Next rebalancing inc?
dePARA
Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Based on an typical pub round wich goes like this:
- Noone is biting res
- Noone is going Fade or Lerk
there might be some rebalancing needed.
NS2 is balanced around Fade and Lerk presence.
Well, looks like the current NS2 player generation cant play these lifeforms anymore.
With luck the aliens have an competent fade or lerk, if not: gg aliens.
Most games end like this:
Aliens cant hold there RTs with only skulks (what a surprise) and then they waiting for the one sneaky tunnel near base.
Or the one carry fade gave aliens enough time so the 7 onos ball is up.
This in basically every round.
Times are over where people ambushing together and fades clean the routes so skulks can bite backres.
How about making skulks more tanky after 2nd hive and remove fades or lerks for pub.
Im serious with this post? A little.
I just wanted to point out that the game has 2 important lifeforms but 90% of the playerbase cant play them anymore.
- Noone is biting res
- Noone is going Fade or Lerk
there might be some rebalancing needed.
NS2 is balanced around Fade and Lerk presence.
Well, looks like the current NS2 player generation cant play these lifeforms anymore.
With luck the aliens have an competent fade or lerk, if not: gg aliens.
Most games end like this:
Aliens cant hold there RTs with only skulks (what a surprise) and then they waiting for the one sneaky tunnel near base.
Or the one carry fade gave aliens enough time so the 7 onos ball is up.
This in basically every round.
Times are over where people ambushing together and fades clean the routes so skulks can bite backres.
How about making skulks more tanky after 2nd hive and remove fades or lerks for pub.
Im serious with this post? A little.
I just wanted to point out that the game has 2 important lifeforms but 90% of the playerbase cant play them anymore.
Comments
Make a new gamemode that allows players to easily replace lifeforms.
Combatmod was such a gamemode, but we don't necessarily have to remake a true copy of that. Any gamemode that doesn't punish us by taking away our lifeforms when we die, will benefit towards new players learning lifeforms. And bonus points, if the gamemode is balanced around 1v1's and 2v2's, so the gamemode is easily seedable.
Edit: Combatmod lol thanks.
Compmod, or Combat?
But only the skulk received eHP adjustments to prevent imbalances (this is bad)
So understandably, players are seeing the giant meatshield (whose hitbox did not change) as being a worthy risk of aiming for as its just a safer guarantee of victory if you can make it that far.
Solution : increase fade and lerk eHP appropriately.
@Nordic and myself have recommended buffing the Lerk to 150 base hp (from 125), 45 armor, and biomass scaling of 2 (from 3).
This results in no more than 2 more bullets/pellets needed to kill a lerk at any point in the game.
eHP increased entirely through base HP because veterans often leave when armor is gone. Increasing eHP through armor would have encouraged veterans to stay in an engagment longer, making strong lerks stronger. We want to avoid that.
A lot of the reasoning for this hp change can be found in my comment in ghouls balance mod.
Yes, the most obvious way to fix it that is to add a hard limit to how many onos a team can have, and make that number scale with team size.
The only other possibility was proposed a while back in this thread: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/146580/mini-alien-lifeforms#latest
On which server? Looking at all servers that have wonitor enabled (and that I could find), I dont see what you are observing.
The only server that really has a problem is a Rookies only.
Servername / wonitor url
aliens wins / marine wins
|-| DiamondGamers.net (East1) |-| http://45.34.5.99/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=gSY0bt6BP4
128/84
|-| DiamondGamers.net (East1) |-| http://45.34.5.99/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=UJa1ePddM0
57/64
|-| DiamondGamers.net (Rookie) |-| http://45.34.5.99/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=a1sGCM540k
82/63
|-| DiamondGamers.net (West2) |-| http://45.34.5.99/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=tPa5hzgSeO
129/107
|-| DiamondGamers.net (West3) |-| http://45.34.5.99/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=T7jcaaUFOG
218/151
ENSL.org | SE Comp #1 | by Thirsty Onos http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&serverId_is=ab1eF01E59
236/223
The Thirsty Onos # 14 No Rookies http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&serverId_is=e2Qa4MDl73
9/7
The Thirsty Onos # 18 http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&serverId_is=qBeRAgrfOa
1977/1850
The Thirsty Onos # 22 http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&serverId_is=5gpQRi5Y9a
4637/4682
The Thirsty Onos # Rookies only http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&serverId_is=4180firrDn
1166/1745
[TA] House of Awesome! http://wonitor.hashtagawesome.net/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=RzeYTs0KH5
1348/1382
[TA] House of Awesome! 12v12! http://wonitor.hashtagawesome.net/configurator.html#x=winner&y=count&plotType=pie&serverId_is=reXzUevpDS
1240/1304
If 3/4 of the team become onos, they rolling over the rines.
Thats one way aliens win these days or by the last chance, the sneaky tunnel near base.
Typcial pub lifeform compose these days on an 22 slot server :
4 Gorges in the beginning (and they going gorge again if they die)
With luck 1 lerk and/or 1 fade.
=6 Onos in the end if they made it that far.
Hmm, I dont understand what you are trying to say, or it a least does not make sense.
So let me rephrase what I read it as.
Aliens play badly compared to how you would want them to.
Currently aliens wins approx 50% of the time.
If ppl played like you want them to, would that change the 50%?
