Is the Onos fun?
Jakkar
Join Date: 2006-12-02 Member: 58826Members
Join Date: 2006-12-02 Member: 58826Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Discuss.</div>From a Marine's perspective, the Onos is a rapidly rotating mass of poorly animated flesh, nearly as fast as a skulk, who can run in, do damage, absorb damage, then run out for healing, rinsed and repeated.
I don't find this entertaining in the slightest to fight against. Does anyone else? Looking to gauge opinion and provoke discussion.
The Onos is to my mind a tank - lumbering, crude, loud. Incapable of subtlety, requires 'infantry support' but can take and deal massive damage. This NS2 incarnation of the Invisible/Silent/Celerity Onos, charging whispering quiet or sitting invisible, darting in and out like a slow-motion Fade in plate-mail, is bad enough.
Four of them 20 minutes into the game, against LMGs? That's something else entirely.
Is the Onos fundamentally 'wrong'? Has NS2 forgotten what an Onos <i>is</i> in the quest for 'balance'? Why is this slow, lumbering tank a hit-and-run ninja capable of killing an entire squad?
I am not enjoying NS2, at this point, and this frustrates me, as I'd love to love this game.
I don't find this entertaining in the slightest to fight against. Does anyone else? Looking to gauge opinion and provoke discussion.
The Onos is to my mind a tank - lumbering, crude, loud. Incapable of subtlety, requires 'infantry support' but can take and deal massive damage. This NS2 incarnation of the Invisible/Silent/Celerity Onos, charging whispering quiet or sitting invisible, darting in and out like a slow-motion Fade in plate-mail, is bad enough.
Four of them 20 minutes into the game, against LMGs? That's something else entirely.
Is the Onos fundamentally 'wrong'? Has NS2 forgotten what an Onos <i>is</i> in the quest for 'balance'? Why is this slow, lumbering tank a hit-and-run ninja capable of killing an entire squad?
I am not enjoying NS2, at this point, and this frustrates me, as I'd love to love this game.
Comments
I mean you dont even feel powerful running around as Onos.
In Exosuit you feel freaking godlike, crushing eggs with your feet. shooting and owning everything, you lights light up everything.
They should really take a page out of Starcraft 2, lets give Onos some front melee blades or something. just running up and moving the front legs up, talking about unsatifying attack. :(
It requires zero skill to run into a room head first and just splat 2 marines with little to no self-preservation at work.
as alien, onos is necessary to end the game because it's the only powerful alien unit. i like it a lot more than being in an exo
Also, I am an alien player. Thought I should point that out.
Yes it's fun to occasionally be that huge unstoppable force. I feel powerful. But having to go Onos every game just to stay relevant is where it gets to be not fun. Since the Onos is so simple the gameplay for it is kind of stale beyond the whole "Unstoppable force" thing. In other words, if going fade were more viable or it didn't feel like a waste to do other lifeforms, then Onos would be fine.
Onos should have a price increase I think as Onos spam is just annoying as marines and boring as aliens. Then buff other lifeforms to compensate for a delayed Onos. I want to play fade and I do sometimes and do ok but it feels like I'm intentionally gimping myself when I can wait 5 more minutes and go Onos and be far far stronger and more useful.
I think that's why it's boring to play as Onos right now. It's too easily achieved and you spend most of your time playing it. For example the Tank in L4D didn't suffer this due to it's limited nature. Also the other SI were effective in their own ways and there was plenty of variety.
Sure you can still go other lifeforms but it seems there's no "real" reason to do it other than variety. I want there to be a reason to go fade or lerk. I want to be able to go gorge for something OTHER than healing an Onos. I want to be able to be skulk lategame and be on par with no equipment marines.
Onos should stay strong but they need to not be so common/easy to get. Seeing an Onos should inspire fear "OH NOES!" not "Oh, another one, sigh".
I kind of rambled on but that's just my general thoughts. Just throwing out what in general seems to me to be the problem.
Right now its the only contender for killing power in the lategame alien army
As for attacking Onos, i usually find it quite fun as well and assuming you're playing with a half decent team, killing an Onos isn't too difficult.
Retreat to a safer area (quite easy if you have a jet-pack) keep firing at Onos and make sure to chase it as it retreats (too many people let Onos escape, which allows it to heal and repeat the attack)
The only problem i have with the Onos is, they're quite easy to get early in the game, which just can lead to several Onos within 10 minutes of the game starting, which isn't fun to play against and not really fun to play as either.
However, because of how easy it is to get on the field (and because its necessary to end any match as the Aliens) it is not as fun as it could be. If it was something that only appeared if the marines took too long and the Aliens felt like screwing around, then it could be fun. It would bring back that 'oh ######!' feeling as opposed to the 'hey, yea... its an onos guys' that we get now after your first few encounters with the onos.
That being said, why should the skill ceiling be any higher? Its a big bulky lifeform that wrecks things, a skilled onos retreats with more than enough health to get away safely, and only attacks significant positions with an escort to assist.
