The thing is though balance alone does not necessarily make a game play fun. As an example, consider if both teams were equally overpowered where neither team virtually ever makes progress (or at the very least progress is painfully slow). While balancing may be a necessity to consider for good game play, it isn’t sufficient.
I don’t usually directly debate someone’s reply unless initially address at me but I have a few problems with this reply.
At s3 vs s3 gameplay, chainsuits are not overpowered. Using 10v10 pub default maps as a model (Tremor, Niveus, Karith, ATCS, UTCS to name a few) a handful of rants will dispatch a medium sized group of humans with a few chainsuits in almost any neutral/alien biased area of said maps. Only a good deal of luck w/ latency difference will allow chainsuits to out dance a group of rants for a positive economy trade between parties … that … OR a skilled lcannon in the h party.
WITH THAT BEING SAID: In the event that humans achieve stage 3 prior to aliens (which happens all too often on ATCS) any kind of suit is overpowered in the hall. Unless the alien team has hyper sensitive cohesion and scrim-level tactics: they will struggle to take down a recurring force of suits and x amount of x weapons w/ helmets. Dragoons and dretches + poison is not enough to consistently achieve positive econ trades with the aforementioned human force.
All in all, in today’s meta (which thrives on large s3 vs s3 pubs if you discount scrims because they don’t happen enough to define a public meta mentality) suits are not overpowered, rants are. Rants allow people to steamroll a traditional human force without much tactic or teamwork. Suits still rely on human allies w/ helmets to preview their surroundings and assist them in taking down 400 hp battery rams. W/ThatBeingSaid: Suits dominate over understaged aliens w ease.
Agree completely, not enough balance for each a class and h weapon to see similar use rates.
Though camping is frustrating, it is actually the only viable last resort defense in the game. It forces (usually the aliens) the aggressor to really test their offensive prowess and dive head first into a group of (usually the humans) defensive units set up and waiting for their push. When that previously mentioned occurrence actually does happen, it exemplifies the discipline and readiness of the camping party if they succeed in the aggressor’s push. In all, it is a viable defensive tactic that is best exemplified in ATCS scrims.
I think this whole snowball phenomena is ridiculous - or maybe I don’t fully understand the justification behind it. EVERY pvp video game should have a reward system. If the team/individual in case is doing well they should be rewarded for their efforts (achieving evos/credits and/or stages in the case of Trem). The whole idea of a snowball isn’t an issue in itself, it is more of an issue under the umbrella that is “balance” in the game. I think what you lot are saying is that aliens or humans that hit the ground running will stay dominant because of how much they are rewarded economically/stage progression. This happens in everygame, thus, snowballing is not a viable gameplay complaint.
This is not an issue of skill on the building team’s part, this is an issue of not having enough BP to viablly defend both a forward and a default in this game. I would hope to see a surge of 40bp or so in 1.3 to expand the viability of forward construction.
The only stop to this is administrative intervention. Any other option would be game ruining, unless we code something into the game that starts EVERY member of the team to be denybuilt and let the team call a vote to have someone designated to build.
As much as I’d like to think that trem can be an individual game, not one person on any given team can carry the victory. 1v1s aren’t very fair. Any good human can backpedal and bait the dretch in case (considering there is no time evos) into dying to his stream. If there are time evos, the alien can just wait a few minutes to achieve a higher HP/more dominant alien to defeat any human without a helmet. 1v1s will never be reasonable in 1.1.
Thank you for your thoughts on the gameplay, though.
One very important thing that we can learn from unlimited bp mods is that if a team is given any amount of extra bp, they tend to use that to build a stronger main base (if possible a super fortress) than to use it for building forwards. But also the problem with moving bases is the same problem of the absence of an om/rc having an immediate catastrophic effect on a team. You can’t solve these problems by simply changing values.
what would happen to the game play if rants were removed but chainsuits remained?
Sure for short term stratigic camping, but what about camping that occurs for 15 plus minutes?
In many single player games, advancing levels means that the game gets more challenging for the player. What if Trem was like that?
Or what if the absence of the om/rc was not so devastating, or at the very least there was a delay in the devastation to allow for recovery without administrative intervention in most cases?
But again, I can’t stress enough, that any change in game play that sufficiently addresses any major flaw in 1.1 vanilla game play would result in a game play that is no longer 1.1 vanilla (that is not necessarily a bad thing though). A lot of old tactics/strategies would no longer be applicable, and a lot of new ones would have to be developed/learned.
Rewarding players for playing well should absolutely be encouraged. The problem is when this becomes so out of hand that by 15 minutes you already may know this round is over and should be thinking on the next game, that is when it becomes like a snowball. (an unstoppable force that continues to grow and all you can do is wait for it to end).
