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Board index » Tribes: Ascend - Official Forums » Tribes: Ascend - General Public Forums » Tribes: Ascend - Feedback & Constructive Discussion

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Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance

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 Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance 
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111uminate
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Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:10 am
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Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
MrLordcaptain wrote:
I want to say my 3 cents about the gen:

1.) A game should be balanced towards comp play
2.) The gen is useless in comp play.

Fazit: HiRez has two options:
a.) remove gen
b.) make the gen important in comp. play

I also think that most of the comp players don't like the gen to have importance (upgrade rules i.e.) and due to the layout of most maps this will stay this way.
I believe it would be possible to give the gen more importance (base shield, shielded assets etc.) to create a comp. ruleset that plays with generator (prob, more players like 9v9) but the state at the moment is awfull.
To put it into your tennis analogy... its like having a "ballbuster" advertisement billboard above the tennis court.


Gotta' agree there. The problem isn't gen importance or a lack of it in comp play, it's the decision for 7v7 teams. There's not enough people on a team to devote to gen attack or gen defense. If you're running 7 man, the focus is undoubtedly going to be the flag and the flag alone.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 7:32 am
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Greth


Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:03 pm
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Location: Belgium
Steam Gamer Name: Greth
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
Thundertactics wrote:
That was a... decent read, I guess. Mostly an overly long justification on why the "comp scene" ought to have so much influence (which I agree with! Especially since you made the (implied) distinction that comp players aren't necessarily "pro", therefore good, just that they're properly organized and have at least a basic understanding of how to play the game properly).

But I do have an issue with one arguement you made, which I've unfortunately seen turn up a lot of times: The Raider is not a killing class.

It got an overly powerful SMG as a secondary weapon that made it extremely capable at killing people, but it wasn't its intended role. It was a combination of the Raider and the Scrambler, both of which were intended as support classes intended for harassment and base asset destruction - with weapons that were extremely potent in the confines of bases and against assets, along with a secondary weapon that should have given it some survivability on its way there.

The Soldier and Ranger (combined into the Soldier) were intended as the pure killing classes (with some slight leeway into asset destruction and harassment), the fact that Hi-Rez couldn't properly balance it and effectively made the Soldier useless shouldn't affect its intended design.


A class intended to only kill base assets would be pointless, hence the Scrambler only saw play because of the whiteout capping it was capable of.

Right now the game has reverted to 'Ranger meta' where every role is played by the Soldier with thumper and AR.
The soldier was doing fine on defence (disregarded that the raider did need nerfing).
After the customisation patch the raider became a viable class (too viable). The fact that it was not intended to be used this way from a design standpoint is irrelevant. Developers need to embrace these developments (when they are not gamebreaking like the scramblercapping was).

It brought variation to an 'all ranger' meta. Now we're back to only a single class being used so nothing has changed. At least there were still a few soldiers on defence before...
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 7:33 am
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Greth


Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:03 pm
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Location: Belgium
Steam Gamer Name: Greth
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
111uminate wrote:
That was an incredibly long winded piece of writing for a game that shouldn't even have a competitive scene yet. The game itself just isn't there, there's still so much wrong with it. Random spawns in a comp match? Hilarious. If you ask me, the comp scene is just as deluded as these weekend warrior casuals you wrote so much about. As with anything else, the problems arise when the two groups play together. Who's at fault there? I take a look at the countless empty custom servers and begin to wonder.

As far as teamstacking in CTF goes, once upon a time it did bug me, but I could honestly care less nowadays. If I choose to play with people who play the mode properly and we win or even stomp the other team completely, then so be it. Things like skill with aiming, your KDR, how good you are in duels, how fast you can drop a generator or how well you can defend one, these things don't matter. I would much rather be on a team, or play with people who understand the fundamentals of CTF, and the team that does is usually the team that wins. If some people label that teamstacking then maybe they should learn, or actively choose to play CTF properly.


You say that, but I'm in close contact with a lot of people in the competitive EU scene and they are almost ready to throw in the towel.

