It shouldn't require 4 hives to break a marine turtle. It should just be the icing on the cake to have a 4th, almost an insult to the marines. "all your base are belong to us" kinda thing.
Maybe increase the amount of HP that 4th hive biomass levels give, but as I say it should be a "for the hell of it" thing and not actually needed to end a marine turtle.
Ideally fades would start to pop before shadowstep is researched, basically it slows down the alien tech explosions. Before you could pop the second hive and get leap instantly, followed quickly by blink for your coming fade ball. Alien tech should be granular like marine tech.
Problem is that with alien lifeforms on p.res and without prior t.res research this doesn't affect fade timing whatsoever. And fades without shadowstep are even more devastating than fades with just shadowstep are in vanilla. Ideally alien p.res gain rates would be slowed to match the slower expansion speed, else this ends up changing very little.
Slowing alien pres is a bad solution (fades already come pretty late), you want to see the lifeforms poping with a slightly weaker state if possible, to make the transition much less jaring on gameplay... The current fade with just blink on 3-4 biomass can be rifled pretty easily with good tracking, he doesnt have nearly the amount of pure evasive movement that even the live fade has in just shadowstep. He does have the ability to be much more creative with his movement in all 3 dimensions however, and can fight jetpacks much better. I dont think your understanding the impacts of slowed tech progression for aliens.
Aliens are really stress inducing as commander currently. 200 health cysts that have their infestation remove instantly. Increase in Hive costs along with Biomass makes the Aliens tech take around 10 minutes to get more than Leap.
But, anyone else think at least W3/A3 should require a 2nd com chair? I feel now the only reason to get a second com chair is to simply prevent aliens from getting their 3rd hive, I'd like to have something tied to 2 com chairs! What do you guys think?
No upgrades tied to techpoints please, only abilities.
Just like alien abilities are themselves tied to no of current hives should actual abilities (exo jetpacks, nanoshield etc) be tied to marines current No. of tech points.
( alien upgrades only being lost when destroyed by marine much like losing an arms lab, although again aliens should be able to recover the upgraded structure at any time after initial research much like rebuilding an arms lab. At rest cost of course though still.)
Tried the balance mod. Overall not really a fan of its movement.
Marines:
1) Bullet spread increase to the degree it was in the mod doesn't play well. Shooting even at medium ranges required you to stay on target longer and induces some "luck" into the picture as to what % of shots hit the target. Making "luck" come into play in a skill based shooter is a bad idea.
2) Marine movement wasn't bad. It felt more natural jumping around not doing crazy spins.
Aliens:
1) Skulk movement was terrible. It was difficult / impossible to maintain speed and almost every thing would halt all momentum. Engaging marines felt better since they were more stationary but at the cost of you flailing around like a fish out of water trying to evade his shots. Jumping off walls also didn't play well due to how you had to look exactly where you wanted go and there was no forgiveness to the jump.
2) The removal of a default shadow step is TERRIBLE. Shadowstep is the primary movement against marines so I just pray it wasn't tied to a 2nd hive requirement...if it was that is a huge mistake just like removing default shadowstep is. Being able to shadow step upwards was really nice. Shadow step also felt faster or maybe it covered more ground, which I liked.
3) Fade movement was also quite bad. All movement cost energy, there is no way to conserve it to move around the map. The fact that double jump was removed is confusing. Requiring a life form to use energy to move around the map is absurd. So now that it requires energy to do everything it almost makes adrenaline a requirement. Which, an adrenaline fade is crazy slow and easy to hit. Trying to maintain speed as a non shadow step fade is also quite bad. Trying to move around the map while using blink (LOL) costing you shit tons of energy and not able to double jump to conserve it while still maintaining speed is also bad. Hell, trying to get in and out of combat using blink only is also a major joke.
Sorry but I really really really do not like the movement...Nothing was wrong with the fade movement in the regular ns2.
Suggestions:
Marines:
1) Reduce bullet spread on lmg
Aliens:
1) Make shaowstep default again. Perhaps have an upgrade ability to Shaowstep upwards.
2) Add double jump back in so fade can keep up momentum and not use energy constantly.
3) If 2 isn't added back in I would want a reduction in energy cost for both shadowstep and blink.
4) Give skulk more directional control when jumping off walls.
