I'm pretty new to these forum discussions so forgive me for my ignorance, but what exactly makes whips OP?
This might just be my perspective coming from someone who has played a fair amount of TF2, but I've always thought whips were very well designed compared to the other kinds of area denial/defensive structures present in most FPS games.
They almost never kill marines unless they're already weak. They can use bombard, but that does very limited damage, even to armor.
A whip basically serves two purposes: it provides soft area denial, and it slows down marine pushes by forcing them to spend time killing the whip.
But compared with nearly every other kind of passive defensive structures in FPS games, whips are one of the most benign to enemy players. They are much less unfair than mines or sentry guns, though their low cost means they are much more prevalent than sentries.
Well, this is mainly why they are so useful. It's not their killing power, it's their delaying power.
The marine game is all about constant pressure on alien RTs, to prevent them from expanding all over the place. A whip or two and a crag on a crucial map location can help aliens lock down part of the map and delay marines quite significantly when they try to break through, weakening them in the process with bile and faceslapping. So they can give aliens more time to respond to threats and make cleanups easier as well, which can pay off really nicely for aliens in the long run.
In pubs it's less of a problem due to sheer playercounts, but in 6vs6 games, whips can be a real hassle to deal with.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Whips are fine. I like echoing them behind marine offenses into alien territory. When they go to retreat from aliens... smack! smack smack! Then throw in a bone wall so they can't get out of the whips range before they die.
I'm pretty new to these forum discussions so forgive me for my ignorance, but what exactly makes whips OP?
This might just be my perspective coming from someone who has played a fair amount of TF2, but I've always thought whips were very well designed compared to the other kinds of area denial/defensive structures present in most FPS games.
They almost never kill marines unless they're already weak. They can use bombard, but that does very limited damage, even to armor.
A whip basically serves two purposes: it provides soft area denial, and it slows down marine pushes by forcing them to spend time killing the whip.
But compared with nearly every other kind of passive defensive structures in FPS games, whips are one of the most benign to enemy players. They are much less unfair than mines or sentry guns, though their low cost means they are much more prevalent than sentries.
What makes them so OP is a couple of things.
1. The alien commander putting them in areas that the marines have to advance through and making them hard to shoot directly at. It takes more than a few clips of a rifle to kill a whip, that usually has a crag in range, and shotties have to move into attack range of the whip to make them worth the shot.
2. They are cheap, only 10 res. The alien economy doesn't need continuous investment in their tech tree, like the marines. What the aliens need are lifeforms.
3. Now that you've blocked doorways and whips are cheap to replace you now created a situation that the marines are fighting the whips and the lifeforms.
I agree with those points. But alien upgrades are expensive. At least in pub games, whips appear when there is no new tech point free for the aliens and all upgrades they got are bought. At this point, aliens can use their res to reinforce their positions. This means that marines are playing passive. When the aliens already got all upgrades from their 2 tech points, it should be more than time for the marines to get a few ARCs going. Either way, with a bit of teamplay, aliens will crush every marine base when enough onos appear. So the marines need to hurry anyway. I like the aspect that a whip spamming com forces the marines to use arcs and GLs.
On the other points: GLs are fine now. And an increase of the whip cost to 15res wouldn't be any problem (when skulk upgrades get 5 res cheaper).
I mean you could do it that way or you could just whip the entire map delaying/stopping the marines everywhere. I mean, for the aliens, you DONT NEED lifeform ups right away. You don't NEED them ASAP, just eventually. Marines NEED weapons and armor ups asap, they NEED phase tech, they NEED an AA and proto.
1. The alien commander putting them in areas that the marines have to advance through and making them hard to shoot directly at.
That is not what makes them a problem? That is their intended purposes by design, a design that can easily co exist in this game without the frustration currently experienced.
Without this being possible, the structure would cease to exist / ever be dropped.
The other 2 issues you brought up are better reasons, but still only one that i'd consider to be the issue.
The low cost of spamming them is definitely an issue, but as said before in these forums is due to research dependency on skulk. Raising the price (even if you made skulk upgrade cost free) will just make the structure never be dropped anywhere but once in base as a useless, expensive upgrade structure. Might as well delete it from the game entirely.
Your 3rd point of it becoming too much of a PvE game is definitely the issue, and why whips suck right now.
My suggestion: Just lower its effective health.
For bonus points you can remove it's armor by converting it to HP only to lessen the impact of mucous - per Ghost's idea - but also lower the total effect HP too.
