the thing which bugs me about the lerk is that it plays so similar to fade... it's basically a poor-mans fade.
i hope it's not too late to change, but from the lerk abilities and accessibility it really seems like it was intended to be primarily a 'support' lifeform. however, it's just terrible for support without ranged spores (not roulette crop-dusting spores*) or umbra and really is like a weak fade.
*if you have to get into melee range to spore the enemy, then more often than not you might as well bite them... if you bite them then you might as well finish them quickly instead of dilly-dallying trying to chip them down with fart gas. the crop-dusting spores are wholly contradictory.
I dont see any reason to remove the flap energy cost, especially with spikes costing so little energy. Even if you run out of energy as lerk you can still almost always get away, simply because the flap cost is low enough that you can still flap 3 times per second. You already have an unlimited ammo rifle basically, no reason to make it so you really can fire it forever.
Well like i said previously, the reason would be because you now have to flap so much more.
In other words you no longer have an alternative method of travel which doesn't require energy (only the fade doesn't have an alternate method, but SS + dbl jump allows for it to instantly regenerate anyways)
Spike energy cost has little to do with this particular argument and can always be adjusted.*
Removing energy from flapping allows you to travel without energy penalty - a luxury every other class gets already - *and as a byproduct it brings back a stronger harassing role that the lerk had when it was able to spike and dodge continuously. This former meta game was fun and skillful imo, as the then weaker lerk really had to dodge well, or else it was easily picked out of the sky as if it were perching... but a skilled dodging lerk meant you also had to track better than said marine.
tldr: given the recent increased flap requirement, it creates an unnecessary nerf, (especially considering it's other recent movement nerfs!) breaks consistency regarding energy and movement requirements across the classes, continues to prevent one of the most fun and skillful meta games the class had, and honestly its already such a low value it adds nothing to the game like you said.. so really just remove it.
nobody went lerk because it was such a weak and useless 30 res life form. by the time lerks become "spammable at 30 res" marines would have level 2 shotguns and armor to render the lerks useless, at this point of the game marines also stopped purchasing mines aswell.
Show me a competitive game in the last 2 weeks where marines have level 2 weapons, shotguns and level 1 armour as lerks come out. Doesn't happen...
What does happen is teams go double or triple lerk against marines with level 1 armour or phase gates or early shotguns (but none of these combined)
You cannot possibly compare the game as it is right now to beta. Lerk should be a fragile life form, not the flying melee tank as it is currently played. If bite wasn't so strong (and it is fucking crazy strong) maybe...
For NS1, it was a calculated risk for a lerk to fly into melee range. It was very effective, but you couldn't fly around spasming a broken hitbox + broken animations to tank bullets for skulk.
i never EVER said that by the time lerks come out marines will have level 2's i said by the time a commander can have the resources to spam lerk eggs marines should have level 2's which would make lerk a very inefficient cost decision
lerk not fragile? lerk a flying tank? bite too strong?
bro do you even lerk?
by the time lerks come out marines should have level 1 armor and possibly level 1 lmg's, lerks are very fragile which is why good lerks stay in the back spiking while skulks come in for the kill.
i do hope that lerk flap energy cost gets removed aswell
the thing which bugs me about the lerk is that it plays so similar to fade... it's basically a poor-mans fade.
i hope it's not too late to change, but from the lerk abilities and accessibility it really seems like it was intended to be primarily a 'support' lifeform. however, it's just terrible for support without ranged spores (not roulette crop-dusting spores*) or umbra and really is like a weak fade.
*if you have to get into melee range to spore the enemy, then more often than not you might as well bite them... if you bite them then you might as well finish them quickly instead of dilly-dallying trying to chip them down with fart gas. the crop-dusting spores are wholly contradictory.
The lerk is very very different from a fade and very very strong. Tarquinbb you are acting like spikes aren't absolutely awesome, they're ranged, they blind, are extremely accurate. A lerk can hold back marineS with shotguns by himself in a relatively small room. Its almost impossible to die as a lerk vs a marine without a shotgun at the 30 p.res mark. And there is nothing wrong with how spores work in live. If you are dying too much while using spores, than either its late game and you're getting one shot, or you're choosing oppurtunites poorly and doing it very wrong. There isn't a single lifeform that can stay in a room with 8 marines in it for any amount of time, so why should a 30 p.res lerk?
