I think another strong point to consider is the patching time frame on this game. These teams, however great they are, have only had a week on 223 (previously 0 experience in the case of the Guru tournament). It's hard to say who has spent how much time experimenting with what on this patch. I tend to agree that once the sample size increases, more things will come to light. The tournaments are no doubt an extremely great resource for UWE, but the waters are muddy at best given how much time these teams have to play with these builds.
Some things don't scale when comparing 6v6 to 16v16 (Alien res distribution was the big one in NS1), but there's still a lot of core concepts that hold true (Eg. Second hive is a great upgrade that one person should almost always save for and drop ASAP)
One thing you want to keep in mind is regional differences in metagame/playstyle. In many games there's a significant difference and I know in NS1 we Americans would always make fun of the Euros for taking 8 minutes to get Armor 1. It also takes time for strategies and counter-strategies to evolve, so it would probably be helpful if there was time between patches to let the dust settle instead of making balance changes all the time.
<!--quoteo(post=1994925:date=Oct 22 2012, 11:52 AM:name=n.s.l.d)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (n.s.l.d @ Oct 22 2012, 11:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1994925"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think another strong point to consider is the patching time frame on this game. These teams, however great they are, have only had a week on 223 (previously 0 experience in the case of the Guru tournament). It's hard to say who has spent how much time experimenting with what on this patch. I tend to agree that once the sample size increases, more things will come to light. The tournaments are no doubt an extremely great resource for UWE, but the waters are muddy at best given how much time these teams have to play with these builds.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is honestly the best point in the thread.
Competitive players are and will always be the "best" players in NS2 in the sense that they will use the best strategies available to them. The game is open to metagame shifts as people discover how to beat said strategies. I've seen some metagame shifting over the past 2-3 weeks. It is happening in NS2.
However, more importantly than the metagame shifting is the weekly or biweekly patches. For example, b222/b223 introduced a smaller bite cone for melee (aka all aliens). What aliens rely on their melee? Skulks, Lerks, Fades. All these were just nerfed. Everyone is relying on onos even more because his strength is in his tank-ability. The other lifeforms rely on getting in, getting a kill (or hitting a bite or two) and getting out. If now it is harder to land your bites, then it becomes harder to execute this while the onos is still its overpowered goodness. Thus, onos -- every single game.
Also, some of the mechanics of the current collision severely favor certain strategies. When a skulk or fade hit a marine while the marine is jumping, they go flying backward 5-10 feet. Then the marine kills the alien. I think (?) this is a bug. It's pretty broken and because of it, you see almost every marine team play hyper-aggressively in the first 5 minutes. You'll watch a pair of competitive marines walk across the map and kill 8 skulks because marines are always favored in this build. Always. Even in a 2v2 ambush situation, a marine can simply jump which leads to distance and gives him time to pick the skulk on him. It's even easier if marines position well and stagger themselves. Thus you see how a team like arc can walk with two marines from sub to atrium without building phase gates.
The second problem with collision is how marines walk over skulks. This has less impact than the bite->knockback effect, but is still important to mention because it greatly hinders skulk play. when you have ~1 foot leeway to position yourself and the marine can change direction and speed at any given time, even walking over you (which requires a 180 degree turn), then you are going to have a hard time competing with him.
Remember that an lmg kills a skulk in less than a second. Even if a skulk starts the fight in or near melee range, there is still a better-than-50/50 chance that the marine will win the fight due to the mechanics I've listed out. This is why skulk is so weak. This is why aliens are so weak. This is why aliens are so unfun to play. This is why every marine team is hyper aggressive and why every competitive team favors marines over aliens. This is why every team rushes fast second hive into 2-hive onos. Because you don't win games as aliens without an onos or a very lucky base rush.
TL;DR: Aliens, namely skulks, and fades, are not fun to play in competitive games because of a) the bite->knockback b) collision problems. 2 hive onos is imbalanced, overplayed, and does not require skill, but it is the only thing that keeps aliens from losing every single game against a team of good shooters.
