Balance issues / praise
.ADHd
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
Let's hear your thoughts...
Drifters are epic now. Probably the single best implementation I have seen to the alien commander yet. I have something to do now as comm! Microing around drifters is insane fun and now the commander can actually work together and effect the combat real time with his team. The tweaks to jetpacks are good as well.
Now for the bad....
1. Energy cysts are a good idea to keep expansion slower, but now alien TRES is abundant as with previous imbalanced builds since you don't need to spend tres on them. Placing cysts is a lot more mindless now. This surplus of tres makes it so killing harvesters on marine side is very difficult and even if marines take one down the aliens have plenty of res to replace them (Wasn't like this in 207). On previous builds killing harvesters would seriously cripple the aliens if they didn't use teamwork and defend their RT's. Aliens have the mobility advantage afterall. The aliens are getting too strongly buffed again. I like energy for cysts since the khamm won't be able to spam them (Only about once every 5 seconds in early game). Instead the starting tres on aliens should be lowered to allow aggressive marine play to be viable.
2. Harvester health is a tad too high now making it extremely difficult for marines to cut off res from the aliens (Which is the only way to slow down the alien tech explosion). Even on 2 RT's the aliens can beat a marine team that has 5-6 RT's and weapons upgrades at level 2. I would say decrease the overall build time of the harvesters but also leave their health lower when not fully mature. This way aliens can still get res quickly but have a much greater responsibility to defend RT's. Like I said earlier, since cysts do not cost tres the aliens can redrop harvesters and even hives all day long due to removing cysts from the res sink. The TRES system is completely broken on aliens again. It was almost perfectly balanced in 207 then I guess people complained about losing more on alien. Alien required thought and teamwork in 207 and games were LONG and fun and back and forth. Now the entire game is decided over who wins the first engagement on either team (More or less).
3. Marines are teching up too slow now. By the time the inevitable alien tech explosion happens it is usually VERY rare to see a team equipped enough to actually take down fades and maintain a strong map presence. You need shotguns, phase tech, and weapons and armor 2 to effectively counter an alien tech explosion. Does this usually happen? No.
My team has played many scrims on this build and we played one where we killed 8 hives and over 15 harvesters. We had every possible tech available. The aliens couldn't put a dent in us but every time we killed an RT or a hive the aliens had a gigantic bank of res to keep dropping hives. It's impossible to kill 4 hives at once when you are trying to counter onos and the aliens have an infinite res pool. The aliens simply have way too much TRES again even when a marine team is playing extremely aggressively AND winning all of their engagements. This may sound like a whiny complaint but my team did everything right and had complete map dominance and killed hives and rt's constantly WHILE killing all of their lifeforms. We took down 2 fades at the same time and killed their first onos as well. When aliens suffer losing a 2nd hive and 4 RT's and 2 fades all by midgame the marines should be able to win.
All the aliens have to do is camp 2 RT's to win now.
4. Bombard. I just built a 20 arc train in mineshaft last night. 1 whip with bombard was able to kill half of them by the time they could even get a shot off. The whip was cloaked so I wasnt aware it was there at first (Clever alien? yes until i realized how OP bombard is). I didn't realize 1 whip could decimate 20 arcs in 5 seconds, but it happened. Try it out for yourself and let me know if the 300 TRES I spent on 20 arcs was balanced compared to the 20 tres the alien comm spent on 1 whip. Incredible that this was able to make it into the build how it is currently balanced. I have taken out entire marine bases with 3 mature whips with bombard. Spam cysts (Since they are free) and move 3 whips close enough to bomard. Everything in their base will be decimated in seconds. Seriously, try it out sometime and you will have a good laugh.
6. Catalyze looks really corny compared to the mist effect, and seems only useful for speeding up evolves / hive maturity now. It seems a bit redundant but I guess gives the alien commander more to micromanage.
Until this build I was getting extremely excited for the game as it seemed both teams required tons of skill and coordination to win. Now playing aliens has gone back to the COD leisure-fest where no teamwork or guarding of RT's is necessary. Alien's can completely dominate a marine team with only 1 tech researched (carapace), while the marines can have 5-6 different tech's researched. The imbalance is just sitting there screaming at everyone in the face. Hopefully a little more in depth playing and thought will get this balance set straight again.
