I still think having them cloaked (semi-cloaked now) would be better.
And even then they'd have to automatically move a fair distance in a random direction, away from buildings they've last built.
And maybe fly at different heights.
And maybe be un-uncloakable with most weapons (spray-firing LMG to find them was so easy, besides even rookies that never thought about doing this to uncloak hidden units would occasionally find drifters when they fought visible enemies - skulks and the like).
But I don't like *any* of the whole alien commander drifter micromanagement. And when you want to a really good job as Kham, apparently you'd need to micro them to help grow cysts?
(By the way, almost 0 health fresh cysts with growth delay totally suck, too. Another easy target for the marines in larger games!)
Drifter AI is bad, and needs improvement
Often they will ignore building stuff right next to them, until you manually force them.
If one drifter wants to build something but gets stuck on the way (they like to climb crates and door frames, getting stuck there), all the other drifters ignore building that thing. You have to manually stop the bugged drifter (press X for "stop") so the others start building.
Drifters will often deselect themselves (maybe this is a selection priority issue?).
Sometimes you can't select a Drifter by dragging a rectangle when it should work.
Sometimes they ignore movement orders. Often when under fire (or having been shot recently).
Drifters really need a "follow" command, like MACs have. Additionally: using Drifter abilities should not break the "follow" order, they should just go back to following after they've spit their ability somewhere.
Drifters need more HP or that semi cloak back. Marines will easily pick them out even in huge fights.
The entire Alien comm system/tech path is basically the same as before, but with less flexibility and slower due to biomass as a res sink.
You mostly research all upgrades in order, because else you'd only be waiting.
Things like "let's get quick bilebomb" or "let's rush spores" are impossible. Instead you are locked in the given order of upgrades, at most skipping one (usually shadowstep) when money is low.
The problem of missing upgrades without a 3rd Hive is exactly the same as in 249, just with the new system instead.
The entire Alien comm system seems underdeveloped. Most problems with the old system are in place with the new system.
I think consideration was one-sided towards the Marine tech path, allowing useful 1 base tech, different upgrade choices (SG vs gates vs AA etc.) and 1 base comeback ability, ninja gates (build on Infestation), energize in case of power node loss, etc. Marines got all their possible wishes considered.
The Khamm system instead is now more linear and cumbersome and opaque, but not really better (the new Marine system, in contrast, is better).
Enzyme (or what it's called, the dual attack rate red mist) is a tremendously useful Drifter ability to help your team in a fight and make a difference when needed. It's worth its money. The new abilities (speed, slow armor heal) are not.
Crag/Shift/Shade "movement" is so painfully slow, it's only good for some laughs by the team when you attempt to actually utilize their capabilities
General Alien impression:
It seems Marines hit *everything* better and miss less. I'm getting one-shotted much more often than before. Being severely damaged but not dead happens less often than before.
There was a change in the Marine hit detection right?
