Regarding the conception that Hypermutation is worthless
Techercizer
7th Player Join Date: 2011-06-11 Member: 103832Members
7th Player Join Date: 2011-06-11 Member: 103832Members
Comments
It was a great game.
<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2" target="_blank">http://www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2</a>
Bitey was switching between Lerk and Fade, and later Onos and never losing his Pres on the team (except at one point with miscommunication and no support) filling different roles against the Marines on the fly.
I was using it to instantly evolve into a Gorge outside their base and bile, then reskulk when they reacted and save my Pres.
I was using it to instantly evolve into a Gorge outside their base and bile, then reskulk when they reacted and save my Pres.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll give you the saving of Pres. That seems like an incredibly powerful aspect of hyper mutation, almost an imbalanced one. Personally I don't think it was meant to be used in that way, and borders on an exploit. That is to say, you were never meant to be an Onos, and attack as an Onos, but die as a Skulk without losing resources, that wasn't the intention behind hypermutation.
Personally, I think the intention was to get players changing meaningfully between lifeforms, to perform different rolls at different times. But lets be honest, when you're a fade, you don't want to be a lerk. And when you're a lerk, you don't want to be a skulk. We all like to think that every lifeform brings some essential element to the party, but the fact of the matter is some are just better than others, and there are no situations where you would take the one over the other. Fade and Onos I will give you though. If you are changing to fade to assault a forward base, and then to Onos when they try make a push, that sounds pretty cool. However, realistically, this is not an ideal situation, and the number of times the opportunity arises to do so is very low.
Thinking about it, yes, hyper mutation can be very effective. The problem is it is far too situational. The reason we can see it used competitively is because maybe competitive players are the only ones who can identify the specific niches where it could be useful in each game. It needs to apply more broadly.
Oh, and they need to find a fix for the resource refunding. Sorry but, just because you managed to duck behind a crate and evolve into a skulk, doesn't mean you deserve 75 res refunded.
Do the resources that you reclaim from hypermutation apply when you start evolving or when you finish? I.e. do you have to finish evolving to reclaim the res, or if you die while evolving do you not get the resources back?
Also, does feign death reset after evolving it again with a different lifeform? I know i've had feign death kick in while i'm an egg - but what I want to know is if you get feign death, go feign death, and reevolve a lifeform with feign death included in the evolution traits, will you be able to go feign death again after your egg gets shot down? Also, does the cloaking that comes with feign death stop after you start evolving (while feigning death)?
I'm asking because, depending on the answers to the above, the use of a combination of hypermutation and feign death (as well as carapace if you have it), might make for some interesting suicide onos rushes on powernodes. Don't run away, just keep on attacking until feign death kicks in. When the feign death kicks in, immediately evolve skulk, or lerk or fade depending on how much res you have to recover (if you have 75 res anyway, you may aswell evolve fade, as you'll have 100 res and you'll be fade when you egg, likewise with 55 res and lerk). This way, you can suicide rush a powernode, keep the resources, and have a full health lifeform available after the egging to take down the remaining marines in the room (presuming you survive the egging). Chances are the rush will be successful, but if it's not, at least you get the res back. Of course, the factors in the question above effect the legitimacy of the tactic and whether it will actually work.
This, combined with shifts outside the base you're trying to hit, could prove for some relentless alien seiging. I have a feeling though that gl's may also effect how well this would work (if they're grenading the location that they're hypermutation evolving, and if they don't get the res back if they die during this period, then it instantly counters it pretty easily, even if hypermutation speeds up the evolving process).
This doesn't mean that suicide onos attack on locations with particularly obscuring objects wouldn't be possible though. Just jump behind a crate as an Onos and evolve to skulk in 1 second, full refund. Warehouse would be a prime target.
I think this approach is unintended though. I would prefer if, on death, you lost 50% of the cost of your highest evolution. So, if you took hyper mutation and evolved into a lerk, then a fade, then a lerk, then a gorge, and finally died as a skulk, you would lose half the cost of a fade, ie 25 res.
i had this happen quite a few builds ago, so not sure if it is fixed yet. i was evolving from lerk into fade, my egg got shot, but i still managed to evolve into fade.
i think such exploits should be fixed, even if it means nerfing hypermutation even further. that said, i think it is obvious that many people would like to see a general overhaul of its mechanics to make it more viable.
