Oh Marines must be completely op, that's why they win 100 percent of games.
Right?
This is the response that i cant understand. Balancing a games "WIN Ratio" by unbalancing a games Combat, is wonderful for the competitive scene. BUT in the Pub scene where people play for fun feeling like your loosing (because your loosing 70% of engagments) and then wining isnt fun.
Before you jump on the LTP I have, and i have yet to find a PUB server where I dont end in the top 3 slots, with a K/D of at least 3:1... (and i have no interest in the "competitive scene" it is after all a game)
I personally believe the UWE should focus on Balancing Combat and Wins independently and to 50/50. This maybe hard but i dont believe its impossible and I hate the line, "well rines should win 70-80 persent of engegments to win the round" THIS IS A CHEEP, LAME, COP OUT FROM FIXING A FUNDAMENTAL FLAW!!
In Conclusion a 50/50 win ratio in no way proves or disproves the existences of OP/Broken/Bad/lazy mechanics...
On pub servers, in my experience, aliens don't lose the majority of their engagements unless the teams are stacked. Marines don't need to win some arbitrary percentage of their engagements to win, they need to win the majority of the important engagements.
If we go nerfing Marines into oblivion because some newbie comes to the forums whining that he can't 1v1 an exo as a skulk after 2h of gameplay experience, well let's just say I can't think of a more effective way to screw up the game balance...
The alien sight is undoubtedly a factor in this which IS a valid complaint. It's hard to track Marines in cqc with the horrible outlines combined with full textures, and I can sympathise with how hard new players must find skulking when you combine this with their lack of experience and game knowledge.
But ultimately this is a l2p issue and a learn to use teamwork issue as well.
Don't try to fight prolonged melee engagements as Lerk. There's a reason why it has spikes and poisonous bite. Fly by, land a bite, then retreat to longer range and harass with spikes while poison wears them down or circle around and attack from another angle. Rooms you can maneuver in but also have enough cover for you to exit marine line of sight and keep them guessing where you're going to attack from next are the best, like Falls in Biodome, Lava Falls in Refinery, Central Drilling or The Gap in Mineshaft, etc. The Shift key for Lerks allows them to stick to walls and ceilings, which you can also use to quickly change direction if needed since it eliminates all your current momentum. Always be mixing up your combat style to keep them disoriented unless they have shotguns, then don't even bother with bite unless they're engaged by other teammates, and even then, I wouldn't do it without umbra.
Wall climbing and zig zagging as skulk are only part of the puzzle against players that aren't terrible. You need to get good at being able to gain speed through walljumping at the same time. Using the environment while in combat to break line of sight like you would as a Lerk also becomes even more important as it prevents marines from reliably tracking you.
I agree apart for the skulk maneuvering in combat. I've watched tutorials and even the official guide from UWE and it just plain doesn't work. It does against total noob marines who just stand still, but not for jumping marines. And then it's the friggin retarded skulk movement over objects where i caught myself climbing over marine negating my bite instead of moving through environment itself (very annoying when attacking a marine who is moving close to a wall or extractor due to skulks inherited auto sticking to walls). That's nearly as annoying as dodge jumping.
OP has a point about the strafe jumping, aside from balance, it's a weird feature that seems to undermine the assymetrical role of skulk (melee, fast, agile) vs marine (ranged, human).
Maybe limit the strafe jump to 1x every XX seconds (like in UT)?
-Humans get tired so it feels sort of logical.
-it would make the strafe jump more a strategic 'think before you jump' mechanic.
Don't try to fight prolonged melee engagements as Lerk. There's a reason why it has spikes and poisonous bite. Fly by, land a bite, then retreat to longer range and harass with spikes while poison wears them down or circle around and attack from another angle. Rooms you can maneuver in but also have enough cover for you to exit marine line of sight and keep them guessing where you're going to attack from next are the best, like Falls in Biodome, Lava Falls in Refinery, Central Drilling or The Gap in Mineshaft, etc. The Shift key for Lerks allows them to stick to walls and ceilings, which you can also use to quickly change direction if needed since it eliminates all your current momentum. Always be mixing up your combat style to keep them disoriented unless they have shotguns, then don't even bother with bite unless they're engaged by other teammates, and even then, I wouldn't do it without umbra.
