Planned Balance-change: Instant-Upgrades when you Spawn
Handschuh
Join Date: 2005-03-08 Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
Join Date: 2005-03-08 Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
A discussion about the Following Trellocard:
The reason I bring this up as Topic because I think it needs further balancing.
Some of you might be aware, that on ThirstyOnos there is this as a Mod, that you instantly spawn with full Upgrades as skulk and I think this is overpowered in certain situations.
Personally I think it is great, I'm superstrong and if I spawn beside a Marine I can instantly kill him. Spawning with celerity allows me to instantly dodge... and with leap AND celerity this is awesome... easy kills. BUT this is unfair, because the guys who are getting even more stomped are the non-high-skilled people or rookies and that is in my opinion an issue. (And we want player-retention eh?)
Having played with that for a long while now I think it should be nerfed since if the comm spawns "eggs" it is quite OP that they have instantly all upgrades.
My Idea:
Delayed Upgrade / evolving... It takes for example 6 Seconds till your upgrades can be used.
When you Spawn you see for example "3 times Celerity", but they aren't in effect (red/transparent), after every 2 seconds "1 spur" get's released... and after 6 seconds you have your full celerity and maybe other upgrades
- I think this would make playing more convenient - because no need to upgrade
- you have the chance to to stay in the fight the marines off without needing to gestate (if you hide behind a box)
- You can get Focus without gestating !! (No need to gestate would make it intuitive... just give focus later)
- the visualization (color red for upgrades) would make it intuitive to understand what is happening!
denied Ideas for me
- Increasing gestate-time... bad for spawncamping / unintuitive behaviour
- need to gestate again -> annoying and most ppl don't know about the gestate with same upgrades - button (that is completely weird for other players)
https://trello.com/c/iwJm0qjz/996-323-auto-select-alien-upgrades-at-respawn
Description
To avoid that new players run into the field without any upgrades we now reapply the last selected skulk upgrades at re-spawn. If a player hasn't selected a upgrade for a available chamber yet a random upgrade (excluding focus) gets selected.
Test Instructions
Confirm that aliens spawn with their last selected skulk upgrades
Confirm that Focus doesn't get picked randomly
Confirm that after upgrades got selected randomly it is reapplied the next time you spawn (unless you picked another upgrade in-between)
Give feedback
The reason I bring this up as Topic because I think it needs further balancing.
Some of you might be aware, that on ThirstyOnos there is this as a Mod, that you instantly spawn with full Upgrades as skulk and I think this is overpowered in certain situations.
Personally I think it is great, I'm superstrong and if I spawn beside a Marine I can instantly kill him. Spawning with celerity allows me to instantly dodge... and with leap AND celerity this is awesome... easy kills. BUT this is unfair, because the guys who are getting even more stomped are the non-high-skilled people or rookies and that is in my opinion an issue. (And we want player-retention eh?)
Having played with that for a long while now I think it should be nerfed since if the comm spawns "eggs" it is quite OP that they have instantly all upgrades.
My Idea:
Delayed Upgrade / evolving... It takes for example 6 Seconds till your upgrades can be used.
When you Spawn you see for example "3 times Celerity", but they aren't in effect (red/transparent), after every 2 seconds "1 spur" get's released... and after 6 seconds you have your full celerity and maybe other upgrades
- I think this would make playing more convenient - because no need to upgrade
- you have the chance to to stay in the fight the marines off without needing to gestate (if you hide behind a box)
- You can get Focus without gestating !! (No need to gestate would make it intuitive... just give focus later)
- the visualization (color red for upgrades) would make it intuitive to understand what is happening!
denied Ideas for me
- Increasing gestate-time... bad for spawncamping / unintuitive behaviour
- need to gestate again -> annoying and most ppl don't know about the gestate with same upgrades - button (that is completely weird for other players)
Comments
It is a very bad feature, but you have to do something if you don't want to put people into the stress of pressing b I guess.
We don't want either team to be too strong in their own tech points. Turtling is often a bad thing. We also don't want them too easy to rush. There is a balance to it, and auto upgrades tip that balance from where it is now. I am not convinced it makes a difference enough to need a nerf though.
Seems like this could be an interesting conversation.
Does this make the time until engagement shorter despite being short enough as it is? Yes. Though in the end it's still a quality of life change that I believe improves a rougher aspect of alien spawning.
That will just promote defensive plays, turtling with arcs, dragging out more games
You want to change the meta?
This IS quite a difference...
Too be frank it hardly changed in years, not that I believe it would drastically change how the game is played at least in the public space.
I think the refined thing would be to have delayed upgrades, just for a few seconds.
Rushing into the hive and sniping an upgrade is a lot harder like that.
The argument that it disadvantages lower skill players is just wrong, spectate some lower skill games and see how many people don't take upgrades at all... I think this being added will solve that pesky problem and help lower skilled players far more than it hinders them.
Is it a little bit of a comeback mechanic to egg lock? sure, kind of... but it is incredibly minor.
yes, if they let the marines walk in freely without any structures built. aliens are hardly disadvantaged in a hive room with hive and crag (potentially boosted) heals, a shift and even whips if they are too worried about not being able to fend off a hive push.
edit: if the worry is with some new players not using their upgrades, why don't you look into better methods of indicating to them that they should?
