The metabolize does not feel too smooth. There is some delay for swipe after you use it.

But the important thing: ICON SHOULD NOT BE RED. This makes you think you are always low energy and makes it extremely hard to notice without proper check if you actually are really low on energy.

The delay was intentional iirc. It prevents you from spamming metab constantly mid-engagement. But yes, the icon needs to be changed.

the sluggish feel to meta makes it not as enjoyable to use like in ns1 when you could just blink to ceiling, meta in the air and blink down to swipe again.
this meta doesn't come close to that gameplay but at least it allows fades to regen faster in the field.

And I thought the icon was a nifty way to communicate the cooldown :S. What if I made the icon a different color for when you're on cooldown?

There is a slight delay after the metabolize animation finishes before you are able to swipe, but that is something inherent to the animation for vortex and isnt something I can fix, unless I completely unlink from the animation.

What do people think is 'sluggish' about metabolize? Is it that delay after the metabolize animation but before swipe? And not the delay between metabolizes?

It's a combination of it having a CD, and that you need x amount(20%?) energy to even cast it atm. Not sure if the latter is a bug or intentional but over all notion that you can't spam cast it i guess it's what separates it the most from the ns1 counterpart, Even if the hp+energy ratio is tuned right, it just felt more fluid to be able to channel it.

Whos to say you couldn't just tune it down so without cd you get the same amount hp/energy as now with cd.

First of all I think it was a mistake to change balance during a season. Second I think a lot of the changes look like change for the sake of change instead of actually trying to address PROBLEMS that the game faces.

Stranger says

...I think a lot of the changes look like change for the sake of change instead of actually trying to address PROBLEMS that the game faces.

+1

Trying to make all game mechanics viable is not working.
Remove babblers to start with, why add more PVE?

Feedback and suggestions on these patchnotes are encouraged, but please keep in mind that if you do have a suggestion or criticism, you need to provide well thought out reasonings for it. Just saying “this is bad” or “add/change this” without the reasoning behind it will not get your ideas the consideration or respect they deserve.

Stranger says

First of all I think it was a mistake to change balance during a season. Second I think a lot of the changes look like change for the sake of change instead of actually trying to address PROBLEMS that the game faces.

+1

rantology says

Feedback and suggestions on these patchnotes are encouraged, but please keep in mind that if you do have a suggestion or criticism, you need to provide well thought out reasonings for it. Just saying “this is bad” or “add/change this” without the reasoning behind it will not get your ideas the consideration or respect they deserve.

+1

+1 +1 +1 =3 ....right?......

great guys that defnitly helps the people that develop this balance mod to change something now great feedback.

i think its great to get diversity in a game and getting different tactics going, thats why i loved testing Fracture the map of Howser as well, even though its completely different from the other maps.

It would be a dull game if the state of game would be the same over half a year and really appreciate the work these guys are doing..

Now BACK TO FEEDBACK!:
One problem i see atm is the ability to get 1 Grenade well palaced and a lerk has to retreat! 2 Players can stop 4 skulks without even much shooting...

atm Grenades seem to strong for the Amount of Ress they take.
Definitly needs some Tweaking there, cause 3 Pres is way to cheap for 2 chances of taking out lerks or skulk packs etc.

provide well thought out reasonings for it.

Laggy as fuck game, want to re-up the skill and lower the pve, proceeds to add babblers and make tunnels spammable LOLwdhipwudjhwpdiuhjwdi

What I think we should do to the alien tech tree:

1. Remove the inability to research lifeform upgrades based on biomass - it just adds an unnecessary delay to getting alien upgrades, and serves no actual purpose (did anyone actually complain about this?)

