Wait.. all this will be released on a official patch someday?
sewlek is the one from UWE who made the most gamefeatures. So, yes. There good chances that you going to see most of the stuff from this mod in the game soon.
Not necessarily "most", it's a pretty raw testing ground so a lot of the changes are very experimental. I also can't imagine we'll get a mega-patch that implements it all at once, that would be reckless. My guess is they'll start picking and choosing the most successful changes to patch in over time. The best way to get the good changes implemented is to keep playing the mod and showing support in this thread.
2) you can just gain speed from jumping and holding forward along a flat surface... this is basically completely indistinguishable from NS1 bunnyhop to the average player, except it sucks the entire skill-movement aspect out of it. I don't understand all this flailing around trying to create everything that's not bunnyhopping, just to end up with a simplified and dry version of bunnyhopping?
The magic mouse movements to gain speed is exactly the thing about bunnyhopping that drove them to exclude it. It's just too unintuitive. Quake bhopping on the other hand is very easy to understand - even easier than the walljumping, really - but still difficult to master because of the tradeoff with air control. In fact that's one thing that was much easier about NS1 bunnyhopping, you still had 100% air control and could go anywhere you wanted provided the surface was flat enough.
I had an absolute BLAST tonight playing this on the HBZ server. Thanks everyone who was there, and thanks HBZ for hosting, and thanks Sewlek - I actually find this far, far more fun than build 241...!
I think the alien movement is ROFLTOPS overpowered... unless marines have weapons 2, or preferably w3 by the time fades come out, it's almost certainly GG. The onos however... this needs some love. I haven't played as it, as I've been working on my fading lately, but oh SO MANY have died horrible deaths. They're just a liability as it stands!
Both teams seem to find it somewhat difficult to gain enough of an upper hand at times, not all the time - I wonder if this is the lack of game ending tech (less of a problem for marines of course, but I didn't see much sieging tonight).
I actually love the phase gate change - they're *just* vulnerable enough for a fast take-down but being able to ninja again is so much fun.
It really feels fun to be an alien, and fun to be a marine, and losing isn't really that bad (it's still worse for aliens though, the lack of being able to do anything while a marine shoots at your egg is pretty dire). That's quite a feat in a side project such as this. I really hope some of these changes make it through into the official patches. There's an awful lot to like here.
A few observations that may or may not be influenced with me not being that good of a player:
- Onoses (Oni?) seem to be a lot more brittle and clumsy. A single marine can survive a lot longer against one than in vanilla game and if he has good position he can take a truly huge chunk of his health and armor and two marines can be a real threat capable of repelling or killing an onos if they are smart enough to use obstacles (like marine base) to block him.. It is kinda nice to not be so overwhelmingly helpless against onos if you are not in huge group, but late-game they kinda become really underwhelming against w3 a3 marines and exos. They also seem to get stuck on things like railings, marine buildings random objects, etc REALLY often. A lot more than in vanilla game.
- I was neutral-to-positive to the whole Armory not healing armor thing, but those few games really sold me. It really wasn't that hard to get welded, buying welder to help fellow players felt pretty natural, and getting welded by a marine after repelling an alien assault or surviving an ambush made me want to give him brofist through Internet. Mandatory or not, it felt pretty awesome in a "F*CK YEAH, TEAMWORK! sort of way.
-There is something definitely weird going on with sound in the mod. I was able to hear marine welding power node in Maintenance, while I was behind res node in Stability Monitoring (I was just leaving Departures and heading for Generator). Thats pretty huge distance.
-I was kinda leery about combining camo and silence, but the end result works pretty well. Camo is so underpowered currently that when you combine it with silence you get basically slightly buffed silence. Which is useful without being overpowered or over-the-top in any way. Nice change
-I am not convinced about the phase gate changes. Sure you can do a ninja pg strategy a lot more reliably now, but I feel that the change feel a bit too unintuitive and illogical: No marine building can be build on the infestation, except for phase gate. No marine building partially work without power except for phase gate... It has also potential of making ninja pg a bit too easy to pull off, which is not that good of a thing considering how easily can one of these screw aliens over.