The game has been released, and some of the things imperative to competitive play have been demanded since alpha and early beta. If anything the last patch was a slap in the face.
Improvement is glacial and the fickle interests of high end teams are waning, and that would be the death of the 'eSport' of tribes.

The reason why it was long winded was because I wanted to put down as many counter arguments as I could. I wanted to be as clear as possible. I also put in some padding so it wasn't a long dry read.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 7:50 am
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Thundertactics
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Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:34 am
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Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
Greth wrote:

A class intended to only kill base assets would be pointless, hence the Scrambler only saw play because of the whiteout capping it was capable of.

[...]

Not denying this, but calling it a class purely intended for killing (and as a result needing to be balanced around that concept) because it had a secondary weapon that exceeded its intended role is a bit of a stretch. Would you have done the same thing if the Technician had started off with the Rockwind? "Oh, sure, it has these turrets and this repair tool, but since it's broken in such a way that it excells at killing it clearly needs to be balanced in that direction."

Both the Raider and Soldier just need a lot of work in properly defining their roles and while keeping said roles useful. The Soldier being confined to defensive and midfield killing and the Raider going for pure offense/harassment ought to be how it works, but it's hard to properly balance either class in such a way that they actually do work in any of the aforementioned situations with out also excelling in the other. (Not to mention those potentially creating overlap with other classes, the Medium classes in particular are so similar in ability that combining them into one would hardly have an effect - not saying they should be.)

But I suppose this is a bit off-topic, barring the related arguement that the competetive scene relies perhaps a bit too much on emergent (potentially exploitative) gameplay to be fully objective when it comes to balancing the game.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:04 am
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HazzleHOF


Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:50 am
Posts: 266
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
111uminate wrote:
MrLordcaptain wrote:
I want to say my 3 cents about the gen:

1.) A game should be balanced towards comp play
2.) The gen is useless in comp play.

Fazit: HiRez has two options:
a.) remove gen
b.) make the gen important in comp. play

I also think that most of the comp players don't like the gen to have importance (upgrade rules i.e.) and due to the layout of most maps this will stay this way.
I believe it would be possible to give the gen more importance (base shield, shielded assets etc.) to create a comp. ruleset that plays with generator (prob, more players like 9v9) but the state at the moment is awfull.
To put it into your tennis analogy... its like having a "ballbuster" advertisement billboard above the tennis court.


Gotta' agree there. The problem isn't gen importance or a lack of it in comp play, it's the decision for 7v7 teams. There's not enough people on a team to devote to gen attack or gen defense. If you're running 7 man, the focus is undoubtedly going to be the flag and the flag alone.


Team-size in comp is definitely part of the problem since it really restricts teams away from gen-play. Not just that, but it forces teams to recruit people whom are all-stars in multiple roles and near-perfect with automatics. With 10v10 it opens up a lot more strategy and flexibility, especially for defenses to combine tactics and making HOFing viable. Hell, a friend of mine suggested free vehicles too. Imagine the kind of coordination an offense would have to go through to counter 2 tanks and a shrike, so their capper could get the flag. You'd probably see more aerial combat with shrike vs shrike too.

On the other hand, HiRez will definitely have to redesign some indoor bases like on Raindance/Temple Ruins/Arx Novena, 'cause it's just too easy to defend. If they're going to make gens more important, then giving offense better access to getting into the base is just as important. Like I remember doing base d on Sanctuary where there's like 6 different ways you can get into the base and attack the generator. This also ties into having base turrets fire more than just plasma, i.e. adding AA, mortar, ELF, and missile upgrades.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:27 am
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SxxyKate
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Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:23 am
Posts: 1614
Location: California
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
These noobs always ruin my games....
When I try to avoid them, they blame me for teamtacking

-_-
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:29 am
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VonSchlupeurk


Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 6:05 pm
Posts: 448
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
It is ironic that you chose to criticize "zealous parroting" considering that your rant comes off as rather extremist and is not a very fresh perspective either , rather a summary of existing opinions.
While you are right in pointing out the bad faith of some arguments , you are certainly not going to win anyone over.

