As a mostly 12v12 player, there's some crap mechanics that need fixing
Kama_Blue
Join Date: 2012-03-13 Member: 148710Members
Join Date: 2012-03-13 Member: 148710Members
<div class="IPBDescription">An experienced NS1 player and what's ruining his games.</div>This topic is meant to spark discussion, my opinions may not be 100% correct, but i assure you the mechanics i'm bringing up ARE ruining game after game, and visibly the culprits ruining match after match. I'm not bringing up petty issues with classes, these are things that honestly need to be fixed for any semblance of balance to exist between the teams.
Listed in order of how many rounds i can safely say they've ruined.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>1). the 250ms Delay</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Ever run at a resource node and fire at a skulk the second you see him, wondering why he doesn't move and just stands there and dies? I bet you didn't realize he DOESN'T KNOW you're shooting at him, until you've fired atleast 5 bullets, and can't humanly react before atleast 8, leaving even the best players dying sometimes to things they can't react to. Ever jumped around a corner and bitten the ankles of a marine near instantly, before he reacts and fires back? Ever run around the corner as a skulk and died a full third of a second later to bullets you know should have missed you?
Now how about playing a marine? Ever wonder why it's so much easier to hit skulks running towards you than skulks running perpendicular to you? Or how it's practically impossible to put down a fade with a full clip of your LMG even though it's mathematically far more damage than that fade can possibly have? Hit detection, hitboxes, bullet travel times, SOMETHING is broken and it's horrible, you can watch it happen, you've SEEN it happen more than once.
Fades/Lerks/Skulks seem to be nearly immune to 50% of the bullets in a marine's clip while moving, and Onos/Gorges seem to be complete bullet sponges. Oh and the best part, which i can't explain , i can't tell you why or how, is that some players are not seeing this discrepancy. .25s is a ton of difference between two players and when i watch one marine (We can call him NODELAY) consistently take down 4 skulks in one clip with split reaction timing as they leap around a corner and another rine (we'll call him DELAY) stare at the same corner, know an alien is about to go around it and not start shooting until a good third of a second after they appear. Well it's pretty indicative something is wrong.
Whatever it is, there's a pretty distinct difference between fades/skulks/lerks against players who have this delay and players that don't. With the players not having this delay absolutely destroying fades/lerks/skulks with them having no chance of retaliating.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>2). Skilled Rines Vs Decent Aliens</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
I had a ton written here, it was snarky and funny, but i lost it when the forums went down for 10 minutes and i hit the preview button.
Essentially 1 Marine Vs 3 Skulks is far more possible than 1 Skulk vs 3 rines. We can argue all day about fades, onos , lerks and whatever. But what’s important to me is the first five minutes of the game, the resource/hive/ground aquisition phase. That’s the Skulk vs Marine game, and if a marine can roll a more than 2:1 KD ratio it causes a load of problems for the aliens, and the alien players themselves may not be able to fix it. A skulk can’t really hold a 3:1 KD ratio early game, and even if they can, the spawning mechanics of marines completely negate the problem in the first place.
This isn’t to say marines need any changes at all, but it’s the god damn problem because it’s causing #3, and we can’t kill these marines while #3 is around.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>3). EGG LOCK</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
I think the most accurate way to describe how most players feel about being Egg locked, is to smash your face against the keyboard a few times, count which letters you missed and try again until you’ve successfully hit them all with your face. The incomprehensible wall text that results is pretty much all you need to know on the subject.
Personally i want to walk up to whoever decided egglock was a good idea, give them a hug because in essence the mechanic is interesting and brings a seriously unique flavor to the game, and then punch them multiple times in the face for how god awful it actually is as a commander.
There are no other hive choices with 8+ players, you’re going shift, you’re dropping a shift and you’re spamming eggs. Because it’s not possible to not need one against a marine team that knows how to shoot weapon. If the marine team rushes the alien team loses, there’s nothing you can do as two marines sit in hive, kill your eggs and slowly knife the hive to death as the rest of their team takes the map, which if it doesn’t kill you then, will ensure you lose a slow and painful round without map control. I can’t see how many eggs my team has besides going to the hive and counting, i can’t change how fast my eggs spawn by building more infantry portals. Just imagine if a marine infantry portal worked for 4 marines and then broke, that’s how ######TY alien respawns end up being.
Alien players cost RES, and they cost lots of res to respawn. It’s also not possible to spawn them early into a game without gimping yourself. There’s a 3-4 minute window in which an alien team will lose if you rush them and your team as a whole sustains a more than 1:1 KD ratio. That’s all it takes. Two infantry portals beat 1 hive every time, every game, no matter what. Don’t even start on 3, or 4.
On most servers i play on, it’s a gentlemen's agreement not to rush the alien team in the first 3 minutes of a game. Aliens avoid conflict, they avoid rushing the enemy base because they know if 4-5 of them die they’ll be egg locked for a minute. What does that say, really?
Egg spawnrate needs to be doubled in 12v12 matches. Or additional mechanics need to be introduced to a base hive (not connected to shift upgrade) that allow a commander to compensate for most of his team being dead and his hive still only spawning 2 of them every 15 seconds.
The spawn wave system is also interesting, but there’s no reason to have Eggs (limits the number of players spawning based on a timer) and a limit to the number of players spawning per wave. I rage every time i watch 7 dead skulks on my scoreboard, and only 4 spawn, with 3 passed over for the next spawning wave, even though we have PLENTY of eggs.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>4). POWER NODES</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Need more polishing
Few bullet points here
-Bile bomb makes them unbearably weak spots in a marine base. 9/10 times this results in turtling to protect one from an errant gorge. Bad bad bad. I would suggest making them less of a gamebreaker. Give the command chair enough power to run 1-2 Infantry portals, but nothing else when the power is down. Make power nodes a tactical win, but not a literal one. Turning off the lights, obs, armory and other buildings is punishment enough.
-Dropping power nodes is pretty redundant, just let marines build them from scratch on any unpowered node they feel like.
-The light/dark dynamics (Which are brilliant) fall apart when you realize lights are permanently on in any areas the aliens take over, with no way for aliens to turn the power off. It’s this way for the early-game balance of course, but Ideally you could let the Alien commander drop a cyst directly onto the power node, that would force an untouched room’s power off (signaling aliens own the room). This cyst would have about as much health as a normal cyst, would sit on the power node directly possibly with tendrils digging into the sockets, and as a result it would glow brightly, like a form of alien lamp. You could add dynamic orange lights to the default power-socket template, and it would be a much improved addition to the game, as well as a bullseye for marines in darker areas.