If the lerk isn't in danger while sporing, than how are marines going to leave their base, when lerks just shoot spores from range at marine exits over and over again? Currently spores are best used on phase gates then infantry portals, armories, etc. You will be doing more dps with spores on phase gates than biting one marine and leaving yourself vulnerable at point blank.
lerks are very fragile which is why good lerks stay in the back spiking while skulks come in for the kill.
Lerks do not stay in the back spiking. Watch lerks in any comp player and you'll see them regulary 1v1 marines, or fly in biting groups of marines to tank bullets for skulks. Lerks are not support, they are basically semi fades
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2013
From testing the lerk movement just now here are my observations in quotes:
*instant 180 movements result in a speed loss of 1 - 2 orso
This is a good change as it doesn't make sense in vanilla that a lerk maintains its momentum when doing a 180. It made for highly unpredictable movement when you could double double double back to trick your opponents so easily.
*need to do 1 or 2 flap per second to stay near top speed
I'm in favour of this in theory as lerks should make sound when moving and would give a purpose to the silence upgrade. The only issue I have is that it can be a bit tiring to constantly need to mash space in a way that reminds me of ns1 bunnyhop when not using mouse scroll or a script to jump. Frustrating and incredibly tiring. Decrease the frequency of flaps required.
Possible alternative is to maintain vanilla gliding but have the woosh sound audible (the one the lerk can hear) to other players and the volume depend on the speed.
Also, the lerk used to have 11 and 13 as its maximum speed. Now you can reach 10.99 and 12.64 at most even when mashing spacebar, not sure why celerity only gives 1.65 m/s more ?
*No speed increase when diving
Pancaking should be possible and it is currently not possible.
*Speed can be maintained by gliding up and down with a small amplitude
The alternative to spacebar mashing, frustrating in a similar way. Looks stupid and is disorienting.
Overall I am pretty happy with the direction and some of the unpredictable movement of the lerk has been reduced. Also, I think there is now much more option in playstyle/upgrade choice which is pretty important. In vanilla the only upgrade that is necessary is carapace, the second one is irrelevant mostly.
The lerk does have a little bit too much hp for current early game given how early it appears and the possibility of having 2. With the change in abilities to have umbra as the tier 2 I think there has been a repurposing of the lerk for ranged support over direct melee semi-fade. This could probably warrant a reduction in the overall hp the lerk has and perhaps give it a slightly larger hp boost with biomass. (Not sure on Sewlek's justification for the current 5 increase per level, what is this based on ?)
Just one more thing; I'd like is for silence to disable that annoying woosh sound the lerk has audible to itself. It's a sound that I barely notice a lot of the time but I know it's eating away at my soul.
The timings don't apply in BT tho, right?
So they shouldn't be used as an argument, especially given the recent movement changes.. right?
I am not convinced that there will be a huge difference given the ability to field 2 in the same time frame. Movement changes don't significantly reduce the combat effectiveness of the lerk as it will still have a lot of HP if you have cara or will be faster in combat than in vanilla if you have celerity. Spikes are pretty amazing still.
I played this mod yesterday and I think that the original Fade is better to play. The shadowstep->jump mechanic is now lost and I think that's a bad thing.
I played this mod yesterday and I think that the original Fade is better to play. The shadowstep->jump mechanic is now lost and I think that's a bad thing.
You need to play it more, once you really get the hang of the new fade you'll see that it's just as viable if not more viable than the old fade, the difference is that it's much easier to learn compared to vanilla fade which took a bit of practice to get down
Armor healing from armories removed. (Makes hit & run for aliens more viable) Bunnyhopping and better aircontrol. (deepens alien movement)
Things that went wrong:
While skulks now have great air control and bunnyhop, walljumps are ruined. It makes you float in the air as an easy target. Jumping from wall to wall is slower than in the current build and feels worse. (feels like theres not as much gravity or something). Old fade shadowsstep was far more viable. With the new one fades cant cover nearly as much ground as in the current build. In current build you can fly endlessly at 21-23 speed as a fade with celerity if you know what youre doing. (ss+jump+blink+jump ->repeat). Whenever you shadowstep in balance mod you lose all your momentum. Shadowstep and blink have switched places. (May turn out to be good idea with old shadowstep, hard to say yet)
Idea id like to see tested: Shotguns made shoot twice as fast, but with 50% dmg. (2 marines cant now instakill fade). [Or slightly faster with less dmg so that DPS stays same.]
