Fades, Web And Lerks, Oh My!
Beer_Goggles
Join Date: 2004-04-21 Member: 28067Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2004-04-21 Member: 28067Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">A Comprehensive Look at Beta 4</div> Fades, Web and Lerks, oh my!
After beta 4, this post has been long in coming. This is in regards to solely combat, as I haven't played regular NS since beta 4 save for a few custom maps.
Now, before you say that combat has destroyed NS, that I'm not 'qualified' to post my opinions because I'm a n00b because or because I prefer combat over stock NS maps (ns_stargate-xt9 is one of my favorite maps of all time), or that I don't have the 'skill' to play regular NS, please, just listen. If anything, combat has been the best thing for NS in a long time. Combat is not by far more popular than regular NS, as some people seem to think, and as of right now, out of 90 servers with people playing, it appears to be about half and half for both combat and regular NS. There are 415 servers total, not including password protected, and only 90 have people playing. Instead of focusing on those 45 servers with people playing combat, why not focus on the other 325 with zero people playing?
Edit: I have also given beta 4 plenty of time to sink in and for me to adjust. I've played beta 4 at least 6-7 hours since it's been released.
Also, please, don't tell me everything was balanced when testing beta 4 with Constellation members or clans. They are all veterans, not newbies, and the mettle of the players more then makes up for the deficiencies of the current game. I would guess about 80% of the people playing NS are in public servers, and they play NS because it’s fun, not because they’re in a clan. If the game is only balanced for that 20%, what’s going to happen to the majority?
I did not like regular NS in beta 3 because, for the most part, the whole course of the match unfolds in the first 15 minutes. And, in my experience, it's been a marine victory. Now, I'm not saying marines always win, but it's very hard for them to lose. You would need a commander who has never even played an RTS to lose a map for you, as long as you had marines following your orders. As aliens, if marines had a two-hive lockdown, you have nearly lost, but you strung along for another 20, 30 or 40 minutes, until you have no res and there's a heavy train heading to your last hive. And, what losing as aliens really sucked, you couldn’t do ANYTHING. If you spawned, you immediately died to grenade launchers or something else. If the aliens are attacking your main marine base, you at least feel like you're doing something, instead of immediately dying. And there's always bacon, that last-ditch beacon of hope.
---
But enough of that, here are my problems with the patch and the game in general. These are my personal opinions and if you're intelligent, please read them and offer constructive criticism. If not, I think Counter-Strike is calling you (I play CS as well; not everyone is a l33t scripter).
As far as I can see (and have been told by people), the NS dev team values normal NS over combat. I must stress that this is how it appears to me, who doesn't visit the forums often, plays NS most weeknights, and only has to go by what he sees in the changelogs. The dev team has to take a step back and get their priorities straight. They shouldn’t, in my opinion, release a whole new branch to a game and then just turn their backs on it. The majority of the changelog for beta 4 was for NS, not combat. Maybe this will change, but who knows. Maybe I'm completely missing some information, but once again, this is how I interpret what I see.
On to the patch itself, I will go in order from the top of the changelog located at: <a href='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=68960' target='_blank'>http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=68960</a>. The server stats I will use can be found at <a href='http://www.guns4back2school.com/stats/combat/maps.php' target='_blank'>http://www.guns4back2school.com/stats/combat/maps.php</a>. The server is hosted by Guns4Back2School (www.guns4back2school.com) and has 18 players, with 1 donator slot, for a total of 19 if it is a packed night. The server is exclusively combat, and custom maps are used, but they could mistaken for stock combat maps, instead of wild ones like ns_stargate-xt9 or ns_gladiator.
<b>O Removed wave spawn to shorten game length (only one person spawning at a time).
O Aliens now gain experience slowly over time</b>
With these 2 changes, you've gone from aliens winning 60%-70% of the maps, to winning 70%-90% of the maps. What boggles my mind is that spawning was dropped down to 1 person, yet fades were unchanged. It is very common in combat to have focus fades with 30 kills and 5 deaths, or in one case, 70 kills and 0 deaths. If you had a 1:1 kill/death ratio as a focus fade, you probably started playing NS yesterday. Focus fades, in my opinion, are too strong. Even before beta 4, they were too strong. Once you had two or more focus fades spawn camping you in any of the previous betas, you lost. Period. Two swipes to kill ANY non-heavy armor, and if a heavy dropped out, he was usually devoured. Compare that to marines spawn camping where an onos/fade spawns, it doesn't take 2 shotguns blasts to kill him.
If you weakened fades, that 70%-90% alien win ratio would drop in proportion to how much you weaken fades, at least if this was beta 3. In beta 4, if you the aliens have focus fades and you're miraculously still alive, then you won't be alive much longer. Drop the fade's HP, armor or damage, increase the cost of blink, do <i>something</i>.
