Is Skulk air control too powerful?
Desther
Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165195Members
Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165195Members
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In NS2 currently you can actually jump off a platform as an alien, and do a 180 degree turn and land back on the same platform (without leap) this means you cannot predict alien trajectories because they can alter in mid flight. I've been wondering if I should bring this up as a point of discussion for a while. Ultimately without it I think skulks would be too weak, but I do think right now there is far to much of it. Leap is curious one, as it allows instant acceleration in the direction where ever you are looking. I think given its a two hive ability leap should stay, but the default air accelerate should be lowered in my opinion -not removed, just toned down a bit.
Wait, seriously?! I didn't know that. I've always played skulks as if they were defined by physics. No wonder some skulks seem impossible to hit when they jump.
I think its probably fine balance wise. Shooting skulks would be very easy if they had more realistic movement, they'd have to buff the crap out of wall jumps and add no speed loss on bunnyhop.
Fades move weird too, like they bend time...Lerks turn on a dime, and can drop into nowhere like nothing.
Marines counter it with their focussed way of fighting, a very different approach.
That said, as an Alien, I question the Marine's laser guns XD
The game's asymmetry works both ways.
Playing Skulk is probably the area of the game where I'm strongest at the moment (relative to other players). Yet, I still feel that there's a fair amount of room to become even better. This is a good thing because it means there's a high skill ceiling.
I don't want Skulk to be messed up by unnecessary nerfs. Reducing the air control would just reduce the depth of Skulk game play.
The air acceleration causes inexperienced players to jitter around wildly, unable to focus on a target and attack it accurately. Good players can use the air acceleration to accomplish all sorts of things though.
Marines can do it to, but they're slow, so no one cares. I'm just waiting for it to be exploited more in skirmishes with skulks.
I would agree with toning it down, if skulks could leap off walls (back/side to wall plus jump, without the second hive ability).
pretty much the same case for bunnyhop back in ns1, except instead of "wtf, how do I even hit that skulk? he's like a magician!", you get "wtf, they're exploiting/glitching/abusing game engine!".
this is where the game is headed, to a time period years from now when only good players are left playing and dominating pubs everywhere they go. too bad this game was/is/will never be as strategically deep as its predecessor, aside from the performance fiasco that will probably never get fixed.
negativity over 9000.
Way too negative.
The big issue with bunny hop, in NS1, was it was silent. A marine could move around the as fast or faster than walking and not make a sound. Definitely not intended or acceptable.
Not fully silent
Also parasite
I sense the same thing happened in NS1 to NS2, despite the drastically different game play, the concept of the game is similar at least. What makes BH'ing especially dangerous in NS2 is that the only lifeform which can effectively use it, are skulks. In NS1 skulks and Marines could abuse it, in CS1.6 it was equal, in QW it's equal. So we have this drastic situation where one lifeform is getting a huge advantage, not speed, but movement control in fights.
Bunny jump was removed in earlier versions of CS ... ?
Are you talking about NS1 essentially balanced around the inclusion of bunnyhop in the game ? When exactly did 1.6 die because of bh ?
Which majority ? You mean the small half that switched while the other half remained playing 1.6 ?
Every Marine/Alien but commander, lerks and jetpacks had a use for bunny hopping or equivalent
Eh? Marines could not bhop (as of 2.0 I think). They could get a second jump without a speed penalty if jumping on a raised platform and this gave rise to the crouch jump style that top marines used for travel. It most certainly was not silent and definitely not the same as bhop. Wiggle walking was more prevalent for travelling as that is not exactly hard to learn.
As huhuh said, every alien could make use of bhop aside from lerk. It gave aliens a higher skill ceiling to coincide with that of the marine's aim. If aliens do not have a skill based movement system then as aim improves, aliens can do nothing to match that increase in skill. @Tweadle wrote a great post on this quite a while back, its well worth searching for.
