You can't really compare devour to L4D2 SI mechanics. Almost all of the L4D's incap mechanics can be countered by a solo survivor. You can melee hunters before they pounce you or simply kill then with a well timed shot, smoker tongues can be cut, jockeys can me melee'd, chargers can be leveled by a well timed melee weapon... etc. None of the mechanics are as silly as a 1-click skill-less ability like devour.
The onos's hp and dps alone are enough to ensure the marines stick together. This mechanic does not change or enforce that fact.
You can't really compare devour to L4D2 SI mechanics. Almost all of the L4D's incap mechanics can be countered by a solo survivor. You can melee hunters before they pounce you or simply kill then with a well timed shot, smoker tongues can be cut, jockeys can me melee'd, chargers can be leveled by a well timed melee weapon... etc. None of the mechanics are as silly as a 1-click skill-less ability like devour.
The onos's hp and dps alone are enough to ensure the marines stick together. This mechanic does not change or enforce that fact.
You are correct in the fact that the SI can be countered... though in my experience these are in rare cases by some rare players though it is probably easier when the SI are AI controlled and especially if the player knows the game inside and out, but more realistically it is good team-work that a lot of people will see that in general gameplay instead of these few "Golden players" unless you look them up on youtube (I actually dislike players who 'go off and solo' in a team based game especially when I'm in the team with them... and I end up having one less person because its all about 'me' 'me' 'me' get there fast). However though, in my opinion if we do want to continue with the L4D thought pattern I'd be more likely to compare the Onos to a hybrid of the Tank but with arguably Less HP/Armor [depending if the servers are modded or not].
As far as the Hp and ...DPS of a Onos being enough to ensure that fact, at least in NS1 a Onos was NOT recognized for DPS, that was for the other life-forms (aka Fade) I mean the Onos was a hard hitter yes. Being honest here, I remember the Onos as a hard hitting truck that you didn't want to meet when it had a Empty stomach, and even then as a Marine you always could out range one unless you got cornered or got caught unaware or were just in a room with a low ceiling and no places to gain a vantage point or hide but then again that's all situational.
Even in NS2 if they changed the Onos to a DPS machine, it still does not mean that a entire ability should have been gutted JUST because it made you sit and watch horrible things for 10-20 seconds when other games do quite the same 'unless you are some MLG pro' apparently.
You make the assumption that Devour being skill-less is bad, well what about fun? Is it definitely Gross? Yes, horribly so. Though it added that horror factor that I will again say made some if not most people think twice about Rambo-ing off unless they were dim or good at it (and if the other team did NOT have the ability to sense their location yet), it made people stick together and added some tension when you knew a Onos was around the corner, sure the novelty of 'oh crap, I got ate by a alien' wears off, but it isn't meant to be a Novelty just because you hate it and rather not be in the same county. Personally I don't like when the ability was used on me and mostly played Marines, but it is very disappointing all the same that it was removed for leaky 'competitive' reasons or the inability by a few very vocal players to deal with what you essentially deal with in a few other games and had been in Natural Selection 1 for the longest... instead of changed to be a little faster [and having a cool-down as a result probably].
Not saying that I want a uncountable skill, though I was fine with devour as it was in Ns1 but I am definitely not saying that I wouldn't want to see NS2 popular. I'd love it if people played NS2 or NS1 as much as Dota/LoL but not like this.
I love the game series and I am happy to see its still up and kicking to some degree but I don't go back to L4D1 or 2 to show off my L33T skills (I don't have any, anyway), and I don't play with friends in any game to show off how good I possibly am at said game, I play games because they are either quirky or fun. While I do admit that having a good commander or bad commander and playing with a team that knows how to both follow orders and accurately execute them is like night and day, it still is a game. I don't play games just because they are worthy to be called 'competitive,' or I'd waste my money on Battle Field 4, or any other Generic Shooter.
