Beta2
Swiftspear
Custim tital Join Date: 2003-10-29 Member: 22097Members
Custim tital Join Date: 2003-10-29 Member: 22097Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Possible Balance Issue</div> After Playing Beta1 for several hours I had come to the conclution that NS:Combat was fairly well balanced (if anything with a slight alien bias), although this was entirely based on experiance and theory, I find myself somewhat baffled at some of the changes made in Beta2. Here is a quick recap of a few of the changes made in beta2 off the top of my head.
-HA now cost 2 experiance points
-hives now heal at 8% health (ie a regen onos by a hive is healing REALLY fast)
-Onos and fade recieved slight beef ups
-gorges reintorduced to combat (ie, lone JP's no longer are much if any threat to the hive)
Now maby I'm nuts or something, but to me combat now looks desicively biased for aliens (although I definatly appreciate those changes for CNS). Please give me your thoughts. I haven't acctually had the chance to play more than 3 games of Combat since beta2, but those 3 games the aliens one every one, so I could be totally wrong. From your opinion is beta 2 balanced for combat?
-HA now cost 2 experiance points
-hives now heal at 8% health (ie a regen onos by a hive is healing REALLY fast)
-Onos and fade recieved slight beef ups
-gorges reintorduced to combat (ie, lone JP's no longer are much if any threat to the hive)
Now maby I'm nuts or something, but to me combat now looks desicively biased for aliens (although I definatly appreciate those changes for CNS). Please give me your thoughts. I haven't acctually had the chance to play more than 3 games of Combat since beta2, but those 3 games the aliens one every one, so I could be totally wrong. From your opinion is beta 2 balanced for combat?
Comments
HA costing 2 points, not really much of a nerf, just makes them a bit harder to come out.
Hives healing at 8% vs the former fixed rate: Only Onos actually gains from this change. All other forms take longer to heal from hives since their HP counts are insufficient to be greater than the former fixed rate (Which I believe was 20 per tick)
Onos/Fades receiving beefups in health and armour: This was BADLY needed! It was an absolute joke to see an Onos running away from a single marine with a HMG or a Fade fearing 2 shotties. An Onos should be a tank, and it is now. With regards to Combat, well, now you have something to fear =)
Gorges reintroduced to Combat -> hive healing. Not much of a problem. You lost 1 or more players permantly to be on base duty, they gain levels at a horrendous rate, the bug regarding ther healing to hives and the reduced hive regen rate as a result of this means that the gorges don't make that much of an impact. Besides, all that gren spamming blasts the webbing out anyhow.
I've played several rounds of COmbat where the marines just moved off in a fat squad, gunned down every skulk pack that attempted to get close, moved into the hive and before you know it, they were being resupplied and whipped out their shotties and it was bye bye hive and the poor skulks barely got to level 2.
Conversely, the two games before this string of victories were won by a fanatical group of skulks who took it upon themselves to become guided bombs, wiping out the spawn with sucessive xenos.
It's just a matter of who gains the exp to reach the good tech
<b>Neither beta is balanced.</b>
In beta 1 Marines only had to keep a few JPers rushing the hive and could take it down without needing the rest of the team to attack. The hive's extremely slow auto-heal was no match for suicide JPers.
In beta 2 you've got the Gorge which can't heal the hive on certain maps due to a nice bug. But, on the maps they can heal the hive it becomes very noticable, and games tend to drag out forever in long stalemates. Not to mention I find it as boring as boring can be to play a Gorge all game, healing stuff, without having any other real use.
Simultaneously, the hive healing thing is unbalanced both ways. On the one hand, marines can now win early game insanely easily, because of hideous skulk heal times, unless an alien goes gorge. On the other hand, we once had two onos shielding the hive with some umbra, and they just WOULD NOT DIE. Marines couldn't hit the hive (no gls, silly 'rines), onos wouldn't die, and we just slowly chomped them once or twice every time we spawned.
It's definitely not balanced. However, I think a lot of the moves are going to be for the better.
Every Co_ round on my server is always a stalemate, meaning, a perfectly balanced game. All it needs is a skilled player to come on and the team he joins will win probably :-p