I wanted to try out the balance mod, but then I found out there are no balance servers in my region. The player base in Australia/New Zealand has shrunk to about 2 populated servers during peak hours. No server admins will run balance test mods because it would split the remaining players.
It's called the armory because it's where you buy your weapons. Anyone with a reasonable competency in the English language will understand this(and the rest won't care). It's clear you've run out of meaningful arguments if that's the thing you're choosing to latch on to now.
It's because what you are arguing right now is just flat out wrong. Please stick to making points that actually have to do with the game.
i think what you name things in the game and having things make as much sense as possible through simple things like this is valid feedback because it improves the game as a whole. perhaps the point isnt worthwhile when it comes to changing the function of the 'armoury', but it doesnt rule out a change of name for the structure eg. to 'supply centre' or something else that more accurately describes its function in a non confusing way.
It's called the armory because it's where you buy your weapons. Anyone with a reasonable competency in the English language will understand this(and the rest won't care). It's clear you've run out of meaningful arguments if that's the thing you're choosing to latch on to now.
Precisely. Also, Amoury (or Armory for our state-side friends) is a word that has been used for centuries to describe the place where weapons are stored. Just go to any mostly-complete castle in the UK to confirm this. 'Facepalm' is the only correct response to this absurd argument!
i accept that the name alone isnt an argument to change the function of the building, but it is an argument against its intuitivity, considering that the building replenishes everything excluding armor, it being called an 'armory' might be a source of bewilderment, as had been remarked by several people in the server and in other threads... optimisation applies to more than just movement physics and damage stats. It can easily be fixed with a simple name change, but it remains an issue.
doubling down on the semantics - 'arms' refers to sword, shield and armour - from latin 'arma' meaning 'instruments of war'. while you guys might not want to concede the point in order to defend your pet mechanic, the assumption that an armoury would provide your weapons and repair your armour makes perfect sense.
@blarney_stone so you counter tactic to a marine in an alien hive (potentially taking out upgrades) is to leave him be and go attack res?
1 skulk in a marine base is not going to do much...the comm will most likely just hop out...or wait until a dead marine re-spawns (and marines have the upper hand in 1 v 1 as you have said...), just a pity aliens dont have a similar counter...instead they get to deal with a marine who in effect has the alien equivalent of regen and cara (plus focus) thanks to meds, welder, armour and weapons upgrades.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying... I was suggesting that two skulks deal with the marine in base while the other three attack marine start (or another point in the map like an unguarded phase gate). Go back and read my comment more closely and you will see that I never suggest doing anything (other than parasiting and res biting) with a single skulk... that was the main gist of my entire comment....
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 get forums are *thee* place for telling others they are wrong, but I think these discussions can be kept more productive if kept on topic.. And this can occur if everyone ceased responding to posts that debate semantics or anything else that isn't solely the meat and potatoes of this mod.
Derailing such an important thread that will impact the future of ns2 seems like a shame to me. Just a thought..
Precisely. Also, Amoury (or Armory for our state-side friends) is a word that has been used for centuries to describe the place where weapons are stored. Just go to any mostly-complete castle in the UK to confirm this. 'Facepalm' is the only correct response to this absurd argument!
Armor maybe be stored in the armory but you generally went to the blacksmith to get it fixed.
Maybe a little dwarf character can be added that the comm can deploy, who for a fee can repair your armor in a forge. This should take atleast 10-15 days to be balanced IMO.
Either that, or you can crawl into a robotics factory and the doors will close and you can get fixed.....
So I have played bt quite a lot now and I think I have a clear enough idea of it to make a legit feedback.
I am not a commander so I won't give much feedback on it.
So first, i'd like to say that I like where the bt is going, but right now its imbalanced. Mostly imo a number problem, the ideas are good overall.
Aliens early game has been upped a lot, with the skulk movement, the aliens rt hp, and the low hp for marines rt.
Skulk movement :
It needs to be capped. You can go way too fast. A solo capper doesn't really have his chance against a skulk that is coming full speed. A max of 11-12 up to 12-13 with celerity sounds fine. On the other hand, the starting speed of the skulk is too slow. I don't want to have to back off 2 rooms to be able to engage a marine with a decent speed. The first jump needs more acceleration. Again, a better acceleration with celerity than without.
Also, I don't understand why (and same thing in vanilla) the skulk HAS SUCH A BIG NEED FOR WALLS ?????????????? It doesn't make sense to me, gameplay wise or "reality/immersion" wise. I don't want to be dependent on walls. At least not as much. Give the ground skulk a chance. This is why I liked the "dog sprint". I could use it like 0.1s, just as I jumped, to get a decent speed without a wall. I understand that dog speed was maybe too imba when you had reached a marine, but its just the possibility to have a small boost with your first jump that was interesting.
Last thing is air control. You can't have vanilla air control with a skulk that fast, but something halfway between bt and vanilla sounds right. The goal would be being able to go right and left while ground jumping without losing all your speed, so you don't have to go STRAIGHT when rushing a marine. This coupled with a slower skulk should makes more balanced and interesting combat.
Aliens rt hp boost :
I like it, it felt like vanilla rts were too easy to kill. I think this is why double pressure was so strong. I like the moment where marines are pushing and aliens are gathering, just to jump in all together. More hp means more time for aliens to do that, and longer fights around rts.
But, with the recent changes to skulk movement, the annoying lamming with gorges hydra/clogs (and the possibility to add a crag, who I think got a BIG hp boost too?), and the low marine firepower early game it is just too much. It is right now nearly impossible to kill a rt early game, provided you even reached it.
