I am just concerned about how the removal of "No Res While Dead" will eventually lead to a lifeform explosion. It also means that killing enemies contributes in no way to delaying their weapons and lifeforms. This is probably supposed to push the game into a corner where solely territory matters and winning encounters are just the means to capture and hold that territory. And to give bad players also a chance to get higher lifeforms without discouraging them from participating in fights.
But maybe a "Reduces Res While Dead" rule could take effect. Like reducing the income by 33% while being dead, as a compromise to stop simultaneous lifeform appearance.
Advanced Armories repairing armor is a foul compromise. People that previously ran back to an armory will now run the same way + using phase gate back to main base to heal armor there. Also: No matter how slow it repairs, people will use it.
Every comparison to armor regeneration at the alien team is also useless. It simply doesn't matter. This game is asymmetrical that means the less things we have that are "like team B", the better. If they are a root of balance issues, than this can be fixed. As long as the reward is greater than the loss, a change is a good idea.
In the case of armories aren't repairing armor anymore the positives are:
increases teamplay and squad mentality (and yes, it did this in beta as it was tried!)
weakens the strength of very good players. (you can slowly whittle them down now, even if you are not good enough to kill them otherwise)
decreases the appearance of turtles
decreases the effectiveness of Rambo-tactics and single-players.
creates breaks in attacks, that aliens can use to counter-attack.
decreases the effectiveness of forward armories. (They are already very effective with ammo and health regen.)
increases the viability of building a robot factory before you need arcs.
it's a good replacement for alien scaling in late game. (Marines aren't running around with 90 armor at anytime anymore.)
it is fun to work together in a group. (As it was tried in beta, the feeling of being in a tight group of marines that keep each other alive was very cool.)
The negative points as I can name (with my subjective view) are:
forces you into a dependence of your team members (can drag you down with a bad team)
is a nerf to marines effective health that probably needs to be compensated in one way to keep the game balanced
is a nerf to marines p-res that probably also needs to be compensated in some way.
could give an already bad team even more of an disadvantage. (Is this really bad? It's not that they can win right now. This way they lose even faster. Bad teamplay should be a loss.)
no fun with bad teamplay.
This said, the changes sound really promising. Maybe the Biomass thing needs tweaking like others have written. But overall it sounds cool.
Advanced Armories repairing armor is a foul compromise. People that previously ran back to an armory will now run the same way + using phase gate back to main base to heal armor there. Also: No matter how slow it repairs, people will use it.
Every comparison to armor regeneration at the alien team is also useless. It simply doesn't matter. This game is asymmetrical that means the less things we have that are "like team B", the better. If they are a root of balance issues, than this can be fixed. As long as the reward is greater than the loss, a change is a good idea.
In the case of armories aren't repairing armor anymore the positives are:
increases teamplay and squad mentality (and yes, it did this in beta as it was tried!)
weakens the strength of very good players. (you can slowly whittle them down now, even if you are not good enough to kill them otherwise)
decreases the appearance of turtles
decreases the effectiveness of Rambo-tactics and single-players.
creates breaks in attacks, that aliens can use to counter-attack.
decreases the effectiveness of forward armories. (They are already very effective with ammo and health regen.)
increases the viability of building a robot factory before you need arcs.
it's a good replacement for alien scaling in late game. (Marines aren't running around with 90 armor at anytime anymore.)
it is fun to work together in a group. (As it was tried in beta, the feeling of being in a tight group of marines that keep each other alive was very cool.)
The negative points as I can name (with my subjective view) are:
forces you into a dependence of your team members (can drag you down with a bad team)
is a nerf to marines effective health that probably needs to be compensated in one way to keep the game balanced
is a nerf to marines p-res that probably also needs to be compensated in some way.
could give an already bad team even more of an disadvantage. (Is this really bad? It's not that they can win right now. This way they lose even faster. Bad teamplay should be a loss.)
no fun with bad teamplay.
This said, the changes sound really promising. Maybe the Biomass thing needs tweaking like others have written. But overall it sounds cool.
[*] wears away at the patience of good players, eventually forcing them to disconnect from server
i'm not outright dismissing the idea against armory healing armour. in an ideal world it would be a good change to increase synergy and weaken lame turtle strategies, but in practice the world is far from ideal.
also, if the change worked so great in beta, then why was it reverted? was the idea to make the game worse?
