Was traveling through the vent under double today in Veil, saw two babblers running the other way. Out of curiosity I checked to see where their Gorge was. He was in Skylight >.>
AurOn2COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS!AustraliaJoin Date: 2012-01-13Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
you'd be amazed but im happy to say that babblers have saved me loads of times, against moronic marines, they pose a threat. for some reason, im on 10 hp, and he chooses to shoot babblurz at my feet.
Lurlz.
Make them better and increase their cost tbh, that way gorges also have a more significant and longer-lasting p.res sink than they do currently.
1. How much would you be willing to pay for something that dies in 1-2 shots?
2. How many shots should an AI unit that comes out in groups of 9 take?
3. How much would you be willing to pay for something that takes that many shots?
I feel that babblers are in a very bad place because of the above questions. I think they should be removed from the gorge or made free.
I think there are two main, current, fine, components of babbler mechanics: 1) They are a distraction for Marines, either visually, or with spent ammunition (but Marines are only going to shoot them if they pose some sort of threat. I'll let everyone else decide what that threat should be). 2) Additional armour when they are stuck to you, or your team mates, or even structures. That's it. That's all there really needs to be without dramatically upsetting the balance of the game. Behavioural distraction and additional body armour. It's fine. It's not complicated. Maybe needs a few minor tweaks, but it's essentially fine.
You forgot a THIRD and very important component of the Babblers: clearing those damn mines!!! In my opinion a very fast and cost effective ability until you have bile bomb.
Babbler armor is great. Tried it last night with a sympathetic gorgie, it is an awesome combination with fades. Fades generally get quickly into combat so the 20-30s time after which babbler fall off isnt a penalty for the quick moving fade. Extra armor helps a LOT against those shotgunners.
Some well thought out statements in this thread.
- I agree, that Babblers get ignored from marines and most gorges right now. (Even after the movement buff.)
- I also agree, that they can't be to strong. It would be overpowered and not fitting into a multiplayer game.
- The solution should be, to make them a threat to marines (something they need to bother with) without making them killer machines.
This means, increased damage can't be the solution. Vision- or movement-impairment would be hated by many. So what else is possible?
Personally I like the idea of babblers clinging to marines and doing damage over time. (The code is already partial there.) BUT you should be able to shake them off yourself. (Erratic mouse movement could be enough.) It would be better if a marine buddy would shoot them off of you, because they don't die when shaking them off and can cling to you again.
But at least you can decide when to counter this threat. This is different to other impairing alien treats. You could keep hunting this gorge while the babblers are clinging at you. And deal with them after the gorge. But you will take damage over time so you can't just ignore them forever like you can do now.
If babblers cost 15 pres, I would understand your point more. But they do not, they cost 3 pres and therefore they should not be able to do as much damage as even 1 mine. By the way, I'm not sure if you noticed but mines can't move, or chase an alien, or swarm him. A marine can't wear a mine on his back. A marine has to buy 15 pres for 3 mines making the investment a much bigger decision. Mines can easily be taken out by a lerk or gorge. 1 mine won't kill a skulk a lot of the time especially if he has carapace, you have to walk directly over it to die. Oh and by the way, the commander has to research mines and build an armory for a marine to buy them.
So your comparison of a passive defense tactic the marines have which cost 15 pres + tres to resarch, to a active offense unit the gorge can buy for 3 pres with no tres invested.. and you somehow think they two should be equally effective? One hydra costs 3 pres and it is just about as effective as 3 pres of babblers - so if you ask me I think their attack power is right where it should be.
This is taking the discussion on the wrong track, which is partly my fault as well. I did not intent to compare mines to babblers, as they are, as you already said, completely different things. I just wanted to point out (a bit smugly, I admit), that the whole "its absurd to be able to pay small amount of pres and be able seriously damage or kill enemy player around a corner" scenario already frequently happens with mines.
