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Combine versus the Resistance (CVR) Mod Ideas
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Section 1. Basic Concepts
Section 2. Game Mode Ideas 1st tier: Conquest/Objective based team play
Section 3. Game Mode Ideas 2nd tier: DM, TDM, King of the Hill, etc…
Section 4. Class Ideas
=====================================================
SECTION 1. Basic Concepts
=====================================================
The following post contains some of my ideas for a mod I would like to see made—if you are a modder feel free to take any of my ideas and use them. A lot of my ideas are refinements of other games with little twists to fit into the Half-Life Universe. I like the “Combine versus Resistance” (CVR) theme, so I will use that as the title. Some precursory thoughts before I share some of my specific ideas for a mod:
1. The concept of the Combine versus the Resistance is brilliantly fleshed out by Valve and in my opinion classic Sci-Fi: Monster, machines, and aliens against an oppressed human resistance. Cliché? Maybe. Fun? Oh Yeah! Valve created a wonderfully deep Half-Life Universe, a mod team has a lot of quality concepts to work with from the get go that gamers will pick up quickly. Combine versus Resistance is definitely a theme worthy of an expansive multiplayer mod and would be widely popular.
2. The good news for a mod team taking up this idea is that Valve has not only created a world gamers are dieing to play in with their friends, but with the introduction of HL2DM they have also created many of the in-game assets to get the ball rolling. A lot of mods struggle to get basic models, weapons, etc… created in the first year. Mods taking on this project have a great head start to begin focusing on the finer—and more important—aspects of the game.
3. HL2DM, while fun, is not going to be popular long. Note that straight DM games ended with UT and Quake 3. Games that emphasize teamwork (like BF1942 and its mods, UT2004, and so on) are what gamers are looking for. And if that is not proof enough, note the most popular HL1 mods:
• Counter Strike
• Team Fortress Classic
• Day of Defeat
It is pretty clear that if you want a mod to be played for years and years, the key is to keep players interested. **Games that require teamwork** cause gamers to intuitively form close nit communities (clans) that continue to play the same game many years after the graphics have become old hat. Game modes that encourage teamwork are not only more fun, but are important for the longevity of the mod. And longevity is vital for a mod to reach its full potential.
People are dieing to get more HL2, and people love team work based games like CS, BF1942, and UT2004. I think a successful HL2 mod requires very simple math: HL2 Universe + team based game play = Success. HL2DM is fun, but it will loose its appeal soon enough. Combine versus Resistance is an awesome theme just waiting to be exploited to its fullest.
Immersive teamwork focused gameplay, not death match, is the best way to utilize the immense depth of the HL2 Universe and allow a mod to reach its best potential.
4. It is very easy to lose focus when creating a mod. The best mods do a couple things very well. They first have a theme players can enjoy. HL2 does this. A good mod also has good visuals. HL2 not only allows this, but the HL2DM assets and the HL2 game assets make this an easier task. Good mods also tend to have very good game balance and gameplay and offer a quality experience that cannot be had somewhere else. In many ways this will be easy with a HL2 mod because of the unique weapons and versatility of the engine. But it is important to keep a good balance when approaching this subject.
Quality Game Play > Team play > Innovation > Variety
Spending time making a lot of maps when the gameplay is weak will not help the mod. Having a clunky and confusing interface that makes playing frustrating cannot overcome innovative ideas. The good news is that a lot of the gameplay elements have already been created and only need to be tweaked. The balancing of a class system, weapons, etc… should be the easy part. Building the team play architecture will be the hard part. The good news is a mod based on the HL2 assets can focus almost exclusively to this essential thing we call “gameplay”. Some general thoughts on this:
Most online gamers would rather play a game that was intuitive and well thought out than a game that is unique and has some teamwork elements but has frustrating control and is buggy at the conceptual level.
Most online gamers would rather play a game that requires a lot of quality teamwork than a game that is unique but has weak team play.
Most gamers would rather play a handful of extremely good maps that emphasize team play instead of dozens of so-so maps that look cool but do not emphasize strategy and teamwork.
It is great to have new ideas, but success is in executing your ideas. A solid game play experience is more important that novel concepts that are not executed well. So innovation is important, it must not overwhelm the team play and game play aspects.
5. A mod does not need to be complex—clean and efficient are good things. While team work is great, this does not require complex maps. Take the Battlefield 1942 mod “Desert Combat” as an example. The following are some of the more popular maps:
Lost Village: A map where the US assaults a small village island. 5 capable bases and 1 incapable, the US must get control points in control to start ticket bleed on the Iraqis. Simple map, but great idea. This would work well for CVR in that you could use buildings from the beginning of the game. Have the Combine assaulting citizen homes. 3 three story buildings, flags down stairs and up top plus some catwalks… could make a great and intense team work map and it would not need to be very complex. This type of map would also make a great assault/defend map.
