Played about 2 hours tonight, pretty much every game had +2 aliens. Ragequitting is on the up. <ul><li>I like the build % and health % indicators, sensible improvement.</li><li>I don't mind the armoury/armour change as a design direction. Unfortunately it has crippled balance in the short term.</li><li>A dropped welder is still too hard to see. This has been a problem for a few builds but it's now important to fix.</li><li>Some HUD icons are persisting where a marine dies.</li><li>Any combat that was previously "balanced" anticipated marines to have a substantial amount of armour. Since this is no longer the case, marines are getting spanked.</li><li>Secondary fire removed from the pistol. Historically the higher damage output was one of the few ways marines could conserve rifle ammo (ie, you swith to pistol secondary fire to damage structures like whips. This slower paced, methodical thinking has been removed in favour of BAMBAMBAMBAMABABMBAM. I assme this was changed because knowing the damage was higher was not intuitive. Wouldn't it be better to just have primary fire be much less accurate than secondary fire?</li></ul> There are also a few problems which this build inherets from the previous one, and they don't seem to have been addressed in any way: <ul><li>Sentries have been removed from the game.</li><li>Vortex.</li><li>Lerk survivability. I continue to see lone lerks fly through the marine base and out to safety while the entire marine team is in the base. I suspect a good portion of the playerbase doesn't even bother to shoot at lerks which exacerbates the problem.</li><li>Shotgun is a late game weapon still masquerading as an early game weapon. SG is useful against fade and onos but not against skulks (until JP or W2). The role of the shotgun has changed because of higher alien armour values. Changing shotguns from an early game weapon to a late game weapon isn't a problem in itself but the consequences are either a) Marine commanders who don't know what they're doing are unlocking shotguns too early which means marines spend their pRes in the early game and then can't afford shotguns when fades come in to play or b) The first pRes unlock (aside from welders, which are now mandatory, obviously) is mines, which leads to mine spam. The community hasn't really raged about minespam yet.</li></ul> Clearly UWE is not putting any effort in to balance at the moment, which is fine. The problem is when you decide to release a build every 2 weeks regardless. Builds like this just damage the community.
What makes things more frustrating is that developer communication has ceased up. Just a few builds ago I was defending UWE against that kind of statement but take a look at the most recent forum posts by devs - At best the posts could be described as peripheral. Nothing on any of the big, core discussions. At worst we see sarcastic comments from Cory. Cory's a cool guy and I know he can do better than that. Sure, a good portion of the forum posts are stupid and must be annoying and disapointing to read as a developer, but to chose those comments to respond to and then ignore the real meaty stuff? Bizzare.
I'm fully in favor of armories not healing armor. That was something I've thought was broken from the very beginning. It empowers turtling and trivializes alien harassment - as long as you were near an armory, you could basically live forever. It encourages marines to hightail it back to base every time they take damage. Making welders important strongly encourages teamwork which feels good, you feel much closer to your team when you have to work with them to keep eachother alive.
I agree with the concerns about power nodes being unrepairable without one though. You can't even buy a welder if the power is out on your armory. Maybe you should be able to repair them slowly by default, and if you have a welder then it gets used instead and the repairing happens faster?
Also, if the armor change necessitates alien nerfs, I suggest starting with the new Carapace. It seems crazy how much punishment aliens can soak up with it, especially in the early game.
<!--quoteo(post=1953901:date=Jul 26 2012, 10:15 AM:name=Khyron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Khyron @ Jul 26 2012, 10:15 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953901"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Played about 2 hours tonight, pretty much every game had +2 aliens. Ragequitting is on the up. <ul><li>I like the build % and health % indicators, sensible improvement.</li><li>I don't mind the armoury/armour change as a design direction. Unfortunately it has crippled balance in the short term.</li><li>A dropped welder is still too hard to see. This has been a problem for a few builds but it's now important to fix.</li><li>Some HUD icons are persisting where a marine dies.</li><li>Any combat that was previously "balanced" anticipated marines to have a substantial amount of armour. Since this is no longer the case, marines are getting spanked.</li><li>Secondary fire removed from the pistol. Historically the higher damage output was one of the few ways marines could conserve rifle ammo (ie, you swith to pistol secondary fire to damage structures like whips. This slower paced, methodical thinking has been removed in favour of BAMBAMBAMBAMABABMBAM. I assme this was changed because knowing the damage was higher was not intuitive. Wouldn't it be better to just have primary fire be much less accurate than secondary fire?</li></ul> There are also a few problems which this build inherets from the previous one, and they don't seem to have been addressed in any way: <ul><li>Sentries have been removed from the game.</li><li>Vortex.</li><li>Lerk survivability. I continue to see lone lerks fly through the marine base and out to safety while the entire marine team is in the base. I suspect a good portion of the playerbase doesn't even bother to shoot at lerks which exacerbates the problem.</li><li>Shotgun is a late game weapon still masquerading as an early game weapon. SG is useful against fade and onos but not against skulks (until JP or W2). The role of the shotgun has changed because of higher alien armour values. Changing shotguns from an early game weapon to a late game weapon isn't a problem in itself but the consequences are either a) Marine commanders who don't know what they're doing are unlocking shotguns too early which means marines spend their pRes in the early game and then can't afford shotguns when fades come in to play or b) The first pRes unlock (aside from welders, which are now mandatory, obviously) is mines, which leads to mine spam. The community hasn't really raged about minespam yet.</li></ul> Clearly UWE is not putting any effort in to balance at the moment, which is fine. The problem is when you decide to release a build every 2 weeks regardless. Builds like this just damage the community.