5) Make maintaining speed less finicky. Too many things upset the ability to maintain speed around a map. All the times my speed would randomly just slow way down felt unnatural.
I'm just going to point out that if you bhop in between tapping blink (and only tapping when you start to lose speed) you will use far less energy and it is closer to vanilla in energy footprint but you can get going just as fast if not faster.
Yea no idea where thats coming from, but I doubt you played fade much given that result...
The spread on the LMG was fixed (not increased), so thats really not a valid issue. The size of skulks combined with predictable movement means you really shouldnt have much trouble killing skulks, even at medium range.
All the rest of the points are basically to just revert to the broken air control we have in vanilla, not a good solution.
What.
Are you telling me a bug has made the rifle as accurate as its been for years and has just now been fixed? ..................
Or do you just not want to say that its been increased?
How do you guys feel about the fudged resource numbers? Personally I feel the x10 is not worth it for the few pricing changes it enables (Let's be honest, it was primarily done for medkits). I can't imagine the community at large appreciating it, and it just feels wack. I'll take 00,0 over 000 resource figures any day as using halves is still more manageable than working with these fudged numbers. Alternatively, they could have just lowered medkit HP from 50 to 40, while keeping the price on 1.
Yea no idea where thats coming from, but I doubt you played fade much given that result...
The spread on the LMG was fixed (not increased), so thats really not a valid issue. The size of skulks combined with predictable movement means you really shouldnt have much trouble killing skulks, even at medium range.
All the rest of the points are basically to just revert to the broken air control we have in vanilla, not a good solution.
Spread of lmg was not increased but fixed, fixed how? Fixed by increasing the spread.
Shooting skulks (and missing a few bullets) from the top of east wing stairs to where they first exit departures area (the big door) is a unacceptable spread width imo. A skulk ran right to left ground skulking across that huge door and the spread made me miss a few shots and not kill it. The spread is too wide. Missing a few shots due to spread at medium range is unacceptable. Also did you really just say "since skulks move in more straight lines we made weapons less accurate". I agree it seems like a logical change but How does that improve game play (on both sides) at all. It's like saying to improve game play we are going to slow aliens down and as a result reduce rate of fire on all weapons.
As for fade play I only played it enough time to get 30 kills with it. Was like 35 and 4 when I rage quit as to how horrible it was (didn't even die). I first tried celerity fade with no shadowstep. It was hilarious trying to get around the map some blink/jump combo. Once you got to the combat you had to wait to refill your energy. Hell even getting into combat with only blink is a huge LOL moment. I got maybe 15 kills using that then got stuck in a prop in maintenance and eventually died when a marine came along and found me. I Refaded and used adrenalin this time. Now the fade was absolutely dog slow doing any thing but shaowstepping. It was slow before but now reached a new all time slowness w/o celerity. I couldn't figure out any sort of blink/ showstep jump combo to get me around the map in a way that allowed the energy to restore, is there one?
Hearing some one say my experience is due to inexperience would have me wonder what movement/jump combo i was missing that allowed fast/low energy travel type movement. Can some one explain it to me? If it's a complicated skill based movement I don't have time to spend 150 hrs playing the balance mod. Most people will try it a few times and either like it or hate it. From my first 2 games playing the balance mod last night which had play testers and competitive players we all invited in it the vast majority were not the ones saying they liked the alien movement.
Few more points I neglected to mention last night.
1) I liked the new res system from what I could tell but I would prefer to see a decimal. Smaller numbers are easier to manage imo and it keeps things inline with the price of how things are now.
2) I understand you want to make players use normal alien vision more but doing that by gimping alien vision and not improving normal vision is not the right approach. Ideally you should make structures and players glow red in normal vision and make the dark "less dark" to aliens and call it a day, similar to how ns1 did things. This idea of constantly needing to switch back and forth is silly. I thought it was broken for 3/4 of the alien round untill some one told me I needed to use normal vision to see all that stuff.
3) I'm liking the armory not repairing armor and welders coming pre-researched. While I didn't really get to experience it on marines but on aliens I saw several times a group of marines back off to weld before they hit again...looked like great teamwork.
Yeah, he could probably keep the x10 res internally and just change the way it's presented to the players by adding a visual delimiter at the appropriate place. Like
Just to make things less confusing for new players.
