Creep waves

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Viech
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Creep waves

Post by Viech »

Hi Norfenstein,

this was originally the last section of my feedback thread when I realized I was about to violate my own rule of splitting feedback and suggestions (for the sake of having non-selfish feedback). Also, falling back into the realm of being merely an interested observer I felt that, just once, I should be allowed to post the sort of crazy idea that I would routinely ignore for being a far fetched demonstration of a lack of game design experience paired with your average video game player god complex.

Having wasted a good portion of my recent lifetime in the MOBA game of my choice I now feel that I understand what you meant back then when you said that Unvanquished could profit from inspiration from this genre. I recently came to think that creep waves may be exactly the solution we were looking for when it comes to the age old issue of turtling and the associated resource starvation. It would be quite an impactful change but maybe it's worthwhile. Imagine AI controlled dretches with a ranged attack fighting Doom-3-style sentry bots armed with a small machine gun. Players would kill the enemy creeps for credits and to push the friendly wave forward for siege support. Creeps close to a base would target the structures and if they're being killed by defenses they would yield no credits, so there's a point in meeting them in the open.

If you're interested l could arrange for the models and animations to be created. That also goes for different ideas that need assets. We should also talk about the process of implementing your other changes for real on top of the new gamelogic soon.

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

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poVoq
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Re: Creep waves

Post by poVoq »

Sounds like a cool idea to try for sure.

This could also impact/credit the resource system in an interesting way.

Edit: would also be a first step for a COOP mode with AI controlled waves of aliens like in Killing Floor.

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Comet_
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Re: Creep waves

Post by Comet_ »

Wow, Viech! This is such a great idea!!!

It got me thinking more about the actual RTS Genre and how they handle turtling. I know I'm taking what you suggested in a different direction when I say this, but I felt it fits better with the RTS parts of the game. Making the game have constant creep spawns would encourage camping even more because you would be able to farm creeps for everything you want. The inspiration I'm taking for this is what you suggested combined with the StarCraft series.

With Norfenstein's recent additions to gameplay, removal of stamina and creep/power were my favorites. Without the building restrictions, the next step would logically be to have offensive structures. Very much like the Swarm Host in StarCraft, a building that could spawn creeps that target the human team's buildings over humans. This would FORCE the humans to risk leaving the base to deal with the structure or deal with a constant onslaught of credit-less aliens.

Here's a swarm host, my main source of inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPlvLb4jBLA

EDIT: And obviously the humans should have somewhat equivalent offensive structures

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Viech
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Re: Creep waves

Post by Viech »

The swarmhost has always been in the back of my head when thinking about Unvanquished (and anti-camping), too. Offensive structures that force you to go out of base to kill them sound pretty nice in theory and it would be a good way to capitalize on superior map control, too. At the same time, the swarmhost in particular can also achieve quite the opposite and slow games down by forcing the defender to invest a lot into defense at any given time. Swarmhost vs. siege tank equlibirium is boring to watch. To me the question is how fragile the lead maintained through offensive structures is. If a good push-out can reset the situation for the defender it sounds alright to me. As merely an addition to the buildable pool, I found something like swarm hosts to hard to implement and the results to hard to predict so far but as a core gameplay element I'm still highly interested.

I see that farming creeps at the perimeter of your base may actually be an incentive to camp. Dota 2 solves this by a rather complex dynamic: First, while you focus on farming there are techniques to pull the creep equilibrium closer to your base ("denying", "neutral pulling"). The Unvanquished equivalent would be killing your own creeps, which seems quite counter-intuitive to me (like pretty much all of Dota). I didn't find a better solution yet. Allowing you to chose if creeps spawn at all may be no option since bots on your team with a credit reward for killing them will pretty much always feed the enemy. Secondly, when you feel that you want to start attacking enemy structures you would actually need the creeps as defenses are significantly stronger when no enemy creeps are around ("backdoor protection"). This aspect we could actually copy with reasonable explainations: The corrosive spit of the dretches and the special ammunition of the sentry bot would be the only weapon (in the non-late game) that would disable the enemy structure's regeneration.

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Comet_
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Re: Creep waves

Post by Comet_ »

Definitely interesting ideas to say the least. MOBAs are an interesting genre but it will need to be incorporated subtly because the genre seems to be quite overbearing; the game would become a MOBAFPS rather than an FPSMOBA if that makes any sense. Its hard for creeps to not "steal the spotlight" or become "the core-mechanic" to the game when you decide to include them into a game. Definitely worth more deliberation.

