Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Hmm, the effect that makes the zombie stumble around off-balance seems kind of missplaced in NS. In L4D it is handy to use if against the zombie hordes, but the horde is AI controlled. I do not think losing control of your alien player for a few seconds is a thing I'd want in NS2...
<!--quoteo(post=1712698:date=Jun 17 2009, 06:48 PM:name=Bacillus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bacillus @ Jun 17 2009, 06:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1712698"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I've managed to miss most of the L4D, could you describe the feature a bit? It seems like a riffle butt hit, but some details would be appreciated.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pretty much, but it's faster. It's simply melee on with the rifle.
X_StickmanNot good enough for a custom title.Join Date: 2003-04-15Member: 15533Members, Constellation
How about if instead of having the "knockback" effect of L4D, where the infected stumbles back out of control, the skulk is "stunned" or "knocked out" for a few seconds, so they just collapse on the floor.
Excellent idea, those pesky chambers or Kharaa blocking all the time would be something of the past! And what about nub marines! Oh man, this would solve so much!
<!--quoteo(post=1712697:date=Jun 17 2009, 01:42 PM:name=Thaldarin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Thaldarin @ Jun 17 2009, 01:42 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1712697"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Wouldn't it be cool if you could whack a skulk with the LMG? Or with your pistol? L4D style, what do you guys think?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
locallyunsceneFeeder of TrollsJoin Date: 2002-12-25Member: 11528Members, Constellation
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=106232&st=0&p=1705942&hl=strike&#entry1705942" target="_blank">Interesting thread with similar ideas.</a>
Stun moves would completely destroy the fluidity of alien movement. This would be AWFUL in NS2. It is one of the many reasons why L4D is such a bad competitive game, even though it is a good cooperative game.
X_StickmanNot good enough for a custom title.Join Date: 2003-04-15Member: 15533Members, Constellation
I strongly feel that the marine is severely underpowered in close quaters. He is a marine trained specifically to hunt down and kill the aliens in question. Why would he not be able to bat one away from him? And a logical extension of that idea is to add a stun or similar effect onto the skulk that got knocked back.
No this idea would not work. The aliens in this game are suppose to be the pinnacle of biological evolution not decomposing shambling reanimated corpses. There is a HUGE difference. I think that the pinnacle of biological evolution would almost certainly be able to shrug off or ignore getting hit with the butt of a rifle let alone get stunned. I think that there is probably nothing that could stun them anyways. If anything an attack like that would be more like a replacement for the knife but even then whacking something with a gun would do less damage than a knife so there is no point. The only use for this I could see is if something grabbed on to you and you wanted to shake it off. But I doubt that kind of mechanic will be present anyways.
I suggested this same thing (or similar) before in an alternative-fire thread. I think in one of the twitters(?) Charlie mentioned considering something like it too. Basically the idea is that it's a rifle-butt with a <b>zero damage</b> knock-back. Whatever you hit <b>isn't going to get stunned</b> or anything, just knocked back a distance (cue physics). Knock-back distance (severity) will be inversely proportional to the size (mass) of the target. i.e. smacking an onos does nothing except likely get you killed. The knock-back action should be practically instant, but restoring aim should take a <b>little</b> time. So a marine can't simply empty a clip into a skulk immediately after knocking it back.
On another note: Should regular weapons (bullets) have a stunning/slowing/knockback type effect (a la CS) 'cause I sorta hate that about CS. Evading while being shot is impossible. Alien melee attacks shouldn't have knockback (but on the other hand, possibly slow/stun, though maybe not), so that an alien can make successive strikes: unless the attack is particularly powerful, and thus successive strikes would be OP.
Considering the fact that nearly all alien attacks (except gorge spit and acid rocket) are melee attacks, giving marines the ability to knock back, stun or otherwise defeat them with another melee attack (pistol/rifle) is terrible. The marines focus is on ranged weapons, the alien focus is melee...all carefully balanced on a razor edge.
Agreed, the aliens have a big focus on melee, especially at the start of a game. Even a knockback based on alien mass would mainly hurt them at the start of a game. I think you can almost compare it to making skulks immune to LMG fire from a certain range.
<a href="http://www.natural-selection.pl/viewtopic.php?t=2593&sid=f32c7e53796167f14c8d18fa9810dd94" target="_blank">http://www.natural-selection.pl/viewtopic....c8d18fa9810dd94</a> looks like Flayra was one step ahead.
X_StickmanNot good enough for a custom title.Join Date: 2003-04-15Member: 15533Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The alt-fire for the assault rifle (LMG) is a rifle-butt that can be used to knock aliens back, L4D-style.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ranged vs. Melee.... aaaand the Ranged team can push back enemies in melee range...
OK...
This cannot work.
