You cannot change the fundamental mechanics of marine vs skulk gameplay without absolutely huge implications for strategic balance. The current system is a matter of preference, but the fact is that the current game is currently balanced around the current situation. Gameplay changes of this scale with such grand ramifications aren't going to happen, and it's only a matter of opinion whether they should happen at all.
I think this is a bit of a strawman argument. We're talking about tweaking, not redesigning. I agree that this area, skulk vs. marine & melee evasion, is one of the most core and sensitive relationships in NS*. But there have been many iterations of skulk and marine movement over NS2's life. Where we happen to be right now should not be considered the canonical movement systems.
More importantly, some well balanced iterations of NS2 have resulted in frustrating gameplay. We have not previously stopped there and said "Ok, well this is balanced, and balance is King so we just have to endure this unfun way the game plays out now".
By design, marines favour ranged engagements while aliens favour melee. The current problem is the former is hugely advantageous for marine vs skulk while the latter is closer to 50/50. This leads to gameplay where marines rambo sprint across the map to kill harvesters/cyst chains etc. Skulks have to engage and you get a coin toss outcome. If you switch this up a bit so that marines are punished for taking such high risk/high reward actions, you change the gameplay without changing the balance.
By design, marines favour ranged engagements while aliens favour melee. The current problem is the former is hugely advantageous for marine vs skulk while the latter is closer to 50/50. This leads to gameplay where marines rambo sprint across the map to kill harvesters/cyst chains etc. Skulks have to engage and you get a coin toss outcome. If you switch this up a bit so that marines are punished for taking such high risk/high reward actions, you change the gameplay without changing the balance.
You're taking the situation out of its context and only considering 1on1 engagements. Skulks have a myriad of other tricks up their sleeve, especially the ability to have more say on where the engagement happens and the possibility of always outnumbering the enemy. Taking on a marine in a 1on1 engagement just isn't what skulks are supposed to do. Whether this creates unfun or frustrating gameplay is a matter of preference, not absolute truth.
I'm not saying there's no room for tweaking in the mechanics, but most of the arguments against the current mechanics boil down to "skulks should have the upper hand in melee", and they're always talking about 1on1 engagements. That's not how the game works when you take your head out of the bucket and see the big picture.
Also, your last point is ridiculous. You're saying that changing the mechanics to make things more difficult for the marines doesn't change balance. This is by definition untrue.
So you're saying 1:1 encounters shouldn't happen because it's tactically unwise for the alien, therefore we don't need to consider the theory.
Well in practice we see plenty of 1:1 encounters. No? The context IS 1:1 encounters. It's also useful to consider 1:1 simply because it's the lowest common denominator; the simplest scenario. If you don't have the design right at this level of the game what do you have?
Where you're saying aliens can choose the engagement (because of superior mobility) I agree. Similarly, marines can split up into smaller and smaller teams. Is it advantageous for marines to do so? It depends how 1:1 encounters play out.
Also, your last point is ridiculous. You're saying that changing the mechanics to make things more difficult for the marines doesn't change balance. This is by definition untrue.
Nope, you've got it wrong. Think behavioral science. We discourage marines from Rambo adventures because it doesn't work out so well. Of course it would be harder for the marine who foolishly chose to persist with the Rambo adventures. That's the part which you think is ridiculous. But the smarter marine will adapt and do something other. The other is gameplay we want to encourage - less subject to random chance and more subject to skill.
I find that mario-rines (those that spam jump) are easier to deal with because they have a considerable harder time aiming at skulks, what really is annoying to me is when several people start doing it close together and cover each other while they do the stomp.
Really frustrating when I can't damage them properly and get shot by someone bouncing around on the other side of the room.
I'd really like some sort of display on the forum profiles to see what graphic settings these players who continue to come up with topics like these, have on.
So you're saying 1:1 encounters shouldn't happen because it's tactically unwise for the alien, therefore we don't need to consider the theory.
Well in practice we see plenty of 1:1 encounters. No? The context IS 1:1 encounters. It's also useful to consider 1:1 simply because it's the lowest common denominator; the simplest scenario. If you don't have the design right at this level of the game what do you have?
If you're going to design the game to be balanced around 1on1, what's going to happen when the aliens always group up and attack the marines with superior numbers? And when the marines start countering this by moving in bigger groups, the aliens just ignore them and attack somewhere else where the marines aren't? The aliens' superior mobility means that there will on average be more aliens in every encounter than there will be marines. This is why aliens can afford to be weaker in 1on1 situations without the balance being screwed.
If you tweak the marine vs skulk 1on1 gameplay into a 50-50 state, you will start seeing marines lose engagements much more often than the aliens. Combine this with the fact that the aliens are the team that can recover better from losing engagements, and you've got a right royal mess of screwed balance in your hands.
