JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
So now you need biomass and tunnels before you can research bile.
Why have we taken 1 step forward and 2 steps back in the lifeform evolutions department by adding two prerequisites on top of such a hollow choice. There's no situation where you wouldn't get leap if your skulks were struggling, bile if they were trying to end the game with arcs, blink if you've held enough RTs to have fades up soon. There's no strategic variation in what lifeform evolutions are chosen.
You can say its completely wrong, but considering you never played the original fade, I'm not inclined to believe anything. There is hardly anything that is 'skill based' about shadowstep, you press shift and gain 20+ speed instantly, not very hard. Theres no movement to perfect for extra gain, very little evasive movement to be performed while mid shadowstep (other than using it again). I've played both NS1 and NS2 fades probably more/as much as anyone, and the NS1 fade in terms of skill potential was light years beyond NS2. Add shadowstep to that as a purely evasive mechanic, and you could have something that you couldn't perfect after years of play potentially. There are only so many things you can do with shadowstep before you start hitting the limit, learning to slide past marines while swiping isnt exactly difficult, especially with the bad collisions. Honestly most of the skill with a fade currently is just knowing when to engage and when not too.
As for comp players getting destroyed as fade, honestly a majority of that comes from those players just being too greedy with it for a second, which results in your death.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited April 2013
Cost increases are strange, and seem pointless. If the idea is to make res income more intuitive it isn't worth the confusion of the change or the annoyance of the large numbers.
I agree higher numbers are somewhat of an inconvenience and there seems to be very few reasons to warrant said change. Why not just consider dropping medpack hp by 10, making lifeform upgrades a one time investment p.res per lifeform, etc. (unless you change them)
You're seriously telling me that Fades are just weak in pubs and that's okay?
No, he's telling you that most pubbers are bad at fade. Good fades are still the backbone of the team until exos show up, just like in NS1.
yeah but a good fade without blink is almost guaranteed to take ~200 damage from a single competant AR marine in a 1v1. you're sooooo easy and predictable to track - easier than a skulk. except with fade you can't really sneak/ambush like a lerk/skulk, ergo fade without blink is basically a poor man's onos.
that's what i dislike... look at the countless competitve games where fades come out and shadowstep jump into marines, 1 swipe, then have to retreat again instantly - purely as a 'delay' tactic with no intention or safe means of getting a kill. blink gives you another axis and more control which gives you a chance to juke shots; you can blink onto the marine's head, blink onto the floor behind him etc.
in BT mod the blink fade seems incredibly hard to kill unless he's focused while he stops to attack. it feels like blink is twice as fast relative to b244, can be linked with bunny hopping to maintain speed and conserve energy, and the only drawback over b244 shadowstep is the need for energy management - oh damn shifts might be as useful as crags.
Cost increases are strange, and seem pointless. If the idea is to make res income more intuitive it isn't worth the confusion of the change or the annoyance of the large numbers.
You may not see the effects right now, but this opens up more balancing potential in the long run. You couldn't really make something cost 17.5 res before, for instance. Now you can have a round 35 res cost instead. It's just a matter of getting used to it. Players that never played the game before probably wouldn't have nearly as much trouble as veteran commanders right now.
I agree though that the 8 times pres cost increase is a bit confusing. 320 and 480 res cost for Exos seem unfamiliar. Onos probably costs 600 pres. Just doubling the pres gain to match the doubled tres gain would have probably been less confusing since the comm would then at least have the same tres costs for dropping stuff as the players would have in pres cost and thus it would be easier for players to estimate what the comm can afford to drop for them.
A doubled pres cost would seem to offer enough balancing potential, I doubt you would ever really get into the range where you need 8 times the precision of what we have now. But I assume it's just an under-the-hood modification to get rid of floating point pres values in Lua altogether by making the minimum gain by RT 1 pres, which means it would consume less memory to store that information and takes up slightly less bandwidth to replicate.
So now you need biomass and tunnels before you can research bile.