It worked in NS1 so it will work in NS2. People will start welding each other once armor is not healed at armory.
At the Moment there just is NO NEED to weld each other as armory does this job way quicker, for free and even gives away free ammo in the process.
I am just concerned about how the removal of "No Res While Dead" will eventually lead to a lifeform explosion. It also means that killing enemies contributes in no way to delaying their weapons and lifeforms. This is probably supposed to push the game into a corner where solely territory matters and winning encounters are just the means to capture and hold that territory. And to give bad players also a chance to get higher lifeforms without discouraging them from participating in fights.
But maybe a "Reduces Res While Dead" rule could take effect. Like reducing the income by 33% while being dead, as a compromise to stop simultaneous lifeform appearance.
The current system isn't fair either. The AFK guy at 0:0 k/d has more res than the person with 20:10.
I am just concerned about how the removal of "No Res While Dead" will eventually lead to a lifeform explosion. It also means that killing enemies contributes in no way to delaying their weapons and lifeforms. This is probably supposed to push the game into a corner where solely territory matters and winning encounters are just the means to capture and hold that territory. And to give bad players also a chance to get higher lifeforms without discouraging them from participating in fights.
But maybe a "Reduces Res While Dead" rule could take effect. Like reducing the income by 33% while being dead, as a compromise to stop simultaneous lifeform appearance.
No RFD already doesn't prevent the lifeform explosion (even RFK won't completely prevent it but might stagger it more than NoRFD). The only way within the bounds of the TRes/PRes model to really stop this is to add more desirable choices for low res expenditures. The gorge needs some more work (AND WEBS) but he is getting there, to make him always a solid choice. Lerk is a strong resource sink but not everyone see that yet in my opinion.
Some thoughts regarding the armory that haven't been mentioned so far I think:
1. Both sides have their forward bases. But crags heal significantly slower than armories.
Why not increase restoration-time? Aliens are humping the crags as well for quite a duration.
2. Is there a reason nobody suggested something like cooldown for armories?
It could be a timer for individual marines in a corner of the screen indicating that they can't restore (only armor?) just yet again.
I surely haven't played since beta or even NS1, but since nobody mentioned this I thought I'll just throw it into the room.
i think people are forgetting that 'teamplay' in ns2 isn't limited to walking around with the rookie zerg*.
at least that's the impression i get from seeing so many "forcing weld will promote teamplay!" comments.
*the MMO definition of zerg.
All I'm hearing is that you have too much contempt for your teammates to want to attempt to work together with them. Teamplay can never happen as long as we provide all these crutches for veterans and rookies alike to be completely self-sufficient.
- fade: swapped blink and shadow step (shadow step is now the upgrade)
- blink: fades are a bit easier to see and blink is affected by celerity (-> travelling)
- shadowstep: does not add any momentum anymore instead moves you at high speed 6 meters in the desired direction (-> dodging), works also vertical
- fade vortex ability is now created as a seperate object in the world and block all attacks
Interesting fade changes in the update, should help make blink & shadowstep feel more distinct from each other.
*Edit*
I LOVE the feel of shadowstep in this, it feels like a proper dodge tool now. Blinking and then bunnyhopping to maintain speed is nice, though a bit more air control would be great.
What if you dropped welders costs to 0~2 pres
Keep the "no armor healing" on any armory or structure
Change Nano Shield from providing 50% damage reduction to now instead increase a marine's armor to either:
(1) Maximum value allowed by current armor reasearch
(2) Equal to level 3 armor
(3) Equal to level 3 armor but then slowly drains back to your current armor level if level 3 is not researched (that may be to "hidden mechanic-y" though)
And slap a good enough cost and cool down on nano shield to keep it from being broken.
While many of these changes are in testing, its important to note that they are all under active consideration currently. Biomass is in very early stages so the numbers/levels probably will be adjusted in due time.
