Skulks are called skulks for a reason. They are not meant to be, dipping and diving and doing impossible 720's mid-air. Their speed hasn't been lowered, only their ability to impossible maneuvers mid-air.
The acceleration thing is just a bug.
Skulks now are more reliant on hiding above doorways and attacking from behind, like they were SUPPOSED to be.
One problem with that. Good marines are very rarely taken unaware at any point. Doing things like hiding above doorways is a really good way to instantly die as a marine enters the room. And who gets flanked from behind? Seriously.
Speaking as a marine who routinely crushed servers (stuff like going 42-3 routinely) prepatch, this patch is just really, really easy in general. Not only do bad skulk players die even faster, but good players who already could rarely kill me 1v1 now struggle to do any damage at all. The balance just isn't in a good state this patch.
i thought skulks were easy to hit before patch.... now they're still easy to hit, haven't noticed any difference.
my skulk play is still the same, but my marine play has improved abit, its my lerk play that has taken the biggest hit, seems like getting 1 shot killed by shotguns is much harder to avoid as a lerk now.
What confuses me is that just as they slow down skulks, they also release the largest NS2 map (descent) to date. Getting around that map as an alien team is ridiculous, must be why the gorge tunnels were even conceived..
The update to the Skulk depends on what the devs want the Skulk to be:
1. Slow and corner camping, but strong.
2. Fast and maneuverable, but weak.
I prefer 2. In the previous patch the Skulks were both fast and strong, and so definitely needed changing. But now they're slow and weak - the complete opposite, thus hasn't improved the situation. I like to think of the Skulks as being like the Zerglings in StarCraft - fast, but killed easily.
Now, even the Skulk-Gorge pair doesn't work so well. If the Skulk is supposed to sit in the corner waiting for marines then the Gorge has no job healing it. If the Skulk is fast, runs in, causes some damage, and runs out, then it makes sense to move with a Gorge. So the new patch has also made the Skulk-Gorge pair less useful.
The update to the Skulk depends on what the devs want the Skulk to be:
1. Slow and corner camping, but strong.
2. Fast and maneuverable, but weak.
I prefer 2. In the previous patch the Skulks were both fast and strong, and so definitely needed changing. But now they're slow and weak - the complete opposite, thus hasn't improved the situation. I like to think of the Skulks as being like the Zerglings in StarCraft - fast, but killed easily.
Now, even the Skulk-Gorge pair doesn't work so well. If the Skulk is supposed to sit in the corner waiting for marines then the Gorge has no job healing it. If the Skulk is fast, runs in, causes some damage, and runs out, then it makes sense to move with a Gorge. So the new patch has also made the Skulk-Gorge pair less useful.
How about we design the game around what is fun for the people buying it instead of a handful of people that "think" it should "be this way" because "reasons"
I'm so sick of bad design choices being made, and I'm tired of there not being a public outreach as far as a play-test. Blizzard may be a lot of things but the PTR thing they do is genius. It's an untapped resource that I'm shocked the development team refuses to get. Having limited access to a free playtest server (Open monday-friday 8am-4pm, just an example) would not only allow a lot of these random out of left field changes to be tried by a large sample before going live, but it'd be free, and massive, advertising.
What they do now (Handful of people selected for elbow rubbing/cool by association) is NOT working.
Pretty much this. We're bug testers first and gameplay/balance testers a distant second. There is support via the workshop for advance testing of a variety of things depending on what UWE is looking at. Anything beyond that a la Blizzard PTR or the TF2 beta client would probably cost a fair bit of money given the additional servers, staff and potentially steam support that it would require.
How about we design the game around what is fun for the people buying it instead of a handful of people that "think" it should "be this way" because "reasons"
One problem with that. Good marines are very rarely taken unaware at any point. Doing things like hiding above doorways is a really good way to instantly die as a marine enters the room. And who gets flanked from behind? Seriously.
Speaking as a marine who routinely crushed servers (stuff like going 42-3 routinely) prepatch, this patch is just really, really easy in general. Not only do bad skulk players die even faster, but good players who already could rarely kill me 1v1 now struggle to do any damage at all. The balance just isn't in a good state this patch.
Let me just say that this is where skill comes into play. I've seen some people with the 'new' skulks totally undress me with their moves. The tools are still there, it just takes a bit more skill to use them to the same extent as before imho.
