So let me get this straight… you think the argument is invalid because it doesn't affect comp, so you don't want to have a fix to a pub issue in the game that wouldn't really have any effect on comp either? You are not making any sense there.
What has the ARC speed to do with the supply cap? The point of slow ARCs is to encourage marines building more ARC Factories close to the alien base (hence why the upgrade speed and production speed has been increased to compensate for the slowdown) instead of having the production sit without much risk in the main base. If they want to do that, they have to accept that aliens have more time to intercept the ARC train.
Alien structures can move, marine structures can't. Ever heard of "asymmetry"? It's in this game, you know? Marines can sell structures and rebuild them somewhere else; aliens can't sell them but slowly move them. (Also, aliens can't move everything. Only chambers and Whips).
I can't agree that the marine commander gameplay has become less fun. I can still do all stuff in the lategame just as well as I could in vanilla. The supply cap is not anywhere as bad as you make it out to be and I've yet to get to a point where I am using more than 200 supply in the lategame. And if I do, I just get another CC up.
My meaning was that it should be possible to have a set limit that wouldn't impact a standard game, be it public or competitive. Yet still prevent a mass troll strat from occurring. In competitive a mass troll strat is usually never actually viable anyway so it is not really a concern. The main issue I have is a limitation being enforced due to a situation that only occurs in one type of gameplay, affecting legitimate play in the other.
Arc's are a bit of a supply dump as once they have served their purpose once, they are extremely slow moving, so getting them to a new destination takes an extremely long time for a fast NS game. Talking over a minute to move them to another destination and from someone who uses them to ARC anything, not just a hive. All this while being non recyclable, that is 60-80 supply tied up.
With my situation I posted last page, which is very common for me. If I wanted to move up my phase gate, I would have to risk selling the old one to move it to a forward position. I don't want to be turtling 2 tech points before I am allowed to assault the alien hive with arcs.
Obviously our commanding styles are different, as the supply cap as it is implemented hampers me immensely. I'm not saying remove the supply cap completely, just loosen it a bit. I want to use my macs dammit, especially with the armoury armour nerf.
[quote] It used to be the case but these days Cysts should have minimal impact on performance? [/quote]
[quote] 13% drop with minimal 22% drop with rich
After cysting most the map and trying again it was ~ 16%. [/quote]
Okay, i'll rephrase my question.
Jekt what sort of CPU rate are you running? I assume you're in the 4Ghz+ bucket like the rest of competitive ns2 players.
@Ironhorse From your game testing background, how hard would it to be to apply a game mod that runs on consistency applied servers that removes: Particle effects Crag healing wave Eggs Popping Alien Damage flinch animation ect. ect. ect.
The thread 'Why isn't NS2 more popular' might go on about tonnes of reasons. But everyone I know that doesn't play the game purely states 'performance'. They CBF learning the game when they can run BF3 at max settings 60+fps, crysis 60+fps, but 30-40 fps in NS2.
[quote] It used to be the case but these days Cysts should have minimal impact on performance? [/quote]
[quote] 13% drop with minimal 22% drop with rich
After cysting most the map and trying again it was ~ 16%. [/quote]
Okay, i'll rephrase my question.
Jekt what sort of CPU rate are you running? I assume you're in the 4Ghz+ bucket like the rest of competitive ns2 players.
@Ironhorse From your game testing background, how hard would it to be to apply a game mod that runs on consistency applied servers that removes: Particle effects Crag healing wave Eggs Popping Alien Damage flinch animation ect. ect. ect.
The thread 'Why isn't NS2 more popular' might go on about tonnes of reasons. But everyone I know that doesn't play the game purely states 'performance'. They CBF learning the game when they can run BF3 at max settings 60+fps, crysis 60+fps, but 30-40 fps in NS2.
Yeah I should of said, naturally I'm running an i7 Ivy @ 4.4Ghz. I
wasn't trying to generalise anything. I'm sure it's closer to 20% frame loss even
with minimal whenever infestation is even on the screen for any medium
spec'd machine..
The issue I see with Marines is that due to both Jetpacks and Exos being low cost, but super high mobility, it brings an issue of larger player servers just ends up ending the game. They have an issue of late game or with high server population late game it just becomes a massive spawn fest.
