If this is done properly, the early fade should come out the same as now as long as aliens and marines get equal kills. If however the marines manage to got a kill advantage, the fade will be delayed and the marines get more res to deal with it when it comes. Fadeballs happen because every alien gets the same amount of res and there is not much to spend it on, except for the gorge. Coupled with the high starting res, it is only so long you have to hold out until everyone can go fade.
If you get rid of the high starting res but add a mechanic like rfk, you are bound to have different res scores across the team and the one with the highest can go early fade. This was essentially what was NS1 early game all about, marines had the early advantage and tried to delay the first fade as much as possible. Once it hits and the aliens are on equal footing (have 2 hives) the advantage shifts towards the aliens.
If this is done properly, the early fade should come out the same as now as long as aliens and marines get equal kills. If however the marines manage to got a kill advantage, the fade will be delayed and the marines get more res to deal with it when it comes. Fadeballs happen because every alien gets the same amount of res and there is not much to spend it on, except for the gorge. Coupled with the high starting res, it is only so long you have to hold out until everyone can go fade.
If you get rid of the high starting res but add a mechanic like rfk, you are bound to have different res scores across the team and the one with the highest can go early fade. This was essentially what was NS1 early game all about, marines had the early advantage and tried to delay the first fade as much as possible. Once it hits and the aliens are on equal footing (have 2 hives) the advantage shifts towards the aliens.
Read: Boring game play. Fades die, marines steam roll, skulks can't get back to fade. Take that as my subjective view because it is subjective. That's why I suggested what I did, for balance and more entertainment.
You are staggering fade ball, not changing the viability of it. And right now, it is "too" viable, too OP, and stupidly optimised for it.
I dont see how a single one of your suggestions will change the fade ball, its just going to make games take 10 times as long to end, because of fades doing low structure damage. Changing fades damage to structures has 0 impact on their ability to kill marines, and so long as they keep doing that over and over, what chance do the marines truly have? If they cant recap, they cant leave their PGs, its just an inevitable grind until the macs/turrets die and they loose a PG. Except with fades doing 20 damage, it just takes 50 minutes instead of 30. Any suggestion which does not include the 'removal' of tres drops will never fix mass fades, increasing the cost by 10 tres only delays the fade egg by menial 18 seconds.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
there was a time in BT mod where both shotguns and fades did extremely low damage to structures. those games were really bad to play (and extremely boring to watch). they basically made every game be a very long spawn camp festival for a game that has been already won. so while thats a good way to give fades a down side, its not the ultimate solution.
On the topic of the onos, I agree that faster speed would be very welcome with the reduced HP.
Another issue is dual (or single) Exos. Since they deal Heavy-Type damage, they rip Onos apart far to fast for my taste. A speed, agility boost coupled with Exo miniguns dealing Normal-Type damage would solve most of his problems, from a public play perspective.
Has minigun damage ever been tried as Normal before?
there was a time in BT mod where both shotguns and fades did extremely low damage to structures. those games were really bad to play (and extremely boring to watch). they basically made every game be a very long spawn camp festival for a game that has been already won. so while thats a good way to give fades a down side, its not the ultimate solution.
I don't think it's a very good way to create downsides either. One of the most satisfying things about how lifeforms worked in NS1 was how versatile they were. With every lifeform it felt like you had a lot of options rather than doing the one thing your lifeform was designed to do. Fade should hunt marines because it's suited for it, not because it can't contribute in any other way.
I can see some of the reasoning for low building damage and such (not that it solves the issues discussed here), but vast majority of the time it's far from good game design or ideal solution. Heavily specialized and limited units are fine in RTS games, but they don't make exiting FPS characters to play.
I dont see how a single one of your suggestions will change the fade ball, its just going to make games take 10 times as long to end, because of fades doing low structure damage. Changing fades damage to structures has 0 impact on their ability to kill marines, and so long as they keep doing that over and over, what chance do the marines truly have? If they cant recap, they cant leave their PGs, its just an inevitable grind until the macs/turrets die and they loose a PG. Except with fades doing 20 damage, it just takes 50 minutes instead of 30. Any suggestion which does not include the 'removal' of tres drops will never fix mass fades, increasing the cost by 10 tres only delays the fade egg by menial 18 seconds.
If fades can't kill structures like resource nodes then marines will tech up and the comm will be able to support the marines in a way that kills the fades and beats the alien team.
If an alien team wants to deal with a fully teched marine team, fine go for it, you'll probably lose though. This is where a skulk saves for onos so that can be the res biter and structure killer whilst also obviously being adequate at killing marines.
The hp nerf also means having a lerk would be good to support the fades. Thats also decreasing the number of fades.
Did you even read this
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.
