Can we make the Gorge more fun?
Madrawn
Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166535Members
Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166535Members
Hi, I'm not trying <i>to ######</i> (seriously? this is cencored? ok) to hatefully debate about balance here, but I'm a huge fan of supporting classes in games because they let me contribute to the team without having to dish out awesome reaction-times and letting me use a bit more thought than raw power. This is mostly a plea for UWE to make the Gorge more entertaining to play. Supporting classes are great at catching players who are basically just bad, they normally make you feel useful and like you're contributing even if you aren't able to compete with other players in a fight.
But somehow I feel like the Gorge is... kind of boring? It feels like nobody actually 'needs' you other than a Onos trying to break a siege and even they normally don't take notice of you. I feel like a sad fat kid trying to follow a Onos I'm healing who outruns me easily.
Here is a short list of things that annoy me while playing Gorge:
* The only way to support the commander is to help grow buildings, which takes forever. It isn't much fun to stare at building for 30 seconds holding down the 2nd mouse-button. I wouldn't mind doing this every now and then, but it seems to be the only thing I can do after I placed my 13 buildings I'm allowed to build.
* My buildings seem to be useless without me standing next to them, because Hydras seem to die way too fast or deal way too less damage to be viable against anything but one brain dead lone marine stumbling into them and not retreating. Maybe this is different for more Gorges together but on 8vs8 I'm often the only one. This leads to me having to wait near them hoping that I can be a bit useful in sometimes in the next 2-4 minutes or constantly trying to advance my defenses, which leads to:
* Hydras take pretty long building of infestation, which makes it almost impossible to build them right where they're needed right now, which leads the point above. Also:
* Every Hydra I place costs me 3 res, this means if I really try hard to build them when and where they're needed it basically strips me of the res I need to ever get to play one of the 'more fun' life forms.
* The 10 blob-thingy cap somehow makes me sad. It's most of the time barely enough to close an entrance with a thin pillar of blobs, just to get them blown up by 2-3 grenades or with 4 (or 8?) swipes of an eager marine. Give it a 10 seconds cooldown and a higher cap or make it cost res. I've just wasted an Onos in res building a tunnel system on the roof connecting two vents? I don't care, I feel like I did something, had fun and it probably looks cool and enhances immersion to have stuff like that in alien territory other than a green wall and marines still could rid of it with for example a flamethrower, maybe he then feels like the "anti-infestation"-weapon he's advertised in the armory and not like a self-defense air-refreshener. Just... just let me build something.
Boiled down I feel like the building capabilities of the Gorge are pretty meager and most Gorge gameplay consists of "run/stay here; hold M2 / or M1 if somehow in marine base and no Onos to heal; die a unlucky death or of old age; repeat".
I don't care if I'm helping my team while doing this if I'm not having fun. At first I play a game to have fun, not to win it. This may sound harsh, but if you haven't fun playing a game then it's basically work not a game.
I don't want to get into balance discussions, but I think something has to change. And increasing armor/dmg/speed won't cut it he doesn't need to be better at what he's doing right now, it has to be entertaining to play him or you'll never see him played much by casual players.
For example increase the building cap on those blobs, it's an awesome feature to somehow alter the map you're playing on and has huge creative potential strategy wise. Maybe give him different types of blobs, hard ones for cover and soft ones just for concealment or even completely different ones tentacles-like which allow skulks to climb upwards in those huge caves. Hell just make a global cap (number of players on aliens times 3 for Hydras and 10 for blobs) so the lone Gorge could build as many things as the alien team could anyways if it would be communicating and everyone took his turn as Gorge.
Or, as the Gorge has a better understanding what is happening right now around him, give him the feature to place 'ghosts' of buildings around him to which the commander can respond and build them, only let him place one ghost of each building at once so it doesn't get cluttered and let it fade after 15sec so com can safely ignore it. Right now there seems to be a huge gap between the alien com and his teammates.
Now I've run out of ideas for now. If you have ideas for yourself, or feel like discussing this without throwing a 'balance/L2P'-tantrum feel free to do so.
But somehow I feel like the Gorge is... kind of boring? It feels like nobody actually 'needs' you other than a Onos trying to break a siege and even they normally don't take notice of you. I feel like a sad fat kid trying to follow a Onos I'm healing who outruns me easily.
Here is a short list of things that annoy me while playing Gorge:
* The only way to support the commander is to help grow buildings, which takes forever. It isn't much fun to stare at building for 30 seconds holding down the 2nd mouse-button. I wouldn't mind doing this every now and then, but it seems to be the only thing I can do after I placed my 13 buildings I'm allowed to build.
* My buildings seem to be useless without me standing next to them, because Hydras seem to die way too fast or deal way too less damage to be viable against anything but one brain dead lone marine stumbling into them and not retreating. Maybe this is different for more Gorges together but on 8vs8 I'm often the only one. This leads to me having to wait near them hoping that I can be a bit useful in sometimes in the next 2-4 minutes or constantly trying to advance my defenses, which leads to:
* Hydras take pretty long building of infestation, which makes it almost impossible to build them right where they're needed right now, which leads the point above. Also:
* Every Hydra I place costs me 3 res, this means if I really try hard to build them when and where they're needed it basically strips me of the res I need to ever get to play one of the 'more fun' life forms.
