People who did well in fades do just as good in this patch. I had a collection of screenies on obvious stomps where multiple good players would go fade at the same time, achieving insane k/d before 'rines teched up and it is eerily similar to what we have now. In that regard, no problem can be seen in fades current iteration. If anything, aliens are more fun to play now and marines are fun as always.
While it is truth that taking down a fade requires coordination both from the team and commander it is mostly up to the teamplay. w2a1 'rines have little issues when it comes to fades if properly medpacked and can sacrifice for the team. Having commanded a lot of games, I could concur that problem is:
People not listening the commander. Of course every player knows what you as a comm should have done but never fixed one RT.
Being greedy and saving for dual exos and not spending on support. 1 fade can wear down 3 marines next to armory because none of them wants to spent that 3 res on welder.
Marines having a gravitational attraction to gorge checkpoints. Because some like to shoot into clogs until they run out of ammo and then get killed of by a single skulk while behind them RT's are being munched.
In short, its not the fade itself, it more the way that its presence addressed by marine team. As a argument to this, one could say "oh we (all 5-6 of aliens) got pwnd by single Dualmini in seconds we just rushed right in front of him on a conveyor belt, so exo is op". Well it is not since we didn't adapt to situation: no one flanked, no one bilebombed, no one distracted him. Same goes with fades but to much less extent. One actually needs to present himself as a viable target in order to make fades own attack pay off: spend half the clip on that cyst/rt? Not on full armour? No a/w upgrades in 8 minutes? No sg in group 'couse hurrdurrsavforexo? Well *fade puts on sunglasses*...
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Its easier and way more likely that a single individual is more skilled at fading, than it is a team of pubbers can coordinate their efforts to pinch a fade, or even that a pub commander can medpack his way through 11 players.
Huge difference in responsibilities and required efforts between those two groups.
There needs to be some kind of a rock paper scissors mechanic between 2 players, so they can create a trap for the Fade, which is actually effective at deterring them.I´m tired of shooting a whole clip of ammo into a fade and see no one else hit him.
Some kind of a net, that can be destroyed in 1 swipe, but can be activated remotely, but needs 2 guys to setup.
There needs to be some kind of a rock paper scissors mechanic between 2 players, so they can create a trap for the Fade, which is actually effective at deterring them.I´m tired of shooting a whole clip of ammo into a fade and see no one else hit him.
Some kind of a net, that can be destroyed in 1 swipe, but can be activated remotely, but needs 2 guys to setup.
I'm picturing some kind of electrified-net shooting hunter gun a la Jurassic park fan fic or something. Not saying it's a good idea, but it's sure fun to think about.
Its easier and way more likely that a single individual is more skilled at fading, than it is a team of pubbers can coordinate their efforts to pinch a fade, or even that a pub commander can medpack his way through 11 players.
Huge difference in responsibilities and required efforts between those two groups.
The thing about asymmetrical games is they tend to have different requirements for each team and some may be harder than others at first. The thing that balances it is that once a player/team learns the skill/coordination required to counter certain things, the opposing player then has to learn how to deal with these experienced players/teams. If the fade is used to dealing with unorganized pubbers and starts running into people who have learned the teamwork and coordination necessary (and maybe improved their aim over time) that fade will no longer be able to play the way they are used to and will end up dying/running a lot more until they learn how to play against these types of players or coordinate with their own team.
Starcraft is a good example of this kind of design. In Starcraft 2 a Zerg player relies on banelings (a melee-range unit that deals splash damage by suicide bombing its target) to counter the large clumps of marines a Terran player uses in the early and midgame. In this situation if you are a Terran player and you cannot split or micromanage your marines properly (requires a lot of boxing and fast mouse movement) you tend to end up dying to a Zerg that just attack-moves their banelings (a+click in general direction of the marines). At the very bottom of the barrel it is up to you, the Terran, to learn how to split your marines while the lower leveled Zergs don't have to learn anything about baneling micro. However, once you learn, you wipe the floor with those players and they end up having to learn how to control their banelings and other units (flanking with zerglings, etc.) against your marines in order to defeat them.