It also wouldn't be a massive grind to lose PGs because the fades would run low on energy. They would need 1 less fade, and 1 more gorge/skulk/onos.
If you need to recap so heavily and can't pressure at the same time, you're losing a losing battle. This is where the alien team can bring out the comm in a tres onos (if it really is that bad) or a tres gorge and help push.
You really are missing the point though that it should not be optimal for a team to go 4-5 fades. Sure it could work by winning all the engagements (If you can beat 3-3 marines because you can't effectively res bite and they tech up quick) but it should not be the best way to win, which currently it is because they fulfil the roles needed, the best. But if you're getting spawn killed, you GG out or you break it by bringing some marines back. That's how the game works. You give yourself an opportunity to kill the CC and you can do this by making a big spawn queue with no marines on the field.
there was a time in BT mod where both shotguns and fades did extremely low damage to structures. those games were really bad to play (and extremely boring to watch). they basically made every game be a very long spawn camp festival for a game that has been already won. so while thats a good way to give fades a down side, its not the ultimate solution.
I remember this time and all I remember was it being boring to play as marine. Fades were fine. The moment you nerfed shotguns to structure damage it got boring because marines couldn't push. We need to nerf aliens, not marines. The 6 shell shotgun should be enough of a hindrance if my changes were to take place, there is no need to nerf structure damage for shotguns now.
Skulk hp reduced to 55 with +6 hp per biomass.
This gives marines a slightly better chance with dealing with the early game.
Marines already dominate early game(lerks are too weak). Its the mid game against fade ball where aliens are a little stronger. Late game is fine except for onos that needs a slight boost to either speed or armor. And slightly lowered dmg for minigun.
Skulk hp reduced to 55 with +6 hp per biomass.
This gives marines a slightly better chance with dealing with the early game.
Marines already dominate early game(lerks are too weak). Its the mid game against fade ball where aliens are a little stronger. Late game is fine except for onos that needs a slight boost to either speed or armor. And slightly lowered dmg for minigun.
Hahahahaha no. This just is another lie. You'll find more often than not that aliens win the early game or at least make it bloody tough for marines. The fade ball is difficult because of the early game (which is why I say aliens win the early game).
Fades dont need to kill the pg, they can sit in front of it all game and kill anyone who comes through. Your assuming that the fades are going to waste all their energy holding M1 while doing 20 damage, a half competent player wont do that. You will still see 4 fades, 1 lerk, and the comm gorge. Comm gorge can come BB the sentries and macs/pgs/everything, and if he dies, big deal. He can just tres another gorge from the endless supply of tres. If the fades keep up the pressure well once all your RTs are down aside from the 1-2 you get from holding the PGs, you will never get those RTs back. It wouldnt delay the fade ball much for one skulk to run around and bite down all the marine rts after the rest of the team fades... and once they are down he can fade himself. Im saying that unless you change the fact that fades are really good at killing other players, you will almost always see teams using ~4 fades with good success. The key to fixing mass fades is not to make it so you dont want multiple fades, its to make it so the marines can actually KILL the fades, especially when those fades make mistakes.
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.
Your lerk analysis is wrong and your suggestions are poor. At least you have the decency to admit that you don't have any experience, but I have to wonder why you even start typing when that is the case.
The lerk is very squishy against marines with decent aim and using bite is rarely a good idea. Generally, the lerk in b251 is great at supporting offensive plays when umbra is up (because umbra is op), and can still defend hives like a champ, but without umbra it is very difficult to do much as lerk on offense.
Fades dont need to kill the pg, they can sit in front of it all game and kill anyone who comes through. Your assuming that the fades are going to waste all their energy holding M1 while doing 20 damage, a half competent player wont do that. You will still see 4 fades, 1 lerk, and the comm gorge. Comm gorge can come BB the sentries and macs/pgs/everything, and if he dies, big deal. He can just tres another gorge from the endless supply of tres. If the fades keep up the pressure well once all your RTs are down aside from the 1-2 you get from holding the PGs, you will never get those RTs back. It wouldnt delay the fade ball much for one skulk to run around and bite down all the marine rts after the rest of the team fades... and once they are down he can fade himself. Im saying that unless you change the fact that fades are really good at killing other players, you will almost always see teams using ~4 fades with good success. The key to fixing mass fades is not to make it so you dont want multiple fades, its to make it so the marines can actually KILL the fades, especially when those fades make mistakes.
If you're stupid enough to walk into a 4 fade grinder you deserve to lose. You just run to the center of the map. Fades 20sdmg and energy management means you can make it. If it's a more offensive pg, you run from your central pg. If you dont have a central PG, it was a bit of a gamble which didnt pay off or they played well and took your central pg.
