well wiry, that is indeed one thing that may happen - a schism develops and the community splits. personally, i think its almost guaranteed you will see vanilla servers crop up again within hours of the implementation of this mod. this would be a big shame though, because obviously NS2 scene would be diminished as a result i think. thats kinda why i made this thread - so that things like that could be discussed because they werent, yet it seems to me stuff like this happening is a given.
well wiry, that is indeed one thing that may happen - a schism develops and the community splits. personally, i think its almost guaranteed you will see vanilla servers crop up again within hours of the implementation of this mod. this would be a big shame though, because obviously NS2 scene would be diminished as a result i think. thats kinda why i made this thread - so that things like that could be discussed because they werent, yet it seems to me stuff like this happening is a given.
Lol, a massive population of three players... sewlek has been nothing but very responsive of feedback, communicate in the balance thread with some arguments/suggestions/valid points instead of judging every single change on one movement mechanic which seems to be making you very upset, so upset that you'd play on a reverted version if these changes ever came out by yourself
i never said anything about myself - but this is bound to happen to a certain extent. and it will have an impact that i thought it would be worth discussing. thats the thing, this is not about any individual feelings on the mod, but about the big picture. i felt that in ramming through their desired mechanics, alot of issues are being overlooked or brushed over - i just hope its not wilful, though i have my doubts on that too.
i never said anything about myself - but this is bound to happen to a certain extent. and it will have an impact that i thought it would be worth discussing. thats the thing, this is not about any individual feelings on the mod, but about the big picture. i felt that in ramming through their desired mechanics, alot of issues are being overlooked or brushed over - i just hope its not wilful, though i have my doubts on that too.
Yeah.. I can count those players with my fingers, let's be real the thread has 40,000 views~ this is obviously something drawing interest, hbz EU server is maxed out right now and you were even in it
play the mod, discuss in the thread -i'm out here deuce!
from my experience, the people on the HBZ server tend to a) be the same people all the time and b) play competitively. its not representative of the community as a whole. as of now 15:15 GMT, theres 630 players in game. 16 hyper competitive players in a server do not represent the player base as a whole - we are talking about orders of magnitude difference in scale. there seems to be very little consideration for this.
If the balance version makes it easy to bounce around, I really don't see the point in it. Why is bouncing around better than just moving? I simply do not find it engaging, I don't find walljumping engaging, I have no desire to learn these movement mechanics being proposed because I do not find them interesting, how is that hard to grasp?
Bunnyhopping is not the universal answer to making everything good, I entirely get that some people may like bunnyhopping but I am very confused by the idea that me saying 'I don't find bunnyhopping engaging or deep' can be answered with 'you're wrong'.
I understand how it works, I just don't like it, it is not interesting to me, it does not hold my interest. I do not find it to be an engaging game mechanic, I would prefer something else that I do find interesting.
What is being proposed is adding a mechanic, which I don't have any interest in, but which significantly affects the balance of the class it's being added to. So it's going to have an effect on me and my experience of that class whether I want it to or not. Thus, I find this addition distasteful because it is forcing me to use this mechanic I do not enjoy, because using it is now the 'point' as such, of the class.
Compare it, say, to the gorge. A lot of people were unhappy when the gorge lost its building ability and got the hydras to replace it, I like hydras, and wasn't very fussed about buildings in general. But if you're one of the people who dislike hydras and want building back, then to me, buildings are like the skulk's hitpoints and base movement speed, and bunnyhopping is the hydras. You're giving me this mechanic I don't find interesting and neglecting the bits of the class I do like. If you make skulks powerful with bunnyhopping, you are going to neglect them in terms of base hitpoints, damage, normal WASD movement and suchlike.
Basically you're trying to sell me the gorge change by saying 'it's ok that we haven't given the gorge buildings because we gave it these wonderful little tentacle things and that's going to be the main strength of the class now, aren't you happy? Look you can stick them to ceilings and everything, isn't that deep and interesting?' 'It's ok that we haven't improved skulk HP or speed or aircontrol or visibility in the last two dozen patches because it's got bunnyhop, that's enough to make you win'.
I want something more enjoyable for the skulk gimmick.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited May 2013
Everything you say just doesn't make sense to me.
How can you not find quick movement mechanics exciting and engaging?
I don't even know how to argue against you, since I can't even begin to understand why you play Natural Selection 2. A melee vs ranged game where the goal of the base life form is to get as close as possible while taking minimal damage. I certainly would like to make this crucial aspect of the game as interesting, diverse and skill based as possible.