Skulks get stuck on smaller geometry a lot. Had many deaths trying to ambush a Marine, and then being stuck in something while he laughs and shoots me:D
When i first tried it i really hated it i was like how the hell could you ever dare destroying my fav. game but i notice as i get better i'm more and more liking it. For me in my mind its like 'i know how that works i played and trained it for months' but when i play it the game now punches me in my face and tells me i'm wrong, what really frustrates me but on the other hand i'm really excited getting used to the new changes i see how much work sewlek and the rest of uwe put into the update(compared with kdiff) and it would just be ignorant not trying to get better in 250. I just want to tell you thanks for the work and the game and show he guys who are still hating the update how to get used to it and getting back into the game because i'm far away from being 'good' again and im liking the update more and more but there are still some issues left for me to mention(repeat? but supporting those who already mentioned):
-genade launcher seems op. i cant think of a proper way to block an early gl rush even worse with jp even when they're suicide in close combat
(maybe they need to be affected by weapon upgrades, the clipsize reduced)
-flamethrower is also a bit too powerful especially in early game(i mean as soon you can get them (~ +2min))
-skulks should be slightly faster
(compared to advanced armory upgrade the alien upgrades, which also needs biomass seem quite expensive -just my impression)
(-debugspeed should no longer count as cheat because it doent give anyone an advantage but is useful for training the new movements(and sometimes you cant enable it when cheats are on it just wont show up the speedometer))
but i really like that on infestation placed gorgetunnels spreading infestation is awesome (but dont like the idea that they are creating infestation themselves as mentioned in the beta test addon would be good because i could jut place a lonely entrace somewhere in the map just for a little shade-supported base (if i got it right))
the bunnyhopping is ok but for me it still is better suitable for super mario because i rather focus on the fight than bhopping
and i would suggest you to use the ingame main-menu-news-panel also as place for multiplechioce surveys because the forum doesnt cover what all players are thinking maybe it could turn out good also if its only 1 yes-no question of what you want to know from the players (of cause every player can only use them once per steamid)
tl;dr
haters: deal with it/ get used to it -for me it works this way im im making progress in liking 250 more and more so its possible to change your opinion by just playing it long enough(still not loving it but im not done)
gl/ft is op; skulks slightly too slow
debugspped should be available without cheats enabled
main-menu surveys are a great opportunity to cover all players (also seeing how much (%) participated)
just a slight to the walking speed it just feels like it could be a bit faster but i assume its only my view
i mean strafe-walljumping is fast but it should walk faster than rines(or maybe in the scenario in my mind the rine ran but i was slower by just walking) if it walks faster than rines walkspeed -then nvm, forgot what i said, delete it out of your mind^^
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@uke just dont walk
Stay off the ground, not only do you go faster by simply running on the walls, but you should be chaining together wall jumps... pretty much all the time.
Then you'll notice speed is no issue what so ever
i see how much work sewlek and the rest of uwe put into the update(compared with kdiff)
Pretty awesome to see someone even looking at the code like that. But do bear in mind, the code diffs are only the tip of the iceberg. For every completed change you see, there's a ton of other changes - some of which got tried and then reverted to the original, most of which got tried and adjusted and tried and changed some more and tried and completely overhauled and tried and then finally tweaked into their final form.
The real work isn't the code changes, it's in coming up with ideas for changes and then testing and evaluating and improving (or discarding) them over and over and over until they work.
Crag/Shade/Shift movement is soooooo slow.... It really could stand to be faster. At the rate they move it makes more sense just to echo them.
Also, how about (as some have suggested) untying the alien upgrades from Biomass? so the Biomass system is still in place for HP scaling, but upgrades are tied to the hive once again (tunnels/bile/umbra 1 hive, leap/ss/spores 2 hives, xeno/vortex/stomp 3 hives). This gives the alien commander a bit more freedom, if he/she wants to simply get upgrades without going for biomass also.
Lastly, xenocide is still pretty useless. Could use some more tweaking.
@hozz First off, awesome feedback, but I'd like to politely disagree with you on some points. First off, hydras. Time and time again I've done it and so have many other good gorgies. A good gorge with his clog wall and hydra wall can handle quite a few marines for a good amount of time. The extra dps and shield the hydras provide is invaluable when combined with the gorge spit and heal spray.
As far as I know, the drifters do have a follow command. I just sic one on a onos leading the push and he follows the onos all day long until I regain control. Also the drifter heal is totally worth it between the gorgies and my drifter the marines had a real tough time killing anything and in a huge fight, every marine has a habit of ignoring the attackless drifter in lue of attacking aliens so drifters have helped me quite a bit.
I do argee that the biomass system is a bit linear and expencive, but I don't think biomass should be removed by any means, perhaps reworked a little bit but that's about it.
Everything else I either argee with you on or I have no comment lol.
Well - you're right, it isn't desirable that skulks generally move around the map too fast.
