My first impressions

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Meisseli
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My first impressions

Post by Meisseli »

I played on the development game on 24th of March. Here's some first impressions about the new gameplay:

Build system

The build system makes for much more dynamic maps, which is really great! Varying between stages is great fun, (hopefully) the (public) games won't be 90% of the time focused on tyrant camping anymore. Also, the poor sudden death mechanic is now obsolete as well. It's pretty confusing though, I don't really know how it works. Do for example all the extractors get a reduced percentage as you build a new one close by? How much will the percentages be in the end?

Also, you should make the new percentage appear on the HUD even if an extractor is still building, so you can build chains of extractors much easier. I'm not sure the reduction of build generation over time is required as well, the game seems to be much more dynamic anyway and that change just makes things immensely more complicated. I think it's better to just balance the initial values.

Right now the staging is way too quick, most games the other team gets stage two at about 3 minutes into the game. Also it seems like right now it favours aliens by a great margin, as they are obviously the more mobile/self-sufficient team. The problem is that aliens can right now execute a strategy where everyone goes grangers in the start, build one leech at 100% efficiency each, then evolve straight into dretches to defend the built leeches, leaving maybe one granger in the game building even more leeches. Possible solution? Make grangers unable to evolve to a dretch, or add a timer so evolving isn't instantaneous, and can sometimes even be dangerous.

Also, it seems like due to the asymmetry of the teams the human team needs a lot more builders, which makes fighting in the field for them pretty hard. Since the humans can't defend the extractors as well as aliens unless they build a repeater+armoury+extractor(+node+medi) combo I suggest you tinker around with alien and human extractor build times, right now it's way too slow for humans.

I also noticed that especially getting the overmind down is in pretty much all cases an instant win button, since it's near impossible to recover from the lack of extractors the human team will be causing while the aliens are rebuilding overmind. It's probably pretty much the same with the reactor. I believe this issue needs some work. (Possible solution: make extractors require power/creep before building, but don't explode them when power/creep is taken away, just render them useless with some kind of a corresponding animation)

Other

Marauder is great, i love it! I believe with skilled hands it can now become quite fearsome though, it might need its health toned down, but that remains to be seen later on. Zap is still an issue, zaprushes won serious scrims in GPP 90% of the time, and it will still decimate the reactor area completely. You could tone it down to 50 damage, but I fear even that's not enough. Other aliens have very reasonable changes and play great.

As dodge was mainly built to be a counter for the gpp pounce (well, that's the main use for it anyway, against other attacks it's just cheap), you could really remove it altogether. It's still an annoying ability with not much skill required even if you can't do four of them in a row, and it's even more annoying if you play with higher ping. A useless gimmick promoting gimmicky gameplay. (note that over time I've changed my stance on dodge, I was initially defending it some few years ago, I couldn't dream of that anymore, especially with no alien ability it needs to be used against)

An observation: with current gameplay weapons like lasgun are amazing, since even at stage one you now need a versatile weapon capable of killing fast and efficiently both structures and aliens, so preferably the weapon is hitscan, long range, and even has such a high ammo count as las does.

Flamer in every single game in history has been horrible. I don't think it is a required weapon to include at all.

I heard some rumours about redesigning aliens, I urge you to tread with caution. Aliens in Tremulous are in my opinion with the new changes close to perfect. If you are looking at Natural Selection 2 as an example, which I presume you do, the aliens are much more slower, it's not a versatile system at all as you're always stuck with just one class (90% of the game skulk) and aren't going to have much chances to regain the higher lifeform if you die. Healers like gorge are also very annoying/boring class to play with and against. The upgrades the game has aren't balanced at all, you always want the same upgrades in the same silly order, it might seem like versatile but in reality it's not at all. I find Tremulous aliens much much more better, if it were up to me I'd just redesign the evolve points system, right now you for example get a dragoon, which potentially insta-kills humans way too cheaply. Optionally you could split the differences between classes and their upgrades as different upgrades, (health and secondary attack), but I wouldn't really venture too far into NS2's or any other upgrade system really. I find the Tremulous aliens the best the market has to offer right now.

Overall I'm enjoying the game a lot!

