Hahahahaha no. This just is another lie. You'll find more often than not that aliens win the early game or at least make it bloody tough for marines. The fade ball is difficult because of the early game (which is why I say aliens win the early game).
Mm... maybe in public(mostly because of too defensife marines). But in competitive games(div1). Marines are usually very strong early game, but if they cant finish it, and let aliens to get fades -> tides turn. And now aliens are more likely to win. But if aliens cant finish it before marines get jetpacks, then marines have a good chance to win again.
Marine wins in div1 that ive played are either very short or long:
-dominating early game and finishing the game before fades come up.
-if fades get up -> hold 5-6rts and 2pgs until you get jps+enough upgrades and finish it.
Alien wins:
-baserush.
-harassing enough rts and holding 3 harvesters until fades are up and finishing it before jps.
Forget where i read or who posted this on the forums recently but what about the idea of reducing or removing the wispy affect blink has? The game relies on the fact you need to track the movement of a fade in combat and to be completely honest the wispy affect does make me lose him sometimes. Removing that feature or at least making it maybe 75% less opaque may help marines track fades and even groups of fades in heavy combat.
Heh, just a random thought, I'm not sure if this could be any use in the present situation:
Make fades that have taken a lot of damage recently (or are below certain HP treshold) have a bit of non-obstructive 'bleed' trail. It can be a wispy smoke trail or some other effect, preferrably just a clearly recognizable effect that doesn't block vision that much.
If done right, you might have easier time targetting the less healthy fades rather than randomly blasting at a bunch.
Someone with proper marine experience on the recent versions might have an idea whether this could be any help.
Forget where i read or who posted this on the forums recently but what about the idea of reducing or removing the wispy affect blink has? The game relies on the fact you need to track the movement of a fade in combat and to be completely honest the wispy affect does make me lose him sometimes. Removing that feature or at least making it maybe 75% less opaque may help marines track fades and even groups of fades in heavy combat.
Heh, just a random thought, I'm not sure if this could be any use in the present situation:
Make fades that have taken a lot of damage recently (or are below certain HP treshold) have a bit of non-obstructive 'bleed' trail. It can be a wispy smoke trail or some other effect, preferrably just a clearly recognizable effect that doesn't block vision that much.
If done right, you might have easier time targetting the less healthy fades rather than randomly blasting at a bunch.
Someone with proper marine experience on the recent versions might have an idea whether this could be any help.
It would certainly make more fades die in a ball. But I'm already 100% against the heavy armor dying effects as it is. So, I'd vote no
Agreed. If the ProtoLab was back on 2 CCs, you would probably never see any marine wins once Fades came up. It's the one thing that keeps marines in the game and enables their comeback.
But I'd honestly prefer to not see the flow of the game change this massively on either side just because a single technology hits the field (Jetpacks on marine side and Fades on alien side). There should be a more gradual progression towards a new pace of gameplay - a progress that can be recognized by the enemy team early enough and thus can be delayed or prevented to reach its full potential by acting upon it quickly enough.
One possible way of achieving this would be to make those technologies weaker in their initial state but provide more meaningful upgrades that need to be chosen consciously depending on a tactic that the commander is pursuing, which in return means that you will see less similar strategies across different matches.
Examples would be to have Shotguns with a low initial RoF and ammo capacity and to provide upgrades that increase the ammo capacity or RoF slightly again. Or Jetpacks with a more limited amount of fuel, but with an upgrade to increase that amount. Or Flamethrowers with the old fuel canister size, but with an upgrade to increase it to the new amount. Or Grenade Launchers with a reduced explosion radius and ammo capacity, but with upgrades to bring them back to their current amount.
You could argue that players would always wait for the respective upgrades to be researched then, since they don't want to invest a lot of pres into a gimped weapon and possibly lose it. A solution for that could be to make the base weapon slightly cheaper (weak Shotgun for 15 pres) and offer the upgrades as modules in the Armory that can be purchased separately after they have been researched and the player holds the respective weapon. (3 pres for RoF, 2 pres for increased ammo capacity)
If the commander would only drop the basic version of the weapon for tres, you could achieve a similar system to pre-evolved eggs on the alien side where they still have to pay for the traits with their own pres.
The blink effect was already reduced significantly making fades easily trackable. I do not think completely removing it will do anything at all.
There are a few things specifically with the effect that do not make it easy to track. You don't need to remove it entirely.
- When the fade enters blink, he becomes darker and emits a bright circle pulse. This sudden loss of contrast is bad. Sure I am already kinda used to aiming/predicting fades now, but at the heart of it, it's really all guesswork from having played alot. It's still annoying as hell to have to spend time 'getting used' to a certain players fade movement style before being able to actually reliably hit him with lmg.
- When a fade is blinking away from you, he leaves many dark puffs of smoke clouds exactly like the shade ink effect. This literally makes it impossible to see where he is. If you try and chase the fade, you are walking your view camera into these trail puffs and basically blinding yourself. This is dumb.
I just don't see how you can not see this. No pun intended.
*Like honestly, make the fade easier to see for the new players if anything.
You're misunderstanding my point. I can see the blur/ink-like effects you are referring too. I just do not think that those really hinder a marines ability to track the fade. Maybe my high refresh rate monitor makes a significant difference so I am biased. Who knows.
IIRC, this is the first time I have heard any sort of mention on the blink effect since it was almost completely removed at build 250.
You're misunderstanding my point. I can see the blur/ink-like effects you are referring too. I just do not think that those really hinder a marines ability to track the fade. Maybe my high refresh rate monitor makes a significant difference so I am biased. Who knows.
IIRC, this is the first time I have heard any sort of mention on the blink effect since it was almost completely removed at build 250.
Maybe. But personally, I can't track something I can't see. Most 'tracking' in ns2 is not really tracking in the purest sense but actually just some form of having gotten used to specific movement patterns.
Just look at the skulk with it's slow animation smoothing rate. When that thing starts sideways moving and all that good stuff, you can't rely on actually tracking it based on anything but experience of 'how things move in ns2'.
To be more specific, most of the stuff with fade has got to do with certain view angles and situations. i.e. fade blinking away from you (not horizontally across your fov away), trying to chase said fade to finish him off and moving into these ink clouds, fade ball and assorted alien firework effects, and fades blinking right infront of your model (or from 'inside' your model) so that it covers your entire fov. Makes it hard to tell whether they are behind you, above you, or did they just blink to your side.
