The faceless horde

[CABAL]

So how do you decide who's worthy of being the "named" xeno then ? Whitelist ? Brownlist ? Time lock? RNG?

Even the best players have off days, and they can be seen as "wasting the named xeno slot". So how does someone get to be the roundstart named xeno ? And how many named xeno are there supposed to be to hold down the gate vs marine horde early game ?

Just like SL, or specs. RNG. Named xeno was bald? Well, this person who rolled spec is also bald. Timelock would be usefull, for sure. Like 5 hours of xeno gameplay.
I would say that those kind of aliens could be equivalent of Marine Spec, so atleast 4 for low pop (60 players overall) and additional one each 15-20 marines with cap at 8, maybe 10. Since named xenos would be fairly plentifull, then impact of one being bad would be weaker than one bald spec.

I like the idea. Spawn more survivors to give xenos something to do during pre-drop phase and chance to gather players for cannon fodder.
Pre-drop would be like Alien movie, after drop like Aliens and further like AVP games.
Kinda cool. Everyone gets slice of cake, everyone has a phase to shine etc. Add small drones/borgs to the marines so they could get small reinforcements to not be overhelmed that easly in late game and here we got it.
Queen could distribute "jelly" to promote cannon fodder into "named xeno" in situation when it starts as low pop, but spikes to high. Currently xenos don't have tools to balance it out without staff spawning ravs.

[MasterShakeEZ]

If you want aliens to be a faceless horde then limit the amount of marines in the game to small numbers and force people to play aliens. We will see how long people want to be faceless horde then.

[KingKire]

So how do you decide who's worthy of being the "named" xeno then ? Whitelist ? Brownlist ? Time lock? RNG?

Even the best players have off days, and they can be seen as "wasting the named xeno slot". So how does someone get to be the roundstart named xeno ? And how many named xeno are there supposed to be to hold down the gate vs marine horde early game ?

Lets see...

If i had to flesh out the system...hmmm

PRE-GAME:
- all parties enable their preferred roles and attributes.
- Marines roles = Spec, etc.
- Xeno roles = Queen, Named One, Horde.


How do named ones come into play? hmmm
- How many Named Ones should the game start with?
- How are more Names Ones created?
Queen promotion, aka, the leader system? where a queen can have only so many leaders/named ones? Or by RNG chance?


- Start of the game:
A1) Game Start xenos are all *Named Ones*, This is unique, and can go over the *Named One* usual limit. This essentially plays like current CM-13, as they start young, and end up evolved into powerful xeno if they stay alive.

A2) Limited amount of *Named Ones*, with RNG roll choosing who becomes a Starting Named One ( This is like Spec role for marines.)

A3) Queens Choice: An evolved queen can feed a Horde xeno royal jelly (or some other random mcguffin ability) to allow them to become a *Named One*

A4) All begining Xeno and Starting Burrowed Larva have the *Little Named One* Title. Players who spawn in them are allowed to have a name tag. Any other xeno afterwords is just a nameless Horde Xeno.


- Xeno players at the start should have a name tag:
This gives people reason to play xeno well, and gives them a chance to build a name in the community. If they die, they lose out on that name tag chance, and become one of the faceless horde.

- Faceless Hordes/ D-Ghosts should occasionally be able to rejoin as a Named One:
Either by chance ( Hosts will RNG burst a Named One larva instead of several faceless horde larva)
Or by choice ( Queen can give favor to a xeno to become a Named One, with royal jelly, laying special hugger eggs for Named Larva, etc)

- Xeno Players at the start should have a pretty good chance to be a named one:
Somehow, someway, the chance to become a strong xeno should be higher for anyone who round starts xeno, so there will always be a balanced force of alien players to go against marines at all population levels.

- Should all xeno players at the start be Named Ones?
Pros: All starting xenos get to have a chance at being powerful, as a reward for being the opposing player.
Pros: All round start xeno get names, So people know who they are.
Cons: It could get unbalanced if all the aliens survive and become a super powerful force
Pros: If xenos can play a perfect game, why not reward them with the ability to steam roll the opposing force.

Thoughts: Maybe a two tier system? Round start xenos get names, like normal Named Ones, but need Queen to promote them to full Named One status?



Theres a little to think about. But it could be interesting. could be interesting. Named ones could be like the Spec roll, where theres only so many in a xeno horde, but if a Named One dies, a queen can make another Named One to take its place, unlike the specs, who essentially will be permanently dead.

Should there be a hard or Soft cap to Named Ones? (Queen can only ever have ~4 xeno leaders at a time, and she needs to promote them, vs. Xeno Teir's are soft capped against how many xeno their are. aka: If you get 5 boilers, they stay alive even if the xeno pop cant support 5 boilers)

[MasterShakeEZ]

As it stands right now 32% of the vote say they wouldn't want to play xeno anymore. Most of the people who voted the other way are marine mains but lets pretend they aren't. Xenos already have problems getting players. You really think removing 32% of the xeno mains is going to help that? You think more people who play marines exclusively are going to start playing xeno when they are even weaker and take less skill with no team work, and no name recognition? I don't think they will. I know for a fact we will start playing marine and making the balance even worse though . So enjoy losing 32% of your xeno playerbase.

