So abandon making alien khammanding meaningful and fun all together?
No thanks.. its here to stay, so we might as well make it something you want to play.
A strawman argument, followed by a more interesting argument, interesting in the fact that apparently, despite changes being reverted in the past, THIS CHANGE is staying. By order of mr high on his ironhorse.
By the way, how's that revert to the 249 fade movement system coming along. I do lament at having lost the unique movement system for the quake crowd and their bunnies.
The problem that has been solved is alien commanders popping down two chains, 2 RTs, then exiting the hive to go around and gorge build them...
Alien commander was never meant to assist in alien expansion outside of the hive. All it did was add another player into the offensive push/combat mix.
Imagine the marine commander getting out and running around the map building things himself.
This was compounded by many factors, from gorge price, to commander starting pres, to the alien team not needing to assist in expansion early game if they were pressuring marines enough.
Removing starting pres from the commander helps greatly alleviate this issue, and keeps the commander in the chair, and now hopefully with more things to do as well.
Requiring structures for upgrades was a weird uncommunicated change.. but things are better now and you can see which structures are linked to what - both in the descriptions / mouse overs.. but also with the J key.
I also didnt like it at first (when 250 came out) but it really gave a reason to use those structures more.. and thus it ends up serving your team better anyways.
the recent lumping of upgrades into lifeform specific i still do not agree with however.
I don't see where it is an issue ? (chain/rt/poping). Adding someone on the field is a choice. It has down sides too. Yes i can clearly imagine a commander building the obs in the base. Or running through a PG... of course to build an obs on the other base. One way or another they both go out the chair. the kam' don't have more things to do. In fact i feel it's the contrary. 35res an lifeform skill unlocking... you have time... while you pay 8 res a drifter... yeah right.
I'm afraid i totally disagree on that point. Any competitive match had one or another (gorge kam or only kam). The kam' (yé without the H, it's faster) often gorge, instead of doing nothing else than waiting for res.
-To produce a tunnel.
-He could support a little when things are going bad at hive.
-Or make clog on the upgrade to delay destruction if it happens.
-Heal the hive while teammates make them pay the insult of touching the hive.
Especially waiting for res when skill is high. Even a good team have problems to keep 3 or 4 harvesters alive. On 251 the aggression was on RT first then the skulks.
This was a good asset for the team that was compensating the fact kam' couldn't produce any "healing services on the map" (except with drifters, only carapace).
Plus one way or another Aliens still have difficulties to finish the game. So at some point there's nothing to buy except make whip/bile, life form eggs or drifters... That just don't make sense to nerf Kham/com like that.
Also; Whip upgrade is contrary to NS logic in which upgrades are semi or fully passive. Semi because speed have been increased on crag/shit/shade/drifters. You won't kill a marine with that is it? Whip are field units (aggressive and mobile).
I think you're misunderstanding how the build process works internally. Bugs don't "get past" QA because they've been around for weeks and no one happened to notice them, they appear in the absolute last second and either cannot be fixed on schedule and get delayed for a day or two or do slip by because of hardware limitations or forgetting some hidden variable because we are a finite number of mortal human beings. So many things get changed or reverted or fixed or broken every single day that it is surprisingly easy to miss things that an outside individual might find immediately apparent.
If you really think it's possible to release software without any bugs then I'm afraid you may have something in common with John Snow, at least in regards to software development.
I don't think you mean what you think you mean. from what i can glean, you're implying that the skulk stick and the mouse lag were last minute bugs that got in after most of the QA was complete. Bugs that were not present in the QA build. Which leads me to question why I'm not playing that build? why am I playing a build that hasn't been tested by at least a couple of games? I may be mistaken, but these don't feel like minor bugs that would go unnoticed. the skulk thing really doesn't feel right to me, and they were glaring enough that i thought they'd tweaked the movement again. and the mouse thing is literally ever present.
so are you saying that you played this build and didn't notice the bugs? which i might accept, because getting accustomed to things over time might be less jarring that coming upon it fresh? or that you played another build and these are new bugs?
incidentally, I don't get your reference to john snow at all. i'd like to, but the only john snow i could find was an epidemiologist... you may have clevered yourself a bit too obscure there.
Do you seriously not watch Game of Thrones? o_O
My point is that you literally cannot find all bugs, period. Shit happens, man. No build is allowed out the door without actual games played on it and yes, we play every build as much as we can. For no pay. Because we love NS2 and UWE. And we'll gladly do it as much as it needs doing. But, c'mon, man, cut us some slack. Software QA is way harder than most people think it is, and game software QA is at least an order of magnitude harder.
Ugh if I have to read how Narfwak or Ironhorse dedicate their free time for no pay to playtest NS2 one more time, I am going to throw up. First you chose to participate. No one is forcing you. Secondly, and more importantly, the onus is on UWE to make sure their builds are released with as few bugs as possible. Maybe a limited volunteer playtest group is not the best way. Maybe it doesn't work that well. That doesn't excuse a user from complaining about obvious bugs making it into a live build. I totally get you guys are doing your best given the structure you work in.
Spoiler alert, I am actually a NS2 maptester. I have been playing biodome for months hoping to help balance and find bugs in that map. Half the time the map is broken or the playtest build isn't working. Or enough people don't show up to have a proper game. Even in ideal conditions, alot of constructive feedback is missed during our maptest sessions. I am 100% sure there will be complaints about biodome. We did the best to test it within the confines of what UWE has provided. As I am sure the playtest team does too.
Now, I am going to address complaints with biodome the way you should be addressing complaints with bugs. With Information! The maptesting group meets only twice a week (tues and thurs). We usually spend the first 30 minutes hopping around the map, checking for obvious holes, stuck spots, etc while we wait and hope for more people to show up. Like I said before, if we have enough people show up and the build and map are actually loading (which is about 50% of the time), we have a 6v6 scrim. The map creator will hopefully be there to spectate and take notes. At the end, we share any parting thoughts for another 10 minutes or so. Who knows if this is ideal or not? I think Bitey (maptesting lead) might type up a summary of the session and submit it as well (not sure).
Last Thursday a new version of Biodome was released to us. Unfortunately we could only play it on a playtest build with massive fps losses, so it was very difficult to even move around the map, let alone assess any gameplay/balance issues related to the map. We got half of a 6v6 round in before calling it pointless. There was no maptesting on Tuesday as far as I know. And thats it. I am a maptester and I will be playing the released biodome almost for the first time like many of you are (let that sink in). I have no idea how balanced it will be outside of 6v6. Many of my concerns with the map I felt have been addressed, but many have not as well. In the end, there was a deadline. And now its live. I don't think its ready, but it is what it is. If the playest group is anything like the maptest group, they are doing the best with what they have.
