Public Service Announcement
semipsychotic
Join Date: 2003-07-09 Member: 18061Members
Join Date: 2003-07-09 Member: 18061Members
<div class="IPBDescription">of the unofficial variety</div> Regarding the need to re-evolve as an alien upon marine spawn:
Before you complain about it, learn to deal with it. What does this mean?
Well, try to fit your NS strategies into CO a bit. Be less suicidal around marines and engage in your hit-and-run strategies. This means that you won't have to respawn and you won't *gasp* have to re-evolve!
Now, a little opinion on why I like the new egg system:
Do you know how hard it is to kill any one of eight aliens hiding around a hive? Well, here was the situation: I was participating in a Combat clan versus community tournament on a server that I frequent (3.0b4). The map was co_pulse and the timelimit was set to 10. Because we had a few extra players, we decided to bump it to 8v8 instead of 6v6. The rules were basic: the teams would play one alien and one marine round. If one team kills the hive and the other doesn't, then the hive-killers win. If both teams kill the hive or both teams fail to kill the hive, then the marine kills are totaled up and contrasted.
First, the community was on aliens. We defended the time until the end, and the kills were totaled up. The clan scored 35 kills.
Then, we went marines. By six minutes into the game, we had 32 kills. The clan picked up on it, and became <i>very</i> defensive. They gave up only three deaths in the last four minutes, and the tournament ended in a tie. They only gave up <i>three</i> deaths among hard, concentrated, 8-man marine rushes. They were mostly fades with a few lerks and a gorge, maybe a skulk somewhere in there.
My point? It's not that hard to stay alive as an alien, even against relatively disciplined marines. Employ that fact, turn it into a strategy, and then we'll see what the balance is like.
Before you complain about it, learn to deal with it. What does this mean?
Well, try to fit your NS strategies into CO a bit. Be less suicidal around marines and engage in your hit-and-run strategies. This means that you won't have to respawn and you won't *gasp* have to re-evolve!
Now, a little opinion on why I like the new egg system:
Do you know how hard it is to kill any one of eight aliens hiding around a hive? Well, here was the situation: I was participating in a Combat clan versus community tournament on a server that I frequent (3.0b4). The map was co_pulse and the timelimit was set to 10. Because we had a few extra players, we decided to bump it to 8v8 instead of 6v6. The rules were basic: the teams would play one alien and one marine round. If one team kills the hive and the other doesn't, then the hive-killers win. If both teams kill the hive or both teams fail to kill the hive, then the marine kills are totaled up and contrasted.
First, the community was on aliens. We defended the time until the end, and the kills were totaled up. The clan scored 35 kills.
Then, we went marines. By six minutes into the game, we had 32 kills. The clan picked up on it, and became <i>very</i> defensive. They gave up only three deaths in the last four minutes, and the tournament ended in a tie. They only gave up <i>three</i> deaths among hard, concentrated, 8-man marine rushes. They were mostly fades with a few lerks and a gorge, maybe a skulk somewhere in there.
My point? It's not that hard to stay alive as an alien, even against relatively disciplined marines. Employ that fact, turn it into a strategy, and then we'll see what the balance is like.
Comments
The idea is to not die. Even the random, team-neglecting pubbers with some experience with NS mode know to not go suicidal as a Fade and waste 50 res in the first four minutes. All it takes is a conversion of the hit-and-run playstyle over to CO. The fact that pub play is often unorganized should make it even easier: the marines probably won't be concentrating their fire on one alien like we attempted a few times.
(Note: please don't read this post as condescending towards pubbers. The "team-neglecting pubbers" comment referred to a certain group of pub players; it was NOT a generalization of all non-organized players.)
Just treat CO like NS now, or at least try and if it is a big problem then we can ALL complain and they might change it, depending on how bad it really is.
EDIT: The map was co_faceoff, and the reason they won is because they had 3/4 jetpackers in the vents near the hive with gl's and our fades were out attcking. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
No, this makes no sense since aliens only have to spawn and they are already at their objective, whereas marines have to hike it back to the fight.
So it only makes sense that aliens are penalized more for dying with larger lifeforms.
Next, it also makes sense that aliens have to re-evolve after dying, just like they do in regular NS.
