Lerk flight cost removed is a good thing. I can't count the times that I've tried playing without adrenaline and ended up with no energy to escape, turning my hit-and-run into hit-and-die-horribly. The spawn system is extremely annoying at times and favour the aliens a lot. A dead alien can reinforce much faster than a dead marine (except gorge, and possibly onos). I've seen games where marines had twice as many kills but were still pushed back in their base because they didn't have time to move out before the aliens were back in place again. Personally, I'd prefer an individual spawn system (similar to the first version) but faster, level-independant and limited to X people waiting (depending on how many players are in the game). Sort of like having multiple IPs in classic: everyone will spawn after having waited for a while, but only as many players as IPs would be able to spawn (or as the scoreboard say; reinforce). Not sure how well that would work, but I think it'll be better (or at least less frustrating). Actually, even better, separate the spawn area from the CC/Hive area. A short run back (with plenty of entry points to prevent door-way camping) during which you can wait for others to spawn or whatnot. Sort of like the DoD spawn system (on most maps anyway).
Oh, and the sounds I'm not too fond of. Meta is okay I guess (don't pay that much attention to it anyway), and SG is better than ever, but LMG and HMG just sounds wrong. Maybe I'll get used to it, but I said the same thing for 2.0 and 3.0 (though I'm not sure the LMG was changed for both) and I still prefer the old 1.0 LMG sounds.
I like the idea of the single respawn rate to put the emphasis on not dieing. I like the idea of reducing the average game time to about 5 minutes (maybe allow levelling up quicker, so more people reach a slightly higher level in average game?)
I don't like spending 90% of the game sitting in the spawn queue. If i wanted to sit about I'd play CS on a pro clan server and get raped by them.
There have been so many offered solutions to this, obviously it's up to the team to pick out what they think would suit it best - but as Co is meant to be the fast paced quick action version of NS, why have a 30-40 second spawn queue on an 8 man server (figures are estimated, I may well be way off the mark in which case I apologise).
I didn't vote because I've not played enough of beta4 to actually give reasoning.
I see combat as getting better, but the balance offset by giving aliens xp-over-time is what is causing problems. I hope we get a quick beta out to patch the marine xp gain to compensate for alien xp over time so it evens out.
I am absolutely in LOVE with classic... when you command an hour-long hera game, lose, but feel great in doing it, you know that the developers did something right. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
What I see happening to combat... I really like the concept. Most of it is pretty much hammered out, too. It's just the spawn system. There is a balance or spawn sytem out there somewhere where you don't spend too much time in the spawn line, but it's not impossible to win a game. I really don't know where this has to go to fix it, but I will say that it's getting close.
In my opinion, NS seems a lot like the work of a professional development team, not just some small-scale mod. The only thing I could ask for at this point as far as polish (you know, minor things that create the game's feel) is a round-out of the alien animation sets.
I think beta 4 is a little bit worse than beta 3. At least in beta 3 combat was actually fun IMO, but now its just camp camp camp (even though it was the same deal in beta 3, you at least had a chance with 2 spawning and aliens not getting exp for camping in the spawn)
Personally, I think the first combat spawn system was much better, but it took a bit too long for most people's tastes. I believe (along with a bunch of others most likely... I only lerk these forums, not the beta or S&I) that the spawn camping can be reduced a bit by spawning invincible for 1 sec or less, just enough to get the average joe his bearings when he spawns.
Also, the fade seems way too powerful in CO in the hands of a talented player. I can usually go 40+ kills and less than 10 deaths in a match (of which most deaths are as a skulk or me stupidly rushing fade with no carapace/celerity/focus).
Onos are not really a problem in co until most of the alien team goes onos, with a fade or two, and gorge. Sure, JPs are the counter to Onos, but how many co maps have lots of flying space to dodge in? Not many.
Lerks are much better now that they don't need energy to fly, except it encourages spamming of the "flap" key, which is not the way the lerk should be.
