Skulk jump
.ADHd
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Super fun but at a cost....</div>I'm sure it's been brought up before but now in build 208 the skulkjump has been beefed even more. I personally love this feature of NS2 and think it's brilliant and original. The problem is that good players are going to master this and it pretty much makes the marines utterly defenseless. I think the skulkjump needs to stay the way it is and not be nerfed, but instead the marines need a buff to counter this awesome gameplay mechanic.
This might sound like my snotty opinion but I can honestly say that the skulk is the most deadly class on aliens now. They deal as much damage as fades... they are faster than fades... and they are unpredictable and impossible to hit. By the way you can move faster than leap by connecting a few well timed walljumps.
I've played lots of scrims now were my team loses their fades early on and has to skulk the rest of the game... it actually works out to our advantage since the skulk is just as deadly and FREE. The reason we keep losing our fades in the last couple builds is due to the nerfing of it. The old fearless playstyle of using the fade (The one that made fade fun) has now been stripped away and turned the fade mostly into a class that runs away at EVERY engagement. You are lucky as hell if you can kill 1 marine before you have to run away with no armor and almost 0 HP. This is coming from a player whose played this game everyday for a year straight, so I am no fade noob.
Now I am getting sidetracked. The fade needs more carapace to make it better now since armor upgrades completely dominate the fade now.
ANYWAY... back to the skulk. I think since that now carapace has become the default upgrade in this game that the skulk absolutely has to have less health and armor to start. You have to be quakelive pro to be able to hit a skulk moving 100 miles per hour and moving unpredictably through the air. All the competitive players are going to agree with me that the skulk is stupidly hard to land hits on now even with the better FPS and hitreg.
Reduce the skulks starting health to help counter the immediate carapace they get (And now the insane speed they get without the need for leap at all). I know UWE has been focusing on balancing out the metagame and RTS aspects but they have ignore the FPS aspect for too long now. The players are starting to see this imbalance in the FPS combat now and it makes playing marine pretty extremely boring to be honest. I only play as alien now (And everyone knows how I only ever play marine ever). Marine is utterly boring when you can't have fun getting frags on the default class. I mean of course you can still kill skulks in pubs and etc, but when you come across someone who even understands the simplest concept of playing the skulk you will be at a huge disadvantage. Look at my frag video for examples of the imbalance.
This might sound like my snotty opinion but I can honestly say that the skulk is the most deadly class on aliens now. They deal as much damage as fades... they are faster than fades... and they are unpredictable and impossible to hit. By the way you can move faster than leap by connecting a few well timed walljumps.
I've played lots of scrims now were my team loses their fades early on and has to skulk the rest of the game... it actually works out to our advantage since the skulk is just as deadly and FREE. The reason we keep losing our fades in the last couple builds is due to the nerfing of it. The old fearless playstyle of using the fade (The one that made fade fun) has now been stripped away and turned the fade mostly into a class that runs away at EVERY engagement. You are lucky as hell if you can kill 1 marine before you have to run away with no armor and almost 0 HP. This is coming from a player whose played this game everyday for a year straight, so I am no fade noob.
Now I am getting sidetracked. The fade needs more carapace to make it better now since armor upgrades completely dominate the fade now.
ANYWAY... back to the skulk. I think since that now carapace has become the default upgrade in this game that the skulk absolutely has to have less health and armor to start. You have to be quakelive pro to be able to hit a skulk moving 100 miles per hour and moving unpredictably through the air. All the competitive players are going to agree with me that the skulk is stupidly hard to land hits on now even with the better FPS and hitreg.
Reduce the skulks starting health to help counter the immediate carapace they get (And now the insane speed they get without the need for leap at all). I know UWE has been focusing on balancing out the metagame and RTS aspects but they have ignore the FPS aspect for too long now. The players are starting to see this imbalance in the FPS combat now and it makes playing marine pretty extremely boring to be honest. I only play as alien now (And everyone knows how I only ever play marine ever). Marine is utterly boring when you can't have fun getting frags on the default class. I mean of course you can still kill skulks in pubs and etc, but when you come across someone who even understands the simplest concept of playing the skulk you will be at a huge disadvantage. Look at my frag video for examples of the imbalance.
Comments
You can't expect them to nerf something because your aim is lacking, try practice some more :)
And regarding the carapace: Well let's double all alien lifeforms' damage then, as marines just get so much armor (upgrades) in no time. (See my point?)
Personally I think this is the worst thing that can happen - Reducing Skulk starting HP to compensate for Carapace? No thanks.
If Carapace is broken Carapace needs to be fixed, they don't need to alter something as integral as Skulk starting health to compensate.
If Carapace + Skulk movement is broken then one or both needs to be changed.
On topic, I'd rather they adjust carapace (and the other evolutions) properly rather than nerf the skulks health. I am a little bored of crag hive first every game and the inevitable onslaught of carapace skulks.