Why have we taken 1 step forward and 2 steps back in the lifeform evolutions department by adding two prerequisites on top of such a hollow choice. There's no situation where you wouldn't get leap if your skulks were struggling, bile if they were trying to end the game with arcs, blink if you've held enough RTs to have fades up soon. There's no strategic variation in what lifeform evolutions are chosen.
The upgrade choice is not the focus of strategic variation in this mod, since it tries to encourage to get every upgrade anyway to increase the player's respective fun. The actual strategic choice comes from on what you spend your res to get to that requirement. You can get Leap on 1 Hive, you can try to secure a second Hive first, you can invest into getting your trait structures maxed out first.
And technically the only prerequisite for Bile Bomb is the Gorge Tunnel upgrade, which is 10 (20 in new currency) res. You automatically fulfill the Biomass requirement as soon as you have a second Hive, which would be no different from vanilla, so stop acting like you have any additional requirement there - you rather have the option to not fulfill that requirement for a second Hive and get the upgrade earlier instead.
in BT mod the blink fade seems incredibly hard to kill unless he's focused while he stops to attack. it feels like blink is twice as fast relative to b244, can be linked with bunny hopping to maintain speed and conserve energy, and the only drawback over b244 shadowstep is the need for energy management - oh damn shifts might be as useful as crags.
Really? Last time I tried the mod (maybe a week ago), Fades seemed ridiculously slow except for the insta-teleport shadowstep, and everyone agreed with this. Also, maybe I wasn't doing it right, but Blink seemed to make you lose some of the momentum gained from bunnyhopping. I (we) may just be too used to 'shadowstep hopping' though.
You're seriously telling me that Fades are just weak in pubs and that's okay?
No, he's telling you that most pubbers are bad at fade. Good fades are still the backbone of the team until exos show up, just like in NS1.
In NS1 a Fade was almost mandatory to your team's success. In NS2(pub games) it feels more like "I dunno, it looks like I have 50 res now, I'll just go Fade I guess?" I think the perception of most players on the Fade is that they can take it or leave it. Lerks have a big impact on the game, Onoses have a big impact on the game, Fades are just sort of there. Again, this is at a pub level where I feel the Fade suffers from having too low a skill floor, requiring a pretty high level of competence to even be worth gestating. And personally I consider myself to be a pretty good Fade, but I simply don't enjoy it for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
In NS1 a Fade was almost mandatory to your team's success. In NS2(pub games) it feels more like "I dunno, it looks like I have 50 res now, I'll just go Fade I guess?" I think the perception of most players on the Fade is that they can take it or leave it. Lerks have a big impact on the game, Onoses have a big impact on the game, Fades are just sort of there
The Fade certainly doesn't feel as important as it was NS1. It's role was clear cut back then... now not so much.
Thats not to say it's not good, I only regular a couple of pub servers but on those theres always a couple of fades who can do good things, they just don't seem as essential to the alien win as they used to be. I often find myself being 50/50 on whether I'm going to go lerk or fade, as they can both fill a similar role and both are good in terms of the kind of k/d you can rack up. Maybe that's a good thing? Definitely some nostalgia getting in the way of my view.
in BT mod the blink fade seems incredibly hard to kill unless he's focused while he stops to attack. it feels like blink is twice as fast relative to b244, can be linked with bunny hopping to maintain speed and conserve energy, and the only drawback over b244 shadowstep is the need for energy management - oh damn shifts might be as useful as crags.
Really? Last time I tried the mod (maybe a week ago), Fades seemed ridiculously slow except for the insta-teleport shadowstep, and everyone agreed with this. Also, maybe I wasn't doing it right, but Blink seemed to make you lose some of the momentum gained from bunnyhopping. I (we) may just be too used to 'shadowstep hopping' though.