Other than these few CO "bugs" beta 4 is ok. I think NS mode is perfect, though some of the maps could use a bit of rethinking their res nodes.
The one at a time spawn is ok if the spawn rate is based on the number of players. Say in 15v15 you have someone spawn every second while 1v1 every 15 seconds(just example times). I personally like how a super skulk would spawn faster than an onos in the original system. If it was just my imagination a level 10 skulk should spawn faster than a level 10 onos.
Bast needs more rts. Its sweet its back but 8 rts is not cutting it.
The change to the lerk flight is sweet, but I hear you can go extremely fast so speed cap is needed.
I like the new sounds <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
NS keeps getting more and more into the first person shooting then the strat. In 1.04 if you didnt work as a team you would lose. Now both sides can rambo(pub play).
Webs for gorgs need a delay before they work like mines. Instant web even with welder out and using it while standing still is soo weak.
Jps and HAs should only cost 1 xp point but be a level 3 armor ability. Marines need a little extra help in later levels for combat.
Making the 3rd hive ability costing 2 xp points was needed. Zeno after 2 levels was rape and it does hurt gorgs in the long run. They have plenty of xp points to spend.
maybe you can make it so that you dont get exp for kills within a certain range of the CC?
While there are problems with the lerk and co, classic is just fine the way it is. No energy usage for lerk is fine, but the fast vertical flight seems messed up, sicne you could really do that in b3 without looking up and flapping alot, but here you can fly up straight ala 1.xx and 2.xx.
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>I love the new lerk with all my heart. I've seen talented players fly circles around hapless marines and kill them in four straight bites. It looks like the lerk is some kind of crazy bat hopped up on crack, bouncing up, down, behind the player, back in front, sideways, and so on. The lerk is finally worth the 30 res investment.
I like the current NS system. Aliens and Marines have different priorities. Marines have to be on the offense and expand in all directions, while aliens have to make sure they don't lose their individual investments and agressively patrol the borders into marine territory. It makes the main game tense and fast-paced with aims and goals to pursue.
I've wasted all my time on NS for the past semester. I'll be lucky if I pass my classes thanks to Natural Selection. If it was any more addicting, I'd sue you. Great game.</span>
The only rant I have about beta 4 is not alot of the classic NS issue's were fixed, though I know Flayra is in the process of fixing a few thing's to help balance larger classic game's.
Now, about the spawn-system. Alien's alway's had a 60-70% chance of winning a round against the marine's in beta 3 and changing the spawn system didn't help fix that at all, marine's just lose faster. The only way marine's actually win, is if they push the alien's so far back that they can shotgun the hive to do death or the marine's get a few jetpacker's to take out a webless hive. Other than that, once the alien's push the "rushing" marines back. It's gg alien's with Onos in about 4 minute's later, then it become's a stalemate until alien's eventually win.
I like the lerk-related change. The changes to eclipse were good in my opinion, except for the lighting (Its too bright now). I like and dislike the spawn system in combat, it brings out the point, combat games are supposed to be short. It ends the really long combat stalemates. But thats about it.
The worst problem is the respawn rate in combat. Regardless of whether it makes games shorter as they were meant to be it makes them not fun for rines and not challenging for aliens. Spending the entire game dead while aliens grab near instant focus is not a good way to get players to go rine. I honestly dont know how the cal test rules for combat went (we stuck it out in the ugl one), but adding a timelimit and removing alien ability to spawn camp would go a long way to making the game possibly fun.
I think the only <i>changes</i> that could be seen as bad are: Lerk flying with 0 energy usage, and One-by-one spawning.
Of course, some people like both, rather than hate them, which is weird. I don't see really short games as more fun than the long games which battled back and forth for an hour until you finally broke through. Incidentally, the new spawn system reduces fun, but at least removes some other annoyances which led to the really-long-games-which-weren't-fun-in-the-first-place, where 4 marines would sit on a CC and weld, and respawn far too quickly for any real damage to be done. That got fixed. So did nade spam, in a way, since the naders don't respawn immediately. But I really think those could have been solved other ways(like not letting the welder weld the CC, or at least not quite so fast, or reducing GL power while increasing the handgrenade's.), getting killed within one second of spawning is not going to make people want to play more combat... or NS.