-Gameplay centered around power nodes becomes quickly stale, instead of fighting based around natural lines in the map. Change turret batteries into “Batteries†and allow them to power one closest building or 3 turrets. Phasegates, due to the immense amount of energy required, still need power-nodes however. This would allow more mobility / advancement for the marine team if they’re having a hard time. With obs/armories in otherwise undefendable positions and allows a clever commander to get around map flaws, or easily defended nodes for the alien team.
-That power node at Lava Falls. You know the one.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>5). ARCs</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Generally not too bad, unless a marine commander marches 20 of them into your hive, sets them up on your creep and screams “I’M GONNA WRECK ITâ€. Yeah in that case it’s pretty lame.
Make Arcs the opposite of whips, don’t allow them to go siege mode if they’re on alien infestation. That fixes a huge number of exploitative tactics involving them.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>6). Gorges</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
I leave this section as a somewhat after-note, because either the game is influenced in one way or another by the above 5, or gorges have absolutely destroyed the rine chances of winning by bile bombing a power node or the infantry portals.
Bile bomb is namely only a problem when dealing with power nodes and bases. Small armory/phasegate positions outside of hives deserve to be bile bombed, and it’s one of the only ways an alien team can push back many types of marine encampments. The only real place bile bomb becomes unfair is power nodes So i think if the power-node value was toned down a bit for the main marine bases gorges would be more balanced and bile bomb wouldn’t be this god-tier ability that single handedly causes the downfall of humanity as we know it.
On the other side of the coin, Gorges are required for early game (locking down areas) but are absolutely worthless at it. Hydras do nothing, they fall to pieces the second a marine attacks them and the projectiles they fire miss constantly. It’s almost as if hydras suffer from the same aiming problems marines suffer from with moving hitboxes on aliens.
Gorge spit is also completely worthless. Try standing right next to a wall and firing spit, and actually watch how every third hit takes a full TWO SECONDS to hit the wall from your face which is literally inches infront of it. A gorge should be able to hit a marine consistently with spit and kill a marine that runs into his little clog/hydra fortification. But 9/10 times the marine will win against a gorge with hydras, unless the gorge runs away. Gorges also suffer the most from the shoddy 250 ms delay, if you’re going to die after running around a corner a full second after you should be out of sight, you’ll be on a gorge.
Late game gorges become more useful, mobile healers and artillery. But early game / mid game they suffer pretty badly from a lack of building options, offensive options and mobility. I really want to concentrate on early game, i really want you guys to realize early game sets the tone of a map, and a gorge facing off against a marine for a full 30 seconds and being unable to hit a single spit is a terrible show of balance, and will always mean the aliens lose whatever that gorge was defending.
I would like to see cysts brought back to gorges as a cooldown item as opposed to a resource item (1 cyst every 30 seconds for free). As well as the ability to buy whips as a gorge, and possibly crags/shades/shifts when the commander unlocks them. Possibly a small discount (30%?) Because the gorge would be sacrificing personal res for a crag, or shift, or shade for the team. I would like to see the hydra limit uncapped, but the cost of each hydra increasing with each consecutive hydra already out (First two cost 2 res, third costs 3 res, fourth costs 4 res, fifth costs 5 res and so on). By the time you could amass enough hydras to be unfair to marines, the marine team would already have unlocked tools to deal with them anyway.
As i see it now, gorges suffer the most from having bile bomb, they get neglected terribly early game and only gain value after the aliens have a solid footing in the world and some higher life forms (50+ res and two hives up). Which contradicts the fortification role gorges play in the early game. They kinda get punished for doing a little of everything, but nothing really well, and then settle on bile bombing because it’s all they have that they do really well.
I sometimes really hate how the alien commander butchered gorge gameplay, it’s just clog up things until rines stop attacking, heal up a hive for 2 minutes and then bile bomb things.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->Added 12/22/2012 *NEW*<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>7). FLAMETHROWERS</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Flamethrowers are in a weird place. They curb energy regen, insta-kill cysts, burn buildings, set aliens on fire and destroy lerk spores and umbra.
Overall they're underpowered as hell, unless you use them to destroy the enemy team's cyst chains. In which case they're absolutely hands down the most overpowered tactic a marine team has in it's arsenal to completely destroy an alien team. A single marine with a jetpack and a flamethrower will destroy 20 res worth of structures on the alien team before they can react, and through cumulative damage, lack of focus on other fronts and the sheer amount of TIME it takes to put cysts back up, will have caused 50 or 60 res in damage and leave the commander recovering for minutes. As an alien commander THERE is no counter to a jetpacker with a flamethrower, he's going to wreck your cyst chain and there's nothing you can do about it.
The issue isn't really jetpacks, and it isn't really the flamethrower. Its the cysts themselves. For some stupid reason a cyst which takes 5 seconds to kill for a normal marine (leaving the game pace flowing at a more or less manageable speed) take a marine with a flamethrower a SINGLE PUFF of fire, to set the cyst aflame and it will burn itself to death over a couple seconds. A single marine can fly down a cyst chain and fire at each cyst a puff or two of fire, and completely burn 20 seconds of alien commander setup time, and 10 or so res. It's just too must destruction too fast, and I'm not being thick headed, i know the flamethrower should be able to push back infestation fairly well, but this puff and leave the cyst to burn exploit REALLY is exactly that. It's so effective it's an exploit, it's vastly uncounterable and far too much punishment for an alien team. Oftentimes a flamethrower will burn entire tendrils of your base in only a short span of time, leaving huge red circles across your minimap and your commander scrabbling to fix the problem and calling frantically for anyone available to kill the jetpacking marine before he gets more of your nodes.
I think we can mostly agree that the cyst instantly catching fire and burning to death is a little too powerful a utility. For balance purposes the player with the flamethrower should have to spend 2 seconds and a steady stream of fire to kill a cyst. Much quicker than the 5 seconds for a marine rifle, but still a manageable pace for the alien team to react to and counter. Something where the marine player is trading his own time to take away an equal amount of alien commander time.
As a whole the Flamethrower needs changes as well. It's got a muddled role in combat, usually only used to counter lerk spores and its energy draining properties are poorly understood by most players, as well as the actual burning effect on aliens being completely offset by alien regeneration. The energy drain and burning mechanics need to be more fleshed out against enemy players. Leave an actual lingering dot on the enemy that has a real chance of killing them if they stayed in your flamethrower range too long. Drain fades energy reserves while they're in the stream of napalm you're shooting and leave them limping out of the room. Flamethrower has a real potential to be a real strategic weapon, useful to drain the energy pools of fades or attacking onos and leave them unable to gore you, your teammates or your buildings nearly as often, but in it's current form it's suffering from being far too weak in dealing damage, and being far too good at killing cysts means it would be OP to give it even the tiniest buff.
