Let's talk about the Onos
Wheeee
Join Date: 2003-02-18 Member: 13713Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2003-02-18 Member: 13713Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">how do we make it better?</div>Ok, so here we go. Everyone agrees that the Onos is horribly unbalanced and in general, bad for the game. However, there hasn't really been a discussion on identifying exactly what is wrong with it. Let's talk over what Onos need to be in order to make it a fun, balanced unit in the game. And I'm not talking about fun for the people who just want to jump in the game and tear everything up and there's nothing the other team can do about it, i'm talking about actual strategic gameplay here.
First, let's identify what's right with the onos right now:
<ul>* Movement system feels very visceral. You actually feel like you're a massive hulking beast due to the momentum gain.
* Movement system also deals with minor obstacles the best of any lifeform or marine right now. You don't get stuck on little ledges and lose all your speed.
* Needed as a counter to marine upgrades and tech.
* Low skill floor. You can hop in an onos as a noob and immediately be effective against marines, up to small groups.
* Art-wise, very polished and feels onos-y, terrifying to see in-game.
* Can climb ladders. I mean, seriously. An onos climbing a ladder into my base? Awesome.</li></ul>
Now, let's identify some problems:
<ul>* Low skill ceiling. There's not much to do as an Onos except ###### everything up for the marines all day. Pretty much the only thing that the onos can do wrong is to run into marine base and stand still for 30 seconds.
* Knockback/stun on gore. While it is entertaining as hell to watch marines ragdoll all over the place, it's frustrating as a marine because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except pray that the onos is bad and leaves you alone or misses like 3 gores in a row on your prone body.
* Its stated role, to be the [disabler] or [disruptor], is completely overshadowed by the fact that is easier and more beneficial to your team to simply kill it. It takes all of 5 seconds to destroy an IP with smash, or like 15s to destroy a CC. Stomp? What's that? Is that what marines do when they lose the game after having complete map control?
* I think the Onos was originally envisioned as a huge tank that spearheaded an alien attack, soaking up all the bullets/damage and disabling marine defenses while the rest of the team mopped up. Instead, Onos are just the end all and be all of alien upgrades. I'm hoping this is not the case with the exosuit.
* Supposedly no hard counters in the game, but Onos are a hard counter to everything (including jetpacks in 90% of map spaces)
* Can climb ladders. Terrifying.</li></ul>
So, what can we do to build on the good and mitigate the bad?
Well, first off, let's remove or repurpose smash. The Onos shouldn't be a siege unit. It's too hard to kill and too survivable to be doing that kind of damage to structures. Let's keep that role with lerks. I believe it would be better to use smash as a way to disable/power down structures in an area temporarily (taking this away from stomp). This gives smash a clearly defined role that can still be useful, e.g. cloaked onos walking into a base and then smashing a PG, preventing reinforcements from arriving, while not making onos automatic checkmate. Stomp would retain its ability to ragdoll players, ceding air control to jetpackers who are at least a few feet off the ground. This way, onos are not hard counters to jetpacks, yet with skill and timing can still oppose a JP. Taking the disable away from stomp also gives it a clearer purpose, since the graphic effect of it will be immediately understood vs players, but you could play for a long time and not realize that it disables buildings. Also, let's factor the onos' momentum into his gore attack. It makes sense that a stampeding onos running up to a marine player and putting his horn through him will send the marine flying very far. It also makes sense that the marine wouldn't fly as far, or at all, if the onos was standing there. So, let's say that as a marine, we get ragdoll'd if the onos is charging at us (here is where the momentum storing mechanic from walljump would feel intuitive) and gores us. However, perhaps if he is standing there, we only get the blurred screen effect and a minor knockback, while retaining movement and shooting controls. This way, an onos would have to consider his approach, if goring a marine would throw him back out of reach behind his buddies, or perhaps you are low on health so you really need to disable him, just build up some momentum and knock him away.
Thoughts?
