so far, from the last 15 or so games i played since i saw a few patched servers come up, i've seen nothing but good from this patch.
some may be complaining the overcompensation for marine ownage, but u guys need to look at how the game is set up.
like any good rts, this is a speed game... with time being a valuable tool in your way to victory. for the aliens side, time is their friend, and for every tick they can keep the marines from stepping forward, the closer they are to getting their 2nd (or 3rd) hive. marines on the other hand, is racing against the clock. they need to advance fast enough, gain enough resources along the way, for them to be able to take at least one hive and properly fortify it. usually, on most maps this isn't a problem. have a good team who doesn't get one or two people killed every 5 steps (avoiding the one marine runs back to spot alone, and probably gets killed syndrome), and save your resources instead of putting a turret factory and 3-4 turrets next to every resource node you encounter.
remember aliens need a shitload of resources to get a 2nd hive up... not to mention to properly put defenses up to slow down marines.
aliens on the other hand, need to stall the marines as long as possible, and cost them as much resources as they can (delaying the eventual fortifying of 1 hive). this means killing them and delaying them, harassing them, popping in and out and giving chase, running out and parasiting every one of them. there's nothing worse to a marine than knowing that the second you fall behind your team the whole alien team knows your most likely alone. parasiting a marine virtually guarantees that he won't leave very far w/o reinforcements if he knows what's good for him.
i don't see a problem with balance in this situation. good marines and a good commander will forget fortifying resources, and rush to the nearest hive to base up. inexperienced marines will stop their group every 3 mins to build defensive factories andturrets... all of which cost a shitload of money. aliens would be able to delay a marine group long enough for 2nd hive to come up, harassing them, destroying unguarded resource points, etc. while a **obscenity** alien team would do one or two-time skulk hits, but letting marines get enough resource points to have them decked out in good gear early in the game.
while the alien "harass and impede marines to 1st hive" strat is being used quite often, and seems to be very effective and relies on the players knowledge of the map, and the skill to setup ambushes upon respawn. once marines actually start using their head and actually figure out how to keep themselves from being stalled, instead of complaining that your "advance, occupy resource, fortify and proceed" technique isn't working, maybe you should think of better solutions... just like u said alien players had to when they were losing 9 out of 10 times.
maybe after fortifying every single resource point with turret farms methodically and still losing, maybe, just maybe you should stop spending your valuable 40 resources on a single resource point, and start racing towards that 1st hive.
like the devs said, this game was balanced for the 1 hive marine hold out vs. 2 hive scenario. just as the aliens are sure to die when they're fighting heavily armored and geared up marines, so should the chances of winning proceed equally. play a few more games on diff maps without using the exact same strategy u used to rape in pre-patch and i'd like to hear how exactly, you think , the marines didn't stand a chance to win.
for those of you who think that marines are having a really tough time getting out of their base, remember 1 thing...
SEIGE TURRET SHOOTS THROUGH WALLS!
I'm not sure exactly how long it takes to upgrade the turret factory but i'm guessing by about 5 minutes into the game (maybe less) you can have an armory, a seige turret factory, 3 or 4 turrets + seige turret. This means bye bye alien blockade.
And if you can't defend your base for 5 minutes you deserve to get turtled in...
The seige turret is a very effective weapon, place it, capture any resourse nodes it frees up, build base at those nodes, build seige turret at those bases, rinse and repeat.
Also note that as a marine you NEVER have to enter an enemy hive to destroy it. You can easily kill the hive from outside with a simple seige cannon defended for 30 or 40 seconds. Or even pop some grenades in there to torch any offence chambers and waltz in to take the crown. The fact that aliens HAVE to take down your turrets in order to win but you never have to even aproach theirs is a HUGE advantage! use it!
Right now it seems that the aliens are winning too much but you need to remember that most alien players have been playing the game with a big disadvantage. Now, those tactics that they did use work a lot better now. The marines tactics now need to change.
Yes the marines need a new tactics besides being a rambo wannabes. Also if the marines are smart enough they should build seige cannons to clear out the buildings that is the main streangth of the marines now.
The marines have not been weakened so much they can no longer win. I see two major changes in the patch- the resource bug being fixed and a forced autobalance program to keep teams even. The other stats changed were changed by a few points here and there only.
The aliens now have enough players to expand and rush properly, and the marines can no longer rely on superior numbers and resources to carry them through. I believe the developers achieved the goals they intended with the new release.
I think in a very short time (much less than a week) the marines will learn to rush a hive and hold it. Their survival depends on it. Recently the marines have been slow (due to lack of resource management) as they adjust to the changes. The aliens haven't actually gotten tougher, they are just using the 3rd hive aliens more. Once the marines realize this and keep the aliens to 2 hives again, things will balance themselves out.
On a side note, what gives with this "us" "aliens" BS? Just because one likes playing aliens doesn't mean they are in some kind of special club. We are all human beings playing the game, and people pick whatever side they damn feel like. Leave the elitist crap back at CS please.
