DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I dont believe downing RoF on fades would work.. however. 2 things id like to add to this debate.
* my idea for rescaps and pools works well with rfk as it helps push the individuals caps in a different timeframe then there teammembers.
* remember the cap is on a lifeform, not the player.
* also now the game has changed with 1CC tech, more use on turrets at phasegates etc...
Simply lower or remove fade structure damage. That will solve your fade explosion problem. You want to fade explode? Good luck on killing any rts in a good amount of time.
Want to camp that pg then? Good luck with the turrets next to it.
* Definately only do this to the fade if its done, to balance out. You rarely see fades hitting structures anyway. Lets keep it on other lifeforms.
Less Fades on the field need more support from umbra lerks and gorges. So whats wrong with splitting the player-pres?
I like the idea that the people spending pres for the team getting some buffs for an short time as an extra reward.
How about points and an a choosable upgrade buff (like some extra armor for 20 sec and they have to use this extra buff in a specific time windwow or a special ability)
UWE is tweaking since ages, maybe its time rethink some stuff.
A little longer early game would end in: fadeballs again.
An HMG will not only counter fades, but also everything else.
So sure, by all means don't nerf the fade by having it somewhat depend on teammates like every other class - but now the burden becomes designing the counter to mass fades and only mass fades (else you skew the balance horribly)... Good luck finding that solution.
Personally I think it'd be better to extend the early game, and make lerks more viable, making mass tech of any kind just too risky and encouraging other life forms.
Also want to point out that making early game more risky doesn't actually address mass fade power in the bigger picture. Making it too knife edge has the side effect of diverting onos pres (if any) to fade pres because you need more fade ball midgame to 'catch up'. And as far as i see it, that's a zero sum gain. Force an additional lerk, lose an onos, fade count stays the same.
Cleaning up early game, adding hmg, and making onos stronger is a much cleaner solution for pulling pres away from the fade ball. It's more efficient to have two stages of 'risk', instead of piling it all into early game and hoping for the best. *see below for why extending early game is also not a good way to add early game risk.
Hmg will be easy to tweak against fades specifically via spread. Lerk hitbox footprint is really small, and so is skulk to an extent so i don't see this whole issue of hmg countering everything being a problem. Not anymore than shotguns, exos, or any other piece of equipment that costs pres.
Basically, nerfing early game choices doesn't nerf mid game choices. Only nerfing mid game choices nerfs midgame choices. That is, fade ball is still going to be the desirable choice when you get there, unless you add mid-game marine power and/or nerf fade effectiveness.
The ideal composition should look something like 1 alien commander ('lock' that sucker in the hive. Too bad if its boring), 1 gorge, 1 lerk, 2 fade, 1 onos. A much more 'diverse' composition than 2 lerk, 2 fade or what have you.
1) Better marine movement among other things will probably start forcing gorges for more competitive timings and combat outcomes. There are probably other things that can be done to viably force gorges.
2) lerk is already used
3) Add midgame threat (hmg) to fade to nerf effectiveness as well as energy/speed nerfs.
4) An actual midgame risk forces onos. Also allows marines to be aggressive throughout the midgame (which is the real issue behind fade ball). Fade ball would not be a problem at all if marines were not forced to sentry phasegate turtle. Longer early game really only postpones this to a later timing since it doesn't address fade power.
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*I actually think the early game alien power mess is a bigger issue than fade explosion. Imba gorges, passive egg spawns, drifter abilities, umbra, cheap harvesters, lerk tracer smoke, slow marine movement etc. Extending early game ontop of what we have currently would most likely not do much at all in regard to overall alien win balance.
I think it's wiser to see how a properly tuned early game plays out before we try and arbitrarily add or remove 'risk' via starting pres. Alot of the lack of 'early game risk' is coming from OP early game mechanics that should be fixed at the root instead of compensated for.
i think decreasing res flow timing for a longer early game is a pretty good idea, imo ns2 is most fun in the first 7 minutes, after when the fadeball comes out the game just comes to a halt until either marines can hold it out until they are teched up, or fades finally ending a forward phase gate and rt's. every game plays out almost the same, except for early game
After the release of the balancemod the most people learned now to play aliens. and what is the result: the balancemod that should BALANCE the game made the statistic more bad than any other build before! Since 250 we got in competetive a win rate of 20% Marines and 80% Aliens. In pulics we got a rating of 33% win Marines and 67% Aliens. Where is that balanced??
My personal feeling of the game is the same:
As Marine you got killed by super fast skulks at the beginning who kill you with a mark and 2 bites. thanks to the balance mod they do 75 damage in EVERY bite now....... so no chance for the commander to medpack you or for you to survive.
After fade explosion with the new super fades it is gg.