Wall climbing and zig zagging as skulk are only part of the puzzle against players that aren't terrible. You need to get good at being able to gain speed through walljumping at the same time. Using the environment while in combat to break line of sight like you would as a Lerk also becomes even more important as it prevents marines from reliably tracking you.
I agree apart for the skulk maneuvering in combat. I've watched tutorials and even the official guide from UWE and it just plain doesn't work. It does against total noob marines who just stand still, but not for jumping marines. And then it's the friggin retarded skulk movement over objects where i caught myself climbing over marine negating my bite instead of moving through environment itself (very annoying when attacking a marine who is moving close to a wall or extractor due to skulks inherited auto sticking to walls). That's nearly as annoying as dodge jumping.
You mean you aren't holding crouch when you don't want to stick to walls? Only way to reliably work walljumping into combat routines from my experience, otherwise you get too much altitude when you don't need or want it. Should try working that in.
I agree about the random boost strafe jumps got with Reinforced. It's incredibly frustrating to play against as an alien, and feels way too easy for the huge gains you get from it as a marine.
You can argue about the details, but the OP is right.
NS2 suffers from the terrible basic mechanics that is inherited from the obsolete HL1 engine, and that is the jumpy close combat. It's absolutely horrible and obsolete by all means, it emphasizes everything bad about internet shooters - the netlag, the input lag the low FOV, the hit detection problems. The NS2 has its strong part, namely the innovative life forms, the asymmetry, the FPS/RTS combination, but that does not change the fact that the jumpy close combat is pretty terrible.
Yet, with the last patch, the devs decided we need more of the bad, in an exaggerated form by introducing the strafe jump, the single worst change in any recent patch. Before in 239, skulks had the same problem, too much air control and jerkiness resulting in a "skulk could" where hitting was a matter of luck. Later, the change was rollbacked, luckily. However, now they make the same problem with marine strafe jump. People constantly forget that this problem does not affect only 1 vs 1, but also many vs many, where failure to execute a properly setup screws the game for the aliens. "He is missing so many bites!" shouts the Reddog in a commentary. No doubt.
And please stop throwing the crappy L2P argument around, you can become better player in tic-tac-toe by practice too, but that does not make the game design problems go away. It affects the comp scene as well, these guys are just much faster to adapt in any way, but that does not automatically make any change of the game good.
You can argue about the details, but the OP is right.
NS2 suffers from the terrible basic mechanics that is inherited from the obsolete HL1 engine, and that is the jumpy close combat. It's absolutely horrible and obsolete by all means, it emphasizes everything bad about internet shooters - the netlag, the input lag the low FOV, the hit detection problems. The NS2 has its strong part, namely the innovative life forms, the asymmetry, the FPS/RTS combination, but that does not change the fact that the jumpy close combat is pretty terrible.
Yet, with the last patch, the devs decided we need more of the bad, in an exaggerated form by introducing the strafe jump, the single worst change in any recent patch. Before in 239, skulks had the same problem, too much air control and jerkiness resulting in a "skulk could" where hitting was a matter of luck. Later, the change was rollbacked, luckily. However, now they make the same problem with marine strafe jump. People constantly forget that this problem does not affect only 1 vs 1, but also many vs many, where failure to execute a properly setup screws the game for the aliens. "He is missing so many bites!" shouts the Reddog in a commentary. No doubt.
And please stop throwing the crappy L2P argument around, you can become better player in tic-tac-toe by practice too, but that does not make the game design problems go away.
i like the way marines still have a chance against a noob skulk in melee range.
how 'binary' do you want this game? melee range alien win = true? there's a reason we play video games and not tic-tac-toe, and that is because there are many possible outcomes and moves available - games like tic-tac-toe where there's only 1 viable move are insanely dull.
also, i don't understand the netlag or hit detection problems, i've seen far worse in tf2 or counterstrike source, and CSGO which also has worse performance than NS2 for me (constant unfixable mini-freezing)... and i've played competitive online shooters on and off since the days of ut99 so i can assure you that i detect even the slightest bit of desync, packet loss or choke.
