@Afterhours I just wana know how you use the celing after an engagement has started... In my experience time is to the marines advantage, once you land that first bite the clock starts. The more time between first bite and killing bite increases chances of med pack, nano, reload, support.
While every one always says "time your bites, don't hold Attack". Personally I work on timing my mouse movements to match my bite speed... I Strafing, jump, leap, even stop, but use whatever movement is needed to avoid billets and stay in bite range, then snap back to where he should be to land the next bite... In a good engagement ill land 3-4 consecutive bites while dancing at his feet...
This is why I dislike the jump, because when I turn to bite him where he should be, he's not there. When I look for him he isn't even in the area he could be. Magicly he jumped to an area I thought was no longer a combat zone and has clear line of sight on me.
Sure I can adapt and still kill him, but I don't believe marines should be able to jump out of meele range of a skulk. A good marine avoids letting skulks get into Meele range, once in meele range a marine should not be able to simply jump away and take away the skulk advantage...
Game play wise the first bite a skulk lands should be the hardest to get, because he had to close the distance at a sever disadvantage. After the first bite he should not have to start over trying to close the distance. As it is the first bite is currently the easiest and we have to work even harder to get the second.
All this is assuming the marine knows how to strafe jump and has some skill. Because a noob rine is still just as dead.
Marines can move backward faster than skulks can move forward on the ground with the new jump, you *can't* close the distance without the marine having just as much a chance to kill you as you do to kill them. This is really poor design as it gets rid of ambushing and hitting unaware marines being an advantage, and it also gets rid of the entire concept that marines should stay in packs to stay alive. They don't need to, with enough jumping 1v1 even in an ambush in a dark room it's a 50/50.
Agreed. I thought the reason for skulks to be more mobile than marines was the fact they need to get close and personal in order to kill, as they have no ranged weapon. Now that skulks are inferior also in that respect, I'm not sure how this helps balance. It just pisses a major number of people off, truly yours included.
I'd like to hear @Tane 's opinion on this, I believe he's one of the most qualified people to discuss engagements and would like to know what he thinks.
EDIT: I'm sort of on the fence about it, but leaning more to keeping it and giving the skulk a bit more air control or something to compensate, not sure.
Lots of butt hurt skulks in this thread ;P Marines finally have a way to win engagements without med spam and everyone cries OP/foul. Lucky they didn't play NS1, marines would of run circles around them
Lots of butt hurt skulks in this thread ;P Marines finally have a way to win engagements without med spam and everyone cries OP/foul. Lucky they didn't play NS1, marines would of run circles around them
You're obviously not a very good marine, so I'll make this brief, but there are much, much better ways to handle balance than making one side obviously, ridiculously disadvantaged to such a degree that it's contrary to the very core of the gameplay and frankly makes no sense in any universe or build of the game that's ever existed. Doesn't even make sense given the games own physics. It's bad design on the back of a game with plenty of great designs and great mechanics.
@Afterhours I just wana know how you use the celing after an engagement has started... In my experience time is to the marines advantage, once you land that first bite the clock starts. The more time between first bite and killing bite increases chances of med pack, nano, reload, support.
Depends on how/where you're engaging. Are you attacking a Marine standing in the middle of an open room? Are you attacking him in a tight corridor? All of this matters. Some environments are advantageous to the Marine, and visa versa. I use the ceiling/walls when its possible/worthwhile to do so. My play style is to not rush for the kill if I don't have to. If I can take my time, do hit-and-run attacks, it usually leads to me coming out of the engagement with more HP compared to a straight "go for the throat".
While every one always says "time your bites, don't hold Attack". Personally I work on timing my mouse movements to match my bite speed... I Strafing, jump, leap, even stop, but use whatever movement is needed to avoid billets and stay in bite range, then snap back to where he should be to land the next bite... In a good engagement ill land 3-4 consecutive bites while dancing at his feet...
I want to point out to you that if you like to dance at their feet, good marines will find you an easier to target. They are familiar to the skulks movement speed and will be able to whip around and trace your movement. Its very simple when you're sitting on a level surface. When using the walls and ceilings, your pathing is not AS predictable. The Marine is forced to not only aim at you, but also find you as you move above his head, etc.
This is why I dislike the jump, because when I turn to bite him where he should be, he's not there. When I look for him he isn't even in the area he could be. Magicly he jumped to an area I thought was no longer a combat zone and has clear line of sight on me.