This wouldn't effect pubs with larger playercounts (4-7 rifles concentrating fire on a whip makes quick work no matter what, not to mention damage output from a whip is less impactful on the team as a whole compared to a smaller team size.)
But it would make it easier, safer and faster to clear out and less frustrating / less PvE overall for 6v6
The comm wouldn't just spam them anywhere without care, as they would be much more vulnerable, and easier/quicker to lose (bonus points for making whips move 1/2 speed)
Your only defensive structure as alien commander, and the purpose of the whip gets to remain without being the bane of the game.
Nope. It's one of the fun parts of being alien comm along with drifter micro. Gotta have something to do besides being a glorified upgrade dispenser. I've had it happen to me on marines and it was quite unexpected and funny.
... The low cost of spamming them is definitely an issue, but as said before in these forums is due to research dependency on skulk. Raising the price (even if you made skulk upgrade cost free) will just make the structure never be dropped anywhere but once in base as a useless, expensive upgrade structure. Might as well delete it from the game entirely...
My suggestion: Just lower its effective health.
Back before 250, I think (!) they used to cost 15 res to build, and that was even before you got bombard for it which was another 15 res, which was ridiculous. They're much more flexible at 10 res each now (including getting bombard on full maturity). You can actually work them into your early-mid game builds and still get upgrades on a reasonable schedule. I don't think anything needs to be done with their health just yet. It's difficult to balance it further when game sizes vary so much, unless you have dynamic health adjustments depending on team player sizes. Even then, marines need to use cluster/gas grenades and some actual teamwork to sweep them aside. If it was a "real" problem, it'll be demonstrated as such in competitive games.
They're always guys who don't like fighting static defenses, which is what you get in a RTS/FPS hybrid. There were identical arguments about OCs and turrets 7-8 years ago when NS1 was active.
Nope. It's one of the fun parts of being alien comm along with drifter micro. Gotta have something to do besides being a glorified upgrade dispenser. I've had it happen to me on marines and it was quite unexpected and funny.
Right, right, I forgot, fun trumps balanced gameplay.
All the kham will ever be is a glorified upgrade dispenser if we want to keep this game from being awful. Adding micro for the sake of keeping the kham entertained is just about the worst idea I've ever heard.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
edited December 2013
Right, right, I forgot, fun trumps balanced gameplay.
No, but the "fun" factor should be considered when designing gameplay mechanics.
All the kham will ever be is a glorified upgrade dispenser if we want to keep this game from being awful
I see a lot of hyperbole, but not much substance. You can make the same argument about the marine commander.
Adding micro for the sake of keeping the kham entertained is just about the worst idea I've ever heard
There is nothing to add. Using the drifter effectively to aid your team is just part of high level commanding, and it is fun. Everybody has different tastes.
If it was a "real" problem, it'll be demonstrated as such in competitive games.
Whip spamming is and has long been dominantly a competitive problem, and most cries for adjustments are from competitive players. It's easily the number one cause for frustration in high-level play.
I see a lot of hyperbole, but not much substance. You can make the same argument about the marine commander.
The marine commander is an essential, engaging and balanced core mechanic of the game. The alien commander is a vestigial piece of blu-tack for which, instead of having a clear purpose, features have to be invented to justify its existence.
Just reduce the whip to what it was some 50 patches ago, it did what it was supposed to do end of story.
Now if we’re getting into sentries those are just a lost cause imo, they have been reworked, redone and reworked so many times I don’t really know what their purpose is anymore.
Am I the only one who sees mines as less fair, less avoidable, and more of a PvE experience than sentries or whips? Whips might be annoyingly difficult to kill at times, but mines instakill skulks and blow a large chunk of health off higher lifeforms and nobody seems to bat an eye or see it as a problematically braindead method of combat.
And don't tell me mines are easy to see and avoid or that it's easy to counter them. If it was, you wouldn't see pro teams go early mines and you wouldn't see pro skulks getting killed by them.
It's the same reason I hate spies in TF2 and claymores in COD. Instant, random, unavoidable deaths are the bane of all things competitive. And while sentries and whips might be irritating, they give players a chance to avoid death (echoed whips notwithstanding).
And just to clarify, I'm not saying that whips shouldn't be nerfed or that mines are the most annoying PvE structure in NS2. But nobody ever mentions mines even though they suck for all the same reason as sentries and whips.
Mines are important for gameplay and not over powered.
You're not actually reading what I wrote. I didn't say they were overpowered.