- Outside of onos, I am not really ready to fully comment on the movement changes. I didn't play enough and I also feel that I am also not skilled enough player to do some kind of in-depth analysis. The new skulk movement felt alien but also kind of hilarious in a "I am pogo-jumping around, fast as rocket, and nothing can hit me wheeeeee!!!" sort of way. Lerk flying felt like sliding on ice: every change of direction brought a lot of additional momentum that was not there in vanilla. On one hand it made dodging really easy because even I didn't exactly know where I end at the end of the maneuver, on the other hand it made precise swooping and biting almost impossible and made me get stuck (and subsequently killed) on walls/object/ceiling infuriatingly often. Gorge movement is pretty much as usual and I somehow didn't get to play fade.
i think the phase gate change really does help marines get out of 'turtle mode'. as you don't have to clear the cysts and broadcast your whereabouts to the entire alien team etc.
also, it was actually really nice to see fade and onos earlier in the game.
i'm a bit unclear on balance though. the games this evening felt fair, but i do believe umbra is kinda ridiculously strong for it's position in the biomass index.
The magic mouse movements to gain speed is exactly the thing about bunnyhopping that drove them to exclude it. It's just too unintuitive. Quake bhopping on the other hand is very easy to understand - even easier than the walljumping, really - but still difficult to master because of the tradeoff with air control. In fact that's one thing that was much easier about NS1 bunnyhopping, you still had 100% air control and could go anywhere you wanted provided the surface was flat enough.
Quake had the same physics as NS1 for the most part, so you must be referring to the jump-queuing system where you can hold jump after each landing. The current imlpementation is more like HL2:SP or Painkiller's implementation, where you were able to just hold forward and bunnyhop.
The "unintuitiveness" and "magic mouse movement" issues is a completely tired argument that is easily addressed. the examples are already there: look to NS2: Classic for an excellent implementation of bunnyhopping that even allows you to hold forward, or look at Fortress Forever which has a fully built tutorial system revolving around the various movement mechanics of TFC including trimping, conc jumping, rocket jumping, air acceleration, and bunnyhopping.
goldsrc movement works and scales with skill because it can always be improved upon and yet it is almost impossible to perfect. you can always get closer and closer to the "sweet spot" of a circlejump, but very few people can actually reliably do long circlejumps consistently. with the current implementation, anyone can just hold forward and be able to move at the same speed as a seasoned veteran. limited air acceleration does not make it difficult to master. I think what you're trying to say is that it's difficult to accomplish the things you were able to in previous builds, but it's the same plateau of difficulty for everyone. I don't see where the skill comes in for planning routes which takes about ten minutes to figure out in a listen server.
with bunnyhopping there is also a direct tradeoff, where it was immediately balanced by the fact that you had to look away from the direction you were headed. this also allowed for excellent dodging abilities that again, scaled quite well with skill. I just don't what this adds to gameplay that bunnyhopping hasn't already perfected after a couple of decades of a tried and tested system, existing in the large majority of competitive games, most HL1 / HL2 mods, every id and COD game... I just don't understand the point of reinventing a square wheel.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I think because it wasn't as accessible as the devs wanted it to be.
High skill ceiling was never an issue, low accessibility was imo.
Nothing wrong in trying to create a new skill based movement mechanic either as long as you know you've got your work cut out for you.
Kinda makes me wish actual wall hopping was brought back a little, with more impact, no more of this "falling mechanic"
I don't see where the skill comes in. The concept of "speed vs control" was also in bunnyhopping, by the way. The faster you went, the more precise your mouse movements had to be, otherwise it would only slow you down to the level that corresponded with your movements. Where is the option for skill to overcome the rules of the current system? Take a different route?
Yeah, loved the comeback in that game yesterday. Marines started in Cafe, got a second base up in Departures and had a PG in Terminal. Terminal was constantly attacked and people rarely went there to defend it. Departures went down at some point with the ProtoLab being there, though Exos were never researched despite plenty of res in the bank.
Then it boiled down to maybe 20-40 minutes of turtling in Cafe on 1 RT. Aliens probably lost 20-30 Onos in that time, marines had not many casualties.
We tried everything to push out, but Bar was too heavily fortified with constant Onos support and Terminal was not pushed hard enough.
I then saved up for ARCs long enough to take down Locker Rooms in a surprise assault from Courtyard, but we were not able to push in and aliens got it back up. ARCs got taken down. Ninja PG in Maintenance managed to take down Generator too eventually, but we couldn't hold that either.
