GIVE FADE A NERFED VERSION OF NS1 METABOLIZE.

oh wait anything from ns1 is bad

Wob

Another change I'd like to suggest is for hallucinations to only spawn skulks. I.e. you hallucinate a skulk, it produces a skulk. You hallucinate a fade/lerk/onos, it produces a skulk.

+3

Satyr

GIVE FADE A NERFED VERSION OF NS1 METABOLIZE.

oh wait anything from ns1 is bad

It would actually be nice to find out what Sewlek was playing around with to improve the fade. When I asked him in cologne to add metabolize, he was working on something or so he said :>

Wob

Another change I'd like to suggest is for hallucinations to only spawn skulks. I.e. you hallucinate a skulk, it produces a skulk. You hallucinate a fade/lerk/onos, it produces a skulk.

This is an excellent suggestion. I'd, not mind seeing gorges and lerks as well however.

+3

There is a chance Metabolize will be added as the mid-late game tech for the fade, its one of the discussions we have been having. The big question will be where in the tech tree exactly, what cost and how powerful it needs to be.

We have to be bit careful with changes with hallucination. It's the first time shade hive is being viable in a long time and one of the key elements is illusions helping the adv lifeforms. The shade upgrades are really strong for the skulks but weakest of the 3 traits for the adv lifeforms.
Players might get used to the AI pattern making hallucination pretty weak again, it still remains to see. Its one of the things to keep an close eye on and adjust if needed.

Personally I think instead of making the marines have a phase delay, just bring back the old fade vortex where it disabled structures but limit it, so fades cant just go around disabling everything. Make it so they can disable phase gates, arcs, macs, sentries, etc. But the ability should be limited for it to work, IMO . That way the fade can have a useful ability. At the same time fixing the marine the phasing issue.

I also think the price of biomass should be 20 tres per level instead of 15 tres then 20 tres. Because at the current state it feels too cheap.

I would also like to see the alien comm have their starting 20 pres back and then just make it so they can't collect res ever, so that starting 20 pres would be all they get. With this the khamm could get his own gorge with pres, but at the same time he couldn't save for a lerk, which has been issues in the past. Or instead make it so the khamm starts with 0 pres and is still able collect res, by removing the 60 second delay the commander gets from collecting res. This way the khamm could in theory could get whatever lifeform they wanted but with a long delay. But whoever is in the hive should not be able to collect pres. These implications would make it less of a terrible expirience for anyone that is khamm.

IS THIS BETTER GOLDEN?!?! xD

I would like to suggest that everyone actually play around with the .5 phase delay before making judgments. It's working now in the mod- and even testing it out it's difficult to tell it was even added. It may not be as big of an impact as you may think.

We'd also especially like feedback on the new Muccous as there are concerns that the direct 1:1 conversion in armor healing--> HP healing has left it being too weak.

Tico

I also think the price of biomass should be 20 tres per level instead of 15 tres then 20 tres.

I would also like to see the alien comm have their starting 20 pres back and then just make it so they can't collect res ever, so that starting 20 pres would be all they get. Or instead make it so the khamm starts with 0 pres and is still able collect res, by removing the 60 second delay the commander gets from collecting res.

For suggestions like these, please give reasoning behind why the change should be considered. Otherwise most people will disregard your suggestion out of hand.

If mucous giving just health is too weak, could it not be made to provide health until health is full, and remainder is applied to armor? I feel this might make for dimishing returns the longer an engagement happens for any life form. At first, it keeps their armor up, because they're health is almost full, but if prolonged and spammed, the health will just go only into health as more damage is done.

This might still call for a slight buff in the number of x points healed.

Seb

I personally agree with swalk, but I don't think this is the place to personally attack the people involved with making that decision.

No personal attacks intended, I hope Zefram understands that. I just care. I've made alot of mistakes myself as an admin and if I could prevent Zefram from making similar mistakes by disliking some actions, then I would see it as a win. But it seems all team leaders agreed to it. Did the team leaders know the changes before the vote?

+1 skulk hallucinations only

swalk

No personal attacks intended, I hope Zefram understands that. I just care. I've made alot of mistakes myself as an admin and if I could prevent Zefram from making similar mistakes by disliking some actions, then I would see it as a win. But it seems all team leaders agreed to it. Did the team leaders know the changes before the vote?

I personally messaged every single team captain in Premier, Div 1, and 2 with an inquiry and spelled out exactly what was in the first changelog and the intentions of the balance mod. I also contacted half of Div 3 and 4. In total, I spent more than 10 hours speaking to captains about this matter. Of the 35 captains, including yours (There are 49 teams left this season), only 1 had an objection. That's a pretty resounding majority.

