Why do Aliens need to be continuously nerfed?
YummyProduce
Join Date: 2013-01-31 Member: 182661Members
Join Date: 2013-01-31 Member: 182661Members
I ask the question out of sincere curiosity. With each new patch, aliens are nerfed, either deliberately through balance changes or indirectly through "bug fixes". The result today is that for most players, aliens simply is not fun. Sure, a small percentage of exceptionally dextrous teenagers can do very well on aliens, but for the majority of the population, you'll always be better at and (in my opinion) have more fun on marines.
Consider the life forms. By late game, a marine only needs to look at a skulk funny for it to explode. They're basically worthless against any competent adversary. The lerk and fade both require considerable player skill AND NATURAL TALENT (eg, a degree of dexterity, speed, coordination, etcetera) to be more than a complete waste of res. That leaves only Onos, which is prohibitively expensive (you can go Onos once per round, and by then the fate of the round is probably decided). I'm 29 years old - not ancient, but one round as lerk exhausts my hands, and my eyes and coordination simply aren't what they were when I was playing NS1.
Otoh, the marine with an LMG is viable through late game. Shotgun and JP is 30 res, and combined make the marine a late game killing machine: highly mobile, survivable, and destructive to any alien lifeform. This is just the way the game is. Aliens are far more frustrating to play, despite being more fun in concept - they require more thinking, creativity in play style, and original strategies versus marines (which are more or less your typical FPS experience).
The classic retort I hear is that alienswin more games. OF COURSE MARINES LOSE MORE OFTEN. Am I the only one not at all surprised by this? The nature of the race means marines will always attract the newer and less skilled players. This is especially true given the state of the balance today - even in games where you are winning, skulking as an alien can be extremely frustrating mid- to late-game, and given that these low skill players simply cannot lerk or fade (if they do, their life expectancy is about 5 minutes), thats all they get to do.
The result is aliens are USUALLY skill stacked in an average servers average game. This fact should not in turn imply that marines are weak and aliens OP. Anyway, sorry for the rant, but its getting to the point where I simply don't want to play anymore - which is a shame, because I love NS. My suggestion would be to find a way to balance (see what I did there) game balance considerations with the fun to play factor. There is a real risk of making aliens simply not fun to play, when any moderately competent marine with a shotgun and some upgrades means approximately instant death for everything but the onos.
Consider the life forms. By late game, a marine only needs to look at a skulk funny for it to explode. They're basically worthless against any competent adversary. The lerk and fade both require considerable player skill AND NATURAL TALENT (eg, a degree of dexterity, speed, coordination, etcetera) to be more than a complete waste of res. That leaves only Onos, which is prohibitively expensive (you can go Onos once per round, and by then the fate of the round is probably decided). I'm 29 years old - not ancient, but one round as lerk exhausts my hands, and my eyes and coordination simply aren't what they were when I was playing NS1.
Otoh, the marine with an LMG is viable through late game. Shotgun and JP is 30 res, and combined make the marine a late game killing machine: highly mobile, survivable, and destructive to any alien lifeform. This is just the way the game is. Aliens are far more frustrating to play, despite being more fun in concept - they require more thinking, creativity in play style, and original strategies versus marines (which are more or less your typical FPS experience).
The classic retort I hear is that alienswin more games. OF COURSE MARINES LOSE MORE OFTEN. Am I the only one not at all surprised by this? The nature of the race means marines will always attract the newer and less skilled players. This is especially true given the state of the balance today - even in games where you are winning, skulking as an alien can be extremely frustrating mid- to late-game, and given that these low skill players simply cannot lerk or fade (if they do, their life expectancy is about 5 minutes), thats all they get to do.
The result is aliens are USUALLY skill stacked in an average servers average game. This fact should not in turn imply that marines are weak and aliens OP. Anyway, sorry for the rant, but its getting to the point where I simply don't want to play anymore - which is a shame, because I love NS. My suggestion would be to find a way to balance (see what I did there) game balance considerations with the fun to play factor. There is a real risk of making aliens simply not fun to play, when any moderately competent marine with a shotgun and some upgrades means approximately instant death for everything but the onos.
