If that's the way they want to take it, perhaps now is the time to consider allowing 2/3 upgrades. Would allow for more variation between aliens and more research choices for the khamm.
I was talking about that guy. Honestly, I don't see what it adds if Camo was removed. Silence is not worth Aura and if Aura is nerfed Shade will be the last Hive every game once again.
I feel that the 0.7m bite width is to large. Even with 300 ping you cannot miss the bite if you are a decent player (apart from when you go through the marines model and they end up behind you). Feels great though, love it!
Skulk Animations
I don't know how to describe it, but they seem off? They seem to spasm / warp when changing directions quickly (left and right)
Momentum
Skulks bhopping at 20 speed, then dead-stop mid air if they try to go another direction? Really throws your aim off, if speed is about trading predictability then they should carry their momentum.
I agree with those that say phantom was a good mix so I am confused as to why it was removed. It was one of the few things I was looking forward to about the mod. I could see myself using it on skulk and fade. For Onos I was more in favor of aura and perhaps for lerk since it does make the whole harassment job easier when you know who is low on health. Phantom actually provided a more promising/viable alternative to celerity and carapace but it is lowered beneath them again.
Camo and Aura would promote such a boring and passive playstyle.
Maybe. The idea is that Camo requires you to stay still, and Aura would allow you to know exactly what is around the corner. Both together would make a really good ambushing abilities, and might save a few gorges as well.
I think that if you're going to put Aura in, you kind of HAVE to keep phantom, otherwise you're just going to see people using aura exclusively, kind of like how you pretty much only see silence and cara being used, and rarely camo or regen.
Yeah I don't think there's many circumstances where I would choose silence over aura. More information for me is better than denying information to the enemy, and knowing where the marines are right now is just as good / better for letting you jump them effectively than silence. Hell I probably wouldn't choose phantom either but at least it means that the guys who want cloaking because they think it's cool and fun don't get screwed too badly.
My biggest complaint of these changes is the new bunnyjump. It just doesn't feel right. I feel like I'm overweight skulk that is covered completely in thick slime because I stick to walls so well. There is no same sense of precision and control of the character that there is in vanilla. It feels so annoying to jump on marines from hiding place and try to get some speed off the wall because the movement feels so sticky. This feeling gets worse in tight places.
I'm very happy with the skulk play that is currently in vanilla. The walljumping is limited but you can find with experience some nice travel paths that give you boost for short distances. In bt you propably use ground more because it's pretty easy to maintain the speed so we see more of these skulk rockets that try to charge at you with full speed instead of seeing them laying an ambush and waiting in the ceilings.
So I prefer to have limited walljump that is very useful in specific places instead of changing the skulk to bhop focused spacebar smashing race.
Phantom was a great ability and actually made shade competitive with crag and shift, I really don't understand why it was taken out. Camouflage on its own is not going to work, it never did and even silence is simply not competitive with carapace and celerity.
Skulk Animations
I don't know how to describe it, but they seem off? They seem to spasm / warp when changing directions quickly (left and right)
yea, pretty sure this has been the case ever since they changed the leg animations or some such. It's a problem even on vanilla ns2.
Did a quick search. Build 220 - 200 days ago. Shows how long you've been away for mf.
"Added Skulk running "weave" animations where the back half of the body is slightly delayed from the front.".
Interrupting the animations with fast movement changes causes it to spasm, and the only thing you can really do to fight it is lower skulk accel so you can't adad.
