Build 210. What the heck was going through dev minds?
Locke504
Join Date: 2010-04-23 Member: 71511Members, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2010-04-23 Member: 71511Members, NS2 Map Tester
I think I can guess the logic between the new changes. More res on both sides gives rines more energy for nano and meds and upgrades, and conversely gives aliens more advanced life forms.
What ends up happening though, is rines get all their upgrades so quick that advanced lifeforms don't have as much effect on the field. Couple this with near infinite nano shield and construct, and aliens just get raped.
One good idea proffered was to put nano abilities on a cooldown.
Also, with 4+ rt's, it is almost impossible for rine comm to spend their res quick enough. I had to go double arms labs and robo labs just to get close.
Docking is pretty fun though.
Just my 2 cents.
-Locke
What ends up happening though, is rines get all their upgrades so quick that advanced lifeforms don't have as much effect on the field. Couple this with near infinite nano shield and construct, and aliens just get raped.
One good idea proffered was to put nano abilities on a cooldown.
Also, with 4+ rt's, it is almost impossible for rine comm to spend their res quick enough. I had to go double arms labs and robo labs just to get close.
Docking is pretty fun though.
Just my 2 cents.
-Locke
Comments
Christ, this post happens every build. Can you people please play for more than 5 minutes before you render an opinion?
At least have the humility to understand your opinion will change, and preface them with a statement to this effect.
What ends up happening though, is rines get all their upgrades so quick that advanced lifeforms don't have as much effect on the field. Couple this with near infinite nano shield and construct, and aliens just get raped.
One good idea proffered was to put nano abilities on a cooldown.
Also, with 4+ rt's, it is almost impossible for rine comm to spend their res quick enough. I had to go double arms labs and robo labs just to get close.
Docking is pretty fun though.
-Locke<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This was my first thought when i saw the unofficial changelog laoshra put up. Every single building/upgrade is now relatively cheaper in terms of res/time and by a decent ammount <b>especially for AA</b>(still 20 res apparantly?). The problem is not that med/ammo costs res but that the timing standards are now lower and bad commander's arn't punished as badly for not dropping med/ammo. Unintuitively, when marine power is shifted from player/commander interaction (med/ammo etc.) to pure brute power of upgrade and weapon timings, we actually end up with a game with less depth and less meaningful marine/commander interaction.
Going to have to play alot of rounds to truly say whether the disincentives to med/ammo/nano etc are unhealthily large now or not ofcourse but those were my first thoughts as well OP.
*edit* in regards to AA, both the fact that its upgrade time has been increased to 90 and its res cost has stayed the same means that it is now a mandatory upgrade that you get early and get often due to the power of gl and higher tech. In previous builds, the decision of when to get AA was already kinda trivial due to its low cost so i don't understand the thought behind the changes in b210. I would suggest raising the cost of AA so we get more lmg/shotgun action in early game instead of gl rushes and spams.
Nano - 5-12s cd, or possibly building only
Cysts - 5s cd, long enough to prevent laying of an entire field of cysts, but short enough not to hinder any expansion time as cysts have a 6s(?) build time regardless.
Once marines get JPs its gg with nano spam. Swipe delay + slower lerk bite makes Jpers unkillable with nano
Build 210 in a nutshell lol.
There was one more marine out of view who had nano as well. I'm sure the guy on the tower was being nano-constructed too.
I am only teasing... but the new docking map is pretty cool I think. It's a nice change of pace. I was able to get a double kill with 1 shot from the shotgun today which I have never done before. :) sg is fun!
@noncomposmentis, I'm sure locke only meant his statement as an attention getter and not as an insult.
The one thing I may have to disagree with locke about is the speed at which marines get upgrades... this was a long needed change that I have been waiting forever for.
It will obviously need to be fine tuned so that both teams can tech up around the same time in a well balanced game. I think this is a step forward though.
However this can be tweaked with numbers. remember this is the first build with this resource model, next one will probably play much better. Keeping the opponents rts low is very important now.
This spam is definitely a issue, however give it some time to see how different it plays out.
That said, I kind of enjoy that aspect a bit. Perhaps with a few cost adjustments and more things to tech towards it will balance out.
Where my frustration was coming from before, and this was kind of a shocker to me, is that the marines end up scaling a lot better than aliens now throughout the game. Not having to chose between upgrades and arcs lets your marines dominate the field while you sit back and mass an arc train.
I would be interested to see how the increased res generation worked out without the changes to energy / med / ammo / nano.
-Locke
At least have the humility to understand your opinion will change, and preface them with a statement to this effect.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My "what the heck was going through the devs mind" title, was largely based on the marines ability to spam nano non stop. Once you have weapons upgrades there's nothing short of onos one rine can't easily solo with comm support.
I often lean on the side of developers when it comes to making their game how they want to make it, but in this particular case I'm a little dumbfounded. It's beta, and a great time to try new things out to get the best possible product, but this implementation is beyond unbalanced.
