Third hive tech was always meant to be OP and game enders, because a third hive was supposed to end the game. This is how it has been, and contaminate only makes that more true. You may not like this fact about ns2, but it is how it has been.
- he can heal harvesters with myst. So its harder to kill alien rts.
No, he cannot heal harvesters with mist*.
He can temporarily stop them from losing health - but thats not the same as healing them.
He can however heal cysts (albeit a small small amount)
Rupture parasite lasts like 10 seconds.. so not really OP..
Hallucination is working as intended
And yes.. the game has always had a soft timer where Aliens typically win the longer the game goes on, (statistically true, as well) and is why the late game tech was designed to be OP.
It's been like this for three years, now..
I managed to force a beacon with 3 skulk illusions and one real skulk. Feels good.
and an alien comm managed to put constantly contamination in our mainbase, every few seconds a new contamination. we needed at least 3 marines to kill all the contamination-cysts. even more funny: with the contamination hew managed to put bonewall on our phasegate. so we could not weld it. the alien comm killed our base alone, not a single fieldplayer was needed.
good balance......
Well, aliens had three hives, and you let them sit on that for several minutes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh so 3 Hives are an autowin now? Are 2 CC an autowin too?
Every team should have the chance of a comeback. Even when aliens are on three hives. but with the current changes, a comeback for rines is just impossible.
3 Hives have always been an autowin, there were just times when it was more subtle than other times.
I'm not a fan of it either, but it's the way it works currently, and unless there's going to be some massive rebalancing, it's likely going to stay that way. Adapt and play accordingly.
That's not true. There was not an autowin button before. The contimanation changes made Biomass 9 auto win now and that is bad game design. Bio 9 should have game ending tools. Bio 9 aliens should be a lot stronger than Bio 6 aliens but the only win condition should be "Kill all CCs" or "kill all Hives".
I agree that the other changes are bad too and negatively affect game balance and gameplay.
There were "Xenocide" and "steamrolling a position with a fuckton of onos". More often than not three hives mean marines only have 1 CC left, anyway. And no one likes turtles.
"Fuckton of onos" has nothing to do with amount of Hives and xenocide is 1. strong but not auto win (therefore a good ability) and 2. a skulk ability, not a commander destruction ability.
Marine got only 1 CC 99% of time so that is not a real argument.
It does not have to do anything with hives *directly*, but in order to keep a constant stream of Onos up, aliens need res towers, and for res towers you need map control, and if aliens have map control, they have hives. There's no causation but some decent correlation.
Third hive tech was always meant to be OP and game enders, because a third hive was supposed to end the game. This is how it has been, and contaminate only makes that more true. You may not like this fact about ns2, but it is how it has been.
Given the willingness to take on a new direction with NS2, now is a good time to address this.
Third hive tech was always meant to be OP and game enders, because a third hive was supposed to end the game. This is how it has been, and contaminate only makes that more true. You may not like this fact about ns2, but it is how it has been.
No third hive tech was never so OP like today. Its like welsh-wizzard said: third hive tech has to be strong. But it should not be an auto-win.
contamination itself is not the real problem. spamming contamination is the realissue. maybe a cooldown would solve the problem.
Put in a cooldown and you make contamination more or less useless...
A single contamination cyst or whatever you want to call it can easily be killed by marines before the infestation spreads... You basically need to be able to spam it for it to be useful for echoing in whips..
Besides a couple arcs and you completely and totally nullify all contamination.
No third hive tech was never so OP like today. Its like welsh-wizzard said: third hive tech has to be strong. But it should not be an auto-win.
contamination itself is not the real problem. spamming contamination is the realissue. maybe a cooldown would solve the problem.
That is why they made contaminate stronger, so that it better met with the purpose of the third hive. To end turtles and to end the game.
Also, did you know that they nerfed the bile bomb damage after it was put in? It started by doing 3 bile bombs worth of damage immediately after being dropped and could not be countered. Now it shoots of a bile bomb every 2 seconds, maximum of 3, until it is destroyed. Now it can be countered. Players, or even arcs, can kill it before it can do damage.
