Thoughts on 209
TrC
Join Date: 2008-11-30 Member: 65612Members
Join Date: 2008-11-30 Member: 65612Members
Quick thoughts on newest Natural Selection 2 patch (209)
Patch notes <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/</a>
Original <a href="http://exertus.q-q.name/?p=440" target="_blank">http://exertus.q-q.name/?p=440</a>
The newest patch introduced a lot of new features and some quite huges changes. The most notable ones are the new chamber "shift" for the aliens, lerk getting his bite back and marines losing their gl attachment on light machine gun (LMG). I'm going to give a brief thoughts on how this affects the game try not to emphasize the underlying problems which are resource system, energy and performance.
The Shift has passive ability that gives surrounding aliens more adrenaline and ability to produce more spawning eggs I dont see these two abilities have huge (negative) effect in the game. Shift has more abilities that can be a bit questionable "Echo" is an ability to move structures instantly anymore on the infestation, it allows very interesting moves for the commander however can be a bit exploitable with the bombard or umbra ability such as base rush with umbra/bombard or bombarding RTs down. Ultimately the problem is with the energy of course. Upgrades for lifeforms include celerity and hypermutation, celerity increases your speed as long as you keep moving forward and do not get hit. The speed increase is way too much as marines have close to no chance of getting you down before you up close easily nullifying ranged vs melee advantage marines are supposed to have. Every lifeform benefits from this upgrade which is great but the speed bonus is way too much (especially on lifeforms).
I personally rather see static bonus to base speed as it is much simpler and everyone still benefits from it, it promotes more teamplay as people are less likely to just ram ahead and you dont lose the speed just because you wait for someone to arrive for help. Decreasing the max speed is necessery (maybe faster acceleration?) but subtly only as it is the key feature for shift. Hypermutation allows you gain resources back if you gestate from higher lifeform (res cost) to a lower one. In theory it is great idea that allows you to change your play according to situation the game is at however! It also allows you to gain every lifeform everytime when res peaks certain point ie. 50 , 75. What this means you could have your whole team lerk @ 30 res , fade @ 50 res , onos @ 75 res assuming nobody dies. Obviously it wont be this sweet in action but lifeforms like fade have high probability of surviving and it is not odd to have 3-4 still alive when the res peaks 75 allowing them to quickly traverse to base gestate in matter of seconds and rush the base with 4 onoses. Troublesome as it is not easily counterable especially without jetpacks.
Lerks received significant boost to armor and also an ability to poison bite. I assume the idea behind the armor boost was to allow lerk to get closer and take more hits but it really hurts marines as the previous "counter" to the lerks the shotgun received two "negative impact" against lerk one of them being the armor upgrade and the second increased spread. Shotgun's light damage does far less damage to armor making it extremely difficult to do damage to a flying lerk when the damage is dependable on how close you are to your target (damage not necesserely pellets hit). I'm also no fan of the dot effect from poison bite, faster attack speed lower damage or higher damage lower rof would have been much better way to address this "Cant be the same as skulkbite" issue. I find the risk of engaging marine as a lerk minimal as opposed it to being risk and reward situation.
There was a lot of relevant changes as well such as gorge getting bilebomb, good change finally worthy skill for gorge. Onos stomp no longer affecting structures was probably necessery, but I dont see still onos working something that sits and takes damage is not appealing to play. Aliens no longer gain resources when they are dead, I dont know who the devs are trying to cheat but this is quite stupid as it barely changes "the explosion", it incentivizes players to be less useful (You are not useful when running back to hive and back to action / dying is faster) and "rewards" passivity. Removing gl attachment from light machine gun and adding standalone grenadelauncher deserves an applause. Not only was it OP the spamming was just so silly.
Not to forget appreciating the countless bug fixes you can see from the actual changelog
Patch notes <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/</a>
Original <a href="http://exertus.q-q.name/?p=440" target="_blank">http://exertus.q-q.name/?p=440</a>
The newest patch introduced a lot of new features and some quite huges changes. The most notable ones are the new chamber "shift" for the aliens, lerk getting his bite back and marines losing their gl attachment on light machine gun (LMG). I'm going to give a brief thoughts on how this affects the game try not to emphasize the underlying problems which are resource system, energy and performance.
The Shift has passive ability that gives surrounding aliens more adrenaline and ability to produce more spawning eggs I dont see these two abilities have huge (negative) effect in the game. Shift has more abilities that can be a bit questionable "Echo" is an ability to move structures instantly anymore on the infestation, it allows very interesting moves for the commander however can be a bit exploitable with the bombard or umbra ability such as base rush with umbra/bombard or bombarding RTs down. Ultimately the problem is with the energy of course. Upgrades for lifeforms include celerity and hypermutation, celerity increases your speed as long as you keep moving forward and do not get hit. The speed increase is way too much as marines have close to no chance of getting you down before you up close easily nullifying ranged vs melee advantage marines are supposed to have. Every lifeform benefits from this upgrade which is great but the speed bonus is way too much (especially on lifeforms).
