- Jetpack thrust
- Flamethrower
- Huge waypoint icon (Thankfully we can mod these to make them smaller, however some servers have advanced consistency that block that)
- Huge motion tracking icon (same as waypoint icon)
- Powernode under attack messages (would like a way to turn these off)
- Grenade explosions
- Camera shake on lmg (can be disabled in options)
Generic effects that affect your own vision:
- Skulk view model
- Rifle view model
- Weapon bob
- Celerity effect (removed last patch thankfully)
- Exo hud
- Powernode effects
- Atmospherics (can be disabled)
NS2 focuses too much on the obscuring and negative effects when it should have more features that give a positive benefit rather than always resorting to obscuring the other teams vision or having a negative effect on the players ability to enjoy the game.
I would like to see almost all of these minimized or *gasp* removed or allow us to turn them on and off in the options.
Also like to add exo bullet impact smoke. The puff is really big, smoky, obstructing and a big reason why many exo players can't kill skulks around their feet - thus wrongly thinking exo is balanced if not underpowered.
First of all, I'm not a fan of effects that cause a person to 'lose control' or their character. Be it loss of vision from spit/bile, or loss of movement from stomp etc, the bottom line is that these effects just aren't fun. This is precisely why devour was removed, since sitting around in the gut of an Onos while you twiddle your thumbs and wait to die just wasn't any fun. Let people fight.
First of all, you lose some sight, not control of the character.
You DO lose control of your character since you can no longer see. When you can't see you can't control your character. This isn't World of Warcraft, we don't need crowd control in an FPS.
Secondly, blind effect helps Gorges escape. At the moment, skilled players are taking advantage of recent updates. Before the updates, players were complaining about how they couldn't hit anything and how bad it was for Gorges.
So can I assume you'll be OK dropping the damage down to 10? Or change it into a vortex like effect where - when blinded - the marine receives no damage.
Justify the blind effect. What is the point of it? If it is a mechanic to allow the gorge to escape then the gorge shouldn't be able to 'exploit' the mechanic to get kills when he's supposed to be belly-sliding away. The problem is that no one uses this effect in the way you suggest. Gorges don't use it to escape, they use it for kills. If they want to use spit for kills, then let them do it without a blind opponent.
Do any of the mentioned effects stop you from moving in-game, free-look, changing weapons, and/or firing your weapon? No. That definitively means you do not lose control. What you lose is sight; part of it, temporarily. Also, there are means of crowd control in many FPS games; any with a flashbang or smoke grenade.
hahaha. Ironic coming from someone crying about gorge spit. Sounds like someones just angry.
FYI, using the word "pub" like it's a slur doesn't make you look better. Is that a lesson you teach in your education on NS program?
All of the late greats of NS1 are laughing at you. Adapt or die.
I'm not actually crying. It's just pointing out a silly mechanic that doesn't belong in the game. As you can see I put a humorous picture. It was aimed to be a somewhat "fun" discussion on gorge spit and why it's silly to blind people.
Everyone I know that was actually good at NS1 isn't laughing. They're in agreement. Idk what world you live in.
It's not a slur. It's just fact. What you experience in a pub isn't high level play typically. You started the "you're bad!" tone when you said you have an easy time tracking while blind with 50% of your screen green and that means everyone else should be able to as well. I personally don't have a problem at all against public players while being blinded but it gets pretty frustrating against skulks with great movement.
Just because other players don't agree with you, doesn't mean they haven't taken down a good skulk/gorge. If you're problem is being blinded, then being kill by a skulk, where is your teammate? Or do you want to be able to solo the surprise-skulk, while being HP spammed through gorge spit?
Your arguments and your request (or demand) make it look like you can't handle it, so you want it changed. Dubbing every player who doesn't agree with you a Pub/ground-skulk-killer doesn't help your argument. The screenshot is meaningless; it's showing what's intended. If you have a teammate with you, it doesn't matter if it's hard to see for a few seconds.
You guys keep leaving out low HP red screen of death + 90% of your sound being coned into the floor off the "poop in my screen" list, it's especially horrible because it's visual and aural, I know I'm dying in a computer game because funnily enough I'm sitting in front of a personal computer playing a game called natural selection 2 and I'm being bitten by skulks, the red screen and especially losing nearly all sound is not helping me appreciate the situation anymore.
How good was losing that celerity whoosh, I haven't heard a single person complain about not having their ears turn into a wind tunnel either in game or on the forums, it would lead me to believe that the large majority of the competitive community would extremely enjoy having sliders for all these 'immersion' options while the more casual crowd is more than welcome to keep them on for aesthetics or whatever reason people enjoy having their vision taken out in an FPS game, a genre that boils down to a 2 part equation, see enemy, shoot enemy.