And this is why jumping is effective against ground-skulks.
Sure I can adapt and still kill him, but I don't believe marines should be able to jump out of meele range of a skulk. A good marine avoids letting skulks get into Meele range, once in meele range a marine should not be able to simply jump away and take away the skulk advantage...
We will have to agree to disagree. The increased mobility for marines makes them feel not as hopeless once a skulk eventually closes the gap. I admit this depends heavily on the environment, but, this is where you need to learn to pick your fights, and understand when youre engaging at a disadvantage. You will just have to adapt if you want to continue performing well as a skulk. There's no easy mode here, boy.
Game play wise the first bite a skulk lands should be the hardest to get, because he had to close the distance at a sever disadvantage. After the first bite he should not have to start over trying to close the distance. As it is the first bite is currently the easiest and we have to work even harder to get the second.
The first bite is just as easy as the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. Movement, and positional awareness is the key.
I'd like to hear @Tane 's opinion on this, I believe he's one of the most qualified people to discuss engagements and would like to know what he thinks.
EDIT: I'm sort of on the fence about it, but leaning more to keeping it and giving the skulk a bit more air control or something to compensate, not sure.
Lots of butt hurt skulks in this thread ;P Marines finally have a way to win engagements without med spam and everyone cries OP/foul. Lucky they didn't play NS1, marines would of run circles around them
I *did* play NS1 quite a lot, I also played with competitive people and the reason it wasn't a problem there is because all aliens had much better mobility than the marines did. This is a fundamental problem of the entire concept of the encounter being completely broken. Marines move faster and more unpredictably than skulks one their jump chain ends, meaning once melee starts.
If you're someone who is honestly asserting that you should bite them, get to a wall again, jump away, and jump back to finish them while they reload, then you might want to play with people who can aim because without leap in nearly every situation marines will have at least a full second to hit you, and that's all it takes to kill a skulk. As I've said before, there's no point in ambushing now, you're better off coming into the fight at full wall-hop speed, glancing them with one bit and just leaving, hoping that some other skulk comes by to finish the job.
You have to hunt in packs now, you have to zerg now, stalking and ambushing don't work and open combat favors marines, this is completely counter to what the design of the game asserts combat should be. This isn't an L2P issue, if you're someone who wants to pretend you're great at the game and everyone else just isn't "getting" it or adapting, I can say it's not even about that. I do just as well now as before the patch, but the combat just feels and plays really really poorly and it's not nearly as fun and limits what you can do as a skulk.
Combat feels so much better now that it takes a little brains to kill a marine. We've all felt the frustration of the god-like aim of a good marine as a skulk. You just have to reassess how you're playing your game.
I do agree on the necessity to move in packs now, but, that's quite understandable as marines move in groups commonly.
Combat feels so much better now that it takes a little brains to kill a marine. We've all felt the frustration of the god-like aim of a good marine as a skulk. You just have to reassess how you're playing your game.
I do agree on the necessity to move in packs now, but, that's quite understandable as marines move in groups commonly.
The aim isn't the problem at all, and again I do about the same as I did before. I tend to go 10:1 in normal pubs as alien, the problem is that skulks have zero advantage in close combat or in ambushes against good marines now. You'll get one maybe two bites before they leap away and from that point they have the time to kill you if their aim and reaction time is good.
Moving in packs is always better, but aliens are suppose to be better in 1v1 when they get the drop on marines. Now if the rines have out tech'd you you *have* to 2v1. What is the point of having skulks be so absurdly disadvantaged at range if in melee good marines can make it a 50/50 at even tech?
Marine movement, it was not fast enough, the faster strafes are good, the main problem is that atm it doesn't scale with skill: a bad marine not checking corners and getting ambushed will overcome the alien brain game with his own movement game and dodge the next bites.
Solution proposed: have a mini stunt on the jump when recieving a bite, this way a good marine can still jump+dodge the first bites but can't spam it after recieving 3 bites.
Not bitten marine= 100% jump, Bitten marine= 70% jump for 0.5s
Lol @ people saying i'm a bad player is hilarious. Good argument guys :P I had a serious post above that explained how to skulk against good players, i can't explain it any other way.
Lol the amount of people saying i'm a bad player is hilarious. Good argument guys :P I had a serious post above that explained how to skulk against good players, i can't explain it any other way.