If skulks actually took 10 bullets to die, or 14 with carapace (at weap 0), I don't think the movement would be that big of an issue. But atm it feels like they sometimes take 25+ to kill which is ridiculous.
On topic, I'd rather they adjust carapace (and the other evolutions) properly rather than nerf the skulks health. I am a little bored of crag hive first every game and the inevitable onslaught of carapace skulks.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm pretty sure they just made it harder to hit and maintain them speeds, there are certain odd-ball angles on ramps you can hit where you go from fast to light-speed in a second - And of course you can maintain a pretty insane speed if you hit Leap/Jumps right.
remember how fast and agile skulks where in original NS? well the engine pushed to 100 constant fps, maxed out netsettings and the servertick overclocked to 1000fps. standard for clanwars and many pubs, you could kill skulks like ###### :)
BUT
they where TINY compared to NS2, in NS2 the skulks are HUGE!!!
so, if they manage to push the quality of the engine and gameplay to a q2/goldsrc niveau,
skulks will die like flies...
and they will have to put in all the pressure the took away from the fade again
and the will also have to shrink the skulk model ... or they simply did not succeed in making a
competitive game worth to challenge the q2/goldsrc :)
(but easily other modern good looking ' ' shooters ' ' like cod and bf)
yes, i am some what provocative, but a very good job needs to be done,
to leave the field behind and stand out of the crowd!
crossing fingers for all of us :)
But yes if hit detection and FPS/server perf match NS1 skulks will get destroyed since they are quite large, but that is something that we are very far away from, and really would need to be addressed then.
Regarding fade they are not under powered at all, and honestly still somewhat op. People are beginning to abuse the damage reduction that blink offers alot more. People also need to learn not to just walker fade around constantly... You basically have an invulnerability ability bound to mouse2, use it.
P.S. It also looks retarded and absurd.
TLDR: Remove violation of newtons 3rd law but make skulk faster to compensate.
Perhaps skulks with 1 hive carapace should have 70H/20A and 2 hive should get the 70/30. Similarly, onos should get an armor nerf at 1 hive; marines don't have enough bullets to kill 3-4 1-hive onos...
BUT the day we get stable fps and hitreg, we will all be asking for a skulk speed buff.
You can't expect them to nerf something because your aim is lacking, try practice some more :)
And regarding the carapace: Well let's double all alien lifeforms' damage then, as marines just get so much armor (upgrades) in no time. (See my point?)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I love people like this. They open their mouths and judge somebody they have never even seen play. The top shots in the entire game are going to agree with me that skulks are too hard to hit (Whether it be due to netcode, fps, or their insane speed). Your post offers nothing to this community or forum by calling other people bad that you don't even know. So, if you have something constructive to say to counter my opinion then feel free.
Actually a few of the top players in NS already posted on this thread with good quality feedback on this topic. Telling the best players that they should "get better aim and practice more" might be a really stupid thing to say... considering I probably have hundreds of more hours than you and practice this game religiously everyday.
I tried really hard there not to use vulgar language or insult you... so be happy about that.
And to clarify, the reason I want less health on the skulk is because the hitreg IS still pretty abysmal. It wouldn't have to be permanent... just until people are actually able to hit skulks when their client is saying they are.
Type ".adhd's frag video" in youtube if you are curious to how bad my aim is.
You guys all brought up good points that I think are all valid. Rant good points, orange I also liked the ambush skulk but I think he's still there... just hard to want to ambush things when you can fly around the map at 100 mph.
And to anyone who thinks the wallhopping isn't op... try jumping around like a madman... jump all around the rines but don't attack them until they have exhausted their ammunition on you. Then go bite them and win. I do that all the time now instead of going for the direct kill. When i wallhop I litterally am impossible to hit... unless I go straight for the kill and make myself an easy target. I am sure people will try this and will end up getting rofl stomped. Wall jumping is NOT easy and takes hard dedicated practice to due well. If everyone can get good at it (Which they will) it's going to become a big issue for marine vs skulk combat early game.
This walljumping is a new thing and once people learn it it's going to be abused hardcore. Having better aim on marines might help a little but lets be realistic here....
Dragon, the fades are def not OP anymore in my eyes. If you remember our old pre build 200 fades THEY were OP, but thats back when hitreg was still pretty horrendous. You can still be very good with fades in this build but the gameplay is different with them. Their blink was nerfed a few patches ago and the fade has a lot less energy at his disposal now. It's not as viable to spam blink anymore because you wont have enough energy to attack and then retreat. It might work in pubs but when you play people who can aim and work in groups the fade is pretty useless to be honest. 2 marines (Even at level 0) will lay waste to a fade in these builds. You may disagree but fading against a bunch of directionless and solo marines in a pub isn't an accurate way to judge the balancing of fades.
If skulks actually took 10 bullets to die, or 14 with carapace (at weap 0), I don't think the movement would be that big of an issue. But atm it feels like they sometimes take 25+ to kill which is ridiculous.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I have noticed this too. To be an effective skulk in NS2, you want to take the advantage of your speed because it reduces hit registration. This should be regarded as a bug and should be fixed ASAP, but I think this is going to be on the back burner for a long time.