Other than that I want to say the balance is great and coming along well. Performance is better now. I think the game is coming along amazingly well. Just a couple tweaks need to be made on the alien side to keep the game balanced for now.
I am getting more and more addicted to this game the more challenging and rewarding it is becoming.
Drifters are epic now. Probably the single best implementation I have seen to the alien commander yet. I have something to do now as comm! Microing around drifters is insane fun and now the commander can actually work together and effect the combat real time with his team. The tweaks to jetpacks are good as well.
Now for the bad....
1. Energy cysts are a good idea to keep expansion slower, but now alien TRES is abundant as with previous imbalanced builds since you don't need to spend tres on them. Placing cysts is a lot more mindless now. This surplus of tres makes it so killing harvesters on marine side is very difficult and even if marines take one down the aliens have plenty of res to replace them (Wasn't like this in 207). On previous builds killing harvesters would seriously cripple the aliens if they didn't use teamwork and defend their RT's. Aliens have the mobility advantage afterall. The aliens are getting too strongly buffed again. I like energy for cysts since the khamm won't be able to spam them (Only about once every 5 seconds in early game). Instead the starting tres on aliens should be lowered to allow aggressive marine play to be viable.
2. Harvester health is a tad too high now making it extremely difficult for marines to cut off res from the aliens (Which is the only way to slow down the alien tech explosion). Even on 2 RT's the aliens can beat a marine team that has 5-6 RT's and weapons upgrades at level 2. I would say decrease the overall build time of the harvesters but also leave their health lower when not fully mature. This way aliens can still get res quickly but have a much greater responsibility to defend RT's. Like I said earlier, since cysts do not cost tres the aliens can redrop harvesters and even hives all day long due to removing cysts from the res sink. The TRES system is completely broken on aliens again. It was almost perfectly balanced in 207 then I guess people complained about losing more on alien. Alien required thought and teamwork in 207 and games were LONG and fun and back and forth. Now the entire game is decided over who wins the first engagement on either team (More or less).
3. Marines are teching up too slow now. By the time the inevitable alien tech explosion happens it is usually VERY rare to see a team equipped enough to actually take down fades and maintain a strong map presence. You need shotguns, phase tech, and weapons and armor 2 to effectively counter an alien tech explosion. Does this usually happen? No.
My team has played many scrims on this build and we played one where we killed 8 hives and over 15 harvesters. We had every possible tech available. The aliens couldn't put a dent in us but every time we killed an RT or a hive the aliens had a gigantic bank of res to keep dropping hives. It's impossible to kill 4 hives at once when you are trying to counter onos and the aliens have an infinite res pool. The aliens simply have way too much TRES again even when a marine team is playing extremely aggressively AND winning all of their engagements. This may sound like a whiny complaint but my team did everything right and had complete map dominance and killed hives and rt's constantly WHILE killing all of their lifeforms. We took down 2 fades at the same time and killed their first onos as well. When aliens suffer losing a 2nd hive and 4 RT's and 2 fades all by midgame the marines should be able to win.
All the aliens have to do is camp 2 RT's to win now.
4. Bombard. I just built a 20 arc train in mineshaft last night. 1 whip with bombard was able to kill half of them by the time they could even get a shot off. The whip was cloaked so I wasnt aware it was there at first (Clever alien? yes until i realized how OP bombard is). I didn't realize 1 whip could decimate 20 arcs in 5 seconds, but it happened. Try it out for yourself and let me know if the 300 TRES I spent on 20 arcs was balanced compared to the 20 tres the alien comm spent on 1 whip. Incredible that this was able to make it into the build how it is currently balanced. I have taken out entire marine bases with 3 mature whips with bombard. Spam cysts (Since they are free) and move 3 whips close enough to bomard. Everything in their base will be decimated in seconds. Seriously, try it out sometime and you will have a good laugh.
6. Catalyze looks really corny compared to the mist effect, and seems only useful for speeding up evolves / hive maturity now. It seems a bit redundant but I guess gives the alien commander more to micromanage.
Until this build I was getting extremely excited for the game as it seemed both teams required tons of skill and coordination to win. Now playing aliens has gone back to the COD leisure-fest where no teamwork or guarding of RT's is necessary. Alien's can completely dominate a marine team with only 1 tech researched (carapace), while the marines can have 5-6 different tech's researched. The imbalance is just sitting there screaming at everyone in the face. Hopefully a little more in depth playing and thought will get this balance set straight again.
