I don't understand the new shade
Imbalanxd
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
<div class="IPBDescription">its just so aweful</div>Whether or not the old Shade was too powerful, or did the wrong thing, I do not know. However, the new Shade's presence seems to defeat its own purpose.
Firstly, one of the shades purposes is to prevent the marines from knowing that structures are in the area. If you are trying to ninja a hive location, you put a shade next to it. When the marines walk in, they see some cysts on the ground, but they see nothing else, and so they aren't particularly alerted. Who the hell is the shade fooling when it informs everyone of its presence by giving off that distortion effect? What is the point in hiding structures when everybody is clearly informed of their presence anyway?
Secondly, now this is more of a gorge complaint, one of a gorges strengths when inside his own fortification is elusiveness. He blends in well with the textures of infestation and his own structures, and can be hidden behind them while marines attack. Now you place a shade there, thinking you are helping, but you just make everything invisible except the gorge. It makes it so much easier to hunt him down and kill him.
I understand that the shades role is meant to be sensual deception, but half of its abilities are counter acting the other half at the moment, making it half an asset. I think one of its roles needs to be rethought. Either the cloaking aspect, or the eerie sounds and visuals aspect. The ink cloud is fine though. I like the distinction between structures that the upgrade functionality brings. You can have a vanilla shade which is purely for subtlety and stealth, while the upgraded shade is for causing confusion and disarray.
Firstly, one of the shades purposes is to prevent the marines from knowing that structures are in the area. If you are trying to ninja a hive location, you put a shade next to it. When the marines walk in, they see some cysts on the ground, but they see nothing else, and so they aren't particularly alerted. Who the hell is the shade fooling when it informs everyone of its presence by giving off that distortion effect? What is the point in hiding structures when everybody is clearly informed of their presence anyway?
Secondly, now this is more of a gorge complaint, one of a gorges strengths when inside his own fortification is elusiveness. He blends in well with the textures of infestation and his own structures, and can be hidden behind them while marines attack. Now you place a shade there, thinking you are helping, but you just make everything invisible except the gorge. It makes it so much easier to hunt him down and kill him.
I understand that the shades role is meant to be sensual deception, but half of its abilities are counter acting the other half at the moment, making it half an asset. I think one of its roles needs to be rethought. Either the cloaking aspect, or the eerie sounds and visuals aspect. The ink cloud is fine though. I like the distinction between structures that the upgrade functionality brings. You can have a vanilla shade which is purely for subtlety and stealth, while the upgraded shade is for causing confusion and disarray.
Comments
I agree totally though. I think Phantasm feels a little cheap, and seeing life forms move but without the sort of intelligence of a 'PC' seems off.
Hallucination sort of works, but only if there are players around to defend it.
I like how the cloak works now, but you are right. Scanning sort of defeats the point of it, as does seeing infestation... not sure how you combat that. It is great in combination with baiting players into whips, but if you don't have any all you see is the Gorge. Your first target as a marine.
That bullet also gives away the fact that you know the hive is there and reveals your position on the minimap. Trade offs!
I'm fine with that to be honest. I will admit that, when I know the aliens have shade upgrades and are expanding outwards, I will put a bullet at a tech point I go past. I can also admit that I do not always do this, however. If communication is bad in a team, you won't always have the required information to know to do it. And that's all you should have, a <i>chance </i>of success. Just as carapace doesn't mean you won't be shot to death, it just increases your chances.
I usually have my fishing rod with me out on the battlefield, using the Hive as my bait!
'Generally' speaking.. that is the most effective way of taking down a group.
I hate positive abilities. They increase the performance of my enemies, which means they have a negative impact on my relative performance, and I hate negative abilities.
I like both ideas. Having the comm send a pulse through infestation like a wave to give a "ping" of potential enemy movement would be cool. Also showing marine health would be a great addition to alien vision. Either different shades of color to denote different stages of health and armor or some other clever way.
The shade should be the "Cloak and Dagger" chamber and have abilities that help with reconnaissance and misdirection/subterfuge.
Yeah, I've always wanted that ability in ns2. In the mod Hidden: Source you have a special vision mode that shows you the health of your targets. Green = 3 slashes, Orange = 2, Red = 1. It really helps you to prioritize who you hit first, especially when facing big groups.
It would be really funny if we could make shades artificially lag players for distortion rather than the visual effect.
Bingo. Things that improve offensive power/staying power will always be leagues better than what shade tech has to offer. Even more so when it's easily countered by ONE bullet.
Shade + shade tech is going to require a complete overhaul and new abilities if it is ever going to be a competitive choice. I skip taking shade in favor of a back up crag, unless the game is already won and I feel like making cloak whips for ###### and giggles.
- Hides infestation of cloaked Cysts and Hives.
- Occupied Tech Points appear normal.
- Damaging or touching a cloaked structure shows its faint silhouette, but not uncloak it.
