Yeah, it's a fine line, and the opportunity is there to avoid it entirely by removing the source of the problems.
Even though you could get by doing biting runs sometimes in NS1, it suffered from all the same problems that the spores do in NS2 (lack of scalability due to raw numbers, skill indexing issues etc). The difference is that bites in NS1 do about a million times more damage than spores in NS2, so the risk was somewhat more balanced by the reward. In NS2, the analogue to biting is the shotgun attack, which has a random spread pattern and uses so much adrenaline that you can only ever put someone in "medpack range" with it safely, if that. When players get better at this game, flying in to shotgun spike a marine will be considered suicide at almost every point in the game.
<!--coloro:#aadd00--><span style="color:#aadd00"><!--/coloro-->I'm leaning my preference towards a forward momentum-based Spore replacing shotgun spikes likely for right click. Shotgun could still be preserved for the second slot, keeping spore for right in every slot like heal spray is currently set up.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--quoteo(post=1897006:date=Jan 23 2012, 10:01 PM:name=Kurrine)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kurrine @ Jan 23 2012, 10:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897006"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:#aadd00--><span style="color:#aadd00"><!--/coloro-->I'm leaning my preference towards a forward momentum-based Spore replacing shotgun spikes likely for right click. Shotgun could still be preserved for the second slot, keeping spore for right in every slot like heal spray is currently set up.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Making people choose between shotgun spikes and rapid spikes (and pay with a cooldown for switching) would go a long way towards balancing out lerk burst damage.
But the shotgun attack would still be really gimmicky and bad!
If you had the same hp as a fade and could turn invisible at will, it would be okay to spend res on a lifeform and then go up close to deal damage like that...
<!--quoteo(post=1897018:date=Jan 23 2012, 11:04 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Jan 23 2012, 11:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897018"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->But the shotgun attack would still be really gimmicky and bad!
If you had the same hp as a fade and could turn invisible at will, it would be okay to spend res on a lifeform and then go up close to deal damage like that...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Are you implying that shotgun spikes are broken <i>underpowered</i>?
<!--quoteo(post=1895340:date=Jan 17 2012, 09:02 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Jan 17 2012, 09:02 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1895340"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really like the Lerk. I play it every time I'm on the aliens team, and I try super hard to do awesome stuff with it. People laugh and say the Lerk is bad, and quite honestly they're right. But that doesn't mean I stop trying! That includes this thread.
First, I'll list what I see as the strengths of the class (from a design perspective, not from the perspective of someone who loves the lerk):
<ol type='1'><li>Role is clearly defined and exists throughout the whole game
You are one player with the weight of 25 mutalisks in Starcraft. Your job is to harass things, fly laps around marines like a strafing fighter plane and spike/gas them to death. Your gas allows teammates to get into combat more safely. You can go anywhere just like a Fade, but with fewer gaps in time where you recharge adrenaline. </li><li>High skill ceiling and low skill floor on many activities
The lerk's flight is the closest thing in the game to Quake-style bunnyhopping/strafejumping. It's not actually that involved (mechanically), but there is a lot of 'wiggle room' in how you fly. How quickly you get up to speed, how smoothly you turn (and juke peoples' aim/dodge attacks), how you aim while flying, when you glide...these are all things to be developed. You can tell a good lerk player from a bad one by how they fly.</li></ol>
Here are some of the problems I see with the Lerk right now, and some ideas for solving them cleanly:
<ol type='1'><li>Weapon range/spread/damage is difficult to gauge
It's obvious to me that both spike attacks have accuracy spread, but it's not clear how much spread there is. This can be solved by some more obvious graphics on the spikes (like nailguns/plasma in quake), or a crosshair change.
The shotgun attack should not have a 'random' spread - it should be available in a fixed pattern. Please don't make this a server option like in Quake/TF2 - just let the community grow up thinking that a fixed spread is normal (because it should be - especially when we're not dedicated to modelling a realistic SPAS-12 shotgun or whatnot). </li><li>Damage scales poorly as the game progresses
I'm not sure how to really express this, but it's very obvious every time I play. Of course it gets harder to deal damage because of tech changes, but it *feels* like the upgrade/armor/health values are set against the lerk in some way. If anyone can offer more insight, please do! </li><li>Spores are not useful enough
Their damage is decent, and so is providing teammates a blind spot to enter combat. However, every time you use gas you have to either drop it away from enemies, or fly into them committing suicide to lay it in its "ideal" spot. The class is clearly geared toward ranged combat (not having a bite attack), so why make it abandon that to use its gas? This creates a situation where your gas and spikes can never safely synergize - if you're in range to lay "really good gas clouds" you're not in the ideal range to be using spikes (you want to shoot spikes at things that cannot easily shoot back and kill you). If you're in ideal spike range, your gas only serves to obscure your own view and waste adrenaline. </li><li>Spores have an extremely low skill ceiling
When I said they're "not useful enough" I was lying through my teeth. They're actually absurdly good *when they work*. When you manage to fly up to someone and lay gas clouds around them, your team gets a free pass to run in and clean up everything with the greatest of ease. When you try to fly up to someone, and they just kill you instead, it was a wasted effort.
One might try laying gas farther away from enemies (to alleviate this problem) but it's so obvious that it ends up to be a waste in several regards. It 'pushes' you away from combat (because enemies now know where you are, and will see you coming through the clouds with stark visual contrast) if you try to attack. There are very few ways for aliens to 'put a clock' on a combat situation (the way flamethrowers, grenade spam and ARCs do), and laying spores outside their ideal place only makes this worse (by providing enemies an escape routine and extra information about where you are).
I'm sure this has been debated a thousand times, but having gas be fired as a projectile solves most of these problems. I don't want to say "Make it like NS1!" but it's certainly something to consider. Is there a middle ground between the 2 ideas? One thing I came up with in another thread was giving the spore clouds some of the lerk's momentum when they are fired. This would make them drop "where the lerk is" but then move to a desired landing zone over time. It would also tie in with the lerk's flight ability, which is nice and allows players to develop intuition about how it works very quickly. </li><li>Movement is very predictable
Even though the lerk's movement currently has "the most going on" of the alien classes, it is still extremely limited. This is especially true after the recent patch that lowered the flight speed cap. You can strafe side to side very quickly when you're moving on shallow arcs, and it's nice. However, as soon as you try to make a sharp turn, you lose a lot of speed (because you have to rapidly flap your wings to 'switch' your momentum around). This is, of course, realistic to how a bird's wings would work. However, it is not fun and it is incredibly punishing.
As a flighty harassment character, you should be able to remove yourself from bad situations quickly. If I turn a corner at max speed and end up in the face of an LMG marine, the situation should play out like this:
- I turn around and fly away super quickly - He tries to shoot at me, but he has to try really hard because I'm a lerk and he's just an LMG
What actually happens is you stop in front of the marine for just long enough that he can kill you extremely easily with his basic gun.
Possible solutions to this: higher speed cap, more air control, play with the pitch up/down caps (so you can fly in vertical loops). With the current map design (with fewer open areas), this problem is the biggest of all. </li><li>Shotguns are too punishing
Not sure how to articulate this except to say that the shotgun seems way too easy to use against the Lerk. It's 'classic NS' to have shotguns versus lerks, but in this game the predictable movement and locally-dropped spores make it a one-sided matchup. It's also hard to see visually when someone has a shotgun.
