Skulk bite
Xarius
Join Date: 2003-12-21 Member: 24630Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2003-12-21 Member: 24630Members, Reinforced - Supporter
<div class="IPBDescription">Yes, this thread again</div>I don't know how many times we have to go over this, but we somehow keep running in circles. The skulk bite in 222 feels worse than in 221. I don't know in which universe 'making it more accurate' implies 'making it require more accuracy', but in a melee vs combat set-up like this one you really can't request too much accuracy. It was arguably fine in 221, though the movement mechanics were completely lacking. (wall jump) It doesn't help that their model is HUGE, making them require several tries to land a hit versus jumping marines a guaranteed death sentence.
At least wall jumping feels a little better now, but there really should be a way to hold on to some momentum on the ground.
Can we please get this right in 223? If the skulk is not a competitive or outright enjoyable class even in the early stages of the game, you may as well not bother with any other balance. (And I already fear it will be far too hard for new players to get right)
Also, collision! It's pretty hard for this aspect of the game to be enjoyable if aliens can just continue sliding under marine's feet, the collision boxes in this game are terrible.
At least wall jumping feels a little better now, but there really should be a way to hold on to some momentum on the ground.
Can we please get this right in 223? If the skulk is not a competitive or outright enjoyable class even in the early stages of the game, you may as well not bother with any other balance. (And I already fear it will be far too hard for new players to get right)
Also, collision! It's pretty hard for this aspect of the game to be enjoyable if aliens can just continue sliding under marine's feet, the collision boxes in this game are terrible.
Comments
Its hard to use, rewards practice and skill and is not simply about 'getting close' to the marine.
Please don't change it UWE, its great right now.
FYI, I don't think its the bite that pushes the marine away. Your velocity as a skulk transfers to the marine when you collide. I find not jumping on the marine, rather strafing in circles around the marines feet fixes this problem.
Exactly lol.
Anything that makes the game harder is better in my opinion.
Marines: Primary aim, secondary movement.
Aliens: Primary movement, secondary aim.
Just like marines should be able to, though much less so than aliens, dodge attacks, so should aliens, though much less so than marines, have to aim their attacks. This adds more variety to gameplay than a simple "ok you got within range of the marine, great, +1 kills for you" bite cone.
<!--quoteo(post=1990193:date=Oct 12 2012, 11:37 AM:name=male_fatalities)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (male_fatalities @ Oct 12 2012, 11:37 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1990193"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->FYI, I don't think its the bite that pushes the marine away. Your velocity as a skulk transfers to the marine when you collide. I find not jumping on the marine, rather strafing in circles around the marines feet fixes this problem.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, it depends whether or not the marine is touching the floor or not. If the marine is airborne when the bite hits him, he will get knockback. The force of the knockback might depend on other factors like skulk velocity, though.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Just like marines should be able to, though much less so than aliens, dodge attacks, so should aliens, though much less so than marines, have to aim their attacks. This adds more variety to gameplay than a simple "ok you got within range of the marine, great, +1 kills for you" bite cone.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My point is thought that currently the accuracy and movement needed are BOTH greater than what a marine needs. Like I said, maybe if the skulk mode was smaller this would be accessible, but in its current form it's really not. Aiming has become far more important for the skulk than movement is for the marine.
Essentially you've made skulks even harder to play at both T1 and T2 at a time they were already struggling, particularly at T1 and lategame.
Ah okay, I wasn't quite sure. Thanks for clarifying
If you think movement isn't just as important to a marine, then I don't know what game you are playing.
Aliens: Primary movement, secondary aim.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Theres a fast difference in skill ceilings between marines primary and secondary skillsets
yet aliens ... the difference is minuscule. Whilst this change was needed, whats also needed is better alien movement mechanics, without those this change is simply an alien nerf
I am reminded of a mechanic flaw which occurred in WoW. They decided that plain predictable rotations of abilities wasn't exciting or skillful enough, so they implemented a "priority queue". As the encounter progressed and different events occurred, your priorities would shift dynamically, and the ability which was the best choice at the time would change. This sounded like an amazing new mechanic that required lots of skill to master. In the end, the best players, who studied these priorities and adhered to them at all times, were only doing 2-3% better than people who bound all of their abilities to a cast random macro and hammered it all the time. The length a certain priority queue lasted over another was simply too short to make concentrating on it worth the time.
