A few days ago, I ran an event wherein I altered the rules of the typical Distress Call game mode to move to an Objective-based mode, instead of pure Extermination.
My intention when running the event was to explore if there was a better way for our core game mode to operate that results in more enjoyable rounds that have a far more consistent, fair, and fun point of round-ending.
The basics of my design process are as follows. (this is an abridged version)
A series of three to five (strictly odd numbered) âAtmospheric Processorsâ are placed within the colony (for the event, I used comms towers). Their locations are be set up so there is an even balance between those in âmarineâ territory and vice versa. With some of the Processors being located in neutral/central territory.
After a certain amount of time has elapsed after the first marine drop, the Atmospheric Processors come online.
A faction can capture/infest an Atmospheric Processor/Comms Array, once done, the structure will begin charging a global faction progress bar at a steady rate.
If the faction progress bar reaches 100%, that faction will win the game.
The marines are attempting to introduce some kind of chemical agent (CN20-X) that is lethal to xenomorph life into the Atmospheric Processor system
The xenomorphs are attempting to convert the processor into a super-egg production chamber which will cause an unstoppable wave of facehuggers to overrun the operations zone
The first event ended with a Xenomorph victory, as the Xenomorphs were able to hold and secure most of the five comms towers, with the Marines failing to defend their towers (more so since the XO was new and ordered everyone to suicide charge into caves).
Feedback wise from this first event.
The comms towers may likely need to give the Marines some kind of boon when they capture it for the first time, such as a free omni-sentry gun or pre-made cades that are deployed.
The Marines were not really playing the objective, but the Xenos were hyper focused on it.
There was no FOB siege, the game ended at around the 1 to 1.5 hour mark as Marines were busy fighting to take over one of the comms towers.
This created an interesting scenario where both Marines and Xenos were sacrificing their lives to try and take/hold the comms tower. This was significant as the Xenos lost quite a few of their number to hold the towers. Since both factions knew, the game was going to end, they seemed willing to sacrifice their lives to secure the objective.
FOB (and maybe hive) may need additional defences.
I feel like this system has viability as a replacement for our standard game mode, but feedback is king and an open discussion creates better outcomes I feel.
Hi! I was in that round and⌠it kinda sucked- to no fault of your own, of course.
I dont think anyone really knew what we were doing, Marine-wise at least. I think the only way to remedy this would be to continue running it.
Iâm all for testing new modes. Whatever breaks the hijack slop.
Hi. I was in the event. A problem I saw with it was the fact that marines tend to death ball. During the entire round most of the marines did so capturing a single tower. The only instance I saw where the marines captured more than one was thanks to the personal initiative of an IO at admin. The rest of the match was more or less the same as distress signal. Marines pushing the hive and hive defending. Thanks to the xenos being more mobile than the marines as well as having night vision and a lot of speed, they have better map control than the marines, who do not split up in fear of getting ambushed. I think if this gamemode is going to have any future these issues need to be addressed firts.
I love the concept and think it would be a lot more refreshing than the absolute slog that is standard CM combat. Having an objective to work towards would be very nice.
I would love to see sub-objectives that are a bit more RP focused be thrown in as incentive for people to engage in roleplay. That way people can RP while still having a major contribution not only to the general war effort but also these sub-objectives that could provide further advancement towards a marine win.
The idea is good, I think itâs the best direction for CM to move in, but I do also think objectives need to be better tied into established story for each map; to have actual meaning behind them.
However, I think âatmospheric relays that produce ticket pointsâ is a bit too generic and simplified. It works as a way to alpha test objective controls, but I think it should be fleshed out a lot more to really make this work.
Hereâs a quick brainstorm of objectives:
USCM
Mission Recovery
Retrieve critical research data or samples from the map:
Embryoâs, civilians, and huggers all in cold storage casks
Survivors - Scientists, directors, leadership, and other VIP
Blackbox data from crashed ships or facilities
Strategic Control
Establish and maintain communication uplinks (IMO, not for team communication but for high bandwidth data upload of research objectives - like something really big that the Almayer canât do itself even)
Destroy hive infrastructure to hamper spread of aliens (Maybe something like a giant weed spreader or a telepathic relay or something that doesnât have a direct in-game effect but matters in a storyline sense; maybe some kind of long-term breeding chambers with all the civilian colony caps in them)
Secure and hold strategic points on the map
Protect and repair important colony infrastructure (Powerplant, important buildings for mission recovery objectives, etc.)