Hey everyone, hopefully this weekend me and someone else will get to recording a video explaining --
Skulk bhop + advanced (I'm sure a few people know how to do this well)
Lerk new fly/flap
And Fade moving + fade bhop
After that, you can all practice it and begin to see how the new stuff actually works out; these are still "may or may not change" but once you properly know how to do them all it will really help sewlek with tweaking/changing them, as a lot of players come in for a match - don't really get what to do and immediately hate it, or say oh the old fade is faster at moving and etc etc
I still haven't gotten to play TOO much of this mod, but every time i manage to get a fade I fucking HATE the fact that I have blink first now. Shadowstep is so good when used the right way, and giving the fade blink right at the start (and thus forcing you to learn how to shadowstep properly) lowers the skill floor significantly, which imo isn't a good thing for a lifeform as powerful as the fade.
I suppose you didn't play NS1? Blink + bhop was the style of movement ( I won't talk about metabolize)
In Live build, blink feels weird to me as it doesn't have momentum when shadow step does. It also is stupid easy, jump > shadow step > doublejump+crouch. The movement limitation is quite severe
In BT mod, I can blink to build momentum, bhop to keep momentum and shadow step in any direction I want (up/down/sideways) for evasiveness.
lerks are deadly but easily countered by a team with decent aimers and decent res count. However if u have a slightly weak early game then lerks will make mince meat off you and turn it into a easy alien win.
Marine commander has been neutered. With the supply cap, I can barely get anything out.
Standard base arc push?
2 ip's - 2x5 points
2 armouries, base and forward arc position - 2x5 points
2 phase gates. 2 x 5 points
3 arcs, 3 x 20 points
1 mac, 1 x 10 points
Thats your 100 points. Why so tight? Also with arc's now being extremely slow, they are a massive tie up of supply not to mention ruling out sentries. Is the supply point system really necessary? It just seems to prevent certain strategies and really forces the marine commander into one set of buildings. What is it there to prevent marines from doing? Marine commander in its current state on the BT is a lot less enjoyable than live.
I would agree the supply cap is a bit tight. I really don't see why Phase gates need to be included in it, gorge tunnels aren't for aliens and it's not like phase gate spam is an actual problem... Also, building both ARCs and Sentries is pretty much out of the question with the current cap, not that you'd want to since sentries are still rubbish and inexplicably capped by both the supply cap AND the battery/3perpowernode rule.
I suppose you didn't play NS1? Blink + bhop was the style of movement ( I won't talk about metabolize)
In Live build, blink feels weird to me as it doesn't have momentum when shadow step does. It also is stupid easy, jump > shadow step > doublejump+crouch. The movement limitation is quite severe
In BT mod, I can blink to build momentum, bhop to keep momentum and shadow step in any direction I want (up/down/sideways) for evasiveness.
I completely agree, most people that don't use the bhop mechanic properly will see fade as nerfed in BT.
So here's a quick opinion from someone who's reasonably good at vanilla NS2
but almost never played with the new mechanics. I expect this to happen
to most people once the changes go live in a future build.
The new alien movement mechanics require a lot more skill to be effective, so if you're not playing them properly, you're actually a lot weaker than in vanilla NS2. This is very evident with higher lifeforms, especially the Fade as it lost the shadowstep+jump and double jumping and has to rely on blink for its movement, which is energy-intensive. I heard the Onos is a lot weaker too, but never tried it. It feels like my 700 hours in vanilla NS2 are useless in this mod, as I can't dodge properly as aliens, and as a marine I can't hit skilled aliens at all. In fact, I had more luck hitting skulks with a welder than with a shotgun.
I won't comment on other things as I still need to play the balance mod a lot more. Some changes are completely new to me since I never played NS1.
Hey everyone, hopefully this weekend me and someone else will get to recording a video explaining --
Skulk bhop + advanced (I'm sure a few people know how to do this well)
Lerk new fly/flap
And Fade moving + fade bhop
After that, you can all practice it and begin to see how the new stuff actually works out; these are still "may or may not change" but once you properly know how to do them all it will really help sewlek with tweaking/changing them, as a lot of players come in for a match - don't really get what to do and immediately hate it, or say oh the old fade is faster at moving and etc etc
Its not a big secret or anything. Hold forward then jump, strafe left and move mouse left at the same time. Now do the opposite direction. Bunnyhopping.
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
You actually dont have to change direction. With the skulk you can just hold forward and strafe in one direction (hold both) and adjust your view to get into the direction you want. After around 2-3 jumps you will hear the faster jump sound. I was never able to bunnyhop in any game, but that one is very easy
Remove the hidden 10 second delay before a destroyed powernode can be repaired.
This was done for good reason, as we saw plenty of downsides when removing it in play tests.