Lerk is fragile and just plain doesn't work for me. I don't know what it is, could be the netcode not cooperating or something, but i can be rushing all over the place trying to bite them like madman and anyone with half a second can gun me down which makes no sense because no one can aim around that fast and i'm also suspecting my bites aren't even getting registered properly.
Aim your bites. Don't "bite like a madman". Go in, get one or two bites in the marine, get out.
I'm probably one of the few who prefers cloaking and speed over the traditional carapace and speed everyone else prefer. Even as commander. The problem is, because most are used to speed and carapace, they don't really know what to do with the cloaking advantage. Which kinda sucks.
The alien sight is undoubtedly a factor in this which IS a valid complaint. It's hard to track Marines in cqc with the horrible outlines combined with full textures, and I can sympathise with how hard new players must find skulking when you combine this with their lack of experience and game knowledge.
i like the way marines still have a chance against a noob skulk in melee range.
Why? If you let skulk get in the melee zone you are suppose to be dead just because of that.
Marine: superior at distance, weak in CQB (apart from shotgun dude to a degree)
Alien: superior in CQB, weak at range (apart from Lerk to a degree)
How freakin hard is it to balance this out? Very apparently because they only know how to go from one silly extreme to another. Where they should stop in the middle for both races and they'd have a balanced game.
Like i said, let the marines have the dodge jump as it is, but if an alien manages to score a bite on them, make a 250-500ms stun where they can't perfom this crazy jumping nonsense. This way they can still dodge jump when not actually bitten, but not if an alien makes a successful ambush bite. In that case they can only defend with rifle melee or shooting from where they are. They should still be able to move, just not be able to jump for that period of time.
They can beef up rifle accuracy and even damage for all i care, but i want skulk to be deadly up close. It's not that difficult to make a study of such changes. It's just that apparently no one is even doing it...
The NS2 has its strong part, namely the innovative life forms, the asymmetry, the FPS/RTS combination, but that does not change the fact that the jumpy close combat is pretty terrible.
This is not fact. Many people like the mechanics. Please stop.
There is a difference between game mechanics and gameplay mechanics.
I too like the way how aliens are (in general) melee focused and marines range focused, but i don't like the way how that actually works during gameplay. I like the way how game was thought out to be (FPS+RTS with commanders, building, expansion, big differences between sides, different classes etc), but i hate the actual execution of it.
In general it does feel like a AAA title from everything like graphics, sound and the general feel of motion (which is often a horrible problem with any indie FPS game that's not based on UE3.0 engine), but the important micro stuff just doesn't seem to be able to shake off the "indie" aspect of it.
Im pretty sure the netcode is fine for the lerk. I do understand where you are coming from saying its netcode is bad though. Since they moved the damage numbers away from the crosshair, it is really hard to see them. I know I miss a good bit sometimes but I wish I had those damage numbers back so I knew if I hit or not.
There is also a poison dripping effect on screen when you land a bite but I am not sure how reliable that is because I am usually too focused to notice it.
what games do you guys play if you think the netcode is bad?
seriously, look at the spy in tf2... you can randomly 'backstab' people (instakill) when you're directly infront of them, not to mention the multi-class melee hit registration being far less consistent than ns2's. i'm pretty sure valve would have fixed it years ago if it was possible - these inconsistencies are a necessity to reduce overall latency and prevent potentially 'bottlenecking' slower connections.
additionally, the marine strafe-jumping in ns2 is only a problem if it makes marine versus skulk 'unfair'. but marine versus skulk was already unfair, and the skulk still pretty much has to get the first hit to have a chance - meaning hardly anything has changed. the bottom line is that bite is INSTANT, therefore how can you possibly 'miss' and blame it on the game instead of your bad reactions/inferior skill?
it's laughable is what it is... how about aim then bite, instead of just biting and expecting the marine to stand still... you know - kinda like how marines have to aim before shooting.
the bottom line is that bite is INSTANT, therefore how can you possibly 'miss' and blame it on the game instead of your bad reactions/inferior skill?
it's laughable is what it is... how about aim then bite, instead of just biting and expecting the marine to stand still... you know - kinda like how marines have to aim before shooting.
