I really wonder why a lot of you want to make aliens more powerful. At the moment they are stronger than marines. Winratio of 56% in public and 67% in competetive ( based on ns2stats.org).
we should try to make rines stronger and get the ratio near 50:50
I'm having fun when I'm on the aliens team, but I feel like the marines are getting demolished most games. Even though I used to be a mainly marine player, it just isn't fun right now.
I don't know where the calls for nerfing flamethrower and GL are coming from. From what I've seen, Flamethrower spam is needed to fend off the half a team of Lerks you're up against.
I tried the game after BT and theres so many things I don't like but I wont even bother to complain about it here, I know you wont change any of it.
Instead I quit playing the game entirely, even though it was one of the best games I played in many years.
I dont know where people get this "i wont bother because i know it wont change" attitude from?
This page, this thread, these forums.. are nothing but the masses providing feedback to change this game.
You've seen how radical things can change from feedback with 250... so why wouldn't you contribute any yourself?
:-/
Because obviously I don't like what you guys like and the majority of active forum members are fine with these changes. Simply put I am outnumbered here. I never even visited these forums before patch 250 because I loved NS2 and there was nothing to complain about. I THOUGHT the game was headed in the right direction with updates like gorgeous but after 250 I felt the need to register and speak my mind.
Us people who didn't like the changes are a minority here on forums and we get ignored because of it, so why even bother? All I read whenever I see someone with legit complains is. "Play it more, you will learn to like it" or "You haven't played it enough!"
Its a sad sight looking at my go to server and seeing non of the daily regulars there anymore, and how much did this "change" help the situation NS2 was in? With the low player count.. I wont say I know what the number was previously but looking at the statistics now theres 775 players and it peaked at 1.5k today.
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
Being in the minority just makes your feedback that much more important since i doubt UWE would want to make a game made only for one specific type of person/player.
The fear of others dismissing your arguments is pretty unwarranted, considering
a) it doesn't make your feedback any less absorbed by the devs who read it, nor prevents you from providing future feedback, and
b) i can point you to many dozens of posts in this section that have provided useful feedback that disliked recent changes and were not met with said dismissals and finally
c) the only thing you should fear is someone who offers a counter argument to yours, rendering your argument insufficient
So, if you took the time to register to these forums because you needed to speak your mind... i say do so, begin now right here in this thread, as detailed as you can be.
B-)
Here, i'll join in:
The "change in direction" animation pose the lerk displays when changing direction greater than 60 degrees (i think) leaves him open to attack for a larger window than i believe is necessary, with such a large exposure /target.
Also, its somewhat counter intuitive - and new players won't know any better - that strafing and turning yields much slower results than simply flicking your mouse only.
Finally, i think the lerk should have a great deal more acceleration when "pancaking" or pressing the duck key, so as to allow for a greater degree of dodging.
The "change in direction" animation pose the lerk displays when changing direction greater than 60 degrees (i think) leaves him open to attack for a larger window than i believe is necessary, with such a large exposure /target.
Also, its somewhat counter intuitive - and new players won't know any better - that strafing and turning yields much slower results than simply flicking your mouse only.
Finally, i think the lerk should have a great deal more acceleration when "pancaking" or pressing the duck key, so as to allow for a greater degree of dodging.
I agree with you on the lerk's target profile due to animation (although one could argue that is one tradeoff for such maneuvers, because lerk can change direction of travel instantly), and the strafing (only for aliens, because marines have the advantage of being able to shoot while strafing).
Lerks can still dive rapidly with the duck key, but not while gliding. This was a design decision because otherwise, lerks would just dive (silently a nd without energy cost) to gain speed without the need to flap.
Us people who didn't like the changes are a minority here on forums and we get ignored because of it, so why even bother? All I read whenever I see someone with legit complains is. "Play it more, you will learn to like it" or "You haven't played it enough!"
Legit complaints, eh? So can you tell me how and why the changes have made the game worse, except for "I don't like it"? Because we, the evil majority who won't listen to anyone, can definitely tell you why the changes were for the better of the game.
