Balance "fix" discussion
MoFo1
United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
So the rumors are this balance mod being run on dmd is going to make it into the next build...
Silence being nerfed into oblivion - Since now you make noise even with level 3 veils there is literally no reason to ever take silence again. Just look at how silence was NEVER useful on onos because you still made noise.. now every life form is like that. The worst hit are Gorges as their heal spray is no longer silent, so goodbye sneaky Gorge tunnels since Marines can hear the heal spray from several rooms away. (So many games where that's the Aliens only hope too)
It's a perfect example of another change to benefit high skill players and do absolutely nothing for rookies. High skill players are the only ones who will really notice the quieter sound of skulk footsteps, while rookies will remain painfully oblivious. And what's more, now rookies have something else to make them think people are hacking. Because just like level 3 veils now, you'll have rookies going "I had level 3 silence, no way you heard me hacker!"
On the flip side.. high skill players never really benefit from silence (instead using celerity since they can rush Marines and win almost every encounter) it's the low skill players that rely on silence to close the gap without being heard, because the only way they stand a chance at killing a higher skill player is by getting close without being detected..
Seriously this one change seems entirely 100% anti-rookie pro-veteran...
Then on top of that you have TWO nerfs to Onos...
Nerfed boneshield back to being as useless as it was be fore the heal was added... No big deal as now Onos will die as easy as they did before (even easier since Marine have HMG now)
oh but wait.. they're ALSO bumped up to 62 res... So in addition to dying easier it takes longer to recover the res... I thought the entire res change was to prevent rookies from waiting all game to evolve, only to die and have to wait another 15 min to try again? This brings that "problem" back for rookies trying to learn how to Onos..
From the handful of games I've played with this balance "fix" it seems the majority don't like these changes. Especially the totally unnecessary silence nerf.
I dunno it just seems like more poorly thought out changes (hp bars, hitboxes, res change, etc) that will only screw up balance more and serve to further drive people away...
Discuss.
Silence being nerfed into oblivion - Since now you make noise even with level 3 veils there is literally no reason to ever take silence again. Just look at how silence was NEVER useful on onos because you still made noise.. now every life form is like that. The worst hit are Gorges as their heal spray is no longer silent, so goodbye sneaky Gorge tunnels since Marines can hear the heal spray from several rooms away. (So many games where that's the Aliens only hope too)
It's a perfect example of another change to benefit high skill players and do absolutely nothing for rookies. High skill players are the only ones who will really notice the quieter sound of skulk footsteps, while rookies will remain painfully oblivious. And what's more, now rookies have something else to make them think people are hacking. Because just like level 3 veils now, you'll have rookies going "I had level 3 silence, no way you heard me hacker!"
On the flip side.. high skill players never really benefit from silence (instead using celerity since they can rush Marines and win almost every encounter) it's the low skill players that rely on silence to close the gap without being heard, because the only way they stand a chance at killing a higher skill player is by getting close without being detected..
Seriously this one change seems entirely 100% anti-rookie pro-veteran...
Then on top of that you have TWO nerfs to Onos...
Nerfed boneshield back to being as useless as it was be fore the heal was added... No big deal as now Onos will die as easy as they did before (even easier since Marine have HMG now)
oh but wait.. they're ALSO bumped up to 62 res... So in addition to dying easier it takes longer to recover the res... I thought the entire res change was to prevent rookies from waiting all game to evolve, only to die and have to wait another 15 min to try again? This brings that "problem" back for rookies trying to learn how to Onos..
From the handful of games I've played with this balance "fix" it seems the majority don't like these changes. Especially the totally unnecessary silence nerf.
I dunno it just seems like more poorly thought out changes (hp bars, hitboxes, res change, etc) that will only screw up balance more and serve to further drive people away...
Discuss.
Comments
1) realise that they've made a terrible mistake with the past 5 years of design decisions.
2) announce that realisation on the forums (how else will I learn about it via lurking the forums otherwise?).
I guess 3) actually implement the changes necessary to make the game consistently enjoyable again.
The general idea I have that would make NS2 more successful would be a design philosophy that focuses on ignoring overarching competetive balance and focus on short 30 second to 1 minute encounters in terms of "fun ness". I'm a big fan of atmosphere, immersion and creepiness, but I know NS2 isn't really a full blown horror game.
So that's my general thoughts on those changes, here's a specific one: Most of the skill based movement in the game frustrates me to no end because it defies the laws of physics as is intuitive to me so I basically refuse to do it (I realise it's a choice in the same way some people choose to throw up at the sight of blood).
