You know that 10% accuracy means 5 hits per lmg mag. That means you need 2 marines to kill 1 skulk. You need at least 20% accuracy as an absolute minimum in normal combat. You will need more if your marines are to take out eggs and hydras.
You should also learn that play-testers do not get to have any say in balancing the game. They're there to play in-house builds to test stability and have tea together in their clubhouse. That's it.
To clarify:
A) When something is painfully obvious that it will break balance, we scream and do have a say. If its anything less, the feedback comes from those many other sources that Flayra blogged about on the main page with visuals included, a few weeks ago. Our primary mission is definitely bugs, but occasionally we are asked for feedback, and of course we are constantly having our own discussions in the internal forums.
B)Tequila, not tea. pssh
That's how it was when I PT'd NS1. You will be asked- Just don't be shocked when it's ignored.
Eh, there's a difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." Even if the next build doesn't implement a given tester's idea that doesn't mean their contribution to the discussion about the next build was ignored or had no impact. The same goes for discussions in the public forums as well, I might add.
I am truly and honestly ready to give up on this game guys. I am not just blowing off steam or trolling my own thread. The sad part is I really love the concepts in this game. I think it has such great potenial. But I am so absoltely soured by the horrendous marines since build 239 that I don't think I can play any more. 25 games played, aliens have won 20. I swear to God, that is the ratio.
Some symptoms of a man who has had enough. All I do is play marines now. I do it to see just how much I can get upset at not only seeing the marines lose but losing myself game after game. I can sniff a marine loss within 3 minutes and I have been right every single time.
Its gotten so bad now that I am going off by myself each game, knowing I am going get killed but doing it anyway. Part of me thinks maybe A) I would some how kill as many skulks as kill me or Cut enough cyst chains or harvesters that I make a difference. Neither ever work out. All I do is go 2 and 12 and spend all my time filling an Infantry portal. Its bad. My attitude is bad. I am playing bad. I know it. I am fed up. I need a new game. I can't play this any more. Maybe if they actually balance the game someday and it shows it in stats. But right now.... I don't know. Maybe I'll go back for Battlefield 3 or CIV 5.
You failed me UWE, you really did. You are following some high ideals of a what you imagine the game should be and not looking at the real world at what the game is. Its no fun. And that is not how it should be. It didn't need to suck like this. A few minor changes and it wouldn't but you won't do it.
well ive just checked the Div 1 NA finals and even nexzil didnt managed to win against aliens - so how pub players can do? result: only worse aliens lose.
well ive just checked the Div 1 NA finals and even nexzil didnt managed to win against aliens - so how pub players can do? result: only worse aliens lose.
When you say "even" nexzil, that doesn't mean anything.
To be honest, the game isn't really any better or worse in terms of the win/loss ratio. It's still 60/40, but UWE will release a balance patch sooner or later. I'm hoping for sooner, since the OP isn't the only player who is losing the patience. I hear complaints in the games all the time.
Last night I played a game where marines absolutely dominated the map. I think pubs are a very hard way to measure the balance of each sides. There have been games where aliens have completely dominated, and visa versa. Most of the time what seems to be happening is certain players have chosen to go a side, and their skill level has dictated the outcome.
In a game like this there are strategies galore to handle certain situations. When you have differing levels of skill across sides that adds extra variables to the mix.
I will admit though that when I've commanded on Aliens it hasn't required as high a level of micro management as on marines, but I'm not sure if this is a balance issue, just the nature of the asymetrical gameplay. I still need my team mates to know what they're doing and coordinate with each other (onos / gorge combos etc) otherwise I can't expand anywhere.
If you've had a stream of losses on a server as a particular team it may be time to change servers, or get people to mix what teams they are picking.
I'd rather they made intelligent changes infrequently than making dumb changes every patch.
If they don't have a particular plan to adjust the game balance a particular patch, there's no sense in throwing in a bunch of number changes just to see if it works.
