Magical Flying Fades
EMH_Robert_Picardo
Join Date: 2003-01-03 Member: 11738Members
Join Date: 2003-01-03 Member: 11738Members
<div class="IPBDescription">game balancing</div> As a fade, if you simply crouch and hold down the fire key while "blink" is selected, you can fly around the entire map indefinitely. I believe this is possible even without adrenaline. In any case, this exposes a lot of problems with the blink concept:
1) The Fade becomes a flying creature, able to fly faster and further than a lerk.
2) If a Fade is heavily damaged, he can literally blink from one side of the map, heal at the hive, and blink back to where he was attacking in a few seconds.
2b) Assumption: Aliens have started the game and have one hive, and a gorge puts down either a movement or a defense chamber. Choice1: if fade has redemption, he can use the "flying" ability to go anywhere where there are marines, take one or two out, redeem, and repeat until the marines are bottled up in their base. Since the fade has a lot of health, the redemption threshold is quite high--almost as bad as redeeming onos. However, the onos takes forever to move across the map. A Fade can fly anywhere. Choice2: Fade chooses adrenaline. Even after using up adrenaline while flying, the adrenaline will recover enough so that the fade can kill just about any res node (electrified or not) that doesn't have a shotgunner sitting on top of it. If the fade is ambushed, simply "fly" to the next node or back tot he hive.
So basically, one person can wh*** all the res, become fade within a half-minute, and take out just about everything. In 1.0, it was quite difficult to "fly" across the map, because it was impossible to blink down certain corridors. A room with a high ceiling was fair game.
3) If the person using the fade has decent aim (which I assume people do), you can "fly" into any vent and use it as if you were a lerk, a skulk, or a jetpacker. In 1.0 it was impossible to blink into a small vent.
I believe the concept of the fade is broken, since this "infinite blink-flying" is available within under a minute of the game start. The blink 1.0 ability was bugged, but it made sense, since it wasn't quite flying, and it was better than leap. The 2.0 blink ability is like an infinite leap (or , impulse 119 from those familiar with NS 1.0 hax)
When the alien outcome is inevitable, and two onii are preparing to assault the last Marine base, I just fly around marine base as a fade. Most humans can't hit anything flying that quickly (since I usually have under 80 ping), and turrets are a pathetic defense (only 5 damage is easily countered by regen). It's like a lerk with infinite flying, perfect control, and 3 times lerk health and armor. Granted I'm moving so quickly and so little energy I couldn't possibly hit anything with a weapon, but the concept is still broken.
Possible solutions:
1)you can't blink more than once when holding the fire button
2)restore the old blinking
3)A bit like (1): make blink a better leap (do damage when sailing trough the air) and prevent using slash during the "leap".
I'd like your comments.
1) The Fade becomes a flying creature, able to fly faster and further than a lerk.
2) If a Fade is heavily damaged, he can literally blink from one side of the map, heal at the hive, and blink back to where he was attacking in a few seconds.
2b) Assumption: Aliens have started the game and have one hive, and a gorge puts down either a movement or a defense chamber. Choice1: if fade has redemption, he can use the "flying" ability to go anywhere where there are marines, take one or two out, redeem, and repeat until the marines are bottled up in their base. Since the fade has a lot of health, the redemption threshold is quite high--almost as bad as redeeming onos. However, the onos takes forever to move across the map. A Fade can fly anywhere. Choice2: Fade chooses adrenaline. Even after using up adrenaline while flying, the adrenaline will recover enough so that the fade can kill just about any res node (electrified or not) that doesn't have a shotgunner sitting on top of it. If the fade is ambushed, simply "fly" to the next node or back tot he hive.
So basically, one person can wh*** all the res, become fade within a half-minute, and take out just about everything. In 1.0, it was quite difficult to "fly" across the map, because it was impossible to blink down certain corridors. A room with a high ceiling was fair game.
3) If the person using the fade has decent aim (which I assume people do), you can "fly" into any vent and use it as if you were a lerk, a skulk, or a jetpacker. In 1.0 it was impossible to blink into a small vent.
I believe the concept of the fade is broken, since this "infinite blink-flying" is available within under a minute of the game start. The blink 1.0 ability was bugged, but it made sense, since it wasn't quite flying, and it was better than leap. The 2.0 blink ability is like an infinite leap (or , impulse 119 from those familiar with NS 1.0 hax)
When the alien outcome is inevitable, and two onii are preparing to assault the last Marine base, I just fly around marine base as a fade. Most humans can't hit anything flying that quickly (since I usually have under 80 ping), and turrets are a pathetic defense (only 5 damage is easily countered by regen). It's like a lerk with infinite flying, perfect control, and 3 times lerk health and armor. Granted I'm moving so quickly and so little energy I couldn't possibly hit anything with a weapon, but the concept is still broken.
