Vanilla skulk VS vanilla marine is not very well balanced right now. (It was very well balanced in 239 imo) When I am skulk, I often struggle to keep 1:1 K:D let alone do useful things like destroy buildings or defend ours, when I am marine, 10:0 is not uncommon in the first few minutes. This is all due to the strafe jump matador manoeuvre being so easy to pull off. The side effect of this skulk nerf has been an overall balance of close to 50% each side, but it really is a terrible way of achieving overall balance. As has been pointed out before it is the way the alien economy works combined with the fact that aliens don’t really need to help build stuff leaving them free to run amok across the map that needs to change for overall balance.
but do we really want the skulk to be able to curve-jump to the point that they catch the juking marine?
I’m not sure if possible, but if so I would say keep air control where it is now. It’s the ground friction and acceleration that needs to be tuned back to where it was in 239. This feels like to me the issues with the marine strafe jump to safety issue. The skulk handles like a pallet of bricks in comparison to the marine.
Came on for the first time in 12 days. I consistently get top or near top scores on my team but even when we win, winning alien KDR's have a significant amount of deaths, but marine wins usually has them going with positive KDR. I sort of feel like a martyr as aliens. And a bull getting matador-ed by feisty bunnyhoppers.
I could try playing marines but then again, I sort of pity aliens as the underdog too and it just doesn't feel right.
Are these all related to ground movement? If so, put them back to 239 values.
I think they are. Nerfing the acceleration by more than half put it far below that of a marine (which is 100). Imo, it also placed the skulks in the position they are now in relation to marine juking and lessened skulk enjoyability. Air control feels really off as well. Honestly even if skulk was better pre 240 the wall jump still felt lackluster compared to older builds I saw at launch. I wonder what can be done about it. I am unsure what the friction lines are for so I cannot really comment on it much.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Get rid of stepped bite cones, bring back the 223(?) narrow bite cone and make the skulk fast again. Predictable movement and all this business is important but so is having movement that doesn't frustrate me (thank god I lerk primarily 3 minutes into the game).
If your movement and wits are decent, I dont think marine jumping about is often enough a problem for skulks, its mainly only an issue in pubs where skulks run at you from a distance and you can just keep strafe jumping back and there's nothing they can do about it. I kind of feel like jumping should accelerate the skulk off the floor a bit more... Leap being a (more expensive/longer build time?) first hive upgrade would at least give aliens the option of having some extreme mobility, while keeping them viable late-game when aliens are down to one hive. Leap is the holy grail of anyone having issues duking about with marines
Vanilla skulk VS vanilla marine is not very well balanced right now. (It was very well balanced in 239 imo) When I am skulk, I often struggle to keep 1:1 K:D let alone do useful things like destroy buildings or defend ours, when I am marine, 10:0 is not uncommon in the first few minutes. This is all due to the strafe jump matador manoeuvre being so easy to pull off. The side effect of this skulk nerf has been an overall balance of close to 50% each side, but it really is a terrible way of achieving overall balance. As has been pointed out before it is the way the alien economy works combined with the fact that aliens don’t really need to help build stuff leaving them free to run amok across the map that needs to change for overall balance.
If you'd kept reading you'll of seen that I did say Skulks are weaker than marines and that it only gets worse as marine upgrades start coming out. My game experience with kd ratios matches what you've described as well, aliens even when winning die a lot more (with longer spawn times, yay!). What I disagree with is that Skulk/marine in 239 was well balanced, it wasn't. Skulks with a slight skill difference could tear apart lesser marines, 240 flipped the problem on it's head making the marine better.
But balance is not my major gripe with this whole business. Skulk is less fun than marine to play. Skulks are slow, they get destroyed at range, you get stressed by hyperactive marines, wall jump feels pointless (who else used to bounce around the map wall to wall to get from A to B and now just runs?) you can be one shot killed in a variety of ways (yay mines, shotguns, railguns), and late game about the only thing your good for is res tower munching.
Wall jump needs to be interesting, Skulks need to be agile and fast (it's ridiculous that a marine accelerates faster than a Skulk!), if this makes alien early game to powerful then weaken it someplace else (hint hint, alien economy). If it makes Skulks too powerful then reduce their early game health/dmg and give them someway to scale to late game (this needs doing anyway, lack of scaling is the reason for a lot of this games problems. Both scaling to player counts, and scaling as games progress).
