NS2:
- NS2 gave us the ARCs, that takes away the good base defense battle ns1 had.
- Hive 3 abilities are more or less useless, aliens are fine with 2 hives and enough res.
- Marine bases have the powernode as an achilles heel, a single alien can take out a base. Coordinated attacks are that much easier since they can focus on one target.
This is NS2. A different game. We should stop looking in the past and trying to make ns2 into ns1 with better graphics.
You mentioned those issued - they got to be fixed. But that doesn't mean that system should be returned to ns1 to avoid these issues.
Since you mentioned the advanced armory, let me continue my rant from above:
The advanced armory is meant to delay late marine tech. In ns1, marine tech relies solely on res and time to do that advanced armory upgrade. Aliens on the other hand relied on # of hives more than anything.
In ns2 you have a 2nd techpoint requirement for marines, which doesnt really make sense and the aliens depending more on res than hives.
This makes the decision making you mentioned so pointless, both teams need kind of everything at once. Marines cannot focus on securing all techpoints to deny the aliens their 2nd hive. The advanced armory itself does not do anything as of now, since all the weapons have to be researched separatly anyway. It kind of feels out of place.
It all boils down to a who got the most res battle, not much room for wits.
You mentioned 4 changes of my mod and tried to predict consequences. It has 17.
Major rework of economy and evolutions will make this mod another game. I want it to stay NS2. And I'm sure it fixes major issues it's way.
Reworking armory I wanted to make flames and nades more accessible. Prototype labs got additional price to partly compensate that "gate into new tech" thing.
Also, nerfed Whack makes nades a good siege weapon.
Since you mentioned the advanced armory, let me continue my rant from above:
The advanced armory is meant to delay late marine tech. In ns1, marine tech relies solely on res and time to do that advanced armory upgrade. Aliens on the other hand relied on # of hives more than anything.
In ns2 you have a 2nd techpoint requirement for marines, which doesnt really make sense and the aliens depending more on res than hives.
This makes the decision making you mentioned so pointless, both teams need kind of everything at once. Marines cannot focus on securing all techpoints to deny the aliens their 2nd hive. The advanced armory itself does not do anything as of now, since all the weapons have to be researched separatly anyway. It kind of feels out of place.
Post above.
It all boils down to a who got the most res battle, not much room for wits.
Lots of room for wits. Hallucinations, shift, unpredictable ability pick at second hive. All marines weapons at armory. A lot of place for variety from my point of view.
My point is Alien explosive economy is mostly fine, as soon as marines got bombs too. Mod gives them bombs.
Edit1:
Also, another discussion. Yes, aliens don't need players to build harvester and stuff. But aliens need to build cysts and building time is a lot higher. On the other hand marines with their almost instant building. And free power nodes.
The problem here is not aliens expanding, but marines having hard time holding what they've got. And mod adresses that issue too.
Edit2:
Also, second hive isn't that strong by itself. The issue is that Onos/Fade explosion times around it. Aliens can get that explosion even without second hive at all.
You mentioned 4 changes of my mod and tried to predict consequences. It has 17.
Major rework of economy and evolutions will make this mod another game. I want it to stay NS2. And I'm sure it fixes major issues it's way.
Reworking armory I wanted to make flames and nades more accessible. Prototype labs got additional price to partly compensate that "gate into new tech" thing.
Also, nerfed Whack makes nades a good siege weapon.
I could break down my feelings on each change if you like but I decided the wall of text from the 4 that stuck out to me the most would be enough. I'm just trying to offer some food for thought and constructive criticism to your ideas.
You know, intelligence is defined as being able to learn from experience. NS2 is not a different game from NS1, it is a sequel. Really, this is the same answer as always seems like you can just repeat what you read somewhere else.
I like that you try to do something about the imbalance with your balance mode but please stop hijacking other threads. You should focus on getting a gameserver to run that mod so people can try it and give constructive feedback. You should not mind those people who criticised your mod without even playing it.
PS: You should get your server admin to change his server name into <servername>+" running BigTracer's balance mod" or something like that. When it comes to playing mods, right now the server browser doesnt do it's job very good. All those yellow servers don't really tell me what i can expect.
You mentioned 4 changes of my mod and tried to predict consequences. It has 17.
