Balance mod "Minor Tweaks" by sewlek
Bitey
Join Date: 2012-05-06 Member: 151622Members, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2012-05-06 Member: 151622Members, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=133339748
At the request of Rantology, I've started a post for my thoughts about the current "Minor tweaks" balance mod created by Sewlek. Just to note, I never played NS1 and all of my ideas, thoughts, and creations of intellectual property are formed on my experience playing ns2 and several 'other' games. So please don't slam me too much :< I've been worried about posting any critical feedback for that very purpose, and these are only my formatted ideas! Enjoy
These are the suggested changes currently and I will go over my thoughts of each in sequence:
- increased Medpack cost to 2 resources (up from 1)
In my view I don't really see what issue that this change attempts to solve. For a 100% price increase on medpacks, this only seems to hammer the marine economy for the purpose of supplying health to teammates. If the problem is spammyness, then there are several other changes besides a dramatic price increase such as the following ideas.
a.Lower the amount of total HP given by a medkit, trying 45hp?
b.Decrease the rate at which health recovers making medkits less effective in combat. Gain 25hp per second till total amount of health is healed?
c. Medkit cooldown, say .2 seconds?
In this instance price only seems like a change that solves nothing towards whatever the original perceived problem may have been. Rather then taking a dramatic step such as 100% increase in price, try looking at smaller steps to alleviate the issue before something this extreme.
- increased Infantry Portal cost to 20 resources (up from 15)
I'm slightly confused on what this change attempts to solve as a problem. The extra 5 res only seems to do any kind of damage to the marine econ in early game setup with teams using the 1-3-1 open. This play itself leads to a slowed upgrade path, expansion, and other side effects. If the problem is something to due with how effective an IP is as a structure why not first look at:
a.Attempt adjusting the HP amount by 75-225? This lowers the amount of bites it takes to destroy the pad.
b.Look at increasing the marine spawn timer by one second at a time, this increase the amount of time aliens have a longer opening.
As for a general viewpoint, I think that the infantry portal is fine where it is.
- reduced nano shield duration to 3 seconds (down from 8)
- increased nano shield effectiveness to 75% (up from 50%)
I feel like these changes are extremely heavy nerfs of ability that I view as being fun. While I can agree the ability might need a small nerf due to it's current effective level, this seems is overboard. This change reworks the entire design of nanoshield as this will make the reasons for utilizing nano completely different from the previous builds. Why not look at smaller tweaks which could lead to more a more productive yet balanced approach?
a. Lower the damage reduction by X amount of percent. Try 25-45% reduction settings, maybe make it more effective on buildings rather then players.
b. Increase the cost by 1-2 res intervals till it feels more cost appropriate.
c. With the combination of a small medpack cooldown and cost increase. This ability may be fine as is, due to the real problem of nanoshield being med+nano
d.Medkits are half as effective with nanoshield online? Cannot use armory while nanoshield?
Rather then trying to hammer nanoshield into oblivion just looking at how it functions and making it more acceptable in it's current incarnation is by far more acceptable.
- increased arms lab upgrade costs to 20/30/40 (was 15/25/35)
This is a suggestion which I feel rather indifferent about as a player. By increasing the costs, the side effect is time I don't really have a problem with slower upgrades. As an alien I find it more enjoyable fighting marines till they get the dreaded 3-3 max out.
That ends Bitey's viewpoint, please don't slam me :< I love everybody <333
At the request of Rantology, I've started a post for my thoughts about the current "Minor tweaks" balance mod created by Sewlek. Just to note, I never played NS1 and all of my ideas, thoughts, and creations of intellectual property are formed on my experience playing ns2 and several 'other' games. So please don't slam me too much :< I've been worried about posting any critical feedback for that very purpose, and these are only my formatted ideas! Enjoy
These are the suggested changes currently and I will go over my thoughts of each in sequence:
- increased Medpack cost to 2 resources (up from 1)
In my view I don't really see what issue that this change attempts to solve. For a 100% price increase on medpacks, this only seems to hammer the marine economy for the purpose of supplying health to teammates. If the problem is spammyness, then there are several other changes besides a dramatic price increase such as the following ideas.
a.Lower the amount of total HP given by a medkit, trying 45hp?
b.Decrease the rate at which health recovers making medkits less effective in combat. Gain 25hp per second till total amount of health is healed?
c. Medkit cooldown, say .2 seconds?
In this instance price only seems like a change that solves nothing towards whatever the original perceived problem may have been. Rather then taking a dramatic step such as 100% increase in price, try looking at smaller steps to alleviate the issue before something this extreme.