Wall jump needs to be interesting, Skulks need to be agile and fast (it's ridiculous that a marine accelerates faster than a Skulk!), if this makes alien early game to powerful then weaken it someplace else (hint hint, alien economy). If it makes Skulks too powerful then reduce their early game health/dmg and give them someway to scale to late game (this needs doing anyway, lack of scaling is the reason for a lot of this games problems. Both scaling to player counts, and scaling as games progress).
The values for the current upgrades would need adjusting, but what about something that allows the khamm to upgrade spurs and shells for the extra movement speed or armor for example?
I've been playing exclusively alien after reading and posting in this thread, just to have a good opinion on how and why Marines win more than Aliens (I don't care what stats say, my games are 60/40 for Marines). I don't really agree it's because of the Marine/Skulk match-up.
It is because of the difficulty to master Skulk compared to grabing a rifle as a Marine and just shoot stuff after entering a PG. Right now, people always go Marine. First consequence is that Aliens ALWAYS have one less player (except when server is full or Alien side is close to win). Second one, is that noob marines vs noob alien is a Marine win. The third is the conclusion of the first two: people go Marine to have a safest chance to win and have fun. They could go Alien, but it's taking the risk of having to play with noob aliens (which is equal to 0-12 ratios) and fighting Marines one vs two.
My solution ? Extremly simple: random teaming forced on every Official server. Private servers are free to do what they want, but Officials should be where people don't stack on Marine side, where people should actually learn Alien instead of waiting in Lobby until there is room in Marine team.
I've been playing exclusively alien after reading and posting in this thread, just to have a good opinion on how and why Marines win more than Aliens (I don't care what stats say, my games are 60/40 for Marines). I don't really agree it's because of the Marine/Skulk match-up.
I haven't been keeping track but I guess my games are nearly 50/50, with maybe a small advantage to marines.
It is because of the difficulty to master Skulk compared to grabing a rifle as a Marine and just shoot stuff after entering a PG. Right now, people always go Marine.
This is true. *Being an effective marine is a lot easier than being an effective Skulk. How to be an effective Skulk needs to be communicated to new players better. I've seen so many Skulks who run straight along the ground, spamming bite and never jumping or dodging. Those Skulks against equally bad marines (i.e. don't juke, don't check up and don't have great aim) the Skulks lose pretty horribly.
First consequence is that Aliens ALWAYS have one less player (except when server is full or Alien side is close to win).
This isn't actually an issue right now, at least for small to medium servers (i.e. 8v8 or less). Aliens have an advantage in small servers, marines an advantage in large servers. 1 extra marines making 8v7 or 7v6 doesn't change much. One extra marine making it 9v8 or 10v9 starts to effect the game a lot more.
Second one, is that noob marines vs noob alien is a Marine win. The third is the conclusion of the first two: people go Marine to have a safest chance to win and have fun. They could go Alien, but it's taking the risk of having to play with noob aliens (which is equal to 0-12 ratios) and fighting Marines one vs two.
My solution ? Extremly simple: random teaming forced on every Official server. Private servers are free to do what they want, but Officials should be where people don't stack on Marine side, where people should actually learn Alien instead of waiting in Lobby until there is room in Marine team.
This is not a solution. Random doesn't change the problems you've just described. Like I said for small servers that extra marine doesn't make a big difference, the issue is that new Skulks are less effective. Forcing random won't teach those Skulks any faster.
However playing with noobie teams you don't really encounter the problems we've been talking about in this thread (jukeing marines, ineffective wall jump etc). So while your points are valid I think they belong in another thread.
I've been thinking more about this, and playing a lot with this stuff in mind - and I have to say the skulk nerf is noticeable but its really not a total game changer - also if you notice the Lerk did not have its movement limited, and if you have ever played against a pro-lerker, its absolutely insane how fast and erratic a Lerk can move.. its like trying to shoot a lightning bolt out of the air. Also the fade was improved slightly, which in the hands of a skilled player is very deadly.
So in the grand scheme of things, I guess the skulk nerf isn't a huge deal. If the alien players are not skilled enough to take advantage of the Lerk & Fade, and they get killed and become skulks again - well too bad I guess, a team of upgraded skulks SHOULD lose to a team of upgraded marines late game. And for early game the marines will have a slight advantage but it really does not take very long for a couple aliens to evolve to Lerk.. it doesn't take long to get to 30 res and at that point Marines probably will not have shotguns which makes a skilled Lerk or two a game changer.
