IMO thats a really crappy solution, because it would be absolute chaos in a pub server. It only somewhat works in Combat just because of turnover rate, where people are often dying so everyone that wants to exo/onos can get some time. It could somewhat work in a comp game but would probably prove overly limiting in the long run.
The changes to carapace are pretty much one of the options described here - tweak lifeforms base HP and armor and carapace armor values to make carapace not so rewarding, which also increases the viability of every other upgrade and not just regen.
I don't really like Carapace as an upgrade, especially if the visible benefit of having it is being lowered, but I'd rather it be nerfed if it means Regen making a comeback simply because Regen is a whole lot more fun to play with.
I spent some time trying to think of a replacement for it and there really aren't many good ones with a defense theme. NS1 only had Redemption which was lame. Serious question: would it really be so bad to have an active skill as an upgrade? The passive requirement is incredibly limiting. Say active upgrades were triggered by the Reload button and you can only have one at a time. That opens up a world of ideas - you could have an active replacement for Carapace that does something like absorb 90% of damage and make you stationary for a few seconds, just off the top of my head.
I wonder if one could have an upgrade such as, any time you would die from one attack, the damage is reduced by 50%. This can only trigger every second. I already see the issue of this not really being shown well to the Marines so lack of feedback is an issue, but it would be nice for all the lifeforms but Onos.
Then there is the more boring damage reduction idea.
For Zek, We already tried that idea out. It was the Onos and it was terrible.
So, is everyone happy with the current Fade changes then? Because I still absolutely hate it. To a point where I would probably end up barely ever playing Fade again if it made vanilla. I'm especially interested in the opinions of [i]actually[/i] good Fades, as most pub Fades haven't even truly figured out Shadowstep yet and are dependant on Blink.
I've played with Saunamen, Archaea and HBZ people and I don't think any of them liked it. The most positive thing to be heard was "I'm not sure yet"...
The reason they say "I'm not sure yet" is because it takes time to master the movement, and with ENSL Season 2 still going these players haven't really had the time to play the balance mod. I haven't played this balance mod as much as I'd hoped I would, but i discovered HBZ public server that runs this mod just the other day, so I will be putting a lot of hours trying it out. Also, most people (including various people from these clans you mention) think that this is a good step in the right direction.
As for my own opinion, some things feel a bit off, but like so many others I haven't really had the time to put in the hours necessary to judge it properly. I really do think that this will make the NS2 experience lots better. Just practice more.
The only people I've actually heard say anything negative about the mod is people from Team Work and Tactics, with comments like "ooh It's gonna be the death of the game", ha.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited May 2013
Are there plans to do anything else with the whip? Now that alien structures can be built regardless of hive specialization, does it make any sense for the whip to not be its own hive type? I don't really want to build a random whip so I can use drifter enzyme. Focus for one of the abilities? : D
I'm part of that not sure basket for the fade movement changes also. I get a lot of enjoyment out of air strafing after a double jump out of a shadow step that I just haven't felt bhopping around in the balance mod. Maybe I haven't hit a high enough level of competency using the BT movement however, as Wirymentioned.
Anyone else tired of using ctrl every second jump to avoid head banging a surface? If you use third person you can see that your model doesn't even change, but holding ctrl allows you to pass underneath with no collision. What this means for the hitbox on an air born fade that is crouching I don't even.
my feedback: i played 10+ matches and there was NO teamstacking, but marines lost every single match. sry, but i cant say exactly whats the reason why...
Dear diary. We played the mod yesterday and stacked aliens like never before and still lost (I blame you min kärlek wiri), alltough I was mainly bunnyhopping the entire game and figurin' stuff out. King_yo too stronk.
Onto the feedback: I like the sharp skulk movement and acceleration from side to side, it's like NS1 yayy! Still need alot more playtime to figure out how to effectively bhop and use it in a combat situation against competent marines, but I'm liking the direction its headed.
Fade also seems alot like in NS1 with the bhop being the main source of movement and blink to gain momentum to it, however, if this change is to stay, my suggestion is to add a little bit of acceleration to the blink, it seems kinda slow right now to get the bhop rolling. Didn't get a chance to test shadowstep in combat, but I like the idea of nerfing the SS + dbl jump and increasing skillful movement by other means (maybe even try out the focus uppgrade? WHO KNOWS? IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA).