Again, third hive tech is meant to be game ending. This is the design of the game. You may not like it, but it is what it is. I am not a fan of it myself.
Lerks without spikes? Yeah Sounds like a great idea. Maybe it helps rookies so they cannot become frustrated by getting spiked down by Lerks. We should also consider removing Fade swipe because it is no fun for rookies to get killed by unkillable Godly Fades.
No third hive tech was never so OP like today. Its like welsh-wizzard said: third hive tech has to be strong. But it should not be an auto-win.
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Stomp? Xenocide? Purchasing Onos eggs? You should have seen the first few months of contamination.. it did not have a hitbox so it was invulnerable.. and this was still deemed to be fine given its intended purpose.
The only reason other abilities like stab and webs and spores weren't as OP was because they were improperly designed, and there wasn't enough time to fix them.
I don't agree with the soft timer design.. I'd much rather have homogeneous win conditions .. but people are big on the arbitrary notion of asymmetry and as a result not enough players agreed with views like mine or yours.
No third hive tech was never so OP like today. Its like welsh-wizzard said: third hive tech has to be strong. But it should not be an auto-win.
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Stomp? Xenocide? Purchasing Onos eggs? You should have seen the first few months of contamination.. it did not have a hitbox so it was invulnerable.. and this was still deemed to be fine given its intended purpose.
The only reason other abilities like stab and webs and spores weren't as OP was because they were improperly designed, and there wasn't enough time to fix them.
I don't agree with the soft timer design.. I'd much rather have homogeneous win conditions .. but people are big on the arbitrary notion of asymmetry and as a result not enough players agreed with views like mine or yours.
Because that is a different thing. In your thread you wanted to make marines tech bound to amount of CCs. That is not the question in this discussion here, it is about if third hive should be auto win or not.
Also yuor examples stomp and xenocide are not good ones. 1. because they are NOT auto win (only extremely strong and that is good) 2. they are alien abilites, NOT commander abilites. And the times with unkillable contamination was very annoying indeed but at least it only spread infestation. Comm abilites should be only about supporting your team, they should never be able to damage or parasite the enemy.
But yes, Onos eggs are a problem. But so are egg drops in general.
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
@The_Welsh_Wizard You don't really have a choice whether 3rd hive can be strong or not if marines have irreversible tech progression.. because it causes turtles.
@The_Welsh_Wizard You don't really have a choice whether 3rd hive can be strong or not if marines have irreversible tech progression.. because it causes turtles.
So what new is being introduced to stop alien turtles? Theres countless games that marines hold 3 tech point and fail to kill a hive then slowly end up losing, wheres the marine late game buffs?
The point is NS2 is a PVP "team" based game. It's fun when one side wins through teamwork. When the marine com deploys arcs to end the game, the arcs still need marines to protect them. The game ending exos need support with welders to take down hives. The alien com with support from max evolved onos, fades, lerks, gorges, and even skulk xenocides should be enough working as a team to end the game. If it's not enough then 3 hive aliens should be buffed to win the game. An alien com by himself wrecking the marine base and ending the game is definitely not fun. I'm sure Remi's goal is to make the game fun for everyone.
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
Meh. Someone already said it, but I'll say it again, at that biomass level and at that level of map control, the game is already over.
The faster it can be ended the better. You're not coming back from that, and your team obviously hasn't conceded yet, so the sooner a new round can start the better.
Unless the game gets redesigned and major overhauls occur, like equally buffing marines late game and fixing their non contestable tech progression to create homogeneous win conditions, we are stuck with the byproducts and results of it... so it's best to just make it as painless as possible until that happens, if ever.
@The_Welsh_Wizard You don't really have a choice whether 3rd hive can be strong or not if marines have irreversible tech progression.. because it causes turtles.
So what new is being introduced to stop alien turtles? Theres countless games that marines hold 3 tech point and fail to kill a hive then slowly end up losing, wheres the marine late game buffs?
