I'll post some of my experiences from (early) Gloom games, and what I liked about this game in particular, maybe they will be of some use.
- Strategy. I liked the short clashes in the beginning, when attack strategy mattered the most. Humans were fast, as an alien you had to approach them on a collision course to catch up, but you also had movement tools - like the grappling hook - to jump down onto humans from the dark ceilings. This encouraged sneak attacks, waiting, using the map to your advantage, rather than running straight for the base. In UNVA atm (from my limited gameplay) I think it's mostly rushing each other's base, pushing a 'front', and striving to get bigger, better, meaner weaps/aliens. In Gloom, it was more of a hunt, as far as I remember, and I liked that.
Low HP meant player disposability, so the game changed more towards 'making your death important'. Aliens even encouraged that, having a 1 frag price self destruct alien.
High HPs and HP boosters encourage single-play, because the player is 'big and mean'. I remember that in Gloom you had to be careful even with the Stalker, because an exterminator or a guy in mecha could easily shred you with ranged weapons before you caught up to do damage.
On human side, it was usually exping to get the rocket launcher, and then a team of players went for the alien base, protecting the guy with the rocket launcher to deliver his blasts, or going at it single, shredding everything with a mecha. I remember that often suiciding with the rocket launcher would still get you frags for all the aliens around you, trying to get you.
I liked it that you didn't get frags counted when you played the two most powerful 'forms' both from Aliens and from Humans. You couldn't hoard points on weaker players, and getting the exterminator or mecha once meant you may not be able to afford it for the second time automatically. Same for Stalker.
So, yeah, I'm in for penalizing single play rather than rewarding cooperation. Makes it more intuitive for the players, I think.
- Bases.
Again, what I liked in Gloom is that humans were all bunkered-up, with lots of defense buildings you had a lot of problems to take out, and had to go in a team against them, to distribute the damage from turrets. So going for the base required some preparations and synchronisation.
Aliens were awesome too:
-spike traps delivered a huge damage, but replenished slowly (and I think were quite cheap). You could booby-trap corridors, leave those things all around the base, counting for a kill.
-spawns in most unusual places. I had a game when a cocoon was hidden behind a waterfall, the other team was not able to find it even though they destroyed all other buildings, and the game would go on for a very long time. This 'safety through obscurity' really challenged the humans, as the structures were sometimes impossible to find without a team search effort, or an attempt at localizing the spawn areas.
In later games, when people on the server got more skills, the alien side was forced to co-op, as they couldn't bruteforce the humans with skills only. We had to wait to swarm the humans strategicaly, attacking the weakest spots.
It would be fun to see two different strategies for both humans and aliens, where aliens reinforce co-op, and humans reinforce player skills.
