GL Spam
NeXuS
US Join Date: 2013-10-13 Member: 188681Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester
US Join Date: 2013-10-13 Member: 188681Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester
I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds GL spam extremely annoying. Losing a fade to 2 lobbed grenades from someone I most likely can't even see because they are around a corner is absolutly rage inducing. I understand certain people within the dev circle has tried to push the issue but to no avail. So I came up with an idea that might at least help. Could we get some sort of "hive vision", indicator, whistling sound, or a timer of the grenades in the player vicinity? At least knowing they are coming or where they are landing may help aliens avoid the bombardment of countless nades leading to a sudden death.
Comments
Anyway I'm sort of thinking removing the contact detonation for lifeforms (leaving it for structures) and restoring the old blast radius. They would still be effective for dealing with skulks around an exo or arc but there would be no more "random" nade deaths.
If you make them more visible it's still a problem, especially on any larger server you'll have people spamming GL down a hallway like crazy
To balance it out it could be on an extra slot or so, so you can have both LMG/GL (but not shotty/GL - seems a bit OP :P) or cheaper to buy,
Well it currently does twice the damage vs structures (or rather to put differently half dmg to lifeforms). So you currently have that effect, but I'm guessing the ratio could be different (i.e. half dmg from now, keep the current structure dmg), but as I said before that is still a problem as you can get big dmg spikes of random dmg from people spamming GL.
Dont like the idea of dont do damage over players - eggs maybe bit less but still do i prefer
maybe repel nerfed , one of 3 grenades instead one of 2.
Honestly, if you're getting naded to death as a fade I would assume that's either a rare, unlucky occurance, or the result of you poorly judging a situation and running into a choke point/ not planning your escape route.
Except you're completely helpless by yourself. Marines with nades make for tasty fade snacks!
It may be one nade to kill a fast-moving, hard-to-hit lerk, but it's 3 to kill a cara gorge and 3-4 for a fade (?).
If you're losing life forms to a structure damage weapon on a regular basis you need to evaluate your tactics.
Whilst they are weaker now there not strapped to the LMG (god those times hurt as a kharaa player) good 2-3 players can hold a room or siege a hive really easily.
I always thought the whips flicking back the nades made little sense (but was needed) and the whips "swallowing" 1 GL per x number of seconds would have made more sense.
It could be tweaked so that each GL absorbed does do damage to the whip (eg 10% with 0 splash) and would go along way to solving part of the problem with that whole mechanic.
Its not so much that GL need a counter as whips need a purpose defensively seeing as their "whip" is easily avoided by using items grenades, GL's, FT, JP's or just sprinting past are all viable strategies.
While you can use the grenade launcher skilfully, it also has an element of luck so that even a newbie can use the weapon and instantly kill skulks while occasionally getting lucky kills while higher lifeforms retreat. The damage on it is just incredible, and it's one of the cheapest weapons available. The JP+GL combo is very effective for soloing harvesters and upgrades, sure sometimes it might be a suicide mission but losing 30 pres versus taking out 60 or more of the alien's tres? Totally worth it. Only fades and lerks can effectively combat jetpackers unless skulks are incredibly skilful or the jetpacker isn't that good at using his jetpack, combine that with the incredible power of the GL and fast firing speed you can end up doing hit and run missions through alien territory doing incredibly damage.
My point about why it doesn't fit in with the game:
While I am against one shot kills in videogames, as far as I know only the shotgun does so in NS2 besides the GL. This amazing power of the Shotgun is counter balanced by two factors:
1 - it does less damage over distance, as the pellets spread out, so you can only ohk skulks at close distance - almost within biting range. This allows both the marine and skulk encounters to skilfully battle, allowing the player with superior movement and aim to become the victor.
2 - Pellets can hit other marines, effectively cancelling out the grouping up and spraying techniques new players almost always use unconsciously. You must actually aim your shots, and you can't just spray through a group of marines to get lucky kills.
With the grenade launcher it almost seems impossible to blow yourself up now. If you lob a grenade at a skulk that's right in your face it blows up and you take like what? 30 damage?
You can also fire it into groups of marines and easily pick up lucky kills on skulks and do incredible damage to any other lifeform nearby.
