1 hive with 9 eggs. 5 aliens die and get an instant respawn. 30 seconds later Hive gets back to 9 eggs. And that's the situation with just a single hive and without shifts. Jesus hates NS2.
So let's see if I get this straight... Marine spawn times are going UP? Again? I don't see how this is helping marine balance at all. Alien spawn times are also going down from had been a possible 13 seconds in wave spawn. Now aliens are guaranteed a spawn in 7 seconds, so long as an egg is available. So in short, aliens will always be able to outspawn marines now. Interesting balance choice.
Then there is increased arms lab costs, and Nanoshield has basically be removed from the game. What used to be 8 seconds of shield with a 10 second cooldown is now 4 seconds with a 12 second cooldown? I won't be spending 5 res on that anymore. Will have to be a VERY rare and narrow circumstance to bother with it in that state.
Crag changes were to be expected (it was getting silly) but that's it? I wonder what happened to the 'big balance patch' I hear they are working on?
My exact thinking too from just reading the change log.
Curious why alien build times haven't been touched to address early game map dominance. (To give marines more time to build, respond to an entire team's worth of pressure, and then go on the offense)
So to those who have tried it: this means either faster spawning aliens or more common egg locking?? That seems far from optimal?
I too would like to have seen something to delay alien expansion, preferably by increasing build times.
I'd like to see a mod that increases build times by as much as 200% for instance, but increases the rate at which a gorge can grow structures as well. As aliens, you'll still have the option to put the full skulk force pressure on expanding marines, but at the cost of your own expansion rate. Or you could choose to remove one or two skulks from the offensive and let em evolve to gorge so they can spead up alien expansion, but at the cost of reduced pressure on marines. It should in any case give marines an easier time in the early game to get their economy flowing, while providing the aliens with more of a choice early game and making the gorge more valuable as well. To gorge or not to gorge...
But I'm curious to see how the new alien spawn system will work out.
I'm wondering when hypermutation and feign death are expected to come back in
Hopefully never if they are the same implementation. Feign death encouraged overly risky, aggressive and overall poor play while hypermutation had many exploits.
So, having a shift and some resources allows to keep an infinite alien spawning. Add to that 10 seconds to spawn a marine. Balanced.
Your lack of understanding of these changes is disturbing. The aliens queue up to spawn. No more wave spawns.
It's alot easier for a Marine push to squash a skulk every 7 seconds rather than an entire wave spawn several times.
Let's look together.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
O Change egg spawn timer to 6 sec.
or as soon as a egg is available
In 239 you wait 11 sec to spawn in any case. In 240 you spawn as soon as you're first in queue and there is an egg available. With 9 eggs, you get 2 instant spawns for the whole 5 member alien team.
In 239 there's many other things involved including emergency spawn waves. I'll take a queue system over a spawn wave any day when I'm attacking a hive.
This also penalizes the aliens for failed rushes more.
In 239 there's many other things involved including emergency spawn waves. I'll take a queue system over a spawn wave any day when I'm attacking a hive.
This also penalizes the aliens for failed rushes more.
Aliens are going to spawn even faster than before. If you have a good pack of eggs, there will be no delay. Skulks can suicide rush like minigun bullets.
Also, what do you think about Arms Labs upgrade costs going up? 20/30/40 instead of 10/20/30.
They can suicide all they want in a push for all I care, as long as the Marines are fighting a maximum of 1-2 skulks every 7 seconds I think it will be much more fair in Hive pushes.
You mean 20/30/40 vs 15/25/35..?
The 20/30/40 values have been the same since NS1. Reverting to them isn't really an issue imo. It just makes the Marine upgrades a little more expensive and makes the timing more fair if the Marines are doing well.
Aren't Marines at disadvantage already? What's the point of making their tech tree even more expensive?
Because even with the "disadvantage" the upgrade timings should be slightly longer. Just because the Marines lose more often than Aliens doesn't mean they don't have things that need tuning/are overpowered.
So, having a shift and some resources allows to keep an infinite alien spawning. Add to that 10 seconds to spawn a marine. Balanced.
Your lack of understanding of these changes is disturbing. The aliens queue up to spawn. No more wave spawns.
It's alot easier for a Marine push to squash a skulk every 7 seconds rather than an entire wave spawn several times.
