Aura is the worst ability I've seen in a competitive game.
ChrisAUS
Join Date: 2012-11-17 Member: 172108Members
Join Date: 2012-11-17 Member: 172108Members
Aura gives alien lifeforms a wallhack that also roughly shows enemy hitpoints. There is no downside to having this ability unlike a commanders investment of Tres for a temporary scan. It is not like parasite where the skulk needs to expose itself and is still vulnerable to traps while moving around the map/entering rooms.
Alien:
- No longer need to be aware or ready for an ambush when entering a room.
- No longer scared about being trapped/baited.
- No need to worry about being out-positioned or blocked.
- Do not need to play intelligently.
Marine:
- Only way to defeat an Aura alien is in a head-to-head fight which is chosen at the alien discretion more often than not.
- No ability to trap/bait aliens into over-committing.
- Can not out-position aliens.
This is a horrible mechanic to have in a game that relies on teamwork and tactics. It forces marines to win engagements by burst damage/dps and nothing else.
Alien:
- No longer need to be aware or ready for an ambush when entering a room.
- No longer scared about being trapped/baited.
- No need to worry about being out-positioned or blocked.
- Do not need to play intelligently.
Marine:
- Only way to defeat an Aura alien is in a head-to-head fight which is chosen at the alien discretion more often than not.
- No ability to trap/bait aliens into over-committing.
- Can not out-position aliens.
This is a horrible mechanic to have in a game that relies on teamwork and tactics. It forces marines to win engagements by burst damage/dps and nothing else.
Comments
By mid game with two alien hives the marine com could (maybe) afford scans on a semi permanent basis and by end game with max hives obs should be mostly everywhere... in theory.
Of course, I am talking out of my ass, but I think it can add new layers of teamwork... sometimes (again, its situational).
@Ghosthree3, I kinda agree with you, could level 3 provide the health color? Honestly, I don't really notice a diff between levels (aside from some range).
-Good players will generally be aware of marine positioning regardless of aura. This is generally speaking, while there are of course some situations where aura will give you info you would not otherwise have had, it's not hard to predict that you might get pinched while playing lifeform on a retreat path.
-Aura has no real combat modifiers, and you have to have a SHADE hive to get it. Sacrificing crag or shift hive has significant drawbacks (crag especially) the longer the game goes on.
I am not saying you are wrong, but in your post you sort of make sound like aura is a huge skill floor boost, while I would argue a lot of this information will be inherent to personal game sense/ game skill even without aura.
I don't wanna say aura doesn't belong, but its really way too good IMO. Something needs to be changed about it. Maybe retain its power, but change its function in some way.
One thing players enjoy is having the option of flanking, sneaking and ambushing other players. Nothing pisses them off more than having that option completely shut off to them (part of the reason sentries suck).
My point was that aura is not a huge skill floor boost, but rather a big lowering of the skill ceiling. Covered by your 1st point that good players will generally be aware of marine positioning.
EG: Pre-aura it took a bit of skill to reliably hit the same marine you originally swiped while moving in and out of combat. Same as it took a bit of skill to be aware of marine positioning and of potential traps/safe escape routes. Now everything is made simple.
The OP wasn't meant to be about hive upgrades being good/bad but I knew it would come up.
2 Hive max biomass Fade with cara : 300/100
2 Hive max biomass Fade without cara : 300/80
Personally I would much rather I knew where all the marines are with aura so I can choose when I want to go in, rather then go in and rely on 20 extra armour to save me if I made a bad decision/got outplayed.
Not only is it a big decline in skill cap for the aliens, it also limits the way marines can counter aura play. Again, lowering the available skill-set of marine players.
EDIT:
Just re-read what you wrote and I think I missed your point. You mean that good players can skip aura and go shift/crag because they will be aware of the things mentioned in OP. Yes, I agree. Doesn't really deal with how broken I feel aura is though.
In other words, lifeforms with aura make some noise almost constantly, which can be heard by marines.
"Noise range" would need to be balanced with aura range (if they're the same, or noise range is greater, aura will be useless).
So:
Phantom gives you the ability to be silent and hide.
Aura gives you the ability to see marines through walls, but in return they can hear you (if they're close enough), so you can't really hide.
As I said you are not necessarily wrong, aura does provide a skill floor raise/skill ceiling lowered, whatever you want to call it. But this is the entire point of the upgrade and arguably shade tech, it is the function of a non-linear upgrade system (what would you replace it with?). I don't really see it as OP, I see it as a decent upgrade that comes with trade-offs.
All of the alien (shade/shift/crag) abilities are passive. Their expense is the Tres invested in the upgrade chambers, any Pres cost for actually evolving the upgrade, and not having the benefit of the other upgrade in that path (i.e. Phantom). It's not meant to work like parasite, or Tres scans and shouldn't really be compared to them. It has other drawbacks both personally (upgrade options), and for the team (Hive choice).
