You just listed half the reason having a full time commander is beneficial. The other (bigger) half is constant expansion, PvE micro, and macro calling. Simba's greatest strength as a commander isn't his getting out and "building a hive way too fast", its his god-damned persistence in aggressive cysting that lets his team stay in the game even though they flash all their lifeforms.
No, its not. The having a singular person making decisions about expansion and where to focus is insanely beneficial to a team. And having that singular person perform the expansion is equally beneficial. Of course, there are situations where you can perform at a comparable level with 'musical chair' commanders, but this requires a much greater level of teamwork. And if teams can pull it off effectively, more power to them in my opinion.
What? In order for the commander to get a gorge and heal up a hive, they're sacrificing a combination of a) another player's starting PRes, b) expansion time, c) drifter and PvE micro (bonewall and rupture). They DO NOT just "get a free gorge" and "build a hive so quickly that marines don't get a chance to respond". Building hives takes time and TRes investment. For a gorge to be worth it, you're almost required to drop a shift, otherwise you're better off just drifter building the hive and using the gorge to support res pressure or build RT expansions.
It is NOT harder to kill upgrades against a gorge commander than it is against a skulk commander. The gorge can't kill you, the worst it can do is distract you until a teammate returns. If this happens, you're simply getting outplayed.
At this point, I'd like to point out that this strategy was viable before the PRes punishment was removed. By having another player start in the hive they would be a single PRes behind what they would be now (assuming they were never to jump in the hive again) - meaning at most ~30 seconds resource time.
As Seb pointed out, you never mention the timeframe in which Simba was able to go lerk as a commander in the draft tournament. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was on the order of 20-30 minutes. This isn't something that's an issue, because if you weren't forcing him to be in the chair to re-expand, micro, and such then you're having other issues.
This argument doesn't make any sense to me. You've had several commanders post about how much more beneficial it is to be in the hive rather than doing something like gorging or biting res - including your own commander. I'll add Virsoul and myself to the list, after the first couple of minutes and up until the 15-20 minutes stalemate mark there is SO much for the commander to do. Noone is forcing commanders to play an FPS, its an option for all of them, with its own benefits and drawbacks.
Yes, and she's disagreeing with your view of the situation. If anyone has a naive opinion, it is yours. It seems that you're incapable of looking at the bigger picture and determining the drawbacks to strategies that you determine are OP. Maybe this has something to do with the teamwork problems your team is having?
It's pretty apparent that you don't have a good handle on things, seeing as you haven't been able to come up with any method to combat any of these strategies you're arguing about removing.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the vast majority of people arguing for the removal of the commander PRes penalty were Div 1, and 2 players, NOT the Comp Mod team.
No, you don't have to. As mentioned above there are certain drawbacks to all the strategies you've put forth as OP. And you know what you can do? Go kill the gorge, look he can't gorge again for awhile!
Echoing harvesters is one of the slowest expansion methods there exists in the game. It only works on certain hives on certain maps (having to do with the proximity of the hive to hive RT and with the ability for aliens to protect their expansion.
If you're going to try to argue about how things are "OP" and "fundamentally not making sense" then please think through the entire change to view the downsides, and maybe try to exploit those downsides before demanding a reversion when the Aus League is already in their 3rd week.
We've used comms out of the hive even before the penalty was removed, constantly. The 6v5 scenario you speak of has never not been in the game, it's simply now not a retarded mechanic to delay your field players 1min of res when they need to hop in to the hive to drop cysts before an rt dies, or shit like that.
What totally blows my mind is how you can not see the tradeoff of a player getting 0 res at the start, the alien game is so hugely revolving around lifeform timings, so depending what the lifeform is, you will have more time to get ground and do economic damage, or the more crucial point.. get lifeforms killed.
I seriously can't think of any other scenario where what you talk about would happen, other than that you loose all your engagements for the first 6 mins and have no rts outside of your base. Any stream vods for this? Cuz i'm really having a hard time understanding your problems.
ps. 2 lerk 2 fade 1 onos 1 gorge, is one of the go to end game compositions you should get, have tried to get for what, a year? Why is this an issue now?
Incredibly, Seb, I'm capable of forming my own opinions about this change without having to rely on commanders telling me what to think. My experience has been negative, and it's been making the game less pleasant to play. I've posted my reasons why that experience has been negative on both teams. It may make the experience for the commander more fun, but it sure as hell isn't fun for me.