Let's look together.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
O Change egg spawn timer to 6 sec.
or as soon as a egg is available
In 239 you wait 11 sec to spawn in any case. In 240 you spawn as soon as you're first in queue and there is an egg available. With 9 eggs, you get 2 instant spawns for the whole 5 member alien team.
No, I think you read it wrong. That "or as soon as egg is available" refers to a situation when there are no eggs. So:
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive with 9 eggs, they will spawn at 7, 14 and 21 seconds.
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive that is currently being assaulted and marines destroy all eggs before third skulk re-spawns, then the third skulk will have to wait 21 seconds + however long until an egg is available ( 6 extra seconds if hes lucky)
No, I think you read it wrong. That "or as soon as egg is available" refers to a situation when there are no eggs. So:
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive with 9 eggs, they will spawn at 7, 14 and 21 seconds.
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive that is currently being assaulted and marines destroy all eggs before third skulk re-spawns, then the third skulk will have to wait 21 seconds + however long until an egg is available ( 6 extra seconds if hes lucky)
So, having a shift and some resources allows to keep an infinite alien spawning. Add to that 10 seconds to spawn a marine. Balanced.
Your lack of understanding of these changes is disturbing. The aliens queue up to spawn. No more wave spawns.
It's alot easier for a Marine push to squash a skulk every 7 seconds rather than an entire wave spawn several times.
Let's look together.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
O Change egg spawn timer to 6 sec.
or as soon as a egg is available
In 239 you wait 11 sec to spawn in any case. In 240 you spawn as soon as you're first in queue and there is an egg available. With 9 eggs, you get 2 instant spawns for the whole 5 member alien team.
No, I think you read it wrong. That "or as soon as egg is available" refers to a situation when there are no eggs. So:
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive with 9 eggs, they will spawn at 7, 14 and 21 seconds.
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive that is currently being assaulted and marines destroy all eggs before third skulk re-spawns, then the third skulk will have to wait 21 seconds + however long until an egg is available ( 6 extra seconds if hes lucky)
Well, that makes a difference. But still, I don't like where this all is going. 10 sec to spawn a marine. Alien wave system is an interesting and fitting concept. Now spawn systems are barely different.
Well, that makes a difference. But still, I don't like where this all is going. 10 sec to spawn a marine. Alien wave system is an interesting and fitting concept. Now spawn systems are barely different.
Oh that is something I agree with. The wave spawning system was really fitting for Aliens and something pretty unique and different compared to Marines standart "one at a time" respawns.
On the other hand, it gave Aliens huge edge at the start and caused self egg-lock on higher population servers so I can understand why they changed it.
Still, I wish they could keep the wave spawn mechanics in the game in some way, maybe as Alien Commander ability to spawn all dead aliens at hive for some res cost or something.
I still wonder how these changes would work on 24 player servers. Is that being tested as well? Obviously with the smallest game of 6v6, the potential number of players who can die is less than on a game with 12v12. So the spawn queue would be cut in half for an entire game in 6v6 when compared to 12v12 if say 1/3 of the entire team died at the same time.
Then you have the pubs where you have a mixed assortment of skill levels with the newer or unaware players sometimes rushing 2-3 marines alone and dying. So if you die trying to help the team with you will have to wait quite a while to spawn. Might cause people to act more defensively or not attack at all if they know a bunch of players are dead waiting in queue.
I also realize that what I described can also be applied to marine play but at least they have the option of throwing down another IP early game and are not limited to 2 most of the game.
This might fix the balance as aliens have the speed and mobility to make up for the queue but I was never a fan of increasing spawn times on both marines and aliens because I feel it just slows down the game. Though I cannot ignore the fact that gorge tunnels are coming up and might change a lot making aliens alot more mobile and thus why these changes are being tested.
Aren't Marines at disadvantage already? What's the point of making their tech tree even more expensive?
Because even with the "disadvantage" the upgrade timings should be slightly longer. Just because the Marines lose more often than Aliens doesn't mean they don't have things that need tuning/are overpowered. Nano shield being a prime example.
While I don't disagree (in principle that there are some things that may be imbalanced on marines in spite of the win/loss ratio) wouldn't it make sense to address those issues AFTER taking away a big chunk of the current imbalance first?
This feels like one step forward and two steps back.
