MouseThe Lighter Side of PessimismJoin Date: 2002-03-02Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
edited August 2013
To propose something radical:
It might be a good idea to simply revert some of the lifeform costs and to change the biomass levels of some of the upgrades.
[EDIT] It's also slightly irritating that apart from choosing the chamber for each hive, the aliens have a tech path, not a tech tree.
I don't think the lifeform upgrade cost thing has really panned out. Upgrades just aren't that critical in the very early game(if the team even has them yet), and getting a lifeform 5-10 res earlier is extremely potent, not to mention the impact of disposable Gorges.
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 August 2013
@zek
This is a result of timings not being preserved due to lifeform costs being lowered... not because upgrades cost Pres for higher lifeforms.
You can preserve said timings by lowering the starting pres to 16, the same ratio of change that was applied to every lifeform except the gorge who received a 50% discount. (WB early game!)
Or you can simply re implement the original costs and adjust upgrade costs accordingly.
But alien players having more than a singular Pres sink (lifeforms) is a welcome addition to the game, imo.
@zek
This is a result of timings not being preserved due to lifeform costs being lowered... not because upgrades cost Pres for higher lifeforms.
You can preserve said timings by lowering the starting pres to 16, the same ratio of change that was applied to every lifeform except the gorge who received a 50% discount. (WB early game!)
Or you can simply re implement the original costs and adjust upgrade costs accordingly.
But alien players having more than a singular Pres sink (lifeforms) is a welcome addition to the game, imo.
One wouldn't have happened without the other. I certainly don't want to see upgrade costs plus normal lifeform prices.
Maybe you could tie HP scaling to the amount of upgrades you've evolved to? So when you pay that extra pres for an upgrade, you get extra HP as well. That way you can scale higher lifeforms a bit better than they do now. You'd need to tweak it a bit, but if you make a 40pres fade significantly weaker than a 55 pres one in terms of HP, it might break up the fadeplosion a bit as some people might not want to risk losing an early fade, or at least make the fade ball easier to deal with as long as aliens are still on one hive (and thus just one upgrade).
This is the definition of what is wrong with this game. To fix unbalance, people come up with the most convoluted mechanisms to "fix" these problems. It's this kind of thinking that has made the current build of NS2 into the most needlessly complex, klunky nightmare of a strategy game ever devised.
Bringing back the original lifeform costs would be a disaster for aliens at this point - your talking 12 minute fades? NS1 had fades coming out at 4 minutes but no one complained about the early game being too 'short'. Its not that fades come out that ends the early game, its how the gameplay changes the instant they do, because of their strengths.
Maybe you could tie HP scaling to the amount of upgrades you've evolved to? So when you pay that extra pres for an upgrade, you get extra HP as well. That way you can scale higher lifeforms a bit better than they do now. You'd need to tweak it a bit, but if you make a 40pres fade significantly weaker than a 55 pres one in terms of HP, it might break up the fadeplosion a bit as some people might not want to risk losing an early fade, or at least make the fade ball easier to deal with as long as aliens are still on one hive (and thus just one upgrade).
This is the definition of what is wrong with this game. To fix unbalance, people come up with the most convoluted mechanisms to "fix" these problems. It's this kind of thinking that has made the current build of NS2 into the most needlessly complex, klunky nightmare of a strategy game ever devised.
Reduce base fade HP, add HP alongside every 5pres upgrade. It's not exactly rocket science, is it?
NS2 could become a symmetrical game that will never be balanced outside of a narrow range of expected accuracy because of melee vs. aim
you can keep "scaling" it in silly ways to achieve this
I think the biomass and tiered alien upgrades moved towards that
asymmetry is much better for this type of game because of the melee vs. aim discrepancy, and the fact that there is no end condition if the game is too balanced
you get a more dynamic game with back and forth the further away you move from "scaling"
Reduce base fade HP, add HP alongside every 5pres upgrade. It's not exactly rocket science, is it?
But my point is you shouldn't have to use such wonky stupid mechanics to balance the game. If you did what you say, what's the point of Biomass then? We reduce Fade HP, then increase its HP with upgrades, while at the same time adding HP back with increasing biomass. How does that make sense? How does that fix the problem??
Bringing back the original lifeform costs would be a disaster for aliens at this point - your talking 12 minute fades? NS1 had fades coming out at 4 minutes but no one complained about the early game being too 'short'. Its not that fades come out that ends the early game, its how the gameplay changes the instant they do, because of their strengths.
I think the ideal situation would be to have a lifeform composition that unlocks most lifeforms early and then builds up to a full strength later on by adding higher numbers of expensive lifeforms and all that. It's the basic idea from NS1 refined to full potential. I'm just not sure how you pull that off with the NS2 res model.
Fade simply has too many HP. If you land 2 SG hits or empty your entire AR clip into a Fade and he will still kill you and retreat easily (doesn't have to flee after enough hits), it's not hard to see why people have problems with Fades and complain about Fade ball. Fades currently have too little weaknesses, and less HP would be an obvious one.
I think the improved AR can help a lot to strengthen early game Marines. Making the AR stronger itself (which I would have preferred, but having a cheap buyable stronger AR is neat too) is probably the best way to tone down early Marine weakness. For example, lack of (pub) strategy options is also due to Marine forward positions being easily overrun by organized groups of Skulks because they can hardly defend a position, which makes fast PG quite important.
Also, when will the Onos get more HP/Armor? Will it? What's the official stance on the Onos? With current vanilla values, even switching Onos (40 res) and Fade (60 res) would make sense.
I think Mines should cost 10 res (or make them much stronger so they are good vs higher life forms too). Nobody wants to buy them because it's not a very fun investment and people rather save for better things. And even if you spend all your money on Mines for the PGs because someone has to, 15 seems too expensive for what they do. I know mines can be extremely strong situationally, but it just doesn't happen often enough to justify the cost.
This is the definition of what is wrong with this game. To fix unbalance, people come up with the most convoluted mechanisms to "fix" these problems. It's this kind of thinking that has made the current build of NS2 into the most needlessly complex, klunky nightmare of a strategy game ever devised.
I can relate. Even the devs do it, so you know where it's coming from. Instead of fixing a problem by fixing it the direct, obvious way, everyone goes out of their way to think of some elaborate scheme that works around 5 corners.
So I've given a lot of thought into the issues brought to the table by a few people (Not everyone because I don't have a database logging everything )
A lot of people are happy with how fades are on their own, but in a fade ball they are OP.
I think people are happy that fades are "assassins" and not designed to mash buildings up.
I think people are not happy that fades come out so early and marines aren't adequately equipped.
I do not think that an RFK or RFP system works. I have played on one of the servers with RFP and I (as a veteran) stomped a lot of people rookies and non-rookies on purpose to see how best I can abuse the system. I got a 3 min 50 sec fade (Just started evolving). Sure you can change the values around but if you change the values around such that someone with 17 kills and 1 RT and 3 power node kills along with a fair few harvesters, you won't see the changes for players only getting a few points.
I therefore believe that the RFK/RFP system is flawed because better players really do benefit too much. Horribly too much. I think implementing this system will further add to the stigma of "catering to the pro players". (Which I absolute detest as an argument, and also as a view point).
I also believe it is flawed because it does not solve the issue of the fade ball. Sure the fadeplosion might be staggered somewhat but the fade ball is still out there somewhere, ready to strike, just a couple of minutes later.
