The only way you're going to misdirect marines about your starting hive is if they have no clue about the game, or that they sit in the base without a scan viable. This assuming medpack scouting wasn't possible.
Only mineshaft/refinery come in mind where it might take a bit longer to find out the starting hive, and even in that you'll have a pretty damn good guess, enough to make it not matter in the end.
I would gladly accept close spawns back if marines weren't able to tell where aliens spawned within seconds because medpacks can collide with alien hives and harvesters for some strange reason which doesn't seem like a hard thing to change if you ask me but aaaanyway
For now I think it's best.
And yeah the fact that the spawn configurations haven't been fixed for docking baffles me, it should be fixed to- marines cafe/term, aliens lock/gen/deps & no close spawns (term-deps, cafe-lock).
Medpack trick on close spawns gives you absolutely no advantage! Marines will engage Aliens at the shared RT just as fast as the medpack trick. The only time medpack trick is useful is on the large distance spawns.
For instance, before this patch, if Aliens spawned Locker and Marines at Caf... the Aliens will be in bar within seconds! Or Depatures and Terminal, aliens will be in East Wing within seconds again and you would know very fast. Implying the medpack trick somehow breaks close spawns doesn't make any sense.
edit: lol at diagree. you have zero map awareness and map knowledge if you disagree with this.
The only way you're going to misdirect marines about your starting hive is if they have no clue about the game, or that they sit in the base without a scan viable. This assuming medpack scouting wasn't possible.
Only mineshaft/refinery come in mind where it might take a bit longer to find out the starting hive, and even in that you'll have a pretty damn good guess, enough to make it not matter in the end.
In pub games on Veil, I'd say Aliens can conceal their starting location for a while by splitting evenly between left and right, and the spawning side holding back for a bit. (For example, when starting in Sub Access, Skulks *not* rushing Skylights as fast as possible.)
Please return Gorge tunnels to their previous state. After a few days of trying it out, this change doesn't work well on the 22-24 slot servers. Even after mysting a tunnel to full maturity, they still get destroyed too fast when targeted by a group.
Two marines can kill a fresh tunnel drop with 1.5 out of 4 of their magazines. That's under 8-9 seconds to kill a tunnel that isn't matured by two people. Maybe even faster if Marines quick switch to pistol after 1 full magazine? By the time anyone even tries to respond to defend it, it's gone unless it has a crag. Especially when you account for the extra walking you have to do between tunnels once you're in it. Now imagine on a 24 slot server where players travel is large groups. Or imagine if a skulk could solo a phasegate in under 12 seconds?
These changes don't make any sense besides for 6v6.
Gorge tunnel is the alien Phase Gate equivalent. Would you leave your phase gate undefended and expect it to stay up? If they were available, would you rush to drop a gate before the first engagement?
I'm not getting this gorge tunnel debate. Gorge tunnels are essentially alien PGs. Yes, there are subtle differences, but that's what it boils down to. Marines have never been able to drop PGs in the opening seconds of the game, and for good reason. It's completely imbalanced to give aliens the ability to drop tunnels so early, especially when you consider that they possess more ground mobility than marines to start with
Even after this change aliens are still probably able to get tunnels up before marines can get PGs and tunnels can be built with no damage done to alien tres counts, while marines need to wait longer for those all-important upgrades if they choose to rush phase gates.
ty, best "stable" fps ive had in 2 years...however long this affair has been going on. My ovaries are ready to soak up all the love you are willing to provide me with.
You do realize that the game was not balanced before? If its better now is hard to say, but it was clearly not balanced before (hint, aliens where winning).
Now that this is out of the way, what exactly is your issue?
Yes, aliens were winning more because of rushes in a sense. 1 gorge rush can end the game but not even GL JP rushes can end the game straight away and if it fails, marines are more likely to GG. This game is like SC2 Zerg being able to cheese a Terran opponent anytime in a game without too much risk and straight up win instantly without the Terran being able to do much other than play standard and slowly chip away or commit their entire odds into a rush, fail and lose or succeed and win.
Simply put, rushes are a standard for aliens without much risk involved, they're not for marines. If marines fail a rush, that probably means its gg for them. If aliens fail a rush, they can still keep going.
We all know how incompetent public marine commanders are when it comes to awareness and preparation for alien rushes so I wouldn't take public game data as a legitimate argument for the w/l ratios favoring aliens. What would be more interesting although not realistically possible is identifying how many games are won because of rushes either early-game or late.
@RaZDaZ I agree pub marines are not very competent, but the same can be said of the aliens. So I see that as a 50/50. I only pub and I comm alot, the number of times we go for a rush that didn't work (both as marine and alien) is staggering (only half the team listen, or they give away the location by taking so so so long to go through the tunnel, that the other comm realized something was up). Marines W2/A2 Jp/Gl rush fail due to half the team deciding they HAD to kill that harvester along the way to the surprise rush... The list goes on.
I think the new patch, if anything will give more of a back and forth on games that are fairly evenly balanced. The stomps that favor one team due to skill stack will continue. The reason for the more mid game is because Aliens can get higher life forms back, and Marines can get the tech they need more quickly IF they hold res. With the cheaper upgrade building, I see Aliens need to harass res more.
I think the only thing I don't like about the new patch is the possibility of a fast AA, with GL being so good in a large pub.