Also to address who's in these groups, the maptester group has a ton of top competitive or ex-competitive players from both NA and EU scenes (Bitey, rantology, joshhhy, locklear, Jonacrab, Dragon, herakles, valk, ritual, wob, others I am forgetting). I think every div1 team (both NA and EU) might have at least one person. As far as maptesters having any input on these balance/feature changes, there is none from my point of view. I saw what became b252 barely for the first time Thursday. Since it was still beta and the FPS drops were so bad, I had no idea about the majority of these changes. I was able to see the new alien vision and the consensus was how ugly and awful the massive orangeness was. The playest group has significantly less competitive players. From memory of their Teamspeak channel, I don't recognize most names and I think the most skill players are probably Zefram or WasabiOne.
Hope this information helps you all understand why, to be honest, these builds and maps are many times such a clusterfuck. We literally balance-tested biodome for months on a metagame that may have completely shifted with b252. It's honestly hard to believe. I have mad respect for the time and work Ironhorse, Narwark, and so many others put into this game, albeit misguided and inefficient most of the time. I'll let you be the judge on how well the system is working.
Finally, I promise to never mention in any other post how I volunteer my time to NS2. I hope others do the same. Thanks.
that isn't very confidence inspiring. maybe spread out the upper div players between groups? if that is the actual distribution, I'd rather see it flipped if anything. map balance is important true, but game and feature balance is more sweeping and more important overall.
for example, drifters at 8 res, wtf. make harvesters more expensive if you want to slow alien growth, but drifters can't really serve as spotters or support if it breaks the bank go field them.
I think you're misunderstanding how the build process works internally. Bugs don't "get past" QA because they've been around for weeks and no one happened to notice them, they appear in the absolute last second and either cannot be fixed on schedule and get delayed for a day or two or do slip by because of hardware limitations or forgetting some hidden variable because we are a finite number of mortal human beings. So many things get changed or reverted or fixed or broken every single day that it is surprisingly easy to miss things that an outside individual might find immediately apparent.
If you really think it's possible to release software without any bugs then I'm afraid you may have something in common with John Snow, at least in regards to software development.
I don't think you mean what you think you mean. from what i can glean, you're implying that the skulk stick and the mouse lag were last minute bugs that got in after most of the QA was complete. Bugs that were not present in the QA build. Which leads me to question why I'm not playing that build? why am I playing a build that hasn't been tested by at least a couple of games? I may be mistaken, but these don't feel like minor bugs that would go unnoticed. the skulk thing really doesn't feel right to me, and they were glaring enough that i thought they'd tweaked the movement again. and the mouse thing is literally ever present.
so are you saying that you played this build and didn't notice the bugs? which i might accept, because getting accustomed to things over time might be less jarring that coming upon it fresh? or that you played another build and these are new bugs?
incidentally, I don't get your reference to john snow at all. i'd like to, but the only john snow i could find was an epidemiologist... you may have clevered yourself a bit too obscure there.
Do you seriously not watch Game of Thrones? o_O
My point is that you literally cannot find all bugs, period. Shit happens, man. No build is allowed out the door without actual games played on it and yes, we play every build as much as we can. For no pay. Because we love NS2 and UWE. And we'll gladly do it as much as it needs doing. But, c'mon, man, cut us some slack. Software QA is way harder than most people think it is, and game software QA is at least an order of magnitude harder.
but... you didn't reference game of thrones, you misspelled the name if that was who you were referencing... and i'm not entirely sure the reference applies. please explain it to me. i didn't really follow you around that bend.
Ya I think he meant Jon Snow. And there is a somewhat memorable quote when one of the characters says to him "You know nothing, Jon Snow". I am a big fan and I just only barely got the reference, so don't feel bad.
legitimately, my first reaction was, oh that's a coincidence, game of thrones, but I don't get it, he must mean some historical figure because it's not Jon. and if it's anything to do with the show, I read the books instead, and there we're a lot of words in them.
I think you're misunderstanding how the build process works internally. Bugs don't "get past" QA because they've been around for weeks and no one happened to notice them, they appear in the absolute last second and either cannot be fixed on schedule and get delayed for a day or two or do slip by because of hardware limitations or forgetting some hidden variable because we are a finite number of mortal human beings. So many things get changed or reverted or fixed or broken every single day that it is surprisingly easy to miss things that an outside individual might find immediately apparent.
If you really think it's possible to release software without any bugs then I'm afraid you may have something in common with John Snow, at least in regards to software development.
I don't think you mean what you think you mean. from what i can glean, you're implying that the skulk stick and the mouse lag were last minute bugs that got in after most of the QA was complete. Bugs that were not present in the QA build. Which leads me to question why I'm not playing that build? why am I playing a build that hasn't been tested by at least a couple of games? I may be mistaken, but these don't feel like minor bugs that would go unnoticed. the skulk thing really doesn't feel right to me, and they were glaring enough that i thought they'd tweaked the movement again. and the mouse thing is literally ever present.
so are you saying that you played this build and didn't notice the bugs? which i might accept, because getting accustomed to things over time might be less jarring that coming upon it fresh? or that you played another build and these are new bugs?
incidentally, I don't get your reference to john snow at all. i'd like to, but the only john snow i could find was an epidemiologist... you may have clevered yourself a bit too obscure there.
Do you seriously not watch Game of Thrones? o_O
My point is that you literally cannot find all bugs, period. Shit happens, man. No build is allowed out the door without actual games played on it and yes, we play every build as much as we can. For no pay. Because we love NS2 and UWE. And we'll gladly do it as much as it needs doing. But, c'mon, man, cut us some slack. Software QA is way harder than most people think it is, and game software QA is at least an order of magnitude harder.
Ugh if I have to read how Narfwak or Ironhorse dedicate their free time for no pay to playtest NS2 one more time, I am going to throw up. First you chose to participate. No one is forcing you. Secondly, and more importantly, the onus is on UWE to make sure their builds are released with as few bugs as possible. Maybe a limited volunteer playtest group is not the best way. Maybe it doesn't work that well. That doesn't excuse a user from complaining about obvious bugs making it into a live build. I totally get you guys are doing your best given the structure you work in.
Spoiler alert, I am actually a NS2 maptester. I have been playing biodome for months hoping to help balance and find bugs in that map. Half the time the map is broken or the playtest build isn't working. Or enough people don't show up to have a proper game. Even in ideal conditions, alot of constructive feedback is missed during our maptest sessions. I am 100% sure there will be complaints about biodome. We did the best to test it within the confines of what UWE has provided. As I am sure the playtest team does too.
Now, I am going to address complaints with biodome the way you should be addressing complaints with bugs. With Information! The maptesting group meets only twice a week (tues and thurs). We usually spend the first 30 minutes hopping around the map, checking for obvious holes, stuck spots, etc while we wait and hope for more people to show up. Like I said before, if we have enough people show up and the build and map are actually loading (which is about 50% of the time), we have a 6v6 scrim. The map creator will hopefully be there to spectate and take notes. At the end, we share any parting thoughts for another 10 minutes or so. Who knows if this is ideal or not? I think Bitey (maptesting lead) might type up a summary of the session and submit it as well (not sure).