The only big difference is that this is a team game and sometimes you will run into certain people who want to go do their own thing rather than play as a team. However, if more people's attitudes were oriented towards team play when I joined as a newbie player after release then it is certainly possible for the current generation of newer players to learn the same thing.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I agree Ross, but it's not a binary difference.. It is a gradient, with degrees of difference.
I think the point of the OP (correct me if I'm wrong) and what I agree with is that we like said difference that comes with asymmetrical setups, we just feel that the gap in difference for this one particular interaction is too great - and as such leads to unpleasant experiences.
*shrug *
You make some fair points, but you say that you favor "games that allow and represent the vast differences between skilled and unskilled players", and a fundamental part of my argument is that the level of skill required to be a godmode fade is not high enough. Anyone who thinks they are simply amazing and everyone else is terrible when they go on ridiculous fade killing sprees is fooling themselves. It's an extremely common event, not representative of the highest percentile of skill in the playerbase.
Also, I don't want to derail by going too far into the merits of competitive vs casual, but consider the opposite: The competitive community would not likely last long without the larger casual playerbase to feed it, and it's the vastly larger group of casual players purchasing the game that has funded its development. I think all the videos and tournaments and whatnot are great, but the game would still exist without them.
On the subject of basketball hoops, the analogy I prefer in this instance is baseball fields, but there are many examples of altered rulesets in other games and sports that are designed to accommodate different levels of skill. And the issue is, in fact, that with fades just about everyone CAN 'dunk like Mike'.
Good job oversimplifying and stripping away context to make a point. Ironhorse has hit the nail on the head here: The level of skill required to be an unstoppable fade is disproportionately low, and the level of skill required to be a shotgun surgeon (and timely med/nano/pinch) is disproportionately high. The fade acts as a skill multiplier with a value that is too high, and is therefore overpowered. Onos used to be this way too, and they got more attention because the barrier of entry was essentially non-existent, but have since been nerfed into the ground.
And again you harp on the various anecdotal experiences I've included, but I have yet to see you or anyone else offer any evidence to the contrary which is not anecdotal in nature. Without access to hard data, there's little we can do except to compare our various collected experiences and try to analyze them for the underlying meaning.
I would end up banning a good number of the casual players in |DFA| itself if I did that. As it is, most of them have stopped playing fades of their own volition because it's simply not fun or challenging to them and throws off the game balance. I feel like that alone speaks volumes.
@Amoral
I think the only thing keeping lerks from being in the same boat as fades is the lower HP. I already know a few very talented lerks that are nigh untouchable, they have the same speed and maneuverability that makes fades so hard to hit and chase/finish.
You make some fair points, but you say that you favor "games that allow and represent the vast differences between skilled and unskilled players", and a fundamental part of my argument is that the level of skill required to be a godmode fade is not high enough. Anyone who thinks they are simply amazing and everyone else is terrible when they go on ridiculous fade killing sprees is fooling themselves. It's an extremely common event, not representative of the highest percentile of skill in the playerbase.
Also, I don't want to derail by going too far into the merits of competitive vs casual, but consider the opposite: The competitive community would not likely last long without the larger casual playerbase to feed it, and it's the vastly larger group of casual players purchasing the game that has funded its development. I think all the videos and tournaments and whatnot are great, but the game would still exist without them.
On the subject of basketball hoops, the analogy I prefer in this instance is baseball fields, but there are many examples of altered rulesets in other games and sports that are designed to accommodate different levels of skill. And the issue is, in fact, that with fades just about everyone CAN 'dunk like Mike'.
Good job oversimplifying and stripping away context to make a point. Ironhorse has hit the nail on the head here: The level of skill required to be an unstoppable fade is disproportionately low, and the level of skill required to be a shotgun surgeon (and timely med/nano/pinch) is disproportionately high. The fade acts as a skill multiplier with a value that is too high, and is therefore overpowered. Onos used to be this way too, and they got more attention because the barrier of entry was essentially non-existent, but have since been nerfed into the ground.