What makes things more frustrating is that developer communication has ceased up. Just a few builds ago I was defending UWE against that kind of statement but take a look at the most recent forum posts by devs - At best the posts could be described as peripheral. Nothing on any of the big, core discussions. At worst we see sarcastic comments from Cory. Cory's a cool guy and I know he can do better than that. Sure, a good portion of the forum posts are stupid and must be annoying and disapointing to read as a developer, but to chose those comments to respond to and then ignore the real meaty stuff? Bizzare.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Im new to the forum, mostly im a casual player of ns. But this patch spoiled a bit of the fun I had while playing the game and made me feel like sharing a bit of feedback but luckly this posts sums up perfectly why I felt that way. Thanks and I hope adding the exos will change it a bit.
To those complaining about the marine armory/welder change in B215...
Here's what work well last night.
Basically, assign 1 marine to stay in base with a welder. He can build buildings for the commander and defend the base. Also, and this is the most important part, when he notices that other marines have come back to base to stock up at the armory, he should stand beside the armory with his welder out and weld whoever is at the armory.
Note: this strategy works better on larger games (8x8), but it's a great help to the team and it's easy to weld the injured player because he is stationary.
<!--quoteo(post=1953905:date=Jul 26 2012, 09:24 AM:name=rantology)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rantology @ Jul 26 2012, 09:24 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953905"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->yo dawg, I heard you like armories so we made you a human armory so you can armory while you armory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1953902:date=Jul 26 2012, 09:20 AM:name=Zek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zek @ Jul 26 2012, 09:20 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953902"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm fully in favor of armories not healing armor. That was something I've thought was broken from the very beginning. It empowers turtling and trivializes alien harassment - as long as you were near an armory, you could basically live forever. It encourages marines to hightail it back to base every time they take damage. And it strongly encourages teamwork which feels good, you feel much closer to your team when you have to work with them to keep eachother alive.
I agree with the concerns about power nodes being unrepairable without one though. You can't even buy a welder if the power is out on your armory. Maybe you should be able to repair them slowly by default, and if you have a welder then it gets used instead and the repairing happens faster?
Also, if the armor change necessitates alien nerfs, I suggest starting with the new Carapace. It seems crazy how much punishment aliens can soak up with it, especially in the early game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Alien harassment is trivialized? I just don't understand how you can play NS2 and say that alien harassment is trivial. Alien harassment is what wins the game for aliens in almost every single game they can get a second hive up. Leap and shadowstep fades give aliens map control because of their harassment, in-and-out attacks that destroy marine pushes, and cripple marine RT defense. Because of alien's midgame harassment, the only areas that marines can control are immediately around phase gates. When fades come out, even close RT spawns aren't safe. Alien harassment isn't a problem that needed to be fixed.
Turtling is another problem that didn't need to be fixed. If marines turtle in the current gameplay, they lose. As it should be. Another nonexistant problem being fixed by a solution that causes even more complex balance problems.
Teamwork should be encouraged by force multipliers on the marine side. Not ###### little do-your-homework-or-get-2-shot mechanics.
Implementing a change which then requires a whole bunch of other changes to compensate for is not a positive change. It's a step backward. If this change is kept, expect leap skulks and fades to be gutted because it's going to be impossible to balance welder-based armor repair without a complete destruction of mid game alien power.
This isn't even touching on the huge discrepancy in teamwork required to successfully play marines compared aliens. Something that is going to further complicate balancing pubs and competitive games.
I dislike the armormechanics in NS2. It was fine in NS1 but now it feels a bit antiquated :> . Where is the armor gone when the marine reached 0 armor? Is he naked ^^? Same to Aliens. It makes no sense.
Marines: Remove "armor" and add "energy-shields" "kinetic-shields" "whatevershields" to marines. First damage taken reduce only the shields. Shields regen slowly. Armor upgrades are still in the game. They just reduce the damage from healthpoint like 15 % @ lvl 1 , 25 % @ lvl 2 permanent ,for example.
Welders only needed for buildings, robots, and exo.
Aliens: Remove "armor". Increase health to all lifeforms. Carapace increase healthpoints drastic or give a permanent dmgreduction.
I can't believe people are actually defending this change. You make it sound like it was ever hard to break a tie breaker when marines are holed up in their base. Seriously? You have a hard time with this when fades have unlimited energy? Better yet, an onos with unlimited energy? I can literally stomp all day. No, if you're having a hard time breaking up a situation like that then your teamwork sucks ass and you deserve to lose/get frustrated.
Think about it like this. In a 1 v 2 situation would you rather be an alien or a marine? And don't go with some dumb example like "well duh I'd rather be a marine with a JP, SG, and lvl 3 weapons/armor vs a skulk with no leap or cara!" Be realistic.