Nope, you've got it wrong. Think behavioral science. We discourage marines from Rambo adventures because it doesn't work out so well. Of course it would be harder for the marine who foolishly chose to persist with the Rambo adventures. That's the part which you think is ridiculous. But the smarter marine will adapt and do something other. The other is gameplay we want to encourage - less subject to random chance and more subject to skill.
Marines 'ramboing' is a useful resource at the hands of the marine team. If you take that away, you're going to make the marine team weaker and taking away choices. What is this 'other' you're referring to that you think the marine team doesn't already do?
And why on earth are you suggesting that a ramboing marine is nothing but a game of chance? A great difference between a good and a bad player is the ability to see when you can make a solo push and harass the aliens instead of sitting on your arse and hugging an armory.
If you're going to design the game to be balanced around 1on1, what's going to happen when the aliens always group up and attack the marines with superior numbers? And when the marines start countering this by moving in bigger groups, the aliens just ignore them and attack somewhere else where the marines aren't?
Marines naturally needed to play in larger groups. Teamplay was the only way. Not anymore.
Also if you move from 1on1 to 2v1: 1 Skulk vs 2 Marine => forget it. 2 Skulks vs 1 Marine => possible...
(talking from normal non-rookie pub play perspective)
And why on earth are you suggesting that a ramboing marine is nothing but a game of chance? A great difference between a good and a bad player is the ability to see when you can make a solo push and harass the aliens instead of sitting on your arse and hugging an armory.
So when an Alien skulk sees a great opportunity to defeat said rambo-player still needs to throw a coin in the end, where is the fairness?
It's the difference between a fun game and a game that is perfectly balanced, but frustrating to play and keep to it.
How is 1on1 melee range a 50-50 coin toss? Jump the marine, aim your fucking bites and stop saying retarded things on the forum. A skulk with positional advantage has the advantage over a marine in 1on1. If you fail then you either got outskilled, outsmarted or outteched. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
2on1 is also possible, but it's hard, and it makes sense.
You do not understand. Teamwork on the marine side does not consist of just walking together; if you throw every single marine into a single spot on the map, you're going to lose, because the aliens are just going to ignore you and chomp your phase gates and bases down from behind you. The aliens, on the other hand, can and should use their entire team to wreak havoc both attacking and defending, because thanks to their mobility, they can still react to other threats afterwards.
This mechanic means that if the marine vs skulk gameplay was made a consistent 50-50 in every 1on1 situation, marines would rarely win any engagements, because aliens can always outnumber the marines in an engagement. Skulks need to be weaker than marines in 1on1 situations, because otherwise marines would never win any games in an equally-skilled set-up.
People who get frustrated because of the skulk gameplay are playing the skulk wrong. I'm not saying they're not good enough, I'm saying they're not doing the right things. You should almost never engage in a 1on1 situation with a marine unless you're absolutely certain you're going to win. There are dozens of other things you could be doing to be an asset to your team and have fun outsmarting your opponents. If nothing else gets your blood flowing than always running towards the nearest threat to get kills, then you're playing the wrong game. And even if for some reason it's below you to do anything else than frag marines, is it too much asked to use your so-revered teamplay, ask teammates to join you, and when you outnumber the enemy, engage in a fair and balanced battle without asking the devs to break the game?
People who get frustrated because of the skulk gameplay are playing the skulk wrong. I'm not saying they're not good enough, I'm saying they're not doing the right things. You should almost never engage in a 1on1 situation with a marine unless you're absolutely certain you're going to win. There are dozens of other things you could be doing to be an asset to your team and have fun outsmarting your opponents.
The dozen other things like biting down extractors, parasiting blowing up mines, spying out of vent and waiting for the res to be finally big enough for you're desired lifeform.
Engage in a fair and balanced battle without asking the devs to break the game?
So this gimpy movement is the only thing that keeps the whole balance in place? A movement that only servs against skulks? And its impossible to tune it in a way that makes it less frustrating for both sides and buff Marine elsewhere?
No, lets have this same topic and discussion pop up every month again and again.
How many rookies do bother go the hard way, learning how exactly to cope with Marine-pogo? Not many I say. They drop the game, because they think its unbalanced.
I asked some friends why they have the game, but are not playing it: Amongst other reasons, Skulk vs Marine was always mentioned. (Other been pub stomp, bad performance, too stronk Lerk or Fades or beeing killed around edges).
