As to tech points? Nooooo! The NS1 fan boy in me still thinks that marines should be able to but a CC in nano and that it should be 1/4 the size. Now your suggesting rines need 2 CCs and they have to be in tech rooms.....
What gets me is the lack of teamwork when trying to kill an exo, how often an exo goes unparasited. Onos hits the field and marines will run to pinch and respond heavily to take down the onos. But a exo? I hear "exos are out" and then nothing Not until they are hammering the base. Parasite is so powerful against exo allowing proper ambushes before they get into position.
At the very least do an economy sweep an kill all their RTs. If Wob is in a parasites exo then the entire rest of the map is open(force even teams with a 5k player means your better then his team)? Have an onos tease him so he can't aggress and sweep the map.
What gets me is the lack of teamwork when trying to kill an exo... Onos hits the field and marines will run to pinch
That's because they're not like an Oni at all?
An Onos can catch a slow marine out of position easily and its over, and then run away.
An Exo cannot always catch a fast moving alien out of position, and if they do the alien can typically outpace/outmaneuver/outrun them.
Also consider the time it takes to kill both of those, as it affects the perceived threat level.
A fully armored 40 pres Exo takes 5.5 sec to be destroyed by 1 free skulk (1.8 sec if 3 skulks) while a fully armored Onos takes 17.5 sec to be destroyed by a marine W3 rifle.
This isn't even accounting for the fact that aliens have a cheap and almost always available weapon that is designed and tweaked to wreck havoc on exos, (Bile bomb) - while there exists no equivalent weapon for marines to combat Oni. (JP is arguably anti alien as it closes the mobility gap and is room dependent, yet offers no difference in TTK)
Besides a large TTK difference, there's also the speed. Any alien can outpace an Exo, whereas only JP marines can outpace an Onos for a time.
So overall, it just requires far less teamwork in order to down an Exo, comparatively.
The exception is the infamous hallway Exo that at least requires clever map navigation.
When I see a few Exos on the field I think "Ok, time to sweep the res, hit the base, clean up non exos, inform gorges to get BB ready. We got this."
When I see mass Exos on the field I think "Ha! Bold move Cotton..."
When I see a few Oni on the field I think "Coordinate with team to pinch one, ensure gates are covered, keep the scans up."
When I see mass Oni on the field I think "GG."
Wow. Way to miss the point. He is just saying that players don't attempt to coordinate against exos whereas they do for onos. All Max is asking for is a parasite. Not to rush the exo to get him down, but so as to.
I've said this before multiple times, but I'll say it again because I think it helps establish common ground between the opposing camps that Nordic pointed out:
I've seen it said for many years now that public game data cannot be reliably used as a metric. I humbly disagree and feel this is naive and akin to putting blinders on. When designing for a game involving varying skill ranges, at a minimum you must account for two things
What CAN happen (skill ceiling)
What WILL happen (average, and potentially a major percentage of your playerbase)
If those two factors have a large gap between them in terms of frequency of occurrence - often due to very high skill ceilings - then failing to account for both, will bring negative outcomes.
Ignoring the first one creates exploitable scenarios for the more skilled, generally creating unenjoyable experiences for the masses who cannot compete, and often widening the skill gap, sometimes just through uncommunicated game knowledge or unintended interactions.
Ignoring the second one is often ignoring the strong majority of player experiences. So what if player A can do X, Y, and Z if 99% of your customers cannot? What if X,Y, and Z are the meat and potatoes of your design, does that mean your design is doomed to apply only to those few players?
You must account for both data sets, imho.
With that being said, that data I pulled from was not exclusively pub games @The_Welsh_Wizard , that is from all NS2+ games.
I realize that's not ideal because it's not isolating comp from pub, but it's worth noting nonetheless.
Unless the "average" has a high variance, in which case a large "gap" (though now inappropriate to call it as such) would indicate an excellent game skill-wise.
Actually IronHorse is making my point. People (in this case IronHorse) don't really worry about exos. This is relevant because this is a thread about railgun, and many people are saying they are "OP" in certain hands. Maybe the issue is that they are not being given the "respect" they deserve and that people should work together to kill them.