Last Thursday a new version of Biodome was released to us. Unfortunately we could only play it on a playtest build with massive fps losses, so it was very difficult to even move around the map, let alone assess any gameplay/balance issues related to the map. We got half of a 6v6 round in before calling it pointless. There was no maptesting on Tuesday as far as I know. And thats it. I am a maptester and I will be playing the released biodome almost for the first time like many of you are (let that sink in). I have no idea how balanced it will be outside of 6v6. Many of my concerns with the map I felt have been addressed, but many have not as well. In the end, there was a deadline. And now its live. I don't think its ready, but it is what it is. If the playest group is anything like the maptest group, they are doing the best with what they have.
Also to address who's in these groups, the maptester group has a ton of top competitive or ex-competitive players from both NA and EU scenes (Bitey, rantology, joshhhy, locklear, Jonacrab, Dragon, herakles, valk, ritual, wob, others I am forgetting). I think every div1 team (both NA and EU) might have at least one person. As far as maptesters having any input on these balance/feature changes, there is none from my point of view. I saw what became b252 barely for the first time Thursday. Since it was still beta and the FPS drops were so bad, I had no idea about the majority of these changes. I was able to see the new alien vision and the consensus was how ugly and awful the massive orangeness was. The playest group has significantly less competitive players. From memory of their Teamspeak channel, I don't recognize most names and I think the most skill players are probably Zefram or WasabiOne.
Hope this information helps you all understand why, to be honest, these builds and maps are many times such a clusterfuck. We literally balance-tested biodome for months on a metagame that may have completely shifted with b252. It's honestly hard to believe. I have mad respect for the time and work Ironhorse, Narwark, and so many others put into this game, albeit misguided and inefficient most of the time. I'll let you be the judge on how well the system is working.
Finally, I promise to never mention in any other post how I volunteer my time to NS2. I hope others do the same. Thanks.
that isn't very confidence inspiring. maybe spread out the upper div players between groups? if that is the actual distribution, I'd rather see it flipped if anything. map balance is important true, but game and feature balance is more sweeping and more important overall.
for example, drifters at 8 res, wtf. make harvesters more expensive if you want to slow alien growth, but drifters can't really serve as spotters or support if it breaks the bank go field them.
Playtesters don't provide gameplay feedback, so there is no point in "distributing" skill, there is yet another group that gives gameplay feedback/suggestions, but as with the other groups the devs don't need to adhere 100% to what they say, which also addresses:
What were you thinking with Reception tech point? Concept craps on game play once again.
--
So yeah. End of the day, the decisions to release builds in what we can call premature state, or questionable balance changes, etc, is always up to the devs. Not sure why that's not obvious. If there's legitimate reasons for publishing these builds in the state they get released and they are not communicated properly then I'd say it's a PR problem.
wtf is the skulk upgrade doing on the whip? it looks like the designers decided to do it purely for symmetries sake. im really curious why the lifeform upgrades are on shifts shades and crags in the first place. it's almost as if the designers are admitting that they are pisspoor at what they actually do, and would see zero use if they didn't make at least one of them necessary to get upgrades. artificial res sinks, yay. I've gotta make a whip as a research building... nice.
So yeah. End of the day, the decisions to release builds in what we can call premature state, or questionable balance changes, etc, is always up to the devs. Not sure why that's not obvious. If there's legitimate reasons for publishing these builds in the state they get released and they are not communicated properly then I'd say it's a PR problem.
So when is NS2:Mendasp Mod being released? It has nearly been a year since release, logging more hours into vanilla NS2 feels like logging hours into vanilla Skyrim or New Vegas or VTMB, why bother if you can download the patch/es that fix everything.
So abandon making alien khammanding meaningful and fun all together?
No thanks.. its here to stay, so we might as well make it something you want to play.
A strawman argument, followed by a more interesting argument, interesting in the fact that apparently, despite changes being reverted in the past, THIS CHANGE is staying. By order of mr high on his ironhorse.
Since multiple people seemed to misunderstand : i meant that the alien commander is here to stay.
So, you might as well make it engaging and fun, instead of something that users refer to as boring and wish to skip. Both for balance reasons, as well as enjoyment.
I do not claim anything is fun - that's far too subjective. But there is more to do lately at least, compared to months ago, more involvement (that needs to be more viable with cost adjustments)
@Elodea nailed everything else I'd have to say. Oh except lol at @palagi jabs yet again..
So abandon making alien khammanding meaningful and fun all together?
No thanks.. its here to stay, so we might as well make it something you want to play.
A strawman argument, followed by a more interesting argument, interesting in the fact that apparently, despite changes being reverted in the past, THIS CHANGE is staying. By order of mr high on his ironhorse.
Since multiple people seemed to misunderstand : i meant that the alien commander is here to stay.
So, you might as well make it engaging and fun, instead of something that users refer to as boring and wish to skip. Both for balance reasons, as well as enjoyment.
I do not claim anything is fun - that's far too subjective. But there is more to do lately at least, compared to months ago, more involvement (that needs to be more viable with cost adjustments)
@Elodea nailed everything else I'd have to say. Oh except lol at @palagi jabs yet again..
Oh, you meant the ENTIRE ALIEN COMMANDER.
Yeah ok that is probably here to stay then. I thought you were talking about the new tech changes. All is forgiven.
NarfwakJoin Date: 2002-11-02Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
edited August 2013
We do provide some gameplay feedback, but it's tempered by the knowledge that we're terrible at video games.
I actually missed some last minute tweaks to the cost of the lifeform groupings so they're better than they used to be at least. I'm not sure it's wise to have all of the biomass passive boost be tied into the upgrade - maybe something like half and half.
I liked biomass in its original form, when it unlocked abilities automatically. Ever since then it's been this weird convoluted system that adds complexity just for the sake of having complexity. IMO we should go back to the first model, and make the biomass total persistent even when a hive dies(but only 3 per hive will take effect) so that they can be made more expensive to compensate.
It feels like this was done just to force khamms to use structures they don't normally want to use, which is treating the symptoms and not the problem. Similarly, punishing comms for jumping out is a heavy handed band aid to the real problem of the alien khamm being bored.
I feel the overhaul of the khammander tech tree, and management in general, is unfairly punitive.
The new system denies the khammander (and commander) any res, so they can't go gorge at the beginning: this requires them to create expensive drifters to build anything at worthwhile speed. I can foresee games where a player jumps in to be khammander to start the game, then jumps out so another player can go gorge, and jump in. Sure the original player will be skulk for a longer time, but what problem has been solved here?
Ok, so basically the number 1 issue ns2 has always faced is tres/pres and tech explosions. These changes go towards addressing this.
There are now tradeoffs to not having a field player gorge, with the current changes encouraging composition of alien comm (skulk or whatever) + gorge + lerk + 2 fade + onos. Remember, the point is to take players away from the fade ball. This is also why drifters are now an actual decision you have to make and not something you can spam thoughtlessly - endlessly replacing one after the other as you turbo expand across the map.