Have you missed the skulk movement/jumping changes? Have you seen those marine duck-jumps that completely ignore inertia?
Seriously, it sound like you're talking out of your behind. Marine jumps are "instant" too, but are a lot more agile than skulk jumps. Marines jump like grasshoppers and skulks feel like trains...
Lerk poison bite is totally useless feature beacuse:
a) you have absolutely no clue how much damage it has done so far (no indication like with spores)
b) you have no clue if marine hasn't healed in between with a comm spammed medkit
c) you can keep on poison biting them for 3 hours and you'll achieve exactly nothing if they heal as well
That's why i either go for the kill or don't even bother with it.
What do you mean you have no clue if a marine has healed inbetween? There's a very distinct visual and audio effect when the commander drops a medpack. Do you just outright leave the room the instant you get a poison bite in and not keep up the pressure with spikes?
And if a comm spends that much tres on keeping one marine alive through poison bite harass and then you end up killing them anyway once their armor is gone and they don't get anything done with that tres investment, you just made them waste a lot of tres and diverted the commander's attention, giving you team openings to win other engagements. If they switch to welders to repair armor? Good, gives a window to get a kill because they won't be able to shoot at you for a couple of seconds.
It's called harassment. Wouldn't call that achieving zero.
The NS2 has its strong part, namely the innovative life forms, the asymmetry, the FPS/RTS combination, but that does not change the fact that the jumpy close combat is pretty terrible.
This is not fact. Many people like the mechanics. Please stop.
Some people like terrible things. That does not change the fact they are terrible.
Lerk poison bite is totally useless feature beacuse:
a) you have absolutely no clue how much damage it has done so far (no indication like with spores)
b) you have no clue if marine hasn't healed in between with a comm spammed medkit
c) you can keep on poison biting them for 3 hours and you'll achieve exactly nothing if they heal as well
That's why i either go for the kill or don't even bother with it.
The Lerk is in a great place right now, please don't screw it up for the rest of us.
A dot damage unknown: kind of fair point but you can still count bites and the poison damage is fairly quick.
B erm... watch the Marine and use your ears?
C combination of bites, spikes and understanding when to engage and when not to resolves this.
the bottom line is that bite is INSTANT, therefore how can you possibly 'miss' and blame it on the game instead of your bad reactions/inferior skill?
it's laughable is what it is... how about aim then bite, instead of just biting and expecting the marine to stand still... you know - kinda like how marines have to aim before shooting.
Have you missed the skulk movement/jumping changes? Have you seen those marine duck-jumps that completely ignore inertia?
Seriously, it sound like you're talking out of your behind. Marine jumps are "instant" too, but are a lot more agile than skulk jumps. Marines jump like grasshoppers and skulks feel like trains...
yes i have seen those jumps, but if you 'read' the jump then you can still get 2-3 bites before he gets out of range... by which time the marine is dead all the same. in my experience it's only medpacks that 'confuse' me in a marine 1v1, because i can't see them in the chaos and i can't judge how many more bites required to kill - pretty annoying.
i still find skulk to be far easier now than it was in the brick-skulk patch, and i didn't have any difficulty in brick-skulk patch either because i'm a 1337 gamer compared to most pubbers. :P
Contentious suggestion (?): Make marines slower, not able to uber-jump, but make less bullets required to kill (i.e. BULLETS DO MORE DAMAGE). This means that:
- a better marines is one who is better at positioning and has better accuracy, and;
- a better skulk is one who utilises the ability to ambush / maneuver and has upclose accuracy without getting sea-sick trying to follow the marine as they trampoline around.
