What about making Grenades a free item? Once it is research you get 2 on spawn and have on way to get more. Using the armory you can mix and match which type of grenade as you please.

Simba says

Regen: Instead of cutting regeneration during the combat timer, i would go for a 50% reduction of healing from Regeneration during this same interval.

This would put regen WORSE than vanilla regen, would it not? We would just revert to no one ever using regen, and carapace being used 100%. Watching matches now, I notice there is a time and place for regen and carapace, and all life forms seem to switch back and forth when it is necessary.

thought that maybe my english isn't good, but i don't think you have understood what i wanted to say concerning that point.

atm, with regeneration's skill; you keep regenerating your HP except if you have received some damage. At this point, a "combat timer" start and you won't be regenerated the next 3sec.
Then, after 3sec, if you don't receive any damage you will start regenerating again.

My idea is to put a low regen (50% of initial regen) instead of nothing during this 3sec period. So it's not worse than vanilla.

Sephy says

Simba says

Regen: Instead of cutting regeneration during the combat timer, i would go for a 50% reduction of healing from Regeneration during this same interval.

This would put regen WORSE than vanilla regen, would it not? We would just revert to no one ever using regen, and carapace being used 100%. Watching matches now, I notice there is a time and place for regen and carapace, and all life forms seem to switch back and forth when it is necessary.

thought that maybe my english isn't good, but i don't think you have understood what i wanted to say concerning that point.

atm, with regeneration's skill; you keep regenerating your HP except if you have received some damage. At this point, a "combat timer" start and you won't be regenerated the next 3sec.
Then, after 3sec, if you don't receive any damage you will start regenerating again.

My idea is to put a low regen (50% of initial regen) instead of nothing during this 3sec period. So it's not worse than vanilla.

Ah I see, instead of 0% regen for those 3 seconds, it's 50% of the regen. I understand. Not sure how I feel about that.

Simba says

It won't affect early game much, since aliens shouldn't be blindly trying to expand anyway, since they can't expect to hold it with no lerks. Aliens taking 1 natural and waiting for lerks is fairly standard. They can take 2 naturals if they do well early.

That's sort of situational based on the map. A lot of the time, you cyst both naturals and maybe even beyond your natural (like if you spawn pipeline on jambi, you sometimes can cyst to electrical core, or to waste recycling), then you drop the first node based on where the scouted marines are not pressuring.

On some maps such as veil, you either rapid expand or you lose.

What about just lowering the maturation rate on alien nodes after they come up?

can we add a soft counter to hallucinations? obs or scans make them purple maybe? i still think they're too strong as they waste more bullets than mucous does while still providing a distraction.

and they're not fun to play against. not interactive for aliens at all, and just frustrating guessing games for marines.

Make all hallucinations skulks regardless of lifeform, thx

Kaneh says

can we add a soft counter to hallucinations?

Grenade changes!!! :)

maybe have a cluster grenade change that also dispells hallucinations, although these sort of changes may cause powercreep for marines again.

I would like to offer my ideas about the compmod:

1. Change "Stab" like Swipe with the stab-delay like now.
(its like a suicide action against nearly everything. Its a late research and it has not the power it should have in my opinion)

I think exos will still not used in competitive games.
You can't dodge and the usage of exos is very limited. Its just boring to play them in my opinion.
Maybe someone can change my mind....

2a. Delete Guns of the "Exos". Maybe increase/decrease res, hp, damage and movement . Don't know exactly to what. Would need some testing.

2b. After a "Exo" gets killed, the player jumps out of the exo and have the equipment which he/she took before.
(This could be used to crush rooms with much whips etc as a damagetaker. Also, it can help to buy time for the marine e.g. at phasegates.)

After the discussion before about grenades I have this idea:

3. Delete "Grenades" from the armory. Let the Marine Commander researching it and dropable for him/her. The cost should be really high to prevent abusing.
(If you buy grenades its like a lottery. There are situation where they are pretty usefull and as much situation where they are a totally waste of res.)

LyDDa says

2a. Delete Guns of the "Exos". Maybe increase/decrease res, hp, damage and movement . Don't know exactly to what. Would need some testing.

2b. After a "Exo" gets killed, the player jumps out of the exo and have the equipment which he/she took before.
(This could be used to crush rooms with much whips etc as a damagetaker. Also, it can help to buy time for the marine e.g. at phasegates.)

