Changes I'd Like To See In The Near Future

Jarl Ballin' · November 2012

I thought I would list some things I personally feel need to be changed. To increase balance and functionality of the game. There are so many things askew right now and I was hoping the community and developers could come together.

Console Related:

-Add the ability to copy/paste server information to connect via console.
>This is especially useful in competitive regards when connecting to private servers.
(e.g. "connect 64.94.100.240:27015; password secret")

-More performance related console commands.
>Tweak graphics related commands, network rates, and other performance variables not included in the options.
See: <a href="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Console_Command_List" target="_blank">https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Co...le_Command_List</a>

-Console commands stick instead of being reset every map change.
>As of right now console commands entered by the user are reset upon map change.

Balancing Related:

>>Marines<<

-Shotgun spread increased or damage reduced.
>The shotgun shoots too straight and is able to do full damage from too far away.

-Increase penalty for marine jump.
>Marines can jump to avoid damage too easily. Any marine with half a brain is spamming the jump key as soon as a "Wild Skulk Appears". They already have an advantage at being the ranged unit. This just makes it more in there favor.

-Reduce damage of Grenade Launcher projectiles through solid objects and structures.
>I can't tell you how frustrating it is being a gorge behind a clog wall being bombarded with GL spam. Taking the full damage behind the protection of your wall or behind buildings seems unbalanced.

-Make empty Exosuits take damage.
>If alien eggs are able to be taken out by rogue marines in the alien base then anything dropped by the marine commander should be treated as the same.

-Remove ARC ability to destroy eggs and cysts.
>Currently when ARCS are sieging a hive it damages cysts and eggs. A player can be right next to the building that's getting hit and take 0 damage. Eggs are units and not structures so they shouldn't be affected. I believe it would be more balanced if the structures in a hive all took damage but the cysts and eggs remained so the marines actually have to clean up the infestation themselves. Right now they can just hide behind ARCS and it seems unbalanced.

>>Kharaa<<

-Onos armor increased by 100.
>Onos can easily be taken out by 3 or more marines with an LMG. Adding jetpacks to the equation makes it a guaranteed death sentence. Onos has already been nerfed to 3 hives so reducing the armor by 100 was not necessary.

-Buff Hydra damage, rate of fire, or health.
>Currently Hydra's do not do enough damage. They can be taken out easily with 1 clip from an LMG and from around corners. The only use they provide is a poor distraction. Gorges are usually placing their lives in the hands of these weak defensive buildings.

-Reduce Lerk hit-box size to what it was in build 229.
>Lerks were hard to take down with an LMG in build 229. It took a very skilled marine to take down an evading Lerk. Now it seems far too easy to take down a Lerk. Especially with the high damage output and low spread of the shotgun. I felt it was perfect in build 229.

-Make Lerk spore more transparent so it doesn't totally obstruct vision.
>Spore is too thick. It blocks marine vision too much. Making it near impossible to identify and attack alien targets in the vicinity. Besides that's what Lerk's have Umbra for. Keep Spore damage the same but make it more transparent for balance.

-Increase damage/hp on skulks as more hives go up, same idea as marines damage/armor buff.
>Late game a lot of players are forced to go skulk because of no res. Making it almost a guaranteed win for the marine team with exo's, jetpacks, and full upgrades. Giving skulks a fighting chance late game by increasing their health/damage per hive would help balance.

-Leave umbra untouched.
>It is meant to obstruct view and reduce damage. Works as intended.

-Reduce effectiveness of stomp.
>Currently stomp only costs a little more than 1/4 of Onos energy. Making it quite easy to stomp a couple of times, run around a corner and stomp some more. It also has a very long range. It also effects targets around corners and through structures. On Veil I've done this where marines will be up to 30+ feet away and affected by the shockwave of stomp as it travels quite far.

-Buff Xenocide damage so it's actually worth using.
>There is no inclination to use Xenocide. It is very rare that I have seen a game in which a commander researches it. Especially late game (the only time you can obtain it) it does hardly any damage against upgraded marines, exo's, arcs or buildings.

