I suggested having spikes on t3 (as a heavy damage attack), and moving spores to T1 with bite (gives lerk a good harass/area denial, and a close range/high risk attack. That would leave umbra on T2 with a slightly reduced strength (from the T3 version). Having spikes and spores early game would make the lerk stupidly powerful (spikes are already too easy).
Lerk needs Spikes as counter to Shotguns. It's basically the only somewhat reliable thing that aliens have against it.
Why not move both Umbra and Spores to T2?
I never had problems with the cropduster Lerk. It seems like an adequate risk/reward thing. A ranged version would be fine as long as the range is not too high. (Lerk should still have to go somewhat into Shotgun range to spray an area, so it should be shorter than Umbra).
Also, I was always under the impression that Lerk Spikes would deal light damage, so marines could better defend themselves against it with armor. Seeing that it has puncture damage to be more 25% more effective against players while dealing normal damage to armor makes me wonder if there shouldn't be some damage type in between that fits the role of the Lerk better, like "Light Puncture Damage" where every armor point absorbs 3 damage instead of 2 and +20% damage against players.
It would change Spikes to be more the thing to use to hunt survivors down (good synergy with Aura's damage indicator) after your team got rid of their armor instead of making the Lerk the more efficient combat lifeform.
5 T.res seems like a pretty big investment for a non-cloaked drifter
+1
Nobody will ever use them outside incredibly safe locations - i.e. not for scouting - especially early game. Which might be the point, but I don't like it.
The Arms Lab requirement change probably helps in situations where you could not build an Armory because you exceeded the supply cap or when one of your bases got rushed, the Armory destroyed and your goal is to just rebuild the Arms Lab as soon as possible.
It is more adding an actual choice in early marine build order. As it is right now your options are Robo or Armory. Which is really a non-choice. We've tried obs having no pre-reqs before and it became rush phases more often than not. Arms lab is a better choice to bring back more early game decisions in the tech tree (in my opinion).
5 T.res seems like a pretty big investment for a non-cloaked drifter
+1
Nobody will ever use them outside incredibly safe locations - i.e. not for scouting - especially early game. Which might be the point, but I don't like it.
They'd be less of a set and forget unit without cloak which would require more micro from the alien commander (which is not necessarily a bad thing). The Crag and Shift drifter passives need to be adjusted as such to compensate for this. Drifters in vanilla are a very very powerful unit. Passive vision of the map is a big big deal and cloak 24/7 on them makes it a fire and forget mechanic which is kinda meh.
In general I am still having a hard time how you expect for Aliens to stop ninja rushes with you only wanting five Drifters on the map at all time.
One hidden Marine can set up a Phase Gate and that can ruin the Aliens. While Aliens can somewhat do it as well, Marines have Observatories and before Aliens had drifters. Attempting to limit Drifters to only offensive support units makes it very easy for Marines to get free Phase Gate rushes. I know this sounds dumb, but it is required on pub games when the maps are not filled with players.
This is not counting the fact that you removed their passive Camo unless Aliens get Shade Hive. If Drifters took 7 seconds to cloak and then the normal few seconds with a Shade Hide, the Shade Hide will be strong for Drifter use but will not be required for Drifter use like it is currently.
Also I still think Lurks need the Spores as IronHorse said. Aliens need a good area of deny ability before T3, currently they have none.
Isn't the unit 'population' system, or whatever it's called, already there to stop certain types of spam? It seems a bit overkill that you are trying to soft-cap them in more than one way. Somebody who spams drifters will have less room for whips, crags, shifts and whatnot. I simply don't see myself spending 5 t.res or 1/3 of a harvester on a non-cloaked drifter. (Not to mention you need to pay for some of the abilities on top of that)
It is more adding an actual choice in early marine build order. As it is right now your options are Robo or Armory. Which is really a non-choice. We've tried obs having no pre-reqs before and it became rush phases more often than not. Arms lab is a better choice to bring back more early game decisions in the tech tree (in my opinion).