(I still would like to point out that you get 3 mines for 15 pres, giving you three chances to kill skulk or skulks and that babblers actually cost 13 pres, as you HAVE to evolve to gorge first, which costs 10 pres, unlike mines which can be bought by any marine. But fell free to disregard this as it is inconsequential to overall discussion which is to assess a worthiness of babblers, and not to compare them to mines)
In response to "what is the point of having a remote controlled bot.." the point is you can direct them to wherever you want, they are mobile vs a mine which is immobile. That is a HUGE advantage right there
But what will they do ONCE you direct them wherever you want them? Would you rather have a mine (I know, I KNOW! Sorry!) that would be able to chase skulks but would do 10 damage or one that stays in place but can kill or at least heavily damage one?
While I agree they should be more useful than they are now, I think buffing the attack is absolutely the wrong way to do it.
I think you misunderstood my argument somewhat. Babblers need a buff to their "threat level". That is self-evident, as their currently pose absolutely no threat to anything. That can be increased by increasing their attack, but also tweaking/improving their AI, adding status effects on their attack etc... To put it simply, a marine should be forced to react in some meaningful way when you unleash 3 pres worth of babblers on him. And no, running past/through babblers while ignoring them completely does not count.
It would be really stupid if 1 gorge could hold off 4-5 marines with a clog wall, 3 hydras and 3 babbler eggs.. the gorge is as I said, a support class, he is not tank, he should not be able to spawn a swarm of highly potent bite bugs, have 3 defensive spike towers, a protective wall, a self healing spray, etc that is too much power for a unit that only costs 10 pres to evolve to.
Gorge is already able to hold off a number of marines (the exact number depends on skill of the marines and the gorge). In fact the ability to hold an area against a superior force is roughly one of the three roles gorge is supposed to be able to perform( the other two are healing/speeding the growth of lifeforms and buildings and bilebomb respectively). Why couldn't babblers help with that? Besides did not you even suggest a buff to babblers that would help them to repel marines attacking the glorious gorge fort in your last post?
You have to consider the res spent on this stuff when weighing its effectiveness! Yes babblers suck but they cost 3 pres!! If you want them to be faster , smarter, and be able to take a poor-aim marine down they need to cost 15-20 pres for 3 eggs.
Babblers suck even for the meager expectation their low cost evokes. They would be completely underwhelming even if they were free. After all, Clogs are far more useful than Babblers and those are simply big dumb clumps of goo.
So far the only two uses I found for babblers are: the babbler shield, which is useful, but somewhat hard and unreliable to pull off without a disproportionate amount of communication for such a simple feature and if you need attack a building before second hive and bilebomb is up. Still you are pretty much sacrificing 3 pres to take down a single building slightly faster, and I suspect that simply plopping a hydra next to me would help just as much or more.
Fair enough - so lets stop comparing apples to oranges and consider just the babblers. I think we agree on the point that they should be more useful, but I also think they need to cost more, perhaps 5 pres per egg. If they cost that much, I would support making them nasty swarm bugs that can quickly surround a marine and do significant damage, if not kill him. They should also be able to clear out mines, and the first time they bite a marine his location should be revealed like a parasite.
I like the idea of Babblers being able to Parasite Marines. I would like it if they Prioritized unmarked marines then. It would be pretty cool if you could throw them in and mark most of the assaulting team. The fact that health packs cure parasite kind of makes this a little useless, but that would drain T-res then so would be a fair trade I guess. This would provide a little bit of utility to the Babblers without risking of being overpowered.
That is a good point Geekavenger, and has reminded me of something. An issue I have is that even though Babblers can see the marines, aliens can't see the marines through the babblers hive sight.
They appeared to work when I tried them, I threw a few at marines and the marines got a bit distracted by them for about five to seven seconds, which isn't bad for 2 pres.
But the problem is that that's kinda all you can do. It's like giving a smoke bomb to a guy with no arms. Yes he can create a distraction, but at the end of the distraction he's still headbutting you gently in the chest to try to capitalise on it.
