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.
mmmmh... at average pub skill level; ranged weapons lead to passive playstyle - whether it's useful or detrimental to the team objective.
ergo it's generally the marines who end up being stomped due to overly passive play.
there are other small factors, such as the building. 'average' marines don't look at the map and see where they're best needed until AFTER they've finished building X structure with a bunch of other average marines. at the end of a game, that build stacking probably accounted for 5-10 minutes of time where a marine was doing something useless a.k.a. not in the game.
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.
mmmmh... at average pub skill level; ranged weapons lead to passive playstyle - whether it's useful or detrimental to the team objective.
ergo it's generally the marines who end up being stomped due to overly passive play.
there are other small factors, such as the building. 'average' marines don't look at the map and see where they're best needed until AFTER they've finished building X structure with a bunch of other average marines. at the end of a game, that build stacking probably accounted for 5-10 minutes of time where a marine was doing something useless a.k.a. not in the game.
Ok. I expected more from an average pub player
Marines' toys take a lot of research and a lot of resources.
Advanced Armory = 20 res, Second CC = 15, Proto = 40, Both exo research = 50. Totals in 125 res. And aliens need none to make a choo-choo train. That's one of the global issues.
And in addition - we get some tricky fades even earlier. Pretty hard times for marines.
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.
mmmmh... at average pub skill level; ranged weapons lead to passive playstyle - whether it's useful or detrimental to the team objective.
ergo it's generally the marines who end up being stomped due to overly passive play.
there are other small factors, such as the building. 'average' marines don't look at the map and see where they're best needed until AFTER they've finished building X structure with a bunch of other average marines. at the end of a game, that build stacking probably accounted for 5-10 minutes of time where a marine was doing something useless a.k.a. not in the game.
Marines need to keep moving. Average marines too often build an RT then wait around till they get told where to go next. Even worse is when a few guys sit next to an empty RT for a minute or more waiting for the comm to drop it (even worse is when the comm doesn't even want to drop that RT and has told them!).
If you can keep your marines moving, keep them attacking, never let of the pressure you can really keep the aliens on their toes. You only need one guy to defend your phase network, just popping his head outside each base to check for any aliens then phasing to the next. Everyone else should be attacking, shoot down RTs, upgrades, push towards the hives. If a beacon has to be done then as soon as it's clear push out again, don't have the whole team stand around and weld
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.
mmmmh... at average pub skill level; ranged weapons lead to passive playstyle - whether it's useful or detrimental to the team objective.
ergo it's generally the marines who end up being stomped due to overly passive play.
there are other small factors, such as the building. 'average' marines don't look at the map and see where they're best needed until AFTER they've finished building X structure with a bunch of other average marines. at the end of a game, that build stacking probably accounted for 5-10 minutes of time where a marine was doing something useless a.k.a. not in the game.
Marines need to keep moving. Average marines too often build an RT then wait around till they get told where to go next. Even worse is when a few guys sit next to an empty RT for a minute or more waiting for the comm to drop it (even worse is when the comm doesn't even want to drop that RT and has told them!).
If you can keep your marines moving, keep them attacking, never let of the pressure you can really keep the aliens on their toes. You only need one guy to defend your phase network, just popping his head outside each base to check for any aliens then phasing to the next. Everyone else should be attacking, shoot down RTs, upgrades, push towards the hives. If a beacon has to be done then as soon as it's clear push out again, don't have the whole team stand around and weld
indeed... it's nigh impossible to balance an asymmetrical game for every player-skill bracket. let's face it - competitive must take balance priority otherwise there's no incentive to 'get good' and the game won't have any player retention.
obviously the balance can be tweaked to improve the fairness at the average/pub skill bracket...
we have areas for example bar on docking which function as mega choke-points. e.g. you respawn after causing nice disruption and killing the stability monitoring/maintenance RT - then you look at the map and see 5 of your teammates are STILL fighting in bar against 1-2 skulks after 15 minutes. it makes you want to bash your head against something.
the solution? calmly explain to those players that to win they need to attack attack attack, and holding bar when aliens have 2/3 of the map is doing nothing but helping aliens win the game. then you just hope they eventually learn the basic RTS principles and don't screw up your future games.