Spawning still has a slight delay before you can actually move due to server > client ping etc, so you're a sitting duck for like, half a second, and the eggs don't get anything from your upgrade, so you can still kill them pretty damn quickly.
Spawning with your upgrades has been tested a lot, for a long time on multiple servers and has shown little to no alteration to balance at all. Its a quality of life thing more than a balance thing.
I also don't think the 6 second upgrade timer is a big deal, if it were to be implemented.
But it CAN make a difference. I can easily imagine a scenario where a hiverush is stopped because skulks spawn with carapace (i dont know why leap popped up in the conversation).
So it all depends on the circumstances... I'd be more comfortable with the idea of @Handschuh . It's still a QoL improvement, and will not change egg-lock dynamics in any way (sux for the aliens, but it has to happen sometimes).
You think alien hive rooms should be impenetrable? :P
Some Quotes for example on IRC Discord (I'm old)
Some examples on the official ns2 discord
The timings are completely different - skulks are quicker ready in the fight. (Basically the spawntime is shortened)
With spawned eggs when everyone rushes through a tunnel to save the other tunnel it is quite a difference if there are suddenly 4 skulks with carapace or without carapace. (That is why 6 Seconds are probably not enough)
That is why a solution would be needed that they wouldn't have full upgrades instantly on the other side.
I like the change that you don't need to reupgrade after every death, but the balance-implications have to be considered and adressed.
If Top-Skilled player spawns beside 3 rookies spawncamping - this player will easily take them out thanks to the change
(I've down that several times, even though we should've lost at that point) -> this just leads to more dragged out games -> hurts playerretention..
Clear and obvious implementation ↑ The variable can be adjusted for balance as long as it fits in the above equation.
theres a "evolve last upgrade" keybind so u dont have to do this
you'd have to weight upgrades as well, because this assumes every upgrade is equally as good when it comes to immediately killing marines in the hive room as you spawn. things like adrenaline (without leap), regeneration, invis (whatever it's called), and crush aren't particularly helpful in this scenario. so what would happen is a skulk would automatically get 2-3 seconds added onto his respawn time using these insignificant upgrades when he'd rather just spawn two seconds quicker without them before his egg dies.
cara, cele, silence and the damage increasing upgrade are all too good to automatically spawn with, while all the others are more inconsequential.
Why adjust spawn rates at all? Just have the upgrades kick in XYZ number of seconds after spawning, in accordance to whatever value deemed appropriate. As long as it is slower than doing it manually, you are basically helping forgetful/lazy players while having no other effect otherwise.
not exactly. so with that change, you get to spawn and immediately respond to any threats on the map at full effectiveness, instead of having to balance "should I evolve so i'm stronger, or get there as soon as possible?". defending tunnels will be easier for one.
So push the variable forward to ~10-15 seconds after spawn.
I run into this choice almost every single game, I'm not sure it should be taken away. Choosing to take an upgrade before going through a tunnel, risking that tunnel dying, is a big decision.
Just put annoying tooltips on Rookie screens whenever they don't have an upgrade (toggleable in options).
In a typical pub alienteam these days:
30% didnt noticed that they have auto upgrades and they run on the floor straight into multiple rines and die
30% realized they have auto upgraded but doing the same like above without changing the upgrades to there needs
30% realized they have auto upgrades, they doing ok but they didnt play any better with them.
10 or less % having an real little advantage of this
In my eyes its not changing any balance in pub.
Its more a QoL change, cause pressing b and evolve the same upgrades again and again is getting really boring over time.
Btw. you want to introduce more QoL stuff?
Then introduce autoshuffle if the skill gap is to high after round start.
Repeating "press m and shuffle" like an mantra every round for 5 years is getting boring too.
maybe the devs should do something to let more people know about the "Evolve Last Upgrade" that's been around for a long time
Vanilla NS2 does not support shuffle, and the "press m and shuffle" feature is provided by a community member with their Shine mod: https://github.com/Person8880/Shine/wiki
If you'd like more/different features, the creator is very open to feedback and is still working on the project quite actively.
It is tedious to keep having to evolve them and unlike handschuh i don't see the issue he describes. Usually it plays out in 2 ways, either a marine is in your hive shooting skulks as they spawn and you either have to attack straight away to defend yourself or hide and evolve upgrades. Typically those rushing the hive in such a manor are looking for upgrades or egg locking. In this situation the noob being spawn killed will be more upset than the noob being killed for being in the hive as a marine. The other time this occurs is during a base rush or assault this is when the instant upgrades make the difference in effective response time. Either in getting to the affected hive quicker or spawning in to defend the hive more effectively. This is both a good and bad thing. It makes defending easier and it improves the noob experience, it also makes attacking a hive a little harder and also attempting to kill upgrades and egg lock harder.
Overall i think the positives outweigh the negatives. it also just improves the overall experience of ns2, it feels better than having to manually keep evolving the skulk upgrades each time.
And if silence is removed, will still Shift hive be the first or second choice ? not sure.
on NS1.0 Defense tower use to be the first upgrade (well sensory chamber didn't cloak and movement didn't teleport at that time)
Doing this poses a risk to aliens when their hive is being pushed by marines. If marines get into the hive they can egg lock (which they do most of the time anyway) and aliens will have to choose if selecting upgrades and waiting to gestate is worth doing or not.