Beta 2 Thoughts
matso
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
<div class="IPBDescription">Hive healing</div> (as there doesn't seem to be an official beta2 feed back thread, I guess I'll have to start my own)
Good stuff:
- Fade seems to be working now. The new meta regenerating energy means that the meta upgrade isn't tied to adrenaline, allowing both silenced and celerity fades to be used without being crippled due to lack of energy. Need to play it a bit more to see if it's overpowered, but it sure feels better (in combat, at least).
- hive healing 6 % ... eh, well, unless you are an onos, you are looking at more or less seriously slowed down heal rate. A skulk heals 4 hits/tick, a lerk 5, a fade 18 ... the onos should be healing 42 hits which is nice. Unfortunately, in classic this means that proximity to hive does nothing to strengthen the skulks, meaning spawn camping for marines just became about 5 times easier ... and early shotgun rushes rushes just become too easy. In combat, the early alien game just took a beating... going back to hive to heal used to be a quick affair for a a lerk/skulk, but now it takes just as long to heal a 75% damaged onos as a 75% damaged skulk (15 seconds, bw)
IIRC, hive healing was upped to 20 from 10 just in order to stop shotgun rushes and make spawn camping harder. Seems counter-intuitive to cut hive healing rate to 1/5 for the skulks then...
I would suggest 6% or 20 hits, whichever is higher. Or, keep it at 20 straight and give onoses abnormal heal rates, so they heal twice as fast from hive, DC's and healspray. They need that anyhow, in order for carapaced onoses to be halfway useful.
Speaking of onos carapace, the 700/600 onos has 1900 life ... if the carapace upgrade for an onos is supposed to be at all in line with the other lifeforms carapace upgrade, it should give some 600-700 life ... ie, 300-350 armor. Not the 150 which seems to be a carry-over from 2.1.
- gorge returning to combat... I'm not sure I like it. The only thing the gorge can do is to web and heal - none of which is enough to give him a real role in combat. Also, the new evolve tree means once you go lerk, you are forced to stay lerk for the rest of the game (it used to be you could go lerk, then decide whether to aim for onos at about lvl 6 or so). It also means that you need to save up 3 levels to go fade - unless the hive have become seriously damaged (and, until the hive healing bug is fixed[1]), going gorge means much slower advancement.
At least straighten out the tree to let lerks become fades ... gorge->lerk->fade at 1 cost, then onos at 2 seems to be a pretty straightforward tree?
[1] Healspray from a position below the hive don't heal it. You need to be position at least slightly higher than lowest part of the hive to heal it.
Good stuff:
- Fade seems to be working now. The new meta regenerating energy means that the meta upgrade isn't tied to adrenaline, allowing both silenced and celerity fades to be used without being crippled due to lack of energy. Need to play it a bit more to see if it's overpowered, but it sure feels better (in combat, at least).
- hive healing 6 % ... eh, well, unless you are an onos, you are looking at more or less seriously slowed down heal rate. A skulk heals 4 hits/tick, a lerk 5, a fade 18 ... the onos should be healing 42 hits which is nice. Unfortunately, in classic this means that proximity to hive does nothing to strengthen the skulks, meaning spawn camping for marines just became about 5 times easier ... and early shotgun rushes rushes just become too easy. In combat, the early alien game just took a beating... going back to hive to heal used to be a quick affair for a a lerk/skulk, but now it takes just as long to heal a 75% damaged onos as a 75% damaged skulk (15 seconds, bw)
IIRC, hive healing was upped to 20 from 10 just in order to stop shotgun rushes and make spawn camping harder. Seems counter-intuitive to cut hive healing rate to 1/5 for the skulks then...
I would suggest 6% or 20 hits, whichever is higher. Or, keep it at 20 straight and give onoses abnormal heal rates, so they heal twice as fast from hive, DC's and healspray. They need that anyhow, in order for carapaced onoses to be halfway useful.
Speaking of onos carapace, the 700/600 onos has 1900 life ... if the carapace upgrade for an onos is supposed to be at all in line with the other lifeforms carapace upgrade, it should give some 600-700 life ... ie, 300-350 armor. Not the 150 which seems to be a carry-over from 2.1.
- gorge returning to combat... I'm not sure I like it. The only thing the gorge can do is to web and heal - none of which is enough to give him a real role in combat. Also, the new evolve tree means once you go lerk, you are forced to stay lerk for the rest of the game (it used to be you could go lerk, then decide whether to aim for onos at about lvl 6 or so). It also means that you need to save up 3 levels to go fade - unless the hive have become seriously damaged (and, until the hive healing bug is fixed[1]), going gorge means much slower advancement.
At least straighten out the tree to let lerks become fades ... gorge->lerk->fade at 1 cost, then onos at 2 seems to be a pretty straightforward tree?
[1] Healspray from a position below the hive don't heal it. You need to be position at least slightly higher than lowest part of the hive to heal it.
Comments
You never played mc first gorge rushes eh?