No one is basing their argument as to why this is a bad thing on "male_fatalities is a bad player and should not be listened to", no one has even directly mentioned you except me. I asked you before what you even mean by strafing under marines, since after the first bit they leap far enough away where you can't close the gap before they have enough time to kill you. So I asked you to account for that and you didn't.
What happens against good players in the NA scene for me is that I either get the drop on them or close the distance before they react, I get one or two bites, they jump, at this point I've lost all my speed as skulk, so they are now a couple body lengths away, I have no speed, and I have to close the gap before they kill me. Depending on which way they jump first and how good their aim is usually determines the rest of the encounter. You can't strafe under a marine as they jump, because if they jump away you're not even in melee range nor do you have the speed to track a boosted jump.
I think Marines should be forced to wear lead boots with their legs chained together and have one arm tied behind their backs...
But seriously, why would it be unreasonable to assume that marines suits could provide some sort of mechanical assist in jumping? They clearly have power in them.
In my opinion 2 or 3 bites from a skulk should not be able to kill a marine wearing armor. That defies common sense more then jumping does.
But seriously, why would it be unreasonable to assume that marines suits could provide some sort of mechanical assist in jumping? They clearly have power in them.
Then why aren't skulks born with leap?
It's not even mechanical, it's part of the lifeform...no reason to "research" it, the muscles and nerves are already there :P
Needing an evolutionary upgrade that only comes out after 2 hives or lots of map control and res for skulk v marine to function well isn't really balanced. Having leap from the start would fix the initial problem, but I would much rather just roll combat back to how it was before this patch. We were at a 60:40 which is about as good as you can intentionally get in a competitive game, the early game was back and forth and sneaky/skilled skulk play was rewarded.
Needing an evolutionary upgrade that only comes out after 2 hives or lots of map control and res for skulk v marine to function well isn't really balanced. Having leap from the start would fix the initial problem, but I would much rather just roll combat back to how it was before this patch. We were at a 60:40 which is about as good as you can intentionally get in a competitive game, the early game was back and forth and sneaky/skilled skulk play was rewarded.
Weren't we at 60% something alien wins public and 70% something alien wins competitive?
again, the alien win rate is not due to lmg vs skulk balance. it's because of the change to the resource/structure building model and introduction of the khamm. now you can have n-1 or n-2 fades in the field simultaneously where n is the team size (-2 if there's an additional gorge).
Marine jumping is ugly, is annoying, is ridiculous. This type of mechanic looks like old school arcade shooters. Find a different way to help marines but the jumping is the worst solution.
Nothing more frustrating than marines jumping out of your vision after you bit them twice on the back. Successfully ambushing a marine usually ends like this:
bite..bite... marine vanishes, then you hear BOOM, shotgun 1 time and you die or automatic fire, this triggers skulk to leap around or run up the walls fast to dodge the incoming fire (sometimes skulk lives) then the pistol rounds come and skulk is dead.
It has to be a very skilled and patient skulk vs a non skilled non experienced marine and then maybe skulk can win.
Skulk has to bite 3 times early game, 4 times late game. Skulk cannot shoot, skulk cannot leap (early game and even late game most the time). Meanwhile marines do more damage and have ranged + the added bunny hop which at this point is very frustrating. I have stopped playing the game and have resorted to commenting on the forums instead. It is too frustrating to play this game. The funnest thing in the game is the skulk imo but not at the current state.
And what about before 2 hives and before the mid game?
I liked the mechanic a lot in it's current iteration.. but after a game last night i changed my mind... on this iteration, not the idea.
I encountered a player who could time it perfectly, never doing anything other than the dodge. I decided to spend the rest of the game as a skulk vs him only if i could. I even would get the jump on him with phantom and never touch the jump key..tracking him perfectly.. made no difference. His aim + spamming that dodge distance meant death every time for me.
I realize i was outskilled in the sense that he could do something i couldn't. But i also felt like i was effectively getting hard countered as a skulk.. out of options thinking about how i could close that distance without leap and still track him. Its not like there's more ways than @male_fatalities listed. (btw have you personally met a marine who can continually, exclusively dodge? and can you kill him in time?)
Like @neoken said elsewhere, i'd be fine with it if it couldn't be constantly spammed. (limited to one an encounter?) Because increasing air control for skulks will just lead to the same issue we had pre 249, with players unable to track skulks.. raising the marine skill floor.
