why is the drifter not in the area you are attacking its there for scouting
You're missing the point. The khammander can't continuously move drifters around for every single alien in every single room it enters. While the commander can instantly put nanoshield on any marine anywhere on the map.
But equally missing the point, enzyme can be used to get through buildings very fast in the absence of marines, freeing up your players to move quickly to the next target, in addition to being used in combat. Nanoshield is totally useless in the absence of aliens, and Godlike, in the right hands, in their presence.
I hate pulling the asymmetry card (especially as a crystallographer - I like symmetry!), but in this case there is a clear asymmetry in the potential usage, mechanism, and effect of nanoshield and enzyme. They do different things, can be used differently, and I like that.
Keen to try out the new changes in the flesh: it's the only way to see what works and what doesn't.
why is the drifter not in the area you are attacking its there for scouting
You're missing the point. The khammander can't continuously move drifters around for every single alien in every single room it enters. While the commander can instantly put nanoshield on any marine anywhere on the map.
But equally missing the point, enzyme can be used to get through buildings very fast in the absence of marines, freeing up your players to move quickly to the next target, in addition to being used in combat. Nanoshield is totally useless in the absence of aliens, and Godlike, in the right hands, in their presence.
I hate pulling the asymmetry card (especially as a crystallographer - I like symmetry!), but in this case there is a clear asymmetry in the potential usage, mechanism, and effect of nanoshield and enzyme. They do different things, can be used differently, and I like that.
Keen to try out the new changes in the flesh: it's the only way to see what works and what doesn't.
Roo
You're absolutely right. Enzyme and nanoshield are used differently. That's why I think enzyme will never be a proper counter for nanoshield.
On Alien Respawn:
After playing a scrim with the new changes I am impressed in how it works in 6v6 play. But I don't think I'll be playing 24p servers as Alien if the respawn rate works the same in higher-populated servers.
Is there going to be something implemented that scales back the respawn time in larger servers? Or servers with more active players? Failing that being able to see how long I have until I spawn would be nice...So I can go and get a drink when I have to wait 45 seconds for respawn.
Not commanding and being limited to just 1 scrim at the moment I can't really comment on the other changes.
Shift 15 res is definitely justified.
Crag 15 res... ok, but expensive. The limited heal stack might have been enough.
Shade 15 res is steep. They should get a bit more HP in exchange, given that they are only good for Ink and are a prime target in a base attack (unlike a Shift or Crag).
So we are back to the point, where there will be no support buildings until upgrades are finished? That are exactly the costs the buildings had when nobody used them until late-game.
Yes, aliens need higher costs for their economy. But not for support buildings. For upgrades! They even need more tech-buildings and upgrades to spend res into to increase the cost for their economy. But not a higher cost on support buildings.
Yep, 5-th skulk should wait 35 seconds before respawn. But with 2 hives, there will be 2 skulks respawns every 7 second.
So you are sure about this? You tested it? The wording in the description is really misleading. If you are right, spawn-times of > 30 seconds will frustrate every alien player (as if losing that fade wasn't frustrating enough) and it will simply kill every server with >= 20 players. If you are wrong, you should stop making stuff up.
Nanoshield stops 50% incoming damage -> should also stop 50% of incoming heal -> Medpacks need to be spammed faster and cost more res to fully heal a nanoshielded marine. And maybe make Nanoshield depend on having an online Power Node in that room for whatever reason (nanites can't do their work good enough without having a link to the power grid).
Wasn't it 75% damage reduction? Anyway, the easiest way to fix it would be to decrease it to 25% but keep the current timings. Invincibility is bad. It should be a slight buff instead.
So we are back to the point, where there will be no support buildings until upgrades are finished? That are exactly the costs the buildings had when nobody used them until late-game.
Exactly, sometimes it really feels like UWE is just going in circles when it comes to balance.
I agree that its a disaster to increase the cost of shifts and shades, makes no sense as shifts are already damn expensive once you've made a few eggs and shades are already bad as is.