So in the end I guess the tide goes back and forth as far as which team has the advantage at which stage of a closely matched game - marines are at an advantage for the first 1-2 minutes, then aliens get the upper hand around the 2-3 minute mark, then by the time fades and level 2 wep / armor show up its pretty evenly matched. By mid game there are so many different strategies involved it really comes down to team coordination and upgrade paths more than anything else.
I have seen many games where the marines capture more territory than the aliens in the first couple minutes. Due to the vanilla skulk being kinda crappy, along with early phasegates to give high mobility, the marines cap more locations. But then the aliens get a couple upgrades, maybe celerity or cara, and a Lerk or two. This usually allows the aliens to give a solid push back on the marines and they can usually reclaim at least one of the bases the marines took early on. Which can ultimately lead to the marines falling behind in the res race since they just lost 15-35 tres on that base that just got destroyed.
So in summary, yes the aliens have a slight disadvantage in the early game but I feel that with two evenly matched teams it ends up being a close game.
It's no fun being forced into a higher lifeform though. No doubt pro lerks can wreck early game marines but that doesn't change anything about the skulk problem.
The last 3 days I played a lot, but over the past 24 hours almost all the matches I played were lost. In 95% of the time I play on Aliens side. Always the same - I jump from the ceiling on a Marine, he jumps out and kills me.
Have you ever noticed how many players among Marines has k\d more than 3-4? 20 kills and 5 deaths - It is normal for a player who knows how to play the game, for a player with an average skill. Average. Skill. Players with skill above average take shotguns and make 30 kills to 3 deaths in first 10 minutes. And thats before jetpacks.
How much alien skulk do you see on servers with 3-4 k\d? With 20 kills and 5 deaths? For the last three days I have not seen any such player. I think the player should have an incredible level of skill to do it. Effectively play as skulk against players with average skill level is incredibly difficult.
Skulk is not fun anymore. It is sad.
My friend, as do i, played on Aliens side for 5 months. He loves this game, as do i, but he was tired of all this - marines are better and better with each patch, they have increased movement acceleration, almost infinite charge of jetpack. And what do we, Aliens, have? Only nerfs. With such methods, in time, win percentage will be 60 \ 40 on Marine side.
Yesterday my friend deleted the game. Now I'm thinking about it.
Given how the game is centered around Marines vs. Skulks, given how you play the base class most of the time, given how much Marines gain with weapons and upgrades later in the game, this is a huge issue (in my opinion).
A Marine team can easily win with everyone just using the base class: a LMG Marine (throw in the occasional shotty if you like). Try doing that with Skulks only after 240 (have them all evolutions available if you like). You can't.
And this is the story about why I quit playing NS2, and why it hemorrhaged players after launch.
Ah, such good memories of marines pouring off of the IP with W3/A3, not having to expend ANY pres or tres, and being powerful enough to threaten Fades. Meanwhile aliens spawn as skulks and their only real option is to fuck off and munch on buildings or die.
No, the marine blasting from the hip at everything that moves doesn't necessarily win the game. No, the marine crackhopping around doesn't necessarily win the game. No, the marine with the 5:1 KDR doesn't necessarily win the game. But it makes the game fun, and that's why I like to play games. Why the hell do you people play them? So you can be told "LOL YOU WIN!" at the end? Would you play a game that was actually designed to annoy and frustrate you, and was engineered to be obnoxious rather than fun, just so you could be an alpha male, stroke your ego, and trash talk about how great you are?
a team of upgraded skulks SHOULD lose to a team of upgraded marines late game.
Why?
No really, why? Why should any of this shit be absolute? If both teams, in the late game, blow all of their pres and tres and then jump into lava, why SHOULD the marines just get a pass and 'deserve to win'? You think Team Fortress became big because the Blue side of 2Fort was designed worse than the Red side, and 'if x happens THEY DESERVE TO LOSE?' Even RTS games don't work that way, at least they're equally unfairly punishing to all sides involve - first person to lose their resourcing operation loses the game, it's not a "oh well he's Zerg, so he just deserves to win, because it's been more than y minutes and we engineered the game to just give the Zerg an unfair advantage if the game gets to this point".
^You're not supposed to lose life forms, ever. Marines die so easily, even with a JP and SG, so they need something for nothing, life forms don't (shouldn't) die.
^You're not supposed to lose life forms, ever. Marines die so easily, even with a JP and SG, so they need something for nothing, life forms don't (shouldn't) die.