It is just my observation that even in 249, mainly the extreme speeds in closing in on marines you could achieve as skulk back then would stop small teams (say, two) skilled marines with the then-rarer good frame rates from getting way too many kills against skulks. Mere run & leap - types of speeds wouldn't work, and something marginally faster is what we have now.
(Yep, skulks who knew their movement were probably too fast at getting to RTs and so on, especially when there weren't enough players on the server for there to be opposition everywhere. Of course, I'd rather take a slant to that kind of gameplay than Skulks constantly loosing fights; at least it can be worked around by playing on bigger servers or smaller maps.)
Maybe if leaping straight away from a wall (with maybe the option to go like 60 degrees in any direction) accelerated you to 249-like speeds, so aliens can close in fast on marines, at least in various situations...?
@Radtoo you can get very fast acceleration with the b250 skulk just from 1 walljump. It's easily enough to get up to 'second sound' speed and close gaps to marines very quickly. Honestly, if they were any faster it would be ridiculous!
Okay, I tried it for several days and its just not my game anymore. Movement feels awkward even if you are fast, combat too. I dont want to weld every Marine all the time (with a welder which still costs res), even I loved to weld in the old game. Just some points, there are more.
Sky is not falling down because of this. There are other games. I can use my time in a different way. The game is paid and there always new players joining because of steam sales. But I will not recommend it to friends anymore, which I did before.
A few things for me involves the GL and flamethrower, they should probably need to have to be researched again and the flamethrower really needs an obvious ammo limit and probably nerf to damage. Other than that I don't really see any major issues with the game (maybe the Onos, but I'm still up for debate on that one). Sure aliens play a lot differently then when I last played, but as long as the game is balanced (or getting there) and nothing was done that makes NS2 not NS2 anymore I don't see a problem with it. I played as the fade and I didn't see anything wrong with it. Then again I only played it once.
Exos are TOO fast.
When even the welding Marine can't keep up with the Exo, something is fishy.
Wait the marines actually have to work together and plan their movements now? Doesn't seem fishy to me...
hozz wasn't complaining about welding, but pointing out that exos are incredibly fast now. A railgun exo is just ridiculously fast (haven't tested if it actually outruns marines, but I bet they come close to it).
used the steam sale to pick up the deluxe NS2 package, and have to say that thoroughly love the soundtrack. my daughter mistook it for the arkham city soundtrack, and i find it quite reminiscent of noise unit's "voyeur" and earlier synesthaesia (which is high praise indeed, as both are side projects of front line assembly, a big deal in industrial music).
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@Daveodeath if you figure out exact reproduction steps please message me them. Some of the other causes have been mostly fixed. Bug squashing is best described as triage. ;-)
hozz wasn't complaining about welding, but pointing out that exos are incredibly fast now. A railgun exo is just ridiculously fast (haven't tested if it actually outruns marines, but I bet they come close to it).
Exactly. Especially with the new forward thruster, you'd need a jetpack to keep up with an Exo. No way to do it on foot.
The problem with the Exo speed is basically that it removed their only weakness. Aliens could rush a group of Exos after forcing a beacon, for example. Now, the Exos can just run away faster than the Aliens can get to them. It's not fun to play against a unit with many strengths and little weaknesses.
The Onos, in contrast, has the weakness that it has to commit to an attack and will be chased down if it does not work, there are too many Marines, etc, because it's melee only. Which is why it needs more HP than it has right now. They just die too fast, you can barely engage 2 Marines from across a bigger room without being in extreme danger. We're talking about a once-in-a-game, 76 or 84 res unit.
Absolutely loving the new fade movement. I was never able to really pick up speed in 249 but with this patch...just holy crap. Taking celerity and absolutely hauling around the map is great fun.
Slight "might-get-lost-in-the-mix" suggestion - it would be cool - when you moused over the available "biomass" upgrades it would do a little pop-up that says "research at shift" or "research at crag", etc.