Look at soccer, a team can be behind 4-0 at half time. Changing halves now with a possible advantage due to wind and increased stamina on their players they can still pull out a win. Your chance to score individually is never decreased no matter the overall result (assuming the morale of your players remains intact). In tremulous if someone is just a stage ahead or 4-5 kills ahead the odds of victory are greatly increased.
Now again, that’s not to say they didn’t earn it and that good play shouldn’t be rewarded with a favourable outcome. It’s the RATE at which this outcome presented itself. Reducing snowballing is to improve enjoyment for BOTH teams (it’s a game after all) but also to build tension for the viewers that any side can still turn the game around.
Many games do feature snowballing and many of them have taken steps to limit it.
Dota 2 - If you die you lose gold you have accumulated
LoL - If you are on a kill streak players will gain more for hunting you down and killing you
CSGO - At half time monetary gains are wiped.
Overwatch - Overtime
Street fighter - Super combo gauge (fill a bar for being hit that you can use on a special move)
Heroes of the storm - XP per level is exponential (at higher levels into the late game xp variance per team is less influential as it only contributes maybe 1 level)
EU4 - Diplomatic options (royal marriages, alliances, collations, and inheritances) even if you have possibly lost a large war and most of your lands. The big super power and power player still has the potential to be taken down, if that isn’t the case the game is usually forfeited early because the game is “essentially over” for everyone besides the super power and his allies.
Tremulous - Sit in your base with your thumb up ur ass waiting for enemy to rush you and turn the game around???
Other games add nasty things like crit or RNG methods to try and negate snowball but I think those are even worse of a problem. They reward player for literally nothing besides getting lucky.
Note how a lot of these “anti-snowball” measures still require that the opposing team make a good play (killing the top play or surviving in unfavourable circumstances for a long time) The issue with tremulous is that there are 0 objectives, the only things that matter are getting kills and killing spawns, both of which go hand in hand. If you have a strong presence on their base entrances they have close to no chance to turn the game around.
It can also be argued that reducing snowballing essentially makes it easier for “noob” players and reduces the overall skill cap of the game. I can see how that point can be argued for more skilled players as it can be frustrating when a game is pulled from their grasp by gameplay mechanics after a decisive early start.
GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING GPP-BUILDING
Assholes would still spam rants because they’re shit at goon, so don’t fucking remove chainsuits.
Then that means you’re either playing a boring scrim or in a pub, the other team doesn’t know how to close out games.
Are you implying you want to give aliens rants at stage 1 and gradually take things away from them?
Hell no, if i hop the rc and it goes down, i deserve the win, simple as that. Abscence of om/rc should be devastating to the team. If it gets deconned you revert, arguing to alter the gameplay because of deconners / cheaters is a terrible way to balance the game.
1 Like
ROFL. i have no idea what u’ve just said, but u’re trying to make it sound like the viability of camping is a good thing to have.
u’re confusing „reward” with „snowballing”. every players-vs-players game should have a reward system, which is: if u did sufficiently better than the opponent, then that’s counted as a win.
- in plain car racing games, especially ones with players mechanically separated, the reward system is linear: if u did better by X, then u will be X ahead of ur opponent, and that is how much u may spare to „relax”; an initial lead does not influence the difficulty of achieving further leads, and vice versa (modulo psychological effects of appearing to win/lose).
- by contrast, in games like Tremulous, the reward system is exponential: if u did better than ur opponent, then u will gain comparable amount of power to achieve further gains, all-in-all allowing u to relax to the extent that u were ahead, integral with the time (modulo stage delays, modulo the slow automatic income, and modulo the limits on fund capacities); an initial lead can be a significant factor in determining the final outcome.
ofc, otherwise the issue wouldn’t have been raised.
no, the issue of difficulty of building forward bases is an issue of difficulty of building forward bases, period. 1 (of infinite) possible ways to remove it is to increase the default buildpoints by 40. however, if u don’t somehow make it so that those additional buildpoints could only be used in forward bases, then be prepared to enchanced camping.
what is game ruining under ur definition ?
so u agree by showing an example of what’s poor in 1v1s. PS: mind a reasonable counter.
using the best of what’s available ! those assholes !
TODO: make games not boring by making game design not boring.
because it can’t. (if it were reasonable to assume that the other team knows how to close out games, then it would also be reasonable to assume that the camping team knows how to defend against attempts to close out games.)
yes, for example. another example would be a variation of domination mods where each domination point has a finite amount of funds to be exploited.
I was worried about this as well but if we code something into the game that enables systematic base destruction after sudden death then it would be fine. What I mean is: A team can build a super default fortress and use all of their allotted BP on it. But if after 10 minutes after Sudden Death a certain amount of structures aren’t killed, a ret will start to disappear every 5 minutes until the base has it’s regular BP set up. [quote=“dGr8LookinSparky, post:158, topic:2307”]
what would happen to the game play if rants were removed but chainsuits remained?
