skulk movement
DrFlammable
Join Date: 2012-04-18 Member: 150705Members
Join Date: 2012-04-18 Member: 150705Members
this is horrible. honestly the slowest i remember skulk ever being. why is this a good idea please explain it to me. it's nearly impossible to keep a good speed up while wall jumping unless you've got an absolutely perfect with 5-10% error route you can use. i feel like a gigantic butt made of marble. i would honestly rather have competely zero air control rather than these new friction/accel values.
Comments
This change allows Marines the ability to contend with Alien map control and consistently kill Skulks who make poor positioning choices. Essentially, this update balances out Alien early game which in turn balances the mid and late game. It's a win-win for the community.
And what exactly do you mean by positioning, because you can be a skulk and be on a ceiling somewhere, and that marine (if he knows what he is doing, will check THAT SPOT)......so? Huh?
Aliens have the biggest learning curve? Exactly how do you come to that conclusion? Were that the case initial win percentages wouldn't have been 54% in the favor of Aliens. Marines are substantially harder to play because they are slow, clunky, weak, have to build, make decisions and communicate effectively in order to win. Aliens are kill, kill, and more kill. It's one train of thought and it's stupendously easy in comparison. Not to mention shooting a skulk your first time as a Marine is a lot harder than biting someone as a skulk.
All of you are complaining that it's harder to be a skulk but the truth is a higher skill ceiling on the skulk balances the game out and makes a good player infinitely more valuable. In terms of competitive gameplay this is a wonderful change. Making kills easy to obtain completely defeats the purpose of competitive balance. Most of the players complaining are used to abusing the bunny hop mechanic to become nearly impossible to hit consistently. A marine should stand a 50% chance of winning a 1v1 fight against a skulk and prior to this patch the chances of victory were heavily skewed in the skulk players favor.
1 word: execution.
people tend to forget we're talking about melee vs ranged combat. it isn't a matter of how easy it is to bite someone, but how easy it is to get into biting range of someone. nubs don't have the patience to ambush. they want to rush and kill everything in their path.
learning curve here = any form of skill-based movement. skulk walljump/wallhop, lerk flight, fade shadowstep/blink, maybe even gorge belly slide to a certain extent has a learning curve involved. plus learning how to think as a player and not just rush in like a nub.
i don't think aliens have the biggest learning curve, but i don't think aliens have no learning curve either. don't exaggerate or be dramatic plz.
EDIT: tl;dr - Skulk is hard to master, teamwork necessary to succeed, alone skulk must dodge good or ambush good but against 2-3 players will probably die taking one with him.
Personally I think playing as skulk needs quite good skills or good opportunities (ambush, teamwork), because 1v1 with rifle marine turned out I needed very good aim (hard to do that with that fps) just to bite guy. Marines can dodge bites and shoot back you know, hence you need ambush, rear attacks, flanking and/or teamwork and no marine can live on until they are grouped too. Skulk needs to be in constant move or in good ambush positions, that's why celerity and silence/camo are more popular then carapace/regen if I am playing skulk (carapace? I don't think it does difference anyway).
As marine shooting skulks is very hard, because if one knows how to dodge and hop to you (you know, jumping left and right moving towards you), well for me its certainly a lost round, because as soon as skulk is in biting range, moving in orbit of player (around him) makes alone marine a corpse.
Concluding my humble experience skulk play is more about teamwork and ambush, unless there is skilled player with good movement skills and aim or you are against clumsy player, moving both skulks and marines to group together for bigger survival chances, which encourages teamwork.
I know 99% of this stuff (except fps) are known, but from my point of view newbie and moderate players must use teamwork and ambush while playing skulk (or pray to get unwary and clumsy marine for dinner), while pros can do more tasks alone (which is obvious anyway) but still pro skulk against 2-3 moderate players is balanced IMO.
also i was killing ppl as skulk before and after this changes.. nothing changed rly just got a slower bad game.
'Skill ceiling' refers to how far you can push your effectiveness within the restraints of the game's mechanics. Lowering the speed of skulks decreases the skill ceiling. There is no bunny hop in this game as you cannot maintain air acceleration. Aliens have the biggest learning curve because no game created has the same mechanics as the alien classes. Its from the ground up learning experience. Skulks are much harder to play for rookies than marines are. Marines you point and click period. Learning to strafe from side to side while jumping is a lot more basic than learning to ambush with your shift-walk key, circle jumping, right-click-leaping, landing direct bites, etc.
