Lerk spike and mobility
elodea
Editlodea Join Date: 2009-06-20 Member: 67877Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Editlodea Join Date: 2009-06-20 Member: 67877Members, Reinforced - Shadow
So, i was watching some old lerk footage i had and it dawned on me that lerk actually used to be hella fun to play. And i don't mean because of imba bite or imba air control. For 20 res to a fade, and 20 tres for spikes (even spikes are lacklustre now) lerk just doesn't seem to be worth it besides for late game umbra. Slow speeds, much lower in-combat mobility, and high spread don't make me feel like i can improve and make the lifeform my own anymore. Outcomes seem to depend more on the marine i'm facing and his aim than what options i have at my disposal to throw that aim off.
Felt like UWE actually nailed it quite good previously with the lerk. There was an almost natural feel to spike harassing and movement flow.
1) Faster speed of 14 that didn't come tacked with screen blur, some random unintuitive requirement to keep moving to receive bonus, and speed loss on damage.
2) Faster realisation of downward acceleration (more use to 4 dimensional flying besides pancaking)
3) Lower hp and fragility which made for more knife edge play. Required clever use of movement, opponent reading, and engagement/disengagement to come out on top.
4) Faster flap force and more responsive spike strafing. Also meant more gliding and less spacebar spam.
5) Less inconsistency in slow on turn. Sometimes it hits you hard, sometimes it doesnt..
I understand you can just buy celerity, but it doesn't feel right to need a specific upgrade, ability research, and cop some screen blur and arbitrary speed loss on damage 'tradeoff' just to get the lerk to a fun base level. Also in regard to hp and new cara, 125/30 and 125/50 worked well take what you may. Maybe this changes with normal shotgun damage, but instrusive tradeoff design philosophy on the fps level be damned. The tradeoff should be more about the tres required to get the upgrade and the tres required for additional hives and more slots/upgrade synergies. Maybe its better to balance upgrades around lifeforms, instead of lifeforms around upgrades? Like limit relative effectiveness of cara and celerity on lerk.
Am i imagining things, or was lerk actually alot more fun to play? Or was it just imba (spike lerk play)? Somethings gone wrong either way and it bothers me that we've traded the fast, precise, harassing spike lerk with lots of movement and dodging options for a lumbering, luckbased bullet sponge.
Felt like UWE actually nailed it quite good previously with the lerk. There was an almost natural feel to spike harassing and movement flow.
1) Faster speed of 14 that didn't come tacked with screen blur, some random unintuitive requirement to keep moving to receive bonus, and speed loss on damage.
2) Faster realisation of downward acceleration (more use to 4 dimensional flying besides pancaking)
3) Lower hp and fragility which made for more knife edge play. Required clever use of movement, opponent reading, and engagement/disengagement to come out on top.
4) Faster flap force and more responsive spike strafing. Also meant more gliding and less spacebar spam.
5) Less inconsistency in slow on turn. Sometimes it hits you hard, sometimes it doesnt..
I understand you can just buy celerity, but it doesn't feel right to need a specific upgrade, ability research, and cop some screen blur and arbitrary speed loss on damage 'tradeoff' just to get the lerk to a fun base level. Also in regard to hp and new cara, 125/30 and 125/50 worked well take what you may. Maybe this changes with normal shotgun damage, but instrusive tradeoff design philosophy on the fps level be damned. The tradeoff should be more about the tres required to get the upgrade and the tres required for additional hives and more slots/upgrade synergies. Maybe its better to balance upgrades around lifeforms, instead of lifeforms around upgrades? Like limit relative effectiveness of cara and celerity on lerk.
Am i imagining things, or was lerk actually alot more fun to play? Or was it just imba (spike lerk play)? Somethings gone wrong either way and it bothers me that we've traded the fast, precise, harassing spike lerk with lots of movement and dodging options for a lumbering, luckbased bullet sponge.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Have to agree with this.