I agree that marines should have at least some incentive to get more comm chairs up. As mentionedpreviously, increasing the supply costs for some stuff so that they actually get in the need to expand to another CC would probably help. I would really like to see costs associated with Arms Lab upgrades that can then be enabled and disabled at will if you are in need of other things. It's a soft cap on how much you can get on 1 CC: if you go for a lot of passive upgrades for your troops, you won't be able to afford an ARC train until you get another CC up.
As for the Shadowstep dilemma on the Fade (if it actually exists):
Perhaps have the old weaker Shadowstep from vanilla available by default and provide an upgrade to the new faster one that also goes upwards.
Alternatively, about Blink: you could probably reduce the base energy consumption but make it lose additional energy whenever a Fade using it gets hit. It automatically redirects a part of the damage to the energy pool by "dodging" the projectile. That way you could decrease the cost of using Blink just for movement without making it too strong in fights. The proper amount of how much energy is lost per hit would have to be found by testing, since you don't want things to get to the point where a Fade is a sitting duck after being hit by a few shots and would be better off if it hadn't blinked in in the first place.
As for fade play I played it enough time to get 30 kills with it. Was like 35 and 4 when I rage quit as to how horrible it was (didn't even die). I first tried celerity fade with no shadowstep. It was hilarious trying to get around the map some blink/jump combo. Once you got to the combat you had to wait to refill your energy. Hell even getting into combat with only blink is a huge LOL moment. I got maybe 15 kills using that then got stuck in a prop in maintenance and eventually died when a marine came along and found me. I Refaded and used adrenalin this time. Now the fade was absolutely dog slow doing any thing but shaowstepping. It was slow before but now reached a new all time slowness w/o celerity. I couldn't figure out any sort of blink/ showstep jump combo to get me around the map in a way that allowed the energy to restore, is there one?
Hearing some one say my experience is due to inexperience would have me wonder what movement/jump combo i was missing that allowed fast/low energy travel type movement. Can some one explain it to me? If it's a complicated skill based movement I don't have time to spend 150 hrs playing the balance mod. Most people will try it a few times and either like it or hate it. From my first 2 games playing the balance mod last night which had play testers and competitive players we all invited in it the vast majority were not the ones saying they liked the alien movement.
You need to learn how to bhop (same with your skulk problem). By mixing blink + bhop you can get around the map at a good speed while using hardly any energy. Shadowstep is now a pure dodge tool for use in combat, it's very fast but maintains no momentum.
When you get the hang of it the new fade feels rather nice, like anything it just takes some practice.
Same goes for the skulk that you had problems with, you can bhop + walljump to get some very high speeds going around the maps, and thats without celerity. Others can explain it better than me on here, I'd just suggest spectating some of the more experienced players if any of them are on the same BT server as you. Watch them skulk, and you'll see the kind of movement/speeds they achieve.
As for the Shadowstep dilemma on the Fade (if it actually exists):
Perhaps have the old weaker Shadowstep from vanilla available by default and provide an upgrade to the new faster one that also goes upwards.
Alternatively, about Blink: you could probably reduce the base energy consumption but make it lose additional energy whenever a Fade using it gets hit. It automatically redirects a part of the damage to the energy pool by "dodging" the projectile. That way you could decrease the cost of using Blink just for movement without making it too strong in fights. The proper amount of how much energy is lost per hit would have to be found by testing, since you don't want things to get to the point where a Fade is a sitting duck after being hit by a few shots and would be better off if it hadn't blinked in in the first place.
I think the only thing the fade needs is a *slight* reduction in blink energy cost. It's slower than vanilla and used more in combat (partly due to shadowstep taking a while to be available), it's currently rather easy to run out of energy quickly in combat if you're not very careful with its use. But as I say, a *slight* reduction. The fade should have to keep a careful watch on its energy consumption.
Hearing some one say my experience is due to inexperience would have me wonder what movement/jump combo i was missing that allowed fast/low energy travel type movement. Can some one explain it to me? If it's a complicated skill based movement I don't have time to spend 150 hrs playing the balance mod. Most people will try it a few times and either like it or hate it. From my first 2 games playing the balance mod last night which had play testers and competitive players we all invited in it the vast majority were not the ones saying they liked the alien movement.
I didn't mean to be insulting and I hope it didn't come off that way.
