I'd prefer it if they'd just drop camo completely and replace it with something else more useful in general.
Shade serves no purpose at all, its a total waste of an upgrade and the marines have nothing even NEARLY as useless as this as a major upgrade. What is shotguns cost twice as much and did half a much damage with half the clip size? Thats basically what you did to shade. With the celerity nerf the ONLY choice for Aliens is now CRAG, but because aliens are still slow...even that 1-2 extra bullet doesn't chance the course of the game, resulting in marine victory 80% of the time.
more conjecture, not even worth disputing - i'll just say you're wrong and leave it at that.
I'd prefer it if they'd just drop camo completely and replace it with something else more useful in general.
Shade serves no purpose at all, its a total waste of an upgrade and the marines have nothing even NEARLY as useless as this as a major upgrade. What is shotguns cost twice as much and did half a much damage with half the clip size? Thats basically what you did to shade. With the celerity nerf the ONLY choice for Aliens is now CRAG, but because aliens are still slow...even that 1-2 extra bullet doesn't chance the course of the game, resulting in marine victory 80% of the time.
more conjecture, not even worth disputing - i'll just say you're wrong and leave it at that.
Indeed it is difficult to dispute facts, I know. I'm not wrong, if the aliens go shade nothing about what I said is wrong. Currently, if the alien team wins the game, the marines are bad. If the marine team wins the game, it probably took longer than it should have.
The old camo also encouraged lazy or just plain detrimental gameplay styles (what good is a skulk if he's not fast to move around the map?) much like THAT lerk sitting in lava falls spiking an extractor for 5 minutes instead of doing a million other more useful things. I've seen many a camo skulk being effectively useless.
All that aside, I think the change makes sense from a purely logical standpoint. The ability is called camouflage. Camouflage works on the principle of blending into your environment. Never have I heard or conceived of a creature that bends light (seemingly as the skulk does) whilst moving rather than staying still and appearing to blend in. I'd go so far as to say that the word camouflage was a poor descriptor for the ability, and it should have been called invisibility instead.
-With the previous version of Camo, you could still rush to a location, then go invisible once you got there. You could attack, then run around a box, pillar, etc and go back to being invisible for an escape or second attack. You shouldn't blame the previous Camo for people playing poorly. That was just people playing poorly. Sorta like people hording res for Exos instead of buying Mines and Welders. Do you blame Exos?
-I only agree that it should have been called Invisibility.
The old camo also encouraged lazy or just plain detrimental gameplay styles (what good is a skulk if he's not fast to move around the map?) much like THAT lerk sitting in lava falls spiking an extractor for 5 minutes instead of doing a million other more useful things. I've seen many a camo skulk being effectively useless.
All that aside, I think the change makes sense from a purely logical standpoint. The ability is called camouflage. Camouflage works on the principle of blending into your environment. Never have I heard or conceived of a creature that bends light (seemingly as the skulk does) whilst moving rather than staying still and appearing to blend in. I'd go so far as to say that the word camouflage was a poor descriptor for the ability, and it should have been called invisibility instead.
-With the previous version of Camo, you could still rush to a location, then go invisible once you got there. You could attack, then run around a box, pillar, etc and go back to being invisible for an escape or second attack. You shouldn't blame the previous Camo for people playing poorly. That was just people playing poorly. Sorta like people hording res for Exos instead of buying Mines and Welders. Do you blame Exos?
-I agree, it should have been called Invisibility.
So your comm builds a Obs after you get the power up. Gratz, you just completely eliminated Camo as a threat.
Now the comm doesn't need that Obs at all because Camo is so bad. Marines HAD a way to deal with camo before this patch, now they don't need that counter, which breaks camo to the point of being useless. Its an upgrade, its an "all in" kind of game plan. Why should an upgrade not need SOME kind of counter?
The current status of camo is stupid and shakes my faith in the dev team.
Carapace and celerity are just great, no explanation necessary.
