Balance Issues ?
HamNibble
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9600Members
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9600Members
I have been playing alot of NS lately and the more I play it seems the Aliens have become much too powerfull. The fact that usually newer players tend to join the marines (mainly because the marines are less complicated to learn) when they start playing NS plays a large part in that but I don't believe that is the only reason. Maybe it's the fact that it's much tougher for marines to collect resources or the fact that the resources build up too slowly in the beginning of the game. While the marines are trying to secure a 3rd resource supply the aliens are securing their second hive which gives them the very powerful fade. The only reason I'm saying this is because I love to play marines but it's almost not fun to play them anymore due to the fact that it turns into an alien slaughter 9 times out of 10. You end up spending the last 20 - 30 minutes of a game defending your base even though you know the game is over already. I finally took on the task of learning to play alien a week or so ago (mainly because I'm tired of being on the losing team all the time) and I found that it is very easy to win once you get the fade and some defense chambers in some good locations.
Does anyone else feel this way? Are there any plans in future releases to balance this game a little more? It's a great game but it would be even better if the marines could win a little more often. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Does anyone else feel this way? Are there any plans in future releases to balance this game a little more? It's a great game but it would be even better if the marines could win a little more often. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
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Comments
No, just kidding. In the first couple of weeks of play it seemed like the marines never took the first hive fast enough. Now everyone does that but they expect that once that happens victory is next. You can't just sit on your laurels, you have to keep pushing the aliens back.
HamNibble: If you hadn't picked up on it, this has been said again and again and again. If you're feeling overpowered on either side, you aren't using proper tactics and teamwork. Marines should be getting HMGs and Heavy Armor about the time the second hive is up, and they should have the third hive already taken and turreted. The rest is just a battle of attrition, slowly hacking away at the enemy's defenses and taking their resource nozzles while they do the same to you. And a single marine isn't meant to take on a fade; you should be going out in teams of 2-4 (more for vital locations like hives or strategically important resource nodes), which means death to most fades, even with LMGs. The game is pretty much balanced right now, excepting some bugs that will be fixed shortly. Most games come down to how well you played as a team and followed your commander's orders.
in its current form the game will become "balanced" when peeps learn how to command and what role they need to play when marines. that's about it.
right now as alien i just go around hopping, biting, killing, setting up a few towers here and there and boom, i'm an onos or fade and start wrecking sh*t. unless the teams are very unbalanced number wise or the skill level is very very uneven, aliens do feel really easy to play as.
don't get me wrong marines are fun too but they are usually no walk in the park.
I mean, I can kill one HMG/HA on my own as a Fade (and I like to think I can do Fade well) but two results in instant death.
But for the average person (who is Okay at both, I know I suck as Marine) a HMG/HA seems INSANE when you're a Fade, where it's a piece of p*ss for the Marine in reverse.
(I won't even go into HA once it hits level 3)
So, maybe likewise, we should have the armour rules sorted? Maybe a % of 'critical hits' to allow us Fades to deal with HA-3's?
Here's a litte example why.
In order to get basic heavy armor, you need and infantry portal, an armory, an arms lab, a prototype lab upgraded to heavy armor, and the actual armor.
RP-wise, that's 15+25+50+50+45=185+20 each.
To get level three carapace, you need a gorge, and three defense chambers or:
13+14+14+14=55+2 each.
So the total cost for heavy armor is given by the equation
(185/T)+20T
and carapace is
(55/T)+2T
Where T is the total number of units.
This means that for 5 units of first-level heavy armor, the total cost is
(185/5)+20(5)=137.
And for 5 units of level 3 carapace, the cost is
(55/5)+2(5)=21.
Quite a difference, huh?
When you add to that the fact that the commander must manually spawn each HA while it's self-given/automatic for the aliens and <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=11777&hl=armor,and,massive+bug' target='_blank'>this</a>, the Corps is off to a bad start.
(185/5)+20(5)=137.
And for 5 units of level 3 carapace, the cost is
(55/5)+2(5)=21.
Quite a difference, huh?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
this isnt right at all, ... as a marine you got a mainly range advantage, even against fades!
but i most cases the wekest link is the commander 'cos he cant arrange a defense, building and equipment at one time. so he s always very occupated (or ow this word is called, he got much to do <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> )! if a second commander could join and he put only equipment out it quold b4e quite worse for the aliens!!!