I've been playing for a quite a long time now, ever since this patch i can agree the aliens are in dire need of some kind of buff. the statistics may say that the %win rate is near around 60% but i can suggest that if you do the stats on any 24 non pub server the rates are very bad. when faced with a marine that has a comm backing him with medpacks in a place that MUST be taken, the aliens always fail to take it out because its within the first few minutes of the round. even for marines facing against a couple of gorgers, just a few packs of ammo and medpacks will allow marines to break through if done right. only non pro marine commanders don't notice this and don't tell their marines to force through a just-built gorge wall.
Nanoshield/Mac and end game:
Nano shield and mac spam on marine fortresses is almost impossible to destroy. you can have 2-3 onos's and maybe a gorger, but with enough macs and a nano shield on the power node following a beacon, the aliens will fail in the rush. it's hard to notice this aspect because only pro marine commanders take notice of this and act quickly. but when facing a rush on an alien hive, the aliens have nothing to protect the hive with when facing a heavily guarded arc as every single structure dies quickly anyway. even with crags its hard to keep any structure alive.
The unnoticed edge in the game is the mac/nano shield. this aspect makes a marine commander nearly invincible from any attack. of course its not easy when the marines don't have at least 4-5 towers, the real problem is the start of the game.
Why aliens need a buff in start:
The aliens need some kind of buff early game in order to contend with marines that have medpack/ammo drops. the change in recent skulks in this patch made it much harder to contend with these marines. without this buff, its too easy for marines to take most of the areas of any map. you may think it costs too many resources to do medpack/ammo and scans, but it DOES SO MUCH MORE when you successfully build a gate and resource tower.
And here comes the part where you'll prolly think i'm kidding; i've almost won every single match as marine commander because of this.
Skill ceiling is completely relative to how easy it is to master a particular skill set. Prior to this patch the skill ceiling for the skulk was incredibly low as it was too easy to be an effective skulk. With this physics change we are looking at a skulk that has a similar skill ceiling to a marine; easy to pick up, hard to master. As I said before, this physics change was a long time coming and while it slows Alien early game pressure marginally, it does not make the game slower in any sense of the word. Resources still accumulate at the same rate and skulks are free to roam while their commander builds freely. Mid and late game will still occur at the same pace so let's not act like this is some horrific change that will forever disrupt the flow of the universe.
EDIT: It's also worth noting that a skulk with Celerity is just as mobile and the physics change is barely noticeable as Celerity affects raw speed which in turn affects acceleration. It's been pretty much the standard meta to go Celerity Spur as a first upgrade for a long time so this change really does nothing but limit the first few minutes of a skulk which means they can't just rush a CC or every RT and call it a day.
"I'm sorry but anyone saying it took any measure of skill to be a skulk prior to this patch is just blowing smoke."
-Vile | Frisky
There is a big difference from doing well as a skulk in a 24 man pub, than doing well in a competitive scene like the ENSL league. And there is a big skill gap between someone who could do well in ENSL div 1 with a skulk and one who cannot. Now let me emphasize this next part. Post patch the effectiveness within the game's constraints has punished the better players into becoming, excuse me for the hyperbole, 'marginally' better than the master pubstars. This is of course comparing each player's skulk play pre patch and post patch.
I get the feeling that you only play on public servers...
I've said this about 5 times now and this will be the last time I say it so pay attention. The skulk was designed to be quick and evasive but when the acceleration allows ANY player to do so with ease it makes it that much easier to be a good skulk and that LOWERS your skill ceiling you like to educate everyone on. Anyone who played competitive matches can attest that a 1v1 fight against a skulk was pretty much a done deal if you didn't get the drop on him and he didn't choke miserably. Truth. In a competitive game, both players should stand an equal chance to defeat one another provided neither has an advantage over the other. In NS2 this hasn't been the case though as a basic skulk could easily handle a vanilla marine with serious ease.
There are some changes that came with the update that could certainly use some tweaking. Skulk movement, however, is not one of them. Adapt to the patch or quit playing; this is the core of competitive PC gaming.
"A "skill ceiling" is completely based off of how difficult it is to be good at something"
-Vile | Frisky
That is somewhat correct, but you're just not quite there yet buddy. Let me put it this way, since you enjoy sc2. In SC1 there are a lot more things to do or actions per minute spent on creating or macro'ing, compared to sc2 where macro'ing is extremely simple (because of the hotkey situation). In sc2 anyone can build units just as fast the next guy, because you can hotkey a billion buildings to the button 1. In SC1 there is a much larger spectrum of competencies in macro abilities. Larger spectrum, high skill ceiling, constraints given by the game. Getting it? Ok now for a direct comparison.