No glancing bites sewlek for president.
Can't really cast my final judgement until I have properly tested everything. This mod is the way of the future.
Also, can anyone point me in the right direction where I can buy a mousewheel that allows me to bind jump to it? Please menumod, come back, we miss you.
While I realize people may be used to jumping with the mouse wheel, there's really no need to abuse your mouse like that when there's jump queuing. It's much more effective to use a button you can hold down, such as mouse2.
I must admit I'm struggling with the basic concept that the small, wall-walking dog-like alien can move faster than the teleporting alien or the flying alien. It's the principle of the matter!
Xao - It's not just regen that has to compete with carapace, it is the viability of shift and shade hive openers as well.
So remove in combat penalty from celerity, change adren to 50% more energy with a higher energy regen %, decrease the time of camo re cloak to 1 second or half whatever it is now and keep the stupid shimmer/outline effects, leave silence as it is and maybe increase the first few points of biomass to be more effective than the last points so shade/shift can be more effective, maybe keep biomass same cost for crag hive but reduce the biomass cost or increase ratios on shift/shade hive?
So many better ways than all the "lets shit on cara" suggestions I've read so far, this isn't a fucking MOBA, you don't have 90+ other aspects of the game to power creep and save your inability to balance anything properly. This mod is influenced by nothing but masochists, there's probably a very good reason(s) why no BT server in the world is filling up on it's own accord right now and needs 5-10 people to babysit in it for an hour.
- celerity works now in combat and increases max speed by 1.5 m/s - regeneration works now in combat - adrenaline increases max energy and regeneration rate by 10% per level - added new shade upgrade which shows enemies and their health (called 'Aura' for now) - merged silence and camouflage (called 'Phantom')
One could argue that with lifeforms now scaling on hives, carapace is much less of a necessity (from a design perspective) than it was before. Just beef up hive scaling a little and give aliens some other defensive upgrade.
There are alot of people in this thread who have played the mod months ago and are still trying to pass their opinion on it. I don't think they are aware that it is constantly fluctuating or they have just simply not read the notes on the changes.
It would be interesting if alien structures and lifeforms have an initial resistance against fire in form of their armor (less damage from fire sources) before taking the actual increased damage from being a "flammable" structure. You could also expand it so that the DoT effect is shorter while the structure still has it's carapace, giving matured cysts with armor a little protection against the flamethrower "drive-by" by requiring to use it longer on them. It would also require more synergy with the rest of the team when using flamethrowers: other marines need to kill the armor off first with their bullet weapons before the flamethrower can start to finish them off unless he wants to spend more time and ammo than necessary on burning through the carapace himself. This would also help to push the flamethrower a little back to it's support role after all the buffs it received. And it would balance it a bit more against higher lifeforms.
This might sound stupid, but since carapace is so important, why not remove regen and add another ability in the crag tree, such as increased damage per bite (aka focus) so then you'll have to choose between the two, and you can have some team mates go focus, while others go carapace.. or you can tell me to go home I'm drunk
edit: All the other abilities are a decision between the two, when I look at phantom or aura, I think about what class I'm playing for a second and see which would be better to go off of, aura is really awesome to have as an onos, while phantom is really awesome to have as a lerk/fade well.. both can be awesome
Same goes for adrenaline/celerity, however that's more class dependant.. like I see no reason to go celerity on a fade, while it's mandatory for an onos; maybe some celerity tweaking can be done as well?
One could argue that with lifeforms now scaling on hives, carapace is much less of a necessity (from a design perspective) than it was before. Just beef up hive scaling a little and give aliens some other defensive upgrade.
Less necessary, but not obsolete. I think cara will be perfectly acceptable if we can create viable alternatives. Here are some random defensive-ish ideas;
Affluence - would be provide no physical benefit but grant a slightly increased resource generation rate. This would open up some potentially interesting strategies and mitigate the tech explosions somewhat. Even I'm apprehensive about min-maxing with this though and I'd hate to see it used in a stagnant or defensive way.
Vampiric - Standard life on hit malarkey which would need to be carefully balanced for different classes.
Devour - Lifeform receives RFK (maybe even for destroying buildings). Opens up some interesting strategies/playstyles and again staggers lifeforms. You could also provide a nominal boost to movement or attack speed, short-term regen or anything else that takes your fancy if you want this upgrade to also have some combat efficiency.
