B230 Balance changes
Xarius
Join Date: 2003-12-21 Member: 24630Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2003-12-21 Member: 24630Members, Reinforced - Supporter
From the balance mod
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Changes planned for 230 (updated 11/19 10:40am PST)
- Reverted back to old Hive healing values (228)
- Doubled ARC rate of fire, halved damage (fixed now in this mod)
- Fixed ARC targeting issues
- Welder research time increased from 10 to 15
- Exo armor changed from to 300/390/480/570 to 400/460/520/580
- Welder rate reduced from 125/sec to 90/sec
- Reduced shadow step cost from 15 to 10
- Increased blink momentum to be close to build 220
- Increase start blink energy cost from 8 to 12
- Shift Hatch now creates 2 eggs, but costs 5 resources and has a 5 second cool down (was 1 tres per egg, no cooldown).
- Increased trait structure (Shell, Spur, Veil) mature health by ~20%. Also increased their base health to be closer to their previous mature health.
- Reduced Spore research time from 90 to 60.
- Hive build time increased from 150 seconds to 180 seconds.
- Reduced Onos gore range by .5 meters
- Reduced Onos armor by 100 (-8, effectiveness vs. Exos and heavy weapons impacted less because armor).
- No changes to Skulk bite
- No changes to Lerk health/armor<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm glad they pulled the skulk and lerk changes, though I'm a little sceptical about the changes to the onos. I sincerely doubt that will make any significant difference to the t.res onos strat, if anything it will only serve to make him weaker later on versus W3.... Additionally, the shift egg spawn changes seem like a drastic nerf from the current situation instead of the needed small and cautious balancing steps. (The cooldown also makes it frustrating to use effectively... Why can't eggs just be 2 t.res instead of 1, or 2 eggs for 3 t.res, without this 'cooldown' mess.) I voiced this concern in the survey as well, after several attempts to use it as an alien khammander in the balance mod (to no great success as 5 t.res early on is a huge investment for just 2 eggs) And there's no changes to the spawning system so they are really just addressing a symptom rather than an underlying cause here. (Or addressing a problem in the mid-late game at the expense of its early game viability)
Lastly, I also hope they don't just plan on reverting the regen stats to the useless 228 value, surely they could try something in between 228 and 229? Or have regen tailored to individual lifeforms, like carapace?
Just some thoughts, none the less it will be interesting to see how this plays on in 230 I suppose.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Changes planned for 230 (updated 11/19 10:40am PST)
- Reverted back to old Hive healing values (228)
- Doubled ARC rate of fire, halved damage (fixed now in this mod)
- Fixed ARC targeting issues
- Welder research time increased from 10 to 15
- Exo armor changed from to 300/390/480/570 to 400/460/520/580
- Welder rate reduced from 125/sec to 90/sec
- Reduced shadow step cost from 15 to 10
- Increased blink momentum to be close to build 220
- Increase start blink energy cost from 8 to 12
- Shift Hatch now creates 2 eggs, but costs 5 resources and has a 5 second cool down (was 1 tres per egg, no cooldown).
- Increased trait structure (Shell, Spur, Veil) mature health by ~20%. Also increased their base health to be closer to their previous mature health.
- Reduced Spore research time from 90 to 60.
- Hive build time increased from 150 seconds to 180 seconds.
- Reduced Onos gore range by .5 meters
- Reduced Onos armor by 100 (-8, effectiveness vs. Exos and heavy weapons impacted less because armor).
- No changes to Skulk bite
- No changes to Lerk health/armor<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm glad they pulled the skulk and lerk changes, though I'm a little sceptical about the changes to the onos. I sincerely doubt that will make any significant difference to the t.res onos strat, if anything it will only serve to make him weaker later on versus W3.... Additionally, the shift egg spawn changes seem like a drastic nerf from the current situation instead of the needed small and cautious balancing steps. (The cooldown also makes it frustrating to use effectively... Why can't eggs just be 2 t.res instead of 1, or 2 eggs for 3 t.res, without this 'cooldown' mess.) I voiced this concern in the survey as well, after several attempts to use it as an alien khammander in the balance mod (to no great success as 5 t.res early on is a huge investment for just 2 eggs) And there's no changes to the spawning system so they are really just addressing a symptom rather than an underlying cause here. (Or addressing a problem in the mid-late game at the expense of its early game viability)
Lastly, I also hope they don't just plan on reverting the regen stats to the useless 228 value, surely they could try something in between 228 and 229? Or have regen tailored to individual lifeforms, like carapace?
Just some thoughts, none the less it will be interesting to see how this plays on in 230 I suppose.