Bleh, 2 games stuck as a marine, everyone running for the aliens, out of 16 people, 14 went alien, it was rather odd, I'm used to seeing that with Marines and only 2 aliens.
Yes, I dislike playing marines, until today, I've been stuck playing an alien and actually enjoyed it. Now if you want to keep things fair (or the team balance is on) you switch to marines. I joined in with a team of 8:7 aliens favor. It turned to 10:6 when I finally was able to get in and play marines. Then watched in horror as our team started to quit out of the game, I guess they were fed up. The other team had Onos's and watching the Skulks perform Xenocides like they were engineers doing a Empgrenade attack on a group of soldiers was rather interesting to watch during the 1 minute of life I was able to see it in.
The second game died from a "skulk rush". Lasted maybe 30 seconds.
The results so far that I've seen, in the 4 games that I've played. Even a well organized marine team is going to have a very hard time of it, almost impossible. With a clan, maybe its different I dunno, however on pubs, its now completely skewed. You no longer have to worry about looking above you or in corners as a marine, you wont live that long.
Unfortunately all of the idiots who were happy to play marines before prepatch so they could easily dominate the aliens are now doing the same thing, but happily running to the aliens.. bleh...
Ah well.. I know.. "heres some cheese for that whine you sorry **obscenity**.. "
As much as I was enjoying hearing the complaining before, I can understand now what they were talking about. I truly don't want to learn the marines, I was happy to play an alien. But I have yet to find a single server that doesn't now have the aliens overpopulated.
Not sure who it was, but I agree with him. It should have just been the resource bug that was fixed.
I like that the med packs and ammo aren't sitting around forever. As an alien I used to hate seeing piles of health laying all over. I wanted to eat it or at least put a parasite in it so when the marine used the pack he would dissolve into a glob of goo. Wait, that's not in the game yet. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
What I'm worried about though, is that marines learning new tactics was going to happen anyway. On most of the servers I played on marines would have a hive spot locked down in 5 minutes, and a second hive wouldn't go up for damn near half an hour. The aliens didn't lose because they were underpowered, they lost because they rolled over and died.
I've also played on servers (and this was a most delicious experience) where Kharaa rolled over a skilled marine squad like a frieght train.
It just took people a week to figure out strategies like:
Hide in a corner with cloak + silence. Marine walks by, doesn't realize he's dead before he hits the ground.
Fades + Lerks = dead turrets. (I have seen this in action. Takes 3-4 players to do effectively, but is a truly delicious experience.)
Don't have 15 Gorges on the team at the same time.
When you hear "Our Hive is dying." <i>get to the hive</i>.
And last but not least, <b>work together</b>. It works for the marines, so why not for you?
I'm seeing more and more alien teams that have figured things like this out. And I'm seeing more and more alien wins because of it. About the only marine tweaks they needed were the GL, and some form of SG nerf (and I don't really like this one). Sure, the marines will learn new tactics now, but I'm worried that changes in player skill will be driving the balance changes for the next little while.
<!--QuoteBegin--sundance+Nov 6 2002, 02:09 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (sundance @ Nov 6 2002, 02:09 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Im thinking the whole point of the game is for aliens to be stronger then marines one on one perhaps even two to one. Just like in films etc, remember those moments in Aliens, walking thro aliens infested areas, backing each other, working together? Thats what the marines should have had to do in the first place, move/work together in order to stay alive from these aliens that could come from anywhere, be anywhere. But that wasnt the case. Hopefully now they will, the people bitching are just upset they cant go off on their own now killing/nading everything in sight and not needing a team.
oh, and silverfox, why dont you try writing something constructive for a change? All I ever see you do is cry about this and that <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> If you were here before the mod came out, youd know he was a playtester. The reason he is so upset is becuase the game was made perfect, the endless playtesting, not just once a week, but somtiemes several games a night, with a code change the next day, and then more testing teh next day, is why hes so angry everyone is just bitching. The resource model is wrong, once it is fixed, i hope all the vaules are set to back to nmormal, and we will finallyt see what he and everyone else worked on for so long.
I partially agree with some things, and I disagree with other things. I think people should stop complaining for a minute and deal with it. Before the patch, a fully loaded Marine could survive for a long time with little assistance. If the patch makes it harder to the Marine's to survive alone, fine. That's how The Team wants it.
I think people should try to deal with the changes or defects instead of just complaining about them. After all, that's what Natural Selection and evolution is all about. Adapting to different conditions so that the species may survive. Try it.
I haven't read all these posts yet, but let me just get a couple words in.
1 - I'm so totally overwhelmed trying to read all these posts around here. If you ask me a question, sorry if I don't answer, I probably didn't even see it, or if I did, was exasperated.
2 - I think that the real problems with balance in 1.0 was the fact that teams were never balanced, and that no one knew how to play Kharaa. Now that both those problems are fixed, and add on to the fact that 1.01 changes may have been a little overkill (fade power), may have swung the game back into their favor. We saw this back and forth so many times during playtesting. It's fun but a bit maddening sometimes. It's just a couple numbers, but look at the results. Welcome to game development.