I sincerely think obs could go back to being untied from Armory if only they would fix sentries. Then marine commanders would get an interesting early game choice between sentries, arms lab, armory and weapons or phase tech.
I still hate the poplulation system you added. It removes the ability for Aliens to Whip Rush to any degree and in general it forces a lot of concessions. Falls into the issue of not scaling for player count, map size, and time. I agree that there should be limits for buildings, but only to stop turtling one room. Even then, Marines can arc everything to death. The only team that suffers when building spam happens is the Aliens, as Marines can just Arc/Flamethrower everything. Even then to my even then, giving Aliens a stronger Bile Bomb or another building clearing T3 ability would remove the ability to spam buildings.
There needs to be limits for Arcs/Macs/Drifters, but everything else costs too much for spam to be an issue in any real game.
"- EXPERIMENTAL: unleashed alien commander: crag shift and shade can now always be build
- utility chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type (heal wave requires a crag hive)"
I rather like these changes. It makes Crag Hive not as desired. Carapace is arguably the best upgrade and Crags being the best buildings in general. Making it so that one can build Crags anyways will make Shift and Camo stand out on their own merits. Shift and Crags are tied for most useful upgraded building effects however.
I don't see how tbh. A spotted drifter is a dead drifter. No micro in the world is gonna change that.
I would stop placing your uncloaked drifters in the center of rooms. Positioning becomes more important to be able to make safe and timely exits. That isn't to say the shift and crag passive drifter abilities won't need to be buffed to be somewhat comparable to the shade as I said previously due to the increased need to pay attention to them. As they are currently, the speed and the regen aren't nearly as nice. Perhaps adding armor (carapace) when you have a crag hive would be warranted on top of the regen but I can't think of anything along the lines of shift (adrenaline) to match for the other passive.
"- EXPERIMENTAL: unleashed alien commander: crag shift and shade can now always be build
- utility chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type (heal wave requires a crag hive)"
I rather like these changes. It makes Crag Hive not as desired. Carapace is arguably the best upgrade and Crags being the best buildings in general. Making it so that one can build Crags anyways will make Shift and Camo stand out on their own merits. Shift and Crags are tied for most useful upgraded building effects however.
Eh, with the shift active ability now being echo rather than hatch (as that was moved to the hive) I'd say ink out shines it in every way due to its ability to nullify scan.
I would stop placing your uncloaked drifters in the center of rooms. Positioning becomes more important to be able to make safe and timely exits.
To make any kind of exit, drifters would have to be made either insanely fast or have their range of sight increased by a huge margin. Otherwise, my point still stands. No matter how you place your drifters, if they're in any position where marines aren't distracted by more important stuff (ie. any truly useful position in terms of scouting), they're gonna be shot down.
Other changes that we tried out today:
- Increased cost of Crag, Shade and Shift to 15 (was 10)
- Rupture can now be cast directly on infestation, like Bonewall (infestation bubble grows up and pops, marine can reduce effect by looking in another direction)
- Crag Drifter no longer has Rupture as ability but instead "Mucous Membrane", which causes aliens in it's area of effect to regenerate a small percentage of armor
- Bonewall is now tied to Biomass 3 (so you can get it on 1 Hive)
"- EXPERIMENTAL: unleashed alien commander: crag shift and shade can now always be build
- utility chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type (heal wave requires a crag hive)"
How are marines supposed to stop Lerks with NS1 style Spores if the Lerks never have to put themselves at risk without armory humping, which is boring a #$%& or waiting for a Railguns to rock up. Also why would you ever use Lerk Spikes if you have unlocked Spores if it is infinitely better at suppressing marine teams?
I like the current Spore implementation, if you know what you are doing it is still extremely effective and a much more impressive display of player skill than the vent spamming that was frequent in NS1.
How are marines supposed to stop Lerks with NS1 style Spores if the Lerks never have to put themselves at risk without armory humping, which is boring a #$%& or waiting for a Railguns to rock up. Also why would you ever use Lerk Spikes if you have unlocked Spores if it is infinitely better at suppressing marine teams?