It seems to me like there's a pretty big difference in requirements between the two sides.
Marine? You need to constantly push towards alien territory, while simultaneously defending your extractors. You need to be responsible for building structures for your team, but also watching out for and dealing with enemy lifeforms.
Skulk? Go kill Marines. If an extractor is unguarded, kill it.
Exosuit? Better find some teammates who can hug welders to keep you alive, or a single Skulk at your feet is going to knock out half your health. And don't even think of going off on your own, or an Onos with a friend or two is going to eat you alive and there's nothing you can do about it.
Onos? Go eat Marines. If you get hurt, run away and autoheal.
I play both sides, and I have to say it just feels about a million times easier when my only responsibility is killing the enemy, when I can run away and auto-heal any time I run into something I can't kill, and having the mobility to respond to a threat anywhere on the map.
So much of Marine strategy pretty explicitly requires that your team knows what they're doing. If you don't push Harvesters, you will lose. If you all split up and can't form a coherent group, you will lose. If you waste resources and don't have what you need to deal with Fades and Onos, you will lose. If you can't properly defend a base or lose an extractor or two, well, that's good game right there.
For the aliens, all you have to worry about is killing the Marines when they're on your territory, and going and finding Marines and Marine structures to destroy when they're not on your territory, and just saving up resources until you can afford a Fade or Onos. You can have a whole team of total newbies who only know how to run around and attack, and still win because as long as the khammander is decent you have everything you need from your team.
I really like this game but it seems almost absurd how much more straightforward and simple to play the aliens are. Kill marines. Kill extractors. Save for Onos. Rinse and repeat.
@catbarf
Yep. Exactly. That's one of the major issues. Let's see what happens with Gorgeous Update. New alien spawn might help it out at least to some degree.
@catbarf
Yep. Exactly. That's one of the major issues. Let's see what happens with Gorgeous Update. New alien spawn might help it out at least to some degree.
It has a minor effect. It essentially punishes mass skulk death a bit
Sooo, let's continue. What balance-changing stuff we got:
-Lerk smoke trails - busted.
-Gorge Tunnels are going to be gamebreaking when people get used to it.
-Railgun and claw damage. Railgun is a pretty cool guy. Claw damage and increased backpedal speed make 50 res exos usefull.
-New camo and skulk movement. It's totally fine. I like new camo. I still manage to pull of my old tricks, yet we won't see our good ol' Sneaking Onos anymore. Skulks are cool for me.
-Bilebomb. Now aliens are very vulnerable against exos and arcs. Sad.
Just had a game, where we locked marines at 3 rt's and I got my onos by minute 12. GG. Economy issues are still here.
And less obvious stuff:
-Removed foresight from Alien Commander.
-Increased frequency of alert message when a base power node is under attack.
-Whips no longer hit multiple targets with their melee attack - useless.
-Reduced phase gate rate from 0.5 to 0.2 seconds - the only effective defence mean got buff.
Hope not, why should it die as long as the cause of this thread isn't being addressed? You can twist and turn it all you want, but no amount of minor fixes is going to fix what is essentially a fundamental problem with the alien economic model.
Yes, definitely. I actually think that would be a very easy change that would go a long way in balancing the two factions. Even if it's only research for fade and onos. Additionally, it would once again allow the onos egg to be droppable at 2 hives, since now they actually need prior t.res research.
Unfortunately though, UWE has consciously chosen NOT to require higher lifeform research in the past based on a, in my view somewhat flawed, perception that it would be 'unfun' if aliens couldn't go fade and onos once they have the p.res. I don't see marine players complaining when they don't get to play with exos or jps, or shotguns though, so why would it be so vastly different for aliens?
As much as I'm usually all for the game staying how it is, I actually agree with the above, well at least I'd like to see them try it. (Though I guess we won't since this isn't the "beta" anymore).
One thing that I noticed during the old Google moderator suggestion feed for NS2 was someone suggesting removing the requirement of two CCs for marine tech (once researched). For example: a marine team has a second CC, they research jetpacks and 50 res exo, and then lose their second CC. As of right now, they would lose access to that tech until they recover their second CC (which is nearly impossible as any marine player will tell you, aliens snowball hard). This change would address that by allowing marines to access higher-tech (that they have already researched) without needing a second CC.