+1 For new armory change. <ul><li>Armory humping reduced</li><li>Welders have greater importance</li><li>+ All reasons Fana and others have already mentioned</li></ul>
People should play the game longer than 24 hours before saying they hate something. When exo suits go in I think the balance will shift slightly in a more positive direction. If balance is that big of a problem and the armory not auto-repairing armor is necessary perhaps make that an upgrade you can research per armory at a cost.
i placed a shift chamber and then played around with blink ... and i noticed that the shift chamber recharged my energy to 100% WHILST i was in blink. What this allowed me to do was blink non stop whilst never running out of energy as long as i came back to the shift to recharge. This was WITHOUT the adren upgrade, its even more crazy with it.
I'm sorry, but anyone who agrees with this armor change must be playing a different game. Almost every game i play in aliens win. Now, if I have 0 armor and no one is around with a welder a fully upgraded skulk can run into the base and insta-gib me.
Maybe this change should only apply to the exo, but when it comes to the marine? No, just no. When aliens can have full hp and armor healed from hive, regen , and gorge, this forces marines to hump each other when they should be shooting the already hard to hit skulk, lerk, or fade that just bum rushed into the room.
This change is dumb and further handicaps marines who already have a hard enough time trying to expand in the early game.
As crazy and as broken the current build SEEMS to be, I am thinking we are just not seeing UWE's final vision. I am thinking the welder/armory change must somehow be linked to the upcoming EXO suit somehow. Maybe the internal playtesters found that not enough marines were buying welders to repair exo suits, so they made welders more of a requirement?
It would be cool if UWE would go into some detail about the rationale behind some of the changes so players can understand instead why the changes were made. Might prevent some of the forum lashings if players can see the thought-process.
The current state of game balance is not relevant to this discussion. That can be fixed any time, this is about determining what the role of marine armor should be in the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1953907:date=Jul 26 2012, 08:34 AM:name=GORGEous)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GORGEous @ Jul 26 2012, 08:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953907"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Alien harassment is trivialized? I just don't understand how you can play NS2 and say that alien harassment is trivial. Alien harassment is what wins the game for aliens in almost every single game they can get a second hive up. Leap and shadowstep fades give aliens map control because of their harassment, in-and-out attacks that destroy marine pushes, and cripple marine RT defense. Because of alien's midgame harassment, the only areas that marines can control are immediately around phase gates. When fades come out, even close RT spawns aren't safe. Alien harassment isn't a problem that needed to be fixed.
Turtling is another problem that didn't need to be fixed. If marines turtle in the current gameplay, they lose. As it should be. Another nonexistant problem being fixed by a solution that causes even more complex balance problems.
Teamwork should be encouraged by force multipliers on the marine side. Not ###### little do-your-homework-or-get-2-shot mechanics.
Implementing a change which then requires a whole bunch of other changes to compensate for is not a positive change. It's a step backward. If this change is kept, expect leap skulks and fades to be gutted because it's going to be impossible to balance welder-based armor repair without a complete destruction of mid game alien power.
This isn't even touching on the huge discrepancy in teamwork required to successfully play marines compared aliens. Something that is going to further complicate balancing pubs and competitive games.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Simply put, I don't think the state of affairs you describe is fun. Marines shouldn't be invincible in any room with an armory, nor should they be helpless in any room without one. I think the tension of worrying about dwindling armor, trying to find opportunities to weld eachother between alien attacks, etc, is fun from a gameplay perspective. Throwing down an armory in the vicinity should not be the cure-all that solves all these problems. Right now marine players have become dependent on that crutch, and the balance will need retuning, but it will work out for the better.
This change is not without precedent. Most of us in favor of it feel that way because we played NS1 for many years and know that it works out in practice. If it requires exhaustive balance tweaks to make it work then that's fine with me, now's the time to make these changes before 1.0 hits.
I would like to have a MAC around when rines attack. It could stay behind and if a rine uses e on it the MAC should repair the armor. Would be a nice addition to the emp-wave. Then coms would use them more ;)
For the armory "problem", I'm not sure yet if i like it or not. I saw more rines using it and helping each other. That is nice. But I also saw rines with less weapons and being scared because they had no armor. Desperately looking at each m8 if he wouldn't have a welder. I know, you could say "then he should buy one" or "then the com should drop one" and so on and on and ... But fact is that this only happens in a perfect world. But with skulk waves of attack and lerks attacking, there is no chance to get welded in this chaos. I support that the ingame icons and weld requests have to be as good as in ns1, that will help a lot.
So I will not take a side yet. If the HA comes, there will be more groups of rines with welders. So maybe it is a good preparation. So a single HA with armory isn't a moving fortress and everything will be perfect *dream*
And for the performance: It could be that I hit better, but the performance got worse. Now I have constant microlags and small lagspikes instead of a good performance with mega-lagspikes. That means playing ns2 got even more annoying, but I have better stats from time to time as rine. On the other hand it is a pain in the *** to hit sth as an alien -> I get more and more frustrated with every build. I still have patience, but I won't play it as often as before -_-
Overall I really don't mind the change, I'm just unsure how I feel about the only way to regain armor requiring another player to do it for you. Otherwise I do see both sides of the argument.
If the changes were ever to be reverted I say the armory be kept to initially not heal armor but allow an armor healing upgrade for it (like advanced armory). This would help prevent forward armories from being 'OP' unless marines have managed to hold the area long enough to research the upgrade.