This is also the issue of Railgun tech rush is completely viable to a stupid degree. As long as they oneshot Slulks regardless of the weapons upgrade, they will be horribly broken with low res costs. Their weakness of low health doesn't matter if Aliens can't get close due to higher populations. The higher cost with more health made massing it harder and slower. It will also mean it is harder for Marines to get a critical mass of DPS.
That might be true ezekel but one can try to make the effect lessened.
well here's my take on it
return onos to what he was, his decreased range makes it harder to hit a jetpack, and his decreased speed makes him harder to catch stuff; also you can hatch eggs from the hive now the com probably wasn't aware of that when the server was running.. losing your highest lifeform to one jp shotgun or requiring it to flee is kind of meh, sort of like how exos could previously destroy everything (and they still kind of can with multiples)
that and mineshaft/docking have clear advantages depending on spawn points
I haven't played nearly as much as some of the others to really be able to contribute any kind of viable input. But while playing today I did pick up this gem (sorry ezekel, had to): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cia0cw-GOY
devour was a historical counter to JPers for an onos. However, you could only eat one at a time. Onos in certain maps is sheer JP food though. Descent is awful for an onos in most rooms.
Just had a few rounds on this again, after a long absence from the BT.
Overall, I'm quite disappointed with a few specific aspects, and quite pleased with others. I'll try to be as objective as possible with the feedback.
Lerk flight: Horrible!
Okay okay I've not given it enough time to get really used to it, but there is something very odd going on with collisions - I get clipped on things from seemingly miles away and lose all speed. There's something hinky with the strafe movement when flying, too: it seems kills speed dead in mid air, I think. I don't know what the change is that's different from vanilla, but I really like the vanilla flight model, so didn't understand why it has been changed to something that, subjectively, I think is worse.
Skulk movement: Strange. My bunny hopping is inconsistent - again partly through lack of play time with this mode, but also through some odd clipping issues. Perhaps this is no different from vanilla where tiny pieces of scenery also screw you over... I was able to pull off some ridiculously fast accelerations to get up to essentially full speed from a standing start in almost no time (kind of like a whipping movement, I guess). This will be OP in the hands of the best skulks, I suspect. To counter that, the skulk to me felt very fragile, although I actually did pretty well with it for a first go against some very good shots, so perhaps this is an unfounded fear.
I didn't get a chance to go fade or onos because my alien team was getting owned and we didn't have enough res. More play time needed there for comment.
JP: like the new JP movement. The thrust and direction change is good.
exo: I like that the railgun is SO FAST now, but maybe it's a bit too far? I see the benefits of it: brings the exo into contention in more scenarios rather than slow base defense (or walking death box away from light marine support). Obviously to counter this movement, they are cheaper and weaker. 4 hits from an onos to kill a a3 exo though? Bit too harsh, I think!
Shotgun: slightly nerfed damage at level 3 vs vanilla. Should keep strofix happy Still powerful, no problems there.
I already commented on the biomass system. It seems quite unintuitive for people in the mod, so a lot of time was spent explaining that stuff. Overall I'm fairly indifferent to this change. I presume there is still a fixed order for upgraded abilities? I don't really like that, as it reduces flexibility and options for the alien team to respond (ie early bile, or can we push leap/blink first). I didn't comm so can't comment further on this just now.
I know I'll get absolutely horrendously owned in gathers playing this mod: I have a decent rig, but don't think I can pull enough fps to reliably get the twitch aiming on the faster moving aliens vs vanilla. As an alien, I felt very vulnerable, especially as lerk. Maybe just because I haven't played BT recently, but my concern is tha this will massively widen further the skill gap between us try-hard pubbers who don't have enough time to commit to clan play (and can't often do gathers because of family commitments), and the higher tier players. Possibly an unfounded worry, but this is the place for feedback, so there you go!
Overall, good to test things out. I don't think the mod is actually more enjoyable than vanilla any more, though, which when I first played it some time ago, it was. Some changes great, others, not so sure atm.