I like the current Spore implementation, if you know what you are doing it is still extremely effective and a much more impressive display of player skill than the vent spamming that was frequent in NS1.
is anyone asking for NS1 style spores?
in an earlier version of balance test mod, the spores had like a 4-5 metre range. you were able to place spores without getting 2-shotted by shotgun. imo it absolutely made more sense than crop dusting. you could perch on the roof and spike, then use your tactical 'birds eye view' perspective to dispense spores in ideal locations. in the current build, the best strategy for lerk is to sit on the floor pecking the phase gate etc because the awesome possibilities of being able to fly/cling to walls or 'lerk' are underutilised.
there's a reason why spores are rarely researched in comp play; even though lerk is very common.
I still hate the poplulation system you added. It removes the ability for Aliens to Whip Rush to any degree and in general it forces a lot of concessions. Falls into the issue of not scaling for player count, map size, and time. I agree that there should be limits for buildings, but only to stop turtling one room. Even then, Marines can arc everything to death. The only team that suffers when building spam happens is the Aliens, as Marines can just Arc/Flamethrower everything. Even then to my even then, giving Aliens a stronger Bile Bomb or another building clearing T3 ability would remove the ability to spam buildings.
There needs to be limits for Arcs/Macs/Drifters, but everything else costs too much for spam to be an issue in any real game.
Agreed. I'd rather see stuff like buildings being capped due to their costs (like the recent cost increase from 10 to 15 for alien structures) than such a hard limit.
In the existing system, I would change the supply costs to 5 per alien structure and 20 per Sentry, to give a little more room for breathing. Being able to basically only have one-two Sentry nests in the map (depending on how much you invest into other stuff) does not really enforce any more strategic choice but just limits you so much that you might as well scrap Sentries as a whole. Whips suffer a similar fate, which is sad.
There was never really a problem with structure spam. It gave defense abilities to those with enough map control to afford and require it, but it could not be sustained if you were losing anyway. ARCs and Exos can easily get rid of it.
The only thing that really needed to be addressed were massive MAC and ARC spam, the first because it makes Exos nearly unkillable and the latter because a full train of them can drop an alien base in a second without marine players ever needing to go in. And the only thing aliens had against it was Bile Bomb on a lifeform that is a sitting duck if marines just want to hold an area long enough plus requiring 2 Hives in vanilla.
And in combination with that you could reduce the base supply cap and make it increase with each captured tech point.
I would stop placing your uncloaked drifters in the center of rooms. Positioning becomes more important to be able to make safe and timely exits.
To make any kind of exit, drifters would have to be made either insanely fast or have their range of sight increased by a huge margin. Otherwise, my point still stands. No matter how you place your drifters, if they're in any position where marines aren't distracted by more important stuff (ie. any truly useful position in terms of scouting), they're gonna be shot down.
they are pretty damn fast iirc... unless it was some kind of lag/glitch, it often seems like they move faster than shadowstep :P
Are you making the leap / bile / shadowe step etc upgrades separate researches again? I don't understand the point. It is an empty choice.
yeah i found this to be a little strange. someone was asking for stomp, and i realised that one of the 3 hives wasn't upgraded with biomass. so i had to upgrade that hive twice THEN research stomp.
you have to jump through a bunch of unnecessary flaming hoops.
my largest concern with the movement is with the air acceleration still being limited. there were two things that made bunnyhopping work,
1) circlejump
2) air control
neither of which are in NS2 in an acceptable state right now. as for circlejumping, I don't ever expect it to make its way back into a modern FPS, but that was basically half of the skill involved in bunnyhopping.
air control is something that is much more realistic to address. first of all, the air control was nerfed way too much initially, even in the live build. air control was previously far too good, but it was the ability to change momentum, NOT DIRECTION in mid-air that was the problem. Skulks were able to jump strafeleft, and then in mid-air, straferight and land pretty much exactly where they started or further to the right.