I understand they serve an important role in protecting phase gates, observatories, etc. but they do so at the cost of dynamic player v. player encounters which are much more dynamic, and in the long run give the game more replay value.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited December 2013
Mines are 100% avoidable though. Mines also cost pres (usually) and even if you die to one, it won't be there when you return unless replaced at some expense.
There are options to deal with them without taking any damage either via parasite or biting them.
See my mine biting experiment: (cosmo's stream in the background : >)
Lerk spikes counter them completely and the fade can effectively set them off while taking very minimal damage.
Sentries on the other hand are guaranteed to do some damage to you, and cannot be avoided unless poorly positioned. Thankfully they are weak and easily taken out with bile bomb or getting to that battery. I think sentries and mines are both in a fine place right now.
Whips have so much health that just stacks so heavily with a gorge, crag, healing wave, muccous that often it makes areas completely unpushable, especially with some lerk spikes on top. Marines are often forced to rush past an entrenched area and hopefully reach a favourable spot alive and just accept the slap and bombard damage. Focusing down the pve targets is effective but does leave you vulnerable, and if you don't know you're safe to do so will often just get you killed and the whip quickly healed or just redropped.
The frustration is that the whip is so cost effective at holding areas via free bombard, 50 dmg slap while still being a bullet sponge and can even be moved by the alien commander.
It's the ultimate PvE beast. Close quarters attack, ranged attack, moveable, stacks of health, cheap.
No, but the "fun" factor should be considered when designing gameplay mechanics.
Fun for one player (sort of?) - ridiculously obnoxious for everyone that isn't a commander getting dumped on by the "environment".
Dropping nukes, AoE attacks and micromanaging units in RTS games is fun. But it doesn't come at the expense of the fun of the units.. because they are AI. NS2 is unique in that bit.. you have to think about the fun of the players being effected by the ability/mechanic as well. (Whips aren't fun)
Whips wouldn't be so bad if they cost pres to use, seeing as that would delay and even prevent the appearance of key lifeforms from appearing. However since they cost tres, which isn't really all that valuable to the aliens, they can basically be spammed all over the place.
Yet another example of how the addition of the alien commander completely throws off the balance of NS
Mines are effective vs skulks, not so much vs gorges, lerk don't fly on the ground and have a 1 in 10,000 chance of dealing damage to a fade. As for the onos, "ouch I stubbed my toe."
Now that I think about it more, when did we see the crazy PvE start? I think it was when they made lifeform eggs on such a stupid high biomass cost. What if you lowered the fade biomass to 6 but jacked up the cost to 80 or 100. I mean, that alien res is going somewhere. I mean that gives lower skilled players the option to still PvE some and higher skilled players to replace their lifeforms, that they dominate with.
Marines are often forced to rush past an entrenched area and hopefully reach a favourable spot alive and just accept the slap and bombard damage. Focusing down the pve targets is effective but does leave you vulnerable, and if you don't know you're safe to do so will often just get you killed and the whip quickly healed or just redropped.
That is just as true for Marine pve units. As a Skulk, you are very vulnerable while taking out sentries (lack of space to maneuver), and as a Lerk, you're a lot more vulnerable to surprise attacks while spiking mines.
As an area denial structure, I don't really see a problem with whips. Without the grenade knockback ability, both the GL and flamethrower are hard counters to them. LMG and nerve gas are soft counters. Shotguns are a bit weaker due to lack of range, but these shouldn't be a counter to everything anyway.
Regarding the stack argument: If an area is defended with whips, crags, and the full Gorge arsenal, it *should* not be trivial to take down. And still, such a position will go down pretty easily to grenade spam, or to to JP+Flamer a bit later in the game.
Giving whips Bombard for free is kind of debatable, though. Making it an individual whip upgrade would add tactical decisions for the Alien comm, which is a good thing... although it would need some UI support so it does not become a micro-management nightmare.
Mines are effective vs skulks, not so much vs gorges, lerk don't fly on the ground and have a 1 in 10,000 chance of dealing damage to a fade.
That's only true for badly-placed mines. A mine on a vent exit, for example, can easily kill a Lerk that uses it as an escape route. The same goes for Fades... mines on corners of likely escape routes can be a very nasty surprise, as the Fade usually won't "budget" any HP for that.
Eh.. on paper.
But in reality, one can easily place mines in places that are not practically feasible to always slow down and peek around a corner to check /avoid - especially for a fast mobile team.
