Interesting changes. How is egglocking with the new alien spawn system? With the increased marine respawn time, it's probably harder for marines with less-than-perfect-aim to keep a hive locked down.
I hope the increased marine spawn time sticks. It's too easy to spend 15 tres on a 2nd IP and instantly flood a phase gate. The alien spawn changes, however, look problematic to me. It's going to further increase the difficulty in balancing large and small sized servers simultaneously.
Interesting changes. How is egglocking with the new alien spawn system? With the increased marine respawn time, it's probably harder for marines with less-than-perfect-aim to keep a hive locked down.
Instead of having all dead aliens respawn in 11 sec, you get 1 alien every 7 seconds. Or 2 every 7 seconds with two hives.
Let's just imagine invisible alien Infantry Portals, cause now it works like this.
douchebagatronCustom member titleJoin Date: 2003-12-20Member: 24581Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
I think an important question is this: you get a spawn queue for each hive available, but do you have to spawn at those hives? I would hope not. even if it was queue only spawns at its hive or eggs spawned by shifts then it would be a significant issue with defending hives under attack.
So let's see if I get this straight... Marine spawn times are going UP? Again? I don't see how this is helping marine balance at all. Alien spawn times are also going down from had been a possible 13 seconds in wave spawn. Now aliens are guaranteed a spawn in 7 seconds, so long as an egg is available. So in short, aliens will always be able to outspawn marines now. Interesting balance choice.
Then there is increased arms lab costs, and Nanoshield has basically be removed from the game. What used to be 8 seconds of shield with a 10 second cooldown is now 4 seconds with a 12 second cooldown? I won't be spending 5 res on that anymore. Will have to be a VERY rare and narrow circumstance to bother with it in that state.
Crag changes were to be expected (it was getting silly) but that's it? I wonder what happened to the 'big balance patch' I hear they are working on?
My exact thinking too from just reading the change log.
Curious why alien build times haven't been touched to address early game map dominance. (To give marines more time to build, respond to an entire team's worth of pressure, and then go on the offense)
So to those who have tried it: this means either faster spawning aliens or more common egg locking?? That seems far from optimal?
I can see that they wanted to try and remove egg lock, but I have to ask, is egg lock any different from a skulk that chews up an IP? Yeah aliens can't spawn, but isn't that the idea if the other team gains the upper hand? If a skulk chews an IP or a power node it can very well be game over. Should not the same happen with egg lock?
Also, adding time to marine spawn rates seems really counter intuitive if the alien spawn system will be similar. It says to aliens that they just need to throw themselves at the marines and sooner or later they will be able to out-spawn them regardless of how many IPs the marines have. Seeing as how the aliens have the potential for a high number of 'IPs', this will really put the hurt on marine spawn times. (each egg is an effective IP, so if there are 10 eggs available it is the equivalent of having 10 IPs at that moment in time.) Marines will be pressured to have 3 IPs now in 16 player games since the longer you wait for a marine to spawn the worse off the marine team is.
I think the problem with this balance patch is that it likely addresses issues from a LONG time ago that are only being fixed now. Clearly, with aliens winning 60% of games, the developers won't be consciously nerfing marines. So these are probably changes that were being considered from before, and the timing is just bad.
Well nothing is certain anyway. These are only potential changes and there is no guarantee that they will be used.
I can see that they wanted to try and remove egg lock, but I have to ask, is egg lock any different from a skulk that chews up an IP? Yeah aliens can't spawn, but isn't that the idea if the other team gains the upper hand? If a skulk chews an IP or a power node it can very well be game over. Should not the same happen with egg lock?
Also, adding time to marine spawn rates seems really counter intuitive if the alien spawn system will be similar. It says to aliens that they just need to throw themselves at the marines and sooner or later they will be able to out-spawn them regardless of how many IPs the marines have. Seeing as how the aliens have the potential for a high number of 'IPs', this will really put the hurt on marine spawn times. (each egg is an effective IP, so if there are 10 eggs available it is the equivalent of having 10 IPs at that moment in time.) Marines will be pressured to have 3 IPs now in 16 player games since the longer you wait for a marine to spawn the worse off the marine team is.
I think the problem with this balance patch is that it likely addresses issues from a LONG time ago that are only being fixed now. Clearly, with aliens winning 60% of games, the developers won't be consciously nerfing marines. So these are probably changes that were being considered from before, and the timing is just bad.