Huh, I just created a listen server and have been playing with the fade movement and I can get going pretty quick until I screw up going around a corner with the air control. What speed are you guys topping out at? I can maintain around 13ish with bursts up to 16ish when I tap blink until I tag a ceiling or take a corner wrong. I can't maintain really close to that in vanilla, maybe avg 11 speed, with doublejump + SS (then again I play lerk so fade is not my strong point)
I was using the tunnel on Tram as a track to play around for reference.
I wrote this in another forum, but it is relevant enough to repost here for the fade discussion in the last couple pages:
Shadowstep and Blink definitely overlap, but is that such a bad thing as to warrant an unproven rewrite? In vanilla there are situations where blink is better than shadowstep -- such as tight corners, jetpackers, and precision maneuvers. Shadowstep is more of an overarching ability that sacrifices precision and z-mobility for low energy cost and momentum. They each have their tradeoffs and yet each complements the other. No fade relies solely on shadow step. No fade relies solely on blink. You always see blink researched in every competitive game and fades still use shadowstep after blink is available. That's because, while they are both movement abilities, they have different advantages and disadvantages that synergize greatly with each other.
Personally, and of most of the competitive fade players I've spoken with, I prefer the vanilla fade's shadowstep + jump movement over the blink movement in the balance mod. The shadowstep + jump feels smooth, is easy to employ at a basic level, but takes a lot of skill to execute in combat maneuvers. There is planning (routes and battle egress) and timing (jumps, second jumps, cooldown, and swipe mid-shadow step) which leads shadowstep + jump movement to be a hugely skill based movement system for fades.
Why scrap that? People find the current fade movement fun -- why start over? Don't fix what isn't broken, better is the enemy of good, one in the hand is worth two in the bush, etc, etc.
I would argue that Fades are quite broken right now. In pub games they're rarely used to any real effect - their purpose in the game is unclear at best and I think most players simply avoid playing them. For a lifeform that used to be the backbone of the team in NS1, that's sad. I don't claim that it's entirely because of their movement mechanics, but something really isn't working right now IMO.
My question to you would be: How is rewriting the movement going to change this? Pub fades with the new fade are still going to be crappy fades. Combined with the fact that most pubs are played at 8v8 to 12v12 player counts, fades are always going to be weaker in pubs. It's not like the new blink gives fades any more survivability. In fact, the new blink gives even less precision than the old blink because it attemps to give the fade shadowstep-like momentum. I think that pub fades will find the new fade even worse in pubs, if you excluded other independent changes (such as armory-armor and weaker shotguns).
You're seriously telling me that Fades are just weak in pubs and that's okay? No it's not okay, that's completely unacceptable. Fades are a major part of the alien team - at least, they should be - and for them to just not be useful in pub games because the skill floor is too low is a serious design flaw. And no, pubstomping doesn't count.
Like I said it's not all about the movement, and I'm not saying the balance mod Blink is good or bad, but I have a couple problems with the live Fade's movement setup:
- Shadowstep is completely unintuitive. Intuitively it appears to be a simple dodge mechanic. Knowing the jump trick transforms it into a major movement skill, arguably the Fade's primary movement skill - that's not how you implement a good skill curve.
- The Fade has no active skills outside of movement abilities until Hive 3. He just moves around and swings his claws, that's it. It's silly to me that he starts with a movement skill, and then at Hive 2 he gets another one that does effectively the same thing. That's boring.
No, I do not think it is acceptable that fades are weak in pubs, but I am saying that revamping movement won't fix that. The fades are, almost by video game definition, going to be weak among lower skill players. It's an expensive and fragile hit and run class.
To argue that shadowstep is completely unintuitive is absurd in the context of NS2. Almost everything in NS2 is unintuitive if your definition is as simple as combining two different base mechanics (IE shadowstep and jump) together. Not to mention the fact that you're about to get BUNNY HOPPING as the primary movement system in NS2. What's more unintuitive -- using two basic abilities (your shift movement special and jump) or the W+A/D mouse turning known as bhop?
The fade has no active skills even with hive 3 because vortex is a worthless ability that arrives just in time for onos spam. So what? What are your ideas for fade abilities? Metabolize? It would probably be broken during fade explosions to give fades that much staying power. Acid rocket to fulfill a bilebomb-ish roll?