Since NS2 was officially released I didn't mind so many updates especially when they contained Gorgeous and the likes. During this time I noticed a few of my friends drop off because they were sick of all the changes. I thought 249 was a pretty good build and considered it very well balanced. However come 250 and they totally screwed aliens over in my mind.
- Flamers are OP especially early on.
- Drifters are now a continual waste of res
- infesting a level for map control is pointless now marines can build anywhere on it
- cost of upgrades between aliens and marines and how much it costs to recover the upgrades if lost
- when infest is taken down near a res, its nearly impossible to save the res in time once the marine is killed because then you need to send a drifter/gorge there in time to heal it and wait for the infest time.
- Onos seems far too weak now and seems to be taken down even from a marine sneezing
Obviously there are positives to the updates which I have mentioned previously. However on these key changes alone I'm starting to get over it and I'm not sure how much longer I will stick around for.
Will see what the near future updates contain and will decide from there.
Aliens really have problems finishing a Marine team off/killing a Marine base
I think with reduced GL/FT spam, stronger Onos this will be pretty much fixed.
Marines can make comebacks/turtle+wait so easily, it feels unfair. Aliens meanwhile can hardly make a comeback. Often Aliens lose when they really should have won, or it takes forever to end the game.
GL + Jetpack spam harassment and OP Exos/bad Onos play a big part in this.
I don't think a Railgun Exo should be able to 1v1 an Onos by going backwards, not even being hit due to being faster than the Onos running and attacking (the attack misses). Backwards!
cost of upgrades between aliens and marines and how much it costs to recover the upgrades if lost
Worst thing can happen to Marines is loss of Proto for 40 res and 5 second build time.
Losing a Hive is 90 res and minutes + lack of biomass upgrades + possibly lack of evolution upgrades!
Onos egg is 100 res, meanwhile dropped Exos can't die.
when infest is taken down near a res, its nearly impossible to save the res in time once the marine is killed because then you need to send a drifter/gorge there in time to heal it and wait for the infest time.
Yes. No need for fast receding infestation if Marines can build on it anyways.
- Onos seems far too weak now and seems to be taken down even from a marine sneezing
Drifter handling is just overall bad. Ignoring orders, refusing to move when under fire, getting stuck/deselected, not selectable from bad perspective, etc
Also, Drifters seem to ignore building a cyst right next to them in 99% of cases.
Comments
And maybe fly at different heights.
And maybe be un-uncloakable with most weapons (spray-firing LMG to find them was so easy, besides even rookies that never thought about doing this to uncloak hidden units would occasionally find drifters when they fought visible enemies - skulks and the like).
But I don't like *any* of the whole alien commander drifter micromanagement. And when you want to a really good job as Kham, apparently you'd need to micro them to help grow cysts?
(By the way, almost 0 health fresh cysts with growth delay totally suck, too. Another easy target for the marines in larger games!)
This have become a boring spamfest combat mod.
That being said I'm out to go spend my money on something else.
- Drifter AI is bad, and needs improvement
- Drifters really need a "follow" command, like MACs have. Additionally: using Drifter abilities should not break the "follow" order, they should just go back to following after they've spit their ability somewhere.
- Drifters need more HP or that semi cloak back. Marines will easily pick them out even in huge fights.
- The entire Alien comm system/tech path is basically the same as before, but with less flexibility and slower due to biomass as a res sink.
- Enzyme (or what it's called, the dual attack rate red mist) is a tremendously useful Drifter ability to help your team in a fight and make a difference when needed. It's worth its money. The new abilities (speed, slow armor heal) are not.
- Crag/Shift/Shade "movement" is so painfully slow, it's only good for some laughs by the team when you attempt to actually utilize their capabilities
General Alien impression:Often they will ignore building stuff right next to them, until you manually force them.
If one drifter wants to build something but gets stuck on the way (they like to climb crates and door frames, getting stuck there), all the other drifters ignore building that thing. You have to manually stop the bugged drifter (press X for "stop") so the others start building.
