twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
I kind of wish that Skulk "sprint" (which drains energy) was tested as a part of the game. Adrenaline Skulk would finally be viable early game. (Random idea) Alternatively, Skulk "sneak" could cost energy, but move much faster (almost as fast as marine walk speed).
BTW Caparace does help Skulks against Sentries significantly. Now only if Sentries weren't so inaccurate at long range... Even Skulks without any upgrades can currently charge straight past a cluster of Sentries and survive.
I kind of wish that Skulk "sprint" (which drains energy) was tested as a part of the game.
No. It was ridiculously OP during balance mod (250 testing)
Anything can potentially be OP, if the numbers and minor details are off.
Remember when Fades, Celerity and Gas Grenades were OP? Were they all removed from the game?
Perhaps as a tier 3 upgrade to help end games and replace xenocide, so that it's remotely skillful and increases skill floor drastically to help end games.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
@james888 which is why comp. games go crag? Shift is majority because it was so good back a few patches ago, and we all went shift in pubs. We haven't broken out of that habit yet (I know I haven't). When I comm aliens, if I go shift no one says anything. If I want to go crag and god forbid shade hive, I always ask my team because they whine so much when I go crag and they positively scream when I go shade first.
There was a time where the compmod regen was really strong, with 8% hp regen per tick compared to the 4% in vanilla. Especially lerks would tear up marines in the early game. At that time it would have been silly to not go crag first for compmod games. Teams started doing triple lerk strategies etc. But because it was OP it has been nerfed again to 7% hp/tick (with a 2 sec timer), while vanilla buffed regen to 6% hp/tick in build 268 to make it more viable. So the difference between compmod regen and vanilla is rather small actually.
If shift hive first is still standard in most pub games, maybe people have not yet fully realized it's potential, because going from 4% to 6% is a significant buff. And not only for higher lifeforms: even for skulks, regen can nullify any chip damage you take, making you especially annoying when resbiting.
There was a time where the compmod regen was really strong, with 8% hp regen per tick compared to the 4% in vanilla. Especially lerks would tear up marines in the early game. At that time it would have been silly to not go crag first for compmod games. Teams started doing triple lerk strategies etc. But because it was OP it has been nerfed again to 7% hp/tick (with a 2 sec timer), while vanilla buffed regen to 6% hp/tick in build 268 to make it more viable. So the difference between compmod regen and vanilla is rather small actually.
If shift hive first is still standard in most pub games, maybe people have not yet fully realized it's potential, because going from 4% to 6% is a significant buff. And not only for higher lifeforms: even for skulks, regen can nullify any chip damage you take, making you especially annoying when resbiting.
Ehhh, I still prefer celerity when it comes to skulks. Lets you move around the map faster and gives marines a lot less time to shoot you accurately (closes distance much more quickly and harder for marines to shoot at PB)
There was a time where the compmod regen was really strong, with 8% hp regen per tick compared to the 4% in vanilla. Especially lerks would tear up marines in the early game. At that time it would have been silly to not go crag first for compmod games. Teams started doing triple lerk strategies etc. But because it was OP it has been nerfed again to 7% hp/tick (with a 2 sec timer), while vanilla buffed regen to 6% hp/tick in build 268 to make it more viable. So the difference between compmod regen and vanilla is rather small actually.
If shift hive first is still standard in most pub games, maybe people have not yet fully realized it's potential, because going from 4% to 6% is a significant buff. And not only for higher lifeforms: even for skulks, regen can nullify any chip damage you take, making you especially annoying when resbiting.
Ehhh, I still prefer celerity when it comes to skulks. Lets you move around the map faster and gives marines a lot less time to shoot you accurately (closes distance much more quickly and harder for marines to shoot at PB)
... all very true for pubs. When you get marines who can actually aim, you need every hp you can lay your hands on, which is partly why crag is still the current meta in comp play (although several teams have been playing around with other starts sometimes with good results, to be fair).
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
@James888 and @Neoken I didn't realize the compmod changes and the vanilla changes to regen (I always felt regen was slow in pubs). I will have to try crag sometime. Though past experience; both as comm and player is: I have never won a game with a crag start in 268 (havn't been playing 269 as I am o/s atm).
@James888 and @Neoken I didn't realize the compmod changes and the vanilla changes to regen (I always felt regen was slow in pubs). I will have to try crag sometime. Though past experience; both as comm and player is: I have never won a game with a crag start in 268 (havn't been playing 269 as I am o/s atm).
Anecdotal evidence is only so good because I just had to crag games where crag hive won both times.