And again you harp on the various anecdotal experiences I've included, but I have yet to see you or anyone else offer any evidence to the contrary which is not anecdotal in nature. Without access to hard data, there's little we can do except to compare our various collected experiences and try to analyze them for the underlying meaning.
I would end up banning a good number of the casual players in |DFA| itself if I did that. As it is, most of them have stopped playing fades of their own volition because it's simply not fun or challenging to them and throws off the game balance. I feel like that alone speaks volumes.
@Amoral
I think the only thing keeping lerks from being in the same boat as fades is the lower HP. I already know a few very talented lerks that are nigh untouchable, they have the same speed and maneuverability that makes fades so hard to hit and chase/finish.
actually, lerk has less speed than fade . also, it's probably true for other games, but the development of this one was largely funded by a group of very dedicated players. not what most people would consider casual. apparently. I bought it because I wanted to try ns1, but I didn't find the development.
also, honestly, on most pubs, it's not particularly difficult to be a dominant skulk either. or a dominant lerk. I've restricted myself to skulking all game a lot recently, but if I want to balance the game out more, I go gorge... and that still keeps me at the top.of the board in terms of kills unless a nonrubbish fade pops up.
it still amused me when a comm gets anxious about my gorge in lockers getting pushed by 3 rubbish marines, calling over the voice comms to get back to.locker only to look back and see that I had already cleared the room. they usually just go... oh good job gorge.
or those commanders that think they're hot stuff, not even seeming to realize that the skulk going 35 and 4 may have played a larger role than them in the win. or those that don't seen to realize that their tactics had less to do with the win than the guy chopping down 4 rts early game keeping the aliens on 2 res.... cocky rookies make me smirk, not even understanding why they won.
Pre-orders from the hardcore community members did help get the project off the ground, no doubt. I was a part of that group as well. Overall though, my understanding is the largest portion of the funding has been from steam sales to people who are not in the competitive community.
Massive skill differentials are also a problem, something I've tried to address elsewhere, but it only exacerbates the fade problem.
NS1 dealt with good fade(s) with a HMG and if you had a jetpack you could even chase them down.
Even with my mediocre aim the fact that it had 150 bullets to go crazy with made fades much more careful about engaging a marine with a HMG.
When balancing the fade continues to fail, why they don't fall back on a proven formula is beyond me.
Why it was never bought back for at least one build to see how it panned out.
NS1 dealt with good fade(s) with a HMG and if you had a jetpack you could even chase them down.
Even with my mediocre aim the fact that it had 150 bullets to go crazy with made fades much more careful about engaging a marine with a HMG.
When balancing the fade continues to fail, why they don't fall back on a proven formula is beyond me.
Why it was never bought back for at least one build to see how it panned out.
As the game stands right now, the hmg wouldn't solve the issue. In pubs especially, marines find it very difficult to apply sufficient early game pressure to delay fades enough to tech to 2/2/shotguns, which for pubs is about what you need to have a hope of dealing with good fades. Pub marines on the whole aren't aggressive enough in the early game. This leads its to the current turtle problem while marines try to hold off until they have sufficient high level tech.
In comp matches, marines know what to do, but the aliens are more skilled and coordinated than in pubs. Also marines will tend to concede instead of turtle for 60 minutes. It's also more difficult to exo train the map in a 6v6 (against much better aliens) than it is in a 8-12 a side pub with pub aliens, as there just aren't the numbers to do this against a coordinated team.
So yes, the fade is disproportionately good in pubs right now, but it's a combination of many things, and can be seen at least in part as a symptom of a more fundamental balance issue with the early game. I think the likelihood of encountering a good fade is also a valid point, but shouldn't be taken in isolation.
There is too much weight on the first wave of marines, you can literally lose the game after 30 seconds if you don't take and hold enough ground. If you have a couple of bad engagements it will block the spawn queue and you're basically ruined.
It's difficult to be aggressive as marines and also capture RTs, res skipping is counterproductive, but if you let gorges bed in it's very expensive and risky to push.
People who did well in fades do just as good in this patch.