Listed in order of how many rounds i can safely say they've ruined.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>1). the 250ms Delay</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Ever run at a resource node and fire at a skulk the second you see him, wondering why he doesn't move and just stands there and dies? I bet you didn't realize he DOESN'T KNOW you're shooting at him, until you've fired atleast 5 bullets, and can't humanly react before atleast 8, leaving even the best players dying sometimes to things they can't react to. Ever jumped around a corner and bitten the ankles of a marine near instantly, before he reacts and fires back? Ever run around the corner as a skulk and died a full third of a second later to bullets you know should have missed you?
Now how about playing a marine? Ever wonder why it's so much easier to hit skulks running towards you than skulks running perpendicular to you? Or how it's practically impossible to put down a fade with a full clip of your LMG even though it's mathematically far more damage than that fade can possibly have? Hit detection, hitboxes, bullet travel times, SOMETHING is broken and it's horrible, you can watch it happen, you've SEEN it happen more than once.
Fades/Lerks/Skulks seem to be nearly immune to 50% of the bullets in a marine's clip while moving, and Onos/Gorges seem to be complete bullet sponges. Oh and the best part, which i can't explain , i can't tell you why or how, is that some players are not seeing this discrepancy. .25s is a ton of difference between two players and when i watch one marine (We can call him NODELAY) consistently take down 4 skulks in one clip with split reaction timing as they leap around a corner and another rine (we'll call him DELAY) stare at the same corner, know an alien is about to go around it and not start shooting until a good third of a second after they appear. Well it's pretty indicative something is wrong.
Whatever it is, there's a pretty distinct difference between fades/skulks/lerks against players who have this delay and players that don't. With the players not having this delay absolutely destroying fades/lerks/skulks with them having no chance of retaliating.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>2). Skilled Rines Vs Decent Aliens</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
I had a ton written here, it was snarky and funny, but i lost it when the forums went down for 10 minutes and i hit the preview button.
Essentially 1 Marine Vs 3 Skulks is far more possible than 1 Skulk vs 3 rines. We can argue all day about fades, onos , lerks and whatever. But what’s important to me is the first five minutes of the game, the resource/hive/ground aquisition phase. That’s the Skulk vs Marine game, and if a marine can roll a more than 2:1 KD ratio it causes a load of problems for the aliens, and the alien players themselves may not be able to fix it. A skulk can’t really hold a 3:1 KD ratio early game, and even if they can, the spawning mechanics of marines completely negate the problem in the first place.
This isn’t to say marines need any changes at all, but it’s the god damn problem because it’s causing #3, and we can’t kill these marines while #3 is around.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>3). EGG LOCK</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
I think the most accurate way to describe how most players feel about being Egg locked, is to smash your face against the keyboard a few times, count which letters you missed and try again until you’ve successfully hit them all with your face. The incomprehensible wall text that results is pretty much all you need to know on the subject.
Personally i want to walk up to whoever decided egglock was a good idea, give them a hug because in essence the mechanic is interesting and brings a seriously unique flavor to the game, and then punch them multiple times in the face for how god awful it actually is as a commander.
There are no other hive choices with 8+ players, you’re going shift, you’re dropping a shift and you’re spamming eggs. Because it’s not possible to not need one against a marine team that knows how to shoot weapon. If the marine team rushes the alien team loses, there’s nothing you can do as two marines sit in hive, kill your eggs and slowly knife the hive to death as the rest of their team takes the map, which if it doesn’t kill you then, will ensure you lose a slow and painful round without map control. I can’t see how many eggs my team has besides going to the hive and counting, i can’t change how fast my eggs spawn by building more infantry portals. Just imagine if a marine infantry portal worked for 4 marines and then broke, that’s how ######TY alien respawns end up being.
Alien players cost RES, and they cost lots of res to respawn. It’s also not possible to spawn them early into a game without gimping yourself. There’s a 3-4 minute window in which an alien team will lose if you rush them and your team as a whole sustains a more than 1:1 KD ratio. That’s all it takes. Two infantry portals beat 1 hive every time, every game, no matter what. Don’t even start on 3, or 4.
On most servers i play on, it’s a gentlemen's agreement not to rush the alien team in the first 3 minutes of a game. Aliens avoid conflict, they avoid rushing the enemy base because they know if 4-5 of them die they’ll be egg locked for a minute. What does that say, really?
Egg spawnrate needs to be doubled in 12v12 matches. Or additional mechanics need to be introduced to a base hive (not connected to shift upgrade) that allow a commander to compensate for most of his team being dead and his hive still only spawning 2 of them every 15 seconds.
The spawn wave system is also interesting, but there’s no reason to have Eggs (limits the number of players spawning based on a timer) and a limit to the number of players spawning per wave. I rage every time i watch 7 dead skulks on my scoreboard, and only 4 spawn, with 3 passed over for the next spawning wave, even though we have PLENTY of eggs.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>4). POWER NODES</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Need more polishing
Few bullet points here
-Bile bomb makes them unbearably weak spots in a marine base. 9/10 times this results in turtling to protect one from an errant gorge. Bad bad bad. I would suggest making them less of a gamebreaker. Give the command chair enough power to run 1-2 Infantry portals, but nothing else when the power is down. Make power nodes a tactical win, but not a literal one. Turning off the lights, obs, armory and other buildings is punishment enough.
-Dropping power nodes is pretty redundant, just let marines build them from scratch on any unpowered node they feel like.
-The light/dark dynamics (Which are brilliant) fall apart when you realize lights are permanently on in any areas the aliens take over, with no way for aliens to turn the power off. It’s this way for the early-game balance of course, but Ideally you could let the Alien commander drop a cyst directly onto the power node, that would force an untouched room’s power off (signaling aliens own the room). This cyst would have about as much health as a normal cyst, would sit on the power node directly possibly with tendrils digging into the sockets, and as a result it would glow brightly, like a form of alien lamp. You could add dynamic orange lights to the default power-socket template, and it would be a much improved addition to the game, as well as a bullseye for marines in darker areas.
-Gameplay centered around power nodes becomes quickly stale, instead of fighting based around natural lines in the map. Change turret batteries into “Batteries†and allow them to power one closest building or 3 turrets. Phasegates, due to the immense amount of energy required, still need power-nodes however. This would allow more mobility / advancement for the marine team if they’re having a hard time. With obs/armories in otherwise undefendable positions and allows a clever commander to get around map flaws, or easily defended nodes for the alien team.
-That power node at Lava Falls. You know the one.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>5). ARCs</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Generally not too bad, unless a marine commander marches 20 of them into your hive, sets them up on your creep and screams “I’M GONNA WRECK ITâ€. Yeah in that case it’s pretty lame.
Make Arcs the opposite of whips, don’t allow them to go siege mode if they’re on alien infestation. That fixes a huge number of exploitative tactics involving them.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>6). Gorges</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
I leave this section as a somewhat after-note, because either the game is influenced in one way or another by the above 5, or gorges have absolutely destroyed the rine chances of winning by bile bombing a power node or the infantry portals.