1. That's not really true; the acid rocket is a perfectly accurate long-distance weapon, and the spikes are about as powerful as the shotgun, but accurate, and the only gun with decent range is the pistol, which is not exactly a powerhouse.
2. That's irrelevant.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->but i most cases the wekest link is the commander 'cos he cant arrange a defense, building and equipment at one time. so he s always very occupated (or ow this word is called, he got much to do )! if a second commander could join and he put only equipment out it quold b4e quite worse for the aliens!!! <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Once again, that has no bearing on this.
Adding HA to a marine means he goes from two skulk bites to about 9. More than four times.
They are not comparable.
Can the marines get armor in 5 minutes?With skulks rambo-rushing everytime they try to setup outposts?No.It doesnt help that the average ping for a 16 player server now is 500 ms,and that means skulks teleport all around,and you KNOW how hard it is to kill a teleporting skulk as a marine.....
The only reason i see marine wins on my local servers now are because the aliens dont bother to get 2nd hive,they just try to build off chambers at marine base or they have no gorgs at all....just now on a game of hera we would DEFINATELY have lost if they had good gorgs because it took us ages to get 4 outposts,HA and shotguns(i see HMGs as a waste of res).I didnt time how long it was but it had to be at least 30 mintues......
Marines need LOTS of resources to outfit properly to kill fades.
Oh i see.....normal un-upgraded marines can kill a single fade if they work together in teams of 2-4?Man the fade must be REALLY stupid not to aim with acid rockets to cause splash damage.....i've killed 5 full upgraded power armored marines with hmgs by myself as a fade before with acid rocket.....you have NO idea how easy it was.
I think marines are a bit dis-advantaged now.......
this isnt right at all, ... as a marine you got a mainly range advantage, even against fades!
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. Unless you have a GL, you want to fight Fades at about 3-5 paces.
Standing in a rain of acid rockets firing HMG clips at long range on a Fade supported by a few defense chambers is futile.
However, I find a group of three marines, two with HMG and one with a GL, all in HA and with welders, is able to advance/hold vs most any kind of two-hive aliens. Though keeping the GL guy in ammo is costly... and nasty aliens can still play rough tricks - a swooping lerk dropping on you in an umbra cloud, followed by two Fades blinking into close combat... *shudder*. Fortunately, most aliens haven't needed to advance beyond the acid rocket spamming, so they don't know how to use Fades/Lerks fully.
Adding HA to a marine means he goes from two skulk bites to about 9. More than four times.
They are not comparable.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And that justifies a resource difference of 6.5 times? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
It's ridiculous. Twice the protection of carapace, at only 7 times the cost!
Haven't you people thought that the teams CANNOT be compared to each other because they are ENTIRELY different. Yes, they both have defensive structures, and people have to build them, but the similarities stop there. Therefore, all you people comparing carapace to heavy armor are doing nothing at all. If you want to compare something to carapace, it should be the marine armor upgrades, and not even that, because both teams are different.
The reason why marines win less than the aliens on public servers isn't because the mod is unbalanced, its because people don't know how to work properly as a team. I myself have won a lot of times with the marines these days (Yes, even after 1.02) and when i lose, it is because most of my team tries to go out and try to kill aliens instead of working as a team. People dont seem to realize that in order to play and win as a marine you need a GOOD team. Not skillwise, but you need intelligent teammates, people who follow orders, people who try to weld each other when they have heavy armor in order not to get killed and not to lose those resources spent on a single marine.
You can say whatever you want, but one thing i have found to be true is that most people who play HL mods do not know how to work as a team. Sure, clans may do well, but i usually see the marine losses on pubs, not private servers. Winning requires teamwork, the teams are balanced only if people learn to work as a team, you cant compare one side to the other because they are entirely different and each requires a different skill in order to win. Aliens require raw skill and a basic level of teamwork, which is how they meant it to be. Marines have a commander that tells them what to do, and if they work with him, the commander can be more devastating than the entire alien team.
