Then we are back to having too much teamwork. It is sad, but getting teamwork in pub games can be like pulling teeth all too often.
Well, yeah, but I wouldn't call it "too much". Exos reward teams that can actually work together with firepower. I don't see how this is a bad thing. If your team happens to be the average herd of cats, don't research them.
(Also you can probably rush a single gorge without commander support; although some nano shield/cat packs surely wouldn't hurt.)
So how is the new nutrient mist changes working out? Are alien commanders utilizing the ability much, and is the ability to keep things healed without cysts changing the game a lot?
If I understand this change correctly, you will be able to to cast and spawn hallucinations anywhere.
Why is this needed?
I mean, you don't get a benefit for casting mucous or enzyme without aliens around, so why should hallucination be any different?
The other drifter abilities scale with the number of aliens it applies to.
Imho, you should leave this change out or change the shade drifter abilitiy alltogether. Hallucinations are pretty annoying already. I'd even prefer a 1 second combat cloak as drifter ability to the current and future hallucination.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited May 2016
@Bicsum
Because how often have you casted hallucination and seen zero appear? It happens to me all the time and I don't know why.. maybe the AoE is still small, not sure. (casting stupid drifters needs to be fixed, too)
Also, because enzyme lingers in a large, visible AoE , making them easy to apply.. while Hallu is an instant cast within a small targeted area that requires an extremely high skill floor as far as timing goes.
Casting it too soon means the slow bots don't make it in the room in time, or casting it after aliens enter LOS to marines is far less effective, for instance.
Honestly, this is a great change in usability imo, especially in reducing frustration, and comes closer to matching the ease of use in applying enzyme. (Mucous is targeted and instant but never seems to randomly get discarded like hallu)
Here's another card that may explain it more.
Another reason for the hallucination change on drifters is: Hallucinations (and shade hive in general) are supposed to be about subversion, deception and general indirect guerrilla tactics. One of the purposes I feel hallucinations have failed to do well before is being able to create fake attacks on the map- to draw marines away or at the very least to force them to verify if an attack is real or not.
The current hallucinations are very limited in this capability because they require players to spawn them. This generally encourages only one type of use- spamming them in engagements to try and confuse marines. But with this change I'm hoping more creative options open up since you aren't reliant on player positioning to spawn them. Mock attacks on RTs to try and buy your real res-biting skulk a precious couple of seconds. Fake base rushes to try and freak out the marine team, maybe even cause a couple of them to turn around and run back to base- if only for a second or two. In general aside from the usability factor Ironhorse mentions above, there might more creative ways to use them then spamming them in combat- that was my hope, anyway.
If the goal is to make shade hive as good as a first pick as the other 2, you need to fix ink, it is only really useful to deny Arcs push (late game) while heal wave and echo are far more versatile.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@RevanCorana
That's a good thing imo, as Ink is blindingly obscuring while the enemy team sees your bright outline clearly... also that level of obscuration just isn't fun in a MP game, even if it weren't a strong handicap.
Another reason for the hallucination change on drifters is: Hallucinations (and shade hive in general) are supposed to be about subversion, deception and general indirect guerrilla tactics. One of the purposes I feel hallucinations have failed to do well before is being able to create fake attacks on the map- to draw marines away or at the very least to force them to verify if an attack is real or not.
The current hallucinations are very limited in this capability because they require players to spawn them. This generally encourages only one type of use- spamming them in engagements to try and confuse marines. But with this change I'm hoping more creative options open up since you aren't reliant on player positioning to spawn them. Mock attacks on RTs to try and buy your real res-biting skulk a precious couple of seconds. Fake base rushes to try and freak out the marine team, maybe even cause a couple of them to turn around and run back to base- if only for a second or two. In general aside from the usability factor Ironhorse mentions above, there might more creative ways to use them then spamming them in combat- that was my hope, anyway.
Agree that shade hive should be more useful.
Being able to create diversion attacks is good in principle, and also fun. However, I see 2 major issues with this.
1. Alien side becomes more micro-dependent with shade hive, so it may still not be used by all but the most experienced alien commanders. Hardly ever see simple drifter micro being used in pub games as it is.
2. A diversionary base-rush attack with hallucinated aliens will definitely cause a panic fleet bacon, along with frenetic scans all around the map to try and find the "tunnel" they came from, costing tons of res; and more importantly, a beacon happening early on in the game will lead to loss of all RTs and map control by the time the marines waddle their way back out of base. If aliens are smart enough to do the fake attack, they are smart enough to use the opportunity to bite down the RTs. Even if there are pgs, all the real aliens will be taking that down while the marines are going back to base for the "attack".