It's not really a grenade launcher, it's more of a timed proximity mine lobber. If you shoot a grenade at the ground and an alien touches it - it instantly explodes. That's really... strange, grenades should either explode when they hit map geometry or they shouldn't explode on contact after hitting a wall or ceiling/floor.
The grenades have an incredible AoE effect when they explode, especially in the small combat spaces of NS2 - it just doesn't seem to fit. Many alien structures are grouped closely together due to issues like crags not healing buildings over zlevels or even healing buildings at all within their AoE range that shows when you select them. Upgrades are usually put very close to the hive so the commander can hop out and defend them if need arises, and the players spawning can also defend them. This also prevents the issue of upgrades getting easily sniped by marines from far away as some of the best 'hiding' spots are very close to the hive.
At the moment is just seems to me that the grenade launcher is an out of place weapon, and that time spent on trying to balance the weapon will be fruitless. I'd prefer it they removed the weapon out of the game and tweaked the hand grenades so that they are a more viable option throughout the entire game.
They could also possibly add a new weapon, and I always like options, but I feel like the game is rather sort of balanced at the moment and set in its ways. You won't be able to easily add in something new without screwing everything else up in terms of balance and power and game dynamics.
Not that rare. I saw it happen like twice yesterday. One time in particular, I was commin eclipse, I had an onos healing a gorge and a fade just outside test chamber, around the corner from eclipse hive. I was spamming them mucuous membrane and monitoring the health of all three lifeforms. As soon as all three were at full health, they started sprinting back down hallway into eclipse. One (green) marine pops around the corner, spams 2 or 3 shots down hall, and just like that the fade is gone. This all happened in about 1 second and half, no time for fade to rethink route, just bam. And that's just one example.
Increase the cost at the very least and I'd be happy. They're just too cheap and easy easy easy to spam. Yes, I agree, a solo gl is usually easy to take down, but add a hallway and a jp, and it's a flying, spamming, crap bomber.
P.S. Where is this whips are op thread?
It is a high power, low skill weapon. Some call it noob cannon. There is nothing wrong with that. Removing low skill high power out items hurts the game. Shotguns are much higher skill cap items, but are actually better in the hands of skilled players.
Game design theory says that UWE is correct in what they are doing with the cost and power. I agree with the current state of GL.
•the interp, too high... period. due to this, you can't be very flicky with your aim, which happens to be how you aim a projectile. it just isn't responsive enough.
•the hit boxes/model are too large. this may not be the case, it's just my assumption based on how difficult it is to try and make precis shots through a crack or something. edit: if this was put in, I would think self damaged would need to be slightly lowered when you hit a lifeform directly so you're not punished for hitting them (but also not able to tank it fully, obviously), but not for grenades rolling on the ground (so you can't just shoot your feet and clear the room)
edit: I also agree that it needs some type of visual representation on alien screens, even if it's only in alien vision.
if both of those were fixed, it would make the grenade launcher a high skill high reward weapon, similar to the demomans pipes in tf2. if the interp was fixed I would gladly play the shit out of the GL, only thing you would really need to worry about are fades and onos (unless they fix #2 aswell, lerks might be threatening in that case)
One suggestion I have would be to buff babblers and allow them to reduce incoming explosive damage by a significant percentage to the lifeform they're attached to based on how many babblers there are. Hell, make it so that only the GL is effected by this so that it doesn't mess too much with the current state of mines and hand grenades.
What I would like to see is the removal of the contact explosion, but the the option to trigger the nade with the right mouse button. Then, it might have to be nerfed on terms of player damage, but it would be much less random.
Its received lots of nerfs in that time at least.
But honestly i think that allowing for an outline of the projectile itself is subtle enough to help countering this random and frustrating death occurrence without effecting all other uses of the GL. (spam, area denial, effective use on structures) It merely provides a small window for you to move your body out of the way in time instead of randomly guessing because you cannot reasonably track 4+ high speed, small sized projectiles that blend in with the environment.
In the scenario that you come around the corner into the projectile, it has a minimum arming distance so it will only explode on your face if you have failed to move out of the way of the highlighted projectile in that time.