Other than that I want to say the balance is great and coming along well. Performance is better now. I think the game is coming along amazingly well. Just a couple tweaks need to be made on the alien side to keep the game balanced for now.
I am getting more and more addicted to this game the more challenging and rewarding it is becoming.
Comments
I haven't even read the rest of the post but I'm just going to go ahead and comment on this.
The reason why Aliens have an abundant on TRES is because Alien tech sucks and the lack of anything to spend Tres on.
There are <b>no scaling</b> upgrades like what marines have. That being damage upgrades or health/armor upgrades. Armor being a flat "one" time purchase. Falling back into the same pitfalls as NS1 where the longer the game takes, the better Marines scales and Aliens are still the same as they were from the start. Why haven't they given Aliens scaling yet is beyond me.
Shade tech falls completely flat on its face. Better to not even upgrade a hive to shade and use it for a back up crag. Shift tech hasn't been looking too promising either.
Whips are lackluster and requires a shade to function properly, but you're ignoring Shade because it's a waste.
So what that means is the only real thing Aliens are required to research is Crag hive, carapace and augmentation. Leaving them with an abundance of Tres.
Edit: The only way I can even agree to cysts costs Resources again is if power-nodes costs 5-10 resources each time you want to add one or repair a broken one. Then we will see just how quickly the tune of pre-res people change.
Drifters are epic now. Probably the single best implementation I have seen to the alien commander yet. I have something to do now as comm! Microing around drifters is insane fun and now the commander can actually work together and effect the combat real time with his team. The tweaks to jetpacks are good as well.
Now for the bad....
1. Energy cysts are a good idea to keep expansion slower, but now alien TRES is abundant as with previous imbalanced builds since you don't need to spend tres on them. Placing cysts is a lot more mindless now. This surplus of tres makes it so killing harvesters on marine side is very difficult and even if marines take one down the aliens have plenty of res to replace them (Wasn't like this in 207). On previous builds killing harvesters would seriously cripple the aliens if they didn't use teamwork and defend their RT's. Aliens have the mobility advantage afterall. The aliens are getting too strongly buffed again. I like energy for cysts since the khamm won't be able to spam them (Only about once every 5 seconds in early game). Instead the starting tres on aliens should be lowered to allow aggressive marine play to be viable.
2. Harvester health is a tad too high now making it extremely difficult for marines to cut off res from the aliens (Which is the only way to slow down the alien tech explosion). Even on 2 RT's the aliens can beat a marine team that has 5-6 RT's and weapons upgrades at level 2. I would say decrease the overall build time of the harvesters but also leave their health lower when not fully mature. This way aliens can still get res quickly but have a much greater responsibility to defend RT's. Like I said earlier, since cysts do not cost tres the aliens can redrop harvesters and even hives all day long due to removing cysts from the res sink. The TRES system is completely broken on aliens again. It was almost perfectly balanced in 207 then I guess people complained about losing more on alien. Alien required thought and teamwork in 207 and games were LONG and fun and back and forth. Now the entire game is decided over who wins the first engagement on either team (More or less).
3. Marines are teching up too slow now. By the time the inevitable alien tech explosion happens it is usually VERY rare to see a team equipped enough to actually take down fades and maintain a strong map presence. You need shotguns, phase tech, and weapons and armor 2 to effectively counter an alien tech explosion. Does this usually happen? No.
My team has played many scrims on this build and we played one where we killed 8 hives and over 15 harvesters. We had every possible tech available. The aliens couldn't put a dent in us but every time we killed an RT or a hive the aliens had a gigantic bank of res to keep dropping hives. It's impossible to kill 4 hives at once when you are trying to counter onos and the aliens have an infinite res pool. The aliens simply have way too much TRES again even when a marine team is playing extremely aggressively AND winning all of their engagements. This may sound like a whiny complaint but my team did everything right and had complete map dominance and killed hives and rt's constantly WHILE killing all of their lifeforms. We took down 2 fades at the same time and killed their first onos as well. When aliens suffer losing a 2nd hive and 4 RT's and 2 fades all by midgame the marines should be able to win.
All the aliens have to do is camp 2 RT's to win now.
