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Thread: xeno rework testing discussion

  1. #1
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    xeno rework testing discussion

    the changes are listed here: https://pastebin.com/xqag7Ly9 edit: there are updated versions of this pastebin out there, so this info may be outdated: more recent (3/27) listed here: https://pastebin.com/Za5vD2An

    seen 1 or 2 of these test rounds

    not listed but xenos now show their stats in the stats panel including: current slash dmg - current/total health - current/total armor

    discuss any OP xenos or underpower 1s you feel

    some things with them are probably bugged

    thoughts?

    also heck like they're gonna have this but then the structures and stuff too? like two big xeno changes and while they tested them individually we haven't had a round where they were both tested together
    Last edited by reuben owen; 03-27-2020 at 05:13 PM.

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    Benos feel way weaker, but they have to learn how to use new abilities to properly review that.
    Overall I see quality of life improvements. No longer will marine die from direct gas blob hit, area of boiler fire is clearly indicated so its nice.
    Crusher seems strange with his pouncing.
    Lurker looks like he can't stunlock you no more.
    A lot less warriors on the field.

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    against current marines it will fail, against marines with stuns reworked too, who knows. No way to tell. But you remove stun based combat for xeno and dont compensate by making them tankier then its gonna fail.

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    Currently crusher charge just on breaking stuff is weird with grinders able to stop the charge and it unable to break multiple doors. THAT SAID... it can charge any wall and break it meaning even 1 tile areas are fair game for breaking in. Also cant crush window stills which might be a bug.

    The crusher pounce(it a pounce tbh) does mean it doesnt have any wave clearing, cant just knock a line of marines down and cause panic. The pounce might prevent though crushers from jumping too deep into marine lines considering they stop at the first marine they hit but due to how slow they are they can easily be hunted with shotties. The pounce itself takes way too long to wind up making it painful to get pounces unless the marines are so tightly packed they cant escape, in which case those marines will start dying and fast to pounce+stomp combo as it does about 100~damage. The crusher also I think is more tanky now but still at major risk of getting hunted down by shotgunners.

    Aliens have a harder time with crowd control in general it seems, or at least the changes messed up usual push back mechanics like hedgehog and warden I think it was from pushing them back along with boilers just getting murdered from various things. Other issue might be capturing being made a bit harder with loss of neurogas, it leaves aliens with basically praying to rngesus to get some tackles and heavy organization, aka no captures. It needs to be seen though but I feel caps will decrease even further, removing the carrier hugger apply nerf might push it back but that gameplay was somewhat cancer too so IDK. I just know relying on tackle gangs is like trusting delta to build a FOB; sometimes it happens and it is done right, and most of the time there isn't even a dam cade

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    Slower drag runners, less tackle chance across the board, no Neuro, really only one pounce for a lurker in a combat, crusher can't hit multiple marines in a line, nerfed warrior grab, less aoe acid knockdowns... Definitely a lot less control and far, far less ability to capture hosts. My main criticism is the massively increased difficulty of capturing hosts. Lurkers can't work together either without suffering speed loss. It's like this build wants to remove capturing hosts entirely.

    Overall I didn't like it. Sure, it will take time to get used to, but I think this is a bad direction. Most xenos seem weaker overall and instead stronger as a collective. This is great in theory and in fluff.

    However, this is terrible in reality and actual gameplay. This is not a voice chat game. Messages must be typed and this takes time. Also, there are no rules like in a MOBA forcing teamwork. Other sisters can happily ignore you or do their own thing. In other words coordination never happens and getting aliens to work together to combine their abilities is almost always a pipe dream. As such this direction of travel is inherently flawed. Yes, it's wonderful to imagine a trapper placing traps and then a crusher rushing in after a runner calls out the traps have triggered, and them being followed in by praes and warriors and ravagers using their abilities to all cause stuns and knockdowns and increased damage. However, this will never happen by design and only by luck. In other words, as it won't happen, it is actually a Nerf in reality as individually the xenos are weaker. Better to make each strong at what they do in isolation rather than trying to form teamwork in a game engine, with server rules too, that don't enable that sort of play.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ausrine View Post
    snip
    I do agree that benos overall are way weaker (or just feel like it now), but that last part bothers me. Just as you say that xenos will never work together: What marines have to say? By definition they have to work together. What keeps benos from not working together, that lets each and every marine cooperate?