Adrenaline = REQUIRED by mid-to-late game imo, at the very least for gorges. I miss it a lot when playing fade and onos as well.
Silence: Extremely useful and underrated ability that I take over camo (before and after patch) on three of the five classes, all of which combat. People underestimate silence to the nth degree.
Regen: This I have no opinion on, because I only ever use it as Lerk. It's useful in its own context.
Adrenaline is pretty much useless on anything but BB gorge. Silence is pretty much useless on anything but skulks.
What?
Adrenaline + Leap Skulk = 4 Leaps. That's a 100% increase. It's 5-6 leaps if you don't spam it.
Adrenaline + Fade = A lot of shadow steps, and you can blink for crazily long periods of time.
Adrenaline + Onos = More adrenaline to charge to/from battle, which is about as fast as using celerity with the added benefit of NOT RUNNING OUT OF ENERGY CONSTANTLY.
Adrenaline and Celerity are about equal for the lerk, either you're really quick to go in, and get that bite, or you can drop spores/umbra wantonly while flying around without worrying about running out of energy.
Regen is pretty much useless after the nerf period. Carapace is too much of a must have for any lifeform as the mid game approaches.
Regen is next to useless, unless you take silence too.
The marines can hear you regenerating, and any good marine will just follow the noise and slaughter you.
With that said:
IF you don't take carapace as a Fade/Skulk/Onos, you're probably going to die instantly.
For a gorge, regen and carapace are situational.
If you're using guerilla warfare, regen is better.
If you're a battle gorge, carapace is better.
I love the idea of combining silence and the current camo and then offer focus as a second shade option. That would be truly amazing, but I doubt it's going to happen.
It's laughable some people dare to claim carapace and celerity have any competition whatsoever, they're no brainers and none of the other alternatives even come close in terms of overall impact (on ALL lifeforms)
Celerity only gets you into combat faster.
Celerity barely benefits Fade, as SS+DJ wins out, as celerity has no effect on your speed while using SS.
It does help with blink, but blink is pretty much useless without Adrenaline because of the energy cost.
Celerity is great on skulks before Leap, but afterwards, if you don't take adrenaline, you're an idiot.
It does help with blink, but blink is pretty much useless without Adrenaline because of the energy cost.
Dear world, stop holding down the blink button. Thanks.
I don't use blink most of the time, as I tend to go fade as soon as possible, which usually means I have adrenaline and/or Carapace without any other upgrades for a while.
SS+DJ is superior in pretty much every way.
edit:
Blink is only really useful for escaping, or for catching jetpackers that are too high to SS+DJ to(Ex: In Cargo on Veil).
The way camo behaves for the for the Lerk at the moment is really nice. The faster you fly, the less camoflauge you have, and the more visible you become. With the new distortion affect, they can implement this really well.
When you take camoflauge, you should only return to your normal visible appearance when attacking. The rest of the time you should just be more or less distorted, based on running speed. People have been saying that 80% distortion is just as easy to see as absolutely no camo, but I don't buy that. Sure, when a skulk comes creeping out, hardly moving at all, thinking you can't see him, its easy. When that distortion affect is moving around at a reasonable rate, it becomes incredibly easy to lose it against certain surfaces. Its especially easy to lose it if the alien suddenly stops moving and goes full camo.
I posted about this in another thread, but these are my feels on adrenaline fades:
Marines with any aim at all will be hitting the fade hard to make him withdraw so what exactly is that extra energy going to do? Between tapping blink to get the initial acceleration and proper double jump/shadowstep energy should be mostly spent on swipes and if you are staying in combat long enough to be able to spend all that extra energy adrenaline gives you... well bluntly put, those are some pretty bad marines. Celerity affords you increased acceleration on your blink as well as greater speed on the ground. Even with the fact you lose it when hit or attacking it is still damn strong and allows the fade to exert greater presence on the map with less of an energy footprint. That map control combined with easier combat initiates make it a very strong upgrade despite its deficiencies compared to it's NS1 counterpart.