<b>O Aliens now gain experience slowly over time.</b>
But, maybe it's focus that needs to be tweaked. With the new aliens-gaining-experience-over-time thing, 1 minute and 30 seconds into the game, and half of the aliens have focus. 1 minute and 30 seconds into the game, you're lucky to get 1/4 of the marine team with armor 1, or even level 1. While fades are still incredibly strong if the game lasts long enough to get them, gaining experience over time is even worse. You just can't beat a team of 9 focus skulks.
This also curtails nicely with the statement that aliens are supposed to be the campers and marines are supposed to be on offensive. I will admit that I do see more marines moving out of base, but they just die to the focus skulks who can outflank them, drop on them from above, or crawl through vents and pop up between their legs marine's legs. You would need a massive overhaul of the fundamentals of NS in order to make marines the true offensive players and aliens the true defensive campers. Aliens are BUILT for offensive, with their fast speed and melee attack. One on one, they will kill a marine. Do the math, and 9 on 9, they will kill a marine team. Play any game; a melee unit will kill a ranged unit. Ranged units are meant for camping, and melee is meant for offense. Aliens, save for onos, SHOULD be weak little things that NEED to snipe, NEED to hide around a corner and drop on a marine's head in order to make a kill. Aliens, as of right now, don't need to camp because they can take on marines 1 vs. 1. If you weaken aliens across the board in hitpoints and armor, you would force them to camp until marines came to them, instead of aliens coming to marines and slaughtering them.
<b>O Removed energy cost for lerk flight (to encourage flight while using abilities.</b>
I expect it only a matter of time before people realize the exploit to this. A friend of mine has been called a hacker multiple times for flying up and down with celerity and being unable to be hit. Until, that is, everyone tells them it's beta 4, and they go quiet. About the change, you can't do this. It's just not possible with the stock combat maps because it's so confined. I will admit that I have only recently found the virtues of glide (holding spacebar after you midair), but if you're moving that slow, you're going to get kill right off anyway. Perhaps with the Half-Life 2 engine, or whatever engine NS2 will be made with, where there are wide open, vast areas that lerks can actually fly in, this will work. But until then, I think it's a bad idea that really has no positive. Maybe if there was a delay inbetween how many times you could hit spacebar, like focus.
The three changes above were meant to shorten the game, from what I understand, but please, combat games already lasted 20 minutes on average, how much shorter could you want them? They're now around 2-3 minutes on average, with the focus skulks.
<b>O Increased unlock hive ability 3 cost from 1 to 2</b>
The only reason I can see this done is because of web. The only other GOOD 3rd hive ability was xenocide. Primal scream was ok, but I never had enough adrenaline for that because I would use it all for umbra. Acid rocket and charge were damn horrible; they sucked so bad there really was no point in getting them. This was beta 3. In beta 4, you might as well replace acid rocket and charge with the ability to shoot marshmallows at marines. They'd be old, hard marshmallows though.
Anyways, change web, that's all, it's not hard. The main reason, I would think, web was targeted was because of webbing the marine spawn as they plopped into existence. So, instead of destroying 3 other abilities, either make web take more adrenaline, make it have a longer delay (where in that delay time it could be nullified without any effects, much like mines), make it so you can't just aim web at someone and web them (it has to be on a wall first), make it decay after a set or random amount of time (real spider web doesn’t stay like that forever), or something. Just don't nerf three other abilities in order to fix one. 3-for-1 isn't a good deal if you’re on the selling end.
<b>O New welder, machine gun, pistol, hmg, metabolize and shotty sounds from MadMaxx</b>
- Tweak welder ROF for variety
- Hand grenade sounds
Yeah, the new sounds are cool, even if the new shotgun sound sounds a little cheap, but couldn't the resources have been better spent on making a final NS release? It's not a big deal, just something I was speculating about.
<b>O Map changes</b>
All the map changes are for NS. This goes along with the dev team caring more about regular NS than combat. There are some really horrible map problems in combat. The biggest I can think of is co_angst. It's horrible. There are regular stalemates of 40 minutes. And it generally ends with a rush of 3-5 onos and 2-3 umbra lerks. Make it bigger so jetpacks are actually worthwhile, add some more vents so skulks actually have a chance against the grenade spam, and change the stairs in marine spawn so onos don't have to crouch to get around it. Admittedly, it's better than the first version of co_angst.
Co_pulse is probably my next map problem. In my opinion, to dramatically change the map for the better, make marine spawn larger and take away those damned walls separating the three spawn rooms. Those rooms are so horrible, it's really quite bad. Other then that, it's a rather balanced map.
In co_core, the marine spawn should be widened and add more alternate routes into and out of the hive and marine spawn. Adding more vents would be nice, too.
In Co_kestrel, the overlook above marine spawn should be changed. That's the biggest problem. There should also be more vents directly to the hive, so that jetpackers have a change to not run into an onos, if the game lasts that long.