Annotation 1 shows the former Skulk movement. I am able to land on the platform and instantly 180. even further still, I'm able to jump off the platform and land on the same platform. for the sake of understanding it in terms of NS2 movement, try imagining no mouse movement (facing the "open" part of the map and strafing left and strafing right, or facing the platform I am jumping to and going forward and back).
Annotation 2 shows reasonable acceleration and air acceleration values. I try to do the same jumps, but because I am going directly against my momentum, I stop dead mid-air. I cannot do the platform jump or the mid-air momentum change.
Annotation 3 shows that these kinds of jumps should be possible, but only through proper speed management. I can do the platform jump if I take a wider turn or a wider strafe. This in turn makes my movement more predictable, which is the entire tradeoff of bunnyhopping. This is how it should be, but it's not.
Concerns about Skulks being "too hard to hit" are completely unfounded. NS1 was a much faster game and that argument didn't exist because yes, while it was possible for Skulks to change direction in mid-air, that is entirely different from being able to change momentum. I used to play The Specialists, another HL1 mod. this game was arguably one of the fastest-paced shooters, with a 320 movespeed and complete free air acceleration (and it did not have bunnyhopping !). it boasted walljumps and various other movement mechanics, yet hardly any of them were actually used in mid-combat. this is again, because of the predictability tradeoff. I made several defrag-style tricking movies and the entire sentiment was that it was never going to be used in a real game. no one bunnyhops in Quake mid-combat, either. the trade-off is just too significant, and that's in a game where the hitscan is arguably much weaker.
it also adds the skill aspect to bunnyhopping. these kinds of multiple-beat jumps are impossible and was half the reason bunnyhopping was actually hard to do. mastering the sweeping movement was manageable, but syncing multiple-beat jumping was much more difficult and yielded greater rewards.
i agree the air control isn't anywhere near a likable level, but imo the balance mod movement rework is still a fantastic improvement over the live build.
you still feel 'brickish', but you can travel accross the map and close distances up to twice as fast... meaning you can exploit holes in the marines defense a lot faster. whenever you use a diversion to 'ninja' a base and get the phase gate/power down to 20-30% - with bunny hop you might have been able to destroy it.
that's my idea of fun, and it doesn't directly 'nerf' marines like super air control which may turn skulks into ninja wasps.
imo the best change in the mod is swapping blink for shadow step.
playing fade is horrifying without blink; it's almost essential unless you're miles ahead in the early game already. it's a massive gamble going more than 1 room away from a hive, because there's always that possibility of being sandwiched by shotgunners.
There seems to be a bug in the mod that prevents the khammander from researching any evolutions, despite the respective Biomass requirements being fulfilled. It basically killed the little gathering we had going on tonight.
imo the best change in the mod is swapping blink for shadow step.
playing fade is horrifying without blink; it's almost essential unless you're miles ahead in the early game already. it's a massive gamble going more than 1 room away from a hive, because there's always that possibility of being sandwiched by shotgunners.
Funny, I think most good fades would agree with what you said but apply it to shadowstep instead of blink. I personally barely ever use blink and think it's pretty much only needed once jetpacks are up.
Needless to say, I hate the swap and the shadowstep re-work.
imo the best change in the mod is swapping blink for shadow step.
playing fade is horrifying without blink; it's almost essential unless you're miles ahead in the early game already. it's a massive gamble going more than 1 room away from a hive, because there's always that possibility of being sandwiched by shotgunners.
Funny, I think most good fades would agree with what you said but apply it to shadowstep instead of blink. I personally barely ever use blink and think it's pretty much only needed once jetpacks are up.
Needless to say, I hate the swap and the shadowstep re-work.
i think that statement needs an accompanying explanation. i can't seem to get any use out of shadow step unless i want to go back/sideways while looking straight ahead.
also, if you're down to ~200 hit points and both exits to the room have a shotgunner - it should be certain death unless they're plankton-brain marines. blink can allow you to use vent, travel vertically and gives you at least a slim chance to scoot through an exit.
what makes shadow step better?
edit: to clarify, i do use shadowstep to 'mix it up', but i still fail to see the purpose next to the 'tap and go' (with no cooldown) design of blink. imo making blink the default and buffing shadowstep to be a more potent 'dodge' maneuver seems like the logical path.