For a game that's being sold on its 'modablity' there is a disturbing lack of options present in nearly every other FPS on the market like brightness, gamma, bindable mouse keys, .cfgs, xhair selection and a "don't ask don't tell" in regards to people stream lining things out of the game being acceptable or not like removing 500+ lights per map and gaining 15-20 FPS at all stages of the game.
I'd just like to say, you must operate within the constraints of the game to a certain extent. The blinding effects do take away control to a certain extent, but it is an intended loss of control. I don't see how this is any different than say, group stuns in DOTA, or explosive bouncing in TF2. To a certain extent I don't see how this is any less egregious a design feature than a one-shot. Dying would be the ultimate loss of control after all, hell, SC2 has neural parasite, fungal spore, forcefields. Think of it as a debuff.
My point is, yes, it blocks your vision and makes you susceptible to other life forms, but isn't that the goal in a team-oriented fps? TF2 kritzkrieg and jarate for example. or a nicely positioned crossfire. That the OP thinks that it should be aim vs agility simply means that he has a different conception of what the game design is about than the developers. It's a valid argument, but I would suggest that it is better addressed in the context of tournament play, where balance is more of an issue, and don't misunderstand me, this is a balance issue. If all the competitive players believe that blinding effects are OP, then they should certainly petition UWE for a tournament exclusive option to remove, or have someone mod it out. I am certain that many competitive scenes use their own rulesets when they find unbalanced weapons/characters/maps in the vanilla game.
I like blind, it makes marines easier to kill, though it's not a sure thing, and I am happiest when i can blind a marine and make it easier for a skulk to kill him. Promoting team-play in a public context should not be discouraged. spores+umbra will not kill marines by themselves largely, so again, it promotes teamplay if I know that it messes with marine aim on my teammates.
I'd just like to say, you must operate within the constraints of the game to a certain extent. The blinding effects do take away control to a certain extent, but it is an intended loss of control. I don't see how this is any different than say, group stuns in DOTA, or explosive bouncing in TF2. To a certain extent I don't see how this is any less egregious a design feature than a one-shot. Dying would be the ultimate loss of control after all, hell, SC2 has neural parasite, fungal spore, forcefields. Think of it as a debuff.
My point is, yes, it blocks your vision and makes you susceptible to other life forms, but isn't that the goal in a team-oriented fps? TF2 kritzkrieg and jarate for example. or a nicely positioned crossfire. That the OP thinks that it should be aim vs agility simply means that he has a different conception of what the game design is about than the developers. It's a valid argument, but I would suggest that it is better addressed in the context of tournament play, where balance is more of an issue, and don't misunderstand me, this is a balance issue. If all the competitive players believe that blinding effects are OP, then they should certainly petition UWE for a tournament exclusive option to remove, or have someone mod it out. I am certain that many competitive scenes use their own rulesets when they find unbalanced weapons/characters/maps in the vanilla game.
I like blind, it makes marines easier to kill, though it's not a sure thing, and I am happiest when i can blind a marine and make it easier for a skulk to kill him. Promoting team-play in a public context should not be discouraged. spores+umbra will not kill marines by themselves largely, so again, it promotes teamplay if I know that it messes with marine aim on my teammates.
sorry for the disjointed post, it is late.
All of the "awesomes" and "agrees" of my OP are either competent players or competitive players. I wouldn't mind a way for players to choose for a server to turn the visual clutter off or at least reduce it in some way or another.
I'm going to stand on my point that melee vs ranged is always going to be aim vs. movement unless they dumb it down so far that the melee classes don't actually have to use good movement to defeat the ranged. Teamplay or no, NS since the beginning has always been aim and skilled based movement.
I'm not calling for a no compromise removal of any and all clutter but moving towards any improvement in the visual clutter regard would be great. That was my purpose on this topic.
NS2 focuses too much on the obscuring and negative effects when it should have more features that give a positive benefit rather than always resorting to obscuring the other teams vision or having a negative effect on the players ability to enjoy the game.
I would like to see almost all of these minimized or *gasp* removed or allow us to turn them on and off in the options.
this x1000. Let players decide the combat, not a mess of onscreen garbage we have to wade through.
So why isn't this thread complaining about how better movement and positioning is taking away from the skill of aiming at things? Why is that the only valid counter. And if a counter already exists, what's so bad about their being another one?
Is movement and positioning the only valid counter?
And that is why no competitive player will ever take your claim: "really good but can't play based on location" to be true.
I'm just trying to bring back the dream. The dream of a natural selection that isn't 90% based on aim, and actually involves some intelligent thinking. A counter to aim which requires tactics can only aid in this.
Let me try and explain the problem I see with the reasons you want spit removed.