---
Beyond the beta 4 changes, there are a few things that have annoyed me throughout NS 3. The Range of bite, swipe and devour seemed a little weird, but bite has been fixed. It’s mostly devour, though, where it seems to have a huge range.
The radius for xenocide and grenade launcher grenades seems a little weird, too. There’s been times where I’ve been almost next to a GL grenade and didn’t get any damage, but what would appear to me to be clearly out of range of the GL and I die. I also think the damage to yourself when you’re a GL-toting marine should be increase. When a skulk is directly in front of you, and you shoot a grenade at him, you should receive and equal amount of damage. But you don’t. If you shoot at the ground and you’re killing skulks all around you, you should take just as much damage.
Maybe it’s me, but it seems a little weird. Xenocide seems to work like this, too. And, if you’re directly under/above a xenocide, you don’t get hurt, as the explosion seems to expel to the side.
Edit: And what about Scent of Fear? Is it broken, or it supposed to show where the marines are, 100% of the time?
---
I think that's all I have to say. I want to stress that if anything above comes off as a flame or offensive, I apologize, I don't want it to make anyone angry or hurt anyone's feelings, but that's just the way it came out. I don't mean anything offensively or in a bad light.
If you've taken the time to read through this, please offer constructive criticism. I do realize this is a beta, and this is one of the posts that, I hope, will make NS a better final release. Maybe just advertise to general players that this is indeed a beta and not the final release, as even I sometimes forget it isn't.
After beta 4, this post has been long in coming. This is in regards to solely combat, as I haven't played regular NS since beta 4 save for a few custom maps.
Now, before you say that combat has destroyed NS, that I'm not 'qualified' to post my opinions because I'm a n00b because or because I prefer combat over stock NS maps (ns_stargate-xt9 is one of my favorite maps of all time), or that I don't have the 'skill' to play regular NS, please, just listen. If anything, combat has been the best thing for NS in a long time. Combat is not by far more popular than regular NS, as some people seem to think, and as of right now, out of 90 servers with people playing, it appears to be about half and half for both combat and regular NS. There are 415 servers total, not including password protected, and only 90 have people playing. Instead of focusing on those 45 servers with people playing combat, why not focus on the other 325 with zero people playing?
Edit: I have also given beta 4 plenty of time to sink in and for me to adjust. I've played beta 4 at least 6-7 hours since it's been released.
Also, please, don't tell me everything was balanced when testing beta 4 with Constellation members or clans. They are all veterans, not newbies, and the mettle of the players more then makes up for the deficiencies of the current game. I would guess about 80% of the people playing NS are in public servers, and they play NS because it’s fun, not because they’re in a clan. If the game is only balanced for that 20%, what’s going to happen to the majority?
I did not like regular NS in beta 3 because, for the most part, the whole course of the match unfolds in the first 15 minutes. And, in my experience, it's been a marine victory. Now, I'm not saying marines always win, but it's very hard for them to lose. You would need a commander who has never even played an RTS to lose a map for you, as long as you had marines following your orders. As aliens, if marines had a two-hive lockdown, you have nearly lost, but you strung along for another 20, 30 or 40 minutes, until you have no res and there's a heavy train heading to your last hive. And, what losing as aliens really sucked, you couldn’t do ANYTHING. If you spawned, you immediately died to grenade launchers or something else. If the aliens are attacking your main marine base, you at least feel like you're doing something, instead of immediately dying. And there's always bacon, that last-ditch beacon of hope.
---
But enough of that, here are my problems with the patch and the game in general. These are my personal opinions and if you're intelligent, please read them and offer constructive criticism. If not, I think Counter-Strike is calling you (I play CS as well; not everyone is a l33t scripter).
As far as I can see (and have been told by people), the NS dev team values normal NS over combat. I must stress that this is how it appears to me, who doesn't visit the forums often, plays NS most weeknights, and only has to go by what he sees in the changelogs. The dev team has to take a step back and get their priorities straight. They shouldn’t, in my opinion, release a whole new branch to a game and then just turn their backs on it. The majority of the changelog for beta 4 was for NS, not combat. Maybe this will change, but who knows. Maybe I'm completely missing some information, but once again, this is how I interpret what I see.
On to the patch itself, I will go in order from the top of the changelog located at: <a href='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=68960' target='_blank'>http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=68960</a>. The server stats I will use can be found at <a href='http://www.guns4back2school.com/stats/combat/maps.php' target='_blank'>http://www.guns4back2school.com/stats/combat/maps.php</a>. The server is hosted by Guns4Back2School (www.guns4back2school.com) and has 18 players, with 1 donator slot, for a total of 19 if it is a packed night. The server is exclusively combat, and custom maps are used, but they could mistaken for stock combat maps, instead of wild ones like ns_stargate-xt9 or ns_gladiator.