Everything you say just doesn't make sense to me.
How can you not find quick movement mechanics exciting and engaging?
I don't even know how to argue against you, since I can't even begin to understand why you play Natural Selection 2. A melee vs ranged game where the goal of the base life form is to get as close as possible while taking minimal damage.
Because, fascinatingly, there is an awful lot to NS2 that isn't the skulk.
Almost every other class in the game is (or can be) very much based around things other than movement mechanics. Marine aiming is delightfully enjoyable when the latency isn't a problem. There's a lot of fun to be found (I think) in tracking skulks well with your shotgun and waiting for just the right moment to hit them for best effect, or controlling how many rifle shots you fire to maximise hit percentages. Or playing a lerk and using your spikes and spores to distract marines in a larger fight, or playing a fade and using stealth and your easy-to-use blink power to move around marines and pick off lone targets, or being an onos and breaking up mobs of marines to better allow other aliens to pick off stragglers. Or being a gorge and supporting players with heal spray while avoiding getting shot. Or being an exosuit and picking priority targets while saving some gun-heat for an unexpected fade or onos rush into your group.
I like just about every class in NS2 except the skulk, adding bunnyhopping to the skulk seems like a marked departure from the otherwise quite interesting repertoire of abilities and gimmicks that other classes have.
Unfortunately, the way the alien lifeform system works means I spend an inordinate amount of time playing as a skulk, because everything else is expensive and fragile, so I either play extremely conservatively, or I enjoy a life expectancy of about seven minutes total playing anything but the skulk.
So I am a little concerned about changes to this mandatory class that propose to make it even less inspired than it already is, or, rather, which are insufficiently interesting but which are being added in the place of something that should be interesting.
It's like, if you put walljump on the fade, and said that was its movement gimmick, so we don't need to do anything else to the class. No need for blink or anything, just hit the jump key a lot. Enjoy.
also what makes you assume that you are from an older generation of gamer? i was trading wolf3d on diskette with my schoolmates. fuck strafeaccel - wallrunning is where its at!!!1!!!1! http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Wallrunning
lol i used to play alot of james pond's aquatic games! funnily enough, i actually knew a guy whos real name was james pond aswell. met him at a ski race where he crashed across the finish line xD
For anyone arguing against the bhop currently in the test version, the amount of strafe acceleration is so slight that in effect, its use does not actually gain you much speed. More importantly, the major part of the gain on repeating jumps for the skulk comes simply from the falling acceleration, which you can literally press and hold W and jump and you will gain that speed. There is absolutely 0 requirement to actually use the bhop, and quite honestly, its effects currently are so small that only people playing at the highest levels will really be using it. 95%+ of your speed gain as skulk still comes from walljump and falling acceleration, the major difference being now that your momentum is no longer stored, and the amount of air control you have is quite lessened.
TLDR unless you feel the need to be a completionist, I see no reason why the very slight strafe accel should bother anyone. There is nothing forcing anyone to use it, and its massively less beneficial compared to NS1 - you can easily be just as competitive as someone using it really by just jumping from walls and jumping whenever you touch the ground (all while just holding W).
If the balance version makes it easy to bounce around, I really don't see the point in it. Why is bouncing around better than just moving? I simply do not find it engaging, I don't find walljumping engaging, I have no desire to learn these movement mechanics being proposed because I do not find them interesting, how is that hard to grasp?
Bunnyhopping is not the universal answer to making everything good, I entirely get that some people may like bunnyhopping but I am very confused by the idea that me saying 'I don't find bunnyhopping engaging or deep' can be answered with 'you're wrong'.
I understand how it works, I just don't like it, it is not interesting to me, it does not hold my interest. I do not find it to be an engaging game mechanic, I would prefer something else that I do find interesting.
What is being proposed is adding a mechanic, which I don't have any interest in, but which significantly affects the balance of the class it's being added to. So it's going to have an effect on me and my experience of that class whether I want it to or not. Thus, I find this addition distasteful because it is forcing me to use this mechanic I do not enjoy, because using it is now the 'point' as such, of the class.
I think that if you replaced "bunnyhopping" with shotguns and re-read the post you might see how people view your argument as odd:
Using the shotgun is quite different to the LMG. It has a different timing for when to shoot, different reload time, different range, etc. One could argue that "Why is waiting until the alien is closer (using a shotty) better than just shooting them when they are far way (using the LMG). And that I have no desire to "learn how to use the shotgun" because I don't find it interesting so it shouldn't be used. I don't see the advantage to having varying ranges and stopping power between weapons and don't understand how people can say I am wrong.
