I don't think lerk bite did work in NS1, I could never use it worth a damn. Hell I coudn't play any alien in NS1, I joined marines because trying to play aliens was a joke.
That isn't a good thing, if the only people who can get any use out of lerks are people who are really good at it, the class is effectively a complete waste of time, because most of your players will just not be able to use it. You might as well throw all the development hours out the window because you completely wasted them making a class like that.
The NS2 lerk is pretty good, flying around in relatively close quarters tracking marines with spikes is a lot of fun, and a good change from the other melee focussed classes, honestly it kinda reminds me of playing quake 3 with people bouncing around all over the place trying to track each other with the machinegun or something.
It should be a close fighter, because NS2 maps are enclosed and the fighting is supposed to be close in, but it shouldn't be a MELEE fighter, because then it's a flying skulk, and what's the point in that?
I mean, aside from giving them an even better anti-structure attack, I can't see it fitting with the lerk playstyle at all, if you have to crash into marines and bite them to death, that kind of makes them exactly like a flying skulk.
The shotgun spikes make more sense, they encourage you to get CLOSE but not actually hit the marine.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Agreed, I just cant see it working at all, please leave it as it is!
Considering most of the time, NS2 aliens are a lot of fun and certainly playable, even if I'm not as good at them as I am marines, I'd say that suggests there was something horribly wrong with NS1 aliens.
I mean hell, the entire point of NS1 aliens was that they won if you had a couple of good fade players, and lost if you didn't. That's not a good way to balance a game. The entirety of NS1 alien play was like that, if you have a few very good players, you win, no matter what the marines do. If you don't, you lose, no matter what the marines do.
Basing victory or defeat in a <i>team</i> game on the performance of a small number of players acting individually is ludicrous.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
Removing one or the other isn't a great idea, but combining them would be fun. Not a big fan of exclusive melee or exclusive ranged lifeforms. If the player meets his hardcounter in ns2, all he would be able to do would be run away. The versatility of the additional attacks for each lifeform in ns1 meant that a player would still be able to do something even in the worse of conditions.
This all comes down too "We have no idea what UWE wants out of each class and their plan".
If only UWE would shed some light into what they want for each class it would make these discussions a WHOLE lot easier. Break down each class for us in a couple sentences like so:
Skulk : Melee recon Lerk : Ranged support Gorge : Heal support Fade : Melee assault Onos : Melee tank
Then CLEARLY define each through their tools. If you want the gorge to heal then give then a lot of healing options. Long Range "Heal over Time" spit, Heal Spray, and something like Umbra would be nice.
Give the Lerk tools to actually fill his roll as Ranged Support. The lerk gas imo needs to go back to being shot keeping the lerk OUT of short/med range combat. Bite needs to be no where in his repertoire. Long range spike, shotgun alt, Poison Gas, an alt fire obscuring gas would be nice, the frenzy scream was a good touch (NS1), and im sure there are a million other ideas.
Make the Lerk your Attack Support and Gorge the Medic Support. Stop confusing the two with abilities they dont need to fulfill their roll.
Likewise with Skulks and Fades, Let your skulk be your scouter/primary attacker (Recon Unit), while the Fade is a surgical striker (Assault Unit), and Onos being group suppression.
Just let us know your overall view on things and im sure the quality of suggestions will much improve. You give mappers guidelines, why not us too?
<!--quoteo(post=1897724:date=Jan 27 2012, 09:05 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ Jan 27 2012, 09:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897724"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Am I the only one who thinks a flying skulk would be awesome?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1897727:date=Jan 27 2012, 11:29 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ Jan 27 2012, 11:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897727"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The devs should hire you Chris. As long as they do the opposite of everything you say the game will turn out amazing :D<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So funny because every one thinks this but does not say it. Like basing his opinion on aliens being bad because he's bad at it.