Yes but the efficacy of alien rushes is far stronger than marines because of aspects like cost-efficiency investment into the push. You might disagree but a mid-late game alien gorge rush is cheaper in every scenario than a shotgun rush, JP rush or an ARC rush. Then there's the success rate or efficacy of the rushes themselves. I don't know which is more likely to succeed as the factors inside the game are enormous influences. One thing I do know though is that there are certainly more zergrush attacks on the aliens side than the marines side. How many games have you played as marine where you've lost to a gorge rush on the main base? Too many to count I imagine but how many games have you lost to an ARC rush or beacon JP rush? Some but a much lower statistic I bet. That is a huge variable in of itself when evaluating W/L measurements.
My main point isn't about balance or design that's for another time, my main point was that I responded to someone who used statistical metrics as justification for the balance changes of which they are not valid or reliable. ns2stats or hive doesn't record the right metric needed to evaluate the state of balance, a more contained and prepared approach is required and the reliability is questionable at best due to the sample size and relevancy. I honestly don't know how the devs can say they know what causes the average pub game to end, rush or normal play as there is only one statistic that I find relevant in discerning the difference and that's match duration if you're taking it from quantitative sampling. I'd love to be wrong on this so any documented proof that the win-rates are not at all influenced by this disparity between rush efficiency and efficacy is welcomed.
If you have the data and are certain that aliens don't win because of rush frequency and efficacy, awesome, this patch is looking to be fixing more than I thought. I don't consider this to be a balance issue, just asymmetrical design.
Fixed spawns sucks, big time. It always results in boring games. Please for the love of glob revoke this. x
I watched a lot of Starcraft Brood War, SC2 and most maps had fixed spawns. What we got was the most strategic and indepth video game ever made, the level of complexity in those games and the decisions that you see pro-players make are only recognised by people who understand it, that's how deep it is. Strategy and depth does not emerge from RNG, it's actually much better to eliminate as much of it as possible which getting rid of random spawns was an excellent idea. Cafeteria vs Locker or Cave vs Repair were so brutal for the wrong team that fixed spawn, even if it did create boring games more often is better than blatant balance problems.
I'd be interested to hear your argument that random spawns create more interesting games.
It is self-serving, in the fact we're trying to make our favorite game NS2 better.
By making unneeded changes like onos movement and fade damage? I don't think I ever came across a killing-machine Fade complaining about how he can't finish off that res-tower. He'd have to have a Skulk(or Lerk) come to finish it off. You know, team-work like how a few of these posts are shooting down other arguments saying they should be using team-work? That was the downside of the Fade, you had extra health, near-complete directional air control, and dealt full damage to marines. Downside was larger target, and less structure damage.
We will be making more balance changes in the future based off community feedback and our own thoughts and ideas.
So in other words the community will be disregarded if they dislike another idea introduced by the CDT&friends, like it is now? Why are you planning to make balance changes in the future based off community feedback when you could have done it right before this patch.
Are you seriously going to keep hammering out the 6v6 crap?
If the tunnel dies so easily when you just drop it, DON'T DROP IT WHEN THERE ARE MARINES THERE. Co-ordinate with your team where you want the tunnel, and then make sure there are team mates BACKING YOU UP before dropping.
Maybe we should increase the Skulk health to 500hp too, and just yell at public players to have 100% accuracy. If they complain, tell them to shoot better.
Don't get me wrong, I too felt Gorge Tunnels were too strong in public games (+20 slots) but the current nerf to them is pretty damn drastic. I solo'd a tunnel even though I was contested by 3 skulks. Hello? Not 6v6? It's almost always double that. There are going to be marines EVERYWHERE and I had 2 partners but they got picked off before we got to the tunnel which was easy enough for me to solo.
People are complaining about gorge tunnels dying too fast, a valid complaint. However, no one has bothered to negotiate with them on how to find a middle ground or improve upon gorge tunnels without making them the ludicrous mess they were before-hand. Instead, people are arguing with them, telling them to "git gud" as a public player.
EDIT: Gee, look at all these disagrees... same people on every post. I wonder when the compromise and community feedback will show up...
I still think that dynamic structure HP scaling based on playercount is an ideal solution to the 6v6 vs 12v12+ argument.
Using the same player values as the second IP at round start, give structures [insert balance variable]% more health and armor.
**i.e. GTs have 30% more HP in a 12v12 than a 6v6 to compensate for there being more players attacking a structure in an average scenario.
Note that this should ONLY affect structures, the player damage is fine for any playercount IMO
I still think that dynamic structure HP scaling based on playercount is an ideal solution to the 6v6 vs 12v12+ argument.
Using the same player values as the second IP at round start, give structures [insert balance variable]% more health and armor.
**i.e. GTs have 30% more HP in a 12v12 than a 6v6 to compensate for there being more players attacking a structure in an average scenario.
Note that this should ONLY affect structures, the player damage is fine for any playercount IMO
Here's the unspoken truth about balance processes.. It's unbelievably easy to find a balance change that can work. But the trick is to find a solution that doesn't add complexity.
Your suggestion is extremely complex from a players perspective.
I'll grant right away, your suggestion would probably fix many of those balance issues. But you are asking players to learn all of the health and armor values respective to playercount. That's simply not a good balance change - it's way too complex.
I have no idea what the health/armor values are for anything besides players. For structures, I just know that I have to keep shooting/biting it until it dies (I'm strictly Pub, if you couldn't tell ).