Uh? With even a little skill JP SG marine can challenge fade 1v1 and if he dies its 20res lose (i assume SG gets picked up again 50% of time).
So with 20 res marine has a good chance on killing fade and if he fails, it doesn't matter at all. It's so cheap he can buy new stuff and even if he cant buy new stuff he is still a powerful unit, a rifle marine which is good from the start of the game to the end of the game and also fun to play.
Imo aliens are clearly underpowered atm, but, they are much more "underenjoyable"(or actually the skulk is) than just underpowered in terms of win%. If skulk succesfully ambushes riflemarine, marine shouldn't have a good chance of victory in 1v1 but atm i see these situations result like 50/50 on average players, which is wrong coz u should reward the skulk for outplaying the marine tactically. The game is very unforgiving for skulk but very forgiving for marine. If skulk just happens to be visible on some random marine for a sec or two without moving he is dead, but a marine can walk into carefully executed ambush and be victorious.
For my personal playing this stuff doesn't matter much, i can kill marines left and right, but i do ofc have way higher k/d on riflemarine than skulk. But it's so sad to see the constant marine stacking and ppl not wanting to play aliens. If aliens had a similiar thing as mines on marines, nobody would ever use res on them because it's so unfun to play a skulk.
@Nouswanderer : the skill ceiling has been lowered to a point that its frustrating to a certain level of player.
One could argue that the previous mechanic gave too much freedom and thus power.
This is why changing damage numbers will not help one bit for these level of players - they'd still be able to out position and juke a marine.
But one can also safely argue that against any halfway decent marine with a shotgun, even a one bite advantage (Which is not always possible) isn't enough to win the majority of the time now, as you cannot make up for a strafing marine's speed - instead of being based on who has a faster reaction.
So its not surprising that its now frustrating.
What must be preserved : the benefit of the predictable movement without twitchy/glitched animations that compound the issue.
What must change : the movement skill ceiling and ability to either counter a certain percentage of marine dodges, or have a very narrow reaction time window to do so.
I think its time for creative ideas..
What about earning a mini leap if you recently wall jumped? It would reward an encouraged action, require skill through planning and approach, could easily be explained by a hint, and fits the two criteria above? Its a new meta mechanic and feature though, and that is a downside..
I had been thinking of something similar, but slight different. If you will all allow me, and non of you can stop me (Mwah wahha whahwhah), i will elucidate:
I was watching a documentary and it was talking about how kangaroo's legs store the downwards going energy of a jump, and re-use it in the upwards going energy of the next jump. Which is cool in and of itself, but it also got me thinking of that old crouch jump thing Gordon Freeman used to do. I had the idea that were a skulk to crouch mid air, and then jump in (as a vague number) 0.5 seconds of landing, it would be able to store more of it's speed (or whatever value) than normal--maybe with the caveat that it has to be over a certain speed, or be crouched from a certain time/height.
I figured this would need skill, you have to press the right buttons; you would have to time it right; you would have to be engaging in the right way (after walljumps, after jumping off a ceiling, or whatever), hopefully it would give a skulk who has engaged well that little bit of an advantage to counter a marine's jumps. And I doubt it could be used for general, speedy travel cause of the weird falling increase effect crouching has.
Tbh I think they should just hike the cooldown on jump across the board. That way marines and aliens would have to actually employ exceptional situation awareness not to mention early game ambushes become much more meaningful
If bunnyhopping vs skulks no longer worked, balance would drop like a stone, in the aliens' favor.
Bunnyhopping saves an experienced player (which in this case simply means a player who can time the hopping properly) close to 50% of the bites from all skulks. If those 50 extra percent would land every time even while jumping, the skulk would be the new fade. There would be no reason to ever evolve as you'd be an unstoppable killing machine that would end every match in five minutes. Long before the marines would get access to their much-needed jetpacks to avoid the skulks. Two skulks could easily take down a fully upgraded shotgunner without jetpack every time.
So, while i certainly understand the concern of the OP, it has to be taken into account that making bunny-hopping no longer effective in evading skulk-bites would be the biggest nerf the marines have ever had. Thus it would require one hell of rebalancing process for the whole game.
Bunnyhopping definitely makes that big of an impact.
Well i guess that depends on the player. Some do bunnyhop, as in constantly jumping as they move, like a bunny would if it was chased by a skulk.
