After playing for another day, I resent how utterly bad the basic skulk vs marine combat feels compared to 251. It's more chaotic, unpredictable, random, hard to control, and you feel like you are sliding around on a soapy floor. It's more influenced by lag problems, and if you add the newly introduced omnipresent micro-stuttering, it feels like a batch of relatively mature wine turned into vinegar overnight.
It feels like I am not landing bites that I usually would.
I also managed to solo 2 close ranged (and skilled) skulks over around 10 seconds tonight, something I would never usually get away with.
It's pretty frustrating, but hard to pin down, the closest thing I can liken it to is the last time the hit cone was borked. (I think it was that the hit cone length was reduced that time)
I am fine with the new alien vision, I don't find it too washed out, and I don't have much more trouble tracking marines when its 'on' than I used to.
(incidentally, tracking when its 'off' is damn hard with all the visual clutter).
I just don't land what look like perfectly good hits.
I am thinking perhaps this is an unintended 'feature'.
Don't know anything about changes to bite cone. But marines are a bit more agile. With the new alien view it's also a bit harder to track marines in close combat. And the damage counters are easily looked over now, leading to the feeling that you're not hitting your bites (while you actually are).
Marine movement is fine, Skulks being slow as ass to accelerate is not.
In theory yes, you can balance the marines high speed by making skulk go faster (or accelerate faster which has the same end result of skulk being faster during a fight where they are jumping around)
In practice however everyone being faster amplifies the effects of latency. In a fight at melee range with both opponents moving very fast the error margin between your perceived position relative to your opponent and the actual one becomes huge.
The result is that you often have a marine right in front of you, so close as to fill your entire screen, bite just as this happens, and the bite doesn't connect because the marine is actually already elsewhere.
As a skulk each bite you miss is a big loss of DPS. Meanwhile the marine can use small bursts with much less penalty for missing you, which makes him essentially a better melee fighter than a skulk.
So this very fast bunny hopping marines design is both counter intuitive and way too sensitive to latency, making it frustrating all around. I don't think its the right way to balance marines versus aliens.
The marine jump is very strong, however, the new lerk bite speed makes lerks mandatory and evens the games considerably.
Skulks with babblers last patch were turn your brain off, rush head on, and kill three marines go get more babblers.
Skulks that generally win 2v1 close range is good balance. Marines should win 1v1 with skulks because skulks are meant to waste marine time and kill marine structures. Buy a lerk if you want to kill marines or wait for the team to engage.
Last patch skulks had way too much potential hp with biomass, cara, and babblers so you could play skulk all game. Marines lost every game...0 res skulks that spawn 6 at once vs 20 res to get second ip..skulks should be shitty.
I didn't like the jumping at first then I remembered how much fun marines were last patch. They needed some hops.
to sum up, they broke so much stuff with the newest patch that they had another patch within 24 hours and a hotfix soon after that. yes it's hardwe to hit marines, no your not crazy, but it's a bit difficult which of the many factors it could be until we start to actually get the game to a playable state.
how dare they...
how dare they release a free patch to get >10k concurrent players playing instead of 300... it's almost like they're doing it to make money! what kind of business...
I don't think the patch is responsible for the concurrent player counts. and a messy release isn't as likely to retain paying customers.
i don't know what you're talking about... where's the evidence to support that claim?
new players will be so excited by the game, the vast majority won't care about technical hiccups. cast your mind back to official release and the incredibly 'shaky' performance issues, glitches and unbelievable lack of features. did it stop people from buying the game and having fun? i rest my case.
the game is miles better now than at release. every one of the ~24 updates since release has improved the game.
i got stuck in the menu the other day and was forced to quit. but anyone with a brain knows that's going to be fixed in a few days, so unless you're scheduled for euthanasia, on death row or set to terminally expire in the allotted time, then you can look past these superficial problems.
the past trends, as exemplified by the chartsleads me to the conclusion that the bump in numbers is ephemeral. the numbers of concurrent players always jumps an order of magnitude, then settles back to a 1000ish concurrent players after theexcitement wears off. you're the one making the assumption that this free weekend is unique.
my evidence that a buggy release isn't as likely to retain numbers as much as an insight release is admittedly anecdotal, but it's not really that much of a stretch.
the updates don't seen like a big enough change that they would cause someone who wouldn't have bought 251 to buy 254. while the bugs in 254 seem like they might be enough to turn off someone that is looking for a responsive experience. im certainly less likely to buy a game riddled with bugs until a time that it is not riddled with bugs.
you miss my point.
i believe most people are smart enough to see, for example "cool ns2 free weekend! oh wait... it's the same boring content from last time, i'll just play it while it's free". the fact that the game is updated is invaluable to attracting new players into buying the game - it's proof that the devs are active and creative, even if it does bring one or two minor hitches.
i think you must be experiencing worse issues than the majority of people too. the only 'grand' complaint is the AV change - and new players won't know any different so that argument is moot.
i genuinely believe that a LOT of gamers consider any game which doesn't get regular updates/content as a lost cause... and i'm not talking about boring seasonal dlc content like borderlands2 (the content is good, but it's clear they only do it for the $$$ because many of the skills/weapons have been unbalanced, broken and stupid since the initial release a year ago).