It also gives a much bigger option of sacrificing that pg to pressure something else like shells / RTs.
See that I called for a 15tres gorge egg. Also 10 pres gorge.
"once all your RTs are down" You make that sound as if my suggestion of 20sdmg makes it harder to hold your res towers than currently! If the alien team has 3 fades (1 lerk and 1 rt biter saving onos or something) then you can afford 3 on pg to counter the push with meds and 2 on recap/RT defense/Pressure. 3 fades is a lot easier to deal with than 4 fades and easier to pick off what with fewer targets being distractions and them needing more swipes per fade than if they had 4 or 5.
Sure if they lost one fade and they feel like they need to replace it to get back to 3 fades, go for it. At least that stops an onos coming out and because of the lower sdmg, you should be more appropriately teched up for the fades.
Seriously, fades are in a fine position. We've been over this. The problem is the fade ball because they become exponentially better the more fades there are. If you lower the sdmg, you get more tech because RTs are up for longer. If you lower smdg, you get a res biter which means fewer fades so easier to target the fade ball.
If you make fades a lot weaker, you leave aliens with no defense. If you make it so there are fewer fades so they have to deal with the marine economy and tech, the aliens can still defend. You do NOT want those paper fades which we had in the BT mod.
GhoulofGSG9Join Date: 2013-03-31Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
edited August 2013
A idea about the fade: Maybe play a bit with the "energy blocking" rate of the flamethrower. So fades can't flash out anymore if they get burned for like 30 sec (just a guess). By that way marines would have a strong counter against fades if needed. And fades are still able to do there job if they don't rush into a group of marines
Seriously, fades are in a fine position. We've been over this. The problem is the fade ball because they become exponentially better the more fades there are. If you lower the sdmg, you get more tech because RTs are up for longer. If you lower smdg, you get a res biter which means fewer fades so easier to target the fade ball.
That's the thing the players here are trying to make you understand, teams would still use fades even they do less damage to structures. Fades = map control. Map control = win games. Even if it takes forever to kill structures you can still easily take care of the marines. Meaning you will win but it will just take forever.
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
Fade design is still based on the ns1 res model - assuming one to two a team and a self sustaining effective killer..
Sure values are different to lessen the effect and to accommodate the potential for 5 fades.. But that only can go so far before making it a binary experience. (glass canon syndrome)
This is where it needs some tweaking Imo, not in values, but design.
Every other higher life form has at least some level of complementary RPS element, requiring teammate coordination to a soft degree.
The onos does okay.. But with a gorge it can really excel. The lerk does okay 1v1 or 1v2 but for more than that generally needs others to support. (he often is a force multiplier) the gorge can't 1v1 unless he's a skilled gorge..
The fade is the only self sustaining role.
Sure umbra and enzyme brings it to another level of effectiveness (because both are universally benefiting) .. But it's not nearly comparable to the other life forms in terms of being effective.. Compare it to an onos charging a base without a gorge.
There's a gradient that's missing here along with a complimentary element of teamwork.
If the fade needed X to be as good as he is now, and X was accomplished thanks to coordinating with player Y, then I think a 4 fade team would be too risky /not effective enough as a varied team.
Your lerk analysis is wrong and your suggestions are poor. At least you have the decency to admit that you don't have any experience, but I have to wonder why you even start typing when that is the case.
The lerk is very squishy against marines with decent aim and using bite is rarely a good idea. Generally, the lerk in b251 is great at supporting offensive plays when umbra is up (because umbra is op), and can still defend hives like a champ, but without umbra it is very difficult to do much as lerk on offense.
I wouldn't particularly want to see multiple onos running around the map responding to every little push.
I'm not talking about going full retard. The Onos would still be very slow compared to fades, lerks and skulks.
I feel like I have a good enough understanding of the game to make reasonable suggestions about lifeforms like the fade and how scaling skulks and onos would help remove from the fade ball. With this thinking, I came to the lerk lifeform and thought how from my perspective as a marine, I could change it for better or for worse.
I find that lerks are squishy and I thought that increasing speed would be a good idea.
By suggesting a 20hp nerf to fades (mainly for public play tbh), I thought umbra would be required more but because it's currently a bit OP I wanted to nerf that as well to 1 in 4 bullets and increase the cost to stop the spam.
By increasing the accuracy, I thought it would help with a more offensive support role and harassment rather than just umbra spam. The fact that lerks are easier to hit now means that they spend less time in combat or at a greater distance. I don't think that their accuracy should also have been negatively affected because of this decrease in combat time.
I think that to make it so lerk bites are more important, you'd have to remove the necessity for them to help fades (the fade hp nerf) and make fades damage weaker so lerks were also a powerful killing tool without making every lifeform super fucking OP.