But it does need to not be "hidden", I've been harping on this since it's implementation :-P
Just have a simple 3d hologram infront of it with a timer in digits or a completing circle.
Speaking of 3d.. @Sewlek where's your 3d armory menu!? :-)
So, what do people think about the 75 starting res? Does it bring more benefits to the start of the game (more thinks you can do early on before waiting for more res) or does it have drawback (early unstoppable tech explosion, fast Hive-drop becomes a no-brainer)? Perhaps reduce the amount a little since RT cost got reduced a little as well? 65 or 70?
we found a bug where you get stuck on ladders when you use the jetpack. we were able to reproduce it. only occurs on the balance test mod (we tested 3 maps).
Comments
i hope it's not too late to change, but from the lerk abilities and accessibility it really seems like it was intended to be primarily a 'support' lifeform. however, it's just terrible for support without ranged spores (not roulette crop-dusting spores*) or umbra and really is like a weak fade.
*if you have to get into melee range to spore the enemy, then more often than not you might as well bite them... if you bite them then you might as well finish them quickly instead of dilly-dallying trying to chip them down with fart gas. the crop-dusting spores are wholly contradictory.
In other words you no longer have an alternative method of travel which doesn't require energy (only the fade doesn't have an alternate method, but SS + dbl jump allows for it to instantly regenerate anyways)
Spike energy cost has little to do with this particular argument and can always be adjusted.*
Removing energy from flapping allows you to travel without energy penalty - a luxury every other class gets already - *and as a byproduct it brings back a stronger harassing role that the lerk had when it was able to spike and dodge continuously. This former meta game was fun and skillful imo, as the then weaker lerk really had to dodge well, or else it was easily picked out of the sky as if it were perching... but a skilled dodging lerk meant you also had to track better than said marine.
tldr: given the recent increased flap requirement, it creates an unnecessary nerf, (especially considering it's other recent movement nerfs!) breaks consistency regarding energy and movement requirements across the classes, continues to prevent one of the most fun and skillful meta games the class had, and honestly its already such a low value it adds nothing to the game like you said.. so really just remove it.
i never EVER said that by the time lerks come out marines will have level 2's i said by the time a commander can have the resources to spam lerk eggs marines should have level 2's which would make lerk a very inefficient cost decision
lerk not fragile? lerk a flying tank? bite too strong?
bro do you even lerk?
by the time lerks come out marines should have level 1 armor and possibly level 1 lmg's, lerks are very fragile which is why good lerks stay in the back spiking while skulks come in for the kill.
i do hope that lerk flap energy cost gets removed aswell
The lerk is very very different from a fade and very very strong. Tarquinbb you are acting like spikes aren't absolutely awesome, they're ranged, they blind, are extremely accurate. A lerk can hold back marineS with shotguns by himself in a relatively small room. Its almost impossible to die as a lerk vs a marine without a shotgun at the 30 p.res mark. And there is nothing wrong with how spores work in live. If you are dying too much while using spores, than either its late game and you're getting one shot, or you're choosing oppurtunites poorly and doing it very wrong. There isn't a single lifeform that can stay in a room with 8 marines in it for any amount of time, so why should a 30 p.res lerk?
If the lerk isn't in danger while sporing, than how are marines going to leave their base, when lerks just shoot spores from range at marine exits over and over again? Currently spores are best used on phase gates then infantry portals, armories, etc. You will be doing more dps with spores on phase gates than biting one marine and leaving yourself vulnerable at point blank.
Lerks do not stay in the back spiking. Watch lerks in any comp player and you'll see them regulary 1v1 marines, or fly in biting groups of marines to tank bullets for skulks. Lerks are not support, they are basically semi fades
With the lifeform timings and hp's currently, its more like fades playing like lerks, and lerks playing like fades.
So they shouldn't be used as an argument, especially given the recent movement changes.. right?
This is a good change as it doesn't make sense in vanilla that a lerk maintains its momentum when doing a 180. It made for highly unpredictable movement when you could double double double back to trick your opponents so easily.
I'm in favour of this in theory as lerks should make sound when moving and would give a purpose to the silence upgrade. The only issue I have is that it can be a bit tiring to constantly need to mash space in a way that reminds me of ns1 bunnyhop when not using mouse scroll or a script to jump. Frustrating and incredibly tiring. Decrease the frequency of flaps required.
Possible alternative is to maintain vanilla gliding but have the woosh sound audible (the one the lerk can hear) to other players and the volume depend on the speed.
