Looks like the Balance Test sever #1 did load the mod properly. Any chance this sucker can get a fix? Only BT server up is HBZ and I'd prefer not to play in a 200ms+ environment.
Personally, and some people might disagree with me on this, but personally I think it might be best to remove the exos entirely and just bring back HMG+HA. They were a cool idea but in my opinion they haven't worked out the way I had hoped. They aren't particularly enjoyable to play, nor are they enjoyable to fight as the aliens. I go back and play NS1 and I'm struck by how much more I like HA to exos, as both a marine and an alien.
Railguns, though, are surprisingly fun. Keep them around as a standalone weapon.
Looks like the Balance Test sever #1 did load the mod properly. Any chance this sucker can get a fix? Only BT server up is HBZ and I'd prefer not to play in a 200ms+ environment.
I think he takes it off to make changes, I saw that yesterday or the day before where the mod wasn't on the server
Personally, and some people might disagree with me on this, but personally I think it might be best to remove the exos entirely and just bring back HMG+HA. They were a cool idea but in my opinion they haven't worked out the way I had hoped. They aren't particularly enjoyable to play, nor are they enjoyable to fight as the aliens. I go back and play NS1 and I'm struck by how much more I like HA to exos, as both a marine and an alien.
Railguns, though, are surprisingly fun. Keep them around as a standalone weapon.
I don't know, a HMG is basically the assault rifle with more damage, larger clip, and faster rate of fire.. equip that on some good marines and it'll be like getting shot down by lightning guns on quake
And keeping a railgun lol, sure I'd like it but one blasting skulks as a jp marine would be too much. Also I don't think the removal of something that big is likely, it's a part of the game and there are more players out there than competitive minded (and this game already has so much put into the competitive aspect)
So like before, let's organize a 6v6 on BT, play a few maps, have sewlek watch and collect info, he can tweak from there!
HMG did not fire faster than the LMG in NS1, did more damage per shot, had a signficantly larger spread and also did half damage to structures. It also had an extremely long reload (~6 seconds), and made your movement extremely slow. It had alot of power but generally you did not see a lot of them dropped in comp games, usually it was one or two for your top shooters while the rest still carried shotguns. The HMG was well balanced in NS1 and there was many higher tier shooters there than there is in NS2 currently, I wouldnt worry about it.
1. I assume this means the drifters cast all of those unlocked trigger abilities themselves. Do the abilities cost res still (and the same amount as in vanilla)? And does each drifter get all 4 abilities assuming you have one of the listed hives / whip?
Seeing as the abilities are on the drifters, would it be possible to add an energy system to the game and allow the casting of all of those abilities from the drifter's energy pool? And each skill is balanced by energy cost / regeneration rate.
I'm thinking that would kinda make them like a support unit the commander can use like a defiler from StarCraft.
I think it would give the commander something fun & useful to do that wouldn't cost him resources, which is a drawback of most of his cool abilities. Instead he has to focus on energy management of his drifters. Good / bad idea?
2. How often is the Mucous Membrane used? Just based on the description it seems kinda weak.
Mucous membrane sounds meh for a skulk, and the rest of the life forms can get back to a crag healing station pretty fast if needed. It does sound good for Onos though.
Since the drifter seems to cast "clouds" already, what if instead, crag hive unlocked "bio-rain" that allows a drifter to spew a small radius of infestation at a location while he is stationary (think like the "generate creep" command from the overlords in StarCraft).
If an energy system is added, have it cancel out his natural energy regen.
This could allow a commander a few new strategies. He could keep a severed cyst chain alive. He could make a forward base a little easier at greater risk (all a marine has to do is kill the drifter to harm the base). He could re-enforce a new potential hive location easier. He could grab remote RT's with the same ease as marines can.
You already allow the Gorge tunnel to generate infestation. I think this would be a fun addition that would self-balance itself in theory due to it all hinges upon the drifter staying alive.
Maybe make him glow orange like a powered cyst while the ability is being channeled just to make him easier to spot?
3. The same as question 2, how often is Storm Cloud used?
Storm cloud sounds a bit redundant if you already went celerity (but good if you didn't I suppose).
A few ideas.
