Lol, useful as a distraction/armor boost - that's about it.
They work OK as free AFK DPS also, if we've just cleared a room I'll put the babblers on the power node a lot of times.
And the armor boost isn't anything to laugh at, it's their primary purpose and it can make a significant difference early game :O (well, significant when you consider they cost a mere 1-2 p-res)
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things. It makes them very clunky feeling and reduces the amount of opportunities you get it use them (you really can't drop them in or shortly before combat, they just take an agonizingly long time to deploy with the drop delays and the build time for the eggs) I don't want to stare at my babbler egg for a full second before I can drop my 2nd one. Same wit clogs (which are still completely broken ).
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Better question is how many people posting in this thread play gorge on a regular basis?
I mostly play fade, so I haven't really played enough gorge to figure out where and when babblers are effective, just as I don't have really good knowledge of the best placement of clogs or hydras. However, I've seen some good gorge players do some amazing things with clogs and hydras. The same is true for babblers.
Lol, useful as a distraction/armor boost - that's about it.
They work OK as free AFK DPS also, if we've just cleared a room I'll put the babblers on the power node a lot of times.
The only issue with free DPS is that it cost you time and energy (heal/slide energy) to build the babblers when you could have been doing ~60 DPS for 5 seconds with spit instead.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited April 2013
Grumpy suggestion thing for babblers:
Reduce babbler egging time to nothing (why even have an egg). Rework bait ball thing to be a projectile. Have babblers quickly follow and attach themselves. Allow for a way for gorges to accurately and promptly attach babblers to an alien.
I don't understand why babblers and the bait ball are so slow and retarded. I imagined a bait ball to work like a parasite really, where a gorge can quickly attach their babblers to an alien more than half a meter apart from you. It lands, babblers either go to the location or attach to the alien quickly. No waiting for the babblers to hatch, waiting for them to catch up and then no asking someone to stand still for a few seconds while you fiddle around with a yellow balloon.
Lol, useful as a distraction/armor boost - that's about it.
They work OK as free AFK DPS also, if we've just cleared a room I'll put the babblers on the power node a lot of times.
And the armor boost isn't anything to laugh at, it's their primary purpose and it can make a significant difference early game :O (well, significant when you consider they cost a mere 1-2 p-res)
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things. It makes them very clunky feeling and reduces the amount of opportunities you get it use them (you really can't drop them in or shortly before combat, they just take an agonizingly long time to deploy with the drop delays and the build time for the eggs) I don't want to stare at my babbler egg for a full second before I can drop my 2nd one. Same wit clogs (which are still completely broken ).
It makes somewhat sense for Clogs to prevent Gorges from replacing them faster than marines can tear them down, but for something that costs res and thus has a built-in limit is there no real reason for the delay.
What if I want to keep my Babblers for attacking? Never healspray anyone during combat? My team will love it…
Why not make it so that spitting on a friendly alien will make them latch onto it instead? Spitting on the ground below you will make them latch onto you.
That could work. Whatever the specifics, the core idea is that the gorge player is in direct and tighter control of the babblers, and their effectiveness is tied to the player's skill.
AurOn2COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS!AustraliaJoin Date: 2012-01-13Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
Somewhat useful
But only against idiots who think they are an actual threat.
They've saved my life on countless occasions
So there are countless idiots.
I have developed a sophisticated defense strategy against Babblers: /ignore
Whenever I see Babblers, I kill the Gorge and go away...
Works fine for me.
Better question is how many people posting in this thread play gorge on a regular basis?
I mostly play fade, so I haven't really played enough gorge to figure out where and when babblers are effective, just as I don't have really good knowledge of the best placement of clogs or hydras. However, I've seen some good gorge players do some amazing things with clogs and hydras. The same is true for babblers.
I play gorge alot.
Babblers are good stuff. Especially if you're at a newly dropped hive and aliens are bouncing back for health, it's worth dropping two eggs and heal spraying them at the same time as the hive and then giving them to another alien who then runs off and attacks. Or if I'm clogging up an area and an alien comes for healing, I'll give them babblers. And they're useful when sneak attacking a base to babbler yourself before attacking. 150 armor can sometimes be the difference between surviving long enough to kill the power and dying for nothing.
Some dumb marines see a babbler and assume there's an undefended gorge out there. To which skulks then ambush and nom him. Cheap form of bait.
There are also a fair number of vents where you can not only hydra/bile from but send your babblers out to do damage. Much better to lose babblers then dying yourself. Marines focus on the babblers while you bile everything to death from the relative safety of a vent.
