Alien buffs soon?
dePARA
Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Would be really interisting to know how the current win/loose ratios are for each side.
A while ago it swas nearly perfectly 50%.
Im sure we are far away from this now.
Why im thinking this? Cause i see only marine wins. No matter what server.
Its kinda boring.
1 or 2 alien wins from 10 games maybe.
Its like the current playerbase cant play aliens anymore.
A typical round is like this at the moment:
With luck you have only 2 Gorges, often its up to 4 in a 8 man team.
With luck you have 1 decent Lerk or fade. Without, well its gg most of the time after around 3-4 min.
At the end of the round most of the players have bite accuracys around 30% or lower and nearly no structure damage and 4-19 kdr.
All the last patches have introduced changes for an better player retention.
Im sure from an new player perspective aliens are to weak.
So, are there any alien buffs coming soon?
Would the logical answer to the last win/lose ratios.
A while ago it swas nearly perfectly 50%.
Im sure we are far away from this now.
Why im thinking this? Cause i see only marine wins. No matter what server.
Its kinda boring.
1 or 2 alien wins from 10 games maybe.
Its like the current playerbase cant play aliens anymore.
A typical round is like this at the moment:
With luck you have only 2 Gorges, often its up to 4 in a 8 man team.
With luck you have 1 decent Lerk or fade. Without, well its gg most of the time after around 3-4 min.
At the end of the round most of the players have bite accuracys around 30% or lower and nearly no structure damage and 4-19 kdr.
All the last patches have introduced changes for an better player retention.
Im sure from an new player perspective aliens are to weak.
So, are there any alien buffs coming soon?
Would the logical answer to the last win/lose ratios.
Comments
I wish uwe would just quit now because they have just ruined the game and killed community's and the player count is still dropping
After the modslave had enough it was over with competitive.
For me it just looks like that aliens cant win anymore with players currently playing NS2.
Its not UWEs fault that a skulk is running on the floor straight into nano with 4 marines in it.
Do you want ants? Because this is how you get ants.
No, its not a joke.
I asked about the current win/loss ratios and explained why.
But back on topic - How about asking a dev, not the entire community? Seems like you have chosen the wrong route of inquiry, if an ansver is what you are asking for......
Looks like Aliens winning around 25% on the 18 slot server there now.
Still a joke?
I expected a lower rate from my experience the last 2 weeks.
So a game where one side is winning 75% is still balanced?
Dont get me wrong, im against dumbing down NS2.
But im sure the current stats can become a problem in times of "we need more players".
Maybe its cause smurfs, more players have left the rookie state recently or whatever.
All i know its demotivating like hell when you lose one alien round after another.
it is nothing as fancy as that. They just don't know the basics of the game and they don't listen. In summary:
1) They don't resbite. Ever.
2) They don't play as a pack, instead they run 1 by 1 and die to the nearest room with 5 marines, instead of punishing them for having 5 stupid marines out of position
3) Their map awareness is terrible. Instead of holding the naturals and resbitting, you see them in random places doing nothing while you lose your only harvester.
4) They don't evolve when it is the moment. Clear example: no one saving for onos (wasting pres in extra gorges midgame and stuff like that) or not going onos until 63+ pres!!
Basically, they think that 1 skulk should be able to win a fight against a marine, even if the marine has a shotgun and the skulk is running towards him screaming "Leeeeroy Jenkins". And they think that a balanced game is when aliens hold 4+ harvesters early game with only skulks and 0 lerks
if marines are usually winning now is only because they have a couple carries while the rest of the team just runs in random directions and the aliens don't punish them for that
And by the way, at every match in which aliens have 3 hives I spend more than 10 minutes trying to explain to the commander to use contamination and win the game... and they NEVER do it. NEVER. And no one else in the team seems to care. This is driving me crazy...
What do you expect if they don't even know how important Contamination is to end the game?
TL;DR: just wait until they learn the basics. We had to scream at them for ages until marine commanders learned the need of going for upgrades first... this is something similar. They just need to learn how stupidly easy and powerful it is to resbite in pubs
Now does this include low elo games such as 1000ish, medium, or high?
What is the win ratio in each set?
Every time i go on thirsty onos i see 2/3 other comp players from the past, comp players tend to pick marines more whenever possible. I played there for a good 5 rounds earlier today and every game resulted in a shuffle, the comp players on aliens would get pissed over the lack of teamwork and lack of listening and rage quit 3/4 mins in before they could carry lerk or fade. Marines won 4 of the 5 rounds i played, the only time the aliens won was when they got to fades and the fades never died.