2. Make alien lifeform upgrades all researchable from the hive - so, on 1 hive, only one can be researched at a time, however on 2 hives you can have two researching simultaneously. This will remove the annoying issue where you've just gotten the second hive up, and have to wait ages, while sat on loads of res, to get the lifeform upgrades

I don't want the lifeform upgrades to take up slots on the hive, and to be lost when the hive that researched them is lost, I just want to be able to research stuff at a decent rate if I have the res to do so.

rant ok

Babblers have never been enjoyable to play against, kind of like the pve spam that prevents "skill" - whereas a skulk can just rush straight in with babblers, tank for his teammates and the rest can come in to clear the room. If you recall the first BTMOD, that was in the works (the cup), babblers was made useless by blind for a well thought out reason. It doesn't fit in the game we love to play and people at that time agreed that it's not the way to go. If you don't understand that logic I can't explain it better.

Thank you B1, that's the kind of post that gets attention.

Babblers are somewhat experimental right now in that they have never really been viable or widely used in competitive previously (except for the build that they were completely broken/OP). Right now, the trade-off is that you must have a permanent gorge player on your team (this is 1 less field player), and that player must be sinking p-res into the babblers constantly, so it's not going to be a gorge into onos, it's going to be a gorge almost the whole game.

I agree that they might be a little too strong as they are right now- They have 10HP but cannot be hit for more than a maximum of 5 so each babbler effectively soaks 2 bullets each. Each lifeform generally has 6 attachment points for babblers, but babblers in the back or obscure positions on the models do not always get hit.

If anyone has any ideas on how to improve babblers, feel free to post them. Right now I would like to see them in a few more games before taking any action, but I imagine reducing their HP to 5 would be a reasonable step (so that they only soak 1 bullet, not 2). I too do not enjoy the gimmicky nature of the old/OP babblers and would not want to see that return. But I would also like babbblers to stay mildly useful instead of going with a nuclear option.

Make babblers 2nd hive if you want them so marines at least have weps 1 or 2.

Or yeah, just take them out because they're incredibly frustrating. I imagine they actually get healed by crags and gorge heal too making them more OP then most people are thinking.

In fact to expand on the 2nd hive comment; This would make people consider lifeform timings more instead of presuming as soon as you have the pres, you go your "designated" lifeform. If you watch snails play, they have this truly incredibly transition between lifeforms. It's all the more impressive that pretty much each of their players have mastered each lifeform. That's the type of skill you want to see, not babblers on your commander to defend RTs giving 4 res biters.

I find camo and turrets really frustrating. Let's remove them too.

GORGEous says

I find camo and turrets really frustrating. Let's remove them too.

I find marines with ranged weapons incredibly annoying lets remove them too!

Macs/Drifters and being able to soak dmg. I understand it takes some commander effort to micro a drifter in a fight, but should a drifter or mac be able to soak bullets and save a skulk or screw a marine over?
Would love for them to at least be soft targets so they block LOS but don't eat all your bullets in a fight. The worst is a welding mac getting in the way

I don't think I have even seen a gorge use babblers since the changes, why a commander would research them unless it's late game and you already have everything else makes no sense to me. Yes they annoy marines but don't seem to warrant the upgrade or tres/pres usage from aliens.

The onos still feels too slow to me, one that gets slightly out of position is very vulnerable if it's a long corridor. It'd be nice if a charging onos kept momentum once it completes charging atleast that way you're forcing the onos charge upgrade and you can make the onos not completely useless.

Fade balls are still occuring in gathers though, maybe not so much in matches where there are teams who don't have multiple fade players. but the HP regen of meta + regen is still too much.
Maybe make it so if a fade takes regen upg, adv meta does considerably less HP regen? or vice versa, make normal regen have a lower % regeneration for a period of time after using adv meta?

Macs/Drifters and being able to soak dmg. I understand it takes some commander effort to micro a drifter in a fight, but should a drifter or mac be able to soak bullets and save a skulk or screw a marine over?
Would love for them to at least be soft targets so they block LOS but don't eat all your bullets in a fight.

Drifters and Macs have been soft targets for about 20 builds.

GORGEous says

I find camo and turrets really frustrating. Let's remove them too.

