It is balanced.
Longtooth
Join Date: 2002-07-02 Member: 863Members
Join Date: 2002-07-02 Member: 863Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Stop crying.</div>If I see any more "This team is unbalanced" posts I will shoot somebody, the teams are balanced you just need to know how to use them and to counter them. The blink problem is annoying though, but me suspect it has to do with the lag problem
Comments
they are hard to use... and alot of restriction applies to them....
they should at least tweak teh balance a bit more to make playing as aliens a bit more " fun ? "
right now everyone just wants to play marines and that's a problem
the way i see it
marine needs money to win
aliens needs money AND HIVEs to win...
there's ur imblance... imo hives are a dumb idea and should be removed
Yes. When we learn how to own as Aliens, then the Marines won't seem so bloody overpowered. They're overpowered because they have a very shallow learning curve. It's easier to shoot a HMG than an MP5 in Counter-Strike. So we know that it's not taking long for us to pick up the Marine aspect of the game. But no one's ever played anything like a skulk or a gorge before. These things take more than twelve hours.
Also, about that Blink thing...
<!--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-->he reason why you're not moving is because blink is a -catapult- not a -teleport-.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
-Moleculor on blinking. He suggests jumping, crouching in mid-air, and blinking to facilitate your push.
Hell, even the Skulk kicks some serious ### when he has three hives, silence, regen and cloaking.
And remove hives because they're a dumb idea? I won't even comment.
We cannot expect to run up to a marine and live?
Then why do aliens have melee weapons almost exclusively?
"You're obviously playing them wrong"
Hell I must be, I haven't even found the skulk's ranged attack.
Try not to be too condescending. People are expressing their views on what seems to be imbalanced.
I do think it's a little imbalancing that marines get access to HMG, grenade launchers, and heavy armor without having to control 3/4 of the map like the aliens do to get onos, xenocide, and the better abilities.
There is a snowball effect, like in most RTS, that once you start losing, it requires some immense idiocy on one side and some serious ninjitsu on the other to salvage the situation, and since most players are coming into a live game (which tend to run about 1-2 hours apiece) it seems like the whole game has been them getting pounded.
his only attacks are bite, parasite, leap and kamakazie
all require you get up close and personal (except parasite), however, the way you go about doing it is what makes all the difference ...
EXACTLY
Humans can just build a huge base with every type of buildings AT THEIR SPAWN...and only have to travel a short distance to take 10 seconds to build resource centers. 2 or 3 resource centers, which are easily guarded by 2 turrets, make more than enough money to get all marines what they need.
Aliens cannot afford to become Gorges, create resource centers (which take forever and you get stuck inside of), then make their own offense things. By this time, everyones used all their resources and it will take forever to be able to afford a hive, which by that time the humans could have fortified.
For aliens, perhaps some map that you can call up that displays the level with all the crawlspaces, something that obscures your view and doesn't show hivesight positions. The main purpose is to help players know the level, which is critical to winning with aliens. The aliens need to know the routes used to get behind and ambush the marines. I'll have to agree, aliens become VERY effective against marines when the simple situation arises where a marine has his back turned. I've taken out quite a few marines stealthily this way. However, because it will often take two bites, if they have an HMG, they can usually turn around and spray until I'm dead, which leads me to my other suggestion.
I think the marine team is balanced well, but they might be getting the HMG a little to early considering that the aliens are so slow to build up. I am aware of the one Gorge method of starting as aliens, but not very many are, and that's a big problem. Perhaps you can include better indicators of the current distribution of resources so that players know when there's too many Gorges to be effective? Or something as simple as a tooltip reminder early in the game. This doesn't change gameplay, it just lets players know what's really going on so that they don't complain about something that's already settled.
Another thing is that the more effective weapons the aliens have for destroying marine structures are limited to three hives. Unfortunately, aliens tend to need them earlier. Since it takes so long for aliens to take out a structure early on, it becomes near impossible to reclaim an area before some marine comes back to shoot you while you're chomping on machinery.
Also, perhaps an on screen indicator for aliens that show how many of a particular type of chamber is up before evolving something from that chamber? How many chambers is up really effects my choice in what upgrade to get, and I don't want to get saddled with the wrong type when there's an army of marines sitting outside.
Is there any way to walk on the cielings, while still seeing most of the ground, without falling? What I mean is, to run along the cieling, and keep an eye out on the ground below for marines, you need to look down slightly, but eventually that moves you away from the cieling and that causes a fall, giving away your position. Perhaps allowing the jump key to be held down would do it?