Possible solutions to this? Make the shotgun more visually obvious on marines (with a different pose, lighting etc), change the damage cone of the shotgun, add damage falloff (like in TF2) at range </li><li>The 'shotgun' spike attack has a very low skill ceiling
Is the point of it to "sneak up on someone"? It would work for this purpose (and ONLY this purpose) if I could turn around and fly away quickly after one shot, at the time when any good player should react. I hardly ever use it since b190 because it honestly seems like it relies on the opponent not being able to aim back at me.</li></ol>
Your thoughts?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
change for the sake of change, lerk was fine in ns1 and wouldve been fine in ns2. now lerk sucks but rambos dun care lol, the game is geared so much towards ramboing now its pathetic.
<!--quoteo(post=1896983:date=Jan 23 2012, 08:43 PM:name=saltybp53)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (saltybp53 @ Jan 23 2012, 08:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896983"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lerk needs to stay as a support class, not the get in your face and shotgun you and crop-dust away type. Maybe a return of the lerk sniper is needed, but keep the cropduster spore, so the lerk still has to fly not just camp and spam spikes. The aliens need a long range support class, and the lerk is one.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
so how exactly is lerk a support class, nothing the lerk does is a support role anymore. lerks can umbra during attacks anymore, and lerks cant scout anymore due to having to attack close quarters.
Even with removed hide(we removed it for gathers. because its freaking op), lerk doesnt suck atm... he is a decent killing machine(with hide a god), shotgun its only weakness. (but nobody says you have to fly kamikaze into shotgunners... assist the skulks dont get too close if marines know you are there, or ambush pick out solo marines with shotgun spikes - or try to get them at their base before they can even buy a shotgun... attack some buildings so marines have to split and weaken their lines etc.)
swalkSay hello to my little friend.Join Date: 2011-01-20Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
edited January 2012
Personally I've played most of my hours in NS2 as a lerk. Is it shameful to say that it's over 1000 hours in total? Anyway, here is my take on the lerk after playing with it this long: The current melee spores are really useful, in many ways.
For example when enganging marines, you can use both the geometry, <b>and</b> your spores as LOS cover while going in on the marines.
But the moment where spores are the most useful, is when you have other aliens with you. Lerk fill room with gas, skulks attack. I would almost dare say that it is too powerful in that combination. As you take the range advantage(line of sight) from the marines and give the skulks the advantage.
But, when you go in close against marines, you're risking losing your lerk. You have to fly in really unpredictable patterns to get close to a good rifle marine. Even then he might still kill you. When performance gets better this will only get more evident.
Spores against shotgunners is usually a no-go, unless you do it in an ambush kind of way. The marines don't know you're coming at them.
The lerk movement is very responsive, especially if you're using glide(hold space). Gain some speed(spam space), move in unpredictable patterns(hold space and move your mouse around in different angles).
Feel the space of the room and sense your current out of sight spots in that room, good lerk play is very fast paced, I will show you some of my lerking whenever player releases his gamestate recorder. I can't do it very well with fraps running while playing on my 4 year old PC. I'm not saying that I mastered the lerk in any way, but I would say that I know how to play it effeciently.
If(when?) the time(greater performance) comes where using melee spores will be an almost garanteed suicide, I would like to see the lerk have ranged (projectile like ns1, not instant like earlier ns2 builds) spores again and they should be transparent, not a smokebomb, with bite as primary. The smokebomb spores is "balanced" now because it requires the lerk to get up close and personal. I feel that would be the best solution, if the current spores become useless. Having two ranged abilities(spores and spikes) is way too powerful.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if(when?) the time(greater performance) comes where using melee spores will be an almost garanteed suicide, I would like to see the lerk have ranged (projectile like ns1, not instant like earlier ns2 builds) spores again and they should be transparent, not a smokebomb, with bite as primary. The smokebomb spores is "balanced" now because it requires the lerk to get up close and personal. I feel that would be the best solution, if the current spores become useless. Having two ranged abilities(spores and spikes) is way too powerful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
agree, is really that simple, lerk needs 1 ranged and 1 melee ability, something that makes him stop hiding when skulks are just not enough. in ns1 when things were not going well the lerk needed to get out there and bite marines. 2 ranged skills dont make sense. lerks where made to fly through marines and make them rage.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited January 2012
I've already argued why the current Lerk isn't working very well in multiple other threads, so I won't repeat that here. Instead I'll suggest how to improve it:
<b>Flight model:</b> Current model is good, but the near endless energy-free gliding is a bit over the top. Since you don't make any sounds at all while gliding, the Lerk is overly effective at ambushing right now, which is something I personally don't feel fits the class very well. My preferred solution would be to add a little air friction, which slows the glide down over time. You would then have to flap (press spacebar) every once in a while to maintain top speed, which obviously makes sounds that warn the marines of your presence. This adds a bit of choices and consequences as well, as the player now has to choose between staying stealthy or maintaining top speed.
<b>Weapon 1:</b> Currently rapid-fire spikes primary fire with shotgun spikes alternate fire. My suggestions:
1. Change to shotgun primary, rapid-fire alternate (or just remove rapid-fire, I liked the "no alternate fire modes" design goal in NS1). 2. Drastically increase shotgun spike spread. 3. Drastically reduce shotgun spike energy drain. 4. Increase shotgun spike rate of fire (should be similar to NS1 Lerk bite).
<b>Weapon 2:</b> Currently "crop duster" spores. My suggestion; change to:
- Non-hitscan, slower travelling, larger model, sniper spike. - Semi-automatic with very slow rate of fire (1 spike per 2 seconds?). - High energy drain per shot, slightly higher than the current shotgun spikes. - Explodes (causing some damage if the spike impales a marine or structure) into a cloud of gas when it hits. - Gas does damage over time to both health and armor. - Gas dissipates over time. - Gas is semi-translucent. Significantly less opaque than the current gas, but more opaque than the NS1 gas.
<b>Weapon 3:</b> Umbra spike, similar to my suggestion for weapon 2.
<b>Weapon 4:</b> Something new and "cool" could be good here. Primal scream was a pretty boring ability in NS1, so no need to bring that back.
I remember the ###### old days of running down a corridor as a marine to have some blur of pixels fly past you and rip 40HP off, then come back and take another 40 without you even noticing.
If lerks become too good, early games will just be mental for marines, they'll likely rarely win.
Spores at the moment, yeh they suck for direct assaults, but as has been stated, they just don't seem to be for that anymore. Instead I find it better to drop well short of marines and just force them to wait until they advance. Using them to block off the marines advance is great, it gives skulks a smoke screen, any marines running into it get slaughtered, and you can just fire spikes randomly through it. This reinforces the games initial take on the lerk as a support class.
I was always a ###### lerk, but in build 193 Its actually easy to play and very intuitive i think. Flight is smooth, and despite some balls ups every now and again I am generally quite successful as just a supporting role. This is good! Fades are aggressive attack, Skulks are attack Scouts and Lerks should really be Scout Support! We can;t make them too good, othewise noone will bother with Fades! or maybe even Onos!
I really like the spores settling on the ground idea though, this would solve the straight into marines face issue. Good example being, marine base in cross roads, fly over the top sporing falls onto base, perfec!
