alien movement
rippir
Join Date: 2011-03-30 Member: 89503Members
Join Date: 2011-03-30 Member: 89503Members
incoming opinion fest:
game is coming along beautifully, really running more stable now and the art direction has grown on me.
however, jumping back on the old NS1 and having some good old alien fun, then playing some NS2, the aliens movement in NS2 feel... dumbed down.
It's the same feeling I got going from brood wars to starcraft 2.
Now, it really worked for starcraft 2, because it helped close the gap between those adept players and the pro's (difference between diamond / masters is usually hard to tell). In other words, you no longer need 300+ apm to be competitive (well, we haven't see the current bw korean pros move over to SC2 yet, but for now this holds true). A player could focus far more on micro rather than constantly checking probe production, etc. The new hotkey set up also contributed greatly towards this.
I wonder how this is going to pan out for NS2, where removing the (let's call it) skill from the alien maneuvering doesn't really result in being able to "focus" more on anything else.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on not having bunny-hopping or more "slick" alien movement; here's an example of how dumbed down movement can be a benefit:
The balancing of marines will not need to be around how "top-tier" players play, because there will be next to no difference between someone that's played 500 hours and someone that's played 50 hours. All aliens will move the same and so the guns only need to be powerful enough to deal with the 85th percentile movement style - i.e. the "gap" will not be there for alien players vs marines. An experienced NS player will take as many hits as a "pro" NS player.
Anyway, that's just the way I feel and I was wondering if the learning curve for aliens was going to increase, because at the moment it feels very unrewarding playing aliens.
alien opinion summary:
skulks - clunky, slow and way too big
fade - SLOW, no movement style to mitigate energy loss
gorge - sexy, see alien commander comment
alien commander - luv it, but should be some further "overlap" between alien commander and gorgey responsibilities/capabilities
onos - still early stages, but this behemoth makes sense being clunky and slow!
lerk - would be nice if the lerk could move faster but (for example) when it enters an accelerated state it suffers maneuverability penalties (and vice-verse) and if you clip a wall you become disoriented! (maybe that's too much)
Anywho, i love this game and unknown worlds are epic, so either way I'm going to play my heart out. Wondering what you other players think about the current state of the alien race!
game is coming along beautifully, really running more stable now and the art direction has grown on me.
however, jumping back on the old NS1 and having some good old alien fun, then playing some NS2, the aliens movement in NS2 feel... dumbed down.
It's the same feeling I got going from brood wars to starcraft 2.
Now, it really worked for starcraft 2, because it helped close the gap between those adept players and the pro's (difference between diamond / masters is usually hard to tell). In other words, you no longer need 300+ apm to be competitive (well, we haven't see the current bw korean pros move over to SC2 yet, but for now this holds true). A player could focus far more on micro rather than constantly checking probe production, etc. The new hotkey set up also contributed greatly towards this.
I wonder how this is going to pan out for NS2, where removing the (let's call it) skill from the alien maneuvering doesn't really result in being able to "focus" more on anything else.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on not having bunny-hopping or more "slick" alien movement; here's an example of how dumbed down movement can be a benefit:
The balancing of marines will not need to be around how "top-tier" players play, because there will be next to no difference between someone that's played 500 hours and someone that's played 50 hours. All aliens will move the same and so the guns only need to be powerful enough to deal with the 85th percentile movement style - i.e. the "gap" will not be there for alien players vs marines. An experienced NS player will take as many hits as a "pro" NS player.
Anyway, that's just the way I feel and I was wondering if the learning curve for aliens was going to increase, because at the moment it feels very unrewarding playing aliens.
alien opinion summary:
skulks - clunky, slow and way too big
fade - SLOW, no movement style to mitigate energy loss
gorge - sexy, see alien commander comment
alien commander - luv it, but should be some further "overlap" between alien commander and gorgey responsibilities/capabilities
onos - still early stages, but this behemoth makes sense being clunky and slow!
lerk - would be nice if the lerk could move faster but (for example) when it enters an accelerated state it suffers maneuverability penalties (and vice-verse) and if you clip a wall you become disoriented! (maybe that's too much)
Anywho, i love this game and unknown worlds are epic, so either way I'm going to play my heart out. Wondering what you other players think about the current state of the alien race!
Comments
skulks - clunky, slow and way too big
fade - SLOW, no movement style to mitigate energy loss
gorge - sexy, see alien commander comment
alien commander - luv it, but should be some further "overlap" between alien commander and gorgey responsibilities/capabilities
onos - still early stages, but this behemoth makes sense being clunky and slow!
lerk - would be nice if the lerk could move faster but (for example) when it enters an accelerated state it suffers maneuverability penalties (and vice-verse) and if you clip a wall you become disoriented! (maybe that's too much)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Skulk: Pretty durn fast. You just haven't encountered good skulks yet, or perfected it yourself. The skulk model <b>seems big</b>, but the hitbox is not a box anymore like in NS1. If you go close and shoot around the legs, you will notice that the skulk hitbox is pretty narrowly defined.