Here are some suggestions, random but just some thoughts or maybe something to try out
1) Allow JPs on one CC, while exos require two CC
2) Make flamethrower drain alien adrenaline more the longer the enemy stays in your flame (helps prevent being insta-gibbed by lerk/fade) increase price back to 250
3) Make camo so you're always cloaked, but the "outlined" moving version, the one that's visible not full camo, keep silence and aura their own traits. So essentially you're removing full camo and always keeping the alien in that semi-cloaked form. You still make noise when moving in this form
4) Lower static skulk bite damage, I have no problem with no glancing bites, but since the bites aren't that difficult to hit, having them nail 75 each time feels high.. being 3hit with a0/a1 is fine, but it feels like with a2/a3 you get taken down quicker than normal.. may just be a placebo because feels like everyone can land bites now
off note
Something is funky with skulks atm when playing marine, when they get close to you the model seems to go nutty, and they seem to be "body clipping" more than usual, it's like a twitchy/teleport type thing going on.. can't really explain it but you should see it several times playing one full length match on BT
Remove the muffled sound when your health is low
(and idk if you can even do this) remove that obnoxious never ending hammer dropping sound on refinery lol, I mean please
on that note, great work sewlek and other devs apart of this! (y)
3) Make camo so you're always cloaked, but the "outlined" moving version, the one that's visible not full camo, keep silence and aura their own traits. So essentially you're removing full camo and always keeping the alien in that semi-cloaked form. You still make noise when moving in this form
4) Lower static skulk bite damage, I have no problem with no glancing bites, but since the bites aren't that difficult to hit, having them nail 75 each time feels high.. being 3hit with a0/a1 is fine, but it feels like with a2/a3 you get taken down quicker than normal.. may just be a placebo because feels like everyone can land bites now
So you want to nerf Camo so much that not even a Gorge would take it over Silence anymore? Anything less than 100% cloak is quite useless.
I think the new bite system promotes chain biting a bit too much. Before, you were always running the risk of getting a not-so-good bite in if you just kept M1 pressed. Now you are more likely to spam it while jumping around, I think.
We got some competitive players together last night and played 4 rounds in the balance mod, you can check out the videos of the games here:
There was a lot of discussion on how things worked, and obviously more then half of the people there didn't know the changes, but still gives some idea of how it will play.
One bug that we found was that if marines place a blueprinted RT on infestation RT point then the aliens can not cap that RT until the blueprint is gone, our suggested solution is simply remove the blueprint if the alien commander wants to drop an RT there
One bug that we found was that if marines place a blueprinted RT on infestation RT point then the aliens can not cap that RT until the blueprint is gone, our suggested solution is simply remove the blueprint if the alien commander wants to drop an RT there
Already pointed that out in the past, but Sewlek said he wanted the aliens to actually require to have a player go to an RT location to secure it.
I'd prefer the "Harvester Drop Override" as well, though, since it's otherwise too easy for marines to make some annoying denying that requires to pull an alien away from it's harassment just to touch a blueprint.
One bug that we found was that if marines place a blueprinted RT on infestation RT point then the aliens can not cap that RT until the blueprint is gone, our suggested solution is simply remove the blueprint if the alien commander wants to drop an RT there
Already pointed that out in the past, but Sewlek said he wanted the aliens to actually require to have a player go to an RT location to secure it.
That doesn't make sense, the alien comm doesn't have to send a player to build an RT any other time, and the marine comm doesn't need to send anyone there to drop the blueprint.
^ But marines lose the RES while the blueprint is in place, and aliens can kill the blueprint by using ranged attacks, resulting in permanent res loss; only running into it refunds the marines the res
^ But marines lose the RES while the blueprint is in place, and aliens can kill the blueprint by using ranged attacks, resulting in permanent res loss; only running into it refunds the marines the res
I don't agree with that either, killing the blueprint with ranged attacks is an obscure piece of trivia. The whole reason the blueprint was conceived was to prevent the comm from blocking things without a marine nearby. I don't think there should be a metagame surrounding it.
^ But marines lose the RES while the blueprint is in place, and aliens can kill the blueprint by using ranged attacks, resulting in permanent res loss; only running into it refunds the marines the res
I don't agree with that either, killing the blueprint with ranged attacks is an obscure piece of trivia. The whole reason the blueprint was conceived was to prevent the comm from blocking things without a marine nearby. I don't think there should be a metagame surrounding it.
I agree, We just instantly thought it was a bug that needed to be fixed, not something intentional, I have never liked the mechanic of aliens being able to ranged attack down blueprints either.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Blueprints are a mess imo.
If an alien runs into a blueprint the total expense is refunded, however if the marine commander cancels it only 80% is refunded. Ranged attack don't clear them instantly but instead can destroy the blueprint and the marine team gets no refund.
Try explaining that.