3 - Let's wait at least a few days to see if it really is unbalanced, or if it's just the readjustment period.
4 - Learn to enjoy the imbalances and imperfections. All problems will be fixed eventually, so for now, sit back and enjoy the ride (it's gonna be wild).
<!--QuoteBegin--The Seer+Nov 6 2002, 09:06 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Seer @ Nov 6 2002, 09:06 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I've played on 4 different servers today, all of them had countless games of alien pwnage. Maybe I'm unlucky, but I'm definetely an above-average player, I've been giving at least 5 hours or more a day since the mod came out, and... here, I'll give you scenarios, all the games I've played today pretty much are the same.
First five minutes. Aliens coordinate, there's usually 6 or more on each team I've played on today. They attack as soon as they can. They know where the marine base is, and just keep continuing to attack until it becomes too hard because of turrets. Half of them go gorge, a couple gorges save up for hives, the rest build defenses outside the Marine base, and build resource towers everywhere else. Aliens camp outside the base, and the gorges heal their towers, this continues on for about 10 minutes, the marines usually get somewhere, but never manage to secure a hive. Fades with bile bombs and Onos stomping our bases = Game over Marines.
I played at least 15 games today, not one Marine win. I played two games since the patch came out, both alien wins. The marines had enough coordination, almost all the times I played there were constant attacks of groups of marines of 5 or more, and no newbie commanders. Got stomped everytime.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> did you play on my server? Liquitopia? Because thats how mine works.
BTW i only run default settings, and i personally think the new patch is going to kill marines. I haven't played it yet, but telling from the stats....
I just want to point out one thing I've noticed in this thread.
Seer: Stop taking every post in here personally. I've seen somewhere around 4 times where you get upset at some one for making a general statement towards players- and you act like they were specifically talking about you.
In other news, I've yet to get game from start to finish under the new patch. I blame Lunar Silver Star Story. A wonderful RPG for those of you who are clueless. But from the looks of it, I think the marines might have been shafted a wee bit. Go power-fade!!
Personally, I don't see too much difference here, although the changes made are for the better.
It used to be that if you get a highly skilled, coordinated team of Marines and bring them up against a highly skilled, coordinated team of Aliens that the aliens would get whipped. Reason being that marines just have much nastier toys at their disposal. Grenade launchers and Siege turrets, most notably.
On top of that, if your an alien unfortunate enough to only have one hive then a few well deployed Marine sentry turrets could very effectively stop you from ever recovering. The only tactic that has a ghost of a chance of turning the tide here is a gorge healing a skulk, but it wouldn't work up against more than 2 or 3 turrets, plus that assumes that the marines decided to leave the remaining hive alone which is unlikely.
Has either of these situations really changed? No. Siege turrets do less than 5% (1.1%? I think I screwed up) less damage. Grenades do less damage, but not by much and STILL do double damage against structures. Fades are more durable and do a little more damage, but Lerks, Skulks, and Onos are just the same as before. Some vital marine equipment costs a fraction more: Turrets cost a whopping 3 more resoruce points to deploy, each. Turret Factories, once they go down, prevent the turrets from working. Not like the Turret Factory isn't one of the last things to go down anyway. Heavy armor costs 5 more resoruces to deploy each. I think the worst nerf here is that health packs and ammo that isn't picked up in 30 seconds expires - which means the commander is throwing money down the drain if it's not used promptly.
Ultimately, it's all minor adjustments. The end result is that the playing field has been leveled a bit in the alien's favor. However, it's still possible to do vicious things like fill unoccupied alien hives with turrets and blow up things with siege cannons in a gimpy manner. Most of the alien and marine's arsenal is the same. Personally, I think they haven't gone far enough - I'll be content when it's no longer possible to completely trap aliens with 1 hive with massive turret formations. The quickest way to do this would be to swap the Lerks weapons 2 and 3, so umbra is possible with just one hive. However, since umbra thwarts 2/3rd of the marines armaments it ma not be advised.
For the Marines, however, I do wish to offer a little bit of a support: It'd be neat if there were a couple of pre-assembled turrets near the commander pod at the beginning of each match to prevent them from getting totally overrun at the start of a match. Right now it's already possible to prevent this from happening, but only if you get a bunch of smart marines who guard the entrances and lay down good covering fire until they get the starting turrets assembled.
Well the game SEEMS to be balanced right now, but in all honesty, I don´t really think it is.
I am just coming back from a game. The aliens were owning the marines in their own base, but somehow the marines managed to recover from all the onos, fades and whatnot. They destroyed all the chambers outside their base the gorges built up in a matter of minutes, and some time later they even managed to destroy the third hive! Needless to say, the aliens were screwed afterwards. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Well what do I want to say with that? Basically, if the marines just camp in their base with a helluva of turrets, they can recover pretty fast and likely bounce back. On the other hand, if the aliens camp in their base, well... <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--Ladyskunk+Nov 6 2002, 05:23 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Ladyskunk @ Nov 6 2002, 05:23 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Bleh, 2 games stuck as a marine, everyone running for the aliens, out of 16 people, 14 went alien, it was rather odd, I'm used to seeing that with Marines and only 2 aliens.