Marines rt hp :
I don't understand that change. RTs might cost a bit less, but this is far from balancing how HARD it became for marines to hold rts. You have to see the big picture. Solo skulk > solo capper (as said in the skulk movement part). Solo capper dies, skulk start biting the rt. The capper takes 1234152465 years to respawn. By the time you get there, your rt is dead and the skulk is gone, even with infinite sprint. Everytime you lose a 1on1 as capper, you're gonna lose at least 1 rt. And right now it's gonna happen a lot. Definitly needs a change.
So right now, marines don't have much choices early game. They can't do anything else than defend rts. They won't get past the 2nd rts (read flight/dc if you spawn sub or atrium for example), and hardly get them without losing the 1st rts. The only realistic option for them I can see is fast PG.
Early game really needs a rebalance. I think it won't be that hard to do, but it needs to be done so mid/late game can be too, but it is a "global" matter. What makes it imbalance is not 1 thing, but an accumulation of things.
My suggestions :
-Nerf skulk movement. Cap the max speed.
-Give hp to marine RT
-Change something about the spam near alien RTs
-Give marines more firepower
-faster respawn, maybe for both, it would add some dynamism
-maybe a possibility for marines to dodge a bit in combat? like the air control in vanilla
About the spam near aliens rt, what I'd like the most would be reduce or remove the gorge spam, but I don't see it happen. Crags really seems too strong, even for sgs. Last thing would be reduce the aliens rt hp, but Im not sure I'd like it, so I don't really now what should be done specifically about that.
About marine early firepower, the only thing that comes to my mind is SHOTGUN. The lmg is fine, I don't see a need to change it. I like the new sg with less damage but less spread, to me it feels more rewarding, when I aim at a skulk, he dies, when I don't, he doesn't.
Early sgs would make pushing rts possible against fast skulks and stronger rts, and would add possibilities for marines.
I also think that 20 pres is too much, considering that welders are really important, mines are too expensive and sucks big *****. Buying a sg or 2 really puts you behind for the rest of the game, unless you had them late in the game or have a lot of rts.
So what I think marines need is the ability to have sgs right from the start. Only an armory, no research needed. Now obviously the problem is, because of pres, that every marine could get one. My idea to prevent that would be some kind of "cooldowns" and "stock" for sgs. When you drop an armory, it would have X sgs stocked, so marines could only get X sgs at start. Then, the numbers of sgs available would rise every Y seconds, and/or the comm could add one instantly for Z res. Multiples armory could share the stock and share the cd and/or reduce the cd, or have 2 differents stocks. The armory could also become a target of choice for base rush, if you decide to reset the sg stock if the last armory dies.
This would prevent the SG explosion, wich I think is really annoying, while still allowing the use of early sgs, and depending on the X/Y/Z numbers not impact mid/late game too much.
Except for sgs I don't really see how you could boost marines early game without just making it easier/faster to go into the mid game state (pg and or 1/1 1/2 2/1 upgrades).
now for the rest :
I liked how you changed the alien tech tree. The vanilla one really sucks, there is no other option than rt+cara, wait for the fade explosion and win or lose. All routes seems to have something to offer, especially since you dont have to commit to cara OR regen after choosing crag hive. Also the 3 shells instead of 1 means 2 marines entering your hive won't be able to kill 35 res in 5 seconds.
Lerk : WTF???? It felt bad in vanilla, its useless now. No hp + better reg + good collision + still no decent bite + still no decent harrass. Close combat is like, FORBIDDEN if you want to live more than 3 minutes, and with the nerf in hp, spiking is even more risky. Being a flying turrets wasn't fun in vanilla, it's even less in bt.
Now of course the lerk sucks, until... UMBRA. OP. It costs nearly no energy, you can spam it everywhere, you get it way too soon in the game, it makes marines less able to see (those kind of things are so annoying), and probably the thing that makes it the most OP : you keep umbra on you after just passing through the cloud. It's really a gamebreaker.
I think the lerk really needs drastic changes. I can't help myself but to think of the NS1 lerk. It was so fitting the game, his role changing throughout the round, going from aggressive support (bite + spore against 0/0 0/1 1/1 marines attacking rts/2nd hive) to defensive support (spore + umbra against upgraded and geared marines, using scent of fear to help teammates, scouting).
Now I don't necessarily want the same lerk in ns2, but at least the idea of it. An early lerk being able to harass without getting his ass handed back to him everytime the marines have the possibility to shoot him and having to go back to hive every times he spikes a marine. And a lerk that remains legit mid to late game as a support for his teammates.
To do that I'd change the bite to be faster. The poison is really anecdotal and doesn't bring much to the table. Lerks right now have no power with bite, even against solo 0/0 lmgs. They will never out dps meds, and will be gunned down too easily. They can't go in quickly and kill a wounded marine without spending so much time in a dangerous situation. Lets not talk about that bite vs sgs. It was somewhat balanced in vanilla because the lerk had a lot of HP (and cara was mandatory) and the collision system was terrible, but now... just no. In my mind the bite should be a hight risk hight reward weapon.
Spike is a good weapon if you look at the dps it does. In skilled hand, it does a lot of damage to marines, but you are too exposed when using it. Spiking marines on your own means you're gonna get damaged a lot. Being a flying turret on patrol between marines and healing point isn't my idea of fun. Again it was viable in vanilla because of lot of hp + cara, but not anymore.