I don't know if alien commanders should be able to override a blueprint rt or cc, instead placing a blueprint should have more weight and not result in an almost guaranteed refund. At the moment it's essentially free scouting for a hive drop or res expansion.
Being able to change upgrades at any time at no pres cost is broken, simply evolving between regen and cara at a whim shouldn't be possible.
Playing without glancing bites is fantastic, a landed bite is a landed bite. Simple.
removed flame thrower and grenade launcher research (unlock with advanced armory)
Interesting, I remember complaining about this in the BT server. Ideally in an organised game you'd likely only ever want 1 or at max 2 people getting either of these weapons. Having to research these on top of the AA seemed overkill.
Without the requirement of having players spend pres for structures (ns1 gorge) I don't know of a good way of solving so many players having equal pres and the resulting fade explosions. Is this something that is being thought about? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Being able to change upgrades at any time at no pres cost is broken, simply evolving between regen and cara at a whim shouldn't be possible.
To touch on this point, I don't actually think it's that bad. The gestation time to switch upgrades is punishment enough to do this I think, I haven't been able to find a situation yet where this creates imbalance... So for me, I like this feature. (plus to me, the ability to switch upgrades and adapt on the fly is something that adds to the asymmetry of the game and seems fitting for the aliens)
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Also, alternatively, you can always simply increase the gestation time universally - or even based on per lifeform - if balancing the very badly needed pres sink for aliens becomes too tricky.
But ideally having a pres sink is the way to go.
Just be sure to scale the costs should you do this, with skulk being free (just a gestation time) and every other lifeform scaling in costs just a little bit like maybe the fade pays 2 pres to swap from regen to cara for lategame.
Many benefits to that system, imo.
I spent PAGES worth of writing in internal forums back in beta about this, excited to see it play out. (and not in a half implemented form like prior with universal costs, or universally free attempts)
about the switching regen/carapace... i think the main problem is that you would basically force players to gestate, regen and then gestate back to carapace.
isn't that a bit of a boring mechanic, like armory hump?
imo it's not the same as the welder situation, because marines can live on medpacks - you can't do jack as a weakened lerk/fade/onos so you'd literally have to gestate regen and back every minute.
Comments
I was talking about that guy. Honestly, I don't see what it adds if Camo was removed. Silence is not worth Aura and if Aura is nerfed Shade will be the last Hive every game once again.
I feel that the 0.7m bite width is to large. Even with 300 ping you cannot miss the bite if you are a decent player (apart from when you go through the marines model and they end up behind you). Feels great though, love it!
Skulk Animations
I don't know how to describe it, but they seem off? They seem to spasm / warp when changing directions quickly (left and right)
Momentum
Skulks bhopping at 20 speed, then dead-stop mid air if they try to go another direction? Really throws your aim off, if speed is about trading predictability then they should carry their momentum.
I'm very happy with the skulk play that is currently in vanilla. The walljumping is limited but you can find with experience some nice travel paths that give you boost for short distances. In bt you propably use ground more because it's pretty easy to maintain the speed so we see more of these skulk rockets that try to charge at you with full speed instead of seeing them laying an ambush and waiting in the ceilings.
So I prefer to have limited walljump that is very useful in specific places instead of changing the skulk to bhop focused spacebar smashing race.
Did a quick search. Build 220 - 200 days ago. Shows how long you've been away for mf.
"Added Skulk running "weave" animations where the back half of the body is slightly delayed from the front.".
Interrupting the animations with fast movement changes causes it to spasm, and the only thing you can really do to fight it is lower skulk accel so you can't adad.