First, let's identify what's right with the onos right now:
<ul>* Movement system feels very visceral. You actually feel like you're a massive hulking beast due to the momentum gain.
* Movement system also deals with minor obstacles the best of any lifeform or marine right now. You don't get stuck on little ledges and lose all your speed.
* Needed as a counter to marine upgrades and tech.
* Low skill floor. You can hop in an onos as a noob and immediately be effective against marines, up to small groups.
* Art-wise, very polished and feels onos-y, terrifying to see in-game.
* Can climb ladders. I mean, seriously. An onos climbing a ladder into my base? Awesome.</li></ul>
Now, let's identify some problems:
<ul>* Low skill ceiling. There's not much to do as an Onos except ###### everything up for the marines all day. Pretty much the only thing that the onos can do wrong is to run into marine base and stand still for 30 seconds.
* Knockback/stun on gore. While it is entertaining as hell to watch marines ragdoll all over the place, it's frustrating as a marine because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except pray that the onos is bad and leaves you alone or misses like 3 gores in a row on your prone body.
* Its stated role, to be the [disabler] or [disruptor], is completely overshadowed by the fact that is easier and more beneficial to your team to simply kill it. It takes all of 5 seconds to destroy an IP with smash, or like 15s to destroy a CC. Stomp? What's that? Is that what marines do when they lose the game after having complete map control?
* I think the Onos was originally envisioned as a huge tank that spearheaded an alien attack, soaking up all the bullets/damage and disabling marine defenses while the rest of the team mopped up. Instead, Onos are just the end all and be all of alien upgrades. I'm hoping this is not the case with the exosuit.
* Supposedly no hard counters in the game, but Onos are a hard counter to everything (including jetpacks in 90% of map spaces)
* Can climb ladders. Terrifying.</li></ul>
So, what can we do to build on the good and mitigate the bad?
Well, first off, let's remove or repurpose smash. The Onos shouldn't be a siege unit. It's too hard to kill and too survivable to be doing that kind of damage to structures. Let's keep that role with lerks. I believe it would be better to use smash as a way to disable/power down structures in an area temporarily (taking this away from stomp). This gives smash a clearly defined role that can still be useful, e.g. cloaked onos walking into a base and then smashing a PG, preventing reinforcements from arriving, while not making onos automatic checkmate. Stomp would retain its ability to ragdoll players, ceding air control to jetpackers who are at least a few feet off the ground. This way, onos are not hard counters to jetpacks, yet with skill and timing can still oppose a JP. Taking the disable away from stomp also gives it a clearer purpose, since the graphic effect of it will be immediately understood vs players, but you could play for a long time and not realize that it disables buildings. Also, let's factor the onos' momentum into his gore attack. It makes sense that a stampeding onos running up to a marine player and putting his horn through him will send the marine flying very far. It also makes sense that the marine wouldn't fly as far, or at all, if the onos was standing there. So, let's say that as a marine, we get ragdoll'd if the onos is charging at us (here is where the momentum storing mechanic from walljump would feel intuitive) and gores us. However, perhaps if he is standing there, we only get the blurred screen effect and a minor knockback, while retaining movement and shooting controls. This way, an onos would have to consider his approach, if goring a marine would throw him back out of reach behind his buddies, or perhaps you are low on health so you really need to disable him, just build up some momentum and knock him away.
Thoughts?
Comments
Considering Onos is toughest class in the game I find it silly to worry about balancing it when Marines don't have heavies and heavy armor right now.
Considering Onos is toughest class in the game I find it silly to worry about balancing it when Marines don't have heavies and heavy armor right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
that's the problem. Onos is -right now- the hard counter to EVERYTHING that the marines have, it shouldn't be that way. We shouldn't rely on a single tech to make things playable with onos in the field. That locks the game into a strategic race for exosuits. Why bother with fades when Onos can destroy everything? Why bother with shotguns/flamers/grenades/jetpacks when 3 minutes later i can have exosuits in the field? That's not very compelling gameplay.