If you don't like it, that's fine, but please don't play the victim card.
I really wonder why a lot of you want to make aliens more powerful. At the moment they are stronger than marines. Winratio of 56% in public and 67% in competetive ( based on ns2stats.org).
we should try to make rines stronger and get the ratio near 50:50
Please stop quoting win rates as the end-all-be-all for balance. Win rates are important, but they do not show the whole picture. To say that, just because the win rate is 50/50, the game is balanced is completely wrong.
I really wonder why a lot of you want to make aliens more powerful. At the moment they are stronger than marines. Winratio of 56% in public and 67% in competetive ( based on ns2stats.org).
we should try to make rines stronger and get the ratio near 50:50
Those stats are blurred anyway by servers with all kind of mods counting into the equation as well. And aliens have a 90% win rate for the first 5 minutes of the game, which is 270 games that were won due to early base rushes.
And as stated before: pure win rates don't tell anything about balance or fun. What if all lifeforms would fail against marines in most of the engagements and the only reason aliens were still able to win the match was by spamming Bile Bomb Gorges for the entire match until they took down the marine base?
Its a sad sight looking at my go to server and seeing non of the daily regulars there anymore, and how much did this "change" help the situation NS2 was in? With the low player count.. I wont say I know what the number was previously but looking at the statistics now theres 775 players and it peaked at 1.5k today.
It isn't actually the time to tell if the patch hurt or helped NS2. Some facts:
Before the patch / sale the concurrent player high was around 718 players
It dropped to this value slowly since the free weekend on Mar 23 with 2000 players (shortly after the event)
The effect of the sale on Mar 1 on the player numbers lasted around 19 days.
Before that sale, the player numbers were down to 1400 and it needed 19 days to get pack to this number.
We have day 12 after the sale / patch started and are down to around 1200 players.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Just been thinking about biomass and abilities lately and have the following comments:
Fade
The fade really has nothing in its tech tree that is interesting or critical and is generally only an afterthought when the commander has maxed out everything else. This also undermines a lot of the ability for the life form to have different play styles or utility such that a tactical advantage is gained for the alien team in the way that others do. The lerk has spores, umbra and spikes, while the gorge has tunnels and bile bomb in addition to what it starts with. These, through various combinations of upgrades, create variety in the game play if so chosen. With the fade you have swipe and blink while the rest is never seen. In NS1 you had metabolise and acid rocket and while I think acid rocket was a bit cheesy and looked stupid, it created something to look forward to in that it had utility.
Shadowstep as an ability and the attempts to give it a role are pretty pointless to me also because it doesn't synergise (i hate this word) well with blink as a supplementary in the way that blink acted as a supplementary to SS previously. It's always going to be an utterly boring upgrade.
Suggest implementing metabolise.
Biomass
Right now I like the biomass system but think it needs to be tweaked somewhat so that the tiering system of old is further destroyed. What I would like to happen is for additional hives to act as a means with which to gain access to higher levels of biomass more cheaply and quickly, but are not the limiting factor in how much biomass can be attained. So the hive you start with could reach biomass 9 if you so choose but it would cost significantly more than getting a second hive and having one of them at 5 and one of them at 4, or having three hives at 3 biomass each. The benefits of this I will summarise below:
*More possibilities on one hive while not undermining additional hives
*Creates a risk situation where different hives have different values
*Creates variety through additional choices the commander can make (Do i hold lots of res and less hives or more hives and less res)
*Traditional tier 3 tech (vortex, stomp, xeno) can actually be seen more often thus creating more variety in play
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited July 2013
A simple Shadow Step tweak would make it more attractive. Fade Swipes feel rather weak now with its damage nerfs (Fade speed is a separate aspect of balance).
I would like to see Shadow Step complement Blink. Shadow Step could have additional effects when combined with Swipe, eg, increase Swipe damage during the short SS movement.