I asked myself why i have the game but am not playing it. Among all the reasons where, pub servers full of people playing with random graphical settings on making their aim/tracking unnecessarily difficult combined with bad gamesense equaling to horrible teams, a tournament dragged out for months that your team didnt even participate on due to it being played during the worst time of the year causing the season you would play on being postponed even more giving you a 3 month hiatus on "official" competitive gaming which inturn affects the desire for your team to play the game at all, countless and countless of graphical settings from the sparkly effects to resolution you need to downgrade to to get the same gameplay experience and realiability you had in ns1 even though you have the specs in your PC to run any other game with full details without any of these problems, but most of all just most of all the reason is, people who insist complaining about the most basic feature in gaming since...!!?!?! EVER!?!?! jesus christ.
How is 1on1 melee range a 50-50 coin toss? Jump the marine, aim your fucking bites and stop saying retarded things on the forum. A skulk with positional advantage has the advantage over a marine in 1on1. If you fail then you either got outskilled, outsmarted or outteched. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
For whatever reason you've decided that I'm whinging that skulk is too hard. That's not the case. I'm looking at this from a marine perspective.
In any 1:1 encounter, with the worst positioning for the marine, any half decent marine can get 60+ damage on the skulk. Now, if you happen to get a few extra hits to land, you won. Was it a perfect measurement of skill or was there some luck involved?
The dozen other things like biting down extractors, parasiting blowing up mines, spying out of vent and waiting for the res to be finally big enough for you're desired lifeform.
Exactly. These are the things you should be doing instead of mindlessly engaging in every potential fight you see on your way. Especially biting down extractors is a mind-game you can get pretty good at, making several marines spend their entire game round running aimlessly between their two naturals without ever being able to catch you. If you can't see it, then I'm sorry that you're losing a lot of potential fun in NS2.
So this gimpy movement is the only thing that keeps the whole balance in place? A movement that only servs against skulks? And its impossible to tune it in a way that makes it less frustrating for both sides and buff Marine elsewhere?
I'm not saying it's impossible to tune, I'm saying it's a lot more complicated and time-consuming than you could ever know. The skulk vs marine gameplay is the cornerstone of this game, because every engagement going one way or the other during the first minutes of the game is going to have a tenfold impact on what happens later in the round. And after all those months of resource-dwindling adjustments and horrible 70-30-esque balance patches, it might not even be worth it. These threads might be replaced with threads complaining about the shallowness and binary nature of the marine vs skulk combat.
Especially biting down extractors is a mind-game you can get pretty good at, making several marines spend their entire game round running aimlessly between their two naturals without ever being able to catch you. If you can't see it, then I'm sorry that you're losing a lot of potential fun in NS2.
A single Marine can do the same, try it out! The Kham will have to place whips around his upgrades if he want's to protect them at some point. Same goes for Harvesters.
In my opinion, playing Skulk is the most unfun, unprecitable thing to play in the entire game. Luckily I don't have to.
I asked myself why i have the game but am not playing it. Among all the reasons where, pub servers full of people playing with random graphical settings on making their aim/tracking unnecessarily difficult combined with bad gamesense equaling to horrible teams, a tournament dragged out for months that your team didnt even participate on due to it being played during the worst time of the year causing the season you would play on being postponed even more giving you a 3 month hiatus on "official" competitive gaming which inturn affects the desire for your team to play the game at all, countless and countless of graphical settings from the sparkly effects to resolution you need to downgrade to to get the same gameplay experience and realiability you had in ns1 even though you have the specs in your PC to run any other game with full details without any of these problems, but most of all just most of all the reason is, people who insist complaining about the most basic feature in gaming since...!!?!?! EVER!?!?! jesus christ.
@Ots Don't forget to breath ok? We can't have you fall from the chair now :P
A single Marine can do the same, try it out! The Kham will have to place whips around his upgrades if he want's to protect them at some point. Same goes for Harvesters.
Sure, a marine can do it too. The differences are:
1) Aliens can react to threats more quickly both due to their superior mobility and scouting abilities.
2) Skulks can predict defender arrivals and escape to bite another extractor, a harassing marine cannot feasibly do anything else than try to stand his ground
3) Skulks have a larger variety of routes to utilise when infiltrating behind the enemy lines, and combined with the aliens' superior mobility, lane blocking is much harder for marines than for aliens.
If the only thing defending your team's upgrades and harvesters are whips then the alien team is playing horribly wrong, and you should never balance for people like that.
@Onosfactory, 170fps in menu, 160-200 while running in most maps solo, ~100fps but usually goes below it in most 6v6 games in larger fights, i'd like to say 60's?! but i really hope it doesn't and i'm really not in the mood to go try out publics that are even worse do to large game size and more clutter. I'm 100% your jumping is useless.
gtx760, i7-3770K, 16gb ram, no ssd, win7, it's mostly about processor/gfx anyways though.