Making a game of two teams, where one side is based on a good balance between skill and teamplay, and the other is based on how many extremely good players you can put into classes that are designed to be unusable at low skill levels and impossible to beat at higher skill levels, is dumb.
It's like marines were designed to be good, interesting, and build on the various interactions between players, as well as interactions with the commander, rewarding players for working well together and using group tactics and playing strategically, really being one of the best examples of team based videogaming for the time.
Whereas aliens were designed by someone who just designed a bunch of classes he was really good at playing and everyone else was rubbish at and decided that should be all you need to win a game.
Marines were designed by an actual game designer, who thinks carefully about how everything he puts in will interact with everything else, aliens were designed by someone who spends all his time trying to get noscope headshots in counterstrike and considers that the only thing gaming needs to be about ever.
No, I assume the sides were actually designed by the same person, but it is difficult to imagine how, as one of them demonstrates rather a rather exceptional degree of intelligent thought and awareness of the interaction between all the different parts of the game, I couldn't design something as good as that, for all that it has its flaws, what's there is very good, and is a very solid base to build a game on.
The alien team on the other hand just doesn't, it's about as well designed as quake 3 deathmatch with railguns as the only weapon would be. Either you suceed wildly or you die horribly, and there is very little middle ground, and team cohesion is actively discouraged. The way to win is to run around, on your own, smashing everything you see, and killing all the enemies, and you do that best by being ridiculously good at playing your own class.
NS2 seems to be trying quite hard to fix that, it makes the alien classes much easier to use, and also puts a rather firm cap on how good they can realistically be. You can't fly around a huge room as fade tying up an entire squad of marines, you don't have the RTS side controlled by any idiot who evolves into a gorge. You are actually required to work in groups, and groups of players working together as a mix of classes is really the key to success in pitched battles in NS2. It brings the aliens and marines closer together, which the game needs.
Asymmetry at the cost of gameplay is stupid, the teams need to be comparable otherwise they can't be balanced against each other. In NS1 each side won by playing an entirely different game, so any pretense at balance was impossible, which is why public and organised play was so different. NS2 is showing every evidence of improving that, and I think that makes it a much better game.
Well, yeah, NS1 had a lot of good stuff in it, I did say that. Not everything in the initial NS2 design was good, but so far it's kept a lot of the things I think work best. I assume the devs aren't going to suddenly decide to make fades horribly overpowered if you can blink really well, or move leap back to a different weapon slot solely to make it harder to use properly.
<!--quoteo(post=1897736:date=Jan 27 2012, 10:17 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jan 27 2012, 10:17 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897736"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The way to win is to <b>run around, on your own</b>, smashing everything you see, and killing all the enemies, and you do that best by being ridiculously good at playing your own class.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Huh? Lerks wearing them down, gorges providing for a distraction while skulks camp around the corner ready to strike. What you mean is that fades can get away with doing that, and that's something many will agree should be nerfed a bit in NS2 (blink + meta was possibly too good a combination for a single class to have), but alien-play as a whole certainly cannot be characterized like that.
<!--quoteo(post=1897740:date=Jan 27 2012, 10:34 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Jan 27 2012, 10:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897740"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Huh? Lerks wearing them down, gorges providing for a distraction while skulks camp around the corner ready to strike. What you mean is that fades can get away with doing that, and that's something many will agree should be nerfed a bit in NS2 (blink + meta was possibly too good a combination for a single class to have), but alien-play as a whole certainly cannot be characterized like that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, I was talking about in NS1, in NS2 yes the players are required to work together a lot more, it's a good thing. Even fades have to do that, I think the reason they're a little OP is because they cost 50 res, whereas most marines only carry a 20 res shotgun. Once you can put more than 20-30 res worth of stuff on a marine, fades should balance out better.