Similarly, while you may think that a change like this encourages less holding down of mouse 1, it really doesn't. The nature of bite means that there is almost no reason to not have it on constantly, other than not looking like a noob. I fear that the difference between eagle eye, knee jerk players doing controlled biting, and average players holding down mouse one while they attempt to track their target, will be negligible. Maybe bite accuracy isn't the best place to focus when trying to increase the skill requirement.
It really does. I don't know a good player who holds down mouse1 when biting on skulk, they all time it
I agree with this mind you, but as it stands the skulk skill bottom is just too high for the average player. A smaller model and better hitboxes would go a long way in making the skulk a little more forgiving at least, while not punishing the marine skill ceiling.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Theres a fast difference in skill ceilings between marines primary and secondary skillsets
yet aliens ... the difference is minuscule. Whilst this change was needed, whats also needed is better alien movement mechanics, without those this change is simply an alien nerf<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> This
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you think movement isn't just as important to a marine, then I don't know what game you are playing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You're exaggerating. Yes movement is important for marines, but it's not nearly as important as it is for aliens, since skulks actually have to get up close. Marines only arguably need movement at the point when skulks close the gap.
And here in lies the problem...we are not talking about a fade, onos or even lerk here but the default lifeform most people will play (including these new players (soon to arrive) we all hope will hang around to allow for a decent player base).
You should not need to spend hours mastering this game to be able to play the default alien life form.
This is the lifeform that most players will spend the majority of their time playing and how they will experience the game.
Lets look at marines where you have almost 0 learning curve (the game makes your stronger over time and your guns do more damage) so even if you cant aim for sh1t the game will make you stronger by default as time progresses and your ability to contribute will increase...oh and you can buy GL's. flamers, SG or other weapons that allow you to simply spam and not really aim.
Talk about lack of learning curve and easy to play game metrics.
This continued nerf of aliens is terrible for game play and wont help address any of the real issues with balance (such as lack of scaling on alien team).
Now we simply have marines getting tougher to kill through the game and the contribution that the average new player can put in is almost 0. Doesn't leave a very good gaming experience ahead for hopefully hundreds of thousands of new players.
If we all want to show off at how we can spend hours mastering things that is great...but it should not be at the expense of new players having an enjoyable experience playing BOTH sides, neither should it be on the default lifeform in such an unintuitive and frustrating manner.
Whilst sadism is common I think its narrowing the target audience a lot to require anyone who enjoys playing aliens to be a sadist (The environment currently for new players is pretty ugly).
The only side thats fun to play is marines (JP's exo's arcs, GL, flamers, PG's, beaconing the toys are endless....the fun is seemingly also). Even when your losing your having fun as you can still do serious damage.
Been a while since I played NS1 though.
Focus is gone
Leap is terrible
Adrenaline is Nerfed
No Webs
adrenaline is nerfed
Most importantly, aliens do not get retainable upgrades like marines' weapon and armor improvements. Oh you got a fade? How cute. If you die as your first and only fade spawn you might as well quit the game. There's absolutely nothing competitive or interesting about aliens any more. Hell, they don't have a single counter to jet packs. It's like the developers only play marines.
Aliens can control the entire map, and still struggle for 20 minutes against a single marine base on 3/3 upgrades. This is so dumb. The game is in no state to be released on the 31st. There is ZERO fear in playing marines. You're literally hunting dogs. Heck, you can throw down your weapons and move just as fast a skulk, use your axe, and on 3/3 upgrade kill them.
Skulks have been buffed big time this patch. The current movement mechanic (speed and wall jump iteration) combined with 221 easy mode bite would just be insanely over powered even for low to moderate skilled players, can you imagine how it would be with a high skilled player who has mastered the movement mechanics?
Bite is easier in 222 than it was in 220. Back in that patch I actually was putting in effort to bite whereas now I just cruise around and mop dat ######.
If the good players jumped off a cliff, would you? Haha, I kid, of course.
If you think it its better, tell me why. I'll tell you why I don't think its meaningfully different.
The gap between skulk bites is around what, 0.5 or 0.6 seconds? Factor in reactionary time and this figure goes up. Play with mouse 1 constantly down, and reaction time can be ignored. I can't say with certainty the average amount of time an alien has to react to being in melee range of a marine, but I can say with relative confidence that in the vast majority of cases, its longer than 0.6 seconds.
I'm quite sure that doing controlled bites is "better". Whether or not it is better by enough to warrant putting that effort in, however, I am sceptical about.