The onos comment was kind of to bait you into saying what I couldn't articulate well with the lerk accuracy.
I dont want the lerk to change full retard by making it a sniper. I just think it could be a tad more accurate.
Sorry but I dont think fade is 'fine' currently, its both too forgiving and entirely too fast when moving around the map, atleast with regards to energy management. If you noticed, I never called for a reduction in the fades HP or its Pdmg, so I am not sure where you are getting the idea that I want fades 'alot weaker', but thats far from the truth. I was one of the few advocating for the fade buffs that eventually were done during the BT mod.
As for lerk, buffing the ROF on bite wont make the engagements any less risky, but it gives the lerk an actual chance of killing the marine he is bitting, rather than him just dying if the marine gets meds. As for umbra I would just rather see it cost 35-40 energy so it takes some intelligent placement, instead of just blanketing.
Seriously, fades are in a fine position. We've been over this. The problem is the fade ball because they become exponentially better the more fades there are. If you lower the sdmg, you get more tech because RTs are up for longer. If you lower smdg, you get a res biter which means fewer fades so easier to target the fade ball.
That's the thing the players here are trying to make you understand, teams would still use fades even they do less damage to structures. Fades = map control. Map control = win games. Even if it takes forever to kill structures you can still easily take care of the marines. Meaning you will win but it will just take forever.
But if teams still used these fades and took more time to kill the res towers, marines would be adequately teched up to deal with them and the comm would have the res to support them with nanos and med kits. If the marines then couldn't kill the fades, that is down to player skill and stratagem.
Sorry but I dont think fade is 'fine' currently, its both too forgiving and entirely too fast when moving around the map, atleast with regards to energy management. If you noticed, I never called for a reduction in the fades HP or its Pdmg, so I am not sure where you are getting the idea that I want fades 'alot weaker', but thats far from the truth. I was one of the few advocating for the fade buffs that eventually were done during the BT mod.
As for lerk, buffing the ROF on bite wont make the engagements any less risky, but it gives the lerk an actual chance of killing the marine he is bitting, rather than him just dying if the marine gets meds. As for umbra I would just rather see it cost 35-40 energy so it takes some intelligent placement, instead of just blanketing.
Many many people have said that a single fade is easy to kill. Easy to trap, easy to shoot with 2x shotgun blast. You just need aim (no surprise that you need skill in a game to win).
Many many people have said that the fadeball is the problem. The problem is, if you make it easy to kill fades, aliens have no lifeform defense and the game quickly pivots over to a marine win. If you make it so you can't have that many fades in one engagement (Because RTs will be ticking and 2-2, 3-2 might be coming up) then it comes back to fade skill vs sg skill.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Single fades aren't all that strong, I agree. A marine with w1/a1 and a shotgun can hold off a fade (and even kill a greedy fade) with proper aim and positioning. The problem is the ball. A team of 4 fades and 1 lerk, all with regen, who play safely without taking excessive risks, will basically have no downtime (because they never die and heal while moving around the map) and can hit any marine weak point almost at will.
For once, I do somewhat agree with IronHorse (hell appears to be freezing over): The current fade design doesn't work well with the resource model (which is dictated by the alien commander). This also happens to be what I've been saying since beta, but uwe didn't accept the argument back then, nor do I think they will now. The alien commander is a holy cow and I doubt it will ever be removed, no matter how detrimental it is to the unique qualities of NS1/2. An other option is to completely rework lifeform design, but I don't think that is a particularly appealing proposition for anyone. It should still be possible to tweak fades to a decent balance (some have suggested rfk and/or pres cost inflation) with the current resource model, though, even if it isn't ideal for quality of gameplay.
I think people are misunderstanding my point slightly - a single fade is quite easy to hold off, and kill if he is greedy sure.. but its more about the killing part. It doesn't take much practice to stay alive as fade, and while your effectiveness may not be that great, there's little concern over that. The ease at which fades can traverse the entire map, and the forgiveness of blink allow many fades to be both way more careless than they should be able to get away with, and also constantly hit locations around the map. Even if they run in and then out and don't accomplish anything, its just the fact that they can constantly rotate around the map, waiting for the marines to either make a mistake tactically or mistakes in an engagement. Just reducing the ability of fades to make mistakes with blink (blocking is basically impossible), and also the speed which they can carry around the map with 0 energy cost will help reduce the ability for the fade ball to just constantly roam the map waiting for opportunity.
Ideally the resource model would have changed (god I cant even remember how many posts about there was), but I think that's pretty much a lost cause.