And they aren't nearly as noticeable as they used to be with the old alien vision.
Hence the feeling they illicit sometimes as being an instant, random, and unfair death.
But in truth, there is at least some human planning / strategy / low skill involved with killing that other player... so i do not see it as being random or unfair.
Now lerking around a corner, right into a freshly fired GL projectile that was meant for hitting a structure and instantly exploding / losing your lerk... that tends to feel pretty frustratingly random and luck based.
Jekt, everyone knows mines behind un-lag-compensated doors are unavoidable. I award your arguement 0 points. Mines are like the counter to whips because they kill the cysts when they explode them, and without cysts you can't put whips there can you? can you?
I hope whips never get removed. They r gr8.
Amazing times watching late night ns2 streams and schadenfreuding at the internal rage that goes on when people get whipped, bonewalled, ruptured, and drifter blocked while also being gang banged from corner interping or that random eclipse crate.
The best ones are when the whips get echoed onto cloaked infestation that has bug spread through the wall.
Comments
Well, this is mainly why they are so useful. It's not their killing power, it's their delaying power.
The marine game is all about constant pressure on alien RTs, to prevent them from expanding all over the place. A whip or two and a crag on a crucial map location can help aliens lock down part of the map and delay marines quite significantly when they try to break through, weakening them in the process with bile and faceslapping. So they can give aliens more time to respond to threats and make cleanups easier as well, which can pay off really nicely for aliens in the long run.
In pubs it's less of a problem due to sheer playercounts, but in 6vs6 games, whips can be a real hassle to deal with.
I mean you could do it that way or you could just whip the entire map delaying/stopping the marines everywhere. I mean, for the aliens, you DONT NEED lifeform ups right away. You don't NEED them ASAP, just eventually. Marines NEED weapons and armor ups asap, they NEED phase tech, they NEED an AA and proto.
Without this being possible, the structure would cease to exist / ever be dropped.
The other 2 issues you brought up are better reasons, but still only one that i'd consider to be the issue.
The low cost of spamming them is definitely an issue, but as said before in these forums is due to research dependency on skulk. Raising the price (even if you made skulk upgrade cost free) will just make the structure never be dropped anywhere but once in base as a useless, expensive upgrade structure. Might as well delete it from the game entirely.
Your 3rd point of it becoming too much of a PvE game is definitely the issue, and why whips suck right now.
My suggestion: Just lower its effective health.
For bonus points you can remove it's armor by converting it to HP only to lessen the impact of mucous - per Ghost's idea - but also lower the total effect HP too.
This wouldn't effect pubs with larger playercounts (4-7 rifles concentrating fire on a whip makes quick work no matter what, not to mention damage output from a whip is less impactful on the team as a whole compared to a smaller team size.)
But it would make it easier, safer and faster to clear out and less frustrating / less PvE overall for 6v6
The comm wouldn't just spam them anywhere without care, as they would be much more vulnerable, and easier/quicker to lose (bonus points for making whips move 1/2 speed)
Your only defensive structure as alien commander, and the purpose of the whip gets to remain without being the bane of the game.
I'm always down for removing whips and turrets from the game entirely.
They're even more boring than onos
Back before 250, I think (!) they used to cost 15 res to build, and that was even before you got bombard for it which was another 15 res, which was ridiculous. They're much more flexible at 10 res each now (including getting bombard on full maturity). You can actually work them into your early-mid game builds and still get upgrades on a reasonable schedule. I don't think anything needs to be done with their health just yet. It's difficult to balance it further when game sizes vary so much, unless you have dynamic health adjustments depending on team player sizes. Even then, marines need to use cluster/gas grenades and some actual teamwork to sweep them aside. If it was a "real" problem, it'll be demonstrated as such in competitive games.
They're always guys who don't like fighting static defenses, which is what you get in a RTS/FPS hybrid. There were identical arguments about OCs and turrets 7-8 years ago when NS1 was active.
Right, right, I forgot, fun trumps balanced gameplay.
All the kham will ever be is a glorified upgrade dispenser if we want to keep this game from being awful. Adding micro for the sake of keeping the kham entertained is just about the worst idea I've ever heard.
EDIT: You sneak edited! In that case I say it's not player vs enviroment I hate but player vs AI.
*and arcs.
Whip spamming is and has long been dominantly a competitive problem, and most cries for adjustments are from competitive players. It's easily the number one cause for frustration in high-level play.
