Some concerns I got
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Join Date: 2012-12-13 Member: 174998Members
Join Date: 2012-12-13 Member: 174998Members
I'll make it clear now that I mostly play alien. Can't play humans, I find it far too more easie--- I mean enjoyable to chew those marines. Okay, that easier thing was sarcastic. Though generally, the balance seems to favor aliens a little more, but I still find balance in NS2 fairly impressive if we consider humans vs aliens. But, then there's these little things that really don't impress me.
On the subject of balance, could instantly talk about shotguns and Fades.
Every time I'm looking at the evolve screen and I see that I could afford Fade, I skip doing that 99% of the time. Reason being the shotgun, solely the shotgun. Maybe other players tend to be a tad unhappy about Fade survivability generally, but shotguns 1-shotting Fade goes tad above to what it should be. I understand shotguns oneshotting anything else that they can oneshot, but not Fade. I'm not ENTIRELY sure, but I think they can oneshot Fade with carapace as well. A lot of people have complained about this in matches I've played. "Wow, sg owned fade in one shot". The luck factor in such event becomes far too dramatic. Not sure how to deal with this, but it's ridiculous and turns me off from fade every time this happens.
Okay, now that I got that out... let's talk about stealth! Or camo, call it whatever you want.
I really think that this opinion will backfire me in terms of rage from community... but I think that stealth wasn't the perfect mechanism introduced. The underlying issue is that either it forces the enemy com to spend a ton of resources to scan everything (early on that's quite significant) or their marines get chugged up. On the other hand, there's also this issue that in some pub games occurs very heavily... People just don't understand how to play with stealth. Commander asks someone to come up quickly to a harvester that is getting all stabbed up and you're coming! With stealth on... just in case someone sees you... And there goes the Harvester, with you nowhere near the premises. But hey, at least nobody saw you.
Lots of folks seem to instantly start playing in this manner (and okay, it's good that they get punished for playing bad, but also trying to prove that stealth is more harmful in any type of game than it is good. It doesn't usually introduce a fair game.
While we're at early game tactics, another bugger is that often more than not, games seem to be solved within the first 5 minutes and the rest is just showing off. Taking off enemy harvesters early on punishes them really bad. But in pub games, if this is really all that there is to win the game, I can't say that I'm too excited over that.
Also, I don't like that sensors provide real-time information and I don't like that you can just tag enemy marines and see their whereabouts constantly. For marines, their scanners should just reveal your location every 2-3 seconds while aliens should get a trail that perhaps can be seen in thermal vision.
Well, that's about it. I guess.
On the subject of balance, could instantly talk about shotguns and Fades.
Every time I'm looking at the evolve screen and I see that I could afford Fade, I skip doing that 99% of the time. Reason being the shotgun, solely the shotgun. Maybe other players tend to be a tad unhappy about Fade survivability generally, but shotguns 1-shotting Fade goes tad above to what it should be. I understand shotguns oneshotting anything else that they can oneshot, but not Fade. I'm not ENTIRELY sure, but I think they can oneshot Fade with carapace as well. A lot of people have complained about this in matches I've played. "Wow, sg owned fade in one shot". The luck factor in such event becomes far too dramatic. Not sure how to deal with this, but it's ridiculous and turns me off from fade every time this happens.
Okay, now that I got that out... let's talk about stealth! Or camo, call it whatever you want.
I really think that this opinion will backfire me in terms of rage from community... but I think that stealth wasn't the perfect mechanism introduced. The underlying issue is that either it forces the enemy com to spend a ton of resources to scan everything (early on that's quite significant) or their marines get chugged up. On the other hand, there's also this issue that in some pub games occurs very heavily... People just don't understand how to play with stealth. Commander asks someone to come up quickly to a harvester that is getting all stabbed up and you're coming! With stealth on... just in case someone sees you... And there goes the Harvester, with you nowhere near the premises. But hey, at least nobody saw you.