As for this being the first time mentioned, I'm ok with that. There's always a first time. Specifically in regard to new players - they don't know what's good for them half the time. How many new players said anything about gorge spit effect? How many have complained about rupture? Or structure deaths (most notably RT's and ghost structure poofing) giving skulks a free smoke cloud that 100% gives them vision and first mover advantage. I don't think i've seen a single person besides myself say anything about this, yet it's there, and it's a problem.
But I'd honestly prefer to not see the flow of the game change this massively on either side just because a single technology hits the field (Jetpacks on marine side and Fades on alien side). There should be a more gradual progression towards a new pace of gameplay - a progress that can be recognized by the enemy team early enough and thus can be delayed or prevented to reach its full potential by acting upon it quickly enough.
One possible way of achieving this would be to make those technologies weaker in their initial state but provide more meaningful upgrades that need to be chosen consciously depending on a tactic that the commander is pursuing, which in return means that you will see less similar strategies across different matches.
your post is completely contradictory
gradual upgrades instead of staggered ones make it harder to delay + prevent
if you give people bonuses for what are essentially half upgrades, then the teams pursing those upgrades become empowered and cannot be prevented from getting the full version.
the all-or-nothing mechanic is the only thing that makes NS2 function as a strategy game.
if one side isn't temporarily stronger, then nobody ever has a window of opportunity to attack and it's stagnant gameplay instead of dynamic back-and-forth
the problem is that teams aren't good enough to succeed at attacking so they are encouraged to play safe and go for the low reward / low risk plays.
the solution to that is to increase effectiveness in those windows by making progression less gradual and less symmetrical
maybe there should be more of a scouting mechanic in some cases
eg. if aliens need more time to recognize that marines are going for jetpacks, then the jp research can be slowed
but the denial of scouting should also be there.
eg. if marines don't use FT/GL then aliens don't know about AA and the upcoming proto
this tendency to smooth out the game and make every decision low-risk, low-reward is what's holding NS2 back from becoming decent
Mm... maybe in public(mostly because of too defensife marines). But in competitive games(div1). Marines are usually very strong early game, but if they cant finish it, and let aliens to get fades -> tides turn. And now aliens are more likely to win. But if aliens cant finish it before marines get jetpacks, then marines have a good chance to win again.
Marine wins in div1 that ive played are either very short or long:
-dominating early game and finishing the game before fades come up.
-if fades get up -> hold 5-6rts and 2pgs until you get jps+enough upgrades and finish it.
Alien wins:
-baserush.
-harassing enough rts and holding 3 harvesters until fades are up and finishing it before jps.
I am a div 1 player. Aliens are strong enough that they can keep up nearly 1RT/min destroyed pretty easily now.
What you said is true of b249 and earlier builds. Marines were definitely stronger when skulks weren't nearly as quick or agile in combat and responding to engagements. At the moment though, skulks are strong enough in the early game to prevent the marines delaying the fades long enough and to hold their own RTs for adequate tech to be available.
The marine early game wins only happen when the aliens go brain dead and decide to solo everything in bad positions or setup in bad positions and get pick off 1 by 1 for the first couple of minutes giving the marines a good foothold in maps like tram/veil.
I don't mean to force the issue, so this will be my last post on fade blink obstruction. Here is a recent example.
Short screenshot gallery
To show more accurately what is being obscured and how. Imagine if a scan hadn't been put down at all.. http://imgur.com/a/Bpdjc#0
And this.. how on earth are you supposed to tell which direction the fade is going to go next off something like this? The silhouette has absolutely no definition or tell
Youtube
The point really is not to benchmark off my shitty aim, but just to show how obscuring and offputting the effects can be with a fade that isn't even top level, even if they pulse in and out for a split second.
Here's a suggestion I hope people find useful. It's similar to a category of suggestions I read earlier in that it gives the marines a device which counters the fade ball.
I suggest that the marines get a new weapon similar to the arc cannon that dark troopers have in Star Wars Battlefront 2. The weapon is similar in play style to the exo's rail gun, but instead of piercing, when a target is hit, an auto targeting chain effect is emitted.
Arc Cannon:
* Low damage (Seriously low damage, but scales based on upgrades and charge like rail gun, maybe 30 dmg max)
* Successful hit on a target chains to nearby enemies.
* Hit stops energy regeneration (but does not drain) for some brief amount of time.
* Hit highlights enemy for the same amount of time as the energy stall.
* Arc targets cloaked units.
* Secondary right click fire when held activates nano shield on wielder (Just a suggestion to keep arc cannon user alive but out of the fight when targeted)
Now, if you are worried that the auto targeting chain might be took effective (and it might be!), I suggest the following:
* Chaining prefers enemy structures (including cysts and clogs) over units
-OR-
*Chaining count applies to babblers on units as well.
Did you see what just happened? The arc cannon just got really good as a defensive support weapon against a fade ball, but has counters that involve comm/gorge support.
Has anyone seriously considered the dynamic lifeform pres costs -idea thrown around?
In 6vs6, the first fade would cost, say, 40res, the second 45, the third 50 etc. This could scale according to player numbers (just introduce steps of, for example, 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12 etc) and would affect other lifeforms too. So in 12vs12 the first two fades would cost 40, the third and fourth fades 45 etc.
This could be problematic in pubs for several reasons: how do you compensate for people leaving and joining the server, how else do you decide who gets the first and cheapest fade than by spamming the evolve icon before you hit 40res and does it introduce redundant complexity? All of these, however, would be non-issues in competitive games.
This would either solve the problem of the fade ball by introducing fades in intervals or, if the alien team decides to wait until everyone has the resources, delay it by so much that it's not a wise choice for the aliens. This would also make having one of each lifeform more res efficient than spamming fades all around.
Furthermore, remove alien commander tres egg drops. Atrocious and detrimental, that's what they are.
For the people leaving the game part, It could just scale based on the current number of active lifeforms.
So if the first cheap fade dies, and there are no other fades alive, the cost is 40 again.
This actually sounds like a really good idea, and it could be communicated with a simple equation showing
"[# of Active Life Forms] x [Additional cost per Life Form] = Cost"
and a tooltip saying something along the lines of:
"It takes more effort for the hive to support mulitple higher lifeforms, the cost increases as more enter the field"
This would solve the lifeform explosion issue, as well as multiple fades (since eventually, the player would pay the cost of an Onos to go fade.
