So if the game is balanced at a casual level (aka marines can't aim), what happens when those players progress to the next level (div 3 comp / pugging). They will find the game unbalanced again and cry for changes. A new player might improve 50% in a matter of weeks, then a further 25% in the next few months. Do you make the fade 50%, then 25% weaker as he progresses? No you dont... you balance at the top level as those players only improve in tiny increments (1-5%) as they are already at the limit of skill ceiling.
Balancing at top level play is the only way to do it.
Fyii; If a player on aliens is going 40-1 or something similar, its not the fade that is imbalanced its the skill level. They would be smashing face no matter the class they play...
ok so read most of the post and yes those people that are good with fades should be awarded with kills and marines that need to learn how to aim should be rewarded with death however the greatest weapon that the marines have is group cooperation and the ability to shoot a range lets take an example a map like docking marines should win every time, because generator is easy to assault departures is easy to take with arcs, the main problem is the marines attacking aliens where they are strong , marines can build anywhere there is power aliens have to have a drifter or cyst the best way to attack aliens is to think like a skulk in the early game watching vents and expecting the attack from the rear or flanks ,picking your battles attack the enemy on his gaps not surfaces that will stop the fades from coming out so early phase gates should be used aggressively not passively a phase gate on the enemies doorstep will force the aliens to concentrate their forces on the gate and allow the marines to push the rest of the map, winning the early game as marines is key to stopping the alien advantage of the mid game fade , lerk, and gorge bile bomb, if you push lockers sure build up bar but know that your marines will be engaging aliens in tight corridors with skulks rushing them with fades and spores, lockers should be attacked from ball court, ball court is wide open plenty of fields of fire and you can see what's coming to you plus you can arc locker from ball court and push gen from ball court as well. another good example of marine superiority is on the map veil, if alien start is in pipeline you should win pipeline marines have the opportunity to cap both sub sector and cargo preventing the aliens from having two upgrades again the idea is win the early game with weapons 1 fight in the long hallways and listen for the skulk in the vents and the ceiling if you don't win the early game marines will die in mid game because its hard to counter the fade and lerks with armor 1 and weapon 1. Everyone should understand this and if the aliens keep biting your rts and they die and you have no res remember its YOUR FAULT MARINES for not responding to it not the commanders and if the comm spends 40 res on rebuilding rts then expect a fade ball to swallow your marines and making a stack of bodies.
There's so many things which can be done to balance fades but I think the change needs to be very minor. The problem at the moment is that the marine commander feels like their build order in the first 8 minutes is restricted as they are rushing a2w2 to combat that 8 minute mark when there are multiple fades on the field.
1 fade seems easy for a team to take out with a bit of coordination, 2+ fades is a nightmare.
Consider:
- reducing fade bunny hop speed very slightly.
- reducing the ghost effect slightly so that fades are easier to track.
- reducing fade HP very very slightly.
You want fades to be confident engaging 1 marine, but you want to make the fade player think very seriously about engaging 2+ marines and at the moment it feels like when I'm fade I can go into a group of marines and definitely get 1 swipe and blink out without taking any substantual damage.
(for context in all the above im referring to 6v6 experiences).
Does the blink trail block bullets? I'll try to get a test recorded shooting at a fade blinking directly at the marine. I suspect shenanigans.
As far as I'm aware no, and as far as I'm aware the fade takes the same amount of damage whether they are blinking or not. (they used to take reduced damage I think).
So if the game is balanced at a casual level (aka marines can't aim), what happens when those players progress to the next level (div 3 comp / pugging). They will find the game unbalanced again and cry for changes. A new player might improve 50% in a matter of weeks, then a further 25% in the next few months. Do you make the fade 50%, then 25% weaker as he progresses? No you dont... you balance at the top level as those players only improve in tiny increments (1-5%) as they are already at the limit of skill ceiling.
Balancing at top level play is the only way to do it.