B1 says

Babblers have never been enjoyable to play against, kind of like the pve spam that prevents "skill" - whereas a skulk can just rush straight in with babblers, tank for his teammates and the rest can come in to clear the room.

The sentiment was the same as B1 but here we go. Essay time!

It's just so shitty that something like the balance mod that was supposed to change a few numbers here and there to help aliens a little on their way has turned into "Lets make this work because I want to see it in the game".

Instead of having a vision on what parts of the game aliens/marines are bound to be slightly better/worse at and just tweak numbers to make sure that neither side can stomp or has an "I win" button at any time in the game, we're getting "oh this was a cool feature and it's never used" and "this could be a good mechanic, lets MAKE A NEW ABILITY". This balance mod RAPIDLY spiralled out of control. We're on a slippery slope where everyday I look for new changes. First few patches I thought was pretty cool by tweaking some upgrade costs and pres to help aliens on economy and reduce lifeform punishments. Then I started getting worried by the idea of 10 babblers per egg, hydra cost decreased, gorge tunnel cost. Where is the reduction in PvE??? (13tres crag/shade/shift/whip hasn't really changed much).

For example, babblers are essentially an outright HP boost which could (POTENTIALLY) require something like 24 bullets to kill (Assuming no natural or assisted regeneration). The only thing this does for skill and fun is lower it because the skulk can now be 20IQ points lower and be a bit more rambo. Does this make aliens stronger? Yes. Is it fun and skillful and PvP? Mmmm there are arguments to say yes you need a gorge and you still need to land bites, but come on it's more skill floor raising.

Same thing for stuff like umbra. It's pretty boring to have a damage reduction ability. At least make it crop duster so the lerk needs to dive in. Then maybe you could make spores ranged and introduce that skill back into the game, just give it a cooldown/massive energy use so you can't spam small rooms like oxygenation or something. But for the love of God if you take this spore suggestion seriously, then make spores clearer to see through as marines. It's like a fucking smoke grenade that's stupidly frustrating to just spray through.

I played a very little amount of ns1 and not in a competitive manner and I was so young I can't even remember it that well. I don't know how fades worked in comparison to ns2 and consequently I don't know the impact of metabolise or acid rocket, but acid rocket sounds to be more fun and skill based than just blinking and metabolising at the top of the ceiling whilst you have a bit of regen and maybe a mucous drifter on you. Yet you chose to implement a skill that isn't difficult to use for the effects it gives. WTF is the point of this balance mod again? You've lost me.

If you're trying to fix skulk early game, why??. If you're trying to fix alien early game, there are other ways which don't make players think "OH here we go, I've lost this engagement before anyone's even taken damage." I've tried to talk to a few people about increasing the marine RT build time and I think only GORGEOUS has actually replied saying he agrees. Increased marine RT build time should help alien res biting vs recappers, AND should help some problems of the relentless wave after wave of marines which are impossible to clear if they pick 2-3 skulks each time consistently. DOES THIS LOWER SKILL LVLS? No, it just makes it strategically a bit harder for marines and gives aliens a little more of a break to recover from ping ponging to defend. Maybe welders could increase RT build time so you could use a fast armory drop and this has it's tradeoffs in terms of upgrade delay and pres. Admittedly it is more boring for marines to spend more time building but at least then you could make crags/whips more expensive because the alien RTs wouldn't be CONSTANTLY under attack. You could then also increase alien RT cost to stop RT spam and harvesters being so forgiving for trading.

You see how that paragraph looks at changing things which don't raise skill floor? Engagements and strategy should be the skills you're looking at balancing in a manner that skill also needs to be taken into account to win the game. Getting babblers or getting umbra isn't really strategy or skillful, it's just something you can do to minimise the impact of any mistakes (and hence the lower skilled players)you make. Upgrade costs and build times affect the game in terms of pace which is the biggest problem imo for marines rather than the efficacy of skulks/lerks/fades. Now we can discuss THESE sort of changes to really pick out any flaws and fine tune it to make this a game less about needing PvE and hating it, and more about skill.