You could change "enzyme cloud" to shift, since it technically makes them bite faster which is sort of a shift function already. And since whip unlocks something in the BT, have it unlock a cloud that turns all damage into structural. That kinda goes along with the whip bombard theme. That might be a bit OP though, and kinda overlaps with enzyme cloud (and both cast in conjunction would break the game probably lol). But that could be forbidden to a single drifter by higher energy costs (and another reason to make the castings energy based).
A different idea is to add "after image" to shift -> drifter, which generates a clone image behind the parent alien that mimics exactly what it was doing 2 seconds prior (maybe make it a radius effect ability). I dunno if that is possible, but I'm thinking to get it to work, the server could just take input from the client machine and delay it by 2 seconds (if possible).
The only problem is this ability is very similar to hallucinate. So possibly drop hallucinate somewhere else (or move it to shift as "after image" if the 2 second delay impementation is not possible) and then change shade to provide "smoke" which lets out an ink cloud where cast (targetable cast), like a lerk spore cloud that doesn't do any damage. Allow it to be taken out by flame thrower. Maybe annoying to your alien players though if they aren't playing with alien vision on (how hard is it to press "f" though).
Now, do we really need another vision obscuring ability? But I would say instead to remove rupture now. The functionality would now be on the drifter via "smoke," again giving marines something to kill to stop the annoying effect. And would also solve the spammy problem it has in the current BT implementation.
In summary, I just feel drifters could be reworked to be more fun, to give the alien commander more things to do that provide him more support roles that match marine commander's fun while not simultaneously breaking the game.
The problem with Mucous Membrane and Storm are probably that you have little visual feedback about who is affected and for how long and how big the effect actually is. So they appear a bit pointless even though they may not actually be.
You basically have no exact idea if an alien is still affected after it moves out of the AoE and how long the effect will last after it. If it doesn't hold on for long, it's rather pointless because aliens tend to move quickly away from the Drifter in fights, so it's hard to keep them buffed if you constantly have to follow them and then do a lot of microing with selection the respective ability.
I appreciate the new abilities, though. They open up more tactics to help the team as khammander in fights, possibly even more than what the marine commander can do.
The problem with Mucous Membrane and Storm are probably that you have little visual feedback about who is affected and for how long and how big the effect actually is. So they appear a bit pointless even though they may not actually be.
You basically have no exact idea if an alien is still affected after it moves out of the AoE and how long the effect will last after it. If it doesn't hold on for long, it's rather pointless because aliens tend to move quickly away from the Drifter in fights, so it's hard to keep them buffed if you constantly have to follow them and then do a lot of microing with selection the respective ability.
I appreciate the new abilities, though. They open up more tactics to help the team as khammander in fights, possibly even more than what the marine commander can do.
I haven't had storm used on myself, but used it on someone, does it just act as a smoke grenade type effect and make it hard for marines to see? Pretty neat but something like that should cost a decent amount of res if you can blind an entire area of marines (unless the effect isn't strong) anyone been hit by it? Cause I've only used it as com
Storm accelerates aliens in the area for a short amount of time. It's not supposed to be vision impairing, even though it can actually be, given how much movement is involved in the particle effect.
Storm accelerates aliens in the area for a short amount of time. It's not supposed to be vision impairing, even though it can actually be, given how much movement is involved in the particle effect.
I thought that was the point of the drifters other ability, to make aliens move faster on infestation
holding space bar i kept slowing down even when looking slightly down, yet when you hold space going directly up you don't lose speed... please don't make lerk movement a random space bar masher
I thought that was the point of the drifters other ability, to make aliens move faster on infestation
He has no such ability.
-Enzyme (Whip): Increased rate of fire of affected aliens.
-Storm (Shift): Increases movement speed of affected aliens.
-Mucous Membrane (Crag): Regenerates armor of affected aliens.
-Hallucination (Shade): Creates illusions of the affected aliens that the khammander controls.
After playing the balance test, I can't even play the regular game without wanting to kill myself. Alien movement in vanilla NS2 is just so, so terrible.
A movement speed buff would be handy as a global infestation targeted ability. Tying it to the drifter seems really inconvenient for real world scenarios though.
The only thing that I ever felt had a large problem, was getting a shotgun on a warping fade, I feel so many times during a shadowstep or blink, the shot will just "half ass" hit the fade, but I think that's more because of the fast movement and the game not updating quick enough
Dont warping fades have a much smaller hitbox and collision box than regular fades?