I think people are misunderstanding my point slightly - a single fade is quite easy to hold off, and kill if he is greedy sure.. but its more about the killing part. It doesn't take much practice to stay alive as fade, and while your effectiveness may not be that great, there's little concern over that. The ease at which fades can traverse the entire map, and the forgiveness of blink allow many fades to be both way more careless than they should be able to get away with, and also constantly hit locations around the map. Even if they run in and then out and don't accomplish anything, its just the fact that they can constantly rotate around the map, waiting for the marines to either make a mistake tactically or mistakes in an engagement. Just reducing the ability of fades to make mistakes with blink (blocking is basically impossible), and also the speed which they can carry around the map with 0 energy cost will help reduce the ability for the fade ball to just constantly roam the map waiting for opportunity.
Ideally the resource model would have changed (god I cant even remember how many posts about there was), but I think that's pretty much a lost cause, even if the problem has finally been admired.
So maybe change blink for shadowstep, remove shadowstep cooldown and slightly lower the energy cost
Shadowstep fade had the exact same problems, even worse however as you could actually 2 shot a fade back then, and because the momentum was applied instantly. I would make fade slowly loose speed each successive hop after blinking, and also change their collision model to better represent the size of the fade.
Fade design is still based on the ns1 res model - assuming one to two a team and a self sustaining effective killer..
Sure values are different to lessen the effect and to accommodate the potential for 5 fades.. But that only can go so far before making it a binary experience. (glass canon syndrome)
This is where it needs some tweaking Imo, not in values, but design.
Every other higher life form has at least some level of complementary RPS element, requiring teammate coordination to a soft degree.
The onos does okay.. But with a gorge it can really excel. The lerk does okay 1v1 or 1v2 but for more than that generally needs others to support. (he often is a force multiplier) the gorge can't 1v1 unless he's a skilled gorge..
The fade is the only self sustaining role.
Sure umbra and enzyme brings it to another level of effectiveness (because both are universally benefiting) .. But it's not nearly comparable to the other life forms in terms of being effective.. Compare it to an onos charging a base without a gorge.
There's a gradient that's missing here along with a complimentary element of teamwork.
If the fade needed X to be as good as he is now, and X was accomplished thanks to coordinating with player Y, then I think a 4 fade team would be too risky /not effective enough as a varied team.
Valid points. From what I've seen in almost all comp games I've played the norm is to have 4-5 fades on the map. Because of this I've seen teams which are far superior to another team lose because of lol fade spam. Majority cannot handle it, not even _very_ good players. Once the fades are out marines are locked to their phase gates otherwise they will lose all of their bases. As you describe, adding in umbra, enzyme and babblers compounds the problem even more.
On a completely separate note; one aspect that I liked about NS1 was that when an alien team chooses to go something crazy like 4 early fades they would be sacrificing or compromising their tech path and resources. By choosing 4 fades aliens would either have a later hive, less temp gorges for resource towers, or even sacrificing early chambers. NS2 seems to have none of this. I'm of the opinion that a team choosing 4-5 fades should be compromising something in their strategy e.g. a later hive or less resource towers. Again, the fact that the alien comm exists means none of this is possible, because the aliens will have the same resources towers, hives, chambers regardless of the lifeform decisions made by the team.
Try first turning the fade movement back to the old style, THEN make old shadow step and old blink need to be researched and given for free, respectively (like they are now, but they are the old abilities not the new nerfed ones). Only the old style of fade movement can support this, and it forces the alien team to invest into shadowstep if they want their fades to be as effective. It doesnt smash the effectiveness of the fade, but it requires additional sacrifice by the team.
Also, old fade balls were still pretty effective but the style of movement is BY FAR less conducitve to fade balling since you need to preserve momentum for short intervals, with blink and hop you can change direction at any time.
Mhh... I start to agree that lowered building damage might not be the solution. A camped pg is an argument. So what else do we have? I will just brainstorm a bit.
1.) Weaken the class in its core role to make it less desirable.
Decreasing the health of the fade will only make it into a frustrating glass cannon where luck is more important than skill. The other option is to decrease the DPS of the fade. But than you would pay p-res for a class that makes less damage than the skulk but has more health and can escape nearly every battle. But why not? Does the fade really need to excel the skulk in all its abilities? (=faster map traversal; higher health; better fighting power; better survival chances) I think in only one aspect the fade should be weaker than the skulk and DPS is one option.
Stop jesus-fades. They would need energy to traverse the map quickly (=active blink! No momentum.) and would otherwise be slower than a skulk. But this could be difficult to fight jetpacks than.
2.) Make a downside to the class so you don't want to much of them in your team. (see Exos)
In its current form, the fade is even better as the onos. While the onos needs a buff, I think the cost of the fade could be significantly raised. If the onos is an alternative to the fade instead of an upgrade (or a downgrade as it is now) the prices should be more close together. If the price is high enough, people will more likely save the other few res until onos or use lerk more. Also the loss of a fade has more impact. Justifying its power.