The lerk change helps classic, and since classic supersedes combat in importance, it should stay if it's either-or, and we can't have both(ie beta 3 halved energy usage in combat, no energy usage at all in classic). Much like we can't have different onos for classic and combat.
I wish all you people would stop complaining about CO. Classic play is 100 times more important. The patch did NOTHING for aliens except make the lerk a giant exploit-wh0r3. The aliens are beefy enough, its just the rine tech up too quickly and become nearly impossible to beat once heavily geared up! The HA are just 5% less in speed than their LA/LMG. Oh the other hand, if you could aim in version 2.01 and 1.04, you can aim in the betas. Fixing the hitbox is NO EXCUSE for lessening alien H/A points.
Generally, all the betas have been rushed for some dumbassed reason and never fixed ANYTHING. My FPS have also dropped per beta from ~80ish to now ~30'ish.
The teams have also been newbified to the point where rines are just CS clones wit buildings and aliens just flying and jumping targets.
The mapping community is VERY sad in my opinion. They cant put out a decent map without HALLWAYS. ALIENS CANNOT SURVIVE IN HALLWAYS OR OPEN AREAS! STOP MAKING MAPS LIKE THAT! MAKE MAPS DARKER, TOO! I can almost whitewash the walls on the maps by cranking up my gamma and brightness on my monitor alone! I can't hide and ambush anymore because of these poorly tested and designed maps!
My main gripe is combat: I've played a few games, and after playing marines with very good teamplay (half team jp, half ha, several hmgs/gls/sgs and almost everyone having welders and actually welding each other) vs a rambo alien team (not a single umbra during the entire game) and we totally lost it. Why? Because even with all the firepower we had, aliens could still go mass onos/fade/lerk and make quick storms into the spawn killing a couple of marines for every onos or fade with lerks forcing jps out with spores. It's normal in classic, but in combat, that causes the end to become one big mess where aliens slowly overpower the marines in their spawn with simple numbers - and there's nothing you can do about it, no matter the level of teamplay, as you simply cannot do enough damage to the alien team in time. This was also the first time I ever saw 4 oni and 2 fades go down within 15 seconds or so - this game was an excellent example of what focus fire with various weaponry can do. But by then we were all out of ammo and the remaining onos and lerk tore through the remains of the marine team in a matter of seconds and proceeded to camp our spawn until the reinforcements came. My point in a nutshell - aliens have a strategic path that is simply uncounterable because of the current spawn system - mass higher lifeform. After following this path, they don't even have to have decent teamwork - marines become helpless no matter the level of teamwork on their side.
I voted somewhat worse; would have been much worse except I don't play on the insanely large combat games that got hit the hardest with the new spawn system. I think Classic still has a few serious issues that need to be addressed but as you requested I'll just talk about Combat.
To be perfectly blunt, Flayra, you really need to take a look at other ways of shortening combat besides nerfing spawn rates. Slowing down spawning does shorten games, but it also seriously slows down the pace of the game and makes losing the game a seriously frustrating experience. There's no such thing as a fun loss with this spawn system; if you lose, it's not before a couple minutes of 5-second spurts of activity followed by extremely long spawn queues.
Nerfing the fun, so to speak, of everyone on the losing team is not the solution to stalemates. There are ways to shorten games while leaving a good spawn system intact and keeping combat as a fast-paced game mode; namely, doing something about Hive/CC healing, the true cause of massively drawn out Combat games. As long as the vast majority of offenses are completely nullified in 30 seconds of healing, games will typically last a long time before a sufficient attack can be pulled off(unless, as in Beta 4, defense is nerfed to the point of hopelessness which isn't fun for anybody).