I also remember seeing a suggestion in the Google moderator where someone had asked UWE to remove the power requirement for marine structures, and it was in the "in progress" category. Hmm....
@Dimeinurear
Removing second CC requirement would boil things up. There will be late game, after early game immediately. And it will remove part of assymetry.
I think, a good solution would be to add a mandatory research prior to making Onoses. I'm working on it.
An easy way out would be adding a Third Hive requirement to buy onos for p.res.
On 5 TP maps I don't think the marine 2 CC requirement is all that bad. Though on 4 TP maps marines can actually deny aliens the third hive more easily, which would be a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that a third hive is almost entirely optional for aliens in the lategame.
I think if they were to experiment with making the third hive more potent, made the second hive slightly less of a gamechanger and tied onos and fade to research on 1 and 2 hives respectively you would already see a vastly different and better balanced game.
I get the feeling that UWE really aren't addressing the balance problem currently, and are albeit ignoring the core issues. This is evident by ns2stats.org data. Both sets were taken from Build 248 data.
Pub balance (no balance mod, marine vs marine, or combat mods were factored in)
Comp balance (same factors as above)
Now not only is the balance horrendous (10% winning edge for the aliens is horrible, 10% of an imbalance should be sending up red flags all over the office) but look how long ago this thread started. This thread was started back in February of 2013, where we addressed that balance was a 60:40 split in favor of the aliens.
THIS IS STILL THE CASE, 4 MONTHS LATER.
The argument of "but we just had an influx of new players into the game, don't worry, they'll either get better or quit!" This balance problem has been in place since NS2 went live in October of 2012, and it still has not been addressed.
In a natural response to this, much of the playerbase is leaving, primarily because it's simply no fun to play as the marines when you have to play so aggressively, and play so perfectly, with the tiniest screw-up costing you the game. It's a rush to join the alien team so you can actually have fun playing the game.
I'm not only disappointed because NS is one of my favorite games of all time, I'm very disappointed because I pre-ordered the collector's edition to play the alpha. I'm thoroughly disappointed in UWE for their lack of attention to this problem, because they're too busy focusing on the competitive community. The irony being that the competitive game balance is even worse than the pub game balance. Comp teams are not going to keep playing if the winner is decided by a toss of the coin at the start.
I wish I was wrong about all this. I really do. I love NS2, it's one of my favorite games, and I even advertised NS2 to many of my friends. Hell, I bought three additional copies and gave them away to my friends. I'm really very sad to see that this game will be as dead as NS is currently in just a matter of maybe months. I'm truly sorry to hear that, however UWE brought it on themselves by ignoring our pleas to balance their game.
Marines pres for the most part gets recycled.. a marine dies with a shotgun and welder, 25 res gone .. until another marine picks them up..
Aliens pres is gone..
Aliens can't spend their res early on unless you gorge or lerk .. marines have the option
Before making any radical changes to res collection.. I'd find some way where aliens can use pres .. a half damage/half health lerk for half the price .. puts a weak alien out in the field for marines to kill and make that player attain full fade/onos later
Before people start screaming it's make aliens stronger.. I disagree, it'd give more options, that's all .. it's basically give the option for a flying skulk that costs pres .. the incentive needs to be there for alien pres to get spent earlier to stop the mass appearance of fade+onos
I get the feeling that UWE really aren't addressing the balance problem currently, and are albeit ignoring the core issues. This is evident by ns2stats.org data. Both sets were taken from Build 248 data.
Pub balance (no balance mod, marine vs marine, or combat mods were factored in)
Comp balance (same factors as above)
Now not only is the balance horrendous (10% winning edge for the aliens is horrible, 10% of an imbalance should be sending up red flags all over the office) but look how long ago this thread started. This thread was started back in February of 2013, where we addressed that balance was a 60:40 split in favor of the aliens.
THIS IS STILL THE CASE, 4 MONTHS LATER.
The argument of "but we just had an influx of new players into the game, don't worry, they'll either get better or quit!" This balance problem has been in place since NS2 went live in October of 2012, and it still has not been addressed.
