I might be a rook but I dont see babblers used except by me.... this teaches me that they are completely useless because people who knows what is what only use bile bomb/spit and heal spray... very rarely I see a commander bother researching webs, and past a certain point marines all have welders making them uttly useless as well...
Web should be free, anyway. (By that I mean they should not need to be researched.)
Gorge abilities do need a serious rework in these areas as do spores for the lerk.... why does this not operate like a DMG version of Umbra? at the point commanders have them everyone is weilding flame throwers and shotguns making them extremely difficult to get off in any useful manner, I mean there negated by flame throwers and EXO's can just ignore them having them a melle based spray nullifies there effectiveness completely which is to punish bunched up clumps of marines, I do think lerk should operate as ranged support, also the mild poison effect on a lerks bite can we have those on its ranged spines as well?
as for the marines, I kinda wish there was a third weapon type for the exo's possibly something akin to a shotgun or flak cannon and the choice to double on any other weapon for duel, aka Minigun/railgun combo as much as I love fisting a fade to death, the lack of close range firepower is a shame from a tactical choice perspective.
Historically this i because spores used to be available earlier than umbra. It used to be that you saw spores every game and umbra rarely. Now you rarely see umbra and almost never spores. (For the reason you described.)
Plus, lerks tend to get skipped in the research path because once you can get umbra/spores, leap and metabolize are more important. You usually only get them as an afterthought, for onos support. A lot of pub lerks are dead by that time.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
@STARSBarry "the lack of close range firepower is a shame from a tactical choice perspective."
Aliens do that bit, marines shouldn't step into that territory, they are all about positioning and long range aiming. The EXO's main downside is close range combat, that why it needs support and welds. Besides the shotty is already stepping into the alien domain and marines supporting the EXO should clear off any aliens humping the EXO.
I always push for Umbra, that extra damage absorption pisses the marines off even more But yeah, pubplay sees a lot of dead lorks by the time it becomes available for research
the issue with webs has always been that they cost pres. they get countered by welders which every marine should have well before the time webs come out, which means they're a waste of 1 pres.
as i've said in previous threads, I would really like to see vanilla adopt comp mods webs.
biomass 5
10 tres research
60 second research time
0 pres
gorge can only have 4 at a time. 2 or 3 may be more balanced in both vanilla and comp.
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
Now that the map is dark, I've started using alien vision for the first time, and man is it annoying. Outlining the map looks cool, but doesn't help to maneuver around it because the human visual system wasn't designed for that.
Alien vision should just be an overhead ambient light that lights the whole map.
OR Webs free and available at start of round, limit how many can be placed - and tunnels are swapped to later in the round.
Maybe some early web fortifying can help slow marine early game advantages.
that would only work if welders are also free tech. if not you either force marines to go armory first no matter what (yay options), or have the inability to push any alien location defended by webs (which they all will be because they would be imbalanced at that stage of the game).
I know players can be simple, but I've yet to see a Gorge fail to build anything because they couldn't figure out they had to select another option after pressing 2 for the build menu...
Now that the map is dark, I've started using alien vision for the first time, and man is it annoying. Outlining the map looks cool, but doesn't help to maneuver around it because the human visual system wasn't designed for that.
Alien vision should just be an overhead ambient light that lights the whole map.
There are alternative alien visions you can use. You might consider Huzes minimal alien vision.
that would only work if welders are also free tech. if not you either force marines to go armory first no matter what (yay options), or have the inability to push any alien location defended by webs (which they all will be because they would be imbalanced at that stage of the game).
Weren't we just talking about making welders free?
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 think that's a valid reason to make welders free considering that you can shoot webs just as fast if not faster than walking up to and welding them.
that would only work if welders are also free tech. if not you either force marines to go armory first no matter what (yay options), or have the inability to push any alien location defended by webs (which they all will be because they would be imbalanced at that stage of the game).
Weren't we just talking about making welders free?
has that been approved (I only skimmed those posts)? that's exactly why I mentioned it would only work if they became free.
I don't think that's a valid reason to make welders free considering that you can shoot webs just as fast if not faster than walking up to and welding them.
1-10 how shocked would you be if I told you that webs only take damage from the flamethrower, welder, grenade launcher and hand grenades?