As an alien i run around the map kill everything as super fast skulk. and with the new silence and camouflage upgrade in once they can not even see or hear you. great! as fade (once i learned it) its pretty easy to rush in and go out. its easier than before with shadowstep because there is no break in my movement. so at least as alien i get ratings like 34:2 and as marine 10:10.
sorry sewlek. but there needs someting to be done. you can all say i am a liar or i can not aim. but look at the statistics or look at the balance changes for sumercup. the balance mod made the game awful and alien dominant. i want 249 back.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I agree @elodea regarding the early game not actually solving it... just like gorge costs being raised, it merely chips away at it.
As long as multiple fades are effective you will see multiple fades one way or another.
The only way to solve the effectiveness, imo, is to address the design.
If people don't want that, then we're left with what i consider to be bandaid solutions like delaying the explosion, staggering it, lessening it, and including other explosions as counters.
As for the HMG details, i disagree with the lerk hitbox considering the subtle changes that went into 250, but i digress; I don't actually think a high spread is enough to be fade specific? It would still effect Onos, at the very least. Also this weapon would have to sit in between exos and shotguns, in terms of effectiveness, or else you may as just well remove Exos. (hidden agenda found!! :-P)
KanehJoin Date: 2012-12-11Member: 174783Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
That's the main problem isn't it? by design, the fade has to be strong because it has to hold up against all of the midgame marine tech by itself as well as be worth 40 pres, which is essentially ~12-15 minutes of res. If you lose one early you aren't getting another for a long time. That design choice means the fade is what it is and you have to work around it instead of buffing/nerfing it.
Maybe make jetpacks/exos easier to tech? The current timings means that sgs and pgs hit just before fades do, but then prototech is way too late to do anything with. Turtling for 10 more minutes is too boring. I don't think people have problems with 1/2 prototech vs fadeball, because then it becomes skill based again. Puts the power to win or lose back into the hands of marines and thier skill with jps instead of pg whack-a-mole. Give fades back thier structure damage.
basically, skip all the boring midgame shit and just let endgame tech come and make endgame snowball harder. You can also fix onos cause you can assume it's going to be up only when jps/exos are available instead of balancing for both proto and non-proto situations.
staggering is not a bandaid solution when it's by design instead of artificial
it's about risk vs. reward or advantages vs. disadvantages
there just needs to be a disadvantage to many players going fade
b249 had some of this
- not enough firepower early to fight marine pressure
- not enough onos in the late game
bring it back, maybe make it more disadvantageous/riskier and the problem will fix itself
it's strategy game design 101
you allow for a wide variety of tactics, and then keep balancing the game so that no single tactic is viable in too many situations
there are lots of things that can be overpowered, but whether you can survive until that point is what really matters
After the release of the balancemod the most people learned now to play aliens. and what is the result: the balancemod that should BALANCE the game made the statistic more bad than any other build before! Since 250 we got in competetive a win rate of 20% Marines and 80% Aliens. In pulics we got a rating of 33% win Marines and 67% Aliens. Where is that balanced??
[…]
sorry sewlek. but there needs someting to be done. you can all say i am a liar or i can not aim. but look at the statistics or look at the balance changes for sumercup. the balance mod made the game awful and alien dominant. i want 249 back.
You are getting too caught up on names here. The goal of the Balance mod was not to make the game more balanced. It was a testing ground for features that are supposed to make the game more fun and add more variety and different viable strategies. Sewlek stated often enough himself that the name probably doesn't fit anymore.
Some of the goals of it:
- Getting rid of the typical "Always Crag First, then Shift, then Shade" pattern by making them equally viable.
- Giving the Khammander more stuff to do with Drifters and making cysting less tedious.
- Reducing PvE structure spam.
- Giving aliens more strategic options on 1 Hive.
- Giving aliens some form of lategame scaling.
- Making GLs and FTs more viable as weapons.
- Making Exos less powerful but easier to obtain for more variety.
- Generally reducing the impact of endgame units like Exo and Onos.
- Making Jetpacks stronger but also more expensive.
- New skill-based movement system.
- And a lot of other minor improvements.
There were issues in 249. People seem to forget that. Those issues have been fixed with 250, we just got a bunch of new issues from it.
It's been only one patch since then, so I really don't see the point of people going all havoc and expecting things to be perfectly balanced right from the start. You need to realize that it takes time to see how those changes play out in the entire playerbase, then identify the sources of the problems and adjust the game to fix them.
The beautiful thing about NS1 that prevented fadesplosions wasn't that you didn't want to have 5 fades... It was that you couldn't have them.
