I can't understand NS2 very basics not getting done right...
RejZoR
Slovenia Join Date: 2013-09-24 Member: 188450Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
Slovenia Join Date: 2013-09-24 Member: 188450Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
On one end we have milk toothed marines with kick ass weapons to blow anything out of this world from a nice range and on the other end up close brutal aliens. But then the whole thing gets watered down so badly it's making exactly zero sense.
In AvP which is probably the closest equivalent, aliens were super deadly up close but weak far away. Simple basics. If you're far away, marine will win. If you're up close, alien will win every single time. So, marines have to constantly make sure they keep their enemies far away and never get ambushed. And aliens make sure they always ambush marines and never get caught without a cover far away.
How that works in NS2 ? It doesn't actually. Marines, if they aren't total noobs are so overpowered at all ranges it's ridiculous. This only partially gets better once aliens get lvl 3 speed upgrade. And even then, when they get shotguns, you're back at 0. Shotgun is one shot one kill for pretty much anything below Fade and low and mid range. Skulk needs way too many bites to take down a marine, especially if they are dodge jumping. Place 3 marines in a group and they'll tear down dozen skulks with ease. Especially if comm isn't a total retard and just spams them bunch of medkits.
I mean how many times happend to anyone that you were chasing a running marine with a skulk from behind and not being able to catch him fast enough as you'd expect from an agile alien? Every time i run after marine like a fuckin idiot this always comes to my mind. How the fuck can i be so friggin slow!? It's not even stupid as much as it's ridiculous. Super agile wall climbing alien outrun by a stupid weak marine. It's not even logical on any level. Aliens advantage should be speed, agility and ability to ambush. Out of which they have pretty much none.
And same goes for ridiculous marines jumping which is pissing me off for the last 2-3 weeks or so. Prepare an ambush, marine doesn't even know you're there till you make a bite up his ass. At which point they dodge jump 20 meters away and gun you down with ease.
And this is the part that's really confusing me. Killing noobs is no problem but anyone who mastered dodge jumping makes him nearly unkillable unless a flock of skulks attack. Where does the ambushing fit in at this point if alien has ZERO advantage when doing that? How hard is it to make marines jump like normal humans and not like friggin Superman? Or leave the jumping as it is, but if an alien manages to score a bite, stun the marine and prevent him from doing the bunny jumping bullshit for half a second or 250ms. Enough to give alien a meaningful advantage when he strikes from an ambush.
Third thing are phase gates. Nothing wrong with them as they are, the problem is again that stupid jumping which i clearly don't understand why UW likes so much. Why on Earth do marines get ejected from phase gates like they have WARP speed 10, again 20 meters away from the phase, so skulk can't even get to the marine fast enough to do anything at all. If one marine phases, you might get lucky and kill. But in most cases it's that stupid range that will defeat you and shouldn't even be there to begin with.
Fourth, still going with the ranged issues and the exo's. How for F sake can they gun you down at 0 range when you're climbing on their exo canopy? It makes freakin no sense. Exo is super deadly from far, but they should NEVER be able to gun you down when you're climbing on it. In that case only fist should kill the alien and if it's a dual exo, tough luck. You have dual the ranged power to make sure aliens don't even get up to you... but now you really have to be a super kick ass skulk master to take down an exo driver who isn't a total noob and keeps some of his range.
Jetpacks on large open maps (80% of them are big open halls) makes them again idiotically overpowered and only lerk and partially fade can kill them. If you don't get gunned down with shotgun even though you're speeding all over the flying marine like crazy. Skulk can just helplessly try to run on walls that aren't there and Onos in that case will just die a horrible death. I still don't know how to balance this but i'm sure there is a way.
I'm not saying marines should get totally nerfed on all ends, what i'm just expecting is to bring some logic into the game. Because marines defeating aliens up close makes zero sense because aliens pretty much only have melee. So, for all i care, beef up range weapons but make them pretty much ineffective when aliens come up close. So both sides get a proper treatment. Aliens the deadliness they deserve up close and marines ranged precision and firepower.
At first i was defending NS2 saying it's balanced just fine but after playing as alien exclusively for nearly 1 month and these problems started appearing. And they really need to get fixed, starting with the moronic idiotic stupid 20m dodge jumping with marines. If that gets fixed properly i could even dismiss the rest of the issues because with some training it would give you enough edge that you wouldn't even allow marines to get the rest of the tech...