Fades would be able to choose two different types of tactics to approach marines: Shadow Step, or Blink. Fades that choose to SS to attack would become vulnerable as SS will not be available for a quick escape. Blink initial speed could be reduced, so using Blink is less useful as an escape maneuver. Blink initiated attacks would not benefit from SS bonus damage, but the Fade can instantly use SS to quickly disengage.
Such changes above would undoubtedly increase the skill floor of the Fade. To make Fade more forgiving for new players to play, Fade base ground speed could be increased slightly (to around 5.5-6.0).
Just been thinking about biomass and abilities lately and have the following comments:
Fade
The fade really has nothing in its tech tree that is interesting or critical and is generally only an afterthought when the commander has maxed out everything else. This also undermines a lot of the ability for the life form to have different play styles or utility such that a tactical advantage is gained for the alien team in the way that others do. The lerk has spores, umbra and spikes, while the gorge has tunnels and bile bomb in addition to what it starts with. These, through various combinations of upgrades, create variety in the game play if so chosen. With the fade you have swipe and blink while the rest is never seen. In NS1 you had metabolise and acid rocket and while I think acid rocket was a bit cheesy and looked stupid, it created something to look forward to in that it had utility.
Shadowstep as an ability and the attempts to give it a role are pretty pointless to me also because it doesn't synergise (i hate this word) well with blink as a supplementary in the way that blink acted as a supplementary to SS previously. It's always going to be an utterly boring upgrade.
Suggest implementing metabolise.
Biomass
Right now I like the biomass system but think it needs to be tweaked somewhat so that the tiering system of old is further destroyed. What I would like to happen is for additional hives to act as a means with which to gain access to higher levels of biomass more cheaply and quickly, but are not the limiting factor in how much biomass can be attained. So the hive you start with could reach biomass 9 if you so choose but it would cost significantly more than getting a second hive and having one of them at 5 and one of them at 4, or having three hives at 3 biomass each. The benefits of this I will summarise below:
*More possibilities on one hive while not undermining additional hives
*Creates a risk situation where different hives have different values
*Creates variety through additional choices the commander can make (Do i hold lots of res and less hives or more hives and less res)
*Traditional tier 3 tech (vortex, stomp, xeno) can actually be seen more often thus creating more variety in play
I'm still getting to grips with the new shadow step (and given how it's often skipped is taking a while). Vortex as well seems to be really neglected, means the fade basically doesn't scale. Leap, spores, stomp, bile bomb all make their relevant lifeform much more useful, shadow step and vortex meh.
Really allows him to scale better, depending on the skill of the player.
If balanced right, helps resolve some of the "too many fades in one room" dilemma by making the ones who use it vulnerable as well as making the frequency of fades in the room infrequent due to low energy levels.
Metabolize overlaps with regen somewhat , making him more into a "harassing" role, frequently returning to battle,
instead of focus, which makes him that "assassin" that kills and then gets out quickly.
I know the alpha tried out the fade alt attack, which somewhat resembled focus and it was deemed OP eventually, (due to a bug) but i feel like it was implemented all wrong.
(most notably, it was available at T1)
Really allows him to scale better, depending on the skill of the player.
If balanced right, helps resolve some of the "too many fades in one room" dilemma by making the ones who use it vulnerable as well as making the frequency of fades in the room infrequent due to low energy levels.
Metabolize overlaps with regen somewhat , making him more into a "harassing" role, frequently returning to battle,
instead of focus, which makes him that "assassin" that kills and then gets out quickly.
I know the alpha tried out the fade alt attack, which somewhat resembled focus and it was deemed OP eventually, (due to a bug) but i feel like it was implemented all wrong.
(most notably, it was available at T1)
I don't see how this solves the too many fades problem? How does using a focus attack make you vulnerable? As I recall focus was more damage for lower attack speed.
The only way focus could be balanced is if it had some skillbased implementation such as having to charge it up for a while before the attack reaches full strength, draining energy the whole time (so that you can't just charge indefinitely) but that has some usability issues when it comes to beating down structures (forces you to spam click) and a myriad of other problems.