Aliens
Survival and Propagate
Establish multiple hive locations, possibly allow another queen (lesser queen?) if a location is taken, or confer some other sort of benefit to building an additional hive in that spot.
Protect critical hive infrastructure (mentioned above - longterm breeding or evolution or w/e chamber, strategic weedspreader, telepathy relay, that sort of thing)
Feed marine and other corpses into some kind of biomass accumulator with both in-game benefits at particular biomass thresholds, and strategic roleplay/lore accomplishment for post-game storyline. This could maybe be tied into or inclusive of some of the other critical hive infrastructure
Tactical Disruption
Deny strategic locations to marine forces
Disrupt communications and upload of research and intelligence data - both the colony high bandwidth research transmit comms, and Almayer comms.
Contaminate marine medical, cryo-reinforcement, or logistic supply (Requires some re-thinking about aliens getting on the almayer)
Compromise marine dropship landing zones to prevent landing (This would matter more if we add additional LZâs with better benefits to holding them - maybe not doable with current map sizes)
Construct or protect hive structures that provide defense against OB or CAS/Mortar - might play into the establish multiple hive locations thing, and could be something you start with but canât rebuild
Strategic Interference
Prevent marines achieving primary mission (could depend on map)
Sabotage marine equipment, research, alien technology, prototypes, etc.
Create environmental hazards to hamper marine movement or effectiveness - for example in some locations (maybe anywhere) you can build a telepathy repeater that provides an accuracy malus to marines in range and when the larger telepathy structure is destroyed (unrecoverable) this ability is permanently lost
Eliminate marine leadership and specialists
Dynamic Mechanics and Consequences
Dynamic Mechanics
Multiple stages and alternative completion paths for objectives; this helps keep some variety so not every round plays out the same
Time sensitive objectives
Objectives changing depending on map control/prior accomplishments
Successful completion of objectives conferring team-wide benefits
Consequences
Objectives won/lost that narratively impact post-round storyline (mostly for fun unlessâŚ)
Could have a more long-form campaign that resets daily or weekly with narrative progression and benefits/maluses based on what was achieved in prior maps
Example gameplay flow
USCM
Initial: Establish landing zone
Midphase: Fight through alien defenses
Objective phase: Locate and secure research data, destroy hive structure, eliminate Queen
Alien counter-objectives: Prevent data/survivor retrieval, contaminate research sites
Marine counter-objectives: Locate and neutralize hive nodes and Queen(s)
Implementation
This is where it always gets difficult. Thereâs a lot of work thatâll be necessary - spriting, programming, writing, and designing the entire thing and getting it into an actual playable state. Core ideas:
Flowcharts for marine and alien objectives
Creating objectives with narrative consistency
Ensuring objectives provide meaningful choices/consqeuences
Balancing objectives to give both teams a way to win and solid win conditions
And for actually getting started on this:
1st Phase:
Create 2-3 simple, static objectives per team (this is where the âatmosphere processorsâ fit in imo, just get something simple like that implemented as part of the alpha testing and early design)
Basic UI integration for objective display (re-purposing the intel objective UI would probably be a good place to start, but there should probably be on-screen UI elements too)
Placeholder sprites
2nd Phase:
Playtesting, lots of iterating
Lots of UI development would be in this phase - a more intuitive interface, most relevant info for players
Implement the more complex objective interactions - like the telepathy relay idea mentioned earlier; stuff that requires more of its own coding and development
Create more varied objective types
Flesh out the basic narrative hooks/storylines for objectives
Potentially involves completely re-doing objectives so donât get married to whatâs made in phase 1
Actual sprites
3rd Phase:
Flesh out narratives from 2nd phase
More advanced and in-depth objective chaining based off 2nd phase
Basically polish and perpetual additions (which are easy because we made that extensible in phase 1âŚ)
Start simple, get it playable quickly, design it to be extended from the beginning, and focus on a core gameplay loop.
Something like the almayer getting hijacked could then just be 1 way a round can end, not the only way it ends, and maybe not even the primary way it ends.