For armories healing armor and balance surrounding that, I think its important to realize that many alien classes focus soley on wearing marines down (every class but onos). If you give marines a easy no compromise solution to getting all of their armor back, you quickly run into balance issues lategame where marines have fully upgraded armor. If you were to design and balance the game around always expecting marines to have full armor, then armor upgrades really should be changed to be damage reduction based, and not a straight health increase. Any amory healing of armor really does need to go, it will only serve to strengthen marine teamplay and reinforce the alien mechanics of hit and run.
Kind of a shame that so many comments are focusing on the welders aspect of this balance mod. That said, I'll now comment on the welders aspect. ;-)
I don't like it. I get the teamwork thing, but something about it seems like a "cheap" type of teamwork. Fake teamwork.
Things that seem like "real" teamwork to me are things like covering each other. Choosing complementary weapons. Dividing into strike forces and coordinating actions against multiple targets simultaneously. Giving the commander intel updates. Responding to the commander's direction.
Requiring everyone to carry a welder and to spend a bit of time after each engagement holding down the use key isn't teamwork, it's just activity. It forces people to stay in squads, and I suppose that leads to teamwork, but welding itself isn't teamwork because there's no meaningful joint decisions being made and no difficult joint tasks being performed.
But honestly, if it takes mandatory welder use to keep a marine team moving together as a squad, is that team really going to engage in any actual teamwork just because you've made them stick together? I doubt it. They'll just weld whoever's left alive and then run off to die single-file in a conga line of failure.
All I'm hearing is that you have too much contempt for your teammates to want to attempt to work together with them. Teamplay can never happen as long as we provide all these crutches for veterans and rookies alike to be completely self-sufficient.
i don't have contempt for my teammates. i pragmatically accept that not everyone has thorough understanding, motivation or skill to contribute their share to the team...
the biggest problem in the game for me is the pure frustration of spending your time in a game with ludicrously unbalanced teams. it's not fun when you have absolutely zero effect on the game, no control, there's literally NOTHING you can do.
i can barely handle that frustration now, let alone down the road when you have to weld eachother, wipe eachother's brow and introduce a morale system where if you don't complement your teammates enough then morale gets broken causing you to lose control of your character.
Kind of a shame that so many comments are focusing on the welders aspect of this balance mod. That said, I'll now comment on the welders aspect. ;-)
I don't like it. I get the teamwork thing, but something about it seems like a "cheap" type of teamwork. Fake teamwork.
Things that seem like "real" teamwork to me are things like covering each other. Choosing complementary weapons. Dividing into strike forces and coordinating actions against multiple targets simultaneously. Giving the commander intel updates. Responding to the commander's direction.
Requiring everyone to carry a welder and to spend a bit of time after each engagement holding down the use key isn't teamwork, it's just activity. It forces people to stay in squads, and I suppose that leads to teamwork, but welding itself isn't teamwork because there's no meaningful joint decisions being made and no difficult joint tasks being performed.
But honestly, if it takes mandatory welder use to keep a marine team moving together as a squad, is that team really going to engage in any actual teamwork just because you've made them stick together? I doubt it. They'll just weld whoever's left alive and then run off to die single-file in a conga line of failure.
I don't agree, to me the teamwork of welding each other feels very meaningful. When you need armor badly and a teammate takes time to weld you, you feel gratitude to him. It's much more personal than just being in the same room shooting the same things. It's like the reason they brought back marines building comm structures instead of only MACs doing it like in the early beta. When the comm built all his own stuff, it felt like he was playing one game and his marines were playing another. It's basically the same thing here.
Played a few more rounds and I am really digging the changes. Skulk leap is still buggy but the movement of the class feels a lot more meaningful and deliberate.
Drifters are actually fun and seem like a good res sink, the pathing mesh still needs some more work though. Rupture doesn't give much feedback to the comm, I cannot tell if I am hitting marines with it. Side note, it feels way more meaningful and involved being on the drifter than it was on cysts. On cysts it was such a forgettable and boring mechanic and frustrating for the marines to boot as you were essentially walking through a mine field. The drifter gives a big target to the marines to prevent it and you can see it coming and dodge it by turning around.
I definitely had some VERY fun games with this. Do want.
So fades start with blink and can get shadowstep later? That doesn't feel like much of an upgrade at all to be honest, it was still very do-able to play fade with just shadowstep, until marines all get shotguns that is. I think you should just leave blink as the upgrade but buff the fade's survivability a bit.