Major rework of economy and evolutions will make this mod another game. I want it to stay NS2. And I'm sure it fixes major issues it's way.
Reworking armory I wanted to make flames and nades more accessible. Prototype labs got additional price to partly compensate that "gate into new tech" thing.
Also, nerfed Whack makes nades a good siege weapon.
I could break down my feelings on each change if you like but I decided the wall of text from the 4 that stuck out to me the most would be enough. I'm just trying to offer some food for thought and constructive criticism to your ideas.
Critisizing separate ideas doesn't reflect their impact on the whole picture. And frankly, I guess it's hard to give an unbiased opinion on that point. It's about trying it out on practice.
You know, intelligence is defined as being able to learn from experience. NS2 is not a different game from NS1, it is a sequel. Really, this is the same answer as always seems like you can just repeat what you read somewhere else.
I like that you try to do something about the imbalance with your balance mode but please stop hijacking other threads. You should focus on getting a gameserver to run that mod so people can try it and give constructive feedback. You should not mind those people who criticised your mod without even playing it.
PS: You should get your server admin to change his server name into <servername>+" running BigTracer's balance mod" or something like that. When it comes to playing mods, right now the server browser doesnt do it's job very good. All those yellow servers don't really tell me what i can expect.
Intelligence is also about finding new solutions.
I'm the server admin In mod's descriprion is mentioned how to find that server.
Quoted from wikipedia: [Intelligence is defined as] A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.
Critisizing separate ideas doesn't reflect their impact on the whole picture. And frankly, I guess it's hard to give an unbiased opinion on that point. It's about trying it out on practice.
A whole is but a sum of its parts. You can have a game be perfectly balanced but contain extremely awful unfun mechanics. Balance cannot happen exclusive to a holistic viewpoint. Sometimes a microscope is needed to look in places you wouldn't expect.
To be perfectly blunt, you need to learn to accept constructive criticism better. Whether you agree with my suppositions or not I have tried to present them in a respectful manner. Having you dismiss mine and others concerns with what seems to boil down to "you just don't get it" is flat frustrating at best.
Quoted from wikipedia: [Intelligence is defined as] A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.
Critisizing separate ideas doesn't reflect their impact on the whole picture. And frankly, I guess it's hard to give an unbiased opinion on that point. It's about trying it out on practice.
A whole is but a sum of its parts. You can have a game be perfectly balanced but contain extremely awful unfun mechanics. Balance cannot happen exclusive to a holistic viewpoint. Sometimes a microscope is needed to look in places you wouldn't expect.
To be perfectly blunt, you need to learn to accept constructive criticism better. Whether you agree with my suppositions or not I have tried to present them in a respectful manner. Having you dismiss mine and others concerns with what seems to boil down to "you just don't get it" is flat frustrating at best.
tl;dr check yo ego peepz b tryun 2 halp
It's a sum of it's parts, but the sum usually gets new qualtities, unpresent in it's parts. Ok, man, I got you.
No that's not the same. Obviously, intelligence is related to creativity and innovation but this is going too far off topic. In the first place, you took my intelligence annectote out of the context to make it fit to your needs without addressing what i was saying.
E.g.: You want to break free of a room with a wooden door and a walls. You try running against the wooden door and it doesnt work and it hurts. You know it hurts because wood is harder than your head, and you know stone is harder than wood. Will an intelligent being try to run with his head against the stone wall?
To find new solutions you have to know why other approaches do not work. That is how most scientific papers i read go alon somewhere in the introduction. Approach X to do Y is suboptimal because of Z. By using approach A, we reduce the effects of Z therefore get Y in better quality/time/etc.
Imbalance can actually be a good opportunity to remove some of the less enjoyable aspects of the game. For example, do people like the fact that the public end-game is dominated by high-hp, slow-moving, easy-to-hit onoses where the optimal tactic is frequently to ignore all player-interaction with a couple of gorges? I would say no. I won't postulate solutions here (and it may well be that this endemic of the points xarius makes anyway) but my point is that, where possible, imbalances should be tackled in such a way that we see the least attractive - but powerful - parts removed first.
I tried to aim really hard and got to the top of the marine team. And team was good overal. And good commander. But aliens were good too. Guess what? Choo-choo.
Marines win only if they are far more skilled. Let's see how 240 turns out.