Simply make the fade not able to touch marine buildings. The moment the fade enters melee range of a marine building it is forced into the blink realm until it is far away enough to the building again. This denies spawn camping and pg camping. It also disallows the fade completely to damage buildings. And it will make it extremely difficult for the fade to fight in a marine base. This may be a very hard restriction for the fade. But just as an idea.
3.) Give Marines a hard counter to fades that is otherwise not really useful.
The flamethrower comes to mind. A little more energy-sapping (only!) against fades would force fades to not engage marines with a flamer. But it should not sap to much energy of other classes. Skulk needs leap to get flamer+jp for example. Right now it is to easy to kill a flamer marine as fade.
A little device (placeable by the com for t-res) would be cool that forces fades into the other realm. This way you could lock fades out of marine bases until other aliens got the power / the emitter down. And than boom fades appearing in the base. It should cost a big chunk of res to build it and the radius should be rather small. It also should be easy to destroy.
This fixes both: Fades can't end the game but also can't spawn camp. And they can remain as very good vs players. And could even scout marine bases unseen and without danger. This could allow for more tactical gameplay.
Has anyone seriously considered the dynamic lifeform pres costs -idea thrown around?
In 6vs6, the first fade would cost, say, 40res, the second 45, the third 50 etc. This could scale according to player numbers (just introduce steps of, for example, 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12 etc) and would affect other lifeforms too. So in 12vs12 the first two fades would cost 40, the third and fourth fades 45 etc.
This could be problematic in pubs for several reasons: how do you compensate for people leaving and joining the server, how else do you decide who gets the first and cheapest fade than by spamming the evolve icon before you hit 40res and does it introduce redundant complexity? All of these, however, would be non-issues in competitive games.
This would either solve the problem of the fade ball by introducing fades in intervals or, if the alien team decides to wait until everyone has the resources, delay it by so much that it's not a wise choice for the aliens. This would also make having one of each lifeform more res efficient than spamming fades all around.
Furthermore, remove alien commander tres egg drops. Atrocious and detrimental, that's what they are.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited August 2013
Yeah it's a very interesting idea. Downsides including what you mentioned is that you need a way to communicate it to players and the simplicity of a flat price is nice.
4 pubbers trying to evolve first to get the cheap price would be silly though, even with RFK breaking up the pres a bit.
Forget where i read or who posted this on the forums recently but what about the idea of reducing or removing the wispy affect blink has? The game relies on the fact you need to track the movement of a fade in combat and to be completely honest the wispy affect does make me lose him sometimes. Removing that feature or at least making it maybe 75% less opaque may help marines track fades and even groups of fades in heavy combat.
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If you get rid of the high starting res but add a mechanic like rfk, you are bound to have different res scores across the team and the one with the highest can go early fade. This was essentially what was NS1 early game all about, marines had the early advantage and tried to delay the first fade as much as possible. Once it hits and the aliens are on equal footing (have 2 hives) the advantage shifts towards the aliens.
Read: Boring game play. Fades die, marines steam roll, skulks can't get back to fade. Take that as my subjective view because it is subjective. That's why I suggested what I did, for balance and more entertainment.
You are staggering fade ball, not changing the viability of it. And right now, it is "too" viable, too OP, and stupidly optimised for it.
Another issue is dual (or single) Exos. Since they deal Heavy-Type damage, they rip Onos apart far to fast for my taste. A speed, agility boost coupled with Exo miniguns dealing Normal-Type damage would solve most of his problems, from a public play perspective.
Has minigun damage ever been tried as Normal before?
I can see some of the reasoning for low building damage and such (not that it solves the issues discussed here), but vast majority of the time it's far from good game design or ideal solution. Heavily specialized and limited units are fine in RTS games, but they don't make exiting FPS characters to play.
If fades can't kill structures like resource nodes then marines will tech up and the comm will be able to support the marines in a way that kills the fades and beats the alien team.
If an alien team wants to deal with a fully teched marine team, fine go for it, you'll probably lose though. This is where a skulk saves for onos so that can be the res biter and structure killer whilst also obviously being adequate at killing marines.
The hp nerf also means having a lerk would be good to support the fades. Thats also decreasing the number of fades.
Did you even read this
It also wouldn't be a massive grind to lose PGs because the fades would run low on energy. They would need 1 less fade, and 1 more gorge/skulk/onos.
If you need to recap so heavily and can't pressure at the same time, you're losing a losing battle. This is where the alien team can bring out the comm in a tres onos (if it really is that bad) or a tres gorge and help push.