[/quote]
Then clearly suits would be overpowered… But this isn’t even a question since removing rants would be preposterous.
That says more about the aggressor’s lack of ability to finish, doesn’t it?
But that’s why for (in example) things like scrims, we just recently changed to a point victory system over 2 maps. If there is a round where someone snowballed victory then the team who lost can get a fresh start in the next round.
I think if we had absolutely ZERO snowball in this game then that would mean there is no definitive win insurance for either team. The game would be null until one team overpowered the next. It would exemplify a lot more skill than our current system, but would make the game so evenly keeled that for things like scrims only one map should incite a result… [quote=“DevHC, post:161, topic:2307”]
using the best of what’s available
[/quote]
Rant is by no means the best alien available. This statement in itself showcases your lack of actual play time in trem.
stop skipping posts.
congratulations, u’ve successfully induced double boredom.
rant is the best alien to have in most combat scenarios. this statement itself showcases ur lack of imagination.
You answered the inverse to my question. I asked what would happen to the game play if rants were removed and chainsuits remained.
My idea is to have stage advancement based on the kills of the enemy team rather than your own team. Your team advances to the next stage when/if the enemy team gets X kills. This idea is based on how evolution and technological research occurs in real life. Things that don’t do well prompts change, things that do well remain the same. This can be further enhanced by allowing the possibility of staging down, and even making the staging nonlinear but rather structured like a tree. You still get rewarded evos/credits the same way as before (essentially) so there still would be a direct reward for doing well. But again, a game play that has a feature like this, would not be considered 1.1 vanilla game play 
.
I’ve seen that feature in action before, I’m not a huge fan of it. But also, how does that encourage more forwarding before sd rather than just making a stronger main bases? DevHC brought up a good point:
Gpp vanilla implemented a version of this with zoned bp based on the power ranges of repeaters, but as I’ve said, that implementation had many problems.
But also the actual difficulty for humans to build forwards needs to be considered. A ckit needs to be escorted by one or more combat teammates (unless the ckit gets really lucky wondering out on its own). For a fully functional basic forward the ckit needs to build a repeater, a telenode, an armory, and a medistation. each of those buildables can only be built by the ckit one at a time, each takes time to construct, and the ckit can’t get a combat weapon (if you don’t count the blaster) while buildables are constructing so the escorting combat teammate(s) need to remain at that location to defend at the same time (assuming the ckit isn’t “speed building” and that requires a telenode and timing to make sure the ckit doesn’t respawn at a different location). This is not counting any defensive buildables.
For aliens to make a forward, a granger (while not being effective in most combat situations, its mobility allows it to avoid encountering combat humans pretty well, and sneak around a map pretty quickly) just needs to build one egg, and the aliens have all they need for a fully functional basic forward, and anything else would be a bonus.
No reasons to have suits if you don’t have rants.
Unless you’re UBA LOL
2 Likes
This is interesting. But how would it work with the factor “build a base” ?
Maybe create something like:
- 3 forwards for each team: when a team destroy every enemy forward they can rush enemy base
- 10 mins to build forwards (or maybe put it as default layout). Every forward should have:
As Alien, 1 booster, 1-2 trappers, 2-3 acids, 1 egg
As Human, 1 repeter (ofc), 2-3 turrets, 1 medi, 1 arm
So we skip the S1 stage as build.
Dev is right, but tyrants are only S3 aliens. So if you’re not good enough to get S3, you won’t use the “best alien”.
BTW, are we talking about pubs or scrims?
P.S. @dGr8LookinSparky you can:
- remove both bs and tyrs
or one of these: - give to tyrs only 300 hp
- give to bs 150 hp
NERF PLX
QQQQ
We were kinda talking about both, even though the topic is just about scrims 
.
I can think of numerous scenarios where adv or regular goon offers more utility and killing prowess.
I’m with you, but utility is different than combat.
Tell me
Utility is a major asset in combat in numerous occasions. U are not playing crap of duty.
Tyrant is just a retarded braindead pollack OP as fuck class, nothing more to add.
If I can remember correctly, adv goon kills helmetted humans faster than rant… with poison (or bleed or well placed barb or pounce). O it’s also the only alien class to have a real ranged attack that actually does a high amount of damage in most situations (fuck locdamage though).
After double checking, only primary attacks:
Adv goon can kill a human in 1200 msec with poison, 1800 msec without.
Rant kills a human in 1500 msec.
Worth noting that the goon’s claw does 80 base damage, pounce 100, and barb (utility) 110 (again, FUCK locdamage bullshit).
adv goon is flying rant of scum