Why don't you guys just discuss here on the forums what you're planning for the next realease so that you can get feedback rather than shrouding each one in secrecy? It's not like some competitor is going to steal the ideas for the next patch causing UWE to go bankrupt...
then the whiners voice their concerns before even trying it?
not to mention the fact that many features will be withdrawn after unsuccessful testing phase. so you'd also have new whiners who whine about things being removed which were never actually added.
it's an impossible scenario.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so". But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
Well this is my perspective from the last few days. (Previously an issue, now just compounded).
It certainly feels like skulks are having to chase marines down to get a few bites in, and after the first bite then the leaping dance of the marine begins (apparently they all learnt from Riverdance). Now because skulk hitbox and movement has been changed, skulks feel a little too easy to target mid-hop.
With a LMG, marines should be good at ranged but be at a distinct disadvantage close range. The counter to this is more marines or shotguns. At this point Aliens get lerks.
What feels missing is that disadvantage a LMG marine has at close range. This could be looked at a few ways, reduce a marines agility/accuracy after a bite from a skulk, or buff skulk movement after a successful full damage bite. Enzyme can help skulks but that's an expensive/complex ability to have available.
With marines on the march towards victory it's a complete stomp-fest with marines progressing to a3/w3 and aliens being stuck as skulks with no hope for reprieve. This isn't fun either so probably contributing to the mass early-concedes.
I disagree with your idea of movement buffs/debuffs on bite/close-range, but you bring up a very good point: skulks never directly become more powerful, unlike marines, and if the aliens wind up wasting their higher life forms in a losing match, it's over, as the marines continue to become more and more powerful and all the aliens can do is hope for an odd kill here or there as a skulk, or RT harassment, neither of which is anywhere near enough to turn the tide.
Also, marine movement. Why the hell is it that skulks have been progressively made slower and clunkier over the past several patches, and yet marines feel more agile than ever? Isn't something WRONG here? I'm coming to this uncomfortable conclusion that even once they fix the skulk movement bug (if ever), it won't be enough to make aliens playable again.
I've always said that marines:
1. Shouldn't be able to endlessly hop around the way that they do. They need some sort of stamina bar that ties into their sprinting so that their jumping abilities are limited.
2. Shouldn't be able to outrun a skulk, as is happening now. I've seen marines drop their weapons and just book. It was the most frustrating thing I've ever encountered the first time I saw it happen.
Anyhow, I've found it's almost impossible to play pubs now. Everyone stacks marines and people sadly relegate themselves to a loss as aliens, since we all know that's what's going to happen. I'm even guilty of it. The railgun feels like it has aim assist, as I never seem to miss, and it just explodes everything short of an onos, and I'm sick of being boxed into our first hive by marines after we lose our first encounter and they quickly lock down the whole map.
I wouldn't want marines to become slower, just make skulks faster again. It used to be that even a sprinting marine with no weapons could be caught up to with a vanilla skulk by wall jumping. I doubt that is the case now since any time your skulk hits the ground it's like you landed in a meter of thick mud.
Why don't you guys just discuss here on the forums what you're planning for the next realease so that you can get feedback rather than shrouding each one in secrecy? It's not like some competitor is going to steal the ideas for the next patch causing UWE to go bankrupt...
then the whiners voice their concerns before even trying it?
not to mention the fact that many features will be withdrawn after unsuccessful testing phase. so you'd also have new whiners who whine about things being removed which were never actually added.
it's an impossible scenario.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so". But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
Also, anger is the wrong emotion to take towards all of this. Anger would imply that they're doing something malevolent to try and upset us all. They made the damn game, and they put more time and work into it than most developers have, of course they'd like us to enjoy ourselves. They're not doing anything malicious, like, "Eeheehee, stupid alien players, suffer with this skulk movement nerf!"
They tried something, and it didn't work. It's fine to be upset, but don't be angry. Anger has a tendency of invalidating otherwise valid concerns by way of nasty attitude.
Make commentary on game balancing when you're not a new player.
Even with the amazing efforts of putting tips and now hugh's narrated clips, this game isn't very welcoming to næbs. Tips do help, but they're no substitute for experience.
There's a lot of nuances to the game which make statements like "camo is useless and shotguns make aliens shit themselves" laughable.
During your first 200-250 hours the best thing you can do is suck it up and L2P.
After quitting NS2 because dev-team not listen to "newb"
1/Play Counter Strike 1.6
2/ Being killed so many times
3/ Get to Steam forum >> say this game need patch
4/Play TF2
5/Being dominated by other player
6/ .. repeat again for other games and return to play NS2 )
@Antikaratekid
Most likely you ended up playing a series of one sided games which do not portray the bigger picture. You could have easily played a stacked alien team, stomping a marine side into oblivion a few games in a row, and then made a thread on how aliens are too strong.