Just because they're not mentally incompetent doesn't mean they'll immediately grasp playing the skulk. And while a higher skill ceiling is a good thing, A LOWER SKILL BOTTOM IS NOT. This is a very important distinction to make, look at marines for comparison. New players can easily jump in to the marine side and shoot things, it's very easy, fun and as you get better it's incredibly rewarding. I.e the marine skill bottom is pretty high, it's high enough for new players to easily be competitive with your average skulks.
Now let's compare this to aliens, of course there needs to be a high skill ceiling too, primarily in regards to movement, but:
- The skill ceiling on movement is still not very high, and the wall jump mechanic doesn't even come close to what NS 1 had in regards to Bhopping
- The skill bottom is pretty low because you're easy to hit (big model), not very fast by default and need to get in close and land precise bites on top of that.
Because of this, playing skulk is plain frustrating, and gets more frustrating as the game progresses into the lategame since they do not scale the same way a basic marine does.
Surely it doesn't take much of a brain to see that this is a potentially big issue. This is also visible in the simple fact, as most players will acknowledge, that alien T1 just plain sucks. (An indiciation that the skill ceiling is neither really high nor the bottom is high enough since both competitive and casual players alike struggle at their respective skill levels)
Now let's compare this to aliens, of course there needs to be a high skill ceiling too, primarily in regards to movement, but:
- The skill ceiling on movement is still not very high, and the wall jump mechanic doesn't even come close to what NS 1 had in regards to Bhopping
- The skill bottom is pretty low because you're easy to hit (big model), not very fast by default and need to get in close and land precise bites on top of that.
Because of this, playing skulk is plain frustrating, and gets more frustrating as the game progresses into the lategame since they do not scale the same way a basic marine does.
Surely it doesn't take much of a brain to see that this is a potentially big issue. This is also visible in the simple fact, as most players will acknowledge, that alien T1 just plain sucks. (An indiciation that the skill ceiling is neither really high nor the bottom is high enough since both competitive and casual players alike struggle at their respective skill levels)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Its true that most new players to the NS scene will be more comfortable with the marine side because they are used to playing FPS games, however that doesn't mean that we should jack up the skill bottom for aliens, when doing so will lower the skill ceiling and allow "good" skulks to play as if they are expert skulks.
Skulks do scale, and if you have a good commander who drops a hive right away and gets leap, you actually can outscale the marines quite a bit as you get leap -> cara/celerity.
I disagree that the marines have a lower skill bottom. Its not easy to hit a zigzagging skulk unless hes running down a super long hallway at you (a move only a newb skulk would pull) and really hard to hit a skulk running in circles around you. This will be even more true now with wall jumping in the game. The issue is more that most new players start at a higher skill level on marines. A few tips on skulk play in the loading screen (ie. don't run down halls at marines, try running in a zigzag towards marines, try attacking from above doorways) should be quite sufficient to help make the skulk learning curve quick and relaively painless.
However having said that I would say that the true reason aliens have a tough time at T1 is because marines naturally have a higher skill ceiling due to range. This is true in EVERY GAME which has a range v melee aspect to it and thus has to be balanced in some manner. In NS the balance is based on ammo clip size, speed and bite damage and to be completely candid, in the fact that higher lifeforms are very very strong. The game currently balances around the different teams having different periods of strength (marines strong vanilla, aliesn strong with leap/fades/onos, then marines strong again with jps and exos). This type of time period strength balancing is actually not a bad thing and almost impossible to remove in an asymmetric game (see sc, sc2).
I would suggest to you that the current problems can be partially attributed to bad engagements (shouldn't be engaging down hallways) and a failure of cooperation. When I get into a pub and start talking non-stop and organizing the skulks into groups there is a HUGE difference and we tend to stomp marine teams. Hopefully the wall jump mechanic will make up for any difference that can be attributed to balance.
My ultimate point is I think the balance issues should be dealt with in other ways, not just making the bite radius really easy so newbs have an easy time holding down mouse1 ftw.
Regarding the knockback it always happens to marines when you take damage > 50, on the ground or not. You dont move far when on the ground so its not super noticeable, but it does happen. The knockback is also based on the damage taken.
As for Skulk bite, it seems like a perfect balance now. It does not fully guarantee a skulk to win a CQC battle to a greater extent as it did 2-3 builds ago.
Asking for Focus ability seems like a pipe-dream now.
Asking for better wall-jump in addition to a Marine-like responsiveness to Kharaa movement, however, is <b>not</b> a pipe-dream to ask.
I also noticed the mouse "lag" (for lack of a better term) isn't as apparent this time around. It really feels like the way Raw-Input should work.
Good progress.