The issues with the Onos in NS1 sometimes usually comes down majorly to team composition [and personal competence and awareness] and a Commanders Organization of his/her team. I barely remember a match with a good commander where a Onos didn't rank as a high priority kill target for the sheer fact of the danger of letting one live too long and investment needed to be put into evolving into one by the enemy and shutting a Onos down ASAP generally helped tilt the scales towards the Marines. I mean there is a small risk with having the longest gestation time along with the resource cost made killing it a small victory in its own unless your team was surrounded and pretty much done for already then it was still one of those 'we at least did "x"' moments.
Again, if you don't like devour because you feel it is a Skill-less move, then instead why not argue for a re-tune of devour instead? (though they apparently got it down pat, thankfully) I mean instead of taking something from a game that people obviously didn't outright hate except for a few very vocal people [you can not deny that quite a few people asked about it and want to have it put back into the game, especially after the video linked here I mean it is a ability in the game that I remember clearly, it was the first thing I remembered about NS1 and something that made me want to do everything I could to both avoid the situation and save my fellow marine that was kidnapped to avoid losing the armor/weapons and manpower until the onos killed the marine. Though I didn't hate the ability.]
However, thinking objectively. If I were to fine tune it personally (Don't know how they did it, and not saying I can do it better or what they are doing is wrong in any way shape or form! so please don't take this as such. This is purely thinking about NS1 and how the developers could have translated it to NS2.) Personally If I think back to NS1 of how I would have done it was probably make it so that the target had to be stunned, or if not stunned outright... maybe just out of stamina or below half health or no armor at all before devour worked, not only would this speed up the whole issue for those that are 'impatient' but it would feel a little less like you had no say in the matter at all. Though Stomp would need to be fine-tuned as well, maybe giving people a way to get to their feet faster [if going that route of stomp then devour] or almost immediately at the cost of stamina or something. Though if they were out of stamina? Well you are out of luck.
Fundamentally that would mean that Jetpacks would probably make a very good soft counter to a few of the ability's of a Onos [both stomp and devour] as well as generally staying out of range if possible, though... admittedly in ns1 the range was kinda odd half the time anyway due to latency differences here or there and it made no sense for a Onos to get you if you were floating far above its head by use of Jetpack.
Also, just because L4D's AI SI were 'easily countered' in the rare case by rare players that knew the ins and outs of the game, does not debunk that both things had almost the same purpose: Trying to keep people together and help them work together. Nor do I think that most players could solo most things in L4D1-2 with AI SI at least, none of my friends nor I could reliably do that in L4D1 or 2 but then I guess we just suck and some people are gaming gods compared to us.
Sorry for walls of text, I'm just highly opinionated I guess.
I'm gonna start off with the disclaimer that I only skimmed your wall of text.
Referring to your first statement that these things are rare in L4D, I will have to disagree since almost every player who plays confogl/promod/whatever-its-called-these-days can do these things quite regularly. Even the pubstars in the game have come to understand these mechanics. Tanks are another aspect of the game. Yes you can compare the similarities but then again the tank doesn't have a 1-hit auto kill either. The only comparison I can see would be using hit-ables since they auto-incap. I would also argue that hit-ables take quite a bit more skill to use, granted the survivors aren't total idiots. So again, the l4d argument doesn't work.
For Onos DPS, in vanilla it is still 90 or 100 (honestly forgot exact number) p-damage each gore, (This was nerfed in compmod) which allowed an onos to essentially lawnmower a group of marines. This is why I feel there is a problem with Onos dps but that's another story. Giving the onos this silly devour ability doesn't change how marines approach or deal with onos. If an onos makes the mistake of attacking 5 marines, he/she is going to die regardless of devour. It's just an aggravating 'cool' mechanic that the devs thought up in their this-could-be-cool-thinktank.
My re-tune of devour would make it more of a 'focused' gore. Make it do something like 120 damage with extremely low RoF. If the damage is enough to kill the marine, create a quick animation of being eaten, then kill the marine. I would still find this annoying as all hell but I would be able to live with it instead of being stuck in the onos' stomach animation for 5 seconds increasing my respawn time.
What if you could only devour marines that have no armour left?
Would turn a 2 hit kill into an energy-expensive 1 hit kill, and thus not be OP. Would also force marines to weld eachother (which they famously do not do in combat).
What if you could only devour marines that have no armour left?