Also, some of these suggestions don't even care about whether exosuits are in the game or not. Exosuits or not, smash is still overpowered - is an exosuit really going to stop a cloak/silenced onos from running into marine start and smashing the CC down in 15s? No.
Ive found it common place for the marine strategy to shift to "onos hunting" in packs during the 10 minute mark. If they all get put down, chances are they wont have enough res to do it again and the aliens are pretty much done.
Considering Onos is toughest class in the game I find it silly to worry about balancing it when Marines don't have heavies and heavy armor right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This. All of this.
Ive found it common place for the marine strategy to shift to "onos hunting" in packs during the 10 minute mark. If they all get put down, chances are they wont have enough res to do it again and the aliens are pretty much done.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
what's the rest of the alien team doing while the marines are off onos hunting? let's ignore 6v6 for now since 2 onos in 6v6 is pretty much gg. let's say we're playing 9v9, there's 2 squads of 4 marines chasing 2 onos, 1 comm. aliens have 2 onos, 1 comm, and 6 free lifeforms. you're telling me that this 'onos hunting' strategy really holds water?
also, since we're talking about stuff that's not in the game yet, hyper-mutation anyone? would allow you to go fade and (assuming you don't die), become an onos even quicker.
Something like:
-Gore without moving
20 damage, push the marines a little back (so the Onos can start moving)
-Gore at 50% of full speed
50 damage, push the marines 10 feets away
-Gore at 100% speed
100 damage, marine knockback 25 feets away, dizzy and drop its main weapon. Marine have a wall behind? He get crushed, as simple as that.
That way, the Onos can still be use to breach the marines defenses, but marines can also try to trap it (let's say mines reduce the Onos speed, or simply buildings). If marines are able to control the Onos, they get a great chance to kill it. If they cannot, Onos should be able to rape a marine base.
Also, it could prevent Onos "spam" (like having 4 Onos in a 8v8) in the way that if there is too much Onos, they bump each other and lose their momentum.
I suggest this because right now, Onos is not that fun to play, the only tactic is:
1) Enter Marine Base
2) Hit Marine Base until life is low
3) Go see the gorge
4) Repeat until Marines lose
It was a 9v9 game and because we held much of the map for the start we had 2/2 with 3 weps going up as onos began to show itself. They were also unable to get the second hive up because they couldnt gain control of another hive room for long enough (they didnt have enough people fading or lerking to keep control in the early-mid game). They eventually managed to get 3 onos which we took down one by one until we pushed into the hive taking it with ease. I remember hearing a member of my team saying "ONOS IN DATA, GO GO CHASE HIM PUT HIM DOWN" and then watchin them all follow him, pummeling him with bullets until his corpse slid accross the floor.
Its also awesome if an onos tries to push your spawn, 2 or 3 marines can shoot at it causing it to retreat... if you then select a bunch of marines outside your base to move to a location to cut off its path back to a hive to heal, its going to go down.
The way I see it as a commander, you set a strat that will see you win the game quickly (Quick Jetpack / Flamer, ARC rush) or get 4+ res nodes, hold them and dish out a steady stream of upgrades in anticipation of the onos.
Also, some of these suggestions don't even care about whether exosuits are in the game or not. Exosuits or not, smash is still overpowered - is an exosuit really going to stop a cloak/silenced onos from running into marine start and smashing the CC down in 15s? No.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't understand what you want, marines need to gang up on an onos to win right now, that's how it should be. Send a couple of rines after an onos with jetpacks and upgraded weapons and they should be able to atleast scare him off.
Also, the obs will counter a cloaked Onos coming into your base. Though really, if you do have Onos sneaking into your base then you have been making mistakes and should lose.
I sketched up a suggestion for a more challenging <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=116265" target="_blank">adren/speed management system</a> some months ago. The general response seemed to be to give the present system some more time before looking for alternatives. How about now?
The suggestion isn't probably any kind of cure-all for the whole onos thingy, but giving it more flexibility and challenges should make the balancing much easier to approach in general.