Fyii; If a player on aliens is going 40-1 or something similar, its not the fade that is imbalanced its the skill level. They would be smashing face no matter the class they play...
the top level doesn't even exist. even if you balance only for the top 1%, it's still pretty mediocre play as far as aiming is concerned
you balance around experience and make each race sort of similarly challenging
if you want to actually balance around the top level, just demand 60% accuracy. nobody except pros can achieve it. even the best NS2 teams will look like rookies compared to that
the top level doesn't even exist. even if you balance only for the top 1%, it's still pretty mediocre play as far as aiming is concerned
What??? Many top NS1 players moved on to different games and became the best at those as well... Not sure what you mean by saying top ns2 players don't have crazy good aim
I think good aim is a little overrated for killing pro fades. You can keep a marine alive very well with med pack spam and nano shield, but on public servers this doesn't happen very often. And you can kill a pro fade quite easily by waiting for him at his escape route arround a corner with a shotgun.
Jetpacks and exos also typically get introduced much later in the game than fades do.
I end up comming a lot, and the reason I don't get Exo's or JP's earlier is I have to have w/a at 2/2 to defend against the fades at 6-7min in.
I've seen other comms rush exo's 8 min in, but the marine team has always been getting torn apart by fades for 2 minutes and we end up playing defense with a1 exos at our 2 cc points. You can imagine that's not sustainable.
The real question UWE needs to ask itself in terms of balance is: "What is the alien team losing by having an entire team go fade?"
Right now the answer is nothing.
it's high risk high reward. it is literally the only option against good shotgunners, and losing one or two cripples the alien team because shotguns destroy them. also, umbra is OP, so a lerk isn't out of the question. also, when grinding down a gate skulks can be arguably better.
There's so many things which can be done to balance fades but I think the change needs to be very minor. The problem at the moment is that the marine commander feels like their build order in the first 8 minutes is restricted as they are rushing a2w2 to combat that 8 minute mark when there are multiple fades on the field.
1 fade seems easy for a team to take out with a bit of coordination, 2+ fades is a nightmare.
Consider:
- reducing fade bunny hop speed very slightly.
- reducing the ghost effect slightly so that fades are easier to track.
- reducing fade HP very very slightly.
You want fades to be confident engaging 1 marine, but you want to make the fade player think very seriously about engaging 2+ marines and at the moment it feels like when I'm fade I can go into a group of marines and definitely get 1 swipe and blink out without taking any substantual damage.
(for context in all the above im referring to 6v6 experiences).
I never feel confident engaging a shotgun marine that can shoot and with med support. 3 shot and im dead.
I think good aim is a little overrated for killing pro fades. You can keep a marine alive very well with med pack spam and nano shield, but on public servers this doesn't happen very often. And you can kill a pro fade quite easily by waiting for him at his escape route arround a corner with a shotgun.
I call shenanigans. I've lost fades on pubs before, but mostly because I got lazy and overcommitted, or underestimated a marines aim. top level fades that aren't playing casually on a casual server would never have low enough life that you could pinch them. they'd be maintaining somewhere in the vicinity of 350 effective health, getting out of engagements after a single meatshot, or before they get out of armor.
Give fades shadow step instead of blink first off and reduce the adrenaline of fades or increase the cost of blink. This way it will deter fades from so easily being able to fly around the map, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the fade has more air time than the lerk.
I think good aim is a little overrated for killing pro fades. You can keep a marine alive very well with med pack spam and nano shield, but on public servers this doesn't happen very often. And you can kill a pro fade quite easily by waiting for him at his escape route arround a corner with a shotgun.
I call shenanigans. I've lost fades on pubs before, but mostly because I got lazy and overcommitted, or underestimated a marines aim. top level fades that aren't playing casually on a casual server would never have low enough life that you could pinch them. they'd be maintaining somewhere in the vicinity of 350 effective health, getting out of engagements after a single meatshot, or before they get out of armor.
Is that really a bad thing? Skulks and Lerks are supposed to be the Alien's rapid response units. Perhaps a look could be taken at the fade's walk speed.