There is no such thing as an alien turtle. You fail to understand what a turtle is. Aliens holding two hives and sporting advanced lifeforms is, by definition, not a turtle, it's a balanced late-game.
Turtle is a situation where one team has lost the entire map but is still holding onto their main base by having all their firepower concentrated on small chokepoints. This is easy for marines, as they still retain all their upgrades, and concentrating an entire team's worth of W3A3 marines inside one room is a hard egg to crack without a coordinated team effort. The aliens have no means of turtling, as having their map control reduced to one room means that they have no or only few lifeforms left (otherwise they wouldn't have lost so much map control in the first place) and there is nothing preventing the marines from just walking into the hive room rolling their faces over their keyboard.
@The_Welsh_Wizard You don't really have a choice whether 3rd hive can be strong or not if marines have irreversible tech progression.. because it causes turtles.
So what new is being introduced to stop alien turtles? Theres countless games that marines hold 3 tech point and fail to kill a hive then slowly end up losing, wheres the marine late game buffs?
There is no such thing as an alien turtle. You fail to understand what a turtle is. Aliens holding two hives and sporting advanced lifeforms is, by definition, not a turtle, it's a balanced late-game.
Turtle is a situation where one team has lost the entire map but is still holding onto their main base by having all their firepower concentrated on small chokepoints. This is easy for marines, as they still retain all their upgrades, and concentrating an entire team's worth of W3A3 marines inside one room is a hard egg to crack without a coordinated team effort. The aliens have no means of turtling, as having their map control reduced to one room means that they have no or only few lifeforms left (otherwise they wouldn't have lost so much map control in the first place) and there is nothing preventing the marines from just walking into the hive room rolling their faces over their keyboard.
I was going to reply to that but you beat me to it... and said pretty much everything I was going to...
I have witnessed the mystic alien turtle about three or four times in my ~1000 hours of play. It's like a unicorn, rare and elusive, and you can only see it if very, very specific circumstances are met.
For all practical intents and purposes it does not exist, though. See above.
Aliens simply cannot turtle because all their tech is tied to biomass which requires more than one hive unlike marines which can just keep saving res for upgrades. Simple
Lerks without spikes? Yeah Sounds like a great idea. Maybe it helps rookies so they cannot become frustrated by getting spiked down by Lerks. We should also consider removing Fade swipe because it is no fun for rookies to get killed by unkillable Godly Fades.
What I hate about lerk spikes is it allows them to do damage literally every second they are in a room until either they or their target dies. At least with fades they actually have to get close to do any damage, which puts them at risk of getting squished or 2-3 shotted by a shotgun.
In NS1 3.2, lerks only had two means of attack which were ranged spores and bite, which kept lerks as a strong support class for most players as they would often opt for the long range damage over time rather than swoop in for the risky but high damage bite, it also made them vulnerable if they wanted to harass structures as they would have to be in the same range a skulk would be. In NS2, due to the spikes, lerks are able to dish out continuous damage to their targets at any given distance which means they don't have a predictable range of motion like the other lifeforms have.
Lerks without spikes? Yeah Sounds like a great idea. Maybe it helps rookies so they cannot become frustrated by getting spiked down by Lerks. We should also consider removing Fade swipe because it is no fun for rookies to get killed by unkillable Godly Fades.
What I hate about lerk spikes is it allows them to do damage literally every second they are in a room until either they or their target dies. At least with fades they actually have to get close to do any damage, which puts them at risk of getting squished or 2-3 shotted by a shotgun.
In NS1 3.2, lerks only had two means of attack which were ranged spores and bite, which kept lerks as a strong support class for most players as they would often opt for the long range damage over time rather than swoop in for the risky but high damage bite, it also made them vulnerable if they wanted to harass structures as they would have to be in the same range a skulk would be. In NS2, due to the spikes, lerks are able to dish out continuous damage to their targets at any given distance which means they don't have a predictable range of motion like the other lifeforms have.