I personally rather see static bonus to base speed as it is much simpler and everyone still benefits from it, it promotes more teamplay as people are less likely to just ram ahead and you dont lose the speed just because you wait for someone to arrive for help. Decreasing the max speed is necessery (maybe faster acceleration?) but subtly only as it is the key feature for shift. Hypermutation allows you gain resources back if you gestate from higher lifeform (res cost) to a lower one. In theory it is great idea that allows you to change your play according to situation the game is at however! It also allows you to gain every lifeform everytime when res peaks certain point ie. 50 , 75. What this means you could have your whole team lerk @ 30 res , fade @ 50 res , onos @ 75 res assuming nobody dies. Obviously it wont be this sweet in action but lifeforms like fade have high probability of surviving and it is not odd to have 3-4 still alive when the res peaks 75 allowing them to quickly traverse to base gestate in matter of seconds and rush the base with 4 onoses. Troublesome as it is not easily counterable especially without jetpacks.
Lerks received significant boost to armor and also an ability to poison bite. I assume the idea behind the armor boost was to allow lerk to get closer and take more hits but it really hurts marines as the previous "counter" to the lerks the shotgun received two "negative impact" against lerk one of them being the armor upgrade and the second increased spread. Shotgun's light damage does far less damage to armor making it extremely difficult to do damage to a flying lerk when the damage is dependable on how close you are to your target (damage not necesserely pellets hit). I'm also no fan of the dot effect from poison bite, faster attack speed lower damage or higher damage lower rof would have been much better way to address this "Cant be the same as skulkbite" issue. I find the risk of engaging marine as a lerk minimal as opposed it to being risk and reward situation.
There was a lot of relevant changes as well such as gorge getting bilebomb, good change finally worthy skill for gorge. Onos stomp no longer affecting structures was probably necessery, but I dont see still onos working something that sits and takes damage is not appealing to play. Aliens no longer gain resources when they are dead, I dont know who the devs are trying to cheat but this is quite stupid as it barely changes "the explosion", it incentivizes players to be less useful (You are not useful when running back to hive and back to action / dying is faster) and "rewards" passivity. Removing gl attachment from light machine gun and adding standalone grenadelauncher deserves an applause. Not only was it OP the spamming was just so silly.
Not to forget appreciating the countless bug fixes you can see from the actual changelog
Comments
+1. Something I thought about right away. I don't see the developers logic on creating gameplay elements that detract from the teamplay aspect of the game. You need teamplayers to win... and skulks need to go do as much damage as they can on every life. Adding this mechanic promotes camping and doing nothing for the team. I can't wrap my head around some of the design decisions. I know at first glance they seem to fix a problem but when you think more in depth (Like you) it's easy to see how bad things can be. It was a good attempt at trying to help the tech explosion but in all is going to damage the fun and <i>point</i> of the game.
UWE needs to understand that the fun factor of their videogame needs to be top priority. If they keep removing the fun and polished aspects of the game to bring in newer and much worse ideas then they are gonna be shooting themselves in the foot. This build is a big test in my eyes, but this could have been avoided by simple forward thinking.
in practice it doesnt make that much difference though. people generally dont want to die anyway & if you're doing a suicide run for some tactical reason you know you're likely dead going in.
the real issue is it doesnt seem to be solving the tech explosion (at least in early returns) & without that benefit it is an unnecessary rule in the game.
This
While the idea is nice in theory, its actual impact on the game is neglible. A better way to stop the tech explosion is to reimplement lifeform upgrade costs (but differentiate the cost based on the lifeform, i.e carapace on skulk is much cheaper than carapace on onos)
However i think it is harder on newer players than rfk would be, and has a larger snowball effect (aliens with a bad start are less likely to come back).
Regarding tech explosions i dont personally believe they are a huge problem in the game, as long as they have a reasonable counter (good fades previously didnt have much of a counter, however the 210 shotgun make fix alot of that).
games are long most of the time
you see all the life forms being used not just skulk and onos
Feels pretty well balanced(25 games pretty even split)
Marine aim seems to be better IDK maybe its just the optimization helping everyone
I have noticed a significant drop in performance on my end, however. I think I was around 30 fps in 208, and now I'm lucky if I get 15.
games are long most of the time
you see all the life forms being used not just skulk and onos
Feels pretty well balanced(25 games pretty even split)
Marine aim seems to be better IDK maybe its just the optimization helping everyone<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
10/10...
.....10/10
People making false claims makes it a bit less clear what is good feedback and bad feedback.
e.g. the quoted part jucci is referring to says "it feels pretty balanced".....even the developers have stated there is an issue, so that is obviously a false statement.
Alien commander has been changed for so much the better, its so much MORE FUN to play, so much more to do, you really have an impact on the team. I actually feel that alien commander is at the level where noobs fear commanding, as they do with the marine commander. I think this is a good thing!
Skulks die much more easily, although lerks die harder. Level 2 weps seem to make lerks think twice tho, and level 3 seem to put them down, as well as putting fades down. Fades take about half a clip from a level 3 lmg, and despite what people say, can easily be solod with some skill and luck!
Lerks, are so much fun to play, i quite literrally can barely play sometimes for laughing :D And it has also stopped the onos rush being main tatic played by aliens, not only can fades and lerks take marines out, but they are a lot more fun than onos!
As for balancee, all ican say is meh, balancing can be done (and no doubt will be done) when the game has been tested with ALL features in place, it just seems silly to me that people are gettin wound up over it, yes there appears to be a slight alien imbalance, but its beta!!
Cant wait to see where you take it next :)
Hunter
I can see the mechanic being used to refine, adjust and fine tune the tech/res model if necessary, but it's not a solution by itself and should be considered only after the bigger outlines are set to stone.