How to break asymmetry: Marine sprint
Remedy
Join Date: 2011-06-16 Member: 104735Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2011-06-16 Member: 104735Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Here is the lua code for marine sprint time as you can see it says 12 seconds give or take the 2.
"// Max duration of sprint
SprintMixin.kMaxSprintTime = 12 // 2"
Movement is primary to aliens and aim is second.
Aim is primary to marines and movement is second.
All up if an alien enters a room he can only cover where he is, though a marine can cover wherever he can see. So he essentially he has a huge amount of area control over a skulk as soon as he enters a room. Why then are marines giving the same if not better movement to get quickly back to that advantage?
If marines have the ability to kill the enemy from any point of a room providing there is LOS, then why do they have such a long sprint duration to undermine the aliens having even the smallest amount of time to rally numbers and get into ambushing positions. Aliens rarely have time to set up ambushes and make use of their advantages, because they are always trying to run between aliens structures which are constantly being attack by marines. Marines only get a slap on the wrist for not playing carefully, but aliens get the noose.
Where this goes wrong is the fact that if you lose a fight as marines you start respawning straight after death, then you can sprint for 10-12 seconds and cover a lot of the distance back to where that engagement was if not all of it. Then once your sprint has ran out you still have your ranged advantage and the ability to jump to avoid skulks which are probably still hurting from the last fight. Check the typical hiding spots and presto you have that map control back.
Now if the aliens lose a fight they have to wait for 8 seconds give or take and then have to get back to that area to contest it again, though even if you make it back to that room you still need to close the gap on the enemy to kill them. Now you have to come knocking through the front door, which any attentive marine can spot you and start shooting you down. He may be hurting from the last engagement, but you still need to try close the gap.
Then why do marines have even if not better map flow against the aliens at the start of the round and then are allowed to get phase tech well before aliens get leap and celerity?
10-12 seconds is too much.
"// Max duration of sprint
SprintMixin.kMaxSprintTime = 12 // 2"
Movement is primary to aliens and aim is second.
Aim is primary to marines and movement is second.
All up if an alien enters a room he can only cover where he is, though a marine can cover wherever he can see. So he essentially he has a huge amount of area control over a skulk as soon as he enters a room. Why then are marines giving the same if not better movement to get quickly back to that advantage?
If marines have the ability to kill the enemy from any point of a room providing there is LOS, then why do they have such a long sprint duration to undermine the aliens having even the smallest amount of time to rally numbers and get into ambushing positions. Aliens rarely have time to set up ambushes and make use of their advantages, because they are always trying to run between aliens structures which are constantly being attack by marines. Marines only get a slap on the wrist for not playing carefully, but aliens get the noose.
Where this goes wrong is the fact that if you lose a fight as marines you start respawning straight after death, then you can sprint for 10-12 seconds and cover a lot of the distance back to where that engagement was if not all of it. Then once your sprint has ran out you still have your ranged advantage and the ability to jump to avoid skulks which are probably still hurting from the last fight. Check the typical hiding spots and presto you have that map control back.
Now if the aliens lose a fight they have to wait for 8 seconds give or take and then have to get back to that area to contest it again, though even if you make it back to that room you still need to close the gap on the enemy to kill them. Now you have to come knocking through the front door, which any attentive marine can spot you and start shooting you down. He may be hurting from the last engagement, but you still need to try close the gap.
Then why do marines have even if not better map flow against the aliens at the start of the round and then are allowed to get phase tech well before aliens get leap and celerity?
10-12 seconds is too much.
Comments
At the very least, max sprint time needs to be halved. It's ridiculous that the ranged team has more mobility advantages. Needs to be the other way around, this isn't rocket science. This is more retarded than offensive sentries.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Hell, my hunting dog can sprint, so why can't skulks?
I mean who way you can run as fast and far as marine do in this game and then suddenly just aiming with no recoil.
even when you shoot in real life you hold you breath and keep it steady, running 500-1000 meter with full armor and weapons and then shooting 100%accuracy thats silly.
Its the only real option, and still ofcourse the sprint time is way to long, is there even a cap on it? if there is, i have never reached it, and i could swear that i run faster with the smaller weapons out, as much sense as that doesnt make, as the other weapons doesnt just vanish off youre back.
The more weapons, jetpack you have on the slower / shorter you should be able to sprint. It can be easily done by having a bare displaying when you sprint.
then there will be a greyed out areas that has taken some of that bar as to show how much penalty you have to spring because of gear and weapons and thus you cannot run as fast as a skulk.