After the discussion before about grenades I have this idea:

3. Delete "Grenades" from the armory. Let the Marine Commander researching it and dropable for him/her. The cost should be really high to prevent abusing.
(If you buy grenades its like a lottery. There are situation where they are pretty usefull and as much situation where they are a totally waste of res.)

Interesting exo idea that I like, but might break balance.

Love the grenade idea, though. It's really difficult to plan ahead to a situation where you'd need grenades. Having them support droppable would add some layers of depth.

Tane says

Don’t really understand this being aware of surrounding ”argument”. Sounds are big part of ”surrounding”. If fact, sound data is by far more important than visual data when it comes spotting opponent almost in every competitive FPS ever made. Being aware of surrounding is as much about sounds than it’s about your visual data. That is exactly the reason why silent lerks are so annoying. Silence as game mechanic is problematic because it takes away skill. They are both in same category with cloak, they kill skill ambushing with artificial help. This is the same reason why we don’t see cloak or silence mechanics in competitive games.

Yes, ots. That is exactly my point. Order to skulk to get close to marine with current silent walk is already good ambushing , because it’s so slow you already have to be in good position. Lerk in other hand, didn’t even have to think positioning in order get close to marine. If melee vs. range game really have to use silence mechanic, it has to have drawpacks. Lerk didn’t have any drawpacks, that’s why it was fixed. I would have changed speed as well but I’m not the one who makes these changes.

Old reply, but i know this is a game... but anyways isnt the lerk supposed to be like a "bird" and not an airplane?... Last time i was in Suomi and also seeing National Geographic on TV i didnt see a bird who sounded like a Gripen Airplane. But i dont know how the birds fly in Murica? Did you guys replace all the natural born wildlife birds with your remote controlled mini-airplanes?

The fun with game was actually the element of suprise, even if you couldnt hear the lerk. The awesome feeling of 1 shotgun lerk is nowhere. The fun with the lerk is taken away, with actually getting behind a shotgun marine and playing with your own life. The Speed change i would totally agree on, that could've been changed

And @Rantology also mentioned that "many" prem lerks liked the decision, i would like to know how many. Like how many could outvote the most players in ESL about this decision. Is there like a commitée where random suggestions come up in "CDT Private Section" and then gets voted to the "NS2 CDT Public Section" in Trello to get processed with?

Cause if the game will be ruled by Prem players, and the lowlifes like us dont get even a voice in the air, why do we keep still playing around? Is there any use for us? Ofcouse i understand you speak with the old NS1 players, but i also see that there is a few new players in NS2 who plays in Prem or Higher Divisions.

I would rather see a big change in something like Crag,Shade and Shift Hive. Cause what's the most upgrade played by now? I raise my hand for Crag?

Would be much funnier to see actually a variety in the games like not always starting with the Crag hive.

Old reply, but i know this is a game... but anyways isnt the lerk supposed to be like a "bird" and not an airplane?... Last time i was in Suomi and also seeing National Geographic on TV i didnt see a bird who sounded like a Gripen Airplane. But i dont know how the birds fly in Murica? Did you guys replace all the natural born wildlife birds with your remote controlled mini-airplanes?
[/quote]

Don't understand this argumentation at all. To which nature existing lifeform would you compare the fade with its blink ability? There is no lifeform on this planet which can this. So why compare with nature? Its a game more an competitive game...
I agree with the type of the sound. Its really aarkward. And I have the same opinion that the sound is a bit to loud. From a lifeform with the lowest sound to one with one of the loudest sounds breaks totally the way of play the lerk.

Would be much funnier to see actually a variety in the games like not always starting with the Crag hive.
[/quote]

Since the regen ability gets nerved im not sure, if the crag hive is the best starting... we will see...



Interesting exo idea that I like, but might break balance.
[/quote]

I was also thinking it could make the game more balancing between lower and higher divisions. In lower divisions alien is the better team because the lack of aim.
The lower division can use it to hold longer a position or get a position. For higher divisions would that mean a lower amount of dps, which means its harder to kill the lifefroms.

LyDDa says

Don't understand this argumentation at all. To which nature existing lifeform would you compare the fade with its blink ability? There is no lifeform on this planet which can this. So why compare with nature? Its a game more an competitive game...
I agree with the type of the sound. Its really aarkward. And I have the same opinion that the sound is a bit to loud. From a lifeform with the lowest sound to one with one of the highest sounds breaks totally the way of play the lerk.