Make the CC unweldable, and either do the same for the hive or ditch Gorges entirely(Combat was great before they came back, the only thing they provide is spawn webbing and stalemates). Stalemates only happened on the marine defensive when Gorges weren't around, when the hive had enough regen to recover from a lone rambo but was vulnerable to any kind of coordinated attack. With the ability to recover from large attacks removed, a multi-person spawn system can be brought back. We can fine-tune this until game lengths are acceptable, and then we have the best of both worlds; short, fast paced games without any need for one team to just sit in the queue and watch their team lose.
Also, on a slightly unrelated note, please make some more of these poll/discussion threads for each patch on various issues. I know you don't have time to play NS very often, and of course that's to be expected, but because of that more active feedback needs to be taken from the community. You say you're happy with Classic, but a good deal of people aren't and it's a little unsettling that there's no known way to be heard concerning that. If a poll shows that 90% of people think Classic is ready for release then I'd be happy to concede the point. I don't know how often you read the threads around here but when we can't do anything but talk to eachother without any dev reponse it starts to seem like you guys just aren't listening.
Wave spawning was certainly better than single-spawning.
How about this idea: Players spawn in fairly large waves. When the cc is under attack, the wave spawn time gets longer, so the other team has a chance to do some damage. When it is not (longer between groups), they spawn really fast. Same for kharaa and hive. Probably make spawn rate proportional to both team size and damage rate to the cc/hive.
Less spawn-camping because they have to keep damaging the cc, not spawning one at a time. Slower spawn rate means they can get some work done, if your team dies a few times in a short period, you've lost (not so many stalemates as b3). Also encourages you to actually leave the base because you'll get back in the action faster if you don't die in your own base.
Obviously there's lots of room for tweaking, though.
I still definately think that what you're packing should have an effect on how fast you spawn (jp/onos slower than skulk/la marine), but incorporating that into a wave system would be challenging.
I'm also a big fan of making the cc/hive heal at a good clip by themselves, but removing welding/healspray on them. Welders and healspray are still useful on players, naturally, but I suspect that a welder would never be purchased in pubs unless they came with a suit of HA.
N1Rampage, Flay is specifically asking about Combat. He says he's mostly happy with Classic.
I really don't have any qualms about Classic NS, but Combat is just ridiculous. Aliens have won all of the 24 combat games I've played so far, just because once half of the rines are dead they spawn camp and screw the CC. I think that the alien experience boost should have been tested without the single respawn at first, because both totally overpower the aliens. Maybe re-institute the 3 man respawn?
The only other thing is, why in the world is focus so powerful now? It was good before, but killing lvl1 armor in one bite still is too much.
<!--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 far as I know, a focus skulk wont kill a marine with lvl 1 armour on the first bite.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--><span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Oh god this again. Can we stop this line of discussion before it starts? Thx.</span>
Raping spawncamping marines in 3 minutes or crushing ramboing aliens hive in the same time, that just how it should be.
With getting res slowly over time I began to love the ceelings of all marine starts parasiting all busy marines for 10 minutes without diing. "ohno im parasited, I better not move out so fast, i better wait at the end of this path" <--- BAD idea! After a short time my upgraded teammates come in and I can even parasite from low ceelings, scanned and being visible most times without diing because theire too busy fighting my teammates. <b>vicious circle of parasite, cloaced in rine spawn</b>
Honestly, I could give a rats **** about how CO plays.
But I will say that the Lerk in NS is a bit more overpowering now. IMO the lerk was about the only well balanced alien form for 3.0. It remained a viable class with 1, 2 or 3 hives. However now, it is a skilless position. People can flap wildly and dodge at ridiculous rates, and have enough energy for several spores.