Therefore it is my intention that these suggestions I present will add balance to the game.
Starting pres 15
This means that it takes longer to get fades but if you lose your fade it's still only 40pres instead of a massive 50 making losing fades slightly less pivotal. Wait for the comment on this because other suggestions change the impact of fades
Skulk hp reduced to 55 with +6 hp per biomass.
This gives marines a slightly better chance with dealing with the early game.
It also increases the want for gorge and babbler play. I do not believe that if skulk hp was reduced to this level that babblers would be massively OP, but rather it gives gorges more viability and slightly increases depth in choosing engagements (2x gorge or 1x gorge and skulk packs/ambushes. But ambushes are weaker because skulks are weaker.)
This also makes skulks scale better into the late game with 6biomass skulks being 111 hp (141 carapace) This scaling is important to consider for my later suggestions.
- I can see carapace maybe being more viable and this could lead to issues with stagnant tech routes.
Fades structure damage reduced to 20
"Assassins", marine killers, meat grinders. These are words associated with the fade.
We all know it takes ages to kill an RT with 1 fade, but with 4 fades it's not that slow and the mobility to get to defence is far too great. Reducing the structure damage further decreases the viability of having 4-5 fades.
They are still viable at killing marines.
Some teams might feel that they want 4-5 fades to own the engagements whilst they slowly res bite or kill pgs with 1 skulk/gorge/onos. That's fine, that adds depth. Do you go 5 fades to own engagements? Or might that be bad because marines res will grow too quickly? Maybe your fades are good enough to deal with the teched marines. Maybe that's skillful. But maybe you want another skulk or someone saving for onos.
Increase onos hp.
Make it viable again.
It just simply isn't viable.
More hp.
Maybe more armor too.
Just... more.
Removes a fade from the ball.
Fade hp decreased by 20 though.
Lerk speed increased slightly.
Lerk umbra 1 in 4 bullets stopped
Lerk spikes more accurate
Lerk umbra energy cost increased.
These changes try and bring lerks back into the game.
Removes another fade from the ball because having another one doesn't necessarily protect the others but umbra does. Umbra increases survivability which is needed with the 20hp reduction.
Lerks are slightly too vulnerable now though, they move too slowly with their increased hitbox.
Umbra is OP atm and could do with a slight nerf. Not sure how this works out and it would need to be tested.
Lerk spikes also allows the lerk playstyle to be more versatile and less umbra spam, but with the increased energy cost for umbra, you can't be both offensive and supportive and stay in the air. Easy to learn, hard to master.
Remove pres gain from commander (outside the chair of course) but allow initial 15 starting pres.
Frequently I am able to go fade after setting up hydras, bilebombing targets, marines, and their weapons. I am out of the hive so often because I am so useful as a pres gorge. However I should never be allowed to go fade or lerk unless I have a ridiculous economy to drop myself a tres egg.
Increase some tres egg costs further.
Gorge 15
Lerk 40
Fade 85
Onos 100 (Might need to be adapted depending on viability and HP.)
Increase pres of gorge to 10. If they are a serious investment and lifeform in your team, you will justify getting upgrades. If you are suiciding them on 10pres, jokes on you.
Gorges should NOT be used as suicide bombers! They should be used as a serious and viable (You can tell this is my favourite word) lifeform. 15 res is significant enough to not spam for the commander.
- A big problem I see here is the 3 hydra pres. I suppose with a higher pres for the gorge itself and how skulks are nerfed a bit and hydras don't scale with anything, it might be possible to reduce hydra costs to 1pres each or maybe 2.
Now, by reducing skulk HP and fade HP, shotguns will be a lot stronger even now. I think the 6 shells though somewhat balances this. It will need to be tested though.
I honestly believe that these changes would be for the better of the game, for everyone. Fades are slightly less OP in a ball and on their own, but with support, just as deadly. This helps with uncoordinated play in pubs with fades going 33-3 and competitive play where 5 fades respond to everything. This brings back the onos to being more fun and useful. It makes gorges more serious and less suicidal. It makes lerks more fun and deep. Skulks scale better so losing your fades isn't the end of the world which I think is the largest attributing factor to spam fades and fade balls. Marines will have a better time early game so they can be adequately equipped for the fades and umbra and we'll see a proper midgame with skulks, gorges, lerks, fades vs shotguns and lmgs instead of a quick stomp where the incredible mobility of the alien team allows them to do this:
5 man pressure? Base rush
4 man pressure? Base rush
3 man pressure? Wipe phase gate and pick off pressure group.
2 man pressure? Get res biter through if possible and then clear pressure.
1 man pressure? lol dead.
0 man pressure? Greedy khamm and res ripping fades.
I (as a veteran) stomped a lot of people rookies and non-rookies on purpose to see how best I can abuse the system. I got a 3 min 50 sec fade
If I am getting stomped I would rather have the team owning us get lots of res so they can finish that round as quickly as possible. Pubstomping happens without RFK too, the only way to fix that is proper team arrangement based on some ELO or matchmaking ranking value. I have seen servers with mods like this both in NS1 and 2 (HBZ for example) and it works very well. Even one very highly skilled player can be counterbalanced to have a somewhat fair experience.
Reduce base fade HP, add HP alongside every 5pres upgrade. It's not exactly rocket science, is it?
But my point is you shouldn't have to use such wonky stupid mechanics to balance the game. If you did what you say, what's the point of Biomass then? We reduce Fade HP, then increase its HP with upgrades, while at the same time adding HP back with increasing biomass. How does that make sense? How does that fix the problem??
I can understand what you're saying. And ideally I'd suggest to remove alien commander and return to the old NS1 system, but we know that's not gonna happen, so we'll just have to try and work our way around it. I'm not saying my suggestion will solve the issue, but it might alleviate some of the problems.
For example, the original idea of having to pay pres for upgrades is pretty good imo, but it's not working as well as it should. I think it was supposed to help scale higher lifeforms and potentially break up fadeplosions while also allowing a bit more flexibility in lifeform timings. At the moment though, the problem is that a 40pres fade is still too good not to get. It's a no-brainer decision actually. Waiting for 45, 50 or even 55 pres is silly. End result, instead of smoothing out lifeform timings, we just see the fadeplosions 3-4 minutes sooner.
That's why I was suggesting to lower the base HP, and make evolved upgrades give significantly extra HP as well. If done right, it could make those early fades weak enough so that there's actually a real risk to consider, while still allowing it to scale up with more pres/hives. It also gives the marines another means of dealing with higher lifeforms, as destroying upgrade structures will have bigger consequences than before (it would be like hitting the arms lab).
This sort of HP scaling might also help with the onos issue, as he's suffering from the current system as well. Seeing as you can go onos at 60pres now, it makes sense to have it's HP/armor weaker than the old 75pres onos, but alas the b251 onos doesn't scale up well enough with just upgrades, so even if you spend a whopping 84pres for a fully upgraded onos, he'll still suffer greatly in the late game because of it's low HP.
In short, having upgrades combine with extra HP could allow higher lifeforms to scale up more naturally with pres collection as well as the amount of hives (as each hive would give another upgrade to evolve to and thus extra HP). With this you wouldn't need biomass for HP scaling, making it easier to potentially rework the biomass/alien tech tree altogether into something more dynamic than the lineair path we have now.