This would also push for more lifeform diversity in order to save money.
At this point I feel like there is two issues that should get covered. Fade Balls in low player games and the second being the weaknesses Aliens have in lategame against Marines in 16-20 player servers due to attempting to fix the lower player count issues.
The Fade itself has a relatively easy fix I feel that has been overlooked. Fade instead of dealing 75 damage, it deals 30 damage and then 45 normal damage as a DOT in the time it takes for the Fade to attack again. Single Fade will not notice any change, but Fade Balls will take more time to kill a single Marine.
I am still thinking for what would work on the Aliens vs Marines in pub games mind.
Fade health and damage are actually in a pretty good place. The problem lies where all 4 fades pop at once. If the spawns were staggered (dynamic lifeform cost actually sounds kinda cool) marines have more time to react the the impending fadeball. If the rines have an extra few minutes before all 4 fades are out, they can react accordingly.
Marines can be medpacked through a DOT extremely easy... which is why lerk bites dont work well against a med-spammed marine. The same would apply to fades.
P.S. Marines CAN kill fades with their current weapons. All these ideas about some new marine fade-killing weapon are rubbish.
P.S.S A version of the HMG may be coming if you have tried the BT.
Just give marines something to deal with fades. Keep fade cost low and like it is now. Something that counters fades speed (long range weapon, or heavy damage, grenades maybe?). Yes there is shotgun, but it wont help in long range, lmg need at least w2 to deal with fades. It could be somekind of upgraded lmg, shotgun or somekind of energy weapon. Thing is now, 1 fade ok, 2 fade, oh my, more = gg. If fades die more and cost is pretty low (somewhere easy to get new one), problem solved IMO.
Just give marines something to deal with fades. Keep fade cost low and like it is now. Something that counters fades speed (long range weapon, or heavy damage, grenades maybe?). Yes there is shotgun, but it wont help in long range, lmg need at least w2 to deal with fades. It could be somekind of upgraded lmg, shotgun or somekind of energy weapon. Thing is now, 1 fade ok, 2 fade, oh my, more = gg. If fades die more and cost is pretty low (somewhere easy to get new one), problem solved IMO.
Hmm, maybe even some kind of railgun or something :0
But I'd honestly prefer to not see the flow of the game change this massively on either side just because a single technology hits the field (Jetpacks on marine side and Fades on alien side). There should be a more gradual progression towards a new pace of gameplay - a progress that can be recognized by the enemy team early enough and thus can be delayed or prevented to reach its full potential by acting upon it quickly enough.
One possible way of achieving this would be to make those technologies weaker in their initial state but provide more meaningful upgrades that need to be chosen consciously depending on a tactic that the commander is pursuing, which in return means that you will see less similar strategies across different matches.
your post is completely contradictory
gradual upgrades instead of staggered ones make it harder to delay + prevent
if you give people bonuses for what are essentially half upgrades, then the teams pursing those upgrades become empowered and cannot be prevented from getting the full version.
That is only under the assumption that the "half upgrade" still holds some kind of benefit compared to the status quo. In my suggestion does that only apply to the example of getting Shotguns for 15 pres instead of 20 while making it cost a maximum of 20 pres for all upgrades.
If I change that example so that you get a weak Shotgun for 15 pres and need 25 to get the fully upgraded version (making each upgrade cost 5 pres, so your classic 20 pres investment would only give you a Shotgun that is still slightly weaker than what we currently have in vanilla), that problem you mentioned would be solved.
There wouldn't really be any more empowerment than getting the full upgrade currently in vanilla: the base version would cost the same time and tres to research, the upgrade modules would be another time (binds research capabilities in the respective structure, so you would need additional Armories for more efficient research) and cash sink on top of that.
Sure, getting a Shotgun for 15 pres instead of 20 is still helping marines a bit. But you also have to consider that it's still a weaker Shotgun, so the marine runs a greater risk of losing his investment early in the game. (I'd really like to see some adjustments to the weapon recycle system, so aliens have other effective ways of denying dropped weapons from being recycled, other than using Bile Bomb)
And getting a really effective Shotgun (on par with the current one, so basically all versions before that would be considered nerfs) would cost you 25 pres. This also adds some weapon scaling on marine side as the match progresses, other than the passive damage upgrades. Similar to how aliens need to scale their pres investment for the lategame.
If you bound all upgrade modules to Advanced Armories, you could prevent them by denying the Advanced Armory (though that is in general something hard to achieve anyway). The most straight-forward prevention tactic is always to destroy so many RTs that marines can't afford to be constantly researching tech because they have to re-drop stuff. The more researchable tech marines have, the more efficient this kind of denial gets because otherwise it doesn't take marines long to reach a point in the game where they maxed their tech out and don't need as many RTs anymore.
I personally prefer the way that there is so much available tech choice (and associated cost) in the game that you rarely get to research ALL the tech before the game actually ended, so that your actual tech choice as commander has an impact on the success of the team.
Surely, that goes against the concept of making sure that every player on the field gets to play as whatever role he likes. But I find the concept of pursuing one particular tech tree to make it the most effective for the upcoming fight rather intriguing. It gives a base for the enemy team to read that particular strategy and prepare for it.
You're misunderstanding my point. I can see the blur/ink-like effects you are referring too. I just do not think that those really hinder a marines ability to track the fade. Maybe my high refresh rate monitor makes a significant difference so I am biased. Who knows.
IIRC, this is the first time I have heard any sort of mention on the blink effect since it was almost completely removed at build 250.
You must be the superman of vision then, because those flash effects are distracting as hell. Two years after I started playing this game, I still get disoriented by them every time. I have a 120hz monitor and as solid fps as this engine allows.
I don't know which forums you've been reading, but on this one we've been talking about the disorienting effect of the blink smoke since it was implemented in the beta.
The problem lies where all 4 fades pop at once. If the spawns were staggered (dynamic lifeform cost actually sounds kinda cool) marines have more time to react the the impending fadeball. If the rines have an extra few minutes before all 4 fades are out, they can react accordingly. .
Disagree.
Maybe it works like that in comp games, with timing being more crucial, (and shorter games) but in pubs delaying the issue won't stop fade explosions or it's effectiveness - they'll just coordinate the timing or play safer until all are on the field.
In short : 4-5 fades, even if staggered or delayed, will still wreck a team of marines due to their left over design from ns1.