That means when I do play aliens, I play Onos. So making it even harder for me to Onos just means I'm even more likely to prefer to stack marines.
It's like wondering why Sam from Game of Thrones havent lost weight, but being completely okay with dragons flying around.
Some people like a book with not a single word said. Some people hate it. Games are not tailored. You buy the standart product. Expecting the product to change out of the blue, is like expecting a t-shirt to magicly turn into jeans.
As for the actual topic - These "balance changes" are from mods, from individual players, that server admins have added to their server. They can be taken down at any time by the admins. Complain to them. Trying to smear this off at UWE seems forced, and honestly, seems like you are trying to create a shitstorm. You are asking for a discussion, when you instead should be asking for reasoning, and explanation. Once you have that, you have the basis for a discussion.
Don't complain about your onos' life longevity. They didn't even have hit boxes enlarged.
#makethelerkgreatagain
The modification's goal is to test the waters about these ideas before committing any time to implementing them. So we don't need to wait till things are in play test to realize they will not work out the way we thought. A good example is indeed the change of level 3 silence to -20 db instead of fully silent (with ppl setting up their systems to bypass it in less than 6 hours).
Also the balance ideas are generally focused on all kind of players and not onto a certain group. Specially the silence change is more based on feedback of "new players" / public players than of competitive players (who generally are able to detect attacks of aliens with silence in time with the help of the mini-map but still agree that it's in some ways too strong atm).
If I have more time later on I will set up a thread for feedback in the modding sub section of this forum. Until then as Ixian mentioned please direct any feedback to the server ops who will forward it to me.
Before the Pres change to make lifeforms faster, onos was at 55, so why would you keep it at 55 if you gain resources quicker? Now within 15 minutes regardless of the alien tres situation all game the other team will make it to onos, then swarm you. This often happens at about 10 to 12 mins now, and as quickly as 8.
No marines team can counter 3+ onos at 8 minutes.
You complain about boneshield being nerfed. Are you serious? Have you played as an onos? Instantly healing 800+ worth of damage in 3 seconds every 5~ seconds?
I've had countless games in which i would kill streams of marines for minutes, heal up every couple of seconds and proceed to wipe 2/3 marines over and over until they concede. This is especially bad on low populated servers, any server with less than 8 players, you have 7 marines on the field, maybe 3 or 4 on gates vs 2 onos, you aren't killing them unless the make poor choices.
It may have worked on servers like wooza's where the marine count is so high it wouldn't have mattered ill give you that but any other server it was completely broken.
Don't know which high level players used celerity over silence, silence has been stupidly broken for pretty much always. The only reason it wasn't used was due to it being on shade instead of shift.
With its move to shift you now have shift hive being the best hive by significant margins.
When i play alien, regardless of the lifeforms i always have silence, the ability to sneak up on marines with it or the ability to bomb in with 0 effort and simply the element of surprise wins me 90% of engagements including some i know i had no right to win.
Long overdue changes.
Did you not notice how the Lerk price was reduced to 18 when the rate was increased? The Onos did not get it's price increased, and as a result is appearing on average around 2 minutes earlier.
62 pres matches the exact former timing of Oni before the pres rate increase.
And lifeform timings are a pretty damn important thing in this game.. as history has shown before. (4 min Onos anyone?)
I agree that onos needed a nerf.. I just think both nerfs together are overkill..
Make them easier to kill or more expensive.. Not both..
The main reason for making this thread is the unnecessary silence nerf.
@migalski not sure if you consider me a high level player but I do for 2 reasons:
reason 1: Silence is not on shift hive in NSL compmod
reason 2: If everyone in my team uses silence then I have no problems taking celerity to just be a bait. I know this requires teamwork and on pubs this doesn't always work but I like it. + as lerk you move pretty much silent anyway (especially since lerks in pubs have less air friction, meaning you can glide over the half map with decent speed. So I gain a faster rotation time) + I am harder to hit during an engagement in case I chose a poor angle to engage (or sometimes a flank is just not possible)
I am also still of the opinion that the devs should revert balance to what it was just before the health bar introduction, then assess the situation and start over from there. The current stream of reactionary band aid fixes doesn't seem to go anywhere, and is still lacking an overarching goal. It specifically seems to me like there is an unwillingness to take back any changes in favor of introducing more, reactionary changes instead. I don't know why this is. Maybe "going backwards" is seen as an inherently back thing internally?
But as alien it's now even harder to ressbite because a marine can easily catch you without a scan while playing cat and mouse..
So another gameplayelement is gone if they implement it... (like bluffing without hp bars)
It's also good that we discuss here about this before you try to implement another bad thing forever...