I (as a veteran) stomped a lot of people rookies and non-rookies on purpose to see how best I can abuse the system. I got a 3 min 50 sec fade
If I am getting stomped I would rather have the team owning us get lots of res so they can finish that round as quickly as possible. Pubstomping happens without RFK too, the only way to fix that is proper team arrangement based on some ELO or matchmaking ranking value. I have seen servers with mods like this both in NS1 and 2 (HBZ for example) and it works very well. Even one very highly skilled player can be counterbalanced to have a somewhat fair experience.
But the snowballing effect should be done on engagements won which then leads on to affecting map control and res income. Pure fragging capabilities should not determine games. There should still be somewhat an element of the RTS nature to grab resources.
RFP increases the snowballing effect so much that tech requirements are near impossible to meet for marines. Aliens need pres more than marines need it. The RFP/K system benefits aliens a lto more.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited August 2013
Looking at the b250 and b251 changes, it's kind of amazing to me how anyone could think these patches would be balanced. B249 already had aliens at a slight advantage. B250/251 then gave aliens several significant buffs (cheaper and faster fades, faster skulks, biomass hp boost, cheaper gorges, stronger babblers, stronger celerity, stronger adrenaline, stronger regen, no glancing bites, and more) while giving marines a few nerfs (medpack nerf, wider lmg spread, weaker shotgun, health regen only armories) and some mild buffs (more agile jetpacks, for example). In fairness, the lerk was heavily nerfed, but the end result is still an obvious alien bias. I didn't play at the time so I had no chance to comment on this, but looking at it now that I've started playing again, it's just obvious that these patches would make the aliens overpowered.
Increase onos hp. Make it viable again. It just simply isn't viable.
Lerk spikes more accurate
Onos is plenty viable. I would like it to be more agile, since it's really boring to play a lifeform that moves like a turtle, but it doesn't need more hp/armor.
Stronger Lerk spikes is the last thing we need. Long range lerk spiking is boring for both teams, melee bite lerk, on the other hand, is exciting for both teams.
Onos is plenty viable. I would like it to be more agile, since it's really boring to play a lifeform that moves like a turtle, but it doesn't need more hp/armor.
There's really little skill involved in the onos. You can't wall jump, no energy management with flying, no blinkhopping. There's nothing but a big, expensive lifeform to take some punishment and do some damage.
In public play it is not as enjoyable anymore because it's just ridiculously easy to kill. The balance really tilted when exos benefited from weapons upgrades and the onos got an HP nerf.
In competitive play onos saving just doesn't happen anymore because it's not worth it. Saunamen like to play with the onos but if you catch up on the semifinals against godar you can see how pathetic and useless it was. There comes a point where I think "fades are out now, the aliens have become essentially the strongest they can be.". In b249 and before, seeing an onos was a pretty big deal but they were still possible to dispatch. in b250 they just aren't a threat.
Stronger Lerk spikes is the last thing we need. Long range lerk spiking is boring for both teams, melee bite lerk, on the other hand, is exciting for both teams.
I just believe that the lerk is too inaccurate at the moment and could do with a slight buff.
I don't think that there should be one playstyle for this lifeform when it's clear it has the potential for multiple roles.
Read: Distance spiking to take armor off. Flying in to drag marines aim up and away from the skulks on the floor or to go in for a bite. Umbra for fade support.
Mid game lerks will stop going for the bites because 1-2, 2-2 shotguns hurt. I don't know if shotguns should be balanced to change this or the spike accuracy, but I like to believe that marines shouldn't be touched until the changes I've suggested have been tried.
The reward for exciting play is enjoyment and greater success in terms of bites > spikes in damage. However I think that is appropriately balanced with the risk of losing your lifeform. If you want to be "more boring" and not bite but spike, you're safer in keeping your lifeform but not as damaging as a biter lerk. This is probably where the apparant skill and mastery of the lerk comes in to decide when to bite and when to spike. I just believe that the accuracy could be tighten up a little bit. Obviously we don't want snipers, but just a tad tweak could help.
RFP increases the snowballing effect so much that tech requirements are near impossible to meet for marines. Aliens need pres more than marines need it. The RFP/K system benefits aliens a lto more.
Do you have any reasons as to why tech requirements are near impossible and aliens get more out of it? First of all, the RFP can be adjusted in a way to give marines TRES and PRES to aliens like in NS1 or simply give a portion of the res to TRES and some to PRES. For example 1 res for Points is divided into 0.6/0.4 PRES/TRES for aliens and 0.4/0.6 PRES/TRES for marines.
What you dont get with your snowballing analogies is, that until the pro skulk with RFK has his res to go fade, he does not get any benefits from it. This is not like in other strategy games where you can immediatly build more stuff that puts you ahead, when it comes to early fade it is all about a timing attack.
I also fail to see how marines should not be able to meet the tech requirements. Basically you need shotguns to counter a fade. You can get those pretty early right now if you want them.
Next thing you do is severly lower the starting res or make it zero. This prolongs the early game and makes it very unlikely that mutliple people have the same res at the same time to make that fade ball happen, problem solved. It also means that if a team relies on RFK to get their early fade and they neglect protecting harvesters, they need more kills to get the fade > longer early game.
Btw, it think the Lerk is in a very good place right now.
RFP increases the snowballing effect so much that tech requirements are near impossible to meet for marines. Aliens need pres more than marines need it. The RFP/K system benefits aliens a lto more.
Do you have any reasons as to why tech requirements are near impossible and aliens get more out of it? First of all, the RFP can be adjusted in a way to give marines TRES and PRES to aliens like in NS1 or simply give a portion of the res to TRES and some to PRES.
What you dont get with your snowballing analogys is, that until the pro skulk with RFK has his res to go fade, he does not get any benefits from it. This is not like in other strategy games where you can immediatly build more stuff that puts you ahead, when it comes to early fade it is all about a timing attack.
I also fail to see how marines should not be able to meet the tech requirements. Basically you need shotguns to counter a fade. You can get those pretty early right now if you want them.
Next thing you do is severly lower the starting res or make it zero. This prolongs the early game and makes it very unlikely that mutliüle people have the same res at the same time to make that fade ball happen, problem solved.
Btw, it think the Lerk is in a very good place right now.
Currently we are seeing 7 minute fades. Even quicker on some maps like Tram and veil considering spawns.
7 minutes is very difficult for marines to ready 0-2 or 1-2 with shotguns and pgs. Without the upgrades, your marines will find it very difficult to fight fades. Without the pgs, marines will find it very difficult to establish a decent economy and pressure so the aliens wash over them.
A naked 40pres fade is really good. An upgraded pres fade is even better obviously. A fade ball of 4-5 un-upgraded fades can deal with 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 marines well enough to deny any more marine advancement.
Marines fragging and getting pres for more shotguns doesn't change engagments.
Aliens fragging and getting naked fades before the marine tech catches up changes the entire game.
I believe that it should be possible to get fades out before marines have decent tech and vice-versa but in the current iteration of the game, it's simply too easy and too common that marines are behind what they need to adequately deal with the fade ball.
My skulk changes should help with the marine early game. I also think that reducing the starting pres means that early pressure on alien harvesters will be more beneficial and actually somewhat delay fades.
At the moment it's near impossible to kill off a game before fades or get a good advantage before fades come out. b249 it was possible to delay fades till 15 minutes. Now you'd be doing a fantastic job to delay till 10 minutes.