Imagine a commander who loves ARCs above all else. Every game he builds ARCs, that is his only strategy. He has become very good with ARC attacks and positioning. He knows how to get his marines to defend them well, and ARCs are what make him win all his games. Then they decide to nerf ARCs, and he gets very mad and starts complaining about how they are nerfing ARCs and that they shouldn't.
Now, fair enough, maybe his complaints are legitimate, and ARCs aren't overpowered, or they don't need a nerf at all. And also respect to him, because being good with ARCs is a skill like any other, and its nothing to be scoughed at. But the only reason he's complaining is because he doesn't want one of his strengths taken away.
Now, as you are a competitive player, I assume your aim is at least better than most. And fair enough, you want to be able to make full use of that skill. But, at least from my perspective, you are going to need to bring more to the table than "spit prevents me from using one of my primary assets to kill everything around me".
Because... well that's kind of the point of spit...
Gorge can already heal, I'm fine with splitting between "support" and "damage" and not letting you do both simultaneously.
I'm inclined to agree with this. I feel that the ease with which one can hit a marine with spit, and the damage it causes (even 30) is a bit too high for something that is meant to be a support lifeform (at least in the early game it is). However, its the combination of ease and damage that is the problem. I would like to see the damage reduced even further to something like 10, have the speed of spit increased (travel speed) to make it slightly easier to hit, and have the blind duration reduced to around just under the time it takes a gorge to spit three times. In my mind, if a gorge isn't heal spraying, he should be blinding as many marines as he can, but he shouldn't be doing viable damage in either case. If he wants that he should drop Hydras mid combat.
In such a situation, a single marine would still win against a single gorge, because the gorge can't do the damage to kill the marine. However, a marine vs a gorge and a skulk will never win the engagement, and never should. In an engagement with 2 marines vs a gorge and a skulk, a good gorge would blind both marines permanently. Moral of the story should be, if there a gorge with skulk support up ahead, you may want to put away your aim and call for backup.
I'd just like to say, you must operate within the constraints of the game to a certain extent. The blinding effects do take away control to a certain extent, but it is an intended loss of control. I don't see how this is any different than say, group stuns in DOTA, or explosive bouncing in TF2. To a certain extent I don't see how this is any less egregious a design feature than a one-shot. Dying would be the ultimate loss of control after all, hell, SC2 has neural parasite, fungal spore, forcefields. Think of it as a debuff.
My point is, yes, it blocks your vision and makes you susceptible to other life forms, but isn't that the goal in a team-oriented fps? TF2 kritzkrieg and jarate for example. or a nicely positioned crossfire. That the OP thinks that it should be aim vs agility simply means that he has a different conception of what the game design is about than the developers. It's a valid argument, but I would suggest that it is better addressed in the context of tournament play, where balance is more of an issue, and don't misunderstand me, this is a balance issue. If all the competitive players believe that blinding effects are OP, then they should certainly petition UWE for a tournament exclusive option to remove, or have someone mod it out. I am certain that many competitive scenes use their own rulesets when they find unbalanced weapons/characters/maps in the vanilla game.
I like blind, it makes marines easier to kill, though it's not a sure thing, and I am happiest when i can blind a marine and make it easier for a skulk to kill him. Promoting team-play in a public context should not be discouraged. spores+umbra will not kill marines by themselves largely, so again, it promotes teamplay if I know that it messes with marine aim on my teammates.
sorry for the disjointed post, it is late.
All of the "awesomes" and "agrees" of my OP are either competent players or competitive players.
This remark blew my mind. I have absolutely no idea how I remain civil while speaking to you. I would be very appreciative if you removed it from your post. If for nothing else, than to preserve my sanity.
NS2 focuses too much on the obscuring and negative effects when it should have more features that give a positive benefit rather than always resorting to obscuring the other teams vision or having a negative effect on the players ability to enjoy the game.
I would like to see almost all of these minimized or *gasp* removed or allow us to turn them on and off in the options.
The obscuring effects are an attempt at a solution to a problem. The problem being that the skill and abilities involved with rudimentary aim are not the same or equal to those involved with biting something and being fast.
This hypothesis can most easily be seen when considering someone who is very good in all aspects of the game, such as Fanatic. Fanatic can take on 3 skulks as a marine, even if those skulks are considerably skilled and experienced. Can Fanatic take on 3 marines as a skulk in the same way? Well, I guess you have to answer that in your own mind. In my mind, the answer is no, because it doesn't really work in the same way.
Because of this, aliens potentially need something that prevents them from being identified and shot. UWE saw fit to introduce vision obscuring effects to accomplish this. Maybe there is a better solution, or maybe they went too far with the vision obscuring. But that is the primary reason why it exists. In my opinion anyway.