The problem with Mucous Membrane and Storm are probably that you have little visual feedback about who is affected and for how long and how big the effect actually is. So they appear a bit pointless even though they may not actually be.
You basically have no exact idea if an alien is still affected after it moves out of the AoE and how long the effect will last after it.
This is the exact experience i have with Umbra and why i think it lacks visual feedback, moreso now that its T2. Well said
holding space bar i kept slowing down even when looking slightly down, yet when you hold space going directly up you don't lose speed... please don't make lerk movement a random space bar masher
Should've been opposite?
You should've slowed when going upwards without flapping? As in, diving gains speed.
hmm.
Also, the time between switching weapons is really slow for the lerk - looking at the animations as being the culprit here - but if this could be adjusted it would be greatly helpful as its the only class i know with that level of a delay for complementing weapons. (comparing to parasite > Bite or Spit > healspray etc)
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There is no reason to make marine aiming more forgivable when aliens already have a predictable speed gain mechanic... Its like a double nerf to the already weak team.
You are not accounting for the changes in skulk acceleration and other movement buffs, i believe. Sewlek was modifying them on the fly yesterday, and as you said last page it would take time to learn those mechanics appropriately, even for a comp player.
Hitreg never felt so good, even when it was lowered down to 0.018
and this could be because of the secondary trace that was added.. maybe that's all that was needed.
But even if that isn't the case: So what? We both know revamping the animations/hitboxes is way too much developer time for UWE, flinch animations aren't going anywhere, and even if you made a per-pixel hit detection (its been done in FPS games before with poor results) the only ones who would appreciate it would be the best shooters like yourself, whereas the other 98% will be frustrated and blame hitreg.
::scratches head::
We've grown up in a competitive gaming world with this as our standard:
I thought that was the point of the drifters other ability, to make aliens move faster on infestation
He has no such ability.
-Enzyme (Whip): Increased rate of fire of affected aliens.
-Storm (Shift): Increases movement speed of affected aliens.
-Mucous Membrane (Crag): Regenerates armor of affected aliens.
-Hallucination (Shade): Creates illusions of the affected aliens that the khammander controls.
Maybe a text change, I swear to you a day or two ago the drifter had something that said aliens move 20% faster on infestation, storm had no text on it besides saying storm
Times really have changed, I'm glad UWE made something different though, when it comes to MP what developer can you trust now-a-days?? croteam just punched me in the face with their HD remakes/SS3, I'm really hoping idTECH does something wonderful with q5, since they did a good job with quake live
Anyway, I love ns2 and I love ns2 bt even more than ns2 :P I'll continue support for this dev team for a time to come, I even try and promote the game over on esea to the counter-strike players, few come but the few that did really love the game
Don't really see the need for gorges to move faster on infestation, just buff bellyslide on infestation maybe, but base movement speed really doesn't need a buff.
Also, I agree on exos just feeling lacklustre, but I very much doubt UWE will ever get rid of them. Instead I just hope they can do more to increase their skill ceiling. Same goes with the onos, as it stands both the exo and the onos are in dire need of some skill-based mechanics. Lategame exo vs onos gameplay is incredibly dull with how little skill is involved.
just played a small 2v2, i obviously cant comment on balance, but i love the bone shield for onos, it really does help, as far as movement is concerned, i love playing fade, i loved playing onos, and lerk, skulk felt a bit iffy to me, gorge felt a bit too fast with celerity biling power nodes, i can imagine it would be pretty hard to catch a gorge,
Personally, and some people might disagree with me on this, but personally I think it might be best to remove the exos entirely and just bring back HMG+HA. They were a cool idea but in my opinion they haven't worked out the way I had hoped. They aren't particularly enjoyable to play, nor are they enjoyable to fight as the aliens. I go back and play NS1 and I'm struck by how much more I like HA to exos, as both a marine and an alien.
Railguns, though, are surprisingly fun. Keep them around as a standalone weapon.
Keep it realistic. The Exo won't go away. It was to much work. And btw. I actually like to play with the Exo. But I'm just a pubster.
The HMG and HeavyArmor had disadvantages in NS1 too. And I think it is possible to balance the Exo away from an Endgame Death-Robot to something that resembles the HMG-Heavy of NS1.
If Exos only would be cheaper and with less DPS / armor but therefore able to weld/build things for example.
