Aliens- the final answer?
Joemolly
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4929Members
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4929Members
I will outline some reasons why aliens are not as good as marines in the following, Notice however that I do not advocate DRASTIC changes to all of what I list below. I am just listing possible areas of focus for changes that can improve the overall balance of the game:
1. Aliens spawn slower than marines (if a swarm is supposed to be the idea of the aliens, this is stupid)
2. Alien buildings take longer to develope (Which makes some sense since its Biological, but doesnt make good balancing).
3. Aliens are too bulky to hide behind many pillars, sides of walls, ect.
4. Maps are designed poorly around Alien hives as hives can be ambushed many times from above.
5. Maps' hiding places and alien pathways are designed too visible and there are not enough of them.
6. Alien towers, regardless of placement, aim and fire too innaccurate/slow.
7. Marines can grenade spam too easily and rapidly around corners and down into pits/gullies/crevices thus rendering ANY Alien turret placement useless.
8. Marines weapons are too easy to Aim.
9. Marines can get jetpacks, which encroaches on the Aliens supposed mobility advantage.
10. It is too easy to setup marine turrets to defend hive locations (and when the only class of alien you can have is skulk this effectively illiminates competition).
11. Marine heavy armor is too hard to kill with smaller aliens.
12. Marine weapons are designed too much around getting more powerful and more powerful and less around specialization.
13. After the 2nd tech level, Skulks become almost useless as marines become unproportionally better. And the other alien classes effectively replace them.
14. Aliens have no "Commander" and thus cant use teamwork as effectively.
15. The gorge's spawnlings generally are not good at all. They are too slow, too weak and arent very smart.
16. Marines, and Aliens for that matter, can mass too many turrets in one area.
In theory, I agree that Aliens can be almost as good with practice. However, Marines can be used by anyone used to counterstrike or any other halflife mod. Tactics can be used with aliens effectively, but what casual player would bother learning? They would rather switch to MArines because it is easier for them to play as something they are already used to playing as. It takes more practice to be an alien and sneak up on your foes. My suggestions to improve balancing with immediate results would be to decrease spawntime for aliens, increase the building time for marines (at least for turrets) or limit the number of turrets per map for both sides, do not allow grenade spamming by either limiting the total number of grenades able to be shot off at once or how much one can carry, make hives harder to kill or less easily ambushed, make spawnlings better so that gorges can defend solo easier, and make more aiming drift. Again, I am not advocating drastic change, just a slight tipping of the scale. Face it, the general player isnt very good. Good players in any game (and in any avenue of life) are a minority. You good gamers may think that aliens are good with tactics, but the average person will not use these tactics and frustrate themselves thus influecing them to only play marine. When too many people want to play marine, unbalanced teams effectively destroy any tactic aliens can throw at the marines. (NOTICE: I do not apperciate those with the lowest form of intelligence, I.e. flamers that cannot utilize their mind for constructive criticism)
1. Aliens spawn slower than marines (if a swarm is supposed to be the idea of the aliens, this is stupid)
2. Alien buildings take longer to develope (Which makes some sense since its Biological, but doesnt make good balancing).
3. Aliens are too bulky to hide behind many pillars, sides of walls, ect.
4. Maps are designed poorly around Alien hives as hives can be ambushed many times from above.
5. Maps' hiding places and alien pathways are designed too visible and there are not enough of them.
6. Alien towers, regardless of placement, aim and fire too innaccurate/slow.
7. Marines can grenade spam too easily and rapidly around corners and down into pits/gullies/crevices thus rendering ANY Alien turret placement useless.
8. Marines weapons are too easy to Aim.
9. Marines can get jetpacks, which encroaches on the Aliens supposed mobility advantage.
10. It is too easy to setup marine turrets to defend hive locations (and when the only class of alien you can have is skulk this effectively illiminates competition).
11. Marine heavy armor is too hard to kill with smaller aliens.
12. Marine weapons are designed too much around getting more powerful and more powerful and less around specialization.
13. After the 2nd tech level, Skulks become almost useless as marines become unproportionally better. And the other alien classes effectively replace them.