So what I would want is a lerk able to go in melee range early and stay away mid/late. Combining spike+bite isn't a good idea imo, so (let's start the hate) I'd replace spike with the good old NS1 spore (and get ride of the NS2 spore wich is useless anyway). It lets you harass without putting yourself too much in danger, but whitout the possibility of burst damage that spike has. And I'd put spike as the 3rd attack, so the lerk would remain legit mid to lategame, sporing while alone, spiking when teammates are drawing fires. And umbra as a 4th attack (but still a nerfed version of what we have right now). spike and spore could be inverted (spike 2nd and spore 3rd) but again spikes with a balanced high risk high reward bite doesn't seem viable.
fade : I like it. I like when its fluid, so the change to blink + jump being the standard deplacement instead of shadowstep + jump/dbl jump is imo a good idea. Also the new SS being a quick teleportation used in combat is again a good idea imo. Now I think this is more of a personnal preference. On paper the fade is still mostly the same for me, his role hasn't changed. One thing tho, I think SS cost too much energy. You run out of it way too fast in combat, considering how fast you can die, and how helpless you are when out of energy.
There still is the fade explosion problem, but I don't know how to deal with it, alien com + pres is the problem. Too much aliens saving res for lifeform.
Gorge : I like the fact that it has less HP. Gorges in vanilla were too strong imo, and a bus of skulk + gorge was too strong. Now they cost less and are less tanky, so its fine. But we still have to see how oftens bilebombs rush will happen when the game is balanced.
Onos : Still hasn't played it. Never liked it anyway, but it's needed for lategame balance.
random things :
Picking up weapons on marines is annoying. Especially when a sg and a welder are on the same spot. You either pick up the welder first when the aliens are coming (RAGEEEEEEE), or pick it second and it automatically switch back to the welder. Walking on a weapon should pick it up, cs style. Or at least NOT switch to the welder/mines when you pick it.
The crouch on skulk making you walk isn't a good idea. Crouch is useful when walljumping and all, but as soon as you fail and end on the ground, you will start walking. Since there is already a walk bind, I don't really get the point of it.
Celerity is a bit useless right now it seems. Since it doesn't change the max speed you can get with skulks, the speed of blink or bunnyjump with fades and the lerk is not going close combat anyway, I can't really see why I would pick it over adre (except for onos and skulks without leap). It needs more impact on the alien movement, not just the awsd movements.
There is probably more that I can't think of right now.
Personally I think it's a bit confusing that the Arms Lab doesn't have even a single arm on it. Either it should be able to defend itself with robot arms, or we should just call it the Research Box.
We scrimmed/pugged the balance mod last night for about 3 hours. Soz was kind enough to stream even though he was exausted. You can find the VoD here.
Our (read my) conclusions:
Umbra - Far too powerful in its current state. I feel the correct solution is to do ALL of the following:
- reduce the duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
- Increase energy cost from 1/4 to 1/2 (with flapping not costing energy, lerks need an energy sink in order to force decision making in combat)
- Umbra should not 'stick' to players and should only effect players in the cloud
- the visual obstruction should be reduced, preferably by a decrease in the opacity.
- the damage reduction is too much, especially with regards to the 50% reduction vs shotguns. I think the damage reduction should be ~25%, considering the visual obstruction causes players to miss as well.
- should be returned to second hive. Early umbra was a pain and made skulk/lerk packs nigh invincible.
Skulk speed - it is too easy to maintain a very high speed (I was maintaining 14 speed throughout the map with peaks of 15.5 without celerity by the end of the night). This is simply too fast. Watch this and notice Syknik and myself bomb through hub past 3 marines, taking less than half our health in damage. Notice also that I didn't get hit until I got caught on the stairs. I would recommend 11-12 speed for non-celerity skulks, 12.5-13.5 for celerity.
Resource Towers - Alien Harvesters seem to be fine as is. Marine Extractors die far too quickly. We wouldn't mind them being more expensive in order to have more health and armor.
Alien upgrades -
Shade seems a little overpowered. The combination of silence, cloaking, and the current skulk speed allows skulks to get across the map in ~12-14 seconds in complete silence and then cloak. I would like to see phantom returned to only silence and have the shade structure be the only thing to provide cloaking.
Carapace seems to be fairly unused other than on skulks. 20 extra armor on the fade just isn't worth not having regeneration that works in combat.
Movement upgrades seem to be fine as they are. Lifeforms don't really have energy sinks that require adrenaline yet, maybe other than gorges healspraying.
Fade -
I absolutely love this fade. You don't have the invincibility that live shadowstep gives you, and you need to think about how you want to take engagements. I do think the blink cost needs to be increased slightly, not sure how much. It was very, very easy for me to manage my energy, even without adrenaline. Shadowstep cost seems perfect for what it does.
Marines -
I feel that the Pres sinks are too high at the moment. I'd like to see shotguns lowered back to 20 res, jetpacks to 10 or 12, and welders at 4. Currently a full kit of jp/sg/welder costs 45 res, more than a fade! This, combined with the fragility of the marine extractors, caused several marine losses.
Agreed with everything Tane had to say about marine weapons. Hit the nail on the head.
Still feel drifters shouldn't be able to build. I thought harvester build rates were lowered because it was too easy for an alien commander to try and mass expand while every alien was on the offensive. Lowering the harvester build rates dramatically would mean you'd need gorge(s) to keep up your economy, not only for the early game, but also throughout the entire game to replace fallen harvesters etc. Making gorges less costly would go together quite well with this change. The drifters now partially negate that goal however. It just makes expanding slightly more costly overall.
I also miss the old biomass system that allowed for much more flexibility in the alien tech tree, and would have liked to play around with it some more.