Exactly. Air acceleration movement mechanics detract from the core game play imo, and are tangent game mechanics.
While they do require complex skills to master, they should not have the focal weight in skulk game play that they did pre-patch. Onus should always be on the tactical approach, rather than relying on making a marine struggle to track you due to inherent FOV restrictions.
Let me just say that this is where skill comes into play. I've seen some people with the 'new' skulks totally undress me with their moves. The tools are still there, it just takes a bit more skill to use them to the same extent as before imho.
Exactly. Air acceleration movement mechanics detract from the core game play imo, and are tangent game mechanics.
While they do require complex skills to master, they should not have the focal weight in skulk game play that they did pre-patch. Onus should always be on the tactical approach, rather than relying on making a marine struggle to track you due to inherent FOV restrictions.
Jesus Christ, you can't be serious. Please don't be serious.
I don't like playing Devils advocate to hot topics, unanimous disagreement trumps comprehension.
On the other end of things, why not exacerbate air acceleration mechanics until only one or two people are capable of fully playing skulk. Make the air mechanic skill ceiling so high that these two players are unkillable. They also have to enter the Konami code constantly while air strafing to maximize difficulty. Disagree.?
(there is an imaginary line in the sand between too little movement control and too much, where is it? That's the question I am approaching) game balance is made up of understandings like this
But where is the skill increase for marines?. I mean marines are the easiest to play by far, there is no skill, you point and you spray, there is no kickback no recoil no nothing. no jump move and spray youre weapon.
There is a reason that when rounds ends and these uber marines with their 43/3 cant get on Marine again they just leave server to find another, because its to hard even for them to play Aliens. There is a huge disconnect in skill, Marine is faceroll, Skulk is not.
Give marines more classes so the basic class can be made harder to play if that is what is needed.
There is a reason that when rounds ends and these uber marines with their 43/3 cant get on Marine again they just leave server to find another, because its to hard even for them to play Aliens. There is a huge disconnect in skill, Marine is faceroll, Skulk is not.
I'm fairly sure the reason some people play marine only is because they consider playing aliens to be no fun, not because aliens is harder to play. And I wouldn't consider playing marines "easy" by any stretch - unless you're mowing through a horde of groundskulks on rookie servers, in which case there's no point even commenting any further.
Why are you guys trying to now come up with ways to nerf the marines? How backwards is this... How about just buff the skulk? Make it fast and agile, but with low health. It promotes running in swarms rather than camping corners that just doesn't work and results in boring gameplay.
How about we design the game around what is fun for the people buying it instead of a handful of people that "think" it should "be this way" because "reasons"
I'm so sick of bad design choices being made, and I'm tired of there not being a public outreach as far as a play-test. Blizzard may be a lot of things but the PTR thing they do is genius. It's an untapped resource that I'm shocked the development team refuses to get. Having limited access to a free playtest server (Open monday-friday 8am-4pm, just an example) would not only allow a lot of these random out of left field changes to be tried by a large sample before going live, but it'd be free, and massive, advertising.
What they do now (Handful of people selected for elbow rubbing/cool by association) is NOT working.
There was a public outreach. It was called google moderator. But that was taken down and I am starting to see why.
How about we design the game around what is fun for the people buying it instead of a handful of people that "think" it should "be this way" because "reasons"
I'm so sick of bad design choices being made, and I'm tired of there not being a public outreach as far as a play-test. Blizzard may be a lot of things but the PTR thing they do is genius. It's an untapped resource that I'm shocked the development team refuses to get. Having limited access to a free playtest server (Open monday-friday 8am-4pm, just an example) would not only allow a lot of these random out of left field changes to be tried by a large sample before going live, but it'd be free, and massive, advertising.
What they do now (Handful of people selected for elbow rubbing/cool by association) is NOT working.
There was a public outreach. It was called google moderator. But that was taken down and I am starting to see why.
to be fair, they haven't had time to implement or even consider about 90% of the popular items on google moderator...
if those ideas could be designed, coded and tested by the snapping of fingers then maybe google moderator would still be online?
Whilst ns2 stats might be showing a closer to balanced win rate for each team. Achieving it via the means of the skulk wall jump bug is a horrible way of doing it.
No one wants to have a kill ratio of 1:5 or worse, but that is often what I see on alien teams. Even in games where the aliens managed to hang on long enough to get higher life forms and eventually win. To get there you have no doubt had a lot of spawn, run, die, repeat as skulk which is no fun.