I suppose my thread title is a little inflammatory, but like I said, dumbfounded.
-Locke
Still, going against some people I consider to be among the best at NS2, I felt like I was forcing rine progress a little to easily using nano all over the place. Perhaps I shouldn't put to much stock in the teams KDR as an indicator of progress, but I feel like they should have been a little closer than they actually were for the game to have gone on as long as it did.
Although, being on the losing side of a match and not feeling like you just got steamrolled / put up a fight, is something I would like in all of my losing games.
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All of that said, end game for Marines is hilariously unfair. =P
Just wait till we nanospam exosuits. Then it's game time.
Until they all get Vortexed while the aliens kill the CS. :)
i am personally quite interested in balance (hence my script) but this should not be a top priority yet imo. sure, they could focus more on fine tuning this during the playtests... but would you really like to see a delayed patch-release because of that?
since the game is not feature complete, the fine tuning can already be obsolete with the next upcoming patch. so let's be happy they got the guts to change the mechanics for the sake of better gameplay in the very long run.
Vortex is great, but if there are 3 fades doing it to one guy.... forever vortex is forever.
if so, isn't that basically what stomp did in 208, only now you only need a 50 res lifeform to do it instead of a 75 res one?
if so, isn't that basically what stomp did in 208, only now you only need a 50 res lifeform to do it instead of a 75 res one?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes.
Okay, so then I have to wonder if they nerfed onos stomp for being too powerful and disabling structures (I don't know if this is the reason, just assuming it is), why is it okay on a cheaper / more accessable lifeform that can be obtained earlier in the game?
you say "marines are too OP"
then one of you saying :
"isnt vortex op"
i mean common guys, just play the game and get used it to, yeah you will see good players on pubs that 8dom8 you, its going to happen in every game, vortex is not like stomp was, stomp disabled everything within its stomp and the range was far greater. vortex can be used very well to disable certain structures but you can also only have one vortex up at a time, so its like not like stomp you could just spam it 3 times and disable the whole base.
and before you alll start moaning about shotgun, it isnt overpowered, its still pretty ######.
THIS. Instead of immediately jumping on the dev-bashtrain you should consider the fact that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, the current res income and t.res costs are all tentative. Just be patient, it's not easy to overhaul basically the entire game economy and get it right from the first patch. I agree that res flow is too fast/costs are too low mind you, but there's really no need to call out the game developers like this.
I will say though, nanoshield and nanoconstruct need to go. I thought they were a bad idea when they were put into the game, and they still are. They're certainly in direct opposition of the design doc mantra of making NS2 an FPS first and an RTS second, even more so than was the case in NS1 (paraphrased).
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I will say though, nanoshield and nanoconstruct need to go.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, once people have figured out nanoconstruct there will be cookie-cutter builds without much tactical depth. And nanoshield can be quite frustrating from a fps-perspective.. so maybe just make is usable on structures.
Another thing I noticed in the game I just played: Once aliens were ahead and it got into lategame cysts just got spammed all over the map again, towards the end even in our base. I think it would be a nice change if they can't be build in an area where an energy-node is build by marines.
Yup. Already started seeing teams abusing nanoconstruct last version in comp play. One marine running around nanoconstructing harvesters can build them in a quarter of the time it takes the aliens to kill one. It's also pretty much impossible to stop phase gates from going up since they only take a few seconds to build with nanoconstruct.
The marine comm already has medpacks to aid marines in combat -- what role is nanoshield supposed to fill? The role of making aliens ragequit the game? The amount of frustration I've inflicted upon aliens with a shotgun and a nanoshield+medspam happy comm has certainly had that effect.
<!--quoteo(post=1943805:date=Jun 16 2012, 02:24 PM:name=crypt)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (crypt @ Jun 16 2012, 02:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1943805"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Once aliens were ahead and it got into lategame cysts just got spammed all over the map again<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cysts still creating problems? What a surprise!
High time to KISS and use the development axe liberally.
Not necessary. 1. it will go when the resflow is balanced. 2. ARCs can keep care of this.
I really like b210. Getting such a high res income sure opens the mind to how the game can be played in various ways. It will toned down in the next patch but even with this inbalance the games can be huge fun right now.
Nanoconstruct should be removed imo.
Also nanoconstruct is in theory a very good idea. It shortens the boring building process. But the effect is also <u>way to strong</u>. AND the aliens need some way to counter this ability. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't enzyme cloud increase the attack speed? So it is basically the counter to nanoconstruct. If an alien with enzyms can destroy a building in the same time a marine can build it with nano construct, it would be balanced. (Problem could be, that you need a drifter. But it could also be good in terms of asymmetry) So it may be balance-able when the effect is way weaker and equal to the dps increase from enzyme cloud?
Nano Shield shouldnt be in the game, its kindly pointless and makes some battles very hard (nano shield + med spam).
Imo dropping it to 5-10% would make it competely pointless as it would still take 3 bites from a skulk to kill a marine (vanilla marine)
Than just scale the numbers so it only increases by one hit.