The prevalence of the snowball is a problem I have no idea how to fix because of the FPS aspect (don't get me wrong, I like the fact that the marines are "real" players - it wouldn't be NS without it)
In a pure RTS game, you can tell the outcome of a specific engagement (let's take 8 zerglings vs. 6 marines). Marines win if the zerglings just run single file into them. This makes them easy targets because the marine AI will autmatically focus fire on the ling that enters LOS first.
BUT if the Zerg player is competent, he digs those zerglings in at a spot where the marines will surely walk by or let's the lings attack from multiple angles which helps them get close as the marines can't focus their fire on single lings, but have to spread it all around which results in a landslide zergling win.
In NS2 all bets are off on those engagements, because some players barely grasp the concecpt of WASD, while others kill 4 skulks with a single rifle magazine.
Human players vary so wildly, there is no hope of balancing that part of the game...
On top of that comes the natural tendency for social & communicative players to seek like-minded company and yeehaw, there goes another stacked snowball snorefest.
What was needed was the hit reg to work whilst keeping the 239 skulk movement feel.
Not the double nerf that we got to the skulk.
They should have left the skulk alone until they ironed out the bug rather than releasing a patch that made skulk so bad to play.
This. A million times this. Fix hitreg and revert all the actual movement changes and then see how skulks are. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone thought it was a good idea to make skulks hittable and then also make them incredibly hard to miss in the same patch.
The prevalence of the snowball is a problem I have no idea how to fix because of the FPS aspect (don't get me wrong, I like the fact that the marines are "real" players - it wouldn't be NS without it)
I'm finding snowballing a lot worse this patch. I know balance before was horribly skewed towards aliens but you still saw a lot of marines pushing out to 2 or 3 bases before losing. Likewise when aliens did lose they often lost from a 2 hive, sometimes 3 hive, position. This patch although overall balance is apparently much close to 50% each individual game seems to go in just one direction, one team seems to get caged into struggling to hold 3 RTs while the other team takes the rest of the map. I've seen this go both way, for aliens and marines. Maybe I've just been seeing some horrible skill stacking, but when the server has tried to mix players around its normally just resulted in swinging the win in the other direction rather than giving a balanced game.
I honestly see no problem with how skulks were changed, it just takes more skill to be a good skulk now than it did before. It was silly to have the lightest armor unit in the game be able to rush down open hallways and survive purely because of the absurd speed that they could gain nearly instantaneously, without leap. The only thing this change has done is force players who used something that was admittedly broken to now have to learn to play the unit as intended. Skulks are still good and are still incredibly powerful, the only difference now is that they're more suited to defending expansion points and other vital areas. You can still be aggressive and successfully so as a skulk, you just have to be smarter about how you do it.
That being said, the usefulness of a skulk is also majorly dependent on the map you're playing, if you're in a map with lots of long corridors and wide open areas you'll have to play more defensively until you get your leap.
There is no problem with the change, skulks are just as effective as they ever were, you've just got to change how you play. It's a free unit, you pay no p-res for them, they're not meant to be the most lethal things on the battlefield.
It's a free unit, you pay no p-res for them, they're not meant to be the most lethal things on the battlefield.
So is a stock marine, and yet by end game they can completely tear through packs of skulks. The issue with the new Skulk is that while ambushing is all well and good,
A) Even in an ambush good marines are just jumping away and surviving, you don't get that much of a bonus. You can't always ambush, a lot of the time you have to attack enemy positions head on. Skulks still have to be feasible at range.
Yes good players are still very good, I've seen people go 20:1 as Skulk in this patch. But it's killed of the average players, Skulks players fall into awful, pretty bad, and insanely good there's no middle ground anymore. On the flip side a lot of pretty bad marines have been lifted up into pretty good marines, and good marines are now godly against Skulks.
The changes now promote teamwork for aliens again, no more can you really have the "unstoppable" skulk and sole 2-3 marines (yes it can still happen, but very little now) aliens need to work as a team again and the games that they do are more fun.
As for feeling as if your being hunted well you are.... You just need to be that extra bit cunning and dont ambush where a marine is gonna look
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
Why don't you guys just discuss here on the forums what you're planning for the next realease so that you can get feedback rather than shrouding each one in secrecy? It's not like some competitor is going to steal the ideas for the next patch causing UWE to go bankrupt...
then the whiners voice their concerns before even trying it?
not to mention the fact that many features will be withdrawn after unsuccessful testing phase. so you'd also have new whiners who whine about things being removed which were never actually added.
it's an impossible scenario.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so".