What's the deal with team balancing? One of the major reasons why people think aliens are ineffective is that everyone's joining the marine side, on some servers marines will outnumber aliens 2 to 1. That really cuts down on aliens stalking ability, since with the large amount of marines, it's much more likely to have one stumble on you, or gang up on you as an alien. I recall reading about a resource bonus for the underdog side, but that's not really effective, since for the aliens, that massive number of marines will most likely take control of hive areas before the aliens can make use of that resource bonus. (and again leading back to the alien attack strength vs structures)
Finally, I know you're not in to gore, and I'm not either. However, the aliens need some indication of whether they hit with an attack on a marine. There may be something in already, but I haven't noticed it, so without an indicator, I get this creeping feeling that alien attacks are ineffective, which I know isn't true. Perhaps a hit marine would give off a grunt or a small puff of blood (no splatters), or sparks off heavy armor. This would go a long way towards helping alien players believe that they're effective, and it would also help new players learn how to time their bite attacks.
HIVE SIGHT. If you use hivesight, aliens can <i>easily</i>control 75% of the map, no problem. It takes some getting used to, but once you know how to use it, it will be invaluable.
<!--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-->Try not to be too condescending. People are expressing their views on what seems to be imbalanced<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
People are basing their views on less than a day's worth of playing. And I'm condescending? We spent months balancing the game, and people want to say that it's not balanced after less than a single day. Right. You need to learn how to play the game before you can make these kinds of judgements.
Seriously, I took time to learn real alien tactics (although I'm used to stealth and ambushing), and now I'm usually one of the top alien players on a server. Still haven't won, but I figure once people start learning their real strengths, it will get interesting.
they somehow assume "alright someone will play the aliens and ill pretend to be a marine"
were not bots! we have feelings <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
hehe ok im just saying it seems that way because aliens and ugly cretures are usualy played by a computer
main thing is... even the ####### teams (not the game) !!
I think skulks and fades should definately get buffed a little. Skulks are meant to be sneaky, but their sneakiness is still no match for the marines. I feel cheated whenever I cleverly come up behind a heavy marine, bite him a few times, and then get blown to pieces. If a lone marine is presenting his back to me and I find my way behind him without being detected, I should get a kill, heavy armour or no.
I would love to type more... but I gotta go. Let's all hope the aliens get an upgrade sometime soon.
And don't talk about unbalanced things, you need to learn how the aliens work! You cant just play 5 mins then start complaning! You need to learn the game, then you can complain!
oh i get it, insted we wait for them to come to us, how noval, then they build sige turrets and blow us to peices through walls.
Without the ability to attack marines head on, how can aliens win?! Aliens need to expand to the other hives to get better abilities, yet when we do we wind up *doh* CONFRONTING MARINES!!
There is no way to surpize or ambush anything when *you* are the advancing party, they will ambush YOU, not the other way around.
i think the key is to tone down the costs for resourse nodes and hives for aliens, if your team has 2 gorges (out of a 5-6 man team) they fill up so slow it's almost worthless trying to build anything.
After the intial defense have the skulks assit the gorge in takine and defending another node. Once that is secure, start getting maybe one to two more nodes in the same manner, the procede to the second hive. Take it and setup a some defense there as well. Now comes the happy stuff. ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST A GORGE NUMBER EQUAL TO HIVES. Now put webs everywhere around your off.chambers.
Webs are the key to alien def, offensive chambers only assist. But webs and off.chambers together are nasty.
What I am trying to point out here is what makes the aliens powerful is the fact they each get THEIR OWN resourses, thats many many time the ammout of what the humans get. Use that by constantly evolving to gorges and making chambers and then de evolveing down to attack and harass again.
we got to a point where we had 2 hives and the 3rd was camped by the marines i was like "ok ill use cloacking and get there silently
but cloacking only comes with 3 hives!
point is
2 hives should be a little more powerfull
The balancing is FINE! Most of the games I played were 35min+ it was awesome.
Oh and for everyone who says aliens suck just think that you are an actual alien wanting to eat the marines. If you do that then you just might have some fun.
