Experienced players will be just as strong no matter what direction you take the game. The only way to change that is to make the game so easy to play that everyone could play almost perfectly. The simplest way to do that is increase the hp on all lifeforms and slow them down. This would remove the alien ability to dodge and avoid bullets. That way marines will be able to hit the aliens pretty well no matter what and everyone would be able to master the movement mechanics quite easily since they require less skill to use.
Good players depend on welding just like everyone else, its not like it affects some players more than others. Its just a poor argument for the issue. Its better to focus on gameplay facts.
that's like saying we should focus on pro marines who can aim well and pretend that everyone is the same...
oh wait... we already tried that and aliens won 90% of "fair" games in pubs
everything is situational. and the frequency of situations is different in different games
the metagame is completely different when you look at player skills and server size
the challenge is making "experience and skill" matter just as much for both sides
I have no doubt that we'll eventually arrive at some approximate 50% win-rate across various settings and configurations primarily through accidental balance
how long that process takes and how enjoyable the games are remains to be seen
The point was that saying something does not work well because good players will be more effective with it is flawed. If mechanic is very unintuitive, frustrating or caused gameplay issues then it would be something thats needs to be changed or looked at. Its better to focus on these facts than saying that x does not work simply because some players might be affected less. In the end we have to think about the game as a whole and how it affects everyone with facts.
I'm just talking generally here, just got tired of a argument that is not well thought out.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2013
Whats the deal with biomass? It used to be that abilities statically unlocked with biomass level, then it was changed so biomass levels unlocked evolutions that could then be researched in a tier style order per life form.
Now I think we're back to hive ability research unlock tiers like in vanilla. So we can't get leap on 1 hive, but can get umbra? What's the goal of it at this point? Pure HP scale?
I'm sure Sewlek would be aware of this by now, but current early umbra is broken. It's obscuring vision too much can be thoroughly spammed during any group fight. It's also lasting a few seconds outside of its AoE.
Slow growth and drifter building isn't slowing down alien expansion, or making it require any team member presence, or introducing any pres sinks in construction. Drifters basically come out of the hive instantly and it isn't difficult to move them around with your RT drops to construct at regular speed. Any pres sinks for temp gorges have been halved. I don't see how any alien expansion problems or pres life form explosions have been addressed.
Why are we back to 2k extractor health.
Why do drifters come with free scouting as standard again.
The more flexibile alien upgrade path was one of the best things about the mod (possibility to have leap at hive 1, etc) Can't believe you took it out...
Whats the deal with biomass? It used to be that abilities statically unlocked with biomass level, then it was changed so biomass levels unlocked evolutions that could then be researched in a tier style order per life form.
Now I think we're back to hive ability research unlock tiers like in vanilla. So we can't get leap on 1 hive, but can get umbra? What's the goal of it at this point? Pure HP scale?
This was a sad step back indeed. Sewlek's official reasoning is that Biomass would no longer be needed because he achieved what he wanted by means of increased upgrade research costs and that it would be too crucial to lose 1 Hive for aliens.
But imho this is just copping out. Or giving in to players who were complaining that the new system gave them not enough choice when they just wanted one specific upgrade.
Increasing the costs of upgrades doesn't give you the same balancing means as the Biomass system, which introduced the possibility to replace a Hive requirement with a time component instead: you can get useful upgrades on less Hives than in vanilla, but it's balanced through the means of time (Biomass acquisition) so that you can't get that stuff right away after dropping a Hive.
Losing a Hive should be crucial. And I didn't feel like losing one was essentially GG for aliens with Biomass. At least no more than just losing a Hive in vanilla.
There would still be enough ways to balance things so that the cost in one Hive would not be as huge, for instance by using the new Structure Biomass like you used to shortly before the feature was removed: the second Biomass upgrade in the Hive could be replaced by dropping enough structures in the field, which came with the risk of losing those structures again but put importance off the Hive.
Another way would be to have a way to "evacuate" Biomass from one Hive to another, if the other Hive isn't at full capacity yet. It would take a moment and would occupy the Hive's research bar during the process and perhaps come with a small fee like 5 tres, but it would allow you to save some of your "progress" in case of losing a base if you can hold out long enough.
Or to completely scrap the second Biomass upgrade and rely on structures only to achieve the next tier (though this would remove choice from players, so I am not entirely in favor of it).
On the other hand was the Structure Biomass (in mix with the second Biomass upgrade) a bit overdone from a puristic view on the system. It allowed you to build up the Biomass level too far before getting the respective Hive and thus basically eliminated the time component that I talked about earlier so that you could have Biomass level 5-6 instantly after dropping the next Hive.
I'm sure Sewlek would be aware of this by now, but current early umbra is broken. It's obscuring vision too much can be thoroughly spammed during any group fight. It's also lasting a few seconds outside of its AoE.
Having Leap on 2 Hives again and Umbra on 1 Hive was done already before the removal of the system. Can't really comment on the impact of that decision. I don't use Umbra frequently, especially since it's nerf. I agree though that the vision obscuring is really troublesome and that it should be a lot more transparent.
I was appreciating Leap on a late first Hive play as means to counter Shotguns at a high cost if you don't manage to secure another Hive location.
In general am I a bit on the fence about where the Lerk upgrades should be in the tech tree. Early Umbra tries to emphasize the Lerk's role as a support lifeform. But that may just be the role you want but not the role we need: depending on whether or not Skulks are able to get Leap at 1 Hive or not, the Lerk has to make up for it and be the alien's defense lifeform rather than just the support. It needs to tank a bit of the damage (more than a Skulk) and go in for the kills, but right now it seems way too fragile for that role.
Aliens also need a means of area damage against incoming groups of marines in the Hive. Not at 1 Hive but at least at 2. Same discussion here: do we want the Lerk to perform this task or hand it over to the Skulk? If the Lerk gets to do it (with Spores at 2 Hives instead of 3), then he's way too fragile again to utilize them effectively against group of marines or Shotguns. He needs to be a defender and not a support for that role. If the Skulk gets to do it and the Lerk is supposed to stay in a support role, then we need Xenocide back on 2 Hives (at 6 Biomass, taking the time component of the powerful upgrades into account).
Slow growth and drifter building isn't slowing down alien expansion, or making it require any team member presence, or introducing any pres sinks in construction. Drifters basically come out of the hive instantly and it isn't difficult to move them around with your RT drops to construct at regular speed. Any pres sinks for temp gorges have been halved. I don't see how any alien expansion problems or pres life form explosions have been addressed.