Comments
I'm not real happy about Onoses getting nerfed to compensate for TRes drops.
Thread: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=124113" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=124113</a>
Video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaxfnH6MQY4&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaxfnH6MQY4&hd=1</a>
I'm not real happy about Onoses getting nerfed to compensate for TRes drops.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
-100 armor isn't going to stop them from wrecking the entire Marine team at 4-6 minutes in.
But at this point, it seems like t.res Onos is a valid strategy to UWE.
and I don't think that's the right way to buff Fade. The problem is in it's damage and hp which are ridiculously low for a 50res Alien.
Fast Onos drops continue to be a dodgy issue. Yes, we all know that its in the game, but its not crippling the balance IMO. Its just a kind of "tech rush" strat that is fairly easy to predict once you know the signs and has the potential to fail horribly if the marine team knows how to hunt/kill onos. I'm not sure removing the fast Onos from the game enhances the depth of play by forcing alternate build paths or if it diminishes depth by giving the marine commander one less thing to worry about and making JP's a lower priority than they might otherwise be.
Personally I'd like to see the T-res onos drop cost increased incrementally until it carries with it more risk so that the defensive Onos takes from leaving the hive area is much higher (costs offset infrastructure and trait-upgrades that the early Onos needs to be durable). In the same way that an A1/W1 exo is hamstrung, so too should the fast Onos before 10 minutes IMO.
That said, the most glaring balance issue right now is the regen trait. I can deal with fast Onos, but slow Onos with 229 regen is immortal.
The new costs for spawning eggs are too high for how fragile the shift itself is. Spawning eggs is now a significant T.Res gobbler, whereas before it was expensive but manageable. Combined with the cool down, it effectively makes it impossible to spawn eggs from a shift that has a Marine anywhere nearby. Four egg's now equal the cost of the structure that builds them, which is a bit absurd.
I always went shift first to mitigate subpar egg spawns that come default with a hive. Now, if your team is dying a lot, you will find it very difficult to buy anything except eggs. This removed the cost/benefit pro's of making Shifts, which makes it that much harder to keep pressure up on any forward bases without bankrupting yourself. It also makes the other buildable structures harder to build when the egg's end up being such a significant drain. It is especially noticeable on servers that have a player count of 8 or above, which are the majority of servers at the moment.
If you remove the cool-down and leave the cost the same, it would actually be a little better at staving off Marines incursions and be a more valid trade-off for egg spamming. That, or leave the cost at 1 T.Res per egg with a cool down.
As it is now, if the Marines are applying any pressure at all you will simply not be able to spawn eggs as quickly as they can kill them and every egg lost is that much bigger of a hit to your teams T.Res. Heaven forbid they actually kill the shift, since as it stands it's a significant drain for them to camp it instead. I had two situations while testing the changes where a single Marine with a shotgun was able to easily clear out a shift with all the egg's spawned from it all by his lonesome. The Marine commander was health/ammo spamming him, and it would have broke the bank to try and hold that position versus even one competent Marine. (He didn't even really need the health and ammo spam, when he was done clearing it I could clearly see a ton of medpacks and ammo just lying around the area. No skulks were able to spawn at the location, and by the time skulks got there he was just camping waiting for more eggs.)
Tres drop and the timing in whcih the Onos appears is the issue. Not the armor/damage/range values of the Onos.
Like everything except for the +3/+3 exo only getting a measly +10 armor
Onos nerfs should help a lot though especially for jetpackers on ledges
What we need is a TIMING nerf, not an onos nerf. They need to delay the time at which a t.res onos comes out, bring it significantly closer to the p.res onos timing. That way onos egg drop may still be a viable strat at times, but at least it will be more manageable for marines to deal with and it would no longer be the no brainer strat it is today as at 8 - 10 min instead of 6 - 8, a fade egg or lifeform abilities may make more sense. (Provided the fade gets at least a minor base survivability increase)
I reckon the shift changes will completely wreck the shift hive viability, as early egg dropping is no longer going to be viable and with the spawning remaining unchanged making egg-lock, particularly on higher player count servers, a very large threat to the alien team. Additionally, the shift nerf will also make 1-hive forward shift bases (like veil double res) much less viable, further increasing the preferance of a fast second hive strat. (And surely this is not something UWE wants)
PLEASE UWE reconsider the shift changes, or tone them down somewhat. I completely agree something needed to happen to stop some of the shift rush/spam strats we've been seeing from the midgame on, but this change is incredibly poorly thought out. (Since they affect more than just the one particular strategy UWE is trying to fix)
It's the fact that it was a double nerf at once. Shift egg's were pretty much the only Aliens answer to phase gates. They were already expensive, and finicky since you were unable to choose <i>which</i> shift or egg you spawned into. With that viability rendered unattractive by even two egg drops equaling the cost of the structure you're forced into giving up any chance at holding the double node in Refinery or Nano grid on maps that are already leaning towards a Marines win. It was bad enough that a severed cyst chain resulted in the whole shebang dying, but with a five second timer <i>and</i> 5 T.Res for two eggs it makes a shift impossible to reconcile as a T.Res cost and ineffective as an early game area-denial tactic.