<b>O Removed wave spawn to shorten game length (only one person spawning at a time).
O Aliens now gain experience slowly over time</b>
With these 2 changes, you've gone from aliens winning 60%-70% of the maps, to winning 70%-90% of the maps. What boggles my mind is that spawning was dropped down to 1 person, yet fades were unchanged. It is very common in combat to have focus fades with 30 kills and 5 deaths, or in one case, 70 kills and 0 deaths. If you had a 1:1 kill/death ratio as a focus fade, you probably started playing NS yesterday. Focus fades, in my opinion, are too strong. Even before beta 4, they were too strong. Once you had two or more focus fades spawn camping you in any of the previous betas, you lost. Period. Two swipes to kill ANY non-heavy armor, and if a heavy dropped out, he was usually devoured. Compare that to marines spawn camping where an onos/fade spawns, it doesn't take 2 shotguns blasts to kill him.
If you weakened fades, that 70%-90% alien win ratio would drop in proportion to how much you weaken fades, at least if this was beta 3. In beta 4, if you the aliens have focus fades and you're miraculously still alive, then you won't be alive much longer. Drop the fade's HP, armor or damage, increase the cost of blink, do <i>something</i>.
<b>O Aliens now gain experience slowly over time.</b>
But, maybe it's focus that needs to be tweaked. With the new aliens-gaining-experience-over-time thing, 1 minute and 30 seconds into the game, and half of the aliens have focus. 1 minute and 30 seconds into the game, you're lucky to get 1/4 of the marine team with armor 1, or even level 1. While fades are still incredibly strong if the game lasts long enough to get them, gaining experience over time is even worse. You just can't beat a team of 9 focus skulks.
This also curtails nicely with the statement that aliens are supposed to be the campers and marines are supposed to be on offensive. I will admit that I do see more marines moving out of base, but they just die to the focus skulks who can outflank them, drop on them from above, or crawl through vents and pop up between their legs marine's legs. You would need a massive overhaul of the fundamentals of NS in order to make marines the true offensive players and aliens the true defensive campers. Aliens are BUILT for offensive, with their fast speed and melee attack. One on one, they will kill a marine. Do the math, and 9 on 9, they will kill a marine team. Play any game; a melee unit will kill a ranged unit. Ranged units are meant for camping, and melee is meant for offense. Aliens, save for onos, SHOULD be weak little things that NEED to snipe, NEED to hide around a corner and drop on a marine's head in order to make a kill. Aliens, as of right now, don't need to camp because they can take on marines 1 vs. 1. If you weaken aliens across the board in hitpoints and armor, you would force them to camp until marines came to them, instead of aliens coming to marines and slaughtering them.
<b>O Removed energy cost for lerk flight (to encourage flight while using abilities.</b>
I expect it only a matter of time before people realize the exploit to this. A friend of mine has been called a hacker multiple times for flying up and down with celerity and being unable to be hit. Until, that is, everyone tells them it's beta 4, and they go quiet. About the change, you can't do this. It's just not possible with the stock combat maps because it's so confined. I will admit that I have only recently found the virtues of glide (holding spacebar after you midair), but if you're moving that slow, you're going to get kill right off anyway. Perhaps with the Half-Life 2 engine, or whatever engine NS2 will be made with, where there are wide open, vast areas that lerks can actually fly in, this will work. But until then, I think it's a bad idea that really has no positive. Maybe if there was a delay inbetween how many times you could hit spacebar, like focus.
The three changes above were meant to shorten the game, from what I understand, but please, combat games already lasted 20 minutes on average, how much shorter could you want them? They're now around 2-3 minutes on average, with the focus skulks.
<b>O Increased unlock hive ability 3 cost from 1 to 2</b>
The only reason I can see this done is because of web. The only other GOOD 3rd hive ability was xenocide. Primal scream was ok, but I never had enough adrenaline for that because I would use it all for umbra. Acid rocket and charge were damn horrible; they sucked so bad there really was no point in getting them. This was beta 3. In beta 4, you might as well replace acid rocket and charge with the ability to shoot marshmallows at marines. They'd be old, hard marshmallows though.
Anyways, change web, that's all, it's not hard. The main reason, I would think, web was targeted was because of webbing the marine spawn as they plopped into existence. So, instead of destroying 3 other abilities, either make web take more adrenaline, make it have a longer delay (where in that delay time it could be nullified without any effects, much like mines), make it so you can't just aim web at someone and web them (it has to be on a wall first), make it decay after a set or random amount of time (real spider web doesn’t stay like that forever), or something. Just don't nerf three other abilities in order to fix one. 3-for-1 isn't a good deal if you’re on the selling end.
