Why is this no fun anymore
_Jay_
Join Date: 2013-03-13 Member: 183923Members
Join Date: 2013-03-13 Member: 183923Members
Is there any plan to undo the massive nerf to aliens combat effectiveness over the last few patches as basically they are now horrid to play and the aliens team is now pointless and just moving targets for the marine rape train. I haven't seen aliens win in a pub game for quite a while apart from when all the better players in a server stack the aliens team, an even mix of skill seems to always give a marine win now days and its becoming boring to continue to play this game as its so one sided majority of the time.
My main complaint is that the basic alien life form the skulk is just a pointless ammo waster most of the time, you wall jump for what? there is no point to doing it now you gain next to no advantage. It hasn't got any combat effectiveness at all vs a basic marine in any combat situation other than the marine wanders blindly into the area and your waiting on the roof/wall to jump at him from behind. Any attempt at a fight where the marine could see you prior to you biting him is pointless due to the fact skulks are sooo slow and easy to shoot. There always seems to be too much distance between you and the marine with not enough cover in all the older maps as they were made with faster skulks in mind, the new map from the latest patch plays ok'ish as aliens due to the increased cover but the aliens still struggle with new players as none of the tutorials teach using cover they still recommend wall jumping which isn't at all effective anymore. Skulks and aliens in general have few options in the early/mid game to push into a room and take it by force, you are very dependent on the marines pushing too far out and splitting up to allow you to ambush them. This may happen some of the time but against players who know the game they aren't going to move out of a key room once they take it and its very easy for marines to defend these key areas of the map once they take them. This is largely the reason aliens are losing so many games now they can't take a key area from marines in the early/mid game, this results in marines locking down key tech point rooms and then moving room to room until they get to the hive.
Skulks - too slow, too little damage to effectively ambush in later stages of the game. Marines have too many hit points towards the mid/late game for any ambush to work that doesn't have the first 2 bites without you being shot at. Skulks as I see it need one of two things to make them more combat effective and actually fun to play again. Bring back the speed and make them more agile again so you can realistically make yourself hard to shoot by random wall jumping and running around or give them a better bite that will allow ambushes to be more deadly esp in the later stages of the game. Skulks need a 2 hit kill on a fully upgraded marine when hit from behind or in the head to force skilled ambush play and give them a chance against shot guns and jetpacks. Currently leap isn't a jetpack counter only lerks/fades are and even then they cost as much or more than the jetpack/shotgun and aren't nearly as effective. More often then not the jetpack/shotgun kills your 50 res fade as you need 4 hits to kill him he needs 2 to kill your fade.
on larger player number servers the other alien lifeforms are generally too weak to take on a group of marines yet a marine with a shotgun is a realistic chance vs several skulks as he one shots them all. Aliens need better bite strength from the bigger lifeforms.
Lerks play ok and the new trails attempt to force people into playing the lerks true strength which is as a hit and run biter, fly in bite once fly out heal come back do it again and chase them down til you kill them as it moves fast. the spike trails only really punish dumb lerk play like the people who like to sit on roof's and just be annoying doing minor damage to buildings as spikes are very weak vs buildings. Lerks need more effect from posion, preferable if you get spores it should also increase the poison bite attack as it forces researching of spores to be as viable as blink for first upgrade.
Fade's play ok too but if skulks are going to remain crud maybe reducing the cost of fade by 5 would be an option to encourage them to see more use, as most lerk early or save for ono's mid game fades aren't having much of an impact as no one really wants to go it as its not a game changer like the ono's and costs too much pres unlike a lerk.
Ono's - The alien game winner, if several players simply save and you get 2 hives up and hold on 3-4 res nodes until the roughly half the team can ono's at once you win basically by default of marine concede. This is the last few games I have seen aliens win by just holding on for grim life at the hive and one other node for 15-20mins until we get enough ono's to push back and just roll the map all at the same time so they only have one room left. It would be good if it had a run up charge that was more effective IE if you sprint at a building and then ram it you could do massive damage. kinda dumb that the giant rhino ran at that armoury only to do 100 damage and then can do just as much damage headbutting it from point blank? It also needs a weak spot so a skilled marine player can more easily drop this big sucker, something like a point blank shotgun to the eye hurts for double damage or ass shots do slightly more damage to allow them to get killed when running away. Try to mix it up from the current soaks damage while killing the whole enemy team, eats the power node tank into more of a battering ram to break into rooms and kill key structures.