My $0.02: -I like putting spore clouds on RMB, like heal spray. -Make the shotgun have a reliable pattern. I might suggest more spikes doing less damage (for an equal total damage) if there's objection to making a reliable pattern, as it would serve a similar effect (a denser pattern more reliably hits what you're aiming at within it). -An alternative to the shotgun or lerk bite (which require you to be flying at a solid object to use them) might be adding a "rake" attack. It damages either directly below or in a bubble around the lerk, and you zip past marines to rake them with claws. Damage might be based on speed. Another alternative (though getting it to look right would be harder) would be to allow the lerk player to fly <i>through</i> a marine to damage him. ----- My big issue with the lerk is flying it at the kinds of speeds that are necessary to be hard to hit with a hitscan machinegun or shotgun within the crowded corridors in NS2. My suggestion? Have the sprint key enable terrain avoidance. I'd imagine this as working somewhat like the skulk's wallwalking being able to roll across bumps in the terrain; you aren't stuck to the wall, but if you bump into a light or something the lerk will tuck around it, rather than grinding to a halt. This might make some of those corridors with the rippled ceilings or junk piled along the floor easier to cruise down.
Some types of birds have phenomenal reflexes when it comes to avoiding obstacles and flying in close quarters, and are significantly more maneuverable for squeezing through tight spaces than their wingspan implies. The BBC made <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-_RHRAzUHM#t=1m42s" target="_blank">an incredible video</a> shot from a camera mounted on the back of a Gos Hawk as it flew through pretty dense forest. Pulling in wings for a moment to tuck between two narrowly-spaced branches, rolling to the side to shoot the gap between two pipes, these are stunts a bird can pull off which make it much more maneuverable in tight spaces than a multi-foot wingspan would imply. Humans aren't capable of that kind of fast reaction, but it could be simulated by some form of the terrain avoidance I'd propose.
<!--quoteo(post=1897191:date=Jan 24 2012, 09:49 PM:name=rhysjones81)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rhysjones81 @ Jan 24 2012, 09:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897191"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If lerks become too good, early games will just be mental for marines, they'll likely rarely win.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's why everything I've discussed is geared toward concepts like skill floor/ceiling, skill indexing and so on
Nothing in the game should be 'good' or 'bad' at every level of play - we're not reading a book or staring at a picture in a museum and saying what we think of its immutable form
We're playing a game and as we play it more we get better at it. We compete with one another and the level of competition drives us to explore the possibilities of the game. This includes things like "aiming better at lerks" and "aiming better as a lerk while flying in crazy patterns", but it does not include things like "dropping spores" or "lerk shotgun" because their implementations are so oversimplified and gimmicky. For this game to remain fun in the long term, attract lots of players and develop a healthy following, it needs to have that large set of possibilities. The only alternative is to bring people back to the game every 6 months by gumming up the design with more new mechanics (the way TF2 adds new items and MMORPGs make sweeping balance changes/change level caps).
Here's a challenge, to show off how great the lerk shotgun is: show me a marine weapon or game mechanic that requires the opponent to run with their back to you and ignore all sound as well as their minimap to be effective
<!--quoteo(post=1897200:date=Jan 24 2012, 10:11 PM:name=Shrike3O)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Shrike3O @ Jan 24 2012, 10:11 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897200"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My big issue with the lerk is flying it at the kinds of speeds that are necessary to be hard to hit with a hitscan machinegun or shotgun within the crowded corridors in NS2<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As cool as those birds are, the lerk's flight being difficult and map-dependent is one of the best ways to see skill-indexing in action. I play so much lerk that I can fly around the maps with my eyes closed, just like jumping in Quake after many hours of practice. For you it's not the same, but I can guarantee that if you practiced more it would be. When do I screw up and bump into things, though? When I'm attacked in unexpected ways and get distracted. That's the best part of it - not only do I have to learn the mechanical aspects of pushing buttons to fly, but I have to develop the presence of mind to continue doing it when a giant cone of fire leaps out in my face and I hear my hive scream out of nowhere.
If you deliberately put mechanics that do things for you (like avoiding walls) all of what I just said vanishes and the game isn't fun after 2 weeks.
<b>I'll also take the opportunity to dispel a really common myth:</b> You can't make it "hard" to be hit by hitscan weapons. You can't "dodge" them either. If the opponent aims at you, they will shoot you. It's up to them and not you. Obviously, the lerk in NS (like the scout in TF2) want to 'dodge' things, but they can really only dodge projectiles. For everything else, you have to respect the fact that eventually marines will get so good that they don't care how you fly - they <i>will </i>shoot you. That's why I say that the cropduster spores and spike shotgun scale poorly with player skill - when this game reaches the stage in its life that marines can easily trace lerks through a moving trail of spores, or shoot things that are up close to them, lerks will be almost entirely useless.
I really don't understand this thread. Lerks are amazing right now and are difficult to kill. Just look at Charlie's latest design update. Aliens win more rounds than marines, and lerk average lifetime has almost doubled. If they end up underperforming later in the game's life, it can be addressed then.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited January 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1897203:date=Jan 25 2012, 03:55 AM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Jan 25 2012, 03:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897203"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Here's a challenge, to show off how great the lerk shotgun is: show me a marine weapon or game mechanic that requires the opponent to run with their back to you and ignore all sound as well as their minimap to be effective <b>I'll also take the opportunity to dispel a really common myth:</b> You can't make it "hard" to be hit by hitscan weapons. You can't "dodge" them either. If the opponent aims at you, they will shoot you. It's up to them and not you. Obviously, the lerk in NS (like the scout in TF2) want to 'dodge' things, but they can really only dodge projectiles. For everything else, you have to respect the fact that eventually marines will get so good that they don't care how you fly - they <i>will </i>shoot you. That's why I say that the cropduster spores and spike shotgun scale poorly with player skill - when this game reaches the stage in its life that marines can easily trace lerks through a moving trail of spores, or shoot things that are up close to them, lerks will be almost entirely useless.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You've got it right to a certain degree, but it is a gross oversimplification. Hitscan weapons require a degree prediction by the player and predictability by the target. If the targets movements are unpredictable, it is very difficult to hit accurately. There are also two components to this, which we can call skill at "tracking" (rapid fire weapons) and skill at "snap shooting" (single shot weapons).
Yes, you can't really "dodge" hitscan weapons in the truest sense of the word, because there's no projectile to dodge, but you can make yourself harder or in some cases virtually impossible to hit if your movement abilities are adequate. For skulks that generally means randomly mashing strafe left/strafe right to make your movements unpredictable. For lerks, that means "pancaking", the act of moving up/down/left/right at blindingly fast speeds that are not only unpredictable, but also tends to screw up netcode prediction with makes hit registration a bit random.
If you compare it to NS1, it was actually almost impossible for a single marine to kill a decent lerk with an lmg, when the lerk was actively moving unpredictably. The action only became dangerous for the lerk when he had to cease actively moving unpredictably in order to attack, which by its nature requires predictable movement.
I honestly don't understand how you can claim that the spike shotgun is inadequate for balancing towards all skill levels -- it is certainly oceans better than rapid-fire spikes in terms of how much movement unpredictability it allwos and how well it scales with skill. I guess I should add a comment that the current shotgun is inadequate, but I have suggested ways to fix it in my previous post. To put it very bluntly -- considering it wasn't all that hard to aim bites in NS1, and that scaled decently with skill, there's no reason why properly implemented shotgun spikes should be any worse in that regard. If anything, they should theoretically be easier to use, thus lessening the overly steep learning curve the NS1 lerk had.
