Shade is by far the most useless hive choice for higher lifeforms, which pretty much makes it godawful choice unless you want to gamble on getting a third hive. On 4 TP maps especially though you may as well just surrender if your comm picks shade first.
Say whatever you want but a ton of games are played with mediocre commanders on both sides. Any strategy that puts a disproportionate amount of importance on the competence of the other team's commander - without really requiring anything from your team's commander - is going to be overpowered in your typical pub game and underpowered in a competitive environment. It's simply not a good way to balance the game.
I'm sorry but I just can't agree with that at all. Balancing around rookie players having trouble with something is asinine. If the tools are in the game to deal with it, there's NO excuse. Get better. Camo was already regarded as trash, this change to me just shows how out of touch some of these balance changes are. Overpowered in a pub game? Really..? The only games camo won were games that any other hive would have won, it's like people that care about win %, if one team simply has better players....
Now carapace and celerity are pretty much the only useful upgrades left in the game. UWE seriously needs to take a look at their upgrade system and sort this mess to be honest, it's not okay for only 2/6 possible upgrades to be viable.
I don't understand how silence still isn't good? I think it's the second best upgrade myself, after cara of course.
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
Now carapace and celerity are pretty much the only useful upgrades left in the game. UWE seriously needs to take a look at their upgrade system and sort this mess to be honest, it's not okay for only 2/6 possible upgrades to be viable.
I don't understand how silence still isn't good? I think it's the second best upgrade myself, after cara of course.
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
Silence is a fantastic upgrade for fades, it's not bad for gorges either. Was fantastic for lerks prior to the smoke, but it's still not bad for lerk.
Shade is by far the most useless hive choice for higher lifeforms, which pretty much makes it godawful choice unless want to gamble on getting a third hive. On 4 TP maps especially though you may as well just surrender if your comm picks shade first.
Shade is good for a first or third hive, never second. If you're going to get shade upgrades, you might as well either get them really fast or really late.
It's true that camo and silence are less useful than, say, carapace, for higher life forms which are either already silent and stealthy or benefit little from ambushing (i.e. the onos). However, shade first is still a viable, albeit obviously less-attractive ugprade now that camo has reduced to some form of sanity.
Feign death was ace for fades, oni, and perhaps lerks; that's the true appeal for shade hive for higher life forms and towards the end of the game. All will be well with the shade hive when that makes a return.
I think they should make silence and camo combined, but have 2 versions to pick from.
1. The new camo with a partial 50% silence effect.
2. Silence with a 25% camo effect. 25% since silence is already pretty good.
I think having both fully combined would be too overpowered. But both partially combined makes the shade hive more viable at any point. Plus marine obs or scan doesn't nulify camo 100% this way since you still have 50% silence.
And speaking of scans / obs, why does it need to decloak the alien still? Isn't getting the circular reticle painted on him enough?
Now carapace and celerity are pretty much the only useful upgrades left in the game. UWE seriously needs to take a look at their upgrade system and sort this mess to be honest, it's not okay for only 2/6 possible upgrades to be viable.
I don't understand how silence still isn't good? I think it's the second best upgrade myself, after cara of course.
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
Silence is the best for ninja gorges.
You can heal yourself/build hydras behind enemy lines without anyone hearing.
When you bile the base, comm gets no warnings.
I love it when marines place obs on the far end of shipping and it does not reach balcony. You can climb there as a skulk, go silent gorge, clog up the ladder and build hydras without anyone noticing or hearing you. Then you bile their base and they can hardly get you there without jetpacks.
All will be well with the shade hive when that makes a return.
If, because at this rate I don't think the third upgrade choices are anywhere close to being brought back :P
Also, I wish they'd just rework the entire upgrade system altogether, to allow for greater user flexibility. Right now you pretty much don't get to use the less attractive upgrades even if you wanted to because most khamms won't research them in a timely manner.
Say whatever you want but a ton of games are played with mediocre commanders on both sides. Any strategy that puts a disproportionate amount of importance on the competence of the other team's commander - without really requiring anything from your team's commander - is going to be overpowered in your typical pub game and underpowered in a competitive environment. It's simply not a good way to balance the game.
I'm sorry but I just can't agree with that at all. Balancing around rookie players having trouble with something is asinine. If the tools are in the game to deal with it, there's NO excuse. Get better. Camo was already regarded as trash, this change to me just shows how out of touch some of these balance changes are. Overpowered in a pub game? Really..? The only games camo won were games that any other hive would have won, it's like people that care about win %, if one team simply has better players....