- increased Infantry Portal cost to 20 resources (up from 15)
I'm slightly confused on what this change attempts to solve as a problem. The extra 5 res only seems to do any kind of damage to the marine econ in early game setup with teams using the 1-3-1 open. This play itself leads to a slowed upgrade path, expansion, and other side effects. If the problem is something to due with how effective an IP is as a structure why not first look at:
a.Attempt adjusting the HP amount by 75-225? This lowers the amount of bites it takes to destroy the pad.
b.Look at increasing the marine spawn timer by one second at a time, this increase the amount of time aliens have a longer opening.
As for a general viewpoint, I think that the infantry portal is fine where it is.
- reduced nano shield duration to 3 seconds (down from 8)
- increased nano shield effectiveness to 75% (up from 50%)
I feel like these changes are extremely heavy nerfs of ability that I view as being fun. While I can agree the ability might need a small nerf due to it's current effective level, this seems is overboard. This change reworks the entire design of nanoshield as this will make the reasons for utilizing nano completely different from the previous builds. Why not look at smaller tweaks which could lead to more a more productive yet balanced approach?
a. Lower the damage reduction by X amount of percent. Try 25-45% reduction settings, maybe make it more effective on buildings rather then players.
b. Increase the cost by 1-2 res intervals till it feels more cost appropriate.
c. With the combination of a small medpack cooldown and cost increase. This ability may be fine as is, due to the real problem of nanoshield being med+nano
d.Medkits are half as effective with nanoshield online? Cannot use armory while nanoshield?
Rather then trying to hammer nanoshield into oblivion just looking at how it functions and making it more acceptable in it's current incarnation is by far more acceptable.
- increased arms lab upgrade costs to 20/30/40 (was 15/25/35)
This is a suggestion which I feel rather indifferent about as a player. By increasing the costs, the side effect is time I don't really have a problem with slower upgrades. As an alien I find it more enjoyable fighting marines till they get the dreaded 3-3 max out.
That ends Bitey's viewpoint, please don't slam me :< I love everybody <333
Comments
Don't forget to also try the bigger, more extensive balance mod as well: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130391092 (this one is further off in the horizon but could still really use feedback)
RE: Nano-shield - For anyone who played League of Legends we saw the same thing with Kayle's Ultimate (an invincibility.) I mention that because they (Riot) nerfed the skill by making its duration very short which is what we are seeing with nano shield.
A short duration will transform the ability from a no-brain, always use, ability to a thought out, well timed, ability. With that said, nano-shield, while it's not as good, is still a powerful ability that can really shine depending on the one using it and the situation there of. Isn't that what people cry for, more "skill?"
Edit: It doesn't have to be strictly heal over time, it could be like 40HP and 25 over time or what have you.
That leaves a cost increase or a health decrease, both of which I think would maintain the skill ceiling for medpack usage, while perhaps appropriately dealing with this issue. I actually think a increase to 2res would be a decent idea as it would increase the need to be accurate with your medpacks and think about when you should use them. Right now you can basically use them as much as you want as long as you are reasonably accurate.
I would like to see the upgrade costs nerfed, because I feel that upgrades first is the clearly superior strategy in almost all situations, and sometimes the upgrades feel like they are coming out too quickly. I rarely feel that sense of being cash strapped as marine comm that I feel on alien side, unless I am getting stomped. However, doing this in conjunction with a med pack cost increase might be too much.
Not sure if the damage reduction really needs to be increased as it would basically make any marine invincible for 3 seconds with a few good medpacks. Giving the aliens basically 0% chance of saving an important structure (like a sneaky carapace-snipe).
I could see why the cost was increased for the infantry portal seeing as it increases marine spawning with 100% going from 1 to 2. 20 tres does sound a bit expensive though, but I can't come up with a better solution myself. Perhaps increasing the marine spawning time further and reducing the hp of it slightly. Making it a more viable option when going for base-harass, but still not low enough to be insta-win if aliens decide to baserush.
I'm not much of a balance guy, but I hate nanoshield with a passion and short of having it removed completely (at least from players), this sounds like a good start.
I basically agree with most of what Bitey says, except for nanoshield. That ability has got to get some looking at.