Regeneration - Just improve the current implementation
- Something that reduces the cumulated damage that you take in a split second after the first hit by a set percentage (60-70%?) and is on a cooldown (7-10 seconds) then. In other words: it provides protection against the burst damage of all Shotgun shells hitting you at once or a strong Railgun blast hitting you or a single Grenade explosion. But it is rather useless against rapid fire weapons like the standard Assault Rifle or Minigun because it will only block the first 1-2 bullets since the damage comes over a longer period of time. It might work well to counter fast Pistol shooters as well and force them to slow down instead of using scripts.
- A carapace that works like an Overheal: your armor charges up to the usual Carapace upgrade amount from healing due to a Crag or Gorge (or Hive) and will slowly diminish back to the unupgraded value while you are out of healing range. So basically this enables the option for you to be overhealed. Though this upgrade might be redundant if Gorges are ever supposed to get a built-in Overheal functionality.
- An ability that activates when the lifeform's HP drop below a set percentage and increase the lifeform's stats like attack rate and speed as long as it's below that percentage. It is a risky perk because it doesn't offer any bonus until you are actually close to losing your lifeform. But then it can make the difference between winning and losing a fight. And it can be used tactically by surviving a fight with low HP and then hunting RTs in this more vulnerable state for the benefit of having an increased attack rate to make them go down faster.
- Something that reduces the cumulated damage that you take in a split second after the first hit by a set percentage (60-70%?) and is on a cooldown (7-10 seconds) then. In other words: it provides protection against the burst damage of all Shotgun shells hitting you at once or a strong Railgun blast hitting you or a single Grenade explosion. But it is rather useless against rapid fire weapons like the standard Assault Rifle or Minigun because it will only block the first 1-2 bullets since the damage comes over a longer period of time. It might work well to counter fast Pistol shooters as well and force them to slow down instead of using scripts.
An idea I've been toying around with is kinda like this. It's something that's similar to the Immortal's shields from SC2. While the additional armor from carapace exists, the alien takes a flat amount of damage per attack. It would be useless against weapons that have lower damage, but high ROF like the LMG or FT, but would help supremely against weapons that utilize burst damage like the SG or GL. Not sure how well it would work, but just putting an idea out there.
Damage reduction ideas are a bad way to go. It's a fairly boring mechanic to begin with and the overlap with carapace ("less damage taken" is too similar to "less damage taken from X" or "less damage taken when Y") is pretty obvious. Carapace does it's job well as it is and doesn't require a rule book to understand. We need alternatives, not variations. <goddamn this new forum quote malarkey>
Damage reduction as it has been stated is not boring nor too similar to Carapace. Any suggestion that is designed for high burst damage will be quite different from carapace. My possible idea, any damage source that would kill you, it is reduced by 50%. Shotguns and Railgun not oneshotting Skulks is a good niche, but it the upgrade is worthless for everything else, it is a fair alternative. Regen for general damage and staying power. Force Armor for the Shotguns/Railgun/Grenadelaunchers.
Carapace does do its job well, but too well. The game needs more interesting alternatives than Carapace every game but the game is designed around it. A fair replacement is needed.
Nothing wrong about adding a third trait to each tech tree.
Crag path gets Absorption (melee-range damage to organic targets heals the user; kills give an extra heal and energy bonus) and Reactive Armor (damage that would have killed you is reduced by 50%) as replacements for Carapace. Shift path gets Survivalist (increased attack rate, speed and energy regeneration when below 30% HP). Shade path gets Focus (increased damage, reduced attack rate).
I'd rather see regen just get removed, as it stands regenerating health is always a meh
For marines to get health they have two options
1) medpack 2) armory
For armor, they require a welder or a mac, or when they get an armor upgrade it automatically restores
For aliens
1) Hive 2) Gorge 3) Crag 4) Out of combat slowly regens
So imo regen can be removed and it can be replaced by another trait such as the higher damage per bite or something else which will make players decide between that and carapace, I don't think you can ever make a choice between extra overall damage taken to healing quicker, without making the regen more powerful to the carapace. The extra damage per bite is interesting, and can give specific roles, like having the focus skulks attack from the back while the cara skulks go from the front; also will help them later on when marines get more armor at the risk of having less overall health
Make blue power nodes slowly revert to 0% built, and damaged power nodes slowly repair themselves
The mechanics right now where marines will build a power node to 99% or the aliens might chew a power node to 1% are bad gameplay and unintuitive for new players.