The early game res sinks for the aliens (gorges dropping structures and one player saving for the hive) were more costly and vitally important, and as such you couldn't save for 5 fades without losing the early game so hard that you never reached the fades. The fades themselves were fun to play and competent, but you'd never have reached them without sacrificing potential fades for crucial res sinks. Instead of watering down the fade itself by making it an under-performer or only capable of performing under certain circumstances, introduce res sinks as vital as in NS1 for the alien early game. That way you swat three flies with one strike; make alien gameplay more role dependent, solve the fadesplosion problem and still retain the playability and the powerful feel of the fades.
Your suggestions for a more role-dependent alien team are on the right track, but every one of your suggestions include making the fade weaker either in a specific role or unless a specific condition is met, for instance, lowering their structural damage or needing a gorge for them to have a normal RoF, respectively. Suggestions like these, while perhaps powerful in dealing with the fadesplosion, water down the experience of playing a fade and thus get a big no-no in my book.
Something that doesn't diminish the fade experience while still creating interesting strategic choices and preventing the fade ball is introducing unavoidable res sinks to the alien early game. At the moment, the aliens only have one res sink that can be considered crucial (and even that's very arguable), and that is the lerk. As marines start getting upgrades and shotguns, a lerk becomes vital for defense and support. Not as vital as builder gorges and hive savers in NS1, as 5 skulks to 5 fades is still very viable if you can outperform your opponent in the early game. Gorges in NS2, on the other hand, can hardly be considered res sinks at all with the low costs of both the lifeform itself and the its support features, the hydras and the babblers. And even that tiny res sink is not required, only something that's nice to have every now and then.
Introducing new res sinks without making the alien early game too powerful is extremely difficult, and this is the point where I shed a tear for the old days of NS1. Trying to tackle the problem, however, I came up with a few possible solutions, all of which are not very well thought out and might pose a whole new set of problems, but at least they're a nod to the right direction:
Make the early game abilities of lerks and gorges more costly and more powerful. The lerk could cost 30 resources without upgrades, but have more hp. The gorge price should be bumbed back up to 10, and hydras could cost 5-6 res each but be much more formidable, rather than a nuisance. Babblers are already a bit OP in the early game, so just doubling or even tripling their price would both introduce a new res sink and make them appear less often. Removing the drifter's ability to build and having the gorge's healspray be the only feature capable of bringing a building's growing rate up from a drag would be a nod towards the importance of builder gorges. This way you'd need to have at least one gorge, preferably two, to keep up with harvesters being destroyed.
With these changes, the vitality of early game gorges becomes pretty apparent, and their res sinks would be bigger. That would be at least one, maybe two less fades than in current game, in which there either is no gorge at all or the gorging player fades up anyway one and a half minutes after the others because gorging as it is requires no res at all. The lerk would be in a similar place as it is now, but being a bit stronger would make its appearance more likely.
A final suggestion that would prevent the now-buffed-but-more-expensive alien early game res sinks from being too powerful would be to reduce the rate of pres income, and only pres, not tres. As the amount of tres earned is the gauge of marine strength while pres is that of the aliens, this would be a buff for the marines. This would have three distinctive beneficial effects:
1) The marines would be in a slighly better position in way of upgrades and tech when the fades hit the field, and combined with the reduced amount of fades this would mean that the aliens hitting 40res wouldn't tip the scales as much as they do at the moment.
2) Making the marines stronger in the later part of the early game would mean that the aliens have to lean on their early game res sinks to have a chance of (in the bad case) surviving until they get fades or (in the good case) preventing the marines from teching up further so that even when the fades appear the aliens wouldn't be outteched. This would mean that skipping the lerk in favour of more fades would be much less viable, because the marines would have a much larger time window to completely annihilate the alien team comprised of nothing but gorges and skulks. The new, stronger lerk would also have a better fighting chance against the higher-tiered marines. In some cases, two lerks could also be required to stand a chance, something that never happens with the current build, and something that would reduce the number of potential fades even further.
3) This would extend the early game by creating a late early game phase where somewhat teched marines are fighting against strong lerks.
That could work, although it's kind of going in the opposite direction of reduced damage while blinking (which if is not still the case...pretty sure was at some point), which is weird. No reason it wouldn't work though.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@therius ooohhhh you.. you know just how to get an awesome out of me dontcha?
Just a mention of making the lerk a viable lifeform (or anything but useless paper) wins my vote!
I am hardly ever negative or tough on the devs.. but just this once i will say:
Goodluck convincing sewlek of this though.. there's no subject i have argued and fought more about with him, than the lerk.
I still have nightmares of the god awful role confusions it went through just pre launch. Ugh..
But yes a viable lerk and necessary (instead of optional) gorges is just the start.. you need something else if you want more than singular pres sinks. So keep brainstorming ideas.