Birdge: 5 control points, but only 1 starts ticket drain. This flag is on a single bridge that is a choke point between the two sides. Whoever controls the bridge wins. Very simple map but encourages a lot of team work. A CVR mod, with all the neat weapons and SDK to create unique gameplay ideas, can really do well with the concept of choke points.
Basrah’s Edge: Only three control points in a market, a crash site where an aircraft crashed into a building, and some slums. One side has Anti-Air units and the other side helicopters with miniguns. Each side has a light APC. Each control point has more than one way to get there, meaning losing one control point does not mean the others are out of question. The map is simple but very fun and is a great urban combat type map.
El Al: 3 control points on a massive map. Mountains divide the map in half with control points both at the north and south end of the mountain, with passes at each. The US has a flag near their base but do not have the cover of the mountains to protect their base. Simple map that has a lot of air and land battles at the same time.
All these maps are fairly simple but encourage teamwork. This ends the basic concepts section. A mod does not need to be complicated, but PLANNING is essential.
=====================================================
SECTION 2. Game Mode Ideas 1st tier: Conquest/Objective based team play
=====================================================
I think a mod that has a two tier system would be great because it could appeal to many gamers and allow variety without sacrificing a focus. The 1st tier would be for structured team play, and the 2nd tier for fast and furious single player action for when you just want to frag something. I suggest 2 tiers because many of the 2nd tier games are easy to setup and would be fun and get the word out about a mod while letting people experience the new things when they are created. When a new weapon is created it could be put into a DM mod and let people play with it… it would be good testing and it would also keep people baited!
1st tier: Conquest/Objective based team play.
2nd tier: DM, TDM, King of the Hill, etc… type game play
1. Conquest / Control Point Oriented Team Play.
Control points. Games like BF1942 and DoD are great because of the emphasis on control points. Three things made BF1942 so great:
(a) Rock-Paper-Scissors gameplay. E.g. Tanks kill AA units, Bombers kill Tanks, AA units kill Bombers. This prevents any single weapon or class domination the game.
(b) Control point and Objective oriented maps. Clear objectives pulls a team together quickly.
(c) Balance ground and vehicle combat; some levels were all urban combat with no vehicles, some were all ground wars, and others were ground and air—but always balanced where no class or weapon was invulnerable.
I strongly suggest this type of teamplay for a HL2 mod. For those who have not played BF1942 here is the basic idea: There are control points that need to be captured. You capture a control point by killing all the enemies there and then controlling a perimeter until the cap-time has been fulfilled. Some control points allow you to spawn at there, and others do not, which adds a lot of strategy. When you have more flags than your opponent, the enemy team score begins to go down. First team to 0 tickets loses. Now there can be a lot of variation to this (e.g. different capture points can have different values, or can be capturable but you cannot spawn there, etc…) but the basic idea is simple: Capture bases and hold them as a team.
Here are some great variations for this type of game:
• Like Battlefield Vietnam, having control points sensitive to the number of players assaulting is good. So if one guy is at a flag it takes 30 seconds to capture, but if 3 players are there it takes 10 seconds. This ENCOURAGES teamwork. This also makes it so if one guy comes to a fortified flag with 4 opponents, he cannot cap the flag.
• Encourage playing safe. Make Spawntime = 10seconds + (5seconds * #deaths). This means after dieing 10 times your spawn time will be 60 seconds. So while you still get to play, you wont rush into things rashly. You would want to allow server admins to adjust these variables, but gameplay that encourages sticking together and cautious gameplay adds to the realism.
• Conquest Elimination. Create a game mod that combines conquest style gameplay (control points and ticket count) with elimination type spawn scenarios. E.g. every player gets 5 lives, after dieing 5 times they are out. So taking flags is very important, but doing so as a team to minimize deaths. Another way of doing this is having a pool: Each team gets 50 lives total.
While this would take serious balancing, it creates all kinds of scenarios that require teamwork: Do you try to control all the flags or do you try to eliminate your foe? Re you ahead on lives but low on Tickets you need to assault flags. Are you low on lives but have a lot of tickets you need to pull back. This would give a sense of finiteness to a war.
2. Push maps. Similar to Conquest, control points need to be taken in a sequence. Team 1 needs to go 1,2,3,4,5 while Team 2 needs to go 5,4,3,2,1.
3. Objective. Make key (and possibly secondary) objectives part of the team game. This is pretty basic and usually includes getting to a set place and destroying something.