Skulk movement is slowly growing on me. The current iteration (or at least the one I played two days ago) seems pretty good, with the speed gain primarily through walljumping and the pseudobunnyhopping for maintaining speed. I've been skeptical with the movement changes in general, but I'm starting to like how the bt skulk plays now. It might still be a bit too fast though.
Umbra - Far too powerful in its current state. I feel the correct solution is to do ALL of the following:
- reduce the duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
- Increase energy cost from 1/4 to 1/2 (with flapping not costing energy, lerks need an energy sink in order to force decision making in combat)
- Umbra should not 'stick' to players and should only effect players in the cloud
- the visual obstruction should be reduced, preferably by a decrease in the opacity.
- the damage reduction is too much, especially with regards to the 50% reduction vs shotguns. I think the damage reduction should be ~25%, considering the visual obstruction causes players to miss as well.
- should be returned to second hive. Early umbra was a pain and made skulk/lerk packs nigh invincible.
Yes, yes, yes and yes.. As long as the size of said cloud is large.
Having the leaping, drifting, flying, blinking, charging mobile team fit into a small bubble is impractical during combat.. Frustrating at best, useless at worst.
(I'd say removing the lingering effect or close to it, works as long as rest is implemented too)
Or just put Umbra back on 4 Biomass (after reintroducing the Biomass upgrade system) and Leap on 3 Biomass, so marines have some time to tech up before it hits the field. Strong early tech being available early in the game but with a certain delay was one of the main points of the Biomass system and I really don't see how scrapping it and just making tech more expensive is going to fix it without being completely broken.
I'm hesitant about Gorge-dependent building because nobody wants to be the full-time commander's pet. Marines share the burden of building stuff with the team, but aliens can only have so many Gorges. And playing offensive support is far more fun than personally building every single thing the comm drops.
@blarney_stone so you counter tactic to a marine in an alien hive (potentially taking out upgrades) is to leave him be and go attack res?
1 skulk in a marine base is not going to do much...the comm will most likely just hop out...or wait until a dead marine re-spawns (and marines have the upper hand in 1 v 1 as you have said...), just a pity aliens dont have a similar counter...instead they get to deal with a marine who in effect has the alien equivalent of regen and cara (plus focus) thanks to meds, welder, armour and weapons upgrades.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying... I was suggesting that two skulks deal with the marine in base while the other three attack marine start (or another point in the map like an unguarded phase gate). Go back and read my comment more closely and you will see that I never suggest doing anything (other than parasiting and res biting) with a single skulk... that was the main gist of my entire comment....
You have 1 marine in your base...taking out upgrades...4 at some other place in the map.
If the 3 skulks attack marine start...all that will happen is 4 marines will head back to spawn (thanks to PG's its not likely hard) and you have 4 v 3 (or 5 v 3 if comm hops out of chair) and the marine in your base still takes things out.
Sorry I just dont like it...there is no reason marines need to be able to self heal with a welder.
They can get med packs and and be nano'd...that they cant self heal armour means multiple attacks will eventually be succesful, even a slow self healing rate for armour is too much of a buff.
@Locklear I hope that glancing removal is not something that will flow through and as such am accounting for the welder changes to be factored into vanilla as a stand alone/
Removing glancing bites without changing hit zones simply makes getting kills as a new player harder, after all glancing bites came about as the narrow bite zone was too unforgiving and not "logical" for new players who only have the teeth as a reference (no x-hair).
That its been removed in the BT simply re-affirms my belief that most of these changes are aimed at the comp scene rather than the casual player and dont factor in the fun element.
I am finding it harder and harder to find a reason to keep playing NS2....I am not a fan of playing marines and prefer alien play, but I find aliens too frustrating of late to play...the BT changes do nothing to remedy this neither do the nerfs that have hit the alien team after release.
The player base in australia/nz as khyron has pointed out has diminished to the point that we almost had more players/servers during the beta than we do now...this says to me somethings not right with where the game is heading.
The cause of this is that only 1 side is fun to play all the time....thats the marine side...issue is you need to have as many people on the other team...but if they are not having fun...they wont stay.
Stuff win loss ratios, equal chances to win etc...look at making things fun for all players, not just pro's or ppl who can dedicate large amounts of time to try to learn mechanics that are crucial to being effective.
Without a decent casual player base...you will not have new players in the comp scene...and that will also shrink with time.
I personally would find the game more fun without the alien comm, but that's certainly not a battle to be fought in the BT. I'd like to see an experimental mod down the line that makes an honest attempt to remove it and get feedback, but I doubt UWE will invest their resources on that. It would have to be a community mod with incredibly overwhelming support.
The alien comm has caused nothing but problems up until now, causes problems right now, and will continue to cause problems in the forseeable future.
I wish we could just get rid of the wretched thing and go on our merry way. The game would be much better for it.
Completely agree but I can't even imagine how bad res whoring would be in this day and age of gaming, in fact I can't even rightly remember how pub games in NS 1 handled relying on so many people to temp ups/hive/RTs. They kind of just happened and some people were known res whores while most of everyone else resigned themselves to volunteering a hive or RT, if anything it probably made less skilled players feel integral to the team as they could provide a lot of value regardless of personal skill level.
Something the armoury change I feel fails at horribly.
Bro the bite range for bites in BT is .7 while vanilla NS was 1.1 or 1.4 for all 3 tiers of bites, so the bite rego is a lot higher/easier in BT, prepare to be told to STFU and L2P because none of that info is easily accessed anywhere.