<!--quoteo(post=1953932:date=Jul 26 2012, 11:41 AM:name=Lazer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Lazer @ Jul 26 2012, 11:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953932"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Overall I really don't mind the change, I'm just unsure how I feel about the only way to regain armor requiring another player to do it for you. Otherwise I do see both sides of the argument.
If the changes were ever to be reverted I say the armory be kept to initially not heal armor but allow an armor healing upgrade for it (like advanced armory). This would help prevent forward armories from being 'OP' unless marines have managed to hold the area long enough to research the upgrade.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1953908:date=Jul 26 2012, 10:36 AM:name=Mr.Greedy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mr.Greedy @ Jul 26 2012, 10:36 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953908"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I dislike the armormechanics in NS2. It was fine in NS1 but now it feels a bit antiquated :> . Where is the armor gone when the marine reached 0 armor? Is he naked ^^? Same to Aliens. It makes no sense.
Marines: Remove "armor" and add "energy-shields" "kinetic-shields" "whatevershields" to marines. First damage taken reduce only the shields. Shields regen slowly. Armor upgrades are still in the game. They just reduce the damage from healthpoint like 15 % @ lvl 1 , 25 % @ lvl 2 permanent ,for example.
Welders only needed for buildings, robots, and exo.
Aliens: Remove "armor". Increase health to all lifeforms. Carapace increase healthpoints drastic or give a permanent dmgreduction.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I really like that, would be a cool feature in the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1953935:date=Jul 26 2012, 11:53 AM:name=eh?)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (eh? @ Jul 26 2012, 11:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953935"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Might as well just increase the base cost of the armory in that case, because it will always be used.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Its not just about the cost, its also about the time required to upgrade from basic to advanced armory. Plus it means if/when aliens do push the marines back, they've lost a larger res investment.
I think advanced armories repairing armor would be a good idea.
hard to get used to the new walljump, because of the diminished aircontrol. Its not so much fun to play skulk as it was before. The hitboxes of the marines seem to be smaller.
I guess we have to run some gathers to see how the changes work out in means of balance. Parasited or poisened marines are still parasited/poisened after medpack, which is pretty nice. It favoures aliens more but the hitpoints of the extractors seems to be buffed. Combined with the needed welder, it gives a nice resflow, which will be useful against lerkbite :D.
No armor from the armory seems like a good thing initially but the fact that it ruins things like armory advancing is no good. I say reduce the heal/armor rate from it.
New Fade feels much more in line where it should be (killable) and feign death seems better without regen starting to tick when you're in it.
Welding powernodes is really rough on marines - maybe greatly reduce welding time and/or increase its HP.
Flamethrowers are still way insane on the energy drain.
The ability for a single jetpack marine with a GL to snipe out a hive in generator/warehouse seems like a problem to me, I understand people may disagree. I think hive travel NS1 style was a good thing in that regard.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited July 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1953822:date=Jul 26 2012, 02:21 AM:name=Nakorson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Nakorson @ Jul 26 2012, 02:21 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953822"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->But destroying power nodes wasn't worth the time as a alien. They were rebuild within seconds. It was even problematic to attack a powernode in the marine base, even with the rebuild delay. If you are a onos which is only able to take out the powernode and die short after this you have gained nearly nothing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So we all can agree that powernodes in TP rooms is a bad idea, imbalanced in comparison to the other team, and leads to cheap mechanics that no one enjoys? Good, cause i agree. :-D
also, <!--quoteo(post=1953877:date=Jul 26 2012, 04:29 AM:name=Wheeee)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wheeee @ Jul 26 2012, 04:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953877"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->for those whinging about marines being harder due to no armor healing at the armory - yes, but so what? it helps aliens break end game marine turtles easier<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> it didnt in our playtests...i doubt this will really make the impact it sounds like it should :-/ .. take a look at GL /FT role instead.
<!--quoteo(post=1953929:date=Jul 27 2012, 01:37 AM:name=Zek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zek @ Jul 27 2012, 01:37 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953929"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Simply put, I don't think the state of affairs you describe is fun. Marines shouldn't be invincible in any room with an armory, nor should they be helpless in any room without one.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> But they wern't invincible... Far from it. You needed to aim at the armoury to heal, it healed hp before armour slowly enough that it bought you one extra bite at most if the skulk was stupid enough to chase you with other marines also shooting. I don't see the point.
Assume for the sake of it however that armour healing was a big balance issue. What does removing it from armouries change? If you want to follow that logic, we should also remove welders. We could also imagine a state where marines are only at a slight disadvantage on 0 armour and at a significant advantage with armour. Welders (bought from the armoury) heal armour, amoury gives ammo, which still leads us to this so called 'turtle' state. If so, shouldn't we remove ammo resupply from armouries as well? Where is the line? Its really stretching it bit far for people to suggest that armoury's were causing stalemates or stale gameplay. When talking about a structure that doesn't do damage itself (in comparison to sentries), stale gameplay is the result of bad players simply being bad players and if you can't kill them outright to prevent them going back to hump, then the fault is on the alien.