You really are missing the point though that it should not be optimal for a team to go 4-5 fades. Sure it could work by winning all the engagements (If you can beat 3-3 marines because you can't effectively res bite and they tech up quick) but it should not be the best way to win, which currently it is because they fulfil the roles needed, the best. But if you're getting spawn killed, you GG out or you break it by bringing some marines back. That's how the game works. You give yourself an opportunity to kill the CC and you can do this by making a big spawn queue with no marines on the field.
I remember this time and all I remember was it being boring to play as marine. Fades were fine. The moment you nerfed shotguns to structure damage it got boring because marines couldn't push. We need to nerf aliens, not marines. The 6 shell shotgun should be enough of a hindrance if my changes were to take place, there is no need to nerf structure damage for shotguns now.
Marines already dominate early game(lerks are too weak). Its the mid game against fade ball where aliens are a little stronger. Late game is fine except for onos that needs a slight boost to either speed or armor. And slightly lowered dmg for minigun.
Hahahahaha no. This just is another lie. You'll find more often than not that aliens win the early game or at least make it bloody tough for marines. The fade ball is difficult because of the early game (which is why I say aliens win the early game).
The lerk is very squishy against marines with decent aim and using bite is rarely a good idea. Generally, the lerk in b251 is great at supporting offensive plays when umbra is up (because umbra is op), and can still defend hives like a champ, but without umbra it is very difficult to do much as lerk on offense.
I'm not talking about going full retard. The Onos would still be very slow compared to fades, lerks and skulks.
If you're stupid enough to walk into a 4 fade grinder you deserve to lose. You just run to the center of the map. Fades 20sdmg and energy management means you can make it. If it's a more offensive pg, you run from your central pg. If you dont have a central PG, it was a bit of a gamble which didnt pay off or they played well and took your central pg.
It also gives a much bigger option of sacrificing that pg to pressure something else like shells / RTs.
See that I called for a 15tres gorge egg. Also 10 pres gorge.
"once all your RTs are down" You make that sound as if my suggestion of 20sdmg makes it harder to hold your res towers than currently! If the alien team has 3 fades (1 lerk and 1 rt biter saving onos or something) then you can afford 3 on pg to counter the push with meds and 2 on recap/RT defense/Pressure. 3 fades is a lot easier to deal with than 4 fades and easier to pick off what with fewer targets being distractions and them needing more swipes per fade than if they had 4 or 5.
Sure if they lost one fade and they feel like they need to replace it to get back to 3 fades, go for it. At least that stops an onos coming out and because of the lower sdmg, you should be more appropriately teched up for the fades.
Seriously, fades are in a fine position. We've been over this. The problem is the fade ball because they become exponentially better the more fades there are. If you lower the sdmg, you get more tech because RTs are up for longer. If you lower smdg, you get a res biter which means fewer fades so easier to target the fade ball.
If you make fades a lot weaker, you leave aliens with no defense. If you make it so there are fewer fades so they have to deal with the marine economy and tech, the aliens can still defend. You do NOT want those paper fades which we had in the BT mod.
Sure values are different to lessen the effect and to accommodate the potential for 5 fades.. But that only can go so far before making it a binary experience. (glass canon syndrome)
This is where it needs some tweaking Imo, not in values, but design.
Every other higher life form has at least some level of complementary RPS element, requiring teammate coordination to a soft degree.
The onos does okay.. But with a gorge it can really excel. The lerk does okay 1v1 or 1v2 but for more than that generally needs others to support. (he often is a force multiplier) the gorge can't 1v1 unless he's a skilled gorge..
The fade is the only self sustaining role.
Sure umbra and enzyme brings it to another level of effectiveness (because both are universally benefiting) .. But it's not nearly comparable to the other life forms in terms of being effective.. Compare it to an onos charging a base without a gorge.
There's a gradient that's missing here along with a complimentary element of teamwork.
If the fade needed X to be as good as he is now, and X was accomplished thanks to coordinating with player Y, then I think a 4 fade team would be too risky /not effective enough as a varied team.
I feel like I have a good enough understanding of the game to make reasonable suggestions about lifeforms like the fade and how scaling skulks and onos would help remove from the fade ball. With this thinking, I came to the lerk lifeform and thought how from my perspective as a marine, I could change it for better or for worse.
I find that lerks are squishy and I thought that increasing speed would be a good idea.
By suggesting a 20hp nerf to fades (mainly for public play tbh), I thought umbra would be required more but because it's currently a bit OP I wanted to nerf that as well to 1 in 4 bullets and increase the cost to stop the spam.
By increasing the accuracy, I thought it would help with a more offensive support role and harassment rather than just umbra spam. The fact that lerks are easier to hit now means that they spend less time in combat or at a greater distance. I don't think that their accuracy should also have been negatively affected because of this decrease in combat time.