Eventually a combination of a second ARC push plus marines going through Back Alley got us Locker Rooms, so we could finally get a second CC up and aliens conceded close to 90 minutes. But damn, we should have lost that one, given how their Lerks and Fades seemed nearly unkillable and I was often lacking armor in the early game.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Power nodes are a mess, but creating unique conditions and placement rules per structure to appease the elephant in the room isn't the way to limit the restrictions the power nodes impose on game play. Freedom in structure placement shouldn't be traded for consistency.
I played it yesterday on HBZ too. But not long enough to give really valuable feedback. Only so much:
No armor from armory is no problem. It don't even effect you most of the time.
Early game aliens feel overpowered, because of movement. Celerity makes skulks to the reaper himself!
The new shade-upgrade is really nice, strong but doesn't feel overpowered.
The Biomass-Upgrade-System is very interesting. It increases the t-res the aliens need and therefor corrects the economy, and slows down the alien upgrade explosion. Even with 5 RTs it feels slow to get all upgrades (in a good way).
The health plus for biomass is interesting. I'm not sure if it has real impact on balance. Feels overpowered on paper. But marines were to bad in my games to get sure about this.
The longer respawn times lead to a completely different game play feeling. The battles are less often, making the game more strategical and teamplay-demanding. But I'm not sure how to feel about it overall. It reminds me at NS1 but somehow I'm missing the increased action of NS2 with it.
Anyway. The Biomass-System is a straight upgrade to the normal NS2. Wish this would be implemented. For the rest I need more time to play it. But keep up the good work. It's really fantastic!
Power nodes are a mess, but creating unique conditions and placement rules per structure to appease the elephant in the room isn't the way to limit the restrictions the power nodes impose on game play. Freedom in structure placement shouldn't be traded for consistency.
I agree. I appreciate the gesture of trying to allow ninja phase gates, but this is basically completely forcing the issue while ignoring the complete lack of intuitiveness and coherence in gameplay rules.
If we want ninja phasegates back I think we will have to allow everything to be built on infestation. And bring back power packs or something along those lines.
I'm not necessarily opposed to phase gates not requiring power... But it does more or less undermine the whole point of power nodes in the first place. If marines can take and hold territory without having power, why does it even exist? No better time than the present to revamp the power node system IMO. I still want to see how it plays out with power nodes acting purely as light switches - just make them easier to build and destroy.
Is there really a need for the rule that buildings can't be built on infestation?
It isn't even intuitive. As this rule was introduced, many people wondered, why you can't continue to build this armory. Just because the infestation creeped to it while building.
Get rid of this rule. It is enough that you need power.
I wish I hadn't had to leave early last night as I was having a lot of fun but I was totally exhausted and played terribly for the last 30 minutes before I decided I really had to go to bed.
So here's my thoughts:
Ninja PGs are the best change ever, don't listen to the naysayers, screw consistency, this change alone makes marine play 10 times more aggressive and interesting. Alien map control is through the roof with the amazing map movement speed of skulks and fades and ninja PGs give them a way to make up for that. If aliens let marines get through to a strategic position then they're going to have a phase up and don't need to give their position away by killing cysts. If anything I'd like to see a slight res cost reduction for PGs to make up for their new frailty, or alternatively some new mechanic so that you're not 100% doomed once there's 2 skulks on a phase and you get minced the second you phase through.
Phantom didn't seem overpowered, it's more like 'silence with a slight stealth perk' than anything super powerful. Very thematic though with buffed celerity I still don't see it being a popular 1st hive choice. Still much better than having separate cloak/silence though.
Skulking is really fun but the lack of air control hurts even when you're moving at regular speeds. I really like the 'truck drifting' mechanic when you're going super fast but I'd like a little more control back when you're not hopping for speed. There are some issues where map design can seriously impact your usefulness as a skulk - playing on Descent was a nightmare with all the bits of random architecture to bump into and some of the stairs are just impossible to hop down because they're too steep and you end up hitting the door frame at the bottom.
Lerk feels just perfect to me, it's always been my favourite lifeform and it's super responsive, spores and umbra are massively more usable thanks to the new launch pattern and they probably benefit the most from biomass +HP which makes them much more lategame viable.
Fading is excellent though blink feels a teensy bit too expensive in terms of adren cost, I could live with it though given how strong blinkhopping is.
I didn't go onos all night so no comment there other than we seemed to kill a lot as marines, I put that down to marines sticking together and focus firing better than on most pub servers.