Possible solutions:
1)you can't blink more than once when holding the fire button
2)restore the old blinking
3)A bit like (1): make blink a better leap (do damage when sailing trough the air) and prevent using slash during the "leap".
I'd like your comments.
Comments
So you can fly around, is that unfair?
I guess I don't understand what the problem is. The game is balanced to account for this. Good marines know how to counter it. What's the problem with flying?
Blink right now is great.
It's what makes the fade a fade. Without blink it's just a big slow skulk.
Holy crap, they must be getting a lot of res-for-kill if they can get 25 resources within 30 seconds...
I believe I seen in the changelog for 2.1 that blink now does 25% less force than it did before (don't know if it's still there, or if that was combat only). However, I really don't think that blink is too powerful, it's just the fact that aliens can get the resources to go fade far too quickly. In 2.1, last I knew, fades cost 60 resource, which will help slow down the early fade a bit.
Also, while the fade can technically blink forever, he has next to no energy after blinking for more than a second sustained. I think that balances it out.
And by the way, sentries do 10 damage to fades. It's only 5 to an onos.
Woah
Wierd feeling of deja-vu. I think I've had a coversation like this before, like, in 1.04 about blinking into vents...
So you can fly around, is that unfair?
I guess I don't understand what the problem is. The game is balanced to account for this. Good marines know how to counter it. What's the problem with flying?
Blink right now is great.
It's what makes the fade a fade. Without blink it's just a big slow skulk. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not only is it unfair, but the *only* flying creature is supposed to be the lerk. Fades teleport. Lerks fly. If you can teleport indefinitely, that's like flying, only better, isn't it? I'm not saying "get rid of blink" I'm saying make more like teleportation and less like flight. This is a big conceptual problem.
...
So you can fly around, is that unfair?
I guess I don't understand what the problem is. The game is balanced to account for this. Good marines know how to counter it. What's the problem with flying?
Blink right now is great.
It's what makes the fade a fade. Without blink it's just a big slow skulk. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not only is it unfair, but the *only* flying creature is supposed to be the lerk. Fades teleport. Lerks fly. If you can teleport indefinitely, that's like flying, only better, isn't it? I'm not saying "get rid of blink" I'm saying make more like teleportation and less like flight. This is a big conceptual problem. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fades cant fly infinitely.
... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I accuse you of trolling. *throws glove on the ground*
So you can fly around, is that unfair?
I guess I don't understand what the problem is. The game is balanced to account for this. Good marines know how to counter it. What's the problem with flying?
Blink right now is great.
It's what makes the fade a fade. Without blink it's just a big slow skulk. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not only is it unfair, but the *only* flying creature is supposed to be the lerk. Fades teleport. Lerks fly. If you can teleport indefinitely, that's like flying, only better, isn't it? I'm not saying "get rid of blink" I'm saying make more like teleportation and less like flight. This is a big conceptual problem. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fades cant fly infinitely. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's very simple. You crouch. Select Blink. Aim. Hold down fire button. Keeping Aiming.
50 res ubergodfade dead. kthxbai.
i dont see the problem, does anyone wanna explain it to me again?
50 res ubergodfade dead. kthxbai.
i dont see the problem, does anyone wanna explain it to me again? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Never had that happening while blink-flying. Just change direction after landing into something and you keep flying. If you hit the ground, aim up and you keep flying. You can bounce off the walls indefinitely. The only requirement is that you keep pressing the attack button. Try it. It's fun.
k, you dont do any damage, whats the big deal there?
if so, youre a better fade than a great many people and deserve to be fighting marines with enough aim to have blasted you in that split second.
k, you dont do any damage, whats the big deal there?
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Did you even read my first post? This has nothing to do with dealing damage in flight. The simple fact that if you (a) crouch and (b) hold the fire button you can fly around the entire map without any penalty many times faster than a lerk. Given, you should be allowed to blink across rooms and hallways, that's the whole point of blinking! But not *indefinitely*.
I'm not saying "nerf the fade, make it not blink, I'm getting pwned". The problem I'm describing is more like an exploit/bug that turns into a balance issue when abused. If you blink more than once you should be penalized by not being able to blink again *as well as* not being able to swipe. Make the blink be a *semiautomatic* weapon instead of an *automatic* weapon. Do you understand now? Everything else about the fade is *fine*.
I've never heard of this infinite flying fade thing. Describe its semantics more, does the fade actually blink the whole time or is his adrenaline so low that it only happens in sputters.
If it only happens in sputters, then it is not infinite flying.
I've never heard of this infinite flying fade thing. Describe its semantics more, does the fade actually blink the whole time or is his adrenaline so low that it only happens in sputters.
If it only happens in sputters, then it is not infinite flying. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
"Blinking in circles" is just about what I'd describe I've been doing ever time I'm fade during the endgame, mostly to demonstrate the exploit.