Beyond a comp environment where knowing the exact HP/Armor values can make a difference to winning or losing a game, I hardly think that it complicates things to have to shoot/bite more.
Killing a CC or Hive is a lot less complicated than killing a skulk (10 Bullets+ 3 for cara)/marine (parasite+bite+bite). The only difference is time you have to spend holding down mouse 1.
Plus, in my mind, its intuitive that buildings would have more life if there is the possibility of more players attacking it.
I really don't like the gorge tunnel nerf. I've seen too many tunnel go down by a solo marine before most people can save it. Comparing it to the pg (I mean, phase gates take a while to get, right?) Is absurd. There is no immediate phase. Instead, you have to run through a tunnel with crap in the way.
I suggested before to maybe make the tunnel shorter to compensate the weak tunnels. That's all I can think of. Just remember that marines can control maps faster now (veil with nano). If there were better places to put the tunnels, then that'd help. Still wish you could try to put them on vertical surfaces but I doubt it'll be done and I doubt people would push for it. It may also be out of the cdt's hands.
Don't get me wrong, I too felt Gorge Tunnels were too strong in public games (+20 slots) but the current nerf to them is pretty damn drastic. I solo'd a tunnel even though I was contested by 3 skulks. Hello? Not 6v6? It's almost always double that. There are going to be marines EVERYWHERE and I had 2 partners but they got picked off before we got to the tunnel which was easy enough for me to solo.
I don't understand. You killed 3 skulks and then the tunnel, so the tunnel is too weak? The aliens tried to defend it, failed, and lost the tunnel. I fail to see the problem here.
I really don't like the gorge tunnel nerf. I've seen too many tunnel go down by a solo marine before most people can save it. Comparing it to the pg (I mean, phase gates take a while to get, right?) Is absurd. There is no immediate phase. Instead, you have to run through a tunnel with crap in the way.
I suggested before to maybe make the tunnel shorter to compensate the weak tunnels. That's all I can think of. Just remember that marines can control maps faster now (veil with nano). If there were better places to put the tunnels, then that'd help. Still wish you could try to put them on vertical surfaces but I doubt it'll be done and I doubt people would push for it. It may also be out of the cdt's hands.
The patch has been out for less than a week. I anticipate a short time to adjust to the new health values is necessary. Players need to get used to the idea that they'll need to defend a GT immediately, rather than being able to wait for 5-8 seconds before even starting to respond, which was the case with the old health values.
I still think that dynamic structure HP scaling based on playercount is an ideal solution to the 6v6 vs 12v12+ argument.
Using the same player values as the second IP at round start, give structures [insert balance variable]% more health and armor.
**i.e. GTs have 30% more HP in a 12v12 than a 6v6 to compensate for there being more players attacking a structure in an average scenario.
Note that this should ONLY affect structures, the player damage is fine for any playercount IMO
Dynamic structure health won't work due to the fact that players need to be able to expect consistent health values. Nearly all of the dynamicality (not really a word) in the game should come from player versus player interaction, the exception being spawning rates. Egg spawn rates are already adjusted dynamically (as far as I can remember), but marine spawn timers have always been static, hence the introduction of the 2nd IP at 9v9. Admittedly, 9v9 might be too low of a player count... it might get pushed back to 10v10.
The patch has been out for less than a week. I anticipate a short time to adjust to the new health values is necessary. Players need to get used to the idea that they'll need to defend a GT immediately, rather than being able to wait for 5-8 seconds before even starting to respond, which was the case with the old health values.
You don't need a week to see there is a problem. It's not like it's some complex scenario here. Shoot tunnel, it dies X seconds. If it's not a problem, lets nerf the phase gate to die as fast and call it a day?
And the waiting "5-8 seconds" is BS. Everyone that can defend goes to defend. If it takes someone 5-8 seconds to go defend, they were out of position and need to make way to the tunnel or they're playing deathmatch, as a lot of useless teammates do in this game. Either way, a specific players incompetence to defend something isn't a valid reason to justify a nerf.
That's actually funny. "Hey, our Gorge tunnel is going down, it's so strong and can withstand so much damage that I will derp around for a few seconds before going to try and save it." LOL! How do people come up with this stuff?
I don't understand. You killed 3 skulks and then the tunnel, so the tunnel is too weak? The aliens tried to defend it, failed, and lost the tunnel. I fail to see the problem here.
The problem is that the current Gorge Tunnel change doesn't work well (or scale) with a high player count. It works well with a lower player count (Anything below 8v8) but doesn't work well for the avg pub of 10v10. The 3 skulks picked off my 2 team mates before we reached the gorge tunnel but were chipped enough for me to kill off, and then I was able to, alone, kill a tunnel before any reinforcements came in.
Now if we use a general public shepherding mentality, there is usually going to be 4 marines together almost always. If I can solo that tunnel quick enough before reinforcements came in, imagine how quickly those 4 marines are going to be able to clear that tunnel before the aliens can even come back to base to save it. Normally in a 6v6 scenario, if 4 marines were together and pushing a tunnel, that'd mean a lane was open and you'd punish the hell out of it. But in the avg 10v10 there will be 4/4/2(The people that know how to shoot) and all lanes will still be taken care of. Pub aliens also like to always engage on the front lines instead of going behind them and biting crucial structures.