All alien life forms lose all res and don't get a chance to re-evolve once dead, can we get a horn/claw/wing that drops and can be picked up by the player that dropped it for half pres back? Marines could burn the horn/claw/wing to give the same chance to destroy that bile now has on things like shotguns.
Arc equivalent for aliens - IE make better bombard whips they need an armor upgrade once researched so they then take as long to kill as an arc + a fallout area from the bile of similar size to the arc to make them more effective, they cost 30 res and don't do much at the moment we rarely see them used. A marine should need to empty 3+ clips into one of these just like a skulk needs to sit on an arc chomping it for ages before it dies.
Whips are also not very good when compared to sentries as whips can easily be taken down from range they are rarely used also due to their ineffectiveness, they need a slightly larger range over a 270 degree arc with a dead spot area behind them. They should have a spine or something sticking out the back of them so you can work out where the dead spot is easily and also so they can't be put hard up against a wall, this way marines can move in take some hits but kill them from behind just like skulks do to sentries and placing a few whips will then allow them to cover each other making them a viable option. They should also come down 5 res as they are too expensive and should be limited to 3 per room the same as sentries.
Marines also need a couple of things added
An upgrade for power nodes that gives them a shield capacitor and it turns itself on as soon as its the node is attacked and it gives the node a one off nanosheild before failing and needing to be researched again. Cost of 5 res and it takes 90 seconds to research each time or you could make it marine buildable with a 30 sec build time. This should slow down the speed at which a single alien can kill powernodes if the comm forgets to nanosheild them and also forces marines to research it so it costs res so its not given to just every power node at the start of the game its more so the comm doesn't have to micro manage his power nodes and remember to nanosheild them straight up. It also takes a bit to get back up and should leave the powernode weak for a minute or so. It also encourages aliens to hit the node just to waste the 5 res the sheild costs so punishes buying them early and makes leaving them until mid/late game when you have more res the best option.
Jetpack/shotgun - this is a bit op at the moment as a fully upgraded marine kills a skulk with one shot and better mobility too. if anything should be nerfed it should be the effectiveness of this combo as its game winning for 35 pres, you can solo against lerk/fade and 2-3 cut down a ono's. Aliens struggle to counter these as skulks need several bites to take down the marine he needs one good shot to take the skulk, leap doesn't seem to help much due to the slowness of skulks in general. Lerk/Fade are a 2 shot kill vs a 3-5 hits from the fade/lerk to kill the marine. (I play this combo most often and rarely die once I get a jetpack and shotgun you just move too fast to get hit much and pack such a huge punch with level 3 weapons)
The only other thing that would be fun is alien vs alien and marine vs marine options with a vote at the start to pick sides ie if everyone trys to stack marines it goes into marine vs marine mode and randoms teams.
Points to note also before you respond and tell me I'm some kind of nub to be ignored.
- I play several other games competitively and have 300+ hours on steam playing this game.
- I don't play comp 6v6 in NS2 and have no desire too. Comp players aren't the only people that make up the playerbase of this game either you need pub randoms to buy this game and recommend it too other pub randoms too.
- I don't play low numbers servers, like most people I play larger servers as it used to be much more fun and gave a better balance as the few comp clan players in the server have less impact vs greater numbers of ok players. Aliens are already disadvantaged by eggs not scaling to the server size so you are typically easily egg locked as the skulks die much easier now esp on rookie friendly servers as aliens isn't rookie friendly at all.
- The ambushing play style is pointless once your pushed back and won't help take back an area once lost. You can't stand on your high horse and say aliens should learn to ambush and play skulk how it should be played according to you? As ambushing isn't a valid tactic for retaking an area and without res/map control you are all forced to play skulk as you don't have pres for anything else. Explain how I am supposed to ambush my way out of a marine team attempting to bottleneck us in? get out of an egglock situation? simple you can't. aliens needs another viable option for a early/mid game rather than just ambushing as its too dependent on the marines being dumb to work. this isn't a very good strat as you shouldn't be relying on the enemy to be dumb for your strat to work.
bring back the wall jumping crazy hoppin skulk as this game is dead boring without it.