Sometimes i can swear that marines can run just as fast as me as skulk, i cannot outrun them.
even to someone like me, its plainly obvious that a melee class should always have more health and more mobility than ranged, because ranged have range, this they should be weaker and run slower, i mean thats logic 101?. its even worse in this game, because there is no recoil its just sprint stop hold down trigger and stuff dies. imagine if marines had to fire in short bursts, you know actually using skill :P lol
<!--quoteo(post=2008081:date=Nov 3 2012, 07:26 AM:name=Romolski)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Romolski @ Nov 3 2012, 07:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2008081"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Could just give a sprint function to the Aliens. You know, make them super-retard fast for a short duration. Shift-walking is fine (should be alt imo), but most the time I found the need to close the gap a bigger priority.
Hell, my hunting dog can sprint, so why can't skulks?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Maybe make SHIFT key always a sprint for aliens, and CTRL is slow walk. Right now I think CTRL does nothing for most lifeforms.
Lets see, current:
Gorge - shift is belly slide, basically sprint.
Skulk - shift is slow walk, opposite of sprint.
Onos - shift is charge, so sprint.
Fade - shift is shadow-step, kinda sprint.
Lerk - shift is roost, nothing to do with moving.
Should be:
Gorge - shift as bellyslide, ctrl as silent walk? Gorges are already nearly silent.
Skulk - shift as charge, ctrl as silent walk.
Onos - Shift as charge, ctrl as crouch/silent walk
Fade - Shift as shadowstep, ctrl as crouch/silent walk. Again I think fades are nearly silent anyway.
Lerk - Shift as dive? Ctrl as roost?
I recorded some sprint times from the same starting locations for both teams and the marines are about %15-20 slower getting to the same location.
When I 'kill'ed in console and waited out the respawn time the aliens were around %20 slower to get to the same point from the same spawn room compared to the marines.
For the starting locations going to Crossroads for example this seems somewhat in favor of the aliens, though the ranged rules of engagement for marines pretty much means there is little time to get into the best possible ambush spot. Add in the fact that there are only a few seconds between the marines getting into crossroads they are most likely going to hear you and know to expect company.
So the initial start for marines and aliens can somewhat be balanced, but I wouldn't say there is much chance for aliens to use SHIFT walk to form an ambush as the marines will either hear you first if you don't shift walk or will see you if you do shift walk into position so that they don't hear you.
So the ranged factors of marines somewhat make that balanced against the aliens getting to location just slightly faster, but leaves little to no time to set up an ambush.
Though if you die as an alien it takes %20 longer to get to that location which marines still have that additional %15-20 leverage, because they engage at a distance. So for the matter of reinforcing a position marines get there faster and still have that ranged advantage. Also if you are trying to respawn in and back up your buddies at a location as an alien you still have that gap to close which marines don't once in that room. <!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->If marines can reinforce a fight as soon as they see it why are they allowed to spawn faster and get to the fight faster than the aliens?<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Add an aggressive phase gate in and you can see why aliens have such a hard time defending with pretty much no chance of countering that aggressive phase gate. Now if you have a phase gate you don't have to worry about sprint times, just spawn times which evidently are more biased to the marines. <!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->Though you may think phase gates take sprint out the question they can still sprint from that gate into combat. Even worse if they need to go back and defend the gate from some skulks flanking their push to kill phase gate they can sprint too.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
The fact that it already takes longer for aliens to respawn just means the marines can weld and drop mines where they see fit to secure that location so they can get back on the offensive.
Marine games are pretty much always a rush for phase gates and they still get 12 seconds of sprint time.
Gorge - shift as bellyslide, ctrl as silent walk? Gorges are already nearly silent.
Skulk - shift as charge, ctrl as silent walk.
Onos - Shift as charge, ctrl as crouch/silent walk
Fade - Shift as shadowstep, ctrl as crouch/silent walk. Again I think fades are nearly silent anyway.
Lerk - Shift as dive? Ctrl as roost?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ctrl cant be silent walk, ctrl is currently used to deactivate wall crawl as skulk.
Also... Do skulks really need MORE maneuverability energy draining things? They have leap already.