Or we could just make it a biomass 9 all other abilities researched upgrade that literally doubles damage per hit and halves attack speed for all lifeforms, would certainly solve the turtling problem
Good to see the HMG/rifle coming back to BT, it is a really fun weapon to use and it certainly isn't "op by design" if implemented properly.
Please don't overnerf the advanced weapons, making them a slower and more expensive rush already helps to keep things sane, I much prefer things now when you sometimes have a nasty flamer rush (which needs to be nerfed slightly) than before when nobody ever used flamers or GLs and never researched them because they were trash.
Charge focus attack - i like this idea. It could be implemented to all of lifeforms. Remove carpa and regen (its v boring upgrades, stack it together like aura) and add 2nd - charge focus. Longer you tap button you do more damage. Simple and v useful.
Haven't been up to speed on the current changes but It would be kinda neat to get a mini cc like ns1 had where you could place it any where. Have it power a area visible to the commander so you can place buildings. Make it allow IPs to be built and grant the ability to beacon there.
Not quite sure if I would want it tied to the main CC at all as to not fully allow a relocate but would be interesting to see what you could do with a forward spawn point that's able to be beaconed to.
Really allows him to scale better, depending on the skill of the player.
If balanced right, helps resolve some of the "too many fades in one room" dilemma by making the ones who use it vulnerable as well as making the frequency of fades in the room infrequent due to low energy levels.
Metabolize overlaps with regen somewhat , making him more into a "harassing" role, frequently returning to battle,
instead of focus, which makes him that "assassin" that kills and then gets out quickly.
I know the alpha tried out the fade alt attack, which somewhat resembled focus and it was deemed OP eventually, (due to a bug) but i feel like it was implemented all wrong.
(most notably, it was available at T1)
I don't see how this solves the too many fades problem? How does using a focus attack make you vulnerable? As I recall focus was more damage for lower attack speed.
It doesn't solve it , neither would metabolize, and I wasn't suggesting that it would solve such a thing?? For that solution see my recent post on life form explosions.
If focus required you to charge it then it could be a fun skilled meta game, and if the energy cost was high enough then you would be left vulnerable due to not being able to escape the room quickly.
So you'd be able to pick off one marine from the group, but with only one chance to blink out, or perhaps no energy at all... Hope your fade can hop! Etc etc
The only way to solve the 'too many fades' problem without the removal of alien commander is the introduction of res for kill. Which is never going to happen.
The only way to solve the 'too many fades' problem without the removal of alien commander is the introduction of res for kill. Which is never going to happen.
Better not introduce back one thing that creates gap between competitive and casual players.
Everything you do should benefit everyone, not oneself.
Damn, make a bonus for Drifters adding a bit to building (if you really want to stick with that) but does there have to be such a difference in rate that it becomes mandatory ?
Crag : 0:25 Vs 1:25, Harverster : 0:40 Vs 2:00, Hive : 3:00 vs 10:00
If you lower passive pres gain even more (and by more I mean to almost non-existence) you can add RFK. This will make it so only a few will pop fade at certain times (without comm egg drops). The downside is that some players may never see the lifeform or equipment they want to play. There in lies the problem. That is if you set aside the snowball argument and focus on both teams being equal in skill. Going back to a system like this would put more emphasis on comm dropped eggs and weapons to be honest but punishes people who aren't all that great which creates an accessibility issue.
While I'm cool with it, and it would probably help comp play, I would imagine it would cause some issues in pub play so I can't see it ever actually making it in.
Yeah, I don't see it working for pub play at all (maybe a mod for da 2skilled4u people) honestly I'd rather some other way of fixing the problem than using rfk.
Players with more fades get their fade faster. Marines are then fighting single fades rather a giant fade explosion, giving them a chance to focus the fades down as they come up -> Less fades.
