Commentary on Game
Scatter
Join Date: 2012-09-02 Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2012-09-02 Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
This thread is a general commentary on the state of the game and what I generally think could be done better in the hopes of moving away from stale games with predictable build orders.
Detrimental Impact of Alien Upgrades
On both the marine and alien team there are the must have upgrades which are seen as required (particularly in pubs) to be able to compete with the other team as you leave the early game. For aliens these are celerity, cara and regen and for marines these are the weapons/armour upgrades and shotguns. Rarely will you see a game that does not have these as a priority and in the hundreds if not thousands of games I've played since beta this has been the case. As the alien commander on a pub I will often try and mix it up a bit and not get upgrades and instead push for hives and abilities, often with abuse from decent players threatening eject (on my own server mind you, much to my lulz) if I don't get upgrades even though they have all the tier 2 abilities, level 6 biomass and a 3rd hive on the way.
Why might this be ? Upgrades will generally always be better than abilities because they give 2 or 3 choices to ALL life forms in a useful manner (more speed, more health, regen) whereas ability research will only affect 1 life form type and that ability itself may not be terribly useful to the life form or team as a whole. Also, the process of researching abilities is quite lengthy where you need to get biomass, possibly a second hive and more biomass followed by the ability research itself. This lengthy process also means that you may often never even get to tier 2 ability research because second hive drop usually means that the second set of upgrades will be a priority over anything else. Let's not even get started on tier 3 abilities.
As with Aliens, Marines have their own research that is must have which includes having Weapons 1/Armor1 and shotguns around the time lerks appear and hopefully Weapons 2 by the time Fades appear. These are indeed absolutely necessary and it can be pretty GG when you look at the clock and you don't have one of these at the appropriate time. The reason for these are similar to the upgrades versus abilities research with aliens in the sense that armour and weapons upgrade is something that affects all marines at all times during the game regardless of what other tech you are using and are also permanent provided you have an arms lab. This research is ALWAYS better than any other marine tech because if you invest in arcs or phase gates and you lose them you have basically achieved nothing and wasted a whole lot of res that you could have spent on weapons/armour. The problem with this is as with aliens that you end up with basically 1 build order and the game will always unfold in the same way every single time in comp or pub (unless you have one of those coms who loves phasegates at every techpoint like so many in Aus).
Because of the above we basically are at a point where we don't see around 75% of the content (why did UWE even bother implementing webs or stab? or even exo and jetpacks at this point) of the game which in my view is not only a waste but also makes for tedious repetitive games. Below I will outline possible solutions which I think might make the game more interesting, some of which may be a bit taboo for those who dislike change or see any slight change as "having to relearn the game again" a la build 250. But honestly, that big shake up made me interested in ns2 again and I think it's time for another. The well balanced state of the game doesn't make up for how terribly uninteresting it currently is.
Recommendations
Ability Research- ditch it and have abilities unlock when a hive has completed building. Currently you will not see many abilities due to them being very limited in their use and thus never researched. If abilities were unlocked purely based on whether you have a second hive or not it would mean EVERYONE gets their tier 2 abilities at the same time and not just 1 life form type. As a result of this it would have a similar effect to upgrades in which everyone gets an increase in capability and thus would put them more on equal footing with upgrades as to what should be built next by the commander. Furthermore, having abilities unlock on hive drop would also allow for people to actually practice using these abilities and get better with them, while also making balance easier since you don't have to balance the various possible combinations of marines at x minutes vs aliens with umbra or marines at x minutes vs aliens with leap. It would be marines at x minutes vs tier 2 aliens, where we all know what abilities to expect with a second hive.
Upgrades - Extra health, more speed, more regen and other stats buffs will always be preferred and they make every other upgrade redundant other than for niche purposes. Remove, change to something that isn't just pure stats or nerf to the point where they seen as equivalent to the other unused upgrades. If nerfing them means aliens can no longer compete, then this highlights a balance problem in the first place if they are that necessary.
Marine Upgrades and tech tree - Weapons and Armour as previously mentioned are more important than anything else due to the permanent tangible benefits they give and are preventing other tech from being used. But even if we flatten out the tech tree and make multiple tech paths more viable such as exos or jetpacks, they will still be less of a priority than research that makes all your weapons and armour better.