I think that to make it so lerk bites are more important, you'd have to remove the necessity for them to help fades (the fade hp nerf) and make fades damage weaker so lerks were also a powerful killing tool without making every lifeform super fucking OP.
The onos comment was kind of to bait you into saying what I couldn't articulate well with the lerk accuracy.
I dont want the lerk to change full retard by making it a sniper. I just think it could be a tad more accurate.
As for lerk, buffing the ROF on bite wont make the engagements any less risky, but it gives the lerk an actual chance of killing the marine he is bitting, rather than him just dying if the marine gets meds. As for umbra I would just rather see it cost 35-40 energy so it takes some intelligent placement, instead of just blanketing.
But if teams still used these fades and took more time to kill the res towers, marines would be adequately teched up to deal with them and the comm would have the res to support them with nanos and med kits. If the marines then couldn't kill the fades, that is down to player skill and stratagem.
Many many people have said that a single fade is easy to kill. Easy to trap, easy to shoot with 2x shotgun blast. You just need aim (no surprise that you need skill in a game to win).
Many many people have said that the fadeball is the problem. The problem is, if you make it easy to kill fades, aliens have no lifeform defense and the game quickly pivots over to a marine win. If you make it so you can't have that many fades in one engagement (Because RTs will be ticking and 2-2, 3-2 might be coming up) then it comes back to fade skill vs sg skill.
For once, I do somewhat agree with IronHorse (hell appears to be freezing over): The current fade design doesn't work well with the resource model (which is dictated by the alien commander). This also happens to be what I've been saying since beta, but uwe didn't accept the argument back then, nor do I think they will now. The alien commander is a holy cow and I doubt it will ever be removed, no matter how detrimental it is to the unique qualities of NS1/2. An other option is to completely rework lifeform design, but I don't think that is a particularly appealing proposition for anyone. It should still be possible to tweak fades to a decent balance (some have suggested rfk and/or pres cost inflation) with the current resource model, though, even if it isn't ideal for quality of gameplay.
Ideally the resource model would have changed (god I cant even remember how many posts about there was), but I think that's pretty much a lost cause.
So maybe change blink for shadowstep, remove shadowstep cooldown and slightly lower the energy cost
Valid points. From what I've seen in almost all comp games I've played the norm is to have 4-5 fades on the map. Because of this I've seen teams which are far superior to another team lose because of lol fade spam. Majority cannot handle it, not even _very_ good players. Once the fades are out marines are locked to their phase gates otherwise they will lose all of their bases. As you describe, adding in umbra, enzyme and babblers compounds the problem even more.
On a completely separate note; one aspect that I liked about NS1 was that when an alien team chooses to go something crazy like 4 early fades they would be sacrificing or compromising their tech path and resources. By choosing 4 fades aliens would either have a later hive, less temp gorges for resource towers, or even sacrificing early chambers. NS2 seems to have none of this. I'm of the opinion that a team choosing 4-5 fades should be compromising something in their strategy e.g. a later hive or less resource towers. Again, the fact that the alien comm exists means none of this is possible, because the aliens will have the same resources towers, hives, chambers regardless of the lifeform decisions made by the team.
Also, old fade balls were still pretty effective but the style of movement is BY FAR less conducitve to fade balling since you need to preserve momentum for short intervals, with blink and hop you can change direction at any time.
1.) Weaken the class in its core role to make it less desirable.
2.) Make a downside to the class so you don't want to much of them in your team. (see Exos)
3.) Give Marines a hard counter to fades that is otherwise not really useful.
This fixes both: Fades can't end the game but also can't spawn camp. And they can remain as very good vs players. And could even scout marine bases unseen and without danger. This could allow for more tactical gameplay.
In 6vs6, the first fade would cost, say, 40res, the second 45, the third 50 etc. This could scale according to player numbers (just introduce steps of, for example, 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12 etc) and would affect other lifeforms too. So in 12vs12 the first two fades would cost 40, the third and fourth fades 45 etc.
This could be problematic in pubs for several reasons: how do you compensate for people leaving and joining the server, how else do you decide who gets the first and cheapest fade than by spamming the evolve icon before you hit 40res and does it introduce redundant complexity? All of these, however, would be non-issues in competitive games.
This would either solve the problem of the fade ball by introducing fades in intervals or, if the alien team decides to wait until everyone has the resources, delay it by so much that it's not a wise choice for the aliens. This would also make having one of each lifeform more res efficient than spamming fades all around.
Furthermore, remove alien commander tres egg drops. Atrocious and detrimental, that's what they are.
4 pubbers trying to evolve first to get the cheap price would be silly though, even with RFK breaking up the pres a bit.