Skulk
Gorge
Lerk
Fade
Onos?
if so...that's going to destroy a lot of builds
Why the new evolve tree?
Also gorges healing the hive is a bit bugged. Some folks I was playing with said you could get it to work if you sprayed from certain angles, but I couldnt get it to work.
*waits for beta 3*
And also, I heard gorges can't heal the hive.
And also, I heard gorges can't heal the hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
in some co_maps (like co_kestrel) gorges cant heal hive for some reason..... with hive's lowered self-heal rate this is too easy for marines... takes 10 "ticks" to heal 1% of hive HP
Ill just hope that beta 3 will fix this problem... Only good thing in beta 2 is faster combat spawn <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Skulk
Gorge
Lerk
Fade
Onos?
if so...that's going to destroy a lot of builds <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I guess you could reduce Lerk cost to 1 and make Gorge cost 1 too.
Oh , and why would the halfed damage/energy acid rocket be "fun to use" ? It just encourages blind spamming , I always thought the acid rocket should be a quake-like weapon (slow RoF , high damage) to make prediction and leading more important. For now , Adren Fades can spam rockets forever.
New fade is good improvent <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->. Melee fighting is easier, but using acid rockets to keep away wave of HAs is not a good tactic, because of the low damage, RoF is nice though.
Anyway, its way too soon to critize yet, those were just personal feelings and they might change. Gotta play some more.
gorges arent ment for combat web and healing the hive is far to overpowering and can esily turn the tides with no skill at all
gg combat is ruined till you take the gorge out again
<b><span style='color:red'>*btw, this thred should be in the public beta fyi*</span></b>
gorges arent ment for combat web and healing the hive is far to overpowering and can esily turn the tides with no skill at all
gg combat is ruined till you take the gorge out again
<b><span style='color:red'>*btw, this thred should be in the public beta fyi*</span></b> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Take out the gorge, take out welding the cc and add a tick based healing rate to it instead.
Right the question not to be asked it "Do you want my suggestion?"
I'm not asking it because I'm gonna give it anyway. Drop the fade health down to 275/125. That will give the fades the extra kick that they need, without being overpowering like they are at the moment.
As for the last comment about the gorge. Yeah, it doesnt require skill to go gorge and heal the hive. What it requires is someone willing to do it and stay at the hive healing it. Which effectively takes an attacking player out of the game (exactly the same as rine with welder btw).
If you wanna see a balance issue with this. Then I suggest people ask for both the hive and comm chair to have the same health, and take out the hive regen. Thus making the aformentioned 'change the tide of battle' purely a player intervention as opposed to a game engine problem.
There's one group talking about how Gorges are a bit pointless in combat, and another talking about how the hive heals players too slowly.
Soo... why not have those 'pointless' gorges doing additional healing? In Combat mode at least, they should probably be thought of as field medics. And if marines are getting into your hive then you have a problem; go on the offensive more. A lot of the marine levels get put into directly defensive things, so put yours into things that counter that.
If spit was stronger I'd already have my celerity, adren, regen, cara gorge **** in the thick of things tbh <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
First game on Free SunnyD was an all-out gorge rush game: one onos, the rest gorges. You'd think that the hive would be impossible to kill, but they've gotten it down to 50 before, and with all the gorges healing, it didn't heal any faster, nor did we hear the extra "gloop"ing sounds that would indicated that it is healing any faster.
Also, gorge support is useless for any lifeform larger than a lerk, because heal spray just doesn't heal a significant amount of hp for the larger lifeforms to be of any use.
bilebomb is a nice quick finisher for combat games, and web will keep those pesky jps on the ground, and, excluding a gorge rush, gorges are not suppost to be used for offensive means.
Until hive healing gets fixed, gorges are rarely going to be seen
I'd like to see healspray refactored to work like spores (as a projectile that turns into an area-effect when it collides with something).
With a few obvious caveats:
1. The heal spray projectile range would have to be really, really short
2. The duration of the heal spray "cloud" would have to be fairly short, as well
3. You'd want to use the traditional healspray sprite, not the spore/umbra sprite
gorges arent ment for combat web and healing the hive is far to overpowering and can esily turn the tides with no skill at all
gg combat is ruined till you take the gorge out again
<b><span style='color:red'>*btw, this thred should be in the public beta fyi*</span></b> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You aint a constie right? In previous 2.1 versions with gorge added it was well and balanced.
gorges arent ment for combat web and healing the hive is far to overpowering and can esily turn the tides with no skill at all
gg combat is ruined till you take the gorge out again
<b><span style='color:red'>*btw, this thred should be in the public beta fyi*</span></b> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You aint a constie right? In previous 2.1 versions with gorge added it was well and balanced. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually it wasn't balanced very well at all, and many people hated the gorge.
1) healing the hive is boring, more boring than welding (when you're welding, you're not safe)
2) since the gorge isn't very appealing at high levels, you generally have a shortage of gorges once the game becomes a level 10 fest
3) the ability of aliens to heal their hives rapidly lengthens games