Keep Marine Strafejumping
meatmachine
South England Join Date: 2013-01-06 Member: 177858Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
South England Join Date: 2013-01-06 Member: 177858Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
I still can't understand what people's problem is.
If you're getting outjuked by marines, you need to evaluate what movement options you are utilizing during combat. And stop sucking so hard.
It's depressing... It feels that if marine movement got nerfed I can imagine my hit% as skulk will jump to 100% and combat will become easy/boring.
If you're getting outjuked by marines, you need to evaluate what movement options you are utilizing during combat. And stop sucking so hard.
It's depressing... It feels that if marine movement got nerfed I can imagine my hit% as skulk will jump to 100% and combat will become easy/boring.
Comments
If you plan your angle of attack correctly and switch up jumping/floor movement to counter whatever they're doing, it really isn't hard to kill a marine or two.
Yet more evidence that the aliens are OP and skulks especially need major nerfing, including lower spawn rate.
Ranged vs melee only works if melee has the upper hand once they get close or if they ambush, currently because of strafejump this is not the case. Because of the boosted jump even an unaware marine can react and jump far enough away to give them a full second to track and shoot the skulk, which is enough time to kill. This creates a 50/50 if the skill of both parties is proficient and relatively equal despite ambushing. Even if you track them perfectly as a skulk after the first bite your choices are one: move directly at them for the follow up/final bite or two: disengage. The only option not listed is leap and is irrelevant to the conversation as marines have at least a2/w2 and usually shotguns by the time the skulk upgrade is gotten.
The engine is part of the problem as well, the massive interp does not compensate on bites but does on hitscan meaning the instant momentum gain can displace the marines hitbox out of your range even before the second bite of an ambush. There's no "just keep hopping and track them" as skulks have no momentum retention when turning, there is no "Just get to a wall and wall hop again" as a good marine would kill you before you got there, there is no "Just strafe around under them" as they are already two body lengths away from you after the jump with you left with no speed. I'm wondering what unheard of strategy people are using to get out of this 50/50 in melee that isn't "play against bad marines".
i for myself i had to change my hole gameplay style cuz of this and yes i'm getting successful,but really sometimes too much jumping just to get away from a skulk and i find that skilled less in marines
Yes! YES! Exactly!
Wonderful stuff.
Jump apologists, pls open your eyes!
Keeping SJ will blind everybody. It wont get balanced if it is kept like that. Not only SJ but also the skulk nerfs. Those are in the way for proper balance. There is another way to balance it.
@OP simply NO !
The skill argument isn't valid. Check out the other thread. A lot has been said in it. SJ is over and it won't do the trick. In fact it is something than can truly hit the player base the wrong way.
Get over it.
youtube.com/watch?v=0O3Sg7Ctr-s
It is SiFi, but it makes not a lot of sence if a human can outmanoeuvre an animal. Six million dollar Man and the Phantom aside
If this is all a matter of "skill" (and fps), than why don't give the skulk a similar technique? A mini gordon freeman long-jump enhancement that boosts the skulk jump a little bit once every minute or a very small stamina pool for a sprint? Maybe 2 secs worth of sprint with a long regeneration rate. That would give the marine the chance to outjump the skulk and the skulk the option to close in again.
I say: Give the marine and the skulk the same chances in a melee fight concerning movement and let skill/experience decide who should win. And if you don't agree, why not? Should the marine have more mobility then the skulk? Should a marine kill a skulk 1 on 1 more often than the other way round in melee? I am confused. And If I am confused about ns2, I look at ns1. How was it in ns1? The lmg/pistol teared skulks apart, but in close range the skulk could keep up with the rine. They could even walk under an HA and eat him alive. Yet in ns1 and ns2, I had never a problem to avoid a skulk to a certain level. And that was without a jump-enhancer. Since I think that the rine was fine before the jump boost, I don't think it is necessary. But thats just my opinion. If it has to stay due to balance, I will accept it. But only if they improve the performance and give me the same chance to chase a rine as some1 with a fast PC has. And this is not the case right now with the jump boost.
Edit: It was also easier to track down rines as the floor moving speed of the skulk was faster. Moving faster on walls sounds nice for an alien shooter, but then again...
Yup.
Just out of curiosity, do you feel that strafe-jumping is overpowered in comp play? In pub play, against most marines, I find it isn't that much of an issue to deal with, the hardest part is keeping track of the marine after he starts jumping. But then, that is in pub play where most players aren't incredibly precise with their weapons.
I'll admit to being new to the game, and I only played a handful of matches before Reinforced, but I felt before that it was too easy to kill marines with a skulk (especially if your first bite was by surprise) and I often found myself dying to skulks as a marine because you needed to rely on a teammate to be accurate enough to hit the skulk if you wanted to survive.