As for the specific points, cool downs for medkits will never solve the problem of medspam, only make it either frustrating for the aliens (IE current situation), or make it frustrating for the marine/marine commander. Medspam as a tactic is valid as long as it has a significant impact on the economy of the marine team as a whole, Your sacrificing or delaying strength later for strength now with meds. I don't see any way 1 tRes meds will ever work, unless they are reduced to say ~35 hp a pack, which doesnt really sound as appealing to me. I would rather have the costs be a little high currently to prevent spam, then be too cheap and have them everywhere. Ideally I would say the cost could be changed to 1.5, but that just isnt feasibly possible currently.
The IP costs is to make an early IP for marines more costly, and more impacting on tech progression. With the quick spawn times and overall smaller maps/sprinting, marines can reinforce a lot quicker with a 2nd IP for little tech time cost.
Either way, I have to agree the medkit changes are a bit harsh.
I'm a little on the fence about the nanoshield changes because in this form they would become night useless on structures. Can't we differentiate nano on structures from nano on players? It's really hard to balance it for one aspect without totally gimping the other.
I wish they'd also start by adding these. These changes go quite a long way in prolonging the early game, especially combined with some of the other cost increases for marines and the biomass introduction for aliens. It's by far the most enjoyable phase of any game and as it stands it's far too short currently. Would make a lot more sense to introduce all price changes at once, since they seem to be somewhat interdependent.
it seems as though everything is continually getting nerfed into the ground. Skulks shouldn't be in a position this pathetic and unable to fight tier 1 that these kinds of nerfs should be necessary. I feel like this was the primary strategy that we used in Nexzil when I first started playing (double IP, heavy 3 aggression from the start of the game) and it eventually fell out of favor because split pressure often worked better against competent teams whose Skulks were capable of clearing marines. Now that Skulks have been bricked, it feels like 3 marines are just exponentially more powerful (between the differences in accel, air control, and yes, medspam) and always guarantee some kind of damage so that it's too good not to pass up.
I have yet to play the mod so this is just pure speculation. but it seems obvious to me that it's in the best interest of the game to fix the clearly broken mechanics (such as Skulk or changes to marine RTs) prior to making a drastic change like doubling the cost of the medpack / lowering ammo. these items are dropped in every single engagement in a competitive game. it's impossible to predict what kind of impact it will have on the game.
regarding nano-shield - I wish there was a way to keep and reward the aggressive "rush the hydras / kill the gorge" aspect of nanoshield, and prevent the "hug the armory and never die" aspect of it.
The medpack changes are really poorly thought out, though. They're a very harsh response to marine's power, which in turn only came about because of the gutting of skulks.
First, let's state the perceived problem(s):
A) Weak skulks and late lifeforms lead to
C) Potential medpack spam
I have three main arguments against the doubling of medpack's cost.
1) We're addressing C instead of B or A. The problem is that marine's economy is too strong because they always pop up to 5-7 RTs in the early game while simultaneously pressuring aliens/holding them to 1-3 RTs. At 5-7 RTs, you can afford to drop a medpack every few seconds and tech at the same time. The aliens aren't even getting lerks until 4-5m typically when marines are already at 1-1 with shotguns.
2) They further incentivize armories (which will now have to be nerfed even harder, lol). 4 medpacks and 2 ammo packs, which is enough to heal up two marines after a close fight, will cost as much as an armory. Do you think 4 medpacks and 2 ammo packs should equal an entire armory? Probably not, so now we're going to have to increase armory costs to disincentivize that!
3) They're going to destroy marine comeback attempts. If you've ever played commander, you'd understand how hard it is to support your marines on just 2-3 RTs. What's going to happen with 2 tres medpacks is that if you ever get behind on RTs, you're going to have a very hard time reestablishing them because you won't have the res to drop medpacks.
And here are some potential changes that I think would be better than doubling the cost of medpacks; to be used in combination as needed.
I ) Extractor changes. Increasing build time (12->15s). Increasing cost (10->15). Decreasing health (skulk TTK: 27->23).
II ) Skulk rebuffs. Some control given back to the skulk, though I like the lower ground and air acceleration the 240ish nerf could have been too much. Alternatively, marines could have their ground acceleration trimmed off.
e.g. a marine with 20health, he gets 2 medpacks(=100health)
His healthbar is at 20hp and since he got 2 medpacks it should fill up to 100hp (the 20 excess hp from the medpacks get lost)
So this 80hp from the medpacks should fill up instantly in a slightly transparent color(so the marine knows) and gradually fill up for real. (how long it takes to fill up just depends on what we want it to be, may it be 0.2s or 1s)
We also have to decide what happens if you get hit before the medpack health could apply to 100% so if it should be lost or still fill up the rest.
e.g. 20hp marine gets 2 medpacks, Health managed to climb up to 80hp, when you suddenly get damage for 50hp, health drops to 30hp but still fills up the remaining 20hp. So you end up with 50hp.
