Fix Camo
jostol
Join Date: 2012-11-04 Member: 166659Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-11-04 Member: 166659Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Camo is worse than before. Please revert camo back to the way it was, where you could move slowly and not be seen instead of a micromovement causes you to be a big obvious shimmering target.
Also please fix seeing if you're camouflaged in alien-vision. There's no way to tell currently... unlike in the old version where you could tell...
Also please fix seeing if you're camouflaged in alien-vision. There's no way to tell currently... unlike in the old version where you could tell...
Comments
Second in the old camo system, you'd uncloak if you wanted to move fast or if you attacked (or got shot, I think). So you're trading speed for stealth - and your stealth breaks when you attack. A sprinting marine was faster than you, a walking marine about the same speed as you. They'd have to be still - or walking into you to get close enough to attack.
In the current cloaking system if you move slowly you shimmer and ripple like water making you brutally obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes. So you can't sneak up to attack - infact you can't sneak anywhere - because if you chose camo you give up silence and because if you move you make noise and become (partially)visible. So basically if you move - you get shot. If you stay still and get shot - you become visible.
It's overwhelmingly underpowered. Who would give up Silence for Camo? Would You? What commander would chose Shade as first or second hive? Would you?
Camo only gets you and your whole team killed.
As an alien silence is my preferred choice as I can position myself quickly to be able to get the drop, where as with cloak you have to wait and hold still, in addition silence is effective once combat begins as its disorienting and tricky to track silent things....
As a marine, if kill numerous skulks for shifting a hair and revealing themselves, with the way sounds travel through walls you can hear a skulk long before you would have seen them and anticipate where they are...
Conclusion- most skilled players are almost as reliant on sound as vision for the advanced notice... To loss that advantage is terrible...
Complaint-commanders who don't react to finding out the aliens when shade first by rushing armour upgrades..,
I've even seen commanders not choose to made the third hive a shade hive when the shift/crag hive is in risk, just because they are so much more needed and when they are lost you need them back fast.
moving slowly or stationary with silence should make you invisible to obs/scans
Overpowered? No....... Not even close, it was just good against clueless teams. This is a case of a mechanic being balanced around player intelligence instead of around intent.
The nerf to cloak was disastrous - no one uses it anymore. Before, in pub play, it only worked if you steamrolled the other team and got a third hive up. A decent commander would turtle up, put an Obs everywhere, and deny the third hive. Weak higher lifeforms just couldn't break the turtle. It still required a lot of things to go right to defeat.
I've always considered it easier to sneak up on marines with Silence, mostly because you can still go fast (it's always active regardless of what you're doing).
In short: Camouflage=useless pls balance in some way.
What is not good (not to say utterly useless) is the current vanilla camouflage effect. It has partly invisible polygons and partly camo'ed polygons which of course induces a contrast between invisibility and camo. Therefore there are hard edges for which humans have a natural recognition of pattern/edge detection and that is why it is so easy to see and mostly useless.
So what a good camo effect shouldn't have are hard edges. There should be soft transitions inside the camo effect and no edges at all! I would go further and demand that the silhouette of the camo (which is an edge too!) should be softened or blend from camo to invisible gradually. Basically there should not be any hard edges or refraction peaks at any time when the camo should be somehow deceptive!
Also I like to suggest that aliens with camo should be camo'ed while running(!) and jumping(not leaping!) with the trade off of a higher refraction index for the camo effect dependent on the speed and longer cool down time to complete invisibility.
I imagine it like that:
[standing still]->invisible->[sneaking]->soft camo effect with low refraction->[running/jumping/falling]->hard camo effect with high refraction->[standing/sneaking for x seconds]->invisible/soft camo
Transitions from soft camo/[sneaking] to invisibility/[standing still] should be instant. Also camo'ed sneaking should be slower I think.
EDIT: Also obs shouldn't uncloak cloaked aliens but should rather just draw a circle around the aliens with a low refresh rate of one second or so. Though uncloaking should be able through scan. So that would make the obs a softer counter to camo.
Please improve the camo effect UWE. I have seen it in Sewlek's BT mod made better. The BT mod camo effect while STANDING should be the camo effect in vanilla when MOVING!
For comparison I have made two videos:
Vanilla camo effect.
Sewlek's camo effect while standing, unfortunately it is still the vanilla camo while moving, so I didn't record it.
Camouflage
- Camo effect visibility remains constant but is not 100%
- Once a speed cap is reached (e.g. 10 speed), effect is removed instantly
- Camo breaks only when you perform an ability or receive damage (jump/dodge/run to your heart's content)
- Short delay/fade time between breaking Camo and restoring it
Cloak (from Shade)
- Instant fade time even if damage is received recently
- Must remain static, otherwise Cloak will break
- 100% invisibility
Camouflage is an evolution, while Cloak is more like a defense mechanism. The Camo changes make it better to be used on the move as invisibility is not perfect; also, since the effect is constant, it would not discourage player movement as seen with the current Camo (oh, you fell off the wall? Sorry buddy, you're a sitting duck now).
The changes to Cloak makes it an awesome ambush utility that is only nullified by a Scan. However, it also has great synergy with Ink Cloud (which cancels scans), with instant fade time to shroud nearby aliens. Combine with Camouflage to make a deadly combo!
Vox populi, vox dei ? The NS2 brand new unique impressive camo disapeared in badefit of the actuel thing.
I don't use at all anymore. When you respawn, It ain't worth the time clicking on the upgrade
However, the full camo while moving IS quite annoying as a marine. It feels like you are being cheated, and as an alien I feel like I'm cheating using it. Not to mention cloaking in late game is almost useless other than to hide whip / heal farms. Silence is the obvious choice for late game once we get the third hive.
Not to mention, we are never going to get everyone to agree on how cloak should work. So what I would REALLY like to see is to take the shade hive in a totally different direction. Keep silence but ditch cloaking completely and lets come up with a better ability - something like poison tips for lerk spikes & parasite. Poison bite for ALL units. Poison bile! The innate ability to hide inside of infestation / clogs. Grant onos devour ability. Something like that, in line with being a sneaky ninja bastard but not so annoying as cloaking (for both teams).
And give the khamm something useful! Shifts give you eggs and quick hives, and the ability to relocate critical structures. . crag gives you immense healing capabilities for both structures and players. What does shift give you? The ability to HIDE your structures? OH BOY that is amazing. Everyone always knows where everything is anyway. The ONLY use it has is to prevent arcs from getting a lock IF you happen to upgrade a shade in time and spam the ink which is annoying for both commanders. How about something more useful for early game tactics so that we might actually see early shade being used by skilled teams?? Perhaps something like poisonous cysts that poison the marine who ruptures it. Make all structures cloak themselves automatically (anything hooked to the cyst chain). The ability to teleport players / structures using a shade for a surprise whip / alien attack. I'm sure people can come up with better ideas than this but hopefully you get what I mean.
Because I'm an Alien hog I would like to see it go back to its original form.....
Absolutly, R.I.P early camo option, (and R.I.P camo in later game as well afaik)
100% invisibility camo seems to me to be the most viable/least ridiculous shade has ever been.