Comments
we should try to make rines stronger and get the ratio near 50:50
I don't know where the calls for nerfing flamethrower and GL are coming from. From what I've seen, Flamethrower spam is needed to fend off the half a team of Lerks you're up against.
Us people who didn't like the changes are a minority here on forums and we get ignored because of it, so why even bother? All I read whenever I see someone with legit complains is. "Play it more, you will learn to like it" or "You haven't played it enough!"
Its a sad sight looking at my go to server and seeing non of the daily regulars there anymore, and how much did this "change" help the situation NS2 was in? With the low player count.. I wont say I know what the number was previously but looking at the statistics now theres 775 players and it peaked at 1.5k today.
The fear of others dismissing your arguments is pretty unwarranted, considering
a) it doesn't make your feedback any less absorbed by the devs who read it, nor prevents you from providing future feedback, and
b) i can point you to many dozens of posts in this section that have provided useful feedback that disliked recent changes and were not met with said dismissals and finally
c) the only thing you should fear is someone who offers a counter argument to yours, rendering your argument insufficient
So, if you took the time to register to these forums because you needed to speak your mind... i say do so, begin now right here in this thread, as detailed as you can be.
B-)
Here, i'll join in:
The "change in direction" animation pose the lerk displays when changing direction greater than 60 degrees (i think) leaves him open to attack for a larger window than i believe is necessary, with such a large exposure /target.
Also, its somewhat counter intuitive - and new players won't know any better - that strafing and turning yields much slower results than simply flicking your mouse only.
Finally, i think the lerk should have a great deal more acceleration when "pancaking" or pressing the duck key, so as to allow for a greater degree of dodging.
I agree with you on the lerk's target profile due to animation (although one could argue that is one tradeoff for such maneuvers, because lerk can change direction of travel instantly), and the strafing (only for aliens, because marines have the advantage of being able to shoot while strafing).
Lerks can still dive rapidly with the duck key, but not while gliding. This was a design decision because otherwise, lerks would just dive (silently a nd without energy cost) to gain speed without the need to flap.
If you don't like it, that's fine, but please don't play the victim card.
Please stop quoting win rates as the end-all-be-all for balance. Win rates are important, but they do not show the whole picture. To say that, just because the win rate is 50/50, the game is balanced is completely wrong.
Those stats are blurred anyway by servers with all kind of mods counting into the equation as well. And aliens have a 90% win rate for the first 5 minutes of the game, which is 270 games that were won due to early base rushes.
And as stated before: pure win rates don't tell anything about balance or fun. What if all lifeforms would fail against marines in most of the engagements and the only reason aliens were still able to win the match was by spamming Bile Bomb Gorges for the entire match until they took down the marine base?
It isn't actually the time to tell if the patch hurt or helped NS2. Some facts:
Sources: http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#6m
Fade
The fade really has nothing in its tech tree that is interesting or critical and is generally only an afterthought when the commander has maxed out everything else. This also undermines a lot of the ability for the life form to have different play styles or utility such that a tactical advantage is gained for the alien team in the way that others do. The lerk has spores, umbra and spikes, while the gorge has tunnels and bile bomb in addition to what it starts with. These, through various combinations of upgrades, create variety in the game play if so chosen. With the fade you have swipe and blink while the rest is never seen. In NS1 you had metabolise and acid rocket and while I think acid rocket was a bit cheesy and looked stupid, it created something to look forward to in that it had utility.
Shadowstep as an ability and the attempts to give it a role are pretty pointless to me also because it doesn't synergise (i hate this word) well with blink as a supplementary in the way that blink acted as a supplementary to SS previously. It's always going to be an utterly boring upgrade.
Suggest implementing metabolise.