Plus, now you see an early lerk rush as opposed to a couple fades in 5 minutes or so. <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::lerk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/lerk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='lerk.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::lerk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/lerk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='lerk.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
You show me a demo of a killing-machine lerk on a "medium" sized map (as in height and width of corridors, like Veil) when marines can aim well, then come back. Lerk is great now, it actually adds something to an alien team whilst being fun to play. I dont see why people complain about lerks now. They still cost 30 res, and you can get 1 onos for 3 lerks. Theyre not supposed to die like flies, theyre not supposed to get 5 kills in a row, its supposed to be a HUGE pain in the butt. Beta4 accomplishes a lerk's goal.
lerks are fine, pancake is just a bit annoying, and combat spawn is perfect. ifs almost like the non-cc combat. marines win quick or they dont win at all.
Removing the adrenaline cost for lerk flight won't be as much of a problem after the lerk's vertical speed is capped to prevent "Rubber Lerk Syndrome".
The new spawning system makes combat games shorter and thus is awesome. I will admit that the aliens tend to get a level much faster than the marines and thus focus\cloaking **** rape everyone early on if the aliens play conservatively.
Starting marines with 1 level might be a good experiment--allow them to start with armor 1 or resupply or something to encourage aliens to play defensively and marines even more offensively.
Please make Catalyst worth something... like providing faster reload or something like that.
Also, hand grenades could be more useful... maybe give them more damage or bigger blast radius than the GL. Or start the player off with 3 or something (only for Combat of course).
Marines need a boost in combat. I believe they are not leaving their bases because they know its so dangerous to. There is bound to be a focus skulk hanging from the roof along the way to the hive, and you're going to get killed unless you're very lucky.
The only way to stay alive as a marine in combat at the moment is to stand at the back of a room with your team-mates and wait for the aliens to come. That way they have little chance to get close to you. Even better stand next to the armory for free health.
Punishing marines for staying in base isn't a good idea just yet IMO until you've made marines capable of leaving base. Then you can introduce ways to punish those who do not leave base. Solve the main problem first.
O Perhaps a base armour upgrade is needed as focus really is the best upgrade. O Free catalyst for everyone? (even if it doesn't work out, it might get people using them, then remove it in another update and people might actually still choose it)
----------------
Spawn System.
Come try out the spawn system plugin I made for our server. Its certainly not perfect but atleast it might give you some ideas Flayra: yoclan.com:27025
My issue with spawning in small numbers is that its useless to stop spawn camping. I hate spawn camping and don't think it should be part of any game.
Keep the wave(s), increase the time until they spawn.
<!--QuoteBegin-e.Nadagast+Apr 29 2004, 01:11 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (e.Nadagast @ Apr 29 2004, 01:11 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Um lerks still suck at actually killing marines... at least in my experience. Their HP is way too low, it's way too much of a risk to go for a kill. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> TOTALLY AGREE, I've been trying to say this in all the threads that deal with pancaking lerks.
Comments
The spawn system is extremely annoying at times and favour the aliens a lot. A dead alien can reinforce much faster than a dead marine (except gorge, and possibly onos). I've seen games where marines had twice as many kills but were still pushed back in their base because they didn't have time to move out before the aliens were back in place again. Personally, I'd prefer an individual spawn system (similar to the first version) but faster, level-independant and limited to X people waiting (depending on how many players are in the game). Sort of like having multiple IPs in classic: everyone will spawn after having waited for a while, but only as many players as IPs would be able to spawn (or as the scoreboard say; reinforce). Not sure how well that would work, but I think it'll be better (or at least less frustrating).
Actually, even better, separate the spawn area from the CC/Hive area. A short run back (with plenty of entry points to prevent door-way camping) during which you can wait for others to spawn or whatnot. Sort of like the DoD spawn system (on most maps anyway).
Oh, and the sounds I'm not too fond of. Meta is okay I guess (don't pay that much attention to it anyway), and SG is better than ever, but LMG and HMG just sounds wrong. Maybe I'll get used to it, but I said the same thing for 2.0 and 3.0 (though I'm not sure the LMG was changed for both) and I still prefer the old 1.0 LMG sounds.
I like the idea of the single respawn rate to put the emphasis on not dieing. I like the idea of reducing the average game time to about 5 minutes (maybe allow levelling up quicker, so more people reach a slightly higher level in average game?)