So to conclude: Skulks WEAK, Marines SLOW
Well we used to have 20 second leap, 6 minute Onos, full speed 100% invisible aliens
yep, the game is never wrong.
Well, from what I read the OP wasn't talking about those things. He was talking about mostly problems caused by lack of skill (mainly the whole marines are OP, and now even saying that the lerk is useless when I can do almost as good as a fade as a lerk, not forgetting that lerks can also effectively take down RTs). I do admit my reply was pretty rude, but that's mostly because imo people should always search answers for problems in themselves before blaming anything else, if it was two equally skilled players and OP's points would happen most of the time, then it would most likely be the game, not the player. But seeing how people give advice on how to avoid having these problems instead of fully agreeing that marines are in fact OP and can't be killed, I can pretty much tell it's a l2p issue.
Oh, and I'd appreciate if people would at least make a thread asking if they're doing anything wrong before starting a friggin' rant about how the game is bad because he's been facing more skilled players.
UPDATE:
It turned out to be a huge bug, causing all sorts of hell to the game. (networking etc)
It isn't fixed for this patch, but this and the memory crashing issues are the two top issues for next patch.
Take the skill out of a skill based game. What is left? A game of luck and chance.
Most of this thread is rant and exaggeration coming from frustration and here is the point: Frustration. As the noob casual player that I myself count as, it's simple NOT fun to play Skulk at all. Or rather not fun anymore, since the newer patches.
There are some here that play the skill argument, which is not valid in my opinion because it needs a lot less skill beeing a Marine, than beeing a Skulk. As a Marine fleeing from a Skulk is simple: Space, Space, Turn around, Space, W, Shift, (some more Spaces). Done. Out of reach for any "equally" skilled Skulk. Newcomer to the game like to start playing as Marine, after they figuered beeing Alien isn't as "cool" as it looks. Those that play Alien, skip to Gorge right from the start (as do I).
Those that bring the Alien-win:Marine-win ratio argument are invalid aswell, Alien tend to win because of midgame tech-explosion. Not because initial Skulk and initial Marine are at an equal position.
My pub experience shows, either Marine win fast or they somehow hold out and win after 45min+ games.
It's Super Effective!Join Date: 2012-08-28Member: 156625Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Victories are not measured in kills, they are measured in success of an engagement.
If you went in, did damage, and escaped alive? You won by delaying the marine's advance/weakening offensive/forcing to spend medpacks. Kills are just an extra bonus, at least that's how I see it.
Victories are not measured in kills, they are measured in success of an engagement.
If you went in, did damage, and escaped alive? You won by delaying the marine's advance/weakening offensive/forcing to spend medpacks. Kills are just an extra bonus, at least that's how I see it.
I pressed the agree button, and then I realized that I learned it from your videos. Sweet, sweet irony...
Contentious suggestion (?): Make marines slower, not able to uber-jump, but make less bullets required to kill (i.e. BULLETS DO MORE DAMAGE). This means that:
- a better marines is one who is better at positioning and has better accuracy, and;
- a better skulk is one who utilises the ability to ambush / maneuver and has upclose accuracy without getting sea-sick trying to follow the marine as they trampoline around.
So to conclude: Skulks WEAK, Marines SLOW
I hate that idea. It'd make skulks and marines more shallow and boring to play.
Lerk doesn't work as well as it could because it's fragile and relied on dodging to stay alive, and dodging works very very poorly in this engine. It's also why shotgun hard counters lerk on nearly every map, basically the marine has a full 1/3rd of a second extra to target and shoot you than you think. Basically they get to shoot a snapshot of you that's 1/3rd of a second behind yourself, meaning if you just dodged above their head, they just meatshotted you right before you moved on their screen, and because of hitscan bias in an interpolation system, their shot lands.
It's a fundamental flaw in the engine put there to try to compensate for how fast aliens move, but they really overdid it and created a pretty heavy bias towards marines not needing to react very quickly.