I understand how the shotgun works but I don't find it interesting nor is it an engaging game mechanic.
However, the difference here is that the skulk needs some sort of "advanced movement mechanic" to overcome the ranged advantage the marines have. Effectively killing aliens at range with weapons is a skill, so is closing the distance between marine and alien. If all skulks move at the same speed all the time, there is no skill in closing that distance, and therefore no variety in movement. That makes for easy and predictable targets. Movement is pretty much all the skulk has. Yes, I have played FPS games since the q2 days. Yes, I was kinda successful at bhopping; but by no means a pro. But I do not feel that since I have not mastered it, that it should be removed. Just like in TF2, I never mastered rocket jumping to the degree that the pros have; but I don't think it should be removed.
As a side note, I think too many people get hung up on the origins of bhopping. They look into the past, see the words "exploit" and "bug" and write it off as a cheat. Why doesn't rocket jumping get the same treatment? Plenty of things were discovered by accident...
Yes you can replace it with shotguns, if you don't like shotguns. I would probably agree, shotguns aren't exactly the most inspired weapon option in the world. I would entirely support a motion to replace shotguns with something more interesting, they're not bad, but they're hardly great.
I'm not saying bunnyhopping should be removed, I'm saying bunnyhopping should not be the answer to the problem 'the skulk is boring' just as 'shotguns' should not be the answer to 'the rifle is boring'.
Shotguns are part of the answer to that problem, and a relatively mediocre part at that, but they work, in addition to the jetpack and all the other guns available to marines. All of that combined provides an acceptable method of mitigating dullness in the basic marine experience.
Bunnyhopping alone is just... not good enough as far as I'm concerned. I expect better, I expect more effort.
You wouldn't, if basic marines only had the rifle and people were complaining they were boring, welcome the addition of shotguns as this wonderful game changing thing that will make everything better, at least I assume you wouldn't. I would assume you'd say 'you spent how many months on this problem and the best you can come up with is shotguns?'
Bunnyhopping is not alone on this skulk, quite the contrary. If you just bhopped along (with no fall accel), you would gain hardly any speed. Its about blending, blending the bhop, the fall accel and walljumping into something that actually has decent potential, and also allows for both greater flexibility and greater predictability.
Which I would translate to 'we added in a pistol and you can switch firemodes on it!!!'
Still not really making me very excited.
I just don't see how bunnyhopping or any of the various jump-button based mechanics being stuck onto the skulk are as interesting as say, fade blink, or even lerk flight. I mean, you can play a skulk and do all this stuff to go faster and have somewhat better 3d motion, or you can go lerk and get all of that by pointing your mouse where you want to go, or play marine and get a jetpack.
Bottom line, I'm still playing a weird dog thing that jumps a lot. Not really making me go 'Ooo I want to play that' here. Not when I can be playing a bat with a machinegun taped to it that shoots mustard gas, or a mutant praying mantis that can teleport, or even a giant rhinogorilla that smashes everything and roars a lot. Hell even the gorge is cool in a kind of more cute way. I'm playing a weird pig that barfs tentacle monsters and can slide around on its belly, it's not impressive, really, but it has real charm to it.
Jumping doesn't really result in the skulk doing anything particularly cool, I guess is my point. It's like the shotgun is not as cool as the flamethrower, or the minigun, or the railgun. It's just a shotgun. It's nice to have I suppose, because it does work, but it's not... exciting. I don't really want to use it especially, I just do because it's a bit better than the rifle, and even then I usually skip it if I can possibly afford to do so and go straight for more or less anything else because I'd much rather have a flamethrower or a jetpack or a grenade launcher even, or ideally an exosuit because I really enjoy being able to punch aliens in a big robot while firing a giant gun in the other hand.
Definitely good changes like reducing gore radius to 1.7.
Neutral changes or changes that we can't define if they will make game better or worse - welders available from the start with lowered cost.
Controversial changes - swapping blink and shadow step.
Definitely good changes should be added as soon as possible. Neutral changes should be discussed with community. What about controversial changes? They should exist only as suggestions on the forum.
That's the thing that made some part of the community mad - trying to add controversial changes without asking the community for opinion.
You wouldn't, if basic marines only had the rifle and people were complaining they were boring, welcome the addition of shotguns as this wonderful game changing thing that will make everything better, at least I assume you wouldn't. I would assume you'd say 'you spent how many months on this problem and the best you can come up with is shotguns?'