Competitive games are played in flipped pairs anyway, so the only thing having one side better than the other will do is increase the number of draws (as it becomes hard to achieve anything but a win for both teams with the 'better' side). The game certainly doesn't need to be 50/50 for competitive play, it's just helpful if it's closer.
I only see marines win when they clearly outclass the aliens from the first second onwards. That is because many players are fed up with easy alien victories and dont see any point in playing them.
It really has a lot to do with the server, makes me wonder at times whether endar has installed some bots on the monash servers...as we seem to encounter marines who from all accounts on the forums are not human players.
Marine victories are not hard, but its easier to lose the game as marines. Its not all about map control and this is a common mistake.
Docking is a great example, most teams want to spread out and cap as much of hte map as possible.
If the marines know what to do (ie push courtyard to stability and maintenance) its not hard to cripple the aliens economy.
From there winning is a formality (assuming you dont all fall asleep or stop trying).
Its gotten so bad now that I am going off by myself each game, knowing I am going get killed but doing it anyway. Part of me thinks maybe A) I would some how kill as many skulks as kill me or Cut enough cyst chains or harvesters that I make a difference. Neither ever work out. All I do is go 2 and 12 and spend all my time filling an Infantry portal.
That's pretty much my job every game. Run out of base on my lonesome and try and kill extractors and upgrades (and doing my best to avoid the front line and main routes that all the aliens are traveling). It forces the aliens into a defensive mode or they lose their structures, and early game losing RTs as aliens is just as bad if not worse than losing them as marines.
If they do go defensive then the rest of your team now has an easier job of taking the map, if they don't you've slowed down the time till higher lifeforms, and reduced the chance of crag/whip/egg spam.
Monash are the best servers in AUS IMO. Docking is just such a badly designed map, way too easy for rines.
Yes...the quality of those servers is second to none other I have played on, even with 70+ players....yes 70 plus ticks where still 15-20 in combat and 25-30 in normal running around.
Heck I have played some other aussie ISP hosted servers that played worse with 18 players than monash with 70+ active players.
The fact these servers have been up for a large portion of the pre-release beta means there are a lot of experienced reg's who know how games are won/lost.
Might explain why a lot of the aussies believe the game does not need as much of an overhaul as some others.
When camo first got buffed back to actually working the forums erupted with OMG aliens are so OP....yet it was rarely used on aussie servers.
Now I dont know exactly why but its not because aliens never tried it....the fact that most marine comms knew how to change their strats and how to exploit this relatively weak opening upgrade path.
Similarly docking has never been seen as alien friendly and its seen as marine heaven (courtyard....the vents that became passages (ie to maintenance...still scratching my head on that), I guess the take maintenance and or stab is pretty much a given for most comms.
Looking forward to varying marine starts again....hope that does happen as terminal makes the map too easy for them (though granted they could get some harsh starts when it was fully random).
Its gotten so bad now that I am going off by myself each game, knowing I am going get killed but doing it anyway. Part of me thinks maybe A) I would some how kill as many skulks as kill me or Cut enough cyst chains or harvesters that I make a difference. Neither ever work out. All I do is go 2 and 12 and spend all my time filling an Infantry portal.
That's pretty much my job every game. Run out of base on my lonesome and try and kill extractors and upgrades (and doing my best to avoid the front line and main routes that all the aliens are traveling). It forces the aliens into a defensive mode or they lose their structures, and early game losing RTs as aliens is just as bad if not worse than losing them as marines.
If they do go defensive then the rest of your team now has an easier job of taking the map, if they don't you've slowed down the time till higher lifeforms, and reduced the chance of crag/whip/egg spam.