The only energy cost you should be paying with regards to blink is the initial cost of 12. Shadowstep costs 10 energy and has a fixed velocity no matter what speed you are currently moving at. Short story here is that Blink scales velocity beyond that of shadowstep. Thus with in terms of travel and escapes blink is the better choice of abilities when celerity is your upgrade as the cost:speed ratio leans in its favor at that point.
If adrenaline still provided a quicker regen rate it would be a different story. However, as the upgrade is now, and especially with the change to shotgun damage, fades shouldn't be getting the opportunity to ever take advantage of the bigger energy pool that it provides. The benefits of either upgrade is small as hell on a fade, but in my mind with the factors I outlined, celerity slightly wins out.
I find adrenaline helps a lot when SS+DJing around the map to get from point A to point B, and as opposed to Celerity where you might have ~60% of your total energy when encountering a marine(or three), you have ~80%.
The end result is you have more sustainability in combat, and the ability to escape more effectively with adrenaline.
Celerity is severely overrated for everything except the base skulk.
Have you ever played any of the Halo games?
You can spot camo players in that with little difficulty, once you know what to look for.
Based on how I've perceived things like plain transparency versus distortion, there is one main difference between the two. With transparency, you quickly identify that something is there, but you also quickly identify what it is and where it is. That is to say, the second a skulk goes to 99% transparency, you instantly identify that its there, that it is a skulk, and in which direction its facing. Because its outline immediately becomes visible, you can discern a lot of information about it. That means you can instantly begin shooting and tracking it.
With distortion, all you know is that something is there. If something came shimmering along the floor towards me, I personally would not be able to rapidly identify what it was. Its positioning (roof, floor, air) may give me a clue, but from sight alone, I would not know. This is because distortion seems to make it incredibly difficult to identify an outline, or shape. We can quickly identify that the small block of pixels we are focusing on is distorted, but its very difficult to get any information past those pixels. It becomes quite difficult to discern speed, trajectory, or heading.
I was actually messing around with this with a friend, who is quite good. I was flying around cloaked as a lerk, and he was trying to knife me. The instant I flew past him, he knew I was there and would start to chase me. However, if I quickly perched on the roof, stopping instantly and going to full camouflage, he wouldn't know where I was. He seemed to be able to quickly identify when the distortion was there, but he couldn't discern anything past the "real time" data. He couldn't recall a "last known location", because he could never really pick up on that, he could only pick up on the presence of the distortion.
Anyway, the main difference is that, in a game like Halo, tracking doesn't really feature. You identify your target, and you shoot them. Sure, they move from the location you spot them at, but not like a skulk or a lerk does. The inability to perceive the necessary information to track the target isn't as big a hindrance in Halo as it would be in NS2. In theory anyway.
Have you ever played any of the Halo games?
You can spot camo players in that with little difficulty, once you know what to look for.
With distortion, all you know is that something is there. If something came shimmering along the floor towards me, I personally would not be able to rapidly identify what it was. Its positioning (roof, floor, air) may give me a clue, but from sight alone, I would not know. This is because distortion seems to make it incredibly difficult to identify an outline, or shape. We can quickly identify that the small block of pixels we are focusing on is distorted, but its very difficult to get any information past those pixels. It becomes quite difficult to discern speed, trajectory, or heading.
I was actually messing around with this with a friend, who is quite good. I was flying around cloaked as a lerk, and he was trying to knife me. The instant I flew past him, he knew I was there and would start to chase me. However, if I quickly perched on the roof, stopping instantly and going to full camouflage, he wouldn't know where I was. He seemed to be able to quickly identify when the distortion was there, but he couldn't discern anything past the "real time" data. He couldn't recall a "last known location", because he could never really pick up on that, he could only pick up on the presence of the distortion.
Anyway, the main difference is that, in a game like Halo, tracking doesn't really feature. You identify your target, and you shoot them. Sure, they move from the location you spot them at, but not like a skulk or a lerk does. The inability to perceive the necessary information to track the target isn't as big a hindrance in Halo as it would be in NS2. In theory anyway.
