The 'inbalance' Issue
Tzarcon
Join Date: 2002-02-28 Member: 259Members
<div class="IPBDescription">This is it, I've had enough</div> Every day the majority of the topics I see in these forums are about "Aliens are overpowered!" A few minutes later I see a "Marines are overpowered!" "Aliens are too strong!" "Game is unbalanced, marines always win!". I think it's time that this is clarified
The game is not unbalanced. This game was playtested for MONTHS. The only reason people are having trouble at this point is because the game has only been out for <b>11 days</b>. When the game has been out longer, for say a month/2 months, The unbalances will stop. People do not yet know the game well, once people have played the game more, then they will get better, and play it properly, like it was meant to be played.
I have seen alot of people say things like "Its unfair, the playtesters know the game inside and out, but we dont, so for us it's unbalanced!"
This may be temporarily true, but the game wasn't designed specifically for when it came out. It was designed for when people will actually know the game, like the playtesters do. Notice that the unbalances arn't biased for one side, sometimes aliens win alot, sometimes marines win alot, depending on whos playing on what team.
(Note: I think a topic similar to this should be stickied)
The game is not unbalanced. This game was playtested for MONTHS. The only reason people are having trouble at this point is because the game has only been out for <b>11 days</b>. When the game has been out longer, for say a month/2 months, The unbalances will stop. People do not yet know the game well, once people have played the game more, then they will get better, and play it properly, like it was meant to be played.
I have seen alot of people say things like "Its unfair, the playtesters know the game inside and out, but we dont, so for us it's unbalanced!"
This may be temporarily true, but the game wasn't designed specifically for when it came out. It was designed for when people will actually know the game, like the playtesters do. Notice that the unbalances arn't biased for one side, sometimes aliens win alot, sometimes marines win alot, depending on whos playing on what team.
(Note: I think a topic similar to this should be stickied)
Comments
I agree.
I've seen the skulk rush work against teams who run off on their own in the begining, but not against a team who simply stays put and defends themself for 60 **obscenity** seconds.
I think you're the kind of person he was talking about. This game requires more strategy and teamwork then anyother game I've ever played, easy, mid, and end game. Sometimes you only have 1 hive and they're attacking with GLs, sometimes they expanded quickly and all you can do is Shotgun their Onos. Strategy is especially important for Gorges and the Commander, you don't always have GLs and Fades, sometimes not ever in a game.
From my point of view the game is balanced quite well, I alternated teams all evening and won maybe 60% of the time, some games lasted nearly forever, going back and forth. Things will get better as soon as people get better, learn to follow comm's orders, learn to only have 2 gorges, etc...
If youre a good commander, you KNOW for a fact that a marine with GL and HA is absolutely useless unless he has
A) A backup marine he can trust with an HMG.
B) An enemy base to attack (GLs are useless against aliens since they can close up on you fast)
C) a good commander who promotes teamwork
Have you ever tried taking out a skulk coming straight at you with a GL and HA? yeah... i thought so.
The strategy isnt only on the marine side. The aliens have plenty of decisions to make. To rush, to stay back and fortify their hive or to go all out and grab as many nodes as they can. It all depends on the alien team and how good a team they make. People say HMG is too powerul, but i dont see any aliens saying "Omg fades are too good theire unbalanced! and how about those onos, maybe they should tweak their health down just a bit"
Same goes for people who whine about the aliens, the point is, any team can seem unbalanced if it has good players and a good strategy. The whole point of the mod is to make people actually have to think a little bit before they beat their enemy. Going out and just killing people? Sure you can do it, but as long as it helps the team. If it doesnt, youre about as useful as a babbler sent out in hopes of anihilating the entire enemy team with it. Its just not gonna happen...
Unbalanced? maybe, perhaps in the long run we can tell, but to me, it seems as balanced as it gets. I have yet to lose a single marine game where im commanding. Coincidence? who knows...
I disagree, I hate the grenade launcher, gimme a HMG any day
But I do agree about Fades being over powered (rocket aliens)
Claws, Acid Rocket, Bile Bomb, and Teleport all in one tidy pack, and for only 44 resources/2 hives! Not a bad deal....