[MasterShakeEZ]

snip

Cant have named ones besides like random numbers because the devs wont allow it. We had a giant thread about it on the old forums and they wont do it.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Yeah chief, the ideas to make xeno recognizable OOCly all got dunked on. We're talking names, ckey, unique numbers; all got denied by devs and multiple people. I can show you the link if you want : https://cm-ss13.com/old/viewtopic.php?f=133&t=19337

[KingKire]

No, i remember the threads.

The idea of a name, a name chosen, would be going against the general idea of the xeno's as a faceless horde.

But an idea about possibly giving a choice of 1-3 adjectives, a rare reward given to a few xeno, to become The Named One. That might pass the test, maybe. But either way, the distinction is in the power. Whether its The Named One in name, or just The Named One in spirit, the mechanics remain the same. Xeno mains get to enjoy the power to cleave marines. Marines mains get to enjoy the power to cleave generic Xeno, and the D-chat mains get to enjoy a quicker ways back into the game the longer it goes on.

[CABAL]

As it stands right now 32% of the vote say they wouldn't want to play xeno anymore. Most of the people who voted the other way are marine mains but lets pretend they aren't. Xenos already have problems getting players. You really think removing 32% of the xeno mains is going to help that? You think more people who play marines exclusively are going to start playing xeno when they are even weaker and take less skill with no team work, and no name recognition? I don't think they will. I know for a fact we will start playing marine and making the balance even worse though . So enjoy losing 32% of your xeno playerbase.

Only 31 players voted.
Options are broken and nobody knows how to treat "Yes I will quit playing" and "No I will quit playing".
There is no point to even consider this vote to show anything, even in "big overall".
Yeah, all marine mains are extremists like me who despise anything xeno related, but let's pretend that everything isn't black and white.

Like I said, as an extremist I started to play defender, becouse I liked his gameplay. I didn't play xenos when I started to play (about one and a half year ago) during Apop time when 75% was fixed in place and xenos were only "brainless clicking" simulator 13. Back when Queen could charge like a crusher, when crusher had screech like a queen, when xenos could heal in Almayer with Queen groundside so that they could kill 40 non-combat roles alone, when xenos could metagame dragging corpses around the colony just to deny defibs.

You are just ignoring the fact that if some people would quit playing xenos, new would start doing it. All based on broken vote.
"... xeno when they are even weaker and take less skill with no team work..."
That's clearly opposite. Weaker xenos would take more skill, becouse the more powerfull you are in comparsion to your opponent, the less skill you need to beat him. Again, how marines are able to do team work and xenos can't? Just identification? I bet staff wouldn't have a problem with changing naming system from numerical to something like "Elder Runner (Zeta 2)". It's still "faceless", but it's easier to remember.

Even if that "prophecy" would become a reality, CM have still few aces up in it's sleeves. It's HvH mode and it's ZvH mode.

And again, something that xeno complainers are missing: You won the battle against balance. You have your own 65% +/- 5%. Staff will make sure you won't be balanced, staff will make sure you will have adventage. Nothing will be changed that would impact "xeno killer boner experience". Xenos will always be able to kill more marines by pure stats, by pure delays on any action marines are doing, by pure meta they are allowed to have. Do not be afraid. All xeno mains could stop posting at all and it still wouldn't change the state. This state is running from years, since beginning, it won't change.

This is why i laughed so hard when after i left they recommitted to a win rate %

By the way spookster, you are saying that when you were "in charge" win rate % wasn't considered?

[spookydonut]

Only 31 players voted.
By the way spookster, you are saying that when you were "in charge" win rate % wasn't considered?

Correct.

[MasterShakeEZ]

snip

How do you think they get polls for political elections? They dont literally poll the entire country and then figure out whos gonna win. They take a sample size and then extrapolate it over the entire population to get an idea. It doesnt matter how many people vote that they will keep playing, the point was to show how many people will quit playing and the poll does that. I fucked up the 2 options but still theres a quit or i dont care option so it works good enough.

I dont think any body will play xeno that doesnt already play xeno if you make them worse. That makes no sense. Why would people suddenly want to play xeno?

They wont take more skill because they will be like whiskey outpost where you can just die over and over with no consequences so you will use rush tactics to just overwelm the marines.

HVH mode fucking sucks, marines are completely overpowered in HvH. So unless they rebalance it who cares. ZvH is gay as fuck and no fun for the zombies.

No one cares about winrate except you. We care about having fun and we are voicing our opinion that this will not be fun for us and make us not want to play. It has nothing to do with balance. Thats what you cant understand. I dont know why you cant understand it, but its whatever, thats your problem.