Fade: Can maintain some speed along the ground after a blink/shadowstep if you time your jumps well and curve your mouse way much more than you would for skulk, only pressing W.
Gorge: Slides a bit too slow I think. So slow off infestation. But I understand, he's fat. :(
Onos: Seems quite slow. If you attack any marine base location, you're pretty much committed. There's little chance you're running away alive because gathering momentum takes a long time.
Lerk: Fast, but still fragile. A twitch shot or two from a good shotgunner kills a lerk instantly. But the movement feels quite OK. Just need to learn not to do 180-spins if not holding fly, and learn to avoid walls well.
But: We're still waiting for celerity. It has to give a clear advantage when you take it, and I can see the reason why some of the classes are a bit slower than I'd like: They benefit a lot from celerity.
5¢.
Fade: Can maintain some speed along the ground after a blink/shadowstep if you time your jumps well and curve your mouse way much more than you would for skulk, only pressing W.
Gorge: Slides a bit too slow I think. So slow off infestation. But I understand, he's fat. :(
Onos: Seems quite slow. If you attack any marine base location, you're pretty much committed. There's little chance you're running away alive because gathering momentum takes a long time.
Lerk: Fast, but still fragile. A twitch shot or two from a good shotgunner kills a lerk instantly. But the movement feels quite OK. Just need to learn not to do 180-spins if not holding fly, and learn to avoid walls well.
But: We're still waiting for celerity. It has to give a clear advantage when you take it, and I can see the reason why some of the classes are a bit slower than I'd like: They benefit a lot from celerity.
5¢.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Skulk: You can get good speeds with wallhopping, but it isn't very skillful nor does it make for interesting combat (in my opinion).
Fade: Very low skill ceiling. Once you've learnt the basics there isn't a whole lot more to it. Sure you can use a few tricks like jumping and looking up before quickly pressing and releasing blink to use it to travel around the map fast while conserving energy, but that takes very little effort to perfect. I like shadowstep though. I think, if they removed the current blink (the hive2 blink) and replaced it with the ns1 blink, while keeping shadowstep as the hive1 ability (or switch them around, ns1 blink hive1 and shadowstep hive2), the ns2 fade would be a fantastic revamp of the ns1 fade.
Gorge: Still the "noob class". Will have to wait and see if new abilities make it worth playing.
Onos: Prediction; current charge-up movement will be a nightmare to balance.
Lerk: Movement is good, but perhaps a bit too easy to perfect. The combination of free flight (no energy drain from flapping) and zero velocity loss when gliding, even when making 180 turns, gives it a lower skill ceiling than is necessary.
I'd probably have to agree. I remember playing [pre-nerf] Fade way back when in NS1 and it felt really amazing when you got good at proper blink/swipe/meta. In NS2 it kinda feels like some ideas got thrown together and some duct tape slapped onto it. I feel like I have no control over my Fade at all, which is ironic considering it has arguably the most mobility in the game.
1) The high energy consumption, absence of shadow step and high momentum was forcing the fade to time his blinks on-offs accurately and to use the momentum.
2) The forced use of off-blink momentum was making you more vulnerable while attacking a marine. So the trajectory you used while approaching actually mattered.
For example instead of blinking straight toward a marine, you could blink slightly off the marine and then curve back to him using air control.
3) Short delays allowed to swipe in air. Something you could do is blink slightly on the side of the marine and swipe while flying past him, so you would actually end up behind the marine. It also allowed to attack jetpacks.
Currently I feel that blink is used to approach marines (and that the trajectory you use doesn't really matter) and that the actual fight happens mainly with walking fades vs walking marines instead of having acrobatic fights between hit and run flying fades and walking marines.
To pull out the NS1 fade example for one second: they were simply not fun without MCs and only increased in how fun they were when they got metabolize and the ability to regen energy.
And even if the energy drain was quite high in my mod the only thing it really prevented was to stay all day in blink, you could still blink full speed around the map and destroy the marines.
I don't know what to think about shadow step, can you do something interesting except shadow stepping into a marine and engaging into a walking fight ?
Shadow stepping fades looks like tanks to me, because they have limited movement and lots of hit points (carapace), they need to engage in superior numbers, tanking the damage for the skulks.
Also, if it comes in later then grenade launchers and regular MGs won't be pre-emptively countered by a 1hive fade. If that makes sense.
Also, if it comes in later then grenade launchers and regular MGs won't be pre-emptively countered by a 1hive fade. If that makes sense.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
Also extremely powerful as an escape tool -- use normal blink to engange and then hit shadowstep to escape faster and without risk of getting hit, like you would if you just used the normal ns1 blink.
High skill ceiling too -- extremely good players will be able to time the shadowstep to avoid shotgun blasts for example; think many mini-shadowsteps between shotgun blasts.
Also avoids the perma-invincibility and balance-nightmare that is the current blink, while still retaining the "cool" factor.
Well I can't really tell about the movement speeds, because my performance sucks. So I only can say the onos is fun to play (NS1 Bhopper speaking here lol)