Lol I'm sorry but if you think lerk is useless paper currently, your really horribly wrong. Play the role of support, the lerk is still extremely strong in this role.
Yes making aliens require more early game pres investments would help the fade ball, but as I have said countless times, if lerks become strong enough to hold off against shotguns, what happens when the fades come out? What stops marines from going mass shotgun before fades? You talk like we can just delay the lategame 3-4 minutes and make aliens have even less fades in the fadeball and everything will be perfect, but thats the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that people here see the balance as 70-30 or whatever alien biased number they want, and they think aliens (specifically fade balls) are massively overpowered. While the fadeball is strong, pulling out 1-2 fades from that group, then delaying it by 4 minutes would most likely completely reverse the winrates in high level play, and have only a small impact on lower level play. The answer to the problem is not nearly as drastic as people here seem to think. Fix the alien commander building everything, fix the crazy strengths of early game gorges, fix fade movement mechanics to scale better with skill, fix fade scaling (weaker initially, stronger t2 ability, stronger yet t3).
While the fadeball is strong, pulling out 1-2 fades from that group, then delaying it by 4 minutes would most likely completely reverse the winrates in high level play, and have only a small impact on lower level play.
I think all games played between launch and the first half of this year disagree with that
Make the early game abilities of lerks and gorges more costly and more powerful. The lerk could cost 30 resources without upgrades, but have more hp. The gorge price should be bumbed back up to 10, and hydras could cost 5-6 res each but be much more formidable, rather than a nuisance. Babblers are already a bit OP in the early game, so just doubling or even tripling their price would both introduce a new res sink and make them appear less often. Removing the drifter's ability to build and having the gorge's healspray be the only feature capable of bringing a building's growing rate up from a drag would be a nod towards the importance of builder gorges. This way you'd need to have at least one gorge, preferably two, to keep up with harvesters being destroyed.
To sum it up, you want to:
- create an overpowered lerk that is (again) nearly not killable
- gorges that are able to completely shut down a passageway (again) with hydras
- reintroduce the boring "stare at something and hold mouse 2" for gorges
And all that to push the fadeball to a later timing. (Because it will come when it is effective.)
I agree, that NS1s solution was to force the aliens to spend res and therefore forbid the fadeball. But NS2 can't simply do the same with the changed res model.
-I'm not creating an overpowered lerk, I'm creating a lerk that is necessary for survival, and will appear later, when marines have already teched up somewhat, a1w1 shotguns for example.
-Even if the strength of hydras would be doubled, they could still never completely block a hallway from two or more marines. What you see in a public server is 5 marines being kept at bay by one gorge, and that's not something you'll balance for.
-"stare at something and hold mouse 2" clearly isn't boring for many people, as public servers usually have a problem of too many gorges instead of too few. Builder units have always appealed to many people.
And the entire point was that this will not push the fade ball back, it will prevent it. If the alien pres division at 10-ish minutes looks like 5 (the lerk player), 5 (another lerk player when the aliens realised they were losing), 10 (a gorge player who has used a lot of babblers to make skulks not die instantly in combat), 40 (a player saving for a fade), 40 (another player saving for a fade) and 5 (the commander gorge), you won't get the fade ball, now will you?
And like I said, these were not very thoroughly thought out ideas. The general guideline is the most important thing to take from my post; introduce vital and unavoidable res sinks to the alien early game, whatever those be.
4 minutes is maybe a bit too drastic, what I'm picturing is on average one or two more pieces of tech than the marines would normally have: w2a1 shotguns instead of w1a1 no shotties, a researched and established phase gate instead of just starting the research etc. This would be a delay of 1-3 minutes depending on team performance. The lerk being a bit stronger would be negated by its later appearance and the fact that the marines will most probably have one piece of tech more they'd normally have. Instead of an overpowered lerk, I'm picturing a lerk that feels stronger but has a tough job of killing marines, only keeping them at bay. Like it is now.
And whatever you think about the 'biased' win rates, the fact is that the pendulum swings in the aliens' favour at the moment of the fadesplosion so hard that you can hear the collective cry of pain of the marine team from two servers away. Delaying it by 1-3 minutes with only 2-3 fades instantly hitting the field would only keep the game interesting, in my opinion.
If you make lerks 30pres while the fades are still 40pres, then that's too small a bridge to cross imo. Maybe lowering starting pres to 15 is a better option? It would still take you a bit longer to get lerks up, so buffing them a bit would be justifiable, while still keeping a 15pres bridge to cross for fades to come out, thus increasing the importance of the lerk. It'll increase the overall early game as well. Also, rather than increasing lerk HP, I'd rather see it's speed/agility increased instead so you can dodge fire more easily, instead of having to tank it.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
What if alien players had to donate res early game to get meaningful tech progression? Comm drops "ghost" rt, skulk comes up, pays 15 res, carries on his way. A step further is making players gorge to donate res to structures. Now all of a sudden 2-3 players have no res early game because without that expenditure it would be even slower to get fade res.