Lerk doesn't work as well as it could because it's fragile and relied on dodging to stay alive, and dodging works very very poorly in this engine. It's also why shotgun hard counters lerk on nearly every map, basically the marine has a full 1/3rd of a second extra to target and shoot you than you think. Basically they get to shoot a snapshot of you that's 1/3rd of a second behind yourself, meaning if you just dodged above their head, they just meatshotted you right before you moved on their screen, and because of hitscan bias in an interpolation system, their shot lands.
It's a fundamental flaw in the engine put there to try to compensate for how fast aliens move, but they really overdid it and created a pretty heavy bias towards marines not needing to react very quickly.
erm... they still have the same hitbox to aim at - they don't have a 'window'.
however, lerks are indeed terrible against shotguns unless you have an opportunity to pepper them with spikes from good range.
Because of how interp works, the snapshot every other player sees of what you're doing is, as set by the engine, 250ms behind, combine that with an average ping of 50 per player and you get about a 1/3rd a second difference between what the lerk client is doing and where the marine client sees them. Because hitscan weapons are run through the interpolation system the marine doesn't have to hit where the lerk client is on their own screen, they just have to hit the lerk where it is on the marine client's screen. This is how people die around corners, or get killed by people not even looking the right direction to shoot them. Basically the marine has a full 1/3rd a second more time to react and shoot someone trying to dodge.
Comments
On pub servers, in my experience, aliens don't lose the majority of their engagements unless the teams are stacked. Marines don't need to win some arbitrary percentage of their engagements to win, they need to win the majority of the important engagements.
If we go nerfing Marines into oblivion because some newbie comes to the forums whining that he can't 1v1 an exo as a skulk after 2h of gameplay experience, well let's just say I can't think of a more effective way to screw up the game balance...
The alien sight is undoubtedly a factor in this which IS a valid complaint. It's hard to track Marines in cqc with the horrible outlines combined with full textures, and I can sympathise with how hard new players must find skulking when you combine this with their lack of experience and game knowledge.
But ultimately this is a l2p issue and a learn to use teamwork issue as well.
I agree apart for the skulk maneuvering in combat. I've watched tutorials and even the official guide from UWE and it just plain doesn't work. It does against total noob marines who just stand still, but not for jumping marines. And then it's the friggin retarded skulk movement over objects where i caught myself climbing over marine negating my bite instead of moving through environment itself (very annoying when attacking a marine who is moving close to a wall or extractor due to skulks inherited auto sticking to walls). That's nearly as annoying as dodge jumping.
Maybe limit the strafe jump to 1x every XX seconds (like in UT)?
-Humans get tired so it feels sort of logical.
-it would make the strafe jump more a strategic 'think before you jump' mechanic.
You mean you aren't holding crouch when you don't want to stick to walls? Only way to reliably work walljumping into combat routines from my experience, otherwise you get too much altitude when you don't need or want it. Should try working that in.
I agree about the random boost strafe jumps got with Reinforced. It's incredibly frustrating to play against as an alien, and feels way too easy for the huge gains you get from it as a marine.
NS2 suffers from the terrible basic mechanics that is inherited from the obsolete HL1 engine, and that is the jumpy close combat. It's absolutely horrible and obsolete by all means, it emphasizes everything bad about internet shooters - the netlag, the input lag the low FOV, the hit detection problems. The NS2 has its strong part, namely the innovative life forms, the asymmetry, the FPS/RTS combination, but that does not change the fact that the jumpy close combat is pretty terrible.
Yet, with the last patch, the devs decided we need more of the bad, in an exaggerated form by introducing the strafe jump, the single worst change in any recent patch. Before in 239, skulks had the same problem, too much air control and jerkiness resulting in a "skulk could" where hitting was a matter of luck. Later, the change was rollbacked, luckily. However, now they make the same problem with marine strafe jump. People constantly forget that this problem does not affect only 1 vs 1, but also many vs many, where failure to execute a properly setup screws the game for the aliens. "He is missing so many bites!" shouts the Reddog in a commentary. No doubt.
