Random Thoughts On Ns:combat.
Syringed
Join Date: 2003-04-17 Member: 15579Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-04-17 Member: 15579Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Issues.</div> Just my little random thoughts, issues, problems, loves, and whatever about CO:
1. The Fade - Maybe it's just me but the fade seems....almost too good now. Better than onos even. Even a marginally skilled player like myself can rack up an abnormal amount of kills with one now via hit/run with blink. Sure you die every so often from a lucky 3 or so shotty blasts or constant HMG fire but it's rare. I know the fade needed a boost but when even I have trouble getting killed as one there's a problem. Blink should drain way more energy since they can blink forever even with the adren buff.
2. Focus - Too easy to get a level as aliens then rush for focus and end the game. Yeah, I know marines can just get armor 1 but after the first hit they're 100% screwed the next one since armory gives out health only. Shotties cost at least two levels to get for 1 hit kill potential. Focus should at least be 2 levels to buy.
3. Hand Grenade - Seems almost worthless to get in combat. Maybe make it have the potential to "charge it up" would be nice for a bigger damage possibility or maybe give it critical damage with a low chance.
4. Gorge - No real place in combat in my opinion. Since the aliens can kill the armory and cut off the ability to heal for marines unless they have resupply, marines should have to kill a few DC chambers placed under the hive. For those who will cry they have no webs to defend against JPs, a good lerk can always pick Jpers out of the air with ease. Same with fade and blink.
5. Xenocide - Had a few games where aliens all rushed as skulk and just xenocided over and over with leap/xeno in the first few minutes. Amusing at first it got old quite quickly. Marines couldn't really do anything since killing a leaping skulk out of the air before it xenos is a little difficult. While I know it was a good display of team work and xenociding does kill the alien too, it was kind of gimp in a way. It's good in classic NS but in combat it can become easy to abuse. No idea how I'd correct it since Xeno is already nerfed up but just wish it wasn't so "easy" to get free kills with.
6. Catalist - I got it a bunch of times in combat to try to see if it was really worth it at all but I find it's just simply not. Maybe having it activate when surrounded by 2 or more aliens would be better for that adrenline pump or after you've damaged 1 target 50% or more
7. Mines - I prefered the tripwire mines myself. While I do like not being able to see the laser, I wish there was an invisible laser perhaps to make mines more useful. They're marginally ok for combat. Mostly good for stopping early skulk rushes but that's it after they've evolved.
That is all. No flaming please, they're just opinions and thoughts.
1. The Fade - Maybe it's just me but the fade seems....almost too good now. Better than onos even. Even a marginally skilled player like myself can rack up an abnormal amount of kills with one now via hit/run with blink. Sure you die every so often from a lucky 3 or so shotty blasts or constant HMG fire but it's rare. I know the fade needed a boost but when even I have trouble getting killed as one there's a problem. Blink should drain way more energy since they can blink forever even with the adren buff.
2. Focus - Too easy to get a level as aliens then rush for focus and end the game. Yeah, I know marines can just get armor 1 but after the first hit they're 100% screwed the next one since armory gives out health only. Shotties cost at least two levels to get for 1 hit kill potential. Focus should at least be 2 levels to buy.
3. Hand Grenade - Seems almost worthless to get in combat. Maybe make it have the potential to "charge it up" would be nice for a bigger damage possibility or maybe give it critical damage with a low chance.
4. Gorge - No real place in combat in my opinion. Since the aliens can kill the armory and cut off the ability to heal for marines unless they have resupply, marines should have to kill a few DC chambers placed under the hive. For those who will cry they have no webs to defend against JPs, a good lerk can always pick Jpers out of the air with ease. Same with fade and blink.
5. Xenocide - Had a few games where aliens all rushed as skulk and just xenocided over and over with leap/xeno in the first few minutes. Amusing at first it got old quite quickly. Marines couldn't really do anything since killing a leaping skulk out of the air before it xenos is a little difficult. While I know it was a good display of team work and xenociding does kill the alien too, it was kind of gimp in a way. It's good in classic NS but in combat it can become easy to abuse. No idea how I'd correct it since Xeno is already nerfed up but just wish it wasn't so "easy" to get free kills with.
6. Catalist - I got it a bunch of times in combat to try to see if it was really worth it at all but I find it's just simply not. Maybe having it activate when surrounded by 2 or more aliens would be better for that adrenline pump or after you've damaged 1 target 50% or more
7. Mines - I prefered the tripwire mines myself. While I do like not being able to see the laser, I wish there was an invisible laser perhaps to make mines more useful. They're marginally ok for combat. Mostly good for stopping early skulk rushes but that's it after they've evolved.
That is all. No flaming please, they're just opinions and thoughts.