<!--quoteo(post=2008928:date=Nov 4 2012, 01:21 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 4 2012, 01:21 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2008928"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Would be interesting if sprint (with reduced duration, maybe only 4 seconds) was always immediately followed by a speed malus that would exactly cancel out how far you just ran, so sprint could be used for avoiding a situation very quickly, but would be useless for actually getting around.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Makes sence...
Could make is so if a marine sprints for 4 seconds he cant jump for 4 seconds afterwards.
If he runs for 12 seconds, no jump for 12 seconds...
I agree. I believe it works like so:
<ul><li>Holding shift gives you five seconds of sprint.</li><li>If you continue to move after the sprint, you move at a reduced speed.</li><li>In order to regenerate stamina and return to normal speed, you must stop and crouch for a bit.</li></ul>
It would have to be balanced.
In DOD, the stamina seems to regenerate quicker than it depletes, so people do this constant stop-go technique.
I think everyone is jumping the gun here and UWE should take baby steps here. No need to make 3 or 4 changes to the game to try and see if it alleviates one issue. I have found that to be a continual problem with NS2 throughout its development. Just do a minor tweak each build to solve an issue, then let the public playtest the results first.
Too many variables changing all at once in a single build can really throw balance imho.
Gorge - shift is belly slide, basically sprint.
Skulk - shift is slow walk, opposite of sprint.
Onos - shift is charge, so sprint.
Fade - shift is shadow-step, kinda sprint.
Lerk - shift is roost, nothing to do with moving.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:#FFC0CB--><span style="color:#FFC0CB"><!--/coloro-->Shift and Ctrl for aliens...
<i>Skulk: Shift = silent walk -- Ctrl = detach from walls/ceiling
Gorge: Shift = bellyslide -- Ctrl = silent walk
Lerk: Shift = roost on walls/ceiling -- Ctrl = move down/silent walk
Fade: Shift = shadowstep -- Ctrl = crouch (quiet)
Onos: Shift = charge -- Ctrl = crouch (quiet)</i>
But yeah, forgot about catalyst packs. Maybe once they're added we can see sprint removed? Catalyst would do the same thing anyway.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<i>Skulk: Shift = silent walk -- Ctrl = detach from walls/ceiling
Gorge: Shift = bellyslide -- Ctrl = silent walk
Lerk: Shift = roost on walls/ceiling -- Ctrl = move down/silent walk
Fade: Shift = shadowstep -- Ctrl = crouch (quiet)
Onos: Shift = charge -- Ctrl = crouch (quiet)</i>
But yeah, forgot about catalyst packs. Maybe once they're added we can see sprint removed? Catalyst would do the same thing anyway.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ah didn't realise that gorge and lerk already had silent walk. Guess skulk is the only one who is opposite of others.
Learn to play the game before suggesting changes.
Learn to wall jump. Learn to use leap in addition to wall jumping. You can get going so fast that it becomes difficult to understand where you've gone if you use those two things. I've never sprinted as a marine and thought, "man, I should probably stop for a second and get oriented." I've attempted to sprint DOZENS of times to get back to cover and a skulk has caught up and killed me without a problem. There's nothing wrong with the run speed or duration as it is now.
Stop trying to nerf marines and just learn how to play alien properly!
Learn to play the game before suggesting changes.
Learn to wall jump. Learn to use leap in addition to wall jumping. You can get going so fast that it becomes difficult to understand where you've gone if you use those two things. I've never sprinted as a marine and thought, "man, I should probably stop for a second and get oriented." I've attempted to sprint DOZENS of times to get back to cover and a skulk has caught up and killed me without a problem. There's nothing wrong with the run speed or duration as it is now.
Stop trying to nerf marines and just learn how to play alien properly!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Learn to play alien properly = learn to consistently outskill and outplay the marine team to do what you should've been able to do in the first place, you mean?
Funny, because any scrub with an LMG can do what 95% of the marine team spends doing - holding E or pointing and clicking on enemies. What happens when average players are on the alien team? They eat up eggs and don't advance.
Marine: Want to get away from a skulk? Hold shift.
Alien: Want to catch up to a marine? Use a complicated and vaguely unintuitive wall-leaping technique that requires a lot of practice and is still down to map geometry and doesn't always work totally reliably.
Is that what you just said? Because I think that's what you just said. You people acting as fanboy apologists for this half-finished game always conveniently ignore the point that's been made countless times before, that the game isn't balanced when one team has to try harder or work together better, or be more skilled to be competitive. All the noobs are going marine, so where does that leave all the pros to go? To the alien team. Who are ONLY winning 50% of the time. And almost exclusively because of 5-minute onos or 25-minute mass onos rush.
