Shotgun too big a leap in one bound?
Imbalanxd
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
<div class="IPBDescription">lets have some reciprocity</div>So, the way the second and third hives provided upgrades was changed because there was too big a jump in alien capabilities when each came into existence. The same could be said for what happened to carapace, with its speed reduction. I think its time to see some reciprocal nerfing on the marines side, with regards to shotguns.
The shotgun is a very powerful weapon, even against higher life forms and carapace. Against a no carapace skulk, its laughably overpowered. I just played a few games (I don't want to go into how many), where the marine team dropped an armoury and immediately upgraded shotguns in the first 10 seconds. They proceeded to build entire bases in the hive rooms while helpless aliens could only look on in wonder, from spectator mode (ghost aliens). Now I suppose these weren't your average players, and their FPS was probably quite a bit higher than most, but the rape was still blatant enough for even an idiot to identify quite a glaring imbalance, or at least the existence of a massive jump between no shotguns, and shotguns.
So here's my suggestion: as the shotgun is essentially the new HMG, in the absence of the actual HMG, should it not be upgradeable only from advanced armouries? I think that that is the most diplomatic solution, otherwise a flat out nerf to the shotgun is required, in my opinion.
The shotgun is a very powerful weapon, even against higher life forms and carapace. Against a no carapace skulk, its laughably overpowered. I just played a few games (I don't want to go into how many), where the marine team dropped an armoury and immediately upgraded shotguns in the first 10 seconds. They proceeded to build entire bases in the hive rooms while helpless aliens could only look on in wonder, from spectator mode (ghost aliens). Now I suppose these weren't your average players, and their FPS was probably quite a bit higher than most, but the rape was still blatant enough for even an idiot to identify quite a glaring imbalance, or at least the existence of a massive jump between no shotguns, and shotguns.
So here's my suggestion: as the shotgun is essentially the new HMG, in the absence of the actual HMG, should it not be upgradeable only from advanced armouries? I think that that is the most diplomatic solution, otherwise a flat out nerf to the shotgun is required, in my opinion.
Comments
sg early game are bad enough
but lvl3 sg vs skulks is pure evil ^^
Probably you were just dealing with a skill-stacked team, with alot of new alien players.
I do admit though that skulks have a skill ceiling that puts them at a disadvantage to a shotgunner. Expert skulk player vs expert shotgun user, shotgun user will win. Skulks movement and bunny hopping isn't open enough to combat them.
Explain to me the process of dodging another players shotgun shot.
<!--quoteo(post=1967019:date=Aug 27 2012, 02:21 PM:name=Syknik)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Syknik @ Aug 27 2012, 02:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1967019"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you are close to the marine and get the initial bite on him, most of the time he'll go down. Skulks should always be working in teams as much as possible. It would be silly to go up against 1+ marines who have a shotgun unless if you knew you had the advantage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok so, early game, 1 and a half minutes in, 7 aliens on the ground vs 7 marines on the ground, every marine has a shotgun, no alien should take on a marine 1v1. What do?
It would be nice to be able to destroy shotguns (weapons in general) by biting them. That would make them less frequent and more balanced on its own instead of nerfing damage or increasing cost etc.
Remember you're playing in a beta. Build 217 is around the corner, which will be a completely different animal. Technically, balance is about 50/50, so it stands to reason that as unbalanced as individual moments appear to be, on the whole, both teams seem to be doing well enough to win in this build.
This suggestion will go exactly nowhere, because the HMG <i>will</i> come out eventually (or whatever it will be) and then we will have entirely new balance discussions to have.
My two cents on this discussion are that a LMG in the hands of the right player can be exactly as effective as the shotgun, it just happens over a longer span of time instead of BANG-DEAD.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Ok so, early game, 1 and a half minutes in, 7 aliens on the ground vs 7 marines on the ground, every marine has a shotgun, no alien should take on a marine 1v1. What to do?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Avoid the marines entirely and rush the CC. Alien win.
This holds as much balance value as saying, "prevent them from getting technology X by rushing them early". No offense. :-)
And one hit of the shotgun is enough to kill the skulk. The skulk has to land several hits, if the marine is supported with med packs and nano shield it is even worse.
I think Cee Colon Slash's point was not so much that such a strategy mitigates the problem all together, but rather that a solution, albeit a less than ideal one, exists to the problem such that it is not completely game breaking.
The early shotgun rush is problematic, but Cee Colon Slash is right in that the game is still in beta, and there are upcoming features that will ultimately change the landscape of the game. It's good to note these problems now and keep them in mind, but we really cannot have a meaningful talk about balancing the shotguns until we see where they fall in the completed tech tree of the marines.
At any rate, I do agree that the early shotgun rush strategy needs to be examined closely, as I don't really think NS is very interesting to play if games are always decided in the first two minutes.
I think part of the problem is in the structure of the marine resource system. I haven't spent enough time looking at it to really reach any conclusion, but it seems much easier for the marines to acquire resources in the early game than it is for the alien team. That advantage, coupled with the relatively low cost of their weapons, and their re-usability, seems to give them a much stronger tech advantage over the alien lifeforms.
Its certainly something to consider, but again, I'm not so sure we can really reach a meaningful conclusion before all of the primary features are implemented.
This is actually a valid strategy, though I think its more of a problem than a counter. Basically it seems like aliens either rush and win in the first 3 or 4 minutes, or they lose to JP GL.
I don't know how they calculate win/lose but if they are doing so by the end of game message (Aliens Win! / Marines Win!) and it gets sent to a UWE stats server for tallying then it would probably be inaccurate in this build because of the current bug which makes the "Aliens Win" message show up during certain scenarios when in reality... Marines actually won.