In AvP which is probably the closest equivalent, aliens were super deadly up close but weak far away. Simple basics. If you're far away, marine will win. If you're up close, alien will win every single time. So, marines have to constantly make sure they keep their enemies far away and never get ambushed. And aliens make sure they always ambush marines and never get caught without a cover far away.
How that works in NS2 ? It doesn't actually. Marines, if they aren't total noobs are so overpowered at all ranges it's ridiculous. This only partially gets better once aliens get lvl 3 speed upgrade. And even then, when they get shotguns, you're back at 0. Shotgun is one shot one kill for pretty much anything below Fade and low and mid range. Skulk needs way too many bites to take down a marine, especially if they are dodge jumping. Place 3 marines in a group and they'll tear down dozen skulks with ease. Especially if comm isn't a total retard and just spams them bunch of medkits.
I mean how many times happend to anyone that you were chasing a running marine with a skulk from behind and not being able to catch him fast enough as you'd expect from an agile alien? Every time i run after marine like a fuckin idiot this always comes to my mind. How the fuck can i be so friggin slow!? It's not even stupid as much as it's ridiculous. Super agile wall climbing alien outrun by a stupid weak marine. It's not even logical on any level. Aliens advantage should be speed, agility and ability to ambush. Out of which they have pretty much none.
And same goes for ridiculous marines jumping which is pissing me off for the last 2-3 weeks or so. Prepare an ambush, marine doesn't even know you're there till you make a bite up his ass. At which point they dodge jump 20 meters away and gun you down with ease.
And this is the part that's really confusing me. Killing noobs is no problem but anyone who mastered dodge jumping makes him nearly unkillable unless a flock of skulks attack. Where does the ambushing fit in at this point if alien has ZERO advantage when doing that? How hard is it to make marines jump like normal humans and not like friggin Superman? Or leave the jumping as it is, but if an alien manages to score a bite, stun the marine and prevent him from doing the bunny jumping bullshit for half a second or 250ms. Enough to give alien a meaningful advantage when he strikes from an ambush.
Third thing are phase gates. Nothing wrong with them as they are, the problem is again that stupid jumping which i clearly don't understand why UW likes so much. Why on Earth do marines get ejected from phase gates like they have WARP speed 10, again 20 meters away from the phase, so skulk can't even get to the marine fast enough to do anything at all. If one marine phases, you might get lucky and kill. But in most cases it's that stupid range that will defeat you and shouldn't even be there to begin with.
Fourth, still going with the ranged issues and the exo's. How for F sake can they gun you down at 0 range when you're climbing on their exo canopy? It makes freakin no sense. Exo is super deadly from far, but they should NEVER be able to gun you down when you're climbing on it. In that case only fist should kill the alien and if it's a dual exo, tough luck. You have dual the ranged power to make sure aliens don't even get up to you... but now you really have to be a super kick ass skulk master to take down an exo driver who isn't a total noob and keeps some of his range.
Jetpacks on large open maps (80% of them are big open halls) makes them again idiotically overpowered and only lerk and partially fade can kill them. If you don't get gunned down with shotgun even though you're speeding all over the flying marine like crazy. Skulk can just helplessly try to run on walls that aren't there and Onos in that case will just die a horrible death. I still don't know how to balance this but i'm sure there is a way.
I'm not saying marines should get totally nerfed on all ends, what i'm just expecting is to bring some logic into the game. Because marines defeating aliens up close makes zero sense because aliens pretty much only have melee. So, for all i care, beef up range weapons but make them pretty much ineffective when aliens come up close. So both sides get a proper treatment. Aliens the deadliness they deserve up close and marines ranged precision and firepower.
At first i was defending NS2 saying it's balanced just fine but after playing as alien exclusively for nearly 1 month and these problems started appearing. And they really need to get fixed, starting with the moronic idiotic stupid 20m dodge jumping with marines. If that gets fixed properly i could even dismiss the rest of the issues because with some training it would give you enough edge that you wouldn't even allow marines to get the rest of the tech...
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Comments
It's very possible to kill a marine the moment he phases through if you angle your bites and react quickly to him phasing ... often times before he can react.
You describe being slow but do you know how to gain speed as a skulk or fade?
Especially with celerity, a skulk can easily get 14 speed. A marine.. 7 (6?). I don't see how this is a problem.
Most of these situations you're describing sound like a learning to play issue to be honest. No offense.
Even if it was for the sake of some kind of balancing, I don't think it's the right way to go about it. Then again, I don't have any better ideas. (except that bring back the old AV as an option)
small fov????? There's an FOV slider in options.. pretty sure that brings you way past the 90 horizontal degree mark.. even at times over 110 depending on the alien you're playing
The only similarity in the game is the fact its melee vs range, if you are looking for a much truer comparison go to Savage.
