Fade: Unstoppable killing machine with guaranteed success?
Rammler
Join Date: 2013-06-18 Member: 185607Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2013-06-18 Member: 185607Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Shadow
With the new 250 we got a big balance update. Weaker shotguns, biomass, armory wields no longer armor, cheaper gorges and so on. Most of the changes make sense, but some do not. I see a lot of games getting ruined because of one creature. its the fade. with new maximum health and weaker shotgun its nearly impossible to kill a fade now. with the new maximum of life every fade can blink in front of you, hit you, kill you and than run away. stats like 38:2 or 56:1 are not rare. With fade everything is possible. Before the balancemod i saw some really good marines getting this stats too. with their skill they also achieved stats like 40:1 or 35:2. Ok the balancemod weakend the marines and good marines from 249 have harder times now getting such good stats. but what about fades? are they really weaker? no! Although they are doing less damage now, the extra life now gives them the boost to kill up to 3 or 4 marines in row. i am not talking about bad marines and good fades. i am talking about good marines and good fades. and in my opinion a fade doenst require ANY skill at all. every rookie with 320hp and 100 armor can kill the best marines in this game and than run away. of course a fade should win against a marine. but a fade alone should not kill up to 3 or 4 marines in a group and kill the whole server. stats like 45:1 are insane and frustrating. with the new fade it is also impossible to die. good fades never die. the whole alienteam could be full of beginners, but one pro-fade killing everything can win the game for them alone. this can not be the sense of the game. you get a match-winner-creature for only 50 res...... in build 250 i am happier to see and onos than a fade. is that really a good sign?
on the other side if you disagree i would really like to hear how you can get rid of these fades. because this is a big problem in public. especially in midgame.
PS: i really want to discuss this problem. i had many thoughts about this topic and some discussions with other public-gamers who completly agreed with my facts. so this is NOT a whiner-post ;-)
on the other side if you disagree i would really like to hear how you can get rid of these fades. because this is a big problem in public. especially in midgame.
PS: i really want to discuss this problem. i had many thoughts about this topic and some discussions with other public-gamers who completly agreed with my facts. so this is NOT a whiner-post ;-)
Comments
If it's just 1 guy then he would probably be the same on marines with jp shotgun and we would see the same argument about going 4v1 with skulks.
I agree that good fades are hard to kill, so are good lerks. It's not necessarily about killing them though, it's about reducing their effectiveness and making them retreat to heal while you continue with your objective.
Usually the biggest li\/\/l happens when there's bads on both teams and someone really good joins. Then you know you're in for a trællgæmæ 9000.
The thing is, every time a high KDR happens, you know you're dealing with stæcked teams - and it's 93.2% likely (with 9001% confidence) that it will happen the next round. Enjoy the show!
P.S. All cereals now: good fades can be killed. All it takes is teamwork and lack of failure in the early game, so you can have at least A2W2 with your shotguns, and jetpacks soon thereafter or exos. And of course, people who know how to use them xD ...
The "problem" has actually gotten a lot "better" over time. I remember the pre-release days with feign death, upwards shadowstep (now with MOAR momentum), high fade health, worse FPS, etc. etc... You haven't seen "unstoppable" yet.
It is true that when "fades are out" the game takes a nosedive usually. If the round was hanging on a thread right before, you can bet that with a couple fades that fine balance will be just demolished and marines will be steamrolled to usually 2 phase gates and 2 locations on the map (where the phase gates are). But, that's NS2. If you don't win the game before fades are out, you're probably not going to win it after. In most cases. I'm not talking about necessarily WINNING the game before fades go out, but establishing significant domination, pressure, and RT dominance over the alien team (which usually means you have non-bads on the team who can actually aim/use shotguns properly/use jetpacks properly/use exos properly/use teamwork properly/etc./etc.). Then again, on pubs with people joining and quitting, anything is possible xD .
AT LEAST, we can all agree that 250 broke the game right?
It's the dumbed down res model with pres and fade explosion meta.
You could not be more wrong. I doubt you've actually seen good marines play vs good fades, if so you wouldn't be telling us one good fade can easily take out 3-4 marines. The only way I see one fade take out a group of 3-4 marines, is if those marines are absolutely terrible shots. In any case, getting just one good shotgun hit in can be enough to force a fade to retreat. And without shadowstep, they're easier to predict and thus hit. One good marine player can totally destroy a bad fade.
It's also silly to look at the K/D and conclude fades are too powerful. The strength of fades lies in their ability to move in and out quickly, thus increasing their overall lifespan as long as they play smart, which is crucial seeing as they are a one time 40-55 pres investment. It's totally natural for fades to have high K/D ratios because with sensible play they can survive more easily than any other lifeform. Doesn't mean they are OP however. The only way to get such a high K/D ratio is by disengaging at the right time. You can't just go everywhere on the map and kill anything in your sights.
Marines: learn 2 shoot, learn 2 trap fades.
Fades: learn 2 movement (you can easily go as fast as before), learn 2 engage the right targets.
I don't get why people are making such a fuss about 250... it's not perfect but holy shit, "fade OP", "250 broke the game" wtf are you talking about?