Whaaaat? ) No way. Pre-250 I'd often die as a Fade, shotgun was more powerful with single shot and Shadowstep killed your momentum if you didn't use it in conjunction with jump or just messed up and hit something. Also, blink didn't give you momentum. In other words: YOU STUTTERED A WHOLE LOT. That gave marines chances to take a blast at you. Now? A cele/regen Fade? LOOOL SPEEDY GONZALES FROM THE LAND OF NEVER EVERSTOP WOOOOOOOM.......!!!
Not to mention it's a whole lot easier.
I don't actually know why they bothered to change Fade movement system. I thought it was fine. A bit clunky, but it worked and it had things to master. Now it's just... ...well you just move.
Honestly, pinching fades isn't too difficult - but it mostly happens by chance that you're in an area to pinch. It's hard to bait a fade into a commitment with 2 marines around the next corner to pinch as a plan. Often times those two marines were off doing something else, hit C and saw a fade in another room and then proceed to go to pinch said room.
Maybe if we raise awareness on how to pinch fades, we'd see less of a problem? It's definitely going to be tougher to kill a fade when he knows where is opposition is. If you catch a fade off guard on his retreat, you should land SOME shots since the fade will likely retreat linearly. It's essentially hitting a big floor skulk for a few seconds. In a pub setting, on larger servers, you should expect more marines to be on the map and in positions for fade pinching anyways. If I hear over voice comm "fade in room X" and I know I'm near room X, I attempt a pinch. If most marines made that simple connection then maybe we'd see more dead fades.
Yeah, when you see a Fade chopping down teammates, you should definitely check the map to see if you're near one of the possible escape routes. Then just position yourself as middle as possible, so that he has to go through you.
But yeah, pretty much every single place has atleast 2 exits, so it's less like pinching and more like blind luck.
ALSO, if you know a Fade is coming at you, go ahead and try to hide. He'll go past, bump into your tardy teammates, and when he retreats you might pwn him.
But yeah(2x), half the Fades play super safe, aka retreat after 1 shotgun blast worth of damage, and you won't kill them when they superspeed past you. So there's that.
Fades are just really hard to kill. I think the best tip would be to buy shotguns and BUY WELDERS, move in groups of +2, and MEDPACK/WELD after every encounter. Just play the deny game.
Pre-orders from the hardcore community members did help get the project off the ground, no doubt. I was a part of that group as well. Overall though, my understanding is the largest portion of the funding has been from steam sales to people who are not in the competitive community.
Massive skill differentials are also a problem, something I've tried to address elsewhere, but it only exacerbates the fade problem.
development doesn't end at release true,sometimes, and yes in this case, but emphatically, neither does it start. I was picking nits. the lions share of development was probably funded by a decade long love affair by a hardcore community with a previous game.
As usual, the biggest problem with discussing things on these forums is everyone is arguing from their point of view with their skillset in mind.
We've had comp players talking about a keeping a fade at bay in pubs with a shotgun as well as a solo gorge keeping three marines out of a tech point. I have no clue how to resolve issues like these, but seriously people, try to think in terms of the average player, without degrading other folks.
As usual, the biggest problem with discussing things on these forums is everyone is arguing from their point of view with their skillset in mind.
We've had comp players talking about a keeping a fade at bay in pubs with a shotgun as well as a solo gorge keeping three marines out of a tech point. I have no clue how to resolve issues like these, but seriously people, try to think in terms of the average player, without degrading other folks.
bad marines, i specified bad marines. also, that is what i interpret average to be, able to hold 2-3 marines at bay, or clear them out as gorge occassionally, and able to push away or kill average fades given support and teamwork.
Average players need to at least prioritize killing the fade and not ignore the problem.If someone is the sole reason you loose fights every time, then ****ing try to at least solve the issue and not axe cysts and clog walls for 5 minutes.
As soon as you have that mindset you start thinking of ways of how to do it.Your plan might not work, but its better to at least be mad at the true problem not some general issue, that is always going to be there at that point in the game.
Average players need to at least prioritize killing the fade and not ignore the problem.If someone is the sole reason you loose fights every time, then ****ing try to at least solve the issue and not axe cysts and clog walls for 5 minutes.