Now that the map is dark, I've started using alien vision for the first time, and man is it annoying. Outlining the map looks cool, but doesn't help to maneuver around it because the human visual system wasn't designed for that.
Alien vision should just be an overhead ambient light that lights the whole map.
Just get NS2+ as a client side mod and fiddle around with all the settings of Crazy's AV in there, you can basically fix all that stuff
Now that the map is dark, I've started using alien vision for the first time, and man is it annoying. Outlining the map looks cool, but doesn't help to maneuver around it because the human visual system wasn't designed for that.
Alien vision should just be an overhead ambient light that lights the whole map.
Just get NS2+ as a client side mod and fiddle around with all the settings of Crazy's AV in there, you can basically fix all that stuff
Sure, but downloading a mod and fiddling with settings isn't really consistent with simplifying ns2
I don't think that's a valid reason to make welders free considering that you can shoot webs just as fast if not faster than walking up to and welding them.
1-10 how shocked would you be if I told you that webs only take damage from the flamethrower, welder, grenade launcher and hand grenades?
About 6, it must've changed when I took a break from playing the game. Either way I rarely see webs being used so I never got any first hand experience from it since then.
There's a lot of changes we can try to make webs used more before needing to rebalance the marine economy.
There's a lot of changes we can try to make webs used more before needing to rebalance the marine economy.
I agree. I think the slow from webs is a bit too effective, iirc it reduces the marines move speed to 15% and prevents them from jumping, which practically makes them immobile (see onos devour levels of fun, except slightly better because you can still shoot). I wouldn't mind seeing webs become free at biomass 3 or 4 where they only slow the marines movement to somewhere around 60-80%. still makes them an easier target while giving the marine the ability to move.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
What if webs don't impair movement but they make wielding a weapon impossible. One marine can then take all the webs out so its mot like you'd really wind up with a whole team with no weapon out.
There's nothing salvageable about babblers. They are worthless trash. Babblerbombs are no different. Use that development time on something useful, rather than attempt to revive re-design a useless piece of content that no one gives a crap about anyway.
Let them stay as assets in the spark engine for modders to jerk off to. But remove them from vanilla ns2 and compmod.
Let's cut our losses on this one already..
Edit. I'm sorry I should've been more clear. You can't revive something that never lived in the first place.
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited March 2016
Webs in their current form would be fine if available from the start. I'd like to see babblers made OP and high tech. Webs are much more intuitive than babblers which are complicated to use, and this would keep rookies from trying to kill things with the bait ball since it wouldn't be available. Buffed babblers would make bile rushing much more effective, which would help aliens end the game when required. (And they are a lulzy weapon anyways.)
I don't think that's a valid reason to make welders free considering that you can shoot webs just as fast if not faster than walking up to and welding them.
I was not saying it was a valid reason to make welders free, but free webs might be one part of that bigger re balance I would like to see.
Has anything been approved? As far as I know, unless you see it specifically in trello it is not approved. Just because it is my idea, it will likely never be approved ever.
Now that the map is dark, I've started using alien vision for the first time, and man is it annoying. Outlining the map looks cool, but doesn't help to maneuver around it because the human visual system wasn't designed for that.
Alien vision should just be an overhead ambient light that lights the whole map.
Just get NS2+ as a client side mod and fiddle around with all the settings of Crazy's AV in there, you can basically fix all that stuff
Sure, but downloading a mod and fiddling with settings isn't really consistent with simplifying ns2
Pretty sure at this point you would need a great flood of new players who play only among themselves to get valid feedback. New players would just quit due to being steamrolled by the few vets that are left.
Though remembering back to when I first played, there were a few things that got me frustrated but I'll list what I remember the most.
A commander that had no idea what he was doing and pretty much messed up the game and led to marines being farmed for kills. At the very least, there should be a MANDATORY GOOD tutorial before anyone is allowed to step in there. I remember there was a tutorial but it was extremely lacking in feeling like a real commander. Alien commander was far more forgiving.
The most frustrating thing to new players was saving enough pres for that new shotgun or lerk only to be trashed in a few seconds, losing their upgrade aka "fun" and go back to getting wrecked by either jetpack shotgun marines or fades the rest of the match and then the rage quit.