I agree with the OP in so far that it just needs to be toned down. It can be incremental until they find a sweet spot, but right now it's completely overwhelming. Maybe if there wasn't so many other issues working against you when it comes to aim (ie: lag inducing things like infestation, or structure spam), then maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but it is a bit too harsh in that it literally blinds you for much longer than it really should. If the effect was more transparent then maybe it would be bearable.
All of the "awesomes" and "agrees" of my OP are either competent players or competitive players. I wouldn't mind a way for players to choose for a server to turn the visual clutter off or at least reduce it in some way or another.
I'm going to stand on my point that melee vs ranged is always going to be aim vs. movement unless they dumb it down so far that the melee classes don't actually have to use good movement to defeat the ranged. Teamplay or no, NS since the beginning has always been aim and skilled based movement.
I'm not calling for a no compromise removal of any and all clutter but moving towards any improvement in the visual clutter regard would be great. That was my purpose on this topic.
i am not necessarily against removal of all clutter, if the competitive scene deems it best. What i fear is that, in a community this small, it is not at all unlikely that the competitive scene and the casual scene are inexorably linked. Any changes enacted in the comp scene may trickle down.
I fear that eventually, if you give the servers the option to not have "clutter" you won't be able to find many servers with clutter. From my own gaming history, not the trickle-down effect, but the "option"-fail effect. wolf-ET, there was a server option to enable or disable friendly-fire, it grew progressively that you were more and more hard pressed to find FF enabled servers. On the other hand, metaknight is banned in a lot of tournament play, but people still use him casual.
that is my real worry. but I still maintain that it's a debuff and adds to teamwork/the usefulness of the gorge. Also, NS1, didn't gorges have webbing? not blinding, but still debuff.
First of all, I'm not a fan of effects that cause a person to 'lose control' or their character. Be it loss of vision from spit/bile, or loss of movement from stomp etc, the bottom line is that these effects just aren't fun. This is precisely why devour was removed, since sitting around in the gut of an Onos while you twiddle your thumbs and wait to die just wasn't any fun. Let people fight. If a mechanic is needed for sake of 'balance' then there are plenty of ways to do it without taking away player control.
yup, this can't be stressed enough - players enjoy having control and feeling like their abilities are synergizing and helping them.
Anyone saying that their performance takes a big hit because of the spit overlay needs to get a freaking job and buy a proper PC to play this game. Don't expect to play todays games on a PC that does not meet the requirements or is simply a piece of shite
i7-950 / GTX 560 / 12GB and Gorge spit drops my FPS up to 30 every time it hits. you have to understand that the Spark engine is brand new, and as such it isn't reasonable to expect it to perform consistently across machines of similar specs. even if it did it's not like that's the most brilliant marketing idea to sell your game to the select few gamers who care to spend $2000 on a machine that might run the game ok. thanks for the hostility though!
Gorge can already heal, I'm fine with splitting between "support" and "damage" and not letting you do both simultaneously.
this seems to imply that you have no problem at all with the blinding effect, just that it should not be paired with damage. This is an issue with balance, and should be discussed as such.
All of the "awesomes" and "agrees" of my OP are either competent players or competitive players. I wouldn't mind a way for players to choose for a server to turn the visual clutter off or at least reduce it in some way or another.
I actually awesome'd your post because of the way you made people interested in your thread by using an image.
As far as agree'ing, eh, sorta, gorge spit blocking vision bothers me far less than lerk gas, at least gorges have to aim. Lerk gas should look like the "Low Particle Effects" mode made it look for b235 (I think thats the build) before they changed it to be wallofgreen again. Gorge spit should be..half as obscuring as cyst pops (which are good, but I think if it destroyed the cyst it'd make it more balanced, lol 1 res oh well). But you should be able to see through it, you don't get blinded, it just makes shit look green.
This is also an RTS game. Gorge spit blocking vision isn't critical, but it makes perfect sense as a part of the strategy aspect. I bet templar in starcraft don't like being EMP'd. Also, I feel like part of the whole idea of NS2 is to have it be scary for marines to go into hives or be alone in a dark corridor.
Removing the atmospherics and making it easier for the marines to see what is going on is taking away what for me makes this game fun. There's plenty of games that are just about who can aim and move better already... NS2 is more than that.
I can see how especially from a competitive perspective you'd rather not have a fight be decided by your screen being blocked by gorge spit, but here's the thing: you can use movement and positioning to make sure that if you do get hit by gorge spit, you don't have to die. A reduction to how long it stays on your screen would be nice, yeah. But I don't buy the argument that making your vision obscured at times "takes away player control" I don't see why you can't use movement and positioning to not die because of the atmospherics.
This is also an RTS game. Gorge spit blocking vision isn't critical, but it makes perfect sense as a part of the strategy aspect. I bet templar in starcraft don't like being EMP'd.