This is where I recommend something that will be balked at which is to reduce their importance dramatically or even remove them. But this of course brings the problem of fades and other life forms that appear throughout the game being able to smash 100/30 marines easily. This recommendation would require a rebalancing of the marine health and damage output so that an lmg marine is similarly competitive in the same way as currently with upgrades at various stages of the game just like in other games. Doing this would mean that money spent on phase gates isn't automatically a waste if you lose them that otherwise could've been spent on upgrades and instead constitutes a failed attempt at map control. Either way marine upgrades are too important and too easy to have and are overall detrimental to this game.
Detrimental Impact of Alien Upgrades
On both the marine and alien team there are the must have upgrades which are seen as required (particularly in pubs) to be able to compete with the other team as you leave the early game. For aliens these are celerity, cara and regen and for marines these are the weapons/armour upgrades and shotguns. Rarely will you see a game that does not have these as a priority and in the hundreds if not thousands of games I've played since beta this has been the case. As the alien commander on a pub I will often try and mix it up a bit and not get upgrades and instead push for hives and abilities, often with abuse from decent players threatening eject (on my own server mind you, much to my lulz) if I don't get upgrades even though they have all the tier 2 abilities, level 6 biomass and a 3rd hive on the way.
Why might this be ? Upgrades will generally always be better than abilities because they give 2 or 3 choices to ALL life forms in a useful manner (more speed, more health, regen) whereas ability research will only affect 1 life form type and that ability itself may not be terribly useful to the life form or team as a whole. Also, the process of researching abilities is quite lengthy where you need to get biomass, possibly a second hive and more biomass followed by the ability research itself. This lengthy process also means that you may often never even get to tier 2 ability research because second hive drop usually means that the second set of upgrades will be a priority over anything else. Let's not even get started on tier 3 abilities.
As with Aliens, Marines have their own research that is must have which includes having Weapons 1/Armor1 and shotguns around the time lerks appear and hopefully Weapons 2 by the time Fades appear. These are indeed absolutely necessary and it can be pretty GG when you look at the clock and you don't have one of these at the appropriate time. The reason for these are similar to the upgrades versus abilities research with aliens in the sense that armour and weapons upgrade is something that affects all marines at all times during the game regardless of what other tech you are using and are also permanent provided you have an arms lab. This research is ALWAYS better than any other marine tech because if you invest in arcs or phase gates and you lose them you have basically achieved nothing and wasted a whole lot of res that you could have spent on weapons/armour. The problem with this is as with aliens that you end up with basically 1 build order and the game will always unfold in the same way every single time in comp or pub (unless you have one of those coms who loves phasegates at every techpoint like so many in Aus).
Because of the above we basically are at a point where we don't see around 75% of the content (why did UWE even bother implementing webs or stab? or even exo and jetpacks at this point) of the game which in my view is not only a waste but also makes for tedious repetitive games. Below I will outline possible solutions which I think might make the game more interesting, some of which may be a bit taboo for those who dislike change or see any slight change as "having to relearn the game again" a la build 250. But honestly, that big shake up made me interested in ns2 again and I think it's time for another. The well balanced state of the game doesn't make up for how terribly uninteresting it currently is.
Recommendations
Ability Research- ditch it and have abilities unlock when a hive has completed building. Currently you will not see many abilities due to them being very limited in their use and thus never researched. If abilities were unlocked purely based on whether you have a second hive or not it would mean EVERYONE gets their tier 2 abilities at the same time and not just 1 life form type. As a result of this it would have a similar effect to upgrades in which everyone gets an increase in capability and thus would put them more on equal footing with upgrades as to what should be built next by the commander. Furthermore, having abilities unlock on hive drop would also allow for people to actually practice using these abilities and get better with them, while also making balance easier since you don't have to balance the various possible combinations of marines at x minutes vs aliens with umbra or marines at x minutes vs aliens with leap. It would be marines at x minutes vs tier 2 aliens, where we all know what abilities to expect with a second hive.