Sorry for grammar and spelling errors,

Meisseli

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ViruS
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Re: My first impressions

Post by ViruS »

team gets stage two at about 3 minutes into the game

In the old system I managed to get stage 3 in 2 minutes.

don't explode them when power/creep is taken away, just render them useless with some kind of a corresponding animation

I was gonna say something like this long time ago but I forgot.

it's even more annoying if you play with higher ping

I only use dodge for jumping off ramps or high places because of its incredible "stun time" that it provides as well as its stamina cost. With the ping issue, I've always had that problem so when versing a team of evenly pinged players (usually 50-150 ping range) I generally dodge 0.5 seconds early. If you're camping on the top of the ramp towards the alien base hallway entrance, low pingers vs low pings usually would fire a shot (if it's something like a shotgun) then dodge, but as soon as I see them I dodge, then wait for them to come around the corner while running back up the ramp and then fire. Otherwise I'd get about 2 or so pellets hitting only from the initial distance.

90% of the game skulk

Newbies are stuck with 90% of the time dretch.

Healers like gorge are also very annoying/boring class to play with and against.

Basilisk. They're awesome to use but are heavily ping-biased. Easier to tackle againts with a low ping and easier to use with a low ping. I hope this gets fixed somehow in the feature though.

dragoon, which potentially insta-kills humans way too cheaply

Yeah I thought dragoon as a bit overpowered for a class received in a mere 3 naked kills. Generally to kill dragoons in 1.1 AND gpp, humans needed to gang up on them or required decent dodging skills. In unvanquished though, chomp ranges are shorter than 1.1, longer than gpp, and has a weakened pounce to even the two sides. However I disagree with its speed buff.
A problem about this game/trem is that the high costy classes are tanky AND agile (Tyrant isn't really, it's slow in my opinion to the point I chase them with painsaws, but generally most humans can't catch up to tyrants)

I find Tremulous aliens much much more better, if it were up to me I'd just redesign

I reckon I did a pretty good job on smoothing out the aliens in my 1.1 mod. https://github.com/ZdrytchX/GPP-1-1/blo ... m/game.qvm
It's a mix of 1.1 and gpp gameplay with a few missing elements with a bit of arena-style gameplay (human's blaster and flamer modification + bunnyhop) but in my opinion it's balanced, although the blaster might need some nerfing.

Zap is still an issue

In my gpp-1.1 arena mod, my marauder zap works on the 1.1 style (stay close to deal full damage else it'll cut off, deals damage over time instead of instantaneous) with a little fix to deal with the fact it does less damage when its chaining as well as a pull effect. It's actually pretty useful in clumping humans together and when you jump while zapping, they lift off the ground momentarily as well which is pretty sick. The zap also works when you die as well. In my opinion it's more powerful than 1.1 zap vs buildables, not as OP like gpp, and somewhat balanced vs players.

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kharnov
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Re: My first impressions

Post by kharnov »

Thank you very much for that extremely detailed feedback, Meisseli! We can really use for more feedback like that, and I'd love to hear more from you. I would also very much love to see ddos make its presence known on Unvanquished.

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Viech
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Re: My first impressions

Post by Viech »

Meisseli wrote:

It's pretty confusing though, I don't really know how it works. Do for example all the extractors get a reduced percentage as you build a new one close by? How much will the percentages be in the end?

Here is an explaination with examples that should answer your questions: http://unvanquished.net/news/53-testing ... rce-system

It goes without saying that players should be able to understand the mechanics without reading such a whitepaper. We will need to display a lot more info to them, especially wether their teams total generation will benefit or suffer from building a RGS. This won't be easy to implement code-wise: All RGS adjust their own rate depending on RGS in their range, a function sums these values each second. If we wanted to predict the summed efficiencys of a team, we would need all existing RGS to participate. (Or rather make a copy of them, so if two builders want a prediction at the same time it would still work.) For that reason I decided to just display the expected efficiency of the new RGS for now.

Meisseli wrote:

Also, you should make the new percentage appear on the HUD even if an extractor is still building, so you can build chains of extractors much easier.

Again, this would be possible for the single RGS but other RGS won't reflect the prediction correctly if we don't want them to recieve interference from RGS in construction. The current implementation is by design efficient (we just recalculate the efficiency for any RGS if it becomes necessary due to something that happens in its range) but not versatile. I'll try to come up with something that lets us do more predictions without moving away from our entity-centric approach as I find it a rather elegant solution.

Meisseli wrote:

I'm not sure the reduction of build generation over time is required as well, the game seems to be much more dynamic anyway and that change just makes things immensely more complicated. I think it's better to just balance the initial values.