<!--quoteo(post=1897243:date=Jan 25 2012, 09:55 AM:name=Stele007)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Stele007 @ Jan 25 2012, 09:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897243"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really don't understand this thread. Lerks are amazing right now and are difficult to kill. Just look at Charlie's latest design update. Aliens win more rounds than marines, and lerk average lifetime has almost doubled. If they end up underperforming later in the game's life, it can be addressed then.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You don't understand it, because you haven't bothered to read it properly and realize what the problem actually stems from. It isn't that the lerk isn't effective; with the current -2 damage "hide" introduced in build 193, the Lerk is actually grossly overpowered. The problem is that the weapons the lerk currently has at its disposal, don't scale very well with skill at all. As build 191-192 showed, and was already obvious to many of us a long time ago, improvements in average marine fps makes it so much easier to aim that the average lerk life expectancy drops significantly. As fps continues to improve, lerks will become considerably harder to play. Buffing health to try to balance the lerk in that case simply doesn't work, because lerk weapons have a very shallow learning curve (read: there's a hard limit to how good you can actually get at it) while marine aim is virtually unlimited in terms of how much you can improve it through practice. That means you'll eventually have a situation where even the best lerks will stand little chance against good marines, or you'll have a situation where lower skilled marine players get destroyed be equally skilled lerk players.
I like the spikes better than bite, we already got skulks for that and I dont want to spend 25res to play a flying skulk early game. Buff spikes because it really need it and introduce bite with an 2nd hive id say.
Tbh I would very much rather have it like this: Slot 1 - *Primary: (minigun) Spikes *Sec.: Bite (as in NS1) (or the other way around)
Slot 2 - *Primary: Spores *Sec.: Umbra
...
Balance accordingly
Reason being I feel the spike shotgun doesn't really fill any role, we already have (minigun) spikes for ranged damage.. if it's any role the shotgun spike tries to fill it is the one of bite. It would be better to just replace the shotgun-spike with a bite attack instead (it's basically a ranged bite as it is now, but I'd rather have 'melee+more powerful' than 'ranged+useless')
Umbra would give the lerk some support/utility back, sure the "smoke" screen is nice, but you still take all the damage.. the addition of it would be great imo (and balance accordingly ofc)
<!--quoteo(post=1897284:date=Jan 25 2012, 09:39 AM:name=fanatic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fanatic @ Jan 25 2012, 09:39 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897284"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You don't understand it, because you haven't bothered to read it properly and realize what the problem actually stems from. It isn't that the lerk isn't effective; with the current -2 damage "hide" introduced in build 193, the Lerk is actually grossly overpowered. The problem is that the weapons the lerk currently has at its disposal, don't scale very well with skill at all. As build 191-192 showed, and was already obvious to many of us a long time ago, improvements in average marine fps makes it so much easier to aim that the average lerk life expectancy drops significantly. As fps continues to improve, lerks will become considerably harder to play. Buffing health to try to balance the lerk in that case simply doesn't work, because lerk weapons have a very shallow learning curve (read: there's a hard limit to how good you can actually get at it) while marine aim is virtually unlimited in terms of how much you can improve it through practice. That means you'll eventually have a situation where even the best lerks will stand little chance against good marines, or you'll have a situation where lower skilled marine players get destroyed be equally skilled lerk players.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I still don't get it. A unit that has true 3D movement has no skill level? They can make their movement unpredictable, even more so than skulks (which can only run along the ground/walls and hop and are also dependent on "dodging hitscan weapons"). Once we get a good framerate, they may not be able to just fly into a room of marines and gas the whole place, but it's not like that's the only way they can be used. They can still make a wall of spores to provide cover for approaching skulks or do a strafing run while marines are trying to fend off skulks to obscure their vision. There are so many uses for spore's vision limiting aspect. A lot of skill doesn't just come from basic attacking but also reading the situation and working with your teammates, especially for lerks which I think should be more of a support role than the rambos they currently can be.
The problem with the lerk is that unpredictable movement is incompatible with effective targeting. Other aliens sidestep the issue by having melee weapons - that is, unpredictable movement at range, while effective targeting is alternated with unpredictable movement in proximity.
Having spores work as a heavier-than-air "projectile" that retains the lerk's momentum would mean that unpredictable movement wouldn't always be mutually exclusive with effective targeting.
Also, <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really don't understand this thread. Lerks are amazing right now and are difficult to kill.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> made me laugh. This thread started with a previous build.
Even if the lerk is "strong" right now, it's very obviously because of the damage reduction buff. Guess what has zero relationship with player skill? That raw numbers change in which more of 'survival' is done for you the instant you hatch from your cocoon as a lerk. It's a temporary fix to sweep other problems under the rug *at best*.
Also, I'm okay with how aiming hitscan weapons (the 2 spikes) is incompatible with movement, because it forces tradeoffs in how you play. Do you want to focus solely on not getting hurt? Then fly in the craziest ways you can and don't stop to aim. Want to deal lots of damage? Anticipate when the enemy will be thrown off by your flight/spores and shoot a few strafing shots. Want something in between? Go for it! It creates a rhythm in combat that isn't possible with simple things like melee (the same way reloading does for marines, and adrenaline does for all aliens).
Theoretically, that trade-off stuff is possible. In reality, it doesn't work anything like that.
- When a lerk tracks a marine with spikes at range or in proximity, they cannot easily move sideways or backwards, and tracking becomes much more hopeless the more erratic your motions, so they must fly predictably. Unpredictable movement and effective targeting are mutually exclusive. - When a lerk 'tracks' a marine with spores, they must fly predictably (i.e. straight at the marine). Unpredictable movement and effective targeting are mutually exclusive. - When a lerk simply flies around to be unpredictable - because they cannot easily move sideways or backwards, but only forwards with turns - they are utterly unable to track targets at the same time. Unpredictable movement and effective targeting are mutually exclusive, and/or the lag time between the two is prohibitive. Between the lerk switching from effective targeting to unpredictable movement or vice versa, there is a time period, a window of opportunity for the marine to attack with impunity.
Meanwhile: - Marines can strafe and walk back and forth, while tracking and attacking you at the same time, even at long ranges. They have (some) unpredictable movement and effective targeting at the same time, and/or the lag time between the two is minimal.
For comparison: - Skulks and marines can strafe and walk back and forth, while tracking one another - but in proximity, tracking becomes more difficult for both skulks and marines because of the limited FOV. Both sides have (some) unpredictable movement and effective targeting at the same time, and/or the lag time between the two is minimal.
It seems to me that the lerk could greatly benefit from the ability to do 'strafing runs' and/or stay in close proximity with the target while attacking (thereby making it difficult to track with the low FOVs). Heavier-than-air spores that retain the lerk's velocity would help with the former. Bite, or a large-spread / high-damage-dropoff-with-range shotgun spike attack would assist with the latter (the key features of both are that they are very short distance, and very high <b>instant</b> damage per attack). The long-range spike, however... it's hard to see it being used effectively unless the lerk is hovering or stationary (which could be viable if marines are otherwise occupied with other aliens).
So, what I would suggest: Slot 1, Mouse1: High total instant damage, large-spread (essentially, short-range) shotgun spikes. Slot 2, Mouse1: High rate-of-fire medium-ranged spikes. All Slots, Mouse2: Heavier-than-air spores that retain the lerk's velocity.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited January 2012
Another option is to change the lerk slot 1 primary attack to burst fire spikes, essentially serving the same role as a spike shotgun or bite, but giving a little bit more lee way in terms of much skill you need to use it effectively in combat. It would need to have a short duration for each burst (0.25-0.5 seconds maybe, to avoid limiting movement), high damage per burst (same), large spread (to limit range) and a slow ROF (similar to NS1 bite, to balance/avoid instakills).