14. Aliens have no "Commander" and thus cant use teamwork as effectively.
15. The gorge's spawnlings generally are not good at all. They are too slow, too weak and arent very smart.
16. Marines, and Aliens for that matter, can mass too many turrets in one area.
In theory, I agree that Aliens can be almost as good with practice. However, Marines can be used by anyone used to counterstrike or any other halflife mod. Tactics can be used with aliens effectively, but what casual player would bother learning? They would rather switch to MArines because it is easier for them to play as something they are already used to playing as. It takes more practice to be an alien and sneak up on your foes. My suggestions to improve balancing with immediate results would be to decrease spawntime for aliens, increase the building time for marines (at least for turrets) or limit the number of turrets per map for both sides, do not allow grenade spamming by either limiting the total number of grenades able to be shot off at once or how much one can carry, make hives harder to kill or less easily ambushed, make spawnlings better so that gorges can defend solo easier, and make more aiming drift. Again, I am not advocating drastic change, just a slight tipping of the scale. Face it, the general player isnt very good. Good players in any game (and in any avenue of life) are a minority. You good gamers may think that aliens are good with tactics, but the average person will not use these tactics and frustrate themselves thus influecing them to only play marine. When too many people want to play marine, unbalanced teams effectively destroy any tactic aliens can throw at the marines. (NOTICE: I do not apperciate those with the lowest form of intelligence, I.e. flamers that cannot utilize their mind for constructive criticism)
Comments
2) Grenade launchers need to be toned down (slower RoF, less ammo, cost more, whathave you).
3) People just don't know how to play aliens efficiently, yet.
4) You look out of a skulks freaking mouth and its impossible to see where your going and bite at the same time. This REALLY pisses me off.
5) Aliens have no effective way to destroy multiple strutures quickly enough to stop a commander from rebuilding, until the 3rd hive when you get bile bomb and onos. And because of bile bomb's short range it is not extremely effective.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just a post from another user that should be included in this thread.
I'm not gonna lie to you people. The game is terrible. This has got to be the worst most laggiest unbalanced mod I've ever played. Here's what you need to do to make the aliens even REMOTELY as good as marines.
1. Make alien attacks far more powerful and make aliens faster.
2. Either SERIOUSLY decrease the damage done by grenades or take them out altogether. Also decrease weapon damage and accuracy for marines as this fella said.
3. Make the offense chamber FAR more accurate and a LOT stronger and faster.
To conclude, not often is it that 8 people are killed by 1 person, unless there's an AWP ##### in CS. But that was pretty much all I've experienced.
I promise you in a few weeks when alien players learn what they are doing and get really good,there will be "marines need beefing up" or "aliens need nerfing" posts. :P
In the meantime though, anyone know a good server with team damage ON?
How to get the Onos out, I don't know. Fades can just blink through.
Today I saw a really good tactic employed by the marines. Two guys with grenade launchers would run forward. The first guy would spam in front of him, the second guy would spam ON THE FEET OF THE FIRST. So the front guy was a moving line of explosions that NO ALIEN could get anywhere near but somehow this guy was still full armor and health. It took absolutely no skill. Marines spamming at each others feet with grenades grant immunity to any kind of melee attack as well as killing any turrets they are near.
It should at least damage your teammates armore or SOMETHING.
1. Aliens spawn slower than marines (if a swarm is supposed to be the idea of the aliens, this is stupid)
2. Alien buildings take longer to develope (Which makes some sense since its Biological, but doesnt make good balancing).
3. Aliens are too bulky to hide behind many pillars, sides of walls, ect.
4. Maps are designed poorly around Alien hives as hives can be ambushed many times from above.
5. Maps' hiding places and alien pathways are designed too visible and there are not enough of them.
6. Alien towers, regardless of placement, aim and fire too innaccurate/slow.
7. Marines can grenade spam too easily and rapidly around corners and down into pits/gullies/crevices thus rendering ANY Alien turret placement useless.
8. Marines weapons are too easy to Aim.
9. Marines can get jetpacks, which encroaches on the Aliens supposed mobility advantage.
10. It is too easy to setup marine turrets to defend hive locations (and when the only class of alien you can have is skulk this effectively illiminates competition).
11. Marine heavy armor is too hard to kill with smaller aliens.
12. Marine weapons are designed too much around getting more powerful and more powerful and less around specialization.
13. After the 2nd tech level, Skulks become almost useless as marines become unproportionally better. And the other alien classes effectively replace them.
