Anything but the Drifter Turn Speed...

PuphBall · November 2013

These things always had to be baby sat because of how bad pathing is and how they die in 1 clip. Now that turning speed is set to infinity I really think there is a contradiction here. You want to micro-manage the drifter to safety because casually turning corners is dangerous for it. Now you can't; turn speed is so high that it would waste time and the drifter would get gunned down instantly. Seems like a cheap, quick fix to competitive drifter play and it is extremely frustrating to watch them run away. I made a reddit thread issuing the same complaints along with a video. What are your thoughts? Do we like this? Have any competitive players spoke out about it?

http://www.reddit.com/r/ns2/comments/1r4hzd/first_gorge_tunnels_now_drifters_build_260/

Ghosthree3 · November 2013

Don't get it into a bad position to begin with. Play it safe. I think it's a good change as it stops drifters running circles around marines during combat spamming particle effects.

DarkOmen · November 2013

Yeah, from the other players' perspective at ground level, the Drifter has been improved a bit.

On a slightly different topic, does anyone know what the Drifter's acceleration is? It looks like it's instantaneous, and I think it might round out better for everyone if it would start moving sooner but accelerate more gradually.

Bitey · November 2013

Being an expert NPC360Slayer720XxX I never cared for how fast drifters moved, turned, or got around. My change was requesting the armor to be lowered, and now it makes it much easier to chase away a pesky drifter and kill or send it packing.

Chizzler · November 2013

Mucous membrane needed a nerf. That ability was devastating, particularly if you had it available during the first few encounters... Not sure how I feel about the other drifter nerfs yet. they're already pretty squishy and go down in seconds if your not looking after them, and the cost of replacing them can mount up over a match. That said, generally in combat you'd focus on the lifeforms over the drifter...with reduced armour & turning speed it may be more beneficial in certain encounters to focus on the drifter first now. Time will tell on that one.

Bitey · November 2013

A secret I used, was to focus the drifters in unwinable fights. It has various results, sometimes you wonder if "Could we have won that?" Maybe... But I got the drifter, and that's 8 res down

PuphBall · November 2013

It seems Rambo Drifting is pretty much out of the question now. It's seriously awesome having drifters lead the battles and make it out alive to support the higher lifeforms who didn't insta-die.

Someone on the reddit thread brought up a great point about the frequency of crag openings with intense drifter micro. To be honest, I'd be terrified to open crag now that these changes are live. I'm more of a Shade opener myself, I stopped with the crag openers when mucous got nerfed the first time because my subjects started complaining about no early celerity/adren ;.; Besides, I couldn't deprive a gorge of his 8 minute adrena-bile or 3 minute celeri-gorge. That would just make me a horrible person.

Roobubba · November 2013

It will be very interesting to see how the crag/mucous spam clans adapt to these, whether mucous is still OP (the vision obstruction is still an issue), or whether it really opens up the way for other builds as an alternative. As I said in the other thread, we used shift hive first because we could never quite get on with the crag opening, despite how obnoxious the mucous/drifter combination was in the early game. Higher level clans ubiquitously used crag openings with mucous spam, so we were definitely missing something in our implementation of it (probably just practice tbh).

ns2isgood · November 2013

really not that big of a deal. the only difference I notice are the drifters die a lot more often when caught out of position. seems like a good change, as drifters were practically untouchable before because they were so fast to escape.

Blarney_Stone · November 2013

Drifter and mucous nerfs were needed, even whip nerfs are fine. I have no idea why heal wave, of all things, needed to be nerfed though.

_Revilo_ · November 2013

I'd say just slowing the speed of a drifter's movement would be a better fix, if you think drifter movement needs nerfing. That just looks really clunky and annoying to sit and watch as a comm. It also just removes the whole idea of really having to try and micro a drifter, since all you can really do is tell it to go somewhere, spam mucous/enzyme/storm, and then if you even think about trying to actually have the drifter dodge/be annoying, it'll get killed by any marine who can aim.