On the other hand aliens are almost always out-teching marines (This is what I mean by when I say fades come out before marines have the adequate tech). This is not balanced. Only better teams should be able to out tech the marines in this way but we are often seeing the better marine teams face the worse alien teams in unfavourable conditions. Archaea played duplex 3 days ago on tram and the score was 1-1, both alien wins. I'd say that the Archaea players were playing very well as marines but they didn't have the time despite their pressure, to be prepared for the fades. Even though they are very skilled marines, they couldn't deal with the lesser skilled alien players because of the tech imbalance.
The RFP system brings out fades earlier. Let the RTS elements, determined by the FPS to win engagements so that they might kill resource towers/build resource tower, determine the resource flow. Also if you change it so that it affects pres for aliens and tres for marines, fade wave after wave will come out, and shotguns will diminish quicker unless the commander drops shotguns but this will slow down the tech again. It's not a viable resource system.
I dont understand your second paragraph, sorry. Could you rephrase please?
It is a lie that shotguns is all it takes to deal with a fade and especially a fade ball.
For the most part people agree that fades are not OP on their own.
To deal with a fade ball though, you will need armor and medpack to survive 4-5 swipes to get off enough perfect shotgun shots to kill the fades. Simply pushing them out of a room with 0-0 shotguns is not good enough to win the game and nor should it be. If it were the case that "Basically you need shotguns to counter a fade" then we wouldn't be having this discussion nor would we be seeing the current win ratios because shotguns come out in every game.
EDIT: I should make it clear that I think adequate tech to deal with fades is 1-2, shotguns, 2x phasegates. I think anything less which is often the case shows that the aliens are dominating (which might be a skill thing) and this is happening too far often to be determined by a skill difference, which leads me to think it's a balance issue. If marines can't get a few fade kills with this tech then perhaps the alien team is better than the marine team.
I think if fades would deal nearly no damage to buildings (even if there are 3 or 4!) it would be a better solution.
Sewlek wrote that he tried that and that it lead to spawn-camping fades. Well. Maybe the building damage was to high even with this reduction? it should be impossible for fades to destroy buildings in a reasonable amount of time.
And if this ip-camping is really a problem, maybe beacon could revive dead marines again?
There's really little skill involved in the onos. You can't wall jump, no energy management with flying, no blinkhopping. There's nothing but a big, expensive lifeform to take some punishment and do some damage.
Yes, and this is the reason why it sometimes struggles to have an impact on games. It's too easy to chase down an Onos, even without jetpacks. A more agile Onos (faster base speed, buffed charge) would give it more survivability, without making it more tanky (which would just compound the problems that already exist with the Onos).
I just believe that the lerk is too inaccurate at the moment and could do with a slight buff.
I don't think that there should be one playstyle for this lifeform when it's clear it has the potential for multiple roles.
Well, you're wrong and you're right. Yes, there should be several playstyles. The problem is that there's only one playstyle now: Spike + umbra spam. With the nerfed speed, fixed hitboxes and removed glancing bites (lerk is the only class where this is a nerf), aggressive bite lerk simply isn't viable against marines with good aim.
Even in b249, most lerks at the highest level relied mostly on spikes in a pure support role. In b251, even previously high-impact aggro lerks like me are forced into a pure support role. Buffing spikes would only serve to further solidify that.
Even in b249, most lerks at the highest level relied mostly on spikes in a pure support role. In b251, even previously high-impact aggro lerks like me are forced into a pure support role. Buffing spikes would only serve to further solidify that.
I don't lerk, but I'm all about lerks being in your face biting.
I dont think you could make any reasonable changes to bite lerk that would keep it viable once marines get shotguns out.. at that point its always going to be super high risk... The only buffs I think lerk needs is a slightly faster rof on bite, and a little more speed. Buffing spikes would be very bad for gameplay, just because the sit back and spam spikes gameplay is quite boring, and marines already suffer from massive medpack usage issues, it doesnt need to be made worse.
Nerfing skulk HP would be brutal to the alien early game - it would be better to just nerf the HP of babblers slightly, and possibly increase their cost a little. Lowering the costs of Hydras also would induce more turtle style gameplay, aliens do not need more defensive strengths early game. From what I have seen, the problems with marines early game is not killing skulks (although it can take heavy medpack usage), its the fact that pushing an RT is mostly meaningless, general incurs great risk (if you wipe, your going to loose rts behind it), and that the aliens can so easily defend against the push (hydras, babblers, poor marine movement).
As for RFK, stop evaluating its effects when its added ontop of a resource system balanced without it, its largely pointless, it will always be broken when implemented that way.
As for fade balls, there's a couple changes that would go a long way to improving fades, and also making fade harder to play in comp. Fix the poor collisions that fades have when blinking which allows them to slip past nearly every obstacle with ease, and also fix their ability to traverse the entire map at full speed almost 0 energy cost. You can lower structure damage for fades to almost 0, it wont matter. You can still camp the pgs just as easily, it just gives the marines an extra chance or 2 to attempt to save it, which is nearly impossible with 4 fades on the gate, especially if they have a gorge/lerk.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
Lerk+shotgun=lerk's discression. But the lerk, with perfect movement, should have a chance to solo a solo shotgun marine. The risk is obvious, but.. yea. Upped speed and increased ROF are my exact desires
But yea, if fade blocks were even possible at this point that would be great. If bunnyhops were limited to 1 or 2 before needing a blink that'd be like a ninja turtles band-aid, super cool but still a band-aid. I don't think making fade structure damage ridiculously low is reasonable because 1 fade should be able to kill an rt by himself and faster than a skulk. The lowered structure damage is like generic brand bandaids, they just... don't stick.
I think RFK should be implemented with slowed resources, never lower it from 20.. raise it maybe with the new system, who knows. ONE fade, AT MOST should or could be out at 6 minutes with 4 RTs and reasonably significant res from kills. This is actually very interesting because it's viable to try to give your lerk rfk early? I think things like that are just super neat. Concerted team effort to get a fade at 6 minutes while the other fades will come around 9-10? hell yay! Saving for straight onos? Idk I don't like onoses, never have never will.
If we're sticking with an alien comm.. an idea, probably a bad one, but I LIKE IT.
-Increase the viability of there being rotating comms
-Gorges can't drop structures, but the comm drops a "blueprint" and gorges, perhaps other lifeforms, need to drop pres into them to make them buildable. The comm can choose to entirely fill the RT himself, but not if hes starting with just enough res to cyst (OH SHUCKS Y'ALL)
-This includes slowed Tres and mildly increased Pres flow
I think if fades would deal nearly no damage to buildings (even if there are 3 or 4!) it would be a better solution.
Sewlek wrote that he tried that and that it lead to spawn-camping fades. Well. Maybe the building damage was to high even with this reduction? it should be impossible for fades to destroy buildings in a reasonable amount of time.
And if this ip-camping is really a problem, maybe beacon could revive dead marines again?
Spawn-camping is a legitimate way of winning the game though.
>If you die on the field you take time to get back to where you are needed.
>If you get ambushed on the way out, you take time to get back to where you are needed
>If you die when spawning, you take time to get back to where you are needed
Creating a big spawn queue / delaying reinforcements allows your team time to bite structures. (Power in base, res around the map, IPs themselves)
There are ways to stop this like having marines come back to push aliens out of the base. In fact this is probably the reason why fades aren't doing this now. If fades can currently do 50 damage per swipe to structures they'd be even more inclined to kill the IPs.