Perhaps the fade movement isn't the problem? I thought we established that a long time ago...
The proposed change, after the way the new shadow step works, is complete rubbish. You might as well not go fade until the comm would get blink researched.
Perhaps the fade movement isn't the problem? I thought we established that a long time ago...
The proposed change, after the way the new shadow step works, is complete rubbish. You might as well not go fade until the comm would get blink researched.
it would delay fades, which is the point. Perhaps shadow step could also be made slightly less useless, perhaps half momentum inheritence so fade can do something before blink.
Or just revert to the old fade and the problem would be fixed. Ugh.
The old fade was changed for a reason... I am not going to waste time with a 249 fade movement debate. Anyway, delaying the fade ball doesnt really do that much. The problem at hand isn't the time the fades appear on the field. That is always dependent on how well the marines pressure alien RT's. The problem is based on the effectiveness of the instant 4 player fade ball. I do feel the problem isn't as bad as some make it out to be (ie current fade ball IS beatable,) I just feel it is a tad stronger than it should be.
I don't see this issue being easy to fix tbh. Any suggestion you can come up with without giving it considerable thought is just bound to have heavy implications that you couldn't predict in both pub and competitive play.
The problem isn't fades, it's that many marines in public play are kind of getting the wrong impression on what they should be doing. Public marine play is usually: Cap to next tech point -> rush phase -> put phase in every tech point -> turtle to Proto while protecting my K/D -> "Where are my Exos, I need them to finish the game!"
A lot of public players focus on getting RTs first instead of sending one group out to pressure. Many don't weld their teammates and the commanders seem to hate dropping meds/ammo even when the marines are deep in alien territory where they need them the most. Commanders think they have to rush phasegates for defense when their marines just need to hit their c key more often. All of these contribute to early fade domination by delaying upgrades, not delaying alien resflow for fades, and generally having weaker marines when the fades attack. Nowadays it's even worse because some comms will skip shotguns for the AA even when fades come out.
@ BobRossTheBoss
The problem isn't with commanders going phase at every tech point, I do that in most comm games. The problem is that as a pub commander, without phase, you're relying exclusively on your marines being able to think for themselves or follow your orders, have some communication from each other and have some level of skill. Teching up first sounds like a reasonable strategy and it is in comp play but in pubs, it's a fools errand. Then your team whines at you because you didn't get phase gates. Until we get whittled down to a community of mostly knowledgeable and hardcore players, that is never going to happen consistently.
I'm not saying that every marine commander would rather tech up before phase but that if it was the better option in pub play, more would do it and more would catch on but it's just not. That style of strategy and build just isn't compatible holistically in pub play, the less risky and more stable option is the phase gate play. I would like to see it catch on more though, maybe it will get marine players to think for themselves and being more aggressive. It's just tough for average pubs to think like that, if they could, the fade problem imo would be drastically diminished.
That's my theory anyway, I'll command some games and see if it can work consistently but I see it as being more frustrating than successful, most marines don't even know the map key and never use the bloody thing.
If the commander can drop meds decently he doesn't have to rush gates. If the commander meds their marines and/or drops them an armory the couple extra minutes that they sacrifice by going for upgrades before gates is easily mitigated as long as the marines have decent aim. If they are outnumbered then obviously the team on the other side can push up further. If pub players can figure out how to attack where marines aren't as aliens then they can learn some map awareness, how to split up at the beginning of the game, and when to push as marines. Right now there are a lot of newer players so it may seem like a lot of players simply don't listen.
Perhaps the fade movement isn't the problem? I thought we established that a long time ago...
The proposed change, after the way the new shadow step works, is complete rubbish. You might as well not go fade until the comm would get blink researched.
it would delay fades, which is the point. Perhaps shadow step could also be made slightly less useless, perhaps half momentum inheritence so fade can do something before blink.
Or just revert to the old fade and the problem would be fixed. Ugh.
There were fade ball issues with the pre-b250 shadowstep fades as well. Changing it back around won't fix anything.