4. Bombard. I just built a 20 arc train in mineshaft last night. 1 whip with bombard was able to kill half of them by the time they could even get a shot off. The whip was cloaked so I wasnt aware it was there at first (Clever alien? yes until i realized how OP bombard is). I didn't realize 1 whip could decimate 20 arcs in 5 seconds, but it happened. Try it out for yourself and let me know if the 300 TRES I spent on 20 arcs was balanced compared to the 20 tres the alien comm spent on 1 whip. Incredible that this was able to make it into the build how it is currently balanced. I have taken out entire marine bases with 3 mature whips with bombard. Spam cysts (Since they are free) and move 3 whips close enough to bomard. Everything in their base will be decimated in seconds. Seriously, try it out sometime and you will have a good laugh.
6. Catalyze looks really corny compared to the mist effect, and seems only useful for speeding up evolves / hive maturity now. It seems a bit redundant but I guess gives the alien commander more to micromanage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. I think TRes is fine where it is.
2. Honestly with no Hive sight I'm happy with Harvester help where it is (both as a Marine and as an Alien).
3. The trouble is Marine tech doesn't really do anything worthwhile, the difference between a Skulk and an Onos is massive the difference between a regular Marine and a Jetpack/Grenade Launcher marine is marginal. ARC's aren't really viable unless you're swimming in resources and the other team don't manage to get any Onos out - Spamming turrets is a waste of time and forward bases are an overinvestment once you lose them you lose the game.
4. Bombard does a lot of damage to be sure, but that wasn't the Alien commander being smart - That was you being stupid. The scenario you've presented is ridiculous, scan where your ARC's are going and use your ANTI-BUILDING CANNONS to DESTROY THE BUILDING so that it doesn't kill your ARCs.
What do you need 20 ARCs for anyway..
Bombard vs. Bases is another scenario entirely - One ARC in base (or twenty in your case) prevents cysts being placed, Marine should be on the ball about cysts being in their base if they are lax and whips get rooted that's their fault. Reduce the damage by 50-100% on the Bombard.
Upgraded whips actually have some use right now and I like where they are. They aren't automatically game-winning but they are comparable to ARC's and require more effort to place.
6. Catalyze is bad, change it back to Mist.
I do hope flayra continues to not see a problem with bombard damage. Its quite fun destroying massive ammounts of buildings and arcs with it. Enjoy it while it lasts i say.
An RTS where one team spends 1/4th the res the other does to be just as successful.... = ??????
How about needing to upgrade for the ability to Fade and Onos? (a one time upgrade, but not attached to a hive). This would be an intermediary between what it was in ns1 when evolving to higher lifeforms required an extra hive and the 1 hive, free of cost, it currently stands at.
Their weakness is really balanced by the fact that they are cloaked. If marines want to find them, all they have to do it scan.
Plus, enzyme is a great.. but imo needs more range. I'd love to see more abilities.
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This is an underlying problem with NS2 right now. A lot of these new gimmicks and gameplay options feel FORCED into the game and it doesn't work.
Was NS1 REALLY SO that everything must go? Even the music? THe music was GREAT compared to this action-y TF2 style stuff.
It used to be so intuitive, but they tried to "ballance it"
Everything worked, then, ###### if i knew what happened, they made it worse, then they tried to ballance that terridisaster, and it just kept going down hill from there.
One word, GORGES (hydras, other structures)
I cant say how much i miss YE OLDE GORGE, such a badass, now hes just a gimick.
I'm OK with the escort portion of ARCs - it reminds me of the heavy train, just don't like gameplay associated with spamming 10 to 20 of them. WHen the exo comes in maybe it could be tweaked to get rid of the spam. i assume a rail gun all up in the whips grill would ease the bombard problem as well. :)
edit: this is kind of a 'wait for feature complete' post, which wasnt my whole intent. but in this case I think it will allow for removing some of the annoying part of ARC. Understand, It *still* might not work out
i agree 100%.
oh yeah and on another note, NS1 gorge was ###### fun as hell. If I want to spend my god damn 50 res on 3 OCs and an MC, LET ME. WHY ARE YOU LIMITING MY FUN. LET ME HAVE FUN AGAIN. v208 gorge is abysmal. Hydra health is so negligible now that I need more than 3 to hold down a hallway...