There's really little skill involved in the onos. You can't wall jump, no energy management with flying, no blinkhopping. There's nothing but a big, expensive lifeform to take some punishment and do some damage.
Yes, and this is the reason why it sometimes struggles to have an impact on games. It's too easy to chase down an Onos, even without jetpacks. A more agile Onos (faster base speed, buffed charge) would give it more survivability, without making it more tanky (which would just compound the problems that already exist with the Onos).
I just believe that the lerk is too inaccurate at the moment and could do with a slight buff.
I don't think that there should be one playstyle for this lifeform when it's clear it has the potential for multiple roles.
Well, you're wrong and you're right. Yes, there should be several playstyles. The problem is that there's only one playstyle now: Spike + umbra spam. With the nerfed speed, fixed hitboxes and removed glancing bites (lerk is the only class where this is a nerf), aggressive bite lerk simply isn't viable against marines with good aim.
Even in b249, most lerks at the highest level relied mostly on spikes in a pure support role. In b251, even previously high-impact aggro lerks like me are forced into a pure support role. Buffing spikes would only serve to further solidify that.
I disagree. I think that lerk bite is viable. For example the corridors between observation and elevator transfer in tram. Enough corners to surprise marines and nice room geometry for escaping after a bite. I don't think much more should change to increase the viability of the lerk bite because that might make it too strong in situations where marines should be winning the engagements. I do think that lerk speed should be increased somewhat though.
I am, however, not a lerk player and as such I'm not particularly aware of any big problems at the moment or even the consequences of such changes. It just "kinda makes sense" and is a bit of a hunch so obviously I'm very willing to take this criticism positively.
I can see the argument for faster base speed and how that is better in terms of skill rather than a flat HP boost but I can't help but think that we'll start going back to "WTF MASSIVE GORE RANGE" against JPs when we take into account lag compensation between players. This is kind of an issue with all lifeforms against jetpacks but against a 100 pdmg onos, it's more frustrating. Also I wouldn't particularly want to see multiple onos running around the map responding to every little push.
I dont think you could make any reasonable changes to bite lerk that would keep it viable once marines get shotguns out.. at that point its always going to be super high risk... The only buffs I think lerk needs is a slightly faster rof on bite, and a little more speed. Buffing spikes would be very bad for gameplay, just because the sit back and spam spikes gameplay is quite boring, and marines already suffer from massive medpack usage issues, it doesnt need to be made worse..
Agree with the first part regarding bite.
And this is why I disagree with the solution being ROF increase.. By all means go for it, but it's not going to increase it's viability by much beyond the early game (the only area it doesn't need improvement in) for the reasons you opened with.
The sit back and spike gameplay might be boring to you, but its one of my favorite parts of the class! The only issue is the unnecessary (thanks to the new flight model's loss of momentum) energy flapping that hampers the flexibility in the meta game of dodge + spike so you are relegated to spiking in place, vulnerable, or spiking very briefly.
Lastly, it's role is harass /support.. Forcing the commander to med pack is it's purpose? Both poison bite and spikes. I see no issue there, especially considering the recent nerfs fana mentioned.
Personally I'd increase it's speed (pancake acceleration as well) and remove the unnecessary energy flap. Provides more viability through evasion and increased play styles.
@nachos, you failed to get my point. No one is proposing to introduce rfk ontop of the current res system without adjusting it. If you have RFK/RFP you obviously have to tone down the presflow of RTs and lower starting pres. All of a sudden, there may be one player who got all the RFK/RFP dealt out for his team and can go early fade but that means that the rest of his team has a lot less pres and wont be fade anytime soon.
What you are explaining does not have to do with RFK/RFP, it has to do with marines being unable to deal with fadeballs or early fades generally. If you have a RFK/RFP system, all you need to do as marine is to kill enough aliens to earn enough res to deal with fades once they come out.
@nachos, you failed to get my point. No one is proposing to introduce rfk ontop of the current res system without adjusting it. If you have RFK/RFP you obviously have to tone down the presflow of RTs and lower starting pres. All of a sudden, there may be one player who got all the RFK/RFP dealt out for his team and can go early fade but that means that the rest of his team has a lot less pres and wont be fade anytime soon.
What you are explaining does not have to do with RFK/RFP, it has to do with marines being unable to deal with fadeballs or early fades generally. If you have a RFK/RFP system, all you need to do as marine is to kill enough aliens to earn enough res to deal with fades once they come out.
Ok thank you, I understand now.
Essentially you are not fixing the problem. You are only delaying it. You might add that by delaying it marines can tech up and be equipped properly which is what my main issue with the system is. But in first post with the changes I mentioned that a single fade is not really a big problem and that people are agreed that fades generally are in a pretty good position. The fade ball is the issue and I don't believe that delaying it is a good way of dealing with the issue and it leads to less interesting play (Basically a fade kill counter rather than being aware of lifeforms and how to deal with different team compositions).
However, personally I am a big disbeliever in this system because it seems that marines tech up and all players on the team are becoming stronger at the same time. This ends up with 5 progressively stronger marine players and you end up with "shotgun balls" albeit smaller than fade balls - 2 marines with shotgun welders will be able to pressure too easily and you'll see marines start walking away with the mid game and considering how weak alien tech is compared to marine mid & late game, marines will continue to roll. Also if the aliens lose their fades then we'll see the marines absolutely dominating because at the moment they are a massive (and unfair) pivot point in the game. If you then decrease the contribution made by res towers to pres, fades will be slower to come back into the game and marines will still be teching up and wipe up skulks. This is why I suggested a lower base skulk hp but an increased scaling system with biomass for skulks.
Comments
Have people played with it yet? How does it feel?
It might be a good idea to simply revert some of the lifeform costs and to change the biomass levels of some of the upgrades.
[EDIT] It's also slightly irritating that apart from choosing the chamber for each hive, the aliens have a tech path, not a tech tree.
This is a result of timings not being preserved due to lifeform costs being lowered... not because upgrades cost Pres for higher lifeforms.
You can preserve said timings by lowering the starting pres to 16, the same ratio of change that was applied to every lifeform except the gorge who received a 50% discount. (WB early game!)
Or you can simply re implement the original costs and adjust upgrade costs accordingly.
But alien players having more than a singular Pres sink (lifeforms) is a welcome addition to the game, imo.
One wouldn't have happened without the other. I certainly don't want to see upgrade costs plus normal lifeform prices.
This is the definition of what is wrong with this game. To fix unbalance, people come up with the most convoluted mechanisms to "fix" these problems. It's this kind of thinking that has made the current build of NS2 into the most needlessly complex, klunky nightmare of a strategy game ever devised.
Reduce base fade HP, add HP alongside every 5pres upgrade. It's not exactly rocket science, is it?
you can keep "scaling" it in silly ways to achieve this
I think the biomass and tiered alien upgrades moved towards that
asymmetry is much better for this type of game because of the melee vs. aim discrepancy, and the fact that there is no end condition if the game is too balanced
you get a more dynamic game with back and forth the further away you move from "scaling"
But my point is you shouldn't have to use such wonky stupid mechanics to balance the game. If you did what you say, what's the point of Biomass then? We reduce Fade HP, then increase its HP with upgrades, while at the same time adding HP back with increasing biomass. How does that make sense? How does that fix the problem??