If you still want to comm gorge, you may drop yourself a 10 tres egg or do the gorge swap trick that you mentioned (this is an intended/accepted side-effect mechanic). Although it's kinda 'silly', the gorge swap is not game breaking and still puts a limit to fade explosions.
Infact, I think the alien commander pres rules are not punitive enough, and will only end up encouraging people to stay out of the hive for even longer. Imo, the last person to log into the hive should not get pres at all period. Both marines and aliens run on a pres/tres model, so it only makes sense for the respective commanders to have matching pres income rates (0, since marine commander doesn't get out of the chair).
I really dislike this new model where you have to build each structure so you can research the various species upgrades. I rarely place whips, so now I have to place one in order to research leap. I don't see any reasoning behind this. I suppose the thinking is that this is offset by both upgrades being available when they're researched for the species. I guess this is just an adaptation problem, but it doesn't feel right. Last build took some adjustment, but made sense to me. This one doesn't.
Honestly feels like the devs are throwing different models at the alien khammander model to see which one sticks best, rather than having a cohesive plan. Isn't this game out of beta?
C.
The "upgrade from structure" model is not new, and has been in place since b250. Not sure why this is only becoming a hot topic now? While they may have done this in the past, UWE is not currently throwing things at the wall to see what sticks best, they do have a cohesive plan. The only difference in b252 is that this system has been simplified alot.
And in regard to the simplification, I agree with ironhorse. Not really a fan, and think it's been overly simplified.
@Kaneh Or your designated lerk jumps in the hive at the beginning and then jumps out after your comm gorges up... Yeah sure the lerk comes up right around when the fades do, but umbra anyone?!?! Nothing changed, just requires a stupid loophole to be used.
No, this doesn't work. The point of lerk is to get it at a quicker timing to fades. It is the bridge lifeform. No-one in their right mind would sacrifice that lerk timing in order to get +1 extra fade.
Commander swapping at game start is not an exploit - it works as intended.
I think you've nerfed aliens way too hard on this one.
I have one question. is there any scenario in which UWE will admit to having made an incorrect design decision? Why exactly did they change alien vision between 252 to 253?
I think you're misunderstanding how the build process works internally. Bugs don't "get past" QA because they've been around for weeks and no one happened to notice them, they appear in the absolute last second and either cannot be fixed on schedule and get delayed for a day or two or do slip by because of hardware limitations or forgetting some hidden variable because we are a finite number of mortal human beings. So many things get changed or reverted or fixed or broken every single day that it is surprisingly easy to miss things that an outside individual might find immediately apparent.
If you really think it's possible to release software without any bugs then I'm afraid you may have something in common with Jon Snow, at least in regards to software development.
Ok, see, this is what I don't understand. And I do software development work.
Purpose of the QA is to assure some measure of quality determined by the execs via having a tight grip over the process. This includes stuff from play testing to code reviews. There isn't (or shouldn't) a single QA entity that is solely responsible of finding bugs and reporting it to devs. It is a layered process, it is deeply ingrained to the development itself.
I simply cannot fathom how a "hidden" variable can be changed. I mean, you'd have to have a really bad case of spaghetti code to have hidden variables getting affected by unrelated changes. Assuming UWE is even half competent, that is simply not a possibility.
If we go back to the reality, what is most likely happening in UWE, is that once they get the feedback from the QA build, they make some other changes, test the code internally and then ship it. This is good in theory, but to have such obscure and specific bugs to slip into public builds, you'd have to have some serious issues with your vcs and commit notes, and communication in general to be honest.
TL;DR UWE needs to learn about software QA and their source control habits. What they have done with Spark is a great feat. But they have to realize they shouldn't be in panicky code mode anymore, working with multiple people requires different kind of habits.
Plus, this kind of pushing beta build before the update so they can test it with the smaller playerbase before they showcase the game to a bigger playerbase is disingenuous and leaves a sour taste imho. I would've looked more kindly to the reverse kickstarter thing they are doing if that was not the case.
So abandon making alien khammanding meaningful and fun all together?
No thanks.. its here to stay, so we might as well make it something you want to play.
A strawman argument, followed by a more interesting argument, interesting in the fact that apparently, despite changes being reverted in the past, THIS CHANGE is staying. By order of mr high on his ironhorse.
Since multiple people seemed to misunderstand : i meant that the alien commander is here to stay.
So, you might as well make it engaging and fun, instead of something that users refer to as boring and wish to skip. Both for balance reasons, as well as enjoyment.
I do not claim anything is fun - that's far too subjective. But there is more to do lately at least, compared to months ago, more involvement (that needs to be more viable with cost adjustments)
@Elodea nailed everything else I'd have to say. Oh except lol at @palagi jabs yet again..
Ok thank you for clarifying... that makes for sense and I'm all for alien commanding staying... I'd hate to see it go. I just like the way it was in build 250&251 way more than I do now...
Considering the trait upgrades, I don't really understand why a new building called, for example, "Trait Chamber" cannot be introduced, and all the traits could be researched from there. Extremely intuitive from every RTS across the board and solves the problem of having trait researches slammed on different structures with blu-tack.
Or then, you know, just have a scrolling menu in the hive.
That was only asked for a couple dozen times during beta. It makes too much sense, so we obviously can't have that. So instead, UWE comes up with more ingenious ideas for this mangled mess of an upgrade system that continues to get worse, and worse.
I'm sure once players stop using drifters altogether, UWE will start making them a requirement for upgrades (just like whips).
Considering the trait upgrades, I don't really understand why a new building called, for example, "Trait Chamber" cannot be introduced, and all the traits could be researched from there. Extremely intuitive from every RTS across the board and solves the problem of having trait researches slammed on different structures with blu-tack.
Or then, you know, just have a scrolling menu in the hive.
That was only asked for a couple dozen times during beta. It makes too much sense, so we obviously can't have that. So instead, UWE comes up with more ingenious ideas for this mangled mess of an upgrade system that continues to get worse, and worse.
I'm sure once players stop using drifters altogether, UWE will start making them a requirement for upgrades (just like whips).
structures and eggs don't hatch without drifters... I can see it coming :P
Considering the trait upgrades, I don't really understand why a new building called, for example, "Trait Chamber" cannot be introduced, and all the traits could be researched from there. Extremely intuitive from every RTS across the board and solves the problem of having trait researches slammed on different structures with blu-tack.
Or then, you know, just have a scrolling menu in the hive.
That was only asked for a couple dozen times during beta. It makes too much sense, so we obviously can't have that. So instead, UWE comes up with more ingenious ideas for this mangled mess of an upgrade system that continues to get worse, and worse.
I'm sure once players stop using drifters altogether, UWE will start making them a requirement for upgrades (just like whips).
I was actually wondering where the hell they put the skulk upgrades, then i was like... no, it couldn't be, could it? lemme drop a whip... wtf? If it weren't the whips, next bet is cyst researchable upgrades.