GET A VISION FOR WHAT YOU WANT THE GAME TO BE.
Marines upper hand untill lerks (but not stupid pressure pressure pressure and killing 2-3 skulks quicker than they can respawn and defend next pressure).
Aliens upper hand untill 2-1 shotguns.
Marines upper hand untill fades.
3-3 vs onos or WHATEVER is equal and is determined by lifeform picks or crushing engagements by aliens.
All of these scenarios should be heavily influenced by skill as well, so although marines have upper hand in early game, if skulks play nicely, they can swing the tide of the game. This means that the balance needs to be FINE TUNED so that one team has only a SLIGHT upper hand at each stage of the game just because it's difficult to get perfect balance in asymmetrical game until both teams have absolutely full tech. But because it's only a SLIGHT upper hand, SKILLFUL play can turn the balance.

This is the type of "vision" that needs to be had. Draw out a graph if you need to so you always have that goal in line. Have Y axis as "effectiveness" and X axis as "time" and try and keep the ALIEN and MARINE trend line as close to each other as possible. AND PUBLISH IT SO EVERYONE KNOWS AT WHAT POINT WHICH SIDE IS SUPPOSED TO BE SLIGHTLY STRONGER OR WEAKER SO EVERYONE CAN PROPERLY CONTRIBUTE TO THE FEEDBACK OF THE BALANCE ISSUES. I don't care if my vision is different or bad or not thought through, it was an example of how this mod should be run.

DON'T RAISE SKILL FLOOR.
Weps/armor upgrades are needed to keep pace with lifeforms (still need to aim to kill, skill)
Res biting slows down marine tech (skill)
Babblers/umbra (raise skill floor to make it easier, not more skillful).
Crag/whip (Raises skill floor for alien strategy to lower mistakes leading to marine pressure because it buys time for aliens to defend, not more skillful).

You know those games where when you reload and if you time it right you get a super fast reload speed, and if you get it wrong it slows down. That's a skillful mechanic. I mention it here because I want to introduce the idea of raising the skill ceiling which might need to be done for aliens if you're trying to fix alien early game. I don't have any ideas at the moment to change aliens to fix alien early game, only the marine RT build time. But perhaps this is the type of mechanic we need (LIKE BUTTJUMPING ANYONE?)

GET RID OF PvE.
Topic done to death, pretty sure it was one of the major points of what the balance mod was made for, and so far it's failed.






Now final note. I know I'm involved in the NS2 slack balance chat but it's been so difficult to read changes, play changes, and then evaluate them properly because of the speed at which they go through. While this sounds incredibly conceited, I don't believe that I am so much stupider that I'm way behind on everyone else's thinking involved in the balance chat and that you guys can think/play/evaluate/implement all these changes knowing the most you can know and think that these are all good for the game. It feels like you're rushing through these changes and getting ahead of yourself instead of thinking about these things properly. Rantology asked me to be the cynical person behind the changes and these are my thoughts. Flame away if you think I'm tarnishing your work because I'm being a petulant little child, I can take it. I do feel though that the mod is moving too quickly and in the wrong direction and everything seriously needs to stop and the principle behind the mod rethought THOROUGHLY.

Fuck; the majority of the established changes might need to be reversed making this season (more of) a joke. But I want to remind people that that is the risk we took by trying a competitive mod and that is the cost we all have to live with. But IMO, it's better we do a U-turn now and fix it before the summer tournaments and definitely before the next season than be unhappy with the results forever more and keep tinkering forever more.

This game is about pvp AND pve. If you don't like pve maybe some of you should go play CS: GO

Tinki says

This game is about pvp AND pve. If you don't like pve maybe some of you should go play CS: GO

Sure. Don't remove crag/whip. Just make them expensive so they mean something. Not just a wasteful bandaid to fix noob mistakes from skulks/lerks/fades to buy time on the RTs

Tinki says

This game is about pvp AND pve. If you don't like pve maybe some of you should go play CS: GO

I fully agree with this. Tired of hearing these, "Remove this and that" so there'll be no buildings at all soon. Structures are part of this game and always will be, even AI controlled babblers and whatnot.