-Remove Vortex from Fade and implement self-heal as in NS1.
>Since Fade seems a bit weak right now I feel that removing Vortex and implementing the self-heal from NS1 would fix this and make Fade a more effective assault unit. A Fade is meant to be a hit and run unit. After engaging enemies in battle retreating to a safe spot and sacrificing energy to heal himself in increments.

-Glancing bite removed and Damage Cone restored to it's original circumference.
>Glancing bites are too hard to follow. They don't always show up on the UI and are very confusing when you think you've hit a marine directly. When I engage a marine I judge how many bites it should take for him to go down based on his armor. With glancing bite this isn't an effective way of determining marine health. Removing glancing bite and restoring the damage cone to it's original state would balance that.

-Increase Bile Bomb damage against Exo's.
>Gorge's die very easily since they are defenseless. At the moment it seems like bile bomb doesn't multiply damage as fast against exo's as it does against structures. For a direct hit against an exo the damage multiplier should be the same as a direct hit against a structure. The idea being that it is very hard for a Gorge to land a direct hit against an exo in the first place.

Bug Related:

-Fix hit registration of Gorge Spit.
>Currently when using Gorge Spit it doesn't register when it should. It tends to only register when you aim below the waist. Aiming for the chest registers no damage.

-Fix bug when evolving on landing pad (ns_docking) you fall through the map.
>Currently when evolving anywhere on Landing Pad or any place with empty space below you fall through to your death and your res is wasted. This needs to be fixed.

-Fix bug where evolving with enveloping mist crashes the client.
>It doesn't happen all the time but I have experienced instances when evolving with enveloping mist crashes the client

-Fix where egg is teleported when evolving.
>Example: When I was evolving on ns_tram in the Elevator Transfer behind the hive location. It teleported my egg to the doorway when I chose to evolve. Making my egg an instant target for marines to mow down. Your egg should appear in the same spot you chose to evolve in.

Optimization Related:

-Optimize engine for quad-core utilization.
>I've set affinity for the game to 2 cores and noticed no performance reduction. The game doesn't seem to operate any better when specifying 4 cores. It can't seem to tell the difference, or if it can there is no noticeable improvement.

-Optimize engine GPU utilization
>When monitoring the game via r_stats it would appear that the engine is not utilizing as much GPU as it should. I am on a 5570 1gb 265-bit and it is only allocating 256mb memory.

-Optimize infestation so it doesn't effect performance so much.
>As infestation spreads performance takes a large hit mid to late game. Optimizing the infestation textures could help lessen the load.

-Fix application hanging/crashing.
>The game has a lot of issues with randomly crashing/freezing for a lot of users. A lot of us are posting our crash logs so the culprit can be identified and fixed.

-Add more graphics options to the options menu that increase performance.
>Currently the options menu seems barren considering all of the graphical elements of the game. Implementing more options in the options menu that reduce graphical strain would help users with mid-range to low-end systems increase their performance.

-Fix resolution issues in which native resolution poorly effects FPS and lower resolution increases FPS significantly.
>Currently there seems to be an issue with the engine rendering higher resolutions. People with high-end to mid-range systems can't play at their native resolution and are forced to lower their resolution to something low such as 800x600 or 1024x768 just to obtain playable frames.

-Add more AMD support suggestions to the forums.
>A lot of the trouble-shooting information on the forums is specific to Intel/Nvidia chipsets only. It would be nice if we had more trouble-shooting guides for those with AMD chipsets.

-Fix server/client side lag compensation.
>Currently there are registration issues. People dying around corners or skulks that client side appear to have jumped behind a marine are still taking damage from when they were in front of the marine. The server is running at 30 tick and the server can't seem to keep up with the client.

-Fix ambient sounds playing when they shouldn't or being louder than they should be.
>Many times I've heard pipes wooshing, gorges shooting their healing spray in a continuous loop after they've been killed, or power nodes beeping that have been dead for minutes. Also, sounds that are rooms away being heard as if they are in the same room as you.

-Fix low microphone volume issue.
>Even with windows sound settings set to 100% and mic-boost enabled, microphone volume is extremely low in-game. Also, it would be nice to have microphone send/receive transmissions on it's own volume slider.

