy a lot (a week ago i'd never seen it, now i see it in almost every game) thanks to all of the negative attention it's been getting.
edit: i guess it does come down to onos skill ceiling being insanely low - but still don't really think it's the skill ceiling or onos which is responsible, but more the fact that you can drop tres onos for an easy and super efficient profit.
It is a fact that right now aliens are statistically more likely to win in pub games. That needs to be fixed, and in the short term balance changes are the only way to do it. It's true that there are differences between pub balance and competitive balance, and I think it requires analysis of pub games to figure out exactly why it is that marines are losing there. Are they doing well up until the point the Onos shows up and turns the tide? Are they losing too many fights against skulks even before that? Are they failing to respond quickly enough to RT harass? When the cause is known, a fix that won't break competitive games can be decided.
Sure, we can't <i>prevent</i> skill imbalances, but we can <i>mitigate </i>them through intuitive gameplay mechanics.
I would hate to see lower skill-ceilings: The room for improvement and learning is one of the things I love about this game.
Short term balance changes only address short term issues. The tres onos is an issue <i>right now</i>, but I can think we can afford to be a little less short-sighted than that. There are broader issues facing new players than the one broken tactic that is likely to disappear in a patch or two.
It is a fact that right now aliens are statistically more likely to win in pub games. That needs to be fixed, and in the short term balance changes are the only way to do it. It's true that there are differences between pub balance and competitive balance, and I think it requires analysis of pub games to figure out exactly why it is that marines are losing there. Are they doing well up until the point the Onos shows up and turns the tide? Are they losing too many fights against skulks even before that? Are they failing to respond quickly enough to RT harass? When the cause is known, a fix that won't break competitive games can be decided.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think the biggest obstacle to balance is the commander role. All the FPS aspects can be perfectly balanced, but the skill of the commander and the path of upgrades can severely skew the perceived balance; especially of the commanders' skill levels are disparate.
The best way to achieve balance via skill parity is through the competitive level as the skill disparity will be minimal at best. The best way to attract new blood is for competitive-level players to stay the hell away from public servers or have the decency to split themselves evenly between teams.
I have roughly 100hrs under my belt so far in NS2 and I can count on one hand the number of times I thought I had a really good game. Not good in terms of my KDR or my overall performance, but just the fact I found both sides to be even. Pity my team lost all these games, but much fun to be had in the process! It came as quite a shock that I had two back-to-back fun games in build 229 when it did nothing but give me headaches so far. And let's face it...build 229 is full of crap.
A high skill ceiling is a great thing as there is room for improvement to grow, but a high barrier of entry is detrimental to the long-term survivability of the game. I used to consider myself a rather "hardcore" gamer a few years back, but I'm more of a "casual" player these days. I learn how to play the game but don't really find the need to get "good" as some people like to say. I'm here for the gameplay as I do enjoy it, but I can do without the frustration experienced every time I play NS2.
this is kinda true... but typically the commander spot is taken by the most keen player, and that's usually someone who is experienced as commander and WANTS to be the commander.
i just hope that the data/statistics etc UWE are pulling from the game reflects on my experiences on pub. the game seems fair, like a game of seesaw, unless the tres onos appears. by which time if the marines are not in an overwhelmingly dominant position with a concrete lockdown on the alien's two hives, then onos basically sits his muscular ass on the seesaw and catapults the marine team into the ozone layer.
The very fact that marines have to be present when building (unless you really want a robotics factory as one of your first buildings... oh so many of these...) leaves them naturally at a disadvantage when it comes to map control on a pub server. Even with the most enthusiastic encouragement to move out and take down the harvester at the next resource point, there comes a time when almost every pub marine decides they just can't venture out again. They just can't. :/
Probably most frustrating, however, is when there's no-one on your team who wants to command. That leaves me to do it, and I don't particularly enjoy it. It's a fast-paced thing, and I'm not into RTS games so I struggle with that side of it, despite being as communicative as possible. Having some greens on the team is also more of a problem for marines than aliens, I think. They want to see sentries, and defending areas comes naturally, but instead they really need to be thinking of pushing hard at the harvesters and hives: this doesn't come naturally to new players.
Just finally: I love this game, I'm still learning (long time NS1 player mind), and finding lots of nice nuances.