14. Aliens have no "Commander" and thus cant use teamwork as effectively.
15. The gorge's spawnlings generally are not good at all. They are too slow, too weak and arent very smart.
16. Marines, and Aliens for that matter, can mass too many turrets in one area.
In theory, I agree that Aliens can be almost as good with practice. However, Marines can be used by anyone used to counterstrike or any other halflife mod. Tactics can be used with aliens effectively, but what casual player would bother learning? They would rather switch to MArines because it is easier for them to play as something they are already used to playing as. It takes more practice to be an alien and sneak up on your foes. My suggestions to improve balancing with immediate results would be to decrease spawntime for aliens, increase the building time for marines (at least for turrets) or limit the number of turrets per map for both sides, do not allow grenade spamming by either limiting the total number of grenades able to be shot off at once or how much one can carry, make hives harder to kill or less easily ambushed, make spawnlings better so that gorges can defend solo easier, and make more aiming drift. Again, I am not advocating drastic change, just a slight tipping of the scale. Face it, the general player isnt very good. Good players in any game (and in any avenue of life) are a minority. You good gamers may think that aliens are good with tactics, but the average person will not use these tactics and frustrate themselves thus influecing them to only play marine. When too many people want to play marine, unbalanced teams effectively destroy any tactic aliens can throw at the marines. (NOTICE: I do not apperciate those with the lowest form of intelligence, I.e. flamers that cannot utilize their mind for constructive criticism)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This post deserves special attention <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
1. Aliens also need NO equipping whatsoever before they're effective attackers. Lerks are DEADLY when used right, look at the new gameplay vid that KidC released. A skulk kills FOUR marines all in one attack. Marines, on the other hand, take a while to get properly equipped, and therefore get started slower despite the quicker spawn rate.
2. Yep, multiple buildings at one time can be built. It's like playing as protoss in starcraft. If you've got the resources you can build away.
3. Cloaking. Duh.
4. Never encountered this problem, but there's a few solutions. a) don't let the marines get to the hive. b) Build offensive chambers that can shoot to wherever "above" is, be it a vent or just on top of the hive... c) Defend your hives! If a hive is under attack, all aliens hear about it on hivesight! There should be a mass of aliens at any hive that's under attack within a VERY short time span! If you've got movement chambers built, you can usually zap to any hive instantly.
5. Bah, you've been playing for a day, you're HARDLY qualified to make that judgement. PTs have been playing on the same maps for MONTHS and some still admit to getting lost on them. There are oodles of alien routes, they just need to be found and learned.
6. Webs. Been mentioned before. The reason you can't hit anything with turrets is because you're not using them the way they're supposed to. The game went through month after month of playtesting, I think the devs know how to make a turret hit something.
7. Simple solution: Kill the marines. Aliens have teeth for a reason. All to often I see alien teams just hanging out in their base, waiting for the ability to evolve to onos while one or two gorges work tirelessly trying to keep the hives online and build chambers. ATTACK if you're not doing anything else! Give the marines something to worry about besides destroying your hives!
8. Don't let the marines see you and they won't have anything to aim at.
9. Aliens still have worlds more in the way of mobility. I'd like to see a jetpacked marine move anywhere near as fast as a lerk. Plus, that jetpack comes at the cost of heavy armor, making the marine little more than a floating meatsicle to a skilled lerk.
10. You can always use gorges as well. They have a ranged attack (a weak one, yes, but it CAN be used to take out turrets). Although if you're down to 0 hives, you've basically already lost anyway so this point is rather irrelevant.
11. Use larger aliens. Or better yet, don't let the marines develop HA capability at all.
12. HMGs can't do everything. An alien base with the proper turret set up will not fall to marines armed with the "most powerful weapon" available. It requires a combination of weapons for a marine squad to be effective. That is, if the aliens are playing properly.
13. Bah. Again this statement is based on your inexperience. Some PTs play almost exclusively as a skulk because they are so effective. Leap is an amazing attack because it gives a huge dodge combined with a powerful attack. Xenocide costs aliens NOTHING (since skulks are free) and does massive damage.
14. Not true again. Aliens don't need a commander, they have connections through hive sight. See a teammate/structure in red? Go help him! There's also a thing called voice comm. in half-life, which, when used, lets the aliens coordinate massive assaults even better than they already can with hive sight. Again, you just need to learn to play as aliens.
15. They're not meant to take down HA marines all by themselves or anything. They're to be used tactically. Next time you see a skulk going after a marine, spawn a bunch of babblers and watch the marine try to figure out which one is the strongest. My guess is you'll have a dead marine on your hands very quickly.