Also, the lerk used to have 11 and 13 as its maximum speed. Now you can reach 10.99 and 12.64 at most even when mashing spacebar, not sure why celerity only gives 1.65 m/s more ?
Pancaking should be possible and it is currently not possible.
The alternative to spacebar mashing, frustrating in a similar way. Looks stupid and is disorienting.
Overall I am pretty happy with the direction and some of the unpredictable movement of the lerk has been reduced. Also, I think there is now much more option in playstyle/upgrade choice which is pretty important. In vanilla the only upgrade that is necessary is carapace, the second one is irrelevant mostly.
The lerk does have a little bit too much hp for current early game given how early it appears and the possibility of having 2. With the change in abilities to have umbra as the tier 2 I think there has been a repurposing of the lerk for ranged support over direct melee semi-fade. This could probably warrant a reduction in the overall hp the lerk has and perhaps give it a slightly larger hp boost with biomass. (Not sure on Sewlek's justification for the current 5 increase per level, what is this based on ?)
Just one more thing; I'd like is for silence to disable that annoying woosh sound the lerk has audible to itself. It's a sound that I barely notice a lot of the time but I know it's eating away at my soul.
EDIT
I am not convinced that there will be a huge difference given the ability to field 2 in the same time frame. Movement changes don't significantly reduce the combat effectiveness of the lerk as it will still have a lot of HP if you have cara or will be faster in combat than in vanilla if you have celerity. Spikes are pretty amazing still.
Armor healing from armories removed. (Makes hit & run for aliens more viable)
Bunnyhopping and better aircontrol. (deepens alien movement)
Things that went wrong:
While skulks now have great air control and bunnyhop, walljumps are ruined. It makes you float in the air as an easy target. Jumping from wall to wall is slower than in the current build and feels worse. (feels like theres not as much gravity or something).
Old fade shadowsstep was far more viable. With the new one fades cant cover nearly as much ground as in the current build. In current build you can fly endlessly at 21-23 speed as a fade with celerity if you know what youre doing. (ss+jump+blink+jump ->repeat). Whenever you shadowstep in balance mod you lose all your momentum.
Shadowstep and blink have switched places. (May turn out to be good idea with old shadowstep, hard to say yet)
Idea id like to see tested:
Shotguns made shoot twice as fast, but with 50% dmg. (2 marines cant now instakill fade). [Or slightly faster with less dmg so that DPS stays same.]
I have played 670 hours NS2.
Skulk bhop + advanced (I'm sure a few people know how to do this well)
Lerk new fly/flap
And Fade moving + fade bhop
After that, you can all practice it and begin to see how the new stuff actually works out; these are still "may or may not change" but once you properly know how to do them all it will really help sewlek with tweaking/changing them, as a lot of players come in for a match - don't really get what to do and immediately hate it, or say oh the old fade is faster at moving and etc etc
I feel alot of the complaints about the movement are because people are not aware of what is even possible.
@ritualsacrifice
I suppose you didn't play NS1? Blink + bhop was the style of movement ( I won't talk about metabolize)
In Live build, blink feels weird to me as it doesn't have momentum when shadow step does. It also is stupid easy, jump > shadow step > doublejump+crouch. The movement limitation is quite severe
In BT mod, I can blink to build momentum, bhop to keep momentum and shadow step in any direction I want (up/down/sideways) for evasiveness.
Also, building both ARCs and Sentries is pretty much out of the question with the current cap, not that you'd want to since sentries are still rubbish and inexplicably capped by both the supply cap AND the battery/3perpowernode rule.
The new alien movement mechanics require a lot more skill to be effective, so if you're not playing them properly, you're actually a lot weaker than in vanilla NS2. This is very evident with higher lifeforms, especially the Fade as it lost the shadowstep+jump and double jumping and has to rely on blink for its movement, which is energy-intensive. I heard the Onos is a lot weaker too, but never tried it. It feels like my 700 hours in vanilla NS2 are useless in this mod, as I can't dodge properly as aliens, and as a marine I can't hit skilled aliens at all. In fact, I had more luck hitting skulks with a welder than with a shotgun.
I won't comment on other things as I still need to play the balance mod a lot more. Some changes are completely new to me since I never played NS1.
*Personally i think its the wrong approach to fixing the performance issues with pathing etc.
But it does need to not be "hidden", I've been harping on this since it's implementation :-P
Just have a simple 3d hologram infront of it with a timer in digits or a completing circle.
Speaking of 3d.. @Sewlek where's your 3d armory menu!? :-)