Now the alternative is that they are actually analyzing elements of the game in every server such that they know if the hive count actually reached 0 or if the CC count reached 0. That seems unlikely to me as if I were the one who programmed it I would assume the end of game message was accurate and use that for statistical purposes (since you really can't predict a bug in the win/lose message).
Now with that being said, I've noticed about a 50/50 win/lose ratio for my games but I've heard a lot of people complain about imbalance so I'm curious.
I've seen my share of extended games with Fade-rape the entire match only to be ended by an Onos or Gorge on the power. Right now the skill gap (and fps gap) in players is so huge that 1 good player on either team is enough to shift the balance overwhelmingly to one side.
I'm curious about this. In what kind of circumstances does this happen in?
It seems like it happens randomly, but seems to happen in 50% of all cases when marines win. People say its just a visual bug, but I'm not so sure. A bug like that shouldn't exist unless they mixed the marines win/marines lose sprites around.
Either way it doesn't really matter. I think the main reason the balance of this patch is anywhere close to 50/50 is because of how overpowered the gorge's bilebomb is. When you combine this with how mind numbingly useless the gorge is in public play, and how viable it is in organised play, you get a massive disparity between the two.
Well that's another problem. Its easy to just go rapid upgrade when you see shotguns early in the game. However, from what I have seen, 80-90% of good games won by aliens occur when they drop the second hive within a minute of the start of the game. Rushing upgrades seems to be severely detrimental to the alien team. On the other hand, rushing shotguns really isn't that big of a deal. It gives you massive defence and offence capabilities (which, lets be honest, carapace does not, slow ######s).
Its like sure, you can go carapace to sort of even the fields against shotguns (in my opinion shotguns are still stronger, but I can't prove that), but in the long run you end up just screwing yourself over.
Only that shotguns are easier to get than carapace. And they scale (maybe too) good with skill of the player, killing a player with 1 shot isn't fun for the player which is being shot. Especially if you need yourself a lot of hits to kill a marine.
Someone said that you should attack a marine with a shotgun with several skulks. While you're damage output it higher this way it is also easier for the marine to kill a skulk since the chance for missing a target is lower.
I really don't know if marine should have a weapon so early which can 1 shot skulks, especially with the current spawn system of the aliens.
Just to put it in perspective, I think the shotgun was fine in NS1 because it was possible to, as it has been said previously, simply avoid the shotgun marines. The maps were so large that you could just go somewhere else, bide your time, attack when the time was right. In NS2 maps, confrontation is far too prevalent and far to unavoidable. If the marines start 10 sprinting seconds from your hive, you can't really choose to avoid them.
And that's fine, I'm not saying that's a fundamentally bad way for NS games to play out. But it does create a scenario where you are forcing people to fight a battle they have little to no chance of winning. I just think its a bad idea to have this massively powerful weapon available so soon, at least so long as the marine who wields it maintains his mobility and maneuverability. Maybe a 20% speed reduction to marines carrying shotguns would add a better spin to the combat dynamic? At least then avoidance would be kind of viable.
Unless the point here is that alien's shouldn't have to change their play style against upgraded marine tech?
Also, if the early shotgun rush fails, the marines will most likely lose since they spent all their p.res on shotguns and wont have much for the next few min.
Unless the point here is that alien's shouldn't have to change their play style against upgraded marine tech?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem with this is that the shotgun is pretty much available from start. A good fps player will kill a skulk with 1 shot. The skulk has problems getting close to the marine to even deal damage. Camping for a marine is trouble some because a good marine will check all dark spots and ceilings. Or he will know that you're there because of MT or a scan. Also while you're camping you obviously can't destroy RTs or stop them from advancing on the other side of the map. When you manage to get close to the marine you have to hit him several times to kill him while he has only to hit you once, if he aims bad or is unlucky twice. A shotgun can be picked up when dropped so in theory no res is lost of the shotgunner is being killed, without the aliens being able to stop them from (besides from camping the weapon and trying to kill all incoming marines). Aliens lose all their res when they die. The current spawn system with the long respawn times for aliens is also a problem.
These are all things that a are currently problematic and some of them need adjustments in my eyes. I like the shotgun design in general but currently she's to powerful in skilled hands and to early available in game.
If only, but we don't.
As for ambushing shotgunners. This game is too fast paced for that. If you are sitting somewhere, waiting for a player to come along, then you are a detriment to your team. You can wait, while they take the rest of the map.
I say, isnt that what the lerk is f..... oh wait.
*edit*
any real problems with skulks not scaling well against equally skilled shotgunners is a problem with the mismatch between real skulk movement potential and model size.
Roughly the same low level of air control and speed profile as ns1 (without excessive walljumpsploiting) but considerably bigger model size. Hard to predict, but i'm guessing 217 may see overall winrates shift marine-side as a result of carapace numbers going back to normal and shotguns finally being able to one shot reliably.
Its a 20 res upgrade, which isn't that bad at all. Consider that carapace costs 45 res in total, and can be taken away in 8 seconds by a single shotgun marine. The cost to marines is not worth considering, since an LMG marine compared to a shotgun marine is not the same as a skulk compared to a fade, if you know what I mean. Losing a shotgun sucks, but its not that big a deal. Losing a fade is a catastrophe.
The fact that it isn't even economically that big a deal for marines to equip up to two entire 5 man squads of pure shotgun anytime they want in the game. There's no timing when the res becomes available to make such an investment, just a one time randomly chosen relatively cheap upgrade and massive shotgun spam.
Having to decide between upgrades/tech and more equipment is one of the things I miss the most.