Make Exos to a choice beside SG-JP instead of the All-In Unit they are now.
Hitreg never felt so good, even when it was lowered down to 0.018
and this could be because of the secondary trace that was added.. maybe that's all that was needed.
But even if that isn't the case: So what? We both know revamping the animations/hitboxes is way too much developer time for UWE, flinch animations aren't going anywhere, and even if you made a per-pixel hit detection (its been done in FPS games before with poor results) the only ones who would appreciate it would be the best shooters like yourself, whereas the other 98% will be frustrated and blame hitreg.
::scratches head::
We've grown up in a competitive gaming world with this as our standard:
This is true. But time and technology is moving on. And instead of reverting things back to cornered wheels, because some people keep thinking they should hit an alien when shooting between the legs, we should move on and adapt.
@ironhorse yeah but in quake you don't have to get into melee range.
it makes it all that much easier to hit a skulk when you know instantly if he's not able to retreat, and completely harmless unless he can get into range. the marine is the peeping boy hiding in the skulk's locker room.
i haven't really played enough to decide whether the change will work... but i don't like it. as marines, it feels exactly like being rewarded for poor accuracy. from time to time i used to think "damn that guys aim is good!", but now it's a given and exactly the same situation would be "damn that guy has average motor funtions".
I thought that was the point of the drifters other ability, to make aliens move faster on infestation
He has no such ability.
-Enzyme (Whip): Increased rate of fire of affected aliens.
-Storm (Shift): Increases movement speed of affected aliens.
-Mucous Membrane (Crag): Regenerates armor of affected aliens.
-Hallucination (Shade): Creates illusions of the affected aliens that the khammander controls.
i think the tooltip of mucous membrane mentions acceleration though (nothing about armor), and storm doesn't have a tool tip. easy to mistake.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited April 2013
reduced gore range to 1.65 (was 2.2)
Hooray!
So the railgun and miniguns actually do more damage with weapon upgrades? That's insane.
As for exosuits themselves, I don't necessary want them to be removed. I do want however for there to be some middle ground between the jack of all trades shotgun and a robot capable of killing any lifeform within a moment. A weapon such as the HMG serves this purpose, and has its set of drawbacks as Dragon explained.
So the railgun and miniguns actually do more damage with weapon upgrades? That's insane.
As for exosuits themselves, I don't necessary want them to be removed. I do want however for there to be some middle ground between the jack of all trades shotgun and a robot capable of killing any lifeform within a moment. A weapon such as the HMG serves this purpose, and has its set of drawbacks as Dragon explained.
we already have a load of imbalanced clutter though:
- mines which are OP versus skulks and terrible against everything else,
- grenade launcher which can be spammed but not aimed, and therefore skill ceiling is super low,
- flamethrower same problem as grenade launcher except it's even more braindead,
- exosuit which is OP versus everything,
- vortex, xenocide, stomp.
surely it makes more sense to change this stuff instead of adding another gimmick.
Maybe I'm completely wrong, but my 2ç on exo issue.
In ns1 onos with stomp and ability to swallow marine was counter HA, but was weak against jp+hmg. To counter jp aliens needed fades or sculks+focus.
So everything had counter but it was more like a circle: HA<onos<jp<=fade.
In ns2 it is mostly onos vs exo + welding matrines and biling gorges
I am curious to see what will get integrated into the vanilla game first, possibly with the next patch. Pushing out every change of the mod at once would probably be too much for the community to adapt to and might be a bit of a shock, so I assume the stuff would be split up into multiple patches so people can get accustomed to the changes one at a time.
For the first patch would I expect less crucial changes. For starters everything that simply improves on existing stuff that was underused.