If you design a game to only be balanced when played by expert players, then what you have is an unbalanced game. NS2 is not played by expert players 99% of the time. Camo was regarded as trash competitively and yet was highly effective in pubs games - this should be proof enough that trickle-down balance does not work. Pub balance does matter - yes the teams are random and thus frequently stacked, but they're also frequently more or less balanced.
Now carapace and celerity are pretty much the only useful upgrades left in the game. UWE seriously needs to take a look at their upgrade system and sort this mess to be honest, it's not okay for only 2/6 possible upgrades to be viable.
I don't understand how silence still isn't good? I think it's the second best upgrade myself, after cara of course.
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
I'd say it depends on how you want to play. If I am going gorge, fade, or onos and the khamm has camo but not silence I just go without a shade upgrade 90% of the time until silence becomes available. Camo just seems too defensive and/or slow to me as an alien in general.
I'd much rather just charge around the corner as an onos and the marines only know I'm there once they see me than have to worry about them hearing the rumble 2 rooms away and have them waiting for me to creep in and uncloak. With fade I'm usually not going to be still enough for camo to take effect so I might as well take the benefit of the marines being deaf to me. Gorge I will sometimes use camo depending on what my intentions are, but it is quite great to be an onos buddy and the marines not hearing your constant healing as you run along him. It's also funny to have the onos complain about not getting healed until you tell them you have silence and were healing the whole time.
Now carapace and celerity are pretty much the only useful upgrades left in the game. UWE seriously needs to take a look at their upgrade system and sort this mess to be honest, it's not okay for only 2/6 possible upgrades to be viable.
I don't understand how silence still isn't good? I think it's the second best upgrade myself, after cara of course.
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
Sorry what? Do you play a different game that is like NS2 but isn't? Silence is/was always miles better for fades and lerks! It's probably negated somewhat with the stupid lerk tracers now, but for Fade's it's still as good as ever. Why would you have ever picked camo for a fade even when camo actually worked? Fade is meant to SS in, kill, leave, and repeat, not camp in the corner waiting. Camo ruined Fade's strength which is fast movement.
New camo is pointless. Had to laugh at the onos I could see crouching and walking through lava falls yesterday. Hrm I wonder what that gigantic blurry moving thing could be?
I think camo and silence should be combined into one upgrade "stealth", and an additional shade tech added which would be some sort of focus/scent of fear/etc type upgrade.
Oh man this is a great idea. Along with giving the silence/camo combination and the fullspeed when moving feature Zek/Iron Horse mentioned, it might be a really good upgrade. Since you still shimmer at full speed so as not to be op and are invisible when still it makes it so viable. Of course removing the cloak when attacking, being hit, jumping or using abilities is needed. Then adding Focus/feign death like you said as the second one is just great. I hope this idea suggested by you guys gets some serious consideration. I was kind of also thinking giving the aliens a focus damage buff on the first bite when still in camo but that might be too much.
A bit off topic but might I ask what scent of fear is? Is there a database of the old features of NS1 lying around?
I think camo and silence should be combined into one upgrade "stealth", and an additional shade tech added which would be some sort of focus/scent of fear/etc type upgrade.
Yeah I think that would be a good way to approach it.
I no longer get shade upgrades because they are useless now. While walking around on the ground I became uncloaked right in front of a marine for no reason at all :S
I wish they would take camo back to the pre-gorgeous version as that was a good balance.
Now carapace and celerity are pretty much the only useful upgrades left in the game. UWE seriously needs to take a look at their upgrade system and sort this mess to be honest, it's not okay for only 2/6 possible upgrades to be viable.
Oh goodness I think this post gave me cancer.
Carapace and celerity are just great, no explanation necessary.
Adrenaline = REQUIRED by mid-to-late game imo, at the very least for gorges. I miss it a lot when playing fade and onos as well.
Silence: Extremely useful and underrated ability that I take over camo (before and after patch) on three of the five classes, all of which combat. People underestimate silence to the nth degree.
Regen: This I have no opinion on, because I only ever use it as Lerk. It's useful in its own context.
And now, camo. It kind of baffles me how many people use(d) camo as skulk. Camo's purpose is to mask your presence and skulks innately have that ability by being able to get to places that people don't typically look at/in, and very quickly and stealthily at that. Camo nerf/s/ed one entire half of a skulk's stealth ability: speed. I never used camo as skulk and will continue not to on the basis that I find silence MUCH more useful as a stealth ability.