Would turn a 2 hit kill into an energy-expensive 1 hit kill, and thus not be OP. Would also force marines to weld eachother (which they famously do not do in combat).
If a marine has no armor left, you can just gore him.
Ok in addition to only being able to use it if a marine has no armour, make it so devour heals HP over time, reduces energy to 0, and the marine just gets a short devour animation.
Tbh I dunno why I'm suggesting stuff for devour, kind a bit ot :P
yourstruly41The United States of AmericaJoin Date: 2014-07-01Member: 197141Members
edited July 2014
I bought a four pack of NS2 during the summer sale. My friends and I are enjoying the game. I heard about this standalone game and I am looking forward to it. I think the Commander/RTS is a good concept, it just can never be executed properly, I think it is impossible to do. For a team to have a chance to win, it needs a good commander who knows the build orders, so if the team doesnt have one, they are already screwed. It also must be frustrating for a commander to have a team that does not listen to him. I use to play BF2, and the commander was fine because you didnt necessarily need to depend on him for the win, but he was there to give commands and add a little bit of support (airstrikes, UAV, ammo drops). It wasnt too unforgiving because you did not need to rely on build orders and such.
I think this Combat standalone is moving in the right direction by not having a commander. I will admit I have not played the mod yet, but I heard it was pretty good in NS1 and NS2. The polish and optimization enhancements are definitely needed too. I think the RTS element may be one of the reasons why players don't stick around. I hope that we can see more maps and weapons. I looked up the HMG and that thing looks pretty badass. It seems as though people make the argument that the Exosuits replaced the HMG, but this does not need to be the case. They can make the HMG cost a similar amount of upgrade/resource points, so that a player cannot get an exosuit, die, and then pick up an HMG. It would be balanced I think because you can pick between mobility with the HMG, or more health/armor with the Exo. I also heard that there were webs in NS1; that would be a pretty cool counter to jetpacks. Or instead it can made that the jet pack's fuel drain quicker/ slower recharge.
If Combat is done right I think it can bring in a lot more players, and they will stay. My only concern is that since this game will use a lot of assets from NS2, people will not think it is worth the money. They need to add a lot more content/game mechanics to make it worthwhile, the Devour feature and the LMG look cool but that will not be enough.
I bought a four pack of NS2 during the summer sale. My friends and I are enjoying the game. I heard about this standalone game and I am looking forward to it. I think the Commander/RTS is a good concept, it just can never be executed properly, I think it is impossible to do. For a team to have a chance to win, it needs a good commander who knows the build orders, so if the team doesnt have one, they are already screwed. It also must be frustrating for a commander to have a team that does not listen to him. I use to play BF2, and the commander was fine because you didnt necessarily need to depend on him for the win, but he was there to give commands and add a little bit of support (airstrikes, UAV, ammo drops). It wasnt too unforgiving because you did not need to rely on build orders and such.
I think this Combat standalone is moving in the right direction by not having a commander. I will admit I have not played the mod yet, but I heard it was pretty good in NS1 and NS2. The polish and optimization enhancements are definitely needed too. I think the RTS element may be one of the reasons why players don't stick around. I hope that we can see more maps and weapons. I looked up the HMG and that thing looks pretty badass. It seems as though people make the argument that the Exosuits replaced the HMG, but this does not need to be the case. They can make the HMG cost a similar amount of upgrade/resource points, so that a player cannot get an exosuit, die, and then pick up an HMG. It would be balanced I think because you can pick between mobility with the HMG, or more health/armor with the Exo. I also heard that there were webs in NS1; that would be a pretty cool counter to jetpacks. Or instead it can made that the jet pack's fuel drain quicker/ slower recharge.
If Combat is done right I think it can bring in a lot more players, and they will stay. My only concern is that since this game will use a lot of assets from NS2, people will not think it is worth the money. They need to add a lot more content/game mechanics to make it worthwhile, the Devour feature and the LMG look cool but that will not be enough.
Awesome that you guys like the game! Keep playing it, you will notice the commander feature works great, usually
I recommend playing on community servers with lots of regulars.