I think the ideal situation would be to have a lifeform composition that unlocks most lifeforms early and then builds up to a full strength later on by adding higher numbers of expensive lifeforms and all that. It's the basic idea from NS1 refined to full potential. I'm just not sure how you pull that off with the NS2 res model.
- Fade simply has too many HP. If you land 2 SG hits or empty your entire AR clip into a Fade and he will still kill you and retreat easily (doesn't have to flee after enough hits), it's not hard to see why people have problems with Fades and complain about Fade ball. Fades currently have too little weaknesses, and less HP would be an obvious one.
- I think the improved AR can help a lot to strengthen early game Marines. Making the AR stronger itself (which I would have preferred, but having a cheap buyable stronger AR is neat too) is probably the best way to tone down early Marine weakness. For example, lack of (pub) strategy options is also due to Marine forward positions being easily overrun by organized groups of Skulks because they can hardly defend a position, which makes fast PG quite important.
- Also, when will the Onos get more HP/Armor? Will it? What's the official stance on the Onos? With current vanilla values, even switching Onos (40 res) and Fade (60 res) would make sense.
- I think Mines should cost 10 res (or make them much stronger so they are good vs higher life forms too). Nobody wants to buy them because it's not a very fun investment and people rather save for better things. And even if you spend all your money on Mines for the PGs because someone has to, 15 seems too expensive for what they do. I know mines can be extremely strong situationally, but it just doesn't happen often enough to justify the cost.
I can relate. Even the devs do it, so you know where it's coming from. Instead of fixing a problem by fixing it the direct, obvious way, everyone goes out of their way to think of some elaborate scheme that works around 5 corners.A lot of people are happy with how fades are on their own, but in a fade ball they are OP.
I think people are happy that fades are "assassins" and not designed to mash buildings up.
I think people are not happy that fades come out so early and marines aren't adequately equipped.
I do not think that an RFK or RFP system works. I have played on one of the servers with RFP and I (as a veteran) stomped a lot of people rookies and non-rookies on purpose to see how best I can abuse the system. I got a 3 min 50 sec fade (Just started evolving). Sure you can change the values around but if you change the values around such that someone with 17 kills and 1 RT and 3 power node kills along with a fair few harvesters, you won't see the changes for players only getting a few points.
I therefore believe that the RFK/RFP system is flawed because better players really do benefit too much. Horribly too much. I think implementing this system will further add to the stigma of "catering to the pro players". (Which I absolute detest as an argument, and also as a view point).
I also believe it is flawed because it does not solve the issue of the fade ball. Sure the fadeplosion might be staggered somewhat but the fade ball is still out there somewhere, ready to strike, just a couple of minutes later.
Therefore it is my intention that these suggestions I present will add balance to the game.
Starting pres 15
This means that it takes longer to get fades but if you lose your fade it's still only 40pres instead of a massive 50 making losing fades slightly less pivotal. Wait for the comment on this because other suggestions change the impact of fades
Skulk hp reduced to 55 with +6 hp per biomass.
This gives marines a slightly better chance with dealing with the early game.
It also increases the want for gorge and babbler play. I do not believe that if skulk hp was reduced to this level that babblers would be massively OP, but rather it gives gorges more viability and slightly increases depth in choosing engagements (2x gorge or 1x gorge and skulk packs/ambushes. But ambushes are weaker because skulks are weaker.)
This also makes skulks scale better into the late game with 6biomass skulks being 111 hp (141 carapace) This scaling is important to consider for my later suggestions.
- I can see carapace maybe being more viable and this could lead to issues with stagnant tech routes.
Fades structure damage reduced to 20
"Assassins", marine killers, meat grinders. These are words associated with the fade.
We all know it takes ages to kill an RT with 1 fade, but with 4 fades it's not that slow and the mobility to get to defence is far too great. Reducing the structure damage further decreases the viability of having 4-5 fades.
They are still viable at killing marines.
Some teams might feel that they want 4-5 fades to own the engagements whilst they slowly res bite or kill pgs with 1 skulk/gorge/onos. That's fine, that adds depth. Do you go 5 fades to own engagements? Or might that be bad because marines res will grow too quickly? Maybe your fades are good enough to deal with the teched marines. Maybe that's skillful. But maybe you want another skulk or someone saving for onos.
Increase onos hp.
Make it viable again.
It just simply isn't viable.
More hp.
Maybe more armor too.
Just... more.
Removes a fade from the ball.
Fade hp decreased by 20 though.
Lerk speed increased slightly.
Lerk umbra 1 in 4 bullets stopped
Lerk spikes more accurate
Lerk umbra energy cost increased.
These changes try and bring lerks back into the game.
Removes another fade from the ball because having another one doesn't necessarily protect the others but umbra does. Umbra increases survivability which is needed with the 20hp reduction.
Lerks are slightly too vulnerable now though, they move too slowly with their increased hitbox.
Umbra is OP atm and could do with a slight nerf. Not sure how this works out and it would need to be tested.
Lerk spikes also allows the lerk playstyle to be more versatile and less umbra spam, but with the increased energy cost for umbra, you can't be both offensive and supportive and stay in the air. Easy to learn, hard to master.
Remove pres gain from commander (outside the chair of course) but allow initial 15 starting pres.
Frequently I am able to go fade after setting up hydras, bilebombing targets, marines, and their weapons. I am out of the hive so often because I am so useful as a pres gorge. However I should never be allowed to go fade or lerk unless I have a ridiculous economy to drop myself a tres egg.
Increase some tres egg costs further.
Gorge 15
Lerk 40
Fade 85
Onos 100 (Might need to be adapted depending on viability and HP.)
Increase pres of gorge to 10. If they are a serious investment and lifeform in your team, you will justify getting upgrades. If you are suiciding them on 10pres, jokes on you.
Gorges should NOT be used as suicide bombers! They should be used as a serious and viable (You can tell this is my favourite word) lifeform. 15 res is significant enough to not spam for the commander.
- A big problem I see here is the 3 hydra pres. I suppose with a higher pres for the gorge itself and how skulks are nerfed a bit and hydras don't scale with anything, it might be possible to reduce hydra costs to 1pres each or maybe 2.
Now, by reducing skulk HP and fade HP, shotguns will be a lot stronger even now. I think the 6 shells though somewhat balances this. It will need to be tested though.
I honestly believe that these changes would be for the better of the game, for everyone. Fades are slightly less OP in a ball and on their own, but with support, just as deadly. This helps with uncoordinated play in pubs with fades going 33-3 and competitive play where 5 fades respond to everything. This brings back the onos to being more fun and useful. It makes gorges more serious and less suicidal. It makes lerks more fun and deep. Skulks scale better so losing your fades isn't the end of the world which I think is the largest attributing factor to spam fades and fade balls. Marines will have a better time early game so they can be adequately equipped for the fades and umbra and we'll see a proper midgame with skulks, gorges, lerks, fades vs shotguns and lmgs instead of a quick stomp where the incredible mobility of the alien team allows them to do this:
I can understand what you're saying. And ideally I'd suggest to remove alien commander and return to the old NS1 system, but we know that's not gonna happen, so we'll just have to try and work our way around it. I'm not saying my suggestion will solve the issue, but it might alleviate some of the problems.