I've also found that many marines tend to over-react to RT harass. It's common for a single skulk to be biting an RT and then three marines drop what they're doing and run over there no matter how far it is. Then they get there, save it, and soon enough another RT gets hit and they're all running over there... I think it would be cool if there was a formalized structure for marines being assigned to attack/defense. Like say the comm can assign players to an Attack Squad and a Defense Squad, and have an easy interface for giving waypoints to those players. The regular squad 1-5 system won't do, you need to provide some structure to the comm to help guide them towards effective strategies.
Would additional UI hints or tooltips alleviate this? How about if a player hasn't attacked anything for 20 seconds, he gets a popup on his screen suggesting he finds a res node to kill?
Perhaps an additional tip in the loading screen to suggest that aggression and harassment is the key to victory?
The performance bottleneck may as well be on the server since competetive games are only 6v6 and therefore easier on the servers.
This means experienced players must mix with the inexperienced. This can be done via Twitch streams, which mean you can still enjoy high level play and lead by example, or directly in the servers.
Now, I realise that many competitive groups may not have the time (or numbers) to spend in "competitively unproductive" activity, but the only way to improve the playerbase is to disseminate the information and skills they have.
While you can't help a person's aim, you can at least show them where to shoot. You can show them how to wall jump. Show them how the command interface works. Competitive players are more likely to be listened to than "Random Pubber" as Comm/Khamm, especially if it's a hosted server. You don't have to give away your trade secrets, just build the fundamentals.
People might say that it's not the job of the competitive community to promote a game, and from a certain point of view I could agree. Consider, though, that other "professional" communities (RTS, fighting) do share knowledge, and thrive from that sharing.
If all you're doing is playing 6v6 and complaining about poor pub play, consider that by continually stripping out the best talent you are diminishing their play even further. You are contributing to the problem, not the solution.
Take an active role in supporting the new players. If you feel commanding is the main problem on pubs then try making a guide to commanding. This can be as simple as a commentary on a streamed game. If you feel skills are the issue, teach what skills you can. Ranging, spotting, hiding - all these things can have their theory improved, if not their execution.
NS1's real problem was the division between competitive and casual. For NS2 we should look at narrowing that gap without penalising the parties involved. If NS2 is balanced for the lowest common denominator, the game fails. If it is balanced for the highest tier, the game fails. The only solution is the middle road, and that means equalising.
Many of the competitive teams are familiar with streaming and casting, as are many experienced pubbers. L2PNS2 is a good start, so can't we all get behind the idea of education? If we can equalise NS2, imagine how good NS3 would be from launch.
I don't think it's too much to ask for. We can do it.
Its not because of balance why ppl have bad expiriences, its because most ppl dont have a single idea how the meta game in ns2 works. And this causes imbalances(its an fps/rts hybrid, if you ###### it up from start your chances to win are getting lower and lower because the other team gets more and more tech advantages - some of them require proper teamwork to counter) - no matter how balanced the game would be. (ie. a team that runs around capturing nothing, while aliens get 4+ rts in the first 3min without any resistance until 15min into the game... etc.)
So basically to fix the pubber problems in ns2 you either need unbalance/dumb the game down to "balance" it for this userbase. - which is the worst idea ever.
You give those ppl alternative, simple as in tf2/cod - game modes.
Or you work on educating them* and assist them in finding better expiriences ie. a matchmaking + elo system
* tho It seems like with tutorial videos alone we are not making any progress.
Using this e-sports BS as a rationale for balancing seems kind of silly. UWE needs to focus on building the user base before they worry about that kind of stuff. Let the 50 or 100 people who think there is a competitive scene worthy of that name build a competitive mod for it, and let UWE worry about increasing the user base by balancing their game for the general user base.
* tho It seems like with tutorial videos alone we are not making any progress.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Videos are inherently less effective as teaching tools, because even if a player is 100% invested in a video, they aren't practicing any skills on their own. Few players can get 100% invested in a video, so it all kind of goes downhill from there. An in game tutorial (preferably two maps, one for each side) with simple bots will go incredibly far as a teaching aid.
well you can go buy call of duty etc if you want to learn how to play an FPS game, and you get starcraft if you want to learn an RTS. both of which will be better teaching tools than any tutorial mode.
then you learn to apply those skills to NS2 by watching ns2 tutorial videos and high level player streams/vods etc.
you don't study shakespeare or oscar wilde before you understand language to a certain level...