The terrible performance which I don't know anything about currently but pretty sure the game lost 80% of new players because of this initially. I mean it's been a few years so surely you can brute force it now right? Still the more toasters that can play the better.
Perhaps if the marine weaponry or lifeform pres purchases came with a time limit that let players get them again if they died in that time span, they would stay much longer and keep improving. Yes I know the "balance" would be out the window but hey I'm just listing what new players struggle with or why they left. Even casual players might enjoy it. You can have a "fun" mode where you'll keep getting the upgrades you bought for a longer time if you die and a "Classic" mode where you lose your upgrades as soon as you die. Then as they have their fill of the "fun" mode and want to get more serious they can move on to the regular way of playing where they find the better they get/play, the longer they keep their upgrades. Experienced players on these servers wouldn't easily die vs newer players so they'd likely survive beyond the limit limit while newer players would have a better chance at a comeback.
There's nothing salvageable about babblers. They are worthless trash. Babblerbombs are no different. Use that development time on something useful, rather than attempt to revive re-design a useless piece of content that no one gives a crap about anyway.
Let them stay as assets in the spark engine for modders to jerk off to. But remove them from vanilla ns2 and compmod.
Let's cut our losses on this one already..
Edit. I'm sorry I should've been more clear. You can't revive something that never lived in the first place.
I actually did consider the art that babblers have inspired when I wrote that. But that is definitely their only possible redemption in my mind. -You can still make babbler art in nostalgia tho. And rantology has shown time and time again that she doesn't lack imagination, talent or inspiration.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited March 2016
Seems like Babblers could use some simplification (and people seem to underestimate how effective they can be early game as shields).
I propose to change babblers to be free but are consumed when used. The max count of Babblers could be reduced as well as each of them becomes more effective.
Once a Babbler is stuck on a friendly alien it would remain until killed or if it is detached.
When a Babbler successfully attacks an enemy, it latches on and deals damage over a few seconds. The damage a Babber inflicts would need to be increased to make its life worth while.
Babblers would be spit out by the gorge like in NS and then automatically seek out a nearby enemy, or stick to an ally if it hits one.
These changes could reduce the load on the server as well, since there would be less Babblers and AI to process.
Babbler idea: pressing 2 and then 3 spawns a babbler egg. Once grown the egg does not explode into babblers, but instead spawns a babbler every x seconds up to n babblers. These babblers are tethered to the babbler egg by d meters and will automatically attach themselves to nearby allies or attack enemies within d. They will also randomly patrol the volume within 2πd of the egg if no allies are available to attach to, and no enemies are available to fight.
Once matured the babblers spawned from the egg are sexier babblers with a cool skin that maybe apply web to attacked targets or have a ranged attack? I dunno, get creative here.
Limit the amount of babbler eggs a gorge can have similar to a hydra. Maybe let them create a little bit of infestation similar to the gorge tunnel?
Maybe let babblers and babbler eggs stick to walls?
I am not a huge fan of babblers, but if they're going to be kept, I think they could be simplified and made more intuitive.
Limit a gorge's babbler ammo count to the team's biomass total. New gorges would get babblers equal to the team's current biomass total. As new biomass is completed, all existing gorges would get additional babbler ammo (one per biomass).
Eliminate the bait-ball mechanic. Eliminate the babbler egg mechanic.
Have gorges fire babblers like a projectile - one at a time - and allow for rapid-fire so that a gorge can quickly release all existing babbler ammo. I suggest that they emerge from the gorge's mouth with a goopy, phlegmatic cough sound.
When babblers are shot by a gorge, give them greater velocity than when they hop around. In other words, give this the feeling of a "babbler gun" as opposed to the current babbler targeting experience. Something between spit and bile bomb.
Babblers should pursue their target at their current hopping/gliding speed only after each initial shot.
Have babblers automatically target whatever they're shot toward within a mid-sized range; maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of an average room.
To aim babblers, give players a range-limited straight line cursor extending from the gorge in the direction the player is pointing. This would represent the babbler projectile range. This line/cursor can serve to indicate effective targeting range by seconding as the bait mechanic: the first targetable object within range of the shot (whether it's friendly or an enemy/enemy structure) gets targeted by the babbler being projected.