Biomass
Right now I like the biomass system but think it needs to be tweaked somewhat so that the tiering system of old is further destroyed. What I would like to happen is for additional hives to act as a means with which to gain access to higher levels of biomass more cheaply and quickly, but are not the limiting factor in how much biomass can be attained. So the hive you start with could reach biomass 9 if you so choose but it would cost significantly more than getting a second hive and having one of them at 5 and one of them at 4, or having three hives at 3 biomass each. The benefits of this I will summarise below:
*More possibilities on one hive while not undermining additional hives
*Creates a risk situation where different hives have different values
*Creates variety through additional choices the commander can make (Do i hold lots of res and less hives or more hives and less res)
*Traditional tier 3 tech (vortex, stomp, xeno) can actually be seen more often thus creating more variety in play
I would like to see Shadow Step complement Blink. Shadow Step could have additional effects when combined with Swipe, eg, increase Swipe damage during the short SS movement.
Fades would be able to choose two different types of tactics to approach marines: Shadow Step, or Blink. Fades that choose to SS to attack would become vulnerable as SS will not be available for a quick escape. Blink initial speed could be reduced, so using Blink is less useful as an escape maneuver. Blink initiated attacks would not benefit from SS bonus damage, but the Fade can instantly use SS to quickly disengage.
Such changes above would undoubtedly increase the skill floor of the Fade. To make Fade more forgiving for new players to play, Fade base ground speed could be increased slightly (to around 5.5-6.0).
Is this a balance test mod or a feature test mod
I'm still getting to grips with the new shadow step (and given how it's often skipped is taking a while). Vortex as well seems to be really neglected, means the fade basically doesn't scale. Leap, spores, stomp, bile bomb all make their relevant lifeform much more useful, shadow step and vortex meh.
Biomass idea I agree with.
I know the alpha tried out the fade alt attack, which somewhat resembled focus and it was deemed OP eventually, (due to a bug) but i feel like it was implemented all wrong.
(most notably, it was available at T1)
I don't see how this solves the too many fades problem? How does using a focus attack make you vulnerable? As I recall focus was more damage for lower attack speed.
Or we could just make it a biomass 9 all other abilities researched upgrade that literally doubles damage per hit and halves attack speed for all lifeforms, would certainly solve the turtling problem
Good to see the HMG/rifle coming back to BT, it is a really fun weapon to use and it certainly isn't "op by design" if implemented properly.
Please don't overnerf the advanced weapons, making them a slower and more expensive rush already helps to keep things sane, I much prefer things now when you sometimes have a nasty flamer rush (which needs to be nerfed slightly) than before when nobody ever used flamers or GLs and never researched them because they were trash.
Not quite sure if I would want it tied to the main CC at all as to not fully allow a relocate but would be interesting to see what you could do with a forward spawn point that's able to be beaconed to.
It doesn't solve it , neither would metabolize, and I wasn't suggesting that it would solve such a thing?? For that solution see my recent post on life form explosions.
If focus required you to charge it then it could be a fun skilled meta game, and if the energy cost was high enough then you would be left vulnerable due to not being able to escape the room quickly.
So you'd be able to pick off one marine from the group, but with only one chance to blink out, or perhaps no energy at all... Hope your fade can hop! Etc etc
Better not introduce back one thing that creates gap between competitive and casual players.
Everything you do should benefit everyone, not oneself.
Crag : 0:25 Vs 1:25, Harverster : 0:40 Vs 2:00, Hive : 3:00 vs 10:00
Drifter unasisted growth is way too slow.
If you lower passive pres gain even more (and by more I mean to almost non-existence) you can add RFK. This will make it so only a few will pop fade at certain times (without comm egg drops). The downside is that some players may never see the lifeform or equipment they want to play. There in lies the problem. That is if you set aside the snowball argument and focus on both teams being equal in skill. Going back to a system like this would put more emphasis on comm dropped eggs and weapons to be honest but punishes people who aren't all that great which creates an accessibility issue.
While I'm cool with it, and it would probably help comp play, I would imagine it would cause some issues in pub play so I can't see it ever actually making it in.
Players with more fades get their fade faster. Marines are then fighting single fades rather a giant fade explosion, giving them a chance to focus the fades down as they come up -> Less fades.