Bro the bite range for bites in BT is .7 while vanilla NS was 1.1 or 1.4 for all 3 tiers of bites, so the bite rego is a lot higher/easier in BT, prepare to be told to STFU and L2P because none of that info is easily accessed anywhere.
so in vanilla its 1.1 (1.4 including glancing)...but BT is 0.7...ummm that makes it smaller does it not?
I would say that bite rego zone is thus smaller in BT (or am I missing something?)...
Yeah copped lots of the l2p bs during the beta when they nerfed the bite cones before later adding in glancing bites....never claimed to be worlds best skulk, now or back then...but I guess that means my gaming experience is not valid.
Silly that we are making this game less and less accessible to new players...
Nah so the vanilla bite cone is *1.1* for ALL 3 tiers of bites, 25 50 75, BT mod is *.7*, maybe vanilla was *1.4* I can't quite remember but it worked out like that, the 75 bite cone in BT is a lot larger to compensate for no glancing so instead of "omfg I bit 10 times he still live" a bite is always 75.
Nah so the vanilla bite cone is *1.1* for ALL 3 tiers of bites, 25 50 75, BT mod is *.7*, maybe vanilla was *1.4* I can't quite remember but it worked out like that, the 75 bite cone in BT is a lot larger to compensate for no glancing so instead of "omfg I bit 10 times he still live" a bite is always 75.
Astrix for I have nfi what exact value is.
Unless I am mistaken you still saying the overall size of the combined hit zones smaller in the BT mod than vanilla (I dont care if the 75 hit zones slightly larger (reasoning below)).
The glancing bites just gave back what was originally nerfed from the hit zones (all be it with a lower amount of damage)....so the issue is still that the bite zone (overall including glancing) is smaller.
Sure those who count how many bites land might be happier but new players will simply find it harder to get a hit (even a glancing one).
Most new players have enough trouble getting bites to land as is..taking out glancing bites does nothing to help with this.
You also have no visual indicator for where to aim to land a bite (as it seems logical that the teeth are the indicator in absence of a x-hair of some sort).
I just hope UWE dont bring that change in as it will do nothing but make skulking even more difficult to learn and reduce the likelyhood of new players bothering to learn to play aliens.
When they first nerfed the bite zone I went from a roughly par skulk to sub par.
Yes...I am not some 1337 player and I do rely on not always landing my bite exactly...I guess I will just have to give up playing as I dont have the time or inclination to invest to improve my aim more than the ~800 hours I have invested so far over the last few years.
Its not fun having had to master all sorts of techniques to get into bite range...but because the marines a little too far left or right of the ideal that i miss totally.
I just hope common sense prevails and recognition that if you want to attract new players that BOTH sides have to be FUN to play...for players at ALL levels of skill...not just pro's.
Just because the marine is on your screen does not mean you deserve to land a hit... You need to atleast put him somewhere near the centre of your screen.
Did your parents not play 'here comes the aeroplane' by putting food on a spoon and flying it around till it went in your mouth. Imagine if they had the expectation that putting it 30cm to the left of your mouth and you're still meant to be able to eat it.
Comments
only if u need health.
i think what you name things in the game and having things make as much sense as possible through simple things like this is valid feedback because it improves the game as a whole. perhaps the point isnt worthwhile when it comes to changing the function of the 'armoury', but it doesnt rule out a change of name for the structure eg. to 'supply centre' or something else that more accurately describes its function in a non confusing way.
Precisely. Also, Amoury (or Armory for our state-side friends) is a word that has been used for centuries to describe the place where weapons are stored. Just go to any mostly-complete castle in the UK to confirm this. 'Facepalm' is the only correct response to this absurd argument!
doubling down on the semantics - 'arms' refers to sword, shield and armour - from latin 'arma' meaning 'instruments of war'. while you guys might not want to concede the point in order to defend your pet mechanic, the assumption that an armoury would provide your weapons and repair your armour makes perfect sense.
http://shipinthenight.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/train-derailment.jpg
I think you misunderstood what I was saying... I was suggesting that two skulks deal with the marine in base while the other three attack marine start (or another point in the map like an unguarded phase gate). Go back and read my comment more closely and you will see that I never suggest doing anything (other than parasiting and res biting) with a single skulk... that was the main gist of my entire comment....
Derailing such an important thread that will impact the future of ns2 seems like a shame to me. Just a thought..
Im pretty armour is also stored in armouries.
Maybe a little dwarf character can be added that the comm can deploy, who for a fee can repair your armor in a forge. This should take atleast 10-15 days to be balanced IMO.
Either that, or you can crawl into a robotics factory and the doors will close and you can get fixed.....
I am not a commander so I won't give much feedback on it.
So first, i'd like to say that I like where the bt is going, but right now its imbalanced. Mostly imo a number problem, the ideas are good overall.
Aliens early game has been upped a lot, with the skulk movement, the aliens rt hp, and the low hp for marines rt.
Skulk movement :
It needs to be capped. You can go way too fast. A solo capper doesn't really have his chance against a skulk that is coming full speed. A max of 11-12 up to 12-13 with celerity sounds fine. On the other hand, the starting speed of the skulk is too slow. I don't want to have to back off 2 rooms to be able to engage a marine with a decent speed. The first jump needs more acceleration. Again, a better acceleration with celerity than without.
Also, I don't understand why (and same thing in vanilla) the skulk HAS SUCH A BIG NEED FOR WALLS ?????????????? It doesn't make sense to me, gameplay wise or "reality/immersion" wise. I don't want to be dependent on walls. At least not as much. Give the ground skulk a chance. This is why I liked the "dog sprint". I could use it like 0.1s, just as I jumped, to get a decent speed without a wall. I understand that dog speed was maybe too imba when you had reached a marine, but its just the possibility to have a small boost with your first jump that was interesting.