Nanoshield is useless on terrible marines, and disgustingly overpowered on good marines
Then it has no business being in the game. Changing nanoshield's duration doesn't change the POWER of the mechanic. If it is overpowered, then it's overpowered no matter how long it lasts - be it 4 seconds or 8. In that case - if it really is 'broken' in the eyes of the developers - then it should be removed, completely.
Nanoshield is useless on terrible marines, and disgustingly overpowered on good marines
Then it has no business being in the game. Changing nanoshield's duration doesn't change the POWER of the mechanic. If it is overpowered, then it's overpowered no matter how long it lasts - be it 4 seconds or 8. In that case - if it really is 'broken' in the eyes of the developers - then it should be removed, completely.
60 sec cd to prevent spamming, 35% damage reduction instead of 50% to make it less effective, but not useless. 8 sec duration. Simple as that.
If only everything would be so simple that a single change would fix all the problems of the game! The truth is things have to be taken one step at the time and I feel like this is a good first step forward.
Lets remember this is a test build, so this build might be made to see how the changes feel before moving to step 2. It will be easy to skip these changes if they cause any issues.
But this is my take on these changes:
The increased spawn timer for both teams will give more emphasis on strategy and tactical part of the game. It will make each life more valuable giving more reward to teams that use welders or forward gorges helping to keep the team alive.
The reason for removing the wave spawn is to give more control freedom over the spawn system. The wave spawn has not worked really well up to now in coordination with the egg system. By changing the system players will always be able to spawn and it should be rare that aliens actually have a egglock scenarios. The new values also are much easier to control and easier to scale if needed.
The alien commander still lacks things to spend tres on and it does not take much for him to get to overflow. The chamber changes are probably just the first of many that will be coming for the alien commander. The future goal should be so that the alien commander will have plenty of choices and has to really think what he spends his tres on. At the same time allow him to be little bit more interactive with his teammates to encourage communication between the commander and the players. Again first step of many.
The Increased marine upgrade cost is required to help create a bigger mid game in natural selection. Even if the marine team is having trouble holding resources they can still manage to get 3-2 tech even while dropping medpacks. By increasing the researched cost marines will have to value their resources a little bit and be more careful with their medpacks. Again these changes need to be added in slowly and to both team simultaneously.
Nano shield decrease has been needed for a while now. Nanoshields have a huge impact in fights in ns2 and 8 sec duration was simply way too much. Commanders will now be forced to think a little bit more before using their nanoshield with increased cooldown and lowered duration.
Even 4 sec duration is more than enough to win marines the fight. It easily gives a shotgun marines a chance to shoot 4 shots which is enough to kill 2 fades in a fight. Even with 4 sec duration I could see it be to powerful with 3 tres cost.
I think it will be interesting to see where the balance build is going, I'm sure we are going to see more steps in the process. But continued feedback is always good.
About the shift egg spawning, I think the idea behind the system is that you don't need shifts in larger games since you will always have plenty of eggs anyway.
So your miracle fix for marine balance is to place an uber-turret in every room? And make aliens great at turtling too while we're at it? Overly defensive and passive play is one of the most fundamental mistakes that new players make in NS2, born out of their insecurity in fighting out on the field. Making it the correct strategy is not the answer.
Nanoshield is useless on terrible marines, and disgustingly overpowered on good marines
Then it has no business being in the game. Changing nanoshield's duration doesn't change the POWER of the mechanic. If it is overpowered, then it's overpowered no matter how long it lasts - be it 4 seconds or 8. In that case - if it really is 'broken' in the eyes of the developers - then it should be removed, completely.
Critical thinking exercise:
How powerful is nanoshield if it lasts 0.5 seconds? How powerful is nanoshield if it lasts 60 seconds? Now consider: does duration of the ability impact how powerful it is?
Overly defensive and passive play is one of the most fundamental mistakes that new players make in NS2, born out of their insecurity in fighting out on the field. Making it the correct strategy is not the answer.
I strongly disagree. Game design should be, foremost, intuitive. If players will intuitively play defensively as Marines, then the solution is not to try and force them to be hyper-aggressive (because they won't).