In a natural response to this, much of the playerbase is leaving, primarily because it's simply no fun to play as the marines when you have to play so aggressively, and play so perfectly, with the tiniest screw-up costing you the game. It's a rush to join the alien team so you can actually have fun playing the game.
I'm not only disappointed because NS is one of my favorite games of all time, I'm very disappointed because I pre-ordered the collector's edition to play the alpha. I'm thoroughly disappointed in UWE for their lack of attention to this problem, because they're too busy focusing on the competitive community. The irony being that the competitive game balance is even worse than the pub game balance. Comp teams are not going to keep playing if the winner is decided by a toss of the coin at the start.
I wish I was wrong about all this. I really do. I love NS2, it's one of my favorite games, and I even advertised NS2 to many of my friends. Hell, I bought three additional copies and gave them away to my friends. I'm really very sad to see that this game will be as dead as NS is currently in just a matter of maybe months. I'm truly sorry to hear that, however UWE brought it on themselves by ignoring our pleas to balance their game.
If it makes you feel better: you are wrong, so your wish came true.
1) I don't understand why you accuse UWE of not doing anything and then mention the balance test mod in the next sentence. Makes no sense.
2) I have yet to see people "rush to join aliens" on any server.
3) Please, give me one example of when UWE was "too busy focusing on the competitve community".
4) Stop posting stuff from a competitive point of view, when you are clearly not playing competitively.
I think Marines are going to win even more now with the performance increases .. I know it shouldn't really, but it will
Marines can hit aliens easier now
The game feels pretty even to me as an average pubber. I wish they would focus on balancing all the useless tech in the game like flamethrowers, GLs, regen, adrenaline, camo, mac EMP, the robo factory in general (besides arcs), hallucinations.
Balancing two sides with massive variances, differences and skills required to play them is impossible. Making a game fair, now that's possible. Balance talks always make me lol.
The game feels pretty even to me as an average pubber. I wish they would focus on balancing all the useless tech in the game like flamethrowers, GLs, regen, adrenaline, camo, mac EMP, the robo factory in general (besides arcs), hallucinations.
Great post. I enjoy reading something that is detailed and well thought out.
Another factor that comes into play, imho, is that in NS1 you had electrfied res nodes, and in NS2 you do not. In NS1 this delayed aliens from taking out your extractors, which can be a huge hit to the marine economy.
While I like that marines need more teamwork than aliens now, I think the pendulum has swung a bit too far.
It was a rare match indeed when a com had spare res to electrify RTS.
1) I don't understand why you accuse UWE of not doing anything and then mention the balance test mod in the next sentence. Makes no sense.
Never did I mention the balance test mod. I accuse them of "doing nothing" because hardly any of the changes in the BT mod are ever really put in the game, and even then, these are minor fixes. Major overhauls need to happen because of how easy the aliens have it, in terms of economy.
3) Please, give me one example of when UWE was "too busy focusing on the competitve community".
Read the NS2 twitter feed. It's really just announcements of competitive games. Many things that UWE themselves are funding and attending. Nothing wrong with comp games, but when the balance is 70:30, it's time to put that on hold.
4) Stop posting stuff from a competitive point of view, when you are clearly not playing competitively.
I'm sorry, where did I say that I was posting this from a competitive view? I was merely pasting the raw data from a third party that gathers information about NS2 comp games. Did I say I was in a team, or that I've played competitively? Nope.
Ns1 summed up with "comm drop heavy" "comm drop hmg" never mind electrify that was a luxury.
Ns2 can *never* be balanced. Comp play is wildly different to pub play. Hopefully mods will make it playable for most people before it dies off or turns as niche as ns1 did (handful of uber fades ruling games etc)
I get the feeling that UWE really aren't addressing the balance problem currently, and are albeit ignoring the core issues. This is evident by ns2stats.org data. Both sets were taken from Build 248 data.
Pub balance (no balance mod, marine vs marine, or combat mods were factored in)
Comp balance (same factors as above)
Now not only is the balance horrendous (10% winning edge for the aliens is horrible, 10% of an imbalance should be sending up red flags all over the office) but look how long ago this thread started. This thread was started back in February of 2013, where we addressed that balance was a 60:40 split in favor of the aliens.