Yes, I dislike playing marines, until today, I've been stuck playing an alien and actually enjoyed it. Now if you want to keep things fair (or the team balance is on) you switch to marines. I joined in with a team of 8:7 aliens favor. It turned to 10:6 when I finally was able to get in and play marines. Then watched in horror as our team started to quit out of the game, I guess they were fed up. The other team had Onos's and watching the Skulks perform Xenocides like they were engineers doing a Empgrenade attack on a group of soldiers was rather interesting to watch during the 1 minute of life I was able to see it in.
The second game died from a "skulk rush". Lasted maybe 30 seconds.
The results so far that I've seen, in the 4 games that I've played. Even a well organized marine team is going to have a very hard time of it, almost impossible. With a clan, maybe its different I dunno, however on pubs, its now completely skewed. You no longer have to worry about looking above you or in corners as a marine, you wont live that long.
Unfortunately all of the idiots who were happy to play marines before prepatch so they could easily dominate the aliens are now doing the same thing, but happily running to the aliens.. bleh...
Ah well.. I know.. "heres some cheese for that whine you sorry **obscenity**.. "
As much as I was enjoying hearing the complaining before, I can understand now what they were talking about. I truly don't want to learn the marines, I was happy to play an alien. But I have yet to find a single server that doesn't now have the aliens overpopulated.
Not sure who it was, but I agree with him. It should have just been the resource bug that was fixed.
Take care all.
LS<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> You could not have been playing a patched server... one of the fixes was autobalance... impossible for more then 2 player imbalance after patch... so the 14:2 and 10:6 could not have happened with the patched server. Either you played an alien friendly prepatch server or you are mistaken...
<!--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-->You could not have been playing a patched server... one of the fixes was autobalance... impossible for more then 2 player imbalance after patch... so the 14:2 and 10:6 could not have happened with the patched server. Either you played an alien friendly prepatch server or you are mistaken...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If I'm mistaken because I haven't played the patched game yet, it IS possible to switch teams once you get IN the game. If I'm wrong someone let me know, but that's what I inferred from a posters post.
to switch teams, you still have to go to the ready room, and with the new patch, you cant go onto a team that would make the teams more than 2 people apart. So no, you cant unbalance the teams by switching mid-game.
last night i played on a patch server as aliens and we had alot of fun teasing the marines. we came up with all sorts of stupid tactics to mess with their heads. anyway after winning twice in a row the aliens team filled up fast so i went marines. i consider myself a harcore alien player since ive stuck with aliens since day one. i only played marines a total of 7 times and commanded 3(never lost as comm though <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> ). this time around i knew all of the alien tactics. we stopped the first rush waited for the second but it never came. i was tryin to lead the grunts but some of em always ran off by themselves. when finally my cries for teamwork were answered we quickly took one of their hives and a few nozzles. it was a hell of a fight and we ended up losing but we lasted longer than the 2 previous games. the moral of my story is a marine team with knowledge of the aliens tactics, strenghts and weaknesses should have no trouble goin head to head with the aliens after patch. unfortuantly for my team last night they still didnt look up when goin through a doorway.
I hate the new patch as well. The way I see it, the think aliens were always winning. And that was because everyone went marines -- we are all new to the game, marines are simplest to play, and I think its more fun thinking your saving the world.
They implented team balance - which I thought would have evened it out right there...but they also made aliens do more damage, and marines less. Unfair.
After playing it for a while I think its actually a good patch.
The changes REALLY aren't that big. And I was on a server today where the winds/losses of each team were about even. Whoever worked the best as a TEAM obliterated the other team.
<!--QuoteBegin--SuperMunchkin+Nov 6 2002, 06:15 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SuperMunchkin @ Nov 6 2002, 06:15 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Seer: Stop taking every post in here personally. I've seen somewhere around 4 times where you get upset at some one for making a general statement towards players- and you act like they were specifically talking about you.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Jes. Thank you. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> Saved me from flaming him myself.
And as far as balance issues - here's an idea.
Everyone quit whining about balance. Play the game. Get your mad skillz like the PTs. They thought it was balanced then. Once you become 1337 like them, you will too.
Thank you.
Edit - this post is not directed at any one person in particular. I don't believe in playing favourites - I hate you all equally. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> j/k - enjoy the game.
Sorry to bring a dead topic back up, but the issue seems to still exist. I played 3 games today, aliens won TWO! That's right, marines finally won a game in my past 30 games, so I had to come and tell all you guys about it. I was marine when it happened, and quite frankly, I don't think any member of the alien team knew what they were doing. It did feel good to get 5 or more kills before dying though.
Anyway, the other two games were on another server, and I still saw the alien domination that's not very new to me. But... blaw.
