Things which are annyoing (as alien) in 228
Price
Join Date: 2003-09-27 Member: 21247Members
Join Date: 2003-09-27 Member: 21247Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Just feedback by a NS fan!</div>{This Thread is to help balance and give feedback to the great developer of NS1/2.}
<u><b>WARNING: Trolls will be shot!</b></u> ah i mean skulks.
I watched the Development of this great game since it was an Engine Test.
Now the final version give me mixed Feelings.
So many Designchanges i don't understand or agree with.
Big Question: Is this game just optimized for Esports instead of player fun?
Aliens can win, but there so many things which can be very frustrating.
- Gorge Spit: it did a lot of damage, but why i can't hit some marines, i have the feeling the spit also disapear in short range or get shot sooooo slow, it take 1 second to hit anything.
- Parasite: i know it will be back some day, i remember someone of the Devs said it(?) but it is really needed to parasite a structure, parasite mines would be a big plus, give the parasite a more tactical feature.
- Get hit as Alien: Why, why, why you made the aliens sooo slow on hit?
If you get hit, they slow down sooooo much and can not escape or move at least!
Even with celerity, it don't work you will be slow down as an onos with 1 leg...you can imagine what i mean
- Gorge healing: why it feel so useless? Why it take so long to heal any structure or teammate while marines just walk to an armory or get a medpack? And don't forget the welder, repair mostly everything very quick and the gorge isn't for free too!
- Support Alien commander, it is not really possible to support your commander, why is it not possible to build chambers or at least harvester, maybe hives?
- marine sprint, how come, marines sprint if they also had phase gates? Whats the reason to give them fast speed + teleportation over the whole map and aliens get only Celerity?
- change lifeform give 50% of the res back? Or anything that make it possible to go gorge if you are lerk or fade to heal a hive or anything? I feel so helpless if im lerk, fade or onos and see hive or harvester or any other chamber dying.
Some Stuff i also think which match to this list:
<!--quoteo(post=2007408:date=Nov 3 2012, 12:43 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 3 2012, 12:43 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2007408"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So let's have it then:
- Hivesight has been almost entirely removed. "Structure is under attack!" Oh yeah? What structure? Where? Why can't I see what's going on? I can't even see our hive locations! This is awful. No minimap, I'm tired of having to have the map open for 80% of the game just to see what's going on and who is where.
<b>- Marine turtle-tech. Rather than go the interesting route and make the game about tech node control, it's simply about just kind of dancing around each other until you eventually try to destroy each other's bases. 98% of Marine tech is T1. Aliens, which have limited ability to move around the map, are forced to spread extremely thin.
</b>
- Alien upgrades are dull, uninspired, and so poorly balanced that there's no choice in what you should get. Carapace on everything. Adrenalin for Gorges, Fades, Celerity if anything else.
- Shotguns are a 'soft counter' to literally everything. Which makes them a hard counter.
<u><b>- Armory camping / grenade launcher spamming has really no counter.</b></u>
- Marines can now sprint, giving them skulk speeds to move around. And whack things away with their guns.
- Carapace is pathetic. None of the alien abilities scale. Carapace apparently exists to only put a single given alien ON PAR against a marine with A1 / W1 upgrades. Carapace at Hive 1 is Carapace at Hive 5, and that is why it's garbage. Regeneration is not even a choice, because Fades are so piss-weak without Carapace that they are no match at all for marines with even the most basic upgrades. The Khamm should be able to research T1 through T3 upgrades, or they should be automatically tied to your tech level. A Fade should NOT be dropped by just a couple of marines with shotguns.
- The entire Shade tech tree is hard-countered by an Observatory. Which is fine because the Aliens totally get hard counters to - wait - they get counters to nothing. As long as Observatories are this powerful, nobody will ever use Shade seriously. It's a gimmick and nothing more.
- Skulks lose almost all effectiveness by the midgame. Xenocide simply punishes the player using it and barely puts a scratch in A3 marines. You're deliberately putting yourself back in the 15 second queue for some damage that is quickly repaired, a queue that earns you NO resources.
- Celerity ultra-nerfed, has no effect if you're attacking which is when you'd want it.
- Leap and skulk movement ultra-nerfed. Leap cannot even reach jetpackers, and gives no damage bonus when you leap into enemies.
- Skulks feel as if they have a speed cap. When you wall jump or use leap, there's a huge slowdown like you hit a wall after you move a short distance.
- Focus is gone, which removed the ONLY counter Aliens ever had to armor upgrades. This was the closest aliens ever got to weapon upgrades. Now, a Hive 1 skulk can only ever do as much damage as he does at that moment, and marines only get stronger and harder to kill.