Not much to say about marines except that 15 res JPs feels more reasonable, but marines also feel like they're at a noticable early game disadvantage due to the speed disparity; with that said, most of the games I played were in the 10-14 player region which is naturally a little more alien friendly and once the server filled up aliens got a good stomping in a 9v9 game. I'd like to try making welders cheaper just for personal reasons (the old 'paying pres to heal other people isn't fun' argument) and I think that it wouldn't have a negative impact on balance.
I had an annoying bug where my weapon/adrenaline indicator disappeared from time to time, the only mod I'm running is a custom xhair so I can't imagine that's what caused it.
Overall I had more fun in 1 evening of playing NS2 BT than I've had playing regular NS2 since Gorgeous came out. There's definitely teething issues there but the game just feels more like NS should be and I would personally be 100% happy for the current mod to go live.
Skulking is really fun but the lack of air control hurts even when you're moving at regular speeds. I really like the 'truck drifting' mechanic when you're going super fast but I'd like a little more control back when you're not hopping for speed. There are some issues where map design can seriously impact your usefulness as a skulk - playing on Descent was a nightmare with all the bits of random architecture to bump into and some of the stairs are just impossible to hop down because they're too steep and you end up hitting the door frame at the bottom.
I agree. Speed vs. control should only be a factor at the highest levels of speed. If you jump at a marine you shouldn't be locked into a single trajectory, there should be at least a little wiggle room.
Power nodes are a mess, but creating unique conditions and placement rules per structure to appease the elephant in the room isn't the way to limit the restrictions the power nodes impose on game play. Freedom in structure placement shouldn't be traded for consistency.
doesn't the sentry already build on infestation? it's not a new elephant.
i believe it might be to stop exploits like dropping armory/robotics infront of alien-controlled vents/doorway. not to mention slight balance issues if you could easily drop an armory at arms length while assaulting a hive.
however, there may be a problem with 'power free' phase gates in that you could drop 3 x PG's in the same room while attacking a hive and it has the same effect as a PG with 300% hp. perhaps it would be wise to limit PG to one per room.
it might be less intuitive, but it buys an awesome gameplay improvement. stick the new building parameters into the commander tooltips, no problem.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Ninja PGs are the best change ever, don't listen to the naysayers, screw consistency, this change alone makes marine play 10 times more aggressive and interesting.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in full support of making the infestation and power node mechanics less restrictive. Phase gates are of particular note for this, but that doesn't mean it should be specialized to that structure. If one structure can be built on infestation, they all should be able to be.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in full support of making the infestation and power node mechanics less restrictive. Phase gates are of particular note for this, but that doesn't mean it should be specialized to that structure. If one structure can be built on infestation, they all should be able to be.
See Tarquin's post for why there's a good reason to not allow all building to take place on infestation.
Also I fully support the 1 PG per room idea, I hadn't considered that but it sounds potentially somewhat abusable and I can see very few other reasons why it would be needed.
Ninja PGs are the best change ever, don't listen to the naysayers, screw consistency, this change alone makes marine play 10 times more aggressive and interesting.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in full support of making the infestation and power node mechanics less restrictive. Phase gates are of particular note for this, but that doesn't mean it should be specialized to that structure. If one structure can be built on infestation, they all should be able to be.
remember that it's only 'unintuitive' for the commander. the majority of players in a game will never attempt to place a building on infestation, therefore won't be snatched out of their illusion of consistency by a "you can't do that because meh" message.
while it seems that i missed the biggest game of the evening, i did get a chance to get a couple games in earlier.
so far, still quite enjoying the armory change
love the new phantom ability, shade has been my favorite tree for awhile and I hope this has more khamms using it.
i like the phase gate change as it allows us as marines to do surprising things.
(to me the rules for the gates make sense, utilizing space-time technology to allow marines to travel instantaneously from one gate to another.
further refinement of this technology allows the gates to be quantum connected thereby powering them, unfortunately this tech is too expensive to be used on all structures.
Marine R&D also came up with an experimental tech that attached micro burners to the base of the PG to clear away infestation directly underneath.
The PG was chosen for these developments as it was the most logical choice due to is mobility enhancing properties.)
unfortunately the games i played were rather short so i didn't get to fully play with everything new, but i still had a lot of fun on both sides.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
yes the phase gate change is very strange and it wont make it into the game in this form, im not a fan of such inconsistencies (as you wrote before, the phase gate breaks now 2 rules, power and infestation) but for the sake of testing im ok with it. i will keep this change in the mod for a while to see how it affects game play, but dont expect that such a confusing change would make it into the official game. if it does it would be in another, less confusing, more intuitive form.
