Can we think about Focus again?
countbasie
Join Date: 2008-12-27 Member: 65884Members
Join Date: 2008-12-27 Member: 65884Members
Hey,
it would be awesome if the Focus upgrade made its way back into NS. I like fading, but in late game it's just too hard to be any help for the team. Also as a Skulk. It just feels unfair to bite/swipe 5 times without a kill (EDIT: yeah you only need 4 full its vs armor 3, but it's almost impossible not to get some glancing hits in between) while being able to get so many attacks into the target means you are clearly the better player. 'Get a Bilebombing Gorge at your site' you may think - but armor 3 is not the only problem, it's also weapons upgrades.
I'd like to see Bilebomb not damaging marine armor again (or nerfing it) and implementing Focus. It was a fun, balanced, skill based and awesome way to play as an Alien.
Bilebomb is not skill based. And as a 50 Res Alien (Fade) you don't want to be dependant of a 10 Res Alien (Gorge) when fighting one 20 Res Marine (Shotguns) and one 0 Rs Marine. That's a balanced battle at 60 vs. 20
It used to be: Attack-Move-Attack-Move-Attack-Kill (maybe even less attacks)
Now it's: Attack-Move-Attack-Attack-Move-Attack-Retreat and heal up. Actually most of the time you can't even get two swipes in a row before being killed, so basically you are just scratching a marine and running away.
And the marine just runs back to the Armory to be on full Health+Armor again without even needing a welder mate around.
Focus was just perfect.
EDIT for those who don't know Focus from NS1: It's double damage attack with the trade of double cooldown.
it would be awesome if the Focus upgrade made its way back into NS. I like fading, but in late game it's just too hard to be any help for the team. Also as a Skulk. It just feels unfair to bite/swipe 5 times without a kill (EDIT: yeah you only need 4 full its vs armor 3, but it's almost impossible not to get some glancing hits in between) while being able to get so many attacks into the target means you are clearly the better player. 'Get a Bilebombing Gorge at your site' you may think - but armor 3 is not the only problem, it's also weapons upgrades.
I'd like to see Bilebomb not damaging marine armor again (or nerfing it) and implementing Focus. It was a fun, balanced, skill based and awesome way to play as an Alien.
Bilebomb is not skill based. And as a 50 Res Alien (Fade) you don't want to be dependant of a 10 Res Alien (Gorge) when fighting one 20 Res Marine (Shotguns) and one 0 Rs Marine. That's a balanced battle at 60 vs. 20
It used to be: Attack-Move-Attack-Move-Attack-Kill (maybe even less attacks)
Now it's: Attack-Move-Attack-Attack-Move-Attack-Retreat and heal up. Actually most of the time you can't even get two swipes in a row before being killed, so basically you are just scratching a marine and running away.
And the marine just runs back to the Armory to be on full Health+Armor again without even needing a welder mate around.
Focus was just perfect.
EDIT for those who don't know Focus from NS1: It's double damage attack with the trade of double cooldown.
Comments
In short, the focus upgrade was like carapace etc, an evolution that you had available with a certain chamber. (in this case it was sensory - or what we call shade now) Also, back in NS1 the power of the various evolutionary traits was tied to the number of chambers. So think of it like arms lab, the aliens would receive a better trait if they had more of those chambers. (maximum 3)
So what did it do? It increased the damage of the first slot weapon, but at the expense of attack speed. With 3 chambers (fully upgraded), Focus would double weapon damage, but triple the length of time between attacks. Because of the attack speed reduction, it lowered overall DPS, but increased damage per hit.
Let's apply this to a skulk and a fade.
Skulk has a 75 'normal' damage mouth, and a 0.45 rate of fire. With full upgraded Focus that changes it to 150 damage every 1.35 seconds
Fade has a 65 damage swipe, but it is 'puncture' damage which means it does 125% damage versus marines. So that's 81.25 damage per swipe with a 0.65 rate of fire. With full upgraded Focus that changes it to 162.5 damage every 1.95 seconds.
In short, you would cut the number of bites/swipes in half - down to 2.
So the question begs to be asked. If Aliens had focus, would this become a 'mandatory' upgrade? Would aliens ever choose any other shade upgrade if focus was available? I don't think so. In that case, it's a broken upgrade since it makes other upgrades obsolete. This is something that Charlie doesn't want to happen. He doesn't want to have any one upgrade to be 'must have' - all choices should be viable, even if that isn't the case now.
If we ignore that aspect, how does it impact balance?
Well, if focus is left this way, Fades become unstoppable killing machines. While marines won't be able to be one-shot by a fade so long as they have armor 1 or higher, it will be easy to jump in, swipe, blink around to kill the 2 seconds, and then hit again. I can't see any possible way to kill a Fade in that situation - unless you had a shottie pointed in the exact direction that the fade came from when it came in for the first hit. They'll never stay around long enough after the first hit to get enough damage on them, so barring medpack spam, after the first hit the marine is a dead man walking.
With skulks the difference is pronounced. A focus skulk will 'two-bite' kill an armor 3 marine, effectively nullifying all of their armor upgrades. They're back to armor 0 in terms of number of bites to be killed, despite having armor 3 researched. It will be a lot easier for a skulk to land two consecutive bites than it will for a marine to land the consecutive number of bullets needed to kill a skulk.