Give fades shadow step instead of blink first off and reduce the adrenaline of fades or increase the cost of blink. This way it will deter fades from so easily being able to fly around the map, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the fade has more air time than the lerk.
The old fade was changed for a reason... I am not going to waste time with a 249 fade movement debate. Anyway, delaying the fade ball doesnt really do that much. The problem at hand isn't the time the fades appear on the field. That is always dependent on how well the marines pressure alien RT's. The problem is based on the effectiveness of the instant 4 player fade ball. I do feel the problem isn't as bad as some make it out to be (ie current fade ball IS beatable,) I just feel it is a tad stronger than it should be.
The problem isn't only that the fade ball is too strong (which it is), but also that it makes the strategic gameplay extremely stale. There is no strategic variance when the best solution will always be to save for fades, and the marines have no other counter for that than trying to pump out as much upgrades as they can before the fades hit the field.
NS2 is extremely shallow in terms of strategy, and the fade ball only makes it worse.
I agree. I was just in disagreement with a few folks who thought that delaying the fade ball and/or modifying the movement would change any of this. Completely removing the fade ball element of the game will take some drastic changes... I just do not know what that might be aside from a life form cap (which would be terrible game design.)
Please consider that if you put an excellent fade (Your examples of 70:1) on the Marine side, and give them A1-A2/W1-W2 and a Shotgun, they can handily prevent a fade of the same caliber from achieving the same K:D/Goals/"Stomp", generally. Might not kill the fade right away, but as they get A3/W3, it becomes more or less a fair 1v1. (Granted in a true 1v1 the fade can simply pick away at the marine and play area denial/harass/etc, but the marine has bullying power and can readily two-shot the fade).
The arguments regarding "Fadeballs" are more for the competitive scene (Which also needs consideration but isn't the subject of this thread unless i'm mistaken), because In the hundreds of pubs i've played post-250 (and pre-250), 95% of fades in any game are dying fairly early on (~2-6 minutes alive as a fade) to massed shotgun blobs. The "Fadeball" is strictly a competitive consideration, because as we've established by numerous posts, 90% of players "Can't hit the broad side of a barn".
The players who can't aim or play correctly on marine cannot play a stomping, absurd fade either. Sure, 250 increased the skill floor and therefore exacerbated the problem, but in a game where you have 2 marines who go 40:2 and 2 fades go 70:1, it isn't a 'fadeball', it's just good players doing what good players will do surrounded by not so good players in any environment, as any 'class', in any game.
Assuming we're looking at a public-game perspective here, it boils down to basically that players don't want to play with players of a higher skill because the game's skill ceiling allows for one player to completely transcend another in terms of viability. That is an understandable sentiment, but with the competitive scene where it is, it's not resolvable...
You can't expect great fades to not play fade.
You can't expect great shotgunners to exclusively use welders.
You shouldn't expect some level of balance based on terrible (~2-6% accuracy) players, because then you've literally got no balance at all because they aren't predictable or accountable to a level of gameplay.
Currently, great shotguns are more or less able to fend off/equalize great fade play. It isn't an exact 1:1 thing, and sure it depends greatly on context of the match, individual factors and lots of other variables... but generally speaking, when I have a w2+ shotgun and a1+, fades are more of a fun target and a good 1v1 then some kind of scary, unbeatable monster stomp machine.
TL:DR, Fades aren't a problem outside of competitive play; the problem is the players' dissatisfaction with their inability to aim and/or raise themselves in skill. Fades die to 2-3 shots, they can't really mitigate anything, and it comes down to learning how to play better. Competitive is another matter with "Fadeballs". (Always has been).
That's a great post Colt, but I still disagree on a fundamental level. There is a significant disparity between the level of skill needed to be a 'great fade' and a 'great shotgunner'. The ideal in design is to be easy to learn, difficult to master - Fades are backwards from this.
I see all the time, and know personally, players who are only 'good' shotgunners, but 'great' fades. These players can go on unmitigated killing sprees as a fade, but when they are marines they can't stop or kill fades at their same skill level.