The camo in Halo is a distortion effect, and generally if there's no waypoint above said distortion's head, it's an enemy.
If you wouldn't instantly identify "shimmering movement" with "Cloaked alien", you're doing something wrong.
Adrenaline is pretty much useless on anything but BB gorge. Silence is pretty much useless on anything but skulks. Regen is pretty much useless after the nerf period. Carapace is too much of a must have for any lifeform as the mid game approaches.
Are you kidding? Adrenaline is EXTREMELY useful for fade blink and onos charge (which is the onos' only real movement ability because celerity is effectively useless once you get anywhere near marines,) not to mention gorge heal spray (when building something or when healing an assault.)
Similarly, I find silence much less situational and bad-playstyle-encouraging than camo, even before the nerf. Skulks are loud, fades are loud, lerks are loud. Remove all the sound these classes make and they become much more generally stealthy than the extremely situational uses of camouflage. The only reason I don't use it on gorge and onos as well is because they cannot escape marines as easily as the other more agile classes and for them I find it more useful to be able to hide while marines pass me by (as gorge) or ambush them (as onos). Another more minor reason that I don't use it as gorge is because your teammates can't hear if you're healing them or not.
I also don't think regen is worthless. I only use it when playing lerk, because lerks are so agile, typically hard to hit, and have the ability to escape from combat quickly. In this case I prefer practically no downtime over the ability to absorb a few more bullets, when you really shouldn't be getting hit that much as a lerk anyway (because you'll die if you do, carapace or no.)
Have you ever played any of the Halo games?
You can spot camo players in that with little difficulty, once you know what to look for.
With distortion, all you know is that something is there. If something came shimmering along the floor towards me, I personally would not be able to rapidly identify what it was. Its positioning (roof, floor, air) may give me a clue, but from sight alone, I would not know. This is because distortion seems to make it incredibly difficult to identify an outline, or shape. We can quickly identify that the small block of pixels we are focusing on is distorted, but its very difficult to get any information past those pixels. It becomes quite difficult to discern speed, trajectory, or heading.
I was actually messing around with this with a friend, who is quite good. I was flying around cloaked as a lerk, and he was trying to knife me. The instant I flew past him, he knew I was there and would start to chase me. However, if I quickly perched on the roof, stopping instantly and going to full camouflage, he wouldn't know where I was. He seemed to be able to quickly identify when the distortion was there, but he couldn't discern anything past the "real time" data. He couldn't recall a "last known location", because he could never really pick up on that, he could only pick up on the presence of the distortion.
Anyway, the main difference is that, in a game like Halo, tracking doesn't really feature. You identify your target, and you shoot them. Sure, they move from the location you spot them at, but not like a skulk or a lerk does. The inability to perceive the necessary information to track the target isn't as big a hindrance in Halo as it would be in NS2. In theory anyway.
If you wouldn't instantly identify "shimmering movement" with "Cloaked alien", you're doing something wrong.
There's a pretty big difference between a cloaked skulk and a cloaked lerk/gorge/fade. Without being able to easily identify the outline, you would be hard pressed to tell the first 3 apart.
So I have played some Camo on the Alien side and seen quite some Camo from the Marine side... it's hard NOT to see a distorted Alien.
Also you can easily identify what lifeform it is: a Lerk isn't going to slowly come towards you on a wall or the floor, and a Fade is easily recognized by it's size.. let's not talk about an Onos -"hey that building sized distortion, what could it be?!".
You randomly decloak, for example when dropping a little from a wall ledge you're visible until you're on the floor. Aliens blinking in and out of existence, how can anybody miss that? This and the added lights in all the maps (there are hardly any dark spots to be found)... I'm sorry to say it, but Camo is really useless in terms of being a viable upgrade. Now it's something to play with if it doesn't matter anyway.
edit: an idea how to fix it
Make Camo permanent, even in combat (you never decloak if you have it evolved). With the current distortion effect. Also, no speed reduction.