Since the regen ability gets nerved im not sure, if the crag hive is the best starting... we will see...

And as i said, i know this is a game, but the sound was never insteded in the first place? What i've seen from the posts, alot of people are negative about it, or just questioning "WHY did it come in the first place" Why wasnt it thought of beginning? Like in NS1 it didnt have the sound, and nobody cared about it for... how many years is it now? And just the sound is silly, like... of all the different kinds of sounds there is out in the world, it had to have the sound like an Jet Engine? There has to be some other way with not having a silent glide.

I really did like how the lifeform was, and i still like it but i just dont get it with the sound :S I mean, who picked the sound? Somehow it felt like the game had more speed before, and you had to position yourself alot better for trapping lifeforms, right now it seems too bit easy against the lerks without using scan.

And yeah, hope with the nerf something more funny comes up to see and maybe cast in the future! :)

Oh you mean the sound already in the vanilla game that just wasn't working correctly because it was using the 2d sound instead of the 3d sound?... You couldn't be talking about THAT sound, clearly the sound in use now was made from someone farting into a can....

If people want to have a serious discussion about the lerk glide sound, then do it. If you want to shit talk about it then by all means continue, but I suspect you wont get the answers you are looking for.

There are countless reasons WHY something needs to change with the lerk, since the ability to silently ambush has been a problem since the bite ROF was increased. Given NS2's engine and netcode it is reasonably easy to get in 2 bites before the marine has a chance at reacting.. We have seen these issues many times before in NS2, look at the shotguns current balance. NS1 didnt have a glide sound, but forced you to flap much more than NS2, effectively accomplishing the same thing. I had tried a variant of this as the first attempt, and can easily try that again. There are many other ways we can adjust the lerk to fix the problem of moving full speed silently, but if everyone is just going to stomp their feet and cry I dont think anything is going to change.

NotDragon says

Oh you mean the sound already in the vanilla game that just wasn't working correctly because it was using the 2d sound instead of the 3d sound?... You couldn't be talking about THAT sound, clearly the sound in use now was made from someone farting into a can....

If people want to have a serious discussion about the lerk glide sound, then do it. If you want to shit talk about it then by all means continue, but I suspect you wont get the answers you are looking for.

There are countless reasons WHY something needs to change with the lerk, since the ability to silently ambush has been a problem since the bite ROF was increased. Given NS2's engine and netcode it is reasonably easy to get in 2 bites before the marine has a chance at reacting.. We have seen these issues many times before in NS2, look at the shotguns current balance. NS1 didnt have a glide sound, but forced you to flap much more than NS2, effectively accomplishing the same thing. I had tried a variant of this as the first attempt, and can easily try that again. There are many other ways we can adjust the lerk to fix the problem of moving full speed silently, but if everyone is just going to stomp their feet and cry I dont think anything is going to change.

I for one would like to see the sound removed. I would also like to see the ROF of the lerk decreased if that is what it takes. The lerk always felt like and seemed to be designed for hit and run tactics.

One fix that would be nice and might fix the issue you discussed so we can have silent lerk back is quicker deceleration when impacting something while gliding. As you know it is possible to use glide and look at the ground at the correct angle to gain speed.

If this were fixed you would be able to only nuzzle that poor marines back for one bite and if it wasn't a glancing bite, you'd be forced to flap and make noise.

Decrease the ROF encourageing more "hit and run" gameplay and meetting the intent on putting poison damage on the lerk's bite.

I would say we don't want to lower the bite ROF, mainly because lowering it allows lerks to be hard countered by medpacks. If enough people show interest in it, I can take another shot at making the glide slowdown not.. suck.

NotDragon says

Oh you mean the sound already in the vanilla game that just wasn't working correctly because it was using the 2d sound instead of the 3d sound?... You couldn't be talking about THAT sound, clearly the sound in use now was made from someone farting into a can....

If people want to have a serious discussion about the lerk glide sound, then do it. If you want to shit talk about it then by all means continue, but I suspect you wont get the answers you are looking for.