However on a majority of other servers i often find the game is about 50/50, in reality when you have 2 3000elo ish player quit in 1 round you're probably going to lose.
Then you have too many things on Alien that are way overpowered to compensate for Marines having such stupid dumbed down mechanics...
Like the fact that an Alien who is perfectly 100% hidden from Marine line of sight, will still show up on the minimap. This is without a doubt the dumbest ****ing mechanic EVER in any FPS game. Oh you just painstakingly snuck past the entire Marine team as a Gorge and are about to get a tunnel up... nope, a marine passing by that didn't see you and never even had line of sight suddenly doubles back because a red blip on the minimap showed him where you were... So your skill in sneaking past 8-9 marines is nullified by even the most clueless of rookies who just happen to see a bright red dot on their minimap... With **** mechanics like this why not just give all marines a 24/7 wallhack...
Or the HP bars that provide HUGE assistance in keeping track of the fast moving alien targets... Lets not forget about GL's either, the 1 hit kill noob spam wonderweapon (with no way to counter them whatsoever) With garbage like this it's no wonder Marines feel overpowered...
But then again you have the Alien side, and how ridiculously OP fades can be, or how OP onos are... or how quickly you can recover the res after going Fade/Onos (especially if winning) It used to be I'd go Onos and be lucky to have Lerk res by the time I die.. Now I go Onos and almost always will have Onos res again before dying...
Sadly NS2 is taking the same route NS2combat took... Badly thought out changes made in the name of "balance" completely obliterating anything fun about the game...
What makes it worse is that they won't even consider the thought that their bad changes might be bad... Like HP bars.. overwhelming negative community feedback, and yet they have done NOTHING to improve them whatsoever... It's just "herp derp you don't like it but we think they're fine" and that's it.
Then of course there's other WTF changes like the ping bars (I'll never get over that) or the cysts not dying anymore... You honestly have to wonder if they even think about the stuff they're doing.
This changed around the hit bars implementation imho. However, the devs have repeatedly ignored suggestions to modify them to reduce the aiming assist, so it seems this is likely just the way it is and the way UWE likes it, sad as that is to say.
Other nice to see changes:
- remove aliens that are not under attack, showing up on the map
- reduce GL power against players, buff it on structures AND disable flamethrower special abilities but make it very strong against lifeforms (this is will be very intuitive for rookies)
Depends on how vehement you are
They came to this point with luck, the rines had no real carry or the aliens had one carry lerk/fade.
And when the aliens have 3-4 onos the rines lose cause the same reason aliens lose in early most of the time.
People dont communicate anymore to trap lifeforms.
I saw countless onos beeing trapped but noone of the rines did even try to pinch them.
So while the game balance says "Its 1600 vs 1607 skillpoints, lets go, its balanced", these games are over way too often after one sided 3 min or marines lose a already won game cause they dont know how to deal with an onos.
Most of them wont learn these basics cause they quit before.
Thats why we have these "leave the base", "watch your lanes" .... over and over again since 4 years.
In fact, NS2 is the only game i played where the overall playerskill is going down over the years instead the opposite way.
Wrong, this starts around 2 weeks ago. HP bars are longer in the game.
Maybe the competent players are on holiday or whatever but the recent marine stomps are not the reason of the healthbars.
Its more that marines have always the uber players while the teamscore is on a low around 1000 level.
Im sure smurfs are one of the reason for that.
Back to the topic: Pub is very simple right now.
As a descent player you have two options:
1.) Join marine, get a high kdr and stomp aliens in the early game.
2.) Try a challenge and join aliens.
Imo that is not only a problem of the balance. Blrg explained it perfect. Most of the players do not know how to play alien. Skulks jumping against marines and expecting to take 2 or 3 Marines out. Lerks trying to engage shotgun-marines from ahead, too many gorges and not knowing how to paly lifeforms correctly. Marines is easier to understand for rookies. Just walk around and shoot. Simple as that. But what to do as an alien? Hmmmmm, difficult.
I expected some better alienplay after the release of the new tutorials. But unfortunatly it did not work much.
But rookieplayers is only one side of the problems. The other side is that 3 or 4 very good aimer in marines can kill up to 2 or 3 skulks simultaniously. A lot of "pubstars" are very good marines but weak aliens. So there is always a huge skill gap between the teams. Thanks to other fps most of the pubplayers can be good marines, but they are still horrible aliens.