Shoehorning in an ns1 mechanic and then blaming everything else for it not working properly or being fun is a cop out as far as i'm concerned. Things need to cohere together as a whole with 1.0 around the corner and right now NS2 is a mix of ideas coming from different and often clashing design angles. As much as i would love to play ns1 on spark, we all know ns2 is never going to be the same beast. For example, free hydra's arn't going anywhere despite any ammount of good reason - thats clear enough to anyone paying attention. No armour healing from armouries doesn't make sense in this context. Its a huge pain in the butt fighting hydra's and gorge bilebomb without. We also arn't going to get better marine mobility.
swalkSay hello to my little friend.Join Date: 2011-01-20Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
edited July 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1953797:date=Jul 26 2012, 08:03 AM:name=Dimeinurear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dimeinurear @ Jul 26 2012, 08:03 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953797"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Processor doesn't matter, it's your GPU.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Lol. NS2 is the most CPU intensive game I know of. And it is due to lua, which is not performing fast enough, because it's not optimized yet. (Hopefully it will before release o_O) If anything, the GPU doesn't matter as much as the CPU. Saying that you had 40-60 FPS in the alpha is just a lie. Maybe on your own private LAN server, you would have been able to get that FPS. If you had tried online, FPS would be alot lower and you would have seen the insane stuttering that was going on at that point. And during a game FPS would drop alot due to memory leaks.
<!--quoteo(post=1953929:date=Jul 26 2012, 03:37 PM:name=Zek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zek @ Jul 26 2012, 03:37 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953929"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The current state of game balance is not relevant to this discussion. That can be fixed any time, this is about determining what the role of marine armor should be in the game.
Simply put, I don't think the state of affairs you describe is fun. Marines shouldn't be invincible in any room with an armory, nor should they be helpless in any room without one. I think the tension of worrying about dwindling armor, trying to find opportunities to weld eachother between alien attacks, etc, is fun from a gameplay perspective. Throwing down an armory in the vicinity should not be the cure-all that solves all these problems. Right now marine players have become dependent on that crutch, and the balance will need retuning, but it will work out for the better.
This change is not without precedent. Most of us in favor of it feel that way because we played NS1 for many years and know that it works out in practice. If it requires exhaustive balance tweaks to make it work then that's fine with me, now's the time to make these changes before 1.0 hits.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You could of just made the armory like a Dispenser in TF2 if that was the big problem.
We might as well spawn with welders and remove the welder upgrade, its nothing but a false choice as it is.
<!--quoteo(post=1953957:date=Jul 26 2012, 12:33 PM:name=mushookees)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mushookees @ Jul 26 2012, 12:33 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953957"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You could of just made the armory like a Dispenser in TF2 if that was the big problem.
We might as well spawn with welders and remove the welder upgrade, its nothing but a false choice as it is.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In all seriousness, spawning with welders might actually be pretty fair.
Comments
<ul><li>I like the build % and health % indicators, sensible improvement.</li><li>I don't mind the armoury/armour change as a design direction. Unfortunately it has crippled balance in the short term.</li><li>A dropped welder is still too hard to see. This has been a problem for a few builds but it's now important to fix.</li><li>Some HUD icons are persisting where a marine dies.</li><li>Any combat that was previously "balanced" anticipated marines to have a substantial amount of armour. Since this is no longer the case, marines are getting spanked.</li><li>Secondary fire removed from the pistol. Historically the higher damage output was one of the few ways marines could conserve rifle ammo (ie, you swith to pistol secondary fire to damage structures like whips. This slower paced, methodical thinking has been removed in favour of BAMBAMBAMBAMABABMBAM. I assme this was changed because knowing the damage was higher was not intuitive. Wouldn't it be better to just have primary fire be much less accurate than secondary fire?</li></ul>
There are also a few problems which this build inherets from the previous one, and they don't seem to have been addressed in any way:
<ul><li>Sentries have been removed from the game.</li><li>Vortex.</li><li>Lerk survivability. I continue to see lone lerks fly through the marine base and out to safety while the entire marine team is in the base. I suspect a good portion of the playerbase doesn't even bother to shoot at lerks which exacerbates the problem.</li><li>Shotgun is a late game weapon still masquerading as an early game weapon. SG is useful against fade and onos but not against skulks (until JP or W2). The role of the shotgun has changed because of higher alien armour values. Changing shotguns from an early game weapon to a late game weapon isn't a problem in itself but the consequences are either a) Marine commanders who don't know what they're doing are unlocking shotguns too early which means marines spend their pRes in the early game and then can't afford shotguns when fades come in to play or b) The first pRes unlock (aside from welders, which are now mandatory, obviously) is mines, which leads to mine spam. The community hasn't really raged about minespam yet.</li></ul>
Clearly UWE is not putting any effort in to balance at the moment, which is fine. The problem is when you decide to release a build every 2 weeks regardless. Builds like this just damage the community.
What makes things more frustrating is that developer communication has ceased up. Just a few builds ago I was defending UWE against that kind of statement but take a look at the most recent forum posts by devs - At best the posts could be described as peripheral. Nothing on any of the big, core discussions. At worst we see sarcastic comments from Cory. Cory's a cool guy and I know he can do better than that. Sure, a good portion of the forum posts are stupid and must be annoying and disapointing to read as a developer, but to chose those comments to respond to and then ignore the real meaty stuff? Bizzare.