As opposed to all other Alien lifeforms, which have very little room for mistakes unless you want to instantly die to a shotgun blast from a marine. The only exception being the gorge, who isn't really a front line fighter anyway and doesn't require you to learn any fancing jumping or flying moves.
Meanwhile the marines just have to know how the aliens are going to dodge and shoot them. Even a tactic as simple as sending 1 marine ahead while you just shoot all around him to hit the aliens that attack him drops the skill requirements to a bare minimum. The 1HKO shotgun and grenade launcher only reduce the skill needed even further, as well as your A3 and W3 upgrades that ultimately make dealing with any lesser aliens a joke. Even your exo isn't that hard to learn. As long as you don't go solo-rambo with it you're guaranteed to have a successful run. Even then you don't need the exo to deal with Aliens. A jetpacker with a grenade launcher and an escort of shotguns (and maybe a flamethrower) can easily wipe out an Alien hive, with STILL very little skill needed at all once you reach that point.
Ultimately if you're going to put out balances for the onos you're going to need to rebalance the rest of the Alien team to fill the gap that the onos is currently filling (which is basically all of mid-late game. Maybe you get some lerks and fades but they'll never be worth their investment as much as the onos is in the current state of the game).
Here's the problem.
Exos work pretty well, even though they are slow and lumbering (as the Onos should be). This is because, even though they are classified a priority by the alien players, deciding to focus something down is only half the battle. Now you actually have to <b>get over there</b>, and attack it.
Not so for the marine team unfortunately. When an Onos enters a room, every marine in that room knows the Onos is there, and every one of them can immediately begin to attack that Onos. What does this mean? It means that if the Onos is slow in combat, the Onos is dead in combat. I mean sure, its tank, but its not THAT tank. It still needs to be able to swiftly kill whatever is shooting at it, or it will die just like anything else.
I made a suggestion in the appropriate forum, for a second hive Onos ability called berserk. When used, it would give the Onos the speed and agility that it requires to be effective in combat, however without it, the Onos would be much slower than it currently is.
When this makes it into the game the onos will be fun to play.
As of right now it is necessary evil. Onos is a turn off your brain lifeform. run in, hit, kill, run out, heal, repeat. so monotonous it kills alien gameplay.
And from the Marine point of view hoping in vain that your teammates kill the onos and you survive.
The problem is that there's too many Onos. Without breathers between Onos, the marines have a hard time pushing. This means other alien classes need to be more viable or necessary in early to mid-game so that fewer players have the resources to go Onos. Saving up for them needs to be more dangerous.
There at least needs to be a quick fix until that can be balanced out. Just adding 5-10 resources to the cost, maybe?
Also, yes, the feedback for the gore is a little poor. But the stomp marine fall animation is far worse... almost non-existent.
An OK Onos supported by great Gorges and Lerks is awesome, whereas a great Onos supported by crappy Gorges and Lerks is merely ok and can easily result in a dead Onos. This is especially true if the Marines have jet packs, Exo's, or are really working together as a team themselves.
I think it's awesome that a 10res life form is actually better at base-breaking and taking out Exo's than a 75res Onos, and can never understand why more teams don't upgrade Bile Bomb as the first upgrade. Leap is ok I suppose and spores or blink can definitely turn things around, but when you have two hives and want a third? Bile Bomb is pretty much the best and cheapest answer.
I'm sure there are people who will disagree and say even a crappy Onos is impossible or overly difficult to kill, but if the Aliens have Onos and the Marines don't start really researching Weapons upgrades (or don't already have them)...well I don't know what to tell you. It's possible to rush that tech like any other, and as people have pointed out you can have Exo pretty darn early. That T.Res could have net you a lot bigger advantage by moving up the Weapons upgrade tree I'd wager. Especially on public servers where Marines can field overwhelming firepower against a lone Onos. Even a new NS2 player can hit an Onos, it's the definition of 'broad side of a barn'.
But onos skill is imo less about the energy/hp management and more about a) choosing your targets properly and b) knowing where to be on the map.
Choosing your targets properly means not being baited by the marine jumping into a small crevice, or being able to stomp properly and kill 2-3 marines with just a couple of lmb clicks. As to the second point, Onos is significantly less mobile than late game marines, you make a big difference for your team when you are forcing a beacon or pressuring a tech point before your khammander even tells you to do it. While this is true for the other alien life forms, it's not nearly to the same degree.
So for me, a lot of the fun does come from charging in and goring fools, but there is lots of strategical satisfaction to be had from playing a smart, map-aware onos.
Ah, and as for playing against it: ignoring six-minute tres onos, you'll have jetpacks when the onos start to arrive, and JP vs onos is fair. Smart marine players will flank the onos and/or cutoff its retreat path, they go down pretty easy.
I actually like the idea that the onos replace it's fast, almost unnoticable attack with longer to execute, more powerful attacks. That way you have to time them better or you wont kill X amount of people before having to retreat. It wont make the onos slower to kill marines unless you miss a hit.