How is 1on1 melee range a 50-50 coin toss? Jump the marine, aim your fucking bites and stop saying retarded things on the forum. A skulk with positional advantage has the advantage over a marine in 1on1. If you fail then you either got outskilled, outsmarted or outteched. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
For whatever reason you've decided that I'm whinging that skulk is too hard. That's not the case. I'm looking at this from a marine perspective.
In any 1:1 encounter, with the worst positioning for the marine, any half decent marine can get 60+ damage on the skulk. Now, if you happen to get a few extra hits to land, you won. Was it a perfect measurement of skill or was there some luck involved?
I never said you said skulk was too hard.
If a half decent marine get 60+ damage on the skulk, then he was clearly NOT in the worst positioning. A really good marine would get about 0-5 bullets on the skulk. Most of the time 0-3 I'd say. Worst positioning meaning jumped from behind with the first hint of the skulk presence being the first bite landed on his back. And that's without considering if the timing is good (understand marine reloading, building, sprinting with his axe, or busy doing anything). Look at it from a marine perspective. If you can land at least 60+ on a skulk in any 1on1 situation, join a top team ASAP, you are probably one of the best marine in the world.
Also you can't expect a skulk in melee range to get an instant win JUST because he managed to get into that situatuion, it would be retarded. Or from a marine perspective, an instant lose.
Then again you see the same overall outcome again and again:
Marine's incredible strong early > Aliens need to defend keyareas heavily with Gorges and try to keep atleast 4 RT's and Marine RT's down to 4 aswell. The rest is waiting. Waiting for the first Lerks to pop up and turn the favor quickly.
At that point Marines either have overpowered Aliens and victory is close or they will take down a slow road to complete defeat. JP / Shotguns may be the last straw to take, but if that fails its over.
What game doesnt follow that pattern? How many game's are decided in early already if you take rushes out of the picture?
I beliefe there'd be far more enjoyable games if you buff Aliens early and nerf their mid / late game.
Lets look at the stats (taken from ns2stats.com):
What does this have to do with Marine jump, well Marine jump is one big factor that makes early Skulk bad against early Marine.
Of course you could leave jump be and do something with Skulks. But that would mean lots of balance issues mid / late game.
Note that Marine jump is only valuable against early Skulks.
The marines are by no means incredibly strong in the early game. The first minute of a match gives the best example of why aliens do not need to be on equal terms in 1on1 situations: Imagine a 6vs6 match. The marines make a 3-2 split while the aliens send 5 skulks to the marines' first natural, which makes for a slightly alien-favoured fair fight. After this, no matter whether any skulks die or not, all the 5 skulks can sprint to the other side of the map (either from the marines' natural where the fight just occurred or spawning from fresh eggs back at the hive) and counter the two-man push that's likely to happen before they've had time to deal too much damage, again with 5 skulks against 2 marines.
These two fights happening during the first minute of the match are perhaps the most important fights in a match. These two fights decide which team is going to have the upper hand for the rest of the match assuming equal performance from that point onwards, and the snowballing effect of any RTS means that the earlier you start getting ahead, the harder it's going to be for the other team to make a comeback.
The nature of these fights (and all fights that happen during the first 3-4 minutes) means that skulks need to be weaker individually, or otherwise the marines are going to get their faces stomped in during every early game.
These two fights decide which team is going to have the upper hand for the rest of the match assuming equal performance from that point onwards, and the snowballing effect of any RTS means that the earlier you start getting ahead, the harder it's going to be for the other team to make a comeback.
Another one.
So those are the reasons that justify Marine jump, that only is in there against ground skulks in pub play and there is no other way around gimpy movement turning everyone away from this game?
I cannot help you if you plug your fingers in your ears and go la-la-la. There is no fundamental difference between 6vs6 and 12vs12 concerning this mechanic. Either scenario, there can always be a greater than one skulk-to-marine ratio in early game engagements, and that is why skulks can never be as strong as marines in combat on their own without screwing up balance. You refuse to entertain this idea and comment on it, instead basing your opinion on a vague, subjective feel and biased rhetoric about 'everyone' allegedly being turned away from this game solely because of this mechanic you dislike.
Guys, please.. aliens only win 60% of the games. We need to nerf marines so they win more.
FYI Marines already have a 'jump energy' of sorts, successive jumps will slow you down.
And you're basing every thought on comp play, where of course the problem does not occur. In pub reality Marine's early is strong really and without a doubt because of the mechanic. But thats not the point: Marine can be strong early game for all I care, but does it have to be because of a silly jump mechanic?
'everyone' allegedly being turned away from this game solely because of this mechanic you dislike.