(edit: I realize what I'm talking about has been "fixed" for b224, I am just writing my thoughts on what we've played for the past couple weeks)
<!--quoteo(post=1994711:date=Oct 21 2012, 08:44 PM:name=Imbalanxd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Imbalanxd @ Oct 21 2012, 08:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1994711"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Have you ever seen a competitive Dota game? Me neither. However, what I do know about the game is that certain heroes always feature, simply because their abilities are just so team oriented. Does that mean all the other heroes are weaker? I don't think so, I think its just a case of those heroes abilities not playing to the strengths of an organised team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I play Dota at a high level and observe competitive play all the time. it's not quite true. there are common heroes which are played more often. for pubs, <a href="https://dotabuff.com/heroes/played" target="_blank">dotabuff</a> says Pudge and Bounty Hunter are the most popular. for competitive play, there is a cute hero "tier" list that is maintained by <a href="http://esfiworld.com/news/dota-2-competitive-hero-tier-list-august-2012" target="_blank">ESFI</a>. the tiers simply represent what heroes are the flavor of the month, so to speak. that is the beautiful thing about Dota 2: there's actual metagame and strategy going into the thought process of balancing it. all the heroes that are currently popular right now are only popular because they are all good at the same thing: pushing down towers. in the past, there were other strategies: teams focused on ganking (killing enemy heroes), teams focused on turtling, teams focused on teamfighting, etc. and in general, pushing > turtling > ganking > pushing. and it's not exactly uncommon at all for teams to pick heroes in the last tier and focus a strategy revolving around them. at The International 2, I <strike>believe every single hero was picked at least once.</strike> 22 heroes were not picked. that's incredible when you consider the ~90 heroes they had at the time. pretty much all of those 22 heroes and more received massive buffs in the following patch, and now it's not uncommon to see the majority of them in a high level competitive game. <a href="http://www.dota-academy.com/tournament/58/" target="_blank">http://www.dota-academy.com/tournament/58/</a>
tying this back to NS2: the abilities currently in popular use aren't in popular use because of metagame shifts. there is no such thing as metagame in NS2. it's simply <i>what's good</i>, period. NS2 doesn't have the same luxury as Dota's endless strategies, because every other alternative is terrible.
not just that, but look at the balance changes done by Icefrog in Dota: <!--QuoteBegin-"http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.76"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ("http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.76")</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Gyrocopter - Homing Missile distance required for max damage reduced from 2000 to 1500 - Homing Missile stun duration rescaled from 2.5 to 2.2/2.4/2.6/2.8 - Rocket Barrage damage increased from 11/14/17/20 to 11/15/19/23
Jakiro - Ice Path creation delay increased from 0.4 to 0.5 - Ice Path manacost increased from 75 to 90
Krobelus - Exorcism base ghost count increased from 4/10/18 to 4/12/21<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> these are incremental changes. less than half a second difference on a stun duration. a .1 second increase on animation time.
some examples from NS2 changelogs: <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Skulk bite range reduced by 20% (skulk domination, this is much closer to NS1). Reduced egg generation rate at hives by 25% - to help address the "zerg machine of doom" (thanks Zeikko!).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
these radical values do not represent metagame shifts. it seems to me like the balancing is done by looking at the small picture as opposed to overall goals. every single change should be backed by an overall goal with the unit's niche in the game. lerk speed decrease? what does that have to do with its role as a support? why buff spikes when they already perform the "harass/support" role perfectly already?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->However, more importantly than the metagame shifting is the weekly or biweekly patches. For example, b222/b223 introduced a smaller bite cone for melee (aka all aliens). What aliens rely on their melee? Skulks, Lerks, Fades. All these were just nerfed. Everyone is relying on onos even more because his strength is in his tank-ability. The other lifeforms rely on getting in, getting a kill (or hitting a bite or two) and getting out. If now it is harder to land your bites, then it becomes harder to execute this while the onos is still its overpowered goodness. Thus, onos -- every single game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> this is a great example of NS2 balancing by winrates instead of balancing by role. "skulks are doing well, what will help them do less well? nerfing bite?" as opposed to seeing the overall picture (skulks blow and can't perform their role as expendable fodder units).