The marine basic movement is amazingly smooth. The jetpack fast upwards thrust seems like a good idea.
The armory change is in my opinion a good one. It makes lerk harass on forward pg/armory base strong again and it worked in ns1.
The alien jump to remain at the speed is nice and works; i was able to build up to 12 speed from walking. The alien movement during the hopping is kinda drifty and feels a bit flying; could have little more aircontrol. The wallhop seems awkward, you need to hold W to get speed after the jump and you need very good line towards the wall to keep the speed.
Lerk has that same drifty style on turns. Makes lerk vs lmg melee battle a bit harder for the lerk but still very much doable.
I really like the new fade. Feels like ns1 fade. The drifting effect affects fade aswell but with the right timing of blinks he can move around quite nicely.
Drifter and biomass system seems very good and natural for this game.
This mod made a huge positive impact on me so i added an eu server running it.
I really like the new fade. Feels like ns1 fade. The drifting effect affects fade aswell but with the right timing of blinks he can move around quite nicely.
I don't much like the current iteration of the fade movement. Blink didn't have any momentum and as soon as I stopped I fell out of the sky like a rock. The lerk movement was weird as well, I didn't like that I had to flap to strafe.
Skulk and marine both felt pretty solid though so far.
I really like the new fade. Feels like ns1 fade. The drifting effect affects fade aswell but with the right timing of blinks he can move around quite nicely.
I don't much like the current iteration of the fade movement. Blink didn't have any momentum and as soon as I stopped I fell out of the sky like a rock.
Kind of a shame that so many comments are focusing on the welders aspect of this balance mod. That said, I'll now comment on the welders aspect. ;-)
I don't like it. I get the teamwork thing, but something about it seems like a "cheap" type of teamwork. Fake teamwork.
Things that seem like "real" teamwork to me are things like covering each other. Choosing complementary weapons. Dividing into strike forces and coordinating actions against multiple targets simultaneously. Giving the commander intel updates. Responding to the commander's direction.
Requiring everyone to carry a welder and to spend a bit of time after each engagement holding down the use key isn't teamwork, it's just activity. It forces people to stay in squads, and I suppose that leads to teamwork, but welding itself isn't teamwork because there's no meaningful joint decisions being made and no difficult joint tasks being performed.
But honestly, if it takes mandatory welder use to keep a marine team moving together as a squad, is that team really going to engage in any actual teamwork just because you've made them stick together? I doubt it. They'll just weld whoever's left alive and then run off to die single-file in a conga line of failure.
The thing about this "fake" teamwork is that it often leads to real teamwork because you actually start working with people regularly - it helps break the ice, as it were. If the game mechanics actively encourage teamwork, people are going to be a lot more willing to do it. I know I'll get murdered for this, but think of battlefield vs. CoD - the former has a wide variety of ways for people to work together, while the latter heavily encourages loading yourself out for the sake of your own fun. How many times have you seen people working together in CoD? How about in battlefield?
Edit: Besides, it was tested out in the beta, and it actually did help encourage teamwork - people started talking to one another, groups were formed, etc. The problem was that it was put in when aliens were already beating the crap out of the marines, so it made life even more difficult for them.
I found a server with this today. I just have a few comments about my experience from 3 games and some of the changes.
First game I played as marines in a 3v3. Too small of a game that ended with spawn camping.
Next game had more people joined for a near full server and the map was still docking. It was a pretty general round where we marines won. Nothing really exciting. Only notable aspect was no one ever had a welder but me and people still humped armories for some reason. I don't think they realized they weren't getting armor or something.
Next game I joined aliens. A lot of people left and it was back to a 3v3 but on decent this time. I played commander. I was a bit confused on which directions I wanted to take my upgrades because I am not used to the way the mod makes it. I first went for rt's, got 5, and kept them pretty much the whole game along with getting more. After about 10 minutes the server filled up and we had a problem with not enough eggs. I kept having to make more. I had upgraded crag and shift on my first two hives. I placed 3 spurs and 3 shells which felt a bit ridiculous, because of the amount, and the space it took which made them hard to hide. I did not quite like having the choice of species 2nd and third 3rd tier upgrades taken away. The aliens that had been in the game since the start got onos pretty quick and were asking for stomp which I was unable to get till right before we won. I don't know the exact math, but it seemed a lot more expensive over all. I was unsure how to most effectively use drifters but that is from lack of experience with this mods rules.