The old camo also encouraged lazy or just plain detrimental gameplay styles (what good is a skulk if he's not fast to move around the map?) much like THAT lerk sitting in lava falls spiking an extractor for 5 minutes instead of doing a million other more useful things. I've seen many a camo skulk being effectively useless.
All that aside, I think the change makes sense from a purely logical standpoint. The ability is called camouflage. Camouflage works on the principle of blending into your environment. Never have I heard or conceived of a creature that bends light (seemingly as the skulk does) whilst moving rather than staying still and appearing to blend in. I'd go so far as to say that the word camouflage was a poor descriptor for the ability, and it should have been called invisibility instead.
Hard to know when you're cloaked with alien vision.
Impossible to know what marines see when you're cloacked but not invisible (the cloacked while moving slowly).
When moving slowly, it sometimes flickers from fully visible to fully cloacked.
Sure it needed a tweak, but not a fan of the current implementation.
I hope UWE sees this thread and just removes cloaking. Just bring back feign death so these kids will stop whining that they die due to their invisibility, not their skills or lack thereof.
I never thought I'd be against alien nerfing but I agree, this camo change is not good. It makes it almost completely useless. It was OP before the change but there has got to be some middle ground between before and what we have now. Shade is a waste of a hive.
i think carapace and celerity are greatly overrated.
carapace is on average the most dependable upgrade and therefore desirable, but silence and adrenaline can be far more useful than carapace in a lot of situations.
after a few bites as a lerk you sometimes run out of adrenaline and begin to fly like a balloon. in that situation, is 25 extra armor from carapace really worth a damn?
anyway, my point is that if you want every hive to have equal viability then carapace needs to be less universal. extra hit points (carapace), like extra damage or extra movement speed (not the cheap 'only works out-of-combat' celerity) bonuses will ALWAYS be more desirable than situational stuff.
Carapace and celerity are just great, no explanation necessary.
Adrenaline = REQUIRED by mid-to-late game imo, at the very least for gorges. I miss it a lot when playing fade and onos as well.
Silence: Extremely useful and underrated ability that I take over camo (before and after patch) on three of the five classes, all of which combat. People underestimate silence to the nth degree.
Regen: This I have no opinion on, because I only ever use it as Lerk. It's useful in its own context.
Adrenaline is pretty much useless on anything but BB gorge. Silence is pretty much useless on anything but skulks. Regen is pretty much useless after the nerf period. Carapace is too much of a must have for any lifeform as the mid game approaches.
I love the idea of combining silence and the current camo and then offer focus as a second shade option. That would be truly amazing, but I doubt it's going to happen.
It's laughable some people dare to claim carapace and celerity have any competition whatsoever, they're no brainers and none of the other alternatives even come close in terms of overall impact (on ALL lifeforms)
It's laughable some people dare to claim carapace and celerity have any competition whatsoever, they're no brainers and none of the other alternatives even come close in terms of overall impact (on ALL lifeforms)
Arrogant much?
It depends on the lifeform and your playstyle what upgrades are better for what. For me, I go celerity/silence/regen lerk since SGs will essentially 1 shot you with or without cara. Silence, for me, is useful on skulks, fades, lerks, onos, and gorges depending on the situation. I'd never take camo on a lerk or an onos, especially the current implementation of camo...
I'd prefer it if they'd just drop camo completely and replace it with something else more useful in general.
Shade serves no purpose at all, its a total waste of an upgrade and the marines have nothing even NEARLY as useless as this as a major upgrade. What is shotguns cost twice as much and did half a much damage with half the clip size? Thats basically what you did to shade. With the celerity nerf the ONLY choice for Aliens is now CRAG, but because aliens are still slow...even that 1-2 extra bullet doesn't chance the course of the game, resulting in marine victory 80% of the time.
I never thought I'd be against alien nerfing but I agree, this camo change is not good. It makes it almost completely useless. It was OP before the change but there has got to be some middle ground between before and what we have now. Shade is a waste of a hive.
I don't think it was OP at all. It was a major upgrade that gave you an advantage. Now its a minor side-grade that doesn't help you in combat at all.
I don't get how the current implementation is worth:
A: Hive upgrade slot
B: or the Res to upgrade it. Seriously, shade is a waste of resources. Thats just terrible design UWE.