Bile bomb is namely only a problem when dealing with power nodes and bases. Small armory/phasegate positions outside of hives deserve to be bile bombed, and it’s one of the only ways an alien team can push back many types of marine encampments. The only real place bile bomb becomes unfair is power nodes So i think if the power-node value was toned down a bit for the main marine bases gorges would be more balanced and bile bomb wouldn’t be this god-tier ability that single handedly causes the downfall of humanity as we know it.
On the other side of the coin, Gorges are required for early game (locking down areas) but are absolutely worthless at it. Hydras do nothing, they fall to pieces the second a marine attacks them and the projectiles they fire miss constantly. It’s almost as if hydras suffer from the same aiming problems marines suffer from with moving hitboxes on aliens.
Gorge spit is also completely worthless. Try standing right next to a wall and firing spit, and actually watch how every third hit takes a full TWO SECONDS to hit the wall from your face which is literally inches infront of it. A gorge should be able to hit a marine consistently with spit and kill a marine that runs into his little clog/hydra fortification. But 9/10 times the marine will win against a gorge with hydras, unless the gorge runs away. Gorges also suffer the most from the shoddy 250 ms delay, if you’re going to die after running around a corner a full second after you should be out of sight, you’ll be on a gorge.
Late game gorges become more useful, mobile healers and artillery. But early game / mid game they suffer pretty badly from a lack of building options, offensive options and mobility. I really want to concentrate on early game, i really want you guys to realize early game sets the tone of a map, and a gorge facing off against a marine for a full 30 seconds and being unable to hit a single spit is a terrible show of balance, and will always mean the aliens lose whatever that gorge was defending.
I would like to see cysts brought back to gorges as a cooldown item as opposed to a resource item (1 cyst every 30 seconds for free). As well as the ability to buy whips as a gorge, and possibly crags/shades/shifts when the commander unlocks them. Possibly a small discount (30%?) Because the gorge would be sacrificing personal res for a crag, or shift, or shade for the team. I would like to see the hydra limit uncapped, but the cost of each hydra increasing with each consecutive hydra already out (First two cost 2 res, third costs 3 res, fourth costs 4 res, fifth costs 5 res and so on). By the time you could amass enough hydras to be unfair to marines, the marine team would already have unlocked tools to deal with them anyway.
As i see it now, gorges suffer the most from having bile bomb, they get neglected terribly early game and only gain value after the aliens have a solid footing in the world and some higher life forms (50+ res and two hives up). Which contradicts the fortification role gorges play in the early game. They kinda get punished for doing a little of everything, but nothing really well, and then settle on bile bombing because it’s all they have that they do really well.
I sometimes really hate how the alien commander butchered gorge gameplay, it’s just clog up things until rines stop attacking, heal up a hive for 2 minutes and then bile bomb things.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->Added 12/22/2012 *NEW*<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>7). FLAMETHROWERS</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Flamethrowers are in a weird place. They curb energy regen, insta-kill cysts, burn buildings, set aliens on fire and destroy lerk spores and umbra.
Overall they're underpowered as hell, unless you use them to destroy the enemy team's cyst chains. In which case they're absolutely hands down the most overpowered tactic a marine team has in it's arsenal to completely destroy an alien team. A single marine with a jetpack and a flamethrower will destroy 20 res worth of structures on the alien team before they can react, and through cumulative damage, lack of focus on other fronts and the sheer amount of TIME it takes to put cysts back up, will have caused 50 or 60 res in damage and leave the commander recovering for minutes. As an alien commander THERE is no counter to a jetpacker with a flamethrower, he's going to wreck your cyst chain and there's nothing you can do about it.
The issue isn't really jetpacks, and it isn't really the flamethrower. Its the cysts themselves. For some stupid reason a cyst which takes 5 seconds to kill for a normal marine (leaving the game pace flowing at a more or less manageable speed) take a marine with a flamethrower a SINGLE PUFF of fire, to set the cyst aflame and it will burn itself to death over a couple seconds. A single marine can fly down a cyst chain and fire at each cyst a puff or two of fire, and completely burn 20 seconds of alien commander setup time, and 10 or so res. It's just too must destruction too fast, and I'm not being thick headed, i know the flamethrower should be able to push back infestation fairly well, but this puff and leave the cyst to burn exploit REALLY is exactly that. It's so effective it's an exploit, it's vastly uncounterable and far too much punishment for an alien team. Oftentimes a flamethrower will burn entire tendrils of your base in only a short span of time, leaving huge red circles across your minimap and your commander scrabbling to fix the problem and calling frantically for anyone available to kill the jetpacking marine before he gets more of your nodes.
I think we can mostly agree that the cyst instantly catching fire and burning to death is a little too powerful a utility. For balance purposes the player with the flamethrower should have to spend 2 seconds and a steady stream of fire to kill a cyst. Much quicker than the 5 seconds for a marine rifle, but still a manageable pace for the alien team to react to and counter. Something where the marine player is trading his own time to take away an equal amount of alien commander time.
As a whole the Flamethrower needs changes as well. It's got a muddled role in combat, usually only used to counter lerk spores and its energy draining properties are poorly understood by most players, as well as the actual burning effect on aliens being completely offset by alien regeneration. The energy drain and burning mechanics need to be more fleshed out against enemy players. Leave an actual lingering dot on the enemy that has a real chance of killing them if they stayed in your flamethrower range too long. Drain fades energy reserves while they're in the stream of napalm you're shooting and leave them limping out of the room. Flamethrower has a real potential to be a real strategic weapon, useful to drain the energy pools of fades or attacking onos and leave them unable to gore you, your teammates or your buildings nearly as often, but in it's current form it's suffering from being far too weak in dealing damage, and being far too good at killing cysts means it would be OP to give it even the tiniest buff.
Comments
I would urge you however to stay away from 12v12. It's an inferior experience, the game isn't balanced around it. We need more people playing 6v6-10v10, preferably 8v8. Too many people play 12v12 because those are the servers with the most people, they don't realize the game isn't meant to play with that many people.
I would urge you however to stay away from 12v12. It's an inferior experience, the game isn't balanced around it. We need more people playing 6v6-10v10, preferably 8v8. Too many people play 12v12 because those are the servers with the most people, they don't realize the game isn't meant to play with that many people.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Problem with the lower player count in a server is that you rarely see all 16 players in teams...often there are 2+ people in the RR wanting to join a perceived winning team (due to 1 player having racked up some kills) add in some rage quitters and you only have 2-3 ppl playing out an entire game.
With the higher player counts (24) you stay with 8v8 scenario more than a 16 player sever (for the a fore mentioned reasons).
Egg lock is an issue and one that has not yet been properly addressed, its too easy to egg lock an alien team with an aggressive start.