If we consider your argument that the skill translates equally to both sides, that great shotguns are able to equalize great fades, and we assume a roughly even distribution of skilled players between both teams over a very large sample size, then why is it so common to see unstoppable monster fades? Shouldn't the great fades be getting killed by the great shotgunners roughly 50% of the time?
It occurs to me that maybe that IS your experience, and the problem we are facing here is one of point of view. Competitive / top tier players are typically both 'great fades' AND 'great shotgunners' and they don't have trouble taking down fades - as you said yourself, you see it as a 'fun target and good 1v1'. Therefore, comp players are unable to see the problem from the casual point of view, because any game they are in is altered by their presence.
Your answer is the same one I always see in response to the 'Fades are OP' argument: "It comes down to learning how to play better." You are at a level where fades aren't a big deal for you, and you can't understand why anyone else is unable to reach that same level, but it's like trying to explain color to a blind man. Some of us will never reach the level you're at with a shotgun, no matter how many hours we put in. On the other hand, I frequently see players who are able to achieve the same effective results as a fade - unlimited kills, little to no deaths. By the time someone finally manages to get lucky and put them down, they have enough res to simply go fade again.
I have almost 1000 hours into NS2, and I'm pretty decent. I am usually the top scorer on my team, pretty much always in the top 3 at least. I typically get something like a 3:1 KD, and on a good day I might do 5:1 or better. So I'm somewhere in the 70-80th percentile, and I cannot consistently stop good fades, players who are at roughly my same skill level in all other aspects of the game. Given the diminishing returns of skill gain from time played, how many more thousands of hours should I put in before I can expect even odds?
I see game after game completely decided by one or two fades exerting their influence, and it was the same pre-250. I'm sick of it, and I want a different pub experience.
So if the game is balanced at a casual level (aka marines can't aim), what happens when those players progress to the next level (div 3 comp / pugging). They will find the game unbalanced again and cry for changes. A new player might improve 50% in a matter of weeks, then a further 25% in the next few months. Do you make the fade 50%, then 25% weaker as he progresses? No you dont... you balance at the top level as those players only improve in tiny increments (1-5%) as they are already at the limit of skill ceiling.
Balancing at top level play is the only way to do it.
Fyii; If a player on aliens is going 40-1 or something similar, its not the fade that is imbalanced its the skill level. They would be smashing face no matter the class they play...
the top level doesn't even exist. even if you balance only for the top 1%, it's still pretty mediocre play as far as aiming is concerned
you balance around experience and make each race sort of similarly challenging
if you want to actually balance around the top level, just demand 60% accuracy. nobody except pros can achieve it. even the best NS2 teams will look like rookies compared to that
60% accuracy is pretty much insanity unless you're playing alien... Most top ter "pro" players can get average or 30%. Unfortunately most noobs are sub 10%.
That's a great post Colt, but I still disagree on a fundamental level. There is a significant disparity between the level of skill needed to be a 'great fade' and a 'great shotgunner'.
Of course there is. Fade, along with almost all of the alien lifeforms, isn't reliant on aim. When it comes to Fade, what's more important is the ability to recognize when to go into and out of a fight.
It's definitely easier to become a good fade than to be considered as having high-level aim. So when a decent player comes into the game, they already have the FPS aspects down... all they have to focus on is a week playing Fade against competent players, and bam he's now a great fade.
edit: I just don't see a way to change this without making drastic game changes
pretending that some good NS2 teams is "top level" is kind of silly though because the world has much better aimers, especially from games like Quake / CS
Comments
that's the environment of 99% of games
the people who can actually aim better than they can learn to move + swipe are the minority
Balancing at top level play is the only way to do it.
Fyii; If a player on aliens is going 40-1 or something similar, its not the fade that is imbalanced its the skill level. They would be smashing face no matter the class they play...
1 fade seems easy for a team to take out with a bit of coordination, 2+ fades is a nightmare.
Consider:
- reducing fade bunny hop speed very slightly.