As soon as you have that mindset you start thinking of ways of how to do it.Your plan might not work, but its better to at least be mad at the true problem not some general issue, that is always going to be there at that point in the game.
Prioritizing is inherently the problem. Say it takes 4 "average" marines to take down one "average" fade, that means 4 marines are out of the fight for a long duration. This is commonly called, within the MMORPG community as crowd control or CC. And the ability for mediocre fades to CC 3 to 4 marines is far too great, its the speed at which fades can cover an area, attack (with decent damage), disappear and repeat in short succession with little effort. That is precisely the problem and this is exactly why they can keep the attention of half the team for long time periods.
Lets take a closer look at what skills are needed to be a marine and a fade. For the marines the answer is quite simple, accuracy is the most useful skill to be a successful marine and this is rather easy to do, but in a game like NS2 where almost every enemy is at melee range it is a skill that is very hard to master and is dependent on hardware like a good mouse and decent frame rate. Now lets look at a the fade's mechanic. A fade can, out of the box fly at incredible speeds, now in an open field this would not be a problem for a marine to handle, because fades would have nothing to hide under. But unfortunately we don't live in heaven with acres of golden wheat fields. The maps in NS2 are circular mazes with hidden tunnels, that tend to be very cramped with A LOT of hiding places so even a bad fade can stay alive for quite some time, by just holding down the right mouse button, hiding regenerating and attack once their health is regenerated (marines can't do this). Now most veterans might argue that this is the reason why fades are not as OP as people claim, but this statement is wrong in every possible way, CC is a very powerful force and can change the tide of any battle. Mediocre fades can do this all too easily with the fades superman mechanic, its the scare factor that makes them so overpowered, its the very fact that fades have to be focused too much is the reason why this thread even exists.
I would like to bring in another quote I read on this very thread "fades are like assassins". Now lets define what role of the "assassin" fulfils. (An excerpt from Websters dictionary) Assassin: a person who commits murder; especially : one who murders a politically important person either for hire or from fanatical motives. The fade does not fill this role instead it more closely fills the role of an efficient killer a jackal. I would be fine with this role if they were not so maneuverable/tanky. The fact that I can put over 275 damage on a fade with two clips and watch him just fly away and come back less than a minute later fully healed is frustrating. Me and 2 marines cannot control a fade like 3 marines can control an Onus. A fade cannot be controlled, cannot be killed easily and most of all cannot be ignored. If anything that is the sentence that should remain after hearing long post. If a fade was hard to kill and hard to control, but easily ignored if equipped then this thread would not exist. Unfortunately this is not the case, one fade can consume 4-5 marines while the rest of the Alien team wipes the floor with the rest of the team and takes every RT on the map. I think the question of "do fades do too much damage" is misplaced instead players should ask "How much presence does the fade bring to the game?". This exemplifies the real issue with fades at the moment. Fades bring an abnormal amount of presence to any game in NS2 and thats what needs to be addressed. Decreasing the base health might break them entirely and eliminating the superman flight would change it's role. I think an increase to res cost would bring the best results, lowing the number of fades and essentially lowering the pressure they bring to battle, but not entirely eliminating it as a viable option to turn the tide.
Comments
While it is truth that taking down a fade requires coordination both from the team and commander it is mostly up to the teamplay. w2a1 'rines have little issues when it comes to fades if properly medpacked and can sacrifice for the team. Having commanded a lot of games, I could concur that problem is:
People not listening the commander. Of course every player knows what you as a comm should have done but never fixed one RT.
Being greedy and saving for dual exos and not spending on support. 1 fade can wear down 3 marines next to armory because none of them wants to spent that 3 res on welder.
Marines having a gravitational attraction to gorge checkpoints. Because some like to shoot into clogs until they run out of ammo and then get killed of by a single skulk while behind them RT's are being munched.
In short, its not the fade itself, it more the way that its presence addressed by marine team. As a argument to this, one could say "oh we (all 5-6 of aliens) got pwnd by single Dualmini in seconds we just rushed right in front of him on a conveyor belt, so exo is op". Well it is not since we didn't adapt to situation: no one flanked, no one bilebombed, no one distracted him. Same goes with fades but to much less extent. One actually needs to present himself as a viable target in order to make fades own attack pay off: spend half the clip on that cyst/rt? Not on full armour? No a/w upgrades in 8 minutes? No sg in group 'couse hurrdurrsavforexo? Well *fade puts on sunglasses*...