I don't expect a panacea from the devs. However; if after months of play with just LMGs they introduced shotguns as an answer to "more dynamic and skill based marine play" it would be true. And my "dislike" of shotguns would not make it false.
Some skill based movement mechanic is necessary for the skulk. Your dislike of the mechanic does not negate the need.
Additionally, the balance mod seems to be trying "something different". I'm sure adding true "bhopping" would have been much easier and faster than trying to make something different.
Definitely good changes like reducing gore radius to 1.7.
Neutral changes or changes that we can't define if they will make game better or worse - welders available from the start with lowered cost.
Controversial changes - swapping blink and shadow step.
Definitely good changes should be added as soon as possible. Neutral changes should be discussed with community. What about controversial changes? They should exist only as suggestions on the forum.
That's the thing that made some part of the community mad - trying to add controversial changes without asking the community for opinion.
Honestly, if blink/ss get swapped I'll probably stop playing.
"If all skulks move at the same speed all the time, there is no skill in closing that distance" there is plenty of skill involved in closing distance, its just not all mechanically based. you dont need to know how to bunny - you can use the walls for an unconventional and hard to predict approach, LOS etc. why is it only about speed? imo, its the very antithesis of skill - there is no cogent process's going on when or how to engage - you just build speed and rocket in.
Ok, so your issue is more with the skulks movement mechanics overall, and not just the bhop in general. I think the primary reasoning behind why the skulks base movement (you still get leap at biomass 3) needs to be much more intensive versus the other aliens, is more because of its role. Its the default unit, your always going to be playing a lot of skulk. If the movement mechanics were particularly powerful (lerk flight or fade blink), the skulk would be a balance nightmare. Its similar to the rifle for the marines, its decent at most tasks but not particularly powerful - NS2 is a RTS/FPS and not a class based shooter, so while it does have classes they need to be balanced based on their effective costs, skulk and rifle being at the bottom of that chart.
"If all skulks move at the same speed all the time, there is no skill in closing that distance" there is plenty of skill involved in closing distance, its just not all mechanically based. you dont need to know how to bunny - you can use the walls for an unconventional and hard to predict approach, LOS etc. why is it only about speed? imo, its the very antithesis of skill - there is no cogent process's going on when or how to engage - you just build speed and rocket in.
Because all the best ambush spots are static. Once learned they are rather useless; Marine walks into [room x] and checks the known spots and kills the skulks waiting in them. New spots only come with new maps. But speed is a constant variable. Skulks look the same, but with a skill based movement mechanic, they will all move at varying speeds. This provides a degree of "cover" if you will. Much like all marines looking alike but not shooting the same.
Did you even play NS1 enforcer? If you just 'rocket in' as a skulk, you would most likely die instantly. You can build up all the speed you want, if your moving in a straight line your still an easy target to kill. Thats the point of the movement mechanics - Theres a clear tradeoff to HOW you approach the marine. You can build speed and try to surprise a marine, or you can be evasive and soak bullets for your teammate. You can ambush or try to flank, you can to dance on the edge of LOS as a distraction - the methods are endless, but movement mechanics are there to compliment them, not replace them. If the best option becomes rocketing straight in, then the movement is overpowered and tweaks should be made.
You wouldn't, if basic marines only had the rifle and people were complaining they were boring, welcome the addition of shotguns as this wonderful game changing thing that will make everything better, at least I assume you wouldn't. I would assume you'd say 'you spent how many months on this problem and the best you can come up with is shotguns?'
I don't expect a panacea from the devs. However; if after months of play with just LMGs they introduced shotguns as an answer to "more dynamic and skill based marine play" it would be true. And my "dislike" of shotguns would not make it false.
Some skill based movement mechanic is necessary for the skulk. Your dislike of the mechanic does not negate the need.
Additionally, the balance mod seems to be trying "something different". I'm sure adding true "bhopping" would have been much easier and faster than trying to make something different.
I would be less concerned except there are a lot of people in this thread saying that adding bunnyhopping is a panacea, that it really is all the skulk will ever need and that everyone else is an idiot.
I would object less if bunnyhopping was being added like shadowstep was to the fade, as a somewhat useful but not at all replacement for blink, but that's not really what people are suggesting here, for the most part.
Yes the skulk does need some skill based and exciting mechanic in the relative absence of any existing one. But I don't think that bunnyhopping, in any form I can think of, is able to fill that role.