A lot of games i lost as alien was over after the first 1 to 3 minutes. Because 3 or 4 comp-players or pubstars are pushing the skulks back to their own hive. aliens are trapped in the first minutes in their own hive. I would guess over 75% of the alien loses happened that way. That has 2 reasons imo.
1.) There is nothing easier to kill for a marine than a skulk
2.) Aliens often not packplay. They are hunting on their own and not working together.
and of course the last point that f*cked everything up: Healthbars........ Its so easy to kill lifeforms with they big red target over their heads.
But all in all: I think at the end the biggest problem is that most of the players don't know how to play alien correctly. Too many players play the aliens like cod: "run around the map, try to kill marines."
But the same goes for exos. I lost a round with 3 hives last days because the marines got an exo explosion soon after our 3. hive. It was a 12 vs 12 server. I would guess nearly 9 people were exo at that time. With an unorganized alien team you will lose every hive one by one.
2) It is not exclusively a rookie problem
3) If you consider yourself a good alien player, then do the stuff that others won't:
a) survive
b) res bite
c) parasite
d) wait for other (shit) players to initiate engagements
e) threaten marine base to pull marines back.
f) stop whining
Uwe should however consider implementing a server setting to limit life form distribution, so that you won't end up with 50% gorges at the start of the game OR have the players announce what life form they intend to play before the match start (see OW).
While you are right with your list its totally different now since 2 weeks.
Even Supafred noticed that and the wonitor stats on his server telling the same story.
Nothing changed with the last patches however and these early game alien problems, because of the lack of team work and not knowing what to do, have been like this forever and you know it.
Sometimes a team cant work together, even with good personal skill players. Shit can happen.
But losing one alienround after another, no matter what you do/say is just too much shit.
I am completely against the game limiting your lifeform options. That freedom is important for the game and it is the players responsability to make the good choices
This and a thousand times this. They have a version of this in TGNS server
Original threat discussion about this topic:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/139709/reimagining-the-scoreboard/p1
4 Rounds? All marine wins.
Why? No teamwork.
No Mid to late game lifforms.
1-2 marines just to strong, 1 marine took 3 skulks and won.
Then again, this is nothing new to NS2, this is something that has been happening for years,
i dont think its so much a balance issue, as much as it would be a "learn to Play" Use your fucking brain, THINK, communicate and organise.
I do this. Problem is, I'd love to learn how to fade. But since I'm usually the most efficient res biter on my team (pub), this means actively putting my team at a disadvantage. Thus I almost never get to play anything but skulk and Onos.
This is a real issue for me.
I was a solid fade back in the days but from some point i wasnt fading anymore cause i had lost too many games cause noone in my team was resbiting.
Also Warforce (our com that times) had a huge influence on that (shame on you
In the end i cant play fade anymore, rounds are rare where i dont flash as fade.
Maybe i should try to play it more again, cause it doesnt matter. Aliens lose anyway.
Still, if the problem is the lack of expirience / team work, then buffing aliens is not the solution, because IF the aliens are then playing at their fullest, the balance would be off again. We should work on tools that make team play easier without communication.
You should be able to set map information (like the middle mouse exclamtion mark) in an intuitive way, as a non commander.
You could try speech bubbles that pass through walls for basic commands, like "ambushing here", "marines ahead", "danger", etc.
It happens really often that I'm waiting to ambush and another skulk comes rushing in and runs into the marine I've been waiting for, even though I said that there is a marine in that room.
The list was more about early game, but I know your struggle. All you can do is trying to support skulks who res bite by getting them through lane blocks and ambushing/killing recappers.
Your idea about extra markers on the map sound good on paper but with that players would need to use the map often.
Are they doing this? No.
Played 2 short horrible rounds, both rine wins for sure.
The last one on veil was over after 2 min after a hive-shuffled vote.
I was distracting two marines in front of nano while 3 skulks hanging around in the upper vents doing nothing.
Well, i died for sure only to see that these 3 jumping down there hiding spot one by one AFTER the rines reloaded.
After that the typical "oh my god, we need nano" and the skulks running to nano one by one only to die there.
Rines had the whole map after 2 min.
Even a cool looking "marines ahead" would not stop this behaviour. Cause after the 3rd death every idiot should know "There multiple marines".