This is a question/addition to the cyst modification idea.
What if cysts were given a maturity system (If they don't already have one)
Add a mechanic that makes a cyst only generate infestation if it's connected to a fully matured cyst (One that's produced its maximum amount of infestation) or a matured hive.
Allow heal spray to increase the "maturation" of the cyst, increasing the rate at which their Infestation spreads. This would allow gorges to aid the commander while simultaneously navigating the map to important objectives. Once the Aliens have control of an area re-cysting would be as it is now. This would slow down the alien's early game without becoming a babysitting mechanic, and by mid game or possibly even sooner it wouldn't be noticed much at all.
It's virtually identical to the system that's currently in place, it would just make the Kham rely on his team a bit more for spreading into far off territory more quickly.
May be a silly idea, just wanted to throw it out there.
What if cysts were given a maturity system (If they don't already have one)
Add a mechanic that makes a cyst only generate infestation if it's connected to a fully matured cyst (One that's produced its maximum amount of infestation) or a matured hive.
Allow heal spray to increase the "maturation" of the cyst,
Cysts do mature.
Your system would absolutely cripple the aliens when they play against marines that attack the cyst chain.
You added another boring task for the gorge where he needs to "hold mouse2" on something. That's not fun!
Why do marines have to do boring things like hold e for the whole game?
There is no black and white. That means, you are right partially. If those "holding e" tasks come up to much, it gets boring. In my personal opinion building as marine has a kind of tension most times. Sure, not in base. This is when it is boring. (Ever tried building a robotic factory alone?) But building a ninja pg or even a RT near the front line is not boring.
Compare this to the gorge that heals up a RT or Hive. Most times there will never be a marine that comes to disturb him. So there is no tension. Its just a boring task.
I hope you can see the differences now and that all depends on the amount of time spend to such mechanics. They are necessary in a RTS / FPS hybrid. But we shouldn't go over the top with them. And in no case should we increase their amount, because we want to balance the game. We should balance the game with fun mechanics.
Sometimes, building a robo factory alone gives you the mental break you need in the middle of an intense battle.
Had a 55 minute game on ENSL the other day as marines. 2 very evenly matched teams, lots of to and fro, many, many harvesters and extractors died, several exos and oni died, many jetpacks and shotguns were lost, as were lerks and fades. In the end, we (marines) won it, but it was absolutely edge of the seat, non-stop, full-on action. Except for when I built a proto lab on my own. God I needed that break!
I still can't agree with the title of this thread, that the balance is 'horrendous.' There are plenty of games when I'm on that are not one-sided alien stompfests. PLENTY. 75:25 is bad balance, but 60:40 (as far as I can tell from NS2stats.org, almost all maps are within this), is very far from horrendous. Especially when you factor in the nature of the beast: asymmetry, random map spawns, putting together totally random groups of people with different experiences, plenty of new players in the last few months to name a few.
Let's see what Gorgeous brings us before throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Sometimes, building a robo factory alone gives you the mental break you need in the middle of an intense battle.
Had a 55 minute game on ENSL the other day as marines. 2 very evenly matched teams, lots of to and fro, many, many harvesters and extractors died, several exos and oni died, many jetpacks and shotguns were lost, as were lerks and fades. In the end, we (marines) won it, but it was absolutely edge of the seat, non-stop, full-on action. Except for when I built a proto lab on my own. God I needed that break!
I still can't agree with the title of this thread, that the balance is 'horrendous.' There are plenty of games when I'm on that are not one-sided alien stompfests. PLENTY. 75:25 is bad balance, but 60:40 (as far as I can tell from NS2stats.org, almost all maps are within this), is very far from horrendous. Especially when you factor in the nature of the beast: asymmetry, random map spawns, putting together totally random groups of people with different experiences, plenty of new players in the last few months to name a few.
Let's see what Gorgeous brings us before throwing the baby out with the bath water.
NS2stats doesnt show the skill difference in those games, where teams sometimes lose due to skill gap between them. Competitive games show more realistic numbers. 70:30. Pretty much horrendous. Not to mention rines have only one viable build order, if the want to try to win.
Necro, i guess you never played ns1. If there are gorges out there in the early game, they make vulnerable targets and the marines are gonna hunt them down just like they do with harvesters now. Suddenly aliens have to put some skulks on gorge guard duty and you have much more peaceful early game phase.