I also very plainly laid out how blink does not equal shadowstep. You say that blink is effectively the same as shadowstep. Then why does every competitive team ALWAYS research blink and every fade constantly uses shadowstep even after blink is researched? If shadowstep effectively equals blink, then why does every good fade use both of them? (It's because shadowstep isn't the same as blink, even if they're both movement abilities --- just like how wall jump isn't the same as leap) What you've basically said is equivilent to shotguns are effectively LMGs because they both do damage. It totally misses the value of the current fade movement system.
You can say its completely wrong, but considering you never played the original fade, I'm not inclined to believe anything. There is hardly anything that is 'skill based' about shadowstep, you press shift and gain 20+ speed instantly, not very hard. Theres no movement to perfect for extra gain, very little evasive movement to be performed while mid shadowstep (other than using it again). I've played both NS1 and NS2 fades probably more/as much as anyone, and the NS1 fade in terms of skill potential was light years beyond NS2. Add shadowstep to that as a purely evasive mechanic, and you could have something that you couldn't perfect after years of play potentially. There are only so many things you can do with shadowstep before you start hitting the limit, learning to slide past marines while swiping isnt exactly difficult, especially with the bad collisions. Honestly most of the skill with a fade currently is just knowing when to engage and when not too.
As for comp players getting destroyed as fade, honestly a majority of that comes from those players just being too greedy with it for a second, which results in your death.
I never once spoke about NS1 fade because NS1 isn't an option we're being presented. I can only evaluate the options being presented and I stand by my assessment of ns2b's fade and blink movement.
I also stand by my assessment of shadowstep + jump movement in that it is the most skill based movement in all of ns2. The entire point of my post is that it is easy to learn how to do it and hard to do it well. You can say it is "easy" and "not difficult" but I'd just point you to the big skill gaps you see among competitive fades. No need to revamp something which works great.
Can someone please tell me if this is
* The mod as a whole is being integrated into vanilla
* UWE dev team going to pick apart the mod by selecting things they like/don't like (aka bhop & new tech model for kharra)
* Not being integrated at all, going to end up like ns2:classic
When its 100%, I would like to see the mod implemented as a whole and ns2 renamed to 2.0. Similar to 1.4 -> 2.0 in NS1
* UWE dev team going to pick apart the mod by selecting things they like/don't like (aka bhop & new tech model for kharra)
This. Its to try out multiple things and what doesn't work (or isn't fun) will get removed and what does will be moved towards implementation in the game.
Dive into a BT server and come give feedback about what works and what you think is awful. That's the only way any of this will see the light of day.
if your referring to the old NS2b mod that I created, that blink was hardly something I would consider an improvement over the current NS2 fade (remember what the fade was like back then). If your talking about this balance mod, then it is already close to NS1 is some key ways, however blink speed is way to easy to maintain via hopping currently, as is most speed. There are many elements that need fine tuning, but the movement is this mod is already vastly superior to what the live version of NS2 offers. Finally it feels like aliens will be able to match marines in skill progression.
No I am not, aliens finally have mechanics which can be used to trade speed for predictability, while also having both sides have a much more 'correct' movement which allows for juking and in general a much higher level of movement skill. I think you are the one that is confused by not being able to look past the parts that need 'adjustments' to see what the core mechanics can offer. In NS1 it was totally possible to pistol leaping celerity skulks out of the air, simply because they had to trade that speed gain for predictability, so while you may feel that 14 speed is overpowered for skulks, if your moving in a straight line your still extremely easy to kill. Only time will tell how that plays out.
* UWE dev team going to pick apart the mod by selecting things they like/don't like (aka bhop & new tech model for kharra)
This. Its to try out multiple things and what doesn't work (or isn't fun) will get removed and what does will be moved towards implementation in the game.