I was actually wondering where the hell they put the skulk upgrades, then i was like... no, it couldn't be, could it? lemme drop a whip... wtf? If it weren't the whips, next bet is cyst researchable upgrades.
Hopefully when they realize how unintuitive and mind boggling it was to use whips as an upgrade structure, they'll finally do the right choice (only a year late) and create an actual tech chamber to store the alien upgrades.
Maybe after that, they can finally clean up the fluster cuck that is the Alien Kham and make it an interesting part of the alien gameplay. I have ideas, but it would be faster for me just to learn coding an implement them myself than get an actual nod towards them.
KanehJoin Date: 2012-12-11Member: 174783Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited August 2013
The problem that has been solved is alien commanders popping down two chains, 2 RTs, then exiting the hive to go around and gorge build them...
Alien commander was never meant to assist in alien expansion outside of the hive. All it did was add another player into the offensive push/combat mix.
Imagine the marine commander getting out and running around the map building things himself.
This has not been solved. The alien com now just plops down the rts, drifter, and one upgrade and goes skulking. The only other meaningful commander action that needs to be taken in the first 5 minutes of the game is to drop the other 2 upgrade chambers. This is why i said the commander skulking is the 'workaround'. because he'll be out of the hive anyways. The core issue was never addressed - namely, there is still nothing the alien com can do in the hive except click on upgrades. Doubly so in the early game when you're still saving tres for 3 upgrade chambers.
I don't know why you think sewlek didn't get competitive player's opinions on the matter? that's quite the assumption.
How is skulking a work around exactly?
I implied he did, and the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. I explained how skulking basically means the com isn't in the hive doing hive things anyways, which is basically getting around the stated goal of this change.
Now if said influencing actions while commanding as an alien are boring or need reworking, then that's definitely something i agree needs more work and could use some suggestions from the community.
I maintain its still in the right direction, though, embracing a commander that feels like they need to be in the hive.
and this is where i seriously question the ability of the people making these decisions. They want the alien commander to do more commander things, have more meaningful actions in the hive. And then they nerf the hell out of drifters, which is the only thing in the entire game the alien com actually has to watch and may actually want to be in the hive for. Everything else about alien comming is basic, boring upkeep. clicking on upgrades and (re)cysting things.
~slight rant about the mess than is alien commander~
There is a stated goal of not wanting Players to fight Structures too much, so you want alien coms to be meaningful, then you need an alien version of meds. Commander support so powerful it signifigantly alters the outcome of engagements. That is the only way for it to matter. Unfortunately the aliens already have support classes like the gorge and lerk, so the commander can't overlap with those things. Something like umbra being on drifters would add a ton of value to having an alien com.
On top of the difficulty of abilities, aliens naturally don't need as much direction. Because aliens are supposed to be more mobile and reactionary, there is much less need for an alien com to organize pushes and concentrate forces, as an example, a push by the marines to kill an rt is almost always going to be 2-3 marines along with med/ammo/nano support. Aliens on the other hand only need one skulk chomping. Same with pushes to establish PGs or arcs. This means that there is much less need for some guy sitting with an overhead view of the game organizing concerted pushes and such.
The last reason why alien coms suck ass right now is that there is no interesting tech timings or build paths. Marines can do plenty of interesting things with tres - heck you even have 3 distinct openings that affect the commander's involvement and organization. Arms, obs, or armory>mines. An early obs>PG rush means that the com has to organize pushes (with support) and try to outmaneuver aliens. The com has to organize this though, and he has to pay attention to research timings and such. Pushing too early means PG tech isnt' done and the aliens can set up to crush. Pushing too late and you give aliens time to ambush.
and that's the 3 things that make marine comming much more interesting than alien. You have a direct impact on fights, your overview and information actually helps your team, and you actually need to make decisions that noone else on the team can make due to your position.
how to fix it? i dunno. Copying marines would be the easy way, but also boring as heck. I personally found being a defensive presence on aliens was entertaining, but apparently that clashes with devs vision of the game, so design trumps gameplay for now and we get some rediculous res nerf.
The new alien tech tree is really bad, the alien team is a pack of different lifeforms, you don't want to commit all on one. You want to pick usefull upgrades for your strategy, not all possible upgrades for a lifeform.
Drifters for 8 ressources ? Really ? This is crazy it's just a drifter !
It would be more coherent to increase harversters price than drifters.
Commander have no ress at start and drifters can't be used in combat till they cost 8 ress. So alien commander will just go bite RTs... This no ress commander is really a bad idea and has no point.
In competitive games, I really don't think I will stay in hive smoking cigarettes and drinking beers. I want to be usefull.
Dev should take a look at the NSL Summer Cup balance mod, some of these balance changes was really good.
I feel the overhaul of the khammander tech tree, and management in general, is unfairly punitive.
The new system denies the khammander (and commander) any res, so they can't go gorge at the beginning: this requires them to create expensive drifters to build anything at worthwhile speed. I can foresee games where a player jumps in to be khammander to start the game, then jumps out so another player can go gorge, and jump in. Sure the original player will be skulk for a longer time, but what problem has been solved here?
Ok, so basically the number 1 issue ns2 has always faced is tres/pres and tech explosions. These changes go towards addressing this.
There are now tradeoffs to not having a field player gorge, with the current changes encouraging composition of alien comm (skulk or whatever) + gorge + lerk + 2 fade + onos. Remember, the point is to take players away from the fade ball. This is also why drifters are now an actual decision you have to make and not something you can spam thoughtlessly - endlessly replacing one after the other as you turbo expand across the map.
If you still want to comm gorge, you may drop yourself a 10 tres egg or do the gorge swap trick that you mentioned (this is an intended/accepted side-effect mechanic). Although it's kinda 'silly', the gorge swap is not game breaking and still puts a limit to fade explosions.
Infact, I think the alien commander pres rules are not punitive enough, and will only end up encouraging people to stay out of the hive for even longer. Imo, the last person to log into the hive should not get pres at all period. Both marines and aliens run on a pres/tres model, so it only makes sense for the respective commanders to have matching pres income rates (0, since marine commander doesn't get out of the chair).
I really dislike this new model where you have to build each structure so you can research the various species upgrades. I rarely place whips, so now I have to place one in order to research leap. I don't see any reasoning behind this. I suppose the thinking is that this is offset by both upgrades being available when they're researched for the species. I guess this is just an adaptation problem, but it doesn't feel right. Last build took some adjustment, but made sense to me. This one doesn't.
Honestly feels like the devs are throwing different models at the alien khammander model to see which one sticks best, rather than having a cohesive plan. Isn't this game out of beta?
C.
The "upgrade from structure" model is not new, and has been in place since b250. Not sure why this is only becoming a hot topic now? While they may have done this in the past, UWE is not currently throwing things at the wall to see what sticks best, they do have a cohesive plan. The only difference in b252 is that this system has been simplified alot.
And in regard to the simplification, I agree with ironhorse. Not really a fan, and think it's been overly simplified.