A gorge building a building without any support feels the same tension as any marine, if not more because he actually invested 10 of his precious pres to become a gorge.
the OP does have a point, but since it's safe to say that NS2 is not balanced based on NS1; it can't be the culprit.
imo the main problem is that pub marines don't like running into alien infested areas. it's as simple as that. you often have ~5 marines clustered in a corridor; halted by a single skulk who's taunting them from the other end. later on this translates into the marines being incapable of killing any higher lifeform, because rarely do you have enough smart players to push forwards and bait/punish over-extending aliens.
on the other hand; the aliens don't have this problem because they have no option other than pushing forward. aliens don't have the temptation to camp a hundred miles away, and thus don't unnecessarily waste time nor give the other team a chance to be swimming in res.
the OP does have a point, but since it's safe to say that NS2 is not balanced based on NS1; it can't be the culprit.
imo the main problem is that pub marines don't like running into alien infested areas. it's as simple as that. you often have ~5 marines clustered in a corridor; halted by a single skulk who's taunting them from the other end. later on this translates into the marines being incapable of killing any higher lifeform, because rarely do you have enough smart players to push forwards and bait/punish over-extending aliens.
on the other hand; the aliens don't have this problem because they have no option other than pushing forward. aliens don't have the temptation to camp a hundred miles away, and thus don't unnecessarily waste time nor give the other team a chance to be swimming in res.
You described player-skill problem. No doubt, it exists. But economy problem is aliens get bigger toys a lot faster with less efforts. When two equally skilled teams meet, aliens usually win.
Necro, i guess you never played ns1. If there are gorges out there in the early game, they make vulnerable targets and the marines are gonna hunt them down just like they do with harvesters now. Suddenly aliens have to put some skulks on gorge guard duty and you have much more peaceful early game phase.
A gorge building a building without any support feels the same tension as any marine, if not more because he actually invested 10 of his precious pres to become a gorge.
I have played NS1 but this was years ago and I don't think it has any value in this discussion anyway.
I'm not against "early game gorges". In fact it would add to the game like you say. It would give marines more time to expand and less skulks harassing. But I'm against a boring task without any influence. The com drops the building and the gorge just has to hit mouse 2. That is boring for the gorge. And while there are some gorges even now, most of the time they don't get killed while building RTs or Hives. The tension with this task is at a minimum.
If gorges would be responsible for placing cysts, they would have a task that is important to the team AND gives them influence over what they are doing. They can try to hide the cysts (walls, ceilings). They can decide where to drop it. This is way more fun than just being the right-clicker for the com. It's even more asymmetrical to the marines AND increases the teamplay-dependency for the aliens.
Because you will get real balance, when both teams have the same amount of ways to fail. Right now, it's much easier to fail as marines. A bad com, bad teamplay, bad aim, ... Much can cost you the victory. Aliens have less ways to fail and thats why they win more often.
I can't say gorge in underused now. It just changed it's role from builder to support/offtank unit. Good alien team usually has 1-2 gorges to block crucial passages and actively defend them.
What if cysts were given a maturity system (If they don't already have one)
Add a mechanic that makes a cyst only generate infestation if it's connected to a fully matured cyst (One that's produced its maximum amount of infestation) or a matured hive.
Allow heal spray to increase the "maturation" of the cyst,
Cysts do mature.
Your system would absolutely cripple the aliens when they play against marines that attack the cyst chain.
You added another boring task for the gorge where he needs to "hold mouse2" on something. That's not fun!
I didn't add anything to the game, it was just an idea so don't say I did, you need to not be so defensive about your aliens and aggressive to ideas to change them. As it stands Aliens can cripple marines in multiple ways, cutting the cyst chain (the life blood of the aliens) should really do more damage than it does. This would just give aliens a reason to focus on some defense instead of just pure offense. (Save for the few players who gorge, who will nearly never get to enjoy a life as an onos in that game.)
I don't see what the problem is with giving players some busy work on both sides, yeah maybe this idea isn't the best one, but the concept of equaling out the playing field by letting both sides progress across the map at a similar rate with a similar amount of time invested by the opposing players is very valid.