But I still enjoy Leerks just because they can fly and that, to me, is one of the coolest things in the game (another thing is Skulks wall climbing)
Because of the patch:
If it was balanced before, it's unbalanced now.
If it is balanced now, then it was unbalanced before.
The fact is, you can't say that it has always been balanced, unless of course making some fundemental changes to the game doesn't have <b>any</b> affect on it <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> ...
GOD, I LOVE THIS GAME!!!
Marines HAVE to rely on their commander, he's the Core of their game
Let's face it, with no body part doing more damage then the other, you waste a LOT of ammo, then, if you're in the heat of battle, there's gotta be someone there to provide that ammo
so until we get Field medics (if we ever do) and Mules (not the donkey type...peeps who lug around ammo) the Marines will always have to rely on the commander
Bad commander - Bad team
On your topic of the commander, the issue with that is I think its bad to rely on the commander 100%, it takes away from a lot of things. Most often we see bad commanders and thus we have issue, or we see player who sit there and say "GIVE ME GUN" about 1000 times, because the commander has so much other stuff to do. i think it woudl be wise to take off some of the burden on the commander and put it on the player.
The game is not unbalanced. This game was playtested for MONTHS. The only reason people are having trouble at this point is because the game has only been out for <b>11 days</b>. When the game has been out longer, for say a month/2 months, The unbalances will stop. People do not yet know the game well, once people have played the game more, then they will get better, and play it properly, like it was meant to be played.
I have seen alot of people say things like "Its unfair, the playtesters know the game inside and out, but we dont, so for us it's unbalanced!"
This may be temporarily true, but the game wasn't designed specifically for when it came out. It was designed for when people will actually know the game, like the playtesters do. Notice that the unbalances arn't biased for one side, sometimes aliens win alot, sometimes marines win alot, depending on whos playing on what team.
(Note: I think a topic similar to this should be stickied)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
OK so they recently balanced the game because it was even? I could have sworn one of the fixes said "balance issues". The game is not perfect. The fact is that the majority of the time.....basically all the time marines won before the patch. Now when I play the game the aliens seem to always win, granted they have even a little team work. At least this means the teams wont be stacked all the time. The last patch really idd balance the gmae out more. I'm seeing a lot less spamming of the aliens by 3 times as many marines. The one thing that may need a fix is umbra. One lerk can take out a whole base of turrets which really isn't right. The only problem here is that the turret factory controls them all. maybe there should be a rule like only 2 turrets can be run after the factory dies or so on. I played as aliens for the majority of the time even before the patch and still enjoy it more. Again if you think the game does not need balance and it is perfect in its current condition go read the main page and explain to me what all those fixes like increased cost on guns and armor are as well as lowered round capacity of grenade launcher.
In fact, the only hard thing about being a commander is getting you marines to follow your orders and being able to help them as much as you can.
Commanders bad? If theire so bad how come ive had a team full of marines cheering me on when some wise guy asks for an HMG 5 mins into the game, i tell him no and he tries to kick me out of the chair.
Most of you newer members may not know this, but NS spent about a year of its development in Playtesting.... i think they know what theire doing.
As for the last patch, i believe the only thing that unbalanced it was the resource bug and perhaps the lag a little bit. Otherwise, i think the dev team just answered to the cries of the general public to make them happy...
Keep on doing that and you get a weapons mod with marines and aliens deathmatching.
bottom line: TEAMWORK SOLVES EVERYTHING!
HMG-Fade's Bile Bomb/Onos
GL-Spore Cloud(I think spore cloud deadliest attack in game, towards players that is)/Onos
HA-Onos
Siege Cannon-...nothing directly but....Onos
Plus the fact aliens get all sorts of benefits, like not needing to wait for someone else to drop a building, or doing all sorts of sneaky stuff, like totally dissapering then rippin your head off. And marines get a commander, who if is good enough, is a great benefit. Plus all sorts of other things. So, in the end, I think this game is plenty balanced, we just gotta pick up on the strong and weak points on each team first.