I'm not saying obliterate alien tres, but it can be less important.
I know I keep popping in and out of this thread posting my random thoughts w/o reading much of whats been going on but I got another crazy idea...what about the ability to self nano at the cost of pres? Might be a way for players to combat the fade problem that seems to be appearing in pubs. - http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/131481/fades
One of the biggest differences I see in pub vs comp other then the basic ability to aim is comm support. The overwhelming lack of comm support in key moments is easily enough to turn the tide in MANY marine games. Giving some of that control to the field players may allow for more the marines sack more lifeforms and eek out a few more wins.
Unless you made self nano extremely expensive and only used in emergencies, it would be incredibly over powered. A single nano'd/medpacked marine can push off multiple fades alone. Giving your whole marine team the ability to do this at will is rofl.
Yes that is the idea is to only use it in emergencies. Can't have a team of marines walking around nanoing themselves every 30 seconds haha. Could even make the nano less powerfull and make it a different color to signal to the aliens it's a different type of nano. I would just like to see some power given to the field player since you can't count on commanders doing that kind of stuff. Comm support is a key aspect of play that is just flat out missing from most of pub play.
Unless you also nerf marines, aliens that only pop 2 fades at 10 minutes have lost. There are teams currently that can hold off the fadeball, its not unstoppable. If you weaken early game gorges so that pushing alien RTs is possible again, so that the fades can be delayed through good play, that alone would be huge for marine teams. Good marine teams are generally able (or at least want to) get 2/1 or 2/2 with shotguns and 2 established phase gates by the time fades come out. At that point you turtle with sentries and macs, and either start killing fades and then push, or hold out till jetpacks and push.
My point is that the imbalance is in both mechanics and game design, mechanics are whats making the balance tip so hard at lower play levels, ease of fade play vs unforgivingness of marines. Design like the massing of fades also makes for imbalance, but I don't think people realize that aliens need much of that strength to win. The other larger part of that problem simply comes from the teamplay - marines require much stronger teamplay and also have much less room for mistakes (basically 0).
Comments
* my idea for rescaps and pools works well with rfk as it helps push the individuals caps in a different timeframe then there teammembers.
* remember the cap is on a lifeform, not the player.
* also now the game has changed with 1CC tech, more use on turrets at phasegates etc...
Simply lower or remove fade structure damage. That will solve your fade explosion problem. You want to fade explode? Good luck on killing any rts in a good amount of time.
Want to camp that pg then? Good luck with the turrets next to it.
* Definately only do this to the fade if its done, to balance out. You rarely see fades hitting structures anyway. Lets keep it on other lifeforms.
Less Fades on the field need more support from umbra lerks and gorges. So whats wrong with splitting the player-pres?
I like the idea that the people spending pres for the team getting some buffs for an short time as an extra reward.
How about points and an a choosable upgrade buff (like some extra armor for 20 sec and they have to use this extra buff in a specific time windwow or a special ability)
UWE is tweaking since ages, maybe its time rethink some stuff.
A little longer early game would end in: fadeballs again.
Reduced fire rate and clip site, increased damage and accuracy, and Piercing damage type
Good for sniping fades that are running away
Cleaning up early game, adding hmg, and making onos stronger is a much cleaner solution for pulling pres away from the fade ball. It's more efficient to have two stages of 'risk', instead of piling it all into early game and hoping for the best. *see below for why extending early game is also not a good way to add early game risk.
Hmg will be easy to tweak against fades specifically via spread. Lerk hitbox footprint is really small, and so is skulk to an extent so i don't see this whole issue of hmg countering everything being a problem. Not anymore than shotguns, exos, or any other piece of equipment that costs pres.
Basically, nerfing early game choices doesn't nerf mid game choices. Only nerfing mid game choices nerfs midgame choices. That is, fade ball is still going to be the desirable choice when you get there, unless you add mid-game marine power and/or nerf fade effectiveness.
The ideal composition should look something like 1 alien commander ('lock' that sucker in the hive. Too bad if its boring), 1 gorge, 1 lerk, 2 fade, 1 onos. A much more 'diverse' composition than 2 lerk, 2 fade or what have you.
1) Better marine movement among other things will probably start forcing gorges for more competitive timings and combat outcomes. There are probably other things that can be done to viably force gorges.
2) lerk is already used
3) Add midgame threat (hmg) to fade to nerf effectiveness as well as energy/speed nerfs.
