Psychology Of Ns And Marines Vs Aliens

Savant · January 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">Why the Marines are expected to win...</div> Before anyone gets any further, please note this is a discussion of CONCEPT and PSYCHOLOGY. If you reply and start saying how you 'think the game is balanced', then you have clearly missed my point.

OK, what I'm looking at, is that there seems to be consistent imbalances in the game that favour the marines. No matter how you slice it, this game is the Marine's game to win. Aliens will only win because of Marine incompetence.

My thoughts are, do you think this is this intentional on an <b>unconscious</b> level?

What I'm talking about is the entertainment and video game industry.

Look at the movies. Alien series, Starship Troopers and dozens more all have the same theme. Aliens move in, and the 'Marines' have to come in and clear them out. The Marines ALWAYS win. Off hand, I can't think of a single movie with an 'Alien/Marine' conflict where the aliens WON in the end. They always lose.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that anyone would create a game where one team wins all the time. I'm not suggesting that at all. However, what I'm thinking is that there may be an unconscious element that drives people to want the game to always favour a Marine win since that is 'expected' and is also patriotic.

Thoughts anyone?

Regards,

Savant

Smoke_Nova · January 2003

An intresting idea to say the least Savant.

I think at heart everyone sympathizes with the marines when they play on the marine team.

I personally think that people keep wanting the aliens nerfed because they want to see more marine victories...but humans are soft-skinned fleshlings...we should die some of the time.

playerman · January 2003

i'm not sure about the unconscious bias to favor marines in the way you describe it.

but i think the game does have some sort of balance-like issue resulting from the alien vs marine theme. more specifically: the gameplay for each team is so very different.

one is familiar, the other is indeed "alien".

the marines advantage is that the gameplay concept is very familiar. if you’re a decent shot, understand some basic infantry tactics (travel in groups, be careful) and do as the commander tells you (assuming he's any good), then you and your team will be ok. you don't even need to know the map very well, the comm tells you where to go and he can see all the map. for the rest it's mostly point and shoot.

aliens are quite different. much of their abilities and strategies are not obvious.
it takes a while to understand the alien upgrades and classes as well as we understand 'normal' upgrades such as better armor, better weapon.
in a way aliens need to "think outside the box", and in a way each alien is a commander.
aliens need at least as much team work as marines. it's harder to get organized because there is no single comm. hive sight is a powerful tool but aliens still need voice or text chat to coordinate their efforts. and they better know the map quite well.

I think a really good alien team can give a really good marine team a very hard time. aliens may well win.
But on pub servers usually alien teams are not very good. you'd be lucky if all players at least are not completely clueless.
then it mostly depends on the marine comm, average aliens have little chance against average marines with a good comm.

I play mostly aliens because i go auto team. that tells me that most people prefer playing marine. even if teams always start out even, apparently aliens leave sooner. you know how losing teams tend to get smaller.

marines piled up in the ready room "marines" door is a common sight. i have rarely seen such thing with aliens. you know how people prefer playing on the winning team.

i think that's your bias right there.

i'm a fairly experience fps gamer. but being a decent shot is irrelevant when all i can do is bite. i am obedient to my commander but now i am my own commander. i'm not much of a strategist, but at least i have hive sight. though it takes getting used to, and how the hell do i get over there anyway? ducs? yes well, the ducs are a maze. i get lost.

the learning curve for marines is short. the learning curve for aliens is long, maybe to long for to many people.

Kitsune · January 2003

I would take some issue with the sources of your argument. In Aliens, the marines were soundly crushed. They failed to save the colony or the colonists, failed to exterminate the aliens, and were killed nearly to the last man. Had a random accident not made the aliens' hive blow up, they'd have been just peachy. (Until someone nuked them from orbit, but those aliens, while clever, weren't intelligent enough to ever have a hope against such powerful weapons.)

Starship Troopers offered a similar non-victory. The humans won an important battle and gained valuable information, but that was hardly the end of the war. And, again, you watch them dying in droves against the aliens. The main characters succeeded in their fight, unlike the ones in Aliens, but Starship Troopers was about an all-out war rather than a relatively small skirmish, and their roles were only a small portion of the overall picture. In other words, their victory didn't count for much.

And who could forget the rich, arm-munching goodness of The Thing? Did the humans win? No, they're going to freeze to death. Did they really hose the alien by blowing up his ship? Yes. But did they kill it? ...Maybe?

Movies in general tend towards 'happy endings', which means that humans come out on top. Pyrrhic victories ala Aliens and Alien^3 crop up now and then, but audiences almost never accept a total loss for 'their' team. Horror movies can get away with a 'downer' ending, but once aliens are involved the movie is automatically absorbed into the sci-fi genre.

As far as video games go, I would point out that the marines in the AvP series are by far the weakest of the three species. Aliens shred 'em, Predators snipe 'em and laugh whenever they get a headshot, they're used as fodder for facehuggers, and they generally have short, unpleasant lives.

But is there a subconscious species-loyalty instilling a bias towards the marines? Hard to say. Being subconscious, it would, by definition, not be something that could easily be pinned down. I can safely say, however, that whenever I'm playing Kharaa, I show not one smidgen of mercy to the humans. I don't feel any pangs of remorse for ambushing and eating a squad of marines. And I would suspect that if I was harboring any subconscious desire for the marines to win that I wouldn't relish killing them so much.

