PLEASE please please: NO DEVOUR for vanilla NS2!!!!!!!
Roobubba
Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
I am a huge fan of NS and NS2. I love the game, and I have stated before and will repeat here, that NS2 is my favourite game of all time.
There have been rumours flying about on the forums and on the servers about a possible comeback of devour. I know that there's some implementation of it in the combat mod: I think this is a horrible mistake in principle, but haven't yet had to endure it when I've played combat - and I only really use combat as a way to warm up and relax without having to focus too hard on strategy.
The rest of this post is about ANY possibility, whether it's impending or just a twinkle in UWE's eye, of devour returning to vanilla NS2.
PLEASE do not ruin the public gaming experience by putting devour in!!!
(I recognise here that in comp games, 3 hives + onos doesn't really happen, as the game is won well before that point. If 3 hive oni are potentially going to be more commonplace in pubs (looking at the BT mod here), then it's not the case that most games will be conceded before devour rears its ugly head)
I can live with stomp, I don't mind it because there's a very real and frequent chance of you getting up again, and it's not a very long time being taken out of action. But devour in NS1 was what felt like 5 minutes of having to sit staring at some screen, and probably only making out alive in maybe <1% of cases. If you're going to have an instakill ability, make it insta-kill and don't deny me gaming time, please!
If you have no intention of bringing devour to NS2, I would be hugely grateful for official confirmation of this so that I can sleep easy that my favourite game won't be tainted with this godawful mechanic in the future!
Allow me to finish repeating what I started with: I LOVE ns2 - I think what you've achieved is remarkable, and I care about the longevity of the game. I have spent a lot of time since launch playing it, I've bought copies for steam friends, I've publicised on social media and elsewhere about the game. This post is slightly selfish, because I recognise that not everyone will feel so strongly about devour as I do, but I didn't pipe up in NS1 when it was introduced, and I regret that now as it turned out to be the biggest mistake in NS1 development history in my opinion.
There have been rumours flying about on the forums and on the servers about a possible comeback of devour. I know that there's some implementation of it in the combat mod: I think this is a horrible mistake in principle, but haven't yet had to endure it when I've played combat - and I only really use combat as a way to warm up and relax without having to focus too hard on strategy.
The rest of this post is about ANY possibility, whether it's impending or just a twinkle in UWE's eye, of devour returning to vanilla NS2.
PLEASE do not ruin the public gaming experience by putting devour in!!!
(I recognise here that in comp games, 3 hives + onos doesn't really happen, as the game is won well before that point. If 3 hive oni are potentially going to be more commonplace in pubs (looking at the BT mod here), then it's not the case that most games will be conceded before devour rears its ugly head)
I can live with stomp, I don't mind it because there's a very real and frequent chance of you getting up again, and it's not a very long time being taken out of action. But devour in NS1 was what felt like 5 minutes of having to sit staring at some screen, and probably only making out alive in maybe <1% of cases. If you're going to have an instakill ability, make it insta-kill and don't deny me gaming time, please!
If you have no intention of bringing devour to NS2, I would be hugely grateful for official confirmation of this so that I can sleep easy that my favourite game won't be tainted with this godawful mechanic in the future!
Allow me to finish repeating what I started with: I LOVE ns2 - I think what you've achieved is remarkable, and I care about the longevity of the game. I have spent a lot of time since launch playing it, I've bought copies for steam friends, I've publicised on social media and elsewhere about the game. This post is slightly selfish, because I recognise that not everyone will feel so strongly about devour as I do, but I didn't pipe up in NS1 when it was introduced, and I regret that now as it turned out to be the biggest mistake in NS1 development history in my opinion.
Comments
As you stated, one was that players where taken out of the action for to long. This shouldn't happen again. If devoured, the time until you respawn should be the same as if you would have been normally killed. Just that you look at this belly instead of the 3rd-person spectator.
I also don't mind, that it is an insta-kill. Because if you happen to be the target of an onos, you will die anyway in 90% of the cases if he reaches you.
It also is balance-able by slowing the onos down while he is digesting. He could regenerate energy in this time faster. Maybe also it would only be possible to swallow wounded marines, so it isn't a real insta-kill ability.
There are many possible ways to make it a fun and unique addition to the game without repeating the old failures that were made.
If devour comes to classic, there is a very high probability that I will simply uninstall.