Babblers BY THEMSELVES are garbage. But babblers in coordination with other life forms can be useful.
Most useless feature ever put into a game. Below utterly useless, and I challenge anyone to find anything worse.
1 babbler can set off 3 mines or more.
So 1/3 of a res to take out 15? That's darn useful.
1 bilebomb can take out all the mines in the area and 0 res to take 15-45 res THAT's darn useful...
And if you don't have bilebomb, spit does the trick aswell but not as fast.....
Better question is how many people posting in this thread play gorge on a regular basis?
I mostly play fade, so I haven't really played enough gorge to figure out where and when babblers are effective, just as I don't have really good knowledge of the best placement of clogs or hydras. However, I've seen some good gorge players do some amazing things with clogs and hydras. The same is true for babblers.
i wouldn't say i play gorge on a regular basis, but mostly because i play what's needed. generally speaking, an extra 'above average skilled' skulk/lerk/fade player is far more valuable than an extra 'above average skilled' gorge player.
you can defend/delay a chokepoint against 2-3 marines quite easily, assuming the marines give you 25 minutes to place your fussy clogs. you don't want your 3:1 skulk players filling that gorge role.
i think a lot of people hoped that babblers would have more potential, therefore giving the gorge a greater skill ceiling. but they just turned out to be a mobile hydra, which are about as effective as inflatable water wings when actually IN COMBAT.
Most useless feature ever put into a game. Below utterly useless, and I challenge anyone to find anything worse.
1 babbler can set off 3 mines or more.
So 1/3 of a res to take out 15? That's darn useful.
1 bilebomb can take out all the mines in the area and 0 res to take 15-45 res THAT's darn useful...
And if you don't have bilebomb, spit does the trick aswell but not as fast.....
But that requires energy. And a babbler can set them off faster.
generally speaking, an extra 'above average skilled' skulk/lerk/fade player is far more valuable than an extra 'above average skilled' gorge player.
you can defend/delay a chokepoint against 2-3 marines quite easily, assuming the marines give you 25 minutes to place your fussy clogs. you don't want your 3:1 skulk players filling that gorge role.
i think a lot of people hoped that babblers would have more potential, therefore giving the gorge a greater skill ceiling. but they just turned out to be a mobile hydra, which are about as effective as inflatable water wings when actually IN COMBAT.
Depends. Late game above average skilled gorge player can do more damage to marine bases then a fade could ever hope to. Plus an above average skilled gorge player with a just okay fade player can make that fade far more dangerous with accurate bile bombing. Squads of no armor marines are easy pickings. Especially if that gorge puts 150 more armor on that Fade. And you only really need about a minute to create a defense capable of holding off 2~3 marines in many areas. I remember on Tram I was able to entirely lock up the entrance from Logistics to Repair in 30 seconds with Hydras with the new clog placement thus bottling marines up in Shipping. Before it would take less than 15 seconds to lock things down.
Babblers themselves are pretty garbage. But they are useful supplements to other classes.
somewhat useful - I like it when a gorge attaches them to me and gives me that extra armor, but as for attacking players they are really nothing but an annoyance.. but if they were too strong then I think it'd be an issue
Also I'm not sure how much damage they do to structures but they can cause you to head over to an RT thinking it's a skulk (until you hear babblers of course) and assuming there was no scan done
They're SORT of useful, if used right in small battles they can turn the tide very effectively (eg. 2v2 marinesVskulks), all those little things hopping infront of your vision makes it noticeably harder to hit skulks, even if they don't actually take any shots.
They're SORT of useful, if used right in small battles they can turn the tide very effectively (eg. 2v2 marinesVskulks), all those little things hopping infront of your vision makes it noticeably harder to hit skulks, even if they don't actually take any shots.
Again...SORT of useful.
not even, 2 decent marines would just kill the skulk then kill the gorge for free.
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things.
This was done for a very good reason.
Without a delay an average gorge was able to permanently block a passageway in our PT games, and could do so indefinitely if a shift was nearby (hello alien turtle?) two gorges doing this was insane.
What many forget was that the previous mechanic had a built in delay, requiring pressing 2, then 2, then mouse click - which had an inherent delay with each selection no matter how fast the user was. This artificial delay was meant to mimic that timing. Its close but not perfect. 25% less would do it I think.
also the not being able to place clogs where you want really hampers things. also, it doesn't mimic it even slightly, I'd say make the delay duration 25 percent of what it is now would mimic the time it takes to hit 2 twice and click.