You claim that I think this change is OP for marines and OP for aliens. However, what I actually think is that this change is a large balance change in favor of aliens. I'm not sure how this is a contentious point, since clearly it's being approached as a way for the alien commander to act as a field player while still managing to get all of his commanding responsibilities done. Where you're confused is that I posted specific reasons about why I dislike this change on both teams. Aliens as a whole are stronger because of this change, but it leaves this half-assed commander role that kills the fun and introduces a ton of problems.
Your solution for me is to just not take advantage of this buff to aliens, but telling someone to avoid optimal play because it's not fun is useless. This is a well-known fact about how people play games, and I recommend you read up on it (here's a good article on the matter: (Part 1) (Part 2)). I've seen this first-hand in my previous job, where many players were unhappy with how unpleasant optimal play was in a game I had some minor involvement in. That's the sort of thing that drives players away. Even ignoring that, though, telling someone to just not use a feature doesn't solve the problems with that feature or address any of the arguments against it.
You're right that I have trouble with some aspects of the game; I'm definitely not a premiere player. However, my team and I have been scrimmaging the entire summer and have been improving quite a bit. We've been one of the most active teams. I think we've been playing with this feature long enough for me to feel justified in hating it, and I've already posted lots of reasons why, though you only felt fit to point out the one you thought was weakest. That point was still about balance, though, and when my team's wins are almost all alien games and losses are mostly marine games, I think those sorts of things matter.
I, too, doubt the feature will change, but that's not at all related to any merit it may have. I know some things get reverted, but when the bar is majority community support (based on forum posts?) or a small handful of premiere players, it's easy to feel that we're stuck with the things that make it into Comp Mod.
Golden: It's late, but I'll reply to some of your comments now.
I did list reasons why having a full time commander is beneficial. Why are we making field play so important for commanders that they're performing their duties less? If it's actually not beneficial for the team, people wouldn't be doing it. I've definitely seen it having an impact, though, and the results for field players just suck, in my opinion.
I believe I posted the time frame in which Simba had lerk res by pointing out that onos res hadn't come up yet. Simba gathered 20 res before another of his players had gathered 40. If I had to guess, it was on the order of 10 minutes. I'd be happy to give you an actual time, but the video doesn't seem to be on Simba's Twitch account anymore and I'm not sure if it was casted or by whom.
By having the commander gorge and build a hive, I did not mean swapping which player starts in the hive, but rather the commander using his accumulated resources to very quickly build up a hive while the rest of the team keeps doing what they've been doing. Recently, I think I've seen this in pretty much every game, and it makes a big difference without any real sacrifice for the team.
My comment about the gorge stopping solo marine pushes into hives is based on having watched Simba do this to other players in his stream. The round escapes me, but it was in Hydro on Biodome, and the gorge was incredibly effective against the marine, who I think was Sweetiebot. That marine couldn't get anything done and that gorge just wouldn't die. That's very different play from a skulk being in the hive.
If the marine is receiving medpacks then a gorge is much less useful. If it's in range to heal the structures the marine is shooting he can easilly kill the gorge or force it into the hive, and 3 tap it with the pistol if it comes out again. A gorge comm also cannot hop out to defend naturals as well as a skulk.
Nonono, drifter support/biomass support is leagues more usefull than a gorge is when it's hitting 3-5 lifeforms above skulk. Three heals sprays on an onos is an effective 120-240 hp or so depending on how much of the heal affects armor, enzyme or hullicination with bonewall and maybe heal wave will save more than that amount of effective hp considering the weapons marines will be using by the time onos is out. I'm not sure about mucous atm.
Teams having the comm jump out to bite res as a skulk mid game while his team hops in to cyst and cap and stuff, that's an entirely different story. That could be just something that makes comming more static and boring.
It's at an odd stage right now where low div crudder players like me don't know how to use it but premier team marines still need something to stop the rape train. I feel a change is in order for it but i'm not sure what to do before season 5.
I don't see any real problem with com out or in most of the time. I am probably gonna repeat what others said, but here you go.