1) Allow JPs on one CC, while exos require two CC
2) Make flamethrower drain alien adrenaline more the longer the enemy stays in your flame (helps prevent being insta-gibbed by lerk/fade) increase price back to 250
3) Make camo so you're always cloaked, but the "outlined" moving version, the one that's visible not full camo, keep silence and aura their own traits. So essentially you're removing full camo and always keeping the alien in that semi-cloaked form. You still make noise when moving in this form
4) Lower static skulk bite damage, I have no problem with no glancing bites, but since the bites aren't that difficult to hit, having them nail 75 each time feels high.. being 3hit with a0/a1 is fine, but it feels like with a2/a3 you get taken down quicker than normal.. may just be a placebo because feels like everyone can land bites now
off note
Something is funky with skulks atm when playing marine, when they get close to you the model seems to go nutty, and they seem to be "body clipping" more than usual, it's like a twitchy/teleport type thing going on.. can't really explain it but you should see it several times playing one full length match on BT
Remove the muffled sound when your health is low
(and idk if you can even do this) remove that obnoxious never ending hammer dropping sound on refinery lol, I mean please
on that note, great work sewlek and other devs apart of this! (y)
So you want to nerf Camo so much that not even a Gorge would take it over Silence anymore? Anything less than 100% cloak is quite useless.
I think the new bite system promotes chain biting a bit too much. Before, you were always running the risk of getting a not-so-good bite in if you just kept M1 pressed. Now you are more likely to spam it while jumping around, I think.
There was a lot of discussion on how things worked, and obviously more then half of the people there didn't know the changes, but still gives some idea of how it will play.
One bug that we found was that if marines place a blueprinted RT on infestation RT point then the aliens can not cap that RT until the blueprint is gone, our suggested solution is simply remove the blueprint if the alien commander wants to drop an RT there
Already pointed that out in the past, but Sewlek said he wanted the aliens to actually require to have a player go to an RT location to secure it.
I'd prefer the "Harvester Drop Override" as well, though, since it's otherwise too easy for marines to make some annoying denying that requires to pull an alien away from it's harassment just to touch a blueprint.
That doesn't make sense, the alien comm doesn't have to send a player to build an RT any other time, and the marine comm doesn't need to send anyone there to drop the blueprint.
I don't agree with that either, killing the blueprint with ranged attacks is an obscure piece of trivia. The whole reason the blueprint was conceived was to prevent the comm from blocking things without a marine nearby. I don't think there should be a metagame surrounding it.
I agree, We just instantly thought it was a bug that needed to be fixed, not something intentional, I have never liked the mechanic of aliens being able to ranged attack down blueprints either.
If an alien runs into a blueprint the total expense is refunded, however if the marine commander cancels it only 80% is refunded. Ranged attack don't clear them instantly but instead can destroy the blueprint and the marine team gets no refund.
Try explaining that.
I don't know if alien commanders should be able to override a blueprint rt or cc, instead placing a blueprint should have more weight and not result in an almost guaranteed refund. At the moment it's essentially free scouting for a hive drop or res expansion.
Being able to change upgrades at any time at no pres cost is broken, simply evolving between regen and cara at a whim shouldn't be possible.
Playing without glancing bites is fantastic, a landed bite is a landed bite. Simple.
Interesting, I remember complaining about this in the BT server. Ideally in an organised game you'd likely only ever want 1 or at max 2 people getting either of these weapons. Having to research these on top of the AA seemed overkill.
Without the requirement of having players spend pres for structures (ns1 gorge) I don't know of a good way of solving so many players having equal pres and the resulting fade explosions. Is this something that is being thought about? Does anyone have any suggestions?
To touch on this point, I don't actually think it's that bad. The gestation time to switch upgrades is punishment enough to do this I think, I haven't been able to find a situation yet where this creates imbalance... So for me, I like this feature. (plus to me, the ability to switch upgrades and adapt on the fly is something that adds to the asymmetry of the game and seems fitting for the aliens)
Simple way to fix this is to have the initial upgrade choice be free then changing costs pres.
But ideally having a pres sink is the way to go.
Just be sure to scale the costs should you do this, with skulk being free (just a gestation time) and every other lifeform scaling in costs just a little bit like maybe the fade pays 2 pres to swap from regen to cara for lategame.
Many benefits to that system, imo.
I spent PAGES worth of writing in internal forums back in beta about this, excited to see it play out. (and not in a half implemented form like prior with universal costs, or universally free attempts)
isn't that a bit of a boring mechanic, like armory hump?
imo it's not the same as the welder situation, because marines can live on medpacks - you can't do jack as a weakened lerk/fade/onos so you'd literally have to gestate regen and back every minute.