Considering that the brick-skulk came as a surprise to UWE as well (and yea, it should have been caught in PT, but large ambitions and fixed deadlines tends to lead to late changes ... and surprises. Ask Planetside 2 players about the non-functional tank main armament sometime...).
But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
Most in-progress versions are strictly unplayable, it usually takes a few days of pure bugfixing before playtesters can actually play through a full game after features have been added.
Adding a week of public beta for a new version has been tried, but you don't really gain much by it. If there are glaring bugs, the internal PT group usually finds them, and balancing requires much more feedback than you can get from a week of limited public PT.
So all you gain is complexity (ie, time and resources not spent on making the game better) and a weeks delay of the new release before finding out how things actually work.
Better to do as much testing as you can, release something without obvious bugs and then spend your time hotfixing it as soon as possible. It will sometimes lead to a few days of less-than-optimal gameplay, but all things considered ... it's the best you can get.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so". But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
"i told you so!"... told us what exactly?
i just went on ns2 stats, selected no mods, pub play and build 240 =
did you tell us "darn this skulk nerf, now the win ratio is gonna be 50%!!!" ?? if so then my apologies.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like.
No. It will only increase the drama you have now. It doesn't matter what UWE does. People will complain. If you post info about the patch before the patch, people will just complain sooner (Like you with "I told you so!") and they will complain longer, because some things that were "promised" to them weren't actually added to the game.
Face it. It's the internet, because devs remain quiet. They were much more open in the past. But the constant drama, accusations and demoralization from players (that -on top of that- have a nasty attitude) have made them so. You just can't be that open or you will be ripped apart. Despite that, the devs are doing a great job in enduring this.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so". But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
"i told you so!"... told us what exactly?
i just went on ns2 stats, selected no mods, pub play and build 240 =
did you tell us "darn this skulk nerf, now the win ratio is gonna be 50%!!!" ?? if so then my apologies.
inb4 50/50 balance means nothing, but when we don't have it the game is clearly screwed.
Well I wanted to give my opinion here, I have been playing since the game came out on steam, have played alien and marine many times also played commander often. I only play PUGS, I don´t even get how you do play something that it is not a PUG, no matter how pro you are unless you happend to have 20 friends who play the game, this is true for this game as it is for any multi player game that needs more than 3 players, so IMHO PUGS ARE THE GAME.
And I do not consider myself a particularly good player, neither a noob by all means, Have played about 30 games since this last patch was released, and I haven't seen any noticeable invalance in the win/loss ratio, while before I saw that aliens won a lot more often, but only when both teams had not a decent team work or communication, this situation has somewhat reversed, now I see that when both teams are really awfull and no one is even speaking on mic aliens tend to loss a bit more often, although not nearly as often as they used to won in the same scenario.
But apart from winning stadistics, My own experience playing the skulk has been good so far, I can consistently win any 1vs1 with my skulk vs any marine provided he is alone and I spot him first(witch is the more usual) If I do my approach correctly, even if I cannot ambush I can still kill the marine always that I do not make some big mistake on my part.
The only difference I noticed after the patch is that it is way harder to dodge marine bullets when you are plainly IN FRONT OF HIM, witch IMHO should be hard and was too easy before, Skulks can still consistently attack a defended marine position, and I have seen it happend many times in this last two days, they just need numeric superiority or skill superiority, with makes sense and It is fair when you are attaking a bunch of people with rifles that know you are coming.
The win-loss percentage after such an influx of new players says nothing. We have a near perfect 50/50 rate because it is pure luck what team gets more greens. (=normal probability distribution) It is the same we saw after release. It will take time for the win-loss-stats to get any meaning. This will happen when most of the new players have L2P or quited. Like we saw balance drift off after release. Maybe this time it will drift to a marine advantage. But you really can't tell yet.
The win-loss percentage after such an influx of new players says nothing. We have a near perfect 50/50 rate because it is pure luck what team gets more greens. (=normal probability distribution) It is the same we saw after release. It will take time for the win-loss-stats to get any meaning. This will happen when most of the new players have L2P or quited. Like we saw balance drift off after release. Maybe this time it will drift to a marine advantage. But you really can't tell yet.
the point remains that all 'evidence' to suggest that marines are OP right now is speculative and anecdotal.
once the brick skulk bug is fixed (it's been all but confirmed to be a bug at this point), it should go back to being a bit alien favoured. ergo "GAME IS RUINED", "ALIEN IS IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN NOW" or "SKULK IS NERFED ****" whining is very much quelled by 50% win statistics.
The problem with stats is that they don't tell the whole story by themselves. They can also conveniently tell the story you want to hear when you forget to look at other factors.