Tinkering with the alien spawn system is a start but unfortunately I'm pretty certain a lot more will be needed to fix this game. With this change the spawn system should become closer to NS 1, but there's still going to be the issue of marines facing off against the alien economic timebomb.
While I don't disagree (in principle that there are some things that may be imbalanced on marines in spite of the win/loss ratio) wouldn't it make sense to address those issues AFTER taking away a big chunk of the current imbalance first?
This feels like one step forward and two steps back.
for once, the balance mod is doing the correct thing by addressing changes individually for the overall scope of gameplay. IMO it is much simpler to address the obviously broken issues such as nanoshield so that pseudo-balance isn't created. what I mean by pseudo-balance is the notion of a 50/50 winrate that everyone is obsessed with. this is the process entire beta went through, which was a complete waste of time. you had balance around poor performance leading Fades to have their current HP pool below 300. Skulk bite range swung drastically from unplayable to overpowered every other build. the developers were afraid to touch the 6 minute Onos because the winrate at release was 50/50! we had to deal with this horrible and obviously broken mechanic for months because of this obsession with winrate. it's important to understand each change individually and how it affects gameplay.
for example, if we take into consideration winrate and we are afraid to nerf the obviously broken things such as nanoshield, what happens months down the line when the rest of the lifeforms are balanced around this silly and broken mechanic? you have stale gameplay and a broken mechanic still, while achieving nothing. you don't have to take my word for it - it's easy to observe this exact process with the random shotgun spread.
So, if I understand correctly, the new alien spawn system is almost like having one IP per hive. Marines can have more than one IP per chair. I think this might be a problem...
While I don't disagree (in principle that there are some things that may be imbalanced on marines in spite of the win/loss ratio) wouldn't it make sense to address those issues AFTER taking away a big chunk of the current imbalance first?
for example, if we take into consideration winrate and we are afraid to nerf the obviously broken things such as nanoshield, what happens months down the line when the rest of the lifeforms are balanced around this silly and broken mechanic? you have stale gameplay and a broken mechanic still, while achieving nothing. you don't have to take my word for it - it's easy to observe this exact process with the random shotgun spread.
Well as far as nanoshield they would be better to just remove it from the game until they 'fix' it rather than leave it its current incarnation. Frankly, I never had a problem with it in its current state. If the issue for some people was the impact nanoshield had on marine players, then craft a change that affects players ONLY and not buildings. Now you have 5 res for 4 seconds? Sorry, not interested. Yet another game feature nerfed to the ground.
Anyway, in regard to your point, I would suggest that you are thinking too linearly. Balance changes are never made in isolation. If the game was 'balanced better' before addressing issues like that you feel there are with nanoshield, then *OTHER* changes could be made at the time changes were name to nanoshield to keep the game in balance.
Even if there are justifiable reasons for a marine nerf, timing is everything and there should be priorities. It's the same reason why people are complaining about how the devs are making cosmetic game changes while the game remains woefully unbalanced. Timing is everything, and the time to hammer the marines with more nerfs is not when they only win 40% of the games to begin with. I'm sure there are PLENTY of alien things they could have nerfed'fixed' first before moving to the marine issues.
The bottom line is if every time the devs decide to tinker with balance they toss in a wave of marine nerfs (regardless of whether the nerf was really needed at that point in time) then you'll never have balance in this game. You'll end up with balance patches that give with one hand and take away with the other.
Yeah, I'd rather see Nanoshield be changed to balance it properly than to nerf it into the ground:
-You could make it so that it reduces the effect of medpacks while the player is protected by Nanoshield, or to make it so that he is completely unable to pick up medpacks while nanoshielded.
-Turn Nanoshield into a second temporary layer of armor that can be depleted by aliens.
-Nerf the effect to only protect against 1/3rd or 2/5th of the incoming damage.
-Increase the cost of Nanoshield rather that cutting it's time short.
What are you on about? Did you even read past the first line of the balance mod changelog? I was inclined to respond in reasonable discussion regarding nanoshield, my only mistake reading further.
Lest you forget, these changes are being made in a workshop mod where changes are intended to be tested and judged in isolation. And yet even then, if this was actually a live build, you would still not be making any sense whatsoever.