Drifters will often deselect themselves (maybe this is a selection priority issue?).
Sometimes you can't select a Drifter by dragging a rectangle when it should work.
Sometimes they ignore movement orders. Often when under fire (or having been shot recently).
You mostly research all upgrades in order, because else you'd only be waiting.
Things like "let's get quick bilebomb" or "let's rush spores" are impossible. Instead you are locked in the given order of upgrades, at most skipping one (usually shadowstep) when money is low.
The problem of missing upgrades without a 3rd Hive is exactly the same as in 249, just with the new system instead.
The entire Alien comm system seems underdeveloped. Most problems with the old system are in place with the new system.
I think consideration was one-sided towards the Marine tech path, allowing useful 1 base tech, different upgrade choices (SG vs gates vs AA etc.) and 1 base comeback ability, ninja gates (build on Infestation), energize in case of power node loss, etc. Marines got all their possible wishes considered.
The Khamm system instead is now more linear and cumbersome and opaque, but not really better (the new Marine system, in contrast, is better).
There was a change in the Marine hit detection right?
-genade launcher seems op. i cant think of a proper way to block an early gl rush even worse with jp even when they're suicide in close combat
(maybe they need to be affected by weapon upgrades, the clipsize reduced)
-flamethrower is also a bit too powerful especially in early game(i mean as soon you can get them (~ +2min))
-skulks should be slightly faster
(compared to advanced armory upgrade the alien upgrades, which also needs biomass seem quite expensive -just my impression)
(-debugspeed should no longer count as cheat because it doent give anyone an advantage but is useful for training the new movements(and sometimes you cant enable it when cheats are on it just wont show up the speedometer))
but i really like that on infestation placed gorgetunnels spreading infestation is awesome (but dont like the idea that they are creating infestation themselves as mentioned in the beta test addon would be good because i could jut place a lonely entrace somewhere in the map just for a little shade-supported base (if i got it right))
the bunnyhopping is ok but for me it still is better suitable for super mario because i rather focus on the fight than bhopping
and i would suggest you to use the ingame main-menu-news-panel also as place for multiplechioce surveys because the forum doesnt cover what all players are thinking maybe it could turn out good also if its only 1 yes-no question of what you want to know from the players (of cause every player can only use them once per steamid)
tl;dr
haters: deal with it/ get used to it -for me it works this way im im making progress in liking 250 more and more so its possible to change your opinion by just playing it long enough(still not loving it but im not done)
gl/ft is op; skulks slightly too slow
debugspped should be available without cheats enabled
main-menu surveys are a great opportunity to cover all players (also seeing how much (%) participated)
i mean strafe-walljumping is fast but it should walk faster than rines(or maybe in the scenario in my mind the rine ran but i was slower by just walking) if it walks faster than rines walkspeed -then nvm, forgot what i said, delete it out of your mind^^
Stay off the ground, not only do you go faster by simply running on the walls, but you should be chaining together wall jumps... pretty much all the time.
Then you'll notice speed is no issue what so ever
The real work isn't the code changes, it's in coming up with ideas for changes and then testing and evaluating and improving (or discarding) them over and over and over until they work.
Also, how about (as some have suggested) untying the alien upgrades from Biomass? so the Biomass system is still in place for HP scaling, but upgrades are tied to the hive once again (tunnels/bile/umbra 1 hive, leap/ss/spores 2 hives, xeno/vortex/stomp 3 hives). This gives the alien commander a bit more freedom, if he/she wants to simply get upgrades without going for biomass also.
Lastly, xenocide is still pretty useless. Could use some more tweaking.
As far as I know, the drifters do have a follow command. I just sic one on a onos leading the push and he follows the onos all day long until I regain control. Also the drifter heal is totally worth it between the gorgies and my drifter the marines had a real tough time killing anything and in a huge fight, every marine has a habit of ignoring the attackless drifter in lue of attacking aliens so drifters have helped me quite a bit.