ROFLMAO. A point of fade play not being fun coming from IMHO one of the best fades at the moment :)
I agree with all of the above. b224 will help (hopefully) a lot. It feels much more like WORK playing the current build as aliens versus the fun it should be. That being said, I think people who have stuck with aliens and worked their way through the agony of current situation of skulk will only be rewarded once b224 and beyond are released.
On a semi related note, I think people freaking out about wild balance changes should calm down. Keep in mind this is beta. My 2 cents, UWE is using the opportunity to get a feel for how changes affect game play (i.e. everything GORGEous has spelled out) while they can before release. I would expect to see finer tuning out past release. Heck who knows what UWE has planned once they remove the 1.0 feature lock.
I'll add to my previous statements. I think I remember someone mentioning Blizzard. This is another extremely important differentiation. UWE is a very small company. The sheer fact that such a company was able to pull together something of this quality is incredible. People are probably going to be used to big AAA game companies who can throw a good chunk of money at testing throughout the entire development cycle. UWE will probably draw extensively on their mod experience, and do a similar thing here... free updates for life, but give em time to dial in the perfection.
A point I want to make about GORGEous' post (which you should all read) is that it is not <i>necessary</i> to look at competitive matches (but can be helpful) to realize the things he said. All of the issues with 222/3 were obvious <b>on pubs</b> on the first couple days. Not just the issues with skulk, but how onos is almost overpowered (especially in comparison with the other lifeforms). This has been true for every build I participated in. The idea that competitive players and pub players are two radically different species isn't backed up by reality.
6v6 should not be used a baseline for balance. Games should be balanced around pubs while making sure competitive play isn't broken. If the game isn't fun in pubs then no one is going to give a single ###### about competitive play or want to watch it.
<!--quoteo(post=1995017:date=Oct 22 2012, 02:31 PM:name=SixtyWattMan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SixtyWattMan @ Oct 22 2012, 02:31 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1995017"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->6v6 should not be used a baseline for balance. Games should be balanced around pubs while making sure competitive play isn't broken. If the game isn't fun in pubs then no one is going to give a single ###### about competitive play or want to watch it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd argue the opposite. Competitive players will notice imbalances that do not matter in blunted pub play. Also, as pub players skill up their strategies, pub play will fall more and more inline with what competitive players do. You've already seen this -- in past builds when carapace first was always the first upgrade. Then that transitioned into celerity first. Competitive players demonstrated how much better celerity first was. As average skill and knowledge increased in pub games, they tended to follow the same trend as the competitive games.
Competitive games today are pub games a few weeks or months from now.
The main difference is organization, which can blunt strict timings like a GL + jp push or skulk rush. However, the defense to these strategies is also blunted and you'll still see pub play follow competitive play more often than not.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
edited October 2012
Typically, there is not enough time between patches for comp teams to explore every viable strat/tech path, which is why we get stuck in one to two major starts in comp matches. For example, ARCs have been chronically underused in comp matches lately until both Nexzil an Inversion used them effectively in the Logitech tourny. However, here's a list of NS2 features that need some changes to make them more viable and used: - Xenocide - Hallucination (Shade) - Echo (Shift) - Bombard (Whip) - Rupture (Cyst) - Many alien upgrades (hypermutation, camoflauge, feign death, regen) - Sentries - Flamethrower - Robo tech path
Lately it seems alien teams just get carapace after their early Onos and that's all you see for quite some time. You even see Celerity taking a back seat in most matches until the 10-15m+ mark. The alien economy and tech trees are in pretty bad shape.