If so, why would you rebalance the game?
If not then why not let ppl play as they prefer, and go onos?
I'm assuming the problem described is on low skill pub servers, as the game is balanced at high level play.
Quick alienwins mostly evens out the winrate, or the cluelessness of marines how important it is to cut the ressflow of the aliens (efficiently)...
So, its like its getting definetly getting worse from when I started ns2... even at lowhiveskillteams it wasnt like everyone was saving for gorges or onos
There are 3 types of balance:
Balancing the win ratios for the teams (which is roughly 50:50 atm)
Balancing the weapons/abilities/lifeforms with each other (well appearently lerk and fade are never getting used in pub, same as flamethrower for comp)
Balancing tech trees with each other (can't comment on that one)
But tbh I think that gamemodes like combat rly were awesome at providing an environment to learn lifeforms and other weapons.
like i pointed out in other threads this has a few reasons:
- Rookies think most expensive lifeform = best lifeform. Every player wants the best "weapons" in the game if possible. So why only playin fade when you can have a 1200 health onos with 90 attack? thats what rookies are thinking.
-onos is easier to master than lerk or fade. even a rookie as onos can run at a marine and kill him without getting near to death. a comp player can take out rookie lerks and fades by his own. sometimes even without meds.
The question is: are people willing to learn other lifeforms? or is my first point more weight than the second? why learning fade when the onos is so much stronger?
Or do they want learn other lifeforms but get frustraded when they die over and over again as a ground lerk.
Back in my days: When i got rekt i even tried harder to master a game and learned the dam lifeforms with videos, training and watching comp players.
but today in times of COD, Fifa and battlefield it seems so many childish rookies got the feelings if they are not dominating with only 20 hours in the game this game is either unbalanced or bad designed.
games were real skill is counting like in ns2 are rare these days and it seems rookies cant handle it
For a new player, all lifeforms except for the Onos feel equally squishy. The bigger the teams are, the more difficult it is to find an engagement that you can/should take with your lifeform. Even in a competitive setting with only 5 marines on the field and skilled alien lifeforms, the most difficult part for the alien team is to learn is how to engage together - this level of coordination is just not going to happen with new players.
If all you see are packs of 3+ marines everywhere on the map - and you don't know how to play your lifeform well - you might as well stay skulk. Chances of surviving any direct engagement and getting a kill without dying afterwards are slim; and for ambushes, skulks are equally viable.
I am fully aware the he probably does not speaks about balancing factions. However my questions still stand.
And I still think the questions are very relevant for understanding what he is saying/suggesting.
Let me write where I come from.
What he describes is the optimal strategy for winning in the long run (1000+ games).
Then he proceed to maybe call it bad, which is confusing me, unfun perhaps but not bad.
I find that Ns2 is usually won within the first 3-4 minutes, or even the first confrontations for rt spots.
The rest is just more or less establishment of those surplus of resources/map control.
So in the long run it is much much better to practice units/weapons available at start up.
Yes you may change something going lerk, but if I can practice skulk to some point and then win by everyone goes onos, then that is better for winning next game.
This may be boring but a winning strategy.
Any balance changes will not help here:
Either you just make fx Fade the new onos; so I go skulk untill everyone can go fade and win, in which case the first confrontation gets more important, as there is less time to catch up.
Or you could nerf onos to no longer matter, in which case it makes more sense to practice skulk for next game.
So to understand where he is going I would like to know if he thinks that if ppl played started going fade/lerk would that change the faction balance (in the long run).
I fully agree with his conclusion, but I wonder if it is for the same reasons:
I have seen other games that solve this in another way; by making it random if you got skulk/lerk/fades at startup.
Pregame is good for warmup, training walljump, etc.
But even there, people going onos running to the rine base and camping the entrance only to get slaughtered after roundstart as skulk.
Or something like this in pregame:
Kill 3 marines as fade or lerk to become an onos
Same with exo:
Kill 2 Fades with an shotgun to become an exo
Ideally I'd also like to see jetpacks removed in pregame. It's not good practise. I actually think Exo's are fine in pregame though, they do require _some_ skill.
But start with removing the damn Onos if nothing else. Nobody needs to practise Onos!
This also ties in nicely to what I was saying earlier about a gamemode like combat. People just need nice safe non-punishing environments to practise lifeforms in.
It's not that people don't find them fun to play - they don't find them effective or efficient to play.
It forces something, that is during pregame. You think it will automatically motivate people to train more at the lifeforms but it might have opposite reactions like people going afk in pregame and therefore early game because they dont want to play pregame, or people being unhappy because going onos/exo during pregame is "fun" and they cant anymore.
Like they cant if there is the onos limit reached if the game introduce your idea.
So you fighting against the pregame idea but your idea is awesome?
Makes no sense.
Right now NS2 has reached a dangerous level of incompetence.
Rounds become repetive and boring.
"Oh, aliens are boxed in there hive again. Lets seach the sneaky gorge near base wich try to place the sneaky tunnel"
And there coming, always.
There people with over 500hrs of gametime and there only skill is to place tunnels near base. congrats.
Maybe cause the rookie servers or the current player generation dont want to invest time to learn a lifeform.
I dont know.
Fact is:
Its horrible to play aliens now.
One of the best game experiences i ever had turned into the exact opposite.