. Maybe just because I haven't played BT recently, but my concern is tha this will massively widen further the skill gap between us try-hard pubbers who don't have enough time to commit to clan play (and can't often do gathers because of family commitments), and the higher tier players. Possibly an unfounded worry, but this is the place for feedback, so there you go!
Roo
Don't forget how unintuitive it is to new players, in comparison to just walljumping. This is why I don't think the movement changes in BT will make it into the live game.
. Maybe just because I haven't played BT recently, but my concern is tha this will massively widen further the skill gap between us try-hard pubbers who don't have enough time to commit to clan play (and can't often do gathers because of family commitments), and the higher tier players. Possibly an unfounded worry, but this is the place for feedback, so there you go!
Roo
Don't forget how unintuitive it is to new players, in comparison to just walljumping. This is why I don't think the movement changes in BT will make it into the live game.
I don't agree at all, the live walljumping model is hardly intuitive. New players may or may not notice the speed with which you jump off a wall, but nobody figures out on their own how the movement mechanic(i.e. chaining them together) works. The queued bunnyhopping on the other hand is familiar to lots of people who have played Quake 3, and they can at least figure out how to utilize that off of a Leap. The walljumping part I would say is equally unintuitive compared to live.
I don't agree at all, the live walljumping model is hardly intuitive. New players may or may not notice the speed with which you jump off a wall, but nobody figures out on their own how the movement mechanic(i.e. chaining them together) works. The queued bunnyhopping on the other hand is familiar to lots of people who have played Quake 3, and they can at least figure out how to utilize that off of a Leap. The walljumping part I would say is equally unintuitive compared to live.
I don't think you have quite the right thinking about this..... the people from say Quake 3 or other games where bhopping was prevalant will easily notice and pickup wall jumping in NS2. It is the people who know nothing of bhopping that pick up current vanilla wall jumping faster than they would trying to learn how to bhop.
I don't agree at all, the live walljumping model is hardly intuitive. New players may or may not notice the speed with which you jump off a wall, but nobody figures out on their own how the movement mechanic(i.e. chaining them together) works. The queued bunnyhopping on the other hand is familiar to lots of people who have played Quake 3, and they can at least figure out how to utilize that off of a Leap. The walljumping part I would say is equally unintuitive compared to live.
I don't think you have quite the right thinking about this..... the people from say Quake 3 or other games where bhopping was prevelant will easily notice and pickup wall jumping in NS2. It is the people who know nothing of bhopping that pick up current vanilla wall jumping faster than they would trying to learn how to bhop.
Please point me to one person who just "picked up" walljump-chaining in NS2. It doesn't happen, people get told about it. Even a bhopper probably wouldn't ever realize on their own that NS2 has a movement mechanic right now.
Please point me to one person who just "picked up" walljump-chaining in NS2. It doesn't happen, people get told about it. Even a bhopper probably wouldn't ever realize on their own that NS2 has a movement mechanic right now.
You're looking at one.
I'm a big bunnyhopper and I easily picked up the fact that you gained speed when you jumped off a wall and that you could keep speed by continually wall jumping without having to be told or shown it.
Please don't turn the next 20 pages of this thread into a bhop vs no bhop thread.
Lerk:
Lerk is actually killable now with lmg. Scatter (best lerk in Australia) said he has to fallback into a more support role as lerk now, rather than playing it like a fade. I think this is a good thing. This is due to HP nerf and lerk movement is more predictable now
I wouldn't worry about the speed that you can attain as skulk, the faster you go the more predictable your movement. If you try and turn mid-air at those speeds you will loose all your speed.
Faster speed directly translates into more predictability.
but my concern is tha this will massively widen further the skill gap between us try-hard pubbers who don't have enough time to commit to clan play (and can't often do gathers because of family commitments), and the higher tier players. Possibly an unfounded worry, but this is the place for feedback, so there you go!
Roo
While this point makes a lot of sense, you need to understand that you won't be seeing every single player properly executing the new movement, and from what I've seen on BT, some of the veterans are having quite the trouble figuring it out :>
For every casual player, there's another For every competitive player, there's another
If someone is that much better than someone, it must show; if it never showed then... we'd have something like battlefield
So just because a new mechanic is introduced does not mean you'll join a server and see an entire team of mastermind skulks flying across the map absolutely dominating, if you ever see one it'll be the same person who was dominating BEFORE just in a different way.. so essentially nothing really changes
And with everything else.