Keeping in mind we're looking at a tiny sample size (<1000 games with mods).
The stats for just 240 (mods or no mods, ratios are roughly the same but I'm including mod stats because of the lack of data):
Marines are winning by a fairly significant margin 5-10mins, 10-15mins where these games are about 1/3 (~35%) of the sample size.
15-20mins we're seeing a 55% the marines way (20% of total), more or less even.
20-35mins aliens have a slightly higher average of wins (25% total)
More or less even everywhere else, or meaningless due to lacking sample size.
Now I'll give my 2am opinion on what this seems to mean, and to me it seems to correlate with what I've seen on my local servers.
Marines are winning faster, earlier, and as people have complained people are conceding early game because they can feel it would be pointless fighting a losing battle (this is not fun). In my personal experience this is when the Aliens have been smashed in the early minutes and end up holed up with little res.
Aliens are having to work longer(harder) to get their wins. Comparing this with the early game wins for marines, it may seem marines are having an easier time surviving a longer onslaught.
Anyone who's not so sleep-deprived feel free to comment further or find my slips.
Marines are winning faster, earlier, and as people have complained people are conceding early game because they can feel it would be pointless fighting a losing battle (this is not fun). In my personal experience this is when the Aliens have been smashed in the early minutes and end up holed up with little res.
Aliens are having to work longer(harder) to get their wins. Comparing this with the early game wins for marines, it may seem marines are having an easier time surviving a longer onslaught.
That's been my experience so far. A lot of the marine wins I've seen they've completely shut the aliens down in the first 5 minutes, leading to either concede as soon as 10 minutes rolls round or F4. I think what @__Necro__ said holds weight, so many games seem to be heavily one sided and I assume this is due to skill distribution. Get the Skulk friction bug fixed ASAP but I think after that things need to be given a couple of weeks to see where balance is going before anything else is done.
Now I'll give my 2am opinion on what this seems to mean, and to me it seems to correlate with what I've seen on my local servers.
Marines are winning faster, earlier, and as people have complained people are conceding early game because they can feel it would be pointless fighting a losing battle (this is not fun). In my personal experience this is when the Aliens have been smashed in the early minutes and end up holed up with little res.
Aliens are having to work longer(harder) to get their wins. Comparing this with the early game wins for marines, it may seem marines are having an easier time surviving a longer onslaught.
Anyone who's not so sleep-deprived feel free to comment further or find my slips.
in my experience it's a different story.
the match is often decided in the first 5-10 minutes, but this is pretty much the same for both marines and aliens. the explanation for longer duration alien wins is usually that aliens can't 'finish off' the marines until they get higher lifeforms/tech, where the marines can quite easily finish off the aliens with consistent pressure and don't need such a tech advantage.
when the match is NOT decided in 5-10 minutes, it's usually a sign that the teams are about equally skilled.
i still haven't have seen anything to suggest that balance is 'broken'. i was playing earlier today getting 1:1 kdr as skulk against a marine team with 5:1 kdr when i joined they already had shotgun, exo and jetpacks (marine win), and in two other games i managed to get about 5:1 kdr as skulk (both alien wins). this follows the pattern i've experienced since the release of b240 - it feels more fair than 239.
Its quite possible to win as an alien. I can even agree that its near 50% alien and marine split victories. Problem is, its not very fun to do so, that alien winning part...
Its also true that you as a player are left helpless when there is one near aimbot in marine team and its not really problem of L2P. L2P argument is so dumb that it makes me wanna drown a kitten. Sure to some lifeform who loves his drool cup and has 200e+ just on mouse and keyboard and then invested 300-400 hours to practice game and 100+ in watching pro videos can say aliens are fine but in practice for majority of people that claim is not so true.
Its really really difficult to be a good skulk: Stay away from shotguns, mines, 6-7 rifle rounds, groups of 2 and more, good players, long corridors, jetpackers, railgun exos, vent infested with marines AND YOU ARE GOOD. Just keep biting that extractor and remember: game said that your best usage is to distract marines so your proper use is to be meat. I will be honest here: even when I stalk/ambush/suprise/rush surprise marines I feel that the game has cheated me. Landing 3 bites, marine jumps his own height while turning around and blast me with one shotgun (mind you, I was moving as well) and cries "MEDPACK!" as an insult to injury.
There are no words to describe frustration of chasing a jetpacker... Its horrid. Late game, 4 bites in he takes off, baloons like a moron spraying bullets all around while mind controlling his JP and reloading a rifle at the same time while medpacks start spawning all around him. You are tired since your celerity has been canceled from one bullet that grazed you and your leap that hit its target once is not usable since your energy is gone... He lands for 2-3 seconds, starts running almost as fast as your skulk and then takes off again since his tank is full juice BUT YOU STILL CANT LEAP even once because your energy is not regained. If you run hell just hup armory for a few second aaaaaaand damage inflicted is gone!
