Public Playtest tomorrow for balance changes!
IronHorse
Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Hey all,
For our first Public Playtest session scheduled for patch 323:
Tomorrow, Saturday April 28th 1300 PDT / 2200 CEST
All are welcome to join and test the build with us by playing a few rounds.
This patch and the purpose of this public playtest is to garner some feedback from the community in regards to some balance changes that are in the works. Nothing is final, and most everything is definitely in flux, even day to day, but the important take away is that alien upgrades have been moved around or adjusted and that silence has been removed. This is not the final public playtest for this patch - this is one of hopefully 3 public tests that will be held this patch cycle, to ensure that the changes being made are sound. So if you're able to, come play some rounds and then give your opinion on the state of things, along with any suggestions you may have, in order to help shape the path of development for NS2. (You can always track what's being worked on here)
Join our Official Discord Server a few minutes before the listed time in order to organize with us and ask any question before we play games.
You'll need to swap to the BETA branch of NS2 for this test.
Once you've selected the branch, then just idle in our General Voice channel to coordinate with us joining the server.
If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me in our discord.
Thanks and see you there!
For our first Public Playtest session scheduled for patch 323:
Tomorrow, Saturday April 28th 1300 PDT / 2200 CEST
All are welcome to join and test the build with us by playing a few rounds.
This patch and the purpose of this public playtest is to garner some feedback from the community in regards to some balance changes that are in the works. Nothing is final, and most everything is definitely in flux, even day to day, but the important take away is that alien upgrades have been moved around or adjusted and that silence has been removed. This is not the final public playtest for this patch - this is one of hopefully 3 public tests that will be held this patch cycle, to ensure that the changes being made are sound. So if you're able to, come play some rounds and then give your opinion on the state of things, along with any suggestions you may have, in order to help shape the path of development for NS2. (You can always track what's being worked on here)
Join our Official Discord Server a few minutes before the listed time in order to organize with us and ask any question before we play games.
You'll need to swap to the BETA branch of NS2 for this test.
Once you've selected the branch, then just idle in our General Voice channel to coordinate with us joining the server.
If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me in our discord.
Thanks and see you there!
Comments
Should be removing that instead.
If silence is gone then so to are a fair number of gorge tunnels that only last long enough to be used because the piggy is able to drop/build it without the sound alerting marines 2-3 rooms away.
That makes it even better
Mostly invisible while stationary is much harder (and way less fun) to play against than invisible while outside of marine's FOV + able to move quickly.
Great logic.
Well I guess feelings aren't always logical then...
I could care less if aliens go shift hive because I can still see them when I check my back. (Which I do often) and I can see them hiding in corners or on the ceiling.
However I feel like there's no point in even continuing when they have shade because they're invisible. I can only spot the cloaked alien like 5% of the time at best, and they have to be moving right in front of me.
Maybe if I cranked the gamma to max and played on a newer monitor it'd be different... but honestly those are extreme steps to have to take.
I might also add that nothing makes an average veteran like me more deadly to rookies than cloaking. (And I suck compared to the god-like 4-5k skill players! How much more deadly must it make them!)
Plus the wildly inconsistent way spotting works via the minimap can make rookies think the marine player is using hacks.
There's just so much more wrong with cloaking than silence.
Dude. Even if cloaking was 100%, your location is given away by sound if you're not walking, so you can't even get to position to cloak without the marines noticing for half the engagements.
Also, the appeal to authority is amusing. Considering a lot of the "god-like" players abuse silence over celerity and usually opted for silence over cloak when they separated them from phantom in comp mod previously.
Yes, and that is relevant when comparing silence and cloak how?
Except that cloaking is not 100%, and if you're not walking you are not cloaked
Therefore.
Isn't very accurate. Unless you are up against the hilariously small minority of marine players that can see cloaked aliens like they're lit up with neon lights, it is super super easy to hold shift and walk into position for an ambush. I do it all the time with great success.
Not sure what you mean by that?
Considering that the god-like players can see cloaked aliens so hilariously easily, it's no surprise they would chose silence (or anything really) over cloak.
All I know for certain is that on Alien I can absolutely obliterate rookies (and even some veterans) with cloaking on a skulk. Whereas if I see that I'm up against higher skilled players I don't even bother to try using it, instead opting for focus or aura. -- I basically never use silence unless I'm trying to be a sneaky gorge or to rush a high skill Marine.
If I'm a Marine and they have cloaking then most of my deaths (if not all of them) are from Aliens I never saw coming. And maybe 10% of the time when they land the first bite I'm able to jump away and survive long enough to land a bullet or two.. I can't remember even a single time I managed to kill an alien that ambushed me with cloak. -- I rarely even notice when they have silence because it has no impact on how good or bad I do at all.
I just spoke up because I honestly feel like removing silence would be a rather pointless change that would primarily benefit higher skilled players and serve to widen the skill gap.
If there's one thing this game needs, it's to narrow the skill gap, not widen it.
Nope! Even if you're walking slow you'll show up on the minimap. The shimmer will also be very noticeable. You have to be perfectly still to not show up on the minimap.
The whole point is that you spawn in your hive. To get to your desired location, you can either walk and take forever or wall jump and get there quickly. You aren't going to walk there, so if you aren't there before the marines, they will hear you before they even enter the room.
Yeah, you can obliterate rookies with no upgrades too. Really, the difference between cloak and silence is that with cloak your best case scenario is you lock down a room against single marines, while with silence you can pick people off all over.
This is the reason Aliens need a visual indicator if they're cloaked or not... the way it is right now or it was in the playtest is bad, because with or without viewmodel... you don't know how fully cloaked you are for real.
In NS1 you had left and right the energybar... once you started cloaking due to "Cloaking ability" or a sensory Chamber (/Shade) nearby then you saw a blue Line climing your energy/HPbar going up and you could perfectly see at which moment you were invisible...
Even though you're not 100% invisible in ns2, a good visual indicator should've been done a long time ago.
This is the whole point why ppl think I'm a superhuman who can see every skulk. I cannot, if I don't concentrate and check every spot in my eyes... I easily oversee a cloaked alien, BUT I hear the alien getting into position ... and when I heard something I check every or the usual spot and I find the skulk... and THEN he thinks I'm a cheater... but in reality he has no clue that I can hear him from a mile away.
Even if you have cloak it can work against high level players if you use it in ambush spots most people wouldn't even check if you are not cloaked. Those spots are usually only checked by high level players and only very quickly. With quick glancing you won't be able to spot a cloaked alien, especially if you are in a dark corner.
Why I think silence is still stronger is not due to the checking behind your back issue but the fact that sound scouting is completely denied that way.
As explanation: Sound scouting is basically positioning and listening the the sounds aliens make when traveling from point A to B and relaying those informations to the team so they can react accordingly.
On some maps that work better than on others but to give you an example if you are camping near the powernode in south tunnels (on tram) you will be able to hear aliens entering the vent leading from elevator to observation.
Can't we hotfix that in right now? Pleeease?
That idea has been tossed around for years. I have been under the impression it needed engine work, or possibly a overly significant amount of dev time.
I could probably throw it together as a mod, if a vanilla server owner would like to try it out.
It's a huge change. Its good that alien got nerfed, but it's still a bit dispointing because it was part of the game since NS1.0
Why is seems so powerfull now ?
I have some answers :
- More complex geometry (= more place to hide)
- Marines doesn't have Motion Tracking
- No weldable vents
- You can build a Shade even if you don't have a Shade hive (making it more powerfull)
In time, marine commander use to scout wich evolution alien have and react in consequence. Motion tracking was event better than weapon lvl 2 if movement chamber or sensory chamber first.