Last thing is air control. You can't have vanilla air control with a skulk that fast, but something halfway between bt and vanilla sounds right. The goal would be being able to go right and left while ground jumping without losing all your speed, so you don't have to go STRAIGHT when rushing a marine. This coupled with a slower skulk should makes more balanced and interesting combat.
Aliens rt hp boost :
I like it, it felt like vanilla rts were too easy to kill. I think this is why double pressure was so strong. I like the moment where marines are pushing and aliens are gathering, just to jump in all together. More hp means more time for aliens to do that, and longer fights around rts.
But, with the recent changes to skulk movement, the annoying lamming with gorges hydra/clogs (and the possibility to add a crag, who I think got a BIG hp boost too?), and the low marine firepower early game it is just too much. It is right now nearly impossible to kill a rt early game, provided you even reached it.
Marines rt hp :
I don't understand that change. RTs might cost a bit less, but this is far from balancing how HARD it became for marines to hold rts. You have to see the big picture. Solo skulk > solo capper (as said in the skulk movement part). Solo capper dies, skulk start biting the rt. The capper takes 1234152465 years to respawn. By the time you get there, your rt is dead and the skulk is gone, even with infinite sprint. Everytime you lose a 1on1 as capper, you're gonna lose at least 1 rt. And right now it's gonna happen a lot. Definitly needs a change.
So right now, marines don't have much choices early game. They can't do anything else than defend rts. They won't get past the 2nd rts (read flight/dc if you spawn sub or atrium for example), and hardly get them without losing the 1st rts. The only realistic option for them I can see is fast PG.
Early game really needs a rebalance. I think it won't be that hard to do, but it needs to be done so mid/late game can be too, but it is a "global" matter. What makes it imbalance is not 1 thing, but an accumulation of things.
My suggestions :
-Nerf skulk movement. Cap the max speed.
-Give hp to marine RT
-Change something about the spam near alien RTs
-Give marines more firepower
-faster respawn, maybe for both, it would add some dynamism
-maybe a possibility for marines to dodge a bit in combat? like the air control in vanilla
About the spam near aliens rt, what I'd like the most would be reduce or remove the gorge spam, but I don't see it happen. Crags really seems too strong, even for sgs. Last thing would be reduce the aliens rt hp, but Im not sure I'd like it, so I don't really now what should be done specifically about that.
About marine early firepower, the only thing that comes to my mind is SHOTGUN. The lmg is fine, I don't see a need to change it. I like the new sg with less damage but less spread, to me it feels more rewarding, when I aim at a skulk, he dies, when I don't, he doesn't.
Early sgs would make pushing rts possible against fast skulks and stronger rts, and would add possibilities for marines.
I also think that 20 pres is too much, considering that welders are really important, mines are too expensive and sucks big *****. Buying a sg or 2 really puts you behind for the rest of the game, unless you had them late in the game or have a lot of rts.
So what I think marines need is the ability to have sgs right from the start. Only an armory, no research needed. Now obviously the problem is, because of pres, that every marine could get one. My idea to prevent that would be some kind of "cooldowns" and "stock" for sgs. When you drop an armory, it would have X sgs stocked, so marines could only get X sgs at start. Then, the numbers of sgs available would rise every Y seconds, and/or the comm could add one instantly for Z res. Multiples armory could share the stock and share the cd and/or reduce the cd, or have 2 differents stocks. The armory could also become a target of choice for base rush, if you decide to reset the sg stock if the last armory dies.
This would prevent the SG explosion, wich I think is really annoying, while still allowing the use of early sgs, and depending on the X/Y/Z numbers not impact mid/late game too much.
Except for sgs I don't really see how you could boost marines early game without just making it easier/faster to go into the mid game state (pg and or 1/1 1/2 2/1 upgrades).
now for the rest :
I liked how you changed the alien tech tree. The vanilla one really sucks, there is no other option than rt+cara, wait for the fade explosion and win or lose. All routes seems to have something to offer, especially since you dont have to commit to cara OR regen after choosing crag hive. Also the 3 shells instead of 1 means 2 marines entering your hive won't be able to kill 35 res in 5 seconds.
Lerk : WTF???? It felt bad in vanilla, its useless now. No hp + better reg + good collision + still no decent bite + still no decent harrass. Close combat is like, FORBIDDEN if you want to live more than 3 minutes, and with the nerf in hp, spiking is even more risky. Being a flying turrets wasn't fun in vanilla, it's even less in bt.
Now of course the lerk sucks, until... UMBRA. OP. It costs nearly no energy, you can spam it everywhere, you get it way too soon in the game, it makes marines less able to see (those kind of things are so annoying), and probably the thing that makes it the most OP : you keep umbra on you after just passing through the cloud. It's really a gamebreaker.
I think the lerk really needs drastic changes. I can't help myself but to think of the NS1 lerk. It was so fitting the game, his role changing throughout the round, going from aggressive support (bite + spore against 0/0 0/1 1/1 marines attacking rts/2nd hive) to defensive support (spore + umbra against upgraded and geared marines, using scent of fear to help teammates, scouting).
Now I don't necessarily want the same lerk in ns2, but at least the idea of it. An early lerk being able to harass without getting his ass handed back to him everytime the marines have the possibility to shoot him and having to go back to hive every times he spikes a marine. And a lerk that remains legit mid to late game as a support for his teammates.