So it's not a solution or a work around, Imo; We should be addressing the cause not the symptom.
Yea the effects are annoying for comp play - honestly tho I am starting to think it might be something we look to just fix for comp play, as much as I hate to do things like that, it might be the best choice on certain visual effects. If there was a small list, i could make a mod which removes those effects quite easily. We already run a bunch of mods on comp servers, honestly it would be preferable to see them all integrated or something, then we could just add it to that and it would be mostly automatic.
But I'd honestly prefer to not see the flow of the game change this massively on either side just because a single technology hits the field (Jetpacks on marine side and Fades on alien side). There should be a more gradual progression towards a new pace of gameplay - a progress that can be recognized by the enemy team early enough and thus can be delayed or prevented to reach its full potential by acting upon it quickly enough.
One possible way of achieving this would be to make those technologies weaker in their initial state but provide more meaningful upgrades that need to be chosen consciously depending on a tactic that the commander is pursuing, which in return means that you will see less similar strategies across different matches.
your post is completely contradictory
gradual upgrades instead of staggered ones make it harder to delay + prevent
if you give people bonuses for what are essentially half upgrades, then the teams pursing those upgrades become empowered and cannot be prevented from getting the full version.
That is only under the assumption that the "half upgrade" still holds some kind of benefit compared to the status quo. In my suggestion does that only apply to the example of getting Shotguns for 15 pres instead of 20 while making it cost a maximum of 20 pres for all upgrades.
If I change that example so that you get a weak Shotgun for 15 pres and need 25 to get the fully upgraded version (making each upgrade cost 5 pres, so your classic 20 pres investment would only give you a Shotgun that is still slightly weaker than what we currently have in vanilla), that problem you mentioned would be solved.
There wouldn't really be any more empowerment than getting the full upgrade currently in vanilla: the base version would cost the same time and tres to research, the upgrade modules would be another time (binds research capabilities in the respective structure, so you would need additional Armories for more efficient research) and cash sink on top of that.
Sure, getting a Shotgun for 15 pres instead of 20 is still helping marines a bit. But you also have to consider that it's still a weaker Shotgun, so the marine runs a greater risk of losing his investment early in the game. (I'd really like to see some adjustments to the weapon recycle system, so aliens have other effective ways of denying dropped weapons from being recycled, other than using Bile Bomb)
And getting a really effective Shotgun (on par with the current one, so basically all versions before that would be considered nerfs) would cost you 25 pres. This also adds some weapon scaling on marine side as the match progresses, other than the passive damage upgrades. Similar to how aliens need to scale their pres investment for the lategame.
If you bound all upgrade modules to Advanced Armories, you could prevent them by denying the Advanced Armory (though that is in general something hard to achieve anyway). The most straight-forward prevention tactic is always to destroy so many RTs that marines can't afford to be constantly researching tech because they have to re-drop stuff. The more researchable tech marines have, the more efficient this kind of denial gets because otherwise it doesn't take marines long to reach a point in the game where they maxed their tech out and don't need as many RTs anymore.
I personally prefer the way that there is so much available tech choice (and associated cost) in the game that you rarely get to research ALL the tech before the game actually ended, so that your actual tech choice as commander has an impact on the success of the team.
Surely, that goes against the concept of making sure that every player on the field gets to play as whatever role he likes. But I find the concept of pursuing one particular tech tree to make it the most effective for the upcoming fight rather intriguing. It gives a base for the enemy team to read that particular strategy and prepare for it.
without a counter system I can't see that working out well
i'm all for requiring teams to scout and adapt and pick the right stuff depending on the situation, but the game just doesn't have enough variety
it's just about +damage and +hp and +speed where you brainlessly pursue techs which increase these stats....
it's nice to pretend that comm tech choices are critical in this setup but they just aren't. everything is just a stat modifier that researches quickly. picking which order upgrades come in isn't really going to influence the match
biomass vs. unlocking techniques vs. upgrading an upgrade?
who cares? they will all be done in 2 minutes. the order they come in means nothing for 99% of games
super shotguns (or whatever your idea is called) vs. armor 2 vs. weapons 2?
how is that any different? maybe it takes 4 minutes to do all of these instead of 2, but I can't see the order in which these complete being the deciding factor of a match
the devs just need to define what they key choices are supposed to be, otherwise you'll be adding/suggesting/balancing random stuff that never fits together in any coherent way
imo:
marines need more viable plans than sniping res/lifeforms while teching up
aliens need more viable plans to just fading
devs need to realize what they broke before going on tangents fixing problems that shouldn't even exist...
marines can't push a hive anymore because fades come out too fast
aliens don't have a reason not to fade because onos is late + useless
even if those two things are fixed, I still feel that alien TRES is too easy to manage.
if marines have to choose between attacking and teching up there's at least 1 interesting decision involved... that's more than 0 on the alien side
maybe if hive pressure comes back and crags grow a lot slower, then aliens would have 1 interesting decision in the game...
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
ok ok.. attempt nr2. Wont directly fix the lifeform explosion but it will make it, hopefully, far less forgiving.
Borrowing from ns1.
All values need heavy tweaking and are merely a example!
* Res goes directly into a general pool.
* aliens get res from this pool untill they hit there cap.
* skulk is capped at 100, gorge at 70, lerk at 50, fade at 33, onos 10.
* res stays in the pool if players are hitting there cap & overflowres gets back in the pool.
* no tres drops.
* comm gets a (higher) amount of res from the same pool. So comm res is not the respool. (respool is invisible)
* the comm will be treated on a different rescount as he/she hops out the hive as it is now.
now if a fade dies it had a max of 33/33 res before death. When respawned thats 33/100.
The cap just went up to a skulks 100 So it needs res from the pool to get the resources to refade. If the team lacks the res to do so, the player can not refade.
if a fade dies now, and a 2nd dies a min later both need res from the res pool. But its quite possible the first fade drained it dry.
If the respool grows to fast, up cost for the commander abilities.
* As the cap is passive per lifeform, its fairly easy for new players to notice & pick up.
* the standard player will not notice res overflow vs the way it is now. For them a res counter is a res counter.
* can be balanced by res ticks, % given to players & % given to comm aswell as costs for commander abilities like drifter abilities. Also its possible to let certain overflow res 'be lost'.