Why do drifters come with free scouting as standard again.
I think those two go hand in hand.
While the Drifter building seems somewhat cool and fancy, it boils down to an annoyance in the end and is just busy work for the Khammander. Gorges should be optional and boost your early economy if they want it by getting stuff up faster than usual. But neither they nor Drifters should be a requirement for a reasonable expansion speed. Structures still should grow at ~70% of their normal speed without them.
The growth system is also massively flawing scouting in the first place. If my Drifter gives up it's disguise just to build a cyst that I dropped near it, it is just a major annoyance. Especially if it can't even build that cyst yet because the parent is not built yet. Heck, even a Gorge dropping Babbler Eggs causes the Drifter to become active. A unit for automated construction doesn't work as scout after all. Or the other way around.
Instead of having boring micromanagement by moving Drifters around to build stuff fast, rather go with more interesting micromanagement in the form of moving Drifters around to scout and retreat when you don't have cloak by default.
No idea what Sewlek disliked about the passive Drifter upgrades in the end. It simply meant that I also had to consider my Drifter play in the Hive path choice.
If I wanted to play passive and keep an eye out for every marine movement, I had to go with Shade to get cloaked Drifters.
If I wanted support my troops in open combat, I had to go with Crag Hive to have a Drifter that could tank damage in a fight and then retreat and regenerate for the next fight. For scouting would I have to keep an eye out for every Drifter and start to move it away as soon as marines showed up.
With the Shift Drifter did I get some aggressive expansion gameplay in scouting as well because it's speed allowed me to move it constantly across the entire map and check multiple locations in rapid succession. When the Drifter encountered marines I could start to navigate in zig zag routes and make them miss a lot of shots, which also helps in combat by confusing the enemy and making them waste all their bullets before my team goes in. That Drifter would not be of much use just sitting in a corner, but it still provided scouting - just with more micromanagement involved.
Even if you don't want to globally scrap cloaking from Drifters, passive upgrades should still be there. Just replace the Shade one with Drifter Aura or Drifter Silence then.
Why are we back to 2k extractor health.
Probably because people were complaining about losing RTs too often without being able to do much about it. It was nice for a fast gameplay and less of a pain for solo Skulks. But I think as soon as there were 2 Skulks chewing on a single RT, it was basically dead.
Last thing I heard was that Extractor HP got shifted to armor now so that you could more effectively weaken them with infestation.
The point was that saying something does not work well because good players will be more effective with it is flawed. If mechanic is very unintuitive, frustrating or caused gameplay issues then it would be something thats needs to be changed or looked at. Its better to focus on these facts than saying that x does not work simply because some players might be affected less. In the end we have to think about the game as a whole and how it affects everyone with facts.
I'm just talking generally here, just got tired of a argument that is not well thought out.
that is the whole point - the armory changes is unintuitive, frustrating and causes gameplay issues.
1. an armory that doesnt have anything to do with armor - its been remarked upon by several people - it doesnt make sense.
2. its frustrating because it doesnt actually change anything - marine commanders still put armories in lots of places, and you still have to go back to them all the time to get health if your comm isnt medding actively (like most pub comms....) except now i have to run around crying 'need weld' 'need weld' on top of that (anyone thats run out of ammo in BF3 knows how fun that is)...
3. i think 1&2 qualify as gameplay issues, but in general, you should not leave players completely at the mercy of their teammates at all times.
I think the change is also patronising - trying to force 'superior' gameplay on 'noobs'.
with this in mind - that the change doesnt change anything, instead actually adding a big layer of frustration and annoyance why is it still being pursued? Everything about this is just totally stupid - right down to the inspiration - using NS1 gameplay mechanics when these proved to be so fantastically popular in public play back then - need I remind you that there are posts all over this forum excoriating the very quick death of NS1 public gameplay at the hands of combat?
The marine weaponry hasn´t received focus it deserved it this thread. Vanilla NS2 has been really poor in this area. You normally see marines using only rifles, shotguns, pistols, mines and in some situation welders and axes. Flamethrowers, grenade launchers and rifle butt have been generally unused by better players. It has been like they don´t exist. There are two reasons for this:
1. Some marine weaponry is fundamentally broke or unbalanced.
The GL is just a ”spam weapon”, is this format there isn´t skill curve for the GL. The FT contradicts whole idea of the range vs. melee philosophy; you have to be close to do damage, but the aliens should have advantage over marines in close range. Rifle butt is too weak to be real option over switching to a pistol or reloading the rifle.
2. Tech path has been too long and/or cost has been too expensive.
You have solved this problem making FL and GL available from advanced armory. Now we will see these weapons more, but fundamental problems of these weapons are still unsolved.
I will give my solutions for these problems:
Grenade launcher:
Somehow you have to bring ”skill” to this weapon, something to learn and be better at. It should remain as mainly the building destroying weapon, but this doesn´t mean that it should be totally random and useless against aliens themselves. Games have seen lots of different variation of GLs in the history of gaming and the best GL is in TF2. Copy the demoman, make use of secondary attacks. It’s simple and it’s more skillful; with mouse1 you release nade and with mouse2 you make it explode. Though, for balance reasons and for the nature of NS2 nades should explode between 5-10 seconds after fire even without pressing mouse2. Otherwise you could do too powerful ”traps” too easily and it would also reward camping. This new ability would make the GL more powerful, so you probably have to decrease nades damage toward the players. This simple change would make the GL more intelligent, skillful and therefore more fun weapon.
Flamethrower:
Lets be honest here, you can’t balance FL against alien players. Its complete broke for that role. That is the reason why you have to change it to secondary weapon. It should either replace pistol or axe when purchased. Make it ultimate building destroyer, an expensive secondary weapon for tactical use. Kind of ”anti-welder”, where welder is the defensive tactical weapon the FL would be the offensive tactical weapon.
Rifle butt:
Don´t get me wrong. Aliens should have advantage in melee of course, but right now riffle but isn´t really even an option. Right now when you empty your rifle, it always better to take pistol out than to use rifle butt, even if you know that the last skulk has low amount of hp. I would like to change that ”always” to ”most of the times”. The more options you have in game the more fun it is. I would like to surprise my enemies now and then by doing something unorthodox. Increasing rifle butt damage by 5 would to the trick.
