Umbra Nerf
SlothropX
Join Date: 2003-07-21 Member: 18315Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-07-21 Member: 18315Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">A disagreeable place to hit Kharaa</div> I like the majority of the 2.01 changes, but I feel the two reductions to umbra are quite unnecessary. They seem justified solely on the basis of "hurting Kharaa", and not part of fixing any major point of imbalance. While aliens do need to be brought in line, I think that other 2.01 changes accomplish this by targeting specific balance problems (increasing hive resources, forcing gestate at hive in order to limit gorge mobility).
Umbra, however, has never been a topic of much contention. It requires the dedicated attention of a lerk in order to provide non-trivial protection to a small group, and any failure to perfectly blanket all fighting aliens will result in them feeling the full brunt of the HMG/shotty/turret farm, which can shred even Onos in relatively short order. Given its moderate radius and short duration, umbra has never been a truly dominating force in 2.0. If its effectiveness is reduced by a third, then it is more often than not simply never worth using. Why waste your time setting up a weak defense when one can gestate to a species with better offense? A lerk with 50% umbra would almost certainly be better off joining in the fight.
And even with umbra at its 2.0 levels, 3-hive alien teams tend to have difficulty finishing off a moderate-level marine base. Even with all the maps resources at their disposal (save one), the grand sum of alien abilities can find it hard to take down a marine base that only has a trickle of resources. The aliens still always win, as they should in this situation(edit), but marines with a good number of turrets and enough resource for a shotgun/HA every few minutes can hold out a disproportionately long time for a team which has quite clearly lost.
So, it seems clear to me that the balance problems in 2.0 are not at all due to imbalances in combat ability, but rather how quickly aliens can secure resources and get to their tier 2 and 3 technologies. When it is a remotely even fight, technology-wise, aliens are typically somewhat lacking. But in 2.0 only exceedingly poor Kharaa teams ever allow Marines to even up the tech level.
Changing the combat balance in 2.01, and in particular the umbra changes, seem entirely unwarranted. 2.0 has exceedingly good combat balance, its only problem is economic (which is understandable, when one team typically starts with twice the resources of the other, team-size dependent).
2.01 is going to upset a great deal of things in both Kharaa economics and combat. The economics are necessary, but the combat changes seem to simply be done because aliens win a lot of games at the moment. A better approach would be to release or thoroughly test the economic changes, and then evaluate whether the changes to umbra are truly necessary. I think we'll find that they aren't.
Umbra, however, has never been a topic of much contention. It requires the dedicated attention of a lerk in order to provide non-trivial protection to a small group, and any failure to perfectly blanket all fighting aliens will result in them feeling the full brunt of the HMG/shotty/turret farm, which can shred even Onos in relatively short order. Given its moderate radius and short duration, umbra has never been a truly dominating force in 2.0. If its effectiveness is reduced by a third, then it is more often than not simply never worth using. Why waste your time setting up a weak defense when one can gestate to a species with better offense? A lerk with 50% umbra would almost certainly be better off joining in the fight.
And even with umbra at its 2.0 levels, 3-hive alien teams tend to have difficulty finishing off a moderate-level marine base. Even with all the maps resources at their disposal (save one), the grand sum of alien abilities can find it hard to take down a marine base that only has a trickle of resources. The aliens still always win, as they should in this situation(edit), but marines with a good number of turrets and enough resource for a shotgun/HA every few minutes can hold out a disproportionately long time for a team which has quite clearly lost.
So, it seems clear to me that the balance problems in 2.0 are not at all due to imbalances in combat ability, but rather how quickly aliens can secure resources and get to their tier 2 and 3 technologies. When it is a remotely even fight, technology-wise, aliens are typically somewhat lacking. But in 2.0 only exceedingly poor Kharaa teams ever allow Marines to even up the tech level.
Changing the combat balance in 2.01, and in particular the umbra changes, seem entirely unwarranted. 2.0 has exceedingly good combat balance, its only problem is economic (which is understandable, when one team typically starts with twice the resources of the other, team-size dependent).
2.01 is going to upset a great deal of things in both Kharaa economics and combat. The economics are necessary, but the combat changes seem to simply be done because aliens win a lot of games at the moment. A better approach would be to release or thoroughly test the economic changes, and then evaluate whether the changes to umbra are truly necessary. I think we'll find that they aren't.
Comments
IMO, Umbra should give a resistance applied directly to the damage dealt, instead of the random "this shot has this probability of doing no damage at all"-system. Apart from the fact that I hate randomness in FPSes, I also believe this would make it easier to balance Umbra since you would have exact values to calculate its effectiveness from.