When it was shotgun/spike/spore, the lerk felt really 'together' in a few ways. It was still dealing "damage over time" when played correctly, but you weren't as tied down by a series of all-or-nothing mechanics.
You could also fly faster than marines can run without celerity, which is pretty fundamental!
1. The top speed for the Lerk was 13. Main reason it was lowered was to give the Lerk more incentive to buy celerity (trust me I disliked this as well).
2/4. It was made to be more like flying than zooming around; also to give slight penalties for turning so quickly/pancaking. The glide degradation of speed was lowered so you can maintain top speed for a bit before having to flap. I always get up to full speed and glide into a room or get silence. True it will kill your thumb, but you're doing that anyway when you get into a fray with bite. Also people felt that the strafe-flapping was too strong in terms of shooting you too high into the air.
3. When the shotgun fix was going to be implemented it was bumped up to a higher armor count (HP was never touched). Even then if you get a direct shot on a Lerk with carapace with a shotgun it would almost die instantly. Without the armor boost it was being destroyed by W2 rifles (not sure why).
5. Not sure about this one, but if you can give us a video/reproduce it then it can be looked at.
Since Carapace was changed to lower your speed by a percentage the 100a is granted to kind of counter the loss of speed (it does make it feel tanky, but you're going to be taking more hits when going so slow). I agree to an extent that it was fun to play in the previous builds, but it's not something that UWE was looking for and wanted to expand on the idea of the Lerk to something more complete/polished (balance not included). If anything the Lerk closely resembles the current NS1 Lerk (yes I know, Lerks never had venom/spikes together). Unfortunately I've been able to adapt to the changes that UWE has made to the Lerk and can still use it quite effectively; I guess it's more on the preferences of what you have seen before and the new changes.. which is one of the downsides of seeing constant change.
Which makes carapace upgrade completely redundant. Great, you can take a few more bullets, but now they're going to hit you with even more bullets that they might have otherwise missed with if you were still moving at normal speeds. And late game when Marines are rockin' w3, it is more of a liability taking it. Slowpoke Onos for an example. The fat pigeon lerks now have ankle weights tied to them.
The only time this new carapace is useful is when skulks have leap and fades have blink, but even then, I've stopped talking carapace altogether on skulks. Between upgrades costing pres on a life form that turns into a joke late game and that fact that carapace makes you an easy target to hit... no thanks. I've been doing impressively well for not using carapace on a skulk and even managed to carry games on a skulk during the early portions of the game. Granted that's with early game leap, but with leap being tied to having 2 hives, Aliens are going to be in a world of hurt early game now.
Aliens are going to be a disaster all because UWE doesn't want to bring back hive health/armor scaling for life forms, or add a new tech system to allow aliens to scale through the game similar to Marines. So they make stupid changes such as slowing lifeforms using carapace. It's like, for ever 1 good change, there's at least a dozen or so bad ones.
Back on topic: I consider myself <i>decent</i> with a lerk, that is until this patch butchered spikes yet again. At this rate, natural selection is going get lerks and they'll quickly become extinct. I still say lerks need ranged spores back, don't let the crying marine masses keep influencing bad changes.
Agreed, I loved Lerking then.
I want NS2 to be a really great game and so when i see a clear fun/depth deficiency i am compelled to argue it out. Zooming/flying.. This is subjective as i realize alot of the arguements behind bad UWE decisions seem to be. I felt like it was flying before, not zooming so who wins? Zooming vs flying is a mindset more derivative of different playstyles. Is UWE going to tell me that jet fighters are less about flying than biplanes? The point is to get a lifeform with movement that feels good and is fun to play, and the lerk currently is not. When the majority of lifeforms you see people end up continuously playing are skulk, gorge, fade, onos i think you know you have a problem.