Big +1, I do the same, sometimes to great effect. Though if the aliens put one player on 'rine control' using drifters, you won't have too much success. I find it generally only works against average pub alien teams. And you need to start hitting their economy right away, at the start you can often catch a harvester that's just being dropped. As the game progresses though it becomes increasingly more difficult (on most maps anyway) for marines to 'ninja' RTS the way aliens can throughout the game, simply because aliens will have lerks, fades, celerity and drifters as well as possible whips all easily preventing you from getting to their harvesters. And once aliens sit on 4 - 5 RTs uncontested it's almost always GG.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
I guess that has been my goal. Its an effort to stop the alien RT and stop yet another marine loss. But for me it isn't working. I can pop some cysts but who cares. Its 1 rez to re-drop it. Unless the alien comm is comotose, I've basically wasted my time. And meanwhile its me with my level 1 worthless LMG against 1 or more seemingly expert skulks jumping all around me, biting me every click. Result: I circle the infantry portal half the game. Good times. Been having alot of fun with this game lately. Thanks again to UWE for making such a fine balanaced game. If the game wasn't so broken I wouldn't feel it necessary to play it this way.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
It might be more interesting long term, but short term we'd get a fair amount of people complaining "lol SimCity: Kharaa Edition". I think it would bring something counter intuitive to an already complex game.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
I guess that has been my goal. Its an effort to stop the alien RT and stop yet another marine loss. But for me it isn't working. I can pop some cysts but who cares. Its 1 rez to re-drop it. Unless the alien comm is comotose, I've basically wasted my time. And meanwhile its me with my level 1 worthless LMG against 1 or more seemingly expert skulks jumping all around me, biting me every click. Result: I circle the infantry portal half the game. Good times. Been having alot of fun with this game lately. Thanks again to UWE for making such a fine balanaced game. If the game wasn't so broken I wouldn't feel it necessary to play it this way.
Mr Choke: you're the self-fulfilling prophesy, it would seem. You set out to fail then blame the game when it happens. I could say something trite like "wtf are you shooting cysts for?! You're alerting the aliens to your presence and not doing anything meaningful, try getting into the hive and taking an upgrade, or go straight for the newly dropped harvesters instead," but there's really no point, I suspect.
If you've already given up on the game mentally (it sounds like you have), then the best bet is to take a break for a while. But for the love of Clorf don't come back with the same attitude of 'marines always lose, what's the point', because if you think like that, you will act like that and not help your team, and you WILL lose.
If you can't bring yourself to work with teammates any more, you're just skewing your own results and you can't count the 20 losses from 25 games. If you had not been taking part in those games, running off on your own and not achieving anything while you do it, then are you sure they would still have been marine losses? Perhaps a more positively minded player would have joined and swung the game the other way round. If that's the case, then I'm afraid to say that at least some of those losses are your fault. I don't mean this to be harsh, but it sounds like you're self-flagellating...
There is definitely a place for having ninja marines sneaking into alien territory to cause damage and distraction. The difference between you and Emoo in this regard is that Emoo is doing it with confidence that he's doing some good for his team (and he probably isn't just cutting cysts, I guess). If you die a few times without achieving what you set out to do, you really HAVE to mix it up a bit, get some confidence back, reset your attitude to positive ("right, I'm going after comp lab res node this time, let's do this") and keep the aliens on their toes. If they know you're just going to the same place and they have a skulk who is consistently better than you (it happens to the majority of us!), then you're just feeding them kills!
I may regret this, but can I suggest you join me for a game when I next play (probably Thursday night, then a fair bit next week as the mrs is away with the baby visiting in-laws). I have a bunch of mates who play too, we use mics and teamwork and have a blast, even in those games we lose. I'm based in the UK, don't know where you are though so timing/pings might make this difficult. I'm not the best player, but I am positive about the game, and I do want to help you out of this dejection you've got about the game, if only to stop the seemingly relentless threads about 'oh woe is me, NS2 sucks!"
PM me if you're interested in some games. I have found a fair few decent servers where it's not team-stack central.
As per normal 8v8 servers:
Marine play, as it stands, is on a doomsday timer. Can the marines tech-up before the fade train comes out? If yes, then can they aim? If yes, then the marines can easily win.