I agree with the concerns about power nodes being unrepairable without one though. You can't even buy a welder if the power is out on your armory. Maybe you should be able to repair them slowly by default, and if you have a welder then it gets used instead and the repairing happens faster?
Also, if the armor change necessitates alien nerfs, I suggest starting with the new Carapace. It seems crazy how much punishment aliens can soak up with it, especially in the early game.
<ul><li>I like the build % and health % indicators, sensible improvement.</li><li>I don't mind the armoury/armour change as a design direction. Unfortunately it has crippled balance in the short term.</li><li>A dropped welder is still too hard to see. This has been a problem for a few builds but it's now important to fix.</li><li>Some HUD icons are persisting where a marine dies.</li><li>Any combat that was previously "balanced" anticipated marines to have a substantial amount of armour. Since this is no longer the case, marines are getting spanked.</li><li>Secondary fire removed from the pistol. Historically the higher damage output was one of the few ways marines could conserve rifle ammo (ie, you swith to pistol secondary fire to damage structures like whips. This slower paced, methodical thinking has been removed in favour of BAMBAMBAMBAMABABMBAM. I assme this was changed because knowing the damage was higher was not intuitive. Wouldn't it be better to just have primary fire be much less accurate than secondary fire?</li></ul>
There are also a few problems which this build inherets from the previous one, and they don't seem to have been addressed in any way:
<ul><li>Sentries have been removed from the game.</li><li>Vortex.</li><li>Lerk survivability. I continue to see lone lerks fly through the marine base and out to safety while the entire marine team is in the base. I suspect a good portion of the playerbase doesn't even bother to shoot at lerks which exacerbates the problem.</li><li>Shotgun is a late game weapon still masquerading as an early game weapon. SG is useful against fade and onos but not against skulks (until JP or W2). The role of the shotgun has changed because of higher alien armour values. Changing shotguns from an early game weapon to a late game weapon isn't a problem in itself but the consequences are either a) Marine commanders who don't know what they're doing are unlocking shotguns too early which means marines spend their pRes in the early game and then can't afford shotguns when fades come in to play or b) The first pRes unlock (aside from welders, which are now mandatory, obviously) is mines, which leads to mine spam. The community hasn't really raged about minespam yet.</li></ul>
Clearly UWE is not putting any effort in to balance at the moment, which is fine. The problem is when you decide to release a build every 2 weeks regardless. Builds like this just damage the community.
What makes things more frustrating is that developer communication has ceased up. Just a few builds ago I was defending UWE against that kind of statement but take a look at the most recent forum posts by devs - At best the posts could be described as peripheral. Nothing on any of the big, core discussions. At worst we see sarcastic comments from Cory. Cory's a cool guy and I know he can do better than that. Sure, a good portion of the forum posts are stupid and must be annoying and disapointing to read as a developer, but to chose those comments to respond to and then ignore the real meaty stuff? Bizzare.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Im new to the forum, mostly im a casual player of ns. But this patch spoiled a bit of the fun I had while playing the game and made me feel like sharing a bit of feedback but luckly this posts sums up perfectly why I felt that way. Thanks and I hope adding the exos will change it a bit.
Here's what work well last night.
Basically, assign 1 marine to stay in base with a welder. He can build buildings for the commander and defend the base. Also, and this is the most important part, when he notices that other marines have come back to base to stock up at the armory, he should stand beside the armory with his welder out and weld whoever is at the armory.
Note: this strategy works better on larger games (8x8), but it's a great help to the team and it's easy to weld the injured player because he is stationary.
lol, I know right??
I agree with the concerns about power nodes being unrepairable without one though. You can't even buy a welder if the power is out on your armory. Maybe you should be able to repair them slowly by default, and if you have a welder then it gets used instead and the repairing happens faster?
Also, if the armor change necessitates alien nerfs, I suggest starting with the new Carapace. It seems crazy how much punishment aliens can soak up with it, especially in the early game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Alien harassment is trivialized? I just don't understand how you can play NS2 and say that alien harassment is trivial. Alien harassment is what wins the game for aliens in almost every single game they can get a second hive up. Leap and shadowstep fades give aliens map control because of their harassment, in-and-out attacks that destroy marine pushes, and cripple marine RT defense. Because of alien's midgame harassment, the only areas that marines can control are immediately around phase gates. When fades come out, even close RT spawns aren't safe. Alien harassment isn't a problem that needed to be fixed.
Turtling is another problem that didn't need to be fixed. If marines turtle in the current gameplay, they lose. As it should be. Another nonexistant problem being fixed by a solution that causes even more complex balance problems.
Teamwork should be encouraged by force multipliers on the marine side. Not ###### little do-your-homework-or-get-2-shot mechanics.
Implementing a change which then requires a whole bunch of other changes to compensate for is not a positive change. It's a step backward. If this change is kept, expect leap skulks and fades to be gutted because it's going to be impossible to balance welder-based armor repair without a complete destruction of mid game alien power.
This isn't even touching on the huge discrepancy in teamwork required to successfully play marines compared aliens. Something that is going to further complicate balancing pubs and competitive games.
Marines:
Remove "armor" and add "energy-shields" "kinetic-shields" "whatevershields" to marines. First damage taken reduce only the shields. Shields regen slowly. Armor upgrades are still in the game. They just reduce the damage from healthpoint like 15 % @ lvl 1 , 25 % @ lvl 2 permanent ,for example.