To 4., Bombard is very powerfull but don't say it is OP (ARC is more OP if you compare f.e. Schooting trough walls), it is just too cheap. It should be Tier 3 tech, then it would be ok.
And a whip is very weak, can't bombard if it burns, 1 prescan solves the problem (or more if you do wan't to scan the whole path) and can't always bombard if nades flyby. Or send a mac to check out the path, that is what I do because also the mac is a structure.
And whip rushes can be contered by 2 ARC, just stop theyr actions as soon as the cyst spam begins and then manually select the incoming Whips.
A com with good awarness shouldn't habe problems with bombarding Whips, as I read out of the post you didn't really pay attention to your ARC train, that is veeeery long normally, so that you could have saved atleast 16 because the first ones were hit by a Whip.
It's going to be very difficult to balance an RTS where one side is missing major equipment.
Having said that, as someone who prefers to alien comm:
1. It's too easy to relentlessly expand with cysts, and it's often a waste of time for the marines to try to combat them. You might consider increasing the cost based on how many cysts are already out, that way it will slow down their relentless spamming power later without slowing down your ability to get a good start early on.
2. You do have to choose between expansion and misting, but the only time this ever feels like a real choice is when it comes to the hive. Once you get one hive mature then you can focus on cysts, unless you want mature whips.
3. I do think the game played out better when the aliens scaled up based on how many hives they had. It made territory control mean more to the game than just about having resource nodes.
Granted this put the aliens at a disadvantage because the marines didn't require multiple command chair places, but this was offset by the alien's greater capacity for offense.
Although I'm ok with letting lifeforms not be tied to the hive (I never liked in the original how I didn't get to play onos enough), there are a few things we can do to make the aliens scale more with hives.
1. Require one hive for each like upgrade you want. Meaning you can't have both a carapace and regen on yourself until you have two hives.
2. Consider scaling the effectiveness of upgrades with the number of hives.
The first option I don't think is asking a lot considering that the aliens were never designed originally to mount more than one upgrade of a type at once anyway.
There are some big alien changes afoot that I think will change this situation for the better. And I will check Bombard now.
<!--quoteo(post=1938918:date=May 25 2012, 03:01 PM:name=Flayra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Flayra @ May 25 2012, 03:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1938918"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Thanks for the insightful and thorough post, ADHD. That was quite helpful. Harvester health has been bothering me too so I'll adjust it somewhat.
There are some big alien changes afoot that I think will change this situation for the better. And I will check Bombard now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yay.
It's sort of fun but sort of not fun.
The game is kind of a cluster**** for the first 10 minutes then it usually ends around 15 minutes or so, which is pretty short. This is usually due to 5 or 6 onos rushing the base but could be for other reasons.
I like the fact that gorges can rush bases though.
I really don't know how people are playing NS2 "competitively" in this current form.
Drifters are epic now. Probably the single best implementation I have seen to the alien commander yet. I have something to do now as comm! Microing around drifters is insane fun and now the commander can actually work together and effect the combat real time with his team. The tweaks to jetpacks are good as well.
Now for the bad....
1. Energy cysts are a good idea to keep expansion slower, but now alien TRES is abundant as with previous imbalanced builds since you don't need to spend tres on them. Placing cysts is a lot more mindless now. This surplus of tres makes it so killing harvesters on marine side is very difficult and even if marines take one down the aliens have plenty of res to replace them (Wasn't like this in 207). On previous builds killing harvesters would seriously cripple the aliens if they didn't use teamwork and defend their RT's. Aliens have the mobility advantage afterall. The aliens are getting too strongly buffed again. I like energy for cysts since the khamm won't be able to spam them (Only about once every 5 seconds in early game). Instead the starting tres on aliens should be lowered to allow aggressive marine play to be viable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Personally I dont think the starting tres is too high, aliens need to be able to expand and do so quickly to lock down atleast 2 hives.
Against any half compentant marine team this will mean losing a couple of res towers.
I often see aliens with too little Tres early in game but too much mid to late, this I believe is where the issue lies.
How Tres accrues for aliens seems to have a scaling issue mid game if the aliens have a decent foot hold on the map ie 2-3 hives.