Immacolata · January 2003

Indeed, what do I like most? The grim world of Alien or the pastel colored happy feel good star trek universe. Alien, of course. I get the most SATISFACTION from winning as marine team, but perhaps it is because the marines requires such good teamwork that it is rare.

Gigas · January 2003

Kharaa psychology is easy to decipher. No pity, no remorse, just the warm and comforting siren song of the Bacterium's instinctual stimulus response mechanism...

DEFEND THE HIVE!

CLEANSE THE INTRUDERS!

SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS!

...

Wait...

BlueGhost · January 2003

I played AvP 1 befor watching any of the aliens films.

As such I enjoyed watching the films and sat through it going.. 'Yeeeasee now young padwan alien you run AROUND the walls and then LEAP' 'goood alien!' <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

Anyway the 'happy ending in movies' thing is just a product of consumer driven industry and low-risk investment.

Same with the incredibly bland number of storylines.. *sigh*

ANYWAY:

NS is a GAME as such it is a 'fake' enviroment genorated by a computer in which you have people attempting to achive goals within the 'rules' of that enviroment.

When you talk about 'balance' you're talking about the way in which the 'rules' favour one side over the other.

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>OK, what I'm looking at, is that there seems to be consistent imbalances in the game that favour the marines. No matter how you slice it, this game is the Marine's game to win. Aliens will only win because of Marine incompetence.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Sadly this is patently impossible, any game is simply a set of rules, with moden games the rules interact so you have the "physics" (including things you might not think of as 'physics' like telefrags and resources), and ontop of the physics you have the weapons/buildings/movement speeds/buffs. Quite frankly the system is too complex, any change in physics can have HUGE and far-reaching effects everything else.

'Balance' of the game is mearly achived through testing.

Incedently if you're saying the people playing aliens allow the marines to win due to deep rooted phychological reasons.. Hell I'm not going to argue with a phychology, I'll laugh at it instead <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'>

BlueGhost

EDIT>
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Aliens still win more then 3/4 of games on most servers.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Where DO people get these statistics from?

Minstrel_Knight · January 2003

What are you talking about? I always expect to win because I am the best and if I lose it is because my team clearly sucks.

freeo · January 2003

i'm actually a minor in psychology and what you're saying has no evidence backing it up. it's all the work of sigmund freud, who, although is a well-respected psychologist (by some, at least), had ideas that COULD NOT be tested. how can you test someone's unconscious? i know what you're thinking, but no, hooking them up to equipment doesn't work. you can't read electrical signals in the brain like a storybook.

so sure you can say our "unconscious" is playing a role in the marine's wins. but that is highly doubtful given the inability to provide solid evidence.

though i must point out, over the course of 10 games yesterday on 1.04, marines won only twice (this was on a 7v7 server)--mainly due to EXCELLENT teamwork and EXCELLENT commanding.

Savant · January 2003

Thanks for the well thought out post Kitsune...

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Kitsune @ Jan 27 2003, 06:22 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Until someone nuked them from orbit, but those aliens, while clever, weren't intelligent enough to ever have a hope against such powerful weapons.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>Nuked from orbit? Remind you of anything similar (albeit now removed) in NS?!? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Kitsune @ Jan 27 2003, 06:22 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Starship Troopers offered a similar non-victory. The humans won an important battle and gained valuable information, but that was hardly the end of the war. And, again, you watch them dying in droves against the aliens. </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>Yes they were dying in droves just as Marines die in droves NOW in the game. I never suggested that the Marines were untouchable, just unstoppable if properly commanded/dispatched.

However, the examples are only the beginning here. It's the psychology that I was interested in. I have to admit, when I first played the game, I played as Marine. Since the Aliens were so, ummm ALIEN, in comparison to my team, I found it difficult to initially associate them with real players and not a Marines vs Aliens (run by computer) scenerio. As such, I often found myself 'expecting' to win.

As for the video game talk, I thing we're forgetting the obvious here. Half-life. The game was BUILT on 'humans killing aliens'.

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Kitsune @ Jan 27 2003, 06:22 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I can safely say, however, that whenever I'm playing Kharaa, I show not one smidgen of mercy to the humans. </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>In the heat of battle I don't hesitate to mow 'em down either.

However, when playing Marine, I have caught myself on a very rare occasion thinking that we SHOULD be winning regardless of the situation. Not often though. That's why I'm thinking that it's a subconscious desire.

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (freeo @ Jan 27 2003, 12:28 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>m actually a minor in psychology and what you're saying has no evidence backing it up</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> Freeo, it's the <b>anecdotal evidence</b> that is compelling here. Yes, I quite freely admit that I have no peer-reviewed double-blind studies to back up my argument, but that's not what this debate is about. It's just a game.

However, it was the parallels that I found most interesting, and I think there is something to be had if one looks deeper here.

Regards,

Savant

DoADrunkMonkey · January 2003

how about critters?
they kill everything but i can`t really remeber the last one that made.

Psychology Of Ns And Marines Vs Aliens

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