Make blue power nodes slowly revert to 0% built, and damaged power nodes slowly repair themselves
The mechanics right now where marines will build a power node to 99% or the aliens might chew a power node to 1% are bad gameplay and unintuitive for new players.
I agree with the problem but IMO it's just another way that power nodes inherently don't work very well. Those solutions feel like weird unnatural additions to an already weird and unnatural system.
Experimental: -?? gorges cost now 15 personal resources (down from 100) -?? alien structures auto build rate is reduced by 85% -?? gorges build 4 times faster
Curious. I see the intent behind this, but this brings some pretty scary implications once bile bomb is up. Anybody played a full round with these yet?
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited May 2013
Why make the gorge so cheap? Doesn't exactly break up the pres among players, which I would of thought to have been the intended purpose on top of encouraging team presence for alien building construction.
The only people I've actually heard say anything negative about the mod is people from Team Work and Tactics, with comments like "ooh It's gonna be the death of the game", ha.
Firstly I'm only aware of myself making comments regarding not liking it, not my entire team - so that's a little unfair. And largely I have kept my comments to myself until I see the final changes that are made.
But I am far from the only person to have raised any concerns.
Comments
Then there is the more boring damage reduction idea.
For Zek,
We already tried that idea out. It was the Onos and it was terrible.
I've played with Saunamen, Archaea and HBZ people and I don't think any of them liked it. The most positive thing to be heard was "I'm not sure yet"...
I'm part of that not sure basket for the fade movement changes also. I get a lot of enjoyment out of air strafing after a double jump out of a shadow step that I just haven't felt bhopping around in the balance mod. Maybe I haven't hit a high enough level of competency using the BT movement however, as Wiry mentioned.
Anyone else tired of using ctrl every second jump to avoid head banging a surface? If you use third person you can see that your model doesn't even change, but holding ctrl allows you to pass underneath with no collision. What this means for the hitbox on an air born fade that is crouching I don't even.
sry, but i cant say exactly whats the reason why...
We played the mod yesterday and stacked aliens like never before and still lost (I blame you min kärlek wiri), alltough I was mainly bunnyhopping the entire game and figurin' stuff out. King_yo too stronk.
Onto the feedback:
I like the sharp skulk movement and acceleration from side to side, it's like NS1 yayy! Still need alot more playtime to figure out how to effectively bhop and use it in a combat situation against competent marines, but I'm liking the direction its headed.
Fade also seems alot like in NS1 with the bhop being the main source of movement and blink to gain momentum to it, however, if this change is to stay, my suggestion is to add a little bit of acceleration to the blink, it seems kinda slow right now to get the bhop rolling. Didn't get a chance to test shadowstep in combat, but I like the idea of nerfing the SS + dbl jump and increasing skillful movement by other means (maybe even try out the focus uppgrade? WHO KNOWS? IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA).
No glancing bites
Can't really cast my final judgement until I have properly tested everything. This mod is the way of the future.
Also, can anyone point me in the right direction where I can buy a mousewheel that allows me to bind jump to it? Please menumod, come back, we miss you.
So many better ways than all the "lets shit on cara" suggestions I've read so far, this isn't a fucking MOBA, you don't have 90+ other aspects of the game to power creep and save your inability to balance anything properly. This mod is influenced by nothing but masochists, there's probably a very good reason(s) why no BT server in the world is filling up on it's own accord right now and needs 5-10 people to babysit in it for an hour.
@Agiel
There are alot of people in this thread who have played the mod months ago and are still trying to pass their opinion on it. I don't think they are aware that it is constantly fluctuating or they have just simply not read the notes on the changes.
They are easy to pick out :P
It would be interesting if alien structures and lifeforms have an initial resistance against fire in form of their armor (less damage from fire sources) before taking the actual increased damage from being a "flammable" structure. You could also expand it so that the DoT effect is shorter while the structure still has it's carapace, giving matured cysts with armor a little protection against the flamethrower "drive-by" by requiring to use it longer on them.