Ok, so your issue is more with the skulks movement mechanics overall, and not just the bhop in general. I think the primary reasoning behind why the skulks base movement (you still get leap at biomass 3) needs to be much more intensive versus the other aliens, is more because of its role. Its the default unit, your always going to be playing a lot of skulk. If the movement mechanics were particularly powerful (lerk flight or fade blink), the skulk would be a balance nightmare. Its similar to the rifle for the marines, its decent at most tasks but not particularly powerful - NS2 is a RTS/FPS and not a class based shooter, so while it does have classes they need to be balanced based on their effective costs, skulk and rifle being at the bottom of that chart.
My objection there is that a W3/A3 marine with a rifle is still quite good. It's not going to stop an onos but it can kill cysts and individual structures easily, put out a respectable amount of firepower, and is combat effective from the moment it steps out into the playing field. The rifle marine is not all that engaging, but it is quite good in its way. You have a gun, the gun shoots bullets where you put the crosshair, the bullets hurt, you have lots of bullets to spare.
As a basic rifle marine you have the power to project a respectable amount of death to any point you can see. That's quite a lot of power, especially in a game where your other basic class option is something that can project rather less death to a point directly under your nose, while having a lot less health and armor than your counterpart.
Yes the basic classes would sort of have to, in a game with resource based upgrades, be a bit less good than their paid alternatives, but the skulk is particularly weak. I would go so far as to argue that the lerk, costing 30 res, and especially the gorge, costing 10 res, are probably a better match for a rifle marine at certain points in the game than the skulk is.
Skulks are... especially crap, basically, they don't have anything like the power their upgraded brethren have. Marines with rifles do basically the same thing an exo with a minigun does, the exo just does it a lot better. But your basic marine can still do the thing more or less every marine upgrade does; kill stuff at range. But skulks can't fly, or shoot spikes, or teleport, or murder/stun people all over the place, they don't really have anything comparable to the rest of the classes.
I don't think there needs to be that sort of disparity between skulks and other classes, especially not as it's the basic class you HAVE to play a lot of, that's a reason to give it a seriously good and cool ability, which the basic marine really does have. Being able to shoot stuff puts it, in some way, above many of the aliens it will encounter. A skulk is like a marine with an axe, only faster. Not really a selling point I think.
Thats exactly the bhop that was added... have you not read any of my posts??? Bhop is not the only movement you need to perform as a skulk, and its the least important/useful..... Have you even tried the movement in the mod out???
Firstly, I'd like to say that I agree with what seems like the majority here that NS2 needs a skill-based movement mechanic to allow for skulk skill scaling with marine aim over the coming months/years.
Secondly, as an NS1 vet and at various other times a comp player using true bunnyhop mechanics at moderately high level, I get bunnyhopping. I know first hand how much fun it can be, and how much depth it can add to multiplayer games. I spent some time teaching bunnyhopping, alongside other movement/aim mechanics, in Kingpin to novice, intermediate and advanced players of that game. I had a map-maker friend design me a training map in which a moving spike-wall meant you HAD to master bunnyhopping to complete the map
There are two main reasons I dislike the current implementation of the pseudo bunnyhop.
1) It seems to be like giving up. Now let's be brutally honest here, the NS2 community, as gaming communities go, contains a fairly high proportion of reasonably intelligent people. It probably also contains a reasonably high proportion of creative and imaginative people. Attempting to recreate an old mechanic that originated from an engine bug is unimaginative: it's giving up on finding something that's both intuitive and gives the suitable level of depth. The wall-jumping mechanic is one possible example of a skill-based movement mechanic, but I refuse to believe there aren't other possibilities out there. If I were a modder, I would love to write a mod exploring a variety of different movement mechanic possibilities to test them out. Alas, I am not and can only post here my desire to do this, or to see it done.
2) It's unintuitive. The skulk's wall-walking and ceiling-walking abilities are arguably underused in this regard. For a creature that seems designed for a) ambushing and b) walking on all surfaces, a mechanic that predominantly requires floor-skulking seems weak.
Now allow me to round up here. Vanilla movement isn't the answer. I tried the BT movement last week (and of course tried it over several iterations previously). I have tested it first hand, and can confirm how essentially similar it is to vanilla.
What it doesn't do is utilise the real 3D nature of skulk movement - ie wall and ceiling sticking/walking, which would to me seem a more logical focus of a skill-based movement system.
I want to see a system that's different to the same old engine exploit that was adopted in some games and outlawed in others. Remember, in those games (NS1 aside, bunnyhopping goes back a lot further than NS1 after all), the players were all floor-based, running/jumping humanoids.
This is a unique opportunity to design something specific that makes sense to the lay onlooker, but which allows for deep, long-term skill-based improvement.