So the question begs to be asked, would focus not become the defacto first upgrade given the damage output? Think about it... If aliens go shade (focus) first, skulks will be able to one-shot ALL marines until they get armor 1. How would you compete with that at game start?
A marine with a shotgun can currently 2 shot a fade currently, how is that any different?
While things are different in NS2 focus wouldnt necessarily need to be identical to NS1 in terms of damage/rof slowdown, nor would its impacts on the game be totally the same. I dont think that NS2 needs focus however, especially with the current gameplay state.
The damage output can always be tweaked. I don't know for sure if it was 2 times the damage for half the attack speed in NS1, but if it was, there's no reason it needs to remain that way. It could be 1.5 times the damage for half the attack speed. It can always be tweaked for balance.
The kind of focus I would like to see is the fades old second attack swipe. Charge up on hit, with a few seconds of delay, uninterrupted by the default movement ability (leap/shadowstep/fly).
Bite --> Bite damage applied --> Bonus focus armor damage applied.
That would prevent ill effects in the early game, while still allowing the same upgrade to be highly effective against armor 3 marines. Simple really.
I'd have full support for removing marine armor upgrades entirely, and then rebalancing lerk/fade/onos damage to a middle ground.
however, just throwing focus in the game now would be effectively doubling the damage of the alien team. because it's soooooooo easy to hit and run opposed to sticking around in shotgun sweet spot.
i can only see focus being 'balanced' if marine nanoshield is buffed to have the cooldown removed or some other drastic change.
If that doesn't work a second option would be making only the first attack deal the modified damage maybe at the cost of 1/2 your energy (or it could stop your energy regen for 10 seconds) and make a really loud noise. It would make retreating harder because you would have much less energy to work with and it would alert nearby marines. As an added bonus it would make adrenaline a more viable combat option.
Thoughts?
You mean like carapace is not "must have" and makes regeneration totally viable and doesn't punish any alien commander that does not build crag hive as their first or second hive?
Because with three times as long attack speed, good luck with harassing extractors or attacking buildings in general? Because with shade hive first good luck playing without celerity or carapace or crags or shift? Because marines can already one-shot skulks early game if they decide to rush shotguns? Because late game shotgunner with jetpack has similar amount of maneuverability as lerk or fade and can already two-shot them? Because in the end having to choose between focus or carapace STILL makes for better metagame than having just mandatory carapace? Because if all else fails for some reason, the power and attack speed decrease and heck, even energy cost can be tweaked around to not make focus so overpowering early game, while still offering more options for late-game?
yeah good point. nerfing carapace is the first step, brace yourselves! :P
Nerfing carapace doesn't solve the problem with carapace though. The issue is that a straight armor upgrade is ALWAYS good. You can only nerf the armor count so much before the upgrade becomes inconsequential and not used. As soon as it is changed to the point where it no longer affects TTK then it will be passed up for any other upgrade. It can never be equal to the other upgrades in its current state, only better or worse.
tl;dr Industry continues to demand proper alien armor scaling.
Not enirely right in various points:
1. Skulk would not 1bite kill a0 marines. 160 hp (100+30x2) > 150 (75x2)damage.
2. Focus would not become the one and only mandatory upgrade of the veil. Silence and cloak may be situational, but nonetheless they have their place in the game. Rt harassment as skulk for example, where focus would not help you in any way.
3. Fade would not be able to have focus and silence at the same time. His movement would be easier to track and experience marine using sound would use that "advantage". So they will be able to- as you already claimed as impossible or unlikely- point their shotguns to fades direction.
4. Focus doubled the attack cooldown, not triple. So the overall dps stayed the same.
5. You say fade never stays long enough for a 2nd shotso the marine, once hit, will be dead in he next encounter.
My thought: a marine all alone should die to a fade anyway. Given the same skill level, a 50res investment should beat a 0-20res re-usable investment.
And finally: focus would make shade a waay more viable option for earlier than 3rd hive upgade. Right now as it is, celerity plus frontline egg spawn or carapace plus crag securing 2nd hive growth are so much more powerful that no sane comm would use shade without a very skilled team to pull it off properly. And even then this strat feels cheesy.
I don't know about the high-end competitive stuff, but it would completely mess up the pub-side of the game. And make new players unistall the game quite fast.
Hell even I can go on a rookie serv and be 40-2 fade. And beeing called a cheater. And I'm bad. Without focus. Imagine with it.
You mean like when a skilled player arrives on a server and all the alien players leave after 10 minutes of 50-0 SG or SG/JP?
And talking about balance based on a rookie server... *facepalm*
Focus would be so great, it would actually make shade hive competitive with crag and shift at any stage of the game and finally allow a way for even the lower tier lifeforms to be competitive in the late-game.
Just thought I'd mention that since much of your post mainly concerns skulk and fade, that you forgot to point out that skulks and fade both have glancing attacks so many times the damage wouldn't be what you worked out.
The gorge lerk and onos could have other methods of trade offs. They could remove the vision impairment of gorge spit while increasing the damage value, remove the venom of lerk while increasing the damage value, and the onos would knock the marine across the room so the onos would have to chase him around.