You know what's *actually* funny about lerk spikes?
They deal more damage than a w3 LMG per hit. That's right, lerk spikes are better than rifles.
(Obviously this doesn't take fire rate into account and that marine HP and alien HP might not be comparable, but it's still funny)
In NS1 3.2, lerks only had two means of attack which were ranged spores and bite, which kept lerks as a strong support class for most players as they would often opt for the long range damage over time rather than swoop in for the risky but high damage bite...
In NS1 3.2, lerks only had two means of attack which were ranged spores and bite, which kept lerks as a strong support class for most players as they would often opt for the long range damage over time rather than swoop in for the risky but high damage bite...
And in NS1 Fade's had acid rocket.
Acid Rockets were pretty similar to ranged spores in that they were mostly used to soften up multiple marines before engaging them(or using it to siege from a distance), as a Fade couldn't use it effectively while closing the distance or fleeing from a fight.
Meh. Someone already said it, but I'll say it again, at that biomass level and at that level of map control, the game is already over.
The faster it can be ended the better. You're not coming back from that, and your team obviously hasn't conceded yet, so the sooner a new round can start the better.
Unless the game gets redesigned and major overhauls occur, like equally buffing marines late game and fixing their non contestable tech progression to create homogeneous win conditions, we are stuck with the byproducts and results of it... so it's best to just make it as painless as possible until that happens, if ever.
I'm not sure about whether it's a good idea to end the game as fast as possible. I know it's more a question of taste and subjective preference, but having the ability to come back from a seemingly losing position in end game is a thing I always loved about NS.
Usually I'm the one screaming heads off when my team starts conceding (within reason). Sure, it only works like 1/10th of times, but the effort is still worth it and makes the game thrilling.
3rd hive autowin is just stupid. Why not simply make it a winning condition then? I never thought of NS as a linear, easily predictable game.
YES PLEASE. That was the hallmark of NS1.
And also required careful selection of your nomnom. I remember chasing down the top shooters to put them out of action for a while
Comments
He can temporarily stop them from losing health - but thats not the same as healing them.
He can however heal cysts (albeit a small small amount)
Rupture parasite lasts like 10 seconds.. so not really OP..
Hallucination is working as intended
And yes.. the game has always had a soft timer where Aliens typically win the longer the game goes on, (statistically true, as well) and is why the late game tech was designed to be OP.
It's been like this for three years, now..
It does not have to do anything with hives *directly*, but in order to keep a constant stream of Onos up, aliens need res towers, and for res towers you need map control, and if aliens have map control, they have hives. There's no causation but some decent correlation.
Given the willingness to take on a new direction with NS2, now is a good time to address this.
No third hive tech was never so OP like today. Its like welsh-wizzard said: third hive tech has to be strong. But it should not be an auto-win.
contamination itself is not the real problem. spamming contamination is the realissue. maybe a cooldown would solve the problem.
A single contamination cyst or whatever you want to call it can easily be killed by marines before the infestation spreads... You basically need to be able to spam it for it to be useful for echoing in whips..
Besides a couple arcs and you completely and totally nullify all contamination.
That is why they made contaminate stronger, so that it better met with the purpose of the third hive. To end turtles and to end the game.
Also, did you know that they nerfed the bile bomb damage after it was put in? It started by doing 3 bile bombs worth of damage immediately after being dropped and could not be countered. Now it shoots of a bile bomb every 2 seconds, maximum of 3, until it is destroyed. Now it can be countered. Players, or even arcs, can kill it before it can do damage.
Again, third hive tech is meant to be game ending. This is the design of the game. You may not like it, but it is what it is. I am not a fan of it myself.
Now the lerks need to loose their spikes because their ranged weapons are to powerful and we are close to ns1 3.2?^^
Spores are biomass 4 and need research. Are you sure you want spikes to be removed?
The only reason other abilities like stab and webs and spores weren't as OP was because they were improperly designed, and there wasn't enough time to fix them.