- Never said its the only reason. Just one of those I heared playing a greater role.
- 'everyone' is also wrong, just the rookies that need to face the problems with this mechanic. Say HumbleBundle newcomers.
- "mechanic you dislike": You seem to like it hard. I also do when I play Marine, but I could have it less powerful. Also I don't need to go stomp rookie servers with it.
And you're basing every thought on comp play, where of course the problem does not occur. In pub reality Marine's early is strong really and without a doubt because of the mechanic. But thats not the point: Marine can be strong early game for all I care, but does it have to be because of a silly jump mechanic?
I'm basing my opinions not on comp play, but on people who have grasped the basics and know what they're doing. Not every non-rookie is a competitive pro player. If you want to balance the game around newcomers, creating shallow gameplay and no chance of improvement, then the gap between our preferences is something we cannot overcome. The marine jumping mechanic is not a problem for people who know the fundamentals of skulking, and I would hate to see the game rewarding people for not learning the basics.
And you're basing every thought on comp play, where of course the problem does not occur. In pub reality Marine's early is strong really and without a doubt because of the mechanic. But thats not the point: Marine can be strong early game for all I care, but does it have to be because of a silly jump mechanic?
[quote- "mechanic you dislike"]: You seem to like it hard. I also do when I play Marine, but I could have it less powerful. Also I don't need to go stomp rookie servers with it.
I like it no matter whether I'm a marine or a skulk. I would hate gaining a bigger advantage over a marine than I already do if I manage to get into melee range. That would make skulking way too easy.
Guys, please.. aliens only win 60% of the games. We need to nerf marines so they win more.
FYI Marines already have a 'jump energy' of sorts, successive jumps will slow you down.
I honestly started to write my own reply but then realized that I could convey it with these two quotes.
The aliens' superior mobility means that there will on average be more aliens in every encounter than there will be marines. This is why aliens can afford to be weaker in 1on1 situations without the balance being screwed.
The superior mobility isn't as big a deal as you make it out to be. Marine sprint is plenty good for getting around the map in the early part of the game. FWIW I suggested marine sprint be removed some time ago. Maintaining their mobility edge is just another reason why Shift hive is so common. But this is a whole other topic.
If you tweak the marine vs skulk 1on1 gameplay into a 50-50 state, you will start seeing marines lose engagements much more often than the aliens. Combine this with the fact that the aliens are the team that can recover better from losing engagements, and you've got a right royal mess of screwed balance in your hands.
How is it difficult to imagine making other balance changes in response to this? Remember when armouries used to repair armour? By your same logic that change should NEVER have been implemented because marines would lose every game. Of course, what happened was welders were changed in several ways. They were unlocked at round start instead of requiring 10tRes research. They were also reduced in cost from 10pRes to 3pRes. And importantly, now we have much better gameplay: less armoury humping, more marine teamwork, moments of high risk when marines pull back to weld each other.
I want a balanced game. I also want better gameplay. I believe we can have better gameplay by changing the skulk vs marine melee engagements to favour the skulk more. It's fine if you disagree with that notion, but saying it shouldn't be done because of balance problems is really shortsighted.
Marines 'ramboing' is a useful resource at the hands of the marine team. If you take that away, you're going to make the marine team weaker and taking away choices.
Again with the strawman... Of course I'm not saying ramboing is somehow banned.
It was clearly a mistake for me to try and explain it that way. Rather than try to understand the subtly of how this change might impact marine behaviors you've been distracted by the shiny.
Let me try and explain more directly.
What I would like to see is a change between the skulk vs. marine melee combat such that it favours the skulk more. This could be through any number of means, such as reducing marine evasion capability, or increasing skulk base speed. You could do creative things like boost skulk movement for 3 seconds after a successful parasite. I'm not really fussed how it's done because I'm focused on the outcome.
Why I would like to see this is because I believe there are multiple gameplay benefits, such as
Reduced importance on shift hive first
Increase marine preference to engage at longer range leading to a greater sense of moments of safety vs moments of risk as they move through the map.
Less high risk/high reward gameplay (eg. nano rushing).
Keep in mind I'm talking about changes of small magnitude as discussed in my first post.
my point of this thread was about how marine can jump backwards like 4 feet away so easy but i wasn't being clear. as many have mentioned, skulk do need leap of some sort, as a an upgrade without commander's support.
Joshhh, what is the scale on the time axis in the 2nd graph, I'm guessing 5 mins.
Ots - same, I really don't want to know how bad fps gets even after 'upgrades' lol. + everything about my game is useless, aha!