I play marines and aliens both and I know from experience how much easier it is for the aliens to take the map compared to marines, they have nothing that slows down their advance like marines do, and the only things that can slow them down are marines making it behind the enemy lines to do so, which isn't always possible. There are far more ways to detect a marine on the field than there are to detect a skulk until mid game. Yes, you can say that if a player is skilled they can detect each other from longer distances than visual sight, but that's not touching on the issue of balance. In order to balance a game you have to take the idea of player skill and put it aside to make sure that the mechanics on both sides, although different, have the same progress to work ratio.
Try not to speak for the entire gaming community just because you don't want to have to actually aid in spreading across the map as an alien. That is your opinion, it may seem unfun to you, but there are many other players who have the exact opposite opinion, having mini objectives such as building structures, spreading your area of influence out and holding positions can be just as rewarding as achieving the highest K/D on your team.
Last thing I'd like to say on this is that the reason many players love the gorge is for their ability to actually DO something other than attack! They can change the environment, build a static defense unit, they're capable of attacking and defending and I've never once heard a player playing as one stop and say. "This isn't fun, I don't want to heal the hive, I don't want to heal spray my team or build the harvesters." Seems to me that the more work there is to do, the happier the gorges are.
What if cysts were given a maturity system (If they don't already have one)
Add a mechanic that makes a cyst only generate infestation if it's connected to a fully matured cyst (One that's produced its maximum amount of infestation) or a matured hive.
Allow heal spray to increase the "maturation" of the cyst,
Cysts do mature.
Your system would absolutely cripple the aliens when they play against marines that attack the cyst chain.
You added another boring task for the gorge where he needs to "hold mouse2" on something. That's not fun!
stuff
1.) I didn't want to come over aggressive. If you feel so, sorry.
2.) I don't disagree with your points in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd paragraph. I just don't like your solution and have reasoned why.
3.) I never speak for the whole community. I always speak for myself and from my opinion. I'm just sick of writing it in every of my post, because I think it should be logical that I do that.
Comments
This is NS2. A different game. We should stop looking in the past and trying to make ns2 into ns1 with better graphics.
You mentioned those issued - they got to be fixed. But that doesn't mean that system should be returned to ns1 to avoid these issues.
The advanced armory is meant to delay late marine tech. In ns1, marine tech relies solely on res and time to do that advanced armory upgrade. Aliens on the other hand relied on # of hives more than anything.
In ns2 you have a 2nd techpoint requirement for marines, which doesnt really make sense and the aliens depending more on res than hives.
This makes the decision making you mentioned so pointless, both teams need kind of everything at once. Marines cannot focus on securing all techpoints to deny the aliens their 2nd hive. The advanced armory itself does not do anything as of now, since all the weapons have to be researched separatly anyway. It kind of feels out of place.
It all boils down to a who got the most res battle, not much room for wits.
You mentioned 4 changes of my mod and tried to predict consequences. It has 17.
Major rework of economy and evolutions will make this mod another game. I want it to stay NS2. And I'm sure it fixes major issues it's way.
Reworking armory I wanted to make flames and nades more accessible. Prototype labs got additional price to partly compensate that "gate into new tech" thing.
Also, nerfed Whack makes nades a good siege weapon.
Post above.
Lots of room for wits. Hallucinations, shift, unpredictable ability pick at second hive. All marines weapons at armory. A lot of place for variety from my point of view.
Edit1:
Also, another discussion. Yes, aliens don't need players to build harvester and stuff. But aliens need to build cysts and building time is a lot higher. On the other hand marines with their almost instant building. And free power nodes.
The problem here is not aliens expanding, but marines having hard time holding what they've got. And mod adresses that issue too.
Edit2:
Also, second hive isn't that strong by itself. The issue is that Onos/Fade explosion times around it. Aliens can get that explosion even without second hive at all.
I like that you try to do something about the imbalance with your balance mode but please stop hijacking other threads. You should focus on getting a gameserver to run that mod so people can try it and give constructive feedback. You should not mind those people who criticised your mod without even playing it.
PS: You should get your server admin to change his server name into <servername>+" running BigTracer's balance mod" or something like that. When it comes to playing mods, right now the server browser doesnt do it's job very good. All those yellow servers don't really tell me what i can expect.
In the interest of getting a dev to read and understand the issue here, I don't see the summary in your google doc.