It seems like the developers <i>really</i> want us to go Shade or Crag first by rendering a shift hive virtually pointless outside of Celerity and Adrenaline. Maybe that's the trade off, you get good team buffs at the expensive of nothing else being useful. Kind of like Shade, really.
With the changes you'll see Shade first, crag second, and shift third. This drastically changes the current game-model, I'm just not sure if it's a pro or a con at this point. I do know that forward shifts are a waste of T.Res with the newest patch. This is sad, because it will ultimately lead to a lot more egg locking which is a game condition that isn't terribly fun as a game mechanic already.
The current model already forces the Aliens commander to expend a lot of T.Res for any support structures to work at optimal efficiency. However, the Shift is a hog of epic proportions compared to any other buildable structure by a <i>gigantic</i> margin for very little current benefit. A crag is now infintely more useful, which isn't saying much since skulks get almost zero use from a crag due to abysmal health/armor values. So the current early game structure is...nothing. After you build cloaking, there isn't anything you need to worry about until that second hive is up. Mid game structure is...nothing! Crag isn't worth the T.Res until late mid-game or even late end-game for Fade/Onos support. So basically, you can skip all the aliens structures safely until the very end of the game.
I know some will say Shades are useful, and they can be, but with the ease of Marines negating them along with camouflage being a P.Res upgrade...it's just so easy to skip it and drop an egg instead of virtually anything else now. If anything, we're stream-lining the early Onos strategy into being the only effective strategy by negating anything else that might be an effective T.Res expenditure. This limits the possible mid-game strategies to pretty much one. Deny with cloaking until you get early Onos, get crag up and carapace then ride that Onos to victory.
Wait hear me out
And give them to the hives themselves! This is ridiculus, why on earth can shifts spawn them to begin with?! they have echo, that should be your model on how to get eggs elsewhere, hell, they can still echo eggs, yet it costs the same to spawn them...?!
Wait hear me out
And give them to the hives themselves! This is ridiculus, why on earth can shifts spawn them to begin with?! they have echo, that should be your model on how to get eggs elsewhere, hell, they can still echo eggs, yet it costs the same to spawn them...?!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would totally agree on this. If you could shift eggs for a higher pricetag it would at least make a little more sense and be a reason to upgrade a shift beyond a silly whip rush tactic that's really just used against incompetent Marines.
- Reduced Onos armor by 100 (-8, effectiveness vs. Exos and heavy weapons impacted less because armor).
What does "-8, effectiveness vs. Exos and heavy weapons impacted less because armor" mean? Maybe I don't understand how armor works, and that's why this doesn't make sense to me.
I also agree that nerfing Onos health/armor is not the best approach to the problem of 6min onos or late game onos spam. The problem is the t-res drops, the Onos spam is a symptom.
The other changes seem good, especially the blink momentum.
I would really like to see commander T-res drops addressed though. I know Bitey (and others) have suggested making it a tech-path, I think that would be an interesting alternative to straight up removing it from the game. But it's current incarnation is just broken and it continues to make both competitive and public play unenjoyable. (6-7 min onos is becoming quite common in public games, even).
The shift actually might be overly nerfed. A cooldown probably would suffice, even bumping it up to 5 second cooldown per egg, and leaving the t-res cost the same (at 1 each) would be a better alternative imo. The egg spawning from the shift really shines early game and making it 2.5 t-res per egg is too big of an investment allow it to remain viable. The biggest problem is not the res cost of the eggs, but the sheer volume at which you can spam them at. A longer cooldown would fix the issue (and increase commander micro, also a plus) while still leaving early game shift egg spawns viable.
This doesn't dumb down a shift strategy, it completely excises it as a viable route to victory. It becomes what the crag used to be; only useful at the end-game for final Marine turtle support. The shift was useful as a structure because it allowed you to spawn your units closer to front lines and prevent an in-hive egg-lock. It was useful because it usually let you expend T.Res to keep up pressure at forward locations instead of close to the hive. It no longer pays off to do so, so it will no longer be used that way. (It could perhaps be a touch more viable to hold a double node on certain maps to help offset the cost, but with other avenues already open to deny that strategy eggs won't help hold it anymore in any significant way. This is mostly due to the timer, rather than the cost, when thinking of the few places you could offset the steep T.Res expense. Thus it's rendered moot in any realistic situation.)