NS-Soldier, I'm pretty sure a skulk can jump a lot further ingame than 4 feet, I'm guessing you meant from an on-the-ground-standing-start? As you notice, a lot of people feel that this situation is wrong, then a lot of people will post 'hell no it doesn't/isn't' without really saying what they meant: "I don't think marines need nerfed jump as when I play skulk, I never touch the ground, only walls, plus I never have 0 momentum as a skulk, so I can always jump further than a marine."
Comments
More importantly, some well balanced iterations of NS2 have resulted in frustrating gameplay. We have not previously stopped there and said "Ok, well this is balanced, and balance is King so we just have to endure this unfun way the game plays out now".
By design, marines favour ranged engagements while aliens favour melee. The current problem is the former is hugely advantageous for marine vs skulk while the latter is closer to 50/50. This leads to gameplay where marines rambo sprint across the map to kill harvesters/cyst chains etc. Skulks have to engage and you get a coin toss outcome. If you switch this up a bit so that marines are punished for taking such high risk/high reward actions, you change the gameplay without changing the balance.
You're taking the situation out of its context and only considering 1on1 engagements. Skulks have a myriad of other tricks up their sleeve, especially the ability to have more say on where the engagement happens and the possibility of always outnumbering the enemy. Taking on a marine in a 1on1 engagement just isn't what skulks are supposed to do. Whether this creates unfun or frustrating gameplay is a matter of preference, not absolute truth.
I'm not saying there's no room for tweaking in the mechanics, but most of the arguments against the current mechanics boil down to "skulks should have the upper hand in melee", and they're always talking about 1on1 engagements. That's not how the game works when you take your head out of the bucket and see the big picture.
Also, your last point is ridiculous. You're saying that changing the mechanics to make things more difficult for the marines doesn't change balance. This is by definition untrue.
Well in practice we see plenty of 1:1 encounters. No? The context IS 1:1 encounters. It's also useful to consider 1:1 simply because it's the lowest common denominator; the simplest scenario. If you don't have the design right at this level of the game what do you have?
Where you're saying aliens can choose the engagement (because of superior mobility) I agree. Similarly, marines can split up into smaller and smaller teams. Is it advantageous for marines to do so? It depends how 1:1 encounters play out.
Nope, you've got it wrong. Think behavioral science. We discourage marines from Rambo adventures because it doesn't work out so well. Of course it would be harder for the marine who foolishly chose to persist with the Rambo adventures. That's the part which you think is ridiculous. But the smarter marine will adapt and do something other. The other is gameplay we want to encourage - less subject to random chance and more subject to skill.
Really frustrating when I can't damage them properly and get shot by someone bouncing around on the other side of the room.
If you're going to design the game to be balanced around 1on1, what's going to happen when the aliens always group up and attack the marines with superior numbers? And when the marines start countering this by moving in bigger groups, the aliens just ignore them and attack somewhere else where the marines aren't? The aliens' superior mobility means that there will on average be more aliens in every encounter than there will be marines. This is why aliens can afford to be weaker in 1on1 situations without the balance being screwed.
If you tweak the marine vs skulk 1on1 gameplay into a 50-50 state, you will start seeing marines lose engagements much more often than the aliens. Combine this with the fact that the aliens are the team that can recover better from losing engagements, and you've got a right royal mess of screwed balance in your hands.
Marines 'ramboing' is a useful resource at the hands of the marine team. If you take that away, you're going to make the marine team weaker and taking away choices. What is this 'other' you're referring to that you think the marine team doesn't already do?
And why on earth are you suggesting that a ramboing marine is nothing but a game of chance? A great difference between a good and a bad player is the ability to see when you can make a solo push and harass the aliens instead of sitting on your arse and hugging an armory.
Also if you move from 1on1 to 2v1: 1 Skulk vs 2 Marine => forget it. 2 Skulks vs 1 Marine => possible...
(talking from normal non-rookie pub play perspective)
So when an Alien skulk sees a great opportunity to defeat said rambo-player still needs to throw a coin in the end, where is the fairness?
It's the difference between a fun game and a game that is perfectly balanced, but frustrating to play and keep to it.
2on1 is also possible, but it's hard, and it makes sense.
This mechanic means that if the marine vs skulk gameplay was made a consistent 50-50 in every 1on1 situation, marines would rarely win any engagements, because aliens can always outnumber the marines in an engagement. Skulks need to be weaker than marines in 1on1 situations, because otherwise marines would never win any games in an equally-skilled set-up.
People who get frustrated because of the skulk gameplay are playing the skulk wrong. I'm not saying they're not good enough, I'm saying they're not doing the right things. You should almost never engage in a 1on1 situation with a marine unless you're absolutely certain you're going to win. There are dozens of other things you could be doing to be an asset to your team and have fun outsmarting your opponents. If nothing else gets your blood flowing than always running towards the nearest threat to get kills, then you're playing the wrong game. And even if for some reason it's below you to do anything else than frag marines, is it too much asked to use your so-revered teamplay, ask teammates to join you, and when you outnumber the enemy, engage in a fair and balanced battle without asking the devs to break the game?