About fade:
fade: swapped blink and shadow step (shadow step is now the upgrade)
shadowstep: does not add any momentum anymore
Fade is my favorite alien to play and I think it is a lot of fun. Unlike most fades, I prefer shadow step 9/10 times to blink so I was not happy with that change. I also was not happy with the loss in momentum from shadow step. Fade with this mod does not play how I like to play fade.
I do like the direction that this mod is going in. Will be frequenting the server with this mod.
I feel removing armor repair from armories is a step in the right direction. Armor is arguably the most important thing on a marine. Most of the following has already been said but I want to reiterate how important they are, at least to me.
The guerrilla warfare the aliens are capable of, and built for?, now becomes viable. It's no longer "til death do us part." In essence it is a small buff for each and every alien life-form, specifically lerks and fades.
Marines now must make more coordinated efforts when pushing. This applies to both comp. and pub style play. Far too often do we see marines hold out in hub and armory hump while fades go in and out doing little in the way of real damage. Sure they are keeping them at bay but its just a prolonged boring encounter.
The fear of the perceived forced or "fake" teamwork is just that, a fear, albeit unnecessary. Because I see time and time again when EXO's drop there's nigh always someone there to weld them. What's wrong with doing the same to your future state-of-the-art armor suit. Sidenote: I really, really like the idea of a "TF2 Medi-gun knockoff" for the welder.
TLDR: Armor repair just prolongs events/encounters, eliminates any form of hit-and-run attacks, and doesn't promote teamwork at all.
If people really want to go this welder route, then why not make the welder a 'stock' item marines spawn with and put it in slot 4. If someone buys mines they drop the welder. Then let the marines sort it out on their own.
One request for the new movement system: can we please make the jump timing more forgiving? In NS1 everybody used the triple jump script or the mousewheel so that the timing of chaining your jumps together was trivial. For NS2 IMO we should just have Quake-style jumping, i.e. jump, release the button and then hold it down again at any point to automatically jump when you hit the floor.
Comments
But maybe a "Reduces Res While Dead" rule could take effect. Like reducing the income by 33% while being dead, as a compromise to stop simultaneous lifeform appearance.
Every comparison to armor regeneration at the alien team is also useless. It simply doesn't matter. This game is asymmetrical that means the less things we have that are "like team B", the better. If they are a root of balance issues, than this can be fixed. As long as the reward is greater than the loss, a change is a good idea.
In the case of armories aren't repairing armor anymore the positives are:
- increases teamplay and squad mentality (and yes, it did this in beta as it was tried!)
- weakens the strength of very good players. (you can slowly whittle them down now, even if you are not good enough to kill them otherwise)
- decreases the appearance of turtles
- decreases the effectiveness of Rambo-tactics and single-players.
- creates breaks in attacks, that aliens can use to counter-attack.
- decreases the effectiveness of forward armories. (They are already very effective with ammo and health regen.)
- increases the viability of building a robot factory before you need arcs.
- it's a good replacement for alien scaling in late game. (Marines aren't running around with 90 armor at anytime anymore.)
- it is fun to work together in a group. (As it was tried in beta, the feeling of being in a tight group of marines that keep each other alive was very cool.)
The negative points as I can name (with my subjective view) are:This said, the changes sound really promising. Maybe the Biomass thing needs tweaking like others have written. But overall it sounds cool.
[*] wears away at the patience of good players, eventually forcing them to disconnect from server
i'm not outright dismissing the idea against armory healing armour. in an ideal world it would be a good change to increase synergy and weaken lame turtle strategies, but in practice the world is far from ideal.
also, if the change worked so great in beta, then why was it reverted? was the idea to make the game worse?
It was reverted due to the already abysmal marine winrate at the time which was around 35-40%. (reverting it didn't really make much difference imo)
At the Moment there just is NO NEED to weld each other as armory does this job way quicker, for free and even gives away free ammo in the process.
The current system isn't fair either. The AFK guy at 0:0 k/d has more res than the person with 20:10.