In order to tech-up marines NEED to harass alien harvesters and hives in order to hold their own resource towers (RTs). Most of the time when I play pub games, marines play defensively till they get a second base up. This allows the alien team to constantly attack marine res and in effect, stop marine tech progress. Any pressure marines puts on a hive or harvester takes alien lifeforms off of their RTs. It really comes down to organization and objectives within the marine team.
That being said, yes the alien class is a lot more forgiving when it comes to team coordination and player skill. Yes I do feel like they are slightly over powered. I am confident UWE will release balance changes eventually. But like a different user posted, it would be silly to do so now since the content patch will throw a curve-ball into the balance machine. We will just have to wait and see how it plays out, then worry about balance changes.
You should also learn that play-testers do not get to have any say in balancing the game. They're there to play in-house builds to test stability and have tea together in their clubhouse. That's it.
To clarify:
A) When something is painfully obvious that it will break balance, we scream and do have a say. If its anything less, the feedback comes from those many other sources that Flayra blogged about on the main page with visuals included, a few weeks ago. Our primary mission is definitely bugs, but occasionally we are asked for feedback, and of course we are constantly having our own discussions in the internal forums.
B)Tequila, not tea. pssh
That's how it was when I PT'd NS1. You will be asked- Just don't be shocked when it's ignored.
Eh, there's a difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." Even if the next build doesn't implement a given tester's idea that doesn't mean their contribution to the discussion about the next build was ignored or had no impact. The same goes for discussions in the public forums as well, I might add.
I know that happens too, but I remember back in "The day" SEVERAL of us were outright ignored.
We said: PLEASE DO NOT ADD RES FOR KILL IN CLASSIC NS, IT WILL DESTROY THE GAME.
Actually, I think it was the awful experience of losing as aliens that had a big part to play. Once you're on the slippery slope, it's just a matter of playing the game out, waiting for the inevitable. This was frustrating for both teams, but was, and still is, worst for aliens when they lose. The insta-death from egg situation doesn't help in this regard, I think.
Actually, I think it was the awful experience of losing as aliens that had a big part to play. Once you're on the slippery slope, it's just a matter of playing the game out, waiting for the inevitable. This was frustrating for both teams, but was, and still is, worst for aliens when they lose. The insta-death from egg situation doesn't help in this regard, I think.
RFK was a Bad Idea™. It did horrible things to the game by taking a nearly disposable unit (skulk) and added a penalty (Marines get Res) for dying. It brought out the worst in the experienced vs newbie war (Stop dying, you are giving them free res!) and forced people to be too careful as a skulk. RFK added a nice coating of oil to the slippery slope for aliens.
Actually, I think it was the awful experience of losing as aliens that had a big part to play. Once you're on the slippery slope, it's just a matter of playing the game out, waiting for the inevitable. This was frustrating for both teams, but was, and still is, worst for aliens when they lose. The insta-death from egg situation doesn't help in this regard, I think.
RFK was a Bad Idea™. It did horrible things to the game by taking a nearly disposable unit (skulk) and added a penalty (Marines get Res) for dying. It brought out the worst in the experienced vs newbie war (Stop dying, you are giving them free res!) and forced people to be too careful as a skulk. RFK added a nice coating of oil to the slippery slope for aliens.
Don't forget that RFK allowed Marines to turtle a hive location until they were fully teched up and all had HA/HMG.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
I guess that has been my goal. Its an effort to stop the alien RT and stop yet another marine loss. But for me it isn't working. I can pop some cysts but who cares. Its 1 rez to re-drop it. Unless the alien comm is comotose, I've basically wasted my time. And meanwhile its me with my level 1 worthless LMG against 1 or more seemingly expert skulks jumping all around me, biting me every click. Result: I circle the infantry portal half the game. Good times. Been having alot of fun with this game lately. Thanks again to UWE for making such a fine balanaced game. If the game wasn't so broken I wouldn't feel it necessary to play it this way.