- Vortex consumes way too much adrenalin, is so short you don't even have time to kill a single marine before the guy is back, has an incredibly short range and limited area effect, and in general is not worth it whatsoever.
<u><b>- No counter to jetpacks. Lerks are easily swatted and have quite inferior damage that cannot compete. Skulks can no longer reach. Onos can no longer paralyze. Fade is your only safe bet, and Fade is fairly 'meh' at it due to the difficulty of perfectly timed blink/swipes.
</b></u>
- Aliens lost about half of their toys. Where is Web, exactly? The Onos sprint 'charge' does absolutely no damage. Marines lost... hand grenades. And got a tech 1 mobile siege gun that costs less than a shotgun to research and build.
- Huge amounts of incredibly dull downtime for aliens. No rapid movement system. Outrageously long spawn queue. Outrageously long egg time after that.
<u><b>- No siege abilities for aliens. Lerks cannot even project spores anymore.</b></u>
- Aliens are only really competitive when they outplay marines. Competitive, not dominant. Game design that requires one team to naturally be better and more coordinated than the other is completely bonkers. Alien gameplay relies on lots of tight-nit teamwork and communication, marines need almost zero communication and minimal teamwork, only simple group tactics.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2005743:date=Nov 2 2012, 04:02 AM:name=countbasie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (countbasie @ Nov 2 2012, 04:02 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005743"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Put it that way:<b>
1. long spawn times
2. no hive teleport, very very much running around for helping somewhere just to recognize the rush is over half-way
3. not able to prevent a serious hive rush (see 2.)</b>
4.
5. basic lifeform feels unaware and powerless - basic marine feels like he can do at least something
6.
7. no res for kill or any other useful action
8. no res while dead (NOTE: Price: or commander? Im not sure, im not often commander, but i have the feeling you don't get res, i was a whole game com and just had 20 pres.)
9.
10.
11. no Focus (double damage, double cooldown attack for late game, so you don't have to bite 5 times and feel more precise - worked perfect in NS1)
There are some more, but I think it's enough so far.
I want to make clear that these are small adjustments, I don't want to complain about Aliens in general (UWE hears a lot of crap from us, I don't mean it that way). I think this list is constructive and make sense.
EDIT:
2 more important points:
12. marine sprint
13. marine jump height and/or strange player collision
And: I know UWE will make Aliens better, usually when you think 'dammit' it will be fixed after a couple of patches.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<i></i>
<u><b>WARNING: Trolls will be shot!</b></u> ah i mean skulks.
I watched the Development of this great game since it was an Engine Test.
Now the final version give me mixed Feelings.
So many Designchanges i don't understand or agree with.
Big Question: Is this game just optimized for Esports instead of player fun?
Aliens can win, but there so many things which can be very frustrating.
- Gorge Spit: it did a lot of damage, but why i can't hit some marines, i have the feeling the spit also disapear in short range or get shot sooooo slow, it take 1 second to hit anything.
- Parasite: i know it will be back some day, i remember someone of the Devs said it(?) but it is really needed to parasite a structure, parasite mines would be a big plus, give the parasite a more tactical feature.
- Get hit as Alien: Why, why, why you made the aliens sooo slow on hit?
If you get hit, they slow down sooooo much and can not escape or move at least!
Even with celerity, it don't work you will be slow down as an onos with 1 leg...you can imagine what i mean
- Gorge healing: why it feel so useless? Why it take so long to heal any structure or teammate while marines just walk to an armory or get a medpack? And don't forget the welder, repair mostly everything very quick and the gorge isn't for free too!
- Support Alien commander, it is not really possible to support your commander, why is it not possible to build chambers or at least harvester, maybe hives?
- marine sprint, how come, marines sprint if they also had phase gates? Whats the reason to give them fast speed + teleportation over the whole map and aliens get only Celerity?
- change lifeform give 50% of the res back? Or anything that make it possible to go gorge if you are lerk or fade to heal a hive or anything? I feel so helpless if im lerk, fade or onos and see hive or harvester or any other chamber dying.
Some Stuff i also think which match to this list:
<!--quoteo(post=2007408:date=Nov 3 2012, 12:43 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 3 2012, 12:43 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2007408"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So let's have it then:
- Hivesight has been almost entirely removed. "Structure is under attack!" Oh yeah? What structure? Where? Why can't I see what's going on? I can't even see our hive locations! This is awful. No minimap, I'm tired of having to have the map open for 80% of the game just to see what's going on and who is where.
<b>- Marine turtle-tech. Rather than go the interesting route and make the game about tech node control, it's simply about just kind of dancing around each other until you eventually try to destroy each other's bases. 98% of Marine tech is T1. Aliens, which have limited ability to move around the map, are forced to spread extremely thin.