Basically, it is pretty similar to how the skulk works (in between blinks anyway). Just jump, look ever so slightly up and tap blink. When you land, immediately jump and begin to bhop. You should be able to get multiple hops off before your speed drops at which point you'll want to blink again while in midair. It plays pretty similar to the NS1 fade I believe except that you can actually hold forward now while bhopping which makes it VASTLY easier to do. Essentially, how it should work out is that you only spend the initial blink energy every few seconds, which allows your energy to regen to full prior to using blink again.
You aren't required to like the BT fade movement it just seemed like you were expending too much energy from what you described.
I think the only thing the fade needs is a *slight* reduction in blink energy cost. It's slower than vanilla and used more in combat (partly due to shadowstep taking a while to be available), it's currently rather easy to run out of energy quickly in combat if you're not very careful with its use. But as I say, a *slight* reduction. The fade should have to keep a careful watch on its energy consumption.
I'd be concerned about lowering the cost due to the strength of 1 hive fades in the BT. I actually think they are far more powerful than in vanilla.
Tried the balance mod. Overall not really a fan of its movement.
Marines:
1) Bullet spread increase to the degree it was in the mod doesn't play well. Shooting even at medium ranges required you to stay on target longer and induces some "luck" into the picture as to what % of shots hit the target. Making "luck" come into play in a skill based shooter is a bad idea.
2) Marine movement wasn't bad. It felt more natural jumping around not doing crazy spins.
Aliens:
1) Skulk movement was terrible. It was difficult / impossible to maintain speed and almost every thing would halt all momentum. Engaging marines felt better since they were more stationary but at the cost of you flailing around like a fish out of water trying to evade his shots. Jumping off walls also didn't play well due to how you had to look exactly where you wanted go and there was no forgiveness to the jump.
2) The removal of a default shadow step is TERRIBLE. Shadowstep is the primary movement against marines so I just pray it wasn't tied to a 2nd hive requirement...if it was that is a huge mistake just like removing default shadowstep is. Being able to shadow step upwards was really nice. Shadow step also felt faster or maybe it covered more ground, which I liked.
3) Fade movement was also quite bad. All movement cost energy, there is no way to conserve it to move around the map. The fact that double jump was removed is confusing. Requiring a life form to use energy to move around the map is absurd. So now that it requires energy to do everything it almost makes adrenaline a requirement. Which, an adrenaline fade is crazy slow and easy to hit. Trying to maintain speed as a non shadow step fade is also quite bad. Trying to move around the map while using blink (LOL) costing you shit tons of energy and not able to double jump to conserve it while still maintaining speed is also bad. Hell, trying to get in and out of combat using blink only is also a major joke.
Sorry but I really really really do not like the movement...Nothing was wrong with the fade movement in the regular ns2.
Suggestions:
Marines:
1) Reduce bullet spread on lmg
Aliens:
1) Make shaowstep default again. Perhaps have an upgrade ability to Shaowstep upwards.
2) Add double jump back in so fade can keep up momentum and not use energy constantly.
3) If 2 isn't added back in I would want a reduction in energy cost for both shadowstep and blink.
4) Give skulk more directional control when jumping off walls.
5) Make maintaining speed less finicky. Too many things upset the ability to maintain speed around a map. All the times my speed would randomly just slow way down felt unnatural.
The spread on the LMG is fine, in fact this version of the game has better hit registry on both the LMG and the shotgun; if anything you should be playing better because your bullets will be landing more, keep your xhair on the skulk and you'll see how nice it is
Skulk movement is a major improvement, you can now bunny hop to gain very fast speeds, also it's much easier to control with wall bouncing during combat, you only lose momentum when you obviously bump something, hit a hard incline like a staircase, strafe incorrectly, or move your mouse cursor too aggressively (however the smooth mouse movement requirement seems to have toned down, I'm all for it because this makes for better wiggling around tough corners) I do wish we had air control, but that could make a skulk too strong early on (jumping off walls feels fine)
As for fade, it's jump then blink and repeat, it's the same thing as bunny hopping in a way, you should be able to travel incredibly fast with this movement, later on when you get the all directional shadowstep, you can combine the two and travel VERY fast, this fade has an easier learning curve, but can now also do much more advanced movements (like a skill ceiling raise on it) you need to play more than once to get the hang of all this. The energy management is pretty good and prevents excessive spam
@industry I was 100% not doing it correctly then. I tried to figure out a blink/jump combo to travel around the map but failed to do it in the game I played I guess. Ill try that again next time I get a chance. Any one got any fade or skulk movement videos in the latest balance mod version I can watch?