Now in NS2 post-patch skulks are slower and pre-patch skulks were faster. Still with me?
There are less things you can do now with the skulk post-patch. Hang in there buddy almost done.
The best players' skill compared to the worst players' post-patch .... wait for it ....
has narrowed in terms of skill gap. The skill ceiling has been lowered for skulks.
The "A "skill ceiling" is completely based off of how difficult it is to be good at something" is wrong. The best players will still be the best, but the skill gap between the best and the worst has decreased. That is the 'skill ceiling' has lowered.
By the way Vile | Frisky, I've never heard anyone in the history of gaming complain about being too good at A SKILL and asking for a nerf. You're not fooling anyone here, we know you're the one getting fragged
-md
I've always thought that the problem with marine vs skulk match up is carapace (of course I'm talking about pre-240, atm even with carapace skulks stands little to no chance against good marines).
+40 hp for skulk and +50 for the lerk feels a bit too rough early on for stock marines.
notice he didn't mention the word "skill". not even once.
learning curve does not relate directly to amount of skill required. you're confusing the two - it's not the same. you need to get this point straight in your head.
it's very easy to dramatize a lot of things without reading or thinking through properly beforehand. that sh!t happens a lot in general discussion. this is not general discussion.
10 minutes is subjective. you say that because you played ns1 and probably have some experience with other first person shooters. someone who is completely new to ns2 or even pc gaming may take much longer. i know you haven't considered that.
but regardless of how long it takes, it's a learning process. won't touch your "Saying that skulk wallhop required high skill or good execution is just plain wrong" part. a lot of people, including me, are not qualified to make such a statement, much less agree or disagree with it.
OT: sometimes i still see people running in a straight line as aliens in your classic mod. these players haven't learned what bhop is, much less how to execute it. if you really want to make it accessible for people, why not make a bhop tutorial for them in-game?
Wow, so first, place a skulk and marine say 20 feet apart, so its 'neither has an advantage' and see who wins, pre or post patch the marine would win every time. The point of NS2 is asymmetry, that's why skulks tend to ambush, and when they successfully ambush they usually win a 1v1, but if they don't they lose. Now try to follow me here, the game is dynamic, and as a result engagements are rarely ever this metaphorical even you present. 90 percent of the skill ceiling for skulks is knowing when to engage, bait, wait for reload etc etc, the actual movement is far less important. If you ever have the privelidge to fight the best rines 1v1 you'll realize that in no way were skulks op in the early game pre patch. The reality was contradictory to what you said, most 1v1s were won by the marine assuming level skill, unless the alien got an ambush.
Anecdotally put, pre patch I could handle most 1v1s as a rine vs some pretty dam good players, but win many fewer 1v1s agaisnt the same player as a skulk unless I could get the jump.
Tldr your wrong
First off, let's not turn this into a discussion about Starcraft II but since you brought it up I'm going to go ahead and point out that you still have no idea what you are talking about. Being extremely good at macro in Starcraft II takes an ungodly amount of skill. You think it's easy to max out an army of 200 supply in under 12 minutes? Good luck producing units, taking expansions, and researching upgrades all while defending timings and putting pressure on your opponent in key positions. Think you can execute all that? If so I'd shut up, quit this game and start participating in the GSL.
I really cannot believe I am still having this discussion with you, "buddy". Don't attempt to patronize me or be condescending. I'm not new to the scene of professional gaming. I know what it takes to make or break a game competitively and anyone who plays competitive matches on NS2 will tell you that the skulk was designed to be stealthy and quick but the extent of which was entirely based upon the users skill. Pre patch it was too easy to be evasive and stealthy because you were so quick and erratic. Anyone could make a few simple dodges. With this update anyone can still be stealthy and evasive but the truly skilled players will shine and still outplay other players. A skill ceiling isn't what you can do within a constraint, it's how effective you can be given said constraint.
@Flipper: Your example of a Marine 20 feet away from Alien is a very skewed example. You're putting a frail Alien out in the open in an improper engagement to fit your argument. That is one slippery slope. Knowing when to engage as an Alien is the easiest part to be skilled at but escaping effectively and consistently when things go sour should be the hardest part. It wasn't before this patch. Truth. Now it takes skill to be a good skulk as it should be.
-md
1. The skill ceiling is the maximum point the game's mechanics allow you to reach.
2. Decreasing the speed of skulks decreases said skill ceiling.