Well nothing is certain anyway. These are only potential changes and there is no guarantee that they will be used.
No, each Hive is like an IP. The eggs are merely spawn locations. So a one hive alien team is perpetually on one IP, until they get a second hive up.
Edit: I think some of you guys are missing the point on the alien spawn system.
A steady trickle of skulks is much easier to deal with, rather than a huge wave every minute or two. I think it might actually work. More organized teams can still rally up before attacking like before, except it will take more team cohesion and maybe a bit more time than it is now.
Currently, aliens are mainly 1) spawn, 2) evolve 3) attack. I think UWE wants to break that up a little bit.
Nanoshield has always been OP. However, these changes to cost, cooldown and duration are never going to be the fix if it has to stay in the game. A temporary armor increase would be a better solution if we are going to allow it to be applied to players. That way it can be removed by the aliens and medpack spam doesn't keep a marine alive indefinitely through its duration. Else just make it structure only.
Alien build times have nothing to do with early game dominance... should RTs take 2 minutes to build or something? Aliens dont need to build any other structures besides a shell early game.
The spawn changes are to fix many problems, from ease of marine turtling to the entire alien team respawning at once due to wavespawn. How people seem to think that this will make egglocking any easier?? when eggs spawn faster than aliens can ever possibly spawn is beyond me, nor do I understand how you can think this is an alien buff.
Honestly at this point discussing balance issues on this forum has become completely pointless, horribly rage inducing, completely idiotic and absolutely degrading. Most people here cannot see past their own gameplay experience to make any sort of sensible judgement, let alone even understand the premise of changes that should/could be made to fix the issues that they cannot even begin to fathom. You guys have succeeded in chasing off almost every single other competent would be poster regarding balance at this point, are you looking to chase off the last few so you can revel in your great victory of completely dooming any reasonable discussions?
If you going to respond to threads like this, take the time to read and actually understand the changes, and what problems they might be trying to fix.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited February 2013
Alien build times are the method in which the asymmetrical difference between the teams' expansion responsibilities are somewhat alleviated.
More on the ground player interaction is required for expansion on the marine team than is aliens, much unlike NS1. Longer build times were put in place to help with this difference, obviously. (Alien commander etc)
In other words, its not much of a stretch to assume that it could be one of multiple possible culprits for early map dominance. (i was thinking more along the lines of the constant pressure from aliens though, tbh)
You seem frustrated/burnt out.
Maybe you should take a break from the forums man.. getting "horribly rage induced" over some light general discussion and opinions on balance seems a little overboard to me.
If you think the general quality of posts on this forum are high, then I have nothing further to say on that topic.
Regarding alien build times, increasing those only serves to overly punish aliens. There is no reason why a harvester should take 1m+ to build when a marine rt can be built in 12 seconds... Unless you want to go back to games where aliens get reslocked quite easily.
Alien build times are the method in which the asymmetrical difference between the teams' expansion responsibilities are somewhat alleviated.
In other words, its not much of a stretch to assume that it could be one of multiple possible culprits for early map dominance. (i was thinking more along the lines of the constant pressure from aliens though, tbh)
these changes are a huge nerf to early game alien pressure.
If you want 3 skills to pressure the marines and they die, it now takes 21 seconds for those skulks to spawn again.
If you try a 6 skulk rush and it fails, have fun waiting 42 seconds before you have 6 skulks back on the field.
previously, you only had to wait 12 seconds for most of the team to spawn again. This method makes early attacks very risky for the aliens because they are out spawned by two IP marines.
PS: I think xDragon's anger is pretty understandable. More than half the posts on the recent changes don't even understand what changed, because they some how think this is going to be a buff for aliens. I actually think this is one of the biggest alien nerfs yet, I wouldn't be surprised if the balance shifted drastically after this, and yet many think UWE is nerfing marines?
Most people posting in this thread don't have any idea what is going on.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
No i dont, but thats my point, lol.