Welder:
Removing armor gain from the armory is a really good change. Welders now have clearer purpose. However, they are too expensive. In fact, why they aren´t standard weaponry for marines like LMG and pistol? If they would be by default, new players would understand them better as key part of playing and not just as another advanced weapon. Obviously it would make people to weld more each other. I don´t think this would make marines too powerful, because you have to know when to weld. But if you must, you could always decrease welding speed and make a tech path where you could increase welding speed by cost of team res.
HMG:
There have been rumors that it is making a comeback. I do really hope so, because these are one big piece in marine weaponry puzzle that need filling. You can´t escape the irony when you buy yourself jetpack and the only buyable weapon against alien players is the shotgun. So now you have jetpack which gives you advantage to keep distance to aliens longer, but the weapon that makes damage in close range! It doesn´t make any sense! NS2 longs for weapon like HMG was in NS1; it would give so much more variation to the game.
that is the whole point - the armory changes is unintuitive, frustrating and causes gameplay issues.
Of course it's unintuitive because you are not used to it. On NS1, armories never gave back AP, and no one was complaining about it, even on public games.
I won't quote the rest of your post, because it's just about people not adapting to a new gameplay. Which is totally understandable, since changes occure everyday on this balance mod. Moreover, everything you're saying since the start isn't true or isn't an argument. Stop pointing out the fact armories don't give back APs, it's been 10 pages on this thread you're only talking about that. Just accept if and see what it GIVES, what it removes, and make the balance.
To my mind, armories not giving back APs isn't a problem. However, marines run out of P-res way too fast. SG back to 20, it's a bit better now. Welders cost 5 P-res is too huge since it's a must-have tool. Maybe just make an upgrade in armory so marines spawn with the welder on 4th weapon slot ?
Jetpacks' cost : 15 P-res is too expensive as well. Moreover, jetpack has been nerfed : as soon as you stop jumping, you're so heavy that you go down way too fast. Marines' weight isnt the same as onos, right !?
Marines, as I said and will keep saying it if i don't see any changes about this are really weak in fights. Glancing bites have been removed (always 75dmgs). So now it means, as soon as a skulk is on close combat, you die as marine. Moreover, skulks are faster, so it's way too easy to get a close combat. Balancing it by removing medpack CD isn't enough, to my mind. Commander spamming meds is really handicapping marines' economy, and it's what's happening in every single fight if you want to keep your marines alive.
Assuming you actually have eggs spawning or a built hive in said "base", if you only have a skulk arriving every 20-30 seconds that marine wont have anywhere near as much trouble....especially if the comm meds/nano's
If you're running in one skulk at a time... You're doing it wrong
Really? Even in a 6v6 game?
Yeah, really. 1 marine always has the advantage over 1 skulk, especially with meds and weapons upgrades vs a skulk just spawned with no upgrades.
This armor doesn't really make a huge difference in combat but I don't feel it's really necessary either.
Except that if a team mate had gotten a bite on that marine (even glancing)...the next skulk needs 2 (assuming no armour upgrades)..but with passive regen from welders...he could well be back up to 3.
If armour makes so little difference then lets get rid of armour upgrades...would sure as fuck make killing marines as a skulk easier throughout the whole game.
@blarney_stone so you counter tactic to a marine in an alien hive (potentially taking out upgrades) is to leave him be and go attack res?
1 skulk in a marine base is not going to do much...the comm will most likely just hop out...or wait until a dead marine re-spawns (and marines have the upper hand in 1 v 1 as you have said...), just a pity aliens dont have a similar counter...instead they get to deal with a marine who in effect has the alien equivalent of regen and cara (plus focus) thanks to meds, welder, armour and weapons upgrades.
Also, walking alien structures definitely need to be included again. I don't know what those "bugs" are that you were talking about, Sewlek, but the feature has become such a necessity with the mechanic changes.
You mentioned "Shift Echo was underused" as argument, but this is taken so far out of nowhere in this context that I can't take it serious at all. Echo takes unnecessary amounts of micromanagement and resource costs to fix a convenience issue.
Echo is needed when you want a structure to be at a far away location in the shortest time possible. Walking structures are for fine-tuning when the range of a Shade was estimated larger than it actually was and is for instance not covering a specific structure.
Echo is also only available with Shift Hives, that means you are stuck with unrecyclable, unmovable structures if you choose anything else as first Hive. What if your supply limit is already used up and you don't have a Shift on the field? You can't be res-locked anymore but you can be supply-locked and have to wait for marines to please come deep into your base and kill your structures, or you won't be able to spawn any more Drfiters that you need to construct stuff fast enough.
A Shade that can't move is basically sentenced to death as soon as it got hit by a single bullet and uncloaked for a moment, giving all marines the chance to memorize it's eternal location. No dynamic adjustments to the battle at all.
This was no issue with infinite structures, but with the introduction of supply limits and the inability to recycle stuff on the alien side, aliens simply need to be able to at least relocate their existing stuff.
rayzou, its unintuitive because its called an ARMOURY. I think people are justified in their assumption that it might have something to do with Armour (i know the word has a wide meaning and use though).
it seems totally stupid to me to model this game on NS1 public - the consensus on these forums is that NS1 public scene didnt really exist, atleast not in regular play, everyone instead playing combat. why is everyone so keen on emulating an unsuccessful game?
Its not about adaptation at all. Its about shitty design. without even realising it, sewlek has made the armory even more cost effective (meds cost 2 res now iirc) so it becomes even more economical to drop them everywhere. however, what used to take one action for a marine now takes 2 - finding an armory to heal up, and find a cooperative teammate to weld you. this renders one of the central points he made on SoTG completely moot - that hugging armories is not fun. a. its not really changed, and b. because of the additonal task of finding cool teammates (that happen to have a welder on them at the time) which is about 1000x less fun when you dont find one, and about the same if not more time consuming when you do. the only time its really fun and when it really pays off is when you are trying to sustain a push - but this has nothing to do with the armory giving armor back or not. the only semi valid issue that ive seen is the endgame scenario in high player count games where marines are trapped in base and aliens take a while to finish the game. again though, this has less to do with the armory, and more to do with the power of 12 high dps hitscan weapons in one room. while the armory change will mollify a marine base relatively quickly, the scope and scale of the change doesnt match up the specificity of the issue. the armory change affects everything, all in the name of one endgame scenario that is relatively infrequently an issue.
in reality, the change has added nothing other than a headache for players. if sewlek cant see that, i can only assume that anything good that comes out of this mod can be prescribed purely to chance, because clearly thoughtful design doesnt figure.
without even realising it, sewlek has made the armory even more cost effective (meds cost 2 res now iirc) so it becomes even more economical to drop them everywhere.
rayzou, its unintuitive because its called an ARMOURY. I think people are justified in their assumption that it might have something to do with Armour (i know the word has a wide meaning and use though).
it seems totally stupid to me to model this game on NS1 public - the consensus on these forums is that NS1 public scene didnt really exist, atleast not in regular play, everyone instead playing combat.