1) Bullet spread increase to the degree it was in the mod doesn't play well. Shooting even at medium ranges required you to stay on target longer and induces some "luck" into the picture as to what % of shots hit the target. Making "luck" come into play in a skill based shooter is a bad idea.
Have to say I agree with this as well. It feels too random at a width that large. I don't think the spread needs to be any larger to help people with less than stellar aim given the change to how hit detection works, and making the spread this large actually hurts gameplay and overall "game feel".
I haven't gotten a chance to try the fade much and given how bad I am at playing fade in normal games I'm not sure how much feedback I can give. That said... every game I've played in the fade players were always endlessly frustrated at how difficult it was to get around in any way.
@industry I was 100% not doing it correctly then. I tried to figure out a blink/jump combo to travel around the map but failed to do it in the game I played I guess. Ill try that again next time I get a chance. Any one got any fade or skulk movement videos in the latest balance mod version I can watch?
Bhopping with blink around the map won't make fade feel any better. It still sucks compared to NS2 shadowstep based fade.
There has been what I would consider a bug with spread calculation since early beta. I brought it up many times but it was eventually deemed as the desired logic even if it wasnt 'correct'. Whats interesting is how you can describe it as more 'random' when actually its much more consistent. That was the bug, the spread was very biased towards the center, now it has a much more consistent distribution. The spread on the rifle is still unchanged in terms of degrees.
Also, comparitively the spread is both smaller than NS1, and your also shooting a much larger skulk than in NS1. I dont buy that the spread is even remotely too big currently, I personally thought that it could still even be increased a single degree still. The spread corrections is not to 'make it easier' to shoot skulks, its to make the rifle not a sniper rifle.
From B245
local kSpread = ClipWeapon.kCone3Degrees
Rifle.lua is unchanged in balance mod.
As FYI
// 4 degrees in NS1
As for fade energy management its much harder than live NS2, which is a good change. However I can traverse the entire map at an easy 14-16 speed and always have 85%+ of my energy, with celerity. Traversing the map as a fade in live was stupidly easy, just press shift then jump twice, there was no thought or skill requirement there. Fade speed now scales more with skill, and also energy management is quite critical. As for how the fade feels you may have your own opinions regarding, but generally this change increases the skill ceiling for fade (shadowstep was decent for traversing map, but was really just a gimick in combat).
If the spread was infact a bug it's good that is now fixed and we can play with it. Here is a pic that Matso just got doing testing. I agree the spread pattern looks way better but its just too big IMO.
I was able to play the balance mod last night and alien movement has come a long way. I was finally getting a handle on the skulk movement after a couple alien rounds and found the results rewarding. Fade and Lerk felt great too. I am honestly a mediocre fade on live NS2 because shadowstep just isn't my thing. Using blink tap is much more comfortable to me, so maybe that makes me bias.
My biggest gripes were with drifters. They are insanely fast and their abilities are too cheap and make more vision impairment than lerk gas in live NS2. Is this placeholder?
I LOVE the idea of exos being more similar to HA while being cheaper but actually killable. Unfortunately I think they will still be absent from comp games as you just need the movement when you only have 5 players on the field. And if they are too weak, pubs will have no fun playing them. Its a tough juggle. (I hate exos)
I think Drifters have slightly too much HP. Maybe reduce it to 250. If you have a Crag + Shift Drifter, you can basically troll the hell out of the marines by just moving the Drifter in erratic movement that makes it nearly impossible for marines to hit and often distracts an entire team to hunt it down or to empty their magazines. Then I just wait a while out of sight for it to regenerate and send it back in.
It surely needs that speed to be any viable in it's uncloaked form, though.
Hard to tell ranges from that picture so its kinda meaningless in terms of how big the spread is... As I said before generally when we had a good marine player or two the aliens would get slaughtered, even with what would be an alien stack. It will take people time to adjust to the skulk movement before we can start to see where the skulk vs marine balance lands, but atm its pretty marine sided.
And yea drifters are pretty spammy and pretty tanky atm, especially considering how speedy they are.
Yeah, I had a drifter I got the jump on just book away so fast it startled me. I couldn't put enough damage into it before it got across the room to finish it.