You are going to have to do something to help marines gain/regain map control if aliens are going to get such a buff. At the least, you are going to have to make the uber-hallucination ability very expensive and have a massive cooldown.
If we look at it the other way around, could marines do something similar to aliens? Can they rush PGs and rush a hive? No. Can they get an ARC to an alien RT position quickly and arc it down while the marines attack something else? No. It takes way too long to get all the tech up and costs a ton.
Marines should also be able to do some kind of sneak attack otherwise it just won't be fun or fair.
The current hallucination ability is somewhat buggy. There is a 3 second per entity cooldown on the hallucination spawn, but if you keep casting it on the same group of aliens, it will only check the first alien in the entity list, and the entity list doesn't seem to change per cast, and so it doesn't spawn more hallucinations
You can see what I mean in the video.
If you cast the hallucination cloud on the aliens individualy, you'll always get a hallucination.
I see, but I think it will affect combat situations too much. At least with one-third of number of players.
What would happen if you cast hallucination cloud on 1 skulk? 1 skulk hallucination?
What would happen if you cast hallucination cloud without an alien around? 3 skulks with 9 players on the team?
That seems weird, because you would want to not cast it on your team to get more skulks.
You could try to make more deception happen by sending false marine minimap information within the hallucination cloud. Lite hallucinations so to say. That wouldn't interfer with combat as much, but you could still use it to fake alien presence.
If you really want to go down the road of more hallucination spawns, I think you should make them visualy more distinguishable from real players - with a light outline or removing their eyes or giving them a lower back tattoo.
edit: Oh well, build 300 is out, so we'll see how it plays out.
@RevanCorana
That's a good thing imo, as Ink is blindingly obscuring while the enemy team sees your bright outline clearly... also that level of obscuration just isn't fun in a MP game, even if it weren't a strong handicap.
Yea maybe it's not as annoying as rupture since it's not just a 2D decal on your screen, still I'd like have it spawn halucinations like the drifter, because otherweise when using shade hive first, 2 drifters covering the map is pretty much mandatory to be able spawn halucinations fast enough everywhere.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Arcs in base and you should no longer worry. No fieldplayers from your side needed as well.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Arcs in base and you should no longer worry. No fieldplayers from your side needed as well.
Of course..... aliens sit on three hive and we have to waste res on arcs because the alien comm can kill our base alone with instant biles......
Aliens have always the possibility to rush a base and kill a powernode in a few seconds. even in the lategame.
But as a marine you have no chance to do anything when aliens have three hives up. the alien comm has so much power now:
- he can heal harvesters with myst. So its harder to kill alien rts.
- he can mark with rupture. thats really OP imo. you always needed a skulk to mark marines. that was a basic game mechanic. now everyhting marks you: cysts, webs, parasite, etc...
- hallucinaiton with skulks without any skulks nearby. the comm can fake attacks without any players on the field.
- contamination with bilebomb as instant attack on marine structures. again: no field player needed here.
- bone wall: thats okay, same as before. no problem here.
i think the problem doesn't belong to every single aspect on its own. the problem is the amount of possibilities. all aspects together give the alien comm too much impact on the field.
especially in the lategame he is more than the "extra-player". he can kill a base alone....
I understand that the changes aim to end turteling faster. but not everygame is a turtle when aliens have 3 hives. the changes do prevent turtle, but they also prevent comebacks.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
3 Hives have always been an autowin, there were just times when it was more subtle than other times.
I'm not a fan of it either, but it's the way it works currently, and unless there's going to be some massive rebalancing, it's likely going to stay that way. Adapt and play accordingly.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
3 Hives have always been an autowin, there were just times when it was more subtle than other times.
I'm not a fan of it either, but it's the way it works currently, and unless there's going to be some massive rebalancing, it's likely going to stay that way. Adapt and play accordingly.
That's not true. There was not an autowin button before. The contimanation changes made Biomass 9 auto win now and that is bad game design. Bio 9 should have game ending tools. Bio 9 aliens should be a lot stronger than Bio 6 aliens but the only win condition should be "Kill all CCs" or "kill all Hives".
I agree that the other changes are bad too and negatively affect game balance and gameplay.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
3 Hives have always been an autowin, there were just times when it was more subtle than other times.
I'm not a fan of it either, but it's the way it works currently, and unless there's going to be some massive rebalancing, it's likely going to stay that way. Adapt and play accordingly.
That's not true. There was not an autowin button before. The contimanation changes made Biomass 9 auto win now and that is bad game design. Bio 9 should have game ending tools. Bio 9 aliens should be a lot stronger than Bio 6 aliens but the only win condition should be "Kill all CCs" or "kill all Hives".