Have babblers attack whatever they're shot at relentlessly unless a gorge taps reload, in which case all babblers within range will return to the gorge. Reload would therefore function like a recall button. This should take a few seconds as the babbler catches up to its 'home gorge'.
Babblers that are killed should have a cooldown - maybe two minutes - before they reappear, ready to be fired.
Giving a babbler shield to others can be handled through the firing mechanic.
Giving a babbler shield to yourself could be handled by holding (and not releasing) reload for a three seconds, in which case available babblers would switch to a defensive posture on the gorge (up to the maximum five or six).
For an aiming guide, I'm really just imagining a straight semi-transparent line extending from the targeting reticle. This would convey the direction the babbler shot will travel in, and it would provide a visual guide as to the maximum targeting distance. If a valid target is within range of the line (offensive, defensive), the babbler AI will operate accordingly as if the target was painted by the existing bait ball. If the target is out of range of the line, the babblers will adopt their normal target-seeking AI behavior after landing.
Give gorges higher skill ceiling. Give them higher mobility. Give them compmod style movement.
Allows them to be more effective at all stages in the game and more mobile so while they can't wreck PvP, they can at least be involved without being gimped if they don't have skulk buddies.
They can keep up in combat and heal skulk buddies, they can scout, and they can spit a little early game to help the team gather info, prepare fights, win fights. I'm sure there are a lot of decent pub players who can pick up the easy nature of the gorge compmod movement to make the lifeform more fun for them, more useful for the team, and more balanced for games.
Also - seeing as there are rookie only servers now, can we simplify the hive system to show skill according to total score / total time spent with a minimum cut off of ~ 50 hours.
The only reason we didn't have the skill system like this was because rookie stomping. Now that can't be an issue, lets make skill system actually represent team contribution even if you lose. It will also destroy smurfs as soon as they pop above the 50 hour cut off.
Comments
Web should be free, anyway. (By that I mean they should not need to be researched.)
Historically this i because spores used to be available earlier than umbra. It used to be that you saw spores every game and umbra rarely. Now you rarely see umbra and almost never spores. (For the reason you described.)
Plus, lerks tend to get skipped in the research path because once you can get umbra/spores, leap and metabolize are more important. You usually only get them as an afterthought, for onos support. A lot of pub lerks are dead by that time.
Aliens do that bit, marines shouldn't step into that territory, they are all about positioning and long range aiming. The EXO's main downside is close range combat, that why it needs support and welds. Besides the shotty is already stepping into the alien domain and marines supporting the EXO should clear off any aliens humping the EXO.
I always push for Umbra, that extra damage absorption pisses the marines off even more
as i've said in previous threads, I would really like to see vanilla adopt comp mods webs.
biomass 5
10 tres research
60 second research time
0 pres
gorge can only have 4 at a time. 2 or 3 may be more balanced in both vanilla and comp.
Maybe some early web fortifying can help slow marine early game advantages.
Alien vision should just be an overhead ambient light that lights the whole map.
that would only work if welders are also free tech. if not you either force marines to go armory first no matter what (yay options), or have the inability to push any alien location defended by webs (which they all will be because they would be imbalanced at that stage of the game).
There are alternative alien visions you can use. You might consider Huzes minimal alien vision.
Weren't we just talking about making welders free?
has that been approved (I only skimmed those posts)? that's exactly why I mentioned it would only work if they became free.
1-10 how shocked would you be if I told you that webs only take damage from the flamethrower, welder, grenade launcher and hand grenades?
Just get NS2+ as a client side mod and fiddle around with all the settings of Crazy's AV in there, you can basically fix all that stuff
Sure, but downloading a mod and fiddling with settings isn't really consistent with simplifying ns2
About 6, it must've changed when I took a break from playing the game. Either way I rarely see webs being used so I never got any first hand experience from it since then.
There's a lot of changes we can try to make webs used more before needing to rebalance the marine economy.