THIS IS STILL THE CASE, 4 MONTHS LATER.
The argument of "but we just had an influx of new players into the game, don't worry, they'll either get better or quit!" This balance problem has been in place since NS2 went live in October of 2012, and it still has not been addressed.
In a natural response to this, much of the playerbase is leaving, primarily because it's simply no fun to play as the marines when you have to play so aggressively, and play so perfectly, with the tiniest screw-up costing you the game. It's a rush to join the alien team so you can actually have fun playing the game.
I'm not only disappointed because NS is one of my favorite games of all time, I'm very disappointed because I pre-ordered the collector's edition to play the alpha. I'm thoroughly disappointed in UWE for their lack of attention to this problem, because they're too busy focusing on the competitive community. The irony being that the competitive game balance is even worse than the pub game balance. Comp teams are not going to keep playing if the winner is decided by a toss of the coin at the start.
I wish I was wrong about all this. I really do. I love NS2, it's one of my favorite games, and I even advertised NS2 to many of my friends. Hell, I bought three additional copies and gave them away to my friends. I'm really very sad to see that this game will be as dead as NS is currently in just a matter of maybe months. I'm truly sorry to hear that, however UWE brought it on themselves by ignoring our pleas to balance their game.
This is exactly what i think. I played a lot of pubgames as aliens and as marine. as an alien it was only necessary to get a high kill-ratio or kill RTs. at late game just rush the powernode with 2 or 3 onos and its gg. rines need a lot more teamwork and people who can aim and know the basics of marines gameplay. i do not want to complain about balance here because i know balance is a difficult topic. balance also depends on skill, teams and map. but ns2 stats shows us a clear graph where you can see the exact amount of games and the win-lose ratio. and i think it should be our duty to get this as close as possible to 50:50. a near balanced game based on clear statistics would also stop people complaining about different ingame-situations.
like others said before the biggest problem is the difference in the ressource-management. while aliens do not have to care about getting harvesters or hives, marines have always to build something to get their economy done. this costs a lot of time. i do not want to repeat the arguments here because they were already said few posts before. but in my opinion balance is only possible when we equal the ressource-system of rines and aliens.
Comments
mmmmh... at average pub skill level; ranged weapons lead to passive playstyle - whether it's useful or detrimental to the team objective.
ergo it's generally the marines who end up being stomped due to overly passive play.
there are other small factors, such as the building. 'average' marines don't look at the map and see where they're best needed until AFTER they've finished building X structure with a bunch of other average marines. at the end of a game, that build stacking probably accounted for 5-10 minutes of time where a marine was doing something useless a.k.a. not in the game.
Ok. I expected more from an average pub player
Marines' toys take a lot of research and a lot of resources.
Advanced Armory = 20 res, Second CC = 15, Proto = 40, Both exo research = 50. Totals in 125 res. And aliens need none to make a choo-choo train. That's one of the global issues.
And in addition - we get some tricky fades even earlier. Pretty hard times for marines.
Marines need to keep moving. Average marines too often build an RT then wait around till they get told where to go next. Even worse is when a few guys sit next to an empty RT for a minute or more waiting for the comm to drop it (even worse is when the comm doesn't even want to drop that RT and has told them!).
If you can keep your marines moving, keep them attacking, never let of the pressure you can really keep the aliens on their toes. You only need one guy to defend your phase network, just popping his head outside each base to check for any aliens then phasing to the next. Everyone else should be attacking, shoot down RTs, upgrades, push towards the hives. If a beacon has to be done then as soon as it's clear push out again, don't have the whole team stand around and weld
indeed... it's nigh impossible to balance an asymmetrical game for every player-skill bracket. let's face it - competitive must take balance priority otherwise there's no incentive to 'get good' and the game won't have any player retention.
obviously the balance can be tweaked to improve the fairness at the average/pub skill bracket...
we have areas for example bar on docking which function as mega choke-points. e.g. you respawn after causing nice disruption and killing the stability monitoring/maintenance RT - then you look at the map and see 5 of your teammates are STILL fighting in bar against 1-2 skulks after 15 minutes. it makes you want to bash your head against something.
the solution? calmly explain to those players that to win they need to attack attack attack, and holding bar when aliens have 2/3 of the map is doing nothing but helping aliens win the game. then you just hope they eventually learn the basic RTS principles and don't screw up your future games.