The solution? WORK AS A TEAM. You wont, and i repeat, will not win unless you learn how to work as a team. Which means that yes, you actually have to try and learn, not just go out and shoot whatever you see. In fact, most experienced NS players that play as marines and even aliens KNOW that you cant go around shooting everything you see and hope to kill it. Sometimes you need to hide, build siege turrets, and not let the enemy know you are nearby by attacking that lone Resource Tower sitting on a node while you build.
Frankly, im tired of seeing so many people complain about balance when there is nothing to fix. This game was playtested for months, you cant expect to know if its balanced or not by just playing for a couple of weeks.
These are the major problems right now,simple and the bottomline,nothing else.
With only two hives the aliens can wipe out the marines, there is something wrong with this and it is deffinetely not the marine players faults.
grenades have been made to not hit enemies through walls, HOWEVER, spores from the lerks can go through anything. Whats your defense on that subject. Everyone was complaining of grenades and now spores so why don't the spores get tweaked int the next pacth?
What I find strange is that a lone alien can rebuild a hive but the marines, once they lose their CC, are toast. Omg thats not unbalanced to you.
I was the anti unbalanced thread person a few weeks ago but now after playing for hours on end, their is something wrong...It is simply that the aliens were tweaked too much due to people complaining that aliens didn;t have a chance in the release version.
Now everyday people are learning new things like parasites being able to open doors, and people being able to transfer resources in aliens, which is only making tha ealiens more powerful since the gameplay was actually balanced in 1.0 with the exeption of the resource bug in marines. The playtesters were absolutely right and now I don't know what you guys are going to do to even it again, and don't tell me its uneven because thats an insult to over half of this community.
I have been playing games where we come so so close too winning but something really lame like the aliens being able to shoot through the glass at cc in Hera comes up and the round is crap. There is something wrong obviously when people prepare too lose when they see the first Fade kill for its really true.
If you say marines use teamwork to win then point me to some of the server Ip's your playing on to prove that marines can win effectively. Don't tell lies, Showing me where you Pro balance people play will help me prove you guys are simply lying because you can't stand the unbalanced threads.
I'm not even mad at the dev team about all this. I'm mainly sad and confused by losing all the time. If you hadn't already noticed, the gorges resources never really die down. Since it takes a grenade launcher a full supply of ammo to take out 3 offense towers with defensive chambers healing them from behind, it is really just impossible to get by alien growth. And now I have to say something aboutt he seige turret which has been crap 75% of the time for the strange reason that it will not destroy some alien towers. WTF, all we hear about are alien players posting how seige is too powerful. The truth is that there is something wrong with seige for the animation is borked and simple lone alien structures are not being taken out by a quad of seiges. I ahve seen 4 seiges built next to a wall and on the other side were alien offense chambers(no defense chambers to heal them) and the four seiges don't do any damage whatsoever to the offensive chambers. You don't think something is wrong here?
Omg its 6:30 Am and I've been up all night and since this morning playing and I am convinced. You people can stop already with the cosmetic makeup of NS gameplay issues. Damn I shouldn't be playing NS anymore because it causes me to lose control of myself.
Remember I was the same one who posted the thread about a fun socal game with another NS player and the reccomend a commander thread. This post obviously shows my Tired and exhausted side.
And do you seriously think all i do is post on these forums? I am an avid NS player even though my system barely meets the minimum requirements for NS and i still manage to beat most people. The fact that the marine side requires teamwork will never go away no matter how much you whine and complain about it.
Understand this: Marines were NOT meant to be played defensively, on the contrary, a marine team that always plays on the defensive is bound to lose. The reason you people are losing so much is due to lack of good strategies. The teamwork could be there, im not saying you arent playing as a team. But it is possible you are not using the correct strategy to beat the aliens. If the aliens rush you, and you let them keep you pinned down, you ARE going to lose. Plain and simple. Why? Because the aliens can build and attack at the same time, while youre busy trying to use the strategies that USED to work in 1.0, the aliens are coming up with new ones. Turret forests are USELESS after the aliens have 2 hives. Marines are not defensive, same as aliens. The defensive buildings are there to protect from the early game and prevent the destruction of bases in little time. I keep going on to pubs and all i see is commanders placing over 10 turrets, 10 TURRETS to try to defend a base against fades that are just throwing acid rockets at turrets that arent in range to shoot them. Yet the commander keeps on trying to use turrets to kill them. This in turn produces a shortage of resources because the commander built over 15 turrets and used all of the team's resources to build them, leaving the marines still armed with lmgs and basic armor and weapon upgrades (none) to fight off fades.