Like @neoken said elsewhere, i'd be fine with it if it couldn't be constantly spammed. (limited to one an encounter?) Because increasing air control for skulks will just lead to the same issue we had pre 249, with players unable to track skulks.. raising the marine skill floor.
Don't you mean pre 240?
239 and below was gloriously fun skulks as far as movement went. But due to some oddity with the physics there was poor hit detection. Admittedly this was sometimes frustrating as marine where you would get alien blood etc but no damage done.
240-249 was the days of brick skulks. Bad times. Playing skulk was boring and I stopped playing NS2 as a result. (hrm maybe at some point that was fixed before 249? I dont know, I had stopped)
250 made skulks fun to play again.
251 I believe nerfed buttjumping, but I think the skulk vs rine balance was still pretty good.
Then reinforced came along completely flapped the skulk/rine balance once again via a combo of mouse input lag making skulks all floaty, 'rines getting faster strafe jumps, and someone eating a fiery vindaloo then looking in the dunny bowl the next day for inspiration of how alien vision should look.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Its all a blur to me. Half the time i think the live build im playing is using one of the internal build numbers i test multiple times a week.
But yea, exactly. We got the brick skulk as a result of the old movement system + skulks without limitations and poor animation exploits. Don't want to go back to either of those stages...
Better to just reduce the frequency of said dodge mechanic, making it an even more skilled mechanic to pull off advantageously.
Marine jumping would be fine if not for a very obvious inconsistancy. Marines have instant momentum change in any direction they please, skulks have inertia to deal with. Giving marines inertia or removing skulk inertia would solve this issue. I have no preference, just do something.
Marine movement, it was not fast enough, the faster strafes are good, the main problem is that atm it doesn't scale with skill: a bad marine not checking corners and getting ambushed will overcome the alien brain game with his own movement game and dodge the next bites.
Solution proposed: have a mini stunt on the jump when recieving a bite, this way a good marine can still jump+dodge the first bites but can't spam it after recieving 3 bites.
Not bitten marine= 100% jump, Bitten marine= 70% jump for 0.5s
I decided to spend the rest of the game as a skulk vs him only if i could. I even would get the jump on him with phantom and never touch the jump key..tracking him perfectly.. made no difference. His aim + spamming that dodge distance meant death
On the better EU servers (YO, HBZ), this is an every game experience. Theres almost always at least a couple of marines on who are like this, just nigh on impossible to 1 v 1 (as a skulk).
male_fatalities is right in that you just can't jump in combat, you need to stay on the ground when in combat range to stand a stance with them. Why? Because marines can instantly change direction sharply but if you try that as a skulk while in mid-air you stop dead, no speed. i.e you become a sitting target. To me that's just wrong, an agile unit shouldn't be grounded to stand a chance in combat.
If marines keep their movement buff, give skulks more air control so they turn in the air while keeping speed. (I know we tried this in the beta test mod, but skulks were faster at the time and marines were slower)
Comments
While every one always says "time your bites, don't hold Attack". Personally I work on timing my mouse movements to match my bite speed... I Strafing, jump, leap, even stop, but use whatever movement is needed to avoid billets and stay in bite range, then snap back to where he should be to land the next bite... In a good engagement ill land 3-4 consecutive bites while dancing at his feet...
This is why I dislike the jump, because when I turn to bite him where he should be, he's not there. When I look for him he isn't even in the area he could be. Magicly he jumped to an area I thought was no longer a combat zone and has clear line of sight on me.
Sure I can adapt and still kill him, but I don't believe marines should be able to jump out of meele range of a skulk. A good marine avoids letting skulks get into Meele range, once in meele range a marine should not be able to simply jump away and take away the skulk advantage...
Game play wise the first bite a skulk lands should be the hardest to get, because he had to close the distance at a sever disadvantage. After the first bite he should not have to start over trying to close the distance. As it is the first bite is currently the easiest and we have to work even harder to get the second.
All this is assuming the marine knows how to strafe jump and has some skill. Because a noob rine is still just as dead.
Agreed. I thought the reason for skulks to be more mobile than marines was the fact they need to get close and personal in order to kill, as they have no ranged weapon. Now that skulks are inferior also in that respect, I'm not sure how this helps balance. It just pisses a major number of people off, truly yours included.
EDIT: I'm sort of on the fence about it, but leaning more to keeping it and giving the skulk a bit more air control or something to compensate, not sure.