Heres a tip, if your not a crack marine, don't bother running off on your own. If you really feel like you "know" what to do, play on the best servers and you will find other marines that also know what to do, and believe it or not, marines will win fairly often. I am guessing you just play on any old random server. Try finding the popular servers among better players (KKG is often the best for pubbers in NA) and quite often you will find the marine team to be a well oiled teamwork machine. Of course sometimes you will still end up with a bunch of idiots, but just f4 and get a snack or somthing or go QQ on the forums a bit as that seems to be your hobby.
That said, the fact that your "popping some cysts" while running around solo tips me off that you in fact don't really know what to do.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
I guess that has been my goal. Its an effort to stop the alien RT and stop yet another marine loss. But for me it isn't working. I can pop some cysts but who cares. Its 1 rez to re-drop it. Unless the alien comm is comotose, I've basically wasted my time. And meanwhile its me with my level 1 worthless LMG against 1 or more seemingly expert skulks jumping all around me, biting me every click. Result: I circle the infantry portal half the game. Good times. Been having alot of fun with this game lately. Thanks again to UWE for making such a fine balanaced game. If the game wasn't so broken I wouldn't feel it necessary to play it this way.
Heres a tip, if your not a crack marine, don't bother running off on your own. If you really feel like you "know" what to do, play on the best servers and you will find other marines that also know what to do, and believe it or not, marines will win fairly often. I am guessing you just play on any old random server. Try finding the popular servers among better players (KKG is often the best for pubbers in NA) and quite often you will find the marine team to be a well oiled teamwork machine. Of course sometimes you will still end up with a bunch of idiots, but just f4 and get a snack or somthing or go QQ on the forums a bit as that seems to be your hobby.
That said, the fact that your "popping some cysts" while running around solo tips me off that you in fact don't really know what to do.
I do agree that KKG has the best pub players playing on it, however I do think that marines are not winning on their servers because of skill but more so of the player count of 24 players. I wish they had a server for 16-20 player servers as I don't find it too fun with 24 players, to me its chaos and performance is not as good on top of it all
Comments
Eh, there's a difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." Even if the next build doesn't implement a given tester's idea that doesn't mean their contribution to the discussion about the next build was ignored or had no impact. The same goes for discussions in the public forums as well, I might add.
Some symptoms of a man who has had enough. All I do is play marines now. I do it to see just how much I can get upset at not only seeing the marines lose but losing myself game after game. I can sniff a marine loss within 3 minutes and I have been right every single time.
Its gotten so bad now that I am going off by myself each game, knowing I am going get killed but doing it anyway. Part of me thinks maybe A) I would some how kill as many skulks as kill me or
You failed me UWE, you really did. You are following some high ideals of a what you imagine the game should be and not looking at the real world at what the game is. Its no fun. And that is not how it should be. It didn't need to suck like this. A few minor changes and it wouldn't but you won't do it.
Did I ask for any? No.
When you say "even" nexzil, that doesn't mean anything.
In a game like this there are strategies galore to handle certain situations. When you have differing levels of skill across sides that adds extra variables to the mix.
I will admit though that when I've commanded on Aliens it hasn't required as high a level of micro management as on marines, but I'm not sure if this is a balance issue, just the nature of the asymetrical gameplay. I still need my team mates to know what they're doing and coordinate with each other (onos / gorge combos etc) otherwise I can't expand anywhere.
If you've had a stream of losses on a server as a particular team it may be time to change servers, or get people to mix what teams they are picking.
If they don't have a particular plan to adjust the game balance a particular patch, there's no sense in throwing in a bunch of number changes just to see if it works.
Competitive games are played in flipped pairs anyway, so the only thing having one side better than the other will do is increase the number of draws (as it becomes hard to achieve anything but a win for both teams with the 'better' side). The game certainly doesn't need to be 50/50 for competitive play, it's just helpful if it's closer.
Marine victories are not hard, but its easier to lose the game as marines. Its not all about map control and this is a common mistake.