For example, the original idea of having to pay pres for upgrades is pretty good imo, but it's not working as well as it should. I think it was supposed to help scale higher lifeforms and potentially break up fadeplosions while also allowing a bit more flexibility in lifeform timings. At the moment though, the problem is that a 40pres fade is still too good not to get. It's a no-brainer decision actually. Waiting for 45, 50 or even 55 pres is silly. End result, instead of smoothing out lifeform timings, we just see the fadeplosions 3-4 minutes sooner.
That's why I was suggesting to lower the base HP, and make evolved upgrades give significantly extra HP as well. If done right, it could make those early fades weak enough so that there's actually a real risk to consider, while still allowing it to scale up with more pres/hives. It also gives the marines another means of dealing with higher lifeforms, as destroying upgrade structures will have bigger consequences than before (it would be like hitting the arms lab).
This sort of HP scaling might also help with the onos issue, as he's suffering from the current system as well. Seeing as you can go onos at 60pres now, it makes sense to have it's HP/armor weaker than the old 75pres onos, but alas the b251 onos doesn't scale up well enough with just upgrades, so even if you spend a whopping 84pres for a fully upgraded onos, he'll still suffer greatly in the late game because of it's low HP.
In short, having upgrades combine with extra HP could allow higher lifeforms to scale up more naturally with pres collection as well as the amount of hives (as each hive would give another upgrade to evolve to and thus extra HP). With this you wouldn't need biomass for HP scaling, making it easier to potentially rework the biomass/alien tech tree altogether into something more dynamic than the lineair path we have now.
But the snowballing effect should be done on engagements won which then leads on to affecting map control and res income. Pure fragging capabilities should not determine games. There should still be somewhat an element of the RTS nature to grab resources.
RFP increases the snowballing effect so much that tech requirements are near impossible to meet for marines. Aliens need pres more than marines need it. The RFP/K system benefits aliens a lto more.
Onos is plenty viable. I would like it to be more agile, since it's really boring to play a lifeform that moves like a turtle, but it doesn't need more hp/armor.
Stronger Lerk spikes is the last thing we need. Long range lerk spiking is boring for both teams, melee bite lerk, on the other hand, is exciting for both teams.
There's really little skill involved in the onos. You can't wall jump, no energy management with flying, no blinkhopping. There's nothing but a big, expensive lifeform to take some punishment and do some damage.
In public play it is not as enjoyable anymore because it's just ridiculously easy to kill. The balance really tilted when exos benefited from weapons upgrades and the onos got an HP nerf.
In competitive play onos saving just doesn't happen anymore because it's not worth it. Saunamen like to play with the onos but if you catch up on the semifinals against godar you can see how pathetic and useless it was. There comes a point where I think "fades are out now, the aliens have become essentially the strongest they can be.". In b249 and before, seeing an onos was a pretty big deal but they were still possible to dispatch. in b250 they just aren't a threat.
I just believe that the lerk is too inaccurate at the moment and could do with a slight buff.
I don't think that there should be one playstyle for this lifeform when it's clear it has the potential for multiple roles.
Read: Distance spiking to take armor off. Flying in to drag marines aim up and away from the skulks on the floor or to go in for a bite. Umbra for fade support.
Mid game lerks will stop going for the bites because 1-2, 2-2 shotguns hurt. I don't know if shotguns should be balanced to change this or the spike accuracy, but I like to believe that marines shouldn't be touched until the changes I've suggested have been tried.
The reward for exciting play is enjoyment and greater success in terms of bites > spikes in damage. However I think that is appropriately balanced with the risk of losing your lifeform. If you want to be "more boring" and not bite but spike, you're safer in keeping your lifeform but not as damaging as a biter lerk. This is probably where the apparant skill and mastery of the lerk comes in to decide when to bite and when to spike. I just believe that the accuracy could be tighten up a little bit. Obviously we don't want snipers, but just a tad tweak could help.
Do you have any reasons as to why tech requirements are near impossible and aliens get more out of it? First of all, the RFP can be adjusted in a way to give marines TRES and PRES to aliens like in NS1 or simply give a portion of the res to TRES and some to PRES. For example 1 res for Points is divided into 0.6/0.4 PRES/TRES for aliens and 0.4/0.6 PRES/TRES for marines.
What you dont get with your snowballing analogies is, that until the pro skulk with RFK has his res to go fade, he does not get any benefits from it. This is not like in other strategy games where you can immediatly build more stuff that puts you ahead, when it comes to early fade it is all about a timing attack.
I also fail to see how marines should not be able to meet the tech requirements. Basically you need shotguns to counter a fade. You can get those pretty early right now if you want them.
Next thing you do is severly lower the starting res or make it zero. This prolongs the early game and makes it very unlikely that mutliple people have the same res at the same time to make that fade ball happen, problem solved. It also means that if a team relies on RFK to get their early fade and they neglect protecting harvesters, they need more kills to get the fade > longer early game.
Btw, it think the Lerk is in a very good place right now.
Currently we are seeing 7 minute fades. Even quicker on some maps like Tram and veil considering spawns.
7 minutes is very difficult for marines to ready 0-2 or 1-2 with shotguns and pgs. Without the upgrades, your marines will find it very difficult to fight fades. Without the pgs, marines will find it very difficult to establish a decent economy and pressure so the aliens wash over them.
A naked 40pres fade is really good. An upgraded pres fade is even better obviously. A fade ball of 4-5 un-upgraded fades can deal with 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 marines well enough to deny any more marine advancement.
Marines fragging and getting pres for more shotguns doesn't change engagments.
Aliens fragging and getting naked fades before the marine tech catches up changes the entire game.
I believe that it should be possible to get fades out before marines have decent tech and vice-versa but in the current iteration of the game, it's simply too easy and too common that marines are behind what they need to adequately deal with the fade ball.
My skulk changes should help with the marine early game. I also think that reducing the starting pres means that early pressure on alien harvesters will be more beneficial and actually somewhat delay fades.
At the moment it's near impossible to kill off a game before fades or get a good advantage before fades come out. b249 it was possible to delay fades till 15 minutes. Now you'd be doing a fantastic job to delay till 10 minutes.
On the other hand aliens are almost always out-teching marines (This is what I mean by when I say fades come out before marines have the adequate tech). This is not balanced. Only better teams should be able to out tech the marines in this way but we are often seeing the better marine teams face the worse alien teams in unfavourable conditions. Archaea played duplex 3 days ago on tram and the score was 1-1, both alien wins. I'd say that the Archaea players were playing very well as marines but they didn't have the time despite their pressure, to be prepared for the fades. Even though they are very skilled marines, they couldn't deal with the lesser skilled alien players because of the tech imbalance.
The RFP system brings out fades earlier. Let the RTS elements, determined by the FPS to win engagements so that they might kill resource towers/build resource tower, determine the resource flow. Also if you change it so that it affects pres for aliens and tres for marines, fade wave after wave will come out, and shotguns will diminish quicker unless the commander drops shotguns but this will slow down the tech again. It's not a viable resource system.
I dont understand your second paragraph, sorry. Could you rephrase please?
It is a lie that shotguns is all it takes to deal with a fade and especially a fade ball.
For the most part people agree that fades are not OP on their own.
To deal with a fade ball though, you will need armor and medpack to survive 4-5 swipes to get off enough perfect shotgun shots to kill the fades. Simply pushing them out of a room with 0-0 shotguns is not good enough to win the game and nor should it be. If it were the case that "Basically you need shotguns to counter a fade" then we wouldn't be having this discussion nor would we be seeing the current win ratios because shotguns come out in every game.