Comments
Focus...never really tried it
Hand Grenades...useless in combat? I think useless in NS in general at the moment. They don't clear out structures nor do they deal enough damage to kill aliens with any sort of defensive upgrade. And...in normal NS....they're not effective at clearing out OCs because the DC behind them just regens and etc. etc. etc. I know they're not nukes...but can we up the damage just a bit?
Gorges...the ultimate support of the alien team I think. Very useful to secure hive from JPers with webs. Not to mention mobile healing is always good. Although....imagine what would happen if they got the babblers back......But in short...once gorges get web, they are extremely useful.
As for xeno...I think my friend put it best..."I like to blow up on people." Is really lame when the aliens are already winning and then 8 skulks come through and xeno everything to bits. Granted if it destroys the armory...that's a different story....
I think the mines arefine as they are. It's hard to avoid them as it is.
Hand grenades should be stronger (higher yield) than GL grenades (which could be called smaller mass-produced low yield grenades). GL grenades should have their damage radius lowered slightly, but the damage is fine.
Hand grenades should come in one upgrade with mines. One mine, one grenade, per death. Call it a demolitions pack if you like.
Lose the Gorge, add 3 DCs under the hive, and see how that works out in testing.
I believe the marines would be more fun with more variety, such as another class or gun or something. There's so much cool stuff you can do with the Aliens in combat (lots of different combinations), but with marines you almost always must choose heavy or JP with a HMG or a GL.... meaning maybe 5-6 most commonly used variations. You can do things like SG+armor3, welder+mines+armor3, etc, but the options are limited compared to the aliens.
I really think the HMG needs to have a warm-up time where it stops firing after a certain number of rounds. As it is without warmup or recoil, the HMG is a heavy laser beam that you just point in the direction of the enemy and hold the mouse button down for 10 seconds :) This gets very boring for me as a marine.
[As an alien I have multiple races to pick from and try to get better at. As a marine you can master everything in a very short period of time. Basically I think the marines have a lower skill roof than the aliens.]
Focus should not be changed. It doesn't add any extra damage per unit time, and it doesn't hurt buildings any better, all unlike the 3 levels of marine weapon upgrades. Focus is basically only useful on skulks early on, lerks, and hit&run fades. It's quite useless on the onos, and as such is a wasted point if the player plans to go onos.
Focus note: I think it should increase the damage (potency) of lerk spore, to make it more useful in the late game. I at least thing it'd be worth testing out.
Xenocide should also not be changed. It's quite worthless against heavy armor and flying jetpackers. It's most effective in the early game, and barely useful in the end game, where a heavy class would be much more beneficial to the team.
Cat packs should be given to you in a weapon spot to use whenever you desire. The current system looks like a bad hack, to be honest :)
Radar pinging to remove cloak should also be something the user initiates manually. Doing all these things automatically just removes depth from the game, and that is undesirable.
On umbra: If it was at all possible to implement, I think it's only intuitive to have bullets be stopped when they enter umbra, whether there's an alien in it or not. But I'm thinking this isn't possible/easy to do.
On the XP system: I strongly believe that you should be able to manually lose levels in some form or another. Whether you add a semi-hambone mode where you lose all levels on command, or downgrade your last level and lose the XP, whatever. This would give games more variety as people could counter the makeup of other team by changing the makeup of their own, and would make pub games a lot nicer because we'd be able to change class when 6/8 of the team are all lvl8 skulks or lerks ;)
On NS versus CO: There are obvious issues when trying to balance them using the same stats for each. Most obviously, the ability for aliens to have multiple upgrades from a single tree in CO. If I couldn't do that in CO, I would be very angry, and would have an order of magnitude less fun playing the game.
As such, I think some sort of tree-sharing system could be used in NS to add that same spice that you get in CO.
Personally I find CO to be more fun than NS. I find that NS is a lot more work, and less fun, so I play mostly CO. This is because the aliens are less fun when you have to play a lvl2 skulk for half the game, and marines are less fun when the commander sucks :)
When I do play NS though, it's a sweet change and I have great fun... at least when the teams are balanced.
RE: the commander position.
I suspect this will remain the same for the rest of this NS' existence, but the com has to do too much micromanagment, and is such a difficult job that only a select % of the gaming population are capable of doing. This is not terribly healthy for the game, regardless of what the elite say.
As such, a system more like Savage would be helpful. Players can request things from the commander, which he can serve from the GUI. Just removing the need for medpack+ammo spam (by making marines request and the com hit a button to say yes, or just turn on the auto-accept button) would greatly reduce the amount of time the com has to spend on trivial tasks.
I think they should (randomly) activate either when you hit an alien even if it doesn't kill him, or activate when you get hit by an alien (adren rush of some sort?)