Lest you forget, these changes are being made in a workshop mod where changes are intended to be tested and judged in isolation. And yet even then, if this was actually a live build, you would still not be making any sense whatsoever.
Well seeing as you're not making any sense at all, that would explain why you could make no sense out of what other people are saying. You can't test changes in 'isolation' since they are part of an entire game. Let me spell it out for you.
Every single change you make will invariably affect other aspects of the game, either directly, indirectly, through design or though convergence. As such, any changes need to be looked at on the whole, BEYOND the impact the intended changes are supposed to have.
I'm well aware these are proposed changes, and if you took the time to read my post above you would note I acknowledged that fact. So please don't ramble on about "the first line of the changelog."
My remarks are directed at these changes as they impact the game had the changes been made live. These aren't just random experiments for the fun of it. They aren't going to put out a balance patch with flying Onos for people to see if it would work in the game. These potential changes have already been tested internally, and are being put in this patch so that the competitive community has a crack at testing it to see how it affects competitive play before the changes are made live.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited February 2013
Some people really need to learn how to read/participate in a discussion without the world coming to a dramatic end for them, and thinking this disbelief of theirs justifies poor behaviors in a response..
On topic:
I see the intention of this new spawn system.. But it still seems to me like an easy win once entering the hive? Maybe if the amount of eggs were more? Idk. Also wonder how well this scales, if at all, with higher player counts, as mentioned.
Definitely curious to try it out now though..
If you don't think that you can fix imbalances on marines and aliens at the same time, even in a game/time where aliens are winning 60%, I'm sorry to say but you shouldnt be balancing games. If those spawn changes were made with the old marine re spawn time of 7 seconds, you would probably see marines winning 60% of the games. There are changes that need to go hand in hand with other changes, fixing two things that are broken at once. If you cannot make balance adjustments like that, your doomed to making simple changes every patch and never addressing big balance issues that will forever leave gameplay feeling 'imbalanced', even with 50/50 wins.
Comments
I too would like to have seen something to delay alien expansion, preferably by increasing build times.
I'd like to see a mod that increases build times by as much as 200% for instance, but increases the rate at which a gorge can grow structures as well. As aliens, you'll still have the option to put the full skulk force pressure on expanding marines, but at the cost of your own expansion rate. Or you could choose to remove one or two skulks from the offensive and let em evolve to gorge so they can spead up alien expansion, but at the cost of reduced pressure on marines. It should in any case give marines an easier time in the early game to get their economy flowing, while providing the aliens with more of a choice early game and making the gorge more valuable as well. To gorge or not to gorge...
But I'm curious to see how the new alien spawn system will work out.
Hopefully never if they are the same implementation. Feign death encouraged overly risky, aggressive and overall poor play while hypermutation had many exploits.
Your lack of understanding of these changes is disturbing. The aliens queue up to spawn. No more wave spawns.
It's alot easier for a Marine push to squash a skulk every 7 seconds rather than an entire wave spawn several times.
Let's look together. In 239 you wait 11 sec to spawn in any case. In 240 you spawn as soon as you're first in queue and there is an egg available. With 9 eggs, you get 2 instant spawns for the whole 5 member alien team.
This also penalizes the aliens for failed rushes more.
Aliens are going to spawn even faster than before. If you have a good pack of eggs, there will be no delay. Skulks can suicide rush like minigun bullets.
Also, what do you think about Arms Labs upgrade costs going up? 20/30/40 instead of 10/20/30.
You mean 20/30/40 vs 15/25/35..?
The 20/30/40 values have been the same since NS1. Reverting to them isn't really an issue imo. It just makes the Marine upgrades a little more expensive and makes the timing more fair if the Marines are doing well.
Aren't Marines at disadvantage already? What's the point of making their tech tree even more expensive?
Because even with the "disadvantage" the upgrade timings should be slightly longer. Just because the Marines lose more often than Aliens doesn't mean they don't have things that need tuning/are overpowered.
Nano shield being a prime example.
No, I think you read it wrong. That "or as soon as egg is available" refers to a situation when there are no eggs. So:
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive with 9 eggs, they will spawn at 7, 14 and 21 seconds.
If 3 skulks die and they have 1 hive that is currently being assaulted and marines destroy all eggs before third skulk re-spawns, then the third skulk will have to wait 21 seconds + however long until an egg is available ( 6 extra seconds if hes lucky)
Exactly.