It might be a good idea to tune the lerk towards doing slightly less damage with its primary attacks, while also being able to survive a bit longer to balance it out (basically buffing hps and armor). That should make it slightly more forgiving for newer players, but also scale nicely for high skill play. Combat should still be fast paced and frenetic though -- the idea is to find a middle ground between the lightning attacks of the NS1 lerk and the languid slugouts with the current NS2 lerk.
I prefer my "spore spike" solution over the "momentum spore cloud" because (1) I don't think a vision blocking cloud is conducive to fun fps gameplay and (2) the spore spike gives lerks more options in combat.
To elaborate on (2): It gives lerks the option to attack from longer range, instead of being forced to play mid-short range the entire game. I understand that the developers are trying to avoid the "sitting in a vent all game shooting spores" syndrome that affected some players in NS1, but I think that will sort itself out. If the lerk close combat is made slightly less unforgiving for new players (as per suggestions above) compared to NS1, they won't have the same incentives to hide for most of the round. The mid-long range spore spike (non-hitscan) projectile would also synergize great with the proposed short range slot 1 burst/shotgun spikes, giving lerks a chance to score some rare and very satisfying longer range kills. It would also add another much needed non-hitscan weapon to the mix (currently only gorge spit, flamethrower and grenade launcher).
In addition, I personally think spores coming out of the lerk's "ass" looks ridiculous. The first time I saw it, I thought it was some kind of gag or april fools joke. The aliens should emanate viciousness -- this is a cyberpunk themed game set in space, not Saturday Night Live. I suppose this is also general issue I have towards some of the visual design in NS2 -- it's too colorful and cheery. The alien infestation looks like something you'd see in a Ghostbusters movie and the blue energy fields and whatnot on the marine side reminds me of Star Trek, not Alien.
Edit: Fixed some poor wording, initially wrote this in a hurry. Addendum: The more I think about it, the more I like burst-fire spikes.
this is why i suggested replacing the machine gun spikes with a single fire DOT spike. it allows dodging, with a small window of opportunity to stop and fire a spike at your opponent. the initial damage will be low, but if your skill increases to where you can engage and land several spikes, it will be a major deterrent to marines, or force the comm to waste res medspamming. coupled with ranged spores, would make lerks very effective at area denial. same concept as in NS1, just a different implementation.
Comments
Even though you could get by doing biting runs sometimes in NS1, it suffered from all the same problems that the spores do in NS2 (lack of scalability due to raw numbers, skill indexing issues etc). The difference is that bites in NS1 do about a million times more damage than spores in NS2, so the risk was somewhat more balanced by the reward. In NS2, the analogue to biting is the shotgun attack, which has a random spread pattern and uses so much adrenaline that you can only ever put someone in "medpack range" with it safely, if that. When players get better at this game, flying in to shotgun spike a marine will be considered suicide at almost every point in the game.
Making people choose between shotgun spikes and rapid spikes (and pay with a cooldown for switching) would go a long way towards balancing out lerk burst damage.
If you had the same hp as a fade and could turn invisible at will, it would be okay to spend res on a lifeform and then go up close to deal damage like that...
If you had the same hp as a fade and could turn invisible at will, it would be okay to spend res on a lifeform and then go up close to deal damage like that...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Are you implying that shotgun spikes are broken <i>underpowered</i>?
People laugh and say the Lerk is bad, and quite honestly they're right. But that doesn't mean I stop trying! That includes this thread.
First, I'll list what I see as the strengths of the class (from a design perspective, not from the perspective of someone who loves the lerk):
<ol type='1'><li>Role is clearly defined and exists throughout the whole game
You are one player with the weight of 25 mutalisks in Starcraft. Your job is to harass things, fly laps around marines like a strafing fighter plane and spike/gas them to death. Your gas allows teammates to get into combat more safely. You can go anywhere just like a Fade, but with fewer gaps in time where you recharge adrenaline.
</li><li>High skill ceiling and low skill floor on many activities
The lerk's flight is the closest thing in the game to Quake-style bunnyhopping/strafejumping. It's not actually that involved (mechanically), but there is a lot of 'wiggle room' in how you fly. How quickly you get up to speed, how smoothly you turn (and juke peoples' aim/dodge attacks), how you aim while flying, when you glide...these are all things to be developed. You can tell a good lerk player from a bad one by how they fly.</li></ol>
Here are some of the problems I see with the Lerk right now, and some ideas for solving them cleanly:
<ol type='1'><li>Weapon range/spread/damage is difficult to gauge
It's obvious to me that both spike attacks have accuracy spread, but it's not clear how much spread there is. This can be solved by some more obvious graphics on the spikes (like nailguns/plasma in quake), or a crosshair change.
The shotgun attack should not have a 'random' spread - it should be available in a fixed pattern. Please don't make this a server option like in Quake/TF2 - just let the community grow up thinking that a fixed spread is normal (because it should be - especially when we're not dedicated to modelling a realistic SPAS-12 shotgun or whatnot).
</li><li>Damage scales poorly as the game progresses
I'm not sure how to really express this, but it's very obvious every time I play. Of course it gets harder to deal damage because of tech changes, but it *feels* like the upgrade/armor/health values are set against the lerk in some way. If anyone can offer more insight, please do!
</li><li>Spores are not useful enough
Their damage is decent, and so is providing teammates a blind spot to enter combat. However, every time you use gas you have to either drop it away from enemies, or fly into them committing suicide to lay it in its "ideal" spot. The class is clearly geared toward ranged combat (not having a bite attack), so why make it abandon that to use its gas? This creates a situation where your gas and spikes can never safely synergize - if you're in range to lay "really good gas clouds" you're not in the ideal range to be using spikes (you want to shoot spikes at things that cannot easily shoot back and kill you). If you're in ideal spike range, your gas only serves to obscure your own view and waste adrenaline.
</li><li>Spores have an extremely low skill ceiling
When I said they're "not useful enough" I was lying through my teeth. They're actually absurdly good *when they work*. When you manage to fly up to someone and lay gas clouds around them, your team gets a free pass to run in and clean up everything with the greatest of ease. When you try to fly up to someone, and they just kill you instead, it was a wasted effort.
One might try laying gas farther away from enemies (to alleviate this problem) but it's so obvious that it ends up to be a waste in several regards. It 'pushes' you away from combat (because enemies now know where you are, and will see you coming through the clouds with stark visual contrast) if you try to attack. There are very few ways for aliens to 'put a clock' on a combat situation (the way flamethrowers, grenade spam and ARCs do), and laying spores outside their ideal place only makes this worse (by providing enemies an escape routine and extra information about where you are).
I'm sure this has been debated a thousand times, but having gas be fired as a projectile solves most of these problems. I don't want to say "Make it like NS1!" but it's certainly something to consider. Is there a middle ground between the 2 ideas? One thing I came up with in another thread was giving the spore clouds some of the lerk's momentum when they are fired. This would make them drop "where the lerk is" but then move to a desired landing zone over time. It would also tie in with the lerk's flight ability, which is nice and allows players to develop intuition about how it works very quickly.