Yes this is what I was gettin at. If you are a highly skilled team there is a point where going Aura/shade could be considered inefficient. For curiosity, what kind of games are you finding it to be op in? and at what stage? early/mid/late
Skulks are free and numerous. Their ability is also better than aura in some ways as it shows which direction an enemy is aiming. Hence the limitation on their "wall tracking" abilities.
See above.
This is the silliest thing ever. Aura gives you a passive flow of information. It does not maneuver and attack for you. You still need to ability to process the information, make decisions, and attack; an opening may only last a moment.
Once again, just knowing where the enemy is, doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Aura will discourage rambo marines and encourage tight knit organized groups. You can still bait a player that uses aura anyways. Just don't drop a medkit on that low hp marine and have everyone else just stare at him and wait.
Paying attention to sound, having good headphones, constantly checking the map, keeping enemy positions in the back of your mind, you eventually develop almost an ESP like ability similar to aura, its very rare to get ambushed if you have really good game sense like most comp players.
if the marine hp status was removed then no skilled player would ever use it. Perhaps if the wall hack element was removed, yet keep the health info and instead make it line of sight ? That way you can still have ambush play, and aura would still be useful for skilled players.
At best players hone in on marines with a yellow outline without shade hive but aura takes any intelligent thought out of choosing your target, the fade ball is going to swarm anything red orange and then green as a last resort.
How many people over commit in your average game of NS2 to getting that one last bite/swipe which results in their death? No more.
How many people get caught leaving an area because 2 marines went through the middle of the map to cut off their exit a room and a half away? No more.
How many people enter a room blind and get banked by 4-5 marines who just phased through with a couple of SGs? No more.
There's no way in hell it should have a health indicator at the very least.
tl;dr: There are people that pay monthly subscriptions to dodgy Russian hosted websites all over the world to access the same information in other FPS that aura gives people in NS2.
-> engaging marines silent is a huge benefit for most lifeforms
-> avoiding the occasional trap
I more often choose the first lately.
Crag is less effective as the game progresses. 1 biomass skulks with cara 3 are good, 9 biomass skulks don't really care so much, and both cara and regen are FAR worse for fade than adren and aura.
While what you say may be true enough for pub play, I have a feeling rantology might be more talking about top level competitive play, and she knows more about that than either your or I do
Basic numbers, cara is a smaller percentage of total health as biomass increases. That cara and regen are comparatively weak for fade is obvious at all levels.
Disagree with this. Considering as soon as higher lifeforms come out one of the best ways of taking them down is through baiting and blocking.
You are missing the point. There is a risk-reward in using parasite. The skulk needs to expose itself and it also gives away it's rough position when using parasite. The skulk can also be ambushed and has to be aware when entering rooms. Aura removes all that.
Aura makes that process much much easier. Players don't need to worry about being ambushed, they know if they are being baited or not, they know safe escape routes, they know enemy HP and can much more easily make a call if they should stick in combat or back out because of it.
Teams already play in an organised way. Aura just forces them to play a specific way, and to never try things like blocking and baiting. The only time you will bait someone with aura is if they are over-confident and make a mistake. You will never trick them into this.
Basically this. I know one of the main talking points of BT mod was to increase the skill ceiling while keeping the floor the same. I think aura lowers the ceiling and options on both teams, and should not be in the game as it is.
Yeah, I also think phantom is broken (specifically in public play) but aura is worse in my opinion. :P
Aura is on the shade hive meaning you do not (yet) have crag/shift or you have so many hives its a win already.
* puggers dont all go for aura, cloaking/silence combo is very interesting in the eyes of a newbie.
* No regen/cara or celer/adren will start to break you when you fight more experienced people. They wont miss.
* You can still pinch a alien who has aura. Funny thing is they KNOW they are pinched and may, hopefully, panic.
You say you do not like aura due to the information and lack of ambushes but thats not entirely true. You are giving up other vital upgrades for that information, and it does not matter much knowing marines are there, if they are there on all exits.
But, that's what makes it so much fun.
On a related note I see TONS of pub-skulks not notice they've been scanned while waiting to phantom ambush because they have alien vision on and don't hear/understand the ping.
I think it's fair to disregard tres/pres investment in the discussion, along with hive tech path. I wasn't trying to argue that shade is better than crag or shift, or that aura was more powerful than carapace.
The point of the OP is that once aura is actually in play, 'this is what it does'.
I think the general concensus is that good players don't need the ability. Which I mostly agree with. (I think good players can abuse it more in a way). So why is it in the game? I understand it was in NS1 but gameplay mechanics from 10+ years ago don't necessarily translate well today. This is one of them in my opinion. All it's doing is forcing marines to play a specific way against it, a way that doesn't involve out-smarting or out-positioning but rather waiting for the alien to commit, and then hoping you can burst it down before it leaves/kills you.
It's also letting aliens play a lot more recklessly in terms of how they move around the map. There is less skill required in map awareness, positional awareness and combat ability. I don't mind the suggestion of @piratedave but right now I feel it's a mechanic that than shouldn't be in the game.
Easy.. find a better upgrade to fit the shade path. They already merged silence & cloak for a reason. The path is historicly underpowered.
I have no problem Aura being actually quite strong.