And I'm not even sure why drifter speed needed to be nerfed - they cost 8 tres, and their abilities cost tres too. Was it really that big of an issue?

Roobubba · November 2013

_Revilo_ wrote: »

I'd say just slowing the speed of a drifter's movement would be a better fix, if you think drifter movement needs nerfing. That just looks really clunky and annoying to sit and watch as a comm. It also just removes the whole idea of really having to try and micro a drifter, since all you can really do is tell it to go somewhere, spam mucous/enzyme/storm, and then if you even think about trying to actually have the drifter dodge/be annoying, it'll get killed by any marine who can aim.

And I'm not even sure why drifter speed needed to be nerfed - they cost 8 tres, and their abilities cost tres too. Was it really that big of an issue?

Something needed to give, whether it was costing 1.5 or 2 res for each ability's use, or reducing the AOE effect, or slowing it down, there were several options available. Personally, I think the resource cost would be the best way to fix it to still allow rewarding the khamm for good micro, but to make the ability less ridiculously overpowered. The turning as it is does look a little ridiculous...

PuphBall · November 2013

Crag opening was OP and it was Drifter-intesive. Drifter micro and Mucous took a HUGE hit in efficacy. I really wish there was another way to balance competitive drifter play without changing the play-style of the Drifter. They're boring now and can only be used as an extremely vulnerable support, no more Rambo Play as I said. And this type of play seemed to be really popular in competition. It's a shame really because I feel like the ALien Comm lost a huge aspect of his influence just like the Gorge did when tunnels went down. There was a time where I wanted to actually BE a drifter running around FPS style.

PuphBall · November 2013

Ultimate, final solution to drifters? Drifter blink. Aw yis.

May as well give it to gorges while your at it. Thanks

(sorry for double post, meant to edit)

xen32 · November 2013

I didn't play yet, but I imagined it to do curves when turning rather then standing completely still and turning soooo sloooooow

ThePyroSquirrel · November 2013

This seems a bit extreme.

_Revilo_ · November 2013

Roobubba wrote: »

Something needed to give, whether it was costing 1.5 or 2 res for each ability's use, or reducing the AOE effect, or slowing it down, there were several options available. Personally, I think the resource cost would be the best way to fix it to still allow rewarding the khamm for good micro, but to make the ability less ridiculously overpowered. The turning as it is does look a little ridiculous...

I agree, something did need to change. However, all this has done is make drifters more annoying to use. An increase in drifter cost could work, although I think just toning down the mucous would really have been enough. I don't think anybody has really complained about storm or hallucination, and yet these abilities have effectively been nerfed too. This is like complaining meds are OP, and so adding a cooldown time to meds AND ammo.

d0ped0g · November 2013

Almost lost a drifter earlier because it was clunkily trying to navigate the incline between crusher and cave. There weren't any sharp corners that should have been problematic, but there were lots of tiny mini-turns it had to make which resulted in slowing the drifter down significantly. I don't remember if the same issue existed before the nerf, but I certainly didn't notice it.

I understand why the nerf had to happen, but it would be nice if pathing issues could have been addressed first, as the nerf only amplifies this problem.

EDIT: just watched the video. Seems the problem is worse than I expected. The drifter was actually turning the opposite direction it needed to (e.g. performing a 270 degree turn clockwise to perform a 90 degree turn counter-clockwise). That is actually really bad. I hope it's not intended.

Jesus... At one point (2nd/3rd turn depending on whether you count the initial turn to set the drifter in motion to it's first waypoint) it even decides to begin turning the other way mid turn, just because an additional waypoint is added to the queue? Wut. Am I watching this correctly? Is the direction the drifter turns somehow related to the last location in the queue? Rather than the next?

joshhh · November 2013

Comp commanders would frequently run the drifter through your face while you try to shoot incoming skulks. Add green mucous and red enzyme particles everywhere and you get your own personal Christmas experience. One of the greatest experiences in NS2 hands down... hence the nerf.