I'm sorry to say Chris, but all your arguements are strawman and propped up by bias. Alien's are not incapable of teamwork. You just don't know how to play aliens and this is by your own self admission. I actually find myself agreeing with konata :p
<!--QuoteBegin-smasher+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (smasher)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Could always just speed the Lerk up and remove the "hide"/tweak tankiness, I'd prefer having a fast and agile Lerk, but a bit squishier, than a slow moving and heavy "tanking" Lerk, just how I feel anyway..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was thinking about this too. If they sped the lerk up i think it'd play great like ns1 but the last change they made to lerk movement speed was to slow them down in response to them being able to control the map too well.. so im not sure :s.
<!--quoteo(post=1897752:date=Jan 27 2012, 11:09 PM:name=elodea)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (elodea @ Jan 27 2012, 11:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897752"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm sorry to say Chris, but all your arguements are strawman and propped up by bias. Alien's are not incapable of teamwork. You just don't know how to play aliens and this is by your own self admission. I actually find myself agreeing with konata :p<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The thing is, I should know how to play them <i>if</i> they are at all team-oriented, because I am quite good at teamwork.
While you certainly <i>can</i> play them like a team, you <i>can</i> play call of duty MW2 as a team, there is just very little reason to, and nobody would presume to call that a game with lots of teamwork in it. I'm sure you wouldn't try to argue that NS1 aliens are a strong team oriented side and that, say, marines would be anywhere near as good of a team if they got rid of the commander and all came with sniper rifles so that they won by being really good at aiming, rather than using HMGs and HAs so they win by moving in groups, covering each other, and supporting each other between fights.
Speeding the lerk up would be a bad idea because unlike NS1, NS2 is not full of huge rooms for you to fly around in. If you sped the lerk up significantly you'd just make it really hard to control in the tight corridors that comprise most of NS2's environments.
If you're admitting you're bad at aliens, who need lots of team work, you are also admitting you are bad at team work.
Please Chris, leave this whole aliens being bad thing alone. You are digging yourself in a hole deeper and deeper. What you're saying is you like marines because you can rambo.
<!--quoteo(post=1897756:date=Jan 27 2012, 11:21 PM:name=konata)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (konata @ Jan 27 2012, 11:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897756"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you're admitting you're bad at aliens, who need lots of team work, you are also admitting you are bad at team work.
Please Chris, leave this whole aliens being bad thing alone. You are digging yourself in a hole deeper and deeper. What you're saying is you like marines because you can rambo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Erm, how on earth are <i>marines</i> the rambo side?
Did you play NS1? Did you see how aliens had all these upgrades that let them be entirely self sufficient? How they had loads of health and moved really fast? How they had almost no way to support each other outside of umbra and gorge healing?
Compared to marines where mutually covering each other makes shooting aliens much easier, where they all carry welders to keep each other armored up between fights, where they need to constantly support and be supported by the commander to siege and lock down alien bases?
The first thing everyone learns as a marine is not to try and do it alone, you work much better as a team and the better you work as a team, the better you'll perform. A large number of the of the marine upgrades are based around easy to use, with minimal benefit for mastery. It is very hard to be 'good' with an HMG, you point it roughly at the enemy and shoot until it dies. Same for HA, same for GLs, same for siege turrets as their primary method for attacking hives.
The <i>entire</i> marine ethos is working together, you cannot seriously tell me that I play marines to run around killing everything myself.
<!--quoteo(post=1897759:date=Jan 27 2012, 10:28 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jan 27 2012, 10:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897759"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Erm, how on earth are <i>marines</i> the rambo side?
Did you play NS1? Did you see how aliens had all these upgrades that let them be entirely self sufficient? How they had loads of health and moved really fast? How they had almost no way to support each other outside of umbra and gorge healing?
Compared to marines where mutually covering each other makes shooting aliens much easier, where they all carry welders to keep each other armored up between fights, where they need to constantly support and be supported by the commander to siege and lock down alien bases?