Has there been any official word from a dev or lead playtester? I know sewlek is a dev, but this is obviously a side project due to the drastic game changes. 95% of what is here I would love to see in the vanilla game, but some of it is a complete rewrite of how the game is played I don't see it making its way into the game unless it has the approval of flayra.
* UWE dev team going to pick apart the mod by selecting things they like/don't like (aka bhop & new tech model for kharra)
This. Its to try out multiple things and what doesn't work (or isn't fun) will get removed and what does will be moved towards implementation in the game.
Has there been any official word from a dev or lead playtester? I know sewlek is a dev, but this is obviously a side project due to the drastic game changes. 95% of what is here I would love to see in the vanilla game, but some of it is a complete rewrite of how the game is played I don't see it making its way into the game unless it has the approval of flayra.
And the build 244 patch video also mentions Andi is taking the helm on design as well. There have been other posts mentioning or hinting at it but I'm too lazy.
I don't see all of this being implemented all at once, more pieces of it in waves. It would be too shocking to make big changes to movement and the alien economy in one big go.
Large marine nerf right before finals. You guys have really wierd timing with these things.
The timing is not weird at all. We specifically made these balance tweaks based on talking to the competitive teams, including the guys who are going to be playing in the finals. It was requested that some marine nerfs be made in order to make the gameplay better in Cologne, as marines have been winning at a much higher rate in comp games.
We held off on any large changes that we are still planning on making, specifically to avoid changing the game up too much before the finals, but you can expect to see some of them making their way into the game soon after the Cologne event is over.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
it wont be all included. i will soon remove changes which make no sense anymore (the whole picture of the game has changed so much in that mod) and we are going to put the upcoming changes into a standalone mod for separate testing, the smaller mod will then be intended to get fully integrated into vanilla ns2.
I wrote this in another forum, but it is relevant enough to repost here for the fade discussion in the last couple pages:
Shadowstep and Blink definitely overlap, but is that such a bad thing as to warrant an unproven rewrite? In vanilla there are situations where blink is better than shadowstep -- such as tight corners, jetpackers, and precision maneuvers. Shadowstep is more of an overarching ability that sacrifices precision and z-mobility for low energy cost and momentum. They each have their tradeoffs and yet each complements the other. No fade relies solely on shadow step. No fade relies solely on blink. You always see blink researched in every competitive game and fades still use shadowstep after blink is available. That's because, while they are both movement abilities, they have different advantages and disadvantages that synergize greatly with each other.
Personally, and of most of the competitive fade players I've spoken with, I prefer the vanilla fade's shadowstep + jump movement over the blink movement in the balance mod. The shadowstep + jump feels smooth, is easy to employ at a basic level, but takes a lot of skill to execute in combat maneuvers. There is planning (routes and battle egress) and timing (jumps, second jumps, cooldown, and swipe mid-shadow step) which leads shadowstep + jump movement to be a hugely skill based movement system for fades.
Why scrap that? People find the current fade movement fun -- why start over? Don't fix what isn't broken, better is the enemy of good, one in the hand is worth two in the bush, etc, etc.
I would argue that Fades are quite broken right now. In pub games they're rarely used to any real effect - their purpose in the game is unclear at best and I think most players simply avoid playing them. For a lifeform that used to be the backbone of the team in NS1, that's sad. I don't claim that it's entirely because of their movement mechanics, but something really isn't working right now IMO.
My question to you would be: How is rewriting the movement going to change this? Pub fades with the new fade are still going to be crappy fades. Combined with the fact that most pubs are played at 8v8 to 12v12 player counts, fades are always going to be weaker in pubs. It's not like the new blink gives fades any more survivability. In fact, the new blink gives even less precision than the old blink because it attemps to give the fade shadowstep-like momentum. I think that pub fades will find the new fade even worse in pubs, if you excluded other independent changes (such as armory-armor and weaker shotguns).
You're seriously telling me that Fades are just weak in pubs and that's okay? No it's not okay, that's completely unacceptable. Fades are a major part of the alien team - at least, they should be - and for them to just not be useful in pub games because the skill floor is too low is a serious design flaw. And no, pubstomping doesn't count.