general
- auto unstuck logic ("should" always work)
- added additional 6 second respawn time when rejoining a team, suiciding or when killed by a death trigger
- reduced amount of required cysts to make it less tedious for both sides [but hopefully with a slightly shorter radius than the current form. you should not be able to spread infestation into half the enemy base from a cyst hidden behind some outside geometry and then Whip-rush]
- movement code rewritten
- removed "no res while dead" rule
- resource towers and command structures will now block re-creation for 5 seconds after destruction (enemy team is allowed to drop something)
marine
- multiple MACs are no longer able to weld the same target
- reduced exo thruster cool down to 2.5 seconds (was 4)
- increase flame thrower clip size to 50 (was 30)
- removed flame thrower damage ramp up
- reduced flamethrower cost to 200 (was 250)
- reduced flamethrower weight and increased range slightly
- flamethrower can now burn up bile/whip bombs and disables enemy structure functions
- reduced grenade launcher cost to 150 (was 250)
- increased grenade launcher reserve ammo to 28
- reduced welder cost to 40
- reduced claw damage to 30
- changed claw damage type to heavy
- marines now always see when something is damaged (yellow wrench icon)
- added an icon to marines nameplate when carrying a welder
- arms lab no longer requires an armory
- reduced shotgun damage per pellet to 10 (was 11)
- adjusted shotgun spread
- fixed exo weapon not profiting from weapon upgrades
- toned down minigun damage to 20 (26 full upgraded, was 25 before)
- reduced ARC build time from 10 to 7
- reduced robotics factory upgrade time from 40 to 20
- reduced ARC movement speed by 50%
- added ability for marine commander to temporary power individual structures)
- reduced health/armor of Phase Gates to 2500/300 (down from 2700/450)
- increased jetpack cost to 15 (was 10)
- IP spawn time increased to 8 seconds (was 7)
- fixed ARC not being properly affected by ink clouds
- extractors and command stations can now be parasited
alien
- reduced gore range to 1.65 (was 2.2)
- gorges move now 20% faster on infestation
- whips will now cause whacked grenades to detonate within 0.45 seconds (was 2 seconds)
- hydras are now flammable
- cysts will block recreation in the area when destroyed for 4 seconds
- removed cyst cool down
- cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
- increased cyst build time to 4 seconds to compensate for lack of cool down
- increased cyst range, infestation radius [but not too much]
- EXPERIMENTAL: unleashed alien commander: crag shift and shade can now always be build
- increased cost of crag, shade and shift to 12 (was 10)
- utility chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type (heal wave requires a crag hive)
- rupture can now be cast directly on infestation, like bonewall (infestation bubble grows up and pops, marine can reduce effect by looking in another direction)
- Drifters can now be created during the hive is researching
- increased drifter cost to 4 (was 3)
- reduce drifter cloud costs to 1 (was 2)
- experimental: crag, shade and shift can now move (slowly though and still take damage off infestation)
- shifts increase the movement speed of nearby crags and shades
- added echo harvester to shift
- added echo gorge tunnel to shift (only on infestation) [really? super instant ninja PG?]
- whips will now root and unroot automatically
- reduced hive specialization upgrade time to 10 seconds (down from 20)
- infestation receding is now twice as fast as growing
- gorge tunnel entrances create now infestation when the other side is infested
- (EXPERIMENTAL!): merged camouflage and silence into one upgrade (called 'Phantom' for now)
- enemies are outlined with parasite only [outlines no longer work with alien vision - intentional nerf?]
- added new shade upgrade (called Aura for now) shows enemies and their health (color changes)
- doubled heal spray construct effectiveness
- the normal gestation time is applied when using a pre-evolved egg instead of just 2 seconds
- each alien has individual spawn timer (12 seconds)
- an egg is generated every 10 seconds ( 5 seconds for 12 player)
- hives can have max of 4 eggs (linear scaling with player count, for instance 8 eggs for 12 players)
- hives have now the hatch ability (2 eggs for 10 t.res like shift), shift can no longer hatch eggs
- scalable upgrades (for example build a maximum of 3 shells to get maximum efficiency for carapace, regeneration), 200 res per structure
- celerity works now in combat and increases max speed by 2 m/s
- regeneration works now in combat
- crags no longer stack their healing with each other and can heal a maximum of 3 targets at once
- shift energize no longer stacks
- drifters unlock passive abilities depending on hive type (shade: camouflage, shift: celerity, crag: regeneration)
- drifters unlock triggered abilities (whip: enzyme cloud, shade hive: hallucinate, shift hive: storm cloud/movement speed, crag hive: mucous membrane/heals armor)
- shift echo ability no longer requires maturity
- moved hallucinations from shade to drifters
- drifter hallucinate: use the same way as enzyme cloud. every alien in effect range generates a hallucination, controllable by the alien commander
- blink: fades are a bit easier to see during blink
- fade vortex ability is now created as a separate object in the world and block all attacks if no valid target has been hit
- adrenaline scales now like other upgrades. increases max energy and regeneration rate by 10% per level
So in a nutshell:
-No 10x res adjustements yet.