The only ways I could possibly see this working (assuming there is no stun effect added - kill me now if there is) is if: 1 - The melee animation is longer than the time it would take the skulk/etc to close the distance again. 2 - The melee attack has a long cooldown time of > 5 seconds per use. 3 - It doesn't work against anything but skulks and is an upgrade (power armor?) 4 - It pushes back the enemy only slightly out of melee range, slowing them down ONLY to the velocity of the marine, not stopping, so that the (skulk) would only give a tiny (200ms) delay before biting again in range, and this is the only effect.
Still, I really don't like the ability of the marines to disrupt the movement of the aliens which depend totally and completely on their movement, by the nature of their melee range.
I would have given this idea a chance had Flayra not compared it to L4D's knockback... which is HORRIBLE, AWFUL, and anti-competitive. It's like an easy button. Deep games don't have easy buttons. Even after they added a power meter to melee, it's still bad.
Stun moves which affect marines are fine, because marines don't depend on movement to hit targets because they're ranged. They can still "play" while they can't move, and don't have to accelerate again to start fighting. Aliens are different.
If this is to be successful, it must be FLUID and not stop the alien's movement. Again, this seems difficult to achieve.
Just give the alien better (faster, more fluid, less predictable) lateral and vertical movement. I think it's a given that the animation is slow enough so that the skulk doesn't get completely owned after being knocked back. But making the first melee strike unable to lead into a second melee makes it useless and just extends the time of the skirmish by one melee strike. But as I said before, it should be something like: extremely quick melee action regardless of the current status of the weapon, but re-aiming will take time (and re-loading will be delayed as well), but following a melee attack with another should be faster than re-aiming (possibly at the cost of an even greater extended re-aim time?). Make the melee striking box relatively small, so that it'll still take a good aim to hit a moving skulk. Pretty sure this would also encourage skulks to not straight-line head-on into a marine. And encourage them to attack from behind and such. I'm also assuming no stun and no damage.
Well. If they're replacing the knife with just a melee attack instead (Like +movement), I don't see any problem with it as long as it retains the cooldown for switching between weapons. But knockback is bad. There was a version where they added in knockback to the knife, which mades Onoses almost useless in the hands of the average player because a marine could just get under it and keep juggling it into the air with the knockback.
Knockback is a horrible idea for marines. If the marines let the aliens get that close, they deserve to take damage. And the aliens deserve to have the opportunity to give damage.
Let me just say i'm rather pessimistic about ANYTHING that gives the marines any sort of melee ability. Yes even the knife... 3 knife swipes kill a skulk. 3 bites kill a marine. OY!
I think that the knock back thing would make skulk almost useless. It takes two bites to kill a marine and within that time one whack and bump skulk is on the floor waiting a bullet to the brain dead.
<!--quoteo(post=1713157:date=Jun 20 2009, 01:20 PM:name=MasterPTG)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MasterPTG @ Jun 20 2009, 01:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1713157"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Knockback is a horrible idea for marines. If the marines let the aliens get that close, they deserve to take damage. And the aliens deserve to have the opportunity to give damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> This. It is supposed to be projective vs. mele, not "oh, I have bad aim and couldn't kill the skulk, let me mele back the guy trying to mele me and try again." The system works in left 4 dead because the humans fight tons of zombies and in versus the infected team attacks from a range and is supposed to die a lot anyway.
pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
edited June 2009
<!--quoteo(post=1713703:date=Jun 24 2009, 01:10 AM:name=Pyromaniac)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pyromaniac @ Jun 24 2009, 01:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1713703"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It is supposed to be projective vs. mele, not "oh, I have bad aim and couldn't kill the skulk, let me mele back the guy trying to mele me and try again."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I agree, but this is not completely reflecting how fighting works these days. At the moment marines can backjump, crackjump, railbhop and whatever to increase range and/or avoid being hit.
This goes under movement skills and you don't see average players do that. I'm afraid they'll replace that movement part (maybe still there, but less efficent and less possibilities) with the rifle knockback that is useable by even the worst players. I wouldn't like it, but after all this weakens the lone marine (aka rambo in some cases) and helps groups of marines, where a knocked back skulk gives your teammates more time to cover you and kill it.
I'd prefer, if they kept the current movement skills, but I understand that they have to "noobify" this part to make it more accessable to the average player.
<!--quoteo(post=1713704:date=Jun 24 2009, 02:27 AM:name=pSyk0mAn)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (pSyk0mAn @ Jun 24 2009, 02:27 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1713704"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I agree, but this is not completely reflecting how fighting works these days. At the moment marines can backjump, crackjump, railbhop and whatever to increase range and/or avoid being hit.
This goes under movement skills and you don't see average players do that. I'm afraid they'll replace that movement part (maybe still there, but less efficent and less possibilities) with the rifle knockback that is useable by even the worst players. I wouldn't like it, but after all this weakens the lone marine (aka rambo in some cases) and helps groups of marines, where a knocked back skulk gives your teammates more time to cover you and kill it.
