balance mod thoughts
Gliss
Join Date: 2003-03-23 Member: 14800Members, Constellation, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2003-03-23 Member: 14800Members, Constellation, NS2 Map Tester
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->O Removed Res While Dead (want to try this first before addressing lifeform explosion)
O Changed marine armor and damage upgrade costs from 15/25/35 to 20/30/40
O Upgrading Whips, Shifts and Shades to get their higher abilities costs 10 instead of 15
O Grenade launcher damage radius reduced from 8 to 6
O Marine respawn time increased from 7 to 9
O Nano-shield cooldown increased from 10 to 12
O EMP cooldown reduced from 8 to 6
O EMP now takes 65% of alien energy instead of 50%
O Fade health increased from 250 to 300
O Mine health/armor reduced from 80/10 to 60/10<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:#9932CC--><span style="color:#9932CC"><!--/coloro-->O Removed Res While Dead (want to try this first before addressing lifeform explosion)<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
excellent change for long-term, hopefully this one stays in. aliens may be slightly favored but this is the right change to make regardless of that
<!--coloro:#9932CC--><span style="color:#9932CC"><!--/coloro-->O Fade health increased from 250 to 300<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
it looks like this is being approached from an unnecessarily complicated direction. a flat HP increase isn't the best way to increase Fade survivability. the Fade balance between other weapons seems to be fine. it's only the weapons 3 shotgun that seems to throw this completely off. this is true against all lifeforms and structures. the -220 damage shot is just too much of a risk to stay in the middle of a fight even at full HP. what's worse is that the shotgun spread is still random, so there isn't much skill involved in dodging shotgun fire. all this change serves to do is make Fades more powerful against rifles while not affecting the real problem: the shotgun.
why not try these two universally agreed upon changes prior to something risky like a 50HP buff?
1. removal of Celerity's in-combat debuff
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=124013" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=124013</a>
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=121009" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=121009</a>
I don't see any reason for Celerity to be deactivated upon being shot. it does not work from any perspective. it's an unintuitive and hidden mechanic. it also doesn't really make sense to have people get used to moving at two speeds after they upgrade Celerity.
2. fix to random shotgun spread
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=119845" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....howtopic=119845</a>
the only way to balance the shotgun correctly is to have it work consistently so players are able to master a method of playing against it instead of being instagibbed at random distances.
<!--coloro:#9932CC--><span style="color:#9932CC"><!--/coloro-->O Mine health/armor reduced from 80/10 to 60/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
I'm having trouble understanding the change to mines, I don't think making them easier to spike or spit is going to help much with whatever problem they currently pose.
O Changed marine armor and damage upgrade costs from 15/25/35 to 20/30/40
O Upgrading Whips, Shifts and Shades to get their higher abilities costs 10 instead of 15
O Grenade launcher damage radius reduced from 8 to 6
O Marine respawn time increased from 7 to 9
O Nano-shield cooldown increased from 10 to 12
O EMP cooldown reduced from 8 to 6
O EMP now takes 65% of alien energy instead of 50%
O Fade health increased from 250 to 300
O Mine health/armor reduced from 80/10 to 60/10<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:#9932CC--><span style="color:#9932CC"><!--/coloro-->O Removed Res While Dead (want to try this first before addressing lifeform explosion)<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
excellent change for long-term, hopefully this one stays in. aliens may be slightly favored but this is the right change to make regardless of that
<!--coloro:#9932CC--><span style="color:#9932CC"><!--/coloro-->O Fade health increased from 250 to 300<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
it looks like this is being approached from an unnecessarily complicated direction. a flat HP increase isn't the best way to increase Fade survivability. the Fade balance between other weapons seems to be fine. it's only the weapons 3 shotgun that seems to throw this completely off. this is true against all lifeforms and structures. the -220 damage shot is just too much of a risk to stay in the middle of a fight even at full HP. what's worse is that the shotgun spread is still random, so there isn't much skill involved in dodging shotgun fire. all this change serves to do is make Fades more powerful against rifles while not affecting the real problem: the shotgun.
why not try these two universally agreed upon changes prior to something risky like a 50HP buff?
1. removal of Celerity's in-combat debuff
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=124013" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=124013</a>
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=121009" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=121009</a>
I don't see any reason for Celerity to be deactivated upon being shot. it does not work from any perspective. it's an unintuitive and hidden mechanic. it also doesn't really make sense to have people get used to moving at two speeds after they upgrade Celerity.