The first thing everyone learns as a marine is not to try and do it alone, you work much better as a team and the better you work as a team, the better you'll perform. A large number of the of the marine upgrades are based around easy to use, with minimal benefit for mastery. It is very hard to be 'good' with an HMG, you point it roughly at the enemy and shoot until it dies. Same for HA, same for GLs, same for siege turrets as their primary method for attacking hives.
The <i>entire</i> marine ethos is working together, you cannot seriously tell me that I play marines to run around killing everything myself.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What? You are joking right? Did YOU play NS1?
Aliens blew without teamwork. Skulks died very easily unless you were in packs. Onos were dead meat without alien support or a handy gorge around. Not to mention later game where if you didnt have umbra you were done. I think Aliens without a Comm worked more as a team than marines WITH one. Aliens had to call out jobs just as the game started. RTs, Hive, Lerk, Fade, RT muncher, Perma Gorge, Chambers, and other jobs. Without a comm they HAD to work together. Aliens were always more of the teamwork side.
Best marine strat was have a ninja go sneak off somewhere or shotgun rush the hive to spawn camp/kill the first RT.
You view of the game is VERY skewed and you probably didnt play competitively.
<!--quoteo(post=1897759:date=Jan 28 2012, 10:28 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jan 28 2012, 10:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897759"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The thing is, I should know how to play them if they are at all team-oriented, because I am quite good at teamwork.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think the issue is that aliens requires a slightly different kind of teamwork that might not be immediately obvious to people used to gunplay teamwork. It requires a bit more initiative and map/game awareness.
Even playing on publics now a days, if you go spawn camp. You win. Marines are the biggest rambo side. If you're kills aren't well exceeding your deaths, you normally have a problem winning your game.
<!--quoteo(post=1897761:date=Jan 27 2012, 11:32 PM:name=RisingSun)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (RisingSun @ Jan 27 2012, 11:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897761"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You view of the game is VERY skewed and you probably didnt play competitively.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, I played public games, the kind of game most people would play.
If the game is that different between public and organised play, there's something wrong.
Aliens cannot have needed or benefitted much from teamwork, because if they did they would win every game.
Aliens were much stronger than individual marines, especially once you got fades on the field, if aliens got as strong as marines did due to teamwork then they would be tougher, faster, more destructive, more independent, and just generally invincible in groups. There would be nothing the marines could do to stop them because they just didn't have a high skill ceiling in the later stages of the game.
Aliens benefitted from weight of numbers, as any group of players would, but they did not need teamwork. Umbra wouldn't work in many situations because of the size of the rooms and mobility of aliens, not to mention that marines could have jetpacks, it'd just be impossible to use it effectively enough to make it a case of 'if you don't have it then you're dead'. Onoses wouldn't work against an entire base on their own, but two or three of them would destroy the base easily, even if they died afterwards the base would be gone, you just couldn't kill them fast enough. Again weight of numbers, not teamwork. They don't require any particular support, just enough HP/DPS to beat the marine HP/DPS, that's not teamwork, that's a lot of people trying to do the same thing at the same time.
It just isn't comparable to marines, who were pretty useless individually but very hard to beat when in a cohesive group. When one sees an alien and starts shooting, the rest do too, when one is hurt the rest heal him, when one is attacked the others protect him, that's teamwork, not just 'everyone attack at the same time'.
gonna have to agree with konata and risingsun. in ns1, you were much more effective as aliens if you didn't rambo and stuck together, whereas on marines i would regularly go off by myself and pressure res, all the while killing multiple solo skulks that tried to defend. a rambo marine was much more effective than a rambo skulk until fades started showing up. if you've ever seen competitive matches, the aliens are very teamwork oriented, often with 3-4 skulks rushing in at once backed up by a lerk or gorge. the only reason that it seemed like aliens were overpowered solo is because in pub play most of the marines couldn't aim worth a crap, but any decent marine could kill a pair of skulks simultaneously if they attacked without the element of surprise. it's actually a little disheartening how little teamwork there is on the alien side in ns2, and i'm not really sure why.