Gorges don't really do enough damage to take advantage of babblers as a weapon. I can see maybe sending them in with skulks? But that's a very complicated way to make gorge skulk support more effective.
Basically they work, about as well as I think they really can without becoming effective weapons (and the gorge kinda can't have the ability to spawn his own skulk-equivalent to kill things for him) but the gorge can't make much use of them as a distraction.
It's like they're good, but on the wrong lifeform. Not sure what other lifeform you could put them on though.
Maybe you could synergise them with other gorge abilities? Like gob some bile bombs onto them and they can pass on a weaker version to marines/structures they attack? Or heal spray them and they give slight regen to whatever they stick to, as well as being able to build/heal structures the same way, from a distance too.
There was a suggestion somewhere that they should grab onto jetpackers and ground them, that'd be interesting, like the mini goombas from super mario 3.
Either that or some way to command them a bit better? Like being able to tell them to burrow into infestation and then call them out behind marines, or being able to tell them to form into little landmines that pop and hit like a spit ball when marines get too close.
There's a lot you could do with them without expanding too far beyond the idea of little gribbly things that follow gorges around.
Funidea: Make them some sort of big parasite. Once they hit an marine, they attach themself on him and do like every 5s 10 damage. The marine cant kill them obviously by himself and needs his teammembers/sentries to clear them off his back. Would obliterate lonely ramborines and gives another need for teammembers.
I'm gravitating towards the idea of babblers as a "harder" soft counter to weapons like shotguns and grenade launchers.
It would probably require a new damage type, something like "impact" damage or something, but it would be interesting if babblers took 50% reduced damage or so from shotguns and grenade launchers. That way, a level 2 weapon shotgunner wouldn't be death to countless scores of skulks, assuming there was a gorge nearby willing to help out with a little pres.
Currently, I feel as if Babblers are the 'worker ants' of the Kharaa species.
This gave me an idea, limit gorges to one set of three babblers, at a cost of 3 res.
Than give babblers the ability to attach to growing structures / evolving aliens to speed up build / evolve times. Babblers will be lost after evolving/growing is completed.
The first babbler to attach to a growing structure will give it an extra 1% to progress each 'tick', while the second and third babblers would give it an extra 0.5%.
Meanwhile, each babbler attached to a evolving Kharaa will speed it's progress by 1-1.5% each 'tick'.
You could only attach three babblers to a structure, with eggs allowing up to six.
I think it would give them some usefulness, as growing a Hive or evolving into an Onos takes time,
allowing gorges to lessen that time at the cost of a few Personal Resources would be interesting I feel.
I've been awake for twenty or so hours, so I'm sorry if this idea is actually really stupid.
I think it would be neat if the babblers just repeated whatever the gorge did. If he sprays, they release little sprays. If he bile bombs, they shoot little bile bombs. If he spits, they spit. It would remove the need for them to be AI controlled beyond pathing to follow the gorge around. They would still die quickly in combat, but allow the gorge to spend res for a boost in DPS or healing rate.
Ultimately, I think this thread should focus on one thing, the vast majority of players find the babblers fairly useless. They either need to be made useful or just removed. There's no point in giving new players something to distract them from their role as a gorge and waste their resources on. I applaud people for some of their creative uses, like clearing mines, but as its been said, the mechanics should be intuitive.
My first instinct when trying them out was to lunch a bait ball at a single marine and expect him to at least flee. He didn't. He didn't even seem slowed down. My only pleasant result was lunching them at an exo suit who was solo.
The logic that they are a starting ability and thus should be mostly useless has reoccurred a few times in the thread. I find that argument kind of silly from a development standpoint.
It really feels like everyone wants to use a vegetable peeler to cut a steak. They work fine as is, as a distraction, some minor additional damage, and temporary armor buff. Cheap early game item works exactly as expected.
Honestly the real problem with babblers (IMHO) is the bait ball. Get rid of it and just have the gorge spit act as a tag for the target. If the gorge doesn't hit, babblers don't go anywhere. If he does hit, they go off running at whatever he hit, unless they detect that the target is not attainable. (like a jetpacker) Toss in a range limit (so they don't run through the whole map to chase something) and then call it a day.