So this gimpy movement is the only thing that keeps the whole balance in place? A movement that only servs against skulks? And its impossible to tune it in a way that makes it less frustrating for both sides and buff Marine elsewhere?
No, lets have this same topic and discussion pop up every month again and again.
How many rookies do bother go the hard way, learning how exactly to cope with Marine-pogo? Not many I say. They drop the game, because they think its unbalanced.
I asked some friends why they have the game, but are not playing it: Amongst other reasons, Skulk vs Marine was always mentioned. (Other been pub stomp, bad performance, too stronk Lerk or Fades or beeing killed around edges).
In any 1:1 encounter, with the worst positioning for the marine, any half decent marine can get 60+ damage on the skulk. Now, if you happen to get a few extra hits to land, you won. Was it a perfect measurement of skill or was there some luck involved?
Gtx 650 ti boost, 4350 4.2Ghz Fx Cpu, 4Mb Ram (prolly 1300mhz dual), no SSD. Win7 Ult.
I play with 1920x1080, everything off except Bloom and Ani. Oh and 'Full' Hud ... didn't even notice that one appearing
I get 90 FPS in the menu. Not so much in games
I jump ALOT. Boing boing boing.
Exactly. These are the things you should be doing instead of mindlessly engaging in every potential fight you see on your way. Especially biting down extractors is a mind-game you can get pretty good at, making several marines spend their entire game round running aimlessly between their two naturals without ever being able to catch you. If you can't see it, then I'm sorry that you're losing a lot of potential fun in NS2.
I'm not saying it's impossible to tune, I'm saying it's a lot more complicated and time-consuming than you could ever know. The skulk vs marine gameplay is the cornerstone of this game, because every engagement going one way or the other during the first minutes of the game is going to have a tenfold impact on what happens later in the round. And after all those months of resource-dwindling adjustments and horrible 70-30-esque balance patches, it might not even be worth it. These threads might be replaced with threads complaining about the shallowness and binary nature of the marine vs skulk combat.
In my opinion, playing Skulk is the most unfun, unprecitable thing to play in the entire game. Luckily I don't have to.
Sure, a marine can do it too. The differences are:
1) Aliens can react to threats more quickly both due to their superior mobility and scouting abilities.
2) Skulks can predict defender arrivals and escape to bite another extractor, a harassing marine cannot feasibly do anything else than try to stand his ground
3) Skulks have a larger variety of routes to utilise when infiltrating behind the enemy lines, and combined with the aliens' superior mobility, lane blocking is much harder for marines than for aliens.
If the only thing defending your team's upgrades and harvesters are whips then the alien team is playing horribly wrong, and you should never balance for people like that.
gtx760, i7-3770K, 16gb ram, no ssd, win7, it's mostly about processor/gfx anyways though.
I never said you said skulk was too hard.
If a half decent marine get 60+ damage on the skulk, then he was clearly NOT in the worst positioning. A really good marine would get about 0-5 bullets on the skulk. Most of the time 0-3 I'd say. Worst positioning meaning jumped from behind with the first hint of the skulk presence being the first bite landed on his back. And that's without considering if the timing is good (understand marine reloading, building, sprinting with his axe, or busy doing anything). Look at it from a marine perspective. If you can land at least 60+ on a skulk in any 1on1 situation, join a top team ASAP, you are probably one of the best marine in the world.
Also you can't expect a skulk in melee range to get an instant win JUST because he managed to get into that situatuion, it would be retarded. Or from a marine perspective, an instant lose.
Marine's incredible strong early > Aliens need to defend keyareas heavily with Gorges and try to keep atleast 4 RT's and Marine RT's down to 4 aswell. The rest is waiting. Waiting for the first Lerks to pop up and turn the favor quickly.
At that point Marines either have overpowered Aliens and victory is close or they will take down a slow road to complete defeat. JP / Shotguns may be the last straw to take, but if that fails its over.
What game doesnt follow that pattern? How many game's are decided in early already if you take rushes out of the picture?
I beliefe there'd be far more enjoyable games if you buff Aliens early and nerf their mid / late game.
Lets look at the stats (taken from ns2stats.com):
What does this have to do with Marine jump, well Marine jump is one big factor that makes early Skulk bad against early Marine.
Of course you could leave jump be and do something with Skulks. But that would mean lots of balance issues mid / late game.
Note that Marine jump is only valuable against early Skulks.