Hmm thats strange, because I remember playing public NS1 for years even after 3.2 came out. Both the classic and the combat scene were actually growing pretty fast until ,,World of Warcraft" came out. Even then the public scene stayed surprisingly active. I still remember seeing few classic ns1 servers active when ns2 was in mid beta so I would say its quite an achievement.
Its understandable that in the end mostly competitive players stayed behind, they were still digging into what the game had to offer and had the time to do so. If mechanics are good enough both the public and the competitive scene will keep playing. If not, then they will leave for another game when mechanics start to lose their charm. It's as simple as that.
The point was that saying something does not work well because good players will be more effective with it is flawed. If mechanic is very unintuitive, frustrating or caused gameplay issues then it would be something thats needs to be changed or looked at. Its better to focus on these facts than saying that x does not work simply because some players might be affected less. In the end we have to think about the game as a whole and how it affects everyone with facts.
I'm just talking generally here, just got tired of a argument that is not well thought out.
that is the whole point - the armory changes is unintuitive, frustrating and causes gameplay issues.
1. an armory that doesnt have anything to do with armor - its been remarked upon by several people - it doesnt make sense.
2. its frustrating because it doesnt actually change anything - marine commanders still put armories in lots of places, and you still have to go back to them all the time to get health if your comm isnt medding actively (like most pub comms....) except now i have to run around crying 'need weld' 'need weld' on top of that (anyone thats run out of ammo in BF3 knows how fun that is)...
3. i think 1&2 qualify as gameplay issues, but in general, you should not leave players completely at the mercy of their teammates at all times.
I think the change is also patronising - trying to force 'superior' gameplay on 'noobs'.
with this in mind - that the change doesnt change anything, instead actually adding a big layer of frustration and annoyance why is it still being pursued? Everything about this is just totally stupid - right down to the inspiration - using NS1 gameplay mechanics when these proved to be so fantastically popular in public play back then - need I remind you that there are posts all over this forum excoriating the very quick death of NS1 public gameplay at the hands of combat?
I'm not sure that you've actually played the balance mod based on your facts. When sewlek made this change to remove armory healing on armouries the combat has become more fluid. Instead of people base camping around the armouries the players actually moves out. Don't you think its frustrating for alien when doing alot of dps and move out to take cover. Wait 2seconds, go back to keep fighting and all the marines has full hp/full armor. It will end up to be a spam nest to be able to finnish of the opponent. He want to utilize more teamplay for marines where welders had an purpose. Now your team will help each other out by welding. Some people think it's a slowdown on the gameplay, but I'm not agreeing to that, because how much slowdown is it when players are humping the armory all the time? Alot...
Well, if you check some dictionary, "armoury" means "a place where you keep arms, weapons". But anyway, this discussion is retarded and leads us to anywhere.
Moreover, if you can't stay in touch with the daily changes on this mod, stop posting and spamming here please. This thread is a feedback thread, not an unconstructive thread.
NS1 public games did last really long. I've started playing it at the end of 1.0.4 version / beginning of 2.0 and we had the choice of the server. The fact that NS1 was a better success than NS2 is, as Tane said earlier, the freedom you had as a player. Skulk's bunnyhop was amaizing, you could do it on floor, on walls and you had plenty of possible moves. A single gorge had more impact, had more things to do than in NS2. A lerk had more freedom (either gas from a vent, either bite if enough HPs, either support with umbra). A fade had better skill-needed movements. An onos had to FEAR against a SINGLE jp/hmg.
In a single word, NS1 was a rich game. Plenty of possibilities, plenty of options. NS2 looks like a jail in comparison of NS1.
What i think we need in BT is, as Tane said, more weapon choices with better impact on the game. Every single choice in the tech path or weapon choice SHOULD be viable. This is where BT should start working on. IF max expansion from aliens with a lot of cysts and structures > get Flamethrower and burn them all ! IF you want to take down a hive slowly with a good phase gate and 4 men constantly pressuring, get Grenade Launcher.
Anyway, i feel like the changes on movement code finally gives the edge to aliens so far. The speed you can get as skulk is just insanely monstruous Oo And as i said, if marines don't have any skilled based close combat options, it's unbalanced. Skulks, in a certain way, will always succeed to get on close combat (except if he's stupid and bad).
I got some suggestions :
- give back air control to marines.
- glancing bites from 50 to 75.
- when you stop building, you can take your weapon back faster (so skulks in high speed can't reach you when you're still building like a twat). Since the human reaction is ~1 second, sometimes you don't even have time to react and start shooting.
- Fix sounds (i had, a lot of time, been surprised by skulks chewing my back while they were in high speed. I never heard them before they reached me !?). I'll take vanilla sounds as an example. To my mind, they are kind of really useful stuff since you are able to hear aliens and marines from far. It gives more strategy, possibilities... You can outbrain your enemy by making him think you will attack and look at you while one of your teammate, silent, comes behind the marine.
without even realising it, sewlek has made the armory even more cost effective (meds cost 2 res now iirc) so it becomes even more economical to drop them everywhere.
They cost 1 again.
thanks. doesnt really change the gist of the argument though - armories are almost always cost effective - commanders will use them for that reason alone, and thus players will be forced to hug them.
rayzou, its unintuitive because its called an ARMOURY. I think people are justified in their assumption that it might have something to do with Armour (i know the word has a wide meaning and use though).
it seems totally stupid to me to model this game on NS1 public - the consensus on these forums is that NS1 public scene didnt really exist, atleast not in regular play, everyone instead playing combat.