I'm not sure whether your problem is not knowing how to use shadowstep properly or just not liking it? If it's the former, you might wanna spec a decent fade shadowstepping (hint: jump shift jump), if it's the latter I'm fairly mindblown because it's simply superior to blink in terms of getting around quicker in every way. I pretty much only use blink as an escaping tool or for quick taps after a shadowstep and I know all the top fades are with me on this. Which is why the current swapping of these abilities and the shadowstep re-work in the mod can absolutely not stay.
I'm not sure whether your problem is not knowing how to use shadowstep properly or just not liking it? If it's the former, you might wanna spec a decent fade shadowstepping (hint: jump shift jump), if it's the latter I'm fairly mindblown because it's simply superior to blink in terms of getting around quicker in every way. I pretty much only use blink as an escaping tool or for quick taps after a shadowstep and I know all the top fades are with me on this. Which is why the current swapping of these abilities and the shadowstep re-work in the mod can absolutely not stay.
i discovered the jump shadowstep jump or shadowstep jump combo in about 5 minutes of playing around in explore mode. yeah it's fantastic speed and mobility, and for a fair while i believed it was superior to blink. but over time i've weaned myself onto tapping blink (blink jump blink jump) and get almost the same speed/cost, with more mobility (up a slope, over an obstruction, effectively flying) and NO COOLDOWN.
additionally, the best fades i've seen on pub servers primarily use blink. also, the best fades i've seen on pub tend to die when they don't have blink. when playing as a marine or fade, i just don't feel that non-blink fades are a threat. all mobility/speed from shadowstep jumping is useless when your escape route is a small doorway or snaking corridor, you literally have to 'walk' away like a fat gorge.
Comments
Why not move both Umbra and Spores to T2?
I never had problems with the cropduster Lerk. It seems like an adequate risk/reward thing. A ranged version would be fine as long as the range is not too high. (Lerk should still have to go somewhat into Shotgun range to spray an area, so it should be shorter than Umbra).
Also, I was always under the impression that Lerk Spikes would deal light damage, so marines could better defend themselves against it with armor. Seeing that it has puncture damage to be more 25% more effective against players while dealing normal damage to armor makes me wonder if there shouldn't be some damage type in between that fits the role of the Lerk better, like "Light Puncture Damage" where every armor point absorbs 3 damage instead of 2 and +20% damage against players.
It would change Spikes to be more the thing to use to hunt survivors down (good synergy with Aura's damage indicator) after your team got rid of their armor instead of making the Lerk the more efficient combat lifeform.
Nobody will ever use them outside incredibly safe locations - i.e. not for scouting - especially early game. Which might be the point, but I don't like it.
It is more adding an actual choice in early marine build order. As it is right now your options are Robo or Armory. Which is really a non-choice. We've tried obs having no pre-reqs before and it became rush phases more often than not. Arms lab is a better choice to bring back more early game decisions in the tech tree (in my opinion).
They'd be less of a set and forget unit without cloak which would require more micro from the alien commander (which is not necessarily a bad thing). The Crag and Shift drifter passives need to be adjusted as such to compensate for this. Drifters in vanilla are a very very powerful unit. Passive vision of the map is a big big deal and cloak 24/7 on them makes it a fire and forget mechanic which is kinda meh.
One hidden Marine can set up a Phase Gate and that can ruin the Aliens. While Aliens can somewhat do it as well, Marines have Observatories and before Aliens had drifters. Attempting to limit Drifters to only offensive support units makes it very easy for Marines to get free Phase Gate rushes. I know this sounds dumb, but it is required on pub games when the maps are not filled with players.
This is not counting the fact that you removed their passive Camo unless Aliens get Shade Hive. If Drifters took 7 seconds to cloak and then the normal few seconds with a Shade Hide, the Shade Hide will be strong for Drifter use but will not be required for Drifter use like it is currently.