<b>O New welder, machine gun, pistol, hmg, metabolize and shotty sounds from MadMaxx</b>
- Tweak welder ROF for variety
- Hand grenade sounds
Yeah, the new sounds are cool, even if the new shotgun sound sounds a little cheap, but couldn't the resources have been better spent on making a final NS release? It's not a big deal, just something I was speculating about.
<b>O Map changes</b>
All the map changes are for NS. This goes along with the dev team caring more about regular NS than combat. There are some really horrible map problems in combat. The biggest I can think of is co_angst. It's horrible. There are regular stalemates of 40 minutes. And it generally ends with a rush of 3-5 onos and 2-3 umbra lerks. Make it bigger so jetpacks are actually worthwhile, add some more vents so skulks actually have a chance against the grenade spam, and change the stairs in marine spawn so onos don't have to crouch to get around it. Admittedly, it's better than the first version of co_angst.
Co_pulse is probably my next map problem. In my opinion, to dramatically change the map for the better, make marine spawn larger and take away those damned walls separating the three spawn rooms. Those rooms are so horrible, it's really quite bad. Other then that, it's a rather balanced map.
In co_core, the marine spawn should be widened and add more alternate routes into and out of the hive and marine spawn. Adding more vents would be nice, too.
In Co_kestrel, the overlook above marine spawn should be changed. That's the biggest problem. There should also be more vents directly to the hive, so that jetpackers have a change to not run into an onos, if the game lasts that long.
---
Beyond the beta 4 changes, there are a few things that have annoyed me throughout NS 3. The Range of bite, swipe and devour seemed a little weird, but bite has been fixed. It’s mostly devour, though, where it seems to have a huge range.
The radius for xenocide and grenade launcher grenades seems a little weird, too. There’s been times where I’ve been almost next to a GL grenade and didn’t get any damage, but what would appear to me to be clearly out of range of the GL and I die. I also think the damage to yourself when you’re a GL-toting marine should be increase. When a skulk is directly in front of you, and you shoot a grenade at him, you should receive and equal amount of damage. But you don’t. If you shoot at the ground and you’re killing skulks all around you, you should take just as much damage.
Maybe it’s me, but it seems a little weird. Xenocide seems to work like this, too. And, if you’re directly under/above a xenocide, you don’t get hurt, as the explosion seems to expel to the side.
Edit: And what about Scent of Fear? Is it broken, or it supposed to show where the marines are, 100% of the time?
---
I think that's all I have to say. I want to stress that if anything above comes off as a flame or offensive, I apologize, I don't want it to make anyone angry or hurt anyone's feelings, but that's just the way it came out. I don't mean anything offensively or in a bad light.
If you've taken the time to read through this, please offer constructive criticism. I do realize this is a beta, and this is one of the posts that, I hope, will make NS a better final release. Maybe just advertise to general players that this is indeed a beta and not the final release, as even I sometimes forget it isn't.
Comments
However...
Aliens getting experience slowly is to encourage marines who love to turtle base to move out and kill the hive. If they don't they lose. Why? For not achieving conditions for victory
Spawn System is slow! Don't DIE. The point of combat is to be fast paced and end quickly. Early 3.0 closed beta combat had NO CC, and was 5:00 timer. this made for fun games. The 2 hour killathons of later builds, and ultimately the public releases were long, tedious, boring, and all together dumb. If you don't play as a team, or can't aim, you SHOULDN'T win, and thats what this spawn system encourages.
As for lerk flight, its fine. Skulks can bhop, why can't lerks dodge like that then.\
Overall you question why NS is more important to the dev team than combat. Combat is only meant to be a small addon, a multiplayer training session to get you accustomed to the basics of the game. IT IS NOT AN ENTIRE GAME ON ITS OWN.
There were not any major gameplay changes in beta 4 at all, sadly. I was expecting it to be a very large release.
My statements are probably testament to the opinion of many here, so I'm sorry if I offended you.
<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo-->
If the update did one thing, it made a few CO players give NS a shot. Good on it.
Yes, but you can blame almost anything on players. But, the average player is what I am talking about, and these situations occur all the time with the average player.