* Its not low cap on skulk, high on fade.. its high on skulk, low on fade. This means players who are often skulk because they die (newbies) can potentially drain the respool a bit. So if the pro dies, its less forgiving as there is less res, balancing lowskill servers as the pro is forced to pick a lower lifeform due to lack of res. (yes this could potentially be a bit boring for the pro but newbies can play more higher lifeforms and learn faster, winwin)
* If more folk on the server are skilled, they die less and have a bigger chance to have res in the pool to reevolve when they die.
* If it is a skilled server and a rookie is draining res, well.. its a skilled server.. why is the rookie there?
The problem lies where all 4 fades pop at once. If the spawns were staggered (dynamic lifeform cost actually sounds kinda cool) marines have more time to react the the impending fadeball. If the rines have an extra few minutes before all 4 fades are out, they can react accordingly. .
Disagree.
Maybe it works like that in comp games, with timing being more crucial, (and shorter games) but in pubs delaying the issue won't stop fade explosions or it's effectiveness - they'll just coordinate the timing or play safer until all are on the field.
In short : 4-5 fades, even if staggered or delayed, will still wreck a team of marines due to their left over design from ns1.
So it's not a solution or a work around, Imo; We should be addressing the cause not the symptom.
If you want to address the cause, remove the alien commander. There is no other way around this. This is not going to happen because of reasons, so we'll have to be treating the symptoms instead.
without a counter system I can't see that working out well
i'm all for requiring teams to scout and adapt and pick the right stuff depending on the situation, but the game just doesn't have enough variety
it's just about +damage and +hp and +speed where you brainlessly pursue techs which increase these stats....
it's nice to pretend that comm tech choices are critical in this setup but they just aren't. everything is just a stat modifier that researches quickly. picking which order upgrades come in isn't really going to influence the match
biomass vs. unlocking techniques vs. upgrading an upgrade?
who cares? they will all be done in 2 minutes. the order they come in means nothing for 99% of games
super shotguns (or whatever your idea is called) vs. armor 2 vs. weapons 2?
how is that any different? maybe it takes 4 minutes to do all of these instead of 2, but I can't see the order in which these complete being the deciding factor of a match
Agreed. That was one of my biggest disappointments with the Balance mod changes thus far: the research times of tech have been lowered rather than increased. The reasoning behind that was to allow the other team to react in a proper amount of time to anything that the enemy team would get on the field first - which is actually the "window of opportunity to crush the enemy with your temporary tech advantage" that you mentioned earlier.
Increasing tech research time would reward the opposing team more if they manage to get a certain tech on the field for which you have no counter measures in research yet.
Especially on alien side is the stuff nullified pretty quickly due to the new way how upgrades are researched:
- Spurs, Veils and Shells let you place all three of them at the same time and power-build them with a Drifter. There is basically no delay at all between acquiring a new Hive and dropping those new upgrades, other than waiting a few seconds for the respective res.
- Researching abilities on the support chambers takes any need for planning the order of your research out of the game and I still don't understand why this was introduced in the first place without any need for it. The original argument was "to let marines disable alien abilities by destroying all support chambers of the associated type on the field", but as far as I know is this mechanic not even in the game anymore. The other argument was "to allow aliens to increase their research capabilities similar to how marines can with multiple Arms Labs", but this again defeats the point I mentioned in the first part of this post.
If abilities were researched on the Hive again, you would actually have to make a decision about the order of your research, since researching Biomass and abilities now take up the same research slot. And the only way to increase the rate of your research would be the acquisition of more Hives early on.
Marines would probably need to have slightly longer research times to compensate, though it would probably be interesting to see how it plays out by just slowing alien tech progression slightly this way and see how it affects the 70-80% alien win rate.
And I am really digging the suggestion of @DC_Darkling , but it would leave marines with quite an advantage if they don't have something similar to limit their pres gain, since they are already able to recycle their weapons constantly.
The problem lies where all 4 fades pop at once. If the spawns were staggered (dynamic lifeform cost actually sounds kinda cool) marines have more time to react the the impending fadeball. If the rines have an extra few minutes before all 4 fades are out, they can react accordingly. .
Disagree.
Maybe it works like that in comp games, with timing being more crucial, (and shorter games) but in pubs delaying the issue won't stop fade explosions or it's effectiveness - they'll just coordinate the timing or play safer until all are on the field.
In short : 4-5 fades, even if staggered or delayed, will still wreck a team of marines due to their left over design from ns1.
So it's not a solution or a work around, Imo; We should be addressing the cause not the symptom.
If you want to address the cause, remove the alien commander. There is no other way around this. This is not going to happen because of reasons, so we'll have to be treating the symptoms instead.
Yeah I highly doubt we'll see pigs flying outside our windows anytime soon...
Though I suppose one way to emulate the NS1 system while keeping alien comm would be to completely remove alien rt->pres production, introduce rfk in some capacity, remove tres drops, and add tres->pres option/donation for alien comm. I mean yeah it brings about another set of problems to deal with (such as relying on the alien comm not being an a-hole), but hey at least now its either (naked) fade balls or teched aliens?
Just find it so funny how the best solution to this issue is the one thing we're pretty sure the devs won't even consider.
The problem lies where all 4 fades pop at once. If the spawns were staggered (dynamic lifeform cost actually sounds kinda cool) marines have more time to react the the impending fadeball. If the rines have an extra few minutes before all 4 fades are out, they can react accordingly. .
Disagree.
Maybe it works like that in comp games, with timing being more crucial, (and shorter games) but in pubs delaying the issue won't stop fade explosions or it's effectiveness - they'll just coordinate the timing or play safer until all are on the field.
In short : 4-5 fades, even if staggered or delayed, will still wreck a team of marines due to their left over design from ns1.
So it's not a solution or a work around, Imo; We should be addressing the cause not the symptom.
If you want to address the cause, remove the alien commander. There is no other way around this. This is not going to happen because of reasons, so we'll have to be treating the symptoms instead.
No offense meant therius, but I always found this view to be short sighted when its given.
This is because i believe the view stems from wanting it to be familiar like NS1 and/or for a small token sense of asymmetry.. not truly because the problem is the alien commander.
The alien commander is not the problem.
The problem is having a fixed partition between what the commander spends and what the team spends.
Two separate resource systems, Pres and Tres, are what cause the issue, not the commander. You can actually keep the commander for both teams and still fix the issue.