I'd prefer, if they kept the current movement skills, but I understand that they have to "noobify" this part to make it more accessable to the average player.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Ah, makes a bit more sense now. I think the problem with the mele is though that it lets the marine still look at the skulk and be able to watch it get knocked away and keep his aim in it, whereas with a strafe jump backward the marine has to aim again and the skulk could move anywhere he wanted to try and no get shot in this time.
Comments
Pretty much, but it's faster. It's simply melee on with the rifle.
And what about nub marines! Oh man, this would solve so much!
[edit]where's my sad smiley :D
[edit2]wtf where are the smileys!
No.
Basically the idea is that it's a rifle-butt with a <b>zero damage</b> knock-back. Whatever you hit <b>isn't going to get stunned</b> or anything, just knocked back a distance (cue physics). Knock-back distance (severity) will be inversely proportional to the size (mass) of the target. i.e. smacking an onos does nothing except likely get you killed.
The knock-back action should be practically instant, but restoring aim should take a <b>little</b> time. So a marine can't simply empty a clip into a skulk immediately after knocking it back.
On another note: Should regular weapons (bullets) have a stunning/slowing/knockback type effect (a la CS) 'cause I sorta hate that about CS. Evading while being shot is impossible. Alien melee attacks shouldn't have knockback (but on the other hand, possibly slow/stun, though maybe not), so that an alien can make successive strikes: unless the attack is particularly powerful, and thus successive strikes would be OP.
In yo' face, doubters.
OK...
This cannot work.
The only ways I could possibly see this working (assuming there is no stun effect added - kill me now if there is) is if:
1 - The melee animation is longer than the time it would take the skulk/etc to close the distance again.
2 - The melee attack has a long cooldown time of > 5 seconds per use.
3 - It doesn't work against anything but skulks and is an upgrade (power armor?)
4 - It pushes back the enemy only slightly out of melee range, slowing them down ONLY to the velocity of the marine, not stopping, so that the (skulk) would only give a tiny (200ms) delay before biting again in range, and this is the only effect.
Still, I really don't like the ability of the marines to disrupt the movement of the aliens which depend totally and completely on their movement, by the nature of their melee range.
I would have given this idea a chance had Flayra not compared it to L4D's knockback... which is HORRIBLE, AWFUL, and anti-competitive. It's like an easy button. Deep games don't have easy buttons. Even after they added a power meter to melee, it's still bad.
Stun moves which affect marines are fine, because marines don't depend on movement to hit targets because they're ranged. They can still "play" while they can't move, and don't have to accelerate again to start fighting. Aliens are different.
If this is to be successful, it must be FLUID and not stop the alien's movement. Again, this seems difficult to achieve.
I think it's a given that the animation is slow enough so that the skulk doesn't get completely owned after being knocked back. But making the first melee strike unable to lead into a second melee makes it useless and just extends the time of the skirmish by one melee strike. But as I said before, it should be something like: extremely quick melee action regardless of the current status of the weapon, but re-aiming will take time (and re-loading will be delayed as well), but following a melee attack with another should be faster than re-aiming (possibly at the cost of an even greater extended re-aim time?).
Make the melee striking box relatively small, so that it'll still take a good aim to hit a moving skulk.
Pretty sure this would also encourage skulks to not straight-line head-on into a marine. And encourage them to attack from behind and such.
I'm also assuming no stun and no damage.
This. It is supposed to be projective vs. mele, not "oh, I have bad aim and couldn't kill the skulk, let me mele back the guy trying to mele me and try again." The system works in left 4 dead because the humans fight tons of zombies and in versus the infected team attacks from a range and is supposed to die a lot anyway.
I agree, but this is not completely reflecting how fighting works these days. At the moment marines can backjump, crackjump, railbhop and whatever to increase range and/or avoid being hit.
This goes under movement skills and you don't see average players do that. I'm afraid they'll replace that movement part (maybe still there, but less efficent and less possibilities) with the rifle knockback that is useable by even the worst players.
I wouldn't like it, but after all this weakens the lone marine (aka rambo in some cases) and helps groups of marines, where a knocked back skulk gives your teammates more time to cover you and kill it.
I'd prefer, if they kept the current movement skills, but I understand that they have to "noobify" this part to make it more accessable to the average player.
This goes under movement skills and you don't see average players do that. I'm afraid they'll replace that movement part (maybe still there, but less efficent and less possibilities) with the rifle knockback that is useable by even the worst players.
I wouldn't like it, but after all this weakens the lone marine (aka rambo in some cases) and helps groups of marines, where a knocked back skulk gives your teammates more time to cover you and kill it.
I'd prefer, if they kept the current movement skills, but I understand that they have to "noobify" this part to make it more accessable to the average player.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ah, makes a bit more sense now. I think the problem with the mele is though that it lets the marine still look at the skulk and be able to watch it get knocked away and keep his aim in it, whereas with a strafe jump backward the marine has to aim again and the skulk could move anywhere he wanted to try and no get shot in this time.
If done right, it'd be of little help to a solo marine while encouraging stealth for skulks attacking groups.