A rail exo will pop a gorge/skulk/lerk/fade.... maybe people should paracite them so that lerk/fade can get a little heads up! If rines could tag an onos you know they would.
All Max is asking for is a parasite. Not to rush the exo to get him down, but so as to.
Seems you didn't fully read his comment, or the quote I provided that specifically stated
"What gets me is the lack of teamwork when trying to kill an exo"
How did max get my point but no one else did?
I was simply supplying the reasoning why people don't coordinate to take down exos as much as Oni, since that was pretty relevant to the quoted text. I don't disagree with his call for more parasites obviously, or anything else he said.
All Max is asking for is a parasite. Not to rush the exo to get him down, but so as to.
Seems you didn't fully read his comment, or the quote I provided that specifically stated
"What gets me is the lack of teamwork when trying to kill an exo"
How did max get my point but no one else did?
I was simply supplying the reasoning why people don't coordinate to take down exos as much as Oni, since that was pretty relevant to the quoted text. I don't disagree with his call for more parasites obviously, or anything else he said.
Some of you need to chill out..
I'm not the one who omitted the rest of the post to build a strawman, which was my point.
And your point? I'm pretty sure you are demonstrating his point, not explaining it. You may agree with him, but I'm not sure he agrees with you.
It's much easier to deal with exos when they're parasited. Parasites are trivially easy to get on exos. You need to be more careful if it's a railgun is all. Once you know where the exo is you can generally respond by pushing their base if the exos are at yours, or ripping their RTs when the exos aren't. Once they beacon, clear the exos. This requires a LOT of teamwork. This isn't the only way to deal with it, but it's probably the best percentage play in general.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
It's not as good as telling them to position themselves near the onos' exit, but it generally works against most onoses. The problem is when people target different lifeforms, allowing the onos to tank 3 clips of rifle, survive, and have all the marines get mopped up.
The amount of coordination in what is described in the first paragraph is a lot harder. Also, whilst the TTK an onos is higher, they're also almost impossible to miss and you can hit them many times before they hit you. By contrast, the exo can fire at you for some time before you get to it - and it doesn't need to be camping a hallway the entire game to do that.
It's correct to say that you can solo an exo in a way that is much more difficult to do with an onos, but an onos is also 17 res more expensive and the marines generally have more resources anyway.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
And that's still too difficult for most people
I actually find that if I say it on mic, most people do it. It's when you don't make it explicit that they begin shooting the walls, because, afterall, that is where the aliens come from.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
And that's still too difficult for most people
I actually find that if I say it on mic, most people do it. It's when you don't make it explicit that they begin shooting the walls, because, afterall, that is where the aliens come from.
But then aliens come with 2 oni and youre fucked again.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
And that's still too difficult for most people
I actually find that if I say it on mic, most people do it. It's when you don't make it explicit that they begin shooting the walls, because, afterall, that is where the aliens come from.
But then aliens come with 2 oni and youre fucked again.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
And that's still too difficult for most people
I actually find that if I say it on mic, most people do it. It's when you don't make it explicit that they begin shooting the walls, because, afterall, that is where the aliens come from.
But then aliens come with 2 oni and youre fucked again.
When playing NS2 on the reg, it's a relief to get fucked, whether you're wearing protection (a3) or not.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
And that's still too difficult for most people
I actually find that if I say it on mic, most people do it. It's when you don't make it explicit that they begin shooting the walls, because, afterall, that is where the aliens come from.
But then aliens come with 2 oni and youre fucked again.
Dont forget that lerks only cost 18 res. with the current 1.25 pres tick rate they are literally at no charge. exos cost 45 pres each. so there should be of course a gap in way of power and impact
TIL that Railgun Exos can charge their shots... yeah that would have been nice to know. I must have missed that somehow. Was wondering why anyone in their right mind would use a railgun exo...
Comments
It was how it was in NS1, and how it was returned to in NS2. So gameplay and lore together I'd say it's a core ideology.
What gets me is the lack of teamwork when trying to kill an exo, how often an exo goes unparasited. Onos hits the field and marines will run to pinch and respond heavily to take down the onos. But a exo? I hear "exos are out" and then nothing Not until they are hammering the base. Parasite is so powerful against exo allowing proper ambushes before they get into position.
