Xenos without the mutators

[ProportionalDude420]

I really dislike what happened recently, and take my biased opinion as a grain of salt due to well, bias.

Though there has been a lot of Marine buffs and Xeno nerfs recently, with the recent "Rework", I believe the offset for overall weaker Xenos as they mature was "You upgrade twice as fast, and even though your stats don't increase, you still get mutator points."

Right now that was reverted back so Upgrading takes just as long as before, with most upgrade above Mature not harboring any stat increases for the same amount of time AND Mutators are almost entirely gone. For a long time Mutators were touted as "We're going to rework Xenos to make them more fun to play and give more options" and the end result right now is practically the opposite, upgrades being useless past mature, and lower stats across the board.

I could go on about even more changes recently (Such as Ravagers being almost useless now since their removals going past armor deflects was what carried them.) but I think those two points highlight pretty well how heavily Xenos were nerfed and how incredibly unfun they are to play right now. Marines are constantly getting more options, more fun gameplay opportunities via Mini Pyro, Mini etc, new toys and CAS reworks, and to be quite frank, I do not enjoy playing Xeno at all anymore.

It's just not fun. Which is odd since I have been a Xeno Main for years now. It's not even just the nerfs, it's just less options, less variability, and now you I don't even have the power to show for making it to Ancient anymore. It just feels really like Xeno players are 2nd fiddle right now. Nerf after nerf after Marine buff, and when I brought up these exact complaints in the past was told "You still get mutator points, stop complaining, play Xenos because its fun, not because of how strong they are" and now there's nothing.

Anyways: As I said take this with a grain of salt. I do not have a magic eyepiece into behind the scenes what devs may be planning, and as I said, i'm incredibly biased, but this is just how it feels right now, as a long time Xeno player.

/Semi-Rant

For reals, the devs aren't even hiding their bias these days. Its a laundry list of beano nerf after beano nerf followed by more marine buffs.

Some balancing 101 advice here devs. Its called give and take, if you want balance for everything you take from one side you'll need to 'give' something in return to keep an equilibrium. The current mantra of 'Throw a bunch of badly thought out shit to the wall and see what sticks' is trash-tier choice making.

If all else fails you can pretend to be less biased by not hilariously nerfing one side without and thought and foresight.

[MasterShakeEZ]

I feel you Masked. I called out all this bullshit on the old forum. In game I get harassed constantly by assholes who say I salt on the forums and shit when im just trying to keep xenos from being lame as fuck. I knew this shit was going to happen and the devs never listen. Lets hope they have some idea of how to fix this shit and make xenos fun again cause right now they are in a terrible spot.

[themaskedman2]

I certainly don't want to come across as being "Le angry salty Xeno Main" and claim "All devs are stinky poo-poo heads who don't think about things." because that's the same thing Marine Mains have done when they are nerfed. I'm sure - or at least hope devs are aware and have a plan for things, and I just want to give my opinion out as a Xeno Player. As well, insulting devs is a terrible way to get them to listen as they will just become defensive and it becomes a vicious cycle. So i'm trying to reasonably lay out why I am not happy at the moment with Xeno Gameplay.

For all I know devs have some "massive plan" to make us gods and it all makes sense but there has not been communication on this as far as I know, so this update is all I have to go on. I just think it's a sorry state when even I don't want to play Xeno anymore. As if all the removals and nerfs weren't enoughs, they also make fire do more damage, rifle bullets can single burst Lurkers, buff barricade HP, etc etc.

Slightly unrelated but it's not even only Xenos, Gen 1 synths were removed! That was my favorite kind of RP.

[Renomaki]

the irony is more than a year ago, if not longer, people would argue and complain about the staff being more "xeno biased", and honestly, it did feel that way a lot.

Years of people complaining about xenos being too OP and the marines getting nerfed unfairly has, no doubt, affected development. Now marines are finally getting what they craved so much, but now the xenos are starting to suffer as a result.

Doesn't help that the community as a whole is pretty marine biased. After all, most people came here to shoot guns, kill stuff, and escape the dullness that is vanilla SS13. Why else do most people on vanilla desperately want to do away missions so badly? Because they get to go and fight stuff and get loot, instead of doing mundane work until a traitor sleepypens you to death.

Honestly, being a xeno is not that much fun compared to a marine. You don't get to blow stuff up, you don't get to shoot guns, you don't even get to call in artillery and watch the fireworks. You just got your two claws and your fast feet. Being a xeno is, in reality, a very generic experience. Hence why there are normally so few xeno players in comparison to the 100 or more marine players.

Honestly, I blame this mostly on the whole "lets make xenos win 70% of the time" nonsense that Apop and Feweh used to enforce, which of course made balancing hell. While staff still want xenos to win most of the time, getting to that point while still giving marines a reasonable chance to win has proven difficult, let alone hard to make fun.

[MasterShakeEZ]

snip

Marines have things besides winrate that make them fun. They have roleplay, friendships, accomplishments, big guns that make big explosions, tanks, all sorts of cool stuff. Xenos are faceless, have no roleplay, have to do everything the queen says even when the queen is a jackass or newbie, and have nothing but competition to make it fun. You have to give xenos the ability to win or there is nothing because devs refuse to give us anything that will make the game fun besides killing marines.