As jumping to avoid skulk-bites, which are plenty, is a vital part of the game, i think it deserves to be called bunnyhopping as bunnyhopping is about jumping out of danger. Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If i'm wrong, please provide its new definition it as it apparently has changed since i was there back when it was created.
Well i guess that depends on the player. Some do bunnyhop, as in constantly jumping as they move, like a bunny would if it was chased by a skulk.
As jumping to avoid skulk-bites, which are plenty, is a vital part of the game, i think it deserves to be called bunnyhopping as bunnyhopping is about jumping out of danger. Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If i'm wrong, please provide its new definition it as it apparently has changed since i was there back when it was created.
That aside, I stand by my earlier post. Bull fighting skulks is too easy now, which results in skulks not being very fun to play. They need an acceleration boost. More importantly, wall jumping needs a big buff.
Well i guess that depends on the player. Some do bunnyhop, as in constantly jumping as they move, like a bunny would if it was chased by a skulk.
As jumping to avoid skulk-bites, which are plenty, is a vital part of the game, i think it deserves to be called bunnyhopping as bunnyhopping is about jumping out of danger. Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If i'm wrong, please provide its new definition it as it apparently has changed since i was there back when it was created.
This REAL BUNNY HOPPING is what bunny hopping ACTUALLY is. It is a mechanic that abuses a bug in the physics engine of older games (no modern games I know of have it) to gain massive amounts of speed by using the strafe keys in time with the jump key (and looking left to right), but NEVER the forward key. Simply mashing the jump key DOES NOT make you a bunny hopper. It is actually a really difficult skill to master.
EDIT: The video above is much better than mine (which sucks but was the best I could find )
Well i guess that depends on the player. Some do bunnyhop, as in constantly jumping as they move, like a bunny would if it was chased by a skulk.
As jumping to avoid skulk-bites, which are plenty, is a vital part of the game, i think it deserves to be called bunnyhopping as bunnyhopping is about jumping out of danger. Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If i'm wrong, please provide its new definition it as it apparently has changed since i was there back when it was created.
That aside, I stand by my earlier post. Bull fighting skulks is too easy now, which results in skulks not being very fun to play. They need an acceleration boost. More importantly, wall jumping needs a big buff.
@-) If only skulk had the bunny hop. It's fun and it has that skill level which people can try to reach to truly master the movements. UWE pls
Well i guess that depends on the player. Some do bunnyhop, as in constantly jumping as they move, like a bunny would if it was chased by a skulk.
As jumping to avoid skulk-bites, which are plenty, is a vital part of the game, i think it deserves to be called bunnyhopping as bunnyhopping is about jumping out of danger. Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If i'm wrong, please provide its new definition it as it apparently has changed since i was there back when it was created.
That aside, I stand by my earlier post. Bull fighting skulks is too easy now, which results in skulks not being very fun to play. They need an acceleration boost. More importantly, wall jumping needs a big buff.
@-) If only skulk had the bunny hop. It's fun and it has that skill level which people can try to reach to truly master the movements. UWE pls
@-) If only skulk had the bunny hop. It's fun and it has that skill level which people can try to reach to truly master the movements. UWE pls
I'm a big fan of wall jumping, but it's just not rewarding enough to master it now. I still miss the leap you could do off of walls into the sky once upon a time. Those were fun times.
As it is now, I find it hard to keep 8m/s with wall jumping outside of specific routes (in which I can only keep 10, as opposed to the 11-13 I was able to do before wall jumping was changed [I forgot when that happened]).
Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If you're just talking about people jumping up and down a lot, don't call it "bunnyhopping" or some people with nothing better to do will get all bent out of shape. Just call it "bouncing".
As bunnyhopping is impossible in NS2, I think that when the term is used, it is relatively easy to figure out that it's talking about bouncing around like a tool, rather than the specific movement exploit/artifact found in old FPS engines.
Basically, the word functions perfectly well to communicate the concept, assuming you're not being anal and pretending to be completely ignorant of its meaning in this context and asserting that it only has one meaning and could not possibly acquire another.
So yes, it's bunnyhopping, because most people call it bunnyhopping, and everyone knows what they mean when they do.
Comments
Vanilla skulk VS vanilla marine is not very well balanced right now. (It was very well balanced in 239 imo) When I am skulk, I often struggle to keep 1:1 K:D let alone do useful things like destroy buildings or defend ours, when I am marine, 10:0 is not uncommon in the first few minutes. This is all due to the strafe jump matador manoeuvre being so easy to pull off. The side effect of this skulk nerf has been an overall balance of close to 50% each side, but it really is a terrible way of achieving overall balance. As has been pointed out before it is the way the alien economy works combined with the fact that aliens don’t really need to help build stuff leaving them free to run amok across the map that needs to change for overall balance.