4. Assault/Defend. A variation of objective, but one team has the job of either defending or assaulting.
If stuck on ideas, play the MP in games like Halo 1&2, TimeSplitters 2, UT2004, GoldenEye 007. They should spawn some great ideas
Combine versus the Resistance (CVR) Mod Ideas
=====================================================
Section 1. Basic Concepts
Section 2. Game Mode Ideas 1st tier: Conquest/Objective based team play
Section 3. Game Mode Ideas 2nd tier: DM, TDM, King of the Hill, etc…
Section 4. Class Ideas
=====================================================
SECTION 1. Basic Concepts
=====================================================
The following post contains some of my ideas for a mod I would like to see made—if you are a modder feel free to take any of my ideas and use them. A lot of my ideas are refinements of other games with little twists to fit into the Half-Life Universe. I like the “Combine versus Resistance” (CVR) theme, so I will use that as the title. Some precursory thoughts before I share some of my specific ideas for a mod:
1. The concept of the Combine versus the Resistance is brilliantly fleshed out by Valve and in my opinion classic Sci-Fi: Monster, machines, and aliens against an oppressed human resistance. Cliché? Maybe. Fun? Oh Yeah! Valve created a wonderfully deep Half-Life Universe, a mod team has a lot of quality concepts to work with from the get go that gamers will pick up quickly. Combine versus Resistance is definitely a theme worthy of an expansive multiplayer mod and would be widely popular.
2. The good news for a mod team taking up this idea is that Valve has not only created a world gamers are dieing to play in with their friends, but with the introduction of HL2DM they have also created many of the in-game assets to get the ball rolling. A lot of mods struggle to get basic models, weapons, etc… created in the first year. Mods taking on this project have a great head start to begin focusing on the finer—and more important—aspects of the game.
3. HL2DM, while fun, is not going to be popular long. Note that straight DM games ended with UT and Quake 3. Games that emphasize teamwork (like BF1942 and its mods, UT2004, and so on) are what gamers are looking for. And if that is not proof enough, note the most popular HL1 mods:
• Counter Strike
• Team Fortress Classic
• Day of Defeat
It is pretty clear that if you want a mod to be played for years and years, the key is to keep players interested. **Games that require teamwork** cause gamers to intuitively form close nit communities (clans) that continue to play the same game many years after the graphics have become old hat. Game modes that encourage teamwork are not only more fun, but are important for the longevity of the mod. And longevity is vital for a mod to reach its full potential.
People are dieing to get more HL2, and people love team work based games like CS, BF1942, and UT2004. I think a successful HL2 mod requires very simple math: HL2 Universe + team based game play = Success. HL2DM is fun, but it will loose its appeal soon enough. Combine versus Resistance is an awesome theme just waiting to be exploited to its fullest.
Immersive teamwork focused gameplay, not death match, is the best way to utilize the immense depth of the HL2 Universe and allow a mod to reach its best potential.
4. It is very easy to lose focus when creating a mod. The best mods do a couple things very well. They first have a theme players can enjoy. HL2 does this. A good mod also has good visuals. HL2 not only allows this, but the HL2DM assets and the HL2 game assets make this an easier task. Good mods also tend to have very good game balance and gameplay and offer a quality experience that cannot be had somewhere else. In many ways this will be easy with a HL2 mod because of the unique weapons and versatility of the engine. But it is important to keep a good balance when approaching this subject.
Quality Game Play > Team play > Innovation > Variety
Spending time making a lot of maps when the gameplay is weak will not help the mod. Having a clunky and confusing interface that makes playing frustrating cannot overcome innovative ideas. The good news is that a lot of the gameplay elements have already been created and only need to be tweaked. The balancing of a class system, weapons, etc… should be the easy part. Building the team play architecture will be the hard part. The good news is a mod based on the HL2 assets can focus almost exclusively to this essential thing we call “gameplay”. Some general thoughts on this:
Most online gamers would rather play a game that was intuitive and well thought out than a game that is unique and has some teamwork elements but has frustrating control and is buggy at the conceptual level.
Most online gamers would rather play a game that requires a lot of quality teamwork than a game that is unique but has weak team play.
Most gamers would rather play a handful of extremely good maps that emphasize team play instead of dozens of so-so maps that look cool but do not emphasize strategy and teamwork.
It is great to have new ideas, but success is in executing your ideas. A solid game play experience is more important that novel concepts that are not executed well. So innovation is important, it must not overwhelm the team play and game play aspects.
5. A mod does not need to be complex—clean and efficient are good things. While team work is great, this does not require complex maps. Take the Battlefield 1942 mod “Desert Combat” as an example. The following are some of the more popular maps:
Lost Village: A map where the US assaults a small village island. 5 capable bases and 1 incapable, the US must get control points in control to start ticket bleed on the Iraqis. Simple map, but great idea. This would work well for CVR in that you could use buildings from the beginning of the game. Have the Combine assaulting citizen homes. 3 three story buildings, flags down stairs and up top plus some catwalks… could make a great and intense team work map and it would not need to be very complex. This type of map would also make a great assault/defend map.