The implications of your line of thinking are particularly ugly , "if you're unwilling to permanently sacrifice your fun for a chance to win team games then your noob opinion is irrelevant" and disqualify your appeal to take priority in Hi-Rez' concerns. Last I checked , Tribes Ascend is advertised as a game and not a job. If raiders being killing machines is meant to be the natural state of things , I'm not going to encourage anyone to play that kind of game competitively. Gambling the odds of surviving them long enough to achieve a temporary objective does not bring fun , especially when repeated over hundreds of games.

While it can be very gratifying to actively contribute to flag captures in public games , this does not translate into utility in a competitive match - the 7vs7 metagame makes a mockery of most relevant roles , from chasers to technicians and even heavy offense. The choice of viable loadouts and strategies is skeletal compared to the variety of public servers.

In that respect , you show yourselves as your own worst enemies here. Hi-Rez gave the competitive scene a chance to improve the game , but will soon notice that it has been partly squandered. Lightweight is a perfect example of how the scene is willing to worsen public game experience (in this case for those who *do* try to play CTF) in a desperate attempt to patch up the dysfunctional competitive metagame.

Lastly , it's no surprise to see you jump at the opportunity to berate Hi-Rez for taking risks with iterative changes and weapon variants. They learnt from the lessons of plasma / jackal releases and instead opted to stir the status quo one variable at a time , but on every front. Which synergizes with their data collection capacity , and does not rely on unreadable player feedback.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:51 am
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Greth


Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:03 pm
Posts: 968
Location: Belgium
Steam Gamer Name: Greth
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
VonSchlupeurk wrote:
It is ironic that you chose to criticize "zealous parroting" considering that your rant comes off as rather extremist and is not a very fresh perspective either , rather a summary of existing opinions.
While you are right in pointing out the bad faith of some arguments , you are certainly not going to win anyone over.

The implications of your line of thinking are particularly ugly , "if you're unwilling to permanently sacrifice your fun for a chance to win team games then your noob opinion is irrelevant" and disqualify your appeal to take priority in Hi-Rez' concerns. Last I checked , Tribes Ascend is advertised as a game and not a job. If raiders being killing machines is meant to be the natural state of things , I'm not going to encourage anyone to play that kind of game competitively. Gambling the odds of surviving them long enough to achieve a temporary objective does not bring fun , especially when repeated over hundreds of games.

While it can be very gratifying to actively contribute to flag captures in public games , this does not translate into utility in a competitive match - the 7vs7 metagame makes a mockery of most relevant roles , from chasers to technicians and even heavy offense. The choice of viable loadouts and strategies is skeletal compared to the variety of public servers.

In that respect , you show yourselves as your own worst enemies here. Hi-Rez gave the competitive scene a chance to improve the game , but will soon notice that it has been partly squandered. Lightweight is a perfect example of how the scene is willing to worsen public game experience (in this case for those who *do* try to play CTF) in a desperate attempt to patch up the dysfunctional competitive metagame.

Lastly , it's no surprise to see you jump at the opportunity to berate Hi-Rez for taking risks with iterative changes and weapon variants. They learnt from the lessons of plasma / jackal releases and instead opted to stir the status quo one variable at a time , but on every front. Which synergizes with their data collection capacity , and does not rely on unreadable player feedback.


Yikes ... You had me going until the underlined part. If your not trolling, I'll just let you get eaten alive by those who attended the council ...
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:02 am
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VonSchlupeurk


Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 6:05 pm
Posts: 448
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
Then please explain how the rage + lightweight pair , which gutted the awkward but workable rage + egocentric , makes chasing (public and competitive) more fun.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:12 am
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Greth


Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:03 pm
Posts: 968
Location: Belgium
Steam Gamer Name: Greth
Post Re: Perpetual Newbdom: The Scenes, Teamstacking and Balance
VonSchlupeurk wrote:
Then please explain how the rage + lightweight pair , which gutted the awkward but workable rage + egocentric , makes chasing (public and competitive) more fun.


The point is that the things discussed in the tribal council were implemented poorly. Some were the exact opposite of what ended up in the game.
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Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:19 am
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