As for your opinion on combat, you're the type of people that think CS is only for people who h4x. I play CS all the time, with my friends on a LAN, and we have an awesome time.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Aliens getting experience slowly is to encourage marines who love to turtle base to move out and kill the hive. If they don't they lose. Why? For not achieving conditions for victory<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, the aliens getting experience over time does seem to make marines move out of base more, but not by much. Marines move out, get killed, then get focus camped because they all died on the initial rush. If marines camp their spawn, aliens get focus fade and win anyway.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Spawn System is slow! Don't DIE. The point of combat is to be fast paced and end quickly.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two minutes? Is that quick enough? I thought 20 minutes was the 'sweet spot' where someone, anyone, can jump in for a bit and have fun.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Early 3.0 closed beta combat had NO CC, and was 5:00 timer. this made for fun games. The 2 hour killathons of later builds, and ultimately the public releases were long, tedious, boring, and all together dumb. If you don't play as a team, or can't aim, you SHOULDN'T win, and thats what this spawn system encourages.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And what aboout people new to NS? They'll be overwhelmed by everything and will be ineffectual. They don't know how to get upgrades, let alone act as a team. If combat is supposed to be a primer to NS, you sure ain't making it easy for the new person.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->As for lerk flight, its fine. Skulks can bhop, why can't lerks dodge like that then.\<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You haven't seen what I've seen. It's nothing like skulks bunnyhopping.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Overall you question why NS is more important to the dev team than combat. Combat is only meant to be a small addon, a multiplayer training session to get you accustomed to the basics of the game. IT IS NOT AN ENTIRE GAME ON ITS OWN. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I did not know this. I thought it was, more or less, a seperate game on its own. I retract my above statements, but will leave them so people can read the post in its entirety. You don't have to get uppity, however, a simple explanation would have been sufficient.
However, I think the dev team should look to put more effort into combat, seeing as how it's grown so much. But if it's supposed to just be a tutorial for NS, then it is a damn good one.
More to the point its not as bad as people make it out to be, and yes combat is closet to how it is mean to be currently, if you don't like it...don't play it :\
If the update did one thing, it made a few CO players give NS a shot. Good on it.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't play regular NS as much as I do combat because I find it boring. Read what I said above, it further explains it. My enjoyment level for regular NS games generally goes up and down with the people I'm playing with. If they are a good team, I'm having the best time. If the team can't act together, as what happens most often then not, then it's not fun. Aliens need more teamwork then marines, and it's hard to find a good team. Marines just need a good commander.
As a sidenote, I believe that if there were more maps, then regular NS games woulnd't be so boring. I plan on trying my hand on map design with either the HL or HL2 engine, whichever is out when I have the time, so maybe I can help to alleviate this.
More to the point its not as bad as people make it out to be, and yes combat is closet to how it is mean to be currently, if you don't like it...don't play it :\<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If people didn't like somthing and turned away from whatever it was, there would be no progress in the world. Combat is still fun, for all its current fallacies, don't get me wrong, but it could be better, and that's what I'm trying to do.
More to the point its not as bad as people make it out to be, and yes combat is closet to how it is mean to be currently, if you don't like it...don't play it :\<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If people didn't like somthing and turned away from whatever it was, there would be no progress in the world. Combat is still fun, for all its current fallacies, don't get me wrong, but it could be better, and that's what I'm trying to do. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
It won't get much better than it is unless gorges and welders are removed, hive HP boosted to 10,000 with its auto-heal removed, and aliens keep their slow xp gain, remove the CC, and add a timer. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
My suggestion? Turn combat into a different mod. That way, you'll have two different games and you can change whatever you want in each gametype without having to worry about the other. An alternative to this is to just change the units for each gametype, IE NS onos is stronger than a CO one... but that could probably be very confusing since both gametypes are often played on a single server.
So jeah, two different mods... it'd solve everything. No more NS people complaining about CO people and vice versa, easier time balancing things and probably alot more good points I can't think of right now.
uh combat is great for learning how to combat basically. however people keep forgetting that combat was DESIGNED for <12 people and 5 minute games. first they complained about stalemates and now they are complaining because they fixed that. imo the only way to make combat faster paced is to increase xp gaining rate and re-add invunerability. the spawn 1 by 1 would be fine then because that 1 marine can do quite a bit of damage if he is a higher level, but also do almost nothing if he is a lower level, which would encourage going out there and pwning up.
To all of those who say things like "yay, combat is ruined, more people will play NS now", stop being petty, just because you don't enjoy playing combat doesn't mean that no one else should be able to. Your elitism is sickening, as if the fact that you have been playing longer, spent more time on the forums, or have more skills in the stratagy based gameplay side of NS that your desires as a gamer are more important than anyone elses. I can only hope to God that the devs arn't listening to your sway, it would be utterly terrible producing if they were to activly sabatoge one gamplay mode simply because they value the other one higher. There is no reason that the NS comunity should not be able to have the best of both worlds, this isn't a civil war, stop it with your internal bickering.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I believe that the majority of map updates, if not all of them, were done by the original mapper (or whoever has taken over on that particular map), and not by the actual NS team. That means that it didn't take time away from gameplay development. If combat maps are going to be updated, then it will be done by the people that made them. So, the only change made to classic by the development team was lerk flight, which also affected combat. So, it seems that in this build more effort was put into combat than classic, even though, as CWAG explained, it should be the other way around.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just wanted to reiterate this point. The NS dev team has little or nothing to do with the NS maps. They are partially responsible for thier offical maps, but they make none of the changes for any of those maps, maintinence and upgrading is entirely the responsibility of the maps author (or if he has retired it will be passed to a different mapper who has agreed to take his place) The statment that most of the dev's time was spent on NS is entirely false, the biggest change the games developers have made that applies to NS mode for beta four is the new lerk flight. On somewhat of an asside, if you have recomendations for alterations to CO maps you can track down the authors of those maps through the mapping forum and then either post recomendations in their map thread, or PM them and start a diologe directly.