Lots of folks seem to instantly start playing in this manner (and okay, it's good that they get punished for playing bad, but also trying to prove that stealth is more harmful in any type of game than it is good. It doesn't usually introduce a fair game.
While we're at early game tactics, another bugger is that often more than not, games seem to be solved within the first 5 minutes and the rest is just showing off. Taking off enemy harvesters early on punishes them really bad. But in pub games, if this is really all that there is to win the game, I can't say that I'm too excited over that.
Also, I don't like that sensors provide real-time information and I don't like that you can just tag enemy marines and see their whereabouts constantly. For marines, their scanners should just reveal your location every 2-3 seconds while aliens should get a trail that perhaps can be seen in thermal vision.
Well, that's about it. I guess.
Comments
However, the shotgun is not nearly as deadly as you suggest unless you fly right into a group of marines with shotties. First off the shottie is flat rate damage, since IIRC it doesn't benefit from the arms lab upgrades. So it is a flat 170 per shot, spread out over 10 pellets. The fade has 250 health and 50 armor. The shottie does 'normal' damage so that means the fade's 50 armor is worth 100 versus the shottie. So the Fade's effective health versus the shotgun is 350.
With that said, it is impossible to 1-shot a Fade at full health with a shotgun. In fact you can't even 2-shot a fade, assuming you hit with all 10 pellets each time. The Fade is balanced so that it needs 3 shots from a shottie to kill it, and you need to hit with 7 out of 10 pellets in each of those 3 shots. That seems fair to me.
It takes 2.85 seconds to fire 3 shotgun shots, assuming no lag and constant fire. In 2.6 seconds a fade can hit the marine 4 times, each time the swipe doing 81.25 damage. That's a total of 325 damage in those 4 swipes. A marine has 100 health and 90 armor with the armor 3 upgrade. So if a fade and a shottie marine are in a 1-on-1 battle, assuming neither side misses a shot, the Fade will *always* win. The fade can deliver more effective damage in a shorter period of time than the marine can.
The reason why Fades die to shotties is that people have a hard time PLAYING the Fade.
My only problem with Camo is that it's becoming the 'standard' tech path since it's so good, and anytime one tech path becomes standard that means either it is overpowered, or the other two are underpowered.
The shotgun cannot one shot a fade. Fade has 250 health and 50 armor, shotgun does normal damage, so every armor point protects 2 hitpoints. Therefore, the fade has 350 effective health. The shotgun, at level 0, does 170 damage if every pellet hits. It takes a minimum of 3 shells to kill a fade with W0. Additionally, I'm fairly positive it's actually impossible to hit with every pellet, the spread is just too wide, and close range shotgun mechanics are a bit glitchy. Most commonly we see a 2 to 5 pellet spread on a shotgun hit. For a generous estimate lets assume 6 pellet hits per shell. lets ramp of the weapon upgrades to a more reasonable midgame level. At weapons level 2, the shotgun fires with 20 damage per pellet, assuming a pretty generous average hit ratio of 6 pellets sunk per hit, you are doing 120 damage per shot. 120*3=360. So at weapons 2 you JUST BARELY kill the fade in 3 shells with pretty much optimum hits.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really think that this opinion will backfire me in terms of rage from community... but I think that stealth wasn't the perfect mechanism introduced. The underlying issue is that either it forces the enemy com to spend a ton of resources to scan everything (early on that's quite significant) or their marines get chugged up. On the other hand, there's also this issue that in some pub games occurs very heavily... People just don't understand how to play with stealth. Commander asks someone to come up quickly to a harvester that is getting all stabbed up and you're coming! With stealth on... just in case someone sees you... And there goes the Harvester, with you nowhere near the premises. But hey, at least nobody saw you.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->It's almost like the difficulty of using camo properly vs the difficulty of countering it balance out... interesting.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->While we're at early game tactics, another bugger is that often more than not, games seem to be solved within the first 5 minutes and the rest is just showing off. Taking off enemy harvesters early on punishes them really bad. But in pub games, if this is really all that there is to win the game, I can't say that I'm too excited over that.
