Kharaa And Frontiersmen
Dread
Join Date: 2002-07-24 Member: 993Members
Join Date: 2002-07-24 Member: 993Members
<div class="IPBDescription">impossible to balance?</div> I believe that Aliens and Marines are impossible to balance with current methods. Marines require teamwork to be effective. Aliens don't need any more teamwork than normal teambased deathmatch. In public players are less organized because they don't know eachother and that's why we see less teamwork, thus making it more difficult for marine team to be effective. In clanmatches Marines are extra effective because they are organized. If NS is balanced so that marine and Kharaa win just as often in public, Marine team is going to rule in scrims. If clanmatches are balanced so that marines and Kharaa win just as much, then marines are in serious trouble in pub-servers.
The way I see it, there is currently four ways to make ns:
1) Casual mode is balanced for public play and Tournament mode is for clan play. This would take time but we already have lots of veterans to help balancing it. Devs would just need to make 'Veterans only' and 'PTs only' servers to test clan -and public play. Naturally dozens even hundreds of more PT's would be required in order to compare public(PT) and Clan(Vet) gameplay. This would be rather difficult and would require time and resources.
2) Just leave other side(pub or clanplay) unbalanced and balance the other to its limits. This is very tempting because it is the easiest way but I believe Flayra wants both to be blanced and even so that Clanplay and Public play don't require different modes, which actually crosses over both 1 and 2.
3) Make Kharaa require more tactics to be effective. This would make tactical marine team and tactical Kharaa team just as effective. This option however is not very attractive because we want Kharaa and marines to be completely different. Guess we have left only...
4) Make Kharaa require more skill. That's right, in clanplay people actually have more skill than in public and hence, if marine team has lots of skill(they use über tactics) kharaa team has lots of skill too and compensate their lack of strategical possibilities with their skill-abilities which make them very lethal. In pub play people are not so skilled and wouldn't be so good with their abilities and in the same time marines wouldn't use so good tactics. This ns-working plan is very good because it automatically makes marine team and Kharaa team equally good because when marine team uses good tactics, Kharaa team uses their abilities more effeciently. Of course it's still very difficult to balance marines availlability of strategies and Kharaas possibilities to counter these strategies with their strong-abilities, but at least we have some sort of destination.
Overall: Seems like only way to balance NS is to make Kharaa abilities more dependant on skill, kind of like Leap or Lerk fly+bite combo. Average joe does moderate damage with them, but good clan-players can cause serious havoc. Average joe uses moderate strategies as a marine on public-servers, but good clan-players can use especially wicked strategies. It's going to be a long and wild ride but I hope Flay manages to pull this off.
The way I see it, there is currently four ways to make ns:
1) Casual mode is balanced for public play and Tournament mode is for clan play. This would take time but we already have lots of veterans to help balancing it. Devs would just need to make 'Veterans only' and 'PTs only' servers to test clan -and public play. Naturally dozens even hundreds of more PT's would be required in order to compare public(PT) and Clan(Vet) gameplay. This would be rather difficult and would require time and resources.
2) Just leave other side(pub or clanplay) unbalanced and balance the other to its limits. This is very tempting because it is the easiest way but I believe Flayra wants both to be blanced and even so that Clanplay and Public play don't require different modes, which actually crosses over both 1 and 2.
3) Make Kharaa require more tactics to be effective. This would make tactical marine team and tactical Kharaa team just as effective. This option however is not very attractive because we want Kharaa and marines to be completely different. Guess we have left only...
4) Make Kharaa require more skill. That's right, in clanplay people actually have more skill than in public and hence, if marine team has lots of skill(they use über tactics) kharaa team has lots of skill too and compensate their lack of strategical possibilities with their skill-abilities which make them very lethal. In pub play people are not so skilled and wouldn't be so good with their abilities and in the same time marines wouldn't use so good tactics. This ns-working plan is very good because it automatically makes marine team and Kharaa team equally good because when marine team uses good tactics, Kharaa team uses their abilities more effeciently. Of course it's still very difficult to balance marines availlability of strategies and Kharaas possibilities to counter these strategies with their strong-abilities, but at least we have some sort of destination.
Overall: Seems like only way to balance NS is to make Kharaa abilities more dependant on skill, kind of like Leap or Lerk fly+bite combo. Average joe does moderate damage with them, but good clan-players can cause serious havoc. Average joe uses moderate strategies as a marine on public-servers, but good clan-players can use especially wicked strategies. It's going to be a long and wild ride but I hope Flay manages to pull this off.
Comments
Is that really the case?
The only fundamental difference I can see between the teams is that Marines require a minimum of 2 players to cooperate in order to construct a building. As a compensation they get a common resource pool which allows them to spend resources more efficiently.
"Teamwork", i.e. coordinated assaults, have equal payoff for both teams.
For example:
Johnny: Comm healthpack now! Alien coming!
Comm: Ho he hum, oh hey bobby want an hmg.
Johnny: Comm help!
Comm: Hm, I think I hear a bird <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Is that really the case?
The only fundamental difference I can see between the teams is that Marines require a minimum of 2 players to cooperate in order to construct a building. As a compensation they get a common resource pool which allows them to spend resources more efficiently.
"Teamwork", i.e. coordinated assaults, have equal payoff for both teams. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed on that end as well.
it does not matter one bit how good the aliens are - marines will win the fight every time. you could be the best skulk in the world, but thats useless until you get close enough to bite...
you simply can't balance it completely, because it is too dependant on the player's abilities. if the marine is a crack shot, then the skulks just die... you have the capabilities to kill about 5 skulks before needing to reload (3 for the lmg, 2 for the pistol? not sure exactly...) and clan matches often involve at least 2 marines moving together vs a couple of skulks...
if you power up skulks, then public games become dominated by aliens at the beginning...
the styles of play are so different, and dependant on too many different things, i believev it impossible to balance it properly... only hours of playing and gradual evaluation will sort the problem
As for balancing both teams on a good all round map, like caged, that would take a LOT of work, and it would probably end up making either public or clan play fair, making both fair is bloody difficult. If you look about the MODs, how many MODs with two genuinely diffrent teams are truely balanced? none that I can think of (albiet I dont know many), even MODs with only suttle diffrences in teams can become unbalanced, however yet again this is largely map based.
When clan play is fair, everything is fair.
Of course a pub team loses when it has lots of random newbies, or when the commander is incompetent. That's how it's supposed to be.
Gameplay balance is an idealistic concept. It means that both sides have an equal chance of winning, given that nobody makes any mistakes. Public games are much too random skillwise, you can't draw any useful conclusions from watching them or participating in them. You look at clan games because they tend to contain as few mistakes as humanly possible. If clans can't break the game with an overpowered strategy, nobody will.
Plus, as people have already said, pub play is freakin' random. That's half the fun! Pub balance is a myth, it's too reliant on player personalities... Making it such that a sufficiently skilled pub team can win on either team is different, and that comes from tourney balance.