THIS IS FOR THE DEVS! THANK YOU!!! and please dont listen to the n00bs and complainers. I dont want this game to be changed because some people suck at playing an alien.
but minorly tweaked really really small stuff tweaked
im still not sure if it even needs tweaking cuz ihavent played 1 game with equal number of players at each team
Even a little tweak like changing the the power of the HMG by 1 point can throw the entire game off. I think that the game is fine and with the next little server patch it will be PERFECT.
nuff said time for coffee
At first I thought the aliens sucked horrible, my attacks seemed somewhat weak compared to the marines(also the fact that I could never tell If I was hurting them or not,) and resources went reallllly slow. They also usually killed me in .3 secs.
So after awhile I start learning some stuff, always try to get resource points, protect them with offence chambers and webs. Getting enough points for the first hive seems to take too long in my opinion, maybe make resource points go faster(for everyone.)
Also it seems a well set up marine team(which seems to be easier to make, maybe because of the commander) can take out any set up of defence made by the aliens. They literally can trample over any resource point or hive defence. I have seen two marines take out the max amount of offence chambers(with webs it amazingly set up places) in an area that was guarding a resource point.
The aliens never seem to work together no matter what server I play on. I try to tell them to use gorges to heal while sulks/fades take out turrets, but they usally just run head on and die. Also another good tactic is using a sulk to climb on the wall near turrets, most of the time u can find a nice hiding spot where they keep attacking you and you cant be hit, allowing a flyer(forgot name) to shoot its ranged weapon with some safety(sometimes the turrets decide to attack the flyers, but usually can just move to safety.)
Once they get enough turrets up though, its kind of hard to get all the aliens together on a team to take them down(and even then that takes a lot of skill by everyone.) The flyers(again forgot name) has a attack that slows down bullets which helps greatly when trying to take down a group of turrets.
Oh and getting stuck while making offence chambers really hurts bad <!--emo&:(--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('><!--endemo-->
Lemme think what else...
Why is it with sulks wall walk is on by default, and that when I push crouch it turns off?
The only thing right now that I would tweak or change would be making offence chambers a tiny dab faster or stronger, or better yet allowing gorges to use webs with one hive.
Oh another thing I dislike, to kill a turret with ranged you seem to have to hit it at its exact center to do any real damage to it, is this a bug?
Okay im done for now I guess <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
<!--emo&::onos::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tiny.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::onos::'><!--endemo-->
but seriuosly, could we please get a better view point for skulks.
i really doubt that there eyes are INSIDE there mouth.
maybe an optional third person or something, just SOMETING so you know when you can hit bite.
also, could ducking please be fixed.
as marine i duck, and i move down ungodly slow, and then suddenly snap to having my face jsut above ground, like i was prone.
and moving backwards? geh, whatever happened to be able to pull a tactical retreat.
as for alines, there all fine, just fix hitboxes and clip boxes.
perhaps make the skulks wallclimbing easier, it really does look wierd to see a right side up skulk onn the cieling.
if the view could be turned upside down, and themodel too, then that would help alot.
and if the skulk could actually duck....
or not constantly fall off the cieling.
as for balance, its fine. just make alien building easier.
p.s. redemption is broken.
When I first started learning about NS, I decided I wanted to be alien, mainly for a change. So my first game I played, the marines didn't even have a commander and I managed to take out the 3 last surviving marines as a skulk with a bit of stealth and luck. Anyway, I played again as alien but this time it seemed HARD to win. Not hard to get hives or secure nodes, hell I think we managed to get 3 hives 10mins into the game, and secure at least 3/4 of the nodes on the map with TONS of offensive turrets. The thing was we just could take out the marine base. This didn't help by the fact that there were 3 or 4 more marines than aliens. Anyway this game went on for well over 2 hours, and though fun it began to get frustrating. The server closed before either side managed to get anywhere. <!--emo&:(--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('><!--endemo-->
The thing is, apart from loving playing as aliens, I think the fact that it's hard to win kept me trying. It always seems to feel better to win after a long time trying than just walking over an easy enemy.
To the point, I've played about 8 games today as aliens and I finally won one (one that I played from the beginning and was pretty evenly sided)
Basically, I've been practicing with aliens and started to get the hang and develop tactics, as well as that we managed to get a few people working as a team to take out the marine base at the end (that really is the hardest part)
IF I would say anything is unbalanced, I'd have to say it's the fact that marines have Siege Turret which can easily take out a aliens base from outside of the hive room. Alien's have to get in close against LOTS of turrets and HA/HMG marines. Even the Onos can't last long against that. Hopefully if the problem was server admins messing with resource settings, then marines won't get so much turrets and HMG/HA stuff in future which should make it fairer.