Drifter pathing is a whole different can of worms... but at least this helps the main problem. If the comm tries to make the drifter dance in your face, it is much easier to kill it.

ZEROibis · November 2013

Pubbers were having issues trying to even hit microed drifters or would just get destroyed when the drifter in the face was used with attacking skulks. I feel like they were finally learning to focus on the skulks but this change will likely make a lot of them happy.

Res · November 2013

lol what... comm making a drifter dance in a marines face was never a problem. It is a costly endeavor for the comm, 8 res down the drain. All this change does is make it even more annoying to use a drifter and doesn't address the real problems.

Seb · November 2013

It's a good nerf.

joshhh · November 2013

Rarely would a drifter be killed if the skulks went in with it... unless the skulks all die. Even then the comm usually can get the drifter out. Their old erratic movement was just annoying as hell.
._.

IronHorse · November 2013

The drifter turning east every time it reaches its waypoint is a bug that will be fixed.

joshhh · November 2013

IronHorse wrote: »

The drifter turning east every time it reaches its waypoint is a bug that will be fixed.

It's not the drifter's fault all the parking spaces face east.

_INTER_ · November 2013

How about letting drifters do, say 4 or 5 cyrcles before they start moving? Atleast that'd be fun to watch, they're dead anyway.

PuphBall · November 2013

Res wrote: »

lol what... comm making a drifter dance in a marines face was never a problem. It is a costly endeavor for the comm, 8 res down the drain. All this change does is make it even more annoying to use a drifter and doesn't address the real problems.

I have to disagree on this point here. Drifters being hard to control (build 260) and weaker mucous basically nerfed crag opener a LOT which probably was intended. What I find completely disagreeable is how a crag hive nerf completely handicapped the drifter. Also, shift-queuing drifter move commands was always dodgy but now it's basically pausing them. Doing a 180 takes almost long enough to lose a drifter. It's just a pretty bleak situation when you want to consider yourself a drifter-heavy commander because they are just too damn expensive to bring far off into the map...

Edit: Essentially, I just wish there was a better way to discourage crag openers and drifter-harassment. Surely turning speed does the job, but damn. It's like working with arcs or something.

Benson · November 2013

Bitey wrote: »

A secret I used, was to focus the drifters in unwinable fights. It has various results, sometimes you wonder if "Could we have won that?" Maybe... But I got the drifter, and that's 8 res down

This is why I want a "res damage" counter on the scoreboard. With a cumulative total for the team at the top.

Its a very real indication of how much actual damage has been done to the enemy.

Turbine · November 2013

Looks like they need to determine whether turning left or right based on its current angle would make for the smallest turning arc.

A little snip, use equivalent vector functions.
int getTurnDirection(float radians)
{
return -cross(radToVector(radians));
}

Then -1 or +1 would be returned. So turning speed * result.

PuphBall · November 2013

Seems my balance whine (or hatred for Drifter Turn Speed Thread) got derailed into a possible bug fix or shift-queue improvement. I ain't even mad.

d0ped0g · November 2013

PuphBall wrote: »

Seems my balance whine (or hatred for Drifter Turn Speed Thread) got derailed into a possible bug fix or shift-queue improvement. I ain't even mad.

Tbh I'm a little disappointed more people aren't talking about this. Whether you're for a nerf or not, it's unacceptable and frankly bizarre that a drifter would almost do a complete 360 just to perform a slight turn of a few degrees.

Even without the bug, I think it's way overkill. When I heard that turn speed was nerfed, I didn't think the drifter would stop dead in it's tracks and rotate at snails pace. I figured there would be some kind of smoothing applied to the pathing so that it couldn't be spammed back and forth instantly doing a 180 (i.e. such that a queued operation moving back and forth between two relatively close points a bunch of times might be be circular/oval, and that navigating a corner would also have a gradiant). This seems like a relatively cheap fix to the problem, and as I've already mentioned, serves to make the issues with pathing much more cumbersome to deal with.

Anything but the Drifter Turn Speed...

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