No RFD already doesn't prevent the lifeform explosion (even RFK won't completely prevent it but might stagger it more than NoRFD). The only way within the bounds of the TRes/PRes model to really stop this is to add more desirable choices for low res expenditures. The gorge needs some more work (AND WEBS) but he is getting there, to make him always a solid choice. Lerk is a strong resource sink but not everyone see that yet in my opinion.
1. Both sides have their forward bases. But crags heal significantly slower than armories.
Why not increase restoration-time? Aliens are humping the crags as well for quite a duration.
2. Is there a reason nobody suggested something like cooldown for armories?
It could be a timer for individual marines in a corner of the screen indicating that they can't restore (only armor?) just yet again.
I surely haven't played since beta or even NS1, but since nobody mentioned this I thought I'll just throw it into the room.
at least that's the impression i get from seeing so many "forcing weld will promote teamplay!" comments.
*the MMO definition of zerg.
Fixed for you
I will definitely give this a go when I can next play, it sounds like a really great bunch of changes!
Roo
All I'm hearing is that you have too much contempt for your teammates to want to attempt to work together with them. Teamplay can never happen as long as we provide all these crutches for veterans and rookies alike to be completely self-sufficient.
Interesting fade changes in the update, should help make blink & shadowstep feel more distinct from each other.
*Edit*
I LOVE the feel of shadowstep in this, it feels like a proper dodge tool now. Blinking and then bunnyhopping to maintain speed is nice, though a bit more air control would be great.
Keep the "no armor healing" on any armory or structure
Change Nano Shield from providing 50% damage reduction to now instead increase a marine's armor to either:
(1) Maximum value allowed by current armor reasearch
(2) Equal to level 3 armor
(3) Equal to level 3 armor but then slowly drains back to your current armor level if level 3 is not researched (that may be to "hidden mechanic-y" though)
And slap a good enough cost and cool down on nano shield to keep it from being broken.
For armories healing armor and balance surrounding that, I think its important to realize that many alien classes focus soley on wearing marines down (every class but onos). If you give marines a easy no compromise solution to getting all of their armor back, you quickly run into balance issues lategame where marines have fully upgraded armor. If you were to design and balance the game around always expecting marines to have full armor, then armor upgrades really should be changed to be damage reduction based, and not a straight health increase. Any amory healing of armor really does need to go, it will only serve to strengthen marine teamplay and reinforce the alien mechanics of hit and run.
I don't like it. I get the teamwork thing, but something about it seems like a "cheap" type of teamwork. Fake teamwork.
Things that seem like "real" teamwork to me are things like covering each other. Choosing complementary weapons. Dividing into strike forces and coordinating actions against multiple targets simultaneously. Giving the commander intel updates. Responding to the commander's direction.
Requiring everyone to carry a welder and to spend a bit of time after each engagement holding down the use key isn't teamwork, it's just activity. It forces people to stay in squads, and I suppose that leads to teamwork, but welding itself isn't teamwork because there's no meaningful joint decisions being made and no difficult joint tasks being performed.
But honestly, if it takes mandatory welder use to keep a marine team moving together as a squad, is that team really going to engage in any actual teamwork just because you've made them stick together? I doubt it. They'll just weld whoever's left alive and then run off to die single-file in a conga line of failure.
i don't have contempt for my teammates. i pragmatically accept that not everyone has thorough understanding, motivation or skill to contribute their share to the team...
the biggest problem in the game for me is the pure frustration of spending your time in a game with ludicrously unbalanced teams. it's not fun when you have absolutely zero effect on the game, no control, there's literally NOTHING you can do.
i can barely handle that frustration now, let alone down the road when you have to weld eachother, wipe eachother's brow and introduce a morale system where if you don't complement your teammates enough then morale gets broken causing you to lose control of your character.
I don't agree, to me the teamwork of welding each other feels very meaningful. When you need armor badly and a teammate takes time to weld you, you feel gratitude to him. It's much more personal than just being in the same room shooting the same things. It's like the reason they brought back marines building comm structures instead of only MACs doing it like in the early beta. When the comm built all his own stuff, it felt like he was playing one game and his marines were playing another. It's basically the same thing here.