My main complaint is that the basic alien life form the skulk is just a pointless ammo waster most of the time, you wall jump for what? there is no point to doing it now you gain next to no advantage. It hasn't got any combat effectiveness at all vs a basic marine in any combat situation other than the marine wanders blindly into the area and your waiting on the roof/wall to jump at him from behind. Any attempt at a fight where the marine could see you prior to you biting him is pointless due to the fact skulks are sooo slow and easy to shoot. There always seems to be too much distance between you and the marine with not enough cover in all the older maps as they were made with faster skulks in mind, the new map from the latest patch plays ok'ish as aliens due to the increased cover but the aliens still struggle with new players as none of the tutorials teach using cover they still recommend wall jumping which isn't at all effective anymore. Skulks and aliens in general have few options in the early/mid game to push into a room and take it by force, you are very dependent on the marines pushing too far out and splitting up to allow you to ambush them. This may happen some of the time but against players who know the game they aren't going to move out of a key room once they take it and its very easy for marines to defend these key areas of the map once they take them. This is largely the reason aliens are losing so many games now they can't take a key area from marines in the early/mid game, this results in marines locking down key tech point rooms and then moving room to room until they get to the hive.
Skulks - too slow, too little damage to effectively ambush in later stages of the game. Marines have too many hit points towards the mid/late game for any ambush to work that doesn't have the first 2 bites without you being shot at. Skulks as I see it need one of two things to make them more combat effective and actually fun to play again. Bring back the speed and make them more agile again so you can realistically make yourself hard to shoot by random wall jumping and running around or give them a better bite that will allow ambushes to be more deadly esp in the later stages of the game. Skulks need a 2 hit kill on a fully upgraded marine when hit from behind or in the head to force skilled ambush play and give them a chance against shot guns and jetpacks. Currently leap isn't a jetpack counter only lerks/fades are and even then they cost as much or more than the jetpack/shotgun and aren't nearly as effective. More often then not the jetpack/shotgun kills your 50 res fade as you need 4 hits to kill him he needs 2 to kill your fade.
on larger player number servers the other alien lifeforms are generally too weak to take on a group of marines yet a marine with a shotgun is a realistic chance vs several skulks as he one shots them all. Aliens need better bite strength from the bigger lifeforms.
Lerks play ok and the new trails attempt to force people into playing the lerks true strength which is as a hit and run biter, fly in bite once fly out heal come back do it again and chase them down til you kill them as it moves fast. the spike trails only really punish dumb lerk play like the people who like to sit on roof's and just be annoying doing minor damage to buildings as spikes are very weak vs buildings. Lerks need more effect from posion, preferable if you get spores it should also increase the poison bite attack as it forces researching of spores to be as viable as blink for first upgrade.
Fade's play ok too but if skulks are going to remain crud maybe reducing the cost of fade by 5 would be an option to encourage them to see more use, as most lerk early or save for ono's mid game fades aren't having much of an impact as no one really wants to go it as its not a game changer like the ono's and costs too much pres unlike a lerk.
Ono's - The alien game winner, if several players simply save and you get 2 hives up and hold on 3-4 res nodes until the roughly half the team can ono's at once you win basically by default of marine concede. This is the last few games I have seen aliens win by just holding on for grim life at the hive and one other node for 15-20mins until we get enough ono's to push back and just roll the map all at the same time so they only have one room left. It would be good if it had a run up charge that was more effective IE if you sprint at a building and then ram it you could do massive damage. kinda dumb that the giant rhino ran at that armoury only to do 100 damage and then can do just as much damage headbutting it from point blank? It also needs a weak spot so a skilled marine player can more easily drop this big sucker, something like a point blank shotgun to the eye hurts for double damage or ass shots do slightly more damage to allow them to get killed when running away. Try to mix it up from the current soaks damage while killing the whole enemy team, eats the power node tank into more of a battering ram to break into rooms and kill key structures.
All alien life forms lose all res and don't get a chance to re-evolve once dead, can we get a horn/claw/wing that drops and can be picked up by the player that dropped it for half pres back? Marines could burn the horn/claw/wing to give the same chance to destroy that bile now has on things like shotguns.