1. Hypermutation allows an alien to break the mold of being stuck with one lifeform for an entire game. If you become a true master of the game, you should also be competent with each and every lifeform. Skulks have their role of being 'expendable' killers, Gorges are the base blasters(Bilebomb), Lerk "SEEMS"(Working on it) to be an effective unit for giving chip damage, and fades are the speedsters for flying around like a small minitank. Last is the onos, who is basically the heavy attack unit costing the big 75 res.
All of those are effective on the field at all times, and knowing when your team needs a different lifeform at a time allows you to fill each roll quickly, should the need arise.
Celeraity and adrenaline only make an individual lifeforms more potent. While Hypermutation allows you to actually change between forms and become a more powerful team player.
2. Hypermutations second potent design, is how you are able to manage your pres to a higher degree then any other upgrade. The rolls of lifeforms change slightly as I said in the first points, skulk becomes your 'banker' lifeform. Whenever you find yourself in trouble, you are allowed to downgrade into a skulk at any time in .5-1.5 seconds easily and effectively. AS SOON as you pop out of the egg, your money is refunded(No earlier :P) allowing you to die a quick death or even escape if you have the time with no downsides at all.
All it takes to utilize this ablity to it's maximum is a spatial awareness of the battlefield in how to determine when to pop in and out of a lifeform to save pres. You will need to think "That nook in the wall, is there enough time to slip in there find enough LOS cover to downgrade to skulks?" Or even think bigger "Would it be more effective and allow me to help the team if I can quickly gamble and switch to fade in combat!?" There's alot of decision making tied into using hypermutation well, and I'm sure there will be plenty more to come now that I've enlightened Nxzl, and it seems now THE WORLD <3
3. The last effective of the perk, which esstinally breaks it for standard use. Is how you are able to preserve your HP should you find yourself in a negative situation. Currently as it stands, this upgrade negates any need to ever take Regerenation. If you watch the twitch stream, there were several moment where I had 20% or less hp to fight with. Instead of bothering to return to hive, or even ask for gorge I maximized my upgrades "Explouits". By s simply popping in a skulk, then re upgrading you not only get full hp of w/e lifeform you choose, but you also are granted full energy.
These feature of the perk sends the upgrade several levels above the standard choices, making it by far the best rounded mutation to select in any team based sitatuions. Why settle for only being slightly faster, or worse only having 200% energy that takes an hour to recover? with Hypermutation you can swap between lifeforms for energy, health, money, and team based tactics crafted on the fly.
enjoy the enlightened new toy, showcased to the world on Nxzl v Inv :D Yay for metagame changes <33
This doesn't mean that suicide onos attack on locations with particularly obscuring objects wouldn't be possible though. Just jump behind a crate as an Onos and evolve to skulk in 1 second, full refund. Warehouse would be a prime target.
I think this approach is unintended though. I would prefer if, on death, you lost 50% of the cost of your highest evolution. So, if you took hyper mutation and evolved into a lerk, then a fade, then a lerk, then a gorge, and finally died as a skulk, you would lose half the cost of a fade, ie 25 res.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just tested it out. You can't egg while you're on feign death (major problem for my suggested strat), but as soon as you leave feign death, you can egg, and that feign death will apply to your egg until you've evolved even if you didn't select it as an option (it will of course, not give you feign death traits once you've finished evolving, unless or until you select it as an evolution trait).
As a result, the suicide onos rush isn't effective. I managed to escape being killed while on feign death, but was quickly gunned down. I did, however, have a lot of success in doing suicide bile bomb rushes, as marines aren't so quick to make sure a gorge hasn't feigned death - whereas this is still a huge problem for onos, as the marines will make damn sure an onos isn't feigned (of course if you survive the feign death period, you can skulk and reclaim that res, but you gotta be reaaaaaally quick on the evolve to skulk, as if a marine sees the feigned onos appear, it will be a fraction of a second before they start shooting).
