Update 299 Released! - Natural Selection 2
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Update 299 Released! - Natural Selection 2
Aliens didn’t get all the love, though. Marines have also received some new toys and changes to their existing tech. A preliminary version of the Heavy Machine Gun (HMG) has...
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This week we have brought you a whole bunch of new alien toys including a new ability for the Shade hive which saps health, a new Crag hive ability which...
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This is correct.
Yep, they're still working on Focus. https://trello.com/c/njCroUoO/269-focus-shade-hive-ability
Yes, we didn't have time this week to get that in and functional, but didn't think the other abilities should be held back as a result.
Only thing I would say is that this seems like a big buff for aliens. Hopefully HMGs will balance things out or else we are going to see a lot of marine losses, especially on pubs where late-game marines generally have a lot of trouble as it stands (in my experience).
Will check things out tonight.
Here's my thoughts:
edit: Also, I'm not buying that the HMGs clip holds 100 bullets.
1. The default crosshairs were terrible. Its a rookie buff.
2. Mines are now destroyable with parasite right away. No more waiting for energy. The price was reduced to compensate the nerf. The result should be less frustration and more fluid gameplay
1. As far as I can tell the crosshairs don't change a lot, they mostly add little spaces in the circles.
2. Parasite does ten damage, Mines now have 40 hp. You still need to expend your entire stamina to kill one as a skulk. But otherwise fair point.
I think the only fair thing would be to slow down all alien lifeforms by about 10% globally.
Anyway let's see how it pans out in the real world.
The HMG and fuel usage makes the marine hella slow, but I'd rather see that changed than make the rest of the game slower to match it.
one marine alone shouldnt be able to kill highest lifeform.
Crush as an upgrade is really going to help res biting aliens!
Vampirism is interesting and with silence on shift hive, it still gives shade 2 viable options
Biomass lerk scale increased! Such a good change!
Onos bone shield mechanics are a really interesting change of direction too! Will be interesting to see how they play out.
THIS CYST CHANGE IS MASSIVELY POSITIVE! It's genius! It helps aliens not get rofl stomped by OP marines cutting expansion from a natural, BUT it's an option that keeps marine natural pressure viable!
HMG
JP fuel with HMG is not a good change imo. That's a lot of res with not much burst to be able to survive alien crush plays...
Mine HP is a god send but I would have preferred an ever so slightly bigger hitbox for skulks to bite and then parax2 like they could do before.
Power node build speed is massive!
And a bunch of ns2+ implementation.
Wow, wow, wow. That was incredible. These changes actually have a lot of sense behind them. This patch should be called the Goldilocks patch for not being too little and not being too much, but juuuuust right.
Curious if the new abilities will prove useful or bad. Crush got hugely nerfed from 30% to 15% damage, and for that reason I'm afraid it might not see as much play. Similarly, I'm still not sold on Vampiric, as I think Cloaking (without silence) has always fit into the "unfun yet balanced" mechanic since NS1, and did not need a buff.
Focus not going in yet has made the Shade Hive again feel lackluster, sadly. I'm afraid that less games will play with it, and there will be less Hive 1-Vampiric games.
That said, I think the compmod HMG fits well into NS2 vanilla. I haven't played yet since our testing sessions yesterday, but I'm hoping that today's HMG is more in line with compmod. I know that compmod's HMG is precisely the remedy for what our internal feedback was suggesting for the weapon.
I think Lerk biomass could increase further, especially with the inclusion of the HMG and the insanity of current exosuits.
Now that mines are so weak, can we remove them from being highlighted in alien visions?
You had me nodding my head agreeing, until that line