But since i doubt a singular resource pool like @dc_darkling 's suggestion would ever be considered again (let alone unnecessarily removing the alien commander) - because the original goal of the model was to have players experience more of the game in one sitting, always buying a shotgun when you wanted one - we are left with the next best thing:
Redesigning the lifeforms to accommodate the new resource model.
And that's not actually hard to accomplish... it takes minimal design effort, just look at the downsides and complementary mechanics involved with Exos.
And that's not actually hard to accomplish... it takes minimal design effort, just look at the downsides and complementary mechanics involved with Exos.
Not the best of examples, considering exos make public almost unplayable at the moment. Almost every game is marine turtle to exo. No wonder the playerbase is vanishing, when every round that isn't a one-sided stomp, is a dull grind for both teams.
Comments
Mm... maybe in public(mostly because of too defensife marines). But in competitive games(div1). Marines are usually very strong early game, but if they cant finish it, and let aliens to get fades -> tides turn. And now aliens are more likely to win. But if aliens cant finish it before marines get jetpacks, then marines have a good chance to win again.
Marine wins in div1 that ive played are either very short or long:
-dominating early game and finishing the game before fades come up.
-if fades get up -> hold 5-6rts and 2pgs until you get jps+enough upgrades and finish it.
Alien wins:
-baserush.
-harassing enough rts and holding 3 harvesters until fades are up and finishing it before jps.
Heh, just a random thought, I'm not sure if this could be any use in the present situation:
Make fades that have taken a lot of damage recently (or are below certain HP treshold) have a bit of non-obstructive 'bleed' trail. It can be a wispy smoke trail or some other effect, preferrably just a clearly recognizable effect that doesn't block vision that much.
If done right, you might have easier time targetting the less healthy fades rather than randomly blasting at a bunch.
Someone with proper marine experience on the recent versions might have an idea whether this could be any help.
It would certainly make more fades die in a ball. But I'm already 100% against the heavy armor dying effects as it is. So, I'd vote no
But I'd honestly prefer to not see the flow of the game change this massively on either side just because a single technology hits the field (Jetpacks on marine side and Fades on alien side). There should be a more gradual progression towards a new pace of gameplay - a progress that can be recognized by the enemy team early enough and thus can be delayed or prevented to reach its full potential by acting upon it quickly enough.
One possible way of achieving this would be to make those technologies weaker in their initial state but provide more meaningful upgrades that need to be chosen consciously depending on a tactic that the commander is pursuing, which in return means that you will see less similar strategies across different matches.
Examples would be to have Shotguns with a low initial RoF and ammo capacity and to provide upgrades that increase the ammo capacity or RoF slightly again. Or Jetpacks with a more limited amount of fuel, but with an upgrade to increase that amount. Or Flamethrowers with the old fuel canister size, but with an upgrade to increase it to the new amount. Or Grenade Launchers with a reduced explosion radius and ammo capacity, but with upgrades to bring them back to their current amount.
You could argue that players would always wait for the respective upgrades to be researched then, since they don't want to invest a lot of pres into a gimped weapon and possibly lose it. A solution for that could be to make the base weapon slightly cheaper (weak Shotgun for 15 pres) and offer the upgrades as modules in the Armory that can be purchased separately after they have been researched and the player holds the respective weapon. (3 pres for RoF, 2 pres for increased ammo capacity)
If the commander would only drop the basic version of the weapon for tres, you could achieve a similar system to pre-evolved eggs on the alien side where they still have to pay for the traits with their own pres.
There are a few things specifically with the effect that do not make it easy to track. You don't need to remove it entirely.
- When the fade enters blink, he becomes darker and emits a bright circle pulse. This sudden loss of contrast is bad. Sure I am already kinda used to aiming/predicting fades now, but at the heart of it, it's really all guesswork from having played alot. It's still annoying as hell to have to spend time 'getting used' to a certain players fade movement style before being able to actually reliably hit him with lmg.
- When a fade is blinking away from you, he leaves many dark puffs of smoke clouds exactly like the shade ink effect. This literally makes it impossible to see where he is. If you try and chase the fade, you are walking your view camera into these trail puffs and basically blinding yourself. This is dumb.
I just don't see how you can not see this. No pun intended.
*Like honestly, make the fade easier to see for the new players if anything.
IIRC, this is the first time I have heard any sort of mention on the blink effect since it was almost completely removed at build 250.
I still don't think it should be in the game, though
Just look at the skulk with it's slow animation smoothing rate. When that thing starts sideways moving and all that good stuff, you can't rely on actually tracking it based on anything but experience of 'how things move in ns2'.
To be more specific, most of the stuff with fade has got to do with certain view angles and situations. i.e. fade blinking away from you (not horizontally across your fov away), trying to chase said fade to finish him off and moving into these ink clouds, fade ball and assorted alien firework effects, and fades blinking right infront of your model (or from 'inside' your model) so that it covers your entire fov. Makes it hard to tell whether they are behind you, above you, or did they just blink to your side.
As for this being the first time mentioned, I'm ok with that. There's always a first time. Specifically in regard to new players - they don't know what's good for them half the time. How many new players said anything about gorge spit effect? How many have complained about rupture? Or structure deaths (most notably RT's and ghost structure poofing) giving skulks a free smoke cloud that 100% gives them vision and first mover advantage. I don't think i've seen a single person besides myself say anything about this, yet it's there, and it's a problem.
your post is completely contradictory
gradual upgrades instead of staggered ones make it harder to delay + prevent
if you give people bonuses for what are essentially half upgrades, then the teams pursing those upgrades become empowered and cannot be prevented from getting the full version.
the all-or-nothing mechanic is the only thing that makes NS2 function as a strategy game.
if one side isn't temporarily stronger, then nobody ever has a window of opportunity to attack and it's stagnant gameplay instead of dynamic back-and-forth
the problem is that teams aren't good enough to succeed at attacking so they are encouraged to play safe and go for the low reward / low risk plays.
the solution to that is to increase effectiveness in those windows by making progression less gradual and less symmetrical
maybe there should be more of a scouting mechanic in some cases
eg. if aliens need more time to recognize that marines are going for jetpacks, then the jp research can be slowed
but the denial of scouting should also be there.
eg. if marines don't use FT/GL then aliens don't know about AA and the upcoming proto
this tendency to smooth out the game and make every decision low-risk, low-reward is what's holding NS2 back from becoming decent
I am a div 1 player. Aliens are strong enough that they can keep up nearly 1RT/min destroyed pretty easily now.