I'd love if there was a sort of commander ability to temporarily power a structure instead, that way you could still set up ninja phasegates, though obviously you'd have to invest some additional t.res to be able to take advantage of it, which also means you'd probably also only be able to do a sort of 'ninja-strike' once on that PG, unless your team manages to set up the actual power. Would also be a neat touch for emergency IP, arms lab and obs usage. (Though arguably quite a powerful one)
Hope you also take a look at sentries, they could really use some love to become a viable tech path again and as it stands I feel they are simply horribly overnerfed. Bring back gas blocking them if need be, that was a pretty great mechanic. IMO the biggest issue is that they immediately become redundant at 2 hives because of bilebomb and the ridiculously close proximity they have to be built next to the unintuitive sentry battery. (Why not just attach them to power nodes?)
Im not a fan of spikes for lerk, especially not early game. They were quite tested in NS1 and even there with the weaker lerk they always proved bad for gameplay. Give something an infinitely long ranged attack with almost no energy cost and someone is always going to sit somewhere arbitrary and spike things. I think a decision needs to be made on lerk - if its supposed to fit a more 'harass' role where it should loose a little of its HP and probably have spores, or if its supposed to be more of a skirmish unit where bite should probably be changed.
I still think that marines should be able to build anything on infestation, I did not like that change when it was made in the beta, and it would also fix some of the cyst spam issues.
-Structures built on infestation get only build at half speed and are lacking armor, so a ninja PG on infestation would be even faster to take down than a regular one and gives the aliens more time to notice and react.
-The temporary powering of structures through a commander ability as mentioned above seems really interesting. It would add the bonus that the current PG changes were adding (being able to still rescue a base if just the power in it went down instead of the PG; being able to get a ninja PG up in a Hive area) while costing the marines more resources to maintain (and so they can eventually run out of res for it). Cost, duration and cooldown are open for experimenting with the balance.
-Sentry Batteries need to be placed outside of a minimum range to other Batteries, to prevent the rather weird cross-room setups of 6 sentries in a location. After all this seems more like an unintended exploit than a real feature.
I honestly think Sentries themselves are in a pretty good spot now. I use them quite a lot in the lategame and there have been numerous times already where Sentries payed for themselves. Got an Onos killed with Sentries yesterday which might have escaped otherwise. They killed countless solo Lerks and Skulks who would attempt to harass our bases while the rest of the team was going for a push and who always forced me to pull my team away from a forward push. They also make the difference between "lone Skulk keeps walking into my base to chew on stuff" and "lone Skulk doesn't dare to enter because he takes damage as soon as he walks in front of the door".
And during a final onslaught of aliens onto our Atrium base with Onos, Gorges and everything, Sentries managed to kill a Skulk on the Power Node (while the Onos and Lerks kept my team busy) in the last second before it would go down, basically saving the day at that point and allowing us to turn the game around after that.
-Lerk Spikes drain slightly more of the Lerk's energy per shot.
-Welder cost reduced to 3 res. I currently find them way underused, even with the removal of armor healing, and when I buy one, I feel like I gimp myself against higher lifeforms (less res for shotguns and jetpacks) and won't be able to get much else later on.
In one of the games following that monster 96min job, we had a green hop into the comm chair to start the game. He placed a robo lab. Sigh. I think he must have seen the onos sentry kill in that game!
If there could be a way to require all other tech before sentries could be researched (yes, add a research as well), I'd be a happy man. They could use a buff then to reflect the fact they'll only come out late game.
Comments
The magic mouse movements to gain speed is exactly the thing about bunnyhopping that drove them to exclude it. It's just too unintuitive. Quake bhopping on the other hand is very easy to understand - even easier than the walljumping, really - but still difficult to master because of the tradeoff with air control. In fact that's one thing that was much easier about NS1 bunnyhopping, you still had 100% air control and could go anywhere you wanted provided the surface was flat enough.
An improvement over 10 years in the making but you got there eventually, good job!
I think the alien movement is ROFLTOPS overpowered... unless marines have weapons 2, or preferably w3 by the time fades come out, it's almost certainly GG. The onos however... this needs some love. I haven't played as it, as I've been working on my fading lately, but oh SO MANY have died horrible deaths. They're just a liability as it stands!