There are actually webs in NS2, they just hide behind ludicrous amounts of biomass.
ok so I read some of the devour concerns on here but not all so forgive me if something was said.
We put it in there because we want it and the general feedback we got at PAX was that people wanted it.
We do realize that it can be fine once or twice and sooner than later people may start getting frustrated by it, which is exactly why we are making sure it isn't as punishing as it was in NS2 ( our mod, which btw was the result of us abandoning the project not because we wanted it extremely punishing ) and in NS1.
We are always iterating on the design of the whole game and listening to feedback, if we do release it in such a way that people don't like it we will make proper changes to make sure its fun.
Alex our main programmer just made a simple tweak to it yesterday and I personally like the change, it made Devour more of a skill shot than what it was before.
I hope you guys all join us during our live stream where we will show the game live and demonstrate Devour and perhaps a couple of other things.
Amongst all the concerns I have about devour that I've already mentioned in this thread, one additional concern I have is that your whole marketing and publicity strategy is based around devour. Everything I've seen, including the RPS article, is just focused completely on 'hey look at this cool ability' - I find that really off-putting. Basing the publicity around a flat out bad mechanic is sure to put off a lot of NS vets.
Please please please consider a game mode of competitive combat! Frankly when people use xeno, exos, GLs, onos etc in combat it ruins the game. Fine, I understand there are some newbies who love these things because they're 'cool' - like devour I guess, but for those of us who appreciate skill in our online games, competitive combat mode is a really great addition to the combat mod experience. If you can build this into your plans for the standalone game, I can see myself getting behind you guys again. But as it stands, the focus on devour is really, really bad
New here and very pleased to have discovered this game. Just found it by chance on a forum. I want to just emphasize that this game is designed like most other first person shooter games (staying alive or be killed). Well, your developers have taken the staying alive part to a interesting level of don't be lunch! I saw the clip
. Do you intend on designing a short animation clip of the Marines getting devoured and digested. Hell, It's the price to pay when the prey looses, and since this game is revolved around that concept why not then just go with it. Hopefully the bigger picture of funding, or some sort of inconvenience arise with this extra effort, and of course this might be a outrage to impatient gamers, but couldn't you just skip past the short animation and move on like with most typical instant repawning.
Amongst all the concerns I have about devour that I've already mentioned in this thread, one additional concern I have is that your whole marketing and publicity strategy is based around devour. Everything I've seen, including the RPS article, is just focused completely on 'hey look at this cool ability' - I find that really off-putting. Basing the publicity around a flat out bad mechanic is sure to put off a lot of NS vets.
Please please please consider a game mode of competitive combat! Frankly when people use xeno, exos, GLs, onos etc in combat it ruins the game. Fine, I understand there are some newbies who love these things because they're 'cool' - like devour I guess, but for those of us who appreciate skill in our online games, competitive combat mode is a really great addition to the combat mod experience. If you can build this into your plans for the standalone game, I can see myself getting behind you guys again. But as it stands, the focus on devour is really, really bad
There was some confusion (even internally) about the focus on devour for publicity - it was only intended to be our first reveal, not the driving force behind our marketing (though since we've only revealed one thing, I guess they're equivalent). We have a lot more stuff to reveal.
ok so I read some of the devour concerns on here but not all so forgive me if something was said.
We put it in there because we want it and the general feedback we got at PAX was that people wanted it.
We do realize that it can be fine once or twice and sooner than later people may start getting frustrated by it, which is exactly why we are making sure it isn't as punishing as it was in NS2 ( our mod, which btw was the result of us abandoning the project not because we wanted it extremely punishing ) and in NS1.
We are always iterating on the design of the whole game and listening to feedback, if we do release it in such a way that people don't like it we will make proper changes to make sure its fun.
Alex our main programmer just made a simple tweak to it yesterday and I personally like the change, it made Devour more of a skill shot than what it was before.
I hope you guys all join us during our live stream where we will show the game live and demonstrate Devour and perhaps a couple of other things.
Could I ask if you plan to have an open beta or pay for early access? Normally, I would balk at the words "pay for early access" (bad rep. from Totalbiscuit, and Jim). But for you guys I am definitely willing to make an exception. So I am ready to pony up the dough if you go that route.