Upgrades - Extra health, more speed, more regen and other stats buffs will always be preferred and they make every other upgrade redundant other than for niche purposes. Remove, change to something that isn't just pure stats or nerf to the point where they seen as equivalent to the other unused upgrades. If nerfing them means aliens can no longer compete, then this highlights a balance problem in the first place if they are that necessary.
Marine Upgrades and tech tree - Weapons and Armour as previously mentioned are more important than anything else due to the permanent tangible benefits they give and are preventing other tech from being used. But even if we flatten out the tech tree and make multiple tech paths more viable such as exos or jetpacks, they will still be less of a priority than research that makes all your weapons and armour better.
This is where I recommend something that will be balked at which is to reduce their importance dramatically or even remove them. But this of course brings the problem of fades and other life forms that appear throughout the game being able to smash 100/30 marines easily. This recommendation would require a rebalancing of the marine health and damage output so that an lmg marine is similarly competitive in the same way as currently with upgrades at various stages of the game just like in other games. Doing this would mean that money spent on phase gates isn't automatically a waste if you lose them that otherwise could've been spent on upgrades and instead constitutes a failed attempt at map control. Either way marine upgrades are too important and too easy to have and are overall detrimental to this game.
Comments
I personally don't see a problem with this. You can try and balance the game. But ultimately the players will always discover the best most effective weapons. All you will accomplish is shifting the "must have" weapon to some other weapon.
I absolutely agree with you that ns2 has a lot of junk content that we never see. I think the solution is simple; Remove it. But I know that is never going to happen.
NS2 may have pretty tedious build orders - but the build orders are not what makes ns2 interesting imo. There's a lot of strategy going on outside the build orders. I still learn new things all the time.
I don't think the solution to the issues you post is patching the game. I think the solution is clever map design.
Competitive Starcraft Broodwar lived for 10 years where it was barely ever patched - however, the meta game changed constantly because it had one of the cleverest and most active mapping community I have ever seen, and it flourished as an esports in a time where no other could for that reason imo.
Aliens have games where fast 2nd hive is a good choice and sometimes not. If they made the choice to drop 3 hives and not invest in player upgrades and defense to support it they should absolutely be punished for that (really what would be the point of upgrades if you could ignore them and still be on even ground with the other team?).
For example, it used to be a viable strat to drop 2nd hive immediately to rush leap because it built itself and was faster and eggs actually mattered FAR more they do now. It used to be viable to drop eggs (lerk, fade, onos?). Both of those things are gone, but maybe getting shade is now more viable, and hallucinations are actually used?
Also I remember the MAC "electrical surge" ability to sap alien lifeform energy (why was that removed?).
In any case, I think overall commanding in the game in particular has become a LOT more boring on the alien side - I feel like you're shooting yourself in the ass if you don't drop 2 shells/veils/spurs at the very beginning of a game, even though I've seen (rarely) people going for rushing bile. Not so much leap anymore, because building a 2nd hive takes so long unless you know there is a willing gorge player to build it right at the start of the game and a team willing to put up with no upgrades for quite a while.
At least, I think mostly everything is relatively useful and seen in games nowadays. Very few things that bother me are the cheapness of chamber upgrade structures, the readiness and speed of upgrading a hive to something (like shift/crag/shade), that shifts/shades/crags don't need to be mature anymore to use their special ability, that regen is completely and utterly useless, that the new drifter armor "ubercharge" ability is crap, that fade stab is completely and utterly useless, and that gorge webs are fairly useless as well.
Speaking as a part-time pub commander... there's really not:
1. keep your res
2. kill their res
3. ???
4. profit.
That's pretty much it.
- Reaper Expand
- 2Rax Pressure
- 1Rax Gasless Expand
- CC First
There aren't many deviations from these starting builds but depending on how the game plays out, they can diverse into other builds like hellion banshee pressure, early CC and 2nd Engi bay into double upgrades, early WM drops, you get the picture and this hasn't changed much since release. New builds/strategies are usable when units are changed and buffed but the core strategies remain the same.
NS2 is no different in this regard, you have a set amount of cookie cutter builds and not much deviation from them but there are some. The strategy element and the win factor is associated with how you use those tech choices. How you play hellion banshee or 3rd CC is the important play, not the build itself.