Both teams seem to find it somewhat difficult to gain enough of an upper hand at times, not all the time - I wonder if this is the lack of game ending tech (less of a problem for marines of course, but I didn't see much sieging tonight).
I actually love the phase gate change - they're *just* vulnerable enough for a fast take-down but being able to ninja again is so much fun.
It really feels fun to be an alien, and fun to be a marine, and losing isn't really that bad (it's still worse for aliens though, the lack of being able to do anything while a marine shoots at your egg is pretty dire). That's quite a feat in a side project such as this. I really hope some of these changes make it through into the official patches. There's an awful lot to like here.
Most fun I've had for months.
A few observations that may or may not be influenced with me not being that good of a player:
- Onoses (Oni?) seem to be a lot more brittle and clumsy. A single marine can survive a lot longer against one than in vanilla game and if he has good position he can take a truly huge chunk of his health and armor and two marines can be a real threat capable of repelling or killing an onos if they are smart enough to use obstacles (like marine base) to block him.. It is kinda nice to not be so overwhelmingly helpless against onos if you are not in huge group, but late-game they kinda become really underwhelming against w3 a3 marines and exos. They also seem to get stuck on things like railings, marine buildings random objects, etc REALLY often. A lot more than in vanilla game.
- I was neutral-to-positive to the whole Armory not healing armor thing, but those few games really sold me. It really wasn't that hard to get welded, buying welder to help fellow players felt pretty natural, and getting welded by a marine after repelling an alien assault or surviving an ambush made me want to give him brofist through Internet. Mandatory or not, it felt pretty awesome in a "F*CK YEAH, TEAMWORK! sort of way.
-There is something definitely weird going on with sound in the mod. I was able to hear marine welding power node in Maintenance, while I was behind res node in Stability Monitoring (I was just leaving Departures and heading for Generator). Thats pretty huge distance.
-I was kinda leery about combining camo and silence, but the end result works pretty well. Camo is so underpowered currently that when you combine it with silence you get basically slightly buffed silence. Which is useful without being overpowered or over-the-top in any way. Nice change
-I am not convinced about the phase gate changes. Sure you can do a ninja pg strategy a lot more reliably now, but I feel that the change feel a bit too unintuitive and illogical: No marine building can be build on the infestation, except for phase gate. No marine building partially work without power except for phase gate... It has also potential of making ninja pg a bit too easy to pull off, which is not that good of a thing considering how easily can one of these screw aliens over.
- Outside of onos, I am not really ready to fully comment on the movement changes. I didn't play enough and I also feel that I am also not skilled enough player to do some kind of in-depth analysis. The new skulk movement felt alien but also kind of hilarious in a "I am pogo-jumping around, fast as rocket, and nothing can hit me wheeeeee!!!" sort of way. Lerk flying felt like sliding on ice: every change of direction brought a lot of additional momentum that was not there in vanilla. On one hand it made dodging really easy because even I didn't exactly know where I end at the end of the maneuver, on the other hand it made precise swooping and biting almost impossible and made me get stuck (and subsequently killed) on walls/object/ceiling infuriatingly often. Gorge movement is pretty much as usual and I somehow didn't get to play fade.
also, it was actually really nice to see fade and onos earlier in the game.
i'm a bit unclear on balance though. the games this evening felt fair, but i do believe umbra is kinda ridiculously strong for it's position in the biomass index.
The "unintuitiveness" and "magic mouse movement" issues is a completely tired argument that is easily addressed. the examples are already there: look to NS2: Classic for an excellent implementation of bunnyhopping that even allows you to hold forward, or look at Fortress Forever which has a fully built tutorial system revolving around the various movement mechanics of TFC including trimping, conc jumping, rocket jumping, air acceleration, and bunnyhopping.
goldsrc movement works and scales with skill because it can always be improved upon and yet it is almost impossible to perfect. you can always get closer and closer to the "sweet spot" of a circlejump, but very few people can actually reliably do long circlejumps consistently. with the current implementation, anyone can just hold forward and be able to move at the same speed as a seasoned veteran. limited air acceleration does not make it difficult to master. I think what you're trying to say is that it's difficult to accomplish the things you were able to in previous builds, but it's the same plateau of difficulty for everyone. I don't see where the skill comes in for planning routes which takes about ten minutes to figure out in a listen server.
with bunnyhopping there is also a direct tradeoff, where it was immediately balanced by the fact that you had to look away from the direction you were headed. this also allowed for excellent dodging abilities that again, scaled quite well with skill. I just don't what this adds to gameplay that bunnyhopping hasn't already perfected after a couple of decades of a tried and tested system, existing in the large majority of competitive games, most HL1 / HL2 mods, every id and COD game... I just don't understand the point of reinventing a square wheel.
