Originally Posted by
havokman
I see nobody is willing to point out the elephant in the room, which is that the entire facehugging->bursting gameplay element is a shit mechanic that will never not be shit, and the design tweaks that it has gotten recently are the equivalent of polishing a turd. We can get into a discussion of how much agency should a nested player have, how many Xenos should be devoted to the xenos equivalent of FOB duty, how many larva should burst out of half a dozen baldie retards when they effectively throw the match in favor of xenos by wandering out of the FOB and getting capped an hour into the round, how to make the carrier less aids etc, but no matter how much you shine it up, hugging and bursting will always be a lump of poo.
Spicy take - tell the person doing the new xenos sprites to hurry up and get them in a semi-polished condition, get Cakey or whoever to finally release the Structures update, and then jettison the entirety of xenos lore and the facehugging+nesting+bursting system, and have the new non-IP-infringing xenos fuel their replacements entirely off permadead bodies, which become draggable only once permadead. Then balance the game so that turning bodies into more xenos is a significant but not overwhelming bonus for having good map control over an area where xenos inflicted casualties over marines, instead of a braindead easy way of turning a guarenteed xenos loss into a boring 40 minute hour stall and then 40 xenos coming up on the Alamo because each fuckwit marine who gets capped gives 1-4 xenos, who eventually become worth 3-12 marines once they and the other xenos who use the extra t2/t3 slots they provided get the chance to mature. This way, we don't have to have a discussion about how to balance between making xenos miserable by having them guard captures who will kill themselves and possibly take a couple of xenos with them given half a chance, and making marines miserable by having the last 5 minutes of their round be spent tied up in a pitch black resin box with nothing but the sounds of resin doors opening, the comms chatter of other marines actually having fun, and an aching sensation in their stomach to keep them company.