@James888 and @Neoken I didn't realize the compmod changes and the vanilla changes to regen (I always felt regen was slow in pubs). I will have to try crag sometime. Though past experience; both as comm and player is: I have never won a game with a crag start in 268 (havn't been playing 269 as I am o/s atm).
Anecdotal evidence is only so good because I just had to crag games where crag hive won both times.
Try the Australian servers where every player is in comp (except me :-) where if you are marine your aim is godly, if you are Kharaa, your movement is erratic. I am a flying lead skulk brick or a can of tin food in marine armor.
@James888 and @Neoken I didn't realize the compmod changes and the vanilla changes to regen (I always felt regen was slow in pubs). I will have to try crag sometime. Though past experience; both as comm and player is: I have never won a game with a crag start in 268 (havn't been playing 269 as I am o/s atm).
Anecdotal evidence is only so good because I just had to crag games where crag hive won both times.
I don't think any of us can argue the best chamber for the individual. You may want to do more harassing or you may want to get somewhere far away and/or close distance to melee. If a team knew what they were strong with or what strat they wanted, then the chamber would be easy to decide.
So are we talking about comp? Pub? Pug? Player numbers?
Edit - arguing over these two chambers is a good thing tbh. It shows they are both viable... shade now.. anything that can nullify an upgrade is a no-no for me (obs or scan eliminating camo... I guess nerve gas sorta cancels out cara, in a way..).
Dammit, I lost my train of thought there... butter is kicking in...
The power of the shade hive is not camo!
The real power is aura lerks and hallucination pack play. Ink is great if marines decide to arc rush but that is very rare. If you don't have good pack play, hallucination is less useful but still a distraction and bullet sink (same job as carapace to an extent).
Pubs still have phantom, which quite frankly is op in the hands of a half decent player, because it allows you to sneak quickly and silently into hard to spot places from which to launch your silent attack. The trouble is that it's also a noob trap for floor skulks who think they're invisible.
Crag is brute force, Shift is finesse, whilst Shade is the odd child no one wants to see because of the ugly nose.
Shift and Crag are in a good place atm, Shade needs i feel a complete overhaul, or everything else changed around it to make it more viable. Something wild like replacing camoflage with focus, etc.
Regarding pubs, i don't get why this is such a difficult to comprehend to everyone, shift(celerity) makes you faster, thus all those skulks that for whatever reason are slow(ie. dont know how to play the game or are handicapped by bad hardware), will have much easier time all game long. And that carries to other lifeforms as well.
That does not mean those who are good at the game should always go crag first either, shift is also viable you just need the 2nd hive in most cases to win, where as with crag you can do almost the same things with just 1 hive. Where as with Shade first, you need to snowball from your first engagements and get a huge lead, cause it's almost impossible to come back from a bad start with shade hive.
@James888 and @Neoken I didn't realize the compmod changes and the vanilla changes to regen (I always felt regen was slow in pubs). I will have to try crag sometime. Though past experience; both as comm and player is: I have never won a game with a crag start in 268 (havn't been playing 269 as I am o/s atm).
Anecdotal evidence is only so good because I just had to crag games where crag hive won both times.
So are we talking about comp? Pub? Pug? Player numbers?
Edit - arguing over these two chambers is a good thing tbh. It shows they are both viable... shade now.. anything that can nullify an upgrade is a no-no for me (obs or scan eliminating camo... I guess nerve gas sorta cancels out cara, in a way..).
I started the thread with the intention of pub play as that is where celerity is nearly always chosen. I do not know about comp play. If you were asking about the game where we had crag it was a very high level 8v8 pub.
They are both viable on paper but to beat a dead horse, shift hive is nearly always chosen.
If only aliens had 3 upgrade options per hive type...
What would you have the 3rd shift/crag abilities be?
I can't think of anything that wouldnt be OP or make the others redundant...
Crag:
Clog Armor: Can only take a certain ammount of damage at a time per source (same idea as clogs), no additonal effects.
-- Defense against shotguns, mines and GLs, no additional benefit against anything else, i.e. rifles. (no extra armor or regen)
Shift:
Move silence to shift, its a movement ability anyway...right?
Shade:
(this is a hard one)
Displacement: Sounds made by the lifeform with the upgrade come from a random direction away from the actual location
-- Causes disorientation in a game that heavily relies on hearing.
-or-
Illusion: When a lifeoform reaches 50% HP, a single hallucination is created (not feign death...never again)
-- Allows for escapes and keeps in line with other shade abilities.