With strafe-jumping in place it feels much more balanced, but again, that is without playing against someone with sick tracking skills, so for the sake of comp balance, is strafe-jumping OP in comp play?
Even in pubs with comp players it gets dumb. Here's the thing, the win rates are still up in the air around 50/50. That's not because skulk v marine is balanced though, marines have a ton of early game power and aliens have a ton of mid game power, in skulk v marine in early game it's really not balanced. Past early game skulk v marine gets worse and worse for the skulk until they get leap and that doesn't help much. Against good players that jump will always give them enough time to kill you before finishing them if they aim well and react fast.
So when we talk about balance it's important to note if we're talking overall balance (win rate) or specific variable balance (alien unit versus marine unit). A game can be really really poorly balanced and random and have a win rate of 50/50.
The obvious issue is also lag.
1 sec for a skulk is eternity, when landing on a marine and fight on the ground.
Even with pings under 50, you can get a 1.5 sec lag depending on :
-other players lag (forth and back).
-apparently FPS (slow PC).
-server itself.
-server software performances.
-network issues
So the more you add speed the more skulks and marines will "jump dance" and turn around each other. Add to this a reduced cone for melee weapon and that's gonna be ugly.
The thing that SJ introduced is more "cat fight" (the tornado one). You see a fur ball but no one dies. The problem is that the marine has a gun. He(she) ultimately will reload and shoot.
It would be ok if everything was running smoothly and with great accuracy (low ping, no delay on server etc.). But it is not.
There are many ways for balancing it from :
-Lowering medpack price and add a cool down time to avoid medpack rain. So the commander would help. It's teamwork (finally). And we won't see "jumping pistoleros beans" as there is a little bit of danger.
to:
modifying the secondary action (punch the skulk in the face for example).
Name it, it probably has been suggested. Anything but speed (which is bound to lag).
Agreed. I'd like to see an accel increase or a bit more air control for skulks tested before the marine buff is reduced again, though.
Also as an FYI, both skulk and marine have the same acceleration constant.
You are a beautiful person.
You're putting everything so well. This is something I have tried to argue before - overall balance does not mean sectional balance.
The game is horribly balanced against aliens in the very early game. When the lerk comes out they have a chance for around 1-2 minutes, before the shotguns come out. The game appears to reduce to, "how much can the marines suppress the aliens before the Lerk? How much can the aliens claw back before shotguns? How much can the marines push forward and suppress the aliens before the Fades?". Incidentally fades have been massively nerfed such that the mid-game is pretty even right now. The mid-late is often dominated by the marines because they'll have JP+shotguns and all the aliens can do at that point is defend and, hit RTs and try to destroy the Pres by picking off those jetpacks before they get multiple Onoi.
It's important to note that the above is just a generalisation about which scenarios will differ somewhat (and anomalies will diverge greatly) but it's pretty much an accurate model for what happens in most games.
As I have said before: fun>balance. All other things being equal, greater balance makes the game more fun, but as is often the case all other things are not equal here.
For example, in order to make boxing more balanced, they corrected for weight class. What they did not do is tie up one hand behind the back of a heavyweight, make him hop on one leg and tell him to fight a welterweight. Whilst I realise boxing is symmetrical, and this game not, it does not detract from my point that whilst both can achieve balance in result, they do not in cause.
TL;DR - the marine should have the advantage in ranged battle with a skulk; the skulk the advantage in melee. As it stands, the marine has the advantage in both cases.
Having the same acceleration does not mean the same as deceleration. The marine can jump around the skulk and not lose the speed (assuming he has the skill - i.e. a functioning body and the requisite computer and peripherals) , whereas the skulk cannot change direction so abruptly without having his speed killed.
What? Then how is it that aliens stomp marines at not just the early game, but at all times in the game, both in my own experience and in the ns2stats? Perhaps you should start playing NS2 before commenting, because you surely can't be playing the same game as everyone else.
It's all this tinkering with "air maneuverability" and other such over-complicated concepts/mechanics that creates complexity for the sake of complexity (in a vain attempt to create depth) which leads to the abysmal player retention of this game.
Skilled movement mechanics and their place in online gaming is a hot area of debate
I've played competitive FPS's for over a decade from quake to CS to UT and even L4D, this is not an L2P issue. I already addressed your assertion and laid out the exact situation being discussed step by step explaining how *good* marines create an unavoidable distance gap the moment aliens lose all speed options in their attack. This isn't a hot area of debate because people can't cope, I still go 5:1 to 10:1 playing with/against comp players from the NA scene in pubs but just because I can still be effective doesn't make it a good mechanic.
Please explain how turning while in mid air is over-complicated. Moving your mouse is a fairly easy task to pick up. You can already do it as a skulk... you just happen to lose all your speed while doing it.
To this day, I have no real opinion on this feature.