PS. sorry if you already answered this Q. The time difference between Australia and the US is brutal, so I didn't go on the twitter.
Could I ask if you plan to have an open beta or pay for early access? Normally, I would balk at the words "pay for early access" (bad rep. from Totalbiscuit, and Jim). But for you guys I am definitely willing to make an exception. So I am ready to pony up the dough if you go that route.
PS. sorry if you already answered this Q. The time difference between Australia and the US is brutal, so I didn't go on the twitter.
If you own NS2 already, you can apply to be a playtester (link is in this thread, as well as on the general forum). We will be on steam soon, at which point we'll consider betas/early access.
rofl game isn't even out and whiners (marine stackers) already complaining about devour, sure you go jetpack while shotgun skulks and fades piece of cake. now devour here you jetpack noobs can't do shit. i love to devour jetpacks LOL FLY NOOBS FLY. Maybe implementing knifing while in onos stomach would be nice.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
I don't see how devour is a counter to jetpacks, back in my day any Onos would run from a jetpack regardless of devour. Devour was the hardcounter to heavyarmor and they were removed from the game.
Fades were the original jetpack counter, they'd spray their acid rockets and go in for a quick focus swipe kill.
I don't see how devour is a counter to jetpacks, back in my day any Onos would run from a jetpack regardless of devour. Devour was the hardcounter to heavyarmor and they were removed from the game.
Fades were the original jetpack counter, they'd spray their acid rockets and go in for a quick focus swipe kill.
I don't see how devour is a counter to jetpacks, back in my day any Onos would run from a jetpack regardless of devour. Devour was the hardcounter to heavyarmor and they were removed from the game.
Fades were the original jetpack counter, they'd spray their acid rockets and go in for a quick focus swipe kill.
It worth looking at how devour came to exist in NS.
Devour was meant largely as a counter to conga-lines of heavy armours welding all welding each other, which toghether with JP+HMG rushing hives was a mainstay of 1.0x NS. Devour was made necessary in NS 2.0 due to massively nerfing acid rockets (which earned them the nick-name "vinegar splash" for quite a while), nerfing spores (no longer stacked and no longer affected HAs) and nerfing onos (hit box no longer a 32x32x72, marine sized block in the center of the onos) and replacing paralyze with stomp (paralyze was an aimable ranged stun and affected jetpackers, where as stomp did not). In 2.0, aliens were allowed to get fades and onoses on the first hive, so they could not be too strong (in 1.0x res was capped depending on how many hives you had, and gorges recieved 3x as much res as any other player).
Jetpacks were meant to counter onos (not hard counter, just to be particularly effective against), so that it was no longer a game ender.
In practice devour was quite effective against jetpackers; largely due to bottlenecks in the maps, combined with latency+interpolation which made it difficult to dodge (a problem that's worse in NS2). It was often used to take random players out of the game, even LAs, for about a minute at a time and to drop their weapons behind enemy lines so they could not recycle them (weapons could not be destroyed by bile).
Combat was introduced in 2.x-something or maybe 3.0. Devour was clearly too annoying for combat, so it was shortened to some seconds. In some ways this made devour more effective, as its rate of repetition became much higher. It became the primary attack of onoses in combat; kite marines and nibble them one at a time. Most players wouldn't consider using gore when devour was up unless they were hiting the CC.
An easy fix, if devour must return, would be to let the marine die and go back into the spawn queue, but keeping the onos "full" and digesting for a longer period of time.
Comments
The onos's hp and dps alone are enough to ensure the marines stick together. This mechanic does not change or enforce that fact.
Sssh, you're under NDA, you're not supposed to tell them this!
You are correct in the fact that the SI can be countered... though in my experience these are in rare cases by some rare players though it is probably easier when the SI are AI controlled and especially if the player knows the game inside and out, but more realistically it is good team-work that a lot of people will see that in general gameplay instead of these few "Golden players" unless you look them up on youtube (I actually dislike players who 'go off and solo' in a team based game especially when I'm in the team with them... and I end up having one less person because its all about 'me' 'me' 'me' get there fast). However though, in my opinion if we do want to continue with the L4D thought pattern I'd be more likely to compare the Onos to a hybrid of the Tank but with arguably Less HP/Armor [depending if the servers are modded or not].