Lerk requires insane amount of skill AND a good situation in order to be effective (same is true for fade but less skill is required) so even if the player is able to stay alive he still has to be effective enough to pay off his price and that is something that is, for most people, so difficult that its less fun and more pressure/fear. Still, marines with a good comm can counter that like its nothing: armory + few mines deter anything and is available as early as a few minutes.
I don't MIND the game rules. De facto, aliens and their melee oriented combat is inherently more difficult to play. So what does the game lack? Well if you ask me, believe it or not GORE/gib effect. It feels rather unsatisfying when you down a marine currently and being that you only have melee at your disposal at least reward players when they use it succesfully. I will risk playing fade if that killing swipe will split that shotgunner in two. If an onos gore killing blow dismembers that annoying jetpacker so brutaly that only legs, arms, ears and nipples are left thrown around the room. Example: New move for fade instead of useless vortex. Fade goes into a blink, when it exits it automatically swipes with both claws ad expence of energy. A kind of fade grand entry in combat. If marine exploded in blood bath after that... man would it worth dieing in 50res lifeform. That swipe-swipe-swipe kind of gets old really quickly, especially on a highly mobile glass cannon. So its the reward, at least visual that, at least, I miss when aliening around.
I must be the only person who looks at new patches as good. I still get 3:1 k:d ratio as a skulk in early game. I crawl on walls, check my minimap for my team-mate's locations and attack from diferent directions at the same time.
Also, I make it a point to stay off the floor around marines and wait until they are busy to attack, or let them come to you. If you can get a drop on the support marine(s) in the background while a team-mate bites the face of the frontman, you and your skulk buddy stand a better chance.
Of course, it helps to know how to play both sides, so you can guesstimate enemy locations.
Basically, good communication, and good spatial awareness, with a dash of patients.
Basically, good communication, and good spatial awareness, with a dash of patients.
Unfortunately months of fast-paced skulk play and quick re-spawns has made most alien players accustomed to just running headlong into a group of marines expecting to get kills. I truly wish more skulks played the way you just described it, but it's not going to happen without a lot of moaning to accompany it.
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so". But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
"i told you so!"... told us what exactly?
i just went on ns2 stats, selected no mods, pub play and build 240 =
did you tell us "darn this skulk nerf, now the win ratio is gonna be 50%!!!" ?? if so then my apologies.
Excuse me the win loss ratio is 55% marines, 45% aliens. I just checked using only build 240 and no mods as well. Are you deliberately being deceptive?
Build 239 was 55% alien, 45% marine. That is a HUGE change. So knock off the nonsense.
The win-loss percentage after such an influx of new players says nothing. We have a near perfect 50/50 rate because it is pure luck what team gets more greens. (=normal probability distribution) It is the same we saw after release. It will take time for the win-loss-stats to get any meaning. This will happen when most of the new players have L2P or quited. Like we saw balance drift off after release. Maybe this time it will drift to a marine advantage. But you really can't tell yet.
the point remains that all 'evidence' to suggest that marines are OP right now is speculative and anecdotal.
once the brick skulk bug is fixed (it's been all but confirmed to be a bug at this point), it should go back to being a bit alien favoured. ergo "GAME IS RUINED", "ALIEN IS IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN NOW" or "SKULK IS NERFED ****" whining is very much quelled by 50% win statistics.
Again. It is NOT a 50/50 ratio. Stop spreading misinformation.
Here are some easy steps for you.
1. Click only build 239, no mods and you'll get 55% alien/ 45% marine
2. Click only build 240, no mods and you'll get 55% marine/45% alien.
The last changes have resulted in a 10% drop for winning aliens.
You shouldn't just ignore the impact that the relatively large influx of new players has on balance. NS 2 balance went from 60/40 to like 50/50 when it got released, only to then settle at 60/40 again a week or two later when all the new players had learnt how to play skulks.
Comments
They may voice their concerns, but it's better than the current method of surprising a lot of people with crap they don't like. If I read that they were going to nerf the skulk movement then I admittedly would have complained, and then upon release said "I told you so". But at least there's an ounce of hope that the devs will listen to the anger of the community and not rest assured that the testers will ensure that the game is enjoyable for all. Maybe's it's about time we see a different method of testing, like having a Natural Selection 2 Beta downloadable on Steam that contains the in-progress version of the next patch.