Optionally: 100% invisibility when out of combat and standing still (distortion otherwise).
It would make sense: you can get to Marines faster (no speed reduction) so the distortion visibility is somehow balanced, and it's harder to hit the distortion when it is biting your ankles and jumping all around you so it might actually be a combat advantage.
Also, the upgrade logic would be
Silence = you can be seen, but not heard
Camo = you can be heard, but are less visible (not 100% invis, that would be OP)
There's a pretty big difference between a cloaked skulk and a cloaked lerk/gorge/fade. Without being able to easily identify the outline, you would be hard pressed to tell the first 3 apart.
Yeah, but marines can't cloak so it doesn't matter.
You see a cloaked moving thingy, you either shoot it, or you run.
Hate to ask after 5 pages, but how exactly does new camo work? The changelog is vague, but I'm gathering your transparency is a % depending on movement speed? Is that correct?
Hate to ask after 5 pages, but how exactly does new camo work? The changelog is vague, but I'm gathering your transparency is a % depending on movement speed? Is that correct?
100% invisible when not moving, 80% maybe when walking (transparent shimmer effect thing), fully visible when running. Same combat thing as before where it takes a few seconds to go camo again after combat. It actually doesn't seem too bad to me, but I'm sure a workshop mod will appear that changes the material to bright pink when not 100% invisible before long if it hasn't already, thus making it worthless.
Hate to ask after 5 pages, but how exactly does new camo work? The changelog is vague, but I'm gathering your transparency is a % depending on movement speed? Is that correct?
100% invisible when not moving, 80% maybe when walking (transparent shimmer effect thing), fully visible when running. Same combat thing as before where it takes a few seconds to go camo again after combat. It actually doesn't seem too bad to me, but I'm sure a workshop mod will appear that changes the material to bright pink when not 100% invisible before long if it hasn't already, thus making it worthless.
Its already worthless. I laugh at aliens slowly walking towards me thinking their 80% cloak isn't 100% visible.
100% invisible when not moving, 80% maybe when walking (transparent shimmer effect thing), fully visible when running.
They just need to inverse this:
100% invisible when running, 80% maybe when walking (transparent shimmer effect thing), fully visible when not moving.
And you get an interesting to play, buffed cloak.
lol, yeah, cause a full invisible running skulk isn't at all overpowered, lol. In fact, I think I'd just run around in circles behind them. The noise would drive them nuts.
Camo was perfect before last patch, there was nothing wrong with it on either side of the field.
Anyone who complains about camo being OP pre-patch needs to drop those 15 res obs a little more often then never.
The only good thing about this camo is that you recloak quicker than you do on the old one. So you can for example sit in a base or room, bilebomb and then cloak when you hear someone approaching.
Its already worthless. I laugh at aliens slowly walking towards me thinking their 80% cloak isn't 100% visible.
that's kinda like saying a bicycle is worthless because you can't use it for transatlantic transport.
it could be argued that it's obsolete, but not worthless. if you stop exaggerating then maybe people/devs will start taking your feedback more seriously than QQ whine.
edit: an idea how to fix it
Make Camo permanent, even in combat (you never decloak if you have it evolved). With the current distortion effect. Also, no speed reduction.
Optionally: 100% invisibility when out of combat and standing still (distortion otherwise).
It would make sense: you can get to Marines faster (no speed reduction) so the distortion visibility is somehow balanced, and it's harder to hit the distortion when it is biting your ankles and jumping all around you so it might actually be a combat advantage.
I like this idea.
My opinion about the camo-change:
- Before the change, it was frustrating for the marine on the field.
- It was very powerful in the early game.
- It got useless as soon as marines got 3 tech points with an obs on every base.
- This way it was a high-risk high-reward tactic to go shade first.
It was now nerved to reduce the frustration the marine on the field had while fighting it. (Boy, it was really unfair against marines that couldn't adapt to it.) The problem with nerving it in this regard is, that you also nerf it as a strategy. It is now a high-risk low-reward tactic to go shade first. So you will probably never see it again before the 3rd hive. The changes hozz is suggesting would fix this.