@Kaneh Or your designated lerk jumps in the hive at the beginning and then jumps out after your comm gorges up... Yeah sure the lerk comes up right around when the fades do, but umbra anyone?!?! Nothing changed, just requires a stupid loophole to be used.
No, this doesn't work. The point of lerk is to get it at a quicker timing to fades. It is the bridge lifeform. No-one in their right mind would sacrifice that lerk timing in order to get +1 extra fade.
Commander swapping at game start is not an exploit - it works as intended.
I think you've nerfed aliens way too hard on this one.
Well, the point really was to first get the alien composition in the right place. All the fiddly stuff like lifeform strengths, marine strenght, and timings can be adjusted off this base if sewlek/UWE see that aliens are indeed overnerfed. Whatever the case, it's best not to go back to anything that easily allows 3+ fade balls every game.
I have one question. is there any scenario in which UWE will admit to having made an incorrect design decision? Why exactly did they change alien vision between 252 to 253?
Alien vision
Alien vision was changed because it was just not how they wanted to represent the game aesthetically. The old AV did indeed look horrible. There was also some "alien vision should have a tradeoff", but that has been minimised a bit with the recent build. The goal as i understand it is to make an AV that represents the game world in a visually pleasing and immersive way, so if you don't find it currently nice to look at you should definitely add (or re-add) your feedback to the AV thread.
Personally, I find playing without AV is not so hard anymore with the helpful orange outlines, so i just do that now. As a last resort, you can always use one of the alien vision mods on the workshop.
In general
UWE will admit to having made an incorrect design decision either explicitly as a forum post or implicitly through changelog reversions or fixes. The catch is that you need to 1) Understand what the change was trying to achieve. 2) Thoroughly convince them why either another solution is better, that the current solution is not worth the benefit, or that the goal of the changes is not good. 3) Give feedback on intuitiveness and fun (important) of said design decision.
It's important to note though that UWE does not make knee jerk reactions much anymore (double edged sword, but overall for the better I think). Right now, as with any new build with significant gameplay changes, there is a priority list of things that need careful observation in the wild to see how the metagame evolves. Don't take that to mean that UWE isn't reading feedback though, just that some things arn't appropriate to fully address atm because the base gameplay isn't settled enough. Once the tech explosion plague is truly and forever gone, I would expect alot of sewlek's attention being freed up for many other things.
While UWE already has a fairly solid plan for how gameplay and balance design time is going to be spent going forward, just like all of us here, they really do want to make the best game possible. And that means being more than willing to put aside 'design pride' if necessary.
Considering the trait upgrades, I don't really understand why a new building called, for example, "Trait Chamber" cannot be introduced, and all the traits could be researched from there. Extremely intuitive from every RTS across the board and solves the problem of having trait researches slammed on different structures with blu-tack.
Or then, you know, just have a scrolling menu in the hive.
Hmm.. a single building which can be evolved into any of the lifeform upgrade chambers... yeah I dig that. Keep it separate from the functional structures (crags, shifts, shades, whips).
Please, please, PLEASE take skulk upgrades off of the whip, and add gorge tunnels to the gorge upgrade button. Whips are a highly situational and mostly useless structure that I have literally NEVER used in a scrim or a match, and very rarely in pubs/pugs. The only time I've ever wanted to use whips is when the marines are turtling and I start echoing whips into their base. There is virtually no point to dropping a whip as a defensive structure, as I'll either run past it and get meded and welded up, or i'll just shoot it from far away. It pisses me off to no end that I have to drop a fucking whip to get biomass to apply to skulks.
At what point did you decide to throw everything you did for the alien tech tree out the window? I was the alien commander 90% of the time in beta, why cause I could understand it. I get in now and I say WTF is this? Instead of a tree like the marines have the tech for alien tree is more like a spider web, you need everything to get almost anything.
If I remember correctly UWE removed hive sight for marines moving on creep cause they wanted the alien commander’s to use drifters more, where are we at now?
If I remember correctly UWE removed hive sight for marines moving on creep cause they wanted the alien commander’s to use drifters more, where are we at now?
Alien players can use their mobility to scout the map. Drifters can still be used for scouting by a comm with an APM higher than 4 though, they're very tanky and fast. You can even build them anywhere on infestation so that travel time is even further reduced.
I do agree the current upgrade system is confusing at the moment. The idea was to make it simpler by having each life form have all of its upgrades tied to a chamber, and it seems a bit weird.
Requiring that research before biomass HP scales is really broken though and will be fixed soon I suppose. An unintiated alien comm can spend 20+30 on biomass 2 and 3 straight away, even though it is completely useless until you've upgraded a whip or the gorge at the hive.
I'm not a comp player so take my opinion for whatever it's worth, but...
... if alien comm feels more stressful now, then it's been put more in line with marine comm, imo
it's not more stressful, you know exactly what you need to do, and when to do it, because there is no possibility of variation. the only thing comm really makes a decision on right now is shade shift or crag hive first.
essentially one could have ability unlocks triggered by how much total res the commander has accrued throughout the.round, and you'd be hard pressed to see the difference. no build order differences.
If I remember correctly UWE removed hive sight for marines moving on creep cause they wanted the alien commander’s to use drifters more, where are we at now?
Alien players can use their mobility to scout the map. Drifters can still be used for scouting by a comm with an APM higher than 4 though, they're very tanky and fast. You can even build them anywhere on infestation so that travel time is even further reduced.
right... 8 res for a scout. or just drop a whip. for 2 res more the whip is much tankier. Not like it isn't pretty fast off of infestation too. do you see why so many people think alien tech and alien commander in its current state is so ridiculous? The entire alien side is riddled with inconsistencies and bandaids and quick patchwork. It's some wierd monstrosity that doesn't seem to understand what it can or wants to do because at the end of the day, alien tech is still pres based. It's still all about fades and onos.
there's a slight movement towards making alien tech make lifeforms actually powerful as opposed to being powerful "out of the box", but unless you castrate vanilla lerks/fade/onos and make them cost much less pres, alien tech is still all about pres.
marines are all about becoming 3/3 ubermarines, what are aliens? max biomass? 3 chamber ups? skill unlocks? There's no real 'goal' to alien tech. Half the time you're fighting with what you have and not getting any more tech because you literally can't see a reason to get anything else. not even because you're maxed on ups like 3/3 dual exo marines would be. There's no descisions in tres spending because there's no overarching goal like the way marines want 3/3 prototech. You aren't balancing 'now' spending with 'later' spending. Like marines need shotguns 'now' to fight fades, but want w2 to just be more powerful 'later'.
I'm sorta ranting again. I dunno. I just think there's so much to this and these changes feel so random especially because there's no map for the players and no way for us to tell if these changes are gradual or what they're going for or if it'll be fun when we get there or if the journey is worth it.
I feel like i need to summarize my paragraphs:
1) Alien coms don't have any meaningful impact on engagements
2) Alien coms don't have any meaningful decisions to make
3) Alien coms don't have any meaningful information/abilities to organize the team
Comments
A strawman argument, followed by a more interesting argument, interesting in the fact that apparently, despite changes being reverted in the past, THIS CHANGE is staying. By order of mr high on his ironhorse.