(not that you'd need anything else if the free weapon does it)
It's been nerfed into oblivion and let me tell you why :
Slower
Movement restricted during evasion
Unintuitive movement (you slow if you look up or don't tap the space bar once a second? ?)
And most importantly,
His increase of combat viability is left over from the days just before launch.. Where it was deemed that his support / harass role was prohibiting his viability in competitive games. It was half implemented then (according to the one who gave the suggestions, @fana) and i feel that it's being unfittingly warped and stretched even further now without addressing this.
For instance, if i asked what it's role was right now in this mod could you single it down to even two, with weapons and abilities that are A) effective for their purpose and readily available ??
I prefer the original concept of a support /harassing role.
Having umbra at T2 is a good move; But Imo we're a far cry from that proper role still - and what's worse is that in this awkward half implemented state it's movement is being gutted and it's health lowered..... Which in my mind is asinine, no offense to @sewlek (he knows my opinion on the lerk, we've been disagreeing about it for about a year I think now :-P)
Tldr: address the role and weapons first then iron out what's needed for movement and HP etc.. Otherwise it's simply a triple nerf and just frustrating to play.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2013
Just for reference:
Lerk now has 125/35 instead of 125/50 as its base HP stats. A decrease from 225 to 195 EHP
Lerk Now has 125/50 instead of 125/75 with carapace. A decrease from 275 to 225 EHP.
Biomass now only gives lerk 2 (fade 5) extra HP per level. At level 9 this means the lerk has 243 hp instead of 225 hp, whereas with 5 per level it would have 270 hp at lvl9.
Don't see an issue with lerk getting 5 hp per biomass level as at the highest level it would still have less EHP than the lerk with carapace does currently, in an environment where it can easily be chased by JPs with lvl3 everything or railed.
BTW a no cara lerk will get 1 shot by a railgun which may be a problem if you want to promote upgrade choices such as regen or even a chamber combination at 2 hives that doesn't include crag, which I hope you do.
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
edited May 2013
@res try it, its been increased.. (and you not noticing just highlights how unintuitive and poorly communicated this is) Which just makes it more difficult to use - something the lerk didn't need - in tight spaces and corridors... Something that ns2 has plenty of,
If the silent aspect of gliding wasn't desired, you could easily make the first person "woooosshh" air over bat wing sound, audible for everyone else...
Otherwise It'd be like if the blink sounds were only first person but because this made a silent fade someone decided that the fade should have to shadow step before they could enter blink every time, just so it could make the sound..... Its an unnecessarily complicated and poor solution
Currently the Live build of Lerk is played like a fade (direct melee engagement, hit&run tactics and overall in your face). Once lerks are on the field, no marine can solo cap rt's due to the power of lerks in 1v1 picking marines off (something a fade's role was defined - atleast in ns1).
In NS1, for a lerk to play like a fade (aka direct melee engagement, 1v1 marines) it was a calculated risk. The rego / hp / movement was predictable enough (discounting pancaking) that a solid marine would always beat a lerk 1v1.
I would like to see lerk return to the role of a support unit. If the decision is that lerks are to remain in their current role, they need to either cost more res or a solution for life form explosion needs to be implemented. If people are complaining about the role being to weak, its because they are still trying to play him like a fade and dieing. If his role a support unit isn't enough to justify having a lerk on the field? Make his support skills stronger (move umbra to 1 hive or something, not sure).
NS2 games have 3 stages 0-3:59 minutes: Marines have to do enough damage to delay lerks as long as possible. 4-6 minutes: Lerks dominate, marines have to hold on as long as they can untill they have shotguns + enough upgrades to take control of the game back. 6-9 minutes: Shotguns emerge, game goes back to being 50/50. 10+ minutes: Life form explosion, 3 fades + 2 lerks on the field.
If i was only vsing 1 lerk it probably would not be a problem. But due to aliens not having to invest pres into anything to survive early game, you end up with the whole team saving for higher life forms. LIFE FORM EXPLOSION blah...........