[discotau]

Marines have things besides winrate that make them fun. They have roleplay, friendships, accomplishments, big guns that make big explosions, tanks, all sorts of cool stuff. Xenos are faceless, have no roleplay, have to do everything the queen says even when the queen is a jackass or newbie, and have nothing but competition to make it fun. You have to give xenos the ability to win or there is nothing because devs refuse to give us anything that will make the game fun besides killing marines.

No longer being a faceless horde would help a lot in the current situation allowing me to see actually good xenos mains and not some bot(no offense to some xeno players)

Had a great round last night that we smashed the marines off of lv because there was great teamwork

edit: grammar fixed on mobile

[MasterShakeEZ]

No longer being a faceless horde would help a lot in the current situation allowing me to see actually good xenos mains and not some bot(no offense to someone xeno players)

Had a great round last night that we smashed the marines of lv because there was great teamwork

All of my best memories of playing xenos are memories of awesome team work where 1 or 2 people teamed up with me and we wrecked havoc on an entire group of marines. I will never know who those players were unless they were queen and I saw them at the end of the round. That's just fucking stupid. Like look at Masked hes been playing as long as me and other than what ive seen from him on the forums I have no idea who he is or what he likes. I have no idea what caste he plays, how good he is, if hes a dick, nothing because we don't know each other at all. As a xeno main I can tell you stuff about marine players I don't even play with because I recognize them when im cutting their heads off. How backwards is that?

[discotau]

All of my best memories of playing xenos are memories of awesome team work where 1 or 2 people teamed up with me and we wrecked havoc on an entire group of marines. I will never know who those players were unless they were queen and I saw them at the end of the round. That's just fucking stupid. Like look at Masked hes been playing as long as me and other than what ive seen from him on the forums I have no idea who he is or what he likes. I have no idea what caste he plays, how good he is, if hes a dick, nothing because we don't know each other at all. As a xeno main I can tell you stuff about marine players I don't even play with because I recognize them when im cutting their heads off. How backwards is that?

Yeah the only way I find out who I play with is asking in last round chat, or if someone asks who x was.
edit: grammar, on mobile sorry

[MattAtlas]

I really dislike what happened recently, and take my biased opinion as a grain of salt due to well, bias.

Though there has been a lot of Marine buffs and Xeno nerfs recently, with the recent "Rework", I believe the offset for overall weaker Xenos as they mature was "You upgrade twice as fast, and even though your stats don't increase, you still get mutator points."

Right now that was reverted back so Upgrading takes just as long as before, with most upgrade above Mature not harboring any stat increases for the same amount of time AND Mutators are almost entirely gone. For a long time Mutators were touted as "We're going to rework Xenos to make them more fun to play and give more options" and the end result right now is practically the opposite, upgrades being useless past mature, and lower stats across the board.

I could go on about even more changes recently (Such as Ravagers being almost useless now since their removals going past armor deflects was what carried them.) but I think those two points highlight pretty well how heavily Xenos were nerfed and how incredibly unfun they are to play right now. Marines are constantly getting more options, more fun gameplay opportunities via Mini Pyro, Mini etc, new toys and CAS reworks, and to be quite frank, I do not enjoy playing Xeno at all anymore.

It's just not fun. Which is odd since I have been a Xeno Main for years now. It's not even just the nerfs, it's just less options, less variability, and now I don't even have the power to show for making it to Ancient anymore, it's literally just the name. It just feels really like Xeno players are 2nd fiddle right now. Nerf after nerf after Marine buff, and when I brought up these exact complaints in the past was told "You still get mutator points, stop complaining, play Xenos because its fun, not because of how strong they are" and now there's nothing.

Anyways: As I said take this with a grain of salt. I do not have a magic eyepiece into behind the scenes what devs may be planning, and as I said, i'm incredibly biased, but this is just how it feels right now, as a long time Xeno player.

/Semi-Rant

Xenos have always been bland. Just because their mutators were removed does not mean that they're no longer fun. Mutators did not contribute to fun - they were specifically only stat boosts.

As for the maturity speed, the ticks to upgrade will be halved once again since I have a good idea of the balance right now. Whoch was the entire point of this update.

As I've said ~10 times this is a transitionary period where we need to adjust the balance to make up for the removal of a feature we've balanced upon for 4 to 5 months.

Elder tier 2s still have old elder T2 strength by the way. It's just ancients and > elder T3s that do not have any stat boosts.

[MasterShakeEZ]

Xenos have always been bland. Just because their mutators were removed does not mean that they're no longer fun. Mutators did not contribute to fun - they were specifically only stat boosts.

As for the maturity speed, the ticks to upgrade will be halved once again since I have a good idea of the balance right now. Whoch was the entire point of this update.

As I've said ~10 times this is a transitionary period where we need to adjust the balance to make up for the removal of a feature we've balanced upon for 4 to 5 months.

Elder tier 2s still have old elder T2 strength by the way. It's just ancients and > elder T3s that do not have any stat boosts.

Do you mean ancient t3 or ancient and elder t3? cause t3 didn't really get good until elder. Mature t3 are viable that's it. Ancient t2 were slightly over tuned while elder t2 were pretty good (except for spitter, spitter is not worth even having especially only at elder power level).