Displacement: Sounds made by the lifeform with the upgrade come from a random direction away from the actual location
-- Causes disorientation in a game that heavily relies on hearing.
This is not really a good idea - after all, you don't want to punish players who actually use all their senses in the game, right? It's a skill that should be reliable and worth it.
true, I honestly was having issues trying to find a viable shade ability, and this one just came off the of of my head
Also, this is why I really wish silence were its own upgrade. people tend to focus on the cloak part phantom, and not the amazingly strong silence part.
I would love to see a third upgrade for each hive type and avoid bringing back bad/boring mechanics.
true, I honestly was having issues trying to find a viable shade ability, and this one just came off the of of my head
Also, this is why I really wish silence were its own upgrade. people tend to focus on the cloak part phantom, and not the amazingly strong silence part.
I would love to see a third upgrade for each hive type and avoid bringing back bad/boring mechanics.
Cloak by itself was not strong enough though, and fits well with the current tech tree. Silence was always great but by itself, aura was usually the better choice in my opinion.
The power of the shade hive is not camo!
The real power is aura lerks and hallucination pack play. Ink is great if marines decide to arc rush but that is very rare. If you don't have good pack play, hallucination is less useful but still a distraction and bullet sink (same job as carapace to an extent).
Pubs still have phantom, which quite frankly is op in the hands of a half decent player, because it allows you to sneak quickly and silently into hard to spot places from which to launch your silent attack. The trouble is that it's also a noob trap for floor skulks who think they're invisible.
Scan and obs can reveal the silent life form. But I'm playing devil's advocate. Aura and phantom are very useful. Rush a base and use phantom and it looks like a shit storm lol
Edit - err take phantom n replace it with hallucination lol fail for me
Phantom with skulk is tremendously fun, as well as onos+phantom to mess around with, and I almost always go lerk upgrades or not, and I like to play lerk by quickly going in, going out while the marine takes damage from poison, and then going back in and finishing the marine off. Aura is usefull for this as you can keep track of the marines health and what marine I got the poison on better, and it also allows me to target low health marines, or if one is running away, I can notice that, and if he has really low health I can spike him down quickly.
Gets pretty tricky when Sgs and higher weapons are up for me though, but useally ive already made a decent impact on the game by harrasing marines, or protecting a certain base.
On paper every hive sounds great. Shade hive on paper sounds like it would be the most OP, but in practice is the weakest for a number of reasons. It has a high skill floor to be useful being one major one. Another that it is easily countered. So the contrast of how it sounds on paper to how it works in practice is large. Alternatively shift hive is strong on paper and strong in practice for numerous reasons talked about in this thread.
Does hive variety affect the games fun-ness and playability? Or are players in general satisfied to have only one tech path used for the majority games?
Does hive variety affect the games fun-ness and playability? Or are players in general satisfied to have only one tech path used for the majority games?
Yeah, its very boring shift every game, but you get used to it. Kind of like older exosuits, sure its an option but youll rarley see it because its not great compared to the other options. (Personally it was worse with exosuits imo as its unfortunate to be able to have a giant mech but rarley have one as they arn't that great) But yeah especially with shade hive since, as said in my previous post, I love to play with shade hive upgrades.
I think the solution would be to buff shade hive some.
Some ideas - On 3 veils, It gives aliens complete invisibilty, but when moving there is a considerable amount of blurring, but flashlight will make the completely still alien blur a little bit, enough so that if you were looking carfully you could see it.
Thinking behind this is that it would allow skulk lifeforms to be able to hold an area and ambush very effectively, making it harder for marines to move in. Pretty much same thing as before but better at it.
- Any marine killed by an alien with phantom will not have the yell sound, and the player would be muted in voice chat, and kill wont show on killfeed to marine team. (Maybe even body disapering quicker?)
This is a bit of a niche situation, but my thinking is that this would allow a skulk to sneak up on some marines, take a guy down quickly and then move to the next guy. Kinda like your eternal reward from tf2, the point is alowing you to kill a guy and the team wont even notice that hes going in alone. The reason for muting voice chat is that so a dead guy with a mike couldnt just alert the team quickly and everyone just turns around and shoots you. He can still type chat though, the time it would take for the team to react would be so little, and he can still comunicate with his team.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Some fun new upgrades for aliens:
From Shell (Crag Hive):
Bonecrusher - Your attacks deal additional damage. (Designed for the assassin aliens who sacrifice defense for killing power.)
From Spur (Shift Hive):
Revival - Upon death, you are refunded a percentage of the cost of your current lifeform. You also respawn faster. (For the flashy cannon fodders.)