If the devs had done such a good job on the game, we would see more players by now. Those 200 players are the fanatics like us; no matter how bad the game is, they still play it.
As far as I'm concerned, the devs have achieved nothing at all to improve the game regarding the big picture. Some good stuff has gotten in, but mostly just garbage taken from other games.
Rookies don't enjoy it any more than before and steady veterans are quite disappointed.
I don't know how any internal decision is reached, but if it stays the way it is, this game will be bled to death by the inadequate and unreasonable meddling.
This is something the devs just aren't understanding..
They're making badly thought out balance changes, that end up screwing balance to the point that they need more badly thought out balance changes...
Like silence.. It was fine for YEARS on shade hive.. In over 2000 hours I never heard a SINGLE person complain about it being too strong... Then suddenly one day BAM someone decides it's overpowered and it's moved to shift hive..
That's a nerf (no silence + speed & now 2 upgrades required for silence + cloak) yet somehow we have people thinking it made silence stronger? What kind of logic is this? If it really is too strong now (which I just don't see) move it back to shade hive with cloak.. or hell put it on crag hive (after all don't we have people thinking crush is overpowered as well?)
I mean think about how badly these changes were thought out..
They add in hp bars, yet instead of working like the damage numbers they replaced (ie: being static to where you landed the hit) they now follow the target in real time, providing a TON of assistance in keeping track of your target's movements. = Lerks are easier to track and kill than ever before.
They tweak the hitboxes because of a 1/4 millimeter of the Skulk's back that wasn't covered, yet they also enlarged the Fade hitbox at the same time = Fades are easier to meatshot than ever before
They buff boneshield to a ridiculous extent by adding a hilariously strong heal, instead of simply increasing how much damage it blocks or increasing how often you can use it. = More people wait for Onos than ever before.. (and seriously what was with adding the heal?? It's called bone SHIELD not bone HEAL)
Edit: I almost forgot, they also nerfed Exo's to the point where they're virtually helpless against Onos now... It's possible these days for a lone Onos to solo 2 Exo's and win.
Then they wonder why fewer people Lerk, fewer people Fade, and we get 6+ people going Onos in nearly every game and walking through everything Marines have...
Maybe if they had thought out those changes and implemented them correctly, we wouldn't have a problem with Onos being overpowered now...
Silence was pretty damn strong on shade hive aswell but had the drawback that once midgame is reached your lifeforms do suffer from either the lack of speed or the extra hp. Now the strong silence (earlygame strong) is there and for midgame you can have celerity. Add that with the ability to fast expand more easily using echo and... well yeah... silence in itself didn't get stronger but it got placed into a position where the drawbacks of going silence are much less noticabe
But... now you suffer from the lack of speed 100% of the time when using silence, because you can't use Celerity... so it basically has the same drawback still.
The only thing that changed is silence is now used more often, because shift hive is first in nearly every single game.
If it really does need a nerf, then maybe have silence slightly reduce your running speed, rather than having it make noise which removes any point of having it in the first place...
People did say that it was overpowered before, but it was much, much rarer. Silence being powerful on shade was fine because of the opportunity the cost: It meant you couldn't get shift or crag on that hive. Getting shade first, though powerful in the right hands, was unpopular, so the power of silence came into play rarely.
Fast forwarded to silence moving to shift, and shift hive is now without doubt the most powerful hive by a huge amount. It's not really that silence was buffed; Shift was buffed and silence was made much more available. There is also basically no point anymore in going shade first.
While you are being hyperbolic, I agree here. Lerk and Fade got a lot more difficult to play overnight; at the same time, Oni became a lot easier. I've been an Onos player before so that didn't really affect me much at first, but over the past weeks I have noticed that more people are afraid to use higher lifeforms (that aren't Onos) than ever. And I understand why: They are hard to control, easy to lose, and you don't have to gain that much from them, at least in pub - leading to the Onosplosion problem: Three quarters of the team saves for Onos. The rest is gorges and lerks, maybe a fade. The thing is, often enough this works, at least without the 62 res Onos. After all you just need to survive long enough, and you can perfectly pull this off on 3 RTs. At that point aliens just need to coordinate their Oni to hit in groups of three and they can just overroll everything.