As far as the Hp and ...DPS of a Onos being enough to ensure that fact, at least in NS1 a Onos was NOT recognized for DPS, that was for the other life-forms (aka Fade) I mean the Onos was a hard hitter yes. Being honest here, I remember the Onos as a hard hitting truck that you didn't want to meet when it had a Empty stomach, and even then as a Marine you always could out range one unless you got cornered or got caught unaware or were just in a room with a low ceiling and no places to gain a vantage point or hide but then again that's all situational.
Even in NS2 if they changed the Onos to a DPS machine, it still does not mean that a entire ability should have been gutted JUST because it made you sit and watch horrible things for 10-20 seconds when other games do quite the same 'unless you are some MLG pro' apparently.
You make the assumption that Devour being skill-less is bad, well what about fun? Is it definitely Gross? Yes, horribly so. Though it added that horror factor that I will again say made some if not most people think twice about Rambo-ing off unless they were dim or good at it (and if the other team did NOT have the ability to sense their location yet), it made people stick together and added some tension when you knew a Onos was around the corner, sure the novelty of 'oh crap, I got ate by a alien' wears off, but it isn't meant to be a Novelty just because you hate it and rather not be in the same county. Personally I don't like when the ability was used on me and mostly played Marines, but it is very disappointing all the same that it was removed for leaky 'competitive' reasons or the inability by a few very vocal players to deal with what you essentially deal with in a few other games and had been in Natural Selection 1 for the longest... instead of changed to be a little faster [and having a cool-down as a result probably].
Not saying that I want a uncountable skill, though I was fine with devour as it was in Ns1 but I am definitely not saying that I wouldn't want to see NS2 popular. I'd love it if people played NS2 or NS1 as much as Dota/LoL but not like this.
I love the game series and I am happy to see its still up and kicking to some degree but I don't go back to L4D1 or 2 to show off my L33T skills (I don't have any, anyway), and I don't play with friends in any game to show off how good I possibly am at said game, I play games because they are either quirky or fun. While I do admit that having a good commander or bad commander and playing with a team that knows how to both follow orders and accurately execute them is like night and day, it still is a game. I don't play games just because they are worthy to be called 'competitive,' or I'd waste my money on Battle Field 4, or any other Generic Shooter.
The issues with the Onos in NS1 sometimes usually comes down majorly to team composition [and personal competence and awareness] and a Commanders Organization of his/her team. I barely remember a match with a good commander where a Onos didn't rank as a high priority kill target for the sheer fact of the danger of letting one live too long and investment needed to be put into evolving into one by the enemy and shutting a Onos down ASAP generally helped tilt the scales towards the Marines. I mean there is a small risk with having the longest gestation time along with the resource cost made killing it a small victory in its own unless your team was surrounded and pretty much done for already then it was still one of those 'we at least did "x"' moments.
Again, if you don't like devour because you feel it is a Skill-less move, then instead why not argue for a re-tune of devour instead? (though they apparently got it down pat, thankfully) I mean instead of taking something from a game that people obviously didn't outright hate except for a few very vocal people [you can not deny that quite a few people asked about it and want to have it put back into the game, especially after the video linked here I mean it is a ability in the game that I remember clearly, it was the first thing I remembered about NS1 and something that made me want to do everything I could to both avoid the situation and save my fellow marine that was kidnapped to avoid losing the armor/weapons and manpower until the onos killed the marine. Though I didn't hate the ability.]
However, thinking objectively. If I were to fine tune it personally (Don't know how they did it, and not saying I can do it better or what they are doing is wrong in any way shape or form! so please don't take this as such. This is purely thinking about NS1 and how the developers could have translated it to NS2.) Personally If I think back to NS1 of how I would have done it was probably make it so that the target had to be stunned, or if not stunned outright... maybe just out of stamina or below half health or no armor at all before devour worked, not only would this speed up the whole issue for those that are 'impatient' but it would feel a little less like you had no say in the matter at all. Though Stomp would need to be fine-tuned as well, maybe giving people a way to get to their feet faster [if going that route of stomp then devour] or almost immediately at the cost of stamina or something. Though if they were out of stamina? Well you are out of luck.