You have to make decisions like when to retreat, what to attack first, etc. Same decisions other aliens make but as an Onos you have to do it quicker because all the Marine team are firing at you.
Not sure if I agree that smash is a bad thing. I see Onos as being the game-ender, similar to what marines will have with arc and exosuit rushes. Once one team gets these, the game should be over pretty quick.
Not sure if I agree that smash is a bad thing. I see Onos as being the game-ender, similar to what marines will have with arc and exosuit rushes. Once one team gets these, the game should be over pretty quick.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"No game-ending tech
There should never be a technology, ability, weapon, etc. that simply ends the game, or gives a team an unfair advantage. Each tier should increase the options for the team, but not let them easily win it. Ie, the Onos or Exosuit should not be considered so “late-game†that it means that the game is simply over."
Thats taken directly from the NS2 High-level design document that you can see at <a href="http://t.co/IVvzQav2" target="_blank">http://t.co/IVvzQav2</a>
And I personally very much agree with it. Right now once the aliens get onos and if they have a little knowledge about the game and use a bit of teamwork, the marine team will lose no matter what. Marines got all upgrades - doesnt matter. All it takes is one onos accompanied by the alien team for distraction to smash the powernode or cc within seconds.
Not sure if I agree that smash is a bad thing. I see Onos as being the game-ender, similar to what marines will have with arc and exosuit rushes. Once one team gets these, the game should be over pretty quick.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, as logical as it sounds to have something to end the game and prevent stalemates or "slowly dying, already lost games", this is not as good in the fun-perspective. Onos and Exos are fun to play (or should be) and not only a thing you should be able to play for 1 or 2 minutes at the end of a game.
To topic: This is really a difficult problem. A 75res lifeform should be mighty. But having a mighty weapon is rarely fun on the receiving end.
I don't think there is an easy solution. The more damage with momentum idea sound nice, but will probably not get rid of the main problem.
As I suggested in another thread: What if the life forms would be way cheaper and weaker. You don't get really mighty when evolving to onos, you would need upgrades (which have to be much more expensive and stronger then) to get an onos / fade to the same strength they have right now.
This would bind the higher lifeforms softly to more hives (= more upgrades) and at the same time make a weaker version available with only 1 or 2 hives.
For example the normal armor of the onos would be way lower than right now, but carapace would cost 10 or 15 res but give you a hughe boost in armor.
The main problem with this, is that it's unintuitive. How should a marine be able to tell, if he encounters a strong or a weak onos? Scaling the size of the onos on upgrades? Alter the model? -> more armor plates on carapace would be a huge load of work for the designers.
already did a couple suggestions here (and a buncha complaining :P)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=117271&view=findpost&p=1917855" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...t&p=1917855</a>
<!--quoteo(post=1917855:date=Mar 26 2012, 01:52 AM:name=weezl)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (weezl @ Mar 26 2012, 01:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1917855"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...
[about smash]
constructive: i like the idea of this ability, but it doesn't work in practice right now.
make this ability much more costly in terms of energy, so that 2 smashes require 110% of onos energy
or give it a really long cooldown
or scale dmg to structures somehow, like: small structures are harder to hit (= take less dmg)
make onos more energy dependent IN GENERAL!
like his movement be activated with "alt movement" AND REQUIRES ENERGY (like charge in ns1)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i really like the speed-modified dmg, but i think the knockdown shouldn't be made extremely rare.
although a non-paralyzing crippling effect from standstill-gore sounds like a good idea
maybe make it mess with the aim for a second or so in a random fashion, would be believable...
also, a current bug/problem right now is that stomp knocks down JP:s IN THE AIR
-Limit onos to one per hive
-Reduce onos's vision to be blinkered
-Make the anti structure attack use more energy
-How can I put it....let Marine attacks do more damage to the onos's backside than to the frontside. If an onos turns to kill a powernode it'll go down faster.