This is not true. A well positioned Exo is hard to take down for aliens. Two well positioned and properly supported Exos are damn near impossible. The new boneshield actually made dealing with them harder, in my opinion; since it could soak up a lot of damage, you could tank very easily, allowing either an injured Onos friend to flee behind you, or allowing you to tank so another Onos can come in and attack the Exo while he cools down. As such boneshield was a great, useful and balanced ability. The new boneshield is an insane regen that allows you to take lots of small encounters and shrug of "chip" damage that would kill lower lifeforms. It turns the onos into a marine harasser and -killer, but you can't really use it all that well against and Exo, because of it's huge damage output in a short time, and because you usually cannot retreat from Exo encounters as easily (so you don't get opportunities to regen a lot).
Look, I agree with your basic opinion, but please don't shoot the message with hyperboles and badly thought out examples.
With the latest change:
The boneshield is effectively useless now in my testing. I would prefer to see it like it was before, but regenerate much slower, and perhaps a 3 hive requirement. Frankly most people used it in lieu of a gorge the way it was before.
The silence change (nerf) I am having a hard time understanding. With this latest change I don't believe anybody will use silence anymore, so this change effectively makes this a useless ability. The newer players I can kill more quickly with celerity, and the good players will now be able to hear me coming so combined with my slowness and the crazy backwards jump ability of marines that can jump backwards faster then I can move forward, its useless for me, especially now that 2 spur silence will be really really bad, and 3 spurs are rarely dropped early game.
The silence change has really (and I mean really) upset people on the servers I play on. Perception is, to just change things that don't really need changing, while ignoring the things that need fixing.
Other thoughts:
I think we need to encourage more higher lifeforms rather then "only onos" like it is now. I used to lerk, others used to lerk, its now nearly extinct. Spores are useless, its to easy to hit, and yes, its less expensive and yet nobody uses them anymore (unless you are hobbes).
Some people still fade, but the game has effectively been limited to, skulk -> Onos, even with this latest change.
I do think the exo is too weak. That doesn't mean swing the pendulum to far and OP them, but I do have a problem when 1 onos can destroy 2 exos. Yes you can "position" exos, but that makes them effectively a "sit in base in a corner and guard" upgrade.
I do like the fact that this change was tested as a mod first, great way to get more people to test the changes before forcing it on everyone, so this is a really great move in my opinion.
Gets dialogue started at least.
As ironhorse said, because of pres rate increase, onos are coming out earlier, leading to the aforementioned onos swarms and lack of marine ability to counter at that point in the game. If marines rush proto to match onos timing, they miss out on other necessary upgrades which really defeats the effectiveness of proto tech anyways. Marines need a couple more minutes to stay competitive tech-wise before onos pop.
@mofo1 now you're really confusing me as your op was along the lines of complaining about nerfs, onos included, but then proceed to also complain that exos can't kill onos (which isn't true, I've got a vid to share when i get home tonight). Then it seems like you're back and forth about the silence thing, complaining about a nerf that isn't going to happen, then saying silence is a disadvantage, then saying it's in need of a nerf. It's really hard to see the point you're trying to make other than just raise a stink cuz you lost your alien rounds yesterday or something. I mean... i disagree with almost everything you've stated and can't figure out how you've come to most of these conclusions, then you're wishy-washy about them one you've drawn them.
Frankly, I'm not even sure what the fade's role is anymore. Killing marines? Skulks are (in pub) arguably more effective at that, since you don't need to worry about keeping them alive.
I realize that the situation may look vastly different in comp.
Huh, I would have liked to see that. Those Exos must have made serious mistakes. I've been able to guard lanes against multiple onos with nothing but a marine welding me, and in well coordinated base attacks (the only ones that should feature exos; arguable the only ones that should exist at all, but you know...) they are really hard to kill. (If they don't march in like idiots. As I said, positioning.)
silence isn't just for noobs. it's for everybody and their mother.
Yeah it seems I confused everyone lol...
I agree that Onos needs nerf.. my complaint is that the two proposed nerfs together seem like overkill.. (especially with how drastic the boneshield nerf is)
The way bone shield works in this nerf is actually better than the heal, but it blocks such a pathetic amount of damage that it's useless. They need to increase how much damage it blocks... then raising the res cost wouldn't be as bad.
I don't see where I said silence is a disadvantage? I also never said it needs a nerf.. I think it's fine, I just proposed an alternate nerf that isn't rendering the upgrade useless.
You had to throw in the "well positioned" and "properly supported" into that sentence for it to be true though.. If you have two Exo's alone (say after a beacon) it is possible for a lone Onos to rush them, kill one, dart around a corner and throw up boneshield to heal, then rush back out and kill the other.. I've done it myself.
If an onos has to take half damage to get to the exo, then I agree. If an onos simply waits around a corner so he only absorbs damage while the fighting is going on, he can take out 1 exo very easily. If there is a second exo close enough, he can rush it and typically kill it as well, or make the decision to run back to safety (he literally has enough health / armor to not care too much about that second exo and make an escape easily).