I feel that the skulks still level okay, but by the time the khamm gets celery (if they go shift hive,) the early engagements are done and most skulks have been annihilated and contained back to the aliens cyst spread.
But it's still a problem that late-game fully upgraded skulks are now like regular skulks used to be. That's not fair in any way
Combine that with input lag, framerate issues, network lag, rubber-banding marines, and the terribly CURIOUS hitboxes that seriously don't register once in awhile, and you've got grounds for a lot of frustration. I personally also have an issue where it seems like my bites should land, but I might be too close to the marine and they seem to bite like through or behind them. Other times, I have to be absolutely touching to land a bite, even when I know the range of the bite very well and have measured it in the past.
Comments
It feels like I am not landing bites that I usually would.
I also managed to solo 2 close ranged (and skilled) skulks over around 10 seconds tonight, something I would never usually get away with.
It's pretty frustrating, but hard to pin down, the closest thing I can liken it to is the last time the hit cone was borked. (I think it was that the hit cone length was reduced that time)
I am fine with the new alien vision, I don't find it too washed out, and I don't have much more trouble tracking marines when its 'on' than I used to.
(incidentally, tracking when its 'off' is damn hard with all the visual clutter).
I just don't land what look like perfectly good hits.
I am thinking perhaps this is an unintended 'feature'.
wasn't the skulk un-touched? why is it so different to bite marines?
Edit: tho I do dislike the overall soapy-slippery feeling when going around marines. Dunno why it feels so lubed up.
In practice however everyone being faster amplifies the effects of latency. In a fight at melee range with both opponents moving very fast the error margin between your perceived position relative to your opponent and the actual one becomes huge.
The result is that you often have a marine right in front of you, so close as to fill your entire screen, bite just as this happens, and the bite doesn't connect because the marine is actually already elsewhere.
As a skulk each bite you miss is a big loss of DPS. Meanwhile the marine can use small bursts with much less penalty for missing you, which makes him essentially a better melee fighter than a skulk.
So this very fast bunny hopping marines design is both counter intuitive and way too sensitive to latency, making it frustrating all around. I don't think its the right way to balance marines versus aliens.
Skulks with babblers last patch were turn your brain off, rush head on, and kill three marines go get more babblers.
Skulks that generally win 2v1 close range is good balance. Marines should win 1v1 with skulks because skulks are meant to waste marine time and kill marine structures. Buy a lerk if you want to kill marines or wait for the team to engage.
Last patch skulks had way too much potential hp with biomass, cara, and babblers so you could play skulk all game. Marines lost every game...0 res skulks that spawn 6 at once vs 20 res to get second ip..skulks should be shitty.
I didn't like the jumping at first then I remembered how much fun marines were last patch. They needed some hops.
you miss my point.
i believe most people are smart enough to see, for example "cool ns2 free weekend! oh wait... it's the same boring content from last time, i'll just play it while it's free". the fact that the game is updated is invaluable to attracting new players into buying the game - it's proof that the devs are active and creative, even if it does bring one or two minor hitches.
i think you must be experiencing worse issues than the majority of people too. the only 'grand' complaint is the AV change - and new players won't know any different so that argument is moot.
i genuinely believe that a LOT of gamers consider any game which doesn't get regular updates/content as a lost cause... and i'm not talking about boring seasonal dlc content like borderlands2 (the content is good, but it's clear they only do it for the $$$ because many of the skills/weapons have been unbalanced, broken and stupid since the initial release a year ago).
But it's still a problem that late-game fully upgraded skulks are now like regular skulks used to be. That's not fair in any way
Combine that with input lag, framerate issues, network lag, rubber-banding marines, and the terribly CURIOUS hitboxes that seriously don't register once in awhile, and you've got grounds for a lot of frustration. I personally also have an issue where it seems like my bites should land, but I might be too close to the marine and they seem to bite like through or behind them. Other times, I have to be absolutely touching to land a bite, even when I know the range of the bite very well and have measured it in the past.