-Make onos more of a slow tank. When it runs, the armour moves apart making it vulnerable.
[/list]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Honestly this is actually the way they operate.
In the past 2 months ive learned from my 90 hours of gameplay that the Onos can not single handed take down a marine base (Well lol they actually can, but most teams are not bad enough to allow that).
The only 2 ways ive seen consistently of an Onos winning are
1 -The Onos is a spearhead of an alien attack, running in and taking out the power node while the 3 skulks and 2 fades behind you run in and mop up all of the infantry. By that time the team either wins due to all the marines being dead or they win shortly there after by killing the CC (<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->this is what i see happen most of the time, and is my personal strat when playing Onos<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->)
2 -The Onos runs in with either a Gorge or multiple Onos and the end result is pretty self explanatory.
The onos goes against the high-level design document in that it is game ending. "Wait for the exo!" people cry, but then we will just have 2 game ending units and a rush to get them. The principles in the design doc are good, but they aren't currently applied in the beta.
Make Onos moving over 50% of its max speed cost energy. Nothing crazy, but if the Onos has over committed itself, it can't as easily run away from marines to heal up. Right now players use them as wannabe fatass fades.
This would also give flamethrowers the additional role of preventing Onos from running away or running unchecked in the base.
I would love to see devour make a come back, but maybe only devour dead rag dolls?
Was playing some great games last night that were unfortunately marred by onos knocking jetpackers down constantly. This is totally unacceptable! What you say above sounds perfect.
Actually, everything you said in your post sounds perfect.
We honestly had excellent map control the whole first half of the game, but they got 2 onos, and 2 gorges healing and it was just a long, slow death from there. Even with 9 of us focus firing it didn't work... gorges healed too well and the ######s would just knock 5 of us down at once.
Agree with Zek too, it really does need to be rebalanced now that it's unchained from 3rd hive.
Onos gore knockdown:
Right now the gore automatically hits for 100% damage and knocks down 100% of the time. What if we changed the knockdown and/or damage so they don't happen as often?
Option 1: Just clicking M1 for gore doesn't do much damage or knock down. Holding M1 to "charge up" will allow the player to time a powerful attack that knocks down. This gives the onos player full control over when that knockdown is important, but lets them attack rapidly as needed.
Option 2: Have repeated attacks give diminishing returns. (represented by a small bar on the HUD, similar to NS1 energy) The fuller the bar is, the more damage the gore will do and above a certain threshold (80%?) will knock down. Each use of gore drains a large portion of the bar, if not all of it. Bar fully recharges in 2-4 seconds.
Again, the onos has control over when they can knock down, and can still attack rapidly. If anyone has ever played the SNES RPGs Secret of Mana or Secret of Evermore, they are the best examples I can think of for this kind of system. Go look one up online and play for 5 minutes and you'll see that it works very well, forcing the player to pace themselves for maximum damage, and makes every hit count.
Onos movement:
Make onos move at a set speed, but have Right Mouse mapped to charge. Charge functions exactly like current onos movement, but drains energy. This ensures the Onos must save enough energy in its attack to make its escape, much like a Fade, and can be caught more easily.
Really this whole discussion is based on the two following scenarios.
a) Now ...the exo doesn't exist.
b) Later ...what we IMAGINE the exo is like.
I would love to see devour make a come back, but maybe only devour dead rag dolls?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would seriously love it if they removed the knock down from gore. Aggravating when someone gets knocked down, but goes flying 15 feet away from you and you have to chase them down. It doesn't add anything interesting to the game play, its a rather lame mechanic for marine and it just makes killing marines take longer than it needs to.
Really this whole discussion is based on the two following scenarios.
a) Now ...the exo doesn't exist.
b) Later ...what we IMAGINE the exo is like.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
this discussion has pretty much 0 to do with exo, as has already been said. it's about how to make the onos better. most of the suggestions are geared towards making the onos play more intuitively and how to fix the implementation of the onos so it fits more within its original concept.