However, just as the dev team has expressed dislike towards suggestions of splitting the above factors in Public and Competitive (ie clan) play, they don't want to make them different between Classic and Combat.
So what's the solution? None - thus, whatever almost-solution is most appropriate has to be used instead, and that is to make Classic take priority over Combat in regards to balance. There is no way around it.
- It's a challenge.
- He wants to keep both gameplay modes as close to each other while maintaining a certain difference between the two gameplay modes.
How I understand this? It's common sense. Generally, males like to tackle a challenge, and that's no lie (maybe except for a select few people that shy away from challenges)
And from a develpers PoV, Combat is meant to teach newbies the basics before actually letting them sink into the core playmode : Classic NS. How often have you seen new players in 1.04 that continue asking why you cn't hit this, hurt other marines, etc? A lot, and combat is just one way of lowering the steep learning curve of NS.
Now back to the topic of what the thread maker was asking....
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->O Removed wave spawn to shorten game length (only one person spawning at a time).
O Aliens now gain experience slowly over time<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The reason why wavespawning was removed and alien XP added was because of one issue that was keeping Combat from its purpose : Fast-paced gameplay.
Wave spawning was removed because if marines respawned, they could simply shoot away aliens in their spawn in a spawncamp situation. When aliens respawned, they were still killed because of one certain advantage marines have that aliens don't : Range advantage. While aliens have to run up close and take the risk of dying in a marine spawn, marines can simply sit in a corner and freely shoot you.
For that reason, these 2 were added.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->O Removed energy cost for lerk flight (to encourage flight while using abilities.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That would be to address the insane energy usage lerk weapons have. Because of that, adrenaline was a mandatory upgrade. Those who took Celerity or Silence were severely weakened because of how much energy their other weapons take. With the new change, all upgrades are now equal on priority, and adds versatility to lerks, something they have been lacking in the last few betas.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->O Increased unlock hive ability 3 cost from 1 to 2<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd have to agree that it was for the issue with webs, but lets look at this way. Xenocide does 200 damage (and no it doesn't have blast damage) just about enough to kill a wounded or non-upgraded armor marine. Generally, in combat, most marines that get wounded generally run back to base to heal up. That would be where Xeno becomes horribly powerful.
Acid rockets are pretty much a support weapon, and boy it does serve that role. It eats down armor like there's no tomorrow, and leaves marines vulnerable to Xenocide and focus.
As for charge.....let's not go in there, it simply sucks because the Onos slides off the player and building hulls.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->O New welder, machine gun, pistol, hmg, metabolize and shotty sounds from MadMaxx<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No comment here. It's simply sounds. Of course, HMGS are wee bit more louder than before.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->O Map changes<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ehh...Eclipse and Veil got vents, and they badly needed those. Don't know what happened in ns_metal, but well, as for Bast, nothing much is different from the old version except the balance tweaks.
However...
Aliens getting experience slowly is to encourage marines who love to turtle base to move out and kill the hive. If they don't they lose. Why? For not achieving conditions for victory
Spawn System is slow! Don't DIE. The point of combat is to be fast paced and end quickly. Early 3.0 closed beta combat had NO CC, and was 5:00 timer. this made for fun games. The 2 hour killathons of later builds, and ultimately the public releases were long, tedious, boring, and all together dumb. If you don't play as a team, or can't aim, you SHOULDN'T win, and thats what this spawn system encourages.
As for lerk flight, its fine. Skulks can bhop, why can't lerks dodge like that then.\
Overall you question why NS is more important to the dev team than combat. Combat is only meant to be a small addon, a multiplayer training session to get you accustomed to the basics of the game. IT IS NOT AN ENTIRE GAME ON ITS OWN.
There were not any major gameplay changes in beta 4 at all, sadly. I was expecting it to be a very large release.
My statements are probably testament to the opinion of many here, so I'm sorry if I offended you.
<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually if 3-4 players on your team cannot aim or have little knowledge in the basics of NS then you will probably lose as marine. You could be the top player on the server at the time and be better versed in the mechanics behind the game and just because of a few new players you have little chance.
What he is saying is that yes, combat is designed to make people accustomed to the game prior to trying out the NS version. What it shouldn't do is disuade people from continuing to play because they lose virtually every game while on marine. The end result is a frustrated player that thinks the game is unbalanced because new players get stomped.