How do you guys feel about the fudged resource numbers? Personally I feel the x10 is not worth it for the few pricing changes it enables (Let's be honest, it was primarily done for medkits). I can't imagine the community at large appreciating it, and it just feels wack. I'll take 00,0 over 000 resource figures any day as using halves is still more manageable than working with these fudged numbers. Alternatively, they could have just lowered medkit HP from 50 to 40, while keeping the price on 1.
I agree, bigger numbers are inherently more difficult to think about, and a lot of the community won't appreciate the change. Now that upgrade costs were reverted, there's no reason for PRes at least to be changed.
It will take people time to adjust to the skulk movement before we can start to see where the skulk vs marine balance lands, but atm its pretty marine sided.
If the skulk could just maintain a little bit more speed while turning in the air (in combat), it would be spot on imo.
And I agree with CrushaK about drifers, keep their speed but lower their hp a bit.
Comments
Maybe increase the amount of HP that 4th hive biomass levels give, but as I say it should be a "for the hell of it" thing and not actually needed to end a marine turtle.
But, anyone else think at least W3/A3 should require a 2nd com chair? I feel now the only reason to get a second com chair is to simply prevent aliens from getting their 3rd hive, I'd like to have something tied to 2 com chairs! What do you guys think?
Just like alien abilities are themselves tied to no of current hives should actual abilities (exo jetpacks, nanoshield etc) be tied to marines current No. of tech points.
( alien upgrades only being lost when destroyed by marine much like losing an arms lab, although again aliens should be able to recover the upgraded structure at any time after initial research much like rebuilding an arms lab. At rest cost of course though still.)
Marines:
1) Bullet spread increase to the degree it was in the mod doesn't play well. Shooting even at medium ranges required you to stay on target longer and induces some "luck" into the picture as to what % of shots hit the target. Making "luck" come into play in a skill based shooter is a bad idea.
2) Marine movement wasn't bad. It felt more natural jumping around not doing crazy spins.
Aliens:
1) Skulk movement was terrible. It was difficult / impossible to maintain speed and almost every thing would halt all momentum. Engaging marines felt better since they were more stationary but at the cost of you flailing around like a fish out of water trying to evade his shots. Jumping off walls also didn't play well due to how you had to look exactly where you wanted go and there was no forgiveness to the jump.
2) The removal of a default shadow step is TERRIBLE. Shadowstep is the primary movement against marines so I just pray it wasn't tied to a 2nd hive requirement...if it was that is a huge mistake just like removing default shadowstep is. Being able to shadow step upwards was really nice. Shadow step also felt faster or maybe it covered more ground, which I liked.
3) Fade movement was also quite bad. All movement cost energy, there is no way to conserve it to move around the map. The fact that double jump was removed is confusing. Requiring a life form to use energy to move around the map is absurd. So now that it requires energy to do everything it almost makes adrenaline a requirement. Which, an adrenaline fade is crazy slow and easy to hit. Trying to maintain speed as a non shadow step fade is also quite bad. Trying to move around the map while using blink (LOL) costing you shit tons of energy and not able to double jump to conserve it while still maintaining speed is also bad. Hell, trying to get in and out of combat using blink only is also a major joke.
Sorry but I really really really do not like the movement...Nothing was wrong with the fade movement in the regular ns2.
Suggestions:
Marines:
1) Reduce bullet spread on lmg
Aliens:
1) Make shaowstep default again. Perhaps have an upgrade ability to Shaowstep upwards.
2) Add double jump back in so fade can keep up momentum and not use energy constantly.
3) If 2 isn't added back in I would want a reduction in energy cost for both shadowstep and blink.
4) Give skulk more directional control when jumping off walls.
5) Make maintaining speed less finicky. Too many things upset the ability to maintain speed around a map. All the times my speed would randomly just slow way down felt unnatural.
Just sayin'
The spread on the LMG was fixed (not increased), so thats really not a valid issue. The size of skulks combined with predictable movement means you really shouldnt have much trouble killing skulks, even at medium range.
All the rest of the points are basically to just revert to the broken air control we have in vanilla, not a good solution.
Are you telling me a bug has made the rifle as accurate as its been for years and has just now been fixed? ..................
Or do you just not want to say that its been increased?
Spread of lmg was not increased but fixed, fixed how? Fixed by increasing the spread.