Overly defensive and passive play is one of the most fundamental mistakes that new players make in NS2, born out of their insecurity in fighting out on the field. Making it the correct strategy is not the answer.
I strongly disagree. Game design should be, foremost, intuitive. If players will intuitively play defensively as Marines, then the solution is not to try and force them to be hyper-aggressive (because they won't).
The solution is to make aggressive play more intuitive and/or more beginner friendly. In this case players don't know what's good for them - a game that favors defensive marines will not be fun to play.
>Each target can only be healed by maximum by 2 Crags each tick
Is this not one of those "hidden rules" that UWE is always saying they will avoid even when it is detrimental to the game? Does this mean we can have other "hidden rules" that could help balance the game now?
>Each target can only be healed by maximum by 2 Crags each tick
Is this not one of those "hidden rules" that UWE is always saying they will avoid even when it is detrimental to the game? Does this mean we can have other "hidden rules" that could help balance the game now?
Well there has to be some limit(it was 3 before). It's either this or they have proximity restrictions on dropping crags, which hinders the comm's ability to build backups and is generally annoying.
>Each target can only be healed by maximum by 2 Crags each tick
Is this not one of those "hidden rules" that UWE is always saying they will avoid even when it is detrimental to the game? Does this mean we can have other "hidden rules" that could help balance the game now?
Well there has to be some limit(it was 3 before). It's either this or they have proximity restrictions on dropping crags, which hinders the comm's ability to build backups and is generally annoying.
Yes, there has to be some limit. But an obvious / intuitive one would be better.
How: You can't place crags in the heal radius x2 of another crag. Or simpler: The heal-radius of 2 crags can never collide. This is easy to communicate to the player by the UI and it is a hard cap, that reduces building spam. (=good for server performance)
Sure, you would need to change the healing-rate of one crag to account the cap of 1 crag per healing target. But this isn't that difficult.
>Each target can only be healed by maximum by 2 Crags each tick
Is this not one of those "hidden rules" that UWE is always saying they will avoid even when it is detrimental to the game? Does this mean we can have other "hidden rules" that could help balance the game now?
Well there has to be some limit(it was 3 before). It's either this or they have proximity restrictions on dropping crags, which hinders the comm's ability to build backups and is generally annoying.
The point was why are some hidden rules okay while other hidden rules not considered on the basis that it is not intuitive to new players? Things like aliens scaling with the number of hives they have.
>Each target can only be healed by maximum by 2 Crags each tick
Is this not one of those "hidden rules" that UWE is always saying they will avoid even when it is detrimental to the game? Does this mean we can have other "hidden rules" that could help balance the game now?
Well there has to be some limit(it was 3 before). It's either this or they have proximity restrictions on dropping crags, which hinders the comm's ability to build backups and is generally annoying.
The point was why are some hidden rules okay while other hidden rules not considered on the basis that it is not intuitive to new players? Things like aliens scaling with the number of hives they have.
There's nothing wrong with hidden rules when they make sense. What's important is not becoming overly dependent on them. There's a temptation to fix every problem with the simplest possible hidden modifier that I think leads to sloppy game design and inflates the game's complexity. For instance, if marine turtling is a problem, one fix would be to give Bile Bomb double damage when the 4th hive goes up. That resolves the issue quickly enough, but every time you do something like that it's adding to the list of hidden rules that everybody has to memorize. It's not something anyone could reasonably deduce without being told, since none of the other hives have automatic passive benefits. In general, new complexity is a bad thing for any game and should only be added when it's clearly the best available solution.
To do the crag thingey, they could display a radius when building crags and simply not allow them to be grouped too close.
As for spawn changes, I'm all for it. The fast respawn was the one thing that was causing a lot of frustration for me (if you are losing a game, you spawn, die, spawn die in fast succession and that's "no fun").
