Just to add: Nerfing nades will really buff marines, since FF will be less hurtfull.
Just to add: Nerfing nades will really buff marines, since FF will be less hurtfull.
Pay the devs and you'll see how the game becomes balanced and also 4k compatible.
The reason balance will be one sided is because of the devs/admins wanting a set winrate of 60/40 or whatever the hell it is now. Wanting a set winrate inherently makes balance one sided as to who gets buffs and who gets nerfed. Combined with the fact that marines are infinitely more popular to play than xenos and have about 3-5 marines to a single xeno means that balance for the most part will be xeno heavy.
If the devs/admins wanting a set winrate wasn't a thing balance would probably be a lot better.
Last edited by BND01; 06-14-2019 at 05:28 AM.
I think the only thing keeping marines in the game right now is HEDP.
Consistently, it's almost impossible to kill aliens with regular marine weapons short of the xeno player completely fucking up. With grenades, that changes. Grenades give marines a stun, and that lets them actually kill a xeno player through good plays on their part rather than hoping for bad plays on their opponents' part; yesterday, I didn't find it hard to deal with personally - the situations where I did run into trouble it was, every time, caused by body blocking from another alien player preventing me from keeping distance/getting out of a bad situation in combination with me putting myself in a bad situation / not making sure my escape routes were secured.
I'm still firmly on the opinion that way too many alien players are just straight up bad. I see alien players killing easy captures, pouncing into short range against shotguns, running up to shotguns with <50% health, running into fights in general at <50% health, running face first into grenades that have already been thrown/launched, charging face-first into marine frontlines instead of trying to flank, and being complete idiots near the tank and sadar/grenadier specs. Maybe that's just something that has to be accepted and balanced around instead of hoping a little adversity will actually kick some of these players' butts into gear.
From what I saw in a round with a good team of alien players, even in spite of the large amount of explosives, 10-15 were able to hold off 2-3x their number. For the first time playing on the alien side, I actually felt like I needed to apply myself, but it didn't feel unfair, it felt like an appropriate challenge. I thought the balance was actually pretty good. There've been other times with previous balance changes where it just felt ridiculous fighting marines and they'd unstoppably ungarush, but even outnumbered 3:1 yesterday it felt like we were winning until a few bodyblocks/mistakes on our part that marines capitalized on, in conjunction with an inability for us to get any captures to replace losses.
So in light of my experience, here's a couple changes I'd test out to help xenos:
- Increase how long a marine stays alive in his unconscious/paincrit state so that marines who've been slashed up can actually get nested/infected more often
- Add a minor stabilization effect to nests so they slow (maybe stop?) bleeding and suffocation damage, outright stop cold damage
- Remove the ability for marines to resist out of nests
- Dramatically shorten the 'young' stage for T1/T2 castes
- Revert the resin hole change so they go back to hugging anyone in a 1 tile radius
One, some, or all of these should make captures happen more frequently, keep the captures alive, increase xeno tempo from respawns, and remove the need for aliens to keep 15% of their force on nest duty.
Last edited by Boersgard; 06-14-2019 at 06:41 AM.
I agree on this one as a person who does the double m41a UGL meta. Light armor + double UGL is so disgusting that i racked up 16+ kills with marines in LV with them following up my grenade spam. Even if you miss the nade and dont land it directly to the xeno it stuns them for a brief duration then you switch to the other UGL to stun them again. Rinse and repeat. 4 Nades. Hell shit is even faster than firing than the specs UGL.Originally Posted by MasterShakeEZ
With the current pain update i must say that it benefited veteran players a lot since they can just unga whenever they want. I remember having NEGATIVE Percentage HP and with tram and inaprovaline i can still run like im not even fucking wounded at all.
Devs might as well give xenomorphs some QoL changes to level the playing field.
I don't think a win ratio target is a bad thing, but I do think 60/40 is too much one way. 45/55 split is as far as I'd take things with a marine handicap/xeno bias. More than that and I think you start getting features/abilities that trend towards unfair/frustrating instead of fun. People like playing a game they have a chance at, not one where they just auto-lose because 'we need balanced 60/40 win/loss ratio'.
Frankly I'd go for a 50/50 split and when that seems to be achieved and stable, push a few slight buffs on the xenos to give them a small edge. It really shouldn't take much to tip things from 50/50 towards 45/55.
Last edited by Boersgard; 06-14-2019 at 06:44 AM.
HEDP is strong, I'd reduce either the stun time or the stun range because it's surprising.
While maturity timers were reduced, now crushers and and ravagers have to sit for like 5-10? minutes to recover armor. Again and again. (and ancient doesn't mean much anymore, personally, I'd take 2-3 hours for ancient instead of the current short time for no benefit)
Tank being back is also a big marine pro that's not mentioned much. Also when you manage to hold out as xeno for the 30 vs 100 endgame and the tank comes back with the offscreen instagib cannon (it's late so it's balanced), fuck that noise..
There is a player problem too, recovering bodies to revive them is a lot more easier and intuitive than capturing, if 5 xenos surround a human and 1 of the 5 fails to rub their two braincells together the guy gets slashed to death and you get no capture.
The lack of captures ties into the strategic problems. Even if people do well, it doesn't matter if the rest of the team doesn't have enough people doing good strategic work, this applies to both sides. Sometimes this means drones building from the start of the round until the end, you can get ancient fast and you dont run out of plasma but it's just mind numbing, I tend to switch over to healer after the fight starts because walking in a line to place sticky should be a macro, like how marines get "pick up weapon and shoot in the same moment" and "fire the pistol 20 times in one moment" macro.
One "not really balance" thing I'd change is I'd let nested marines turn on their armor light because sitting in the dark is unnecessarily boring, nobody deserves that shit.
Instead of nerfs the following things have been recommended before:
- Let the queen tracker cycle through leaders (or give xenos a verb in the alien tab like "Set leader" instead of cycling)
- Let the queen turn on alerts for when xenos get critted
- Instead of devolve give the queen "mandate", if a caste is mandated the last free evo slot for that tier cant be filled by evolving into other castes, then the mande is filled and it turns off
Last edited by lurkermain; 06-14-2019 at 10:28 AM.
March ain't May!
This is a super good point and makes me wonder if it's so prevalent because as a xeno you're supposed to believe you're this ultimate killing machine when in reality you're somewhat weaksauce against the average marine toting a shotgun and a backup shotgun. I mean, the MOU will shred every single xeno for instance, no matter what age or caste.
I do see a lot of xenos running into grenades though. I'm not sure why.
Wait
heck
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