2. fix to random shotgun spread
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=119845" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....howtopic=119845</a>
the only way to balance the shotgun correctly is to have it work consistently so players are able to master a method of playing against it instead of being instagibbed at random distances.
<!--coloro:#9932CC--><span style="color:#9932CC"><!--/coloro-->O Mine health/armor reduced from 80/10 to 60/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
I'm having trouble understanding the change to mines, I don't think making them easier to spike or spit is going to help much with whatever problem they currently pose.
Comments
Regarding fade HP, if you think a w3 rifle is not a problem, well im not really sure what to say to that... In NS1 it was entirely possible to lmg solo a fade, and that was against a fade with 100 more effective HP versus the new fade's HP with carapace.... not even counting carapace on the NS1 fade. Couple that with NS2s tighter spread and players learning where to aim on the fade to land the majority of your bullets.. makes for very dead fades. Even currently with the hitreg issues I can generally deal 300+ damage to a blinking fade with the rifle on W3, with the old health that makes for 50 hp remaining without carapace. Consider that the fade is generally not always going to be blinking and that number tends to go up, to the point where you can 1 clip a fade with the rifle and still have bullets left. Shadow step does offer a less predictable path but has drawbacks of its own, mainly the fact that its still very traceable, and you dont have any of the blink effect confusion.
Throw in exos and the fade can basically be instantly killed. 50 HP is not as huge of a buff as you may think, but it does bear mentioning that shadowstep has become quite abuseable again, and the changes made there really should be reverted (blink cost decreased, shadowstep increased).
Celerity does need to be a flat bonus like NS1, for many reasons including the difficulty of actually determining if your in combat... Generally it still makes a large difference as your able to get closer that much easier. So the 'out of combat' focus of the upgrade is not really reflected in game.
Shotgun spread is a complicated issue, and suffers most from the hit detection issues. The current randomly rotated spread really shouldnt be nearly as troublesome as it is, considering NS1 had a totally random spread and was 10x more reliable. I am still waiting for any potential animation sync and hit detection issues to be stamped out before I would start really changing the shotgun.
1) Let's see about fade hp - this is probably just a starting point, instead of potentially overbuffing. I think fade did need more hp regardless to justify 50 pres. Now you need 2 full hits with w2 sg to kill non carafade instead of 1 and a partial. Agree about general problem of celerity incombat badness.
2) Agree. This was brought up by alot of us, -> what dragon said
3) Agree. More needs to be done - it doesn't address mine spam problem very much.
I feel the potential for the more skilled player to come out ahead is greater in rifle vs. Fade due to the gradual DPS as opposed to the burst damage of the shotgun, so there's just more flexibility when it comes to balancing it.
as far as the changes to upgrade costs... how do teams see this affecting the current marine strategy of no phase gate nonstop aggression?
Looks like we are going to see even more Alien wins.
I would suggest changing nano-shield to be a temporary +20armor boost instead of 50% damage reduction. That way you can tear up the nano shield while it's active, which you can't atm. it will always be 50% damage reduction until it goes away, no matter how many times you bite.
I would suggest changing nano-shield to be a temporary +20armor boost instead of 50% damage reduction. That way you can tear up the nano shield while it's active, which you can't atm. it will always be 50% damage reduction until it goes away, no matter how many times you bite.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hmmm... +20 armour boost for that amount of res would be kinda pointless no?
Perhaps double the current armour of the guy you nano (making it situationally useful as opposed to universally able to stop a marine dying ever) or make armour regenerate. (slowly)
This. Walljumping needs significant nerfs, though.
The changes in the mod are all good, although I doubt any of us care about EMP or whatever.
Does anybody in here actually even want MACs in the game? I sure don't.
I think infestation and power system designs suffer from this early redesign / quick fix problems from alpha, also. It would be cool to see a list of ideas of possible redesign for these elements of the game from everyone. I guess the biggest issue is that no one really has any idea how far UWE is willing to go in terms of altering or redesigning existing elements of the game so it's hard to make viable suggestions.
Walljumping needs serious help to actually positively affect gameplay, currently theres just too many things about it which are really problematic for gameplay.