Odd as I see far more cooperation between aliens than I did in NS1, regularly see a few skulks working together, fades and gorges hanging out, hell even a pair of gorges working together being really hard to kill.
If the NS2 changes encourage more cooperation between players in public matches I think that's a very good thing.
cooperation =/= teamplay. teamplay is having an entire team commit to a strategy and every unit working to help execute it. cooperation is just one element of team play.
Comments
That isn't a good thing, if the only people who can get any use out of lerks are people who are really good at it, the class is effectively a complete waste of time, because most of your players will just not be able to use it. You might as well throw all the development hours out the window because you completely wasted them making a class like that.
The NS2 lerk is pretty good, flying around in relatively close quarters tracking marines with spikes is a lot of fun, and a good change from the other melee focussed classes, honestly it kinda reminds me of playing quake 3 with people bouncing around all over the place trying to track each other with the machinegun or something.
It should be a close fighter, because NS2 maps are enclosed and the fighting is supposed to be close in, but it shouldn't be a MELEE fighter, because then it's a flying skulk, and what's the point in that?
I mean, aside from giving them an even better anti-structure attack, I can't see it fitting with the lerk playstyle at all, if you have to crash into marines and bite them to death, that kind of makes them exactly like a flying skulk.
The shotgun spikes make more sense, they encourage you to get CLOSE but not actually hit the marine.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed, I just cant see it working at all, please leave it as it is!
I mean hell, the entire point of NS1 aliens was that they won if you had a couple of good fade players, and lost if you didn't. That's not a good way to balance a game. The entirety of NS1 alien play was like that, if you have a few very good players, you win, no matter what the marines do. If you don't, you lose, no matter what the marines do.
Basing victory or defeat in a <i>team</i> game on the performance of a small number of players acting individually is ludicrous.
If only UWE would shed some light into what they want for each class it would make these discussions a WHOLE lot easier. Break down each class for us in a couple sentences like so:
Skulk : Melee recon
Lerk : Ranged support
Gorge : Heal support
Fade : Melee assault
Onos : Melee tank
Then CLEARLY define each through their tools. If you want the gorge to heal then give then a lot of healing options. Long Range "Heal over Time" spit, Heal Spray, and something like Umbra would be nice.
Give the Lerk tools to actually fill his roll as Ranged Support. The lerk gas imo needs to go back to being shot keeping the lerk OUT of short/med range combat. Bite needs to be no where in his repertoire. Long range spike, shotgun alt, Poison Gas, an alt fire obscuring gas would be nice, the frenzy scream was a good touch (NS1), and im sure there are a million other ideas.
Make the Lerk your Attack Support and Gorge the Medic Support. Stop confusing the two with abilities they dont need to fulfill their roll.
Likewise with Skulks and Fades, Let your skulk be your scouter/primary attacker (Recon Unit), while the Fade is a surgical striker (Assault Unit), and Onos being group suppression.
Just let us know your overall view on things and im sure the quality of suggestions will much improve. You give mappers guidelines, why not us too?
As a replacement for the skulk, possibly.
As one of only five classes? No.
So funny because every one thinks this but does not say it. Like basing his opinion on aliens being bad because he's bad at it.
It's like marines were designed to be good, interesting, and build on the various interactions between players, as well as interactions with the commander, rewarding players for working well together and using group tactics and playing strategically, really being one of the best examples of team based videogaming for the time.
Whereas aliens were designed by someone who just designed a bunch of classes he was really good at playing and everyone else was rubbish at and decided that should be all you need to win a game.
Marines were designed by an actual game designer, who thinks carefully about how everything he puts in will interact with everything else, aliens were designed by someone who spends all his time trying to get noscope headshots in counterstrike and considers that the only thing gaming needs to be about ever.
No, I assume the sides were actually designed by the same person, but it is difficult to imagine how, as one of them demonstrates rather a rather exceptional degree of intelligent thought and awareness of the interaction between all the different parts of the game, I couldn't design something as good as that, for all that it has its flaws, what's there is very good, and is a very solid base to build a game on.