I've got it covered, swalk. If you actually have feedback on the mod itself, great. This is the place for it. If you have issues with how I've ran things since you abdicated your position in the middle of last season, you can PM me yourself. The door's always open.

just some thoughts on hallucinations - I would suggest that if any changes are made, getting rid of the most annoying things about the current implementation should be first priority. For example:

- The Current ragdoll death animations - can they not be replaced with the old hallucination animation or something similar that makes them disappear instantly when they die?

- Having a middle ground for scan as a counter. Instead of killing the hallucinations outright, perhaps having a way to highlight the hallucinations for the duration of the scan to make it easier for the player to distinguish what lifeform is real.

- reducing the hp value on certain higher lifeform hallucinations

Will be intersting to see how shade stacks up down the line in the season.

I think removing the ragdoll death animation would take away from the added player name replicated on the bots when killed,
since it's somewhat tactical and people can fall for it.

I do like the idea of having just skulks being able to become hallucinational lifeforms. But what if, and if, no one flashes or dies with their lifeforms? Then there's probably no skulks on the field and that also renders the ability pretty useless in a way. I guess you could also see it as a strategic pick, on how the game is going, what hive trade to get.

However, spinning off bonage scan counter and including all lifeforms as hallucinations. What about forcing for example,
the "shadow skulk model" and adding the effect of the "normal skulk model" when commanders scan a lifeform?

The fieldplayers could then pick out the normal models as hallucinations infront of them, not on the minimap and letting you aim.
This should only work with scan, not placed obeservatories on the map, since they already give alot of positional information.
The kicker being that commanders won't see the difference of real lifeforms or hallucinations in topview,
still giving the opportunity for khamm to trick the comm with a fake rush, while commiting a push elsewhere.

I think it is far too early to make any judgement calls about the balance on the hallucinations. I don't know about you guys, but I've played against a competent team using shade maybe twice since the patch.

Give it some time before making judgement calls, friends.

These skill killing mechanics need to fucking stop. Hallucinations lmfao. Let's add motion tracking back. Why was crag hive nerfed? The biggest problem was marines atm with aweful stats being able to win the mid game on 4 rts. Rr biting gerting harder as you get more useless fades and your skulks fight 3/2 rines. Imo you try to change too many things in the same time. Im pretty amazed at the lerk egg nerf since some teams trained it and you deny their strats while its easily countered and depends totally on the lerk player's skill! Yo let's remove skill and add useless shit like bile bomb at 3 minutes.

B1

I do like the idea of having just skulks being able to become hallucinational lifeforms. But what if, and if, no one flashes or dies with their lifeforms? Then there's probably no skulks on the field and that also renders the ability pretty useless in a way. I guess you could also see it as a strategic pick, on how the game is going, what hive trade to get.

I also said that making a hallucination on a lerk/fade/onos produces skulks.

Makes it more obvious to marines late game so less powerful but not 100% useless

Skill killing mechanics are getting nerfed, Herakles. No more mucous to carry walker fades.

:D

Anyway, I also am unsure on how I feel about hallucinations. On one hand, I really hate the idea of putting AI into a skill based game... but on the other hand, it now makes shade hive viable. If we can somehow boost shade hives usefulness without adding AI, I would be open to it.

Walker drifted fades aren't breaking the game tbh since they cant deal any damage to gates anyway. I don't see how crag hive pvp side was broken. In term of pve ok a good alien comm mucousing the shit out of whips/tunnels is annoying.

Just get back 3 up path on chambers the 3rd available on a 2nd hive, cele adren on mcs, cara regen on dcs and cloaking focus on scs. Then redemp (lmao), adrenaline, aura on 2nd hive. Voila.

Give the whips, crags and shifts to the gorge. (ooooh yea)

Up the fade structure damage.

Add more air control to marines.
Remove the sprint key and replace it with a walk key. Up the marine base speed a little.

Boost the jp thrust but lower it's refill.

Remove the fuking lmg spread favorising the yo i just spray around me marines.

8 shells in the sg.

More speed to the gorge, belly side as an upgrade should tackle marines down. (omfg just imagine sliding in 3 rines rushing mezza)

+1 hera <3

The last point Herakles, about the gorges tackling Marines. It would actually be possible to use the old animation where marines fell down to the ground from stomp to make that. If done correctly it would definitely create some awesome moments. Would be worth trying out.

But to be allowed to do these kind of changes we need to gain more freedom to go our own way. We are currently working on a draft to show how we could see the future of ns2 gameplay look like. Some of these point do touch the frustration behind of your comments above. The decision to stay close to vanilla or not needs to be made.
Personally I think sticking to vanilla limits our progress, so I would like to split from it and move forward.

Edit:
After months of discussions it seems that giving the Gorge knocback(codename Gorgezilla) would simply make all other lifeforms obsolete. We are also not sure if players could handle such high level of awesomeness. It will have to be put on hold for now.