Played this round on xeno and it was very fun for the first portion of the round, you could find a number of small engagements around the map, and it kept the round fast paced. This was until marines made a very questionable tactical decision and completely ignored the objectives, opting to full send to the hive (in the one game mode where this is not required at all). I think this game mode has a lot of potential in the future upon being fully realized, and hopefully marine command is more in touch with what the game mode requires of the marines next time it is tested in order to get a more accurate demonstration of how it will work with both sides playing the objectives.
Objective based gameplay works on TGMC because when you capture a terminal, its âcapturedâ so you can move on, due to how marines work. Their supply lines are more centralized and harder to maintain.
Meanwhile all xenos are self contained logistic centers (they donât need req for ammo, they just wait for cooldowns or plasma regen. They do not need a medic, they can just wait for health to come back naturally, they do not worry about ammo as plasma is infinite and slashes are free, etc.).
If you make marines require to hold multiple comm towers to win, and those comm towers do not stay âcapturedâ where marines can just move to the next objective, you get the OWL treatment; marines split up to cover more ground but in return get wiped by a competent backline team piecemeal and the round ends, or a Queen screech flank wipes other comm towers and marines do not have the numbers to come back, so it becomes a FOB fight and in return its a defacto xeno victory since xenos have a significantly easier time holding objectives than marines do.
So even if you run this event again, I suspect marines losing most rounds just due to how the balance is. Marines MUST murderball to win if they are facing equally skilled xeno players, but that makes capturing and holding objectives impossible since if you murderball and capture 1 comm tower, the xenos will capture the other 4 and win.
Simply put: If it is a part of a map with noone on it, it is a xeno territory.
Lone runner/lurker can scout just about every marine move and get away from any engagement with no permanent damage, quckly, on its own terms etc.
Marines have only one singular scout spec.
It is ironic how much âassimetricalâ aspect of gameplay is hammered into the game design (xeno nuke canât work like nuke, it has to be a powerfull xeno instead), but when it comes to objectives, both marines and xenos have to have the same stuff to contest when this is something that actually needs to be different.
Marines and xenos fighting over points A (close to marines), B (neutral) and C (close to xenos) will never be outright balanced.
The Marines are intended to be somewhat on the backfoot, so I donât mind if this system is slightly xeno-advantaged.
Speculation aside, I hope if we run this event more often weâll get a better idea to how the community adapts. Its true, that xenos are far better at âholding territoryâ than Marines, but the only event Iâve run on this idea involved the Marine CIC ignoring the objectives which did not really help.
Very good stuff to ponder over.
In either case, for the intrim Iâll likely just focus on running events with the atmo-processor idea to see how things go. Sadly, anything more complicated code wise will have to be left for people who can do that, but it remains to be seen how effective this will be, but I think the concept as a whole is worth going for.
I really like this idea, and it feels like an actual way for the server to head forward, rather than infinitely circling the drain of adding bits and pieces of content that donât feed into anything new.
If we do something like this, I wouldnât be opposed to it having a different balance paradigm from distress signal, where xenos have to rely more on teamwork and smaller units of marines arenât essentially useless on the chessboard
I genuinely think this would ruin the game if done poorly. And I really really think it would need like a year or two as a side gamemode before becoming the main gamemode. Our current game has like 10 years of balance and gameplay development behind it, and the whole game built around distress signal. Jerry-rigging the game into slop objectives will create insane slop gameplay IMO, so it needs a lot of care and patience in the process.
This genuinely needs a whole lot more design discussion before it would fit into the game. Even then, itâs better to just err on the side of caution because of how risky it is.
I think this idea would be in the same boat as many other bold design-choices, like buffing CIC/leadership, removing mortars, nerfing queen, nerfing cades, techwebs, buffing cades, nerfing specs, etc.
My goal with this game mode proposal is three-fold. Firstly, it is to generate a gameplay environment wherein the victory conditions for both factions are realistically achievable even if the opposing faction has yet to be terminated. Secondly, it is to ideally improve the game to ensure rounds donât become elongated beyond the two-hour mark. Finally, I would hope such a system would make the game more enjoyable and fun for the average player.