What you said is true of b249 and earlier builds. Marines were definitely stronger when skulks weren't nearly as quick or agile in combat and responding to engagements. At the moment though, skulks are strong enough in the early game to prevent the marines delaying the fades long enough and to hold their own RTs for adequate tech to be available.
The marine early game wins only happen when the aliens go brain dead and decide to solo everything in bad positions or setup in bad positions and get pick off 1 by 1 for the first couple of minutes giving the marines a good foothold in maps like tram/veil.
Short screenshot gallery
To show more accurately what is being obscured and how. Imagine if a scan hadn't been put down at all..
http://imgur.com/a/Bpdjc#0
And this.. how on earth are you supposed to tell which direction the fade is going to go next off something like this? The silhouette has absolutely no definition or tell
Youtube
The point really is not to benchmark off my shitty aim, but just to show how obscuring and offputting the effects can be with a fade that isn't even top level, even if they pulse in and out for a split second.
I suggest that the marines get a new weapon similar to the arc cannon that dark troopers have in Star Wars Battlefront 2. The weapon is similar in play style to the exo's rail gun, but instead of piercing, when a target is hit, an auto targeting chain effect is emitted.
Arc Cannon:
* Low damage (Seriously low damage, but scales based on upgrades and charge like rail gun, maybe 30 dmg max)
* Successful hit on a target chains to nearby enemies.
* Hit stops energy regeneration (but does not drain) for some brief amount of time.
* Hit highlights enemy for the same amount of time as the energy stall.
* Arc targets cloaked units.
* Secondary right click fire when held activates nano shield on wielder (Just a suggestion to keep arc cannon user alive but out of the fight when targeted)
Now, if you are worried that the auto targeting chain might be took effective (and it might be!), I suggest the following:
* Chaining prefers enemy structures (including cysts and clogs) over units
-OR-
*Chaining count applies to babblers on units as well.
Did you see what just happened? The arc cannon just got really good as a defensive support weapon against a fade ball, but has counters that involve comm/gorge support.
Let's have some comments!
For the people leaving the game part, It could just scale based on the current number of active lifeforms.
So if the first cheap fade dies, and there are no other fades alive, the cost is 40 again.
This actually sounds like a really good idea, and it could be communicated with a simple equation showing
"[# of Active Life Forms] x [Additional cost per Life Form] = Cost"
and a tooltip saying something along the lines of:
"It takes more effort for the hive to support mulitple higher lifeforms, the cost increases as more enter the field"
This would solve the lifeform explosion issue, as well as multiple fades (since eventually, the player would pay the cost of an Onos to go fade.
This would also push for more lifeform diversity in order to save money.
The Fade itself has a relatively easy fix I feel that has been overlooked. Fade instead of dealing 75 damage, it deals 30 damage and then 45 normal damage as a DOT in the time it takes for the Fade to attack again. Single Fade will not notice any change, but Fade Balls will take more time to kill a single Marine.
I am still thinking for what would work on the Aliens vs Marines in pub games mind.
Marines can be medpacked through a DOT extremely easy... which is why lerk bites dont work well against a med-spammed marine. The same would apply to fades.
P.S. Marines CAN kill fades with their current weapons. All these ideas about some new marine fade-killing weapon are rubbish.
P.S.S A version of the HMG may be coming if you have tried the BT.
Hmm, maybe even some kind of railgun or something :0
That is only under the assumption that the "half upgrade" still holds some kind of benefit compared to the status quo. In my suggestion does that only apply to the example of getting Shotguns for 15 pres instead of 20 while making it cost a maximum of 20 pres for all upgrades.
If I change that example so that you get a weak Shotgun for 15 pres and need 25 to get the fully upgraded version (making each upgrade cost 5 pres, so your classic 20 pres investment would only give you a Shotgun that is still slightly weaker than what we currently have in vanilla), that problem you mentioned would be solved.
There wouldn't really be any more empowerment than getting the full upgrade currently in vanilla: the base version would cost the same time and tres to research, the upgrade modules would be another time (binds research capabilities in the respective structure, so you would need additional Armories for more efficient research) and cash sink on top of that.
Sure, getting a Shotgun for 15 pres instead of 20 is still helping marines a bit. But you also have to consider that it's still a weaker Shotgun, so the marine runs a greater risk of losing his investment early in the game. (I'd really like to see some adjustments to the weapon recycle system, so aliens have other effective ways of denying dropped weapons from being recycled, other than using Bile Bomb)
And getting a really effective Shotgun (on par with the current one, so basically all versions before that would be considered nerfs) would cost you 25 pres. This also adds some weapon scaling on marine side as the match progresses, other than the passive damage upgrades. Similar to how aliens need to scale their pres investment for the lategame.
If you bound all upgrade modules to Advanced Armories, you could prevent them by denying the Advanced Armory (though that is in general something hard to achieve anyway). The most straight-forward prevention tactic is always to destroy so many RTs that marines can't afford to be constantly researching tech because they have to re-drop stuff. The more researchable tech marines have, the more efficient this kind of denial gets because otherwise it doesn't take marines long to reach a point in the game where they maxed their tech out and don't need as many RTs anymore.
I personally prefer the way that there is so much available tech choice (and associated cost) in the game that you rarely get to research ALL the tech before the game actually ended, so that your actual tech choice as commander has an impact on the success of the team.
Surely, that goes against the concept of making sure that every player on the field gets to play as whatever role he likes. But I find the concept of pursuing one particular tech tree to make it the most effective for the upcoming fight rather intriguing. It gives a base for the enemy team to read that particular strategy and prepare for it.
I don't know which forums you've been reading, but on this one we've been talking about the disorienting effect of the blink smoke since it was implemented in the beta.
Maybe it works like that in comp games, with timing being more crucial, (and shorter games) but in pubs delaying the issue won't stop fade explosions or it's effectiveness - they'll just coordinate the timing or play safer until all are on the field.
In short : 4-5 fades, even if staggered or delayed, will still wreck a team of marines due to their left over design from ns1.