Drifters are actually fun and seem like a good res sink, the pathing mesh still needs some more work though. Rupture doesn't give much feedback to the comm, I cannot tell if I am hitting marines with it. Side note, it feels way more meaningful and involved being on the drifter than it was on cysts. On cysts it was such a forgettable and boring mechanic and frustrating for the marines to boot as you were essentially walking through a mine field. The drifter gives a big target to the marines to prevent it and you can see it coming and dodge it by turning around.
I definitely had some VERY fun games with this. Do want.
The armory change is in my opinion a good one. It makes lerk harass on forward pg/armory base strong again and it worked in ns1.
The alien jump to remain at the speed is nice and works; i was able to build up to 12 speed from walking. The alien movement during the hopping is kinda drifty and feels a bit flying; could have little more aircontrol. The wallhop seems awkward, you need to hold W to get speed after the jump and you need very good line towards the wall to keep the speed.
Lerk has that same drifty style on turns. Makes lerk vs lmg melee battle a bit harder for the lerk but still very much doable.
I really like the new fade. Feels like ns1 fade. The drifting effect affects fade aswell but with the right timing of blinks he can move around quite nicely.
Drifter and biomass system seems very good and natural for this game.
This mod made a huge positive impact on me so i added an eu server running it.
I don't much like the current iteration of the fade movement. Blink didn't have any momentum and as soon as I stopped I fell out of the sky like a rock. The lerk movement was weird as well, I didn't like that I had to flap to strafe.
Skulk and marine both felt pretty solid though so far.
It works like the ns1 fade. Blink and bunnyhop.
Edit: Besides, it was tested out in the beta, and it actually did help encourage teamwork - people started talking to one another, groups were formed, etc. The problem was that it was put in when aliens were already beating the crap out of the marines, so it made life even more difficult for them.
First game I played as marines in a 3v3. Too small of a game that ended with spawn camping.
Next game had more people joined for a near full server and the map was still docking. It was a pretty general round where we marines won. Nothing really exciting. Only notable aspect was no one ever had a welder but me and people still humped armories for some reason. I don't think they realized they weren't getting armor or something.
Next game I joined aliens. A lot of people left and it was back to a 3v3 but on decent this time. I played commander. I was a bit confused on which directions I wanted to take my upgrades because I am not used to the way the mod makes it. I first went for rt's, got 5, and kept them pretty much the whole game along with getting more. After about 10 minutes the server filled up and we had a problem with not enough eggs. I kept having to make more. I had upgraded crag and shift on my first two hives. I placed 3 spurs and 3 shells which felt a bit ridiculous, because of the amount, and the space it took which made them hard to hide. I did not quite like having the choice of species 2nd and third 3rd tier upgrades taken away. The aliens that had been in the game since the start got onos pretty quick and were asking for stomp which I was unable to get till right before we won. I don't know the exact math, but it seemed a lot more expensive over all. I was unsure how to most effectively use drifters but that is from lack of experience with this mods rules.
About fade: Fade is my favorite alien to play and I think it is a lot of fun. Unlike most fades, I prefer shadow step 9/10 times to blink so I was not happy with that change. I also was not happy with the loss in momentum from shadow step. Fade with this mod does not play how I like to play fade.
I do like the direction that this mod is going in. Will be frequenting the server with this mod.
The guerrilla warfare the aliens are capable of, and built for?, now becomes viable. It's no longer "til death do us part." In essence it is a small buff for each and every alien life-form, specifically lerks and fades.
Marines now must make more coordinated efforts when pushing. This applies to both comp. and pub style play. Far too often do we see marines hold out in hub and armory hump while fades go in and out doing little in the way of real damage. Sure they are keeping them at bay but its just a prolonged boring encounter.
The fear of the perceived forced or "fake" teamwork is just that, a fear, albeit unnecessary. Because I see time and time again when EXO's drop there's nigh always someone there to weld them. What's wrong with doing the same to your future state-of-the-art armor suit. Sidenote: I really, really like the idea of a "TF2 Medi-gun knockoff" for the welder.
TLDR: Armor repair just prolongs events/encounters, eliminates any form of hit-and-run attacks, and doesn't promote teamwork at all.