Shooting skulks (and missing a few bullets) from the top of east wing stairs to where they first exit departures area (the big door) is a unacceptable spread width imo. A skulk ran right to left ground skulking across that huge door and the spread made me miss a few shots and not kill it. The spread is too wide. Missing a few shots due to spread at medium range is unacceptable. Also did you really just say "since skulks move in more straight lines we made weapons less accurate". I agree it seems like a logical change but How does that improve game play (on both sides) at all. It's like saying to improve game play we are going to slow aliens down and as a result reduce rate of fire on all weapons.
As for fade play I only played it enough time to get 30 kills with it. Was like 35 and 4 when I rage quit as to how horrible it was (didn't even die). I first tried celerity fade with no shadowstep. It was hilarious trying to get around the map some blink/jump combo. Once you got to the combat you had to wait to refill your energy. Hell even getting into combat with only blink is a huge LOL moment. I got maybe 15 kills using that then got stuck in a prop in maintenance and eventually died when a marine came along and found me. I Refaded and used adrenalin this time. Now the fade was absolutely dog slow doing any thing but shaowstepping. It was slow before but now reached a new all time slowness w/o celerity. I couldn't figure out any sort of blink/ showstep jump combo to get me around the map in a way that allowed the energy to restore, is there one?
Hearing some one say my experience is due to inexperience would have me wonder what movement/jump combo i was missing that allowed fast/low energy travel type movement. Can some one explain it to me? If it's a complicated skill based movement I don't have time to spend 150 hrs playing the balance mod. Most people will try it a few times and either like it or hate it. From my first 2 games playing the balance mod last night which had play testers and competitive players we all invited in it the vast majority were not the ones saying they liked the alien movement.
Few more points I neglected to mention last night.
1) I liked the new res system from what I could tell but I would prefer to see a decimal. Smaller numbers are easier to manage imo and it keeps things inline with the price of how things are now.
2) I understand you want to make players use normal alien vision more but doing that by gimping alien vision and not improving normal vision is not the right approach. Ideally you should make structures and players glow red in normal vision and make the dark "less dark" to aliens and call it a day, similar to how ns1 did things. This idea of constantly needing to switch back and forth is silly. I thought it was broken for 3/4 of the alien round untill some one told me I needed to use normal vision to see all that stuff.
3) I'm liking the armory not repairing armor and welders coming pre-researched. While I didn't really get to experience it on marines but on aliens I saw several times a group of marines back off to weld before they hit again...looked like great teamwork.
Just to make things less confusing for new players.
I agree that marines should have at least some incentive to get more comm chairs up. As mentioned previously, increasing the supply costs for some stuff so that they actually get in the need to expand to another CC would probably help. I would really like to see costs associated with Arms Lab upgrades that can then be enabled and disabled at will if you are in need of other things. It's a soft cap on how much you can get on 1 CC: if you go for a lot of passive upgrades for your troops, you won't be able to afford an ARC train until you get another CC up.
As for the Shadowstep dilemma on the Fade (if it actually exists):
Perhaps have the old weaker Shadowstep from vanilla available by default and provide an upgrade to the new faster one that also goes upwards.
Alternatively, about Blink: you could probably reduce the base energy consumption but make it lose additional energy whenever a Fade using it gets hit. It automatically redirects a part of the damage to the energy pool by "dodging" the projectile. That way you could decrease the cost of using Blink just for movement without making it too strong in fights. The proper amount of how much energy is lost per hit would have to be found by testing, since you don't want things to get to the point where a Fade is a sitting duck after being hit by a few shots and would be better off if it hadn't blinked in in the first place.
You need to learn how to bhop (same with your skulk problem). By mixing blink + bhop you can get around the map at a good speed while using hardly any energy. Shadowstep is now a pure dodge tool for use in combat, it's very fast but maintains no momentum.
When you get the hang of it the new fade feels rather nice, like anything it just takes some practice.
Same goes for the skulk that you had problems with, you can bhop + walljump to get some very high speeds going around the maps, and thats without celerity. Others can explain it better than me on here, I'd just suggest spectating some of the more experienced players if any of them are on the same BT server as you. Watch them skulk, and you'll see the kind of movement/speeds they achieve.