    If you design something to be powerfull on its own without having cooperation in mind, what you will do when they will start to cooperate?
    Pre-MOBA lurkers and runners were strong alone and guess what: Lurker and Runner gangs started to appear.


    However, this is terrible in reality and actual gameplay. This is not a voice chat game. Messages must be typed and this takes time. Also, there are no rules like in a MOBA forcing teamwork. Other marines can happily ignore you or do their own thing. In other words coordination never happens and getting marines to work together to combine their abilities is almost always a pipe dream. As such this direction of travel is inherently flawed. Yes, it's wonderful to imagine a engineer placing mines and then a shotgunner rushing in after a scout calls out the mines have triggered, and them being followed in by Rifleman and grenade throwers and Smartgunners using their abilities to all cause stuns and knockdowns and increased damage. However, this will never happen by design and only by luck. In other words, as it won't happen, it is actually a Nerf in reality as individually the marines are weaker. Better to make each strong at what they do in isolation rather than trying to form teamwork in a game engine, with server rules too, that don't enable that sort of play.

    Look how it perfectly matches marines.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CABAL View Post
    I do agree that benos overall are way weaker (or just feel like it now), but that last part bothers me. Just as you say that xenos will never work together: What marines have to say? By definition they have to work together. What keeps benos from not working together, that lets each and every marine cooperate?

    If you design something to be powerfull on its own without having cooperation in mind, what you will do when they will start to cooperate?
    Pre-MOBA lurkers and runners were strong alone and guess what: Lurker and Runner gangs started to appear.


    However, this is terrible in reality and actual gameplay. This is not a voice chat game. Messages must be typed and this takes time. Also, there are no rules like in a MOBA forcing teamwork. Other marines can happily ignore you or do their own thing. In other words coordination never happens and getting marines to work together to combine their abilities is almost always a pipe dream. As such this direction of travel is inherently flawed. Yes, it's wonderful to imagine a engineer placing mines and then a shotgunner rushing in after a scout calls out the mines have triggered, and them being followed in by Rifleman and grenade throwers and Smartgunners using their abilities to all cause stuns and knockdowns and increased damage. However, this will never happen by design and only by luck. In other words, as it won't happen, it is actually a Nerf in reality as individually the marines are weaker. Better to make each strong at what they do in isolation rather than trying to form teamwork in a game engine, with server rules too, that don't enable that sort of play.

    Look how it perfectly matches marines.
    Because marines cant work together either. It hard to see proper follow up for mines and nades or anything. It basically all just falls into place. The same will happen with moba aliens but lack of wave clear versus a superior in number human force with virtually no way of capturing which doesnt include a massive gang bang of aliens(rare to see everyone realize they couldve just capped the guy doesnt help admins dont give a dam to force xenos to capture and push xenos to remember to stay alive, being tough on rules sometimes is needed to keep it all together). No wave clear, and dwindling numbers, with randos who may or may not know how to play there roles with various roles missing will hurt like hell the aliens from the get go. At least marines should have some flamers, GLers, some PFC snipers, pointmen(shotgunners+39ers), and general 41 boots not to mention the specs, SGs, vehicle, and fire support along with typically a few players you know will play engineer and build some autism forts. Aliens arent guaranteed to have enough of a mix to get anything done and are even more reliant on choke-points to do anything being unable to fight in the open due to many abilities being wind ups.

    The future I see...