Critisizing separate ideas doesn't reflect their impact on the whole picture. And frankly, I guess it's hard to give an unbiased opinion on that point. It's about trying it out on practice.
I'm the server admin
Agreed, enough with the mod.
That doc is a summary itself. And very informative one, I must say.
Nope, that would be creativity or innovation.
Quoted from wikipedia: [Intelligence is defined as] A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.
A whole is but a sum of its parts. You can have a game be perfectly balanced but contain extremely awful unfun mechanics. Balance cannot happen exclusive to a holistic viewpoint. Sometimes a microscope is needed to look in places you wouldn't expect.
To be perfectly blunt, you need to learn to accept constructive criticism better. Whether you agree with my suppositions or not I have tried to present them in a respectful manner. Having you dismiss mine and others concerns with what seems to boil down to "you just don't get it" is flat frustrating at best.
tl;dr check yo ego peepz b tryun 2 halp
Solving problems != finding new solutions?
It's a sum of it's parts, but the sum usually gets new qualtities, unpresent in it's parts. Ok, man, I got you.
E.g.: You want to break free of a room with a wooden door and a walls. You try running against the wooden door and it doesnt work and it hurts. You know it hurts because wood is harder than your head, and you know stone is harder than wood. Will an intelligent being try to run with his head against the stone wall?
To find new solutions you have to know why other approaches do not work. That is how most scientific papers i read go alon somewhere in the introduction. Approach X to do Y is suboptimal because of Z. By using approach A, we reduce the effects of Z therefore get Y in better quality/time/etc.
Marines win only if they are far more skilled. Let's see how 240 turns out.
1. Skulk/Gorge - early.
2. Lerk - mid.
3. Fade/onos - late?
Then fade's power should be somehow limited in mid game either?
Had a game with a good alien team. We were mashing their main CC, when they didn't even have proto with 4 rts.
What if cysts were given a maturity system (If they don't already have one)
Add a mechanic that makes a cyst only generate infestation if it's connected to a fully matured cyst (One that's produced its maximum amount of infestation) or a matured hive.
Allow heal spray to increase the "maturation" of the cyst, increasing the rate at which their Infestation spreads. This would allow gorges to aid the commander while simultaneously navigating the map to important objectives. Once the Aliens have control of an area re-cysting would be as it is now. This would slow down the alien's early game without becoming a babysitting mechanic, and by mid game or possibly even sooner it wouldn't be noticed much at all.
It's virtually identical to the system that's currently in place, it would just make the Kham rely on his team a bit more for spreading into far off territory more quickly.
May be a silly idea, just wanted to throw it out there.
Cysts do mature.
Your system would absolutely cripple the aliens when they play against marines that attack the cyst chain.
You added another boring task for the gorge where he needs to "hold mouse2" on something. That's not fun!
There is no black and white. That means, you are right partially. If those "holding e" tasks come up to much, it gets boring. In my personal opinion building as marine has a kind of tension most times. Sure, not in base. This is when it is boring. (Ever tried building a robotic factory alone?) But building a ninja pg or even a RT near the front line is not boring.
Compare this to the gorge that heals up a RT or Hive. Most times there will never be a marine that comes to disturb him. So there is no tension. Its just a boring task.
I hope you can see the differences now and that all depends on the amount of time spend to such mechanics. They are necessary in a RTS / FPS hybrid. But we shouldn't go over the top with them. And in no case should we increase their amount, because we want to balance the game. We should balance the game with fun mechanics.
Had a 55 minute game on ENSL the other day as marines. 2 very evenly matched teams, lots of to and fro, many, many harvesters and extractors died, several exos and oni died, many jetpacks and shotguns were lost, as were lerks and fades. In the end, we (marines) won it, but it was absolutely edge of the seat, non-stop, full-on action. Except for when I built a proto lab on my own. God I needed that break!
I still can't agree with the title of this thread, that the balance is 'horrendous.' There are plenty of games when I'm on that are not one-sided alien stompfests. PLENTY. 75:25 is bad balance, but 60:40 (as far as I can tell from NS2stats.org, almost all maps are within this), is very far from horrendous. Especially when you factor in the nature of the beast: asymmetry, random map spawns, putting together totally random groups of people with different experiences, plenty of new players in the last few months to name a few.