Having 1 upgrade appear 8minutes into a game and seeing it be the only one researched/used in most games says a lot. Compare to NS1 where you had 3 different upgrades less than a minute into a game, and had 6 to choose from at the 5-8 minute mark when the 2nd hive went up. Upgrades used to vary the early game combat so much and make it much more interesting to play, from PoV of both sides.
I think there are a lot of comments on here from people who have never played competitively, or played competitively at quite a high level. So I am inclined to see the negative comments towards competitive play as ignorance. Sorry if that offends people.
I quite welcome a good point of view, but I see comments on here and know from previous experience that they are quite flawed.
I think a good point Gorgeous makes is also to do with timings, such as 7 min Onos. In pubs the tech tends to stack up over time, and then pretty much everything drops onto the field before one team gains the edge and steam rolls the other team with a few Oni.
A competitive scene is usually the sign of a very broad/deep and very well balanced game. Once something becomes OP the game loses depth, and thus the competitive scene suffers from linear gameplay.
Why oh why do I keep seeing comments about pubs not being fun because things are based round competitive play? If you have ever played competitively you would realise that it is 100x more fun and satisfying than pub play. You are playing exactly the same game as pubbers, just as efficiently as possible.
6v6/8v8/1v1 this is player count, not whether a game is competitive or not.
In my experience, 5v5/6v6 has always been a competitive player count mainly because of organisation. It is quite hard to get 6 people playing regularly together. I have played 8v8, 12v12, and someone either crashes or has some other thing to attend to. Communication and other areas also tend to get a little bit messy, and it just seems to work out as a nice number to play with.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited October 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1995075:date=Oct 22 2012, 08:29 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Oct 22 2012, 08:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1995075"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Typically, there is not enough time between patches for comp teams to explore every viable strat/tech path, which is why we get stuck in one to two major starts in comp matches. For example, ARCs have been chronically underused in comp matches lately until both Nexzil an Inversion used them effectively in the Logitech tourny. However, here's a list of NS2 features that need some changes to make them more viable and used: - Xenocide - Hallucination (Shade) - Echo (Shift) - Bombard (Whip) - Rupture (Cyst) - Sentries - Flamethrower - Robo tech path<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It's interesting to note that all the features you mention as being underused, also happen to be the features that create unwanted gameplay (at least from most comp players' pov).
<!--quoteo(post=1994711:date=Oct 22 2012, 05:44 AM:name=Imbalanxd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Imbalanxd @ Oct 22 2012, 05:44 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1994711"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Have you ever seen a competitive Dota game? Me neither. However, what I do know about the game is that certain heroes always feature, simply because their abilities are just so team oriented. Does that mean all the other heroes are weaker? I don't think so, I think its just a case of those heroes abilities not playing to the strengths of an organised team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It entirely does and this is the logic behind a tier list, in general a hero in tier 1 is god mode and always picked or banned, tier 2 is extremely good but not usually banned (often picked) 3 is rarely banned, not bad to play but not hte best and 4 and 5 are trash tier. Those in 4 and 5 are rarely used in pubs and concidered bad by any player with 30/40+ games.
If its not used and is totally laughable it needs to change.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1995100:date=Oct 22 2012, 01:04 PM:name=fanatic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fanatic @ Oct 22 2012, 01:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1995100"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's interesting to note that all the features you mention as being underused, also happen to be the features that create unwanted gameplay (at least from most comp players' pov).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> That's probably part of it as I've noticed that comp strats and tactics tend to filter into public play since the overall community is pretty small atm. I think much of the issue is that there never is enough time between patches for comp player to truly explore the potential of the least known elements, so its only natural to try to stick with either what you did last patch or what's familiar from NS1.
I would also add that specifically xenocide is not bad in itself, but when your sacrificing yourself to damage marines that can be fully healed by an armory before you even respawn, or kill a marine that will respawn before your do, it kind of feels pointless.