What bunnyhopping gives is good. How it goes about it could be improved. So to the die-hard bhop-or-bust crew, I say this: I absolutely agree with what you're trying to do, but can we not think outside of this bhop box to come up with something better?
Comments
Lol, a massive population of three players... sewlek has been nothing but very responsive of feedback, communicate in the balance thread with some arguments/suggestions/valid points instead of judging every single change on one movement mechanic which seems to be making you very upset, so upset that you'd play on a reverted version if these changes ever came out by yourself
Yeah.. I can count those players with my fingers, let's be real the thread has 40,000 views~ this is obviously something drawing interest, hbz EU server is maxed out right now and you were even in it
play the mod, discuss in the thread -i'm out here deuce!
*link instead of embedded - Ironhorse *
Bunnyhopping is not the universal answer to making everything good, I entirely get that some people may like bunnyhopping but I am very confused by the idea that me saying 'I don't find bunnyhopping engaging or deep' can be answered with 'you're wrong'.
I understand how it works, I just don't like it, it is not interesting to me, it does not hold my interest. I do not find it to be an engaging game mechanic, I would prefer something else that I do find interesting.
What is being proposed is adding a mechanic, which I don't have any interest in, but which significantly affects the balance of the class it's being added to. So it's going to have an effect on me and my experience of that class whether I want it to or not. Thus, I find this addition distasteful because it is forcing me to use this mechanic I do not enjoy, because using it is now the 'point' as such, of the class.
Compare it, say, to the gorge. A lot of people were unhappy when the gorge lost its building ability and got the hydras to replace it, I like hydras, and wasn't very fussed about buildings in general. But if you're one of the people who dislike hydras and want building back, then to me, buildings are like the skulk's hitpoints and base movement speed, and bunnyhopping is the hydras. You're giving me this mechanic I don't find interesting and neglecting the bits of the class I do like. If you make skulks powerful with bunnyhopping, you are going to neglect them in terms of base hitpoints, damage, normal WASD movement and suchlike.
Basically you're trying to sell me the gorge change by saying 'it's ok that we haven't given the gorge buildings because we gave it these wonderful little tentacle things and that's going to be the main strength of the class now, aren't you happy? Look you can stick them to ceilings and everything, isn't that deep and interesting?' 'It's ok that we haven't improved skulk HP or speed or aircontrol or visibility in the last two dozen patches because it's got bunnyhop, that's enough to make you win'.
I want something more enjoyable for the skulk gimmick.
How can you not find quick movement mechanics exciting and engaging?
I don't even know how to argue against you, since I can't even begin to understand why you play Natural Selection 2. A melee vs ranged game where the goal of the base life form is to get as close as possible while taking minimal damage. I certainly would like to make this crucial aspect of the game as interesting, diverse and skill based as possible.
Because, fascinatingly, there is an awful lot to NS2 that isn't the skulk.
Almost every other class in the game is (or can be) very much based around things other than movement mechanics. Marine aiming is delightfully enjoyable when the latency isn't a problem. There's a lot of fun to be found (I think) in tracking skulks well with your shotgun and waiting for just the right moment to hit them for best effect, or controlling how many rifle shots you fire to maximise hit percentages. Or playing a lerk and using your spikes and spores to distract marines in a larger fight, or playing a fade and using stealth and your easy-to-use blink power to move around marines and pick off lone targets, or being an onos and breaking up mobs of marines to better allow other aliens to pick off stragglers. Or being a gorge and supporting players with heal spray while avoiding getting shot. Or being an exosuit and picking priority targets while saving some gun-heat for an unexpected fade or onos rush into your group.
I like just about every class in NS2 except the skulk, adding bunnyhopping to the skulk seems like a marked departure from the otherwise quite interesting repertoire of abilities and gimmicks that other classes have.
Unfortunately, the way the alien lifeform system works means I spend an inordinate amount of time playing as a skulk, because everything else is expensive and fragile, so I either play extremely conservatively, or I enjoy a life expectancy of about seven minutes total playing anything but the skulk.
So I am a little concerned about changes to this mandatory class that propose to make it even less inspired than it already is, or, rather, which are insufficiently interesting but which are being added in the place of something that should be interesting.
It's like, if you put walljump on the fade, and said that was its movement gimmick, so we don't need to do anything else to the class. No need for blink or anything, just hit the jump key a lot. Enjoy.
You'd be a little disappointed.
Played the hell out of james pond 2: robocod when I was little.