TL;DR The current gorge tunnel health only scales well with 6v6, not the avg 10v10+ public servers. You don't have to make it scale dynamically, just increase the health flat-out to scale with 10v10. It would also do well to extend the hitbox of the gorge tunnel in all directions slightly more, and possibly making the inside of the tunnel shorter.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@ball2hi
You are completely disregarding the fact that a 10 v 10 or 12 v 12 on average yields 3 tunnels within the first minute - AND that while PvE doesn't scale, PvP does..
Meaning 4 marines pushing a tunnel can be responded by 4 or more aliens defending and neither side will be out of position.
Marines have never been able to drop PGs in the opening seconds of the game, and for good reason. It's completely imbalanced to give aliens the ability to drop tunnels so early, especially when you consider that they possess more ground mobility than marines to start with
in large pubs on average you see 3 tunnels within the first minute of a round, creating early map control - especially when they are reinforced with hydras, clog walls, whips, shades, constantly reinforced by skulks and a healing gorge while it takes you and another marine 20+ seconds to kill it if you've already cleared everything else.
This makes that scenario more of a challenge now at least, so its not guaranteed PvE reinforced map control in the first minute of a round against pub marines.
I don't understand. You killed 3 skulks and then the tunnel, so the tunnel is too weak? The aliens tried to defend it, failed, and lost the tunnel. I fail to see the problem here.
The problem is that the current Gorge Tunnel change doesn't work well (or scale) with a high player count. It works well with a lower player count (Anything below 8v8) but doesn't work well for the avg pub of 10v10. The 3 skulks picked off my 2 team mates before we reached the gorge tunnel but were chipped enough for me to kill off, and then I was able to, alone, kill a tunnel before any reinforcements came in.
Now if we use a general public shepherding mentality, there is usually going to be 4 marines together almost always. If I can solo that tunnel quick enough before reinforcements came in, imagine how quickly those 4 marines are going to be able to clear that tunnel before the aliens can even come back to base to save it. Normally in a 6v6 scenario, if 4 marines were together and pushing a tunnel, that'd mean a lane was open and you'd punish the hell out of it. But in the avg 10v10 there will be 4/4/2(The people that know how to shoot) and all lanes will still be taken care of. Pub aliens also like to always engage on the front lines instead of going behind them and biting crucial structures.
TL;DR The current gorge tunnel health only scales well with 6v6, not the avg 10v10+ public servers. You don't have to make it scale dynamically, just increase the health flat-out to scale with 10v10. It would also do well to extend the hitbox of the gorge tunnel in all directions slightly more, and possibly making the inside of the tunnel shorter.
What you are describing is not a problem with the gorge tunnel HP values nor a problem with player counts but a problem with people playing this game. Its as simple as that.
@ball2hi
You are completely disregarding the fact that a 10 v 10 or 12 v 12 on average yields 3 tunnels within the first minute - AND that while PvE doesn't scale, PvP does..
Meaning 4 marines pushing a tunnel can be responded by 4 or more aliens defending and neither side will be out of position.
in large pubs on average you see 3 tunnels within the first minute of a round, creating early map control - especially when they are reinforced with hydras, clog walls, whips, shades, constantly reinforced by skulks and a healing gorge while it takes you and another marine 20+ seconds to kill it if you've already cleared everything else.
This makes that scenario more of a challenge now at least, so its not guaranteed PvE reinforced map control in the first minute of a round against pub marines.
You rarely get 3 tunnels up at start. Here is typical pub scenario on large player slot servers:
- 3 or 4 people go gorge at start
- 1 or 2 die en-route to their location
- 1 definite tunnel goes up, maybe 2
- Generally with even teams, the weaker 1 of the 2 tunnels gets cleared, typically the one that com doesn't allocate res to defend.
3 successful tunnels early game is extremely rare, unless the other team is very bad, or you're on a 28+ slot server. The only time you see more than 2+ tunnels is typically around mid-late game if Aliens have taken more map control, or are trying to sneak a tunnel behind.
Marines have never been able to drop PGs in the opening seconds of the game, and for good reason. It's completely imbalanced to give aliens the ability to drop tunnels so early, especially when you consider that they possess more ground mobility than marines to start with
The game is constantly mentioned as being asymmetrical when comparing things in the past between Alien vs Marine (why does X have a better Y than Z), but now it's time to make direct comparisons to try and prove a point? Lets not forget that the marines have quite a few advantages over Aliens in other areas. Beacons, JPs and Exos on 1 CC, lower delay teleporters and travel distance, sentries 10x more powerful than hydras as defense early with no bile, free starting ip that can be cycled for a new selection of strats, etc. So should we nerf all those Marine advantages too?
And for the record, I definitely think the tunnels needed to be tweaked, as they can be a pain to get down in certain scenarios, but I think a HP nerf was the wrong move. Not every tunnel is heavily fortified, especially early game or lone tunnels when res can't be afforded or spent to fortify it. You guys essentially nerfed tunnels because they are very strong in certain scenarios while overlooking the standard and weaker scenarios. The end result is an even weaker tunnel when not reinforced.
As for the whole topic of tunnels, I sense the tone is it's not up for discussion and it's the end of story. Apparently the reason has been given multiple times already in other replies, so end of discussion! With that said, I bow out from this discussion.