ZeikkoJoin Date: 2007-12-16Member: 63179Members, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester
<!--quoteo(post=1995116:date=Oct 22 2012, 10:17 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Oct 22 2012, 10:17 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1995116"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That's probably part of it as I've noticed that comp strats and tactics tend to filter into public play since the overall community is pretty small atm. I think much of the issue is that there never is enough time between patches for comp player to truly explore the potential of the least known elements, so its only natural to try to stick with either what you did last patch or what's familiar from NS1.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would say that all the teams that practice regularly (every day) try out many of the features and mechanics out often when they are changed in a patch or in other situations too. Most of the time they just are not viable in a competitive setting. Of course more time and players could bring some new strategies and build orders to the table but i think they're mostly just not viable.
Comments
One thing you want to keep in mind is regional differences in metagame/playstyle. In many games there's a significant difference and I know in NS1 we Americans would always make fun of the Euros for taking 8 minutes to get Armor 1. It also takes time for strategies and counter-strategies to evolve, so it would probably be helpful if there was time between patches to let the dust settle instead of making balance changes all the time.
This is honestly the best point in the thread.
Competitive players are and will always be the "best" players in NS2 in the sense that they will use the best strategies available to them. The game is open to metagame shifts as people discover how to beat said strategies. I've seen some metagame shifting over the past 2-3 weeks. It is happening in NS2.
However, more importantly than the metagame shifting is the weekly or biweekly patches. For example, b222/b223 introduced a smaller bite cone for melee (aka all aliens). What aliens rely on their melee? Skulks, Lerks, Fades. All these were just nerfed. Everyone is relying on onos even more because his strength is in his tank-ability. The other lifeforms rely on getting in, getting a kill (or hitting a bite or two) and getting out. If now it is harder to land your bites, then it becomes harder to execute this while the onos is still its overpowered goodness. Thus, onos -- every single game.
Also, some of the mechanics of the current collision severely favor certain strategies. When a skulk or fade hit a marine while the marine is jumping, they go flying backward 5-10 feet. Then the marine kills the alien. I think (?) this is a bug. It's pretty broken and because of it, you see almost every marine team play hyper-aggressively in the first 5 minutes. You'll watch a pair of competitive marines walk across the map and kill 8 skulks because marines are always favored in this build. Always. Even in a 2v2 ambush situation, a marine can simply jump which leads to distance and gives him time to pick the skulk on him. It's even easier if marines position well and stagger themselves. Thus you see how a team like arc can walk with two marines from sub to atrium without building phase gates.
The second problem with collision is how marines walk over skulks. This has less impact than the bite->knockback effect, but is still important to mention because it greatly hinders skulk play. when you have ~1 foot leeway to position yourself and the marine can change direction and speed at any given time, even walking over you (which requires a 180 degree turn), then you are going to have a hard time competing with him.
Remember that an lmg kills a skulk in less than a second. Even if a skulk starts the fight in or near melee range, there is still a better-than-50/50 chance that the marine will win the fight due to the mechanics I've listed out. This is why skulk is so weak. This is why aliens are so weak. This is why aliens are so unfun to play. This is why every marine team is hyper aggressive and why every competitive team favors marines over aliens. This is why every team rushes fast second hive into 2-hive onos. Because you don't win games as aliens without an onos or a very lucky base rush.
TL;DR: Aliens, namely skulks, and fades, are not fun to play in competitive games because of a) the bite->knockback b) collision problems. 2 hive onos is imbalanced, overplayed, and does not require skill, but it is the only thing that keeps aliens from losing every single game against a team of good shooters.