Why are you playing NS2 like its AvP... Trust me, a good alien knows how to mess up a very very good marine players aim by getting under their feet
I'm still seeing more alien wins on the server I regular, mainly thanks to aliens mid-late game strength when working together. OP's and others beef seems mainly to be with the marine v skulk micro game and not with marines dominating at all stages, because I just don't see that happening in-game unless it's stacked.
go try how op your jumping skills are @ http://www.ensl.org/.
The closer the target is to the POV, the faster it seems to be moving in relation to you, therefore increasing the difficulty of orienting yourself to the target.
Now, with the increased visual clutter (AV nerf) and the marine jumping, the lifeform that's supposed to be at advantage at the close range suddenly requires quite a bit of skill to keep the target in the field of view.
Also I would argue that aiming up at the target is more difficult and disorienting than aiming down.
All this can obviously be compensated for (to an extent) with learning to play, but the point is that especially for the newer players the skill floor is frustratingly high.
Well we used to have 20 second leap, 6 minute Onos, full speed 100% invisible aliens
yep, the game is never wrong.
Right?
I do love it when lerks try to bite me when I have a shotty. PULL!
But OP has a point, some things just seem to be fundamentally badly designed (though I admit it's really hard getting it right, especially melee vs ranged).
For example, if you run on the ground behind a Marine (who is running away from you), you bite and the first bite hits and the second bite doesn't hit because the Marine is faster than the Skulk wall walking dog monster thingie... well, that's just dumb.
About strafejumping, that's something worth discussing though.
if you think a step ahead of the marine then you should literally never die. you need to take calculated risks to get kills/destroy buildings/get anything done, but running away before an encounter is ALWAYS possible for alien.
therefore whenever you die as alien, it means you played a bad poker hand and lost (unless you planned to die, for example you decided to finish killing the RT at the cost of your skulk life).
by thinking a step ahead i mean -
* do pay attention to the map and your teammate positions/destinations
* don't clumsily run into a room containing marines, if they expect you coming then it won't work unless the marines are dumb - equally, if you do this and die for nothing then you are dumb
* do try attack wherever you are NOT expected, attack undefended RT's or hunt lone marines (if you can get the jump)
* if you want a decent chance to 1v1 a marine, you need to get the first hit, so a) don't make noise b) use bunny hopping for speed and c) if he knows you're there then don't even bother - attack somewhere else instead.
* a good tactic for group fights is for the one who takes point (the one being shot at) should not even bother to attack - just jump around like an unpredictable crazy person - this decoy allows the rest of the team to live longer and deal more damage
in pub servers the game is basically deathmatch. if your team can kill the opposite team, it means you gain more ground and naturally deny/get more resources. i.e. don't f****** die for no reason!
I politely disagree
I'd reduce the jump range and make it so that you cannot jump into any direction at full "speed" regardless of prior movement speed/direction.
It would be far more fun if marines were not more agile than skulks, so you can more easily hit them, but maybe a bit tougher...
And about the sound, i'm probably one of the biggest audio enthusiasts and have been using top end soundcards for gaming since the Aureal Vortex era. But what good is knowing where everyone else is just by sound if that means exactly nothing when you actually attack because of the above issues...
Jetpack - 15 res
Shotgun - 20 res
Exo - 40 res
Dual exo - 60 res
Skulks should be able to kill these things why?
You mention that you exclusively play aliens... Do you ever think that maybe there's a little bit of bias welling up here? If you're playing as a skulk, don't attack something more powerful than you. Get around it and bite down res or wait for your team to come assist you. If you want to kill more powerful marines (ie ones that have actually spent res) maybe you should go spend some res yourself and play as a lerk, fade, or onos.
Also, I can't stand it when people say "aliens are melee based so they should win at close range." No, they shouldn't automatically win just because they engaged at close range. They should be given an advantage, but they still need to use skill to actually pull off the kill. If you ambush a marine and he outskills you, avoiding your bites and successfully landing a great number of bullets, he deserves the kill, and you don't. You bought yourself an advantage by ambushing him, but you were outskilled and therefore did not get the kill.
This is the response that i cant understand. Balancing a games "WIN Ratio" by unbalancing a games Combat, is wonderful for the competitive scene. BUT in the Pub scene where people play for fun feeling like your loosing (because your loosing 70% of engagments) and then wining isnt fun.