I don't like spending 90% of the game sitting in the spawn queue. If i wanted to sit about I'd play CS on a pro clan server and get raped by them.
There have been so many offered solutions to this, obviously it's up to the team to pick out what they think would suit it best - but as Co is meant to be the fast paced quick action version of NS, why have a 30-40 second spawn queue on an 8 man server (figures are estimated, I may well be way off the mark in which case I apologise).
I didn't vote because I've not played enough of beta4 to actually give reasoning.
What I see happening to combat... I really like the concept. Most of it is pretty much hammered out, too. It's just the spawn system. There is a balance or spawn sytem out there somewhere where you don't spend too much time in the spawn line, but it's not impossible to win a game. I really don't know where this has to go to fix it, but I will say that it's getting close.
In my opinion, NS seems a lot like the work of a professional development team, not just some small-scale mod. The only thing I could ask for at this point as far as polish (you know, minor things that create the game's feel) is a round-out of the alien animation sets.
Personally, I think the first combat spawn system was much better, but it took a bit too long for most people's tastes. I believe (along with a bunch of others most likely... I only lerk these forums, not the beta or S&I) that the spawn camping can be reduced a bit by spawning invincible for 1 sec or less, just enough to get the average joe his bearings when he spawns.
Also, the fade seems way too powerful in CO in the hands of a talented player. I can usually go 40+ kills and less than 10 deaths in a match (of which most deaths are as a skulk or me stupidly rushing fade with no carapace/celerity/focus).
Onos are not really a problem in co until most of the alien team goes onos, with a fade or two, and gorge. Sure, JPs are the counter to Onos, but how many co maps have lots of flying space to dodge in? Not many.
Lerks are much better now that they don't need energy to fly, except it encourages spamming of the "flap" key, which is not the way the lerk should be.
Other than these few CO "bugs" beta 4 is ok. I think NS mode is perfect, though some of the maps could use a bit of rethinking their res nodes.
Bast needs more rts. Its sweet its back but 8 rts is not cutting it.
The change to the lerk flight is sweet, but I hear you can go extremely fast so speed cap is needed.
I like the new sounds <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
NS keeps getting more and more into the first person shooting then the strat. In 1.04 if you didnt work as a team you would lose. Now both sides can rambo(pub play).
Webs for gorgs need a delay before they work like mines. Instant web even with welder out and using it while standing still is soo weak.
Jps and HAs should only cost 1 xp point but be a level 3 armor ability. Marines need a little extra help in later levels for combat.
Making the 3rd hive ability costing 2 xp points was needed. Zeno after 2 levels was rape and it does hurt gorgs in the long run. They have plenty of xp points to spend.
While there are problems with the lerk and co, classic is just fine the way it is. No energy usage for lerk is fine, but the fast vertical flight seems messed up, sicne you could really do that in b3 without looking up and flapping alot, but here you can fly up straight ala 1.xx and 2.xx.
I like the current NS system. Aliens and Marines have different priorities. Marines have to be on the offense and expand in all directions, while aliens have to make sure they don't lose their individual investments and agressively patrol the borders into marine territory. It makes the main game tense and fast-paced with aims and goals to pursue.
I've wasted all my time on NS for the past semester. I'll be lucky if I pass my classes thanks to Natural Selection. If it was any more addicting, I'd sue you. Great game.</span>
Now, about the spawn-system. Alien's alway's had a 60-70% chance of winning a round against the marine's in beta 3 and changing the spawn system didn't help fix that at all, marine's just lose faster. The only way marine's actually win, is if they push the alien's so far back that they can shotgun the hive to do death or the marine's get a few jetpacker's to take out a webless hive. Other than that, once the alien's push the "rushing" marines back. It's gg alien's with Onos in about 4 minute's later, then it become's a stalemate until alien's eventually win.
Lerk flying with 0 energy usage, and
One-by-one spawning.