What matters is not the game itself but what the players do with the game that's important whether its directly with unit control (team control/personal skill in NS2) or mapping/modding tools to change strategies. Look at Veil for example, plays completely different to any other map yet the builds are generally the same while some are made more or less viable due to the maps geography. ARC rushes are common but Arms first is still a good choice to go with, aliens might counter by going early bile and breaking an ARC base, they might fully commit to taking down all marine res, just small differences in a map design completely change the way the game is played.
Almost all SC2 TvZ's can be summed up as 4M vs mutalingbane, 2 simple but very, very mechanically demanding army compositions that account for 90% of TvZ matchups. The composition or army isn't interesting but watching top tier koreans execute battles using them is heart racing for me.
Builds provide the foundation for strategy, going early Crag first is not a strategy, what you do with it is.
I agree that some aspects of the game just aren't useful like webs and stab but the majority is. Even Shade hive first (which I thoroughly detest) has a place in the game and can be useful in some situations. Many units and compositions in SC or many item/hero builds aren't viable in MOBAs but they are still complex and interesting.
So you openly state you don't have the experience to argue his point yet you do it anyway? StarCraft macro play can be summed up as "expand, harass economy, defeat army, ???, profit."
I don't think abilities should be taken out of the game, even if they are rarely used. If anything, the game needs to be balanced so that they are viable. 75% is a bit high
Marines can easily 2-man rush a hive and kill chambers easily.
Macs with the energy thing are now hand grenades (the pulse or whatever).
What does removing these achieve if they are never used in the first place?
There is a lot of strategy outside of the build orders, but playing 100 games to see something slightly new in that 1 game isn't terribly compelling. How is clever map design at all a solution given the time frame it takes to produce new maps? Moreover, you've said you don't think there is much problem with the current state so what is your solution aimed at?
Did you read the part where I clearly state that this is the case, that not having this tech will be suicide for your team? I think you've missed the general thrust of the OP.
Yeah, and even on veil with the different play the go to is still weapon and armour upgrades illustrating the point of my OP. This game has even less builds (not that I find the particular building selection the important, but as you said what is done with it) than starcraft. Interesting, I think there is even less variety than in ns1 despite ns2 having more content in general.
I am fine with there being go to strats, as long there are more than 1.5. I've played this game enough in comp, pub and pug to state that I see the game generally unfold the same way every time with small differences here and there. There is a bunch of tech in this game that I never see and haven't seen in more than a year and prior to that very infrequently. In comp it is significantly worse than pub .
How does he not have experience. He plays this game and observes the way it is. Just because he doesn't play competitive doesn't make his point invalid since competitive isn't the only thing I was addressing.
Yes, it was in ns1 and this fact is irrelevant to the discussion. But generally I am not sure what point you are making.
I think what you are referring to is build 250, where Sewlek's balance mod became vanilla ns2.
Pre-build 250, the meta was this: Drop hive instantly -> save for onos egg -> win.
That's it. You didn't get leap. There were no other alternatives if you intended to win in a competitive game. The whole game revolved around whether marines could kill the aliens before onos timing, or if they could survive long enough to get weapons 3 so they could start combating the onos.
Now, you say people don't go early hive anymore because it takes too long? This is false. The build time is EXACTLY the same, 3 minutes, as long as you have a drifter on it.
The reason people don't go early hive anymore, is because the onos egg drop was removed, and GOOD RIDDANCE.
Leap is still on two hives, if you really wanted early leap, you can still go for it.
Edit: Regen is great. Chambers are more expensive now than they were pre250.
Of course vanilla marines should have little advantage in combat situations versus skulks because that is how melee vs. range games works. The range side should always have little advantage in combat while the melee side should be faster, or like in L4D zombies can ambush. In NS2 this unbalance makes teamwork as mandatary for aliens. Because aliens move faster and from tactical point of view marines have to attack aliens order to win the aliens can make uneven combat situations. Basically as alien you never want to engage marines with even numbers. This is all good, this is the core element of NS.