-No expensive RTs/more starting res yet.
-No Proto Lab/Arms Lab CC dependency change yet.
-No Exo cost buff/armor nerf yet.
-No Biomass yet.
-No Fade/Onos changes yet.
-No Spore/Umbra tier switch yet.
Those are the things I'd consider too extreme to integrate with all the other new stuff at once. They certainly should come, but give people some time to adjust to the more understandable concepts first in a somewhat familiar environment.
I disagree with people saying that the HMG should not be put back into NS because it is basically your standard rifle just upgraded and it makes the standard rifle obsolete.
By mid-game I would expect my default and free weapon to not hold up to much if anything at all, even with W3. Aliens are probably sporting advanced lifeforms with probably two evolutions. If a standard rifle at W2/W3 is meant to seriously contend with lifeforms at the stage then I disagree with that philosophy. It's an arms race, I bring a knife to a fist fight where you counter by bringing a gun and so forth until one of us wins.
The HMG did also have some very strong negative points to counter being an 'upgraded rifle' - Long reload times, it cost res to research it, it cost money to buy it, it had a bigger spread than the LMG and it cost time to research it.
The marine arsenal is currently missing a weapon that is the next logical step up from the LMG, unless ofcourse you jump in an exosuit with its ruinous cost. There is no other long range, fast firing weapon out there for the standard marine.
Also don't forget that standard marines sporting a HMG still have the same amount of armour/hp as if they didn't have that HMG. Glass cannon.
Comments
Railguns, though, are surprisingly fun. Keep them around as a standalone weapon.
I think he takes it off to make changes, I saw that yesterday or the day before where the mod wasn't on the server
I don't know, a HMG is basically the assault rifle with more damage, larger clip, and faster rate of fire.. equip that on some good marines and it'll be like getting shot down by lightning guns on quake
And keeping a railgun lol, sure I'd like it but one blasting skulks as a jp marine would be too much. Also I don't think the removal of something that big is likely, it's a part of the game and there are more players out there than competitive minded (and this game already has so much put into the competitive aspect)
So like before, let's organize a 6v6 on BT, play a few maps, have sewlek watch and collect info, he can tweak from there!
And the server should be fixed.
1. I assume this means the drifters cast all of those unlocked trigger abilities themselves. Do the abilities cost res still (and the same amount as in vanilla)? And does each drifter get all 4 abilities assuming you have one of the listed hives / whip?
Seeing as the abilities are on the drifters, would it be possible to add an energy system to the game and allow the casting of all of those abilities from the drifter's energy pool? And each skill is balanced by energy cost / regeneration rate.
I'm thinking that would kinda make them like a support unit the commander can use like a defiler from StarCraft.
I think it would give the commander something fun & useful to do that wouldn't cost him resources, which is a drawback of most of his cool abilities. Instead he has to focus on energy management of his drifters. Good / bad idea?
2. How often is the Mucous Membrane used? Just based on the description it seems kinda weak.
Mucous membrane sounds meh for a skulk, and the rest of the life forms can get back to a crag healing station pretty fast if needed. It does sound good for Onos though.
Since the drifter seems to cast "clouds" already, what if instead, crag hive unlocked "bio-rain" that allows a drifter to spew a small radius of infestation at a location while he is stationary (think like the "generate creep" command from the overlords in StarCraft).
If an energy system is added, have it cancel out his natural energy regen.
This could allow a commander a few new strategies. He could keep a severed cyst chain alive. He could make a forward base a little easier at greater risk (all a marine has to do is kill the drifter to harm the base). He could re-enforce a new potential hive location easier. He could grab remote RT's with the same ease as marines can.
You already allow the Gorge tunnel to generate infestation. I think this would be a fun addition that would self-balance itself in theory due to it all hinges upon the drifter staying alive.
Maybe make him glow orange like a powered cyst while the ability is being channeled just to make him easier to spot?
3. The same as question 2, how often is Storm Cloud used?
Storm cloud sounds a bit redundant if you already went celerity (but good if you didn't I suppose).
A few ideas.