SuperMunch, I'm not taking things personally here, I'm not crying or pounding the arms of my chair when someone says something negative about whiners. (I'm not even a whiner, so wtf?) I just want people to know that a good alien team just might be invincible. Or very well near it.
Basically a team of the same 5 marines can go down very quickly to a well organized and diverse alien team, can even be 3 or 4, just get a lerk, a gorge, and a fade, and it's almost unbeatable, especially if you prepare before combat by making a few defense chambers. (I'm alien quite a bit, I know how all this works.)
So even if the marines plow through the initial rushes and get to the third hive, you can bet that at least someone on the team is keeping a watch on it, and they never will be able to get that base up. Not only do aliens look at getting that third hive as MUCH more important as Marines do, aliens can get there faster, and pwn them faster.
Someone in this thread said that if you were prepared for all the alien's movements, that it's no big deal. The first 2 minutes of rushing isn't designed to end the game early, it's to keep you at base, and that's exactly what you're doing when you're waiting at the base for them to come through the front door.
As for siege turrets, yes that is an effective method from being turtled in from the front door, but unless you push forward with siege turrets, you're still pinned down. Once the Marines can figure out a way through this, or changes or made, there's still one last issue...
While I never saw Marines win when they are pinned down in their base with no expansion, they can still last a heck of a long time. While when aliens are pinned down to their last base, they rarely last longer than a minute. Perhaps the aliens need something defensive, but rarely used except for these occasions. It's really not that big a deal since the game is pretty much over anyway, but either make it easier to stomp the marine's base as aliens when this happens, or make it so the alien's can last longer too. 8D
<!--QuoteBegin--Barbarian+Nov 6 2002, 06:12 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Barbarian @ Nov 6 2002, 06:12 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I wonder how things would be if the patch had only been a no-unbalanced teams patch, instead of making all these resource changes.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think I hear a marine that wants his toys back.
To compensate for the increase in the fade's armor and speed the HMG's damage should have been left alone. I used to play Aliens a lot before the patch only because the teams were uneven (trust me, my loyalty lies with my own race) but now I play Marines all the time, and I must say they seem just a wee bit weaker.
I think we should have just tried the game out with the resource bug fixed and nothing else, if Marine ownage was still apparent then we should have taken steps to fix that. ** play nice or not at all, this is your only warning **
To my knowlege.. the fade was toned down and the resource bug appeared JUST prior to release with no testing... this patch has basically set things the way that they were in the playtests.
The resource bug WAS NOT PART OF THE GAME... you marines need to stop playing like you have that on your side. Its rare that I run into a heavy now.
Humans are SUPPOSED TO be weaker if you listen to the team.
Marines... and aliens who are speaking on behalf of them... give the patch a chance before we all start yelling "HMGS NEED MORE DMG.... MARIneS NEED MOR RESOURCES... GRENS DONT DO ENOUGH DAMAGE"
Comments
some may be complaining the overcompensation for marine ownage, but u guys need to look at how the game is set up.
like any good rts, this is a speed game... with time being a valuable tool in your way to victory. for the aliens side, time is their friend, and for every tick they can keep the marines from stepping forward, the closer they are to getting their 2nd (or 3rd) hive. marines on the other hand, is racing against the clock. they need to advance fast enough, gain enough resources along the way, for them to be able to take at least one hive and properly fortify it. usually, on most maps this isn't a problem. have a good team who doesn't get one or two people killed every 5 steps (avoiding the one marine runs back to spot alone, and probably gets killed syndrome), and save your resources instead of putting a turret factory and 3-4 turrets next to every resource node you encounter.
remember aliens need a shitload of resources to get a 2nd hive up... not to mention to properly put defenses up to slow down marines.
aliens on the other hand, need to stall the marines as long as possible, and cost them as much resources as they can (delaying the eventual fortifying of 1 hive). this means killing them and delaying them, harassing them, popping in and out and giving chase, running out and parasiting every one of them. there's nothing worse to a marine than knowing that the second you fall behind your team the whole alien team knows your most likely alone. parasiting a marine virtually guarantees that he won't leave very far w/o reinforcements if he knows what's good for him.
i don't see a problem with balance in this situation. good marines and a good commander will forget fortifying resources, and rush to the nearest hive to base up. inexperienced marines will stop their group every 3 mins to build defensive factories andturrets... all of which cost a shitload of money. aliens would be able to delay a marine group long enough for 2nd hive to come up, harassing them, destroying unguarded resource points, etc. while a **obscenity** alien team would do one or two-time skulk hits, but letting marines get enough resource points to have them decked out in good gear early in the game.
while the alien "harass and impede marines to 1st hive" strat is being used quite often, and seems to be very effective and relies on the players knowledge of the map, and the skill to setup ambushes upon respawn. once marines actually start using their head and actually figure out how to keep themselves from being stalled, instead of complaining that your "advance, occupy resource, fortify and proceed" technique isn't working, maybe you should think of better solutions... just like u said alien players had to when they were losing 9 out of 10 times.
maybe after fortifying every single resource point with turret farms methodically and still losing, maybe, just maybe you should stop spending your valuable 40 resources on a single resource point, and start racing towards that 1st hive.
like the devs said, this game was balanced for the 1 hive marine hold out vs. 2 hive scenario. just as the aliens are sure to die when they're fighting heavily armored and geared up marines, so should the chances of winning proceed equally. play a few more games on diff maps without using the exact same strategy u used to rape in pre-patch and i'd like to hear how exactly, you think , the marines didn't stand a chance to win.