    Moba aliens get buffed hard
    People try them for a while and learn new strats that make the new sets work
    All is good and the kits get nerfed over time as robustos can carry any new crop of alien players

    Other future
    Moba aliens stay as is
    People might try the novelty but getting curb stomped due to new skill sets and medicore-weak alien sets pushes people off xenos
    Their is no core robustos to keep the game going or the core robustos cant carry the game anymore due to weaking of the individual xeno in favor of the collective
    Alien win-rate goes to about 0 excluding command suiciding marines by scobby dooing them into various directions and refusing calls for back up, OBing the FOB with 40 marines in it, obscenely nasty event that kills a large chunk of the marine force, fully
    incompetent people from PFC to CO. So about 5-20% winrate
    Obscene buffs or cries to revert the changes keep occurring, just generally annoying state'

    TLDR: change is bad, and randos have the 0 cooperation marine or xeno

  8. #8
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    CABAL you don't make a good point. Furthermore, have you not played as a Marine recently? They don't work well together either. However, they do have better tools for teamwork because of their few abilities, with everything else not requiring it.

    Mortars and OBs? You just need one person not to mess it up. If they do it can wipe out lots of marines. Generally it is done far enough away from marine lines that this doesn't happen.

    Orders? They work like pheromones and buff everyone in an AOE.

    And that's mostly it. When you start talking about different weapons you seem to forget that marines don't need to capture and they don't need to wipe out every alien - they just need to drive them off and hold, since ultimately a nuke will appear. Furthermore, with the risk of friendly fire, they are driven to work together to an extent since you can't just fire blindly. However, disregarding that, a Marine with any weapon can kill most aliens with enough shots - but they shouldn't be going around solo. Multiple marines with multiple weapons will kill aliens and this is as intended. It helps if there is a slugger or flamer or a spec, sure, but it isn't required. A bunch with buckshot or M39s do the job well enough at the moment.

    So, setting aside your lousy point of "oh but it is the same for marines" (when clearly it isn't), aliens should be individually much more menacing. Also, expecting the side with 1/3 the numbers or worse to have to work together more is laughable. Marines should have to overcome individual weakness with cooperation, not aliens. It goes against what this game even pays homage to. Alien and Aliens 3 would have ended with the drone or even praetorian dying to tallhosts in melee surrounding it and knifing it to death. Heck, even now I see this happen in game with marines not bothering with their guns and trying to knife to death a queen after a screech so they can boast they killed a queen in melee... This sort of behaviour will only happen more frequently as aliens get weaker on their own.

    I am happy to see Pigeon agreeing with me and I think their insights into the future are compelling.

    Finally, CABAL, you contradict yourself even. You say that lurkers and runners were strong and hence why there were gangs of them. Do you even realise what that means? Making aliens strong individually encourages cooperation since you are all effective with or without help, and it also means that type of alien will be played as it is strong.

    Nobody wants to play a support class that creates opportunities others never exploit or act upon. Players will only end up playing individually strong aliens when cooperation is so difficult to effect. You seem to have unconsciously realised this without also considering the implications of it. I hope you now do

  9. #9
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    There’s a bunch of stuff in the changes that’s just... questionably thought through.

    Like, Spitters, Boilers and Praetorians all apply acid to their enemies. But with each one of them, the acid does something entirely different. That’s both confusing for the xenos (Praes slashing at marines marked with the wrong type of acid) and marines (PFCs getting it by one kind of acid and thinking it does all there possible effects, or the wrong ones)

    I’m also really not fond of giving xenos stuff with windup on the beyond engine. It works for marines, because the delayed setup stuff they have is meant for ranged combat, but if you’re meant to do windups around PB deltards it’s just not gonna be a good time.

    All in all, I’m with Ausrine’s general assessment. It’s a nice attempt, but one that seems to miss the realities of the game.
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  10. #10
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    they are supposedly reworking guns too, so maybe guns will have windups and conditions to stun people and do less damage and just generally be shitty like new xenos. Then everything will be ok.

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