4) An actual midgame risk forces onos. Also allows marines to be aggressive throughout the midgame (which is the real issue behind fade ball). Fade ball would not be a problem at all if marines were not forced to sentry phasegate turtle. Longer early game really only postpones this to a later timing since it doesn't address fade power.
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*I actually think the early game alien power mess is a bigger issue than fade explosion. Imba gorges, passive egg spawns, drifter abilities, umbra, cheap harvesters, lerk tracer smoke, slow marine movement etc. Extending early game ontop of what we have currently would most likely not do much at all in regard to overall alien win balance.
I think it's wiser to see how a properly tuned early game plays out before we try and arbitrarily add or remove 'risk' via starting pres. Alot of the lack of 'early game risk' is coming from OP early game mechanics that should be fixed at the root instead of compensated for.
My personal feeling of the game is the same:
As Marine you got killed by super fast skulks at the beginning who kill you with a mark and 2 bites. thanks to the balance mod they do 75 damage in EVERY bite now....... so no chance for the commander to medpack you or for you to survive.
After fade explosion with the new super fades it is gg.
As an alien i run around the map kill everything as super fast skulk. and with the new silence and camouflage upgrade in once they can not even see or hear you. great! as fade (once i learned it) its pretty easy to rush in and go out. its easier than before with shadowstep because there is no break in my movement. so at least as alien i get ratings like 34:2 and as marine 10:10.
sorry sewlek. but there needs someting to be done. you can all say i am a liar or i can not aim. but look at the statistics or look at the balance changes for sumercup. the balance mod made the game awful and alien dominant. i want 249 back.
Not 3 hives, or 4.. but 'all techpoints minus 1'.
Buff armor.
>ow and add the 'now we dance' line from ns1 to it, ya know.. nostalgia'
As long as multiple fades are effective you will see multiple fades one way or another.
The only way to solve the effectiveness, imo, is to address the design.
If people don't want that, then we're left with what i consider to be bandaid solutions like delaying the explosion, staggering it, lessening it, and including other explosions as counters.
As for the HMG details, i disagree with the lerk hitbox considering the subtle changes that went into 250, but i digress; I don't actually think a high spread is enough to be fade specific? It would still effect Onos, at the very least. Also this weapon would have to sit in between exos and shotguns, in terms of effectiveness, or else you may as just well remove Exos. (hidden agenda found!! :-P)
Maybe make jetpacks/exos easier to tech? The current timings means that sgs and pgs hit just before fades do, but then prototech is way too late to do anything with. Turtling for 10 more minutes is too boring. I don't think people have problems with 1/2 prototech vs fadeball, because then it becomes skill based again. Puts the power to win or lose back into the hands of marines and thier skill with jps instead of pg whack-a-mole. Give fades back thier structure damage.
basically, skip all the boring midgame shit and just let endgame tech come and make endgame snowball harder. You can also fix onos cause you can assume it's going to be up only when jps/exos are available instead of balancing for both proto and non-proto situations.
it's about risk vs. reward or advantages vs. disadvantages
there just needs to be a disadvantage to many players going fade
b249 had some of this
- not enough firepower early to fight marine pressure
- not enough onos in the late game
bring it back, maybe make it more disadvantageous/riskier and the problem will fix itself
it's strategy game design 101
you allow for a wide variety of tactics, and then keep balancing the game so that no single tactic is viable in too many situations
there are lots of things that can be overpowered, but whether you can survive until that point is what really matters
You are getting too caught up on names here. The goal of the Balance mod was not to make the game more balanced. It was a testing ground for features that are supposed to make the game more fun and add more variety and different viable strategies. Sewlek stated often enough himself that the name probably doesn't fit anymore.
Some of the goals of it:
- Getting rid of the typical "Always Crag First, then Shift, then Shade" pattern by making them equally viable.
- Giving the Khammander more stuff to do with Drifters and making cysting less tedious.
- Reducing PvE structure spam.
- Giving aliens more strategic options on 1 Hive.
- Giving aliens some form of lategame scaling.
- Making GLs and FTs more viable as weapons.
- Making Exos less powerful but easier to obtain for more variety.
- Generally reducing the impact of endgame units like Exo and Onos.
- Making Jetpacks stronger but also more expensive.
- New skill-based movement system.
- And a lot of other minor improvements.
There were issues in 249. People seem to forget that. Those issues have been fixed with 250, we just got a bunch of new issues from it.
It's been only one patch since then, so I really don't see the point of people going all havoc and expecting things to be perfectly balanced right from the start. You need to realize that it takes time to see how those changes play out in the entire playerbase, then identify the sources of the problems and adjust the game to fix them.
The beautiful thing about NS1 that prevented fadesplosions wasn't that you didn't want to have 5 fades... It was that you couldn't have them.