I have personally never had a problem seeing through Gorge spit. Unless that Gorge manages to land enough spits on me to kill me before my rifle tears through it, it's a dead Gorge.
Now, I understand where everyone is coming from in their arguments. You each have your own views and opinions on the subject matter... now allow me to introduce my own.
Gorge spit blinding is not only a defensive tactic, giving the Gorge some room to escape or delay the enemy, it is also a support tactic allowing the Gorge to give other lifeforms a better chance at reaching their target. That's teamwork.
You may argue that the game is "aim vs movement", but what happens when you introduce a player with near inhuman ability to aim who can gun down anything below an Onos with no trouble, despite all of their dodging, dipping, ducking, diving, and dodging? Do you have a team devote three or four Skulks to ambush duty just to take out one marine who can solo your entire team while the rest of the marines tear your Harvesters apart with their vicious axes?
Aliens are forced to go into melee combat against a team with ranged weapons, and one weapon which strictly counters melee (Shotgun). The blind from Gorge spit is a necessary tool to allow other lifeforms a decent chance against the enemy.
As far as I see it, Natural Selection 2 is about teamwork, and there seems to be a movement to remove abilities which promote teamwork in order to boost the marines into more victories.
And to those who say "Gorge spit blinding has no cost", I refer you to the 10 Pres investment in becoming a Gorge.
There is only one idea in this thread I agree with, and that's making the blind less noticeable upon first application, but stacking upon further applications.
First of all, I'm not a fan of effects that cause a person to 'lose control' or their character.
Do any of the mentioned effects stop you from moving in-game, free-look, changing weapons, and/or firing your weapon? No. That definitively means you do not lose control. What you lose is sight
Control: the power to direct a course of events
Being able to stumble around blindly is not control.
Those effect add to immersion and help the alien team.
Funny how when the LMG melee swing was knocking skulks away, 'immersion' wasn't enough to save it from being removed.
There are plenty of things that one could say would be justified by parroting the word 'immersion', but the reality is that gameplay > immersion. It's why most people turn off atmospherics. Sure the 'foggy' look may appeal to some. but it really is nothing but a visual hindrance.
Immersion is not a justification for spit. If you want to suggest that it is to be primarily used as an escape mechanism, then remove the damage from spit. This is one of those 'have your cake and eat it too' cases where people want to have to have it all. The gorge is a support class. The gorge was designed by the developers as a support class.
Frankly I'd rather see spit blind removed and extend the bile bomb blind to marines. (with the level of obstruction based on how direct a hit it was.) In this way you have a skill that needs to be researched and has a cost, and it also can't be used at the same time as a weapon that can kill. Sure you can blind a marine, but only strip his armor as you are doing it.
This is also an RTS game. Gorge spit blocking vision isn't critical, but it makes perfect sense as a part of the strategy aspect. I bet templar in starcraft don't like being EMP'd. Also, I feel like part of the whole idea of NS2 is to have it be scary for marines to go into hives or be alone in a dark corridor.
Removing the atmospherics and making it easier for the marines to see what is going on is taking away what for me makes this game fun. There's plenty of games that are just about who can aim and move better already... NS2 is more than that.
I can see how especially from a competitive perspective you'd rather not have a fight be decided by your screen being blocked by gorge spit, but here's the thing: you can use movement and positioning to make sure that if you do get hit by gorge spit, you don't have to die. A reduction to how long it stays on your screen would be nice, yeah. But I don't buy the argument that making your vision obscured at times "takes away player control" I don't see why you can't use movement and positioning to not die because of the atmospherics.
Let us count the number of abilities on the alien side that can result in an obstruction of a marines view:
- Huge motion tracking icon (same as waypoint icon)
This really annoys me. I've always found it ironic that I can see less when a scan is happening than when one isn't. Especially as it seems to highlight every cyst and every clog.
Frankly I'd rather see spit blind removed and extend the bile bomb blind to marines. (with the level of obstruction based on how direct a hit it was.) In this way you have a skill that needs to be researched and has a cost, and it also can't be used at the same time as a weapon that can kill. Sure you can blind a marine, but only strip his armor as you are doing it.
Interesting idea, but then would anyone use split when BB becomes available? (Maybe if they changed spit back to be fast and damaging again after removing the blind?)
edit: Remember: Bile bomb is area of effect, so you can blind even more marines at once with a bile bomb
Funny how when the LMG melee swing was knocking skulks away, 'immersion' wasn't enough to save it from being removed.
The melee swing stun was deemed overpowered, and allowed marines to dispatch skulks too easily. For that reason, it was removed.