However, in NS2 it is just too unbalanced which makes dull and unrewarding gameplay. For me most frustration comes from ambushing situations. My skulk play have over 10 years revolved around ambushing and I dare to say that I’m one best there has ever been in that art. But in NS2 in premier competitive level you don’t want to ambush alone even a single marine because fighting odds are pretty much even in those situations and if commander drops meds odds are even against the skulk. This wasn’t as big problem before skulk movement overhaul because back then skulk movement was just op. Now it is, because the skulk is just too slow and big to dance around marine like in NS1 and the marine hits almost every bullet because you are so fat and so it becomes DPS fight which the marine wins with help of the commander. In these ambushing situations the skulk might play perfectly and still lose the engagement.
This is also the reason why teams emphasize fast upgrades. Especially as aliens it’s mandatory because with fast upgrades like cara or cele you narrow that huge marine advantage greatly. Marines on other hand try increase that advantage with plain combat upgrades like w1, a2 or shotguns. In fact marines lack variation when it comes to pure combat upgrades. NS1 solved this problem giving HMG from the advanced armory upgrade. In NS2 the route to JPs or EXOs is just too long and contains no combat upgrades.
Overall balance can be reaches from different ways but I have always highlighted balance of basic combat. I do believe that game would be much easier to balance when you first get basics right. But right now in both vanilla NS2 and in competitive mod the game is unbalance in its core and it is balanced by timing of alien lifeforms and cost of structures. That is the one way to balance the game but in my opinion it is the wrong way.
I'm simply saying in general Pub play there isn't much strategy (which is most of NS2). Just like how bronze league SC players go about the game.
Moreover if you deviate from the accepted build orders the OP mentioned you get harassed for it... which means there are no other PUB viable strategies.
The problem I was referring to is you saying the games all look the same, same build order and what not. The solution to that is different map designs that encourages other build orders, like phase gate openings for example. One way (over-simplified for the sake of the discussion), to do this is to make the walking distance longer and have really strong, marine favored locations intended for phase gates that allow for strong early pressure.
In starcraft, if zergs are getting crushed because their units can't reach their expansions to defend before they die, you can do two things: You can patch the game so the zerg units are faster, or you can change the maps so the naturals are close to your main base.
If protoss can't defend early zerg rushes, you can patch the game so protoss units are stronger, or you can fix the maps so that the naturals have thin choke points that the protoss can block with buildings.
This is is the type of clever map design I'm talking about.
The uniqueness of all the Alien classes, and the marines with their varying transport abilities and differing ranged weapons, means that anything other than 'room combat' results in a unbalanced game. Because of ARC's and other weapons, maps have to be designed very carefully to work at all with NS2.
NS2 is just not flexible enough to significantly alter gameplay without massively unbalancing the game.
Edit:
I'd even go so far as to say, that anything other than a 'Summit' type wheel layout map introduces balance issues to the main game. The fact Skulks and Marines are essentially the same speed, means all points need to be equi-distant from each other, and that alone is a significant factor in determining the design of maps.
Phasegate rush I see a lot. Marines are much stronger early game, so it is easy to establish.
Leap is like an upgrade - good for everyone even if the team lost lots of lifeforms. Stab and web are useless however.
All other abilities are essential. If you have fades, they need metabolize. If you need to take down the phase/robo-tech or force a beacon - you need bile. Onos and lerk abilities + xeno are to be able to finish the game, because the last marine base just won't die.
Exos are good on some servers, but on my favourite srv they work only as base defense or mass exo rush.
PS: I don't like that abilities are locked to the hive count. It is not very intuitive. Why tie it even more?
I was responding to various comments. I didn't feel like attempting to get every quote with this tablet.
It was in ns1 - this is ns2 and it's one of the bigger changes in how this game works. You could also argue that this conversation is irrelevant bc nothing will come out of this thread that will change the game (with the ideas so far).
@Tane interesting read, much of which I agree with. I'm curious to know your thoughts about the right way to balance the vanilla skulk, and in turn the game.
Do you think it's the problem of skulks not being able to engage fast enough from an ambush position to get a pick ? Or is it more to do with the fact that marines don't die fast enough due to factors like med spam and early a1 research ?
Regarding the OP, i would certainly agree that the game is limited in the sense that there are only few viable tech paths for each team that are quite predictable. Marines unfortunately do suffer the most, requiring almost always a1 to press an early game advantage and not fall behind in the mid game. With lerks having such a dominant role now in the early -> mid game transition, it's almost essential that a1 is researched first to help cripple the alien economy and ensure that things like SG are up to counter aggressive lerks.