Not sure what you mean with esports bs, but i feel like what you say is, that you want gamebalance focused on ppl that dont understand the game rather than focusing on tweaking it for ppl that play it to its full potential. (proper teamwork, meta game etc.)
How about we take all those ppl that have a similar opinion, and put them into ns2 combat?
I consider "competitive" mode a bad idea and TF2 is probably the last game they should emulate as far as "competitive scene goes. Competitive 6v6 TF2 is literally a different game from pub TF2, considering that more than half of the classes and almost all but vanilla weapons are unusable there among other things. Any sort of "competitive" mode for tournaments that significantly alters the the balance pretty much forces any new competitive player to relearn the game again from the basics up and splits "pubbers" and competitive players with a barbed fence made of tigers. Which is a <b>bad</b>.
Really, two greatest problem in pubs right now are: the "early Onos" strategy which is easy to do, well-known to the point where even a newbie Alien Commander can perform it and provides a HUGE pay-off for how simple it is and Marine players still not knowing much about how they are supposed to play except the very basic "build structures and kill aliens". Most of them have no idea that turtling with 4 res nodes and 2 tech points is a <b>bad idea</b> to do or that ganking res nodes is not something that only aliens should do, and so on.
The first problem can be solved relatively easily (infact I will be shocked if it wont be addressed in the next patch) and the second...the second only needs time.
in games with similarly low skills, aliens almost always have more RTs than marines. they almost always have fewer RTs lost than marines. the hive rarely gets attacked quickly enough to deny anything. even if marines manage to rush phasegates competently, aliens will be comfortably sitting on 4-7 harvesters by the time they're up, whereas marines usually have 2-4. and none of that econ advantage is because of tres onos or regen or camo or whatever the hell else you want to blame.
a skulk is easier to play competently than a marine because aiming a gun in NS2 is ridiculously hard and marines require well-aimed and well-timed medpack drops to stay alive (requires communication, requires fast commander, requires resources - all of which are missing)
alien comm is easier to play efficiently than marine comm because it doesn't rely on the team, and it's harder to make a mistake as alien comm
alien teamwork is easier because skulks move faster to respond to threats and can be productive by doing the stupidest things whereas marines have to be coordinated and cannot react quickly enough even if they wanted to
alien strategy is easier because sitting around gorging key points and reacting to harvesters being attacked is useful, easy, safe, and comes naturally to a random newbie. the marine equivalent is difficult, a resource drain and will cost them the game
alien late-game is easier because onos is the easiest role in all of NS2
yeah... this is hard to solve with tweaking numbers
Such nonsense. Do you actually watch competitive play, or ever played in a gather? If teams are more or less evenly skilled, marines have a definite edge early on. The onos comes at a vital time in the alien strategic gameplay, when they are at risk of desperately falling behind and losing the game, without it many more games would go the way of marines. (In both competitive as well as public games)
That's not to say there's some other things that need addressing, like how strong early shifts are, or the 229 regeneration, but none of these things are as big of a gamechanges as the early t.res onos egg drop.
The one thing you want to avoid with this is making it really hard to learn the game. I used to play a lot of Dawn of War 2, and new players starting out in that were easily deterred because getting to the point where you could play the game remotely competitively required a lot of practice and learning. There were a lot of things in that game that were very difficult for new players to deal with, but experienced players had significantly less trouble with them.
The learning curve in NS2 isn't nearly as steep though and I don't think the difference between experienced players and new players has as drastic of an effect. Or rather, I think that most pubs have a fairly even distribution of skill level except in a handful of cases of team stacking. Continuing to balance the game for the top level of play is definitely the way to go. In its current state, I don't think NS2 is nearly obtrusive enough towards new players to really drive that many away. It's a healthy concern to always consider the state of low level/non competitive play and the experience of new players, but don't balance the game around appeasing them.
The one thing you want to avoid with this is making it really hard to learn the game. I used to play a lot of Dawn of War 2, and new players starting out in that were easily deterred because getting to the point where you could play the game remotely competitively required a lot of practice and learning. There were a lot of things in that game that were very difficult for new players to deal with, but experienced players had significantly less trouble with them.