For me it balances out, if you go on the field, you can't do other very useful stuff:
bonewall to split marines or safe lifeforms - heal marines as gorge and support them from the field.
ink hive so your lifefroms have more time to kill rines and arks - bile the arcs and risk dieing in fight or heal hive
drifter support - gorge heal support
cysting into lanes, shift marine focus and make life harder - heal your damaged RTs and structures when marines are focusin on pressure
I agree that "commaaandeeer leeeerk!" is a bit OP. But most of the above still a bit applies and if you didn't capitalize on commander out of the hive there are other problems to worry about. This is a reactive game and if you go with "one strat to counter them all" you are gonna have a bad day. I also agree that cysting, bonewalls, rupturing that cyst shit in your face, etc is more annoying and harder to deal with than 1 more gorge or skulk on the field. Fuck you all good aggressive commanders, go gorges more often so I can get my revenge!
Are you seriously basing one round and one instance of a comm gorge stopping a marine? It sounds like that marine was either outskilled or getting no comm support.
The point of this change is it is something we have been over countless times before, we know the impact of musical comms. We tested this quite extensively back in BT. If you think alien commander before this change was any funner, I really don't know what to say. This change does not in ANY way take away from an active alien commanders role, plain and simple. You can still have your comm stay in the hive 24/7 and just hop out to help as a skulk occasionally. Having a comm gain pRes may be something we look to restrict, but an alien team that is giving up drifter abilities, heavy cysting pressure, forward scouting and many other things to get +1 skulk is not really coming away with a clear cut advantage. Its situational at best, and can be a considerable disadvantage in some.
The comp mod has to look to the community for input, but you also must realize that your team is really the only one actively saying this is a problem from what I am seeing. We cant change balance for one team. You can try the passive aggressive bullshit about how nothing will change, but honestly its not gaining you any support and its getting on my nerves.
Some people seem to think the commander change makes aliens overpowered, some of us don't.
It seems that more think it's fine than think it's a problem, so I think it will likely end up staying. If indeed there is a huge problem with it and it's evident BEYOND one team's perspective, I recommend finding that problem and exploiting it to make it visible to everyone. If there's clearly an OP problem, and it's a problem across all teams and divisions, exploit it to bring light to it. If it's only a problem with one team, then it's another issue.
If the khamm saving for lerk is really powerful and becomes common, it'll receive a nerf. I have never seen it done yet, so I cannot lend credence to it's viability.
So let's not devolve this into personal attacks or insults over intelligence. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Opinions have been raised and discussed here, and it is clear to me there's more of a consensus for keeping it than reverting it. If there are more people who have good opinions and evidence to show it should be reverted, let them speak.
This change was discussed before v3 at length, and I made a pretty long post that addressed what is being debated here. I stated that at the time, we were at a crossroads, and whichever direction we chose (comm getting pres when out OR comm penalty for Pres) would both require such a significant amount of changes that it would be difficult to go back. I said that I don't know what the results will be of such a change, but I warned there could problems that we'd have to balance against. I made strong arguments for and against keeping the 60 second pres penalty for comms and left the decision open. A direction has been chosen and I think it's a little late to go back, but we should instead balance around it.
As a note, removing the ability for khamm to go any other life form wouldn't work. How would the game label the khamm? The person who STARTs in the chair? or does someone have to register as the khamm? If it's the person who starts in the chair, we throw away the early khamm gorge start at the expense of late onos strategy, which I think is balanced.
Just to add wanted to add to these discussions why the initial pres penalty was added.
The alien commander had absolutely nothing to do at the time and trying to fix it was really hard without any accurate data. So when the drifter abilities were added the pres penalty was added with it. That way were were able to stick the alien commanders within the hive to see how it would play out. That allowed the balance team at the time to see more accurate data on the current state of the alien commander and made it way more useful than it was before. The plan was always to remove that penalty in the end when the alien commander was effective enough that it was actually a real tradeoff to multi-command(all players jumping in and out just to drop stuff).
In the end the alien commander has always been a lackbuster and underdeveloped. In my opinion the could have been made more fun and interesting to go with another direction with it than having a player stuck in the hive but that's not a discussion for this topic. I think the team has done a pretty decent team up til now to make the best of what they have.
One thing to note, sometimes its better to focus less on the ,,Balance" and more of how to make the mechanics more fun and rewarding for players. Balance can always be achieved by changing numbers but having fun playing is more important than having perfect balance. I'm pretty sure most experienced alien commander enjoy the field play more than staying in the hive for example.
I agree. I don't think researched alien abilities should be lost immediately on hive kill (umbra, adv metab, etc). I think if a life form continue to live after being granted those abilities, he should keep them until death.