Comments
but then people here talk about balances. not fun. sorry dude.
Sorry.
According to NS2Stats, aliens have a substantial advantage in competitive games. Almost 70/30, in fact.
What's funny is it isn't hard to figure out where the underlying problem is.
Hint: It has the same reason to due why Aliens are so boring to play.
But catering exclusively to the win:loss ratio in competitive games introduces its own set of problems. NS2 is not a free mod; its a pay game. To survive, it must attract mainstream players. That means being fun and interesting to play in a pub game.
If UW makes half their game unapproachable in an attempt to appease the interests of a very small subset of the gaming population (maybe 1%, probably less), NS simply will not survive in the long run. You've got to find a way to moderate between balancing in competitive play and making a very squishy race a legitimately fun experience for your average player.
This is a recurring problem for developers making the jump to pay games and attempting to cater to clans; typically their games end up being inaccessible and they die slow deaths. The most successful competitive online games are HIGHLY ACCESSIBLY (think COD and BF in FPS, SC in RTS).
Do you find COD fun and interesting to play?
I like how people immediately view anyone questioning them as something to take offense to. By all means, don't answer the question.
Battlefield... successful competitive game... heh... haha... BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I think a fairly good amount of that stats is also from ENSL gathers where lack of coordinated play is prevalent in spite of being "competitive". It's just how the game is now. You need to play flawlessly as marines to win 6v6 whereas playing as aliens is a lot more forgiving
Steam stats for COD MW2, which is 3 years old and an incrementally obsolete game:
10,102. Just on Steam. Overall today? Who knows. 50k maybe. Across all the COD's, just on steam ,you'ret alking about maybe 100,000 people.
NS2? 1,900. Not successful?
You guys must be using an internal definition of success and competition. I don't do that; when I speak, I use accepted english language and definitions, so people know what I'm talking about. That's generally the goal of communication. If you mean something by competitive other than "a game of sport played between two or more teams", now we are all on the same page about what I'm saying, at least.
You asked if I thought COD was fun and interesting to play. The answer is irrelevant to my point; your purpose probably was to imply they aren't - at least in the opinion of "true" scotsmen, er, gamers - and that therefore they aren't relevant. My point in mentioning them was this: they are accessible, whatever their faults, and fun to jump into. This should be a goal of ANY video game. Even a sophisticated one for smarties and intellectuals like NS.
I'm genuinely surprised at the character of the responses. No substantive disagreement, so far, just a variety of veiled threats: I must be a COD simpleton, or not truly competitive, or something. Excepting the comment on gorge spit; indeed it probably was OP, but so is skulks getting shot behind walls (a consequence of the net code, I know, but it still sucks for the skulk). These are minor nuisances. I'm speaking of a larger problem in balance and feel between the races.
Finally! Substance.
Those games were successful financially, but they have never had successful COMPETITIVE SCENES. They were never successful as COMPETITIVE GAMES. Games like CS, Q3A and Painkiller were successful as competitive games.
The original Counterstrike wants to say hi.
That game is anything BUT accessible.
Yeah, you can jump in and play it, but you get your ass kicked for months until you L2P.
Why do Aliens need to be continuously nerfed?
Told:
Win rate in PUB is 60/40
Yummy Produce:
Is this really the driving force behind developer changes to race balance? The expected outcome of a pub game over the whole population?
Told:
Competitive is even worse, closer to 70/30
Yummy Produce:
But catering exclusively to the win:loss ratio in competitive games introduces its own set of problems.
...
Half your original post was that aliens take too much dexterity to play well, then you say newer players stack marine, but aliens instantly die anyway as skulks. It takes alot of skill to track a skulk who knows how to play, it takes alot of teamwork to kill fades and lerks who know how to play and it takes alot of skill to beable to use alien lifeforms well.