</li><li>Movement is very predictable
Even though the lerk's movement currently has "the most going on" of the alien classes, it is still extremely limited. This is especially true after the recent patch that lowered the flight speed cap. You can strafe side to side very quickly when you're moving on shallow arcs, and it's nice. However, as soon as you try to make a sharp turn, you lose a lot of speed (because you have to rapidly flap your wings to 'switch' your momentum around). This is, of course, realistic to how a bird's wings would work. However, it is not fun and it is incredibly punishing.
As a flighty harassment character, you should be able to remove yourself from bad situations quickly. If I turn a corner at max speed and end up in the face of an LMG marine, the situation should play out like this:
- I turn around and fly away super quickly
- He tries to shoot at me, but he has to try really hard because I'm a lerk and he's just an LMG
What actually happens is you stop in front of the marine for just long enough that he can kill you extremely easily with his basic gun.
Possible solutions to this: higher speed cap, more air control, play with the pitch up/down caps (so you can fly in vertical loops). With the current map design (with fewer open areas), this problem is the biggest of all.
</li><li>Shotguns are too punishing
Not sure how to articulate this except to say that the shotgun seems way too easy to use against the Lerk. It's 'classic NS' to have shotguns versus lerks, but in this game the predictable movement and locally-dropped spores make it a one-sided matchup. It's also hard to see visually when someone has a shotgun.
Possible solutions to this? Make the shotgun more visually obvious on marines (with a different pose, lighting etc), change the damage cone of the shotgun, add damage falloff (like in TF2) at range
</li><li>The 'shotgun' spike attack has a very low skill ceiling
Is the point of it to "sneak up on someone"? It would work for this purpose (and ONLY this purpose) if I could turn around and fly away quickly after one shot, at the time when any good player should react. I hardly ever use it since b190 because it honestly seems like it relies on the opponent not being able to aim back at me.</li></ol>
Your thoughts?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
change for the sake of change, lerk was fine in ns1 and wouldve been fine in ns2. now lerk sucks but rambos dun care lol, the game is geared so much towards ramboing now its pathetic.
so how exactly is lerk a support class, nothing the lerk does is a support role anymore. lerks can umbra during attacks anymore, and lerks cant scout anymore due to having to attack close quarters.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->now lerk sucks<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Even with removed hide(we removed it for gathers. because its freaking op), lerk doesnt suck atm... he is a decent killing machine(with hide a god), shotgun its only weakness. (but nobody says you have to fly kamikaze into shotgunners... assist the skulks dont get too close if marines know you are there, or ambush pick out solo marines with shotgun spikes - or try to get them at their base before they can even buy a shotgun... attack some buildings so marines have to split and weaken their lines etc.)
Anyway, here is my take on the lerk after playing with it this long:
The current melee spores are really useful, in many ways.
For example when enganging marines, you can use both the geometry, <b>and</b> your spores as LOS cover while going in on the marines.
But the moment where spores are the most useful, is when you have other aliens with you. Lerk fill room with gas, skulks attack.
I would almost dare say that it is too powerful in that combination.
As you take the range advantage(line of sight) from the marines and give the skulks the advantage.
But, when you go in close against marines, you're risking losing your lerk.
You have to fly in really unpredictable patterns to get close to a good rifle marine. Even then he might still kill you.
When performance gets better this will only get more evident.
Spores against shotgunners is usually a no-go, unless you do it in an ambush kind of way. The marines don't know you're coming at them.
The lerk movement is very responsive, especially if you're using glide(hold space).
Gain some speed(spam space), move in unpredictable patterns(hold space and move your mouse around in different angles).
Feel the space of the room and sense your current out of sight spots in that room, good lerk play is very fast paced, I will show you some of my lerking whenever player releases his gamestate recorder. I can't do it very well with fraps running while playing on my 4 year old PC.
I'm not saying that I mastered the lerk in any way, but I would say that I know how to play it effeciently.
If(when?) the time(greater performance) comes where using melee spores will be an almost garanteed suicide, I would like to see the lerk have ranged (projectile like ns1, not instant like earlier ns2 builds) spores again and they should be transparent, not a smokebomb, with bite as primary.
The smokebomb spores is "balanced" now because it requires the lerk to get up close and personal.
I feel that would be the best solution, if the current spores become useless.
Having two ranged abilities(spores and spikes) is way too powerful.
The smokebomb spores is "balanced" now because it requires the lerk to get up close and personal.
I feel that would be the best solution, if the current spores become useless.
Having two ranged abilities(spores and spikes) is way too powerful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
100% agree. @ swalk
2 ranged skills dont make sense. lerks where made to fly through marines and make them rage.
ranged spores + bite
or
spikes + current spores.
i like the current smokescreen system.
<b>Flight model:</b>
Current model is good, but the near endless energy-free gliding is a bit over the top. Since you don't make any sounds at all while gliding, the Lerk is overly effective at ambushing right now, which is something I personally don't feel fits the class very well. My preferred solution would be to add a little air friction, which slows the glide down over time. You would then have to flap (press spacebar) every once in a while to maintain top speed, which obviously makes sounds that warn the marines of your presence. This adds a bit of choices and consequences as well, as the player now has to choose between staying stealthy or maintaining top speed.
<b>Weapon 1:</b>
Currently rapid-fire spikes primary fire with shotgun spikes alternate fire. My suggestions:
1. Change to shotgun primary, rapid-fire alternate (or just remove rapid-fire, I liked the "no alternate fire modes" design goal in NS1).
2. Drastically increase shotgun spike spread.
3. Drastically reduce shotgun spike energy drain.
4. Increase shotgun spike rate of fire (should be similar to NS1 Lerk bite).
<b>Weapon 2:</b>
Currently "crop duster" spores. My suggestion; change to:
- Non-hitscan, slower travelling, larger model, sniper spike.
- Semi-automatic with very slow rate of fire (1 spike per 2 seconds?).
- High energy drain per shot, slightly higher than the current shotgun spikes.
- Explodes (causing some damage if the spike impales a marine or structure) into a cloud of gas when it hits.
- Gas does damage over time to both health and armor.
- Gas dissipates over time.
- Gas is semi-translucent. Significantly less opaque than the current gas, but more opaque than the NS1 gas.
<b>Weapon 3:</b>
Umbra spike, similar to my suggestion for weapon 2.
<b>Weapon 4:</b>
Something new and "cool" could be good here. Primal scream was a pretty boring ability in NS1, so no need to bring that back.
Edit: brain fart on opacity.
wow..
and the majority of the game is played with shotgun , and no, shotgun ISNT its only weakness.
but by all means continue to cripple kharaa
cant wait to sit in ready room because everyone stacks frontiersman due to alien suckage.
hopefully someone makes a decent combat mod or classic mode
If lerks become too good, early games will just be mental for marines, they'll likely rarely win.
Spores at the moment, yeh they suck for direct assaults, but as has been stated, they just don't seem to be for that anymore. Instead I find it better to drop well short of marines and just force them to wait until they advance. Using them to block off the marines advance is great, it gives skulks a smoke screen, any marines running into it get slaughtered, and you can just fire spikes randomly through it. This reinforces the games initial take on the lerk as a support class.
I was always a ###### lerk, but in build 193 Its actually easy to play and very intuitive i think. Flight is smooth, and despite some balls ups every now and again I am generally quite successful as just a supporting role. This is good! Fades are aggressive attack, Skulks are attack Scouts and Lerks should really be Scout Support!
We can;t make them too good, othewise noone will bother with Fades! or maybe even Onos!
I really like the spores settling on the ground idea though, this would solve the straight into marines face issue. Good example being, marine base in cross roads, fly over the top sporing falls onto base, perfec!