I have yet to see any commander build turrets forests in the main base on the servers i play on. 2 or 3 turrets are there by the end of the game, bu thats about it. Play the game, and play it right, before trying to flame anyone or complain about balance. You can't say its unbalanced when you had people test this mod for months before release. How long have you been playing it?
And please, dont take this personally. The last thing these forums need is yet another flame war. We are a mature and educated community, please try to act like one.
4 members of my clan were on marines so it was not a question of"newbie players".....all the alien team had was a smart gorg who saved up for 2nd hive.
Within 20 minutes from game start,we had fades blowing up all our outposts up and bombarding our main base.....naturally we lost.
I still dont know why aliens can get fade so fast compared to marines getting HA + shotgun/HMG.
You may be right. But at what point do you think that people are going to work
together? When I pop on a server for a few hours and some guy is having fun
scouting, ignoring commands, etc...
Guess what? it's not gonna change. Your whole argument is based on the premise
that the marines just need to pull together. It's not gonna happen. You always have
one or two jerks on the team. That's a fact of playing games on the net! And that
means when I'm playing on the net (not in a tournament) I'm gonna win as an alien
and lose as a marine 95% of the time.
Here's another argument for you: If we all just work together we can end war and
world hunger tomorrow. Yea, we could, but it ain't gonna happen.
So yes, the aliens are too powerful. I played 6 games last night. Won 3 as an alien,
lost 3 as a marine. And that's the way it's gonna stay til they do a little bit of
balancing with the next patch.
Needless to say, i wont argue anymore. It is your opinion and i will respect it. Unlike many of the people here who are turning this into a personal thing.
Because HA/HMG generally is more effective? Especially for newer players. And if you get equal level players, the money is generally on the HMGer...
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Here's another argument for you: If we all just work together we can end war and
world hunger tomorrow. Yea, we could, but it ain't gonna happen.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So because you won't work together, the team should be made more powerful? Well, that's another copy of Q3 sold as far as I'm concerned.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->What I find strange is that a lone alien can rebuild a hive but the marines, once they lose their CC, are toast. Omg thats not unbalanced to you. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A CC is rather harder to deal with than a Hive in general, as aliens (due to there being 3 hives) will be scattered, whilst marines find it quite easy to defend CC. And it's not like that lone alien really has much chance of rebuilding the hive.
Sorry to pick holes, but all 3 of those quotes had some major ones. Yes, there are balance issues & tweaks needed, and I'm sure the team are doing those as fast as they can. But there's as many 'broken' things for Aliens as there are for Marines.
I don't agree Rico m8, aliens are just as much about teamwork. The aliens will tend to travel independantly, but good teams react as one body when it comes to threats. I.E in any attack or defense, there should be several aliens progressing to the site (imagine Skulks/Fades as anitbodies, and the whole force as the body) in order to defend, whilst the healing agents (Gorges) repair the damage. Without either of those factors, the body will sicken.
The only reason i see marine wins on my local servers now are because the aliens dont bother to get 2nd hive,they just try to build off chambers at marine base or they have no gorgs at all....just now on a game of hera we would DEFINATELY have lost if they had good gorgs because it took us ages to get 4 outposts,HA and shotguns(i see HMGs as a waste of res).I didnt time how long it was but it had to be at least 30 mintues......
Marines need LOTS of resources to outfit properly to kill fades.
Oh i see.....normal un-upgraded marines can kill a single fade if they work together in teams of 2-4?Man the fade must be REALLY stupid not to aim with acid rockets to cause splash damage.....i've killed 5 full upgraded power armored marines with hmgs by myself as a fade before with acid rocket.....you have NO idea how easy it was.
I think marines are a bit dis-advantaged now.......<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What the hell are those servers running on? 56Ks? I don't even touch servers where my ping is over 80 on the server list screen, and most of the time my ping is around 40-70 in the game. And no, I don't only play on one or two über servers.