By all means, if you feel that the obscuration effect caused by the gorges spit is imbalanced, I will gladly accept your opinion on that. However, it doesn't seem like anybody is really saying that the gorge's spit is overpowered.
The opinion I won't accept is that gorge spit should be removed because someone doesn't like it. If everyone doesn't like it, then sure, that should certainly be removed. But this thread tells me that that isn't the case.
Comments
- gorge spit (hive 1)
- gorge bile bomb (hive 2)
- Lerk spore (hive 2)
- Lerk umbra (hive 3)
- Cyst rupture (costs res)
- Whip bombard (costs res)
- Ink cloud (costs res)
- Vortex (hive 3)
- Dynamic infestation (can be disabled)
- nutrient mist
Now lets look at the marine side:
- Jetpack thrust
- Flamethrower
- Huge waypoint icon (Thankfully we can mod these to make them smaller, however some servers have advanced consistency that block that)
- Huge motion tracking icon (same as waypoint icon)
- Powernode under attack messages (would like a way to turn these off)
- Grenade explosions
- Camera shake on lmg (can be disabled in options)
Generic effects that affect your own vision:
- Skulk view model
- Rifle view model
- Weapon bob
- Celerity effect (removed last patch thankfully)
- Exo hud
- Powernode effects
- Atmospherics (can be disabled)
NS2 focuses too much on the obscuring and negative effects when it should have more features that give a positive benefit rather than always resorting to obscuring the other teams vision or having a negative effect on the players ability to enjoy the game.
I would like to see almost all of these minimized or *gasp* removed or allow us to turn them on and off in the options.
Case and point. These are my thoughts in a less humorous but spot on serious tone.
Allow a removal setting for all of these negative obscuring blinding effects that should not be in this game with such magnitude.
And that is why no competitive player will ever take your claim: "really good but can't play based on location" to be true.
Do any of the mentioned effects stop you from moving in-game, free-look, changing weapons, and/or firing your weapon? No. That definitively means you do not lose control. What you lose is sight; part of it, temporarily. Also, there are means of crowd control in many FPS games; any with a flashbang or smoke grenade.
I already justified the blind effect.
Just because other players don't agree with you, doesn't mean they haven't taken down a good skulk/gorge. If you're problem is being blinded, then being kill by a skulk, where is your teammate? Or do you want to be able to solo the surprise-skulk, while being HP spammed through gorge spit?
Your arguments and your request (or demand) make it look like you can't handle it, so you want it changed. Dubbing every player who doesn't agree with you a Pub/ground-skulk-killer doesn't help your argument. The screenshot is meaningless; it's showing what's intended. If you have a teammate with you, it doesn't matter if it's hard to see for a few seconds.
How good was losing that celerity whoosh, I haven't heard a single person complain about not having their ears turn into a wind tunnel either in game or on the forums, it would lead me to believe that the large majority of the competitive community would extremely enjoy having sliders for all these 'immersion' options while the more casual crowd is more than welcome to keep them on for aesthetics or whatever reason people enjoy having their vision taken out in an FPS game, a genre that boils down to a 2 part equation, see enemy, shoot enemy.
For a game that's being sold on its 'modablity' there is a disturbing lack of options present in nearly every other FPS on the market like brightness, gamma, bindable mouse keys, .cfgs, xhair selection and a "don't ask don't tell" in regards to people stream lining things out of the game being acceptable or not like removing 500+ lights per map and gaining 15-20 FPS at all stages of the game.
Those are saved for bone walls, stomp and gore.
My point is, yes, it blocks your vision and makes you susceptible to other life forms, but isn't that the goal in a team-oriented fps? TF2 kritzkrieg and jarate for example. or a nicely positioned crossfire. That the OP thinks that it should be aim vs agility simply means that he has a different conception of what the game design is about than the developers. It's a valid argument, but I would suggest that it is better addressed in the context of tournament play, where balance is more of an issue, and don't misunderstand me, this is a balance issue. If all the competitive players believe that blinding effects are OP, then they should certainly petition UWE for a tournament exclusive option to remove, or have someone mod it out. I am certain that many competitive scenes use their own rulesets when they find unbalanced weapons/characters/maps in the vanilla game.
I like blind, it makes marines easier to kill, though it's not a sure thing, and I am happiest when i can blind a marine and make it easier for a skulk to kill him. Promoting team-play in a public context should not be discouraged. spores+umbra will not kill marines by themselves largely, so again, it promotes teamplay if I know that it messes with marine aim on my teammates.
sorry for the disjointed post, it is late.
All of the "awesomes" and "agrees" of my OP are either competent players or competitive players. I wouldn't mind a way for players to choose for a server to turn the visual clutter off or at least reduce it in some way or another.