High skill ceiling was never an issue, low accessibility was imo.
Nothing wrong in trying to create a new skill based movement mechanic either as long as you know you've got your work cut out for you.
Kinda makes me wish actual wall hopping was brought back a little, with more impact, no more of this "falling mechanic"
Then it boiled down to maybe 20-40 minutes of turtling in Cafe on 1 RT. Aliens probably lost 20-30 Onos in that time, marines had not many casualties.
We tried everything to push out, but Bar was too heavily fortified with constant Onos support and Terminal was not pushed hard enough.
I then saved up for ARCs long enough to take down Locker Rooms in a surprise assault from Courtyard, but we were not able to push in and aliens got it back up. ARCs got taken down. Ninja PG in Maintenance managed to take down Generator too eventually, but we couldn't hold that either.
Eventually a combination of a second ARC push plus marines going through Back Alley got us Locker Rooms, so we could finally get a second CC up and aliens conceded close to 90 minutes. But damn, we should have lost that one, given how their Lerks and Fades seemed nearly unkillable and I was often lacking armor in the early game.
Anyway. The Biomass-System is a straight upgrade to the normal NS2. Wish this would be implemented. For the rest I need more time to play it. But keep up the good work. It's really fantastic!
It isn't even intuitive. As this rule was introduced, many people wondered, why you can't continue to build this armory. Just because the infestation creeped to it while building.
Get rid of this rule. It is enough that you need power.
So here's my thoughts:
Ninja PGs are the best change ever, don't listen to the naysayers, screw consistency, this change alone makes marine play 10 times more aggressive and interesting. Alien map control is through the roof with the amazing map movement speed of skulks and fades and ninja PGs give them a way to make up for that. If aliens let marines get through to a strategic position then they're going to have a phase up and don't need to give their position away by killing cysts. If anything I'd like to see a slight res cost reduction for PGs to make up for their new frailty, or alternatively some new mechanic so that you're not 100% doomed once there's 2 skulks on a phase and you get minced the second you phase through.
Phantom didn't seem overpowered, it's more like 'silence with a slight stealth perk' than anything super powerful. Very thematic though with buffed celerity I still don't see it being a popular 1st hive choice. Still much better than having separate cloak/silence though.
Skulking is really fun but the lack of air control hurts even when you're moving at regular speeds. I really like the 'truck drifting' mechanic when you're going super fast but I'd like a little more control back when you're not hopping for speed. There are some issues where map design can seriously impact your usefulness as a skulk - playing on Descent was a nightmare with all the bits of random architecture to bump into and some of the stairs are just impossible to hop down because they're too steep and you end up hitting the door frame at the bottom.
Lerk feels just perfect to me, it's always been my favourite lifeform and it's super responsive, spores and umbra are massively more usable thanks to the new launch pattern and they probably benefit the most from biomass +HP which makes them much more lategame viable.
Fading is excellent though blink feels a teensy bit too expensive in terms of adren cost, I could live with it though given how strong blinkhopping is.
I didn't go onos all night so no comment there other than we seemed to kill a lot as marines, I put that down to marines sticking together and focus firing better than on most pub servers.
Not much to say about marines except that 15 res JPs feels more reasonable, but marines also feel like they're at a noticable early game disadvantage due to the speed disparity; with that said, most of the games I played were in the 10-14 player region which is naturally a little more alien friendly and once the server filled up aliens got a good stomping in a 9v9 game. I'd like to try making welders cheaper just for personal reasons (the old 'paying pres to heal other people isn't fun' argument) and I think that it wouldn't have a negative impact on balance.
I had an annoying bug where my weapon/adrenaline indicator disappeared from time to time, the only mod I'm running is a custom xhair so I can't imagine that's what caused it.