I do argee that the biomass system is a bit linear and expencive, but I don't think biomass should be removed by any means, perhaps reworked a little bit but that's about it.
Everything else I either argee with you on or I have no comment lol.
It is just my observation that even in 249, mainly the extreme speeds in closing in on marines you could achieve as skulk back then would stop small teams (say, two) skilled marines with the then-rarer good frame rates from getting way too many kills against skulks. Mere run & leap - types of speeds wouldn't work, and something marginally faster is what we have now.
(Yep, skulks who knew their movement were probably too fast at getting to RTs and so on, especially when there weren't enough players on the server for there to be opposition everywhere. Of course, I'd rather take a slant to that kind of gameplay than Skulks constantly loosing fights; at least it can be worked around by playing on bigger servers or smaller maps.)
Maybe if leaping straight away from a wall (with maybe the option to go like 60 degrees in any direction) accelerated you to 249-like speeds, so aliens can close in fast on marines, at least in various situations...?
K, you weren't spending more money here anyway
This is a bad thing??
Huh?
Are you taking stupid pills..
Sky is not falling down because of this. There are other games. I can use my time in a different way. The game is paid and there always new players joining because of steam sales. But I will not recommend it to friends anymore, which I did before.
Since I paid for the game about a year and a half ago and not a dime since, I'd say his pills are just fine, whatever he's taking.
Wait the marines actually have to work together and plan their movements now? Doesn't seem fishy to me...
hozz wasn't complaining about welding, but pointing out that exos are incredibly fast now. A railgun exo is just ridiculously fast (haven't tested if it actually outruns marines, but I bet they come close to it).
used the steam sale to pick up the deluxe NS2 package, and have to say that thoroughly love the soundtrack. my daughter mistook it for the arkham city soundtrack, and i find it quite reminiscent of noise unit's "voyeur" and earlier synesthaesia (which is high praise indeed, as both are side projects of front line assembly, a big deal in industrial music).
Jolly good show anyway! well worth the cash!
The problem with the Exo speed is basically that it removed their only weakness. Aliens could rush a group of Exos after forcing a beacon, for example. Now, the Exos can just run away faster than the Aliens can get to them. It's not fun to play against a unit with many strengths and little weaknesses.
The Onos, in contrast, has the weakness that it has to commit to an attack and will be chased down if it does not work, there are too many Marines, etc, because it's melee only. Which is why it needs more HP than it has right now. They just die too fast, you can barely engage 2 Marines from across a bigger room without being in extreme danger. We're talking about a once-in-a-game, 76 or 84 res unit.
TLDR: Exos too fast, Onoses too weak.
Slight "might-get-lost-in-the-mix" suggestion - it would be cool - when you moused over the available "biomass" upgrades it would do a little pop-up that says "research at shift" or "research at crag", etc.
Just my $0.02.
- Flamers are OP especially early on.
- Drifters are now a continual waste of res
- infesting a level for map control is pointless now marines can build anywhere on it
- cost of upgrades between aliens and marines and how much it costs to recover the upgrades if lost
- when infest is taken down near a res, its nearly impossible to save the res in time once the marine is killed because then you need to send a drifter/gorge there in time to heal it and wait for the infest time.
- Onos seems far too weak now and seems to be taken down even from a marine sneezing
Obviously there are positives to the updates which I have mentioned previously. However on these key changes alone I'm starting to get over it and I'm not sure how much longer I will stick around for.
Will see what the near future updates contain and will decide from there.
I think with reduced GL/FT spam, stronger Onos this will be pretty much fixed.
GL + Jetpack spam harassment and OP Exos/bad Onos play a big part in this.
Losing a Hive is 90 res and minutes + lack of biomass upgrades + possibly lack of evolution upgrades!
Onos egg is 100 res, meanwhile dropped Exos can't die.
Also, Drifters seem to ignore building a cyst right next to them in 99% of cases.