Comments
I'm sorry but I just can't agree with that at all. Balancing around rookie players having trouble with something is asinine. If the tools are in the game to deal with it, there's NO excuse. Get better. Camo was already regarded as trash, this change to me just shows how out of touch some of these balance changes are. Overpowered in a pub game? Really..? The only games camo won were games that any other hive would have won, it's like people that care about win %, if one team simply has better players....
maybe for skulks, but silence is probably one of the worst upgrades for, gorges, fades and onos... and only marginally useful for lerks.
Silence is a fantastic upgrade for fades, it's not bad for gorges either. Was fantastic for lerks prior to the smoke, but it's still not bad for lerk.
Shade is good for a first or third hive, never second. If you're going to get shade upgrades, you might as well either get them really fast or really late.
It's true that camo and silence are less useful than, say, carapace, for higher life forms which are either already silent and stealthy or benefit little from ambushing (i.e. the onos). However, shade first is still a viable, albeit obviously less-attractive ugprade now that camo has reduced to some form of sanity.
Feign death was ace for fades, oni, and perhaps lerks; that's the true appeal for shade hive for higher life forms and towards the end of the game. All will be well with the shade hive when that makes a return.
1. The new camo with a partial 50% silence effect.
2. Silence with a 25% camo effect. 25% since silence is already pretty good.
I think having both fully combined would be too overpowered. But both partially combined makes the shade hive more viable at any point. Plus marine obs or scan doesn't nulify camo 100% this way since you still have 50% silence.
And speaking of scans / obs, why does it need to decloak the alien still? Isn't getting the circular reticle painted on him enough?
Silence is the best for ninja gorges.
You can heal yourself/build hydras behind enemy lines without anyone hearing.
When you bile the base, comm gets no warnings.
I love it when marines place obs on the far end of shipping and it does not reach balcony. You can climb there as a skulk, go silent gorge, clog up the ladder and build hydras without anyone noticing or hearing you. Then you bile their base and they can hardly get you there without jetpacks.
If, because at this rate I don't think the third upgrade choices are anywhere close to being brought back :P
Also, I wish they'd just rework the entire upgrade system altogether, to allow for greater user flexibility. Right now you pretty much don't get to use the less attractive upgrades even if you wanted to because most khamms won't research them in a timely manner.
If you design a game to only be balanced when played by expert players, then what you have is an unbalanced game. NS2 is not played by expert players 99% of the time. Camo was regarded as trash competitively and yet was highly effective in pubs games - this should be proof enough that trickle-down balance does not work. Pub balance does matter - yes the teams are random and thus frequently stacked, but they're also frequently more or less balanced.
I'd say it depends on how you want to play. If I am going gorge, fade, or onos and the khamm has camo but not silence I just go without a shade upgrade 90% of the time until silence becomes available. Camo just seems too defensive and/or slow to me as an alien in general.
I'd much rather just charge around the corner as an onos and the marines only know I'm there once they see me than have to worry about them hearing the rumble 2 rooms away and have them waiting for me to creep in and uncloak. With fade I'm usually not going to be still enough for camo to take effect so I might as well take the benefit of the marines being deaf to me. Gorge I will sometimes use camo depending on what my intentions are, but it is quite great to be an onos buddy and the marines not hearing your constant healing as you run along him. It's also funny to have the onos complain about not getting healed until you tell them you have silence and were healing the whole time.
Silence is the second best upgrade for fade.
It also used to be a possible gambit as first upgrade.
Camo is now completely useless, you can flush it down The toilets, moreover, the new effect is ugly.
This is the first time i see something that was working quite fine broken In such a brutal way.
Sorry what? Do you play a different game that is like NS2 but isn't? Silence is/was always miles better for fades and lerks! It's probably negated somewhat with the stupid lerk tracers now, but for Fade's it's still as good as ever. Why would you have ever picked camo for a fade even when camo actually worked? Fade is meant to SS in, kill, leave, and repeat, not camp in the corner waiting. Camo ruined Fade's strength which is fast movement.
New camo is pointless. Had to laugh at the onos I could see crouching and walking through lava falls yesterday. Hrm I wonder what that gigantic blurry moving thing could be?