Another thing to consider is pacing the game around creeps. FPS pace is very interesting because it can either go from, for lack of better terminology, 0 to 100 really fast or be very fast paced all the time. This can be observed in popular FPS games like CSGO (and Tremulous), where you can poke at an enemy with grenades and burst firing before starting a bomb site take. A lot of other more traditional shooters (Red Eclipse, Quake, Half-Life, Call of Duty) always have a speed that dictates the flow of the game but is generally very fast paced, immersive, and intense. Adding creep waves worries me in this because, by the way you make it sound, I find it hard to imagine humans or aliens rushing without their creep wave pushed forward. So that would almost forcefully create a simple flow to a dynamic game which could make players feel like they have no control when they lose or make players feel like they're slowed down when they win. I play MOBAs occasionally and one of the things I hate much is having to wait for creeps to go to a tower so I can kill it when Im super far ahead; I want to be able to just attack and end it. We should also consider the average time of a MOBA-like game. Often times 20-60 minutes is the average which is not desirable for an FPS.

We have talked in the past, many times, about having builders be a more aggressive class. Allowing offensive structures will hinder camping and bring the average time of games far down because you could take a lead and run away with it. In the pre-alpha 44 build, taking a lead and using it to win was really hard in two conditions:

  1. You don't have enough players to destroy a base
  2. You aren't incredibly better and miles ahead of your opponent

Reasons why I like offensive structures:

  1. The offensive team has to sacrifice possible defensive structures to go fully aggressive meaning that once the structures are destroyed by the defending team, it is likely that a comeback will still be possible.
  2. Viech wrote:

    At the same time, the swarmhost in particular can also achieve quite the opposite and slow games down by forcing the defender to invest a lot into defense at any given time. Swarmhost vs. siege tank equlibirium is boring to watch.

    Offensive structures shouldn't be a threat alone. StarCraft and Unvy are two almost entirely different games and I see stalemates caused by offensive structures rare. Defensive structures should be balanced to the point where they will beat out offensive structures in all respects. Offensive structures should be used to synergize with an alien or human attack to make it to where the defending team no longer has defender's advantage unless they go out and kill the structure(s).
  3. Granger will be a lean, mean aggro-machine :granger:

Lastly I've thought of an offensive structure for both teams that will give you some insight as to the direction that I am thinking of taking these offensive structures:

H: A Telepathy disruptor. This fragile-looking, repurposed satellite dish is mounted to a base that projects sound on a similar frequency that the Overmind uses to talk to its aliens. The disruption of communication is different for every alien.

Affects all aliens structures within range of Overmind
-Overmind no longer displays message "Overmind is under attack!"
-Barricades recede
-Booster no longer provides poison or healing bonus
-Acid tubes iteration rate decreased by half
-Communication disruption only lasts 20 seconds before the Overmind switches frequency and takes 2 minutes to obtain the new frequency that the Overmind switched to.
-When alien communication is jammed a message will appear on screen notifying humans and aliens

A: Sacrificial Pod. This strange looking egg sends larvae before they hatch into battle with only one instruction; attack!

Structure sends in waves of 3 larvae every 5-10 seconds
-Larvae have toxic spittle that will temporarily disable turrets that they get close to
-Larvae ignore humans and only go for structures
-Larvae are small with very low movement speed and have 15 hit points
-Aliens can use LMB (Left Mouse Button) to chomp on the Larvae, eating them and regaining 50 HP instantly

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Viech
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Re: Creep waves

Post by Viech »

Thanks for the detailed reply!

I see your point with the pacing, though I would argue that in Tremulous and Unvanquished, pacing has always been a high level balance problem. One reason why camping is most frequently discussed for the human team is that the player equilibrium is much closer to the human base due to the higher movement speed (and lower base dependence) of the alien team. If it takes some time to move the creep equilibrium from the initial middle line towards the enemy base (slows down certain aspects of the game) or when the human creeps are naturally harder pushers (probably a low level balance nightmare) then we also move the combat between two equally strong teams towards the middle of the map (where it should be) and give humans some more space from the start. Either way, I believe that forcing fights in a certain place is unlikely to make the game feel less intense.

I also like the idea of offensive structures. Your ideas are nice because they describe structures that are of no use in defense (unlike swarmhosts). I guess we should discuss them in a different thread though.

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Comet_
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Re: Creep waves

Post by Comet_ »

Viech wrote:

One reason why camping is most frequently discussed for the human team is that the player equilibrium is much closer to the human base due to the higher movement speed (and lower base dependence) of the alien team.

Yes! This! :thumbup: And I have many proposals to fix that. But I'll save it for another day :cool:

Perhaps you're right about forcing them into the middle of the map. I cant help but think that the way the game is balanced now would give humans an immense creep advantage from the get go. Simply speaking, dretches can not fight on equal terms with a rifle and forcing dretches to attack stagnated creep waves can actually hurt the alien team more because aliens are a lot weaker when they are attacking, except for the marauder (this is why the marauder is so good in high player count lobbies and late game against lucifer cannons).

Besides that one complaint, I'd love to see this implemented. I think it would be super interesting and if implemented correctly could add a new aspect to the game that feels as good as the momentum system.

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