I’m not sure if possible, but if so I would say keep air control where it is now. It’s the ground friction and acceleration that needs to be tuned back to where it was in 239. This feels like to me the issues with the marine strafe jump to safety issue. The skulk handles like a pallet of bricks in comparison to the marine.
Are these all related to ground movement? If so, put them back to 239 values.
I could try playing marines but then again, I sort of pity aliens as the underdog too and it just doesn't feel right.
I think they are. Nerfing the acceleration by more than half put it far below that of a marine (which is 100). Imo, it also placed the skulks in the position they are now in relation to marine juking and lessened skulk enjoyability. Air control feels really off as well. Honestly even if skulk was better pre 240 the wall jump still felt lackluster compared to older builds I saw at launch. I wonder what can be done about it. I am unsure what the friction lines are for so I cannot really comment on it much.
If you'd kept reading you'll of seen that I did say Skulks are weaker than marines and that it only gets worse as marine upgrades start coming out. My game experience with kd ratios matches what you've described as well, aliens even when winning die a lot more (with longer spawn times, yay!). What I disagree with is that Skulk/marine in 239 was well balanced, it wasn't. Skulks with a slight skill difference could tear apart lesser marines, 240 flipped the problem on it's head making the marine better.
But balance is not my major gripe with this whole business. Skulk is less fun than marine to play. Skulks are slow, they get destroyed at range, you get stressed by hyperactive marines, wall jump feels pointless (who else used to bounce around the map wall to wall to get from A to B and now just runs?) you can be one shot killed in a variety of ways (yay mines, shotguns, railguns), and late game about the only thing your good for is res tower munching.
Wall jump needs to be interesting, Skulks need to be agile and fast (it's ridiculous that a marine accelerates faster than a Skulk!), if this makes alien early game to powerful then weaken it someplace else (hint hint, alien economy). If it makes Skulks too powerful then reduce their early game health/dmg and give them someway to scale to late game (this needs doing anyway, lack of scaling is the reason for a lot of this games problems. Both scaling to player counts, and scaling as games progress).
The values for the current upgrades would need adjusting, but what about something that allows the khamm to upgrade spurs and shells for the extra movement speed or armor for example?
It is because of the difficulty to master Skulk compared to grabing a rifle as a Marine and just shoot stuff after entering a PG. Right now, people always go Marine. First consequence is that Aliens ALWAYS have one less player (except when server is full or Alien side is close to win). Second one, is that noob marines vs noob alien is a Marine win. The third is the conclusion of the first two: people go Marine to have a safest chance to win and have fun. They could go Alien, but it's taking the risk of having to play with noob aliens (which is equal to 0-12 ratios) and fighting Marines one vs two.
My solution ? Extremly simple: random teaming forced on every Official server. Private servers are free to do what they want, but Officials should be where people don't stack on Marine side, where people should actually learn Alien instead of waiting in Lobby until there is room in Marine team.
I haven't been keeping track but I guess my games are nearly 50/50, with maybe a small advantage to marines.
This is true. *Being an effective marine is a lot easier than being an effective Skulk. How to be an effective Skulk needs to be communicated to new players better. I've seen so many Skulks who run straight along the ground, spamming bite and never jumping or dodging. Those Skulks against equally bad marines (i.e. don't juke, don't check up and don't have great aim) the Skulks lose pretty horribly.
This isn't actually an issue right now, at least for small to medium servers (i.e. 8v8 or less). Aliens have an advantage in small servers, marines an advantage in large servers. 1 extra marines making 8v7 or 7v6 doesn't change much. One extra marine making it 9v8 or 10v9 starts to effect the game a lot more.
See above *.
This is not a solution. Random doesn't change the problems you've just described. Like I said for small servers that extra marine doesn't make a big difference, the issue is that new Skulks are less effective. Forcing random won't teach those Skulks any faster.
However playing with noobie teams you don't really encounter the problems we've been talking about in this thread (jukeing marines, ineffective wall jump etc). So while your points are valid I think they belong in another thread.