Agreed with shadow step's energy cost. I truly believe it was in a perfect state, in regard of energy cost. I only wish to see shadow step's cooldown slightly decreased to match Fade's jumping, as well the mechanic of shadow step (pressing Shift) and crouching, to be more like in HL1.
Khammanders don't need any more reason to not use these structure's active abilities and use the res on upgrades/lifeforms instead. None of them need to be any more expensive than they already are.
No changes to fade health.
No changes to 5min onos.
Ermahgerd. Brace yourselves...
But seriously, the answer to the 5min onos is not to buff exos. I guess marines can rush exos in about 5-6 minutes, but they're really not a good match for the onos IMO :S . IDK; doesn't look good imo.
Active regen would be good to be pushed back to 2 seconds, and passive regen nerfed a little bit also :-( .
- Reduced Onos armor by 100 (-8, effectiveness vs. Exos and heavy weapons impacted less because armor).
What does "-8, effectiveness vs. Exos and heavy weapons impacted less because armor" mean? Maybe I don't understand how armor works, and that's why this doesn't make sense to me.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Armor is effectively health, but can absorb differing amounts based on the type of weapon damage it receives. Light damage (pistol, mines) does 1/4 damage to armor. IE it takes 4 points of damage to remove 1 armor point. Normal damage (LMG, shotgun, bite, a few more) does 1/2 damage to armor. Puncture damage (swipe, gore) works the same as normal damage but also does +25% damage to players. Heavy damage (minigun and dual minigun) do 1:1 damage to armor.
By reducing the onos' armor, they nerf him more against small arms than they do against exosuits. He is nerfed against both, though. For small arms: we're talking about 8% of his pre-carapace effective-hp being removed. With carapace included, -100 armor means the onos is losing 6% of his effective-hp.
The onos nerf included in this balance patch is the wrong direction to take. We need the onos timing via tres drops slowed. Not the onos' hp nerfed. The onos needs to be powerful for late game play. He just shouldn't be powerful at 6-10m in the game.
That's why I keep on suggesting <!--coloro:#FFFF00--><span style="color:#FFFF00"><!--/coloro-->more viable siege strategies and abilities for<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> <!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->Aliens<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->, and <!--coloro:#FFFF00--><span style="color:#FFFF00"><!--/coloro-->more viable combat weapons for<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> <!--coloro:#00BFFF--><span style="color:#00BFFF"><!--/coloro-->Marines.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=123155" target="_blank">My Gripes</a>
The game drastically needs more content, as it stands I don't think UWE can do much with what they have to make it less linear and repetitive; Onos seems to be the only thing capable of piercing an adequate (I'm saying just adequate) marine single CC turtle
I personally Like how they are making certain alien upgrades more effective, but aliens need something more, another branch of strategy or something against lategame marines (allow them to successfully sabotage marine upgrades) then they could proceed to nerf the onos If they really wish, hopefully making him require more skill somehow instead of making him less effective, this way only good OhF***'s <!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->(Plural of Onos.)<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--> survive and destroy things.
On the flip side; Instead of nerfing OhF***'s; UWE could release more combat oriented marine weapons, since as it stands they only have LMG and Shotguns to deal with direct combat. They could Possibly add some more variations of current weapons, <b>not direct upgrades</b> like HMG, I'm saying different kinds of shotguns, rifles, pistols, hopefully some that require a higher skill threshold but higher reward. a more powerful and costly Marine "Super Weapon" that competes with Exo in destructive effectiveness albeit less powerful since it's hand held.
You could also make marines with a single CC less effective at turtling, lowering or effectively removing the need for onos spam, then OhF***'s could be nerfed... But making marines dependent on map control like aliens is not intuitive, I'd hate to push some frustrations from one side and copy it to the other.
The more choice each side has, the less frustrating the game will be overall, you won't always feel hopeless, and neither will you feel cheap and overpowered, which is what I hope they are striving for.
Every adjustment to lifeform hp/armor values has one of two effects: makes them overpowered early game, or makes them underpowered late game. Why? Because marines scale and aliens don't. Aliens need to have scaling HP/armor as the game progresses. Whether this is an automatic improvement based on quantity of hives, or a research option on the hive, or a new structure doesn't matter. They need it.