The camera does "jiggle" during the blink-flight, but I can't tell if that's sputtering or from crouching while blinking (if you crouch-blink the camera jitters sometimes)
In any case, even if it's "sputtering" the result is still full-speed blinking... I can still fly in any direction and the energy bar jitters near zero... no crash-landing ever happens. Of course, I haven't fully tested this without adrenaline. IMO, this needs to be tested out a LOT more to determine exactly why this happens.
And thank you for actually trying to analyze this problem instead of accusing me of nerfing.
and either way, whoopdie-do. 1) Fade cost 60 res in 2.1 and 2) there is absolutley no problem with a fade blinking (flying) forever. He's literally always at zero or almost zero energy, and therefore cannot do damage without coming to a standstill (or stopping blink), and when he does, he's cannon fodder. Roberto, if you have problems with fades "flying" just for the sake of having a valid argument, it's ridiculous. A fade that always just blinks has no point in the game except as a distraction. He's a worthless waste of 50 resources as he doesn't have enough energy to do any damage or to protect himself. The current way blink works is the way it's *supposed* to work, and just because he can get around the whole map quickly and end up with no energy doesn't mean it's unbalanced or a bug, and it's certainly not an exploit. I'm going to stop here to prevent myself from flaming your utter stupidity.
It's not particularily useful to attack marines with as your adrenaline is so low, but is effective when you consider that it allows the fade to travel from one end othe map to the other many times the speed of a skulk/lerk and then (with adren) be able to take down an rt in about 30 seconds far too quick for marines to react. rinse and repeat.
In my opinion it's not an issue of the fade being to tough (it's not at all) just being too quick/manouverable for its size compared to the supposedly nimbler aliens.
The only way i can think to fix it is to require a fade to release the blink when the energy reaches 0 rather than being able to 'run on empty' as it does. This would slow the blink down to a sensible speed without nerfing it in combat imo.
The only way i can think to fix it is to require a fade to release the blink when the energy reaches 0 rather than being able to 'run on empty' as it does. This would slow the blink down to a sensible speed without nerfing it in combat imo. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes exactly.
The flying through base thing isn't supposed to be a tactical maneuver, just entertainment during the endgame.
Interesting how Blink was intented to be noclip. I somehow missed that.
The only way i can think to fix it is to require a fade to release the blink when the energy reaches 0 rather than being able to 'run on empty' as it does. This would slow the blink down to a sensible speed without nerfing it in combat imo. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes exactly. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You have no idea how much that'd cripple the fade, do you? Fades already have atrocious weaponry, atrocious footspeed, and are incredibly paper-thin when fighting level 2 marines.
BTW: As a fade, I blink around inside the marine spawn (Esp on Eclipse) and all the marines waste their ammo while I'm up there regenerating... then they're reloading and I drop down and take one out, then keep blinking.
yes i do, i agree that fades apart from the blink are far too weak, (32 lvl0 lmg or something stupid)
but that's no reason to compensate by having another ability completely overpowered. what i'm proposing would slow the fade down to 1.0x esque speeds while not affecting the fade in regular combat at all.
So you can fly around, is that unfair?
I guess I don't understand what the problem is. The game is balanced to account for this. Good marines know how to counter it. What's the problem with flying?
Blink right now is great.
It's what makes the fade a fade. Without blink it's just a big slow skulk. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's not game balance itself that is the problem, it's just that fade is becoming far too similar to the lerk. Each species should be very different in their play style.
Well, anyhows, when i take that lerk modifying into thought, and the fact that the hitboxes are fixed also. I dont see any problem with this blinking stuff.
Can't the just add an automatic /stuck kind of thing at the end of each blink cause i like the old blink style wise more. Especially blinking through stuff. that was cool.
Its good to know that 99% percent of ns players never learned to aim it properly. If they were to reimplement that i would add a good nice description in cl_autohelp on how to use it right (aim where you wan the fades head to be).
Well, anyhows, when i take that lerk modifying into thought, and the fact that the hitboxes are fixed also. I dont see any problem with this blinking stuff. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I haven't played 2.1 so I wouldn't know <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'll just cross my fingers and take your word for it.
Hold longer for farther blink. Tap it to close the gap between you and a rine.
So you propose an instant teleportation of a fade in any chosen direction? Cool, I see how this stance improves your idea that blink should be slowed. Fades can be shot at while blinking, I've killed numerous fades when they were blinking out of a room with little health. You can't do that with a 1.0x blink bud.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The flying through base thing isn't supposed to be a tactical maneuver, just entertainment during the endgame.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Who says? You? Forgive me if I don't take your word for it. Just because you don't think it should be a tactical maneuver doesn't mean that it shouldn't be one. It's already been stated in this thread that it can be used tactically, why would you possibly think it shouldn't be used this way?