If anyone was to believe your rhetoric that the noobs are all flocking to marine, we'd be seeing 65% alien victories. Not just under 50%.
Let's do this: please identify the skills that are necessary to play each team.
Marines need to understand basic teamwork, to follow orders, and have good aim.
Aliens need to be able to understand advanced teamwork (they have much more reliance on each others' unique skills), have good aim, to know how to outsmart and ambush when the time is right, to chose the proper upgrade for their playstyle. You also need to know wall jumping, proper shadowshift / blink energy conservation, how to use a lerk without getting immediately shot down, and how to play as an effective gorge.
The marines need to understand one very simple playstyle that involves pointing and clicking and holding E sometimes, which covers exo, jetpack, shotgun, LMG, flamer, and grenade launcher usage. Aliens need to understand how to play five different lifeforms with totally different playstyles that have to work in synergy, <u>and they aren't even given proper tools to help them in doing this</u> (ie: neutered Hivesight).
Marines need to have a better commander, and the aliens can have a semi-active one and do well. That's really the only capacity where marine skills need to outweigh alien skills.
Funny, because any scrub with an LMG can do what 95% of the marine team spends doing - holding E or pointing and clicking on enemies. What happens when average players are on the alien team? They eat up eggs and don't advance.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And this is entirely because all FPS games play this way and we have years of experience doing it. Just learn to play aliens, it shouldn't take very long.
<!--quoteo(post=2009592:date=Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2009592"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marine: Want to get away from a skulk? Hold shift.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your funeral.
<!--quoteo(post=2009592:date=Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2009592"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Alien: Want to catch up to a marine? Use a complicated and vaguely unintuitive wall-leaping technique that requires a lot of practice and is still down to map geometry and doesn't always work totally reliably.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Also known as "learning to play the game". See my first response to this comment.
<!--quoteo(post=2009592:date=Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2009592"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Is that what you just said? Because I think that's what you just said. You people acting as fanboy apologists for this half-finished game always conveniently ignore the point that's been made countless times before, that the game isn't balanced when one team has to try harder or work together better, or be more skilled to be competitive. All the noobs are going marine, so where does that leave all the pros to go? To the alien team. Who are ONLY winning 50% of the time. And almost exclusively because of 5-minute onos or 25-minute mass onos rush.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you are having so much trouble playing alien, then just go to the "noob" marine team and stop whining. This version is far more balanced than the previous NS where aliens won the majority of the time. Now the marines actually have a few goodies for themselves (exos, which are still less power than an onos), and you think the aliens have nothing.
By the way: <i><b>"Who are ONLY winning 50% of the time."</b></i>
That sounds pretty balanced to me.
<!--quoteo(post=2009592:date=Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2009592"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If anyone was to believe your rhetoric that the noobs are all flocking to marine, we'd be seeing 65% alien victories. Not just under 50%.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I never said that. You did. So that's <i>your</i> rhetoric you're referencing.
<!--quoteo(post=2009592:date=Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 4 2012, 09:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2009592"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marines need to have a better commander, and the aliens can have a semi-active one and do well. That's really the only capacity where marine skills need to outweigh alien skills.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And it almost definitely results in the demise of the marine team if the comm does poorly. The alien comm doesn't have to do much and the alien players can organize themselves and win even if the alien com more or less sucks. You also don't have to worry about running out of ammo after 2-3 encounters and have to spam "I need ammo" for 2-5 minutes before getting killed by a lone skulk (which is how I die as marine at least 40% of the time).
I imagine that INT was your dump stat, wasn't it?
Learn to play the game before suggesting changes.
Learn to wall jump. Learn to use leap in addition to wall jumping. You can get going so fast that it becomes difficult to understand where you've gone if you use those two things. I've never sprinted as a marine and thought, "man, I should probably stop for a second and get oriented." I've attempted to sprint DOZENS of times to get back to cover and a skulk has caught up and killed me without a problem. There's nothing wrong with the run speed or duration as it is now.
Stop trying to nerf marines and just learn how to play alien properly!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I myself and some of the people here have been playing NS2 since the beta was out, not to mention ns. So saying people don't know how to play the game is a shrewd assumption.