Hmm thats strange, because I remember playing public NS1 for years even after 3.2 came out. Both the classic and the combat scene were actually growing pretty fast until ,,World of Warcraft" came out. Even then the public scene stayed surprisingly active. I still remember seeing few classic ns1 servers active when ns2 was in mid beta so I would say its quite an achievement.
Its understandable that in the end mostly competitive players stayed behind, they were still digging into what the game had to offer and had the time to do so. If mechanics are good enough both the public and the competitive scene will keep playing. If not, then they will leave for another game when mechanics start to lose their charm. It's as simple as that.
well, im not a NS1 vet by any means, i only go off what i see on this forum - there were multiple threads full of NS1 vets lamenting the release of combat mod for NS2 as they were fearful it would kill off the public scene like it did NS1.
anyway, if this makes it in, im not sure i would be able to support the mod. I dont think this even a matter of opinion - if the designer makes what i would consider to be such a fundamental error in design - it undermines my confidence in the rest of the features, despite my enjoyment of some of them.
1. an armory that doesnt have anything to do with armor - its been remarked upon by several people - it doesnt make sense.
Making an argument for this mechanic based on a varying definition of the word 'Armory' is quite silly and now I've seen it one too many times. In this case the word armory is used in the context of a place to store arms. As in, weapons.
You should be focusing on giving feedback from a gameplay standpoint like your other two points, arguing semantics like this is pointless.
rant - thats why i put a disclaimer that the word has more than one definition. also, the modern spelling of armoury is directly related to the fact that it is to do with armour... whats more, its directly derived from french words... ray.
its a pretty well established practice by now that you tend to select names with the intention to clearly convey the function. this is generally done in the name of intuitiveness. though it may be a semantic detail - attention to detail is one of the hallmarks of good design.
ray - could you provide a changelog where I would be able to keep abreast of the day to day changes? Afaik there is no such thing. also, raw human reaction speed is more in the 100-500ms range. 500ms is really fucking slow though. some of your feedback i agree with - particularly the sound, the glancing bites im not sure about, but the skulk does suck in engagements now, after the first couple of bites anyway.
Armoury is the European spelling, Armory is the way its spelled in the states. It's spelled 'Armory' in game. The definitions of both spellings are the same. Semantics.
ray - could you provide a changelog where I would be able to keep abreast of the day to day changes? Afaik there is no such thing. also, raw human reaction speed is more in the 100-500ms range. 500ms is really fucking slow though. some of your feedback i agree with - particularly the sound, the glancing bites im not sure about, but the skulk does suck in engagements now, after the first couple of bites anyway.
No i can't. You just need 30 mins in-game a day to see most of the changes...
Moreover, I've always been slow on reaction ;D
Nice start for a feedback, by the way, thanks to stop arguing about semantic useless things. It's not the place for it.
the american spelling is a bastardisation of the english one. also, americans spell armour armor. colour and color are the same thing, are they not?
"Origin:
Middle English (in the sense 'armour'): from Old French armoirie, armoierie, from armoier 'to blazon', from arme 'weapon' (see arms). The change in the second syllable in the 17th century was due to association with armour"
My point is that calling something an Armoury, then having it specifically not have anything to do with armour in the game is not a huge deal in and of itself, but rather speaks to the general polish and design of the game. At face value its not something that is going to have a massive impact, but inconsistencies and illogicalities like these should be construed as a red flag that everything is not quite as it should. Its not a semantic argument, though you both seem very keen to start one....
changing the name of the 'skulk' to 'beserker' doesnt have any effect in and of itself on the game, but it does have a big effect on people preconceptions and ideas of how something is meant to work. expectation management is an important part of game design, and the way this change currently works, runs counter to expectations imo. thats all im trying to point out. im not surprised to find myself once more under attack oncemore though...
Except that if a team mate had gotten a bite on that marine (even glancing)...the next skulk needs 2 (assuming no armour upgrades)..but with passive regen from welders...he could well be back up to 3.
Naw, there is no glancing in BT. Either way, medpacks are more of a concern if you're concerned about a marine requiring too many bites.
The slight regeneration of armor won't put him up to 3 bites again unless you wait ages.
Comments
that's like saying we should focus on pro marines who can aim well and pretend that everyone is the same...
oh wait... we already tried that and aliens won 90% of "fair" games in pubs
everything is situational. and the frequency of situations is different in different games
the metagame is completely different when you look at player skills and server size
the challenge is making "experience and skill" matter just as much for both sides
I have no doubt that we'll eventually arrive at some approximate 50% win-rate across various settings and configurations primarily through accidental balance
how long that process takes and how enjoyable the games are remains to be seen
I'm just talking generally here, just got tired of a argument that is not well thought out.
Now I think we're back to hive ability research unlock tiers like in vanilla. So we can't get leap on 1 hive, but can get umbra? What's the goal of it at this point? Pure HP scale?
I'm sure Sewlek would be aware of this by now, but current early umbra is broken. It's obscuring vision too much can be thoroughly spammed during any group fight. It's also lasting a few seconds outside of its AoE.
Slow growth and drifter building isn't slowing down alien expansion, or making it require any team member presence, or introducing any pres sinks in construction. Drifters basically come out of the hive instantly and it isn't difficult to move them around with your RT drops to construct at regular speed. Any pres sinks for temp gorges have been halved. I don't see how any alien expansion problems or pres life form explosions have been addressed.
Why are we back to 2k extractor health.
Why do drifters come with free scouting as standard again.
Would be interesting to see with these gorge price drops making it a more frequently played role..
This was a sad step back indeed. Sewlek's official reasoning is that Biomass would no longer be needed because he achieved what he wanted by means of increased upgrade research costs and that it would be too crucial to lose 1 Hive for aliens.
But imho this is just copping out. Or giving in to players who were complaining that the new system gave them not enough choice when they just wanted one specific upgrade.
Increasing the costs of upgrades doesn't give you the same balancing means as the Biomass system, which introduced the possibility to replace a Hive requirement with a time component instead: you can get useful upgrades on less Hives than in vanilla, but it's balanced through the means of time (Biomass acquisition) so that you can't get that stuff right away after dropping a Hive.
Losing a Hive should be crucial. And I didn't feel like losing one was essentially GG for aliens with Biomass. At least no more than just losing a Hive in vanilla.
There would still be enough ways to balance things so that the cost in one Hive would not be as huge, for instance by using the new Structure Biomass like you used to shortly before the feature was removed: the second Biomass upgrade in the Hive could be replaced by dropping enough structures in the field, which came with the risk of losing those structures again but put importance off the Hive.