-Enable the option to remove music completely from the in-game.
>It's great to have on the main menu and I enjoy the dramatic music, but when in a game it's completely distracting and unwarranted. In a competitive atmosphere it is completely looked down upon to be forced to have in-game music as it doesn't contribute to game play in any sense.

-Increase overall network performance.
>Red plug of death issues, server side lag spikes, update rates, and net code all needs to be looked at.

-Reduce engine strain on servers.
>Currently even with the servers running at only 30 tick the engine seems to be putting quite a large strain on servers. Resulting in game play being choppy and un-enjoyable for servers with higher population (e.g. 18+ players). I would hope to see engine strain reduced so in the future we can have servers operating at higher tick and functionality for a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Haze · November 2012

You would do better to research each of your individual suggestions, see what has been suggested, prune the list accordingly, and focus your efforts on convincing the community why a few select original ideas ("Reduce engine strain on servers" -- no we were going to try and increase it; is that a real suggestion?) should make it into the game. No one is going to give this list the time of day, why should they when you yourself have not?

Toastie · November 2012

Wait, did you seriously post this in two places?

Zenu · November 2012

You suggest many buffs to already op aliens.

Horror Fox · November 2012

-Add the ability to copy/paste server information to connect via console
ye i agree, also a favourite button in-game to add servers to your fav list

-Shotgun spread increased or damage reduced (can easily 1 shot a skulk with carapace from far away)
shotguns are good now.. they are a bit pricey, 20 resources, i rarely buy one

-Onos armor increased by 100 (keep Onos egg to 3 hives but having both nerfs is overkill)
no i don't agree, they are already powerful, they still need a nerf, they can easy win 1 vs 1 against exo and in my opinion aliens are way more powerful then marine coz they don't require a lot of teamwork (marine's are in need for one to win)

-Increase penalty for marine jump (use NS1 as a reference)
then they should nerf the skulk wall jumping high speed ninja too.. coz i saw some players playing as a skulk and then it's like "WTF"

-Reduce concussive damage of Grenade Launcher projectiles through solid objects or structures
grenade launcher is good what it is now.. it is useless in a lot of ways.. Whips, close combat (like being attacked by a fade or skulk) team mate blocking the grenade and probaly many others.

-Make un-inhabited Exosuits damageable/destroy-able
i kinda agree with this but then something has to nerf on the alien side

-Increase damage/hp on skulks as more hives go up, same idea as marines damage/armor buff
No. they are cannon fodders they are already powerful enough when you have camo+armor bonus and let alone stronger aliens

-Make Lerk spore more transparent so it doesn't totally cloud view.
Yes - if there is a lot of gas/mist you will not be able to see (not even in real life) also it produce a little more lagg, so i think it will be better to turn that down a bit 

-Fix resolution issues in which native resolution poorly effects FPS and lower resolution increases FPS significantly
that or make dedicated servers, coz it is unbalanced now if u play with someone from a country that is miles away. coz you will see him skipping around but he has good connection, so he can easily kill you

-Reduce effectiveness of stomp
Ye i think area of effect has to be toned down a bit, i have heard somewhere that they even can stun you if ur behind a wall (so stomping and stunning you through a wall)


Enable the option to remove music completely from the in-game (competitively having music enabled during play is terrible)
Yea i agree with this, i have my music off but when i go to "bar"(believe it was on dockings) i still hear music from the bar.. but when i turn off my in-game sound, the bar music will be gone too

-Remove Vortex from Fade and implement self-heal as in NS1
or make the vortex a little longer or area of effect larger, they don't need self heal, they are way too powerful for that. they are hit and run aliens. and most of the time they will flee away when they are running low with HP

-Increase overall network performance
ye Agreed, like i said "dedicated servers"

-Increase Bilebomb damage against Exo's
Gorges are support Aliens and bilebomb is already fine enough, exo is easy to take it down anyway.

-Remove ARC ability to destroy eggs (they're units not structures)
actually no. Eggs are structures, it's like command and conquer(bad example) if u build 5 troopers they come from a barrack or a structure. so basically you are coming out of a strucure.

Changes I'd Like To See In The Near Future

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