On a side note: Since the introduction of 100% invis camo, many people never understood how to use it (or even tried it). You don't need camo to ambush marines at a stationary location. You can do this already very easily in hiding on ceilings or ledges. Heck, I can even hide in plain sight when not moving on a ceiling without camo (at least in front of textures like in tram or summit). Camo was useful, because you could close the distance to guarding marines unseen or cut them off. Now it may be useful when you sit in the middle of a hallway when a marine is coming at you. Sadly that isn't enough to justify its use as 1st hive tech, as long as every obs is hard countering it.
Camouflage is now a rehash of that Redlight Greenlight game kids play. It's a different mechanic now, and should be approached as such. Makes Camo a stalking tool for backstabbing, and increases the safety range of marines. Though, while shift walking I believe full cloak should be instantaneous upon stop. The slight delay, plus inherent latency between players needlessly hamstrings the ability.
I've said it once, and i've said it several times actually. Why have camo as a 'conventional' style camo.
DON'T make lifeforms invisible, just make it so you can't see them on the minimap or commander view unless they have been shot or scanned, and for a period of X seconds they are visible.
It would actually make it a useful upgrade without the annoying balance issues that invisibility brings to the game.
Comments
more conjecture, not even worth disputing - i'll just say you're wrong and leave it at that.
Indeed it is difficult to dispute facts, I know. I'm not wrong, if the aliens go shade nothing about what I said is wrong. Currently, if the alien team wins the game, the marines are bad. If the marine team wins the game, it probably took longer than it should have.
-With the previous version of Camo, you could still rush to a location, then go invisible once you got there. You could attack, then run around a box, pillar, etc and go back to being invisible for an escape or second attack. You shouldn't blame the previous Camo for people playing poorly. That was just people playing poorly. Sorta like people hording res for Exos instead of buying Mines and Welders. Do you blame Exos?
-I only agree that it should have been called Invisibility.
So your comm builds a Obs after you get the power up. Gratz, you just completely eliminated Camo as a threat.
Now the comm doesn't need that Obs at all because Camo is so bad. Marines HAD a way to deal with camo before this patch, now they don't need that counter, which breaks camo to the point of being useless. Its an upgrade, its an "all in" kind of game plan. Why should an upgrade not need SOME kind of counter?
The current status of camo is stupid and shakes my faith in the dev team.
Adrenaline + Leap Skulk = 4 Leaps. That's a 100% increase. It's 5-6 leaps if you don't spam it.
Adrenaline + Fade = A lot of shadow steps, and you can blink for crazily long periods of time.
Adrenaline + Onos = More adrenaline to charge to/from battle, which is about as fast as using celerity with the added benefit of NOT RUNNING OUT OF ENERGY CONSTANTLY.
Adrenaline and Celerity are about equal for the lerk, either you're really quick to go in, and get that bite, or you can drop spores/umbra wantonly while flying around without worrying about running out of energy.
Regen is next to useless, unless you take silence too.
The marines can hear you regenerating, and any good marine will just follow the noise and slaughter you.
With that said:
IF you don't take carapace as a Fade/Skulk/Onos, you're probably going to die instantly.
For a gorge, regen and carapace are situational.
If you're using guerilla warfare, regen is better.
If you're a battle gorge, carapace is better.
Celerity only gets you into combat faster.
Celerity barely benefits Fade, as SS+DJ wins out, as celerity has no effect on your speed while using SS.
It does help with blink, but blink is pretty much useless without Adrenaline because of the energy cost.
Celerity is great on skulks before Leap, but afterwards, if you don't take adrenaline, you're an idiot.
Dear world, stop holding down the blink button. Thanks.
SS+DJ is superior in pretty much every way.
edit:
Blink is only really useful for escaping, or for catching jetpackers that are too high to SS+DJ to(Ex: In Cargo on Veil).