Also I still think Lurks need the Spores as IronHorse said. Aliens need a good area of deny ability before T3, currently they have none.
I sincerely think obs could go back to being untied from Armory if only they would fix sentries. Then marine commanders would get an interesting early game choice between sentries, arms lab, armory and weapons or phase tech.
There needs to be limits for Arcs/Macs/Drifters, but everything else costs too much for spam to be an issue in any real game.
- utility chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type (heal wave requires a crag hive)"
I rather like these changes. It makes Crag Hive not as desired. Carapace is arguably the best upgrade and Crags being the best buildings in general. Making it so that one can build Crags anyways will make Shift and Camo stand out on their own merits. Shift and Crags are tied for most useful upgraded building effects however.
I would stop placing your uncloaked drifters in the center of rooms. Positioning becomes more important to be able to make safe and timely exits. That isn't to say the shift and crag passive drifter abilities won't need to be buffed to be somewhat comparable to the shade as I said previously due to the increased need to pay attention to them. As they are currently, the speed and the regen aren't nearly as nice. Perhaps adding armor (carapace) when you have a crag hive would be warranted on top of the regen but I can't think of anything along the lines of shift (adrenaline) to match for the other passive.
Eh, with the shift active ability now being echo rather than hatch (as that was moved to the hive) I'd say ink out shines it in every way due to its ability to nullify scan.
- Increased cost of Crag, Shade and Shift to 15 (was 10)
- Rupture can now be cast directly on infestation, like Bonewall (infestation bubble grows up and pops, marine can reduce effect by looking in another direction)
- Crag Drifter no longer has Rupture as ability but instead "Mucous Membrane", which causes aliens in it's area of effect to regenerate a small percentage of armor
- Bonewall is now tied to Biomass 3 (so you can get it on 1 Hive)
Awesome!
I like the current Spore implementation, if you know what you are doing it is still extremely effective and a much more impressive display of player skill than the vent spamming that was frequent in NS1.
is anyone asking for NS1 style spores?
in an earlier version of balance test mod, the spores had like a 4-5 metre range. you were able to place spores without getting 2-shotted by shotgun. imo it absolutely made more sense than crop dusting. you could perch on the roof and spike, then use your tactical 'birds eye view' perspective to dispense spores in ideal locations. in the current build, the best strategy for lerk is to sit on the floor pecking the phase gate etc because the awesome possibilities of being able to fly/cling to walls or 'lerk' are underutilised.
there's a reason why spores are rarely researched in comp play; even though lerk is very common.
Agreed. I'd rather see stuff like buildings being capped due to their costs (like the recent cost increase from 10 to 15 for alien structures) than such a hard limit.
In the existing system, I would change the supply costs to 5 per alien structure and 20 per Sentry, to give a little more room for breathing. Being able to basically only have one-two Sentry nests in the map (depending on how much you invest into other stuff) does not really enforce any more strategic choice but just limits you so much that you might as well scrap Sentries as a whole. Whips suffer a similar fate, which is sad.
There was never really a problem with structure spam. It gave defense abilities to those with enough map control to afford and require it, but it could not be sustained if you were losing anyway. ARCs and Exos can easily get rid of it.
The only thing that really needed to be addressed were massive MAC and ARC spam, the first because it makes Exos nearly unkillable and the latter because a full train of them can drop an alien base in a second without marine players ever needing to go in. And the only thing aliens had against it was Bile Bomb on a lifeform that is a sitting duck if marines just want to hold an area long enough plus requiring 2 Hives in vanilla.
And in combination with that you could reduce the base supply cap and make it increase with each captured tech point.
they are pretty damn fast iirc... unless it was some kind of lag/glitch, it often seems like they move faster than shadowstep :P
yeah i found this to be a little strange. someone was asking for stomp, and i realised that one of the 3 hives wasn't upgraded with biomass. so i had to upgrade that hive twice THEN research stomp.
you have to jump through a bunch of unnecessary flaming hoops.