Marine? You need to constantly push towards alien territory, while simultaneously defending your extractors. You need to be responsible for building structures for your team, but also watching out for and dealing with enemy lifeforms.
Skulk? Go kill Marines. If an extractor is unguarded, kill it.
Exosuit? Better find some teammates who can hug welders to keep you alive, or a single Skulk at your feet is going to knock out half your health. And don't even think of going off on your own, or an Onos with a friend or two is going to eat you alive and there's nothing you can do about it.
Onos? Go eat Marines. If you get hurt, run away and autoheal.
I play both sides, and I have to say it just feels about a million times easier when my only responsibility is killing the enemy, when I can run away and auto-heal any time I run into something I can't kill, and having the mobility to respond to a threat anywhere on the map.
So much of Marine strategy pretty explicitly requires that your team knows what they're doing. If you don't push Harvesters, you will lose. If you all split up and can't form a coherent group, you will lose. If you waste resources and don't have what you need to deal with Fades and Onos, you will lose. If you can't properly defend a base or lose an extractor or two, well, that's good game right there.
For the aliens, all you have to worry about is killing the Marines when they're on your territory, and going and finding Marines and Marine structures to destroy when they're not on your territory, and just saving up resources until you can afford a Fade or Onos. You can have a whole team of total newbies who only know how to run around and attack, and still win because as long as the khammander is decent you have everything you need from your team.
I really like this game but it seems almost absurd how much more straightforward and simple to play the aliens are. Kill marines. Kill extractors. Save for Onos. Rinse and repeat.
Yep. Exactly. That's one of the major issues. Let's see what happens with Gorgeous Update. New alien spawn might help it out at least to some degree.
-Lerk smoke trails - busted.
-Gorge Tunnels are going to be gamebreaking when people get used to it.
-Railgun and claw damage. Railgun is a pretty cool guy. Claw damage and increased backpedal speed make 50 res exos usefull.
-New camo and skulk movement. It's totally fine. I like new camo. I still manage to pull of my old tricks, yet we won't see our good ol' Sneaking Onos anymore. Skulks are cool for me.
-Bilebomb. Now aliens are very vulnerable against exos and arcs. Sad.
Just had a game, where we locked marines at 3 rt's and I got my onos by minute 12. GG. Economy issues are still here.
And less obvious stuff:
-Removed foresight from Alien Commander.
-Increased frequency of alert message when a base power node is under attack.
-Whips no longer hit multiple targets with their melee attack - useless.
-Reduced phase gate rate from 0.5 to 0.2 seconds - the only effective defence mean got buff.
Unfortunately though, UWE has consciously chosen NOT to require higher lifeform research in the past based on a, in my view somewhat flawed, perception that it would be 'unfun' if aliens couldn't go fade and onos once they have the p.res. I don't see marine players complaining when they don't get to play with exos or jps, or shotguns though, so why would it be so vastly different for aliens?
I also remember seeing a suggestion in the Google moderator where someone had asked UWE to remove the power requirement for marine structures, and it was in the "in progress" category. Hmm....
Removing second CC requirement would boil things up. There will be late game, after early game immediately. And it will remove part of assymetry.
I think, a good solution would be to add a mandatory research prior to making Onoses. I'm working on it.
An easy way out would be adding a Third Hive requirement to buy onos for p.res.
I think if they were to experiment with making the third hive more potent, made the second hive slightly less of a gamechanger and tied onos and fade to research on 1 and 2 hives respectively you would already see a vastly different and better balanced game.
Pub balance (no balance mod, marine vs marine, or combat mods were factored in)
Comp balance (same factors as above)
Now not only is the balance horrendous (10% winning edge for the aliens is horrible, 10% of an imbalance should be sending up red flags all over the office) but look how long ago this thread started. This thread was started back in February of 2013, where we addressed that balance was a 60:40 split in favor of the aliens.
THIS IS STILL THE CASE, 4 MONTHS LATER.
The argument of "but we just had an influx of new players into the game, don't worry, they'll either get better or quit!" This balance problem has been in place since NS2 went live in October of 2012, and it still has not been addressed.