I have always wondered why in public forums you get banned by insulting other people but not from other logical fallacies. I find other logical fallacies causing as much harm to discussion as mere ad homines. I mean in this thread there are so many straw men fallacies that you could build a house from straw.
I sense the tone is it's not up for discussion and it's the end of story. Apparently the reason has been given multiple times already in other replies, so end of discussion! With that said, I bow out from this discussion.
On the contrary, please discuss and debate!
I not only enjoy it, (that's gotta be obvious, right? hehe) but I encourage and support it because humans too easily believe their ideas are without flaws.
But you cannot take reasons given to you in a discussion, as I did, as an indicator of the end of the interaction... because that's pretty much how discussions work, fundamentally.
I do disagree with you over the average frequency as well as success of early gorge tunnels in pubs, large and small, during the past year. *shrug*
There are similarities and differences between GTs and PGs, that I don't think that comparison alone is worthy to debate over.
Instead I offer something to consider:
Phase gates were designed as an invested response to combat alien mobility (a large advantage when the winning recipe is map control, esp for larger maps) while gorge tunnels were not made out of necessity.
It was a fun idea from long ago around 2007 , and maybe was meant to replace hive teleporting from NS1, but was actually developed post launch and implemented when the last thing balance needed was an alien buff. (They were winning ~70% at the time) So they were placed at biomass 6 and were expensive - they soon became one of those rarely seen mechanics.
Fast forward to around build 250 where the gorge was given tunnels freely researched and available immediately, not for balance sake mind you or out of necessity, but instead because the gorge needed more fun things to do early game besides what was available then. So the mechanic went from something that was intentionally relegated into near obsolescence through timing, due to fear of potentially being OP - to being immediately available in a round... and there it stayed. This is the first balance adjustment i can recall since then besides maybe cost?
For the record, I suggested increasing the timing by 30 seconds, and to leave the health alone.. (pub marines move slow) but after playing with it in comp mod and internally: I love having that much less PvE, damn was it annoying, and I love aliens having to actually rely on teamwork to enjoy such a low risk / high reward advantage.
@Tane - Off topic but, all logical fallacies are not created equal.
An argument from authority is considered a logical fallacy, but under certain conditions they can still be reasonable arguments.
Ironically your post is kind of a strawman in itself (which is why I couldn't resist responding ), cuz it's not about wether the user commits a logical fallacy or not, it's about being civil to each other!
Obviously you have a point, there's a lot of poor arguments in here, I just couldn't resist the irony No offense intended.
Yes, of course. But when the idea is to be funny, and not to represent any hard arguments, you kind of get free pass. It would be different if I would actually claim something to be true.
The only way you're going to misdirect marines about your starting hive is if they have no clue about the game, or that they sit in the base without a scan viable. This assuming medpack scouting wasn't possible.
Only mineshaft/refinery come in mind where it might take a bit longer to find out the starting hive, and even in that you'll have a pretty damn good guess, enough to make it not matter in the end.
In pub games on Veil, I'd say Aliens can conceal their starting location for a while by splitting evenly between left and right, and the spawning side holding back for a bit. (For example, when starting in Sub Access, Skulks *not* rushing Skylights as fast as possible.)
And marines rushing through topo getting to c12/dome/pipe area without any contest can communicate that hive is most likely sub, and vice versa on the other side of the map, if hive is cargo you can negate sub by rushing towards system as marine, you've now covered that it's either cargo or pipe. Ultimately the gameplans remain the same on that map anyways, you either deny nanogrid, or you take everything else.
... hence the introduction of the 2nd IP at 9v9. Admittedly, 9v9 might be too low of a player count... it might get pushed back to 10v10.
I kindly request you read my post1 & post2 about this.
I believe a more complex calculation for the amount of start IPs based on
1. Server slot count
2. Total current player count
3. Current players on marine team
is required to make it work smoothly.
It seems to me that we're beginning - just - to see public play aliens feel the pressure again, which is a good thing. There was a turning point in comp a few seasons ago (especially so at the lower divisions) where marines started to be the aggressors in the early game by virtue of a few alien nerfs and marine buffs, such as the reduced upgrades cost and physics improvements. Since then in comp play, the alien early game has been a very fragile thing (in a good way) and it's really important to defend rapidly and successfully when required (of course while maintaining res biting). Later, once map control is established and the economy is up and running, aliens have a bit more leeway, but at the start of the game they need to take a lot more care.
To my mind, this hasn't been so in most pub servers for a long time. Apart from the occasional marine stomps, aliens have had to do very little actual defence: they have been able to be the aggressors and contain marines thereby defending their own harvesters from afar by dominating the map control game. I say dominating here, because in an even match, you'd expect not to be able to hold all parts of the map you wish, likewise when you push an area hard, you expect to be able to take it. Alien territory control in pub play has been absolutely ridiculous for far too long in general, and this was in no small part down to gorge tunnels at the start with massive amounts of health. Now that marines in pubs are able to shoot slightly better due to performance improvements, and they are able to be more aggressive due to some specific alien structure HP nerfs, aliens begin to feel the pressure again that early game is actually more about defence for the alien team than it is for marines - and this is how it should be given the improved mobility of aliens vs marines.