It would also require more synergy with the rest of the team when using flamethrowers: other marines need to kill the armor off first with their bullet weapons before the flamethrower can start to finish them off unless he wants to spend more time and ammo than necessary on burning through the carapace himself. This would also help to push the flamethrower a little back to it's support role after all the buffs it received.
And it would balance it a bit more against higher lifeforms.
edit: All the other abilities are a decision between the two, when I look at phantom or aura, I think about what class I'm playing for a second and see which would be better to go off of, aura is really awesome to have as an onos, while phantom is really awesome to have as a lerk/fade well.. both can be awesome
Same goes for adrenaline/celerity, however that's more class dependant.. like I see no reason to go celerity on a fade, while it's mandatory for an onos; maybe some celerity tweaking can be done as well?
- Something that reduces the cumulated damage that you take in a split second after the first hit by a set percentage (60-70%?) and is on a cooldown (7-10 seconds) then.
In other words: it provides protection against the burst damage of all Shotgun shells hitting you at once or a strong Railgun blast hitting you or a single Grenade explosion. But it is rather useless against rapid fire weapons like the standard Assault Rifle or Minigun because it will only block the first 1-2 bullets since the damage comes over a longer period of time. It might work well to counter fast Pistol shooters as well and force them to slow down instead of using scripts.
- A carapace that works like an Overheal: your armor charges up to the usual Carapace upgrade amount from healing due to a Crag or Gorge (or Hive) and will slowly diminish back to the unupgraded value while you are out of healing range. So basically this enables the option for you to be overhealed. Though this upgrade might be redundant if Gorges are ever supposed to get a built-in Overheal functionality.
- An ability that activates when the lifeform's HP drop below a set percentage and increase the lifeform's stats like attack rate and speed as long as it's below that percentage. It is a risky perk because it doesn't offer any bonus until you are actually close to losing your lifeform. But then it can make the difference between winning and losing a fight. And it can be used tactically by surviving a fight with low HP and then hunting RTs in this more vulnerable state for the benefit of having an increased attack rate to make them go down faster.
An idea I've been toying around with is kinda like this. It's something that's similar to the Immortal's shields from SC2. While the additional armor from carapace exists, the alien takes a flat amount of damage per attack. It would be useless against weapons that have lower damage, but high ROF like the LMG or FT, but would help supremely against weapons that utilize burst damage like the SG or GL. Not sure how well it would work, but just putting an idea out there.
Carapace does do its job well, but too well. The game needs more interesting alternatives than Carapace every game but the game is designed around it. A fair replacement is needed.
Crag path gets Absorption (melee-range damage to organic targets heals the user; kills give an extra heal and energy bonus) and Reactive Armor (damage that would have killed you is reduced by 50%) as replacements for Carapace.
Shift path gets Survivalist (increased attack rate, speed and energy regeneration when below 30% HP).
Shade path gets Focus (increased damage, reduced attack rate).
For marines to get health they have two options
1) medpack
2) armory
For armor, they require a welder or a mac, or when they get an armor upgrade it automatically restores
For aliens
1) Hive
2) Gorge
3) Crag
4) Out of combat slowly regens
So imo regen can be removed and it can be replaced by another trait such as the higher damage per bite or something else which will make players decide between that and carapace, I don't think you can ever make a choice between extra overall damage taken to healing quicker, without making the regen more powerful to the carapace. The extra damage per bite is interesting, and can give specific roles, like having the focus skulks attack from the back while the cara skulks go from the front; also will help them later on when marines get more armor at the risk of having less overall health
I agree with the problem but IMO it's just another way that power nodes inherently don't work very well. Those solutions feel like weird unnatural additions to an already weird and unnatural system.
Curious. I see the intent behind this, but this brings some pretty scary implications once bile bomb is up. Anybody played a full round with these yet?
You can powerbuild a hive with 4 gorge, since they cost nothing.
With a drifter and a shift its instant up.
The idea behind it, is rly good.
But its to unbalanced at the moment and it needs some fixes for possible exploits.
- Gorge cost to 50 res.
- alien structures auto build rate is reduced by 50%
- gorges build 2 times faster
Bilebomb rushes of gorges will be an issue as well.
my suggestion: nerf bilebomb AOE and let the dmg of gorge not stack on buildings.