At the very least do an economy sweep an kill all their RTs. If Wob is in a parasites exo then the entire rest of the map is open(force even teams with a 5k player means your better then his team)? Have an onos tease him so he can't aggress and sweep the map.
An Onos can catch a slow marine out of position easily and its over, and then run away.
An Exo cannot always catch a fast moving alien out of position, and if they do the alien can typically outpace/outmaneuver/outrun them.
Also consider the time it takes to kill both of those, as it affects the perceived threat level.
A fully armored 40 pres Exo takes 5.5 sec to be destroyed by 1 free skulk (1.8 sec if 3 skulks) while a fully armored Onos takes 17.5 sec to be destroyed by a marine W3 rifle.
This isn't even accounting for the fact that aliens have a cheap and almost always available weapon that is designed and tweaked to wreck havoc on exos, (Bile bomb) - while there exists no equivalent weapon for marines to combat Oni. (JP is arguably anti alien as it closes the mobility gap and is room dependent, yet offers no difference in TTK)
Besides a large TTK difference, there's also the speed. Any alien can outpace an Exo, whereas only JP marines can outpace an Onos for a time.
So overall, it just requires far less teamwork in order to down an Exo, comparatively.
The exception is the infamous hallway Exo that at least requires clever map navigation.
When I see a few Exos on the field I think "Ok, time to sweep the res, hit the base, clean up non exos, inform gorges to get BB ready. We got this."
When I see mass Exos on the field I think "Ha! Bold move Cotton..."
When I see a few Oni on the field I think "Coordinate with team to pinch one, ensure gates are covered, keep the scans up."
When I see mass Oni on the field I think "GG."
Unless the "average" has a high variance, in which case a large "gap" (though now inappropriate to call it as such) would indicate an excellent game skill-wise.
A rail exo will pop a gorge/skulk/lerk/fade.... maybe people should paracite them so that lerk/fade can get a little heads up! If rines could tag an onos you know they would.
They should be skinned as clowns... who the hell's not afraid of clowns?
"What gets me is the lack of teamwork when trying to kill an exo"
How did max get my point but no one else did?
I was simply supplying the reasoning why people don't coordinate to take down exos as much as Oni, since that was pretty relevant to the quoted text. I don't disagree with his call for more parasites obviously, or anything else he said.
Some of you need to chill out..
I'm not the one who omitted the rest of the post to build a strawman, which was my point.
And your point? I'm pretty sure you are demonstrating his point, not explaining it. You may agree with him, but I'm not sure he agrees with you.
A bunch of marines shooting at the big monster in the room requires this,
"everybody shoot the onos and when he runs, push him."
It's not as good as telling them to position themselves near the onos' exit, but it generally works against most onoses. The problem is when people target different lifeforms, allowing the onos to tank 3 clips of rifle, survive, and have all the marines get mopped up.
The amount of coordination in what is described in the first paragraph is a lot harder. Also, whilst the TTK an onos is higher, they're also almost impossible to miss and you can hit them many times before they hit you. By contrast, the exo can fire at you for some time before you get to it - and it doesn't need to be camping a hallway the entire game to do that.
It's correct to say that you can solo an exo in a way that is much more difficult to do with an onos, but an onos is also 17 res more expensive and the marines generally have more resources anyway.
And that's still too difficult for most people
But.. but... THERE ARE CYSTS ON THE FLOOR! OOOH THE HORROR!
Fact: Cysts can instakill you if you dont look at them. Never turn your back on them.
@Vetinari Is someone getting this game confused with Prey?
Nope, but now that you mention it, a gloo gun would be really damn useful against fades.
I actually find that if I say it on mic, most people do it. It's when you don't make it explicit that they begin shooting the walls, because, afterall, that is where the aliens come from.
But then aliens come with 2 oni and youre fucked again.
Nah, you always have to target the uglier one!
When playing NS2 on the reg, it's a relief to get fucked, whether you're wearing protection (a3) or not.
Call me racist but they look all the same to me
Well, I wouldn't dare shoot norm.. whi.. reaper skin aliens
This used to be a valid strategy because they were usually more skilled