Docking is a great example, most teams want to spread out and cap as much of hte map as possible.
If the marines know what to do (ie push courtyard to stability and maintenance) its not hard to cripple the aliens economy.
From there winning is a formality (assuming you dont all fall asleep or stop trying).
That's pretty much my job every game. Run out of base on my lonesome and try and kill extractors and upgrades (and doing my best to avoid the front line and main routes that all the aliens are traveling). It forces the aliens into a defensive mode or they lose their structures, and early game losing RTs as aliens is just as bad if not worse than losing them as marines.
If they do go defensive then the rest of your team now has an easier job of taking the map, if they don't you've slowed down the time till higher lifeforms, and reduced the chance of crag/whip/egg spam.
Heck I have played some other aussie ISP hosted servers that played worse with 18 players than monash with 70+ active players.
The fact these servers have been up for a large portion of the pre-release beta means there are a lot of experienced reg's who know how games are won/lost.
Might explain why a lot of the aussies believe the game does not need as much of an overhaul as some others.
When camo first got buffed back to actually working the forums erupted with OMG aliens are so OP....yet it was rarely used on aussie servers.
Now I dont know exactly why but its not because aliens never tried it....the fact that most marine comms knew how to change their strats and how to exploit this relatively weak opening upgrade path.
Similarly docking has never been seen as alien friendly and its seen as marine heaven (courtyard....the vents that became passages (ie to maintenance...still scratching my head on that), I guess the take maintenance and or stab is pretty much a given for most comms.
Looking forward to varying marine starts again....hope that does happen as terminal makes the map too easy for them (though granted they could get some harsh starts when it was fully random).
lol Camo gone
Big +1, I do the same, sometimes to great effect. Though if the aliens put one player on 'rine control' using drifters, you won't have too much success. I find it generally only works against average pub alien teams. And you need to start hitting their economy right away, at the start you can often catch a harvester that's just being dropped. As the game progresses though it becomes increasingly more difficult (on most maps anyway) for marines to 'ninja' RTS the way aliens can throughout the game, simply because aliens will have lerks, fades, celerity and drifters as well as possible whips all easily preventing you from getting to their harvesters. And once aliens sit on 4 - 5 RTs uncontested it's almost always GG.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
I guess that has been my goal. Its an effort to stop the alien RT and stop yet another marine loss. But for me it isn't working. I can pop some cysts but who cares. Its 1 rez to re-drop it. Unless the alien comm is comotose, I've basically wasted my time. And meanwhile its me with my level 1 worthless LMG against 1 or more seemingly expert skulks jumping all around me, biting me every click. Result: I circle the infantry portal half the game. Good times. Been having alot of fun with this game lately. Thanks again to UWE for making such a fine balanaced game. If the game wasn't so broken I wouldn't feel it necessary to play it this way.
It might be more interesting long term, but short term we'd get a fair amount of people complaining "lol SimCity: Kharaa Edition". I think it would bring something counter intuitive to an already complex game.
Mr Choke: you're the self-fulfilling prophesy, it would seem. You set out to fail then blame the game when it happens. I could say something trite like "wtf are you shooting cysts for?! You're alerting the aliens to your presence and not doing anything meaningful, try getting into the hive and taking an upgrade, or go straight for the newly dropped harvesters instead," but there's really no point, I suspect.
If you've already given up on the game mentally (it sounds like you have), then the best bet is to take a break for a while. But for the love of Clorf don't come back with the same attitude of 'marines always lose, what's the point', because if you think like that, you will act like that and not help your team, and you WILL lose.
If you can't bring yourself to work with teammates any more, you're just skewing your own results and you can't count the 20 losses from 25 games. If you had not been taking part in those games, running off on your own and not achieving anything while you do it, then are you sure they would still have been marine losses? Perhaps a more positively minded player would have joined and swung the game the other way round. If that's the case, then I'm afraid to say that at least some of those losses are your fault. I don't mean this to be harsh, but it sounds like you're self-flagellating...