I don't get what you're arguing about. It seems like your original question was answered, then you kept moving onto different styles of the same argument when information was provided?
In my opinion everyone on the marine team needs to know what is going on , and what the goal is for them to stand a chance at winning. Also I find playing as aliens alot of fun. Game isn't perfect but I enjoy playing it.
None of the games you mentioned suffered from the same problem.
"That game is anything BUT accessible."
Respectfully, I disagree. The mechanics were simple and understandable. Anybody could, as you say, jump in and play. There was not a role or archetype that just felt useless in the game.
" I'm sorry you're upset as an alien player but the community needs those alien nerfs badly and quickly. "
Fair enough. Its 1900 peak players today. I'd be surprised if it was half that in a month. I think the developers should be far more concerned with the retention rates of sale players than the win:loss rates of some tiny subset of the pop.
But if thats the direction this game wants to go in, best of luck.
There are already more people claiming that the number of players will half if balance isn't restored to 50/50 soon.
Plus aliens are just a lot better suited at getting back into the fight to deny area or harass map points/RTs while marines fumble around the map early on. They can organize quickly and assault points faster than marines can react most of the times because they are pushing another area. Not really about class confrontations imo. Just as a marine you cannot afford mistakes when it comes to losing a base. I mean even if you do have your team pushing with arcs, exos, forward bases in an even game the aliens can stroll into home base, force a beacon, leaving the forward base, exos, and arcs alone for a while. Or they might even take the powernode out in an instant if they bring enough lifeforms.
The Gorge is for those players with less dexterity to effectively play the other Alien classes.
You should try the Gorge class some time.
I don't consider myself a good player. I'm 33 and haven't played any competitive game since Kingpin over a decade ago (edit: not quite true, I played a little bit of CS competitively, but still over a decade ago!), and I don't get much sleep with an 8 month old baby screaming at all times of day and night. If I can learn to play as aliens and get real enjoyment out of it, I don't really see why anyone else can't. For me, the most important (and enjoyable) aspect of NS2 is teamplay. Getting a group working together, taking part in that to push to a goal, that's the real reward in this game. Sure, if I go top of the server with a K:D ratio of 10, I'm going to be happier at the end of the game than if I got drubbed, but that's a secondary consideration. I can honestly say that the majority of my learning has come about during these highly-organised teamwork times. Someone tells you 'hey Roo, try jump-shadowstep-jump as fade, you'll move about much faster,' and hey presto - one of the most important things to learn as a fade!
What I'm struggling with in your post is quite what your point is. You acknowledge that aliens win more, so are they not fun to play because they win too much? But then you talk about getting owned by marines... You don't have to be a twichy nimble-fingered god to do well as an alien, but you do need to learn some of the tricks. If you see me about on a server (I'll be using voice comm as I always do), I'm happy to show you the tricks that I've learned so far. I'm sure many of the more experienced players can also impart some of their wisdom (I'm grateful for all that I've received so far!), too.
Roo
There is a problem with trying to compete with the COD/BF audience, and that is that COD/BF already exist, already have established fanbases, already have massive brand power, and have huge amounts of funding and advertising behind them, which is most of the reason they sell so well. I don't imagine many people come along and buy a COD or BF game because they saw it and thought it looked interesting, they buy it because it's advertised as a must have game, or because they bought the previous game and enjoyed it, or because they have some weird compulsion to buy the newest version as soon as it's out.
NS2 is not a game like that, it doesn't have the things COD has, it is by necessity advertising and aimed at a different market, because trying to compete with the people who have millions of dollars to make and advertise games is a ridiculous idea unless you also happen to have millions of dollars.
NS2 does not have to beat COD or battlefield, it's made on a much smaller budget with a much smaller team to support with its sales. It only has to do well enough, and by all accounts it is doing better than expected. I don't imagine it would do as well if it was a COD knockoff, because the people who like COD games would go play COD, and everyone else would find it boring.