By the way, how's that revert to the 249 fade movement system coming along. I do lament at having lost the unique movement system for the quake crowd and their bunnies.
Edit: apparently hurp duurp
I'm afraid i totally disagree on that point. Any competitive match had one or another (gorge kam or only kam). The kam' (yé without the H, it's faster) often gorge, instead of doing nothing else than waiting for res.
-To produce a tunnel.
-He could support a little when things are going bad at hive.
-Or make clog on the upgrade to delay destruction if it happens.
-Heal the hive while teammates make them pay the insult of touching the hive.
Especially waiting for res when skill is high. Even a good team have problems to keep 3 or 4 harvesters alive. On 251 the aggression was on RT first then the skulks.
This was a good asset for the team that was compensating the fact kam' couldn't produce any "healing services on the map" (except with drifters, only carapace).
Plus one way or another Aliens still have difficulties to finish the game. So at some point there's nothing to buy except make whip/bile, life form eggs or drifters... That just don't make sense to nerf Kham/com like that.
Also; Whip upgrade is contrary to NS logic in which upgrades are semi or fully passive. Semi because speed have been increased on crag/shit/shade/drifters. You won't kill a marine with that is it? Whip are field units (aggressive and mobile).
that isn't very confidence inspiring. maybe spread out the upper div players between groups? if that is the actual distribution, I'd rather see it flipped if anything. map balance is important true, but game and feature balance is more sweeping and more important overall.
for example, drifters at 8 res, wtf. make harvesters more expensive if you want to slow alien growth, but drifters can't really serve as spotters or support if it breaks the bank go field them.
legitimately, my first reaction was, oh that's a coincidence, game of thrones, but I don't get it, he must mean some historical figure because it's not Jon. and if it's anything to do with the show, I read the books instead, and there we're a lot of words in them.
Playtesters don't provide gameplay feedback, so there is no point in "distributing" skill, there is yet another group that gives gameplay feedback/suggestions, but as with the other groups the devs don't need to adhere 100% to what they say, which also addresses:
--
So yeah. End of the day, the decisions to release builds in what we can call premature state, or questionable balance changes, etc, is always up to the devs. Not sure why that's not obvious. If there's legitimate reasons for publishing these builds in the state they get released and they are not communicated properly then I'd say it's a PR problem.
So when is NS2:Mendasp Mod being released? It has nearly been a year since release, logging more hours into vanilla NS2 feels like logging hours into vanilla Skyrim or New Vegas or VTMB, why bother if you can download the patch/es that fix everything.
So, you might as well make it engaging and fun, instead of something that users refer to as boring and wish to skip. Both for balance reasons, as well as enjoyment.
I do not claim anything is fun - that's far too subjective. But there is more to do lately at least, compared to months ago, more involvement (that needs to be more viable with cost adjustments)
@Elodea nailed everything else I'd have to say. Oh except lol at @palagi jabs yet again..
Yeah ok that is probably here to stay then. I thought you were talking about the new tech changes. All is forgiven.
I actually missed some last minute tweaks to the cost of the lifeform groupings so they're better than they used to be at least. I'm not sure it's wise to have all of the biomass passive boost be tied into the upgrade - maybe something like half and half.
It feels like this was done just to force khamms to use structures they don't normally want to use, which is treating the symptoms and not the problem. Similarly, punishing comms for jumping out is a heavy handed band aid to the real problem of the alien khamm being bored.
I think you've nerfed aliens way too hard on this one.
I have one question. is there any scenario in which UWE will admit to having made an incorrect design decision? Why exactly did they change alien vision between 252 to 253?
Ok, see, this is what I don't understand. And I do software development work.
Purpose of the QA is to assure some measure of quality determined by the execs via having a tight grip over the process. This includes stuff from play testing to code reviews. There isn't (or shouldn't) a single QA entity that is solely responsible of finding bugs and reporting it to devs. It is a layered process, it is deeply ingrained to the development itself.
I simply cannot fathom how a "hidden" variable can be changed. I mean, you'd have to have a really bad case of spaghetti code to have hidden variables getting affected by unrelated changes. Assuming UWE is even half competent, that is simply not a possibility.
If we go back to the reality, what is most likely happening in UWE, is that once they get the feedback from the QA build, they make some other changes, test the code internally and then ship it. This is good in theory, but to have such obscure and specific bugs to slip into public builds, you'd have to have some serious issues with your vcs and commit notes, and communication in general to be honest.
TL;DR UWE needs to learn about software QA and their source control habits. What they have done with Spark is a great feat. But they have to realize they shouldn't be in panicky code mode anymore, working with multiple people requires different kind of habits.
Plus, this kind of pushing beta build before the update so they can test it with the smaller playerbase before they showcase the game to a bigger playerbase is disingenuous and leaves a sour taste imho. I would've looked more kindly to the reverse kickstarter thing they are doing if that was not the case.
Ok thank you for clarifying... that makes for sense and I'm all for alien commanding staying... I'd hate to see it go. I just like the way it was in build 250&251 way more than I do now...
That was only asked for a couple dozen times during beta. It makes too much sense, so we obviously can't have that. So instead, UWE comes up with more ingenious ideas for this mangled mess of an upgrade system that continues to get worse, and worse.
I'm sure once players stop using drifters altogether, UWE will start making them a requirement for upgrades (just like whips).
structures and eggs don't hatch without drifters... I can see it coming :P
I was actually wondering where the hell they put the skulk upgrades, then i was like... no, it couldn't be, could it? lemme drop a whip... wtf? If it weren't the whips, next bet is cyst researchable upgrades.
Hopefully when they realize how unintuitive and mind boggling it was to use whips as an upgrade structure, they'll finally do the right choice (only a year late) and create an actual tech chamber to store the alien upgrades.
Maybe after that, they can finally clean up the fluster cuck that is the Alien Kham and make it an interesting part of the alien gameplay. I have ideas, but it would be faster for me just to learn coding an implement them myself than get an actual nod towards them.
This has not been solved. The alien com now just plops down the rts, drifter, and one upgrade and goes skulking. The only other meaningful commander action that needs to be taken in the first 5 minutes of the game is to drop the other 2 upgrade chambers. This is why i said the commander skulking is the 'workaround'. because he'll be out of the hive anyways. The core issue was never addressed - namely, there is still nothing the alien com can do in the hive except click on upgrades. Doubly so in the early game when you're still saving tres for 3 upgrade chambers.
I implied he did, and the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. I explained how skulking basically means the com isn't in the hive doing hive things anyways, which is basically getting around the stated goal of this change.
and this is where i seriously question the ability of the people making these decisions. They want the alien commander to do more commander things, have more meaningful actions in the hive. And then they nerf the hell out of drifters, which is the only thing in the entire game the alien com actually has to watch and may actually want to be in the hive for. Everything else about alien comming is basic, boring upkeep. clicking on upgrades and (re)cysting things.