When an Onos eats you and you sit in his belly. When this happens you type "kill" in the console so that you can actually respawn.
In NS1, devour was an attack that swallowed a marine (including Heavy Amour marines), and after a timer, something like 30s but I really can't remember, in fact was this linked to the marine's health?, the marine was killed. The marine had a picture of the inside of an onos on screen, but could hear things going on outside the onos. If marines managed to kill the onos before the swallowed marine died, the marine was saved and would reappear. I think I saw this happen once.
I acknowledged this in my post, and explained why. My post is a pre-emptive plea not to include devour in vanilla ns2, which is what I said quite clearly.
As long as that stays the case, it's fine, but I wanted to register my opposition now to any ideas of devour making it into vanilla in the future!
As far as combat goes, I would prefer it without onos and exos, but that's a matter for another thread entirely!
This picture popped up on NS2's Facebook page recently.
As you can see, it is not the standard devour screen that we see in combat but instead something that more production value went into. And it shows the minimap of Summit in the corner, which looks different in it's Combat version.
The bigger question is then:
Due to the reasons for its removal, what has changed that allows it to be in combat but not normal?
The trouble here is that sometimes you can spawn pretty quickly, or it can take a while. So should it be the shortest possible spawn time (and then join the spawn queue if there is a longer wait at that time)? In that case, it would only be a few seconds, and how likely would it be to be saved? It's a valid argument to say that any chance of being saved might be better than no chance, I suppose.
I wouldn't have a problem with an instakill - or instakill equivalent - function, provided it's suitably balanced, and the minimum prerequisites there would be: a) no increase in down-time for the victim and b) suitable energy requirements and/or cooldown of the ability (there has to be some trade-off for a 1 shot kill ability!)
I just want to note caution with the words fun and unique. It's of course good to have 'fun' as a target in a computer game, but this also has to be balanced by not being unduly unfun for the other team.
I of course object to the 30s sat staring at nothing, not able to look around at the game, spectate my teammates, keep up to date with the current state of the game so I know precisely what to do when I spawn - those are the obvious drawbacks to being devoured, but I also find it difficult to see how to balance the ability to be reasonable for both teams.
Primal scream on the onos, for example, was a much better ability in my view: the large armoured beast giving out a visceral roar that buffed nearby aliens. This didn't take marines out of play directly, it also boosted teamwork more than devour (which could be used cleverly for the team, but was also just used a lot as 'trollololol i swallod u lolz' trolling rather than something used specifically in a push to finish the game.
There may be ways to balance devour such that it's fair to both teams. I just think there would be an equal or larger number of different possible abilities that could be more fun, better for teamwork, and at least just as unique.
PANIC!!!!!!!
PLEASE, UWE: DO NOT PUT DEVOUR IN NS2!
Effectivly adding up to 3-4 respawncycles before respawning as a marine.
Then again, if they make it realy fast and you dont spend more then a few secunds before dieing, it wouldnt be a problem.
It comes with a cost in combat, since it's a tier 3 ability. That means you have to invest 2 upgrade points into tier 2 Stomp first and then another 2 to get Devour. Those points could have been invested into at least 2 more traits like Carapace, Regeneration, Adrenaline and Celerity that would increase the Onos' chance of survival. The Onos itself costs 5 upgrade points as well and you have a maximum of 13 at the highest rank in Combat, so if you go for Devour you can only spend 4 more points on other traits.
Also, you can only have 1 Onos per 6 players on the team in Combat, so there is some built-in protection that prevents the entire team from going Onos and just insta-killing the entire marine team as soon as they spawn.
Those balancing mechanics are not available in vanilla NS2. Once Devour would be researched, every Onos could use it without having a disadvantage from a lost alternative choice. And everyone on a team could go Onos at the same time, allowing to just keep the entire enemy team swallowed at a time.
The only general balancing aspect of Devour is that it also takes 1/2 - 1/3 of the Onos' energy per attack attempt, making it harder for it to escape again. But it's quite effective if you pick off marines out of nowhere with a camouflaged Onos and then run away before the rest of the team even realizes what's going on.
On the subject of combat they should remove exos / onos / flame throwers / gl and all the other non standard gubbins
Thats only why ice tested his model in vanilla (as a view model replacement for the axe), thats much faster then including it in combat for testing,
SO CALM DOWN.