The marine commander is an essential, engaging and balanced core mechanic of the game. The alien commander is a vestigial piece of blu-tack for which, instead of having a clear purpose, features have to be invented to justify its existence.
Now if we’re getting into sentries those are just a lost cause imo, they have been reworked, redone and reworked so many times I don’t really know what their purpose is anymore.
And don't tell me mines are easy to see and avoid or that it's easy to counter them. If it was, you wouldn't see pro teams go early mines and you wouldn't see pro skulks getting killed by them.
It's the same reason I hate spies in TF2 and claymores in COD. Instant, random, unavoidable deaths are the bane of all things competitive. And while sentries and whips might be irritating, they give players a chance to avoid death (echoed whips notwithstanding).
I understand they serve an important role in protecting phase gates, observatories, etc. but they do so at the cost of dynamic player v. player encounters which are much more dynamic, and in the long run give the game more replay value.
There are options to deal with them without taking any damage either via parasite or biting them.
See my mine biting experiment: (cosmo's stream in the background : >)
Lerk spikes counter them completely and the fade can effectively set them off while taking very minimal damage.
Sentries on the other hand are guaranteed to do some damage to you, and cannot be avoided unless poorly positioned. Thankfully they are weak and easily taken out with bile bomb or getting to that battery. I think sentries and mines are both in a fine place right now.
Whips have so much health that just stacks so heavily with a gorge, crag, healing wave, muccous that often it makes areas completely unpushable, especially with some lerk spikes on top. Marines are often forced to rush past an entrenched area and hopefully reach a favourable spot alive and just accept the slap and bombard damage. Focusing down the pve targets is effective but does leave you vulnerable, and if you don't know you're safe to do so will often just get you killed and the whip quickly healed or just redropped.
The frustration is that the whip is so cost effective at holding areas via free bombard, 50 dmg slap while still being a bullet sponge and can even be moved by the alien commander.
It's the ultimate PvE beast. Close quarters attack, ranged attack, moveable, stacks of health, cheap.
Fun for one player (sort of?) - ridiculously obnoxious for everyone that isn't a commander getting dumped on by the "environment".
Dropping nukes, AoE attacks and micromanaging units in RTS games is fun. But it doesn't come at the expense of the fun of the units.. because they are AI. NS2 is unique in that bit.. you have to think about the fun of the players being effected by the ability/mechanic as well. (Whips aren't fun)
Yet another example of how the addition of the alien commander completely throws off the balance of NS
Mines are effective vs skulks, not so much vs gorges, lerk don't fly on the ground and have a 1 in 10,000 chance of dealing damage to a fade. As for the onos, "ouch I stubbed my toe."
That is just as true for Marine pve units. As a Skulk, you are very vulnerable while taking out sentries (lack of space to maneuver), and as a Lerk, you're a lot more vulnerable to surprise attacks while spiking mines.
As an area denial structure, I don't really see a problem with whips. Without the grenade knockback ability, both the GL and flamethrower are hard counters to them. LMG and nerve gas are soft counters. Shotguns are a bit weaker due to lack of range, but these shouldn't be a counter to everything anyway.
Regarding the stack argument: If an area is defended with whips, crags, and the full Gorge arsenal, it *should* not be trivial to take down. And still, such a position will go down pretty easily to grenade spam, or to to JP+Flamer a bit later in the game.
Giving whips Bombard for free is kind of debatable, though. Making it an individual whip upgrade would add tactical decisions for the Alien comm, which is a good thing... although it would need some UI support so it does not become a micro-management nightmare.
Losing a lifeform to a hidden mine isn't fun either. Part of the game IMO.
But in reality, one can easily place mines in places that are not practically feasible to always slow down and peek around a corner to check /avoid - especially for a fast mobile team.
And they aren't nearly as noticeable as they used to be with the old alien vision.
Hence the feeling they illicit sometimes as being an instant, random, and unfair death.
But in truth, there is at least some human planning / strategy / low skill involved with killing that other player... so i do not see it as being random or unfair.
Now lerking around a corner, right into a freshly fired GL projectile that was meant for hitting a structure and instantly exploding / losing your lerk... that tends to feel pretty frustratingly random and luck based.
I hope whips never get removed. They r gr8.
Amazing times watching late night ns2 streams and schadenfreuding at the internal rage that goes on when people get whipped, bonewalled, ruptured, and drifter blocked while also being gang banged from corner interping or that random eclipse crate.
The best ones are when the whips get echoed onto cloaked infestation that has bug spread through the wall.