Don't tempt the n00bs ... we'll see an "I want an elephant gun" thread in requests in about two seconds. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
- M4H
Unless you mean the resource thing, which wasn't ment to be exploited by admins and messed up the first version.
I find the game to be very balanced, and very true to it's intention. The key is teamwork. The aliens can get away with having a couple of deathmatchers on their team, since it fits into their strategy, but the marines need teamwork from everyone to win, that's the difference.
Right now people aren't playing as a team enough, and that is why the aliens (who are less reliant on this) win a bit more. Aliens just need a couple of players with some teamplay or strategy brain cells to be ok, marines need more. Once the deathmatchers get tired of NS and go back to CS/Quake/Whatever NS will probably take on a new level of play, after THAT has happened we can discuss balance issues <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
We where aliens in a nothing game, we had powersilo and viaduct, marines early rushed cargo bay and took it, we where trying to advance trought the middle of the map when we see that the marines are sieging viaduct hive, we all try to save it but we get pretty much screwed by the ha´s, then theiggsta says over voicecomm: Damn, we are screwed, its all over....... WE LOST!!!.Then we all say stuff like: hey, be possitive, we will win and stuff like that, after a hard time fighting viaduct, i just get killed and i see a little gorge building a huge base behind their defending base at viaduct, so i go skulk and i help the gorge, cleaning everything up from marine spawn to cargo bay, then we all massivelly assaulted cargobay. Marines where using a lot phase gates so they never noticed the base the little gorge had built in the way <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->, after we took cargo bay we easily took care of viaduct defenses, then we where all laughing at iggsta because he sayed we had already lost when we all hear: THE HIVE IS UNDERATTACK!! THE HIVE IS DYING, then Sentrysteve yells: damn, we got a siege, gogogo, after a really hardcore battle (like 10 mins atleast) we took the siege off and rebuilt powersilo base, then i bugged the elev (mwhaahahah) so they couldnt bother us trought power silo anymore unless they attacked trought a whole wall of offensive towers and lotsa stuff =). After like 10 mins of constantly assaulting marines outposts till we got them cornered we all morphed into onos, and i mean ALL (we where like 7 onos atleast) we all rushed in at the same time, and destroyed the base. then we where all having fun when we notice that the game hasnt finished.... there where like 2 marines left around somewhere. One of them was hiding with a jetpack in the elev i bugged, he was with his shotgun all confident flying around having fun when i paralize him, he fell to the ground and broke all his bones, damn that was funny as hell. After like 10 secs another onos kills the last marine. This game is seriously balanced if you know how to play it, you can be dying and then getting close to the win when something you never expected happens and you get totally surprised. After that game we played a long nancy game and marines won (they totally destroyed us......) so this game is pretty much balanced the problem is that we dont know how we should play it, so we just complain about the balancing issues, but, there arent any........
Alright, I guess this conversation is over. Please tell me when all of them have left, thanks <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Basically, no games of this nature are 100% balanced. SO just stop your moaning, and enjoy the game.. all this bitching will just cause the designers to keep messing witht the balance, and eventually the game will suck.. Usually when a game is too balanced, it gets boring.. On the flip side when games are too unbalanced, they can just be anoying.. so far NS seems pretty balanced.. to me..
But from what I can tell.. if you arent a team player, you should play as an alien, and marines really need a good commander and need to follow orders, and work together. (ie. humans need to evolve or else they will be destroyed...) isnt this the whole premise behind the game?
Just have fun, and keep the posts positive people.. you have a great game here .. enjoy it..
and If you have an idea that you think could make the game better, share it.. instead of just being negative and inconstructive...
later,
LAZ
Note: that's not saying a good team of marines will beat an average alien team; it's saying that in a match of two equally skilled teams, the marines will win. Therefore, some elements were tweaked in the aliens' favor. This kind of thing could not be seen in playtest because as talented as we are, we're not pro clanners. (:
Tzarcon is completely correct in his statement. Oh, and if you want to suit up an entire team of marines with HA and GLs... please, be my guest. Just make sure I'm an alien when you do it, meatpop.