16. Nope. More turrets in one area just means area effect weapons do more damage.
All of your points derive either from a lack of understanding of the design in mind for aliens or a lack of experience in using that design. The mod has been out for less than two days, and you can't expect to have mastered all the nuances yet. PTs played for months on end trying to find the perfect balance. They understand the game, and as soon as normal players do you'll see that the balance is perfect. I admit it's frustrating when you lose as aliens because marines just seem too powerful*. But that's not the fault of the game. You get angry in CS when you get AWPed over and over and over again, but it's player using the awp who's killing you. Likewise, it's the players using the aliens who aren't very skilled with them yet (i.e. everyone) who are screwing alien teams over, NOT the balance of the game.
* On a side note, I went through a VERY exciting game today on ns_caged. We had three hives up, all upgrades, and I (since I had taken sort of an unofficial leadership role) told my team to start coordinating their attacks on the marine base, and we could have the game over fairly quickly. Of course, my team chose not to listen and instead sat in the hive rooms "defending" them or just being useless in general since they didn't understand how to evolve/what upgrades do/how to build, etc. We ended up losing that game because in the time between me trying to solo assault the marine base because my team wasn't helping and the time it took to convince a few of my teammates to attack with me, the marines had developed HA/HMG/GL and siege turrets, and the aliens got smashed pretty quickly thereafter. A prime example of an alien team losing not because of balance (we had the game TOTALLY over, alien win was not in doubt if they just would have attacked), but because of lack of knowledge of NS and lack of skill.
edit: @ kilmster: I totally agree about lerks! I played as a lerk for basically the first time today and it took FOREVER for me to die because of umbra. I'd just walk in to a marine base, umbra myself and then unload with spore clouds... dead marines left and right.
@ longshot: Do you have any idea how badly aliens would get thwomped with open spaces on maps?!?! Wide open spaces = instant alien loss, marines would have WAY too much advantage since all their weapons are ranged! Poor map design? HAH! I have yet to see maps for any game that fit their game as well as ns's do.
However to listen to most of these proposed balance changes made after 2 days of playing would *probably* hurt the game overall.
1. Aliens spawn slower than marines (if a swarm is supposed to be the idea of the aliens, this is stupid)
2. Alien buildings take longer to develope (Which makes some sense since its Biological, but doesnt make good balancing).
3. Aliens are too bulky to hide behind many pillars, sides of walls, ect.
4. Maps are designed poorly around Alien hives as hives can be ambushed many times from above.
5. Maps' hiding places and alien pathways are designed too visible and there are not enough of them.
6. Alien towers, regardless of placement, aim and fire too innaccurate/slow.
7. Marines can grenade spam too easily and rapidly around corners and down into pits/gullies/crevices thus rendering ANY Alien turret placement useless.
8. Marines weapons are too easy to Aim.
9. Marines can get jetpacks, which encroaches on the Aliens supposed mobility advantage.
10. It is too easy to setup marine turrets to defend hive locations (and when the only class of alien you can have is skulk this effectively illiminates competition).
11. Marine heavy armor is too hard to kill with smaller aliens.
12. Marine weapons are designed too much around getting more powerful and more powerful and less around specialization.
13. After the 2nd tech level, Skulks become almost useless as marines become unproportionally better. And the other alien classes effectively replace them.
14. Aliens have no "Commander" and thus cant use teamwork as effectively.
15. The gorge's spawnlings generally are not good at all. They are too slow, too weak and arent very smart.
16. Marines, and Aliens for that matter, can mass too many turrets in one area.
In theory, I agree that Aliens can be almost as good with practice. However, Marines can be used by anyone used to counterstrike or any other halflife mod. Tactics can be used with aliens effectively, but what casual player would bother learning? They would rather switch to MArines because it is easier for them to play as something they are already used to playing as. It takes more practice to be an alien and sneak up on your foes. My suggestions to improve balancing with immediate results would be to decrease spawntime for aliens, increase the building time for marines (at least for turrets) or limit the number of turrets per map for both sides, do not allow grenade spamming by either limiting the total number of grenades able to be shot off at once or how much one can carry, make hives harder to kill or less easily ambushed, make spawnlings better so that gorges can defend solo easier, and make more aiming drift. Again, I am not advocating drastic change, just a slight tipping of the scale. Face it, the general player isnt very good. Good players in any game (and in any avenue of life) are a minority. You good gamers may think that aliens are good with tactics, but the average person will not use these tactics and frustrate themselves thus influecing them to only play marine. When too many people want to play marine, unbalanced teams effectively destroy any tactic aliens can throw at the marines. (NOTICE: I do not apperciate those with the lowest form of intelligence, I.e. flamers that cannot utilize their mind for constructive criticism)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I unfortunately agree that some things have to be looked at. I just played a game where for an hour the aliens were trying to get their 3rd Hive. The marines had all the upgrades and simply camped and taunted us. The suicide abilties may have to be easier to get as that would have at least put us in the game.