Huge difference in responsibilities and required efforts between those two groups.
Some kind of a net, that can be destroyed in 1 swipe, but can be activated remotely, but needs 2 guys to setup.
I'm picturing some kind of electrified-net shooting hunter gun a la Jurassic park fan fic or something. Not saying it's a good idea, but it's sure fun to think about.
The thing about asymmetrical games is they tend to have different requirements for each team and some may be harder than others at first. The thing that balances it is that once a player/team learns the skill/coordination required to counter certain things, the opposing player then has to learn how to deal with these experienced players/teams. If the fade is used to dealing with unorganized pubbers and starts running into people who have learned the teamwork and coordination necessary (and maybe improved their aim over time) that fade will no longer be able to play the way they are used to and will end up dying/running a lot more until they learn how to play against these types of players or coordinate with their own team.
Starcraft is a good example of this kind of design. In Starcraft 2 a Zerg player relies on banelings (a melee-range unit that deals splash damage by suicide bombing its target) to counter the large clumps of marines a Terran player uses in the early and midgame. In this situation if you are a Terran player and you cannot split or micromanage your marines properly (requires a lot of boxing and fast mouse movement) you tend to end up dying to a Zerg that just attack-moves their banelings (a+click in general direction of the marines). At the very bottom of the barrel it is up to you, the Terran, to learn how to split your marines while the lower leveled Zergs don't have to learn anything about baneling micro. However, once you learn, you wipe the floor with those players and they end up having to learn how to control their banelings and other units (flanking with zerglings, etc.) against your marines in order to defeat them.
The only big difference is that this is a team game and sometimes you will run into certain people who want to go do their own thing rather than play as a team. However, if more people's attitudes were oriented towards team play when I joined as a newbie player after release then it is certainly possible for the current generation of newer players to learn the same thing.
I think the point of the OP (correct me if I'm wrong) and what I agree with is that we like said difference that comes with asymmetrical setups, we just feel that the gap in difference for this one particular interaction is too great - and as such leads to unpleasant experiences.
*shrug *
What do you expect.. given what Colt said.
I suppose if you want to cut down on 70:1 fades on your server you should start skillbanning.
Though I feel like if you slow the Fade down, you'll start seeing a lot more die.
You make some fair points, but you say that you favor "games that allow and represent the vast differences between skilled and unskilled players", and a fundamental part of my argument is that the level of skill required to be a godmode fade is not high enough. Anyone who thinks they are simply amazing and everyone else is terrible when they go on ridiculous fade killing sprees is fooling themselves. It's an extremely common event, not representative of the highest percentile of skill in the playerbase.
Also, I don't want to derail by going too far into the merits of competitive vs casual, but consider the opposite: The competitive community would not likely last long without the larger casual playerbase to feed it, and it's the vastly larger group of casual players purchasing the game that has funded its development. I think all the videos and tournaments and whatnot are great, but the game would still exist without them.
On the subject of basketball hoops, the analogy I prefer in this instance is baseball fields, but there are many examples of altered rulesets in other games and sports that are designed to accommodate different levels of skill. And the issue is, in fact, that with fades just about everyone CAN 'dunk like Mike'.
@Therius
Good job oversimplifying and stripping away context to make a point. Ironhorse has hit the nail on the head here: The level of skill required to be an unstoppable fade is disproportionately low, and the level of skill required to be a shotgun surgeon (and timely med/nano/pinch) is disproportionately high. The fade acts as a skill multiplier with a value that is too high, and is therefore overpowered. Onos used to be this way too, and they got more attention because the barrier of entry was essentially non-existent, but have since been nerfed into the ground.
And again you harp on the various anecdotal experiences I've included, but I have yet to see you or anyone else offer any evidence to the contrary which is not anecdotal in nature. Without access to hard data, there's little we can do except to compare our various collected experiences and try to analyze them for the underlying meaning.
