Can you think of any features that could be removed?
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The Lighter Side of Pessimism Join Date: 2002-03-02 Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
The Lighter Side of Pessimism Join Date: 2002-03-02 Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
A decent number of us have ideas for new features in NS2. But can you think of any features that don't really need to be there?
Maybe they:
To get things started:
Rupture - 2 tres to explode a blob of goo that obscures marine vision for a couple of seconds. But only if they happen to be looking at it. It seems a bit too situational and require too much careful placement to be worthwhile.
Maybe they:
- are under/overpowered
- are awkward to use
- duplicate some other feature
- just don't get used much
- etc.
To get things started:
Rupture - 2 tres to explode a blob of goo that obscures marine vision for a couple of seconds. But only if they happen to be looking at it. It seems a bit too situational and require too much careful placement to be worthwhile.
Comments
I also think drifters need rework. Back in the day, when they had passive cloak and only enzyme, I used them all the time both for vision and enzyme. Now they are just busy building structures all the time. Meaning the commander no longer actually uses them on the field.
This is why nobody likes commanding aliens. While marine commanding you're actually an important asset in engagements.
I do think it's good that marines can punish rapid expanding aliens, by killing their drifters while they are building rts or slowing down their hive expansions. That 8 extra squishy res can often make a big difference.
But I think the whole alien commanding role would be a lot more interesting, if the drifters weren't such a big requirement in expansion and instead could be used to cast enzyme, mucous or clones during engagements.
Right now, it's usually too expensive to build a dedicated drifter for casting, unless you're already way ahead. So maybe cutting down the price a little would also be a viable solution. Bump the harvester price to compensate.
Frankly, I'd go the other way, and untie enzyme/mucous/hallucinations from drifters entirely. It would turn the drifter into a mostly-worker unit with some scouting thrown in. (Passive, sentry like scouting though; you can place a shade somewhere, put a drifter next to it, then forget about them until your minimap shows something.)
That would probably require some rebalancing, though; making the abilities a little more costly and removing the ability to cast hallucination when no aliens are around should do it, imo.
They are too adorable to be removed.
One of the more terrible ideas so far: Give hallus a cooldown and let them spawn 2 skulks out of nowhere.
One of the "we make something op and unfun to play, so we have to rebalance other things for that" ideas.
Because it is good for alien comms to be able to put marines into an engagement without having any aliens nearby right? And because it is fun to watch the timer go down slooooowlyyyyy to use it again right? And because the change was very much needed right?
Oh god, how could we even play without the cooldowns.
You could remove all of the following with no other changes and have a minimal impact on gameplay:
- Power surge
- Nano Shield
- Catpacks
- flamethrowers
- Grenade Launchers
- MG's
- Advanced Armory
- Exo's
- Arcs
- Macs
- Turrets
- Robo Factory
- Marine axe
- Marine rifle bash
- Powernodes
- Bonesheild
- Rupture
- Drifter abilities
- Shade hive
- Crush upgrade
- Gorge webs
- Gorge Babblers
- Skulk Leap
- Skulk Xenocide
- Lerk Spores
- Lerk Umbra
- Fade Advanced Metabolize
- Fade Stab
- Onos Bone shield
- Onos Stomp
- Infestation
I am sure there are more I can't think of at the moment.For the record, I find rupture invaluable. It is a great support ability. Use it before your aliens arrive to protect a harvester. Then they have wallhacks. The strength of rupture is not in the vision obscuring but the AOE parasite effect.
Wait, what?
I will refer to the OP.
If you are getting worked up about a few things from my list, then you missed my point. My point was that the line of thought this thread is bringing us on can lead to unexpected results. Just because say leap, exo's babblers, or rifle bash don't need to be there doesn't mean we should get rid of them. There are so many features in NS2 that don't need to be there. That is not a reason by itself to remove them.
now before I get killed here:
I think those upgrades are OP as hell because marines need them everytime to be able to win. They are so OP that the game has been balanced around those upgrades.
The meta evolved around those upgrades. They are just the core of marine tech and without them nothing will work correctly (unless cheese).
This is the exact reason why I want to see them removed.
NS3: Command-line.
You could say removing all of those things would remove some of the RTS tech tree mechanics. Those mechanics are not really there though. Certain tech paths are so much better than other tech paths, there is only really one tech path.
That's actually a nice point. I wish we could make marine upgrades more individual, and more unique than just "more damage", "more armor".
The most core balance element is aliens getting access to stronger lifeforms.
Marine upgrades is the counter to that so if you want to remove it you absolutely need to replace it with something else with the same goal, counter Kharaa power creep.
An idea I have is different types of ammo. Can be researched by com and carried around by players with a limit say max 2 special mag per player, when they die it drops on the floor.
Could use right mouse button to cycle through ammo types if you get rid of rifle bash that is which I think you should (glitching an animation to get a faster reload is not a healthy mechanic).
Some ammo types ideas:
-standard, normal damage no special effect, FREE
-cryogenic , low damage but crippling bullet
-electrical, low damage but first target gets a short stun , plus nearby targets gets a small area of effect damage (electric arc stuff)
-explosive , high damage plus aoe damage
-fire , normal damage plus damage over time that denies regen
-piercing, normal damage and passes through several targets with gradually decreasing damage
-heavy , normal damage but bypass a percentage of armor
That would add new strategy and more teamplay and also customizability which many people like
like "oh there's a gorge baricade, commander drop me explosive ammo" kinda thing ya know
In general different ammo types would be nice, but removing upgrades is non sense. More different passive upgrades however would be cool, to have more to choose from.
It's not for realism tho, it's about pressing the R key being more a conscious choice with advantages and tradeoffs and less automatic.
It would be more accurate to say, that it's a dangerous game to take out of the sandbox without carefully considering the merits of removing a given feature. But feature creep is a thing and NS2 could do with reducing the number of "wrong" decisions available to players (commanders).
Not what I meant. What I meant is that you prefaced that list literally with the line
http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Hand_Grenades
However they need to be purchased by the marine at an armoury.
As you know, i've brought this exact argument up many times in the past. In fact, i'm pretty sure I was the one who convinced you about it XD
Yeah, I really do with there were alternates to "weapon damage" or "armour buff"... movement speed, reload speed, night vision/infravision goggles, riot shields, more weapon types for functionality, reduced spread etc. it would make the game more varied and allow people to find "their" style of play.
This doesn't add any depth, it would be solely a balance change that makes ammo cost more Tres basically.
The com would only marginaly have to drop more ammo pack; once people understood that they must adjust when to use reload that is.
Can you explain how does this somehow rule out adding depth? It doesn't.
Exo's, arcs, skulk leap, and onos stomp are all strong and useful. Onos boneshield is not really all that strong anymore but still useful. All of them could be outright removed and the game balanced would not suffer. A few of those are late game tech that is not seen very often. Exo's are late game tech, but even those are seen more often than stomp. None of those are necessary in the game and could be removed as the OP asked. I may have been a little careless by including power nodes and infestation. Those could not simply be removed like the others. Still though, they are not necessary. If you really think about what could be removed, you realize nearly everything can be fairly easily.
This is entirely besides the point though. Just because they could be removed does not mean they should be just because they can be removed. You need far greater justification than that.
Onos boneshield not that strong anymore? I think this is going too far the other way. Not sure how you came to that conclusion.
I think the purpose here is to remove features that contribute to bloat, especially useless abilities like stab.