All of my opinions come from pug games. That being said i fell that its not so much aliens being underpowered but marines having many small advantages.
The main one for me is the fact that often marines can share their weapons/lifeforms thus keeping the pres within the team, aliens cant do this. My suggestion is making it so when aliens die the pres (or life essence) is distributed evenly among players (maybe just on infestation?). THis lets marines accrue resources much faster than aliens. I often go a whole game as a marine not buying weapons/lifeforms because i can just pick up gl and flamethrowers for free. THen go straight into an exo.
Also marines can expand and build at a much faster rate than aliens, they also seem to be more mobile to me (phasgates, 10 res flying speed ability).
Not sure if this is still the same or if its been changed but destroying the arms lab all you need to do is rebuild it and you have all the upgrades again but with aliens you have to re-research them all.
Skulks seem quite weak late game and although by then you should be in other forms it doesnt always work out like that.
Those are just a couple of things that pop into my head. On a side not i see a lot of servers at 18 or 24 player limits and the game is apparantly balanced for 16 players. so perhaps we should all play on those servers and aliens may be more competitive. Because the marine upgrades stack together.
I think focus would help a lot with skulks. Also shotguns seem to be very powerful at the moment.
I just recently took out three Exos, six Sentries, and God knows how many Marines by myself with Crags hidden nearby for quick pick-me-ups when needed.
It's pretty damn fun....when you're an Onos or Gorge anyway. Otherwise I imagine it might suck. (I don't play Lerk at all, so iunno about that one)
I guess I was responding to the OP's feeling that skulk, lerk and gorge are useless at end game, but I would also like to see focus make a return for the fade, or at least a boost to the fade strikes called 'Puncture' or 'Stab' or 'Pierce' or something - ignores a percentage of armor and attacks directly at the marine's HP. No effect against exos, but then again you should be attacking the welder marine, not the exo.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I am sure I am not the only one who feels the way I do. To me the end game is great, the end game is even more fun for me when I am on the losing side. I really love how some times an end game team (losing) will figure out how to do one last great push or pour their last res into one last sneak attack. For me that is one really fun and exciting part of NS2. In those situations, alot of the time, the team losing will lose. But every now and then when their last ditch effort pays off, they some times turn the game around and after a long struggle, they win. This does not happen very offten but it does happen, and I always try to make it happen. The felling of winning after being so close to defeat, I think, is unriveled in any game. Thats why towards the end of the game, if our team is losing I try my hardest to pursuade people to nor RR and to carry one. Fight to the death, till the other team acctually kill us and not our team quitting. That to me is what NS2 is about, never giving up on your team. I really hate when people start to RR becase the end game can be really fun. Alot of people who do this, tend to take the game way to serious. Not in the way of team play but in the way of blaming people on their team for there loss.
So to cut a long story short. End game is fun, It should be played till the end. People should relax from RR'ing. Thats all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two days ago, I played in exactly the same kind of match as you described, on ns_tram. We lost warehouse hive and we only had server hive up, but leap had been researched. The comm started raging but our team saw that we had still had a slim chance to win if we dropped elevator hive (still had 50 res). The hive went down and two gorges jumped on it to get it up as soon as possible. We pushed back wave after wave of marines from server room while harassing their RTs and repair room. We were literally hanging on by the fingertips, if they had gotten a PG in the tunnel outside server room, it would have been really gg.
Our comm got an early onos up somehow, and we used it to go around the map with a couple gorges healing it. More people started fading/onosing and we eventually managed to cut them off by taking repair room and splitting the marines between warehouse and shipping. We did a rush on shipping and it went down, then it was just a matter of hitting the power node in warehouse for an epic comeback. It was intense.
Comments
Endgame can be quite fun with Bile spam and Onos trains.
The main one for me is the fact that often marines can share their weapons/lifeforms thus keeping the pres within the team, aliens cant do this. My suggestion is making it so when aliens die the pres (or life essence) is distributed evenly among players (maybe just on infestation?). THis lets marines accrue resources much faster than aliens. I often go a whole game as a marine not buying weapons/lifeforms because i can just pick up gl and flamethrowers for free. THen go straight into an exo.
Also marines can expand and build at a much faster rate than aliens, they also seem to be more mobile to me (phasgates, 10 res flying speed ability).
Not sure if this is still the same or if its been changed but destroying the arms lab all you need to do is rebuild it and you have all the upgrades again but with aliens you have to re-research them all.
Skulks seem quite weak late game and although by then you should be in other forms it doesnt always work out like that.
Those are just a couple of things that pop into my head. On a side not i see a lot of servers at 18 or 24 player limits and the game is apparantly balanced for 16 players. so perhaps we should all play on those servers and aliens may be more competitive. Because the marine upgrades stack together.
I think focus would help a lot with skulks. Also shotguns seem to be very powerful at the moment.
It's pretty damn fun....when you're an Onos or Gorge anyway. Otherwise I imagine it might suck. (I don't play Lerk at all, so iunno about that one)
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I am sure I am not the only one who feels the way I do. To me the end game is great, the end game is even more fun for me when I am on the losing side. I really love how some times an end game team (losing) will figure out how to do one last great push or pour their last res into one last sneak attack. For me that is one really fun and exciting part of NS2. In those situations, alot of the time, the team losing will lose. But every now and then when their last ditch effort pays off, they some times turn the game around and after a long struggle, they win. This does not happen very offten but it does happen, and I always try to make it happen. The felling of winning after being so close to defeat, I think, is unriveled in any game. Thats why towards the end of the game, if our team is losing I try my hardest to pursuade people to nor RR and to carry one. Fight to the death, till the other team acctually kill us and not our team quitting. That to me is what NS2 is about, never giving up on your team. I really hate when people start to RR becase the end game can be really fun. Alot of people who do this, tend to take the game way to serious. Not in the way of team play but in the way of blaming people on their team for there loss.
So to cut a long story short. End game is fun, It should be played till the end. People should relax from RR'ing. Thats all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two days ago, I played in exactly the same kind of match as you described, on ns_tram. We lost warehouse hive and we only had server hive up, but leap had been researched. The comm started raging but our team saw that we had still had a slim chance to win if we dropped elevator hive (still had 50 res). The hive went down and two gorges jumped on it to get it up as soon as possible. We pushed back wave after wave of marines from server room while harassing their RTs and repair room. We were literally hanging on by the fingertips, if they had gotten a PG in the tunnel outside server room, it would have been really gg.
Our comm got an early onos up somehow, and we used it to go around the map with a couple gorges healing it. More people started fading/onosing and we eventually managed to cut them off by taking repair room and splitting the marines between warehouse and shipping. We did a rush on shipping and it went down, then it was just a matter of hitting the power node in warehouse for an epic comeback. It was intense.