- reducing the ghost effect slightly so that fades are easier to track.
- reducing fade HP very very slightly.
You want fades to be confident engaging 1 marine, but you want to make the fade player think very seriously about engaging 2+ marines and at the moment it feels like when I'm fade I can go into a group of marines and definitely get 1 swipe and blink out without taking any substantual damage.
(for context in all the above im referring to 6v6 experiences).
As far as I'm aware no, and as far as I'm aware the fade takes the same amount of damage whether they are blinking or not. (they used to take reduced damage I think).
the top level doesn't even exist. even if you balance only for the top 1%, it's still pretty mediocre play as far as aiming is concerned
you balance around experience and make each race sort of similarly challenging
if you want to actually balance around the top level, just demand 60% accuracy. nobody except pros can achieve it. even the best NS2 teams will look like rookies compared to that
What??? Many top NS1 players moved on to different games and became the best at those as well... Not sure what you mean by saying top ns2 players don't have crazy good aim
it's high risk high reward. it is literally the only option against good shotgunners, and losing one or two cripples the alien team because shotguns destroy them. also, umbra is OP, so a lerk isn't out of the question. also, when grinding down a gate skulks can be arguably better.
I never feel confident engaging a shotgun marine that can shoot and with med support. 3 shot and im dead.
I call shenanigans. I've lost fades on pubs before, but mostly because I got lazy and overcommitted, or underestimated a marines aim. top level fades that aren't playing casually on a casual server would never have low enough life that you could pinch them. they'd be maintaining somewhere in the vicinity of 350 effective health, getting out of engagements after a single meatshot, or before they get out of armor.
haha meatshot
The proposed change, after the way the new shadow step works, is complete rubbish. You might as well not go fade until the comm would get blink researched.
it would delay fades, which is the point. Perhaps shadow step could also be made slightly less useless, perhaps half momentum inheritence so fade can do something before blink.
Or just revert to the old fade and the problem would be fixed. Ugh.
If the commander can drop meds decently he doesn't have to rush gates. If the commander meds their marines and/or drops them an armory the couple extra minutes that they sacrifice by going for upgrades before gates is easily mitigated as long as the marines have decent aim. If they are outnumbered then obviously the team on the other side can push up further. If pub players can figure out how to attack where marines aren't as aliens then they can learn some map awareness, how to split up at the beginning of the game, and when to push as marines. Right now there are a lot of newer players so it may seem like a lot of players simply don't listen.
There were fade ball issues with the pre-b250 shadowstep fades as well. Changing it back around won't fix anything.
Hahaha this guy, oh how I miss thee so.
The problem isn't only that the fade ball is too strong (which it is), but also that it makes the strategic gameplay extremely stale. There is no strategic variance when the best solution will always be to save for fades, and the marines have no other counter for that than trying to pump out as much upgrades as they can before the fades hit the field.
NS2 is extremely shallow in terms of strategy, and the fade ball only makes it worse.
Please consider that if you put an excellent fade (Your examples of 70:1) on the Marine side, and give them A1-A2/W1-W2 and a Shotgun, they can handily prevent a fade of the same caliber from achieving the same K:D/Goals/"Stomp", generally. Might not kill the fade right away, but as they get A3/W3, it becomes more or less a fair 1v1. (Granted in a true 1v1 the fade can simply pick away at the marine and play area denial/harass/etc, but the marine has bullying power and can readily two-shot the fade).
The arguments regarding "Fadeballs" are more for the competitive scene (Which also needs consideration but isn't the subject of this thread unless i'm mistaken), because In the hundreds of pubs i've played post-250 (and pre-250), 95% of fades in any game are dying fairly early on (~2-6 minutes alive as a fade) to massed shotgun blobs. The "Fadeball" is strictly a competitive consideration, because as we've established by numerous posts, 90% of players "Can't hit the broad side of a barn".