Typically, you will see tech paths always looking like something similar to this, give or take few variations like 2nd ip before W1 or armory etc:
Marines:
Armour 1 -> Weapons 1 -> armory -> Obs -> 2nd IP -> armor 2 -> phase tech -> Weapons 2 -> advanced armory
Aliens:
1 RT -> Hive Upgrade Research -> 2 spurs/shells -> 2nd RT -> 3rd RT -> 3rd Shell/Spur -> 4th RT -> PVE or Biomass -> Metabolise and or bile -> 2nd Hive
Or
2-3 RTs w/ gorge and pack play -> Hive Upgrade Research -> delayed spurs/Shells -> 4th RT -> etc
One issue is that late game tech is non existent and has no impact for both teams due to the fact that the majority of the time the game has already been won by the time it is out. Not to mention things like a prototype lab are too expensive and the tech it produces provides no real advantage over an average marine, as marines have decent enough movement and firepower as is with upgrades. There is really no incentive to go anything other than early upgrades, and use those to press early advantages to get the upper economic hand.
There is also no incentive to invest in early res heavy tech like robo factory/sentries or phase gates due to the fact that the base marine with its current movement, med support and early upgrades are effective enough as they are. Holding a tech point or res point point on the map early offers no real tactical advantage, as most marines can protect their res and maintain a healthy economy simply by walking there.
On the alien side of things, the upgrades early or mass res expansion early with pve/gorge achieves 2 things. Upgrades bridge the gap between skulks and marines early game, especially if they get a1 early, where as res early allows for lerks to appear faster, allowing them to assert superiority until SG are up.
Aliens are always playing catch up with marines in terms of tech, relying on bursts of new tier lifeforms to turn the tide of battle which plays into the predictability of the game at the moment. Aliens also rely heavily on team play to achieve anything in the early game - which is not technically a bad thing, team work should definitely be encouraged, but i think with NS2, it is required a little too much to get anything done, which is one of the reasons I think new people to the game struggle to do well on aliens in both pub and competitive matches.
I still enjoy the game far more now than I did pre 250 - the movement on the lifeforms (bar the vanilla skulk) is great, importance of lifeforms kills and less focus on pve is great too - but as @Scatter said there comes a point where the status quo needs to be assessed again as it was was around 250. I think there is a way to achieve a shake up without very radical changes that would annoy both pub and comp players - for example it could be as simple as making something like 5 levels of marine upgrades to lessen the impact a bit, or reducing the cost of late game tech to make it viable. I don't think there is a magic formula to fix everything, but i think there's is definitely room for change that would allow for more varied tech paths, which in turn would create more dynamic combat scenarios.
It's an FPS with a support class that has a top down view.
The goal of the game is to gain map control in order to tech up.
Even if you untied the ups, you'd still need map control to tech up - which pretty much illustrates how intuitive it is, being parallel and aligned with the goal of the game.
@Spooge
Never met an FPS that was solely an FPS that also had such slippery slope mechanics and was ruthlessly unforgiving to your 30 minutes(!) of commitment.
In other words, if there were zero resources in the game, or at the very least zero means to accrue resources, you might have had a point.
NS2 is most definitely an RTS
Just because it has an economy doesn't mean it requires strategy. Most of the choices in this game are linear. Hence the OP.
That said, I was a bit short with that and thought it would be best to suggest ideas to alter what I see as a problem.
Relocation. Give players the ability to place a CC or Hive wherever they wish. For a hive, it's probably best to require infestation. This would allow players to create their own choke points throughout the maps.
Reduce starting health for everything. Offer the choice to improve defenses or risk a fast assault.
From there you can look at more individualized upgrades for attack and defense structures, weapons, etc.
So there. I'm not just a curmudgeon.
slippery slope? ruthlessly unforgiving?
Sounds like Dota.