Let the aliens have a chance to get the second hive back up if it dies. The lost biomass/upgrades mean gg when one of two hives dies.
This was changed for the flipside of this argument, to allow greater chances for comebacks for marines. Generally speaking, killing a hive late game is a pretty drawn out affair and the aliens have quite a few chances to stop it, and failing that they usually do not recover, even when maintaining the second hive abilities. However there are times when marines are able to snipe a hive to get back into a game, and when aliens are able to keep their abilities this really doesn't end up having much of an impact.
Aye, it's not the easiest thing in the world to push into, umbra lerks and stuff. Everybody has seen the immortal alien mezzanine before. Compmod adds new counters to it, such as grenade and flamethrower buffs which people just haven't gotten used to yet. So I personally don't have a problem with lifeforms keeping them until they die, but imo a soft buff to grenades is in place then. Simba said earlier grenade research time was too long and I agree. Let lifeforms keep their upgrades upon hive destruction until death, but also reduce the research time on grenades.
As marines, see aliens get 2 hives up. Do suicide sg rush on alien main hive, win game because aliens now have no upgrades or biomass? Take their main as your new main rebuild arms lab win game?
I feel like marines have a fine chance to come back vs 2 hive aliens especially with op GL catpack combos or jetpacks.
@crazy The hive itself is usually not a big deal. Leap, umbra and advanced metabolize are what we are talking about. And just because you gl rush with bubba and other drunk europians in pugs does not make it a reliable strategy.
Been playing with them long enough now to get a feel for how they are playing out.
Biggest problem I see with them at the moment is the timing. Have scrimed a number of different teams at different levels and have noticed them appearing anywhere from the 4min mark onwards. This is pre-fade timing. Earliest you can get them is 2min 30 if you rush them.
The majority of the time, the only way to deal with them is to pack up hard, which is fine. I just don't agree with the fact that they appear so early, where the highest lifeform is a lerk. Lerks struggle against hmgs. They cannot spike them, as they get ripped. They cannot bite them, because of the high dps output. The difference is with sg at this timestamp (4min onwards), lerks can at least spike, get chip, and not take too much dmg from pistols or long range sg shots. And now that hmgs do normal dmg to structures, they are more potent that ever.
If the hmg was designed to be a counter to mid-late game mechanics like umbra and biomass, it shouldn't be appearing as early as 4min. Good marines with only a1 can abuse them easily.
I would like to know if the other scenes have noticed a similar trend with hmgs. If this is the case, delaying the hmgs until later in the game should happen, either by increasing the pres cost, the time it takes to research, or by moving to protolab and lowering the proto cost to help open up those unused techpath options.
I still don't agreeing with hmg being in the game in the first place, but whilst it's here, they need to be tested thoroughly and discussed.
Nerfing it sounds fine, but those changes specifically are for gimping the item and all it really ends up making marine early games much more static and boring. There are ways to keep them as relevant items that add more flavour to the game strategy without removing them from the game.
here are some suggestions for possible changes:
-cap the amount of field players who are able to use at once it to 1, or two
-cap the amount of players who can buy it to one player per 2 minutes
-take some parts away from the item, and charge a tres cost for upgrading them later, like duellies used to be. For instance, make the base hmgs have the same ammo capacity as lmg, but still have their less accuray, movement speed, and worse reload animation, but still have more dps, until you get a tres upgrade that requires aa. Or maybe make the base hmg slow the user when firing until you get a tres upgrade from the command chair.
on an offnote, I wonder what an upgrade would be like if it improved the accuracy of all rifles by 4%, and was available on the cc for 15-20 tres.
[quote=Seb]
Well if it where only 10 tres there'd be complaints 96% of it being a core part of the balance yata yata
considering weapons 1 costs 20 tres and requires a long research time AND a built 20 tres object, and only makes it take 1-2 less bullets at killing a skulk, it may be interesting to have an upgrade that makes one-two more bullets land at long range that doesn't need the arms lab.
Nobody would do it (least of all the Div 1 and 2 players that supposedly requested this) if it were a *disadvantage*... ?
Clearly even if there's a tradeoff, it's still worth doing - allowing this more beneficial decision to occur is allowing a buff.. plain and simple, regardless of whether its purely situational or not doesn't change this, so long as players are electing for the most optimal choice.
Since everyone has something to say about the degree of its impact already, the only real question is:
Do aliens need this (large/medium/small) buff?