SEIGE TURRET SHOOTS THROUGH WALLS!
I'm not sure exactly how long it takes to upgrade the turret factory but i'm guessing by about 5 minutes into the game (maybe less) you can have an armory, a seige turret factory, 3 or 4 turrets + seige turret. This means bye bye alien blockade.
And if you can't defend your base for 5 minutes you deserve to get turtled in...
The seige turret is a very effective weapon, place it, capture any resourse nodes it frees up, build base at those nodes, build seige turret at those bases, rinse and repeat.
Also note that as a marine you NEVER have to enter an enemy hive to destroy it. You can easily kill the hive from outside with a simple seige cannon defended for 30 or 40 seconds. Or even pop some grenades in there to torch any offence chambers and waltz in to take the crown. The fact that aliens HAVE to take down your turrets in order to win but you never have to even aproach theirs is a HUGE advantage! use it!
The aliens now have enough players to expand and rush properly, and the marines can no longer rely on superior numbers and resources to carry them through. I believe the developers achieved the goals they intended with the new release.
I think in a very short time (much less than a week) the marines will learn to rush a hive and hold it. Their survival depends on it. Recently the marines have been slow (due to lack of resource management) as they adjust to the changes. The aliens haven't actually gotten tougher, they are just using the 3rd hive aliens more. Once the marines realize this and keep the aliens to 2 hives again, things will balance themselves out.
On a side note, what gives with this "us" "aliens" BS? Just because one likes playing aliens doesn't mean they are in some kind of special club. We are all human beings playing the game, and people pick whatever side they damn feel like. Leave the elitist crap back at CS please.
-Leu
Yes, I dislike playing marines, until today, I've been stuck playing an alien and actually enjoyed it. Now if you want to keep things fair (or the team balance is on) you switch to marines. I joined in with a team of 8:7 aliens favor. It turned to 10:6 when I finally was able to get in and play marines. Then watched in horror as our team started to quit out of the game, I guess they were fed up. The other team had Onos's and watching the Skulks perform Xenocides like they were engineers doing a Empgrenade attack on a group of soldiers was rather interesting to watch during the 1 minute of life I was able to see it in.
The second game died from a "skulk rush". Lasted maybe 30 seconds.
The results so far that I've seen, in the 4 games that I've played. Even a well organized marine team is going to have a very hard time of it, almost impossible. With a clan, maybe its different I dunno, however on pubs, its now completely skewed. You no longer have to worry about looking above you or in corners as a marine, you wont live that long.
Unfortunately all of the idiots who were happy to play marines before prepatch so they could easily dominate the aliens are now doing the same thing, but happily running to the aliens.. bleh...
Ah well.. I know.. "heres some cheese for that whine you sorry **obscenity**.. "
As much as I was enjoying hearing the complaining before, I can understand now what they were talking about. I truly don't want to learn the marines, I was happy to play an alien. But I have yet to find a single server that doesn't now have the aliens overpopulated.
Not sure who it was, but I agree with him. It should have just been the resource bug that was fixed.
Take care all.
LS
I've also played on servers (and this was a most delicious experience) where Kharaa rolled over a skilled marine squad like a frieght train.
It just took people a week to figure out strategies like:
Hide in a corner with cloak + silence. Marine walks by, doesn't realize he's dead before he hits the ground.
Fades + Lerks = dead turrets. (I have seen this in action. Takes 3-4 players to do effectively, but is a truly delicious experience.)
Don't have 15 Gorges on the team at the same time.
When you hear "Our Hive is dying." <i>get to the hive</i>.
And last but not least, <b>work together</b>. It works for the marines, so why not for you?
I'm seeing more and more alien teams that have figured things like this out. And I'm seeing more and more alien wins because of it. About the only marine tweaks they needed were the GL, and some form of SG nerf (and I don't really like this one). Sure, the marines will learn new tactics now, but I'm worried that changes in player skill will be driving the balance changes for the next little while.
But that wasnt the case. Hopefully now they will, the people bitching are just upset they cant go off on their own now killing/nading everything in sight and not needing a team.
oh, and silverfox, why dont you try writing something constructive for a change? All I ever see you do is cry about this and that <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you were here before the mod came out, youd know he was a playtester. The reason he is so upset is becuase the game was made perfect, the endless playtesting, not just once a week, but somtiemes several games a night, with a code change the next day, and then more testing teh next day, is why hes so angry everyone is just bitching. The resource model is wrong, once it is fixed, i hope all the vaules are set to back to nmormal, and we will finallyt see what he and everyone else worked on for so long.
So basically, you were just slammed!