</b>
- Alien upgrades are dull, uninspired, and so poorly balanced that there's no choice in what you should get. Carapace on everything. Adrenalin for Gorges, Fades, Celerity if anything else.
- Shotguns are a 'soft counter' to literally everything. Which makes them a hard counter.
<u><b>- Armory camping / grenade launcher spamming has really no counter.</b></u>
- Marines can now sprint, giving them skulk speeds to move around. And whack things away with their guns.
- Carapace is pathetic. None of the alien abilities scale. Carapace apparently exists to only put a single given alien ON PAR against a marine with A1 / W1 upgrades. Carapace at Hive 1 is Carapace at Hive 5, and that is why it's garbage. Regeneration is not even a choice, because Fades are so piss-weak without Carapace that they are no match at all for marines with even the most basic upgrades. The Khamm should be able to research T1 through T3 upgrades, or they should be automatically tied to your tech level. A Fade should NOT be dropped by just a couple of marines with shotguns.
- The entire Shade tech tree is hard-countered by an Observatory. Which is fine because the Aliens totally get hard counters to - wait - they get counters to nothing. As long as Observatories are this powerful, nobody will ever use Shade seriously. It's a gimmick and nothing more.
- Skulks lose almost all effectiveness by the midgame. Xenocide simply punishes the player using it and barely puts a scratch in A3 marines. You're deliberately putting yourself back in the 15 second queue for some damage that is quickly repaired, a queue that earns you NO resources.
- Celerity ultra-nerfed, has no effect if you're attacking which is when you'd want it.
- Leap and skulk movement ultra-nerfed. Leap cannot even reach jetpackers, and gives no damage bonus when you leap into enemies.
- Skulks feel as if they have a speed cap. When you wall jump or use leap, there's a huge slowdown like you hit a wall after you move a short distance.
- Focus is gone, which removed the ONLY counter Aliens ever had to armor upgrades. This was the closest aliens ever got to weapon upgrades. Now, a Hive 1 skulk can only ever do as much damage as he does at that moment, and marines only get stronger and harder to kill.
- Vortex consumes way too much adrenalin, is so short you don't even have time to kill a single marine before the guy is back, has an incredibly short range and limited area effect, and in general is not worth it whatsoever.
<u><b>- No counter to jetpacks. Lerks are easily swatted and have quite inferior damage that cannot compete. Skulks can no longer reach. Onos can no longer paralyze. Fade is your only safe bet, and Fade is fairly 'meh' at it due to the difficulty of perfectly timed blink/swipes.
</b></u>
- Aliens lost about half of their toys. Where is Web, exactly? The Onos sprint 'charge' does absolutely no damage. Marines lost... hand grenades. And got a tech 1 mobile siege gun that costs less than a shotgun to research and build.
- Huge amounts of incredibly dull downtime for aliens. No rapid movement system. Outrageously long spawn queue. Outrageously long egg time after that.
<u><b>- No siege abilities for aliens. Lerks cannot even project spores anymore.</b></u>
- Aliens are only really competitive when they outplay marines. Competitive, not dominant. Game design that requires one team to naturally be better and more coordinated than the other is completely bonkers. Alien gameplay relies on lots of tight-nit teamwork and communication, marines need almost zero communication and minimal teamwork, only simple group tactics.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2005743:date=Nov 2 2012, 04:02 AM:name=countbasie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (countbasie @ Nov 2 2012, 04:02 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005743"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Put it that way:<b>
1. long spawn times
2. no hive teleport, very very much running around for helping somewhere just to recognize the rush is over half-way
3. not able to prevent a serious hive rush (see 2.)</b>
4.
5. basic lifeform feels unaware and powerless - basic marine feels like he can do at least something
6.
7. no res for kill or any other useful action
8. no res while dead (NOTE: Price: or commander? Im not sure, im not often commander, but i have the feeling you don't get res, i was a whole game com and just had 20 pres.)
9.
10.
11. no Focus (double damage, double cooldown attack for late game, so you don't have to bite 5 times and feel more precise - worked perfect in NS1)
There are some more, but I think it's enough so far.
I want to make clear that these are small adjustments, I don't want to complain about Aliens in general (UWE hears a lot of crap from us, I don't mean it that way). I think this list is constructive and make sense.
EDIT:
2 more important points:
12. marine sprint
13. marine jump height and/or strange player collision
And: I know UWE will make Aliens better, usually when you think 'dammit' it will be fixed after a couple of patches.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<i></i>
Comments
That's actually a pretty darn good idea. I'm all for the alien commander having more to do, although I'm also interested in being able to rebind command keys before expanding into more NPC drone's that are hard to track down and impossible to see on the map ^_^
I just want to use the darn num-pad for commanding!