This pretty much forces aliens to go shift first or power build 2nd hive, when marines can simply build another IP if there in the same boat.
Even with 8v8 if you have close spawns then you will also risk egg lock.
I would urge you however to stay away from 12v12. It's an inferior experience, the game isn't balanced around it. We need more people playing 6v6-10v10, preferably 8v8. Too many people play 12v12 because those are the servers with the most people, they don't realize the game isn't meant to play with that many people.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you think experienced players are joining 12v12 servers because "There's more people" you're extremely mistaken.
Having played many 6v6 and 8v8 rounds, i can say pretty easily that the reason people are on the 12v12 servers has nothing to do with the server population, they have more people for a reason and that reason is the 12v12 is an all round better experience than the 6v6, and it's an experience much truer to the old NS1 experience.
6v6 games concentrate on the skill of a single player. 12v12 concentrate on teamwork. Teamwork wins every time on the scales of fun. There's never any 6v6 or 8v8 servers full, even during peak hours when all the 24 slot servers are full. People just migrate to the 20 slots, and then the 18 slot servers. Old NS1 was 32 players (I'm pretty sure), Balancing the game around 6v6 when most players aren't interested in playing 6v6 is commonly perceived as one of the biggest flaws for game balance.
Most players i talk to agree that the developers should take a much stronger stance on balancing the gameplay at all team sizes.
<!--quoteo(post=2049776:date=Dec 22 2012, 04:08 AM:name=NeoRussia)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NeoRussia @ Dec 22 2012, 04:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2049776"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->12v12 player? Shouldn't you be more concerned with having more than 10fps in fights? I wish I had a beast of a system to actually be able to run with 24 players.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Do a completely clean reinstall of your graphics drivers. Seriously uninstall them all, look up how to make sure you do a full CLEAN uninstall, all drivers/ect. Then reinstall them.
It'll boost your fps 20+
About the <b>delay</b>, I doubt there is much you can do. Yes it could be changed, but I honestly feel that I prefer that all hits that I see myself hitting, should deal their damage, than that I only are dealt damage by hits that I think hit me. Sure, as you say, this creates issues with how I often die before I even know I took damage, but it feels better than having to correct my aim for every individual player so it fits their latency.
Now I don't know if it is my client telling the server that I scored a hit, or if they made me just send data about my direction and position, and the server calculates a hit. Honestly it is not noticeable to me, as I usually play on servers with around 100 latency. But the issue is when you are standing still, maybe shot from behind, and then it does not really matter. The enemy player may have as much as 200 ms latency (lets assume these values to count with a worst-case scenario), and after that, the server has to tell me that I got hit, which adds up to often around 300 ms, this is a very noticeable amount, and by the time I start moving (300 ms + 300 ms expected reaction time + 100 ms delay = 700 ms) it will be too late and I will most likely be dead on their screen. Adding 200 ms to make sure that the enemy sees that he isn't hitting anymore does not even matter at this point.
I honestly see no fix for it, and as I said I prefer it as it is now, even though being ambushed by a marine is pretty much instant death. When attacking extractors I try to counter this by keeping my eyes open for the enemy. If I position myself so that I can see them (often through extractors legs) if they reach a point where they can see me, then I don't have to wait 300 ms until I know I am shot, I negate my reaction-time with theirs, and therefor there is only round 200 ms delay (assuming 100 ms for the actual movement) until server knows I am safe behind cover, 400 ms until enemy see that as well.
I sometimes die anyway, but when the goddess of latency smiles upon me, I manage to survive, and the positions will be reversed with him having a delay from the moment I decide to jump out at him.
For #2, I honestly don't see the issue. A marine cant win 1v3 against skulks who perform a coordinated ambush (until they come with armor 3, shotty, good aim and extreme luck), and if they are coming down a hallway well within his sight, I feel he is <i>expected</i> to have a chance to survive. Skulks also have far superior mobility, and can strike at a squad several times before they reach their objective (even if it isnt towards their spawn), which is much harder for marines to do against a squad of skulks.
But yes, its a cause of #3. Changing the balance for this is not the way to solve #3 though.
#3 would be a lesser issue if egg-spawnrate depended on amount of players, and maybe if attacking a hive increased it. Dunno if its really a good idea though.
For #4, I honestly feel as if powernodes importance is being nerfed too much, rather than being an issue like you state. It has a ######load of health, and welders are cheap. Repairing a powernode in your base is also not very dangerous and difficult. When a ninja-gorge is causing the issue, it would be solved by a single marine and a scan, unless the map-design is pretty interesting. Gorges suck at retreating without infestation.
Making alien areas entirely dark is a bit too op, and actually makes it harder to move as an alien as well. Played around with a mod for that quite some builds ago, and decided to keep the default behavior in the end.
#5 I agree that ARC spam is an issue, but it could be solved by simply doing stuff like increasing how close they think they may go to each others. Also love your inverted whip idea.
#6 Yes, gorge is not very useful at start, and hydras only work well when marines are busy with other aliens. I really liked the mini-cysts, and I wasnt playing when they got removed, so I have no idea why. Could be experimented with a lot imho.
I sometimes die anyway, but when the goddess of latency smiles upon me, I manage to survive, and the positions will be reversed with him having a delay from the moment I decide to jump out at him.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah this is what most skilled skulks do, i can usually kill 1-2 marines that come firing blindly at a res node and waste a full clip to give me a chance to attack them. But in many situations you can't put the res node between yourself and the door, and i just resort to circling the darn thing so my hitbox is always moving.
I don't know how to fix it, but i do know other games handle it somewhat better, or feel like they do.
<!--quoteo(post=2049781:date=Dec 22 2012, 04:27 AM:name=Feha)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Feha @ Dec 22 2012, 04:27 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2049781"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->For #2, I honestly don't see the issue. A marine cant win 1v3 against skulks who perform a coordinated ambush (until they come with armor 3, shotty, good aim and extreme luck), and if they are coming down a hallway well within his sight, I feel he is <i>expected</i> to have a chance to survive. Skulks also have far superior mobility, and can strike at a squad several times before they reach their objective (even if it isnt towards their spawn), which is much harder for marines to do against a squad of skulks.
But yes, its a cause of #3. Changing the balance for this is not the way to solve #3 though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Marines don't need changes, i was listing the problem that caused egglock in the first place. Had some enemy marines going 7/0 and it was so frustrating 2 minutes into the game, i ended up buying a shift and wasting our res keeping map control, and we lost because i couldn't get a second hive down. It's just GOOD players are causing egglock, and i don't have tools to deal with egglock and i need to deal with egglock to kill good players.
Good points otherwise, but as stated the game really isn't meant for 12v12's. They shouldn't be taken seriously.
Good points otherwise, but as stated the game really isn't meant for 12v12's. They shouldn't be taken seriously.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The day they fix gorge spit, It will be perceived as even more imba than camo.