On the flipside, also allow babblers to be a defensive tool as well. If the gorge has babblers with him and is attacked, babblers attack the person attacking the gorge.
I'm fine with the p-res cost of babblers when you compare to other things. The 3 p-res you pay for 9 babblers isn't excessive if they actually are USEFUL.
I really like the idea of babblers that cling to marines and needs to be shaken away by shaking mouse wildly. Clinging babblers should also make marine's crosshair to shake and shaking increases as more babblers jump on him. It should also take more time to shake them off, if there's many of them. This way babblers could serve as a defense mechanism since now lone gorge outside his defense lines vs marine always ends predictably. It would also make them more of a threat because no marine wants to lose his pinpoint perfect accuracy. Especially when trying to shoot a jumping skulk. Babblers' damage should be minimal since it wouldn't be the main reason to use them. Gorges have always been annoying (in a good way) and this would be another way to piss marines off.
Ps: Big no to babbler timer!
The other day a friendly gorge kept creating babblers and attaching them to my fade. I think it really made all the difference in my being able to defend East Wing while the rest of the Aliens assaulted locker rooms.
The gorge provided me with health + extra armor over a five to seven minute period.
Selfless support gorges are one of the things I love about NS2. Babblers are another tool for them to distract and provide armor.
I wish we could stick the babbler egg sack on to other aliens. That way we (the gorge and other alien) dont need to wait for babblers to hatch, to throw the babbler ball, and wait for the babblers to move.
Honestly the real problem with babblers (IMHO) is the bait ball. Get rid of it and just have the gorge spit act as a tag for the target. If the gorge doesn't hit, babblers don't go anywhere. If he does hit, they go off running at whatever he hit, unless they detect that the target is not attainable. (like a jetpacker) Toss in a range limit (so they don't run through the whole map to chase something) and then call it a day.
On the flipside, also allow babblers to be a defensive tool as well. If the gorge has babblers with him and is attacked, babblers attack the person attacking the gorge.
I'm fine with the p-res cost of babblers when you compare to other things. The 3 p-res you pay for 9 babblers isn't excessive if they actually are USEFUL.
I like the simplicity of this.
Babblers automatically follow gorge wherever he moves.
Babblers automatically attack anything hit with gorge spit if it is in certain range.
Babblers automatically attack any enemy that comes to certain vicinity of gorge
Babblers automatically attach to any life-form that is hit by gorge healspray.
Babblers automatically attach to gorge if he uses healspray without hitting another lifeform (ie. self-heal)
The bait-ball is definitely one of the problem with babblers. Hitting a marine with bait-ball is almost impossible, but without a direct hit, babblers don't really attack the targets outside of a gentle nibble here and there.
Yeah, the control mechanism is all that is wrong about Babblers in the first place to make them a viable tool in combat. It just takes too much micromanagement to get them out somewhere and then the result is too little.
The controls mentioned in the post above would be too prone to accidents, though. What if you want to heal someone without attaching babblers to him? What if you want to attack someone without sending Babblers there? What if you accidentally miss a hit and it hits something else far away and Babblers would run to their doom trying to get there?
I think bait-ball should work same way as bile bomb, but with longer range. It would splash pheromones on large radius and babblers would attack any marine hit, going for the closest first. If splash drenched both marines and structures, marines would be first in priority, of course. If splash hit only structures, babblers would attack closest structure first, unless gorge targeted a specific structure with his/her crosshair. Same with marines. If jetpack -marine was targeted babblers would simply follow him on the ground until he eventually lands. Double-tapping 4 would call them back (they should zig-zag a bit to make it harder for marines to snipe them). Babblers wouldn't come back automatically, but would stay in the target spot (preferably silently) until called. That way it would be possible to make babbler traps and make it easier to get them close to marines. Kharaa -version of mines :P Maybe they could be ordered on ceilings and they would drop on top of the first unlucky marine walking below them? ...and maybe clinging babblers could make jetpack use more fuel proportionally to the amount of babblers flying around with the marine while babbling merrily and nibbling gently.