There are countless reasons WHY something needs to change with the lerk, since the ability to silently ambush has been a problem since the bite ROF was increased. Given NS2's engine and netcode it is reasonably easy to get in 2 bites before the marine has a chance at reacting.. We have seen these issues many times before in NS2, look at the shotguns current balance. NS1 didnt have a glide sound, but forced you to flap much more than NS2, effectively accomplishing the same thing. I had tried a variant of this as the first attempt, and can easily try that again. There are many other ways we can adjust the lerk to fix the problem of moving full speed silently, but if everyone is just going to stomp their feet and cry I dont think anything is going to change.

We've tried so many times to actually discuss about things, but you've always somehow managed to ignore us. Or atleast i feel like that way and from the response of other people, i think they feel the same way or somehow close to it.

And it was no meaning to shit talk about the lerk sound, i was trying to point out how it sounds like, and how the idea got brought up with, and like implementing into the game, without any further testing. Except maybe the testing phase was intended at the summerholidays?

As you say yourself, the lerk had more flapping like it did in the NS1, and the ROF was lower also i believe.

Then i ask myself (why did they choose a shortcut?) I know you described earlier that the flapping together with the speed was hard as hell to do, but.. if more people working with it, instead of maybe you alone? Couldnt it be more efficient in the end? With doing a final adjustment that actually works, and asking the many prem lerks as rantology said to try it out in a testning phase?

@RisingSun: Exactly, hit and run would be nicer.

I kind of liked how before, you'd be walking down the hall listening to life forms, and you'd hear the lerk chirp as if from the back of your head. You immediately knew a lerk was close... or coming, but you didn't know from where. Like a horror movie....

IS he gonna get me? Am I safe, will he fly by? Is he behind me right now? Imma go sit in the corner and cry.

A problem was, yes, you wouldn't hear him coming, and you have two bites into your ass AND poison before you can react (thanks to ping).

NotDragon says

I would say we don't want to lower the bite ROF, mainly because lowering it allows lerks to be hard countered by medpacks. If enough people show interest in it, I can take another shot at making the glide slowdown not.. suck.

If meds hard counter then remove the silly poison no one even uses, lower the ROF, and up the damage a bit =D

I've heard rumors the CDT team has a fix in the works for the lerk glide throttle issue.

Lastly, would fixing the glide collision be too much of a pain? It seems this is the real problem, not silent lerk.

You shouldnt be able to glide into a moving marine and maintain speed while biting.
Would it be possible to greatly decrease speed on impact with an enemy player model? This would force a hit and flap style, causing the premier desired noise.

Collisions for the lerk were intentionally made that way, previously you would stop dead when biting a marine as a lerk, and it actually made it a lot harder to kill a marine. The lerk should be rewarded for taking the risk to get in close for bites if he chooses, but it should actually REQUIRE taking a risk. With full speed silent gliding there is no risk, and if the marine happens to catch you right before you bite, you can just retreat.

I will take a shot at modifying glide to require more flapping, so that the passive glide sound can be removed. I think I have an idea for how to do it that wont make glide really bad.

NotDragon says

Collisions for the lerk were intentionally made that way, previously you would stop dead when biting a marine as a lerk, and it actually made it a lot harder to kill a marine. The lerk should be rewarded for taking the risk to get in close for bites if he chooses, but it should actually REQUIRE taking a risk. With full speed silent gliding there is no risk, and if the marine happens to catch you right before you bite, you can just retreat.

I will take a shot at modifying glide to require more flapping, so that the passive glide sound can be removed.

Thank you!!

I am sure there are many lerks more than willing to test this out. If you need people, I can lerk all of today if needed past 4CDT

I published a trial of it, there will be some more updates later tonight hopefully if steam workshop starts working again...

Alright looks like its updated again hopefully..

NotDragon says

Collisions for the lerk were intentionally made that way, previously you would stop dead when biting a marine as a lerk, and it actually made it a lot harder to kill a marine. The lerk should be rewarded for taking the risk to get in close for bites if he chooses, but it should actually REQUIRE taking a risk. With full speed silent gliding there is no risk, and if the marine happens to catch you right before you bite, you can just retreat.

I will take a shot at modifying glide to require more flapping, so that the passive glide sound can be removed. I think I have an idea for how to do it that wont make glide really bad.