Macs could prove useful for public play if they are changed slightly, but honestly the most effective thing they do currently is add the frustration of turtles and exos in pubs. Fighting exos with 5+ macs gets pretty old quickly.
Drifters are honestly best removed too as they remove arguably one of the few jobs the alien commander actually had, there is little use for the alien commanders forsight ability when you have something 10x better that doesnt require constant monitoring, and also can provide a buff for a measly 3 tres.
<!--QuoteBegin-"http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108447514"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ("http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108447514")</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Testing some changes, potentially for 236 (updated 1/03 6:05pm PST)
O Cysts now start with 25 health (down from 100)
O Increased minimum distance that Cysts can be placed near other Cysts (now 6 meters up from 2 meters)
O When Cyst is destroyed, it's infestation dies instantly (we will improve effect if we keep this)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
these changes all seem fine to me as a band-aid for the cyst spamming tactic that is ever so popular
<!--quoteo(post=2055500:date=Jan 3 2013, 12:24 PM:name=rantology)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rantology @ Jan 3 2013, 12:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2055500"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Macs and drifters suffer from role and purpose confusion, they both need to be re-evaluated closely. They were initially put into the game to be the primary builders for both teams and both have had this hallmark removed early in the alpha, since then they were given quick fixes to keep them useful... They were not well thought out designs in the long term though, since they have both developed problematic gameplay and performance issues..
I think infestation and power system designs suffer from this early redesign / quick fix problems from alpha, also. It would be cool to see a list of ideas of possible redesign for these elements of the game from everyone. I guess the biggest issue is that no one really has any idea how far UWE is willing to go in terms of altering or redesigning existing elements of the game so it's hard to make viable suggestions.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
yes - this is exactly why I made the post in the first place. it seems that most people generally agree that the issues with NS2 are fundamental in nature (MACs, Drifters, infestation, power nodes). adjusting values here and there will not accomplish much in terms of balance, gameplay, or fun.
jetpack - the jetpack in NS2 feels like a glorified high jump more than an actual jetpack, and the movement is incredibly limited.
nano-shield - incredibly powerful even in its current state. half of the time the walls get nano-shielded instead of players. I can't imagine what it would be like if it worked properly. I wouldn't mind a slight nerf to the shield itself as opposed to restricting it to buildings only. I am generally not a huge fan of limiting options for players, and I don't mind the "comeback" possibilities of a single shotgun nano-shielded against Fades - it just needs to be toned down.
walljump - we were told to expect a new revamped walljump "after 1.0", I'm not sure if that's planned in the January update or not.
shotgun - we were also told to expect a new shotgun spread a few patches ago, again I don't know how far away that update is.
Comeback possibilities with nanoshield is more or less not plausible - in the position where your loosing and are going to need to kill alot of lifeforms quickly, is the same position where the aliens have absolutely 0 reason to be playing riskily with their lifeforms. While that doesnt mean it wouldnt occasionally happen, against most teams thats not really something you should be seeing happen. The time it matters most is the times its overpowered - hive rushes and pressure situations where aliens need to kill marines, the same exact point where players will be risking their lifeform the most.
Cyst spam is a real problem, that has no good solution. Almost any and all nerfs to cyst can severally hurt alien early game play, a point where aliens are arguably the weakest. Plus they almost all have the same reduced effects on late game spam, where they only offer small improvements at best.
And my point about fade vs lmg is not that it is something to expect to happen, quite the contrary in high level play it would probably almost never happen. The point is how much damage you can do as a single lmg to a fade - the fade shouldn't have to be nearly as afraid of 2 rifle marines as he is currently.
Comeback possibilities with nanoshield is more or less not plausible - in the position where your loosing and are going to need to kill alot of lifeforms quickly, is the same position where the aliens have absolutely 0 reason to be playing riskily with their lifeforms. While that doesnt mean it wouldnt occasionally happen, against most teams thats not really something you should be seeing happen. The time it matters most is the times its overpowered - hive rushes and pressure situations where aliens need to kill marines, the same exact point where players will be risking their lifeform the most.
Cyst spam is a real problem, that has no good solution. Almost any and all nerfs to cyst can severally hurt alien early game play, a point where aliens are arguably the weakest. Plus they almost all have the same reduced effects on late game spam, where they only offer small improvements at best.