So in the grand scheme of things, I guess the skulk nerf isn't a huge deal. If the alien players are not skilled enough to take advantage of the Lerk & Fade, and they get killed and become skulks again - well too bad I guess, a team of upgraded skulks SHOULD lose to a team of upgraded marines late game. And for early game the marines will have a slight advantage but it really does not take very long for a couple aliens to evolve to Lerk.. it doesn't take long to get to 30 res and at that point Marines probably will not have shotguns which makes a skilled Lerk or two a game changer.
So in the end I guess the tide goes back and forth as far as which team has the advantage at which stage of a closely matched game - marines are at an advantage for the first 1-2 minutes, then aliens get the upper hand around the 2-3 minute mark, then by the time fades and level 2 wep / armor show up its pretty evenly matched. By mid game there are so many different strategies involved it really comes down to team coordination and upgrade paths more than anything else.
I have seen many games where the marines capture more territory than the aliens in the first couple minutes. Due to the vanilla skulk being kinda crappy, along with early phasegates to give high mobility, the marines cap more locations. But then the aliens get a couple upgrades, maybe celerity or cara, and a Lerk or two. This usually allows the aliens to give a solid push back on the marines and they can usually reclaim at least one of the bases the marines took early on. Which can ultimately lead to the marines falling behind in the res race since they just lost 15-35 tres on that base that just got destroyed.
So in summary, yes the aliens have a slight disadvantage in the early game but I feel that with two evenly matched teams it ends up being a close game.
Have you ever noticed how many players among Marines has k\d more than 3-4? 20 kills and 5 deaths - It is normal for a player who knows how to play the game, for a player with an average skill. Average. Skill. Players with skill above average take shotguns and make 30 kills to 3 deaths in first 10 minutes. And thats before jetpacks.
How much alien skulk do you see on servers with 3-4 k\d? With 20 kills and 5 deaths? For the last three days I have not seen any such player. I think the player should have an incredible level of skill to do it. Effectively play as skulk against players with average skill level is incredibly difficult.
Skulk is not fun anymore. It is sad.
My friend, as do i, played on Aliens side for 5 months. He loves this game, as do i, but he was tired of all this - marines are better and better with each patch, they have increased movement acceleration, almost infinite charge of jetpack. And what do we, Aliens, have? Only nerfs. With such methods, in time, win percentage will be 60 \ 40 on Marine side.
Yesterday my friend deleted the game. Now I'm thinking about it.
And this is the story about why I quit playing NS2, and why it hemorrhaged players after launch.
Ah, such good memories of marines pouring off of the IP with W3/A3, not having to expend ANY pres or tres, and being powerful enough to threaten Fades. Meanwhile aliens spawn as skulks and their only real option is to fuck off and munch on buildings or die.
No, the marine blasting from the hip at everything that moves doesn't necessarily win the game. No, the marine crackhopping around doesn't necessarily win the game. No, the marine with the 5:1 KDR doesn't necessarily win the game. But it makes the game fun, and that's why I like to play games. Why the hell do you people play them? So you can be told "LOL YOU WIN!" at the end? Would you play a game that was actually designed to annoy and frustrate you, and was engineered to be obnoxious rather than fun, just so you could be an alpha male, stroke your ego, and trash talk about how great you are?
Why?
No really, why? Why should any of this shit be absolute? If both teams, in the late game, blow all of their pres and tres and then jump into lava, why SHOULD the marines just get a pass and 'deserve to win'? You think Team Fortress became big because the Blue side of 2Fort was designed worse than the Red side, and 'if x happens THEY DESERVE TO LOSE?' Even RTS games don't work that way, at least they're equally unfairly punishing to all sides involve - first person to lose their resourcing operation loses the game, it's not a "oh well he's Zerg, so he just deserves to win, because it's been more than y minutes and we engineered the game to just give the Zerg an unfair advantage if the game gets to this point".
Uh? With even a little skill JP SG marine can challenge fade 1v1 and if he dies its 20res lose (i assume SG gets picked up again 50% of time).
So with 20 res marine has a good chance on killing fade and if he fails, it doesn't matter at all. It's so cheap he can buy new stuff and even if he cant buy new stuff he is still a powerful unit, a rifle marine which is good from the start of the game to the end of the game and also fun to play.