You're obviously not a very good marine, so I'll make this brief, but there are much, much better ways to handle balance than making one side obviously, ridiculously disadvantaged to such a degree that it's contrary to the very core of the gameplay and frankly makes no sense in any universe or build of the game that's ever existed. Doesn't even make sense given the games own physics. It's bad design on the back of a game with plenty of great designs and great mechanics.
Anything else pointless you'd like to say?
Depends on how/where you're engaging. Are you attacking a Marine standing in the middle of an open room? Are you attacking him in a tight corridor? All of this matters. Some environments are advantageous to the Marine, and visa versa. I use the ceiling/walls when its possible/worthwhile to do so. My play style is to not rush for the kill if I don't have to. If I can take my time, do hit-and-run attacks, it usually leads to me coming out of the engagement with more HP compared to a straight "go for the throat".
I want to point out to you that if you like to dance at their feet, good marines will find you an easier to target. They are familiar to the skulks movement speed and will be able to whip around and trace your movement. Its very simple when you're sitting on a level surface. When using the walls and ceilings, your pathing is not AS predictable. The Marine is forced to not only aim at you, but also find you as you move above his head, etc.
And this is why jumping is effective against ground-skulks.
We will have to agree to disagree. The increased mobility for marines makes them feel not as hopeless once a skulk eventually closes the gap. I admit this depends heavily on the environment, but, this is where you need to learn to pick your fights, and understand when youre engaging at a disadvantage. You will just have to adapt if you want to continue performing well as a skulk. There's no easy mode here, boy.
The first bite is just as easy as the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. Movement, and positional awareness is the key.
he wanted marine strafe
I *did* play NS1 quite a lot, I also played with competitive people and the reason it wasn't a problem there is because all aliens had much better mobility than the marines did. This is a fundamental problem of the entire concept of the encounter being completely broken. Marines move faster and more unpredictably than skulks one their jump chain ends, meaning once melee starts.
If you're someone who is honestly asserting that you should bite them, get to a wall again, jump away, and jump back to finish them while they reload, then you might want to play with people who can aim because without leap in nearly every situation marines will have at least a full second to hit you, and that's all it takes to kill a skulk. As I've said before, there's no point in ambushing now, you're better off coming into the fight at full wall-hop speed, glancing them with one bit and just leaving, hoping that some other skulk comes by to finish the job.
You have to hunt in packs now, you have to zerg now, stalking and ambushing don't work and open combat favors marines, this is completely counter to what the design of the game asserts combat should be. This isn't an L2P issue, if you're someone who wants to pretend you're great at the game and everyone else just isn't "getting" it or adapting, I can say it's not even about that. I do just as well now as before the patch, but the combat just feels and plays really really poorly and it's not nearly as fun and limits what you can do as a skulk.
Combat feels so much better now that it takes a little brains to kill a marine. We've all felt the frustration of the god-like aim of a good marine as a skulk. You just have to reassess how you're playing your game.
I do agree on the necessity to move in packs now, but, that's quite understandable as marines move in groups commonly.
The aim isn't the problem at all, and again I do about the same as I did before. I tend to go 10:1 in normal pubs as alien, the problem is that skulks have zero advantage in close combat or in ambushes against good marines now. You'll get one maybe two bites before they leap away and from that point they have the time to kill you if their aim and reaction time is good.
Moving in packs is always better, but aliens are suppose to be better in 1v1 when they get the drop on marines. Now if the rines have out tech'd you you *have* to 2v1. What is the point of having skulks be so absurdly disadvantaged at range if in melee good marines can make it a 50/50 at even tech?
No one is basing their argument as to why this is a bad thing on "male_fatalities is a bad player and should not be listened to", no one has even directly mentioned you except me. I asked you before what you even mean by strafing under marines, since after the first bit they leap far enough away where you can't close the gap before they have enough time to kill you. So I asked you to account for that and you didn't.
What happens against good players in the NA scene for me is that I either get the drop on them or close the distance before they react, I get one or two bites, they jump, at this point I've lost all my speed as skulk, so they are now a couple body lengths away, I have no speed, and I have to close the gap before they kill me. Depending on which way they jump first and how good their aim is usually determines the rest of the encounter. You can't strafe under a marine as they jump, because if they jump away you're not even in melee range nor do you have the speed to track a boosted jump.
But seriously, why would it be unreasonable to assume that marines suits could provide some sort of mechanical assist in jumping? They clearly have power in them.