Let's see what Gorgeous brings us before throwing the baby out with the bath water.
NS2stats doesnt show the skill difference in those games, where teams sometimes lose due to skill gap between them. Competitive games show more realistic numbers. 70:30. Pretty much horrendous. Not to mention rines have only one viable build order, if the want to try to win.
A gorge building a building without any support feels the same tension as any marine, if not more because he actually invested 10 of his precious pres to become a gorge.
imo the main problem is that pub marines don't like running into alien infested areas. it's as simple as that. you often have ~5 marines clustered in a corridor; halted by a single skulk who's taunting them from the other end. later on this translates into the marines being incapable of killing any higher lifeform, because rarely do you have enough smart players to push forwards and bait/punish over-extending aliens.
on the other hand; the aliens don't have this problem because they have no option other than pushing forward. aliens don't have the temptation to camp a hundred miles away, and thus don't unnecessarily waste time nor give the other team a chance to be swimming in res.
You described player-skill problem. No doubt, it exists. But economy problem is aliens get bigger toys a lot faster with less efforts. When two equally skilled teams meet, aliens usually win.
I have played NS1 but this was years ago and I don't think it has any value in this discussion anyway.
I'm not against "early game gorges". In fact it would add to the game like you say. It would give marines more time to expand and less skulks harassing. But I'm against a boring task without any influence. The com drops the building and the gorge just has to hit mouse 2. That is boring for the gorge. And while there are some gorges even now, most of the time they don't get killed while building RTs or Hives. The tension with this task is at a minimum.
If gorges would be responsible for placing cysts, they would have a task that is important to the team AND gives them influence over what they are doing. They can try to hide the cysts (walls, ceilings). They can decide where to drop it. This is way more fun than just being the right-clicker for the com. It's even more asymmetrical to the marines AND increases the teamplay-dependency for the aliens.
Because you will get real balance, when both teams have the same amount of ways to fail. Right now, it's much easier to fail as marines. A bad com, bad teamplay, bad aim, ... Much can cost you the victory. Aliens have less ways to fail and thats why they win more often.
I didn't add anything to the game, it was just an idea so don't say I did, you need to not be so defensive about your aliens and aggressive to ideas to change them. As it stands Aliens can cripple marines in multiple ways, cutting the cyst chain (the life blood of the aliens) should really do more damage than it does. This would just give aliens a reason to focus on some defense instead of just pure offense. (Save for the few players who gorge, who will nearly never get to enjoy a life as an onos in that game.)
I don't see what the problem is with giving players some busy work on both sides, yeah maybe this idea isn't the best one, but the concept of equaling out the playing field by letting both sides progress across the map at a similar rate with a similar amount of time invested by the opposing players is very valid.
I play marines and aliens both and I know from experience how much easier it is for the aliens to take the map compared to marines, they have nothing that slows down their advance like marines do, and the only things that can slow them down are marines making it behind the enemy lines to do so, which isn't always possible. There are far more ways to detect a marine on the field than there are to detect a skulk until mid game. Yes, you can say that if a player is skilled they can detect each other from longer distances than visual sight, but that's not touching on the issue of balance. In order to balance a game you have to take the idea of player skill and put it aside to make sure that the mechanics on both sides, although different, have the same progress to work ratio.
Try not to speak for the entire gaming community just because you don't want to have to actually aid in spreading across the map as an alien. That is your opinion, it may seem unfun to you, but there are many other players who have the exact opposite opinion, having mini objectives such as building structures, spreading your area of influence out and holding positions can be just as rewarding as achieving the highest K/D on your team.
Last thing I'd like to say on this is that the reason many players love the gorge is for their ability to actually DO something other than attack! They can change the environment, build a static defense unit, they're capable of attacking and defending and I've never once heard a player playing as one stop and say. "This isn't fun, I don't want to heal the hive, I don't want to heal spray my team or build the harvesters." Seems to me that the more work there is to do, the happier the gorges are.
1.) I didn't want to come over aggressive. If you feel so, sorry.
2.) I don't disagree with your points in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd paragraph. I just don't like your solution and have reasoned why.
3.) I never speak for the whole community. I always speak for myself and from my opinion. I'm just sick of writing it in every of my post, because I think it should be logical that I do that.