Welders only needed for buildings, robots, and exo.
Aliens:
Remove "armor". Increase health to all lifeforms. Carapace increase healthpoints drastic or give a permanent dmgreduction.
Think about it like this. In a 1 v 2 situation would you rather be an alien or a marine? And don't go with some dumb example like "well duh I'd rather be a marine with a JP, SG, and lvl 3 weapons/armor vs a skulk with no leap or cara!" Be realistic.
<ul><li>Armory humping reduced</li><li>Welders have greater importance</li><li>+ All reasons Fana and others have already mentioned</li></ul>
People should play the game longer than 24 hours before saying they hate something. When exo suits go in I think the balance will shift slightly in a more positive direction. If balance is that big of a problem and the armory not auto-repairing armor is necessary perhaps make that an upgrade you can research per armory at a cost.
i placed a shift chamber and then played around with blink ... and i noticed that the shift chamber recharged my energy to 100% WHILST i was in blink. What this allowed me to do was blink non stop whilst never running out of energy as long as i came back to the shift to recharge. This was WITHOUT the adren upgrade, its even more crazy with it.
Maybe this change should only apply to the exo, but when it comes to the marine? No, just no. When aliens can have full hp and armor healed from hive, regen , and gorge, this forces marines to hump each other when they should be shooting the already hard to hit skulk, lerk, or fade that just bum rushed into the room.
This change is dumb and further handicaps marines who already have a hard enough time trying to expand in the early game.
It would be cool if UWE would go into some detail about the rationale behind some of the changes so players can understand instead why the changes were made. Might prevent some of the forum lashings if players can see the thought-process.
<!--quoteo(post=1953907:date=Jul 26 2012, 08:34 AM:name=GORGEous)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GORGEous @ Jul 26 2012, 08:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953907"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Alien harassment is trivialized? I just don't understand how you can play NS2 and say that alien harassment is trivial. Alien harassment is what wins the game for aliens in almost every single game they can get a second hive up. Leap and shadowstep fades give aliens map control because of their harassment, in-and-out attacks that destroy marine pushes, and cripple marine RT defense. Because of alien's midgame harassment, the only areas that marines can control are immediately around phase gates. When fades come out, even close RT spawns aren't safe. Alien harassment isn't a problem that needed to be fixed.
Turtling is another problem that didn't need to be fixed. If marines turtle in the current gameplay, they lose. As it should be. Another nonexistant problem being fixed by a solution that causes even more complex balance problems.
Teamwork should be encouraged by force multipliers on the marine side. Not ###### little do-your-homework-or-get-2-shot mechanics.
Implementing a change which then requires a whole bunch of other changes to compensate for is not a positive change. It's a step backward. If this change is kept, expect leap skulks and fades to be gutted because it's going to be impossible to balance welder-based armor repair without a complete destruction of mid game alien power.
This isn't even touching on the huge discrepancy in teamwork required to successfully play marines compared aliens. Something that is going to further complicate balancing pubs and competitive games.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Simply put, I don't think the state of affairs you describe is fun. Marines shouldn't be invincible in any room with an armory, nor should they be helpless in any room without one. I think the tension of worrying about dwindling armor, trying to find opportunities to weld eachother between alien attacks, etc, is fun from a gameplay perspective. Throwing down an armory in the vicinity should not be the cure-all that solves all these problems. Right now marine players have become dependent on that crutch, and the balance will need retuning, but it will work out for the better.
This change is not without precedent. Most of us in favor of it feel that way because we played NS1 for many years and know that it works out in practice. If it requires exhaustive balance tweaks to make it work then that's fine with me, now's the time to make these changes before 1.0 hits.
For the armory "problem", I'm not sure yet if i like it or not. I saw more rines using it and helping each other. That is nice. But I also saw rines with less weapons and being scared because they had no armor. Desperately looking at each m8 if he wouldn't have a welder. I know, you could say "then he should buy one" or "then the com should drop one" and so on and on and ... But fact is that this only happens in a perfect world. But with skulk waves of attack and lerks attacking, there is no chance to get welded in this chaos. I support that the ingame icons and weld requests have to be as good as in ns1, that will help a lot.
So I will not take a side yet. If the HA comes, there will be more groups of rines with welders. So maybe it is a good preparation. So a single HA with armory isn't a moving fortress and everything will be perfect *dream*
And for the performance: It could be that I hit better, but the performance got worse. Now I have constant microlags and small lagspikes instead of a good performance with mega-lagspikes. That means playing ns2 got even more annoying, but I have better stats from time to time as rine. On the other hand it is a pain in the *** to hit sth as an alien -> I get more and more frustrated with every build. I still have patience, but I won't play it as often as before -_-
If the changes were ever to be reverted I say the armory be kept to initially not heal armor but allow an armor healing upgrade for it (like advanced armory). This would help prevent forward armories from being 'OP' unless marines have managed to hold the area long enough to research the upgrade.
