Okay.
First thing's first, shotgun hasn't been mandatory for months, you can rock a flamer + m39, m39 + l42, m39 + pulse, l42 + mou, the list goes on, do any combo you feel like really, only exception is pretty much HPR since it still blows.
Queen screech is still king, but other xenos have always (and still do) contribute an insane amount. How many rounds have you seen where a single warrior or boo's funny backup crew just sweep the round because all focus is on them? Not to mention the power of any T3 in a competent player's hands.
If you NEED something in current meta, it's because it's a crutch for you, and not actually mandatory. The limiter is you, not balance.
Clearly you did not get what I meant,
The Shotgun is the meta, go-to weapon to anyone that knows what they are doing, sure these guys can run M39 or a different gun besides shotgun, but that's willfully not doing the best you can for the purpose of not running an M37 anymore.
You can say whatever you want, but M37 has the highest damage output over a short period of time, has a built-in stun, more magazine size, fits the best in most loadouts and offers you what you need to take down a xeno.
You got the point for Xeno, I'm not saying BOO's Outpost in engineering with RAT and a Carrier doesn't win rounds, it does, but Queen Screech is too good to pass up, have a couple of runners alongside her and she can get some easy caps and kill the spec.
Removing the Queen Screech alongside the Buckshot stun and juggling mechanic and you'll have xenos and marines learning new tactics and trying out other load-outs, strats, attacks and the like.
But I've seen enough of these conversations to know how much back and forth it brings, even if I may have a point or not.
Still funny to watch and read tho hehe eks de xd
Queen is giga slow, so removing screech would allow 1 robust marine, or two normal marines to solo her. Remove her neuro and she can't actually do anything at all, because by the time she can slash someone, she is dead.
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Queen is not too slow to evade marines. Queen is too slow to outrun marines if she has absolutely no entourage and never uses her flashbang or taser and basically just rolls over and dies when she sees a marine.
Go and watch someone who knows what they're doing play queen and you quickly see them engaging and disengaging swarms of marines no problem. If anything the queen is on the verge of being too fast.
I'm going to chip in with my two cents, because I played both sides extensively when maturation was in I guess its first iteration
Maturation was not and is not a bad concept. It was a good concept that was poorly executed, because the old maturation rate disparity was huge across tiers, and actually benefitting from them and being viable took too long if you were tiering up in accordance with the hive's needs. My suggestion would be (bearing in mind this is in-game seconds not irl seconds) for T1 60/120/240, for t2 90/180/360, and for T3 120/240/480. With these numbers, and with the old benefit ratios, if you can evolve to the next tier the moment you hit maturity (which aught to be the case, actually), it should take you a total of 10 minutes real time to go from a Young T1 to a Mature T3, instead of ~40 minutes.
What are your thoughts?
Too short to make a difference for xenos if ancient xeno would be the same power (or only a bit better) than current general level.
Too short to justify having uber Ancient xenos, while current "ageless" xenos are supposedly between mature and elder power.
If you will make it longer, it will promote metarushes - first major battle lost by marines - cadehugging.
If you will make it longer, it will discourage dying as a beno which will promote metarush - first major battle lost by benos - cavehugging, delayliens and general cowardience from xenos, which will prelong the rounds artificially, in a painfull way which is worse than short rounds.
Aging of any kind is bad unless both sides get benefits from the same ammount of waiting, which currently is achieved by techwebs where both benos and marines get power as time passes, so it doesn't contribute to rushing, or delaying, untill some broken OP T3 tech will be introduced in near future, then it will be bad again.
Xeno maturity is FUBAR.