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things.
This was done for a very good reason.
Without a delay an average gorge was able to permanently block a passageway in our PT games, and could do so indefinitely if a shift was nearby (hello alien turtle?) two gorges doing this was insane.
What many forget was that the previous mechanic had a built in delay, requiring pressing 2, then 2, then mouse click - which had an inherent delay with each selection no matter how fast the user was. This artificial delay was meant to mimic that timing. Its close but not perfect. 25% less would do it I think.
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things.
This was done for a very good reason.
Without a delay an average gorge was able to permanently block a passageway in our PT games, and could do so indefinitely if a shift was nearby (hello alien turtle?) two gorges doing this was insane.
What many forget was that the previous mechanic had a built in delay, requiring pressing 2, then 2, then mouse click - which had an inherent delay with each selection no matter how fast the user was. This artificial delay was meant to mimic that timing. Its close but not perfect. 25% less would do it I think.
Maybe all the playtesters just suck.
I was LITERALLY about to reply to this guy, "How are you not banned yet?!" and then I noticed his avatar is gone and he is banned, lol!
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things.
This was done for a very good reason.
Without a delay an average gorge was able to permanently block a passageway in our PT games, and could do so indefinitely if a shift was nearby (hello alien turtle?) two gorges doing this was insane.
What many forget was that the previous mechanic had a built in delay, requiring pressing 2, then 2, then mouse click - which had an inherent delay with each selection no matter how fast the user was. This artificial delay was meant to mimic that timing. Its close but not perfect. 25% less would do it I think.
Maybe all the playtesters just suck.
I was LITERALLY about to reply to this guy, "How are you not banned yet?!" and then I noticed his avatar is gone and he is banned, lol!
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
edited April 2013
While his posts don't warrant a response, I can address the general concern of pt skill :
Despite the intentionally varied skill levels amongst our team, (from top comp teams to pub stars) It doesn't take skill to organize a firing squad of five marines concentrating fire on one clog in a testing environment. ;-)
Clogs are about as useless as they have ever been. The only thing they are good at is meat-shielding RTs and upgrades. so I don't really care that much about the timing for those. But you used to be able to put up your wall in probably half the time it takes now. (loller mountain goat physics)
I do think in terms of babblers their energy cost, the build time of the eggs, and the drop delay severely limits their useful-ness outside of pre-meditated scenarios where you already have them deployed. These things seem overly harsh considering their limited function and the fact that they are a p-res ability. Also another minor pet peeve is how tedious the bait ball is to use. Even just trying to give them to team mates as armor is a process that often requires me saying over mic "hold on, can you stop moving for a sec so I can actually hit you with this bait ball?".
Comments
They work OK as free AFK DPS also, if we've just cleared a room I'll put the babblers on the power node a lot of times.
And the armor boost isn't anything to laugh at, it's their primary purpose and it can make a significant difference early game :O (well, significant when you consider they cost a mere 1-2 p-res)
My only pet peeve with them (and really with all gorge abilities) is that stupid built in delay while dropping things. It makes them very clunky feeling and reduces the amount of opportunities you get it use them (you really can't drop them in or shortly before combat, they just take an agonizingly long time to deploy with the drop delays and the build time for the eggs) I don't want to stare at my babbler egg for a full second before I can drop my 2nd one. Same wit clogs (which are still completely broken
I mostly play fade, so I haven't really played enough gorge to figure out where and when babblers are effective, just as I don't have really good knowledge of the best placement of clogs or hydras. However, I've seen some good gorge players do some amazing things with clogs and hydras. The same is true for babblers.
The only issue with free DPS is that it cost you time and energy (heal/slide energy) to build the babblers when you could have been doing ~60 DPS for 5 seconds with spit instead.
Reduce babbler egging time to nothing (why even have an egg). Rework bait ball thing to be a projectile. Have babblers quickly follow and attach themselves. Allow for a way for gorges to accurately and promptly attach babblers to an alien.
I don't understand why babblers and the bait ball are so slow and retarded. I imagined a bait ball to work like a parasite really, where a gorge can quickly attach their babblers to an alien more than half a meter apart from you. It lands, babblers either go to the location or attach to the alien quickly. No waiting for the babblers to hatch, waiting for them to catch up and then no asking someone to stand still for a few seconds while you fiddle around with a yellow balloon.
They're cute though.
It makes somewhat sense for Clogs to prevent Gorges from replacing them faster than marines can tear them down, but for something that costs res and thus has a built-in limit is there no real reason for the delay.