(edit: I realize what I'm talking about has been "fixed" for b224, I am just writing my thoughts on what we've played for the past couple weeks)
I play Dota at a high level and observe competitive play all the time. it's not quite true. there are common heroes which are played more often. for pubs, <a href="https://dotabuff.com/heroes/played" target="_blank">dotabuff</a> says Pudge and Bounty Hunter are the most popular. for competitive play, there is a cute hero "tier" list that is maintained by <a href="http://esfiworld.com/news/dota-2-competitive-hero-tier-list-august-2012" target="_blank">ESFI</a>. the tiers simply represent what heroes are the flavor of the month, so to speak. that is the beautiful thing about Dota 2: there's actual metagame and strategy going into the thought process of balancing it. all the heroes that are currently popular right now are only popular because they are all good at the same thing: pushing down towers. in the past, there were other strategies: teams focused on ganking (killing enemy heroes), teams focused on turtling, teams focused on teamfighting, etc. and in general, pushing > turtling > ganking > pushing. and it's not exactly uncommon at all for teams to pick heroes in the last tier and focus a strategy revolving around them. at The International 2, I <strike>believe every single hero was picked at least once.</strike> 22 heroes were not picked. that's incredible when you consider the ~90 heroes they had at the time. pretty much all of those 22 heroes and more received massive buffs in the following patch, and now it's not uncommon to see the majority of them in a high level competitive game.
<a href="http://www.dota-academy.com/tournament/58/" target="_blank">http://www.dota-academy.com/tournament/58/</a>
tying this back to NS2: the abilities currently in popular use aren't in popular use because of metagame shifts. there is no such thing as metagame in NS2. it's simply <i>what's good</i>, period. NS2 doesn't have the same luxury as Dota's endless strategies, because every other alternative is terrible.
not just that, but look at the balance changes done by Icefrog in Dota:
<!--QuoteBegin-"http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.76"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ("http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.76")</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Gyrocopter
- Homing Missile distance required for max damage reduced from 2000 to 1500
- Homing Missile stun duration rescaled from 2.5 to 2.2/2.4/2.6/2.8
- Rocket Barrage damage increased from 11/14/17/20 to 11/15/19/23
Jakiro
- Ice Path creation delay increased from 0.4 to 0.5
- Ice Path manacost increased from 75 to 90
Krobelus
- Exorcism base ghost count increased from 4/10/18 to 4/12/21<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
these are incremental changes. less than half a second difference on a stun duration. a .1 second increase on animation time.
some examples from NS2 changelogs:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Skulk bite range reduced by 20% (skulk domination, this is much closer to NS1).
Reduced egg generation rate at hives by 25% - to help address the "zerg machine of doom" (thanks Zeikko!).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
these radical values do not represent metagame shifts. it seems to me like the balancing is done by looking at the small picture as opposed to overall goals. every single change should be backed by an overall goal with the unit's niche in the game. lerk speed decrease? what does that have to do with its role as a support? why buff spikes when they already perform the "harass/support" role perfectly already?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->However, more importantly than the metagame shifting is the weekly or biweekly patches. For example, b222/b223 introduced a smaller bite cone for melee (aka all aliens). What aliens rely on their melee? Skulks, Lerks, Fades. All these were just nerfed. Everyone is relying on onos even more because his strength is in his tank-ability. The other lifeforms rely on getting in, getting a kill (or hitting a bite or two) and getting out. If now it is harder to land your bites, then it becomes harder to execute this while the onos is still its overpowered goodness. Thus, onos -- every single game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
this is a great example of NS2 balancing by winrates instead of balancing by role. "skulks are doing well, what will help them do less well? nerfing bite?" as opposed to seeing the overall picture (skulks blow and can't perform their role as expendable fodder units).
I agree with all of the above. b224 will help (hopefully) a lot. It feels much more like WORK playing the current build as aliens versus the fun it should be. That being said, I think people who have stuck with aliens and worked their way through the agony of current situation of skulk will only be rewarded once b224 and beyond are released.
On a semi related note, I think people freaking out about wild balance changes should calm down. Keep in mind this is beta. My 2 cents, UWE is using the opportunity to get a feel for how changes affect game play (i.e. everything GORGEous has spelled out) while they can before release. I would expect to see finer tuning out past release. Heck who knows what UWE has planned once they remove the 1.0 feature lock.