Another way would be to have a way to "evacuate" Biomass from one Hive to another, if the other Hive isn't at full capacity yet. It would take a moment and would occupy the Hive's research bar during the process and perhaps come with a small fee like 5 tres, but it would allow you to save some of your "progress" in case of losing a base if you can hold out long enough.
Or to completely scrap the second Biomass upgrade and rely on structures only to achieve the next tier (though this would remove choice from players, so I am not entirely in favor of it).
On the other hand was the Structure Biomass (in mix with the second Biomass upgrade) a bit overdone from a puristic view on the system. It allowed you to build up the Biomass level too far before getting the respective Hive and thus basically eliminated the time component that I talked about earlier so that you could have Biomass level 5-6 instantly after dropping the next Hive.
Having Leap on 2 Hives again and Umbra on 1 Hive was done already before the removal of the system. Can't really comment on the impact of that decision. I don't use Umbra frequently, especially since it's nerf. I agree though that the vision obscuring is really troublesome and that it should be a lot more transparent.
I was appreciating Leap on a late first Hive play as means to counter Shotguns at a high cost if you don't manage to secure another Hive location.
In general am I a bit on the fence about where the Lerk upgrades should be in the tech tree. Early Umbra tries to emphasize the Lerk's role as a support lifeform. But that may just be the role you want but not the role we need: depending on whether or not Skulks are able to get Leap at 1 Hive or not, the Lerk has to make up for it and be the alien's defense lifeform rather than just the support. It needs to tank a bit of the damage (more than a Skulk) and go in for the kills, but right now it seems way too fragile for that role.
Aliens also need a means of area damage against incoming groups of marines in the Hive. Not at 1 Hive but at least at 2. Same discussion here: do we want the Lerk to perform this task or hand it over to the Skulk? If the Lerk gets to do it (with Spores at 2 Hives instead of 3), then he's way too fragile again to utilize them effectively against group of marines or Shotguns. He needs to be a defender and not a support for that role. If the Skulk gets to do it and the Lerk is supposed to stay in a support role, then we need Xenocide back on 2 Hives (at 6 Biomass, taking the time component of the powerful upgrades into account).
I think those two go hand in hand.
While the Drifter building seems somewhat cool and fancy, it boils down to an annoyance in the end and is just busy work for the Khammander. Gorges should be optional and boost your early economy if they want it by getting stuff up faster than usual. But neither they nor Drifters should be a requirement for a reasonable expansion speed. Structures still should grow at ~70% of their normal speed without them.
The growth system is also massively flawing scouting in the first place. If my Drifter gives up it's disguise just to build a cyst that I dropped near it, it is just a major annoyance. Especially if it can't even build that cyst yet because the parent is not built yet. Heck, even a Gorge dropping Babbler Eggs causes the Drifter to become active. A unit for automated construction doesn't work as scout after all. Or the other way around.
Instead of having boring micromanagement by moving Drifters around to build stuff fast, rather go with more interesting micromanagement in the form of moving Drifters around to scout and retreat when you don't have cloak by default.
No idea what Sewlek disliked about the passive Drifter upgrades in the end. It simply meant that I also had to consider my Drifter play in the Hive path choice.
If I wanted to play passive and keep an eye out for every marine movement, I had to go with Shade to get cloaked Drifters.
If I wanted support my troops in open combat, I had to go with Crag Hive to have a Drifter that could tank damage in a fight and then retreat and regenerate for the next fight. For scouting would I have to keep an eye out for every Drifter and start to move it away as soon as marines showed up.
With the Shift Drifter did I get some aggressive expansion gameplay in scouting as well because it's speed allowed me to move it constantly across the entire map and check multiple locations in rapid succession. When the Drifter encountered marines I could start to navigate in zig zag routes and make them miss a lot of shots, which also helps in combat by confusing the enemy and making them waste all their bullets before my team goes in. That Drifter would not be of much use just sitting in a corner, but it still provided scouting - just with more micromanagement involved.
Even if you don't want to globally scrap cloaking from Drifters, passive upgrades should still be there. Just replace the Shade one with Drifter Aura or Drifter Silence then.
Probably because people were complaining about losing RTs too often without being able to do much about it. It was nice for a fast gameplay and less of a pain for solo Skulks. But I think as soon as there were 2 Skulks chewing on a single RT, it was basically dead.
Last thing I heard was that Extractor HP got shifted to armor now so that you could more effectively weaken them with infestation.
Biomass was a system I was looking forward to quite a lot.
Drifter system was good as it gave incentive to get a shade hive. Is it now the same as in vanilla ?
Big steps backwards to be honest. The alien tech tree is already intolerably linear without needing to make it so rigid.
that is the whole point - the armory changes is unintuitive, frustrating and causes gameplay issues.
1. an armory that doesnt have anything to do with armor - its been remarked upon by several people - it doesnt make sense.
2. its frustrating because it doesnt actually change anything - marine commanders still put armories in lots of places, and you still have to go back to them all the time to get health if your comm isnt medding actively (like most pub comms....) except now i have to run around crying 'need weld' 'need weld' on top of that (anyone thats run out of ammo in BF3 knows how fun that is)...
3. i think 1&2 qualify as gameplay issues, but in general, you should not leave players completely at the mercy of their teammates at all times.
I think the change is also patronising - trying to force 'superior' gameplay on 'noobs'.
with this in mind - that the change doesnt change anything, instead actually adding a big layer of frustration and annoyance why is it still being pursued? Everything about this is just totally stupid - right down to the inspiration - using NS1 gameplay mechanics when these proved to be so fantastically popular in public play back then - need I remind you that there are posts all over this forum excoriating the very quick death of NS1 public gameplay at the hands of combat?
1. Some marine weaponry is fundamentally broke or unbalanced.
The GL is just a ”spam weapon”, is this format there isn´t skill curve for the GL. The FT contradicts whole idea of the range vs. melee philosophy; you have to be close to do damage, but the aliens should have advantage over marines in close range. Rifle butt is too weak to be real option over switching to a pistol or reloading the rifle.
2. Tech path has been too long and/or cost has been too expensive.
You have solved this problem making FL and GL available from advanced armory. Now we will see these weapons more, but fundamental problems of these weapons are still unsolved.