Firstly walljump is great for skulks and is really useful, but this doesn't justify the fact that marines should have 12 seconds of sprint. Also walljump doesn't work so great everywhere for maintaining speed, yet marines can sprint as long as gravity remains. There are small repercussions for dying as a marine compared to aliens with the spawn and travel times. Also the fact that aliens have such buttery unmatured harvesters and marines can recycle their structures also shows how much the aliens get punished for dying.
So marines have this advantage and still keep it when they get phasetech up, which most familiar marines commanders first get.
Also there is a huge insignificance of killing 1 or 2 marines on an aggressive phasegate offensive, because they start respawning in 3 seconds or so have a phase next to their IP's and sprint back to the buddies at the front line all the while you're either dead or healing up. If you are trying to counter such a push by the marines as skulks you often are going to have to just try and stall them, because once several of you die you'll be bent over by the respawn times and start getting egg locked. Also I find when I'm trying to flank the phasegate location to take it out that I prefer my team is not killing any of them, because then you just get freshly spawned marines coming through the gate. Same goes for trying to force a beacon to their spawn.
Getting leap can help, but most marine teams will have a1 by then with shotguns. Even saving for a fade doesn't turn the push much as most smart marines will focus fire on the fade so he'll have to bail out and start healing up the skulks may get a kill or two, but they'll already be running back from that phase when the fade has healed up. And a teammate can shuffle your shotgun on the ground, but sprinting from the gate you will most likely get your gun back.
The reason players save for early onos is because its the only thing that can moderately meat the bullets ontop of the marines respawn/reinforcement rate.
You can't remove phasegates that is just stupid, but sprint seriously ###### over travel times even more for aliens and their lethargic egg spawn times.
This.
Do you have any idea how hilarious your first comment looks in a thread like this?
>...I'll say it 52346598743 more times if need be.
>Posts: 29
Responding to a thread created by a playtester, mapper, community veteran and all round nice guy who (as usual) presented a well written and reasoned argument. Further, the thread has contributions from a variety of regular, thoughtful forum goers who all agree with the OP. Your initial comment might have been relevant for a post created by someone who recently joined the forums making an ill-informed suggestion, but that clearly wasn't the case here. I normally wouldn't have mentioned any of this except your tone for both posts in this thread is particularly acidic.
<b>Now back to topic...</b>
I pretty much came to the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=122232&view=findpost&p=1997595" target="_blank">same conclusion</a> recently.
<!--quoteo(post=1997595:date=Oct 26 2012, 04:06 PM:name=Khyron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Khyron @ Oct 26 2012, 04:06 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1997595"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->At this stage sprint could be removed. Or the max sprint distance halved.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From memory, a large part of the reason why sprint was brought in was to redress game balance problems. Specifically at a time when marines were having a lot of trouble holding extractors. I thought sprint came in after phase gates were around, but I could be wrong. It would be helpful to be able to go back through the patch note history to check stuff like that but I don't think we have easily accessible/searchable public records going back that far, do we?
Basically I think the reasons why it was introduced have little to do with how it is being used now, and the way it is being used now is detrimental to the game. Broadly, the main problem I have with sprint is how it combines with fast spawn mechanics, and the combat strength of an A3/W3 marine - it makes for very effective suicide runs.
Last point, normally I would advocate minor tweaks as AussieKid suggested, but the difference between sprint and normal running isn't much to begin with.
I would love to try a couple games with that iteration. No more Usain Bolt Marines keeping up with my gorge's celerity drifts around 3-4 corners with downhill slopes in between...such nonsense! However I also wonder if removing it outright might also be going too far, too fast. Last thing I would want is to just tip the scale completely in the other direction, solving nothing in the process. Perhaps an incremental approach is best? Halve the duration (or more if needed), have it incur some sort of penalty, and/or give Aliens something to make up for the current imbalance (as has been suggested). If that's not enough to close the gap to something a bit more reasonable, then sure, start testing sprint's removal to see if that is indeed the measure that's needed to improve the game. And get it into testing sooner rather than later, before more of the community gets frustrated and server populations suffer/die off.
This game does sport some impressive balance for taking an asymmetrical approach, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still many improvements that can be made. "Learn2Play" is valid, to a point, but is not all encompassing to balance issues. Complacency and white-knighting everything can be just as bad, if not worse than uninformed/inexperienced players. As others have said, sometimes a pair of fresh eyes on a problem can be very useful.
Regardless, if the devs decide that everything is perfect regarding this issue (which could very well happen), there's always the possibility of modded servers offering the balanced gameplay many of us seek.