Amad says

Tinki says

This game is about pvp AND pve. If you don't like pve maybe some of you should go play CS: GO

I fully agree with this. Tired of hearing these, "Remove this and that" so there'll be no buildings at all soon. Structures are part of this game and always will be, even AI controlled babblers and whatnot.

+1

As Amad said, this is a part of NS2. So yeah, of course, you can lose a game because of that, but Commander, strategies, PVE then is needed. Except if you think AIM is 100% of the game, but I disagree with this opinion.

Big rant post by Wob, but I'd partially agree. The idea "let's tweak babblers so they are viable" is not really a motion I can support, since it is a game mechanic which doesn't need to be in NS imo. It doesn't add "fun" as I'd envision competitive PvP. Just because UWE implemented them for giggles doesn't mean we need to make them viable. There is tons of stuff to improve the meta which you can accomplish already by small tweaks, so introducing babblers back kinda feels bad.

Also I fear you guys go abit overboard, just because you keep NS2 fresh (which is a good motion) doesn't need we need to change the whole game mechanics every 2-4 weeks. Overall, I was happy with most changes but I like to signalize a "let's be a bit careful" sign over it.

I liked all the reasoning posts rantology put up so far, but what about a general discussion of where do you want to head towards with the game meta? Wob did put up some nice examples on how to envision the game, a clarification on your goals on that part would be nice so it is easier to understand or discuss the minor details - if it supports the goal or not. And of course, if the community actually agrees on the goals.

Take PvE as an example, I think they are many people who'd love to remove it at all and others clearly see it as part of the game. When you address things like that, a general goal consensus would be nice to have, e.g. go back on alien comm only supportive but more time on the field than in the hive, that is so you don't have to artificially put "interesting abilities" or PvE to make the khamm's job not too relaxing in the hive. Etcpp.

In short: If you go for bigger changes, get a discussion and reasoning about yuor main goals what you envision how NS2 should be played first and then the changes according to it. If you want to keep the general meta similar, only tweak numbers to balance it a bit.

@Wob - Why would anyone want to flame you? This thread should be the place for that kind of discussion.

As for the "big vision" of the mod, it's primary goal so far has been to fix the alien tech tree and the previous lack of options there-in, and to reduce the amount of PvE and low skill gimmicky mechanics that cause frustration in the game (muccous, bonewall, phantom, etc). Has the mod achieved that? Debatable, I think it has improved things when compared to vanilla NS2, but it is of course an always-evolving thing and it will never be perfect. What was not a part of that vision, for the moment anyway, is re-balancing existing stages of the game (like you mentioned in your post wob, "Team X have advantage from here until here, then team Y has it").

Everyone seems to be focusing on babblers at the moment thinking there was some kind of malicious plan to make them so effective and viable that they will be spammed every game - this is not the case. Babblers have become a side-affect of unlocking the alien tech tree in the manner that we have, and they will have to be re-balanced a bit to fit this new position.

The current mod has a lot of changes in it, and most of them have a very specific purpose (there are of course "fluff" changes like reducing the weight of mines). This big list of changes were oriented toward moving the game a step closer to the before-mentioned vision of a more coherent alien tech tree, and less frustration and gimmickry in a more encompassing and in-depth manner than the first iteration that was purely value tweaks. There is no talk of more/bigger changes, this version of the mod will hopefully be debated and tested for quite a while before another patch is considered. (this is excluding 'fixes and tweaks' made to improve existing changes within the mod)

And as always, feedback is welcomed (especially specific suggestions. While vague and broadly reaching statements about vision are fine, this does not particularly translate into actual changes very well).

Mucous was fine. It gave the alien comm something to do and was often important in engagements. He had to micro the drifter, cast it in the right place, manage res (when it became 2tres).