Imo aliens are clearly underpowered atm, but, they are much more "underenjoyable"(or actually the skulk is) than just underpowered in terms of win%. If skulk succesfully ambushes riflemarine, marine shouldn't have a good chance of victory in 1v1 but atm i see these situations result like 50/50 on average players, which is wrong coz u should reward the skulk for outplaying the marine tactically. The game is very unforgiving for skulk but very forgiving for marine. If skulk just happens to be visible on some random marine for a sec or two without moving he is dead, but a marine can walk into carefully executed ambush and be victorious.
For my personal playing this stuff doesn't matter much, i can kill marines left and right, but i do ofc have way higher k/d on riflemarine than skulk. But it's so sad to see the constant marine stacking and ppl not wanting to play aliens. If aliens had a similiar thing as mines on marines, nobody would ever use res on them because it's so unfun to play a skulk.
I had been thinking of something similar, but slight different. If you will all allow me, and non of you can stop me (Mwah wahha whahwhah), i will elucidate:
I was watching a documentary and it was talking about how kangaroo's legs store the downwards going energy of a jump, and re-use it in the upwards going energy of the next jump. Which is cool in and of itself, but it also got me thinking of that old crouch jump thing Gordon Freeman used to do. I had the idea that were a skulk to crouch mid air, and then jump in (as a vague number) 0.5 seconds of landing, it would be able to store more of it's speed (or whatever value) than normal--maybe with the caveat that it has to be over a certain speed, or be crouched from a certain time/height.
I figured this would need skill, you have to press the right buttons; you would have to time it right; you would have to be engaging in the right way (after walljumps, after jumping off a ceiling, or whatever), hopefully it would give a skulk who has engaged well that little bit of an advantage to counter a marine's jumps. And I doubt it could be used for general, speedy travel cause of the weird falling increase effect crouching has.
Bunnyhopping saves an experienced player (which in this case simply means a player who can time the hopping properly) close to 50% of the bites from all skulks. If those 50 extra percent would land every time even while jumping, the skulk would be the new fade. There would be no reason to ever evolve as you'd be an unstoppable killing machine that would end every match in five minutes. Long before the marines would get access to their much-needed jetpacks to avoid the skulks. Two skulks could easily take down a fully upgraded shotgunner without jetpack every time.
So, while i certainly understand the concern of the OP, it has to be taken into account that making bunny-hopping no longer effective in evading skulk-bites would be the biggest nerf the marines have ever had. Thus it would require one hell of rebalancing process for the whole game.
Bunnyhopping definitely makes that big of an impact.
Well i guess that depends on the player. Some do bunnyhop, as in constantly jumping as they move, like a bunny would if it was chased by a skulk.
As jumping to avoid skulk-bites, which are plenty, is a vital part of the game, i think it deserves to be called bunnyhopping as bunnyhopping is about jumping out of danger. Just because some don't do it as often as a rabbit would it doesn't mean that it's something else than bunnyhopping.
If i'm wrong, please provide its new definition it as it apparently has changed since i was there back when it was created.
Here is a helpful link as to what bunny hopping actually is.
That aside, I stand by my earlier post. Bull fighting skulks is too easy now, which results in skulks not being very fun to play. They need an acceleration boost. More importantly, wall jumping needs a big buff.
This REAL BUNNY HOPPING is what bunny hopping ACTUALLY is. It is a mechanic that abuses a bug in the physics engine of older games (no modern games I know of have it) to gain massive amounts of speed by using the strafe keys in time with the jump key (and looking left to right), but NEVER the forward key. Simply mashing the jump key DOES NOT make you a bunny hopper. It is actually a really difficult skill to master.
EDIT: The video above is much better than mine (which sucks but was the best I could find
@-) If only skulk had the bunny hop. It's fun and it has that skill level which people can try to reach to truly master the movements. UWE pls
RIP skilled movement in games.
I'm a big fan of wall jumping, but it's just not rewarding enough to master it now. I still miss the leap you could do off of walls into the sky once upon a time. Those were fun times.
As it is now, I find it hard to keep 8m/s with wall jumping outside of specific routes (in which I can only keep 10, as opposed to the 11-13 I was able to do before wall jumping was changed [I forgot when that happened]).
If you're just talking about people jumping up and down a lot, don't call it "bunnyhopping" or some people with nothing better to do will get all bent out of shape. Just call it "bouncing".
Basically, the word functions perfectly well to communicate the concept, assuming you're not being anal and pretending to be completely ignorant of its meaning in this context and asserting that it only has one meaning and could not possibly acquire another.
So yes, it's bunnyhopping, because most people call it bunnyhopping, and everyone knows what they mean when they do.