The current game mode has only one game end state, the extermination of the entire enemy team. The Marines win when all Xenomorphs are dead, and vice versa if all Marines die. I believe that this is a primitive and sub-standard system that is not conducive to an enjoyable experience and has slowly cultivated a game-state that is inherently unfun for the player base. We have forced the game into a defensive mindset wherein both factions trap the game into a defensive system. Xenomorphs will secure hell chocks to attrition Marines, and the Marines will more often than not find themselves forced into a FOB or similar siege as they are either reduced in strength to the point, they cannot contest the enemy, or they lack the desire to engage the enemy if they have the strength.
It is my hope that an objective-based system will alleviate some, if not all, of these issues I have highlighted.
Both factions will have a strong incentive to go on the offensive and not sit back in relative safety, but also a faction that is clearly in a position of strength and is winning by securing more objectives, will be able to eventually close out and end a round in victory, even if they lack the strength to overrun the enemy home-base. Furthermore, the concept of objective-progression will ensure that a round must end after a certain amount of time no matter what actions are, or are not, taken by the players.
How many times have we been trapped by an endless FOB siege that lasts for hours, or how Marines grind themselves at a hell chock for so long that they either drag the round out for hours, or eventually they lose strength and are forced to retreat, into another endless FOB siege?
I appreciate that the concept of the xeno-deathball does make small-unit tactics among the Marines extremely impractical at best. I also appreciate that my initial objective-system may be primitive or undercooked, but I believe wholeheartedly these are a good place to start and build on towards a system that we all will come to believe is a better concept.
I have played the event round you ran and I think it can be good sidemode for cm. I think the next time you run it have 3 objectives to hold with 1 marine sided 1 xeno sided and 1 center of the map. Also it will be cool if you ran a hvh version to make the objectives aa guns the upp and the marine ship can get bombed by them with the winning side launching a ob level explosion at the enemy ship something like the Carrier Assault from bf4.
Have you considered running it when you have a guaranteed CO?
One thats a bit more experienced with some other command staff?
I dont want folks to write off an entire game mode because command sucked at the time.
For testing purposes it may be beneficial to coordinate with xenos and command roles ahead of time and see if they can jump on ao youve got a good foundation.
If you want this to work, you need to take some ideas from TGMC as they have perfected a lot of objective based gameplay ideas, specifically for the marine side that makes it actually plausible for small tactics to work.
While we cannot take everything from them since then weâd be TGMC, one of the things that TGMC does is add side objectives marines can go for. For example, they have terminals besides the nuke codes that can be captured which, in turn, give requisition points at a set amount that is used to further fortify the actual nuke code locations with more materials or special weapons like SADAR (since you order spec weapons in TGMC and anyone can use them, but you do not start with specs).
The same can be done but with Intel OR outright give marines a set amount of advanced equipment if they capture side objectives, such as a power station that powers the atmos processors, allowing small groups of marines to make an impact because now they have upgraded weaponry (like giving them the PMC version of the mk2, or upgraded m39) or giving them more defensive items if they capture these side objectives like more turrets deployed to an atmos converter.
The problem will be that if you do not give marines any sort of rewards for capturing objectives besides âwinningâ, they will not have any incentive to capture them (so the gamemode will turn into slop anyway since no one is listening to orders) and also it is just impossible to capture multiple objectives as marines and hold them unless you are already winning.
You do not need to run this gamemode multiple times to know this, we already know this with nuke holds; if marines are not already winning the game, they cannot hold both comms and the FOB where the nuke usually is (and your evac point so you have to protect it regardless or xenos stealthjack) for the actual nuke to work.
All I can do is run events to see how things go, I am not promising I am actually going to suddenly start coding and forcing this as a new direction of CM, its more just me being an IdeasGuy but who can run mini-events.
I am hoping to try to run a event sooner than later to continue trialing this concept.
For next the event, I am thinking of spawning just 3 comms towers on the map, and to spawn a Omni-Sentry on a Comms tower for the first time Marines capture it.
Players thought that after the departure of the Admin who used to run HvH events, it would be almost impossible to run a good HvH event anymore, but Steelpoint made HvH fun again. Of course, this was possible after months of trial and error.
I believe that Steelpoint will also develop this new game mode and make it fun eventually. I fully support this initiative, and I know there are those in Management who want new game modes. What players need to do here is give us thoughtful feedback whenever we run this event out. It is certain that this development will take a long time, but it is also in the playersâ hands to shorten it. Stay positive!