On tres lifeforms, I'd suggest simply removing the ability to drop onos eggs as an immediate, simple fix. Stop the hemorrhage, then take the time to asses the situation in more detail and find a better solution.
The game drastically needs more content, as it stands I don't think UWE can do much with what they have to make it less linear and repetitive; Onos seems to be the only thing capable of piercing an adequate (I'm saying just adequate) marine single CC turtle
I personally Like how they are making certain alien upgrades more effective, but aliens need something more, another branch of strategy or something against lategame marines, then they could proceed to nerf the onos If they really wish, hopefully making him require more skill somehow nstead of making him less effective, this way only good OhF***'s <!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->(Plural of Onos.)<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--> survive and destroy things.
On the flip side; Instead of nerfing OhF***'s; UWE could release more combat oriented marine weapons, since as it stands they only have LMG and Shotguns to deal with direct combat. They could Possibly add some more variations of current weapons, <b>not direct upgrades</b> like HMG, I'm saying different kinds of shotguns, rifles, pistols, hopefully some that require a higher skill threshold but higher reward. a more powerful and costly Marine "Super Weapon" that competes with Exo in destructive effectiveness albeit less powerful since it's hand held.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've been saying the same thing about needing more strategies for the Aliens, but the Marine defenders seem to only be interested in making the Aliens easier to kill rather than actually considering how little strategy we have to deal with. Build 229 didn't improve that a whole lot. Yea, crag is a lot more useful and camouflage is actually useful outside of scans and obs, but we're still at the same boring strategy path with some changes to how you start the game, and onos is still the only option for dealing with late game marines even if they have failed to control a map.
Someone posted about removing the ability to spawn eggs with a shift and just give it to the hive, and I like that idea. The hive already spawns eggs on its own, if it becomes a shift hive then give it the ability to let you spawn more eggs around the hive itself ( and maybe around any future hive you build) then just use that echo ability to move eggs if you need them somewhere else.
But the general idea is to not just make it harder to spawn an onos early in the game, but to also give Aliens more options and more reason to invest in other evolutions. The onos still costs an absurd amount of pres, if the tres option wasn't available but the fade and lerk were significantly more effective than they currently are, players would be more likely to switch to them to counter mid-late game marines, further delaying how long you would see an onos on the field. Even if some players choose to remain skulk to only evolve to onos you're going to have less onos on the field and at a far later time in the game than 6 minutes.
i mainly like that the 229 regeneration has been kept at least a while longer to give it more of a chance, i personally feel that it had only a small impact on the increased marine losses since 229. the main reason being the onos.
the onos change, although wouldn't've been my first choice, still shows that charlie acknowledges a problem with the onos in the current state of the game. perhaps with the significantly (.5m seems quite a lot) reduced range it will be harder for the onos to kill marines who dodge around buildings or obstacles etc, which could give skilled marines a chance to empty 3 clips into the onos instead of 1-2... though onos is really too easy to play atm - so any skill cap increase like this can't be such a bad thing.
maybe charlie wants onos rush to be a valid strategy, and therefore decided making the onos less of an 'uber' unit than 229 would be a better solution... either way it seems like a step in the right direction for me... whether it's overkill or not remains to be seen :)
i'm also glad that the alien buildings weren't nerfed back to 228.
Every adjustment to lifeform hp/armor values has one of two effects: makes them overpowered early game, or makes them underpowered late game. Why? Because marines scale and aliens don't. Aliens need to have scaling HP/armor as the game progresses. Whether this is an automatic improvement based on quantity of hives, or a research option on the hive, or a new structure doesn't matter. They need it.
On tres lifeforms, I'd suggest simply removing the ability to drop onos eggs as an immediate, simple fix. Stop the hemorrhage, then take the time to asses the situation in more detail and find a better solution.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd been thinking about this too lately. Just let the players show you where the Aliens need improvement. At the expense of a period with some easier marine victories, I'd like to see UWE take in data and feedback on what an Alien team without the tres onos needs to win.
No changes to fade health.
No changes to 5min onos.
Ermahgerd. Brace yourselves...
But seriously, the answer to the 5min onos is not to buff exos. I guess marines can rush exos in about 5-6 minutes, but they're really not a good match for the onos IMO :S . IDK; doesn't look good imo.
Active regen would be good to be pushed back to 2 seconds, and passive regen nerfed a little bit also :-( .<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
dude where does it say a buff to exos is the new answer to onos?
exo was buffed because it's never used in competitive play... ever... ergo it's only used in pubs because people are bad and can't make best use of jetpacks/PG mobility and therefore need a crutch.