Also, I don't like that sensors provide real-time information and I don't like that you can just tag enemy marines and see their whereabouts constantly. For marines, their scanners should just reveal your location every 2-3 seconds while aliens should get a trail that perhaps can be seen in thermal vision.
Well, that's about it. I guess.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is an issue of RTS games called "slippery slope". You can literally find essays on this particular issue online... suffice to say, it's an impossible thing, if your game includes RTS elements, to completely remove slippery slope as a factor. The reality is, there's just an advantage to gaining an advantage, and as there should be. What you want to do is make is such that there's as much grippy surface as possible (so if I lose my RTs in the early game, I'm at a large disadvantage, but I still can come back if I win some key engagements, which does happen in NS2) and make it such that once the slide really begins, it ties up quickly (NS2 is bad for this currently, but things like egg lock and power nodes have helped a bit)
And yeah, I gotta agree with that slippery slope issue. And I've seen also my share of the comebacks to say that there's definitively some chance. And I also realize how hard these things come, especially for a game that has severely harder balance factor considering that they're alienating humans and aliens playstyle from each other. I've only seen one good demonstration to beat the issue in a strategy game (not really RTS though). They just introduced a good amount of RNG (this perhaps sounds strange, but it keeps the game really interesting...). Unfortunately, such approach would never work for NS2 and wouldn't have a slightest idea how to even implement it. Only RNG currently is the spawnpoint of your initial base.
Oh and yes, I sort of find other smaller things also worthy to nitpick about (such as why celerity does not stay on while in combat, or why every other evolution than stealth is just plain boring). But I've seen other threads explaining the same things over and over again, thus I decided not to go into them directly.
And yeah, I gotta agree with that slippery slope issue. And I've seen also my share of the comebacks to say that there's definitively some chance. And I also realize how hard these things come, especially for a game that has severely harder balance factor considering that they're alienating humans and aliens playstyle from each other. I've only seen one good demonstration to beat the issue in a strategy game (not really RTS though). They just introduced a good amount of RNG (this perhaps sounds strange, but it keeps the game really interesting...). Unfortunately, such approach would never work for NS2 and wouldn't have a slightest idea how to even implement it. Only RNG currently is the spawnpoint of your initial base.
Oh and yes, I sort of find other smaller things also worthy to nitpick about (such as why celerity does not stay on while in combat, or why every other evolution than stealth is just plain boring). But I've seen other threads explaining the same things over and over again, thus I decided not to go into them directly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Celerity would stay on in combat in NS1. I think the decision was made to remove that so that Shift chambers were not the only start chamber anyone ever went for (as was the case in NS1, as, for a good player, being 20% faster was a bigger buff than any of the other upgrade options for the skulk).
They made it the way it is now so it's more tactical. Celerity gets you to the combat line faster, but once you're there you may wish you had picked something else as your starting upgrade.
And to an extent, this already is evident. If your comm picks shift first, adrenaline doesn't look really even closely as interesting as celerity. In fact, I think that no life form apart from Lerk & Onos benefits directly from adrenaline without additional upgrades? Sure, some can attack at full speed slightly longer, but you probably get my point. Or actually, perhaps Gorge? Well still, two life forms that don't directly benefit and celerity in most cases is more rewarding anyway.
And let's not even go to regeneration. Silent footsteps is way underrated though. I think that the better players would prefer on using it instead of stealth as a Skulk.
The only benefit is for the Gorge that has to help construct the Hives. Other then that, I see no real benefit from adrenaline vs celerity. Lerk and even Onos is crazy fast with celerity. The celerity speed increase kicks in quick enough anyways if you dodge fire for a short bit, which is of course harder to accomplish as a big Onos. But it does make it possible to escape at warp speed, not to mention quickly getting into combat as well.