I disagree with your idea of movement buffs/debuffs on bite/close-range, but you bring up a very good point: skulks never directly become more powerful, unlike marines, and if the aliens wind up wasting their higher life forms in a losing match, it's over, as the marines continue to become more and more powerful and all the aliens can do is hope for an odd kill here or there as a skulk, or RT harassment, neither of which is anywhere near enough to turn the tide.
Also, marine movement. Why the hell is it that skulks have been progressively made slower and clunkier over the past several patches, and yet marines feel more agile than ever? Isn't something WRONG here? I'm coming to this uncomfortable conclusion that even once they fix the skulk movement bug (if ever), it won't be enough to make aliens playable again.
I've always said that marines:
1. Shouldn't be able to endlessly hop around the way that they do. They need some sort of stamina bar that ties into their sprinting so that their jumping abilities are limited.
2. Shouldn't be able to outrun a skulk, as is happening now. I've seen marines drop their weapons and just book. It was the most frustrating thing I've ever encountered the first time I saw it happen.
Anyhow, I've found it's almost impossible to play pubs now. Everyone stacks marines and people sadly relegate themselves to a loss as aliens, since we all know that's what's going to happen. I'm even guilty of it. The railgun feels like it has aim assist, as I never seem to miss, and it just explodes everything short of an onos, and I'm sick of being boxed into our first hive by marines after we lose our first encounter and they quickly lock down the whole map.
Also, anger is the wrong emotion to take towards all of this. Anger would imply that they're doing something malevolent to try and upset us all. They made the damn game, and they put more time and work into it than most developers have, of course they'd like us to enjoy ourselves. They're not doing anything malicious, like, "Eeheehee, stupid alien players, suffer with this skulk movement nerf!"
They tried something, and it didn't work. It's fine to be upset, but don't be angry. Anger has a tendency of invalidating otherwise valid concerns by way of nasty attitude.
Everyone needs to relax~
Even with the amazing efforts of putting tips and now hugh's narrated clips, this game isn't very welcoming to næbs. Tips do help, but they're no substitute for experience.
There's a lot of nuances to the game which make statements like "camo is useless and shotguns make aliens shit themselves" laughable.
During your first 200-250 hours the best thing you can do is suck it up and L2P.
1/Play Counter Strike 1.6
2/ Being killed so many times
3/ Get to Steam forum >> say this game need patch
4/Play TF2
5/Being dominated by other player
6/ .. repeat again for other games and return to play NS2
In a pure RTS game, you can tell the outcome of a specific engagement (let's take 8 zerglings vs. 6 marines). Marines win if the zerglings just run single file into them. This makes them easy targets because the marine AI will autmatically focus fire on the ling that enters LOS first.
BUT if the Zerg player is competent, he digs those zerglings in at a spot where the marines will surely walk by or let's the lings attack from multiple angles which helps them get close as the marines can't focus their fire on single lings, but have to spread it all around which results in a landslide zergling win.
In NS2 all bets are off on those engagements, because some players barely grasp the concecpt of WASD, while others kill 4 skulks with a single rifle magazine.
Human players vary so wildly, there is no hope of balancing that part of the game...
On top of that comes the natural tendency for social & communicative players to seek like-minded company and yeehaw, there goes another stacked snowball snorefest.
This. A million times this. Fix hitreg and revert all the actual movement changes and then see how skulks are. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone thought it was a good idea to make skulks hittable and then also make them incredibly hard to miss in the same patch.
I'm finding snowballing a lot worse this patch. I know balance before was horribly skewed towards aliens but you still saw a lot of marines pushing out to 2 or 3 bases before losing. Likewise when aliens did lose they often lost from a 2 hive, sometimes 3 hive, position. This patch although overall balance is apparently much close to 50% each individual game seems to go in just one direction, one team seems to get caged into struggling to hold 3 RTs while the other team takes the rest of the map. I've seen this go both way, for aliens and marines. Maybe I've just been seeing some horrible skill stacking, but when the server has tried to mix players around its normally just resulted in swinging the win in the other direction rather than giving a balanced game.
That being said, the usefulness of a skulk is also majorly dependent on the map you're playing, if you're in a map with lots of long corridors and wide open areas you'll have to play more defensively until you get your leap.
There is no problem with the change, skulks are just as effective as they ever were, you've just got to change how you play. It's a free unit, you pay no p-res for them, they're not meant to be the most lethal things on the battlefield.
So is a stock marine, and yet by end game they can completely tear through packs of skulks. The issue with the new Skulk is that while ambushing is all well and good,
A) Even in an ambush good marines are just jumping away and surviving, you don't get that much of a bonus.