Of course, some people like both, rather than hate them, which is weird.
I don't see really short games as more fun than the long games which battled back and forth for an hour until you finally broke through.
Incidentally, the new spawn system reduces fun, but at least removes some other annoyances which led to the really-long-games-which-weren't-fun-in-the-first-place, where 4 marines would sit on a CC and weld, and respawn far too quickly for any real damage to be done. That got fixed. So did nade spam, in a way, since the naders don't respawn immediately.
But I really think those could have been solved other ways(like not letting the welder weld the CC, or at least not quite so fast, or reducing GL power while increasing the handgrenade's.), getting killed within one second of spawning is not going to make people want to play more combat... or NS.
The lerk change helps classic, and since classic supersedes combat in importance, it should stay if it's either-or, and we can't have both(ie beta 3 halved energy usage in combat, no energy usage at all in classic). Much like we can't have different onos for classic and combat.
EDIT: vote= somewhat worse than beta 3.
Generally, all the betas have been rushed for some dumbassed reason and never fixed ANYTHING. My FPS have also dropped per beta from ~80ish to now ~30'ish.
The teams have also been newbified to the point where rines are just CS clones wit buildings and aliens just flying and jumping targets.
The mapping community is VERY sad in my opinion. They cant put out a decent map without HALLWAYS. ALIENS CANNOT SURVIVE IN HALLWAYS OR OPEN AREAS! STOP MAKING MAPS LIKE THAT! MAKE MAPS DARKER, TOO! I can almost whitewash the walls on the maps by cranking up my gamma and brightness on my monitor alone! I can't hide and ambush anymore because of these poorly tested and designed maps!
My point in a nutshell - aliens have a strategic path that is simply uncounterable because of the current spawn system - mass higher lifeform. After following this path, they don't even have to have decent teamwork - marines become helpless no matter the level of teamwork on their side.
To be perfectly blunt, Flayra, you really need to take a look at other ways of shortening combat besides nerfing spawn rates. Slowing down spawning does shorten games, but it also seriously slows down the pace of the game and makes losing the game a seriously frustrating experience. There's no such thing as a fun loss with this spawn system; if you lose, it's not before a couple minutes of 5-second spurts of activity followed by extremely long spawn queues.
Nerfing the fun, so to speak, of everyone on the losing team is not the solution to stalemates. There are ways to shorten games while leaving a good spawn system intact and keeping combat as a fast-paced game mode; namely, doing something about Hive/CC healing, the true cause of massively drawn out Combat games. As long as the vast majority of offenses are completely nullified in 30 seconds of healing, games will typically last a long time before a sufficient attack can be pulled off(unless, as in Beta 4, defense is nerfed to the point of hopelessness which isn't fun for anybody).
Make the CC unweldable, and either do the same for the hive or ditch Gorges entirely(Combat was great before they came back, the only thing they provide is spawn webbing and stalemates). Stalemates only happened on the marine defensive when Gorges weren't around, when the hive had enough regen to recover from a lone rambo but was vulnerable to any kind of coordinated attack. With the ability to recover from large attacks removed, a multi-person spawn system can be brought back. We can fine-tune this until game lengths are acceptable, and then we have the best of both worlds; short, fast paced games without any need for one team to just sit in the queue and watch their team lose.
Also, on a slightly unrelated note, please make some more of these poll/discussion threads for each patch on various issues. I know you don't have time to play NS very often, and of course that's to be expected, but because of that more active feedback needs to be taken from the community. You say you're happy with Classic, but a good deal of people aren't and it's a little unsettling that there's no known way to be heard concerning that. If a poll shows that 90% of people think Classic is ready for release then I'd be happy to concede the point. I don't know how often you read the threads around here but when we can't do anything but talk to eachother without any dev reponse it starts to seem like you guys just aren't listening.
thats just my opinion you dont need to take it serously
How about this idea: Players spawn in fairly large waves. When the cc is under attack, the wave spawn time gets longer, so the other team has a chance to do some damage. When it is not (longer between groups), they spawn really fast. Same for kharaa and hive. Probably make spawn rate proportional to both team size and damage rate to the cc/hive.
