I agree. I actually have a lot of fun with the vanilla b264. While tweaking numbers may solve some of the issues found at the ns2wc, there will be far less support for another ns2wc. The community and more importantly, UWE might become alienated from the game they know to the game we end up playing.
That's the trade off/balancing act we have to make from the competitive side.
In my eyes the big problem is that last season we had fairly respectable alien/marine win ratio in the top division. Only when the game came to LAN was it a problem. Trying to solve for X (balance) when the situations are fundamentally different because the constant (ping high/low) changes is impossible.
This is why only very small tweaks should be made. New features, removed features, even altered features like the mucous or my suggested hallucination change can properly alienate the community (from another ns2wc) because the differences in LAN could be extraordinary.
Tweaking numbers should be the primary objective this season at least. When all things considered like biomass cost, upgrade cost, rate of pres, etc etc get us closer to what we want (PvP > PvE), only then can we think about introducing a new mechanic. I'm not expecting number tweaks alone to fix the PvE issue completely, but I think it's important we work incrementally so not to overshoot and make 1000 U-turns in decisions. Yes it'll take a lot more time, but I like to think that I'm not alone in thinking this is one of the better UWE builds that everyone can play without land sliding victories. We shouldn't be too hasty to rush and potentially ruin what we have.
My most important message and fear is that we need UWE, and the rest of the community onside. When people are happy with the tweaks made, we should approach Sewlek to get these things officially implemented. I'm thinking that we give him the final product and all he has to do is look at a couple of videos/anecdotes to be convinced and then plug in the code. Then we can start thinking about new mechanics and features. Lessons will have been learnt, numbers understood, and balance can properly be addressed when introducing new features.
Lets face it, we've clearly been left to our own devices to find balance. It's unequivocally important that the way we act not only finds the best balance for the game, but makes sure that it is implemented officially and in such a manner that UWE can support us for another ns2wc. Most importantly that the rest of the community can watch and support a similar game to us.
I understand that there's a school of thought that balance can't be achieved for 6v6 and public, but we simply have to accommodate that side of the game somewhat if we want another ns2wc which is the pinnacle of ns2 gaming and what we should all be striving towards for next year.
This would be great imo. It could definitely make it easier to tweak the numbers for balance when you're dealing with individual abilities instead of packages. It would also allow a bit more freedom for the alien commander and hopefully further reduce the dependency on PvE stuff.
Shadowstep for instance wouldn't be so bad if it would be a bit more energy efficient in combat, and if you could research it individually.
Would allow a decrease in time to research allowing less of a penalty to a reaction to ARCs which almost always end up being devastating without bilebomb.
It would mean that all lifeform upgrades should be near enough equal to each other. Sure some upgrades like bilebomb will be more common than others, so adjust via upgrade speed.
The one thing to keep in check if this change were to go through would be to ensure that we don't see lifeform balls by making 1 lifeform do all roles. That would mean we'd only see 1 tech tree every game for that 1 lifeform and it would be a buff in terms of research time and boring like the days of "rush crag hive, drop 1 shell, done for 10 minutes".
Shadowstep is ridiculously energy efficient and possibly has a little too much range. I'd only change one or the other though or completely remove it in favour of another ability, although I hate the idea of removing/introducing mechanics in a competitive mod.
Ye the game is becoming a joke with the hallu and shit. Its the new babblers. Ppl act like shift hive is skilled yet they just rush you full speed straight, spamming the most op drifter ability now (focus) The balance discussion is kind of hilarious. The crag drifter ability is now useless in fights. While pvp crag wasnt a problem.
The problem is you can say the same about crag - previously you could just rush in not really caring about your movement with mucous.
The big question is are people willing to make the required changes to actually FIX the core problems with the gameplay, and WHAT do they want the core gameplay to be. Currently the game is a mess because so much was designed without a clear purpose, and until you define what you want from the gameplay, the best we can hope to do is plug holes in the bucket.
This isn't a decision to just go back to NS1 or not as there are limitations to what can be realistically changed without loosing most of the community, but more what direction should the gameplay take. For me it would be more helpful to see not what balance issues people see in small things like drifters abilities or lifeforms or weapons, but more how they 'envision' the game. From that its relatively simple to design changes that drive gameplay in that direction.
Also, as for any kind of official support or updates from our changes, that's most likely not going to happen, and we cant drag our feet or attempt to conform our changes to something that would fit officially. If and when that would be possible, we can deal with that separately.
The problem is: Ask 50 competitive players about balance changes and you will get 50 different answers.
I think everyone has to deal with some changes he dont like. Like i have todo with the last fade changes (more damage against structures=fadeball is coming back)
There's both advantages and disadvantages to using shadow skins. I'm not totally convinced that they're harder to see. But they're definitely easier to single out in fights when there are mixed groups. On top of that, hallucinations only spawn regular skinned skulks when casted. Hint: shoot the shadow lifeforms.
Why wouldn't they rush u with celerity? that's the advantage, They can just close distance quicker. Moving around the map barely helps against good teams due to route blocking so makes it useless. Adrenaline is pointless. Onos hallucinations is retarded
The fact is, it's a competition, so we need to be all on the same line. (don't tell me about the crosshairs, everyone can do one, and it's not cashplay :))
People shall not get advantage or disadvantage because they did a cashplay or not...
You can't force everyone to spend 70$ to get shadow skulk, lerk or gorge (even if you are not convice about the advantage or the disavantage of it)...
So to be fair to everyone, you should edit the rules about having the default skulk, lerk, gorge skin :) in the ensl season.
I didn't say crag was skilled that's the point. It was easily counterable, and gave some of the most balanced rounds at the lan in term of pvp. Shift hive got stomped. Shift drifter ability and shade both have value in a fight, crag doesnt anymore. Ie: its broken Dirfter abilities shouldnt have after fight effects. Why does shift drifters have 2 effects? Faster attacks and even faster movements. When the other hives got 1. Remove focus and give it to shade hive, fucking erase hallucinations. Get back mucous on armor, but lower structures armors.
Too much circle jerking between too few players that are very judgemental on lower divs yet didnt win shit.
And why the fuck are frenchs getting banned from gathers when the community is nearly dead.
In case you didn't notice there are more teams playing season 4 than there was in season 3. I would not say that is an indicator of the community dying.
How is shift now op? nothing has changed about it from the balance mod from vanilla. If anything crag has been nerfed a little to much. Shade is in need of a fix.
Again having to explain is pretty annoying if you give your balance ideas you need to know how the game works bro.
Shift and shade were massively boosted in the sense that you played these hives for the upgrades, while crrag was mostly played for mucous spam wich denied fast cara.
It means that now with the new cost you get full silence or full speed at 2 or 3 minutes with the shift/shade drifter ability it's hilarious, since these abilities are one time in combat use = super worth it. Mucous=super useless
No troll ideas then: Remove focus boost from shift drifter Remove hallucinations replace with oldschool damage focus or new ability Phantom should have only silence or cloaking
Make veils give silence only + drifters shade ability grants temp cloak for aliens in cloud range. There would be no speed penalty (in regards to breaking cloak) you would be cloaked temporarily as long as you were in the cloud when it was created, as for how long the cloak lasts, just make it as long as the other drifter abilities last. or would that be op? personally I don't think cloaks that hard to spot at all...
ps Can we make exos viable please, maybe instead of eject you could press G and they would turn into a car, like transformers, then you could drive to nano
The idea of cloaking as a drifter-casted ability sounds kinda fun, but I don't know if it's smart to allow the aliens to be cloaked and using aura at the same time