Like I said it's not all about the movement, and I'm not saying the balance mod Blink is good or bad, but I have a couple problems with the live Fade's movement setup:
- Shadowstep is completely unintuitive. Intuitively it appears to be a simple dodge mechanic. Knowing the jump trick transforms it into a major movement skill, arguably the Fade's primary movement skill - that's not how you implement a good skill curve.
- The Fade has no active skills outside of movement abilities until Hive 3. He just moves around and swings his claws, that's it. It's silly to me that he starts with a movement skill, and then at Hive 2 he gets another one that does effectively the same thing. That's boring.
No, I do not think it is acceptable that fades are weak in pubs, but I am saying that revamping movement won't fix that. The fades are, almost by video game definition, going to be weak among lower skill players. It's an expensive and fragile hit and run class.
To argue that shadowstep is completely unintuitive is absurd in the context of NS2. Almost everything in NS2 is unintuitive if your definition is as simple as combining two different base mechanics (IE shadowstep and jump) together. Not to mention the fact that you're about to get BUNNY HOPPING as the primary movement system in NS2. What's more unintuitive -- using two basic abilities (your shift movement special and jump) or the W+A/D mouse turning known as bhop?
The fade has no active skills even with hive 3 because vortex is a worthless ability that arrives just in time for onos spam. So what? What are your ideas for fade abilities? Metabolize? It would probably be broken during fade explosions to give fades that much staying power. Acid rocket to fulfill a bilebomb-ish roll?
I also very plainly laid out how blink does not equal shadowstep. You say that blink is effectively the same as shadowstep. Then why does every competitive team ALWAYS research blink and every fade constantly uses shadowstep even after blink is researched? If shadowstep effectively equals blink, then why does every good fade use both of them? (It's because shadowstep isn't the same as blink, even if they're both movement abilities --- just like how wall jump isn't the same as leap) What you've basically said is equivilent to shotguns are effectively LMGs because they both do damage. It totally misses the value of the current fade movement system.
Just a page or two ago in this very thread there was a debate about which between Shadowstep and Blink is the better primary movement skill. The conclusion seemed to be that it was ultimately a matter of taste. And you tell me they don't do effectively the same thing? I'm not saying they are literally identical, or that you shouldn't use both, just that there's a huge amount of overlap in their roles. I don't think that's a good design for a Hive 2 ability - it should add something new and interesting to the class, not just a variant of what they already have. I don't have a problem with Shadowstep and Blink working together, but they should both be available in some form at Hive 1 IMO to open up a slot for a more interesting ability.
Like I said, Metabolize is something that we know for a fact works. Lifeform explosion is a problem that should be solved regardless. The only reason it's not a big deal right now is because Fades aren't that good.
They should release the majority of features in this mod and call it NS 2 2.0, because that's truly what it plays like.
Also, any chance sentries will get a pass in the mod? They could really use some love still. TF as it stands is still not a viable tech path.
Comments
Why have we taken 1 step forward and 2 steps back in the lifeform evolutions department by adding two prerequisites on top of such a hollow choice. There's no situation where you wouldn't get leap if your skulks were struggling, bile if they were trying to end the game with arcs, blink if you've held enough RTs to have fades up soon. There's no strategic variation in what lifeform evolutions are chosen.
As for comp players getting destroyed as fade, honestly a majority of that comes from those players just being too greedy with it for a second, which results in your death.
yeah but a good fade without blink is almost guaranteed to take ~200 damage from a single competant AR marine in a 1v1. you're sooooo easy and predictable to track - easier than a skulk. except with fade you can't really sneak/ambush like a lerk/skulk, ergo fade without blink is basically a poor man's onos.
that's what i dislike... look at the countless competitve games where fades come out and shadowstep jump into marines, 1 swipe, then have to retreat again instantly - purely as a 'delay' tactic with no intention or safe means of getting a kill. blink gives you another axis and more control which gives you a chance to juke shots; you can blink onto the marine's head, blink onto the floor behind him etc.
in BT mod the blink fade seems incredibly hard to kill unless he's focused while he stops to attack. it feels like blink is twice as fast relative to b244, can be linked with bunny hopping to maintain speed and conserve energy, and the only drawback over b244 shadowstep is the need for energy management - oh damn shifts might be as useful as crags.