When you take camoflauge, you should only return to your normal visible appearance when attacking. The rest of the time you should just be more or less distorted, based on running speed. People have been saying that 80% distortion is just as easy to see as absolutely no camo, but I don't buy that. Sure, when a skulk comes creeping out, hardly moving at all, thinking you can't see him, its easy. When that distortion affect is moving around at a reasonable rate, it becomes incredibly easy to lose it against certain surfaces. Its especially easy to lose it if the alien suddenly stops moving and goes full camo.
You can spot camo players in that with little difficulty, once you know what to look for.
If adrenaline still provided a quicker regen rate it would be a different story. However, as the upgrade is now, and especially with the change to shotgun damage, fades shouldn't be getting the opportunity to ever take advantage of the bigger energy pool that it provides. The benefits of either upgrade is small as hell on a fade, but in my mind with the factors I outlined, celerity slightly wins out.
That's my 2 cents.
The end result is you have more sustainability in combat, and the ability to escape more effectively with adrenaline.
Celerity is severely overrated for everything except the base skulk.
Based on how I've perceived things like plain transparency versus distortion, there is one main difference between the two. With transparency, you quickly identify that something is there, but you also quickly identify what it is and where it is. That is to say, the second a skulk goes to 99% transparency, you instantly identify that its there, that it is a skulk, and in which direction its facing. Because its outline immediately becomes visible, you can discern a lot of information about it. That means you can instantly begin shooting and tracking it.
With distortion, all you know is that something is there. If something came shimmering along the floor towards me, I personally would not be able to rapidly identify what it was. Its positioning (roof, floor, air) may give me a clue, but from sight alone, I would not know. This is because distortion seems to make it incredibly difficult to identify an outline, or shape. We can quickly identify that the small block of pixels we are focusing on is distorted, but its very difficult to get any information past those pixels. It becomes quite difficult to discern speed, trajectory, or heading.
I was actually messing around with this with a friend, who is quite good. I was flying around cloaked as a lerk, and he was trying to knife me. The instant I flew past him, he knew I was there and would start to chase me. However, if I quickly perched on the roof, stopping instantly and going to full camouflage, he wouldn't know where I was. He seemed to be able to quickly identify when the distortion was there, but he couldn't discern anything past the "real time" data. He couldn't recall a "last known location", because he could never really pick up on that, he could only pick up on the presence of the distortion.
Anyway, the main difference is that, in a game like Halo, tracking doesn't really feature. You identify your target, and you shoot them. Sure, they move from the location you spot them at, but not like a skulk or a lerk does. The inability to perceive the necessary information to track the target isn't as big a hindrance in Halo as it would be in NS2. In theory anyway.
The camo in Halo is a distortion effect, and generally if there's no waypoint above said distortion's head, it's an enemy.
If you wouldn't instantly identify "shimmering movement" with "Cloaked alien", you're doing something wrong.
Are you kidding? Adrenaline is EXTREMELY useful for fade blink and onos charge (which is the onos' only real movement ability because celerity is effectively useless once you get anywhere near marines,) not to mention gorge heal spray (when building something or when healing an assault.)
Similarly, I find silence much less situational and bad-playstyle-encouraging than camo, even before the nerf. Skulks are loud, fades are loud, lerks are loud. Remove all the sound these classes make and they become much more generally stealthy than the extremely situational uses of camouflage. The only reason I don't use it on gorge and onos as well is because they cannot escape marines as easily as the other more agile classes and for them I find it more useful to be able to hide while marines pass me by (as gorge) or ambush them (as onos). Another more minor reason that I don't use it as gorge is because your teammates can't hear if you're healing them or not.
I also don't think regen is worthless. I only use it when playing lerk, because lerks are so agile, typically hard to hit, and have the ability to escape from combat quickly. In this case I prefer practically no downtime over the ability to absorb a few more bullets, when you really shouldn't be getting hit that much as a lerk anyway (because you'll die if you do, carapace or no.)