Now, the alien team has to coordinate to ensure it defends the areas it REALLY wants to keep. If that means letting marines have skylights and overlook while you get the gorge tunnel established and defended elsewhere on the map, then that's the choice that you as a team have to make. Once you have a) scouted the marines, parasited them to make sure you know what's going on and b) established and defended the early GT position, you then have the opportunity to crush the push on the other side of the map and bite res before the marines can push again. I think it's a good thing that aliens can no longer do all of these things simultaneously, especially in the early game. They need a certain level of pack play and coordination, and finally pub aliens are going to have to learn this. That's a really positive thing, IMHO.
Finally, shortening the gorge tunnels isn't a perfect solution to the perceived problem - after all that shorten's the marines' route to the other end of your tunnel, and don't forget that they take armour damage while in there - the longer they spend in there the better. It really doesn't take very long to walljump through a GT anyway.
TL;DR: Alien pack play and coordination required. Parasite marines, choose your engagements, work as a team to establish map control and decide what to defend and when.
These are all just moot points. It doesn't matter the scenarios you want to make up, the final result is a marine shooting a tunnel and them going down too fast.
Well actually, there was only one point. And the point was 'dont drop tunnels you can't keep'.
I'm really hoping to see this change break the complete (and unnecessary) reliance aliens seem to have on tunnels in pubs currently.
Not to mention, gorges might finally start actually doing useful stuff with their pres early game, like fortifying chokes with hydras and clog forests, instead of building gorge tunnels that give the aliens perhaps 2-3 seconds faster travel to a specific, predictable spot that is prone to drawing gunfire in a push.
Edit: I posted an unposted draft... Roo above me says it all in more words with better meanings and stuff. I am samrt
Comments
Only mineshaft/refinery come in mind where it might take a bit longer to find out the starting hive, and even in that you'll have a pretty damn good guess, enough to make it not matter in the end.
Medpack trick on close spawns gives you absolutely no advantage! Marines will engage Aliens at the shared RT just as fast as the medpack trick. The only time medpack trick is useful is on the large distance spawns.
For instance, before this patch, if Aliens spawned Locker and Marines at Caf... the Aliens will be in bar within seconds! Or Depatures and Terminal, aliens will be in East Wing within seconds again and you would know very fast. Implying the medpack trick somehow breaks close spawns doesn't make any sense.
edit: lol at diagree. you have zero map awareness and map knowledge if you disagree with this.
Gorge tunnel is the alien Phase Gate equivalent. Would you leave your phase gate undefended and expect it to stay up? If they were available, would you rush to drop a gate before the first engagement?
Even after this change aliens are still probably able to get tunnels up before marines can get PGs and tunnels can be built with no damage done to alien tres counts, while marines need to wait longer for those all-important upgrades if they choose to rush phase gates.
Yes but the efficacy of alien rushes is far stronger than marines because of aspects like cost-efficiency investment into the push. You might disagree but a mid-late game alien gorge rush is cheaper in every scenario than a shotgun rush, JP rush or an ARC rush. Then there's the success rate or efficacy of the rushes themselves. I don't know which is more likely to succeed as the factors inside the game are enormous influences. One thing I do know though is that there are certainly more zergrush attacks on the aliens side than the marines side. How many games have you played as marine where you've lost to a gorge rush on the main base? Too many to count I imagine but how many games have you lost to an ARC rush or beacon JP rush? Some but a much lower statistic I bet. That is a huge variable in of itself when evaluating W/L measurements.
My main point isn't about balance or design that's for another time, my main point was that I responded to someone who used statistical metrics as justification for the balance changes of which they are not valid or reliable. ns2stats or hive doesn't record the right metric needed to evaluate the state of balance, a more contained and prepared approach is required and the reliability is questionable at best due to the sample size and relevancy. I honestly don't know how the devs can say they know what causes the average pub game to end, rush or normal play as there is only one statistic that I find relevant in discerning the difference and that's match duration if you're taking it from quantitative sampling. I'd love to be wrong on this so any documented proof that the win-rates are not at all influenced by this disparity between rush efficiency and efficacy is welcomed.
If you have the data and are certain that aliens don't win because of rush frequency and efficacy, awesome, this patch is looking to be fixing more than I thought. I don't consider this to be a balance issue, just asymmetrical design.
I watched a lot of Starcraft Brood War, SC2 and most maps had fixed spawns. What we got was the most strategic and indepth video game ever made, the level of complexity in those games and the decisions that you see pro-players make are only recognised by people who understand it, that's how deep it is. Strategy and depth does not emerge from RNG, it's actually much better to eliminate as much of it as possible which getting rid of random spawns was an excellent idea. Cafeteria vs Locker or Cave vs Repair were so brutal for the wrong team that fixed spawn, even if it did create boring games more often is better than blatant balance problems.
I'd be interested to hear your argument that random spawns create more interesting games.
So in other words the community will be disregarded if they dislike another idea introduced by the CDT&friends, like it is now? Why are you planning to make balance changes in the future based off community feedback when you could have done it right before this patch.
I mean, look at this fine quote...
Maybe we should increase the Skulk health to 500hp too, and just yell at public players to have 100% accuracy. If they complain, tell them to shoot better.
Don't get me wrong, I too felt Gorge Tunnels were too strong in public games (+20 slots) but the current nerf to them is pretty damn drastic. I solo'd a tunnel even though I was contested by 3 skulks. Hello? Not 6v6? It's almost always double that. There are going to be marines EVERYWHERE and I had 2 partners but they got picked off before we got to the tunnel which was easy enough for me to solo.