Arc equivalent for aliens - IE make better bombard whips they need an armor upgrade once researched so they then take as long to kill as an arc + a fallout area from the bile of similar size to the arc to make them more effective, they cost 30 res and don't do much at the moment we rarely see them used. A marine should need to empty 3+ clips into one of these just like a skulk needs to sit on an arc chomping it for ages before it dies.
Whips are also not very good when compared to sentries as whips can easily be taken down from range they are rarely used also due to their ineffectiveness, they need a slightly larger range over a 270 degree arc with a dead spot area behind them. They should have a spine or something sticking out the back of them so you can work out where the dead spot is easily and also so they can't be put hard up against a wall, this way marines can move in take some hits but kill them from behind just like skulks do to sentries and placing a few whips will then allow them to cover each other making them a viable option. They should also come down 5 res as they are too expensive and should be limited to 3 per room the same as sentries.
Marines also need a couple of things added
An upgrade for power nodes that gives them a shield capacitor and it turns itself on as soon as its the node is attacked and it gives the node a one off nanosheild before failing and needing to be researched again. Cost of 5 res and it takes 90 seconds to research each time or you could make it marine buildable with a 30 sec build time. This should slow down the speed at which a single alien can kill powernodes if the comm forgets to nanosheild them and also forces marines to research it so it costs res so its not given to just every power node at the start of the game its more so the comm doesn't have to micro manage his power nodes and remember to nanosheild them straight up. It also takes a bit to get back up and should leave the powernode weak for a minute or so. It also encourages aliens to hit the node just to waste the 5 res the sheild costs so punishes buying them early and makes leaving them until mid/late game when you have more res the best option.
Jetpack/shotgun - this is a bit op at the moment as a fully upgraded marine kills a skulk with one shot and better mobility too. if anything should be nerfed it should be the effectiveness of this combo as its game winning for 35 pres, you can solo against lerk/fade and 2-3 cut down a ono's. Aliens struggle to counter these as skulks need several bites to take down the marine he needs one good shot to take the skulk, leap doesn't seem to help much due to the slowness of skulks in general. Lerk/Fade are a 2 shot kill vs a 3-5 hits from the fade/lerk to kill the marine. (I play this combo most often and rarely die once I get a jetpack and shotgun you just move too fast to get hit much and pack such a huge punch with level 3 weapons)
The only other thing that would be fun is alien vs alien and marine vs marine options with a vote at the start to pick sides ie if everyone trys to stack marines it goes into marine vs marine mode and randoms teams.
Points to note also before you respond and tell me I'm some kind of nub to be ignored.
- I play several other games competitively and have 300+ hours on steam playing this game.
- I don't play comp 6v6 in NS2 and have no desire too. Comp players aren't the only people that make up the playerbase of this game either you need pub randoms to buy this game and recommend it too other pub randoms too.
- I don't play low numbers servers, like most people I play larger servers as it used to be much more fun and gave a better balance as the few comp clan players in the server have less impact vs greater numbers of ok players. Aliens are already disadvantaged by eggs not scaling to the server size so you are typically easily egg locked as the skulks die much easier now esp on rookie friendly servers as aliens isn't rookie friendly at all.
- The ambushing play style is pointless once your pushed back and won't help take back an area once lost. You can't stand on your high horse and say aliens should learn to ambush and play skulk how it should be played according to you? As ambushing isn't a valid tactic for retaking an area and without res/map control you are all forced to play skulk as you don't have pres for anything else. Explain how I am supposed to ambush my way out of a marine team attempting to bottleneck us in? get out of an egglock situation? simple you can't. aliens needs another viable option for a early/mid game rather than just ambushing as its too dependent on the marines being dumb to work. this isn't a very good strat as you shouldn't be relying on the enemy to be dumb for your strat to work.
bring back the wall jumping crazy hoppin skulk as this game is dead boring without it.
Comments
That's why I like to build - I think I don't build much worse than the pros out there ;-) Shooting, that's another matter.