- Whips still reveal themselves when attacking (they still get first whack off :P)
Also, I agree the wobbly Disorient effect is a dead giveaway. Maybe have it as part of Ink Cloud since all it does currently is obstruct vision.
'Generally' speaking.. that is the most effective way of taking down a group.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
absolutely LOVING this idea.
to those that know/love the hidden source mod.... i so want to make a hidden spark mod. :-D it would be so little work..
to those that know/love the hidden source mod.... i so want to make a hidden spark mod. :-D it would be so little work..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Mod of the year all years. Man, it probably wouldn't be a lot of work like you said. Alien vision is already in, just color people based on health and give them all parasites. Transparency is in, leap is in, wallsticking is in.
to those that know/love the hidden source mod.... i so want to make a hidden spark mod. :-D it would be so little work..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
early prototype would be as simple as taking a skulk or fade, give it a cloaked "water" effect, adjust health as needed and boom, hidden mod.
Post-Second Hive there is some worth to Shades they make upgrade structures less obvious and people are often in a hurry in certain places meaning they get a lot more effect.
But, I can't see any scenario where you would want to go Shade first beyond trying to show off or do something different for the sake of doing something different. The sad fact is it that Aliens can win doing pretty much anything so some people try this early Shade hive and think it's worthwhile when it's actually not.
Fast Aug/Silence is the only use I can see for it, there are plenty of scenarios where a Marine only kills you because he hears you coming seven miles away.
Shade/RT/Whip vs. Shade/Whip - 1/10 the Shade might slow the RT kill down longer than just a Whip would. Not worth 10 Resources, not worth taking a worse Tech route.
I could see Shift Hive getting some early use if Augment timings got pushed back. Otherwise you're going light-speed four-six minutes in anyway..
Camoflage is certainly not particularly useful (but cool in principle), but silence is much more handy since skulk sound was boosted, so half the problem has gotta be with cara.
You have to remember that people have a psychological bias to prefer options which are easier to compare/quantify, so comms will have a propensity to go for the upgrade with the easiest to understand stat boost. In this case cara = x more bullets till you die whilst camo/silence = um err... element of suprise? (unfortuntely making games predictable and reducing the extent to which comms have to think about their strategy)
If you made cara less of a general stat boost I bet you'd find more comms opting for shade/crag/shift based on their strategy:
ie. cara builds up armour on infestation which fairly quickly drops again once a skulk is off it (sort of like the overheal Charlie keeps mentioning)
This way comms would have to choose between <u>lots of cysts + cara</u> to try and fight on their own turf, or <u>fewer cysts and silence</u> to have the upper hand on Marine territory.
to those that know/love the hidden source mod.... i so want to make a hidden spark mod. :-D it would be so little work..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There has actually been some work on this. I wouldn't call it a Hidden:Source mod, but should be similar. I never tried it personally though, and it might not be up to date with the latest version.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=115881" target="_blank">The Hunter</a> by Soul_Rider
'Generally' speaking.. that is the most effective way of taking down a group.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
if all the aliens go for one guy at a time the rest are free to stand back and pick them off, sounds bad
Not any worse than marines focus firing one alien or structure. How is that possibly bad, unless they all suck and can't hit anything?
Great points about the Shade in this thread. Something that's supposed to HIDE itself and others literally announcing its own presence seems like suicide to me... Natural Selection would have selected it dead long ago.
Camo whips sounds like hella fun though, especially when you can reposition them.
aliens have to move from enemy to enemy (while being shot from all sides) in order to attack, and they have generally higher DPS than marines because they only attack at point blank
it simply doesn't make sense to gang up on targets that are in even numbers (but someone's gonna quote this and say aliens should never take those fights anyway so lollllllllllllll)
You walk so slow when camo'd that it either takes you forever to get where you want to go or you risk running into a marine un-camo'd on the way to where you want to get to. Not knowing if there are marines even on your controlled area (ie infested..or perhaps with x% or # of mature structures) makes timing when you need to go camo and slow a game of chance.
If aliens need to have infestation to build on then perhaps one of the benefits of the shade hive is a form of hive sight.
Logically the khamm has to invest to get the hive sight and it not be default but additional research like silence perhaps 20 Pres (yes...personal res from teh khamm...he sacrifices his higher life form for something to benefit his team in another way).
Another option could be for the khamm has to select cysts that they can upgrade and then make hive sight function between that cyst and the nearest hive via 1 pathway. This would need to cost less than the one above as you would need to upgrade multiple cysts.
Depending on cost this could also be Pres. when an upgraded cyst is killed that hive sight pathway is lost and there is now an un sighted pathway back to the hive.
Another option to improve the shade hive issue is to make it so that only melee weapons will make a hive etc show (so a bullet wont show up as a hit and decloak the structure...but a hatchet would....this would not be the case for alien lifeforms) .