Well, that makes a difference. But still, I don't like where this all is going. 10 sec to spawn a marine. Alien wave system is an interesting and fitting concept. Now spawn systems are barely different.
Oh that is something I agree with. The wave spawning system was really fitting for Aliens and something pretty unique and different compared to Marines standart "one at a time" respawns.
On the other hand, it gave Aliens huge edge at the start and caused self egg-lock on higher population servers so I can understand why they changed it.
Still, I wish they could keep the wave spawn mechanics in the game in some way, maybe as Alien Commander ability to spawn all dead aliens at hive for some res cost or something.
Then you have the pubs where you have a mixed assortment of skill levels with the newer or unaware players sometimes rushing 2-3 marines alone and dying. So if you die trying to help the team with you will have to wait quite a while to spawn. Might cause people to act more defensively or not attack at all if they know a bunch of players are dead waiting in queue.
I also realize that what I described can also be applied to marine play but at least they have the option of throwing down another IP early game and are not limited to 2 most of the game.
This might fix the balance as aliens have the speed and mobility to make up for the queue but I was never a fan of increasing spawn times on both marines and aliens because I feel it just slows down the game. Though I cannot ignore the fact that gorge tunnels are coming up and might change a lot making aliens alot more mobile and thus why these changes are being tested.
This feels like one step forward and two steps back.
for example, if we take into consideration winrate and we are afraid to nerf the obviously broken things such as nanoshield, what happens months down the line when the rest of the lifeforms are balanced around this silly and broken mechanic? you have stale gameplay and a broken mechanic still, while achieving nothing. you don't have to take my word for it - it's easy to observe this exact process with the random shotgun spread.
Anyway, in regard to your point, I would suggest that you are thinking too linearly. Balance changes are never made in isolation. If the game was 'balanced better' before addressing issues like that you feel there are with nanoshield, then *OTHER* changes could be made at the time changes were name to nanoshield to keep the game in balance.
Even if there are justifiable reasons for a marine nerf, timing is everything and there should be priorities. It's the same reason why people are complaining about how the devs are making cosmetic game changes while the game remains woefully unbalanced. Timing is everything, and the time to hammer the marines with more nerfs is not when they only win 40% of the games to begin with. I'm sure there are PLENTY of alien things they could have nerfed'fixed' first before moving to the marine issues.
The bottom line is if every time the devs decide to tinker with balance they toss in a wave of marine nerfs (regardless of whether the nerf was really needed at that point in time) then you'll never have balance in this game. You'll end up with balance patches that give with one hand and take away with the other.
It's not helping.
-You could make it so that it reduces the effect of medpacks while the player is protected by Nanoshield, or to make it so that he is completely unable to pick up medpacks while nanoshielded.
-Turn Nanoshield into a second temporary layer of armor that can be depleted by aliens.
-Nerf the effect to only protect against 1/3rd or 2/5th of the incoming damage.
-Increase the cost of Nanoshield rather that cutting it's time short.
Lest you forget, these changes are being made in a workshop mod where changes are intended to be tested and judged in isolation. And yet even then, if this was actually a live build, you would still not be making any sense whatsoever.
"Removed alien wave spawning. Each hive will now spawn one alien every 7 seconds."
Don't worry about describing edge cases like what happens when there are no eggs. It just confuses people.
Every single change you make will invariably affect other aspects of the game, either directly, indirectly, through design or though convergence. As such, any changes need to be looked at on the whole, BEYOND the impact the intended changes are supposed to have.
I'm well aware these are proposed changes, and if you took the time to read my post above you would note I acknowledged that fact. So please don't ramble on about "the first line of the changelog."
My remarks are directed at these changes as they impact the game had the changes been made live. These aren't just random experiments for the fun of it. They aren't going to put out a balance patch with flying Onos for people to see if it would work in the game. These potential changes have already been tested internally, and are being put in this patch so that the competitive community has a crack at testing it to see how it affects competitive play before the changes are made live.
My opinion of these changes stands.
On topic:
I see the intention of this new spawn system.. But it still seems to me like an easy win once entering the hive? Maybe if the amount of eggs were more? Idk. Also wonder how well this scales, if at all, with higher player counts, as mentioned.
Definitely curious to try it out now though..