Last Stand suggestions
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Join Date: 2013-01-03 Member: 177320Members
Join Date: 2013-01-03 Member: 177320Members
I really like the look of this mod. Looks like a nice side-game blast every once in a while.
Obviously it's in a really early stage but here's a few thing I noticed after watching ten minutes of footage:
1) The most obvious: would you pick a skulk instead of a bile bombing gorge? Well with some team coordination perhaps but I cannot help but feel there should be some sort of points system. If you forgo the two best options you get after a couple of deaths, perhaps you will have saved up enough for an Onos at the end
2) Hugh said he didn't mind dying as an alien because you instantly respawn - that's fine. However, if I heard that guitar sound where it says 30 seconds left, and I was a biling gorge or something, I would instantly kill myself so I can respawn as a fully upgraded fade or something. You could end up with an entire fade team or something, at that point.
Will post more as I think of stuff.
Edits:
The link to watch what I am talking about: http://www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2/b/393114664
3) Something about the jetpacks you guys were discussing: If you don't want guys getting to unreasonably high positions, rather than remove them completely, or cut off the map more (which would restrict alien ambushes from the flanks), could you try halving the jetpack's fuel? I don't know - something to consider.
Obviously it's in a really early stage but here's a few thing I noticed after watching ten minutes of footage:
1) The most obvious: would you pick a skulk instead of a bile bombing gorge? Well with some team coordination perhaps but I cannot help but feel there should be some sort of points system. If you forgo the two best options you get after a couple of deaths, perhaps you will have saved up enough for an Onos at the end
2) Hugh said he didn't mind dying as an alien because you instantly respawn - that's fine. However, if I heard that guitar sound where it says 30 seconds left, and I was a biling gorge or something, I would instantly kill myself so I can respawn as a fully upgraded fade or something. You could end up with an entire fade team or something, at that point.
Will post more as I think of stuff.
Edits:
The link to watch what I am talking about: http://www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2/b/393114664
3) Something about the jetpacks you guys were discussing: If you don't want guys getting to unreasonably high positions, rather than remove them completely, or cut off the map more (which would restrict alien ambushes from the flanks), could you try halving the jetpack's fuel? I don't know - something to consider.
Comments
#2, I think simply removing any way aliens can suicide, other than marines killing them would solve most of that problem, but it's certainly not an easy issue to solve.
#3 Maybe limiting the range jetpacks can be activated from the shuttle, so at long distances they just fail. Or force the higher areas as alien only. I do like having some form of high areas as vertical play is a core part of ns2 and would be a shame to limit it so much.
Something I mentioned on stream chat is having a marine beacon activate on the last second or two, so the marines do actually survive when they win rather than just stand still glaring at fades/onos. Also getting the final kill while the beacon is blaring through the level would be quite an awesome experience.
Also Lerks can easily deal with the marines in weird locations or jetpack marines in general. The thing that balances this mod out is the fact that marines have a finite amount of resources and equipment, while aliens have unlimited supplies and their power ramps up the closer it gets to marine salvation (0:00)
The way I use the Bilebomb Gorge and Xeno Skulk is as a suicide rusher, just to wear down their Mine supply and keep them busy welding (armour/stationary EXO/turrets), while the others sweep up and do more damage. Just create chaos and do maximum damage, when we have an Onos, Fade or Lerk healing can be useful. But even those aliens are mostly used as "horde mode chaos causing cannon fodder" and that is fun for both marines and aliens.
If you as an alien can do the following:
- damage structures
- take out mines by biling or xenoing them or heck even walking over them if that causes more to explode, with you dying and respawning as something new and exciting :P
- wear down their ammo supply
- wear down their medkit supply
- cause loads of chaos in general
-- Basically anything you do that causes them to lose at least something or keeps them busy is good.
Jetpacks have fuel right now and will run out during end game when they are facing Onos. I'm not really a fan of this as it is an artificial limiter, works different from NS2 and jetpacks aren't a real problem anyways when the lerks roll out. I'd rather see a mapper controlled entity to have control over the spawn waves and equipment spawns.
The alien areas are quite dark so aliens have a huge advantage, especially with the instant/constant respawns
You could also ramp up the difficulty by requiring marines to manually trigger the beacon, once it comes available after the timer ran out. e.g. by getting into an evacuation zone or pressing a button(welding or constructing some thing) next to the dropship or whatever that triggers the beacon.
Tho this could be rather hard, since aliens will know this and will try to gather up around this position at the end of the round if you didnt manage to hold this area there it becomes next to impossible to sneak trough to press the button, especially without a jetpack.
The upside of the button, would be that you might not have to limit jetpacks(edit: okay maybe you still have to considering how long it takes to see lerks etc), and its not possible anymore to win the game by just running away or hiding.(You are a TSF marine, you shouldnt be hiding in a corner, right?) The timer doesn't save you magically, it will only allow you to trigger the winning condition for your team once it ran out.
Next i would change ammo packs into ammo crates or piles so instead of making ppl pick up all the packs lying around by accidentally running over them after reloading for 1 bullet, it would be an finite or infinite supply but at a place thats not super secure. (have you ever played left4dead? you get the idea)
Medpacks suffer from the same problem, its just annoying that some random guy just wastes all medpacks by running over them each time he got 1 damage. So that requires a solution as well.
But i guess you could also just make this stuff use the weapon pickup system instead, i know we are fans of quick and easy fixes instead of complex ones. (just depends if you have problems with all the crap spam on the floors or not, i kinda do - but i can live with it :P)
Btw. are there any hard limits to what lifeform combos can be out there at the same time? My very first idea for this gamemode is making the aliens write /kill to get the most potent combos.
So instead of just wasting time on suicide rushing with not too great picks i would just /kill spam around the timings when the good stuff gets available. (xeno skulks, lerks, fades)
All your suggestions actually came up but there wasn't time to test and implement them. I agree with all of them as well. Dushan and Steven were trying to add the beacon idea at the last seconds, it didn't make it in though :P
Killing yourself doesn't help, the lifeforms are timer based, so early game you will get Gorges and Skulks, then the Lerks come out and play, with Fades right behind and at the end game timer and Onos at the end of the countdown. And afaik they are are checking what is out in the field (not sure about that bit, but end game you're better off doing something then sitting in base constantly committing seppuku :P
its a server setting