There's a pretty big difference between a cloaked skulk and a cloaked lerk/gorge/fade. Without being able to easily identify the outline, you would be hard pressed to tell the first 3 apart.
Also you can easily identify what lifeform it is: a Lerk isn't going to slowly come towards you on a wall or the floor, and a Fade is easily recognized by it's size.. let's not talk about an Onos -"hey that building sized distortion, what could it be?!".
You randomly decloak, for example when dropping a little from a wall ledge you're visible until you're on the floor. Aliens blinking in and out of existence, how can anybody miss that? This and the added lights in all the maps (there are hardly any dark spots to be found)... I'm sorry to say it, but Camo is really useless in terms of being a viable upgrade. Now it's something to play with if it doesn't matter anyway.
edit: an idea how to fix it
Make Camo permanent, even in combat (you never decloak if you have it evolved). With the current distortion effect. Also, no speed reduction.
Optionally: 100% invisibility when out of combat and standing still (distortion otherwise).
It would make sense: you can get to Marines faster (no speed reduction) so the distortion visibility is somehow balanced, and it's harder to hit the distortion when it is biting your ankles and jumping all around you so it might actually be a combat advantage.
Also, the upgrade logic would be
Silence = you can be seen, but not heard
Camo = you can be heard, but are less visible (not 100% invis, that would be OP)
You see a cloaked moving thingy, you either shoot it, or you run.
100% invisible when not moving, 80% maybe when walking (transparent shimmer effect thing), fully visible when running. Same combat thing as before where it takes a few seconds to go camo again after combat. It actually doesn't seem too bad to me, but I'm sure a workshop mod will appear that changes the material to bright pink when not 100% invisible before long if it hasn't already, thus making it worthless.
Its already worthless. I laugh at aliens slowly walking towards me thinking their 80% cloak isn't 100% visible.
They just need to inverse this:
100% invisible when running, 80% maybe when walking (transparent shimmer effect thing), fully visible when not moving.
And you get an interesting to play, buffed cloak.
lol, yeah, cause a full invisible running skulk isn't at all overpowered, lol. In fact, I think I'd just run around in circles behind them. The noise would drive them nuts.
Camo was perfect before last patch, there was nothing wrong with it on either side of the field.
Anyone who complains about camo being OP pre-patch needs to drop those 15 res obs a little more often then never.
that's kinda like saying a bicycle is worthless because you can't use it for transatlantic transport.
it could be argued that it's obsolete, but not worthless. if you stop exaggerating then maybe people/devs will start taking your feedback more seriously than QQ whine.
That's the worst analogy ever.
I like this idea.
My opinion about the camo-change:
- Before the change, it was frustrating for the marine on the field.
- It was very powerful in the early game.
- It got useless as soon as marines got 3 tech points with an obs on every base.
- This way it was a high-risk high-reward tactic to go shade first.
It was now nerved to reduce the frustration the marine on the field had while fighting it. (Boy, it was really unfair against marines that couldn't adapt to it.) The problem with nerving it in this regard is, that you also nerf it as a strategy. It is now a high-risk low-reward tactic to go shade first. So you will probably never see it again before the 3rd hive. The changes hozz is suggesting would fix this.
On a side note: Since the introduction of 100% invis camo, many people never understood how to use it (or even tried it). You don't need camo to ambush marines at a stationary location. You can do this already very easily in hiding on ceilings or ledges. Heck, I can even hide in plain sight when not moving on a ceiling without camo (at least in front of textures like in tram or summit). Camo was useful, because you could close the distance to guarding marines unseen or cut them off. Now it may be useful when you sit in the middle of a hallway when a marine is coming at you. Sadly that isn't enough to justify its use as 1st hive tech, as long as every obs is hard countering it.
DON'T make lifeforms invisible, just make it so you can't see them on the minimap or commander view unless they have been shot or scanned, and for a period of X seconds they are visible.
It would actually make it a useful upgrade without the annoying balance issues that invisibility brings to the game.