As it was, we couldn't do anything against the marines armor, HMGs, and their dang turrets. Which of course there were like 5-6 in one of our Hive rooms. *shrug* Fun game, but it needs some tweaking. (As do all new games.) Play on!
When I have played as aliens, half the time I take some sorta command, cos I am the only one with comms.
This WORKS, though people dont immediatly reply to attacks, I say stuff to alert them.
When I play as aliens we DO work as a team, and we kick ###!!! I LOVE aliens(thou 1/2 the time I play it due to team in-balance)
IF we aint outnumbered and people play sensibly, we can win, even with ####ed resource things. We just take the Hives and defend them like mad.
I usually only play skulk or onos. I also usually have a score in the region of 3:1 ratio. I have played 15+ games so far, and 6 of them were alien wins, the others were losses main due to teams numbers in-balance(at one point it was 15v1 <!--emo&???--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='???'><!--endemo--> ).
You have to learn the aliens, there is a simple way, READ THE F'IN MANUAL. I read it and I know all about the upgrades, it is soooooooooo useful.
I use the skulks very effectivly, basiclly at the start you can take out a lot of marines, cos they aint fast enuf to react before they are dead.
As the game progresses, heavy armor IS a problem, but in the games I won as alien, we had the 2 other hives almost up by that time, so Xenocide was of great use.
If you study the aliens carefully, it is not that hard to win the game, although I must admit, if your team does not work together, then aliens are screwed.
Please stop posting about the game being un-balanced and crap, it really is not, it jus is a *little* challange to play aliens right. That said, the good majority of NS players will not see this post, or will ever bother learning stuff effectivly.
Once experiance sets in, we will do fine <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
Also I would LOVE to see the PT's play against all the people who say marines rule aliens, that would be a right laugh to have a demo of...... <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->
WP on creating the mod, BUT PLZ get that team balance patch out ASAP!!!!! (pisses me off when teams are like 10v5)
Webs are a total waste of time as well. The welder is NOT expensive, and doesn't hassle the Marine at all (it replaces the pistol). In fact, having your Marines leave the base with a welder is probably the best way to go at all times, as they can now repair their armor (Extremely quickly, by the way) and regain that 230 armor points. Webs are NOT hard to spot, either.
So yeah, offensive towers are pitiful. Had a server of 14 players, all the marines and aliens agreed that Offensive towers were nothing but things to waste human's time and attention.
some ideas:
1) welders need to be more of a hassle to use
2) welders probably need to repair armor slower
3) welders shouldn't chop down webs so quickly
about 1 hour ago i played commander where i put 5 nodes up in about 10 min time.. using my marines as meatshields.... and the only reason i were allowed to do that is becuase of alien lazyness.... a SINGLE lerk took out 1 resource tower and 3 marines.... <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo--> just doing umbra, sneaking and pinning my men with its evil little darts (we took over the room later and built tons of turrets but imo thats another matter) i dont know if the rp were screwed on the server but all i can say is the only reason marines win is because all the aliens are massing up on a base, i also played alien earlier.... doing v. good. sneaking up through an alien gateway with a skulk, realising i was BEHIND the marine base, i evolved to fade and started killing people, 20 seconds later a skulk joined me... and the base were gon gon.... so... just play right and u can take it... <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
And if the marine grenades and heavy armor are going to be that powerful and tough to kill, increase the damage on the fade's missle launcher and increase the armor on all aliens.
Oh yea, and marines with jetpacks should be much easier to kill because they now have mobility equal to that of aliens. The whole point is that marines should be LESS mobile than aliens because they have guns & grenades
So yes there is a little offbalance but ohwell, Its still fun. And skulks are so cute <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo-->