Overall I had more fun in 1 evening of playing NS2 BT than I've had playing regular NS2 since Gorgeous came out. There's definitely teething issues there but the game just feels more like NS should be and I would personally be 100% happy for the current mod to go live.
doesn't the sentry already build on infestation? it's not a new elephant.
i believe it might be to stop exploits like dropping armory/robotics infront of alien-controlled vents/doorway. not to mention slight balance issues if you could easily drop an armory at arms length while assaulting a hive.
however, there may be a problem with 'power free' phase gates in that you could drop 3 x PG's in the same room while attacking a hive and it has the same effect as a PG with 300% hp. perhaps it would be wise to limit PG to one per room.
it might be less intuitive, but it buys an awesome gameplay improvement. stick the new building parameters into the commander tooltips, no problem.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in full support of making the infestation and power node mechanics less restrictive. Phase gates are of particular note for this, but that doesn't mean it should be specialized to that structure. If one structure can be built on infestation, they all should be able to be.
See Tarquin's post for why there's a good reason to not allow all building to take place on infestation.
Also I fully support the 1 PG per room idea, I hadn't considered that but it sounds potentially somewhat abusable and I can see very few other reasons why it would be needed.
remember that it's only 'unintuitive' for the commander. the majority of players in a game will never attempt to place a building on infestation, therefore won't be snatched out of their illusion of consistency by a "you can't do that because meh" message.
so far, still quite enjoying the armory change
love the new phantom ability, shade has been my favorite tree for awhile and I hope this has more khamms using it.
i like the phase gate change as it allows us as marines to do surprising things.
(to me the rules for the gates make sense, utilizing space-time technology to allow marines to travel instantaneously from one gate to another.
further refinement of this technology allows the gates to be quantum connected thereby powering them, unfortunately this tech is too expensive to be used on all structures.
Marine R&D also came up with an experimental tech that attached micro burners to the base of the PG to clear away infestation directly underneath.
The PG was chosen for these developments as it was the most logical choice due to is mobility enhancing properties.)
unfortunately the games i played were rather short so i didn't get to fully play with everything new, but i still had a lot of fun on both sides.
Keep up the good work Sewlek!
Hope you also take a look at sentries, they could really use some love to become a viable tech path again and as it stands I feel they are simply horribly overnerfed. Bring back gas blocking them if need be, that was a pretty great mechanic. IMO the biggest issue is that they immediately become redundant at 2 hives because of bilebomb and the ridiculously close proximity they have to be built next to the unintuitive sentry battery. (Why not just attach them to power nodes?)
I still think that marines should be able to build anything on infestation, I did not like that change when it was made in the beta, and it would also fix some of the cyst spam issues.
-Structures built on infestation get only build at half speed and are lacking armor, so a ninja PG on infestation would be even faster to take down than a regular one and gives the aliens more time to notice and react.
-The temporary powering of structures through a commander ability as mentioned above seems really interesting. It would add the bonus that the current PG changes were adding (being able to still rescue a base if just the power in it went down instead of the PG; being able to get a ninja PG up in a Hive area) while costing the marines more resources to maintain (and so they can eventually run out of res for it). Cost, duration and cooldown are open for experimenting with the balance.
-Sentry Batteries need to be placed outside of a minimum range to other Batteries, to prevent the rather weird cross-room setups of 6 sentries in a location. After all this seems more like an unintended exploit than a real feature.
I honestly think Sentries themselves are in a pretty good spot now. I use them quite a lot in the lategame and there have been numerous times already where Sentries payed for themselves. Got an Onos killed with Sentries yesterday which might have escaped otherwise. They killed countless solo Lerks and Skulks who would attempt to harass our bases while the rest of the team was going for a push and who always forced me to pull my team away from a forward push. They also make the difference between "lone Skulk keeps walking into my base to chew on stuff" and "lone Skulk doesn't dare to enter because he takes damage as soon as he walks in front of the door".
And during a final onslaught of aliens onto our Atrium base with Onos, Gorges and everything, Sentries managed to kill a Skulk on the Power Node (while the Onos and Lerks kept my team busy) in the last second before it would go down, basically saving the day at that point and allowing us to turn the game around after that.
-Lerk Spikes drain slightly more of the Lerk's energy per shot.
-Welder cost reduced to 3 res. I currently find them way underused, even with the removal of armor healing, and when I buy one, I feel like I gimp myself against higher lifeforms (less res for shotguns and jetpacks) and won't be able to get much else later on.
If there could be a way to require all other tech before sentries could be researched (yes, add a research as well), I'd be a happy man. They could use a buff then to reflect the fact they'll only come out late game.