Balance needs to be more than just each side's win rate. It needs to be that in an even game most people will have a k:d not too far from one. None of this entire alien team at 0.2 until they save for onos.
At least if it means all the new players are drifting towards Marine(go with what you know etc), it makes for a better experience for now. Rather than a baptism by fire.
From what I've seen experienced players are stacking marine to rack up easy kills on ground running skulks. Even on rookie friendly servers.
Even in servers with quite a few rookies in each team I don't think the alien experience will keep them coming back. I was marine com in a game last night like this and there was a lot of moaning from the alien team that they could not get anywhere as skulk in the first few minutes.
Having the base unit from either team not balanced with that of the opposing team is really bad.
Comments
Glad to hear it's a bug, as it least that way it's likely to be fixed rather than debated right?
i thought skulks were easy to hit before patch.... now they're still easy to hit, haven't noticed any difference.
Now it feels like you are controlling a fucking brick on legs.
Can't maintain wall jumping speed now. And the ground acceleration for quick changes feels like moving through sludge. Good times.
1. Slow and corner camping, but strong.
2. Fast and maneuverable, but weak.
I prefer 2. In the previous patch the Skulks were both fast and strong, and so definitely needed changing. But now they're slow and weak - the complete opposite, thus hasn't improved the situation. I like to think of the Skulks as being like the Zerglings in StarCraft - fast, but killed easily.
Now, even the Skulk-Gorge pair doesn't work so well. If the Skulk is supposed to sit in the corner waiting for marines then the Gorge has no job healing it. If the Skulk is fast, runs in, causes some damage, and runs out, then it makes sense to move with a Gorge. So the new patch has also made the Skulk-Gorge pair less useful.
How about we design the game around what is fun for the people buying it instead of a handful of people that "think" it should "be this way" because "reasons"
I'm so sick of bad design choices being made, and I'm tired of there not being a public outreach as far as a play-test. Blizzard may be a lot of things but the PTR thing they do is genius. It's an untapped resource that I'm shocked the development team refuses to get. Having limited access to a free playtest server (Open monday-friday 8am-4pm, just an example) would not only allow a lot of these random out of left field changes to be tried by a large sample before going live, but it'd be free, and massive, advertising.
What they do now (Handful of people selected for elbow rubbing/cool by association) is NOT working.
How do we determine the difference?
Exactly this!
While they do require complex skills to master, they should not have the focal weight in skulk game play that they did pre-patch. Onus should always be on the tactical approach, rather than relying on making a marine struggle to track you due to inherent FOV restrictions.
Jesus Christ, you can't be serious. Please don't be serious.
On the other end of things, why not exacerbate air acceleration mechanics until only one or two people are capable of fully playing skulk. Make the air mechanic skill ceiling so high that these two players are unkillable. They also have to enter the Konami code constantly while air strafing to maximize difficulty. Disagree.?
(there is an imaginary line in the sand between too little movement control and too much, where is it? That's the question I am approaching) game balance is made up of understandings like this
There is a reason that when rounds ends and these uber marines with their 43/3 cant get on Marine again they just leave server to find another, because its to hard even for them to play Aliens. There is a huge disconnect in skill, Marine is faceroll, Skulk is not.
Give marines more classes so the basic class can be made harder to play if that is what is needed.
There's such an abundance of reasons they do not work that it isn't worth typing them all out
Does this mean it's not getting fixed?
There was a public outreach. It was called google moderator. But that was taken down and I am starting to see why.
to be fair, they haven't had time to implement or even consider about 90% of the popular items on google moderator...
if those ideas could be designed, coded and tested by the snapping of fingers then maybe google moderator would still be online?
No one wants to have a kill ratio of 1:5 or worse, but that is often what I see on alien teams. Even in games where the aliens managed to hang on long enough to get higher life forms and eventually win. To get there you have no doubt had a lot of spawn, run, die, repeat as skulk which is no fun.
Balance needs to be more than just each side's win rate. It needs to be that in an even game most people will have a k:d not too far from one. None of this entire alien team at 0.2 until they save for onos.
Even in servers with quite a few rookies in each team I don't think the alien experience will keep them coming back. I was marine com in a game last night like this and there was a lot of moaning from the alien team that they could not get anywhere as skulk in the first few minutes.
Having the base unit from either team not balanced with that of the opposing team is really bad.