So it's not a solution or a work around, Imo; We should be addressing the cause not the symptom.
without a counter system I can't see that working out well
i'm all for requiring teams to scout and adapt and pick the right stuff depending on the situation, but the game just doesn't have enough variety
it's just about +damage and +hp and +speed where you brainlessly pursue techs which increase these stats....
it's nice to pretend that comm tech choices are critical in this setup but they just aren't. everything is just a stat modifier that researches quickly. picking which order upgrades come in isn't really going to influence the match
biomass vs. unlocking techniques vs. upgrading an upgrade?
who cares? they will all be done in 2 minutes. the order they come in means nothing for 99% of games
super shotguns (or whatever your idea is called) vs. armor 2 vs. weapons 2?
how is that any different? maybe it takes 4 minutes to do all of these instead of 2, but I can't see the order in which these complete being the deciding factor of a match
the devs just need to define what they key choices are supposed to be, otherwise you'll be adding/suggesting/balancing random stuff that never fits together in any coherent way
imo:
marines need more viable plans than sniping res/lifeforms while teching up
aliens need more viable plans to just fading
devs need to realize what they broke before going on tangents fixing problems that shouldn't even exist...
marines can't push a hive anymore because fades come out too fast
aliens don't have a reason not to fade because onos is late + useless
even if those two things are fixed, I still feel that alien TRES is too easy to manage.
if marines have to choose between attacking and teching up there's at least 1 interesting decision involved... that's more than 0 on the alien side
maybe if hive pressure comes back and crags grow a lot slower, then aliens would have 1 interesting decision in the game...
Borrowing from ns1.
All values need heavy tweaking and are merely a example!
* Res goes directly into a general pool.
* aliens get res from this pool untill they hit there cap.
* skulk is capped at 100, gorge at 70, lerk at 50, fade at 33, onos 10.
* res stays in the pool if players are hitting there cap & overflowres gets back in the pool.
* no tres drops.
* comm gets a (higher) amount of res from the same pool. So comm res is not the respool. (respool is invisible)
* the comm will be treated on a different rescount as he/she hops out the hive as it is now.
now if a fade dies it had a max of 33/33 res before death. When respawned thats 33/100.
The cap just went up to a skulks 100 So it needs res from the pool to get the resources to refade. If the team lacks the res to do so, the player can not refade.
if a fade dies now, and a 2nd dies a min later both need res from the res pool. But its quite possible the first fade drained it dry.
If the respool grows to fast, up cost for the commander abilities.
* As the cap is passive per lifeform, its fairly easy for new players to notice & pick up.
* the standard player will not notice res overflow vs the way it is now. For them a res counter is a res counter.
* can be balanced by res ticks, % given to players & % given to comm aswell as costs for commander abilities like drifter abilities. Also its possible to let certain overflow res 'be lost'.
* Its not low cap on skulk, high on fade.. its high on skulk, low on fade. This means players who are often skulk because they die (newbies) can potentially drain the respool a bit. So if the pro dies, its less forgiving as there is less res, balancing lowskill servers as the pro is forced to pick a lower lifeform due to lack of res. (yes this could potentially be a bit boring for the pro but newbies can play more higher lifeforms and learn faster, winwin)
* If more folk on the server are skilled, they die less and have a bigger chance to have res in the pool to reevolve when they die.
* If it is a skilled server and a rookie is draining res, well.. its a skilled server.. why is the rookie there?
Discuss
If you want to address the cause, remove the alien commander. There is no other way around this. This is not going to happen because of reasons, so we'll have to be treating the symptoms instead.
Agreed. That was one of my biggest disappointments with the Balance mod changes thus far: the research times of tech have been lowered rather than increased. The reasoning behind that was to allow the other team to react in a proper amount of time to anything that the enemy team would get on the field first - which is actually the "window of opportunity to crush the enemy with your temporary tech advantage" that you mentioned earlier.
Increasing tech research time would reward the opposing team more if they manage to get a certain tech on the field for which you have no counter measures in research yet.
Especially on alien side is the stuff nullified pretty quickly due to the new way how upgrades are researched:
- Spurs, Veils and Shells let you place all three of them at the same time and power-build them with a Drifter. There is basically no delay at all between acquiring a new Hive and dropping those new upgrades, other than waiting a few seconds for the respective res.
- Researching abilities on the support chambers takes any need for planning the order of your research out of the game and I still don't understand why this was introduced in the first place without any need for it. The original argument was "to let marines disable alien abilities by destroying all support chambers of the associated type on the field", but as far as I know is this mechanic not even in the game anymore. The other argument was "to allow aliens to increase their research capabilities similar to how marines can with multiple Arms Labs", but this again defeats the point I mentioned in the first part of this post.
If abilities were researched on the Hive again, you would actually have to make a decision about the order of your research, since researching Biomass and abilities now take up the same research slot. And the only way to increase the rate of your research would be the acquisition of more Hives early on.
Marines would probably need to have slightly longer research times to compensate, though it would probably be interesting to see how it plays out by just slowing alien tech progression slightly this way and see how it affects the 70-80% alien win rate.
And I am really digging the suggestion of @DC_Darkling , but it would leave marines with quite an advantage if they don't have something similar to limit their pres gain, since they are already able to recycle their weapons constantly.
Yeah I highly doubt we'll see pigs flying outside our windows anytime soon...
Though I suppose one way to emulate the NS1 system while keeping alien comm would be to completely remove alien rt->pres production, introduce rfk in some capacity, remove tres drops, and add tres->pres option/donation for alien comm. I mean yeah it brings about another set of problems to deal with (such as relying on the alien comm not being an a-hole), but hey at least now its either (naked) fade balls or teched aliens?
Just find it so funny how the best solution to this issue is the one thing we're pretty sure the devs won't even consider.
This is because i believe the view stems from wanting it to be familiar like NS1 and/or for a small token sense of asymmetry.. not truly because the problem is the alien commander.
The alien commander is not the problem.
The problem is having a fixed partition between what the commander spends and what the team spends.
Two separate resource systems, Pres and Tres, are what cause the issue, not the commander. You can actually keep the commander for both teams and still fix the issue.
But since i doubt a singular resource pool like @dc_darkling 's suggestion would ever be considered again (let alone unnecessarily removing the alien commander) - because the original goal of the model was to have players experience more of the game in one sitting, always buying a shotgun when you wanted one - we are left with the next best thing:
Redesigning the lifeforms to accommodate the new resource model.
And that's not actually hard to accomplish... it takes minimal design effort, just look at the downsides and complementary mechanics involved with Exos.
How many puggers know the deeper mechanics of it all? So few do.