You may not see the effects right now, but this opens up more balancing potential in the long run. You couldn't really make something cost 17.5 res before, for instance. Now you can have a round 35 res cost instead. It's just a matter of getting used to it. Players that never played the game before probably wouldn't have nearly as much trouble as veteran commanders right now.
I agree though that the 8 times pres cost increase is a bit confusing. 320 and 480 res cost for Exos seem unfamiliar. Onos probably costs 600 pres. Just doubling the pres gain to match the doubled tres gain would have probably been less confusing since the comm would then at least have the same tres costs for dropping stuff as the players would have in pres cost and thus it would be easier for players to estimate what the comm can afford to drop for them.
A doubled pres cost would seem to offer enough balancing potential, I doubt you would ever really get into the range where you need 8 times the precision of what we have now. But I assume it's just an under-the-hood modification to get rid of floating point pres values in Lua altogether by making the minimum gain by RT 1 pres, which means it would consume less memory to store that information and takes up slightly less bandwidth to replicate.
Ehm, they are? Only thing that did not double in cost were Cysts and that was an intentional change to make them sit less heavy on the alien economy.
The upgrade choice is not the focus of strategic variation in this mod, since it tries to encourage to get every upgrade anyway to increase the player's respective fun. The actual strategic choice comes from on what you spend your res to get to that requirement. You can get Leap on 1 Hive, you can try to secure a second Hive first, you can invest into getting your trait structures maxed out first.
And technically the only prerequisite for Bile Bomb is the Gorge Tunnel upgrade, which is 10 (20 in new currency) res. You automatically fulfill the Biomass requirement as soon as you have a second Hive, which would be no different from vanilla, so stop acting like you have any additional requirement there - you rather have the option to not fulfill that requirement for a second Hive and get the upgrade earlier instead.
In NS1 a Fade was almost mandatory to your team's success. In NS2(pub games) it feels more like "I dunno, it looks like I have 50 res now, I'll just go Fade I guess?" I think the perception of most players on the Fade is that they can take it or leave it. Lerks have a big impact on the game, Onoses have a big impact on the game, Fades are just sort of there. Again, this is at a pub level where I feel the Fade suffers from having too low a skill floor, requiring a pretty high level of competence to even be worth gestating. And personally I consider myself to be a pretty good Fade, but I simply don't enjoy it for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
The Fade certainly doesn't feel as important as it was NS1. It's role was clear cut back then... now not so much.
Thats not to say it's not good, I only regular a couple of pub servers but on those theres always a couple of fades who can do good things, they just don't seem as essential to the alien win as they used to be. I often find myself being 50/50 on whether I'm going to go lerk or fade, as they can both fill a similar role and both are good in terms of the kind of k/d you can rack up. Maybe that's a good thing? Definitely some nostalgia getting in the way of my view.
Huh, I just created a listen server and have been playing with the fade movement and I can get going pretty quick until I screw up going around a corner with the air control. What speed are you guys topping out at? I can maintain around 13ish with bursts up to 16ish when I tap blink until I tag a ceiling or take a corner wrong. I can't maintain really close to that in vanilla, maybe avg 11 speed, with doublejump + SS (then again I play lerk so fade is not my strong point)
I was using the tunnel on Tram as a track to play around for reference.
No, I do not think it is acceptable that fades are weak in pubs, but I am saying that revamping movement won't fix that. The fades are, almost by video game definition, going to be weak among lower skill players. It's an expensive and fragile hit and run class.