I'd argue the opposite. Competitive players will notice imbalances that do not matter in blunted pub play. Also, as pub players skill up their strategies, pub play will fall more and more inline with what competitive players do. You've already seen this -- in past builds when carapace first was always the first upgrade. Then that transitioned into celerity first. Competitive players demonstrated how much better celerity first was. As average skill and knowledge increased in pub games, they tended to follow the same trend as the competitive games.
Competitive games today are pub games a few weeks or months from now.
The main difference is organization, which can blunt strict timings like a GL + jp push or skulk rush. However, the defense to these strategies is also blunted and you'll still see pub play follow competitive play more often than not.
- Xenocide
- Hallucination (Shade)
- Echo (Shift)
- Bombard (Whip)
- Rupture (Cyst)
- Many alien upgrades (hypermutation, camoflauge, feign death, regen)
- Sentries
- Flamethrower
- Robo tech path
Lately it seems alien teams just get carapace after their early Onos and that's all you see for quite some time. You even see Celerity taking a back seat in most matches until the 10-15m+ mark. The alien economy and tech trees are in pretty bad shape.
Having 1 upgrade appear 8minutes into a game and seeing it be the only one researched/used in most games says a lot. Compare to NS1 where you had 3 different upgrades less than a minute into a game, and had 6 to choose from at the 5-8 minute mark when the 2nd hive went up. Upgrades used to vary the early game combat so much and make it much more interesting to play, from PoV of both sides.
I quite welcome a good point of view, but I see comments on here and know from previous experience that they are quite flawed.
I think a good point Gorgeous makes is also to do with timings, such as 7 min Onos. In pubs the tech tends to stack up over time, and then pretty much everything drops onto the field before one team gains the edge and steam rolls the other team with a few Oni.
A competitive scene is usually the sign of a very broad/deep and very well balanced game. Once something becomes OP the game loses depth, and thus the competitive scene suffers from linear gameplay.
Why oh why do I keep seeing comments about pubs not being fun because things are based round competitive play? If you have ever played competitively you would realise that it is 100x more fun and satisfying than pub play. You are playing exactly the same game as pubbers, just as efficiently as possible.
6v6/8v8/1v1 this is player count, not whether a game is competitive or not.
In my experience, 5v5/6v6 has always been a competitive player count mainly because of organisation. It is quite hard to get 6 people playing regularly together. I have played 8v8, 12v12, and someone either crashes or has some other thing to attend to. Communication and other areas also tend to get a little bit messy, and it just seems to work out as a nice number to play with.
- Xenocide
- Hallucination (Shade)
- Echo (Shift)
- Bombard (Whip)
- Rupture (Cyst)
- Sentries
- Flamethrower
- Robo tech path<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's interesting to note that all the features you mention as being underused, also happen to be the features that create unwanted gameplay (at least from most comp players' pov).
It entirely does and this is the logic behind a tier list, in general a hero in tier 1 is god mode and always picked or banned, tier 2 is extremely good but not usually banned (often picked) 3 is rarely banned, not bad to play but not hte best and 4 and 5 are trash tier. Those in 4 and 5 are rarely used in pubs and concidered bad by any player with 30/40+ games.
If its not used and is totally laughable it needs to change.
That's probably part of it as I've noticed that comp strats and tactics tend to filter into public play since the overall community is pretty small atm. I think much of the issue is that there never is enough time between patches for comp player to truly explore the potential of the least known elements, so its only natural to try to stick with either what you did last patch or what's familiar from NS1.
I would say that all the teams that practice regularly (every day) try out many of the features and mechanics out often when they are changed in a patch or in other situations too. Most of the time they just are not viable in a competitive setting. Of course more time and players could bring some new strategies and build orders to the table but i think they're mostly just not viable.