Yes good players are still very good, I've seen people go 20:1 as Skulk in this patch. But it's killed of the average players, Skulks players fall into awful, pretty bad, and insanely good there's no middle ground anymore. On the flip side a lot of pretty bad marines have been lifted up into pretty good marines, and good marines are now godly against Skulks.
As for feeling as if your being hunted well you are.... You just need to be that extra bit cunning and dont ambush where a marine is gonna look
Considering that the brick-skulk came as a surprise to UWE as well (and yea, it should have been caught in PT, but large ambitions and fixed deadlines tends to lead to late changes ... and surprises. Ask Planetside 2 players about the non-functional tank main armament sometime...).
Most in-progress versions are strictly unplayable, it usually takes a few days of pure bugfixing before playtesters can actually play through a full game after features have been added.
Adding a week of public beta for a new version has been tried, but you don't really gain much by it. If there are glaring bugs, the internal PT group usually finds them, and balancing requires much more feedback than you can get from a week of limited public PT.
So all you gain is complexity (ie, time and resources not spent on making the game better) and a weeks delay of the new release before finding out how things actually work.
Better to do as much testing as you can, release something without obvious bugs and then spend your time hotfixing it as soon as possible. It will sometimes lead to a few days of less-than-optimal gameplay, but all things considered ... it's the best you can get.
"i told you so!"... told us what exactly?
i just went on ns2 stats, selected no mods, pub play and build 240 =
did you tell us "darn this skulk nerf, now the win ratio is gonna be 50%!!!" ?? if so then my apologies.
No. It will only increase the drama you have now. It doesn't matter what UWE does. People will complain. If you post info about the patch before the patch, people will just complain sooner (Like you with "I told you so!") and they will complain longer, because some things that were "promised" to them weren't actually added to the game.
Face it. It's the internet, because devs remain quiet. They were much more open in the past. But the constant drama, accusations and demoralization from players (that -on top of that- have a nasty attitude) have made them so. You just can't be that open or you will be ripped apart. Despite that, the devs are doing a great job in enduring this.
inb4 50/50 balance means nothing, but when we don't have it the game is clearly screwed.
And I do not consider myself a particularly good player, neither a noob by all means, Have played about 30 games since this last patch was released, and I haven't seen any noticeable invalance in the win/loss ratio, while before I saw that aliens won a lot more often, but only when both teams had not a decent team work or communication, this situation has somewhat reversed, now I see that when both teams are really awfull and no one is even speaking on mic aliens tend to loss a bit more often, although not nearly as often as they used to won in the same scenario.
But apart from winning stadistics, My own experience playing the skulk has been good so far, I can consistently win any 1vs1 with my skulk vs any marine provided he is alone and I spot him first(witch is the more usual) If I do my approach correctly, even if I cannot ambush I can still kill the marine always that I do not make some big mistake on my part.
The only difference I noticed after the patch is that it is way harder to dodge marine bullets when you are plainly IN FRONT OF HIM, witch IMHO should be hard and was too easy before, Skulks can still consistently attack a defended marine position, and I have seen it happend many times in this last two days, they just need numeric superiority or skill superiority, with makes sense and It is fair when you are attaking a bunch of people with rifles that know you are coming.
the point remains that all 'evidence' to suggest that marines are OP right now is speculative and anecdotal.
once the brick skulk bug is fixed (it's been all but confirmed to be a bug at this point), it should go back to being a bit alien favoured. ergo "GAME IS RUINED", "ALIEN IS IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN NOW" or "SKULK IS NERFED ****" whining is very much quelled by 50% win statistics.
Keeping in mind we're looking at a tiny sample size (<1000 games with mods).
The stats for just 240 (mods or no mods, ratios are roughly the same but I'm including mod stats because of the lack of data):
Now I'll give my 2am opinion on what this seems to mean, and to me it seems to correlate with what I've seen on my local servers.
Marines are winning faster, earlier, and as people have complained people are conceding early game because they can feel it would be pointless fighting a losing battle (this is not fun). In my personal experience this is when the Aliens have been smashed in the early minutes and end up holed up with little res.
Aliens are having to work longer(harder) to get their wins. Comparing this with the early game wins for marines, it may seem marines are having an easier time surviving a longer onslaught.
Anyone who's not so sleep-deprived feel free to comment further or find my slips.