The alien team on the other hand just doesn't, it's about as well designed as quake 3 deathmatch with railguns as the only weapon would be. Either you suceed wildly or you die horribly, and there is very little middle ground, and team cohesion is actively discouraged. The way to win is to run around, on your own, smashing everything you see, and killing all the enemies, and you do that best by being ridiculously good at playing your own class.
NS2 seems to be trying quite hard to fix that, it makes the alien classes much easier to use, and also puts a rather firm cap on how good they can realistically be. You can't fly around a huge room as fade tying up an entire squad of marines, you don't have the RTS side controlled by any idiot who evolves into a gorge. You are actually required to work in groups, and groups of players working together as a mix of classes is really the key to success in pitched battles in NS2. It brings the aliens and marines closer together, which the game needs.
Asymmetry at the cost of gameplay is stupid, the teams need to be comparable otherwise they can't be balanced against each other. In NS1 each side won by playing an entirely different game, so any pretense at balance was impossible, which is why public and organised play was so different. NS2 is showing every evidence of improving that, and I think that makes it a much better game.
Although I see a lot more elements of NS1 coming back in to NS2.
See what I did there?
Huh? Lerks wearing them down, gorges providing for a distraction while skulks camp around the corner ready to strike. What you mean is that fades can get away with doing that, and that's something many will agree should be nerfed a bit in NS2 (blink + meta was possibly too good a combination for a single class to have), but alien-play as a whole certainly cannot be characterized like that.
No, I was talking about in NS1, in NS2 yes the players are required to work together a lot more, it's a good thing. Even fades have to do that, I think the reason they're a little OP is because they cost 50 res, whereas most marines only carry a 20 res shotgun. Once you can put more than 20-30 res worth of stuff on a marine, fades should balance out better.
I actually find myself agreeing with konata :p
<!--QuoteBegin-smasher+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (smasher)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Could always just speed the Lerk up and remove the "hide"/tweak tankiness, I'd prefer having a fast and agile Lerk, but a bit squishier, than a slow moving and heavy "tanking" Lerk, just how I feel anyway..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was thinking about this too. If they sped the lerk up i think it'd play great like ns1 but the last change they made to lerk movement speed was to slow them down in response to them being able to control the map too well.. so im not sure :s.
That's because as much of a tool as I am, when it comes to game play, I'm not a strawman ;D
I agree with speeding the lerk up by as much as 1.5 or even 2.x
I actually find myself agreeing with konata :p<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The thing is, I should know how to play them <i>if</i> they are at all team-oriented, because I am quite good at teamwork.
While you certainly <i>can</i> play them like a team, you <i>can</i> play call of duty MW2 as a team, there is just very little reason to, and nobody would presume to call that a game with lots of teamwork in it. I'm sure you wouldn't try to argue that NS1 aliens are a strong team oriented side and that, say, marines would be anywhere near as good of a team if they got rid of the commander and all came with sniper rifles so that they won by being really good at aiming, rather than using HMGs and HAs so they win by moving in groups, covering each other, and supporting each other between fights.
Speeding the lerk up would be a bad idea because unlike NS1, NS2 is not full of huge rooms for you to fly around in. If you sped the lerk up significantly you'd just make it really hard to control in the tight corridors that comprise most of NS2's environments.
Please Chris, leave this whole aliens being bad thing alone. You are digging yourself in a hole deeper and deeper. What you're saying is you like marines because you can rambo.
Please Chris, leave this whole aliens being bad thing alone. You are digging yourself in a hole deeper and deeper. What you're saying is you like marines because you can rambo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Erm, how on earth are <i>marines</i> the rambo side?
Did you play NS1? Did you see how aliens had all these upgrades that let them be entirely self sufficient? How they had loads of health and moved really fast? How they had almost no way to support each other outside of umbra and gorge healing?