People are complaining about gorge tunnels dying too fast, a valid complaint. However, no one has bothered to negotiate with them on how to find a middle ground or improve upon gorge tunnels without making them the ludicrous mess they were before-hand. Instead, people are arguing with them, telling them to "git gud" as a public player.
EDIT: Gee, look at all these disagrees... same people on every post. I wonder when the compromise and community feedback will show up...
Using the same player values as the second IP at round start, give structures [insert balance variable]% more health and armor.
**i.e. GTs have 30% more HP in a 12v12 than a 6v6 to compensate for there being more players attacking a structure in an average scenario.
Note that this should ONLY affect structures, the player damage is fine for any playercount IMO
Your suggestion is extremely complex from a players perspective.
I'll grant right away, your suggestion would probably fix many of those balance issues. But you are asking players to learn all of the health and armor values respective to playercount. That's simply not a good balance change - it's way too complex.
I have no idea what the health/armor values are for anything besides players. For structures, I just know that I have to keep shooting/biting it until it dies (I'm strictly Pub, if you couldn't tell
Beyond a comp environment where knowing the exact HP/Armor values can make a difference to winning or losing a game, I hardly think that it complicates things to have to shoot/bite more.
Killing a CC or Hive is a lot less complicated than killing a skulk (10 Bullets+ 3 for cara)/marine (parasite+bite+bite). The only difference is time you have to spend holding down mouse 1.
Plus, in my mind, its intuitive that buildings would have more life if there is the possibility of more players attacking it.
I suggested before to maybe make the tunnel shorter to compensate the weak tunnels. That's all I can think of. Just remember that marines can control maps faster now (veil with nano). If there were better places to put the tunnels, then that'd help. Still wish you could try to put them on vertical surfaces but I doubt it'll be done and I doubt people would push for it. It may also be out of the cdt's hands.
I don't understand. You killed 3 skulks and then the tunnel, so the tunnel is too weak? The aliens tried to defend it, failed, and lost the tunnel. I fail to see the problem here.
The patch has been out for less than a week. I anticipate a short time to adjust to the new health values is necessary. Players need to get used to the idea that they'll need to defend a GT immediately, rather than being able to wait for 5-8 seconds before even starting to respond, which was the case with the old health values.
Dynamic structure health won't work due to the fact that players need to be able to expect consistent health values. Nearly all of the dynamicality (not really a word) in the game should come from player versus player interaction, the exception being spawning rates. Egg spawn rates are already adjusted dynamically (as far as I can remember), but marine spawn timers have always been static, hence the introduction of the 2nd IP at 9v9. Admittedly, 9v9 might be too low of a player count... it might get pushed back to 10v10.
You don't need a week to see there is a problem. It's not like it's some complex scenario here. Shoot tunnel, it dies X seconds. If it's not a problem, lets nerf the phase gate to die as fast and call it a day?
And the waiting "5-8 seconds" is BS. Everyone that can defend goes to defend. If it takes someone 5-8 seconds to go defend, they were out of position and need to make way to the tunnel or they're playing deathmatch, as a lot of useless teammates do in this game. Either way, a specific players incompetence to defend something isn't a valid reason to justify a nerf.
That's actually funny. "Hey, our Gorge tunnel is going down, it's so strong and can withstand so much damage that I will derp around for a few seconds before going to try and save it." LOL! How do people come up with this stuff?
Now if we use a general public shepherding mentality, there is usually going to be 4 marines together almost always. If I can solo that tunnel quick enough before reinforcements came in, imagine how quickly those 4 marines are going to be able to clear that tunnel before the aliens can even come back to base to save it. Normally in a 6v6 scenario, if 4 marines were together and pushing a tunnel, that'd mean a lane was open and you'd punish the hell out of it. But in the avg 10v10 there will be 4/4/2(The people that know how to shoot) and all lanes will still be taken care of. Pub aliens also like to always engage on the front lines instead of going behind them and biting crucial structures.
TL;DR The current gorge tunnel health only scales well with 6v6, not the avg 10v10+ public servers. You don't have to make it scale dynamically, just increase the health flat-out to scale with 10v10. It would also do well to extend the hitbox of the gorge tunnel in all directions slightly more, and possibly making the inside of the tunnel shorter.
You are completely disregarding the fact that a 10 v 10 or 12 v 12 on average yields 3 tunnels within the first minute - AND that while PvE doesn't scale, PvP does..
Meaning 4 marines pushing a tunnel can be responded by 4 or more aliens defending and neither side will be out of position.
Maybe not, but the reasons already given multiple times now in this thread are.
What you are describing is not a problem with the gorge tunnel HP values nor a problem with player counts but a problem with people playing this game. Its as simple as that.
You rarely get 3 tunnels up at start. Here is typical pub scenario on large player slot servers:
- 3 or 4 people go gorge at start
- 1 or 2 die en-route to their location
- 1 definite tunnel goes up, maybe 2
- Generally with even teams, the weaker 1 of the 2 tunnels gets cleared, typically the one that com doesn't allocate res to defend.
3 successful tunnels early game is extremely rare, unless the other team is very bad, or you're on a 28+ slot server. The only time you see more than 2+ tunnels is typically around mid-late game if Aliens have taken more map control, or are trying to sneak a tunnel behind.