From Veil (Shade Hive):
Gremlin: You no longer trigger Mines, Grenades, Sentries. (A hyper aggressive Shade upgrade, unlike Phantom and Aura.)
Crag- Onospawn - each player can turn into an onos at will for a limited time of 6 seconds with a 6 second cooldown. Also every footstep generates a bile splash
Shift - Lerkbane - players can all fly like lerks, no matter the life form
Shade - Every time you land a bite, you spawn 5 fade ghosts to do more damage for you
From Shell (Crag Hive):
Bonecrusher - Your attacks deal additional damage. (Designed for the assassin aliens who sacrifice defense for killing power.)
From Spur (Shift Hive):
Revival - Upon death, you are refunded a percentage of the cost of your current lifeform. You also respawn faster. (For the flashy cannon fodders.)
From Veil (Shade Hive):
Gremlin: You no longer trigger Mines, Grenades, Sentries. (A hyper aggressive Shade upgrade, unlike Phantom and Aura.)
These aren't half bad ideas because they give a different perspective to the different upgrades. Currently Crag hive = defense (no choice for other players with a different play style), so I think its worth a try.
Comments
BTW Caparace does help Skulks against Sentries significantly. Now only if Sentries weren't so inaccurate at long range... Even Skulks without any upgrades can currently charge straight past a cluster of Sentries and survive.
Anything can potentially be OP, if the numbers and minor details are off.
Remember when Fades, Celerity and Gas Grenades were OP? Were they all removed from the game?
Perhaps as a tier 3 upgrade to help end games and replace xenocide, so that it's remotely skillful and increases skill floor drastically to help end games.
If shift hive first is still standard in most pub games, maybe people have not yet fully realized it's potential, because going from 4% to 6% is a significant buff. And not only for higher lifeforms: even for skulks, regen can nullify any chip damage you take, making you especially annoying when resbiting.
Ehhh, I still prefer celerity when it comes to skulks. Lets you move around the map faster and gives marines a lot less time to shoot you accurately (closes distance much more quickly and harder for marines to shoot at PB)
... all very true for pubs. When you get marines who can actually aim, you need every hp you can lay your hands on, which is partly why crag is still the current meta in comp play (although several teams have been playing around with other starts sometimes with good results, to be fair).
Anecdotal evidence is only so good because I just had to crag games where crag hive won both times.
Try the Australian servers where every player is in comp (except me :-) where if you are marine your aim is godly, if you are Kharaa, your movement is erratic. I am a flying lead skulk brick or a can of tin food in marine armor.
I don't think any of us can argue the best chamber for the individual. You may want to do more harassing or you may want to get somewhere far away and/or close distance to melee. If a team knew what they were strong with or what strat they wanted, then the chamber would be easy to decide.
So are we talking about comp? Pub? Pug? Player numbers?
Edit - arguing over these two chambers is a good thing tbh. It shows they are both viable... shade now.. anything that can nullify an upgrade is a no-no for me (obs or scan eliminating camo... I guess nerve gas sorta cancels out cara, in a way..).
Dammit, I lost my train of thought there... butter is kicking in...
The real power is aura lerks and hallucination pack play. Ink is great if marines decide to arc rush but that is very rare. If you don't have good pack play, hallucination is less useful but still a distraction and bullet sink (same job as carapace to an extent).
Pubs still have phantom, which quite frankly is op in the hands of a half decent player, because it allows you to sneak quickly and silently into hard to spot places from which to launch your silent attack. The trouble is that it's also a noob trap for floor skulks who think they're invisible.
Shift and Crag are in a good place atm, Shade needs i feel a complete overhaul, or everything else changed around it to make it more viable. Something wild like replacing camoflage with focus, etc.
Regarding pubs, i don't get why this is such a difficult to comprehend to everyone, shift(celerity) makes you faster, thus all those skulks that for whatever reason are slow(ie. dont know how to play the game or are handicapped by bad hardware), will have much easier time all game long. And that carries to other lifeforms as well.
That does not mean those who are good at the game should always go crag first either, shift is also viable you just need the 2nd hive in most cases to win, where as with crag you can do almost the same things with just 1 hive. Where as with Shade first, you need to snowball from your first engagements and get a huge lead, cause it's almost impossible to come back from a bad start with shade hive.
What would you have the 3rd shift/crag abilities be?
I can't think of anything that wouldnt be OP or make the others redundant...
I started the thread with the intention of pub play as that is where celerity is nearly always chosen. I do not know about comp play. If you were asking about the game where we had crag it was a very high level 8v8 pub.