Early on I dont think they have too much Tres, starting Pres is high but I believe thats still be design and is changing later.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->2. Harvester health is a tad too high now making it extremely difficult for marines to cut off res from the aliens (Which is the only way to slow down the alien tech explosion). Even on 2 RT's the aliens can beat a marine team that has 5-6 RT's and weapons upgrades at level 2. I would say decrease the overall build time of the harvesters but also leave their health lower when not fully mature. This way aliens can still get res quickly but have a much greater responsibility to defend RT's. Like I said earlier, since cysts do not cost tres the aliens can redrop harvesters and even hives all day long due to removing cysts from the res sink. The TRES system is completely broken on aliens again. It was almost perfectly balanced in 207 then I guess people complained about losing more on alien. Alien required thought and teamwork in 207 and games were LONG and fun and back and forth. Now the entire game is decided over who wins the first engagement on either team (More or less).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Smart marines kill the cysts around the harvester and not the harvester itself I have noticed, that cuts it off and leaves it to die.
Harvesters are as easy to take down IMO as marine extractors and the marine comm can nano shield the extractor to buy more time (which I dont believe the khamm can).
The volatility of the first engagement is a double edged sword as you have indicated, either side gains the upper hand very easily.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->3. Marines are teching up too slow now. By the time the inevitable alien tech explosion happens it is usually VERY rare to see a team equipped enough to actually take down fades and maintain a strong map presence. You need shotguns, phase tech, and weapons and armor 2 to effectively counter an alien tech explosion. Does this usually happen? No.
My team has played many scrims on this build and we played one where we killed 8 hives and over 15 harvesters. We had every possible tech available. The aliens couldn't put a dent in us but every time we killed an RT or a hive the aliens had a gigantic bank of res to keep dropping hives. It's impossible to kill 4 hives at once when you are trying to counter onos and the aliens have an infinite res pool. The aliens simply have way too much TRES again even when a marine team is playing extremely aggressively AND winning all of their engagements. This may sound like a whiny complaint but my team did everything right and had complete map dominance and killed hives and rt's constantly WHILE killing all of their lifeforms. We took down 2 fades at the same time and killed their first onos as well. When aliens suffer losing a 2nd hive and 4 RT's and 2 fades all by midgame the marines should be able to win.
All the aliens have to do is camp 2 RT's to win now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You had every available tech except for exo, I think what you have described sounds like the games fairly well balanced minus the exo which would have certainly aided you in finishing off the aliens.
I have seen many arc trains take down multiple hives, sure the aliens had to have no onos for this to happen but thats only due to the lack of exo, have an arc train with a couple of exo's....will mean 2 onos wont be able to stop the arcs.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->4. Bombard. I just built a 20 arc train in mineshaft last night. 1 whip with bombard was able to kill half of them by the time they could even get a shot off. The whip was cloaked so I wasnt aware it was there at first (Clever alien? yes until i realized how OP bombard is). I didn't realize 1 whip could decimate 20 arcs in 5 seconds, but it happened. Try it out for yourself and let me know if the 300 TRES I spent on 20 arcs was balanced compared to the 20 tres the alien comm spent on 1 whip. Incredible that this was able to make it into the build how it is currently balanced. I have taken out entire marine bases with 3 mature whips with bombard. Spam cysts (Since they are free) and move 3 whips close enough to bomard. Everything in their base will be decimated in seconds. Seriously, try it out sometime and you will have a good laugh.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
lol, you missed the whip and paid a huge price that happens when your not aware of what aliens have in a hive and just waltz in unprepared.
Had you know it was there I am sure it would have played out differently.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->6. Catalyze looks really corny compared to the mist effect, and seems only useful for speeding up evolves / hive maturity now. It seems a bit redundant but I guess gives the alien commander more to micromanage.
Until this build I was getting extremely excited for the game as it seemed both teams required tons of skill and coordination to win. Now playing aliens has gone back to the COD leisure-fest where no teamwork or guarding of RT's is necessary. Alien's can completely dominate a marine team with only 1 tech researched (carapace), while the marines can have 5-6 different tech's researched. The imbalance is just sitting there screaming at everyone in the face. Hopefully a little more in depth playing and thought will get this balance set straight again.
Other than that I want to say the balance is great and coming along well. Performance is better now. I think the game is coming along amazingly well. Just a couple tweaks need to be made on the alien side to keep the game balanced for now.