I will give my solutions for these problems:
Grenade launcher:
Somehow you have to bring ”skill” to this weapon, something to learn and be better at. It should remain as mainly the building destroying weapon, but this doesn´t mean that it should be totally random and useless against aliens themselves. Games have seen lots of different variation of GLs in the history of gaming and the best GL is in TF2. Copy the demoman, make use of secondary attacks. It’s simple and it’s more skillful; with mouse1 you release nade and with mouse2 you make it explode. Though, for balance reasons and for the nature of NS2 nades should explode between 5-10 seconds after fire even without pressing mouse2. Otherwise you could do too powerful ”traps” too easily and it would also reward camping. This new ability would make the GL more powerful, so you probably have to decrease nades damage toward the players. This simple change would make the GL more intelligent, skillful and therefore more fun weapon.
Flamethrower:
Lets be honest here, you can’t balance FL against alien players. Its complete broke for that role. That is the reason why you have to change it to secondary weapon. It should either replace pistol or axe when purchased. Make it ultimate building destroyer, an expensive secondary weapon for tactical use. Kind of ”anti-welder”, where welder is the defensive tactical weapon the FL would be the offensive tactical weapon.
Rifle butt:
Don´t get me wrong. Aliens should have advantage in melee of course, but right now riffle but isn´t really even an option. Right now when you empty your rifle, it always better to take pistol out than to use rifle butt, even if you know that the last skulk has low amount of hp. I would like to change that ”always” to ”most of the times”. The more options you have in game the more fun it is. I would like to surprise my enemies now and then by doing something unorthodox. Increasing rifle butt damage by 5 would to the trick.
Welder:
Removing armor gain from the armory is a really good change. Welders now have clearer purpose. However, they are too expensive. In fact, why they aren´t standard weaponry for marines like LMG and pistol? If they would be by default, new players would understand them better as key part of playing and not just as another advanced weapon. Obviously it would make people to weld more each other. I don´t think this would make marines too powerful, because you have to know when to weld. But if you must, you could always decrease welding speed and make a tech path where you could increase welding speed by cost of team res.
HMG:
There have been rumors that it is making a comeback. I do really hope so, because these are one big piece in marine weaponry puzzle that need filling. You can´t escape the irony when you buy yourself jetpack and the only buyable weapon against alien players is the shotgun. So now you have jetpack which gives you advantage to keep distance to aliens longer, but the weapon that makes damage in close range! It doesn´t make any sense! NS2 longs for weapon like HMG was in NS1; it would give so much more variation to the game.
Of course it's unintuitive because you are not used to it. On NS1, armories never gave back AP, and no one was complaining about it, even on public games.
I won't quote the rest of your post, because it's just about people not adapting to a new gameplay. Which is totally understandable, since changes occure everyday on this balance mod. Moreover, everything you're saying since the start isn't true or isn't an argument. Stop pointing out the fact armories don't give back APs, it's been 10 pages on this thread you're only talking about that. Just accept if and see what it GIVES, what it removes, and make the balance.
To my mind, armories not giving back APs isn't a problem. However, marines run out of P-res way too fast. SG back to 20, it's a bit better now. Welders cost 5 P-res is too huge since it's a must-have tool. Maybe just make an upgrade in armory so marines spawn with the welder on 4th weapon slot ?
Jetpacks' cost : 15 P-res is too expensive as well. Moreover, jetpack has been nerfed : as soon as you stop jumping, you're so heavy that you go down way too fast. Marines' weight isnt the same as onos, right !?
Marines, as I said and will keep saying it if i don't see any changes about this are really weak in fights. Glancing bites have been removed (always 75dmgs). So now it means, as soon as a skulk is on close combat, you die as marine. Moreover, skulks are faster, so it's way too easy to get a close combat. Balancing it by removing medpack CD isn't enough, to my mind. Commander spamming meds is really handicapping marines' economy, and it's what's happening in every single fight if you want to keep your marines alive.
Except that if a team mate had gotten a bite on that marine (even glancing)...the next skulk needs 2 (assuming no armour upgrades)..but with passive regen from welders...he could well be back up to 3.
If armour makes so little difference then lets get rid of armour upgrades...would sure as fuck make killing marines as a skulk easier throughout the whole game.
@blarney_stone so you counter tactic to a marine in an alien hive (potentially taking out upgrades) is to leave him be and go attack res?
1 skulk in a marine base is not going to do much...the comm will most likely just hop out...or wait until a dead marine re-spawns (and marines have the upper hand in 1 v 1 as you have said...), just a pity aliens dont have a similar counter...instead they get to deal with a marine who in effect has the alien equivalent of regen and cara (plus focus) thanks to meds, welder, armour and weapons upgrades.
You mentioned "Shift Echo was underused" as argument, but this is taken so far out of nowhere in this context that I can't take it serious at all. Echo takes unnecessary amounts of micromanagement and resource costs to fix a convenience issue.
Echo is needed when you want a structure to be at a far away location in the shortest time possible. Walking structures are for fine-tuning when the range of a Shade was estimated larger than it actually was and is for instance not covering a specific structure.
Echo is also only available with Shift Hives, that means you are stuck with unrecyclable, unmovable structures if you choose anything else as first Hive. What if your supply limit is already used up and you don't have a Shift on the field? You can't be res-locked anymore but you can be supply-locked and have to wait for marines to please come deep into your base and kill your structures, or you won't be able to spawn any more Drfiters that you need to construct stuff fast enough.
A Shade that can't move is basically sentenced to death as soon as it got hit by a single bullet and uncloaked for a moment, giving all marines the chance to memorize it's eternal location. No dynamic adjustments to the battle at all.
This was no issue with infinite structures, but with the introduction of supply limits and the inability to recycle stuff on the alien side, aliens simply need to be able to at least relocate their existing stuff.
it seems totally stupid to me to model this game on NS1 public - the consensus on these forums is that NS1 public scene didnt really exist, atleast not in regular play, everyone instead playing combat. why is everyone so keen on emulating an unsuccessful game?