Birdge: 5 control points, but only 1 starts ticket drain. This flag is on a single bridge that is a choke point between the two sides. Whoever controls the bridge wins. Very simple map but encourages a lot of team work. A CVR mod, with all the neat weapons and SDK to create unique gameplay ideas, can really do well with the concept of choke points.
Basrah’s Edge: Only three control points in a market, a crash site where an aircraft crashed into a building, and some slums. One side has Anti-Air units and the other side helicopters with miniguns. Each side has a light APC. Each control point has more than one way to get there, meaning losing one control point does not mean the others are out of question. The map is simple but very fun and is a great urban combat type map.
El Al: 3 control points on a massive map. Mountains divide the map in half with control points both at the north and south end of the mountain, with passes at each. The US has a flag near their base but do not have the cover of the mountains to protect their base. Simple map that has a lot of air and land battles at the same time.
All these maps are fairly simple but encourage teamwork. This ends the basic concepts section. A mod does not need to be complicated, but PLANNING is essential.
=====================================================
SECTION 2. Game Mode Ideas 1st tier: Conquest/Objective based team play
=====================================================
I think a mod that has a two tier system would be great because it could appeal to many gamers and allow variety without sacrificing a focus. The 1st tier would be for structured team play, and the 2nd tier for fast and furious single player action for when you just want to frag something. I suggest 2 tiers because many of the 2nd tier games are easy to setup and would be fun and get the word out about a mod while letting people experience the new things when they are created. When a new weapon is created it could be put into a DM mod and let people play with it… it would be good testing and it would also keep people baited!
1st tier: Conquest/Objective based team play.
2nd tier: DM, TDM, King of the Hill, etc… type game play
1. Conquest / Control Point Oriented Team Play.
Control points. Games like BF1942 and DoD are great because of the emphasis on control points. Three things made BF1942 so great:
(a) Rock-Paper-Scissors gameplay. E.g. Tanks kill AA units, Bombers kill Tanks, AA units kill Bombers. This prevents any single weapon or class domination the game.
(b) Control point and Objective oriented maps. Clear objectives pulls a team together quickly.
(c) Balance ground and vehicle combat; some levels were all urban combat with no vehicles, some were all ground wars, and others were ground and air—but always balanced where no class or weapon was invulnerable.
I strongly suggest this type of teamplay for a HL2 mod. For those who have not played BF1942 here is the basic idea: There are control points that need to be captured. You capture a control point by killing all the enemies there and then controlling a perimeter until the cap-time has been fulfilled. Some control points allow you to spawn at there, and others do not, which adds a lot of strategy. When you have more flags than your opponent, the enemy team score begins to go down. First team to 0 tickets loses. Now there can be a lot of variation to this (e.g. different capture points can have different values, or can be capturable but you cannot spawn there, etc…) but the basic idea is simple: Capture bases and hold them as a team.
Here are some great variations for this type of game:
• Like Battlefield Vietnam, having control points sensitive to the number of players assaulting is good. So if one guy is at a flag it takes 30 seconds to capture, but if 3 players are there it takes 10 seconds. This ENCOURAGES teamwork. This also makes it so if one guy comes to a fortified flag with 4 opponents, he cannot cap the flag.
• Encourage playing safe. Make Spawntime = 10seconds + (5seconds * #deaths). This means after dieing 10 times your spawn time will be 60 seconds. So while you still get to play, you wont rush into things rashly. You would want to allow server admins to adjust these variables, but gameplay that encourages sticking together and cautious gameplay adds to the realism.
• Conquest Elimination. Create a game mod that combines conquest style gameplay (control points and ticket count) with elimination type spawn scenarios. E.g. every player gets 5 lives, after dieing 5 times they are out. So taking flags is very important, but doing so as a team to minimize deaths. Another way of doing this is having a pool: Each team gets 50 lives total.
While this would take serious balancing, it creates all kinds of scenarios that require teamwork: Do you try to control all the flags or do you try to eliminate your foe? Re you ahead on lives but low on Tickets you need to assault flags. Are you low on lives but have a lot of tickets you need to pull back. This would give a sense of finiteness to a war.
2. Push maps. Similar to Conquest, control points need to be taken in a sequence. Team 1 needs to go 1,2,3,4,5 while Team 2 needs to go 5,4,3,2,1.
3. Objective. Make key (and possibly secondary) objectives part of the team game. This is pretty basic and usually includes getting to a set place and destroying something.
4. Assault/Defend. A variation of objective, but one team has the job of either defending or assaulting.
If stuck on ideas, play the MP in games like Halo 1&2, TimeSplitters 2, UT2004, GoldenEye 007. They should spawn some great ideas