Babblers are not useless, they made me start using the rifle bash again ;-) After a position is secured, I run around and squash the little helpless buggers, one by one.
I really like the idea of a babbler mine. It could cost something like 5 res (Same as marine mine),would replace babbler eggs and could be placed on walls and when mature, if a marine came nearby it would explode, splatter the acid effect on his screen and the babblers would try to jump onto anything nearby like they do now but more aggressive, and latch on, dealing around 10 dmg per second each and sticking on the marine and not letting go untill they die. they could be removed by a teamate, or swinging your axe in the air, each swipe killing one babbler. The mine would probably release something like 4 babblers (4 seconds to kill stock marine) the babblers one hatched from mine that didnt latch on (Marine died early) would act like normal babblers and follow except do the special latch on attack against marines. they would attack exosuits and other structures as they do now, and mine could be detonated prematuraly by gorge to release babblers as they act now but still with special latch on ability. Killing the mine as a marine with any weapon will not release babblers, just the blinding goo effect to anyone nearby.
I would like to have babblers as biomass 8 upgrade. And make them freaking devastating. Little mad glass cannons.
Webs should therefor be available at 5 or 6 biomass.
Comments
Was traveling through the vent under double today in Veil, saw two babblers running the other way. Out of curiosity I checked to see where their Gorge was. He was in Skylight >.>
Lurlz.
1. How much would you be willing to pay for something that dies in 1-2 shots?
2. How many shots should an AI unit that comes out in groups of 9 take?
3. How much would you be willing to pay for something that takes that many shots?
I feel that babblers are in a very bad place because of the above questions. I think they should be removed from the gorge or made free.
You forgot a THIRD and very important component of the Babblers: clearing those damn mines!!! In my opinion a very fast and cost effective ability until you have bile bomb.
- I agree, that Babblers get ignored from marines and most gorges right now. (Even after the movement buff.)
- I also agree, that they can't be to strong. It would be overpowered and not fitting into a multiplayer game.
- The solution should be, to make them a threat to marines (something they need to bother with) without making them killer machines.
This means, increased damage can't be the solution. Vision- or movement-impairment would be hated by many. So what else is possible?
Personally I like the idea of babblers clinging to marines and doing damage over time. (The code is already partial there.) BUT you should be able to shake them off yourself. (Erratic mouse movement could be enough.) It would be better if a marine buddy would shoot them off of you, because they don't die when shaking them off and can cling to you again.
But at least you can decide when to counter this threat. This is different to other impairing alien treats. You could keep hunting this gorge while the babblers are clinging at you. And deal with them after the gorge. But you will take damage over time so you can't just ignore them forever like you can do now.
Fair enough - so lets stop comparing apples to oranges and consider just the babblers. I think we agree on the point that they should be more useful, but I also think they need to cost more, perhaps 5 pres per egg. If they cost that much, I would support making them nasty swarm bugs that can quickly surround a marine and do significant damage, if not kill him. They should also be able to clear out mines, and the first time they bite a marine his location should be revealed like a parasite.
They should work like drifters in that way.
They appeared to work when I tried them, I threw a few at marines and the marines got a bit distracted by them for about five to seven seconds, which isn't bad for 2 pres.
But the problem is that that's kinda all you can do. It's like giving a smoke bomb to a guy with no arms. Yes he can create a distraction, but at the end of the distraction he's still headbutting you gently in the chest to try to capitalise on it.
Gorges don't really do enough damage to take advantage of babblers as a weapon. I can see maybe sending them in with skulks? But that's a very complicated way to make gorge skulk support more effective.
Basically they work, about as well as I think they really can without becoming effective weapons (and the gorge kinda can't have the ability to spawn his own skulk-equivalent to kill things for him) but the gorge can't make much use of them as a distraction.