I think people should try to deal with the changes or defects instead of just complaining about them. After all, that's what Natural Selection and evolution is all about. Adapting to different conditions so that the species may survive. Try it.
The end.
1 - I'm so totally overwhelmed trying to read all these posts around here. If you ask me a question, sorry if I don't answer, I probably didn't even see it, or if I did, was exasperated.
2 - I think that the real problems with balance in 1.0 was the fact that teams were never balanced, and that no one knew how to play Kharaa. Now that both those problems are fixed, and add on to the fact that 1.01 changes may have been a little overkill (fade power), may have swung the game back into their favor. We saw this back and forth so many times during playtesting. It's fun but a bit maddening sometimes. It's just a couple numbers, but look at the results. Welcome to game development.
3 - Let's wait at least a few days to see if it really is unbalanced, or if it's just the readjustment period.
4 - Learn to enjoy the imbalances and imperfections. All problems will be fixed eventually, so for now, sit back and enjoy the ride (it's gonna be wild).
First five minutes. Aliens coordinate, there's usually 6 or more on each team I've played on today. They attack as soon as they can. They know where the marine base is, and just keep continuing to attack until it becomes too hard because of turrets. Half of them go gorge, a couple gorges save up for hives, the rest build defenses outside the Marine base, and build resource towers everywhere else. Aliens camp outside the base, and the gorges heal their towers, this continues on for about 10 minutes, the marines usually get somewhere, but never manage to secure a hive. Fades with bile bombs and Onos stomping our bases = Game over Marines.
I played at least 15 games today, not one Marine win. I played two games since the patch came out, both alien wins. The marines had enough coordination, almost all the times I played there were constant attacks of groups of marines of 5 or more, and no newbie commanders. Got stomped everytime.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
did you play on my server? Liquitopia? Because thats how mine works.
BTW i only run default settings, and i personally think the new patch is going to kill marines. I haven't played it yet, but telling from the stats....
Fades were great before the patch.
Now Fades are gods.
So that makes me God.
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Take care,
LS
Seer: Stop taking every post in here personally. I've seen somewhere around 4 times where you get upset at some one for making a general statement towards players- and you act like they were specifically talking about you.
In other news, I've yet to get game from start to finish under the new patch. I blame Lunar Silver Star Story. A wonderful RPG for those of you who are clueless. But from the looks of it, I think the marines might have been shafted a wee bit. Go power-fade!!
It used to be that if you get a highly skilled, coordinated team of Marines and bring them up against a highly skilled, coordinated team of Aliens that the aliens would get whipped. Reason being that marines just have much nastier toys at their disposal. Grenade launchers and Siege turrets, most notably.
On top of that, if your an alien unfortunate enough to only have one hive then a few well deployed Marine sentry turrets could very effectively stop you from ever recovering. The only tactic that has a ghost of a chance of turning the tide here is a gorge healing a skulk, but it wouldn't work up against more than 2 or 3 turrets, plus that assumes that the marines decided to leave the remaining hive alone which is unlikely.
Has either of these situations really changed? No. Siege turrets do less than 5% (1.1%? I think I screwed up) less damage. Grenades do less damage, but not by much and STILL do double damage against structures. Fades are more durable and do a little more damage, but Lerks, Skulks, and Onos are just the same as before. Some vital marine equipment costs a fraction more: Turrets cost a whopping 3 more resoruce points to deploy, each. Turret Factories, once they go down, prevent the turrets from working. Not like the Turret Factory isn't one of the last things to go down anyway. Heavy armor costs 5 more resoruces to deploy each. I think the worst nerf here is that health packs and ammo that isn't picked up in 30 seconds expires - which means the commander is throwing money down the drain if it's not used promptly.
Ultimately, it's all minor adjustments. The end result is that the playing field has been leveled a bit in the alien's favor. However, it's still possible to do vicious things like fill unoccupied alien hives with turrets and blow up things with siege cannons in a gimpy manner. Most of the alien and marine's arsenal is the same. Personally, I think they haven't gone far enough - I'll be content when it's no longer possible to completely trap aliens with 1 hive with massive turret formations. The quickest way to do this would be to swap the Lerks weapons 2 and 3, so umbra is possible with just one hive. However, since umbra thwarts 2/3rd of the marines armaments it ma not be advised.
For the Marines, however, I do wish to offer a little bit of a support: It'd be neat if there were a couple of pre-assembled turrets near the commander pod at the beginning of each match to prevent them from getting totally overrun at the start of a match. Right now it's already possible to prevent this from happening, but only if you get a bunch of smart marines who guard the entrances and lay down good covering fire until they get the starting turrets assembled.