To argue that shadowstep is completely unintuitive is absurd in the context of NS2. Almost everything in NS2 is unintuitive if your definition is as simple as combining two different base mechanics (IE shadowstep and jump) together. Not to mention the fact that you're about to get BUNNY HOPPING as the primary movement system in NS2. What's more unintuitive -- using two basic abilities (your shift movement special and jump) or the W+A/D mouse turning known as bhop?
The fade has no active skills even with hive 3 because vortex is a worthless ability that arrives just in time for onos spam. So what? What are your ideas for fade abilities? Metabolize? It would probably be broken during fade explosions to give fades that much staying power. Acid rocket to fulfill a bilebomb-ish roll?
I also very plainly laid out how blink does not equal shadowstep. You say that blink is effectively the same as shadowstep. Then why does every competitive team ALWAYS research blink and every fade constantly uses shadowstep even after blink is researched? If shadowstep effectively equals blink, then why does every good fade use both of them? (It's because shadowstep isn't the same as blink, even if they're both movement abilities --- just like how wall jump isn't the same as leap) What you've basically said is equivilent to shotguns are effectively LMGs because they both do damage. It totally misses the value of the current fade movement system.
should be the tooltip description.
I never once spoke about NS1 fade because NS1 isn't an option we're being presented. I can only evaluate the options being presented and I stand by my assessment of ns2b's fade and blink movement.
I also stand by my assessment of shadowstep + jump movement in that it is the most skill based movement in all of ns2. The entire point of my post is that it is easy to learn how to do it and hard to do it well. You can say it is "easy" and "not difficult" but I'd just point you to the big skill gaps you see among competitive fades. No need to revamp something which works great.
Can someone please tell me if this is
* The mod as a whole is being integrated into vanilla
* UWE dev team going to pick apart the mod by selecting things they like/don't like (aka bhop & new tech model for kharra)
* Not being integrated at all, going to end up like ns2:classic
When its 100%, I would like to see the mod implemented as a whole and ns2 renamed to 2.0. Similar to 1.4 -> 2.0 in NS1
This. Its to try out multiple things and what doesn't work (or isn't fun) will get removed and what does will be moved towards implementation in the game.
Dive into a BT server and come give feedback about what works and what you think is awful. That's the only way any of this will see the light of day.
And I think you're confusing "skill progression" with overpowered movement mechanics. I.E. 14 speed skulk bhop and 15 speed easy blink.
The balance mod fade has a flatter skill curve than our current fade.
Has there been any official word from a dev or lead playtester? I know sewlek is a dev, but this is obviously a side project due to the drastic game changes. 95% of what is here I would love to see in the vanilla game, but some of it is a complete rewrite of how the game is played I don't see it making its way into the game unless it has the approval of flayra.
See this post: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2104332/#Comment_2104332
And the build 244 patch video also mentions Andi is taking the helm on design as well. There have been other posts mentioning or hinting at it but I'm too lazy.
I don't see all of this being implemented all at once, more pieces of it in waves. It would be too shocking to make big changes to movement and the alien economy in one big go.
Looks like i'll be getting back into ns2 then when this NS2 2.0 is released!
Just a page or two ago in this very thread there was a debate about which between Shadowstep and Blink is the better primary movement skill. The conclusion seemed to be that it was ultimately a matter of taste. And you tell me they don't do effectively the same thing? I'm not saying they are literally identical, or that you shouldn't use both, just that there's a huge amount of overlap in their roles. I don't think that's a good design for a Hive 2 ability - it should add something new and interesting to the class, not just a variant of what they already have. I don't have a problem with Shadowstep and Blink working together, but they should both be available in some form at Hive 1 IMO to open up a slot for a more interesting ability.
Like I said, Metabolize is something that we know for a fact works. Lifeform explosion is a problem that should be solved regardless. The only reason it's not a big deal right now is because Fades aren't that good.
And he got the entire ns2 community backing him up for balance changes.
Also, any chance sentries will get a pass in the mod? They could really use some love still. TF as it stands is still not a viable tech path.