I mean, it does 40 damage, has quite a fire rate and needs very little adrenaline.
As I have a PhD in gorgeology I look forward to this fixed spit but the hate will be quite strong...
However, its probably one of the weapons that is least affected by latency or performance issues, in fact, if everyone has the same issues, it gets even more powerful. This is because you don't really aim anyway, since it due to other issues "cant" hit. Instead I just fire away, hoping for the best. Tends to do the trick pretty well, and any hit I do slows them down so my teammates kill them easily (or is the spit slowing removed now?).
Also you say other games don't feel as bad, I would say that there is some pretty obvious reasons.
First of all, in other games, when does a player stand still? This is an issue pretty unique to fps/rts hybrids and king of the hill games on certain map designs.
You might also notice that many other games often makes it harder to kill enemies, where playing with high latency means you need to do insane target-leading and predict what they will do.
Or sometimes the graphics of a target is actually ahead of where he really is, based on your latency, and if he makes a turn, you will see the player change direction with a funky speedup (or teleport) that is hard to perceive due to it being a turn + low fps anyway. At higher latencies this might be really noticeable though.
Some games, having high latency, means players start warping (prediction assumes he moves same direction when he really dodges a lot, and has to be corrected over and over), and you have to fire at where you suspect he dodged to, while being fooled by your clients prediction.
I know some other games have a similar approach to ns2, and those are the games where you can die after rounding a corner. I think at least one COD title does this, but I never rly played them, just heard ppl rant about it.
<b>1. Don't play 12v12.</b> The game's sweet spot is clearly 6v6 to 10v10.
<i>Responses:</i>
<b>1. Delay:</b> This happened in every multiplayer FPS you ever played. Find servers where players don't have 200+ ms ping and you'll be exactly as aware of this trait of multiplayer gaming as you have been in the past (ie you'll be blissfully <i>unaware </i>of it.)
<b>2a. Eggs: </b>This is not a tough fix and <i>should </i>be addressed by the dev team. Basically the more players there are the faster the default egg spawn should be.
<b>2b. Cysts: </b>The lower the population, the worse the cyst population should be. Compared with a 12-marine team, 6 marines build half as fast and 3 marines build a quarter as fast -- and yet aliens have a constant build speed throughout. Some tweak to cysts and/or alien build speed needs to happen to nudge things towards balance in smaller or larger games.
<b>3a. Power Nodes:</b> Not really a massive problem, especially lately as several particularly weak nodes have been moved to stronger locations (Docking). If this were addressed at all it should be done via the Portable Batteries I heard someone mention which could only power 1 building. If priced correctly (8-10 res), these could add an interesting strategic choice for commanders.
<b>3b. Marine Holdouts:</b> But let's face it, marines holding out on 1-tech point is actually way too durable compared to aliens right now, and they honestly don't need the massive help this would be to them (either that or let aliens be similarly resilient at 1 tech point.) And if marine holdouts are rough in the servers I play on (not 12v12 servers) then you of all people should understand
<b>4. ARCs:</b> If you let the enemy team acquire that many resources you've lost already -- we shouldn't create specialized rules for teams who lost the game already and want the way they lost to be nerfed.
<b>5. Bilebomb is a game-ender. </b> It is, and it needs to be. It's fine. If you leave your nodes undefended and don't keep pressure or coverage of some sort on each major base, you're going to be in trouble -- so don't play bad by doing that!
<b>1. Delay:</b> This happened in every multiplayer FPS you ever played. Find servers where players don't have 200+ ms ping and you'll be exactly as aware of this trait of multiplayer gaming as you have been in the past (ie you'll be blissfully <i>unaware </i>of it.)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Bull######. This happens on servers where everyone has 50 ping or less just as much. At 200+, people are literally warping.
It's disgusting how far around a corner you can be and still be killed, and it happens all the time. Peeking around corners can often just mean instant death. The other day I jumped up to get a look over something, landed back on the ground, and then was gunned down by the guy on the other side a full second later. I was 100% without a doubt entirely behind the object.
To a lesser extent, I've made kills where I missed a shot as someone quickly rounds a corner on my screen and killed them regardless. I've also been killed a few times in this way, with my opponents even calling it out as bull###### in chat telling me I had made it around the corner on their screen as well.
#1 is huge.
<b>3a. Power Nodes:</b> Not really a massive problem, especially lately as several particularly weak nodes have been moved to stronger locations (Docking). If this were addressed at all it should be done via the Portable Batteries I heard someone mention which could only power 1 building. If priced correctly (8-10 res), these could add an interesting strategic choice for commanders.
<b>3b. Marine Holdouts:</b> But let's face it, marines holding out on 1-tech point is actually way too durable compared to aliens right now, and they honestly don't need the massive help this would be to them (either that or let aliens be similarly resilient at 1 tech point.) And if marine holdouts are rough in the servers I play on (not 12v12 servers) then you of all people should understand
<b>5. Bilebomb is a game-ender. </b> It is, and it needs to be. It's fine. If you leave your nodes undefended and don't keep pressure or coverage of some sort on each major base, you're going to be in trouble -- so don't play bad by doing that!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3a +5: I think power nodes are too weak in Tech points as well Bilebomb is too strong against these nodes. Just played a game where 2 or 3 gorges killed our base node within a ridiculous short amount of time. And it was not at the end but rather in the middle of a good, evenly balanced game. Cara gorges take quite some bullets and I cant imagine the current way of bilebomb ending many otherwise even games within seconds is really intended by the devs.
This probably also is a problem of size of a game. With 6v6 its easier to prevent a 2 or even 3 gorge rush on a power node, simply because this means 2/3 or even 1/2 of the alien team including the commander have to participate which means good parts of the map are not defended in the mean time.
With 10v10, 2 or 3 gorges missing is not that big of a deal in terms of mapcontrol and winning/loosing fights.
This means on a 6v6 a 3 gorge rush on power is a High-Risk High-Reward kind of move. With 10v10 or 12v12 even its is a Low-Risk High-Reward move.
3b: I remember some crazy holdouts in ns_veil or ns_eclipse in NS1. compared to these games in NS2 end rather quick because of Power Node.
Maybe a good Idea would be to make power nodes in tech points considerably stronger but give aliens a 4th Hive ability which is really good against power nodes and therefor can act as a game ender without ruining so many good games too early like bile does atm.
I would urge you however to stay away from 12v12. It's an inferior experience, the game isn't balanced around it. We need more people playing 6v6-10v10, preferably 8v8. Too many people play 12v12 because those are the servers with the most people, they don't realize the game isn't meant to play with that many people.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem I have with 12/14/16 man server is once you roll the other team (it's bound to happen when you're generally just better), if just one or two people quit, they've literally lost the game due to that. It makes a huge difference. In a 24 man, however...