The nano changes are interesting, but the mechanic of saving a powernode by nanoshielding it would be pointless. I suggest different durations for buildings and marines (and exos). If no more than 3 aliens try to ninja a base and the commander reacts immidieatly, nanoshields the power/obs (whatever is attacked) and beacons, he should be able to save the base.
A rule that a third or forth crag will have no effect healing a player isn't something someone would figure out without being told either.
Technically no, but most players will think to ask "do crags stack with eachother?" and if the answer is "yes but only two of them" then that's pretty straightforward. It would be simpler if they didn't stack at all but that has other effects on balance. Different weapons doing different damage types is another reasonably common mechanic in games even though it's a hidden rule. Compared to something like the 4th hive bile bomb that no one would even think to consider until they eventually happen to hear about it, it's just not the same.
You are the one to make up a rule about forth hive bile bomb, something like armor scaling with the number of hives would be just as intuitive and if a player can actually see their armor value changing it isn't even hidden.
Yes and you're the one to bring up alien armor scaling. I don't have a problem with that as far as hidden systems go but there are other reasons not to do it. For instance it ties aliens even more strongly to their hive count than before, and doesn't require anything from their economy unlike marine upgrades.
Comments
I hate pulling the asymmetry card (especially as a crystallographer - I like symmetry!), but in this case there is a clear asymmetry in the potential usage, mechanism, and effect of nanoshield and enzyme. They do different things, can be used differently, and I like that.
Keen to try out the new changes in the flesh: it's the only way to see what works and what doesn't.
Roo
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/128218/altbalance-by-stepahead
You're absolutely right. Enzyme and nanoshield are used differently. That's why I think enzyme will never be a proper counter for nanoshield.
After playing a scrim with the new changes I am impressed in how it works in 6v6 play. But I don't think I'll be playing 24p servers as Alien if the respawn rate works the same in higher-populated servers.
Is there going to be something implemented that scales back the respawn time in larger servers? Or servers with more active players? Failing that being able to see how long I have until I spawn would be nice...So I can go and get a drink when I have to wait 45 seconds for respawn.
Not commanding and being limited to just 1 scrim at the moment I can't really comment on the other changes.
Yes, aliens need higher costs for their economy. But not for support buildings. For upgrades! They even need more tech-buildings and upgrades to spend res into to increase the cost for their economy. But not a higher cost on support buildings. So you are sure about this? You tested it? The wording in the description is really misleading. If you are right, spawn-times of > 30 seconds will frustrate every alien player (as if losing that fade wasn't frustrating enough) and it will simply kill every server with >= 20 players. If you are wrong, you should stop making stuff up. Wasn't it 75% damage reduction? Anyway, the easiest way to fix it would be to decrease it to 25% but keep the current timings. Invincibility is bad. It should be a slight buff instead. In your mod, marines can't lose if they spam sentries at every tech point.
Exactly, sometimes it really feels like UWE is just going in circles when it comes to balance.
60 sec cd to prevent spamming, 35% damage reduction instead of 50% to make it less effective, but not useless. 8 sec duration. Simple as that.
Lets remember this is a test build, so this build might be made to see how the changes feel before moving to step 2. It will be easy to skip these changes if they cause any issues.
But this is my take on these changes:
The increased spawn timer for both teams will give more emphasis on strategy and tactical part of the game. It will make each life more valuable giving more reward to teams that use welders or forward gorges helping to keep the team alive.
The reason for removing the wave spawn is to give more control freedom over the spawn system. The wave spawn has not worked really well up to now in coordination with the egg system. By changing the system players will always be able to spawn and it should be rare that aliens actually have a egglock scenarios. The new values also are much easier to control and easier to scale if needed.
The alien commander still lacks things to spend tres on and it does not take much for him to get to overflow. The chamber changes are probably just the first of many that will be coming for the alien commander. The future goal should be so that the alien commander will have plenty of choices and has to really think what he spends his tres on. At the same time allow him to be little bit more interactive with his teammates to encourage communication between the commander and the players. Again first step of many.