And please stop throwing the crappy L2P argument around, you can become better player in tic-tac-toe by practice too, but that does not make the game design problems go away. It affects the comp scene as well, these guys are just much faster to adapt in any way, but that does not automatically make any change of the game good.
i like the way marines still have a chance against a noob skulk in melee range.
how 'binary' do you want this game? melee range alien win = true? there's a reason we play video games and not tic-tac-toe, and that is because there are many possible outcomes and moves available - games like tic-tac-toe where there's only 1 viable move are insanely dull.
also, i don't understand the netlag or hit detection problems, i've seen far worse in tf2 or counterstrike source, and CSGO which also has worse performance than NS2 for me (constant unfixable mini-freezing)... and i've played competitive online shooters on and off since the days of ut99 so i can assure you that i detect even the slightest bit of desync, packet loss or choke.
Still think this is the single worst cause of frustration for people, especially with a team that is mostly melee.
Aim your bites. Don't "bite like a madman". Go in, get one or two bites in the marine, get out.
I feel the same.
"Undoubtely", yes...
I'm fine with the new AV.
Why? If you let skulk get in the melee zone you are suppose to be dead just because of that.
Marine: superior at distance, weak in CQB (apart from shotgun dude to a degree)
Alien: superior in CQB, weak at range (apart from Lerk to a degree)
How freakin hard is it to balance this out? Very apparently because they only know how to go from one silly extreme to another. Where they should stop in the middle for both races and they'd have a balanced game.
Like i said, let the marines have the dodge jump as it is, but if an alien manages to score a bite on them, make a 250-500ms stun where they can't perfom this crazy jumping nonsense. This way they can still dodge jump when not actually bitten, but not if an alien makes a successful ambush bite. In that case they can only defend with rifle melee or shooting from where they are. They should still be able to move, just not be able to jump for that period of time.
They can beef up rifle accuracy and even damage for all i care, but i want skulk to be deadly up close. It's not that difficult to make a study of such changes. It's just that apparently no one is even doing it...
This is not fact. Many people like the mechanics. Please stop.
I too like the way how aliens are (in general) melee focused and marines range focused, but i don't like the way how that actually works during gameplay. I like the way how game was thought out to be (FPS+RTS with commanders, building, expansion, big differences between sides, different classes etc), but i hate the actual execution of it.
In general it does feel like a AAA title from everything like graphics, sound and the general feel of motion (which is often a horrible problem with any indie FPS game that's not based on UE3.0 engine), but the important micro stuff just doesn't seem to be able to shake off the "indie" aspect of it.
There is also a poison dripping effect on screen when you land a bite but I am not sure how reliable that is because I am usually too focused to notice it.
seriously, look at the spy in tf2... you can randomly 'backstab' people (instakill) when you're directly infront of them, not to mention the multi-class melee hit registration being far less consistent than ns2's. i'm pretty sure valve would have fixed it years ago if it was possible - these inconsistencies are a necessity to reduce overall latency and prevent potentially 'bottlenecking' slower connections.
additionally, the marine strafe-jumping in ns2 is only a problem if it makes marine versus skulk 'unfair'. but marine versus skulk was already unfair, and the skulk still pretty much has to get the first hit to have a chance - meaning hardly anything has changed. the bottom line is that bite is INSTANT, therefore how can you possibly 'miss' and blame it on the game instead of your bad reactions/inferior skill?
it's laughable is what it is... how about aim then bite, instead of just biting and expecting the marine to stand still... you know - kinda like how marines have to aim before shooting.
Have you missed the skulk movement/jumping changes? Have you seen those marine duck-jumps that completely ignore inertia?