It'll boost your fps 20+<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If this is the long awaited secret to being able to run NS2 I'll fall to my knees. I'll bite, I'm actually going to put the effort into trying this. I doubt it would do anything, but what the heck.
People like the bigger servers. It's been this way since the very beginning of NS1. I am so tired of this "6 v 6" stuff. Only competitive players like to play 6 v 6, and if you go online right now - on a Saturday no less - I can count on one hand the number of active 6 v 6 servers there are. (empty or not)
Public players don't want to play 6 v 6. <b>They just don't.</b> Some will play 8v8, but most like bigger servers. Why?
#1: A player on a large server has less of an impact on the game. On a 6v6 server all it takes is one sub-optimal player to doom the whole team. In larger games that doesn't happen. That single player doesn't feel the individual pressure anymore.
#2: It's more fun. People like combat and interaction between players, and you don't get that nearly as much in smaller games. There is more 'action' on larger servers. Combat around every corner.
#3: The smaller games are much more competitive. People can crow all they like about 6v6, but that style of play is of interest to only one group of players, and that's competitive players. People don't want to feel like they are playing in a match game when they just logged on for a quick and fun game. If competitive players like playing 6v6, then go for it. Just don't force the rest of the players to subscribe to that point of view.
There is one thing you learn fast in business, and that is to <b>give the customer what they want</b>.
If you don't, then someone else will.
2) Skilled marines will always have the advantage over skulks because they have ranged weaponry, and a good one will bounce around killing skulks left and right until 3 or more get a very good ambush.
3) I will never consider egg locking legitimate. Marines win by shooting eggs the moment they spawn while they are very squishy. This means you can't even attempt a defense, and it leads to extremely frustrating gameplay. It's a lot harder to do the same to marine because of how much longer it takes to kill an IP. It was even harder before they removed the pushback when someone spawned or came through a phase gate (which was removed because of skulks going so fast they actually traveled back in time and viciously attacked the folks at UWE who were forced to fight back with kitchen knives and tongs). It wasn't as bad before the Shift nerf (which happened because some of us [I promise I didn't do this, even though I am blatantly lying] went and put a wall of whips and crags up with a shift or two in the back spawning hundreds of eggs right next to the marine bases).
I don't like eggs, and I'd rather have the spawn wave be a timer until the hive spits out the eggs that will hatch into aliens. Then the aliens would have their second or two before they pop out, but they'd all spawn at once, and no egg lock would stop them. That doesn't stop the eggs from being killed before they hatch, but it gives aliens a chance. EDIT: This would mean Shifts would act as a limited spawn front, only capable of spawning a couple of aliens each wave, or perhaps every other wave.
4) I completely agree with the command station [The chair, as I call it from my beloved NS1 days] being able to power its own infantry portals. I would also agree with making the sentry battery a battery for a couple of buildings (but not a phase gate). And I definitely support aliens being able to turn the power off. [We have alien vision for a reason.]
5) ARCs definitely should not be able to deploy on infestation. Hell, I'd rather have them as ye olde siege turret. At least then you'd know when they were coming and could focus your attention before they suddenly showed up unannounced to the party and started wrecking you.
6) I will hold on to the hope that Gorges will be more like NS1 Gorges... but until that day, I just want the spit fixed so that it can be nerfed into pointlessness.
If you don't, then someone else will.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This only makes sense from a bussiness perspective, to sell as much copies as possible. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll make for a good game. If you want to create something special, in certain cases you'll just have to swim upstream and give players what you think is best, and not what they want. If you don't, then everything would end up being thesame thing. See also: generic modern warfare shooters.
It reminds me for instance of the 64 player Metro only servers in BF3. Those are, or at least were at the time I still played BF3, the most popular servers. So, a game which main draw used to be vehicle warfare on large open maps got reduced to an infantry only underground chokepoint spamfest, because that's what people wanted, and then the players on those servers started complaining the incessant nade spam was a problem that needed fixing.
Anyway, not saying you shouldn't play on a 12vs12 NS2 server. Just saying I agree that 12vs12 is not an ideal playercount for this game and actually make some of the problems OP listed worse.
Other than that, the OP makes some good points. Although I strongly disagree skulks are at a disadvantage when engaging marines early game.
It's less of a problem once you have two hives, but getting there can be a pain. This isn't to say that <i>every</i> 12v12 game leads to egg lock, it's just that it's so easy for it to happen. Even one repeatedly dying player, which is likely in 12v12, will eventually eat all your eggs. If there are two death prone skulks? Oof.
<!--quoteo(post=2049855:date=Dec 22 2012, 12:09 PM:name=Savant)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Savant @ Dec 22 2012, 12:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2049855"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How about we let people decide how they want to have fun instead of TELLING them that 'your way' is the only way to have fun?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think he was just talking about how the game isn't intended to be balanced around 12v12. Sure people will still join a big server, but there is no denying it isn't as balanced as it could be. A badly balanced 12v12 game won't be 'fun' for a lot of people since some of the mechanics will fight you more effectively than the other team will.
If people love playing on big servers, why would anyone say "no we don't want to give you that."...? It makes no sense to me.
Do larger servers change the dynamic of the game? Of course they do. But that's what people are going to those servers for. There is a reason why all the biggest servers are constantly full and all the smallest ones are empty. Seeing as the players have 'voted with their feet' why would anyone try and force a square peg into a round hole?
Video games are a business first. Without cashflow there is no development, and if there is no development there is no game. This is why many of us did special 'pre-orders' which were really investments into the game. They needed that capital to move forward. To continue to move forward they need to keep selling copies. If people who want to play the game like larger servers, then by God let's give it to them. It's not like they're asking for lerks to carry an Onos around the map.
I just scratch my head when I hear some people suggest we should 'force' people to play on smaller servers. (others have actually asked to have the game coded to prevent larger servers from being run) Sometimes I think some people forget who the customer is here.
Ok, I'll bite.
I don't think anyone is suggesting to 'force' players into anything. If someone is, it's probably for the new players own good. If you see a friend of yours repeatedly jamming a knife into his leg, are you going to point out to him that if it hurts maybe he should stop? People complain about a lot of difference facets of large servers, precisely because large servers were not a thing the game was 'designed' around. I think it should be the server admins job to come up with a mod to support his <i>already poor decision</i> in creating a server that supports more players than the rule set intends, while changing nothing in a game that touts it's modability.
You can't blame the developers for the actions of independent server owners making <i>a choice</i> that results in some servers being imbalanced at their core. The players are guilty of this too. It's not UWE's fault that this is happening, although ignoring it is a pretty big mistake too at the end of the day.
This is, again, something an alternate rule set <i>or even a tweak to the existing rule set</i> would fix.