I agree with you about Kharaa being unable to punch through Marine defenses properly. Personally, I think it's slightly too hard already at one hive to kill off completely unguarded turret farms, too easy for the Marines to just throw up some turrets in a hive and then forget all about it. This isn't that much of a problem though, as the endless sieges you see at the end of maps, where Kharaa have complete map control and have Marines totally shut in. I've seen fights that have drawn out to 20 minutes or even more, just because Marines had dug in heavily with loads of turrets, some GL spam and so on. Perhaps Carapace could give Onos a "hidden" extra resistance to turrets? Apart from helping in breaking the last Marine stronghold, this might also give even one hive aliens some base wrecking abilities.
Chamooze
2.01 hasn't been officially released yet, notice the disclaimer at the bottom <!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Please, keep an open mind. These changes aren't final. They are beta. This is experimentation. This is fun, remember? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What this means is that Flayra is not necessarilly keeping these changes, but just seeing how they affect balance. If no one uses umbra in the public betas of 2.01, I'm sure he will change it.
A few days ago I was playing as an alien on ns_lost. We recently completed two hives, so I morphed into a Lerk and gathered up with a couple Fades. The marine base had a few turrets and at least 5 marines, two with GLs. The Fades blinked in and I started darting around on the outskirts, spamming Umbra wherever there were marines. The Fades blinked all around the room, slaughtering the marines and shrugging off the LMG and shotgun blasts. The GLs tried in vain to kill them, but when the grens started bouncing the Fades just blinked around and switched targets. No matter where the Fades moved or what the marines did, I kept the Fades in a cloud and protected.
The problem stems from the reduced duration and energy drain of Umbra in 2.0. Umbra is now dynamic and can be recast whenever it's needed, unlike in 1.04 where it forced aliens to stay confined to a small area in order to reap the benefits. Aliens can move around to their hearts' content and be protected, and the simple fact of the matter is that it's extremely difficult for a GL to strike a moving target on open ground. Umbra's supposed counter is the only marine weapon that can easily be avoided.
In order for the GL to serve as a counter, Umbra must force the aliens to stop dodging and become vulnerable to grenades. <b>I would suggest that the duration of Umbra be doubled and its energy cost tripled, or that the duration tripled and the cost quintupled.</b> This results in fewer clouds, forcing the aliens to either remain in designated areas or lose their protection. Marine GL users can then anticipate the aliens' movements. Great benefit (high resistance to bullets) at great cost (easy targets for grenades). Balanced, and promotes diverse and interesting gameplay. Nerfing the actual protection of Umbra dumbs down the late-game, allowing marines to ignore GLs and aliens to ignore Lerks.
Instead of targeting specific problems in what was an otherwise pretty balanced game (mainly the overly disperportionate and inconsistant economy of the kharaa), they seem to have taken a shotgun approach of "lets give an overall boost to the marines, and an overall nerfing to the aliens".
-JohnnySmash
You cant stop 3 adrenaline/celerity skulks and 2 gorges covered in umbra in early 2 hive situations.
As for the complaints that umbra is hard to counter, I have not found that to be true. When the lerks use umbra to cover themselves, the umbra is nearly strong enough to prevent them from being shredded. In the case where the lerk is using umbra to cover gorges/fades/oni a grenade launcher works wonders. The game has changed in that the GL user must practice aiming as the lerks/fades don't hide around corners anymore waiting to be grenaded.
Unless there is another counter to combat umbra, preferably a tier 2, (I've made suggestions of letting piercing type weapons negate half of umbra's effect, HMG), Umbra needs to be toned down.
2/3 is the minimum protection it can offer and still allow aliens a method of dealing with groups of HA/HMG. Anything less and multiple Oni die before they even get within gore range.
1) Umbra was cast around the lerk, meaning he tended to sit in his cloud where he was a target.
2) Umbra was most frequently cast to protect Acid-Rocket Fades. 2-hive Fades are no longer the ranged attackers of 1.04; they are the exact opposite - extremely fast, agile melee fighters. The new faster, ranged umbra supports them well, but the new GL is absolutely miserable for countering it.
I like the idea of HMG doing more damage through Umbra, but I'd simultaneously suggest a slight ROF nerf (and perhaps a cost increase, to 12-15) to the shotgun to truly promote mixed squads.
While I disagree that the HMG should be changed to counter Umbra (I still rarely see actual shotties or anything besides HMGs being handed out these days) I do think that another tier 2 counter would be useful. Although I think that if the legendary flamethrower ever gets introduced into the game, it would be the perfect counter for the new ranged umbra.
Perhaps the modification should be to the pistol to halve the effect of Umbra, instead? Just a thought.
As for only seeing HMGs... give it a few more weeks. You almost never see them in scrims nowadays -- a skilled shotgunner can destroy *anything* (which is why I suggested the ROF nerf for shotties), and for half the cost.