I Guess i just don't expect much so it doesn't bother me? idk.. all walks of life come through here and share their thoughts. Some i agree with, some i dont.. but i dont think i've considered any single one wrong enough for me to be that level of upset. Its not really impactful.. here in some general discussion game forum lost on page 8? :shrug:
Regarding build times: i dont like the marine team's binary mechanic of "Beating the clock" against alien build times either .. but the mechanic already exists, so unless its possible to address that deficit of expansion requirement like "commander dropped, gorge built"... it may be a subtle and effective adjustment. idk it was just a thought, i'm not entirely sold on it myself.
tweaking build times will not solve the underlying issue because build time does not scale with skill level. when marines are skilled enough to pressure aliens instead of vice versa, extended build times will be crippling.
Players on both sides are gonna wait longer now. Aliens should play safe. Safe skulks :o3 .
So, if defending aliens get wiped out - they lose.
20/30/40 Arms Labs costs. What are we supposed to do with that? Marines were short on resources as they were. Now their sweet upgrades are being taken away.
Shift 15 res is definitely justified.
Crag 15 res... ok, but expensive. The limited heal stack might have been enough.
Shade 15 res is steep. They should get a bit more HP in exchange, given that they are only good for Ink and are a prime target in a base attack (unlike a Shift or Crag).
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
Does this mean that if 5 skulks die at the same time, the last respawning skulk will have to wait 35 seconds before spawning?
Or does it mean that:
Skulk A dies at 2:00 -> Respawns at 2:07
Skulk B dies at 2:03 -> Respawns at 2:10
I can see how both methods could be good, but I think the first method would make public games rage enducing and the second method seems like the respawn might be too quick?
Either way it seems like it will make people pick their engagements abit more carefully which is good imo.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
Does this mean that if 5 skulks die at the same time, the last respawning skulk will have to wait 35 seconds before spawning?
Or does it mean that:
Skulk A dies at 2:00 -> Respawns at 2:07
Skulk B dies at 2:03 -> Respawns at 2:10
I can see how both methods could be good, but I think the first method would make public games rage enducing and the second method seems like the respawn might be too quick?
Either way it seems like it will make people pick their engagements abit more carefully which is good imo.
I read it as you will respawn 7 seconds after you die (assuming there are eggs...which are separate equation), so if 3 skulks all go boom on a mine at the same time, then if there are 3 egg you will have 3 skulks spawning.
This though is rare and you will see aliens spawning randomly every few seconds based on when they died (assuming there are free eggs).
Otherwise they have simply kept wave spawning in place with a hard cap of 1 (when for a while we had 3...which did not scale) and this seems highly unlikely as you have maintained the wave spawning.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
Does this mean that if 5 skulks die at the same time, the last respawning skulk will have to wait 35 seconds before spawning?
Or does it mean that:
Skulk A dies at 2:00 -> Respawns at 2:07
Skulk B dies at 2:03 -> Respawns at 2:10
I can see how both methods could be good, but I think the first method would make public games rage enducing and the second method seems like the respawn might be too quick?
Either way it seems like it will make people pick their engagements abit more carefully which is good imo.
If I understand this mechanic correctly, it will scale up based on the number of hives the aliens control. So you'll have 2-3 skulks every 7 seconds during mid-late game, whereas in early game you will have the 1 skulk every 7 seconds. (Or less than 7 seconds if there are plenty of eggs).
It actually makes some sense, weakens aliens in early game if they play badly. If they go back down to one hive late game, they may have to work on preserving their higher life-forms if they ever hope to make a comeback.
It's a well-thought out solution, and I can't wait until it gets playtested. Good thinking, whoever in UWE came up with the idea.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
Does this mean that if 5 skulks die at the same time, the last respawning skulk will have to wait 35 seconds before spawning?
Or does it mean that:
Skulk A dies at 2:00 -> Respawns at 2:07
Skulk B dies at 2:03 -> Respawns at 2:10
I can see how both methods could be good, but I think the first method would make public games rage enducing and the second method seems like the respawn might be too quick?
Either way it seems like it will make people pick their engagements abit more carefully which is good imo.
If I understand this mechanic correctly, it will scale up based on the number of hives the aliens control. So you'll have 2-3 skulks every 7 seconds during mid-late game, whereas in early game you will have the 1 skulk every 7 seconds. (Or less than 7 seconds if there are plenty of eggs).
It actually makes some sense, weakens aliens in early game if they play badly. If they go back down to one hive late game, they may have to work on preserving their higher life-forms if they ever hope to make a comeback.
It's a well-thought out solution, and I can't wait until it gets playtested. Good thinking, whoever in UWE came up with the idea.