1) circlejump
2) air control
neither of which are in NS2 in an acceptable state right now. as for circlejumping, I don't ever expect it to make its way back into a modern FPS, but that was basically half of the skill involved in bunnyhopping.
air control is something that is much more realistic to address. first of all, the air control was nerfed way too much initially, even in the live build. air control was previously far too good, but it was the ability to change momentum, NOT DIRECTION in mid-air that was the problem. Skulks were able to jump strafeleft, and then in mid-air, straferight and land pretty much exactly where they started or further to the right.
I summarized this in a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Gm9xdC4fGXc
Annotation 1 shows the former Skulk movement. I am able to land on the platform and instantly 180. even further still, I'm able to jump off the platform and land on the same platform. for the sake of understanding it in terms of NS2 movement, try imagining no mouse movement (facing the "open" part of the map and strafing left and strafing right, or facing the platform I am jumping to and going forward and back).
Annotation 2 shows reasonable acceleration and air acceleration values. I try to do the same jumps, but because I am going directly against my momentum, I stop dead mid-air. I cannot do the platform jump or the mid-air momentum change.
Annotation 3 shows that these kinds of jumps should be possible, but only through proper speed management. I can do the platform jump if I take a wider turn or a wider strafe. This in turn makes my movement more predictable, which is the entire tradeoff of bunnyhopping. This is how it should be, but it's not.
Concerns about Skulks being "too hard to hit" are completely unfounded. NS1 was a much faster game and that argument didn't exist because yes, while it was possible for Skulks to change direction in mid-air, that is entirely different from being able to change momentum. I used to play The Specialists, another HL1 mod. this game was arguably one of the fastest-paced shooters, with a 320 movespeed and complete free air acceleration (and it did not have bunnyhopping !). it boasted walljumps and various other movement mechanics, yet hardly any of them were actually used in mid-combat. this is again, because of the predictability tradeoff. I made several defrag-style tricking movies and the entire sentiment was that it was never going to be used in a real game. no one bunnyhops in Quake mid-combat, either. the trade-off is just too significant, and that's in a game where the hitscan is arguably much weaker.
it also adds the skill aspect to bunnyhopping.
you still feel 'brickish', but you can travel accross the map and close distances up to twice as fast... meaning you can exploit holes in the marines defense a lot faster. whenever you use a diversion to 'ninja' a base and get the phase gate/power down to 20-30% - with bunny hop you might have been able to destroy it.
that's my idea of fun, and it doesn't directly 'nerf' marines like super air control which may turn skulks into ninja wasps.
playing fade is horrifying without blink; it's almost essential unless you're miles ahead in the early game already. it's a massive gamble going more than 1 room away from a hive, because there's always that possibility of being sandwiched by shotgunners.
Needless to say, I hate the swap and the shadowstep re-work.
i think that statement needs an accompanying explanation. i can't seem to get any use out of shadow step unless i want to go back/sideways while looking straight ahead.
also, if you're down to ~200 hit points and both exits to the room have a shotgunner - it should be certain death unless they're plankton-brain marines. blink can allow you to use vent, travel vertically and gives you at least a slim chance to scoot through an exit.
what makes shadow step better?
edit: to clarify, i do use shadowstep to 'mix it up', but i still fail to see the purpose next to the 'tap and go' (with no cooldown) design of blink. imo making blink the default and buffing shadowstep to be a more potent 'dodge' maneuver seems like the logical path.
i discovered the jump shadowstep jump or shadowstep jump combo in about 5 minutes of playing around in explore mode. yeah it's fantastic speed and mobility, and for a fair while i believed it was superior to blink. but over time i've weaned myself onto tapping blink (blink jump blink jump) and get almost the same speed/cost, with more mobility (up a slope, over an obstruction, effectively flying) and NO COOLDOWN.
additionally, the best fades i've seen on pub servers primarily use blink. also, the best fades i've seen on pub tend to die when they don't have blink. when playing as a marine or fade, i just don't feel that non-blink fades are a threat. all mobility/speed from shadowstep jumping is useless when your escape route is a small doorway or snaking corridor, you literally have to 'walk' away like a fat gorge.