* The 10 blob-thingy cap somehow makes me sad. It's most of the time barely enough to close an entrance with a thin pillar of blobs, just to get them blown up by 2-3 grenades or with 4 (or 8?) swipes of an eager marine. Give it a 10 seconds cooldown and a higher cap or make it cost res. I've just wasted an Onos in res building a tunnel system on the roof connecting two vents? I don't care, I feel like I did something, had fun and it probably looks cool and enhances immersion to have stuff like that in alien territory other than a green wall and marines still could rid of it with for example a flamethrower, maybe he then feels like the "anti-infestation"-weapon he's advertised in the armory and not like a self-defense air-refreshener. Just... just let me build something.
Boiled down I feel like the building capabilities of the Gorge are pretty meager and most Gorge gameplay consists of "run/stay here; hold M2 / or M1 if somehow in marine base and no Onos to heal; die a unlucky death or of old age; repeat".
I don't care if I'm helping my team while doing this if I'm not having fun. At first I play a game to have fun, not to win it. This may sound harsh, but if you haven't fun playing a game then it's basically work not a game.
I don't want to get into balance discussions, but I think something has to change. And increasing armor/dmg/speed won't cut it he doesn't need to be better at what he's doing right now, it has to be entertaining to play him or you'll never see him played much by casual players.
For example increase the building cap on those blobs, it's an awesome feature to somehow alter the map you're playing on and has huge creative potential strategy wise. Maybe give him different types of blobs, hard ones for cover and soft ones just for concealment or even completely different ones tentacles-like which allow skulks to climb upwards in those huge caves. Hell just make a global cap (number of players on aliens times 3 for Hydras and 10 for blobs) so the lone Gorge could build as many things as the alien team could anyways if it would be communicating and everyone took his turn as Gorge.
Or, as the Gorge has a better understanding what is happening right now around him, give him the feature to place 'ghosts' of buildings around him to which the commander can respond and build them, only let him place one ghost of each building at once so it doesn't get cluttered and let it fade after 15sec so com can safely ignore it. Right now there seems to be a huge gap between the alien com and his teammates.
Now I've run out of ideas for now. If you have ideas for yourself, or feel like discussing this without throwing a 'balance/L2P'-tantrum feel free to do so.
Comments
The idea of a class that can build, not just turrets, but, as you say, change the environment of the terrain is very attractive to me and is something I find quite entertaining, however, I'll agree that at this point, it's either useless or unhandy to work with.
Quick ideas:
- Hydras costing 1 res and/or making them more effective at DPS
- Higher clog limit, about 15, I can't close up bigger hallways. Or have them emit poison gas that deals short range damage to marines
- How about traps/mines as a third option? Cost 5 res each and releases toxic bile, dealing high DoT effects, slightly more damage than mines.
The clog idea is probably the most important. I've held off pushes with multiple marines with clogs and bile bomb while the rest of my team flanks and destroy a command center.
Why cant the george waste his ressource to build healing and cloak structures? I really wish he had that potential, to set up a camp by himself : 20 clogs, 1 healing or 1 cloaking structure ( with the upgrade done by commander first ), and the hydras.
If the Dev's are against adding other abilities I would not mind making it tougher to kill the Clogs and also make the Hydras more dangerous.
In all honesty, I have played Gorge a lot to try and figure out viable strategies and in that time I don't recall getting hydra kills more than 10 times in total of all my time played. Most of the kills I do get are secondary kills resulting from a wounded marine.
I tend to agree with this. Does anyone know the thinking behind removing Gorge abilities and giving them to an alien commander?
It seems to me that Natural Selection is big on having two very different teams. Therefore having the Gorge as your builder and removing the alien commander would be a big factor in making aliens hugely different to the marines. It also means playing Gorge is a lot more fun and valued for the team.
I don't see the need for an alien commander myself, although if a sweet spot between keeping the commander and making the Gorge more useful and fun could be found, I'd be all for that.
At the moment gorge seems a bit weak. The hydras are rather weak and are killed in no time. They could poison the enemy like the lerk bite so even if they are discovered they still deal some damage to an enemy.
Hmm, you just gave me an idea. What if an upgrade structure (Shell/Veil/Spur) would automatically unlock it's upgrades on completion, but the build time was much longer? (And the placement cost compensated.) This would mean the Kham would still need to research the hive time and place the building, but then the aliens would unlock all of that hives upgrades and make the Gorge more useful. (Since he can speed up it's construction.)
So assuming that won't happen, I agree that giving the gorges *something* more to do or ways to make themselves useful would be great, even if it's just being able to place more buildings. Being a marine and coming up against a clog-wall is an interesting challenge and can be a very effective defense at chokepoints if the gorge is there to maintain it. But if hydras were more powerful and more numerous, they could do a lot to help commanders maintain their cyst-trains, which currently is one of the more annoying parts of the comm experience.