To do that I'd change the bite to be faster. The poison is really anecdotal and doesn't bring much to the table. Lerks right now have no power with bite, even against solo 0/0 lmgs. They will never out dps meds, and will be gunned down too easily. They can't go in quickly and kill a wounded marine without spending so much time in a dangerous situation. Lets not talk about that bite vs sgs. It was somewhat balanced in vanilla because the lerk had a lot of HP (and cara was mandatory) and the collision system was terrible, but now... just no. In my mind the bite should be a hight risk hight reward weapon.
Spike is a good weapon if you look at the dps it does. In skilled hand, it does a lot of damage to marines, but you are too exposed when using it. Spiking marines on your own means you're gonna get damaged a lot. Being a flying turret on patrol between marines and healing point isn't my idea of fun. Again it was viable in vanilla because of lot of hp + cara, but not anymore.
So what I would want is a lerk able to go in melee range early and stay away mid/late. Combining spike+bite isn't a good idea imo, so (let's start the hate) I'd replace spike with the good old NS1 spore (and get ride of the NS2 spore wich is useless anyway). It lets you harass without putting yourself too much in danger, but whitout the possibility of burst damage that spike has. And I'd put spike as the 3rd attack, so the lerk would remain legit mid to lategame, sporing while alone, spiking when teammates are drawing fires. And umbra as a 4th attack (but still a nerfed version of what we have right now). spike and spore could be inverted (spike 2nd and spore 3rd) but again spikes with a balanced high risk high reward bite doesn't seem viable.
fade : I like it. I like when its fluid, so the change to blink + jump being the standard deplacement instead of shadowstep + jump/dbl jump is imo a good idea. Also the new SS being a quick teleportation used in combat is again a good idea imo. Now I think this is more of a personnal preference. On paper the fade is still mostly the same for me, his role hasn't changed. One thing tho, I think SS cost too much energy. You run out of it way too fast in combat, considering how fast you can die, and how helpless you are when out of energy.
There still is the fade explosion problem, but I don't know how to deal with it, alien com + pres is the problem. Too much aliens saving res for lifeform.
Gorge : I like the fact that it has less HP. Gorges in vanilla were too strong imo, and a bus of skulk + gorge was too strong. Now they cost less and are less tanky, so its fine. But we still have to see how oftens bilebombs rush will happen when the game is balanced.
Onos : Still hasn't played it. Never liked it anyway, but it's needed for lategame balance.
random things :
Picking up weapons on marines is annoying. Especially when a sg and a welder are on the same spot. You either pick up the welder first when the aliens are coming (RAGEEEEEEE), or pick it second and it automatically switch back to the welder. Walking on a weapon should pick it up, cs style. Or at least NOT switch to the welder/mines when you pick it.
The crouch on skulk making you walk isn't a good idea. Crouch is useful when walljumping and all, but as soon as you fail and end on the ground, you will start walking. Since there is already a walk bind, I don't really get the point of it.
Celerity is a bit useless right now it seems. Since it doesn't change the max speed you can get with skulks, the speed of blink or bunnyjump with fades and the lerk is not going close combat anyway, I can't really see why I would pick it over adre (except for onos and skulks without leap). It needs more impact on the alien movement, not just the awsd movements.
There is probably more that I can't think of right now.
Feedbacks on my feedbacks are appreciated.
Shadow Step is too short and cost too much energy.
Skulk speed is too hight and too slow when on the ground in combat.
Our (read my) conclusions:
Umbra - Far too powerful in its current state. I feel the correct solution is to do ALL of the following:
- reduce the duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
- Increase energy cost from 1/4 to 1/2 (with flapping not costing energy, lerks need an energy sink in order to force decision making in combat)
- Umbra should not 'stick' to players and should only effect players in the cloud
- the visual obstruction should be reduced, preferably by a decrease in the opacity.
- the damage reduction is too much, especially with regards to the 50% reduction vs shotguns. I think the damage reduction should be ~25%, considering the visual obstruction causes players to miss as well.
- should be returned to second hive. Early umbra was a pain and made skulk/lerk packs nigh invincible.
Skulk speed - it is too easy to maintain a very high speed (I was maintaining 14 speed throughout the map with peaks of 15.5 without celerity by the end of the night). This is simply too fast. Watch this and notice Syknik and myself bomb through hub past 3 marines, taking less than half our health in damage. Notice also that I didn't get hit until I got caught on the stairs. I would recommend 11-12 speed for non-celerity skulks, 12.5-13.5 for celerity.
Resource Towers - Alien Harvesters seem to be fine as is. Marine Extractors die far too quickly. We wouldn't mind them being more expensive in order to have more health and armor.
Alien upgrades -
Shade seems a little overpowered. The combination of silence, cloaking, and the current skulk speed allows skulks to get across the map in ~12-14 seconds in complete silence and then cloak. I would like to see phantom returned to only silence and have the shade structure be the only thing to provide cloaking.
Carapace seems to be fairly unused other than on skulks. 20 extra armor on the fade just isn't worth not having regeneration that works in combat.
Movement upgrades seem to be fine as they are. Lifeforms don't really have energy sinks that require adrenaline yet, maybe other than gorges healspraying.
Fade -
I absolutely love this fade. You don't have the invincibility that live shadowstep gives you, and you need to think about how you want to take engagements. I do think the blink cost needs to be increased slightly, not sure how much. It was very, very easy for me to manage my energy, even without adrenaline. Shadowstep cost seems perfect for what it does.
Marines -
I feel that the Pres sinks are too high at the moment. I'd like to see shotguns lowered back to 20 res, jetpacks to 10 or 12, and welders at 4. Currently a full kit of jp/sg/welder costs 45 res, more than a fade! This, combined with the fragility of the marine extractors, caused several marine losses.