So yes, positioning is key here, but the damage vs tank ability of the onos vs exo is disproportionate.
Put differently, if you place an exo and an onos side by side with the same skilled player for both, the exo has a 0% chance to win.
If you place 2 exos right beside an onos, the onos can usually position 1 exo behind the other (so he only takes half the damage), he can kill the first exo, still has ~half the health / armor left and can rush the second exo, with about a 50/50 chance to kill it.
I am assuming celerity and armor (cannot remember the name) for the onos.
Its very common for aliens to force a beacon, leaving 2 exo's behind, and a single onos can kill both exo's.
Again, I am not advocating major changes, I just find it out of balance between the 2 most expensive "units" in game. The exo used to be a slow moving tank, that used to make Onos think twice. Now its a paper tiger which onos will 'lol' and rush anyway for a quick kill unless the exo is sitting clear across an empty room, and the damage you take getting to it is to great.
For an exo to be useful it has to have a dedicated weld with it, and should it come across an onos in relatively close quarters, its dead.
An onos can run around solo destroying items, take on 3 marines (without jetpacks), only watch the map to avoid a coordinated pinch trying to kill it. If there are to many marines or exos, it has the speed to simply run away, heal and go out all over again.
An exo can't 1v1 an onos. That is not their role. Exo's are meant to kill structures and hives and not be as good at killing lifeforms. You may disagree and say exo's should have an equal chance of killing an onos assuming equal skill. That would be a normative statement. The fact is that exo's do not have an equal chance of killing an onos assuming equal skill.
I know most people here don't like the healthbars or enlarged hitboxes. I am not happy with them either. I do understand why UWE did those changes though. I think it is clear they are not going to go away. Those changes have left us with some balance problems, specifically the onos explosion.
I believe improved hitreg from b279, healthbars, and enlarged hitboxes have made lifeforms unnecessarily harder to play. The lifeforms have become less accessible resulting in them being played less. I believe the lerk has been hit the hardest out of all the lifeforms.
That leaves the question of how do we make lifeforms more accessible. This is not a new problem but it has become noticeably worse. People are not going lifeforms and are instead saving for the now cheap onos. Making the onos 62 pres is a safe change but it does not improve accessibility for lerks and fades.
I main lerk and don't play fade. It is hard for me to speak about fade but I can speak about lerk. Skulks had an hp increase after the enlarged hitboxes and I think lerks need the same treatment. Any increase in health will always help the more skilled players more, but I think an HP buff is the best way to improve lerk survivability, viability, and accessibility.
Onos were incredibly strong before the bone shield and pres buffs. By nerfing onos back to its past strong self, and improving lifeform survivability, viability, and accessibility the onos explosion will go away.
I liked the old slow exo tank. It could not re-position quickly, so was not going to go out and solo stuff, but could help teams advance forward.
The current Exo has been relegated to guarding bases or guarding arc's.
I 100% agree with you on the other lifeforms. I used to be mainly a lerk, now I never play it, its simply not worth it, to easy to hit, no real role and overly frustrating to play.
Like you, I cannot really speak to fade, but I do see less of them.
With mid level lifeforms being considered "not worth it" by most, that is allowing the 3/4/5 onos swarm all hitting at the same time, whereas before you used to see lerks / fades and then later maybe 1-2 onos at most.
I think you are dead on that making mid level lifeforms more attractive are a critical part of helping balance this onos issue.
Meh, I think the healthbars and stuff are just too off-putting. Would gladly start playing again if most of this mess cleared up.
On the topic of exos, what if we increased their effective hp while reducing the amount of healing they get from welding?
Personally i always considered evolving lerk/fade/onos a waste since I started playing NS2 3 years ago.
Against the average pub player I have enough killing power in the skulk.
It requires a lot of skill, but if all you ever play is skulk you tend to get good at it.
You don't have to retreat to heal, so more kills per minute then any other lifeform.
I usually end up with a KDR of 1.x but always the top 3 fraggers in the team.
Little Skulky does everything: killing rines, exos, extractors, JPs and breaks turtles with xeno.
I don't agree with the notion that onos being overpowered, whenever I see my teammates going onos they usually don't survive more than 1 or 2 minutes.
At the time the onos comes out there usually is no boneshield up, even when the aliens are doing good.
When doing good: 2 hives, 3 to 5 upgrade chambers, biomass 4.
When game goes badly: 1 Hive, 3 upgrade chambers, biomass 3.
By the time the com has researched boneshield they are all dead.