~slight rant about the mess than is alien commander~
There is a stated goal of not wanting Players to fight Structures too much, so you want alien coms to be meaningful, then you need an alien version of meds. Commander support so powerful it signifigantly alters the outcome of engagements. That is the only way for it to matter. Unfortunately the aliens already have support classes like the gorge and lerk, so the commander can't overlap with those things. Something like umbra being on drifters would add a ton of value to having an alien com.
On top of the difficulty of abilities, aliens naturally don't need as much direction. Because aliens are supposed to be more mobile and reactionary, there is much less need for an alien com to organize pushes and concentrate forces, as an example, a push by the marines to kill an rt is almost always going to be 2-3 marines along with med/ammo/nano support. Aliens on the other hand only need one skulk chomping. Same with pushes to establish PGs or arcs. This means that there is much less need for some guy sitting with an overhead view of the game organizing concerted pushes and such.
The last reason why alien coms suck ass right now is that there is no interesting tech timings or build paths. Marines can do plenty of interesting things with tres - heck you even have 3 distinct openings that affect the commander's involvement and organization. Arms, obs, or armory>mines. An early obs>PG rush means that the com has to organize pushes (with support) and try to outmaneuver aliens. The com has to organize this though, and he has to pay attention to research timings and such. Pushing too early means PG tech isnt' done and the aliens can set up to crush. Pushing too late and you give aliens time to ambush.
and that's the 3 things that make marine comming much more interesting than alien. You have a direct impact on fights, your overview and information actually helps your team, and you actually need to make decisions that noone else on the team can make due to your position.
how to fix it? i dunno. Copying marines would be the easy way, but also boring as heck. I personally found being a defensive presence on aliens was entertaining, but apparently that clashes with devs vision of the game, so design trumps gameplay for now and we get some rediculous res nerf.
Drifters for 8 ressources ? Really ? This is crazy it's just a drifter !
It would be more coherent to increase harversters price than drifters.
Commander have no ress at start and drifters can't be used in combat till they cost 8 ress. So alien commander will just go bite RTs... This no ress commander is really a bad idea and has no point.
In competitive games, I really don't think I will stay in hive smoking cigarettes and drinking beers. I want to be usefull.
Dev should take a look at the NSL Summer Cup balance mod, some of these balance changes was really good.
Alien vision
Alien vision was changed because it was just not how they wanted to represent the game aesthetically. The old AV did indeed look horrible. There was also some "alien vision should have a tradeoff", but that has been minimised a bit with the recent build. The goal as i understand it is to make an AV that represents the game world in a visually pleasing and immersive way, so if you don't find it currently nice to look at you should definitely add (or re-add) your feedback to the AV thread.
Personally, I find playing without AV is not so hard anymore with the helpful orange outlines, so i just do that now. As a last resort, you can always use one of the alien vision mods on the workshop.
In general
UWE will admit to having made an incorrect design decision either explicitly as a forum post or implicitly through changelog reversions or fixes. The catch is that you need to
1) Understand what the change was trying to achieve.
2) Thoroughly convince them why either another solution is better, that the current solution is not worth the benefit, or that the goal of the changes is not good.
3) Give feedback on intuitiveness and fun (important) of said design decision.
It's important to note though that UWE does not make knee jerk reactions much anymore (double edged sword, but overall for the better I think). Right now, as with any new build with significant gameplay changes, there is a priority list of things that need careful observation in the wild to see how the metagame evolves. Don't take that to mean that UWE isn't reading feedback though, just that some things arn't appropriate to fully address atm because the base gameplay isn't settled enough. Once the tech explosion plague is truly and forever gone, I would expect alot of sewlek's attention being freed up for many other things.
While UWE already has a fairly solid plan for how gameplay and balance design time is going to be spent going forward, just like all of us here, they really do want to make the best game possible. And that means being more than willing to put aside 'design pride' if necessary.
Hmm.. a single building which can be evolved into any of the lifeform upgrade chambers... yeah I dig that. Keep it separate from the functional structures (crags, shifts, shades, whips).
If I remember correctly UWE removed hive sight for marines moving on creep cause they wanted the alien commander’s to use drifters more, where are we at now?
Alien players can use their mobility to scout the map. Drifters can still be used for scouting by a comm with an APM higher than 4 though, they're very tanky and fast. You can even build them anywhere on infestation so that travel time is even further reduced.
I do agree the current upgrade system is confusing at the moment. The idea was to make it simpler by having each life form have all of its upgrades tied to a chamber, and it seems a bit weird.
Requiring that research before biomass HP scales is really broken though and will be fixed soon I suppose. An unintiated alien comm can spend 20+30 on biomass 2 and 3 straight away, even though it is completely useless until you've upgraded a whip or the gorge at the hive.
... if alien comm feels more stressful now, then it's been put more in line with marine comm, imo
it's not more stressful, you know exactly what you need to do, and when to do it, because there is no possibility of variation. the only thing comm really makes a decision on right now is shade shift or crag hive first.
essentially one could have ability unlocks triggered by how much total res the commander has accrued throughout the.round, and you'd be hard pressed to see the difference. no build order differences.
*edit* fix phone autocorrections
Not stressful at all... Mind numbingly boring yes.
right... 8 res for a scout. or just drop a whip. for 2 res more the whip is much tankier. Not like it isn't pretty fast off of infestation too. do you see why so many people think alien tech and alien commander in its current state is so ridiculous? The entire alien side is riddled with inconsistencies and bandaids and quick patchwork. It's some wierd monstrosity that doesn't seem to understand what it can or wants to do because at the end of the day, alien tech is still pres based. It's still all about fades and onos.
there's a slight movement towards making alien tech make lifeforms actually powerful as opposed to being powerful "out of the box", but unless you castrate vanilla lerks/fade/onos and make them cost much less pres, alien tech is still all about pres.
marines are all about becoming 3/3 ubermarines, what are aliens? max biomass? 3 chamber ups? skill unlocks? There's no real 'goal' to alien tech. Half the time you're fighting with what you have and not getting any more tech because you literally can't see a reason to get anything else. not even because you're maxed on ups like 3/3 dual exo marines would be. There's no descisions in tres spending because there's no overarching goal like the way marines want 3/3 prototech. You aren't balancing 'now' spending with 'later' spending. Like marines need shotguns 'now' to fight fades, but want w2 to just be more powerful 'later'.
I'm sorta ranting again. I dunno. I just think there's so much to this and these changes feel so random especially because there's no map for the players and no way for us to tell if these changes are gradual or what they're going for or if it'll be fun when we get there or if the journey is worth it.
I feel like i need to summarize my paragraphs:
1) Alien coms don't have any meaningful impact on engagements
2) Alien coms don't have any meaningful decisions to make
3) Alien coms don't have any meaningful information/abilities to organize the team
as for alien tech
1) still pres based
2) no goal/focus