And my point about fade vs lmg is not that it is something to expect to happen, quite the contrary in high level play it would probably almost never happen. The point is how much damage you can do as a single lmg to a fade - the fade shouldn't have to be nearly as afraid of 2 rifle marines as he is currently.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem with hit detection is that the net code was developed for an RTS game when this is an FPS competitive shooter with RTS sprinkled on. There is a 250ms delay for online games regardless of how low your ping is which is consistent with the delay in most RTS'. If you ever played DotA 1 back on warcraft 3 you might remember that a lot of host used programs to make the game think you were playing LAN where the latency would be at your ping, this provided great fun as everyone was experiencing 10 to 15 times less latency.
What does this mean in NS2? It means when you shot at a skulk eating on a power node and you kill him before he moves.. its because on his screen you weren't there or shooting at him for the first quarter of the second you were firing (and getting off your first 10-12 rounds making the kill very easy). This also happens as a skulk when you attack a marine from behind at it takes them half a second to respond to that as well. Its not because their reactions are slow, go play Counter-strike and shoot someone in the back and tell me if you aren't getting sprayed at in under that first tenth of a second.
25hp is very little for a starting cyst. We tried this a long time ago and we found Marines would be able to kill the aliens expanding far too easily at the start of the game. Aliens could not expand at all because they spend all their resources replacing Cysts. I would say at the very lowest, 50hp to start with and no lower.
Infestation being removed immediately will take away some of the gameplay aspect of infestation, with the marines having to hold an area they're attacking for a short time in order to build. Just speed up the infestation receding by a factor of 2 and that should accomplish the desired effect without many gameplay issues.
I'm not seeing EMP used at all in any games I've played. I would suggest it's radius of effect be larger by a decent amount as well as the other changes suggested, though I'm not quite sure about the fade buff. The other changes I would agree with.
I find it absurd that an onos can accelerate faster and has better combat movement ability than my jetpacker does.
Also, the infestation insta-recede will pretty much make it so that whips can't be anywhere but right next to the hive (where you don't need cysts). Because anywhere else, a marine can just shoot down a cyst and it'll unroot the whip instantly. Also, it basically makes the echo whip bombard strategy completely useless - and we don't need any LESS viable strategies (and this was hardly viable as it was), and any more reasons just to stick to the regular strats.
Also, the infestation insta-recede will pretty much make it so that whips can't be anywhere but right next to the hive (where you don't need cysts). Because anywhere else, a marine can just shoot down a cyst and it'll unroot the whip instantly. Also, it basically makes the echo whip bombard strategy completely useless - and we don't need any LESS viable strategies (and this was hardly viable as it was), and any more reasons just to stick to the regular strats.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree on the latter part, the insta-recede will become a problem. The cyst spam have been a problem and will stay as a problem unless fixed, so good thing Charlie is working on this! We've seen cyst-spam + mist to give aliens insanely much more control over the map and completely denies marines building RTs for a long time, forcing them to fight against cysts instead.
I think this type of cyst-spam will become less of a problem if the change of minimal distance between cysts will be increased (just make sure it's not over the top, so we still can place cysts close to RT locations without to much of a hassle, to get the RT up as fast as possible). If the min distance change goes in, the aliens cant have that many cysts close to eachother making the mist-spam viable in regards to return of investment.
The low start-health on cysts sounds like a bad idéa, I think it's fine as it is now. Infestation to die instantly when a cyst is destroyed is not an option - maybe make it a bit faster, but not instantly remove the infestation (not even with neat animations).
Disclaimer: I have not tried the mod, I'm just reflecting over the changelog.
O Increased minimum distance that Cysts can be placed near other Cysts (now 6 meters up from 2 meters)
O When Cyst is destroyed, it's infestation dies instantly (we will improve effect if we keep this)
I like these changes in theory (from a balance side and a performance side) and will be interested to see how it plays out.
Also nerf the initial velocity of gorge bilebomb so that it isn't a boulder being launched from a 50 foot catapult. There is no reason an ability that does that much structure damage should be able to be arc'd over the Himalayas. This will indirectly fix a fair number of gorge bilebomb spots too. I think dropping it from 15 m/s to 9 is alright.
+1
Maybe with this change it will be worth it, but I doubt it.
I don't think MACs are really that viable in competitive games without the speed upgrade, and that's kinda expensive too so meh.