I'm going to stand on my point that melee vs ranged is always going to be aim vs. movement unless they dumb it down so far that the melee classes don't actually have to use good movement to defeat the ranged. Teamplay or no, NS since the beginning has always been aim and skilled based movement.
I'm not calling for a no compromise removal of any and all clutter but moving towards any improvement in the visual clutter regard would be great. That was my purpose on this topic.
this x1000. Let players decide the combat, not a mess of onscreen garbage we have to wade through.
Gorge can already heal, I'm fine with splitting between "support" and "damage" and not letting you do both simultaneously.
So why isn't this thread complaining about how better movement and positioning is taking away from the skill of aiming at things? Why is that the only valid counter. And if a counter already exists, what's so bad about their being another one?
Is movement and positioning the only valid counter?
I'm just trying to bring back the dream. The dream of a natural selection that isn't 90% based on aim, and actually involves some intelligent thinking. A counter to aim which requires tactics can only aid in this.
Let me try and explain the problem I see with the reasons you want spit removed.
Imagine a commander who loves ARCs above all else. Every game he builds ARCs, that is his only strategy. He has become very good with ARC attacks and positioning. He knows how to get his marines to defend them well, and ARCs are what make him win all his games. Then they decide to nerf ARCs, and he gets very mad and starts complaining about how they are nerfing ARCs and that they shouldn't.
Now, fair enough, maybe his complaints are legitimate, and ARCs aren't overpowered, or they don't need a nerf at all. And also respect to him, because being good with ARCs is a skill like any other, and its nothing to be scoughed at. But the only reason he's complaining is because he doesn't want one of his strengths taken away.
Now, as you are a competitive player, I assume your aim is at least better than most. And fair enough, you want to be able to make full use of that skill. But, at least from my perspective, you are going to need to bring more to the table than "spit prevents me from using one of my primary assets to kill everything around me".
Because... well that's kind of the point of spit...
I'm inclined to agree with this. I feel that the ease with which one can hit a marine with spit, and the damage it causes (even 30) is a bit too high for something that is meant to be a support lifeform (at least in the early game it is). However, its the combination of ease and damage that is the problem. I would like to see the damage reduced even further to something like 10, have the speed of spit increased (travel speed) to make it slightly easier to hit, and have the blind duration reduced to around just under the time it takes a gorge to spit three times. In my mind, if a gorge isn't heal spraying, he should be blinding as many marines as he can, but he shouldn't be doing viable damage in either case. If he wants that he should drop Hydras mid combat.
In such a situation, a single marine would still win against a single gorge, because the gorge can't do the damage to kill the marine. However, a marine vs a gorge and a skulk will never win the engagement, and never should. In an engagement with 2 marines vs a gorge and a skulk, a good gorge would blind both marines permanently. Moral of the story should be, if there a gorge with skulk support up ahead, you may want to put away your aim and call for backup.
This remark blew my mind. I have absolutely no idea how I remain civil while speaking to you. I would be very appreciative if you removed it from your post. If for nothing else, than to preserve my sanity.
The obscuring effects are an attempt at a solution to a problem. The problem being that the skill and abilities involved with rudimentary aim are not the same or equal to those involved with biting something and being fast.
This hypothesis can most easily be seen when considering someone who is very good in all aspects of the game, such as Fanatic. Fanatic can take on 3 skulks as a marine, even if those skulks are considerably skilled and experienced. Can Fanatic take on 3 marines as a skulk in the same way? Well, I guess you have to answer that in your own mind. In my mind, the answer is no, because it doesn't really work in the same way.
Because of this, aliens potentially need something that prevents them from being identified and shot. UWE saw fit to introduce vision obscuring effects to accomplish this. Maybe there is a better solution, or maybe they went too far with the vision obscuring. But that is the primary reason why it exists. In my opinion anyway.
This does not make your argument any stronger. It does make this thread seem more trollish.
i am not necessarily against removal of all clutter, if the competitive scene deems it best. What i fear is that, in a community this small, it is not at all unlikely that the competitive scene and the casual scene are inexorably linked. Any changes enacted in the comp scene may trickle down.
I fear that eventually, if you give the servers the option to not have "clutter" you won't be able to find many servers with clutter. From my own gaming history, not the trickle-down effect, but the "option"-fail effect. wolf-ET, there was a server option to enable or disable friendly-fire, it grew progressively that you were more and more hard pressed to find FF enabled servers. On the other hand, metaknight is banned in a lot of tournament play, but people still use him casual.
that is my real worry. but I still maintain that it's a debuff and adds to teamwork/the usefulness of the gorge. Also, NS1, didn't gorges have webbing? not blinding, but still debuff.
i7-950 / GTX 560 / 12GB and Gorge spit drops my FPS up to 30 every time it hits. you have to understand that the Spark engine is brand new, and as such it isn't reasonable to expect it to perform consistently across machines of similar specs. even if it did it's not like that's the most brilliant marketing idea to sell your game to the select few gamers who care to spend $2000 on a machine that might run the game ok. thanks for the hostility though!
this seems to imply that you have no problem at all with the blinding effect, just that it should not be paired with damage. This is an issue with balance, and should be discussed as such.