Its not about adaptation at all. Its about shitty design. without even realising it, sewlek has made the armory even more cost effective (meds cost 2 res now iirc) so it becomes even more economical to drop them everywhere. however, what used to take one action for a marine now takes 2 - finding an armory to heal up, and find a cooperative teammate to weld you. this renders one of the central points he made on SoTG completely moot - that hugging armories is not fun. a. its not really changed, and b. because of the additonal task of finding cool teammates (that happen to have a welder on them at the time) which is about 1000x less fun when you dont find one, and about the same if not more time consuming when you do. the only time its really fun and when it really pays off is when you are trying to sustain a push - but this has nothing to do with the armory giving armor back or not. the only semi valid issue that ive seen is the endgame scenario in high player count games where marines are trapped in base and aliens take a while to finish the game. again though, this has less to do with the armory, and more to do with the power of 12 high dps hitscan weapons in one room. while the armory change will mollify a marine base relatively quickly, the scope and scale of the change doesnt match up the specificity of the issue. the armory change affects everything, all in the name of one endgame scenario that is relatively infrequently an issue.
in reality, the change has added nothing other than a headache for players. if sewlek cant see that, i can only assume that anything good that comes out of this mod can be prescribed purely to chance, because clearly thoughtful design doesnt figure.
They cost 1 again.
Its understandable that in the end mostly competitive players stayed behind, they were still digging into what the game had to offer and had the time to do so. If mechanics are good enough both the public and the competitive scene will keep playing. If not, then they will leave for another game when mechanics start to lose their charm. It's as simple as that.
I'm not sure that you've actually played the balance mod based on your facts. When sewlek made this change to remove armory healing on armouries the combat has become more fluid. Instead of people base camping around the armouries the players actually moves out. Don't you think its frustrating for alien when doing alot of dps and move out to take cover. Wait 2seconds, go back to keep fighting and all the marines has full hp/full armor. It will end up to be a spam nest to be able to finnish of the opponent. He want to utilize more teamplay for marines where welders had an purpose. Now your team will help each other out by welding. Some people think it's a slowdown on the gameplay, but I'm not agreeing to that, because how much slowdown is it when players are humping the armory all the time? Alot...
Moreover, if you can't stay in touch with the daily changes on this mod, stop posting and spamming here please. This thread is a feedback thread, not an unconstructive thread.
NS1 public games did last really long. I've started playing it at the end of 1.0.4 version / beginning of 2.0 and we had the choice of the server. The fact that NS1 was a better success than NS2 is, as Tane said earlier, the freedom you had as a player. Skulk's bunnyhop was amaizing, you could do it on floor, on walls and you had plenty of possible moves. A single gorge had more impact, had more things to do than in NS2. A lerk had more freedom (either gas from a vent, either bite if enough HPs, either support with umbra). A fade had better skill-needed movements. An onos had to FEAR against a SINGLE jp/hmg.
In a single word, NS1 was a rich game. Plenty of possibilities, plenty of options. NS2 looks like a jail in comparison of NS1.
What i think we need in BT is, as Tane said, more weapon choices with better impact on the game. Every single choice in the tech path or weapon choice SHOULD be viable. This is where BT should start working on. IF max expansion from aliens with a lot of cysts and structures > get Flamethrower and burn them all ! IF you want to take down a hive slowly with a good phase gate and 4 men constantly pressuring, get Grenade Launcher.
Anyway, i feel like the changes on movement code finally gives the edge to aliens so far. The speed you can get as skulk is just insanely monstruous Oo And as i said, if marines don't have any skilled based close combat options, it's unbalanced. Skulks, in a certain way, will always succeed to get on close combat (except if he's stupid and bad).
I got some suggestions :
- give back air control to marines.
- glancing bites from 50 to 75.
- when you stop building, you can take your weapon back faster (so skulks in high speed can't reach you when you're still building like a twat). Since the human reaction is ~1 second, sometimes you don't even have time to react and start shooting.
- Fix sounds (i had, a lot of time, been surprised by skulks chewing my back while they were in high speed. I never heard them before they reached me !?). I'll take vanilla sounds as an example. To my mind, they are kind of really useful stuff since you are able to hear aliens and marines from far. It gives more strategy, possibilities... You can outbrain your enemy by making him think you will attack and look at you while one of your teammate, silent, comes behind the marine.
thanks. doesnt really change the gist of the argument though - armories are almost always cost effective - commanders will use them for that reason alone, and thus players will be forced to hug them.
well, im not a NS1 vet by any means, i only go off what i see on this forum - there were multiple threads full of NS1 vets lamenting the release of combat mod for NS2 as they were fearful it would kill off the public scene like it did NS1.
anyway, if this makes it in, im not sure i would be able to support the mod. I dont think this even a matter of opinion - if the designer makes what i would consider to be such a fundamental error in design - it undermines my confidence in the rest of the features, despite my enjoyment of some of them.
Making an argument for this mechanic based on a varying definition of the word 'Armory' is quite silly and now I've seen it one too many times. In this case the word armory is used in the context of a place to store arms. As in, weapons.
You should be focusing on giving feedback from a gameplay standpoint like your other two points, arguing semantics like this is pointless.
its a pretty well established practice by now that you tend to select names with the intention to clearly convey the function. this is generally done in the name of intuitiveness. though it may be a semantic detail - attention to detail is one of the hallmarks of good design.
ray - could you provide a changelog where I would be able to keep abreast of the day to day changes? Afaik there is no such thing. also, raw human reaction speed is more in the 100-500ms range. 500ms is really fucking slow though. some of your feedback i agree with - particularly the sound, the glancing bites im not sure about, but the skulk does suck in engagements now, after the first couple of bites anyway.
No i can't. You just need 30 mins in-game a day to see most of the changes...
Moreover, I've always been slow on reaction ;D
Nice start for a feedback, by the way, thanks to stop arguing about semantic useless things. It's not the place for it.
"Origin:
Middle English (in the sense 'armour'): from Old French armoirie, armoierie, from armoier 'to blazon', from arme 'weapon' (see arms). The change in the second syllable in the 17th century was due to association with armour"
My point is that calling something an Armoury, then having it specifically not have anything to do with armour in the game is not a huge deal in and of itself, but rather speaks to the general polish and design of the game. At face value its not something that is going to have a massive impact, but inconsistencies and illogicalities like these should be construed as a red flag that everything is not quite as it should. Its not a semantic argument, though you both seem very keen to start one....
Red cross means health, not armor. Your intuitive arguments are invalid.
Naw, there is no glancing in BT. Either way, medpacks are more of a concern if you're concerned about a marine requiring too many bites.
The slight regeneration of armor won't put him up to 3 bites again unless you wait ages.