Can't believe there isn't a trial / idea proposed yet to fix this.
I don't agree at all, the live walljumping model is hardly intuitive. New players may or may not notice the speed with which you jump off a wall, but nobody figures out on their own how the movement mechanic(i.e. chaining them together) works. The queued bunnyhopping on the other hand is familiar to lots of people who have played Quake 3, and they can at least figure out how to utilize that off of a Leap. The walljumping part I would say is equally unintuitive compared to live.
I don't think you have quite the right thinking about this..... the people from say Quake 3 or other games where bhopping was prevelant will easily notice and pickup wall jumping in NS2. It is the people who know nothing of bhopping that pick up current vanilla wall jumping faster than they would trying to learn how to bhop.
Please point me to one person who just "picked up" walljump-chaining in NS2. It doesn't happen, people get told about it. Even a bhopper probably wouldn't ever realize on their own that NS2 has a movement mechanic right now.
<
I picked it up pretty quickly, even though the last multiplayer FPS I played was Goldeneye 007 for the N64. It is pretty easy to figure out that wall-jumping increases speed, and you naturally find it out as you get better at Skulking. Bunnyhopping, however, is the exact opposite of intuitive. If you haven't bunnyhopped in previous games, then you will never figure it out without someone telling you.
Bunnyhopping, in my opinion, is something that is only in the balance mod for the sake of nostalgia and shouldn't be in the game just because it was in NS1.
Lerk is actually slightly faster IMO, unless you considered the takeoff speed in live constant, and most of the movement restrictions have been removed. You cant do the stupid 180 turns without a slight speed loss, and flying into things is actually bad now, all which are good changes.
The lower HP helps cement lerk into a support/harrass role, where before you could act as a flying tank. The HP was increased because of people complaining when they got killed by a shotgun, since for some reason people think they should be able to fly in and kill a shotgun marine with bite, not to fix the uselessness in comp play (hint, the complaints there were because of spores before the switch).
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Yeah the initial life form explosion hasn't changed at all which should directly affect how powerful each life form should be. The only thing that has changed is the ability to egg drop as much as is possible in the live build, due to the increased tres sinks in the balance test mod. This goes back to the alien commander existing.
Need to really go back to the basics and determine how life form explosion can be reduced while maintaining the commander and then reassess life form hp, attack power and how much access to higher tier weapons marines should have.
Life forms as purely tres drops ? I don't know. Alien com is such a disaster.
10+ minutes: Life form explosion, 3 fades + 2 lerks on the field.If i was only vsing 1 lerk it probably would not be a problem. But due to aliens not having to invest pres into anything to survive early game, you end up with the whole team saving for higher life forms. LIFE FORM EXPLOSION blah...........Can't believe there isn't a trial / idea proposed yet to fix this.
The best suggestion I thought would be to start as a level 1 lifeform which is a skulk. To reach level 3 onos you would have to already spent res for level 2 gorge, lerk, or fade and then save again for level 3 to be onos. Unlike combat mod there is always risk of losing all res and starting as a skulk again if killed.
10+ minutes: Life form explosion, 3 fades + 2 lerks on the field.If i was only vsing 1 lerk it probably would not be a problem. But due to aliens not having to invest pres into anything to survive early game, you end up with the whole team saving for higher life forms. LIFE FORM EXPLOSION blah...........Can't believe there isn't a trial / idea proposed yet to fix this.
The best suggestion I thought would be to start as a level 1 lifeform which is a skulk. To reach level 3 onos you would have to already spent res for level 2 gorge, lerk, or fade and then save again for level 3 to be onos. Unlike combat mod there is always risk of losing all res and starting as a skulk again if killed.
You are over complicating it. Aliens simply require a NEED to invest their pres into something to survive to mid game. At the moment they only have to survive 4 minutes, then lerks pop out. THey keep playing for another 5 minutes then the rest of the team that didn't lerk all go fade.
It's RTS at the most basic level, if a player doesn't invest his resources into early game tech/units then he won't survive to late game to use all those unspent resources. In NS1 this meant 2 players temp gorging (gorge + drop rt), 1 saving for hive, 1 lerk, 1 fade, 2 temp-chamber (gorge + drop 1 chamber).