The only reasons aliens win in the public games on the servers I play on is because the marines don't work together or have a crappy commander/commander trouble in general. If the marines actually work as a team and don't spend too many resources towering in, they win.
There is no shortage of gorges around the place where I play, on the contrary, every single newbie seems to flock to the gorge side of the force and then I have to shout at them for a loong time before they finally understand they shouldn't be gorges if they don't have ANY idea how to play. It's so nice having an 8 player team of which 6 are gorges and 2 keep asking "how do u build stuff?!?!" or "Why don't I get res?!?!?!?" on the global chat...
Aliens need a lot of resources to properly outfit to get fades. Namely 80 for hive+50 (fade+upgrades) for every person. What do the marines need? HA/HMG (or shotty or GL), my my, 50 RP per person, and a whopping 85 for the research (35 for amory, 50 for heavy).
I think the teams are balanced as long as the marines don't bother with the ultra lame tactics (huge turret farms, jetpacking into hives via the vents, sieging from halfway across the map).
Buddy boy with the math put it best
I've played with Grendel, a guy that is, by my standards, probably the best NS player in the world, go check your www.csports.net too, he's almost always #1 there too. Me and Grendel as Aliens work together, just me and him on some pub, let's say a 16 player server with no lag, so 8 on 8, within 7 to 8 minutes, exactly, we can have the 2nd AND 3rd hive up. Because here's a little Alien Resources 101 for all you people who don't know it yet. When an alien caps his resources, and reaches say 33/33, he longer collects any RP's. All RP's he would normally collect, go right to the Gorge. What does this cause? Rich **obscenity** Gorge. Fat Boy's with RP's compiled from Swiss Bank Accounts. Can you say, honestly, you can have, oh let's say within 15 minutes, 1 hive locked down, properly defend, phase gated with main base for easy access, with HMG/HA researched and equipped on 3 marines?
No, you can't, because it's impossible. It simply is too expensive. And it's not so much a problem in the cost, the problem comes back to the fact you shouldn't need to REACH the TOP OF THE MARINE TECH TREE Just to be able to compete against a lowly 2nd Hive Alien, the Fade.
lost 3 as a marine. And that's the way it's gonna stay til they do a little bit of
balancing with the next patch.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(Warning, long and a bit rambling. But on topic I hope.)
Well, I just now played and won my first game as commander where I had the command chair for the whole game. I was always too intimidated before, but since nobody wanted the comm I took it.
Marines WILL work together if the commander keeps them all informed. I don't even have voice comm and my marines (EVEN THE RAMBOS) came together. Yes some marines still complained or whined for equipment. It wasn't a big deal to ignore them. I had enough happy marines that I wasn't ejected.
When we took the first hive in Subspace Array, I had a bug where I couldn't drop weapons in the hive. I told my marines this as soon as I noticed the problem, and explained that all gear would drop in the mess hall. That worked out great, because I had all the Rambos defending the best chokepoint on the map.
When marines started losing focus and wandering, I rounded them up one by one and gave them waypoints.
When people died because I couldn't be everywhere dropping health packs and ammo, I tried to give them full gear and a waypoint when they spawned. Morale is important in this game, whether it's hardcoded or not.
When a Rambo insisted on a resource nozzle in some far off place on the map, I dropped it and then gave him a waypoint to get the heck out of there. No turrets for Rambo, just get out and let the aliens be distracted by an unguarded resource if they find it. That's one less alien defending the hives.
I also had some great leaders on the field. It doesn't take much, just tell the new marines to follow you and stick together. I love those marines who handle tactics. It makes all the difference. The command console isn't good for tactics. And marines aren't like units in RTS games. They don't really need to be micromanaged all day.
The aliens even had 3 hives for a short time. I tried to stay calm and placed a backup CC in our best turret farm. Then I gave all my guys waypoints to the siege point for a hive, and told them to get there when they CAN, i.e. not to charge in there. I spent every last resource getting all of them equipment, a TF, and siege cannons on that hive. And what do you know, they worked together so well that we took the hive and built a new base there.