As for the people saying it's combat, who cares? Well, new players tend to try combat before NS. This comes from jumping on a NS server only to receive insults left and right for having little understanding of the gameplay. You don't know where to go, all of the slang and where you fit into everything, people get flamed for it. So you go try combat, it's simple, your goal is to kill the other team and stay alive. When you realize that if you have little understanding of combat that you will get walked over as well it really turns you off from the game in general.
Oh and just another thing to mention, most of the imbalances to combat with beta 4 are due to changes made solely to combat, not changes made across the board for both NS/CO gameplay. The spawn rate is probably the biggest of the changes.
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Its the other way around. Aliens need structure, yes, but marines need WAY more teamwork than aliens.
combat was designed fo small ammounts of player to have fun untill enough join so a proper NS game can start. THAT was the idea. balancing for such varying numbers is not possible.
my main question is, SHOULD Co maps have a player limit of say 4v4 max?because if you have any more players a full ns games should be fine.
Yes, but you can blame almost anything on players. But, the average player is what I am talking about, and these situations occur all the time with the average player. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you think you are the average player, and you think this:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You would need a massive overhaul of the fundamentals of NS in order to make marines the true offensive players and aliens the true defensive campers. Aliens are BUILT for offensive, with their fast speed and melee attack. One on one, they will kill a marine. Do the math, and 9 on 9, they will kill a marine team. Play any game; a melee unit will kill a ranged unit. Ranged units are meant for camping, and melee is meant for offense.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Then you are not the average player.
The average player wastes skulks as marine's. One marine is given enough firepower at the start of the game to kill 4-5 skulks in sucession if he's got good aim and if the skulks do not make themselves hard targets.
I admit that would be pretty interesting.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I beleive there are other gameplay modes then CO.
If the update did one thing, it made a few CO players give NS a shot. Good on it.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please read Swiftspear's post.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->the spawn 1 by 1 would be fine then because that 1 marine can do quite a bit of damage if he is a higher level, but also do almost nothing if he is a lower level, which would encourage going out there and pwning up.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The point is, marines can't get to a high-level. They're either spawn camped with focus skulks within 2 minutes of game start, or it's 5 minutes into the game and there is one focus fade spawn camping. Even in beta 3, with it's better spawn, if a focus fade was spawn camping, you lost. Marines are generally confined in a single room, where it's easy to camp them, but aliens are spawning in different rooms, on ledges, etc. But this is a map problem. Focus fades aren't, however.
You don't know the power of a focus fade.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I just wanted to reiterate this point. The NS dev team has little or nothing to do with the NS maps. They are partially responsible for thier offical maps, but they make none of the changes for any of those maps, maintinence and upgrading is entirely the responsibility of the maps author (or if he has retired it will be passed to a different mapper who has agreed to take his place) The statment that most of the dev's time was spent on NS is entirely false, the biggest change the games developers have made that applies to NS mode for beta four is the new lerk flight. On somewhat of an asside, if you have recomendations for alterations to CO maps you can track down the authors of those maps through the mapping forum and then either post recomendations in their map thread, or PM them and start a diologe directly.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for the information, maybe I will. I still think the new lerk change isn't for the best, maybe make the cost negligeble, but still a drain.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The reason why wavespawning was removed and alien XP added was because of one issue that was keeping Combat from its purpose : Fast-paced gameplay.
Wave spawning was removed because if marines respawned, they could simply shoot away aliens in their spawn in a spawncamp situation.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fast-paced gameplay has been achieved. Two minutes, with marines lucky to get shotguns. But spawn camping... you don't get a CHANCE to shoot anything. If you're good, you get one, maybe two skulks, if you have a shotty. If they have a focus fade, it's all over.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->That would be to address the insane energy usage lerk weapons have. Because of that, adrenaline was a mandatory upgrade. Those who took Celerity or Silence were severely weakened because of how much energy their other weapons take. With the new change, all upgrades are now equal on priority, and adds versatility to lerks, something they have been lacking in the last few betas.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I know this, but making something infinite isn't always a good thing.
Yes, but you can blame almost anything on players. But, the average player is what I am talking about, and these situations occur all the time with the average player. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you think you are the average player, and you think this:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You would need a massive overhaul of the fundamentals of NS in order to make marines the true offensive players and aliens the true defensive campers. Aliens are BUILT for offensive, with their fast speed and melee attack. One on one, they will kill a marine. Do the math, and 9 on 9, they will kill a marine team. Play any game; a melee unit will kill a ranged unit. Ranged units are meant for camping, and melee is meant for offense.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Then you are not the average player.
The average player wastes skulks as marine's. One marine is given enough firepower at the start of the game to kill 4-5 skulks in sucession if he's got good aim and if the skulks do not make themselves hard targets. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
-boggles-
This may be the case in Classic, but in CO it is not. Skulks get level 2 after 1 minute or so with free exp gain. Leap anyone? Leap to marine, kill marine, leap away. Get next upgrade..
Maybe you've been playing against less than average skulks.