I am getting more and more addicted to this game the more challenging and rewarding it is becoming.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The lack of Exo makes it really hard to say whether aliens are too easy or if the tactics currently available with jps, arcs, gl's etc are known.
Aliens having all lifeforms now available should be able to cover a marine side thats lacking its big ticket item.
I see marines winning games out there, not only in teh first 10-15 min either. I have seen some longer games where the marines methodically pushed taking back more real estate.
They functioned well and moved in packs rather than going rambo, having 2 marines means your more likely to hold an extractor...having 3 almost guarantees it.
1 marine should not regularly be able to take down a harvester by himself, same way a skulk rarely cant. You need 2 skulks to give you a fighting chance of doing that...it should take atleast the same number of marines to do the same.
1. Starting tres is too high on aliens, you can afford to buy a 2nd hive and upgrade to crag hive all on starting res. That is pretty redic dude. Not to mention the huge amount of energy you receive from 2 hives.
2. Smart marines know that the alien commander isn't stupid. Killing cysts does nothing since the commander can replace them constantly on this new build. The only way killing cysts would work is if no backup came to kill the marine (Which it will). Marines are slow compared to aliens so the health of harvesters needs to be reduced to sympathize with the marines.
3. If I was able to grab every tech, kill hives, lifeforms, and put constant pressure on harvesters I should have won. In build 207 that match we would have steamrolled if it were balanced correctly. Exosuit would have meant nothing not to mention we wouldn't have had the res to think about getting them anyway. To be honest I doubt I will ever buy exo suits in competitive play. The jetpack easily counters all lifeforms and gives marines mobility without the need for phase tech. A slow moving exo isn't gonna help me counter 4 hives especially when my team has exhausted all of their pres on more important upgrades like jetpacks and shotguns.
4. I did miss the whip and it wasn't in their hive. I had to move the arcs through the tram tunnels in mineshaft. There was a shade placed more towards cave side at the t junction cloaking the whip. There was absolutely no reason for me to have wasted a scan on an area I wasn't going to even move through. I can understand losing maybe 2-3 arcs from a whip but not my entire armada.
5. We have all seen marines push back and win.. we have all see marines win... thats not the issue. The balance in this CURRENT build has made it alien sided once again. Marines won all the time in build 207... now its a rarity again. Also I have used 2 marines to try to cut down harvesters but like I said it took my guys way longer to move into the alien territory and by the time they are there the aliens will already be on them due to their speed and drifter sight. There needs to be a tradeoff and you cannot expect both races to be able to do the same things. This is an asymmetric game.
Also, want to clarify that the early and mid game are what are lacking balance.... not the late game tech which you seem to be defending as the marines savior (Which it isn't). Play NS1 and tell me which tech is more useful... jetpacks or heavy armor. Jetpacks always are better and will continue to be that way in NS2. I don't even need to see the exo suit to know that the jetpack will a superior choice for the team. 1 jetpack marine vs 1 onos = onos dead.
Oh, and master blaster the reason you don't know how us competitive players play competitively is because you haven't tried.
Points 1-3 are all about TRes, and I do agree though that aliens appear to have far too much now. They need more research and investments to spend on. Harvesters being suitably tough would not be an issue if the commander had more to research, proper trees to develop, etc. Adding 'fake' costs such as replacing a harvester every 5 minutes is not the way to go.
I dont think what your saying is without some merit at all, I just see the cause/solution in a different way and from the aliens side more as I always preferred playing aliens more...probably because everyone else always seemed to want to go marines so they could shoot things (I played enough dod, cs, bfv, etc to get my dose of shooters and liked the different gameplay of aliens in ns1).
<!--quoteo(post=1939172:date=May 27 2012, 10:47 AM:name=.ADHd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (.ADHd @ May 27 2012, 10:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1939172"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hackenspit good points that you made but I want to counter a couple things that you said.
1. Starting tres is too high on aliens, you can afford to buy a 2nd hive and upgrade to crag hive all on starting res. That is pretty redic dude. Not to mention the huge amount of energy you receive from 2 hives.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
True but the second hive is crucial to offer carapace & regen, marines are not limited to whether they can get jp or gl.