Sure i can get used to the lerk too but it doesn't make it any less boring and engaging to play now. My point was that there is nothing to draw me to improving my lerk play anymore - it's pretty easily mastered and kinda shallow. Why would i go lerk over fade or even just stay skulk when i literally can't make the lifeform perform anywhere near the same level (by perform i mean higher level play). I'm not even a very good player compared to competitive ns1 vets and i'm already seeing a severe lack of depth in lerk play. By 'complete and polished', i must assume UWE means something dumbed down enough to provide accessibility with hardly any depth over time that isn't gimmicky (upgrade 'tradeoffs', poison dot, crop dusting 'skill'), because it certainly doesn't mean having a lerk that can bring something to the early-mid game. It isn't a fast harassing class as stated by their very own class goals - one that can do damage, engage/disengage etc. but some horrible mutant hybrid of tank and 'lets make vampires'.
What happened to the good design philosophy of stripping a feature to its core and making sure it works right on a base level? Slow poison bite is a stupid mechanic for reasons i think has been made clear enough by the community. You either base lerk movement around ranged spores, high rof bite ns1 play, or you base it around ns2 fast spike strafe play. Which will it be? What we have now is a messy mix of everything that just doesn't work or synergise.
The arguements surrounding lerk and cele/cara are so incredibly shortsighted i don't know where to begin. Celerity is the sorriest excuse ever for a speed and mobility boost. Whoever thought it a good idea to incentivise the use of something that is inherently not fun (motion blur) and useless in combat is going about it the wrong way. Fun things generally don't need incentives for people to perform them. Unfun things do - which is the reason i pay my plumber so much to do something i'd rather not myself. Cara is also shortsightedly applied to lerk. For whatever 'balanced' value, more armour and less speed means the only thing you end up with is slow lerks that have the same approximate effectiveness as before, no new situational advantages, yet are stupefyingly boring to play and play against. Whats the point of getting the upgrade if the tradeoffs and benefits negate each other to result in a less fun state anyway? Cara lerk is so slow, ineffective, yet tanky that i can't help but laugh when playing it. Its a flying troll onos that blinds and applies annoying effects to people, ends up not being able to do any kind of damage and disengages like someone activated bullet time mode. I could learn to speak french and russian while doing that.
In regard to armour bumps and shotgun/rifle damage as you have brought up let me just say I think the point of lerk should not be to absorb damage but to dodge it either by disengaging, burst engaging, not engaging at all, outpositioning/flanking, or clever movement strafing and the like. Its obvious that shifting the necessary tankiness from something that doesn't scale with player control (hp/armour) to one that is player controlled (movement) is a good thing for game playability and longevity while very quickly providing feedback about lerk play to new players. Sure there is a point where you need extra hp due to shotgun damage etc. but i have never ever had a problem with w2+ rifles. With faster movement it becomes moot as you have the potential to use mobility and positioning. It was alot more fun having to make split second judgements about whether you stick around or get out rather than tank and hope for the best. Like i said, 125/30 125/60 worked good against rifles previously take what you may. You die quickly in the wrong position, which encouraged use of the brain. Which brings me to the next point in regard to the limited pool of experience that design decisions are seemingly too often being made upon.
<i><b>Disclaimer - the following is slightly 'political' and said in all respect to individuals. (saddens me that the interpretation of such posts has changed to where i need to disclaimer this).</b></i>
What slightly bothers me is that you are the only decent lerk on the internal pt saba, and if UWE isn't also trying to take feedback from wider sources with alot of NS2 experience/understanding other than internal pt's, NS2 is going to end up being some horrible incestuous baby. I mean this as a concern about how the internal pt interacts with design decisions and its legitimacy to do so when the skill pool only has <b>one</b> person who has good understanding of lerk. You cannot capture the entire picture doing this and i'm sure at some points even your concerns about lerk direction have been lost in the noise saba. Yea, its been said officially by Hugh the internal pt only tests for bugs and have no design scope etc., but its clear to anyone who pays attention that this is anything but the whole truth and by no fault of the internal pt's might i add.
I need to clarify before this gets out of hand. I wasn't calling out internal playtesters. I was only calling out the decision making process that was taking into account internal pt experience as a whole too heavily. Saba is a good lerk, but only one. I'm not sure Scotty even pt's anymore.
