I remember when we didn’t have perma-nests. Xenos would build complex and interesting hives, sentinels and other xenos would monitor and patrol their hive, multi-burst made xeno population more random. Marines could actually pull off daring escapes, you’d even, occasionally, get telepathic interactions between the Queen and the capture because you didn’t ghost immedietly.
Now 1 cap is 2 xenos and short of scout hivedive or actually winning, thats for certain. Xenos don’t have to defend their hive like Marines have to defend the FOB. It rarely bites them in the ass because of traps that just alert the entire hive, who can instantly return to the hive via tunnel.
You can kill 10 xenos but if they capture 5 people, that number is replenished within 15 minutes.
All Xenos, despite being extremely powerful, focus in murderball because they no longer have to think on a strategic level, they just group together because they have the numbers and strength to do so and Marines don’t have the strength to counter that without CAS and OBs.
tl;dr
Perma-nests are a mistake. Spawn-pool is a mistake. I miss 2019.