Fundamentally that would mean that Jetpacks would probably make a very good soft counter to a few of the ability's of a Onos [both stomp and devour] as well as generally staying out of range if possible, though... admittedly in ns1 the range was kinda odd half the time anyway due to latency differences here or there and it made no sense for a Onos to get you if you were floating far above its head by use of Jetpack.
Also, just because L4D's AI SI were 'easily countered' in the rare case by rare players that knew the ins and outs of the game, does not debunk that both things had almost the same purpose: Trying to keep people together and help them work together. Nor do I think that most players could solo most things in L4D1-2 with AI SI at least, none of my friends nor I could reliably do that in L4D1 or 2 but then I guess we just suck and some people are gaming gods compared to us.
Sorry for walls of text, I'm just highly opinionated I guess.
There's still a thursday in there!
I'm gonna start off with the disclaimer that I only skimmed your wall of text.
Referring to your first statement that these things are rare in L4D, I will have to disagree since almost every player who plays confogl/promod/whatever-its-called-these-days can do these things quite regularly. Even the pubstars in the game have come to understand these mechanics. Tanks are another aspect of the game. Yes you can compare the similarities but then again the tank doesn't have a 1-hit auto kill either. The only comparison I can see would be using hit-ables since they auto-incap. I would also argue that hit-ables take quite a bit more skill to use, granted the survivors aren't total idiots. So again, the l4d argument doesn't work.
For Onos DPS, in vanilla it is still 90 or 100 (honestly forgot exact number) p-damage each gore, (This was nerfed in compmod) which allowed an onos to essentially lawnmower a group of marines. This is why I feel there is a problem with Onos dps but that's another story. Giving the onos this silly devour ability doesn't change how marines approach or deal with onos. If an onos makes the mistake of attacking 5 marines, he/she is going to die regardless of devour. It's just an aggravating 'cool' mechanic that the devs thought up in their this-could-be-cool-thinktank.
My re-tune of devour would make it more of a 'focused' gore. Make it do something like 120 damage with extremely low RoF. If the damage is enough to kill the marine, create a quick animation of being eaten, then kill the marine. I would still find this annoying as all hell but I would be able to live with it instead of being stuck in the onos' stomach animation for 5 seconds increasing my respawn time.
And that's about as far as I read.
Would turn a 2 hit kill into an energy-expensive 1 hit kill, and thus not be OP. Would also force marines to weld eachother (which they famously do not do in combat).
If a marine has no armor left, you can just gore him.
Tbh I dunno why I'm suggesting stuff for devour, kind a bit ot :P
I think this Combat standalone is moving in the right direction by not having a commander. I will admit I have not played the mod yet, but I heard it was pretty good in NS1 and NS2. The polish and optimization enhancements are definitely needed too. I think the RTS element may be one of the reasons why players don't stick around. I hope that we can see more maps and weapons. I looked up the HMG and that thing looks pretty badass. It seems as though people make the argument that the Exosuits replaced the HMG, but this does not need to be the case. They can make the HMG cost a similar amount of upgrade/resource points, so that a player cannot get an exosuit, die, and then pick up an HMG. It would be balanced I think because you can pick between mobility with the HMG, or more health/armor with the Exo. I also heard that there were webs in NS1; that would be a pretty cool counter to jetpacks. Or instead it can made that the jet pack's fuel drain quicker/ slower recharge.
If Combat is done right I think it can bring in a lot more players, and they will stay. My only concern is that since this game will use a lot of assets from NS2, people will not think it is worth the money. They need to add a lot more content/game mechanics to make it worthwhile, the Devour feature and the LMG look cool but that will not be enough.
Awesome that you guys like the game! Keep playing it, you will notice the commander feature works great, usually
I recommend playing on community servers with lots of regulars.
There are actually webs in NS2, they just hide behind ludicrous amounts of biomass.