I hope your not right as all your doing is saying aliens will spawn in waves of 1 every second...might as well just let aliens spawn as how they died (assuming there are free eggs).
If 3 aliens die from a min or GL you might as well let them all spawn at once, seems like this has potential to snowball badly late game (when GL's are being lobbed around a hive and multiple deaths happen).
They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
Oh wait. Right. Aliens will spawn even faster. If eggs are available, even faster than marines do. ROFLMAO. So, marines are getting NERFED in this patch? Is this the real life?
Comments
I think Arms Lab is only reasonable now when you have resources all over your face.
Instead of having all dead aliens respawn in 11 sec, you get 1 alien every 7 seconds. Or 2 every 7 seconds with two hives.
Let's just imagine invisible alien Infantry Portals, cause now it works like this.
Are any servers running this?
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2077365/#Comment_2077365
Curious why alien build times haven't been touched to address early game map dominance. (To give marines more time to build, respond to an entire team's worth of pressure, and then go on the offense)
So to those who have tried it: this means either faster spawning aliens or more common egg locking?? That seems far from optimal?
Also, adding time to marine spawn rates seems really counter intuitive if the alien spawn system will be similar. It says to aliens that they just need to throw themselves at the marines and sooner or later they will be able to out-spawn them regardless of how many IPs the marines have. Seeing as how the aliens have the potential for a high number of 'IPs', this will really put the hurt on marine spawn times. (each egg is an effective IP, so if there are 10 eggs available it is the equivalent of having 10 IPs at that moment in time.) Marines will be pressured to have 3 IPs now in 16 player games since the longer you wait for a marine to spawn the worse off the marine team is.
I think the problem with this balance patch is that it likely addresses issues from a LONG time ago that are only being fixed now. Clearly, with aliens winning 60% of games, the developers won't be consciously nerfing marines. So these are probably changes that were being considered from before, and the timing is just bad.
Well nothing is certain anyway. These are only potential changes and there is no guarantee that they will be used.
No, each Hive is like an IP. The eggs are merely spawn locations. So a one hive alien team is perpetually on one IP, until they get a second hive up.
Edit: I think some of you guys are missing the point on the alien spawn system.
A steady trickle of skulks is much easier to deal with, rather than a huge wave every minute or two. I think it might actually work. More organized teams can still rally up before attacking like before, except it will take more team cohesion and maybe a bit more time than it is now.
Currently, aliens are mainly 1) spawn, 2) evolve 3) attack. I think UWE wants to break that up a little bit.
Nanoshield has always been OP. However, these changes to cost, cooldown and duration are never going to be the fix if it has to stay in the game. A temporary armor increase would be a better solution if we are going to allow it to be applied to players. That way it can be removed by the aliens and medpack spam doesn't keep a marine alive indefinitely through its duration. Else just make it structure only.
The spawn changes are to fix many problems, from ease of marine turtling to the entire alien team respawning at once due to wavespawn. How people seem to think that this will make egglocking any easier?? when eggs spawn faster than aliens can ever possibly spawn is beyond me, nor do I understand how you can think this is an alien buff.
Honestly at this point discussing balance issues on this forum has become completely pointless, horribly rage inducing, completely idiotic and absolutely degrading. Most people here cannot see past their own gameplay experience to make any sort of sensible judgement, let alone even understand the premise of changes that should/could be made to fix the issues that they cannot even begin to fathom. You guys have succeeded in chasing off almost every single other competent would be poster regarding balance at this point, are you looking to chase off the last few so you can revel in your great victory of completely dooming any reasonable discussions?
If you going to respond to threads like this, take the time to read and actually understand the changes, and what problems they might be trying to fix.
More on the ground player interaction is required for expansion on the marine team than is aliens, much unlike NS1. Longer build times were put in place to help with this difference, obviously. (Alien commander etc)
In other words, its not much of a stretch to assume that it could be one of multiple possible culprits for early map dominance. (i was thinking more along the lines of the constant pressure from aliens though, tbh)
You seem frustrated/burnt out.
Maybe you should take a break from the forums man.. getting "horribly rage induced" over some light general discussion and opinions on balance seems a little overboard to me.
@Squishpoke: Good point
Regarding alien build times, increasing those only serves to overly punish aliens. There is no reason why a harvester should take 1m+ to build when a marine rt can be built in 12 seconds... Unless you want to go back to games where aliens get reslocked quite easily.
these changes are a huge nerf to early game alien pressure.