EDIT: I should make it clear that I think adequate tech to deal with fades is 1-2, shotguns, 2x phasegates. I think anything less which is often the case shows that the aliens are dominating (which might be a skill thing) and this is happening too far often to be determined by a skill difference, which leads me to think it's a balance issue. If marines can't get a few fade kills with this tech then perhaps the alien team is better than the marine team.
Sewlek wrote that he tried that and that it lead to spawn-camping fades. Well. Maybe the building damage was to high even with this reduction? it should be impossible for fades to destroy buildings in a reasonable amount of time.
And if this ip-camping is really a problem, maybe beacon could revive dead marines again?
Well, you're wrong and you're right. Yes, there should be several playstyles. The problem is that there's only one playstyle now: Spike + umbra spam. With the nerfed speed, fixed hitboxes and removed glancing bites (lerk is the only class where this is a nerf), aggressive bite lerk simply isn't viable against marines with good aim.
Even in b249, most lerks at the highest level relied mostly on spikes in a pure support role. In b251, even previously high-impact aggro lerks like me are forced into a pure support role. Buffing spikes would only serve to further solidify that.
I don't lerk, but I'm all about lerks being in your face biting.
Nerfing skulk HP would be brutal to the alien early game - it would be better to just nerf the HP of babblers slightly, and possibly increase their cost a little. Lowering the costs of Hydras also would induce more turtle style gameplay, aliens do not need more defensive strengths early game. From what I have seen, the problems with marines early game is not killing skulks (although it can take heavy medpack usage), its the fact that pushing an RT is mostly meaningless, general incurs great risk (if you wipe, your going to loose rts behind it), and that the aliens can so easily defend against the push (hydras, babblers, poor marine movement).
As for RFK, stop evaluating its effects when its added ontop of a resource system balanced without it, its largely pointless, it will always be broken when implemented that way.
As for fade balls, there's a couple changes that would go a long way to improving fades, and also making fade harder to play in comp. Fix the poor collisions that fades have when blinking which allows them to slip past nearly every obstacle with ease, and also fix their ability to traverse the entire map at full speed almost 0 energy cost. You can lower structure damage for fades to almost 0, it wont matter. You can still camp the pgs just as easily, it just gives the marines an extra chance or 2 to attempt to save it, which is nearly impossible with 4 fades on the gate, especially if they have a gorge/lerk.
But yea, if fade blocks were even possible at this point that would be great. If bunnyhops were limited to 1 or 2 before needing a blink that'd be like a ninja turtles band-aid, super cool but still a band-aid. I don't think making fade structure damage ridiculously low is reasonable because 1 fade should be able to kill an rt by himself and faster than a skulk. The lowered structure damage is like generic brand bandaids, they just... don't stick.
I think RFK should be implemented with slowed resources, never lower it from 20.. raise it maybe with the new system, who knows. ONE fade, AT MOST should or could be out at 6 minutes with 4 RTs and reasonably significant res from kills. This is actually very interesting because it's viable to try to give your lerk rfk early? I think things like that are just super neat. Concerted team effort to get a fade at 6 minutes while the other fades will come around 9-10? hell yay! Saving for straight onos? Idk I don't like onoses, never have never will.
If we're sticking with an alien comm.. an idea, probably a bad one, but I LIKE IT.
-Increase the viability of there being rotating comms
-Gorges can't drop structures, but the comm drops a "blueprint" and gorges, perhaps other lifeforms, need to drop pres into them to make them buildable. The comm can choose to entirely fill the RT himself, but not if hes starting with just enough res to cyst (OH SHUCKS Y'ALL)
-This includes slowed Tres and mildly increased Pres flow
Spawn-camping is a legitimate way of winning the game though.
>If you die on the field you take time to get back to where you are needed.
>If you get ambushed on the way out, you take time to get back to where you are needed
>If you die when spawning, you take time to get back to where you are needed
Creating a big spawn queue / delaying reinforcements allows your team time to bite structures. (Power in base, res around the map, IPs themselves)
There are ways to stop this like having marines come back to push aliens out of the base. In fact this is probably the reason why fades aren't doing this now. If fades can currently do 50 damage per swipe to structures they'd be even more inclined to kill the IPs.
I disagree. I think that lerk bite is viable. For example the corridors between observation and elevator transfer in tram. Enough corners to surprise marines and nice room geometry for escaping after a bite. I don't think much more should change to increase the viability of the lerk bite because that might make it too strong in situations where marines should be winning the engagements. I do think that lerk speed should be increased somewhat though.
I am, however, not a lerk player and as such I'm not particularly aware of any big problems at the moment or even the consequences of such changes. It just "kinda makes sense" and is a bit of a hunch so obviously I'm very willing to take this criticism positively.
I can see the argument for faster base speed and how that is better in terms of skill rather than a flat HP boost but I can't help but think that we'll start going back to "WTF MASSIVE GORE RANGE" against JPs when we take into account lag compensation between players. This is kind of an issue with all lifeforms against jetpacks but against a 100 pdmg onos, it's more frustrating. Also I wouldn't particularly want to see multiple onos running around the map responding to every little push.
Agree with the first part regarding bite.
And this is why I disagree with the solution being ROF increase.. By all means go for it, but it's not going to increase it's viability by much beyond the early game (the only area it doesn't need improvement in) for the reasons you opened with.
The sit back and spike gameplay might be boring to you, but its one of my favorite parts of the class! The only issue is the unnecessary (thanks to the new flight model's loss of momentum) energy flapping that hampers the flexibility in the meta game of dodge + spike so you are relegated to spiking in place, vulnerable, or spiking very briefly.
Lastly, it's role is harass /support.. Forcing the commander to med pack is it's purpose? Both poison bite and spikes. I see no issue there, especially considering the recent nerfs fana mentioned.
Personally I'd increase it's speed (pancake acceleration as well) and remove the unnecessary energy flap. Provides more viability through evasion and increased play styles.
What you are explaining does not have to do with RFK/RFP, it has to do with marines being unable to deal with fadeballs or early fades generally. If you have a RFK/RFP system, all you need to do as marine is to kill enough aliens to earn enough res to deal with fades once they come out.
Ok thank you, I understand now.
Essentially you are not fixing the problem. You are only delaying it. You might add that by delaying it marines can tech up and be equipped properly which is what my main issue with the system is. But in first post with the changes I mentioned that a single fade is not really a big problem and that people are agreed that fades generally are in a pretty good position. The fade ball is the issue and I don't believe that delaying it is a good way of dealing with the issue and it leads to less interesting play (Basically a fade kill counter rather than being aware of lifeforms and how to deal with different team compositions).
However, personally I am a big disbeliever in this system because it seems that marines tech up and all players on the team are becoming stronger at the same time. This ends up with 5 progressively stronger marine players and you end up with "shotgun balls" albeit smaller than fade balls - 2 marines with shotgun welders will be able to pressure too easily and you'll see marines start walking away with the mid game and considering how weak alien tech is compared to marine mid & late game, marines will continue to roll. Also if the aliens lose their fades then we'll see the marines absolutely dominating because at the moment they are a massive (and unfair) pivot point in the game. If you then decrease the contribution made by res towers to pres, fades will be slower to come back into the game and marines will still be teching up and wipe up skulks. This is why I suggested a lower base skulk hp but an increased scaling system with biomass for skulks.