I don't want UBP style games even if the teams play passive/defensive. Being on top for a while shouldn't allow someone on your team to cluster the main base with turrets, instead it should force the complete team to aggressively use their advantage against the enemy. At the same time, I don't want expansion to hang at the beginning of the game. There should be a significantly higher gain in the first minutes so you can place and fortify all those mandatory mining forwards.
It happened to me both as a human and as an alien that the generation rate and the number of available BP was too low to allow for rebuilding (humans) and RGS spamming (alien) when we were at the edge of loosing. In both matches, I dropped the ckit/granger and tried to push the enemy back for a last time. I felt this was a lot more fun and intense than loosing a game of trem.

Meisseli wrote:

Right now the staging is way too quick, most games the other team gets stage two at about 3 minutes into the game.

On smaller maps, S3 is rather hard to reach. We will try to base stage thresholds on map size next.

Meisseli wrote:

Also it seems like right now it favours aliens by a great margin, as they are obviously the more mobile/self-sufficient team.

Possible, but we shouldn't build our resource system around balancing assumptions. It will be a lot easier to adjust health/damage/cost/buildtime values at a later time to compensate for anything we might break now.

Meisseli wrote:

I also noticed that especially getting the overmind down is in pretty much all cases an instant win button, since it's near impossible to recover from the lack of extractors the human team will be causing while the aliens are rebuilding overmind. It's probably pretty much the same with the reactor. I believe this issue needs some work. (Possible solution: make extractors require power/creep before building, but don't explode them when power/creep is taken away, just render them useless with some kind of a corresponding animation)

Human buildings will allready no longer explode when unpowered. Leeches will, like any other building, explode as soon as they don't have creep (but they will have creep if they are in range of an egg, even if OM is down). Norfenstein proposed to make building completely independent of creep/power zones and while I like the fact that each forward has a weak point that has to be shielded this could potentially solve your issue.

Thank you for your review, Meisseli!

Responsible for: Arch Linux package & torrent distribution, Parpax (map), Chameleon (map texture editor), Sloth (material file generator), gameplay design & programming, artistic direction

Meisseli
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Re: My first impressions

Post by Meisseli »

I don't think there's no doubt that aliens are currently having the upper hand with the resource system, with essentially comes down to:

1) aliens being able to instantly evolve to defend resource towers VS humans having to build an armoury
2) aliens getting a free spawn with the powering structure (egg) VS humans having to build a telenode
3) aliens having regeneration and no need for ammo plus with the current system potentially getting so many eggs around that there's creep regeneration all over the map VS humans having to build an armoury AND a medistation
4) aliens being in my opinion the overall stronger team in stage one, with insta-killing dragoons and fast-moving marauders
4) aliens obviously being more mobile overall and able to travel vertically in stage one, which humans cannot do

I find that to properly defend resource towers that aren't close to the human base humans have to at least build an armoury to be able to have more defenders around, in worst cases arm+medi+node. That's why I think the build timer for human resource towers should at least be comparably lower. There's also the matter of the all-granger tactic which I discussed in the first post.

Gorge isn't comparable to basilisk at all. NS2 has a fixed mechanic making for example getting a fade practically impossible before around 10-minute mark. NS2 aliens is more about the new lifeforms you get very, very rarely, while Tremulous gameplay is focused on staging up and the whole team getting better and different aliens. Evolving and getting all kinds of new weapons in Tremulous happens all the time, as does fragging and losing your evolutions, while in NS2 it's a lot more slower process and dying as the better aliens happens quite rarely. The games are fundamentally very different, and I at least prefer the Tremulous version much more.

Meisseli
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Re: My first impressions

Post by Meisseli »

This seems to be evolving into much more than just first impressions, but oh well:

I don't really care about visuals at all, I mainly just want a good gameplay. But right now the visuals are really hindering gameplay, for example half the screen covering muzzle flashes. It's pretty much the only thing making rifling dretches harder compared to normal Tremulous, and that's a poor solution I think. Bullets and lasgun pellets hitting the walls tend to generate some very big fireworks as well, and oh boy, lucifer cannon, I literally never had any clue if I hit an alien or not since there was a giant firecracker spawning in the world either way.

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kharnov
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Re: My first impressions

Post by kharnov »

All of the effects you mentioned are going to be replaced or altered.

Meisseli
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Re: My first impressions

Post by Meisseli »

kharnov wrote:

All of the effects you mentioned are going to be replaced or altered.

Nice to hear!

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Re: My first impressions

Post by ViruS »

Aussie Assault 1.1 allowed aliens to evolve near humans if they're near their ovemind I think. This should be implemented as well.

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