Compared to marines where mutually covering each other makes shooting aliens much easier, where they all carry welders to keep each other armored up between fights, where they need to constantly support and be supported by the commander to siege and lock down alien bases?
The first thing everyone learns as a marine is not to try and do it alone, you work much better as a team and the better you work as a team, the better you'll perform. A large number of the of the marine upgrades are based around easy to use, with minimal benefit for mastery. It is very hard to be 'good' with an HMG, you point it roughly at the enemy and shoot until it dies. Same for HA, same for GLs, same for siege turrets as their primary method for attacking hives.
The <i>entire</i> marine ethos is working together, you cannot seriously tell me that I play marines to run around killing everything myself.
Did you play NS1? Did you see how aliens had all these upgrades that let them be entirely self sufficient? How they had loads of health and moved really fast? How they had almost no way to support each other outside of umbra and gorge healing?
Compared to marines where mutually covering each other makes shooting aliens much easier, where they all carry welders to keep each other armored up between fights, where they need to constantly support and be supported by the commander to siege and lock down alien bases?
The first thing everyone learns as a marine is not to try and do it alone, you work much better as a team and the better you work as a team, the better you'll perform. A large number of the of the marine upgrades are based around easy to use, with minimal benefit for mastery. It is very hard to be 'good' with an HMG, you point it roughly at the enemy and shoot until it dies. Same for HA, same for GLs, same for siege turrets as their primary method for attacking hives.
The <i>entire</i> marine ethos is working together, you cannot seriously tell me that I play marines to run around killing everything myself.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What? You are joking right? Did YOU play NS1?
Aliens blew without teamwork. Skulks died very easily unless you were in packs. Onos were dead meat without alien support or a handy gorge around. Not to mention later game where if you didnt have umbra you were done. I think Aliens without a Comm worked more as a team than marines WITH one. Aliens had to call out jobs just as the game started. RTs, Hive, Lerk, Fade, RT muncher, Perma Gorge, Chambers, and other jobs. Without a comm they HAD to work together. Aliens were always more of the teamwork side.
Best marine strat was have a ninja go sneak off somewhere or shotgun rush the hive to spawn camp/kill the first RT.
You view of the game is VERY skewed and you probably didnt play competitively.
I think the issue is that aliens requires a slightly different kind of teamwork that might not be immediately obvious to people used to gunplay teamwork. It requires a bit more initiative and map/game awareness.
No, I played public games, the kind of game most people would play.
If the game is that different between public and organised play, there's something wrong.
Aliens cannot have needed or benefitted much from teamwork, because if they did they would win every game.
Aliens were much stronger than individual marines, especially once you got fades on the field, if aliens got as strong as marines did due to teamwork then they would be tougher, faster, more destructive, more independent, and just generally invincible in groups. There would be nothing the marines could do to stop them because they just didn't have a high skill ceiling in the later stages of the game.
Aliens benefitted from weight of numbers, as any group of players would, but they did not need teamwork. Umbra wouldn't work in many situations because of the size of the rooms and mobility of aliens, not to mention that marines could have jetpacks, it'd just be impossible to use it effectively enough to make it a case of 'if you don't have it then you're dead'. Onoses wouldn't work against an entire base on their own, but two or three of them would destroy the base easily, even if they died afterwards the base would be gone, you just couldn't kill them fast enough. Again weight of numbers, not teamwork. They don't require any particular support, just enough HP/DPS to beat the marine HP/DPS, that's not teamwork, that's a lot of people trying to do the same thing at the same time.
It just isn't comparable to marines, who were pretty useless individually but very hard to beat when in a cohesive group. When one sees an alien and starts shooting, the rest do too, when one is hurt the rest heal him, when one is attacked the others protect him, that's teamwork, not just 'everyone attack at the same time'.
If the NS2 changes encourage more cooperation between players in public matches I think that's a very good thing.