Make sure to buy combat :P
We put it in there because we want it and the general feedback we got at PAX was that people wanted it.
We do realize that it can be fine once or twice and sooner than later people may start getting frustrated by it, which is exactly why we are making sure it isn't as punishing as it was in NS2 ( our mod, which btw was the result of us abandoning the project not because we wanted it extremely punishing ) and in NS1.
We are always iterating on the design of the whole game and listening to feedback, if we do release it in such a way that people don't like it we will make proper changes to make sure its fun.
Alex our main programmer just made a simple tweak to it yesterday and I personally like the change, it made Devour more of a skill shot than what it was before.
I hope you guys all join us during our live stream where we will show the game live and demonstrate Devour and perhaps a couple of other things.
Please please please consider a game mode of competitive combat! Frankly when people use xeno, exos, GLs, onos etc in combat it ruins the game. Fine, I understand there are some newbies who love these things because they're 'cool' - like devour I guess, but for those of us who appreciate skill in our online games, competitive combat mode is a really great addition to the combat mod experience. If you can build this into your plans for the standalone game, I can see myself getting behind you guys again. But as it stands, the focus on devour is really, really bad
. Do you intend on designing a short animation clip of the Marines getting devoured and digested. Hell, It's the price to pay when the prey looses, and since this game is revolved around that concept why not then just go with it. Hopefully the bigger picture of funding, or some sort of inconvenience arise with this extra effort, and of course this might be a outrage to impatient gamers, but couldn't you just skip past the short animation and move on like with most typical instant repawning.
There was some confusion (even internally) about the focus on devour for publicity - it was only intended to be our first reveal, not the driving force behind our marketing (though since we've only revealed one thing, I guess they're equivalent). We have a lot more stuff to reveal.
Could I ask if you plan to have an open beta or pay for early access? Normally, I would balk at the words "pay for early access" (bad rep. from Totalbiscuit, and Jim). But for you guys I am definitely willing to make an exception. So I am ready to pony up the dough if you go that route.
PS. sorry if you already answered this Q. The time difference between Australia and the US is brutal, so I didn't go on the twitter.
If you own NS2 already, you can apply to be a playtester (link is in this thread, as well as on the general forum). We will be on steam soon, at which point we'll consider betas/early access.
Fades were the original jetpack counter, they'd spray their acid rockets and go in for a quick focus swipe kill.
Sooo... bring back acid rocket?
I miss Focus, it was so OP.
Devour was meant largely as a counter to conga-lines of heavy armours welding all welding each other, which toghether with JP+HMG rushing hives was a mainstay of 1.0x NS. Devour was made necessary in NS 2.0 due to massively nerfing acid rockets (which earned them the nick-name "vinegar splash" for quite a while), nerfing spores (no longer stacked and no longer affected HAs) and nerfing onos (hit box no longer a 32x32x72, marine sized block in the center of the onos) and replacing paralyze with stomp (paralyze was an aimable ranged stun and affected jetpackers, where as stomp did not). In 2.0, aliens were allowed to get fades and onoses on the first hive, so they could not be too strong (in 1.0x res was capped depending on how many hives you had, and gorges recieved 3x as much res as any other player).
Jetpacks were meant to counter onos (not hard counter, just to be particularly effective against), so that it was no longer a game ender.
In practice devour was quite effective against jetpackers; largely due to bottlenecks in the maps, combined with latency+interpolation which made it difficult to dodge (a problem that's worse in NS2). It was often used to take random players out of the game, even LAs, for about a minute at a time and to drop their weapons behind enemy lines so they could not recycle them (weapons could not be destroyed by bile).
Combat was introduced in 2.x-something or maybe 3.0. Devour was clearly too annoying for combat, so it was shortened to some seconds. In some ways this made devour more effective, as its rate of repetition became much higher. It became the primary attack of onoses in combat; kite marines and nibble them one at a time. Most players wouldn't consider using gore when devour was up unless they were hiting the CC.
An easy fix, if devour must return, would be to let the marine die and go back into the spawn queue, but keeping the onos "full" and digesting for a longer period of time.