This is one of the things that can irritate me the most in pub games. I've seen games in which 2-3 people are just sitting on +75 res and don't even bother with going onos. Games we end up losing. Often, you can just see the game slipping away from aliens during mid-game as marines tech up while aliens aren't making the most of their res pools.
Your TL;DR version is: "Bring aliens back to the overpowered state they had before 240."
And I say NO. L2P! I'm playing since beta and have no problems to win with the alien team. The win-rates are absolutely fine.
The only thing I agree with, is that those horribad 24 player servers are screwing the balance in favor for marines. But the fix for this is a change in the egg-spawn system not in skulk-combat efficiency.
Aliens can still win, but it requires a lot of more team coordination that Marines need ATM
If your comm doesn't have a drifter ready for when the majority of your team pushes into an occupied room with advanced life forms you likely won't stand a chance
If there are no good Fades on your team it is almost a guaranteed loss as Lerks can no longer stand their ground without the ambush factor
The biggest issue I see is the small window that skulks have to pressure early game
If Aliens cannot destroy a node in the first 3 minutes Marines will acquire too much res and dominate map control for the next 10
(also what seems to be the biggest block of time for Marines to outright end of game via egglock of concedes)
I have seen this before, and when I questioned it the reply was "I like playing Skulk". Sometimes 3/4 people can go Fade or even maybe one them could go Onos. Sometimes games are lost because of this.
I honestly don't understand it.
1.) You just described the exact play style that a skulk was designed to do and you even said that is the only way you ever have a chance. Think about that. I understand your frustration with skulk though. I am not very good with them, but that is mainly because I move a alien like I do a marine out of habit. Use the play style you just described and it might be slower but you will live longer and get more kills
2.) Whips can kill you in 3 hits. A well placed whip can take out multiple marines and the range is pretty good considering the model actually stretches out a little.
3.) There is a mvm mod that is amazingly fun it just has not been updated to 241 yet, but they are working on that.
Pretty sure I've read it already.
If you didn't read it, you really shouldn't comment on it.
It wasn't even much to read. How lazy are people these days?
I also agree with Draconis. Not all skulks can save to be onos. If you do, it's your fault the game was boring. - especially if you never get to go onos.
Here's a "cool story bro" for you: I was alien commander yesterday. We secured two hives, had a third prepped for hive drop. However, we have 5 skulk players with 60+ res waiting to go onos. Marines were upgraded by this stage of the game and mowing down skulks. Marines managed to cut our res flow and take down the hives. None of those skulks actually made it to onos. At the end a couple of those skulks had 75+ res but couldn't find a safe place to egg. One or two good fades would have made all the difference. Instead those five players suffered a long, painful, skulk-only game.
If you're a skulk for the whole game and it sucks, it's your own fault.
I've seen a skilled early lerk or fade completely shut down marine teams, so yeah. I'm not a very good skulk, but still manage an overall 1:1 ratio at least.
Staying skulk is fine, so long as you're happy doing it and aren't depriving the team. Also, like you said, not everyone can be Onos every game. If a player has problems playing skulk, then go lerk early and try that. You get all the speed and air control you want.
Going back to the horridly overpowered skulks isn't going to happen.
Now that Hitreg has been greatly improved, hitting skulks won't be as hard as before.
Translation: "I play a game with 30-50% more players than intended. Why am is this game not balanced for the number of players I think it should have?"
I will agree that skulks need a tiny boost (some accel back or a bit more wall hop momentum, or even marines not being able to sprint as fast as a running skulk) and that marines should have some mild tweak somewhere to keep them around as powerful in comparison. Skulks are kinda where they need to be but they also aren't as fun as they could be.
You're still flat-out wrong.
Along with the fact that these threads are repeated and repeated and repeated. Some one asks a question that has already been asked they get flamed. Some one starts a whine topic of which there are already 10 and no one seems to care.
This. Stop playing on giant servers with a thousand players. The game was balanced for 6v6. I've found a good mix can be found on 16 or 18 player servers, and I completely and utterly avoid anything more than 18.
I think it's a bit of an issue that the alien team has no res dump that allows them to keep playing skulk. In NS1 half the team did that by going temp-Gorge and building important structures before returning to Skulk. I don't think we should do that again, but it would be cool to see at least one thing you could do to get rid of your money, sort of like marines can plant mines.