The game is constantly mentioned as being asymmetrical when comparing things in the past between Alien vs Marine (why does X have a better Y than Z), but now it's time to make direct comparisons to try and prove a point? Lets not forget that the marines have quite a few advantages over Aliens in other areas. Beacons, JPs and Exos on 1 CC, lower delay teleporters and travel distance, sentries 10x more powerful than hydras as defense early with no bile, free starting ip that can be cycled for a new selection of strats, etc. So should we nerf all those Marine advantages too?
And for the record, I definitely think the tunnels needed to be tweaked, as they can be a pain to get down in certain scenarios, but I think a HP nerf was the wrong move. Not every tunnel is heavily fortified, especially early game or lone tunnels when res can't be afforded or spent to fortify it. You guys essentially nerfed tunnels because they are very strong in certain scenarios while overlooking the standard and weaker scenarios. The end result is an even weaker tunnel when not reinforced.
As for the whole topic of tunnels, I sense the tone is it's not up for discussion and it's the end of story. Apparently the reason has been given multiple times already in other replies, so end of discussion! With that said, I bow out from this discussion.
I not only enjoy it, (that's gotta be obvious, right? hehe) but I encourage and support it because humans too easily believe their ideas are without flaws.
But you cannot take reasons given to you in a discussion, as I did, as an indicator of the end of the interaction... because that's pretty much how discussions work, fundamentally.
I do disagree with you over the average frequency as well as success of early gorge tunnels in pubs, large and small, during the past year. *shrug*
There are similarities and differences between GTs and PGs, that I don't think that comparison alone is worthy to debate over.
Instead I offer something to consider:
Phase gates were designed as an invested response to combat alien mobility (a large advantage when the winning recipe is map control, esp for larger maps) while gorge tunnels were not made out of necessity.
It was a fun idea from long ago around 2007 , and maybe was meant to replace hive teleporting from NS1, but was actually developed post launch and implemented when the last thing balance needed was an alien buff. (They were winning ~70% at the time) So they were placed at biomass 6 and were expensive - they soon became one of those rarely seen mechanics.
Fast forward to around build 250 where the gorge was given tunnels freely researched and available immediately, not for balance sake mind you or out of necessity, but instead because the gorge needed more fun things to do early game besides what was available then. So the mechanic went from something that was intentionally relegated into near obsolescence through timing, due to fear of potentially being OP - to being immediately available in a round... and there it stayed. This is the first balance adjustment i can recall since then besides maybe cost?
For the record, I suggested increasing the timing by 30 seconds, and to leave the health alone.. (pub marines move slow) but after playing with it in comp mod and internally:
I love having that much less PvE, damn was it annoying, and I love aliens having to actually rely on teamwork to enjoy such a low risk / high reward advantage.
An argument from authority is considered a logical fallacy, but under certain conditions they can still be reasonable arguments.
Ironically your post is kind of a strawman in itself (which is why I couldn't resist responding
Obviously you have a point, there's a lot of poor arguments in here, I just couldn't resist the irony
I kindly request you read my post1 & post2 about this.
I believe a more complex calculation for the amount of start IPs based on
1. Server slot count
2. Total current player count
3. Current players on marine team
is required to make it work smoothly.
To my mind, this hasn't been so in most pub servers for a long time. Apart from the occasional marine stomps, aliens have had to do very little actual defence: they have been able to be the aggressors and contain marines thereby defending their own harvesters from afar by dominating the map control game. I say dominating here, because in an even match, you'd expect not to be able to hold all parts of the map you wish, likewise when you push an area hard, you expect to be able to take it. Alien territory control in pub play has been absolutely ridiculous for far too long in general, and this was in no small part down to gorge tunnels at the start with massive amounts of health. Now that marines in pubs are able to shoot slightly better due to performance improvements, and they are able to be more aggressive due to some specific alien structure HP nerfs, aliens begin to feel the pressure again that early game is actually more about defence for the alien team than it is for marines - and this is how it should be given the improved mobility of aliens vs marines.
Now, the alien team has to coordinate to ensure it defends the areas it REALLY wants to keep. If that means letting marines have skylights and overlook while you get the gorge tunnel established and defended elsewhere on the map, then that's the choice that you as a team have to make. Once you have a) scouted the marines, parasited them to make sure you know what's going on and b) established and defended the early GT position, you then have the opportunity to crush the push on the other side of the map and bite res before the marines can push again. I think it's a good thing that aliens can no longer do all of these things simultaneously, especially in the early game. They need a certain level of pack play and coordination, and finally pub aliens are going to have to learn this. That's a really positive thing, IMHO.
Finally, shortening the gorge tunnels isn't a perfect solution to the perceived problem - after all that shorten's the marines' route to the other end of your tunnel, and don't forget that they take armour damage while in there - the longer they spend in there the better. It really doesn't take very long to walljump through a GT anyway.
TL;DR: Alien pack play and coordination required. Parasite marines, choose your engagements, work as a team to establish map control and decide what to defend and when.
I'm really hoping to see this change break the complete (and unnecessary) reliance aliens seem to have on tunnels in pubs currently.
Not to mention, gorges might finally start actually doing useful stuff with their pres early game, like fortifying chokes with hydras and clog forests, instead of building gorge tunnels that give the aliens perhaps 2-3 seconds faster travel to a specific, predictable spot that is prone to drawing gunfire in a push.
Edit: I posted an unposted draft... Roo above me says it all in more words with better meanings and stuff. I am samrt