If I would test a combat map in vanilla, would you then think thats a normal vanilla map, only why theres no combat interface ???
As far as complaining about Devour... allow the marine to axe his way out. This lets an Onos grab a high value marine target (somebody with a jetpack and an advanced weapon) and charge them away from their comrades so they can be taken out with ease and their weapon removed from play. While the Onos has a target devoured, make it unable to attack while receiving extra regeneration. This should allow the Onos to bring the target at least one room away. To prevent it from being abused to troll, make it deal damage to the marine inside the belly of the Onos, in case of a single player being devoured multiple times (so that you can be devoured no more than twice).
After all of that, it still won't stop people from F4'ing and rejoining or suiciding.
Bone wall isn't ready, yet, so why not give the Onos another hit and run ability?
And it is 30 seconds max, most of the time it was way shorter than that. For me, it was clearly more fun on the marine side than the alien side.
Firstly it was really hard to devour for I don't know what reason, but it always failed hard for me. Secondly, like I stated in the previous topic, it was fun being in the stomach of the onos, you could hear your friends trying to save you, and it added a lot of tension, are you going to be rescued or not... and the hope faded away the more the sound of bullets detonations was fading away...
Same when one of your friend was taken, it was like a mini game to rescue him.
"Oh noes, we have to take him down to bring back our friend"
*Onos down*
"Yeaaaaah, welcome home brother!"
*Skulk chomp*
"Well... not for long".
Now, you might say this is a huge disadvantage for the onos since they will die. I disagree. The point of the onos is that he's a tank. He absorbs hit points for the other aliens. This forces a single marine, hopefully a dangerous one, to shoot the onos and only the onos and is also a guaranteed kill.
It just balances out that incredible power by forcing the onos to run away and heal right after devouring, something onoses usually do anyway. It's also much more satisfying and fun for the marine being devoured, especially on those rare occasions the onos screws up and the marine blasts his way out from inside of the onos' guts!
Onoses aren't the tanks everyone pretends they are. Even 3 people focus firing will kill an Onos incredibly fast.
Stomp is a very very well designed ability for the Onos. It directly removes their weaknesses - Marines can't dodge and jump away from you when you are close (faster killing = taking less damage), and you don't get shot at by others while dealing with one Marine as the others lie on the ground immobilized and you are safe for 3 seconds, it can even help you get away alive (stomp your group of pursuers - think jetpackers - and GTFO). Still, Stomp isn't overpowered, imba or not fun for Marines (if you added the ability for Marines to very slowly crouch around while stomped, it would be perfect as it gives them something to do).
Devour, on the other hand
Even in an empty room, just one devoured Marine could probably kill a full hp Onos on his own.
This sounds like an ability only a stupid player uses (once). No Onos in their right mind would use Devour.
And the idea of one guy being a "high value target" who others will fight for is pretty ridiculous for NS2 (sorry, but WHO expects this to happen?), unless Onoses can devour Exos - which would be ridiculous on its own.
TLDR:
Stomp is an excellently designed ability and is absolutely fine,
Devour sounds stupid and even counterproductive,
NS2 isn't NS1 and UWE should not feel like they retroactively have to "fix" NS1 by moving it's abilities to NS2 even if NS2 has had much better alternatives right from the start.
I personally loved devour, never understood what all the QQ was about. Being in an onos's stomach and hearing all these sounds outside, your buddies trying to save you etc was pretty memorable. Also NS was a much slower game than NS 2 is, so claiming that this 'slow death' somehow contrasted with the fast-paced combat of it all is nonsense.
Anyway, much ado about nothing, it's exclusively for the combat mod and simply wouldn't work for NS 2 the way it worked for NS1.
You bring up an important fact I completely forgot about. Heavy Armor players were the biggest nuisance in NS1... welding each other and firing HMGs into the poor alien players....
The Onos is eventually going to get a third ability. I just hope it's one that makes it possible for them to fight a dual gun Exo.
Why isn't the 75 res enough of a balance?
Ex. SGs insta-kill skulks (even with cara) and only cost res, Railgun exos insta-kill skulks (and almost insta-kill almost every other lifeform) and only cost res (besides the standard exo draw-backs). Both of these cost less than 75 res and (barring standard exo drawbacks) have no other excessive drawbacks.
I also want to be able to use handgrenades while in a onos, all of them, at once.
Hilarity ensues.