They are both viable on paper but to beat a dead horse, shift hive is nearly always chosen.
Crag:
Clog Armor: Can only take a certain ammount of damage at a time per source (same idea as clogs), no additonal effects.
-- Defense against shotguns, mines and GLs, no additional benefit against anything else, i.e. rifles. (no extra armor or regen)
Shift:
Move silence to shift, its a movement ability anyway...right?
Shade:
(this is a hard one)
Displacement: Sounds made by the lifeform with the upgrade come from a random direction away from the actual location
-- Causes disorientation in a game that heavily relies on hearing.
-or-
Illusion: When a lifeoform reaches 50% HP, a single hallucination is created (not feign death...never again)
-- Allows for escapes and keeps in line with other shade abilities.
This is not really a good idea - after all, you don't want to punish players who actually use all their senses in the game, right? It's a skill that should be reliable and worth it.
true, I honestly was having issues trying to find a viable shade ability, and this one just came off the of of my head
Also, this is why I really wish silence were its own upgrade. people tend to focus on the cloak part phantom, and not the amazingly strong silence part.
I would love to see a third upgrade for each hive type and avoid bringing back bad/boring mechanics.
Imagine Silence and aura! now THOSE are some good upgrades
Scan and obs can reveal the silent life form. But I'm playing devil's advocate. Aura and phantom are very useful. Rush a base and use phantom and it looks like a shit storm lol
Edit - err take phantom n replace it with hallucination lol fail for me
Phantom with skulk is tremendously fun, as well as onos+phantom to mess around with, and I almost always go lerk upgrades or not, and I like to play lerk by quickly going in, going out while the marine takes damage from poison, and then going back in and finishing the marine off. Aura is usefull for this as you can keep track of the marines health and what marine I got the poison on better, and it also allows me to target low health marines, or if one is running away, I can notice that, and if he has really low health I can spike him down quickly.
Gets pretty tricky when Sgs and higher weapons are up for me though, but useally ive already made a decent impact on the game by harrasing marines, or protecting a certain base.
Does hive variety affect the games fun-ness and playability? Or are players in general satisfied to have only one tech path used for the majority games?
Yeah, its very boring shift every game, but you get used to it. Kind of like older exosuits, sure its an option but youll rarley see it because its not great compared to the other options. (Personally it was worse with exosuits imo as its unfortunate to be able to have a giant mech but rarley have one as they arn't that great) But yeah especially with shade hive since, as said in my previous post, I love to play with shade hive upgrades.
I think the solution would be to buff shade hive some.
Some ideas - On 3 veils, It gives aliens complete invisibilty, but when moving there is a considerable amount of blurring, but flashlight will make the completely still alien blur a little bit, enough so that if you were looking carfully you could see it.
Thinking behind this is that it would allow skulk lifeforms to be able to hold an area and ambush very effectively, making it harder for marines to move in. Pretty much same thing as before but better at it.
- Any marine killed by an alien with phantom will not have the yell sound, and the player would be muted in voice chat, and kill wont show on killfeed to marine team. (Maybe even body disapering quicker?)
This is a bit of a niche situation, but my thinking is that this would allow a skulk to sneak up on some marines, take a guy down quickly and then move to the next guy. Kinda like your eternal reward from tf2, the point is alowing you to kill a guy and the team wont even notice that hes going in alone. The reason for muting voice chat is that so a dead guy with a mike couldnt just alert the team quickly and everyone just turns around and shoots you. He can still type chat though, the time it would take for the team to react would be so little, and he can still comunicate with his team.
From Shell (Crag Hive):
Bonecrusher - Your attacks deal additional damage. (Designed for the assassin aliens who sacrifice defense for killing power.)
From Spur (Shift Hive):
Revival - Upon death, you are refunded a percentage of the cost of your current lifeform. You also respawn faster. (For the flashy cannon fodders.)
From Veil (Shade Hive):
Gremlin: You no longer trigger Mines, Grenades, Sentries. (A hyper aggressive Shade upgrade, unlike Phantom and Aura.)
Crag- Onospawn - each player can turn into an onos at will for a limited time of 6 seconds with a 6 second cooldown. Also every footstep generates a bile splash
Shift - Lerkbane - players can all fly like lerks, no matter the life form
Shade - Every time you land a bite, you spawn 5 fade ghosts to do more damage for you
These aren't half bad ideas because they give a different perspective to the different upgrades. Currently Crag hive = defense (no choice for other players with a different play style), so I think its worth a try.