Still feel drifters shouldn't be able to build. I thought harvester build rates were lowered because it was too easy for an alien commander to try and mass expand while every alien was on the offensive. Lowering the harvester build rates dramatically would mean you'd need gorge(s) to keep up your economy, not only for the early game, but also throughout the entire game to replace fallen harvesters etc. Making gorges less costly would go together quite well with this change. The drifters now partially negate that goal however. It just makes expanding slightly more costly overall.
I also miss the old biomass system that allowed for much more flexibility in the alien tech tree, and would have liked to play around with it some more.
Skulk movement is slowly growing on me. The current iteration (or at least the one I played two days ago) seems pretty good, with the speed gain primarily through walljumping and the pseudobunnyhopping for maintaining speed. I've been skeptical with the movement changes in general, but I'm starting to like how the bt skulk plays now. It might still be a bit too fast though.
Having the leaping, drifting, flying, blinking, charging mobile team fit into a small bubble is impractical during combat.. Frustrating at best, useless at worst.
(I'd say removing the lingering effect or close to it, works as long as rest is implemented too)
I wish we could just get rid of the wretched thing and go on our merry way. The game would be much better for it.
You have 1 marine in your base...taking out upgrades...4 at some other place in the map.
If the 3 skulks attack marine start...all that will happen is 4 marines will head back to spawn (thanks to PG's its not likely hard) and you have 4 v 3 (or 5 v 3 if comm hops out of chair) and the marine in your base still takes things out.
Sorry I just dont like it...there is no reason marines need to be able to self heal with a welder.
They can get med packs and and be nano'd...that they cant self heal armour means multiple attacks will eventually be succesful, even a slow self healing rate for armour is too much of a buff.
@Locklear I hope that glancing removal is not something that will flow through and as such am accounting for the welder changes to be factored into vanilla as a stand alone/
Removing glancing bites without changing hit zones simply makes getting kills as a new player harder, after all glancing bites came about as the narrow bite zone was too unforgiving and not "logical" for new players who only have the teeth as a reference (no x-hair).
That its been removed in the BT simply re-affirms my belief that most of these changes are aimed at the comp scene rather than the casual player and dont factor in the fun element.
I am finding it harder and harder to find a reason to keep playing NS2....I am not a fan of playing marines and prefer alien play, but I find aliens too frustrating of late to play...the BT changes do nothing to remedy this neither do the nerfs that have hit the alien team after release.
The player base in australia/nz as khyron has pointed out has diminished to the point that we almost had more players/servers during the beta than we do now...this says to me somethings not right with where the game is heading.
The cause of this is that only 1 side is fun to play all the time....thats the marine side...issue is you need to have as many people on the other team...but if they are not having fun...they wont stay.
Stuff win loss ratios, equal chances to win etc...look at making things fun for all players, not just pro's or ppl who can dedicate large amounts of time to try to learn mechanics that are crucial to being effective.
Without a decent casual player base...you will not have new players in the comp scene...and that will also shrink with time.
Completely agree but I can't even imagine how bad res whoring would be in this day and age of gaming, in fact I can't even rightly remember how pub games in NS 1 handled relying on so many people to temp ups/hive/RTs. They kind of just happened and some people were known res whores while most of everyone else resigned themselves to volunteering a hive or RT, if anything it probably made less skilled players feel integral to the team as they could provide a lot of value regardless of personal skill level.
Something the armoury change I feel fails at horribly.
Bro the bite range for bites in BT is .7 while vanilla NS was 1.1 or 1.4 for all 3 tiers of bites, so the bite rego is a lot higher/easier in BT, prepare to be told to STFU and L2P because none of that info is easily accessed anywhere.
so in vanilla its 1.1 (1.4 including glancing)...but BT is 0.7...ummm that makes it smaller does it not?
I would say that bite rego zone is thus smaller in BT (or am I missing something?)...
Yeah copped lots of the l2p bs during the beta when they nerfed the bite cones before later adding in glancing bites....never claimed to be worlds best skulk, now or back then...but I guess that means my gaming experience is not valid.
Silly that we are making this game less and less accessible to new players...
Astrix for I have nfi what exact value is.
The glancing bites just gave back what was originally nerfed from the hit zones (all be it with a lower amount of damage)....so the issue is still that the bite zone (overall including glancing) is smaller.
Sure those who count how many bites land might be happier but new players will simply find it harder to get a hit (even a glancing one).
Most new players have enough trouble getting bites to land as is..taking out glancing bites does nothing to help with this.
You also have no visual indicator for where to aim to land a bite (as it seems logical that the teeth are the indicator in absence of a x-hair of some sort).
I just hope UWE dont bring that change in as it will do nothing but make skulking even more difficult to learn and reduce the likelyhood of new players bothering to learn to play aliens.
When they first nerfed the bite zone I went from a roughly par skulk to sub par.
Yes...I am not some 1337 player and I do rely on not always landing my bite exactly...I guess I will just have to give up playing as I dont have the time or inclination to invest to improve my aim more than the ~800 hours I have invested so far over the last few years.
Its not fun having had to master all sorts of techniques to get into bite range...but because the marines a little too far left or right of the ideal that i miss totally.
I just hope common sense prevails and recognition that if you want to attract new players that BOTH sides have to be FUN to play...for players at ALL levels of skill...not just pro's.
Did your parents not play 'here comes the aeroplane' by putting food on a spoon and flying it around till it went in your mouth. Imagine if they had the expectation that putting it 30cm to the left of your mouth and you're still meant to be able to eat it.