The early game res sinks for the aliens (gorges dropping structures and one player saving for the hive) were more costly and vitally important, and as such you couldn't save for 5 fades without losing the early game so hard that you never reached the fades. The fades themselves were fun to play and competent, but you'd never have reached them without sacrificing potential fades for crucial res sinks. Instead of watering down the fade itself by making it an under-performer or only capable of performing under certain circumstances, introduce res sinks as vital as in NS1 for the alien early game. That way you swat three flies with one strike; make alien gameplay more role dependent, solve the fadesplosion problem and still retain the playability and the powerful feel of the fades.
Your suggestions for a more role-dependent alien team are on the right track, but every one of your suggestions include making the fade weaker either in a specific role or unless a specific condition is met, for instance, lowering their structural damage or needing a gorge for them to have a normal RoF, respectively. Suggestions like these, while perhaps powerful in dealing with the fadesplosion, water down the experience of playing a fade and thus get a big no-no in my book.
Something that doesn't diminish the fade experience while still creating interesting strategic choices and preventing the fade ball is introducing unavoidable res sinks to the alien early game. At the moment, the aliens only have one res sink that can be considered crucial (and even that's very arguable), and that is the lerk. As marines start getting upgrades and shotguns, a lerk becomes vital for defense and support. Not as vital as builder gorges and hive savers in NS1, as 5 skulks to 5 fades is still very viable if you can outperform your opponent in the early game. Gorges in NS2, on the other hand, can hardly be considered res sinks at all with the low costs of both the lifeform itself and the its support features, the hydras and the babblers. And even that tiny res sink is not required, only something that's nice to have every now and then.
Introducing new res sinks without making the alien early game too powerful is extremely difficult, and this is the point where I shed a tear for the old days of NS1. Trying to tackle the problem, however, I came up with a few possible solutions, all of which are not very well thought out and might pose a whole new set of problems, but at least they're a nod to the right direction:
Make the early game abilities of lerks and gorges more costly and more powerful. The lerk could cost 30 resources without upgrades, but have more hp. The gorge price should be bumbed back up to 10, and hydras could cost 5-6 res each but be much more formidable, rather than a nuisance. Babblers are already a bit OP in the early game, so just doubling or even tripling their price would both introduce a new res sink and make them appear less often. Removing the drifter's ability to build and having the gorge's healspray be the only feature capable of bringing a building's growing rate up from a drag would be a nod towards the importance of builder gorges. This way you'd need to have at least one gorge, preferably two, to keep up with harvesters being destroyed.
With these changes, the vitality of early game gorges becomes pretty apparent, and their res sinks would be bigger. That would be at least one, maybe two less fades than in current game, in which there either is no gorge at all or the gorging player fades up anyway one and a half minutes after the others because gorging as it is requires no res at all. The lerk would be in a similar place as it is now, but being a bit stronger would make its appearance more likely.
A final suggestion that would prevent the now-buffed-but-more-expensive alien early game res sinks from being too powerful would be to reduce the rate of pres income, and only pres, not tres. As the amount of tres earned is the gauge of marine strength while pres is that of the aliens, this would be a buff for the marines. This would have three distinctive beneficial effects:
1) The marines would be in a slighly better position in way of upgrades and tech when the fades hit the field, and combined with the reduced amount of fades this would mean that the aliens hitting 40res wouldn't tip the scales as much as they do at the moment.
2) Making the marines stronger in the later part of the early game would mean that the aliens have to lean on their early game res sinks to have a chance of (in the bad case) surviving until they get fades or (in the good case) preventing the marines from teching up further so that even when the fades appear the aliens wouldn't be outteched. This would mean that skipping the lerk in favour of more fades would be much less viable, because the marines would have a much larger time window to completely annihilate the alien team comprised of nothing but gorges and skulks. The new, stronger lerk would also have a better fighting chance against the higher-tiered marines. In some cases, two lerks could also be required to stand a chance, something that never happens with the current build, and something that would reduce the number of potential fades even further.
3) This would extend the early game by creating a late early game phase where somewhat teched marines are fighting against strong lerks.
I guess they could make it so that the HMG only does extra damage to Fades and not other lifeforms.
Bonus bullet damage while blinking?
Just a mention of making the lerk a viable lifeform (or anything but useless paper) wins my vote!
I am hardly ever negative or tough on the devs.. but just this once i will say:
Goodluck convincing sewlek of this though.. there's no subject i have argued and fought more about with him, than the lerk.
I still have nightmares of the god awful role confusions it went through just pre launch. Ugh..
But yes a viable lerk and necessary (instead of optional) gorges is just the start.. you need something else if you want more than singular pres sinks. So keep brainstorming ideas.