You could change "enzyme cloud" to shift, since it technically makes them bite faster which is sort of a shift function already. And since whip unlocks something in the BT, have it unlock a cloud that turns all damage into structural. That kinda goes along with the whip bombard theme. That might be a bit OP though, and kinda overlaps with enzyme cloud (and both cast in conjunction would break the game probably lol). But that could be forbidden to a single drifter by higher energy costs (and another reason to make the castings energy based).
A different idea is to add "after image" to shift -> drifter, which generates a clone image behind the parent alien that mimics exactly what it was doing 2 seconds prior (maybe make it a radius effect ability). I dunno if that is possible, but I'm thinking to get it to work, the server could just take input from the client machine and delay it by 2 seconds (if possible).
The only problem is this ability is very similar to hallucinate. So possibly drop hallucinate somewhere else (or move it to shift as "after image" if the 2 second delay impementation is not possible) and then change shade to provide "smoke" which lets out an ink cloud where cast (targetable cast), like a lerk spore cloud that doesn't do any damage. Allow it to be taken out by flame thrower. Maybe annoying to your alien players though if they aren't playing with alien vision on (how hard is it to press "f" though).
Now, do we really need another vision obscuring ability? But I would say instead to remove rupture now. The functionality would now be on the drifter via "smoke," again giving marines something to kill to stop the annoying effect. And would also solve the spammy problem it has in the current BT implementation.
In summary, I just feel drifters could be reworked to be more fun, to give the alien commander more things to do that provide him more support roles that match marine commander's fun while not simultaneously breaking the game.
You basically have no exact idea if an alien is still affected after it moves out of the AoE and how long the effect will last after it. If it doesn't hold on for long, it's rather pointless because aliens tend to move quickly away from the Drifter in fights, so it's hard to keep them buffed if you constantly have to follow them and then do a lot of microing with selection the respective ability.
I appreciate the new abilities, though. They open up more tactics to help the team as khammander in fights, possibly even more than what the marine commander can do.
I haven't had storm used on myself, but used it on someone, does it just act as a smoke grenade type effect and make it hard for marines to see? Pretty neat but something like that should cost a decent amount of res if you can blind an entire area of marines (unless the effect isn't strong) anyone been hit by it? Cause I've only used it as com
Getting curious
I thought that was the point of the drifters other ability, to make aliens move faster on infestation
holding space bar i kept slowing down even when looking slightly down, yet when you hold space going directly up you don't lose speed... please don't make lerk movement a random space bar masher
He has no such ability.
-Enzyme (Whip): Increased rate of fire of affected aliens.
-Storm (Shift): Increases movement speed of affected aliens.
-Mucous Membrane (Crag): Regenerates armor of affected aliens.
-Hallucination (Shade): Creates illusions of the affected aliens that the khammander controls.
I wish there were more people playing it.
Dont warping fades have a much smaller hitbox and collision box than regular fades?
This is the exact experience i have with Umbra and why i think it lacks visual feedback, moreso now that its T2. Well said
Should've been opposite?
You should've slowed when going upwards without flapping? As in, diving gains speed.
hmm.
Also, the time between switching weapons is really slow for the lerk - looking at the animations as being the culprit here - but if this could be adjusted it would be greatly helpful as its the only class i know with that level of a delay for complementing weapons. (comparing to parasite > Bite or Spit > healspray etc)
[ You are not accounting for the changes in skulk acceleration and other movement buffs, i believe. Sewlek was modifying them on the fly yesterday, and as you said last page it would take time to learn those mechanics appropriately, even for a comp player.
Hitreg never felt so good, even when it was lowered down to 0.018
and this could be because of the secondary trace that was added.. maybe that's all that was needed.
But even if that isn't the case: So what? We both know revamping the animations/hitboxes is way too much developer time for UWE, flinch animations aren't going anywhere, and even if you made a per-pixel hit detection (its been done in FPS games before with poor results) the only ones who would appreciate it would be the best shooters like yourself, whereas the other 98% will be frustrated and blame hitreg.