Less spawn-camping because they have to keep damaging the cc, not spawning one at a time. Slower spawn rate means they can get some work done, if your team dies a few times in a short period, you've lost (not so many stalemates as b3). Also encourages you to actually leave the base because you'll get back in the action faster if you don't die in your own base.
Obviously there's lots of room for tweaking, though.
I still definately think that what you're packing should have an effect on how fast you spawn (jp/onos slower than skulk/la marine), but incorporating that into a wave system would be challenging.
I'm also a big fan of making the cc/hive heal at a good clip by themselves, but removing welding/healspray on them. Welders and healspray are still useful on players, naturally, but I suspect that a welder would never be purchased in pubs unless they came with a suit of HA.
N1Rampage, Flay is specifically asking about Combat. He says he's mostly happy with Classic.
The only other thing is, why in the world is focus so powerful now? It was good before, but killing lvl1 armor in one bite still is too much.
With getting res slowly over time I began to love the ceelings of all marine starts parasiting all busy marines for 10 minutes without diing.
"ohno im parasited, I better not move out so fast, i better wait at the end of this path" <--- BAD idea!
After a short time my upgraded teammates come in and I can even parasite from low ceelings, scanned and being visible most times without diing because theire too busy fighting my teammates.
<b>vicious circle of parasite, cloaced in rine spawn</b>
But I will say that the Lerk in NS is a bit more overpowering now. IMO the lerk was about the only well balanced alien form for 3.0. It remained a viable class with 1, 2 or 3 hives. However now, it is a skilless position. People can flap wildly and dodge at ridiculous rates, and have enough energy for several spores.
Plus, now you see an early lerk rush as opposed to a couple fades in 5 minutes or so. <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::lerk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/lerk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='lerk.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::lerk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/lerk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='lerk.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
You show me a demo of a killing-machine lerk on a "medium" sized map (as in height and width of corridors, like Veil) when marines can aim well, then come back. Lerk is great now, it actually adds something to an alien team whilst being fun to play. I dont see why people complain about lerks now. They still cost 30 res, and you can get 1 onos for 3 lerks. Theyre not supposed to die like flies, theyre not supposed to get 5 kills in a row, its supposed to be a HUGE pain in the butt. Beta4 accomplishes a lerk's goal.
Theyre fine!
The new spawning system makes combat games shorter and thus is awesome. I will admit that the aliens tend to get a level much faster than the marines and thus focus\cloaking **** rape everyone early on if the aliens play conservatively.
Starting marines with 1 level might be a good experiment--allow them to start with armor 1 or resupply or something to encourage aliens to play defensively and marines even more offensively.
Also, hand grenades could be more useful... maybe give them more damage or bigger blast radius than the GL. Or start the player off with 3 or something (only for Combat of course).
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Nullzero
The only way to stay alive as a marine in combat at the moment is to stand at the back of a room with your team-mates and wait for the aliens to come. That way they have little chance to get close to you. Even better stand next to the armory for free health.
Punishing marines for staying in base isn't a good idea just yet IMO until you've made marines capable of leaving base. Then you can introduce ways to punish those who do not leave base. Solve the main problem first.
O Perhaps a base armour upgrade is needed as focus really is the best upgrade.
O Free catalyst for everyone? (even if it doesn't work out, it might get people using them, then remove it in another update and people might actually still choose it)
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Spawn System.
Come try out the spawn system plugin I made for our server. Its certainly not perfect but atleast it might give you some ideas Flayra: yoclan.com:27025
My issue with spawning in small numbers is that its useless to stop spawn camping. I hate spawn camping and don't think it should be part of any game.
Keep the wave(s), increase the time until they spawn.
TOTALLY AGREE, I've been trying to say this in all the threads that deal with pancaking lerks.