The learning curve in NS2 isn't nearly as steep though and I don't think the difference between experienced players and new players has as drastic of an effect. Or rather, I think that most pubs have a fairly even distribution of skill level except in a handful of cases of team stacking. Continuing to balance the game for the top level of play is definitely the way to go. In its current state, I don't think NS2 is nearly obtrusive enough towards new players to really drive that many away. It's a healthy concern to always consider the state of low level/non competitive play and the experience of new players, but don't balance the game around appeasing them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lol Dullahan. Long time no see.
In b4 ns2 gets on gamereplays.org with a proper replay system and dullahan is admin!
Anyways,
the answer to helping new players is here.. www.twitch.tv/L2PNS2
Subscribe and such if you want to see focused streams on game mechanics, tips and pr0 play!
In b4 ns2 gets on gamereplays.org with a proper replay system and dullahan is admin!
Anyways,
the answer to helping new players is here.. www.twitch.tv/L2PNS2
Subscribe and such if you want to see focused streams on game mechanics, tips and pr0 play!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hey man ;)
I saw a L2P stream and totally thought it reminded me of L2P DoW2 and now I know why haha. Good to see the community over here is eager to help new players out.
One general difficulty marines seem to have is supposedly they're the ones that need to be aggressive, but it's the aliens who are actually easy to play aggressively and have little repercussions for their mistakes. I've seen so many skulk rushes at the beginning of the game recently. If you think about it there's not much reason for the aliens not to do this. Even if the marines see it coming and mow them down it still keeps them in their base. The alien commander can still spread infestation and build RTs around the map even if all his guys are attacking the marine base. Then once the aliens respawn they can get where they need to go quickly.
Look at the win rates on ns2stats for game length. The longer the game goes, the more likely aliens are to win. Once they start doing big pushes that require the marines to use beacons it's all downhill from there as the aliens can just pick off structures and slowly whittle down the marines. If there are exosuits on the field when this happens they are left there to die as the rest of the team gets teleported back to save a base. This is kind of irrelevant though because it's VERY rare that the marines will even last long enough to get exosuits in the first place.
How about we take all those ppl that have a similar opinion, and put them into ns2 combat?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
See, I'm looking at it more from a standpoint of, "UWE is a business who wants to make money". This is where the entitled moniker gets laid on gamers and rightly so. If NS2 sold two million copies, UWE would be easily able to afford making a "competitive mode" that had the game tweaked perfectly for competition. Not only that, but people might actually watch these events to see "how the pro's do it" and these events might actually have respectable prizes instead of a couple hundred bucks. They then get free "mainstream press" (a subjective term of course) which in turn increases their sales, opening more opportunities for UWE. Are you insinuating that a game should be balanced around less than 1% of the install base because they are better at it then anyone else? That's not a smart business decision in a game outside of the F2P model. They need people buying their product to make money and keep supporting this great game.
I want UWE to succeed, but to do so it might have to make changes some players just don't understand, like making changes focused on increasing their install base and thus their revenue. You think on the other hand they should balance around an essentially non-existent e-sports scene for this game. They are about 2 million copies sold from having a serious chance at being a worthy e-sports title. Let's get the 2 million copies sold, then worry about e-sports...
Most sports, you'll notice, are symmetrical sports making them a test of mechanical skill and strategy within the same game dynamic. This is why game's like Counter-Strike and League of Legends are such popular E-Sports. This means both teams are essentially the same, or at least have the same access to the same tools. Natural Selection, however, is asymmetrical in both it's tech trees and winning conditions for each team. Can it be fun to watch? Certainly! However, when looking through the ESL you know what I see? A ton of Marines victories. It's an upset victory when the Aliens win at all, and really at the end of the day the ESL seems like a showcase of 'How will the Marines win this time?' more than 'Who is going to win?' That, or 'is the Alien commander going to drop that Early Onos at 3 minutes, or 4?'
Just my opinion, I'm sure some people will venomously and vigorously disagree.
(The above opinion is why I think it's a mistake to ultimately balance around 'competitive' players. Unless, of course, you mean that the game has a long way to go before being a legitimate E-Sport. If it's at all possible in the first place, that is.)
I must be one of the weird people who actually prefer playing a video game, rather than watch other people play it on YouTube.
The problems are that it require some methodology (science and stuff) and a lot of logistic (balance teams, lots of games played, ..).
Then there is fun, needlessly complicated mechanics or just simply bad, which is a bit different from balance.