I can kill a skulk with about 15 bullets that's stationary and eating a powernode. On the other hand, once the speed of the skulk increases, the hit registration drops (this was the same for the lerk in the previous builds).
Obviously fades vs 3/3 marines is more even, but still careful fading then can still be quite powerful.
And regarding the old fade yes that was more like onos level overpowered.
Obviously fades vs 3/3 marines is more even, but still careful fading then can still be quite powerful.
And regarding the old fade yes that was more like onos level overpowered.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cmon dragon this isn't a competition of whose played more gathers and scrims. You probably gather a lot more because I don't enjoy playing with the same 10 people everyday. It get's stagnant. Which is why I only like to play scrims now. I am just surprised that you think the fade is OP in these builds. Armor 2 is all you need for fades now, and no offense but even a lot of people in scrims and gathers don't have the best aim. This game is still small and the community is also small. I don't think people have even scratched the surface in the amount of skilled players that are about to enter this game on 1.0. I honestly haven't been too impressed by any players other than a couple handfuls in this game so far. Once performance is amazing (which it will be) this game is going to explode and all these teams in the game currently are going to get some serious spankings once people learn the game. Imagine having 100 servers all populated and full. The amount of skill is going to increase 10 fold. Which is why people need to take these OP aspects seriously NOW.
If skulks actually took 10 bullets to die, or 14 with carapace (at weap 0), I don't think the movement would be that big of an issue. But atm it feels like they sometimes take 25+ to kill which is ridiculous.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
same for me.
And clearly the skill level will increase, but honestly there is little skill in this game currently, beyond basic knowledge of the lifeforms and their abilities.
Makes aliens very boring to play.
And clearly the skill level will increase, but honestly there is little skill in this game currently, beyond basic knowledge of the lifeforms and their abilities.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I didn't call you out as a pub fade just saying a lot of people think of balancing the game so it sympathizes with noobies (Which has it's place). Now we have clarified where you judge your balance from and neither way of looking at balance is totally right or wrong. This game is trying to sell afterall. Don't take it as a personal attack to you and your skill level which I know are good.
Have you considered that the people you gather with play this game religiously and already have high skill levels? There honestly is not much competition in NS2 right now when you think of it. I think you understand where I am coming from. It's also not fair to judge somethings OPness by continually playing with the best players in the entire game.
The game needs to optimized a lot more. Only once the game plays smooth will any fine tweaking really matter.
On my machine the bad performance adds to that, as with 20FPS you can forget anything that is like slide - aim + shoot (at the same time). It's more like: slide too far - shoot - slide back too far - shoot - dead.
Marines would be pretty strong (until Onoses are up) if the performance was great. I think they'd actually completely destroy the aliens as the numbers are set right now.
Skulks may as well start with leap like in old builds... haha just kidding.
Isn't that exactly what you should be doing?
Also, theres no real way for most people to know what skill level someone is at in this game until stats are implemented. Because of this, and the ego accompanied by so many gamers, people will assume things are OP when they actually aren't at all...e.g. wall hopping. Like SOME *cough* posters here who might end up getting extremely rofl stomped by someone whose played nearly 1000 hours of NS2 then they come on the forums and complain. Even when stats are out it won't mean much since a lot like to mess around in pubs (Like me).
What will matter is stats tracked by a gaming league site or something like that. So many people complain about OP this and OP that... how can we know they aren't just playing an INSANE player? I am sick to death of all the nerfing of the skillbased aspects of this game. It makes me want to cry... litterally. That how much I love this game.
Also, how does celerity fit into this equation?
I think we really need a video that shows how impossible it is to hit a good wall jumper right now. Than the people will understand. Right now, it is really overpowered.
The Skulk is a glass cannon -> super strong, but getting hit by a shotgun means death in most cases. I think this is a huge problem to balance, because people like Treffnix, Fana, Tomb raider Chronicles or Elmo (and others of course) tend to hit much more often with the shotgun.
So the effictiveness of the skulk is either useless or super strong.
I personally prefer fighting fades, because I may not kill them all the time, but I definitley hit them (making them retreat). Lerks are usually easy kills.
Maybe a possible solution for the shotgun is to increase the spread, but lower its damage a bit and for the assault rifle a more reliable stun.
Yes skulk is useful and hard to kill at times but that is mostly just hit detection and low fps, you do not generally one shot a skulk, that takes decent aim and a good bit of luck with the shotgun.
Regarding lmg vs skulk balance i would say skulk wall jump is somewhat op, but moreso when used as a purely evasive skill, and not as a gap closer. The speed you can get however can be probably a little extreme, but its hard 2 say as that does take some decent practice, timing and the correct situations to really achieve. I dont think many (if any) players truly have mastered that yet, as it takes good proficiency with the jumps and good knowledge of the maps.