The Increased marine upgrade cost is required to help create a bigger mid game in natural selection. Even if the marine team is having trouble holding resources they can still manage to get 3-2 tech even while dropping medpacks. By increasing the researched cost marines will have to value their resources a little bit and be more careful with their medpacks. Again these changes need to be added in slowly and to both team simultaneously.
Nano shield decrease has been needed for a while now. Nanoshields have a huge impact in fights in ns2 and 8 sec duration was simply way too much. Commanders will now be forced to think a little bit more before using their nanoshield with increased cooldown and lowered duration.
Even 4 sec duration is more than enough to win marines the fight. It easily gives a shotgun marines a chance to shoot 4 shots which is enough to kill 2 fades in a fight. Even with 4 sec duration I could see it be to powerful with 3 tres cost.
I think it will be interesting to see where the balance build is going, I'm sure we are going to see more steps in the process. But continued feedback is always good.
About the shift egg spawning, I think the idea behind the system is that you don't need shifts in larger games since you will always have plenty of eggs anyway.
So your miracle fix for marine balance is to place an uber-turret in every room? And make aliens great at turtling too while we're at it? Overly defensive and passive play is one of the most fundamental mistakes that new players make in NS2, born out of their insecurity in fighting out on the field. Making it the correct strategy is not the answer.
Critical thinking exercise:
How powerful is nanoshield if it lasts 0.5 seconds? How powerful is nanoshield if it lasts 60 seconds? Now consider: does duration of the ability impact how powerful it is?
I strongly disagree. Game design should be, foremost, intuitive. If players will intuitively play defensively as Marines, then the solution is not to try and force them to be hyper-aggressive (because they won't).
The solution is to make aggressive play more intuitive and/or more beginner friendly. In this case players don't know what's good for them - a game that favors defensive marines will not be fun to play.
Is this not one of those "hidden rules" that UWE is always saying they will avoid even when it is detrimental to the game? Does this mean we can have other "hidden rules" that could help balance the game now?
Well there has to be some limit(it was 3 before). It's either this or they have proximity restrictions on dropping crags, which hinders the comm's ability to build backups and is generally annoying.
How: You can't place crags in the heal radius x2 of another crag. Or simpler: The heal-radius of 2 crags can never collide. This is easy to communicate to the player by the UI and it is a hard cap, that reduces building spam. (=good for server performance)
Sure, you would need to change the healing-rate of one crag to account the cap of 1 crag per healing target. But this isn't that difficult.
The point was why are some hidden rules okay while other hidden rules not considered on the basis that it is not intuitive to new players? Things like aliens scaling with the number of hives they have.
There's nothing wrong with hidden rules when they make sense. What's important is not becoming overly dependent on them. There's a temptation to fix every problem with the simplest possible hidden modifier that I think leads to sloppy game design and inflates the game's complexity. For instance, if marine turtling is a problem, one fix would be to give Bile Bomb double damage when the 4th hive goes up. That resolves the issue quickly enough, but every time you do something like that it's adding to the list of hidden rules that everybody has to memorize. It's not something anyone could reasonably deduce without being told, since none of the other hives have automatic passive benefits. In general, new complexity is a bad thing for any game and should only be added when it's clearly the best available solution.
As for spawn changes, I'm all for it. The fast respawn was the one thing that was causing a lot of frustration for me (if you are losing a game, you spawn, die, spawn die in fast succession and that's "no fun").
The nano changes are interesting, but the mechanic of saving a powernode by nanoshielding it would be pointless. I suggest different durations for buildings and marines (and exos). If no more than 3 aliens try to ninja a base and the commander reacts immidieatly, nanoshields the power/obs (whatever is attacked) and beacons, he should be able to save the base.
Technically no, but most players will think to ask "do crags stack with eachother?" and if the answer is "yes but only two of them" then that's pretty straightforward. It would be simpler if they didn't stack at all but that has other effects on balance. Different weapons doing different damage types is another reasonably common mechanic in games even though it's a hidden rule. Compared to something like the 4th hive bile bomb that no one would even think to consider until they eventually happen to hear about it, it's just not the same.