It's like they're good, but on the wrong lifeform. Not sure what other lifeform you could put them on though.
Maybe you could synergise them with other gorge abilities? Like gob some bile bombs onto them and they can pass on a weaker version to marines/structures they attack? Or heal spray them and they give slight regen to whatever they stick to, as well as being able to build/heal structures the same way, from a distance too.
There was a suggestion somewhere that they should grab onto jetpackers and ground them, that'd be interesting, like the mini goombas from super mario 3.
Either that or some way to command them a bit better? Like being able to tell them to burrow into infestation and then call them out behind marines, or being able to tell them to form into little landmines that pop and hit like a spit ball when marines get too close.
There's a lot you could do with them without expanding too far beyond the idea of little gribbly things that follow gorges around.
It would probably require a new damage type, something like "impact" damage or something, but it would be interesting if babblers took 50% reduced damage or so from shotguns and grenade launchers. That way, a level 2 weapon shotgunner wouldn't be death to countless scores of skulks, assuming there was a gorge nearby willing to help out with a little pres.
This gave me an idea, limit gorges to one set of three babblers, at a cost of 3 res.
Than give babblers the ability to attach to growing structures / evolving aliens to speed up build / evolve times. Babblers will be lost after evolving/growing is completed.
The first babbler to attach to a growing structure will give it an extra 1% to progress each 'tick', while the second and third babblers would give it an extra 0.5%.
Meanwhile, each babbler attached to a evolving Kharaa will speed it's progress by 1-1.5% each 'tick'.
You could only attach three babblers to a structure, with eggs allowing up to six.
I think it would give them some usefulness, as growing a Hive or evolving into an Onos takes time,
allowing gorges to lessen that time at the cost of a few Personal Resources would be interesting I feel.
I've been awake for twenty or so hours, so I'm sorry if this idea is actually really stupid.
Ultimately, I think this thread should focus on one thing, the vast majority of players find the babblers fairly useless. They either need to be made useful or just removed. There's no point in giving new players something to distract them from their role as a gorge and waste their resources on. I applaud people for some of their creative uses, like clearing mines, but as its been said, the mechanics should be intuitive.
My first instinct when trying them out was to lunch a bait ball at a single marine and expect him to at least flee. He didn't. He didn't even seem slowed down. My only pleasant result was lunching them at an exo suit who was solo.
The logic that they are a starting ability and thus should be mostly useless has reoccurred a few times in the thread. I find that argument kind of silly from a development standpoint.
On the flipside, also allow babblers to be a defensive tool as well. If the gorge has babblers with him and is attacked, babblers attack the person attacking the gorge.
I'm fine with the p-res cost of babblers when you compare to other things. The 3 p-res you pay for 9 babblers isn't excessive if they actually are USEFUL.
Ps: Big no to babbler timer!
The gorge provided me with health + extra armor over a five to seven minute period.
Selfless support gorges are one of the things I love about NS2. Babblers are another tool for them to distract and provide armor.
Babblers on their own are (aesthetically) awesome.
Babblers stuck to marines would probably look amazing. GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME!!
I like the simplicity of this.
Babblers automatically follow gorge wherever he moves.
Babblers automatically attack anything hit with gorge spit if it is in certain range.
Babblers automatically attack any enemy that comes to certain vicinity of gorge
Babblers automatically attach to any life-form that is hit by gorge healspray.
Babblers automatically attach to gorge if he uses healspray without hitting another lifeform (ie. self-heal)
The bait-ball is definitely one of the problem with babblers. Hitting a marine with bait-ball is almost impossible, but without a direct hit, babblers don't really attack the targets outside of a gentle nibble here and there.
The controls mentioned in the post above would be too prone to accidents, though. What if you want to heal someone without attaching babblers to him? What if you want to attack someone without sending Babblers there? What if you accidentally miss a hit and it hits something else far away and Babblers would run to their doom trying to get there?
Webs should therefor be available at 5 or 6 biomass.