There is definitely a place for having ninja marines sneaking into alien territory to cause damage and distraction. The difference between you and Emoo in this regard is that Emoo is doing it with confidence that he's doing some good for his team (and he probably isn't just cutting cysts, I guess). If you die a few times without achieving what you set out to do, you really HAVE to mix it up a bit, get some confidence back, reset your attitude to positive ("right, I'm going after comp lab res node this time, let's do this") and keep the aliens on their toes. If they know you're just going to the same place and they have a skulk who is consistently better than you (it happens to the majority of us!), then you're just feeding them kills!
I may regret this, but can I suggest you join me for a game when I next play (probably Thursday night, then a fair bit next week as the mrs is away with the baby visiting in-laws). I have a bunch of mates who play too, we use mics and teamwork and have a blast, even in those games we lose. I'm based in the UK, don't know where you are though so timing/pings might make this difficult. I'm not the best player, but I am positive about the game, and I do want to help you out of this dejection you've got about the game, if only to stop the seemingly relentless threads about 'oh woe is me, NS2 sucks!"
PM me if you're interested in some games. I have found a fair few decent servers where it's not team-stack central.
Roo
As per normal 8v8 servers:
Marine play, as it stands, is on a doomsday timer. Can the marines tech-up before the fade train comes out? If yes, then can they aim? If yes, then the marines can easily win.
In order to tech-up marines NEED to harass alien harvesters and hives in order to hold their own resource towers (RTs). Most of the time when I play pub games, marines play defensively till they get a second base up. This allows the alien team to constantly attack marine res and in effect, stop marine tech progress. Any pressure marines puts on a hive or harvester takes alien lifeforms off of their RTs. It really comes down to organization and objectives within the marine team.
That being said, yes the alien class is a lot more forgiving when it comes to team coordination and player skill. Yes I do feel like they are slightly over powered. I am confident UWE will release balance changes eventually. But like a different user posted, it would be silly to do so now since the content patch will throw a curve-ball into the balance machine. We will just have to wait and see how it plays out, then worry about balance changes.
I know that happens too, but I remember back in "The day" SEVERAL of us were outright ignored.
We said: PLEASE DO NOT ADD RES FOR KILL IN CLASSIC NS, IT WILL DESTROY THE GAME.
We were ignored.
Insert snyde comment that "RFK didn't kill NS1, devour did" here.
Actually, I think it was the awful experience of losing as aliens that had a big part to play. Once you're on the slippery slope, it's just a matter of playing the game out, waiting for the inevitable. This was frustrating for both teams, but was, and still is, worst for aliens when they lose. The insta-death from egg situation doesn't help in this regard, I think.
RFK was a Bad Idea™. It did horrible things to the game by taking a nearly disposable unit (skulk) and added a penalty (Marines get Res) for dying. It brought out the worst in the experienced vs newbie war (Stop dying, you are giving them free res!) and forced people to be too careful as a skulk. RFK added a nice coating of oil to the slippery slope for aliens.
Don't forget that RFK allowed Marines to turtle a hive location until they were fully teched up and all had HA/HMG.
Heres a tip, if your not a crack marine, don't bother running off on your own. If you really feel like you "know" what to do, play on the best servers and you will find other marines that also know what to do, and believe it or not, marines will win fairly often. I am guessing you just play on any old random server. Try finding the popular servers among better players (KKG is often the best for pubbers in NA) and quite often you will find the marine team to be a well oiled teamwork machine. Of course sometimes you will still end up with a bunch of idiots, but just f4 and get a snack or somthing or go QQ on the forums a bit as that seems to be your hobby.
That said, the fact that your "popping some cysts" while running around solo tips me off that you in fact don't really know what to do.
I do agree that KKG has the best pub players playing on it, however I do think that marines are not winning on their servers because of skill but more so of the player count of 24 players. I wish they had a server for 16-20 player servers as I don't find it too fun with 24 players, to me its chaos and performance is not as good on top of it all