The marines are by no means incredibly strong in the early game. The first minute of a match gives the best example of why aliens do not need to be on equal terms in 1on1 situations: Imagine a 6vs6 match. The marines make a 3-2 split while the aliens send 5 skulks to the marines' first natural, which makes for a slightly alien-favoured fair fight. After this, no matter whether any skulks die or not, all the 5 skulks can sprint to the other side of the map (either from the marines' natural where the fight just occurred or spawning from fresh eggs back at the hive) and counter the two-man push that's likely to happen before they've had time to deal too much damage, again with 5 skulks against 2 marines.
These two fights happening during the first minute of the match are perhaps the most important fights in a match. These two fights decide which team is going to have the upper hand for the rest of the match assuming equal performance from that point onwards, and the snowballing effect of any RTS means that the earlier you start getting ahead, the harder it's going to be for the other team to make a comeback.
The nature of these fights (and all fights that happen during the first 3-4 minutes) means that skulks need to be weaker individually, or otherwise the marines are going to get their faces stomped in during every early game.
And I thought comps don't rely on the jump.
Another one.
So those are the reasons that justify Marine jump, that only is in there against ground skulks in pub play and there is no other way around gimpy movement turning everyone away from this game?
FYI Marines already have a 'jump energy' of sorts, successive jumps will slow you down.
- Never said its the only reason. Just one of those I heared playing a greater role.
- 'everyone' is also wrong, just the rookies that need to face the problems with this mechanic. Say HumbleBundle newcomers.
- "mechanic you dislike": You seem to like it hard. I also do when I play Marine, but I could have it less powerful. Also I don't need to go stomp rookie servers with it.
I'm basing my opinions not on comp play, but on people who have grasped the basics and know what they're doing. Not every non-rookie is a competitive pro player. If you want to balance the game around newcomers, creating shallow gameplay and no chance of improvement, then the gap between our preferences is something we cannot overcome. The marine jumping mechanic is not a problem for people who know the fundamentals of skulking, and I would hate to see the game rewarding people for not learning the basics.
I like it no matter whether I'm a marine or a skulk. I would hate gaining a bigger advantage over a marine than I already do if I manage to get into melee range. That would make skulking way too easy.
I honestly started to write my own reply but then realized that I could convey it with these two quotes.
The superior mobility isn't as big a deal as you make it out to be. Marine sprint is plenty good for getting around the map in the early part of the game. FWIW I suggested marine sprint be removed some time ago. Maintaining their mobility edge is just another reason why Shift hive is so common. But this is a whole other topic.
How is it difficult to imagine making other balance changes in response to this? Remember when armouries used to repair armour? By your same logic that change should NEVER have been implemented because marines would lose every game. Of course, what happened was welders were changed in several ways. They were unlocked at round start instead of requiring 10tRes research. They were also reduced in cost from 10pRes to 3pRes. And importantly, now we have much better gameplay: less armoury humping, more marine teamwork, moments of high risk when marines pull back to weld each other.
I want a balanced game. I also want better gameplay. I believe we can have better gameplay by changing the skulk vs marine melee engagements to favour the skulk more. It's fine if you disagree with that notion, but saying it shouldn't be done because of balance problems is really shortsighted.
Again with the strawman... Of course I'm not saying ramboing is somehow banned.
It was clearly a mistake for me to try and explain it that way. Rather than try to understand the subtly of how this change might impact marine behaviors you've been distracted by the shiny.
Let me try and explain more directly.
What I would like to see is a change between the skulk vs. marine melee combat such that it favours the skulk more. This could be through any number of means, such as reducing marine evasion capability, or increasing skulk base speed. You could do creative things like boost skulk movement for 3 seconds after a successful parasite. I'm not really fussed how it's done because I'm focused on the outcome.
Why I would like to see this is because I believe there are multiple gameplay benefits, such as
- Reduced importance on shift hive first
- Increase marine preference to engage at longer range leading to a greater sense of moments of safety vs moments of risk as they move through the map.
- Less high risk/high reward gameplay (eg. nano rushing).
Keep in mind I'm talking about changes of small magnitude as discussed in my first post.Ots - same, I really don't want to know how bad fps gets even after 'upgrades' lol. + everything about my game is useless, aha!
NS-Soldier, I'm pretty sure a skulk can jump a lot further ingame than 4 feet, I'm guessing you meant from an on-the-ground-standing-start? As you notice, a lot of people feel that this situation is wrong, then a lot of people will post 'hell no it doesn't/isn't' without really saying what they meant: "I don't think marines need nerfed jump as when I play skulk, I never touch the ground, only walls, plus I never have 0 momentum as a skulk, so I can always jump further than a marine."