@Locklear
I would end up banning a good number of the casual players in |DFA| itself if I did that. As it is, most of them have stopped playing fades of their own volition because it's simply not fun or challenging to them and throws off the game balance. I feel like that alone speaks volumes.
@Amoral
I think the only thing keeping lerks from being in the same boat as fades is the lower HP. I already know a few very talented lerks that are nigh untouchable, they have the same speed and maneuverability that makes fades so hard to hit and chase/finish.
actually, lerk has less speed than fade
also, honestly, on most pubs, it's not particularly difficult to be a dominant skulk either. or a dominant lerk. I've restricted myself to skulking all game a lot recently, but if I want to balance the game out more, I go gorge... and that still keeps me at the top.of the board in terms of kills unless a nonrubbish fade pops up.
it still amused me when a comm gets anxious about my gorge in lockers getting pushed by 3 rubbish marines, calling over the voice comms to get back to.locker only to look back and see that I had already cleared the room. they usually just go... oh good job gorge.
or those commanders that think they're hot stuff, not even seeming to realize that the skulk going 35 and 4 may have played a larger role than them in the win. or those that don't seen to realize that their tactics had less to do with the win than the guy chopping down 4 rts early game keeping the aliens on 2 res.... cocky rookies make me smirk, not even understanding why they won.
Pre-orders from the hardcore community members did help get the project off the ground, no doubt. I was a part of that group as well. Overall though, my understanding is the largest portion of the funding has been from steam sales to people who are not in the competitive community.
Massive skill differentials are also a problem, something I've tried to address elsewhere, but it only exacerbates the fade problem.
Even with my mediocre aim the fact that it had 150 bullets to go crazy with made fades much more careful about engaging a marine with a HMG.
When balancing the fade continues to fail, why they don't fall back on a proven formula is beyond me.
Why it was never bought back for at least one build to see how it panned out.
As the game stands right now, the hmg wouldn't solve the issue. In pubs especially, marines find it very difficult to apply sufficient early game pressure to delay fades enough to tech to 2/2/shotguns, which for pubs is about what you need to have a hope of dealing with good fades. Pub marines on the whole aren't aggressive enough in the early game. This leads its to the current turtle problem while marines try to hold off until they have sufficient high level tech.
In comp matches, marines know what to do, but the aliens are more skilled and coordinated than in pubs. Also marines will tend to concede instead of turtle for 60 minutes. It's also more difficult to exo train the map in a 6v6 (against much better aliens) than it is in a 8-12 a side pub with pub aliens, as there just aren't the numbers to do this against a coordinated team.
So yes, the fade is disproportionately good in pubs right now, but it's a combination of many things, and can be seen at least in part as a symptom of a more fundamental balance issue with the early game. I think the likelihood of encountering a good fade is also a valid point, but shouldn't be taken in isolation.
Thank you, I tried to make it simple enough for you to understand.
It's difficult to be aggressive as marines and also capture RTs, res skipping is counterproductive, but if you let gorges bed in it's very expensive and risky to push.
Whaaaat?
Not to mention it's a whole lot easier.
I don't actually know why they bothered to change Fade movement system. I thought it was fine. A bit clunky, but it worked and it had things to master. Now it's just... ...well you just move.
And now you've graduated to ad hominem. Your parents must be so proud.
Maybe if we raise awareness on how to pinch fades, we'd see less of a problem? It's definitely going to be tougher to kill a fade when he knows where is opposition is. If you catch a fade off guard on his retreat, you should land SOME shots since the fade will likely retreat linearly. It's essentially hitting a big floor skulk for a few seconds. In a pub setting, on larger servers, you should expect more marines to be on the map and in positions for fade pinching anyways. If I hear over voice comm "fade in room X" and I know I'm near room X, I attempt a pinch. If most marines made that simple connection then maybe we'd see more dead fades.
But yeah, pretty much every single place has atleast 2 exits, so it's less like pinching and more like blind luck.
ALSO, if you know a Fade is coming at you, go ahead and try to hide. He'll go past, bump into your tardy teammates, and when he retreats you might pwn him.