Must admit I have not looked at energy but considering aliens can have up to 4 hives allowing them to get a second quickly still leave them a long way to go.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->2. Smart marines know that the alien commander isn't stupid. Killing cysts does nothing since the commander can replace them constantly on this new build. The only way killing cysts would work is if no backup came to kill the marine (Which it will). Marines are slow compared to aliens so the health of harvesters needs to be reduced to sympathize with the marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Marines are meant to be slow compared to aliens, res plays such a crucial part for both sides that making the harvesters too weak will force atleast 1 alien to guard every res tower (yet marines dont have to guard their extractors in the same way).
I just see this crippling aliens if changed much, I do like the idea of the harvester maturing over a short time (though would feel it only balanced if marine structures also increased HP over say first 3-5 min after being built).
So a harvester/extractor that is 2 min old only has say 40% of the full HP and is easier to take down in this time, after say 5 min they have 100% of their HP.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->3. If I was able to grab every tech, kill hives, lifeforms, and put constant pressure on harvesters I should have won. In build 207 that match we would have steamrolled if it were balanced correctly. Exosuit would have meant nothing not to mention we wouldn't have had the res to think about getting them anyway. To be honest I doubt I will ever buy exo suits in competitive play. The jetpack easily counters all lifeforms and gives marines mobility without the need for phase tech. A slow moving exo isn't gonna help me counter 4 hives especially when my team has exhausted all of their pres on more important upgrades like jetpacks and shotguns.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think we will have to wait and see, I still think this has more to do wit how T-res are accrued later in the game (mid-late) than early game so dont see lowering the starting point as really changing much.
By the first 5 min most khamms have spent all their res and this is ahead of the time that your seeing an issue.
I am not saying there is perhaps not some issue but its not starting t-res related (its mid-late game t-res which is linked to res accruel)
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->4. I did miss the whip and it wasn't in their hive. I had to move the arcs through the tram tunnels in mineshaft. There was a shade placed more towards cave side at the t junction cloaking the whip. There was absolutely no reason for me to have wasted a scan on an area I wasn't going to even move through. I can understand losing maybe 2-3 arcs from a whip but not my entire armada.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I dont think the scan would have been wasted given the outcome you had :)
Considering it takes usually 2-3 Onos to stop a decent arc train (fades dont do enough damage) that aliens have something other than onos means they have other alternatives to countering the arc rush tactic.
I have seen an arc trains take out oodles of hydras, cysts and whips..they are just as OP'd and they can shoot around walls etc...so firing from safety...whip cant do that.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->5. We have all seen marines push back and win.. we have all see marines win... thats not the issue. The balance in this CURRENT build has made it alien sided once again. Marines won all the time in build 207... now its a rarity again. Also I have used 2 marines to try to cut down harvesters but like I said it took my guys way longer to move into the alien territory and by the time they are there the aliens will already be on them due to their speed and drifter sight. There needs to be a tradeoff and you cannot expect both races to be able to do the same things. This is an asymmetric game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I see the game in its final stages and waiting for the last piece of the marines armoury..the exo aliens already have all their possible lifeforms which means we are not yet comparing apples with apples.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also, want to clarify that the early and mid game are what are lacking balance.... not the late game tech which you seem to be defending as the marines savior (Which it isn't). Play NS1 and tell me which tech is more useful... jetpacks or heavy armor. Jetpacks always are better and will continue to be that way in NS2. I don't even need to see the exo suit to know that the jetpack will a superior choice for the team. 1 jetpack marine vs 1 onos = onos dead.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Early game is fairly balanced the fact it can go either way shows this (you said it can be pivotol on the first battle), mid game is about right but it's late game when aliens have enough res to onos thats not currently balanced.
When aliens dont have enough res marines dont have the right tools to always finish the game quickly (this is where I see exo coming into it as unlike JP'ers they should be more effectively support an arc train in an sort of corridor or lower ceiling area.
I have played those games that are lost as aliens but marines dont have the ability to provide the winning move.
Heavy trains where game winners in ns1...jet packs where an alternate path more so on certain maps/hives.
Heavies support the ns1 arc (damn senility...total blank on what it was called) where damn hard to stop...JP's couldn't offer the same level of support.
Also I would rather go exo/heavy than jp'er (I have always sucked with a JP....and preferred to go heavy), both should be options that we can chose from that help win games in different ways/situations.
I dont disagree that the game doesn't feel balanced right now and by the time the games launched it needs to be closer to balanced.
cheers