-I like putting spore clouds on RMB, like heal spray.
-Make the shotgun have a reliable pattern. I might suggest more spikes doing less damage (for an equal total damage) if there's objection to making a reliable pattern, as it would serve a similar effect (a denser pattern more reliably hits what you're aiming at within it).
-An alternative to the shotgun or lerk bite (which require you to be flying at a solid object to use them) might be adding a "rake" attack. It damages either directly below or in a bubble around the lerk, and you zip past marines to rake them with claws. Damage might be based on speed. Another alternative (though getting it to look right would be harder) would be to allow the lerk player to fly <i>through</i> a marine to damage him.
-----
My big issue with the lerk is flying it at the kinds of speeds that are necessary to be hard to hit with a hitscan machinegun or shotgun within the crowded corridors in NS2. My suggestion? Have the sprint key enable terrain avoidance. I'd imagine this as working somewhat like the skulk's wallwalking being able to roll across bumps in the terrain; you aren't stuck to the wall, but if you bump into a light or something the lerk will tuck around it, rather than grinding to a halt. This might make some of those corridors with the rippled ceilings or junk piled along the floor easier to cruise down.
Some types of birds have phenomenal reflexes when it comes to avoiding obstacles and flying in close quarters, and are significantly more maneuverable for squeezing through tight spaces than their wingspan implies. The BBC made <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-_RHRAzUHM#t=1m42s" target="_blank">an incredible video</a> shot from a camera mounted on the back of a Gos Hawk as it flew through pretty dense forest. Pulling in wings for a moment to tuck between two narrowly-spaced branches, rolling to the side to shoot the gap between two pipes, these are stunts a bird can pull off which make it much more maneuverable in tight spaces than a multi-foot wingspan would imply. Humans aren't capable of that kind of fast reaction, but it could be simulated by some form of the terrain avoidance I'd propose.
That's why everything I've discussed is geared toward concepts like skill floor/ceiling, skill indexing and so on
Nothing in the game should be 'good' or 'bad' at every level of play - we're not reading a book or staring at a picture in a museum and saying what we think of its immutable form
We're playing a game and as we play it more we get better at it. We compete with one another and the level of competition drives us to explore the possibilities of the game.
This includes things like "aiming better at lerks" and "aiming better as a lerk while flying in crazy patterns", but it does not include things like "dropping spores" or "lerk shotgun" because their implementations are so oversimplified and gimmicky. For this game to remain fun in the long term, attract lots of players and develop a healthy following, it needs to have that large set of possibilities. The only alternative is to bring people back to the game every 6 months by gumming up the design with more new mechanics (the way TF2 adds new items and MMORPGs make sweeping balance changes/change level caps).
Here's a challenge, to show off how great the lerk shotgun is: show me a marine weapon or game mechanic that requires the opponent to run with their back to you and ignore all sound as well as their minimap to be effective
<!--quoteo(post=1897200:date=Jan 24 2012, 10:11 PM:name=Shrike3O)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Shrike3O @ Jan 24 2012, 10:11 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897200"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My big issue with the lerk is flying it at the kinds of speeds that are necessary to be hard to hit with a hitscan machinegun or shotgun within the crowded corridors in NS2<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As cool as those birds are, the lerk's flight being difficult and map-dependent is one of the best ways to see skill-indexing in action. I play so much lerk that I can fly around the maps with my eyes closed, just like jumping in Quake after many hours of practice. For you it's not the same, but I can guarantee that if you practiced more it would be. When do I screw up and bump into things, though? When I'm attacked in unexpected ways and get distracted. That's the best part of it - not only do I have to learn the mechanical aspects of pushing buttons to fly, but I have to develop the presence of mind to continue doing it when a giant cone of fire leaps out in my face and I hear my hive scream out of nowhere.
If you deliberately put mechanics that do things for you (like avoiding walls) all of what I just said vanishes and the game isn't fun after 2 weeks.
<b>I'll also take the opportunity to dispel a really common myth:</b> You can't make it "hard" to be hit by hitscan weapons. You can't "dodge" them either. If the opponent aims at you, they will shoot you. It's up to them and not you. Obviously, the lerk in NS (like the scout in TF2) want to 'dodge' things, but they can really only dodge projectiles. For everything else, you have to respect the fact that eventually marines will get so good that they don't care how you fly - they <i>will </i>shoot you. That's why I say that the cropduster spores and spike shotgun scale poorly with player skill - when this game reaches the stage in its life that marines can easily trace lerks through a moving trail of spores, or shoot things that are up close to them, lerks will be almost entirely useless.
<b>I'll also take the opportunity to dispel a really common myth:</b> You can't make it "hard" to be hit by hitscan weapons. You can't "dodge" them either. If the opponent aims at you, they will shoot you. It's up to them and not you. Obviously, the lerk in NS (like the scout in TF2) want to 'dodge' things, but they can really only dodge projectiles. For everything else, you have to respect the fact that eventually marines will get so good that they don't care how you fly - they <i>will </i>shoot you. That's why I say that the cropduster spores and spike shotgun scale poorly with player skill - when this game reaches the stage in its life that marines can easily trace lerks through a moving trail of spores, or shoot things that are up close to them, lerks will be almost entirely useless.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You've got it right to a certain degree, but it is a gross oversimplification. Hitscan weapons require a degree prediction by the player and predictability by the target. If the targets movements are unpredictable, it is very difficult to hit accurately. There are also two components to this, which we can call skill at "tracking" (rapid fire weapons) and skill at "snap shooting" (single shot weapons).
Yes, you can't really "dodge" hitscan weapons in the truest sense of the word, because there's no projectile to dodge, but you can make yourself harder or in some cases virtually impossible to hit if your movement abilities are adequate. For skulks that generally means randomly mashing strafe left/strafe right to make your movements unpredictable. For lerks, that means "pancaking", the act of moving up/down/left/right at blindingly fast speeds that are not only unpredictable, but also tends to screw up netcode prediction with makes hit registration a bit random.
If you compare it to NS1, it was actually almost impossible for a single marine to kill a decent lerk with an lmg, when the lerk was actively moving unpredictably. The action only became dangerous for the lerk when he had to cease actively moving unpredictably in order to attack, which by its nature requires predictable movement.
I honestly don't understand how you can claim that the spike shotgun is inadequate for balancing towards all skill levels -- it is certainly oceans better than rapid-fire spikes in terms of how much movement unpredictability it allwos and how well it scales with skill. I guess I should add a comment that the current shotgun is inadequate, but I have suggested ways to fix it in my previous post. To put it very bluntly -- considering it wasn't all that hard to aim bites in NS1, and that scaled decently with skill, there's no reason why properly implemented shotgun spikes should be any worse in that regard. If anything, they should theoretically be easier to use, thus lessening the overly steep learning curve the NS1 lerk had.