If you want 3 skills to pressure the marines and they die, it now takes 21 seconds for those skulks to spawn again.
If you try a 6 skulk rush and it fails, have fun waiting 42 seconds before you have 6 skulks back on the field.
previously, you only had to wait 12 seconds for most of the team to spawn again. This method makes early attacks very risky for the aliens because they are out spawned by two IP marines.
PS: I think xDragon's anger is pretty understandable. More than half the posts on the recent changes don't even understand what changed, because they some how think this is going to be a buff for aliens. I actually think this is one of the biggest alien nerfs yet, I wouldn't be surprised if the balance shifted drastically after this, and yet many think UWE is nerfing marines?
Most people posting in this thread don't have any idea what is going on.
I Guess i just don't expect much so it doesn't bother me? idk.. all walks of life come through here and share their thoughts. Some i agree with, some i dont.. but i dont think i've considered any single one wrong enough for me to be that level of upset. Its not really impactful.. here in some general discussion game forum lost on page 8? :shrug:
Regarding build times: i dont like the marine team's binary mechanic of "Beating the clock" against alien build times either .. but the mechanic already exists, so unless its possible to address that deficit of expansion requirement like "commander dropped, gorge built"... it may be a subtle and effective adjustment. idk it was just a thought, i'm not entirely sold on it myself.
So, if defending aliens get wiped out - they lose.
20/30/40 Arms Labs costs. What are we supposed to do with that? Marines were short on resources as they were. Now their sweet upgrades are being taken away.
Crag 15 res... ok, but expensive. The limited heal stack might have been enough.
Shade 15 res is steep. They should get a bit more HP in exchange, given that they are only good for Ink and are a prime target in a base attack (unlike a Shift or Crag).
Decent post indeed. NS2 needs conceptional balance based on more than just numbers.
O Remove the alien spawn system. Create a new alien spawn system
where aliens queue up for a spawn. They spawn after 7 sec or as soon
as a egg is available. There should be a queue for each build hive.
Does this mean that if 5 skulks die at the same time, the last respawning skulk will have to wait 35 seconds before spawning?
Or does it mean that:
Skulk A dies at 2:00 -> Respawns at 2:07
Skulk B dies at 2:03 -> Respawns at 2:10
I can see how both methods could be good, but I think the first method would make public games rage enducing and the second method seems like the respawn might be too quick?
Either way it seems like it will make people pick their engagements abit more carefully which is good imo.
Yep, 5-th skulk should wait 35 seconds before respawn. But with 2 hives, there will be 2 skulks respawns every 7 second.
But it denies the whole idea of skulks being expendable. For sure, aliens need a nerf, but I wanted to see it another way.
I read it as you will respawn 7 seconds after you die (assuming there are eggs...which are separate equation), so if 3 skulks all go boom on a mine at the same time, then if there are 3 egg you will have 3 skulks spawning.
This though is rare and you will see aliens spawning randomly every few seconds based on when they died (assuming there are free eggs).
Otherwise they have simply kept wave spawning in place with a hard cap of 1 (when for a while we had 3...which did not scale) and this seems highly unlikely as you have maintained the wave spawning.
If I understand this mechanic correctly, it will scale up based on the number of hives the aliens control. So you'll have 2-3 skulks every 7 seconds during mid-late game, whereas in early game you will have the 1 skulk every 7 seconds. (Or less than 7 seconds if there are plenty of eggs).
It actually makes some sense, weakens aliens in early game if they play badly. If they go back down to one hive late game, they may have to work on preserving their higher life-forms if they ever hope to make a comeback.
It's a well-thought out solution, and I can't wait until it gets playtested. Good thinking, whoever in UWE came up with the idea.
I hope your not right as all your doing is saying aliens will spawn in waves of 1 every second...might as well just let aliens spawn as how they died (assuming there are free eggs).
If 3 aliens die from a min or GL you might as well let them all spawn at once, seems like this has potential to snowball badly late game (when GL's are being lobbed around a hive and multiple deaths happen).
Oh wait. Right. Aliens will spawn even faster. If eggs are available, even faster than marines do. ROFLMAO. So, marines are getting NERFED in this patch? Is this the real life?