Bunnyhopping was removed in quite a lot of competitive rulesets by defining air accelerate to a lower value than default, but it was as people wanted and decided on individual servers. The majority of the public servers Jolt etc just left configs as default and when a good player came along BH'ing it cleared out the server in a few rounds as there was no way to fight it (I'm guilty of being that guy)
No (NS1 balance), as I said, I never played it - but aliens having faster base movement speed is a big part of NS2, and if Marines could counter that by bunny hopping - I imagine it would seriously upset the balance
Just inferring that when a sequel game comes out a hardcore minority always stay on and play and usually the more casual players move to the new version along with a chunk of competitive players, the same thing happened with CS1.6 and CS:S both had competitive scenes which existed at the same time but the game essentially died at this point due to no new players being introduced to CS1.6. It was merely the old guys remaining to play out whatever was left of it. If no new players are joining a community, it is slowly dying.
Basically yes; but also that new players stopped appearing. Once CS:S was released it basically tore the community in half (I'd honestly say more like 60% stayed in CS1.6) but since no new players joined 1.6 and through attrition it just died. Hey I stayed with 1.6 I could never stand the movement and style of play that CS:S used, but I knew I was just holding out and wasn't really going anywhere new with it by that point.
This I disagree with, lerks don't need it as everytime they "flap their wings" they are allowed a trajectory change, jetpackers the same, press the jump key - allows trajectory change. Blink and shadowstep allow fades trajectory changes.
Why should skulks get a passive trajectory change which is such a strong component in the use of their characters when everyone else has to pay for it? They get leap at 2 hives, that allows instant trajectory change and speed boost
Sorry my sentence was ill-written. What I meant was that in NS1, everyone but lerks/comms/jetpacks had a use for BH or similar mechanics. Your original post stated that only skulks and marines had a use for it.
Bunnyhopping gorge is angered by his exclusion!
Onos too.
huhuh, I'm refering to NS2 at this point. I don't want to remove walljumping (valid tactic) but I feel that skulks in combat ability to alter trajectory is very harsh for marines to anticipate and deal with (read: can't)
I'm talking about NS1 gorge and onos. Backwards bhopping gorge in NS1 was faster than a speeding bullet.
Probably my favorite 1v1 video of all time. Pure insanity. I like to show this to console players who haven't seen this level of gameplay before.
eg: a new marine would not expect a skulk to jump in a curve with out that skulk using 'an ability' - why should this be allowed?
Sorry, no.
High learning curve ? You could teach it to beginners through a tutorial. The good practice of it would probably require a good amount of time though.
And what's the issue with beginners discovering new things or getting owned by better players ??
on topic: Maybe high learning curve is a little steep - but it's extremely counter intuitive to how reality works aka you cannot alter your trajectory while in mid air.
On topic: Wall jump and the air control/acceleration in NS2 seems like a horrible substitute for bhoping at the best of times, once a skulk makes contact with a wall they can go at least 3 different directions or jump and maintain speed, it's probably the most difficult thing to adjust to as a marine for aiming and a skulk for playing well. The tick rate, lag comp, interp 100ms and laggy/warping animations some people have in game does not help.
Kinda offtopic, but yes it did. Gave slightly more speed than wiggle walking if I remember correctly.
I think the Skulk air control is fine in NS2. I often use it to my advantage to evade bullets and flank quickly. Being unpredictable when you jump is much better than jumping straight against a Marine, especially against one who can track well.
Offtopic: hate to quibble but BH was never removed form the HL engine, they just allowed you access to the cvar to remove it - some servers left it on, others removed it. The elevation bhop is interesting in NS1, but a quirk more than anything.
On topic: I've no problem with a skulk making contact with a wall and being able to either wall jump, or change direction - thats fine, they are touching an item of the map they are able to walk up walls, it makes perfect sense. Being able to change (significantly) direction in mid air is just so counter-intuitive is borders on insane in my view.