Other change would be easier to make. That would be increasing medpack cost to 2 or 1.5. Ambushing skulk normally hits 2-4 bites before gets killed by medspammed marine. With increased cost of medpack the skulk would at least do some res damage to the marine team. This would also make commanding more skillfull because you couldn’t just blindly spam medpacks. Once again this would be huge balance change and would also require time to get used to it. This would also solve problem of OP SG rushes in premier level but that is another topic.
As for the linearity of NS2 build orders and lack of real choices outside of cheese strategies and patch fueled meta shifts, it is an unfortunate result of the basic game design. NS2 doesn't have particularly complex RTS mechanics, so there's only so much one can do.
The following is only tangentially on-topic, but what the hell.
B250 was Sewlek's attempt at designing a better game, supported by feedback from prominent competitive players at the time, including myself. In my opinion he did a very good job, but was ultimately unable (or unwilling) to address the fundamental issues plaguing NS2 design. Opinions may differ as to what these fundamental issues are, but I have maintained since the beta days that the single most important issue is the combination of (1) the implementation of the alien commander, (2) the tres/pres distinction, and (3) the alien lifeform/ability/upgrade design.
To explain it, I'll refer to UWE's stated goal during development of having 1/3 copied from NS1, 1/3 improved from NS1 and 1/3 entirely new. By implementing the alien commander (entirely new) and adding a distinction between tres and pres (improvement), they also altered the underlying premises dictating the basic design of NS1 alien lifeforms, abilities and upgrades (copied), which remained largely unchanged. This roughly means that UWE made fundamental changes to how the alien side spends their resources, without changing what they spend the resources on.
In NS1, there was no distinction between tres and pres. Instead, each player had a pool of resources that he could use either for building team improvements (hives, resource towers, static defense, tech upgrades etc.) or for personal improvements (lifeforms, upgrades). If a player used his resources for making team improvements, that player would not have resources to spend on personal improvements until much later in the game (and vice versa). Alien build orders therefore became centered upon finding a balance between team improvements and personal improvements. Compare that with NS2, where spending on team improvments (tres) is very much separate from spending on personal improvements (pres). The aliens need the alien commander to drop resource towers so that they get pres, but apart from that the commander's spending on team improvements doesn't affect the alien team's available resources to spend on personal improvements. This is why, for example, the fade ball (four or more alien players saving for fade) made famous by Godar during spring 2013 was even possible, consequently leading to nerfs on fade structure damage, further reducing skulk play to endless rt biting.
The way I see it, there was no profitable middle of the road solution. By adding an alien commander, it was necessary to add a distinction between tres and pres. By adding that distinction, it was furthermore necessary to make fundamental changes to alien lifeform/ability/upgrade design, but this was not done. The alternative was to not add an alien commander, in which case there would be no need to distinguish between tres and pres. This can thus be framed either as a failure by UWE to not make enough changes from NS1, or as a failure by UWE in making too many changes from NS1. In the end it doesn't really matter which.
This was a personal crusade of mine in internal (balance team) discussions during Sewlek's development of the balance mod (which eventually became B250). I tried to explain why medpacks were too cheap in every way I could think of, but was ultimately unsuccessful in convincing the other balance team members (you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink).
As for the marine vs. skulk balance, I agree with your assessment. Strangely, NS2 lengthened the period before fades appear on the map (as opposed to NS1) but at the same time made basic marine vs. skulk play less rewarding due to the issues you point out. Fortunately still rewarding enough to make it a good game, just not as good as it could have been.
It looks good on paper to change a value here and there to "balance" things but it would have a different impact on each of the 3 groups.
During the beta phase the game evolved to the current state.
Many ideas and features where thrown away for known reasons and it looks like some people forgot these reasons or didnt know them.
You cannot have perfect balance in an asymetric game but i think UWE made a good job here.
And there is one thing noone can ever balance, its called "personal skill".
In an eye of a new player every Div2 lerk is totally overpowered, every skilled marine has an aimbot and every Onos is godlike.
80% of the current playerbase has zero mapawareness, they didnt know hoiw to react in needed situations.
This is one of the main differences between the Divsions btw. aside aim.
Would rebalancing stuff help here? No.
The good players would be still good and the bad players still bad.
Not even arguing balance here since balance is pretty good atm. But a balanced games doesn't mean it's a fun game that is worth playing over and over. This thread and OP have nothing to do with skill or pub vs comp since both pub and comp suffer from the same lack of variety and stale game play for the same reasons.