TLDR unless you feel the need to be a completionist, I see no reason why the very slight strafe accel should bother anyone. There is nothing forcing anyone to use it, and its massively less beneficial compared to NS1 - you can easily be just as competitive as someone using it really by just jumping from walls and jumping whenever you touch the ground (all while just holding W).
I think that if you replaced "bunnyhopping" with shotguns and re-read the post you might see how people view your argument as odd:
However, the difference here is that the skulk needs some sort of "advanced movement mechanic" to overcome the ranged advantage the marines have. Effectively killing aliens at range with weapons is a skill, so is closing the distance between marine and alien. If all skulks move at the same speed all the time, there is no skill in closing that distance, and therefore no variety in movement. That makes for easy and predictable targets. Movement is pretty much all the skulk has. Yes, I have played FPS games since the q2 days. Yes, I was kinda successful at bhopping; but by no means a pro. But I do not feel that since I have not mastered it, that it should be removed. Just like in TF2, I never mastered rocket jumping to the degree that the pros have; but I don't think it should be removed.
As a side note, I think too many people get hung up on the origins of bhopping. They look into the past, see the words "exploit" and "bug" and write it off as a cheat. Why doesn't rocket jumping get the same treatment? Plenty of things were discovered by accident...
I'm not saying bunnyhopping should be removed, I'm saying bunnyhopping should not be the answer to the problem 'the skulk is boring' just as 'shotguns' should not be the answer to 'the rifle is boring'.
Shotguns are part of the answer to that problem, and a relatively mediocre part at that, but they work, in addition to the jetpack and all the other guns available to marines. All of that combined provides an acceptable method of mitigating dullness in the basic marine experience.
Bunnyhopping alone is just... not good enough as far as I'm concerned. I expect better, I expect more effort.
You wouldn't, if basic marines only had the rifle and people were complaining they were boring, welcome the addition of shotguns as this wonderful game changing thing that will make everything better, at least I assume you wouldn't. I would assume you'd say 'you spent how many months on this problem and the best you can come up with is shotguns?'
Still not really making me very excited.
I just don't see how bunnyhopping or any of the various jump-button based mechanics being stuck onto the skulk are as interesting as say, fade blink, or even lerk flight. I mean, you can play a skulk and do all this stuff to go faster and have somewhat better 3d motion, or you can go lerk and get all of that by pointing your mouse where you want to go, or play marine and get a jetpack.
Bottom line, I'm still playing a weird dog thing that jumps a lot. Not really making me go 'Ooo I want to play that' here. Not when I can be playing a bat with a machinegun taped to it that shoots mustard gas, or a mutant praying mantis that can teleport, or even a giant rhinogorilla that smashes everything and roars a lot. Hell even the gorge is cool in a kind of more cute way. I'm playing a weird pig that barfs tentacle monsters and can slide around on its belly, it's not impressive, really, but it has real charm to it.
Jumping doesn't really result in the skulk doing anything particularly cool, I guess is my point. It's like the shotgun is not as cool as the flamethrower, or the minigun, or the railgun. It's just a shotgun. It's nice to have I suppose, because it does work, but it's not... exciting. I don't really want to use it especially, I just do because it's a bit better than the rifle, and even then I usually skip it if I can possibly afford to do so and go straight for more or less anything else because I'd much rather have a flamethrower or a jetpack or a grenade launcher even, or ideally an exosuit because I really enjoy being able to punch aliens in a big robot while firing a giant gun in the other hand.
Definitely good changes like reducing gore radius to 1.7.
Neutral changes or changes that we can't define if they will make game better or worse - welders available from the start with lowered cost.
Controversial changes - swapping blink and shadow step.
Definitely good changes should be added as soon as possible. Neutral changes should be discussed with community. What about controversial changes? They should exist only as suggestions on the forum.
That's the thing that made some part of the community mad - trying to add controversial changes without asking the community for opinion.
I don't expect a panacea from the devs. However; if after months of play with just LMGs they introduced shotguns as an answer to "more dynamic and skill based marine play" it would be true. And my "dislike" of shotguns would not make it false.
Some skill based movement mechanic is necessary for the skulk. Your dislike of the mechanic does not negate the need.
Additionally, the balance mod seems to be trying "something different". I'm sure adding true "bhopping" would have been much easier and faster than trying to make something different.
Honestly, if blink/ss get swapped I'll probably stop playing.
Because all the best ambush spots are static. Once learned they are rather useless; Marine walks into [room x] and checks the known spots and kills the skulks waiting in them. New spots only come with new maps. But speed is a constant variable. Skulks look the same, but with a skill based movement mechanic, they will all move at varying speeds. This provides a degree of "cover" if you will. Much like all marines looking alike but not shooting the same.