In a natural response to this, much of the playerbase is leaving, primarily because it's simply no fun to play as the marines when you have to play so aggressively, and play so perfectly, with the tiniest screw-up costing you the game. It's a rush to join the alien team so you can actually have fun playing the game.
I'm not only disappointed because NS is one of my favorite games of all time, I'm very disappointed because I pre-ordered the collector's edition to play the alpha. I'm thoroughly disappointed in UWE for their lack of attention to this problem, because they're too busy focusing on the competitive community. The irony being that the competitive game balance is even worse than the pub game balance. Comp teams are not going to keep playing if the winner is decided by a toss of the coin at the start.
I wish I was wrong about all this. I really do. I love NS2, it's one of my favorite games, and I even advertised NS2 to many of my friends. Hell, I bought three additional copies and gave them away to my friends. I'm really very sad to see that this game will be as dead as NS is currently in just a matter of maybe months. I'm truly sorry to hear that, however UWE brought it on themselves by ignoring our pleas to balance their game.
Aliens pres is gone..
Aliens can't spend their res early on unless you gorge or lerk .. marines have the option
Before making any radical changes to res collection.. I'd find some way where aliens can use pres .. a half damage/half health lerk for half the price .. puts a weak alien out in the field for marines to kill and make that player attain full fade/onos later
Before people start screaming it's make aliens stronger.. I disagree, it'd give more options, that's all .. it's basically give the option for a flying skulk that costs pres .. the incentive needs to be there for alien pres to get spent earlier to stop the mass appearance of fade+onos
If it makes you feel better: you are wrong, so your wish came true.
1) I don't understand why you accuse UWE of not doing anything and then mention the balance test mod in the next sentence. Makes no sense.
2) I have yet to see people "rush to join aliens" on any server.
3) Please, give me one example of when UWE was "too busy focusing on the competitve community".
4) Stop posting stuff from a competitive point of view, when you are clearly not playing competitively.
I think Marines are going to win even more now with the performance increases .. I know it shouldn't really, but it will
Marines can hit aliens easier now
EDIT: I like going marine com sometimes, but man it can be stressful.
adrenaline is not useless.
It was a rare match indeed when a com had spare res to electrify RTS.
Never did I mention the balance test mod. I accuse them of "doing nothing" because hardly any of the changes in the BT mod are ever really put in the game, and even then, these are minor fixes. Major overhauls need to happen because of how easy the aliens have it, in terms of economy.
Pay more attention next time you play. I haven't had a single game yet where the aliens don't team stack.
Read the NS2 twitter feed. It's really just announcements of competitive games. Many things that UWE themselves are funding and attending. Nothing wrong with comp games, but when the balance is 70:30, it's time to put that on hold.
I'm sorry, where did I say that I was posting this from a competitive view? I was merely pasting the raw data from a third party that gathers information about NS2 comp games. Did I say I was in a team, or that I've played competitively? Nope.
I'm so using this quote in the future when someone says the BT mod is a completely different game. Evidence, right here.
::puts in pocket::
<:-P
Ns2 can *never* be balanced. Comp play is wildly different to pub play. Hopefully mods will make it playable for most people before it dies off or turns as niche as ns1 did (handful of uber fades ruling games etc)
This is exactly what i think. I played a lot of pubgames as aliens and as marine. as an alien it was only necessary to get a high kill-ratio or kill RTs. at late game just rush the powernode with 2 or 3 onos and its gg. rines need a lot more teamwork and people who can aim and know the basics of marines gameplay. i do not want to complain about balance here because i know balance is a difficult topic. balance also depends on skill, teams and map. but ns2 stats shows us a clear graph where you can see the exact amount of games and the win-lose ratio. and i think it should be our duty to get this as close as possible to 50:50. a near balanced game based on clear statistics would also stop people complaining about different ingame-situations.
like others said before the biggest problem is the difference in the ressource-management. while aliens do not have to care about getting harvesters or hives, marines have always to build something to get their economy done. this costs a lot of time. i do not want to repeat the arguments here because they were already said few posts before. but in my opinion balance is only possible when we equal the ressource-system of rines and aliens.