Yes making aliens require more early game pres investments would help the fade ball, but as I have said countless times, if lerks become strong enough to hold off against shotguns, what happens when the fades come out? What stops marines from going mass shotgun before fades? You talk like we can just delay the lategame 3-4 minutes and make aliens have even less fades in the fadeball and everything will be perfect, but thats the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that people here see the balance as 70-30 or whatever alien biased number they want, and they think aliens (specifically fade balls) are massively overpowered. While the fadeball is strong, pulling out 1-2 fades from that group, then delaying it by 4 minutes would most likely completely reverse the winrates in high level play, and have only a small impact on lower level play. The answer to the problem is not nearly as drastic as people here seem to think. Fix the alien commander building everything, fix the crazy strengths of early game gorges, fix fade movement mechanics to scale better with skill, fix fade scaling (weaker initially, stronger t2 ability, stronger yet t3).
I think all games played between launch and the first half of this year disagree with that
To sum it up, you want to:
- create an overpowered lerk that is (again) nearly not killable
- gorges that are able to completely shut down a passageway (again) with hydras
- reintroduce the boring "stare at something and hold mouse 2" for gorges
And all that to push the fadeball to a later timing. (Because it will come when it is effective.)
I agree, that NS1s solution was to force the aliens to spend res and therefore forbid the fadeball. But NS2 can't simply do the same with the changed res model.
No, to all of your points.
-I'm not creating an overpowered lerk, I'm creating a lerk that is necessary for survival, and will appear later, when marines have already teched up somewhat, a1w1 shotguns for example.
-Even if the strength of hydras would be doubled, they could still never completely block a hallway from two or more marines. What you see in a public server is 5 marines being kept at bay by one gorge, and that's not something you'll balance for.
-"stare at something and hold mouse 2" clearly isn't boring for many people, as public servers usually have a problem of too many gorges instead of too few. Builder units have always appealed to many people.
And the entire point was that this will not push the fade ball back, it will prevent it. If the alien pres division at 10-ish minutes looks like 5 (the lerk player), 5 (another lerk player when the aliens realised they were losing), 10 (a gorge player who has used a lot of babblers to make skulks not die instantly in combat), 40 (a player saving for a fade), 40 (another player saving for a fade) and 5 (the commander gorge), you won't get the fade ball, now will you?
And like I said, these were not very thoroughly thought out ideas. The general guideline is the most important thing to take from my post; introduce vital and unavoidable res sinks to the alien early game, whatever those be.
@xDragon
4 minutes is maybe a bit too drastic, what I'm picturing is on average one or two more pieces of tech than the marines would normally have: w2a1 shotguns instead of w1a1 no shotties, a researched and established phase gate instead of just starting the research etc. This would be a delay of 1-3 minutes depending on team performance. The lerk being a bit stronger would be negated by its later appearance and the fact that the marines will most probably have one piece of tech more they'd normally have. Instead of an overpowered lerk, I'm picturing a lerk that feels stronger but has a tough job of killing marines, only keeping them at bay. Like it is now.
And whatever you think about the 'biased' win rates, the fact is that the pendulum swings in the aliens' favour at the moment of the fadesplosion so hard that you can hear the collective cry of pain of the marine team from two servers away. Delaying it by 1-3 minutes with only 2-3 fades instantly hitting the field would only keep the game interesting, in my opinion.
If you make lerks 30pres while the fades are still 40pres, then that's too small a bridge to cross imo. Maybe lowering starting pres to 15 is a better option? It would still take you a bit longer to get lerks up, so buffing them a bit would be justifiable, while still keeping a 15pres bridge to cross for fades to come out, thus increasing the importance of the lerk. It'll increase the overall early game as well. Also, rather than increasing lerk HP, I'd rather see it's speed/agility increased instead so you can dodge fire more easily, instead of having to tank it.
Other than that, agreed.
inb4 "lerk balls op" "hydra rush op" etc
Anyway, this direction seems right to me. Whatever you do, don't sacrifice fun to balance (although I think UWE has already acknowledged this.)
I'm not saying obliterate alien tres, but it can be less important.
One of the biggest differences I see in pub vs comp other then the basic ability to aim is comm support. The overwhelming lack of comm support in key moments is easily enough to turn the tide in MANY marine games. Giving some of that control to the field players may allow for more the marines sack more lifeforms and eek out a few more wins.
Thoughts?
My point is that the imbalance is in both mechanics and game design, mechanics are whats making the balance tip so hard at lower play levels, ease of fade play vs unforgivingness of marines. Design like the massing of fades also makes for imbalance, but I don't think people realize that aliens need much of that strength to win. The other larger part of that problem simply comes from the teamplay - marines require much stronger teamplay and also have much less room for mistakes (basically 0).