I guess the question UWE should ask themselves is if they're willing to adjust the 'official' game code for the actions of a few rogue server admins. I'm guessing the answer is no, since there has been nothing but dead silence on this issue since the Shift had a cool down and cost increase slapped onto it. (Which was the only in-game solution to low egg spawns on one hive in large servers. Admittedly, this was broken in other situations, but it was a 'fix' as Alien commander for what Server admins put in place.)
EDIT:
Remember that server that had like a 60 or a 100 player max? It's a more extreme example, but there is <i>no way</i> UWE should be on the hook for supporting that type of lunacy. 12v12 is a full four extra people <i>per team</i> than the game was 'balanced' for.
It'll boost your fps 20+<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
well that was an hour spent achieving absolutely nothing. Oh well.
I see you talking about poor performance a lot, now that I think about it. I'd suggest making a Technical Support topic with your computer and GPU spec's and seeing if someone there can give you a hand. It's possible your rig can't be tweaked, but it's also possible there's a fix.
I remember what it was like playing a sub-standard system and trying any tweak I could to get games I wanted to run. Hopefully there's a solution for you!
It's disgusting how far around a corner you can be and still be killed, and it happens all the time. Peeking around corners can often just mean instant death. The other day I jumped up to get a look over something, landed back on the ground, and then was gunned down by the guy on the other side a full second later. I was 100% without a doubt entirely behind the object.
To a lesser extent, I've made kills where I missed a shot as someone quickly rounds a corner on my screen and killed them regardless. I've also been killed a few times in this way, with my opponents even calling it out as bull###### in chat telling me I had made it around the corner on their screen as well.
#1 is huge.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When people literally warp it's typically because their computers are terrible. That's one aspect of NS2's netcode which genuinely <i>does </i>need fixing. Instead of smoothly translating between locations (even though they'd be wobbly and rubberbandy) their location instantly snaps to a location a few feet away.
Personally I don't experience the delay you mention at all, so it's also possible that experiencing the delay only happens on poor computers.
This probably also is a problem of size of a game. With 6v6 its easier to prevent a 2 or even 3 gorge rush on a power node, simply because this means 2/3 or even 1/2 of the alien team including the commander have to participate which means good parts of the map are not defended in the mean time.
With 10v10, 2 or 3 gorges missing is not that big of a deal in terms of mapcontrol and winning/loosing fights.
This means on a 6v6 a 3 gorge rush on power is a High-Risk High-Reward kind of move. With 10v10 or 12v12 even its is a Low-Risk High-Reward move.
3b: I remember some crazy holdouts in ns_veil or ns_eclipse in NS1. compared to these games in NS2 end rather quick because of Power Node.
Maybe a good Idea would be to make power nodes in tech points considerably stronger but give aliens a 4th Hive ability which is really good against power nodes and therefor can act as a game ender without ruining so many good games too early like bile does atm.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's not as much against the designers' intent as you portray it. After all you're talking about the marines themselves, either intentionally or incompetently, choosing a high-risk playstyle. A playstyle where they don't keep a constant push extending from their tech points which would spot an incoming gorge push with enough time. A playstyle where they don't beacon or have the observatory placed in a location to see the attack coming in time to react.
Just because unreasonable holdouts might have been worse in NS1 wouldn't really rationalize them being too long in NS2, nor contradict the point that there's a vast difference in 1-hive power between aliens and marines (which would actually solve quite a few issues if it was improved, possibly paving the way for power nodes to be made stronger.)
That's pretty much it.
If your friend jabs his knife into his leg and doesn't complain of the pain, there's no problem.
It's when your friend jabs his knife into his leg and complains of the pain that you have to point out the obvious, "Stop doing that."
Think of it this way. If a game told you that you couldn't play with anyone from your Steam friends list, would you think it was being done 'for your own good', or would you think 'I'm going to take my cash and walk'?
This is why we already have a combat mod. People *like* that style of play. So why not give it to them? If it keeps them coming back and then they bring their friends, doesn't that improve the game?
Steam is filled with THOUSANDS of games. Literally thousands. They all want to get their hands on the limited number of gamer dollars. Why in the world would anyone want to do *anything* that would in any way diminish the enjoyment of the game for a large chunk of the playerbase?
I want NS2 to succeed. It's why I've given out eight copies. It's why I mention it with people who I think will buy it. For NS2 to succeed they need to make their customers happy. In NS1 that didn't apply since it was a free mod. In such a case people get what they pay for. However, when you want to extract cash from a wallet, you had best be considering what the players want.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I guess the question UWE should ask themselves is if they're willing to adjust the 'official' game code for the actions of a few rogue server admins.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Not rogue and hardly a few. I did just a scan of the servers, and there are ~40 servers that are at or above 18 players. It represents 2/3rds of the people playing NS2 right now.
Rogue? What about Voogru? He's an ex-developer from NS1, and he's the reason why you can get health when you walk up to an armory. (It was his server mod that put this feature in the game first, before it was 'adopted' into the game) He runs two 18 player servers. Then you have gaming sites like Team156 and NS2-FR who each run ~10 servers, all at/above the 18 player mark.
A minority of players play on 16 player (or less) servers. Hit up the server browser and see for yourself. Sort by player count and you'll see just how many larger servers there are - most all of them FULL all the time.
The players have spoken.
It's about time we start listening.
Rogue? What about Voogru? He's an ex-developer from NS1, and he's the reason why you can get health when you walk up to an armory. (It was his server mod that put this feature in the game first, before it was 'adopted' into the game) He runs two 18 player servers. Then you have gaming sites like Team156 and NS2-FR who each run ~10 servers, all at/above the 18 player mark.
A minority of players play on 16 player (or less) servers. Hit up the server browser and see for yourself. Sort by player count and you'll see just how many larger servers there are - most all of them FULL all the time.
The players have spoken.
It's about time we start listening.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Good points, and I tend to agree with you. However, what moving target of server size do you want it balanced for? You could completely redo the game and base things off a 32 player server, and a lot of people might like that better, but is it UWE's job to balance that or the server admins that are doing something that they <i>already know</i> is going to be more or less imbalanced than the vanilla game?
Talking about how Voogru is responsible for healing armories backs up my point pretty well. If these admins wanted to, they are <i>more</i> than capable of, say, increasing the egg timer on their servers. It's a hidden metric anyway, and is easily changed to adjust the spawn timer to be roughly the same as a 16 person server.
You can argue they shouldn't have to, that's quite possible and I'd tend to agree with that too. Since that isn't likely to happen soon if ever, why aren't these servers implementing their own 'large server' balance patch?
Either they think it isn't needed, or they can't be bothered. NS2 is infinitely friendly to modded servers, you don't even need to pre-download a mod to play on a modded server. (Although a custom map might take a bit to download. Not a good way around that it seems.)