The instant we had a CC and inf portals up in that hive, they killed my command chair at main base and figured they won the game. One alien even said, "We WIN!". Surprise! I respawned at hive base, took comm again and gave the marines the waypoint for the next hive while the aliens chewed up our old main base. I wanted my guys to keep moving fast. We sieged hive #2, and before you know it there are no more Fades or umbra. The rest of the game was a joke, as I gave everybody HA/Welder/HMG or GL and had them mop up the last hive.
If the commander wants marines to work together, he has to use LEADERSHIP. You can't hardcode that into a game. I don't think I'm a great leader or anything, so just a little is enough to beat your average public server aliens. If the marines on the field want more teamwork, then somebody needs to act like a sergeant and tell the marines exactly what's on their mind. Group tactics won't magically happen. Somebody needs to step forward and just do it. I'm happy that some of my guys did! I gave them the strategic points, and they figured out how to get there.
The main problem I see (and I caught myself doing this) is that commanders kinda get shell-shocked in the mid game. The marines take a hive, and suddenly there is no more leadership happening. Everybody gets split up defending dumb little places all over the map at a time when teamwork is most important. The only thing I had to do was go to each marine and give him a waypoint to the next hive and make sure everybody had equipment. Simple as that, but I've played so many games as marine where that didn't happen.
PS: A smaller problem is how commanders give out equipment. HMGs for a bunch of light marines are weak compared to two guys with HA/Welder/HMG. My strategy this game was to always drop HA/Welder/Heavy Weapon together. I tried not to give out good weapons without also giving HA or jetpack. It's just wasteful otherwise, IMHO.
But I still see marines making the same huge mistakes nearly every single time, too. Aliens can play NS like any other FPS and win. Go out, kill everything, aliens win. Marines need a new approach to NS, and some unique strategies. Stick together always, don't camp very long, fight only for chokepoints and hives and your CC. It's starting to happen, but mostly I see a lot of public players at the bottom of the learning curve for marines. Myself included. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Haven't you people thought that the teams CANNOT be compared to each other because they are ENTIRELY different. Yes, they both have defensive structures, and people have to build them, but the similarities stop there. Therefore, all you people comparing carapace to heavy armor are doing nothing at all. If you want to compare something to carapace, it should be the marine armor upgrades, and not even that, because both teams are different.
The reason why marines win less than the aliens on public servers isn't because the mod is unbalanced, its because people don't know how to work properly as a team. I myself have won a lot of times with the marines these days (Yes, even after 1.02) and when i lose, it is because most of my team tries to go out and try to kill aliens instead of working as a team. People dont seem to realize that in order to play and win as a marine you need a GOOD team. Not skillwise, but you need intelligent teammates, people who follow orders, people who try to weld each other when they have heavy armor in order not to get killed and not to lose those resources spent on a single marine.
You can say whatever you want, but one thing i have found to be true is that most people who play HL mods do not know how to work as a team. Sure, clans may do well, but i usually see the marine losses on pubs, not private servers. Winning requires teamwork, the teams are balanced only if people learn to work as a team, you cant compare one side to the other because they are entirely different and each requires a different skill in order to win. Aliens require raw skill and a basic level of teamwork, which is how they meant it to be. Marines have a commander that tells them what to do, and if they work with him, the commander can be more devastating than the entire alien team.
The solution? WORK AS A TEAM. You wont, and i repeat, will not win unless you learn how to work as a team. Which means that yes, you actually have to try and learn, not just go out and shoot whatever you see. In fact, most experienced NS players that play as marines and even aliens KNOW that you cant go around shooting everything you see and hope to kill it. Sometimes you need to hide, build siege turrets, and not let the enemy know you are nearby by attacking that lone Resource Tower sitting on a node while you build.
Frankly, im tired of seeing so many people complain about balance when there is nothing to fix. This game was playtested for months, you cant expect to know if its balanced or not by just playing for a couple of weeks.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is only maybe tangentially relevant to what I was saying.
If you have a marine team and an alien team of equal skill and ability, with both using teamwork and smart tactics, the aliens will always win, I don't care if you have actual United States Marines all playing in the same room, they will lose. That is the very definition on unbalanced.
The reason the Kharaa don't have to use teamwork to win is that they're much stronger, and their lower need for resources is a big part of that.
The Kharaa don't have to use teamwork, but when they do, it's devastating.
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So why do the playtesters consistently tell us that what you said is not true?