I am just coming back from a game. The aliens were owning the marines in their own base, but somehow the marines managed to recover from all the onos, fades and whatnot. They destroyed all the chambers outside their base the gorges built up in a matter of minutes, and some time later they even managed to destroy the third hive! Needless to say, the aliens were screwed afterwards. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Well what do I want to say with that? Basically, if the marines just camp in their base with a helluva of turrets, they can recover pretty fast and likely bounce back. On the other hand, if the aliens camp in their base, well... <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo-->
Yes, I dislike playing marines, until today, I've been stuck playing an alien and actually enjoyed it. Now if you want to keep things fair (or the team balance is on) you switch to marines. I joined in with a team of 8:7 aliens favor. It turned to 10:6 when I finally was able to get in and play marines. Then watched in horror as our team started to quit out of the game, I guess they were fed up. The other team had Onos's and watching the Skulks perform Xenocides like they were engineers doing a Empgrenade attack on a group of soldiers was rather interesting to watch during the 1 minute of life I was able to see it in.
The second game died from a "skulk rush". Lasted maybe 30 seconds.
The results so far that I've seen, in the 4 games that I've played. Even a well organized marine team is going to have a very hard time of it, almost impossible. With a clan, maybe its different I dunno, however on pubs, its now completely skewed. You no longer have to worry about looking above you or in corners as a marine, you wont live that long.
Unfortunately all of the idiots who were happy to play marines before prepatch so they could easily dominate the aliens are now doing the same thing, but happily running to the aliens.. bleh...
Ah well.. I know.. "heres some cheese for that whine you sorry **obscenity**.. "
As much as I was enjoying hearing the complaining before, I can understand now what they were talking about. I truly don't want to learn the marines, I was happy to play an alien. But I have yet to find a single server that doesn't now have the aliens overpopulated.
Not sure who it was, but I agree with him. It should have just been the resource bug that was fixed.
Take care all.
LS<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You could not have been playing a patched server... one of the fixes was autobalance... impossible for more then 2 player imbalance after patch... so the 14:2 and 10:6 could not have happened with the patched server. Either you played an alien friendly prepatch server or you are mistaken...
If I'm mistaken because I haven't played the patched game yet, it IS possible to switch teams once you get IN the game. If I'm wrong someone let me know, but that's what I inferred from a posters post.
They implented team balance - which I thought would have evened it out right there...but they also made aliens do more damage, and marines less. Unfair.
The changes REALLY aren't that big. And I was on a server today where the winds/losses of each team were about even. Whoever worked the best as a TEAM obliterated the other team.
And in the end, it was more fun either way.
Which is what the whole point is...
Jes. Thank you. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> Saved me from flaming him myself.
And as far as balance issues - here's an idea.
Everyone quit whining about balance.
Play the game. Get your mad skillz like the PTs.
They thought it was balanced then.
Once you become 1337 like them, you will too.
Thank you.
Edit - this post is not directed at any one person in particular. I don't believe in playing favourites - I hate you all equally. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> j/k - enjoy the game.
- M4H
Anyway, the other two games were on another server, and I still saw the alien domination that's not very new to me. But... blaw.
SuperMunch, I'm not taking things personally here, I'm not crying or pounding the arms of my chair when someone says something negative about whiners. (I'm not even a whiner, so wtf?) I just want people to know that a good alien team just might be invincible. Or very well near it.
Basically a team of the same 5 marines can go down very quickly to a well organized and diverse alien team, can even be 3 or 4, just get a lerk, a gorge, and a fade, and it's almost unbeatable, especially if you prepare before combat by making a few defense chambers. (I'm alien quite a bit, I know how all this works.)
So even if the marines plow through the initial rushes and get to the third hive, you can bet that at least someone on the team is keeping a watch on it, and they never will be able to get that base up. Not only do aliens look at getting that third hive as MUCH more important as Marines do, aliens can get there faster, and pwn them faster.
Someone in this thread said that if you were prepared for all the alien's movements, that it's no big deal. The first 2 minutes of rushing isn't designed to end the game early, it's to keep you at base, and that's exactly what you're doing when you're waiting at the base for them to come through the front door.
As for siege turrets, yes that is an effective method from being turtled in from the front door, but unless you push forward with siege turrets, you're still pinned down. Once the Marines can figure out a way through this, or changes or made, there's still one last issue...
While I never saw Marines win when they are pinned down in their base with no expansion, they can still last a heck of a long time. While when aliens are pinned down to their last base, they rarely last longer than a minute. Perhaps the aliens need something defensive, but rarely used except for these occasions. It's really not that big a deal since the game is pretty much over anyway, but either make it easier to stomp the marine's base as aliens when this happens, or make it so the alien's can last longer too. 8D
I think I hear a marine that wants his toys back.
I think we should have just tried the game out with the resource bug fixed and nothing else, if Marine ownage was still apparent then we should have taken steps to fix that. ** play nice or not at all, this is your only warning **
The resource bug WAS NOT PART OF THE GAME... you marines need to stop playing like you have that on your side. Its rare that I run into a heavy now.
Humans are SUPPOSED TO be weaker if you listen to the team.
Marines... and aliens who are speaking on behalf of them... give the patch a chance before we all start yelling "HMGS NEED MORE DMG.... MARIneS NEED MOR RESOURCES... GRENS DONT DO ENOUGH DAMAGE"