But yeah(2x), half the Fades play super safe, aka retreat after 1 shotgun blast worth of damage, and you won't kill them when they superspeed past you. So there's that.
Fades are just really hard to kill.
development doesn't end at release true,sometimes, and yes in this case, but emphatically, neither does it start. I was picking nits. the lions share of development was probably funded by a decade long love affair by a hardcore community with a previous game.
as an impartial observer, his retort was fair and witty. I'll allow it.
We've had comp players talking about a keeping a fade at bay in pubs with a shotgun as well as a solo gorge keeping three marines out of a tech point. I have no clue how to resolve issues like these, but seriously people, try to think in terms of the average player, without degrading other folks.
bad marines, i specified bad marines. also, that is what i interpret average to be, able to hold 2-3 marines at bay, or clear them out as gorge occassionally, and able to push away or kill average fades given support and teamwork.
As soon as you have that mindset you start thinking of ways of how to do it.Your plan might not work, but its better to at least be mad at the true problem not some general issue, that is always going to be there at that point in the game.
Prioritizing is inherently the problem. Say it takes 4 "average" marines to take down one "average" fade, that means 4 marines are out of the fight for a long duration. This is commonly called, within the MMORPG community as crowd control or CC. And the ability for mediocre fades to CC 3 to 4 marines is far too great, its the speed at which fades can cover an area, attack (with decent damage), disappear and repeat in short succession with little effort. That is precisely the problem and this is exactly why they can keep the attention of half the team for long time periods.
Lets take a closer look at what skills are needed to be a marine and a fade. For the marines the answer is quite simple, accuracy is the most useful skill to be a successful marine and this is rather easy to do, but in a game like NS2 where almost every enemy is at melee range it is a skill that is very hard to master and is dependent on hardware like a good mouse and decent frame rate. Now lets look at a the fade's mechanic. A fade can, out of the box fly at incredible speeds, now in an open field this would not be a problem for a marine to handle, because fades would have nothing to hide under. But unfortunately we don't live in heaven with acres of golden wheat fields. The maps in NS2 are circular mazes with hidden tunnels, that tend to be very cramped with A LOT of hiding places so even a bad fade can stay alive for quite some time, by just holding down the right mouse button, hiding regenerating and attack once their health is regenerated (marines can't do this). Now most veterans might argue that this is the reason why fades are not as OP as people claim, but this statement is wrong in every possible way, CC is a very powerful force and can change the tide of any battle. Mediocre fades can do this all too easily with the fades superman mechanic, its the scare factor that makes them so overpowered, its the very fact that fades have to be focused too much is the reason why this thread even exists.
I would like to bring in another quote I read on this very thread "fades are like assassins". Now lets define what role of the "assassin" fulfils. (An excerpt from Websters dictionary) Assassin: a person who commits murder; especially : one who murders a politically important person either for hire or from fanatical motives. The fade does not fill this role instead it more closely fills the role of an efficient killer a jackal. I would be fine with this role if they were not so maneuverable/tanky. The fact that I can put over 275 damage on a fade with two clips and watch him just fly away and come back less than a minute later fully healed is frustrating. Me and 2 marines cannot control a fade like 3 marines can control an Onus. A fade cannot be controlled, cannot be killed easily and most of all cannot be ignored. If anything that is the sentence that should remain after hearing long post. If a fade was hard to kill and hard to control, but easily ignored if equipped then this thread would not exist. Unfortunately this is not the case, one fade can consume 4-5 marines while the rest of the Alien team wipes the floor with the rest of the team and takes every RT on the map. I think the question of "do fades do too much damage" is misplaced instead players should ask "How much presence does the fade bring to the game?". This exemplifies the real issue with fades at the moment. Fades bring an abnormal amount of presence to any game in NS2 and thats what needs to be addressed. Decreasing the base health might break them entirely and eliminating the superman flight would change it's role. I think an increase to res cost would bring the best results, lowing the number of fades and essentially lowering the pressure they bring to battle, but not entirely eliminating it as a viable option to turn the tide.