*edit* nested quote
^
This thread is out-of-date but still very relevant.
I actually awesome'd your post because of the way you made people interested in your thread by using an image.
As far as agree'ing, eh, sorta, gorge spit blocking vision bothers me far less than lerk gas, at least gorges have to aim. Lerk gas should look like the "Low Particle Effects" mode made it look for b235 (I think thats the build) before they changed it to be wallofgreen again. Gorge spit should be..half as obscuring as cyst pops (which are good, but I think if it destroyed the cyst it'd make it more balanced, lol 1 res oh well). But you should be able to see through it, you don't get blinded, it just makes shit look green.
Stun them? Why nerf marines? They already kill at range.
Removing the atmospherics and making it easier for the marines to see what is going on is taking away what for me makes this game fun. There's plenty of games that are just about who can aim and move better already... NS2 is more than that.
I can see how especially from a competitive perspective you'd rather not have a fight be decided by your screen being blocked by gorge spit, but here's the thing: you can use movement and positioning to make sure that if you do get hit by gorge spit, you don't have to die. A reduction to how long it stays on your screen would be nice, yeah. But I don't buy the argument that making your vision obscured at times "takes away player control" I don't see why you can't use movement and positioning to not die because of the atmospherics.
Now, I understand where everyone is coming from in their arguments. You each have your own views and opinions on the subject matter... now allow me to introduce my own.
Gorge spit blinding is not only a defensive tactic, giving the Gorge some room to escape or delay the enemy, it is also a support tactic allowing the Gorge to give other lifeforms a better chance at reaching their target. That's teamwork.
You may argue that the game is "aim vs movement", but what happens when you introduce a player with near inhuman ability to aim who can gun down anything below an Onos with no trouble, despite all of their dodging, dipping, ducking, diving, and dodging? Do you have a team devote three or four Skulks to ambush duty just to take out one marine who can solo your entire team while the rest of the marines tear your Harvesters apart with their vicious axes?
Aliens are forced to go into melee combat against a team with ranged weapons, and one weapon which strictly counters melee (Shotgun). The blind from Gorge spit is a necessary tool to allow other lifeforms a decent chance against the enemy.
As far as I see it, Natural Selection 2 is about teamwork, and there seems to be a movement to remove abilities which promote teamwork in order to boost the marines into more victories.
And to those who say "Gorge spit blinding has no cost", I refer you to the 10 Pres investment in becoming a Gorge.
There is only one idea in this thread I agree with, and that's making the blind less noticeable upon first application, but stacking upon further applications.
And that's how I feel about that.
Being able to stumble around blindly is not control.
Funny how when the LMG melee swing was knocking skulks away, 'immersion' wasn't enough to save it from being removed.
There are plenty of things that one could say would be justified by parroting the word 'immersion', but the reality is that gameplay > immersion. It's why most people turn off atmospherics. Sure the 'foggy' look may appeal to some. but it really is nothing but a visual hindrance.
Immersion is not a justification for spit. If you want to suggest that it is to be primarily used as an escape mechanism, then remove the damage from spit. This is one of those 'have your cake and eat it too' cases where people want to have to have it all. The gorge is a support class. The gorge was designed by the developers as a support class.
Frankly I'd rather see spit blind removed and extend the bile bomb blind to marines. (with the level of obstruction based on how direct a hit it was.) In this way you have a skill that needs to be researched and has a cost, and it also can't be used at the same time as a weapon that can kill. Sure you can blind a marine, but only strip his armor as you are doing it.
My thoughts, exactly.
This really annoys me. I've always found it ironic that I can see less when a scan is happening than when one isn't. Especially as it seems to highlight every cyst and every clog.
Interesting idea, but then would anyone use split when BB becomes available? (Maybe if they changed spit back to be fast and damaging again after removing the blind?)
edit: Remember: Bile bomb is area of effect, so you can blind even more marines at once with a bile bomb
The melee swing stun was deemed overpowered, and allowed marines to dispatch skulks too easily. For that reason, it was removed.
By all means, if you feel that the obscuration effect caused by the gorges spit is imbalanced, I will gladly accept your opinion on that. However, it doesn't seem like anybody is really saying that the gorge's spit is overpowered.
The opinion I won't accept is that gorge spit should be removed because someone doesn't like it. If everyone doesn't like it, then sure, that should certainly be removed. But this thread tells me that that isn't the case.