Seriously, it sound like you're talking out of your behind. Marine jumps are "instant" too, but are a lot more agile than skulk jumps. Marines jump like grasshoppers and skulks feel like trains...
a) you have absolutely no clue how much damage it has done so far (no indication like with spores)
b) you have no clue if marine hasn't healed in between with a comm spammed medkit
c) you can keep on poison biting them for 3 hours and you'll achieve exactly nothing if they heal as well
That's why i either go for the kill or don't even bother with it.
And if a comm spends that much tres on keeping one marine alive through poison bite harass and then you end up killing them anyway once their armor is gone and they don't get anything done with that tres investment, you just made them waste a lot of tres and diverted the commander's attention, giving you team openings to win other engagements. If they switch to welders to repair armor? Good, gives a window to get a kill because they won't be able to shoot at you for a couple of seconds.
It's called harassment. Wouldn't call that achieving zero.
Some people like terrible things. That does not change the fact they are terrible.
The Lerk is in a great place right now, please don't screw it up for the rest of us.
A dot damage unknown: kind of fair point but you can still count bites and the poison damage is fairly quick.
B erm... watch the Marine and use your ears?
C combination of bites, spikes and understanding when to engage and when not to resolves this.
yes i have seen those jumps, but if you 'read' the jump then you can still get 2-3 bites before he gets out of range... by which time the marine is dead all the same. in my experience it's only medpacks that 'confuse' me in a marine 1v1, because i can't see them in the chaos and i can't judge how many more bites required to kill - pretty annoying.
i still find skulk to be far easier now than it was in the brick-skulk patch, and i didn't have any difficulty in brick-skulk patch either because i'm a 1337 gamer compared to most pubbers. :P
- a better marines is one who is better at positioning and has better accuracy, and;
- a better skulk is one who utilises the ability to ambush / maneuver and has upclose accuracy without getting sea-sick trying to follow the marine as they trampoline around.
So to conclude: Skulks WEAK, Marines SLOW
Well, from what I read the OP wasn't talking about those things. He was talking about mostly problems caused by lack of skill (mainly the whole marines are OP, and now even saying that the lerk is useless when I can do almost as good as a fade as a lerk, not forgetting that lerks can also effectively take down RTs). I do admit my reply was pretty rude, but that's mostly because imo people should always search answers for problems in themselves before blaming anything else, if it was two equally skilled players and OP's points would happen most of the time, then it would most likely be the game, not the player. But seeing how people give advice on how to avoid having these problems instead of fully agreeing that marines are in fact OP and can't be killed, I can pretty much tell it's a l2p issue.
Oh, and I'd appreciate if people would at least make a thread asking if they're doing anything wrong before starting a friggin' rant about how the game is bad because he's been facing more skilled players.
Take the skill out of a skill based game. What is left? A game of luck and chance.
There are some here that play the skill argument, which is not valid in my opinion because it needs a lot less skill beeing a Marine, than beeing a Skulk. As a Marine fleeing from a Skulk is simple: Space, Space, Turn around, Space, W, Shift, (some more Spaces). Done. Out of reach for any "equally" skilled Skulk. Newcomer to the game like to start playing as Marine, after they figuered beeing Alien isn't as "cool" as it looks. Those that play Alien, skip to Gorge right from the start (as do I).
Those that bring the Alien-win:Marine-win ratio argument are invalid aswell, Alien tend to win because of midgame tech-explosion. Not because initial Skulk and initial Marine are at an equal position.
My pub experience shows, either Marine win fast or they somehow hold out and win after 45min+ games.
If you went in, did damage, and escaped alive? You won by delaying the marine's advance/weakening offensive/forcing to spend medpacks. Kills are just an extra bonus, at least that's how I see it.
I pressed the agree button, and then I realized that I learned it from your videos. Sweet, sweet irony...
I hate that idea. It'd make skulks and marines more shallow and boring to play.
It's a fundamental flaw in the engine put there to try to compensate for how fast aliens move, but they really overdid it and created a pretty heavy bias towards marines not needing to react very quickly.
erm... they still have the same hitbox to aim at - they don't have a 'window'.
however, lerks are indeed terrible against shotguns unless you have an opportunity to pepper them with spikes from good range.