<!--quoteo(post=1897243:date=Jan 25 2012, 09:55 AM:name=Stele007)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Stele007 @ Jan 25 2012, 09:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897243"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really don't understand this thread. Lerks are amazing right now and are difficult to kill. Just look at Charlie's latest design update. Aliens win more rounds than marines, and lerk average lifetime has almost doubled. If they end up underperforming later in the game's life, it can be addressed then.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You don't understand it, because you haven't bothered to read it properly and realize what the problem actually stems from. It isn't that the lerk isn't effective; with the current -2 damage "hide" introduced in build 193, the Lerk is actually grossly overpowered. The problem is that the weapons the lerk currently has at its disposal, don't scale very well with skill at all. As build 191-192 showed, and was already obvious to many of us a long time ago, improvements in average marine fps makes it so much easier to aim that the average lerk life expectancy drops significantly. As fps continues to improve, lerks will become considerably harder to play. Buffing health to try to balance the lerk in that case simply doesn't work, because lerk weapons have a very shallow learning curve (read: there's a hard limit to how good you can actually get at it) while marine aim is virtually unlimited in terms of how much you can improve it through practice. That means you'll eventually have a situation where even the best lerks will stand little chance against good marines, or you'll have a situation where lower skilled marine players get destroyed be equally skilled lerk players.
Slot 1 -
*Primary: (minigun) Spikes
*Sec.: Bite (as in NS1)
(or the other way around)
Slot 2 -
*Primary: Spores
*Sec.: Umbra
...
Balance accordingly
Reason being I feel the spike shotgun doesn't really fill any role, we already have (minigun) spikes for ranged damage.. if it's any role the shotgun spike tries to fill it is the one of bite.
It would be better to just replace the shotgun-spike with a bite attack instead (it's basically a ranged bite as it is now, but I'd rather have 'melee+more powerful' than 'ranged+useless')
Umbra would give the lerk some support/utility back, sure the "smoke" screen is nice, but you still take all the damage.. the addition of it would be great imo (and balance accordingly ofc)
Anyone agree or have some thoughts?
I still don't get it. A unit that has true 3D movement has no skill level? They can make their movement unpredictable, even more so than skulks (which can only run along the ground/walls and hop and are also dependent on "dodging hitscan weapons"). Once we get a good framerate, they may not be able to just fly into a room of marines and gas the whole place, but it's not like that's the only way they can be used. They can still make a wall of spores to provide cover for approaching skulks or do a strafing run while marines are trying to fend off skulks to obscure their vision. There are so many uses for spore's vision limiting aspect. A lot of skill doesn't just come from basic attacking but also reading the situation and working with your teammates, especially for lerks which I think should be more of a support role than the rambos they currently can be.
Having spores work as a heavier-than-air "projectile" that retains the lerk's momentum would mean that unpredictable movement wouldn't always be mutually exclusive with effective targeting.
Also,
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really don't understand this thread. Lerks are amazing right now and are difficult to kill.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
made me laugh. This thread started with a previous build.
Also, I'm okay with how aiming hitscan weapons (the 2 spikes) is incompatible with movement, because it forces tradeoffs in how you play. Do you want to focus solely on not getting hurt? Then fly in the craziest ways you can and don't stop to aim. Want to deal lots of damage? Anticipate when the enemy will be thrown off by your flight/spores and shoot a few strafing shots. Want something in between? Go for it! It creates a rhythm in combat that isn't possible with simple things like melee (the same way reloading does for marines, and adrenaline does for all aliens).
- When a lerk tracks a marine with spikes at range or in proximity, they cannot easily move sideways or backwards, and tracking becomes much more hopeless the more erratic your motions, so they must fly predictably. Unpredictable movement and effective targeting are mutually exclusive.
- When a lerk 'tracks' a marine with spores, they must fly predictably (i.e. straight at the marine). Unpredictable movement and effective targeting are mutually exclusive.
- When a lerk simply flies around to be unpredictable - because they cannot easily move sideways or backwards, but only forwards with turns - they are utterly unable to track targets at the same time. Unpredictable movement and effective targeting are mutually exclusive, and/or the lag time between the two is prohibitive. Between the lerk switching from effective targeting to unpredictable movement or vice versa, there is a time period, a window of opportunity for the marine to attack with impunity.
Meanwhile:
- Marines can strafe and walk back and forth, while tracking and attacking you at the same time, even at long ranges. They have (some) unpredictable movement and effective targeting at the same time, and/or the lag time between the two is minimal.
For comparison:
- Skulks and marines can strafe and walk back and forth, while tracking one another - but in proximity, tracking becomes more difficult for both skulks and marines because of the limited FOV. Both sides have (some) unpredictable movement and effective targeting at the same time, and/or the lag time between the two is minimal.
It seems to me that the lerk could greatly benefit from the ability to do 'strafing runs' and/or stay in close proximity with the target while attacking (thereby making it difficult to track with the low FOVs). Heavier-than-air spores that retain the lerk's velocity would help with the former. Bite, or a large-spread / high-damage-dropoff-with-range shotgun spike attack would assist with the latter (the key features of both are that they are very short distance, and very high <b>instant</b> damage per attack). The long-range spike, however... it's hard to see it being used effectively unless the lerk is hovering or stationary (which could be viable if marines are otherwise occupied with other aliens).
So, what I would suggest:
Slot 1, Mouse1: High total instant damage, large-spread (essentially, short-range) shotgun spikes.
Slot 2, Mouse1: High rate-of-fire medium-ranged spikes.
All Slots, Mouse2: Heavier-than-air spores that retain the lerk's velocity.
It might be a good idea to tune the lerk towards doing slightly less damage with its primary attacks, while also being able to survive a bit longer to balance it out (basically buffing hps and armor). That should make it slightly more forgiving for newer players, but also scale nicely for high skill play. Combat should still be fast paced and frenetic though -- the idea is to find a middle ground between the lightning attacks of the NS1 lerk and the languid slugouts with the current NS2 lerk.
I'm opposed to re-adding bite on the grounds that it is very unfriendly towards new players. It was great for balanced play at high skill levels in NS1, but a nightmare to use for new players. A ranged, although short ranged, shotgun or burst style weapon would mitigate that problem because (a (for burst fire)) even if you miss initially, you still have a chance to do some damage if you correct your aim before the burst finishes, (b) you can use range to make aiming easier due to the spread, although doing less damage that way and © it's easier to avoid damage for new players as you don't have to get right in the marines face to do damage.
I prefer my "spore spike" solution over the "momentum spore cloud" because (1) I don't think a vision blocking cloud is conducive to fun fps gameplay and (2) the spore spike gives lerks more options in combat.
To elaborate on (2): It gives lerks the option to attack from longer range, instead of being forced to play mid-short range the entire game. I understand that the developers are trying to avoid the "sitting in a vent all game shooting spores" syndrome that affected some players in NS1, but I think that will sort itself out. If the lerk close combat is made slightly less unforgiving for new players (as per suggestions above) compared to NS1, they won't have the same incentives to hide for most of the round. The mid-long range spore spike (non-hitscan) projectile would also synergize great with the proposed short range slot 1 burst/shotgun spikes, giving lerks a chance to score some rare and very satisfying longer range kills. It would also add another much needed non-hitscan weapon to the mix (currently only gorge spit, flamethrower and grenade launcher).
In addition, I personally think spores coming out of the lerk's "ass" looks ridiculous. The first time I saw it, I thought it was some kind of gag or april fools joke. The aliens should emanate viciousness -- this is a cyberpunk themed game set in space, not Saturday Night Live. I suppose this is also general issue I have towards some of the visual design in NS2 -- it's too colorful and cheery. The alien infestation looks like something you'd see in a Ghostbusters movie and the blue energy fields and whatnot on the marine side reminds me of Star Trek, not Alien.
Edit: Fixed some poor wording, initially wrote this in a hurry.
Addendum: The more I think about it, the more I like burst-fire spikes.
And I agree that vision-obscuring clouds are bad. They should be rendered unnecessary by other balance changes (like skulks getting some exercise).