I think the only thing the fade needs is a *slight* reduction in blink energy cost. It's slower than vanilla and used more in combat (partly due to shadowstep taking a while to be available), it's currently rather easy to run out of energy quickly in combat if you're not very careful with its use. But as I say, a *slight* reduction. The fade should have to keep a careful watch on its energy consumption.
I didn't mean to be insulting and I hope it didn't come off that way.
Basically, it is pretty similar to how the skulk works (in between blinks anyway). Just jump, look ever so slightly up and tap blink. When you land, immediately jump and begin to bhop. You should be able to get multiple hops off before your speed drops at which point you'll want to blink again while in midair. It plays pretty similar to the NS1 fade I believe except that you can actually hold forward now while bhopping which makes it VASTLY easier to do. Essentially, how it should work out is that you only spend the initial blink energy every few seconds, which allows your energy to regen to full prior to using blink again.
You aren't required to like the BT fade movement it just seemed like you were expending too much energy from what you described.
edit:
I'd be concerned about lowering the cost due to the strength of 1 hive fades in the BT. I actually think they are far more powerful than in vanilla.
The spread on the LMG is fine, in fact this version of the game has better hit registry on both the LMG and the shotgun; if anything you should be playing better because your bullets will be landing more, keep your xhair on the skulk and you'll see how nice it is
Skulk movement is a major improvement, you can now bunny hop to gain very fast speeds, also it's much easier to control with wall bouncing during combat, you only lose momentum when you obviously bump something, hit a hard incline like a staircase, strafe incorrectly, or move your mouse cursor too aggressively (however the smooth mouse movement requirement seems to have toned down, I'm all for it because this makes for better wiggling around tough corners) I do wish we had air control, but that could make a skulk too strong early on (jumping off walls feels fine)
As for fade, it's jump then blink and repeat, it's the same thing as bunny hopping in a way, you should be able to travel incredibly fast with this movement, later on when you get the all directional shadowstep, you can combine the two and travel VERY fast, this fade has an easier learning curve, but can now also do much more advanced movements (like a skill ceiling raise on it) you need to play more than once to get the hang of all this. The energy management is pretty good and prevents excessive spam
Have to say I agree with this as well. It feels too random at a width that large. I don't think the spread needs to be any larger to help people with less than stellar aim given the change to how hit detection works, and making the spread this large actually hurts gameplay and overall "game feel".
I haven't gotten a chance to try the fade much and given how bad I am at playing fade in normal games I'm not sure how much feedback I can give. That said... every game I've played in the fade players were always endlessly frustrated at how difficult it was to get around in any way.
Bhopping with blink around the map won't make fade feel any better. It still sucks compared to NS2 shadowstep based fade.
Also, comparitively the spread is both smaller than NS1, and your also shooting a much larger skulk than in NS1. I dont buy that the spread is even remotely too big currently, I personally thought that it could still even be increased a single degree still. The spread corrections is not to 'make it easier' to shoot skulks, its to make the rifle not a sniper rifle.
As for fade energy management its much harder than live NS2, which is a good change. However I can traverse the entire map at an easy 14-16 speed and always have 85%+ of my energy, with celerity. Traversing the map as a fade in live was stupidly easy, just press shift then jump twice, there was no thought or skill requirement there. Fade speed now scales more with skill, and also energy management is quite critical. As for how the fade feels you may have your own opinions regarding, but generally this change increases the skill ceiling for fade (shadowstep was decent for traversing map, but was really just a gimick in combat).
My biggest gripes were with drifters. They are insanely fast and their abilities are too cheap and make more vision impairment than lerk gas in live NS2. Is this placeholder?
I LOVE the idea of exos being more similar to HA while being cheaper but actually killable. Unfortunately I think they will still be absent from comp games as you just need the movement when you only have 5 players on the field. And if they are too weak, pubs will have no fun playing them. Its a tough juggle. (I hate exos)
It surely needs that speed to be any viable in it's uncloaked form, though.
And yea drifters are pretty spammy and pretty tanky atm, especially considering how speedy they are.
I agree, bigger numbers are inherently more difficult to think about, and a lot of the community won't appreciate the change. Now that upgrade costs were reverted, there's no reason for PRes at least to be changed.
If the skulk could just maintain a little bit more speed while turning in the air (in combat), it would be spot on imo.
And I agree with CrushaK about drifers, keep their speed but lower their hp a bit.