I don't agree with the soft timer design.. I'd much rather have homogeneous win conditions .. but people are big on the arbitrary notion of asymmetry and as a result not enough players agreed with views like mine or yours.
Because that is a different thing. In your thread you wanted to make marines tech bound to amount of CCs. That is not the question in this discussion here, it is about if third hive should be auto win or not.
Also yuor examples stomp and xenocide are not good ones. 1. because they are NOT auto win (only extremely strong and that is good) 2. they are alien abilites, NOT commander abilites. And the times with unkillable contamination was very annoying indeed but at least it only spread infestation. Comm abilites should be only about supporting your team, they should never be able to damage or parasite the enemy.
But yes, Onos eggs are a problem. But so are egg drops in general.
So what new is being introduced to stop alien turtles? Theres countless games that marines hold 3 tech point and fail to kill a hive then slowly end up losing, wheres the marine late game buffs?
The faster it can be ended the better. You're not coming back from that, and your team obviously hasn't conceded yet, so the sooner a new round can start the better.
Unless the game gets redesigned and major overhauls occur, like equally buffing marines late game and fixing their non contestable tech progression to create homogeneous win conditions, we are stuck with the byproducts and results of it... so it's best to just make it as painless as possible until that happens, if ever.
There is no such thing as an alien turtle. You fail to understand what a turtle is. Aliens holding two hives and sporting advanced lifeforms is, by definition, not a turtle, it's a balanced late-game.
Turtle is a situation where one team has lost the entire map but is still holding onto their main base by having all their firepower concentrated on small chokepoints. This is easy for marines, as they still retain all their upgrades, and concentrating an entire team's worth of W3A3 marines inside one room is a hard egg to crack without a coordinated team effort. The aliens have no means of turtling, as having their map control reduced to one room means that they have no or only few lifeforms left (otherwise they wouldn't have lost so much map control in the first place) and there is nothing preventing the marines from just walking into the hive room rolling their faces over their keyboard.
I was going to reply to that but you beat me to it... and said pretty much everything I was going to...
No such thing as an Alien turtle.
For all practical intents and purposes it does not exist, though. See above.
What I hate about lerk spikes is it allows them to do damage literally every second they are in a room until either they or their target dies. At least with fades they actually have to get close to do any damage, which puts them at risk of getting squished or 2-3 shotted by a shotgun.
In NS1 3.2, lerks only had two means of attack which were ranged spores and bite, which kept lerks as a strong support class for most players as they would often opt for the long range damage over time rather than swoop in for the risky but high damage bite, it also made them vulnerable if they wanted to harass structures as they would have to be in the same range a skulk would be. In NS2, due to the spikes, lerks are able to dish out continuous damage to their targets at any given distance which means they don't have a predictable range of motion like the other lifeforms have.
You know what's *actually* funny about lerk spikes?
They deal more damage than a w3 LMG per hit. That's right, lerk spikes are better than rifles.
(Obviously this doesn't take fire rate into account and that marine HP and alien HP might not be comparable, but it's still funny)
I think lerk spikes work balance wise, though.
And in NS1 Fade's had acid rocket.
Acid Rockets were pretty similar to ranged spores in that they were mostly used to soften up multiple marines before engaging them(or using it to siege from a distance), as a Fade couldn't use it effectively while closing the distance or fleeing from a fight.
We needs it back.
#MakeNS2FunAgain
I'm not sure about whether it's a good idea to end the game as fast as possible. I know it's more a question of taste and subjective preference, but having the ability to come back from a seemingly losing position in end game is a thing I always loved about NS.
Usually I'm the one screaming heads off when my team starts conceding (within reason). Sure, it only works like 1/10th of times, but the effort is still worth it and makes the game thrilling.
3rd hive autowin is just stupid. Why not simply make it a winning condition then? I never thought of NS as a linear, easily predictable game.
YES PLEASE. That was the hallmark of NS1.
And also required careful selection of your nomnom. I remember chasing down the top shooters to put them out of action for a while