If the changes were ever to be reverted I say the armory be kept to initially not heal armor but allow an armor healing upgrade for it (like advanced armory). This would help prevent forward armories from being 'OP' unless marines have managed to hold the area long enough to research the upgrade.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1
Marines:
Remove "armor" and add "energy-shields" "kinetic-shields" "whatevershields" to marines. First damage taken reduce only the shields. Shields regen slowly. Armor upgrades are still in the game. They just reduce the damage from healthpoint like 15 % @ lvl 1 , 25 % @ lvl 2 permanent ,for example.
Welders only needed for buildings, robots, and exo.
Aliens:
Remove "armor". Increase health to all lifeforms. Carapace increase healthpoints drastic or give a permanent dmgreduction.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I really like that, would be a cool feature in the game.
N being your armor level.
Its not just about the cost, its also about the time required to upgrade from basic to advanced armory. Plus it means if/when aliens do push the marines back, they've lost a larger res investment.
I think advanced armories repairing armor would be a good idea.
The hitboxes of the marines seem to be smaller.
I guess we have to run some gathers to see how the changes work out in means of balance.
Parasited or poisened marines are still parasited/poisened after medpack, which is pretty nice.
It favoures aliens more but the hitpoints of the extractors seems to be buffed. Combined with the needed welder, it gives a nice resflow, which will be useful against lerkbite :D.
Plz dont argue about the silly armory. Just die.
New Fade feels much more in line where it should be (killable) and feign death seems better without regen starting to tick when you're in it.
Welding powernodes is really rough on marines - maybe greatly reduce welding time and/or increase its HP.
Flamethrowers are still way insane on the energy drain.
The ability for a single jetpack marine with a GL to snipe out a hive in generator/warehouse seems like a problem to me, I understand people may disagree. I think hive travel NS1 style was a good thing in that regard.
Where is pistol laser sight mode??
So we all can agree that powernodes in TP rooms is a bad idea, imbalanced in comparison to the other team, and leads to cheap mechanics that no one enjoys?
Good, cause i agree. :-D
also,
<!--quoteo(post=1953877:date=Jul 26 2012, 04:29 AM:name=Wheeee)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wheeee @ Jul 26 2012, 04:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1953877"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->for those whinging about marines being harder due to no armor healing at the armory - yes, but so what? it helps aliens break end game marine turtles easier<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
it didnt in our playtests...i doubt this will really make the impact it sounds like it should :-/ .. take a look at GL /FT role instead.
But they wern't invincible... Far from it. You needed to aim at the armoury to heal, it healed hp before armour slowly enough that it bought you one extra bite at most if the skulk was stupid enough to chase you with other marines also shooting. I don't see the point.
Assume for the sake of it however that armour healing was a big balance issue. What does removing it from armouries change? If you want to follow that logic, we should also remove welders. We could also imagine a state where marines are only at a slight disadvantage on 0 armour and at a significant advantage with armour. Welders (bought from the armoury) heal armour, amoury gives ammo, which still leads us to this so called 'turtle' state. If so, shouldn't we remove ammo resupply from armouries as well? Where is the line? Its really stretching it bit far for people to suggest that armoury's were causing stalemates or stale gameplay. When talking about a structure that doesn't do damage itself (in comparison to sentries), stale gameplay is the result of bad players simply being bad players and if you can't kill them outright to prevent them going back to hump, then the fault is on the alien.
Shoehorning in an ns1 mechanic and then blaming everything else for it not working properly or being fun is a cop out as far as i'm concerned. Things need to cohere together as a whole with 1.0 around the corner and right now NS2 is a mix of ideas coming from different and often clashing design angles. As much as i would love to play ns1 on spark, we all know ns2 is never going to be the same beast.
For example, free hydra's arn't going anywhere despite any ammount of good reason - thats clear enough to anyone paying attention. No armour healing from armouries doesn't make sense in this context. Its a huge pain in the butt fighting hydra's and gorge bilebomb without. We also arn't going to get better marine mobility.
Lol. NS2 is the most CPU intensive game I know of.
And it is due to lua, which is not performing fast enough, because it's not optimized yet. (Hopefully it will before release o_O)
If anything, the GPU doesn't matter as much as the CPU.
Saying that you had 40-60 FPS in the alpha is just a lie.
Maybe on your own private LAN server, you would have been able to get that FPS.
If you had tried online, FPS would be alot lower and you would have seen the insane stuttering that was going on at that point.
And during a game FPS would drop alot due to memory leaks.
Simply put, I don't think the state of affairs you describe is fun. Marines shouldn't be invincible in any room with an armory, nor should they be helpless in any room without one. I think the tension of worrying about dwindling armor, trying to find opportunities to weld eachother between alien attacks, etc, is fun from a gameplay perspective. Throwing down an armory in the vicinity should not be the cure-all that solves all these problems. Right now marine players have become dependent on that crutch, and the balance will need retuning, but it will work out for the better.
This change is not without precedent. Most of us in favor of it feel that way because we played NS1 for many years and know that it works out in practice. If it requires exhaustive balance tweaks to make it work then that's fine with me, now's the time to make these changes before 1.0 hits.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You could of just made the armory like a Dispenser in TF2 if that was the big problem.
We might as well spawn with welders and remove the welder upgrade, its nothing but a false choice as it is.
We might as well spawn with welders and remove the welder upgrade, its nothing but a false choice as it is.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In all seriousness, spawning with welders might actually be pretty fair.