In my opinion 2 or 3 bites from a skulk should not be able to kill a marine wearing armor. That defies common sense more then jumping does.
It's not even mechanical, it's part of the lifeform...no reason to "research" it, the muscles and nerves are already there :P
Obviously I don't know...
but I wouldn't be opposed to it being an upgrade for marines as well.
ok, either leap and strafe-jump as a default movement, or both as upgrades?
Needing an evolutionary upgrade that only comes out after 2 hives or lots of map control and res for skulk v marine to function well isn't really balanced. Having leap from the start would fix the initial problem, but I would much rather just roll combat back to how it was before this patch. We were at a 60:40 which is about as good as you can intentionally get in a competitive game, the early game was back and forth and sneaky/skilled skulk play was rewarded.
Weren't we at 60% something alien wins public and 70% something alien wins competitive?
Nothing more frustrating than marines jumping out of your vision after you bit them twice on the back. Successfully ambushing a marine usually ends like this:
bite..bite... marine vanishes, then you hear BOOM, shotgun 1 time and you die or automatic fire, this triggers skulk to leap around or run up the walls fast to dodge the incoming fire (sometimes skulk lives) then the pistol rounds come and skulk is dead.
It has to be a very skilled and patient skulk vs a non skilled non experienced marine and then maybe skulk can win.
Skulk has to bite 3 times early game, 4 times late game. Skulk cannot shoot, skulk cannot leap (early game and even late game most the time). Meanwhile marines do more damage and have ranged + the added bunny hop which at this point is very frustrating. I have stopped playing the game and have resorted to commenting on the forums instead. It is too frustrating to play this game. The funnest thing in the game is the skulk imo but not at the current state.
I liked the mechanic a lot in it's current iteration.. but after a game last night i changed my mind... on this iteration, not the idea.
I encountered a player who could time it perfectly, never doing anything other than the dodge. I decided to spend the rest of the game as a skulk vs him only if i could. I even would get the jump on him with phantom and never touch the jump key..tracking him perfectly.. made no difference. His aim + spamming that dodge distance meant death every time for me.
I realize i was outskilled in the sense that he could do something i couldn't. But i also felt like i was effectively getting hard countered as a skulk.. out of options thinking about how i could close that distance without leap and still track him. Its not like there's more ways than @male_fatalities listed. (btw have you personally met a marine who can continually, exclusively dodge? and can you kill him in time?)
Like @neoken said elsewhere, i'd be fine with it if it couldn't be constantly spammed. (limited to one an encounter?) Because increasing air control for skulks will just lead to the same issue we had pre 249, with players unable to track skulks.. raising the marine skill floor.
Don't you mean pre 240?
239 and below was gloriously fun skulks as far as movement went. But due to some oddity with the physics there was poor hit detection. Admittedly this was sometimes frustrating as marine where you would get alien blood etc but no damage done.
240-249 was the days of brick skulks. Bad times. Playing skulk was boring and I stopped playing NS2 as a result. (hrm maybe at some point that was fixed before 249? I dont know, I had stopped)
250 made skulks fun to play again.
251 I believe nerfed buttjumping, but I think the skulk vs rine balance was still pretty good.
Then reinforced came along completely flapped the skulk/rine balance once again via a combo of mouse input lag making skulks all floaty, 'rines getting faster strafe jumps, and someone eating a fiery vindaloo then looking in the dunny bowl the next day for inspiration of how alien vision should look.
But yea, exactly. We got the brick skulk as a result of the old movement system + skulks without limitations and poor animation exploits. Don't want to go back to either of those stages...
Better to just reduce the frequency of said dodge mechanic, making it an even more skilled mechanic to pull off advantageously.
Sounds like something worth trying out.
On the better EU servers (YO, HBZ), this is an every game experience. Theres almost always at least a couple of marines on who are like this, just nigh on impossible to 1 v 1 (as a skulk).
male_fatalities is right in that you just can't jump in combat, you need to stay on the ground when in combat range to stand a stance with them. Why? Because marines can instantly change direction sharply but if you try that as a skulk while in mid-air you stop dead, no speed. i.e you become a sitting target. To me that's just wrong, an agile unit shouldn't be grounded to stand a chance in combat.
If marines keep their movement buff, give skulks more air control so they turn in the air while keeping speed. (I know we tried this in the beta test mod, but skulks were faster at the time and marines were slower)