::scratches head::
We've grown up in a competitive gaming world with this as our standard:
Maybe a text change, I swear to you a day or two ago the drifter had something that said aliens move 20% faster on infestation, storm had no text on it besides saying storm
@ironhorse
Times really have changed, I'm glad UWE made something different though, when it comes to MP what developer can you trust now-a-days?? croteam just punched me in the face with their HD remakes/SS3, I'm really hoping idTECH does something wonderful with q5, since they did a good job with quake live
Anyway, I love ns2 and I love ns2 bt even more than ns2 :P I'll continue support for this dev team for a time to come, I even try and promote the game over on esea to the counter-strike players, few come but the few that did really love the game
That was gorges now move 20% faster on infestation
Also, I agree on exos just feeling lacklustre, but I very much doubt UWE will ever get rid of them. Instead I just hope they can do more to increase their skill ceiling. Same goes with the onos, as it stands both the exo and the onos are in dire need of some skill-based mechanics. Lategame exo vs onos gameplay is incredibly dull with how little skill is involved.
fade movement needs to be in official
Keep it realistic. The Exo won't go away. It was to much work. And btw. I actually like to play with the Exo. But I'm just a pubster.
The HMG and HeavyArmor had disadvantages in NS1 too. And I think it is possible to balance the Exo away from an Endgame Death-Robot to something that resembles the HMG-Heavy of NS1.
If Exos only would be cheaper and with less DPS / armor but therefore able to weld/build things for example.
Make Exos to a choice beside SG-JP instead of the All-In Unit they are now.
This is true. But time and technology is moving on. And instead of reverting things back to cornered wheels, because some people keep thinking they should hit an alien when shooting between the legs, we should move on and adapt.
it makes it all that much easier to hit a skulk when you know instantly if he's not able to retreat, and completely harmless unless he can get into range. the marine is the peeping boy hiding in the skulk's locker room.
i haven't really played enough to decide whether the change will work... but i don't like it. as marines, it feels exactly like being rewarded for poor accuracy. from time to time i used to think "damn that guys aim is good!", but now it's a given and exactly the same situation would be "damn that guy has average motor funtions".
i think the tooltip of mucous membrane mentions acceleration though (nothing about armor), and storm doesn't have a tool tip. easy to mistake.
Hooray!
So the railgun and miniguns actually do more damage with weapon upgrades? That's insane.
As for exosuits themselves, I don't necessary want them to be removed. I do want however for there to be some middle ground between the jack of all trades shotgun and a robot capable of killing any lifeform within a moment. A weapon such as the HMG serves this purpose, and has its set of drawbacks as Dragon explained.
we already have a load of imbalanced clutter though:
- mines which are OP versus skulks and terrible against everything else,
- grenade launcher which can be spammed but not aimed, and therefore skill ceiling is super low,
- flamethrower same problem as grenade launcher except it's even more braindead,
- exosuit which is OP versus everything,
- vortex, xenocide, stomp.
surely it makes more sense to change this stuff instead of adding another gimmick.
In ns1 onos with stomp and ability to swallow marine was counter HA, but was weak against jp+hmg. To counter jp aliens needed fades or sculks+focus.
So everything had counter but it was more like a circle: HA<onos<jp<=fade.
In ns2 it is mostly onos vs exo + welding matrines and biling gorges
For the first patch would I expect less crucial changes. For starters everything that simply improves on existing stuff that was underused.
So in a nutshell:
-No 10x res adjustements yet.
-No expensive RTs/more starting res yet.
-No Proto Lab/Arms Lab CC dependency change yet.
-No Exo cost buff/armor nerf yet.
-No Biomass yet.
-No Fade/Onos changes yet.
-No Spore/Umbra tier switch yet.
Those are the things I'd consider too extreme to integrate with all the other new stuff at once. They certainly should come, but give people some time to adjust to the more understandable concepts first in a somewhat familiar environment.
By mid-game I would expect my default and free weapon to not hold up to much if anything at all, even with W3. Aliens are probably sporting advanced lifeforms with probably two evolutions. If a standard rifle at W2/W3 is meant to seriously contend with lifeforms at the stage then I disagree with that philosophy. It's an arms race, I bring a knife to a fist fight where you counter by bringing a gun and so forth until one of us wins.
The HMG did also have some very strong negative points to counter being an 'upgraded rifle' - Long reload times, it cost res to research it, it cost money to buy it, it had a bigger spread than the LMG and it cost time to research it.
The marine arsenal is currently missing a weapon that is the next logical step up from the LMG, unless ofcourse you jump in an exosuit with its ruinous cost. There is no other long range, fast firing weapon out there for the standard marine.
Also don't forget that standard marines sporting a HMG still have the same amount of armour/hp as if they didn't have that HMG. Glass cannon.