On hindsight, I think it was necessary to either to sacrifice both NS1 res model and some of the iconic NS1 lifeform profiles or to keep them both. NS2 has been suffering tremendously because of the way it's stuck between the old and the new.
I'm not sure about the available solutions right now, but I think it might be necessary to do some bigger rethinking on how the lifeform structure works - assuming that's still an option this late this far into game's lifetime.
Well, what you need is a way to spend pres early game and balance that against a later higher lifeform.
Personally, I'd go for a personal upgrade tree; the idea being that you can either play a vanilla skulk and go early lerk/fade, or play an upgraded skulk but pay for it by having to wait longer to go to a higher lifeform. A simple variant would be to have multiple levels of extra armor/speed/damage which would apply to all lifeforms once researched.
As an incidental bonus, this allows skulk players to go "super skulk", just feeding in more and more pres into more and more personal upgrades. Good for beginner players as well, as they can just forego higher lifeforms and play a more powerful skulk.
It also means that really early lerks and fades are less dangerous, lacking upgrades.
Balancing that is tricky; the advantage of having a few really early lerk/fades must be better than having everyone go "super skulk" and then dominate the map.
But then all balancing is tricky.
As of the prior week, the fade was able to reach ~ 22 speeds (albiet was a bug) while
249 allowed 30 speed ss that dissipated within a second to a capped 14.8 speed.
The incoming fixed fade should be maxed out around 16 speed, but you really shouldn't discount the fade's huge increase in movement flexibility... Speed isn't the only thing factoring in for a viable fade. They are far more agile and free moving now, even without upgrades.
Just don't rambo out alone, always stick with another marine with a welder, if the commander drops you medpacks the fade should only be able to come in for a few swipes and retreat again.
this is an incredibly obvious and basic solution, but apparently everyone is stuck thinking in terms of how ns1 did it, which, unfortunately, is quite poor.
Do you have a blog? I would love to read more.
That's not how it works in RTS games, even though there are some "x is ineffective against y" relationships - which are present in NS2 as well. I believe you're talking about converting ns2 to a "class based shooter" above.
In an fps, you need to do something different, because clearly you can't easily control a horde of skulks to balance things out. You incentivize getting higher lifeforms because they synergize well with lower lifeforms, i.e. 2 skulks and 2 fades is better than 4 skulks or 4 fades.
I'm dat one guy!
Anyways real talk, Fades are more or less the same. Could have been buffed, or nerfed but the difference is rather miniscule. See SS below of pre-250 and post-250.
IMO, I prefer 250 Fades and feel as if it gives much more versatility early game. Plus biomass is awesome
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Seriously, it's depressing having never broken 100 kills
I find Fades to be different, but in terms of effectiveness, roughly the same as before. I don't see what all the fuss is about. I think my K/D is around the same as what it was before. Against LMG marines shadow step was a bit better, but against shotgun marines, I prefer the ability to blink.
What's the problem? Now you just right click and spacebar, which is arguably easier than shadowstepping was, considering you don't fly into walls as often as pre-250.
Don't be afraid to "relearn"...it took me about 2 minutes and should take anyone else little longer if at all.
why do you think the marines there are not good? a fade with high kill-death ratio doess not only get kills because of weak marines. maybe it is too easy to get such high stats with fades. did you ever think of that? i think a good marine is not so strong like a good fade with the same skill-level. or did you ever see a marine with 89:2? imo there should be no class in ns2 that can reach stats like that. that stats shows superiority and unbalancing. not even onos can reach such stats. and do you really think the game of shinigaml was fun? i think not all marines can be so weak. maybe the fade is ways too strong
Super skulks in Combat are one thing, but I don't think it's a good idea to blur the line between the lifeforms that much in classic. How is a marine supposed to know if they're facing a super skulk or vanilla skulk? They'll lose any ability to predict how many bullets it'll take to kill one. In a perfect world I think it would be better to have another 5-10 res lifeform that fills that role.
My guess is it's the marines with 2-25, 6-18, 4-16, and 0-8 that lead him to believe they might not be good.
Yeh. Res sinks are the way I'd like to see things handled, but as you said, it's tricky business.
I also feel one of the major problem with individual upgrades is how messy it becomes unless the upgrades are properly communicated throughout the game. It's going to be ridiculously chaotic for both teams if a pack of skulks can contain anything from weak vanilla versions to complete powerhouses without much consistency or indication before the engagement happens. At the very least the upgrades should give out visual feedback, but even then the communication would be tricky and most of the decisions inside the game would be guesswork at best.
If I could go back in time a while, I'd seriously consider adding a new res sink melee lifeform somewhere between skulks and lerks, maybe in 5-15 res region. Combining that with small res sink upgrades (probably a bit like NS1 pre 3.0Final) and some additional gorge mechanics would allow aliens to control their res investments a lot more, communicate the investment to both teams and add more lifeform diversity to early game. With proper balancing around such mechanics, a lifeform explosion would be more of a greedy high risk move or an all-innish rush than your regular go-to strategy.
Most of all, I feel something needs to happen in a decisive way. I think we've seen enough of NS1 heritage being stuck in an environment that isn't suited for it.
Isn't it obvious? Given even skill/upgrades fades do not get 50:1 kdrs................................fact
In general it appears to be more playable from what ive seen.