Anyway, as gorge, I got gunned down a few times while evolving (after they saw my feign gorge unfeign and then egg), but feign death kicked in on the egg, and got away each time scott free. So yeah, I was able to pull off multiple suicide biles, and reclaim the res after getting gunned down. Wasn't a bad strat. This might work better with more gorges. Though grenade launchers would counter it pretty easily.
The one thing I didn't work out is whether or not you lose the reclaimed res if you die while evolving to the lower lifeform. Either way, the hypermutation evolve is pretty fast, and with feign death on the egg, you'll most likely get away with it (unless there's gl spam).
So if you want to be skulk/onos. Go skulk first with hyper, then go onos. Then shortcut switches between these two lifeforms.
I didn't see how quick the switching was, but I think it should be QUICK to allow for some really cool action.
Perhaps on death you keep 1/2 of your pres of your highest lifeform. So if you die as skulk, and were Onos in that life, you get back 37.5. As fade, 25. Etc.
That is OP as hell.
Remove this ability from the game and replace it with focus(easy to implement, and needed for aliens to scale with marine lategame).
Hypermutation feels more like an exploit than an actual upgrade.
Makes for an intresting design, the health thing can be fixed by just scaling health up and down as you morph about.
That is OP as hell.
Remove this ability from the game and replace it with focus(easy to implement, and needed for aliens to scale with marine lategame).
Hypermutation feels more like an exploit than an actual upgrade.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's at the sacrifice of celerity, so the onos still has to escape to evolve and will have a harder time doing so. But you're right. It does exploit the fact that lifeforms evolve with full hp regardless of the hp of the previous lifeform (I'm expecting this will be changed at some point). I'd argue that it's far less of an exploit than powernode blocking, but still exploitative. I'm not sure as to just how effective it is forgoing celerity for this perk, but it's probably doesn't matter all that much (I don't expect people to be able to do it for very long).
However, I wouldn't replace it with Focus, as it is waaaaaaay more OP than hypermutation - although would probably be less OP than in ns1, as armorys repair armour now, so you don't have to rely on welders to escape getting one-shotted. The reason people are looking to exploits like this is that it is an incredibly weak upgrade and there are f*ckall other ways to make hypermutation viable in the slightest (people need to get creative to explore it's viability as an upgrade, and this is a result of that). And whether or not you agree with people using it this way, it hasn't become a prolific exploit on pubs or in competitive play (as commanders tend to shun getting hypermutation as it's weak as f#ck).
I would however suggest that if anybody has any issues with seeing this in a competitive match, that they voice their concerns on this. This way it can be banned from competitive play if necessary (until it's fixed, unless UWE themselves state that this is how they intend it to work anyway), or a gentlemans agreement can be made not to use it, or at have it be least highly frowned upon if it is used.
i reported it, just in case.
thanks
Its not that its worthy of nerfing, its the fact that the only reason someone found it useful is not at all the reason it was put into the game. I read what bitey said but Im forever a cynic and believe he said what he said about the gimmicky part of the upgrade in an effort to keep the unintentional parts of the upgrade in the game. The unintentional parts being the energy regen and health regen from evolving and the pres management aspects.
I'm all for keeping it the way it is now, full hp and all. Celerity is probably still the better option anyway. I can understand why people might think it's exploitative and that you shouldn't evolve with full hp. But even if you didn't, you could still hypermutate gorge and heal yourself, but this is just a way quicker and less fiddly way of doing that. It's good to get some discussion going though. I guess we'll wait for UWE to make the change away from evolving with full hp, or wait for them to say "this is how it's meant to work".
I agree with shortcut switching. That would be nice. It would be even better with custom loadouts. So if you know you always want carapace, or silence, or whatever upgrade, for a specific alien class, you can do it all pressing a single key.
I'd also like to see players be able to evolve while on feign death. But I doubt that'll happen :(
Can you clarify what you mean by that very last part (not the part about energy & health regen). The pres management aspects are intended... That's the whole point of hypermutation - to reclaim res from evolving to lower lifeforms (or up to higher lifeforms from other high lifeforms like lerk->fade/onos or fade->onos). Without it, it may as well be an empty upgrade slot (and it pretty much is already anyway - as you said, it's not even worthy of nerfing, gimmicks and all).