That could work. Whatever the specifics, the core idea is that the gorge player is in direct and tighter control of the babblers, and their effectiveness is tied to the player's skill.
Yeah but the entire game is one giant delay so gg.
But only against idiots who think they are an actual threat.
They've saved my life on countless occasions
So there are countless idiots.
Whenever I see Babblers, I kill the Gorge and go away...
Works fine for me.
I play gorge alot.
Babblers are good stuff. Especially if you're at a newly dropped hive and aliens are bouncing back for health, it's worth dropping two eggs and heal spraying them at the same time as the hive and then giving them to another alien who then runs off and attacks. Or if I'm clogging up an area and an alien comes for healing, I'll give them babblers. And they're useful when sneak attacking a base to babbler yourself before attacking. 150 armor can sometimes be the difference between surviving long enough to kill the power and dying for nothing.
Some dumb marines see a babbler and assume there's an undefended gorge out there. To which skulks then ambush and nom him. Cheap form of bait.
There are also a fair number of vents where you can not only hydra/bile from but send your babblers out to do damage. Much better to lose babblers then dying yourself. Marines focus on the babblers while you bile everything to death from the relative safety of a vent.
Babblers BY THEMSELVES are garbage. But babblers in coordination with other life forms can be useful.
1 babbler can set off 3 mines or more.
So 1/3 of a res to take out 15? That's darn useful.
1 bilebomb can take out all the mines in the area and 0 res to take 15-45 res THAT's darn useful...
And if you don't have bilebomb, spit does the trick aswell but not as fast.....
I think Locklear hit the nail on the head with "useful as a distraction/armor boost - that's about it."
i wouldn't say i play gorge on a regular basis, but mostly because i play what's needed. generally speaking, an extra 'above average skilled' skulk/lerk/fade player is far more valuable than an extra 'above average skilled' gorge player.
you can defend/delay a chokepoint against 2-3 marines quite easily, assuming the marines give you 25 minutes to place your fussy clogs. you don't want your 3:1 skulk players filling that gorge role.
i think a lot of people hoped that babblers would have more potential, therefore giving the gorge a greater skill ceiling. but they just turned out to be a mobile hydra, which are about as effective as inflatable water wings when actually IN COMBAT.
But that requires energy. And a babbler can set them off faster.
Depends. Late game above average skilled gorge player can do more damage to marine bases then a fade could ever hope to. Plus an above average skilled gorge player with a just okay fade player can make that fade far more dangerous with accurate bile bombing. Squads of no armor marines are easy pickings. Especially if that gorge puts 150 more armor on that Fade. And you only really need about a minute to create a defense capable of holding off 2~3 marines in many areas. I remember on Tram I was able to entirely lock up the entrance from Logistics to Repair in 30 seconds with Hydras with the new clog placement thus bottling marines up in Shipping. Before it would take less than 15 seconds to lock things down.
Babblers themselves are pretty garbage. But they are useful supplements to other classes.
Also I'm not sure how much damage they do to structures but they can cause you to head over to an RT thinking it's a skulk (until you hear babblers of course) and assuming there was no scan done
Again...SORT of useful.
not even, 2 decent marines would just kill the skulk then kill the gorge for free.
This was done for a very good reason.
Without a delay an average gorge was able to permanently block a passageway in our PT games, and could do so indefinitely if a shift was nearby (hello alien turtle?) two gorges doing this was insane.
What many forget was that the previous mechanic had a built in delay, requiring pressing 2, then 2, then mouse click - which had an inherent delay with each selection no matter how fast the user was. This artificial delay was meant to mimic that timing. Its close but not perfect. 25% less would do it I think.
Maybe all the playtesters just suck.
I was LITERALLY about to reply to this guy, "How are you not banned yet?!" and then I noticed his avatar is gone and he is banned, lol!
I've been wondering this for awhile myself...
Despite the intentionally varied skill levels amongst our team, (from top comp teams to pub stars) It doesn't take skill to organize a firing squad of five marines concentrating fire on one clog in a testing environment. ;-)
I do think in terms of babblers their energy cost, the build time of the eggs, and the drop delay severely limits their useful-ness outside of pre-meditated scenarios where you already have them deployed. These things seem overly harsh considering their limited function and the fact that they are a p-res ability. Also another minor pet peeve is how tedious the bait ball is to use. Even just trying to give them to team mates as armor is a process that often requires me saying over mic "hold on, can you stop moving for a sec so I can actually hit you with this bait ball?".