Before you jump on the LTP I have, and i have yet to find a PUB server where I dont end in the top 3 slots, with a K/D of at least 3:1... (and i have no interest in the "competitive scene" it is after all a game)
I personally believe the UWE should focus on Balancing Combat and Wins independently and to 50/50. This maybe hard but i dont believe its impossible and I hate the line, "well rines should win 70-80 persent of engegments to win the round" THIS IS A CHEEP, LAME, COP OUT FROM FIXING A FUNDAMENTAL FLAW!!
In Conclusion a 50/50 win ratio in no way proves or disproves the existences of OP/Broken/Bad/lazy mechanics...
- impossible to do early game due to lifeforms having more health then the shotgun does in damage. Biomass helps in this regard later ingame.
* Skulk needs way too many bites to take down a marine, especially if they are dodge jumping. Place 3 marines in a group and they'll tear down dozen skulks with ease. Especially if comm isn't a total retard and just spams them bunch of medkits.
- Ambush is to get the first bite in 'free' not get all bites in. If 3 marines gun down 12 aliens, im sorry thats a LTP issue. 12 correctly walljumping aliens gain far to much space to gun down intime. Medpacks costs res so you basicly invest resources to win a fight. Let aliens ALSO invest res and the outcome be different.
* Out of which they have pretty much none.
- walljump makes you gain almost same speed as celerity. Both are faster then a sprinting marine. Ambushes work fine.
* And same goes for ridiculous marines jumping which is pissing me off for the last 2-3 weeks or so. Prepare an ambush, marine doesn't even know you're there till you make a bite up his ass. At which point they dodge jump 20 meters away and gun you down with ease.
- Get of the floor. Seriously, get..of...the..floor.. A jumping marine is already pushing his/her aim. Start wall/ceiling running/jumping and change directions as much as the marine does. You have the advantage, its still melee range.
* Why on Earth do marines get ejected from phase gates like they have WARP speed 10, again 20 meters away from the phase, so skulk can't even get to the marine fast enough to do anything at all.
- They don't. These marines are not complete idiots and actually run the second they phase through. Add latency and he/she is a bit away. A marine who doesnt do this gets trashed. Proper PG placement (In the open and not on a wall) helps a lot on this regard.
* Fourth, still going with the ranged issues and the exo's. How for F sake can they gun you down at 0 range when you're climbing on their exo canopy?
- balance reasons instead realism I assume? You would be surprised however on the poor view from a exo suit. A skulk can very well jump around a exo biting there ass off, and the exo is missing every shot.
* Jetpacks on large open maps (80% of them are big open halls) makes them again idiotically overpowered and only lerk and partially fade can kill them.
- Aliens should use a mix of lifeforms regardless. Skilled lerk, fade and (leap) skulks can take out JP with relitive ease. Yes yetpack are very strong in open areas, the point is to draw them into areas they are not strong in. You will notice some techpoints are open while others are very closed. A techpoint with pillars for example, is closed because it allows alien cover and leaping points.
All in the end its just either stack on teams or the aliens not knowing what to do. Watch some vids, it will become better.
Did you even think about it, how fast you can get lerk and fade?
I just prefer the skulks due to unlimited motion through the world (though again, zig zaging and wall climbing does exactly nothing to evade gunfire despite what all the tutorials say). Even getting behind corners or ducts is weird most of the time where i get behind the cover and still die like there is some horrible delay in hits registration. It feels really weird and it's happening a lot for me. But since skulk is pretty much free (it only costs time) i usually use them to perform tasks and make it expendable asset. So if RT has to go down even if i die afterwards, i'll do that.
I just prefer ambushing and sneak attacks over anything else. I'm probably one of the few who prefers cloaking and speed over the traditional carapace and speed everyone else prefer. Even as commander. The problem is, because most are used to speed and carapace, they don't really know what to do with the cloaking advantage. Which kinda sucks. But with it i can dominate on pretty much any map which kinda shows why i prefer ambushing enemies even when i'm not cloaked. But it seems to me that once you have cloak, they track you harder even when you're moving. Haven't really made a study of that, just an long time observation. And it also makes fast movement on open maps easier because you're silent. Otherwise you make so much noise anyone can prepare to gun you down ages before they even see you and out on the open you can't really do much.
Wall climbing and zig zagging as skulk are only part of the puzzle against players that aren't terrible. You need to get good at being able to gain speed through walljumping at the same time. Using the environment while in combat to break line of sight like you would as a Lerk also becomes even more important as it prevents marines from reliably tracking you.