I would be less concerned except there are a lot of people in this thread saying that adding bunnyhopping is a panacea, that it really is all the skulk will ever need and that everyone else is an idiot.
I would object less if bunnyhopping was being added like shadowstep was to the fade, as a somewhat useful but not at all replacement for blink, but that's not really what people are suggesting here, for the most part.
Yes the skulk does need some skill based and exciting mechanic in the relative absence of any existing one. But I don't think that bunnyhopping, in any form I can think of, is able to fill that role.
My objection there is that a W3/A3 marine with a rifle is still quite good. It's not going to stop an onos but it can kill cysts and individual structures easily, put out a respectable amount of firepower, and is combat effective from the moment it steps out into the playing field. The rifle marine is not all that engaging, but it is quite good in its way. You have a gun, the gun shoots bullets where you put the crosshair, the bullets hurt, you have lots of bullets to spare.
As a basic rifle marine you have the power to project a respectable amount of death to any point you can see. That's quite a lot of power, especially in a game where your other basic class option is something that can project rather less death to a point directly under your nose, while having a lot less health and armor than your counterpart.
Yes the basic classes would sort of have to, in a game with resource based upgrades, be a bit less good than their paid alternatives, but the skulk is particularly weak. I would go so far as to argue that the lerk, costing 30 res, and especially the gorge, costing 10 res, are probably a better match for a rifle marine at certain points in the game than the skulk is.
Skulks are... especially crap, basically, they don't have anything like the power their upgraded brethren have. Marines with rifles do basically the same thing an exo with a minigun does, the exo just does it a lot better. But your basic marine can still do the thing more or less every marine upgrade does; kill stuff at range. But skulks can't fly, or shoot spikes, or teleport, or murder/stun people all over the place, they don't really have anything comparable to the rest of the classes.
I don't think there needs to be that sort of disparity between skulks and other classes, especially not as it's the basic class you HAVE to play a lot of, that's a reason to give it a seriously good and cool ability, which the basic marine really does have. Being able to shoot stuff puts it, in some way, above many of the aliens it will encounter. A skulk is like a marine with an axe, only faster. Not really a selling point I think.
Secondly, as an NS1 vet and at various other times a comp player using true bunnyhop mechanics at moderately high level, I get bunnyhopping. I know first hand how much fun it can be, and how much depth it can add to multiplayer games. I spent some time teaching bunnyhopping, alongside other movement/aim mechanics, in Kingpin to novice, intermediate and advanced players of that game. I had a map-maker friend design me a training map in which a moving spike-wall meant you HAD to master bunnyhopping to complete the map
There are two main reasons I dislike the current implementation of the pseudo bunnyhop.
1) It seems to be like giving up. Now let's be brutally honest here, the NS2 community, as gaming communities go, contains a fairly high proportion of reasonably intelligent people. It probably also contains a reasonably high proportion of creative and imaginative people. Attempting to recreate an old mechanic that originated from an engine bug is unimaginative: it's giving up on finding something that's both intuitive and gives the suitable level of depth. The wall-jumping mechanic is one possible example of a skill-based movement mechanic, but I refuse to believe there aren't other possibilities out there. If I were a modder, I would love to write a mod exploring a variety of different movement mechanic possibilities to test them out. Alas, I am not and can only post here my desire to do this, or to see it done.
2) It's unintuitive. The skulk's wall-walking and ceiling-walking abilities are arguably underused in this regard. For a creature that seems designed for a) ambushing and b) walking on all surfaces, a mechanic that predominantly requires floor-skulking seems weak.
Now allow me to round up here. Vanilla movement isn't the answer. I tried the BT movement last week (and of course tried it over several iterations previously). I have tested it first hand, and can confirm how essentially similar it is to vanilla.
What it doesn't do is utilise the real 3D nature of skulk movement - ie wall and ceiling sticking/walking, which would to me seem a more logical focus of a skill-based movement system.
I want to see a system that's different to the same old engine exploit that was adopted in some games and outlawed in others. Remember, in those games (NS1 aside, bunnyhopping goes back a lot further than NS1 after all), the players were all floor-based, running/jumping humanoids.
This is a unique opportunity to design something specific that makes sense to the lay onlooker, but which allows for deep, long-term skill-based improvement.
What bunnyhopping gives is good. How it goes about it could be improved. So to the die-hard bhop-or-bust crew, I say this: I absolutely agree with what you're trying to do, but can we not think outside of this bhop box to come up with something better?