Oh man this is a great idea. Along with giving the silence/camo combination and the fullspeed when moving feature Zek/Iron Horse mentioned, it might be a really good upgrade. Since you still shimmer at full speed so as not to be op and are invisible when still it makes it so viable. Of course removing the cloak when attacking, being hit, jumping or using abilities is needed. Then adding Focus/feign death like you said as the second one is just great. I hope this idea suggested by you guys gets some serious consideration. I was kind of also thinking giving the aliens a focus damage buff on the first bite when still in camo but that might be too much.
A bit off topic but might I ask what scent of fear is? Is there a database of the old features of NS1 lying around?
Yeah I think that would be a good way to approach it.
I no longer get shade upgrades because they are useless now. While walking around on the ground I became uncloaked right in front of a marine for no reason at all :S
I wish they would take camo back to the pre-gorgeous version as that was a good balance.
Oh goodness I think this post gave me cancer.
Carapace and celerity are just great, no explanation necessary.
Adrenaline = REQUIRED by mid-to-late game imo, at the very least for gorges. I miss it a lot when playing fade and onos as well.
Silence: Extremely useful and underrated ability that I take over camo (before and after patch) on three of the five classes, all of which combat. People underestimate silence to the nth degree.
Regen: This I have no opinion on, because I only ever use it as Lerk. It's useful in its own context.
And now, camo. It kind of baffles me how many people use(d) camo as skulk. Camo's purpose is to mask your presence and skulks innately have that ability by being able to get to places that people don't typically look at/in, and very quickly and stealthily at that. Camo nerf/s/ed one entire half of a skulk's stealth ability: speed. I never used camo as skulk and will continue not to on the basis that I find silence MUCH more useful as a stealth ability.
The old camo also encouraged lazy or just plain detrimental gameplay styles (what good is a skulk if he's not fast to move around the map?) much like THAT lerk sitting in lava falls spiking an extractor for 5 minutes instead of doing a million other more useful things. I've seen many a camo skulk being effectively useless.
All that aside, I think the change makes sense from a purely logical standpoint. The ability is called camouflage. Camouflage works on the principle of blending into your environment. Never have I heard or conceived of a creature that bends light (seemingly as the skulk does) whilst moving rather than staying still and appearing to blend in. I'd go so far as to say that the word camouflage was a poor descriptor for the ability, and it should have been called invisibility instead.
Impossible to know what marines see when you're cloacked but not invisible (the cloacked while moving slowly).
When moving slowly, it sometimes flickers from fully visible to fully cloacked.
Sure it needed a tweak, but not a fan of the current implementation.
carapace is on average the most dependable upgrade and therefore desirable, but silence and adrenaline can be far more useful than carapace in a lot of situations.
after a few bites as a lerk you sometimes run out of adrenaline and begin to fly like a balloon. in that situation, is 25 extra armor from carapace really worth a damn?
anyway, my point is that if you want every hive to have equal viability then carapace needs to be less universal. extra hit points (carapace), like extra damage or extra movement speed (not the cheap 'only works out-of-combat' celerity) bonuses will ALWAYS be more desirable than situational stuff.
Adrenaline is pretty much useless on anything but BB gorge. Silence is pretty much useless on anything but skulks. Regen is pretty much useless after the nerf period. Carapace is too much of a must have for any lifeform as the mid game approaches.
I love the idea of combining silence and the current camo and then offer focus as a second shade option. That would be truly amazing, but I doubt it's going to happen.
It's laughable some people dare to claim carapace and celerity have any competition whatsoever, they're no brainers and none of the other alternatives even come close in terms of overall impact (on ALL lifeforms)
Arrogant much?
It depends on the lifeform and your playstyle what upgrades are better for what. For me, I go celerity/silence/regen lerk since SGs will essentially 1 shot you with or without cara. Silence, for me, is useful on skulks, fades, lerks, onos, and gorges depending on the situation. I'd never take camo on a lerk or an onos, especially the current implementation of camo...
Shade serves no purpose at all, its a total waste of an upgrade and the marines have nothing even NEARLY as useless as this as a major upgrade. What is shotguns cost twice as much and did half a much damage with half the clip size? Thats basically what you did to shade. With the celerity nerf the ONLY choice for Aliens is now CRAG, but because aliens are still slow...even that 1-2 extra bullet doesn't chance the course of the game, resulting in marine victory 80% of the time.
I don't think it was OP at all. It was a major upgrade that gave you an advantage. Now its a minor side-grade that doesn't help you in combat at all.
I don't get how the current implementation is worth:
A: Hive upgrade slot
B: or the Res to upgrade it. Seriously, shade is a waste of resources. Thats just terrible design UWE.