I agree that the other changes are bad too and negatively affect game balance and gameplay.
There were "Xenocide" and "steamrolling a position with a fuckton of onos". More often than not three hives mean marines only have 1 CC left, anyway. And no one likes turtles.
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Arcs in base and you should no longer worry. No fieldplayers from your side needed as well.
Of course..... aliens sit on three hive and we have to waste res on arcs because the alien comm can kill our base alone with instant biles......
Well, it would be pretty lame is Biomass 9 ability could be auto-countered for free somehow...
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
3 Hives have always been an autowin, there were just times when it was more subtle than other times.
I'm not a fan of it either, but it's the way it works currently, and unless there's going to be some massive rebalancing, it's likely going to stay that way. Adapt and play accordingly.
That's not true. There was not an autowin button before. The contimanation changes made Biomass 9 auto win now and that is bad game design. Bio 9 should have game ending tools. Bio 9 aliens should be a lot stronger than Bio 6 aliens but the only win condition should be "Kill all CCs" or "kill all Hives".
I agree that the other changes are bad too and negatively affect game balance and gameplay.
There were "Xenocide" and "steamrolling a position with a fuckton of onos". More often than not three hives mean marines only have 1 CC left, anyway. And no one likes turtles.
"Fuckton of onos" has nothing to do with amount of Hives and xenocide is 1. strong but not auto win (therefore a good ability) and 2. a skulk ability, not a commander destruction ability.
Marine got only 1 CC 99% of time so that is not a real argument.
Three hives is not the alien late game, it's the alien after-game. That amount of map control alone gives the game to the aliens, nothing wrong with giving them abilities to end the game faster.
Comments
If a single gorge is keeping you out you're doing it wrong. Get some commander support and rush him.
Well, yeah, but I wouldn't call it "too much". Exos reward teams that can actually work together with firepower. I don't see how this is a bad thing. If your team happens to be the average herd of cats, don't research them.
(Also you can probably rush a single gorge without commander support; although some nano shield/cat packs surely wouldn't hurt.)
https://trello.com/c/wNHcm1AH/275-drifter-hallucination-if-no-aliens-are-around-to-be-cloned-spawns-a-pack-of-skulks-re-implement-sounds-to-hallucinations
If I understand this change correctly, you will be able to to cast and spawn hallucinations anywhere.
Why is this needed?
I mean, you don't get a benefit for casting mucous or enzyme without aliens around, so why should hallucination be any different?
The other drifter abilities scale with the number of aliens it applies to.
Imho, you should leave this change out or change the shade drifter abilitiy alltogether. Hallucinations are pretty annoying already. I'd even prefer a 1 second combat cloak as drifter ability to the current and future hallucination.
Because how often have you casted hallucination and seen zero appear? It happens to me all the time and I don't know why.. maybe the AoE is still small, not sure. (casting stupid drifters needs to be fixed, too)
Also, because enzyme lingers in a large, visible AoE , making them easy to apply.. while Hallu is an instant cast within a small targeted area that requires an extremely high skill floor as far as timing goes.
Casting it too soon means the slow bots don't make it in the room in time, or casting it after aliens enter LOS to marines is far less effective, for instance.
Honestly, this is a great change in usability imo, especially in reducing frustration, and comes closer to matching the ease of use in applying enzyme. (Mucous is targeted and instant but never seems to randomly get discarded like hallu)
Here's another card that may explain it more.
The current hallucinations are very limited in this capability because they require players to spawn them. This generally encourages only one type of use- spamming them in engagements to try and confuse marines. But with this change I'm hoping more creative options open up since you aren't reliant on player positioning to spawn them. Mock attacks on RTs to try and buy your real res-biting skulk a precious couple of seconds. Fake base rushes to try and freak out the marine team, maybe even cause a couple of them to turn around and run back to base- if only for a second or two. In general aside from the usability factor Ironhorse mentions above, there might more creative ways to use them then spamming them in combat- that was my hope, anyway.
That's a good thing imo, as Ink is blindingly obscuring while the enemy team sees your bright outline clearly... also that level of obscuration just isn't fun in a MP game, even if it weren't a strong handicap.
I hope the projectile Spores are short ranged (<15m range, or shorter range than Umbra), so they aren't spammed from all the way across the room.
Agree that shade hive should be more useful.
Being able to create diversion attacks is good in principle, and also fun. However, I see 2 major issues with this.
1. Alien side becomes more micro-dependent with shade hive, so it may still not be used by all but the most experienced alien commanders. Hardly ever see simple drifter micro being used in pub games as it is.