The same problem exists for marines though, it goes from 5 LMG's to 5 shotguns in the blink of an eye. You can't fix the life form explosion without making changes to the weapon explosion for marines. I heard dragon in BT pub saying he thinks fades are too weak, they have to be weak cause you can have so many of them. This is countered by the whole marine team having shotguns (this never happened in ns1...)
Alien commander and PRES for marines cause so many problems in NS2 that did not exist in NS1.
Comments
[quote]
It used to be the case but these days Cysts should have minimal impact on performance?
[/quote]
[quote]
13% drop with minimal
22% drop with rich
After cysting most the map and trying again it was ~ 16%.
[/quote]
Okay, i'll rephrase my question.
Jekt what sort of CPU rate are you running? I assume you're in the 4Ghz+ bucket like the rest of competitive ns2 players.
@Ironhorse
From your game testing background, how hard would it to be to apply a game mod that runs on consistency applied servers that removes:
Particle effects
Crag healing wave
Eggs Popping
Alien Damage flinch animation
ect.
ect.
ect.
The thread 'Why isn't NS2 more popular' might go on about tonnes of reasons. But everyone I know that doesn't play the game purely states 'performance'. They CBF learning the game when they can run BF3 at max settings 60+fps, crysis 60+fps, but 30-40 fps in NS2.
Yeah I should of said, naturally I'm running an i7 Ivy @ 4.4Ghz. I wasn't trying to generalise anything. I'm sure it's closer to 20% frame loss even with minimal whenever infestation is even on the screen for any medium spec'd machine..
Player count too low = alien advantage
Player count too high = marine advantage
Player count middle ground = play ball
well here's my take on it
return onos to what he was, his decreased range makes it harder to hit a jetpack, and his decreased speed makes him harder to catch stuff; also you can hatch eggs from the hive now the com probably wasn't aware of that when the server was running.. losing your highest lifeform to one jp shotgun or requiring it to flee is kind of meh, sort of like how exos could previously destroy everything (and they still kind of can with multiples)
that and mineshaft/docking have clear advantages depending on spawn points
actually countering my last post about the onos, maybe not, maybe just a speed increase w/ celerity. leaving the nerfed gore range is fine
I don't agree at all, the live walljumping model is hardly intuitive. New players may or may not notice the speed with which you jump off a wall, but nobody figures out on their own how the movement mechanic(i.e. chaining them together) works. The queued bunnyhopping on the other hand is familiar to lots of people who have played Quake 3, and they can at least figure out how to utilize that off of a Leap. The walljumping part I would say is equally unintuitive compared to live.
You're looking at one.
I'm a big bunnyhopper and I easily picked up the fact that you gained speed when you jumped off a wall and that you could keep speed by continually wall jumping without having to be told or shown it.
Please don't turn the next 20 pages of this thread into a bhop vs no bhop thread.
Lerk:
Lerk is actually killable now with lmg. Scatter (best lerk in Australia) said he has to fallback into a more support role as lerk now, rather than playing it like a fade. I think this is a good thing. This is due to HP nerf and lerk movement is more predictable now
@RooBubba
I wouldn't worry about the speed that you can attain as skulk, the faster you go the more predictable your movement. If you try and turn mid-air at those speeds you will loose all your speed.
Faster speed directly translates into more predictability.
For every casual player, there's another
For every competitive player, there's another
If someone is that much better than someone, it must show; if it never showed then... we'd have something like battlefield
So just because a new mechanic is introduced does not mean you'll join a server and see an entire team of mastermind skulks flying across the map absolutely dominating, if you ever see one it'll be the same person who was dominating BEFORE just in a different way.. so essentially nothing really changes
And with everything else.
(not that you'd need anything else if the free weapon does it)
It's been nerfed into oblivion and let me tell you why :
Slower
Movement restricted during evasion
Unintuitive movement (you slow if you look up or don't tap the space bar once a second? ?)