Are you actually utilizing the strategy? If you're an alien and you're getting spawncamped into oblivion by marines, it's because you died. Then, try not to die.
However, the one problem I see with the system is what happens to people who die trying to defend the hive from a jetpacker. At that point, skulks are hard to use. This would be no problem other than JP+GL combo's, because most JP varieties usually aim for the hive, but only GL's have that strong splash range.
I wish I could come up with a simple way to fix it for that for the next beta. Hopefully the devs are more creative than I am. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
We're in a quite difficult situation right now, partly caused by to the long delay between 4a and 5 (ashes on our heads, mea culpa and all that): You just get used to certain ways of playing the game, and it takes concious effort to change. Seeing that a lot of people need to make this effort, it's difficult to determine what exactely works and what doesn't for quite some time. It seems as though the unchained evolutions begin to work, but that the aliens are still at a severe disadvantage, especially in big combat games. We had hoped to alleviate this with the spawning method, thus making death meaningful while still giving aliens a fair chance. It's unfortunately a matter of patience right now: One can't hope to improve the situation with fixes based on shaky data, which is all we have so far, so we'll literally have to wait and see how it pans out before we can make the necessary changes for B6.
The unchained evo is fine, but why is CO being turned back into NS? I think there should be a gap between CO and NS because they are supposed to be 2 different game styles. Strategies should be different in both. Hell, CO shouldn't have much strategy at that. After all, isn't CO supposed to be a fast paced kill-em-all, and NS a long run strategy?
The alien re-volve is an okay feature, but later in a co game, its almost garunteed game over for aliens in most maps. I would say a de-evolve option would be better, for aliens and marines(so you can change tactics like aliens).
If CO maps were just a little bigger, or evolve time a little faster, then I think it would work fine. Untill then it's really gonna cut down on alien wins.
Makeing the marine respawns longer in co to balance against aliens haveing to re-evolve? That's no way to balance things imo. Basically marines are slowed down in the beginnnig enabling skulks/lerks to own in 2waves, and aliens are weakend in late game, enabling jpers/glers a gg. Seems more like they balanced in the wrong places to me. I don't think it would be so bad, if more spawned than 5.
In my opinon It should be a percentage of the actual marine count, not a set number. Or instead of increasing spawn time for marines, why not decrease spawn time for aliens?
BTW has any of the DEV tested on a full server? 24-32 player servesr IE: nsarmslab combat server.
Give it some weeks, people need to learn hit and run now.
Maybe the balance need a lowering of the gestation time but then on the other hand "suicide-fades/oni" aren't punished enough.
Erm... I was relaying this straight from Flayra, so I believe I can claim they are not supposed to be two wholly different gamestyles. While Co is of course more action-oriented, it's still supposed to carry as many hallmarks of classic's gameplay as possible.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->BTW has any of the DEV tested on a full server? 24-32 player servesr IE: nsarmslab combat server.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, but the main testing was undertaken on servers running around 8vs.8 players. Let's just say that we won't make that mistake again.
lol, yeah the respawn is horrible in large scale games :/
Sorry for my misentepretation of co and ns, I'm just fooled by my love of action games, and NS Combat = very good action. I just see these "strategies" as slowing it down and turning it back into a strategy game like NS. Of course I favor games more like TFC so it's mostly my opinion affecting my sight lol.
At anyrate, the new spawn is a good idea imo, just not tested and tweaked right.
As I said before, if it can be set to spawn a certain % of the team (depending on how many dead) then it would be a lot better.
It's not that hard to stay alive as an onos or fade....jeez. Just try not to rush head on, and even as a fade, blink around a bit for them to waste ammo, and swoop in for the kill.
It's not that hard, guys. Honestly.
I rarely see a game with a higher lifeform than a lerk nowadays. Marines just pummel skulks. I mean, when they're travelling in packs skulks have a difficult time dealing damage to them, especially on pubs. Then when you do get an organized skulk rush, it'll fail alot of the time. Marines walk in and your spawning 5 people per hour (feels like that, anyone actually have any numbers on this? They would be greatly appreciated <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> ) it's hard to come back. Pretty much the general notion is that "Once 3-4 marines are inside your hive, game over". Since aliens are defending and that's their home turf, I feel it shouldn't be that way.