Basically, COD/BF stuff is already being done extremely well, by COD/BF. NS does NS quite well, and thus people buy it who like NS stuff. The best way to improve it is to make it better at being NS.
I don't know of any teenager in the competative scene. You're simply wrong about this.
I find it very hard to believe you need natural talent to play smart, so you don't die (eg, don't fly into a group of more than 3 marines that has shotgun)
I can't talk for your setup, but in proper light and proper posture for back, wrist and arms. You shouldn't get exhausted at age of 29, eyes or hand. I'm almost as old as you, I've none off these problems, even after a full day of gaming.
This is true that it's a unqiue way of play, not etched into the back of your skull like normal FPS, but in general all that is needed is a little teamwork, go 2v1 and dont run head into a marines face. Most important is map awareness and anticipate where the marines will be, and be there to ambush them. If you've played NS1, you should alrdy know this.
I experience the opposite since the Gorge buff, less skilled player (meaning ½ the team) went gorge and turtled up doing nothing but that all game. Ofc they will be bad at skulk/fade/lerk if they never leave Gorge until onos. The Gorge nerf was warranted, maybe now they can use their brains and learn the simple rules mentioned above to be a better player.
As mentioned above, my experience is the opposite. Either they gorge or they run on the ground for easy pickings ( the ones that haven't figured out gorge requires 0 skill to use).
You can't just say OP things like the last patch gorge shouldn't be nerfed because the players are bad, you desgin the game around balance, and not the players themself.
I am sorry but through out this thread I have heard arguments along the lines of: "Why Nerf Aliens based on win/lose ratio?", "Should not nerf aliens when win ratio is between 60-70% in alien favour", "Balance is aimed at Competitive level but you need to consider casual players and how the game will die if you don't"
I cannot believe the misguided logic that some of you seem to float towards. Not only does most of your arguments conflict with each other, but you blatantly ignore rational discussion opposed to your particular opinions.
I have poked my head in here just to drop my 2 cents as well.
Firstly, on a casual only level. You say that the game will die because the casual people who play aliens feel that its bored, yet the Pub(which is basically random casual games) have a win rate in the favour of aliens. So as a Casual player playing marines, in your opinion, he just has to be content with losing 60 - 70% of his games because you feel that aliens are boring... WoW. Flawed rationalization right there.
Secondly, you go on about why aliens get nerfed because the win ratio is like it is because some higher power decides that every new or newbie player automatically drafts marines every single game and that is why the win/loss ration is the way it is. Well, the win/loss ratio is STILL in the aliens favour in pro-competitive games. Where both teams are basically equally skilled. Which tells us that there is a balance issue.
So the question then is, why is it that aliens feel like its boring when playing aliens?
Gorge spit nerfed by -10 and 12% attack speed redux doesn't seem like much of a nerf to change the excitement level of a game? How about the nerf to veil then? No more bile bombing from vents at nano? hmmm, seems like that would be a strategic difference and not really anything to do with entertainment. So then why? Why would the Alien players complain?
Perhaps just because its a NERF to aliens.
No? Could it be? I dont believe it? Or could it really be because they troll much?
Fact is, the side you are somewhat partial to is being nerfed a little. It gets buffed too. But just because it gets nerfed you throw your toys out of the cot. Marines also got a nerf as I recall. Grenades have a whole 25% deduction to their splash range. 25%!! That is a WHOLE fourth. Surely that is a call for aliens to rejoice? And yet, here you are...
Food for thought.
Sincerely,
An Alien Player
This is not a thing, this is not an actual argument. A person must never, ever conscientiously struggle against design or be forced to adapt to it. The game obviously needs to have some numbers adjusted, or better yet, some new feature introduced or major fix to balance things. Playing as a marine is just much more difficult, both for the commander and players alike. I find it silly that "casuals", despite being the same paying customers, and a MAJORITY, have to be considered only half-heartedly on the discussion forum.