Anyways, we now have a way to tweak medpack efficiency without making it crap for commanders to use, or require res cost increases as bandaid.
Alternative idea:
Focus. (tho that would need to be in the crag chamber so ppl have to choose carapace vs. focus, and will likely never be used except on skulks => you need to redesign upgrades on aliens.
I have already prepared a post about that (since im kinda unhappy that basically only cara,cele,silence is used - the balance mod so far wouldnt really change that) but im waiting to see if swelek has some more ideas for his mod coming up first :P
I think this is actually something that would really be worth trying out. It seems to me like the reason for the medpack res increase in this mod is targeted at their frequency and combat effectiveness. The combat effectiveness, and the lack of thought put into marine survivability by the marine commander.
While 2 t-res meds worked fine in NS1, I think there is some opportunity here to try out something different. If medpacks were changed to something like Kouryo suggests, this would leave a good niche for NanoShield. The marine commander could then make a fair trade of more resources for in-combat marine survivability via nanoshield, while leaving the OOC medpacks as a way to heal up after engagements (or for much less effective in-combat healing).
And for what it's worth I think a method like this would also work a lot better on pubs than a double res cost. You could perhaps change armory healing to function in the same way to reduce the in-combat effectiveness of armory humping.
As for the med change, what about reducing the heal of a single medpack to 40 from 50? It would make two meds still out dps a skulk, but the fade could out dps two meds at ~81 a swipe.
*Crosspost editing this
Is the goal to lower medpack effectiveness in combat or to slow down the marine economy?
We can slow down the marine economy easily in other ways -> increased cost of ip, increased cost of upgrades. I think then that when we mess with medpacks we should be mainly thinking about the effect on combat effectiveness.
With that said I am really against heal over time medpacks. I think it would be a very drastic change. Think for example about trying to get your marines out of a phasegate thats getting grinded by two aliens, it will be much harder with HoT medpacks. A smaller change like reducing health regen to 40 or 45 would be a good starting point imo.
I am also going to reiterate what I said earlier about hitting in combat medpacks being one of the "skill" aspects of commanding and removing the importance of this through HoT would in my opinion dumb down the impact a good commander can make on the game.
This is a pretty massive segue but I think that perhaps an underlying problem in marine early combat effectiveness is how much Pres marines get. Marines just get such a large amount of Pres by the nature of the marine economy that they can easily each afford a pack of mines a shotgun and a welder all within the early game. The aliens by comparison take quite a while to build up their Pres. I never ever stop to think, man maybe I shouldn't get this pack of mines because we are going for early shotguns, I just get them both.
Yeah, I don't agree with that. I suppose that's why we differ so greatly on how medpacks should change. I feel like the game is built with medpacks in mind and that aliens have plenty of ability to kill marines with precise hits, even through medpack spam. I also think they do have a large impact on marine economy -- and even that there are frequent occurrences when medpacks are not dropped for the sake of faster tech.
NA in general is definitely behind as there are only a handful of teams that even try, but that's not really relevant.
IE I may think skulk is too weak vs vanilla marines, and think we should increase the rifle spread slightly. Someone else agrees with the problem, but thinks we should increase skulk base ms..
It both encourages Commanders to be more precise with their medpacks and also a bit more decision making. My philosophy before was to guarantee 2 medpacks per engagement for each Marine in the early stages of a round for an effective A2 scenario vs skulks early on because they are so cheap.
Requiring more thought and decision making with whether or not to medpack a certain engagement is good. Currently the decision is very easy and most of the time you can drop 2 medpacks and give the Marine another bite without much thought.
Let's land them on heads, not make carpets!
Less spam, more thought. I like it.
It should still be able to fill up a good amount of health between attacks(but not as much, why? because its ticking up - so there is a timewindow between attacks - this time window should be the reference on tweaking how quick a medpack would will up the health - so if you have a good enough window it will fill up just fine, in a attack + medpack + attack without delays it would maybe mean its only able to fill up 85% of the 50health it should provide etc.), so if the marine doesnt manage to make a good dodge and there are no misses, delays or other mistakes by the alien guy, there is a quicker definitive/more consistent end on how long a marine could stay alife even with perfect medpacking. (spammed or not)
That said, I believe my idea is not a bad idea, so it could find its use one way or the other - maybe not for medpacks. (since it does have aspects that we might not want for meds)
Also ofc its kinda overkill, in complexity of the mechanic :P