The problem with mucous was the shitty spam on crags and whips which tied in with lerk defence or skulk defence. You nuke the ability to drop crags and whips like they're pennies like increasing cost and you decrease alien rate of expansion and so marine pressure doesn't need to be so hard.

Bonewall is nice now, I think that was one of the best changes to come out of this mod. It scales with the game, provides momentary alien relief, and is just less frustrating while still keeping a use for alien comm skill.

The vision you have to fix the game by just looking at tech/pve/gimmicky mechanics doesn't translate well into an RTS game that evolves as time goes by in game. Different things have different uses and levels of efficacy but also are used different amounts at different times in the game. If the game isn't being balanced around the progression of the game, you're going to have a lot of unintended side-effects and will be constantly tweaking the game for ages to come. It's like there's no structure. It's probably best to CREATE a meta game and work from there to keep things balanced and in your control. Then you can bring other things up to par working around this central idea. At the moment all changes just seem to be thought of out of the blue, discussed, changed, and implemented around this vague ideology of "better alien tech tree, less pve, less gimmicks".

I sincerely disagree about muccous, Armor being the primary currency for alien engagements, it was pretty broken - especially when you talk in terms of raising the skill floor--- this ability used to be a MASSIVE skill floor booster. How is it fine when lifeforms don't have to manage their HP/AP and proceed to face tank damage only to have their primary concern- the armor- healed up either mid-engagement or post-engagement while grinding a gate or hiding around a corner. It was like an AoE medpack that was spammed at every opportunity... not to mention it was more or less a hard-counter to pistols. This is not even considering the structure healing, which was just as silly. 2 tres for this ability was pretty negligible. I would also like to point out that it effectively heals for the same amount now that it did before, it's just not as broken because it's not healing the most valuable portion of the eHP.


Like I said, the goal was not to change the overall meta/flow of the game with this patch- it was purely to try and address some of the most glaring issues that have been in the game for months. The ideology was not vague, we had very specific mechanics we wanted to fix/improve (e.g. the alien tech tree, fade, muccous, bonewall, phantom, the strength and frequency of PvE).


I am not trying to shoot your ideas down, I do think looking over the existing meta and evaluating how the game flows would be very worthwhile (albeit difficult considering the range of opinions on the subject). I am am just clarifying that it was not the intention of this set of changes- if you have specific suggestions pertaining to the existing changes, by all means please do post them.

Alright its all well and good to complain about the changes, but honestly its posts and attitudes like that which define the very reason why I say a balance mod is a waste. These changes have been around for a long time, with many attempts to promote discussion. Why has not a single thing been said until now? That has and will always be one of the worst thing with this community - everyone says nothing until something impacts them, and then its a huge deal. I made 2 posts both here and on the official forums trying to get a better idea of what direction people would like to see the gameplay go - and I got 1 response.

Ok, to be not so vague, a more specific sense. The biggest impact on the game meta following game decisions has to be made around the alien commander's role IMO which also dictates the tres/pres model. 2 options there: keep it as it is or go back to pre 240 builds where the alien play was more on the field and ppl just jump in to start an upgrade from time to time. A complete removal of alien commander is too much of a change I fear (everyone would say we just want NS1 back ;)

So, if you want the alien commander as a full time job, we need skill elements and useful tres dumps for him to use like medpacks for the marine commander. drifters were heading in the direction, but currently you don't need it like you need meds/ammo drops. UWE tried many gimmicks to make an alien commander having something to do in the match, so we now face ruptures, bone walls, drifter abilities and teleporting shit or moving structures. And we faced "no-fun" elements with it all over - like the rapture spam obscuring vision, bone walls as "negative" ability like stomp and so on.

My personal vision would be to have it legit again for alien commanders play in the field, but many would disagree. But if you'd do that, you could balance the game around that fact. If you don't, well we need drifter spam abilities etc which others again find extremely frustrating to play against.

Now you got 2 responses, Dragon, sorry for being so late ;)