I'm curious as to how many people think giving Fades their structure damage back would work. I really think you'd see 3-4 fade balls back in every game, you'd be fighting fades instead of skulks in the solo lanes.

I think the difference in resource systems between NS1 and NS2 would mean this mechanic could never work the same... Fade in NS1 was a team/economical investment, in NS2 with the p-res system, it is only a personal investment- no sacrifices in team economy or tech is made. Having 4 fades on the field wouldn't have any trade-offs, it'd just be incredibly strong.

I've thought about the fade structure damage dilemma for a long time, and it even appeals to me in some respects. But every time I come back to this conclusion.. that it wouldn't really work.

In respect to the RTs becoming too difficult to pressure in mid/late game for aliens, I think this might be more related to the 'PG Triad' marines are able to get up and hold. Again it goes back to the effectiveness of marines being able to turtle and how difficult it can be to break gates.

herakles

These skill killing mechanics need to fucking stop. Hallucinations lmfao. Let's add motion tracking back. Why was crag hive nerfed? The biggest problem was marines atm with aweful stats being able to win the mid game on 4 rts. Rr biting gerting harder as you get more useless fades and your skulks fight 3/2 rines. Imo you try to change too many things in the same time. Im pretty amazed at the lerk egg nerf since some teams trained it and you deny their strats while its easily countered and depends totally on the lerk player's skill! Yo let's remove skill and add useless shit like bile bomb at 3 minutes.

+1

The fade was much stronger when fade balls happened,it is now not uncommon to be solo and forcing a fade back to his hive.

Anyway with the current game any team going no gorge, 1 lerk will have a hard time against real marines.

The fades are not as strong now, a fade ball would prolly mean high eco rine game with at least sg w2 to fight.

Give us 8 shells back.

What's the reasoning behind increasing the shotgun back to 8 shells?

Counter to the previously mentioned fade ball and to pve.
Most of the time the problem while dealing with whips is you get stuck between dealing structure and player damage.
you leave the whip/crag low aliens engage you somehow manage a clean, you get back to pve alien comm as moved structures and drifted spammed them to 70%
The loop starts again.

hmmm.. good points

Well, like I said... half of me thinks giving Fade structure damage back is a great idea, the other half thinks it's a terrible idea. I think there is also a slew of other changes that would have to go in with it, among them:

-Shotgun 8 shells again (like you say)
-Alien lifeform upgrade revamp - to make the alien abilities individually research-able again
-re-nerf the fade blink energy cost, remove shadowstep, add Metabolize

It is also a question of whether the community would tolerate such drastic changes, I don't think this decision should be taken lightly.

herakles

Walker drifted fades aren't breaking the game tbh since they cant deal any damage to gates anyway. I don't see how crag hive pvp side was broken. In term of pve ok a good alien comm mucousing the shit out of whips/tunnels is annoying.

Just get back 3 up path on chambers the 3rd available on a 2nd hive, cele adren on mcs, cara regen on dcs and cloaking focus on scs. Then redemp (lmao), adrenaline, aura on 2nd hive. Voila.

Give the whips, crags and shifts to the gorge. (ooooh yea)

Up the fade structure damage.

Add more air control to marines.
Remove the sprint key and replace it with a walk key. Up the marine base speed a little.

Boost the jp thrust but lower it's refill.

Remove the fuking lmg spread favorising the yo i just spray around me marines.

8 shells in the sg.

More speed to the gorge, belly side as an upgrade should tackle marines down. (omfg just imagine sliding in 3 rines rushing mezza)

+2, especially the marine walk key and 8 shell shotguns

+1 Herakles

Fade Structure damage, would it be okey to have biomass 5-6 ability upgrading swipe damage to full, or giving them an attack that would do it? Is that late enough for it disencourage fadeballs?

How broken would it be if the gorge slide didn't require any energy? Think about it.

The problem is, with great power comes great responsibility.

The more that more and more people want to fix with the game, the more the game deviates from what it originally was, and IMO is a tricky path to walk down.

I don't like the idea of a whole community giving feedback as many people have different ideas about what this game is and what it should be. Heck, even in the Aus community we have people advocating pink skulks, invisible weapon models and grey walls.

We have to trust that the people in charge of the mod will do the right thing by us, the competitive community, UWE, and the public community that might potentially move into competitive in the future.

In saying that however, it is a bit hard to do so when there hasn't been a vision laid out on the table for this mod other than to 'experiment' with the future balance of the game.

On one hand I really like this and am excited to see where it goes. On the other however, and I'm sure the balance 'team' have already discussed this, it will be difficult to satisfy everyone and may harm the competitive scene from within.