I agree. I think the slow from webs is a bit too effective, iirc it reduces the marines move speed to 15% and prevents them from jumping, which practically makes them immobile (see onos devour levels of fun, except slightly better because you can still shoot). I wouldn't mind seeing webs become free at biomass 3 or 4 where they only slow the marines movement to somewhere around 60-80%. still makes them an easier target while giving the marine the ability to move.
Or maybe webs should just be hive 3 and OP
Has anything been approved? As far as I know, unless you see it specifically in trello it is not approved. Just because it is my idea, it will likely never be approved ever.
START FIDDLING MOULTANO!!!
Bablers being useless? I use them everytime before bilebombing a base. Some times they finish the power as the marine chases me...
Which brings me to webs... are you all not using tech properly? Webs are great at setting to get away or to stick jetpackers.
Must be thinking from the Leagues with modded game play and community disconnection.
Though remembering back to when I first played, there were a few things that got me frustrated but I'll list what I remember the most.
A commander that had no idea what he was doing and pretty much messed up the game and led to marines being farmed for kills. At the very least, there should be a MANDATORY GOOD tutorial before anyone is allowed to step in there. I remember there was a tutorial but it was extremely lacking in feeling like a real commander. Alien commander was far more forgiving.
The most frustrating thing to new players was saving enough pres for that new shotgun or lerk only to be trashed in a few seconds, losing their upgrade aka "fun" and go back to getting wrecked by either jetpack shotgun marines or fades the rest of the match and then the rage quit.
The terrible performance which I don't know anything about currently but pretty sure the game lost 80% of new players because of this initially. I mean it's been a few years so surely you can brute force it now right? Still the more toasters that can play the better.
Perhaps if the marine weaponry or lifeform pres purchases came with a time limit that let players get them again if they died in that time span, they would stay much longer and keep improving. Yes I know the "balance" would be out the window but hey I'm just listing what new players struggle with or why they left. Even casual players might enjoy it. You can have a "fun" mode where you'll keep getting the upgrades you bought for a longer time if you die and a "Classic" mode where you lose your upgrades as soon as you die. Then as they have their fill of the "fun" mode and want to get more serious they can move on to the regular way of playing where they find the better they get/play, the longer they keep their upgrades. Experienced players on these servers wouldn't easily die vs newer players so they'd likely survive beyond the limit limit while newer players would have a better chance at a comeback.
How long is the tutorial?
So fuck babblers.
I propose to change babblers to be free but are consumed when used. The max count of Babblers could be reduced as well as each of them becomes more effective.
Once a Babbler is stuck on a friendly alien it would remain until killed or if it is detached.
When a Babbler successfully attacks an enemy, it latches on and deals damage over a few seconds. The damage a Babber inflicts would need to be increased to make its life worth while.
Babblers would be spit out by the gorge like in NS and then automatically seek out a nearby enemy, or stick to an ally if it hits one.
These changes could reduce the load on the server as well, since there would be less Babblers and AI to process.
Once matured the babblers spawned from the egg are sexier babblers with a cool skin that maybe apply web to attacked targets or have a ranged attack? I dunno, get creative here.
Limit the amount of babbler eggs a gorge can have similar to a hydra. Maybe let them create a little bit of infestation similar to the gorge tunnel?
Maybe let babblers and babbler eggs stick to walls?
For an aiming guide, I'm really just imagining a straight semi-transparent line extending from the targeting reticle. This would convey the direction the babbler shot will travel in, and it would provide a visual guide as to the maximum targeting distance. If a valid target is within range of the line (offensive, defensive), the babbler AI will operate accordingly as if the target was painted by the existing bait ball. If the target is out of range of the line, the babblers will adopt their normal target-seeking AI behavior after landing.
Allows them to be more effective at all stages in the game and more mobile so while they can't wreck PvP, they can at least be involved without being gimped if they don't have skulk buddies.
They can keep up in combat and heal skulk buddies, they can scout, and they can spit a little early game to help the team gather info, prepare fights, win fights. I'm sure there are a lot of decent pub players who can pick up the easy nature of the gorge compmod movement to make the lifeform more fun for them, more useful for the team, and more balanced for games.
The only reason we didn't have the skill system like this was because rookie stomping. Now that can't be an issue, lets make skill system actually represent team contribution even if you lose. It will also destroy smurfs as soon as they pop above the 50 hour cut off.