This thread is not about balance , it's about lack of variety, cookie cutter builds that feature in 99% of the games played in comp and pub, and also the fact that much of the tech is less frequently seen now than it was in the past prior to 250 as a consequence of upgrades that affect This should be pretty clear in the OP but I think very few, other than Tane and Fana (who address root causes), have actually addressed the OP in a meaningful way.
Tane and Fana's coments are correct, of course. Fana knows that while his comments regarding the pres/tres and alien commder and the deviation from ns1 in general are correct they will never be changed which is why I don't even bother addressing that anymore even though I have, ad nauseum, in the past. I know it's something that will never get changed so instead I choose to argue for things that may get changed such as the biomass system and ability research.
As for medpacks, I completely agree. I've said it before of course only to be to told by the usual status quo maintaining suspects that all is well in the world because they are used to a certain way of doing business.
We had alientech bound to an hive (like Fade @ 2nd hive) and it didnt work.
Thats exact what i mentioned above, people forget why things where introduced or didnt know they where part of the game in the past.
If you unlock abilitys automatic after a hive is up, you have the techplosion wich was a huge problem in the past.
If aliens losing all there tech cause a hive is killed, is also a horrible mechanic,
You say this thread is not about balance?
Well it is: you cant change or introduce new gamechanics without balancing the whole game around it.
"and also the fact that much of the tech is less frequently seen now than it was in the past prior to 250"
The only tech that you dont see often are:
- webs
- catpacks (pub)
- nanoshield (pub)
- flamer (competitive)
- exo (competitive)
You are only one of them who still thinking 249 was the perfect NS2 version and you dont want to see the issues of 249 anymore.
Well that is false. Again, I'll have to point out. You can make new maps. If you make a map that is super phasegate favored, that won't affect the balance of veil or summit. Thereby you create variety.
And it can even help address the issue of skill gaps that you raised in your earlier post. If lower division teams tend to lose their marine rounds, then you can make more marine favored maps catering the lower divisions. If the prem teams favor marine side, you can make more alien favored maps catering the prem division.
In effect you can balance one aspect without affecting the other.
There are also other ways to balance for a specific audience without affecting the whole game, for example balance mods, but I really prefer the map design route.
I think it's a failure of imagination to say that you can't change the meta game or can't balance without redoing the whole game. Older games never really suffered from this as you didn't really want to patch it so often with dial-up and everything.
Makes no sense to me.
"Currently you will not see many abilities due to them being very limited in their use and thus never researched"
This is complete nonsense btw. Dont know on what servers you are playing.
Not a fast process at all. It does have the benefit however, that everyone, not just uwe or the cdt, can create maps. This is of course an advantage that is only proportional to the size of the community. Which is why a game like starcraft or quake can flourish so much with it while ns2 perhaps can not.
But thinking of it like "unbalancing" doesn't make any sense. Any balance process, whether it is through map design, number tweaks or otherwise, revolves around giving one faction or another an advantage.
Creating new maps for the problems that the OP pointed out isn't a viable solution. New maps with different play styles from the summit model might offer different strats in the short term, but at the end of the day the same tech paths are going to be followed regardless. The importance will still be placed on stat boosting upgrades, because they are the most valuable. Aggressive phase gate positioning will never outshine these upgrades due to the nature of marine movement being good as it is already. Gorge tunnels also nullify aggressive pg placement early, allowing aliens to simply readjust and expand in another direction.
Maps shouldn't force a particular team into a going a specific tech path either because it is favorable on that particular map. That only serves to worsen the problem of cookie cut tech paths which the OP was talking about. Ideally a map should allow for a relatively even contest, so that the onus is on teams to out think and out perform the opposing team using whichever tech path they want to win a match.
I also believe the solution shouldn't be to create new content to fix current issues at the core of the game (both vanilla and competitive) that are present in every game on all the current maps - maps, which arguably are going to be the ones most played anyway. New content should only be introduced after these core issues are fixed. That is one of the reasons why the HMG in comp mod is so broken as it is, but that's a story for another thread.
That alien commander has to research abilitys? cmon