2. A diversionary base-rush attack with hallucinated aliens will definitely cause a panic fleet bacon, along with frenetic scans all around the map to try and find the "tunnel" they came from, costing tons of res; and more importantly, a beacon happening early on in the game will lead to loss of all RTs and map control by the time the marines waddle their way back out of base. If aliens are smart enough to do the fake attack, they are smart enough to use the opportunity to bite down the RTs. Even if there are pgs, all the real aliens will be taking that down while the marines are going back to base for the "attack".
You are going to have to do something to help marines gain/regain map control if aliens are going to get such a buff. At the least, you are going to have to make the uber-hallucination ability very expensive and have a massive cooldown.
If we look at it the other way around, could marines do something similar to aliens? Can they rush PGs and rush a hive? No. Can they get an ARC to an alien RT position quickly and arc it down while the marines attack something else? No. It takes way too long to get all the tech up and costs a ton.
Marines should also be able to do some kind of sneak attack otherwise it just won't be fun or fair.
The current hallucination ability is somewhat buggy. There is a 3 second per entity cooldown on the hallucination spawn, but if you keep casting it on the same group of aliens, it will only check the first alien in the entity list, and the entity list doesn't seem to change per cast, and so it doesn't spawn more hallucinations
You can see what I mean in the video.
If you cast the hallucination cloud on the aliens individualy, you'll always get a hallucination.
@rantology
I see, but I think it will affect combat situations too much. At least with one-third of number of players.
What would happen if you cast hallucination cloud on 1 skulk? 1 skulk hallucination?
What would happen if you cast hallucination cloud without an alien around? 3 skulks with 9 players on the team?
That seems weird, because you would want to not cast it on your team to get more skulks.
You could try to make more deception happen by sending false marine minimap information within the hallucination cloud. Lite hallucinations so to say. That wouldn't interfer with combat as much, but you could still use it to fake alien presence.
If you really want to go down the road of more hallucination spawns, I think you should make them visualy more distinguishable from real players - with a light outline or removing their eyes or giving them a lower back tattoo.
edit: Oh well, build 300 is out, so we'll see how it plays out.
Yea maybe it's not as annoying as rupture since it's not just a 2D decal on your screen, still I'd like have it spawn halucinations like the drifter, because otherweise when using shade hive first, 2 drifters covering the map is pretty much mandatory to be able spawn halucinations fast enough everywhere.
But thanks for taking to the time to make it
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Arcs in base and you should no longer worry. No fieldplayers from your side needed as well.
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
Of course..... aliens sit on three hive and we have to waste res on arcs because the alien comm can kill our base alone with instant biles......
But as a marine you have no chance to do anything when aliens have three hives up. the alien comm has so much power now:
- he can heal harvesters with myst. So its harder to kill alien rts.
- he can mark with rupture. thats really OP imo. you always needed a skulk to mark marines. that was a basic game mechanic. now everyhting marks you: cysts, webs, parasite, etc...
- hallucinaiton with skulks without any skulks nearby. the comm can fake attacks without any players on the field.
- contamination with bilebomb as instant attack on marine structures. again: no field player needed here.
- bone wall: thats okay, same as before. no problem here.
i think the problem doesn't belong to every single aspect on its own. the problem is the amount of possibilities. all aspects together give the alien comm too much impact on the field.
especially in the lategame he is more than the "extra-player". he can kill a base alone....
I understand that the changes aim to end turteling faster. but not everygame is a turtle when aliens have 3 hives. the changes do prevent turtle, but they also prevent comebacks.
3 Hives have always been an autowin, there were just times when it was more subtle than other times.
I'm not a fan of it either, but it's the way it works currently, and unless there's going to be some massive rebalancing, it's likely going to stay that way. Adapt and play accordingly.
That's not true. There was not an autowin button before. The contimanation changes made Biomass 9 auto win now and that is bad game design. Bio 9 should have game ending tools. Bio 9 aliens should be a lot stronger than Bio 6 aliens but the only win condition should be "Kill all CCs" or "kill all Hives".
I agree that the other changes are bad too and negatively affect game balance and gameplay.
There were "Xenocide" and "steamrolling a position with a fuckton of onos". More often than not three hives mean marines only have 1 CC left, anyway. And no one likes turtles.
Well, it would be pretty lame is Biomass 9 ability could be auto-countered for free somehow...
"Fuckton of onos" has nothing to do with amount of Hives and xenocide is 1. strong but not auto win (therefore a good ability) and 2. a skulk ability, not a commander destruction ability.
Marine got only 1 CC 99% of time so that is not a real argument.