And most importantly,
His increase of combat viability is left over from the days just before launch.. Where it was deemed that his support / harass role was prohibiting his viability in competitive games. It was half implemented then (according to the one who gave the suggestions, @fana) and i feel that it's being unfittingly warped and stretched even further now without addressing this.
For instance, if i asked what it's role was right now in this mod could you single it down to even two, with weapons and abilities that are A) effective for their purpose and
I prefer the original concept of a support /harassing role.
Having umbra at T2 is a good move; But Imo we're a far cry from that proper role still - and what's worse is that in this awkward half implemented state it's movement is being gutted and it's health lowered..... Which in my mind is asinine, no offense to @sewlek (he knows my opinion on the lerk, we've been disagreeing about it for about a year I think now :-P)
Tldr: address the role and weapons first then iron out what's needed for movement and HP etc.. Otherwise it's simply a triple nerf and just frustrating to play.
If the silent aspect of gliding wasn't desired, you could easily make the first person "woooosshh" air over bat wing sound, audible for everyone else...
Otherwise It'd be like if the blink sounds were only first person but because this made a silent fade someone decided that the fade should have to shadow step before they could enter blink every time, just so it could make the sound..... Its an unnecessarily complicated and poor solution
@Ironhorse
I agree, the lerk needs a defined role.
Currently the Live build of Lerk is played like a fade (direct melee engagement, hit&run tactics and overall in your face). Once lerks are on the field, no marine can solo cap rt's due to the power of lerks in 1v1 picking marines off (something a fade's role was defined - atleast in ns1).
In NS1, for a lerk to play like a fade (aka direct melee engagement, 1v1 marines) it was a calculated risk. The rego / hp / movement was predictable enough (discounting pancaking) that a solid marine would always beat a lerk 1v1.
I would like to see lerk return to the role of a support unit. If the decision is that lerks are to remain in their current role, they need to either cost more res or a solution for life form explosion needs to be implemented. If people are complaining about the role being to weak, its because they are still trying to play him like a fade and dieing. If his role a support unit isn't enough to justify having a lerk on the field? Make his support skills stronger (move umbra to 1 hive or something, not sure).
NS2 games have 3 stages
0-3:59 minutes: Marines have to do enough damage to delay lerks as long as possible.
4-6 minutes: Lerks dominate, marines have to hold on as long as they can untill they have shotguns + enough upgrades to take control of the game back.
6-9 minutes: Shotguns emerge, game goes back to being 50/50.
10+ minutes: Life form explosion, 3 fades + 2 lerks on the field.
If i was only vsing 1 lerk it probably would not be a problem. But due to aliens not having to invest pres into anything to survive early game, you end up with the whole team saving for higher life forms. LIFE FORM EXPLOSION blah...........
Can't believe there isn't a trial / idea proposed yet to fix this.
@Robotix
The bhop is nothing like the goldsrc bhop, you only hold forward + stafe + jump. People do this already
gah, i'm going to stop posting about bhop because I don't want to turn the thread into a bhop argument.
The best suggestion I thought would be to start as a level 1 lifeform which is a skulk. To reach level 3 onos you would have to already spent res for level 2 gorge, lerk, or fade and then save again for level 3 to be onos. Unlike combat mod there is always risk of losing all res and starting as a skulk again if killed.
You are over complicating it. Aliens simply require a NEED to invest their pres into something to survive to mid game. At the moment they only have to survive 4 minutes, then lerks pop out. THey keep playing for another 5 minutes then the rest of the team that didn't lerk all go fade.
It's RTS at the most basic level, if a player doesn't invest his resources into early game tech/units then he won't survive to late game to use all those unspent resources. In NS1 this meant 2 players temp gorging (gorge + drop rt), 1 saving for hive, 1 lerk, 1 fade, 2 temp-chamber (gorge + drop 1 chamber).
The same problem exists for marines though, it goes from 5 LMG's to 5 shotguns in the blink of an eye. You can't fix the life form explosion without making changes to the weapon explosion for marines. I heard dragon in BT pub saying he thinks fades are too weak, they have to be weak cause you can have so many of them. This is countered by the whole marine team having shotguns (this never happened in ns1...)
Alien commander and PRES for marines cause so many problems in NS2 that did not exist in NS1.