<!--quoteo(post=1949299:date=Jul 6 2012, 05:10 AM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Jul 6 2012, 05:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1949299"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Doesn't matter. You're still going to get rolled because you called it like it is.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Watch your tone.
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elodea; PT's are there mostly for bug testing. Yes, they're also being used as input for balance decisions, like everyone else posting on the forum.
If you want to get your point across better, I suggest you don't use phrases like "NS2 is going to end up being some horrible incestuous baby", and "your ... is incredibly shortsighted ...". That type of comment tends to invoke emotional responses, which doesn't help a proper discussion at all.
As for your concerns, try not to worry too much. Charlie has an overall idea of how he wants things to work. Sometimes it takes several iterations of an idea before it shapes up to be as he envisioned. It's beta, things can change. Take into account that not everyone with an opinion on the matter replies to your single thread.
Saba did, and she has valid points. You don't have to agree with her, but be respectful.
Haha, I beg to differ. We've seen some weird things in the past, to the point one might think he's just throwing anything at the wall and see what sticks.
This is exactly what everyone has a problem with.
Non-playertesters can discuss and give their input on these forums till their face turns blue or the cows come home only to have their input waved off by playertesters. Exactly what you just did. Not to mention it's obvious how very little our input is taken into consideration. "Don't worry, kiddies. Charlies got it."
Even though you might not agree with some of the design decisions, they're not made without consideration. And yes, sure, some things have been added in simply to see what effect it would have - that's to learn.
These forums are here to get the community's input. The developers <b>want to know</b> what everyone thinks about certain features. Feedback is read and appreciated. If you do not want to believe it, fine - that's your choice. It's just a waste, because you are welcome here to voice your opinion.
Take into account that just because you don't see your suggestion implemented, it doesn't mean that it has not been taken into account. It's not that simple to design a good game.
This is my final word on the matter. This post applies to more than one thread here, unfortunately.
Come on now. Don't pretend there isn't a 'privilege' gap here. Perhaps privilege is the wrong word. How about a convenience gap - which is what i was talking about with internal pt feedback being the heavily favored source of balance and gameplay feedback. This thread isn't even about balance. It is about fun and the underlying design issues with how the lerk is messy and doesn't know what it is.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you want to get your point across better, I suggest you don't use phrases like "NS2 is going to end up being some horrible incestuous baby", and "your ... is incredibly shortsighted ...". That type of comment tends to invoke emotional responses, which doesn't help a proper discussion at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1) This is true of all endeavors that rely on limited and thus positively reinforcing group opinion no? Sure the pt's disagree with each other on many counts i have no doubt, but really lets be honest. How valued is forum discussion to UWE? Not alot. I think i could safely link every single one of fana's posts in evidence of this.
2) Don't pull my words out of context, miscontrue my meanings or misquote me. I honestly would have expected better of a forum moderator. Where is this "your ... is incredibly shortsighted ..."? I said the implementation of celerity and cara is incredibly shortsighted. Where is the personal attack? If i make something bad, i want people to criticize it and tell me why. If people want to have their own emotional cry thats their issue - don't pin that on me when i state it as it is.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As for your concerns, try not to worry too much. Charlie has an overall idea of how he wants things to work. Sometimes it takes several iterations of an idea before it shapes up to be as he envisioned. It's beta, things can change. Take into account that not everyone with an opinion on the matter replies to your single thread.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I knew it wouldnt be long before someone brought up ns2 beta being an iterative process. That just doesn't work here sorry. Its not a positive force when you go from good to bad over numerous builds full stop.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Saba did, and she has valid points. You don't have to agree with her, but be respectful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please point out which part in which i attacked saba out of order? If anything i said she was a good lerk and that it was a pity that the internal PT only has ONE good lerk. I even clarified it further after IE's post if you had trouble understanding my initial intent. I really don't feel like putting any more disclaimers so if people want to continue to interprete my disagreement as disrespect and personal attacks be that their prerogative.