That's been my experience so far. A lot of the marine wins I've seen they've completely shut the aliens down in the first 5 minutes, leading to either concede as soon as 10 minutes rolls round or F4. I think what @__Necro__ said holds weight, so many games seem to be heavily one sided and I assume this is due to skill distribution. Get the Skulk friction bug fixed ASAP but I think after that things need to be given a couple of weeks to see where balance is going before anything else is done.
in my experience it's a different story.
the match is often decided in the first 5-10 minutes, but this is pretty much the same for both marines and aliens. the explanation for longer duration alien wins is usually that aliens can't 'finish off' the marines until they get higher lifeforms/tech, where the marines can quite easily finish off the aliens with consistent pressure and don't need such a tech advantage.
when the match is NOT decided in 5-10 minutes, it's usually a sign that the teams are about equally skilled.
i still haven't have seen anything to suggest that balance is 'broken'. i was playing earlier today getting 1:1 kdr as skulk against a marine team with 5:1 kdr when i joined they already had shotgun, exo and jetpacks (marine win), and in two other games i managed to get about 5:1 kdr as skulk (both alien wins). this follows the pattern i've experienced since the release of b240 - it feels more fair than 239.
Its also true that you as a player are left helpless when there is one near aimbot in marine team and its not really problem of L2P. L2P argument is so dumb that it makes me wanna drown a kitten. Sure to some lifeform who loves his drool cup and has 200e+ just on mouse and keyboard and then invested 300-400 hours to practice game and 100+ in watching pro videos can say aliens are fine but in practice for majority of people that claim is not so true.
Its really really difficult to be a good skulk: Stay away from shotguns, mines, 6-7 rifle rounds, groups of 2 and more, good players, long corridors, jetpackers, railgun exos, vent infested with marines AND YOU ARE GOOD. Just keep biting that extractor and remember: game said that your best usage is to distract marines so your proper use is to be meat. I will be honest here: even when I stalk/ambush/suprise/rush surprise marines I feel that the game has cheated me. Landing 3 bites, marine jumps his own height while turning around and blast me with one shotgun (mind you, I was moving as well) and cries "MEDPACK!" as an insult to injury.
There are no words to describe frustration of chasing a jetpacker... Its horrid. Late game, 4 bites in he takes off, baloons like a moron spraying bullets all around while mind controlling his JP and reloading a rifle at the same time while medpacks start spawning all around him. You are tired since your celerity has been canceled from one bullet that grazed you and your leap that hit its target once is not usable since your energy is gone... He lands for 2-3 seconds, starts running almost as fast as your skulk and then takes off again since his tank is full juice BUT YOU STILL CANT LEAP even once because your energy is not regained. If you run hell just hup armory for a few second aaaaaaand damage inflicted is gone!
Lerk requires insane amount of skill AND a good situation in order to be effective (same is true for fade but less skill is required) so even if the player is able to stay alive he still has to be effective enough to pay off his price and that is something that is, for most people, so difficult that its less fun and more pressure/fear. Still, marines with a good comm can counter that like its nothing: armory + few mines deter anything and is available as early as a few minutes.
I don't MIND the game rules. De facto, aliens and their melee oriented combat is inherently more difficult to play. So what does the game lack? Well if you ask me, believe it or not GORE/gib effect. It feels rather unsatisfying when you down a marine currently and being that you only have melee at your disposal at least reward players when they use it succesfully. I will risk playing fade if that killing swipe will split that shotgunner in two. If an onos gore killing blow dismembers that annoying jetpacker so brutaly that only legs, arms, ears and nipples are left thrown around the room. Example: New move for fade instead of useless vortex. Fade goes into a blink, when it exits it automatically swipes with both claws ad expence of energy. A kind of fade grand entry in combat. If marine exploded in blood bath after that... man would it worth dieing in 50res lifeform. That swipe-swipe-swipe kind of gets old really quickly, especially on a highly mobile glass cannon. So its the reward, at least visual that, at least, I miss when aliening around.
Also, I make it a point to stay off the floor around marines and wait until they are busy to attack, or let them come to you. If you can get a drop on the support marine(s) in the background while a team-mate bites the face of the frontman, you and your skulk buddy stand a better chance.
Of course, it helps to know how to play both sides, so you can guesstimate enemy locations.
Basically, good communication, and good spatial awareness, with a dash of patients.
Unfortunately months of fast-paced skulk play and quick re-spawns has made most alien players accustomed to just running headlong into a group of marines expecting to get kills. I truly wish more skulks played the way you just described it, but it's not going to happen without a lot of moaning to accompany it.
Excuse me the win loss ratio is 55% marines, 45% aliens. I just checked using only build 240 and no mods as well. Are you deliberately being deceptive?
Build 239 was 55% alien, 45% marine. That is a HUGE change. So knock off the nonsense.
Again. It is NOT a 50/50 ratio. Stop spreading misinformation.
Here are some easy steps for you.
1. Click only build 239, no mods and you'll get 55% alien/ 45% marine
2. Click only build 240, no mods and you'll get 55% marine/45% alien.
The last changes have resulted in a 10% drop for winning aliens.