Nice to hear! And like always, have some people testing it in a pcw, and then we can give some feedback about it, but dont just release it with the official without testing like "OK, HAVE FUN" something herakles would say :)

So i'm assuming the version i just tried on listen server was the new version, my speed is slowing down more rapidly but i can still glide to a point, with celerity i need to flap much more frequently to remain at "higher" speed.

I like this very much, then again after that sound i guess i'll like everything else? :)

Just to clarify given all the recent events:

Server side glide sound was removed for Lerks. As the Lerk however, you will still hear the glide sound as you would in vanilla. This is ONLY client side for the actual lerk player, no one else hears it.

Air friction will increase progressively for the Lerk when going over 7 speed and not having flapped within the last 1.25 seconds. At a maximum there is a 0.3 increase to air friction, the 'base' air friction for lerk being 0.1. If you are going under 7 speed there is no change in friction.

The same scaling applies to the glide acceleration from your viewangle - so when you are looking down you will also gain less acceleration.

I can go into further specifics about this if needed, and have a decent amount of granularity control over it currently. The average increase in air friction for most lerk players is probably close to 0.05, since half of the scalar decreases with the natural speed decay, while the other half is increasing with time between flaps.

NotDragon says

Just to clarify given all the recent events:

Server side glide sound was removed for Lerks. As the Lerk however, you will still hear the glide sound as you would in vanilla. This is ONLY client side for the actual lerk player, no one else hears it.

Air friction will increase progressively for the Lerk when going over 7 speed and not having flapped within the last 1.25 seconds. At a maximum there is a 0.3 increase to air friction, the 'base' air friction for lerk being 0.1. If you are going under 7 speed there is no change in friction.

The same scaling applies to the glide acceleration from your viewangle - so when you are looking down you will also gain less acceleration.

I can go into further specifics about this if needed, and have a decent amount of granularity control over it currently. The average increase in air friction for most lerk players is probably close to 0.05, since half of the scalar decreases with the natural speed decay, while the other half is increasing with time between flaps.

Amazing work as always. I'll be testing this tonight in a scrim.

This is a horrible change.

Lerk plays completely differently, yeah im whining, stop fucking with the lifeform so drastically.

I'm actually really liking the vanilla lerk changes. One flap (while moving already) gets you to max speed and you must flap every 2-3 seconds to maintain a good amount of forward momentum.

One issue:

With 3 chamber celerity it feels like it has been heavily nerfed. One flap as before brings you to max speed but only to a max of 13.something and it degrades to 12 fast enough to warrant never really needing celerity unless you want to flap every .2 seconds.

Would it be possible to have the old silent lerk values with 3 chamber celerity? Or maybe a compromise between the two? The need to flap should still be there so you cant be relatively silent without the silence upgrade but not as much as vanilla lerk, which seems to be a lot.

I love the changes to vanilla lerk but celerity lerk needs tweaking imo.

Cr4zy_ says

This is a horrible change.

Lerk plays completely differently, yeah im whining, stop fucking with the lifeform so drastically.

Better to reply with like more constructive critisism (spelling?) and tell to Dragon what you dont like right now with the change, and give some tips, instead of baffling some utter worthless information....

As another PSA, walking for marines now works, NS2+ was breaking it.

Here's feedback :

So I played last night without knowing something had changed again in the Lerk.
Happy to see the gliding sound has been removed. Now you just need to flap your wings like all the time. From my perspective general speed of the lerk has decreased a lot (I don't know if that's actually the case). And the lerk feels heavy as fuck.
It might be too much. This time the changes were good (since the CDT seems to want changes in the lerk) but maybe a little too much. You might need to have like celerity all the time to be reactive and effective on the field. Plus mashing the flap button to keep a descent speed and avoid dropping on the ground, isn't that great.

When I say the new changes are better, it's because they're not altering the nature of the NS2 lerk (as it was designed by uwe), which the gliding sound did. Now the lerk still plays like a lerk, it's a silent class, that has little armor and life, that can fly above marines, and ambush them silently.

Btw, I'm wondering, I've not done it but if you try to spike and flap your wings at the same time, there should be an energy issue right ? since you tend to flap more now to fly

Why all the changes to the lerk by the way. Before it was changed the major issue people talked about was the Regen Lerk, with the old regen. Now that is changed, no in-combat regen, why is there a need to nerf and nerf this lifeform again ?

This is pretty much the only lifeform that changed in the last months, that's crazy