The players who can't aim or play correctly on marine cannot play a stomping, absurd fade either. Sure, 250 increased the skill floor and therefore exacerbated the problem, but in a game where you have 2 marines who go 40:2 and 2 fades go 70:1, it isn't a 'fadeball', it's just good players doing what good players will do surrounded by not so good players in any environment, as any 'class', in any game.
Assuming we're looking at a public-game perspective here, it boils down to basically that players don't want to play with players of a higher skill because the game's skill ceiling allows for one player to completely transcend another in terms of viability. That is an understandable sentiment, but with the competitive scene where it is, it's not resolvable...
You can't expect great fades to not play fade.
You can't expect great shotgunners to exclusively use welders.
You shouldn't expect some level of balance based on terrible (~2-6% accuracy) players, because then you've literally got no balance at all because they aren't predictable or accountable to a level of gameplay.
Currently, great shotguns are more or less able to fend off/equalize great fade play. It isn't an exact 1:1 thing, and sure it depends greatly on context of the match, individual factors and lots of other variables... but generally speaking, when I have a w2+ shotgun and a1+, fades are more of a fun target and a good 1v1 then some kind of scary, unbeatable monster stomp machine.
TL:DR, Fades aren't a problem outside of competitive play; the problem is the players' dissatisfaction with their inability to aim and/or raise themselves in skill. Fades die to 2-3 shots, they can't really mitigate anything, and it comes down to learning how to play better. Competitive is another matter with "Fadeballs". (Always has been).
Five cents.
-Colt
I see all the time, and know personally, players who are only 'good' shotgunners, but 'great' fades. These players can go on unmitigated killing sprees as a fade, but when they are marines they can't stop or kill fades at their same skill level.
If we consider your argument that the skill translates equally to both sides, that great shotguns are able to equalize great fades, and we assume a roughly even distribution of skilled players between both teams over a very large sample size, then why is it so common to see unstoppable monster fades? Shouldn't the great fades be getting killed by the great shotgunners roughly 50% of the time?
It occurs to me that maybe that IS your experience, and the problem we are facing here is one of point of view. Competitive / top tier players are typically both 'great fades' AND 'great shotgunners' and they don't have trouble taking down fades - as you said yourself, you see it as a 'fun target and good 1v1'. Therefore, comp players are unable to see the problem from the casual point of view, because any game they are in is altered by their presence.
Your answer is the same one I always see in response to the 'Fades are OP' argument: "It comes down to learning how to play better." You are at a level where fades aren't a big deal for you, and you can't understand why anyone else is unable to reach that same level, but it's like trying to explain color to a blind man. Some of us will never reach the level you're at with a shotgun, no matter how many hours we put in. On the other hand, I frequently see players who are able to achieve the same effective results as a fade - unlimited kills, little to no deaths. By the time someone finally manages to get lucky and put them down, they have enough res to simply go fade again.
I have almost 1000 hours into NS2, and I'm pretty decent. I am usually the top scorer on my team, pretty much always in the top 3 at least. I typically get something like a 3:1 KD, and on a good day I might do 5:1 or better. So I'm somewhere in the 70-80th percentile, and I cannot consistently stop good fades, players who are at roughly my same skill level in all other aspects of the game. Given the diminishing returns of skill gain from time played, how many more thousands of hours should I put in before I can expect even odds?
I see game after game completely decided by one or two fades exerting their influence, and it was the same pre-250. I'm sick of it, and I want a different pub experience.
60% accuracy is pretty much insanity unless you're playing alien... Most top ter "pro" players can get average or 30%. Unfortunately most noobs are sub 10%.
Of course there is. Fade, along with almost all of the alien lifeforms, isn't reliant on aim. When it comes to Fade, what's more important is the ability to recognize when to go into and out of a fight.
It's definitely easier to become a good fade than to be considered as having high-level aim. So when a decent player comes into the game, they already have the FPS aspects down... all they have to focus on is a week playing Fade against competent players, and bam he's now a great fade.
edit: I just don't see a way to change this without making drastic game changes
pretending that some good NS2 teams is "top level" is kind of silly though because the world has much better aimers, especially from games like Quake / CS